Hi Darin,

I would like the opportunity to speak with you directly regarding some of the comments in your post. It's unfortunate that you have found yourself frustrated and this is an issue we take very seriously.

Please call me at 888-422-2006. If I don't hear from you, I will call you before close of business today.

Matt Murray

Director, Digital Marketing

Dealer.com

First, let me state that since I've been on board with our dealership for 3 years now, we have hosted our various branded sites with the following companies...

Reynolds Web Solutions

Cobalt

AutoFusion

GS Marketing

Porsche Direct

Audi Direct

HostGator (for other stuff)

and now Dealer.com

That said, Dealer.com is BY FAR the worst experience we've had so far. Apparently, we keep getting assigned incompetent account managers who have no idea what it means to communicate with their client. So I complain to Mark B. - who then promises things will get better - and reassigns another account manager.

But the root of the problem is absolutely NO VISIBILTY to project/change requests. It's like they go into some black hole, and they drag on for weeks.

And Dealer.com, before you start replying to this with 8 paragraphs, please remember I save ALL MY EMAIL to you guys and will time stamp and point out all the issues we've had with you to date.

Just know folks, there are better solutions out there. If you like EXACTLY what you see with Dealer.com - fine. But if you want to make some changes - I would look elsewhere (based off of my experience).

Extremely frustrating, but the good new is we really like one vendor on the list above and will start to move all of our sites to them asap.

Hmmm... An automotive website cartel. Sounds interesting.

What you're looking for typically falls under Socialism and/or Communism. Karl would be very proud! History has proven that these forms of government and economy do not work on the whole, and Capitalism is turning into the world ruler of the day.

But I do hear you and agree - that would be nice. It isn't a perfect world and the best innovation comes from competition.

In the meantime, let's carry this conversation over to the website forums: http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f43/ - start a thread and I'll join in.

I apologize because my post was not poised towards Dealer.com who I have respect for, and I realize it's a big world, competition rocks but if you need to axe this post inside the thread, you have my permission.

What boggles my mind though is why can't the top 10 companies (or their designers) get together to create 1 super amazing website (company) with everything we could ask for in the site - no add-ons - I mean everything, you get it all, and just cap it at $1,000 a month?

Instead we have many companies (all claiming to be better than the next) many plan levels, plug-in this and plug-in that, up-charge here, up-charge there and LONG contracts - when we can all probably agree that WE NEED IT ALL, out of the box, with the flexibility to change and augment when necessary.

Build me one, and I'll be your customer for life. Plus, I will also find you 1,000 more dealers and you will make $1,000,000 a month!

(or is that my destiny)

Chris,

Not sure why you wanted to post that on a Dealer.com profile, but I'll assume you're a Dealer.com client. For how I'm going to respond it doesn't matter who you're with.

Any Internet/Marketing Manager worth their salt has considered going outside of the automotive industry for a website solution at one time or another. I can tell you that I weighed that option every time we changed site providers. The problem I always came back to was inventory. I have yet to find an outside web provider who can adequately handle automotive inventory. In fact, most of them ran away when I started to elaborate how vehicle inventory works online. It isn't as simple as having a Sony TV model 998803 where you have an endless supply and one price that fits all. New cars maybe, but used cars - no. And with your inventory being your single greatest marketing asset there really couldn't be a bigger deal.

You also brought up costs. You get what you pay for. Yeah, you might find some Indian to exploit, but how long is that going to last and will it really help you progress over time?

I'm glad to hear you thinking outside of the box, but it isn't worth it to go outside because you'll be coming right back for some plugin solution(s). And then your reporting isn't 100% accurate and you're dealing with multiple vendors instead of just one. By that time you probably haven't saved any money anyway.

I personally think most of the dealer website services are too pricey. We got a bargain I think at $800 a month compared to what's out there, but it's a 3 year contract totaling around $30,000 - so - What we propose on doing next time is hiring an amazing web team, possibly in India, and spend about $3,000 - $5000 for the most killer site imaginable and host it somewhere else. Hosting at most is $100 a month. This way we have no contract, we can mimic the very best site with amazing SEO and all that jazz. I don't think anyone has to be with the big players, when we've sadly discovered we've probably over spent about $20,000 over the contact - regardless of how many sale we were promised. it can be done much cheaper with equally impressive results as anyone can offer, possibly more.

David: Thank you so much for your awesome post! We really appreciate the kind words and congratulations on the success of Ken Garff!

Been working with Dealer.com for a little over two years now and out of the many Dealer Website Builders I believe they are hands down the best. The ease of use, reporting at your finger tips, being able to create new and compelling content and have it up instantly is huge. I can build a page myself for a new product or sales event and have it up in a couple of hours. I have worked with many other Providers that all you could update or change was Specials, Staff, Coupons, and that was about it.

As far as SEO they are leagues above the self proclaimed best of the best TKCarsites as well as Dealerskins. For those two vendors I had to constantly work on the sites myself to get us ranked to page one and keep us there.

The other great thing is how fast their support team, which deals with any issue I have had quickly, efficiently, and professionally. They are constantly upgrading and adding to your tools and making it a great platform. By the way I am not a Dealer.com Employee, but I manage Internet Marketing for our Dealer Group Ken Garff Honda in Utah. Nothing but praises, keep up the good work!

Victor:

The tone of your post is unfortunate and doesn't reflect the thousands of very happy dealers we are servicing nationwide. In fact, Dealer.com is the only vendor in our business that opens our customer service up to the scrutiny of the NPS (Net Promoter Score) system. Our outstanding customer service is validated to be excellent by a 3rd party.

All of the positive comments on this site have been posted by our dealerships, not our employees.. Your statement is purely false.

As far as the McDonalds of car dealership websites? We do more custom websites than any other provider and in fact more of the top 125 dealer groups in the country use our services. Over 80% in fact... Those stellar performers who most dealerships aspire to be can't all be wrong. All these top groups certainly did not go the bargain basement route when they did their due diligence to choose a provider to partner with... In fact, they did exhaustive searches, intense interviewing, scrutinized the players'capabilities in the landscape, vetted the leadership teams, and ultimately chose Dealer.com because we had the offering that would deliver them the best solutions to help them continue to grow their businesses.

As far as SEO goes to say that we're the worst in the business when some of the most respected authorities in our space say we're the best is strange... Dealer.com was ranked as the top provider in the 2009 ASMA SEO architecture study put out by the Pasch Consulting Group who is an authority on Automotive SEO practices.

To your last point about our sales and marketing team being liars... It's too bad that you feel that way and choose to set such a tone. In fact, everything Dealer.com does from a marketing standpoint is backed up by a proven track record of measurable success.

We're confident that smart dealerships reading this page in search of a digital marketing partner will overlook the posts that lack substance and understand that Dealer.com is a proven leader in our space. Are we perfect? No, but no company is perfect. All we can do is keep doing the things we know are the right things for the dealers that we are thankful to be partnered with.

Dealer.com is garbage, all the positive posts here are made by their employees. I've used dealer.com for multiple websites in my 15+ years in the automotive industry. Dealer.com is basically the McDonalds of car dealer websites, cheap + low quality but affordable. They say that their SEO is 'top-notch' but by far, their SEO is among the worst my web developer friends have seen. The only thing that dealer.com has is a sales & marketing team that is able to lie & convince you they are good.

Good Gosh Baron,

You're like a lightning rod. I am all about venting frustration about a platform, but your name-calling carpet bombing rant is filled with "look at me, look at me" rhetoric. Does your ego allow you to play with others? You said:

"...I am good enough to succeed DESPITE your product."

"The next time you have lunch with Roger Penske..."

Gulp.

Baron,
When you live in a glass house, it's not smart to throw stones...

USED CAR SPECIALS:
"Sorry, no specials are available at this time. Please check back later!"

SERVICE SPECIALS:
"Sorry, no specials are available at this time. Please check back later!"

PARTS SPECIALS:
(Click here to add text)

ACCESSORIES:
"Coming Soon!"

YouTube Videos
"Videos are coming Soon!"

MEET TEAM PLANET
No Pics.

USED CARS OVERALL:
What? No options listed? Everything is standard equipment? Not good. Lead count reduction AND profit compression.




Ahhh.... You're fuming mad about lead automation issues?? What's more important, creating a lead or managing it?

If I were your GM, you're costing me money. I'd have your b*lls on a silver platter for letting these lead generating errors happen.

Better call your pal Roger Penske over this weekend, you've got some catch-up work to do.

p.s. Baron, I feel your pain bro. We all are dealing with less than perfection. Be mad, vent your frustrations, choose strong words, isolate and stress the importance of the problem, but, your MAIN mission is to bring people together to achieve YOUR goals.

"Napalm works... but nothing’s left after you've used it"

Mark:

I am currently seeing a TREMENDOUS effort from people your side of the aisle, now that they understand exactly what my issues happen to be, as well as the fact that we are not just going to sit back and accept the idea that these issues cannot be corrected. I also believe that your people now see the problems inherent in what you created, and that has gone a long way to making this work.

Now that you see the problems, you can correct the problems. If you put the same effort in to correcting these issues as you have in actually listening and LEARNING these issues these last two days, then this can be made to work.

I have my work-arounds in place, I will get through the month-end and pound away at the cycles next week, and I will make this work. And I am certainly of the realization that it is time for me to stop whining about all the things that are wrong, and endeavor to find ways to make this work for me.

With some of the imperative items you were given, the ball is now in your court. Keeping the sports metaphors going, I will have no issue letting people on here know that you stepped up to the plate, if you get the job done.

Baron, you fail to mention how hard our team has been trying to make changes for you and your dealership. You fail to mention how you guys had a hard time even keeping a phone line working at your store in order to have a call with you. You dropped several calls due to "not understanding your new phone system. Seems like you might want to allow us to help you with your needs without bashing our team. Mike D truly cares about every dealer we work with and works tirelessly to help them every week. There is no good that comes from bashing others and stating their weakness if you are not going to recognize the efforts made to improve.
You listed off all of many achievements in the post above, very nice, but what good are they if you cant simply work with a provider that is trying so hard to help you? In this instance all you are doing to trying to upset the very team of people that is trying so hard to help you, this is like ordering food at a diner that you bounce checks at, after a while they want to stop serving you!!
I am sure you will come up with some creative comeback and will have plenty to state in response to this so go right ahead, I don't have time to respond back and this is my one post for you. I simply thought it would be fair for anyone that reads these posts to understand that you are 1 out of a very few that has this narrow view of what Dealer.com is all about. Yes our lead manager will improve, yes it is more robust than before, yes we take feedback from thousands of dealers to build in the features they need most. Does it satisfy every dealer all the time?? NO! We use the feedback to constantly improve the product and we do that faster than any other company by releasing more versions of our software to clients than any other vendor. This represents challenges for clients that liked the "old" software and are not interested in change. Our clients benefit from massive testing and R&D that has taken place over the course of 11 years. We have measured, monitored and developed new systems and software based on this approach so that the vast majority of our dealer clients do not have to on their own. We have developed and fully integrated marketing solution that combines these solutions in a way that saves the avg dealer countless hours and massive expense on a monthly and annual basis. Try to understand that we are simply trying to accommodate your team with the best solution but can only do it if you work with us with the honest intent to come up with valuable solutions. We are not interested in proving who is right or wrong in a blog post. Lets get back to work and make things happen, in the real world and not on a blog. -Mark Bonfigli President, CEO Dealer.com

Mike:

You are being disingenuous at best. I have spent hours on the phone in training, with customer service, and speaking with all manner of people at your company.

So let me go over my 4 biggest issues with the new LeadMachine, and if you are honest about it you will see the issues involved.

And remember, this all occurred after we were promised that the solution would be more robust and useful, not less so.

And, to make this very clear, your people knew going in to our contract that we were buying a package deal with improved functionality. We never considered it to be a "throw-in", and it is very disappointing that you would describe your own product in such a fashion. It tells me exactly how much confidence you have in your own solution.

1) You cannot print customer correspondence. You must cut and paste items on to a word document, then from from there. Or, you need to forward the e-mail to a third-party e-mail provider, and print that out later.

2) You have to create a new lead cycle for EVERY lead possibility, which could result in DOZENS of possibilities that can easily get confused as one lead receives multiple inputs. As a BDC Manager, there is almost NO control of the response schedules.

3) Did you know that your system does not allow for prioritize scheduled tasks? To your system, a follow-up phone call set for 60 days after the contact creation has just as much importance as a follow-up phone call set as the first follow-up phone call for a new opportunity.

I can list a half dozen more, right now. It's not that difficult.

By the way, the fact that you would try and connect approval of your product with being worthy of respect is a ridiculous notion.

A person that isn't worthy of respect is someone who attempts to intimidate and threaten people when they don't like the fact that someone exercises their right to inform others of major issues and problems with one of your products.

But I will work through these issues on your product because I have no choice. I will make this product function some how, some way. I will construct work-around after work-around until I can cobble back together my BDC department.

I am good enough to succeed DESPITE your product.

And if you want to try and pass off to people that I do not know what I am doing, here is a run-down of my credentials:

16 years in the car business as a sales person, sales manager, F&I Manager, closer, and BDC Manager. 4 years working for a major website and CRM company, where I was contracted out to United Auto Group, Chrysler, and more. At one time, 6 of the dealers with whom I worked were all in the Wards' e-Dealer Top 100, with 5 in the top 50, having climbed a total of 68 spots combined in just one year.

The next time you have lunch with Roger Penske, and he tells you what a great job you are doing, let me know because we will then have something in common.

Thanks Alex... We really appreciate you chiming in. It's great when we hear a guy who everyone respects in our industry speak up. It's better than me going off on capabilities when as a user, you can say it best.

Patrick - like you, I am also competent in HTML coding. I use Dealer.com by choice because it allows me the flexibility to create content plainly or by coding things. I'm constantly inserting various DIV items in their system and building different HTML variables outside of their editing platform (typically in Apple's TextEdit or Dreamweaver with fine tuning in FireBug). I also embed differing analytics software to make sure we're all on the same page in reporting.

The only thing I can't do in Control Center is put my own JAVA in. I completely understand why Dealer.com would limit this because it could break my website!

I have two Dealer.com websites: one that is very customized (http://www.checkeredflag.com) and another that is simply a template (http://www.driversworld.com). I have found both to be easily editable in Control Center. Sure, there is the occasional table that doesn't format as I'd like it to when I paste it in, but I can still make it work.

Of all the different site providers I've used, I've found Dealer.com to be the most accommodating to my customization needs. That is why I'm commenting here - my experience with them has been a complete 180 from what you're describing.

Thanks Patrick for your positive comments. We do have to build our products and services for the overwhelming majority of dealers that aren't lucky enough to have a skilled HTML person like you.

Thanks for your comments Baron. No strong arm tactics here... Just good client relationships with thousands of dealers and we'd like to help. It's unfortunate you aren't open with working with us. You're not paying for lead machine. We included it for free in your deal. You should feel free to use another system if it does not meet your specific needs.

Mike,
I'm with a Toyota dealership. Thanks for the offer for training, but I am very well versed in HTML and web design. That's really the reason why I dread working with dealer.com. It's the Microsoft Frontpage of dealer website generation. Acceptable for beginners, but seriously lacking for those with the expertise and dedication to create a truly unique and comprehensive web presence, not just another cookie-cutter website.

The driving force behind web 2.0 is the desire to stand out from the crowd. It's just not possible to do that with dealer.com, thus I feel my conversion rates would suffer if I ever reverted back to your company's solution.

Many dealers set the bar low for thier Internet department, and dealer.com fits right in with that mentality. Again, it's not horrible, just mediocre, which is fine for most, but not for me.

Mike:

I didn't call dealer.com "whores". That was Reynolds and Reynolds.

And by the way, threatening me by e-mail, just because you don't like the fact that I pointed out the horrid nature of your products, is not what I would call "customer service".

The best part is, my General Manager was in on the conference call we had yesterday with your people and he is just as dumb-founded by your poor product. On top of that, he is as disappointed as I in the lies that were fed to us as concerning what your products can do, would do, and how well we would be cared for after-sale.

Keep trying the strong-arm tactics. They have absolutely no effect on me. And I am glad they have been revealed in a public forum, to show just what kind of company you have.

Patrick:

Thanks for your post. What dealership are you with? Is it a Subaru, Acura, or Chrysler store? Our training department would love to show you how to highly customize your site with our suite of tools.

Our sites are designed to drive maximum traffic and lead conversion which is the primary goal of a website.

Please reach out to me so I can get you set up for training.

[email protected]
888-807-9119

Baron:

Thank you for pointing out your frustration. It's unfortunate to see your experience has been less than perfect in your opinion.

I'll speak for the literally thousands of very satisfied customers including the moderator on this site... The situation you're describing is extraordinarily rare.

This point I do not understand...

"And by the way, it’s amazing that some of the responses on this board are from dealer.com employees. Absolutely shameful." How does calling Dealer.com "whores" on a public forum help anyone?

I'm not quite sure that having a voice on this forum could be considered shameful. In fact, I would postulate that we're probably one of the few vendors that actually take the time to read these boards, listen to the feedback, comment, and take action.

Let me know what dealership you are with and we'll get you straightened out immediately.

If you do not respond, I'll assume that everything has been taken care of and your

e-mail me at [email protected] or call me at 888-807-9119

I personally dread working with a dealer.com site and try my best to get them dropped whenever the chance arrives.

They aren't horrible, but my standards are too high for what kind of site they ALLOW us to produce.

If you want a mediocre, run-of-the-mill, forgettable site, go with dealer.com, especially if you don't plan on updating it much.

I had to add this piece of wonderful news regarding LeadMachine...it seems that during the changeover ALL of our future tasks and follow-up was deleted and now we find that you cannot attach a new work cycle to our legacy leads. It's as if they expect you to just forget every customer prior to the changeover, and start with a clean slate.

This is an absolute nightmare. If you value your BDC department, if a Dealer.com rep walks in to your store, throw him out immediately.