It’s a hassle to lose your car keys. Multiply that pain point by hundreds, even thousands, for dealerships trying to find errant keys on their premises.
U.S. dealers spend more than $325 million a year replacing lost keys and fobs that can cost $300 to $500 each (and up to $1,100 for the technology-laden Mercedes-Benz SL), says Mike Hanna.
He is CEO and founder of TrueSpot, a 3-year-old Texas-based digital company with a platform that enables the real-time tracking and locating not only of car keys, but also of cars themselves that can get lost amid acres of dealership inventory.
Add the digital service to a growing list of dealer-specific technologies. “Really, for our industry’s first time, technology is becoming highly specialized, and we intend to be at the forefront of this wave of transformation,” Hanna says.
He tells stories about TrueSpot coming to the rescue.
There was the time when an employee in a dealership’s reconditioning section inadvertently rolled up 10 sets of car keys in a plastic wrap and tossed the bundle in a dumpster.
The dealership, a TrueSpot client, called the company. “They said, ‘It looks like the keys are in the dumpster, but we may be wrong,’” Hanna says. (TrueSpot CEO Mike Hanna, left)
No, they were right. “We came over and, using the system, not only found the keys in the dumpster but located the exact bag they were in,” Hanna tells Wards, noting the tracking system is accurate within inches.