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HomeNet vs vAuto as an Inventory Provider

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#11
We have about 50 rooftops with homenet. I have noticed the initial support people are very hit and miss. And was better couple years back. I have found myself politely getting off the phone and trying to call in again in the hopes I'd get one that I can understand and who actually has some experience. If you get the right one, they are awesome. I also typically ask to be put through to someone who has more syndication experience as my concerns / requests are typically a little more then 'why isn't my car showing up'. They are good once you get through all the preliminaries with whatever the issue is. We have some feeds we push to homenet and take from homenet and if nothing else, once right, pretty good.

Concerning how much Cox actually owns though.
 
#12
Todd Thomspon said:
We have about 50 rooftops with homenet. I have noticed the initial support people are very hit and miss. And was better couple years back. I have found myself politely getting off the phone and trying to call in again in the hopes I'd get one that I can understand and who actually has some experience. If you get the right one, they are awesome. I also typically ask to be put through to someone who has more syndication experience as my concerns / requests are typically a little more then 'why isn't my car showing up'. They are good once you get through all the preliminaries with whatever the issue is. We have some feeds we push to homenet and take from homenet and if nothing else, once right, pretty good.

Concerning how much Cox actually owns though.
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I like this. I'll try pushing a little bit for the right person.

And yes, the behemoth that is Cox is definitely a problem when it comes to innovation and service. I recently made a post about issues with Gubagoo and it's no coincidence that things have gone downhill with the Reynolds & Reynolds acquisition.
 
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#16
Alex Snyder said:
I recently looked at CARS' Accu-Trade with Brian Kramer. It was impressive for a number of reasons and definitely will be a known competitor once more dealers adopt it.
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We have a couple of US stores using them. Did a demo with them. Its pretty decent. Not really any savings over other ones and they don't seem to get back to you with answers to harder questions. But none of them really do. 'Devil you know'
 
#17
Alex Snyder said:
I recently looked at CARS' Accu-Trade with Brian Kramer. It was impressive for a number of reasons and definitely will be a known competitor once more dealers adopt it.
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I looked at Accu-Trade for the trade aspect, but don't remember any mention of it as an inventory provider. I have a better rep now than when I got that demo, so I will reach out. Thanks, Alex!
 
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#18
Bill, I used homenet for quite some time while having Vauto. The support recently is def hit or miss. My experience was def more hits than misses though. My former dealership (@Alex Snyder it feels weird saying that LOL), the DMS we used was UCS. These guys at Homenet had to hand map flat files to get that mess to parse in. This isn't 20 years go either. This was less than 12 months ago. Vauto is very run of the mill syndication. Which isn't a bad thing but if you need very much customizing with the inbound feed, they're limited. Thats when they'll get on the phone with homenet and ask them to fix it. Is it mapping issues that you're having with them?
 
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#19
I don't know exactly where you are needing your inventory sent. My website provider can send our feed to Cars . Com, Car Gurus, Auto Trader, Dealers Link (inventory tool), and pretty much anyone else that I need the information sent to. They provide this service for free. 100% Discount, they said that's the best they could do.

I don't know if something like this would work for you @BillKVMotorCo .
 
#20
Rick Buffkin said:
Bill, I used homenet for quite some time while having Vauto. The support recently is def hit or miss. My experience was def more hits than misses though. My former dealership (@Alex Snyder it feels weird saying that LOL), the DMS we used was UCS. These guys at Homenet had to hand map flat files to get that mess to parse in. This isn't 20 years go either. This was less than 12 months ago. Vauto is very run of the mill syndication. Which isn't a bad thing but if you need very much customizing with the inbound feed, they're limited. Thats when they'll get on the phone with homenet and ask them to fix it. Is it mapping issues that you're having with them?
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This is all great info. Thank you very much. It seems like a simple problem to me. On our portal site, our Toyota inventory is showing in stock when it's still in-transit.
 
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