ntwell
New Member
- Joined
- January 13, 2015
- Messages
- 7
- Reaction score
- 0
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- 2014 Ford Explorer
Hey everyone, I am a relatively happy owner of a 2014 Ford Explorer Limited with a few add on's. One of the things that we added was the BLIS package and overall, I'm happy with the Blind Spot Monitoring and up until recently, the seatbelts in the second row have been just "different" to our passengers.
We are Air Force members stationed in Germany, and we drove our Explorer on our recent vacation to Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Everything went great on that trip, until near the end, when my mother-in-law, who occupied the second row passenger seat for much of the trip, asked me, "has this seatbelt always been like this?" That is when I discovered this:
I do not think that my mother-in-law purposely damage the belt, nor do I think my kids did anything to it either. I know for a fact that the belt was not this way before the trip, and it looks like the stitching in the hem that holds the two belt pieces together just started to come apart.
So I have made an appointment at a local Ford garage here in Germany, and when I took it in so they could see what the problem was, the mechanic seemed to be in disbelief that this could happen, and that somebody must have cut the edge of the belt. They will have to take pictures and send them to Ford in the US to determine if this problem is to be repaired under warranty or not.
I suspect that this is a quality control issue. My Explorer has not been exactly problem free. I have many of the same issues with Sync that others have, and I even discovered that some screws had been omitted from the exterior trim pieces during manufacturing, so that they were flapping loosly right after I picked it up. (the local garage fixed that one under warranty!)
So my question is, more of an opinion poll. Do you think that this problem was caused by one of my passengers, or could it be that this is a defect? I haven't seen any recalls related to the BLIS seatbelts, so I have a bad feeling that Ford is going to try to blame me. Thoughts?
We are Air Force members stationed in Germany, and we drove our Explorer on our recent vacation to Austria, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Everything went great on that trip, until near the end, when my mother-in-law, who occupied the second row passenger seat for much of the trip, asked me, "has this seatbelt always been like this?" That is when I discovered this:
I do not think that my mother-in-law purposely damage the belt, nor do I think my kids did anything to it either. I know for a fact that the belt was not this way before the trip, and it looks like the stitching in the hem that holds the two belt pieces together just started to come apart.
So I have made an appointment at a local Ford garage here in Germany, and when I took it in so they could see what the problem was, the mechanic seemed to be in disbelief that this could happen, and that somebody must have cut the edge of the belt. They will have to take pictures and send them to Ford in the US to determine if this problem is to be repaired under warranty or not.
I suspect that this is a quality control issue. My Explorer has not been exactly problem free. I have many of the same issues with Sync that others have, and I even discovered that some screws had been omitted from the exterior trim pieces during manufacturing, so that they were flapping loosly right after I picked it up. (the local garage fixed that one under warranty!)
So my question is, more of an opinion poll. Do you think that this problem was caused by one of my passengers, or could it be that this is a defect? I haven't seen any recalls related to the BLIS seatbelts, so I have a bad feeling that Ford is going to try to blame me. Thoughts?