Hey, News OTS: I heard that in about 10 or 12 markets that had been "shut down" a while back like: Winston Salem, Raleigh, Roanoke, etc., that the private-seller Auto Trader will come back in a week or two in those shuttered markets.
The source, aka {Deep Throat} is no longer employed but I believe it, and figure that DE is playing hardball on contract enforcement and the financial penalties are most likely severe, so they might as well deliver the AT in those markets anyway if they are delivering the DE books.
On another note, my prediction for Private-Seller revenue/activity for '09 is that it will continue to die a slow, miserable "you can pry my cold dead fingers off of my upside-down payment book" death as ATC will probably abandon run-till-sold packages in lieu of 6 or 8 weeks max to control runaway print costs(or raise the package price substantially,or, maybe make an 84-grid postage stamp sized photo book?) and the skinny little books will be replaced by more robust free pubs and free-ad websites and venues launched by attentive, caring competitors across the land.
For example, when all private-seller calls started going to the big ATL call center
(the cloud) last January, I started my own little analysis on total average ATC weekly ads vs Craigslist.org automotive entries in some key markets. ATC was getting famous for forcing customers to place ads online only. Need a photographer? Forget it, with a capital F-U.
Interesting stuff, and by now you can all guess the outcome... If not, just picture a pronounced trend line that is not moving in the appropriate direction on a big graph.
My attempted advice on the matter fell on stone-cold, deaf ears, of course. When the organization took the unbelievable and legendary, warm & fuzzy service away from the very customers who made us famous,(and I have to tell you, my heart bleeds still for all those great private-seller folks that were sent packing on those little secret consolidation missions) the private sellers went away as fast as they could press the backspace key. I think this is the part where I say that you ought to dance with the one that brung ya.
To make matters worse unfortunately, the joined-at-the-hip-but-not-really connection with Dominion (that customers still don't understand), made the situation much more harmful, because their new call center in Seattle was pathetically 15 times worse.On-hold times of 30-45 minutes were normal and the association with AT crippled the effort. Long time customers would come to field offices (if they could find them after the offices moved) to try to change and ad and AT folks were required to say:
"You'll have to call them, you are out of my data base now"
The former AutoTrader claim to fame is no longer. No more brand recognition, cover changes, cover price changes and trials, no more engaged employees proudly portraying the company vision, and a lot of advocate customers that were brought along to financial success, one car sold at at a time, now have nobody to turn to.
Let's see word of mouth and referrals start working now.
What a sad day indeed.
Sorry for the lengthy diatribe, but now I feel much better.
