Dealership experience - How was yours?

[AJ's Nite Pony]

Good Morning MME friends,
I am looking to get some real world data for how people's experience's were at your Dealership. This could be anything from ordering, delivery, shopping on the lot, service visits, buying/installing accessories, or calling in asking a question.
I work at a dealer in Canada and am a part of the dedicated EV Team. I am hoping to use your experiences and feedback to better support our Guests, both those looking to purchase and those who already have.
We have seen a huge uptake in EV ownership in the last year or two and would love any feedback you have! I'd also love to be able to use real world examples to debunk EV myths and try and sway the naysayers.

Thanks in advance and stay charged!

My dealer was nice and all but I knew more about the Mach E than they did and thats not saying a whole lot. Also I really did not appreciate it when I went to talk to the finance manager and the first thing he said to me was "Why on earth would you want to buy one of those." I chalked it up to some shitty sales tactic of him trying to sell me extra warranties.

Also I had to drive 45 minutes to the dealer so I negotiated my price before leaving the house. I have Z plan pricing and when I got there they changed the price on me. Pissed me off to no end.

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[Jtg]

My experience has been horrible from both the purchase and service side. I ordered back on 11/21 from Ford. Delivered on 7/22 through the dealer and the dealer increased the price by ~$1500 saying a price increase happened between the time I ordered and the local dealer confirmed the order. Neither Ford nor Dealer would budge.

Service had been horrible as I am one of the lucky owners who does not receive OTAs for some reason. Dealers do not want to deal with it and essentially refuse to do anything, Ford customer service does absolutely nothing as well.

Also, the Dealer quoted me 2 days for the HVBJB recall and 5 weeks later, I finally got my car back.

Ford and their dealerships are not working together and are even at odds on EVs creating a horrible customer experience. Ford says the dealer has to take care of it. The dealer blames Ford and says they don't get paid for it and that it is a Ford issue.

NEVER AGAIN will I buy a Ford. The shame of it is, that I love the Mach E. SMH.

 

[PilotMark]

My experience has been quite good. I know more about the Mache than the salesman, but I also read the owners manual several times before talking with them. The salesperson did not pretend that he knew all about the car. Ordering was good and the delivery was also good.
I've only had to service calls. 10k they picked the car up and delivered it back total cost $35.00. And there was a module update they did in my driveway at no cost.

I'll be going back to them again.

 

[Paisano]

Crossroads Ford Apex NC, suburb of Raleigh, was and continues to a great EV dealership. Sales was good and continues to call to see how I'm doing. Service did my HVB replacement overnight with no issues. Ordered a 2021 Premium AWD and got a 2022, 9 months later.

 

[Shepherd]

Before I went to the dealer for a test drive I did my homework. I knew I wanted to buy a Mach-E and maybe a Lightning, because I was coming out of a 4Runner. I wanted a dealer that's EV Certified, with pick up/delivery and mobile service. I wanted the Premium Care Plus EV plan. Fortunately I found that dealer in my town.

I had a good experience with the salesman who is very knowledgeable about EVs and he's 75 years old. He said he doesn't drive an EV because he only works part time and doesn't drive much at his age. I also had a good experience with the sales manager, who drives a Lightning, and the F&I person. The sales manager wouldn't offer as much as I wanted for the 4Runner and the salesman suggested Carvanna. I sold it to them and had a good experience with Carvanna. I meticulously maintained the 4Runner and they offered $4k more than the dealer. Sales manager ran the numbers for me on both the 0% APR financing and a lease.

I wasn't pushed one way or the other buying the Mach-E versus Lightning, though they were anxious to move the 2023 Mach-Es off the lot and subtracted $500 more plus the $3000 discount. F&I initially gave me a quote on a third party extended plan, to which I said no thanks, I don't want to deal with one owned by an insurance company. Plus I had a A-Plan code that gave me a discount on MSRP, dealer prep and the premium care.

The only "pack" the dealer did was to put on a racing stripe, which was not on the car in their website ad. Not saying I don't like it, but I would have chosen differently. I haven't been back for service yet, so I can only hope they will be good. They didn't update the inspection from 8/23 before I took delivery last month. No big deal in the end. I didn't ask for it up front, but I think they should have done it. There was some confusion about the license plates. I wanted to reuse my old ones but they got a new plate for me and now I have to take them to DMV to deal with that. Overall it was a good experience.

 

[danielcb]

Good Morning MME friends,
I am looking to get some real world data for how people's experience's were at your Dealership. This could be anything from ordering, delivery, shopping on the lot, service visits, buying/installing accessories, or calling in asking a question.
I work at a dealer in Canada and am a part of the dedicated EV Team. I am hoping to use your experiences and feedback to better support our Guests, both those looking to purchase and those who already have.
We have seen a huge uptake in EV ownership in the last year or two and would love any feedback you have! I'd also love to be able to use real world examples to debunk EV myths and try and sway the naysayers.

Thanks in advance and stay charged!

I know you and your dealership and you guys are simply the worst dealership I had to deal with!

Not only I had to shout at 3 of you to get my car serviced for HVBJB recall, but you simply don't have even the bare minimum tooling or willingness to fix customers issues.

You say you have 6 EV specialists? Well, I think you need fire all of them because they know a squat about about EV and have the least desire to help customers!

Your sales team is also a joke, the sellers main interest was to just put orders in and then forget about your customers.

You will be hearing from Ford any time now!

 

[BreatheEasy]

Good Morning MME friends,
I am looking to get some real world data for how people's experience's were at your Dealership. This could be anything from ordering, delivery, shopping on the lot, service visits, buying/installing accessories, or calling in asking a question.
I work at a dealer in Canada and am a part of the dedicated EV Team. I am hoping to use your experiences and feedback to better support our Guests, both those looking to purchase and those who already have.
We have seen a huge uptake in EV ownership in the last year or two and would love any feedback you have! I'd also love to be able to use real world examples to debunk EV myths and try and sway the naysayers.

Thanks in advance and stay charged!

First of all, thank you so much for asking this question! I wish the dealerships in my area would do the same, because my experiences leave lots of room for improvement. Ford is aware that their EVs are attracting buyers away from luxury brands, but I don’t think Ford has considered how their customer experience compares with those luxury brands. As someone who owns an MME and a Lexus RX, I can tell you that Ford is failing badly in this regard. It was like a slap in the face to go from Lexus service to Ford service. But let’s start at the beginning.

Sales experience

I made the decision to purchase an MME in early 2022. Times were a bit crazy then in terms of availability, long lead-times, dealer shenanigans, and so on. One dealer in Toronto told me on the phone that they had the model I wanted on the lot, so I went to check it out. Well, they lied about having the car on site. My husband and I spent a few hours trying to get straight answers and had been prepared to sign a contract, but we were turned off by the games and lying. They refused to sell the car unless we financed it fully, even though we didn’t want financing at all. We ended up walking out on them. I felt like I needed a shower after that experience.

I returned to the dealership at which I’d done my test drive. The salesperson was very friendly and helpful, but he was not great at following up when I’d dealt with him previously. He was honest and didn’t play games, though, so I made the purchase from him. Everyone on the sales team was pleasant to deal with, and I was happy with the sales experience there.

Service experience

I’m now dealing with the third dealership in the area for service. The dealership from which I purchased the car had a horrible service team. It took 30 minutes just to drop off the car for the first service appointment, and they acted like they were doing me a favor in servicing my car. Next!

The second dealership was humungous; I suspect they do a lot of commercial business. The service advisor was terse and inflexible. She said that they couldn’t wash my car after the service because it was too large (??). Next.

The current dealership is OK. It took two visits and a total of five days for them to deal with the HVBJB and charge cord stuck recalls, but I suppose that’s not bad compared to what others have dealt with! However, it seems clear to me that the service desk staff is not properly trained on EVs. For example:

• In 90% of my transactions with the service desk, I’m asked if I want an oil change. And yes, this is after I’ve told them I have an MME. It’s as if they don’t realize that there’s a difference between an MME and a Mustang.
• One advisor told me that it was important to have brake service done during my annual maintenance, because of all the wear and tear on the disc brakes from regenerative braking. Clearly, he doesn’t understand how regenerative braking works.
• When I asked what level of EVSE they had in the parking lot, the first advisor was totally clueless. She had to refer me to another colleague to answer that question. I got the impression that the first advisor has no clue about EV charging at all.

Getting back to my comment about luring owners from luxury brands: I know that Ford isn’t a luxury brand, so I don’t expect the experience to be quite the same as what Lexus provides. But I do expect:

• That employees have been fully trained on EVs and can deal with EV customers in an intelligent manner.
• To be treated courteously by everyone in a customer-facing role and feel that I am valued.
• To be dealt with in an honest and straightforward manner.

If Ford dealerships can manage to do these three things, that would help a lot.

 

[danielcb]

Good points so far. You should also focus on transparent upfront pricing for EV buyers. An increasing number of us want to buy online, or at least have a simple out the door price. Price games anger me to the point I’ve walked out the door.

I also recommend doing a charging consult before the sale so people are aware of gotchas. You want to make sure someone in an apartment realizes they will have to set aside extra time for public charging, etc before they commit to purchase. Or that they realize road trips will take longer. And know the difference between AC and DC charging. If you have a DC charger, you should demonstrate how to use it.

This dealership don't know even the difference between kWh and kW.

Sooooo....all told, fail.

Buying experience was decent, but I knew more than the sales guy did, which was almost par for the course. Where they really excelled was stepping up to the plate with Ford Canada when my original order was damaged in transit - CAD$20k worth of damage. Details here.

Since then service has been a bit of a joke - from a service advisor reviewing my "oil change" when I brought her in for the 15k EV service to my original dealership outright refusing to try and troubleshoot a L2 charging issue. You can read all about that one here. Gave me every excuse from "it's your wiring" to "it's your charger" to "there's no standards, it could be anything". Total joke.

Second dealership was not much better, but sort of tried. Ultimately they did not have an L2 charger powerful enough to reproduce what I was seeing (L2 fails at anything over 32A) and blamed it on an OTA from four months prior, even though the issue had just started. At least they gave me a Lightning loaner for a few days.

I'm still waiting for a dealership to actually be able to diagnose the issue and have the right equipment to test.

So overall, still unimpressed. I honestly think they have no idea where to even start. I'll try yet another dealership recommended by a YouTuber so we'll see.

I have been having a similar issues for over than a year, but in my case, L2 charging does not go over than 10~12A and if tries to go above, the charging session just keeps resetting.

Took my car to the dealership that started this thread here in BC and they simply returned the car to me saying it was fixed but the problem persists.

Most likely they cheaped out while installing their chargers and their L2 chargers are only 3kW. They also don't have any test benches for properly testing the car charging or are simply to unwilling to do it so.

What a joke of a dealership and technicians!

 

[lesz]

Good Morning MME friends,
I am looking to get some real world data for how people's experience's were at your Dealership. This could be anything from ordering, delivery, shopping on the lot, service visits, buying/installing accessories, or calling in asking a question.
I work at a dealer in Canada and am a part of the dedicated EV Team. I am hoping to use your experiences and feedback to better support our Guests, both those looking to purchase and those who already have.
We have seen a huge uptake in EV ownership in the last year or two and would love any feedback you have! I'd also love to be able to use real world examples to debunk EV myths and try and sway the naysayers.

Thanks in advance and stay charged!

From a purchase standpoint, I’m happy with the price on my ‘22 Mach-e GTPE, although the salesman knew next to nothing about EV’s. During my first service visit I was told the dealership had one certified EV Tech, and not a lot of experience. However, the dealership has always been very courteous and provides a pickup/return service when
my car is in their shop and follows up with status text messages.
Although you didn’t ask about Ford overall, on numerous times I’ve contacted several POC‘s supporting EV ownership and have been very disappointed with the level of knowledge. Conflicting recommendations, clearly not on the same page as the dealership, etc.

 

[Nikos]

ordered a 21 premium in Jan 21, my local dealer went well above and beyond in making this happen. I got the car with xplan in about 3.5 months when others were waiting much longer. Had that car for 2.5 years, and only had one visit with the service dept to do the 10 k service, update some software. with parts dept, they ordered the second key fob under the customer satisfaction program, took two days. From the same dealer I ordered a 23 gtpe and got sept 23. It had an initial charging issue which was identified and fixed after four months (tsb out on this now). The lead tech for mach es is extremely knowledgeable and his wife owns a mach e (she recently traded in for a gt). When ford notified my dealer the fix was available for my car, they called, made an appt for first thing next morning, was in and out in 90 minutes. I'm very happy with this dealer and the fact that they're four miles from my house is even better.

I will say the sales staff really don't know anything about the mach es, but I only had contact very briefly when I picked both cars up.

It is interesting to read the Forum members experiences with their dealers. Experiences that range from the “ Good……Bad……Ugly “.
My experience with my dealer has been excellent. They knew very little about EVs but they embraced it, became a premium Model E dealer, and trying hard to understand it even further.
My dealer even asked for my help to help perspective buyers or current buyers with their questions.
I still been asked, after three years of owning my Mach E, if I still like it.
I like/love both my EVs. A Mach E and my Lightning. The service is top notch and apologetic if the vehicles are not returned back at a reasonable amount of time. They are just 12 miles away and I will not consider any other dealer in my area. They are not without their faults. No one is perfect.
So…..put me down in the Good column.

 

[markw314]

Good Morning MME friends,
I am looking to get some real world data for how people's experience's were at your Dealership. This could be anything from ordering, delivery, shopping on the lot, service visits, buying/installing accessories, or calling in asking a question.
I work at a dealer in Canada and am a part of the dedicated EV Team. I am hoping to use your experiences and feedback to better support our Guests, both those looking to purchase and those who already have.
We have seen a huge uptake in EV ownership in the last year or two and would love any feedback you have! I'd also love to be able to use real world examples to debunk EV myths and try and sway the naysayers.

Thanks in advance and stay charged!

My purchase from Jerry's Ford (Leesburg, VA) was terrible. The salesperson didn't really know anything about the car, When I offered them a pretty good deal, the salesperson still spent 20-30 minutes with the sales manager trying to make me squirm. I almost left. I was the last customer of the day and they rushed through the process, not explaining much about Fordpass, the 250 free kwh, or anything else of use to an EV purchaser.

On the other hand, I stopped by Koon's Ford (Sterling, VA) about 3 days later with some questions, and a salesperson spent an hour with me getting my account set up, walking me through accessing all the bells and whistles, and explaining how to get to their L2 charger (free) when I wanted to.

I've gone there for service (mainly just tire rotation and checking the system) and they haven't tried to oversell or push anything I didn't need.

 

[Opa]

Our dealership, Woody Anderson Ford of Huntsville, Alabama, has committed to become a Ford EV certified center and will be installing Ford DCFC‘s this year.
As others have said, I had done my research on the MME and several other EV I was comparing it to (Kia Hyundai and Audi) so of course I knew more than the salesman as others have said that’s to be expected when you have 20 different models on the showroom floor. What I liked about our sales was his honesty. I would ask him about a feature in the MME and he look at me and say I don’t know give me a second and get on the phone talk to somebody and get the answer I was looking for , the epitome of customer service: honesty, integrity, and following up on promises.

I can unreservedly recommend Woody Anderson Ford in Huntsville Alabama as an exemplar dealership .

 

[Arsenic17]

Got 2 Mach-Es so far from different local dealers and the experience was okay in both cases. The first one was during the pandemic and they *only* marked up the MSRP by $2500. The second buy was following the recent price cuts and the other dealer came down $2500 from the new MSRP. They had 30+ MMEs on the lot, so needless to say they wanted to unload as many as possible.

The first dealer's finance person was very rude and pushy about extended warranty and other add-ons. Eventually I accepted one just to get out of there. But cancelled it later.

The second dealer's finance guy was much better. Minimal pressure and I was able to decline everything easily. Though this MachE came with a ridiculously large rear window decal advertisement which literally blocked the entire view out the back window. Quickly removed that myself with a plastic blade and hair dryer.

---

Haven't done any service yet on either car, but we'll see how that goes. I am hopeful the second dealer can be the primary one as it is closer to my home. There's a ton of EVs in my area and a good many Mach-Es, so I don't expect too many issues.

 

[burritoman]

My dealer was nice and all but I knew more about the Mach E than they did and thats not saying a whole lot. Also I really did not appreciate it when I went to talk to the finance manager and the first thing he said to me was "Why on earth would you want to buy one of those." I chalked it up to some shitty sales tactic of him trying to sell me extra warranties.

Also I had to drive 45 minutes to the dealer so I negotiated my price before leaving the house. I have Z plan pricing and when I got there they changed the price on me. Pissed me off to no end.

Ha, yea I had a similar experience with the finance manager I worked with, totally anti-EV. He tried hard to sell me on the warranties, I mean really hard. I'm too polite to get angry or even show irritation, just calmly said no thanks. But I liked my sales guy there, he didn't know a whole lot about the Mach-E, but he went above and beyond to make sure I was happy with the purchase. He said they wouldn't be getting any '24 models as their dealership was no longer on the list to receive them. It made me a bit nervous from a support standpoint. But I really wanted to replace my Tesla so I took the plunge.

 

[firstford17]

My dealership experience at Ted Britt in NOVA was horrible. Shady salesmen didn't know a single thing about the car. No one did. You can tell they mostly just sell F-150's. Tricked me into getting a car without parking assist, buy showing me another one that did have it. Then a newer one that doesn't have it.

But it's fine I won't use it. I've read that there's been a few wrecks and fatalities involving blue cruise. I'm not paying $70 for scary cruise control but I have it free. Does anyone know details of what happened?

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