Cox Automotive is going national with its DealShield Purchase Guarantee product that lets wholesale buyers return a vehicle for any reason and receive a complete refund of purchase price and buyer’s fee.

Through DealShield, the car can be brought back for up to 21 days and 500 miles from the time of purchase, depending on the options chosen by the buyer.

Earlier this month, Auto Remarketing caught up with Matt Trapp, senior director of adjacent growth for Cox Automotive and founder of DealShield, to talk about the product, its inception and development.

In talking with customers, Trapp said he found, “They were looking for ways to get peace-of-mind when purchasing inventory in the wholesale automotive space, and ways to protect themselves when they’re buying vehicles, whether it be online or in lane.”

The team went out to auctions to get feedback, worked with customers to best understand their needs, conducted research and development, and so forth.

“From that, we’ve evolved a suite of products at DealShield which we think really helps them with inventory risk management,” he said. “And by that, I mean it helps them vehicles where they’ve mis-estimated reconditioning expense; it helps them when the market falls off or a buyer walks away. It really protects them and gives them an additional level of security to know what they’re getting into and how they can get out of a vehicle should they need to.”

In addition to helping helping buyers feel more comfortable in both buying online and in the lanes, Trapp said it also allows buyers to try out different types of inventory they might have not otherwise purchased. In essence, they can source a wider variety of cars to see if they work for the dealership.

DealShield was started in mid-2012 and debuted at Manheim Statesville, which is 46 miles north of Charlotte, N.C. From there, the team moved to other select markets to fine-tune the product, and began rolling it out across the country. It was launched in Florida in July, California in August and will make its way throughout the country the remainder of this year.

DealShield is rolling out in a few Southwestern markets this month, a few locations in north Midwest and before the end-of-year holidays, the company hopes to have it in every Manheim location, Trapp said.

Buyers can choose to add DealShield to most purchases — about 97 percent of the cars that go through the lanes, the company says — with a few exceptions: salvage vehicles, vehicles from 1995 or earlier, and cars that have more than 250,000 miles, odometer discrepancies, or a sale price above $100,000.

The guarantee allows cars to be brought back to any U.S. Manheim location that hosts sales regularly.

Buyers have two choices as to how they use the DealShield Purchase Guarantee.

Option No. 1 is for DealShield to be added as an individual purchase at the time of the sale to any eligible vehicle at any participating location.

The other option is DealShield 360 Membership, which is available to qualifying dealers buying more than 40 vehicles annually. If a buyer purchases this membership, the purchase guarantee is automatically applied to every eligible car the buyer purchase at one consistent rate.