CarGurus blurring info on free listings

[mikesayre]

So all of our dealers received this notice, anyone else? Thoughts?

We canceled our paid Cargurus accounts for our group late last year due to price increases. This move seems petty, and doesn't make us want to pay now. We might just pull all our group inventory off. What a shame.

 

[Jlewis74]

I would pull it all, I would also water mark every photo with a copy write and then let them mess with the photo!

 

[yagoparamo]

Cargurus doesn't need me to defend them, but what is the problem with them offering something for free to launch a business or a feature then sunseting it as the business evolves?

I have done it, the OEM has done it, you have done it.

And probably every time I did it wasn't to punish those not paying but to adjust to new business expenses and pressures. Punishing clients (paying or not still clients) doesn't work in business. But not adapting doesn't work either. You must change as the business grows.

Shouldn't we be happy that they gave us what they could for as long as it lasted? Didn't dealers ask for years to have a Cox (autotrader) alternative?

Pulling your inventory because you are mad does nothing to their business model. Pay them if you get results and don't if the ROI doesn't work out for your needs.

 

[dm18k]

We just found out the other day about this. We had an increased request for images from CarGuru leads.

Missed the memo?!?!?! CarGurus removed all of our photos.

It looks like some dealership are getting blurred out and others completely removed.
Currently working with CarGurus and our inventory exporter to correct this issue.

I understand why CarGurus is doing it, but removing all of our photos vs blurring the "self promotion" out was a bit extreme.

I am sure they will notice a huge drop from dealerships shortly.
Being on the free service the leads come in with masked email address little to no information.
Just giving enough information to get by. We have a very low closing ratio on these leads. I am sure the closing ratio would change having more information about the customer.

Can't wait till Monday to ask for an increase to the marketing budget. =)

 

[Anthony Lopez]

We dropped CarGurus because they wanted to more than double our pricing structure. I held out 3 months and they begged to have us back. The ROI is there, not quite as good as Autotrader for us, but decent enough to keep. We put our whole inventory of 100-120 cars on there for around $2k. We've spent close to $16k on them with an ROI of close to 9.5x. The largest problem with CarGurus is your inventory feed properly sending over the correct options. You almost have to manually adjust everything to make sure the vehicles are priced accordingly as a deal.

If I was in your position and simply did not want to pay for the actual product, I would create a diagonal pin stripe water mark across the whole picture that is transparent enough to see the car. Make it where it goes across the whole picture. I doubt they'll blur the whole picture, but it's worth a try.

 

[dm18k]

I've used Cargurus paid service before changing locations. We held a 12% closing ratio paying around 2K for around 180/200 cars.

At my current location we only have the free service and have just over a 1% closing ratio. We use dominion specialties for inventory/photo and vin decode. The issue is the VIN Decode isn't worth a dam and does not decode the correct option half the time. Not sure what vendor you use but we had them select major options manually. Options such as Bluetooth, Leather, Sunroof, Tow Package just to name a few and had a lot better results. Most vendors that control your inventory miss a lot of your options due to poor vin decode. New Vehicles are not really a problem most of that is pushed from OEM. You will see it a lot more on your used vehicles.

I do not think CarGurus does any vin decoding. I think they only use the information provided from the vendor.