Dawsongroup vans’ Stockton workshop has been accepted to carry out in-house Ford warranty work following a recent audit by Graham Wright, Group Aftersales Development Manager at TrustFord, and Jason Themistocleous, Fleet Aftermarket Business Manager at Ford Motor Company.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic and due to the global supply chain issues facing the LCV industry, dealerships have been experiencing ever-increasing pressures from customers to complete warranty work. With the average age of fleets increasing and staffing shortages within dealerships, warranty recall lead times have been taking six to eight weeks. Seeing an opportunity to improve the situation for our customers, Stewart Inglis, Engineering Manager at Dawsongroup vans, began the process of becoming Ford warranty approved.
“I knew that it was possible for Ford warranty work to be completed in-house, providing the right measures were met. Knowing how much pressure dealerships were currently under led me to exploring this possibility with Dawsongroup,” said Stewart. “I knew that if we could become Ford warranty approved, we would be able to significantly reduce the number of vehicles off the road for customers, leading to a faster turnaround time on any warranty work required and ultimately a better service for our customers.”
Becoming Ford warranty approved doesn’t happen overnight. In addition to passing the audit from TrustFord and Ford Motor Company, our Dawsongroup vans mechanics at Stockton completed Ford’s eight week training programme. We also had to make sure that our Stockton workshop has all the correct tools required to carry out Ford warranty work, our team purchase all parts from Ford approved suppliers, and that we follow the correct procedures and timeframes for every piece of Ford warranty work carried out. When asked about the future, Stewart said, “Our Stockton workshop becoming Ford warranty approved is just the beginning. As part of our on-going commitment to reduce the amount of downtime for our customers, we have built a new workshop at our Newcastle branch and have plans firmly in place to build workshops at our Doncaster and Skelmersdale sites within the next few months. We have already approached Ford about gaining a warranty dealer code for all these workshops and enrolling the mechanics based at each site onto the training programme.”
