If true, it's interesting because Ford's CEO said they were going to crack down on this and basically said "we know who you are". But apparently, 'crack down' must mean loosen the standard and look the other way.Just got this interesting tidbit from @fordvideoguy weekly live stream. Ford has dropped the COVP name match policy to 60% on 2023 retail orders and has no official sanctions in place for going below it. They said they will just "monitor" it.
In other words, dealers are not at real risk of losing allocations when customers who ordered walk away. As such, this only means that many dealers will actually WANT customers who ordered to refuse the orders upon delivery so they can add massive ADM and make big $$$$.
It's also concerning from the standpoint of dealers who add "surprise" markups when retail orders arrive. Without any penalty for not having a name match, what's to stop dealers from just tacking $3,000 or $5,000 onto every Maverick order that shows up and telling customers, "Hey, if you don't like it, we'll sell it off the lot for $8,000 or $10,000 over sticker."
My personal opinion is this is a pretty lousy move by @Ford Motor Company and will benefit dealers a lot and do NOTHING to benefit consumers!
Heck, maybe the standard before was up to 60% of dealer orders could be 'fraudulent' and now they've tightened it to only 40% and they actually have 'cracked down'. . . .
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