DealShield® Crosses Major Milestone Fueled by Ongoing Dealer Demand and Satisfaction

ATLANTA – March 12, 2024 – DealShield®, the wholesale industry’s best purchase protection solution, has surpassed a major milestone: $80 billion in vehicle value guaranteed since launching nationally 10 years ago. That’s more than 4.5 million vehicles dealers have purchased with the utmost peace of mind—and it’s no wonder why. With its truly hassle-free return experience, the DS360 Return Guarantee enables subscribing dealers to return vehicles that don’t meet their expectations, helping them limit costly mistakes, reduce reconditioning costs and redeploy capital faster to purchase other units. 

“Over the last few years in particular, dealers have shifted to purchasing more vehicles across numerous auction locations, and the vast majority of those purchases are happening online—oftentimes from hundreds of miles away,” said Brett Woods, vice president of Assurance at Cox Automotive. “With DealShield, dealers can stock up on inventory quickly and confidently no matter where they purchase, while avoiding unnecessary headaches if there are any surprises when a vehicle arrives.”

DealShield was the first in the industry to launch a wholesale vehicle return guarantee in 2014, the first to launch a 30-day guarantee in 2018 and today stands as the only vehicle return guarantee available at over 175 auction locations. And with the crossing of the $80 billion milestone, it’s clear that dealers across the nation have continued to find great value in the purchase protection solution.

In particular, clients have said that DealShield gives them more confidence and peace of mind when buying wholesale vehicles while also positively impacting their bottom line. As a more recently added benefit, clients now have access to highly trained performance managers who can help them make even more informed buying decisions.

How it works:

With the DS360 Return Guarantee available across the physical and digital Manheim Marketplace as well as nearly one hundred independent auction locations in the U.S., subscribing dealers have access to an immense selection of DS360-eligible inventory. Depending on their subscription, clients will either have the 21-day/360-mile guarantee or 30-day/500-mile guarantee automatically applied to eligible vehicle purchases.

If a vehicle that is eligible for coverage doesn’t meet their expectations, or their reason for purchasing it changes, dealers can easily return the vehicle to any participating auction location, no matter where the vehicle was purchased from, for a full refund of the purchase price and buy fee, no arbitration required. This ability to return an eligible vehicle to a nearby participating location in the expansive DealShield network is a huge benefit to buyers, especially given that the data shows that Simulcast buyers in the Manheim Marketplace purchased vehicles 360+ miles away on average in 2023.

Dealers who are interested in learning more about the DealShield DS360 Return Guarantee can visit DealShield.com.  

About Cox Automotive
Cox Automotive is the world’s largest automotive services and technology provider. Fueled by the largest breadth of first-party data fed by 2.3 billion online interactions a year, Cox Automotive tailors leading solutions for car shoppers, auto manufacturers, dealers, lenders and fleets. The company has 29,000+ employees on five continents and a portfolio of industry-leading brands that include Autotrader®, Kelley Blue Book®, Manheim®, vAuto®, Dealertrack®, NextGear Capital™, CentralDispatch® and FleetNet America®. Cox Automotive is a subsidiary of Cox Enterprises Inc., a privately-owned, Atlanta-based company with $22 billion in annual revenue. Visit coxautoinc.com or connect via @CoxAutomotive on X, CoxAutoInc  on Facebook or Cox-Automotive-Inc on LinkedIn. 

Media Contact:
Julie Zorn Jackson
Senior Manager, Public Relations
Cox Automotive
julie.jackson@coxautoinc.com
404.558.7837