I became a Cox employee when my city was acquired by them. I was thankful for the the generous severance I received when the original founder sold out and I decided to give my new employer a chance. It was fun to be a part of a very successful organization and I was well paid for my time. Everyone in the organization cared about the customers we served and we were one of the most profitable cities in the country. In my opinion, the company began to focus more on cutting costs than it did on customer satisfaction. I felt that the company did not want to listen to my ideas so I decided to quit about 4 years ago. It is sad to see so many people hurting because upper management did not adapt to the changing market conditions.

To all of those about to be laid off: The sooner you let go of your past and forgive your last boss for all the suffering you had to go through, the better off you will be in the future. Most of the middle managers I worked for at Cox were only guilty of carrying out orders from the top and the people at the top were just trying to keep their jobs. If upper management had been more responsible, the company could have been better off, even in a down market. Now more than ever, dealers need a decent place to advertise and it is too bad that something that used to be free as part of a print package now costs more and more every year. Good luck in your job hunt and make sure you get a job with a company that cares about you and the customers you will serve. I am glad I chose to quit on my terms instead of waiting for the train wreck but there are some good companies out there that will hire you as long as you put your best foot forward. Keep in touch with your friends and network as much as possible. When you are in a job interview, avoid bad-mouthing your last boss and you will soon be living the dream. Good luck with your job search.

MMK, do you work for Cox right now? If not, then it is reasonable to assume that you probably do not know what is going on. Being there before Cox, and after Cox, its clear they were steering toward shutting the thing down eventually right from the get go. Uncle Joe's state of the company addresses since he has taken over have been nothing but bad news. Every one. He then came up with this 3 phase plan. Im sure anybody who was there remembers all this, what these big changes were supposed to be for the better etc. Well I guess we know what phase 3 is.

I'm surprised that no one has commented here that these decisions were made in the wake of a truly atrocious year for the automotive industry. It's most certainly unfortunate, but given what is happening in the economy and in the automotive industry- it seems completely unreasonable to blame management for the environment that created the necessity for this decision.

I feel for you Josh. Anytime a company puts incentives on collections and concentrates more on that than new business sales, something is up, like it's going to be put on the block or dumped. Good luck trying to get paid in full from them, I'm sure they'll spin your head with promises & stories, I wish you luck.

I work for Auto Trader and the thing that has me worried and mad is that for some reason our branch gets paid on our receivables not on our sales. So I have thousands of dollars in unpaid commission owed to me. Since they are going to close the branch, how do I have any control over those collections and how can I be assured that I will get paid. I think that part of our final pay and/or severance package should be getting paid in full for this money. We worked for it, we earned it, and 99% of the other branches would have already paid their reps for it. Talk about getting ripped off. This is discrimination at the fullest.

I totally agree that Cox did everything they could to eliminate these publications. I was a long time employee and unfortunately saw the writing on the wall so I got out about 5 weeks ago. All they kept saying is "print is dead". Well about 40 percent of the public still uses print so I am not sure how that is not enough?? And as for the few people they have offered positions on the autotrader.com side they will use them and then get rid of them as well. I am sad for all those who worked hard for this orginazation because Cox never intended to continue forward anyway. They are a very greedy company who does not care about the employees or the clients they serve. If I were a car dealer I would reeveluate any adertising decision in the future that involves using a Cox product. Because being a former employee I can tell you they are not looking out for them as a customer the decisions they make are only based on Cox best interest. Therefore the customer suffers from their poor decisions and does not receive what they have been promised.

Scott @ CarsForSale.com

Your website is a pretty blatant copy of AutoTrader.com. You need to make your website a little more original... geez

Actually, that is not correct, Cox did not buy anything. When Trader Publishing was started in 91, it was half owned by Landmark, half owned by Cox. In 06, Landmark was getting tired of messing with Cox (I assume) so Cox was deciding on if they wanted to take over the whole thing or not. Cox decided it did not want the whole thing and took their half. The automotive stuff when to them, everything else went to a newly formed company of Landmark, Dominion. Dominion is actually more or less the old Trader. Anyway, it seems to me like cox never wanted to take their half but were forced, and in hindsight, seems every step they have made since then had been deliberate move to run the company into the ground in my opinion. I know our office is still generating good revenue, and our dealers are really mad right now.

I'm sad for the people that lost their jobs. The print gave us a lot of biz to and are rep was great.
They have too many wesbites they're trying to sell, and I guess it'll be part of autotrader.com now - which we only use the free listings, the cost is just too much.
We get bunch of traffic from web searches most of are customers find us on google.com, theres so many ways online for people to find cars, like easyautosales, carsearch, autopopulous, and everycarlisted which are all free. I don't see how thye can keep charging more for their websites.

This company went downhill about 2 years after Cox purchased the company. I think the sales manager in San Diego hung himself and their were a ton of human resource problems and sexual harassment issues there. Quotas were inflated and sales mgrs. were rotated in and out. In Atlanta a few years ago top reps started their own company and later sold to another national mag. I think the same happened in San Diego but I can't remember the name of the company that competes against them. Management was horrific and all the top reps would leave. It is sad for all to see this company ruin a once thriving print magazine.

I''ve been with the company for going on 7 years as a graphic artist for Cox Auto Mart and our last day will be February 6...Waiting to find out what my severance package will be, but I'm not expecting much. I agree with prior posters that the company went downhill after the buyout in 2006. Before that, it was a great company to work for and I truly enjoyed my job. I know that sales management wasn't great, and neither was composing.

"about to be jobless" - I know DP well as he works out of the office beside me, and your description of him is accurate.
Good luck on the job hunt, guys!

I am blown away by this. I feel horrible for all that are in this position of losing their jobs and all.
From what I have read they tend to rip the little guys apart and take away as much as they can. If it was not for the staff they would not have been there in the first place. Geeze!

Good luck to all of you you have my support!!

To, "about to be jobless," yes know DP pretty well, just had a class w/ him a few wks back. My top two reps are in Atlanta now being swindled into taking this ATC job, offering them only $25k (they were making $250k & $110k!!!) They told them there will be no severance and no unemployment so they HAVE to take this job. They have 90 days to prove themselves, change over some of their accts to ATC and then they'll dump them and again try to sell the company. They will have a small increase in sales while saving $$ by not paying these top producers a severance... when will it end?!?

DP was my regional. Once the local manager left, we had a great temporary fill-in for a short while. After that, they just let it slide. No manager, no support, accounts dropping. The most we saw "management" is when HR was visiting beacause of problems between the employees and mgmt. No surprise, nothing ever changed.

We went from 80k to 20 or 30k billing in no time.

I am curious to see if they are going to deduct any outstanding account balances against our severance. It wouldn't be surprising.

I too was a 12 year management employee at Cox. This is a heck of a way to blow 1.7 Billion. The real reason to close the pubs down is to be able to sell ATC and generate cash. They have NEVER cared about the employees. Even now the VP's for Trade are at Las Vegas and they were all given LARGE suites so that it would help them to "collect themselves" What a way to go!!

"About to be Jobless" - my top reps were still billing $25k/wk & $12k/wk. Despite the economy we barely skipped a beat. Give me the initials of your 'GED holding regional' - probably the same as mine (BB). I think the public should know how Cox Enterprises, a multi-billion dollar company, has treated this division in the last year, it is just so wrong.

I have to agree, the management is very poor and unprofessional. They were slow to react to economic changes locally and changes throughout the restructure. These managers just kept themselves scarce and acted busy while they were playing around.

My city was still billing a decent weekly amount and it would be a good opportunity for an independent publication to step in and replace us. Some of my clients are very sad to see us go and are looking for a similar replacement.

I have been employed with Trader Publishing, now Cox for 8 years. The beginning of the end was when the company was split in to a couple of years ago. It was a stupid move and its been going downhill ever since. AFter that, they started moving all the private party customer service to call centers which provided bad customer service. Our city always used to earn awards for our customer service. Once we were no longer taking our own calls, it went down hill from there. Every move these upper management people have made had been one wrong move after another. About 2 months ago they completely shut down all private party operations and the only way somebody could place an ad was on autotrader.com. Thats fine but there are lots of folks who do not use the internet.
I used to be a private party manager and my position was eliminated right at a year ago and I was offered to take severance or stay on in a much lower position. I chose to stay on and was later offered a new position in commercial sales running a newly launched service called Carspot. This thing had the potential to make alot of money but they ran it wrong, did not try to sell it. A month ago I was told they were shuting that down and I had 30 days left. Was bad for dealers we had signed up who put all their data feeds and collection with us. Left them in a bind. I think my last week is this week but not sure. Our office is having a meeting Monday about the severance. Such a shame. Maybe somebody will come in a buy it up and do it the right way like before Cox took over.

This is all terrible news. God bless the employees and their families that have been wronged after years of providing loyal service.

SS it would be wise to learn to read your audience before making your pitch.

I sympathize with those impacted by this layoff. I believe Cox will cull as much business as they can from the print reps they took on and will unload autotrader.com next year once they've rid the print part of the business to make it that much more desirable. I wouldn't be suprised if autotrader.com pared down it's field sales force mid year this year, they can't possibly need that many sales reps in this economy in all markets, save the major ones.

To comment on the rest of the bad news the rest who are staying on with Auto trader Latino formerly Auto Mercado will later be let go as soon as they are used for there leads and contacts....

This is amazing to me. I can understand why Auto Mart Magazine was not profitible with their heavy discounting but there had to be profitible markets that could be salvaged and kept alive?

I have to believe that Dominion is next and if they are already suing Cox for distribution- I think the writing is on the wall! The whole internet only stategy seems like having all the eggs in one basket for these companies.

Also with all of these companies killing their print and pushing us all onto their websites - major saturation! Their internet rates are going to sky rocket and my ad budget is going to explode. I wish all of you media people well- very sad to see so many loose jobs and treated terribly.

To "cox employee" what is the average your reps were billing weekly?

My unethical, corrupt GED-holding Regional gave me the news about losing my job over the phone. He said the severence would be similar to the packages given to the AT employees when their market here was shut down a couple months ago. He said preliminarily that I will get one week and it will be an average of my weekly commissions so I have a good idea of what that is looking like. I will know more next week.

O.K. Mike. Thanks for the advice. We will try to do better this year. Produce good results. Get shorter name.
Thank you Michael.