UCDA Members can now sign up for CARPROOF’s newly introduced used-car appraisal tool — Vehicle Valuation Report — and receive competitive rates following the company’s recent partnership with the not-for-profit organization.
“The partnership is a mutual mandate between both CARPROOF and the UCDA that we help our shared customers operate in a more efficient way with better margins,” CARPROOF vice president of automotive sales Shawn Vording said in a phone interview with Auto Remarketing Canada. “The benefit that our UCDA members are getting is the competitive rates that we offer through the VVR subscription.”
VVR is specifically designed to help dealers sell cars faster by cutting the cost of negotiation and bringing in quality inventory. CARPROOF said it utilizes robust data that combines wholesale and True Retail Sold™ transactions with current listing valuations.
More than 600 dealers have signed up for VVR since it first launched in April, the company said.
“The UCDA is dedicated to helping our Members buy and sell better, and CARPROOF’s VVR tool will be fundamental in advancing that mission,” Warren Barnard, executive director for the UCDA, said in a news release. “We’re excited about adding this value to our member offerings.”
The UCDA has almost 5,000 dealer members across Ontario, according to the organization.
Members include franchise dealers, independent dealers, truck dealers and leasing companies, based in more than 500 municipalities within the province.
Earlier this week, Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. said it has teamed up with U.K.-based Reevoo, a user-generated content platform provider, to gather reviews from Hyundai drivers.
The ratings are set to be published on the forthcoming new consumer website from the car brand. This is Reevoo’s first deal in North America, having made long-term partnerships with most of the carmakers in Europe. Beyond automotive, Reevoo also works in various consumer goods sectors like financial services, retail and travel.
In a news release, Hyundai Auto Canada director of marketing Lawrence Hamilton pointed to the value of voicing the feedback of Hyundai customers.
“Not only do we get to plug-in to direct feedback from Canadian Hyundai drivers and learn from them, but we also get to share that feedback publicly with people who might be researching their next vehicle,” Hamilton said.
“In an era where shopping online for the vast majority of consumer goods involves customer reviews, it's time for this valuable content to migrate into the North American automotive industry,” he said.
The two companies have been gathering feedback from consumers since November, Hamilton said.
“After collecting over 2,200 reviews so far, Hyundai's vehicle range is scoring high amongst consumers, with no vehicle rated below an 8.5 out of 10. This is a testament to the amount of work our engineers invest to ensure the quality of Hyundai vehicles consistently meet incredibly high standards. It's one thing for Hyundai to say it has high-quality vehicles, Reevoo empowers customers to say the same thing, but on our behalf,” he said.
Reevoo chief executive officer Jonathan Callcut added: “Across all industries and locales, we're seeing a simple trend emerging — people are increasingly looking to the opinions of 'people like them' before they make important purchases. And there aren't many more important purchases than a new car.
“We're delighted to be working with Hyundai Auto Canada to give the megaphone to its customers, and looking forward to seeing other North American car makers joining this trend.”
Service shop customers have an option to pay for repairs before picking up their car thanks to a newly launched service from VenueVision Media Systems.
Mobile Cashier is an express e-payment solution for parts and service departments that sends dealer-branded notifications of repair completion along with a copy of the invoice to customers’ smartphone, tablet or PC.
“Mobile Cashier is an innovative leap forward for auto dealers and their service customers alike,” said Dave Hooper, president of VenueVision. “This express e-pay solution allows service customers to skip the cashier line and pick up their vehicle at their convenience while drastically reducing the 5 p.m. rush for dealership staff. In the competitive, fast-paced automotive marketplace, great service with an emphasis on ease and convenience is vital.”
Here’s how Mobile Cashier works:
1. When a service repair is complete and ready for pickup, the customer is automatically notified by email or text with a copy of the invoice and a link to the dealer-branded payment page (pre-populated with the customer’s name, invoice number and invoice amount).
2. The secure payment portal prompts the customer to enter credit card information, then completes the transaction online and notifies the dealer’s cashier of confirmed payment.
3. The customer receives a text or email confirming payment, then is free to pick up their vehicle when convenient.
Customers can access the dealer-branded Mobile Cashier from any mobile or PC-based browser without specialized hardware or software requirements. Mobile Cashier is fully integrated with VenueVision’s service applications, enabling it to complete transactions in real time.
For more information, visit www.venuevision.com.
Impact Auto Auctions has launched a revamped website featuring a new interface, an advanced search function and a streamlined registration process as well as two tools that are designed to make the bidding process easier for customers seeking salvage vehicles.
One of those tools, My Auction Center, is a personalized dashboard that enables registered customers to bid in real time, receive vehicle pick-up notifications, and view upcoming auctions and announcements on a single page.
The other, Impact AuctionNow, builds on the company’s previous LiveBlock Hybrid Auction system to bring domestic and international buyers side-by-side with live bidders at IAA’s auctions.
Impact AuctionNow gives customers faster and easier access to Impact’s vehicle inventory. Buyers can now view and bid on multiple auction lanes or sales from one screen, track active bids across all auctions sites, pre-bid on a vehicle the moment it is posted until its auction date, and monitor upcoming buying opportunities via an automated Watch List.
“We are delighted to launch our new online buyer portal, which not only simplifies the bidding process for our customers, but reinforces our commitment to investing in our diverse and growing buyer market,” said Terry Daniels, Impact’s managing director.
“Together these enhancements constitute one of our largest investments in our buyer base to-date and we are already getting great feedback from buyers.”
Click here to visit the new website.
Impact Auto Actions Ltd. is a subsidiary of Insurance Auto Auctions and a business unit of KAR Auction Services.
ADESA Canada announced it has integrated CARPROOF’s Vehicle Valuation Report into its auction system. Subscribing dealers can now access a vehicle’s True Retail Sold value directly from ADESA’s Market Guide through a seamless integration with CARPROOF’s VVR.
"We feel that dealers will find tremendous value in this tool," Trevor Henderson, chief operating officer at ADESA Canada, said in a news release. "Integrating VVR into our system brings enhanced data-driven decision-making capability to the pre-auction research process.
“The single-screen access to wholesale, listings, and True Retail Sold data empowers a dealer to make informed decisions about how they plan to bid on auction day,” he continued. “And when we asked for faster access to the data, CARPROOF delivered with the VVR QuickView browser extension.”
VVR QuickView is a free extension for Google Chrome. It is designed to assist dealers in their pre-auction prep work by simplifying the process of filtering a run list, researching wholesale and listing prices, and planning how to bid at auction. By providing a summary of CARPROOF's valuation data on any website that displays 17-digit VINs, QuickView lets dealers see the margin between wholesale and retail sold prices simply by hovering over the VIN. This allows dealers to arrive at the auction knowing which vehicles to bid on.
"We are proud to partner with ADESA, one of the premier vehicle auctions in Canada," said Mark Rousseau, president at CARPROOF. "The opportunity to use the combined power of CARPROOF and ADESA data to fuel better auction decision-making is a game-changer for this industry, and the sheer reach available through ADESA's large network and market penetration means that more and more dealers can maximize the value available through this powerful data.
“It's exciting to watch VVR and VVR QuickView achieve exactly what we set-out to do — help Canadian dealers make informed decisions when they buy and sell used vehicles,” he continued.
This week, RSR Global launched three new solutions for Canadian dealers — GLOBAL ONE, GLOBAL DRIVE and GLOBAL U.
With the rollout of these solutions, RSR Global highlighted that it now offers a comprehensive suite of easy-to-deploy F&I products and programs, backed by the newest technology to manage and sell, while delivering the training necessary to optimize the entire process.
“After listening very closely to our dealer partners, our efforts lie squarely on leading the charge to providing a simplified single vendor approach to the F&I office,” RSR Global president Steve Langdon said. “The industry needs a supplier focused entirely on offering three main F&I elements — the right program mix, robust yet user friendly software, and expert training.”
The company pointed out the launch of GLOBAL ONE has been in the works for more than two years. GLOBAL ONE is a complete bundle of product offerings, which includes:
— GLOBALi, a theft deterrent
— GLOBALid, an identity restoration service
— GLOBALn2, a nitrogen tire warranty
— GLOBALap, an appearance protection
— GLOBALci, which is credit insurance
— GLOBALxt, which are extended service agreements
— GLOBALpt, a limited powertrain warranty
— GLOBALp3, which is payment protection.
GLOBALu is what RSR Global dubbed as its “University of Strategic Management,” a professional F&I managers training program.
“On top of the comprehensive product set, we’ve aligned with JM&A Group and established a proven training curriculum, that will drive performance and consistency among staff,” said Amanda Paetkau, vice president of dealer group solutions at RSR Global.
Paetkau mentioned rigorous group exercises and interactive role-play activities over four training days place emphasis on increasing profits, menu and step-selling techniques, and, ultimately, customer satisfaction and retention strategies.
Also unveiled this week was GLOBAL DRIVE powered by DealerCorp, RSR Global’s strategic management software. The company emphasized this new dealer technology is rich in features such as, e-contracts, e-remittance, historical reports, order management, certificate management and more.
“GLOBAL DRIVE will force efficiencies and ease into the selling process, while making disclosure a priority and providing the quantifiable results today’s dealer expects” Paetkau said.
More information about RSR Global can be found at www.rsr-global.com.
To give you a sense of the company’s philosophy around the CARPROOF Vehicle Valuation Report, director of product management Shawn Vording likens it to the approach in the real estate market.
“When you’re buying a home, you don’t actually care what similar homes are listed for. You care what similar homes are selling for,” Vording told Auto Remarketing Canada in a phone interview last week.
“And so our perspective was, the automotive industry really is no different. It’s just data that wasn’t previously available, and now that it is available, and we’re able to give it to dealers, it allows them to take out the negotiation factor or to eliminate the variance that happens from wholesale to sold,” he said. “So, it actually gives them what the market will bear.”
The data he refers to is the price at which a vehicle is actually sold, something CARPROOF said sets VVR apart.
This used-car appraisal tool that the company launched on Monday “offers a new approach to vehicle valuation,” CARPROOF said in its news release.
The VVR is powered by True Retail Sold values, which makes it different from similar services. In the announcement, vice president of dealer sales Chris Alfonso said: “VVR alters the valuation and appraisal game by providing dealers with actual retail sold values — what comparable vehicles sold for, rather than just what they are listed for.
“In addition, VVR appraises vehicles based on wholesale sold data from ADESA, odometer and damage adjustments, and listing prices,” he added. “This comprehensive data set is packaged together in an intuitive, user-friendly customer experience that empowers dealers to make smart, informed decisions.”
In the same phone interview with Auto Remarketing Canada, Alfonso added a bit more about the vehicle history component, which he called a “natural extension.”
“When we include the damage into the evaluation, that’s also a pretty big game-changer because it’s just not available anywhere else right now,” Alfonso said. “And so, a dealer’s now comparing apples to apples. So when they see a car down the road that’s listed for a certain price or perhaps is sold for a certain price, we’re throwing in the variable that sure, it sold for two grand less than yours, but it also had $8,000 worth of damage, or what have you. With that damage component, it’s kind of a third pillar, if you will.”
One of the players involved in pilot testing was The Birchwood Automotive Group.
Scott Greer, Birchwood’s director of used vehicles, said in the news release: “VVR gives me confidence to make accurate and efficient buying and pricing decisions.”
All of the fast-paced, real-time, instant gratification of buying a car at auction – with none of the expense of transporting yourself or your vehicles to auction – all crammed into your desktop or mobile device’s screen. And no listing fees.
Sound good to you? Michael Ryan O’Connor, eBlock’s president and chief executive officer, sure hopes so. And after a successful first auction on Tuesday afternoon, it appears as though at least a few dealer buyers and sellers are on track to possibly make eBlock part of their daily routine.
If you’re saying, “Did I just see ‘daily’ and ‘auction’ in the same sentence?” to yourself, don’t worry, you read that correctly. eBlock currently plans to operate one Canada-wide online auction, for every province, at 3:30 p.m. EST every day. And just like the physical auction – each vehicle is sold, or not sold, in roughly a minute.
If the name O’Connor is ringing a bell, that’s because he’s also the president and CEO of Carmigo.com and the president and co-founder of eDealer, as well as a member of our 2015 class of “Remarketing’s 40 Under 40.”
O’Connor invited Auto Remarketing Canada to take part in eBlock’s first auction on Tuesday. And with over 700 dealers, mostly in Ontario, having signed up for the service over the previous five weeks, it was looking to be a success.
Limited to a 125-unit run list for Ontario and Quebec for its first day, eBlock sold 53 units, which were comprised mostly of late model vehicles and quite a few trucks and SUVs, resulting in just over $1 million in sales. The auction sold another 35 units during Wednesday's sale, bringing eBlock's two-day total sales to roughly $1.6 million.
Not too shabby considering each auction only takes about an hour to complete.
And although the majority of the dealers currently signed up for eBlock’s services are currently in the Ontario area, O’Connor says that the company now has two representatives in British Columbia and two in Quebec, and expects that eBlock will be operating nationwide within the next six months.
And with a brand slogan of “it’s about time,” eBlock really has set its focus on selling vehicles as conveniently and expediently as possible. With each province’s lane running four vehicles at a time, each vehicle starts with 45 seconds on the “block,” but the timer won’t stop until the vehicle has gone 15 seconds without a bid. The application updates the current bid in real time, visually showing the name of the current high bidder and time remaining for transparency.
Like a traditional auction, eBlock even has “if bids” in case the required minimum reserve isn’t met – a nifty feature if you consider the fact that 25 percent of Tuesday’s sales closed in the “if bid” stage. The “if bids” remain open until noon the day after the sale. If an agreement can’t be made, the dealer can always relist it for free in the next day’s sale.
“Used cars are not a commodity anymore,” O’Connor said. “So remarketing them should not be an expense. And that’s our angle.”
To get an idea of the application’s aesthetics, which is quite reminiscent of a Tinder app for auto auctions, check out eBlock’s YouTube video above or here. For more information on its functionality, check out its site.
Full of anticipation the evening prior to eBlock’s first sale, O’Connor sat down with Auto Remarketing Canada to discuss why his company has decided to throw its hat into the crowded online auction space.
Interestingly enough, eDealer was working on a trade appraisal tool when TradeRev launched. The company decided to park the project – and O’Connor says that’s when he felt the large potential to grab market share on the online auction side of the industry.
“Most dealers are pricing their own trades. They do their best to take it in right and maximize profit when selling,” he said. “So when a dealer owns that car we are saying, ‘Hey, throw it up on eBlock and see what happens. Zero cost.’ Because of the set auction times and buyer experience, we believe we will be able to get more eyes on cars and hopefully better results for the seller. If it doesn't sell they can always run it at the block or use other platforms.”
Again, the key point that O’Connor reiterates behind the eBlock system is its focus on saving dealers’ time. And for the average dealer, O’Connor says eBlock may save a lot more than just time. Putting himself in their shoes, he proposed a hypothetical situation to demonstrate his thought process.
“Forget this product,” he said. “Say I’m the dealer and the closest auction is an hour and a half away. I’ve either got to get drivers together or transport my cars to the auction. So I’ve got that expense. So let’s say I took that car in on a trade on a Saturday and I call the auction, which (has its sale) on a Wednesday, and I get a relatively (bad) run number. I end up no-selling it to run it the following week. I’ve now sat on that car for almost two weeks. And guess what, I’m never bringing that car home. Eventually I end up cutting. And I’ve got seller’s fees, and my transportation fees, and my money’s been out for 10 or 11 days. This tool allows the seller to list it on Monday. Have the car sold. And if it doesn’t sell on Monday, he can run it again on Tuesday.”
While the eBlock system doesn't have seller's fees to list vehicles, it does have buyer's fees that are taken out of the vehicle's selling price. Check out those rates below.
eBlock's Buyer Fees
| Selling Price |
Buyer Fees |
| $0 – $499 |
$50 |
| $500 – $999 |
$90 |
| $1,000 – $2,499 |
$125 |
| $2,500 – $4,999 |
$150 |
| $5,000 – $7,499 |
$200 |
| $7,500 – $9,999 |
$225 |
| $10,000 – $14,999 |
$250 |
| $15,000 – $19,999 |
$275 |
| $20,000 – $29,999 |
$300 |
| $30,000 – $39,999 |
$350 |
| $40,000+ |
1% of sell price |
General Motors Canada announced this week that it has been awarded a mandate to build a fleet of self-driving 2017 Chevrolet Volts at its Canadian Engineering Centre in Oshawa, Ontario.
This was confirmed by Steve Carlisle, the president and managing director of GM Canada, while speaking to the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa on Tuesday, specifying that the vehicles will be a part of a test fleet based at the GM Technical Center in Warren, Mich.
"Our Engineering Centre in Oshawa was a logical place to locate this important work and it is the next step in growing the new mandate of the Centre to focus on work related to the Connected Car," Carlisle said. "The Province of Ontario's leadership in allowing autonomous vehicle testing was a helpful support in securing this advanced technology work for our Canadian facility."
This announcement follows GM Canada’s recent address to the Canadian government, urging it to “act quickly” to ensure they have a “purposeful role” in the evolution of the automotive industry.
According to GM Canada, when the fleet of self-driving Volts are first deployed as part of a broader test at the GM Technical Center in Michigan, GM employees will reserve a Volt using a car-sharing application and select a destination. The GM technology will bring the vehicle to its destination and park it, serving as a rapid development laboratory to provide data and lessons to speed up GM’s technical capabilities for these autonomous vehicles.
In the statement from GM, the company said that the Conference Board of Canada has suggested that autonomous cars could save Canadians $65 billion per year by reducing congestion, consuming less fuel and producing fewer collisions and fatalities.
You have your vehicle history report and your safety inspection. That’s enough, right? The team at Titan Certified, which launched this past September in Canada, says “no.”
The company refers to its transmission and engine inspection offering as a “DNA Blood Test” for vehicles, and markets the test as the “third and final inspection report, which closes the loop and assures dealers and consumers the two most expensive components of the vehicle are sound.”
Auto Remarketing Canada chatted with Dale Finch, president and chief executive officer of Titan Certified Inc., to get a handle on how the process works and how it can potentially help dealers and consumers protect their profits and assets.
“It’s really about confidence for consumers and dealers, and it’s a great marketing program for used vehicle departments,” Finch said.
The process
In today’s vehicles, it can be tough to diagnose internal engine problems. Gone are the days when a compression test took 30 to 45 minutes. In some vehicles today, dealers will have to allot two to three hours for the inspection, and on a diesel vehicle, that time grows even more.
“It’s a major deal, and it’s not easy to do,” said Finch.
That said, Titan Certified has developed a system Finch says is efficient and increases confidence in vehicles for both dealers and consumers.
Here’s how it works.
The company has in its tool belt what it refers to as a "Vampire Gun," which is a vacuum gun with a three-ounce bottle attached to it to capture the oil.
“We have a tube that goes down the dipstick tube of the engine and transmission or in the cooler line on specialty vehicles such as BMW and Mercedes that have sealed transmissions,” said Finch. “Basically, we take a sample of the fluid, and then they get couriered off to a lab.”
The company currently has two labs in Canada, in both Burlington, Ontario and Edmonton, Alberta. The oil is analyzed by the lab, the data is loaded into the company’s system and then it comes to a Titan Certified engineer for analysis.
“We have a proprietary algorithm for our database. Our founder and engineer has been doing this for about 20 years, and he has perfected this process in the used-car industry,” said Finch. “He compares ASTM/OEM standards to our database, looking at the types of vehicles. Data on a GM car might pass, but that same data on a VW might fail the unit, depending on a variety of factors.”
The vehicles can make it through the system with a pass or fail, or a pass with a fluid change, which Finch says can be a big deal, especially on a BMW or Mercedes, since a transmission service for these vehicles can get up to $1,000.
“If it passes, or passes with a fluid change, it goes through the system, and our engineer approves the status of the vehicle, and then the dealer gets the results of the vehicle,” said Finch.
Passing vehicles receive a 90 day, 5,000 kilometer guarantee for buyers.
“We have a short-term guarantee for the 90 days because we don’t want to get in the way of the dealer’s extended service contract sales or the business office sales, which are obviously very important to them,” said Finch. “But if you have a car that fails, it’s not going to make the end of it financing very often, and it is going to cause problems.”
A marketing tool
Once the dealer has a “pass” on the vehicle, that’s when he or she can really start using the Titan Certified badge as a marketing tool.
“From there, the dealer can market the certified badge for six months, or up to 700 kilometers,” said Finch. “When it’s sold, they can go back into the system, and they basically print off a guarantee document for the consumer, and it has a bunch of information about what’s covered, and if there’s a claim, how they can navigate that, and then they can give it to the customer, and away they go.”
Titan Certified also has a widget that allows dealers to post the Titan Certified badge along with each vehicle that passed on their website, which can serve as another item to catch a shopper’s eye.
“That’s the whole crux of selling is to get the consumer confident in the vehicle and the dealers confident in the vehicle,” said Finch. “When they have got that, what we recommend is a visual and safety inspection and a vehicle history report for sure on the vehicle, and then with a Titan report, it's full-circle protection, and the customer should be pretty confident by that point the vehicle will be a good purchase for them.”
The Titan Certified report also gives the salespeople on the lot something else to discuss with a customer during the sales process.
A path to more inventory
Beyond a marketing tool, another interesting way using Titan Certified could potentially help a dealership is by expanding inventory options.
Finch offered this example. Many dealers say they aren’t going to sell a used car with over 100,000 kilometers, or wherever their cut-off might be. With Titan Certified, that same vehicle you might have passed over or wholesaled could now potentially be retailed if it passes the transmission and engine test.
“We have vehicles pass at over 400,000 kilometers, and then we have vehicles that fail at very low mileage for many reasons … the customer didn’t service the vehicle, daily rentals that don’t get an oil range for 20,000 kilometers – all these things contribute to failures, including flood damage,” said Finch. “These are all things that we can determine.”
Transparency is key
Finch explained the key to the product is “transparency,” and instilling confidence in both the buyer and seller.
“I think transparency is the key to success. You are informing the consumer and the dealers involved, potentially the financial institutions. They could say I will loan you this money, but I want to know the vehicle is good, and this is a way they can do that,” said Finch. “A car never fixes itself, so if you have got the information and it’s good, then it starts out good.”
The Titan Certified team is currently busy educating Canadian dealers about the process, and Finch shared he expects the company to expand further in the future.
“We have a very sophisticated computer system for dealers, which is very easy to use and upload their vehicles. It’s an almost fully-automated system. We developed that, and we then designed it to work both in Canada and the U.S,” said Finch. “It will be pretty easy to adopt to other commonwealth countries, as well, like England and Australia, and so on. As we go forward, we will be able to add other countries on.”
For more information, see titancertified.com.
