First time Ford customer here. I'm sure you've read my posts but I'll briefly describe my experience, to refute your stance a bit. And I'll take into consideration you're clearly a Ford person in and out, including working for Ford. I have a pretty good dealer, granted in the last two years they were acquired, did what always happens and lost nearly all of their awesome techs, service writers, managers, etc, several times. But luckily, most of the replacements have been pretty easy to work with.
My issues with rattling wastegates started at around 7K miles on my brand new '19 plati. I took a huge leap of faith, did so much research prior to buying this, and spent way more on a vehicle than I would have ever considered doing. I bought this thing because of it's size, volume, towing, and the engine (power with economy). I came from 5 different Gen2 and Gen3 Hemi's that were pretty darn bulletproof, but definitely drank the petrol!
At 7K miles, I took it for the wastegate rattles, I had multiple videos, the F150 TSB, forum articles for similar noises, and found a perfect way to recreate the sound every time. Showed the service writers, the heavy tech, etc. they all agreed, it sound like crap. Then (given there were still expy's on the lot) we took a brand new '19 expy and ran them side by side, no rattles. Should be more than enough evidence of the issue. I even had audio of how loud it was while driving, echoing off of structures and re-entering the cabin.
They wrote it up, and submitted the repair requests to Ford. oh boy, it went downhill from there, and mind you, per your statement, at this point I was still very nice and pleasant, and patient. So Ford comes back with absurd options. First and foremost, they tell the dealer they won't even consider repairing the turbo's until I do the phaser repair. Mind you, we didn't have any phaser knocking, and this had nothing to do with cold/warm engine. So 90 days later, parts come in, vehicle is in the shop for over 4 days just for that, and you're tearing open a perfectly good engine at that point, for nothing, probably causing more issues than you're fixing. When I went to pick up the car, while in the service bay, I start it up, do the process, and voila, the rattle is still there, just as bad as ever!
So they contact Ford again. Ford tells them to do the F150 TSB piece that tries to replace the wastegate actuator arm, so 2 weeks later, parts are in, leave the vehicle for another 2 days, pick it up and voila, still rattling. The noise is inside the turbo itself, has nothing to do with the actuator arm (and the heavy tech showed me an email where he told Ford it wouldn't help). He was pissed for me at this point. So we start escalating, and Ford absolutely refuses to replace the turbos. I called Ford Customer care, and long story short, I spent hundreds of countless hours on the phone, over a period of 6 months, being told Ford reviewed the case and refused to do the turbos, citing it's not affecting performance or reliability. I refused to accept that. Two pieces of metal rattling like that will eventually wear down the weaker of the two, and then what, I'm stranded on the highway with two young kids? Not to mention, I didn't buy an $85K+ sticker vehicle for it to sound like a loose heatshield. They didn't care.
Ford Customer care was a crap show. They assigned a person from who knows what country to try and communicate with me, refused to let me speak with any of the "engineers", "techs", those making decisions. The case worker actually told me many times, there is no way to escalate further. And I literally had to argue over and over and over that no business has a single flat line of customer care, and that there must be a manager or supervisor I could speak to. In 4 months, I literally never got to speak to a supervisor, till finally about the 5th month, I got a supervisor. I was still pretty nice and patient, but not budging on my stance. Then, I got a call from the original case worker saying they are working on a buy back offer. I explained we hadn't even discussed that, and that to me, for a publicly traded company, I didn't understand how fiscally they could (and i own ford stock myself), justify a buy back instead of just fixing the turbos. Mind you, my dealer reps are pushing from their side as well.
It took just over 6 months of arguing for Ford to finally agree to replace the turbos. 3 more days without my vehicle, and yay! the rattle is gone! Sadly, about 10k miles later, I've heard it come back a few times, so it's clearly a terrible design and will happen again. My experience with Ford customer care was terrible. Just to give you an example of the opposite, about 10 years ago, I had one of the first Grand Cherokee's with a moon roof, and it rattled a lot. I went to the dealer probably 15 times over 2 years to get it checked, and jeep was very helpful in trying to figure it out. Daimler at the time actually flew 3 body techs out, from Detroit, to Denver, to do ride-along's and troubleshooting with me. They found the issue, simply a missing nut on the moonroof frame. It was a completely different experience, and they not only gave me a 125k mile full warranty, but they paid me back for the warranty I bought with the vehicle when I bought it new.
Ford offered me nothing for my time and troubles, other than 6 months of oil changes, seriously? My rig is doing pretty great right now, still have quality and fitment issues all over, but I love driving it. But I'm not sure I would ever buy or recommend buying a Ford any time soon. So as a Ford employee, who likely also relies on stock prices for retirement, ESPP, etc, you might understand why terrible customer care will continue to hurt a company and it's standing. it's one thing for example, for terrible customer care with consumer product companies like Dyson, Apple, etc. A $500-$1K investment on a consumable is vastly different from a nearly 6 figure product. Especially, with Ford (again it's Ford), getting up there in the same price ranges as Lexus, MB, BMW, Cadillac, etc, they need to step up in the customer care. I even wrote a letter to the "CEO" and got nothing, zero, zilch back!
Sorry for my rant, but I love an opportunity to actually tell a Ford employee a real customers experience, lord knows the customer care folks didn't care! And don't get me wrong, I get nothing is perfect, but the tolerances and apparent lack of pride from manufacturing is apparent. Just look at the folks on here who wait for months to buy a brand new rig and get it with body panels not aligned, parts missing, stuff screwed up from day one. I read where you said these are made by people, any more, larger and larger groups of those people are simply monitoring telemetry from robots and computers, not taking a wrench and turning a nut. I'm coming from a place of experience here, Toyota and Hyundai were customers of mine for years, and when I would tour their facilities, their tolerances were so much more strict that than these appear to be. it's frustrating, more could be done, but even when there are problems, the real measure of pride is how you handle the problem.
