Ok so after just speaking to Sean Bradley about the whole CARGURUS situation. I was looking through my personal emails. Like many of you out there I recently submitted leads to cars.com and cargurus and within 48 hours received my wonderful "Hey here's 8 similar cars". I through my little fit ran around with the rest of the tribe and made a fuss posting my Negative feeling towards these lovely money sucking maggots dealer friendly vendors. So today I received an email that brings me to a whole new level of just "WHAT THE HELLDOM" So today almost a week after the initial lead submission I received the following email.
So I am no longer getting the 8 similar cars emails. I just received most likely every damn Honda Accord In New York... Now as a consumer I would look at this the same way I did as a dealer. "WHAT THE HELL" At this point I am all for a good old fashioned village mob scene and storm Cargurus who's with me.
-Eric Nichols-
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi1ZRZHGnik
I believe Cars & Trader and other sites do deliver value but at what cost? How much damage has been done already?
If Dealers boycott the people that disrespect them, it will not only take down that site, it will take down ALL OF THE SITES that were getting inventory from those rogue companies that Dealers have been paying.
Oh, guess what...BONUS BENEFIT...without all that extra inventory on the sites you don't want, you may actually be able to reclaim some of your real estate in the natural search on Google too!
This isn't a simple "oops I accidentally did this" it's a case of "Oops, I've been pretending to give a crap about you guys while taking money from you and making money by using your property to advertise on sites like CarGurus which basically make you look horrible so they can make their paying customers deals look better.
If an employee stole your cars every night, took them to his house and put signs on the car with an email address to generate leads, then came in the next day trying to sell you those leads, you'd fire him and say "hey, you're using my inventory to get that lead you moron!"
When vendors do it, people go - "that's bad, but I'm cool if they say sorry".
If a waiter gave you a beautiful filet, and you ate it and paid for it...but then he said "I dropped it on the floor but look, you couldn't tell and it did taste good" - would you EVER go back to that restaurant?
Of course not! You wouldn't do business with someone who disrespected you like that right?
What makes this situation different? Oh, I know, it's the fear that you'll lose precious VDPs by not being on Cars.com or some of the other sites right? How many are you losing now by these sites perpetuating the stereotype that you're a liar and a scammer who will take advantage of consumers?
Or, what if the precious VDP reports from Cars.com and other sites that we pay for include VDPs from sites like CarGurus and the other sites that are negative toward the dealer and their inventory?
Maybe that's why conversion is so low these days on your favorite site. Maybe it's because your VDP results are all over hell's half-acres on sites that bash your dealership and say "overpriced" like CarGurus.
Who knows what is happening when there is ZERO vendor transparency for dealers but if it is happening, you have to ask if they're using the numbers from sites that slam you to justify why you should keep taking it up the rear on the rate increases year over year?
If this isn't worth fighting for what is?
I just spoke at the Detroit Auto Dealers Association and this Cars.com & Car Gurus conversation was a HUGE topic and I have to tell you that DEALERS are VERY UPSET!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DYXCRsT5Uc
I will admit that I spend a lot of time reading the posts on this page, it has made me significantly better at my job. I rarely comment because it is hard to top what is normally said here, but this whole situation really has me in an uproar.
I have long been of the opinion that the typical third party vendor has the best racket in town. We buy our inventory, pay them to list it and then they use their collective power to knock the individual dealer down in organic search. That alone makes zero sense to me and validates our dealership's strategy of doing away with these relationships. If every dealer would think the same way and find trusted vendors for assistance with legitimate and effective websites, landing pages, SEO,SEM, blog posting, social media etc, we could starve these people out of existence. The problem is undereducated, improperly staffed and lazy dealers who buy the hype that Car.com and others sell. I am all for transparency, we practice it every day. What I am not for is someone subjectively rating our pricing based on "market data" without the slightest weight being given to individual costs involved with our pricing. Especially in the NY market area; how much of the data that a place such as CarGurus uses to "rate" our pricing includes dealers who advertise vehicles way under average $$ but require a consumer to finance with the dealer to get that price ( a biggie in this area)? How many dealers are ok with the idea that they sell a few cars a month from this "service" without taking into account how many deals they have lost the same way? That is not quantifiable, we will never know.
When all of this came up I spoke with a GSM in one of our 5 used car superstores. He told me that he was aware of the way CarGurus was listing our inventory but that he had been assured that none of OUR cars was ever going to show up as anything less than a good deal. I have yet to be able to verify this information, however, in my mind that brings up a whole new set of issues. If they can make that assurance to one of my stores, it would indicate that their pricing model can and is being manipualted to suit certain dealers. If they cant or wont do that ( which is my suspicion based on my own research of our cars) then they just plain tell dealers what they want to hear and go on to do what they want. Either way, be it for our benefit or not, it is unacceptable. CarGurus has been off my radar as we do not pay for it, nor have I chosen to send them a feed from any of our website vendors. Shame on me for believing I was in control of who, what, where and how.
To solve this issue we have just undertaken a massive project to find each and every obscure site that has my inventory and take steps to cut off feeds I find less than friendly to our marketing plan. We put entirely too much work into devising and implementing that plan every day to have it sidetracked due to our own ignorance.
I guess my point is that I am still surprised that dealers just havent caught up with technology. The lions share still just write checks, do very little to track roi and smuggly walk away believing they have done things in their stores best interest. Until that changes, there is a real opportunity for the dealers that staff properly, track properly and just gereally "get it" to pull ahead of the pack.
I did the same thing. Then I had a very long phone call with a gentleman from Car Gurus and he did not have any of the answers I wanted. I stopped him in his tracks a few times. Anyways....I wanted to know what Car Gurus was selling. Why, as a dealer, would it be benefit to me to advertise with them if they are already getting my feed. I found out for me, less than150 used cars, would cost $1400. $1400 to be at the top when a customer looks at a particular vehicle. Ok, that is natural. Now, what if my car is a "poor deal?" It still shows up. There is nothing I can do to make it not show up at the top if my inventory matches what that customer is looking for. There is not a back end tool that you can see where your inventory stands without having to search every car in your inventory. I then asked, what if my inventory was $200 off from being fair to poor, is there a notification to let me know? Is there permission I can have you change the price of a car to show not a poor deal within x amount of dollars? There is not, as well as no way for our poor deals not to show on the feed at all. Then I ask him what else is offered. Well, as a dealer you are on the top and then you have a details page that takes you to information about your dealership. On the phone I look for a featured dealer. I found one, but he was on the old platform, so he had no information?? I had no idea what dealership he was at and I could not find any information or a phone number. I was told I must have found a problem with the system. Then, I look within 500 miles so that I may actually find a featured listing with the information he told me about. I found one. (Car Gurus told me they have 151 total dealers advertising with them since they offered it last September) On that page, directions, a map, etc. Well then I also found out that I could add pictures to that dealer and change things on their page. I found another problem. He told me that he should hire me to find all the problems, and I definitely found a few more. I could not figure out a reason why I would even want to pay for this.
Some useful information I did find, was that you can edit your reviews if you write into support. If someone gives you negative feedback without a comment, you email in. If they do not put a reason, within 24 hours they will take down the review. You are also able to respond to a review if you write it in to them as well. Once a shopper is on Car Gurus, they will later receive a chance to review your dealership and that is how you can get reviews. Now, this website has moved from number 28 to number 9 in a year. So it is something that car shoppers are looking at, and something that you could easily dominate at this point. However, if I were them, I would at least make a dealer friendly back end tool to earn some more trust. Also, their banner ads were ran by jump start, (I believe that is what he told me) so if I do not advertise with them, then I would not have any control of what was on there as a featured dealer either.
LOL!
Great post Eric!
VERY Well said Eric! Thank you for the post!