Dealers getting in the way

[oadesign]

Yes I’m aware of pre-pandemic prices which is the only reason I’m even remotely okay with paying MSRP currently.
You’re missing the point, the dealer is not allowed to reduce the price of the vehicles. No discounts unless Ford tells them they can discount it. Ford is effectively eliminating dealer competition.
If this was about benefiting the customer they would have eliminated markups and allowed discounts.

Which is why I indicated that when supply catches up with demand, they won’t be able to stay hardfast to this new pricing policy.

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[Steve-o]

Yes solar was pretty shady as well. One of the main reasons I have Brand T's panels on my roof. Was a painless and scummy-free experience to order it, although I kinda hated to have to download the Tesla app, etc.

I like the Tesla shingles as well, but i cant stand to give them $1 of my money so waiting for Duracell to make one haha

 

[praxiscat]

Completely true. The high ADM markups are the worst. I lucked out with a no ADM dealers, but if anything was going to make me bolt to Tesla (or Rivian, Lucid, and Aptera now too I guess), it was dealers and their skeezy tactics.

 

[Motomax]

Which is why I indicated that when supply catches up with demand, they won’t be able to stay hardfast to this new pricing policy.

I’m not sure what supply and demand has to do with Ford preventing dealerships from discounting vehicles by taking a smaller cut of the sale bonus. Dealership discounts is where good deals are made, not Factory incentives, and Definitely not paying MSRP.
Maybe you’re just focusing on ADMs going away but I couldnt care less about ADMs because I’ll never pay it. The problem is that Fords new business model of Minimum sale prices are bad for consumers.
From the article: “ Usually dealer invoice pricing is lower, allowing dealers to offer deals below MSRP, which just isn’t as clean or simple to a consumer, who may rather want to just pay what the car costs instead of worrying about getting the best deal.”
Who can possibly think this is a good thing…

 

[NoVAguy]

For me, the dealer tried to charge an ADM when converting my GT reservation to an order online despite written email with me stating otherwise.


My advice is as follows:

1. You can order yourself online. I would do this. The advantage of this is that you get to precisely pick the spec of your car. You could also have the dealer order the car for you, but this board has examples of the dealer ordering folks the wrong car, and not realizing this until it shows up. You do have to commit to the dealer that will take delivery upon placing this order. I think it's difficult to change the dealer (you can do so by calling Ford) and once the car enters production you can't change the dealer, so pick wisely. See #2.
2. Before placing the order yourself, visit said dealer and see if they appear somewhat reputable. Do they know about the car? Will they let you test drive it? etc.
3. Go on the dealer's web site and find the internet sales manager email address or the email of the overall sales manager. Email this person, telling them you are about to order a mach-e, and you want them to confirm by replying to your email the answers on whether: (1) they will sell you the car without any ADM added; (2) that they will accept X-Plan pricing for the vehicle; (3) that they are familiar with and will offer Ford Options on the vehicle. If they won't respond in the affirmative for all three of these via replied email, find another dealer. As for these three, these will help you to maximize the savings on the car. X-Plan pricing already discussed in this thread. But Ford Options, as an example, generally is offering $1000 or $2500 off as an incentive, and you can pay off Ford Options basically at any time, so it does not make sense not to do this and pay off the loan (refinancing if you need to) in order to get the additional incentive. Also, because of the delay between ordering and receiving the car, it doesn't make sense not to have all of the financing flexibility available to you. It's also a really bad sign if the dealer doesn't know what Ford Options is or won't participate in it.

I would also add a (4) to this and ask what their dealership policy is in regards to deposit refunds, in the off chance you decide against taking delivery. The majority of dealerships will give you your deposit back but I've ran into a few that have explicitly told me over email that the deposit is non-refundable. Ford's website even tells you deposit refunds are dealership specific and to verify with your dealership.

I had every intention of taking delivery of my car (and did). But it's good to have that safety net knowing you can get your deposit refunded in the off chance you simply don't want the vehicle anymore, or your financial circumstances drastically change between ordering to delivery time.

 

[bruceski88]

Yes solar was pretty shady as well. One of the main reasons I have Brand T's panels on my roof. Was a painless and scummy-free experience to order it, although I kinda hated to have to download the Tesla app, etc.

If you are good with tools and know about electrical work similar to installing a subpanel or EVSE charger, check out mysolarpod.com. If you can get an electrician to install a sub - panel next to your array site you don’t even need to be that competent with electrical installations. its like building with a huge erector set. i was able to install an additional array to power my Mach-e at about $2/watt including permit.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Yes solar was pretty shady as well. One of the main reasons I have Brand T's panels on my roof. Was a painless and scummy-free experience to order it, although I kinda hated to have to download the Tesla app, etc.

We apparently had very different Tesla solar experiences. They were by far the worst dealer I dealt with when seeking a solar system. We did not walk, we ran away as fast as we could from that. That experience also is one of the many reasons I’d walk before owning a Tesla vehicle.

 

[kennethjk]

I would also add a (4) to this and ask what their dealership policy is in regards to deposit refunds, in the off chance you decide against taking delivery. The majority of dealerships will give you your deposit back but I've ran into a few that have explicitly told me over email that the deposit is non-refundable. Ford's website even tells you deposit refunds are dealership specific and to verify with your dealership.

I had every intention of taking delivery of my car (and did). But it's good to have that safety net knowing you can get your deposit refunded in the off chance you simply don't want the vehicle anymore, or your financial circumstances drastically change between ordering to delivery time.

I wrote on the check refundable deposit, and as to the ADM, the invoice they wrote up for the order was clear on the price. MSRP. Not much different than when I ordered my Macan 7 years ago.

 

[shutterbug]

Most of the comments here are focused on ADM. But ADM is actually fairly rare. It normally applies to high demand low volume vehicles. There are other dealer shenanigans designed to separate [uninformed] buyers from their cash:

• Unwanted/overpriced add-ons such as wheel locks, paint protection, undercoating, tinting, striping, leather/fabric protection, and [my favorite] nitrogen in tires. Yes some of these are useful, but dealers always charge a lot more than it would cost outside of dealer's shop. My dealer attempted to charge me $1,500 for all of those. They did succeed in charging me $80 for 5 minutes of work to program my 2nd FOB.
• Financing shenanigans. Dealers love customers with less than stellar credit.That way they can steer you away from Ford Credit (for example) and to some shady bank with high interest and opaque practices. They get a piece of the action and customer is screwed. I've gotten into practice of pre-arranging financing through my credit union before even showing up at the dealer's showroom. So if the dealer tries to screw me, I have an alternative. That typically results in a small hit against my credit score, but it quickly goes away. For MME, I chose Ford Options. I had the dealer's finance guy go back 4 times to redo it, because the first 4 times the payment or residual number was higher than it was supposed to be.
• Shady fees. My dealer tried to charge me $500 doc fee and $300 online filing fee, which are for the same thing. With X-Plan they are limited to $100, which is still way too high for essentially paying a clerk to sit in front of a computer for 5 minutes and enter your information on the state's website. My favorite is charging tire disposal fee, $2.50 X 5, even though you're not disposing of any tires and only get 4 tires (no spare).
• Wrong state tax fees. My dealer attempted to charge me $1,000 for AZ VLT, even though the correct amount for EV was $20. The states with different sales taxes based on city essentially created a system that's tailor made for abuse.

 

[zvez]

I'm new here and considering ordering a Mach-E from the Ford website… so is the implication here that the MSRP price that's listed when I place my order may not be honored by the dealer?

Or is this markup just something typically encountered by people who are trying to buy off the dealership's lot?

couple ways this can play out. When you order the car on the ford site, you build the car, you get a summary of the build and pricing. Depending on the dealer you've chosen, they can have mark up there. You'll have two prices on the summary, the MSRP and the "dealer selling price" in the case of my dealer, they had a $5k markup, but I discussed this with them and the car was sold to me at MSRP with xplan. I don't have an issue with "dealer selling price" with a markup , if they can find someone that will pay it, I wouldn't .

Some people have experienced ordering a car and when it arrived being hit with a markup, which seems really sketchy to me. The best thing to do, order your car online, see if they have "dealer selling price" markup or not and negotiate or get a commitment in writing to msrp . s

 

[Motomax]

Most of the comments here are focused on ADM. But ADM is actually fairly rare. It normally applies to high demand low volume vehicles. There are other dealer shenanigans designed to separate [uninformed] buyers from their cash.

Makes you wonder why Ford new business model still allows all these shenanigans and instead bans discounts… ?

 

[shutterbug]

Makes you wonder why Ford new business model still allows all these shenanigans and instead bans discounts… ?

It doesn't ban discounts. It penalizes advertising of discounts. MAP (minimum advertised price) isn't uncommon where the OEM pays for some of the advertising. The dealers can give up the advertising $$ from Ford and also can sell below MSRP if they don't advertise the discounted price.

 

[yngwenli]

I wonder, and am pretty sure this discussion is probably within Ford and probably all manufacturers, as to whether they will eventually start buying out dealerships and change the way they do business moving forward. Similar to Tesla/Rivian/Lucid. Build products that people actually 'want', and it's almost a wait for everything and just in time ordering so no more of 250+ cars on a lot.

Ford execs, who do read this board, if you're watching, with the chip shortage and really no cars for the foreseeable future, this is probably the ideal time to start buying dealers out in large/major high volume locations and change their business model now. It eliminates all the negative stuff if the dealership (won't be called dealerships anymore) was owned by them and things like Dealer Add-ons, and ADM is gone...they exist and makes sense because again, dealers are in it for their own self interests and survival as well.

I think we'll all agree that some dealerships aren't helping the manufacturers in many cases and it's widely reported people hate the haggling and shopping/buying experience. Bad dealers give them all a bad name, but without cars to sell now, I assume dealerships aren't doing the best neither and as we transition to a more EV/electric car model (some manufacturers already plan to stop all ICE engine builds in 15 years), the old model of servicing cars to make the bulk of the $$ isn't going to work anymore anyways.

I'm sure like a lot of you, if you can charge at home (and with more tech advances and larger/better batteries like the Lucid which can go 520 miles on a single charge (not even hypermiling)), does anyone ever plan to buy an ICE anymore after experiencing an EV?

 

[TRP]

I would really prefer ordering a car spec'd as I want and wait 6wks to get it than go into a dealer and start haggling over a car on the lot that may or may not be exactly as I would want. A recent experience at a Nissan dealer really set this home for me. They tried to add $1500 ADM to the car after I had placed a deposit and agreed on a price, I even had it in writing and showed them. Their answer was, well if you have it in writing we'll agree to that. Seriously? Jackasses.

As far as MAP goes, I owned a music store years ago and MAP was definitely a thing in that industry. I could sell at any price I wanted, I just could not advertise any lower than MAP. In the Ebay hayday there were even a few manufacturers that would not allow you to sell there.

 

[Motomax]

It doesn't ban discounts. It penalizes advertising of discounts. MAP (minimum advertised price) isn't uncommon where the OEM pays for some of the advertising. The dealers can give up the advertising $$ from Ford and also can sell below MSRP if they don't advertise the discounted price.

It doesn't ban discounts. It penalizes advertising of discounts. MAP (minimum advertised price) isn't uncommon where the OEM pays for some of the advertising. The dealers can give up the advertising $$ from Ford and also can sell below MSRP if they don't advertise the discounted price.

Fair point but there won’t really be any incentives to discount especially since Ford cut their initial sales profit for single units.
I have 25 dealers within 50 miles from me, everyone has to advertise the same price, what’s the incentive to chose a particular dealer?
The people who never researched and just paid whatever the dealer wanted won’t see a difference. The people who researched online for different dealer incentives will only see the same price everywhere. The people who negotiated through email with a bunch of dealers will probably not get any incentives in writing due to dealers being overly cautious about loosing more of their incentives from Ford. The build to order model will eliminate overstock discounts as well.
This only works if you move to 100% direct to consumer sales and pass on the savings to the customer, but why would they?

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