[jimelliott60]

I am seeking opinions of anyone that has used ecarlist products and services.

[andwrig]

Good guys. Really good products. We use their inventory management tool and it is well designed and easy to use. Their websites are also very well designed. Very much a "boutique" firm capable of doing highly custom sites. Len is on top of his game and very knowledgeable. Jerry Salerno, Sales Director, is very sharp as well. Service is good. Highly recommend.

Andy

[salete22]

Have been with them for a while. Len has pioneered a dealership and software. ILM=Good, Website = Good, syndications to ebay=great, to craigslist=OK *** Only weak aspect is CRM and the ability to manage, mail, mass email existing customers. Automated paperwork, OK, limited in forms they can work with...all in all B...Hope this helps..

[Marc McGurren]

I have been with them for approximately 6 months and have been very happy with my services. My connection is Jason Miller - great guy. I originally looked into them just for their inventory management - but after seeing what they can do, I used them for our autogroup website.

They are easy to work with and can customize just about anything. Feel free to check our site at Jerry Durant Auto Group | And Preowned Auto Dealer | Weatherford, Texas. Thumbs up from Texas...

[jimelliott60]

Thanks for the great feedback, it is very helpful.

[ghen]

They make a good product in the inventory manager. Sometimes there are just a lot of random problems that take a while to fix though. All our Nissan Versa Hatchbacks are being VIN decoded as HB, but would show up in ecarlist as sedans. So all of them had to be manually changed once we actually found out that there was a problem, and continually as we get more. That was monday the ticket was put in, so it hasn't been too long yet, but the problem still exists.
Using their website before my current provider they also always took just a little too long on tickets there too, we would request holiday sale banners or just minor information changes to store hours etc. and they would take seemingly forever. It wasn't ever too long compared to other tech supports like the Nissan Assist team, but it was too long in the instant world of the internet.

Our current website provider hasn't improved on turn-around time in any way, but at least I can change my own store hours now on the fly and create new webpages like the one I did for ford's year end sales event: http://www.porterford.com/year-end-sales-event2.jsp... I just can't expect to call them and have anything done faster than ecarlist would have done it.

So all in all, I give ecarlist a thumbs up. They just need more staff on the support team that can actually fix stuff. They answer the phone quickly.

[ghen]

What product of theirs were you looking at anyway?

[jimelliott60]

How about their inventory management dashboards -- pricing, aging, etc.? Are they good enough to replace inventory mgmt. tools like the ones from Firstlook or vAuto?

[ghen]

Originally Posted by jimelliott60

How about their inventory management dashboards -- pricing, aging, etc.? Are they good enough to replace inventory mgmt. tools like the ones from Firstlook or vAuto?

That would probably be best done in a demo from the company. It's going to be a personal opinion type thing. For my use, their market pricing tool was very good but based on prior sales instead of current market conditions. So upside is you get the prices that actually sold and are more realistic, but downside you're not seeing what the customer sees on the market. The tool itself is easy to use and easy to semi-automate. I never used aging tools except there's a column in the main list saying how old the car is.

[terrencegordon]

Just wanted to peek my head in here and thank everyone for the feedback (good and "constructive" ). I did want to clarify a few vitally important facts based on some of the comments above, and then I'll bow out and hope to see the postings continue.

-Per salete22's comment - we are not a CRM tool. We do not have CRM functionality other than the ability to gather leads and email leads back through our software.

-Per ghen - our market pricing tool does in-fact precisely pull current market data from numerous sources including eBay and AutoTrader giving our dealers the same exact view as to what customers are seeing in real-time. We actually do not have prior sales history (something we are working on for Version 2.0), so I'm sorry if you misunderstood the basis of the analytics data. We have also very recently added considerably to our Account Management, Project Management, Programming and Development departments so the problems you had with turn-around have been addressed. 2009 was a tremendous growth year for us, and our goal was scalability - which we have acheived for 2010.

Thanks to all our current clients for your business, and for helping us achieve our goals for 2009!

Please continue....