Who Gets What? Is Ford treating all orders the same?

[shoelessjoe]

I had a reservation from July 18, 2020 4DR Badlands with Sasquatch, 2.7, MIC, until Thanksgiving 2021 I had not heard anything. I placed an identical order with everything except a soft top instead of the MIC top on November 23rd 2021. I got a VIN and build date 18 days after placing the soft top order. I got a build date 1 week later for my MIC reservation/order. The soft top had a build date of 2/7/22 after a few bumps the blend date was 3/1/22. My MIC reservation/order had a build date of 2/14/22 after a few bumps the blend date was 3/17/22. The soft top is still sitting at the plant on hold. I took delivery of my reservation/order on 3/23/22.

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[okbob]

100% random and consistently inconsistent lol.

 

[Tonka1]

When 200,000 of us placed our reservations, Ford told us they would be built in order of reservation timestamp. That is no longer the case. Plan to be patient for your Bronco. I made a reservation in October of 2020, ordered and reordered as soon as I could each model year. Other then receiving a confirmation of order and several nice gifts for hanging in there, I have no VIN or build date. Running out of time on my current vehicle so I ordered a Wrangler in January of which I have a VIN for, will be built any day and anticipated to be delivered in about 4 weeks. You will hear stories on here of people who placed an order well after you for similar builds and get their Bronco before you. My advice is to have no expectations, don't stress over it and someday you may be surprised with positive news.

 

[Compta38]

yes, big dealers won this deal while small dealers even the ones that had a TON of orders got screwed. The entire allocation system used is a mess and Ford doesn't give a shit how early your reservation is or how long you wait.

 

[Jawbox]

The worst part, to me, is that there is no commitment to building all existing orders now that they stopped taking orders.

They should commit to clearing out the entire backlog before they take another new order. Regardless of your dealer.

 

[Teh_Chonco]

Originally orders were to be built in the order received given consideration to constraints. It was set up this way thinking that people would stick to their local dealers. Then a few smaller dealers either game the system or were marketing geniuses depending on your perspective and took a ton of market share with generous offers that they advertised nationally. Not surprisingly a lot of the bigger dealers flipped their lids. They argued (and they do have a bit of a point) that for years they took vehicles from Ford that no one wanted to buy and sold them at little to no profit (think sedan lineup) and then the moment they release a hot product dealers who never had to take these slow sellers at the same #s swoop in and take over their market share. I don’t think it’s widely known that dealer contracts require a dealership to maintain certain ratios to prevent a dealership from saying all the profit is in F-150s so I’m going to be exclusively a F-150 dealership.

The big dealers cried foul and got the allocation formula changed for the MY22+. That’s why there is a lot of line jumping going around.

Help me understand how they gamed the system. Shouldn't the allocations stay relatively fixed by the dealers' historical volume? IOW, just because they jacked up the reservations doesn't mean they gained more allocations did it?

 

[Jawbox]

Help me understand how they gamed the system. Shouldn't the allocations stay relatively fixed by the dealers' historical volume? IOW, just because they jacked up the reservations doesn't mean they gained more allocations did it?

Why should allocations be fixed by historical volume though? Shouldn't allocations come from places where people want to buy the damn things? It's currently a system put in place to keep the small dealers small. This doesn't serve customers. Competition from smaller dealers serves customers.

 

[Kos]

Help me understand how they gamed the system. Shouldn't the allocations stay relatively fixed by the dealers' historical volume? IOW, just because they jacked up the reservations doesn't mean they gained more allocations did it?

I said it was depending on your perspective and that perspective was whether or not you were on the side of the big dealers. The big dealers argued small dealers gamed the system because the Bronco was/is outside of the normal allocation models. As a result they could advertise outside their normal area, grab a chunk of the national market share and not have to worry about selling more Escapes to maintain the proper balance. Ford apparently agreed with their argument and thats why the allocation model was changed for MY22.

 

[Teh_Chonco]

Why should allocations be fixed by historical volume though? Shouldn't allocations come from places where people want to buy the damn things? It's currently a system put in place to keep the small dealers small. This doesn't serve customers. Competition from smaller dealers serves customers.

You misunderstand. I am not aware of the allocation system in place when reservations first opened, I'm simply guessing it's some formula based partially on historical sales.

But I am trying to understand how small dealers took advantage. Did they add a disproportionate number of reservations--generating fake sales intent--in order to receive favorable allocations?

 

[Jawbox]

You misunderstand. I am not aware of the allocation system in place when reservations first opened, I'm simply guessing it's some formula based partially on historical sales.

But I am trying to understand how small dealers took advantage. Did they add a disproportionate number of reservations--generating fake sales intent--in order to receive favorable allocations?

I see, no, they offered some great deals that the big dealers wouldn't match and drew in a disproportionate amount of reservation holders. Originally Ford claimed that dealer allocations were going to be based on the reservations regardless of what dealer people had chosen.

Big dealers with less reservations complained and Ford gave in stripping expected allocations from these smaller dealers to the traditional model.

There was nothing fake about the reservations themselves, just that they didn't go to the biggest dealers.

 

[Teh_Chonco]

I said it was depending on your perspective and that perspective was whether or not you were on the side of the big dealers. The big dealers argued small dealers gamed the system because the Bronco was/is outside of the normal allocation models. As a result they could advertise outside their normal area, grab a chunk of the national market share and not have to worry about selling more Escapes to maintain the proper balance. Ford apparently agreed with their argument and thats why the allocation model was changed for MY22.

That's clearer. What threw me off (unless you still mean differently) is saying that the small dealers "gamed" the system, meaning that they actually did something outside of established norms to gain an advantage. It seems to me that it's just as likely that the small dealers were getting their fair share of reservations. But they didn't "pay their dues" when times were lean and big dealers deserved more favorable treatment.

It also feels like a "hold the line" moment for these big dealers. What happened with the rollout felt too close to a direct sales model and any success gained from it would be another case against the value of dealers.

This still doesn't explain my situation as a 7/23/20 reservation holder in a top 150 dealership.

 

[FrankenRodz]

I made an appointment with my Proctologist, because I must have a Horseshoe up my butt!
Got my first one 11/21, and my second one is being built right now!

 

[Teh_Chonco]

I see, no, they offered some great deals that the big dealers wouldn't match and drew in a disproportionate amount of reservation holders. Originally Ford claimed that dealer allocations were going to be based on the reservations regardless of what dealer people had chosen.

Big dealers with less reservations complained and Ford gave in stripping expected allocations from these smaller dealers to the traditional model.

There was nothing fake about the reservations themselves, just that they didn't go to the biggest dealers.

Interesting. I myself never came across any competing incentives. My dealer (who is in the top 150) was the only choice in my area code. I was always under the impression that there was no dealer-level promotional activity with the Bronco and that demand was entirely driven by the online reservation system.

 

[ByrdDogX]

I think it's fair to say that reservation's are a waste to even mention at this point. They should have been a priority, but that didn't happen. It's about order placement, dealer allocation and sales volumes that met Ford's criteria. First dealer I ordered with has 2 NEW cars on their lot right now and I do not believe has had more than 10 at any given time on the last 6 months. That dealer will NEVER get allocation and be able to deliver a customer ordered Bronco any time soon. They just don't meet the requirements.

Went to another dealer that has volume, sales a lot of Bronco Sports, and has allocation as a result. I'm in production now.

I hate it for everyone that had to endure this process. It's been a cluster to say the least.

 

[MLRey]

Originally orders were to be built in the order received given consideration to constraints. It was set up this way thinking that people would stick to their local dealers. Then a few smaller dealers either game the system or were marketing geniuses depending on your perspective and took a ton of market share with generous offers that they advertised nationally. Not surprisingly a lot of the bigger dealers flipped their lids. They argued (and they do have a bit of a point) that for years they took vehicles from Ford that no one wanted to buy and sold them at little to no profit (think sedan lineup) and then the moment they release a hot product dealers who never had to take these slow sellers at the same #s swoop in and take over their market share. I don’t think it’s widely known that dealer contracts require a dealership to maintain certain ratios to prevent a dealership from saying all the profit is in F-150s so I’m going to be exclusively a F-150 dealership.

The big dealers cried foul and got the allocation formula changed for the MY22+. That’s why there is a lot of line jumping going around.

You make some good points about the allocation changes that Ford made to punish the dealerships that offered too good of a deal. I would have happily stayed with my local dealer instead of making a new later reservation with one offering a discounted price. I cancelled my original reservation because my local dealer well over a year ago told me the price would be market driven at the time of delivery. I can only imagine how badly they're screwing people now. Not wanting to be part of that I switched to a dealer that was "gaming" the system. Price was not the biggest factor, just not wanting to get screwed.

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