The Car Price You Saw Online Was Never Real (The Roman Report)

Опубликовано 31 марта 2026, 14:00

Car dealerships are in hot water, as the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to 97 automotive dealer groups for allegedly advertising prices lower than what consumers actually pay. Required fees, dealer financing, fake discounts, unavailable cars, and all the other little games that buyers have been screaming about for YEARS are finally getting put on blast by the FTC. But is it too little, too late?

In this month’s episode of The Roman Report, I’ll talk about how dealerships have lost the trust of buyers by teaching them that the price they saw online was never real. I’ll also read you the FULL LETTER sent out to dealer groups by the FTC, so you can decide whether or not this letter has the power to really make a difference. Is the trust between car dealerships and consumers too broken to ever fix? Can the dealership model ever recover? Or will the bad reputation of price gouging car dealerships force us to find a new way to buy cars?

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Timestamps:
00:00 The Car Price You Saw Online Was Never Real
01:38 Theme Song
01:46 The FTC’s Warning Letter About Fake Car Prices
06:38 Why Buyers Feel Trapped By Dealerships
10:40 That OTHER Time the Government Tried To Fix This
13:56 Is the FTC Serious About Fighting Price Gouging?
18:55 The Newest Threat to the Car Dealership Model
20:06 What This Means for the Future of Car Buying
28:43 Sources and Photo Credits