I am BEYOND frustrated with Dealer.com

[yagoparamo]

Dealer.com will never be able to offer what I need, so there's no point in even trying to work with them again. I'm in the process of building new relationships with other companies who can handle all my needs. No matter how much I reach out to Dealer.com, they'll never offer customized websites, or any more value for the things they already overcharge for. The point is, they are great for someone who doesn't know what they are doing and wants to be average. The real dealers, the one's who want to take things to the next level won't settle for subpar.. Refuse to be like everyone else, they choose to define their brand as their own, and will do everything to get that message across every platform they use. I'm just saying, not to completely trash Dealer.com, because their support is great for "regular" issues, but when you get into the custom area and want to move away from the template, they won't have the answers.

As much as I compete with DDC sometimes, I have to say that every vendor is better at once little thing or another, that a large company like DDC maybe droped the ball along the way for you, but that we all make mistakes sometimes and that I'm sure they can work things out of you give them the chance and you work with them to solve the problem.

They have very good people working there that you can reach out to.

 

[MullerToyota]

Lol, I just came on here to vent my recent frustration and found this thread. Eerily similar to one I had a few months ago.

I could care less about YouTube, but let's name some things that Dealer.com does NOT do well.

SEO. Yes, I said it. Regardless of what they want you to believe, their SEO sucks. They do a terrible job of adding pages to their sitemap and I can't get pages to index for the life of me. I really believe their site architecture is terrible.

HTML editor is atrocious. Enough said.

No ability to do anything myself. Can I build a blog ona subdirectory using wordpress? No - I have to PAY. Can I go in an FTP files to the site? Nope. Just terrible.

They want you to believe that their SEO on page SPAM is all it takes to rank well on google. Meanwhile, they name their image files 03495723904857.jpg and give you crappy ways to actually use image tags.

TCD is a waste of money. Seriously - go talk to Moore and Scarry before you give over all your money to Dealer.com. Their ad copy is terrible and no one updates anything.

I expect more from a company that I pay an arm and a leg to that is suppose to be the best in the industry.

When I ask for something to get it done - it should be done before I am able to do it. If not - let ME do it and step aside.

When I make specific requests, I intend them to be followed up. Not half-assed.

I expect someone to care about my account and actually make real suggestions about what I can do to improve other than "adding more content".

1 more year until my contact is up. I can't wait.

 

[kcar]

You're not going to find a vendor that's going to handle this for you. I'm sorry, but it's the truth. They might make all the promises in the world, but once that contract is signed the gloves will come off. I understand what you want to do, and I think it'll be an incredible investment in your business. But you're going to have to roll your own solution and not piggy bank on someone else's. PM me and I can get you in touch with what vendors and documentation you'll need to get things rolling.

Trust me, there's plenty of other companies that will do everything they offer + much more for way cheaper. Dealers just don't know where to look, or simply they don't have the time to look, but they are out there. But back to that point, simply they just "settle" for what they can find or know about. I've been working with a few of these "not well known" companies for years now, and everything they have done has been flawless/top-notch every-time. If you want to go into details, anyone can get an inventory script outsourced and coded, and code the website portion. It's just a matter of what company is going to do it; but there's a lot of start up's who are seeing the serious amount of $ to be made here. Pay $2-4K for a inventory source/coding/feed/dataserver + template or whatever the client wants ONE time, and (costs them $20/month to operate) charge them $500/month for next few years +. It's easy to see how profitable these companies can be, they rake in dealers by the thousands. Everyone's got to make money, but if the dealership I'm working at is paying for it - damn right I'm going to make sure it's worth every penny and working to it's full potential.

 

[kcar]

ahh...then why did you buy it?

Where is your responsibility in this?? Are you saying you didn't know what you needed when you bought it?

Take a minute to think of this parallel scenerio.
If your customer buys a V8 coupe from you and months later your service department can't add a 3 row with stow-n-go seating...

...is this YOUR fault?


Don't think your alone kcar, I'm on the record for my anti-reyrey rants, but we all gotta work within the limitations of the platforms that are under contract.

You had best do your homework because as the current contract expires, the ultimate responsibility of the new vendor resides with you. You need to understand that your goals are high, no one vendor will do it all and the one you pick will fall short of your needs. You will find that the one you pick will not be perfect, but has the best compromise.

I never bought it, and for that matter never signed a dealer.com contract. The person/people before me have all ended up on a contract for the first time. As of now, as that contract was over I switched it to a new company immediately. Always do my homework, that's why I'm able to compare DDC to other companies and realize why it's lacking. See that's the mentality I cannot stand, so many dealers are okay with settling or losing this or not being able to that. I am not and never will be; I pay for it, it should be worth every penny and run to it's full potential. There are a few vendors out there who will handle absolutely everything and do it for the right price and deliver perfect support. The dealers who are going with dealer.com aren't doing their homework, or simply aren't educated enough to know how much better their website could perform.

 

[kcar]

kcar,

I smell a conflict and demand your honest reply.

EXPLAIN YOUR SIG: "Building more #1 dealerships one at a time."

I smell a Shill. Prove me wrong... NOW.

Shill: "A shill, plant or stooge is a person who helps a person or organization without disclosing that he or she has a close relationship with that person or organization. Shill typically refers to someone who purposely gives onlookers the impression that he or she is an independent customer of a seller (or marketer of ideas) that he or she is secretly working for..."


It's your words:


That has vendor speak written all over it.

Dear Employer of kcar,
If kcar is making these posts from your employment (all posts have IP sigs), then it will be DealerRefresh's call to make a full and public disclosure of these underhanded tactics, and, I'd imagine that the legal department at Dealer.com may be very interested in this matter as well.

The forum really endorses dealer.com doesn't it? If I was a vendor I'd have something to advertise, but I don't and I'm not a vendor. Just because I voice my opinion about Dealer.com, and you're accusing me of being a vendor speaks volumes about the amount of endorsement the forum gives to Dealer.com. I don't understand why you can't accept that Dealer.com doesn't offer it's clients exactly what they need. I've explained things out for anyone who wants to read the specifics of why I won't use them. Also remember, I'm within my own rights to write about my own negative experience I've had with Dealer.com. Also, yes, I know how a forum works, you can log my IP, I have a vBulletin license myself, and I know exactly what you are looking at. Also just a word of advice, even though I do not work with any other company or operate one myself.. there's no privacy policy or terms of use on your forum. If you were to disclosure my information, you'd be facing a legal matter yourself. And if you really want to know, I work within dealerships to turn them around by being an employee there, not by pushing some product on them. I'm like any other car dealership employee with an office you'd see anywhere else.

So don't come at me like that, and accuse me of something I'm not.

 

[kcar]

As much as I compete with DDC sometimes, I have to say that every vendor is better at once little thing or another, that a large company like DDC maybe droped the ball along the way for you, but that we all make mistakes sometimes and that I'm sure they can work things out of you give them the chance and you work with them to solve the problem.

They have very good people working there that you can reach out to.

You're right but they didn't drop the ball, they simply couldn't do what I needed. I'm not saying they are horrible, etc. Every-time I call in the phone support is always there for me, even on the weekends and off-peak hours. So I'll give them that. The control panel works, website editor is easy, etc. But solve the problem? They will never be able to offer me a custom website, so working with them again will never happen. And to prove I gave them chances, I spoke with over six - seven different reps trying to get an answer moving up the chain.. And all I got was our development team can't do this or we'll see if we can after you sign, etc. Just sign first and ask later, only to be denied. Also the "it's not brand compliant" statements, kind of got to me. If they can't modify the template, they will say it's not brand compliant when it is.. Just be honest and say it would affect the template, and we really don't want other dealers to do the same thing because that's extensive work.

Everyone on here seems to not understand they couldn't offer what I needed, so I move on. That's it, there's really nothing much more to it. There's no reason to give them a call again, if they can't do what I need. You guys know they don't do customization so why would I force myself into a template.

 

[kcar]

Lol, I just came on here to vent my recent frustration and found this thread. Eerily similar to one I had a few months ago.

I could care less about YouTube, but let's name some things that Dealer.com does NOT do well.

SEO. Yes, I said it. Regardless of what they want you to believe, their SEO sucks. They do a terrible job of adding pages to their sitemap and I can't get pages to index for the life of me. I really believe their site architecture is terrible.

HTML editor is atrocious. Enough said.

No ability to do anything myself. Can I build a blog ona subdirectory using wordpress? No - I have to PAY. Can I go in an FTP files to the site? Nope. Just terrible.

They want you to believe that their SEO on page SPAM is all it takes to rank well on google. Meanwhile, they name their image files 03495723904857.jpg and give you crappy ways to actually use image tags.

TCD is a waste of money. Seriously - go talk to Moore and Scarry before you give over all your money to Dealer.com. Their ad copy is terrible and no one updates anything.

I expect more from a company that I pay an arm and a leg to that is suppose to be the best in the industry.

When I ask for something to get it done - it should be done before I am able to do it. If not - let ME do it and step aside.

When I make specific requests, I intend them to be followed up. Not half-assed.

I expect someone to care about my account and actually make real suggestions about what I can do to improve other than "adding more content".

1 more year until my contact is up. I can't wait.

There SEO seems fine, are you doing the right on-page SEO for it to index well and rank high? I've never had this issue. Although the templates really limit you on what you can do in terms of SEO. They recently changed the url's too I believe so that's a small improvement but not much; Also the folder setup is horrible, I'll agree with you on that one. The editor is okay, I've used a ton, but if you try to enter in your own code, it will mess it up a TON. The reason behind this is dealer.com removes ALL style tags so if you want something in bold/red/custom-font/centered/spacing-this-much/etc, it will remove most of those and force their style over your custom one.

You're right on the Wordpress, it's amazing for SEO! But I believe they charge $$$ for a blog, which is a joke. Wordpress is free, FTP upload takes a second and installation takes less than 30 seconds with very minimal space taken up. I agree with you on that one, what they have now is just a basic blog format, it sucks to be honest. Have you seen the image uploading process? It's so horrible, that was one of my biggest issues, and it removes the names with numbers too, doesn't it? I can't remember but I think it does. Yeah, would never use them for online advertising, $2-3+/a click, with horrible phrases that aren't supposed to be modified per the rep says. I can get the CPC down to $0.18+/- and keep it on the keywords all day long, the competition is not that high for your area.

As far as support goes. If I need something done they usually get it done, unless it's custom work, they will NOT follow back because they don't want to tell you no. For minor changes they will do them during the same phone call. Also you're right on the suggestions, all they offer is more $$/upgrades which is fine, they should it's a company. But none of them benefit the site, you're better off reading SEO articles online and building backlinks, etc. Good luck with your departure, they always want to keep you working with them, they called a bunch of times trying to get me to stay on, and kept trying to say x or y will make it worth it, you just need to spend more or do this or that.

 

[Chris Cachor]

Trust me, there's plenty of other companies that will do everything they offer + much more for way cheaper. Dealers just don't know where to look, or simply they don't have the time to look, but they are out there. But back to that point, simply they just "settle" for what they can find or know about. I've been working with a few of these "not well known" companies for years now, and everything they have done has been flawless/top-notch every-time

Care to spill the beans?

 

[joe.pistell]

kcar,

Your a wanna be vendor, or, your a shill. Your Signature reveals your true intent:

"Building more #1 dealerships one at a time"



Explain your VENDOR signature

 

[john.quinn]

Can't we all just get along?? LOL.

As a NEUTRAL observer here (I wouldn't know a WordPress from a bench press -- I do have a drill press -- anybody need a hole??), I will offer that there is one MAJOR difference in the banter above -- anonymity vs. public accountability.

Many of the above respondents (as well as a couple of other strings on the forum) have seemingly public profiles, and are offering some tangible intel based on actual usage. In other words, they are putting their money where their mouth is.

Beating your chest and making threatening remarks behind the veil of anonymity is kinda like a little kid flipping-off the other kids on the playground while holding-on to mommy's pant leg -- not real high on the Brave-O-Meter, know what I mean?

This is a pretty lively discussion, but not really valuable without equality. I would like to see introductions! This is the CAR business -- I think we skipped the meet-n-greet. "Hello, my name is John, and you are?"

Let's take the masks off! If we can't get that far, maybe time to pick another playground.