Why dealer allotments no longer make sense

[Landric]

Well I ordered from my local dealership. Live in a town of 21,000 and Ford is the only local car dealer. My sales guy has become a friend over the years as has the service manager. Why would I drive 1267 miles to Kansas to buy a truck?? I always try to support local businesses over say a Walmart.

Next Thursday will be 8 months since order confirmed! First Edition, Hybrid with all the bells and whistles. Not willing to settle for anything less.

On the bright side, All First Editions will be built in my/22 as it is the only year that they will be produced. So I will get it. Now if I get it the first week in September right before the my/23 come out I will be pissed!

But this allocation system will only hurt the small dealers, as I feel they will lose repeat customers to the mega dealers.

I ordered the first of my three Mavericks from a small town dealer local to my office (I work in a different county from where I live). That dealer is the only new car dealer in the entire county and they definitely qualify as small. I would very much like to give them by business. Hopefully they will be blessed by the allocation gods and my order will be built soon.

I also ordered from both Long McArthur and Granger. I really want to get a Maverick and I figure spreading my orders out across several dealers might make that more likely. Hopefully someone will be blessed by the allocation gods. There is a good chance I will actually take delivery of two of the three if they all manage to be built as 2022 models.

My oldest son lives in the Kansas City Metro area, so if I have to go pick up a truck in Iowa or Kansas I will just use that as an excuse to visit him (and probably enlist his help driving me to the dealer).

All that said, I need to have a vehicle by July of this year. I could afford to wait so I ordered what I want. If Ford can't manage to deliver any of the three Mavericks I ordered in six months (which seems entirely possible) I'm going to have to buy something else. Ford doesn't really offer anything else that fits my needs. So, if they can't deliver that will likely drive me to another brand.

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[Landric]

try thinking outside your own age demographic here. Many Sr citizens and just plain retired folks don't prefer doing everything on-line... and we buy new cars!

I'm not a "senior citizen" but I'm not exactly a spring chicken either. I'll be 50 next year and I'm totally open to this whole online model. There are plenty of older folks on this forum who are clearly computer savvy. I'm sure there are people of all ages who would prefer not to shop online. I'm not advocating eliminating dealers, I'm advocating eliminating the requirement that they be involved in special orders. There is no reason at all, other than inertia at Ford, why I can't special order a vehicle from my office on my computer or from my phone.

 

[bbhaag]

Never seen a thread like this before... ....oh wait it seems to happen several times a week especially on Thursdays.

 

[Mymaverick2021]

Spoiler alert - I didn't get my email today and I'm salty. I know I'm only Oct 14th order but we're talking XL EB with only 4k tow and the 110V inverter; no constraint items, just a small-town dealership that will never get vehicles from Ford.

Prior to Covid, the dealer allotment system made sense in the fact that dealerships who could move vehicles would get preferential treatment of stock units because they've proven to be the most capable at converting those stock units into sold units as fast as possible. Now that supply chains are completely broken and Ford is (allegedly) trying to shift to a custom-order model, there is no reason that I can see outside of pure inertia that an allotment system even makes sense anymore. Can anyone think of one? The only thing I can possibly figure would be that a lower performing / smaller dealer would be less likely to convert a customer-cancelled order into a sale, but even then you could transfer vehicles among dealerships if needed.

I guess you didn't see the 28 day post Where the guy ordered and already has a build date only took 28 days. Granted it is a ecoboost not a hybrid but that doesn't make the rest of this happy

 

[Trucklet]

Never seen a thread like this before... ....oh wait it seems to happen several times a week especially on Thursdays.

Because it's true I promise I'll stop complaining when I get my truck.

 

[Trucklet]

I guess you didn't see the 28 day post Where the guy ordered and already has a build date only took 28 days. Granted it is a ecoboost not a hybrid but that doesn't make the rest of this happy

That's kinda my point - Mine's also an EB base model so his was presumably only chosen over mine (or literally anyone else's who has no constraint items) because his dealer had the allotment available. No ill will to anyone who actually gets their truck (including the ones who barely wait a few weeks) but the system is terrible.

 

[brdl04]

Im going on 4 months with no update from the largest Ford dealer in the US.

 

[Trucklet]

Im going on 4 months with no update from the largest Ford dealer in the US.

It's a game of odds - the largest dealer would have the most customers so you're one of many with 300 allotments a month, and I'm one of 15 with one allotment a month (all made up numbers but I'm just generalizing).

 

[brdl04]

It's a game of odds - the largest dealer would have the most customers so you're one of many with 300 allotments a month, and I'm one of 15 with one allotment a month (all made up numbers but I'm just generalizing).

Hey at least im a priority 10 for the last 2 months! lol

 

[Trucklet]

Hey at least I'm a priority 10 for the last 2 months! lol

Same...

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