Bark's Bites: When Is a Sale Not a Sale? When Is Not a Sale a Sale?

If you happen to live somewhere in the United States where radio waves can be transmitted and/or received, you’ve no doubt heard of the “ Friends and Neighbors” sale that is going on Now At Your Local Ford Dealer. It sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it? Employee pricing for everybody!

Not so fast, my friends.

Like nearly everybody on God’s Green Earth, I qualify for X Plan pricing at Ford. It’s how I effortlessly purchased/leased my Flex and my Fiesta ST. X Plan is Ford’s code for supplier pricing, and it’s typically about four-percent higher than invoice. It also limits the documentation fees that dealers can charge, which can be insane in some states.

Can better deals be negotiated? Certainly. However, for a low-stress car buying experience, it’s hard to beat. You simply walk into a dealership, they print off the X Plan price, you give them your certificate, and you walk out half an hour later with a new set of keys.

Ford also has pricing for actual employees and their immediate families, called A Plan, which is a little bit better than X Plan but it follows essentially the same guidelines. All that’s required is proof of employment and a PIN code you generate from Ford’s employee site.

So wouldn’t you think that “an inside deal for everyone” would be A Plan, or at least X Plan? You’d be somewhat right, but you’d be mostly wrong. Here’s why.

The Friends and Neighbors pricing, according to some TTAC sources, is the same as X Plan. However, X Plan pricing has changed.

Ford has rolled back about $500 on average per vehicle on X Plan. So, for example, if you had been interested in a Fusion on October 30th, your X Plan price might have been $20,000. If you came back for that same price after Friends and Neighbors started, your new X Plan price would be $20,500. Several dealers had to “backdate” sales back to October for X Plan customers who were curious about what their price was going to be after Friends and Neighbors started.

In addition to increasing the X Plan prices, Ford also reduced or discontinued several rebates that were in place prior to the sale. In some cases, X Plan customers would have saved over $1,000 by buying prior to the sale. Not awesome. Also, the same rules that apply to X Plan apply to the Friends and Neighbors sale, which means no discounts for you on the Fords that you really want to buy, like the GT350 or the Focus RS.

However, there is an American car manufacturer that’s having somewhat of an unadvertised sale right now.

According to TTAC sources, General Motors is piloting some changes to their Standard for Excellence bonus (known by most dealers as SFE), which has historically been paid out on a quarterly basis to dealers based on new car sales targets. Some dealers are now being paid their SFE bonuses on a monthly basis, which is causing utter panic in some General Managers’ offices across America. They can’t make up for a slow month with a strong month now; if they miss the month, that money (which is significant) is gone forever.

If you’re interested in a Buick or a GMC, it is almost a certainty you’ll be able to start your negotiations at invoice pricing. The SFE bonuses are paid on a per-make basis, meaning that a Buick/GMC dealer might be doing fine on its GMC numbers, but if it falls short of its Buick goal, they’re not getting the loot. That might explain why your dealer is much more willing to make an attractive deal for you on an Enclave than an Acadia right now.

So, if you’re really looking to get a good deal between now and the end of the year on an American car, skip that Ford Friends and Neighbors sale and head directly to your local GM dealer. If you’re really smart, you might even want to wait until the last weekend of the month, when the difference between selling or not selling that last Encore could mean thousands of dollars for that dealer.

And when you get your rip-roaring deal, be sure to silently thank your friend, Bark, for giving you the heads up.