Hi John. I just joined the Forum and saw your post. Your challenge is a common one. As you are seeing, OEMs have different names for the same equipment and the OEM colors are all over the place. When you add in the fact that dealership employees enter more information "free form" as you mentioned, it compounds the issue.
DataOne Software, where I am Director of Sales, solves this with a data set that pulls in over 300k standard and optional equipment names and "normalizes" them into common, useable terms.
Free or nearly-free VIN decoding options are fine when 100% accuracy is not critical. You'll know (your customers will tell you) when a commercial-grade solution is needed. Let me know if you think it's worth a quick chat. Here's a link where you or others following this thread can request a technical API or a non-technical browser trial to check it out for yourself.
DataOne Software, where I am Director of Sales, solves this with a data set that pulls in over 300k standard and optional equipment names and "normalizes" them into common, useable terms.
Free or nearly-free VIN decoding options are fine when 100% accuracy is not critical. You'll know (your customers will tell you) when a commercial-grade solution is needed. Let me know if you think it's worth a quick chat. Here's a link where you or others following this thread can request a technical API or a non-technical browser trial to check it out for yourself.