[Mondaveo]

Disclaimer: I Am Not A Lawyer.

I think you should seek legal advice. You can start by contacting Fair Trading in your state for general advice and resources. Some consumer law services and firms provide free consultations that you can use to find out if your claim may have any merit.

Yes, Ford's standard MO is to fob you off until they've run out the time on the warranty and consumer guarantees (the "rejection period" in their response to you). The same happened with the Mondeo I bought (they fobbed off the previous owner over a Powershift defect, so that it was still present when I became owner out of warranty). It stinks that they only do the minimum required of them by law and won't go beyond to do the right thing by owners. Since they've successfully wrung you out to seven years by now, it's going to be hard to get them to come to party - and note that post-ACCC lawsuit they wouldn't be doing this if they didn't think they could justify under law. But seeing as your uncle is the original owner, and the car has essentially never been right from the start, you may be able to build a case.

You'll need to gather all the service history and any documentation and evidence you can to show when and what faults occurred and repairs were attempted. There are a few avenues you may be able to go with this. If there were a lot of failures and time spent being fixed from early on in the ownership period, then you can argue that constitutes a major fault and the vehicle was not fit for purpose from the outset, which should (7 years later) constitute grounds for a partial refund or goodwill repair of the current issue.

You should also follow up on the details of the extended Powershift warranty. If the current issue is covered in those terms (I'm not sure how specific they may be - the dealer seems to be implying you have a different kind of failure that isn't included) and you can show it was present during the warranty period, then you should be able to argue for a no-cost repair.

Your claim that your uncle asked for a refund "several years ago" and was denied by the dealer is an interesting one. As far as I know, if the product has a major failure and you ask for a refund within the "rejection period", the dealer doesn't get to refuse you while they keep trying (pretending) to fix it. So they may actually have acted unlawfully there, but whether you can get traction on a claim for this will depend on the details (timeframe, evidence, whether there was a formal request).

While you are investigating your legal options, you should politely contact your case manager and ask for a review of your case. In your submission, you should emphasise the points above (the vehicle was not of acceptable quality from the get go, the issues have been longstanding/were present and covered by warranty but not addressed, a refund was previously requested and unlawfully refused, etc - as far as those are applicable, which is to say, you'll need to check up the details). Mention that you are reviewing your legal options, but as a longstanding customer, you'd be willing to accept a no-cost repair (replacement) of the transmission as an act of goodwill, rather than pursuing a full refund.

And whatever the outcome, you use your experience of Ford's customer support to inform your decision of where to shop when you come to buy your next car.