Wake up, Buy Here, Pay Here people. It's a beautiful day. Go grab yourself another cup of joe and say hello to Jim and Michelle Rhodes on the Buy Here, Pay Here morning show. Take it away, you two. Music Just happy Wednesday, everyone. Happy to have folks here. Happy to have folks here. It's, yeah, White Hat Wednesday. And I know, like, today's topic is going to be, a lot of people are like, law. Pfft. but you know, this is, this is important stuff. Well, it's hard. It's really hard to make legal stuff sexy. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, you know, the, the, the, uh, the topic today is, is about some things that dealers have to work about, work with, but, um, just be aware of, be aware of. Yeah. Right. So yeah, it's all good. A couple of quick announcements. Um, we have tomorrow, Thursday for our VA dealers. We have our going to be awesome mastermind. This will be the first mastermind that we have, uh, done and we're we're handling masterminds virtually a little bit differently but we're digging into one of our members uh business plan and we invite people to come be on the screen yeah cpa will be there so this is just for v eight plus so um and all of our v eight membership so I would just say Jim, I've heard you talk about it enough. Send me an email here. Okay. I'm going to put my email address. Well, and just real quick, if, if you haven't yet joined V eight and want to want to step in as V eight plus actually V eight too, because this is, this is the last V eight plus meeting that all V eight members are going to be invited to. You don't have to have had your first initial meeting. Just you have to have a contract and the, the the, the what is that clause? I can't think of it. Well, confidentiality. Yeah. So that whatever it is that you're here, you're not going to talk about. And yeah. So if, if that's something you're thinking about, this is going to be a really, really, really, really rich and interesting conversation. Yeah. This one's around the business plan. We're taking one of our dealers and digging into the business plan. So we got that tomorrow. So, so just my point is I put my email up there. Send me an email that says, Jim, I'm okay. I'm ready to join a VAT dealer group. But no, Yeah, enough. And then Friday on the broadcast, we have Casey Stanton, who is marketing. No, Friday is Casey Leidecker, who we're doing this thing about. So and who we're having the business plan. conversation tomorrow on the V eight plus, we're going to have him on the show on Friday to kind of talk about some of the higher points or, you know, his, maybe some of his takeaways. And then next Wednesday is Casey Stanton, who is a, um, he owns a company that teaches people how to be fractional CMOs, which is a corporate marketing officers. And he's going to talk about where marketing has changed and how to, how we can keep really relevant. and how we're communicating with people. Because sometimes I think that in buy here, pay here, we start to work like in an echo chamber. And so it's, you know, it's what are all the things that are happening here? What are the pings that are coming from within our sphere? But there's a lot of stuff that's outside of it that could really be helpful to a lot of dealers. Yeah. So again, Casey Leitaker from RBH Groups will be here as he's a North Carolina dealer. We'll be here to talk about that. you know, his business plan. So shall we bring in our guest? I think that is a fantastic idea. Allison Harrison, standing by. Hi, Allison. Hey, so glad you're here. Allison, for those of you that are not familiar with Allison and her connection with us, is that she is, I guess you would call the legal counsel for White Hat Way. and is stepping in to assist us in a lot of those legal questions. Broadly said, she is supporting our mission and legal days. So we're grateful for that. They're trying to do a lot of good for dealers. And she's a lot of fun. I mean, we were looking at some of the content that you put out there and it's just, it is when we talk about marketing, it's education that is just like, it's quick, it's fast. It's like, here's the things. Mm-hmm. I love it. I mean, folks don't have a huge attention span, right? Like just if you get quick hitters and also it tries to make law fun. Because if I write a law review article or record a video that's as exciting as any of those, no one's watching it. No one's reading it. Right. Exactly. So Allison, by the way, is being a trooper this morning. She got a cold. So you hear that in her voice. She's she's being tough and showing up with a cold. Thank you. She's going to power through a little mug there. She got a little tea, whatever. Yeah. Yeah. yeah all good glad to have you here let's dive into we better talk about first the cars rule because I see in the news and I don't pay a lot of attention like I got my own stuff to do allison so I don't pay attention to the legal stuff for dealers so you want to share with us kind of what the latest news is on cars rule yeah so the cars rule went into effect in twenty twenty four but it got stayed um and so recently it was I think either friday or monday I get the days confused it officially got axed. Like the circuit court, the fifth district circuit court or fifth circuit court said this, it wasn't instituted properly. Like they skipped steps when they implemented the cars rule. For folks who don't know the cars rule had a robust requirement for dealers when they're selling cars. And it, the rule basically said, yes, we know we're having them sign retail installment contracts, but that's not sufficient to explain what the interest rate is, what their payments are. So on top of, the retail installment contract that you're signing, you also need to give a verbal disclosure and a separate written disclosure, which made no sense. You have a retail installment contract, it's governed by truth and lending or the consumer leasing act for our leasing dealers. And so that has been, invalidated, rolled back. I'm not sure the right term. It's just gone. It's gone. It's gone. It's not under review. It's not. I mean, technically, it could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but I don't think there's appetite for an appeal on this. And I don't think this administration, the cars will all fits with their motto on how government should be. So I think we can say that that is done behind us. You know, there are some things in there that might linger if you will that are low burden that some states already have like if you advertise the price it's two fifty with three thousand dollars down at twenty percent interest you have to say how much that is over the whole loan you're already doing that in your truth and lending so doing it in your advertising isn't a huge burden on anyone that's something that might stick around Yeah. Well, and I can just say from a White Hat Way perspective, you know, that's a big part of our work is we're asking dealers to, you know, if you think about operating in White Hat Way, that would mean that we're going to be transparent in our marketing. We're going to be transparent at the point of closing. We're going to be more than transparent. We're going to help the customer understand fully what they're buying because we want that experience for the customer, right? Yeah, a hundred percent. So yeah, for White Hat Way dealers, I don't think it's going to be a big change into what you're doing. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So sound like that when we can kind of put aside for a time and like you say, don't expect in the Trump administration and necessarily see that one come back around. But so so we still think obviously dealers ought to disclose and make sure their customers know what they're buying. And I think your life will get a lot easier. We're mostly here to talk about. What do I do if I get sued? So kind of this can tie into all the disclosure stuff. Like what's the typical experience, Allison, for a used car dealer? Remembering most of our dealers that would be listening are buy here, pay here, lease here, pay here. Like what's the scenario? If they find themselves getting sued, they get served papers or whatever, and they're expected to appear in court. What happens? So the first thing is you get served. Most people think of it as like the process server shows up at your doorstop. That's how you get served. It's not always the case. Most courts and most states allow you to serve by certified mail or FedEx. So the first thing I tell everyone is be diligent about your mail. It sounds so silly, but often we get called in. So our firm's licensed in Ohio and Michigan, and we defend dealers in these cases. We get called in when there's a day left to file an answer where they've already got judgment against them because they didn't check the mail or didn't know what it was. And so first thing first, check your mail. Second thing is read it. But if it has something that looks official, it came from a court, it has a state seal on it because they all will have something. Call your attorney. If you don't have an attorney, call Jim. If you or your state association. Yes. Yeah. Find someone who knows this area of law to help you. I know so many folks, like ninety percent of the dealers that come to our firm will say, but Allison, I didn't do anything wrong. And I'm like, look, I believe you and I want to prove that, but we don't get to just go in and talk to the judge right away. Like that doesn't happen. There's like this whole procedure and documentation that happens. And so like, even if your God is, I didn't do anything wrong. I helped this customer so much. You still have to defend it so they don't get a judgment against you. So check your mail. and call someone for help. Those are like the first two things. Yeah. And you kind of breezed over something I think is significant. If the dealer doesn't act and that date comes, then they're looking at a judgment against them potentially. Like if they don't appear on their own behalf or to defend themselves and then the court very well may just place a judgment, right? Most of the time it's called a default judgment. Yeah. They get it. And the thing, the disconnect is we see all these things go right to trial on TV, right? that's it's not how it works so if you're in like a small claim situation you get a complaint you get a hearing date it's a trial right like that but most of these cases are not brought in small claims because they have a really low threshold for damages right it's usually a few thousand dollars and it'll depend on state if you're in any other court they have to file an answer it's like a written thing and then there's written discovery you never get to see the judge so like Some folks wait because they're like, well, I was waiting for a trial date. And so you don't get a trial date right away. That's the biggest thing I think folks need to know is like, if you get it, you need to take action so you don't get that judgment against you because your trial date is going to be Eighteen months later. Yeah. A quick aside. And then we come back to the same things like some of the things you just shared on social media were about this idea of can I defend myself? Like, can I? Of course, this assumes that you have a court date, right? And all this stuff. But I think what I understood from your social media posts is in most jurisdictions we could defend ourselves. We're not going to recommend it when somebody like Allison's available. You know, we think you ought to call Allison and get some legal help. But but but let's talk about that part. so no you can't if you're a business if you are a sole proprietor one we need to talk because you probably shouldn't be a sole proprietor but if you're an llc or a corporation you likely can't represent yourself so the reason if we look at an llc or corporation you get that protection from personal liability because it's a separate legal person in the eyes of the law so if you as the owner or sole member or shareholder shows up you are representing another person which means you're practicing law. If we look at the definition of practicing law, it's representing another person's interest. Got it. Gotcha. Interesting, because I think a lot of dealers are like, oh, I'll just murmur, murmur. And this sounds like the system has been framed out that that's just not the case anymore. Sometimes in small claims, you can't. And again, that's going to be state-specific. But outside of small claims, you likely can't. And I wouldn't. Because I am an attorney. I wouldn't underwrite a loan. You wouldn't trust me. I mean, I legitimately know how to do it. But just because I kind of have an idea of how it works doesn't mean I should. And the same thing for representing yourself when you get sued. You may know kind of how it works, but that doesn't mean you should. I don't want to do my own taxes because I'm not a CPA. I could. And I think it's kind of the same thing. You could, but should you? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I feel the same about doing repairs on my own car. Could I? Yes, but I need to go somewhere this afternoon. So I probably should. Yeah. Yeah. Or I mean, you're thinking, oh, this is an easy job. And the minute you've tore apart the thing, it's like, oh, I don't have a wrench that's going to open this thing up or whatever. And it's like, Or I broke it. Or I broke it. And now I'm stuck in a bad place. So the same can happen here. I just think we really want to get legal help in that situation. So you, though, on this, if there's people that are facing something like this, you just are in Ohio and Michigan, did you say? I'm in Ohio and Michigan, and I'm working on Pennsylvania right now. Okay. And actually, Alison, you are the lawyer associated with Mid-Atlantic region. Mid-Atlantic, Ohio and Michigan, they represent all those independent associations. That's awesome. Very good. So let's dive into the the thing about what what dealers get sued if they're if they're buy here, pay here, lease here, pay here, like more on the financing or leasing side. What do you see? Just kind of general, generally speaking here, what are the things that you see these dealers get sued over? So the general theme is I bought a car and it broke and it's your fault. Like that is the general theme, but within that theme are you didn't calculate your interest, right. Or, um, your late payments exceeded the state maximum, or you repoed my car and didn't provide me the proper notice. So it, but almost all of them have a component of, I bought a car, it broke and it's your fault. Okay. Yep. And that's what exacerbated, that's what made me go find a lawyer. Right. Right. They go to the lawyer because their car doesn't work the way they want it. And then the lawyer finds all of these other like technical violations to add to it. So, you know, Jim and I were having a conversation about this. We talk about your payer twenty four seven. And yeah. And and so I was we were talking about the likelihood of getting sued. And, you know, he's like, I don't know that a lot of our customers can even afford an attorney. And so are there I mean, is this is this something that that is a factor or, you know, to clarify when she means our customers, she means the customers of the dealers, the customers of the dealers. Yeah. Yeah. So consumers. have a different kind of structure around it. So most consumer attorneys that take these cases that sue dealers, sue builders, sue businesses, can do it on a contingency fee where they're getting a percentage of what's getting recovered. That's a typical model, but you also have to keep in mind if you're in the buy here, pay here, and lease your pay here, you may qualify for legal aid as a consumer. And so those attorneys are free. Now they have the right to recover their attorney's fees as well, the consumer standpoint so much of this is a different fee structure so they can't afford it um because it doesn't cost them anything initially gotcha gotcha now is that I what is the likelihood then because every dealer has some kind of friction around my car broke and it's your fault what's the likelihood of someone getting sued so I think so much of this is how the dealer handles it when the car breaks or when something doesn't go well with a customer, we can't avoid it completely. Like that is just, it's a fact of life as a business owner, you're probably getting sued at some point, but we can reduce the likelihood that you do get sued, which is taking care of your customer. Oh, it broke. Let's talk about how do we get it repaired? What does that cost look like? We want as a buy here, pay here and lease your payer. You want that car rolling down the street because if the customer can get to their job, you'll get paid. Right. So, It's taking that step to say like, okay, how do we fix this? Is it we give you a loaner car for a week while we repair it? Is it we do a collateral swap and we take you out of that car and we get you into something else, the payments remain the same. It's those type of things that can help reduce the liability of getting sued because by and large, if the customer is happy, the car works, any of the like technical things, maybe a box wasn't checked or something isn't gonna result in a suit. They're not going to an attorney appears to be great to them. An attorney is going to look for all of the things and just really, you know, break it down into the minute pieces. And that's a lot of like what I have to educate my clients when they come to me and not everyone, but sometimes I'm like, I don't think that the customer's complaint of like the car broken, it's your fault is valid. I do think you didn't fill out the buyer's guide correctly. And so like that alone creates a liability. And so we have to we have to do something because it's black and white. You didn't check the box. Right. Good. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. So that's for those listening or not familiar, like the, which is referring to the buyer's guide is going to be the FTC thing that's required to be placed on every vehicle. Is it as is, does it have a warranty? I mean, exactly what is disclosed and they're posted on the cars and then the customer will sign one at the time of closing. So it's really important to get that one right. And then I think Allison, we work with a lot of dealers who have, I'll call it after delivery support solutions, whether the customer opted for a service contract or the dealers including some warranty, or maybe they have some other support that they can provide. So most dealers that we work with are mindful of that. They recognize the car needs to be running, but we know also that I kind of live by the rule that often, especially in customer service arena, The customer's perception is our reality as dealers. So if they perceive one of the things I remember an attorney saying in a classroom situation years ago is that we don't want our customers in attorney's offices. And so if they have the feeling that they've been wronged, we need to be aware and we're going to step in and have that conversation, do what we can to, you know, within, within reason, we want to be consistent, but we definitely want to be aware that the customer perceives that they've been wronged. And this is the customer who, if we don't find a way to fix that thing or you get them happy, that's the customer that can end up in an attorney's office. Yeah, it's a hundred percent right. And Jim, you hit on something that I didn't talk about, which was your warranties and your service contracts. Okay. As dealers, you take for granted for like, well, yeah, you just take it to any repair shop and they submit a claim. Or you can only take it to these repair shops. Or educating your customers when you give them that product, whether they buy it or it's included, so they understand how to submit a claim. So many of these suits are, they never submitted a claim because they either didn't know how or they just didn't. And had they, it would have been covered and it fixed it or they didn't know it wasn't covered. Yeah. And so like, you know, so many of these contracts, they're not going to cover your taillight or seals, right? Like those are usually excluded, but telling the customer, Hey, these things aren't included, but if it happens. Call us. Yeah. And that actually, I was writing a little note as Jim was talking, and that really parallels and complements this, is that we've had the conversation that you think about yourself, and when you're going through a closing of a car or a home, something that requires a lot of paperwork to go in there, there's lots of fine print, all of the things. and it's like and and and the the closer salesperson whatever is like I covered everything and um and there's you know there are uh services out there now that do it in the video and they slow the process down and they are you aware check the box you know all of that fantastic but I I believe that the buy here, pay here, lease here, pay here customer, when they leave the dealership are going to forget. Seventy five plus percent of all of the things that are considered supportive that they're just going to forget it because, you know, it's like it's fire hose. It's a fire hose. Yeah. And so the the you know, we can say, well, you were informed and we have these and I hear dealers their frustration around. We have the support, but they're still leaving their car on the side of the road and it's just empty or it's just, you know, whatever it is. And and so what we Gemini for years, it's like You know, we hear dealers say we don't have the same relationship that we used to with our consumers. Well, that is on you, not on them to have a relationship with them. And so, you know, it used to be on them because they had to come in. and pay their payment and make that contact. Well, that's not the case anymore. So it is on the dealer's shoulders to keep that communication open. And especially around things like this, are we reaching out to them a week later and saying, don't forget, these are the things so that they are outside of the fire hose, they're enjoying their car, and then you're able to catch them where their mind is a little cleaner. Yeah. I mean- One, you're right. There's so much information and all they're thinking about, all anyone is thinking about. It doesn't matter the customer basis. I really want to go show off this new car. Yeah. Right. It's anytime we buy a shiny object. If you've got a new iPad, you're super pumped to get it open. You know, you're not paying attention to some of those details that might be relevant. And in today's day and age. Yeah, you can do that follow up warm touch, but you can also automate some of that stuff, right? Send an email follow up. Hey, just want to let you know, here's our customer success center. If you have any questions and you can do that text message, if you got their consent, like there's all these ways to touch on your customer to follow up, to make sure that they know. you want them to succeed. Yeah. I love that you just slipped in there. If you have their consent. I used to do telemarketing a lot, which was like the bane of my existence, but I consent, consent, consent. Okay. Right on. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, it's, it's the, that there's going to be things that come up. We all know that we all know that. And so having the support is, is one way of keeping yourself from being sued. It also builds your reputation. So many of the things that I try to educate folks on and talk to my clients about, it's customer experience. It's giving them a really quality experience, but it's also protecting you. So it's a twofold. One, it'll help you get those Google reviews, get referrals, but it's also going to protect you from lawsuits because the more you take care of that customer... the more they're going to be your business champion to their friends. Yeah. We talk about relationship equity. So what we would love to have is enough equity in that relationship so that when there is a setback that the customer doesn't approach us from a place of distrust, that we're better able to resolve those situations because we know dealers are out there trying to make their customers happy and resolve these situations. But I think a lot of times it's difficult because we don't know one another, you know, that we don't, We don't have that nature of a relationship with the customer. So I love that you use the word customer experience because I think that's really important for us to work into what we do. I was thinking about like we have a few dealers actually. Let me back up on social that I've seen some conversations around, you know, hey, the little things are coming back and they're wanting them fixed and they're feeling like we're not doing our you know, we're not we're not selling them a good product because there are things that need to get fixed. And then I see dealers, Jack Carter. I just I love how you do this. And I've seen other ones that are like this. he will walk around a car on video, like a new thing, and talk about all of the things that are wrong with it. It's like all of the things that are wrong with the car. And I was like, we are fully aware that this bumper has a scratch. We are fully aware of this. And that when you, as a salesperson, if you don't want to do the videos, that that car, you like, because you know that when it goes to recon, you're going to know all the things that don't work. And so that you take the consumer around the car before you sign the papers and say, here are all the things that we know that don't work. This is not, we're not going to fix them. Sign here. When I think too, if above and beyond just like your traditional recon of cleaning, if you do any sort of inspection, any sort of repair, show the customer, this is what we did. Where I see some suits and this isn't necessarily buy here, pay here is you said it was inspected, but this broke. So clearly you missed it. Well, if we said this was inspected, here's the inspection, here's exactly what we did. We looked at the brakes, the tire, and really basic things. We did not look at the transmission. You would never have gotten near it. So if the transmission goes, you don't have this, well, you represented it. No, I showed you it was tires, spark plugs, and brakes. We did a conversation on our podcast probably a year ago around this idea of dealers using the word reliability in their things. So we're getting on a tangent here. But I think it's really about that thing about a customer feeling wrong. If I'm the salesperson and I promise the customer something, this car should be reliable for you. Don't expect any problems. Even though I've got the warranty behind it, the customer's two weeks in and they're having problems. Now they start to lose confidence in me. They lose confidence in the vehicle itself. So even though I've got a perfectly good warranty behind it, we've created this environment where we've sort of over-promised. I think this is hard. This is not legal, right? This is where we kind of start to get into the verbal versus what the documents say. And Allison, over the years, I've heard attorneys will just say, well, what do the documents say, right? Like, you know, regardless of what the salesperson promised or whatever, what did the customer sign? What's our agreement? I mean, that's a good thing to fall back on. Like I will tell you, like we use those documents, but there's also so much he said, she said, because if we look at the case law that says, uh, warranty, at least in Ohio and a little bit in Michigan. And so I know this is in other states because we've run across it is if I tell you this car has a great engine, but I also sell it as is I've made a representation that that as is, isn't going to get around. And so now I just created a warranty on that engine. And so. That's something that's really hard because like, no, I sold it as is. And I'm like, you did. But the case law, when you do these specifics, creates a liability. If you just say it's reliable. OK, maybe that's like a border. We have this thing called puffing where you can say, like, it's a good car. OK, well, everyone's definition of goods different. That's not a specific opinion. And so just being careful of the language you use when you are selling it. avoids a lot of that liability as well. Yeah. And I guess there's actual legal liability. And the part that I'm really just trying to introduce to our dealer listeners, especially the newer ones, is like we We may not be culpable legally in the end, but we have to ask ourselves, are we creating situations where customers feel wronged? And now what? What they feel wronged, they go look for an attorney potentially. So we, to me, some of that stuff is avoidable. And I'm a big believer after many years of business ownership, I don't like creating my own stresses. You know, and even if you're like but I shouldn't have to and it's like it doesn't matter it just yeah yeah so the other thing I will mention because I'm sure like some dealers that are listening are like oh my gosh I'm just like this is you know liability wazoo um which is some feedback I get keep in mind that most businesses if you have arizona emissions insurance some of this can be covered generally we see like the unfair and deceptive acts are excluded But if there's a claim for not disclosing the truth and lending boxes correctly, or an odometer issue that usually is covered. And so if you've got that coverage, it's under what's called a right of reservation, which means we're not sure all of this is covered, but we're going to provide your defense right now. We reserve the right to stop providing it. It's basically how it works, but you may have coverage to protect you on all fronts. So like, look at the complaint, call an attorney and talk about insurance. I know sometimes dealers don't want to submit it to their insurance because their rates go up when there's a claim, but at least knowing that you have that available to you allows you to make the choice. Right? If you don't know, you can't make an informed choice. Yeah. Gotcha. I think I want to come to one more thing. I want to ask you about arbitration agreement before we wrap up. But I think that as I hear this, I in social media will hear dealers chatting inside these private Facebook groups and what have you. And I'll hear them say things that frighten me as a non-attorney. Like I think, wow, there's going to be work for attorneys out there. Because what I hear is they're doing things that are... their practices, especially around enforcement, are inconsistent when it comes to taking action against the customer over, you know, an actual repossession action or there may be some other sort of enforcement action. So, you know, that's a conversation for another day. But I just think when all these things that we're talking about, it just, you know, we want to be consistent. We're talking mostly about the day of delivery and the disclosures and how we actually close the deal. And then we move over to the account side. So we'll bring you back and have conversations around a lot of that soon, but you can add whatever you want to add there. And then I want to ask you about arbitration. Yeah, really quickly. Anytime we're looking at collections in any way, like it's regular payments or deficiencies is have a written standard because what you want is it to be non-discriminatory. The biggest issue you can get is, You only go after certain subgroups that are protected classes, and that will create a ton of liability. And that's like class action liability. If you have a written standard that's like we only go after balances under or over a thousand dollars. OK, great. Then you can go back to that standard. You're not picking on a particular subclass. yeah and the other one that makes me nervous is when I see dealers who maybe they hire a new collection supervisor and they now they start repossessing customers at fourteen days late who have a history of paying twenty eight days late in the past it's like we can't just change practices on the customer without notifying them that stuff makes me nervous I think customers are bound to feel wronged in that situation. And so it's like, I think we just, that's the avoidable kind of stresses that I think. We are constantly beating that drum. It's like, figure out what your boundaries are, stick to them. If you have an exception and that this, we've had other guests, it's like, write it down. And if it becomes the rule, you need to change your rule. Yeah. A hundred percent. But yeah, write it down because then, especially as employees flip out, it is, you know, universal, right? They know exactly they can refer back to it. We urge them not to, but some folks get to the place where they take it personally and that causes them to sometimes act in a way that they wouldn't have yesterday or whatever. Just before we move on to the last subject, George Spatt, check out Florida Case White versus Ferco Motors. If you want to see when as is, is not as is. So he's just, you know, one of the, I know George is out of Florida. so he's very familiar with a lot of the cases we had a dealer in our v-eight meeting the other day share a story about their own direct experience of of kind of being called on the carpet about something as is and they're still paying for repairs for that car so so there's that stuff happens but we could spend all day talking about case study cases yeah yeah allison I think I want to get your opinion about arbitration let me just first say as somebody who was a dealer and a manager back in the nineties I feel like across my career I've heard you know, yes to arbitration agreement. No, don't do arbitration agreement. I don't know what's legal. I don't know what's proper. What's your recommendation when it comes to putting an arbitration agreement in our documents at signing? Yeah, currently there's no federal prohibition against arbitration. There was a movement under the Biden administration to get rid of it. Not the case. I don't foresee it being, you know, resurrected again. I think arbitration is still fine across the board. The thing is, arbitration is really expensive. If you go with the big arbitration providers, the benefits of arbitration, it's private. It should go faster. But what we're seeing is with these larger arbitration providers, one, it's so expensive because you're paying your attorney. You're paying for the arbitrator because under the consumer rules, the business has to pay for all of it. And they're slower anymore because they're so busy because so many people use arbitration. So you're not getting that quickness. You still have the privacy. So I think if you're going to do arbitration, it is great because you've got a private setting to resolve it. But look at who the provider is. You know, I have one right now. I think it's in jams and like we have to use an arbitrator out of New York and it's like fifteen hundred dollars an hour. Wow. The neutral. And so that's why I like arbitration provides something wonderful. But it's you have to be prepared to pay. And if that isn't in what your pocketbook, because I don't know any business like, sure, I love paying fifteen hundred dollars an hour. You may want to reconsider the arbitration because it'll just keep your costs down. Yeah. Good point. I'm going to add a little perspective, and I don't know that this is still true. I'm going to speak from my own direct experience as a dealer. And in my state, we did have the option to garnish, like you'd have to get a judgment and then you could move toward garnishing wages. So we did pursue some deficiencies. And I can just share that my experience was often because I was often the one as a dealer going to the court as the plaintiff. And my experience was there would be a percentage of customers that wouldn't show up and you'd get that default judgment. There would be others that would show up and want to make a claim often around mechanical matters, as you talked about. And the judge would often just send us down the hall to meet with a mediator. Right. Which is different than what we're talking about here. Right. They're just going out. This is actually a court, you know, appointed local. And so And nine out of ten times when we went down the hall, that got worked out. That was largely because I was super flexible. I just want to see the customer follow through. I didn't care if it was a small amount. I just want to see a resolution and see them be held accountable to the understanding. And so they got worked out. But that's that's different. That's mediation inside a court situation. And but but arbitration really calls for that independent sort of situation. Right. So arbitration is like a private court. is basically what it is. You're saying we don't want to use the court that is government funded. We're going to use a private court is kind of what it is mediation. And it's a trial that used to discovery. You have a trial it's called a hearing, but it's the same thing. When we talk about mediation, you can do that before suit. You can do it during a lawsuit. You can do it in arbitration. It's really bringing in a different neutral that doesn't have any ability to make a decision on the case. They're not the judge. They're not the, arbitrator and they help the sides come up with a resolution that everyone can live with. I love mediation. I think something that dealers generally could look at is requiring mediation before suit. If you can put pre-suit requirements in as like a stipulation. And I think that would be great because so much of this is if we sat down and talked it out we can fix it yeah yeah you're not getting huge attorney bills you know like on both sides yeah so if is that that's something that's written in your contract right yeah and you just have to find a party that doesn't a lot of courts um will have some sort of free mediation option or there are paid mediators through like I think it's the distinguished mediators of america or like There's different organizations that promote mediators. That's a wonderful tool. So an attorney that is just looking for, you know, I'm going to take this case because they're going to pay the things. And if they see something in there that says that mediation is the first step, then they're going to kick it right back to it needs to be taken care of here, wouldn't it? Then we're going to go to court. You would think so. Like they just have to do it. If they skip the step and say, well, we're not doing mediation, we're just suing. You've missed a condition precedent and it may be able to be kicked back to mediation. But the idea is, and I think other attorneys that are truly in it to help the customer not to take advantage on their bills. Right. Would be like, great. Yeah, I'll do this. And then my bills are for one day. Right. Like I get us to mediation. We resolve it. The customer is taken care of. And the attorney for the plaintiff consumer is five hundred or a thousand bucks, not ten thousand, not twenty thousand like it is when we litigate. Yeah. One of the things I can share, this is White Hat Wednesday, and one of the things you can expect in the coming months is that we'll come to you as somebody who's supporting us legally to work out the details around what we're going to call White Hat conflict resolution, which would be through mediation. But one of the things we feel like we can do as sort of an independent third party who's interested in both the success of the dealer and the customer is to create white hat mediation conflict resolution solutions as somebody who sits on the sidelines and we're just we're just somebody who sits over here and has an interest in you know facilitating communication yeah and getting to the bottom of the thing and avoiding a courthouse so so that's kind of the way we're that's that's something that we have yeah But it's on our roadmap. But we feel like we just feel like we're in a good position to provide that solution to dealers. And so we look forward to being able to do that through a through a white hat lens, you know. And so so look for that. That's part of the way we approach this sort of thing, because we don't want customers to feel wronged. And when they do, we want to talk about it. Yeah. Yeah. And again, it's going to help avoid lawsuits and help you sell more cars, get more customers. Right. Yeah. And all around. Yeah. Yeah. We're not too worried about taking revenue away from you. We know there's going to be plenty of legal work. Yes, absolutely. There are plenty of them that aren't white hat dealers. That's the thing. Right. Yeah. Yeah. What else before we. I think we should wrap up. Just a quick reminder, we have Casey Leidecker on Friday. Yeah. Yeah, we appreciate you, Allison, for making time. And we know that your time is limited, and we appreciate you coming over to share with our listeners. Thank you so much. Thank you both for having me. I really appreciate it. Oh, we appreciate your insight, and you're just fun to talk to. If you want to stick around for just a second, and then as soon as we've closed up, we'll say a proper goodbye. All right. Great. I, you know, I always, I always, yeah. Enjoy those kinds of conversations. Yeah. So we have actually, Alison is going to be joining us for a V eight plus and it will be a series within V eight of ask a lawyer. And so there will be a topic, but we'll have her there to ask questions for those of her in the V eight plus program. So we really, really appreciate her stepping in. Should I put my email up there one more time? Absolutely. Just an email for this address. Jim, please get me in one of your VAD with this. Because, I mean, if we get this executed today, then you can join us for our conversation tomorrow, which is going to be really, really, really rich. Hey, everybody. Thanks again so much for joining us. We will see you on Friday. And, yeah, hope you guys have a great rest of your week. We'll talk with you all later. Bye.
