#363 - Our Top Priority For 2025

This is the Independent Dealer Podcast, Education by Dealers for Dealers. Now here are your hosts, Luke Godwin and Jeff Watson.

Hello and welcome to the Independent Dealer Podcast with special guest Luke Godwin, brought to you by Buckeye Dealership Consulting. Hey, Luke, pop quiz.

Jeff, that is just, that is just so wrong on so many levels.

I'm gonna still giggle about it every time. Real quick question. What do you think a dealer's biggest, like, headache is? What's their biggest pain point? What, what, what really, like, gets us employees?

I think more than anything, I'd agree.

And a lot of people say cars. Yeah. Some people struggle with cars. Some people just go and pick them up.

Cars are easy. Cars, easy. You can buy cars. You can buy cars all day long.

Fixing them, getting leads, getting customers, making sales. I think it all boils, boils down to employees like, and as the, the bigger you get and the more layers of employees you add, the more chance some employee out there is saying or doing something wrong. Right. They've. You taught them right? You showed them. They have just decided to go rogue on you and they're doing it their own way.

Yep, for sure. But, you know, luckily we have, you know, a great sponsor and one of the, you know, most friendly people in our industry, Steve Levine, to, to navigate us through those murky waters.

Right?

Yeah.

Steve, I can't imagine anyone doesn't know you, but if there is that one listener out there that doesn't introduce yourself, what do you do?

Yeah. Steve Levine with Ignite Consulting Partners. My company does all sorts of compliance work for independent car dealers. I've been a lawyer practicing auto finance law my whole career. 30 plus years work with dealers around the country. Small, big, everything in between.

Yeah. Isn't that cool? So why I say that, Luke is my focus for this year is going to be really building out my policies and procedures manual. Right. I want everyone to know if they have a question, this is where they go to find an answer. If, if I need training, if I need to make sure people stay on track, it's written down somewhere and they can reference it. So there's no excuse as to why you went rogue and started saying something completely wrong or sometimes illegal. Right. Like it's there, it's in writing, just please review it. So with Steve is just the go to guy, right? He's the guy that's going to help navigate that stuff. One thing that really jumps out to me right now, we all saw the news yesterday, so this is such a timely episode. Steve, can you give us some insight as to what is going down with that CARS rule? And does it mean that it's just like kid in a candy shop now we don't got to worry about anything. And we go back, we can. We can do.

We can do and say anything we want, right, Steve?

No, unfortunately not, man. So nada. And Texas Dealer association challenged the CARS rule that that was going to go into effect, that they suit the ftc. The fifth Circuit the other day basically struck it down, said that the FTC didn't follow the notice of rulemaking that they have to follow and has struck it down. And yeah, I fielded a bunch of calls yesterday on this. And, you know, that's certainly great news. I'm very happy about it because I thought there were a lot of problems with the rule. I thought that it was going to make the car buying and finance process a lot more complicated. But it's not all good news because FTC has taken the position the whole time that the CARS rule codifies existing law. It's not like it's a whole new law. So they're already taking action against dealers based on laws that already exist. And then we saw that in December with two actions they filed against new car dealer groups. So, you know, it's not all good news. There is still tough law on the books that they need to be followed. People really need to look at their process and make sure that they're not doing anything. Because, you know, the FTC as well as the cfpb, has given plaintiffs lawyers a ton of information about how to attack car dealers. And that's always my biggest concern. It's not that the FTC or CFPB is going to show up. It's that every dealer I work with is in a town that has a couple of lawyers, and some of those lawyers sue dealers. So you have to separate yourself from the pack and make sure that you're doing things the right way.

Yeah, and I mean, that was my argument the entire time, was essentially, the CARS rule is already there. So why do we need a different layer? Why do we need another person talking about it? Because in my state, the Attorney General will come after you or the Department of Consumer affairs is going to come after you. My only problem is they don't come after the right ones. It seems like Steve, and car dealers are out there. We. We advertise all over the place. And so I get frustrated, and I know many other dealers get frustrated out there seeing the deceptive practices that other dealers do.

What.

What is. How do we get around that? How do we Turn these people in.

You know, I don't know that turning folks in is effective. I've talked to a lot of regulators over the years that tell me that their biggest source of leads isn't actually consumers, it's other car dealers.

So.

So I think there's some merit to that. You know, I, I think more importantly, join your state association, join your local association, join the national association, get everybody understanding what the best practices and what the standards are. Because you know what makes me sick is if you look at some of the cases that the, the ftcc, CFBP pursuit, they're horrible cases. And it paints the entire industry in a bad light. And then, you know, these are one person, small shops, just, you know, cowboy in it. These are big companies, lots of resources, just, you know, either they don't know better or they're choosing to kind of paint on the lines, whatever.

Do you think that's what it is, Steve? Do you think that it's these guys just these big operations are uneducated or don't know, or do you think it's some little. I missed. I forgot to dot an I here. And now the FTC sees they can make an example out of me and they know I have deep pockets.

Like, yeah, you know what I think some of it is. And I actually have a book coming out in a couple of months called Counterpunch and it talks about the mind frame of dealers. And I think one of the big obstacles that dealers face. Y' all are the greatest entrepreneurs in the world. Incredible entrepreneurs, very savvy, very business oriented. None of you signed up because you loved minutiae and regulation and, and having to, to go through this, you know, it's heavy lifting, it's strenuous activity. To understand all this, I think that's a big part of it. It's just, it's this barrier. And a lot of times you're trying to make budget, you're trying to move metal, and you are not focused on those issues that come back to haunt you.

What, what are the. So with it, with the rules that are already in place and the rules of that, that the safe safeguards or whatever it was called, we're looking at what are the three or four things that dealers should be super mindful of when. When pricing or whatever, the things that most attorney generals go after, what are the four number one things?

So I think the cars rule did a really good job of laying them out. And number one is advertising. Is your advertising transparent? Is it honest? Number two is the offering price. They had big issues with customers calling the dealership, getting one price, and then they show up and there's a couple of thousand dollars packed into it for different sorts of fees and products that are supposed to be voluntary, but the customer thinks they're mandatory and that stuff isn't going away. That is already lacking transparency. That's already an issue. And I think the other big one is, and I think dealers need to be honest about their closing process. Express informed consent. This is something that regulators have written about for years. They tried to codify it in the bars rule. Are you actually informing the customer, giving them the information they need to make an informed decision? And are they voluntarily doing this? You know, a lot of dealer packages that I look at, I look at their closing documents, they're contradictory, they're confusing. So I think dealers need to really take an honest look.

Well, confusing is not our fault. Confusing is attorney's fault. But contradictory is our fault.

Confusing because, you know, when I first started in this business, a closing package was maybe 10, 12 pages, and now it's 40. Yeah, and now it's 40 pages. Because every time it seems like a consumer advocate group gets on an issue, the industry comes up with another form to try to cut that issue down. So you've got pieces of paper about the GPS and about agreement to provide insurance and all these things that are mentioned in the retail solo contract. But now we think we have to have 20 other documents just to worry about. Suspenders.

Yeah.

Draw pictures, like diagrams, you know, Alexa cartoon. Alexa used to always say this, Luke, we need another document that said, that outlines. This is this. I said, babe, this is. This has already been done. We don't need another document. She's like, yeah, but they don't understand. I'm like, no, they don't listen. That's the reason. They don't understand. They don't listen.

That's huge. And, and we had that issue the other day, so someone brought it up in, I think it was our 20 group or maybe at convent in Carolinas the other day that basically said, because we serve some Spanish speaking customers. And they said, either present all your documents in Spanish or present none of them in Spanish. Because you're running into a, a situation where if you're giving them half in Spanish and half in English, they're like, well, I understood the Spanish ones, but I didn't understand the English ones. So what's the deal? Like, do you put all the onus on the customer and say these are all English? You have to bring a translator to Understand my documents, it's not on me. You need to bring someone because I do English. Like that was. I never even thought about that.

So I've been, you know, out of Texas. I've been dealing with this for 20 something years. And it's a scary issue because other than California, which has state laws that, that mandate you have documents and the customer's language, and other than the Buyer's guide rule that says if any part of the transaction is in Spanish, you have to have a Spanish Buyer's Guide, there's nothing that says that you have to have retail, installment contract and these other documents in Spanish. And in fact, the forms providers don't often make them in Spanish. So it's really a tough situation. And the scariest thing is when somebody says to me, oh, you know, I've got somebody here and we're going to translate the documents. I mean, you're just leaving yourself up.

For rewriting in whatever language they're using.

That sounds scary. Yeah.

And you know, kudos to a company like Secure Close that actually had the forethought that they actually have Spanish closings where they walk through the documents in Spanish. And so at least you have confidence that the same things being disclosed every time. Yeah, I, I always tell folks, you know, if you're relying on a 10 year old kid translating for their parents, you're just setting yourself up for a nightmare.

Hey guys, real quick, just to bust in and make sure you guys have moved your credit card processing over to Blitzpay by this time of year. It's been long enough. We've been telling you about it. You put your notice in with your current payment processor and your contract has expired. Like our good friend Melissa text me the other day and said, hey, I'm out of contract with my current provider. I'm moving to Blitzpay. Is this a good idea?

Yes. Jeff and I answered it for her to you. Yes, it is a good idea. Blitzpay is great service. It's taking cash out the office at different places and it's taking your credit card payments out of the office. So it's something that if you're not doing now, you should be doing it. You should be collecting fees on the payments you're taking so that you don't get hit over the head with credit card fees every month.

Yeah. And it's easier for your customers. So give the guys and gals over there Blitzpay call and get that credit card processing streamlined. Who's worse though? What, what is worse? I say, Mr. Customer in, in Spanish, I say this, you need to bring and, you know, translator for you to understand these documents and whether that's your uncle, your kid, your cousin, or Google, whatever. But I, you cannot expect my salesman don't put it on us to translate these documents because that's where the rub comes. Oh, well, the salesman told me it meant this. Like, is that an issue where now they blame us because we translated, we interpreted for them.

Right. So, so, so things that I've seen that I think work pretty well is, you know, I had one client that, that they made their own Spanish closing video. And they don't walk you through each document page by page, but they talk about, here's what you're going to be asked to sign today. Here's what this transaction is. Here are the key pieces, information you need to look for, for in the documents. I thought that's effective. Some have scripts. I think that's effective. But it's a real problem if you're just hoping that your staff is going to get this right. Same way every time.

Yeah.

And, and Steve wrote, wrote our scripts. We sent him our closing, our closing packet and said, steve, we want to make sure everybody's doing this. And that's. Jeff, you want to talk about something to put in your training, training manual, that script is in there. And anybody that ever does any closing has to know that thing word by word.

Yeah. It's important you're explaining those documents. Right. Because I'll sit here in my office and I'll hear a salesman explain a document and I'm like, oh, where did that come from? That's not even the title of the document. Like you're just making stuff up now. Oh, man.

Yeah, it happens. And I'm glad you're talking about policy content because policy content is so important. A lot of dealers overlook it. You know, they think they know I know what my policy is. I don't have to worry about it. I had a matter recently for a client. Somebody got denied for credit and they challenged the dealer. They complained that the state said they were discriminated against. Luckily, we had a really good underwriting policy. We had a fair lending policy, and we provided that to the state and said, here's exactly why they were declined. This is in our policy. And, you know, went away in a matter of minutes. If you don't have that backup, you get a consumer friendly regulator on the other side and they're off to the races.

I typically just send a picture of the face tattoo and just say, this.

Is why we you know, back to this point, Steve, about 20 years ago. 20. How old am I? No, let's say 25 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, I. We got one of those nasty letters that we had that we had denied somebody credit. And this is when I wasn't involved in associations, didn't know you anything. And someone came in with only disability, and I didn't want to finance them. And I. I told him the reason we weren't financing them because of a fixed income. Yeah, disability income. Oh, I got a nasty, nasty gram from a. From a state. A state department here in South Carolina. And I didn't know. Luckily, I mean, luckily the woman didn't go to the extreme, because she could have, and it caught. It would have cost me a lot of money.

And the scary thing now is with all the information available on the Internet, I mean, literally, I see it every day. I. I see my clients getting letters from folks and that they're getting this language right off the Internet. Plenty of law firm websites make this stuff available, and it basically teaches consumers how to set the dealer up.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I felt like we were being done like that one time, and luckily, you know, we followed it by the line because we had great teachers like you, Steve, that told us, hey, this is what you're supposed to do. And I guarantee you that person was trying to. To set us up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They.

They were checking how deep your bank account was first. Steve. And kudos to Steve. Yesterday, we had an issue at our dealership. During our management meeting. We had two questions come up that we were like, I don't know, man. Like, I think that's legal. I don't know if it's legal or not. Like, we should find out. And so luckily, I'm on Steve's program where I can send him an email. And Steve shot us back an answer, like, within an hour. He gave us an opinion and guidance that was like, oh, okay, yeah, that's kind of, you know, we. That's what we thought. Or, hey, we had no idea. So having the ability to have Steve at Access, like, saved us from so much headache, so much hassle, so much argument, like, even going down the wrong road or doing something that we shouldn't have been doing. Right?

I've been. I've been on that. I've been on that program for a while. And even after being in business 40 years, I still have to ask deep questions. How do we get set up on that if we're. If we're not on that, Steve?

Well, we'll work with folks however they want to work. Some people prefer to be hourly. Some project based that, this retainer program. So basically we go over where you are, what your gaps are, what your needs are, and we kind of come up with a plan for you. And then at the start of every month, we do a touch base. And okay, this is going to be the priority for this month because I want to make sure that you're getting value from your retainer agreement. Yeah. So, you know, we just kind of come up with maybe it's a three month, six month, nine month plan. This is what it looks like. And then we do a monthly touch base and then we execute. Yeah. And you know, some months during tax season, you may be too busy to focus on this, but, you know, we're there behind the scenes executing the plan, so. So that you're covered and protected.

Yeah, it's been huge. And, and the value of it is completely worth it when you think about A, doing something wrong or B, just having to go back and redo things that you've done for so long. Maybe the wrong way. Right. And you're like, oh, man, that really cost us a lot of money because we were missing this, this, or this. So it's been super helpful. Steve, I want to ask again because, Luke, we got one of them. What else do you see? Dealers not doing what. What else do you see as where we're stepping in it or maybe some exposure that we have? Because I feel like that brings a lot of value to us because we just don't know what we don't know.

Sometimes, you know, if you look at the cases that are being filed right now, a lot of it has to do with, you know, front end point of sale. You, you sold me a car that didn't perform as expected. You, you did certain things on the front end and you either didn't disclose them to me or you hit them. The other thing that I'm seeing a lot of right now is post repossession. You didn't send me the right letter. You're. You're charging me fees that legally you're not allowed to charge. And the whole energy behind that is that the CFPB got on that about 10 years ago and educated a generation of lawyers on how to pursue those claims. And, and now we see a lot of that. So, you know, first thing I always do when I start working with a new client is let's take a look at your documents, your front end documents, all your closing documents. Let's take a Look at your collection letters. Let's take a look at your post repossession letters, your deficiency letters. And, and then I want to look at the advertising, the website. I feel like if we look at all that quickly, you're going to be in a much better position to, to know where your gaps are. And then, then we just systematically go about closing those gaps.

A couple years ago at a 20 group, Steve, you audited our websites. And I would have never thought about my website being, beside pricing being something where there could be litigation. What are the main things that dealers are missing when it comes to our websites?

The big thing is trigger terms. If you're quoting a down payment, according to truth and lending law, you have to quote some them other terms. And a lot of times those are missing. A lot of times dealers aren't saying things the right way, you know, that they'll, they'll go too far when they talk about safety features. And, and then lawyers are using that to say, well, you're, you're representing how the car is going to perform in the event of an accident. That's led to some pretty dangerous cases. You know, another big thing, and this came up in that audit, a lot of dealers weren't taking advantage of everything they have going in their favor. If you offer a limited warranty, man, you should be blasting that from the rooftops. That's a very valuable thing, needs to be talked about that if you have in house service departments, that's something that, that should be focused on on your website. So there's opportunities being missed as well. You know, the other big thing we see with advertising, and I talk about this 10 times, 20 times a year, it doesn't seem to make an impact social media. Most of my clients, even if we're following the program, even if they're doing a good job, they've got their employees on social media just saying all sorts of things. And regulators consider those advertisements for your dealership. So it's really important to have a policy tell your folks, this is what we expect you to do on social media. And what we don't want you to do is social media. Here are some templates that you could use, here's some ideas how you could say it that are compliant, because that's been a big one the last couple years.

Yeah, it's so funny. We all get on, you know, Marketplace or Instagram or whatever. We see cars and we're like, wait a minute, that looks like it's at a dealership, or that looks like it's a Salesman for a dealership. But nowhere in the ad does he say he's a salesman at that dealership, you know, and he might have financial terms in there that trigger disclosures that aren't there. And it's like, man, if this new car store knew that this salesman had 20 listings that were all completely off base, some new, completely wrong price.

Yeah.

Figured it out.

I had a deal a couple of years ago and consumer complained to the regulator. Regulator went and did their own investigation and sent a really hostile, threatening letter. So I get on the phone with them and I said, look, this wasn't the dealership. This was personnel. They were acting on their own. Regulator flat out said to me, I see your. Your client's name in the background. That's their sign, that's their car, that's their ad. And, and the only reason we were able to get a good income outcome out of that case was because we actually had a social media policy. Employees had to sign off on it and say, yes, I've been told this. These are the standards I'm going to conform to. And that person didn't. And the regulator said, okay, you've done enough to where that. That's just somebody going off on their own. You're going to reprimand them. Person wound up being fired. But, but the, the dealership didn't get fined.

That is. I've never like, never even thought about having a social media calls inside of our. Our contract that they have to sign. That mean that's.

That's awesome enough to. Yeah, it's easy enough to do. And, and in that, if you're going to let them advertise down payment. If you're going to let them advertise any of those trigger terms, just give them an example. If you say this, then this is the way you say the rest of that ad. This is how you have to make it prominent that this is how you position it. And just that little step right there reduces your risk a lot.

Yeah. Every time I talk to Steve, my to do list gets longer and longer.

Your employee manual was this.

Yeah.

Now it's that big and everything changes. Steve, one thing that came up. Jeff, you okay to leave that?

No, no.

Yeah, I think.

I think I'm going. Where you're going is one thing that came up in our 20 group. And this is a shout out to our good friend Jack Carter.

Yes. This is where I was going the g. How funny.

Weird. It's like we spent a week together. Wavelength. You do it, then you do it.

I don't I don't want to steal your thunder. Okay, Jeff, we talk about it every week. And if.

If you.

If you're not already doing reinsurance, you need to do it. You need to call Buckeye, and if you're already doing reinsurance, you probably need to do more. So give those guys a call, and they will take care of you and get you all set up.

Yeah, for sure. It's funny that we've harped on it for, what, like, four years now. They've been a sponsor of the podcast, and we keep telling people, and yet every week, every convention we go to, we find someone new that's like, oh, I just heard about this reinsurance thing, or, oh, I've heard about you guys talk about it, and I just never pulled the trigger until now. And it's like, wow, it really took you 365 episodes to realize that you need to be doing this. So it's pretty crazy, but every day people are making it happen.

Yeah. Just the other day at the. The event in Greenville, we're talking to somebody about cpi, and I just said, watch this spreadsheet real quick. And started doing the numbers.

And.

And their eyes were getting so big, they were like, I can make that much money? Yes, you can make that much money doing it. So give the guys a Buckeye call. Shoot. Give me a call. I'll walk you through it and. And show you what's going on. Credit reporting, Steve, that's not where I was going. Oh, really?

You go first, though, then I'll do mine.

Okay. So one thing that came up during Hot Topics was credit reporting and the goods and the bads and the ugly. And we've been one that's since probably since maybe 2000 or even earlier than that. I've been reporting credit, and I think it's something that every good buy here, pay here, store should do, because it's beneficial for the customer, is beneficial for the dealer. But I know there's pitfalls. What is your say and what are the best practices? A dealer who doesn't do it yet and wants to do it or that does it, what that does do it and need to do.

So I'm glad you brought this up. We're actually doing a webinar February 18th with Automaster, talking about credit reporting and the importance of doing some audits and training your staff. Because the number one problem that we see when we start working with somebody is there's no training when it comes to credit reporting and dispute handling. And you have to be strong on both of Those. So we can teach your staff how to do mini audits. We can do it for you. We can teach you how to respond to those disputes, because there's a ton of liability in that stuff. That's where the lawsuits are being filed right now. And I don't mean to be flippant about it, but a lot of times I ask somebody, you've been doing this five years. Where'd you get your training? Well, you know, so and so taught me they were doing it, and then they went on maternity leave or they got fired. Now I'm doing it. They've never had any formal training. Yeah, we've got like five classes in our online training platform specifically about that issue. We could spend an hour with somebody and really teach them what they need to know. And then it's just a matter of understanding what your DMS does, what you, as the dealership have to do. And, you know, even our clients that do this really well, they usually have us come in once a year and just do a mini audit. Let's look at 50 accounts. Let's look at the most likely scenarios where there's going to be an issue, and let's make sure.

So, Steve, most of our dmss report it for us.

Good.

Dmss. I know Automasters are AMS doesn't and IDMS does. I mean, they're doing it. Why do we need to look at it?

Because a lot of times there's what we call logical inconsistencies. And sometimes in this business, you know, we all know this, it's not a straight line. You take a lot of zigzags. You know, payment was late, then. Then you push them forward, then they were late again. Maybe they filed bankruptcy. That there's just a lot of things that happen, and the next thing you know, two years later, you. You get a dispute from somebody and you don't even bother to investigate. You just say, nope, our system's got to be right. And it turns out when you open up that account. No, it's not. Right now you've got an issue because you didn't investigate it, you didn't respond.

So, yeah, so that could be happening. But as long as we are just checking randomly, and then when someone. I mean, we get them all the time. We get, you know, through E. Oscar or through. Through mail, in letters. Hey, you didn't do this, right? I mean, we. We always answer those. I mean, that's. That's a big deal. I know.

Yeah. A lot of times when I do a site visit, one of the first things I do is, is I'll go in the office and I'll ask to see those. A lot of times there's like a stack of papers in the corner. Yeah, we, we don't know what to do with those. We just put those over there. Those are like taking, those are ticking time bombs. Because the number one action being brought against, against accredited industry and this is like four years running, it's credit disputes. It's like its own little cottage industry. These law firms have set up separate companies to, to fish for cases for them.

Yeah. E. Oscar is, has been such a thorn in my side. Like just like getting signed up with it was a hassle. Staying logged in and having access to it is just such a freaking so much brain damage. But it is.

I, I don't know if you've seen this. CFPB has gone after Experian, they've gone after Equifax. They've been really hot on this issue that they just think there's a fundamental problem with the way credit reporting is handled. And I don't think it's going to go anywhere go away anytime soon.

So let me go down my, my sidetrack that I wanted just a shout out to our buddy Jack. GPS and starter interrupts. Is there any kind of like new weigh in or attitude on me putting starter interrupts on cars? I think maybe one dealer, not sure who it was, suggested hooking it up to the fuel pump as a way to make it so it couldn't be tampered.

Steve, I shut that down.

Liability.

I shut that down so fast I was like absolutely not. Don't do that. That's ridiculous.

Anyway, I'm just going to hook it. I'm just going to attach it to maybe like the front driver's side lug nuts so that it just ejects the front tire when I don't want it to be driven. No. So but, but what is the rule around or just maybe give us some basic guidance and best practices because yes, for me shutting someone's car off with a starter interrupt and having to sit in their driveway overnight scares the bejeebas out of me that I will get sued because they had a medical emergency and couldn't get to the hospital or you know, this, that or the other.

So just, just a couple of good rules to follow. Disclose. I'm a big believer. Even if it's listed in the retail installment contract, have that separate piece of paper that explains this is, is what the device does that this is how it's going to be used. These are the privacy considerations. So, so it needs to be disclosed. And that's. Most state laws say that it needs to be disclosed. If you disable a car that, that is considered in just about all states as constructive repossession because you've exercised control over or the use of the vehicle. So if you're in a right to cure state, you, you've got to use the devices in accordance with, with right to cure laws. You've got to understand where the vehicle is located. You know, if you live in, in some of those northeast states, that they may be in three different states in a day. So, so you need to consider all those factors. And then, you know, my personal opinion, I think that, I hate to say it, but I think that a lot of folks are lazy and then they rely upon the gps. Instead of picking up the phone and following up with the customer and trying to work them through the process, they're just like, oh, I'll turn off the car and I'll make them call me. And a lot of times that's not the best outcome.

Or I leave it off overnight, or I leave it off for three days with it sitting in their driveway. My opinion is if you're ready to shut the car off, you're shutting it off so you can go repo it and it won't go anywhere. But it just seems like that you just have a recipe for disaster if you've got a disabled car sitting in their driveway.

Well, we, we shut off anticipating communication after we've tried to communicate a ton of times and they haven't. And we still try to communicate even after we turn the car off. And I think that you have to do all you can to make sure you get a customer to, to call you.

Yeah. So I'm in favor of the, the devices. I think that they work wonderfully. I, I think that if you follow what the providers are telling you, use the right documentation, it's a great tool. But, but it is not the be, be all, end all. It's part of the process.

Yeah.

So, and you need to have a, and you need to have a written policy and procedure to cover that.

Absolutely. Because I, boy, I, I have seen folks share information when they shouldn't have. I've seen employees get a hold of things that they shouldn't have. So yeah, you, you need to build in protections.

It's the worst thing about gps. Someone comes in, hey, my, my, my car got stolen. Or this, this, can you track it and tell me where it's at it's like, no, no, no, you're freaking crazy and your girlfriend has it and you're trying to figure out where she went with her boyfriend and it's cheating on you. Like I'm, I'm not.

If they're the owner, they're the owner of that car. I will do that. If they're not.

What if they're joined?

We, we've had, we've had this happen before where somebody, somebody.

If you think the car stolen, you file a police report and have them call me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So. So one thing I want to bring up you. Bring you bring up you. Reminds me of something. So I've seen folks market this as a theft deterrent device and states don't like that. Call it what it is. Talk about the Cape. Now, it may help in the event that a vehicle is stolen to recover that feel it may. But you have to be transparent about what it does, how it's used.

We've, we've had, we've had, we've had situations. Our customers cars were stolen. We were able to locate and help and work with the police. We've also had an occasion where there was an abduction and they were able to get to the, the police were able to get to the people quickly. So they are very useful and, and done properly are, are really awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the stories, stories I could tell about the GPS tracking situation. So to wrap this up, Steve, we're going to get, we're going to just be able to dive right into the deep end of this in Las Vegas. Right. If we show up to Compliance Unleashed, that's going to be. It's in conjunction with the annual Here Pay Here right.

In April Pay Here United summit.

Okay, that's right. So, so what we did is we joined forces because let's face it, not everybody wants to go to Texas for a compliance conference. So we joined forces with Biopay United. It's going to be run compliance at least in conjunction with the summit. It's April 22nd to 24th. It's going to be a ton of great education. Tuesday the 22nd in the afternoon, we kick it off with four hours of compliance content and then the rest of the conference where we kind of go side by side simultaneously, that the business folks could learn a ton in the Buy Here Pay United classes. The compliance folks, folks that you want to protect your business. We're going to cram a ton of information into our curriculum. I mean, you go to these classes, it's going to open your eyes to A lot of ways that you can protect your business, a lot of risk that, that once you identify it, you can shut it down. But you got to be able to identify it and that's what we teach.

So if we, if we register for Buy Here, Pay Here United, do we also need to register for, for Compliance Unleashed?

That's the great thing. It's, it's two conferences. It is one registration gets you access to both. So one flight, one, one hotel registration, one conference registration. Yeah, I think it's a big win for, for dealers because it's just there's never been so much value in one place.

I agree.

They also include one trip to the buffet. So.

No, no, that's, that's bad advertising.

And I want to mention this. So we've started something at the, at the beginning of this year we started what's called compliance accountability groups and our idea is let's get the people responsible for protecting the business. Let's get them together. It's almost like a giant 20 group and we're going to talk about what's getting dealers in trouble, what successful dealers are due to protect themselves. And it's like going to be a giant think tank. At Compliance Unleashed, we're actually going to have our first in person meeting of that group. So we're really excited about that because I think this is an opportunity. We put together a compliance composite so dealers are going to be able to measure themselves against other dealers and maybe I'm weak in this area. Let me reach out to so and so. They're about my size, same resources and they're doing much better at this. So we're jacked about that.

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Sounds great.

Cool.

So to wrap this up, where can dealers get a hold of you if they do want to reach out? Get on your retainer program, send over their packet. That's the one of the first interactions I had with you is I sent you my whole deal jacket and I said here's a deal jacket, here's all my documents. And you went through and told me what I was missing. What contradicts. That's one of the smartest, smartest things to do right away because again, you don't know what you don't know and to be honest with you, I barely understand the documents. So there's no way I can fix it. So how do we reach out to you?

So you could always email infoignitecp.com or just go to our website, ignitecp.com and you know, if I'm at the desk. I'm checking every hour on the hour. So I'll get back to you and. And we'll set something up.

Awesome.

That's right.

Okay, well, got a big old post it note of things I got to get to today, so I gotta get out of here.

Well, thank you both so much for this opportunity. I love speaking to. To the dealers out there. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.

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