Car marketing platform CarGiGi was unknown to me until yesterday when another blogger mentioned it in an email. The domain who-is cargigi.com shows it’s owned by eBay Inc. However as of today the website URL is returning a 404 not found error.
According to this TechCrunch article on 03/15/2016 eBay acquired CarGiGi to replace its Motors division’s Dealer Center. The company says that it’s interested in using the technology Cargigi developed to help onboard auto dealers’ inventory onto eBay’s website. In addition to replacing eBay’s own Dealer Center product, Cargigi will help enable eBay to “build out its structured data capabilities for the vehicles industry,” said eBay in an announcement. Over time, more functionality will also be added. But more immediately, dealers will have access to analytics they didn’t before.
So it’s been nearly 4 years since eBay acquired CarGiGi and it’s domain is offline as of this blog post. It’s my personal opinion that eBay forgot all about their Trust and Community Values that made high dollar vehicle transactions work so well in it’s early days.
It’s possible they took the technology from the cargigi-acquisition and rolled it into the motors platform. But even if that’s why the domain is offline it should be redirected elsewhere. More than likely the motors venue home page – or the dealers center. Even beginning webmasters know that dead links are an SEO nightmare. This situation reminds me of these former major subdomains that were left offline and still are to this day. 😥
I get it that eBay was a novelty back in its glory days. Memories of the fly-in drive-home sales are just that, memories. And it does not make sense these days to buy a late-model used car thousands of miles away when the same car is available in a buyer’s location. Then there are those bargain seekers who jump at seemingly “too-good-to-be-true” great deals – then realize the bargain buggy they bought was no bargain at all.
It all boils down to this. All eBay is interested in is collecting seller’s fees. Bad car dealers and other sellers can burn up a seller’s account that gets eventually suspended and do it all over with a new seller’s account . All they want is that $50 listing fee plus listing upgrades.
Personally saying adding new technology from acquisitions like cargigi and others is a must to stay market currently. Yet they allow bad sellers and scammers to rip off their buyers. When I was selling cars on eBay Motors along with other reputable dealers, we could see the trust slipping away. We begged the corporation to verify their buyers and sellers but that fell on deaf ears. I suggested an arbitration panel of volunteer qualified dealers to negotiate vehicle buyer-seller complaints. Nope the arbitration idea never happened either.
What I would have done with eBay Motors, would have been turning it into a membership venue. Something like Sam’s Club or Costco, but specifically for motor vehicles. Car dealers would be verified and their dealer’s bond put on file in case of an out-of-trust or other situation. They could have charged the dealers a $100 annual fee covering the cost of verification. Similar to buyers who would require verification before they could bid or buy an automobile.
Instead of courting franchised dealers selling late model common everyday autos, I would be targeting the antique, specialty, and collector car market. Internet motor-vehicle buyers/sellers/exporters/importers offering rare and hard-to-find desirable vehicles for the worldwide market. This motors niche venue could have been the number one car trading venue in the world. But today it’s just another used car Internet business failure. 😥
FidoSysop
I'm a former Auto Dealer and Mechanic born in the 50s. In 1991 Doc's Place Bulletin Board System was born on the Fidonet Network. Since the net went public I've been studying and mastering it becoming a tech-savvy hobbyist webmaster. I.blog my opinion about many worthy subjects and maintain a large political archive!
They either wanted to put them out of business or maybe they actually have plans for the domain. eBay knows they can get some nice profits from vehicle listings, they may be outsourcing site upgrades and functionality, but I think they are preparing to move eBay Motors over to this domain eventually. Let’s hope more people in 2020 won’t be defrauded out of their money. Seems PayPal’s SpaceX and eBay Inc Russians will try anything on the American public to steal from them!
It’s sad corporate greed screwed the once most successful automobile trading venue into the ground 😢