Passenger seat belt would lock arbitrarily and would have to be fully retracted in order to unlock. Took it to the dealer (3) times for repair, problem persisted. Contacted Ford Customer Relations, they sided with dealer and claimed that problem was resolved/repaired. Took vehicle to third party and had seat belt replaced at my cost. Seat belt now operates properly. Vehicle was under factory warranty, but Ford refused to complete repair. In the case of an accident, the person in that seat would have been injured or killed because the seat belt did not operate properly. Ford could care less and I have written documentation that states exactly that. In addition, and because I took the vehicle to be repaired by a third party, Ford has absolved itself from any liabilty that would occur as a result of the seat belt. I have the old seat belt assembly with factory date code stamped on body, but factory will not tell be when part was made. If I could find out how to read the date code, I could prove that dealer never changed the original part. My biggest objective is to warn other Escape owners that they could be exposing those sitting in the passenger seat to serious injury or death as a result of a flawed seat belt device.