Doc fee disclosure & consent — after CARS

The 2026 landscape

With the CARS Rule vacated, plaintiffs’ firms and state enforcers have moved to their pre-CARS toolkits — and they are more effective than the CARS Rule would have been. Three recent data points frame where the pressure is:

• Lindsay Automotive Group (MD/VA). FTC and Maryland AG allegations of deceptive advertising and added junk fees; potential exposure ~$75M.
• Indiana doc-prep fee settlement. A coordinated set of class actions settled for $13.5M covering doc-prep fees charged by Indianapolis-area dealers.
• FTC warning letters. The FTC sent warning letters to roughly 100 retailers in 2025 flagging specific fee practices as presumptively illegal under Section 5.

What plaintiffs actually look for

Class-action theories on dealer fees share a structure. A plaintiffs’ lawyer looks for:

1. A fee that appears on the contract but was not conspicuously advertised.
2. No signed, itemized customer acknowledgement of the fee before signing.
3. Inconsistent fee amounts across the same dealership (e.g., $399 for some customers, $699 for others, no stated basis).
4. The fee exceeding a statutory cap, where one exists.
5. The fee labeled in a way that implies government mandate (“required by law”, “state fee”) when it is dealer-imposed.

Every one of those is an evidence question. The defendant dealer either has the signed, timestamped consent artifact or does not. If it does, most of these cases die on summary judgment. If it does not, they settle for seven figures.

What “express, informed consent” actually means

The standard that survived the CARS Rule vacatur and persists under Section 5 and state UDAPs has four elements. Plaintiffs test every one:

• Express. The customer actively agreed — signed, clicked, or said yes. Pre-checked boxes and silent assent do not clear the bar.
• Informed. The customer was shown the specific fee, amount, and purpose before agreeing.
• Specific. Consent to “all dealer fees” is weaker than consent to each itemized fee.
• Documented. The consent artifact is retrievable, time-stamped, and tied to the signer’s verified identity.

A modern doc-fee disclosure flow

Dealerships with strong documentation share the same pattern:

1. The doc fee (and every other dealer-imposed fee) is disclosed in the advertised out-the-door price, not surfaced at F&I.
2. A pre-F&I itemized price work-up is presented to the customer, line by line.
3. The customer signs an explicit acknowledgement of the itemized price — with each fee named — before leaving the sales desk.
4. That acknowledgement is archived with the verified ID, the signed test drive agreement, and the timestamped drive record, in one deal jacket.
5. Retention policy is uniform across rooftops and long enough to defend against statute-of-limitations-maxed claims (typically 5–7 years).

Where Test Drive Pro fits

Test Drive Pro does not set your fees or your pay plan. What it does is give F&I a verified, signed, timestamped front half of the deal jacket — customer ID, test drive agreement, TCPA consent — every single drive. Dealerships using Test Drive Pro can configure an additional “itemized fee acknowledgement” page in the signing flow so the doc fee, destination, dealer adds, and any other dealer-imposed charges are explicitly presented and consented to before the customer moves to F&I. The resulting PDF is archived with timestamps, device metadata, and the verified ID — exactly the artifact plaintiffs’ lawyers cannot break.

For the broader defensive posture across the 2026 case load, see the junk-fees class-action defense playbook.

This is general information, not legal advice. Work with your counsel on state-specific disclosure requirements and retention windows.