First Terrible Experience

Hi! I have owned my Fiesta ST now for almost a year and last week I had my first terrible experience. I was on a 6 hour road trip when my car began showing warning lights of over heating. When I pulled over there was no smoke or steam and the engine seemed fine when I opened the hood. After doing this I got back in the car (still running) and tried to see what happened when I pushed the accelerator in neutral, this did not make the car rev at all. Because I am not a mechanic and the car is brand new this led me to believe there was a serious problem. I called roadside assistance and got a tow to the nearest dealership which was A & B Ford in Smith Falls Ontario. Once I got there and spoke to the service manager I was told that no one there had ever seen my car before and they would not know how to work on it. I explained to him that all I needed was a quick diagnostic to try to see how serious the problem was. He proceeded to tell me that he did not have enough staff that day and might be able to look at it the following week (this incident occurred on a wednesday). This left me completely stranded and because of my age (21) I am not able to even rent a vehicle. I called roadside assistance and explained my situation. They were somewhat helpful and found a dealership in Carlton Place (50 km away) but it would more than likely be the next day that they would look at my car. Once again this left me worried about being completely stranded with no car, no where near home and no place to stay. I explained to the roadside assistance that I would like to be towed back to kingston Ontario to James Braden Ford the dealership where I purchased the car from. This was only 90 km away 40 km more than Carlton Place and I had already spoken to the sales manager and he said he could get it looked at right away. I was unfortunately told by roadside assistance that they would not tow me this far.

Due to the situation I was in I ended up paying $322.05 for a tow to the dealership where they immediately looked at my car and found that there was no coolant left. I was also informed that the reason my car would not do anything was because it went into self preservation mode. After refilling the coolant and reseting the computer the car ran fine and I was able to continue my trip.

Overall this was a terrible experience and I feel due to the fact that A & B Ford in Smith Falls refused to service my car I should be compensated for the cost of the tow back to a dealership that was actually being helpful. There is no reason anyone should receive this poor of service and I actually really don't care that the car broke down. I just care about the fact that it was a very simple issue that was fixed in 10 minutes but because of one dealership I added over 10 hours to my trip of trying to get my car fixed.

Also if anyone could shine some light onto why my coolant tank was empty that would be much appreciated!

Thank you

Christian Whitmore