I am trying to place an order for a 2023 Raptor with 37 package at MSRP. Every time I find a dealer selling at MSRP, I am being told they won’t sell to me because I am out of state. Any help finding a dealer would be amazing.
This is the push/pull of stealership games. when the ’17 came out it was a clown show, like they had some mystical voodoo powered truck sporting bespoke 24k gold inlays. It was an evolutionary improvement over the previous Jen Juan but we were seeing our share of 10-20k on the outside, but 10-15k over from late ’16 through ... Spring of ’18 as I recall until supply made that untenable. What did we do? Used Ford’s truck locator, heck we even had a user put up the Raptorfinder website so we could find stealerships that weren’t charging ADM. It was alleged that larger stealerships were brokering sales from local stealerships selling at MSRP, only to turn around and re-sell the trucks with a hefty markup.
I think that was happening through the ’20 MY, maybe into ’22 because now you have to have a customer order, and the stealership stock trucks are non existent anymore. So what does a stealership to maximize their fùcking of the consumers? restrict sales to in state buyers.
On the surface that shouldn’t be a bad thing as states like California would have to suffer the consequences of their economic behavior, and the Raptor market would ease SUBSTANTIALLY. Raptor prices in CA are stupid high and a large number of Raptor buyers in CA buy out of state, making their economy even worse and drying up Raptor inventory for the rest of us.
And it’s not JUST Cali, there are plenty of other, particularly urban retail areas that do the same thing.
These ADM games, particularly the surprise ADM; like a bait and switch, you get on site to make an order after multiple calls, texts, etc. and SURPRISE: Your order will be getting a 10,000 dollar mark up -- This gives customers a bad impression of Ford and RIGHTLY so.
I even tried using my bank’s buying service, which had everything spec’d and had their network stealership try to tack 10k on to a Raptor order. S/M literally told me “I don’t care about your written agreement, if you want the Raptor, you’re paying $10k over”. The bank was apologetic but the only thing they could do was pull them from their network. There’s literally no easy way to deal with this kind of dealer.
Up front ADM is what it is; MSRP is a suggested price, negotiations can go above or below and if the market is that bad and everyone’s paying over no matter who they are, ok that’s the market, deal with it. That said, the stealership is making an easy several thousand on a loaded Rap at invoice. At MSRP is substantially more.
This market has made truck buying a PITA again. Your only real way of eventually getting a truck is ordering from multiple stealerships and only ordering with an agreement on price up front. Eventually a few trucks will get VINs and maybe one of them will get built before 2024. That’s the current reality.