OMVIC fines Stouffville Honda $2,500 after a mystery shop found a $588 administration fee and a $22 OMVIC fee stacked on the advertised price

David Robitaille first registered as a motor vehicle salesperson in June 1989. A discipline decision dated July 8, 2026 is sending him to the MVDA Key Elements Course anyway. At the dealership where he is Officer and Person in Charge, 2449616 Ontario Inc. o/a Stouffville Honda, a salesperson handed a mystery shopper a quote with $610 in mandatory fees that the advertised price never mentioned. The dealer pays a $2,500 fine.

The facts occupy one page of the Agreed Statement of Facts. On or before October 28, 2025, the dealer’s website advertised a 2021 Honda CR-V at $27,888, exclusive of HST and licensing. On or about October 28, an OMVIC representative posing as a customer visited the dealership and asked about that vehicle. Salesperson Jing Zhang produced a written quote: $27,888, plus a mandatory $588 administration fee, plus a mandatory $22 OMVIC fee. An advertised price that grows at the desk is not all-in. That contravenes s. 36(7) of O. Reg. 333/08, and the same conduct breaches sections 4(2) and 9(3) of the Code of Ethics.

Zhang was found to have breached sections 4(2), 6(2) and 9(3) personally: she made the representation, and in doing so caused her dealer to break the law. Robitaille, as Person in Charge since May 2023, breached 6(2) and 9(3) for failing to ensure the dealership operated compliantly. The matter resolved without an oral hearing under Rule 1.07, on an Agreed Statement of Facts dated March 17, 2026 and a joint penalty proposal that the Reviewing Panel of Deb Mattina, Jon Lemaire and Paul Eros accepted as clearly connected to the admitted breaches.

The order reaches salespeople who have not been hired yet

Four parts:

1. The dealer pays $2,500 within 90 days.
2. Robitaille completes the MVDA Key Elements Course with at least 80%, within 120 days.
3. Zhang completes the same course with at least 80%, within 90 days.
4. The dealer must offer to fund Key Elements for all current and future salespersons, within 120 days.

The current-and-future scope of that fourth term runs through OMVIC’s recent funded-course orders: the July 8 decisions against Cardoor and 5 Star Dealers carry terms with the same reach. Its effect is to write regulator-mandated training into the dealership’s onboarding for whoever it hires next.

Two facts softened the outcome. Robitaille advised the Registrar that the dealership had taken proactive steps: salespersons informed of the all-in pricing requirements and the advertising revised. And the panel noted expressly that this was an isolated incident and that “the Salesperson responsible is no longer employed by the Dealership”. Zhang’s employment ran from August 5 to November 3, 2025; she was first registered in January 2025, and the mystery shop happened in her third month on the job. As of the March 2026 Agreed Statement of Facts, she remained registered.

The fee pattern is the familiar one. The $22 OMVIC transaction fee keeps appearing as a desk-stage add-on: Autohouse Kingston was fined over a $12.50 version of it after three reminders, and Georgetown Kia’s cease-and-retract order involved pop-ups misstating the same fee. The regulator’s position has not moved: under s. 36(7), recovery of the dealer’s own OMVIC fee belongs inside the advertised number, next to the administration fee and every other charge the buyer cannot decline. For anyone tracking the town rather than the brand, this is also the second Stouffville dealership fined over a desk quote this year: Stouffville Hyundai’s handwritten quote drew a $3,500 order on the May 27 docket.

What to learn

• The quote is advertising’s last mile. The website said $27,888; the desk said $28,498 plus tax. s. 36(7) is breached the moment a mandatory fee lands on top of the advertised price, whether in a pop-up, a handwritten worksheet or a printed quote.
• A three-month employee’s quote binds the dealer, the Person in Charge and herself. Zhang, Robitaille and the corporation were all found in breach over one document. s. 6(2) makes the salesperson answerable for causing the dealer’s breach, and the Person in Charge answerable for failing to prevent it, so nobody in the chain escapes a bad quote.
• Corrective action and a clean file shape the outcome. Robitaille told the Registrar the advertising had been revised and salespersons briefed on all-in pricing before the panel ruled, and the reasons record the incident as isolated. The $2,500 fine ties the lowest all-in pricing fine this site has covered.