Check out the video below for a discussion on Electronic Title Registration Fees.
In this video, I talk about how much a dealer can charge a customer and what it can cover. Don’t overcharge for ETR or you might face serious consequences.
Below is a transcript of the video:
I know there are dealers that have just watched the last video where I go through advertising and I explained that a dock fee or a dealer fee cannot be added to an advertised price and they are thinking, “okay, well, I’ll just fluff the ETR fee a little bit, since what is that, anyway? It’s admin fees. It’s a couple of different things. Nobody knows.” Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
The State is heavily investigating ETR fluffing. It is a bad idea, and it is a violation. While the Georgia State laws don’t specifically limit the amount of the ETR fee, the ETR fee has to be directly tied to the amount that the dealer incurs for Electronic Title Registration. What do I mean by that? Let’s say that the title registration is $20 to actually register the title.
Then there are five minutes of time involved in preparing the paperwork to do that and somebody is paid $20 an hour (that is like $2). So $25 is a reasonable ETR fee.
$399 is not a reasonable ETR fee and is the kind of fee that the State will investigate. Remember a couple of videos ago, I explained that when the State investigates a violation if they find one, it is a penalty violation for each one. There is a penalty associated with each one. So if a dealer is charging a $399 ETR fee when it should be $25, that is a penalty for every single time it happens. It is a mistake. Do not do it.
The only thing that can be added to an advertised price is tax, tag, and title. The title fees have to be reasonably tied to the amount of money that the dealer has to spend to actually process the title.
For more videos on the Georgia Car Law Authority series, please visit www.georgiacarlaw.com.
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