Turbo Tips: Should I Show Problem Areas With Used-Car Photos?

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4 Responses »

1. Ralph, I agree with what you’re saying but for dealers it’s hard to change old habits. As mainstream consumers evolve from using the internet as a research medium to a transactional marketplace, dealers need to figure out how to establish credibility and quickly build trust with online customers. Very simply they need to display not only the vehicle’s features, options and equipment but they also need to disclose the vehicle’s condition.
   The “condition” element of a vehicle is the single biggest factor in determining value and yet when you look at the bulk of online listings today …. all you see is X-Clean / X-Clean /X-Clean.
   If a dealer wants to differentiate there cars and their dealership in the online space then provide some form of disclosure about condition.
   Online buyers know it’s a used car … if every used car on your lot says … Perfect Condition … your not fooling anyone … your just deterring that online buyer from talking to you first.

   Transparency establishes credibility and credibility builds trust.

   My 2 Bits
   cDemo

   Allan Chell on September 1st, 2009 at 9:37 pm:

2. I believe that many dealers have the best intentions of disclosing as much information as possible but currently I have not found a technology that enables dealers self inspect their used vehicles and collect the condition information you are talking about. None of the technologies I have seen enable a dealer to accurately record and distribute damage information. Quite honestly, I have a hard enough time maintaining consistency in collecting the options and equipment.

   K Gray on September 3rd, 2009 at 4:58 pm:

3. k.Gray. If you have an iPhone .. download the free App called Mobile Inspector. This app standardizes the inspection process for automobiles … no training required ..As a dealer you can register for a corporate account which then gives you the ability to generate inspection requests from your DMS and setup export tasks to send data to multiple systems. You can easily collect, manage and distribute data and images from a single devise. I would recommend you use a 3GS iPhone because the camera is far superior to the older version of iPhone.

   Allan Chell

   Allan Chell on September 18th, 2009 at 9:11 am:

4. Allan .. we downloaded the Mobile Inspector from Apple’s App Store and our lot manager complete several Used Enhanced Inspections .. he said the detail and ease of use is quite amazing. He did not first realize that he needed to establish a WiFi or 3G internet connection to start the inspection but once he figured that out he said it was much more thorough and took about the same amount of time compared to using our current paper based process.
   The App that we downloaded enables us to inspect and upload one vehicle at a time which brings me to my next question … can the Mobile Inspector be setup to enable volume based dealers to perform multiple types of inspections … new car check-in … used car appraisal .. and create a process that enables us to automatically upload the information that we want from those records to the multiple systems that we want to distribute to? (website / AutoTrader etc.)

   Looking forward to your response

   kgray on October 5th, 2009 at 7:59 am: