CARFAX - What Are You Thinking?

[Jeff Kershner]

Who has seen CARFAX's NEW Price Calculator?

CarFax has apparently decided to take it upon themselves to determine how their own CarFax history report "should" effect the price of your dealers inventory.

Why even go there?

Stick to your core product CarFax - History Reports NOT Pricing!!

I can see me yanking CarFax off my website real soon.

Is it time to consider AutoCheck??

Carfax vs. AutoCheck

What do you guys & ladies think of this??



We also have a discussion over on the forum about this. Feel free to share your thoughts here and in the forums.

CarFax Car Values and their NEW Price Calculator

 

[emersonhr]

I first started seeing this on our dealer side of CarFax months ago and asked our rep about it and even then all he could tell us was that it's something that we are working on and the customer won't be able to see it. Ok... well that's great unless we want the customer to see it.

After several tweets and blog posts tonight I went on my website and pulled it up...sure enough a 1 owner car with low miles on it shows a -$140 on the CarFax report....

Is CarFax trying to be the next KBB or NADA? CarFax doesn't even disclose how they come up with their figures....

Guess the phones are going to be hot tomorrow!

 

[Matt]

The worst part is no one can explain how they arrived at the value.

We considered making the switch from AutoCheck to CarFax. But we were hesitant because it's almost as if CarFax is a household name when it comes to used cars. We also had a rash of erroneous AutoCheck history reports that took a considerable amount of time to resolve.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Matt - I'm with you. We just want to know how they come up with these values before we make a decision on switching to AutoCheck.

 

[Nick]

WHY do we keep working with vendors who claim to "work for us" when in fact they're just figuring out how to SCREW us? In what other industry would any company in their right mind pay someone to tell customers why they should pay less for their products?

This isn't just for CarFax... this is for every lead provider, and hell, every media outlet in the industry.

 

[Nick]

oh, and CARFAX links are coming off my site... today!

 

[Ghen (blog)]

We switched to autocheck just because they're cheaper. Unfortunately, customers ask for carfax by name and we have to either overcome -another- objection or relent and spend the money for both.

 

[Mike@Carfeine]

simple question...is the vendor in the b2c biz or b2b?

as to how they derive their values/impact of history... isn't CarFax owned by Polk? they'd know the + and - of the values,no?

 

[Ryan]

Nick and Mike,

Very interesting discussion brewing here. The fact is that some companies can market to the end user and hold those in the middle hostage for revenue. Carfax has done an excellent job of marketing to the consumer, "don't buy a used car without it," this is just another extension of that effort.

This isn't new or exclusive to the automotive industry. Think real estate appraisals to get a loan, legal proceedings requiring a lawyer, federal govt mandates on nearly everything, BBB certification, college education hiring requirements to get a job, all of these industries have an equivalency to this end user marketing practice.

Pay Carfax less for using their logo to advertise, but they will get your money if your customer demands the service in order to do business with you.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

I just want to point a few things out for CarFax. Dealers certainly could tell a customer "we factored the CarFax price adjustment into the price of the car", but for dealers using vAuto, FirstLook, or AAX this might not be true.

1. CarFax - did you factor-in how dealers price used vehicles today?

A dealer that uses a pricing tool, like one of the 3 I mentioned above, probably does not have access to this "CarFax pricing adjustment" yet. I have to assume CarFax is working with these companies to integrate this pricing feature. If not, then dealers who use pricing tools should seriously consider whether they retain a partnership with CarFax.

2. CarFax - did you consider the arguments dealers are going to have?

There are going to be arguments for and against CarFax's latest move, but at the end of the day dealers will have to gauge whether CarFax is just a well-branded synonym for "Used Car History Report" in each market. If the dealer's sales staff is strong they have the ability to work with or around CarFax. If a dealer has confidence in his sales staff then they're going to have to internally discuss switching to a cheaper alternative than CarFax. Before this move, this internal discussion was not as rampant.

3. CarFax - who are your customers?

If you make more money off the monthly bills dealers send you, then why didn't you give dealers more of a heads-up before launching this product?

4. CarFax - where are these values coming from?

How can a dealer be against or for your new pricing feature without knowing how to explain it? Are dealers supposed to take the stance of "because CarFax says so"? Consumers and dealers deserve to know where these values are derived.

5. CarFax - Why?

I guess this one doesn't matter as much as the other questions. But why did you get into this game? Many of us are scratching our heads right now. The question doesn't really matter because you've done it and now we all have to figure out whether we're going to stand by your decision.

My advice
Speak up quick. Speak up now. Don't let another website tarnish your "great new feature". Publicly respond ASAP!