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Anyone Use CarOffer?

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#11
Channel Chatter said:
Afternoon Bill - just wanted to circle back on this and see if you gave it a go and how you found the results?
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Yes, I have. It has been pretty valuable. They are going through some HUGE growing pains while trying to grow in the midst of an insane market, but they have made up for every mistake they have made. It is actually pretty crazy how easy they have been to work with in resolving issues. Maybe the best I have seen from a vendor.

Not only have we acquired some vehicles from them, but we have also sold some stuff for crazy amounts more than we were asking for. Those were obviously hard decisions to make in a market where it is hard to get inventory, but it was so much more than we were already asking that we had to pull the trigger. We also let them give us more for trades we didn't want to make and we were able to offload those trades to them.

All this being said, our current view is that the market is coming down a bit and we feel we were getting to the point that we were overpaying for some vehicles that we were getting from them, so temporarily we are acquiring very few vehicles from them. We have every intention to pick back up again in the future.

Last but definitely not least, they were recently acquired by CarGurus, so literally everything that I just said could change.
 
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#12
BillKVMotorCo said:
Yes, I have. It has been pretty valuable. They are going through some HUGE growing pains while trying to grow in the midst of an insane market, but they have made up for every mistake they have made. It is actually pretty crazy how easy they have been to work with in resolving issues. Maybe the best I have seen from a vendor.

Not only have we acquired some vehicles from them, but we have also sold some stuff for crazy amounts more than we were asking for. Those were obviously hard decisions to make in a market where it is hard to get inventory, but it was so much more than we were already asking that we had to pull the trigger. We also let them give us more for trades we didn't want to make and we were able to offload those trades to them.

All this being said, our current view is that the market is coming down a bit and we feel we were getting to the point that we were overpaying for some vehicles that we were getting from them, so temporarily we are acquiring very few vehicles from them. We have every intention to pick back up again in the future.

Last but definitely not least, they were recently acquired by CarGurus, so literally everything that I just said could change.
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Got it, definitely interesting.....and hilarious given your ending remarks so you checked a few boxes on the reply. Well done. My view of CarGurus isn't quite so negative and I think their size/reach might actually be helping CarOffer, so if they were going to screw it up it likely wouldn't be a near term event, but it sounds like CarGurus would has a lot of work to do in the goodwill department.
 
#13
We use Car Offer as well. We have not bought many from them because we have our buying matrix set extremely conservative. We will take inventory but it must be on the money.

We have sold some inventory though them and our story is the same as @BillKVMotorCo . Yes it is hard to wholesale inventory when we are struggling to find inventory, but at what point are we really not "wholesaling"? When someone pays $2,800 over our advertised price, it isn't really a wholesale deal anymore.

It takes an extreme amount of patience and planning to set up a Buying Matrix. The user has to think of everything and every possible scenario right down to color and individual options. To say that I will take 3-5 year old F-150 4X4's with under 60,000 miles at or below MMR isn't even scratching the surface. That matrix gets you every brown or tan 2.7 Eco Boost in the country dropped before the sun goes down.

Overall I have been very happy with the relationship but hate that they sold to CarGurus.
 
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#14
Tallcool1 said:
We use Car Offer as well. We have not bought many from them because we have our buying matrix set extremely conservative. We will take inventory but it must be on the money.

We have sold some inventory though them and our story is the same as @BillKVMotorCo . Yes it is hard to wholesale inventory when we are struggling to find inventory, but at what point are we really not "wholesaling"? When someone pays $2,800 over our advertised price, it isn't really a wholesale deal anymore.

It takes an extreme amount of patience and planning to set up a Buying Matrix. The user has to think of everything and every possible scenario right down to color and individual options. To say that I will take 3-5 year old F-150 4X4's with under 60,000 miles at or below MMR isn't even scratching the surface. That matrix gets you every brown or tan 2.7 Eco Boost in the country dropped before the sun goes down.

Overall I have been very happy with the relationship but hate that they sold to CarGurus.
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Appreciate the thoughts TC1. Thx and good luck!
 
#17
Probably not threadworthy so keeping it here since its a similar product - anyone have any thoughts on KAR buy CARWAVE (thats a lot of caps there)? Does this further push auctions towards digital? Is KAR late to very late here and throwing money at a problem? Does this seem odd considering they just bought Backlotcars a year ago? Does this affect anyone's ACV or CarOffer usage?

Strong opinions welcome.
 
#18
We had some issues with CarOffer cars and so we had stopped using them. They basically begged us to start buying from them again and so we gave them another chance. The cars that came in were actually worse. We received a few with several thousand dollars worth of damage on them. I'll never forget the filthy one that came in with a friggin car seat still in it. We notified them that we no longer wanted to receive cars from them. They acknowledged receipt of that communication and then the next day their automated system still issued us one. As soon as we were notified that we had it incoming we reiterated that we did not want it. They still sent it anyway. Now they are refusing to take it back. They were easy enough to work with when there were issues before being owned by CarGurus. Not sure if that has something to do with the new issues.
 

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#19
We had similar issues starting in July. Previous used manager handled CarOffer well and getting some good vehicles left in May. Moved our new manager to used, who was well qualified but old school. I found out he wouldn't meet weekly as you need to in order to stay on top of the matrix and targets. Market started falling and 2nd to last week of July CarOffer bought 7 units that showed up last week of July (some reason my email was taken off notifications and I wasn't aware). Every unit had issues beyond acceptable or what we had seen the 2 months prior with conditions. None were profitable per our matrix setup. UC manager was frustrated, said the CarOffer rep said give him cost to fix and he'll "see what he can do". July 28 I said no, they are taking these back, tell him to stop our matrix till we sort this out, and he did on a call I was on. Aug 1-4 Caroffer buys 6 more and we get shipping notification.

I got involved to arbitrate, and we refused to accept the inbound when they started arriving. I alerted GMF and told them to block CarOffer from accessing funds. Our rep was pretty slick talker and talked over me and interrupted a lot, we had to have a lesson in who's check book this was. We tried to work with them all of August & Sept. Got VP of sales involved, Phil Smith, he helped some, then communications quit and every time I tried to communicate it was games. Sept 19th sent me an email to make a offer to him for the arbitration. Nothing for 2 weeks, on 10.3 I sent one last email offering asking $5,000 in arbitration (we had $7,300 in unacceptable recon expenses that should have not had) that I could spread over 4 units and listing the repairs. He text me 2 days later while I was in a meeting, I replied to call me that afternoon please. He never does, 2 more rounds of text, calls and emails from me - nothing. I was done, retailed all of them at losses. Sent and email to the rep and copied the VP mentioned to terminate our dealership with CarOffer.

Fast forward to 11.09 and they start sending emails to pick up the units, send the titles back etc?? We retailed the units they wanted to pick up 30 days earlier. The rep starts calling hounding me about changes being made to the system and how its better. That I need to get back on there or I am missing out. I got emails for 2 weeks to get back on, send titles back with no one explaining, drivers were showing up to get vehicles we sold etc. I sent another email to all the contacts at CarOffer I had explaining the entire shit show we had been through since Aug and to remove our dealership from any further contact.

We still get cold calls from sales people there, and we still get CarOffer Premium Alerts. They don't give up!
 
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