Customer Complains of Mach-E ADM on Twitter, Ford's Mike Levine Has ADM Removed

[malba2366]

Same here, that's why i drove 130 miles for mine and have two Bronco reservation numbers with them. Although the bastards are making $2,400 on our trade! My Choice, so all good.

That is actually fair. The dealer typically needs to mark up a used car 10% to make money on it.

 

[Brademcee]

Well you Said you wouldn't pay ADM, so in that case, they didn't have any to sell you. ?

I told the same thing to Fair Oaks Naperville and they said okay only to try to put $3K ADM.

I'm confused. If you told them you won't pay ADM, why should they have told you about one with ADM?

I don't like dealers either, but the anger over ADM has never made sense to me. If you don't want to pay ADM, find another dealer (there are plenty who aren't marking up) or order the car and wait (for a loooong time). I would much rather have a dealer disclose an exorbitant ADM (as it appears these guys did) rather than try to make their money with back-end shenanigans in the finance office.

Why do people find supply and demand and honest capitalism so offensive? This is actually one of the dealers I called when looking for my grabber blue with x-plan pricing. The dealer told me they were charging ADM, I said no thanks, and that was that.

That is my point. I am not faulting dealers for trying to charge ADM, as long as they are honest. I told that to Fair Oaks Ford on their Grabber Blue FE and when they agreed to sell it to me at MSRP, they still proceeded to try to charge me ADM when I arrived. After a painful experience, the GM stepped in and gave me the car at MSRP. That was after the finance team tried to convince me their flex purchase financing was a better value then the Ford Options (which they told me was not available).

However, you are totally missing my point though.....but that is okay. The car industry is changing and dealers need to figure out how to adapt because sooner or later, manufacturers will figure out that a majority of car buyers are not happy about the car buying experience. Lastly, no one that supports dealers can talk about Capatlism (this is not directed at you). Most dealerships use decade old laws to protect their self interest. In a true capatalistic economy, Tesla would not be banned from selling cars in states where dealers are forcing states to stop the direct sales model. That is not captalism.....

 

[MightyJawa]

Lol at dealer's " adjusted MSRP..

I wonder if this is why they got in trouble. Probably against some rule to actually change the MSRP.

 

[Ixoye]

I forwarded the tweets to two local dealers who are putting ADM's on dropped ordered FE's and one of them responded with this:

"Thank you for the heads up. The good news is our markup on the last 1st Edition we have left is only $8K, not $10K. We had 3 1st Editions here last week that were ordered from customers who decided not to go through with their purchase, for any number of reasons. The reason for the markup you're seeing is because as dealers we are not able to order Mach-E's for the dealership to sell right now. The only way to get a Mach-E 1st Edition right now is from a dealer who had an order from a customer who opted not to purchase. The inventory for Mach-E's for the seeable future is going to be extremely limited. If you were to put in an order right now for a 1st Edition you will not see you're Mach-E till sometime in 2022.​

​

Right now the 1st Edition Mach-E is under a similar category as the F-150 Raptor and the Shelby. Where there is a very limited number of vehicles available across the country. And once those are gone there will not be any available for awhile.​

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I appreciate your feedback and hopefully, this helps gives some insight into the shock value of the markup you are seeing for the 1st Edition Mach-E's. I do have a Select with Regular Battery "not extended" and AWD available without the markup if you are interested."​

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My response was this mentality is 1980's dealer/customer relationship. We are in the Amazon generation where the customer expects to be able to purchase online and for the marked price that all other dealers are selling it at. I also threw in that those customers will eventually talk to the other FE customers and find out they did not pay 8k extra and will remember that when selecing a dealer to deal with in the future.

 

[NotSoJon]

This is SCHAUMBURG FORD (I looked up the VIN). Weird because before I picked up my First Edition from another dealer, I was asking them if they had any to sell. I also told them I won't pay ADM. They never told me they had this one in stock. I guess this is capatalism at its finest. I do not fault the dealer just like I did not fault Blockbuster for failing to realize that Netflix and online rental companies that made renting/streaming easy would someday take Blockbuster out of business. Dealers that do not adapt will not be here in 10 years. The car industry is changing and most consumers just want to buy their cars online or by walking into a design "center" and without the pains of dealing with dealerships.

Wow, I'm in Arlington Heights. This hit close to home, literally. I'm supposed to pick up my reservation any day now and I'm a bit worried I'm going to show up to AH Ford and have them pull some shenanigans.

 

[Brademcee]

Wow, I'm in Arlington Heights. This hit close to home, literally. I'm supposed to pick up my reservation any day now and I'm a bit worried I'm going to show up to AH Ford and have them pull some shenanigans.

They won’t. It’s just dealers with canceled orders that are marking them up. Just know what financing you want and be firm. You are my neighbor! My original order was with AH but I didn’t order until 1/5 so my build date wasn’t until 5/10. This I found something sooner.

 

[SteelMach]

They can't terminate the franchise over that, what they can do is to reduce allocations of desirable vehicles to a particular dealer that is doing this. If we are seeing $10K on the Mach E, just imagine what they will try when the Raptor and Bronco are released. The problem is that Ford probably does not know about individual dealers doing this. Even if Ford does crack down, they will just do other things like applying a ceramic coat to the car, or PPF and charging a well above market price for that.
This is why i strongly believe that all of the legacy automakers will need to buy out all of their dealers at some point and have them all be company owned retail/service points. There is no effective way to compete with Tesla, Lucid, Rivian etc when you have to give up margin to dealerships and there is all sorts of nonsense going on at the dealership level.

Oh I know they can't. I can dream.

 

[NotSoJon]

They won’t. It’s just dealers with canceled orders that are marking them up. Just know what financing you want and be firm. You are my neighbor! My original order was with AH but I didn’t order until 1/5 so my build date wasn’t until 5/10. This I found something sooner.

That's good to know! I've been looking for mach-e's in the wild but haven't seen one yet. I'm going to guess you're the only grabber blue in the northwest suburbs. I'll be on the lookout for you!

 

[benk016]

I paid $1000 ADM for my FE. They had it listed at $5000 ADM. I felt since this was a FE in Grabber Blue, and its a car I literally can't order at this point, that it was fair to pay that. Any more I wouldn't have done it though.

 

[machefan]

One down, many more to go!

 

[VegStang]

This I completely understand.

Now if only I could complain to Mike Levine on twitter and get my car delivered. With a discount for waiting patiently.

I paid $1000 ADM for my FE. They had it listed at $5000 ADM. I felt since this was a FE in Grabber Blue, and its a car I literally can't order at this point, that it was fair to pay that. Any more I wouldn't have done it though.

 

[Davedough]

I forwarded the tweets to two local dealers who are putting ADM's on dropped ordered FE's and one of them responded with this:

"Thank you for the heads up. The good news is our markup on the last 1st Edition we have left is only $8K, not $10K. We had 3 1st Editions here last week that were ordered from customers who decided not to go through with their purchase, for any number of reasons. The reason for the markup you're seeing is because as dealers we are not able to order Mach-E's for the dealership to sell right now. The only way to get a Mach-E 1st Edition right now is from a dealer who had an order from a customer who opted not to purchase. The inventory for Mach-E's for the seeable future is going to be extremely limited. If you were to put in an order right now for a 1st Edition you will not see you're Mach-E till sometime in 2022.​

​

Right now the 1st Edition Mach-E is under a similar category as the F-150 Raptor and the Shelby. Where there is a very limited number of vehicles available across the country. And once those are gone there will not be any available for awhile.​

​

I appreciate your feedback and hopefully, this helps gives some insight into the shock value of the markup you are seeing for the 1st Edition Mach-E's. I do have a Select with Regular Battery "not extended" and AWD available without the markup if you are interested."​

​

My response was this mentality is 1980's dealer/customer relationship. We are in the Amazon generation where the customer expects to be able to purchase online and for the marked price that all other dealers are selling it at. I also threw in that those customers will eventually talk to the other FE customers and find out they did not pay 8k extra and will remember that when selecing a dealer to deal with in the future.

That’s actually a really shitty response. The dealer acknowledges the markup and tries to justify it as “they’re limited so greed is ok”. That’s not justification, that’s called being an asshole

 

[Daraiders76]

Same here, that's why i drove 130 miles for mine and have two Bronco reservation numbers with them. Although the bastards are making $2,400 on our trade! My Choice, so all good.

Isn’t that what a trade is for? They aren’t gonna give you money on a trade in to break even.

 

[Stang68]

That’s actually a really shitty response. The dealer acknowledges the markup and tries to justify it as “they’re limited so greed is ok”. That’s not justification, that’s called being an asshole

AND the guy made it seem like "First Editions" will be coming back to order again lol he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

[capt_jak_harkness]

Amazing Thread. I'll be curious to see if this type of interaction leads to more change of Ford sales model. Click the black Tweet to see discussion.

HA! This is AMAZING!

I live in Gurnee, IL and drove over an hour to see this car! They also would not let me drive it. When I tried to purchase it the salesman asked the dealer who said "they're all going for $10k above MSRP". I immediately rolled my eyes and was not going to buy it. The salesman said they would probably take something more reasonable "like $7k over." I left. Later I emailed the GM (Sevan Sayabian) and told him that I'd pay MSRP (even though I qualify for X plan) if they wanted to sell it. He replied:

"Unfortunately we won’t sell that vehicle at msrp do to supply and demand. We have already had about ten offers between 5-7k on it which were rejected by management."

I am SO HAPPY at the thought that someone at this dealership got yelled at and that they're now going to sell this MME at MSRP.

For what it's worth, Sevan and the salesman were both very pleasant and answered a lot of my questions, but it's just a shame they are trying to get over MSRP on their MMEs.

I know this is the literal definition of capitalism, but I just think Ford made a mistake rolling out the MME through the dealer model. This should have been 100% online only to prevent issues like this.