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Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

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Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a quiet irony in car dealership networks being fucked like this. They spend so much money ensuring their government-mandated monopoly, only to fall victim to a different kind of monopoly.

> government-mandated monopoly Could you expand on this, aren't U.S. car dealerships private businesses competing in a (mostly) unregulated market?

> direct manufacturer auto sales are prohibited in many states by franchise laws requiring that new cars be sold only by independent dealers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_US_dealership_disputes

not a monopoly per se, but "forced demand"

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#122
post #13

This is what happens when a single player (CDK Global) has massive market share (90% when measured by number of vehicles sold [0] --- EDIT: this is actually the combined market share of CDK + Reynolds, who have a non-compete agreement ---). The entire industry becomes fragile to product issues and/or malicious attacks. Anti-trust is important. [0] https://casetext.com/case/loop-llc-v-cdk-global-llc-in-re-de...

My entrepreneurial mind immediately thinks: Let's create a better solution to revolutionize this industry and make the old, expensive incumbents obsolete. We can drive to the affected car dealers and migrate them one by one. Of course, I'm not going to do it and it's probably extremely hard :)

Enterprise vendors have gotten better at locking in customers on multi-year contracts which takes away some of the biggest upside to chipping away at the market. Often a challenger will come in and snag a few smaller deals but the Monopoly has a plethora of options to swat it away - rev up their larger more experienced product team to compete, lobby for regulation, poach from the challenger, acquire the challenger, tank prices in the one area the challenger has traction, and much more.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a quiet irony in car dealership networks being fucked like this. They spend so much money ensuring their government-mandated monopoly, only to fall victim to a different kind of monopoly.

> government-mandated monopoly Could you expand on this, aren't U.S. car dealerships private businesses competing in a (mostly) unregulated market?

No, they only exist because state laws prevented manufacturers from selling directly to customers.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#125
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like how they blame "young people" for not being able read cursive instead of their own terrible hand writing.

"Young people" are not being taught cursive in school. Schools are not teaching cursive to students any longer since 2010 if they're following the Common Core curriculum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursive_handwriting_instructio... .

You can learn to read cursive in a few hours. It's not like they are writing in Mandarin, most of the letters are identical. Complaining about it is culture war virtue signaling.

Additionally, kids do still learn cursive. It's just not mandatory curriculum. My nephew is was learning it just before school ended this year.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#126
post #13

This is what happens when a single player (CDK Global) has massive market share (90% when measured by number of vehicles sold [0] --- EDIT: this is actually the combined market share of CDK + Reynolds, who have a non-compete agreement ---). The entire industry becomes fragile to product issues and/or malicious attacks. Anti-trust is important. [0] https://casetext.com/case/loop-llc-v-cdk-global-llc-in-re-de...

Maybe part of the problem is the reliance on the cloud. Will the pendulum ever swing back to on prem?

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#127
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the vendor becomes insulated from customer demands. Why patch things or work your ass off, when none of your customers have an alternative? (especially if PE buys the business or CEOs get a stock price focus and gut engineering to keep-the-lights-on levels)

There's a quiet irony in car dealership networks being fucked like this. They spend so much money ensuring their government-mandated monopoly, only to fall victim to a different kind of monopoly.

[deleted]

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#128
post #79

In studying voting systems I’ve come to respect paper-based logs along the same quality parameters as databases. Resiliency, scalability, backup, readability, schema-flexibility , onboarding, power-efficiency are all very good with paper. So many of us were quick to move paper-based systems (voting, orders, kiosks, parking meters, journals, requests, etc) over to computers – without accounting for the e2e cost and fl…

The part I love about paper-bases voting is the ability for anyone to visit the polling station and understand from A to Z how it works and how security is graranteed.

If you have doubts about the system, you can just come and see.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is kind of a crazy model. You don't go to the Pepsi store for Pepsi and the Coke store for Coke. The exclusivity dealerships get enshrined in law is kinda nuts. Still, I think there is something to be said for independent dealerships overall for service quality. Trying to get a Tesla serviced is still something of a nightmare. In comparison the service departments of dealerships have are much more robust.

> The exclusivity dealerships get enshrined in law is kinda nuts. It’s wired that the country of free market has all these protectionist laws that do not exist in many ex-soviet evonomies

> the country of free market

It's a common misconception, but the US actually has a mixed economy.

Re: Car dealerships revert to pens and paper after cyberattacks on software provider

#130

Related note: car stealerships are a relic of the past. There is no reason why a middleman should exist when buying a car. Consumers should have the option to purchase directly from the manufacturer. I am personally not a fan of Tesla as a vehicle, but I admire the business model of buying directly from Tesla. Stealerships are a drain on the consumer. All that land they own can be used for productive economic activit…

Does anyone know exactly how we got to this situation ( required car dealerships)?

National Auto Dealers Association (NADA). Once there was a large number of these independent dealers, they had the political sway to get it made into law.

https://caredge.com/guides/how-did-car-dealerships-become-so...

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