great tool! i've always felt powerless too when i have bad experiences with dealerships, and now i can vent or praise on a proper forum!

A good tool, and thank you.
  
The Archaic franchise dealership arrangements in the USA causes most of these headaches. Of all manufacturers, it seems only Toyota is really trying to improve this mess (article in Business Week... of course many dealers are fighting them).

The problem is if you say anything bad about dealers in the Forums you will have your posts deleted by the moderators. I know because I made negative comments in general about dealers and was emailed privetely that my posts were deleted. So I hope this new thing you are doing isn't censored. You have one moderator who jumps on the slightest thing I say if it's negatiove about any dealer or dealer practices. But if it's uncensored sign me up and I'll post a lot about what I've been through!

Steve, there is a similar thing on e-Bay: sellers actually have the right to delete a review if it's negative! What's the point of reviewing if only positive ones will be posted? Ridiculous.......
 
I know what happens to e-Bay is irrelevant the Edmunds, but I just had to mention this! I just hope Edmunds wouldn't adopt similar policies!

Yes that's just it and of course the moderators at least in this case become friends with the sales people so theyare on their side. I hope that policy will change. I posted a very true and accurate review on this new dealership rating tool. I will also post the good reviews as well as the bad ones. But as soon as they censor the forums then they lose their effectiveness and some moderators abuse their authority or take things personally.
Many dealerships consistantly get away with this because theer is no way to rate a dealer and when you do they can sue you unless you can prove it and how do you prove they were rude, obnoxious and unhelpful? Or whatever they were, same as trying to prove they were really good. There is a dealer locater that does reviews but it's very incomplete and mostly it's bad reviews and I know some of those dealers and I'd agree with many of them but I really want to see fair and honest reviews. The problem is that the dealerships will have their salespeople log on and post a great review of the dealership. One dealership was banned in this other locater due to the influx of salespeople from the dealer posting all great reviews to cover up all the bad ones.
If I don't get censored then i will continue to post on this until I have covered every car dealer I have ever bought from or had service by.
That's a lot of cars and brands and shopping experiences. You can't post them in the forum, as i've already had quite a few warnings in email from the Moderator.
Censored blogs are pretty useless in my opinion and I use and trust Edmunds because I don't think they censor a lot of their reviews but certainly the forums are different at least the one involving the car dealers themselves.

What nonsense! How can a dealer sue a private person giving his opinion on a review website....whether the review is indeed the truth or not? What judge would waste his precious time hearing such a stupid case? (Hmmm... but I remember farmers suing Oprah some years ago when she was giving her honest opinion about beef! The simpler solution would have been to visit Oprah's show and give their side of the story! No wonder that case was thrown out!)
 
Karl, would the dealers have the right to sue either reviewers or edmunds.com if a review on this tool is not what they want to hear?

Anyone CAN sue anyone for pretty much any reason, but most people don't both unless they have a strong case, and I don't see anything related to these forums being a strong case for a deaer.
 
BTW, I'd love to see tort reform that made people who sue more responsible for legal fees if they lose. Not a wholesale, all-or-nothing system, but something that makes you really think about bringing legal action before you do.
 
My Dad is a lawyer, and his personal system was to always make it known that "counter-claims" would be part of any legal action against. It's not really a "trick" move or trump card, but if you make it clear that legal action brought against you will mean counter-claim legal action brought against the "suing" party (i.e. -- you're not just going to sit there and let yourself be sued, and spend a bunch of time and energy defending yourself, without the prosecuting party having a thing to worry about) is something I believe in.
 
Note: I'm still just an automotive journalist, so legal advice taken here is taken at your own risk!!

Thaks Karl, some states are more apt to allow this than others and even if they lose it still costs time and money to fightthem. They can afford a battery of lawyers on Standby. Mine cost around $600 per hour and that makes me nervous when plavces like I mentioned will go to great lengths to shut up anyone who has had a problem. They somehow got the websites taken down that told alot about their operations over there. These guys really make all car dealers look bad and to make it worse they have the best seletion of cars in the entire area by far. I'll still post reviews about my various experiences but yes, I'd counter sue in a heartbeat.