:)

Question: does the proprietary valuation technology take vehicle condition into account?

Echo The Alpha Dawg...

We often have little success with vin decoders and our accuracy of our trade appraisal tools. It misses factort options and can't always determine a trim, engine or drivetrain by vin. Do you have similar problems, or are you getting a feed that has all that info directly from the dealer with the accurate info? Thx for reaching out Langley.

Langley, I don't have an issue with CarGurus. While I think the latest controversy was the result of poor communication that ended in a futile debate, I must also reluctantly admit that there are certain dealerships that will do better with an inflatable gorilla in their parking lots instead of an online marketing strategy. With that said, for many dealers, your site will suffice. However, for others, it may not. We must understand that every dealer has a different set of goals and processes - which are affected by almost endless variables (e.g. markets, brand, management’s ambitions, size of franchise territories, planning volumes, units in operation, etc...) . No single solution fits all, but overall, the industry trends cannot be ignored – specifically the “transparency movement.” Since I do not have a full understanding of the true intricacies of your business model, I will not support it just yet. However, I will say that today's consumer is determining the fate of the marketplace. While history has continuously proven that consumer demand ultimately wins, it’s still easy to find many auto dealers launching futile protests against the inevitable reality of transparent car shopping. Dealers that choose to progressively accept this reality, and embrace change, will thrive as innovators and gain new market share by meeting the needs/wants of the consumer. While dealers that fight the inevitable will only lose customers and profits. Of course, many will disagree with my opinion, and there will always be exceptions to every trend/rule/etc... However, one thing is for sure, as Al Zimmer(John Goodman’s character) stated in The Artist, “The Public is Never Wrong.” The consumer will get what they want, transparency is here to stay. I know I’ll be on the right side of history. Jeremy PS. I’m currently VP of a Dealership Group. I’m also on TrueCar’s Dealer Council, and I’m also a former e-commerce consultant for OEMs including BMW. Lastly, I started my own successful dot com at age 16. I’m confident in my opinion of the consumer’s desire for transparency.

Craig, we too have that problem! I thought we were the only ones! ;) So what we do is we have a guy who is my online inventory merchandising manager lay hands on the cars to see what options the car actually has and he notes it in our vehicle description section. I doubt any of the aggregators pick up on that with their technologies. Perhaps I'm wrong.

Langley, Thank you for sharing your thoughts with the DrivingSales community. I still believe this entire issue has been blown out of proportion and that many dealers are still missing one key element: these platforms are still designed to help the customer. And, while many dealers are still arguing about cancelling this service & that service, they still haven't looked at how broken their own branding, search, social and merchandising efforts are within their stores - much less on 3rd party sites.

Long time fan of CarGurus, studied and summarized my findings nearly 3 years ago: Look-Out AutoTrader and Cars.com, There’s a new Guru in Town... "...So, from my seat, CarGurus.com has some internal marketing hooks to perfect, but, it's site architecture has no equal. Top rankings on Google are a zero sum game. Look out AutoTrader.com, Cars.com. The Guru is building its empire, one city at a time " http://www.dealerrefresh.com/look-out-autotrader-and-cars-com-theres-a-new-guru-in-town/ A year later, I watched them vansish in Penguin 1.0, buy truck loads of PPC to counter it and BAM! they clawed back even stronger. Very cool indeed.

Eric said: "these platforms are still designed to help the customer" When a company "pays to play", i.e. pays more money to have their listings come in at the top of a search without regard as to how well the vehicle is priced, or without regard to the physical geographical proximity to the consumer, I'm just not feeling the love for the customer there. The small dealer who perhaps can't afford the super duper premium listing might have the better deal for the customer and only be a mile away.

I still want my inventory to show up as many places at possible, but if we can use this forum to help a vendor fix what I think is a problem it would be great rather pick sides and boost egos. Am I missing something or is the model where they price cars Good, Fair, High Priced or Over Priced possibly broken? is their vin decoder accurate enough, becuase our tools sure are not and I imagine we are using the same tools. In the next few days I will audit some of our inventory and compare it to local market values and share what I find. Good or bad, I just want to sell cars! P.S. I'm just a dealer's son, but work 50 hrs a week behind the front lines of a BDC. Haha only kidding Jeremy, love your input!!!

Sorry but what gives you the right to make dealers look bad? This is a hot topic for me! Every used car is different and unique in their own way. Who are you to tell consumers what is fair priced and what is not fair priced? You never retailed a vehicle a single day in your life. I get it that you are an internet entrepreneur and you are successful but no one ever gave you a right to make dealers look bad. I was recently a involved in a transaction where the consumer went to your site after being on others and was refusing to come in to buy a used 2008 Scion xB because you said that the price was too high. You did not factor in your searches that all Scion xB vehicles had 75k+ miles and this one had 30k. You treated this 30k mile vehicle like the others. If you removed that one piece of technology you will never be blamed again. I understand it is all about the consumer. But automotive dealers have a tough time trying to prove that they are not the bad guys. It is actions like the ones caused by your company that gives automotive retailing a bad name. The only way to be successful with your product is to always be aggressive which will cause competitors to be more aggressive and it becomes a rat race for who sells the car the cheapest. All I am saying is to quit make dealers look bad. You deserve every bit of chance to be in the automotive space because more inventory means more visibility and ultimately more sales opportunities but do it right. Don't do it like a failure that previously sold cars and couldn't hack it so they go out and try to make the industry look bad!

I'm a little confused to how a platform can be unbiased when it's powered by a proprietary algorithm. How can proprietary ever be unbiased? It is completely biased. Not saying that it is a good or bad thing. But let’s call a spade a spade here. HowStuffWorks.com states - "To make a computer do anything, you have to write a computer program. To write a computer program, you have to tell the computer, step by step, exactly what you want it to do. The computer then "executes" the program, following each step mechanically, to accomplish the end goal. When you are telling the computer what to do, you also get to choose how it's going to do it. That's where computer algorithms come in. The algorithm is the basic technique used to get the job done." So exactly is the job of the algorithm? who decides what the goals are? What happens if there is a natural disaster that could affect thousands of used vehicles coast to coast? Who is in charge of recalibrating the system when that happens? Further more what defines the parameters in which the data can be manipulated? I guess what I am trying to say is that even though you do in fact own proprietary software. The human factor involved throughout the whole process from Idea to implementation unfortunately excuses itself from being "unbiased"

Stan brings up another valid point, labeling the cars "high priced" and "over priced" gives that perception that dealer's are "out to get customers". It is the same concern some dealers have with CarFax promoting to not trust dealers. This is another platform that although gives transparency, it is marketing not to trust dealers. As a former top level executive in Expedia and Tripadvisor, did you ever label air companies "overpriced" or "hidden fees"? Did you label Ebay auctions "overpriced"? I can understand TMV with Edmunds because new cars are much easier to get true, clean data in regards to market pricing, no real issues with vin decoding there. You spec the car out and build your own. Once again, I'm all for another used car inventory site that generates leads and gets the traffic that cargurus.com does. I was on this same platform years ago reaching out to you because we wanted to host our inventory. I like your Dealer Rating score on the SRP page, and how many days the inventory has been on your site on the VDP page, all good content. I just would like clarification on the concerns mentioned (vin decoder on used vehicles/auto dealer perception).

"I understand it is all about the consumer." -- Stan, I know that is what they always say, but as Chris said, let's call a spade a spade. These companies are not philanthropists. They are in business for the exact same reasons as all of us are, to make money. If the consumer also wins, fine and well. But I'm sick and tired of hearing "it's for the children" lingo (politician's version of the same ploy) when in fact that motive is far from primary. When you can get big companies to pony up more bucks for higher placement, even if their prices are higher or they are further away in distance I think it is clear it is about the profits. Don't get me wrong, I am all for profit. But let's just have a little "transparency" with it.

I have stayed away from this subject for the most part except to say the following and I think most dealerships would agree. Our problem is we don’t like surprises and our data IS OURS. If you are a vendor, partner, provider whatever you are calling yourself and you are getting data from a dealerships DMS, CRM, Website or Inventory, IT DOESN'T MATTER… WE ABSOLUTELY HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW WHERE YOU ARE SENDING THAT DATA “PII (PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION) OR NOT” AND WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO OPT OUT OF YOU SENDING OUR DATA TO ANYWHERE WE DO NOT FEEL IT IS APPROPRIATE…PERIOD. The dealer worked hard and paid a lot of money to get that customer to their website, into their showroom and eventually earn their business as a customer so that data is a form of currency. If the dealer decides to trade that currency to do business with your program in full transparency of what you are going to do with the data…So Be It. The problem comes in Mr. Steinert when you are getting feeds from places other than the dealer and we didn't approve it. Furthermore we don’t understand your process for rating and therefore if we choose not to participate then we have that right to do so UNLESS you or the vendors, partners, providers who feed your platform would like to share in the floorplan cost with us, then we can talk until then you and the other vendors, partners and providers that are giving you the data should respect our wishes to not have our inventory on your platform. END OF DISCUSSION.

Larry is right. This is not a cargurus problem, this is a cars.com inventory distribution visibility problem. Cars.com is PAYING to distribute a dealer's inventory to other car shopping sites where the dealer pays NOTHING and Cars.com eats the costs. Why isn't this a great marketing spin for cars.com? It's amazingly pro-dealer. IMO (only) The only fail is a messaging problem. Had Cars.com got ahead of this and put this inventory distribution network in it's marketing, they'd be heros. This thread would be "why dosent autotrader try as hard as cars.com"? As time moves forward, had cars.com published a distribution list AND had select dealers wanted out, then cars.com could easily have built an optout system. One last thought. Cars.com has had this relationship with cargurus.com for YEARS. From my seat in the biz, with over 20,000 used car sales in 5 years that I oversaw, I've never heard it trickle down to the sales floor, positively or negatively. I'm sure I missed an instance or two, but I never had a GM or GSM in my face screaming holy hell about cargurus.com.

Yeah, it does really make you think why Cars.com doesn't shout it from the rooftops when they are signing up dealers, or going for more gross later (price hikes, new packages, whatever). You'd think the reps would be saying "hey man, we are going to send your inventory feed out to hundreds if not thousands of websites to get you all that much more exposure". And if they had been really smart, they would have also said, "AND, YOU can pick and choose WHICH sites we send that feed out to!". And if they had been really smart and transparent, they would say "AND THIS will cause you to have many more SRPs and VDP which we track all together on our reporting page in your dealer dashboard". And if they would be super transparent and smart they would had said "AND we will divide up the reports on SRPs and VDP to show you exactly which sites are giving you how many of each to help you in your marketing decisions". Alas, they weren't very smart nor transparent it seems. So they lose market share. That's the business world though. The market will decide the outcome of their apparent lack of smarts and transparency. Love live the market! Gotta love it.

So, "Cargurus does not give any preference to dealers that work with CarGurus directly or via CarGurus partners." But, "CarGurus does offer a Featured Placement program whereby participating dealers can buy an advertising package that will promote their inventory to the top of the search results on every search page." Explain to me again how, "Cargurus does not give any preference to dealers that work with CarGurus directly or via CarGurus partners." You can dress it up in fancy words like "proprietary valuation model," but that just means a simple variable set based on data that is already proven to be inconsistent. If data driven automation was so successful, dealership personnel wouldn't have to spend the enormous amount of time they spend adding info like trim and options packages when CHROME doesn't decode it all from the VIN explosion. In any case, the issue of late largely stems from a lack of transparency from an industry that has preached (condescendingly at times) to automotive dealers that they be transparent about their pricing. In addition to that, they have preached a process for selling products that is based on a "race to the bottom" mentality eroding dealer profitability. All of this works to serve the needs of vendors and consumers, but NOT the dealer. Sorry, Langley, but working with Ebay, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Edmunds.com and Yahoo doesn't make someone an expert on automotive retail. One has not to do with the other. You can spin the value of technology all you want, at the end of the day you are injecting a SUBJECTIVE opinion, based on a finite data set that has been at best shown to be flawed over the years. Dealers should stop taking the BAD MEDICINE that vendor's keep prescribing. http://www.automotivedigitalmarketing.com/profiles/blogs/bad-medicine-who-s-really-getting-better

Hey Craig, I certainly didn’t intend to sound like a “self-promoter.” I just want any readers of this article to know that I actually work for a dealer, and that I have diversified industry experience that allows me to gain insight into marketing and the retail customer experience. With that said, being a BDC manager is no easy feat. I set up our BDC about 6 years ago, and I quickly learned that BDC reps are the unsung heroes in the variable selling process. Next point…. If a dealer does not like CarGurus, then they can simply opt-out of sharing their inventory with them. In fact, way before the latest snafu, some dealers decided to opt-out of sharing their inventory with CarGurus. I feel that many dealers were misled into believing that Cars.com was surreptitiously pushing dealer’s inventory to “hostile” sites, but no one has been able to truly prove this was the case. I know dealers who opted-out of the CarGurus exchange a long time ago, then subsequently opted back in, and this was all before the latest onslaught against Cars.com! We definitely need to be aware of the business tactics of any site that could potentially damage our store’s reputation or brand. I’ve certainly challenged companies in the past, including my CARFAX posts from last year, in which I stated my detailed opinion that CARFAX was violating anti-trust law and therefore forcing dealers to pay unfair premiums for Vehicle History Reports (VHRs). However, to predict auto dealership doomsday over a site like CarGurus is just an unfortunate distraction. Finally, the real tragedy of this debacle is that the some of us are losing sight of the real threats to our industry. Right now, the franchise system is being attacked. Any major change to the franchise system could put us all out of a job (including the folks at CarGurus, Cars.com, TrueCar, and every other site…). Moreover, what happens if there’s a major shift in interest rates? Automotive sales will likely decrease, floor planning expenses will increase, but are dealers prepared? Even the self-driving car has far reaching implications that no one has grasped yet. There’s F&I reform, facility requirements, and I could go on and on… PS. For those that still want to fight transparency, I suggest you consider hedging your bet by buying stock in AutoNation, CARMAX, or others companies that seem to be doing quite well with used cars…

This is great and everything but what Stan really wants to know is: "How much can Langley bench press?".

"For those that still want to fight transparency" --- Who here is wanting to fight transparency? I think we all agree that we want more transparency. When Cars.com doesn't tell us in our dealer dashboard where our SRPs and VDPs are coming from, that's a lack of transparency. When they don't tell us where the feeds are going, but instead wait for us to figure out on our own where they are going, how is that transparent? Dealers are very transparent now, whether because of their own realization of the need or whether they were forced into it by the changing market... I don't see a big call to fight the transparency at this point from the dealers. The cat is out of the bag and there is no turning back. Now it's the vendor's turn to come clean and be more transparent.

Glen, LOL. I want to know Langley's opinion on where to stay in Paris! I love Trip Advisor, I'm "that guy" that submits the detailed reviews and ends up on the hotel blacklists. ;-) Jeremy

"CarGurus does offer a Featured Placement program whereby participating dealers can buy an advertising package that will promote their inventory to the top of the search results on every search page. However, these Featured Listings are clearly marked on CarGurus and are separate from the organic search results." This is where Car Gurus looses my interest.....the consumer does not review or know or care if the featured listings are separate from the organic search results.......as in google if you are not at the top or on the first page the consumer does not go any further.....so your statement that it is unbiased and is good for all dealers.....only those that pay. We are already paying by having the money invested in the vehicle, invested in our facilities that we are requried by manufactures to redo to the tune of millions of dollars, invested in our employees, their training costs, and all the other related costs to do business in a physical setting - ie taxes to community etc.....You Car Gurus do not pay taxes on personal property of all the millions of dollars of inventory that you are benefiting from profiting from by having dealers Pay to show up first...... I will say this very simple - Your AUDIENCE is only there because the DEALERS have PAID for the merchandise they are wanting to see Your SITE has NOT Value if the screens and search results are BLANK YOUR making sure our inventory is scene - well only YOUR SEO is being optimized thereby pushing down the individual dealers sites on google searches for organic search results - therfore the need to spend more money with vendors that are probably part of your Companies HOldings to try and WIN out the spot. Then your Other Companies Holdings are contstantly in the dealership saying "Lower your price Lower Your PRice" Be careful - Once there are no profits to be gained by the dealers - there is no money to budget for your Featured Listings -

FYI, from the dealer and financial perspective... Private dealerships generated record profits at an average $843k per store in 2012, up 6.2% from 2011 according to NADA. Moreover, new unit sales per dealership also reached an all-time high of 812 units in 2012. And in 2013, it's should increase further. Again, doomsday scenarios about grosses are unproven.

LOL Glen you had to there????

CarGurus = Computer programming = Relevant data in, Relevant data out... Based on the fact that there are no two identical preowned cars / delivery experiences, there can be no fair algorithm. ie... OEM certified vs. insurance restored "as is" vehicle. (please do not assume that insurance restored vehicles all have branded titles. (Try going to an insurance auction and seeing how many cars are sold "green light") CarGurus current business plan is not dealer (or really even consumer) friendly. Price alone does not determine a great deal... Never has, Never will. Controlling the data remains the key... If CarGurus and similar sites control dealership data, they win. If dealers harness their data to dealer centric websites, which they have every right to do, then they win. Good Selling All, DTG

Dealers don't need help looking bad, we can do bad all by ourself. But really, Cars.com does it, aperently Chrysler Digital does it, have you checked your inventory provider's "other sites" list? I'm with Larry that our DMS data should belong to us, the dealer, but years of unread and forced contracts allow almost every provider access to everything. Working at a dealership where our prices change maybe a little too much, I know both sides of this story. But what this really comes down to is that even if you are a used car dealer with everything in house, every program including the DMS, CRM, hosting and website created and maintained internally with no vendors or 3rd parties, your information will still show up on sites like CarGurus. No outside company will have access to your data that way-but do you want to run that business? Heck, have you seen myvinny.com? So what should we have learned by now? Just like personal information in the social media age, a dealer's information-Inventory & data-are there for all to see if they choose to find it. So be careful-if you don't want it seen, don't do it.

David Gould - obviously these sites don't understand that.....they take none of that into consideration. Again I stand on the fact they have not skin in the game, just basically using our investments with none of their own to make money for themselves. If the consumer that inquired knew where all of their information was fed to and to how many and how many times their information was resold to companies the consumer would be outraged that these vendors were making money off of their inquiries... I guess until all dealers quit using them they are brilliant and I am sure the head guys are sailing around the seas living a luxury lifestyle. All of these costs they add by having every dealer buy into every site just to make sure that one person gets to them are passed on to the consumer. If the consumer knew how much it added to the price of the car....they would OPT OUT of this type of searching and online submission.

What's interesting is that for the most recent NADA DATA Study(2012), Internet advertising was just 24.8% of a dealer's advertising budget. Additionally, advertising expense per vehicle actually dropped 3.9% in 2011 from 2010.

Ours just dropped by several more percent when we tossed cars!

The fact that dealers are selling more cars / trucks per store has nothing to do with 3rd party vendors. My take on that would be...the downsizing of dealers by Chevrolet / Chrysler reduced the number of facilities consumers can buy from. (thus increasing the sales per store by default) PLUS the SAR is higher this year (which compounds that factor). Dealers making a profit is not bad... It improves facilities, hires more personnel, benefits communities and all around boosts income for the automotive sales support system. (including vendors)

Hey David, Thanks for jumping in. Actually, we are still way below the SAAR from 2002-2007 and yet profitability is still high. Much of what's been driving auto sales is related to low interest rates. Additionally, manufacturers introduced many new models in 2013, which will also help unit count. While it's true, dealer count did decrease post 2008(and is now slightly up again), the important point is that many of the doomsday gross scenarios that challenge the transparency trend are being proved erroneous by measuring actual dealership profitability. Today, dealer principals(the people who own the dealerships) are doing quite well, and frankly, profit for the dealer should be the main priority(variable gross isn’t). Dealers are paying everyone's salary and keeping the US economy buzzing. Unless you can prove that transparency trends and 3rd party vendors are having an adverse effect on the dealer's bottom-line with an actual industry-wide analysis, then I think it will be difficult to make a business case against all third party vendors. Again, the real threats to the industry are being overlooked. Jeremy

"CarGurus does offer a Featured Placement program whereby participating dealers can buy an advertising package that will promote their inventory to the top of the search results on every search page." Why are they taking heat for this part of their program in this thread when dealers are doing the same thing on AutoTrader everyday? And it costs several times more to do so on AutoTrader. Dealers have always paid more for premium package listings on inventory sites.

Bill, Thanks for jumping in... That's a good question! I'll let someone else answer. I hope it's working out with your new BDC Manager! Jeremy

1. I think we are getting over sensitive about our "data". It's inventory, it's not like its confidential private data. If anything, this is the data I want to share as much as possible. 2. Cars.com has always shared their inventory with many sites, essentially because they owned several newspaper publications, and hosted the inventory on those sites. What's really wrong with them publishing our inventory to as many sites as possible? Yes, it would be nice if when I got a cars.com lead I knew exactly what site it came from, but no different than when I get an Autobytel lead etc...bottomline the customer was online and is interested in product. All old school sales manager live by "who cares...just get'em in!" 3. Bill, I think they are responding to Langley's first statement that CarGurus is unbiased. Langley is defending his reputation that they are not altering the "overpriced" tool depending on what you pay, showing no favoritism. Their company has way too much to lose to practice those poor ethics. I believe they are NOT practicing those methods. However, they are being bias to those who pay more, and better placement. But like you said, that is common and a non issue. 4. This forum has got some great engagement, it's really awesome. I would hope Langley responds. The only questions I have for him was stated previously and I think I have repeated myself enough lol -CDW

Tongue in cheek here... Then... it is ok to post a description / photo of you, your family, your business on a website that suggests you, your family , your business are something you are not with acknowledgement / no recourse. A description / photo you did not intentionally provide to them... All common decency says this is not right. I don't count (and have no business counting) dealership profitability. I simply stated my opinion on what is driving today's sales figures. As for transparency... Is that what CarGurus, Cars.com and the like are providing?

Interesting to note, CarGurus is contractually not allowed to talk about pricing for their "featured placement", as long as they are receiving a feed with your inventory from cars.com. My biggest issue / question with CarGuru's has nothing to do with cars.com, but more along the lines of vehicle valuation on the CG site... How is Instant Market Value determined, taking into consideration all vehicle trim levels and vehicle option packages. Do you have proprietary software that can accurately pull every option and trim level correctly on a used vehicle? If so, why isn't this being offered to dealers? If you don't have this type of software, then you can't *consistently / accurately* determine Market Value with all the options and features on a used vehicle.

Look Guys and Gals it’s time to land this plane. The problem dealers should have with CarGurus has nothing to do with premium listings. It comes down to 2 fundamental problems. 1. Where CarGurus gets its inventory. If the dealer did not approve their inventory to be on this site then it shouldn’t be there…period. Cars.com and others, it is not your inventory to sling all over the web as you please. 2. The BLACK BOX way CarGurus values a car. We don’t understand it and it seems subjective and like it can be bought. If that is the case it’s WRONG! In reality there is not a lot to fix here for CarGurus. Get transparent with your valuation model and stop taking feeds from dealers that don’t want their cars on your site. I don’t think that is a lot to ask.

I think that's fair Larry. If dealers don't want inventory on a specific site, then they should be able to have it removed, period. I imagine the CarGuru people will assist dealers with this.... On another note… Back in the days of running an e-commerce company, I would often find my copyrighted product descriptions being used by competitors (copyright infringement). Since my descriptions and pictures were copyrighted, I would send DMCA takedown notices to have the infringing content removed. It was very effective.

David, Tongue in cheek? LOL. But I'm talking about transparency in general and the effect of Internet pricing. If a dealer doesn't like CarGuru's model, then they should be able to remove their inventory, and it's my understanding they can. I think that's fair.

Craig, Good points!!!

Exactly Jeremy, Inventory infringement would be a good word for it. There should be a DMCA type letter for dealers when their inventory appears where they don't want it to. My biggest problem is when sites like CarGurus use dealers inventory to compete with that very dealer for the customer then sell the lead to that dealer and any others that will pay for it. We enable this process and WE need to find a way to stop it.

Since this issue first came to my attention a couple of weeks ago.. I have been looking at the various places our inventory feed shows up... In the case of this... Our inventory is showing up on the car garu site. I assume through Cars.com because we have no contract with you. Several things about it... first you thought that several of my cars were an okay deal.. Our dealership tools allow us to know they may be the best value for the money in our market... the real issue I had... You marked our Convertible as a bad deal.. and seemed to compare it's pricing to the sedan with the same designation... G37. Not happy, but perhaps that shows me why the GA shows me no traffic coming from your site.

So does Car Gurus contribute to Dealer margin compression? Does CarGurus depend on Dealers for revenue? What does CarGurus have to do with Cars.com?

You guys who tout "transparency" need to define the word. When both buyers and sellers have equal information an efficient market is created and the product is transformed into a commodity. An efficient market results in "disintermediation." This is an economic term that means "cut out the middle man." That's you Mr./Ms. Dealer and Sales person. Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.

A common theme to some of the questions above revolves around how CarGurus derives its instant market valuation for each car in our search index. Some have asked if we use a VIN decoder. The short answer is we have developed in house algorithms that go far beyond a VIN decoder. As I mentioned earlier, our valuation models take in to account: (make, model, trim, options, vehicle condition, mileage and geographic market among other variables). We index over 6 million cars a night so our data sets are extremely large and statistically significant. Hope this helps clear up any confusion on this point.

Respectfully, Langley (CarGurus), you are being told (and shown) here and on multiple other threads that your algorithm is not taking those variables into effect on a level playing field. I believe you should listen and get dealers involved with resolving your issues vs. being not so transparent with the "among other variables". If I am correct that CarGurus (and similar sites) assume that their web site data engine (inventory) is a third party redistributor's property to feed to you vs. the orginating dealership's... This issue is far from over. Just my thoughts. DTG

David Ruggles, As long as the current franchise system stays intact, and therefore protects the billions that dealers have invested into their franchised brands, then manufacturers will not be able to bypass the dealer. I fear, if it wasn’t for franchise laws, then many dealers would not exist today. Industry leaders, like Tim Jackson of Colorado, are leading a noble and worthy fight to protect our interests.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#cat=0-47-473&q=cargurus&geo=US&cmpt=q

RE: "As long as the current franchise system stays intact, and therefore protects the billions that dealers have invested into their franchised brands, then manufacturers will not be able to bypass the dealer." "Disintermediation" does not mean OEMs would cancel their dealer agreements and try to sell direct to consumers. Out margin compression together with increased overhead and bankruptcy takes care of cutting out the middle man. Franchise law doesn't help a bankrupt dealer. After disintermediation takes place, prices generally rise, something those who advocate "transparency" seem to be oblivious of. In the dealer world, it isn't transparency that counts. It is consumer perception of transparency that counts. Complete transparency isn't good for anyone. In fact, in our business, it doesn't exist. Dealers aren't "transparent" with their employees. Managers aren't "transparent" with their sales staff. I repeat, if true transparency takes place, sellers and buyers have identical information, transforming the product into a commodity. In that case, middle men become extraneous and fall by the wayside. Be careful what you wish for. This is simple and basic economics.

Thank you David Ruggles for your better clarification of the so loosely bantered term "transparency".

@ David - Its a HUGE burr under my saddle. So many vendors are going to help us provide "transparency," when the type of transparency they are talking about provides margin compression. Worse yet, they want us to pay them for providing transparency/margin compression to consumers. I still want someone to explain to me how happy customers via lower margins and higher costs add up for dealers. Salesmanship is NOT giving them what they want, it is making them like what we give them. IMHO

I echo David Gould's thanks for the clarification David Ruggles! One thing that transparency doesn't always give exposure to is VALUE. Price and Value are not the same as we know. Transparency only wants to expose price but tends to leave value behind, especially if that value is not something so easily measured, like a lifetime warranty on a car, or a year of free car washes, or extended service hours, fast procedures and so many other things that most people really care about. And we have all read the studies that show only somewhere around 25% of car buyers put price down as their number one priority. Thus the focus of these vendors is really somewhat counterproductive is it not?

Joe pistell, wanted to elaborate on your Google Trends post. Your insight is dead on. Many mistakenly think CarGurus is a "small", "anti-dealer" website. The facts just don't support either of those characterizations. Last month (April), CarGurus was the 6th largest automotive shopping site in the U.S. CarGurus has more daily shoppers than KBB, Edmunds or MSN Autos. CarGurus is hardly "small". On the anti-dealer front, the numbers don't support that either. The leads that we send down to dealers convert to sold cars at the highest end of the lead conversion scale. I've seen statistically significant data from a number of the top ten national dealer groups we work with that ranks CarGurus as the 3rd highest converting 3rd party lead source on the web. CarGurus helps dealers sell tons of cars. Our lead flow is of the highest quality. As a marketing medium, dealers should evaluate 3rd party websites on 2 key issues: scale and conversion rates. You want to work with partners that can move the needle from a scale standpoint and whose lead referrals convert to sold cars at a high rate. On those two dimensions Cargurus is at the very top of the list here in the United States. Your post did so as well but thought I'd add more clarity and data to the debate.

It's been 3 years since I first saw the CarGurus platform (see link below*). I was SHOCKED (like everyone else here). I totally thought CarGurus going to cause chaos on the sales floor. That never happened then and it's not now. 2 things happens at CarGurus: #1). When your car is price "below market", you get an up. #2). When your car is price "above market" the up looks else where. Compare that to AutoTrader. 2 things happen at AutoTrader.com #1). When your car is priced "below market", you get an up. #2). When your car is priced "above market" the up looks else where. If you feel this is wrong, then why are Velocity dealers killin' it? No Transparency? How many KBB fights have you had on the floor... THIS MONTH? How many CarGuru fights have you had on the floor... ever?? If CarGurus the Perfect Up Machine? No... it doesn't exist. When you move your price down does CarGurus help you sell it? Yes. When you move your price down does AutoTrader help you sell it? Yes. When you move your price down does Cars.com help you sell it? Yes. It's a classified ad system. PRICE discovery is why the shopper is there. http://forum.dealerrefresh.com/f44/used-cars-cargurus-com-vauto-travel-industry-916.html#post7639

But AutoTrader does not tell the customer in bold lettering that the price is "fair" or "unfair". AutoTrader is not making dealers look like they are a ripoff. CarGurus is.

Langley, Are you sure you had more "shoppers" than Edmunds? The folks at Edmunds are telling me this is incorrect.

The numbers are correct. Comscore media metric (the industry standard for traffic measurement) for April, 2013. If you look at average daily traffic for shopping sites (which removes manufacturer sites and community bulliten boards), CarGurus was #6 above edmunds, kbb and msn autos. Part of the reason for this is that our traffic is heavily skewed towards shoppers not folks reading reviews or researching.

Impressive. In fairness, when it comes to traffic I am told, there's no shortage of stats that can be cited to prove different points. Regardless, the Comscore metrics, at least for now, are impressive. It will be interesting to continue watch the traffic trends.

David Ruggles: Thank you for clarifying your transparency concerns. Obviously, I'm a capitalist; so I'm certainly not supporting, and never have supported, the commerce disrupting transparency that you cautioned us about. Such extremism would result in anarchy.

As I've said repeatedly, it is a mystery to me how the word "transparency" crept into our lexicon as true transparency leads to efficient markets, which renders the product into a commodity, and eliminates all "middle men." And I continue to be baffled at how some vendors will charge dealers money to help them achieve further transparency. And totally mystified that dealers pay that money. Consumers have every right to ask for whatever they want. And they, as always, the want us to quote them our best price so they can use it to shop us. AND if we don't give it to them, they can walk. OR, we DO give it to them, and they walk to shop. The problem is that there is no such thing as a "best price" on a vehicle. But consumers think there us. They think we know what it is and won't give it to them, and in their mind, that makes us evasive. But Jeremy, absolute "commoditizing" transparency is not "commerce disrupting." But it IS "profit disrupting." And we should never forget why we come to work every day. AND we should NEVER be embarrassed about it just because some consumers don't understand our business, or don't care. IMHO.

Thanks for your opinion David.

I found this blog post over the weekend relevant to this topic. The author, Jean Chatzky, is a pretty well know writer in the financial sector and appears on the NBC Today Show as a financial reporter. Pay attention to items #1 & #2 that she writes about in her personal experience in buying a used car. Item #3 addresses Joe Pistell's point on how dealership pricing can get the click, and did so in her shopping experience. https://www.jeanchatzky.com/uncategorized/my-experience-shopping-for-a-used-car/

Great find Bill.

Great find Bill! I shared internally.

Another Dealer I know is trying to get in touch with car gurus and is unable to find a working number for someone who will call her back. Does anyone have a contact they can share.

Cargurus suck! I received an email from Cargurus that someone is interested in my car but when I replied to that email I never received any update. I don't have direct email from the two inquiries I had so I have no idea if they even received my reply.

Advertising costs keep on rising with Autotraders of the world charging so much and the stiff competition is driving the profitability flat per copy. Now there are new players like cargurus who are playing the same game, dealers pockets are getting squeezed beyond limits. Something has a got a give.

Here's my beef. For the second time, we have started getting uninvited leads from CarGurus. Both times, the leads did not go into our CRM system but instead a "spam" folder in a general email account. Not surprisingly, they were not replied to. Both times we found out because a customer called mad that we hadn't replied as CarGurus had promised we would. Hey, jackasses, it would be nice of you to communicate with us BEFORE making promises on our behalf! We never consented to have our inventory on your sight and don't want to be a part of your program. I will call (again) and ask to be removed (again) and hope this time you respect our declination to participate. My advice to other dealers? Don't feed this beast. These guys NEED our inventory information to have clout. If we willingly give it to them, or allow them to use it without objection, we only help them build that clout on our backs. Once they have accumulated a critical mass of clout, the drive for revenue will come and come hard. Some of us may be happy getting a few free leads now, but if we let these guys get big enough, they'll be in our stores demanding ever-escalating subscription fees and we'll face the dilemma of paying to continue to participate or being portrayed as "evasive" in their marketing. It's CarFax/TrueCar all over again.

Gary,If you're getting free leads trapped in a SPAM box, is the problem unsolicited free leads or the SPAM box? If the vendor goes from free to paid, don't pay. The CarGurus problem is made possible by Google. Give it a good look, do a long tail search for a car for sale in your back yard (i.e. Subaru Impreza for sale Bloomington il). Classified sites always take top positions 1 thru 6, one car dealer always gets #7. In every city, Google has hard coded the results this way, from coast to coast. Results? You now have to "pay for position" in Google too. (for the record, Google has just reset it's SERPs. Dealers use to always get position 4, now it's position #7.... not good >:-/ )

Yes Joe, but if dealers didn't let CarGooroo access their inventory then the car wouldn't be available for Google to put Cargooroo in the SERP. Some other classified site maybe, but at least not that parasite. It does suck how Google can get away with antitrust type activities like that though.

Joe, Like most dealers, we have a specific pathway we expect leads to follow and we communicate that with our partners/vendors. CarGurus' arbitrary decision to send us leads without communicating with us (and arbitrary decision where to send the leads) means they get sent to a place where we're not expecting them and where they're likely to get overlooked and/or lost. As a dealership GM, I can tell you my spam box is full of solicitations from would-be vendors disguised as leads. I get dozens of them every week. I can't blame the spam filter for sending CarGurus leads there. In my opinion, they ARE spam at this point since I have previously asked them not to send them. As for Google, I acknowledge their ever-increasing role in the market place. They're too big to fight. I don't want to participate in the building of yet another Goliath who will someday be standing in our doorway wanting a piece of our ever-decreasing margins.

Guys, lets cut to the chase, you don't like cargurus' price display model. Period. You can live outside the classified sites (like SouthWestAir.com does in the airlines space), you just adjust your business game plan for it. FYI: The net is FULL of scrapers, most use your cars to attract traffic and sell ad space. Gary, your 06 Hummer VIN is on 125 different sites/pages https://www.google.com/search?q=5GTDN136268290575&oq=5GTDN136268290575&aqs=chrome..69i57.400j0j7&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=119&ie=UTF-8 IMO, these scraper vendors are not going away, FWIW, I'd be looking in my SPAM box for "scraped leads" every day.

Why are the dealerships wasting time fighting with a company that can not share a live Extraordinary Experience about the dealership - they can only suggest where to purchase the cheapest NOT where a customer can have the best experience beyond just purchasing a vehicle but while they own the vehicle. I don't care that my inventory is viewed in California when the dealership is located in West Virginia. What I care about are the current Loyal Customers already doing business with me that have influence with others in the community that WILL be purchasing a vehicle in my market. So my advice - spend time training and educating your employees - ALL of them - on how to make each customers experience Positively Extraordinary. 1. Train EACH person how to engage with a customer - even the lot person 2. Make sure the facility is User Friendly 3. Educate the customer - 4. Add Value beyond selling and repairing vehicles 5. Constantly get feedback and ACT upon it about your organization 6. Always be working on Improving 7. Dedicate a greater percent of your marketing budget to spending it on the customers that already trust you - so that they are promoting you and referring you to their circle of Influence Marketing is not selling, it's generating engagement through value add, resulting in the sale of a product or service. And that doesn't necessarily mean its the cheapest -

Christi that is the best advice you can give any of us! If price alone becomes THE defining factor in sell automobiles I want out!

Customers be "AWARE" info at CarGurus is not very accurate.I have found mistakes emailed them about the mistakes.They emailed me back right away asking for vin #'s.I emailed back vin #'s. No corrections as of yet.Best thing to do is look up on NADA.com for values, that is what the bank goes by not opinions. The mistakes I found were how long vehicles have been for sale. Example Gurus said car had been for sale for 194 days and it was only 45 days misleading the customer as well as costing dealership potential business. Shame on CarGurus.

CarGurus really need to modify its weeding formula, they took my ad off without notifying me at all, because I have reached as they considered high leads (around 35 requests) and I am not even a dealer and third of those requests are duplicate messages (interested buyers just send the same message or add another question to it) When I emailed them about my car why is not showing up in the search anymore they said its a formula that they are trying to look at now. I doubt that they are trying change it now specially it came out Feb 2014. Who ever planned this formula need to think in the future more about private seller that they are getting mixed up with the dealers just because of this.

James M, the car showing as listed 194 days - was it an auction car the dealer bought? I've had my cars show listed XXX days and Listed by dealer XX days. Those are by VIN, autotrader does the same, but just not customer facing. ............. James H, as a dealer, I'm not sure what their model is for placing an add from a private seller. ........... What I have learned in meeting with the car gurus guys and by using their services, they have a very different outlook on moving metal. Coming from the travel industry, they haven't tried to fit the mold of carbiz vendors. The biggest thing I've learned is they don't do vin explosions, they wrote script to understand the info in the custom comments and use that to value and populate a car's info on their site. Given how dirty and varied our data is, this was their out of the box idea on how to overcome a large problem facing all auto partners. They ended their relationship with CARS.com, but many inventory hosts have them on a list of "free sites" to which they export your data. If you haven't actually checked with your host recently, do you even know all the places to which they are SENDING your cars (not to mention the places scraping your inventory)?

We are a used car dealer in Houston, TX . We tried CarGurus for a month on a trial. We couldn't handle the calls and the hundreds of email leads . But guess what .. ZERO sales from CarGurus , on the other side, we were getting way less calls from eBay and Craigslist, But almost ALL the callers showed up, and we closed most of them. When we switched to the premium plan with $1000 monthly fee, the calls dropped to one or two calls a day , same with emails. I forgot to mention that we never got a reply from the emails, and all the phone numbers in the emails are NOT real numbers. But we were busy and getting buyers from other websites. So we decided to cancel our subscription with CarGurus, I called Brandon to request cancellation , Few minutes after that phone call we start getting calls again from people who didn't know the color of the car they were calling about , p.s. we have pictures for all our cars on the adds. Long story short , we believe that Cargurus is a S.C.A.M.

This has been the most frustrating service oriented company to deal with. It seems like the managers like to create this cocoon for themselves where nobody can reach anybody to talk to. My account was charged $1500 and I have been try to find someone and ask why? even after leaving an email and ask for help I received this answer "It appear that your account manager can answer your questions". Does this smart guy think that I would have emailed him and waited two weeks for his response if I had a telephone number or knew who the heck my account manager was. It is so frustrating to find somebody. I think my only recourse would be to cut the funding to them and see if they still try to hide themselves...

My experience has been quite the opposite of what others have described. I am a small Independent in a small rural market. Within 60 days of signing up with CarGurus, we dropped all other 3rd party services. We get along great with CarGurus, and I have never had a problem reaching my rep. In fact, I get regular calls from my rep. I realize that different things work for different stores. I like what CarGurus has done for us. Personally, I don't have a problem with a vendor that looks at things differently...as long as it works.

Anytime I tried to access your website I get to "403 forbidden". Most home pages block your site. How can I access cargurus website without been blocked. kenny

Langley,Thanks for helping to eliminate the confusion regarding CarGurus Instant Market Value calculation. In Canada there many dealers that don't understand CarGurus platform or their meteoric rise in the organic search result over the past year. I've spoken to several that have demanded that their inventory be removed from your site and numerous that refuse to respond to the leads you've generated. Posts like this only serve to clarify and eliminate those problems. There are a lot of dealers in Canada that believe AutoTrader.ca has enjoyed a captive market for far too many years. As a result they don't feel compelled to offer much of a value or service proposition. Once Canadian dealers have a better understanding of how CarGurus indexes and ranks their inventory, watch out AutoTrader.ca

Langley, I jumped onboard with you guys before you even reached out to southern Ca dealers. recently you have DOUBLED our monthly fee. You team of closers (retention department) fought with me tooth and nail about justifying the rate hike. just a few disgruntled points i personally have with gurus 1. We appreciate the fact you have taken in consideration our support for your company since day 1 by DOUBLING our rates. 2. Honestly, your back end tool is maybe 10% of what Autotraders or Cars.coms is. there is ZERO per car insight example the VDP analysis is completely useless I want to see VDP per car not Overall. There are several things your backend lacks and I have talked to your teams over and over about it. too bad you don't have any real "car-gurus" working for you, you could have an awesome product. God knows you have the talent to make it happen as far as programming and software solutions go. But those brains are not in the trenches as we are on a daily basis. So congratulations on your New "retention" Department, and Also to Doubling your Bottom Line Overnight.

I find it interesting that the CEO of car gurus states in this article that their pricing tools use so many variables. Yes they use simplistic variables like make, model, year, mileage and options because the vin number tells them all that. But not for a second do i believe that their pricing tools account for the condition of the car. This is a complete lie. A dealership next door is selling a 2003 nissan xterra for $995. It cannot go in reverse. None of the electronics work. And the interior is completely shot. Except on car gurus pricing tools state its an "amazing deal"! HA the msrp is$3995 on a 2003 Nissan Xterra. Car gurus pricing tool is a joke. 

@Steve, I agree with you steve regarding inventory placement. I dont have any problem with dealer pay for  more exposure, but one can not claim that a website is consumer friendly when consumer is trying to sort by lower price or less mileage or any other way, and the result is those dealers who paid more are at the top of the list regardless of consumer prefrences.

Here is the #1 burning question about Car Guru's, How do they mine there data? and why is CG online pricing  completely erroneous and inaccurate?  I have received many complaints that people find my inventory online with CG that is in some cases thousand below my online posting on our website and third party providers. We get plenty of free leads from GC however the pricing they post is in question and extremely problematic.

There is a portion of this post I take issue with:

"CarGurus search results are not subject to any bias. The listings are ranked solely based on the consumer’s savings and the dealer’s reputation. Cargurus does not give any preference to dealers that work with CarGurus directly or via CarGurus partners."

Based on my research and comparing data form listings, it looks like CarGurus gives a significant bump based on "Dealer Reputation."  

I see a car at CarMax (with 31 reviews and four stars)  that has an IMV that is $1100 higher than an identical car in the same area for sale by a private seller who has zero reputation points.

Seems to me like the more a dealer sells on CarGurus, the more likely the dealer is to be able to earn "reputation points"  which in turn means that the dealer's cars have a higher value.

The value of a vehicle changes depending on which dealer is selling it?

Come on.  If you want this to be unbiased, then un-link the dealer's reputation to the value of the vehicle. 

The IMV algorithm may be applied evenly and with no bias, but the bias and subjectivity are baked into the algorithm itself when some sort of subjective weighting is given to how much a vehicles value is affected by the dealer who is selling it.

How does your company justify taking my stores Featured Placement cost that I was paying $1,400 for a very long time to an astronomical $4,200 per month.  I of course had to cancel but how do you justify this ?

Just as I predicted many pages back, these guys have achieved a critical mass of market awareness and are now seeking to recoup all the start-up losses they took to get here.  The next goliath has arrived.