A few months back we studied over 35,000 emails to dealerships on Mojo Motors from shoppers interesting in buying a car. What we found was shoppers don’t care about recalls. Only two people asked about them. That’s right, only .005 percent of people asked about recalls. Since that article was published, there have been something like a billion more vehicle recalls and that’s not counting those GM recalls.
Shoppers now must really be wary of open recalls on used cars. They aren’t. In a study of nearly 20,000 new email leads to dealers since May, not a single person mentioned the word recall. Most people don’t even ask questions as the majority of people (81 percent) use the stock email message. Here’s what everyone else (19 percent) wanted to know.
- 9.6% asked about the price and/or made an offer
- 8.3% asked if the car is available
- 5.6% asked about monthly or down payments
- 5.3% asked about credit
- 2.7% asked for more pictures
- 1.5% wanted a response ASAP
- 1.3% asked about car color
- .9% needed store hours
- .3% were concerned if the previous owner was a smoker
- .2% asked about service records or repairs
None of those requests are all that surprising. But while reading through the email leads, we also noticed some weirdness. One shopper wanted to know if a pickup truck was “bulletproofed.” Another person asked how much the “sneaky dealer fees” totaled. One shopper who owned several vehicles asked if their credit would be effected because they “voluntarily” stopped making payments until one of their cars was repossessed. They probably should have kept that to themselves.
Here’s the thing about emailing dealers, the majority have an auto responder asking the shopper to set up an appointment. Therefore, none of these questions will likely be answered. Most dealers also won’t negotiate via email, especially on non-luxury used cars until they run a credit report or the customer fills out a finance application. Our advice? If someone really wants an answer ASAP regarding any of the above, just call the dealer.
Written by Max Katsarelas
The post Shoppers care more about bulletproofed trucks than recalls appeared first on Mojo Motors Blog.