CarGurus wants in your DMS...

[Chris Leslie]

I can't wait to have this conversation with our CG rep..

I was just talking to someone the other day about how I wanted access to their GA account.
We'll see what they say to that. It seems only fair.

 

[Marty Blue]

This is Marty Blue from CarGurus. I want to confirm that CarGurus does request DMS data from our partner dealers in our standard contract (and it is our understanding that many other third party sites do the same) but we always ask for permission from dealers before we access that data. As the contract language states "under no circumstances will CarGurus i) use the sales data in a manner that would disclose to a viewer of any CarGurus website or third party publisher the name of the Dealer or consumer or ii) sell or otherwise license the sales data to any other person or entity. Further "CarGurus will not access or collect any non-public personal information collected by Dealer about Dealer’s customers.” In fact, we make sure to anonymize the information so we can match up sales, but do not get any personal info out of the DMS.

We use this data to improve results for our dealers. Since all our leads to dealers comes from traffic to the CarGurus website, we can use this data to understand which leads convert the best for our dealers. We hope to increase the value of our leads and improve dealer sales by tracking this data backwards and improving our understanding of the best way to target users who are serious shoppers. If any of our customers want to discuss their contract or any specific aspect of their relationship with us, we encourage them to call their Customer Service Representative directly.

 

[Chris Leslie]

@Marty Blue - With hundreds of sites out there like Spokeo the majority amount of all of our information is already out there. Because of the internet there is no amount of copy in a contract that is able to keep data 100% secure. So the argument of only looking at public data is kind of mute. You're probably going to look at all of it in all honesty, I mean why wouldn't you.

It's always interesting to me how many vendors want to stick their hands into something that is not their business. Car Gurus is in the website business. Car Gurus' job is to get more traffic to Car Gurus. Car Gurus has absolutely zero need to look at transactional data of dealerships. Car Gurus is not in the dealership business, Car Gurus is in the internet business.

The only reason a vendor wants access to transactional data is so that they can say they were responsible for more of those transactions. Which then gives a vendor a platform to increase the price of their product. Because, look at all the sales we gave you. Or they plan on re-selling that customer data to larger data companies like BlueKai.

 

[Steve Stauning]

We use this data to improve results for our dealers.

Thanks for diving into this topic, Marty; and I'm not trying to pile on or blindside you, but I'm curious how you view the dealer relationship in terms of the results you wrote about. For example, one of my clients is ready to cancel CarGurus because of your process of retargeting his prospects (leads he received from you via a paid subscription on his vehicles). Specifically, he's angry that:

1. On the very first day, you send an email to his prospect inviting them to "Compare Cars" and "Sell Your Car." Both of these activities are unfriendly to the paying dealer who may now have additional competition AND may not be able to secure a trade vehicle because you invited his prospect to sell their car online.
2. On Day 5 you show his prospect actual alternate vehicles sitting on competitor lots and again ask his prospect to sell their car online (without the dealer).
3. On Day 7 and again on Day 15 you send his prospect an invitation to review the dealer. While I'm sure this pumps up your dealer reviews, it's not fair to any one dealer, given that their close rate of your leads averages (I'm guessing) less than 10%. Even if they close 20% of your leads, this means 80% of the invitations to review go to someone who never bought from the dealer and is more likely to make negative comments. (I believe my client's own reviews on other sites bear out this notion, given they are well above 4 stars on Google and Yelp, yet hover barely at 3 stars with you.)

I think given these communications (which my client deems extremely dealer-unfriendly), you can understand everyone's concern about CarGurus collecting data from the DMS that can be had elsewhere (like registration data, for example).

 

[craigh]

I had no idea these things were taking place ^

Time to read some contracts.

 

[Chris Leslie]

Don't you hate it when a vender rep just pops in for a quick one and done. I would rather you guys stay out of the conversation. I mean if it's not going to be an ongoing then don't even start a dialog.

 

[Steve Stauning]

Don't you hate it when a vender rep just pops in for a quick one and done. I would rather you guys stay out of the conversation. I mean if it's not going to be an ongoing then don't even start a dialog.

Great point. She joined Friday to answer the issue, then vanished. I don't think anyone here is trying to gang up or call anyone out (as happens too often on the other discussion sites); we really just want an honest dialog.

 

[WillMcG32]

http://goo.gl/EbZvxZ

(FCA names CarGurus as partner for CPO advertising)

This is the most recent post about CarGurus so I figured I'd share it here.

 

[Chris Leslie]

Guess it's time to start pulling out local dollars. This is not going to be good for dealers. Without knowing the details of the agreement I can only assume that it includes some type of preferred placements. I mean, why wouldn't it.

 

[Brad Randolph-Adams]

The devil is in the details. Guru's is a platform that leans heavily on price evaluation. I curious to see how they highlight the more expensive CPO cars compared to some very inexpensive offerings from independent dealers.