I love competition! It makes me, and hopefully my dealership, better as it keeps us on our toes to keep thinking outside the box and come up with unique and interesting ideas. We use Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization to put ourselves on the top of any relevant search page and I for one would never begrudge a dealership if they can do this better. I will, however, try learn from my previous mistakes and, hopefully, grow.

I also believe the expression All is fair in love and the car business is not true. I have always tried to do things on the up and up with fair competition without resorting to untruths. There is a dealer in our market that I feel is operating in a less than ethical way and I'm curious how our customers feel about this. Is what they're doing part of the game or is it just over the line.

What they are doing is getting P.O. Boxes in our immediate area, (Our Area Of Responsibility as Acura puts it) and putting up false Google Map locations (Their Princeton location is smack in the middle of Princeton University). We've tried diplomatic ways to get them to stop to no avail. From a customer's point of view, do you take Google Maps as gospel? If a dealership that is not located in Princeton or Trenton  NJ said they were would you still do business with them or would that be a sign of a dealership that may not be the most ethical? Would you be angry with that dealer if you followed the Google Map's direction and ended up in the middle of Princeton University or Downtown Trenton? If you called the dealer first and they told you they were not located where they claimed they were, would you still go to see them?

Is this fair business practice or over the line?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.