Anyone have FordPass?

[sc00ter]

My wife treated herself to a new truck. As close to her beloved Subaru Baja we could find is a Ford Maverick. She has a 2025 forest green eco-boost XLT. She'll maybe put 3000 miles max a year on it, average 1000 miles. She's retired and hates driving. I don't really drive the Maverick, its huge and thirsty compared to my 2016 Honda Fit. Yeah, the Maverick is fun to drive but my Fit is more sensible to me (and has a nice stereo!). Anyways:

The dealer keeps bugging her to sign up for Ford Pass, like non-stop. The app will allows us to do stuff we don't care to do thru our phones. We have a key fob for auto-start and don't care to do any other things thru our phones and we have no intention to take it to the dealership for service work. We have a trusted independent mechanic we prefer. This is what we understand so far.

FordPass is free for one year and afterwards it's $35 a month BUT you have to enter credit card info before activating it. No thanks, this truck gets 20ish mpg's as is, we'd rather put that in money in the tank. We were told that the dealership collects data and sells it to outside parties: insurance companies being one of them. We went in and manually turned off all the data settings we could and plan to disconnect the modem as soon as the warranty expires. The dealer said we're missing out on getting perks like credits towards discounted or free future service and parts, me personally I don't sign up for any perks except our local hot dog spot that simply uses my phone number toward free food! We read a conspiracy that Father Ford with-holds some money until the selling dealer gets the customer to sign up for Ford Pass, but that's not our problem. It's more of a useless feature that we now feel invades what little privacy we have left! Anyone else have it? If so, why and how does it help you?

 

[stompandgo]

I have a 2021 Ranger and did not sign up for FordPass. If you think the Maverick is huge, the Ranger must be a semi to you. They are both small trucks.

Either your indie mechanic or you should have a OBDLinkEX dongle and the Forscan software. Its a full customization and diagnostic toolset. There is so much annoying stuff that you can turn off, and great optional features that you can turn on. It will change your experience with the vehicle.

 

[sc00ter]

I have a 2021 Ranger and did not sign up for FordPass. If you think the Maverick is huge, the Ranger must be a semi to you. They are both small trucks.

Either your indie mechanic or you should have a OBDLinkEX dongle and the Forscan software. Its a full customization and diagnostic toolset. There is so much annoying stuff that you can turn off, and great optional features that you can turn on. It will change your experience with the vehicle.

I loved my 2001 Ranger. Standard cap with short bed, the Danger Ranger Edge version. Compared to a Fit everything feels big! And I drove 18wheelers for a few years. I tried signing up for the Maverick forum but I never heard back. I saw the Forscan being mentioned. My wife is going to reach out to our mechanic and see if he has the subscription to service it. That's funny, a subscription to service a vehicle! Thanks for the heads-up on the dongle. I had a homemade one to access the computer on my wife's old CanAm Spyder. Dealer wanted $200 just to plug it in to see why the parking brake got stuck. I couldn't even move it! Left it at the Post Office parking lot where it got stuck and had a co-worker overnight the dongle with his Amazon account. The best $40 I ever spent!

It's funny, I really wanted a Fiat Abarth before finding the Fit. I just couldn't find a clean Fiat for a fair price. Everyone (Fiat) I found had accident damage. Oh well, the Fit is a cool little car. Nice enough to take care of but cheap enough to not worry about.

 

[indianajo]

I bought a new 2025 F-150 in June. I need the 8' bed for home repairs & moving pianos & organs. I've been ignoring FordPass. The free Ford app for my phone requires a username and password, so I have been ignoring that too. The biggest downside is that I cannot call anybody to tell them when I am arriving until I pull off the road and punch the number in my phone.
This digital **** is too useless for words. In 2025 US 59 was closed from Texarkana to Lufkin, so I tried to navigate with google maps on a parallel route. So much fiction on google maps. I ended up looking for the signs to the next town when I hit the town center, over and over again. Google showed totally mythical route numbers north of Rusk to I30. The next trip to my brother's in Houston, I had managed to find a paper Rand-Mcnally atlas at a WalMart. Not the one near my residence, Clarksville, IN. They don't stock them. Much better. Turns out US 259 between Nacogdoces and Omaha TX was speedy and little traffic . There was even a 1 traffic light bypass around Kilgore and 5 lights around Longview. Bring on I69!
The only subscriptions I pay monthly besides Medicare supplement, are ATT fiber to my city house, and the cell phone (android). I tried to use pay phones as long as possible, but they stopped working about 2016. There was a 7 mile push of groceries on a blown bike tire one hot day that year, with no way to call anybody and waving a $50 bill convinced no pickup to stop.

 

[sc00ter]

Google maps can be cute sometimes! I have a old Garmin that I'll update (downloads over the internet with a cable!) that is shockingly accurate. I also love paper maps but can only find decent ones at truck stops and "local" ones (more detailed) at better gas stations. I rarely travel much anymore so I'll keep my old Garmin until it lock-up or outright dies, then suffer with Google maps because I'm Android guy.

 

[indianajo]

There is one subscription I have been considering. Ford offered a service program in the mail. I have been considering the 10 years 125000 mi option. So much digital **** probably made in *****. I have had 4 recalls for software in 10 months, and one mysterious incident. Recalls were non-functional brake booster (emergency priority), possible blank speedometer gas gage temperature oil pressure screen, windows bounce at the bottom or top and go the other way (two updates). Then there was the night when both windows opened in a rain storm when the truck was locked and filled all the door pockets with water. Nobody has explained that one except maybe NBC news. Thieves can copy your key fob from outside your house with a laptop, and drive off in your vehicle. If that was what happened, they abandoned it in my driveway when they figured out I had the 20 mpg V-6 engine. I now keep the key in a metal school pencil box. I had to special order a 6 cyl 3.5 L single seat F-150 with 8' bed. Everything on the lot in Clarksville was 6.8 L V-8 or bigger. No diesels, no electrics. All on the lot were 6 passenger F-250 with 6.5' bed. I congratulate myself every time I buy gas. 20 mpg suburban, 23 mpg freeway.

 

[stompandgo]

Forscan can be used without a paid subscription. They give you a temporary one that expires after a number of days. Figure out what you want to change, sign up, then do the work. I've also signed up again many months later to retrieve and reset codes.

As for an extended warranty, I have one from Granger Ford. Don't buy any extended warranty other than a genuine Ford Protect warranty, and price them out first. Granger was by far the cheapest. You don't have to buy one through your dealer. It's good anywhere. I have the 8 year 125000 mile with lighting protection and $200 deductible, and I spread the cost across 18 monthly payments for free. I normally don't buy them, but there are two known failures in my era Ranger that costs thousands to fix, and my truck is exhibiting symptoms with one of them.

 

[Chazmo]

Tough to replace the classic Subie Baja. Good luck with the Ford.

 

[sc00ter]

Tough to replace the classic Subie Baja. Good luck with the Ford.

Yes it is! The Baja had 248,000 miles on it. Clear coat shot, roof pure primer, broken sunroof, all external plastics cracked-I mean ALL, bullet holes in hood, seats very ratty, most windows sticky and slow, headlights always on BUT a.c. works perfect, all services done, newer tires, tracks straight but all suspension parts rusted shut and overall looks "good enough" from 30 feet. New owner is already on ebay tracking down some parts. Shame Subaru doesn't make anything she likes but then again she had a Crosstrek that always had electrical gremlins. Our local Subaru dealer (Perry Subaru) got bought out and has went down hill fast.

The Maverick was as close as we could find. We like it but in no way love it, if that makes sense. It lacks a soul that makes you love driving it, its just a semi-small truck in a cool color. She also considered a Hyundai Santa Cruz but her sister has a Palisade but its kinda crappy overall and the dealership is always fighting Hyundai corporate on warranty claims. The Santa Cruz was a tad bit better driving but all the dealers loaded them with accessories we didn't want, so we went with the Ford. Didn't even look at a Honda Ridgeline, just never crossed our minds. Now, we considered this:

She paid cash for the Maverick. We looked for a mint, super low miles Baja but the very few we found were suspect. I know ours went thru many deep floods and the undercarriage suffered, plus road treatment when it did snow. The few we found had nastier undercarriages than ours! We also considered a Kei truck but there is a rumor Virginia will no longer allow them on the road soon. No worse that a golf cart and we can register those here!

 

[sc00ter]

Oh, and I took a crash course via YouTube and turned off many evasive "permissions" in the Maverick operating system! It was weird because she started ghosting the dealership calls (now the OWNER of the dealership is calling) and after turning off most of these permissions her phone started getting blown-up extra hard. She started blocking the numbers and now they go straight to voicemail. Data mining must be worth big money! We all need to invest in some land and build a data center instead of working normal jobs!

 

[indianajo]

Indiana must be paradise. My Ford dealer never calls me. They send me a polite letter every now & then. The wife's Hyundai has needed no warranty work in 8 years. It was delivered with a miss, and new plug & coil pack did not fix it. A bottle of STP gas treatment fixed it. I get a letter from Hyundai dealer offering me a trade 4 times a year. Not 80000 miles yet.