Ford's "Crickets" Communication Style...

[Mach1E]

OMG…finally! Since I have received zero notifications from Ford about the recall, the extra one month delay in production past the posted date, I’ve been keeping track myself and just logged in to discover this change:

While good news that two months from today (6/21/22) I’ll get my MME, my give-a-shit-meter is at its lowest point. This has NOT been a good experience, mainly due to the lack of communication from Ford:

A) @Ford Motor Company never sent me any communication about the build week delay and it’s been an extra one month to build the car.

Seriously…how hard is it to connect up systems that display the status information about progress and have that trigger an automatically sent email?

B) Since I ordered online — and CEO Farley is very public about his goal of changing the way Ford customers order and are delivered vehicles — I expected A LOT more than close to radio silence with direct communication from Ford. So much for “changing the way we do business” I guess.

Even though it’s likely that internal Ford people may think, “Oh…these orders are tied to a dealer so we only have to send 3-4 emails to an online ordering customer” and ”let ‘em talk to the dealer about their order so we don’t have to.” I’d like to have a little chat with them and ensure they understand what a horrifically bad job they’re doing with customers. Also that Gen Xers (and especially Millenials) will NOT put up with this crap.

C) Getting the car has taken ALOT longer than expected. My order was confirmed Monday, December 20, 2021 and delivery will be between Saturday, August 20, 2022 and Friday, August 26, 2022. That is a whopping 8 months or 35+ weeks from order to delivery and is still two months away from today!

Yes, I know others have waited longer. But again, only 3-4 emails in all that time is what agitates me the most.

End of my rant.

You keep complaining but seem to not understand that there is no fix for what you’re complaining about.

Why is there no communication? Because there is NO NEW INFORMATION TO SHARE!

They tell you order confirmed. Tell you when it’s scheduled for production. Tell you when shipped and tell you when delivered.

Any other communication in between those events would just be a waste of your time and frustrate you more.

Do you want a weekly email saying “your production date is NOT scheduled yet and we don’t know when it will be?”

I honestly don’t know what you are asking for.

Based on how angry you are when 20 weeks went by on their “20 PLUS” week estimate, I can’t imagine how angry you’d be getting an email every time there is an estimated delay.

 

[sborsch]

You keep complaining but seem to not understand that there is no fix for what you’re complaining about.

Why is there no communication? Because there is NO NEW INFORMATION TO SHARE!

They tell you order confirmed. Tell you when it’s scheduled for production. Tell you when shipped and tell you when delivered.

Any other communication in between those events would just be a waste of your time and frustrate you more.

Do you want a weekly email saying “your production date is NOT scheduled yet and we don’t know when it will be?”

I honestly don’t know what you are asking for.

Based on how angry you are when 20 weeks went by on their “20 PLUS” week estimate, I can’t imagine how angry you’d be getting an email every time there is an estimated delay.

First off, did you read the post, or just take one piece of content from it as the essence of what I'm saying?

No, I don't "want a weekly email" but I have spent most of my career in technology sales, business and alliance development, and can tell you that "customer 101" isn't being followed by Ford. They are failing at that and I've been pretty clear about Ford's missed opportunity to communicate (maybe overcommunicate?) to customers who have ORDERED and put down money. Those same customers are eager to get the MME, but are out here twisting in the wind waiting.

If any salesperson that ever worked for me had known about a missed shipping date (or in my case a build date), moved the shipping date without saying "boo" to the customer, had a recall but didn't communicate to the customer (expected they'd read it in their news feed?) and then a month later built the car but didn't send the built-notification email in a timely fashion (I still haven't received any emails from Ford yet that my car is built) I would have blown a gasket.

Secondly, it's pretty clear from taking a quick scan at your thousands of replies to people on this forum (over 2,000 of them) that you seem to delight in pointing out people who aren't waving their pom-poms and leading cheers about Ford or the MME. Several are pretty mean and nasty, IMHO.

Your comments: https://www.macheforum.com/site/search/1230044/

 

[yngwenli]

First off, did you read the post, or just take one piece of content from it as the essence of what I'm saying?

No, I don't "want a weekly email" but I have spent most of my career in technology sales, business and alliance development, and can tell you that "customer 101" isn't being followed by Ford. They are failing at that and I've been pretty clear about Ford's missed opportunity to communicate (maybe overcommunicate?) to customers who have ORDERED and put down money. Those same customers are eager to get the MME, but are out here twisting in the wind waiting.

If any salesperson that ever worked for me had known about a missed shipping date (or in my case a build date), moved the shipping date without saying "boo" to the customer, had a recall but didn't communicate to the customer (expected they'd read it in their news feed?) and then a month later built the car but didn't send the built-notification email in a timely fashion (I still haven't received any emails from Ford yet that my car is built) I would have blown a gasket.

Secondly, it's pretty clear from taking a quick scan at your thousands of replies to people on this forum (over 2,000 of them) that you seem to delight in pointing out people who aren't waving their pom-poms and leading cheers about Ford or the MME. Several are pretty mean and nasty, IMHO.

Your comments: https://www.macheforum.com/site/search/1230044/

You have to actually remember that YOU are not the customer. The dealership is the customer and that's the car franchise/sales model we have currently.

We may have an order, but it's really the DEALER who has the order with Ford directly. This is true for a lot of old legacy automakers not called Tesla, Rivian, Lucid.

Once you get that, it's easy to understand why the process is so bad. Blame our lawmakers maybe to change it.

Like if the dealer decides to just sell YOUR order to someone else (happened here), you have little/no recourse since again, it's not really your order I think.

It's not really your order to start I suppose is what I'm getting at and they need us less than we need them currently if you want a MME. We're really not that important and if you cancel, that's a $5k-15k markup .

Your ETA isn't too bad really. I was over 9+ months myself. Best advice is don't worry/stress too much. Reserve/"Order" multiple cars possibly and take whichever comes first, you like the most. Tracking it here non-stop (which we all did) just gets upsetting if you think it won't be delayed.

 

[HuntingPudel]

At least you're being told anything. Ford's communications seem to have gotten marginally better than when I was waiting for my car. I got a confirmation of my reservation and I got the "Chip Hold" email. That's it. Every other piece of information I had to pull myself, get told by a helpful forum member, or be told by my dealer (who was pretty much just as in the dark as I was, so the only pieces of information that were useful from my dealer was that they accepted my order when my reservation was converted to an order and photos of the hauler when my car was coming in their driveway).

Ford's communication sucks. Period. I sincerely hope that they get better at it than they are now, but at least they're better at it than when I was waiting (which isn't saying much).

 

[Mach1E]

First off, did you read the post, or just take one piece of content from it as the essence of what I'm saying?

No, I don't "want a weekly email" but I have spent most of my career in technology sales, business and alliance development, and can tell you that "customer 101" isn't being followed by Ford. They are failing at that and I've been pretty clear about Ford's missed opportunity to communicate (maybe overcommunicate?) to customers who have ORDERED and put down money. Those same customers are eager to get the MME, but are out here twisting in the wind waiting.

If any salesperson that ever worked for me had known about a missed shipping date (or in my case a build date), moved the shipping date without saying "boo" to the customer, had a recall but didn't communicate to the customer (expected they'd read it in their news feed?) and then a month later built the car but didn't send the built-notification email in a timely fashion (I still haven't received any emails from Ford yet that my car is built) I would have blown a gasket.

Secondly, it's pretty clear from taking a quick scan at your thousands of replies to people on this forum (over 2,000 of them) that you seem to delight in pointing out people who aren't waving their pom-poms and leading cheers about Ford or the MME. Several are pretty mean and nasty, IMHO.

Your comments: https://www.macheforum.com/site/search/1230044/

Yup, I read the whole thing.

And I’ll say it again- there is no fix for what you’re complaining about.

They don’t sent more information because there is no more information to give.

No one……. I’ll repeat…. No one can predict when your car will arrive.

This isn’t a Ford thing. It’s an industry wide thing.

When my buddy ordered a $130k M5 competition last year, it showed up months late with no way to see when it would show up. Dealer didn’t know any more than he did.

But if you want to choose to “blow a gasket” about something there is no fix for and no one has control over, that’s your decision.

If you think it’s mean an nasty to give you reasons to not be angry…… that’s you reading emotion that isn’t there.

 

[DR.J56]

There’s a thread on this site for people to be grumpy in somewhere. I know because I think we’ve all posted in it. You may want to check it out. The other people on here who have received their cars are worried about the new recall. Your car may come tomorrow and all you could do is look at it, and make a new thread.

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