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.
The last time I bought a car, I asked a few questions about how they calculated their financing and was told “Don’t worry, the numbers are correct, the software does the hard math for us”. I would have walked out right then if I didn’t understand more of it than they did – I was still getting the deal I wanted, and ultimately I was able to get the numbers to make sense with the help of the Internet. But if the software really did go down, that dealership would probably grind to a halt, because nobody could do the hard math manually, not even the “Finance Manager”.
The “hard math” can be done easily and quickly with a financial calculator app. The one I have shows the amortization schedule as well.
I agree, which is why I was astounded when the Finance Manager basically said he didn’t know. Isn’t that his job? I had it all on a spreadsheet and didn’t agree to the sale until my numbers matched theirs.