No, we Are Not DealerRater.

Since we started our pre-launch of our ISR 'In Store Review' Mobile Web App a large number of dealerships have decided to participate. Unfortunately, about 2% of the dealerships were under the impression we were DealerRater. So I wanted to go on the record and let everyone know we are MyDealerReport.com, not DealerRater. We don't want the 2% to be mislead into believing we are.

Don't get me wrong. DealerRater has done a great job at building their company and reputation. They are by far the leader within the car dealership review space. Chip has done a bang up job making the industry aware of the need for this type of service. I know, why am I being so nice? What is the catch?  

There is no catch. Because we are no longer in competition with DealerRater. We are merely a FREE alternative. We are not competing for the same revenue.  I have personally suggested to dealers that it is necessary to build reviews on multiple sites including DealerRater. With that being said let me explain the difference between MyDealerReport.com and many other reviews sites. We have taken the Facebook approach instead of the Classmates.com approach.

• We are 100% free. All our features and functions.
• We offer In Store Review capability with our new app ISR.
• We launched in 2004.
• Our review content is owned by the dealerships who were reviewed, not by us.
• We don't have dealership advertisement.
• We are a small size organization.

Unfortunately, the space is somewhat fragmented and this has caused a lot of headache for dealers. But remember we have been here since the beginning. We have made many adjustments along the way in order to figure out how to be the ultimate free model.  We have been told by multiple people that a free model can not exist within the automotive industry because dealers will not buy into it. We are betting on the fact there are some dealers who will buy into our system, by merely committing some of their efforts in using our Free service. Just like users bought into Facebook's and twitter's free system.

I hope DealerRater doesn't take anything within this blog as negative, because it wasn't meant to come across that way. We merely wanted to clear up the confusion, because we believe their is room for a Free model along side any paid model. Also we did not want it to appear as if we were misrepresenting ourselves to dealerships.