Welcome to the Car Buyer's Bill of Rights Hotzone | Compli.com

Welcome to the Car Buyer's Bill of Rights Hotzone

ARTICLES+ SEE ALL ARTICLES

Article: Welcome to the Car Buyer's Bill of Rights Hotzone

Article Date: Friday, October 19, 2007

Article Source: Compli

Welcome-to-the-Hotzone-CBBORs-Movement.pdf

Welcome to the CBBOR Hotzone:
The Germ of an Idea Spreads

By: James E. Lawrence
Vice President
Compli
610 SW Broadway, Ste. #600
Portland, Oregon 97205
503-294-2020 x121

THE CBBORs PANDEMIC
“A pandemic (from Greek pan all + demos people) is an epidemic that spreads across a large region (for example a continent)…” - Wikipedia

It’s already happening. Ready or not…the average dealer’s world is about to get yet another jolt from the arbiter of legal fashion, California. With the final acceptance and promulgation of the California Car Buyers Bill of Rights, a whole new world of fresh and costly business processes and expensive consumer protections land squarely in the dealer’s collective lap.

“To date seven states (AZ, MA, MN, MO NJ, NY, and OR) have introduced bills containing provisions similar to those adopted in the California Car Buyers’ Bill of Rights (CA CBBORs). There are 15 bills total. As introduced, eleven included contract cancellation provisions…” - American Financial Services Association - Vehicle Finance Report - May 16, 2007

Once an idea like the CBBOR catches fire with politicians (e.g. populist and easy to support publicly), it spreads like a wildfire across the country because they tend to want to glom on and author, co-sponsor, amend and legislate at a pace normally set for official holidays or pay raises. Hence, the above is not the only the legislation “borrowing” from the CA CBBORs. Several other states, including PA, RI, TN, AK, TX, NV, IL and MO are considering similar and/or directly related legislation. The concept and elements of the CA CBBORs is causing a fever many state legislatures can’t resist.

WHAT THE OEMS GET TO DEAL WITH…
OEMs are the providers of stringent CPO/CUV requirements, a key element in the CBBORs, and the auditors of same. They represent the deepest of pockets, that would be affected by the negative fallout of litigation everyone in the compliance space knew was (is) coming.
Now CA-based legal teams are roaming dealer malls in pursuit of dealerships with out-of-compliance CPO programs and the OEMs are spending millions on periodic, scheduled, “see-it-coming-from-a-mile-away” audits from folks like MSI and Carcannon. Dealerships are busy places. They survive off average margins in the single digits. There are no layers of personnel waiting around to manage new compliance requirements as they arise, from Legislators or the Franchisor. So when another OEM program comes down the pike, e.g. CPO, CUV, Blue Oval, 5Star, Signature, etc, or if the State of California defines what “CPO” really means, dealers are going to give it the attention it needs when they can, the best they can. But this tends to inconsistency. And Inconsistency is a hungry lawyer’s friend.

OUTLOOK
With the success and growing payouts happening in CA, other states saw an opportunity to support the listless lawyers seeking a better life (e.g. dealer money) in the streets and halls of legislatures across the country. The growth of CBBORs has been startling. The first new bits of the alphabet soup of legislative actions broke-out in MA, MN, NY and NJ. In the less than 3
years since the beginning of the pandemic in California, 15 states (that I can find so far) have initiated similar, and in some cases, identical CBBORs legislation.

The interesting thing about an epidemic is that as defined by Wikipedia its “a classification of a disease that appears as new cases in a given human population, during a given period, at a rate that substantially exceeds what is "expected”…” epidemics it seems are merely a matter of scale and timing. Epidemics wax and wane over time…the emergence of CBBORs is a virus that is not going away and initial pain for dealerships will follow. But where flu’s once ravished our cities, ways of dealing with their effects and aftermath grew. New technologies and methodologies and management eventually reduced or eliminated much of this negative impact. So weaker (e.g. less compliant) folks get the strain and don’t survive while more resistant folks (e.g. more compliant) get stronger.

Dealerships need to inoculate themselves as soon as they can. Whether you are doing business in the rolling hills of Minnesota or in the cities of New York or the smog-soaked LA basin, there are new technologies and methodologies that can help support these new business requirements. The best part of these new software applications is that they enable new and productive and profitable ways to better manage and protect your business.

Question: what would you do if you knew for certain that you were going to get the flu? I don’t know about you but I would stand in line for my shot. Sure it hurts for a moment, but it can save your life.