PALO ALTO, CA, August 03, 2017 – Open safety recalls are a common aspect of the retail automotive business, unfortunately, but their quick resolution need not bring burden, inefficiency, and risk to auto dealerships.
OEMs and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration seem to announce new recalls as routine now. And California’s Motor Vehicle Code prohibits “selling or offering for sale” any vehicle (new or used) with a Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) non-compliant safety recall.
For dealers who depend on vehicles’ safety recall status to be timely and accurate, misinformation can be costly and frustrating. One in four vehicles today has an open safety recalls on it, so having precise and correct recall data is essential for identifying and then being able to address those units should they make their way into your recon operation or are already for sale on your lot.
For example, a vehicle on-boarded into the dealership’s reconditioning process this morning being then-free of a safety recall may be reported to be part of one that afternoon. Without daily updates, dealers may sell vehicles with open safety recalls without even knowing it.
“We’re seeing 10-11% of inventory on dealers’ lots change like this in a day,” noted Dennis McGinn, CEO, and Founder of Rapid Recon, providers of reconditioning workflow and recall management software tools.
Catching that affected inventory and correcting those recalls is critical for buyer safety and dealership goodwill, McGinn pointed out.
Thor Gilbertson, President of Holiday Automotive, a four-store dealership group in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, uses Rapid Recon’s Integrated Recall Management tool to ensure the group’s compliance with the legal and goodwill resolution of every recall. The software identifies affected inventory:
- As off-loaded from transport or trades and logged into the DMS
- During make ready or reconditioning
- Already on the sales lot
- Sold vehicles
“Having the right open safety recall information at the right time helps us catch those issues whether the affected vehicle is just arriving in recon, in process, or already out to the sales lot,” Gilbertson said. “We now resolve recalls as they’re identified and they’re tracked and accounted for, so no cars fall through the cracks,” he said.
Integrated Recall Management is powered by AutoAp, Inc, the industry’s number one provider of accurate and timely safety recall information. AutoAp provides multi-source and proprietary, automated processing to overcome the errors and timing delays in OEM and government safety recall data systems. Rapid Recon Integrated Recall Management then delivers a daily cleansed and verified list to the dealership general manager, and to the used car, service, and reconditioning managers.
With more than 175,000 vehicles a day being affected by vehicle safety recalls and increasingly more regulatory pressures put on them at the city, state, and federal levels, dealerships find it difficult to stay on top of safety recalls without such a system.
Dealers using this recall management solution:
- Reduce recall liability exposure
- Increase warranty revenue
- Improve customer safety and CSI
- Enhance market differentiation
- Optimize service bay utilization
- Reduce overhead costs
Gilbertson said Holiday Automotive is now confident in its improved recall compliance across the used vehicles the stores recondition and sell a year. The group represents Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac in one location, with Ford and Mazda stores nearby. A budget car center is also part of the organization.
“We want to deliver cars to our customers having recalls already addressed. The reality in the business today is some safety recall replacement parts aren’t available when needed. Those delays kill our time to market, but otherwise we now have more accurate and timely recall status information, and we’re better able to track their progress through repairs than any other tool we have found,” Gilbertson said.
About Rapid Recon
Rapid Recon is the leading Time-to-Market Workflow reconditioning software for new and used car dealerships. Rapid Recon benchmarks and best practices help GMs, used car managers, and service managers fine-tune their reconditioning practices to achieve faster time to market that helps retain vehicle gross. www.rapidrecon.com
Media contact:
Jim Leman
847-840-0784
[email protected]
