Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Mark Dubis on August 14, 2010 at 10:48pm

Below is my reply to this discussion as posted on ADM. I am addressing Scott Falcone, the owner of World Hyundai and Presto Reviews who was upset and felt I should let the issue just die.
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Scott, thank you for sharing your thoughts and frustrations with us about a consumer video attacking a dealer. I am certainly sensitive to the situations that anyone working in auto retail faces today. My goal with posting this discussion was not to give advice, but to get advice from the higher levels of ownership or management at auto dealerships. I posted this same discussion on Automotive Digital Marketing, Kain Idea Exchange and on DealerElite.net. Not one GM, dealer principal or executive officer posted a reply with how the situation should have been handled. This in itself is very telling. Scott, you posted a reply but only to blast the open discussion of the topic.

Scott, as the owner of a dealership and of Presto Reviews, you better than anyone should know how important reputation is. You and I both agree that dealers need to get a greater number of their happy customers to post reviews in order to give a more accurate picture of how a dealer performs.

But your solution and the solution of many vendors in this space are to allow poor performing dealers to “game the system” and that activity only perpetuates the impression that all car dealers are sneaky business people. A customer review platform that allows dealers to control the reviews, kill negative reviews, and hide them for a few weeks is a great solution for dealers that don’t really want to improve their performance or the way they do business. Good dealers know better than to stoop to silly sleight of hand solutions.

I searched for reviews on World Hyundai from Matteson and on DealerRater out of 20 reviews 15% were negative, on Yelp.com 50% were negative (only two there- one positive one negative), and on the Google Reviews I had to go through 30 reviews before the first negative one came up. By any account you seem to be a pretty good dealership. But when I go to your review site I went through six pages of 5 star reviews. Not one negative review. Then I visited a number of the dealers using PrestoReviews and it was amazing how many had perfect scores. Hiding the truth, and treating the symptoms of poor performance does nothing to improve our industry. It’s like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic . . . it’s not going to change the outcome.

To use your quote in our discussion here, “I'm quite certain that all dealers understand how important it is to do the right thing all of the time and address failures and issues when they arise. . .” Is hiding negative reviews the right thing to do?

You say that you don’t know me, and the reality is, I am insignificant as far as the retail auto industry is concerned. I have worked for over 25 years in this industry and have nothing but the utmost respect for the hard working people in the automotive retail business. In my mind, the heroes in our business are the technicians who get up at 5:30 in the morning show up at the dealership at 7AM, ready to fix Mom’s sedan so the brakes don’t fail when she takes the kids to school.

The heroes are the sales professionals that help a Dad and his teenage daughter find and buy safe car to take to college and bring her home safely on weekends.

The heroes are the managers, accountants, office staff who show up early, stay late and put up with so much government regulation it would make your head explode. The hero is the dealer owner who puts up with the hostile actions of the OEMs and their heavy handed and burdensome requirements.

The hero is the dealership that stands ready to support their community in a hundred different ways. These are the heroes that deserve better! And even though they face Herculean challenges every day they go out each morning and get the job done. These are the folks that have earned my undying respect.

Every time I see a negative review, or a video bashing a dealer I take it personally. I know we deserve better than that. I want people working in this industry to have the respect they truly deserve. But we can only get that respect when we respect ourselves, exude the right behavior and take care of our neighbors. Sleazy car sales people will always be a part of our business, but I want it to be a very, very small part of our business. Working together with a clear vision we can make that happen.

Until we are successful in rewarding dealers and their people for doing things right we will continue to be challenged in obtaining the professional status we so badly need.