What the heck is this? $486.00 tacked onto the vehicle price. It's bad enough they throw in D&D which should be factored into the vehicle cost, but this, too? That's $1336 on top of the price of the car.

 

Everyone has it. Mine was 475.

 

Whats the difference if they raise the base price of the car $1336 and don't show this charge individually or break it out seperately? Either way you are going to pay the same.

 

It's so the charges for fuel and delivery are equal for everyone, so everyone pays the same amount.

 

They should add it into the base price instead of pretending it's 1300+ less only to add this crap later. If it's part of the expense of every car it should be factored in as such.

Just my .02.

 

The reason they don't do it that way is because the advertising charge varies by market.

 

they do it for obvious reasons. to make the price of the car seem less than it is. its a marketing ploy. but for is far from the only ppl that do it.

 

Of course that begs the question. . . how much advertising goes into an X-plan pre-order????

I hate that fee. I know I have to pay it but I hate it. It makes dealer holdback look like "profit" when they tell you "it's to cover overhead" ... last I checked, overhead included advertising costs.

One way or another, Ford and the dealers will make money. We just pay what we think the cars are worth or buy something else.

And don't get me started on the exorbitant destination and delivery fee. $850? Really? OK, if they're shipped 1 at a time or by the Fed. Gummint, yeah... but I just can't see the "average" cost of shipping a new Ford hitting $850. I can hire a carrier to ship BY TRUCK almost anywhere in CONUS for less than that.

 

Well, the fee is 1350$ in Canada...

 

OUCH!

 

Please tell me that's 1,350 Canuck Bucks!




EDIT: Nevermind - 1,350.00 CAD = 1,302.26 USD so it's still criminal.

 

I heard somewhere that Chicago and other megacities were much higher...

 

It doesn't go into the MSRP so they don't do it to make the price of the car seem cheaper. It goes into the cost of the car eating into the available profit margin to the dealer. If you and your dealer choice to work from cost up then it has to be factored into the cost. For most dealers and customers they work from the MSRP down so it really has less bearing.

 

Canada may be unavoidable if there are import fees or some crap (even though the borders are basically open). All I know is that Ford charges everyone equally for the cars and that it's supposedly roughly the average for all cars. It makes it viable for dealerships to settle in more remote areas for the customer's convenience, ensuring that there's almost certainly a dealership within 50 miles of wherever you are. I could also see it helping make fair competition around rival plants. Imagine how hard it would be to sell a Camaro in Detroit if it cost the local Ford dealership $10 to ship their cars in from the factory down the street when the local Chevy dealership paid $1000 to get their car in.

Wow I could see that getting crazy.

 

We sell our cars at $300 under dealer invoice. One of the ways we are able to do this is because we spend very litlle money on advertising. We depend on our customers and our manufacturer to do the advertising for us. If the FDAF went away alot of our regional advertising would go away with it. We would have to spend more on advertising and we would have to raise our prices to cover it. Realistically it doesn't really hurt our customers too much.

 

Shipping costs also cover the costs of moving raw materials and other vendor supplied parts to the factory not just the vehicle to the dealer.

Also do forget all of the high tech tracking systems in place so that everyone can tell exactly where there car is at all times and..... oh, never mind.

 

The funny thing is that for the 850$ fee, Karpro's cars are taken by rail from Flat Rock to Toronto, CANADA, then by truck to Rochester NY.

 

I call BS on this... although I mean no offense by it.

"Destination and Delivery" does not include "shipping of component parts" . . . that's covered under the manufacturer's overhead.

RE the tracking... Um, yeah.

 

Not so unusual. I mean 99% of the time the customer pays for the shipping of whatever they bought, not the producer. In the case of components, Ford is the customer, and they just happen to package it all together and send it their customers, who also pay shipping to the producer, which in the case of cars is Ford.

 

Was that a Freudian slip, added for ironic effect?