NEVER Factory order a Mustang

[cbrookre]

Thanks for the response and the wise words. I was never expecting "white glove" service but I told the dealer that I had been burned before and that I was only placing the order with them on the understanding that I wouldn't have to wait months and months for my car. This isn't just impatience. I have a trade-in that is depreciating by the week and, to keep the miles down and to avoid getting the car damaged, my existing GT Vert has been sitting in my garage unused, except for emergencies. The dealership blew all colors of smoke up my ass about Ford pledging to get the verts out in the summer...clearly that was BS.

The issue is that the car has been built but it's sitting in the CSX facility in Twin Oaks. Ford corporate informed me in writing that I'd have the car by August 24th however, my dealer, who told me that the car would be with me by Aug 18, told me last Monday that there is a problem with CSX and they now have no idea when the car will be delivered. Nobody can/will tell me what the problem is. Ford Corporate punt to the dealer and the dealer says that they are at the mercy of Ford Corp and their local rep.

It's not a case of being pampered, it's a case of respectful customer service. I want real dates and I want Ford and the dealer to stick to their agreements. Of course, if there is a Force Majeur, like the recent fire at the components factory in Detroit, then I'd understand and be patient. But to be told that we're not delivering it as promised and we're not going to tell you when it will be delivered or why it's been delayed is just unprofessional

Re the Ford GT, I can understand why they are on a long waitlist because they are individually hand-built and in no way part of Ford's regular production cycle. If I could afford a Ford GT then I'd fully expect a long wait time!

I do feel your pain, and was impatient with mine as well. When you are the customer you want information to be reliable, I do get it. But after our Fusion, I went into it eyes wide open and prepared to have only the best information that was available with large error bars. In all reality, once the car leaves the factory it is at the mercy of the shipping companies and if they have a problem (breakdown, etc.) then they may not be able to give you answer because they do not have an answer. I am not in disagreement that better communication would be, er, better. But custom orders, to the factory, are another car being delivered to the dealer. The only unique part is that the window sticker may be marked slightly differently and they build with that particular configuration.

My point about the GT was that they did not know, similar to you, when the car would be delivered. There was not a separate process, even for those people, that gave them more regular updates. They knew their car was being delivered shortly before it was delivered.

I still stand by the statement that your satisfaction or lack thereof will be dependent on what you expect and are willing to tolerate. I am certain that my dealer was sick of me asking them, and the owner is a friend of my family. But even having that personal relationship, they were not able to get any more information for me than your dealer was able to for you.

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[cbrookre]

Also, understand the feeling of depreciation and worry that you may do something to damage this. Just curious, what compelled you to upgrade from the 2015? I feel that mine is just getting broken in and has a ton of power (at least for me and the type of driving I do) at 45k miles.

 

[Nigel Bishop]

I do feel your pain, and was impatient with mine as well. When you are the customer you want information to be reliable, I do get it. But after our Fusion, I went into it eyes wide open and prepared to have only the best information that was available with large error bars. In all reality, once the car leaves the factory it is at the mercy of the shipping companies and if they have a problem (breakdown, etc.) then they may not be able to give you answer because they do not have an answer. I am not in disagreement that better communication would be, er, better. But custom orders, to the factory, are another car being delivered to the dealer. The only unique part is that the window sticker may be marked slightly differently and they build with that particular configuration.

My point about the GT was that they did not know, similar to you, when the car would be delivered. There was not a separate process, even for those people, that gave them more regular updates. They knew their car was being delivered shortly before it was delivered.

I still stand by the statement that your satisfaction or lack thereof will be dependent on what you expect and are willing to tolerate. I am certain that my dealer was sick of me asking them, and the owner is a friend of my family. But even having that personal relationship, they were not able to get any more information for me than your dealer was able to for you.

Thanks again for the wise words but my expectations were set by the dealer when they told (in writing) me that the car would be with me in 6-8 weeks and then 10-12 weeks. I told them what I was willing to tolerate as a condition of signing the deal. I tolerated the delay from 6-8 to 10-12 weeks. Although shocked and very disappointed, I tolerated the delay from 10 - 12 weeks to 17+ weeks when I eventually got my VIN. To be told now, that the ETA is now unknown for unknown reasons is beyond tolerable.

In all honesty, my beef is with Ford Corporate. I believe my dealer when he says that he can't get anymore information than I...that's the problem with the entire custom order process...in fact with any dealings with Ford. I talk to Ford and they tell me

a) they don't have that info in that department, and they can't transfer me to the right department, and they can't give me the phone number of that department or the name of anyone who can help me.

or

b)Ford: "talk to your dealer"
Me:

Ford apparently feel no obligation give their customers support when they, and only they, have the required information/authority/specialists. They are the manufacturers!

I'm starting to think that my dealers are afraid of Corporate, they do tens of millions of Dollars a year with Ford, yet they have no power or influence. Are they afraid that Ford Corporate or their local rep will retaliate in some way?

The same goes for Ford Corporate and CSX. Ford must be doing hundreds of millions of Dollars each year yet they seem to be afraid or unwilling to apply pressure to their service provider. If she is to be believed, the local rep for my dealer was claiming that CSX would not return her calls!

The whole Custom Ordering and Custom Tracking is a shambles and Ford know about this but don't apparently care. There have been online complaints about COTUS going back to 2015.

 

[cbrookre]

I think the real problem that you had is that your dealer misled you into having false expectations that they COULD promise you a delivery at a certain date. Ford Corporate will not guarantee that, and they do not open up themselves to be a "customer service" department for manufacturing operations. You are right, they are manufacturers, but they focus their resources on the manufacturing and R&D aspects and not on customer service to answer questions. To do so would incur a high cost for very little (in numbers of people or in returned revenue) benefit. There were some ford service people on the boards in the early days that seemed to be able to get a little more information somehow, but I have not seen those folks on mustang6g for a long time.

Truth be told, the custom order process with COTUS is a big improvement over what existed many years ago, when you get literally zero information until your car arrived. So while COTUS is flawed, it is also very much better than what was there before it which was nothing.

True that Ford does business with CSX, but they are not in the business of tracking deliveries to the level where some person on a phone could answer questions about an item on a car on a train and when it would get re-routed due to breakdowns, weather or other things. To get answers, they would have to walk out and assess, summarize, and deliver information and that would require them to have people prepared to do that at all of their stops. Just not something I would expect they would do regularly. Again, this is all my own expectations with my limited knowledge of supply chain management in general.

Either way, man I am on your side and I hope you get your car soon. I do know it can be painful and frustrating going through the wait!

 

[Nigel Bishop]

I think the real problem that you had is that your dealer misled you into having false expectations that they COULD promise you a delivery at a certain date. Ford Corporate will not guarantee that, and they do not open up themselves to be a "customer service" department for manufacturing operations. You are right, they are manufacturers, but they focus their resources on the manufacturing and R&D aspects and not on customer service to answer questions. To do so would incur a high cost for very little (in numbers of people or in returned revenue) benefit. There were some ford service people on the boards in the early days that seemed to be able to get a little more information somehow, but I have not seen those folks on mustang6g for a long time.

Truth be told, the custom order process with COTUS is a big improvement over what existed many years ago, when you get literally zero information until your car arrived. So while COTUS is flawed, it is also very much better than what was there before it which was nothing.

True that Ford does business with CSX, but they are not in the business of tracking deliveries to the level where some person on a phone could answer questions about an item on a car on a train and when it would get re-routed due to breakdowns, weather or other things. To get answers, they would have to walk out and assess, summarize, and deliver information and that would require them to have people prepared to do that at all of their stops. Just not something I would expect they would do regularly. Again, this is all my own expectations with my limited knowledge of supply chain management in general.

Either way, man I am on your side and I hope you get your car soon. I do know it can be painful and frustrating going through the wait!

Thanks dude, I appreciate the support...happy driving!

 

[cbrookre]

Loving my factory special order. Worth every day of the wait to get exactly what I wanted. Patience, grasshopper. The day will come to enjoy yours too.

Beautiful car!

 

[cbrookre]

Thanks dude, I appreciate the support...happy driving!

As a few others have said, when the wait is over it is SO worth it, and you seriously will not be thinking about any of this waiting.

Here are a few pics of mine, notice in the first on the day of deliver standing with my friend that co-owns the dealership, there is nothing but smiling despite the >3 month wait with little info.

Mustang_Phil

• cbrookre
• Aug 31, 2018

Day of delivery with Phil

IMG_1926_resize

• cbrookre
• Aug 31, 2018

Oregon coast

IMG_3107 (Large)

• cbrookre
• Aug 31, 2018

Freshly washed and waxed

 

[goldengooner]

Beautiful car!

I must have been very lucky, ordered last week of Jan, was built March 23rd and in Canada by 2nd week of April, and in the UK by early May

 

[V_Eight]

I ordered one years ago. I'll do it again in a few months. It's all based on the dealer really.

 

[mattmania35]

Ordered Performance Pack on October 1st and it’s now April 4th and I’m still waiting. It has been 7 months.

 

[Stang 19]

NEVER FACTORY ORDER A FORD...the process is a nightmare and the customer service is useless/non-existent. Ford don't give a rat's *** about you once they've booked the sale...they gamble on the fact that you won't cancel the order once they give you a delivery date as you will have already wasted up to 2 months waiting for this information.

Either buy off the lot or choose another manufacturer.

I custom ordered a fully loaded 2019 Mustang GT Premium Convertible from my local dealer on May 11th; remember, this is a $55,000 purchase. At that time I was told, in writing on my purchase order, that my car would be delivered within 6 - 8 weeks. OK, that was a mistake on the dealer's part and, when I still didn't have my VIN after 5 weeks, they admitted their mistake and revised that to a 10 - 12 weeks estimated delivery. I stated clearly at the time that I was ultra-sensitive to delivery as I had a very bad experience with a previous custom factory order.

I eventually got my VIN after about 6 - 7 weeks and COTUS showed my delivery date to be 17 - 18 weeks from the date of my order, with the admonishment that this date is not fixed... it could be longer! The factory order process is a big black hole from the customer's point of view. COTUS is useless...it was showing the details of a previously ordered and delivered Explorer until the VIN was created.

NO CUSTOMER SERVICE: My dealer told me that my order "does not exist" as far as Ford is concerned until the VIN is created. For 5 - 6 weeks they could not tell me when the VIN would be created. They stated that this was in the hands of the regional rep and that neither they nor I had any influence over this. I was told that I was not allowed to even talk to the rep. Ford Corporate were even less help...they claimed that hey had no record of my order and would not have any information until the VIN was created! I was/still am being bounced between Ford Corporate and the dealer.

As I said above, a couple of days after I received the VIN from my dealer COTUS was updated with a delivery date of September 5th, this was revised down to August 31st but, given that nobody, my dealer or Ford Corporate, can/will tell me what the scheduled build/shipping date is, I have no idea if this is accurate or not. But I've been warned again that my August 31st delivery date is not confirmed...with 5 weeks to go, it's almost guaranteed that it won't be delivered earlier but could well be delivered later.

I'm a member of several Mustang forums and I learned from another member last week that they are receiving their (very similar) mustang next week (4 weeks earlier than mine) even though they ordered their vehicle 2 weeks after me. So their net delivery time is 6 weeks earlier than mine even though I placed my order earlier.

I again contacted Ford's Customer Relationship Department but again, that was worse than useless. They claim that they have no knowledge of my build date and that I should work with my dealer. My dealer tells me that they have no more information than I do as they depend on COTUS as well.

So let that sink in...I have made a $55,000 purchase and Ford Customer Service claim that they have no information at all about my vehicle's build date...and, although somebody at Ford must have some information, unless the COTUS dates are totally fictitious, nobody knows or nobody will tell me anything about the status of my purchase...What I am being told is that NOBODY at Ford can/will tell me when my car will be built an delivered.

It is evident from my experience that Ford simply do not care about customers who factory order their cars. The process is arcane, not even my dealer can explain the process or the factors affecting scheduling/build/delivery. Ford operate this process entirely to suit their needs and not those of their customers...I've been told, not in so many words, that if your don't like it we don't care.

My guess is that factory orders are a nuisance to Ford and, as this probably doesn't represent a large revenue stream in the scheme of things, that they can afford to alienate buyers like me...this will by my 5th new mustang purchase, but this experience is sorely testing my loyalty to Ford.

This is not the first time that I've had this problem. I factory ordered a Mustang a number of years ago from another dealer who outright lied about the price/delivery...etc. I was given a 6 - 8 week delivery estimate which turned out to be 20 - 26 weeks. I had to sue the dealer to get my deposit refunded...Ford Corporate were no help then either.

Why is this an issue for me, other than impatience to receive my shiny new mustang convertible whilst the sun is still out? My trade-in is the issue. My trade-in value continues to diminish as every week goes by. Worse...I, like most buyers, am funding my new purchase by using the residual value in my existing Mustang. My dealer will not even discuss the value of my trade-in against the purchase of my new Mustang until the delivery has been scheduled, i.e., 1 - 2 weeks before my new car is due to hit the lot. At that time, I will be in a very weak bargaining position...they can, and probably will, low-ball me as they have me over a barrel. If I get an unacceptably low offer for my existing car, I'll either have to eat several thousand Dollars of loss, i.e., borrow more or, run round like a rat on crack trying to sell the car privately before I have to seal the deal on financing. I obviously can't sell my existing car early as I will then have no transport.

In summary, Ford operate the custom order system for their benefit and their benefit only. It is totally unacceptable to me, as it would be to any reasonable person, that I have committed to a $55,000 purchase and I can get no meaningful information as to when I will receive my product. Adding insult to injury, Ford simply don't care and they could not be less helpful.

Don't even get me started about how Ford prioritized the Bullitt build, frequently with no live customer orders, above the build and delivery of vehicles with real live customers who placed orders in good faith. Another example of Ford stiffing their customers and prioritizing their own interests above those of the customer.

I agree with everything you say here. Purchased many mustangs right off of the dealer lot . Tomorrow I will be picking up my custom ordered Mustang with performance package level two I waited a full 7 1/2 months !!! Your Ford dealer more customer service was able to help in any part of the process with the delays were . Perhaps we are all so spoiled because of the pin point accuracy and tracking systems with companies such as Amazon UPS FedEx etc. i realize there are many factors outside of Ford’s direct control when it comes to getting a vehicle that’s manufactured and shipped to the dealer, but they ought to be able to do a much better job than they are already. I plan to make my opinion extremely painfully clear when my new car survey arrives.

 

[I Bleed Ford Blue]

It's not a mustang, but when I ordered my daughters focus, I placed the order in early May and was told 8-10 weeks. I picked up the car 5 1/2 weeks later in mid June.

 

[Nomadic]

I saw dealer heavily discounted one GT on the lot. I called an Uber and got a ride there and drove it home. So I think my wait was like an hour. As long as I live, I'll never order a car. But I'm low maintenance. You'll never get great deals on them that way either. And most "options" on cars I found to be overpriced stuff I don't need.

 

[Cardude99]

hmmm didn't know mustangs were such a pain in the ass to order. Helped my dad order a raptor from a small dealer in Louisiana that we have never used before. This was about a year and a half ago. Was told 4 to 6 months but had it in 2, very happy and surprised with the process. Maybe trucks are easier?

 

[IronG]

I agree with everything you say here. Purchased many mustangs right off of the dealer lot . Tomorrow I will be picking up my custom ordered Mustang with performance package level two I waited a full 7 1/2 months !!! Your Ford dealer more customer service was able to help in any part of the process with the delays were . Perhaps we are all so spoiled because of the pin point accuracy and tracking systems with companies such as Amazon UPS FedEx etc. i realize there are many factors outside of Ford’s direct control when it comes to getting a vehicle that’s manufactured and shipped to the dealer, but they ought to be able to do a much better job than they are already. I plan to make my opinion extremely painfully clear when my new car survey arrives.

Took "only" 3 months to get mine. My dealer told me 12 to 14 weeks....it took just under 13. I was thinking it would take more like 16-20. So my dealer nailed it and beat my expectations. Did I just get lucky? Gave my dealer 5 stars across the board on their survey.

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