Watch CarGurus Hijack this Lead

[joe.pistell]

User story: “I like this car and this dealer is on my way to work, I’ll ask to see if the tires are new…”



Lead is Sent...



Woa, that's underhanded! It happens to EVERY lead on any car that's NOT a 'great deal'.

 

[joe.pistell]

And your 'good deals' are lost to 'great deals'





Ouch!

 

[joe.pistell]

It's like it's a machine, a conveyor belt that uses price alone to move shoppers to less and less profitable vehicles.

 

[mikesayre]

It's like it's a machine, a conveyor belt that uses price alone to move shoppers to less and less profitable vehicles.

CG is absolutely the best around at getting shoppers to shotgun leads everywhere & attribution by showing more leads to dealers.. they're super sharp, because they built a platform around knowing shoppers want deal validation & dealers want leads..

 

[AndrewAutoiPacket]

I'll leave this easy to follow nugget...

"Price is only an issue in the absence of value"

If you cannot convey your value and show why your car isn't marked a great deal or whatever (newsflash, not all options are always correct on CG so it's already messed up) you are going to lose everytime when you value sell. A consumer in any industry will always pay more for VALUE.

Agree?

 

[Jeff Kershner]

I'll leave this easy to follow nugget...

"Price is only an issue in the absence of value"

If you cannot convey your value and show why your car isn't marked a great deal or whatever (newsflash, not all options are always correct on CG so it's already messed up) you are going to lose every time when you value sell. A consumer in any industry will always pay more for VALUE.

Agree?

Hard not to agree with that Andrew. If the options are more messed up (missing) than not, how can dealers try and build more value in marketplace websites like this?

One of my biggest gripes around Fair/Good/Great deal badging is the fact that there tends to be no added value for an OEM Certified Pre-Owned program vehicle. No value add for an additional or extending the original manufacturer warranty?

This alone, depending on the manufacturer can easily add a $1000 in value to the vehicle. If I'm not mistaken, CarGurus doesn't even take CPO in to account. There's no highlighting or CPO badging added to the VDP. So unless you're mentioning this in the custom vehicle comments and/or within the images of the vehicle, the shopper has no way of knowing if that particular vehicle is a Certified Pre-Owned and includes any additional options and warranties.

 

[AndrewAutoiPacket]

Hard not to agree with that Andrew. If the options are more messed up (missing) than not, how can dealers try and build more value in marketplace websites like this?

One of my biggest gripes around Fair/Good/Great deal badging is the fact that there tends to be no added value for an OEM Certified Pre-Owned program vehicle. No value add for an additional or extending the original manufacturer warranty?

This alone, depending on the manufacturer can easily add a $1000 in value to the vehicle. If I'm not mistaken, CarGurus doesn't even take CPO in to account. There's no highlighting or CPO badging added to the VDP. So unless you're mentioning this in the custom vehicle comments and/or within the images of the vehicle, the shopper has no way of knowing if that particular vehicle is a Certified Pre-Owned and includes any additional options and warranties.

Bingo! No value added on any third party sites that I’m aware of for CPO or extra inventives that set the dealer apart

That’s the market we are out to destroy. Because it isn’t right! You know who looks like the hero on CG? The guy who has the worse car (spends the least on recon washes it and puts it on the front line) with a clean CarFax.

 

[Colin Rodger]

Hard not to agree with that Andrew. If the options are more messed up (missing) than not, how can dealers try and build more value in marketplace websites like this?

One of my biggest gripes around Fair/Good/Great deal badging is the fact that there tends to be no added value for an OEM Certified Pre-Owned program vehicle. No value add for an additional or extending the original manufacturer warranty?

This alone, depending on the manufacturer can easily add a $1000 in value to the vehicle. If I'm not mistaken, CarGurus doesn't even take CPO in to account. There's no highlighting or CPO badging added to the VDP. So unless you're mentioning this in the custom vehicle comments and/or within the images of the vehicle, the shopper has no way of knowing if that particular vehicle is a Certified Pre-Owned and includes any additional options and warranties.

They do have a CPO option in the filters on the left nav bar (New/Used/CPO), and have badging on the SRP page to show that it's a CPO vehicle, but not every manufacturer gets the CPO badge on the SRP page. To get the CPO badge on the SRP page the info needs to come from both dealer AND OEM. No CPO feed from the OEM = no CPO badge on SRP.

For example, Toyota has CPO badges on the SRP (blue overlay on the image) -


Audi (even with CPO selected), no badges -


It does also show on the VDP that it's a CPO vehicle, but it's buried way below the fold with the vehicle description and could/should be displayed much more prominently. If I'm not mistaken they do adjust the deal rating/add value for a CPO vehicle, but as to how much the CPO designation changes the deal rating I have no idea, sounds like probably not enough.

 

[Kevin373]

I'll leave this easy to follow nugget...

"Price is only an issue in the absence of value"

If you cannot convey your value and show why your car isn't marked a great deal or whatever (newsflash, not all options are always correct on CG so it's already messed up) you are going to lose every time when you value sell. A consumer in any industry will always pay more for VALUE.

Agree?

This is a great point, when price is the only metric then decisions can only be made on price. As far as value creation, the only way a dealer can demonstrate value is by taking the time to ensure that their postings are as accurate as possible.

Is CG using KBB to drive it's 'Great', 'Good' etc? Along that same line who is CarFax using when it shows it's value pricing? If it's not KBB I'm interested if anyone knows who is.

 

[Viracocha]

Great post Joe. I enjoy your content the most on this forum, you need your own sub forum or something.

The race to the bottom was really started with vAuto. It was always my opinion that every used vehicle stood on its own as a unique entity. I found it laughable that my one owner, never been hit peach was being compared to the guy across towns' former wreck that had a checkered out of state history. It's a disincentive to being a reputable retailer when its a price>value war.