Authorized dealerships of Fiat-Chrysler Automobiles have accused the automotive group of flooding their showrooms with vehicles they never ordered.
Speaking in an interview, one of the networks said the carmaker once literally choked the warehouses with 40,000 cars no one ordered, and forced retail sellers to accept the extra shipments not previously agreed upon.
As a result, the dealerships found themselves in an awkward position where they had to boost sales with aggressive marketing and other similar tricks just to get rid of the overhead and get some free storage space. Furthermore, keeping unsold cars also incurred secondary costs, for instance, maintenance-related ones.
Fiat Chrysler has reacted to the accusations by rejecting them completely. The corporation referred to its new demand prediction system that allegedly enabled it to guess how many cars any given seller would need on any given date and adjust the production volumes accordingly. Despite that, an independent study was conducted that indicated that the dealers’ complaints had a reason to them. FCA cars have indeed spent much longer in warehouses than any of the competing brands.