Hello teeming millions!
I am not a mechanic nor did I play one on t.v. I have some basic automotive repair capabilities but any heavy lifting is left to the professionals.
My mother owns a 2007ish (I don’t know exact year) Ford Escape and she recently had a breakdown. Per her mechanic shop, the transmission needed replaced. She paid them to replace the transmission (re-manufcaturerd, not new). After she picked up the vehicle from the shop, she noticed it was not shifting correctly. She took it back and the shop has told her that it appears their technician did not program it correctly. They keep giving her the run-around on when they can re-program it. They say they’ll have to bring in a new technician who knows how to do it correctly as obviously their tech has not been able to get it right. The problem is that never happens and it has been a few weeks now where she calls them to ask if she can bring it back in to get fixed and they stall saying they’re still working on the “other” technician’s availability. She is not driving the vehicle out of fear of damaging the transmission if it isn’t programmed right.
My questions are:
[ul]
[li]How big of a deal is this to reprogram the computer that controls the transmission? It seems to me if you are a shop that does transmission work this should be… well, what you do, right?[/li][li]Is there something inherently different in a Ford Escape’s transmission control module/computer that is causing this?[/li][li]How big of a risk is there if the computer is not programmed correctly? Will my mother risk destroying the new transmission if she drives it at all? Is her safety at risk from them replacing the transmission without correctly programming it?[/li][li]If this lingers, does my mother have a valid premise for disputing the charge through her credit card as they didn’t “complete the job” since the programming is not complete and we don’t see any end in sight with the constant run-around she is getting.[/li][li] Is she being fed a line of bull and being scammed here? I don’t know the shop she used, she took it to the same people she uses for every vehicle repair she has. It is not the shop I would take my vehicles to whom I trust to be legitimate repair shops.[/li][/ul]
MeanJoe