NHTSA Complaint #11478819 — 2022 FORD F-350 SD

The tailgate for my 2022 F-350 has opened while towing several times over the last two months. During one of these instances, the open tailgate struck and damaged my fifth wheel recreational vehicle (RV) trailer during a low speed left hand turn. The area where the tailgate hit our trailer is the battery compartment for our RV. If this where to happen at a high speed it has the potential to cause additional significant damage to a trailer and potentially cause consequential accidents while the vehicle is in motion. There was an open Customer Satisfaction Program opened by Ford associated with this issue and my vehicle's VIN (campaign # 21M05) in May 2022. Due to this alert, we brought our vehicle into a dealer in June 2022 (before towing our RV) and asked them to address this issue. At the time the Ford dealer declined to address the issue because there wasn't "a problem yet." The damage incident then happened and we brought our vehicle into a second Ford dealer (we were then living in our RV on the road so unable to return to our original dealer). They agreed (in writing) that there was an unintended tailgate opening while we were towing that caused damage, however they indicated that they didn't have an approved repair procedure from Ford at that time. We recently found out that Ford has since approved a procedure (on approximately 7/22/2022) and again brought our Ford into a third Ford dealer for repairs (8/11/2022). Ford is willing to fix the damage to the vehicle associated with this accident, however, they have been unresponsive regarding the consequential damages to our fifth wheel RV (bay door needs to be replaced with an estimated cost of more than $1,000). The fact that this keeps happening and that the tailgate is able to open while towing / while the vehicle is in drive is a massive issue. What if this happened while carrying a load on the highway? There could be serious injury. For reference, my Ford case number is: 37688945