Stan

I had picked up Dealix as that initial 3rd party. To my luck they did very well for me, maybe it was my consistent follow up and not stop calling until they told me ” STOP CALLING”.

My closing ratio at the time was very well.

I never had a problem with getting credited back for them also. My rep was in the Detroit area and still to this day makes the time to come up here in Northern Michigan to visit. Actually he will be up here this weekend. Surprisingly again! He emailed me to hang out and chat!

It is hard to find a good rep from a good 3rd party lead provider that is more concerned about helping with the dealerships success than his paycheck!

Thanks Jason Porter @ Dealix!

Other than that, I speak highly of Dealix and it all comes down on how savvy the Internet Manager is on closing those appointments with a 3rd party lead!

There is my 2 sense …….

Gary appears to be a business person trying to do things the right way and I applaud him for contributing to the dialogue. I have access to hundreds of lead providers through wholesale exchanges, and Gary’s company shows up in exactly none of them. This would lead me to believe he is actually generating his leads through his own efforts and not re-selling leads bought off an exchange.

I run both a car dealership AND a lead generation company. I am completely aware of the crap that is going on with many lead providers. I still purchase, on average, $15,000 in third party leads per month. I might not be the brightest guy on the planet, but at a $276 average cost per sale, this is a marketing effort I can’t afford to not be in.

Again, all leads are not created equal. Unfortunately, you have to weed through a ton of bad providers to find the guys trying to do things the right way.

As always, my two cents…

Tom

I still invite you to call me if you have the time.

Jeff

To set the record straight, I told Dealix that we did not wish to be paid for this lead – it did come through our site.

I have no explanation for this, only conjecture. After reading your allegations, I wonder if this consumer was sent some kind of e-mail solicitation from someone else promising him that someone would pay him $5 for a lead. At that time, we had content on our site dealing with issues for people looking to trade-in for more fuel efficient cars during this oil crisis. That likely brought him to a web page where he confused our site with those who had sent him an incentive type e-mail. We have never had those kind of ads or e-mail enticements. I just don’t know what is going on here. If the consumer said he wasn’t even in the market, how else did this happen? I simply don’t know.

We are just a small business This isn’t my main living. I have no financial or other reasons to engage in this type of marketing activity. I started NCA as a hobby business and I have been upfront with all our accounts about this. I don’t even have the staff to do the accounting necessary to pay people $5.00 per lead. We’ve done okay since late 2005. If we were engaging in this type of marketing practice, either paying people ourselves or sending them into a dealer who unknowingly was expected to pay them $5.00, we’d have been history in relatively short order. There was, nor is, no reason for us to try such a foolish and risky marketing strategy. Even if I needed the money that bad, that would be the last way to try to get it. Word travels fast, as we are seeing now.

I hate this type of thing as much as you do.

Thanks for the opportunity to clarify this issue. I have a long day(s) ahead of me.

Sincerely,

Gary Moran
NCA

In the affiliate world there is such a thing as “incentive” promotion. If you have got leads where people were trying to get a free Razor phone in the past they were funneled through an incentive site.

@Gary – If the lead houses are only paying you $10 a lead I suggest you get with some of the affiliate networks. I am being paid $12.50 per lead through one and $14 through another and do not have to worry about returns or bad press, justified or not.

The 3rd party lead business has been on the verge of a scam for sometime now. Reselling customer leads to several dealers at a time then reselling the same leads months later. I’ve had it happen to me several times.

There’s something fishy here. I’m not sorry for bringing it to the surface so other Internet sales managers and dealers are careful and not get stuck with bogus leads.

It still doesn’t explain why Dealix called the customer that filled out the lead and the end result was Dealix crediting the dealer for the leads coming from the lead service.

You are right about the sloppy use of wording with possibly and proved. I have made the changes.

Dealers get scammed on all the time and if it smells fishy, chances are it’s fish.

If you like, feel free to give me a call tomorrow afternoon and we can discuss over the phone.

you’ve outed this michael guy–are you encouraging each of your readers to contact him personally and ask a few questions?

gary has commented twice–he seems to be a guy willing to engage in dialog. someone brought up paul r, and i can’t help but think about the dealerrefresh commenters agreeing that a simple phone call could have avoided a big stink just 2 or 3 weeks ago.

i digress. hey, here’s a fact.

the dealerrefresh and newcaramerica websites were both started in late 2005. gary’s first blog post wasn’t until a few months after jeff’s, but he was using his real name to sign each one just like his comments above. if he’s scam, i don’t know why.

no press is bad press, right?

Owner: “What is this invoice for $999″

Internet Manager: “Let me look into it”

(intenet manager scrambling, wasting time to find if this is a legit claim or not)

Internet Manager 2 hours later: “Boss throw it away, its another bogus attempt to scam money from us”

Thanks again for the information Jeff,

Michael