A blacklist is a bad idea. Dealers would sue.

Jason has said in the past that he's working on setting up a dealer registry (for Camaros) that promise not to mark the cars up. Maybe he'd allow Pontiac dealers to add themselves to the registry as well?

Plus? I think you mean minus.

 

Yeah.....but why not merely make a list of dealers that have mark-ups? All that would be is information and not a "don't buy your car here" advertisement. As long as it's not "misrepresentation" (i.e. the dealer doesn't really have mark-ups), there shouldn't be any problem with that.

This would also be very useful in facilitating the "shopping around" process.

If I saw a $7000 mark-up on a car Holden has been making for years, I'd be ROTFLMAO all the way out the door.

 

But why is the auto industry special? I can go to the Nike factory outlet and buy a new pair of shoes; how come they don't fall under the same restrictions?

And didn't GM set up its own small network of dealers a few years ago? Perhaps it was pressure from the independent dealers that helped end that experiement.

 

What could they sue for? All it would be is a list of dealers who have outrageous markups on their cars. It wouldn't be called a blacklist. If people don't want to go to those dealers, then they can make their own decision. The list wouldn't specifically say not to go to those dealers.

 

As has been done in the past, some dealers mark up new cars just to keep them on the lot. otherwise they would sell immediately and no one could look at them. Brings in more sales.

 

Unfortunately, the list would clearly be a list of places not to go, even if it wasn't billed as such.

My guess is defamation, libel, or slander, depending on who they were suing.

Keep in mind that you don't have to have a legitimate case in order to sue. Even if the dealer loses the lawsuit, you're still out legal fees and time spent fighting it.

It's easier to simply never mention the bad ones. This has been tried before, and there were problems. I don't know if it actually came to the point of a lawsuit, but suffice it to say that it's never a good idea to publish a list of businesses people should not patronize, even if you don't explicitly say that.

 

It's not defamation, libel, or slander if it's true.

The list would simply be a list of dealers who charge X amount of dollars over MSRP. They can't sue for that.

 

The dealers could still sue for defamation, libel, or slander, even if it's true. They'd lose the lawsuit, but Jason and Chris (or whoever hosts the list) would still to have to deal with the lawsuit -- time out of their busy days, money out of their pockets, etc.

Any company big enough to keep a lawyer on staff (and there are many dealership chains that qualify) could easily bury our poor site admins in paperwork and legal fees, even if they lost the suit.

 

OR FIX THE PRICE LIKE SCION.

 

I think Jason is working on this.

 

 

Oh I definitely agree with what you're saying.....and like I said, I have no problems doing my own shopping and ROTFLMAO out the door if the price is "comical". I don't need a list to do that.

However.....just for the sake of argument any dealership that isn't dumber than a box of rocks would sue over such a thing if it's true, because not only would the dealership lose, they'd be countersued, lose that case and be held libel for the costs I boldfaced in your quote.

 

That's possible, but again, the original lawsuit alone is more headache than Jason and Chris have time to deal with, let alone adding a countersuit.

 

They'd be an idiot to sue since they would end up being the ones paying the legal fees as well as for the time Jason and other had to put into it. Not worth it, not to mention the news stories that would cause the spread of said list, etc..

 

On what grounds? If you list dealers who markup their prices, it is just stating facts??