Ford, why do reservations not have priority?

[EELinneman]

Is a large dealer really going to try to sell fewer cars because they are not getting special treatment? Seems self defeating.

Where as a small dealer may not survive if they don’t sell enough which gives all the business to GM or someone else if that happened.

Don’t call it a reservation system, call it a popularity contest.

I agree. Right now, my dealer, who is just a Ford dealer, has only 1 car in the showroom - a Porsche 911. Their lot is about 10 to 15% full and mostly used cars and some higher-end Shelby trucks. Almost nothing has a sticker on the window telling me that the price is super high.

It's not that they are trying to sell fewer cars, they just are. I suspect that the supply chain and distribution problems are a lot worse than we are hearing. The model is changing underneath them and they are not ready for this.

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[HuntingPudel]

I understand the arguments about dealer allocations (I don’t agree with them in the regard of reservations but I understand). The problem is that someone like @Plutoman15 placed his reservation over a year and a half before some people who have already taken delivery. I could understand the argument about allocations if it were only a matter of 2 or 3 months. There is a serious flaw in the system if it allows more than one model year of discrepancy. Therefore, in this case, I cannot accept the argument. Pure and simple, either the system is flawed or there is a cascade of screw-ups that has allowed this to happen multiple times. Heck, my reservation has taken much longer than is reasonably expected and my order has jumped the line over @Plutoman15 .

 

[ElectrifyCLT]

This is a bummer to hear and will fully admit I'm someone who benefitted from getting lucky at a dealer that had allocation available. I didn't do research or anything, simply got lucky with the draw. I ordered in August of this year and have an ETA of 12/15.

May not agree with it, but allocation rules with dealers are far and away the biggest factor in how your order gets ranked for production. Until the dealer model changes, Ford can't do much about it.

Allegedly they are using Mach-E sales and how a dealer approaches ADM or not as a deciding factor in the F-150 Lightning allocations. So some bad-behavior by dealers today can hurt them in the long run.

 

[HuntingPudel]

I should state that I don’t yet have my car, and that it should be here in a week or so. There have been a lot of cars that have jumped the line in front of mine. I am not in a area that is devoid of demand for EVs or cars in my general (SF Bay Area). While my dealer isn’t the biggest, they’re far from the smallest.

I can understand that someone with a higher volume dealer who reserved or ordered a couple of months after I reserved getting their cars prioritized in front of mine. I don’t buy the allocation argument for guys like @Plutoman15 and @EELinneman where people who ordered or reserved more than a year after they reserved got priority over them. If the system allows this, Ford needs to fix it. It’s Ford’s system.

 

[Caramel]

A week or two, maybe a month - that much time difference between a “big” dealer and smaller dealer might make sense. But many of these delays are way more than that and the lack of clarity is disheartening.

 

[capnhowdy21]

We also don’t know how much of this is dealer error as well.

 

[Plutoman15]

We also don’t know how much of this is dealer error as well.

Its not.

Ford system shows when your reservation is placed and when the dealer acknowledged the order.

 

[HuntingPudel]

A week or two, maybe a month - that much time difference between a “big” dealer and smaller dealer might make sense. But many of these delays are way more than that and the lack of clarity is disheartening.

^THIS^
I can even see two months, sort of.

 

[Maquis]

I'll summarize my take on the situation:

• Reservations are meaningless as far as the build schedule goes, nothing happens until you place an order. Someone without a reservation who places an order on date 'X' is likely ahead of someone with a year-old reservation who places their order on date 'X + Y'.
• Dealer size and their allocations do matter. The fact that Sam Pack Ford in Dallas got the first Mach-E is not some random event.
• Once GT production started, some resources originally destined for non-GTs got reallocated.
• The supply chain mess (including chips) has further complicated everything.
• Various quality holds have also complicated things.
• One is better off not worrying about this and patiently waiting in order to preserve your sanity. I realize this is easy for me to say since I have my car! If you can't wait, there are options (as others have detailed in this thread).

 

[Plutoman15]

I'll summarize my take on the situation:

• Reservations are meaningless as far as the build schedule goes, nothing happens until you place an order. Someone without a reservation who places an order on date 'X' is likely ahead of someone with a year-old reservation who places their order on date 'X + Y'.
• Dealer size and their allocations do matter. The fact that Sam Pack Ford in Dallas got the first Mach-E is not some random event.
• Once GT production started, some resources originally destined for non-GTs got reallocated.
• The supply chain mess (including chips) has further complicated everything.
• Various quality holds have also complicated things.
• One is better off not worrying about this and patiently waiting in order to preserve your sanity. I realize this is easy for me to say since I have my car! If you can't wait, there are options (as others have detailed in this thread).

In this case dealer size is the only thing that matters because my order was months ahead of some that have their car.

 

[Rfehl62]

I would like to clarify the priority code situation as there seems to be mixed consensus on this matter. Priority code 10 and priority code 19 are the same thing just different order types. For example, my dealership uses priority code for fleet orders and priority code 19 for retail orders but, one does not get a vehicle faster by going with one over the other. The only way to get a technically "higher" priority would be for it to be changed to "1" which is only reserved for certain situations. Say your order fell off the train and was totaled, Ford would have the dealership put a new order in under priority code "1" to expedite that new order. Now, a dealership could technically put all their orders under priority code 1 but, it would be the same as putting it under 19 or 10 if Ford did not request the expedited status. The MAIN reason your reservation may have taken backseat to other orders is simply becasue you are not in a desirable market. That is directly from Ford and it sucks to hear but is sadly true.

 

[lwilliams0514]

@Ford Motor Company there are many of us that supported the Mach-e very early, some same day of announcement, that have been put to the back of the line despite giving you $500 almost 2 years ago. We can understand chip delays and shipping delays, but it seems rather insulting that many of the deliveries for the GT have been people that never reserved and only ordered this last Spring or early summer? I reserved 15-16 months before those and ordered as soon as orders opened and yet I am scheduled to get my car almost 3 months after those late orders that already have cars? I reserved Jan 2020. I am not alone, other early reservation holders are in the same boat.

So are reservations meaningless? Certainly doesn’t make me interested reserving for any new Ford products.

I am sorry about how long it is taking to get your car, but part of the problem is the availability of the parts that go into building a car. Sometimes, based on your configuration, they may be lacking parts that your particular build needs, to produce your car. They are not going to stop production for that..... they will move on to building all the cars that they have all the parts on hand to build. With the GLOBAL shortage of not only chips, but magnesium, it is taking time for them to produce ANY car, let alone the MME. Add to that the fact that they are now producing the MME GT alongside the Reg MME, and you can see how daunting the task is.

I would suggest posting on this forum and see if there are any reservations or vehicles that have been produced that people no longer want which closely match the car you want and go grab it while you can.

I work in the car industry and it is ugly out there for buyers in this environment. On one side, you can get more for your trade than any other time in HISTORY, but it is hard to find cars, let alone cars without markup.

So I would suggest just hanging tight and wait it out. It is a WONDERFUL car and worth the wait. I will have my MME a long time and I already have a reservation for a Lightning F150 and I am prepared to wait until 2023 to get one if need be. These supply issues will continue into the later part of 2022 and affect ALL auto manufacturers.

Just my two cents......

 

[Maquis]

In this case dealer size is the only thing that matters because my order was months ahead of some that have their car.

I'm not convinced that's the only factor. It's complicated.

Had the supply chain issues not existed and Ford were able to have executed their original 2021 production plan, you likely would have gotten your car by now. Once supply was constrained, dealer priority factors kicked in.

I am sympathetic to your situation. My car was delayed multiple times, eventually delivered 2 months later than the original date. I hope everything works out for you, eventually.

 

[jjhenry]

I'll summarize my take on the situation:

• Reservations are meaningless as far as the build schedule goes, nothing happens until you place an order. Someone without a reservation who places an order on date 'X' is likely ahead of someone with a year-old reservation who places their order on date 'X + Y'.
• Dealer size and their allocations do matter. The fact that Sam Pack Ford in Dallas got the first Mach-E is not some random event.
• Once GT production started, some resources originally destined for non-GTs got reallocated.
• The supply chain mess (including chips) has further complicated everything.
• Various quality holds have also complicated things.
• One is better off not worrying about this and patiently waiting in order to preserve your sanity. I realize this is easy for me to say since I have my car! If you can't wait, there are options (as others have detailed in this thread).

Well put. I think that from Ford's point of view, reservations are more for them to gauge interest and plan production, than to create a FIFO queue. Where I think Ford has gone wrong, and what many of you have been screaming for months, is that there has been no communication. I expect corporate wants the dealers to handle direct comms with the customer, and no dealer is going to tell you that they are at the bottom of the food chain.

 

[RickMachE]

Dealer size isn't really the issue, it's how many vehicles does the dealership move for Ford. Some dealerships of similar size move a dramatically different amount of metal than others. That's important of course to Ford.

As a result of a dealer being way up that list, many people tend to go there. For my dealer to tell me that he's got a lot of Lightning reservations, and I'm "in the first 50" tells you something. I reserved mine at around 9:30AM, the reveal was the prior evening at 9:30PM. But I know a reservation only gives me a window to order at some point, and I plan on ordering the minute I can, and then seeing what that means for a delivery timeframe.

My dealer does over 1/2 their business on plans, mostly A and Z, and that allows them to spend less time haggling and more time moving vehicles.

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