A thousand ain't nuthin'

[Joe86]

I've ordered plenty of new vehicles from Stellantis, Ram, Jeep (insert current name here) and have never left a deposit for a rig. Sounds like dealer BS to me.

I have ordered two vehicles from two different dealerships here in Denver and they both took 1k deposit.. and my MD order is the same. Some do and some don't.

 

[ramdaddy]

you are fairly new lets have eighty explain it to you
@Eighty

sigh, it seems this forum has a 'you', too

 

[Raddonkey]

I've ordered so many from my local dealer they stopped asking for deposits years ago. No pressure to buy when it arrives. They simply say if you don't want it when it shows up we will put it in our inventory.

 

[405Forged]

Here’s the thing I think that really gets under most everyone’s skin.

Early orders being April thru say July for example have zero movement aside from a VIN. Meanwhile someone that literally ordered beginning of November has a truck with the same options, color etc…as the truck you ordered month and months before them.

 

[Turbineguru]

Here’s the thing I think that really gets under most everyone’s skin.

Early orders being April thru say July for example have zero movement aside from a VIN. Meanwhile someone that literally ordered beginning of November has a truck with the same options, color etc…as the truck you ordered month and months before them.

It’s pretty interesting my order placed in july was shipped dec 9th due to be delivered jan 10th. Some people who ordered months earlier haven’t moved an inch other than receiving a vin and some others ordered and received their trucks in less than 2 months. I don’t think this has anything to do with the dealer but RAM really has to get it together. I read elsewhere that it was the same when the TRX launched.

 

[Ghost02]

It’s pretty interesting my order placed in july was shipped dec 9th due to be delivered jan 10th. Some people who ordered months earlier haven’t moved an inch other than receiving a vin and some others ordered and received their trucks in less than 2 months. I don’t think this has anything to do with the dealer but RAM really has to get it together. I read elsewhere that it was the same when the TRX launched.

Someone somewhere knows the reason for this. Logic-probably not, but the reason-yes.

 

[Eighty]

It’s pretty interesting my order placed in july was shipped dec 9th due to be delivered jan 10th. Some people who ordered months earlier haven’t moved an inch other than receiving a vin and some others ordered and received their trucks in less than 2 months. I don’t think this has anything to do with the dealer but RAM really has to get it together. I read elsewhere that it was the same when the TRX launched.

It was very much that way for the TRX. Not just the launch, but every year. Same thing with early orders (every year) for Rebels, Laramies, etc.
Ram seemingly builds whatever they want, whenever they want. Some of us have been trying to crack the code for a long time…to no avail.
The only consistent thing is the inconsistency.

 

[AnthonyRI]

This is directed at the early adopters who've had no movement. While those who casually opened orders in the past month or two, those who early-ordered then ordered again, all of whom have either gotten their trucks or see actual progress, we languish in 'WTF'.

Though many don't seem to think a grand down down the drain is a big deal, some of us do. Meanwhile, we're held hostage in the Mark Dodge jail and all because we took action to support Ram, the product and, to some degree, MD, too. I don't know about you but I was initially told 'end of Q3 or sometime in Q4' and I believed that. I knew I needed a new truck by then so the timing was good. Cut to now. No truck, no movement, no idea whether Ram even has my order on its books. MD does but that seems to mean zip.

Given the way this has gone for us, I think a there are two reasonable solutions:

1. Create new orders, for us, and transfer the deposit. MD, you're only going to win IF (big 'if' in my book) you end up with our original order - 10K more in your owners pocket!
2. Refund the deposit so we are free to move forward with a situation where the walk matches the talk.

There's a lot to unpack here, and I'm willing to do so. First off, yes - you caught me - answering the same question a certain number of times, I do save some frequently used language to explain the situation. Not going to deny that one bit, as there is currently a lot of information that applies to a large number of customers.

I am realizing, lately, that there are a lot of newcomers to this particular forum, and while many folks are catching up with the newest posts, our big post is so long that it is impossible for anyone to really go back and read it all. That's a function of a highly engaged group of people, but that also means that newcomers are getting parts of the info - and sometimes I forget that maybe y'all didn't read back through. I've given some shorter answers recently where I could have divulged more.

So maybe this can be a little recap, of what what was and what is:

TIMING/PRODUCTION Originally, RAM stated that RHO's would land in Q3. We told everyone that would probably look more like Q4 for the first bunch of orders, just based on the sheer fact that marketing is always a little more bullish than actual production. If you ordered in April/May/June you did so without Ram having announced their start date. If you ordered in July/August we were already quoting 4-6 months. It was originally supposed to be 8/19 and then ended up being more like 9/19. The start was RIDICULOUSLY slow and they were in what I believe to be less than a dozen trucks per week for the first two months before things seemed to pick up. Now they seem to be cranking things out, but are going to pause for xmas break anyway.

SEQUENCING RAM/Stellantis never builds "in order," - but this is an entirely different scenario. We always knew that some colors would take longer than others, or that a particular feature may drag. The only one we were told about was the BASE level trucks would take longer, we learned that in September. When they first started scheduling things out of order, it didn't seem like TOO much, just a little off-kilter. Then in September it was completely upside down. We had over 180 trucks in D1 scheduled status, and they were all the wrong ones. We alerted RAM and they wiped everything out of D1 status, it seemed to be getting back on track. Things kind of putzed around for a few weeks and then it happened again - except this time they didn't just go D1, they BUILT the damned things. This was in November when they ramped up production. Now, THIS PAST WEEK we saw 30 of our oldest orders actually get some action, but there's still many to go.

REACHING RAM AS A DEALER RAM admitted to us that there was a problem in September, and said they were working on it. When I tell you that we escalated this to the furthest extent of our abilities, I don't know how else to say it. This was not a salesman talking to their rep. This was our owner (Mark) speaking directly to the top. We sent them hot-button lists, larger scale samples, charts, graphs, etc. These people do not work for us, and we do not work for them - we can show them the problem but we can't fix it. At the same time, we do have to maintain a relationship with these people. You would think that the largest RAM dealer would be able to have an ear to those at the top - and we DID! It's just that they couldn't, or wouldn't, fix the problem fast enough. While the RHO is incredible important to me and everyone reading this, what % does it account for RAM sales? They have some REALLY big fish to fry and I'm afraid while our issues were heard, they were not prioritized compared to other things going on. I'm not making excuses for RAM, I'm just sharing what the reality is.

REACHING RAM AS A CUSTOMER Ram is NOT set up to service you all as sold-order customers prior to your order arriving. Read that again. They are not Amazon Prime tracking, they are not Tesla. If you call the customer care #, or chat with RAM online, or troll them on FB or Instagram posts, you're not going to get anything much more than what you can get on the tracker. That being said the tracker IS from RAM. That's not our website (Mark Dodge). When you place an order with Mark Dodge, before you ever sign (or send $ for that matter) you have your VON. It's on the top center of your POC. That, and your last name, is how you can see does your order exist in the Ram system. I have had three customers this week call customer care and give them their VIN #, and then customer care can't find it. They're not looking in the right place, the VIN will not populate, because it hasn't been built yet. they are not trained on how to support sold order customers. So your options are to use the tracker, or ask your dealer. That is the verification. If you want to see a screenshot of your order with today's date on it? Sure, we can do that. It'll have your VON, VIN, name and address, and your current status at the top - like a hostage with today's newspaper.

DEPOSITS There's always, on every forum or FB, someone who chimes in and talks about how their local dealership does not require deposits. That is awesome, and for some people, that works just fine. In our case, with the national reach that we have - we must have deposits in order ensure that our customers are committed to purchasing the vehicle when it arrives.
- RAM actually does hold us accountable for the % of orders that go to their original customer. We do not want to be on the wrong side of that equation and be penalized
- Our entire business model is based on efficiency. If a dealer that does 30 vehicles per month gets one or two extra inventory units, that's not the end of the world. If we did not have deposits, we would have had 3x the number of orders, and probably only 10% more actual buyers. Having that many inventory units of things that do not necessary sell in our local market every day is not a position we'd like to be in.
- RAM does not have to accept our cancellation requests. This is not a right-click delete type of scenario. Yes, I can request to cancel an order, and they'll send it anyway, and we have to take it. It happens ALL the time. And then they can penalize us for not hitting the % match!

With these factors in mind, is why we must stick to the one order = one deposit. We can't have multiples hanging to try to game the system, meanwhile pushing RAM to FIX the system, and have double orders all over the place.

ALLOCATION This is one of those things that we talked about a lot in the beginning, and I take for granted. The RHO is unallocated. These are sold-order-only: This means that ANY dealer can order as many RHO's as they'd like, so long as they have a customer name/address/signature on it. Now PLENTY of dealerships were quite well happy to take orders with no deposit, for their neighbors' cat's aunt who didn't end up buying. We are not here to police that. The speed at which your truck gets built has nothing to do with which dealership you ordered from. We are receiving plenty of trucks and have a LOT on the way, I just wish they were the April/May/June ones first.

CHANGE REQUESTS Ram does not have to accept any change or cancellation to any order once we click the submit button. This is why every customer signs the POC saying "no changes can be made." While we have requested changes for many of you, the overwhelming majority do not go through. It takes me literally ten seconds to request a change, it's 1 email (I do usually batch a few together to make my rep's job easier). The issue is that it goes through seven layers of beaurocracy before it gets to someone who says yay or nay - and the NEVER tell us one way or the other. It either happens or it doesn't, there is no reason response or pattern. So when you're placing your order, assume that's what you're getting.

RHO'S IN STOCK We DO have a few here and there customers who walked away from their order, if you want to buy one of those, email us at [email protected] and ask to be put on the backout list. It is very low-tech. We do not filter for preferences on color, packages, etc. The instock trucks are priced as instock trucks, they do NOT get your same discount that your order had. They are market-priced to sell quickly. Lately that has meant around $3-$5K off MSRP for the first few. This is part of the grand equation that allows us to give the rest of you $10K off, it's all in the averages.

MERRY CHRISTMAS You ordered a vehicle that you really want, and you're going to get it. You're going to get it at the best price we can come up with, just the way you agreed to. It will likely be one of the easiest vehicle purchases you've ever made, without every leaving your house. We at Mark Dodge wish that they'd build them in order - it serves us no good to have October trucks here while May orders wait. But as they come in, and boy they're coming, we're going to do everything we can to make it the best experience it can possible be for all of you.

It is super rewarding to see people receiving their trucks, and I hope that you all will stick with it and have that experience. And that this forum will stay active and engaged beyond this initial ordering - to see all of you drive the hell out of these things in your home towns/states. If we didn't have such an active community of RAM lovers, we wouldn't be the dealership and team that we are. Woof, can you imagine selling KIA's?! Bah Humbug. I hope you all get some mods under your tree this year whether your truck is in your driveway, in transit, or in D status waiting patiently. Even my favorite forum trolls.... just elfs with a little coal in their stocking.... Merry Christmas to you too I know you'll be happy once you're behind the wheel.

 

[Dustin]

It'll have your VON, VIN, name and address, and your current status at the top - like a hostage with today's newspaper.

I laughed so hard at this my wife gave me the side eye.