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Ford is cutting F-150 Lightning production due to waning demand
(www.engadget.com)
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this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Priced way too fucking high and Ford didn’t do anything about dealerships marking up on an already absurd price.
I will never forget test driving a Maverick and the salesman bragging about how his dealership put a $75k markup on the Lightnings just because they could.
Put a sour taste in my mouth for anything Ford ever again in the future.
That’s why dealerships need to die. Manufacturers don’t like that shit either, but dealerships have been banding together to lobby to remain a shitty middle-man that greatly marks up prices.
Don't even have to go far for the lobbying, there are a lot of politicians who own or are involved with car dealerships directly :|
Youre right, car dealer owner running for local office is a damned trope
Manufacturers love the dealership model, because those shitty middlemen at the dealerships shield the manufacturers from direct contact with the consumer and all of the consumer's problems and complaints. And the dealerships absorb the costs of holding inventory and investing in the real estate square footage required to sell cars.
I don’t know, there are a lot of very recent examples of legacy manufacturers trying to sell direct and then getting caught up in litigation and politics with dealers.
I was recently caught up in a mess with Volvo. I leased direct through Volvo, no dealer. Then the program got shit canned because dealers through a fit. Volvo fought back, and now it’s back in many US states.
Tesla seems to do alright without them?
Aren't the repair cost snd repair times significantly higher with Teslas?
We have an outback and a model y. The experience in purchasing both was pretty similar. Every other dealership I went to would aggressively upset crap and grossly inflate the sticker price. I don't foresee buying anything other than a Tesla simply for the great charging network and purchase experience. Plus, I personally hate buttons everywhere.
My Model X was in the shop for ELEVEN MONTHS because Tesla decided it's more important to sell new cars than to use those parts for repairs. And it wasn't anything weird like parts for the gull wing doors, it was suspension parts.
You should REALLY look into that shit before buying another Tesla. I love that car, but no way am I buying another Tesla until they get their supply chain shit together.
Also, don't forget that starting next year pretty much every EV will be using Tesla's NACS connector and charging network going forward. That's no longer a reason to buy Tesla.
Sounds like temp agencies.
People like to hate on Tesla around here, but they were at least fighting the good fight against dealers. Doing the right thing for the wrong reason still counts.
This.
A friend of my parents desperately wanted one of the new Broncos, and they were just selling out everywhere, so they decided to work with the small local dealership and order one direct from Ford.
So they picked out every last detail, placed the deposit, and waited.
It was like 5 or 6 months then they finally got the call to come down, it was ready.
Well when they got there, the fucking piece of shit dealer tells them that he's increasing the price by 10k.
They ask why and what happened to the price they agreed on, and the guy tells them that basically these kinds of customer orders are the only way he can get more broncos from Ford, but he knows he can get more for this one so he's going back on their agreement. So they can either agree to the higher price right now, or go home empty handed and he will still sell it within the week.
I don't know how they walked out of that place not in handcuffs, because I'd have assaulted the guy.
They get home and call up Ford and Ford basically said, "Sorry you had to go through that, but we have no control over our dealers, so they can do that and neither you nor we have any recourse or any way around it."
Basically that story alone meant to me that A. I'll never drive a Ford, and 2. I will badmouth that little locally owned dealership any time anyone I know is considering using them, and I hope they go under.
The thing is, Ford can control that shit, they just have no desire or motivation to do so. Contrast that story with Subaru. Post pandemic when car prices were insane and demand was through the roof, Subaru of America mandated that all their dealers were not too MSRP on any new Subaru vehicles. If they found any dealership price gouging, they got one warning, then SoA pulled their fucking license to sell the brand.
What's the name of the dealer
Steve.
That bastard
It's always fucking Steve
If they pulled that shit on me I would roll up with a fucking news truck
Good luck. Something that happens 100x/day isn't news.
The dealerships were supposed to protect the consumer from the auto manufacturers. Who would've guessed they wound up being the bad guys? /s
Why would a salesman ever say that to a customer! Or even anyone!
You don't need to be smart to be a car salesman. I think it may actually be a hindrance.
I had a salesman tell me once that I could get a really good deal on an R32. Someone at the dealership took it out for a joyride and rolled it, but because it wasn’t insured, they slapped it back together and sold it with a clean title.
Another time I had a sales guy try to sell me a truck with 100k miles put on it in 12 months with no maintenance records.
When selling products where demand massively exceeds supply sales staff aren't required at all.
I wondered the same lol.
But he was all around off putting.
I found the Maverick on their website and was amazed. It was a limited edition with all the features for around $40k if I remember right and was right around the corner from where I worked. So I knew I wanted it and went to see it as soon as I got off of work.
Walked into the dealership and asked them about their Mavericks. They said they had 4 available with one person actively signing the paperwork to take one of them home today. I asked about the available trims and they listed them but none matched the one I saw online so I felt I needed to now bring up the exact one I saw online (didn’t want to make it obvious I wanted this so they could upsell me, but when they didn’t list it off, I knew I lost my edge and might be wasting my time).
When the salesman saw the one on the website and the price he literally laughed and said they would never have anything like this for that price on their lot. He said they immediately put a $4,500 markup on all Mavericks.
I honestly wanted to walk when I heard that but my mom and her husband wanted to still give them a chance so we went on a test drive and that’s when he told us the markup on the Lightnings too.
He had also asked me about what I did for work and when I mentioned some of the stuff I did, he made a condescending remark to me too. Can’t remember exactly what he said, but I remember the feeling of disrespect.
Just all around was one of the strangest dealership visits I’ve ever had. Never found someone who made me feel like wanting to run so bad.
As I write this…makes me wonder if he didn’t like me and wanted to chase me off by being as off putting as possible.
You must be young. You need to find someone with sense to help you with the car buying process. Your mom and her husband are not it if they still hadn’t figured out the dealership and sales guy were shady at that point.
Lol, car salesman making condescending remarks on someone else's job! That's the funniest shit I've read all day!
I swear half the popularity of Tesla is being able to avoid dealerships/saleslizards
Previously we seemed to have decent luck at Toyota dealers but for one car we had such a bad experience that we went to a different dealer and said we’d be willing to pay more if the original saleslizard doesn’t get a commission.
I definitely don’t even understand - when a customer has something very specific they’re looking for, how do you waste both your and their time and abuse the customer enough to lose an easy sale? I can see the attempt to upsell but come on, try something that might work
They just don't want to sell electric cars because they don't get the long tail profits on oil changes and tune ups.
Because this was during peak pandemic stock shortages when dealerships were selling everything they had with zero effort. They had a free years there where they had salesmen who never had to put any effort into selling a car.
I was surprised to see this headline because I remember how high the interest was when it was first revealed. What a shame that EV adoption is being hampered by price gouging. The industry is ripe for competition.
Sorry to tell you but that's not a Ford thing. That's a dealership thing. Ford has tried to control it but there's only so much they can do.
Dealerships were created and mandated to improve competition. Letting the OEM decide what prices they can charge would be completely antithetical to that.