Rhode Island buyers already have DMV rules and an Attorney General with a track record of pursuing hidden add-ons; the FTC’s guidance adds a federal enforcement signal and a clear test for any fee that appears after the advertised price.
Forty thousand dollars plus an $850 mandatory document fee is not a $40,000 car. It is a $40,850 car, and the ad has to say so.
That is the example the Federal Trade Commission chose when its staff published a set of price-transparency FAQs for auto dealers today. The document’s core sentence is short: an advertised vehicle price must be the actual price any consumer can walk in and pay. The only charges a dealer may leave out are the ones a federal, state or local government requires the buyer to pay directly — sales tax, registration, that category of thing. Everything the dealer itself insists on collecting belongs in the number on the windshield, the website and the roadside sign…