Rate Your Car Dealer

Ticked off by the way a car salesperson treated you? Do you want to warn other consumers? Here's your chance. Maybe.

We wrote about car dealer complaint web sites awhile back (click here to see the earlier blog) and back then we had high hopes for MyDealerandMe.com. They had just started up and we thought now would be a good time to check back and see how things were going.

It looked like their intentions were to give consumers a place where they could complain or praise any car dealer they had experience with and that would help keep dealers honest and warn potential buyers of bad dealers to avoid. Well, maybe, maybe not.

The web site is not very intuitive and you have to guess where some things are. It is more than a little hard to find those reviews that consumers post. Don't give up though, you have to "locate your dealer" first and then go from there.

But even with a minor difficulty finding your way around, MyDealerandMe.com is still better than having nowhere to go at all. Maybe they'll improve things. For now, if you've got a gripe about a car dealer, post it. You've got nothing to lose. But if they get back to you in an attempt to "mediate" or help work out your complaint, be suspicious and be careful.

DealerRater.com is another dealer review site that is pushing its wares lately. Their web site is certainly easier to find the starting point where your dealer is and it's probably there somewhere. That's their problem, though: it looks like ALL car dealers are listed even though the vast majority have no comments posted about them at all.

So the index (which is really just a listed of possible pages where all the dealers are alphabetically listed) can easily be 50 pages long. Since there's no hint on where the "F" dealers begin and where the "M" dealers are on the list, you have to guess. You end up wandering through pages trying to find the listing for the dealer you want to comment on and, guess what, you probably will get bored and quit. That doesn't help anyone.

Both of these sites have a great idea and just need to polish it up. A consumer needs to be able to find their dealer's listing fast, no more than 2 clicks would be best. And if the dealer isn't on the list already, there needs to be a quick and easy way to add a dealer to the list. After all, car dealers come and go, some faster than others.

For now, these websites are worth at least taking a look at, but don't plunk down your hard earned money based on anything you see there. You just might be reading a review that was written by one of the salespeople who are working there.

Meantime, if you've been lied to by a car dealer, or ripped off by a salesperson, don't put up with it. Email us or call 1-888-331-6422 Toll Free for our free help.

Life is too short to always get caught short. We can help you fight back. Helping consumers fight back is what we do. Everyday.