Ford Galaxy - no stars! (Ford Galaxy LX in general)

Member Name: mocsari

Product:	Ford Galaxy LX in general
Date:	17/12/00 (356 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Felxible seating

Disadvantages: Totally unreliable

Not so much an opinion, more a long and sorry tale of woe...
Purchasing a Galaxy back in '96 was hardly a snap decision, as we've test driven and looked at all the other people movers available. It took 4 months for our eagerly anticipated shiny new Galaxy to arrive only to find that the garage hadn't even done a proper inspection on it - it was covered with chips and scuffmarks!
We took up their offer of taking this Galaxy while another, hopefully unblemished model, was shipped over, which sounded like quite a good deal in the circumstances, but soon we started having problems: the bumpers started falling off (repeatedly), the driver’s door jammed and it broke down just as we were going away for a long weekend (scrub one short holiday, cue three very disappointed junior members of the household).
(Handy Hint for People Carrier Owners: make sure the recovery vehicle is up to the job. The first one tried to load the Galaxy and its nose started to point to the sky.)
Obviously this was a “Friday afternoon” rogue vehicle and all would be well once we got our hands on the replacement vehicle. Which took another 3 months…
At least the next Galaxy passed our rigorous “Has it arrived without any scuffs and chips in the paintwork?” test but problems set in within 48 hours. The trim on the backs of the seats starting coming away and the garage insisted this was due to our children being “too rough” – we’d had an identical car for 4 months without them managing to achieve this – duh! So we went back to the garage and swapped the seats over, thereby having a brand new car with seats from the old one!
Another relatively minor, bit mind boggling problem was that we had ordered fitted mats for the second Galaxy. One luxury item we had ordered with the first one was a £200 fridge. (Okay it sound flash, but these things are really useful on holidays, but experience has taught us: bu
y one for £80 from Halfords.) This purpose made item clicked into an empty chair space in the floor for safety. Unfortunately those wonderful people at Ford had not worked out was that the fitted carpet raised the fridge up a few millimetres and it wouldn’t click into place. The garage told us “No problem, we’ll get a refund for you from Ford.” Weeks went by, no dosh. Chased garage: “Sorry, Ford say you can’t have a refund.” Us: !!*?!! Refund eventually arrived from garage/ Ford/who cares?
Then the Airbag warning light started coming on and the garage warned us that it was not advisable to drive with this on as it indicated that the airbag might inflate while driving! Another weekend away down the pan…
Correspondence with the garage escalated to correspondence with Ford who were incredibly slow to reply and very dismissive. (“We’ve had no other similar problems with the Galaxy” – yeah, right.) We were so disgusted we just wanted them to take the car back and give us our mone. We established that this happens only if the car is off the road for 30 days out of the first year and/or the same fault cannot be rectified in three attempts (and subject to the AA mileage allowance – fair ‘nuff). We came close – it was off the road for 28 days in the first year and the airbag fault was rectified only on the third time in the garage, but by this time we’d had enough and traded it in for a Chrysler Voyager, which we still have three years on and has been first rate.
We got rid of the Galaxy just before the pathetic one year warranty ran out (this being on the second one – are you keeping up with this?) and we took a huge financial beating on the depreciation.
Another Ford? – not if they were giving them away.
By the by, the Galaxy was a 2.2 litre and we get better fuel consumption from our 3.3 litre Voyager. Does that tell you something about the Voyag
er or the Galaxy??

Summary: