ponypower05GT

Just thought I would post some information on a problem I am having with one of the rear seat belts in my Mustang. This is not a huge problem, could be a bit of aggravation if it happened for someone else but not a major pain, yet. After having owned the car for almost exactly one year, my wife and I had her parents over to our house to visit and her father wanted us all to go for a ride in the Mustang. Up until this point I don't think that we had actually had more than 2 people in the car at one time so no one ever rode in the back and had to use the rear seat belts. When we got in, my mother-in-law sat behind the passenger seat and tried to put on the seat belt but the lap belt was not actually attached to the car. The shoulder strap functioned like it was suppose to, but where the lap belt attaches to the side of the car it just had a bolt attached to the lap belt mounting device but the bolt just pulled straight out the hole where is "should" be anchored down to the car with a bolt or in some other such manner. Well needless to say I would prefer if the safety equipment in my vehicle actually worked, even though it is not for a part that will get much usage. I took it in to my local dealership and they were stumped. Didn't know what to do. Not really their fault though so I don't blame them. They had to call up the Ford engineers and get some guidance. Well, it has been a little over 2 months now and I still have the same problem with the seat belt. I called after about a month to see what was going on and the dealership was still waiting for guidance as this problem was going to require some sort of reverse engineering masterpiece in order to fix it supposedly. Well another week or so goes by and now I am at a roughly weekly calling interval with my local dealership to see what the status is now. About 2 weeks back they had actually heard from Ford, after some minor harrasment by me to which I would always get the reply of they were just about to check on that or had just heard from them and were about to call me. So Ford was supposed to have sent parts and instructions to fix this to the dealership and they should expect it in a couple days. About a week went by and I call again to see what is going on and they have not received the parts yet. The local dealership calls Ford to find out what is going on and they are told that yes the part had been shipped, and their records indicated it had been received, yet my dealership had no knowledge of receiving the part. So Ford was called again and have supposedly sent out the parts and instructions and my dealership is awaiting the arrival. That is the last of it for now as the part should be in today, maybe tomorrow at the latest, yet for some reason my dealership is unable to get any tracking number for this package to try to figure out where it might be at currently or when the expected arrival time is. Now, unless it is coming by like a bike messenger service or something, I would expect to be able to find out a tracking of the package to check the status, so I am not sure why this is such a difficult thing to find out. Clearly the Ford engineering people had some sort of tracking for it or they wouldn't have told my dealership that the package had been shipped out and their records indicated it got delivered the first time. How could they have a confirmation of delivery if it didn't get tracked. So, basically I am just waiting to see what happens now, and I have upped my "call and annoy the dealership" timetable to daily. I am hoping to get a tracking number myself and even hoping that there is a remote chance I can speak to someone from the Ford engineering directly myself to see what in the world is going on. My patience is starting to wear a little thin, it is just lucky this is something that doesn't personally affect the ability of the car for my needs. I also called the Ford customer service to see if that route would get my any results. They are suppose to call me within 2 business days so we will see on that one. Honestly, I just want straight answers to when it will be fixed. If they said it will take 4 months to fix this, I would probably be upset, but probably wouldn't pester anyone about it since I can live with that. If I am told "we're working on it" and "we'll call you when it is ready" but don't actually get any call, it annoys me. When I'm told the parts are on the way, and they don't actually arrive, I am also annoyed. Oh well, if I finally resolve this mess and it turns out to be some information I can pass along on what actually has to be done to the car, I will pass it along in case someone else has this problem with their vehicle. Sorry for the long post if you actually made it to here.