GlosGuy that’s a brilliant explanation and rationale & indeed should be a pint of good practice for dealers to be open and honest with customers. In 20+ years as a motability customer I’ve maybe had one good ‘motability advisor’ – the motability accreditation system isn’t fit for purpose. it’s always good to read the rare nugget of people having dealt with a food dealer. And the current industry issues withstanding, and a wide variation in manufacturer logistics and CRM. i think most people would rather have an explanation like you’ve articulated above
I learnt the hard way Dante, after a bad experience with our first Motability car at a VW dealership. I didn’t understand how the system worked at that stage and assumed that the car had been ordered only to find out two months later that it hadn’t. Now I specifically ask the questions that I mentioned.
When we ordered our current car last year I asked the BMW sales person (who I trust, having ordered privately from them) whether they had any available build allocations for X1’s. They didn’t, but hoped to within 1 to 2 months. As we had negotiated nearly £1k discount off the AP and options I accepted that, but said that if it hadn’t moved to a firm order within that time I would cancel. A week later, the AP dropped £100. The dealer cancelled the order on the Motability system and re-entered it at the lower AP without me even asking, which was great service. Obviously this didn’t affect the ‘actual’ order as it hadn’t yet been placed with BMW. Within a few weeks, the dealer called me to say that they had spotted a cancelled order for an M-Sport model at a different dealership and had called them to ask if they could have it. They were successful and changed that order to the X-Line that we wanted. We got the car in less than 4 months from when we first visited the dealership, and that was during the early stages of the chip shortage.
There are very good sales people out there, but they are few and far between. If you know the right questions to ask it is far more difficult for them to bluff.