Forgive Me For I Have Sinned (The Cars.com Debacle)

With all the noise about making the Industries more transparent you would think that the vendors that supply the those Industries and say they their purpose is to provide consumers more transparency would reciprocate and be transparent with their client base before launching their new strategies.

When launching new programs that impacts the clients that you serve it is critical that you take the initiative to collaborate with them to understand their point of view and communicate yours.

How do these big companies stumble and make these grandiose errors that cause such uproars. There have been so many instances of these blunders and right or wrong it is always better to first apologize to control the damage done and institute measures to repair the damage that has been done. If you do not it projects arrogance and produces animosity and distrust.

Whatever Cars.com's intentions, they were wrong if not for any reason but for not collaborating with their dealer base and should have apologized. It was even more damaging to find out that they were doing other things that they were not communicating. One blunder is bad enough but when it causes other things to be uncovered it makes the situation worse and the saga seems to be uncovering more.

Do the right thing and Apologize Cars.com and the sooner the better. Don’t just stop doing the things you obviously realized you shouldn’t have been doing hoping it will all just go away. Don’t appear to be like the some liberals who are for big government because they think that they know how to run things better than their constituents.

Classified Ventures, LLC who owns Cars.com is a strategic joint-venture owned by five large media partners whose objectives are to collectively capitalize on the online revenue growth opportunities in the automotive, rental and real estate advertising categories. Our strategic partners are A. H. Belo Corp. (NYSE: AHC), Gannett Company Inc. (NYSE: GCI), The McClatchy Company (NYSE: MNI), Tribune Company and The Washington Post Company (NYSE: WPO).

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Comment by Bill Cosgrove on May 6, 2013 at 5:57pm: Bill,

After the discovery of other questionable actions taken by them it is hard to know what their intentions were. If I or others who are upset about this would not take any of these actions without first advising our clients first is an ethical question that would make their intentions suspect.

Maybe it is time to stop forgiving these big companies and start seeking alternatives with smaller ones. I don’t know if is forgiveness or a feeling of helplessness that there are no other alternatives. Events like this should convince dealers that they should let these big companies backed them into a corner.

Comment by William Phillips on May 6, 2013 at 4:51pm: I believe Cars.com had good intentions. They have shown consistently over the years that they care about their dealer base. Im sure they will learn from this and not repeat it. If we can forgive Autotrader for bilking dealers with high fees and multiple CRM vendors who sell us garbage that never works as they advertise, Cars.com should get a pass and never repeat promise. Unlike our current liberal bent Government that makes no excuses for its socialistic freedom eliminating moves that we should fear, we have a choice. Tell Cars.com that a repeat offense lands them with fewer dealers, starting with yours. If we could only do that next year when we all get the financial pounding thats not far off from Obama Care.