A franchise dealership is a car store that’s officially allowed by a brand to sell its new cars. The host is contrasting those with independent dealerships.
“D dealers” are dealerships that got a low letter grade in the host’s rating system. The host groups “D” with “F” to talk about the worst-performing dealerships.
“Methodology” here means the specific process and rules used to produce the dealership ratings (how data is collected, filtered, and scored). The host says the “methodology piece” is currently missing, implying the FTC action or public-facing explanation lacks enough detail about how conclusions were reached.
Dealer add-ons are extra fees or packages a dealership adds on top of the car’s advertised price. The point here is that there can be many of them, which can make the final price much higher than what you first see.
The out-the-door price is the full total you pay at the end, including taxes and fees. The host is saying some dealers advertise one number online, but the final total you’re quoted later can be different.
A dealer group is a company that owns several car dealerships. The hosts are saying the FTC talked about groups, but people assumed it meant the same thing as counting every single dealership location.
“Rooftops” means dealership locations—basically, how many separate dealership stores there are. They’re using it to clarify that the FTC numbers were about groups, not the total number of store locations.
The FTC is a U.S. government agency that protects consumers. In this discussion, it’s the agency sending warning letters to car dealers over how they present prices online.
A warning letter is an official message from a government agency saying they think a company broke the rules. It usually asks for changes or a response.
Independent used car dealerships are businesses that mainly sell pre-owned cars, not new cars from a specific brand’s dealer network. The hosts are saying these stores were most represented in the FTC warning-letter group.
Carvana is a company that sells used cars, mostly through an online-first model. In this segment, the host is saying Carvana wasn’t among the companies that got certain FTC letters.
Penske Automotive Group is a company that owns and operates car dealerships. In this segment, the host says its dealerships weren’t caught up in the FTC letters being discussed.
Asbury Automotive Group is a company that runs car dealerships. The host is saying its dealerships weren’t included in the FTC-letter situation they’re discussing.
The Dodge Ram is a large pickup truck. People use it to carry things in the back and to tow trailers, and it’s sold through many dealerships. It may be mentioned in a podcast when talking about the Dodge/Ram brand group and how it fits into the dealership landscape.
Dock fees are extra charges a dealer adds to cover getting the car ready for sale. They’re one of those fees that can make the final price jump, so the host is using them as a transparency benchmark.
It’s a score that tries to measure how “transparent” a car dealer is about what they charge. In this case, if a dealer’s extra fees are higher than what’s typical in that state, their score goes down.
This is the overall rating the host uses for dealers. In this segment, they say if a dealer’s fees are higher than the state average, that hurts the grade.
Genesis of Annapolis is a dealership used as an example in this segment. The takeaway is that they showed fees separately, which is what the FTC is pushing dealers to do.
A mystery shop is when investigators act like normal shoppers to see what the dealer really says and charges. It helps catch differences between what’s advertised and what you’re actually quoted.
Berkshire Hathaway is a big company that owns lots of other businesses. In this discussion, they’re talking about whether Berkshire’s dealership ownership is connected to the FTC’s concerns.
The Vantile Organization is referenced as the dealership group Berkshire Hathaway acquired. The point is that any questionable practices may have originated with the dealerships’ prior ownership, not the later corporate owner.
Holmen is a dealership group that’s generally known for doing things well. Even so, the segment says letters were sent to multiple Holmen stores, which raises questions about how rules are followed at each location.
Concept
car search process
The “car search process” here is framed as a structured research workflow, including reviewing dealer identities and any regulatory correspondence. The hosts argue this research should be part of how consumers choose where to shop.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a U.S. agency that helps protect consumers. Here, it’s contacting car dealers when it thinks their marketing or sales practices aren’t following the law.
“Advertised price” is the price you first see in ads. The point here is that the final price can be different once you account for details and extra terms.
“Fine print” is the small details that come with an offer. It can include rules or extra costs that change what you’ll really pay.
LIVE
It's noon here in Ventner City, New Jersey on our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.,
and this is Car Edge Live for Monday, June 1st with your host, me, Ray, hanging out where I
always hang out, my living room, and Zach, back in D.C. in his office. How are you today, handsome?
I'm doing fantastic. Happy Monday, everyone. I am always impressed by my dad's energy when we
start our show. A friendly reminder, folks, today's show is brought to you by CarEdge.com. If me,
my dad, and our incredible team can help you through the car buying process, we would love to.
Go check out CarEdge.com. There's the shop cars, which is our car search. There's our car buying
service where you can meet our team of car buying experts. We can help you with research,
dealer reviews, insurance, warranty, and so much more. Check it all out back at CarEdge.com.
Dad, the big story this morning, the Federal Trade Commission. Now, it was a couple of months ago,
back in March, dad, that the FTC, they sent out letters to 97 dealership groups, and quietly,
on Friday, May 29th, last week, they made an announcement that is really kind of unthinkable.
They named names. Before we get into the names that have been named, can you please set the
stage here? What happened on Friday and what happened back on March 11th when the FTC sent
letters to 97 dealer groups? But again, please, folks, stay tuned. They named the names finally.
Yes. Back in March, the FTC sent warning letters to 97 dealerships or dealership groups,
but they did not release the names of who they sent the letters to. The letters suggested that
some of these dealers, if not perhaps all of these dealers, might have violated one or some or all
of the regulations that the FTC found near and dear to their heart, which was advertising a price
that does not reflect all the required fees, advertising a price that reflects rebates or
discounts not available to all customers, advertising a price that fails to take into account
the amount of an additional required down payment, conditioning the advertised price on
consumers using dealer financing, requiring consumers to buy additional items, not reflected in the
advertised price, and advertising unavailable or non-existent vehicles. So the suggestion was
that the dealers that they sent this to violated one or some of those items, but we didn't know
who. And like most things the government does that they don't really want you to pay that much
attention to, they wait for a late Friday afternoon news dump when everybody's on their way to the
beach or somewhere, and so the people won't really pay attention to it. And I know Friday
afternoon, Zach, you were made aware of who the letters went to. We had a music concert to go
to an early one at 5 p.m., and I'm ready to shine off for the day. And around 4 p.m. in the afternoon,
I find this, thank goodness I did. And, Dad, I want to be clear here, again, we're going to name the
names in just a second here, but it is not easy to find the 97 dealer groups that are named. You
have to be looking in the legal library, then browse, then go to warning letters, and then click
on the FTC warns 97 auto dealerships groups about the septa pricing. And again, these letters were
sent on March 11th. Now, here's the kicker, Dad, because it was 4 p.m. I was ready to sign off,
ready to go to this concert with you. I had to go home and change and get dressed, but you know
what? I couldn't, because what I found is when I started to click into these letters, I'm going to
click into this one right here, NOLAR auto group layered NOLAR automotive ink. This is where things
got really interesting. You'd think, Dad, NOLAR auto group layered NOLAR automotive ink. This is
the group. This is the dealership that was named. When you scroll down to the bottom of all of these
letters, you actually see the individual dealerships that are being named by the FTC. Talk about not
making it easily accessible. So I went crazy on Friday. I was going nuts because I was like,
holy cow, I need to compile the list of any guesses here, guesses from our community,
how many total dealerships are named across these 97 letters that the FTC sent out back on March 11.
Let me know. Let me know the guesses. I know you know the number, Apostle. Let's get some guesses
from the community. I'm not going to say. Let's get some guesses because it's more than 97. I mean,
that was just one example there where you could see that was one dealer group, but it was what?
Four dealerships that were named, three dealerships? Three dealerships that were named.
And let's also get some guesses as to what dealer groups...
Some people cheated on their homework. 355, 1,146, 400, 420, 289. Dad, it was 200
and three dealerships, individual dealerships that were named. We have caredge.com slash FTC.
Everyone tuning into today's show. I encourage you to go to this URL where a lot of the data
that we're going to review today is. But, Dad, you were about to say something about public
dealer groups on all ears. Yes. I would also like you to guess what publicly traded large
dealer groups were sent letters and which ones weren't. And not that that necessarily means
some are better than others. Or at least at that stage, the FTC hadn't seen activity at
some of these dealer groups that they thought they should send off a letter.
Yeah. Guess which? There are four publicly traded car dealership groups that were not
sent letters, but I contend that it doesn't actually mean they're better. Because when
we started to crunch the numbers and compare the caredge transparency index data to the
dealers that have received letters, a lot of dealers got A grades because they actually
are transparent. They got wrapped up in the FTC's work more broadly with the group. And then many
dealerships need to get letters from the FTC that happened. Many more. Yeah, many more. Hundreds
more, if not thousands more. So I hate to say this, but I don't think... Man, oh man, I live in
Washington, D.C. The FTC building's close by. I hope someday to meet with the folks there and
engage with them. But I don't like the way that they did this. I don't know how they came up with
the 97. They didn't disclose their methodology for the 97 groups. And the 97 wasn't 97. All those
headlines you saw, including the ones coming from us, all those headlines you saw, 97 dealerships
got warning letters, excuse me, from the FTC. It was incorrect. There was 203 dealerships,
and it should be many, many more. They need to disclose their methodology here, Dad. Because,
again, there's some trends that we're going to break down in a second here, but it's so
many more. In CarEdge.com slash FTC, just to pull it up on the screen here, we built a map
and a search. So here's the map so you can see all the dealers that are graded on the map
and a search. So you can see every single name on this list. They're CarEdge grade as well,
obviously. But every single dealership that receives a letter is right here. And to be
clear here, we link directly back to that letter as well. So you can see, again,
they don't make this easy. This one was Lithia, obviously. They don't make this easy. Lithia had
123456789 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 dealerships
that got caught up in this dead. But I bet you there's some different Lithia dealerships
that probably need to receive a letter as well.
One would think. Let's face it. We've done what we've done with our AI agents,
shopping dealers, and our concierge agents, shopping dealers. And we've been able to
put together data that others have not. And we've rated, what about 10,000 dealers? And
franchise, new franchised automobile dealerships. So ours represents a small percentage.
It is a much larger percentage than what the FTC has indicated at this point. And I think through
ours, what's the percentage of dealers that are DNF? Let's pull it up on the screen. Give me one
second, hair pops. I'll share it with everyone live, CarEdge.com. And then from CarEdge.com,
dealer reviews, rating overview, drum roll please. We've got over 10,000 dealerships,
only 277 F dealers, 442 D dealers out of 10,000. So we're talking less than 10% that
receive an F or a D grade. So that would indicate if there's, let's be conservative and say there's
60,000 dealerships in this country, independent and new car franchise dealerships. And we know of
the new car franchise dealerships, there's about 18,000. So that means there's 42,000 independent
dealerships. But if it is about 10% of what we've been able to score so far, then I'm not real good
math, but 10% of 60,000 would be 6,000. And so far there's been 203 letters sent. So that would
just indicate that we're 9,800 and or yeah, 797 letters short so far. And that number could grow
because you might want to include C dealerships in there as well. So it is.
Yeah. And if I may work for the FTC is what I was trying to say.
It's a ton of work for the FTC. It's also, I want to be clear here about time we got the names.
Yeah. Goodness, we finally got the names that took like almost 22 and a half months.
But here's where again, the methodology piece is currently missing. And this is we're consumer
advocates here at CarEdge. We're advocates for dealers who are transparent. If I'm a dealer that
is transparent, I'm pissed off that I don't understand the methodology. And here's the
reason being dad. Yeah. I go to caredge.com right now. I go to dealer reviews and I search
Lithia. I can find Nissan of Lithia Springs, which again, coming back over to the dealership list
from the FTC to Lithia Motors. Yes. So you see on this list that Nissan of Lithia Springs.
No, I see Nissan of Clovis and Nissan of Eugene. Which maybe, maybe Lithia Springs is wrong because
it's Lithia Springs. So let's go back actually. Let's go back. Let's see. Lithia Toyota of Billings.
That one sounds to me like no matter what, that's a Lithia dealership, right? Yeah, it is.
Okay. So you know what? Yeah. The other one was as well.
Yeah. Well, even if it wasn't, here we go. This is actually a good moment. Lithia Toyota of Billings.
It's on the list. What data do we have back at caredge.com? Drum roll, please. Wait for it.
Wait for it. It's a little hard to see here, y'all, because it's twisted. But you
can see add-ons out the wazoo right there. Again, I know it's sideways, so it's a little hard to see.
So that's good. That's validating. But I bet you there are more, for example, that other Nissan
dealer that gets a low grade because they advertise one price online and then they do a
different price to contact the dealership. There's more work here than just these 203
dealerships. And I want to pull up. I appreciate you were saying 97 dealer groups, 203 rooftops.
I hate to say it, but it felt a little maybe misleading to say 97 dealer groups. All of the
reporting on this was 97 dealer groups. But then everyone interpreted that as dealerships. So maybe
that's on us, on us at caredge, on automotive news, on every single media company who said
97 dealerships got warning letters. 203 did. And it's buried at the bottom of those PDFs.
Yeah. Well, the problem was the FTC's headline was that they contacted 97 dealer groups. They
didn't say how many dealerships within those dealer groups that they sent letters to. But
regardless of that, that's unimportant. The sad reality is that out of 60,000 dealerships,
203 got letters. There are so many more letters that need to be sent. There is so much more
that needs to be reviewed. And here's an even sadder reality. We've got the receipts. Okay? We,
if the FTC would contact us, could make their lives a lot easier. Okay? Because we have the
independent receipts. We have the verified copies of out-the-door quotes, of completed
quotes that the dealerships sent to us. We're not guessing. They sent us the information.
We can validate the information so that the FTC doesn't do this as their
only job. But we do. This is in, I hate to say this, this is in our wheelhouse. Not
and sometimes, maybe federal agencies need to look outside their windows and go,
who can we utilize to help make our life easier so that we can make life better for customers
after, for consumers out there? So now that we do have the names, Dad. So again, that's a big
story. We now have the names. You can see the names. I'll pull it back up on the screen,
caredge.com slash FTC. You can now see all the names right back there of all the dealers who
were named. And there's 97 letters. It was 203 dealerships in total that were named. But here's
what I want to ask you, Pops. Yes. What I want to ask you is, where were there some interesting
clusters, both in terms of brand and state? Now, I know you already read this. So I'll ask the
community first. Where do you think? What types of dealerships? Was it a particular brand that
received more warning letters from the FTC? Or were there particular states that were outliers
that received more letters than others? I know you've already looked, so put some guesses in the
chat here. I'm going to just say this. There's some intuition that goes into this, and you
should trust that intuition. There are certain places in the country and types of dealerships
that have a bad rap, unfortunately. And part of it could be population-based.
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think that's a good point. We've got Nissan in Florida. We've
got lots of good guesses from our community. All right, Dad, you ready to take a peek?
Yes. Let's start with brands of vehicles sold first. Oh, man, I did a bit. There we go. Get
that off the scratch. Okay, you can still tell who it is over there. Right, but, Dad, independent
used car dealerships. Those were number one in terms of the types of groups that received
letters from the FTC. Now, notably, no Carvana, no Carmax. So Carvana and Carmax did not receive
letters from the FTC. Of note, the other public that didn't were Penske Automotive Group and
Asbury Automotive Group, none of their dealerships got caught up in this. I'm not going to say yet,
but independent used car dealerships, 25 of them were in this Chevrolet, Dad, 22 Chevrolet dealerships,
then Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram, then Nissan, then Hyundai, then Ford, then Kia, then Honda,
then Toyota, and then Buick all the way down there at the bottom. And we talk about geographic
location. I don't think anyone's going to be too surprised to see Texas and Florida up at the
tippy top here. Not surprised to see Florida, California, makes sense from a population stands
are Illinois up there with 14. But yeah, really, your big three, Texas, Florida, California,
are the states where there's the most FTC's letters sent. Interesting, Dad, New York,
all the way down there at eight. You'd think that New York dealers would have more letters
coming their way. So again, now that we actually have the names of these dealerships,
which again, to be clear here, I downloaded every single PDF and went through and pulled out every
single name. They did not make it easy. Let me ask you a question. Sure. We know that in Florida,
for instance, it is the wild, wild West when it comes to dock fees. Of course, the average
dock fee in Florida is $999. And we have seen higher than that. How many dealers in Florida
on our dealership transparency index score well, but have egregiously high dock fees? Or if their
dock fee is significantly above the state average, which is $999, would that lower their
dealer transparency index score? Yeah, actually, if you have a dock fee above the average in your
state, your score is lower on the on the car edge grade. We actually have, it's not something we
talk about all that often, but we actually have reports. It's caredge.com slash reports slash
states and then put the state in. So this is Florida. I'll drop it in the chat if anyone is
interested. These reports actually show you the underlying data. So we've analyzed over 4,800
quotes just in Florida. The average dock fee data is actually $968. Okay. The 53% of dealers do not
put add-ons on vehicles. And when there are add-ons present, it's $1,202. Here's the breakdown
of the grade distribution, which is more DNF and C dealers than we see in that overall national
population. And if I scroll all the way down here, we've got the lowest rated dealers. Where was it?
Where was it? Oh, Florida fee comparison as well. So I can even bring a breakdown of fees specifically
in the state of Florida. The highest dock fee we've seen is $1,299. Yeah, as you can see,
here's the distribution of dock fees in the state. If I scroll down here a little bit further,
a lot a bit further, give me a second here drum roll please. And the reason I asked,
Zach, is we know that Florida, many dealers can score well on the transparency index,
even though their average dock fee is $968. Yeah, because it's comparable to their competition.
Yes, which when you compare it to some other states is significantly higher. So
I guess the point I'm trying to make is just because a dealer might grade really well in Florida.
Oftentimes, you're still going to be overpaying significantly because of the dock fee. And let's
face it, the FTC isn't playing in that sandbox either. All the FTC is suggesting is that you list
the selling price and then as we saw with Genesis of Annapolis, you then as a separate line item
list what your processing or dock fee is. And if you do that, then you're in compliance. So
just because somebody scores really well transparency wise, it doesn't necessarily mean
that some of the cost of their fees isn't a tad bit outrageous. Oh, of course, yeah. Fairness
and transparency, unfortunately, do not go hand in hand right now. What you just referred to
with Genesis of Annapolis is we did a mystery shop. And you can see here, this was a dealer's
online advertisement for a vehicle as compared to the actual out the door price that they
sent us when we shopped and they're identical. And that's exactly what the FTC wants to see here.
And many of you have probably already seen on various car search websites and dealer websites,
they're now listing out fees much more transparently. The next iteration of this is like,
who's fair? Who actually is still offering a fair price? So trust me, we're ahead of that
over at CarEdge.com as well. But a tremendous moment this morning. And I think, I hope,
you know, when the FTC made this announcement, did their press release about the 97 dealer groups
who received these letters, there was a lot of interest around a lot. You and I were doing
interviews left and right for different national media publications for local news, etc. I hope
we can get as many eyeballs, if not more now that the 203 names have actually come out because,
again, it's not 97, it's 203 and more and more awareness needs to be brought to this work.
And, and the FTC, quite frankly, needs help. There was a period of time that they were asking
dealers in a webinar that they did to rat out other dealers who were doing different pricing.
That's an interesting tactic. So FTC, if that's the route you're going, you're more than welcome
to pick up the phone and call me directly as well. Or you can reply back to all the LinkedIn messages
I've sent folks at the FTC. We'd be thrilled to help you here. We think this is the absolute best
thing that can happen for the auto industry is make it more transparent, efficient,
make it more fair. Well, and the good dealers agree with that. The good dealers would want to see
this happen. And, and, you know, quite honestly, we can, we can provide the FTC with, with much more
data than they have available to them and much more up to date data that, that, and data gets
added on a daily basis. Because guess what? We're working deals on a daily basis. And, and so
at a certain point, and I know governmental agencies don't necessarily like to want to
reach out to non-governmental entities for some of their information. But this is, this is real
live, verified, documented, receipt-based information that the, that the FTC, if they
wanted to use it for evidence you, evidence purposes, it's perfect for them. It's almost
foolish that they haven't contacted us yet. Yeah. Well, you know, how I feel about these things.
Anyway, caredge.com slash FTC. Go there. You can obviously see the full list of dealers. You
can also click through. I want to be very clear here. We made this as essentially a repository so
that you can click all the way through and go and see the original letter that was sent to a dealer.
Just scroll all the way down. We have the map feature here, which is great. So I want to come
into Arizona real quick. Okay. I want to see the letter for this particular dealership. This was
Berkshire Hathaway Automotive and Berkshire Hathaway. They had four dealerships in there.
I think they have 150 dealerships, 150 dealership group. Four of them got named,
Airpark Dodge Chrysler Jeep, Showcase Honda, Capital Chevrolet of Austin, and Vandergrift,
Honda again. If I'm the FTC, I'm thinking maybe there are a handful more. We'd love to help you
out. Yeah, let's see. Oh, I can assure you, at least in the Arizona area, when it comes to
the Berkshire Hathaway, I'm not suggesting it's Berkshire Hathaway that was the problem.
It was who they bought those dealerships from that might have been the problem.
They acquired Vantile Organization, which, Dad, you worked in it. You worked in the Phoenix
Market, what, 20 years ago? I think a little longer. Well, yeah, until 2008, yeah.
And that was a group that you competed directly with, and they didn't necessarily,
in your opinion, compete fairly.
Yeah, they had some business practices that were suspect at best.
Even though Berkshire Hathaway has a different history than, say,
those dealerships had prior to Berkshire Hathaway taking it over, I would imagine that there is
still some carryover as far as personnel is concerned. And what we're seeing is that,
for instance, some of the letters went to, I think, three Holmen dealerships. And the Holmen
Organization has one of the better reputations in the automotive industry. And I know I was
surprised when I saw that there were letters sent to three Holmen stores. So what it indicates to me
is sometimes that the head of the organization might not have their finger on the pulse of
every manager or general manager in every one of their locations, and so that every general
manager might not be playing by the corporate rules that have been set up. And I think that
might be the same situation that Berkshire Hathaway is finding out, especially in,
trust me, there are many more stores in the Phoenix area that would probably fail
the dealer transparency index, at least from our perspective.
And again, the big news today was March 11th, these letters went out to 97 dealer groups on May 29th
in the afternoon. That's when I found it back on the FTC's website, very difficult to get to. And
then again, the actual names of dealers in the letters CC'd at the bottom of the second page,
meticulously went through every single one and pulled out all 203 as part of your car search
process. And please, we need to bring awareness to this. Know if this was a dealership that received
a letter from the Federal Trade Commission. Now, again, to be clear, many of the dealers that
receive letters from the Federal Trade Commission get good grades from CarEdge and A-grade,
meaning they've cleaned up their practices or maybe they got caught up in this all together.
It doesn't necessarily mean the letter was an indictment as much as it was a warning. And so
this is an incredibly important part of the car buying process and research.
And we put it all in one place, caredge.com, slash FTC. From Lego Joe, thank you for this Lego Joe,
we appreciate it. FTC sends, we can see you letters to 97 dealership groups, reminds me,
reminds, excuse me, 203 dealerships that quote, fine print is not a personality.
And they suddenly and shockingly discover the meaning of advertised price. Yeah, Lego Joe,
there's quite a story here. Again, I don't, I don't like to point fingers, but I just,
I don't love how this was handled. Like, share the methodology, share that it's 203 dealerships,
not 97 dealership groups, make that data more accessible to consumers and to dealerships.
Anyway, I'm, I'm obviously fired up about this. Well, you know, if, if, if the information
is made available to consumers and consumers can, can then compare it to what we've been able to
find, that can drive consumer behavior. Because the sad reality is that if a consumer has a choice
between an F graded dealer and a A or a B graded dealer, I would think that the vast majority of
potential consumers would, would want to do business with the A and B graded dealers.
And so by not making the, the information available, readily available to the buying public,
they were doing a disservice to, to customers out there. And, and we are trying to shed light
via both the dealership transparency index and, and who these letters went to. We're trying to
shed light on that so that consumers can make a, a better informed decision as to where it is they
might want to do business. And if I may, the FTC's mission is to vigorously enforce the law to
protect Americans from anti-competitive, unfair and deceptive business practices without unduly
burdening legitimate business activity. FTC, this is a public announcement. If you want to
license the map that I created over the weekend, you know, you're more than welcome to contact me,
you can license this thing. Because last time I checked, your mission and our mission are identical
and we're the ones out here trying to make this information materially significantly more accessible
than going through your website, downloading every single PDF, scrolling to the bottom and
finding the names of the dealers that were listed here. But hey, what do I know? I'm just a guy
sitting in my office. He talks to his dad for 30 minutes every day on YouTube, but we're doing our
best here to make this information accessible, available and in the hands of consumers and
the industry so that everyone can have a level playing field to operate on. I'm fired up today,
Dad. Well, you saw me on Friday. I was going crazy. We were going to have such a
nice night and I was like, I was, I was going nuts, man. I didn't, I didn't change. I didn't go home.
I was, I couldn't get off my computer working to pull out all the names. It was ridiculous to me.
Yes. And I know somebody who wasn't thrilled. Yeah. My girlfriend was not thrilled at all. She was
like, what the heck is going on? But you know what? I got so wired up about this because
we've been waiting months. We thought we would never know the dealerships that received the
letters from the FTC. Yes. And now we do. And, but, you know, there's so much more information
available to the FTC for them to use to, to send out many, many, many thousands of more letters.
And, you know, for the industry to change, it can't just be send out those letters on March 11th
to 203 dealers. It can't just be us at CarEdge trying to put together a dealership transparency
index and, and hopefully at some point in time, be able to combine that with a fairness index
because just because a dealership's transparent doesn't necessarily mean they're fair in their
pricing or, or how they actually complete a transaction. So there's much, much more work to
be done. But there are better tools available today than there have ever been. And my hope is that
in my lifetime, we will see those changes. And, and I think I'd like to believe that one of the
reasons we'll see those changes is because of the efforts of CarEdge and primarily the efforts of
one Zach Shefska and his, and his very busy team. Yeah. And our community, Dad, our community demands
this stuff. So anyway, that's today's show, folks. Thanks so much for tuning in. The FTC did the
unthinkable. We didn't see this coming. It's been months since they announced those 97 letters being
sent out. And so again, as a resource, if we can support you, CarEdge.com slash FTC, that's where
we've compiled everything for the FTC related efforts. Now again, to my dad's point, these are
letters. They're not enforcement. So we'll see what comes on the heels of this. If you enjoyed today's
show, please, as always, subscribe to the channel, share it with a friend and dad, please, please,
I am begging you right now, just put on a little bit of sunscreen, just a little bit, okay? Just
like that much. That's all I'm asking for that much sunscreen. Okay, I'll share with you. I will
put a little bit of sunscreen on my left buttock, okay? And I will continue to wear shorts when
I'm outside. Yeah, you know, I listen, I like only Ray Shevska can go from asking the federal
government to reach out to us for support to saying he'll put sunscreen on his left butt cheek. So
there you go, folks. That's the duality. I like a little color. I've been pale my entire life. Okay?
I like a little color. I, you know, I'm 75 years old. How much more time do I really have left?
Why, when I go, I want to be, I want to. All right, folks, that's the show from Car Edge. We'll
be back tomorrow with more Car Edge Live. I got you. See you, Fox.
About this episode
The hosts break down the FTC’s latest dealer warning-letter campaign, starting with how the agency first sent letters to 97 dealership groups in March without naming them, then later “named names” on May 29. They argue the “97” headline obscures how many individual dealerships were involved—discussing their own research and grading approach. The conversation connects FTC guidance on fee disclosure to real-world pricing tactics, including dock fees and add-ons, and points listeners to a public repository of the letters.
Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest on the FTC. Tune in to learn more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
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