Our New Ford Freestar - the "Perfect" Family Car? NOT! A Rant

Subject: Our New Ford Freestar - the "Perfect" Family Car? NOT! A Rant
From: "TwinMom"
Date: Tue, Nov 4, 2003 1:57 PM
Message-id:

A lawyer might be our next option, but we're trying to handle this without
having to incur legal expenses. The biggest deal about the factory paint,
durability aside, is that, without it, or rather, having it "done over"
immediately reduces the trade-in value of this car, by about $2,000. If
this
car, and another, without the re-paint, were side-by-side, the other car
would fetch $2K more in the used market.

From where are you getting this 2K figure?
Maybe if you turn around and sell it next year you might be looking at that
kind of a loss. But if you keep it the 8-10 years that you planned, I really
doubt it will mean anything approaching a 2K difference.

As far as what to do now, maybe one option would be to contact the CA BBB and
file a formal complaint.

Regarding different dealerships in different states -- FWIW we bought our
RAV4 in Oregon. We have had issues with the engine light going on (long story
but it had something to do with the catalytic converter and the way the chip
was set -- we never actually had the car break down) and have had it looked at
in dealerships located in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Where we bought the car or had other work done on it was never an issue.

Lori

David desJardins wrote:

I don't know anything about the actual durability of car paint. I
wouldn't personally have thought that having it repainted would be such
a big deal, although I can certainly understand why you would prefer a
car without defects in the first place.

Generally a repaint is thicker (and can thus be easily found out) but
has -properly made- no influence on durability.
However, a repaint is usually done to cars after accidents or other
damages, therefore the reduced value.

David desJardins wrote:

I don't know anything about the actual durability of car paint. I
wouldn't personally have thought that having it repainted would be such
a big deal, although I can certainly understand why you would prefer a
car without defects in the first place.

Generally a repaint is thicker (and can thus be easily found out) but
has -properly made- no influence on durability.
However, a repaint is usually done to cars after accidents or other
damages, therefore the reduced value.