Savvy Toddler Mom

[SavvyDad is guest-blogging today - Thanks, hon!] 

I think I almost got scammed by onestopmotors.com. I had to post a review of my experience. If you don’t want the details, skip to the last two paragraphs.

I was toying with the idea of selling my car recently and posted an ad in the local classified website, kslcars.com. The site allows you to post images and a description of your car - no charge. It goes in their database which is easily searchable by year, price, mileage, vicinity, etc. Very easy to browse for a car. No complaints about it.

Two days later, I got a call from a rep from One Stop Motors saying they saw my car ad on KSL’s website. They told me they can sell my car for more than I’m asking and that I can keep all the money they get for the sale. Naturally skeptical, I asked how they make money. He said, “By arranging the financing for buyers.” I was stuck in traffic and figured I could listen to the rest of the story. What followed was a very savvy sales pitch.

I gave them some specs on my car, and they gave me a quote about $1500 more than I was asking. For a $500 fee they would advertise my car on their network until it sold by doing keyword buys for search engines, posting on their affiliate sites, etc. Since ads cost money, they say, it’s in their interest to sell my car quickly. They told me they’d keep advertising until it sold, even if it cost more than the $500 I would be giving. It did make me wonder who would ever buy from them, though. You know they’re asking as much as they think they can get - more even than the actual owner thinks is fair. Whatever.

After their pitch, I expected some pressure to close the sale. To my surprise, it didn’t come. I said I’d think about it. He asked when he could call back. I said, effectively, “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” “Okay,” he said. “Let me email you that quote and our website so you can check it out.” I gave him my email address, and that was the end of the call.

That email never came and a week later he called back. In the meantime, I went to their website and googled their name. The site looks legit enough. The other search results were …peculiar. The first results were mostly links to them. The #3 result was from a site called “Rip-Off Report,” with this blog entry, which reads like a sales pitch, clearly not an objective assessment of someone’s experience. Get this quote: “…they continue to fulfill their commitment to superior customer service…” and “*UPDATE Employee.. inside information ..OneStopMotors provides everything they say they will.” (How reassuring.) They clearly have a wide network of rather disingenuous bloggers. Many dozens of search results have URLs with some permutation of their name. I can’t prove they’re trying to drown out dissent, but if you were going to, this is exactly what it would look like.

So I go the the Better Business Bureau site and find this page which reports “this company is not a member” and “The company has an unsatisfactory record due to the failure to eliminate the underlying cause of consumer dissatisfaction.” This causes me to look deeper into google search results and find individual experiences. Then I ask myself, “If I give them $500, what keeps them from doing nothing?” According to one customer, “they keep calling untile[sic] they get your credit card # then you never here [sic] from them again.”

When I got the next call, I said I would not be doing business with them as I saw they weren’t members of the BBB. The sales rep told me, “The hell we’re not!” (They’re not.) He then insulted me and asked if I realized the volumes they deal with. Before I could respond, he hung up on me. It’s possible he had a point. According to the BBB, of “168 complaints in the last 36 months, 66 were closed in the last year,” which tells me they have made some efforts to resolve complaints. Whether it’s because they care about the customer, or the just bad publicity is anyone’s guess. FYI, Costco had a total of 257 complaints in the same time period.

I would not do business with One Stop Motors. If you pay $500 and they do a crappy job, you have no recourse. They have no incentive to be a strong advocate for you since they a) already have your money and b) have flooded search results with their sites, effectively burying objective evaluations/dissent/complaints. If you found this when researching these guys, then you’re a pretty savvy reader.