AndyPearce

Is it just me or does anyone else think we pre-order cusotmers are not getting the sort of treatment we deserve. Over the space of 24 hours we find that people have been sitting in and even having a ride in some of the cars in the country, it may even be that any old osul could have had a go in the one in Leeds. And then we find that dealers in Scotland have ordered a number speculatively and someone who first see the car on top gear can get one when they arrive and has a choice of colours! No offence to Specman but I think this stinks.

I wasn't even invited to one of the roadshows because Mazda in their wisdom left it up to the dealers to invite and organise, and we all know the quality of service in dealerships varies wildly.

If they are going to let people out in rides in the cars like they did at Leeds then again Mazda should have organised something for the pre-orders.

The American pre-order debacle was scandalous and it's now looking like the UK one may be no better. I for one am extremely pissed off with Mazda's treatment of me as a pre-order customer.

MarkW

Andy,

I agree that both of these issues are bad and we need some clarification on them. I have emailed Mazda this morning, but my contact is on holday until later in the week so it may be a while before I get a reply.

It may be that the car at Leeds was just passing through, and Crabacle got lucky. Mazda indicated to me that they will try to get us pre-orderers into these fleet cars if they can. You have to remember its not just us on here, but over 1000 pre-orderers so anything they organise will be a big event and take some time in planning and execution.

With regard the speculative orders, I beleive that dealers werent meant to do this, as all orders should be going to customers first. If they have done so, I would be interested to hear Mazda's view on this as it makes a mockery of those of us who have pre-ordered 9 months in advance, if there will be unsold cars in dealers during October.

I recently received some correspondence from Mazda regarding the order and delivery process, which implies they are taking all the care that they can in delivering cars in the correct order, and not having unsold stock lying around:

"This may sound easy but we have several other planning considerations to take into account, namely our promise to customers to fulfil them in the order they placed their order and to ensure that pre-order customers are the first customers in the UK driving their car on the road. This is very much our intention and thus it takes a while to work out the most efficient method of allocating production to ensure we get cars to dealers for pre-order customers to test drive, fulfil customer pre-orders and minimise any stock we have lying around to ensure demand exceeds supply. "

Cheers
Mark

ChrisW

I don't think it's a good idea for people to go telling tales to Mazda UK just because a dealer has managed to briefly get hold of a few cars and demo them to a few lucky people. The dealer probably wasn't authorised to do this, but it's a competitive business and they seized their chance and maybe they'll get a few more customers as a result. Good luck to them.

Do we really want to make it impossible for dealers to get away with doing this kind of thing? Next month it might be YOUR dealer. Would you rather they were able to bend the rules a little and try and do a few favours for their customers and potential customers or just stick to the script: "Sorry, you can't see anything but the blue car until October, more than my job's worth to try and do anything else".

bugbear

i know the speculative ordering thing stinks - but there's no real getting around it - there's nothing to have stopped any of us from ordering one in each colour etc and hoping to make a quick quid.

if when the car comes and i really cant live with it - i'm hoping to recover my costs. and if i love it and second hand prices are right i'll be ordering another new one for a year later and hopefully covering the cost with the old one!

it would be nice if we lived in a fair and equal world - but that's communism - overall i'm glad it's a capitalistic society we live in!

Lensman

I'm sure you haven't. I forgot to say "welcome to the forum... err.. 'club'".

Stu C

Damn, damn damn! Wish I had not read this now. I could have been there in 10 minutes flat!

Grrrrrr.

STU

MarkW

Chris,

If that is replying to my post, I have no problem with a dealer taking someone out if they have access to the car and I would not 'tell tales' about it. As I said, Mazda said they would try to sort something out for us, but it takes time and planning. I have not mentioned this to Mazda.

I emailed Mazda on several points, but one was clarification on dealers having speculative orders. Specman indicated his dealer had several of these, and if this is reproduced across the country there could be several hundred of them. This is contradictory to what Mazda have previously stated, and even if it cant be avoided it is frustrating to think I have deposited £1000 and waited 9 months, but some people could just walk in and buy one.

As for Mazda finding out about these dealers etc, I know for a fact they read this forum on a regular basis so they will find out anyway.

Mark

renegade_si

hmmm, don't all of the pre-orders have to have a name and address on them?

So, if any are registered to the dealership or anyone that works in the dealership, then Mazda could pick this up (as they are ensuring orders are corectly filled in order of date placement and not just EP number and thus taking their time) and do something about it (capital punishment is my fave)...

jimbobjoe

I agree that Mazda shouldn't have too much difficulty spotting speculative orders from dealers.

But if they have told them that they cannot preorder unassigned cars, then surely the dealers would be risking their franchise by doing it.

It sounds like mazda have at least tried to strike a balance in the UK, beacuse we know that all dealers will be getting demonstrator cars in the first batch, so that they can immediately start to 'sell' to joe public. I think that was one of the problems in the US, where dealers were left with no cars of their own to try to sell with.

I think Mazda UK do need to clarify whether dealers have been allowed to preorder stock themselves from the first batch.

After the preorders have been delivered though, I would imagine that dealers can then order as many as they want. That would make more sense.

AndyPearce

Don't worry - I wasn't trying to shoot the messenger.

The analogy doesn't really stand up as you won't have implied to your customers exclusive 'first wear' of the Gucci specs. The pre-order system was the only way (in my eyes) of becoming on of the first owner / drivers of an RX-8. If customers can effectively go into a dealer in October and choose a car the dealer has speculatively ordered then this nullifies Mazda's pre-order system to a certain extent.

Ok - so my pre-order gaurantees me a car in the first batch but if dealers have used the pre-order system to get 10 or so in for their dealership then any customer buying one could leap frog me (if the dealer got their pre-order in before mine) and they won't have loaned Mazda £1000 for several months either.

As I said before - I'm not aiming any anger at you, but at Mazda for allowing this to happen.

ChrisW

OK. It just sounded from your posting like that was one of the things that you were emailing them about.
I think there's a difference between them reading a few postings on a forum like this (that merely confirm what they probably know goes on anyway) and actually getting complaints from customers. In the latter case they may feel they have to be seen to do something.

Lensman

That'd be a first!

Titanium Grey

My 2 pence worth.

I believe the leeds car was one of the cars I saw in the Raddison SAS car park on Friday morning.

So what I think happened was the Dealer Principle from Leeds instead of going on his proposed route to Llandudno and back, decided to take a different route. He decided to take the car to his dealership to show to his pre-order customers, as he values them so much.

The mileage is about the same so if anybody checked they wouldn't have seen anything odd. All the dealer needed to do was to give some **** and bull story about not being able to find the half way rendevous and deciding to turn back.

These guys are lucky to have a dealer who was prepared to take this risk for them and I don't think highlighting this particular dealer would be fair. However, by all means tell Mazda how frustrated this makes the rest of us, just be a bit vague about which dealer it was.

Anyway if they do read this forum as regularly as they say, they will know his identity already.

Stu C

Well, I'm a pre-orderer from Leeds, I even spoke to the dealership owner at Manchester when we saw the blue pre-prod and he mentioned nothing of the possible rx8 at Leeds.

So pre-order favouritism? I think not. However, I will be asking them this week why I did not get a chance to at least see it.

STU