Yessir!
The Jeep website is not even close to accurate. if you look at most of those they will probably say "in transit" so really there are no where near that many actually available. The other side to this is if I am paying 50k +/- for a mid size pickup I am going to get what I want. I have not seen 1 rubicon on a dealer lot that doesn't have leather. I really don't want leather. It is hot and sticky here in Florida not to mention I have found the leather seats to be too firm for my liking. So order it is. I actually think that the ability to "see" where it is with the status updates makes it worse. In a day where Amazon will deliver same day in some instances just makes the process harder to deal with.
The reason I've ordered all my vehicles for the past 20 years is so I get exactly what I want. After being stuck in D for a month, I started searching dealers all over Utah and Colorado. When I checked, I did not find a single vehicle with the trail cam...or with a steel bumper...or with cloth seats...let alone with all 3. I also did not want leather. I'm happy to wait to get exactly what I want...well, almost exactly. I will not like the black cloth seats, but I already ordered a set of gray Bartact Tactical seat covers that will pretty much match the Billet Silver exterior and be much cooler than black. However, Bartact sent the wrong color. I will talk to them about that tomorrow.
This is why I am not upset at the wait. This is the first vehicle I have ordered, everything else I bought off the lot. I placed the order on 5/4 and my vehicle left Toledo on a train a week ago. It seems long to me but I don't have anything to compare it too, so I don't know what a normal time is to custom order a vehicle.
My suspicion is that even though it seems like most people are ordering I would think that it really amounts to a small percentage of overall sales. I don't think it is something they want to invest heavily in for a small percentage of customers. Now the other side of this is that those who ordered are likely the most loyal customers so what is their satisfaction worth. I have owned Jeep and Ram vehicles for a while now and will admit to a bit of a love hate relationship but honestly I haven't had any better or worse experiences with other manufacturers. Well except Mitsubishi, I wouldn't buy one of those with someone else's money.
I have owned Jeeps and Ram trucks for years, my first Jeep was a 59 Willys and I think of all the manufacturers over the years, FCA does the best job. But FCA used to have a web link you could use to check status, and they took it down a couple years ago. The cost for it is negligible, the development effort is negligible. This would be an easy win win for FCA and the customer
Right, because it would be much better for things to go wrong once people get ownership of a vehicle.
That system was called VOTS (Vehicle Order Tracking System, if I remember correctly)...and you could track your Jeep through the build and the shipping process. I used it with my 2013 JK. It was great. My understanding is that it was discontinued because some bozos using the internet decided to show up at various shipping points and demand access to the vehicles that they ordered. There's always a few jerks that ruin it for everyone else. While I would prefer to still have that system in place, I think Jeep has done an overall decent job with the launch and orders. Yes, there have been hiccups...understandable with a new model despite what some people think.
