Ford Silverton

Poor service and costly vehicle service

Unacceptable standard, unaccountable customer service accompanied by arrogant service standard. In 14 May 2026, I took my vehicle there for service in preparation for a vacation trip the following day. My vehicle was running well before taking it there. They mentioned few faults which I believed I could fix at a later stage as they were not critical, except for shocks. On 18 May 2026, exactly 4 days later, the vehicle suddenly overheated and damaged the engine. It cost me over R125000 to get a new engine. In addition, I have had to spend over R30,000 renting a temporary to go to work. I informed the service manager Ms Zanele Mashele. She only wanted to know that what caused the vehicle to overheat. Thereafter, she never bothered to follow up on my safety and the quality of their service. I wrote a letter to the service manager Mr. Shaun Potgieter. His immediate response was, he was not prepared to honour any claim. He only returned with a " It's not our fault" kind of response when I indicated that I would escalate the matter to the authorities, directing that I bring the car to the workshop in Silverton Pretoria when I had already stated that the car broken in Pietermaritzburg, KZN. It required over R15000 to transport an immobile vehicle to Pretoria from there, so my insurance could only tour it to the nearest mechanic in Hilton. I escalated the matter to Retail Motor Industry ( RMI).They wanted an invoice to validate the claim. Since then, there's never been any response whatsoever. I trusted these people with vehicle. I had been servicing my car with them for quite sometime. But I feel let down by supposed to be professional service. It would have been fair to even return my money I paid for the service which has damaged my vehicle and also to be assisted to obtain a new engine, at least at cost price. I maintain, if they had done a thorough job of conducting the 101 point checks that are standard practice by auto service stations, they would have detected this. There's not even evidence that the vehicle was serviced as I did not even receive the replaced parts as I would usually do whenever I would service my vehicle there.