The Independent Dealer Podcast Feb 5, 2026

#417 - Auto Dealer Compliance & Attorney General Enforcement 2025 with Steve Levine

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39:11

Car

GMC Yukon

The GMC Yukon is a large SUV that can carry many passengers and cargo. It's often used by families because it has a lot of space and is good for towing things like trailers.

Term

head gasket

The head gasket is a part of the engine that keeps oil and coolant separate. If it fails, it can cause serious problems like overheating.

Term

valve covers

Valve covers are parts of the engine that cover the valves and keep oil from leaking out. They help keep the engine running smoothly.

Term

Yukon

The Yukon is a large SUV made by GMC. It's popular for families because it has a lot of space and can carry heavy loads.

LIVE

You have consumers who are now chat GPT warriors that type that crap into chat GPT and say I bought this car from so-and-so auto

And this thing happened. What should I do? Okay, please draft me a letter. I noticed the distinct change

August-September time frame and the sophistication of complaints that I was seeing from consumers

And it's because AI has learned our business better and it has learned how to attack our business

And I'm so concerned about it. I'm actually teaching a class on this at compliance at least this year

Specifically on how consumers are using AI to attack dealers because the game has changed and and the quality

That is going

To the regulators and and is being pled in court. I looked at one last week

Pro say plaintiff

Hello and welcome to the independent dealer podcast Luke one of my favorite topics best time of the year to talk about it

If it's not tax money, it is compliance and making sure I don't get my pants suit off me

Yeah, I mean, it's such an important thing when we talk about

Dealers and how they should operate in their business and we have one the best in the industry

I should say to keep us compliant and keep us safe and that's mr. Steve Levine with ignite consulting. Thanks for being here Steve

Thanks for having me guys. Great to be here. Yeah

Steve's like the

He's like the canary in the coalmine. They're like the watchman on the tower or like the I don't know

What's the other kind of like acronym for him? Like he's the guy that lets us know what's going on before we get

Frickin ambushed or infiltrated or like shut down right Steve

I try to be you know, you've got you've got your pulse on what's going on. So give us an update Steve

What are you seeing like?

Because I got a bunch of questions for eggs. I've seen stuff here, but first off tell us

What what what are you seeing? What happened in 2025?

I mean, I think that's the best thing to go at like

What'd you see happen in 2025 with dealer compliance?

How are people getting sued or how are people making consumers angry that we need to do a better job?

The big thing I saw throughout 2025

was

increase of activity by the state regulators

You know that there's this war being fought between the states and the federal government and the CFPB backing down and

Federal deregulation and a lot of the consumer advocates consumer zealots got got very upset about that and

They became very aggressive at the state level. I mean, I had more

Attorney general activity this summer that than any summer I could remember and

They were harder to talk to they were harder to get to see reason and and that's still ongoing

And is this is this regulation?

Financial disclosure regulation or is this legislation that are are I sold them a limit like what is causing the

The consumer to push back what's causing the the consumer affairs to push back in these states a

Lot of that depends on the given state

Some states are being very aggressive in how they're interpreting their statutes and and are really targeting

certain types of conduct

profit centers and fees a

big one is if

The AG is getting complaints about a dealership. They're much more likely to go in and start digging around and asking questions and

Examples of that

Well, I mean, let's let's put that in context guys

If your AG is getting complaints about you

He should be coming in and digging around and finding out what the freaks going on, right?

Like we're talking to a group of dealers here on this podcast who have their pulse on their dealerships

If if complaints are getting outside of your four walls of your dealership

Like come on like you should be addressing these things. You should you should not

Let yeah, let's get to the state level. Yeah, but I'll tell you Jeff. I

Need a lot of dealers what when I ask them about their complaint management

It's blank

You know that I don't help me mother folks to do a good job, but they have no idea

They're not documenting anything that they can't tell you anything historical and that's problematic because

More so now that I've ever seen that the attorney generals have a lot of working relationships with better business bureau

And I mean I I had I had one dealer they flat out asked them

Get give us your better business bureau complaints for the last three years

Luckily, this was a dealer that really kept the track of things and we were able to answer that question

If you don't have that record and you can't answer that question

You're just inviting a ton of scrutiny. So so it's important to keep track of this stuff

It's important to talk to your team about

What they're doing in the complaint process? What is a complaint and and where do we write that down and what the next steps?

Are in terms of getting resolved Steve what it didn't I think that's key. What is a complaint because?

Is a complaint that someone is mad because we repossess their car or is a complaint

Where we repossess customers car and they go to the department consumer affairs

Or they go to the better business bureau or they leave a review. Is that a complaint because?

Some complaints are real and some complaints are not real

So this is where a lot of people that they get tripped up right here

They can't answer this question and they just move on and never want to invest the time and tackle it

I don't really care that everybody has the same definition of a complaint

But I care if everybody in your organization has the same definition of a plate week. We shouldn't have departments

Thinking there are different definitions to me. It's a dissatisfaction with a product or a service that you provide them

If they're saying I told the salesman that these are my paydates and they told me my payments

We're gonna be do this date when they do something else. Okay, that's a complaint

You know if they're just complaining about

My car payments too much. You shouldn't have repossess, you know, we hear that noise all the time

but but if they if they're

Pointing the finger at something you did or didn't do something that was said or not said I think that rises to the level and

I got one client that they had a problem with their their complaint process and

We started meeting weekly about it and and really digging in and what we found was

collections and

service departments had completely different

Understandings of what a complaint was and we're just looking for the other to solve the problems and once we broke through and got everybody on the same page

No, no more problems. It all works out now

Yeah, it's really it's interesting to me that you have a

Situation and the reason I made that first statement was I get a

Grievance right like you have a complaint. Hey, you got my paydays wrong or hey

You know, I I understood that this was a 12 month warranty that was bumper to bumper

You know, like there's little like

Misunderstandings, let's say, but then there's complaints like you sold me a warranty

I didn't know I need I had or you told me my interest rate was 12% and it's actually 24 or

You didn't account for my down payment, right? Like there's actual errors and issues

Those is what I don't understand like if someone comes in and says you sold me a warranty. I didn't know about

Okay, mr. Customer. I'm so sorry. Let me refund that like what are we doing?

Are these are these dealerships you're dealing with Steve or they actually say nope? You said yes

See I have a signature right here. This is you bought this warranty like they're just getting it to these customers at the expense of

Yeah, but it does have a couple bucks. I I was dealing with an issue yesterday

you know because of the storm a lot of people are in a state of emergency and

this client

Chose to turn off cars over the weekend

And my first question what are you doing? It's a storm. It's a state of emergency

You know, you got to think about these stuff

You got to anticipate that you're just gonna drive negative experiences when you do something like that

Yeah, but a lot of people it's like nope. This is what our policy is. This is what we we travel

This is what we're doing that does them out. Did you tell them to turn all those cars back on immediately?

I'm gonna mess they could drive out of the storm

You don't want to get in there getting

The nightmare in my head

somebody's stuck in the house and that they need to go get milk for the kids and

cars are enough

Yeah, well, that's the only thing producing heat for him is sitting in their car like so so common sense

I guess would say I mean

Should it should prevail Jeff common sense should prevail, but it doesn't always do so so so I get

When you say these AG complaints and we had the situation here in Utah, right?

We had some AG was still complaining or getting complaints by consumers for there's probably two or three dealer groups in the state

That everybody knows our sketchy. They have false advertising on their website

They are notorious for payment packing and duping customers and it's it's it's literally known the new car association

knows who these guys are

But when the AG is like, hey, we still have complaints they throw this big blanket

Big blanket regulation on all dealers and say okay because we're getting payment complaints

We're gonna change this form and add new stuff when

Literally you could go to three dealer principles that don't know that their F&I guys are

Fleecing customers or don't care maybe and just find the pants off them

Drop a big old lawsuit on them and I guarantee you that would stop and the rest of us dealers don't have to deal with all this

Nonsensical red tape that's popping up

Is that where you're seeing Steve is it is it is it literally just bad apples in the barrel spoiling the whole thing?

Now I think some of it is I also think some of it is just bad information

And this is something that I'm trying to

Combat with you know our training platform and and all the stuff I put out information wise

I'll go to those you know Facebook group pages and and

You know, you'll have somebody say something outland just

clearly illegal and

You'll have five people say ooh, you shouldn't be doing that. You'll have the one guy say oh, yeah, that's a great idea

And I'll listen to the one person

Yeah, so there's just some bad information out there, too

There's truly this there's truly disinformation out there and we see it in the Facebook groups all the time

And I see every Thursday when I listen to the Luke's podcast

Thanks, thanks Jeff

I worn my clients be careful who's

Reading that stuff it because it's not just dealers on those pages. I guarantee you you've got regulators watching those pages

You've got lawyers watching those pages and and I do know lawyers that have

Used that against dealers in elitiation, you know, let's put your Facebook page up there

Let's look at all these comments. What did you about this one? What did you about this one?

So you really need to do a good job of understanding what the rules are

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Yeah, absolutely. I have not seen a company so willing to get behind the dealers from an education from a support standpoint

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and

And I think I know a good bit about

Compliance and I try to be as compliant as possible

But even me who's been in business that long whenever I have a question

my first call is Steve Levy

Because I'm not going to put it out there for some dealer that's been in business for a month to comment on

It's not worth it to me. You shouldn't be taking

Your compliance questions to facebook

Um, it just shouldn't be there. It should it should go to to Steve Levine. It should

It should be dealt with at conferences

It shouldn't be put in the open for other consumers

other dealers and other

People to comment on in my opinion. Yeah, Steve. Let me ask you a specific question along those lines then when you say complaint

Documenting what are you seeing dealers do or use give us some advice there because

To me my brain says well, we documented it inside of our dms

It's in the notes that this is what the complaint was and this is how we resolved it

Is that adequate or do we need a separate?

Ledger google sheet document formal complaint forms that are being filled out resolved and filed away somewhere

I'd like it to be kept separately

because

if you get examined

And and our regulator starts asking questions about complaints

You don't want to have to go sort for all your notes to try to answer those questions

You want I don't care whether it's a yellow legal pad or a spreadsheet or if you want to use software

I don't care but but just as long as

You've got something that that you could show that that we do track this and we do work through this and and look

If it's complaints that that you got resolved in five minutes

I don't really care about writing those down

But but the ones that continue on the ones that that there's a email chain or there's just you know note after note

It's good to have those written down separately and and you know the other thing I find that some dealers do is

They'll only write down the hardest most miserable ones

And there was all the ones that cause you headache

They sit down with you in the office and you got the wife and the husband and the wife there and they're complaining and

We had one the other day

We had to unwind a deal and that would be an automatic trigger, right?

I mean if you ever unwind a deal like that needs to be documented on why and how and all that kind of stuff, right?

Um, but those are the biggest headaches because they are kind of the ones that grab your attention, right?

right and and I think that

It requires some work. It doesn't require a ton of work

But the benefits are huge because this is happening more and more. I never used to talk about this 10 years ago

And now it seems like it happens

Very frequently and not just the big scary blue states, but but it happens all over the country

Because all the regulators talk to one another

And and there's a lot of consumer

Zealots out there that that are pushing the regulators

And there's there's also out there too. Yeah, and there's also some bad dealers out there. I mean, let's be honest

um and

The unwind Jeff and you know, this happens and dealers need to

To take this in as a tool in their toolbox

Because the last thing you won't as a buy here pay here dealer is

To keep a customer in a car that doesn't want to be in the car because they can just create a nightmare for you

and and even as a retail dealer

Unwind the deal if it's if it's even a bit sideways, just get out of it

It's it's so refreshed and sometimes to look at the customer and say

You know what you're having this much problem. Let's just I'm gonna buy the car back from you

I'm gonna give you your down payment back. I'm gonna take the car back

For for one it kind of takes the burden off of you as a dealer to try to rectify something that may take some time

Um and the consumer actually when you say that it disarms them, right Jeff? I mean this probably happened with you

Yeah, yeah, and and one I think of two months ago

I did was a friend of mine that I sold a Yukon to that just started acting up

And and I tried to help him kind of work through it for the first few weeks

And then he's like my wife has no confidence in the car and I'm like, well, well, that's it

Like yeah, just bring it to me. I'm gonna cut you a check for the full amount. I'm not gonna subtract miles or this

That's right. I'll pay you for the head gasket job

You did or the the valve covers like it just doesn't matter. I think we need to be cautious of that

And here's the issue you said Luke earlier desperate times make dealers desperate

Yeah, and so yes

Financially I'm in a position where I can buy back a Yukon that's gonna cost me a couple bucks

And I get that not all dealers are there. I get that if they take that $3,000 loss

Bringing a car back into inventory that's got issues

It could put them under for the month. Yeah, I have some empathy there

I do too a real quick break to make sure you guys know about blitz pay

It's who I use to take all the payments at my buy here pay here dealership

We've been with them for almost three years now and it is absolutely amazing. It's great. Yeah

The product is so simple even an idiot like me can use it but uh,

You know when even when my collector's out and I'm just taking a phone call here or there

No matter where I am I can log into blitz pay and I can take that payment

I can see the customers texting in and say, hey, can you run this or whatever's going on?

It's always on top of it and the money's in the bank almost the next day and that is to me so important

And the support is great if we do have a charge back or a dispute

We get an email that says, hey, there was this dispute and then their team goes to work to help us resolve it

It doesn't they don't just dump it back on your table with some random

Notification or email that you barely ever see

Like my previous processors. Yeah, it's so helpful

and a lot of times it's because our

Our customers did something wrong, but when it's not they'll fight to the to the end with you and get that money back into your account

Yeah, so give them a call the guys and girls over at blitz pay great partner to have

Definitely an essential tool to have if you're a buy here pay here dealer

What do you do when you're in that situation steve you see this often where a dealer

Just can't financially

Do what is the right thing to do? What are you supposed to do then?

Uh, I see that but I also see some dealers that that honestly they need a little bit of work on what the right thing is

I've got one on my desk right now

They agreed to do a rescission with the customer

We'll just unwind the deal

And unfortunately they didn't call me to to to document it. They just went to ai

Uh, so they went to ai and they got this online agreement

And now the customer is threatening to sue them

And I look at the agreement. There was no release in the agreement

You know, so so they asked ai for something they got exactly what they asked for but it didn't cover them

And and now they've got to deal with with this customer anyway. Well, let's let's talk about that though. I mean

Jeff and I would figure maybe jeff smarter than I am. I doubt it. But um, if I unwind a deal with a customer

I mean, shouldn't I be

Pretty and clear. Do I need a document? Do I need a Steve Levine document to unwind?

I'm always going to tell you get a release because it

Perfect again, this customer goes and sees a lawyer tells the lawyer about it and the lawyer said, oh

You had all these damages. You had all this mental anguish. You you had all this time wasted

We're going to try to recover that. Oh my come from dissolved with one more sentence

Hmm

And so the chat gpt comment you made that is the other side of it. You talk about the federal

Uh, attorney general is not being as aggressive. So the state ones have stepped in and now they're the ones doing it

and you have consumer advocates being more active and

You have consumers who are now chat gpt warriors

That type that crap into chat gpt and say I bought this car from so-and-so auto and this thing happened. What should I do?

Okay, please draft me a letter. So now they've got these very elegant well worded letters that they send on to the attorney general

That's all fluffed up

Because this is a great subject

It wasn't worth the hassle or headache for them to try to put together a case or draft a full letter to submit

Now they can have it done in a snap of a finger and all of a sudden they have this full blown legal briefing

That they send on

And so here's my observation

I noticed a distinct change

August-September timeframe in the sophistication of complaints

That that I was seeing from consumers and it's because

AI has learned our business better and it has learned how to attack our business better

So so I've seen that and I'm so concerned about it. I'm actually teaching a class on this

At compliance and leased this year

Specifically on how consumers are using AI to attack dealers because the game has changed

and and the quality

That is going

To the regulators and and is being pled in courts. I looked at one last week

Pro say plaintiff they did it themselves. I actually spoke to the lady. She doesn't need a law firm

She feels like she's got the best law firm in the world represent your because she's using AI

And and it's pretty darn good

And it doesn't take the third

what you make exactly

exactly and

It actually drafted her pleadings for her

The dealer filed an answer filed a motion to dismiss the case. She fed that

into

AI and it gave her a response back

Uh, wow

And she actually told me to get this whole thing started. She actually fed her deal

The contract all the paperwork. She fed that into AI and and wanted to know

Where she was taking advantage of

So it's it's gotten very sophisticated and and it understands the weaknesses now

You have to be careful because because again, you you get out what you put into it

I I see a lot of

bad information

because consumers don't understand

The relationship

That they don't understand this, you know, they're asking. What's the usury in so-and-so state?

Usury is one thing retail installment contract rates are something else

so a lot of times that they're scaring the heck out of dealers saying all this stuff and you unravel it and

The picture looks a lot better for the dealer because all the customer was doing was just

Ranting and and and not positioning the right way, but I've also seen some dealers

Send back answers that they actually created liability

Because they put in bad information to AI as well

So that's gonna be a great class because I think there's a lot of landmines people are thinking about

Yeah

Yeah, you can

You can kind of get AI to say what you wanted to say if you prompted, right?

and I would uh

I think it helps in response to consumers a lot of times if you put all the information there and you prompt it well

But again response from you

Is way better because I'll stay out of trouble

Yeah

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Yep, give them a call go to our website for more information. So let's talk about that real quick. So you know

You mentioned uh compliance unleashed and buy here pay here united. Obviously it's again this year joint

Uh kind of event in las vegas uh april

April 19th to 21st uh this year will be enjoying by uh lh ph capital as well

So so it was compliance buy here pay here lease here pay here all in vegas in april

I'm on the agenda committee. So I've been uh helping draft some of the other sessions and it's really exciting

There's going to be some awesome stuff especially cool stuff in the workshop section

Where we're going to have some hands-on stuff and that's something I've pushed forever. They did all at the garage

The garage section don't get confused. It's not it's not for mechanics

It is literally just the hands-on portion where we're going to be using things like ai to draft stuff

Hopefully illegal documents, but yeah, so it's going to be cool. So steve

You got one day of just compliance with you. Are you also

Speaking during the the rest of the conversation

Yeah, the the first day of the afternoon is all compliance and then we've got we've got tracks

One morning one afternoon we've got four sessions each of those days as well

But the class i'm really excited about i've wanted to do this for a long time

And and just things worked out for i'm able to this year is

You know that there's a big philosophy. Well, it's never going to happen to me. I'm too small. I'm too this

I'm too that never going to happen to me

I've I've got

Two dealers and and we're keeping them anonymous because I don't want any publicity about who they are

I don't want anybody to to get names

But they're going to talk about it did happen to that

and and they got attorney general subpoenas and

It's going to be a very raw conversation. We're going to talk about the sleepless nights

We're going to talk about the tremendous business distraction and all the stress and and what they had to do

To to even respond to that information, you know, the

Not only is it the money cost it is the time cost and and it is a

It is a huge distraction on the business. So it's emotional. It's emotional cost, too

It is it is and we're going to talk about all of that and because literally these are two dealers that if you ask them

It would never happen to them

and it did

Well, I've always I've always been under that

That thought hey, I'm not big enough to be messed with

I think they would go after, you know, somebody with 5 000 accounts or or 2 000 accounts not, you know

somebody in plumbia with a thousand accounts like I never

I never thought that that would happen, but it does happen

It absolutely happened. I'm working with a dealer right now

and

They only sell about 15 cars a month. Oh man should have never happened to them

Unfortunately, they didn't know who I was

And that they started working with the regulator themselves and quite honestly pissed them off. Oh, no, don't ever do that

Yeah

And

That they pissed them off to the extent that I should be able to work something out quickly now

But but i'm not able to because this regulator is just convinced

That that they're being sneaky and they're doing good things

So edit that's the hard thing luke and you talk about being too small

Sometimes it is the small dealer that just doesn't know any better

And that's the problem is we don't know what we don't know

So we've been doing it one way or we were taught one way and all of a sudden

We get these lawsuits or complaints that we've been missing a form or missing a signature or saying the wrong thing because we're not big enough

To have a compliance department or to really be paying attention to that stuff or going to convention

and getting educated so

That's the issues. It's us little guys that yeah, just kind of slinging it like it's the wild west

We're not my collection to don our eyes and cross on our t's. Yeah, my compliance department's steeper than

but

I mean, that's how I handle it

You know, we used to hear a cfpb. Is that even exists anymore?

cfpb exists cfpb has been greatly reduced in numbers

Uh cfpb is still active, but but they're focusing on other things right now

I'm more concerned about the federal trade commission. I was about to say f tc. What do we got to be worried about there?

That you've got to be worried about your advertising

You've got to be worried about

Google reviews

That they have gone after

Not just our industry that they've gone after big companies about google reviews that not disclosing that you're compensating

people for reviews not disclosing

That that these are not all the reviews that there's been a lot of activity with reviews

And and the big one that i'm keeping a careful eye on is still the safeguards rule

I think the 700 credit

security incident was a big wake-up call

I expect to see a lot of activity coming out of that

I'd say that in the last couple of months

I've had more private lawyers, uh, you know, you're dealing with a consumer issue

And all of a sudden they're working safeguards into the conversation. Well, we we think that their

Information was breached we we think they didn't take take care of things because there's a close proximity to when they

Gave us the application and when bad things started happening. So so we're seeing that too

So so I tell folks if you do not have an information security plan in writing

If you don't have an incident response plan if you're not doing some type of training with your team

Bare minimum you need to be doing those things because if there ever is an incident

And you are not able to demonstrate that that you did something

That then you're going to have a book thrown at you either either by a regulator or private litigation

Yeah, that uh information, uh

You know the thing is we don't know who it is whose information it is right

We figure that my dms should take care of that information

Our 700 credit score should take care of that information or 700 credit should take care of that information

and when something happens with

With your dms

company or 700 credit that it brings us into the liability to me

It's kind of upsetting but we're still responsible, right?

You are still responsible and and I cautioned folks

You know 700 credit did a fantastic job

That they they were staffed accordingly that they had resources

They were able to take a lot of the pain away from the dealers and do a lot of the work for them

They got out in front of it. They communicated. They did a really good job

The next one we may not be so lucky that that company may not have those resources

They may go out of business. They may disappear. They may jump into bankruptcy

And everybody's going to be left fending for themselves

So so you really have to put in some work now and and not just think

You know, I know it wasn't easy, but to the dealer is 700 credit made it look easy because they did the heavy lifting

Hmm. I pay them enough. They're better

No doubt good gracious. You come on my big bills as a jerks

I tell you no, they're great people and I'd love for them to advertise on the podcast

It's going up there for sure

You mentioned uh google reviews real quick. Is there's something coming out?

I must try to find it but about whitewashing your reviews and getting in trouble for that

So when us dealers are like, oh, it's I got a one star review

I'm going to challenge it with google and try to get it removed and it's like, oh, don't do that anymore

Like that's that's a no-no

Yes, so just in the past couple of months google has changed their rules facebook has changed their rules

If you want a really good article summarizing all that terrible collie a big time advertising put something out

It's really strong content that that'll explain what they've done

When I do website reviews

One of the big things that I see is okay. Great. You've got 15 reviews. They're all five star

Uh, but they go back four years. So you're telling me in the last four years

You've only gotten 15 reviews and they're all five stars

You know, it's a misrepresentation

And that that has become its own cause of action now

And lawyers could turn that into a deceptive action practices claim

Regulators could turn that into a similar type of claim

So you really have to understand

What your website is doing and and ask your providers about this stuff

Uh that there was something going around just last week. My phone blew up over the weekend

I got like five different ones

It was a spoof. It was a fishing

exercise

But reportedly it was from a law firm saying that

dealer's website has

Unlicensed images on the website

and

These came from all over the country all different businesses. I looked at them. I was able to figure out quickly

It's just fishing nothing to worry about

But those claims are are real. They are out there people are being sued on them today. I actually know a lawyer that was sued on that

Make sure that that your company is using

Uh stock images if using stock images make sure that they're licensed or you're using actual images from your dealership

You know, a lot of people want the lady holding the keys

Make sure that the stock image make sure that that they are licensed for that make sure that your provider

Uh is telling you and writing that that yes, your website is compliant and we're using

licensed images

Because those cases get very expensive

I want to I want to go back to one thing you said about google reviews. Um

and it was uh

compensation for reviews

Is does that mean you can't compensate your

Sales people forgetting the reviews or you can't compensate the person for leaving the review

If you compensate a person for leaving the review you you need to disclose it

You know, he's gonna fade out of the car wash even if you're giving them, you know, I'll change whatever it is

I forget the hotel chain but but hotel chain just got

In trouble with the fdc because that they were encouraging reviews

by getting people points

and they weren't disclosing that

And and you could do it. You have to disclose it

And and and would you disclose that at the bottom of the review or do you disclose? Where do you disclose that?

You could disclose it the each review. You could just disclose it at the top of the review page

You know some customers that had been compensated for these reviews and customers have gotten, you know, whatever it is

but compensating your sales staff for

Get obtaining the reviews is still okay

Yeah, I think you could do that. Yes. Okay. Okay. All right. I just wanted to verify that because I

I have heard about some things going on

I've heard of someone that may or may not do that

Uh allegedly allegedly Steve. Let's wrap this up

I think this is a lot to chew on because every time you come on I just think to myself man, there are so many blind spots

I have

Um that that I need to just make sure I'm buttoning up because it is ever changing too

And even my document package, you know, when we have little glitches in software or changes in little things that get

Like well are all my packages, right?

Am I still getting signatures in all the right spots? Am I still keeping them long enough? Like all these things pop up and it's continually changing

Um, and so we have to be continually reviewing it. It's not just to set it and forget it

And I think a lot of dealers just think that oh well, I probably did it right the first time

So I'm sure it's fine 10 years later

I hear that all the time

Please get your documents reviewed at least once a year. I used to work for a dms. I know

You haven't done anything different, but your documents may change a document gets slipped in one gets taken out

You have to check and you have to make sure don't rely on your dms

Because I guarantee you in your contract

With the dms that the dms says these are your documents. This is your responsibility

Yeah

All right, steve. How can everybody get in touch with you because they need to call you I promise you yep

Go to info at ignite cp.com

or ignite consulting partners.com online

Uh, certainly you could find me a compliance on lease by your pay united in april

Uh, we've got a lot of good information plans

and you know

You guys know this because you all have called me before

Uh, I'll I'll talk to anybody. You know, you don't have to be a client

I'll answer the phone if you've got a problem pick up the phone getting your call

I'm glad to steer you in the right direction if I can so just reach out info at ignite cp.com

And and jeff and our customers this is a non compensating

Uh a podcast here because we believe it's that important for consumers to

For our dealers listening the consumers of this podcast to be compliant and to be good dealers because if

If we're all good dealers that are listening we're only going to get better and make each other better

so uh

Reach out do it the right way and uh and come to convention. It's so great to see

See steve there. You can actually ask him questions and not other dealers on how to stay compliant

Yeah

Hey steve. Thanks so much appreciate it. Talk to you next time

Thank you guys and I love the uh independent dealer podcast

Also a non compensated endorsement

About this episode

Steve Levine joins the podcast to discuss the evolving landscape of auto dealer compliance and the increasing scrutiny from state regulators in 2025. With consumers now leveraging AI to voice complaints, Levine emphasizes the importance of proper complaint management and documentation within dealerships. He highlights the challenges dealers face, including aggressive actions from Attorney Generals and the impact of misinformation circulating in online communities. The conversation also touches on the need for a unified understanding of what constitutes a complaint and the consequences of failing to address consumer grievances effectively.

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Original notes

In this episode of the Independent Dealer Podcast, hosts Jeff Watson and Luke Godwin sit down with compliance expert Steve Levine from Ignite Consulting to discuss the biggest compliance challenges facing auto dealers in 2025.What You'll Learn:Why state Attorney Generals are getting more aggressive with dealer enforcementHow to properly manage and document customer complaintsWhat constitutes a "complaint" and why it matters for your dealershipDocument retention requirements and best practicesNew FTC rules on Google reviews and compensation disclosureWebsite compliance issues including stock image licensingThe importance of annual document reviewsKey Topics Covered:State regulator activity and AG investigationsComplaint management systems that actually workFee transparency and profit center scrutinyBetter Business Bureau complaint trackingBHPH dealer-specific compliance considerationsGoogle review regulations and FTC enforcementWebsite copyright and licensing issuesAbout Steve Levine: Steve Levine is a compliance consultant with Ignite Consulting Partners, specializing in helping independent dealers stay compliant with ever-changing state and federal regulations.Resources: Contact Steve: [email protected] Website: igniteconsultingpartners.com Compliance Unleashed Conference - April (NABD United)Support the businesses that support the podcastBuckeye Risk ServicesReinsurance, tax planning, and long-term wealth strategies built specifically for independent dealers.https://theindependentdealer.com/buckeyeBlytzPayBuy Here Pay Here payment processing with fast funding, text-to-pay, and real dealer-focused support.https://theindependentdealer.com/blytzpayIturan GPSGPS and payment technology for BHPH and retail dealerships focused on asset protection, recovery tools, and customer management.https://theindependentdealer.com/ituranFollow & Connect Website: www.theindependentdealer.com Email: [email protected] Facebook Group: @independentautogroup Luke Godwin: @lukegodwin Jeff Watson: /sendtojeffwLike, subscribe, and share this episode with another dealer who needs a fresh perspective.

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