Ford has forgotten who the customers are

[Davidod]

I suggest that Ford rethink the dealer allocation system if they want to operate in a Customer Build retail world, The only ones that benefit are the large dealers and the folks that place the order via the small town Mom and Pop dealer has to wait. They need to allocate based on order date - the big dealers will still make a fortune but the smaller dealer will still have a chance to fulfill orders in a timely fashion. Whatever ever happened to first come - first served. I purchased (ordered) two new Fords this year and the Maverick ordered in July has not been assigned a delivery date. Let’s let Ford know what we think of their system. Agree or disagree that is up to you but please input your thoughts in this thread. Hopefully someone like @fordvideoguy can direct the brand manager to this thread.

I ordered from a small town dealer on 6-19. The truck was built the week of 11-29 and the projected delivery date is 1-10. Seems like 7 months is a very long time to wait for a vehicle. I’ve been a GM guy all my life and never had to wait that long for a new build.

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[GaryHoosier]

Found the guy responsible for this very fast delivery.

Drole, very drole.

 

[GaryHoosier]

I'm pretty sure it's the infamous "THEY" who are doing this. You've heard of THEM, I'm sure. We all know who THEY are (although, oddly, we often disagree about it).

Anyway, it can't possibly be what it appears to be. It never is. My gut tells me that.

It's always THEM... maybe even the same THEM that caused WWII! Maybe THEY've been hiding on the dark side of the moon all this time. (I know the dark side of the moon isn't a real thing, but that's what makes it such a great place for THEM to hide.)

Actually, the moon DOES have a dark- side.

 

[Whitenight]

Actually, the moon DOES have a dark- side.

There is no dark side of the moon - it's all dark. And that is documented by Pink Floyd!

 

[IPunchCholla]

Insofar as the SupplyChain problem goes, my gut tells me that it is contrived.
There is only one other time I can think of when this country had such systemic shortages...during WWII.

No, somebody wants it to be this way.
To what end I can't even imagine.
But I'm sure it won't be good.

What we’re seeing now is the result of 30 plus years of everything moving to JIT (just in time). It is great when it works. It reduces costs through efficiencies in labor, transportation, storage, etc. the problem is when something interrupts any one of those, say shutdowns from a world wide plague, followed by a reduced labor pool due to a massive increase in retirements and people simply dropping out of the workforce, there is not enough slack in the system to keep going. So things break down Each break down has knock on effects.

imagine your a manufacturer who makes cars. Rather than storing all the parts to make all the cars you think you are going to sell, you contract with your suppliers to deliver the parts at the rate you can make them. The suppliers in turn do the same with their suppliers, and so on. So when a major manufacturing country, say China, shuts down, followed in turn by pretty much every other manufacturer on the planet at irregular intervals, it isn’t as simple as just restarting everything. You basically need to rebuild all of those networked production lines in a time when there are continuing crunches (Think Texas this last winter taking a number of chemical plants offline or flooding in Taiwan taking out a chip fab). These aren’t things that can be rebuilt or resorted quickly.

just kidding. I called all the businesses and convinced them they would make more money not selling things to people.

 

[IPunchCholla]

Actually, the moon DOES have a dark- side.

The moon has a FAR side. But you can watch the dark and light rotate around the moon. Happens every month.

 

[M.A.C.]

Frustrations understood and I am not defending Ford but sometimes it’s impossible to communicate what you don’t know. I work in distribution/supply chain. It has never been more murky and I have been doing this for awhile, quite awhile. Whether it’s brokers/transportation/warehousing there’s a ton more questions than answers. I have never experienced such a shortage in equipment and people. Every supplier is in the same situation. If most people really knew how bad it was they would be hoarding everything they could get. From grocery shelves to refrigerators there is slim pickings because of the shortages.
Just sharing what I know to be true whether its what people want hear or not. Figure how to fix the supply chain and you with be the wealthiest person in the world.

Ford knows a lot they could be sharing. The know exactly how many reservations they have, they know how many have been converted into orders, they know exactly how many of each trim has been ordered, they know what part of the country, region and dealer they have been ordered from, they know what is the maximum amount trucks they can produce by the hour, day, week and month, they know every production variable you can imagine.

They know exactly ever part that goes into every trim level, they gather enough information to know months and even years in advance what it will take to deliver tens of thousands of vehicles, or hundreds of thousands of vehicles and they should after all they have been doing it for over one hundred years.

So what’s the problem, was it poor management, poor planning, poor logistics, some would say to add arrogance, greed.

Bottom line is we are falling over ourselves, whining, bitching, complaining but most importantly waiting.

As long as there is no other game in town they don’t have to do a thing and let’s be clear 98% of us here know there is no other game in town not even close.

Bottom line Ford knows a lot about a lot but chooses if and when to say anything. So they say the least that they have to and string people along for as long as they can while they sell as many trucks as they can and that’s just the way it is.

I may continue to bitch but I will also continue to wait !!!

 

[2022EOW]

That's not how any of that works. There is no reason that the person who orders first and gets produced first can't be in rural Alaska. Sure the delivery date may be later, but saying that people that live in more populated states should get first vehicles produced in ridiculous. The logistics of building the vehicles has nothing to do with where a customer lives. They order parts with very long lead times and every single Maverick is produced in the same location in Mexico regardless.

Yes logistics are a thing. You have no clue.

 

[DryHeat]

Actually, the moon DOES have a dark- side.

 

[whtnrdy]

Well I’m giving Ford the benefit of the doubt and not assuming they’re illegally inflating the destination charge to cover the price of the vehicle. They’re already getting sued for it on the Bronco.

https://fordauthority.com/2021/07/class-action-lawsuit-filed-over-ford-destination-charges/

By the way I’m not saying high destination charge should mean FIFO, I just mean that given the delays and ordering issues we’re not getting value out of it and it’s a money grab (an illegal one by YOUR description).

My vehicle is built and shipped and on its way to the dealer btw.

I’m super excited for my truck and have been active since I ordered in June, I own a Ford Mustang and think Ford is doing a great job making the vehicles people actually want and understanding the market, but I’m not going to blindly defend a company for every action they take. Like I said in a previous comment, imported luxury vehicles like BMW (of which I also drive), cost less in destination shipped halfway across the globe, even in this market.

From the link:
"The suit claims General Motors makes a “significant amount of profit” off of the destination charges that it applies to its new vehicles and “deceives customers into paying far more than the actual cost of vehicle delivery.” The plaintiffs also say that a destination charge has very little to do with how much it costs to ship a vehicle from the assembly plant to a dealership and is instead a way for GM to sneak “hidden markups” into its vehicle transactions."

No where in this article, or other links within this one, does it say that the practice is illegal under some explicit written law, just that it is deceptive. The courts haven't yet decided on the "legality" of it. But I don't really understand this idea of it being deceptive with "hidden markups", as if we know the cost behind the base price any more than we know the cost of delivery. All the markups are hidden.

Based on what we know it is entirely possible that Ford makes less money than BMW per car, they just happen to have a higher "markup" on the delivery fee. I would really like to hear someone argue how they know enough at all to say that we are "not getting value out of it and it's a money grab". We have literally no idea what the cost of this or any vehicle or delivery is.

By the way, my new Maverick is already sitting in my garage.

 

[whtnrdy]

Federal law has required destination fees to be disclosed since 1958. Like many laws, it has no teeth and manufacturers just violated the spirit of the law using their legal and lobbying departments to be scummy, because that is the type of industry it is. While it may be legal, it is still unethical even if everyone does it.

Gotcha. I just don't understand why it matters all that much as we have a total we have to pay for a vehicle. Why pay much attention to the broken out delivery fee?

What I am pushing back on here is the idea that we can make a claim that we aren't "getting the value" out of the "high" delivery fee as if we know the costs behind it, or the costs behind the total cost of the/a vehicle. How can we "not be getting the value out it" when we have no idea what the cost/value of it is, for Ford and all their competitors, in the first place

 

[hcforde]

I suggest that Ford rethink the dealer allocation system if they want to operate in a Customer Build retail world, The only ones that benefit are the large dealers and the folks that place the order via the small town Mom and Pop dealer has to wait. They need to allocate based on order date - the big dealers will still make a fortune but the smaller dealer will still have a chance to fulfill orders in a timely fashion. Whatever ever happened to first come - first served. I purchased (ordered) two new Fords this year and the Maverick ordered in July has not been assigned a delivery date. Let’s let Ford know what we think of their system. Agree or disagree that is up to you but please input your thoughts in this thread. Hopefully someone like @fordvideoguy can direct the brand manager to this thread.

I just wonder if you would have this same complaint it there were no constrained item caused by the pandemic? Do you expect a company to change its way of doing business in a heartbeat because of what can be seen as a temporary condition?

 

[hcforde]

That's not how any of that works. There is no reason that the person who orders first and gets produced first can't be in rural Alaska. Sure the delivery date may be later, but saying that people that live in more populated states should get first vehicles produced in ridiculous. The logistics of building the vehicles has nothing to do with where a customer lives. They order parts with very long lead times and every single Maverick is produced in the same location in Mexico regardless.

You have to take into consideration bulk shipping by train. They are not goint to ship 1 vehicle to Alaska. Logistics takes into account not just the items in the manufacturing process but also final location along with other parameters. It is all done to minimize cost and much more involved than you could possibly imagine.

 

[whtnrdy]

Then why even call it a delivery fee if it is really just a profit fee? The only reason is to be deceptive. That is unethical no matter how much you want to defend it. It even fits the legal definition of fraud.

"It even fits the definition of fraud"

Laws aren't written in stone by some higher power; we can question what we think should legally constitute "fraud".

And to that point, I totally agree, why call it a delivery fee and why break it out from the total cost of the vehicle? Since it is just an average over the entire model line, and we aren't paying the actual direct cost of delivery, it doesn't make much sense to separate it. We have to pay for the steering wheel just as much as we have to pay for the vehicle to be shipped to the dealer. What other consumer product does, or is forced to do this?

However, anyone that is aware of and discussing the destination fee can't claim that Ford is deceiving them. This is the point I am trying to make here.

And for the people that walk into a dealer not understanding that car companies withhold the destination fee from the MSRP on ads and commercials, they do have an argument that they were being deceived on the total price. But that deception is used to look more competitive in the market and may not have anything to do with profit deception. What they shouldn't be able to argue is that this deception is preventing them from "getting proper value from the destination fee we are paying" or that it is a "profit grab" when they know nothing about the actual costs and profit of the vehicle.

 

[mav_can]

Gotcha. I just don't understand why it matters all that much as we have a total we have to pay for a vehicle. Why pay much attention to the broken out delivery fee?

What I am pushing back on here is the idea that we can make a claim that we aren't "getting the value" out of the "high" delivery fee as if we know the costs behind it, or the costs behind the total cost of the/a vehicle. How can we "not be getting the value out it" when we have no idea what the cost/value of it is, for Ford and all their competitors, in the first place

Because the delivery fee is not advertised in marketing nor is it negotiable at the dealership. I’m assuming good faith here but it’s pretty obvious that there’s an issue if the base price was $15k and the delivery fee was $5k. Marketing material, even the window sticker focuses heavily on “MSRP” the destination charge is added at the last minute and having it that way gives companies who do this an unfair advantage by being able to advertise their cars at a lower price than competitors.

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