The awful purchase process

[4sallypat]

Yes, similar experience here too.
My dealer (F150 Lightning) had to be schooled on the 2 deposits (reservation & order), price protection, and financing option choices (SMART VINcent).

It's easy to get the $500 back - notify your dealer by email, contact your card company and do a chargeback.

As for giving the survey all 1s, beware that it will hurt the salesperson and F&I - not the dealership, not the sales manager, not the owner.

Have a chat with the owner/principal of the dealership and let them know - give him/her a chance to fix it....

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[generaltso]

I showed them proof of my deposit from Ford. I didnt bother with the cc info given their reaction. Whats an IOU sheet? I have not seen that before.

That doesn't show that your deposit went to the dealer. Show them your credit card statement that shows the dealer's name next to the charge.

It's too late now, but the dealer would have had you sign a "We Owe" form (or IOU) when you were filling out the paperwork. That's where you should have had them add a line that says that they owe you a resolution to your missing deposit situation. The form usually looks something like this:

Please don't let them keep your $500. Dispute the charge with your credit card if you have to.

 

[Bikespace]

How long did you spend at the dealership? It is unfortunate to say that your experience was above average, approaching "good".

 

[Parasmoney]

I wanted to post my purchase experience today after 10 months of waiting for my Route 1 to arrive. So I purchased back in November 2021 and today I get the call that my car arrived. Here is how it went down:
1. Price Protection: They wanted to charge me the MSRP on the window sticker. I obviously had price protection and sent them the order sheet and the sheet Ford sent to dealers saying that customers were price protected if cars were ordered before December. Once I showed those two pieces of info they quickly relented to price protection. So that took the MSRP from 53,550 to 51,875 for a "savings" of $1675.
2. $500 deposit: They said they never saw that I paid a $500 deposit when I placed my order last November. So my $500 deposit was gone and I gave up trying after I showed them proof I paid a deposit. They just shrugged.
3. Options: The manager had no idea that I could do ford options from last November. They called some other places and got is sorted. I was happy to save $2500 by doing Ford Options so that was a win. I believe them that they didn't know as I could easily overhear their convo with some off-site manager. Savings of $2500.
4. X-Plan: I learned about about x-plan a couple months ago and qualified through my wife's work. I got the 7 digit pin and was all set. They said they couldn't do x-plan AND price protection which seemed very common after reading a couple other posts. There didn't seem to be a way to convince them and I saw nothing on the forums to make the point. So there went $750.
5: Park-Assist: So the window sticker showed the -$325 for Park Assist. I brought this up but they shrugged and were like we don't know how to reduce the price $325 since you are on price protection. So that's a loss of $325.

I have to believe my situation went better than most thanks to the tons of helpful info from this forum. It's still an absolutely miserable process that dragged for over 3 hours. And for those wondering I purchased this at Frontier Ford in Santa Clara (SF Bay Area). I don't want to single them out as being bad. In my mind the fault lies with Ford not able to help their customers or their dealers through the purchase process.

Sorry to hear about your experience. If x plan wasn't available when you originally ordered the car then dealer might give you a hard time applying x plan discount to your original price. As for the $325 credit, if the dealer doesn't return that to you, call Ford customer service and hopefully they can help get that sorted out. I'm going back and forth with my dealer to get the 325 back. I'm hoping not to get Ford customer service involved as the dealer has been amazing for everything else. Where did you pay the $500 deposit? Online or to the dealer? If online, then Ford typically gives that money to the dealer. So if they are not giving you the deposit back, you will need to contact Ford customer service. I had to wait about a month for my dealer to verify if they had received the money from Ford to credit me back. But I did have to stay on top of it and contact them on a weekly basis to get updates.

 

[rpowell]

How long did you spend at the dealership? It is unfortunate to say that your experience was above average, approaching "good".

A little over 3 hours. I was the only person purchasing at the time and they werent busy.

 

[rpowell]

Sorry to hear about your experience. If x plan wasn't available when you originally ordered the car then dealer might give you a hard time applying x plan discount to your original price. As for the $325 credit, if the dealer doesn't return that to you, call Ford customer service and hopefully they can help get that sorted out. I'm going back and forth with my dealer to get the 325 back. I'm hoping not to get Ford customer service involved as the dealer has been amazing for everything else. Where did you pay the $500 deposit? Online or to the dealer? If online, then Ford typically gives that money to the dealer. So if they are not giving you the deposit back, you will need to contact Ford customer service. I had to wait about a month for my dealer to verify if they had received the money from Ford to credit me back. But I did have to stay on top of it and contact them on a weekly basis to get updates.

I paid the $500 deposit online but I just pulled my CC history and it looks like the charge went directly to the dealer.
I was under the impression that X plan was available in Nov 21. The dealer even offered to honor my xplan if I gave up price protection.

 

[MachKet]

I paid the $500 deposit online but I just pulled my CC history and it looks like the charge went directly to the dealer.
I was under the impression that X plan was available in Nov 21. The dealer even offered to honor my xplan if I gave up price protection.

Issue a chargeback with your credit card asap. It will be an easy win

 

[MyLittlePony2022]

I am sorry to hear about your bad experience. I think there is a great deal of people on this forum that either can relate directly to this or have empathy.

In my experience with dealers, they are playing the short game. They simply want your money, they want it now and as much of it as possible. They are not looking at the long game and return customers. A quick google search shows that customer are keeping their cars ~ 5 years. I sure there are outliers on both ends of the 5 year period. Again, if they played the long game they would be getting return business for people who keep their car from 1 year to 5 years. Also, think about the high profit of service from those "satisfied" customers. Let's also throw in the possible business from referrals or word of mouth (think this forum). To me is it just bad business strategy.

I see a general theme from the numerous threads on this forum. The dealers seem to either ignorant about the savings, optins, pricing, etc., or they are play games. In my opinion, it is a combination of both. For instance if they play the price protection game and the customer has to pay the post Dec 2021 MSRP, they can submit the prices protection with Ford and keep the customer increased MSRP. This allows them to pocket the price protection rebate from Ford and equal amount from the customer. Criminal I am sure, unethical at best. We have to fight them to get price protection, X-plan, no ADM's, options, rebates, financing cost reductions on factory deletion of features, and the list goes on.

The thread was about a poor experience with Frontier Ford in Santa Clara. I see others posting about bad experience at other SF Bay Area dealers, so there is a common experience that there is bad customer service here, and that is a great number of dealers in our metropolitan area. I'm sure it can be extrapolated to other areas such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and even to our neighbors to the north in Canada. There is hope of at least a few "ok" dealers. Someone mentioned Morgan Hill Ford, which is where I bought my car. They do no ADM and honor X-plan, so that is a positive. Others on the forum have had a good experience there. I did not and they played games with me on price protection, financing, and just general piss poor customer service. I keep my cars for decades so I can honestly say I will not nor do I need to go back to them again. I will also provide feedback to others that they should heed my warning about them not being a great dealer and to expect some issues. I think that some experience are going to be dependant up the person helping the customer and the customer. Could a bad dealer provide a good experience to someone, possibly. Could a good dealer, provide a bad experience to someone, most definitely.

Oh, that felt good to get up on a soap box and shout into the wind.... hope the crickets and the feral cats are listening.

 

[MyLittlePony2022]

A little over 3 hours. I was the only person purchasing at the time and they werent busy.

Mine took 3 hours and there were only two other couples buying cars that day. They only had one one finance person on a Saturday. All the paperwork that I filled out prior to me coming in, "could not be used". Games and ineptitude.

 

[Jimrpa]

Way back in the beginning of time, I made my $500 deposit to Ford. When it was converted to an order, the deposit was refunded to my credit card and at the same time, I got a $500 charge from my dealer. About 2 weeks after the purchase was complete, I got a $500 check from the dealer. They told me this was going to happen. I forget the details, but I trusted them on it and that happened just as they said it would.

 

[Parasmoney]

I paid the $500 deposit online but I just pulled my CC history and it looks like the charge went directly to the dealer.
I was under the impression that X plan was available in Nov 21. The dealer even offered to honor my xplan if I gave up price protection.

The $500 should be shown as credit in the purchase order. Show them the statement since you have proof. Otherwise your option is to contact Ford customer service or your credit card company and dispute the charge. As for xplan. You would have had to present the certificate at the time of ordering the car to get the xplan price protected. If you didn't have the certificate on the date of ordering, you will have a hard time getting both... But try to fight for it if you are up for it.

 

[HuntingPudel]

<SNIP>
Oh, that felt good to get up on a soap box and shout into the wind.... hope the crickets and the feral cats are listening.

Dunno about cats, but dogs have good hearing. I hear you. Unfortunately we can’t have rainbows and sparkles all of the time. We can only aspire to that.

Congrats @rpowell on the arrival of your new car. The advice already posted is good. Definitely give the dealership a bad review and either talk to them one more time about your deposit or simply refute the charge with your CC company. Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. I went well away from the peninsula to order my car and had a pretty decent experience since I hate the dealership grip closest to me and I dislike the next closest dealer.

 

[ChuckA]

Yes, similar experience here too.
My dealer (F150 Lightning) had to be schooled on the 2 deposits (reservation & order), price protection, and financing option choices (SMART VINcent).

It's easy to get the $500 back - notify your dealer by email, contact your card company and do a chargeback.

As for giving the survey all 1s, beware that it will hurt the salesperson and F&I - not the dealership, not the sales manager, not the owner.

Have a chat with the owner/principal of the dealership and let them know - give him/her a chance to fix it....

Payment made 10 months ago can’t be disputed with credit card company. I think you have 60 days but may be able to claim that the paid in advance item was never received.

 

[rpowell]

Issue a chargeback with your credit card asap. It will be an easy win

I believe charge backs only work up to 90 or 120 days. I am well past that since the time for order to delivery was 10 months.

 

[minders]

I am scheduled to go in before the end of the year and I’m bringing three people with me and we’re all going to jibber jabber common sense at them
We’re gonna take them down with family being as annoying as possible

Want to borrow my friend from Google? He and his girlfriend went to a time share presentation with me and my hubby so we could all get discounted show tickets in Vegas. The poor sales guy was about to cry from the frustration of dealing with an analyst, an accountant, a VERY detail oriented/energy vampire computer guy, and his girlfriend that was just there for the free food. Every time he tried something, he was shot down by one of us. It was hilarious when we pulled up a listing to buy the same time share for $1.00 online instead of $8,000. It got to the point of him saying to just get the ticket vouchers and leave. Bwahahahaha! Good times! Happened in 2016 and we all still laugh about it.

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