Autotrader

[sk 4]

i think at the moment no other company can, and as much as it pains me to say it match the "customer" base of Auto Trader. other companies like motors are trying, and it seems investing heavily into advertising but at the moment AutoTrader are the biggest draw for me,i do think  though that in maybe 4 or 5 years Motors may be giving them a run for there money.may be by then Autotrader will decide to lower there prices to compete.....or pigs may fly.

[Bethany_AutoTrader 5]

Hi all,

First of all, thanks for sharing your feedback so openly and honestly – really constructive stuff.

Rather than give you war and peace I’ll try my best to categorise your comments:

Our part-ex valuations are calculated off our trade prices. They are always lower than trade to allow for costs faced by dealers in taking in a part-exchange…etc. We don’t falsify any figures. They’re based purely on what we see in the market with algorithms applied. On rare occasions if we have not seen matching observations for certain cars in the market, we may get the guide price wrong and although this is rare, it can happen and we’ll investigate each time and adjust if necessary. This is the same with any other pricing guides out there that are used by both dealers and consumers.

Whether you have a field Account Manager or an office based Account Manager they should be able to add the exact same value. I appreciate some people prefer to actually sit down with somebody although it’s not something we encourage, if it’s something that really needs attention we’ll happily send a local Account Manager round to see you. The reason why we don’t encourage this is because a different field Account Manager won’t know your business as well as your current Account Manager should do. If your current Account Manager isn't adding value, you must tell us so we can look at this. One last thing on this, I understand many of you are dotted around the country and taking a day out of the business can often be difficult but providing your Account Manager is available, we welcome any of you to come into our office and spend some time with them. Some customers who attended our last discovery day have already talked to their Account Managers here in the office about coming back to spend some time with them – this is great!

Above, I briefly mention Discovery Days. We hold these once a month for our independent retailers. This is an opportunity for you to come and talk to us about what delights you and what disappoints you. We share best practice and insight on the current and future digital automotive marketplace. We've had great feedback from attendees although this isn't to say everything in the garden is rosy or we’re there yet. “You've been dictatorial and arrogant in the past” – this is what we hear, please be assured this is something we’re trying extremely hard to change. We want to build better relationships with our customers and on this note, GG – we’d still love to talk to you. We travel around the country conducting seminars and regional discovery days to listen to your feedback. We’ve got several coming up in Wales and the South West before Christmas so if you’d like to know more, please just let me know or contact your Account Manager and the best thing is…they’re free!

Being a trusted business partner to retailers is something that we work hard at every day. This is why we set up our Retailer Education and Insight programme. The programme was designed to help retailers navigate the changing digital automotive landscape – things are changing rapidly as consumers change their buying behaviours so we want to ensure we share trends/insights with you so you can run your business’ accordingly.

I promised I wouldn't write war and peace so I’ll finish off by saying… we work hard to maintain a quality website so consumers get a smooth and useful experience so that in turn our retailer customers gain better value from the marketplace. We are also focused on driving consumers to your forecourts and it’s our mission to produce products and services based on real data and insight that will add value to your to businesses.

Hope I've not missed anything but please shout up if I have.

Bethany
Auto Trader

[James Baggott 227]

Bethany - thanks for taking the time to answer our forum members.