Car dealerships in North America continue to wrestle with major disruptions that started last week with cyberattacks on a software company used widely in the auto retail sales sector.
CDK Global, a company that provides software for thousands of auto dealers in the U.S. and Canada, was hit by back-to-back cyberattacks Wednesday. That led to an outage that has continued to impact operations.
For prospective car buyers, that may mean delays at dealerships or vehicle orders written up by hand, with no immediate end in sight.
On Monday, Group 1 Automotive Inc., a $4 billion automotive retailers, said that it continued to use “alternative processes” to sell cars to its customers.
It sounds like it is currently trivially easy to make car dealers miserable simply by pretending to be interested in buying a car and then deciding not to buy at the last moment once they’ve gone to all the trouble.
It depends on what car you are interested in. Some cars are in such high demand that they don’t stay on the lot that long, they’ll just wait a week and get another taker.
I used to have this group of friends that were pretty savvy on finances and negotiations. For fun and sport, they would go to auto dealers and pretend to be interested in a car they had zero intentions of buying. All to hook and reel in the salesman and then decide “no” at the last second and walk off the lot.
I mean, the idea is humorous and I dislike most auto salesmen too, but I have better things to do.