Yet Another X-Plan Question

[garymkrieg]

According to the FordPartner.com web site you can use the X-Plan to purchase a car by ordering one or by buying one off the dealer's lot. Is it common for dealers to refuse to give X-Plan pricing for ordered cars. I ran into a dealer here in Las Vegas that will only sell a car that is on the lot for X-Plan price.

[hermans]

A dealer does not have to honor X-plan. I buy A-plan and once had a dealer refuse to order a car. I went down the road a bit and had no issues with the dealer that I now give all my business to.

[jeff_h]

I ran into a dealer here in Las Vegas that will only sell a car that is on the lot for X-Plan price.

 

Are you sure it's not the other way around? Seems to me that a dealer may want to hold onto a popular model sitting on the lot to get a good price for it, and thus not sell it for X-plan. However on a retail order the dealer orders it, receives and PDIs it, and then off you go with the car sitting on the lot for a very small amount of time (in 2009 my FFH arrived on a truck at noon and I took delivery same day and drove away at 7pm). But then again maybe the dealer doesn't want to use an allocation on a sale that doesn't yield a lot of profit, but geez I would think it's such an easy sale.

Edited August 26, 2014 by jeff_h

[hybridbear]

I thought X-Plan sales got higher profit for dealers than a normal sale sold only a few hundred dollars above invoice price.

[garymkrieg]

Jeff, I'm sure it's not the other way around. I'll check again but the salesman, who had just talked to his manager, was pretty clear.

[corncobs]

I had the same experience with my dealer.

 

Order the car with X-Plan no problem use the X-Plan on a car on the lot no way. ( higher profit to be expected on the car from the lot )

[keith705]

There are quite a few rules covering X-Plan sales, most are for the dealership so you don't have to worry about them. Of those, the key one for this discussion is our choice to participate as Ford doesn't require a dealership to participate in plan pricing. As a consumer your biggest concern to stay with program rules is that you have to deal directly with dealership employees at the dealership where you will be making your purchase, so you can't hire a broker or use another 3rd party. Another thing to keep in mind with plan purchases is that they're monitored directly by Ford, so if you want the extra piece of mind that somebody else is checking to ensure your deal is structured properly and doesn't include any "unusual" fees it's a great way to buy a car. You also don't need to haggle on the selling price, in fact the dealership can't negotiate a different price for a plan purchase as that defeats the entire reasoning behind the plan pricing.

 

From the dealership perspective they can have various reasons for refusing to order (or sell in-stock) at plan pricing. For example if you're looking at a Fusion Hybrid SE and they are in high demand in your market the dealer may want to sell something that's been sitting on their lot for a while and use their allocation to order a more popular color or equipment combination. Or they may not want to sell an in-stock unit if they're having a hard time replenishing inventory.

[hybridbear]

From the dealership perspective they can have various reasons for refusing to order (or sell in-stock) at plan pricing. For example if you're looking at a Fusion Hybrid SE and they are in high demand in your market the dealer may want to sell something that's been sitting on their lot for a while and use their allocation to order a more popular color or equipment combination. Or they may not want to sell an in-stock unit if they're having a hard time replenishing inventory.

Or because they want a higher profit. We had this happen to us when we tried to buy our FFH back in October 2012. The dealer knew that they could sell the car for a premium above MSRP and thus didn't want to sell it to us with X-Plan. Even though we had put a deposit down on the car to buy it they sold it to someone else. They never refused to sell it for X-Plan, but their actions showed that they wouldn't do it. According to the salesman they ended up selling it for about $2000 above MSRP.