GPS has come a long way over the years. From fishermen using numbers to find and catch fish, to turn by turn navigation in your car. Now the same technology is being used by independent used car dealers, finance companies and new car dealers of high priced cars to protect their investments. Buy here /pay here lots who cater to customers with bad, low or no credit often times use a location or disabling device to insure payments are made. High profile vehicles sometimes come from the factory with anti-theft devices than can be tracked.
One of the biggest questions in this situation is the ethics of should the dealer tell the customer about these devices or use the device for insurance of the companies investments. The economic conditions with which these types of devices are used tells the story of why they are needed. Some customers are so desperate to get a vehicle that they will agree to anything being put on it even if it means the vehicle can be disabled or located for possible repossession. However, some unscrupulous used car dealers may simply put the tracking device on the vehicle without disclosing the fact to the customer.
On the other hand, someone spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a high end sport car or a luxury vehicle wants to know that if anything happens to it, it can be located quickly as possible. Sometimes the dealers install GPS trackers on new cars while they are still on the lot. Several years ago in Central Florida a Chevrolet dealer had a brand new, high end Corvette on the lot with an equally high end LoJack system. Realizing one morning that the car was missing, the dealer called LoJack and was informed that according to the signal, the car was still on the property. A few weeks later the water level in a retention pond dropped to reveal the missing Corvette. Someone had lost control of it while trying to steal it and had driven it into the pond. As the LoJack had signaled, the car was still on the property.
There are several companies offering dealers devices to track and sometimes even disable vehicles. LoJack, Linxup, Goldstar GPS, Teletrac and many others. Some units can be programmed so that cars can't be driven outside a certain mileage range or the dealer can be notified if the vehicle has not been moved in several days. It is a sad fact that in this day and age and these economic times, dealers feel the need to use technology that can be such a convenience for the everyday driver in such a way that it seems sneaky and underhanded.
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