A Ford dealership in Foxborough, Massachusetts has come under fire for allegedly asking F-150 Lightning reservation holders to cough up an extra $5,000 to have their reservation prioritized.
A member of the F-150 Gen 14 forum recently received an email from the Rodman Ford dealership. In this email, the dealership claims that it has secured more than 200 reservations for the F-150 Lightning but says its initial allocation of vehicles will only account for 10 per cent of these reservations.
Should customers want to place an order when sales commence in January, they will be slapped with a $5,000 markup on top of the MSRP, the dealer states. The email adds that the first 10 per cent of reservation holders that respond to the message and agree to the markup will be placed as a priority to secure an order and take delivery during the initial allocation.
It is no secret that the Ford F-150 Lightning has proven to be much more popular that the company had expected. In fact, the automaker recently halted reservations after receiving nearly 200,000 of them. Ford had initially only planned to build 15,000 units through 2022, 55,000 in 2023, and 80,000 in 2024. The carmaker will respond by ramping up production to 80,000 units in 2023 but even still, many reservation holders will apparently be waiting years to take delivery.
Prices for the 2022 F-150 Lightning start at $39,974 before a $7,500 federal EV tax credit. Adding an extra $5,000 to that price tag is a lot of money and the forum member who published this email claims to have already moved his reservation to another dealer to avoid the markup.
