Quote:
Originally Posted by tnpartsguy
What's stunning about this is that it took so long to figure it out....
I think this is what happens when dealers get involved in a Daily Rent A Car System and have no ideal how to do it. We had a very successful DRACS years ago, and they are getting their toes wet again currently.
#1, make it a department, and account for it's revenues or losses on the monthly statement!!
#2, do a weekly 'floorplan' inspection. Most of these DRACS units are floored, not owned by the dealer, and the GM/GSM and the DRACS manager should weekly discuss where the vehicles are. We had to touch every car that wasn't in rental once a week (we did keep a few at a remote location at a body shop that was about 25 miles away).
#3, 14 days. That's the longest you allow anyone to stay in a unit. If they want to recontract, fine, bring them in and switch the unit out, don't let them stay in it more then 14 days. We have one lady that started driving a delivery route between middle TN and southern FL (we do not know for SURE what she was delivering, but we have some guesses now), and was putting 1,200~1,400 miles PER WEEK on our car. Most factory DRACS don't want you to put more than 4,500~5,000 miles on these units, so if we have left her in a month, we would have had to ground the unit when it did come back.
That's just a few of the crazy things that came up when we had GMDRACS the 1st time... I'm hoping it doesn't go crazy again.
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Great post - thanks for sharing your experience.
I agree that it's possible for a dealership to develop a successful DRAC program but I've also heard a fair number of horror stories where the DRAC program turns out to be a money losing operation because no one is responsible for running the department.
In the case of Nissan of Hawthorn, I wonder if there's more to the story? It's hard to imagine that the problem with the DRAC department could go on so long or become so large without being detected earlier.