Overboost

That's what my friend got for three months...I'd be asking for some papers if I were you.

The Sheriff

Is it the Fleet Manager that does the ordering at Ford dealerships? I'd like to avoid any unnecessary hassles, when I place my order.

2011GB/CS

... They only have one person that does the ordering at the dealership where i bought my car. They sell a lot of cars and trucks. They're one of the top dealerships in the Pittsburgh area.

Five Oh Brian

We have 3 of us that place orders for inventory and customer orders (for all of our sales staff). I order Mustangs and all the SVT/Shelby products. Our Fleet Manager orders all the commerical rigs (cargo vans, work trucks, etc.). Our GM orders everything else.

Every dealer is set up differently, though, as to who has access to place orders.

drewzx3

Im getting very anxious they better let me know something soon.

Itravelalot

I did get a copy of the Vehicle order confirmation today. Although I don't think it says anything about allocation, it does show that they had bumped my priority up to 10. Not bad. At least this is something. I guess I will wait patiently for a bit longer to see if they can get me a DORA soon.

holdover

this is how it works at the dealership I always deal with. I tell them what I want, we agree on a price, They try to find the car immediately, if they can't they place the order, I get my car pretty quick. No deposit! I have purchased 8 vehicles from them in 9 years, 4 of them were ordered to my specs, they like my business and work with me, always have. They are a big volume dealer in Christiansburg Va, and know that there are 3 other dealers within 30 miles. I send them alot of business because of the way they do business, no bull.

whoa stang

I ordered a gt in lava on 12-24-10 and got a priority 10 also. If you get a 10 does it mean the dealership had an allotication? Also, how do priority number break down?

Itravelalot

From what I understand, the priority code has nothing to do with allocation. I am certainly not an expert, but I heard that priority codes work like this:

Dealers can use from 10 to 99.

Ford uses 1-9 for things like destroyed orders or something like that.

The priority code for each dealer only really sets the relative priority within that dealer. So if dealer A always starts at priority 20 so that they will have some extra room for emergencies, dealer B starts setting priority codes at 15, and dealer C always starts at 30, then a priority of 30 could come before 15, if dealer C has more allocation or his turn comes up first. The numbers are only useful then in relation to other orders in the same dealership. Therefore, it should only be your dealer who knows for sure if he put other orders as a priority before yours. Either way, dealers allocation and their turn to have an order filled comes, then Ford sees from what that dealer has ordered what the priority is.

Again, I really do not know all that much on the subject, but if you have a priority of 80, then chances are you are not really a priority Your dealer would be the only one that would know for sure though, if I am right. I have a priority code of 10, and that is gr8 except for the fact that I do not even know if my dealer has any allocation for this order. I would be surprised if I get a Dora or a Vin anytime soon.

OAC_Sparky

I will repeat this again. I'm trying to make this clear.

DORA does not equal VIN.

As soon as Ford receives the order, a DORA is produced. Period.
Your order is "in the system". I've seen it. Therefore, a DORA exists.

If the DORA did not exist, it wouldn't be visible in the system, and you will never ever ever get a VIN.

Itravelalot

I find it very pathetic that you are more helpful than the people that are taking my money for the car that I will be buying. I appreciate your help, but why in the world do they not know enough about this whole process to even show me the Dora that must exist. They suck. Since they are going to be getting this money, I should not have to be on the forums researching this. Better yet, they should give all of you a kickback for helping with their bad customer service. Oh well. If it is in the system, then at least I am one step closer to getting my car. I know that the vin will not come soon, but I assumed that there was no DORA yet, because they told me several times that they did not get that yet. Either they are clueless, or something. I know the vin and the DORA are different, but they did not do anything, but show me the VOC that was signed when I gave the deposit (and when the order was updated). I have told them numerous times that I do not wish to be a pest, but I just wanted simple straight answers and updates. To which they kept just feeding me stories about buying the car wholesale, and "we bought the allocation and put the order in the system already, so we expect the DORA and the Vin hopefully in 2 to 4 weeks" I know that the vin and Dora do not come together, but whatever. At least someone tells me what is going on.


Oh well, when I order the 2014/15? Mustang, if you remind me, I will order it from either your dealership, or from Five oh Brian's, since you two actually seem to know what you are doing. I know he is in Washington state, and I have no clue where you are at, but I honestly would prefer to deal with someone who knows what they are doing and is honest. I would not even mind a 1000 mile drive back to AZ, if that is what it takes to get a short simple honest answer.

Edit: Oh wait, you are in Canada. That is not good. Canadian prices are far too expensive for me to buy a car there. That is a shame that you are not in the USA. Canada is not bad, but it is just too far away

Stang-Par

You have every right to be a pest. In fact you have every right to rain toads on the dealership. You were good enough to lay down some decent money at their store. There are some things they have no control over, however information is not one of them especially over VOC and DORAs. If they placed the order, they should have them.

I'm a newbie at this and I just ordered mine a couple of weeks ago. I'm not in a big hurry for it because winters suck around here, but I do like to have information with regards to its progress. I guess its in my nature due to the work I do. From all the reading I've done (and brother I've done alot of reading) my understanding is this (and others better informed can straighten me out if I've misunderstood):

The VOC is just the dealer putting in the order. The DORA is the answer back from Ford that they received the order and it can be built. My observation is that it shows up a day or two after the order is placed by the dealer. In my case it was about 4 days later as my dealer didn't put the order in right away. When I made a change on the build, the dealer submitted another VOC with the change which they put through right away and they received the DORA the next day. They emailed both sets of VOCs and DORAs to me at my request. The DORA will show the day you placed the order at the dealer and the day the dealer placed the order with Ford. My dealer in particular called me and asked if there was anything they can do for me. That's good customer service.

My understanding of priority is the same as you mentioned, its the priority that the dealer wants to assign to their order when their allocation comes up. On any given week I would suspect that hundreds of dealers have their allocations come up. I believe the order in which their allocations are filled is random and they can get skipped if some commodities are short for that order. It seems to work like a draft pick in sports. If you have multiple orders, the highest priority gets picked first on the first round, then the next highest on the second round, etc. My dealer informed me that their allocation comes up the first week of February. What I suspect should happen is my status should change from "unscheduled/clean" to "sent to plant". The information I also got from the dealer is that it's usually a week after that that the vin appears. Then its all a matter of scheduling and delivery which is beyond the dealers control. I'll know more at the end of the week.

Delivery is another matter. It appears that you could get your VIN and earlier build than one person, but their car can get shipped before yours. This can be due to a number of plant issues, transport issues, etc.

Yes Sparky is a fellow Canuck, but he's no dealer. Just better informed then the rest of us.

Good luck and I hope everything works out for you

OAC_Sparky

Itravelalot -- The good news is that even though you don't have a copy of the DORA the order IS in the system. So, at this point, the only thing a DORA is going to do is let you double-check the order.

Why won't they produce one? Could be a few reasons. First, your salesman may just be ignorant of the fact of when the DORA is produced. Second, without knowing what you have agreed with your dealer to pay, DORAs come with the prices on them, perhaps that's an issue to them.

But all-in-all, you shouldn't fret too much, the order IS in, so now it's out of the dealer's and into Ford's hands anyways.

Allocation: Easiest analogy I can think of.

You have a group of 6 men at a round table. The six men represent the 4 dealers in a market zone. Because 2 of the dealers are high volume, they get to have 2 representatives while the other two, just one.

There is a potato. When the Mustang plant starts pulling orders (as it clears out existing orders) the referee hands the potato to Dealer #1. Dealer#1s highest priority order (which is the lowest number, from 10-99) gets pulled, assigned a VIN and perhaps a date.

The Mustang plant builds another car, the referee passed the potato to the next guy at the table, his highest priority order goes in. As Mustangs get built, the potato goes round and round the table until the orders get built.

Now, as you can see, a large dealer might get "2" orders pulled in the same time period (allocation cycle) that a small dealer gets one. It's Ford's way of "rewarding" big dealers (because in a sense, you are not Ford's customer -- the dealer is! You are the dealer's customer!). Just like if you had a store, you reward your best customers with better prices or faster service.

Now, to fill out the picture, instead of just six guys at the table, picture it to be 50. And not just ONE table where this is going on, but 20 tables (for 20 market zones)! And those are just for the Mustangs; there are 10 more rooms "just like it" for each of Ford's vehicles! A dealer that sells a lot of Mustangs historically would get a better Mustang allocation; a dealer that sells a lot of F150s would get better allocation of those.

Now, of course, there aren't people sitting at tables with potatoes. It's all done by computer. But this is the normal process of how things work. What will change things is when Ford sees that there is a particular model line (Mustang being one of them) that has an unusually high retail order rate, they will run a program that will expedite allocation to retail orders over dealer orders.

The principle behind it is to balance things out -- Texans buy more trucks than New York City dwellers, Californians buy more Mustang convertibles than, hell, all of Canada total! So they want to get the most product where they sell it the most. It doesn't do Ford or the dealers any good to have 50 unsold F150s sitting on a Manhattan dealer lot or a dozen Mustang convertibles sitting in Anchorage.

Stang-Par

Does this potato have sour cream and bacon bits by any chance?

OAC_Sparky

No, usually just sour grapes and washed down with a lot of whine errr wine.

12GTBLK

Im in same boat as you travel!

Itravelalot

Thank you Sparky, Deysha, and others. Now I know a lot more of the ordering process, and even that my vehicle has recieved a DORA and is in the system as "Unscheduled-Clean". As much as I have learned, I still have no help from the dealer I am using, but when I need another status update, I will just PM Deysha. It is nice to not be reliant on the dealership. It is even nicer to know that the dealership actually did put the order in, despite the fact that they could not really communicate that fact to me. Either way though, I would rather have the car somewhat quickly with no good communication than have the car later, but have great communication.

Stang-Par

Dealer should be more helpful. After all they had no problem taking your money. Remember that when they send you the survey after you pick up you car and they ask how the dealer did.

At least this forum has a lot of help and knowledge for those that have dealers that left them dangling in the wind.

First Stang

My dealer was no help in tracking my order at all. Once you have your order number and dealer code you can contact Ford Customer Service to track your order on your own. My salesperson was surpised that I knew more about my order status than he did.