You know all the funny meanings for FORD – Found On Road Dead, Fix Or Repair Daily, First On Rust & Deterioration, Fork Over Repair Dough? Well, for many years, because of the horror stories we had heard about Ford, we always bought non-Ford vehicles. However, when our children were very young, we decided that it made sense for us to buy a Van & at the time, the Ford Windstar was advertising that it had the highest safety ratings for Vans. Also, because we live & I work in Kanata, we wanted a dealer that was close to home. So, foolishly we decided to give Ford a try because after all, the quality must have improved right? And, just to be safe, we paid the extra $1,145 for the extended warranty – 72 months or 80,000 kilometers. We have faithfully followed Ford's expensive maintenance plan in order to maintain our warranty status. We should have started to get concerned when our friend's Ford Exploder, we mean Explorer had to go in for repairs 5 times in a 4 week period last year. But, we had faith. So, with 69,207 KMS on our Van that had never been used to tow anything, the day before we were leaving on our holidays (in the Van), the transmission failed while driving. Faced with a tow truck, rental car for holidays & the unknown cost of the transmission repair, we left for holidays with our Van at Kanata Ford. While our extended warranty had expired past the number of months, we still weren't even close on the mileage. At the scheduled time, four days after the Van was towed, we called Kanata Ford from out of town on a pay phone & were told that the transmission needed to be replaced. The cost would be $3,900 + tax! $3,900??? You've got to be kidding? A new transmission for a vehicle with less than 70,000 KMS that's mainly driven around Kanata & never towed ANYTHING? Sorry, we should clarify that it would be a Ford Quality New Reconditioned transmission. Ford & Quality in the same sentence and New & Reconditioned also in the same sentence. Can you say oxymoron? When we asked the service person at Kanata Ford how he would feel about this if it was his vehicle, he said that he would be very frustrated & upset as well. We then called Ford Customer Service from the pay phone & explained everything to the representative. When we asked the Customer Service rep how she would feel about it if it happened to her, she said that she would be very upset as well. However, Ford would do NOTHING to stand by their faulty product. While we explained that we felt that it was a very good opportunity for Ford to keep a customer by offering some form of assistance, they stated that they could do NOTHING as the warranty had expired. So, we explained that we would NEVER purchase a Ford again. She said that she would add that to our file. While we do believe that Kanata Ford (the dealership) provided good repair service & the service manager maintained his cool with us as irate customers, we have lost complete faith in Ford & as stated, we will NEVER buy another one. In our 25+ years of purchasing new & used vehicles, we have owned Hondas, Suzuki, Volkswagens, Chevrolets, Mazdas. Every single one of them had much higher usage & yet, this is the first time we've experienced this type of high cost maintenance at such low mileage. As we will be looking to purchase a new vehicle within the next year, all we can say is ‘Thank God for new Car Dealerships bringing new competition & better options to Kanata!'.