Yesterday I was out doing some shopping and I folded down the larger half of my backseats down to fit in a floor lamp. There was no warning stickers or anything indicating what to do. I assumed like most cars, you just pull the lever and fold down the seat. To my surprise, the seat is stuck in the down position. The middle seat belt is also tugged really tight. It feels like the seat belt itself is whats holding the seat down. I searched online and found only one site with this mentioned and of course, they want to charge you to see the solution. I called Ford and they told me my car needed to be brought in to have the seat belt physically cut to pull the seat back up. What!? So there is nothing mentioned in the manual about this, no stickers advising what the proper way to lower the seat is, and the only solution Ford has is to rip out the seat belt and replace it? The service rep also told me she could not guaranty this was covered under warranty. Um...with only 40k in miles on my car and with what appears to be a very poor design flaw, Ford cant guaranty the service is covered? Has anyone else come across this and/or know of a solution short of cutting the seat belt with scissors? For such a high tech car, this is baffling. Please help.
The center seat belt latch was still connected. There is no sticker or warning tags telling you of the proper way to lower the seat. I simply and with quit a bit of ease, lowered the seat like anyone else would have. The seat is being held down by the belt and I can only lift the seat about 10%. Not enough to get my hands under and around to locate any latch to release. It appears to be the housing unit towards the top that is stuck. I drove by a different Ford dealership to get a second opinion and they couldn't advise why it was stuck either. When I told them what the other Ford dealership said they might have to cut the seat belt, they scratched their heads and thought that was strange. I am going to consider this my luck that I happen to just have a faulty center seal belt unit. I have an appointment for service this Sat. I'll post the results.