Dealer.com - Dealer Website Vendor Profile

[Baron Ringler (blog)]

Dealer.com is perhaps the worst dealer vendor in the business today.

Against my recommendation (I had only been at this particular dealership two weeks) we renewed dealer.com for one year for websites and their LeadMachine product. 6 months later, we are still trying to get the website to function properly, and support has been nearly non-existent.

As for LeadMachine, it was a horrible application to start, but now they have done an "upgrade" that has made the thing absolutely unusable. For example, you cannot print out customer correspondence unless you cut & past the message in to a Word document, then print from there. Also, you cannot schedule future tasks properly, so for some leads, if a customer sends in something at 11pm, your follow-up is scheduled for 11pm and cannot be changed. As well, you cannot set up any lease retention schedules as there is nothing in the schedule denoting regular mail. On top of that, at least once a day, the whole system crashes and we are out of business for at least 15 minutes.

The combination of poor product planning, poor technology, poor customer service, and arrogant attitudes makes dealer.com one of the worst companies that I have ever had the displeasure of working with. Even Reynolds and Reynolds was better than this, and they are the biggest whores on the planet.

Avoid dealer.com like the plague. I may end up leaving this dealership, owing to dealer.com's poor products.

And by the way, it's amazing that some of the responses on this board are from dealer.com employees. Absolutely shameful.

 

[Baron Ringler (blog)]

I had to add this piece of wonderful news regarding LeadMachine...it seems that during the changeover ALL of our future tasks and follow-up was deleted and now we find that you cannot attach a new work cycle to our legacy leads. It's as if they expect you to just forget every customer prior to the changeover, and start with a clean slate.

This is an absolute nightmare. If you value your BDC department, if a Dealer.com rep walks in to your store, throw him out immediately.

 

[Patrick (blog)]

I personally dread working with a dealer.com site and try my best to get them dropped whenever the chance arrives.

They aren't horrible, but my standards are too high for what kind of site they ALLOW us to produce.

If you want a mediocre, run-of-the-mill, forgettable site, go with dealer.com, especially if you don't plan on updating it much.

 

[mikedececco]

Baron:

Thank you for pointing out your frustration. It's unfortunate to see your experience has been less than perfect in your opinion.

I'll speak for the literally thousands of very satisfied customers including the moderator on this site... The situation you're describing is extraordinarily rare.

This point I do not understand...

"And by the way, it’s amazing that some of the responses on this board are from dealer.com employees. Absolutely shameful." How does calling Dealer.com "whores" on a public forum help anyone?

I'm not quite sure that having a voice on this forum could be considered shameful. In fact, I would postulate that we're probably one of the few vendors that actually take the time to read these boards, listen to the feedback, comment, and take action.

Let me know what dealership you are with and we'll get you straightened out immediately.

If you do not respond, I'll assume that everything has been taken care of and your

e-mail me at [email protected] or call me at 888-807-9119

 

[mikedececco]

Patrick:

Thanks for your post. What dealership are you with? Is it a Subaru, Acura, or Chrysler store? Our training department would love to show you how to highly customize your site with our suite of tools.

Our sites are designed to drive maximum traffic and lead conversion which is the primary goal of a website.

Please reach out to me so I can get you set up for training.

[email protected]
888-807-9119

 

[Baron Ringler (blog)]

Mike:

I didn't call dealer.com "whores". That was Reynolds and Reynolds.

And by the way, threatening me by e-mail, just because you don't like the fact that I pointed out the horrid nature of your products, is not what I would call "customer service".

The best part is, my General Manager was in on the conference call we had yesterday with your people and he is just as dumb-founded by your poor product. On top of that, he is as disappointed as I in the lies that were fed to us as concerning what your products can do, would do, and how well we would be cared for after-sale.

Keep trying the strong-arm tactics. They have absolutely no effect on me. And I am glad they have been revealed in a public forum, to show just what kind of company you have.

 

[Patrick (blog)]

Mike,
I'm with a Toyota dealership. Thanks for the offer for training, but I am very well versed in HTML and web design. That's really the reason why I dread working with dealer.com. It's the Microsoft Frontpage of dealer website generation. Acceptable for beginners, but seriously lacking for those with the expertise and dedication to create a truly unique and comprehensive web presence, not just another cookie-cutter website.

The driving force behind web 2.0 is the desire to stand out from the crowd. It's just not possible to do that with dealer.com, thus I feel my conversion rates would suffer if I ever reverted back to your company's solution.

Many dealers set the bar low for thier Internet department, and dealer.com fits right in with that mentality. Again, it's not horrible, just mediocre, which is fine for most, but not for me.

 

[mikedececco]

Thanks for your comments Baron. No strong arm tactics here... Just good client relationships with thousands of dealers and we'd like to help. It's unfortunate you aren't open with working with us. You're not paying for lead machine. We included it for free in your deal. You should feel free to use another system if it does not meet your specific needs.

 

[mikedececco]

Thanks Patrick for your positive comments. We do have to build our products and services for the overwhelming majority of dealers that aren't lucky enough to have a skilled HTML person like you.

 

[Alex Snyder (blog)]

Patrick - like you, I am also competent in HTML coding. I use Dealer.com by choice because it allows me the flexibility to create content plainly or by coding things. I'm constantly inserting various DIV items in their system and building different HTML variables outside of their editing platform (typically in Apple's TextEdit or Dreamweaver with fine tuning in FireBug). I also embed differing analytics software to make sure we're all on the same page in reporting.

The only thing I can't do in Control Center is put my own JAVA in. I completely understand why Dealer.com would limit this because it could break my website!

I have two Dealer.com websites: one that is very customized (http://www.checkeredflag.com) and another that is simply a template (http://www.driversworld.com). I have found both to be easily editable in Control Center. Sure, there is the occasional table that doesn't format as I'd like it to when I paste it in, but I can still make it work.

Of all the different site providers I've used, I've found Dealer.com to be the most accommodating to my customization needs. That is why I'm commenting here - my experience with them has been a complete 180 from what you're describing.