Q & A Session... - Ask a Ford Dealer

[13COBRA]

SELLING them and being able to adequately SERVICE them are 2 different things, aren’t they? Isn’t Shelby service training limited to certain dealers?


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Used to be, not any more.

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[bdcardinal]

Used to be, not any more.

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The only one I know of is to be a GT servicing dealer which my work declined to do. That is not including the Technician/Shop Competency or the special F650/750 requirements. When a 05-06 GT comes in our service manager has it parked right by my back counter so I can keep an eye on it.

 

[13COBRA]

The only one I know of is to be a GT servicing dealer which my work declined to do. That is not including the Technician/Shop Competency or the special F650/750 requirements. When a 05-06 GT comes in our service manager has it parked right by my back counter so I can keep an eye on it.

The 05/06 FGT do not have any special service requirements...the new one does. To be certified it runs to the tune of about $80-90k, assuming you have the physical space already available.

 

[bdcardinal]

The 05/06 FGT do not have any special service requirements...the new one does. To be certified it runs to the tune of about $80-90k, assuming you have the physical space already available.

Ya, I guess I wasn't clear. We don't have the space requirement for the new ones. Management told me that if we did that I would have been made the concierge either willingly or against my will.

 

[Zymologist]

Do dealerships opt in or out of car advertising aggregators like Cars.com or Cargurus.com? Does the dealership pay a fee to these sites for clicks or contact leads? I noticed your dealership inventory is listed on Cars.com and not on Cargurus.com. What would lead a dealership to opt into one but not another?

 

[13COBRA]

Do dealerships opt in or out of car advertising aggregators like Cars.com or Cargurus.com? Does the dealership pay a fee to these sites for clicks or contact leads? I noticed your dealership inventory is listed on Cars.com and not on Cargurus.com. What would lead a dealership to opt into one but not another?

Yes, we pay a fortune to them. You don't pay per click or by lead...but just pay to be on the site in differing 'packages' leading to more or less exposure.

CarGurus is an interesting beast. So, every dealership's inventory is on there for free. When you are not paying, you don't get preferential placement, however if your cars are priced extremely competitively then you still get plenty of attention. When a lead comes in, the email address looks like this: [email protected]. You have 6 or 7 attempts to get the customer to call you or give you their actual email address, then that email because invalid. So for the longest time I just did the free version, as I was having a great conversion rate between leads and sold units.

Then my rep convinced me to go to one of the paid packages. So I started paying $2,100 a month. After 3 months of that, and not seeing ANY change in leads or sold units, I called my rep and explained my frustration. He explained that he could put me in the next package for only $1,100 and he assured me that I would see more traffic. I didn't.

So then I cancelled. CarGurus will not host your inventory for 90 days after you cancel. My cars will start showing back up there in June/July.

To answer your other question, some third party sites are a lot more popular in certain areas than others.

 

[Weather Man]

cars.com and carsoup.com are my usual go to search sites for cars. autabuy.com for dreaming.

 

[Lambeau]

Nick,

1) Do dealers like or dislike performing warranty work on vehicles purchased at other dealerships?
2) Do they have any choice not to fix it?

One of the roof rail covers on my wife's new Explorer continues to come loose. I don't want to drive 90 miles to the selling dealership to get it fixed. I want to use the local dealership that we go by 3x-4x/week instead.

Thanks,
Curly

 

[13COBRA]

Nick,

1) Do dealers like or dislike performing warranty work on vehicles purchased at other dealerships?
2) Do they have any choice not to fix it?

One of the roof rail covers on my wife's new Explorer continues to come loose. I don't want to drive 90 miles to the selling dealership to get it fixed. I want to use the local dealership that we go by 3x-4x/week instead.

Thanks,
Curly

They dont mind. We get paid to do warranty work, however they dont make as much doing warranty work as they do customer pay.

They can refuse, but they won't.

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[Sinister04L]

Nick, when do you expect the '20 GT500 and Explorer to hit the ground? My wife and I are in the market.

 

[RDJ]

cars.com and carsoup.com are my usual go to search sites for cars. autabuy.com for dreaming.

I do my daydreaming with the DuPont Registry. that shit is gold from old cars to modern exotics and everything in between

 

[Zymologist]

They dont mind. We get paid to do warranty work, however they dont make as much doing warranty work as they do customer pay.

They can refuse, but they won't.

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This is interesting. A few years ago I had a Toyota subject to an oil consumption campaign from the factory. My car was using more than a quart of oil per thousand miles. The dealer told me my car passed the test. I insisted on paying for a second test and witnessing the sealing of the engine at the start of the test and the unsealing and checking of the oil level at the end. At the end of the test period the service manager was very nervous about me being in the shop witnessing the unsealing of the engine, siting insurance reasons. I responded that we could check the oil in the parking lot and she relented. Not surprising, the oil didn't register on the dipstick and only barely did after adding a quart of oil. It took it almost 2 quarts to get back to full. I still got hassled and they took a week to check my service records to prove I maintained the car. I finally got approved. It was a big job. I forgot something in the car and went back to retrieve it. The engine was out of the car and disassembled. All the pistons were out. They had it for 5 days and it was absolutely perfect when I got it back. I told the story to many friends and several of them had models covered by the campaign and every single one was told they passed the test even though they knew they had a severe oil consumption problem. Of all the people I talked to who had the problem, I was the only one to get a repair. All were at different dealers too.

Why do you think the Toyota dealership network pushed back so hard on this campaign? I'd think with a loaner car paid for by the factory they could have worked on mine when they weren't working on customer pay cars and even at the lower rate, could still make money on the job.

P.S. I gave the car to my daughter and at well over 200,000 miles, it still looks and runs astonishingly well.

 

[bdcardinal]

This is interesting. A few years ago I had a Toyota subject to an oil consumption campaign from the factory. My car was using more than a quart of oil per thousand miles. The dealer told me my car passed the test. I insisted on paying for a second test and witnessing the sealing of the engine at the start of the test and the unsealing and checking of the oil level at the end. At the end of the test period the service manager was very nervous about me being in the shop witnessing the unsealing of the engine, siting insurance reasons. I responded that we could check the oil in the parking lot and she relented. Not surprising, the oil didn't register on the dipstick and only barely did after adding a quart of oil. It took it almost 2 quarts to get back to full. I still got hassled and they took a week to check my service records to prove I maintained the car. I finally got approved. It was a big job. I forgot something in the car and went back to retrieve it. The engine was out of the car and disassembled. All the pistons were out. They had it for 5 days and it was absolutely perfect when I got it back. I told the story to many friends and several of them had models covered by the campaign and every single one was told they passed the test even though they knew they had a severe oil consumption problem. Of all the people I talked to who had the problem, I was the only one to get a repair. All were at different dealers too.

Why do you think the Toyota dealership network pushed back so hard on this campaign? I'd think with a loaner car paid for by the factory they could have worked on mine when they weren't working on customer pay cars and even at the lower rate, could still make money on the job.

P.S. I gave the car to my daughter and at well over 200,000 miles, it still looks and runs astonishingly well.

Different manufacturers treat warranty differently. Mazda bones their dealer techs hard on warranty times. We have been doing dashboards on Mazda 3's under warranty and the tech only gets paid 1.7 for the whole job.

 

[13COBRA]

Nick, when do you expect the '20 GT500 and Explorer to hit the ground? My wife and I are in the market.

Explorers, soon. 6-8 weeks.

GT500, towards the end of the year.

This is interesting. A few years ago I had a Toyota subject to an oil consumption campaign from the factory. My car was using more than a quart of oil per thousand miles. The dealer told me my car passed the test. I insisted on paying for a second test and witnessing the sealing of the engine at the start of the test and the unsealing and checking of the oil level at the end. At the end of the test period the service manager was very nervous about me being in the shop witnessing the unsealing of the engine, siting insurance reasons. I responded that we could check the oil in the parking lot and she relented. Not surprising, the oil didn't register on the dipstick and only barely did after adding a quart of oil. It took it almost 2 quarts to get back to full. I still got hassled and they took a week to check my service records to prove I maintained the car. I finally got approved. It was a big job. I forgot something in the car and went back to retrieve it. The engine was out of the car and disassembled. All the pistons were out. They had it for 5 days and it was absolutely perfect when I got it back. I told the story to many friends and several of them had models covered by the campaign and every single one was told they passed the test even though they knew they had a severe oil consumption problem. Of all the people I talked to who had the problem, I was the only one to get a repair. All were at different dealers too.

Why do you think the Toyota dealership network pushed back so hard on this campaign? I'd think with a loaner car paid for by the factory they could have worked on mine when they weren't working on customer pay cars and even at the lower rate, could still make money on the job.

P.S. I gave the car to my daughter and at well over 200,000 miles, it still looks and runs astonishingly well.

It is an insurance nightmare for consumers to be in the shop.

I think it's just a coincidence. Dealers wouldn't falsify tests to not get warranty work, hell if anything they would falsify a test to get the work. (Wrong, and will get caught and charged back..but it happens often.)

Different manufacturers treat warranty differently. Mazda bones their dealer techs hard on warranty times. We have been doing dashboards on Mazda 3's under warranty and the tech only gets paid 1.7 for the whole job.

Yep. I'd LOVE to see any tech perform a recall (vast majority of recall work) in the amount of time that Ford pays.

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[RDJ]

@13COBRA what do you think the chances of us former focus owners seeing any money as a result of that class action transmission lawsuit?

 

[13COBRA]

@13COBRA what do you think the chances of us former focus owners seeing any money as a result of that class action transmission lawsuit?

Ford pretty much covered themselves with the extended coverage up to 100k on them. Any class action would likely pay out a couple hundred dollars, max.



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[RDJ]

Ford pretty much covered themselves with the extended coverage up to 100k on them. Any class action would likely pay out a couple hundred dollars, max.

https://jalopnik.com/ford-faces-4-b...PPcvALj5U0QhMGm8fdYflJWiuPxQ5S4fe950shFa406oI

interesting article about it. I will be watching it carefully cause I do want my cut. but then if their stock starts falling again I will just buy more of it LOL

 

[13COBRA]

https://jalopnik.com/ford-faces-4-b...PPcvALj5U0QhMGm8fdYflJWiuPxQ5S4fe950shFa406oI

interesting article about it. I will be watching it carefully cause I do want my cut. but then if their stock starts falling again I will just buy more of it LOL

I saw that.

I think they'll get a favorable ruling as they've purchased back tens of thousands, extended the warranty coverage and provided additional private cash offers to Focus/Fiesta owners. They'll argue that if they knowingly were producing bad transmissions, that they wouldn't have copped hundreds of millions in "relief" funds.

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[RDJ]

I saw that.

I think they'll get a favorable ruling as they've purchased back tens of thousands, extended the warranty coverage and provided additional private cash offers to Focus/Fiesta owners. They'll argue that if they knowingly were producing bad transmissions, that they wouldn't have copped hundreds of millions in "relief" funds.

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Idon't think I ever got any "private cash offers" and I got screwed when I traded it in due to the transmission issues. I DEMAND recompense damnit LOL.

it will be interesting to see where it goes

 

[SHOdown220]

This is interesting. A few years ago I had a Toyota subject to an oil consumption campaign from the factory. My car was using more than a quart of oil per thousand miles. The dealer told me my car passed the test. I insisted on paying for a second test and witnessing the sealing of the engine at the start of the test and the unsealing and checking of the oil level at the end. At the end of the test period the service manager was very nervous about me being in the shop witnessing the unsealing of the engine, siting insurance reasons. I responded that we could check the oil in the parking lot and she relented. Not surprising, the oil didn't register on the dipstick and only barely did after adding a quart of oil. It took it almost 2 quarts to get back to full. I still got hassled and they took a week to check my service records to prove I maintained the car. I finally got approved. It was a big job. I forgot something in the car and went back to retrieve it. The engine was out of the car and disassembled. All the pistons were out. They had it for 5 days and it was absolutely perfect when I got it back. I told the story to many friends and several of them had models covered by the campaign and every single one was told they passed the test even though they knew they had a severe oil consumption problem. Of all the people I talked to who had the problem, I was the only one to get a repair. All were at different dealers too.

Why do you think the Toyota dealership network pushed back so hard on this campaign? I'd think with a loaner car paid for by the factory they could have worked on mine when they weren't working on customer pay cars and even at the lower rate, could still make money on the job.

P.S. I gave the car to my daughter and at well over 200,000 miles, it still looks and runs astonishingly well.

That's weird, I drool over oil consumption cars, just had one this week that netted me enough commission to cover my car payment plus my wife's car payment. I'll write those tickets all day every day lol. To be fair the techs get screwed in those under warranty though, I actually make more as the writer than the tech does, due to parts being so expensive.