MENU
SEARCH
The program is designed to help dealers, managers and front-line teams get more information about Federal Trade Commission pricing enforcement, advertising transparency and evolving regulation.
Read More →
Thomas B. Hudson - “No. Why should we pay ABC Forms Company 58 cents a form for those things? My brother-in-law says he knows a printer who’ll run them off for us for 12 cents each. Give me a copy of one of the ones you have left, and I’ll get us a bunch made.”
Read More →David Keller - What a month it has been! For the past three to four weeks, we have been busy assisting our GM dealers who received a “non-renewal agreement” letter to effectively close their new GM franchises down by October 2010 ...
Read More →Thomas B. Hudson - I was conducting an on-site dealership compliance audit of a buy here pay here store, looking over the dealership’s sales and F&I process from A to Z in an effort to decrease the dealership’s potential liability for violations of state and federal law. It’s a good thing that it was only lil’ ole me probing this dealership’s operation. If, instead, an FTC SWAT team had descended on the car lot, the dealer would be out of business ...
Read More →David Keller - This past year, most dealers struggled to make a profit or attempted to keep losses at a minimum, conserve cash and basically just stay alive. They were hit with some strange tax consequences generated by the headlines noted earlier in this article. Used vehicle wholesale prices, in most instances, were drastically reduced at December 2008 versus December 2007 due to diminished demand from customers. This resulted in LIFO income, rather than normal LIFO expense ...
Read More →Thomas B. Hudson - A friend who is a consultant to auto dealers regularly supplies me with examples of direct mail advertisements from his dealer clients. Almost always, the ads he forwards to me are ...
Read More →Dave Keller - You, your accounting personnel or your accountant can access your data from any Internet connection using communication software such as PC Anywhere, VPN, VNC and terminal services connections. This enables real-time analysis of your dealership data with your accounting personnel. The Internet also lets you download the data to other software or third-party vendors you have authorized to receive your data ...
Read More →Thomas B. Hudson - "Dolly" saw a 2006 Nissan Murano advertised on the Internet. When she contacted the dealer about the car, a dealer representative quoted the purchase price as $15,500. When Dolly drove to the dealership to pick up the car, a second representative told her the purchase price was actually $21,500. “Molly,” Dolly's sister, agreed to act as a co-signer so that Dolly ...
Read More →Thomas B. Hudson - The bailout mentality seems to be everywhere. Here’s an example. Customers borrow money from a bank to finance their car purchases. They default on their loans, and the bank undertakes court actions to recover the vehicles. The consumers discover that the loan officer they dealt with had pled guilty to defrauding the bank. The consumers decided that was reason enough to let them keep their cars ...
Read More →Dave Keller -Chrysler and GM have yet to prove how eliminating dealers is going to save them to a profit. They should let the economics of business weed out the dealers who are not profitable. Sooner or later, the non-profitable and under-capitalized dealers won’t be able to ...
Read More →Ron Smith - If, for whatever reason, you have decided that the time has come for you to exit the industry as a franchised new car dealer, the following is a very brief synopsis of things to consider. The following is a checklist I have given to some clients considering exiting...
Read More →
