Tie every text offer to a stock number, a price, an end date, and a link to the full terms, and stop the message the moment the vehicle sells or the price changes. GoHighLevel's Opportunity Changed trigger can cancel pending messages when a stage or field changes. The bottom line: the federal auto retail rule is gone, but regulators still enforce existing law against false dealer advertising, and a text that quotes yesterday's price is advertising.
Where the rules stand
The Fifth Circuit vacated the FTC's Combating Auto Retail Scams Rule on January 27, 2025, on procedural grounds, before it took effect, and summaries report the FTC formally withdrew it in February 2026. The court did not rule on the substance. A Crowell client alert reports that the FTC then sent warning letters to 97 auto dealers alleging false advertising, and a Mayer Brown analysis points out that dealers remain subject to existing FTC rules and to state laws, with Pennsylvania's automotive trade practices amendments taking effect in August 2024 as one example. The practical rule for a text workflow is that a price, a payment, or a claim in a message must be true when it is read.
What every price text should carry
| Item | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| Stock number or VIN | So the offer is tied to one vehicle and your system can cancel it |
| The price, and what it includes | A number without its conditions invites a complaint |
| The end date | An offer that never expires will eventually be wrong |
| A link to the full terms and fees page | Keeps the text short without hiding anything |
| The dealership's name and a phone number | The customer knows who is speaking |
Avoid payment figures, savings claims, and words like guaranteed unless they are true for the customer who reads them. A text that quotes a monthly payment needs the term, the down payment, and the other conditions your advertising rules require, which usually does not fit in a message.
The failure to design against
A shopper receives Still available! with a price after the car has sold or the price has been raised. It happens when the messages are scheduled by a person and the inventory changes by itself. The fix is to keep the facts in fields that the workflow reads at the moment of sending, not in the message text typed last week.
Build it in HighLevel
- Add opportunity custom fields for Stock number, Vehicle price, Offer ends, and Vehicle status, and update them from your inventory feed through an integration or a daily import.
- Build the offer message with those fields as custom values, so the price and the date come from the record.
- Start the offer workflow from a stage change to Offer sent, and add an If/Else before each send that checks Vehicle status is Available and Offer ends is in the future.
- If the check fails, use the Remove from Workflow action and create a task for the salesperson.
- Build a second workflow with the Opportunity Changed trigger for Vehicle status changing to Sold or Hold. It removes the opportunity from the offer workflows and starts the sold vehicle follow up in our guide on texting a shopper whose vehicle just sold.
- Review the sent messages for a week against the inventory, and fix any record that was wrong when the text went out.
Worked example
A dealership sends 200 offer texts a month. If 5 percent of the cars are sold or repriced before the second message would go out, that is 10 cars (200 times 0.05) where a stale second text is stopped. Each stopped text is a possible complaint, and the 5 percent is an assumption to replace with your own turnover.
Consent still applies
An offer is marketing, so the customer must have given prior express written consent, and the message needs a working STOP. Honor opt outs in any reasonable form, and keep the consent record, since the FCC's 2024 order and its 2026 revision changed how revocation works.
A weekly audit routine
Once a week, pull the offer texts sent in the last seven days and compare ten of them with the inventory and the website on the day they were sent. Check the price, the stock number, and the end date. Write down every mismatch and its cause: a late feed, a manual price change, or a copy and paste error. The first month of audits usually finds one cause that accounts for most of the errors, and fixing it is worth more than any rule.
Claims to avoid in a text
Avoid wording that promises more than the dealership will honor: lowest price in town, guaranteed approval, no fees, and similar phrases. A text is short, so the temptation is to compress a condition away. If a condition cannot fit, link to the page that states it, and keep the text to the facts you can support in one line.
How this was handled before
A salesperson typed a price into a text or an email from memory, and the website, the feed, and the message sometimes disagreed. Fields that the workflow reads at the moment of sending make the record the single source for the number.
What to measure
Track offers sent, messages stopped because the car sold or the price changed, customer complaints about a price in a message, and opt outs. A complaint count of zero is the goal, and the stopped messages show the control is working.
Questions people ask
Is the FTC's auto dealer rule still in effect?
No. The Fifth Circuit vacated the CARS Rule on January 27, 2025, on procedural grounds, and summaries report the FTC withdrew it in February 2026. The FTC still enforces existing law against deceptive advertising.
Do price texts count as advertising?
A price or offer sent to promote a vehicle is advertising and should be accurate when the customer reads it.
How do I stop a text when a car sells?
Store the stock status in a field, check it with an If/Else before each send, and use an Opportunity Changed trigger to remove the contact from the offer workflow when the status changes.
You can start a GoHighLevel account here and build the stock number checks above. The opportunity and workflow tools are shown in our capabilities demo.