Cars.com Dealer Reviews Will Be Going Live Spring of 2011

Dealership ratings are SO not like product ratings. Whereas many people will review products whether they like them or not, 95% of unprompted dealership reviews (maybe higher) are of the negative variety. Almost nobody goes out of their way to rave about a great car buying experience, but many are willing to vent about a bad experience to anyone who will listen. It's generally only those customers who are encouraged to post positive reviews that will do so (and most of those who are encouraged to do so, will not). Thank you, cars.com, for further dilluting the review pool and for giving us yet another site on which to police fake negative reviews. Unscrupulous competitors will do this and it's VERY hard to police, especially if all cars.com requires in order to post a damaging anonymous review is a valid email address (which can be created in about 2 minutes).

It should be "When Shoppers Speak (Nicely) You Win". What about the negative reviews? Cars.com and AutoTrader are jumping in way too early on this band wagon. And to whose benefit? Surely not the dealer, who is paying to advertise their vehicles on what now could contain detrimental content for their business. Good luck Cars and Trader. I'd hate to be the one taking the phone calls from your dealers when the negative reviews start piling up.

Time will only tell. My bet is that Cars.com is heading for disaster with this one. If you have honest reviews, you must publish all of the negative ones as well as the good ones. How fast will a dealer threaten to cancel Cars.com if a negative review is posted? How fast will consumers see right through it if every review they see is a good one? This appears to be a no win situation for Cars.com.

Jeff, thanks for starting this thread. Lots of comments and debatewill surely follow. Is Cars.com attempting to bite the hand that feeds them? They will say no... but what will the dealers say?

I would be interested to know how far will Cars.com go to protect the integrity of the reviews. It is extremely easy to create positive reviews for yourself (and negative ones for your competitors) - and without an method for checking the validity of the reviews, Cars.com might find itself play "cop" on a full time basis. If a review can simply be posted based on a phone call or email (or lack of either) it looks like it would be very easy for those inclined to do so, to manipulate the system.

Robert, ATC is not increasing rates. You are obviously not paying attention and if you do work for ATC, it's time you find another job.

On the surface, it seems that the ability to "Opt In" to the dealer review service is the best of both worlds. This way, only the dealerships that want the reviews, get them. My biggest concern would be that until you have at least 25+ reviews the "rating system" will be greatly affected by one negative review. Of course it is easy to say that if you are providing excellent customer service and vehicles there should be no worry, but everyone knows it is much easier for a person to spend a few minutes ranting online in a review than to write a glowing review.

This is just another way for another vendor to squeeze every last penny out of the auto dealers. When does it stop? Will all you vendors be happy when we are out of business? Every new tool, vendor, review site, is another way to charge us money. I can only imagine that Cars.com will charge some round number of about $499 per rooftop to be a "sponsored review dealer". This will line right up with their $275 for video, $425 for specials, and $500 for power positions. When a company like Cars.com is owned and operated by a failing industry such as newspapers, you get this effect.

Not sure if it's a good idea for an advertiser such as Cars.com to be basically hosting reviews of its very own clients...a little up in the air on this one. The transparency continues to broaden, which I'm all for, but I'll think on this one for a bit.

Here is what Chip Perry the CEO of Autotrader has to say about their role in dealer ratings "We (autotrader) will help them (dealers) merchandise on AutoTrader the fact that they have a great reputation online." He goes on to say that Autotrader dealers will have the choice to opt in if they want the feature. http://bit.ly/ihhVkG to watch it for yourself.....

I love it! This is what the internet is about... transparency for all. Now you get to see how your competition is faring, as well, at least on AutoTrader.com and Cars.com. The shopper rules online, and they trust reviews from their peers far more than they trust a sales person. Managing brand/ dealer reputation should be a daily activity, and monitoring scattered social media conversations can be daunting, but one bad review sitting out there for three months before you discover it will prove how essential it really is to do. There are some very powerful tools out there to do it for you and help you review and respond (SocialDealer, GOSO, etc.)--even an aggregation tool like Google Alerts is better than nothing; but clearly, the time is upon us all to increase awareness of what shoppers are saying about us (and our competition)... and get in on the conversation. Disclaimer: I work for HomeNet, and we are partners with SocialDealer... but that doesn't change the truth of my words.

Consumers will not be able to post reviews on ATC. ATC will link to third party reviews.

I am very disappionted that Cars.com & as I was told soon Autotrader.com is getting into the REVIEW buisness!! Don't they work for us the "Auto Dealer"! I pay cars.com over $6,000 a month for both dealerships to advertise My vehicles.......I am a top rated (Best of the Best) dealership so I am not as much worried about getting bad reviews but someone that works for me / advertises for me is going to show a non (5 star) review flatterying review is they day I take back my $6,000 dollars!

I wanted to introduce myself to all the readers and contributors here. I'm the product manager for Dealer Reviews at Cars.com; I'll be doing an interview with Jeff for the site but I do want to make myself directly available for questions and feedback here, including why Cars.com will generate reviews instead of aggregating them. When we set out to develop a reviews feature, it was important to create a level playing field on day one - all dealers will start fresh and have equal footing with reviews. For those already actively managing reputation and soliciting reviews, Cars.com will offer another opportunity to generate additional content that can be used to cement their online reputation. We'll also be notifying our dealers each and every time a review is posted to Cars.com (after undergoing validation and moderation, of course) so that you don’t have to spend extra time monitoring Cars.com or our backend tools. Thanks to all of you for your feedback and thanks to Jeff and everyone at DealerRefresh for getting the conversation going. If you have direct questions or suggestions for me, don’t hesitate to ping me directly. Nick Hummer 312- 601-6004 nhummer@cars.com

Great, now there are about 15 websites that can push to our Google Place page.

One more place to worry about getting reviews posted and managing them... I wish they would just aggregate reviews from the current primary review sites and go from there. I am following about 12 review sites monthly now and this is one more. The truth is, folks primarily leave positive reviews when you proactively encourage them. If not, typically only the folks that are dissatisfied will go out of their way to leave a negative review. Therefore, as a dealer, I will now have to work at building positive reviews at one more site. I am a big fan of Cars.com, but have mixed feelings at this point...

There are too many review sites.

I have always thought that they would get into this. It will be great for some dealers and horrible for others.

Autotrader.com has already launched this in test markets. It will be going live in 3 weeks across the country.

It will no doubt be interesting to see how this plays out. Will be a great benefit for dealers that understand and get on-board early.

I think it is a smart move by Cars.com to make their website more than just an inventory advertising portal. In theory, the site could gain credibility with consumers by having reviews integrated into the shopping experience. It also opens up a discussion whether dealers who pay for inventory advertising want their advertising partners placing reviews on the vehicle detail pages. Reviews are an element of the socialization of the Internet so like it or not, actions like the one Cars.com is taking, is adding more transparency to how car dealers operate and treat their customers. Welcome to the world of the empowered consumer.

Dealership ratings are SO not like product ratings. Whereas many people will review products whether they like them or not, 95% of unprompted dealership reviews (maybe higher) are of the negative variety. Almost nobody goes out of their way to rave about a great car buying experience, but many are willing to vent about a bad experience to anyone who will listen. It's generally only those customers who are encouraged to post positive reviews that will do so (and most of those who are encouraged to do so, will not).

Thank you, cars.com, for further dilluting the review pool and for giving us yet another site on which to police fake negative reviews. Unscrupulous competitors will do this and it's VERY hard to police, especially if all cars.com requires in order to post a damaging anonymous review is a valid email address (which can be created in about 2 minutes).

It should be "When Shoppers Speak (Nicely) You Win". What about the negative reviews? Cars.com and AutoTrader are jumping in way too early on this band wagon. And to whose benefit? Surely not the dealer, who is paying to advertise their vehicles on what now could contain detrimental content for their business.

Good luck Cars and Trader. I'd hate to be the one taking the phone calls from your dealers when the negative reviews start piling up.

Time will only tell. My bet is that Cars.com is heading for disaster with this one. If you have honest reviews, you must publish all of the negative ones as well as the good ones. How fast will a dealer threaten to cancel Cars.com if a negative review is posted? How fast will consumers see right through it if every review they see is a good one? This appears to be a no win situation for Cars.com.

Jeff, thanks for starting this thread. Lots of comments and debatewill surely follow. Is Cars.com attempting to bite the hand that feeds them? They will say no... but what will the dealers say?

I would be interested to know how far will Cars.com go to protect the integrity of the reviews. It is extremely easy to create positive reviews for yourself (and negative ones for your competitors) - and without an method for checking the validity of the reviews, Cars.com might find itself play "cop" on a full time basis. If a review can simply be posted based on a phone call or email (or lack of either) it looks like it would be very easy for those inclined to do so, to manipulate the system.

Robert,

ATC is not increasing rates. You are obviously not paying attention and if you do work for ATC, it's time you find another job.

On the surface, it seems that the ability to "Opt In" to the dealer review service is the best of both worlds. This way, only the dealerships that want the reviews, get them.

My biggest concern would be that until you have at least 25+ reviews the "rating system" will be greatly affected by one negative review. Of course it is easy to say that if you are providing excellent customer service and vehicles there should be no worry, but everyone knows it is much easier for a person to spend a few minutes ranting online in a review than to write a glowing review.

This is just another way for another vendor to squeeze every last penny out of the auto dealers. When does it stop? Will all you vendors be happy when we are out of business? Every new tool, vendor, review site, is another way to charge us money.

I can only imagine that Cars.com will charge some round number of about $499 per rooftop to be a "sponsored review dealer". This will line right up with their $275 for video, $425 for specials, and $500 for power positions.

When a company like Cars.com is owned and operated by a failing industry such as newspapers, you get this effect.