The 10-Second Version (AI Summary)
Generated by AI and reviewed by our team.
What happened: Dealers have started arguing back at Delivrd's Tomi Mikula on social media, and it keeps backfiring.
Why it matters: Every call Tomi livestreams is a public look at how your store treats customers.
What to do: Give your team a polite way to decline a deal, and treat consumer advocates as the customer's representative.
The best moments on Tomi Mikula's livestreams happen when nobody is fighting.
Our team watches plenty of Tomi's calls, and the ones we end up celebrating are the calls where he and a dealer find common ground on what a customer actually needs. The tense calls get the clicks. The productive ones show where this could go: dealers treating consumer advocates as people to work with, which ultimately helps the customer.
That came up near the end of our Auto Collabs conversation with Tomi, when we asked about a growing trend. Dealers have started arguing back at him online.
What happens when a dealer chirps back at Tomi Mikula?
Tomi says he never names dealerships in his videos, but viewers piece it together fast from context clues. He shared two examples:
The website quote
Tomi quoted a store the price listed on its own website, and the store told him the price wasn't real. He says the store then received about 5,000 one-star Google reviews and saw its Google Business Profile shut down.
The cursing manager
A Ford dealer in California knew exactly who he was talking to and cursed Tomi out on the call, telling him the price was the price.
Our advice to dealers was simple: stop chirping back. Tomi is too good at this for anyone to win that fight.
How should a dealer turn down a Delivrd deal?
Tomi offered the script himself. A dealer who doesn't want the deal can simply say so, kindly:
"Hey Tomi, I love what you do. We are a small dealership[;] we don't give the deals that you're looking for. I wish we could."
His point is that a polite decline leaves him nothing to push back on. If he argued with it, viewers would see him as the one being unfair. Paul compared it to restaurant owners who blow up at Dave Portnoy during his pizza reviews. The owner who stays gracious comes out ahead.
Why would a dealer want Delivrd's business at all?
Tomi says Delivrd's deals move fast. His team already knows the price it needs, uses a dealer portal for paperwork, and can close a deal in minutes. He compares it to a deal the owner hands a salesperson: little profit per car, but 10 to 15 of them a month helps hit stair-step volume targets.
He also says his channel reflects each week's real mix of calls. A team member grades every call as good or bad, and the videos follow that split, which he puts at roughly 20 good to 80 bad most weeks. Every respectful call improves that ratio.
Consumer advocates are here to stay, so treat them as the customer's representative.
We disagree with Tomi on plenty, from franchise laws to the future of F&I. On this point, he's right. Every call with an advocate is a public conversation about how your store treats people. Dealers who stay professional, even when the answer is no, protect their reputation and show viewers the kind of store most of this industry actually runs.
Tomi uses fake names and sometimes a voice changer, so your team won't know when he's on the line. Coach them to handle every price call as if it's being streamed, and the next viral clip from your store could be one of the good ones.
Hear the full conversation on Auto Collabs.
