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Cars.com Followup Emails With Other Dealers Inventory

I would make that a certain and not a maybe. Sounds like you have a frustrated rep that's not in the know.

I know for a fact that any higher up would be more than happy to speak with you Steve.

Let me know if you have any issues and ill point you in the right direction.

Update - I emailed the rep and let him know I was astonished that he would seemingly rather us cancel than them come forward with full disclosure. He called back and left another voice mail that said they would of course rather retain our business and that he and I would talk next week.

I'll definitely be all ears.
 
It is my understanding that Cars.com is not going to tell who their "partners" are. If you want them to stop sending out your inventory to other sites, just let them know and your inventory will not be pushed.
As far as I'm concerned, it is no longer an issue. I always got a great ROI from them and like their people.
 
It is my understanding that Cars.com is not going to tell who their "partners" are. If you want them to stop sending out your inventory to other sites, just let them know and your inventory will not be pushed.
As far as I'm concerned, it is no longer an issue. I always got a great ROI from them and like their people.

Pandora's box is being opened right now and it won't matter if Cars wants to reveal who their partner sites are. We are finding out without them telling us, at least who some of them are. But yes I have informed them to opt us out of ALL other sites/partners/affiliates or any third party as to sending our feeds out. We are going to reclaim our inventory and other data. We put a lot of effort, time, money and other resources into it and we will reclaim all rights to it. This commodity belongs to us and we'll decide how it is to be sold, bartered, traded, or otherwise monetized.
 
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Update: Cars.com reps inform me they have opted us out from all outbound feeds, that it will take 3 days to be effective. So we shall wait and see. I'll take them at their word, but as Ronald Reagan says, trust but verify!
 
Kelly, James states in another thread, "I have no problem with TrueCar" but slams Cars.com for having anti-dealer websites. This is starting to look like a vendetta.

It is. I got kicked out...

I've been 'defending' Cars.com because there some history to this; dealers used to ask "how many free sites do it get" but also because the data can be scraped or taken (no feed needed).

The focus on cars.com makes no sense. The focus should be on data ownership and how to control that.

Hurting Cars.com helps nobody: cars.com loses money, dealers lose an advertising avenue, the market becomes more monopolized by autotarder, etc.

PS: The arrow marks where they deleted my comments.


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Yago,

I came out against this Cars.com program. Now, you can opt out of the inventory feeds, to other websites, and they have cancelled the program. I don't understand why this continues. Yes, it does look like a vendetta. I was also on that thread, and another one. Like yours, my comments were removed.

In a discussion, there is something fundamentally wrong, when the dissenting views are removed.
 
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The "Data Jihadists" seek to tightly control inventory. Unfortunately, when something is on the internet it's out.

I speak to Jim Z on a regular basis, this was part of my message to him on Facebook this morning;
"I think that as soon as you release inventory "into the wild" you lose control of it. THAT is the genie that you can't stuff back into the bottle. So either you fight by keeping your inventory and pricing a secret OR you seek ways to leverage the internet TO YOUR ADVANTAGE."
 
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The issue was never Cars.com.

Everyone does this, so the issue should be 'how do 3rd party sites use dealers inventory'. Dealers should ask to have clear contracts about the sites where the inventory would be used. So by Cars.com offering a choice the entire issue falls apart.

My argument has been that we need to give inventory a value and a copyright so it can be legally controlled. Feeds are nothing... you can scrape the data anyway, make up inventory, etc.