Arizona Attorney General Goes After Car Dealers for Misleading Ads!

During the past 15 months, three Tucson-area car dealers have agreed to pay the state more than $275,000 after the Attorney General's Office filed lawsuits and claimed the car dealers' ads misled consumers, reports the Arizona Daily Star and as written in DealersEdge.com.

Dealers run into problems, an Attorney General's spokesman said, when customers can draw one conclusion from the big type and a different conclusion from the small type.

For example, in September 2004, the Attorney General sued a Toyota dealership claiming that newspaper and television ads promised 50 percent off the MSRP, on every new Toyota in stock. In the newspaper ad, the deal was followed by an asterisk, and said in small type, "See dealer for details."

According to the Attorney General, the 50 percent discount on the car was available only after the buyer first leased the new car for six years. Under the deal, a Toyota Avalon with MSRP of $29,942 would have cost the customer $30,331, the Attorney General's Office said. That's 1 percent more than MSRP, not 50 percent off. In January 2005, the Toyota dealer agreed to pay $152,000 to the Attorney General's consumer protection division.

In November 2005, the Attorney General sued another dealership claiming that, in multiple advertisements, the dealer offered free items that were not free!

According to the lawsuit, one deal offered customers a four-day vacation to San Francisco, a satellite dish and a refrigerator with each auto purchase. But the dealership added the cost of the items to the sticker price of the car, the lawsuit said.

In November 2005, the dealer agreed to pay $50,000 to settle the suit. For its part, a spokesman for the dealership said that the ads never claimed the store was giving away a free vacation, satellite dish and refrigerator with a car purchase. Those items were listed on the sticker, he said, and consumers were given the option of buying some, none or all!

And in December 2005, the Attorney General sued a Tucson Ford dealer claiming that a newspaper ad misleadingly promised 50 percent off MSRP. According to the lawsuit, the 50-percent-off sale involved just two trucks, both of which were sold by 8:30 a.m. on the first day.
The dealer agreed to pay $75,000 to settle the claims.

The moral of these stories is simple: don't believe anything you read in a car dealer's ad. These ads are designed for one thing , and one thing only - to get you in the door so their sales team can manipulate you through their "Car Selling System" into buying a vehicle.