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I am BEYOND frustrated with Dealer.com

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#72
Back to what this was about. Was eBay. D.com's eBay tool not populating as it should. Was told they (D.com) would look into it. I have not heard back, which is fine. I found from another contact, (different Provider) that D.com is not authorized to retrieve this information from ebay's system...

Thanks for wasting my time.
 
#73
kcar said:
There SEO seems fine, are you doing the right on-page SEO for it to index well and rank high?
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I'm not talking about ranking high - I just want a page to Index. Let's not put the cart before the horse.

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.
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Editing the CSS would be nice. Having an HTML editor that doesn't jumble everything together would be nice too. Not sucking would be a step in the right direction.

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.
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Yes, wordpress is free and easy to use. Instead, you must pay $299 or $399 per month to use their VERY BASIC blog editor that fails to work half the time and is not very powerful. It makes me hate my life. Therefore, I don't bother blogging.

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.
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I would be shocked to see a $0.18 CPC - but it should definitely be under $2. Their ad copy is what kills me the most. That, and the fact that they never review anything with you or try to make changes.

The idea of "set it and forget it" is suicide for SEM.

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.
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Support is great when I need something simple. As soon as anything needs to go to "Production" is when I have nightmares. I picture the production team as a bunch of chimpanzees in a room with a bunch of computers. Nothing ever comes out of production correctly. And by the time it gets done - you are too annoyed at waiting 5 years to complain because you don't want them to screw up the crappy job they have already done.

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.
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Thanks, I am counting down the days.
 
#74
MullerToyota said:
Yes, wordpress is free and easy to use. Instead, you must pay $299 or $399 per month to use their VERY BASIC blog editor that fails to work half the time and is not very powerful. It makes me hate my life. Therefore, I don't bother blogging.
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I believe you expect all of these things to be handled by one vendor, however here's the workaround I use:

1. Obtain cheap hosting. Use this hosting for email, php, apache, mysql, etc: all the things DDC can't do. If you're a do-it-yourself kinda person, obtain a server & bandwidth and host it in your building (total control!).

2. Configure your DNS, point www.YourDealership.com and YourDealership.com to the IP address for the DDC website.

3. Point Blog.YourDealership.com (and any other subdomains you'd like!) to the IP address for your cheap hosting. My cheap hosting features Fantastico on WHM/CPanel, which allows one-click application installation for WordPress, ZenCart, and many other FOSS packages.

In this manner we capitalize on DDC's strengths and bypass their weaknesses.

Edit: turned off automagic link parsing.
 
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#75
ArtMorris said:
I believe you expect all of these things to be handled by one vendor, however here's the workaround I use:

1. Obtain cheap hosting. Use this hosting for email, php, apache, mysql, etc: all the things DDC can't do. If you're a do-it-yourself kinda person, obtain a server & bandwidth and host it in your building (total control!).

2. Configure your DNS, point Welcome to YOURDEALERSHIP.COM and YourDealership.com to the IP address for the DDC website.

3. Point Blog.YourDealership.com (and any other subdomains you'd like!) to the IP address for your cheap hosting. My cheap hosting features Fantastico on WHM/CPanel, which allows one-click application installation for WordPress, ZenCart, and many other FOSS packages.

In this manner we capitalize on DDC's strengths and bypass their weaknesses.

Edit: turned off automagic link parsing.
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WTG ART!

What a nicely documented work around!

Dealer's that don't have a genius on staff (like Art), you can work google to find a local web builder that can work this plan for you! It doesn't have to be a local guy, but it's nice to know you can walk down the street and choke him when it breaks ;-)
 
#77
The workaround doesn't solve the problem because I sepcifically gave up a seperate domaine to put a blog on the subdirectory of my main site. A sub-domain just doesn't work for me.

Also, wanted to point out that I am now on day 4 waiting to get one line of code added to my site. It took Dealer.com 3 days to decide that they want me to sign a work order before they do anything.

EDITED:

I just saw that the work order says that production is going to take 3-5 days to complete. This is a 3 minute job at most.
 
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#78
MullerToyota said:
The workaround doesn't solve the problem because I sepcifically gave up a seperate domaine to put a blog on the subdirectory of my main site. A sub-domain just doesn't work for me.

Also, wanted to point out that I am now on day 4 waiting to get one line of code added to my site. It took Dealer.com 3 days to decide that they want me to sign a work order before they do anything.
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Ouch.

Clay, Did you call Joe from DDC, in the post above?
 
#79
"I am BEYOND frustrated with Dealer.com". This has not been my experience. I was intrigued by this so I had to read it in it's entirety.

As an Internet Director, my first concern was that customers are being followed up with properly and as quickly as possible. Not being a webmaster, I only need a website that will allow me to market my vehicles with good descriptions, pictures, videos and market-based pricing.

Dan, twelve leads? Seriously, the problem is not with your website.

I was with one of the larger groups and we changed to Dealer.com websites. Within a month, I saw a big difference in my lead count.

One of my friends has all of his cars listed on YouTube. As I looked at the entire list, the most views on any of his videos was three. Maybe, he might need to look at how he could improve his videos but if he was like me, he doesn't have the time. If your Internet department makes up the majority of the dealership sales where do you find the time?
 
#80
kcar said:
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.
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So maybe the thread should be re-named to: "DDC can't offer what I want".

Then you can focus on what you want and get some pointers in the right direction.
 
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