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1 FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION

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4 In the Matter of: )

5 Public Forum on Vehicle ) Matter No. P964402

6 Buyback Disclosures )

7 ‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑‑)

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10 Thursday, October 3, 1996

11 Room 432

12 Federal Trade Commission

13 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue

14 Washington, D.C. 20580

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17 The above‑entitled matter came on for public

18 hearing, pursuant to notice, at 9:30 a.m.

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23 APPEARANCES:

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25 ON BEHALF OF THE FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION:

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1 EILEEN HARRINGTON, MODERATOR

2 CAROLE DANIELSON

3 ALLEN HILE

4 JOSEPH MULHOLLAND

5 ADAM COHN

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7 PANELISTS AT PUBLIC FORUM ON VEHICLE BUYBACK DISCLOSURES:

8 LORI COHEN, AMERICAN ASSOCIATION OF MOTOR VEHICLE

9 ADMINISTRATORS (AAMVA)

10 JOHN T. WHATLEY, ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL AUTOMOBILE

11 MANUFACTURERS, INC. (AIAM)

12 RICHARD RAINES and MARGARET SCHWARTZ, CARFAX

13 ROBERT GRAHAM, CENTER FOR AUTO SAFETY

14 LEWIS GOLDFARB and JACQUELINE GLASSMAN, CHRYSLER CORPORATION

15 JACK GILLIS, CONSUMER FEDERATION OF AMERICA (CFA)

16 ROSEMARY SHAHAN and LAWRENCE KANTER, CONSUMERS FOR AUTO

17 RELIABILITY AND SAFETY (CARS)

18 JANET L. SMITH, FLORIDA ATTORNEY GENERAL\'S OFFICE

19 GERALD DUCHARME and PEGGY BOWERS, FORD MOTOR COMPANY

20 GEORGE VELEZ, GENERAL MOTORS CORPORATION

21 PETER L. MAIER, MAIER & SEVERANCE, P.C.

22 EVAN JOHNSON, MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND DIVISION OF

23 CONSUMER AFFAIRS

24 STEVEN A. TATERKA, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF CONSUMER

25 ADVOCATES (NACA)

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1 BERTA PHELPS, NATIONAL AUTO AUCTION ASSOCIATION (NAAA)

2 J. PETER KITZMILLER, NATIONAL AUTOMOBILE DEALERS ASSOCIATION

3 (NADA)

4 R. B. GRISHAM, NATIONAL INDEPENDENT AUTOMOBILE DEALERS

5 ASSOCIATION (NIADA)

6 PHILIP R. NOWICKI, P. R. NOWICKI & CO.

7 EDWARD MIERZWINSKI, NATIONAL OFFICE OF SAFETY PUBLIC

8 INTEREST RESEARCH GROUPS (USPIRG)

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1 P‑R‑O‑C‑E‑E‑D‑I‑N‑G‑S

2 MS. HARRINGTON: My name is Eileen Harrington, and I

3 will be moderating our discussion today. I want to, before

4 we have introductions, go over the ground rules. But first

5 I\'d like to thank all of you for coming, and particularly

6 those of you who have filed comments on this issue. We have

7 read them all.

8 I hope that those of you sitting around the table

9 have read the comments of the other round table

10 participants. That\'s one of the ground rules. But we found

11 much in the comments to educate us and certainly to help us

12 frame the issues which you see laid out on our discussion

13 agenda.

14 These are the items that the staff of the Commission

15 would very much like to hear you discuss among yourselves

16 and with us today. Let me make a couple of prefatory

17 statements and disclosures.

18 First of all, this workshop is being conducted by

19 the staff of the Commission. And nothing that we say today

20 reflects necessarily the views of the Commission or any

21 individual commissioner. However, we expect that everything

22 that you say will reflect the views of your organization.

23 (Laughter.)

24 MS. HARRINGTON: The format for today\'s meeting is a

25 discussion format. We have found in a whole variety in

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1 contexts in the past few years that our thinking is aided

2 greatly by discussion among people who have a stake in

3 whatever issue it is that we have under consideration.

4 So today, a great premium will be placed on

5 participants talking to one another. Conversely, if you

6 repeat your comment, your written comment, we might not call

7 on you again.

8 I am the product of twelve years of Catholic

9 education. And I, therefore, had ample opportunity to study

10 at an early age how you keep order and impose discipline.

11 And I have facilitated a number of these sessions and

12 displayed what I learned at an early age and will today.

13 If you want to be recognized, participants, what you

14 need to do is take, you will notice that at each one\'s place

15 you have these little stickies, post‑its. Stick one on your

16 name plaque like this (indicating).

17 And I will be making note of who seeks recognition

18 in the order that I see them. And generally I will call on

19 you in the order of your sticky unless I decide that I want

20 to call on someone else.

21 (Laughter.)

22 MS. HARRINGTON: And the reason that I will call on

23 someone else is because the last time I called on you, you

24 simply rehashed your comment and you didn\'t talk to what,

25 you didn\'t participate in a way that was responsive to the

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1 conversation that\'s going on.

2 This really is intended as an opportunity for all of

3 us to talk to one another about the issues that are raised

4 by this larger question of whether there is in fact a

5 problem with the information that consumers receive or don\'t

6 receive about vehicles that they purchase which had

7 previously been the subject of a buyback.

8 That\'s what we want to talk about. So, please, let

9 me encourage you to talk to one another and not to us. We

10 have, trust me, we have all, the staff of the Commission

11 here and others, read your comments so we know what\'s in

12 them, what you\'ve said, what you think; and we are looking

13 to move the dialogue forward I think today.

14 Now let me give you a little bit of housekeeping

15 information. We have a message board out in the foyer. And

16 if people want to call in and leave messages for you, they

17 may do that, although I have no idea how they may do that.

18 Do we have a phone number?

19 MS. DANIELSON: It was on that general information

20 sheet.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: On that general information sheet

22 that you received there was a phone number that you could

23 leave with your offices. And do we know what that number

24 is?

25 UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: 326‑3238.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: 326‑3238. 326‑3238. Oh, that\'s

2 Jody Bernstein\'s office. She\'s on vacation this week.

3 (Laughter.)

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Second, there are restrooms on this

5 floor near the elevators; just look around. And third, if

6 you need to make a phone call, there are two telephones

7 outside this room.

8 One is right in the ante room and the other is in

9 the sort of storage room off of it. If you\'re making a

10 local call, dial nine. If you\'re making a long distance

11 call, use a credit card, please. Are there any other

12 housekeeping details?

13 (No response.)

14 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. Well, we\'re going to

15 stick very rigorously to this agenda. What I would like to

16 ask the participants at the table to do before we get into

17 the, discussing the first question is to introduce yourself,

18 say who you\'re with, and in one sentence, it can be a

19 sentence of a lot of words I suppose, but in one sentence

20 I\'d like you to say what you hope to get out of this

21 discussion today.

22 Now, because those of you at the table are just

23 hearing this for the first time, maybe we\'ll start with

24 someone from the FTC staff.

25 Let me start with Joe Mulholland from our Bureau of

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1 Economics. Joe, do you want to introduce yourself and say

2 in one sentence what you hope to get out of today?

3 MR. MULHOLLAND: Hi. I\'m Joe Mulholland. I\'m an

4 economist. And I\'d just like to learn more about what the

5 process is, what are the problems and how, what\'s the best

6 remedy we can do for them.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Now, we have a stenographer who is

8 transcribing this discussion. And I\'d like to ask everyone

9 before you speak to please identify yourself for her; it

10 will make her job easier.

11 Also, if the people who are seated along this front

12 row could turn their name plaques in some way so that I

13 could see your names. It\'s these folks (indicating).

14 Peter, thank you, that would be very good. That\'s

15 helpful. If you\'d just tip them a little now. Or you might

16 want to tip them the other ‑‑ I don\'t know.

17 Can the people over there see the names of the

18 people over here now? Do you all know each other?

19 (Laughter.)

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Anyway, if you could just

21 tip them a little bit. Thank you. Phil, why don\'t we start

22 over with you now.

23 MR. NOWICKI: I\'m Philip Nowicki. I have my own

24 automotive research company. And I hope to learn something

25 today. I hope to contribute today. And I just see this as

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1 a great opportunity here to bring all the parties together

2 to try and have some resolution on this issue.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Rosemary.

4 MS. SHAHAN: Rosemay Shahan, President of Consumers

5 for Auto Reliability and Safety. And I\'m hoping to find

6 where there are areas of common ground, wherever they are,

7 and to find out where there are areas of disagreements and

8 get a sense of how we can address the areas of disagreement.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Evan.

10 MR. JOHNSON: Evan Johnson with Montgomery County

11 Consumer Affairs. I\'m encouraged in reading the comments,

12 and I think there is a fair amount of common ground among

13 interests that in past issues I have been involved with

14 aren\'t usually this apparent. So I\'m looking forward to a

15 productive discussion also.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. We need people to use

17 microphones if you want to be heard, please. There are

18 microphones all around the table. Thanks. Janet.

19 MS. SMITH: I\'m Janet Smith, with the Florida

20 Attorney General\'s Office. And I suppose like everyone else

21 I\'m looking for a productive discussion and to learn

22 something about what some of the other companies and other

23 people think about these problems.

24 Our state law is such that we could use a little

25 assistance in learning in the area. And I\'m hoping that

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1 today we will come to some meaningful result.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Mr. Ducharme.

3 MR. DUCHARME: My name is Gerry Ducharme. I\'m a

4 lawyer with ‑‑

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Would you do me a favor and use the

6 microphone?

7 MR. DUCHARME: Sure.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: We\'ve got people on headsets in the

9 back and also downstairs listening. Thanks.

10 MR. DUCHARME: How\'s that? My name is Gerry

11 Ducharme. I\'m a lawyer with Ford Motor Company. I\'m

12 looking forward today to have a candid exchange of views.

13 And if we find that there are some areas that we can improve

14 and the industry can improve, I\'m all ears and anxious to

15 talk about improvements.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Thank you. Ed.

17 MR. MIERZWINSKI: Ed Mierzwinski, with the National

18 Office of Safety Public Interest Research Groups. And we

19 are hoping that we can help to find out and identify ways to

20 improve the problems that consumers face when they have

21 lemon law cars.

22 MR. GRAHAM: I\'m Robert Graham, and I\'m staff

23 attorney with the Center for Auto Safety. And I, like Evan,

24 notice that there is a lot of common ground in the comments.

25 I just hope that the devils that are in the details are not

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1 too large.

2 MR. GOLDFARB: My name is Lou Goldfarb, with

3 Chrysler Corporation. I\'m hopeful that this will be a

4 constructive, productive discussion that may allow us to

5 shed some light on ways that we can deal with some of the

6 contradictions and inconsistencies among the various state

7 laws that may be getting in the way of, I don\'t know, some

8 type of disclosures getting out to consumers.

9 MR. RAINES: I\'m Dick Raines. I\'m president of

10 Carfax. We are a vehicle history business. And I\'m just

11 here to see whether there might be ways we can help address

12 the problem as a business.

13 MS. COHEN: My name is Lori Cohen. I am with the

14 American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. And

15 our association facilitates uniformity among the Departments

16 of Motor Vehicle. And that\'s part of what we\'re seeking

17 about manufactured buybacks.

18 MR. DOWDY: I\'m Lemuel Dowdy in the Division of

19 Enforcement of the Bureau of Consumer Protection. That

20 division enforces the Commission\'s used car rules, the rules

21 that require dealers to post the buyers guide on used cars.

22 So I\'m interested in discussions about disclosure

23 regulations.

24 MR. TATERKA: I\'m Steve Taterka. I\'m here on behalf

25 of the National Association of Consumer Advocates. First

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1 I\'m interested in seeing the extent to which everybody

2 agrees that there is a problem. And second of all ‑‑

3 second, of course, the solution to that problem.

4 MR. WHATLEY: I\'m John Whatley, with the Association

5 of International Automobile Manufacturers. I guess we come

6 to this looking, we also sense the great deal of consensus

7 in the comments.

8 And we were hoping the consensus would move further

9 towards a standard that is clear, simple, and uniform for

10 disclosures.

11 MR. KITZMILLER: I\'m Peter Kitzmiller, with the

12 National Automobile Dealers Association. And I guess what

13 I\'m hoping to get out of today is to determine where the

14 problem areas are and try to find some reasonable,

15 consistent ways to deal with these disclosure issues.

16 MR. VELEZ: George Velez from General Motors

17 Corporation. And I guess some of our colleagues here have

18 already expressed the same hopes I have.

19 Lou did an excellent job of stating, I think, that

20 what we are looking forward to here is getting some idea of

21 ways to fix some problems that we see out there. But I

22 think you do have a lot of common ground.

23 MR. GRISHAM: I\'m R. B. Grisham. I\'m with the

24 National Independent Auto Dealers Association. We\'re here

25 to contribute and to provide input and to listen and to help

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1 General Motors all we can.

2 (Laughter.)

3 MR. MAIER: Peter Maier. I\'m an attorney in private

4 practice in Seattle. I do many lemon law cases. I\'m

5 particularly interested in the specifics of how the buyback

6 process works after the buyback occurs.

7 MS. DANIELSON: Carole Danielson, from the Federal

8 Trade Commission, Division of Marketing Practices. And I

9 too was heartened by the amount of common ground that I saw

10 in the comments that I read.

11 And I\'m hoping that we can build on that and that

12 through the process we have today that we can help the staff

13 here reach a recommendation, a good recommendation for the

14 Commission.

15 MS. PHELPS: I\'m Berta Phelps, and I represent the

16 National Auto Auction Association. And I hope to convey of

17 how our auctions fit into the used car marketing business.

18 And I would also like to learn of how our auctions can aid

19 with the committee to resolve any of the buyback problems.

20 MR. COHN: My name is Adam Cohn. I\'m with the

21 Federal Trade Commission. I\'m an attorney with the Division

22 of Marketing Practices.

23 And I\'m in agreement with Carole; I want to learn

24 more about where the areas of agreement and disagreement are

25 among the various parties and to hopefully figure out what

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1 the FTC can do to help facilitate a solution to the problem.

2 MR. HILE: I\'m Allen Hile. I\'m the Assistant

3 Director in the Division of Marketing Practices. And I hope

4 that this discussion today will advance beyond what we see

5 in the comments to the point where the staff that you\'ve

6 already met will be able to make a good and sound

7 recommendation to the Commission on how it should deal with

8 the petition that started this proceeding.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, I\'ve already introduced

10 myself. I\'m Eileen Harrington, and I\'m the Director of

11 Marketing Practices Division.

12 And I want to say that something has just happened

13 that gives me a little bit of empathy with all of the people

14 who are in the chain of selling these vehicles with respect

15 to making sure that the right notices get passed along

16 because we screwed up and forgot to print up a name tag for

17 Jack Gillis, but we have just done that and seated him at

18 the table.

19 And, Jack, we couldn\'t, we wouldn\'t dream of having

20 this discussion without you or the CFA. But I apologize.

21 And would you introduce yourself?

22 MR. GILLIS: Well, my name is Jack Gillis. I\'m with

23 the Consumer Federation of America and the author of The Car

24 Book. And my goal here is to resolve this problem as

25 quickly as a name tag was produced for me.

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1 (Laughter.)

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Let me just say that the solution

3 here is not that the FTC is going to print and distribute

4 anything.

5 (Laughter.)

6 MS. HARRINGTON: We can\'t even get 25 name tags

7 right, so ‑‑

8 MR. GILLIS: The private sector can do that quite

9 well.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, thank you very much. Let me

11 also say that for those of you who are here but not seated

12 at the table, there will be an opportunity at four for

13 public participation.

14 And during that time we would like you and ask you,

15 and we will insist that you please limit your comments to

16 matters that have been discussed today.

17 Okay. Let\'s go get to it. We have tried in setting

18 forth this agenda to tell you why it is that we are asking

19 the questions that we are asking.

20 So the first series of questions that we\'re asking

21 for some discussion on deal with the definition of a

22 buyback; what is it, what ought to be included in this class

23 of vehicles about which information is needed or should be

24 provided.

25 What we see in the comments, as we have indicated on

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1 the agenda, is that there is not complete agreement among

2 the commentors on what it is that defines the vehicles that

3 are in this class, if you will.

4 And so we\'d like some discussion on that. And let

5 me just open it up. How should buyback be defined? What

6 vehicles ought to be in this class, about which there seems

7 to be some agreement that there is additional information

8 required.

9 (No response.)

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Well? I\'m going to start to call

11 on people if no one is ‑‑ Thank you very much, Gerry.

12 MR. DUCHARME: We talked about this extensively.

13 And very frankly you can, if you look at defining buyback in

14 terms of a process, I think you are going to find yourself

15 with a definition that will not work.

16 If you define a buyback as a car and a person

17 involved in a certain stage in the lemon law process in a

18 particular state, you won\'t necessarily encapture the right

19 kind of vehicles that really warrant disclosure.

20 Because, for instance, someone may be having

21 substantial problems with their vehicle, may be attempting

22 to get into the, this new settlement process board in a

23 particular statement or the lemon law process in a

24 particular state, but low and behold there will be a

25 goodwill, so‑called goodwill buyback and the vehicle will be

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1 repurchased by the manufacturer and it will be resold.

2 Under some definitions that vehicle would not count

3 as a buyback or not warrant disclosure. Now, that isn\'t

4 necessarily right.

5 What we\'ve been doing, because of the inability I

6 think to come up with a proper definition, we have been

7 disclosing every vehicle that we actually do buy back

8 regardless of whether it\'s a goodwill or so‑called lemon law

9 vehicle.

10 So I guess our view is that a definition is an

11 extremely difficult thing to do. I can\'t conceive of a

12 definition that would work.

13 So the easy way around that is simply to disclose

14 every vehicle you buy back; and that\'s what Ford Motor

15 Company does.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. John.

17 MR. WHATLEY: I think this question, as I read the

18 comments, was perhaps the most difficult question posed. I

19 guess I was pleased to see that it was first, although it is

20 more hard to get your hands around.

21 In our view this is a complex, the consumer

22 satisfaction issue is a complex situation. There is a whole

23 range of activities that manufacturers undertake to make

24 consumers happy.

25 At the same time, we as an industry would like to

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1 have a fairly simple standard to deal with so you would have

2 to balance‑‑this is kind of a schizophrenic process in a

3 way‑‑you have to balance out the need for clarity and the

4 need for simplicity against the fact that you\'ve got this

5 whole range of things that manufacturers do, and you have

6 humans making these decisions and humans make mistakes.

7 The result was, in our comments we proposed a

8 standard that\'s in a couple of states, Florida and New York,

9 where if there\'s been a submission to a state or a

10 manufacturer program, that triggers these disclosures.

11 But looking at the other comments, there are other,

12 there were other standards that are proposed. For instance,

13 if the lemon law presumption is made. It\'s not as clear.

14 It\'s not as simple.

15 But it\'s certainly another place you could trigger

16 the disclosures. I think when you do that, though, you run

17 some risk of putting, of doing away with some of the various

18 things manufacturers may do now to help consumers of the new

19 car.

20 And the question is how do you balance out the

21 benefits to the consumer that buying the repurchased car

22 against maybe some loss in consumer satisfaction because of

23 the fewer goodwill efforts in other areas.

24 And I think there is a number of ways you can go at

25 that. But our concern is above all that this standard,

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1 whatever it is we come out with, be uniform so that we can

2 figure out what our responsibilities are.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: You\'re suggesting, John, that if

4 the definition of buyback or if the sort of the net is more

5 broadly cast, that that may have a chilling effect on

6 manufacturers\' willingness to make goodwill buybacks; is

7 that what you\'re saying?

8 MR. WHATLEY: I\'m sure that there\'s ‑‑ and I can ‑‑

9 MS. HARRINGTON: That would be at variance with some

10 of the other manufacturers.

11 MR. WHATLEY: I\'m not sure that I can quantify that.

12 But my concern is there are a number of laws. We have

13 eighteen members. And they do a number of different, they

14 have a number of different philosophies on how they satisfy

15 their consumers.

16 Some do different things than others. I would hate

17 to sort of make everything homogeneous. I think that would

18 hurt competition in this area. And there is competition

19 here in making consumers happy. How much, I can\'t tell you.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Steve.

21 MR. TATERKA: I think that the, sort of the

22 preliminary question, I think the preliminary question that

23 has to be addressed before even defining buyback is who\'s

24 going to apply whatever the criteria are.

25 And I think that\'s the biggest problem. Because

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1 obviously consumers and manufacturers are already

2 disagreeing as to whether or not the vehicle was a lemon in

3 the first place.

4 And so consequently that disagreement is still going

5 to carry over even after there may be a repurchase. So I

6 think that the definition of buyback cannot allow for the

7 type of discretion which is going to continue to reflect

8 those disagreements between consumers and automobile

9 manufacturers.

10 So consequently I would want all vehicles that are

11 repurchased to be covered under the definition, of

12 repurchase or trade assists, so forth, to be covered, making

13 specific exclusions for the kinds of things ‑‑ I know

14 General Motors in some cases has had their guaranteed

15 repurchase programs I think on Saturns and so forth.

16 And if the vehicle is repurchased within the time

17 frames under whatever the guaranteed repurchase program is

18 advertised, then I think that kind of thing could be

19 excluded. But otherwise I think they should all be

20 included.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou.

22 MR. GOLDFARB: Thank you. I mean, I don\'t want to

23 oversimplify it. But isn\'t a buyback any time a

24 manufacturer buys back a car? I mean, that\'s a buyback.

25 I don\'t think the issue is really difficult defining

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1 the buyback. The issue is what do you disclose when you

2 bought back a vehicle, put it through auction and it\'s being

3 resold?

4 And, yeah, we\'re sort of skirting around this

5 question. But the question is, is it a lemon law buyback or

6 is it a buyback fitting into other category?

7 And I think that\'s the area of the most contention;

8 when does it qualify as what states define as lemons and

9 when does a vehicle, therefore, have to be called a lemon,

10 designated a lemon, in some states branded as, having your

11 title branded as a lemon.

12 That\'s where most of the difficulty comes. I think

13 there is uniform agreement among the manufacturers that when

14 a manufacturer buys a car back it\'s a buyback.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, let me ‑‑

16 MR. GOLDFARB: And when we make disclosures ‑‑

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Hold that thought and let me check

18 with John. John, do you people agree with that?

19 MR. WHATLEY: I think usually that\'s the case. I\'m

20 not sure it\'s always the case.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Do we have any ‑‑ Okay. You know,

22 I just want to check to see whether there is agreement among

23 the manufacturers.

24 MR. WHATLEY: Okay. Well, I think he\'s, he\'s

25 hitting the vast majority of the cases. I think there were

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1 some unusual situations where there may not be, for

2 instance, a buyer\'s remorse, overnight a car comes back

3 that\'s not under the 30‑day return and goodwill program.

4 But, yeah, they\'re going to check out the car and you may

5 not notice.

6 MR. GOLDFARB: Some manufacturers have programs

7 where they actually let you keep the car for 30 days. And

8 if you don\'t like it for whatever reason, you don\'t even

9 have to give the reason, you can have it bought back.

10 Maybe that category would not be included. And

11 that\'s rare. By and large ‑‑ John is speaking for 18

12 manufacturers; that\'s a little more difficult. But by and

13 large, whenever that vehicle is bought back there is a

14 disclosure made.

15 And the question really is, the area of dispute I

16 think is what is disclosed and does this vehicle have to be

17 designated a lemon?

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, before we get to that issue,

19 which is later on the agenda, I really want to try to hone

20 in as much as I can on what you\'re saying and where the

21 agreement is. Would you include trade assists?

22 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, trade assists are not bought

23 back by the manufacturer.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: But they\'re bought back.

25 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, the manufacturer does not take

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1 them back and run them through the auction. I mean, and

2 manufacturers have different definitions of what a trade

3 assist is.

4 Some use different terminology. But in our case,

5 the case of Chrysler, we will assist a dealer in bringing a

6 car back that a customer is unhappy with very early on, very

7 early on in the process for whatever reason.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: What\'s the problem with including

9 trade assists in the definition of buybacks?

10 MR. GOLDFARB: I think, I think we do make

11 disclosures that a vehicle has been sent back by the

12 consumer and the reasons for the sending it back. Again,

13 the vehicle never gets resold unless whatever was complained

14 about gets repaired, if there is that kind of problem.

15 But trade assists covers a whole range of issues

16 that people raise that don\'t rise to the level of a

17 mechanical problem with the vehicle, necessarily. Some do.

18 But, I mean, in many cases it goes beyond that.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Now, Steve, does the 30‑day

20 you‑get‑to‑bring‑it‑back deal fall under your satisfaction

21 guarantee exception?

22 MR. TATERKA: Yes. Yes, it would, sure. Yeah.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. So we seem to have some

24 agreement there.

25 MR. TATERKA: Right.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou, do you want to say anything

2 else? I\'ve been sort of putting you on the spot, but that\'s

3 because you used to work here.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MR. GOLDFARB: If the lemon law issues are going to

6 come up later, fine. But I mean I really think that‑‑

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Yeah. Oh, no, it will.

8 MR. GOLDFARB: ‑‑that\'s where most of the difference

9 in point of view comes when that has to be done.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Evan and then Jack.

11 MR. JOHNSON: My perception when I sent the, I

12 thought there was a lot of common ground. Actually I

13 thought a lot of the common ground was on this issue. And

14 maybe we need to be flexible in the agenda.

15 Because I hear, I think I hear the consumer

16 regulatory side and Ford and General Motors in their

17 comments and now Chrysler being pretty close on this issue.

18 I mean, that\'s highly unusual.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, we\'re going to test it in

20 just a minute.

21 MR. JOHNSON: Okay. In terms of how you say and

22 categorize vehicles on which some kind of disclosure is

23 appropriate, then maybe the issue is the disclosure.

24 I think it\'s worth visiting here the terms. And I\'d

25 like to say for purposes of the audience, obviously, to try

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1 and clarify some terms because people use them differently

2 out there.

3 One is the term buyback. Sometimes people use that

4 to mean a case just when a car is repurchased in cash. I

5 think we are using that broader here to include so‑called

6 replacement. So we need to be clear.

7 I knew a very good consumer advocate who was

8 completing a term of three years on her local Ford board

9 here and she thought she was buying back cars that was

10 determined in use, but at the time the board was only

11 replacing the cars, not buying back.

12 And at the end of her term she finally realized that

13 people weren\'t getting cash back for those cars. And Ford

14 has since cleaned up their terminology and they are in fact

15 repurchasing cars in that program, also I must add.

16 But that\'s why terms are important and we need to

17 know what we\'re talking about. Trade assist is a term that

18 Lou says manufacturers have different definitions of, and I

19 want to hear it.

20 Because trade assist can mean several things, one of

21 which, a placement transaction might be viewed as a trade

22 assist.

23 I call replacement a situation where a manufacturer

24 may say, consumer, okay, we\'ll take back your car to a

25 dealer and maybe you paid for an upgrade in a cost of a new

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1 vehicle that\'s more expensive than what your old one was and

2 maybe you paid something for mileage, that\'s a replacement

3 type transaction.

4 But sometimes trade assist is applied to that. And

5 I can tell you when the paperwork is done, it\'s hard to see

6 that that was a full replacement transaction sometimes.

7 The other term that might include trade assist is

8 the policy of so‑called certificates. A manufacturer,

9 instead of working on a particular deal on an entire

10 transaction will say, okay, consumer, we\'ll give you a

11 certificate good for usually in the thousands toward the

12 purchase of another vehicle of our make.

13 And you cut your best deal. It can be at the dealer

14 you have been dealing with or someone else. And you may not

15 even trade in your old car; you may get rid of it in some

16 other way. But, I mean, that\'s a trade assist also.

17 Now what happens with those vehicles? I guess my

18 thinking is, I mean, if a vehicle in which a certificate is

19 given is traded in to a dealer of that vehicle

20 manufacturer\'s make, then disclosures is appropriate there

21 also. But I think we can talk about the terms a little

22 more.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack.

24 MR. GILLIS: That\'s essentially, I was just going to

25 ask Lou what ‑‑ could you define trade assists? That\'s ‑‑

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1 MR. GOLDFARB: A trade assist is a situation where

2 we become aware because a customer is complaining to our

3 customer relations office that that customer is unhappy with

4 the vehicle for whatever reason.

5 Sometimes it\'s a mechanical problem and the dealer

6 makes an effort to fix it. Sometimes it\'s buyers\' remorse.

7 Sometimes it\'s the noise of the transmission. Sometimes the

8 person bought a truck and didn\'t realize what it was like to

9 drive a truck.

10 But they\'re real unhappy and the dealer wants to do

11 something for this customer. We want to do something for

12 the customer. We will basically provide some amount of

13 money to enable that customer to buy another Chrysler

14 product.

15 Now, the vehicle they turn in becomes a used vehicle

16 immediately, okay, so we then have to dispose of that

17 vehicle. And my understanding is we make disclosures even

18 in those situations of the history of that vehicle, what was

19 complained about, what was repaired.

20 And those vehicles are put back on the market as

21 used vehicles. But we basically provide some amount of

22 funds to enable that new transaction to take place, the sale

23 of another car.

24 MR. GILLIS: But the consumer is on his own in terms

25 of trading in the problem car?

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1 MR. GOLDFARB: Yeah, well, the consumer ‑‑

2 MR. GILLIS: Or is that contingent; you\'ll give me

3 the money if I give you the car?

4 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, I mean, we don\'t give them the

5 full price of the car. What happens is a negotiation takes

6 place between the consumer and the dealer to buy another

7 car.

8 And we will make up the difference in lost value

9 because the car they\'re bringing back is a used car. And we

10 will, you know, basically satisfy that customer with a car

11 that\'s more to that person\'s liking than the one they drove

12 out of the dealership with.

13 MR. GILLIS: But you in effect buy back their

14 vehicle.

15 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, the vehicle comes back to the

16 dealer; it does not come back to Chrysler. So it\'s a

17 completely different process.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: But, if I understand you correctly,

19 you don\'t have a problem with the notion that the class of

20 repurchased vehicles for purposes of this discussion

21 includes the vehicles that are bought back by the dealer or

22 taken back by the dealer rather than the manufacturer.

23 MR. GOLDFARB: No, I don\'t have a problem with that.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: And I\'d like to, Phil, before we

25 call on you, I just want to, I want to check to see around

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1 the table whether there is any disagreement on the notion

2 that the class of vehicles that we are discussing here

3 includes vehicles that are taken back by the dealer as well

4 as vehicles that are taken back by the manufacturer.

5 Is there any disagreement on that? Could I just see

6 a show of hands?

7 Disagreement on that; Gerry, George, John. Well, we

8 are going to talk more about that in just a minute then.

9 And for you three I\'m going to call on you and ask you why,

10 you know, what your concerns are there. But let\'s go first

11 to Phil.

12 MR. NOWICKI: With you raising that question, I\'d

13 like you to ask then the question you were going to ask

14 because it may be relevant.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: You may ask it.

16 MR. NOWICKI: Well, just the question you had said

17 as far as is there any difference with dealers and

18 manufacturers in terms of the vehicles that are taken back.

19 I\'d be interested in what they were going to say before I

20 say what I was going to say.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Well, then, we\'ll come back

22 to you, Phil.

23 Gerry?

24 MR. DUCHARME: We use certificates from time to time

25 for customer satisfaction purposes. And most times because

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1 we have instructions to our field personnel not to use

2 certificates for cars that are, and again we get into a

3 definitional issue here, but cars that are lemon law

4 eligible, our field personnel are informed they are not to

5 use what we call certificates for the consumers.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, what are these certificates?

7 MR. DUCHARME: Basically they\'re negotiated with the

8 customer who is unhappy for a series of reasons. And I\'m

9 looking for some examples of the reasons. They\'re good for

10 an amount of money on the purchase of a new vehicle.

11 Now, some, some consumers may well keep the vehicle

12 they have and use a certificate to buy another vehicle for

13 their spouse or their child. A certificate doesn\'t have to

14 be used for the specific vehicle for which it was granted.

15 Now, they\'re used for a number of purposes.

16 Somebody may well buy an Explorer and expect to tow their

17 cabin cruiser around with it, and low and behold they

18 discover it just isn\'t capable of doing that.

19 We have a number of people who have their vehicle

20 out of warranty, they have an expensive repair that they

21 have to have on the vehicle, it\'s just out of warranty; so

22 as a matter of goodwill we say, look it, you don\'t want to

23 have the repair.

24 Maybe you want to trade it in and here\'s a

25 certificate for a thousand dollars against a new car. We

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1 use it quite often in those kinds of situations. We also

2 use it in situations where people for some reason or other

3 just lose confidence in the vehicle, if it stalls and the

4 like a couple of times.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Gerry, let me interrupt for a

6 minute. That\'s all fine. But what we\'re really talking

7 about here is what happens to the vehicle that they have

8 when the dealer takes it back.

9 MR. DUCHARME: The vehicle that they have is not

10 considered by us as a buyback, by Ford Motor Company. The

11 dealer is, takes a trade‑in just as a dealer takes a

12 trade‑in on any other vehicle at the dealership.

13 It\'s either sold by the dealer on his used car lot

14 or the dealer wholesales it elsewhere as a used car. It\'s

15 treated just as any other trade‑in.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: What\'s the problem with treating it

17 differently? What\'s your problem with that?

18 MR. DUCHARME: My problem is that there is no basis

19 to treat it any differently than a regular trade‑in. There

20 is nothing wrong with these vehicles. They are just a

21 trade‑in car.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: So your assumption is that the

23 vehicles that are in the buyback class have something wrong

24 with them?

25 MR. DUCHARME: My assumption is that the vehicles in

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1 the buyback, you know, class don\'t always have things wrong

2 with them. But as a matter of degree, let\'s say, there is

3 more of a chance that something is wrong with them than, of

4 course, there is with a certificate card.

5 If we have a lot of cars in the buyback category,

6 they are purely goodwill. If someone is so upset with

7 certain aspects of the vehicle and if they are a long‑term

8 customer of the company, they own a lot of vehicles, the

9 family owns a lot of vehicles, we may well bend over

10 backwards and buy back their car, where another person in

11 the same situation we would give a certificate.

12 What I\'m saying is that it\'s customer specific not

13 vehicle specific. In other words, we do this for the

14 goodwill of the customer. It isn\'t necessarily related to

15 the particular condition of the vehicle. And that\'s the big

16 difference.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: I\'m not seeing the difference sort

18 of conceptually between a goodwill buyback that the

19 manufacturer makes and a goodwill buyback that the

20 manufacturer or the dealer participates in.

21 MR. DUCHARME: Well, it\'s not a ‑‑

22 MS. HARRINGTON: That isn\'t a buyback I guess in

23 your mind. I\'m not ‑‑ Because if the assumption isn\'t that

24 there is something wrong with the car that\'s bought back,

25 then what\'s the difference?

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1 MR. DUCHARME: Well, the point is many times with

2 certificates, they are issued on the basis of who the

3 consumer is and the degree of loyalty that we want to

4 maintain with the consumer.

5 The certificate isn\'t necessarily issued because of

6 a particular problem in a car that we think is a concern.

7 That\'s the major difference.

8 When you get into the goodwill area and when you get

9 into the so‑called lemon law area, then you move from the

10 customer‑specific kind of action that you\'re taking to

11 preserve loyalty into the let\'s‑fix‑a‑problem‑with‑your‑car

12 category.

13 And there is vast difference between the two and I

14 think a vast difference between how a manufacturer ought to

15 react in the two situations. There is a lot of gray between

16 the two.

17 And the gray, as I would say, I would think in the

18 area of the goodwill car, if you can define a car as such, I

19 think it\'s pretty black and white. And the certificate, it

20 gets gray in the goodwill, and again it gets very, very

21 clear in the so‑called lemon law eligible vehicle. So it

22 moves from customer specific to vehicle specific with a gray

23 area in between.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. George.

25 MR. VELEZ: Yeah, let me take a shot at that because

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1 we\'ve got the same problem they do. We have the

2 certificate. And the problem is we don\'t get the car back;

3 it isn\'t a buyback. There is no obligation to trade that

4 car in, so consumers often will buy a second car; they\'ll

5 trade in a different car. And so ‑‑

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Do you have any idea how often in

7 these certificate situations the dealer takes back the car?

8 MR. VELEZ: I don\'t know that because, again, you\'d

9 have to get that, that comes under the dealers\' statistics.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: You don\'t do that?

11 MR. VELEZ: We don\'t, we don\'t do that, no. The

12 other, with a straight trade assist with the dealer where we

13 participate financially, again we don\'t buy back the

14 vehicle; the dealer does.

15 We don\'t have a problem disclosing. In fact, we

16 give the dealer our disclosure documents and encourage him

17 to disclose. But we lose control over that vehicle. We\'re

18 never in the chain of title.

19 The dealer has that and it\'s really up to him to be,

20 to disclose. The third situation I think where it gets a

21 little screwy is in lawsuits, for example, the consumer is

22 absolutely convinced, he\'d go and then we\'d disagree, sues

23 us over it; we settle that for cash.

24 That vehicle will go on for ‑‑ he\'ll keep the car,

25 perfectly happy with the car, and who knows what\'s going to

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1 happen to the car. We have, we certainly have no control

2 over it, don\'t know when it\'s going to get traded in, if

3 he\'s going to get rid of it, if it\'s going to get sold to

4 another consumer. We don\'t know that.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Lori.

6 MS. COHEN: If Motor Vehicle Administrators are

7 disclosing on a title, say, or on a brand, something is in a

8 manufacturers\' buyback status, to brand something, there is

9 an implication there is safety issues, there is a devalue

10 issue.

11 And it seems that if it\'s important enough to

12 disclose, there would be a safety or value issue, not that

13 somebody took it back because there wasn\'t enough trunk

14 space. I would think you would want to have the definition

15 of a safety or value implication and not call it buyback.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil.

17 MR. NOWICKI: Yeah, well, there\'s a lot of gray

18 areas. We had looked at about several thousand of

19 settlements, both from our own program and from the

20 manufacturers\' programs.

21 And they generally fall on a whole range of

22 categories people who get the complete, as a settlement, the

23 refund that they would be entitled to under the lemon law.

24 This is for the Florida Attorney General\'s Office, by the

25 way, for people in the audience.

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1 Replacement vehicles where it is really a swap in

2 accordance to the lemon law. And then it goes down a little

3 bit where we look at something in the form of trade assists

4 where it looks like some money was offered by the

5 manufacturer to help the consumer get out of the car;

6 partial refunds, if you will, where they don\'t give them

7 everything they\'re entitled to under the lemon law.

8 Maybe they bill them for their entire mileage or

9 they don\'t give them their interest. And then you get into

10 buyer certificates that are used. You get into, as was

11 mentioned, some people take straight cash and keep the car.

12 You get into some people accepting repairs or

13 extended warranties. When we approach these, though, we

14 also look at the buyer certificates that were used and try

15 to identify how many times we saw that as a settlement and

16 how many times that was actually used by the consumer and

17 some evidence that the consumer did return the car.

18 And particularly with the manufacturers\' programs,

19 they have to keep that information under Rule 703. I\'d say

20 at least 90 percent of the time when we did see evidence of

21 a certificate we were able to find, to the extent it was in

22 the file, some evidence of what actually happened, that

23 indeed it was used to purchase another vehicle of that make.

24 I would say the other issue that‑‑again, it\'s

25 drawing those lines on the use of buyer certificates; and

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1 again this was primarily the three domestic manufacturers so

2 I can\'t speak for each one specifically‑‑but in general,

3 between those things that were trade assists or buyer

4 certificates or other types of partial refunds, to us it

5 looked more like a product of what the consumer was willing

6 to accept as a settlement, not so much as the condition of

7 the car.

8 So, you know, as far as what we could tell in

9 looking at buyer certificates, the nonconformity, how many

10 times that it infects or how many days out of service,

11 compared to trade assists or partial refunds we did not see

12 a big difference.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: John.

14 MR. WHATLEY: I\'m not sure what all 18 of my members

15 do. Some of them I think would agree with Lou. I think

16 some would agree with Gerry.

17 There is another way to look at it, too, though, and

18 that is what is a disclosable buyback under current law?

19 And a number of our companies try to draw that line. The

20 problem is you have a number of different jurisdictions and

21 a number of different definitions and it\'s difficult to say.

22 Some companies adopt the policy that they disclose

23 the car, in our judgment it beats the lemon law presumption

24 in whatever state it\'s bought back in. And that\'s, that is

25 a little ‑‑ that\'s a lot gray.

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1 What you do if you have that policy is you try to

2 make certain you overdisclose. So if you buy it back for

3 paint or for color of paint, not necessarily a paint defect,

4 you don\'t disclose that because it wouldn\'t be a, it

5 wouldn\'t be a substantial defect in best use, value, and

6 safety.

7 But if it\'s something that breaks, maybe you do.

8 There are other ways to sort of make this definition if you

9 kind of look at it in terms of what\'s out there now. And

10 part of the problem we have is there are so many different

11 regimes, so many different definitions, it\'s hard to know

12 what to do from state to state.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Rosemary.

14 MS. SHAHAN: I start off by saying that we were

15 pleased to see in the comments, I see around this table, I

16 feel like I\'m hearing, anyways, more movement than there was

17 in the comments.

18 But I\'m concerned about Gerry\'s comment regarding a

19 vehicle that\'s returned after it stalled a couple of times

20 and the consumer has lost confidence in the vehicle.

21 And one of the biggest problems we\'re concerned with

22 is when there is an intermittent defect like that and

23 consumers maybe have been scared because it stalls in

24 traffic; and they have reason to be concerned about it.

25 And we don\'t want vehicles with a condition that is

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1 a serious condition to not have full disclosure on them.

2 Our major concern is ‑‑

3 MS. HARRINGTON: What would you disclose, though,

4 Rosemary? Tell me, tell me what that disclosure should be.

5 MS. SHAHAN: That it had a history of stalling,

6 and ‑‑ or at least the consumer alleges that it has a

7 condition. One of the biggest problem areas ‑‑

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Could the disclosure include ‑‑ I

9 want to, may I press on this a little bit?

10 MS. SHAHAN: Okay, sure.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Let\'s say that the disclosure is

12 consumer alleges vehicle stalls in traffic. Would there be

13 room on that disclosure for some comment from the

14 manufacturer as well? Manufacturer says ‑‑

15 MS. SHAHAN: Figment of their imagination.

16 (Laughter.)

17 MR. GILLIS: Couldn\'t find the problem.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, that doesn\'t seem to be a

19 particularly marketable claim.

20 MS. SHAHAN: Well, nothing to say it\'s normal.

21 Stalling in traffic isn\'t normal.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: No. But, I mean, if the disclosure

23 was, you know, you know, car returned, you know, car bought

24 back, you know, consumer says stalls in traffic.

25 MS. SHAHAN: Unable to diagnosis maybe.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Manufacturer says, you know,

2 problem is fixed or manufacturer says can\'t find the problem

3 or manufacturer says there isn\'t a problem and the car is

4 under warranty or something like that. Would that be

5 acceptable?

6 MS. SHAHAN: Possibly. I think one of the concerns

7 we have regarding disclosure is the implication that a

8 problem has been fixed when it simply hasn\'t been adequately

9 diagnosed. And we\'ve run into this.

10 The implication is, you know, this was the problem.

11 And especially if there is no indication that it was a

12 repeated problem; a consumer would want to know, did this

13 happen only once or did it just happen and it was returned

14 for this 12 times?

15 I think there is a difference, and people would want

16 to know that. And if the implication is that it\'s been

17 repaired, that\'s kind of tricky, too.

18 Because sometimes with an intermittent problem it

19 may appear to have been repaired but then, you know, it

20 reoccurs under certain climactic conditions or a certain

21 altitude again. Maybe it just wasn\'t tested adequately.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Jack.

23 MR. GILLIS: I\'m still going back to your original

24 question. I\'m a little confused. The auto manufacturer,

25 are you saying that a buyback would apply to you but not

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1 dealers?

2 MS. HARRINGTON: George? He\'s making significant

3 eye contact with you.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MR. GILLIS: Or the NADA guy. I mean, I\'d like to

6 know what NADA is, where you guys are on this.

7 MR. VELEZ: No. I think the common perception is

8 that buybacks apply only to manufacturers. I\'m not taking

9 issue with would it should apply to or that it does or it

10 doesn\'t.

11 I\'m just saying if you are looking to us and asking

12 us to define a buyback in terms of what we buy back, which

13 is the simplest definition, we don\'t buy those vehicles

14 back. And so for those classes of vehicles you\'re going to

15 have to look to someone else is all I\'m suggesting.

16 MR. GILLIS: Okay. But they could be called

17 buybacks as well, just because the dealer buys it back and

18 not you.

19 MR. VELEZ: If someone buys it back, I think you can

20 call it a buyback.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter.

22 MR. KITZMILLER: Well, I think from our perspective

23 with regard to trade assists, and again different

24 manufacturers do different things with trade assists. We\'ve

25 heard about the coupons and sometime ‑‑ I mean, what I would

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1 call a normal trade assist situation is where we have a

2 customer who is unhappy with a vehicle for a particular

3 reason and we go to the manufacturer.

4 And between the dealer and the manufacturer we give

5 the person financial assistance and we trade them out of

6 that vehicle. I don\'t think from NADA\'s perspective we have

7 any problem in disclosing the fact that this was a trade

8 assist vehicle to the customer necessarily.

9 I think in our comments our concern was that again,

10 we talked about defining these terms, are we going to have

11 to disclose with the same language a trade assist which

12 someone traded a car in because they bought an Explorer and

13 they never had a sport utility vehicle before and they

14 weren\'t prepared for the fact that it drove like a truck

15 with the same terminology that someone bought the car back

16 because there was a problem with the brakes.

17 Are we just going to call that a buyback? I think

18 we have some concern with that. But from our perspective,

19 as long as we have some clear criteria that trade assists

20 need to be disclosed, you know, and as long as we can factor

21 that into the manufacture when we\'re figuring out

22 financially what it\'s going to cost to buy, to get this

23 customer in a different vehicle, I don\'t think we have a

24 problem with that.

25 Again I think, and some other people have raised

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1 this, I think that there has got to be some look taken at do

2 you want to equate somebody bringing a car back because they

3 don\'t like the ride characteristics with somebody brought a

4 car back because there was a problem with the brakes.

5 You know, that I think we have some concern about.

6 But in general, no. I think from a trade assist standpoint,

7 if that\'s part of a buyback disclosure and we understand

8 what we\'re supposed to disclose, I don\'t think we have a

9 problem with that.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Janet.

11 MS. SMITH: I just had a question for Gerald because

12 I thought I heard him say that at least in Ford\'s buyer

13 certificate program your instruction to your field people is

14 that if it\'s a lemon law eligible car you won\'t use the

15 buyer certificate?

16 MR. DUCHARME: Those are the instructions.

17 MS. SMITH: How does Ford define what a lemon law

18 eligible car is?

19 MR. DUCHARME: It depends on the state law.

20 MS. SMITH: Okay. So under Florida\'s law our line

21 for lemon disclosure has to occur is when a claim is filed

22 with either your informal presale or procedure or the

23 state‑run arbitration process.

24 There is a period before that when the consumer has

25 to notify the manufacturer directly if the vehicle has a

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1 defect and give the manufacturer a final opportunity to cure

2 the defect.

3 And we were interested in kind of knowing at what

4 point there do buyer buyer certificates occur as a means of

5 resolving that dispute? There is definitely notice of the

6 defect.

7 It\'s not, under our law at least, a requirement to

8 disclose if the vehicle is taken back. But it may be a line

9 that\'s discussed here as a point where disclosure maybe

10 should click in.

11 MR. DUCHARME: Well, I\'d have to talk to my

12 colleagues who have Florida specific knowledge in their

13 repertoire; I don\'t at this time. However, the rule out

14 there is that we have, though, with the use of these

15 certificates is that they are not to be used for vehicles

16 that would qualify for lemon law protection.

17 They are solely to be used for customer satisfaction

18 purposes and the kinds of situations we discussed. When I

19 mentioned the example of the car that stalled a couple of

20 times, you should all take into account that many times cars

21 will stall intermittently when the consumer goes out and

22 buys, you know, dirty gasoline and puts that in the product.

23 And some people who don\'t have a large amount of

24 database in terms of the mechanics of the car will lose

25 confidence in the car even though the problem has nothing to

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1 do with the car.

2 And that was an example that I put Ford had a

3 problem that Rosemary was describing. But if you want the

4 answer in Florida, I\'m very happy to get that information

5 for you.

6 But the message we have to our consumer affairs

7 people is that these certificates are to be used for a

8 particular kind of purpose. They are not to be misused.

9 And they are misused. But we have, you know, ways

10 of tracking that in the company and we try to inspect that

11 or stop that when we come upon it. But they are solely to

12 achieve customer satisfaction in non lemon law kinds of

13 situations.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou, you were next on my list

15 but ‑‑

16 MR. GOLDFARB: I withdrew.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. And, Gerry, I guess you ‑‑

18 was there anything? You were next after Lou.

19 MR. DUCHARME: I think that\'s it.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: You\'re covered, okay. Robert?

21 MR. GRAHAM: The general tenor of the discussion I\'m

22 hearing today is sort of tension between underinclusiveness

23 and overinclusiveness. And we\'ve been talking a great deal

24 I think about these trade assists and these so‑called

25 goodwill buybacks. I think we are talking about the

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1 marginal cases here.

2 So when, if we\'re going to focus on the marginal

3 cases, I\'d like to know from the manufacturers if they can

4 give us a sense of what percentage of the numbers of the

5 vehicles that they say that they buy back per year, what

6 percents of those include the goodwill buybacks?

7 I mean, if we\'re going to be that concerned about

8 so‑called goodwill buybacks, we\'ve got to make sure that

9 that\'s a substantial number.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: That\'s a very good question.

11 MR. GRAHAM: So, for instance, George, you mentioned

12 in your comments that roughly one half of one percent of the

13 vehicles under warranty at any given time are purchased,

14 during a given year are repurchased by GM.

15 If you assume a two‑year warranty, we can always

16 roughly raise the cap and figure, what percentage of those

17 would you say are buybacks for vehicles that are not

18 strictly speaking lemons?

19 MR. VELEZ: First of all, let me say that number is

20 wrong. It\'s grossly overstated. But in percentage terms I

21 can tell you three percent of the vehicles we buy back are

22 mandated to be bought back; 33 percent are bought back under

23 guaranteed satisfaction programs. And you\'re talking, the

24 rest of that from our perspective is mostly goodwill. So I

25 would say well over 50 percent.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: So you\'re saying 64 percent of the

2 cars that GM buys back you would classify as goodwill

3 buybacks?

4 MR. VELEZ: No, I wouldn\'t go that far. I would say

5 if it\'s in a gray area, if I\'d say even being conservative

6 and taking half of those, we\'re talking about 16 or

7 something percent being goodwill and giving the benefit of

8 the doubt. Because obviously we buy back cars that were not

9 ordered that do meet lemon law presumptions.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Early buybacks, as they\'re called.

11 MR. VELEZ: Yeah. Well, once arbitration has been

12 filed in Florida, for example, then that\'s a vehicle that

13 has to be disclosed. We weren\'t ordered to buy that car

14 back but we chose to and it met the presumption and so we

15 have to disclose that.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou.

17 MR. GRAHAM: If I may just clarify what I\'m trying

18 to say. We have been talking today about certain things

19 where you have got a long‑time customer, somebody that is

20 reputable, going to plead on them for General Motors,

21 Chrysler, Ford vehicles.

22 What percentage of those cases where somebody has,

23 somebody has bought a Ford Explorer, for instance, and they

24 aren\'t able to tow the cabin cruiser. What percentage of

25 the time are we talking about that kind of a case, bad color

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1 or just not knowing how to drive a truck for instance?

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou.

3 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, we\'re talking, I mean, you put

4 it into categories, goodwill and lemon or goodwill and

5 mandated by my community. We don\'t consider every vehicle

6 that is not a mandated buyback a goodwill buyback.

7 I mean, there are many, many ‑‑ and I think our

8 percentages are probably the same as GM\'s; three percent may

9 be mandated.

10 The vast majority of them are vehicles we bought

11 back where a customer has complained of a problem. We

12 believe we\'ve fixed it. The customer disagrees. We buy it

13 back. And we fully disclose what the problem was, what we

14 did to fix it.

15 And we make sure that disclosure is given to the

16 dealer and the dealer gives it to the customer. So, I mean,

17 if we wanted to assume that we\'re assuming that all other

18 than mandated buybacks are goodwill buybacks‑‑

19 MR. GRAHAM: No, I understand that.

20 MR. GOLDFARB: ‑‑the product\'s worthiness has been a

21 problem, and that problem has been fully disclosed.

22 MR. GRAHAM: I understand that. Great.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: But we\'re not ‑‑ Let me sort of

24 clarify, Lou, then. We\'re not, though, talking, are we, in

25 the double digits of percentages of cars that are bought

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1 back about cars that are bought back because the customer

2 thinks that the trunk is too small or doesn\'t like the color

3 or‑‑

4 MR. GOLDFARB: No, no.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: ‑‑you know, finds that it drives

6 like a truck or, I mean.

7 MR. VELEZ: Yeah, we are.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: I mean, that\'s a small percentage

9 you\'re saying in the sense of this?

10 MR. GOLDFARB: For us it\'s a very small, small. I

11 mean, we don\'t have the term goodwill on our disclosure

12 form. Now, we do have, you know, settlement of litigation

13 or resolution of, you know, a dispute.

14 We have some, we have about four or five different

15 items on the disclosure form. But most often there has been

16 a problem. We made an effort to fix it. We think it\'s

17 fixed, they don\'t, and we buy it back.

18 Now one could say that\'s for customer satisfaction.

19 We wanted to satisfy that customer and hope that they buy

20 another one. In many cases they do.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil.

22 MR. NOWICKI: Yeah. I was just going to say, part

23 of it is related to what, I believe it\'s Lori said, Cohen,

24 as far as what the disclosure is going to be. Giving the

25 example of the truck that rides bad. Well, yeah, to some

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1 people that is true. They\'ve had a car. They\'re now in a

2 truck. It rides differently. They complain about it. And

3 there is goodwill. And in some of those instances it\'s

4 swapping people out or using buyer certificates.

5 Other instances, though, it may be a matter of

6 degree. And maybe this truck does have a vibration problem

7 that is real and genuine and it\'s bought back for that

8 reason. It\'s hard to decipher what that difference is

9 between what is goodwill and what is a legitimate problem.

10 And again, from the manufacturer\'s side when it

11 clearly is something like color or like a bad ride or, I

12 mean, adjusting to a different type of vehicle, to then say

13 it\'s bought back because it wasn\'t repaired after a

14 reasonable number of attempts may be somewhat excessive and

15 may be something that misrepresents the history.

16 But it\'s, like I said, it\'s very, very hard to try

17 and define what this problem is because you\'re going to have

18 differences of opinions on it from people who handle the

19 complaints from the government and from company people who

20 may see it differently. So it\'s ‑‑

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Is it naive to think that it would

22 be possible for either the dealer or the manufacturer to

23 disclose the following: This car was bought back because,

24 and then the \"because\" would be the previous owner

25 complained of a problem and was not satisfied with, you

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1 know, the efforts to repair, and identifying the problem; or

2 the previous owner didn\'t like the way that the car drives.

3 Or, that is, about the reason for the buyback. I\'m

4 not talking here about lemons because those disclosures are

5 already set. I\'m talking about nonlemons. Can that, is it,

6 is that something that can be done by dealers and

7 manufacturers?

8 MR. GOLDFARB: Yes.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: And if it can be done, is that a

10 satisfactory solution?

11 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, we think it is being done. I

12 mean, that is what is happening today. I mean, we have

13 disclosure forms that have a number of ‑‑ we don\'t use quite

14 the verbiage that you suggest, though.

15 But, I mean, I think it says customer satisfaction.

16 And then below that, okay, it lists the problem complained

17 of. And below that it specifies what was done to repair

18 that problem. And that is the disclosure we have been using

19 since \'88, \'89.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil.

21 MR. NOWICKI: Okay. Let me make this point. What

22 if, following up on the point you raised, what if you had

23 the customer who returned the vehicle sign the form for the

24 reason of buyback, provided though it wasn\'t done under any

25 duress or conditions to get the settlement?

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1 In other words, how do you ‑‑ and wouldn\'t that be

2 the best information to then pass along to the next buyer,

3 provided it wasn\'t done under any duress, giving them the

4 disclosure.

5 Yeah, they swapped it out because I didn\'t like the

6 color. And I\'m the first owner, and here\'s my name and

7 address. And that would be a disclosure that would be

8 passed along to the next buyer.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Rosemary.

10 MS. SHAHAN: I think we are moving in the right

11 direction. If we can address this without having what we

12 call the loopholes. I mean, our biggest concern is that the

13 manufacturers in a number of cases that were cognizant about

14 have used this customer satisfaction.

15 We feel like it\'s been abused, that vehicles that

16 are really very defective and serious defects have been

17 designated as customer satisfaction. I feel like it would

18 be helpful for us to see the disclosure forms that

19 manufacturers are using.

20 And I appreciated the fact that Ford provided its

21 disclosure form with its comments. And I feel like it would

22 be helpful if we could get those from all the manufacturers,

23 maybe the disclosure forms that have been in use in the last

24 two to three years.

25 Because, for instance, the one disclosure form that

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1 we noted that GM had been using, I don\'t know if GM is still

2 using, indicated it was a customer satisfaction buyback.

3 And then when you read the fine print about it, it said that

4 it could also be a lemon buyback.

5 And to my way of thinking they\'re not, it\'s not the

6 same. If it\'s customer satisfaction, that implies that it

7 was a trivial concern or a matter of taste or something, not

8 that there ‑‑

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Do you have a basis for saying that

10 that\'s what that implies, or is that just your sense or?

11 MS. SHAHAN: Just in a sense of it and in talking

12 with consumers. I think there is some implication there

13 that customer satisfaction means a customer was dissatisfied

14 maybe not for a legitimate reason or a reason that someone

15 else would be concerned about.

16 But if it\'s also lemon law, if it could also be

17 lemon law, then that\'s kind of contradictory. I mean,

18 that\'s a different matter. I think where manufacturers run

19 into trouble is where they\'re indicating it was a customer

20 satisfaction buyback, and the second owner hears somehow

21 from the first owner and the first owner says, oh, yeah, it

22 was really a big pain. And I thought it was ‑‑

23 MS. HARRINGTON: But I hear Lou saying, for example,

24 that there is more disclosed than customer satisfaction.

25 And you\'ve already explained that.

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1 George, what about you? Is there more? I mean,

2 what\'s the, what is it that you\'re saying on the these

3 customer satisfaction disclosures?

4 MR. VELEZ: I\'m sorry. What was the question again?

5 MS. HARRINGTON: When GM provides a disclosure on a

6 buyback and the reason for the buyback is customer

7 satisfaction or customer dissatisfaction, is there

8 additional information provided about the nature of the

9 problem or the, whatever, that left the customer

10 dissatisfied?

11 MR. VELEZ: Yes, there is.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: And give me an example of what that

13 would be.

14 MR. VELEZ: Well, here is a copy of our form. And

15 the form has the different categories that you can check

16 off. And then it has an area where you, in all instances,

17 should write in what the reasons for repurchasing the

18 vehicle were.

19 The category Rosemary is talking about is titled

20 mediated or customer satisfaction purchase. And then what

21 the verbiage explains is this problem; we have put

22 definitions.

23 We\'re not going to argue about whether this was a

24 lemon law or customer satisfaction. We\'re just telling you

25 that\'s the general category it fell in and these are the

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1 reasons we bought it back.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Could you read us that paragraph,

3 please?

4 MR. VELEZ: It says, \"General Motors or the dealer

5 voluntarily repurchased or reacquired this vehicle as a

6 customer satisfaction measure.

7 Included in this category are vehicles repurchased

8 under a guaranteed satisfaction program or reacquired to

9 settle or mediate a dispute in the BBB Auto Line Program in

10 which General Motors participates. These disputes could

11 include claims that could fall under a state lemon law.\"

12 Now, the thing you have to understand is that many

13 states have their own requirements. So this is filled out

14 always in addition to whatever the state requirement is. So

15 you would actually have two forms, as you do in California,

16 that are handed along the chain that hopefully gets to the

17 consumer.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Thank you. Evan.

19 MR. JOHNSON: I guess my reaction to that is similar

20 to Rosemary\'s. I mean, the disclosure isn\'t specific

21 enough. When you include everything it doesn\'t tell the

22 consumer anything. And that\'s what that does.

23 I have a philosophy of giving, I have no problem

24 with giving information in the disclosures and I think we

25 should discuss that specific information. I think when

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1 you\'re talking about sort of a threshold cut‑off, and

2 something that needs to be in there is when a consumer was

3 alleging, you know, a defect in the car. And we can get

4 into specific how you want to word that, but I think FTC

5 staff would work out things like that, I\'m quite sure.

6 But if there is an allegation, then I think you\'re

7 in a category where you need to, that needs to be said. And

8 that\'s a fairly objective test that you don\'t want to get

9 into too many judgment calls on the labels.

10 If I could digress just a moment, I have a question

11 for Lou Goldbarb, and that is, the figures on buybacks in

12 Chrysler\'s comments, Lou, now did those not include trade

13 assists, which are the ones that you help the person into a

14 new car on or not?

15 You seem to use trade assists pretty, pretty

16 broadly. So I\'m asking you if your figures of buyback

17 exclude trade assists.

18 MR. GOLDFARB: Why do you say we use trade assists

19 broadly? I mean, I gave no indication of what the number of

20 trade assists were; I just defined the category, which is

21 where the dealer takes the car back.

22 I can\'t break down that number. I didn\'t actually

23 prepare the comments; Dave Husaka did. And I\'ll plead

24 Gerry\'s defense; I\'ll get that information to you.

25 (Laughter.)

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1 MR. JOHNSON: Okay.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Gerry, you\'re next.

3 MR. DUCHARME: Thank you. In terms of disclosure, I

4 know the forms asked us, at least our forms asked the people

5 preparing them to check a box.

6 One is buyback was an effort to promote customer

7 goodwill; another, a decision of the Ford Consumer Affairs

8 Board; an adverse state lemon law ruling; a settlement in a

9 legal matter; or other.

10 And very frankly, it seems to me that we aren\'t

11 doing anyone any favors by asking people to make these kinds

12 of, you know, judgments really. If it\'s a ‑‑ The important

13 thing is to get the facts out to the consumer why was the

14 vehicle bought back because it may have gone through an

15 appeals board process.

16 And maybe there was nothing wrong with the vehicle;

17 yeah, we had to buy it back. And that happens all the time;

18 I\'m sure my colleagues in the industry will agree. What we

19 do at Ford, we write down on the form the reason, immediate

20 reason why the vehicle was repurchased. But we attach to

21 the form, and this goes right through the auction and goes

22 through the dealership and to the consumer the 24, the last

23 24‑month history of repairs made at dealerships on warranty

24 off of our computer records.

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Is this like a plain English

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1 statement though, or is it ‑‑ I mean, I\'m, I\'m pretty car

2 dumb. So if I were reading one of these statements would I

3 have a clue about what this means?

4 MR. DUCHARME: Yes, you would. It\'s done in a, we

5 try to do it in a self‑explanatory way. There are people

6 obviously who will not know what it means to change a brake

7 rotor, and that will mean nothing to them. But there is not

8 any other way of saying it.

9 So to some, yes, they won\'t understand it if they

10 have no inclination to mechanical terms. But the

11 disclosures are written we believe in clear terms. The

12 dates are there for the repairs, and the full 24‑month

13 history is appended to the disclosure.

14 Our view is the consumer is entitled to have the

15 facts. Whether they\'re relevant or not is up to the

16 consumer to decide in making his purchase. But the facts

17 ought to be there.

18 Most of these service repairs during warranty

19 probably will have nothing at all to do with the reason why

20 the vehicle was repurchased. But yet they\'re there. If the

21 consumer finds it relevant, fine; if he doesn\'t, that\'s

22 fine, too.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack.

24 MR. GILLIS: A couple things. One, I\'d like to

25 respond to your question, Rosemary, in terms of the common

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1 understanding of customer satisfaction. I go back to

2 something Gerry said.

3 You\'re buying this car back for two reasons. One,

4 because there is something wrong with the customer, the

5 customer is unhappy, or there is something wrong with the

6 car.

7 So I think there is a pretty common understanding

8 that customer satisfaction means we wanted to make the

9 customer happy. And that implies there is nothing wrong

10 with the car.

11 Because there is no reason without, with a few

12 exceptions, for any smart business person to simply buy back

13 a vehicle that has nothing wrong with it. I mean, we don\'t

14 want to see you guys doing that because that\'s going to

15 raise the cost of cars.

16 So I think that there is an understanding that the

17 word customer satisfaction means the car is probably okay.

18 We just have ‑‑ You know how customers can be. Gerry just

19 said it earlier; hey, we buy back great cars that even the

20 appeals board say are bad cars all the time; right,

21 colleagues? And you all nodded your head, yeah, yeah, that

22 happens all the time.

23 There is something that we are missing here. So I\'d

24 like to, you know, just from our perspective we think

25 customer satisfaction has a clear‑cut implication.

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1 The second thing is, George, in the thing you just

2 read to me, you just said GM or the dealer buys back.

3 MR. VELEZ: Right.

4 MR. GILLIS: Now, earlier you had said, listen, we

5 buy cars back and that\'s our deal. The dealer may even buy

6 cars back, and that\'s their deal; we have nothing to do with

7 that.

8 MR. VELEZ: Right.

9 MR. GILLIS: So ‑‑

10 MR. VELEZ: We give the dealer this form and say we

11 suggest you fill it out and we\'ll hand it on to the next

12 purchaser.

13 MR. GILLIS: Okay. So that\'s just a generic form

14 that either you or the dealer would use, okay.

15 And then finally, Gerry, can you expound on the fact

16 that you buy a lot of cars back that the appeals board say

17 are wrong but you think are, consider problematic that you

18 think are okay?

19 MR. DUCHARME: Well, if we didn\'t think we had a

20 case we wouldn\'t have matters go to the appeals board. If

21 we thought really and truly there was a real problem with

22 the car, we would contest it and we\'d take care of the

23 customer.

24 We disagree many times with what consumers said. We

25 try to help them. We, you know, try to maintain their

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1 loyalty. But sometimes we have disagreements. We have

2 allegations and claims mainly with respect to our cars that

3 frankly astound many of us and we find ourselves faced with

4 decisions of appeal boards that yet further astound us. And

5 those vehicles ‑‑

6 MR. GILLIS: Well, if a car then rises to the level

7 of becoming a lemon and goes through a state lemon law

8 process, are you also saying that for the most part the

9 reason why that happened is because we would have taken care

10 of this a long time ago but we really think the car is okay?

11 MR. DUCHARME: There are all kinds of situations.

12 I\'m not saying in every situation that\'s the case. But

13 there are many situations where we find ourselves buying

14 back cars that we find nothing wrong with; there are no

15 things wrong with it.

16 We resell those, you know, vehicles and we put a

17 warranty on them. And we find in many, many cases that

18 these vehicles are never back in for the repair, not a thing

19 wrong with them.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Steve.

21 MR. TATERKA: Let me make a couple of points. First

22 I want to address something in the form that George read.

23 The language that you read included both guaranteed

24 repurchased cars and I think goodwill adjustments.

25 The reason I said earlier that I didn\'t have a

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1 problem with excluding guaranteed repurchase cars is that

2 typically guaranteed repurchase programs are going to extend

3 for such a short duration that the vehicle wouldn\'t be

4 nonconforming under a state lemon law anyway.

5 In other words, if the customer has the right to

6 insist on a guaranteed repurchase within 30 days of when

7 they repurchased it, it\'s unlikely that the vehicle would

8 have met poor repair attempts or been out of service for 30

9 days, which may be a typical lemon law criteria.

10 But I want to address sort of what I think is a more

11 serious problem on the mechanics of disclosure. We are

12 talking about the disclosure form that the manufacturer or

13 maybe the dealer was going to give presumably to the next

14 purchaser.

15 But in the real world, the only document that you

16 can assume is going to make it to the next purchaser is

17 going to be the title certificate. And I think, I mean, I

18 think this ‑‑

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Steve, we\'re going to get to that

20 issue later today.

21 MR. TATERKA: Okay. Okay. Well, the only thing I

22 wanted, the only point I wanted to make was that regardless

23 of what is put on that disclosure form, you can\'t make the

24 assumption that it\'s going to be seen by the next person.

25 Because, I mean, when I was in the regulatory arena,

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1 I mean, I can\'t tell you how many times I saw a dealer

2 selling cars that they may have taken in on trade or bought

3 at an auction and went ahead and sold; they couldn\'t even

4 disclose the mileage properly because they didn\'t even have

5 the title certificate from the prior owner.

6 And now we\'re talking about additional forms that

7 presumably they\'re going to have and disclose to the next

8 customer? It\'s not realistic.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: George?

10 MR. VELEZ: Yeah. I wanted to address I guess two

11 issues that I just couldn\'t let go, silence sometimes being

12 interpreted as assent.

13 One is that someone made the statement that it\'s a

14 pretty objective thing when a consumer alleges that there is

15 a problem with a car. There is ‑‑ Everyone here, most

16 everyone here probably has owned an automobile.

17 It is a very emotional thing. And it is

18 particularly frustrating when you believe there is a problem

19 with the car and it can\'t be fixed to your satisfaction. So

20 it becomes a very emotional thing. And there is absolutely

21 nothing objective about it sometimes.

22 If you take a look just at the Florida statistics,

23 56 percent of the cases that went to arbitration by their

24 own statistics were settled in favor of the manufacturer.

25 If we had a customer satisfaction matter about those

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1 car backs, they would then be titled lemons or they would be

2 disclosed as lemons. So my only point is I don\'t think

3 that\'s a valid assumption.

4 Second, you know, folks, if you want to take a look

5 at this disclosure and read the whole thing, I\'d be glad to

6 pass it around and give you copies or whatever. But that\'s

7 the catch‑all category here.

8 There are specific disclosures for when it has been

9 ordered to be bought back, adjudicated, or bought back after

10 having been filed with either a state or a DSP arbitration

11 system.

12 So that catch‑all category there is specifically

13 because we\'ve got people out there in the field who are

14 trying to do their job. They\'ve got lots of other things to

15 do and they happen to be human.

16 And we don\'t want to put them in the situation where

17 they have to have a thousand boxes and have to pick the

18 right pigeonhole. We give them the general category. They

19 say I can\'t figure out what this is, but here it is and

20 we\'re making disclosure about what the problems are.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Would you reconsider that? I mean,

22 for example‑‑

23 MR. VELEZ: Oh, sure. As long as that\'s ‑‑

24 MS. HARRINGTON: ‑‑we have some very good, I see one

25 of them here, Carolyn Shanna from our Office of Consumer

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1 Business Education, who I\'m sure would be glad to work with

2 any of you on your forms.

3 MR. VELEZ: No, we would take input from whomever.

4 We are not proud ‑‑ we\'re not, no pride in ownership here.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Great. Well, Carolyn would be glad

6 to work with you on your form because I, I have a problem

7 with that paragraph that you read. I wouldn\'t know as a

8 consumer what that meant. I mean, I don\'t, that doesn\'t,

9 that doesn\'t hit it for me in terms of giving useful

10 information.

11 MR. VELEZ: But you understand that the driver

12 behind that is that you, first of all, you\'re getting a

13 state form in some instances. And again, the driver behind

14 it is you don\'t want to guess wrong.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Sure.

16 MR. VELEZ: And you are getting presumably what

17 happened, what were the mechanical problems. But, yeah,

18 we\'ll take input.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter.

20 MR. MAIER: I have two comments. One is that in my

21 experience a pure customer satisfaction buyback, that is,

22 because the customer doesn\'t like the color, for example, is

23 extremely rare. And the discussion I think is, in focusing

24 on that, is missing the much larger issue.

25 But the second question I wanted to ask the

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1 manufacturers is there is an interesting suggestion in the

2 comments by the California Department of DMV that the

3 disclosure form have attached to it a printout of the

4 warranty history. In my experience the manufacturers can

5 easily print that out. I think Mr. Ducharme ‑‑

6 MR. DUCHARME: We do that. We do that in the

7 format ‑‑

8 MR. MAIER: Ford does that. And I\'m wondering if

9 the other manufacturers do that. And if they don\'t, what

10 they think about that suggestion.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay, we\'re going to ‑‑ Lou is next

12 on the list. So we\'ll hear from that manufacturer whatever

13 it is that you were going to say after you answer Peter\'s

14 question.

15 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, actually, it ties into what I

16 was going to say which was to expound on what Jack Gillis

17 said about how people interpret designation customer

18 satisfaction.

19 I think, correct me if I\'m wrong, Jack, I think you

20 were suggesting that someone who sees customer satisfaction

21 check things that had nothing to do with the car. I have

22 trouble believing it. We don\'t buy cars back because people

23 are unhappy with their marriages.

24 (Laughter.)

25 MR. GOLDFARB: You know, if someone is unhappy and

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1 brings it to our attention it\'s because they\'re unhappy with

2 the car. The important information on the disclosure is

3 what was complained about, which we disclose, and what was

4 done to fix that, which we disclose.

5 And that is the critical information. All these

6 designations including, frankly, lemon law designation is

7 confusing. It\'s misleading. The real information that\'s

8 useful is what was complained about and why was this car

9 bought back and what was done to fix it and was it fixed?

10 I\'m not sure giving a three‑year warranty history is

11 going to be useful to consumers. Frankly, it could be

12 information overload. I mean, a lot of that information is

13 difficult to decipher. We shouldn\'t ‑‑ it may be too much

14 information. I don\'t know.

15 I mean, I\'m not saying it\'s impossible to do. If

16 Ford does it, certainly it\'s doable. But, you know, I just

17 think that no one is misled by a proper disclosure form,

18 even if customer satisfaction is checked because we always

19 disclose what was done, what was wrong, you know, where the

20 vehicle is.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Adam, question?

22 MR. COHN: Yeah. Actually maybe the other

23 manufacturers should be given a chance to respond first

24 because my question actually takes a step backwards to an

25 earlier question, so ‑‑

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. We\'ll come back to you.

2 John, you were next on the list, do you want to

3 respond to Peter\'s question?

4 MR. WHATLEY: Briefly two points. The first one was

5 I wanted to take issue with a statement that no rational

6 manufacturer were to buy a car back that wasn\'t defective.

7 I mean, we can argue about how often it happens.

8 It does happen. Because manufacturers look at this

9 in terms of the investment of their customer. They want

10 their customer coming back. They want their customer

11 talking to their neighbors about how good an experience

12 they\'ve had.

13 And there are a number of manufactures that will do

14 that. They may not have a thirty days, a program in writing

15 with a particular car back for whatever reasons. But

16 they\'re very liberal about buying the car back in some

17 situations.

18 The second thing is, when you start having to ‑‑

19 this jumped to the question what you list on the form. If

20 you start having to list the warranty histories, it\'s,

21 manufacturers vary in the capacity to be able to do that for

22 one thing.

23 Some have very sophisticated systems. Some don\'t.

24 And if you\'re trying to get, unless you have a standardized

25 national uniform way of doing it, you\'re going to have all

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1 kinds of problems with the complexity and confusion that

2 would result from this.

3 Everybody doesn\'t do that. Everybody I think has

4 some problems doing it. And there would be a lot of

5 problems, some shoehorn holding everything to that kind of a

6 form.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Gerry, do you have an answer to

8 Peter\'s question, or you\'ve already answered it?

9 MR. DUCHARME: I\'m going to have to go back to your

10 question, Peter. I was thinking of something else as you

11 asked the question. What was your question again exactly?

12 Sorry.

13 MR. MAIER: The question is why isn\'t it possible

14 simply attach with a stapler a printout of the warranty

15 summary which I know that at least the three big

16 manufacturers and the domestic manufacturers have to their

17 system, which isn\'t an enormously complex task‑‑

18 MR. DUCHARME: Right.

19 MR. MAIER: ‑‑something I think a dealer can pull up

20 in an instant at their terminals at the dealership.

21 MR. DUCHARME: Okay. Well, I guess the answer is it

22 is possible. But I would agree with some of my colleagues,

23 and you questioned how relevant all that is, you know, to

24 the particular consumer buying a particular car.

25 It seems to me the really relevant information is

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1 the fact not that it was a lemon law buyback or part of the

2 DSP settlement or the like, but the fact that it was

3 repurchased by the manufacturer.

4 And the other relevant fact is why it was

5 repurchased by the manufacturer. The third relevant fact is

6 that it was fixed and here\'s how it was fixed by the

7 manufacturer. It seems to me those are the three relevant

8 things to be told to the consumer.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Or that it wasn\'t fixed.

10 MR. DUCHARME: Or that it wasn\'t fixed. Okay. Or

11 that it wasn\'t fixed is a relevant factor as well. And it

12 seems to me that if we had that on a uniform form used

13 throughout all the United States, then we\'d have consumers

14 who would know what to expect when they buy a car and they\'d

15 know how to understand it because they wouldn\'t be faced

16 with all these 20 forms.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. Well, let\'s test that

18 proposition. If we had a form that said this car was

19 repurchased and we included trade assists in this for the

20 purposes of this question, so whoever does, whether it\'s the

21 dealer or the manufacturer, the fact that the car has been

22 repurchased is going to be disclosed, that it was

23 repurchased because and there is going to be some fairly

24 specific information filling, that is provided, and this is

25 what has been done about that.

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1 I mean, if it was repurchased because the trunk was

2 too small, I assume that the statement is nothing was done

3 to enlarge the trunk.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. So, I mean, I\'m talking

6 about specific, vehicle specific information. Would that

7 fix, if that information was provided on every buyback,

8 would that fix the problem?

9 Jack?

10 MR. GILLIS: I think it would.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Evan?

12 MR. JOHNSON: I\'m going to hedge a little on that

13 one. I think that that sounds good. I\'m wondering whether

14 a little bit more information might be relevant. I mean, it

15 might be relevant if the case, if it was a car that got

16 bought back after a court action or something like that.

17 That would be my hedge on that. But I think some categories

18 like that might be relevant additional information. But

19 that core information I think is going a long way toward

20 where we need to be.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil?

22 MR. NOWICKI: I have some reservations with that.

23 You get into whether something is fixed and whether you want

24 to bring in a third party in to determine whether it\'s fixed

25 or whether you just say it\'s repaired.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Didn\'t use the word fixed in my

2 disclosure.

3 MR. NOWICKI: Okay.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: And this is what has been done

5 about it.

6 MR. NOWICKI: Okay. I mean, it has potential.

7 Yeah, I still get back that in the end maybe some bright

8 line threshold just takes care of it and deciding where that

9 bright line is.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Robert.

11 MR. GRAHAM: My suggestion of that story is that if

12 your, if somebody other than the manufacturer has got some

13 control over the language, then that shows some promise.

14 Otherwise if the person buying it back, the party

15 buying it back has complete control of the language used,

16 it\'s going to become a little bit more problematic. Because

17 whether it\'s conscious or unconscious, the messenger

18 controls the message to some extent.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Rosemary.

20 MS. SHAHAN: I think it would really help consumers

21 to capture that whole category of vehicles that are getting

22 bought back. So I think that aspect is hopeful, especially

23 if there is a double‑check there, if there is a potential

24 that the first owner can come back, you know, and

25 communicate with the second owner. I\'m not saying we should

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1 structure it that way. But if there is a way of

2 spot‑checking the accuracy.

3 One concern that we have is that we\'re seeing, when

4 manufacturers, or one, at least one manufacturer, Chrysler,

5 I don\'t know if Chrysler is the only one, is buying back

6 vehicles from the first owner, they\'re asking them to sign a

7 confidentiality agreement not just regarding the terms of

8 the settlement, which we have no problems with, but

9 regarding the reasons why the vehicle was bought back.

10 And I\'d like to know from Chrysler and the other

11 manufacturers if this is becoming common or if this is rare.

12 Because I think that kind of resolution has some real

13 potential for being helpful, but I\'d want to have some way

14 of double‑checking it for accuracy.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. I\'m going to get to Lou in

16 just a minute. But I wanted, Peter, did you want to say

17 something? Did you have an answer to that?

18 MR. MAIER: Yeah. In answer to your question. I

19 think that\'s moving in the right direction. I think there

20 are some other things that need to be added to the mix to

21 make it effective.

22 One is the title and registration branding. Because

23 what you\'re talking about would only survive the first

24 purchaser. And that information should survive down the

25 line.

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1 Also, I think it\'s very important to make the

2 disclosure form not just be posted on the vehicle but

3 actually be signed and a copy given to the purchaser.

4 That\'s ‑‑

5 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. Well, let\'s test ‑‑

6 Okay. Now we\'re going to give a ‑‑ I\'m sorry, Peter.

7 MR. MAIER: And then there\'s, the other things I

8 think that are helpful are, Ford, for example, is starting a

9 program putting a door sticker similar to the odometer

10 change sticker. I think that\'s a very useful concept.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Lou. This is on my

12 question, not Rosemary\'s at the moment.

13 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, I have to respond to both.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: No, you just have to do what I tell

15 you to do.

16 (Laughter.)

17 MS. HARRINGTON: We\'ll get back to Rosemary\'s

18 question.

19 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, it relates to yours, actually.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay.

21 MR. GOLDFARB: What is it, your solution is our

22 solution, okay. But you can\'t avoid using the word repair.

23 I mean, we don\'t want to say to these people, you know,

24 writing, dropped the floor pad and put in new sleeves.

25 I mean, if we put just the technical details of what

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1 an automobile mechanic has done, okay, without bringing the

2 conclusion into it that this has been repaired, that\'s the

3 information that the buyer wants to know; has it been

4 repaired?

5 We think it\'s been repaired. The consumer

6 complained about the transmission. We spent X number of

7 hours on it. We repaired it, okay. I mean, that has to be

8 disclosed. You can\'t avoid doing that. I mean, that\'s

9 critical information.

10 I\'m not aware of ever requiring confidentiality as

11 the reason for the buyback. That would be totally contrary

12 to what we\'re doing. I mean we are giving the reasons for

13 the buyback.

14 MS. SHAHAN: I have a copy of a ‑‑

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Ah.

16 MS. SHAHAN: Sorry.

17 (Laughter.)

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Gerry.

19 MR. DUCHARME: First of all, on the confidentiality

20 in the buyback I, that is totally news to me. We have a, in

21 a situation where we buy back a vehicle we ask for a release

22 from the individual but there is no confidentiality in there

23 at all.

24 And on the point you made too, Rosemary, about

25 making people available to be contacted by subsequent

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1 purchasers, I\'m not sure a lot of people want to be caught

2 up in that, quite frankly.

3 And I think very frankly if we were to require that,

4 I think people would have some substantial concerns about

5 their privacy. And just, you know, once they sell the

6 vehicle they want to be out of the picture. So I think ‑‑

7 MS. HARRINGTON: I\'m going to interject something

8 here that\'s probably not going to make you happy. But we

9 don\'t want to talk about agreements between manufacturers

10 and car owners. That\'s not what we\'re here to talk about

11 today.

12 What we are here to talk about today is information

13 that goes to subsequent purchasers of cars that are bought

14 back. So that\'s just not, that\'s not an issue for today.

15 MR. DUCHARME: I just want to make one further point

16 if I could. That terms of the fix that was made on the car,

17 you want to keep in mind that when someone buys a reacquired

18 vehicle from us, they get a comprehensive 12‑month warranty

19 on that vehicle, the entire vehicle.

20 So it\'s interesting to know what the fix was. But

21 if anything else goes wrong with the vehicle or if in the

22 very situation where the fix isn\'t quite, you know,

23 effective, the consumer is protected with a full warranty

24 for 12 months or 12,000 miles.

25 MS. SHAHAN: Could I just respond to what Gerry said

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1 about having the first consumer contacted? Because I think

2 there is a misunderstanding there. And I don\'t propose a

3 formal way that the names of the first owners would be made

4 available necessarily.

5 I can agree that there could be privacy concerns.

6 But just that the potential be there for the first owners to

7 communicate about the problems. We see that as desirable.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Janet.

9 And then, Adam, is your question in order yet?

10 MR. COHN: I think it is.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Well, let\'s hear from Janet

12 and then we\'ll come back to you.

13 MS. SMITH: Well, in answer to Carole\'s original

14 question, I think we\'re seeing what\'s happening. We are

15 creeping in now into the area of instead of saying what\'s

16 been done to address the reason for the buyback, everybody

17 wants to say it\'s been repaired or it\'s not been repaired.

18 And that\'s ‑‑ Our experience has been that on those

19 manufacturers who add a comment about repairs, a lot of

20 times what we will see are things that were basically

21 defenses raised at an arbitration hearing that were rejected

22 by the arbitration board or dates of repair that were early

23 in the process that obviously did not work or the vehicle

24 would not have been declared a lemon.

25 And I think Phil\'s point, that was the problem that

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1 Phil pointed out. If you start getting into allowing that

2 kind of an explanation, and as Robert said, if the control

3 of the explanation is the manufacturers\' to control, then

4 you\'re going to see things like that that are misleading

5 because they are basically related to things that the next

6 buyer is not going to know where that, where that worked in

7 the chain of events.

8 But I think that\'s where you need to be careful in

9 covering those three areas. I think your basic premise is a

10 good start for what needs to be on the disclosure form,

11 whatever form it takes.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Adam.

13 MR. COHN: I had a question in general for the

14 manufacturers, but specifically for Gerry. About ‑‑ I\'ve

15 heard a lot about what types of disclosure should be given,

16 what types of protections should be given to the consumer

17 that receives a buyback.

18 But I\'m still unclear about the issue of trade

19 assists. Is the 12‑month warranty that Ford gives, I assume

20 that\'s just for manufacturer buyback.

21 MR. DUCHARME: That\'s correct.

22 MR. COHN: To what extent do you think and the other

23 manufacturers think that when a manufacturer makes a good

24 faith effort to help with a manufacturer buyback and

25 alleviate the problem of disclosure and warranty with a

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1 manufacturer buyback, does that put pressure on a

2 manufacturer to increase the number of trade assists every

3 so much?

4 I mean, what protects against trade assists becoming

5 sort of a future loophole for vehicles that are currently

6 being dealt with as manufacturer buybacks?

7 MR. DUCHARME: If I understand your question, you

8 were saying that if no disclosure is required with respect

9 to a vehicle that is traded in with a certificate, there are

10 no restrictions on that at all, what\'s to stop us from using

11 those rather than getting into‑‑

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Buybacks.

13 MR. DUCHARME: ‑‑buybacks. I guess our own

14 internal, our own internal policies. We instruct our people

15 that they are not to use these for vehicles that are, quote,

16 lemon law eligible.

17 Other than our own policies, I know of no state laws

18 that, you know, creep into here and that require us to do

19 one thing or the other.

20 We want to keep in mind, too, that under the law, at

21 least as we understand it right now, the manufacturers are

22 not under an obligation to buy back a vehicle until the

23 state process has run its course.

24 All the rest of the buybacks are done at the

25 discretion and voluntarily by the manufacturer. So, you

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1 know, you\'re into a lot of gray areas here, Adam. I\'m not

2 sure exactly, I\'m not sure exactly how to answer your

3 question actually.

4 MR. COHN: The reason I was asking it is just in

5 terms of defining a buyback. If we cast this wide net for

6 all situations where manufacturers buy back the car, there

7 was an earlier discussion of whether trade assists should be

8 included.

9 MR. DUCHARME: Yeah. Well, the concern is, again,

10 that first of all, as I tried to describe it before, perhaps

11 I wasn\'t too articulate in doing so, but there is a spectrum

12 here of things.

13 And you get into your certificates, which are at one

14 end of the spectrum. And you get into state law mandated

15 buyback at the other and you have this area in between. And

16 we try to organize our processes within Ford so that

17 certificates are used at this end of the spectrum.

18 And to get to a certain point, again, there are a

19 lot of gray areas. Then you get into the goodwill

20 situation, which is a buyback, a reacquired vehicle

21 disclosure. And then you get into the other areas where you

22 have mandated buybacks.

23 MR. COHN: But would there be, do you think there is

24 an objective way of drawing some sort of line maybe based on

25 some sort of dollar figure value for the certificate or

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1 something like that?

2 MR. DUCHARME: Well, there may be. The concern I

3 think is, I know in the request for comments there was a

4 question in there about whether some regulation in certain

5 areas would have a, quote, chilling effects on what the

6 manufacturers do.

7 And very frankly, if we got into a situation‑‑and I

8 will speak for Ford; I can\'t speak for my colleagues‑‑but if

9 we were into a situation where suddenly we were to find that

10 all vehicles that were traded in with the use of a

11 certificate were deemed to be buybacks and would be required

12 to have disclosures and all the process that we have views

13 with respect to buybacks, I have to tell you that there

14 would be a substantially chilling effect on the use of the

15 certificates and a substantial reduction in their use.

16 It costs us a lot of money when we buy back a

17 vehicle. And we buy back a great majority of our vehicles

18 for purely goodwill purposes. And it costs us a small

19 fortune with respect to each vehicle.

20 One, in terms of paying a dealer to process it; and

21 two, in terms of paying a dealer to make disclosure. Three,

22 in terms of administering the process that runs disclosure

23 to us through the auction back down to the dealer and to the

24 retail customer with follow up.

25 And I don\'t think as a company we\'d be prepared to

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1 extend that to goodwill certificates. Or if we had to, I

2 think we\'d have to find ourselves substantially limiting the

3 use of goodwill certificates which in turn is going to

4 reduce customer satisfaction, in turn is not good for the

5 consumer.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack, I\'m not going to call on you.

7 But do you want to be called on?

8 MR. GILLIS: Yeah, I would like to.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Okay. I just couldn\'t tell.

10 Your sticker has been up.

11 MR. GILLIS: It\'s a defective sticker.

12 (Laughter.)

13 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. Lou, Steve, and Jack,

14 and Jack.

15 MR. GOLDFARB: I just wanted to get a clarification

16 of Adam\'s question. Are you saying if we can give less

17 disclosure with trade assists that we may move more in that

18 direction and be less willing to have buybacks that have

19 less disclosure? Is that ‑‑?

20 I mean, there is some confusion. Because you talk

21 about trade assists, and Gerry referred to using the

22 certificates. I mean that\'s a different kind of a system.

23 A certificate is one to three thousand dollars. A

24 certificate is given to people that they can hold on to, you

25 know, indefinitely. When they feel like buying a car, they

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1 can use that to get another car.

2 They trade their car into any dealer, any Chrysler

3 dealer in our case. And we have no control over, you know,

4 what happens at that point to that vehicle.

5 A trade assist is much more contemporaneous with the

6 complained of problem where someone is real unhappy but, you

7 know, and the dealer wants to take him out of the car and we

8 assist the dealer in doing that.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: And the dealer takes the car back.

10 MR. GOLDFARB: That\'s right, and the dealer takes

11 the car back. The dealer takes the car back in both those

12 two instances because it\'s traded in for another car. It

13 may be at a later point with a certificate or the trade

14 assist; it\'s more contemporaneous.

15 But I guess to answer your question, I don\'t think

16 either of those objections is going to necessarily, or

17 either anyway, going to get, going to get in the way with us

18 buying back a vehicle that is seriously complained of and

19 that has a problem that the customer is simply unhappy with

20 the resolution of.

21 You know, it\'s wrong to talk about defects here. I

22 mean there are complained of problems, and we make an effort

23 to fix them, make an effort to satisfy the customer that

24 it\'s fixed.

25 And if ultimately the customer can\'t be satisfied,

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1 we buy it back and we designate customer satisfaction if

2 it\'s not, doesn\'t come under the statutory definition of

3 lemon. But we make full disclosure of what was complained

4 of and what was repaired. So I think the consumer is

5 getting full information in all these instances.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Steve.

7 MR. TATERKA: I have got just a couple of questions

8 for the manufacturers. Gerry indicated that Ford issues a

9 12‑month/12,000 mile warranty on buybacks. My first

10 question is, does Chrysler and General Motors do the same,

11 even in states ‑‑ well, in most of the states that don\'t

12 mandate a warranty upon the resale of a buyback vehicle.

13 And my second question for all three of, Gerry,

14 George, and Lewis, is would the manufacturers, how do

15 manufacturers feel about a warranty which would go, which

16 would be the greater of the one‑year warranty, the greater

17 of the one‑year or what the original warranty was for the

18 first purchaser?

19 MR. GOLDFARB: I don\'t think a vehicle loses its

20 warranty if a vehicle has been bought back. If the vehicle

21 has been bought back under warranty, that warranty is given.

22 So we give, we have since \'88 given a full one‑year

23 warranty on every vehicle that we sold after we bought it

24 back.

25 The original warranty continues, if it\'s on the

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1 vehicle it remains. Because we don\'t revoke the warranty

2 simply because we bought it back.

3 MR. WHATLEY: Everyone I have ever seen is done that

4 way. You get the longer of the two.

5 MR. DUCHARME: That\'s true for Ford Motor Company,

6 too. They get the longer of the two.

7 MR. VELEZ: It\'s true for General Motors, as well.

8 But in some instances if the state law in unclear, you may

9 have to give them the one year even though they have a

10 longer term remaining on the original warranty.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Jack.

12 MR. GILLIS: What I\'d like to do is follow up on

13 something Robert said earlier, and it really cuts to the

14 heart of this issue.

15 We started off where it seemed like all the

16 manufacturers liked the idea of disclosure. However, now we

17 are finding, and I was really surprised at your remark,

18 John, when you said manufacturers are very liberal in buying

19 back cars for customer satisfaction.

20 We\'re not all here today because that is the

21 presumed assumption. We\'re here today because there is a

22 huge problem out there that we think is happening, we as

23 consumer advocates think is happening.

24 We\'re not here because you guys are doing such a

25 great job of buying all these cars back just because you

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1 want to keep your customers happy. And I think part of the

2 problem is we just don\'t know what the facts are.

3 We just don\'t know what, other than what we see in

4 the lemon litigation, in the work that Phil has done, that

5 there is a huge problem of people buying cars that have

6 serious defects.

7 We\'re not talking about Lou fixing the car and the

8 guy just didn\'t like the way he fixed it. We\'re talking

9 about real big problems with cars. Now, are what you guys

10 saying is this is not a, this is not a problem?

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Actually, Jack, if I could

12 interject, why we\'re here today is because we want to know

13 whether there is a problem with consumers not receiving

14 information that\'s material about cars that are purchased

15 after they have been bought back.

16 MR. GILLIS: Presumably because they need that

17 information. Because the only reason consumers would need

18 that information is if it\'s true that there are substantial

19 numbers of cases where consumers are buying cars that are

20 defective, that they don\'t have any idea they\'re defective.

21 Not because it doesn\'t happen very much. I mean,

22 let\'s not get into it if it doesn\'t happen very much.

23 You\'ve got other things to do; we\'ve got other things to do.

24 If this is really not a problem, let\'s not do this.

25 But we think it\'s a problem. We think consumers are

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1 getting a lot of cars that are bad. But if it\'s truly not a

2 problem, let\'s not figure out how to disclose it.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: I just want to, you know, state for

4 the record that the Federal Trade Commission staff is

5 holding this workshop to find out, or in an effort to find

6 out whether consumers are getting the material information

7 that they need about cars that they buy, where those cars

8 have been the subject of a repurchase. We are not asking

9 the question about whether consumers are buying bad cars or

10 whether there are a lot of bad cars there.

11 MR. GILLIS: Well, why do you want to know that?

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Because the Federal Trade

13 Commission\'s role is to facilitate commerce by seeing to it

14 that material information is made available in the

15 marketplace. That\'s our concern. That\'s what the Federal

16 Trade ‑‑

17 MR. GILLIS: But I would assume that information has

18 to have relevance. You know, you don\'t ‑‑

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, it has to be material, that\'s

20 right.

21 MR. GILLIS: And relevance to the consumers\'

22 purchase.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Right.

24 MR. GILLIS: I mean, in other words, if all cars

25 have four tires, you\'re not investigating whether consumers

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1 are being told whether the car has four tires on it because

2 you assume that all cars have four tires. I presume we\'re

3 into this thing because we assume there\'s a problem out

4 there of consumers getting bad cars.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: No. You may assume that but we

6 don\'t. And I just want to make the record very clear on

7 that point. The reason that the staff of the Federal Trade

8 Commission has asked for comment and has invited you here is

9 to discuss the issue of whether material information is

10 being provided to consumers when they purchase cars that

11 have been the subject of buybacks. That\'s our agenda. So I

12 just, you can bring whatever assumption ‑‑

13 MR. GILLIS: Regardless of how often consumers get

14 bad cars.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: You can bring, you can bring

16 whatever assumption to this you want to, but it\'s our

17 meeting. And so I\'m going to say why we\'re here. And why

18 we\'re here is to explore the issue of whether consumers are

19 receiving adequate information, adequate material

20 information about cars.

21 The Federal Government, the Federal Trade

22 Commission\'s role is not to guarantee the quality of cars

23 that are purchased or that are available in the marketplace.

24 MR. GILLIS: I think I am miscommunicating then. I

25 don\'t say that that\'s your role. But I assume there is

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1 something behind why you are concerned about whether or not

2 they get this material information.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: What\'s behind it is a petition

4 that\'s been filed and alleges that they\'re not getting

5 material information. And we want to find out what kind of

6 information consumers are getting.

7 We want to find out whether they\'re not getting

8 information. We want to find out whether there\'s something

9 that could be done or needs to be done to improve the

10 information that consumers are receiving. But we are

11 responding to a petition that has been filed asking that the

12 Commission take action.

13 Now, let\'s see. Janet.

14 MS. SMITH: I\'m getting back to your original

15 question about the three things you think might be good for

16 disclosure. And I think probably, after thinking about it a

17 little more, my concern about the third part of that, now

18 what\'s been done to address the reason that a vehicle has

19 been bought back, I think probably, and I will throw this

20 out to the group, it might be better to remove that third

21 one and just have the first two and try to deal with them at

22 the front end in terms of where you draw the line to

23 determine when the disclosure has to be made.

24 And the reason I would suggest that is because I

25 really think based on everything I am hearing and based on

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1 what we\'ve seen in our state experience, there is too much

2 potential for abuse of that last part of the information,

3 particularly if it\'s coming from the manufacturers.

4 And I think that you\'re trying to keep it away from

5 whether or not the problem has been repaired, but that\'s

6 essentially what the industry wants to be able to tell

7 people. And I think it might be better to deal with it at

8 the front end rather than dealing with it at the back.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil.

10 MR. NOWICKI: Yeah. And I would say along the same

11 lines, I think we may be going in the wrong direction as far

12 as trying to figure out which cars fit the buyer certificate

13 category, trade assist, and so forth, when I think maybe in

14 everybody\'s interest some bright line, and deciding where

15 that bright line is, kind of simplifies things.

16 And then anything that happens after that bright

17 line in terms of where the car is, returned to the dealer,

18 the manufacturer, and then another car is swapped out is

19 probably the simplest way.

20 Because the other way, you\'re just going to bring

21 more government interpretation into what all these other

22 categories are or what the first consumer felt or what the

23 second consumer thought they should have known. And it just

24 seems to, you know, confuse more than simplify it.

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. George. And let me just

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1 clarify, Rosemary, do you have your, your thing up? Did you

2 want to be called on?

3 MS. SHAHAN: Yes.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. George.

5 MR. VELEZ: Yeah, I wanted to respond to a couple of

6 things I guess. One, to Adam\'s question, why we wouldn\'t

7 just buy, step up and buy cars voluntarily rather than

8 giving them to the lemon law.

9 It\'s very simple economics; it would cost too much

10 money to do that. So it is never our first instinct to

11 offer to buy back a vehicle. It\'s only when it\'s clear that

12 that\'s, the customer can\'t be satisfied any other way.

13 I also wanted to address, I guess an underlying

14 problem here is just the lack of product that we\'re going to

15 have. And maybe there is no way of getting beyond that.

16 But there is no normative implication, I guess, when we use

17 the word repair.

18 It is a jargon in the industry. When a mechanic

19 does something to a vehicle, he calls that a repair. So,

20 you know, we\'re certainly not trying to say that the vehicle

21 is free from defect.

22 In fact, that\'s why we offer the warranty and why we

23 don\'t have a problem offering the extended warranty, the 12

24 months on the vehicles that are out of warranty.

25 But if you are going to describe what happens to

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1 that vehicle, if you ask the mechanic off the street he\'ll

2 say I repaired that vehicle. And he\'s not making any

3 normative judgment about how the car works or ‑‑

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Joe, do you have a question?

5 MR. MULHOLLAND: Yeah. I was curious whether there

6 is any evidence out there on how consumers interpret

7 different disclosure statements.

8 Because I think a lot of what we are doing here is

9 speculating, if you will, on how consumers do interpret the

10 different types of information, whether we are getting

11 information overload or not. I just throw out the question

12 whether anybody has done any work in that area.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: I think that\'s an excellent

14 question. If I may, I\'d like to ask everyone to think about

15 it and be prepared to talk about that in the 1:15 session;

16 if that\'s agreeable with you, Joe. Because I think that

17 really does get to the heart of part of what we\'re talking

18 about.

19 Ed and Rosemary.

20 MR. MIERZWINSKI: Well, I mean, I just wanted to

21 follow up on what Jack said. And if we\'re not here to talk

22 about the extent of the problem‑‑I mean, are the

23 manufacturers and the FTC, it doesn\'t sound like either of

24 you are willing to stipulate to the facts or the allegations

25 in our petition on the enormity of the problem‑‑when is the

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1 FTC going to investigate that part of our petition which I

2 think involved some serious characterizations that the

3 problem is enormous and ought to be looked into further.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, the petition alleges ‑‑

5 MR. MIERZWINSKI: Is there a separate investigation?

6 MS. HARRINGTON: No. I think that\'s, that\'s not the

7 way that I read the petition at all, Ed. The petition

8 alleges that information isn\'t being given to consumers

9 about car that they\'re buying and that the information is

10 very important to them.

11 And that\'s what we\'re looking at here; what

12 information is being provided, when is it being provided,

13 does that need to be improved, and what are the facts

14 underlying that.

15 Rosemary.

16 MS. SHAHAN: Two points. One is, in what you

17 suggested, I think it\'s extremely helpful including the

18 trade assist, based on our experience.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: So you would include trade assist

20 in the class of vehicles about which information should be

21 provided.

22 MS. SHAHAN: Absolutely. Because just as an

23 example, we had a board member who bought a vehicle that had

24 bad brakes. It had a history of bad brakes. The original

25 owner returned it with a trade assist and it continued to

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1 have that serious problem.

2 And the severity of the problem isn\'t always

3 reflected by the stage at which it\'s repurchased. If a

4 manufacturer wants to make a legal point, for instance, they

5 could litigate over a relatively minor problem; not safety,

6 not functioning of the vehicle, maybe it\'s the paint, say,

7 to make a legal point.

8 And that gets litigated and indicated as a lemon if

9 we use litigation as a standard. But it might not relate to

10 the severity of the problems that the consumers are

11 experiencing.

12 And part of what I think I\'m understanding the

13 manufacturers to say is that if a consumer has a serious

14 problem, that you want to get them out of that vehicle for

15 customer satisfaction reasons because they have a

16 legitimate, they may have a legitimate complaint. And it\'s

17 important to include those vehicles.

18 And the second, I have a question for George with,

19 regarding General Motors and which vehicles are customer

20 satisfaction and just to get a better feel for, even though

21 we\'re including possibly all vehicles and what\'s disclosed.

22 In GM\'s comments, the statement was made that GM

23 successfully repairs the vast majority of the vehicles it

24 repurchases. Those that are repurchased for customer

25 satisfaction purposes generally require no repair.

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1 And to me that says the vast majority of vehicles

2 that GM is repurchasing require repair, and repairs are

3 being made and that they\'re not customer satisfaction.

4 But I thought I earlier today heard you say only

5 about three percent of vehicles are not customer

6 satisfaction. So I\'m more, so I\'m confused about the

7 percentage of customer satisfaction vehicles at GM.

8 MR. VELEZ: Okay. I guess a couple of things there.

9 One, we have, as I said, a third of our vehicles we buy back

10 under guaranteed satisfaction programs. And the number one

11 reason for buying those back is either paint or I wanted a

12 two door rather than a four door or vice versa.

13 So you can\'t repair that. We\'re not going to take a

14 car and make it a four door which was built as a two door.

15 We\'re not going to repaint a car. So there is no, there is

16 no repair required there.

17 Second, the other vehicles are repaired as I\'ve just

18 explained. A mechanic worked on them. There was a

19 complaint. The mechanic tried to fix that complaint. And

20 we wouldn\'t put a vehicle back into commerce if we thought

21 that it still had something wrong that could be repaired.

22 And the ones that can\'t be repaired we scrap, we

23 donate to ‑‑ like we said in the comment, we take those out.

24 There\'s going to be an argument, and as I said, we\'re not

25 here to argue.

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1 And so we will take whatever assumption you want

2 about that 60 percent in between, whatever, whether those

3 are customer satisfaction, whether they fall under some

4 states\' lemon law or whatever, that\'s just more than I can

5 figure out.

6 But, yeah, those vehicles are repaired. But they

7 were not adjudicated lemons at anywhere along the way is the

8 best I can explain it.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. We\'re going to hear from

10 Peter and Lou. And then we\'re going to test at the end,

11 we\'re coming to the end of this session. And I\'m going to

12 be looking to see how close we can come to agreement on some

13 key principles that we have been discussing. Peter.

14 MR. KITZMILLER: Actually, Janet, I can\'t read your

15 name tag. My understanding is we were going to do a

16 disclosure, we were going to describe what the problem is.

17 Am I understanding you to say that you would prefer not to

18 have any kind of description with regards to whether it was

19 repaired or not?

20 MS. SMITH: Yes.

21 MR. KITZMILLER: And would that be replaced with

22 anything or we\'re just going to tell them that there was a

23 leaky roof and that\'s all that we\'re going to disclose to

24 the consumer?

25 MS. SMITH: No. Well, what I said was, it depends

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1 on how broadly you draw the category of what is going to be

2 disclosed. If the category is very broad and includes

3 everything, maybe there is a need for some explanation.

4 But my comment was you\'re better off drawing that

5 line at the beginning and not having that explanation.

6 Because there is, number one, there is too much potential

7 there for the explanation not being accurate or it being

8 misleading.

9 Number two, allowing explanation as to why the

10 vehicle was repaired or the defect was cured, particularly

11 if they were bought back under the lemon law, is really kind

12 of empathetical to what lemon laws are.

13 A lemon law says if you don\'t do it within a certain

14 time period the vehicle is a lemon. The fact that you may

15 or may not do it later is something that should not enter

16 into that equation at that particular repurchase point.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: It\'s not material to the

18 repurchaser to know whether there have been subsequent

19 repairs made?

20 MS. SMITH: I think in this situation where the

21 vehicle was bought back under a lemon law‑‑

22 MS. HARRINGTON: Uh‑huh.

23 MS. SMITH: ‑‑no. I don\'t think it\'s ‑‑ Because the

24 problem is it was the vehicle\'s history or the inability to

25 fix the problem before that gave rise to the repurchase.

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1 And to then allow a company who was not able to either

2 diagnose or fix the problem prior to that time to then say,

3 well, on this one time after we bought it back we shipped it

4 out to X repair facility and it\'s all fixed now I think

5 would be very misleading.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou.

7 MR. GOLDFARB: There\'s a lot that\'s misleading here,

8 I think both the categories of the, the generic categories

9 of customer satisfaction. Customer satisfaction is really a

10 misnomer because it\'s only, you know, we may check that box.

11 But the fact is we disclosed what was wrong with it

12 and what we\'ve done to fix it. We don\'t sell irreparable

13 vehicles. I mean, if someone is complaining about a problem

14 and we can\'t fix it, we crush it or we donate it to a tech

15 institute.

16 When someone complains about a problem and we have

17 made an effort to fix it, and we have fixed it, we will put

18 down repaired. Or we will put down could not find the

19 problem the customer complained about.

20 The point is that the subsequent buyer of the

21 vehicles gets notice, gets information indicating what went

22 on previously, which is someone complained about a

23 transmission.

24 The dealer went in to repair it. He either repaired

25 it or could not find the problem. And that\'s what the

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1 customer is left with. And they can make their own judgment

2 a to whether they want to buy a vehicle under those terms.

3 These generic descriptions of, you know, customer

4 satisfaction, lemon law, arbitration board, I mean, that

5 tells people nothing beyond the fact that it was bought back

6 by the manufacturer, which itself is useful information.

7 But it would really be a disservice not to disclose

8 that the customer complained of the transmission, an effort

9 was made to fix it, the manufacturer believes it was fixed

10 or the manufacturer couldn\'t find the problem. Then the

11 second buyer can make the judgment as, on the basis of that

12 information. But that is necessary information.

13 MR. KITZMILLER: I\'d just like to make one follow‑up

14 point on that. I mean, the customers get to ‑‑ if it\'s not

15 on there the customer is going to ask.

16 And I certainly think it would be better for the

17 person, the manufacturers in this case if they\'re the ones

18 that repaired the vehicle, to put down what they did to

19 repair the vehicle instead of having the dealer try to

20 determine whether, what they did or didn\'t do.

21 I mean, the customer is going to ask the question.

22 If you put down that this vehicle is repurchased for a

23 specific problem, they\'re going to ask what was done to

24 address that. I mean, I just think that\'s logical they\'re

25 going to ask that question.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: We are not going to have any more

2 discussion on this issue during this decision. So if you

3 can figure out a way to finagle your comments on this into

4 the next session, good for you.

5 (Laughter.)

6 MS. HARRINGTON: I want to conclude this part of our

7 discussion by just testing here to see where we are on these

8 issues.

9 Is there anyone who disagrees with the proposition

10 that the class of vehicles about which information should be

11 provided includes both dealer buybacks, takebacks, and

12 manufacturer buybacks, takebacks?

13 Is there any disagreement? Okay. Mr. Ducharme from

14 Ford disagrees with that. Is there ‑‑ And Mr. Goldfarb from

15 Chrysler disagrees also out of solidarity with Ford.

16 (Laughter.)

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Actually, I don\'t know that. The

18 record should reflect that we don\'t know why Mr. Goldfarb

19 disagrees with that.

20 (Laughter.)

21 MS. HARRINGTON: We have talked some about the

22 notion that the following information should be provided on

23 cars that are buybacks: That the car was bought back. A

24 statement about why the car was bought back, where that

25 statement has sufficient specificity to tell the repurchaser

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1 in a meaningful way why it was bought back. That is,

2 customer satisfaction isn\'t enough; customer satisfaction

3 because the customer believed that the brakes squeaked and

4 they didn\'t stop squeaking would be enough.

5 And noting the disagreement of the Assistant

6 Attorney General from Florida already, a statement that the

7 manufacturer or the dealer have taken the following steps to

8 address the problem or has done nothing.

9 That three part sort of disclosure. How many think

10 that that would provide, that type of disclosure would

11 provide the material information that the subsequent

12 purchaser needs and should have?

13 How many think that three part disclosure would

14 provide adequate and material information to the subsequent

15 purchaser?

16 That\'s okay. We can ‑‑

17 MS. SHAHAN: It depends ‑‑

18 MS. HARRINGTON: No, no. I\'m just asking ‑‑ you

19 know, we can\'t have disclosures that depend. How many

20 think ‑‑ I mean, you know, it either is there or it\'s not.

21 So, okay.

22 Well, we have Ford, Chrysler, and GM. And the

23 gentleman from the NADA. And the gentleman from the AIAM.

24 How many disagree that that disclosure ‑‑ How many,

25 how many think that that disclosure is inadequate?

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1 Phil Nowicki thinks that it\'s inadequate. PIRG

2 thinks it\'s inadequate. Peter, Peter, what\'s your last

3 name, Maier. And Steve and Rosemary and Janet and Jack.

4 Was your hand up?

5 MR. GILLIS: I was scratching my arm.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack was scratching.

7 (Laughter.)

8 MS. HARRINGTON: And the others of you abstain? And

9 everyone else abstains. So that\'s where we are at the end

10 of this first session.

11 We will, it is now 11:00. And we will resume

12 promptly at 11:15. And the restrooms, as I said, are right

13 out beyond the elevators.

14 (Whereupon, a brief recess was taken.)

15 MS. HARRINGTON: We are now starting the second

16 portion of the program entitled Implementing Change. Would

17 everyone please be seated and stop talking?

18 (Laughter.)

19 MS. HARRINGTON: If you don\'t stop talking, we\'re

20 going to make you share with the class. Well, I think that

21 the first session, I would say from my perspective it went

22 well. I think that I\'ve managed probably to annoy or offend

23 everybody but the car auction people. But you\'re next.

24 (Laughter.)

25 MS. HARRINGTON: I need to remind everyone that we

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1 do have at 4:00 an hour set aside for public participation.

2 And if you are here and would like to participate during

3 that that hour, we have three‑by‑five cards in the back, out

4 in the foyer.

5 And you need to fill out one of these cards during

6 the day with your name and your affiliation, if any. And we

7 would like you to say generally what part of the agenda it

8 is that you would like to comment on, discuss, or respond

9 to.

10 And Tom Rowan from our staff, who is standing in the

11 back door, the tall gentleman with his jacket draped

12 stylishly over his arm, is the person who you should give

13 your card to if you are here and would like to participate

14 during the public participation part of the program.

15 And I will be making this announcement again and

16 again as we go through the day. We want to make sure that

17 anyone who is here who wants to participate between four and

18 five has an opportunity to do that and knows how to do that.

19 And for those of you who have just come in, Jack,

20 for example, I have observed that I think that the first

21 session went well because except for the car auction people,

22 I think I have managed to offend or interrupt all of the

23 other interests seated around the table.

24 (Laughter.)

25 MS. HARRINGTON: And we\'re going to get to the car

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1 auction people. I\'ll find a way to offend you.

2 (Laughter.)

3 MS. HARRINGTON: So we\'re now on to the 11:15

4 session, Implementing Change. I think that during the first

5 section of the day we had discussed a great deal about

6 information, the information that is currently being given

7 to consumers.

8 I would like to focus beyond that now on information

9 resources. So we\'re not talking here about the information

10 that manufacturers and dealers and car auctions and others

11 are presently passing through the pipeline to end‑use

12 consumers, but rather other information resources that may

13 be available to consumers.

14 And I think that the main part of what we hope to

15 discuss here concerns vehicle information number databases,

16 the viability of establishing those and so on and so forth.

17 Does everyone understand sort of the general

18 parameters of the discussion?

19 Okay. Well, let me just kick this off then with a

20 basic question. What information resources are readily

21 available to consumers to enable them, if any, to enable

22 them to learn about vehicle, a vehicle\'s history? Let\'s

23 just say car. Vehicle sounds like we\'re all on Cops.

24 (Laughter.)

25 MS. HARRINGTON: We know we mean motor homes, too,

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1 and, you know, motorcycles and those little pickup trucks

2 and things. We know we mean all that, but we\'ll just say

3 car. Robert?

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Or we don\'t know that.

5 MR. GRAHAM: Actually, we really don\'t know that

6 because I don\'t think motorcycles are covered under lemon

7 laws. And I think anything over 10,000 pounds gross vehicle

8 weight rating is not necessarily covered in the lemon law.

9 So, just to mention that.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Cars. Okay. Well, we\'ll say cars

11 mean cars.

12 MR. GRAHAM: We can say cars among us.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Cars meaning cars. Richard.

14 MR. RAINES: I assume you\'re not asking for an

15 advertisement about Carfax.

16 (Laughter.)

17 MR. RAINES: We are obviously in the vehicle history

18 information business. And dealers and consumers can get

19 access to the history of a car if they have the 17 digit

20 VIN.

21 We generally have title information. And in four

22 states that title information‑‑the four states are

23 California, Connecticut, Indiana, and New Hampshire‑‑would

24 include a manufacturer\'s buyback brand.

25 So from that point of view, that\'s an information

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1 resource that consumers can use or dealers use and pass that

2 information on to consumers that would notify them about

3 some elements of the history of the car.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Adam, you have a follow‑up

5 question?

6 MR. COHN: I have a question for you, Mr. Raines,

7 about Carfax. I\'d like to know what types of difficulties

8 your organization or other vehicle information organizations

9 have in getting adequate information; and what types of

10 things manufacturers, government, states, consumer groups,

11 or consumers could do, what types of things would you like

12 to see change in the industry, whether that be regulatory or

13 not, that would make it easier for you to compile the

14 information you need to get it to consumers?

15 MR. RAINES: That\'s a good question. I mean there

16 are sources of information, earlier this morning we talked

17 about warranty information. The manufacturers have warranty

18 repair information.

19 We know in talking to our consumers and in consumer

20 research that consumers are very interested in that kind of

21 information in general. Even if it\'s confusing, they\'re

22 still interested in it.

23 So that\'s one source of information that we believe

24 would be helpful to our marketplace to consumers that get

25 information.

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1 Another element to your question I think is what

2 happens at the state level in terms of the difficulty of

3 getting this information. As I said, we get branded

4 information about manufactured buybacks from only four

5 states.

6 I think we\'re aware that there are up to 16 states,

7 and I\'m not sure how accurate my information is, that in

8 fact have some sort of manufacturer buyback brand. So we

9 certainly could use help.

10 And I think we\'ve talked to various states as well

11 as FTC about where that information is and how we could

12 make, you know, get access to information so that we then

13 could provide it to the consumer.

14 So there\'s a state level issue that we certainly,

15 you know, are working on but, you know, we haven\'t made the

16 full progress on.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Lori. And let me just check, Adam,

18 do you have any follow‑up there?

19 MR. COHN: I guess I\'d like to hear some more first.

20 I think I will have a follow‑up.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Lori.

22 MS. COHEN: The American Association of Motor

23 Vehicle Administrators is in the ‑‑ Oh, okay. The American

24 Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators is in the

25 process of building a system called National Motor Vehicle

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1 Title Information System.

2 Congress said in the 1992 Antitheft Car Act, they

3 said build this system to help prevent car theft. We are in

4 that process. It will track a vehicle from birth to death.

5 It will include any brands that have been placed on a

6 vehicle, whether salvage, floor, or whatever. It can also

7 include manufacturers\' buybacks.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Can, but isn\'t presently

9 compensated to?

10 MS. COHEN: It is, it is programmed now. It is

11 programmed now.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Uh‑huh.

13 MS. COHEN: It will have to have the reporting from

14 the American ‑‑

15 MS. HARRINGTON: And when is this database going to

16 be up and running?

17 MS. COHEN: It will be in pilot by October of \'97,

18 so this month it will be in pilot with five different

19 states.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: This is \'96.

21 MS. COHEN: \'97, I\'m sorry. Next year it will be in

22 pilot with five different states.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay.

24 MR. HILE: Which five states?

25 MS. COHEN: I\'ve got it. Virginia, New York,

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1 Indiana. I\'ve got two others.

2 MR. GILLIS: Florida is one of them.

3 MS. COHEN: Florida is one.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Florida?

5 MS. COHEN: And I don\'t remember the other one right

6 now. Okay.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: And not Wisconsin?

8 MS. COHEN: Thank you. And New Jersey also.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: New Jersey, okay. And how will

10 consumers be able to obtain information from that database?

11 MS. COHEN: We can work with the third‑party

12 providers, and they will provide the information to the

13 consumers through ‑‑ they will have access to the system.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: \"We\" being the Motor Vehicle

15 Administrations of the states? Or who\'s the \"we\"?

16 MS. COHEN: Through the system the states can work

17 with third‑party providers, okay.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: But consumers won\'t be able to get

19 it directly?

20 MS. COHEN: They will most likely go through the

21 third‑party providers.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: And the third‑party priors are?

23 Give me some examples of who these third‑party providers

24 are.

25 MS. COHEN: It could be something similar to Carfax

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1 or anyone who wants to use it, anyone who wants to provide

2 this information.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, are groups like, for example,

4 the CFA or CAS, you know, cars likely to become providers?

5 Is that, do you contemplate that as a fee‑for‑service

6 arrangement. Or I mean what, how is this ‑‑ I\'m trying to

7 sort of understand how this information is going to get to

8 consumers from this database.

9 MR. GRAHAM: Well, for our part, we still have IBM

10 AT computers in our office. So the odds of us being

11 anywhere beyond punch cards in the next ten years‑‑

12 (Laughter.)

13 MR. GRAHAM: ‑‑getting on the Internet, being able

14 to use the services of the databases is fairly slim. It\'s

15 not really the business that we\'re in.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Is there, Mr. Raines, you think

17 that there\'s some sort of market for this information I

18 guess.

19 MR. RAINES: We have a business that provides the

20 information right now. Just to give you a sense of it again

21 without making it an advertisement, eight million cars a

22 year in the last year were checked through Carfax, used

23 cars, for their history.

24 We have over three hundred million records of used

25 cars in our database. It takes less than a second to get a

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1 response from that database.

2 We have a very technically sophisticated system.

3 We\'re due on the net two to three to four weeks. My staff\'s

4 here checking on the deadline. But we\'ll have an Internet

5 page up where the consumer can enter the VIN and access the

6 vehicle\'s history.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Do you know how many individual

8 consumers used your, have, you know, dipped into your

9 database in the last year?

10 MR. RAINES: Consumers are not our primary market.

11 So of the eight million ‑‑

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Who is?

13 MR. RAINES: Dealers are our primary market, as well

14 as auctions that we furnish.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Uh‑huh.

16 MR. RAINES: And they provide ‑‑ Dealers in general

17 will do two things with information. They\'ll check out the

18 trade‑in, make sure that they want to buy that car. Then

19 they\'ll show the Carfax information to the consumer to help,

20 you know, them understand what they\'re buying.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack, you\'ve got a pretty good

22 finger on the pulse of what, what the market is for

23 information, what the consumer market is for information.

24 MR. GILLIS: I, this is the first time I\'ve heard

25 about this being available on a nationwide basis. And if

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1 it\'s funded by Congress, I\'d certainly hope the consumers

2 are going to be provided access to it at little or no cost.

3 MS. COHEN: It\'s part of the act. This information

4 will be provided to consumers, law enforcement officers.

5 Junkyards and salvage are going to be determining ‑‑

6 MR. GILLIS: But not having to go through a

7 third‑party and pay extra for it.

8 MS. COHEN: I\'m really not sure. I don\'t think it\'s

9 a difficult thing. Our companies worked through third‑party

10 providers before. It\'s something that will be available to

11 consumers. I mean, this is part of the act.

12 MR. GILLIS: I think there\'s a tremendous market for

13 it.

14 MS. COHEN: This is something that every state will

15 eventually participate in. So you\'re going to have it.

16 Manufacturers can report right into it, okay, so that it

17 will be on‑line updated.

18 There is a similar bill out right now having to do

19 with salvage vehicles, HR2900. And it requires owners of

20 salvaged vehicles, insurance companies to report within 15

21 days, okay. And we can have a similar sort of requirement

22 from manufacturers to get the information directly into the

23 system.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou.

25 MR. GOLDFARB: Yeah. I just had a quick question

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1 for Richard and Lori, actually. And that goes to what kind

2 of security is built into these systems. I mean, there is

3 some concern among some of us that there is a very small

4 segment of the legal profession actually that tries to

5 access this information. I know, I know it\'s hard to

6 believe.

7 (Laughter.)

8 MR. GOLDFARB: From trying to access this

9 information for the purpose of creating class action

10 lawsuits and other misuses of the information. I\'m just

11 wondering is there, is there, you know, ways that you, that

12 you can limit access to it, just the people who legitimately

13 need that information?

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Would somebody extend you the same,

15 you know, sharp rebuke that I did to Jack, you know, if the

16 representative from Chrysler wants to assume that a class

17 action lawsuit is a misuse of information, you know, that\'s,

18 that\'s your, that\'s your view but not necessarily the view

19 of the Federal Trade Commission in the past.

20 MR. GOLDFARB: I mean generated by lawyers. I\'m

21 fine with consumers doing it, but lawyers are another thing.

22 (Laughter.)

23 MR. RAINES: We don\'t restrict who wants to have

24 access to our information. We clearly have security in,

25 security in our system. And generally a dealer of business

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1 who has access has a, has an I.D. number and a password to

2 get into the database.

3 But if someone calls us on the phone, if it\'s a

4 consumer or anybody else, we provide that information to

5 them. We\'re very careful about explaining what the

6 information is and making sure that, you know, we don\'t come

7 to any conclusions about the vehicle. But we can\'t restrict

8 access to it.

9 We don\'t include, but I\'m not sure if this is your

10 question either, the name and address of the individual that

11 owned the car or anything like that. So we\'ve, we\'ve, you

12 know, drawn a bright line about the privacy concern.

13 MR. GOLDFARB: And is use of the VIN number the only

14 way you can access the information?

15 MR. RAINES: Right. We will not provide other kind

16 of analytical approaches to the data. We only, if you have

17 a VIN, you can get the information about that VIN and that\'s

18 it.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Robert and then Janet.

20 And then, Lori, do you want to be recognized again?

21 MS. COHEN: Yeah.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: Robert, Janet, Lori, and Peter.

23 MR. GRAHAM: I\'ve got a couple of questions for

24 Richard and then one for Lori.

25 Richard, first off, I know that California, for

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1 instance, and Virginia, they both restrict access to

2 registration record and I believe title records. Does that,

3 has those proposed any obstacles to you?

4 MR. RAINES: No. In both California and Virginia we

5 get their title data. California has, the only issue with

6 California has been they have not been in compliance with

7 TIMA, Truth in Mileage Access.

8 Some of their data about odometer readings is less

9 deep. And each state has different information. One of the

10 things we track is the odometer reading so we can look at

11 whether the odometer has been rolled back.

12 MR. GRAHAM: The second question is, I noticed in

13 the comment there was reference to a service called Paccar

14 which I believe is run through TC Corporation. I understand

15 they\'re probably competitors of yours. Do you have any

16 understanding of how their business is similar to yours or

17 different from yours?

18 MR. RAINES: Generally, you know, it\'s not good to

19 represent a competitor\'s exact information. I know their

20 primary source of information is insurance, from the

21 insurance industry when a car, their business when a car has

22 an accident.

23 An adjuster has to process, you know, evaluate the

24 amount of repair of that car. And the car may in fact be

25 totaled. And they pick up that information about whether

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1 the car is totaled or not and went through the process of

2 being totaled.

3 They\'re picking up information at a different chain

4 in really the accident than the total history of that car.

5 We\'re picking up information from the state, the official,

6 whether it was branded or not. They\'re picking it up from

7 the point, the time of the processing of the total is being

8 done.

9 MR. GRAHAM: And my question for Lori, finally. The

10 authorization for the establishment of this database back in

11 1992, did that actually explicitly include information

12 concerning vehicle buybacks, manufacturer buybacks or was it

13 limited just to stolen cars and salvaged vehicles, flood

14 vehicles, and the like?

15 MS. COHEN: The purpose of the act was to do what

16 you need to do to track that vehicle so that if it\'s stolen

17 you\'ll have the information. If it\'s salvaged vehicles, if

18 there is chop shops and things, it\'s trying to track the

19 vehicles for all the reasons.

20 Since it\'s tracking brands for those reasons,

21 manufacturers buybacks is a different category. But it\'s

22 easily absorbed by it. And we\'ve already planned in before

23 we even knew of this hearing to track manufacturers

24 buybacks.

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Let me ask you a question, Lori,

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1 though. The one vehicle administrators in the comments take

2 a narrower view of what ought to be classified as a buyback

3 than do many of the other commentors. Is this database

4 going to incorporate the vehicle administrator\'s narrower

5 view, or might it use a broader definition?

6 MS. COHEN: It\'s been an interesting discussion.

7 Our assumption going in was that buybacks have a connotation

8 of lesser value and a safety problem, okay. We\'ve been

9 talking here being inclusive; if you buy it back for any

10 reason, include it.

11 So we can still call it a buyback. It sounds like

12 something that people are saying, well, yes, we will call it

13 a buyback now and forever. I know that\'s a future

14 discussion, how long.

15 But our assumption is a brand or a buyback is a

16 permanent brand. From the discussion we have been having

17 here, you will need disclosures to explain serious buyback,

18 lesser buyback. And disclosure is another aspect.

19 Our particular system has the capability for vehicle

20 history. We need to look into that more, especially from

21 the discussion here today, how much history can this system

22 go ahead and track.

23 It\'s something that can, it can be accommodated but

24 I can\'t tell you right at this moment it will include all

25 the disclosures we\'ve been talking about. But the

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1 possibility is there.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Adam, question?

3 MR. COHN: Just a follow‑up question for Lori. The

4 way I understand it is that it won\'t necessarily be a

5 general ‑‑ what do you represent, the American Association

6 of Motor Vehicle Administrators?

7 MS. COHEN: Yeah.

8 MR. COHN: You won\'t have your own standard

9 definition of lemon, but rather you will take whatever a

10 state determines, whatever a specific state determines that

11 a brand should be on a vehicle, you will just include that

12 on your database. But you won\'t impose or use any standard

13 definition.

14 MS. COHEN: Correct. Right now for salvaged

15 vehicles you\'ve got every definition under the sun. States

16 have all these definitions. At this moment we\'ll pass on

17 whatever brand from state to state for whatever meaning that

18 state has.

19 It\'s a lot better if you have one meaning for

20 salvage. It\'s a lot better if you have one meaning for

21 buyback. If we didn\'t have one meaning, we would pass on

22 whatever there was.

23 But I would say uniformity in this case is

24 important. Whatever ‑‑ if all buyback means is that you

25 bought the vehicle back, at least have one understanding of

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1 what they\'re talking about.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: But my understanding from you,

3 Lori, is that you\'re willing to work with people. You think

4 the association would be willing to work with people to come

5 up with a broader definition than the Motor Vehicle

6 Administrators might have held coming into this.

7 MS. COHEN: If it\'s uniform, easily understood, can

8 be passed along, yes, um‑hmm.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Janet.

10 MS. SMITH: I had a question for Lori and then a

11 comment about one of the things Richard said.

12 Lori, if I understand the comment that AAMVA

13 submitted correctly, the way this title thing is going to

14 work is the states will have to apply through some kind of

15 grant type of program to be able to either utilize it or ‑‑

16 Can you kind of tell us a little more how it is going to

17 work and whether or not there is money appropriated for

18 these grants or is that something that you\'re still working

19 on?

20 MS. COHEN: There was 890,000 appropriated from

21 Congress to get it started. We just got another million

22 that\'s going to get us through the pilot for those five

23 states; possibly more can join us.

24 Once the pilot is complete and you have got your

25 comments and your revisions and whatever, we open it up to

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1 all the states. We are still seeking more Federal money.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: When do you think that will be?

3 When is that?

4 MS. COHEN: In one year.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: One year after the pilot starts?

6 MS. COHEN: It starts October, \'97.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay, so October \'98?

8 MS. HARRINGTON: So hopefully October, \'98.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: It will be opened up to all the

10 states.

11 MS. COHEN: Yes.

12 MS. SMITH: And then they\'ll have to apply to get

13 in?

14 MS. COHEN: We are seeking additional Congressional

15 funds. We would, we want money to help those states

16 participate. There\'s advantages to the states. Congress

17 has said we want every state to be in it. We\'ll see what

18 happens.

19 But we expect that states are going on this system.

20 It\'s going to transfer things that they now might have to

21 mail, titles and so forth. It is going to serve a lot of

22 state interests.

23 MS. SMITH: And then my comment on what Richard

24 mentioned was that one of the, as an enforcing and

25 monitoring agency, our interest is in knowing who the person

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1 in who buys that resold vehicle.

2 And that is one piece of information that Carfax

3 does not presently provide. So I would just simply say that

4 if we\'re talking about the kind of national database, that

5 should be one piece of information that should be included.

6 MS. COHEN: I don\'t know if there is privacy

7 concerns on that. We certainly were not planning on giving

8 any previous owner information.

9 MS. SMITH: Not ‑‑ well, what I\'m talking about is

10 present, well, if you\'re looking for who it is that bought

11 the resold vehicle to determine whether they got the

12 disclosure they\'re entitled to, depending on what kind of

13 disclosure there is, that\'s the, that\'s the identity we\'re

14 trying to get.

15 MR. RAINES: Could I respond to that? We don\'t

16 include the name and address. What our customers would

17 typically do is at least they have the title number of the

18 previous owner.

19 And if the customer wanted to pursue additional

20 information, they would then contact the states and the

21 states have different, you know, laws on disclosure and

22 privacy. So that\'s how we would handle that.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Lori and then Larry.

24 MS. COHEN: Oh, I, I said it.

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Larry.

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1 MR. KANTER: We actually have some experience using

2 the Carfax data. And I have to say that the experience

3 we\'ve had was not entirely satisfactory in terms of easy

4 access to it.

5 I\'d like to explain that. We gathered several

6 hundred VIN numbers from state officials of cars that had

7 been bought back. And at first Carfax was giving us the

8 data of the title histories on these vehicles.

9 What we found after doing several hundred cars that

10 our access was limited or restricted to getting further

11 title history. And the way it was presented to us, if I can

12 paraphrase it, was that we could have the data so long as,

13 so long as we did not tie any particular manufacturer or

14 dealer to a failure to disclose. So the question that we

15 have will consumers have open access to the data in Carfax

16 to other providers?

17 MR. RAINES: The answer to that is yes. They do now

18 and they will in the future. And we\'re making the access

19 more available. The concern that we have with any customer

20 accessing our data, and we\'re very careful about it, is no

21 database is perfect when you have three hundred million plus

22 records.

23 And I think anybody who is trying to develop this

24 kind of business can conceive what kind of challenges it

25 takes. We have to be very careful that we don\'t have

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1 conclusions drawn from our database about the condition of

2 the vehicle that would be tied to our company because that\'s

3 not the business we\'re in.

4 We\'re in the business of providing data, not

5 conclusions about vehicles. But there is no restriction on

6 access to our data by anybody. And in fact we believe the

7 consumer market is probably the most important market

8 ultimately for this information.

9 That\'s going to drive. You know, it\'s a need for

10 any buyer and seller of a car to, you know, have this

11 information. So we make the consumer access, that\'s why we

12 don\'t restrict it. That\'s why we felt that things like the

13 Internet would make it more and more accessible.

14 MR. KANTER: If the data were expanded to include

15 more of the kinds of things that we are talking about this

16 morning, would that raise more problems for you or would it

17 be just as completed for buybacks?

18 MR. RAINES: It would be, if that\'s a benefit to our

19 market, it\'s ultimately a benefit to us. And we know

20 consumers want more information. We know that they want

21 repair information. We know that they want accident

22 information.

23 The research has been done. The number one thing

24 the consumers want that they\'re not getting in terms of used

25 cars is more information about the history of the car. So

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1 that\'s our market. That\'s what we\'re going to.

2 And we\'re expanding the way we allow consumers to

3 access this. And we\'re expanding the kind of information

4 about a car that they get.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter.

6 MR. MAIER: Yeah. Carfax and the related service

7 are providing useful service. But I think it would be a

8 misconception to say that the information that we\'ve been

9 talking about this morning is already available.

10 As a customer of Carfax on occasion, the information

11 provided is spotty. It doesn\'t always work. And I don\'t

12 know why that is. I\'m not faulting Carfax; it\'s probably

13 because the input of data is incomplete.

14 But we\'re far from there in terms of consumer or

15 consumer representative accessing that kind of information.

16 And obviously the Motor Vehicle Administrators database will

17 move us in that direction.

18 But it\'s important to recognize that to a large

19 degree what Carfax or any other service can provide would

20 depend on the input. And it\'s only as good as the data

21 that\'s put in.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: I want to compliment everyone for

23 talking to each other and having actually some dialogue

24 here. That\'s what we were hoping for.

25 I have a question about the Motor Vehicle

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1 Administrators database. If the database were expanded to

2 include buyback information that goes well beyond what is

3 required under state lemon law to be branded or, you know,

4 if the notion of what\'s going to be included in the buyback

5 category on this database is more inclusive so that it goes

6 well beyond legal definition of lemon and that sort of

7 thing, where would that information come from?

8 MS. COHEN: I assume we\'re talking about, we\'ve been

9 talking about definitions. How are you, what are you going

10 to call this.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Yes.

12 MS. COHEN: If a manufacturer has a buyback, they

13 can call it a buyback with a disclosure for what it was

14 bought back for. I\'m not sure beyond that ‑‑

15 MS. HARRINGTON: So the information would come from

16 the manufacturers.

17 MS. COHEN: They bought it back for a reason so

18 they\'re providing the reason for the buyback. It would be

19 the manufacturers saying that.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: And is this, is your designing this

21 database and your data capture system, is it set up to

22 receive information like that from other than Motor Vehicle

23 Administration sources? I mean, how are you going to get

24 this data into the database?

25 MS. COHEN: I would need to get back to you. I\'m

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1 not, don\'t have all of that information. But I will

2 certainly get back to you on it.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: Allen, do you have a question?

4 MR. HILE: And my question for you, Lori, is is this

5 system that you\'re setting up only prospective, or are you

6 doing what Carfax did, I believe I\'m correct on this, that

7 you have old records that you put into your system from the

8 states? Is yours going to go back in time at all or is it

9 just from this point forward that your database ‑‑

10 MS. COHEN: From the time they participate I would

11 imagine it\'s going to be that point forward. I do imagine

12 that\'s the way it would be.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. Let me test something

14 here. Let\'s assume that it\'s October of 1998 and the Motor

15 Vehicle Administrators database is up and running. And we

16 have, they have come up with a very inclusive definition of

17 buyback, getting back to our first session, that is more

18 along the lines of the definition that people who agree,

19 that is, the definition that the manufacturers weren\'t

20 comfortable with.

21 Let\'s say that we\'re using that definition. And

22 that the manufacturers and the dealers are systematically

23 contributing data so that we have a very robust database in

24 this motor vehicle database.

25 Is that an adequate information resource for

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1 consumers? And this database is made available through

2 third‑party providers. And we\'re going to assume that there

3 will be some sort of market there. Is that, will that do

4 it?

5 Jack, put on your thinking cap.

6 MR. GILLIS: I think from our perspective, I think

7 that will be a giant step forward, a giant step forward.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Giant step forward.

9 MR. GILLIS: I mean it, obviously I don\'t want to

10 go ‑‑

11 MS. HARRINGTON: I\'m not trying to pin you.

12 MR. GILLIS: No. But I mean ‑‑

13 MS. HARRINGTON: I\'m not saying that facetiously. I

14 think that\'s a good answer.

15 MR. GILLIS: I think there is a few nuances and few

16 details; I think Janet provided some of them. I think the

17 fact you\'re getting a lot of stuff directly from the car

18 companies. But I think the concept is terrific.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Now, car companies, can you

20 provide the motor vehicle database with this information?

21 Gerry.

22 MR. DUCHARME: Yes. Yes.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. George?

24 MR. VELEZ: Provided that we can work out the

25 technical aspects of it and it isn\'t going to cost of

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1 hundreds of millions of dollars, yeah.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: John.

3 MR. WHATLEY: I\'m not sure we can do it for the cars

4 the dealer buys back. I know we could probably do it with

5 the coupons.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: You are definitely not Lou

7 Goldfarb. Who are you?

8 MS. GLASSMAN: Jackie Glassman, also from Chrysler.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Jackie.

10 MS. GLASSMAN: Yeah. The same as George and John.

11 As long as we can work out the definitional standard. And

12 obviously we can\'t provide what the dealer buys back.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. Well, lets talk to the

14 dealers.

15 Peter? What about what the dealers buy back?

16 MR. KITZMILLER: I\'m not sure what the question is.

17 (Laughter.)

18 MS. HARRINGTON: The question is can you provide

19 that information to the Motor Vehicle Administrators

20 database?

21 MR. KITZMILLER: Certainly. Again, I think the same

22 category that the manufacturers have, as long as there is a

23 clear understanding as to when we\'re supposed to do that and

24 what we\'re supposed to do and that there is not a major cost

25 factor involved, certainly.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. Discuss among

2 yourselves.

3 (Laughter.)

4 MS. HARRINGTON: What do we think of this idea? It

5 sounds to me like we may have, we have the potential in

6 terms of an information resource for consumers. We may have

7 something on the horizon here that at least prospectively

8 would be of great benefit.

9 Robert?

10 MR. GRAHAM: Yeah. I think by the resounding

11 silence that you\'re looking at right now there is not a

12 whole lot of conflict on the value of the database. I think

13 everybody sees that it\'s a good thing to have a good flow of

14 accurate information. I think that we\'re not talking about

15 substance or form of disclosures but rather we\'re talking

16 about the conduit.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, we\'re also talking about the

18 content. We\'re talking about conduit and context.

19 MR. GRAHAM: So if you\'re talking about the

20 disclosure that the manufacturers were uncomfortable with

21 and that we abstained on, then I suppose to some extent I\'m

22 going to have to abstain. But I think that the, that the ‑‑

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, there has to be something in

24 that. If the consumer groups abstain and the manufacturers

25 are a little uncomfortable, we must be heading toward a

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1 middle ground here.

2 (Laughter.)

3 MS. COHEN: Something we are looking for is we want

4 to pass along as much as possible through the system. We

5 are trying to decrease as much as possible papers that have

6 to go from place to place.

7 You may have to come up with codes for defective

8 idling for brake problems or a list of things, whatever it

9 is. Excuse me. So we are looking to pass along as much

10 through the system because that\'s the most reliable way so

11 that when the vehicle changes owners, it\'s going to pass

12 from state to state to owners.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. I\'m going to go a little out

14 of order because R. B. has his tag up and we haven\'t heard

15 from you yet.

16 MR. GRISHAM: Thank you very much.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Would you say your name for the

18 recorder?

19 MR. GRISHAM: R. B. Grisham for the National

20 Independent Automobilers Association. When you asked the

21 dealers\' perspective, I thought for a second.

22 And actually what comes to mind, having been a

23 former director of a motor vehicle commission for a state,

24 is what sort of paperwork or paper processed at the time of

25 transaction that the dealer would be responsible for once he

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1 receives, he or she receives information either on a

2 trade‑in or whatever type of transaction we\'re having at

3 that particular point and time.

4 And then where does that dealer actually physically

5 send that information? Would it be to the State Department

6 of Motor Vehicle? Are they going to be able to handle the

7 influx of information?

8 Where is the clearinghouse of any database? Right

9 now I contend it\'s with the motor vehicle departments. And

10 if you\'re talking about adding more forms, as was just

11 mentioned, if you added more forms on one end you\'re adding

12 more detail.

13 And having been a state regulator, when you add that

14 detail you add a heck of a lot of items that must go into

15 that database. So from that perspective, where from the

16 dealer point would such a clearinghouse be?

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Do you have an answer to that,

18 Lori?

19 MS. COHEN: No.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Well, there\'s a good

21 question.

22 MS. COHEN: It\'s definitely to be worked out.

23 MR. GRISHAM: We would love to see it. We would

24 love to see disclosure as much as possible. Because being

25 at the very tail end of that marketing chain, it is our

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1 people that the car comes back to initially because the

2 customer has the dealer that they have to go back to to

3 start unraveling this chain of where the information dropped

4 out of the system.

5 And that is a very important problem to solve is

6 where did the information get lost; not who\'s responsible,

7 but where did it get lost?

8 Because when you\'re dealing in the type of, the

9 number of transactions across the United States, and I can

10 only speak for one state, from the years 1989 to 1993 we had

11 about 15 million transactions per year.

12 Now, that was a medium‑sized state. Now, throw in

13 New York, Florida, and California and you\'ve got another

14 country in processing, data processing. And information

15 drops out of the system.

16 And when it drops out of the system and then gets

17 down to the dealer and customer level, and I stop there

18 because what do you do?

19 MS. COHEN: Yeah. We need to get the information

20 about that buyback into the system, not papers, but into the

21 system and carry it everywhere the vehicle goes.

22 MR. GRISHAM: I, we agree.

23 MS. COHEN: Uh‑huh.

24 MR. GRISHAM: No, no problem with that.

25 MS. COHEN: Okay.

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1 MR. GRISHAM: It\'s the mechanics of that‑‑

2 MR. COHEN: Right.

3 MR. GRISHAM: ‑‑that is just ‑‑

4 MS. COHEN: Absolutely.

5 MR. GRISHAM: That\'s the problem. And if we can

6 come to some conclusions on that mechanisms, you\'re going to

7 make our constituency very happy.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Are the Motor Vehicle

9 Administrators working with these people? I mean, who\'s

10 working with you on the mechanics of this database?

11 MR. GRISHAM: We are working with Larry Greenberg.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Who is Larry Greenberg?

13 MR. GRISHAM: He\'s the head of AAMVA.

14 MS. COHEN: He\'s the head of vehicle services area

15 in AAMVA.

16 MR. GRISHAM: Right.

17 MS. COHEN: And the person I report to.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Great.

19 Allen, do you have a question?

20 MR. HILE: I wonder if there might a paperless way

21 of doing this through the Internet, for the dealers and

22 manufacturers to enter it into your database?

23 MS. COHEN: We\'ve got paperless proposals for

24 transferring titles and all kinds of things. This system,

25 paperless is exactly what now? What were you saying,

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1 meaning when you say paperless?

2 MR. HILE: A paperless system for the data to get

3 from the dealers, since we\'re talking about dealers here,

4 into your ‑‑

5 MS. COHEN: Well, we are talking about having the

6 dealers, manufacturers, whomever is providing that

7 information, enter that information ‑‑

8 MR. HILE: The concern that I\'m hearing from him is

9 paper.

10 MS. COHEN: Yeah, no.

11 MR. HILE: It\'s more paper for us to do our ‑‑

12 MS. COHEN: We don\'t want the paper; we want the

13 information entered. And there are precedents, by the way.

14 This system has others already, as you were saying, how do

15 manufacturers gets the information in. The system as

16 already envisioned has law enforcement entering reports and

17 getting it into the system. So there is ways to do it. I

18 don\'t have the details on it.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Jack.

20 MR. GILLIS: First of all, I\'d like to, I hope that

21 the AAMVA is getting consumer input on this whole process.

22 I think it\'s really important. Ultimately we consumers are

23 paying for it and we are the only true beneficiaries of it.

24 So I hope that you guys will set up some mechanism

25 so that we can, or some other consumers can provide some

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1 input.

2 Secondly, I think this solves a ton of problems.

3 Sure, we can work out the details. I don\'t want to belittle

4 the paperwork. But it gets back to what is going to be on

5 that document or what is going to be on that printout?

6 I can\'t imagine a consumer in America who wouldn\'t

7 add a dollar to the cost of their vehicle registration fee

8 or whatever to get a valid printout of the history of that

9 vehicle.

10 So it may even not be a cost factor. That whole

11 issue can be taken care of. But what\'s going to be on it?

12 And that\'s where I hope that you will look to consumer input

13 as well as input from the manufacturers.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil?

15 MR. NOWICKI: Well, you said at the end of the last

16 session if we could a way to go back to where we were at the

17 last session in this one, and I\'m going to try and do that.

18 I don\'t know how far apart we are in, you know, we

19 were far apart on what the reasons are for the buyback; we

20 didn\'t have agreement.

21 But getting back to the bright line and just in

22 talking to manufacturers over the years and knowing sort of

23 their feelings on positions, I think John Whatley indicated

24 like in Florida if we had that bright line when someone

25 filed for arbitration, that\'s something that is generally

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1 acceptable.

2 Some states use a notice requirement. But if you

3 had the reason for the vehicle was being bought back was

4 just really one or two reasons, one it was bought back after

5 notice of defect or after filing for arbitration or if it

6 was like a court order, so forth, that is the only

7 information there that really is the only real reason, I

8 think it simplifies things for the people with the, the

9 title branding people.

10 It helps gives you a mechanism now that\'s out there.

11 You could tie it into some form. For example, in Florida,

12 and manufacturers are very familiar with our form in

13 Florida, and this doesn\'t necessarily have to be in the

14 manufacturers, I mean, it doesn\'t have to be the state

15 giving out a booklet, but we have a defect notification

16 form.

17 Now what if manufacturers put in their warranties,

18 something along those lines, that was triggered by this

19 reporting mechanism, anything that was bought by, after that

20 period of time was then fed into this database, does that

21 add a little clarity or agreement here?

22 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, the next person on my list is

23 Gerry. So I\'m going to ask you to respond to that and then

24 say whatever else it was that you have.

25 MR. DUCHARME: Thank you. The simple answer, Phil,

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1 is yes, that would be an objective act that one could look

2 at and use as a benchmark to decide whether is disclosable

3 or not, even with respect to the use of certificates or any

4 other kind of mechanism for so‑called customer satisfaction

5 purposes.

6 So in principle I think the use of something like

7 that, as long as the message was clearly given to consumers

8 as to when this is to be used and as long as there was some

9 safeguards so that it would not be used inappropriately, I

10 would think yes, that would be a good bright line that we

11 could work with.

12 And if we were to use certificates that we discussed

13 in our last session after the point in time where one of

14 these documents was properly served on us, well, then we

15 could very easily call that vehicle a so‑called buyback

16 vehicle and make disclosures with respect to it. So yes,

17 the simple answer is yes.

18 The comment that I wanted to ‑‑

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Let me ask a question, though, of

20 both of you. Since every state doesn\'t have the same

21 requirement that Florida has and some states don\'t have a

22 similar requirement, what do we get in the database about

23 the vehicles that are purchased by consumers who live in

24 those states where there isn\'t ‑‑

25 MR. DUCHARME: Which was the next part of my

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1 comment.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Yeah, okay. Gerry.

3 MR. DUCHARME: What we would like to see, quite

4 frankly, is uniform standards throughout the whole country.

5 It is incredibly difficult for a manufacturer who does

6 business in all the states to be able to monitor all of the

7 differing state laws, to be able to 100 percent comply with

8 all of them, notwithstanding all of our efforts to do.

9 Cars, no doubt, are incredibly mobile things. And

10 to have their transfer and their, you know, pedigree covered

11 by individual state laws when in minutes a car can be in a

12 totally different jurisdiction and with, you know, customers

13 and with dealers in a totally different jurisdiction frankly

14 is an issue that everyone should focus upon.

15 And I think all attention should be directed in

16 getting uniform, preemptive legislation or rulemaking that

17 would govern this, you know, throughout the whole country.

18 We\'ve talked about disclosure forms before.

19 Frankly, it\'s incredibly difficult for manufacturers

20 to have different disclosure forms in different states.

21 It\'s incredibly confusing to consumers who take the car from

22 one state to another that maybe have two disclosure forms.

23 One, it doesn\'t comply with the law of the state

24 where they were buying the vehicle. So we would push very

25 much for some sort of uniform legislation.

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1 Also, we at Ford are very much in favor of having a

2 national database that would monitor the pedigree of

3 so‑called buyback vehicles.

4 But the caveat on that, we are not excited about

5 having additional rules and additional requirements to

6 overlay all the different regulations in all the states. We

7 would favor a national database as part of a uniform Federal

8 rule or regulation that would govern this whole situation.

9 We think it would be a very important part of such a

10 rule. We think it would be incredibly consumer friendly.

11 And for all the reasons we\'ll probably get into this

12 afternoon when we get into this in detail, we would support

13 it a thousand fold.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Ed.

15 MR. MIERZWINSKI: Eileen, getting back to a point

16 you had made earlier about getting more information to

17 consumers and also about this, I don\'t know a lot, I don\'t

18 know very much about this database at all.

19 But I think it is a step forward. I would encourage

20 your staff, and I can provide you with names of people, I

21 have some grave concerns about the cost to the consumers who

22 seek the information.

23 And I think we have to worry about the chilling

24 effect on them of if there would have to be a fee for a

25 consumer to ask this database for information. And I

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1 realize there is no such thing as a free lunch.

2 But the SEC went through a problem where it actually

3 created a database and some monopolistic information these

4 sellers thought that they had a monopoly on government

5 information and wanted to resell government records for an

6 enormous fee per hour.

7 Now, the SEC ended up, now you can get it on the

8 Internet free, the Edgar database. And so I think that we

9 ought to go down this line but at the same time make sure

10 that we can get to the point where we can continue to

11 provide more information to consumers at a lower cost.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Has there ever been any thought,

13 Lori, about somehow making the ability to search this

14 database available on the Internet?

15 MS. COHEN: I really can\'t answer what\'s been,

16 what\'s been looked into so far.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Evan.

18 MR. JOHNSON: I guess I have more of a question than

19 a comment. And I guess my question is of you, Eileen. You

20 asked Jackie for us in general what we thought of this.

21 And was I understanding your question to say, are

22 you asking us if this ideally could take care of the problem

23 or perceived problem? Was that the question or?

24 MS. HARRINGTON: No. No, no. I think the question

25 is what do you think, what do you think of this?

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1 MR. JOHNSON: I think everybody thinks it\'s good. I

2 just want to make sure that it\'s clear that, and this could

3 be wonderful. And even if you got it free, et cetera, I

4 have questions whether it\'s, whether it\'s accurate. Because

5 a lot of people still may not use it even though we\'re

6 getting more into the computer age, no doubt about it.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: John and then Phil.

8 MR. WHATLEY: A couple of comments and a question, I

9 guess. I enthusiastically second, enthusiastically second

10 what Gerry said a minute ago.

11 But I guess I wonder, looking at this database,

12 whether it\'s really going to be a full provision of all

13 information the consumer needs or just enough to put them on

14 inquiry notice that, gee, you better check out the history

15 of this vehicle because it\'s a lemon law buyback or a

16 manufacturer repurchase.

17 And I don\'t quite understand, I\'ve had other

18 discussions about this, and I\'m not quite sure how much

19 information is planned on being in there right now. I

20 thought it was the title brand or.

21 MS. COHEN: Right now it is extremely minimal. And

22 that\'s why I say brands will be passed on. Vehicle history,

23 there is a capability there. It\'s not standardized. States

24 have not been told you must carry X information. We would

25 need codes.

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1 We would need things where states understood

2 uniformly you would have to carry certain vehicle history

3 information. It is not planned into the system at the

4 moment.

5 And I start out by saying we are open to that

6 possibility. But it is not planned into the system yet.

7 There is a lot that needs to be defined.

8 And also I just wanted to say you can\'t put in all

9 the information that we\'ve been talking about, you know, all

10 the repair history and things like that. It would be

11 lesser, less of what you could put into this electronic

12 database.

13 We\'d have to come up with that happy medium of

14 something that\'s transferable and standard and still

15 satisfies what the consumer needs to know.

16 MR. WHATLEY: Do you have ‑‑ follow‑up. Do you have

17 a ‑‑ question again. Do you have a projection as to how

18 long it will be before all fifty or fifty‑one jurisdictions

19 are actually on this?

20 MS. COHEN: I don\'t have a projection right now.

21 MR. WHATLEY: We\'ve got four or five ‑‑

22 MS. COHEN: We\'ll have it ready, tested, ready to go

23 October, \'98. We will be seeking additional funds so all

24 states can participate. Some will without funds, perhaps.

25 Additional programs.

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1 MR. WHATLEY: Well, it will take more, it may take

2 more funding from Congress; am I right?

3 MS. COHEN: We are seeking it. We are definitely

4 seeking it. It will help the states do it. It\'s something

5 they want to do. But I can\'t say say right now how many how

6 soon.

7 MR. WHATLEY: Thanks.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil and then Peter.

9 MR. NOWICKI: Just to revisit what I said earlier,

10 the role of the Federal Government as far as that they might

11 want to play, recent research that I just did, nearly forty

12 states have some written notification requirements.

13 So it wouldn\'t be the Federal Government putting a

14 great burden coming in and saying maybe under Magnuson‑Moss

15 under disclosure that manufacturers will provide a form that

16 consumers must use to notify the manufacturer of a product

17 defect, and that will go in the warranty or in the owners

18 manual materials.

19 And I think getting over that threshold is, and I

20 know it\'s a state rights issue, but it may be an issue where

21 the uniformity may in the long run be in the best interest.

22 What people are giving up in these other ten states, it\'s

23 not necessarily, well, now we are putting a notice burden

24 on, on consumers.

25 In many states some of the difficulty is that they

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1 are not even aware they have to give them notice. So if you

2 provide them with a form, our experience in Florida has been

3 that that has worked out exceptionally well.

4 They get it. They use it, as manufacturers can

5 attest to. And the role of the Federal Government might be

6 to consider something under the Magnuson‑Moss sort of

7 disclosure aspect of the requirement.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter.

9 MR. MAIER: The database we have been talking about

10 is mainly of use after the resale of the repurchased

11 vehicle. Because as a practical matter, the consumer buying

12 a vehicle that\'s been repurchased already is unlikely to

13 access that database at the car lot.

14 So that we also need to address how the information

15 needed from that database and/or from other sources is

16 actually given to the consumer at the point of sale and

17 during the sales transaction.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Has the AAMVA thought about that?

19 MS. COHEN: How the consumer will know? When it

20 comes to branding, okay, that\'s not lots of disclosure

21 information.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: Right.

23 MS. COHEN: But if you want to know if the vehicle

24 has been branded, in the HR2900 bill for salvaged vehicles

25 it proposes a sticker that you put on the doorjamb and it

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1 says that is a salvaged vehicle, repaired vehicle, whether

2 it\'s been inspected or not. It\'s on the doorjamb. If we

3 want to use that same standard for one type of brand, we

4 could see use the same for another.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Allen, a question?

6 MR. HILE: I have a question for Raines. How long

7 does it take a buyback brand to gets into the Carfax

8 database? Would it be quick enough for it to be useful for

9 the first repurchaser of a buyback, before the purchaser ‑‑

10 MR. RAINES: That\'s going to depend on the process

11 of the state. That would depend on the process of the

12 states and, you know, what happens before we get it.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: How long does it take roughly?

14 MR. RAINES: Once we get it, we put it in

15 immediately. But it would ‑‑

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Can you give us a range of how long

17 it takes for that information to get to you after it\'s been

18 branded?

19 MR. RAINES: It\'s really state by state. I mean, we

20 don\'t know.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Does it range from two days to two

22 years? Does it range from a month to two months? Can you

23 give us a ‑‑

24 MR. RAINES: What\'s the \"it\" here in terms of the

25 time limit so I can be more specific in the answer?

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: What is the, how long, what is the

2 lapse of time, how much time passes between the title being

3 branded and the information reaching Carfax?

4 MR. RAINES: Anywhere from a week to a month

5 probably.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Jack.

7 MR. GILLIS: I have a question maybe Janet or one of

8 the car makers could answer. Phil reminds me of the

9 Magnuson‑Moss Act. If this disclosed the fact that you did

10 repair the problem, is that a warranty? And will I have any

11 recourse if in fact you didn\'t?

12 MS. SMITH: That\'s an interesting question.

13 MS. GLASSMAN: I think the thing to remember is that

14 every buyback has a warranty, has an additional,

15 supplemental 12‑month warranty that goes along with it. So

16 any subsequent problems that may arise are always going to

17 be covered under that 12‑month warranty.

18 No vehicle goes out before it is repaired. And if

19 it can\'t be repaired, the disclosure notice says that it

20 can\'t be repaired.

21 The one problem that it sounds like in this system

22 is that because it requires so much coding and specificity,

23 the kind of information we were talking about before is

24 going to be hard to put into it.

25 MR. GILLIS: Well, I\'m not actually talking about

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1 that system. I realize that\'s too much for AAMVA. But what

2 about the case where the guy said it had stalling problems,

3 you said you looked at it, couldn\'t find any stalling

4 problems. So now I have a stalling problem. Do you have

5 any responsibility there?

6 MR. DUCHARME: You have a 12‑month warranty.

7 MR. GILLIS: So everybody gives an automatic

8 12‑month warranty to every single car they buy back?

9 MR. DUCHARME: Every one that we resell we give a

10 12‑month warranty. Ford does.

11 MS. SMITH: In Florida that\'s statutory also.

12 MR. WHATLEY: I\'m not sure. I don\'t know whether

13 everybody does it in every state. It\'s required in a number

14 of, several states.

15 MR. DUCHARME: I thought a lot of the states

16 required that you warrant the particular problem. We go

17 farther than that and we warrant the entire vehicle. I

18 believe Chrysler does as well.

19 MS. GLASSMAN: Yes.

20 MR. DUCHARME: I think General Motors does, too.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: We have heard the discussion that

22 we were hoping to hear during this segment. And we have no

23 additional questions. The staff has no additional

24 questions.

25 We do have approximately four minutes and twenty‑two

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1 seconds left in this segment. Do any of the participants

2 have any additional questions?

3 (No response.)

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Otherwise, we can build four

5 minutes of additional time into lunch.

6 (No response.)

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Good. Well, you\'re doing very

8 well. We will resume promptly at 1:15.

9 Thank you.

10 (Whereupon, a lunch recess was taken.)

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1 A‑F‑T‑E‑R‑N‑O‑O‑N S‑E‑S‑S‑I‑O‑N

2 MS. HARRINGTON: We have lemonade this afternoon

3 that we are serving out in the foyer. So if anyone needs

4 something cold to drink, go pour yourself a nice cup of

5 lemonade.

6 We are ready to go with the first afternoon session

7 talking about possible remedies. Although I would clarify

8 that when we talk about possible remedies, we can draw an

9 inference that we have concluded that there is a problem and

10 that\'s not really true for us.

11 But some of the commentors certainly believe that

12 there is a problem. And so in the afternoon session we\'re

13 going to talk about how that problem, if it exists, might be

14 remedied.

15 The comments reflected a pretty wide diversity of

16 suggestions and thoughts about remedial approaches here.

17 And I think that the gist of our questioning during this

18 session goes to what combination of proposed remedies would

19 have the desired result of giving consumers information,

20 material information that they need. That\'s our concern.

21 Again, at the risk of being repetitive, the Federal

22 Trade Commission\'s staff concern is with information that\'s

23 available to consumers in the marketplace to enable them to

24 make good purchase decisions.

25 So with that, let me open with the broad question

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1 which combination of proposed remedies do you think would

2 give consumers the information that they need?

3 And while you\'re all thinking, I hope that you found

4 nice lunches in the neighborhood. The food situation has

5 improved immeasurably. Some of you who have been coming

6 here for years will no doubt notice that.

7 MS. PHELPS: I\'ll start.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Good. Berta.

9 MS. PHELPS: Within our industry, we are strictly

10 wholesalers. We feel in order for this to be effective, we

11 all have to strive for uniformity. And we see the problems

12 nonuniformity causes in our industry right now, i.e., with

13 salvage.

14 Where some states have a brand that another state

15 does not recognize, the vehicle will travel across to that

16 other state, the brand gets washed off, and the dealer and

17 subsequently the consumer well not be aware of the fact

18 until there is possibly a problem.

19 As far as remedies, we feel title branding, vehicle

20 branding is very effective if it is done uniformly so the

21 auctions will have access to that information. We realize

22 that in most instances the retail customer, the consumer

23 will not see the title since the lending institution will

24 get the title and the brand. Obviously the lending

25 institution generally does not look at the title itself.

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1 So if in conjunction with you also brand the vehicle

2 that it is whatever you want to label it, then it would be

3 visible to the consumer.

4 Also, we find that a brand on a title is very

5 effective because of the available databases. Most of the

6 member auctions within the interplay access databases for

7 brands.

8 So when they pass the vehicle on from the seller to

9 the buyer, everybody is assured that the proper disclosures

10 were made. And again, we beg to the body here that will

11 decide of how to label the vehicles, that they will arrive

12 at a uniform procedure because otherwise it will defeat the

13 purpose.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Thank you. Robert.

15 MR. GRAHAM: I think there are two concepts that are

16 at play here, at least two concepts of some importance in my

17 view in the way of disclosure.

18 Those two concepts are permanence and prominence.

19 Prominence is important to the extent that that\'s what\'s

20 required to get information to consumers, to make sure that

21 they take note of the salient information.

22 And you can achieve that through, as Berta

23 recognized, an on‑vehicle sticker, something that will be

24 prominently displayed at the point of sale before any

25 consideration changes hands so that that information figures

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1 into the consumer\'s decision whether or not to purchase a

2 vehicle.

3 Permanence is important because we don\'t want

4 disclosure just to go to the initial resale customer but for

5 that information to go to subsequent repurchasers of the

6 vehicle.

7 You can achieve that through title branding. You

8 can achieve it through registration branding and a number of

9 states can achieve it through something in the way of a

10 doorjamb sticker, although there are going to be certain

11 unscrupulous vehicle owners who are going to peel off that

12 doorjamb sticker.

13 But now you\'ve got the theories there. And I think

14 if we keep those, keep both prominence and permanence in

15 mind, I think to the extent we\'re able to achieve that we\'re

16 better off.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Lori?

18 MS. COHEN: Yeah. Just to be very brief, I agree

19 with Robert that you want to have the, to show that there is

20 a brand to have the sticker on the doorjamb. That will help

21 the consumer at the time of the purchase. And then to

22 ensure that it\'s carried from owner and owner, do the title

23 branding as well.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Gerry.

25 MR. DUCHARME: We\'d like to see, frankly, use of the

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1 Used Car Buyers\' Guide as a mechanism for disclosure at the

2 retail or at the point of retail sale. And that coupled

3 with the 1‑800 number of the central database that we talked

4 about this morning seemed to me to be a mechanism to ensure

5 discontinued disclosure.

6 Title branding, you know, typically isn\'t as

7 effective as a lot of people would like to think it is. But

8 normally people don\'t have sight of their title until after

9 they\'ve paid for their cars. Most people finance their

10 cars.

11 So in terms of being a mechanism to inform the

12 consumer of the pedigree of the car before they take their

13 purchase decision to my mind is largely ineffective. So

14 it\'s one of those things you do when you have to do.

15 And I guess a lot of states require that we do it so

16 we do it. But in terms of effectiveness and in terms of

17 bang for the buck, in terms of the money we spend doing it,

18 I really don\'t think it\'s there in terms of consumer

19 benefit.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou?

21 MR. GOLDFARB: We agree with what Robert said a few

22 minutes ago about permanence and prominence. What\'s even

23 more important than that is content; what are people being

24 told?

25 You know, the State of California until January of

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1 this year had the requirement to put on the brand on

2 vehicles that qualified to the consumer warranty law,

3 warranty wrecked or warranty returned, abbreviated to

4 warranty wrecked.

5 No one knew what that meant. Finally, after seven

6 years they decided to modify that to lemon law buyback, I

7 think. But the point is that we still have to wrestle with

8 the issue of what is disclosed through whatever, you know,

9 uniform nationals?

10 I agree it would have to be uniform. Maybe a term

11 manufacturer buyback would cover all these buybacks and then

12 it would also give disclosures that we were talking about

13 earlier of what was claimed to be wrong with the vehicle and

14 what was repaired.

15 Just to have a uniform system that has information

16 does not give you very revealing or could be misleading to

17 the consumer. I mean, lemon law buyback is a misleading

18 term.

19 It doesn\'t say a lot. It may overstate the extent

20 of the problem. It may discourage someone from buying a

21 vehicle that could be in very good, good shape. So I think

22 we need to focus as well on the issue of what is disclosed.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Steve.

24 MR. TATERKA: Let me respond to something that Gerry

25 said about the title branding. And that was also raised I

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1 think in some of the comments from some of the other

2 industry folks.

3 Obviously in most states the lender holds the title

4 so that the customer isn\'t going to see the title right

5 away. Obviously, in a cash transaction of course they would

6 get the title.

7 In those states where the lender does not hold the

8 title, the customer would see it right away; I know

9 Wisconsin, I think Kentucky also, there is a few others.

10 But the purpose of title branding isn\'t to in and of

11 itself give the disclosure to the customer. The purpose of

12 title branding is to make sure that the chain of disclosure

13 continues every step down the line.

14 Because if you don\'t have the title brand, there is

15 no way to know. I mean, the manufacturer may do a superb

16 job of giving the disclosure to their franchise dealer when

17 they sell it at a closed auction.

18 Whether that dealer retails it or wholesales it to a

19 dealer, another franchise dealer or an independent dealer,

20 the manufacturer has no control over that. The one thing

21 that\'s constant is the title certificate with the branding

22 information.

23 Likewise under the Federal Odometer Act, it\'s the,

24 the Federal law already now requires that there be an

25 odometer brand on the title every time a title is issued.

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1 And that\'s the information that a customer can use

2 to impute knowledge to the seller that the vehicle has a

3 certain amount of mileage. And likewise a title brand for

4 buybacks can do the same kind of thing.

5 So I just want to sort of clarify that the purpose

6 of the brand is not to directly give disclosure to the

7 consumer but so that you can impute knowledge to the seller

8 that the vehicle is a buyback and consequently make sure

9 that the seller has an incentive to give the consumer the

10 appropriate disclosure.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. John.

12 MR. WHATLEY: I guess a lot of our reservations

13 about title branding has to do with the current situation.

14 Because it doesn\'t do that now because only a few states

15 have it and there are ways that the brands can get lost from

16 titles.

17 Not only does it not provide the disclosure to the

18 consumer at the time ‑‑ we can quibble about whether it

19 really does or not. It doesn\'t provide a reliable source of

20 the, for law enforcement purposes because things can be done

21 to lose the title.

22 We prefer something that, A, gets notice to

23 consumers who are the ones who really care about giving

24 notice to. And two, we can have some assurance that

25 essentially it\'s going to get from us to the ultimate

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1 consumer.

2 And the only way I know of to do that, and it\'s not

3 the perfect way, is through a series of contract disclosures

4 where each and every person in that chain has the

5 responsibility to pass that information along and have some

6 evidence that they passed it along in case there\'s a need to

7 track back up and find out where that information would

8 arrive, where it was lost.

9 Title branding might be just, not only does not

10 provide consumers the information they need, but it is just

11 not very reliable in the current state of things. We need a

12 uniform, maybe if you had a uniform standard that was

13 nationwide, title branding would have to provide some

14 information. But it doesn\'t in the current circumstances.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter.

16 MR. MAIER: Yeah. On the question of title

17 branding, it does, I agree with Steve, it does have a useful

18 purpose in perpetuating the information.

19 In addition, it does have some information to the

20 buyer, because typically it also goes on the registration.

21 And even if the buyer does not see the title if they finance

22 the car, they do see the registration.

23 But I think what we really need is a blend of

24 information. There are five things I think at a minimum

25 will be required. Because these things serve different

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1 purposes.

2 One is to have a disclosure on the car itself of its

3 repurchase status. That is, some kind of window sticker.

4 Because that information is a part of the, it then becomes a

5 part of the informed bargaining process in purchasing a car

6 or not purchasing a car. I think that the door sticker is

7 useful. Ford apparently is doing it or is about to do it.

8 MR. DUCHARME: We do it nationwide.

9 MR. MAIER: You are doing it now? Starting?

10 MR. DUCHARME: Starting four months ago. Thank you.

11 MR. MAIER: Four months ago, okay.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Do you have one of your stickers

13 here?

14 MR. DUCHARME: I sure do. This is the only, the

15 only one we use in California. The nationwide one I don\'t

16 have a copy of. But this is the sticker. It goes in the

17 doorjamb. It looks small from a distance, but a doorjamb

18 isn\'t that big. So this is the sticker. And it goes on a

19 doorjamb right below the VIN.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Could you pass it around so that we

21 could all ‑‑

22 MR. MAIER: Yeah. That would be very useful.

23 MR. DUCHARME: I\'ve got a couple of them here I

24 think.

25 MR. MAIER: And there is the model for that of

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1 course under the odometer law which has a similar kind of

2 sticker. Granted they can be removed, but at least it, if

3 somebody removes it they are themselves doing a bad act.

4 And so that has a, that has the kind of purpose that

5 the title branding has in terms of permanence but in a

6 different form. There\'s title branding, which we\'ve talked

7 about.

8 Then I think it\'s important that there be a point of

9 sale disclosure which would typically happen towards the end

10 of the sale process. And that would be a form used in some

11 states, and I have an example from the State of Washington,

12 what the form they have.

13 And the critical point here is that it\'s signed and

14 dated by the consumer. The consumer retains a copy. And so

15 there is an actual instrument that demonstrates the

16 disclosure was actually made.

17 And then there is the database, which would be the

18 fifth way of doing it, which would be a way of both for the

19 dealer to access information to confirm, make sure that

20 something hasn\'t gotten lost along the way.

21 And if there is a question that arises later,

22 somebody is having difficulty with their vehicle and they

23 suspect perhaps incorrectly that this might have been a

24 repurchased vehicle, they can confirm or have their

25 suspicions allayed by accessing the database.

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1 These things, no one disclosure or information

2 perpetuation mechanism by itself is going to work. You need

3 to have these things work in concert.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Adam, do you have a question?

5 MR. COHN: Yes, about title branding. Someone said

6 earlier that title branding, the purpose of it was for

7 continuity.

8 With regard to that, to what extent is it important

9 that there be a single, I heard some talk about there needs

10 to be a single title brand.

11 But wouldn\'t the purpose of continuity be served

12 merely by requiring one state to at least acknowledge that

13 another state has branded that title?

14 Wouldn\'t that serve the purpose of continuity

15 without necessarily coming up with some sort of mandatory

16 statement that it would have to be branded on all titles?

17 For instance, if you had a California title, merely

18 be required to say branded in Wisconsin and not really

19 necessarily give the entire statement that Wisconsin might

20 require. What do people think about that?

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Steve.

22 MR. TATERKA: The question of how to deal with

23 carryover brands is really more of an issue in the salvage

24 business already because you\'ve got states using completely

25 different brands.

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1 And states have taken two approaches. One has been

2 to simply carry over the other state\'s brand literally. The

3 other has been to convert it to what they believe is the

4 closest brand.

5 I guess for, I mean we\'re going to talk about

6 uniformity later on this afternoon. But I suppose, at least

7 to respond to your question I think, it probably would be

8 useful for there to be a uniform title brand so that, you

9 know, addressing, you know lemon law buybacks.

10 Now what that brand should be is something that I\'m

11 sure can be the subject of a lot of discussion. But

12 something that certainly would be understandable and would

13 be the same might not be a bad idea.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Gerry.

15 MR. DUCHARME: I find some of the things that are

16 being discussed here to be a little bit disturbing because I

17 gather that we are talking about adding things to what other

18 people are, what manufacturers currently are doing. And I

19 think that\'s most troublesome.

20 What we would like to see is a fresh set of rules

21 that would make the right things happen at the right time.

22 Not, for instance, the gentleman from Washington mentioned

23 that we have to do all of these things.

24 We have to have the paper there. We have to have

25 the database. We have to have the sticker. We have to have

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1 I don\'t know God knows what to make sure the consumer knows.

2 Well, there is a point beyond which people just

3 shouldn\'t have to tread in terms of complying with these

4 kinds of rules and regulations. We all share your goals.

5 As a matter of fact, Ford has been in the forefront

6 in making sure there has been adequate disclosure to the

7 consumers. But you can overregulate. You can overkill.

8 And very frankly, I think if we were to follow along those

9 lines I think we\'d be in the overkill area.

10 In terms of title branding, I really wonder whether

11 that\'s overkill if we have a national database. That\'s

12 something that\'s permanent. That\'s something that a

13 consumer is going to have reference to, he\'s going to have

14 recourse to any time at all.

15 If someone goes to buy a used car, they can call a

16 1‑800 number, they can punch in a VIN and they can find out

17 whether there is something they ought to know about that

18 car. That\'s there forever, and that\'s there potentially

19 before the consumer buys the vehicle, not six months after

20 when he pays for it.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Let me stop right there,

22 Gerry. For those who are recommending that part of the mix

23 include title branding, if there was a national database and

24 an 800 number that consumers could access to search by

25 vehicle identification number, would title branding be

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1 necessary?

2 Lori, Steve, I want to ask both of you to respond to

3 that.

4 MS. COHEN: I don\'t see how it would not be

5 necessary. Our plan right now for National Motor Vehicle

6 Title Information System is to do pretty much what Adam was

7 saying.

8 If California branded it as salvage and Wisconsin

9 takes it in, Wisconsin will have to carry the brand but

10 they\'ll have to know it came from California and apply that

11 definition.

12 It gets confusing. We\'d rather have a uniform

13 definition. You\'ll have to go back and look up which state

14 it came from and how they define salvage.

15 So National Motor Vehicle Title Information System

16 will carry over the brands. But uniformity would be much

17 nicer. So should there be a brand? I think you need it

18 definitely with the system. I\'m not sure how you could not

19 have the brand. I\'m not sure about your ‑‑

20 MR. DUCHARME: Can I plug in? I think there is a

21 misunderstanding what I was saying.

22 MS. COHEN: Yes.

23 MR. DUCHARME: If we define what is caught by our

24 overall regulation, in other words, what is a reacquired

25 vehicle, if we are able to define that, and we were talking

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1 about that this morning, let\'s say we have a category of

2 vehicles, the rule could be that when a manufacturer has one

3 of these, right, then the manufacturer is obligated by law

4 to put certain information on the database.

5 And it doesn\'t matter whether that vehicle has been

6 branded. That\'s got nothing to do with it. The important

7 thing is that the data gets from the manufacturer to the

8 database and that consumers have access to it. And whether

9 the title is branded is to my mind totally irrelevant.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Steve.

11 MR. TATERKA: See, I don\'t think you can separate

12 the two. Because it\'s the, normally when the title is

13 submitted, in states that now require title branding, the

14 manufacturer submits the title from the first owner, the

15 person that the car has been reacquired from, along with the

16 title application, that goes into the state motor vehicle

17 division.

18 And then they will issue a new title to, you know,

19 in the manufacturer\'s name with whatever the appropriate

20 title brand is for that state. That creates the computer

21 record which Carfax now picks up and presumably, hopefully

22 MVA will pick up on their system also.

23 So the fact that that title brand appears on the

24 title itself, that\'s not out there alone. I mean, it\'s that

25 computer record that the databases pick up which would

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1 provide the information that consumers could then access via

2 an 800 number or otherwise.

3 MR. DUCHARME: I guess the point is where is the

4 source of the core data? You\'re saying the source of the

5 core data ought to be the vehicle registration bureau in the

6 state.

7 I guess I was saying what\'s the matter with having

8 the manufacturer be the source of the data to the central

9 database? If the manufacturers were the source of the data,

10 you wouldn\'t have to go through other bureaucracy within the

11 state to have them input the data. So I think that\'s where

12 we differ, I think.

13 MR. TATERKA: I\'m not sure the proposals are

14 mutually exclusive. I guess to answer Eileen\'s question,

15 which was if there was a database would we also want the

16 title branding.

17 When I heard the question I understood it to mean

18 not necessarily a separate manufacturer‑run database. But

19 again, you know, I don\'t know how many consumers would

20 access the database, how many consumers would have knowledge

21 of the database. I mean, I would still want the title

22 branding.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Question, Allen?

24 MR. HILE: Yes. This is for Lori. Under the

25 current state of the law that governs your pilot project and

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1 your, whatever administrative regulations you have, would

2 you be able to put data into your system without the

3 predicate of a title brand?

4 Could you do what Gerry is suggesting here and take

5 information directly from the manufacturers and possibly the

6 dealers and put it into the database without it being a

7 brand? Or does the law contemplate as a predicate to

8 putting it in your database it has to the supplemented

9 privately?

10 MS. COHEN: The very way that this system is

11 organized, it has four files. The VIN is the pointer and it

12 gets you to everything else.

13 The other files on it is theft, an MCO, and the

14 brand file. And for us to identify this as a buyback, it\'s

15 the brand file that\'s key.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: But earlier when we asked whether

17 you could expand that, you said yes, you could.

18 MS. COHEN: Okay. There are ‑‑

19 MS. HARRINGTON: There wouldn\'t have to be a brand.

20 MS. COHEN: All right. I have to explain a little

21 more about the system. There is the VIN pointer file. And

22 the pointer file has certain minimal information. It won\'t

23 even have driver name, not driver name, owner name or

24 address.

25 To get more specific information from the VIN file

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1 about who owns the vehicle, you shoot the inquiry to the

2 state itself which holds the more complete database. It

3 helps for privacy purposes that way, too.

4 So you\'re getting the more specific information out

5 of the state itself. The state would hold the vehicle

6 history information, the more specific information. It\'s

7 hard for me to explain how they all interact. There\'s a

8 brand file, there\'s a VIN file, there\'s a state file, but.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, earlier when we were

10 discussing this database, my understanding was that it

11 would, that it will be possible with this database to expand

12 on the information that it captures to include, if we wanted

13 to, if you wanted to, if the world wanted to, any car that

14 was subject to a buyback, that that information could be

15 captured and used in response to a VIN search.

16 MS. COHEN: There will be a brand file that connects

17 with the VIN file, yes.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: But I guess what we were, the

19 assumption there is that we\'re going well beyond cars that

20 have branded titles.

21 MR. COHN: Um‑hmm. I don\'t think I better speak to

22 how it works. I have got people who can help on the how

23 later. But I can\'t really provide that information in

24 detail that you want.

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. I\'m not, I don\'t think I\'m

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1 interested in how; I\'m more interested in what. And that is

2 what can, what could this database capture and produce in

3 response to a consumer query?

4 MS. COHEN: Right now I\'d have to say we\'re very

5 open. It is brand oriented. Vehicle history is a

6 possibility that has not been developed much at all.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay.

8 MS. COHEN: It\'s a possibility. And it\'s really

9 wide open at this point because it\'s not very well developed

10 as part of the system. But the possibility is there.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Lou, you\'ve been patient.

12 MR. GOLDFARB: Actually, my comment is going to

13 respond to Adam\'s question awhile back. But I\'d like to say

14 a few other things, too.

15 I think, you know, it\'s very hard to divorce the

16 issue of what should be done about it without acknowledging

17 the magnitude or lack of magnitude of the problem. I

18 understand there is good reason not to get into that, but ‑‑

19 MR. GILLIS: No, that\'s all right; you can get into

20 it.

21 MR. GOLDFARB: I agree with ‑‑

22 (Laughter.)

23 MR. GOLDFARB: Actually Jack\'s learned a lot today.

24 (Laughter.)

25 MR. GOLDFARB: He has a better understanding of the

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1 situation. But I have to agree with what Gerry said and

2 expand on it a little bit. And that is we are really

3 getting to overkill here.

4 I mean, first of all when you talk about title

5 branding, and this is responding to Adam\'s point, it would

6 be very difficult, Adam, to direct the state DMV to do what

7 you suggested.

8 You have to understand we\'ve had a lot of experience

9 with one DMV in particular. You know, they have a lot of

10 responsibilities. And let me say this as charming as I can.

11 They have a lot of responsibilities, DMV\'s do.

12 And they just, you know, I mean, I will say for the

13 first four or five years of California\'s law, title branding

14 law, the DMV didn\'t even know how to do it. I mean, dealers

15 from all manufacturers were submitting information to the

16 DMV and not getting the vehicles branded.

17 In fact, last week the DMV were sending letters out

18 to owners telling them that they now have to retroactivity

19 brand vehicles that should have been branded years and years

20 ago.

21 So it\'s a very complex thing. It\'s another level of

22 bureaucracy that has to be imposed on the existing already

23 busy agency. And I just don\'t think it\'s going to get done.

24 But even more important than that, I mean, title

25 branding is just not that useful in any way along this

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1 process. It really isn\'t. I mean, the most important piece

2 of information is the information that\'s given at point of

3 sale.

4 I mean how many consumers are really going to go

5 into their computer and access some national database when

6 they\'re contemplating buying a used car? All right? I

7 mean, these are people that by used cars, okay.

8 And they see a good deal with a car that was bought

9 back by a manufacturer. They see it\'s costing a lot less

10 than the blue book is for that particular vehicle. They go

11 in. And the most valuable information is what they get at

12 point of sale.

13 And, you know, we make every effort to see to it

14 that these disclosure forms go through the whole process. I

15 will acknowledge that in many instances they don\'t. In some

16 instances they don\'t.

17 Very often when dealers sell cars to other dealers,

18 dealers of other brands, those forms don\'t necessarily

19 follow. And greater efforts can be made to make sure those

20 forms follow.

21 But the really best disclosure is that which appears

22 at point of sale when someone is negotiating to buy the

23 vehicle. That\'s when they can negotiate a lower price for

24 whatever they see in this disclosure.

25 To have all these high tech overlays, it\'s nice. I

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1 mean, it\'s nice in theory and we have the equipment and the

2 computer technology to do it. And it\'s interesting.

3 But when you really get down to it, (A) you can\'t

4 impose these huge responsibilities on DMVs, they don\'t have

5 the resources to do it; and (B) I\'m not sure how meaningful

6 it is to get into this massive title branding on a national

7 scale and try to get that information out there.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: R. B.

9 MR. GRISHAM: Looking at it further down the chain,

10 when the vehicle, whether or not it\'s branded or not, but

11 let me first start by saying branding from our perspective

12 helps. From a used car dealer\'s perspective, it helps.

13 Because it\'s preserving the chain. It\'s preserving

14 what that vehicle has gone through. I\'ve heard a lot of

15 discussion about the brand may or may not be meaningful, so

16 I come back to the word uniformity which is all in what

17 we\'re trying to work out.

18 But on the other side of that equation, when you

19 come down to that title being branded, it gives the

20 information that can be traced back to where and what

21 happened to that vehicle.

22 And the states are the repository of that

23 information right now; have been. So what, I go back to a

24 little bit, what I said a little bit earlier, it\'s when that

25 information drops off this chain is where we need to have

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1 the brand or the information recorded in a proper fashion so

2 we can find out where that information did drop off.

3 And we\'re talking about remedy, that\'s where we can

4 go back and discuss how and why that information dropped out

5 of sight. So we feel like that branding is a part of this,

6 as long as I come back to the term uniformity.

7 But branding ensures that the information gets

8 passed by transaction by transaction by transaction. And

9 the states are already the repository of that information.

10 And it\'s used every single day.

11 Titles in most states have to be present at the

12 dealership to sell the car. I know in the State of Missouri

13 you cannot sell a car unless the title is present at the

14 dealership. And a lot of states have that.

15 And as long as we hold dealers responsible for what

16 they should have known at the time of the sale, then you

17 have got to give the dealer the opportunity to go back

18 through the chain to find out when this information was

19 lost.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: George.

21 MR. VELEZ: Yeah. I guess a couple of comments.

22 When you\'re introducing complexity into anything, and in the

23 chaos theory, the people here, they can expound on it, but

24 anytime you ask our field people to do one more thing, you

25 increase multifold the chances of it not getting done or not

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1 getting done right.

2 That goes to Gerry and Lou\'s point about you need to

3 simplify this thing. You can\'t just keep adding layer upon

4 layer upon layer on this and hope that we\'re all going to be

5 in compliance because it\'s going to get hopelessly chaotic

6 and everything is going to go wrong.

7 But I think, there is a lot of us who think that

8 something is doable. But it goes back to uniformity and it

9 goes back to keeping it simple.

10 This form that we developed we developed

11 specifically with the State of Pennsylvania to settle some

12 differences we had with them. They approved the form. It

13 was the first of its kind. And now everyone thinks it\'s

14 useless and, you know, confusing and everything else.

15 I mean, it just shows you what happens. And, you

16 know, we tried adapting it to different states\'

17 requirements. And that\'s why it gets longer and whatever.

18 And you want to keep the print big so you don\'t get accused

19 of making the print small.

20 And everything you do to try to accommodate someone

21 because there is so much distrust gets interpreted as trying

22 to evade something.

23 So I think it\'s just absolutely paramount, you\'re

24 going to drive up costs dramatically. I don\'t think anyone

25 here wants to see consumers pay more for cars. I know we

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1 don\'t.

2 I mean, whenever we price vehicles, one of the

3 things we take into consideration is, you know, there\'s a

4 segment of the population that can\'t afford these vehicles

5 anymore.

6 And it\'s just, it\'s driving costs up and it\'s

7 driving compliance down because it\'s just so hard to do. So

8 I just, I think we\'ve got to simplify this thing.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil, and then we\'ll go to Adam for

10 a question.

11 MR. NOWICKI: I don\'t really have a position one way

12 or the other on title branding. I would just in our

13 experience with our investigation in Florida, a number of

14 problems we have had are \"6\"s look like \"G\"s in the VIN and

15 \"8\"s look like \"B\"s and \"4\"s \"Y\"s, \"1\"s and \"L\"s.

16 Sometimes it doesn\'t have all the characters. And

17 one of the things we were able to do if we had the title

18 number was run it that way and to find the VIN that way.

19 And sort of as a cross‑check mechanism it has some value.

20 Now, if there is some other mechanism out there

21 that\'s going to help you make sure you have the right VIN

22 for the right car, maybe there are other alternatives. But

23 we saw value at least in accessing the title from that

24 perspective.

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Adam, question?

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1 MR. COHN: About, about the necessity for our

2 uniform title brand. I still don\'t think I\'m clear on the

3 issue of the importance of branding in terms of continuity.

4 Because it seems to me that after October, 1997, at least, a

5 dealer would be on some sort of notice for any car if there

6 is a database that the dealer could just access and see

7 whatever brands were on that VIN in any state.

8 You wouldn\'t necessarily have to have a title that

9 said branded in whatever state. You could have a title that

10 was free and clear of all brands to your, to the best, you

11 know, just looking at it.

12 But if you dialed that 1‑800 number, you\'d see that

13 there were four brands on that car. And I still don\'t know,

14 I\'m not convinced that requiring the states to do anything

15 to change their branding would achieve anything, or even to

16 require them to carry over a brand from another state once

17 you had an adequate functional database. I mean, I\'m not

18 sure I understand ‑‑

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Are you addressing this? Who are

20 you addressing this to?

21 MR. COHN: To R. B. particularly.

22 MR. GRISHAM: Having experienced both sides, my

23 experience is over on the salvage side, so let me step back

24 on that side as opposed to the lemon side. But let me tell

25 you that it, the dynamics is probably a little bit different

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1 on this side of the equation.

2 But it\'s very easy when there is no uniformity to

3 wash a title from state to state to state because it gets

4 dropped in the mechanism. And again, states don\'t recognize

5 other states\' brands. They don\'t recognize other states\'

6 legal descriptions of that vehicle.

7 Now, what the specs on the AAMVA system that I\'ve

8 seen shows us that a pointer system, if you will, toward the

9 problem could exist and function and work. But if you start

10 dropping the problem from state to state to state

11 transaction, then the pointer system, once again I go back,

12 the information is going to be lost.

13 If Alabama doesn\'t recognize Mississippi\'s brands in

14 some sort of way, then if that brand is lost the information

15 is going to be lost and the information is not going to be

16 transmitted at the point of sale when it\'s finally between

17 the consumer and the dealer.

18 MR. COHN: Presumably the brand is still on the

19 database. Just because it\'s not on the title itself doesn\'t

20 mean that the record of that car having a brand is lost.

21 MR. GRISHAM: So the question becomes the point of

22 knowledge. If the dealer does not know, and again say he

23 purchased the vehicle at a wholesale level or say he takes

24 it as a trade‑in. And he takes that vehicle as a trade‑in

25 and there is no brand on that title, what would give the

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1 dealer the idea that maybe I should check all of my brands

2 or all of my vehicles on the lot?

3 Maybe from a business standpoint that\'s a very good

4 practice. But from a business standpoint also it\'s going to

5 be a very expensive practice. Because there will be a

6 charge somewhere along the line for the utilization of these

7 databases because you don\'t build them for free.

8 And the other aspect of that is, if it\'s right there

9 on the title in the dealership, then they don\'t have to

10 check; it\'s there on the document. And now that document is

11 being, is required to show to the consumer.

12 And there you have the problem solved at the point

13 of sale: Here\'s the disclosure, here\'s the information on

14 the car, now make the decision on whether you wish to

15 purchase or not.

16 Now again, that\'s how it\'s supposed to work on the

17 salvage side. And it doesn\'t always work that way. But on

18 the, on this, on what we\'re talking about here where you

19 don\'t have any, and I go back to uniformity, we\'re going to

20 have to come up with some pretty basic definitions before we

21 can move towards this uniformity. But then I think branding

22 is a part of that ultimately.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: Berta.

24 MS. PHELPS: As I said earlier, uniformity in our

25 business is really very important. It\'s one of the most

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1 important factors. We examine, our member auctions examine

2 literally millions of title documents a year.

3 And if you don\'t keep the process as simple as

4 possible for our industry and for the dealer industry and

5 for the AAMVA industry, the Motor Vehicle Administrators

6 themselves, I really truly believe you\'re losing the control

7 of it.

8 Branding the vehicle itself is very effective. You

9 might not have the document in front of you. You might not

10 have access to the title base at that point in time. But

11 you certainly can open the door and the doorjamb is labeled

12 that it is a, whatever you want to call it.

13 That is a visible fact. It\'s a visible fact for us.

14 If it\'s a dealer, he opens the door, he can inspect the

15 vehicle. He knows immediately, i.e., the odometer is not

16 right or it\'s branded or it\'s salvaged.

17 So again, I really have to ask that all the parties

18 involved look at the simplicity of it. To pass on the

19 documents, the disclosure documents on the initial sale is

20 good.

21 We dispose of dissatisfaction buybacks or

22 satisfaction buybacks for the manufacturer. We pass on the

23 documents. The manufacturer sets very stringent

24 requirements on the auctions to pass down the documentation

25 that goes with the car disclosing why the vehicle was bought

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1 back, what has been done with it.

2 The purchasing dealer has to sign for that. But you

3 cannot expect that these documents will follow the life of a

4 car; that is impossible. Because most likely within

5 possibly another year, another two years, that car will get

6 sold again.

7 And it then will truly go out into the used car

8 wholesale market. And there is no way you can expect those

9 written documents to follow the vehicle.

10 So we need to come up with some procedure that lets

11 the subsequent buyer‑‑and I don\'t mean the first buyer on

12 the dissatisfaction buyback but the subsequent buyer‑‑know,

13 hey, this is really a dissatisfaction buyback.

14 And whatever procedures, they need to be simple.

15 You cannot expect the public nor can you expect again the

16 dealers and the entire motor vehicle community to deal with

17 this massive paperwork.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Rosemary.

19 MS. SHAHAN: I\'ll probably make some history here by

20 agreeing with Lou Goldfarb of Chrysler‑‑

21 (Laughter.)

22 MS. SHAHAN: ‑‑that the bottom line interest is in

23 getting disclosure to the consumer that\'s usable at the

24 point of sale or prior to the point of sale. And I\'m not

25 sure, I don\'t think I have the answers on how to resolve

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1 with the database and title branding because there are other

2 people more experienced with that end of things.

3 I just wanted to raise a question I haven\'t heard

4 raised yet and see if people could address it. And that is

5 a concern that we have that sometimes the buyback vehicle

6 gets, especially when it\'s a trade assist kind of

7 transaction, it\'s back on the lot really fast.

8 Sometimes the vehicle is bought back and changes

9 hands, is on another dealership\'s lot within 72 hours, say,

10 and is up for sale again. And I\'m concerned about how long

11 it would take to get information into a database and get

12 people who are to go along.

13 And I know that that\'s actually been a frustration

14 that some of the car companies have had with complying with

15 different state regulations is how do you get the state DMV

16 to do everything that it has to do, the documents have to be

17 recorded if the vehicle\'s up for resale.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: As we go around, if anyone has an

19 answer to Rosemary\'s question about delay or timeliness,

20 we\'d like to hear answers to that.

21 Steve.

22 MR. TATERKA: I just want to respond to some of the

23 industry comments about, you know, chaos in the automobile

24 titling system and so forth if we go to some kind of

25 national title branding.

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1 Right now the only thing a manufacturer has to do in

2 the states that require title branding is to simply apply

3 for a title in their name and submit whatever form to DMV

4 that says this car has to branded as a buyback. That\'s all

5 the manufacturer has to do.

6 In terms of what the Motor Vehicle Divisions have to

7 do, they just have to brand it that they already are geared

8 up to put all sorts of brands.

9 I know in Indiana where I was for several years, the

10 Bureau of Motor Vehicles there has, I think they have the

11 ability to put up to ten different brands in the branding

12 fields. I mean, we\'re not talking adding anything that

13 isn\'t already I think in the infrastructure.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Ed.

15 MR. MIERZWINSKI: I just, along with the Federal

16 Trade Commission have been in a seven‑year battle with the

17 credit bureaus over the referential integrity of their

18 databases, over the mistakes in the credit bureau databases.

19 Congress just passed the law to improve credit

20 reporting. And I would say that if we were to remove the

21 title brands as the source of the database, that I think

22 you\'re going to end up with a database that has got a lot of

23 chaos theory in it.

24 I don\'t know chaos theory. But I think that\'s what

25 you\'d end up with is a mess just like the credit bureaus

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1 have. It sounds to me like title branding is a critical

2 part of the database.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: Richard.

4 MR. RAINES: I was going to address the issue of the

5 national database and title branding to reflect back I think

6 on Gerry\'s comments.

7 You, I don\'t think you have to have title branding

8 in order to have the national lemon database. I think it

9 would help. It certainly would replace. We have a lot of

10 experience with state title brands and it is quite

11 confusing.

12 I don\'t want to walk through the technical details.

13 But states themselves do have a hard time handling brands

14 as a number of brands proliferate. They may have a code for

15 certain brands. They drop them. If they drop them, and we

16 receive these brands.

17 And a lot of times there is a lack of information

18 about the brands. So it\'s a tough job handling brands. If

19 your only objective was to have a national database of lemon

20 information or manufacturer buyback information, you could

21 do that independently of title brands.

22 You could do it yourself or do it through private

23 parties like ourselves. But you could also probably get

24 that done a lot sooner than mixing it into the title brand

25 area because that is a complicated area.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: We\'re halfway through this segment.

2 And because we just had lunch a little while ago I\'d like to

3 take one minute for everyone to stand up and stretch and

4 just move about, and then we\'ll sit right back down and

5 resume. And I have, the next ones who has to be called on

6 are on the list.

7 (Whereupon, a short break was taken.)

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Let get back to our discussion.

9 Let\'s see. Richard. Richard. Where did Richard go?

10 MS. SCHWARTZ: Richard had to leave, so I\'m taking

11 his place. My name is Margaret Schwartz.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Hi, Margaret.

13 MS. SCHWARTZ: Hi.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: All right, Jack. I have you next.

15 MR. GILLIS: I also agree with Lou in terms of point

16 of disclosure is the key. And, Berta, I\'m interested to

17 hear you say that you are under tremendous pressure from the

18 car makers to keep all this paperwork with the car. And I

19 assume you comply with their requests.

20 MS. PHELPS: Correct.

21 MR. GILLIS: Two questions. One, what kind of

22 pressure, I mean, what do they do to you if you don\'t do

23 this? And can you do the same thing to the next person down

24 the channel?

25 MS. PHELPS: Obviously, they ‑‑

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Now it\'s getting good; \"what do

2 they do to you?\"

3 (Laughter.)

4 MS. PHELPS: They can pull the contract from us.

5 Obviously we have to, we sell their cars. We\'re they\'re

6 agents so we have to represent the merchandise that they

7 sell exactly as they tell us to do. If we fail to do that,

8 we fail our obligation, our contractual obligation.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: And what do they do? Do they sue

10 you?

11 MS. PHELPS: They could. Yes. They could stop ‑‑

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Do these things happen?

13 MS. PHELPS: Well, we\'re very diligent in passing on

14 the right paperwork. So I hope it will not happen.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: So the auto makers have sort of an

16 iterim effect on the auction people. What do you do, Lou?

17 MR. GOLDFARB: That\'s all to the good. I mean, we

18 actually have one of our employees at the auction who walks

19 these vehicles through.

20 The employee is standing there with the forms, okay,

21 and puts that form on the vehicle, makes sure the dealer

22 sees the form, signs off on the form, has multiple copies of

23 the form, mainly to give off to the people that he sells

24 these vehicles to.

25 It\'s a very effective way to get that communication

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1 as best that we can do to the point of sale. And most

2 dealers, I mean, you know, don\'t get the wrong idea. Most

3 dealers are complying.

4 I mean, dealers want to do the right thing by and

5 large, and there are always exceptions. But most of the

6 time dealers will make these disclosures to consumers and

7 people get the information.

8 Again, you know, our concern is overkill. I mean,

9 you know, we\'re talking about title branding. But again,

10 refer back to George\'s comments about the percentage of

11 vehicles that GM title, I mean, that are actually defined as

12 lemon, lemons under state lemon law is three percent.

13 So the rest of the vehicles are not even involved in

14 this whole branding idea. No one knows what the impact of

15 including all manufacturer buybacks in some national

16 so‑called branding scheme.

17 That raises a whole different magnitude of problems.

18 And we want to take a very close look at that. But, I mean,

19 if what you\'re talking about is simply the branding of those

20 that qualified as lemons, it\'s a very minuscule part of the

21 issue.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack, did you have anything else?

23 MR. GILLIS: No.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Lou, did you have anything

25 else?

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1 MR. GOLDFARB: No. That was it.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Janet.

3 MS. SMITH: Well, I just wanted to kind of give the

4 state enforcement views since I\'m the only state person

5 here.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Let me also just add that the

7 National Association of Attorneys General filed a very

8 thoughtful comment and had planned on having a

9 representative here today, but the press of other business

10 kept all of them from being able to be here unfortunately.

11 So, Janet, we\'re very glad that you\'re here.

12 MS. SMITH: Thank you. I just primarily wanted to

13 disagree with Lou that title branding is totally useless. I

14 think, yes, I would agree that the most important aspect of

15 this whole thing is to get the disclosure to the purchaser

16 of the resold vehicle at the point of sale.

17 But title branding is useful as an enforcement tool

18 to make sure that the person did get that disclosure. It\'s

19 a means of finding out, lets the enforcing agency finding

20 out later who that person was and checking to make sure that

21 they got the disclosure. So it does have that value. And

22 it is something ‑‑

23 MS. HARRINGTON: And how often is that done?

24 MS. SMITH: Well, I can\'t speak for Florida because

25 we just initiated title branding two days ago.

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1 (Laughter.)

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Does anyone know?

3 MS. SMITH: It is something that we will do.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Does anyone, with great regularity

5 does anyone have any experience with this, that is, with

6 state enforcement authorities following up to see whether

7 disclosure was given?

8 Peter.

9 MR. MAIER: In Washington State it is done and is

10 quite effective.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Is it done a lot or randomly or?

12 MR. MAIER: The enforcement?

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Yeah.

14 MR. MAIER: It\'s done a lot. In fact, Washington

15 State is probably in the leadership in this area. But every

16 vehicle that is repurchased, bought through the program, the

17 state attorney general\'s office which actually runs the

18 program then follows up to make sure that it in fact has

19 been branded.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Like 248 vehicles or something last

21 year, as I recall from the comments?

22 MR. MAIER: It\'s on the order of several hundreds of

23 vehicles so it\'s possible. Also, there is a state funded

24 organization that the attorney general\'s office does it.

25 MS. SMITH: Sometimes how much the state can do is

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1 driven by the case load that it has to deal with. But one

2 of the things we\'re trying to get started in Florida,

3 because our system has been so full of holes with a form

4 that\'s supposed to move with the vehicle, that just does not

5 work.

6 It\'s, with the exception of title branding, working

7 with our motor vehicle department so that we can track where

8 these vehicles are going.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Did you have an answer to

10 that question, Rosemary, about the enforcement, how often is

11 this?

12 MS. SHAHAN: Yes. Obviously we\'re not a state

13 agency, but we\'ve taken a very careful look at what

14 California\'s DMV has done to enforce this.

15 And there does seem to be a trend for more states to

16 be paying attention to lemon buyback resales in general.

17 The title branding is only one component of that. And I

18 would like to note that the state DMVs have been in

19 disagreement with the car companies over which vehicles

20 would qualify as lemons.

21 As you know from our comments, they\'ve come up with

22 a lot of internal documentation from the car companies on

23 vehicles that they would characterize as customer

24 satisfaction buybacks where they had requested, in

25 California they had requested the tax refund for those as

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1 lemons and they weren\'t branded in the states we believe

2 they should have been.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: We\'re aware of that controversy.

4 George?

5 MR. VELEZ: Yeah. I guess I hate to keep harping on

6 the same things, but I guess we\'re just disagreeing at a

7 very fundamental level here. We\'re not saying that ‑‑ We\'re

8 willing to do anything at this point that people think is ‑‑

9 but we question how effective any of it is.

10 Because we\'ve got ‑‑ And everyone has anecdotal

11 evidence. And I\'m sure that for every example I throw out

12 somebody is going to come up with a dozen other examples.

13 But we know that consumers, handing a consumer

14 another piece of paper to sign at closing is in most

15 instances futile because they\'ve got so much paperwork that

16 one more just doesn\'t make an impression on them.

17 If it does, they\'ll swear two months later that it

18 didn\'t do it. It\'s just, it\'s human nature. You forget

19 those sorts of things; you\'re excited about the car.

20 But fine. If that\'s the thing to do, let\'s do that.

21 But let\'s do it uniformly so we don\'t have 50 different ways

22 or 52 different ways of doing it. If we\'re going to have

23 title branding, let\'s do it.

24 Great. If the State of Indiana can figure out how

25 to do it, that\'s great. Why don\'t you teach Connecticut and

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1 New Jersey and California and some other states, where in

2 Georgia we could not get a car branded because we don\'t have

3 a business office in the state.

4 I mean, these things are just silly. And, you know,

5 we\'re not against any of that. We will do whatever anyone

6 wants us to do they think it\'s a consumer benefit to do that

7 doesn\'t cost a whole lot, and in fact that costs which is

8 going to have to be passed on to the consumer and that

9 really is benefiting the consumer.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Gerry.

11 MR. DUCHARME: Thank you. We have a process that

12 pretty much tracks a vehicle down to retail sale. We have a

13 form that we have go through the auction with a vehicle that

14 is required to be signed by the dealer when he purchases the

15 vehicle at auction.

16 And on the form it says that the dealer

17 contractually commits to make the disclosure to the retail

18 customer. He signs that. We get a copy of it. The form

19 goes along into the dealer, and the dealer then at point of

20 sale is required to disclose the form to the consumer and to

21 obtain the consumer\'s signature on the form.

22 And then the dealer is required to send us a copy of

23 that signed form for our records. When the dealer does that

24 and sends us the signed form, we send him a check for three

25 hundred dollars to pay him for, frankly, doing what he ought

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1 to be doing.

2 If we don\'t get the form over a certain period of

3 time, we have a process where we write the dealer, ask where

4 the form is and get a status of it. Maybe the vehicle is

5 still in inventory or the like.

6 If we discover that in fact the vehicle has been

7 sold and the disclosure form has not been signed, then we

8 implement what we call our recontact program. We write the

9 consumer and we say we understand you bought a vehicle. We

10 want to tell you about it.

11 And so we disclose at that point and time. This has

12 resulted in our dealers becoming a little more adept at

13 making disclosures at the appropriate time.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Gerry, I read this in your comment

15 and I had a question about it.

16 MR. DUCHARME: Sure.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: What is it that they disclose when

18 they recontact? What\'s the content of that disclosure?

19 MR. DUCHARME: I think we have form letters here,

20 don\'t we?

21 UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: The disclosure form and the

22 cover letter.

23 MR. DUCHARME: Yeah. It\'s the disclosure form that

24 he should have seen with the cover letter. So we give him

25 what he should have gotten at point of sale.

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1 But my point is not to describe our process. My

2 point here is that manufacturers ought not to have to be

3 doing this kind of thing. It is ridiculous that a company

4 in order to make sure consumers are being told what they

5 ought to have find out has to go to the lengths that we\'re

6 going through.

7 And that\'s one of the reasons why Ford Motor Company

8 is here today is to see whether we can get some sensible

9 preemptive Federal legislation to get the law enforcement

10 people in this country to be doing what some of us felt that

11 we\'ve had to do ourselves to make sure that the right thing

12 is happening.

13 In my mind we don\'t want to have some sort of a

14 system that overlays what we\'re doing. That\'s ridiculous

15 because we\'re spending a fortune on that right now. We need

16 a system that is self‑operative and that is going to work.

17 And in my mind if we had a 1‑800 number central

18 database for this information and we use a mechanism that\'s

19 out there right now, the Used Car Buyer Guide that will

20 travel with the vehicle every time it\'s sold, the guide goes

21 every time it\'s sold by a used car dealer, the guide goes on

22 the window, the used car dealers have to call the 1‑800

23 number and get the pedigree of the vehicle and put the

24 information on, then we can ensure in a simple,

25 straightforward way that this information is carried on it

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1 as long as that vehicle is on the road.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Steve.

3 MR. TATERKA: Let me just respond, Eileen, to your

4 inquiry a little earlier about what states have used title

5 branding. And I can do that in a somewhat different

6 context.

7 When I was with the Tennessee Attorney General\'s

8 Office, we used another state\'s flood salvage brand to

9 identify cars that had been resold to Tennessee consumers

10 and then sent contact letters or actually questionnaires to

11 those consumers asking whether they knew the car had been

12 flood salvaged in the other state.

13 So that information can be pretty useful depending

14 on how it\'s managed. I also just want to respond to

15 something that Lou said a little earlier, because I\'m not

16 sure that we were sort of all on the same plane on this.

17 The question I think had to do with, or the comment

18 had to do with the percentage of vehicles that are buybacks.

19 And I thought the implication in that ‑‑

20 MR. GOLDFARB: A lemon buyback.

21 MR. TATERKA: A lemon buyback. But I thought the

22 implication that was that only that three percent figure is

23 the ones that would be branded. And let me say that at

24 least Indiana, their statute is much more comprehensive and

25 would apply to any vehicle that\'s repurchased, whether it

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1 was denominated as such or was through settlement or

2 arbitration or whatever.

3 But I think that the answer to the question as to

4 which vehicles should be branded is going to be determined

5 by the outcome to this morning\'s discussion about what

6 vehicles are ultimately determined to fall within the

7 definition of buybacks.

8 My only point is that I just didn\'t want to, I

9 didn\'t want us to proceed on the assumption that 97 percent

10 of the vehicles would not necessarily be branded. Because I

11 think most of the consumer representatives here would feel

12 that, anything that went back to the manufacturer or trade

13 assists and then certain certificate cars that we could talk

14 about also should also be branded.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou.

16 MR. GOLDFARB: Except for maybe Indiana, no state in

17 the country now requires that. That\'s a major step beyond

18 what exists today in terms of the rather severe remedy, and,

19 you know, a questionable value remedy of branding a title.

20 I mean, branding a title is done when it\'s, you

21 know, comes within its state\'s definition of lemon. And to

22 brand all manufacturer buybacks in that way is just a

23 quantum leap beyond what is being done today.

24 I\'m not sure that it\'s justified by the cost and

25 significance of it. But, you know, I understand what you\'re

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1 saying. I just think that that\'s a very different approach.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: R. B. and then Phil, please.

3 MR. GRISHAM: I just want to step back up and ask

4 for sort of a clarification. If, at this point if we have

5 theoretically determined what the lemon is, then the brand

6 is necessary if, unless the accountability for continuing

7 the information flow ends at the first or second level of

8 sale, which I don\'t think it should.

9 But what I think I\'m hearing is that once it goes

10 past the point of the franchise dealer to that first sale

11 from that point, once it\'s been branded after we\'ve

12 determined what that brand is, then that information is not

13 necessarily through the livelihood of the vehicle to be

14 necessarily there with documents behind the titles and all

15 sorts of phone numbers or databases that may or may not have

16 the information at that point and time.

17 But if it\'s branded on that title all through the

18 subsequent chain, then that information is always present at

19 the point of sale. If it\'s not branded and the

20 accountability ends at the point where the brand comes off,

21 then that\'s fine with us.

22 But that accountability won\'t end there, and we know

23 it. We\'re realistic about it. It will not end at that

24 point.

25 So the question on brand or not to brand, if the car

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1 does meet that criteria that it is the cars we\'re talking

2 about, the lemon, the three percent, it\'s got to be branded.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil and then Jack.

4 MR. NOWICKI: I would just add that the norm is the

5 15 states plus the District of Columbia that have title

6 branding because it does apply to the standard which is most

7 of these states: California, Connecticut, even Florida now,

8 New York, Utah. It\'s various settlements and so forth. So

9 I don\'t think the three percent if it\'s represented as a,

10 you know, a decision of some sort is accurate.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Jack.

12 MR. GILLIS: I think that, at the risk of offending

13 the Chairperson, I\'m really concerned about the fact that if

14 we go with Lou\'s idea or we brand, your idea, we just brand

15 all the lemons, I don\'t think that\'s where our concern is.

16 MR. GRISHAM: I asked for a clarification.

17 MR. GILLIS: Yeah. It\'s clear to us that there is

18 some, there is a lot of confusion and there\'s probably some

19 legitimate buybacks; it\'s not fair to devalue that car in

20 the marketplace by somehow tagging it as a buyback.

21 But I think from the consumer perspective, our

22 concern is these nonlemons that are being purchased back.

23 Because I can tell you on the surface it seems to me if I

24 were a manufacturer, I would buy them back like crazy just

25 before they go into some branding, forced branding

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1 situation.

2 It\'s in my best interest to do that. I can get more

3 money for the car when I sell it over there to Berta. I

4 don\'t have to disclose it. I don\'t have to spend the three

5 hundred bucks to do all this stuff.

6 So there is a huge, at least on the surface,

7 incentive to pull these cars back just before they get

8 tagged. And I think that\'s what we\'re concerned about. And

9 that\'s why the numbers are so important.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Now, Jack, does that incentive

11 exist more in terms of the value of the car at wholesale

12 than it does to the repurchaser?

13 That is, what I\'ve heard from Lou, for example, is

14 that the information that goes to the consumer who purchases

15 that car is the same information whether or not the car

16 qualifies as a lemon under state law and is repurchased

17 because of a legal obligation under the law.

18 So are you suggesting that the financial incentives

19 for the manufacturer exists in the wholesale market rather

20 than in the retail market?

21 MR. GILLIS: Yes. That\'s exactly what I\'m

22 suggesting. But, Berta, you can answer that. I mean, you

23 can get more for a car that\'s not branded than you can for

24 one that is.

25 MS. PHELPS: That is true. But remember, the

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1 manufacturer declares the vehicle ‑‑ and we do not buy

2 vehicles, to correct you, when you said he\'s selling the car

3 to us. We are just an auction house providing a service.

4 But when the manufacturer sells that vehicle, in

5 their closed sale to the buying dealer, they do disclose

6 whether it is a lemon or whether it is a goodwill buyback or

7 whatever; and it affects the price, yes.

8 So the vehicle, actually whether the title is

9 branded, the manufacturer discloses on the block that there

10 is some cloud, if you want to call it that, on the vehicle.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Why would I be offended?

12 MR. GILLIS: Well, because, if this is happening ten

13 times, let\'s go home. If it\'s happening a hundred thousand

14 times a day, let\'s deal with it. And we don\'t know.

15 MR. GOLDFARB: If what\'s happening?

16 MR. GILLIS: The fact that there are bad cars being

17 sold in this gray area of just before they become branded.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, let me phrase the question a

19 little differently. Your question is how many cars are

20 being bought back and resold every year.

21 MR. GILLIS: Right, right.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: And it would appear from the

23 comments in the record that number is between twenty‑three

24 and fifty thousand. Is that ‑‑ That\'s the record that we\'ve

25 got.

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1 MR. GRAHAM: Again, I think George would take issue

2 with this. But based on the comments that Chrysler

3 submitted and also General Motors submitted, we\'re talking

4 about a minimum of over two thousand. It\'s a very

5 substantial number. Now, that obviously is going to

6 include ‑‑

7 MS. HARRINGTON: And how many cars were sold, new

8 cars are sold every year in the United States, Phil?

9 MR. NOWICKI: Fifteen million, roughly.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: So ‑‑

11 MR. VELEZ: And how many are under warranty?

12 Because it doesn\'t cover just the first year.

13 MR. NOWICKI: Three times that much.

14 MR. VELEZ: Right. So we\'re talking 45 million.

15 MR. GILLIS: So, just let me make sure I understand.

16 So you\'ve got 45 million cars; three percent of them you\'re

17 buying back for lemons?

18 MR. VELEZ: No. Three percent of what we buy back

19 are lemons.

20 MR. GILLIS: Okay. But what you\'re not saying is

21 how many you\'re buying back.

22 MR. VELEZ: That\'s right.

23 MR. GILLIS: Okay. Now, if you\'re buying back .0001

24 percent, then this is not an issue. If you\'re buying back

25 10 percent ‑‑

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Hold on a sec, Jack. Didn\'t GM\'s

2 comments say that they were buying back one half of one

3 percent of cars sold?

4 MR. VELEZ: No.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Is that what it says?

6 MR. VELEZ: We were saying less than one half of one

7 percent of cars under warranty.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Less than one. It\'s less

9 than one half of one percent of cars under warranty.

10 MR. VELEZ: Right.

11 MR. GILLIS: So, Robert, that\'s where you got the

12 fifty thousand.

13 MR. GRAHAM: We get the forty‑six thousand looking

14 at, assuming a two‑year warranty. And well, forty‑six

15 thousand for General Motors assuming a two‑year warranty and

16 assuming that we\'re looking at one half of one percent.

17 Now, if it\'s less than one half of one percent, if

18 it\'s a quarter of a percent, then we\'re talking about, you

19 know, twenty‑three thousand for General Motors plus the

20 fifty‑one hundred that Chrysler talked about and an addition

21 of two thousand from the programs.

22 But in any event, it\'s a substantial number. If

23 we\'re going to look at Chrysler and General Motors as

24 indicative to the market, then we\'re talking about well

25 over fifty thousand.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou.

2 MR. GOLDFARB: I thought Berta answered Jack\'s

3 question but I don\'t think you fully understood it. I mean,

4 the point is that let\'s assume fifty thousand. Let\'s assume

5 it\'s sixty or seventy thousand.

6 Disclosures are being made. The incentive you talk

7 about is not there. Because whether we have to disclose as

8 a lemon law buyback or disclose it as a manufacturer buyback

9 and give the reasons in both cases, the point is that when

10 we buy it back we know we\'re going to take a loss on resale

11 at the auction.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: I thought I heard Berta say,

13 though, that the devaluation is more substantial if the car

14 is branded a lemon than if it is bought back with the

15 disclosure but not branded.

16 MS. PHELPS: It has a, the value of the car is

17 diminished. When you announce, as I said, and I\'m calling

18 it a could on the vehicle, whether or not you have a branded

19 title or you announce that the vehicle is a buyback by the

20 manufacturer, it has a definite effect on the price. But ‑‑

21 MR. GOLDFARB: It does have a greater effect if the

22 word lemon buyback is on there as opposed to manufacturer

23 buyback. Sure it does because lemon connotes something

24 worse than a normal buyback.

25 MS. PHELPS: Right. It is a safety issue.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, then Jack\'s point, which is

2 then there is an incentive to buy back before it reaches

3 that point.

4 MR. GOLDFARB: But the distinction is really, the

5 distinction is not that significant in terms of what a

6 manufacturer gets in return. Because in both cases a dealer

7 has to make a disclosure.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Right.

9 MR. GOLDFARB: Okay. And it just depends on how much

10 weight a consumer gives to the word lemon versus

11 manufacturer buyback and here are the reasons.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, the question really was what

13 happens at wholesale, not retail. And how much weight does

14 the dealer who\'s buying the car at the auction give to lemon

15 versus buyback.

16 MR. GOLDFARB: Yeah. Well, it depends on what was

17 disclosed as the problem. If the problem was disclosed as a

18 leaky roof, let\'s say, and the manufacturer says it\'s been

19 fixed, the dealer would, whether or not it\'s gone through a

20 lemon mechanism and been declared a lemon, the dealer would

21 put a different judgment on that than it will if the

22 disclosure is defective transmission, which the manufacturer

23 then tried to fix and couldn\'t find the problem.

24 The dealer looking at that might diminish the value

25 of that much more than a leaky roof, even though the leaky

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1 roof was the one that went through a lemon law mechanism.

2 Okay. So the dealer pays more credence to what is

3 disclosed as the problem rather than the titles or the

4 designation that\'s given to them, intuitively.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: I mean, do any of the dealer people

6 have anything to say about that? Does that sound right?

7 MS. PHELPS: That sounds about right.

8 MR. KITZMILLER: I think certainly how much the

9 dealer feels the car is going to devalue depends on exactly

10 what Lou said, what the problem is. And the fact that it\'s

11 a lemon in and of itself doesn\'t mean that it\'s going to be

12 worth less than if it was, doesn\'t have a problem.

13 Again, I think if goes exactly to what he said,

14 whether or not the problem has been addressed. The other

15 point I want to make is we keep coming back to this issue of

16 the, that there is a financial incentive that\'s been

17 directed for the manufactures but by inference it\'s directed

18 toward us, that there\'s somehow some financial incentive to

19 grab these bad cars right before they have to be disclosed

20 and them dump them on the next person.

21 I mean, that just doesn\'t make any sense from a

22 business perspective. We\'ve heard Ford Motor Company,

23 General Motors, Chrylser all go through their procedures,

24 how much money it costs them to buy these cars back.

25 And so to my mind it makes no sense at all to assume

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1 they\'re going to jump at the chance to dump these bad cars

2 before they have to make a disclosure on somebody else who\'s

3 also going to have a problem.

4 I think some of the comments reflected, we didn\'t

5 put this in our comments but I think it\'s very true, the

6 automobile business at this point is the most competitive

7 industry in this country.

8 And it costs us seven times more from the dealers\'

9 perspective to get a customer back than to get one the first

10 time. So, you know, again, I just don\'t think the financial

11 incentive everybody keeps talking about to force these bad,

12 quote, bad cars on people exists out there.

13 I think the manufacturers have made a business

14 decision over the last number of years, which the dealers

15 certainly applaud because they\'re dealing with our

16 customers, to buy these cars back and to do more customer

17 goodwill buybacks. And I just don\'t think this financial

18 incentive we keep talking about is out there.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Question from Carole?

20 MS. DANIELSON: Yeah. I want to, we were talking a

21 little bit earlier about the effect that various types of

22 brands or disclosures might have. And I really want to go

23 back to a question that Joe brought up this morning.

24 Are there any studies or anything else that are out

25 there, any surveys showing either consumer perception of

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1 various types of disclosures or even dealer perception on

2 disclosures and what effect that might have?

3 MR. GOLDFARB: I\'m not aware of any studies.

4 MR. MULHOLLAND: I\'m not.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack.

6 MR. GILLIS: Well, disclosure is certainly not a be

7 all end all remedy, as we can tell by how many people smoke.

8 But what I think is a more salient question is, I mean, what

9 do you think, Peter? Is this much to do about nothing? I

10 mean, you\'re in there every single day. Your dealers are in

11 the front line.

12 MR. KITZMILLER: Do I think it\'s much ado? I would

13 say it\'s much ado about nothing. If you\'re asking me do I

14 take fifty calls a week from our dealers who have problems

15 with lemon law buyback cars, the answer is absolutely not.

16 I\'m not trying to minimize the problem. I don\'t

17 know the figures or the numbers, and I don\'t think that this

18 is an issue that we shouldn\'t be addressing. But I\'m not

19 going to sit here and tell you that it\'s something that I

20 get fifty calls a week from our dealers who have a problem.

21 And frankly, if they were having a problem, we\'d be hearing

22 it.

23 MR. HILE: How many do you get?

24 MR. GILLIS: Well, I don\'t think they\'re having a

25 problem. It appears that they\'re just pushing these cars

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1 back out on the market without disclosure so therefore this

2 is no problem

3 MR. KITZMILLER: Well, no. First of all, that\'s not

4 correct. And second of all, when I say have a problem, we

5 get calls from dealers all the time who have problems with

6 customers, consumer problems where they didn\'t make a

7 correct disclosure or they did something incorrectly.

8 There are certain issues where a theme comes up and

9 we see a consistent problem with different types of dealers.

10 We had a problem way back before I started when they dealt

11 with the used car rule, maybe not doing that correctly or

12 doing some of those things correctly.

13 So I\'m not saying it\'s much ado about nothing. But

14 I mean, I know you want to keep harping on the fact someone

15 is going to give you a magic figure as to how many of these

16 cars are out there; I don\'t know. We don\'t build the cars.

17 I take exception with the fact that we don\'t have a

18 problem because we\'re turning around and handing these cars

19 back out to people. Again, the majority of our dealers pass

20 on the disclosures that they receive from the manufacturer

21 to the customers.

22 We can talk about whether those disclosures are

23 effective or not or whether or not we need to change the

24 language. But again, I would take exception to the fact

25 that we don\'t do the disclosures because I don\'t think

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1 that\'s the case.

2 And, you know, again, I don\'t know the scope of the

3 problem. But based on, you know, the issues that I deal

4 with, I don\'t get a lot of questions from dealers or

5 concerns or problems, either if the manufacturer has a

6 problem what they\'ve done or consumers have had a problem

7 with what they\'ve done.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack, I was interested in your

9 comment about smoking. And I wonder if you were here to

10 advance the theory that cars are a medical vice.

11 (Laughter.)

12 MS. HARRINGTON: This could be the answer. The FDA

13 should regulate this.

14 (Laughter.)

15 MS. HARRINGTON: How many of you think that\'s a good

16 idea?

17 MR. GILLIS: I think that we have some preemptive

18 problems there, serious preemptive problems.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Let\'s go to Rosemary.

20 MS. SHAHAN: I don\'t have the answer regarding how

21 much vehicles are devalued, but I\'d like to suggest some

22 places to look. And one would be to maybe ask lenders or

23 insurers.

24 Because I know we heard from consumers who were

25 informed that they had a buyback vehicle. Then they found

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1 out it had a history of safety defects. And their lender

2 wanted to call the entire note due because they said it was

3 not collateral for their loan.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: How many times are you aware of

5 that having happened?

6 MS. SHAHAN: Not real often. It was when they, when

7 they had like bad brakes, bad steering.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Single digit, double digit?

9 MS. SHAHAN: Right. And it was partly because ‑‑

10 (Laughter.)

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Which of those two?

12 (Laughter.)

13 MS. SHAHAN: Single. Single digits.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay.

15 MS. SHAHAN: And it\'s because it had to be a

16 combination of things. One, they had to become aware. And

17 consumers aren\'t always aware.

18 The other was they had to find out the history of

19 the vehicle included the safety defect. And the third was

20 that their lender insurer found out. In a lot of cases they

21 don\'t even, they don\'t know.

22 Because the title is not branded, the lenders or

23 insurers don\'t have a way to know that the vehicle has

24 problems. But these were cases where it got publicity in

25 their lender insurer that they had got in touch with them

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1 and said.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: It would be pretty costly for the

3 FTC to ask all the lenders and insurers about this on the

4 basis of‑‑

5 MS. SHAHAN: A few.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: ‑‑a single digit number. I mean, I

7 think, you know, you have to think about what the cost to

8 the consumers who are getting those loans would be as the

9 lenders absorb the cost of responding to subpoenas from the

10 Federal Trade Commission.

11 MS. SHAHAN: I understand. I\'m just thinking if we

12 were to be branding more titles, lenders and insurers might

13 take more notice of that. You know, they aren\'t around the

14 table, but obviously they have a concern.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Gerry.

16 MR. DUCHARME: We have not done it, this is in

17 answer to Carole\'s question earlier. We have not done a

18 real survey on all of this. But we have had some experience

19 in connection with our recontact program that I described a

20 little while ago.

21 And funny enough, the great majority, the

22 overwhelming majority of people that we contacted were

23 delighted with the fact that they get a twelve‑twelve

24 warranty that they weren\'t aware of.

25 They evidence delight with the car. And we\'ve had

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1 very, very few, I can just count them on one hand, you know,

2 single digits here, where we\'ve had, you know, sticky

3 situations where they wanted to take some action because

4 think felt that there was some wrongdoing.

5 And these are people who did not receive disclosure

6 at the dealership at the point of sale. So when you\'re

7 looking at magnitude of the problem out there, I guess we\'ve

8 come to learn that you may get several people in several

9 states who make a lot of noise, maybe go to the media and

10 get a lot in the press.

11 But in the real world the common person buying a

12 car, once they find out what\'s happened sort of look at it

13 as kind of a no‑brainer. I don\'t want to deflate this whole

14 thing, but that\'s our experience.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Evan.

16 MR. JOHNSON: Well, one is I think Ford\'s experience

17 might be certainly different than other industry members.

18 But I think Ford\'s done a pretty good job and they\'ve

19 certainly done a good job of telling us they do a good job.

20 (Laughter.)

21 MR. DUCHARME: Thank you very much.

22 (Laughter.)

23 MR. JOHNSON: But there are other problems here. No

24 one is going to be able to totally quantify this. The

25 record is replete with the problem of cars going between

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1 states and disclosures not being made.

2 When we took a quick look at GM\'s disclosure

3 earlier, and I guess Pennsylvania at one time said it was

4 fine. But I think the quick reaction of people here is that

5 it was not.

6 While I\'m not intimately familiar with Chrysler\'s

7 disclosures, I would be willing to bet that a fair number of

8 us could find some problems with them. The need for studies

9 is probably true. We probably need focus groups, et cetera.

10 But I think with too much work we can show that

11 disclosures as a status quo are not adequate even when

12 they\'re given.

13 The ‑‑ I\'m curious. You know, we\'ve gone on and on

14 about the title branding. I think we beat it to death. And

15 I\'ll throw out something that I sort of did in my comments.

16 Some people have told me it was stupid to do it then, it\'s

17 probably stupid now.

18 But the title branding does seem to be somewhat more

19 severe. And certainly there is more opposition to it, and

20 my perception is than other disclosure forms.

21 So do you do something different if you have a, if

22 we have a fairly broad universe of vehicles that we do a

23 written disclosure on, as we were discussing this morning

24 but couldn\'t quite reach agreement on?

25 But for branding do you take a smaller universe,

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1 like maybe a quite small universe of those that are actually

2 lemons for branding because of it being more severe? Does

3 it make any sense to not have the same threshold for all

4 different mechanisms that are used? I don\'t know. But I

5 think that has to be thought about.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Janet. I would just remind

7 you all that we have about six minutes left here.

8 MS. SMITH: I thank Evan for helping me get found

9 again because I got lost there for a few minutes. That\'s

10 what I was going to say.

11 And I thought I heard people saying this morning

12 that we disclose all our buybacks; it doesn\'t matter what we

13 buy them back for. And then I was convinced. But we don\'t,

14 but title branding is horrible, horrible and useless and

15 terrible.

16 So I guess I was trying to figure out what are we

17 talking about, what the problem is. And thank you, Evan,

18 for helping me get found again. It sounds like one form of

19 disclosure is okay and another is not. I guess I\'m

20 interested in knowing why.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, I would offer one answer, and

22 that is it\'s probably different to say lemon than it is to

23 say bought this car back because the original purchaser

24 complained of a leaky roof and the manufacturer says we

25 fixed it.

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1 MS. SMITH: That sounds like lemon to me.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, but, I mean, a brand has a

3 more succinct and disparaging, potentially, connotation I

4 would think. I would think. That\'d be my guess. I don\'t

5 know.

6 Lou, you\'re next on the list. What do you think?

7 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, actually I put this up here

8 when you were accepting single digit studies.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Oh.

10 (Laughter.)

11 MR. GOLDFARB: Speaking to Carole\'s point about the

12 effectiveness of disclosures, we do have some experience

13 with, not large numbers but the number of consumers who we

14 brought up to testify at a proceeding.

15 And a significant number actually got into double

16 digits that our disclosure was very meaningful to them along

17 with the one‑year warranty and that they do not feel that

18 having a brand lemon, or actually warranty read on their

19 warranty return, gave them significantly more information

20 and would have affected their decision at point of sale

21 either in terms of the amount they bargained for or whether

22 to buy the vehicle, so. But, Carole, there is too little

23 out there to really make a definitive determination.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: I would think that there might be

25 some interesting developing work on your part. I mean, if

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1 it costs seven times more to get a new customer than keep

2 one, you know, satisfied, it seems like this would be pretty

3 useful information.

4 MR. GOLDFARB: That was Peter\'s number.

5 MR. KITZMILLER: That was mine.

6 MR. GOLDFARB: I\'m not sure that\'s our experience.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter, you\'re next on the list.

8 One of the Peters.

9 MR. KITZMILLER: No, I\'m down.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Peters are all down.

11 George.

12 MR. VELEZ: Yeah. I guess I\'m not going to let our

13 disclosure form be attacked that way without a response. I

14 think the key to that disclosure form is the fact that it

15 has space to write in what was wrong with it, the problem.

16 And I don\'t know that we\'ve had any consumers who

17 have actually seen the form complain that it\'s confusing,

18 first of all.

19 Second of all, we\'re not arguing about whether title

20 branding is good, Janet, or whether we ought to disclose at

21 point of sale. From General Motor\'s perspective, we\'ll do

22 whatever anyone wants that is effective as long as it\'s

23 uniform.

24 What we do have a problem with is, when I was in,

25 for example, when I was in high school the State of Texas

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1 decided that pie was going to be equal to seven over three

2 or whatever, two point one three, whatever fraction or

3 approximation there is. It doesn\'t make it so.

4 And a state can brand something. And that\'s fine;

5 we don\'t care about that. But it doesn\'t necessarily mean

6 that that\'s a bad car just because it was branded. It tells

7 something about the history of that vehicle.

8 And we don\'t have a problem disclosing the history

9 of the vehicle. We do disclose in every single instance.

10 And Lou\'s gripe with that, as is mine, is that that doesn\'t

11 mean that\'s a lemon and it doesn\'t mean it\'s a bad car and

12 ought to be thrown away.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: I\'m reading a note from one of my

14 colleagues. I should have worn my progressive bifocals

15 today. I have no idea what that is.

16 (Laughter.)

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Adam, what do you want to know?

18 What\'s the question?

19 MR. COHN: Well, I\'d like to hear what people think

20 about something that. We talked about a database earlier in

21 a lot of detail. And we\'ve been talking about branding and

22 disclosures on the vehicle later today.

23 I just wanted to hear what people thought about

24 something along the lines of taking a very broad definition

25 we discussed earlier today of a buyback and incorporating

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1 that into the notification that would be either on the title

2 brand or on the vehicle itself or in the disclosure at the

3 point of sale and then rely on the database for more

4 detailed information.

5 In other words, the consumer might get that point of

6 sale notice that they need to be on alert that there might

7 be something wrong with the car, and then they can access

8 the database by an 800 number or whatever.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, we have one minute. And my

10 hunch is that the answer to that question is it depends on

11 what the content of the disclosure is.

12 But, Lou, do you want to give that ‑‑

13 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, you have to keep in mind what a

14 transaction is like. People who buy used cars, from our

15 experience, don\'t consult their computer initially. I mean,

16 they go out to used car lots and see a car.

17 And whatever information that they rely on

18 negotiating that car, it has to be there, okay. They\'re not

19 going to be giving those go look somewhere else and come

20 back a week later and see whether you want to buy this car

21 and what you want to pay for it.

22 So nothing is really meaningful unless it\'s there.

23 And that\'s why we give a disclosure and have been at point

24 of sale.

25 And the only real shortcoming that I think has been

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1 demonstrated to some extent is that in some cases that

2 disclosure doesn\'t make it all the way through. We need to

3 look at ways to make it go all the way through.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, another, probably another

5 perspective on that is that a different shortcoming is that

6 the content of the disclosure isn\'t significant, that it\'s

7 too, that it glosses over.

8 MR. GOLDFARB: It\'s inadequate.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: It\'s inadequate, it\'s, you know. I

10 mean, some of the, and I\'m not endorsing it.

11 MR. GOLDFARB: I would agree with that.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: Right. No. I\'m just sort of, some

13 of the comments that we\'ve heard suggest that some think

14 that saying something about the manufacturer having made

15 repair is misleading. Others think that, you know, the

16 characterization of the buyback is misleading. So, I mean,

17 I think that gets us to content.

18 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, I\'d really like to know from

19 Janet what should be in place of, you know, the

20 manufacturer\'s statement of what it has done. I mean,

21 either it\'s been repaired or it\'s not or there is some

22 dispute as to whether it\'s been repaired.

23 But the most important thing a consumer could want

24 is what\'s happened to this? I mean, what is this ‑‑

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Janet\'s comment earlier was that

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1 that shouldn\'t included at all one way or the other.

2 MR. GOLDFARB: What do you say?

3 MS. SMITH: I don\'t know.

4 MR. GOLDFARB: Nothing?

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Janet says nothing.

6 (Laughter.)

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack, you\'re going to have the last

8 word. Then we\'re done with discussion.

9 MR. GILLIS: Okay. I think from CFA\'s perspective,

10 I\'m just speaking for CFA, we think that\'s a good idea, a

11 big, bold warning, this is a buyback.

12 There is a whole bunch of issues associated with

13 that; how do you find out why it was bought back, was the

14 problem fixed, so forth.

15 But right now we sense, regardless of all these

16 papers that we\'ve seen here, consumers aren\'t being told.

17 So it\'s got to be a big, bold warning, do something else,

18 but this is a buyback.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Warning?

20 MR. MIERZWINSKI: On a lemon yellow background.

21 MR. GILLIS: Yeah.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. We are at a breaking

23 point here only in terms of our schedule but not our spirit.

24 And we will resume promptly at three p.m. to discuss the

25 issue of uniformity.

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1 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.)

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Toward uniformity. This is where

3 we talk about how the United Nations is going to take over

4 the world.

5 (Laughter.)

6 MS. HARRINGTON: This is where we talk about whether

7 or not we need a uniform national standard or approach to

8 the information that\'s provided to consumers about vehicles

9 that have been the subject of repurchaser buyback.

10 Ruth, are you back there? Ruth, we need a little

11 bit of help. One of our pitchers tipped over here. If you

12 can just grab something. Thanks.

13 We\'ve heard a lot of comments, particularly I think

14 from the selling, the seller\'s side: the manufacturers, the

15 dealers, the auctions about their view that we need some

16 uniformity in the information that must be provided and in

17 the requirements for information that must be provided.

18 To begin the discussion on this issue, let me go to

19 the first question that\'s on our agenda. And that is, what

20 if any specific requirements must be uniform? And I think

21 here we really are going to be looking for something,

22 looking to see whether we can develop some consensus.

23 So I\'m interested, we\'re interested here in a sense

24 of what it is that people agree with or what they don\'t

25 agree with. And we are not interested in people just

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1 repeating one another.

2 So would someone like to begin the discussion?

3 Assuming that there should be some uniformity, what is it

4 that should be uniformly required by way of disclosure?

5 John?

6 Now, Robert, I wanted to point out that your little

7 sticky was up at the end of the last session and you didn\'t

8 get called on, and that was two times today that that

9 happened; twice.

10 MR. GRAHAM: Twice running.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Do you want to say anything about

12 this?

13 MR. GRAHAM: Well, I had something to say on a

14 separate topic before, which I\'ve forgotten.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, we won\'t allow you to speak

16 on another topic.

17 MR. GRAHAM: But I will share my very broad views on

18 uniformity.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay.

20 MR. GRAHAM: I think uniformity does serve a

21 purpose. To the extent that it serves to effectuate better

22 disclosure to the consumer, it\'s a good thing. As soon as

23 it stops serving that interest, it\'s a bad thing.

24 And so our general view, before we get into, deeper

25 into the details, is that a fully preemptive Federal

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1 standard is a bad thing. It\'s a, you\'ve got, the states

2 have to have the freedom to provide an extra measure of

3 protection to the citizens.

4 It\'s a reserve power that they\'ve had for two

5 hundred and some odd years to safeguard the health, safety,

6 and morals of their citizenry. And I think that if you\'re

7 going to have a, if you\'re going to have a fully preemptive

8 law, you\'ve got to have a very, very, very good reason.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: John.

10 MR. WHATLEY: Well, I\'m all in favor of a fully

11 preemptive Federal law so I\'m going to start out with

12 initial disagreement. And the reason is relatively

13 practical.

14 And you said what disclosures must be. I think it

15 falls into two categories. The first is a standard itself

16 on which you\'ve got, you trigger the disclosure. That needs

17 to be uniform so that it can be applied by the customer

18 relations departments of the manufacturers throughout the

19 country and do it uniformly so that there is sort of a less

20 chance of making mistakes. It is a very practical problem.

21 If you have one standard to apply, you can apply it,

22 you can get better at applying it and you\'ll do it right.

23 Under current systems, a lot of the problems I think that

24 arise here are because the dealers and the customer

25 relations departments have to apply a number of different

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1 standards, and it\'s tough keeping them straight and making

2 the right standards, making the right disclosures in the

3 right state.

4 So the standard itself for disclosure I think needs

5 to be uniform, and I think it needs to be the same

6 everywhere. There doesn\'t need to be a more protective one.

7 If you need to make more, give more protection, give it at a

8 Federal level. Make it uniform, make it preemptive.

9 And the other thing that needs to be uniform I think

10 is sort of the path you follow after that. If it\'s going to

11 be title branding, make it the same. I don\'t know how, I

12 don\'t endorse title branding, but it needs to be the same

13 procedures from state to state.

14 If it\'s going to be contract disclosure, which I

15 said in the last session I thought was the way to go, that

16 needs to be uniform to state to state. Otherwise problems

17 fall into the process and you make mistakes and you\'re going

18 to ‑‑

19 And that I think right now something we could do, if

20 there is a problem with title disclosure in this country, it

21 follows from the fact that there is too much vulcanization.

22 There are too many pratfalls for those people who have to

23 make the decision on what to do.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: One question that I would like to

25 throw out here, and we\'d appreciate it if the next two or

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1 three that I call on would comment on it, and anyone else,

2 is whether there is any possibility for consensus around the

3 following equation.

4 A trigger that is very inclusive of the sort that we

5 discussed this morning, that is, what would trigger the

6 disclosure requirement would be the buyback of the car but

7 content that is less inclusive, shall we say.

8 That is, is there any ‑‑ Because I think that

9 historically at least, the differences of view have been

10 that the states favor a Federal law that leaves intact state

11 requirements because the state, because the content of the

12 state disclosures is more to the liking of the individual

13 state.

14 The state believes that that, that the content gives

15 better protection to its citizens. But on the other hand,

16 other consumer advocates argue that the trigger isn\'t

17 inclusive enough.

18 And so I\'m just wondering if there is any, if there

19 is any room for compromise along the lines of the equation

20 that I suggest; a very inclusive trigger, a less inclusive,

21 if you will, content, broader categories of information in

22 the disclosure rather than, you know, whatever it is that

23 the states require that is currently, at least, that is more

24 detailed.

25 Lou.

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1 MR. GOLDFARB: We put a tremendous value on

2 uniformity. We would go very, very far along the road to

3 inclusiveness if there could be uniformity. We\'d even go

4 down the road to more data being disclosed if we could have

5 uniformity, but ‑‑

6 MS. HARRINGTON: What in your mind is the more

7 burdensome statement of disclosure?

8 MR. GOLDFARB: Well, wait a second. But uniformity,

9 uniformity coupled with fifty different requirements means

10 uniformity doesn\'t exist. So that is really what the

11 concern here is. I mean, all the virtues of uniformity are

12 gone without uniformity.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Right. Well, is there a state that

14 you, you don\'t even have to name the state, but can you

15 describe a disclosure requirement that is more inclusive?

16 Is there a state that you think has, or is there a

17 particular state requirement disclosure requirement that you

18 think is particularly detailed and maybe overkill, as you

19 call it?

20 MR. GOLDFARB: There are a number of state

21 disclosure requirements which are in two parts. One, if it

22 comes within their definition of a lemon, be branded a

23 lemon, and then give the reasons that it was, the problems

24 complained of and the things that were done to repair it.

25 If it\'s not branded a lemon, you say it was a

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1 manufacturer buyback and give the reasons that were

2 complained of and what you did to repair it. That is what

3 we\'re doing, and that is the right way to go.

4 That is the most informative way to get the

5 information to consumers in a meaningful way. And there are

6 states that come close. They give autonomy as to what

7 specifically is said as far as the problem complained of and

8 the action taken by the manufacturer. That\'s up to the

9 manufacturer.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: I guess what I\'m asking is whether

11 the manufacturers and others who complain that the lack of

12 uniformity among state disclosure requirements really is a

13 problem for you, that it creates burdens, whether you can

14 live, whether you could live with a Federal law that

15 required that disclosures be those that would be set forth

16 in what you think of is the most burdensome state disclosure

17 law.

18 MR. GOLDFARB: We could accept that. But the only

19 problem with the varied state laws is the branding

20 requirement, because we can\'t go among states and have the

21 same branding implemented in various states. So, I mean,

22 that is the problem with varying state requirements. But as

23 far as what\'s disclosed ‑‑

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, let\'s set aside the branding

25 issue for the moment and just think about what you think of

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1 as the most burdensome state, set of state disclosures. If

2 that were, if the most burdensome were the national

3 standard, would that be acceptable?

4 MR. GOLDFARB: Yes.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Now, states. We only have one

6 state, unfortunately. Do you think that the, Janet, do you

7 have any sense of whether the states think that, would see

8 their disclosure requirements as being somewhere on a

9 spectrum of more inclusive, more burdensome, or is it a

10 matter of, you know, different and better information that\'s

11 required by one state versus another?

12 I mean, is there, would there be any way that you

13 think that the states could come to some agreement on sort

14 of a most inclusive disclosure standard? Any idea?

15 MS. SMITH: That is a hard one. Because I don\'t

16 know, it\'s hard for me to speak to all the states because

17 all the requirements are so, are different.

18 I think, at least speaking for our state, it\'s not

19 so much that it\'s burdensome, because I\'m not sure how

20 you\'re defining burdensome.

21 If you\'re saying burdensome meaning burdensome on

22 the manufacturers, our concern is more that the information

23 be complete and accessible to the consumer at the point of

24 sale and that we have a means of monitoring and enforcing

25 the compliance with that information. Whether or not that\'s

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1 burdensome on somebody, that\'s not a big concern.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay.

3 MS. SMITH: I can\'t speak for any other states.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil, do you have a point of view

5 on that?

6 MR. NOWICKI: Well, I\'ll give you my personal point

7 of view and then I\'ll give you what I think I sense the

8 states\' reaction might be. Maybe I\'ll go in that order.

9 I think the states will be somewhat ambivalent to

10 anything that\'s preemptive. I think they think that new

11 problems may develop that, they may be at a local level,

12 that they would like to think that they could handle in a

13 more specific fashion.

14 I will give you my point of view as I have looked at

15 this situation, as I have done research, as I have looked at

16 all of the states and what they require. And right now we

17 have something that even with great, strong standards we

18 have something that doesn\'t work very well as far as

19 accomplishing its objective.

20 And when I hear people willing to make some

21 concessions on the broadness of a disclosure standard and so

22 forth and perhaps seeing some kind of uniformity, even if it

23 has a preemptive element, I think that has merit and I think

24 it is maybe one of the ways to solve this problem.

25 I don\'t know about total preemption. But I would

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1 think there would have to be some preemption there to

2 achieve a common standard that I think would work for the

3 states.

4 The states can look at it from an idealistic

5 standpoint as they have it right now. But I don\'t see

6 something that really works. And I think if you looked at

7 something that was uniform, you would have something that

8 would work. So from that perspective I like that.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Let me just check the other

10 manufacturers to see whether they would share Lou\'s view on

11 the acceptability of sort of going to the most inclusive,

12 whatever you want to call it, the most burdensome, most

13 inclusive, you know, whatever you think of as like the

14 most ‑‑

15 Peggy, what do you?

16 MS. BOWERS: I agree that we certainly would be

17 willing to do that if we could get uniformity. The problem

18 that we have is trying to comply with 50 different state

19 statutes.

20 Phil has a chart that he can probably hold up. He\'s

21 got all of these little dots on it and various different

22 charts and formulas. And trying to get our people to

23 understand that and follow it is certainly a challenge.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. George.

25 MR. VELEZ: Yeah. We wouldn\'t have a problem with

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1 that. But I think you would have to include everyone who

2 sells cars. But, yeah.

3 MS. HARRINGTON: John.

4 MR. WHATLEY: Can I ask a point of clarification?

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Um‑hmm.

6 MR. WHATLEY: You initially premised this on the two

7 pieces.

8 MS. HARRINGTON: Um‑hmm.

9 MR. WHATLEY: Trigger and then the content.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Um‑hmm.

11 MR. WHATLEY: Are you saying both would be uniform

12 or just the trigger would be uniform?

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Both the trigger and the content

14 would be uniform.

15 MR. WHATLEY: Then I think the answer is yes.

16 Because we would say ‑‑

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Talking about a more inclusive

18 trigger‑‑

19 MR. WHATLEY: A more inclusive trigger.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: ‑‑and a more, for lack of a better

21 word, more burdensome disclosure or more ‑‑

22 MR. WHATLEY: As long as they\'re both uniform and we

23 can figure out what to do under those standards, I think yes

24 is the answer.

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Lori, do you have a point of view

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1 on that?

2 MS. COHEN: There are so many things I\'ve been

3 wanting to respond to. You\'re asking the state point of

4 view. We do represent state motor vehicle administrators.

5 They could have a little different opinions than the state

6 attorneys general on the enforcement side.

7 We strongly believe in uniformity. It\'s hard to get

8 it; we\'ve been trying for a long time. Sometimes Federal

9 laws are helpful. It would be helpful in coming up with a

10 common definition. And on the salvage side, that\'s what the

11 HR2900 is about.

12 So many things here. What kind of disclosure for

13 the state motor vehicle administrators? You would want to

14 have the least burdensome and yet something that\'s

15 meaningful.

16 You need standard definitions. That would be

17 extremely helpful. And something that you can transmit

18 electronically so you don\'t have to rely on the paper state

19 to state.

20 So it\'s all a balancing act that we need to work

21 together and come up with these definitions and the right

22 mix of some things. Manufacturers agree we don\'t want lots

23 of forms, lots of procedures, lots of requirements.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Ed.

25 MR. MIERZWINSKI: Well, from the standpoint of

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1 consumer groups, the \"P\" word really gets us very upset.

2 And the preemption of state laws just for the sake of

3 uniformity I think is, I think is going too far for where

4 this debate really is at.

5 And I would prefer that we start from the point of

6 minimal standards and then see if we need to discuss the

7 idea of uniformity.

8 If we\'re talking about minimal standards, that is,

9 to have a Federal standard that takes away the weaker state

10 standards, we\'re for that. But if we\'re talking about also

11 taking away the stronger states\' standards ‑‑

12 MS. HARRINGTON: No, we\'re not. We\'re saying we

13 would take the strongest state standard.

14 MR. MIERZWINSKI: And take away the right of the

15 states to go farther.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Yes. Yes.

17 MR. MIERZWINSKI: Well, we\'re against that. But the

18 first part of your system is good.

19 MS. HARRINGTON: So you\'re against preemption,

20 period.

21 MR. MIERZWINSKI: Well, if you took the strongest

22 state standard, I would strongly argue that very few states

23 would go further unless that strongest standard turned out

24 to not be adequate enough and that you would achieve your

25 goal without eviscerating the rights of the states to go

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1 farther.

2 That is, no state that has a number of problems

3 before it is going to have either attorneys general,

4 consumer groups or other people agitating for a different

5 law.

6 It\'s going to, they\'re going to give your law a

7 chance to work because there are many other things to deal

8 with. But if you take away their right to work on another

9 law that is better, there may be other problems that come

10 up.

11 And then we\'ve got to come back to the Federal

12 Government. And moving the Federal Government is kind of

13 like moving a, well, it\'s hard to move the Federal

14 Government.

15 (Laughter.)

16 MR. MIERZWINSKI: And it\'s better to be able to move

17 a couple of states. And then once you\'ve moved a couple of

18 states, then you can move the Federal Government. I mean,

19 that\'s why we don\'t like to give away that right.

20 But again, if you bring the bar ‑‑ and I, you know,

21 this industry here, I don\'t doubt what everybody is saying

22 here is sincere.

23 But when we work on the Hill, when we talk about

24 bringing it up to the level of the strongest state, we

25 usually end up with a level of the weakest state. In the

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1 end those are the fights we end up with. And that\'s one of

2 the other reasons we get kind of concerned when we get to

3 the preemptive battle.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Berta.

5 MS. PHELPS: Again, in our industry we handle

6 roughly fifty million cars a year. And we see the problem

7 with nonuniformity in the salvage end, the problems it

8 causes for us, for the dealers, for the consumers.

9 What happens, they are in every walk of business and

10 every walk of life, there are unscrupulous people,

11 unscrupulous dealers.

12 They will take advantage of the states that have

13 less stringent requirements for disclosure and move those

14 vehicles in those states and sell them there. Unless you

15 have a uniform law, make the Federal law preemptive so all

16 the states will have to comply the same way, I really don\'t

17 they you\'re accomplishing it.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Jack.

19 MR. GILLIS: CFA views preemption much in the way

20 Lou Goldfard views the American Trial Lawyers. Having said

21 that, we are very open to a uniform set of standards that

22 would be, in the contingency is that we would have to have

23 an extraordinary good faith effort by the manufacturers to

24 hammer out a set of standards that truly are meaningful and

25 that can be subject to outside verification.

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1 It\'s not just the car company putting data into this

2 system. So with those two exemptions, I think we\'re very

3 open to a uniform set of standards.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: But not a preemptive, not a Federal

5 standard that is preemptive.

6 MR. GILLIS: CFA\'s position is ‑‑

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Lou is stalking out now that you\'ve

8 made reference to his views about the American Trial

9 Lawyers.

10 MR. GILLIS: I know. Well ‑‑

11 (Laughter.)

12 MR. JOHNSON: He\'s probably going out to find one.

13 MR. GILLIS: He\'s probably going out to find one,

14 right. I\'m not saying no to preemption. I am saying there

15 is a long, long history and concern, as Ed said, about the

16 issue of preemption. But I\'m not saying no.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter.

18 MR. MIERZWINSKI: Yes. I know from Washington

19 State\'s perspective there is a lot weariness about

20 preemption and uniformity. And the Washington Attorney

21 General\'s Office had made some comments and wasn\'t able to

22 come.

23 But they feel, and I agree that the Washington State

24 system is good, and they are concerned that if there\'s

25 preemption that it will be a lesser standard.

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1 And I think there are other states who would share

2 that point of view. And it\'s not only the content of the

3 disclosure, but it also has to do with the manner in which

4 it occurs.

5 That is, things like prominence, where it is on the

6 vehicle, at what point it occurs during the transaction, how

7 visible it is, whether there is a signature, all those

8 things are just as important if not more important than the

9 actual wording of it.

10 So that\'s very important to address. Because the

11 words on it, and many of us here are wordsmiths, but it\'s

12 the process of how it actually occurs that really determines

13 in many cases the actual effectiveness of the document.

14 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Phil.

15 MR. NOWICKI: Actually, I\'m going to pass and come

16 back if other people have comments.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Steve.

18 MR. TATERKA: I guess I would express some of the

19 same concerns that some of the other consumer

20 representatives have expressed in terms of preemption. But

21 maybe the approach that would work would be the one similar

22 to the one that\'s done in the Federal Odometer Act which

23 sets forth Federally mandated minimum requirements and

24 allows the states to do whatever they want as long as

25 they\'re not inconsistent with the Federal requirements.

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1 So you could, you could have the uniformity. But

2 yet if some states wanted to mandate something over and

3 above what was already Federally mandated, that might work

4 in terms of what disclosures have to be made.

5 That might pose a problem in terms of what the

6 trigger is. Because I still wouldn\'t want to preclude a

7 state from having a trigger that might be more

8 comprehensive.

9 And I think the whole difficulty in having this

10 discussion is is that although you have posed the question

11 in terms of the most comprehensive definition of buyback and

12 the most all inclusive requirements in terms of disclosures,

13 you know, the devil is in the details.

14 And as a consumer representative, I\'d hate to sign

15 off on something without looking at whatever those details

16 might be.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, we\'re very familiar with the

18 history of the debate over preemption in consumer protection

19 matters here at the FTC. So I don\'t want to have that whole

20 discussion again.

21 What I\'m looking for here is a sense of whether

22 there\'s been any movement. Because I know where the states

23 have been. I know where consumer groups have been. I know

24 where industry has been.

25 Do we have any movement here on this I guess is one

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1 of the questions that I\'m asking. We will hear from Evan.

2 And, Peggy, you had your flag up but it\'s down now?

3 MS. BOWERS: I just had one more point I wanted to

4 add.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, you were up before them. But

6 I didn\'t know whether you didn\'t want to speak.

7 MS. BOWERS: I just, I just want to respond to

8 Peter\'s point. He talked about not the content but the

9 prominence.

10 And one of the things about uniformity that I think

11 is something we don\'t want to overlook is the resources that

12 we have, if we can address them all to one standard for

13 training purposes of our people, it makes it so much easier

14 for us to be able to make sure that the content is correct,

15 that the prominence is there and that all of these things

16 are properly addressed as opposed to trying to use our

17 resources for fifty different standards.

18 So I think that, you know, if you can do one

19 standard, you really can make it more effective in addition

20 to having the threshold that you\'re looking for.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Evan and then Phil.

22 MR. JOHNSON: The, I think there is more of an

23 argument for uniformity in the topics that we\'re dealing

24 with now on used car disclosures, and in many other aspects

25 of lemon laws, et cetera.

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1 When you start to get into possible titling areas or

2 other disclosures, you\'ll have the pressings of the FTC Used

3 Car Rule, the strong Federal presence in the area. Though

4 it is not totally preemptive, you have become almost uniform

5 with the exception of a couple states into something a

6 little bit in addition.

7 But it does preempt anything inconsistent. And that

8 sort of approach here may make sense. The problem, one

9 problem is of course that you have a lot more states with

10 something apparently on the books than we did in the used

11 car rule. And so that\'s a problematic area.

12 But I think if you come up with a good, strong

13 Federal approach, you\'re going to accomplish uniformity

14 virtually totally whether or not you make it absolutely

15 preemptive, in my view. You\'re going to accomplish what you

16 want.

17 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil.

18 MR. NOWICKI: I was just going to say on the used

19 car rule you have that; it\'s basically preemptive unless the

20 state can show a stronger need. I think there\'s three

21 states, though, that have the separate requirements for the

22 disclosure.

23 So I don\'t know if that lends any support to how you

24 might want to approach this problem. But I gather that\'s

25 been relatively successful and not overly burdensome, so.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter.

2 MR. MAIER: Actually, that\'s a good example.

3 Because the used car rule actually in Washington State is a

4 big problem because it requires an as‑is denomination, when

5 under Washington State law that is hardly ever the case. It

6 is a very good example where we should not have preemption.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Peter, I\'m not quite sure I\'m

8 following how this actually plays out in Washington State.

9 Would you enlighten me?

10 MR. MAIER: You mean in used car?

11 MS. HARRINGTON: Yeah. Why is it a problem?

12 MR. MAIER: Well, because under Washington State law

13 to disclaim an implied warranty takes specific negotiations

14 and so forth which hardly ever occurs except in a

15 theoretical sense.

16 MR. HILE: So you just leave the box unchecked.

17 There\'s usually a sticker. There\'s a box on the used car

18 sticker than says \"as is.\" If you check it, it\'s as‑is. If

19 you leave it unchecked, then there\'s no warranty.

20 MR. MAIER: Yes. But the sticker is required and

21 they always check it. And there should be more on there.

22 And this is not on our point here. But the point is that

23 under Washington\'s law it does not, it actually, I think

24 it\'s counterproductive because it misleads people that in

25 fact it is an as‑is state when in fact it is not.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Evan. Did you want to be

2 recognized?

3 MR. JOHNSON: No, I have nothing more to comment.

4 Private conversation.

5 MS. HARRINGTON: Share with the class, Evan.

6 (Laughter.)

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, it seems to me that we

8 started out on a bright note and things have sort of slid

9 downhill here on this topic. That is, we began with some

10 sense that there was an equation for a compromise. But my

11 sense is that that\'s not really the case.

12 MR. GILLIS: I don\'t think so.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, tell me why, Jack.

14 MR. GILLIS: I mean, again, preemption is a very

15 slippery slope. But we are open. I don\'t know what the

16 most burdensome state requirements are, but I\'d like to take

17 a look at them and see what that bottom line stick is and

18 make a determination of whether that or something different

19 could be effective, so.

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Would you be willing, would there

21 be a small group of you who would be willing to get,

22 representing some of the different interests who would be

23 willing to get together and really take a look at this to

24 see whether you could come to agreement on a uniform

25 standard?

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1 MR. GRAHAM: Uniform preemptive standard?

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Let\'s start, let\'s start with

3 uniformity.

4 MR. GRAHAM: That\'s the whole thing.

5 MR. GILLIS: Let\'s start with the uniform. Let\'s

6 start with uniform.

7 MS. HARRINGTON: Start with uniformity.

8 MR. GRAHAM: Okay. Sure.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: What would, you know, what would

10 ‑‑ I mean, I think that we\'ve heard that the manufacturers

11 would be willing to, could live with a more inclusive

12 trigger and a uniform, would go for a more inclusive trigger

13 if the disclosure standard, the content standard was

14 uniform.

15 MS. BOWERS: If there were uniformity.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Theoretically, yeah, if there were

17 uniformity. Is there a very small group of you that would

18 be willing to try to come up with something that we would

19 mail around to all of the participants, sort of a straw,

20 just a straw poll, nothing binding. It would be on the

21 record.

22 Is there an OMB problem with that? Does anyone

23 know? Lee, you\'re here. You know about those things. No?

24 MR. GRAHAM: Don\'t you have to file a reduction of

25 paperwork in?

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1 MR. HILE: If it\'s more than twenty people.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: If it\'s more than twenty people.

3 Good. Well, we won\'t poll all of you.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MS. HARRINGTON: You know, I think that there ‑‑ You

6 know, we would really be interested in knowing what the

7 prospect for consensus might be on a uniform disclosure.

8 MR. GILLIS: Why don\'t we have like two or three

9 manufacturers, database person, and a couple consumer people

10 just ‑‑ I\'m not sure we can come to a consensus.

11 MS. HARRINGTON: It would be interesting to see.

12 MR. GILLIS: Right.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: It would be interesting to see.

14 Now, the last one of the these kinds of public workshops

15 that I moderated was in a completely different subject area,

16 but we sent a group of six people out of the room and told

17 them to pretend that they were stranded on a desert island

18 and they couldn\'t get off until they came to a consensus on

19 how to make a particular disclosure. And they\'re, still

20 they\'re starving.

21 (Laughter.)

22 MS. HARRINGTON: So I think you\'re right. It may

23 not be possible. But I think that a good follow‑up to this

24 discussion today would be to see whether there really is any

25 prospect for agreement on uniform, on the content and

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1 trigger of uniform disclosure.

2 Phil?

3 MR. NOWICKI: I don\'t know if we have to entirely

4 reinvent the wheel. Five years ago on a task force that I

5 was involved with in NAAG we put together a model law

6 dealing with resold lemons.

7 And Connecticut adopted most of it. Utah adopted

8 most of it. Indiana adopted most of it. And I guess if we

9 throw California into the formula, you could probably pick

10 those four and probably come up with something that may be

11 the standard that contains the elements at least that the

12 consumer groups are looking at.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Were these for lemons within the

14 legal ‑‑

15 MR. NOWICKI: No, they covered everything. And then

16 it was the same issue, you know, that we had. Steve was on

17 the calls and then Jan and Garry. It\'s too bad Garry

18 Desjardins isn\'t here to speak of the Connecticut

19 experience.

20 So, I mean, you already have that without going out

21 on a search and find mission. I think people we\'ve brought

22 in, in fact I think we had all 51, or 50 attorneys general.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: And who were the manufacturers on

24 the NAAG proposal?

25 MR. NOWICKI: Only at a meeting, at the final

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1 meeting.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: But did they take a position?

3 MR. NOWICKI: Well, I think John was at the meeting

4 in Fort Lauderdale when it was adopted. And Lou Goldfarb

5 was there. I mean I ‑‑

6 MR. WHATLEY: We didn\'t take a position.

7 MR. NOWICKI: Again, it was from the issue that it

8 was not preemptive. It was just states wanting to do that.

9 I mean, I don\'t think it\'s in the context to consider how

10 they felt about it knowing that this is just the highest

11 standard and every state was going to go out and whether

12 they were going to adopt it or not adopt it. I think if we

13 had to work preemptive with that there might have been a

14 different response, so.

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Do you know, Peggy, did Ford have a

16 position on that?

17 MS. BOWERS: No, I\'m sorry, I don\'t know.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Jackie?

19 MS. GLASSMAN: Apparently Lou was there, but I was

20 not so I don\'t know what it was.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Are you suggesting that to

22 be a starting point, Phil?

23 MR. NOWICKI: I think it would simplify things. And

24 based on my research that I\'ve done over the last few

25 months, it seems to be the case that you\'re trying to find

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1 the highest standard. And the elements there that I think

2 would satisfy consumer people is probably in those four

3 states.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: Does anyone have any other comment

5 on uniformity, in this section because we may move to the

6 public discussion portion of the program if no one has

7 anything else to say.

8 MS. SHAHAN: I have a question.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Um‑hmm.

10 MS. SHAHAN: And that is, I\'d appreciate, I need

11 some clarification from the manufacturers and the dealers

12 possibly and maybe other companies as well regarding whether

13 they, what they really want is uniformity or whether

14 preemption in and of itself is what they\'re after.

15 Now, if you could have a hundred percent uniformity

16 through regulation that sets the standard that all the

17 states love and don\'t supersede, are you accomplishing what

18 you\'re after or are you after preemption for reasons other

19 than uniformity?

20 MS. HARRINGTON: John.

21 MR. WHATLEY: In my view preemption guarantees

22 uniformity.

23 MS. SHAHAN: That\'s like begging the customer, isn\'t

24 it? You\'ve saying you have to have preemption in order to

25 get ‑‑

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1 MR. WHATLEY: In a theoretical world, in a

2 theoretical world if all 51 jurisdictions got together in

3 agreement, we\'ll do this and no more, which I don\'t think

4 they can do anyway, that would be fine. But they\'re not

5 going to do that.

6 If they were going to ‑‑ they didn\'t even agree on

7 the NAAG proposal on Federal regs. In fact, four or five

8 states did. A lot more didn\'t adopt it. And we got no

9 uniformity here.

10 MR. GILLIS: Is there a critical mass that you would

11 be happy with, if 40 states agreed or something? I mean,

12 that\'s better than 50 different.

13 MR. GRAHAM: But then you\'ve got 11 different

14 states.

15 MR. WHATLEY: Yeah, you\'ve still got to keep ‑‑ I

16 mean, the problem we have, as I said in the first comment I

17 made, the more standards you have the more chances you have

18 to make a mistake.

19 And that\'s what we\'re concerned about. If we have a

20 clear, simple uniform standard you make fewer mistakes.

21 Consumers benefit, we benefit. That\'s our view. If it\'s

22 two standards as opposed to one, there is that much more

23 chance for mistakes.

24 It\'s clearly more palatable. But my real preference

25 is give us one stand, make it tough, and we\'ll live with it.

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1 MS. HARRINGTON: Evan.

2 MR. JOHNSON: Well, you see, I think this is

3 different than past things that I\'ve seen. And I\'m more

4 optimistic than you, Eileen, because I don\'t recall the

5 industry saying‑‑

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Wow.

7 MR. JOHNSON: ‑‑that we\'ll go to the, we\'ll go to

8 the strongest. I mean, I\'m sure there\'s a limit there

9 somewhere to how far I\'m willing to go for uniformity. But

10 I haven\'t, I haven\'t heard that before. And I, you know, I

11 think that\'s a major ‑‑

12 MR. GILLIS: See, they don\'t know about this new law

13 in Maryland that you\'re passing.

14 (Laughter.)

15 MR. JOHNSON: That\'s right. I think that\'s a major

16 concession. And it changed from some of what we heard

17 earlier, you know, throughout the day. I mean, it seems to

18 me they\'ve said they\'re willing to reconsider everything for

19 uniformity. And that\'s where there is a chance to do

20 something.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Berta.

22 MS. PHELPS: Unless you have preemption, I don\'t

23 think you can accomplish uniformity. And I see this in our

24 daily business life. And I\'m giving you one example. I

25 guess I have to keep harping on salvage because this is an

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1 issue we are very familiar with.

2 I will not name the state. They just passed a new

3 salvage law, 85 percent is rebuildable, 95 percent is scrap.

4 The legislature had enough power behind them from the, from

5 one segment of the industry which now allows the 95 percent

6 to be rebuildable.

7 Even so, the law says it is scrap. So the states

8 within themselves, their own laws they cannot come up with

9 uniformity. And we deal with all the motor vehicle

10 administrators throughout the United States.

11 And if you hear one common theme among them is that

12 they cannot accomplish uniformity among themselves. That is

13 why they all supported the anti car‑theft act. That\'s why

14 they supported the uniformity with salvage, because among

15 themselves they cannot come up with uniformity.

16 There are such strong lobbyists in certain states

17 that will not allow uniformity. So truly just take a poll

18 among the state administrators, motor vehicle administrators

19 and see how they feel about achieving uniformity on their

20 own. And you will find that they will tell you it is not

21 possible. So.

22 MS. HARRINGTON: Evan, did you want to speak again?

23 MR. JOHNSON: No, I don\'t.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. John. Hurry, get those

25 post‑its down.

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1 Well, I want to see whether we might in the wake of

2 this discussion test whether we really have moved, whether

3 we have had some movement by putting a little work group

4 together to come up with an idea of what a uniform

5 disclosure trigger and standard might look like.

6 And I want to be really clear here on the record

7 that this would not be a proposal for a regulation from the

8 Federal Trade Commission at all, but rather an opportunity

9 to see whether there is any possibility for a consensus

10 among the various interests and stakeholders that we have

11 here on this issue.

12 And with that understanding, I was wondering whether

13 Jack Gillis, and either Gerry or Peggy, and Lou or Jackie,

14 and Lori, Janet, and Steve and Berta would be willing to

15 form a work group and work on this.

16 And whether the rest of you would be willing, are

17 comfortable with the composition of that group. Let\'s all

18 talk about them.

19 (Laughter.)

20 MS. HARRINGTON: Does anyone have a serious problem?

21 MR. GILLIS: I\'d like to propose that the chief

22 petitioner, Rosemary, be part of that.

23 MS. SHAHAN: Can we meet in Sacramento?

24 MS. HARRINGTON: We\'re not, you can meet on the

25 phone, you know.

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1 MS. SHAHAN: Good.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: It\'s up to you guys to figure out

3 how to meet. But it would be an interesting follow‑up to

4 see whether you can come up with something that you all can

5 agree on.

6 Jack.

7 MR. GILLIS: Is John included?

8 MS. HARRINGTON: No, but he could be. I mean, the

9 larger the group, the more difficult the task.

10 MR. WHATLEY: I think it would a liability if I\'m

11 not.

12 MR. GILLIS: I think we need an international.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: I think ‑‑

14 MS. SHAHAN: Could we, I\'m not sure if you included

15 Garry Desjardins. He\'s not here so he can\'t say no.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Janet, Garry can talk to Janet.

17 Does anybody have a problem with that? All right. Do you

18 think, Jack, since you\'re the first name on my list, would

19 you chair this?

20 MR. GILLIS: Yes.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: And could you, could this group,

22 through whatever means of conversation you can arrange, get

23 back to us in a month to tell us whether you have been able

24 to come to a consensus?

25 MR. GILLIS: Okay. As you indicated, this is not a

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1 opportunity for us to propose that the FTC‑‑

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Yes.

3 MR. GILLIS: ‑‑present a law. I would also like to

4 say that if we don\'t come to a consensus, we preserve our

5 options here.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Sure. Yeah. No. I think ‑‑

7 MR. GILLIS: We\'re going to give it a good faith to

8 come to a consensus.

9 MS. HARRINGTON: Yeah. I ‑‑ Understood.

10 Understood.

11 MR. GILLIS: Good. I\'ll be happy to do that.

12 MS. HARRINGTON: This is, this is, you know,

13 everyone just making a good faith effort to see whether

14 consensus can be achieved.

15 And so what we\'re looking for back from you, Jack,

16 is, yes, we achieved consensus and here\'s what it is; no, we

17 didn\'t. And then if you can give us anything additional, we

18 came really close, you know, but this group just couldn\'t

19 agree.

20 MR. GRAHAM: That might be a mistake in disclosure.

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Nah. But it would be, and so, you

22 know, let\'s say November 3rd we\'ll hear back from you. And

23 this group will conference over the phone.

24 MS. PHELPS: Can I make one comment?

25 MS. HARRINGTON: Yes.

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1 MS. PHELPS: I do want to make clear that I have

2 absolutely no experience with dealing with consumers.

3 MR. GILLIS: You\'re going to love it.

4 (Laughter.)

5 MS. PHELPS: I tried to get out.

6 MS. SHAHAN: Would it be possible to have a little

7 more time?

8 MS. HARRINGTON: No. No.

9 MS. SHAHAN: It\'s going to be before the election.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, it has nothing to do with the

11 election. It has to do with a month from today. If you

12 want it to be a month and four days from today so that

13 you\'re after the election, that\'s fine.

14 But, you know, this is, if you can\'t agree on this

15 in 30 days, you\'re not going to agree on it in 60 days or 90

16 days or 120 days I don\'t think. And, you know, you might

17 disagree, but that\'s why it\'s our meeting.

18 (Laughter.)

19 MR. JOHNSON: How much specificity are you looking

20 for from this?

21 MS. HARRINGTON: Jack will worry about that.

22 MR. GILLIS: Yeah.

23 MS. HARRINGTON: That\'s, you know.

24 MR. GILLIS: I mean, it\'s going to be very specific.

25 Because I don\'t want any fooling around later. I mean,

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1 let\'s just make it specific. If we can\'t agree on something

2 really tight and really strong, then we just can\'t do it and

3 we\'ll move forward.

4 MS. HARRINGTON: All right. Now we\'re at the

5 portion of the program where we\'re going to hear from

6 members of the audience.

7 Tom, you have the index cards, please.

8 MR. ROWAN: Three of them were distributed and none

9 of them have been returned.

10 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Well, there is someone who

11 wants to return his index card, and it\'s the gentleman from

12 Mazda.

13 Okay. We have Robert Mathieson from Mazda Motor of

14 America, Inc., who would like to discuss the definition of

15 buyback and the issue of standards for uniformity.

16 And if we could give him the microphone that\'s right

17 near you, Evan, that one comes off.

18 And Jack Oprah Gillis is at the mike.

19 (Laughter.)

20 MR. MATHIESON: Oh, thank you. Am I supposed to

21 stand up?

22 MS. HARRINGTON: You\'re supposed to talk in the

23 other end. There you go.

24 MR. MATHIESON: Am I supposed to stand up?

25 MS. HARRINGTON: No.

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1 MR. MATHIESON: Ah. Well, I think this has been

2 most interesting from my point of view. I should say right

3 away that I\'m not an attorney, and that\'s one of the points

4 of why I wanted to speak.

5 We\'ve heard a lot of high level gentlemen and ladies

6 at the meeting. And I think we have seen that there\'s been

7 a lot of disagreement as well as some agreement.

8 The point that I would like to make is that all this

9 uniformity and definition trickles down to blokes like me

10 who actually have to write the process for the manufacturer.

11 And that is very difficult. As you can gather, if we can\'t

12 reach agreement at this high level, it\'s even more difficult

13 at my level.

14 So what I would like to do is to make a plea for

15 simplicity and definitely uniformity. And, because we\'re

16 all agreed that we need to do something for the consumer, I

17 haven\'t heard any disagreement on that.

18 And in order to do it, we need to change some of the

19 outlandish and outrageous conditions that are put on us by

20 the 50 states and Washington, D.C. So I would just like to

21 ask for uniformity and simplicity from the low level part of

22 the manufacturers who actually have to write the process.

23 Thank you.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Thank you, Mr. Mathieson.

25 Now we have, is it Lestanja or Lestanja Baker from

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1 Toyota.

2 MS. BAKER: Yes. Is

3 MS. HARRINGTON: Did I mispronounce your name?

4 MS. BAKER: Lestanja is correct. Thank you. And I

5 also have enjoyed the conversation today but wanted to at

6 least make the same plea that Bob made. So my statements

7 are going to be redundant at this point.

8 Because I also am charged with the responsibility of

9 knowing when a car has to have a disclosure and what the

10 disclosure must say and when a title has to be branded.

11 And the overwhelming I think here is the variety of

12 triggers and the variety of disclosure that has to be made.

13 And so I would strongly request again simplicity. I think

14 we support John 100 percent when he says we would take the

15 toughest standard out there.

16 And as long as we had to do it in all of the states

17 where we resell vehicles, we would be happy to do that

18 because it not only serves us but it serves our consumers.

19 And I would like to, at least on Toyota\'s behalf,

20 say that we are interested in the consumers having

21 information about the history of these vehicles when they go

22 in to buy them.

23 MR. MATHIESON: Here, here.

24 MS. HARRINGTON: Thank you, Lestanja.

25 We\'re going to conclude. And I\'m going to do the

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1 same thing at the closing that we did at the outset this

2 morning. And that is, I\'d like to ask each of the

3 participants this time to give me in one sentence your sense

4 of whether we came close to meeting your expectations as you

5 stated them at the outset.

6 And I know it\'s hard to do that in one sentence.

7 But yes or no, you know, would work. And we would take

8 more. But, you know what, I\'d like to know whether we came

9 close to meeting your expectations today.

10 Let me start with Rosemary, the Petitioner.

11 MS. SHAHAN: I think, I feel like it remains to be

12 seen.

13 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay.

14 MS. SHAHAN: I definitely appreciated the

15 opportunity.

16 MS. HARRINGTON: Okay. Jack.

17 MR. GILLIS: Yes.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Janet.

19 MS. SMITH: I\'d have to say yes. And there\'s one

20 more thing I\'d have to say. If there was one thing I could

21 take back to my boss as to what impressed me the most today,

22 it would have to be the last part where the manufacturers

23 did express almost uniform agreement that if they had to

24 meet the toughest standard, they would go along with that.

25 I think that would be something that will impress at least

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1 my attorney general.

2 MS. HARRINGTON: Phil.

3 MR. NOWICKI: Yes.

4 MS. GLASSMAN: Yes.

5 MR. JOHNSON: No.

6 MS. HARRINGTON: Lori.

7 MS. COHEN: Yes.

8 MS. BOWERS: Yes.

9 MR. TATERKA: I think the dialogue was real helpful.

10 But I guess I still just don\'t know whether or not we\'re

11 going to be able to work out some of the details. I\'m

12 hopeful that we are. But at least I think the dialogue

13 really was helpful.

14 MR. GRAHAM: I agree with Steve. I have been in

15 enough of these meetings where people start screaming and

16 yelling at each other that this is certainly refreshing.

17 But I think the result is unclear.

18 MR. KITZMILLER: Yes.

19 MS. SCHWARTZ: Yes.

20 MR. MAIER: I think we need to know more about where

21 exactly the next step would be headed.

22 MR. DOWDY: I think the idea of having the group

23 come together in terms of the disclosure, the actual

24 disclosure is very helpful because then, once knowing what a

25 disclosure, the content of the disclosure is, we can then go

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1 on to the vehicle for that disclosure.

2 MS. PHELPS: Yes.

3 MR. WHATLEY: I guess in my mind it depends on what

4 happens with the smaller group.

5 MR. COHN: I agree. I think that remains to be

6 seen. I think some progress was made. So a hesitant yes.

7 MR. VELEZ: Yes.

8 MR. HILE: I think substantial progress was made

9 toward the goal that I had here, which was to get additional

10 information to help the staff make a recommendation to the

11 Commission about what we should be doing.

12 MR. MULHOLLAND: I feel the same way. I learned a

13 lot.

14 MS. DANIELSON: Yeah. And the same thing. I saw a

15 lot of movement today that I didn\'t think we were going to

16 see. So I\'m coming away very hopeful. It will depend,

17 however, on the results of this task force.

18 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, I think I\'m more optimistic

19 than Evan, just by nature.

20 (Laughter.)

21 MS. HARRINGTON: But I am very pleased with the

22 quality of the dialogue and the effort that people have made

23 to listen and respond to one another. And I\'m hopeful that

24 you all can figure out a way to advance this.

25 As we said at the outset, the staff of the

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1 Commission is reviewing the petition that gave rise to this

2 workshop. We will look forward to hearing in a month from

3 Jack on behalf of the work group or the whole work group.

4 And we will continue to study these issues. And it

5 is our goal, the staff\'s goal, to make a recommendation to

6 the commission, but I don\'t know what it will be, with

7 respect to the petition that the Commission has received.

8 So that is what we expect will be happening at some

9 point in the not terribly distant future, but certainly it

10 will be after we hear back from this group that\'s going to

11 see whether consensus is possible.

12 Does anyone among the participants have any

13 questions about process for us? Otherwise we will conclude.

14 (No response.)

15 MS. HARRINGTON: Well, thank you very much.

16 (Whereupon, the proceedings concluded at 3:50 p.m)

17

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19

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25

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1 C E R T I F I C A T I O N O F R E P O R T E R

2

3 DOCKET/FILE NUMBER:

4 CASE TITLE: Public Forum on Vehicle Buyback Disclosures

5 HEARING DATE: October 3, 1996

6

7 I HEREBY CERTIFY that the transcript contained

8 herein is a full and accurate transcript of the notes taken

9 by me at the hearing on the above cause before the FEDERAL

10 TRADE COMMISSION to the best of my knowledge and belief.

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12 DATED: October 15, 1996

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15 Jayne M. Toering

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For The Record, Inc., Waldorf, Maryland (301) 870‑8025