Understanding allocations

[TXNJ]

Is there a way to determine roughly how many allocations a dealership gets each week/month? In the Dallas Fort Worth area we have several dealers and they all appear to be pretty sizeable. But other than looking at the inventory listing on GM's site and trying to roughly guess how big by comparison each dealership is I don't know how one determines who the biggest (and theoretically the largest recipient of allocations is). It seems like some people on this board have a good idea of where to place orders so that they are with the dealers that get the most allocations. I suppose you can ask your dealer, but that isn't as convenient as being able to look at some kind of chart that shows allocations by dealership. Also, asking a dealer might not get a truthful answer, as they may want that order on their books for future sales, even though they know it will be longer than they communicate to you.

 

[StephenPT]

About all you can do as a consumer is look at their inventory on their website and compare to other dealers you're interested in. Give them each a call and ask how many allocations they get per month. Weekly is not a good gauge as some weeks they might get 5 allocations and the next week none. Also, look to see if they are part of a large conglomerate of dealerships.

 

[zbad55]

If you have or establish a relationship with the ordering manager of your dealership he may give you an insight to the process. When I ordered from my local dealer I was able to sit down and talk with the ordering manager. He showed me the allocations that come into the dealership on Thursday's and how they work. They might get 1 or 2 or they might not get ay at all for that week. As he showed me the list he was able to configure 1 yukon SLT for the week, he then had to look at all of the constraints and then process the 1 allocation he had. Now he had to try and match this with the customer orders which at the time looked to be like over a hundred and who was first in line for an order. It's not a good process but that is what it is,

 

[bunky319]

If you have or establish a relationship with the ordering manager of your dealership he may give you an insight to the process. When I ordered from my local dealer I was able to sit down and talk with the ordering manager. He showed me the allocations that come into the dealership on Thursday's and how they work. They might get 1 or 2 or they might not get ay at all for that week. As he showed me the list he was able to configure 1 yukon SLT for the week, he then had to look at all of the constraints and then process the 1 allocation he had. Now he had to try and match this with the customer orders which at the time looked to be like over a hundred and who was first in line for an order. It's not a good process but that is what it is,

This is the best approach if possible. Unfortunately most dealerships protect their inventory/ordering manager from external customers. It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain. Only 1 dealership out of 4 or 5 that I talked to let me talk directly to the Inventory manager. In lieu of that the other suggestions are about all you can do. It certainly isn't a great process...good luck!