Ford Inventory Discussion

[Deanh]

1 hour ago, GearheadGrrrl said:

Making some progress with the local dealer, they're offering invoice price if I order.

so basically $100 below Xplan pricing and youre willing to wait approx. 4-6 ,months ( and that timeframe was BEFORE the shutdown )...which is close to what they take once ordered......ok, got  it...

Edited May 13, 2021 by Deanh

[rmc523]

16 hours ago, HotRunrGuy said:

 

Any ideas why a dealer would do this?  If I'm willing to put in the keyboard time to find a specific build combination, why hide what you have in stock?  Do they really think that customers today are going to drive from dealer to dealer to see what they actually have?

 

HRG

 

They also could have a customer lined up to come look at it and don't want it shown.

[twintornados]

17 hours ago, ice-capades said:

 

I did actually leave officially last September but still run inventory and sales reports for the dealership along with doing some marketing projects. As such, I still have full access to the FMCDealer.com portal. 

 

..and for that, we thank you!

[Deanh]

$100 savings from X plan...willing to wait approx. 6 months if ordered...that equates to a savings of 55c a day.....somewhat bizarre thought process....

[scode1]

23 hours ago, Deanh said:

 

NIGHTMARE customer...we would have politely said sorry we cant help you. Obviously this individual doesn't value anyone elses time and effort but their own...love it when a consumer thinks they are doing the Dealer of their choice a favor by deciding to buy a vehicle from them...PASS. Sorry to be harsh...but this screams high maintenance let alone a lot of effort for....NOTHING.

You forgot to mention that the customer will probably burn you on their QC survey because they don't like the fact that they can't buy directly from the manufacturer and has to deal with a human being that is just trying to make a living. 

[GearheadGrrrl]

That's the dealer's offer, I haven't accepted it. Honestly, I'm having difficulty believing that any Transit Connect is worth over $30K, especially when a dealer within a days round trip is offering the Transit Connect XLT wagon to government agencies for under $27K delivered.

[GearheadGrrrl]

7 minutes ago, scode1 said:

You forgot to mention that the customer will probably burn you on their QC survey because they don't like the fact that they can't buy directly from the manufacturer and has to deal with a human being that is just trying to make a living. 

Last new car I bought I quite honestly gave the dealer top ratings on the QC survey, they more than deserved it. However, I had to finance to get a huge rebate and I paid off the loan before the dealer got their kickback... Sorry, that was costing me money!

[scode1]

5 minutes ago, GearheadGrrrl said:

Last new car I bought I quite honestly gave the dealer top ratings on the QC survey, they more than deserved it. However, I had to finance to get a huge rebate and I paid off the loan before the dealer got their kickback... Sorry, that was costing me money!

For your information. The dealer would have offered you a choice on how to pay for your vehicle. You could have paid cash or financed it through your own source or used Ford Motor Credit through the dealership. Sometimes Ford will give you an extra rebate if you go through Ford Motor Credit. Some cash buyers would rather not deal with the hassle of writing a check to payoff the loan after they get their first payment notice and that's fine. Others see the value of financing how ever much they want in order to get $500 or $1,000 FMCC bonus cash and paying it off right away. It's not the dealers rebate. It's Ford and Ford Credit that know some people will change their minds and keep the loan for a while so Ford Credit can make the interest. You seem to have a problem with a dealer making a penny of profit from you. 

[HotRunrGuy]

33 minutes ago, GearheadGrrrl said:

However, I had to finance to get a huge rebate and I paid off the loan before the dealer got their kickback... Sorry, that was costing me money!

 

How was this costing you money?  You got a "huge" rebate that you weren't eligible for if you didn't finance. Even if you made 2 payments, I doubt that your interest costs exceeded the rebate you were given.

 

I've done the "take the finance rebate & pay off quickly" deal numerous times.  Unless they change the language to mandate keeping the loan for a year or more, I will continue to do so.

 

HRG

[scode1]

On 5/13/2021 at 10:05 AM, HotRunrGuy said:

 

Any ideas why a dealer would do this?  If I'm willing to put in the keyboard time to find a specific build combination, why hide what you have in stock?  Do they really think that customers today are going to drive from dealer to dealer to see what they actually have?

 

HRG

If the they have vehicles that were ordered for a specific business like a plumbing company that buys several vehicles  per year just not at once or a fleet order or Government agency that takes them throughout the year... There is no need to display them if there already spoken for. It just makes it easier not to have to explain to people that they can't buy them. 

[GearheadGrrrl]

3 minutes ago, scode1 said:

For your information. The dealer would have offered you a choice on how to pay for your vehicle. You could have paid cash or financed it through your own source or used Ford Motor Credit through the dealership. Sometimes Ford will give you an extra rebate if you go through Ford Motor Credit. Some cash buyers would rather not deal with the hassle of writing a check to payoff the loan after they get their first payment notice and that's fine. Others see the value of financing how ever much they want in order to get $500 or $1,000 FMCC bonus cash and paying it off right away. It's not the dealers rebate. It's Ford and Ford Credit that know some people will change their minds and keep the loan for a while so Ford Credit can make the interest. You seem to have a problem with a dealer making a penny of profit from you. 

This was a VW, I've never financed a Ford. Had to lease or finance to get a $5k rebate on a held over TDI, the story I heard was that EPA didn't totally trust VW so they wanted the TDIs financed or leased so they could yank them back if the emissions fix failed. Didn't need financing, especially since I took the buyback on my '13 TDI a week after and the new '15 TDI I bought was a couple thousand dollars less. Interest rate was usurious, so of course, I paid off the loan ASAP.

[ice-capades]

The normal OTD (Order-to-Delivery) for a Transit Connect is 5-6 months! 

[ice-capades]

57 minutes ago, GearheadGrrrl said:

That's the dealer's offer, I haven't accepted it. Honestly, I'm having difficulty believing that any Transit Connect is worth over $30K, especially when a dealer within a days round trip is offering the Transit Connect XLT wagon to government agencies for under $27K delivered.

 

This is just an impossible discussion... You can't compare retail pricing and/or incentives to what's available to a government agency or Ford Fleet account! Apples vs. Oranges!

[GearheadGrrrl]

21 minutes ago, ice-capades said:

 

This is just an impossible discussion... You can't compare retail pricing and/or incentives to what's available to a government agency or Ford Fleet account! Apples vs. Oranges!

 

I'm not expecting my local Ford dealer in a county of 25,000 to match price with a large scale dealer in a metro area of 3 million- They probably get a bigger holdback for their high volume and other incentives from Ford. But I can't spend spend thousands more to pad a local dealers profits and help them maintain their near monopoly, which is common in rural areas.

 

That said, I'm getting too old to twist wrenches and as this next vehicle will be in my garage 'til I'm at least 80 or in the hands of one of my mechanically incompetent heirs, having a dealer available is important. Within 50 miles of me there are 3 Ford dealers, 7 GM dealers, 3 Stelantus dealers, and that's it. So If I buy a Ford, I have a vested interest in keeping those three local dealers in business. 

[Deanh]

2 hours ago, ice-capades said:

 

This is just an impossible discussion... You can't compare retail pricing and/or incentives to what's available to a government agency or Ford Fleet account! Apples vs. Oranges!

hate to say this....we actually may be being trolled in an expert manner.....sure is starting to smell like it...lol.

[mackinaw]

To bring this back to a discussion on dealer inventory, my (rural) dealer has only three vehicles in stock, two Escapes and a Bronco Sport.  Everything else has been sold.  

[Deanh]

16 minutes ago, mackinaw said:

To bring this back to a discussion on dealer inventory, my (rural) dealer has only three vehicles in stock, two Escapes and a Bronco Sport.  Everything else has been sold.  

we are in  a similar, albeit, not so bad, situation...we have a grand total of 4 F150 supercrews over XL trim levels! ....

[GearheadGrrrl]

1 hour ago, Deanh said:

hate to say this....we actually may be being trolled in an expert manner.....sure is starting to smell like it...lol.

 

No I'm a for real Ford enthusiast and customer, even applied to buy a GT but they turned me down. That said, I've owned slightly more VWs than Fords mostly because Ford didn't offer anything like the Golf TDI in this market. VW pulled the TDI outa this market 5 years ago and the Golf is just about gone, and through the Golf R sounds tempting twice the price of a TDI is too much.

[GearheadGrrrl]

3 hours ago, ice-capades said:

 

This is just an impossible discussion... You can't compare retail pricing and/or incentives to what's available to a government agency or Ford Fleet account! Apples vs. Oranges!

 

I just use that price as a goal, know I won't get it. When I bought a small tractor 4 years ago I did something similar, looked up the discount off MSRP the state and federal government get and set that as my goal. Took a while, but saved 20% off the dealer's price for an in stock model by negotiating and ordering one with what I wanted and nothing more.

[jpd80]

14 minutes ago, GearheadGrrrl said:

 

I just use that price as a goal, know I won't get it. When I bought a small tractor 4 years ago I did something similar, looked up the discount off MSRP the state and federal government get and set that as my goal. Took a while, but saved 20% off the dealer's price for an in stock model by negotiating and ordering one with what I wanted and nothing more.

At the moment, you’re probably going to get bypassed by other people who are prepared to pay close to MSRP,

Transit Connect is sourced from outside USA and those areas are also experiencing chip shortages so the same

squeeze on supply, inventory and pricing but is that really the case?

 

May 1 inventory of Transit Connect was 6,200 (50 days supply) 

that’s dealers and Ford holding yards so there was plenty of them.

[Deanh]

22 minutes ago, jpd80 said:

At the moment, you’re probably going to get bypassed by other people who are prepared to pay close to MSRP,

Transit Connect is sourced from outside USA and those areas are also experiencing chip shortages so the same

squeeze on supply, inventory and pricing but is that really the case?

 

May 1 inventory of Transit Connect was 6,200 (50 days supply) 

that’s dealers and Ford holding yards so there was plenty of them.

 keep in mind...that's less than 2 per dealer....and it includes all variations ...Short and long wheelbases, Commercial vans AND passenger variants...

[GearheadGrrrl]

Transit Connect inventory is almost normal, and in the case of wagons seems to be pretty normal. But the plant that builds them is 2 weeks into an 8 week shutdown, so by July inventory will probably be pretty tight. But demand has surprised me, I was surprised when a dealer in Winona, Minnesota had 5 wagons in stock, there's only 2 left now...

[jpd80]

On 5/10/2021 at 2:00 AM, GearheadGrrrl said:

This crisis is an incredible opportunity for Ford- For decades the sales model has been to waste ten or so million dollar acres of prime retail property to store new cars so the customer can sign and leave with a new vehicle before they do due diligence just so the factories can keep running. To continue that stupidity, we build vehicless for inventory first and figure out how to sell them later, to the point where Ford has at times had a million unsold vehicles in the system, plus the downside financial risk of millions of vehicles that Ford has leased and financed. There has to be a better way...

 

How about offering enough incentives for customer orders that they can order a car for less $$$ than buying a heavily rebated one that's wasted lot space and tied up capital for months?   Do the same thing with used, with many trades going almost straight through reconditioning to a new owner as the online dealers are increasingly doing.  And all that prime acreage on high traffic roads? Profitably lease it out, maybe even a Ford themed restaurant or accessories store. Save the back lot for service and employee parking, but cut down on that space by reducing wait times for parts orders and employee van pooling- We make great vans and minibuses, don't we?

 

Ford is starting to figure it out- Being big in the fleet biz they've been offering good BTO deals to them forever, and the $500 rebate for retail customer orders is a start. But so many dealers who can't think farther out than end of month don't get it and see this as a chance to virtually auction off the dwindling inventory of new vehicles for inflated prices while demanding list price for a customer ordered vehicle... Next month and maybe for a few more months they'll have little or no new vehicles to make those absurd profits on. I speak from personal experience as a shareholder and customer- I've been "stalking" Transit Connect wagons for over a year now and there's currently at least 10 with the options I want (XLT or higher trim with trailer tow package) within 250 miles but the only discount off MSRP is the $1000-1750 rebates, and only the $500 rebate if I order one that won't arrive until at least September. That puts the price over $30k, at that price I may as well get a cheaper mopar minivan or spend another $5-10k and get a Toyota Sienna that beats the Transit Connect by 9-10 MPG and offers AWD to boot. Millions of customers like me are making the same decisions, and most don't have near enough blind "brand loyalty" to order a $50,000 pickup at a mere $500 off MSRP with no build date.

 

Ford and dealers, you can do better...

Sorry, I missed your post from a while back but here’s my thoughts,

Ford and it’s dealers have a pretty good idea on what vehicles make for good fast moving inventory

that doesn’t sit on lots for very long, they know by research and dealer feedback which are popular

trim and options combinations that they can move.

 

Dealers love people to come see products at showrooms because they know that the chance of 

buy right now impulse sale depends on an emotional connection forming between buyer and vehicle,

you don’t get that as much with an online sale but more importantly, sales staff talking to buyers means

an opportunity to explore buyer’s desires and if another trim or another vehicle would work better.

 

With regards to customer orders vs building to dealer stock, I think it was Jim Hackett that tried to get

faster delivery times for customer orders only to run into problems with production line scheduling due

to longer lead times on supplier parts - Ford gets big reduction by signing up for years with a defined 

ordering profile that’s not supposed to vary in short lead times, some change is possible but I hear that

Prioritising customer orders outside of certain build profiles is a real headache.

 

Your Transit Connect dilemma is one shared by many other Ford buyers wanting certain vehicle types

and frustrated by the price.  I think that you and others are fighting against a well established wall of 

premium pricing that’s prepared to forgo easy sales of lower trims or even heavy discounts of higher

trim levels, a stance driven no by more sales -more revenue but by a set return expectation on revenue.

Thats a hard wall to penetrate.

 

[GearheadGrrrl]

jpd80 You're correct that Ford and some of the dealers have tons of data on what consumers want ready to be mined. But they seem to be missing a lot of trends like the popularity of the Transit Connect with motorcyclists (tall enough inside for a bike) and wheelchair users (low floor and seat height for easy transfers or ramp access). There's also the growing #vanlife market out there that isn't even on Ford's radar. How can Ford better serve these customers and attract more? First thing the #vanlife customers do is insulate the "cargo area", why not offer the wagon's side and roof insulation and headliner as an option on vans?

 

Having hordes of vehicles on the lot ready for sale was an idea GM developed to compete with Ford's Model T back in the 1920s, along with easy credit to allow the customer to buy more vehicle sooner. This made sense with big ticket stuff like houses because folks shouldn't have to save up until they're 60 to become homeowners. same with taking out a car loan in your 20s so you can buy a reliable new car. But the concept has been abused to the point where we're pressuring buyers into $40k Explorers and the accompanying years of debt when $20k Fusions are all the car they need. For the dealers, a big inventory now presents the same "show rooming" problem "that brick and mortar" retailers are having- Customers come in to look at the product, then go online to find the lowest price.

 

As for the problem of long term supplier contracts, the automakers need to do a better job of negotiating terms with suppliers- For example, Sync has gotten bad reviews from the start and has been driving Ford's Consumer Reports reliability ratings down for years, the supplier's smartphone OS has died in the market, yet Ford seems to jam Sync into everything that rolls down it's assembly lines- It's time to tell Microsoft to go away and take it's attempt at an infotainment OS with them!

 

Pricing has gotten totally out of touch with consumers financial resources- With transaction prices north of $40k we've lost all but the highest income 20% or so of the potential market, and the increase in median vehicle age even a decade after the last recession shows it. We now deliver a new vehicle like the XL trim that has as standard equipment stuff that wasn't even available on the top trim lines only a couple decades ago, yet you seldom find an XL in stock and have to settle for an XLT. Then there's the stupid packaging of options- Our Rural Water Association out here has a bunch of F150 crew cabs with toppers for their techs and they put on miles like crazy- They could really use an F150 long bed because they're using the back seat to carry the tool overflow from the box and the 3 liter diesel, but Ford won't build them an F150 diesel long bed. When I bought my '98 Ranger I ended up saving several hundred $$$ by ordering an XL and then adding the XLT options I wanted. I tried the same thing pricing out a Transit Connect yesterday and cut the price $1500 and the only option I couldn't get on the XL was HID headlights and LED foglight. Ford's pricing structure is especially insane on the Transit Connect van- To get around the "Chicken Tax" they're importing a "Combi" with basic 2nd row seats and side windows, paying a contractor at the port to remove the seats and glass and fill the holes, and then they drop the price $2000! 

 

Is it any surprise that Ford is managing to tick off customers and lose money at the same time?

[fuzzymoomoo]

26 minutes ago, GearheadGrrrl said:

There's also the growing #vanlife market out there that isn't even on Ford's radar. 

Not according to the social media posts of some in upper management. 

 

26 minutes ago, GearheadGrrrl said:

How can Ford better serve these customers and attract more? First thing the #vanlife customers do is insulate the "cargo area", why not offer the wagon's side and roof insulation and headliner as an option on vans?

You need to understand it's not necessarily that easy. The current generation of vans came out before all of these trends started really taking hold. It was just a very niche thing that was better off being handled by upfitters. For all we know it's coming in the next few years as the next generation comes out.