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FTC Investigating Dealerships

The US Federal Trade Commission is reviewing dealerships and trying to determine if dealerships are taking advantage of military members and their families when they are going to the dealership to buy a vehicle. This is the second stage of the process to determine if this is happening, and it is set to take place August the second and third in San Antonio, Texas. So what all are they going to be looking at? 

They are not only looking at the vehicles that are being sold to the military members, but they are looking at the financing options that are given to military, and they are hoping to make sure that these dealerships are practicing fair lending towards military consumers, and giving them the right information that they need in order to make an informed decision. 

When the FTC decided that they were going to adopt a new way for dealers to deal with consumers, the Pentagon did weigh in on the behalf of military members and their families and stated that they knew that there were many military members who had been taken advantage of when they go to the lots. The Pentagon included some disturbing statistics on the issue. They have noted that 72% of the counselors on military installations have counseled military members on receiving bad information when they purchased their vehicle and basically being taken advantage of. The Pentagon was hoping that the FTC could do something about this and get these dealerships to stop these malicious practices against military members. 

Just what kind of problems are military members reporting? Things such as falsifying their loan applications in order to get them to qualify for a loan, giving loan terms that were increased in order to make more profit, and probably the most damaging is the fact that the dealerships were not paying off the trade in vehicles for the buyer.