Richardson Ford

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

Had a warning light come on my Focus and since we were passing, popped in for them to have a look. It turned out it needed something done and despite not booking ahead a loan car was provided. The car was fixed and ready when stated and we collected the Focus when it was ready.

Richardson Ford are an excellent garage. They always service my Kuga well and do not try to 'push' any extra offers, such as air conditioning refresh or brake fluid change(unless necessary) etc. The day I was due to have my car serviced I was in hospital. At short notice, they willingly collected and returned the car. A fine example of good service from a local garage.