hankanddara Posted February 8, 2015 at 06:54 PM Report Share Posted February 8, 2015 at 06:54 PM (edited) PART 1 - The Good.After doing a fair amount of research on plug ins, I settled on the FFE... but was quickly discouraged by the $36,000 + price tag. I then saw an ad on ford.com for a very attractive lease offer $269/month for 36 months, so I bit the bullet and clicked on the "Have a Dealership Contact Me" button. Within 10 minutes a salesperson from a Dealership in Santa Barbara (100 miles away) called and invited me in for a test drive. There are at least 4 closer Ford dealers and I told her this. She said that her place would have the best selection and the best prices (of course), and to give her a chance before I made a deal elsewhere. I quickly learned that not all Ford Dealers were 'Energi Certified', including the one 1/2 a mile from my workplace. I went to the 2nd closest one and they could have cared less about my business, "Yes, we're Energi Certified, but we don't have any on the lot and they're kinda hard to get... you'll be better off getting a hybrid".Well, Santa Barbara isn't THAT far away, and I admired her eagerness, so I made an appointment for a test drive the next weekend... then decided to read the fine print on the 'too good to be true' lease offer. It was for a base SE and included the phrase 'must take delivery from dealer stock'. I thought, okay, that's where they get you... they're only going to have fully loaded $42,000 Titaniums in their 'dealer stock'. I sent my salesperson a copy of the ad, and told her that I would only be able make a deal on those terms, and she confirmed that they didn't have any base SEs on the lot, but to give her the afternoon to find one. She called me an hour later and had found one at another dealer in 'Metallic Guard' (dark green), and could match the lease terms.My wife and I drove down for the test drive, (in their 'in stock Titanium'), loved it, and started the paperwork. They even gave us a fair amount for my 2007 Explorer Sport Trac, which lowered the lease payments to a very affordable $216 per month... and let us borrow a nice Lincoln MKZ to use while waiting for our new Metallic Guard SE to arrive - she said it would be 'a few days'. So far, so good!To be continued... Edited February 8, 2015 at 09:21 PM by hankanddara Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hankanddara Posted February 9, 2015 at 02:11 AM Author Report Share Posted February 9, 2015 at 02:11 AM PART 2 - The Bad (actually, just frustrating) I texted my salesperson on the following Wednesday to see if she would be able to give me an estimated day of arrival (if it was going to be a weekday, I would need time to find someone to cover me at work). She told me that our car (The 2015 FFE SE in Mettalic Guard) had been sold to someone else at the other dealership, and she was currently on the hunt for another comparable car! Wait... if we have a signed lease agreement WITH the car's VIN, isn't that OUR car? Apparently not. A couple of hours later she called again to say she'd located another one down in San Diego in Magnetic (Dark Gray), and it would be ready to pick up on Friday. I arranged to take the day off, THEN on Thursday my wife took a call from the sales manager who told her that the San Diego dealership had sold our car (again)! Don't you think that if you promise a car to a customer - either locally or from another dealership that there should be some system - either computerized or just putting a big SOLD sign on the car that prevents it from being sold again??? I guess not. Well, they were able to find a third car that they could have for us by Friday - this one in Bronze Flame (a $395 extra cost, and the intelligent entry / push button stop option for $520). We told them that that was good, but we weren't going to pay for nearly $1000 in options that we didn't ask for, and the manager said fine. At this point we thought we were done. I was still happy with our salesperson; willing to believe that the snafus with the cars were probably beyond her control, and I was satisfied that the sales manager had made some effort to accommodate us with the free extra options. Now it's time to go BACK into the finance guys office to re-sign all of the paperwork that we had done a week earlier... this time for the correct car. It all seemed to go smoothly until I got home and read the two sets of paperwork side by side (he asked me to please shred the earlier paperwork on the original vehicle). We had opted for something called the "Wear Care Lease Protection". It costs $750, and provides up to $4,000 worth of "excess wear and use" at lease-end. My wife takes care of small children, and I can just imagine that in 3 years, there are going to be a number of things that Ford considers excessive wear, including scratches, door dings, carpet stains, worn tires, etc. etc, so we did it. Upon reviewing the new Wear Care Addendum, the maximum coverage was all of a sudden $2,500 instead of $4,000! What the hell? I sent the manager scans of both forms, and asked him what was up. He called back immediately, apologizing, saying that the F & I guy had obviously "used an old form" the second time around. He also told me that he was reviewing the paperwork and discovered that my down payment was TOO LARGE for a Ford lease! I'd never heard of such a thing, plus we didn't put any money down, just the value that they gave us for my Explorer Sport Trac. Bottom line is that my monthly lease payments are going up $12, and they're going to send me a check for $420 dollars. They overnighted the corrected Wear Care document for my signature, and I'm still waiting for my $420 check to arrive in the mail. Bottom line, I LOVE the car, I'm satisfied with our salesperson, but It's clear to me why car dealerships in general get such a bad rap. Sorry this was so lengthy, but I wanted to get it all off of my chest while it was still fresh in my memory. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hybridbear Posted February 9, 2015 at 02:57 AM Report Share Posted February 9, 2015 at 02:57 AM Interesting experience. Ford does have rules about down payments on leases. The Federal tax credit of $4007 should show as part of the down payment in addition to the trade-in. Dealerships frequently have the issue with the Focus Electric since it gets a $7500 tax credit plus a $4000 Ford incentive most of the time. Dealers usually have to somehow override the error in the system to allow the lease to go through. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hankanddara Posted February 9, 2015 at 05:12 AM Author Report Share Posted February 9, 2015 at 05:12 AM The total of rebates was $5,757. Not sure how much was federal, as it wasn't itemized. And they gave me $7,800 for the truck. I didn't mind since it was still well below the advertised $269 that I was prepared to pay. I felt that the F & I guy should've known the rules AND used the correct forms. His actions help perpetuate the negative reputation of car dealers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hybridbear Posted February 9, 2015 at 01:38 PM Report Share Posted February 9, 2015 at 01:38 PM The total of rebates was $5,757. Not sure how much was federal, as it wasn't itemized. And they gave me $7,800 for the truck. I didn't mind since it was still well below the advertised $269 that I was prepared to pay. I felt that the F & I guy should've known the rules AND used the correct forms. His actions help perpetuate the negative reputation of car dealers.$5757 = $4007 Federal Tax Credit & $1750 Ford incentives Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexracer Posted February 10, 2015 at 06:54 PM Report Share Posted February 10, 2015 at 06:54 PM In General this is what I would say is the biggest problem Ford has. Dealing with Dealerships. Its not just Ford, its all American dealerships, and as I just learned the other day, Land Rover is the worst (at least from a repair experience perspective). On one really big hand having multiple different dealerships competing for your business is a good thing, but on the other hand, not having a uniform business model that everyone is working from is a huge negative. This is where Tesla's business model starts to look attractive. I will say my experience buying my car was amazingly good, but I was "on guard" the entire time waiting for "something" to come up that made the deal I had pre-arranged to not be real. If the overall experience could be cut down to 1-2 hours (if the customer desired) and things were black and white where people didn't have to be on guard to be ripped off, that would hugely improve the entire car buying experience. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rexracer Posted February 20, 2015 at 05:26 PM Report Share Posted February 20, 2015 at 05:26 PM Chevy has finally figured out that the old way of dealers selling people cars is not working, and is sending/forcing people to go to Disney for training! http://carbuying.jalopnik.com/why-is-chevrolet-sending-their-dealers-to-disney-1686731823/+damon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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