Briarwood Ford

I would like to bring to your attention my recent experience with Jeff Steinbach, the service manager at your Saline location. In 2012 we purchased the car I’d always wanted, a Ford Flex from Briarwood. It has been a wonderful vehicle, with one small caveat. It began making a clicking noise in the rear of the vehicle at the beginning of 2015. It was tough to explain it to the techs, as it was not constant and didn’t always perform on demand. We brought the vehicle to Briarwood for service perhaps four times last spring with Matt Foley and it was finally determined that we needed to replace the brake pads. I think he also had the shop remove all of the brake parts and clean them up just in case that was the source of the noise. We were unhappy to pay for new brake pads since the vehicle only had about 30,000 miles and that just didn’t seem like something that should have worn out that quickly. Nevertheless, the noise disappeared after the job and we thought the matter was over. Then in the fall, the clicking/knocking noise returned. I was loathe to deal with this again. When we purchased the Flex we were a one car family with 4 people that needed to be in a different place every day. I took it to ArborMotion instead, and they were unable to determine the issue (although they did discover that my two year old had generously fed my muffler a great meal of Hotwheels). So for six months I listened to the clicking, wondering if damage was being done, wondering if the car was safe to drive, just wondering. I began to notice that it would go away once the brakes were applied. And always fully disappeared after about 15 seconds into the drive. I consulted with my father who is a master mechanic, but lives too far away to have helped. He suggested I just needed to return to Briarwood and report the problem was still unresolved. So last week we did just that, and brought the vehicle in for service on March 15th. By Friday, the techs were still not able to replicate the knocking noise so I offered to come out and drive with them to see if I could point it out. Of course, it did NOT perform on demand and I was left frustrated as ever. Enter Jeff Steinbach. He graciously offered to provide our family with a demo to use over the weekend, so the Flex could be allowed to sit long enough for him to hear it cold on Monday. But even more, he called later in the day and asked for my permission to take my vehicle home so he could have as many opportunities as possible to hear the noise. I eagerly said yes, finally someone was going to hear it!! To my delight, he called on Monday and said he’d been able to replicate the noise, and they were able to locate the problem within the brake pad brackets. I cannot tell you how pleased I am that he went to the extra effort to drive my car all weekend in order to validate my concerns. He assured me that he wanted to make it right for us and get to the bottom of it, and he took the time and effort to do just as he promised. Thank you Jeff! Sincerely, Amber Prior