Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of these Terms

By accessing or using DealerApproved, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use the service. Additional terms may apply to particular features when clearly presented to you.

2. What DealerApproved is

DealerApproved is an independent automotive-technology research and community platform. It helps automotive professionals discover and compare products, share professional experience, document issues and fixes, and contribute information about dealership technology.

DealerApproved is not the manufacturer, reseller, implementer, or support provider for the third-party products discussed on the site unless expressly stated otherwise. Product names, marks, and company names belong to their respective owners.

3. Accounts and eligibility

You are responsible for information submitted through your account and for maintaining the security of your sign-in methods. You may not impersonate another person or organization, create accounts for deceptive purposes, share access in a way that undermines account security, or attempt to obtain unauthorized access to another account.

DealerApproved is intended for adults and professional automotive use. You must be legally capable of entering into these Terms to create an account or submit content.

We may use third-party identity providers to simplify sign-in. Using such a provider does not give DealerApproved your provider password, and it does not automatically grant Automotive Verified status.

4. Profiles and verification

Profile information should accurately reflect your professional background. DealerApproved may offer different verification signals for email ownership, professional identity, automotive-industry affiliation, vendor affiliation, or other trust indicators. A badge or status reflects only the verification represented by that label and is not an endorsement of a person's opinions or conduct.

We may revoke or change verification when information is inaccurate, outdated, misleading, or no longer supported.

5. Reviews, discussions, issues, fixes, and submissions

You are responsible for content you submit. Contributions should be based on genuine experience, reasonable belief, or clearly identified opinion. You may not knowingly submit false facts, fabricated experiences, confidential information you are not authorized to disclose, unlawful content, threats, harassment, malware, spam, or material intended to manipulate ratings or mislead users.

Product and vendor submissions may be reviewed, edited for clarity, researched, merged with existing records, rejected, held for further review, or published at DealerApproved's discretion. Submission does not guarantee publication.

6. Rating and review integrity

DealerApproved is designed to preserve the independence of community ratings and professional feedback. Vendors, users, agencies, and other parties may not buy, sell, coordinate, manufacture, suppress, or manipulate reviews, ratings, votes, issue reports, confirmations, or other trust signals.

Vendors may participate, respond, provide factual corrections, and use features made available to them. Payment, sponsorship, advertising, or any other commercial relationship does not permit a vendor or other party to buy, improve, suppress, alter, or remove an independent rating or review, and does not provide control over independent community opinion. Legitimate content remains subject to the same integrity and moderation standards regardless of commercial relationship.

We may investigate suspicious activity and may remove, limit, annotate, de-weight, or otherwise moderate content or signals when reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, address fraud or abuse, comply with law, or protect platform integrity. Moderation decisions are not for sale and are not changed because a person or vendor pays DealerApproved.

7. Automated access, scraping, and data extraction

Except for ordinary access by generally recognized search engines in accordance with our published crawling instructions, you may not, without our prior written permission, use bots, crawlers, scrapers, scripts, automated browsers, data-mining tools, or similar means to systematically access, copy, extract, monitor, index, reproduce, or compile DealerApproved content or data.

You also may not:

• circumvent access controls, rate limits, technical restrictions, or security measures;
• bulk-copy or reconstruct our product, review, community, comparison, rating, or relationship datasets;
• use DealerApproved content to create or enrich a competing database, directory, review product, or commercial dataset;
• use scraped or bulk-extracted DealerApproved content to train, fine-tune, evaluate, or supply an automated model or service without written permission;
• resell, sublicense, syndicate, or commercially redistribute substantial portions of DealerApproved content or data; or
• use automated activity in a manner that places unreasonable load on the service or interferes with other users.

These restrictions do not prevent a user from manually accessing and using the service for its intended purpose or exercising rights that cannot lawfully be restricted.

8. DealerApproved intellectual property

DealerApproved's branding, original site design, software, text, selection and arrangement of content, original research, compiled data, and other materials provided by DealerApproved are protected by intellectual-property and other applicable laws. Except as expressly permitted by these Terms, no license is granted to reproduce, distribute, modify, create derivative works from, or commercially exploit DealerApproved materials.

Third-party trademarks, product names, logos, and other materials remain the property of their respective owners. Their appearance on DealerApproved does not imply sponsorship or endorsement.

9. License for content you submit

You retain ownership of content you submit to the extent you own it. By submitting content for publication, you grant DealerApproved a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, format, adapt for presentation, distribute, and use that content as reasonably necessary to operate, improve, promote, protect, and provide DealerApproved.

You represent that you have the rights necessary to submit the content and grant this license. This license does not give you rights in DealerApproved's compilation, design, ratings, metadata, or other materials created by the service.

10. Moderation and enforcement

We may review, refuse, edit, label, restrict, remove, preserve, or restore content when reasonably necessary to enforce these Terms, protect users or platform integrity, respond to legal requests, or maintain the quality of the service. We may suspend or terminate accounts for violations, abuse, fraud, security threats, or conduct that creates material risk to DealerApproved or others.

We are not obligated to publish every submission or resolve every dispute between users, reviewers, vendors, or third parties.

11. Product information, research, and community content

DealerApproved may combine public information, vendor-provided information, community contributions, professional experience, and editorial or research work. Technology products change frequently. We do not guarantee that every description, integration, feature, price, compatibility statement, rating, review, issue, or fix is complete, current, or error-free.

You should independently confirm information that is important to a purchase, contract, implementation, security, compliance, or business decision. DealerApproved content is informational and is not legal, financial, security, or professional consulting advice.

12. Vendor responses, claims, and commercial features

DealerApproved may allow vendors or authorized representatives to claim profiles, provide updates, answer community questions, respond to feedback, or receive inquiries. Commercial participation does not guarantee favorable reviews, ratings, editorial treatment, or removal of legitimate criticism. Ratings, reviews, and moderation decisions cannot be purchased or altered in exchange for payment. If DealerApproved offers sponsored or paid promotional placement, it will be clearly identified as such and will remain separate from independent ratings, reviews, and moderation decisions.

13. Third-party sites and services

DealerApproved may link to third-party products, vendors, identity providers, resources, or services. We do not control those third parties and are not responsible for their availability, terms, privacy practices, security, products, promises, or conduct.

14. Disclaimers

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, DEALERAPPROVED IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.” WE DISCLAIM WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, AND ANY WARRANTY THAT THE SERVICE OR CONTENT WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, COMPLETE, CURRENT, OR SUITABLE FOR A PARTICULAR BUSINESS DECISION.

Nothing in these Terms excludes warranties or rights that cannot be excluded under applicable law.

15. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, DEALERAPPROVED AND ITS OPERATORS, CONTRIBUTORS, SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND REPRESENTATIVES WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, REVENUE, DATA, GOODWILL, OR BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY ARISING FROM OR RELATED TO YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE.

Where liability cannot lawfully be excluded, it will be limited to the extent permitted by applicable law. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain exclusions or limitations, so portions of this section may not apply to you.

16. Indemnity

To the extent permitted by law, you agree to defend, indemnify, and hold harmless DealerApproved and its operators from third-party claims arising from content you submit, your unlawful use of the service, your violation of these Terms, or your infringement of another party's rights.

17. Changes to the service or these Terms

DealerApproved will evolve. We may add, change, suspend, or remove features and may update these Terms. When we make changes, we will post the revised Terms and update the date above. Where required by law, we will provide additional notice before material changes take effect.

18. Severability and no waiver

If a provision of these Terms is found unenforceable, the remaining provisions remain in effect to the extent permitted by law. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of the right to enforce it later.