Good morning
I Just want to clarify a few points and provide further context.
Clearly I wont be able to address every individual customer situation but I’ll attempt to give further clarity
Firstly, we do not lie to customers. We may have unintentionally given, what turned out to be inaccurate information, but only based on information that was available to us at the time. This is true in this situation and in others, where we have had manufacturers suffer from similar supply chain issues leading to significant and in some cases multiple delays.
Manufacturers typically get their business from 4 channels. Retail ( Dealers) Big Fleet (corporations) Daily Rental and Intermediaries like us which get classed as small fleet as vehicles are registered to the relevant Lease CO’s.
In this case, at some point, MG realised that they could not satisfy all of their orders for these vehicles, and had to make decisions on who to let down.
Obviously they don’t want to let anyone down. In this case, it was one bad call to us ( and other similar businesses), rather than them making hundreds of individual calls. That was left to us.
I’m not knocking them for this, as every one of their sales channels have been affected, and they were caught between a rock and a hard place.They’re a good partner dealing with really challenging circumstances.
There may be a cost element to this too, as we do get some discount because of the volume we do, but not a lot in this market of short supply.
In reality MG are getting a very small proportion of vehicles ordered, actually delivered to the UK in time. And because of the state of the supply chain vehicles are turning up at random times completely out of sync with when they were ordered.
We’ve seen this across all manufacturers, with productions lines literally being halted, while a missing part is put on back order, then having to be reinserted back into a production line out of sequence. Which means even factories like the highly automated and supremely efficient German plants, needing manual processes to augment automated ones. Yes people with clipboards trying to find vehicles with missing parts that came off productions lines weeks and sometimes months earlier.
What It does mean, is that you are seeing customers who ordered via dealers later than they ordered via us, having earlier dates for delivery confirmed. Obviously that does make things look like we are not given accurate information, which is not helpful and I can understand why many of you are frustrated. As a customer I would be too.
As for Greenhous they are the official fleet and rental PDI centre for MG
Shropshire Greenhous PDI Centre wins new MG contract
They take and process orders with MG from Fleet, Rental and Intermediaries etc. then take care of PDI and delivery to the end customer.
I am very confident that we (and them) processed the orders on time, we have that process baked in and automated.
The difference in prices being quoted is primarily the impact of the Grant which we ( along with the BVRLA) are trying to sort. What the lease CO’s are able to do in terms of their rates, is something we are working with them on, and we our doing our best to get clarity on as quickly as possible.
Residual Values have not yet been positively adjusted by lease CO’s, at least not in a way that is noticeable. if by the time we get nearer to delivery that does happen then the benefit of that will be reflected in the lease prices quoted. The challenge here is that any benefit of that MAY be eroded by rising interest rates. It‘s a complex situation to resolve but we are trying hard to resolve it.
We are not trying to “run down the clock”, that couldn’t be further from the truth. We don’t earn anything until a vehicle is delivered, and this isn’t the first( far from it) of these types of situations we have had to deal with across various manufacturers. We have incurred huge costs, installing chargers across the country in anticipation of vehicles being delivered( you’ll have done your research and know how much home chargers cost) . That’s not your problem, but it surely shows how important it is to us, to deliver these vehicles as soon as possible.
It is a s****y situation for all concerned, and I really am sorry for the problems this is causing many of you. It is our intent to do all we can to sort this situation as soon as possible, and deliver vehicles as promised.
We will keep you informed as soon as we have more (relatable) information.
Have a good weekend
Andy Alderson
Vanarama
