My experience so far with Ford's Build & Price website

[climateguy]

Kansas Ford dealer Long McArthur recently posted a video “How to BUILD and BUY a 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning”

This Kansas dealer is saying the website he did the video about is going to be the new way for customers to get their hands on Ford electric vehicles, and furthermore it is the only way at present a new customer can get their hands on a new Lightning, because, he says, dealers can’t place new orders.

I’ve talked to two local Ford dealers, and several of the type of representatives a prospective customer can reach with a cold call to Ford, and all of them knew nothing about this website.

I tend to believe that Kansas dealer, so I spent some time learning how this Ford website works. I’ll go through describing how to access it and use it at first, then write about what I learned.

I found that a reliable way to get there is to start at Ford.com. Select the word SHOP near the top left of the screen. Select the first choice in the drop down menu that appears i.e. Build & Price. Scroll down on the page that appears and select “2024 F-150 Lightning”. Scroll down a bit under the column showing the trim level you want, i.e. FLASH, and select “Choose your options”. Now you’re at the “Build & Price” page.

The first thing I concluded is that you don’t get to “Build” anything, at least with the 2024 Lightning Flash trim.

As of the moment the site is oriented to selling Lightnings Ford has built or is committed to build, that could be slated for transit to, or are in transit and could end up at a customers choice of dealership, or are in stock at a particular dealership.

You are given a limited set of options to select from. The site will then try to present you with a list of vehicles that at least have those options. The vehicles may have more options as well. When you check what's on offer and see what you want, you put it into your "cart", put a deposit down, and supposedly, Ford will make it available at the dealer.

For instance, I’m looking for an Oxford White Flash with Max Tow and all season tires. The site let me select those options. I don’t want the Ford mobile power cord, and it let me exclude that. It wouldn’t let me specify or exclude a spray on bed liner.

There is a link that allows you to set a zip code and how far away from that you want to search. You can select particular dealers from a list of dealers who are located in that specified area.

My search turned up loads of dealers starting 9 miles away extending out to 200 miles away who supposedly would have matching vehicles “available” at these dealers in 3 - 4 weeks.

I checked the details pages for a few of these vehicles. The prices listed varied a bit. I wondered why. The base MSRP was the same on all I examined in Washington state. The options I couldn't select or exclude were present on some of the vehicles presented as "matches". The document fees varied.

I was skeptical. I wondered, if I ordered one of these, would it appear on a dealer’s lot in the time stated?

If the dealers think they can’t get their hands on something to sell me, how is it that I can just order something from Ford and have it appear on their lots?

I phoned Ford. Eventually I reached someone supposedly knowledgeable. I told her the website says Ford can make a certain vehicle appear at a dealership, but the dealership knows nothing about it and has nothing like it on order.. This Ford rep said the website is probably unreliable. She said your dealer is the only source of authoritative info like this.

After seeing the Kansas dealer’s video about this website I tend to believe what this Ford rep was saying was probably unreliable.

I came up with a semi hack to learn a bit more about the website. The details pages on the vehicles I was looking at on the website wouldn’t show me window stickers or VINs. However, if I copied the webpage address from the browser address bar on the details page for a particular vehicle matching my option selection, and examined it in a text editor, a VIN appears as the last part of the address. Ford has to keep track of what it is offering somehow....

I looked at details pages on vehicles that supposedly would be appearing in 3 - 4 weeks at different dealers and looked at the VINs. The same vehicle would be listed as about to appear at any number of dealers. I searched many dealers in Washington, and even out to Idaho and found a vehicle with the same VIN on offer. I looked out farther, eg. Utah and Arizona, but that same vehicle was not there.

The Kansas dealer says in the video that he thinks Ford is shipping vehicles to regional centers. Customers then are supposed to use this website to select from that pool of vehicles something that matches or is close to what they want, and Ford will then ship it from that regional center to a dealership the customer selects.

I spent some time experimenting with the website. You can check if the vehicle that could arrive at that dealership is listed at the current Flash base MSRP, if the total price of the options listed on the details page for that particular vehicle adds up to the current MSRP for those, what the particular dealer’s document fee is, and if there is a “Dealer Adjustment” subtracted from the MSRP.

I found a dealer in Idaho who was subtracting $2,939 as a “Dealer Adjustment” from the MSRP price. This was the same Flash with the same VIN I saw offered at many Washington state dealerships.

The Washington dealers I checked were all wanting full MSRP with no dealer adjustments. I found a dealer in Salt Lake City who was subtracting $2500. One Arizona dealer was subtracting $500. Most of the out of state dealers I checked were listed as wanting to sell at full MSRP. One Utah dealer apparently wanted the old Flash MSRP of $73K+ as his base price. His vehicle was listed as sitting on his lot, which seems very rare for a 2024 Flash. Document fees varied from $150 - $599.

What I’m going to do next is to examine the vehicles a search on this website puts out. I’ll be looking for one that most closely resembles the Flash I would special order from Ford. If I find one, I’ll select the dealer I want it to appear at, and go talk to that dealer about it. If he knows nothing about the Ford website or this process for customers to buy cars, I’ll get after Ford and the dealer to give me some kind of definite answer.

Does anyone reading this know of anyone who ordered an F-150 Lightning from Ford using this Build and Price website who has taken delivery?

Sponsored

 

[bmwhitetx]

I think this site tries to emulate what you can do at Rivian and Tesla. If you shop there and configure a truck, it will offer a vehicle that is can be directly purchased and delivered in a few weeks. The problem is for Ford, you can't buy directly from Ford. So dealers have to be on board. Those of us that started our journey back in 2021 (reservation to order) know how frustrating this was with lack of dealer knowledge.

While we all want transparent online pricing like Tesla and Rivian, in reality the best deals have come from those who were able to buy last year and this year right off the dealer lot.

But Ford seems to want try yet another online model and the dealers aren't having it. Either they are ignoring the memos or there haven't been any.

To answer your question, I haven't heard of anyone who has used this method. You are now the expert!

 

[The Weatherman]

I don’t know of any dealers that have knowledge of this approach. However, I have followed Tim Barts for several years and have faith that what he was saying is how this approach is suppose to work.

 

[climateguy]

Here is a Nov 27 2023 Electrek article "Ford loses nearly 400 participants from its EV dealer program"

In that article, a Ford representative appears to refer to the "Build & Price" concept that purports to allow customers to select a vehicle from a regional pool of vehicles for delivery to a Ford supplied list of dealers.

"Ford will create “retail replenishment centers” where Certified Elite dealers can replenish stock..... ... According to a company spokesperson, elite dealers will hold “limited” stock for customer test drives."

 

[DesertEV]

Is their a Cliffs Notes version to this thread?

 

[pdegenkolb]

We looked at the Ford site earlier this year, then did some shopping. Looking in California, Oregon and Washington, all of the dealers were charging full MSRP plus add-ons. Also, most of teh dealers seemed to think that they were doing us a favor talking to them. To put a twist on things, I looked up where Lightnings were selling well and got a list of 15 states. California, Oregon and Washington were all near the top of the list. Idaho was not on the list. I contacted a few dealers in Idaho, and ended up with Kendall Ford just west of Boise. They immediately offered a $6K dealer incentive, and they had configured the Lariats with all of the options which were factor only, and none of the dealer options installed. The result was an MSRP of $79,800. Just below the cutoff for the federal $7,500 rebate. (The other three states added a bunch of dealer installable options as factory, pushing all of their Lariats over the $80K limit.) Then, a week after we had placed a down payment on the truck, and a week before we picked it up (They were doing a clear bra installation) Ford announced their $5K incentive. When we picked it up, we were pleasantly surprised that they had included the Dealer incentive ($6K), the Ford incentive($5K) and the instant Tax credit ($7.5K) on the credit side of our invoice.
I will note that when we first called they were barely selling one Lightning a month. The week we picked ours up, they had sold one a day for the entire week, and ours was the second off the lot the day we picked ours up.

This was all in March of 2024, but we intentionally bought a 2023 model year truck.

 

[TaxmanHog]

However, if I copied the webpage address from the browser address bar on the details page for a particular vehicle matching my option selection, and examined it in a text editor, a VIN appears as the last part of the address.

Is their a Cliffs Notes version to this thread?

I performed a similar search process confirming a specific VIN could be routed to any of my local dealerships, though I'm not in the market buy another truck, I have faith that the process @FordVideoGuy outlined is accurate.

Looking forward to someone actually rolling through this sales experience and reporting the end results.

 

[bmwhitetx]

A month ago, I scoured the B&B website counting up the number of vehicles found (post here). It showed a whopping 800,000 Lightnings available nationwide. Which is impossible. Now I/we know those search results are because one truck is being offered at multiple dealers.

 

[climateguy]

I visited a local dealer yesterday. I talked with him for about an hour. I don't think he was taking me that seriously at first.

After a while, we got on his computer and I showed him how the Build & Price website was working with the F-150 Lightning at the moment. I made the site produce a list of four 2024 LIghtnings with my preferred options, i.e. Flash trim, Oxford White, MaxTow and all season tires. I pointed out that there were even more vehicles below that list that didn't quite meet my specification, i.e. some were a different color, or they didn't have MaxTow, etc.

When he saw that the site indicated that everything, all these vehicles, were "in transit" to his very dealership, arriving in 3-4 weeks, he looked a bit floored. He knew that wasn't happening.

I pointed out that the site could be set to show that these same vehicles, with identical VINs, were also "in transit", arriving in 3 -4 weeks, at a dealership down the road, or for that matter, at dealers as far away as neighboring states.

I said I wanted to buy one of these vehicles, but since no one so far can tell me if anyone they've heard of ever bought one of these on this website and had it appear in the stated time frame at the dealership of their choice, I was hesitant.

Apparently he was quite familiar with Ford.com, and he wasn't used to seeing gibberish that made no sense to him on it.

He said there was some senior guy at the dealership who had been studying up on Fords EV strategy, and he went to talk to him.

He came back after ten minutes or so. He said go ahead and buy one. It's legitimate. I said what I needed to know was how firm was the 3 -4 weeks. I wanted an out if 2 or 3 months go by and no vehicle shows up.

The deposit on this deal at this dealership was $500. This salesman said they've ordered Lightnings for people in the past using their old methods of ordering from Ford. The vehicles showed up and some of the people backed out. He said the dealership policy was, they give them their deposits back.

He did say, and repeat, you're expectations have to be flexible about the time frame. He said even with ICE vehicles sold at his dealership, since the pandemic, transport and supply chain issues have made it harder to give customers accurate information, or even a rough idea, about time of delivery.

I'm going to try to get through to that Kansas dealership to ask if they know about actual sales and deliveries of 2024 Lightnings made through this Ford website.

 

[bmwhitetx]

Thanks for Trailblazing. If you do go past the Add to Cart page and do a Checkout, it would be nice to see some of the options they present.

Tim (the Kansas dealer) has indicated that on some of these portals he has to populate fields like doc fee and dealer adjustments to MSRP (higher or lower). I note that the B&B web site shows doc fee. And clearly some dealers aren't updating that. The dealer I bought from 2 years ago has a $150 doc fee and the B&B website shows $0. Another dealer that we purchased a Mach-E from in 2022 had a $150 doc fee and that is what the B&B shows for their doc fee.

 

[climateguy]

I went to ford.com/buy

This is a page that is promoting online buying. There's no way to interpret this page except ford.com is promoting the Build and Buy, a.k.a. Build and Price webpage for online buying. There are caveats.

Notice that the first promo statement does not mention F-150 Lightnings:

When this page was last updated, dealers who were participating in this scheme only existed in NY, NJ, and MA. If I squint at the page long enough, I can imagine that the screens they say are "demonstration" only are the screenshots on this promo page, not all the screens on Build and Buy. Otherwise, a guy would have to conclude that Build and Buy for F-150 Lightnings is a demo that does not refer to current reality.

Further down this page, in the FAQ there is this:

The date this page was updated was not posted on the page.

 

[climateguy]

Whoever represents Long McArthur in the comments section of the "How to BUILD and BUY a 2024 Ford F-150 Lightning or Mustang Mach-E" youtube video says this in response to my comment:

I asked why would Ford lead customers on with statements on Build and Buy like, this particular vehicle you've selected is "in transit" to a dealer of your choice in "3 - 4 weeks"? Are they trying to alienate customers?

Why not say Ford has to clear the yards around Dearborn where they are stashing all the Lightnings that are on "quality assurance" holds, or Ford has to fulfill all existing orders that were sent in prior to the creation of Build and Buy, or whatever the truth is?

 

[climateguy]

If you do go past the Add to Cart page and do a Checkout, it would be nice to see some of the options they present.

I got to where the next step was enter credit card information, then to "Place Order".

Near the order button, Ford informs you that by clicking on the Place Order button, you have accepted their eCommerce Terms & Conditions. I made them into pdfs. They are attached.

After scanning and reading the conditions, I had no interest in proceeding to actually place an order, reservation, or whatever Ford was defining whatever was happening as. I then backed out of the page and removed the vehicle from my "cart".

 

[TaxmanHog]

Many of us fretted over those documents back in the day [2022], several long discussions about whether the dealer would refuse a refund of deposit when canceling a reservation. Very few exercised the right to retain funds.

The lack of certainty of delivery by the proposed limits: 1-2 weeks, 3-4 weeks, June, July ..... etc. this has been a notable failure for the factory to perform in 22/23 so I understand your hesitation.

 

[DesertEV]

I got to where the next step was enter credit card information, then to "Place Order".

Near the order button, Ford informs you that by clicking on the Place Order button, you have accepted their eCommerce Terms & Conditions. I made them into pdfs. They are attached.

After scanning and reading the conditions, I had no interest in proceeding to actually place an order, reservation, or whatever Ford was defining whatever was happening as. I then backed out of the page and removed the vehicle from my "cart".

Can’t wait to see your truck and your review of it…especially with heat pump range in winter. What trim and color did you go with? Order any extras?