I) From CSI to Online Reviews:   The CSI Era kicked in during the 1980s, a time when consumers were used to being manhandled at dealerships. Its rise is attributed to new competition resulting from the entrance of Honda and Toyota into the US market, which made satisfied  customers more critical to domestic OEMs. So began two decades of OEMs surveying customers to calculate the Customer Satisfaction Index, and then divvying out the carrots and sticks: whether inventory allocation, the green light to expand, bigger holdback payments, bonuses, etc.   With much at stake, CSI brought decades of dealer manipulation: from free fill-up incentives when a customer brought back the old paper surveys for the dealer to mail (guaranteeing positive results), to altering unhappy customers’ contact info to make them unreachable, to sending gifts as bribes for positive surveys, etc.. Recently, OEMs have been trying to prevent the system-gaming – for ex...