Parents with teenagers or college-age students can get peace of mind when vehicles have Mopar EVTS
Brandie Wagner believes there isn’t anything more powerful than personal experience when it comes explaining the value of the Mopar Electronic Vehicle Tracking System (EVTS) to sales personnel and managers at the 18 dealerships in her sales territory.
Not only is Mopar EVTS essential for managing rental car inventory, Brandie says, but it’s a heck of a sales tool when dealerships decide to sell their stock as used vehicles to parents of teenagers and college-age drivers – customers just like herself.
“I have it on my 16-year-old son’s Jeep, and I wouldn’t be without it now,” says Brandie, area manager for FCA (Mopar) in the Cleveland Outstate District. “I tell them that there is a lot more to the system than just theft recovery.”
“Then I tell them my terrible story.”
By way of background, Brandie explains to sales and F&I personnel how much valuable information Mopar EVTS collects and how easy it is to access all of that information from a desktop computer, table or Internet-connected smartphone using the Dealer Management Tool.
The system can track where vehicles are, where they have been, how long they have been in certain locations, and usage history. In addition, the dealership can receive notifications if the battery is low or if the vehicle is driven outside of an area as small as the dealership lot. Dealers say their mechanics can install Mopar EVTS units in less than 20 minutes since they don’t require additional wiring connections to vehicles.
All of that data available from easy-to-generate reports saves time and money for dealerships – but it comes in doubly handy when they turn around to sell the vehicles to parents with younger drivers. “With the app on my smartphone, I am able to see where my son’s Jeep is at all times,” Brandie says. “And believe me, I check it several times a day.” She has set the system to notify her if the vehicle exceeds the speed limit, leaves or enters a certain geographic territory and the history of trips over time.
“So my son started dating a girl who lived an hour 20 minutes from our home, and one summer night he broke the rules and didn’t come home on time,” Brandie says. “It was a work night and I was asleep, but mother’s intuition woke me up a 3 a.m. The first thing I did was look at the app. I could see that his car was 40 minutes away from home on the highway – and it wasn’t moving.”
After trying to reach her son by cell phone but getting voice mail, Brandie received a call from the police that her son was involved in an accident and all the parties involved were okay. “It was a big accident that did about $8,000 damage to his Jeep,” she said. “It wasn’t his fault, but then he shouldn’t have been out that late, and we busted him for it.”
While Mopar EVTS is a great sales add-on for retail sales, Guidepoint recently made several enhancements for rental car applications, such as production of standard rental forms that automatically record data in the system and provide retail customers with complete rental agreements that include legal verbiage.
New upgrades makes it a snap to list all of the rental cars in the fleet, determine where they are on a map for floor plan inventory purposes, and fill out forms to cut the time it takes for retail customers to leave the dealership.
But the bottom line for Brandie is that the Mopar EVTS system with the gold package brings a lot of peace of mind for relatively little cost – and that should resonate with other parents with younger adults.
Either through its own brand or private labels such as Mopar EVTS and Nissan VTRS, Guidepoint provides hardware and software solutions to dealers of Audi, BMW, Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Jeep, Kia, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes, Mercury, Nissan, Porsche, Subaru, Toyota and other vehicle brands.
Guidepoint Systems, with headquarters in Detroit and main operational facilities in Fort Worth, Texas, owns and operates response centers staffed 24/7/365 in the United States and Mexico to provide a wide range of services for rental car companies, dealerships, commercial fleet managers and individual vehicle owners. Guidepoint customer service representatives personally handle notifications of impact, theft, driver emergencies and concierge services.
To learn more about Guidepoint systems for the individual and commercial markets, please call (877) 477-3463 or write to [email protected].
