Complaint Review: Cottman Transmission

Since we have received NO help from the Cottman Franchise or Corporate, I felt I needed a forum to complain about this very shoddy business.

Our story began on Jan 3, 2000 when our '96 Ford Taurus died with just over 60,000 miles on it. We had it towed to the Ford dealer who offered to repair it for a non-refundable tear down fee of $500.00 plus the cost of the transmission $1800.00 with a 1 year warranty.

Well, we called Cottman, "home of the lifetime" warranty, who assured us they could do the work and we would "never have to pay another transmission cost again." Well, just weeks after the repair, we took it in for a routine oil change and were told by our Ford dealer it was "leaking transmission fluid all over the place."

We took it back and Lenny, the owner stated, "Well it lasted for three weeks, didn't it?" He then supposedly repaired the broken seals.

Several days later my husband and two young children were riding in the car when my husband totally lost control as the tire jammed into the front wheelbase of the car.

Thankfully, nothing was coming and he was able to get the car back under control and safely off the road. The problem diagnosed by Ford-- Cottman "forgot" to put the cotter pin back on the tire!!!!

Just a year and a half later the car died again in almost the exact same spot. We thought to ourselves, "No problem; we have a lifetime warranty." WRONG!! The original owner had since been jailed due to crashing a customers car in the middle of the night and had died in prison so we met the new owner--a smooth-talking liar.

He informed us that there was a two- to three-month wait just to see the car, due to the fact that there were 25-30 cars ahead of us (the Reading Eagle reported that this number actually exceeded 125), all experiencing similar failures to the transmission.

The new owner, Todd, informed us that NOTHING was covered as it was related to "electrical" and the "soft parts of the transmission". The cost: another $1300.00 and another "life time warranty" on top of the old one;

surely it was not worth the paper it was written on!

I have NEVER been verbally abused worse than on the phone with this guy. The language he used with us was unprintable. Todd assured us he could have it fixed but it would take at least 2 MONTHS due to having to fix all the other cars returned due to the previous owner's shoddy work.

Sure enough it was over 2 months, and the car still didn't work right!!

On the day I went to pick it up, my husband was waiting for the dealership to open to pick the car up. There was a major altercation going on in the parking lot, as one of the mechanics was livid due to the fact that his paycheck had bounced the night before (there were no monies in their account) and the owner had not showed up.

He threatened to "beat the owner with a crowbar" if he didn't make it right and added, "I'm from Center-City Philly; I don't care if I spend time in jail!"

The owner showed up an hour late and asked if my husband would stay in the waiting room while he and the mechanic went to the bank to "work things out". So there my husband was, with another customer, standing alone in the Cottman waiting room. Fifteen minutes later, they returned from the bank. Evidently things didn't work out as the mechanic stormed into the service area, threw things against the wall, and said to my husband on the way out the door, "That sound you heard was me locking down my tools until I get paid!" Sheeze!

Five miles up the road after the rebuild, my engine light went on again, and we realized that, for the second time in a row, Cottman had damaged the downstream oxygen sensors in the Taurus. Todd told me "it has nothing to do with our work", although Ford confirmed that dropping and reinstalling the transmission could damage the O2 sensors if you are not careful. And for the second time in two years, I replaced them at my own cost.

Furthermore, the entire front end of the car shook.

We called Carol at corporate who refused to help us or even let us come down and tell our story. They had NO interest in the way we were treated because, as she stated, "each office is independently owned and operated".

Sure enough, this crook went out of business only a couple of months later. I forgot to mention that when we received the car back from him, we discovered that he had put over 500 miles on it over the weekend and left us with an empty tank (we had been promised by Todd that would be filled). Where the heck did he test-drive it to--Chicago?

We were told to take it to yet another franchise who told us how terrible the work had been and added another $600.00 which was covered. Again, the problem was the engine light was still on and corporate refused to fix it.

We took it to the Ford dealer who told us they had broken oxygen sensors once again. They also mentioned that the mechanics of the transmission were so messed up that, even if we did put out the money to replace the O2 sensors, we "would not be happy with this car".

We were just too tired of the battle and chose to take a major loss and trade the car in basically for junk. To look at the car you would have thought it was brand new but the internal damage was beyond repair. So we are the losers in this. Cottman has almost $4000.00 of our money and we have a car that wasn't even worth "$1,000 at trade in!!

Now we just want to get the word out BUYER BEWARE! We wish we could go back to that original day and just let the dealer fix it!! We have surely learned our lesson the hard way but maybe we can stop someone else from making the same mistake we made!

Vicki
Blandon, Pennsylvania

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