‘Months to correct, if not years’: Car dealerships and customers feel the impact as CDK outage drags on

A CDK Global system outage has affected nearly every aspect of the Mazda dealership in Seekonk, Massachusetts, where Ryan Callahan is general sales manager. He says it won’t be a simple fix.

A CDK Global system outage has affected nearly every aspect of the Mazda dealership in Seekonk, Massachusetts, where Ryan Callahan is general sales manager. He says it won’t be a simple fix. “The financial impact it will directly have on us will take months to correct, if not years,” Callahan said. Car buyers and dealers are grappling with the shutdown of the retail software provider, which has left nearly 15,000 car dealerships across North America struggling to provide services to customers and scrambling to find temporary analog solutions to operate. CDK says it’s working on restoring its systems and expects them to be back online in several days, but in the interim, customers and dealership employees remain beset by long wait times, delays – and missed chances to make or save money. Tom McParland, the owner of Automatic Consulting, a national car buying service, said the outage was impacting customers because they have fewer dealers to choose from. “It reduces their ability to get a deal,” he said. “It limits the customer’s leverage.”