NY attorney general settles with dealers selling cars with open recalls

NY attorney general settles with dealers selling cars with open recalls

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman reached settlements with 104 auto dealers, including several franchised dealers, selling vehicles under open recall. The recalls were for unrepaired safety problems such as unintended acceleration, airbag problems, vehicle fires and steering and brake loss. WANADA dealers should know about such actions because something similar could happen in the Washington area through the attorneys general in Maryland and Virginia.

The settlement requires the 104 dealers to provide consumers with advance notice of any existing and unrepaired recall. Additional settlement guidelines for dealers are as follows:

« Dealers that advertise used vehicles online must include information that enables consumers to check the recall status of advertised vehicles;

« Dealers that advertise in print or other media must also disclose in the ad that the vehicle is subject to a safety recall;

« Dealers must place a decal notice in the window of used cars that includes information allowing consumers to check the recall status of the vehicles, including the SaferCar.gov website and mobile application operated by NHTSA;

« Two days before any sale, dealers must provide consumers with a copy of the NHTSA recall status report for a vehicle with an unrepaired safety recall, and obtain a written acknowledgement from the customer;

« Dealers must send notices to customers who bought vehicles from January 2016 to the present with unrepaired safety recalls that are still unrepaired. Franchised dealers must also cover up to five days of a loaner car for consumers if their vehicle requires repairs that will take longer than one day;

« Each of the 104 dealers in the settlement will also pay a fine of $1,000 to New York.

Under federal law, franchised dealers who sell used cars from other makes are required to either have a manufacturer-authorized repair person on their premises, or to transport the vehicle to a dealer of that make to have the recall work done.