Federal regulators say one of Florida’s big dealer groups charged more than the advertised price in 92 percent of the deals they reviewed — $3,350 more on average. The complaint reads like a script, so here is the translation, line by line.
If you buy a car in the next year, some version of what follows is going to happen to you, because the federal government just caught a dealer group doing all of it at scale.
On October 8, the Federal Trade Commission announced a proposed settlement with Greenway Auto Group, the Orlando-based chain behind Greenway Kia East, Greenway Kia West, Greenway Hyundai Orlando, Greenway Kia at the Avenues in Jacksonville, and Greenway Kia North in Longwood. According to the FTC’s complaint, filed the same day in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida (Case No. 6:26-cv-02337), Greenway’s customers paid more than the advertised price in over 92 percent of the transactions investigators reviewed, by an average of more than $3,350 per vehicle. The agency also says it warned the group about its pricing practices back in March 2026, and the practices continued anyway.
None of the tactics in the complaint are exotic. They are the standard lines of the American car deal, which is exactly why they are worth learning — and why the FTC keeps bringing cases like its $4 million Manchester City Nissan settlement over fees. Here they are, with the sentence that answers each one.
Line 1: “The price is $18,800.”
That price is bait. It is the number that gets you into the showroom, not the number on the final paperwork, and Greenway’s own numbers prove the gap: a used 2017 Honda CR-V the group listed online at $18,800 ended up costing its buyer $23,539.85 by the time the deal was signed, a difference of nearly $4,740.
Say this instead: “What’s my out-the-door price?” The out-the-door price is the total you would write a check for, including every fee, and it is the only number worth negotiating. A dealer who will not give it to you in writing is telling you something important about the deal.
Line 2: “Everybody pays these fees. They’re non-negotiable.”
Almost nothing at a dealership is truly non-negotiable, and the FTC’s complaint describes how the stack gets built: administrative fees, dealer fees, delivery and processing charges, layered on top of the advertised price and presented at the signing table as fixed costs of doing business. They are not fixed. They are margin, and margin can move. (It is the same gap between listing and reality at the heart of New York City’s lawsuit over CarGurus deal ratings and hidden fees.)
Say this instead: “Show me every fee, in writing, with the total.” Fees that survive being itemized in plain sight are usually the real ones. Fees that were supposedly carved in stone have a way of shrinking once they have to be listed one by one, in dollars, before you sign.
Line 3: “The protection package is already on the car.”
The fact that a package has already been installed does not obligate you to pay for it. According to the FTC, add-on packages were part of how Greenway’s advertised prices and its final prices drifted thousands of dollars apart, and the pattern is industry-wide: paint protection, interior protection, and similar bundles are sold at the moment of maximum pressure, after hours of negotiation, when most buyers will agree to almost anything to finish. At the extreme end, dealer addendums can run into six figures.
Say this instead: “I didn’t order it, so either take it off, or take it off the price.” If the package genuinely cannot be removed, its cost can still come out of the deal. What you should not do is pay several hundred dollars for a product you never asked for because it happened to be installed before you arrived.
Line 4: “You’ve won a cash prize!”
This one does not arrive in the showroom. It arrives in your mailbox. The FTC alleges that Greenway sent out mailers suggesting recipients had won cash prizes that did not exist, in order to lure them into its stores. There is no sentence to practice for this one, because the correct response is to throw the mailer away. You did not win anything. The prize was you, standing in the showroom, where lines one through three could be used on you in person.
Line 5: “That discount brings it down to…”
Before you sign anything, ask the question dealers least want to answer directly: “Is every discount in your ad actually available to me?” The FTC says Greenway advertised prices built on conditional discounts that many buyers could not qualify for, which means the advertised number was unreachable for the typical customer reading it. If a price depends on a rebate you do not qualify for, it is not the price of the car. It is the price of a car being sold to somebody else.
The honest part
Tax and title are real. Everybody pays them, because those charges belong to the government and not the dealer, and a dealership that itemizes them cleanly is doing its job. The settlement Greenway has agreed to reflects exactly that line: going forward, the group has to advertise the true price of its vehicles, with only government charges permitted on top of it. Everything else — the fees, the packages, the unreachable discounts — is negotiable, removable, or both.
That distinction is the whole story. A dealer charging tax is collecting for the state. A dealer whose advertised prices were wrong in 92 percent of reviewed deals, after a written warning from the federal regulator, was running something else. As the FTC’s case puts it in numbers, the average Greenway customer paid $3,350 for the difference between the price in the ad and the price at the desk.
So learn the five lines before you need them — especially now, with auto debt at $1.71 trillion and every extra dollar at the desk getting financed. The salesperson across the desk gets paid when you don’t know these numbers. Now you know them before you ever sit down.
Which of these lines have you heard in a showroom — and what did it cost you?