okay guys, for those who have bought a car, are these removable? genuinely curious. dealership is saying since it already came preinstalled with the vehicle they’re not able to remove it. can i actually have this removed or have them eat the cost? (the ones hightlighted) how to negotiate..

Since creating the subreddit, we’ve had some users reach out and ask whether or not the car listing they were looking at seemed legit. We’re going to try and run as many of these we can through the free version of the DealershipTricks.com tool to see whether or not they are actually fair.

When we see egregious attempts to screw over buyers, we’ll post them here.

If you have any suggestions on how to make this more helpful, would love to hear them.

Looking to get this 2016 Subaru Impreza. Listing price is close to 11k for around 108k km. At first, the dealership refused to send me the carfax unless I came in person to see the car. When I didn’t answer, they later sent me the carfax. Now they are trying to push extra fees. What’s your opinion- scam or not? I don’t know too much about cars but trying to do my research.

Bro I understand you need your margin but at least pretend to haggle a little

An hour after buying my car, I got an email from some company "CarRX" claiming my dealer had paid for a year of service. It included car health tracking, theft protection, speeding notifications... etc. I don't typically blindly trust companies to handle my data (especially location data), so I planned to ignore it.

But something about the email bothered me. They didn't offer to send me a dongle or anything to track my car's data, just to activate the service. After some obsessive research and googling, I have learned what CarRX is and why dealerships are partnering with them.

Who is CarRX?

They are just one of many companies offering GPS tracking for dealerships. The dealer installs the device on their vehicles and then have easy access to their entire stock. They save time with inventory, they get info from the cars (such as if it has a dead battery)... etc. It sounds great for them.

So what's the problem?

Dealers don't remove the device when you buy the car (some of them even sneak the cost of it into their fees... gross). CarRX sends you an email telling you to download their app so they can help you "track the health of your car" and "locate it if it's stolen"... etc.

But what's really happening? They're tracking your car's information and sending you reminders to go back to the dealer when it's time for service. They're also sending the dealer the information so they can call you when it's "time to trade in", such as just before you hit 100K miles. And that's just what I've found. There's probably no limit to what dealers can do with that level of access to your vehicle data.

It goes further. CarRX is also collecting data about your driving habits, such as speeding events, braking events, hard turns, and yes... your location. The privacy policy explicitly states they can share your information with 3rd parties not directly affiliated with you.

What does this mean?

Your car gets a check engine light. And before you can blink, you're getting calls from the sleaziest auto shops in town. You think auto shops that pay for marketing data like that are also offering fair repair rates?

You swerve around an object in the road. You're okay and the car is okay, but the device logged a swerve event. Later that year, when it's time to renew your insurance, you notice your rates have spiked. The insurance company paid for your data and saw the swerve event. They used that to justify raising your rates.

In Conclusion

I'll never stop being surprised at the lengths tech companies will go to collect/sell our data. I'm no lawyer, but from what I can tell about the privacy policy, it doesn't matter if you ignore the email or never download the app. They can still track everything and sell it.

I'm lucky that I found mine and no wires were cut or spliced. They just installed a Y cable that tapped into the OBD cable. After removing the tracker and wiring harness, it's as good as factory again. But I've read stories of dealers hiding these in weird places and making it nearly impossible to remove.

If you've purchased a car recently, I'd start looking to see if you've got one of these. It could explain why so many business seem to know exactly when to call you for service.

Oh yeah... fuck CarRX and fuck dealerships. :)

Edit: AI doesn't normally infodump and ramble on and on like I do, but feel free to copy/paste it into an AI detection website if you're still skeptical.

Edit #2: Got the multimeter out and proved it can listen to the OBD port.

There are 4 wires going to the GPS device.

Red: OBD port 16 Black: OBD port 5 Green: OBD port 14 Yellow: OBD port 6

That's proof this device can read OBD data and possibly even request data. There is no reason a passive GPS tracker would need this unless it plans to log and send it out to a 3rd party.

Since creating the subreddit, we’ve had some users reach out and ask whether or not the car listing they were looking at seemed legit. We’re going to try and run as many of these we can through the DealershipTricks.com tool to see whether or not they are actually fair.

When we see egregious attempts to screw over buyers, we’ll post them here.

If you have any suggestions on how to make this more helpful, would love to hear them.