greenne
Well-known member
- First Name
- Nathan
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2021
- Threads
- 27
- Messages
- 1,894
- Reaction score
- 2,305
- Location
- Niskayuna, NY
- Vehicles
- 2022 Lightning (Ordered 6/19, delivered 10/28/22)
I agree, it appears that they allocated them to specific dealers and then had the dealers contact customer only on their list. If your reservation is at a dealer that didn't get a unit allocated, you didn't get offered one.
What Ford did for wave 7 is allocate the trucks to the dealers. My dealer..for example got 5 ER Lariats and 2 SR Lariats. The dealer then started calling people pinging if they were interested in these allocations. The dealer then submitted the names. This poses problems because it now appear as if the dealer did not(or could not) submit the names of interested parties, those allocations stayed at the dealer and were converted to dealer stock allocations. (Its just a theory based on what I'm seeing).
If true.. this is really a bad move. I'm almost betting some crappy dealers didn't call anyone..or didn't put forth any real effort....while there is someone in line who almost certainly would have taken the unit. The dealer can now get it as stock and mark it up price wise. This also does not address the fact that one dealer may have zero people interested in a SR Lariat while another dealer(whom the truck could have been reallocated) may have several people willing to take it.
What Ford should have done from the start is ask people to decide their preferred trim on the reservation from day 1. That way, dealers could be allocated units based on actual desires instead of random guessing(or just luck).
I don't think Ford can(or should) o to a straight custom order system because that would slow things to a crawl, but I do think they can do better in supplying trims numbers, allocations, and units to the correct location and correct customers(i.e. those who reserved first).
I hope Ford will learn from this experience. Their logistics chain needs to adapt to a post pandemic, high demand/low supply world.....
PS-- I do think they are taking positive steps with the Model E division and the EV certified dealer memo that came out last week
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