Overpromise, Underdeliver, Blame FoMoCo

[MikeD]

Sure thing

Thanks for the pic, Love those car's and the Bentley isn't bad either. lol

 

[Humvee21]

A Countach?

I wish... A ******* Ford Taurus 1998... My dad complained so many times they finally gave us a 2011 CTS... Once...

 

[Danner]

This sense of entitlement because of a badge on a 40k-50k truck is ridiculous. Every customer should have the right to correct knowledge about their ordered trucks/cars regardless of the badge or price. If a company wants to bring back customers time after time they need to treat them right and not lie to them. I don't care if they ordered a gearshift knob for a fiesta they should be notified of when they should get it as if they ordered a 10 harley davidson edition trucks!

These after all are F-150 trucks that are basically going though the same treatment as the other trucks just with different parts. If Ford had the best customer service and dealerships they wouldn't have to worry about the customer coming back, it would happen automatically!

 

[6.2]

It all comes down to the dealer. There's good ones, and there's bad ones.

 

[Aaron]

Mine sucked pretty bad honestly. First was the giant financing fiasco where they said they had me approved, then decided after a week I wasn't approved and told me to bring it back, but when I did they had magically figured it out and all was ok.

Then after I bought it I had purchased the Lo-Jack system for my truck and it was supposed to get installed while I was out in Afghan, I figured they'd call my wife and get it done. Nope. I called 4 months later to ask why it hadn't been done, and all they could say was "Oh we thought it had been done...it was marked as done." So I demanded my money back for that...and to their credit, they did give it back without much fuss.

The salesman I bought it from was a complete slimeball and kept calling and bothering my wife months after I bought the truck about stupid things. It finally stopped for the most part after she phoned the owner of the dealership and informed him of the harassment.

The last straw was when my wife wanted to make our first service appointment, she set it up online and didn't hear back for 4 days. So she called and still got nowhere. She tried unsuccessfully for over a week JUST TO SCHEDULE A SERVICE! Finally she got mad and tried another dealer closer to home. The result? She scheduled online and received an email back from them within the hour.

She took the truck in and guess what? They didn't try to sell her anything stupid, they did what needed to be done and let her know of anything that might need to be taken care of soon (tires) and just generally treated her well. The best part was that they had her in and our of the shop in 1 hour since she had to take our kid to karate.

It's a shame they didn't have a Raptor I wanted when I found mine.

 

[sdraptor]

Anyone have the number to SVT?

 

[STUTIDE]

Anyone have the number to SVT?

800 367 3788 press 1

 

[Mjolnir]

I talked to the owner of the dealership today, told him my concerns and what I've read about the ordering issues. He is getting me a contact person within SVT, I hope to have that person/number next week.

The owner seems like a very nice guy, came highly recommended, but I guess my biggest issue is that the way I was informed that it would be built two weeks ago, then this week, now February was too casual.

After the first delay, I would stop making promises, talk to SVT, Ford, regional director and figure out EXACTLY what to tell the customer, not just continue to kick the can down the road.

I don't think you need to sell $100K+ cars to adopt the customer care attitudes of those dealerships.

A post earlier mentioned the commerical side and how great it was. I agree, I bought two Chevy Silverados from the largest commercial Chevy Dealer in the US which is down the road from my house. The owner personally handled the sale (which I was probably the smallest of the day). His admin books my service appointments, and he or his son check up on me every so often to make sure I'm happy with the trucks (I bought them 4 years ago). They are probably 10 times the volume of an average Ford or Chevy dealership yet they sweat the details.

 

[sdraptor]

Thank you sir for the number

 

[Hocker52]

I heard this morning that my build, scheduled for yesterday, has now moved to February and I should have a delivery date scheduled for me next week.

After trolling for the past couple of weeks this seems like a trend. The dealer blows sunshine up your skirt, then reality sets in and Ford gets the blame.

It looks to me like it's a simple sales tactic used by the dealers to keep you happy, then they get to shift blame when dates don't match up.

Owning a business myself, this strategy is flawed in my opinion and the net result is that the dealer is taking what could be a fanatic customer of theirs and turning it into a purely transactional basis - (gimme my truck, last time I will ever see you).

On the far other end of the spectrum, I have bought some expensive Italian vehicles and not only do they inform you during the build process, they make a photo album of each step and invite you to the factory to see your baby being built.

I think the Raptor is exclusive enough (not in same price as Ford GT, but certainly in same enthusiast circles) that Ford would want to cultivate our passions in hope of building further business.

My dealer is about 45 miles from my house, partly because they would drop the price some, which wasn't that critical in my decision, but more importantly so I could talk to the owner of the dealership and not have to go through the process of talking to sales guy, waiting in his cubicle while he talked to the sales manager and then spend 2 hours doing what should take about 3 minutes to do.

I thought since I had made this connection it would make the process more of a relationship, but getting this news today with no explanation just makes me think it's just another Ford dealership, cheap suits, bad coffee, and vinyl covered customer waiting areas.

Ford could really learn from the Porsche and Ferrari dealers for their SVT lineup. My Porsche dealer will do ALL the mods I want, talking me through good/bad decisions, sponsor track days, invite me to product launches, generally immerse me in the experience of "there is no substitute", Ferrari is much the same.

I know that if Ford can build vehicles as unique as the Raptor and the Ford GT, they can muster the marketing muscle to support their community before and after the purchase.

/rantoff

My 2011 took 17 weeks from order till delivery.