Invited After Transferring to ZEV State Dealer

[jazzmanmonty]

Nobody that's successfully ordered a vehicle is PO'ed... other than I guess the people who wanted the pro-model.

Yes, there are potential customers that are likely PO'ed, but short of doing the theoretical impossible, they were bound to piss off somebody.

Not true. I ordered wave 1, day 1, and i am pissed for people that I've in a way gotten to know on here. We've all gone through the same emotions since last year so there is a bond. There are many regulars on here I've conversed with that have helped me out and I too have tried helping. Im rooting for them to get initiated into the cool club with me, as well as newcomers which I also try to help out.
So I too am PO'd for all these guys and the shit they have to go through, especially day one people.

The only people I'm don't really care for are the whiny entitled ones that reserved from say June up til whenever they stopped taking orders. They're coming in here crying "Why didn't I get an invite yet? I reserved early enough..like 2 weeks after reservations started.. no way anyone ahead of me. Well maybe like 5 people, but it's not fair!" Most of these are the same people that are too lazy to use the search feature to find answers, or take some time to read a bit, because they would know if u didn't reserve first night or aren't on a priority list, no chance ur getting one this year..

Sorry, long day..had to vent..but I'm right you know [insert Morgan Freeman meme here]

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[wheelz2000]

It's possible at this point that not all day 1 reservation holders like myself will get an invite by wave 6. My local dealer "not mentioning name" said they don't think they are getting any allocations in wave 4. Its frustrating as he'll, but they don't control this. With that said, I'm not transferring to another dealer to ruin someone elses next up in line, I'm staying put because in my view, thats not fair to others who are also waiting to order. I like who I deal with and I'm staying my place in line. Gonna stay true to the system I got in line for. So when the time comes, I can say I did it. Whenever that is. I'm viewing this now as the lightning lottery and I'm actually part of a big pot of other numbers that ford will just choose. That's my take...good luck to those who are selected for wave 4!

 

[jfried]

Not true. I ordered wave 1, day 1, and i am pissed for people that I've in a way gotten to know on here. We've all gone through the same emotions since last year so there is a bond. There are many regulars on here I've conversed with that have helped me out and I too have tried helping. Im rooting for them to get initiated into the cool club with me, as well as newcomers which I also try to help out.
So I too am PO'd for all these guys and the shit they have to go through, especially day one people.

The only people I'm don't really care for are the whiny entitled ones that reserved from say June up til whenever they stopped taking orders. They're coming in here crying "Why didn't I get an invite yet? I reserved early enough..like 2 weeks after reservations started.. no way anyone ahead of me. Well maybe like 5 people, but it's not fair!" Most of these are the same people that are too lazy to use the search feature to find answers, or take some time to read a bit, because they would know if u didn't reserve first night or aren't on a priority list, no chance ur getting one this year..

Sorry, long day..had to vent..but I'm right you know [insert Morgan Freeman meme here]

Perhaps I should have re-phrased my point...

We can agree that the only people legitimately PO'ed on this site are day 1 reservation holders.

How many of them are PO'ed to the point of it actually affecting a future purchasing decision?

But what about the guy that has been a loyal Ford buyer for the last 20 years, who's "ford relationship" exists entirely with the dealership.. and when he wants a vehicle, he calls? Should he be told "sorry, we can't do anything for you"? I know if I had a longstanding relationship with a ford dealer, I'd be pissed.

And more importantly, of the people who are at that point -- what is worse? PO'ing somebody who reserved on day 1? or PO'ing somebody who is a loyal ford buyer that has a great relationship with their dealership.

 

[maverick92]

With that said, I'm not transferring to another dealer to ruin someone elses next up in line, I'm staying put because in my view, thats not fair to others who are also waiting to order. I like who I deal with and I'm staying my place in line. Gonna stay true to the system I got in line for.

I understand where you're coming from, but not when Ford leaves out critical information like 50% of all Lightnings will go to ZEV states, dealers are free to prioritize orders for their friends/family/staff or charge whatever ADMs they want. Ford is beholden to their dealer network and obviously has to walk a fine line, but their fault has been a lack of transparency about the entire process. They should have invited people to order based on their timestamp and then let the customer select whatever dealer they want to work with.

 

[lowercontrol]

Day 1 reservation holder. #1081XXXX

Picked a dealership close to me ranther than one I did business with previous, due to a move. Had no idea doing this was going to backfire as bad as it did.

I lost track of time, eventually heard about wave 1. Inquired from the new dealership in a none ZEV state, found out they were only allocated (2) MY22's and both were accounted for (people were prioritzed ahead of me).

Wave 2 came, then Wave 3... no invitation. I reached out the dealership again and they refused to let me know my place in line and claimed they couldn't.

Eventually canceled my reservation, didn't want all the hassle.

 

[Nick Gerteis]

Perhaps I should have re-phrased my point...

We can agree that the only people legitimately PO'ed on this site are day 1 reservation holders.

How many of them are PO'ed to the point of it actually affecting a future purchasing decision?

But what about the guy that has been a loyal Ford buyer for the last 20 years, who's "ford relationship" exists entirely with the dealership.. and when he wants a vehicle, he calls? Should he be told "sorry, we can't do anything for you"? I know if I had a longstanding relationship with a ford dealer, I'd be pissed.

And more importantly, of the people who are at that point -- what is worse? PO'ing somebody who reserved on day 1? or PO'ing somebody who is a loyal ford buyer that has a great relationship with their dealership.

You seem to think that it’s legitimate for the long time Ford buyer to be PO’d if he….doesn’t get to skip ahead in the line? I don’t think that’s how most people would see it at all. Most of us have been (hopefully) conditioned since childhood to wait for our proper turn in line. Ford’s original reservation process with time stamp and somewhat sequential order numbers implied that they were setting up just such a line, and everyone was fine with it because it felt fair. Apparently “fair” is just another four letter word to some folks though.

 

[Deleted member 9341]

All valid points, but if Ford had done the right thing from the get go and invited to order and allocated vehicles very simply by time stamp, nobody would be trying to cut in line now. The amount of bad will they’re building here will likely deter enough potential new customers to more than negate their short term $ gains from playing ZEV state games, prioritization games, and trim level allocation games. To each their own, I’m sure they’ll look back at this as a learning experience in the future.

Can only hope they learn from it. It’s been a frustrating debacle for most of us. And I say that as someone who walked away from American cars long ago but got excited about this one. This was a super rare opportunity for Ford to pick off customers from foreign competition. I thankfully (via pure luck) happened to pick a good dealer and got to order in wave 3 with no dealer BS. I totally disagree about the “building a dealer relationship” theory. The dealer might as well hang out a sign saying “We only want biz from old, established customers. Everyone else please go somewhere else”.

You seem to think that it’s legitimate for the long time Ford buyer to be PO’d if he….doesn’t get to skip ahead in the line? I don’t think that’s how most people would see it at all. Most of us have been (hopefully) conditioned since childhood to wait for our proper turn in line. Ford’s original reservation process with time stamp and somewhat sequential order numbers implied that they were setting up just such a line, and everyone was fine with it because it felt fair. Apparently “fair” is just another four letter word to some folks though.

Exactly right. Bottom line is there should have been no prioritizations allowed to begin with. Ford clearly created tons of needless ill-will and a whole lot of confusion with that one thing. First come, first served was so simple and straightforward. Like most anything else in life, you want it first, get in line first or wait. Everyone knows how that works

 

[RavenYZF-R6]

For those long time ford customers that might be mad, your dealers are the ones you should be mad at. The salesman and GM that you have dealt with. They should have reached out to inform you about the upcoming Lightning and kept you in the loop out how to reserve, when to reserve, how it would work out to order down the road.

 

[jfried]

You seem to think that it’s legitimate for the long time Ford buyer to be PO’d if he….doesn’t get to skip ahead in the line? I don’t think that’s how most people would see it at all. Most of us have been (hopefully) conditioned since childhood to wait for our proper turn in line. Ford’s original reservation process with time stamp and somewhat sequential order numbers implied that they were setting up just such a line, and everyone was fine with it because it felt fair. Apparently “fair” is just another four letter word to some folks though.

I don't know if Ford ever actually said that the trucks would be allocated in order of reservation, at/around the time the reservations bank opened. I believe that may have just been assuming such.

That being said -- you, and really, this whole forum, are not necessarily representative of the USA-wide pool of f150 buyers. This forum is a subsect that will almost certainly "trend younger", and trend more "into technology" than the "average f150 buyer".

Put yourself in the shoes of a guy, probably in his early 60s -- for whom the concept of "reserving a vehicle online" is completely foreign to, as is the concept of "reading forums to see what's coming down the pipe". He drives a Plat/KR/Limited truck, his wife an explorer, and just bought his kids an ecosport. He's a small business owner; and has a half a dozen XL or XLTs for his crew.

He's somebody who was maybe on vacation during the announcement, but when he got back, saw the presser, saw Biden saying "this sucker is quick". He wants one. He calls up his salesguy as he's done for every vehicle he's ever purchased and says I want one. Should a loyal Ford customer like this be told "sorry, you missed the boat, have one of your kids go online, make a reservation, and you'll probably be 2-3 years down the road at this point?"

Maybe it's "unfair" to be pissed off, but it doesn't change the fact that that guy is likely going to be really pissed off at the fact his dealership, that he's written many hundreds of thousands of dollars in cheques to -- isn't and/or cannot do anything.

Fairness can be achieved in many different ways. You could argue that the "fairest" way would be to auction off the slots based on a difference from MSRP, and let those who want to pay, play.

I'm not saying the exact mechanics of how Ford did things is perfect -- far from it. The fact that dealers could prioritize between 5 and 25 reservations, where it seems that a small dealer is not going to see 5 lightnings in 2022, and a big dealer is not going to see 25, to me is ridiculous. There are / were many other approaches that could have been taken, like a points-based system that factored in timeslot with dealer-allocated "points", and purchase history on their fordpass acct. They could have also taken the approach of "we're gonna build 1000 trucks a week"... 500 to dealer-nominated reservation holders (based on a traditional "allocation" model that factors in size of dealership, etc), 500 to timestamp-orders.

The fact that they want / need more trucks going to ZEV states is a simple reality of making their business work in a country that has fractured regulations.

 

[jfried]

Can only hope they learn from it. It’s been a frustrating debacle for most of us. And I say that as someone who walked away from American cars long ago but got excited about this one. This was a super rare opportunity for Ford to pick off customers from foreign competition. I thankfully (via pure luck) happened to pick a good dealer and got to order in wave 3 with no dealer BS. I totally disagree about the “building a dealer relationship” theory. The dealer might as well hang out a sign saying “We only want biz from old, established customers. Everyone else please go somewhere else”.

Exactly right. Bottom line is there should have been no prioritizations allowed to begin with. Ford clearly created tons of needless ill-will and a whole lot of confusion with that one thing. First come, first served was so simple and straightforward. Like most anything else in life, you want it first, get in line first or wait. Everyone knows how that works

To be fair, put yourself in the dealer's shoes. Selling cars & trucks in 2019, 2020 was tough. You'd have massive inventories sitting on the lot, many customers coming in knowing exactly what the invoice price of the car is; and everyone plays the game of "try to beat the dealer down", while the dealer returns the favour in trying to "Extra to death" on a bunch of smaller margins.

Car buying is an "unique" transaction. Most people do it once every 3-5 years. It is usually the 2nd biggest financial decision after house buying. So they've got time and energy to invest. On the flip side (if we go pre-pandemic with everyone having inventory), it's not like buying a house where each one is a little unique and as a customer you can/will miss out if you get too aggressive. Get too aggressive? no problem, just go to the next dealer.

Now fast forward to the Bronco / Lightning releases. Ford has announced / debuted the 2, brand new, REALLY EXCITING cars. Yes, in a perfect world, the dealers would use this as an opportunity to "win people" to the Ford brand. But at the same time, I think anyone can see how a dealer principle may look at it with a bit of cyncism and say to themselves....

"These guys who I've never seen before aren't potential lifelong ford people. They're not going to buy a Bronco Sport for the teenagers because I got them the real Bronco. They're just out for the latest & greatest and maybe to try and flip. Giving them any sort of priority or special treatment is not going to help my business at all."

Would they be right in saying that? definitely not 100% of the time... but they definitely wouldn't be wrong 100% of the time either.

Ford did a similar exercise with the Ford GT; except when you're only selling 300 cars a year, you can get a couple of people at Ford Corporate to handle it. The f150 is a mass market vehicle, so they've somewhat left the dealers to try and do that exercise on their own.

A Ford isn't a Ferrari, but people need to buy several used Ferrari's from the dealer before they can go and order a new one (except maybe the Roma/entry level one?). A buyer must purchase several new ferrari's, before they get invited to purchase the hero cars like Enzo's, LaFerrari's etc. Hero vehicles must be profitable, but they can also serve as means towards building the relationships that help sell the everyday cars.

Ford would much rather get a Lightning in the hands of a small business owner who's got 6 2018 F150s out in the field, that are due to be refreshed, than they would somebody who saw the announcment, saw a money-making opportunity, and jumped on it quickly.

 

[Deleted member 9341]

To be fair, put yourself in the dealer's shoes. Selling cars & trucks in 2019, 2020 was tough. You'd have massive inventories sitting on the lot, many customers coming in knowing exactly what the invoice price of the car is; and everyone plays the game of "try to beat the dealer down", while the dealer returns the favour in trying to "Extra to death" on a bunch of smaller margins.

Car buying is an "unique" transaction. Most people do it once every 3-5 years. It is usually the 2nd biggest financial decision after house buying. So they've got time and energy to invest. On the flip side (if we go pre-pandemic with everyone having inventory), it's not like buying a house where each one is a little unique and as a customer you can/will miss out if you get too aggressive. Get too aggressive? no problem, just go to the next dealer.

Now fast forward to the Bronco / Lightning releases. Ford has announced / debuted the 2, brand new, REALLY EXCITING cars. Yes, in a perfect world, the dealers would use this as an opportunity to "win people" to the Ford brand. But at the same time, I think anyone can see how a dealer principle may look at it with a bit of cyncism and say to themselves....

"These guys who I've never seen before aren't potential lifelong ford people. They're not going to buy a Bronco Sport for the teenagers because I got them the real Bronco. They're just out for the latest & greatest and maybe to try and flip. Giving them any sort of priority or special treatment is not going to help my business at all."

Would they be right in saying that? definitely not 100% of the time... but they definitely wouldn't be wrong 100% of the time either.

Ford did a similar exercise with the Ford GT; except when you're only selling 300 cars a year, you can get a couple of people at Ford Corporate to handle it. The f150 is a mass market vehicle, so they've somewhat left the dealers to try and do that exercise on their own.

A Ford isn't a Ferrari, but people need to buy several used Ferrari's from the dealer before they can go and order a new one (except maybe the Roma/entry level one?). A buyer must purchase several new ferrari's, before they get invited to purchase the hero cars like Enzo's, LaFerrari's etc. Hero vehicles must be profitable, but they can also serve as means towards building the relationships that help sell the everyday cars.

Ford would much rather get a Lightning in the hands of a small business owner who's got 6 2018 F150s out in the field, that are due to be refreshed, than they would somebody who saw the announcment, saw a money-making opportunity, and jumped on it quickly.

Nobody that's successfully ordered a vehicle is PO'ed... other than I guess the people who wanted the pro-model.

Yes, there are potential customers that are likely PO'ed, but short of doing the theoretical impossible, they were bound to piss off somebody.

I ordered and I’m super annoyed by the whole thing and I’m certainly not alone. And I have no doubt that just placing an order hasn’t ended the frustration. Maybe even set me up for more of it.

 

[TaxmanHog]

For those long time ford customers that might be mad, your dealers are the ones you should be mad at. The salesman and GM that you have dealt with. They should have reached out to inform you about the upcoming Lightning and kept you in the loop out how to reserve, when to reserve, how it would work out to order down the road.

1000% with you on this, I was going to say the same thing regarding long term customers!!

The dealers know their client base, months before the unveiling, all the dealers should have given the rookie and old time salesmen lead lists to go out and inform customers of an opportunity to buy Lightning.

Some customers would be ready jump at the reservation on their own, and some might need hand holding or assistance putting in that reservation, especially if they were busy with other life matters on the evening of May 9th 2021.

Once that day had passed (5/19) all bet's off, first in first out time stamp order only when the offers are issued in evenly allocated wave across the country regardless of state EV incentives.

Ford also should have mandated the markup being incorporated into the WEB ordering system, no allowance for opting out, forget to list it, to-bad/so-sad.

 

[jfried]

I ordered and I’m super annoyed by the whole thing and I’m certainly not alone. And I have no doubt that just placing an order hasn’t ended the frustration. Maybe even set me up for more of it.

What "annoys" you? and do you think that annoyance will actually influence future purchasing decisions?

 

[Nick Gerteis]

I don't know if Ford ever actually said that the trucks would be allocated in order of reservation, at/around the time the reservations bank opened. I believe that may have just been assuming such.

That being said -- you, and really, this whole forum, are not necessarily representative of the USA-wide pool of f150 buyers. This forum is a subsect that will almost certainly "trend younger", and trend more "into technology" than the "average f150 buyer".

Put yourself in the shoes of a guy, probably in his early 60s -- for whom the concept of "reserving a vehicle online" is completely foreign to, as is the concept of "reading forums to see what's coming down the pipe". He drives a Plat/KR/Limited truck, his wife an explorer, and just bought his kids an ecosport. He's a small business owner; and has a half a dozen XL or XLTs for his crew.

He's somebody who was maybe on vacation during the announcement, but when he got back, saw the presser, saw Biden saying "this sucker is quick". He wants one. He calls up his salesguy as he's done for every vehicle he's ever purchased and says I want one. Should a loyal Ford customer like this be told "sorry, you missed the boat, have one of your kids go online, make a reservation, and you'll probably be 2-3 years down the road at this point?"

Maybe it's "unfair" to be pissed off, but it doesn't change the fact that that guy is likely going to be really pissed off at the fact his dealership, that he's written many hundreds of thousands of dollars in cheques to -- isn't and/or cannot do anything.

Fairness can be achieved in many different ways. You could argue that the "fairest" way would be to auction off the slots based on a difference from MSRP, and let those who want to pay, play.

I'm not saying the exact mechanics of how Ford did things is perfect -- far from it. The fact that dealers could prioritize between 5 and 25 reservations, where it seems that a small dealer is not going to see 5 lightnings in 2022, and a big dealer is not going to see 25, to me is ridiculous. There are / were many other approaches that could have been taken, like a points-based system that factored in timeslot with dealer-allocated "points", and purchase history on their fordpass acct. They could have also taken the approach of "we're gonna build 1000 trucks a week"... 500 to dealer-nominated reservation holders (based on a traditional "allocation" model that factors in size of dealership, etc), 500 to timestamp-orders.

The fact that they want / need more trucks going to ZEV states is a simple reality of making their business work in a country that has fractured regulations.

That’s why I only said that they “implied” there was a orderly line that everyone at the time thought they were going to follow. My local Kroger also doesn’t announce on the intercom every five minutes that there’s no skipping lines at the checkout, but everyone seems to understand how the system works just fine. It’s simply a universally understood and accepted protocol, but congratulations to all those that managed to skip the line anyway! Not a big deal in the big picture of things.

 

[wheelz2000]

I think whether no matter what way we see our place in line, we are gonna wait. If ford had advertised what big dealerships we customers should sign up at, we could have had options to choose from depending how far customers are willing to drive to to pick up a Lightning. I guess being in Iowa, I should have known somehow to go with a dealership on the coast or in Texas, but that would be dumb when I have a local ford dealer that I have been dealing with for years. This whole allocation thing is dumb IMO. Go off the next person in line timestamp and send the lightning to the nearest dealership. Why must this be so hard....shouldn't matter how big or small the dealership area is. I can order any other truck at my local dealer. Why should the lightning be any different...come on now...for real!

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