The Ford dealers in my area are idiots...

So I've taken a liking to the Fiesta ST. It's gotten glowing reviews in every magazine I've read, it looks cool to me, it'll fit my kids in the back and it comes in a shade of green I've only seen on a Lamborghini until now. Heck, even the GRM message board likes it (for the most part). I had decided I needed a test drive.

After checking closest dealer's web site I called them to arrange a test drive. It looked like they had 3 in stock so when I talked the receptionist girl I specifically said I wanted to test drive a Fiesta ST and she said, "No problem. I showed up the next day all excited to drive this cool car. After half an our of waiting (with my whole family in tow) the sales guy breaks it to me that they don't have any ST's in stock. I whip out my smartphone to show him the listings on their website inventory. His response; "Oh, those are in transit.I can call you when one comes in, would you like to drive an Edge instead? We have a lot of those in stock." I keep my cool (even though I've wasted an hour and a half of my precious weekend at this point) and say no thanks to the Edge test drive. I give him my phone number and he agrees to call me when an ST shows up. Arrghh.

Fast forward two weeks and while I'm driving around at lunch this past Friday I see this guy in traffic: I tail him around the corner to the local Ford dealer and find out that Ecoboost challenge will be in Orlando tomorrow! Sweet! I sign up immediately on my phone. I have to take the last spot of the day at 5 p.m. due to family stuff. I leave my house at 4 and haul ass over to the orange county convention center to get my drive. I get there at 5 til 5 and what has happened? Weather delay due to lightning. About 50 of us mill around until 5:30 when they finally call it off for the day. AAAARRGGGHH. I can't blame them due to safety of the people working the event, but none the less very disappointing.

Not to be deterred I call ANOTHER Ford dealer in the area today that also listed on their own web site having 3 ST's in stock. This time I made sure to be VERY CLEAR about what I was looking for before driving over there:

Me: I see you list 3 Fiesta ST's in stock, do you actually have these cars in stock?

Receptionist: Let me check with the sales manager.

Me: OK, thank you.

Receptionist: He says we do indeed have a couple.

Me: Are you certain they are ST's? Not SE.

Receptionist: Let me ask just to make sure.

Me: OK, thanks.

Receptionist: Yes, he says they are ST's

So I drive the 20 minutes over there and what do I find? You guessed it. NO FIESTA ST's!!!! They had a Focus ST and that was what the sales manager was talking about. Are you friggin kidding me? On top of all that they had a huge Painted "ECOBOOST CHALLENGE" graphic on their front window, yet they had no idea about the event that had just happened. I told them this was the second time this idiocy had happened. Once again the sales jerk offered to call me when one comes in. I said no, don't call me. EVER. I'm done. I'll just fix what's broke on my AW11. It'll be cheaper anyway.

To the OP, you must be young to have not experienced this. And please don't pick on just Ford, as ALL salesmen are this way...

General dealerships simply don't have a clue how to sell performance cars. They are all like this.

Back in the early 2000's, I was shopping for a SRT-4, and a saleman straight up told me: "No one is dumb enough to buy a 20K+ Neon"....so yeah, they are all idiots.

I was looking for a used Civic/Sentra/Corolla/Mazda3 type vehicle and I grilled the salemen on the cars on ebay or computer listings - "oh, we just sold that one".

Yup typical half assed sales staff not understanding or listening to what a customer wants.

When you called and asked about a Fiesta ST and you get pointed to a Focus ST or an EDGE and you reconfirmed it on the phone. That's a problem.

1-800-392-3673 is Fords complaint line. Call them, tell them what happened and tell them what you want. Have them get in touch with a dealer that has the inventory. They can tell what is sitting.

Good luck

In reply to Datsun1500: He said he specifically called and they said it was in stock. That's idiocy, get him in the door try to sell an edge....

A dealer (regardless of mfg) will tell you ANYTHING to get you to physically show up at the dealership. Lie through their teeth. When you get there, they will say it just sold, or its out to detail, but we do have this totally unrelated car that is the total opposite of what you want but is "a better car."

The website stuff is almost irrelevant. E36 M3 happens.

The fact that he went out of his way inquiring about EXACTLY what he wanted to see and they TWICE affirmed it and STILL either lied or were too unimformed/ignorant or stupid to answer correctly is unforgivable.

+1 for the Ford guys being especially dull. I went through this when I was looking at an EcoBoost Flex, called, ensured that they had one, went down, not one on the lot. Left my name, please call me when you get the $50,000 vehicle with no rebates or incentives (more money for you salesperson) that I want to buy...not one call. Idiots.

When I went from an AW11 to a Fiesta ST, I had a similar run around. Found the approximate price I wanted to pay online, and started calling to see who could get in the ballpark. All of the dealers near me doubled the monthly payment I wanted. I am no math whiz, but I can do an amortization payment and double check it against the Ford site and be close. Idiots.

I wound up e-mailing every dealer in the area with an offer, and one contacted me and was willing to do the deal. They had a black ST on the lot, no Recaros, the exact car I wanted. Not one other dealer even contacted me. Idiots.

My advice is to stick with it. The dealer I worked with tossed me the keys and told me to take it home to the wife overnight and really check it out. (sounds nice but I was practically drooling, so they already knew I was hooked) It is the most fun you can have for the money and it puts a smile on my face every time I dominate HS or commute to work.

Datsun1500 wrote: If they're marked in transit and you didn't read, are they still idiots?

Hey I can understand where you are coming from. I looked at this particular dealers website on my PC and it does indeed show the photo for those vehicles as "In Transit". However, their mobile device website does not show this picture. Instead it has a generic image, it says nothing about the vehicle in transit. I had been burned once already, so that's why I called ahead and was very specific about what I was looking for.

I'm actually not that young, I just don't buy new cars very often. The last round of this was in 2001. I was looking at the Mini Cooper S, SVT Focus, Civic Si and Sentra SE-R Spec V. The Ford dealers were jerkoffs back then too. They treated that SVT Focus like it was a GT-40 or something. Terrible test drive experience. I ended up with the Sentra mainly because it was the most fun but also because the internet sales person I dealt with was straight forward and gave me the exact car I was looking for.

At this point my wife has decided the "car god" or karma says I should not have this car due to all this trouble. So, even if I do buy one every time something goes wrong with it I'll have to hear about how I should have never gotten it in the first place.

I do have to say there was a huge difference in the dealer experience when we went to buy my wife's MINI in 2004. We got exactly what we wanted and were treated well by a knowledgeable staff that never waster our time. I guess that's the difference between a rank and file brand and a semi-luxo one. I'd like to buy a car from a domestic manufacturer, but their dealer experience sucks so far.

If it makes you feel any better all the Ford dealers in my area are ding dongs that are lucky to have dumb people strolling in to keep them afloat.

You didn't miss much with the ecoboost challenge. I stood in different lines for 2 hours and got about 15 sec in an ST and about 25 sec in a Mustang. There was a Street Drive portion, but I wasn't standing around any longer...

Really nice cars, though.

I've found it's not only Ford dealers. They are salesmen, not car enthusiast. Job is to sell cars, get you in the door anyway they can then pass off anything they can get away with.

Datsun1500 wrote: Look at it this way, if you buy a car Monday, it does not get closed as "sold" in the dealers system until it's marked sold by the FI guy, or funded by the bank.

Well, we just bought two trucks on Saturday (cash/cheque) and the ads were down within 2 hours.

So its not they can't, its that they don't, aka poor/E36 M3ty customer service.

In reply to problemaddict: Mrs. DX and I went to the Philly stop this past weekend. The longest line was getting registered. The ST reaction time was pretty fun. Then we split up and she went and did the Mustang course and I did the street drive. In the time she stood in line and got one turn in a mustang in, I drove the Transit Connect, Fusion and Focus in the street drive. After that, I wasn't about to stand in line to drive the Stang or the Escape/F150..

kb58 wrote: To the OP, you must be young to have not experienced this. And please don't pick on just Ford, as ALL salesmen are this way...

That is true but Ford does seem to be particularly bad. My experience with them has been pathetic. What's really sad is they get a sales commission for basically knowing nothing, doing nothing and making nothing but mistakes. I look forward to the day when we will be able to order cars online (like Tesla proposes) and not have to deal with sales people at all although I don't see that happening any time soon.

fanfoy wrote: General dealerships simply don't have a clue how to sell performance cars. They are all like this. Back in the early 2000's, I was shopping for a SRT-4, and a saleman straight up told me: "No one is dumb enough to buy a 20K+ Neon"....so yeah, they are all idiots.

Would have been funny if you told him to check his info packet - the SRT-4 is not a Neon, it's its own separate model.

But good for him for telling a potential money source that he's an idiot, to his face. That always works well as a strategy.

(alternatively, you could have assumed that meant he WOULD sell you an SRT-4 for $19k out the door with taxes and everything)

kb58 wrote: I look forward to the day when we will be able to order cars online (like Tesla proposes) and not have to deal with sales people at all although I don't see that happening any time soon.

Me too! It probably won't happen, but wouldn't it be great to go on a website select the exact options and color of the car you want and then press "order" and have it show up at your house? If they can do it with Pizza they can do it with cars....

mblommel wrote:

kb58 wrote: I look forward to the day when we will be able to order cars online (like Tesla proposes) and not have to deal with sales people at all although I don't see that happening any time soon.

Me too! It probably won't happen, but wouldn't it be great to go on a website select the exact options and color of the car you want and then press "order" and have it show up at your house? If they can do it with Pizza they can do it with cars....

Write your congressman.

Seriously. Do it. The dealers have that locked up. There are other manufacturers who would like to do business that way, but each state has a law against it.

I have to say that the local ford dealer I have dealt with over the years has always been great. Never had a problem. Then again my family has been shopping there for decades. Like everything else develop a relationship with a business and you will get better service. These guys deal with so many tire kickers and people that don't understand that when you are making 20K a year you can not %100 finance a 40K car. Like everything there are two sides to it.

mblommel wrote: However, their mobile device website does not show this picture. Instead it has a generic image...

This is the key. While there is a small chance with a generic image that it literally just arrived today, or maybe yesterday, just assume that no pics of the actual car on the dealer lot means not there. Also note the difference in the 'Stock #:' between generic photo inbound cars and the on-site photographed cars that are physically in stock.

In all fairness, it's not entirely the salesmen who are to blame for dealerships that choose to basically force all staff to follow dishonest scripts which tell customers generic legal-loophole statements like "we have plenty of 'that car' in stock" when they really don't have the specific trim/optioned in stock that you are specifically asking about.

.

dean1484 wrote: I have to say that the local ford dealer I have dealt with over the years has always been great. Never had a problem. Then again my family has been shopping there for decades. Like everything else develop a relationship with a business and you will get better service.

Yes and no...Your family developed a working relationship with a dealership because they were a good dealership to work with from the very first time approaching them as a potential customer. They see repeat business as an important part of their long-term business strategy. You probably would not have done so with a bad dealership treating your family more poorly from the start, with their long term business strategy relying on one-and-done sales with a continual influx of new schmucks. In my experience, a good dealership will have policies in place that try to encourage treating every (actual or potential) customer like they have a working relationship with the dealership, while a bad dealership will have policies in place that decidedly do not. I was fortunate enough to briefly work at a dealership group that was squarely in the former category, but have known people who (very) briefly worked at dealerships in the latter category.

One caveat is that salesmen with low moral standards will still typically last much longer at otherwise good dealerships, than salesmen with higher moral standards do at bad dealerships.

problemaddict wrote: You didn't miss much with the ecoboost challenge. I stood in different lines for 2 hours and got about 15 sec in an ST and about 25 sec in a Mustang. There was a Street Drive portion, but I wasn't standing around any longer... Really nice cars, though.

I posted the 2nd fastest time of the day in the fiST at the Indy EB challenge. 4 runs total in the 37-38 second range for me.

To the OP, you do realize you can always test fit kiddos in a base version, then special order the car you want?

In reply to mblommel:

You can already do that through the dealer. Just do the "build your own", print the final details, and take it to a dealer to fill out the order. Its seriously that easy. Only issues you run into are manufacturer specific rebates that only apply to in stock vehicles......but most dealers I have ever been around will happily check for same optioned cars at other dealers. That's how my neighbor got his MCoA Mustang in that dark cherry color. The Anderson, IN dealer actually went all the way out to New Hampshire to get it.

yamaha wrote:

problemaddict wrote: You didn't miss much with the ecoboost challenge. I stood in different lines for 2 hours and got about 15 sec in an ST and about 25 sec in a Mustang. There was a Street Drive portion, but I wasn't standing around any longer... Really nice cars, though.

I posted the 2nd fastest time of the day in the fiST at the Indy EB challenge. 4 runs total in the 37-38 second range for me. To the OP, you do realize you can always test fit kiddos in a base version, then special order the car you want?

Sweet! Everything I read or see says this car is really just tons of fun. And it's cheap! (for a new car) I did indeed test fit the kiddies at my first unfortunate dealer visit in a base 5 door. They fit fine. Maybe not good for a 12 hour trip, but better than my MR2.

I know you can "theoretically" order a car any way you want one (that is available from the manufacturer). But from what I've seen you're gonna pay more for it than one you find on a lot. I think it also varies a lot from dealer to dealer about how willing they are to work with you vs. pushing you off onto something they have sitting on the lot. I just don't want to deal with the sliminess. Nobody on the Papa John's is trying to talk me into a meatlover pizza when I want half pepperoni half 3 cheese blend. It's easy to get exactly what you want without some half-wit trying to talk you into something else. I suppose I'm a bit Aspergers when it comes to these sorts of situations.

I guess the dealer transfer thing is a possibility, but I'm not ready to sign up for that level of commitment to a deal when I haven't even been able to try out the friggin car.

yamaha wrote: In reply to mblommel: You can already do that through the dealer. Just do the "build your own", print the final details, and take it to a dealer to fill out the order. Its seriously that easy. Only issues you run into are manufacturer specific rebates that only apply to in stock vehicles......but most dealers I have ever been around will happily check for same optioned cars at other dealers. That's how my neighbor got his MCoA Mustang in that dark cherry color. The Anderson, IN dealer actually went all the way out to New Hampshire to get it.

I think you can do that with many cars already but why should a sales person get a commission when you did all the work and they did nothing? I hate to be so harsh and I know I am probably offending someone here but it doesn't make any sense to me.