Re: Contact Previous Owner
I suspect the real problem is with the manufacturers own systems not being able to easily handle this natural transfer of ownership.
Some of this could be simply rectified by the manufacturer just needing to change the "owner" on the data file and lock out previous data when that changes. With the dealer "lockin" that gives the dealer the ability to pressure sell new vehicles and at this point, who's paying the dealer to this "data transfer" work? From the tone of the article, not only is this process rather undefined by the manufacturer but there's no incentive (legal or otherwise) for them to do something that costs bit of money.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
