OMVIC fines Orillia Kia $3,000 for selling a demo Telluride as new with a misdated warranty

OMVIC’s Discipline Tribunal fined 2548802 Ontario Limited o/a Orillia Kia $3,000 on May 27, 2026 over the sale of a demonstration vehicle described as new on the bill of sale. General Manager and Person in Charge Adam Tyler Gauthier, a registered salesperson since around May 2005, must complete the MVDA Key Elements Course with a passing grade of at least 80 percent, and the dealer must offer to fund the Automotive Certification Course for all its current and future salespersons. The matter proceeded on an Agreed Statement of Facts dated February 27, 2026 with a jointly proposed disposition, reviewed in writing under Rule 1.07 by the same panel that decided the rest of the May 27 docket: Sherry Darvish, Joe Malfara and Chris Pinelli. Allegations against two other individuals named in the referral, Dustin C Stein and Robert William Stein, were withdrawn.

The vehicle was a 2024 Kia Telluride the dealer registered to itself with the Ministry of Transportation on July 11, 2024 and put into service as a demonstrator. On April 12, 2025 a salesperson sold it to a consumer for $68,764.68 plus taxes and licensing, a price that included a $1,700 “Kia Extended Plan” warranty. The odometer read 8,232 kilometres. The dealer had told the buyer it was a demo, but the bill of sale said the opposite: it marked the Telluride as new and carried no written disclosure of the prior demonstrator use.

That double failure is exactly what OMVIC’s demo vehicle bulletin warned about five months later: once a dealer registers a vehicle to itself and uses it, the vehicle is legally a used vehicle, whatever the mileage, and the prior use goes on the contract in writing. The panel found the bill of sale breached s. 40(2) paragraph 1 of O. Reg. 333/08 (a used vehicle contract must state prescribed disclosures) and s. 42 paragraph 25, along with s. 7(1) (documents must be current and comply with the law), s. 9(1) and s. 9(3) of the Code of Ethics.

Six months of warranty that did not exist

The misdescription had a price attached. The bill of sale showed the manufacturer’s warranty and the 48-month, 80,000-kilometre extended warranty both measuring from the April 12, 2025 sale, implying coverage to around April 2029. The extended warranty contract itself told a different story: the vehicle’s “Original In-Service Date” was October 11, 2024, when the demo went on the road, and the contract expiry was October 11, 2028. The buyer was paying for warranty time the clock had already burned. A third document, an engine-program application, gave yet another in-service date of April 10, 2025.

The consumer complained to the Registrar two days after the purchase. A request for information under s. 14 of the Act followed on April 30, 2025, and Gauthier responded on behalf of the dealer the next day. By May 16 he acknowledged the accurate in-service date was October 11, 2024, and on May 23 attributed the wrong date on the bill of sale to “a data input error in [the Dealer’s] system”. The panel found the warranty dating on the bill of sale inaccurate and misleading, in breach of the same provisions as the new-versus-demo misdescription.

Gauthier’s personal findings flow from his role rather than the pen: as the Person in Charge he failed to ensure the dealer conducted business in compliance, breaching s. 6(2) and s. 9(3) of the Code of Ethics. The pattern matches Guelph Hyundai and Stouffville Hyundai from the same docket, where the person in charge wore the individual findings. For dealers who sell their own warranty products alongside, the obligations in the extended warranty bulletin post sit next to this one.

What to learn

• A demonstrator is a used vehicle, at any mileage. Registration to the dealer plus use makes it used; the demo history is a written disclosure on the contract under s. 40(2) and s. 42, not a sales-floor mention.
• Warranty clocks start at in-service, not at sale. Selling a warranty measured from the wrong date overstates the coverage the buyer is paying for. Check the in-service date on every program document before it reaches the customer.
• “Data input error” does not undo a misleading document. Section 7(1) of the Code of Ethics makes registrants responsible for documents being current and lawful; how the wrong date got there did not change the finding.