On the return leg home from an errand... checked out Bronco inventory

[Cajun21]

I find this very insulting to the American consumer- This get's my goat because like most excited people about shiny things it happened to me- I ordered a C8 put down my deposit and nine month's later it came in dealer phoned me up and when I arrived the dealer to drive it home, markup was asked. I said a few four-letter words, requested my deposit back and left the dealer in an uber. I shall never go back to that dealer-drove pass the dealer just before christmas and that C8 is still there. I don't care about markup and think that people paying it are just as bad as the dealer. Or maybe I'm jealous. lol NOT.

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[aldo98229]

I find this very insulting to the American consumer- This get's my goat because like most excited people about shiny things it happened to me- I ordered a C8 put down my deposit and nine month's later it came in dealer phoned me up and when I arrived the dealer to drive it home, markup was asked. I said a few four-letter words, requested my deposit back and left the dealer in an uber. I shall never go back to that dealer-drove pass the dealer just before christmas and that C8 is still there. I don't care about markup and think that people paying it are just as bad as the dealer. Or maybe I'm jealous. lol NOT.

That’s just it. You place your order, wait patiently for weeks, get all excited, only for the dealer to change the rules of game by jacking up price the day you go pick it up.

Many people, unwisely, sold their existing vehicle while they waited for their Bronco to arrive.

For dealers to get you all excited and jack up the price at the last moment is the equivalent of trying to hold you hostage.

Then again, that’s just how our healthcare system works any day of the week...

 

[Zandcwhite]

Wait wait wait: Everyone wants to slam dealers and then want to let the manufacturers dictate cost (MSRP) and better, get discounts below that. Well wait a damn minute.

Sale prices aren’t set in a vacuum. I mean, every item you buy has a fixed cost, and what you are paying for has to both cover that cost AND provide a profit to the seller. That’s how money works.

Manufacturers costs have skyrocketed this past year. Steel, Aluminum, Magnesium and Copper have all risen dramatically in price, and auto manufacturers buy all those good not first hand, not second hand, but third and fourth hand through their finished parts suppliers. Add to that the rising costs of electronics, energy (used to manufacture the parts), paints and freight. Together it’s estimated these resources increased the cost of production some +13% over 2021. But there’s more: Those are fixed costs of assets inside the vehicle; on top of that there’s wages to pay for workers and administration - and insurance, and property taxes for the plants that are building the vehicles - and the cost of maintaining both those plants and the equipment inside them necessary for that production to take place. Then there’s taxes on top of that - because manufacturers pay those too…. And they all have to be accounted for in determining the cost of your vehicle. But wait, there‘s more:

When talking about these “soft costs”; labour, insurance, taxes, maintenance, administration, etc), well those costs burden sell price based on a fixed volume of production: What I mean is, imagine Brand X builds 100 vehicles a year every year, and has an annual soft cost of $100 that covers the entire plant and employee salary base. Now imagine that Due to supply chain shortages, Brand X had to slash production from 100 vehicles a year to 20…. But their soft costs are fixed (they actually rose this year) - regardless, that $100 needs to be spread out over these 20 vehicles, not 100 - a five fold increase in price.

“Hey!” You say, MSRP didn’t jump that much across the brand though! That might be true of certain models, but MSRP IS created in a vacuum (to an extent). It has little to do with fixed cost, and is instead intended to address a “reasonable” (as determined by the manufacturer, not the dealer) cost of sale plus profit for the dealer. By failing to raise MSRP, the manufacturer is playing the role
Of “Mr Nice Guy”. “Hey folks, we are looking out for your interest, we are eating added costs to put you behind the wheel of this new 2022 beauty!” They aint.

The dealer also has fixed soft costs. Property and taxes and wages only go away when you close down dealerships and layoff or fire workers. Dealers too live on fixed margins and have to pay their bills if they want to survive - but when the manufacture they represent can only deliver 1/5th of The vehicles they order for the year, then those soft costs have to be covered by a greater portion of their value being applied to each sale. The alternative? Bankruptcy.

“Hey!” You say. “That makes my argument for me! Close all dealers and let manufacturers sell direct!”

my friends, manufacturers don’t have a support network of their own. They rely on their dealers for that. Manufacturers sell to dealers at a set discount rate and in turn force dealers to pay license fees to sell those vehicles, and pay for sales and service training, and to stock a set number of vehicles and parts maintain and repair them. Manufacturers and their Dealers don’t have a parasitic relationship, they have a symbiotic one. Without Dealers, Manufacturers can’t sell their parts regularly, they can’t sell their training or their licenses…. And those are things the manufacturers sell at Margins 5x higher than they sell their actual vehicles for….If they didn’t have a customer base for that, then they would have to raise prices across the board on all products (from vehicles to parts to services) just to stay afloat. But it gets worse: Without Dealers and their lucrative service revenues, the Manufacturers would have to establish their OWN brick and mortar service Centers, and stock the parts required for repairs and maintenance on their own dime, instead of the dealers. Those are added costs to the manufacturer, who isn’t set up to address them - and added administration costs, as they have to build the network to keep those service Centers profitable.

Now, I realize “Market Adjustments” seem like highway robbery (because they are so damn high), but the truth is “the Dealer” isn’t the problem: the Market is. You might not know it if your only source of (dis)information is the nightly news, but we are in a heap of trouble. The Global Supply Chain shortages, which are directly attributable to government mandates, has wreaked hell on our economies. We call what is happening “hyper inflation” (shhh, they don’t like that word!), and also “stagflation”. This means costs are rising dramatically quarter after quarter, they can’t seem to stop it, and printing money and handing it out for free isn’t solving the problem, it IS the problem, because that money is devaluing and at the same time demand for goods and services is going up and up and up….

We are in a lot more trouble than most seem to realize or want to acknowledge. Terminating dealers fixes nothing. It just breaks a broken system more.

Long winded rant that misses some key elements. MSRP is not set in a vacuum at all, and includes plenty of profit for the manufacturer and the dealer. If production costs skyrocket and the msrp stays the same, so does the invoice price. The dealer still gets their profit and the manufacturer would be the one taking the loss. Dealer mark ups are greed driven period. They price gouge when they can and that mark up is pure profit on top of the profit built in to the msrp. You can still find these same vehicles at honest dealers at msrp even in these strange times we live in. It's profiteering and any dealer I see adding 50%+ market adjustments will never see a dime from me.

 

[Sparty]

while posting on Google chrome browser on their iPhone sipping on their starbucks coffee as they wait for their Jeep parts to arrive from Amazon.

no, no, no....those are all the people that participated in the 1% marches

 

[aldo98229]

All these capitalism-socialism-communism rants are hilarious!

C’mon guys, no greedy dealer is worth getting all worked up over. Least of all a freaking Ford dealer.

 

[Heimkehr]

I ordered a C8 put down my deposit and nine month's later it came in

dealer phoned me up and when I arrived the dealer to drive it home, markup was asked.

I said a few four-letter words, requested my deposit back and left the dealer in an uber.

I put a $500 deposit down when I ordered my JLU, but not before receiving an assurance from the sales manager, buttressed by the Deposit/Order Form that we jointly signed, that I would not have to pay for any price increase(s) that occurred between the order entry date and the day the vehicle arrived at the dealership.

Sure enough, a mild increase in the base price was evident on the window sticker when my new Jeep was offloaded from the truck. However, as expected, my paperwork (vehicle sale contract, etc.) matched the original figures in force on the day my deposit was provided. Done and done.

----------------

You said "markup was asked". Why not just refuse the request, and tell the dealer to honor the original price? This is doubly true since you paid a deposit yourself. Can you provide additional context here?

 

[cbrenthus]

Lots of people on the Bronco forum reporting being asked for ADM upon delivery of their Bronco they ordered over a year ago. My attitude is that I don't NEED a new vehicle, and my dealer told me they will not charge ADM, and if they try I'll walk and never step foot in a Ford dealer again. I don't know why, but Ford dealers seem to be the worst when it comes to ADM.

The other issue that is going on is with flippers - lots of people order these vehicles with no intent on keeping them, just to resell to make a quick 10 or 20 grand. They are as much of the problem as anything.

 

[jbcrane]

As others have rightly noted, this is disgraceful and shameful. But they're banking on the fool walking in the door and plunking down money to 'feel special.' Shaking my head...

 

[Tellurian]

All this anti capitalism talk makes me chuckle at the absurdity coming from guys buying jeeps that only exist due to the wonders of said economic system.

Complaining about a dealership gouging something that is not a necessity is plain silly. If you dont like the price then don't buy it...and if someone is wealthy enough or dumb enough to pay then hooray for the consumer because the price will go down because capitalism will strike when supply equals demand.

If anything socialistic behavior has brought about a semi conductor shortage and poor business practices by Ford have resulted in delays of a new concept to production as well.

I remember when 40inch 480p flatscreens were $20k. Stupid yeah but thank goodness for the guys that bought them and let me get at 75 inch 4k for $700 now.

I’m with you on the first statement.

The second statement veers a bit because the issue is that folks are ordering at MSRP and then being blindsided by the dealer when they go to pick it up. When the customer refuses it, this in turn gives the dealer inventory to sell with a huge ADM - something they wouldn’t have if the customer hadn’t placed their MSRP order. I have no issues with a dealer trying to find the sweet spot on price for something on the lot they ordered. I do have an issue when it’s a direct from manufacturer order that a dealer refuses to honor.

Third statement has me lost. How did socialist behaviors drive current semiconductor constraints? Everything I have read and observed is that about 70% of all semiconductors come from 2 manufacturers, one in Taiwan and one in South Korea. The issue seems to be extreme demand as semiconductor use has grown exponentially in non-tech markets such as the auto industry. This is exacerbated by a non-diverse semiconductor network causing a bottleneck in distribution. To add insult to injury, this is all caused by consumerism and profitabilty (intrinicly capitalistic).

The flat screen TV analogy is a little off the mark. In 1997, the first flat screen was a 42” and sold for $15K. The reason for the cost was because it was entirely new technology and the cost of building it was ridiculously high. As new technologies came about over the years and mass production costs came down, price competition set in as more flat TV makers entered the market. Those early adopters of the technological paradigm shift helped pay the way for those manufactures to pursue new technologies and eventually aid in reducing costs and price. However, the Bronco is nothing new and early buyers of it aren’t tech adopters. Prices are set by the manufacturer but dealers are capitalizing on high demand and low supply.

First batch Bronco buyers are more equivalent to the first pancake - as in you sacrifice the first pancake to make sure the griddle is the right temp. Could be a pancake with a blown 2.7. Could be pancake with windows that don’t roll down in the winter so you can’t open the door. Eventually, you end up with a nice stack but that first one will always give you trouble.


Crap… Now I want pancakes

 

[Gmot123]

Prices are set by the manufacturer but dealers are capitalizing on high demand and low supply.

I would phrase this another way, and say that dealers are capitalizing on a generational global public health crisis, and unprecedented supply chain crisis. And that is where I lose any sympathy for a capitalism/supply and demand argument for these dealers.

I am in the market for a new Audi for my wife. Pretty much all Audi dealers in my area are charging a market adjustment of at least a few grand over MSRP. Before my Wrangler, I came from an Audi myself, and sure I struggled to negotiate that price a few years ago. But I got some amount off MSRP, and would have been upset at paying MSRP, and would certainly never have contemplated paying over MSRP. I consider this simply taking advantage of an unprecedented convergence of events, at the customer’s expense. $10k-$30k over MSRP is simply obnoxious. JMHO.

 

[Sevier01]

I tell them that i will pay them what tha bank says its worth. Not a dime more.
Be ready to walk out. Most of the time the sales mgr follows me to the car and a deal is offered at or near loan value.
If not
Buh bye……,

 

[Hennessey17]

This is capitalism... but you can also use it to your advantage...

I live in Milwaukee, but grew up in the Chicago area where most of my family remains.

I sent emails to 30+ dealers, told them what options I wanted, that I had the Tread Lightly discount, and that I'm sending this to multiple dealers. I asked them for their best price.

Most of the Chicago dealers wouldn't send me any numbers, they just emailed, texted, and called non stop.

A third of the Wisconsin dealers didn't respond. Another third only gave me the Tread Lightly discount. The last third gave me the TL discount and offered even more off. I went with the dealer that would give me a guaranteed trade in for my Tiguan with a failing turbo and oil pressure problems.

Create a bidding process... have them chase you. Not the other way around.

 

[camo4stealth]

Hennessey17, you are spot on. I also had dealers bidding for a sale when I bought my Raptor. Price differences were 10k! 18 months later, I sold it to a dealer for 8k more than I paid for it. Was I gouging? Or, just taking advantage of the market? I didn't make anyone pay a dime more than they were willing to. They tacked on another 2k, put it on their lot and it was gone in a week. I took the cash and bought a Rubicon 2D. (should make people here happy) A lot of the people bashing dealers would not do so if the shoe was on their foot.

 

[omega145]

Hate to say it but that white hardtop at 50K isn't that bad of a deal when you look at the other prices out there for Bronco's. I'd genuinely be interested in it if it was closer.
Edited since it looks like that either white or Area 51 color Bronco isn't in stock anymore and that stock # is actually for a white soft top with silver trim wheels.

 

[ECP]

According to your pictures though, you get a FREE gas guide! That's gotta be worth the market adjustment! /s

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