Comments on: Pricing Games on Classified Inventory Websites

By: ashamed

ashamed — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 08:04:17 +0000

regrettably I am an ISM for one of “those” dealerships. I have to say it is an unending battle and YES we were blacklisted! Cars.com pulled our prices and ATC pulled our listings entirely!!! I have to say when they put their foot down I was ecstatic. I am a true believer that as far as the net goes the days of having 4-5 pounders is over. I would rather price the cars to move and have more shots at the back end money. Unfortunatly Im not in charge of pricing and since we lost the battle with cars/at we have pulled prices altogether.

By: Travis Thompson

Travis Thompson — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:39:23 +0000

I was the local cars.com rep for the Columbia, SC area, now I’m the ISM for a Toyota Dealership here, and I will tell you that Cars.com WILL NEVER BLACKLIST A DEALER! Like AD HUSTLER said, they need the dealers way too much and every dealer is looking for a way to cut costs and many GM’s don’t care what the ISM says ( Thank God I don’t have that problem) and are looking for ways to cut money.
Not to mention most Cars.com reps work for the local newspaper anyway and cutting a dealer out of Cars.com is also going to make what few dealers still advertise in the papers, pull out and the Newspaper can not afford that at all!
This is an animal that we are just goign to have to deal with and hope it pisses the customer off so much that they come to me!

By: Keely

Keely — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 20:19:08 +0000

I am the Director of Fraud Prevention Strategies and in my world “abuse” is considered fraud and I thought it would be important to weigh in and let the audience here know that AutoTrader.com is aware of these practices and we do care about our car shoppers and their experience. We know that without buyers there are no sellers and its in our best interest to maintain a trustworthy marketplace. We are not turning a blind eye to these practices, we ask our consumers to flag listings that they feel are misleading or fraudulent and we follow up on these reports. The link is at the top of our vehicle detail page and it is labeled “Suspect Fraud”. Please use this tool when you’re on our site and let us know when you find abuse.
Thank you

By: Stu Chapman

Stu Chapman — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:33:34 +0000

Matt Watson said:

“I also see dealers list their inventory for like 1,000,000 dollars so they have the highest price and come up first. It’s silly but it works. We have ex Internet sales guys on staff that used to over price used cars all the time.”

I guess that explains why they are ex Internet sales guys!

By: Muller Toyota

Muller Toyota — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:13:46 +0000

This is kind of like white hat vs. black hat SEO in my opinion. Black hat will work for a short time but end up costing you everything eventually. White hat SEO might start slow, but it continues to build indefinitely.

You need to educate your customers so that they can identify malicious practices.

Most of my customers appreciate that I am 100% transparent. In fact, I have even won over customers with a higher price because of my honest and straight-forward attitude. They know what to expect from me and they are willing to pay for the honest.

In the long run, the people that use these tactics will lose.

By: Alan

Alan — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 21:29:13 +0000

Is it really up to the classified site (or any advertising venue) to police these dealers? I sold newspaper advertising to dealers and this was standard practice for years to put the real deal in the fine print. (“Used cars at $49″,”Double rebates”, “Guaranteed $$ for your trade”) Classified sites host dealers listings. What dealers say reflects on them and state and federal laws regulating automotive advertising. Car buying is, and always has been a “negotiated purchase” like buying a house. It IS fair to try and clean up these practices when the dealer does it–but it shouldn’t be up to the advertising medium to police these practices. Buy Here/Pay Here customers know their credit situation and know it costs them more to do business in most financed purchases: credit cards, housing,and car buying. Yes, these shady dealers will always do it and, as usual, it will reflect on the overall reputation of car dealers in the eyes of the public.

By: MBR Marketing Auto Dealer Supplies

MBR Marketing Auto Dealer Supplies — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:25:43 +0000

Honesty and openness is the best policy. Misleading pricing may result in more calls for some dealers, however in the long run those who conduct business in an ethical way win.

By: Craig Belowski

Craig Belowski — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:27:49 +0000

It is amazing that although the number of truly transparent customer-centric dealerships has increased over the last few years, the number of gold chain wearing, fast talking, shell game playing salespeople and more importantly sales management seems not be going away quick enough. There is a reason the latest automotive industry buzzword is “Reputation Management” instead of “Reputation Creation.” It’s too bad for those of us that love being in the car business, but hate the reputation created by the likes of those with shady advertising practices. With the combination of truly forward thinking internet sales managers that now ALMOST have the ball in their hands, but are still subject to a one way thinking “how can I trick a customer today” boss pulling the strings I think we will see more of these tactics. Until the people responsible for leading a store understand that you can only “Reputation Manage” your way out of poor reputation creation for a short time before customers see right through it.

By: Glen Garvin

Glen Garvin — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:15:33 +0000

To Toby’s point earlier, there are still all kinds of games being played. I wonder what percentage of dealers still keep stale inventory on-line trying to generate leads only to respond, “that car was just sold, but come on down… ” when they don’t have anything very similar to that vehicle?

By: Ryan Leslie

Ryan Leslie — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:21:36 +0000

William is right on. We do attempt to police this kind of stuff, but the reason why may surprise you.

The dealerships that use classified sites in this manner are usually the first ones to cancel. The buying cycle is at 90 days and the consumer trend is to utilize classified sites throughout the entire cycle( see the NYC Google Summit post). By the time the consumer is ready to buy the dealership has marketed themselves right out of contention. The consumer doesn’t want to play the old school games, otherwise they would have gone straight to the showroom with “red” being their only qualification. I know we still switch people, but you are far more likely to hear a stock number at the greeting than ever before. The consumer is better educated than ever. They see through the gimmick on one listing and don’t click through any other listings returned in search from that dealer.

Point is that the dealerships that use these tactics eventually don’t get the same kind of results that an upfront dealer will get and they cancel. We police this in order to retain customers.