A broker that we know that was supposed to track down a FEH for us just told us that she got a letter from Ford saying that the 2009 FEH's are on some kind of quality control hold from Ford and she wouldn't be able to get one in the near future because Ford has them on hold or something because of quality issues.

super

 

I have a FEHL on order being built this week so I've been watching the progress on the Blueoval forums tracking section and all the hybrids built from 9/10 on were not being released from the factory. It might have been a shipping problem but I am seeing them now shipped from an update today. I don't know if that is in reference to that or if they are going to be filling fleet orders soon or if your broker is using that as an excuse for not being able to get allocation.

The only other thing I noticed in the tracking is the lack of new posts of VIN numbers. Every Thursday in August they were scheduling new hybrids and I have not seen a new VIN since I received mine on 8/28. Could it be a hold or a coincidence that no one on the site has received a VIN number in September? Seems like a small chance that no one in 3 weeks has posted one now that I'm thinking about it.

 

hmm yea got to find out more info. I thought maybe that was an excuse because they couldn't get one right away. we'll see.

 

Fleet orders were on material hold till Sept/Oct sometime ago but I've seen no other holds on retail orders. With allocations limited and prices high from the dealers, Brokers have little chance of getting one and making any profit off the sale.

The BIG PICTURE of what may be happening with Ford and other US car makers is on TV right now. We're talking at lease a 700 BILLION BAILOUT of our Loan Industry. If Ford Motor Credit is in the same shape Wall Street is in, why should Ford continue to build when there is no money to loan for purchases. I've already read a few days ago that Ford was planning on layoffs even at the KC Plant. ViperPilot has discontinued VIN Tracking within the last 24 hours and I don't buy his excuse. We're on the verge of a DEPRESSION FOLKS! Until this huge problem is solved, every ones hands are tied.

GaryG

 

Hey Gary, where does VP say he's discontinuing the VIN tracking? I was just over at blueoval and I saw some of his tracking posts from this morning but couldn't see where he says he's stopping.

 

Here is what was posted:




Sep 22 2008, 09:36 PM


Colonial Warrior


Group: Blue Oval Members
Posts: 4,550
Joined: 4-April 07
From: 13th Colonial Squadron, Picon




...continued...because I'm sick and tired running around here dispelling rumours and assumptions.

I'm thinking it's a good time to put the tracking on indefinite hiatus.


Must have changed his mind.

GaryG

 

Must have had a bad day... I think we've all been there before!

 

VIN numbers are "issued" in batches at the beginning of each month (not on the 1st of the month... but within the first week or so). Because of the low allocation for most states (other than California), you'll see a bunch of VINs issued... then nothing for many weeks. The VINs issued aren't for cars being built that same month, but rather these are the VINs for what they plan to build the following month. This is pretty much unique to the FEH due to the high-demand and low manufacturing capacity.

I'm guessing this is what you might be noticing. In about 1-1/2 weeks you should see another big batch of VINs. The VINs issued in early October will be for FEHs intended to be built in November.

 

The VIN issuing does not seem to be done in batches at the start of the month. The Serialize Date is the date that a VIN number is assigned to a vehicle. That is a date defined by the Ford employee that provides vehicle tracking. These dates have been assigned weekly through the month of August every Thursday, from 8/14, 8/21, to 8/28 when my VIN was created. It was spotty before that with production starting and then stopping again in July but it about every week with a gap during the shutdown. From that point it's about a month before it hits the production line and I have not seen any new requests for the month of September.
It could be that Ford has changed to a monthly assignment of VIN's from this point forward but I have not seen any assigned for September and it has been weekly up to this point.

 

Maybe it depends on your region. I ended up having to call Ford corporate when I noticed at the BlueOval website, just about every order tracked showed the date the order was accepted, then showed the VIN being assigned either almost immediately or after about a month. I had been on my 4th month of waiting when I started pressing the dealer and the Ford regional rep that something was obviously fishy with my order. The Ford regional rep pretty much said "I don't believe you know of anyone who ordered an FEH after you and is already driving it." -- so of course I went to the website and showed them order & deliver dates of all these people who ordered their cars AFTER me -- and not only was I not _driving_ my car... I couldn't even get the VIN number assigned.

This ended up getting escalated to a director at Ford who called me back. He explained what's going on with the car, fessed up that my region (which is basically most of the state of Michigan) has a very limited number of cars per month -- there are lots of regions in the same situation, but some regions (e.g. California regions) seems to be able to get all the FEHs they want.

To help put me at ease, he looked up my order number, checked the queue of orders to see where I was in the queue, looked at the monthly allocation for my region, and estimated when my car would actually be built (even though I have no VIN yet).

It was then that he explained that each month, in the first week of the month, they do their production planning for the following month, then issue the VIN numbers for those cars and told me approximately what day the VIN number will be issued for _my_ car (he basically said my VIN will get issued in the first week of October so I should probably phone the dealer the 2nd week of October and they should finally have the number for me to track.) But he was clear that for my region the VINs were all issued only in the first week of the month -- so if my VIN wasn't issued there would be no point in calling the dealer for the rest of the month to check progress.

I've been very careful to say that this isn't the same for _all_ regions. California, for example, is a huge exception. So you'll see VIN numbers for cars in those states issued all the time. But if you live in Michigan, you can't even order an '09 FEH anymore. Michigan's allocation ran dry on August 15th. Anything ordered before that date will get their car. Any orders after that date probably resulted in a follow-up call from frustrated dealers that had to explain to the customer that they're probably not _really_ going to get their car at all unless there are some cancellations.

I don't know what the other "exception" regions are... I suspect Florida and possibly New York are the others, but it's regional. Some regions span multiple states, other regions don't even make up a full state. For example I think upstate NY is not the same region as NYC.