Dealer Ad Checker
Screen dealer ad copy or public dealer web pages for selected federal lease, credit, pricing, bait, and warranty advertising risk signals, with the exact quoted text behind every finding.
Not legal advice. Not a compliance certification. Car Thrive is independent and not affiliated with the FTC, CFPB, or any government agency. Results are automated screening signals for human review; no result means an ad is lawful or compliant. State law is never assessed.
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Methodology and sources
The checker looks for trigger terms and claims in captured text (for example, a monthly lease payment, a down payment, an APR, "was/now" pricing, "only one left", or "lifetime warranty"), quotes the exact text, then lists disclosures it could not find nearby. Each check reports one of: potential issue, manual review, signals found, not triggered, or not assessed. "Not triggered" only means no trigger text was detected in what was captured; it is not a pass.
This is deterministic text-pattern screening, not an AI or LLM analysis. The lease and credit advertising regulations are distinct from the FTC interpretive guides in 16 CFR Parts 233, 238 and 239 and from FTC staff FAQs. The guides and staff views inform review prompts; they do not establish that an ad violates the FTC Act. Warranty wording is flagged for contextual human review, never as a blanket violation. State-specific as-is requirements are not checked.
URL scans check robots.txt and validate public destinations. A robots.txt HTTP 403 is treated as an unavailable file, not a published Disallow rule, following RFC 9309 §2.3.1.3, and recorded in the report. Actual published exclusions are honored; robots authentication, rate limits, network errors and server failures stop capture. A page-level HTTP 403 or script dependency may trigger one basic anonymous Firecrawl request. The report identifies capture methods and failures; it never treats a failed fetch as a clean ad. Provider-side browser requests run on Firecrawl's infrastructure, not Car Thrive's server. No authentication or CAPTCHA solving is attempted.
Firecrawl uses basic capture without enhanced-proxy escalation, login sessions, form actions or CAPTCHA solving requested by Car Thrive. The checker limits rendering to one attempt per review and 60 attempts per hour per server process. Provider filtering may omit ad widgets or popups, and a render may still omit delayed offers, frames or interactive disclosures. Missing captured text is not proof that a disclosure was absent in the original ad.
It does not cover every FTC or CFPB rule, state law, dealer licensing, TILA disclosures outside ads, images, video, or every JavaScript-loaded offer. Rendered text does not establish visual prominence or completeness.
- CFPB Regulation M, 12 CFR 1013.7Consumer lease advertising: trigger terms and required lease disclosures.
- eCFR Regulation M, 12 CFR 213.7Federal Reserve version of the lease advertising rule.
- CFPB Regulation Z, 12 CFR 1026.24Closed-end credit advertising: trigger terms, APR, and payment terms.
- FTC staff guidance: Automobile Industry Pricing Transparency FAQs (September 2026)Staff guidance, not a regulation: FTC staff views on advertised vehicle prices, fees, and add-ons. Cited for pricing findings.
- FTC Guides Against Deceptive Pricing, 16 CFR 233Former-price, comparison-price, and bargain claims.
- FTC Guides Against Bait Advertising, 16 CFR 238Offers not made in good faith; discouraging the advertised product.
- FTC Guides for Advertising Warranties, 16 CFR 239Warranty and guarantee claims in advertising.