<p>I’m with mini–I very much doubt if this was the car you ordered at all. I agree with the advice to buy a used car and then trade it in later on the car you really want from a different dealer.</p>
<p>Are you saying they shipped the wrong car or is the OP being accused of fabricating this?</p>
<p>In all fairness, let’s remember the Op has only spoken to dealership so far. So there is no evidence at the moment that this is a company-wide Ford conspiracy against the Op. That is a big part of the potential help of going above the dealership to the regional manager. If this was a dealer oversight, or IF the dealership is trying something shady, they will try harder to make it right by the customer to avoid getting reported, or once the regional sees it, he/she will try harder to correct it. Taking the deal offered now or walking away are not the only 2 options right now- there are more avenues to explore yet.</p>
<p>To be fair…it doesn’t MATTER what happened. The OP did NOT receive the color car he wanted or ordered…period. For me it would depend on the color. Back in the day, we ordered a Toyota Tercel…in BLUE…it came in…in YELLOW (kind of a taxicab yellow) which was hideous. They begged me to take that car. I didn’t. There was no incentive…nothing…but I can tell you, I would have walked rather than drive a yellow car. I waited 5 or 6 more weeks for the blue car…which I had for almost 10 years. Yellow would have put me right over the top.</p>
<p>Bottom line…if you hate the color…don’t take the car.</p>
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<p>I don’t think anyone thinks the OP is fabricating this - only that the car company is fabricating this “mistake” in order to unload the color they have instead of the one the customer wants.</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters where the mistake was made…the car is NOT the color the buyer ordered or wanted. The buyer has a decision to make…either take the car in the wrong color (I would agree that oil changes wouldn’t do it for me…how about throwing in the $2000 extended warranty package too)…or look for a dealer who is willing to help him get the car he wants.</p>
<p>
But if the car is special ordered the dealer usually (in my small sample of myself with a few cars) shows the buyer the confirmation sheet from the factory with all the options on it with the color spelled out - not just as a code that no one checks. I suppose it’s possible some procedures were changed since I special ordered a Ford.</p>
<p>
I haven’t seen anyone doubt the OP. </p>
<p>I think the question is whether the dealer actually specially ordered the car, assuming it was supposed to be special ordered, and if so, whether the dealer made a mistake in the order, the factory made a mistake in the delivery, or the dealer was pulling a fast one and sold the car to someone else willing to buy it on the spot, perhaps for more money, so the dealer then tried to pawn another car off on the OP’s S.</p>
<p>The other possibility is that the dealer never special ordered it at all and was just waiting for one with the right color to show up in the random cars that are always showing up in the allotments that arrive and possibly when it never arrived they tried to talk the S into a different car so they could make another sale that month and get the deal out of their hair.</p>
<p>We need an update from the OP on what the status is.</p>
<p>
Maybe I am misreading, but…</p>
<p>
[quote]
I don’t believe for one minute that the dealer ordered the wrong color. <a href=“post%20#15”>/quote</a>
[quote]
There would have to be multiple errors, not just one. The order would have to be entered wrong. The confirmation of the order would have to come back and be unread. The shipping documentation would also have had to be unread. The dealer then would have to have decided, once the car arrived, not to attempt to rectify the error.</p>
<p>Each individually improbable. Taken together, extraordinarily improbable. Can happen. But, as I said, I don’t believe it. <a href=“post%20#%2027”>/quote</a>
That sounds to me like the OP is being questioned. So this post #41
also sounded that way to me. I could be mistaken, but that’s how it sounds.</p>
<p>[“]or the dealer was pulling a fast one and sold the car to someone else willing to buy it on the spot, perhaps for more money, so the dealer then tried to pawn another car off on the OP’s S.[”]
jym, I think the above addresses all your quotes and doesn’t implicate the OP</p>
<p>That makes PERFECT sense, mominva!! The other pouints in that post make a lot of sense. I do not think for one minute that the OP was disengenuous, but the way I read those posts, its sounded like it was put into question. Thanks for clarifying. I just can’t believe a dealership would sink so low and be so sleazy. Oh wait, we are talking about car dealerships. Yes I can. Never mind.</p>
<p>jym:</p>
<p>When I read those posts by mini and others I interpreted them to imply that the ‘dealer’ didn’t order the car, even though the dealer told the OP it was on order so the OP was sitting back waiting for the order to arrive only to discover after it theoretically arrived that it was a different car. This leads one to wonder whether it was actually ordered by the dealer at all.</p>
<p>It also makes no sense that the dealer would have never checked the car for the correct color before calling the customer in to take delivery of it. That’s such a basic thing in that business that it’s hard to imagine it was just an oversight unless they’re particularly incompetent at that dealership. </p>
<p>There’s a lot of conjecture here that hopefully the OP can use pieces of to resolve this. Some of these points are easily determined - like whether it was truly a factory special order or not, where the mistake was made, etc. Simply looking at the window sticker on the theoretical ‘ordered car’ that was the wrong color would indicate if it was a special order or not. The Ford I special ordered I believe even had my name on the sticker if I’m remembering correctly.</p>
<p>Many automotive paint colors depend upon a pigment called “Xirallic”. It gives paint it’s shiny quality. Unfortunately, it is only produced in one plant in the world: Onahama, Japan. The plant is located some 35 miles from the ***ashjima Nuclear reactor which melted down after the devastating Tsunami. </p>
<p>In March, the local newspapers reported that Ford would inform its dealers that certain colors would be in short supply or not available until the Japanese plant is back on line. Ford told their dealers that “Tuxedo Black” and three shades of red would not be available for special orders. The lack of this Japanese sourced pigment may impact other colors as well.</p>
<p>I would ask your dealer or the regional or zone manager if your car color was impacted by the Japanese plant’s shutdown. Hopefully when you do receive the car in your chosen color, the shine is from the Xirallic pigment and not some by-product of the ***ashjima meltdown (if you catch my “drift” (Sorry)…</p>
<p>See: [Car</a> Paint Shortage in Japan Hurts Auto Industry](<a href=“http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_7474.shtml]Car”>http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_7474.shtml)</p>
<p>Note: The Japanese nuclear reactor’s name’s first three letters have been replaced by three asterisks. It seems a proper Japanese name has run afoul of an English idiomatic expression!</p>
<p>^^ that special ‘glow in the dark’ paint.</p>
<p>I doubt this was the dealer making a mistake, and the fact that the car took so long to get in makes me even more suspicious. I know more then a bit about how the auto industry does things like custom orders and this isn’t the old days (and Ford manufacturing control and such is one of the best in the business, literally). Ford and the other automakers are using lean production techniques, just in time inventory and so forth, and unlike the bad old days they have manufacturing targeted down to the hour in many cases, this is not the slop of the past where they ran millions of cars off the lines and so forth, and custom orders were a crap shoot. The story about the paint being in short supply could explain the delay, for obvious reasons, but what bothers me is that no one told the OP why the car was delayed, because that information is known and the dealer knows it, as well (they can track the order, literally from soup to nuts). </p>
<p>I don’t think this was a mistaken order, I agree with others, my 30 some odd years of dealing with dealers and also knowing a bit about what goes behind the scenes, I suspect the dealer found a car with all the options except the color, knowing the car was going to be delayed, either on lot or at another dealer, and decided to try, and prob figured the person buying it would be happy to have a car… what is really weird is normally when cars come into the dealership, they check them against invoices in doing the prep, and if they had the printed copy they originally entered it should have shown it was the wrong color before the person even came in, that should have been checked. Yeah, in theory that could show the dealer made a mistake in ordering it, if they looked at the shipping docs that came with the car that showed the wrong color, but he also would have a local printout that showed the original order the customer made before it was sent in…</p>
<p>Even if I was inclined to take the car (which I wouldn’t be), I wouldn’t take the deal with the oil change and rotation, that is ridiculous, it doesn’t represent much of anything (a lot of dealers these days are doing that automatically, not exactly representing much, you are talking maybe a couple of hundred dollars in value, at most). </p>
<p>My recommendation would be to call up Ford’s regional sale manager and complain, the dealer quite frankly IMO acted in ways the car companies don’t want, they have been trying to get rid of the sleaze factor for a long time, dealer rep is critical in car purchases (to give you an idea, Toyota and Honda have high dealer perceptions, and while US cars quality is neck and neck, their dealer network still has a hangover from the ‘big charlie’ days when dealers treated you like crap…). Among other things, the dealer is in effect telling the customer they should be happy to have a car or that they shouldnt get what they want. Yeah, car color may not seem like much compared to other things, but it is, and who is the dealer to be saying that? If a dealer pulled that on me I would rip up the paperwork, and walk out and go to another dealer, and also send nastygrams to Ford and the regional sales manager. Whether this was a dealer mistake or some sort of trickery, the attitude of the dealer would **** me off, instead of understanding he screwed up and trying to help the customer, he tried to in effect badger them into taking something they didn’t really want,…and for what? oil changes and tire rotation? Please, big charley should be put out to pasture for that one…</p>
<p>It may be the dealer ordered a car correctly, but manufactured wrong. Could be it was ordered wrong. Could be right car was shipped elsewhere and this is a close comparison, could be a dirty deal the dealer is trying to cover for with a car that is very close.</p>
<p>And to Jym- don’t forget where car dealers stand on the “reputation of integrity” ladder- just a half-step above lawyers, landlords, and child molestors.</p>
<p>P.S.- reputations are not always accurate.</p>
<p>spoken like a true landlord, younghoss ;)</p>
<p>but I’m neither of the other 2, jym!</p>
<p>Good thing!</p>
<p>Well, at least about not being a…
hmmm… which is worse ?
;)</p>
<p>I don’t have much to add to this conversation except to say that my S bought a 2012 Ford Focus. Despite the dealer telling him that he could pick a car and a color that he wanted and despite him wanting a car that was much more expensive than the one they had in stock and despite him being very flexible with the color he wanted (basically any color than the yellow, which is hideous) they claimed they could not find him what he wanted and that he needed to take the one on the lot. We looked locally for another Focus but there was nothing in the area that he wanted so he took what they had in stock. Also despite them telling us that he would have a new graduate discount and despite telling us that they would also take $500 extra off the price, they tried to sell us the car at list price. They did sell him the car with the discount after I threatened to walk in the middle of signing the papers.</p>
<p>Anyways, when a month later my H and I went to buy a similar car, we bought a Hyundai. For $4000 cheaper. Same options except for the heated seats, which my S didn’t really need in Texas!</p>
<p>I was doubting the dealer, not the OP, and that’s how I read mini’s comments as well.</p>
<p>Did the car deviate from the order in any other way? If it did, that would be the clincher for me.</p>