OMVIC fines Pierson Motors $3,500 after a mystery shop caught a $733.65 markup and a former rental car advertised without disclosure

OMVIC’s Discipline Tribunal fined Pierson Motors Inc. $3,500 on April 13, 2026 after a mystery shop the prior September turned up two distinct breaches on two separate vehicles. Director and Person in Charge Michael Pierson was fined $500. Pierson and Finance Manager Eric Hopkins must each complete the MVDA Key Elements Course with a passing grade of at least 80% within 90 days. The dealer must offer to fund the same course for every salesperson it employs.

The case is the first on the site that pairs an all-in pricing breach with a separate failure-to-disclose-prior-daily-rental-use breach in the same order. It is also the first to bring a Finance Manager respondent into the compliance collection alongside the Director and PIC.

The mystery shop on September 4, 2025

2023 Chevrolet Trail Blazer LT (VIN ending 1286)

On or before September 4, 2025, the dealer published a website advertisement for a white 2023 Chevrolet Trail Blazer LT with an advertised selling price of $25,995 plus HST, OMVIC fee and licensing fee. The same day, an OMVIC representative attended the premises posing as a member of the public.

Hopkins, acting on the dealer’s behalf, handed the representative a handwritten quote of $30,167 for the vehicle inclusive of tax, license fee, fuel fee, and administrative fee. The arithmetic the panel walked through is straightforward. The advertised price of $25,995, plus HST and a $59 license fee, would total $29,433.35. The handwritten quote was $733.65 above that number.

The fuel fee and administrative fee in Hopkins’s handwritten quote were not inside the advertised number, and the advertisement had not disclosed them. That is the breach. The all-in price rule under s. 36(7) of O. Reg. 333/08 puts every transactional fee inside the advertised number, with sales tax pulled out by the text of s. 36(10) and the separately itemised licensing line carved out by OMVIC’s longstanding interpretive practice. Neither the fuel preparation fee nor the administrative fee fits either of those carve-outs; both belonged inside the $25,995.

2025 Kia Seltos EX (VIN ending 0295)

A separate vehicle, a separate failure. On or before September 3, 2025, the dealer published an advertisement for a 2025 Kia Seltos EX at $32,995. When the OMVIC representative searched the Ministry of Transportation vehicle database, the previous owner came back as Enterprise Rent-A-Car Canada Company. The Kia had been transferred directly from the rental company to the dealer.

The advertisement made no mention of the prior daily-rental use. The dealer did disclose the rental history on the bill of sale when the vehicle eventually sold, but s. 36(5)(a) of O. Reg. 333/08 attaches to the advertisement, not the contract. The rule requires a dealer to disclose, in any advertisement, that the vehicle was previously leased on a daily basis if that is the case. The bill-of-sale disclosure came too late to save the advertisement, though the panel recorded the contract-level disclosure as a fact, not as a defence.

Pierson’s and Hopkins’s personal findings

Michael Pierson was first registered as a salesperson in or around August 1991 and has been the Director and Person in Charge of the day-to-day activities of the dealer at all material times. Eric Hopkins was first registered as a salesperson in or around August 2000 and held the Finance Manager role. Both contravened s. 6(2) of the Code of Ethics: a registered salesperson “shall not do or omit to do anything that causes the registered motor vehicle dealer who employs or retains the salesperson to contravene this Regulation or any applicable law with respect to trading in motor vehicles.”

Hopkins is where the s. 6(2) finding bites. He handed the OMVIC representative the handwritten quote. His role was Finance Manager. He was not a Director, not the registered PIC, and not on the Dealer’s officer list. The personal finding does not need him to be any of those things. It attaches to the act of quoting a non-compliant price during a customer interaction, the act that put the dealer offside.

Pierson’s personal finding flows from the dealer-level finding rather than from a specific transaction. As Director and PIC he held the supervisory role that s. 6(2) reaches when a registered individual’s role, not their specific action, causes the breach. Both Pierson and Hopkins also picked up the s. 9(3) finding for failing to use the best efforts the rule requires to prevent error or misrepresentation in respect of a trade.

Allegations against a third individual, Bailey Pierson, in paragraphs 3 and 16 of the Notice of Referral to Discipline dated October 2, 2025, were withdrawn before the order.

The 80 per cent pass requirement

The order on Pierson and Hopkins specifies a passing grade of at least 80 per cent on the MVDA Key Elements Course. This is the first discipline order in the compliance collection to record an explicit pass threshold in the order itself. The Key Elements Course has a passing standard of its own through Georgian College, but here the panel has written the 80 per cent into the operative paragraph. A registrant who scrapes the lower standard but falls below 80 will have failed the order, not just the test.

Paragraph 5 of the order then layers the dealer-funded Key Elements offer on top. Pierson Motors must put the funded course in front of every current and future salesperson. Two specific registrants have a personal deadline; the rest of the roster gets a standing offer. CCC Motors, Beattie Chrysler, and Riverside Chevrolet each carry a version of this offer, but Pierson is the one that locks in the 80 per cent threshold for the individuals named in the operative paragraph.

What to learn

• A handwritten quote at the dealership counter is an advertisement for s. 36(7) purposes once it sets a price the consumer is being asked to pay. A note that bundles “fuel fee and administrative fee” inside the inclusive number is the same breach as a website that hides them outside the advertised price, just on paper instead of pixels.
• A vehicle whose previous owner shows up in the registration trail as Enterprise, Discount, Hertz, Avis, Budget, National, Alamo, Enterprise Holdings, or any other daily-rental company has to carry that disclosure into every advertisement. A bill-of-sale disclosure at the close of the deal is required by other parts of the regulation but does not cure an advertisement that omitted the rental status.
• The s. 6(2) accountability finding reaches the Finance Manager who quotes the off-spec number to a customer, not just the Director and Person in Charge who set up the system. Two registered salespersons can both pick up the accountability finding for one set of facts when both played a role in causing the breach.