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Dealers Frustrated With NHTSA Clunkers Registration
Automotive retailers have contacted us to express their frustration with registering their dealer for the NHTSA Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) also known as the Cash for Clunkers program. Due to online registration problems the NHTSA has moved the official start date of the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS) to Monday July 27th.
Car dealers have been trying to register for since early this morning with no success. Many have been unsuccessful given the sheer volume of traffic being directed to the NHTSA website. Slow response times and error pages are all most dealers have received so far. The registration pile-up seemed to ease a bit later in the day as some dealer registration Tweets were sent in to us.
Car Dealers Share Their Experiences
Although many dealers are expressing frustration, some seemed prepared for the hassle. Kevin Frye of the Jeff Wyler Automotive Family seemed to take it all in stride. According to Frye, “With 25,000 dealers all attempting to register at the same time, this is certainly not unexpected.”
Preston Auto Group in Maryland had begun accepting trade-ins in the beginning of July. Brent Durham, Internet Sales Manager, said the delay was disappointing. “Being that we started accepting trade-ins in the beginning of July, we were really looking forward to getting registered today so we could start the process of getting our refunds on Monday. Right now it looks like we will have to wait a few more days.”
Hagen Durant, General Manager of Classic Chevrolet in Texas also commented on his experience trying to register his dealership, “It seemed like the website couldn’t handle the volume of traffic it received or perhaps they just weren’t fully prepared. Now that we have the official guidelines, we can at least start accepting deals even though we couldn’t get registered. It’s a little bit of a burden on dealers, but I do believe once this gets going we will get the benefit from it.”
We Predicted Server Bottlenecks
Many dealers across the nation are undoubtedly experiencing the same frustration as thousands try to register. We had concerns over how the NHTSA would register the thousands of dealerships across the country in one day. Right now, there is no other choice but for dealers who have been unsuccessful at registering to keep trying over the weekend.
Mazda sent a note to their dealers that on Friday night at midnight the NHTSA dealer registration website would be taken down to undergo a server upgrade. The new web server is designed to handle thousands of simultaneous connections. We hope that this new server can handle the load.
Car dealers and consumers are invited to follow the real-time Cash for Clunkers blog update on Twitter: http://twitter.com/cashclunkers.
12 responses on “Dealers Frustrated With NHTSA Clunkers Registration”
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[...] Dealers Frustrated With NHTSA Clunkers Registration [...]
Question – primarily to VA dealerships? My daughter is a college student whose permanent address is VA (she has a valid VA drivers license and her car is a current VA vehicle – current title and registration typically left in state.) However, she is moving home to VA at the end of Aug, so she drove her car to FL to help with the move home. Suddenly, the cash for clunkers program is announced, she qualifies for the program and wants to purchase a new car in FL while there but wants to register her new car in VA. Sounds okay BUT the dealer in FL says, if you purchase and register in FL, then the $4500 voucher is considered a trade value for the car. But if you register the car in VA, then it is not a trade value but is considered a “Customer Investment”. Consequently, instead of subtracting the trade value from the price of the new car, before calculating state tax, as is done in FL – For VA – the tax is calculated on the total price of the car without the $4500 voucher credit, so she gets a zero trade value. The tax was already paid on this trade-in car when prurchased, how is it appropriate to charge tax in VA on the Cash for clunker trade-in value? This does not seem right. How are the VA dealers doing this?
Right now you can get $3500 – $4500 for a qualifying car/truck, plus if you buy the right vehicle could get a 4000 – 4500 rebate from the manufacturer. The average saving is 8-10k dollars.
This is a scam !! I know it sounds good, however prior to the cash for clunkers program you could easily purchased a vehicle for 80-10k below sticker price. My wife and I just purchased a brand new ’09 dodge journey about 4 months ago that had an msrp of around 27k dollars, we walked out of the dealership paying 21k, that includes tax, title, docking fee’s and all. I had looked for new dodge journeys or for a pickup for several months prior to purchasing and found the same prices, 8-10k dollars off msrp. Dealerships were even advertising it. The way it use to work was…. The manufacturer offered around 4k dollars off in a rebate or incentive program and the dealership could discount the vehicle around 4k dollars, plus you would get around 1k dollars for a owner loyalty program and if you purchased around the end of the month, a dealer would usually dip into his dealerships hold back $$ and you could get another 500-1k off.
Dealerships stopped discounting, they are just giving the manufacturers rebate + cash fro clunkers money. Now this program is suppose to help the American people ??, how ?? I would say most people who couldn’t afford to purchase a new vehicle prior to this, still cant afford it. Are you really getting 3500-4000 for that old vehicle? No, you could have purchased a new vehicle and kept your clunker prior to the cash for clunkers program, and still saved the same amount of money.
And this part really gets me fired up!! Well all of those old vehicles being traded in under the cash for clunkers are being destroyed as far as I understand, so for those Americans that can not afford a newer vehicle, guess what.. Your slowly being forced to purchase a new vehicle because our brilliant government is going to destroy a large number of still decent used vehicles. How does this help the small used car dealers? How does this help poor working class Americans?
Does everyone remember what Toyota did not long ago? There was a mass recall on Toyota pickups for a frame rust problem. They recalled practically every late model Toyota pickup, and gave 1.5% Kelly blue book “good” value to the owner. All of they recalled trucks were crushed and sent back to Japan or China for scrap steel, and FYI China has a overwhelming need for steel. Scrap steel is at a basically all time high in value due to China’s need for steel. This created a need for Toyota owners to purchase a new Toyota pickup, however to be fair, the truck owners were not required to purchase another Toyota. But as a loyal owner, most probably did buy Toyota because they felt they were being treated good.
I don’t know for sure, but if the cash for clunkers are being destroyed and China who the USA owes a lot of money to needs steel, well it doesn’t take much to add 2+2!!
The federal government is showing favoritism toward American made cars and their dealerships with this program. I live in Ohio and there are hundreds of Ford and GM dealers that have had their registrations approved in this state, but not one single Toyota or Honda dealer has gotten successfully registered in the ENTIRE state. Seems kind of strange, doesn’t it? I wonder if there’s going to be legel action over this.
My parents qualified for the program and then were denied because their registration didn’t match their driver’s license. Jim istead of Jimmie.
Pat Quinn, I’m also waiting on a 1997 Jeep Cherokee to be added to the list. I did get an email today saying it would be added soon, but it’s silly to be stuck waiting for official data that’s been freely available on kbb.com for a long time.
Add me to the list of 1993 Camry V6 (4-spd auto) owners that got passed over when the EPA “groomed” the MPG data on July 24. I had been checking with dealerships earlier and had my trade ready to go, knowing that my car me the 18 MPG combined, but when I went to make the deal on the 24th, they looked it up on fueleconomy.gov and it was listed as 19 MPG and NOT eligible for CARS…worst yet, the 5-spd manual was still listed as 18 MPG..which is a complete crock, the 4-spd auto version should always have the worst MPG compared to a manual version. So I left with my 93 Camry…shame, I was ready to help out the auto industry and the environment and get a 2010 Ford Fusion 4-cylinder…
I’m stuck waiting for the dealer to get registered for CARS. They evidently have been trying since Friday. I went in early last week before the program started and I’m #2 on their list of people waiting. I’ll be grumpy if the gov runs out of money and I don’t get my car because their computer systems were not prepared for the dealer registration process. They should have started registering the dealerships much sooner!
What is the combined MPG for City MPG of 16 and HWY MPG of 22? 18 or 19?
Assuming 55% city miles and 45% highway miles, the no. of gallons of gasoline to drive 100 miles is:
55miles/16mpg + 45miles/22mpg = 5.483 gallons
The combined mpg is:
100 miles/5.483 gallons = 18.238 mpg
For the 1993 Toyota Camry listed in http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/sbs.htm, both the automatic and the manual 6 cyl have the same city mpg of 16 and highway mpg of 22. Yet the listed combined mpg is 18 for the manual 5-spd 6 cyl and 19 for the automatic 4-spd 6 cyl. (Note: Before July 24, both were listed as 18.)
Is it 18 or 19? This is causing a lot of consumers who want to participate in the CARS (Cash for Clunker) program.
What will happen to those dealers and consumers who used the combined 18 mpg before July 24? Who will bear the cost of $3500/$4500 since the goverment won’t reimburse the dealers if the mpg is 19.
The database public database needs to be updated. My 1997 Jeep Cherokee (which would otherwise qualify) is not listed on the fueleconomy.gov web page. All other model years of Jeep Cherokee are listed and qualify. NHTSA needs to get this right as the law is specific, only cars listed on the web page qualify.
The NHTSA ignored the original legislation and demands insurance be required for places that do not have mandatory insurance. If you belong to one of these states (Wisconsin and New Hamshire) and are unhappy that you cannot qualify for this program, call your senator and ask them to help you.
Wisconsin’s senators are Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl.
New Hampshire’s senators are Judd Gregg and Jeanne Shaheen.
With regards to the mpg of the 1993 Toyota Camry as show in http://www.fueleconomy.gov, both the automatic 4-spd 6 cyl and the manual 5-spd 6 cyl have the same city mpg of 16 and the highway mpg of 22. Yet the combined mpg is 19 for the automatic and 18 for the manual. Why are they different?
Before July 24, both were 18 for the combined mpg. But on July 24, the Camry with automatic 4-spd 6 cyl is increased to 19 while the manual stays at 18.
Based on the data before July 24, I wanted to make use of the CARS program to trade in my 1993 Toyota Camry with automatic 4-spd 6 cyl. Before I went to the dealer today, I checked the website again and was horrified to see 19.
What will happen to those people who had already made the trade in with the dealer. Who is going to bear the cost if the goverment is not going to reimburse the dealer?