Roughly 75% of customers surveyed as part of a federal investigation into one national dealership group said they were charged for products they never agreed to, or were falsely told those charges were mandatory, according to the Federal Trade Commission’s own 2024 complaint against Asbury Automotive, detailed in the agency’s press release announcing the case. The tactic behind those numbers has a name inside the agency: payment packing. It works by getting a buyer to agree to a monthly payment that’s higher than the car actually requires, then quietly loading unwanted products into the loan to justify the difference. It isn’t a fringe scam run out of a single lot — federal regulators have built a documented record of it happening at some of the country’s larger dealer groups.
What Payment Packing Actually Looks Like
The FTC’s complaint against Asbury Automotive Group, which operates dealerships under brands including Coggin, lays out the mechanics in detail. According to the FTC’s account of the case, buyers were often asked to sign on electronic devices that displayed only a signature line, concealing the rest of the contract. When customers later spotted charges for protective chemical coatings, extended service contracts, or life and disability insurance policies, finance staff allegedly told them the items were mandatory, even though many buyers said the products were never mentioned during the actual sales conversation. On top of that, the FTC alleged Black consumers were charged an average of $298 more than white consumers for identical add-on products, and Latino consumers were charged $214 more, per the same release.
Why the Monthly Payment Is the Real Target
The reason payment packing works is that most car shoppers negotiate against a monthly number, not a total contract price. A buyer who talks a dealer down to a payment they can afford has no easy way to see that the payment still includes $2,000 or $3,000 in products they didn’t ask for, spread out over 60 or 72 months where it barely moves the bill. Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, put it plainly in the agency’s statement on the case: “The FTC will continue to crack down on illegal hidden fees and discrimination, which have no place at car dealerships.”
It Wasn’t a One-Dealer Problem
Asbury isn’t the only large dealer group the FTC has pursued for functionally the same tactic. In 2022, the agency and the Illinois Attorney General secured a $10 million settlement, described by the FTC as a record for an auto-lending case at the time, against the Napleton dealer group over eight dealerships that added charges for products like payment insurance and paint protection late in 60-page contracts most buyers never fully read, according to the FTC’s press release on that case. A survey cited in that action found 83% of buyers paid junk fees they either never authorized or were misled into accepting. That same year, the FTC also reached a $3.38 million settlement with Passport Automotive Group, a Washington, D.C.-area chain, over allegations it advertised vehicles at one price and then added undisclosed fees, in one cited example pushing a $24,050 asking price to $26,440 at signing, per the agency’s announcement.
How to Spot It Before You Sign
Every one of these cases points to the same defense: stop negotiating on the monthly payment and insist on seeing the full “out-the-door” price, itemized, before signing anything. If a salesperson can’t or won’t show the total contract amount independent of financing terms, that’s the moment to slow down. Asking directly whether any product on the contract is optional, and getting the answer in writing, closes off the exact gap these dealerships allegedly exploited.
The Pattern Regulators Keep Finding
What connects Asbury, Napleton, and Passport isn’t that they operated in different states with different brands — it’s that each allegedly used the same basic move: hide the add-ons inside a payment number the buyer already agreed felt affordable. Federal regulators clearly see this as systemic rather than isolated, and the settlements keep landing at dealer groups large enough to have compliance departments. For anyone financing a car, the lesson isn’t that every dealer is running this play — it’s that the monthly payment was never designed to tell you what you’re actually agreeing to pay.