Create your dealership on Vehicle Fair Trade

Creating your dealership on Vehicle Fair Trade is self-serve. You find your store in a directory of Canadian dealerships, claim it with a verified work email, and choose a plan. There is no sales call and no setup queue.

From your profile, select Create your dealership, search the directory for your store, and claim it with a verified email at your dealership’s domain. The name, address, and logo are filled in for you, and you go straight to choosing a plan.

Before you start: verify a work email

The claim is proven by email domain. To create a dealership, your account needs a verified email address at that dealership’s website domain. An address from a free provider does not qualify, because it does not prove you work there.

Your account can hold several verified addresses, so if you signed up with a personal email, add your work address under Email Address in your account settings and click the verification link it sends. The account setup guide covers this step.

Step 1: Find your dealership in the directory

From your profile, select Create your dealership. The page shows a single search box: type your dealership’s name, city, or postal code, and pick your store from the results. Most entries show the dealership’s logo, which makes yours easy to spot.

Select your store and press Continue. If your dealership is not in the directory, use the Can’t find your dealership? link to email Vehicle Fair Trade and ask for it to be added.

Step 2: Confirm you can claim it

Vehicle Fair Trade checks the store you picked against your verified emails. One of these outcomes follows:

• You’re verified. Your email domain matches the dealership’s website. Select Continue to choose a plan and the dealership is created.
• You need to verify an email first. The page tells you which domain to verify at. Add the address, click the verification link, and come back.
• The dealership is already on Vehicle Fair Trade. Someone at your store beat you to it. Ask their admin to invite you, or verify your work email: if your store has automatic team membership turned on, verifying the address adds you to the team on its own.

A small number of directory entries cannot be claimed automatically, usually because no usable website domain is on file for the store. The page tells you when that is the case; email Vehicle Fair Trade to claim such a dealership manually.

Step 3: Choose a plan

Once the dealership is created, you land on the plan page. Pick the tier that matches how you intend to work; the plans and features guide lists exactly what each one includes, and there is a free tier if you want to start small. You can change plans at any time.

What gets set up for you

Claiming from the directory means you do not fill out a dealership form. Vehicle Fair Trade copies the store’s name, address, and logo from its directory entry, and derives the dealership’s email domain from its website. If your plan includes SMS conversations, a dedicated texting number is provisioned for the dealership automatically in the background, with nothing to configure.

You become the dealership’s first member, and it is set as your active dealership right away. From there, the dealership settings page is where you invite your team and tune the store-wide rules.

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