The FTC is a government group that makes sure businesses, like car dealers, are honest and don’t trick customers with sneaky prices. They help protect people buying cars.
Honda certification means a used Honda car has been checked carefully and meets Honda's quality rules, so it's safer to buy and might come with extra protection.
Out-the-door price means the full amount you pay to buy a car, including the car's price plus taxes, fees, and extra charges. It's the real total cost to take the car home.
Government fees are extra costs you pay to the state or local government when you buy a car, like for registering the car or getting a title. They add to the total price but might not be shown upfront.
Capital One Auto Navigator is a website where you can look for cars and get loan offers, but sometimes the prices shown there aren't the real prices you would pay at the dealer.
A marketplace problem means the websites where people look for cars sometimes show wrong or fake prices, which can confuse buyers and make it hard for honest dealers to compete.
The pre-delivery service charge is a fee the dealer charges to get the car ready for you. They check it, clean it, and make sure it works before you get it.
Dealerradar.com is a website where people can see ratings and reviews of car dealers to help them decide which dealer to trust.
LIVE
It's Nunesh here in Venture City in New Jersey on our nation's capital, Washington, DC, and
this is Car Edge Live for Monday, March 16th with your host, me, Ray here in, where the
hell am I?
Oh, Venture City.
And Zach coming to us from his apartment in DC.
How are you today, Hanson?
Doing pretty good.
It is gloomy here in Washington, so that's a bit of a bummer.
I think we're going to get some pretty bad weather later today.
But let's start here, pops.
Today's show is brought to you by caredge.com.
We're going to be talking about the FTC and the action they took over the weekend that
is putting shock waves through the auto industry.
Before we do, a friendly reminder, my dad and I, six years ago, folks, started caredge.com.
We provide a car buying service that takes care of research, dealer outreach, and even
negotiation.
We learn what matters.
Do contact dealers on your behalf, compare real offers, and help you get the best deal
without the stress.
You can learn more back at caredge.com.
We also have a new beta.
It looks a little similar, but it's caredge.com slash beta.
We're asking folks to use the new car search over at caredge.com slash beta.
And to share feedback with us, we really appreciate it back in the chat and in the comments.
Pops, let's start here.
This is pretty remarkable considering this comes on the heels of the Dealer Transparency
Index from Car Edge being launched.
So recently, Automotive News headline reads, FTC warns dealership's advertised prices must
include all required fees.
I'll put up a letter here in just a second that we can go through together.
But your take on this, dad, the FTC warning dealerships nationwide.
This is big news.
It's a step in the right direction, damn it.
Long overdue.
Yeah, the FTC warned 97 dealership groups that their advertised prices must include all required
fees.
The only fees that it cannot, there does not need to include, I think, are the state fees,
tax and registrations.
Yep, registration, yep.
But everything else, if the price you list is using all types of rebates, well, everybody
has to be able to qualify for every one of those rebates that you're using.
And if they don't, well, then that would be inappropriate.
We're going to go through the letter here in just a second.
But before we do, we literally just launched, and you all have been hearing us talk about,
the dealer ratings, the car edge dealer ratings, which are expressly based on the idea of transparent
pricing.
You can come here and you can find dealers, let's just scroll down, you can find dealers,
dad, who do bait and switch pricing.
You can come here and you can see which dealers have an F grade, this F grade coming from the
fact that I have to just log into my account really quickly.
But you can see here, dealers that ultimately put add-ons on vehicles.
This dealership, dad, 100% of the time that we've gotten quotes from them, Metro Honda,
they've had add-ons averaging $2,224.
I can come down here and I can actually view the quote with the add-ons, Honda certification,
PDSI.
This is the type of stuff that the FTC is going after.
And here's the warning letter, dad.
Let's actually read the warning letter that they sent out to dealerships, 97 dealerships.
Are you ready?
Yes.
All right.
We're going to go line by line.
I hope I've got a good David Attenborough voice.
Dear name.
Okay.
That's how I start.
This letter is to advise you that you may be advertising prices for cars that are lower
than what you actually charge consumers.
Just jump in whenever you want, dad.
Such deceptive tactics harm not only consumers, but competition by making it hard for law-abiding
businesses to compete on an even playing field.
One of the FTC's enforcement priorities is ensuring, excuse me, that advertised pricing
is transparent and truthful.
When consumers do not know the true price of a car or any product, consumers and others
suffer related consequences, including that consumers cannot comparison shop and make
informed decisions, sellers trying to deal honestly with consumers are put out of competitive
disadvantage, and the market cannot operate efficiently.
This is why the FTC has focused on promoting price transparency across multiple markets,
including rental housing, ticketing in hotels, grocery delivery services, and auto sales and
leasing.
The FTC is committed to ensuring that the price consumers see in advertising is the
actual price they will pay, aside from required government charges like taxes.
This is what the FTC act, which prohibits deceptive or unfair acts or practices, requires.
Examples of illegal pricing practices include advertising a price that does not reflect all
required fees, advertising a price that reflects rebates or discounts not available to all consumers,
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 unavoidable or non-existent vehicles.
I am concerned that your company may be engaging or one or more of these practices.
Accordingly, I encourage you to review your practices, including by making sure your prices,
the prices you advertise include all required fees and charges,
aside from required government charges, to ensure you are complying with applicable
laws. This would include at a minimum evaluating your advertised prices and actual prices and
confirming they match. This letter is not intended to be a comprehensive statement of concerns that
may exist about your dealership or dealership group, nor is it intended to represent any
conclusions on whether your dealership or dealership group is engaging in these practices.
It is your company's responsibility to comply with all requirements of federal law, including
Section 5 of the FTC Act and other laws and rules enforced by the Commission. We will continue to
monitor the marketplace and take additional action as warranted additionally. Please note
that I am distributing similar notifications to other auto dealers. I need to take a deep breath,
Dad. Does this letter have some substance or does it lack substance?
Both. Your dealership may or may not be involved. Here's the thing. They send it to 97 dealers
or dealership groups. There are 18,100-some or 200-some new car franchise new car dealerships in
America. That number jumps to like 40,000 when you add all the independent used car dealerships.
Well, just on the new car side. I'm not sure how many of those 97 dealers or dealer groups,
how many dealerships they represent, but I'm guessing that there are only about 18,000 letters
short of who they needed to send letters to. I think it's about time that the FTC actually
showed some enforcement to the rules and regulations that are already on the books.
I think it's wonderful that they would send out a letter, and I believe the letter should go to
all dealerships, just not these 97 that stipulate what it is that they are expecting when it comes
to advertising from all dealerships. Dad, it's more than just dealerships. There's such a
prevalent problem on the marketplace websites. They do not police this behavior at all. It's
dealership website, and it's not going to name names with the marketplace websites that don't
police this. Yeah, but if there's no enforcement actions, you have to realize that these regulations
have been on the books for years, and dealerships have regularly and routinely violated these
rules and regulations for years and continue to do so. It's great to have the letter. The letter
is long overdue as a reminder to dealerships as to how it is you're expected to operate,
but, and this is the big but, if you don't police it, if there's never any enforcement actions
against any of the dealers that are in constant violation of these rules and regulations,
then it doesn't mean anything. We have lots of laws in this country, but if you don't enforce them,
it doesn't matter. It's wonderful. It is no different than corporate speak and corporate BS
for certain things. This is just FTC BS, where they're making this play, and that's what it is,
to buy some media attention, trying to show that they're doing something about it. Well,
writing a letter to 97 dealership groups is not really doing anything when there's, as you said,
40,000 new and used car dealerships. You only have such different takes on this. I cannot
believe how hard you're being on the FTC. They didn't have to write this letter, and they have
active and ongoing litigations and enforcements right now with multiple dealership groups that
I'm actually really surprised. This is the Maryland AG and FTC going after Lindsay Automotive Group.
We've got the FTC and Illinois, excuse me, went after Leader and Auto Canada. We had that. It was
Asbury Automotive Group in Texas, where we have enforcement. I am quite frankly shocked at your
take on this, that it means nothing. I think it's actually a big wake up call. It's on the home page
of Automotive News. It's been sent to 97 dealership groups. I think this is like, what do you want?
You want enforcement? Sure, but this is at least some action, and there's on billing enforcement
in three states. What would satisfy you, Pops?
Actual, literal enforcement. They sent this to 97 dealership groups, refused to name
in their press release, refused to name who any of those dealerships were, or any of those
to say if any of these dealership groups were actually in violation of any of the rules and
regulations. You, you know, the word you may be exonerates the FTC because you may not be.
So, to me, it is a hollow statement from the FTC. I think if you send a letter like that,
you send a letter naming the 97 dealership groups that you suspect to be violating the rules and
regulations. You name names. You bring actions. You just, you don't just send this letter that says,
you may be, and we expect you to act better. Yeah, I expect all dealerships to act better,
but we know, we know it doesn't happen. And so, I just think it's a PR ploy on behalf of the FTC.
I don't see any teeth in it. It would be one thing to say we have been doing an ongoing
investigation and we have found this dealer and that dealer to not necessarily be in compliance
with the rules and regulations regarding the advertised prices that they're listing for their
vehicles. That would be something. That would have some teeth in it. But this is like, okay,
it's a good PR ploy. And then that to me is what it is. And, and, and I guess, I guess the difference
is that, you know, having spent 43 years in a retail automotive that you can tell BS from the
government from real stuff from the government, the real stuff from the governments when they
come in with subpoenas and they, and they ask for paperwork and they ask for deals. That's,
that's different than this generic letter that they sent the 97 differ. I mean, you know,
it's the same letter to every group and to every dealership and without naming any names. So,
I don't know. I want to see that they're actually, there's, there's some enforcement
behind the PR ploy. That's what I'd like to see.
Fascinating. Love that. And I obviously feel similarly that being said, dad, one of the
dealers that we just looked at back on the car edge dealer ratings, let's actually do this live for
a second as an experiment. So we've got here Metro Honda. Okay. This is Metro Honda in Jersey,
city, New Jersey. Our car edge team has shopped this dealership and gotten 10 verified out the
door price quotes from them. Every single time we've had add-ons. So I'm coming over here. I'm
on auto trader now. Yes. And I'm on, I think this is at Metro Honda. Let's actually, let's just,
let's just go from Jump Street. So let's go. Give me a second. I'll be your trader.
Metro Honda. Okay. Auto trader, Metro Honda. So I'm going to click on this. Yes. Okay. So now,
yeah, this is Jersey, city, New Jersey, which is going to come back here. Yep. Metro Honda,
which car edge grades an F, again, from 10 verified quotes that we have, our team has.
KBB's rating for this dealership is 4.9. Okay. Okay. So maybe car edge is wrong,
but I don't know. I don't know. Let's scroll down here and let's take a peek at some of
their used cars. So we've got here, dad. Yes. On the pilot and they're advertising it for sale for
$18,198. I could request the info. Maybe we do it live on the show here. My fear is that it's not
going to include, what do we have here? We have other used vehicles that we've requested quotes
from dealership. Can you find the most recent one quote that we've got from Metro? Yeah,
the most recent one's going to be this top one right here. Okay. And what's the date of that?
March 14th. Literally two days ago. Okay. So now scroll down. What's the stock number?
This. Okay. Now go to their website and look at that stock number and see what the advertise price is.
That way we can see if the advertised price matches. Okay. So here's the vehicle on the
$149. Okay. And the out-of-the-door quote included? A $1495 PDSI government fees stock fee,
obviously taxes, but yeah, it included $1,500 that was not advertised.
Yes. So there is absolute proof using going to their website today that their advertised price
does not comport to their real price with the PDSI, whatever the hell that is.
Gee, maybe we take a screenshot of this and a screenshot of their website today
and share that with the FTC. I want to be very clear. I'm not picking up a phone and calling the FTC.
There's no need for us to be in that particular role. They have jobs to do.
Our responsibility is to bring forward better solutions than the auto traders of the world
or quite frankly, just going to that dealership directly. Let's look up that vehicle on auto
trader, dad. I'm curious how it's advertised over here. Yes. All right. So this was, what was it,
a Mazda? Yeah. Okay. And no, how do I even search for a Mazda here in their inventory?
On the pilots for sale. No, I want that dealership. Oh God.
What was it? It was a 20, 21. Can you search by VIN?
Let's see. I'm copying the VIN from the dealer site. Yeah. See if we can do that.
Okay. Zero matches over on auto trader. So maybe they're not using auto trader.
Let's just do a Google search for this really quickly. Capital one. All right.
Here's capital one advertising this car for sale. Yeah. Oops. Here you go. 18,749 dollars.
Yeah, except they're forgetting the other 1400. Look at this. Wow. Look at this. Look
at the tooltip here. Read the tooltip, dad. Dealer advertised brand. We have to show it.
Oh, sorry. You can't see it? No.
Tell me out there, man. Here it is on capital one. Yeah. You see that tooltip now?
What's it say? It says, can you see it? Yeah. Dealer advertised price is the price given by
the dealer. New Jersey requires advertised price to include all costs to be paid by consumer,
except for licensing costs, registration fees, and taxes. You should check with the
dealer to confirm what is included or left out of the price shown. So they know what they're
supposed to include, and they're not doing it. Again, and when you come back to car edge,
this is why, by the way, I'm so freaking passionate about what we do. This is why I'm
so passionate about what we do, because the price, this is go to caredge.com slash beta right now,
dad. Car sites show you fake prices. We'll get you the real one. The whole position that we're
moving towards y'all is getting you OTD prices, because this is ridiculous. The FTC literally
sends this message out to all these people. Yes. The dealership website is advertising a BS price.
Yes. Capital one is advertising a BS price. Confirm. And I'm sure the dealership pays to
have it advertised on the Capital one. I'm sure. I'm sure they're partners. Yeah. Yeah.
And then when you actually shop that dealership, which again, this is all I used was car edge
dealer reviews, Metro Honda, great enough today. Scroll down to recent quotes. The most recent
one shows up at the top here. We viewed it. It's an actual, then this is, we call it the FTC. No,
we're not calling the FTC. We're trying to make everyone aware that there are resources out there.
Stop going to Capital one auto navigator. Yeah. I mean this with all due respect. It's useless.
The prices on all of these websites are useless. They're useless. And you know that letter that
the FTC wrote? They should be sending it to all the marketplaces as well. It's not just a dealer
problem. It's a marketplace problem. Well, and we should see some enforcement at the marketplace
level. Yeah, but the marketplace level is not going to do it. They're not. They, you know,
it's been brought up to them by good dealers who say, we can't compete against these bogus prices.
And you know, how much does the dealer pay Capital one to advertise that car? How much
the dealers pay auto trader or cars, whoever it is. Okay. You know, they make,
they make a ton of money from these dealers. And yeah, they allow them to advertise bogus prices.
So yeah, you can, the FTC could send the letter to Capital one navigator and all the others out
there. Absolutely they could, but they could send 40,000 letters to 40,000 dealerships.
It's, it's, it's not or it's and it needs to be both because what we just demonstrated here
live, this was not prepared whatsoever. We literally just went to the dealer reviews that
we've created and just saw the first F rated dealer. As far as I know, dad, this dealer's A
rated on, what was it? Auto trader? They had four. Kelly blue book. Kelly blue book. Yeah,
that was on auto trader. So this dealership gets a 4.9 on auto trader. Yeah. You know,
I got another example. This one actually comes from, give me one second here and I'll pull it
up. We had another one that another dealership group. This is, yeah, this is fantastic. Bear
with me for one second. But this is, this is a perfect example of, of states recognizing the
fact that dealers are violating the state laws and regulations, the FTC recognizing that dealers
are violating both state and federal laws and regulations. And it's one thing to recognize it
and it's another thing to actually do something about it. And, and you know, we have talked in
the past, one of the reasons that, that many states don't bring as many enforcement actions as they
could or they should is because those divisions in the attorney general's office are usually
limited personnel wise, limited expense wise as, as what they can spend on these things. They have
a limited number of investigators. So the problem is, is there's, there's way more fraud
going on than there are investigators and enforcers that can take care of it. That's the real
problem. It is so pervasive that states and, and the FTC just, they don't have enough personnel
in order to do, and they know what's happening. I mean, it's, they absolutely, positively,
both know what's happening, but neither one of them has enough enforcement personnel
to really do anything about it. So you see cases from 2024, 2023. And, you know, when, when there
is a ruling, it's huge. Yep. But, you know, there's 39,872 other dealers that are doing the same
thing that didn't get caught yet. Here's another example of it. I'm going to pull this up on the
screen. This is a Kia 2025 Kia Carnival SX Prestige. $41,799. I click on details. Okay,
that's the price. I've got a disclaimer here. Yes. There's going to be a pre-delivery service
charge of $1,298. There's going to be a tag agency fee of $189 and a registration filing
fee of $598. Okay. Okay. Here's the OTD from that dealership. Includes a $1,295 certification,
the recommended PPP plus for $2,000 and reconditioning for $1,495. Oh, and then the fees
that they outlined there. This dealership, dad, if you go to them on dealerradar.com right now,
yes, has a 4.3 star score. Yeah. This is useless. This is useless. This is 100%
useless. This is so inefficient and so dumb for so many reasons. Please, for the love
of everyone in your life, stop using this broken crap. Stop. This is why we have the
dealer ratings and it's not just an ad for dealer ratings. FTC, go use dealer ratings.
Again, don't call me. I don't want to call from the FTC. I don't need that right now.
We don't need that. But use the damn tools. It's out there. That dealership has a bad grade
on the car edge dealer ratings. Why? Because they do that. But they have a great review on
dealerarator.com. Get out of here. Come on, man. So dumb. So inefficient. So dumb.
How many of those reviews do you think were written by the salespeople that work at that
dealership? I know my dad's saying that in his own opinion, but we have had enforcement from the
FTC where dealerships have been writing fake reviews for themselves. Absolutely. Yeah. These
platforms where dealers pay for access to modify what shows up. Absolutely. That happens. Not saying
that happened in this case, but it is a little confounding that a dealership that adds, what
was that dad? They added $1,300 plus $2,000 plus $1,500. What's that? $4,800 in fees that were
unadvertised, not even including their $1,298 dock fee, which to be clear, they actually did
disclose. How can they have that higher? I don't think they disclosed the... Yeah, they had the
dock fee. They had it. That was the only fee they had listed? Yeah. This wasn't a disclaimer right
here. Yeah. Yeah, they said, hey, we're going to hit you with a $1,300 dock fee. Okay. Well,
they claimed it was a pre-delivery service fee. Whatever. They're telling you they're going to
do a $1,300 fee. They have that disclosure. I don't think we can get on them for that. We can
absolutely get on them for this. Then how can you, as a rational human being, sit here and say,
oh yeah, definitely. Definitely. Sales price transparency, dad. Look at that. Yes. Over four
stars. Get out of here. Yeah. Well, we can show that it's not. No. Absolutely. Anyone,
only ones who might not be able to see it are some major league baseball umpires.
But other than that... You know what the major win for consumers is, dad. I do think the letter is
being sent as a big deal because it starts a conversation. Again, a conversation that we have
every day but needs to happen more broadly. The major win for consumers is when we stop
rewarding these platforms, including the dealer websites themselves, back dealers, stop rewarding
them, and stop rewarding the websites that perpetuate this false information. That's when
consumers win. Finally, there are alternatives to that. Finally. It's taken us years, but finally,
there are some alternatives because it is such BS what exists out there.
Like I say, dealerships are going to continue to do what they're doing because
they realize that the likelihood of being caught doing what they're doing or being
fined for doing what they're doing or any type of enforcement action being brought against them
for doing what they're doing is probably less than 1%. So, if that's the case, why wouldn't they
just continue doing what they're doing? There's not enough resources allocated either on a state
or federal level to protect consumers in this country.
That's where I'm coming from, Dad. The major win for consumers is when we stop rewarding
the bad actors, meaning we shouldn't need to rely on the federal government or state government to
protect us from bad dealers. We should have legitimate rating and review systems that
don't perpetuate false information. We should have platforms that tell us, hey, red alert,
Hollywood Kia is not actually 4.3 stars because when you get an OTD price and then they add all
these add-ons, this is the whole premise for what we've been building with the dealer reviews
platform is to help you avoid, here's another example from this dealership.
So, let me ask you this very important question. How do we get our dealer transparency index to be
more mainstream than it is, to be more recognized than it is, to be more used than it is so that
the vast majority of potential car buyers out there would actually use the damn thing
and save themselves the headaches that they're destined to have with these bottom-feeding dealers
that are doing stuff that the dealer knows they shouldn't do and the customers know that they
shouldn't do. So, shame on you for not making it more mainstream, young man. Get it out there.
I mean, how do we do that? I mean, seriously. Working on it, man. Again, I think it's a big
deal that the FTC is talking about this today because it'll bring more awareness to projects like
DTI, Dealer Transparency Index, to the dealer reviews, things like that. It's egregious what
happens today and I'm glad to see a conversation being sparked as a result of what the FTC has done.
I mean, literally, that article should be responded to by CarEdge. Hey, here's a way for the public
to really find out what dealerships are doing and we just thought we'd like to bring that to your
attention, not that you're going to share that with customers out there because automotive news is
an automotive industry publication. It is not a consumer publication. You're sure?
And perhaps that's part of a marketing campaign that should be done with AutoTrader and all the
other car gurus and say, hey, you should display this for these dealers because your customers
are being misled. I appreciate one of the things the FTC said in this, is it breaks down competition
for good actors. It does. It absolutely does. Yeah, it absolutely does. Anyway, all right,
we could talk about this forever. This is truly one of the things I'm most passionate about. As
many of you know, I'm not a huge car guy. I hate information asymmetry and I hate broken systems,
and this is such a broken, broken aspect of the car buying process. That being said,
Deb, let's turn our attention to the chat for a moment here. Thank you, Matthew.
Pops, you're a watch guy. Where does one spot two patecs, a panda Rolex, and a presidential all at
once economy class LAX to Aspen, let them eat cake for the world? Wow. Yeah, I thought you were
going to tell me at the Oscars last night, but wow. Wow. That's pretty good. Yeah. Apparently,
I need to move to LA and fly to Aspen, although I remember driving through Aspen when we drove
back from Las Vegas a few years ago. Yeah, and it was in May and it was snowing when we were driving
through. Yeah. David's got a question. Does our AI negotiator ask dealers not to send dealer fees?
No, it just requests an alpha door price quote just like you or I would, via phone or text or
email. Also speaking of which, now I just want to do a quick little gut check here. Yeah, man,
look at this. Keep growing. So yesterday was how many deals started? 407 deals that we started
negotiating for customers yesterday. The day before that was 539 deals. Wow. We started. Yeah,
so really good stuff over here. This is backoncarage.com. Dealer ratings and then under reports,
we have some information about the impact of the work we are all doing together to try and
to try and help customers not waste so much time buying a car and deal with all this BS that we've
been talking about today. Let's call it a show for today, Pops, for those of you that are interested
in continuing to spread the word and to try and help the FTC here and try and help yourselves,
you know, stop wasting time. Resources from today's show are on carage.com,
beta. Use the data at carage.com slash beta, share your feedback, share your input.
On this crusade, you all want to get transparent pricing out there for everyone and hopefully
the examples today demonstrate why it's so necessary. It certainly demonstrates that there's
dealers out there that are taking advantage of the situation as it presently exists. And
it would be great if we could figure out a way to make that stop.
Yeah. All right, folks, we're back tomorrow with more Car Edge Live Pops. Enjoy the afternoon.
You do the same. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. See you tomorrow.
If you liked the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe. It really does help
the show to grow. Thank you for listening.
About this episode
The discussion centers on the FTC's recent warning to 97 dealership groups about deceptive pricing practices, emphasizing the need for transparent advertised prices that include all fees except government taxes. The hosts debate the impact of this letter, with one viewing it as a significant step toward consumer protection and the other skeptical, calling it more of a PR move without real enforcement. They highlight ongoing issues with add-ons and bait-and-switch tactics at dealerships, referencing Car Edge's dealer transparency ratings. The episode also touches on the broader challenge of policing marketplace websites and the importance of actual enforcement actions.
Today on CarEdge Live, Ray and Zach discuss the latest news from the FTC. Tune in to learn more! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com
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