Chris G

Dissapointed kuga Owner, Ford powershift

I Bought an immaculate well looked after 2015 Ford Kuga Titanium x Sport powershift with 55000 miles on the clock in mid 2021 for £11500,i bought it privately from a Richardson ford mechanic, the car was his personal car owned for over a year & he bought it internally from Richardsons, so he had made sure everything was up to date including the all important gear box oil change before he purchased the car. I asked him at the time of purchase if the Power-shift gearboxes where reliable & was told they are great if you keep the oil changed within recommended intervals.i made sure to do this & spent a small fortune keeping the car up to date & well serviced at Richardsons for the next 1.5 years . No problems at all until mid July this year ( 2023) i had the all important gear box oil & filter again at a cost of £500 . We went away on holiday ,never used the car for nearly 2 weeks after the oil change, returned from holiday & within 4 days of returning had my car engine serviced again at Richardsons . 3 days later the gearbox basically fell to pieces internally & had to be towed to Richardsons by the AA. Less than 200 miles after the gearbox oil change & straight after another service, they had a look & promised to ring me & let me know. I had to drive into Richarsons after work that day to be told the car needed a new gear box at a cost of well over £5000. They advised me to try a gearbox specialist over in Bradford as it would be cheaper & apart from them letting me park the car on their customer car park offered no other help at all . I rang the gearbox specialist along with 4 other specialists around the uk to be told the same thing ,at 90000 miles my car should have had 2 gearboxes in by now & the Power-shift gearbox at manufacture is flawed to the extent that they fail at around 40 to 50000 miles . Not even a case of if it will fail but when it will fail .I googled Ford Powershift gearboxes & was amazed at the amount of cars that had been affected by the gearbox issues , even to the point that ford had a lawsuit taken out against them in various countries including the USA. I went back to Richardsons & asked why they were not aware of this issues & they denied all knowledge of this as they had only had a couple come in over the years. Probably because they are so expensive to repair at the main dealer who would go there? My issue here is with Richardsons being a main dealer that knows nothing about such an issue with one of the cars they sell? i asked for a refund of any kind from the recent £500 gear box service & after 3 weeks wait was refused, they offered to make sure my next service costs would be reduced, should i take my next car there . I would never go there again £1000 spent in services in the space of 1.5 months & the car is scrap. I sold my kuga to a mechanic who would be repairing the gearbox himself , even then his costs would be over 2000 for parts alone. My car was worth aprox £7000 until i had the gearbox oil & filter change at Richardsons & £2500 after. Make your own mind up about that but do not make the same mistake i did in buying a ford with a Powershift gearbox & maybe think twice about buying from Richardsons who apparently don't know all they need to know about the cars they sell. Yes i bought my car one of their mechanics but he bought it direct from his place of work ie Richardsons , so he knew it was very well maintained at point of buying it & i trusted him as a main dealer Mechanic , who wouldn't ? I lost at least £4500 on the sale of the car & the few thousands spent at Richardsons maintaining it over 2 years were a waste of time in the end. In my opinion do your research about the car you want before going to Richardsons & maybe think twice about buying a car from here? they may look after you while your car fairly new but after in my experience you will get no help at all. Date of experience: 01 August 2023