If it was a one off thing, it’d be one thing, but it’s evidence of a critical issue in their business strategy. They’re either so desperate for dealers that they’re ignoring the issue to try to boost market share or they’re participating. That isn’t a “hard to please” issue. That’s customers expecting them to deliver what they’re offering and them fundamentally failing to understand their product.
I don’t understand your quarterly ra-ra speeches for Rodo. This is an issue that comes up over and over again here and you come back acting like you’ve never hear of such a thing and promoting the company. If you’ve had a good experience, that’s great. Lucky you. Some people have, others haven’t, that’s why there’s a review thread, but the blind, continuing support is not indicative of someone that just had a good experience. It comes across as someone with a vested interest.
I’m not a broker. I’m one of the many people that had Rodo deals bait and switched on me.
I like the concept of Rodo. I’d love to see it succeed. Its never going to happen until they figure out how to reliably get the dealers to honor the deals advertised.
To @Norm and @jdawg333
You should tone down your Combatativness.
Re-read the tread from the start and you will see all reported bait and switch deals that users of this forum experienced.
Including me, who actually got one of the best deals and I’ve been advocating for them since the start.
Many were. But sentiment changed once reviews starter rollling in long before proliferation of many brokers on this site.
Also, a lot of times deals by brokers on LH are better than RODO. So they don’t care for the app. It doesn’t have competitive deals 90% of the time. I’m checking it for fun fairly often.
As a general update, Rodo now has a new process where they appear to be directly processing trade-ins. Previously they offered a buyout service through Carvana, basically acting as a pass thru to extend the same pricing and just offered management.
However, now when you use the new “sell my car” option, you submit your vehicle information and you get contacted by a Rodo trade manager. The agent who contacted me (via email) asked some basic questions and then provided me a KBB appraisal report which he claimed Rodo would honor, only requiring me to send him a few pictures of the vehicle to lock in the offer. I was told that once I accepted the offer they would input the trade into my Rodo default calculations and I could then pick any deal, with any dealer, I wanted.
Would I have used the service? Yes. Did I use the service, no. Ultimately a local dealer offered me significantly more then the KBB value of my vehicle and the Rodo trade manager was unable to match (we traded a few emails throughout the process). Overall I like the improved service.
These are the same cheap guys! They had to re-brand as they cheated so many people through ‘Honcker’!
So now they will start cheating using a new name ‘Rodo’ - Natahan Hecht and his cheap tricks of classic bait and switch!
Those who are new and are enticed to use these scammers - please read the old reviews and then make an informed decision. Just trying to do my bit to save a few innocents!
I love how triggered people get over this subject.
Just so I understand. The main complaint is sometimes you can’t get the deal offered and sometimes they do a hard credit pull. Meanwhile, they have not taken a dollar of your money and you are free to walk away if you find a better offer at any time. For this they get vilified, called scammers and accused of bait and switch?
However, in my case, everything went smoothly and the dealer they connected me to honored the deal 100% and 24 hours after clicking order the vehicle was in my driveway at a great price.
Rodo, as a company, has raised over 25M in Series A funding led by IAC. IAC, as a VC, is betting heavily on automotive related tech companies, having invested over $250M into Turo. I am sure somebody from IAC is sitting on the board of Rodo. This is not some fly by night company that is about to collapse.
Lets consider the data on all sides of this discussion please.
Yes, the main complaint is that they often offer one price, and then after collecting all your information, refuse to deliver on it. The kind of behavior that no one would put up with from any business. Further, they specifically acknowledged that it was occurring, stated they were going to no longer do it, and then continue to do so.
Is it that unreasonable to expect a company to honor the price they’re offering, particularly when their sole product is the price they’re offering?
I do feel that Honcker does use bait and switch, but what car dealer doesn’t? We’ve seen some punished for doing so, like that Alfa deal a while back, but its almost a part of the industry, whether it be stacking conquest and loyalty, or lease rebates with finance bonus cash, it happens and due diligence is needed.
There’s a difference between a dealer that advertises a price with a big fat asterisk that’s says “includes every incentive ever” or “before tax, title, license, and the other half of the payment” and an offer that says “here is your price to the dollar, based on the incentives you qualify for and your credit we already verified”
Isn’t most of the fault here with the originating dealer who provided the information. I just fail to see how an individual was harmed, damaged or otherwise made worse-off as a result of a Rodo deal falling through. The upside is a great deal and the downside is they have your information and wasted some of your time time. That sounds like exactly what happens when I walk into just about any dealership.
As a broker take everything with a grain of salt. But it isn’t, I actually placed an order of a car as I couldn’t believe the price. They had 3 listed at that price, at different dealers, wouldn’t honor it after I placed the order.
Discussed with @mllcb42, mixture of dealer/incompetence/algorithm
I’m sure RODO would have given a ‘few’ good deals - that’s the bait
But there are tons of people who got cheated so do you treat them as ‘good’ guys.
(Just look at the number of people you are responding to; just to defend your theory!)
Let’s be honest. There are tons of good brokers here and dealers too. Why go for people (read RODO) who have proven to be bad! This is a community for helping people. Let’s create awareness.
Also about VC funding -
Firstly let me know what’s your explanation on them rebranding (people change their names and whereabouts only for forgery)?
Have all VC funded companies been legally clean?
There have been instances where VCs had to fire the management and clean-up the mess they have created. Hope IAC does that too.
Rebranding a startup happens all the time. Startups generally launch in “stealth” mode with seed funding and until they fund a series A. Honcker was the name of the company when they were still in stealth, when they exited, they re-branded to Rodo. Not saying people haven’t had problems with them, but rebranding a startup is very common.
IAC’s $25M funding round would have required a full examination of the business sheet. The net worth of InterActiveCorp is estimated at $3.4B, and their portfolio includes: Match Group, Vimeo, USA Network, Expedia, Turo, Lending Tree, Hotwire, TripAdvisor, Angies List, Home Advisor, The Daily Beast… I find it hard to believe they would invest in something illegal, evaluating companies is what they do.
Rodo’s probable board configuration would make it very hard to fire executive management, because the founders most likely control the majority. But if the company fails to meet financial expectations over a period of time, absolutely yes, the board can and will fire executive management.
The fact does not change that the number of haters on this thread are outnumbering a handful of admirers like you! That’s the proof of the pudding
Also, my humble advice - just confirm the definition of probability and stealth mode startups!
Lastly, let’s have the same discussion after 3 years. I will be around! I will hope that Rodo will be too. Last year, I was having the same debate with ‘Honcker admirer’ (their sales rep ‘Morgan’) who is no where around, this year it’s with you and in 3 more years? - Your guess is as good as mine! But I’ll still do it for the sake of the community and as a passionate lease hackr!
I wouldn’t go as far as to call a lot of the people here haters. A lot of people I’ve talked to about this, myself included, would love to see Rodo be successful. I like the concept and I wish it worked well. If they executed on their product reliably, I’d have no qualms with using them. @nyclife and I were having a conversation a night or two ago specifically about we both have tried to use Rodo, even after lots of negative reports, because the concept is strong. Unfortunately, both of us have ran afoul with the same issues on recent attempts as well.
I actually don’t necessarily agree with that. On the bait and switch deals, the payment isn’t a particularly good reference point to say it can be done cheaper as it isn’t real.
Ha, well other than that. They are pretty much a non player in my market, last time I checked they only had Cadillac and Hyundai deals, and I wouldn’t call them deals
