Business View Magazine | April/May 2022

66 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 9, ISSUE 4 directly is not legal in Texas and would move the automobile industry toward monopolistic behavior, costing the consumer more money and limiting service and warranty protections. According to Whitehurst, “for the dealers, the relationship goes beyond just selling the initial sale of the vehicle—it extends to what happens after the customer takes the vehicle home and something goes wrong or there is a recall.” Another issue is the chip shortage, which is resulting in the lack of inventory and what dealers have available to sell. Beyond chips, parts are incredibly important to servicing these vehicles and there is a severe shortage of parts. Additionally, there are issues relating to warranty work that dealers perform on vehicles which are under a manufacturer warranty. “Often there are disagreements on what the manufacturer should be paying to the dealer as far as warranty,” says Whitehurst. “Our statute does spell out what Manufacturers are supposed to be paying but it doesn’t always happen. Ultimately the dealer serves as an advocate for the consumer in dealing with the manufacturers.” Texas automobile dealers are licensed to provide ‘temp tags’ for vehicles until they get their permanent plates. But there has recently been significant fraud and abuse that has occurred on the used car side. People who are not actually dealers are being licensed as used car dealers and then printing thousands of tags that are being used for criminal activity. TADA is working with the regulatory agency on solutions to curtail giving temporary tag access to these individuals while not burdening the legitimate dealers who are providing a service to the customer According to Whitehurst, “The county Tax Assessor-Collectors are responsible for titling and registering vehicles. During the pandemic, we ran into problems, especially with some of the larger counties, in getting them processed in a timely manner. They’ve tried to set up a system