Amazon can track a $2 package to the minute almost, but Ford has trouble tracking a 40k truck..... go figure. Something seems messed up about that.It is weird, a $40,000, 2 ton vehicle is somewhere in pending land ? Actually thousands of them out there somewhere. Who knows ? Anybody ? Ford? And we are talking about just one vehicle. How many other cars and trucks are lost out there in pending land?
Amazon sends a lot more packages, has a lot more practice, has many more data points to build predictions from, and honestly there are simply more people people who care where their package is. To put it into perspective, ford might hit 100k rangers this year, while amazon sends a few million packages per day, and most of the rangers will be bought off the lot.
Not to mention Amazon's entire business model revolves around logistics. Freight shipping is different than retail package delivery.
I'm sorry - I have a hard time giving them a break - we are talking about EXPENSIVE trucks - and if they can't do it, they shouldn't even offer the tracker - all the tracker does is generate false expectations.
Well, if they spent a few million dollars improving the tracker, the odds that it would result in a few million in increased profits are basically zero. I'd assume that what they did was give a limited view into existing data as cheaply as possible. In most cases that's more than enough to give a great customer experience for not much cost. In the case there's a problem, there's no way they'd give access to the internal logs of Bob dinging the door and Ed trying to decide how to fix it and Jack checking parts availability and everything else that goes on when something is screwed up. It's just not a realistic ask.
Agreed that from a purely profit standpoint, it might not make any sense to enhance the tracker. But additional customer satisfaction does have value - it is just that it isn't something easily put on a spreadsheet.
Again, I'm not sure what's actually reasonable. I'm fairly confident that nothing is actually "lost", something just went wrong. Purely from a liability standpoint they're not going to make it easy to find out what exactly went wrong. Given how useless so many of the salespeople are, I'm not sure why anyone would expect them to have deep access into the actual manufacturing logs because it's pretty clear they'd botch communicating that to customers. What they could maybe do is put a cap on how long something can be in a screwed-up state, but what then? Would you be happier to just hear "truck delayed too long, cancelling order"? As it stands if you decide you hit "too long" you can just cancel it yourself--at least you have an option. Yeah, expectations should be managed: this is a ford, not a mercedes E class; you aren't going to get a personalized visit to the factory to walk you through your truck.
I guess we just have different expectations. For a 40k + truck, I expect they should be able to tell me where it is at any given moment, and if it is going to be delayed from what they told me, I would expect they could tell me WHY it is being delayed (it doesn't have to be "Bob from the body shop is fixing a dent", just a general "quality hold"), along with a reasonable ETA of when I can expect it. Saying "I don't know, and I don't know when you can expect it" is just (as someone else put it "piss poor customer service".
I guess from my perspective if it's sitting around in production then it's obvious that something has gone wrong, and if it was quick & easy to fix they'd have fixed it already and it wouldn't need an ETA. The internet has just changed perceptions; 30 years ago if this had happened the dealer would have just made up some BS answer and you wouldn't have any way to know any better and would be happy with the BS. Now when the dealer BS's you can quickly find that out online.
It is a sign of the times. Amazon, the Internet in general and instant tracking have greatly raised expectations for all sorts of things.
