Are Autotrader dealer reviews genuine?

paulpud

I'm currently looking for a used car and wondered does anyone know if the dealer reviews on Autotrader are genuine and reliable?

The main reason I ask is there is a small independent dealer selling a car I am interested in - a 2011 car that seems to be in good condition with low miles and that is very good value at what he's asking. He has several reviews listed from supposedly verified purchasers that are all very positive about their experiences buying from him. What concerns me is, after doing a little digging around the web, I've discovered that this dealer got into trouble for clocking cars 3 or 4 years ago, although I have checked the MOT history of this particular car and the recorded mileage does seem to be in order.

I's probably be a bit less weary if I was sure there was a system in place to ensure these positive dealer reviews aren't fake.

forgotmyname

All positive reviews will be SPAM, if you think of it like that your not sidetracked with possible false reviews.

Autotrader cannot verify the sale so who does verify it?

Is it like some other reviews where someone leaves a review and the actual company get to select if its legit or not. So they leave a review themselves and tick to say it was a genuine sale. Any negative reviews will be ticked as fake?

Kalamazoo

I left a genuine positive review for a small dealer i used the other day.

Use your common sense - if there's s a rake of overly gushing reviews you can probably write them off as spam. If there's a few normal ones I'd take more notice

paulpud

Although these particular reviews aren't overly-gushing, I do wonder just how genuine they are. Having looked at a lot of these reviews for different dealers on Autotrader I've yet to find one with any kind of negativity attached to it which seems just a little unlikely.

Strider590

I'm in no doubt that there are companies that will provide a fake reviewing services for traders on Autotrader (they exist for almost everything else), what you find is (like most things) happy customers rarely have anything to say.

Car_54

If the dealer was willing to risk clocking cars, then he's hardly likely to be reluctant to write fake reviews.