Colorado’s dealer advertising rules, applied to Facebook Marketplace

Most Colorado stores now get their cars onto Facebook Marketplace through their salespeople, each posting from their own profile. It’s cheap, it works, and it moves a lot of advertising out of the marketing department and into the hands of people who were never trained on the state’s ad rules. This is the checklist we wish every store had taped next to the sales desk.

Does a salesperson’s listing count as a dealer ad?

Treat it as one. Colorado’s advertising statute, C.R.S. 44-20-134, applies to dealers and to their agents, and a salesperson posting the store’s inventory to sell the store’s cars is acting for the store. The Dealer Board’s advertising rules, Regulation 44-20-121(3)(i), don’t carve out social media or one-off listings either. That’s the cautious reading, and it’s the one we built KeyTurn Logic around. If your attorney reads it differently, go with your attorney.

There’s a second reason. A listing posted from a personal profile looks like a private sale unless it says otherwise, and that impression is exactly what 44-20-134 is written to stop: a dealer ad can’t suggest that a private party is selling, and it has to carry the dealer’s name and the word “dealer” (or a name that makes it obvious).

The checklist

The fee problem with feed-built listings

This is the one most stores get wrong. Your inventory feed sends each car’s Internet Price. A posting tool that drops that number straight into Marketplace’s price box advertises a price that leaves out your dealer handling fee.

Rule 13 says an advertised price has to include all costs to the buyer at delivery, with a short list of exceptions: sales tax, finance charges, emissions testing, other government fees and taxes, and transportation the buyer asks for after the sale. A dealer handling or documentation fee isn’t on that list. Writing “plus $699 dealer fee” under the price doesn’t fix it, because the advertised number still leaves the fee out. The fee has to be inside the price.

A listing that gets it right looks like this:

Internet Price

$34,995

Dealer handling fee

$699

Total advertised price

$35,694

The price box says $35,694. The description shows the same breakdown, the good-through date, and the store’s approved line about what isn’t included (sales tax and government fees). Get that wording from your attorney once and use it everywhere.

Three days, unless you say otherwise

Under Rule 3, a car advertised with a price has to be sold at that price for three days after the ad last runs, unless the ad states a time limit that has passed. On Marketplace, a listing keeps running for as long as it’s up. So a listing that’s still live after a price increase is a promise at the old price.

Two habits cover it: put a good-through date on every price, and update or take down every live listing when a price changes. Increases first, since those listings advertise less than the car now costs.

Payments and rates stay out of listings

“Only $489 a month” is a triggering term under federal Truth in Lending rules. Under Regulation Z, 12 CFR 1026.24(d), an ad that states the amount or percentage of a down payment, the number of payments or repayment period, the amount of any payment, or the amount of any finance charge must also state the down payment, the terms of repayment and the annual percentage rate.

A Marketplace description isn’t built to carry that, and the numbers depend on the buyer’s credit anyway. “Financing available” is fine. A payment, a rate, a down payment or a term length is not, unless the full disclosures go with it.

Words to leave out

The Dealer Board names specific wording as misleading. These come up in Marketplace listings more than you’d think:

• “Write your own deal,” “name your own price,” “no reasonable offer refused,” “we will not be undersold.” Rule 9 treats these as creating the false impression that the buyer sets the terms. The same rule bars calling something “free” when the buyer only gets it by buying the car.
• “Dealer cost,” “invoice,” “wholesale.” Rule 11 bars any reference to dealer cost or invoice price, and the word “wholesale” in a retail offer.
• “Everybody financed,” “no credit rejected,” “we finance anyone.” Rule 18 allows these only if they’re true, meaning no applicant is ever turned down.
• “Priced below KBB,” “save $3,000.” On a used car, Rule 10 requires you to be able to document what the savings is measured against.

Where to start this week

Pull up five live listings from five different salespeople. Check each against the table above. If the price box shows the Internet Price, the fee is outside the price on every one of them, and that’s the fix to make first.

Or paste one into our free listing check. It runs these checks in your browser and doesn’t save what you paste.