Marketplace is the hardest type of tech startup. its harder than B2C or B2B because they need critical mass of sellers and buyers. they also need to balance being anal about the rules and retaining the dealers. they only have 2 MB dealers on board in 200 miles radius from me. they cannot play like they are Amazon.
it does take time. They will get there. But again, some of the cars will get unavailable because dealer really sold them. but its not unseen that dealer keeps listing the car on its website for days after sale. Vehicle I bought was listed for 5 days after the paperwork was done. Rodo has no way to know the car isn’t available until dealer notifies them.
The issue isn’t with cars no longer being available, it’s with dealers refusing to honor the prices that they posted.
I get that it sometimes takes time to update things, but posting a deal to get the lead in the door and then not honoring the price isn’t an acceptable business model.
There are plenty of dealers that outright say that they use Rodo as a lead generator but won’t actually honor the prices.
this is fair argument. But trashing Rodo because of a bunch of shitty dealers isn’t right until Rodo has enough leverage to reject such behavior, which they don’t right now.
They didn’t break the ice yet, this is tough industry.
As they develop, their app will get better, they will add dealer rankings/trust indexes, turnaround times etc. there is not critical mass yet.
At the end, if they are successful - consumer wins.
They’re choosing to be complicit in bait and switch tactics in order to gain market share. They always have a choice and they’re choosing to compromise the integrity of their product. What’s even worse is they have came out before saying that they are aware of the issue and are taking steps to mitigate it… only to continue to do the same thing. That isn’t behavior that should be tolerated, much less rewarded. The consumer doesn’t win by being scammed.
Is it that much to ask for to have a company just provide what they offer?
Are brokers non-profit? Rodo is another type of broker, in the perfect scenario - a broker with an access to hundreds of more cars leasehackr brokers have.
and I know this because I’m consumer, I did walk into my dealership in Fort Myers, FL two weeks ago to do a service on my wife GLC. I asked about an E Class loaner they had, and this was the offer.
Below was legit Rodo offer from a dealer I got my c43 from. it’s not the best by any means, and I could have probably done better myself with that dealer (-1.7% more of MSRP, -500 from DAS if I pick up in person), but still - it is much better for a random consumer entering random dealership.
So, will you accept the same bait-and-switch from any of LH brokers? There is no difference - if they don’t deliver they are done here. And most of them have positive reviews.
well, okay, maybe I misused the word ‘scam’. but offering such an outrageous deal isn’t far from scam on the shittiness scale - 'alright, we guess the customer is dumb moron lets bully him into paying 40k in three years on a 55k worth vehicle.
Your arguments about Rodo being complicit in the bait-and-switch is well earned by Rodo, yes. All I’m saying you are a little bit too harsh. They are offering another venue for consumers to look for deals and I find it rather positive even if some end up being scam-ish. You could write that dealer off in your search because bait-n-switch on one car means their behavior will be similar on another.
And again, as they grow, they will get more dealers onboard and so gain more leverage about being strong and anal about the rules. Right now they are the ones fighting to get the dealers. It would be whole another story if they had enough.
And finally, I simply don’t get how having another option, even if its 50-50, is as bad as you make it sound it is.
p.s. I’m not arguing they should get better at handling bait-n-switch and I’m not arguing that bait-n-switch is terrible behavior. They need to get the dealer reviews in the app, and honesty rating. I’m not certain they can afford doing that as of today.
I feel like I’m being eaten buy you in this argument, kudos, so let’s wrap it up:
There are scam dealers at Rodo.
There are some honest dealers too. We don’t know the proportions, consumers with negative experience are typically 5-10 times more vocal.
Rodo can be much better at handling #1, otherwise they will receive well deserved negative feedback from consumers, and this forum specifically.
Rodo is there, and it is another venue, still immature, to check when you are in the market for a lease.
From here they have a chance to improve and succeed, or ignore the feedback and fail.
It will take time and funding, but I wish them luck nevertheless because I could see the end-result could be beneficial to leasing community, improve competition and bring transparency into leasing process.
I would love to see something like Rodo succeed. In concept, it’s a great idea. I am sympathetic to hiccups with dealers giving bad info. If it was incredibly rare occurrence, I could pass it off as shit happens. The issue I have is that it’s a rampant issue. I tried on multiple occasions to use them and ran into the same issue. Many, many others have tried repeated times and failed. Someone from Rodo came here, posted acknowledging the problem and their commitment to fix it, and nothing changed. At this point, I don’t see it as a viable avenue for consumers to look at with how common the issues are. I have absolutely no confidence that any deal I see on there is viable, is usable for reference, or is worth pursuing, and I certainly wouldn’t recommend someone give them personal identifying information to run credit checks on a vehicle that’s going to bait and switch. If they can’t honor their word about addressing the most fundamental of issues, how could anyone trust them with anything else?
I get what you’re saying, and if this was 2 years ago in their product lifecycle, I could get behind your logic. Personally, I think the ship has sailed, which is unfortunate, because I think the concept is great.
agreed. I still hope the ship is there, but we shall see. I understand your point as well. I have 20 years of experience in IT, dealt with many startups, very successful and complete failures. What I learned is it takes time, and yes, smart and timely decisions that many miss.
I think you’re right. Even the Honcker/Rodo rep who was replying on this thread (can’t remember his SN) “we’re looking into it” or “I’m sorry” basically gave up several months ago, after he was blown up with negative experiences here. Too big too soon, perhaps.
The people at Rodo are either unable to make simple calculations or dealers are sometimes taking them for a ride (read this thread carefully). Either way, I wouldn’t want to use them again, considering that they do a hard pull on your credit report. I made an order for a Subaru Outback 2020 that the dealer then reneged on and raise the monthly rate by $11. Maybe that’s small fries, but that’s not the price I was willing to pay. If Rodo was providing their offers in good faith they should have absorbed the price increase themselves.
I’ve used rodo twice so far and after thorough reading here and elsewhere I learned that you NEVER submit the paperwork until you get a hard confirmation of everything from the rep or you risk a hard pull for naught as in your case.
The first car I got from rodo is through a credit union which landed me 2 hard pulls, one from the dealer and another from the credit union, that was a shock but ok…
The second time they only had a color that I did not want at all and I chatted and asked beforehand if colors I see are just like manikins in a dept store and there are other colors “in the back” and I was told yes. So I placed the order and when the rep called I told him I wanted a different color and he said there was no other color available to which I said oh well no deal. He said let me check some more. He called back a while later and said he convinced a dealer to give me a different color in a better trim for the same price! Yay me. But ultimately after all the paperwork was processed the dealer realized how much money he would be losing so he backed out but in all that time he was able to get me a color that I did want on the original, cheaper trim.
Bottom line, it feels like a big lottery, you win some, you lose some but it’s nice to be able to do everything from the palm of your hand.
I posted my feedback on selling to Rodo earlier in this thread. Yes Rodo qualifies as a dealer to get a pretax dealer payoff. Just be prepared for a business check as payment and somewhat sketchy paperwork.
to which I said oh well no deal. He said let me check some more. He called back a while later and said he convinced a dealer to give me a different color in a better trim for the same price! Yay me. But ultimately after all the paperwork was processed the dealer realized how much money he would be losing so he backed out but in all that time he was able to get me a color that I did want on the original, cheaper trim.