A little over a month ago, the Federal Trade Commission’s CARS Rule ceased to worry auto dealers when a federal appellate court shut that regulatory door.

Two and a half years since the agency proposed it, the car-shopping regulation seemed destined to fade into dealers’ bad-memories files, since the FTC under the Trump administration is highly unlikely to resurrect it in any form.

The FTC said it proposed the rule to protect consumers and make the car shopping and buying process more transparent. Industry leaders, though, said its measures are already on the books and that the rule would have burdened dealers – and consumers – with redundant and expensive requirements.

Unnecessary rules shouldn’t be on anybody’s priority list. But consumers do need to be able to trust businesses they buy from, particularly for big purchases like cars. 

So the court’s decision seems like a good excuse for dealers and their F&I departments to conduct an “audit” of sorts to make sure they’re doing everything they can to help customers feel comfortable. After all, when a consumer trusts a salesperson, he or she is far more likely to buy, including add-on products.

Such a review could focus on vehicle and F&I sales processes with an eye toward ensuring they unfold in such a way as to reassure customers that dealers have their best interests in mind.

As F&I and Showroom columnist and training expert Rick McCormick recommends in his latest Peak Performance column, processes should be consistent among customers, and the customer should be the focus of them. 

“You must decide that what the customer wants from the process is more important than what you want,” he says in part.

The more trust dealers cultivate with their customer bases, the better sales will be, and the less likely that regulators will propose new laws like the CARS Rule. 

Especially when some bend the law, it’s inevitable that regulators will take notice. As industry legal expert Terry O’Loughlin points out in a recent Compliance column, liberal-leaning states are likely to ramp up enforcement during the new Trump years. 

Of course, most dealers do the right thing. So those can only further burnish their good reputations by tuning up their sales approaches.

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