PM sent. It's in Issaquah.

 

If you think a Suncoast trans is equal to a Brian built or John built trans you are very wrong. They don't have the nick-name "Suntoast" for no reason.

If I couldn't have a BTS or a JW built trans, my next choice would be to contact Roland (like Matt has done) and have a Roland advised how-to-build-a-transmission 4R100.

Stewart

 

Sometimes there's bad customer service, and sometimes there's bad customers. Don't be one of these customers.

Service technicians who are actually working on your truck are doing a job to support them and their families, and in most dealerships they aren't paid all that well. They only get paid if you pay for the work, or if Ford pays for warranty. If they can't find a problem or duplicate a problem, they don't have anything to get paid on and are basically doing work for free on a transmission they never built in the first place on a truck they never built or sold. As a customer trying to "remind them how much you paid for it" doesn't help your cause one bit, because that doesn't put food on the technician's table.

Next, those who work in the parts department are responsible for tens of thousands of parts. No they cannot be experts on everything, it's flat out impossible. So when they don't know the answer and then they get ridiculed for their job just shows them that as a customer you don't know what they do for a living and don't respect the difficulty of the job.

As I said in my first post, be nice. To accurately diagnose and repair your truck, they need to see something happening. A doctor won't just cut you open and look inside of you for some generic description of a problem that he can't see. A doctor will look for signs, symptoms, and try to locate and understand the problem before operating. An auto technician is the same way. Parts departments have dozens of distributors to deal with tens of thousands of parts, and mountains of information from Ford is just dumped on them on a daily basis. It's difficult to keep up with what's out there, and it's even harder when Ford is constantly changing or modifying parts, part numbers, etc. and then doesn't give good resources for dealerships to organize and keep up with the ever changing information.

 

I hear what your saying Pocket but that logic applies both ways.

I agree that counter personell as well as techs have not possible way of knowing every part offered by the manufacturer they represent, THEY as well as the CUSTOMER need to recognize that. For an employee/ service advisor to flat out state " ford doesn't make that" or anything along those lines without at least investigating superfically is poor service.

I understand that the a large percentage of customers walking through the door at a dealership don't know their lug wrench from a key fob and have all kinds of misconceptions about what their vehicle is capable of or not capable of.

It is also very easy to become "jaded" but a good service professional will take every customer walking through the door with a clean slate and give them the benefit of the doubt and even after they prove they are full of something it is still necessary humor them and explain with humility and usually a complete lack of condescension the situation while exploring why they arrived at the conclusion they did.

I work in field service repairing x-ray equipment and it took me quite a few years to master the skill of customer service, I have found " fixing the customer" equally as important as fixing the equipment, but I will add that I do get paid for showing up even if there is nothing wrong with the equipment and that makes keeping a smile on my face that much easier.

 

Of course there are some that deliver bad customer service. For that there's no excuse.


But I was simply commenting on what was posted.

 

I'm glad you brought up that analogy, Curtis, because I'm actually a physician. This might in part explain me being Type-A. You're right, a surgeon won't do exploratory surgery unless there is an identifiable problem, and that's why the workup has to proceed beyond a road-test (which is what we also call it in the hospital, when you walk a patient up and down the hall to see if they're steady enough on their feet to go home).

We are lucky in the medical field that we have easy access in this day and age to detailed noninvasive testing ranging from labs to advanced imaging like CT, US, MRI, PET, etc. But in the old days, yes, indeed, surgeons would open you up if you complained of abdominal pain, just to see what was wrong. And until the auto repair field has equivalent noninvasive diagnostic testing (beyond compression gauges, OBD-II and borescopes), they need to swing wrenches and remove covers to visualize the problem. How hard is it pull a transmission pan on a new $5K transmission job?

What upsets me is that there was no diagnostic testing or investigation beyond a test drive. It was the equivalent of a someone who just had an elective knee replacement come back and complain of nightly fevers and excessive pain with catching and grinding in the joint (witnessed by the wife and physical therapist) that wasn't reproducible in the ER by "road test". No diagnostic testing was done, then the patient was sent home, only to discover later that he was suffering from hardware loosening from a MRSA infection. (I've seen this before, BTW).

Here's some inside knowledge for you laymen. If you're in the hospital for whatever reason, and you feel like you're getting substandard service from the doctors, nurses, or other ancillary staff, you can now complain to the Patient Care Advocate (all hospitals have them in one form or another), who will then set into motion process to appease you. That means nurse managers and administrative staff discussions with the physicians on your behalf, extra attention and TLC, and possibly extra unnecessary additional testing, extra medications, and lengthier hospital stays.

This is done in part to preserve and improve patient satisfaction scores for the hospital, which has an impact on hospital ratings, marketing, etc. This is very important to them. I believe Ford has an equivalent process to air your grievances, whereby Ford Corporate gets in touch with the dealership in question to address your problem, and hopefully kicks their service attempts into a higher gear.

 

Just got the call that the truck is ready for pick up. They pulled the pan, and said they didn't find anything wrong. They also addressed what they felt was the binding slip yoke which they felt was causing the new clunk on take off. We'll see how this goes.

 

Nader & Curtis great discussion. I like the way both of you put this. And Nader, I hope it works out for you.

 

keep us updated on your transmission status. good bad or otherwise. cheers!

 

This has been a much cheaper route, and ironically I've gotten most of the hard parts from JW minus the converter, which I sourced from Precision. Total cost so far for a duplicate JW build with some slightly better parts here and there is $3100 including the donor trans for the build.

Op, fingers are crossed that they did you right and this got sorted out properly.

 

Crystal may be able to assist with what you are talking about.

Ford Truck Enthusiasts Forums - View Profile: FordService

 

Is John is providing you with his custom machined parts too? Machine work he does on his lathe?

The last time I talked to him he wasn't doing that.

Stewart

 

Thanks for the well wishes so far. I did, in fact, contact Ford Corporate yesterday about this tranny problem when I felt like the issue was being dismissed by techs' uneventful test-drives. The online form is broken down into three parts:
1) What is your concern? (my brand new heavy duty transmission failed)
2) What has the dealership done so far? (a few uneventful test drives)
3) What do you want from FoMoCo? (replace the currently defective and untrustworthy transmission or else give me my old transmission and a full refund)

I was somewhat surprised to get an email this morning from a Ford rep. (Maureen) from the Customer Relations Center, telling me that she contacted the dealership, and spoke to the service writer. I was discouraged by her recommendation to continue dealing with them since they were "in the best position to assist you in repairing and resolving the concerns with the transmission."

But there's a few lines of fine print at the end of the message that indicates that if I don't feel that they have adequately addressed my concerns, they may need additional information and I should call a particular 1-800 number.

Sooo, I picked up the truck, still without a diagnosis, and leery of the transmission. To their credit, the clunk on take off seems resolved after they addressed the binding slip yoke with some grease and a boot.

HOWEVER, after about 10 minutes of stop and go traffic, there was a roughness in first gear when coasting around 15 mph. Kind of a rumbling, I hoped was the uneven surface of the highway, but disappeared when I shifted into neutral.

I'm deciding to stress-test the drivetrain by hauling a single motorcycle in my big car hauler to my motorcycle event this weekend, about a hundred miles away. Part of me hopes the thing breaks down on the road for good to put this issue to rest. Quite the contrast from what should have been a customer happy with his new stout transmission, confident about towing anything, anytime, anywhere.

Come Monday, I'll be calling the 800 number at Ford.

 

I kind of got an 'in' with him while talking over the course of several weeks. I've got several of his billet items and a few other things he asked me not to share publicly.

 

Heh heh heh....yeah, because he'd get INUNDATED with requests!

Stewart