OMVIC all-in pricing, and the fees you can refuse
The short version
Ontario’s all-in price rule says a registered dealer’s advertised price must include every fee the dealer intends to collect. Freight, pre-delivery inspection, administration, the air tax, the green levy: all inside the price already. Only HST and licensing may be left out, and the ad has to say so clearly. A fee that appears for the first time on the bill of sale is a fee to question.
Almost everyone who has bought a car in Ontario has had the same moment. You agreed on a price. You sit down at the desk. The sheet in front of you has the price you agreed and then four more lines under it, and the total at the bottom is eleven hundred dollars higher than the number in your head.
In Ontario, most of those lines are not allowed to be there.
Under the Motor Vehicle Dealers Act, a registered dealer’s advertised price has to include every fee the dealer intends to collect from you. Only two things may be excluded: HST and licensing. And the exclusion has to be clearly disclosed in the advertisement rather than assumed.
What has to be in the price already
These are the ones that show up most often as add-ons, and every one of them belongs inside the advertised number.
- Freight and pre-delivery inspection. The cost of getting the car to the lot and preparing it. Inside the price.
- Administration or documentation fees. Whatever the dealership calls its own paperwork. Inside the price.
- Air conditioning excise tax and the green levy. Federal charges, but the dealer collects them, so they are inside the price.
- The federal luxury tax, where the vehicle attracts it. Inside the price.
- Reconditioning, safety and certification on a used car. If the dealer intends to charge you for it, it belongs in the advertised number.
The one small charge that legitimately sits outside is the Ontario tire stewardship fee, $20 to $30 per vehicle. Everything else on that list should already be in the figure you saw online.
A used car advertised at $28,000 by an Ontario dealer
- Advertised all-in price$28,000
- 13% HST$3,640
- Ontario tire stewardship fee$25
- What the bill of sale should come to, before licensing$31,665
Freight, pre-delivery inspection, administration, the air tax and the green levy are already inside that $28,000. A line adding any of them again is the line to question.
What to do when a fee appears anyway
Enforcement is imperfect and it is worth knowing that going in. CBC secret-shopper testing found Ontario dealers breaching all-in pricing, so this is a rule you may well have to invoke rather than one you can assume has already been followed.
The good news is that invoking it is straightforward and does not require an argument.
- Ask one question. "Was this fee in the advertised price?" It is a factual question with a factual answer and it does not require you to accuse anybody of anything.
- Bring the advertisement. A screenshot of the listing, with the date, settles most of these in under a minute. OMVIC also enforces price consistency between a dealer’s own website and third-party listings, so the listing you saw counts.
- Ask for the total, in writing, before you sign anything. Advertised price, HST, licensing, and nothing else. If a line will not survive being written down, it will not survive being questioned either.
- Know where to complain. OMVIC regulates dealers in Ontario and takes consumer complaints. Saying so out loud is rarely necessary and is occasionally very effective.
What the rule does not cover
Two limits worth knowing so you do not overreach.
The rule is about fees the dealer intends to charge, not about products you choose to add. An extended warranty, rustproofing or a paint package that you agree to at the desk is a purchase, not a hidden fee. You can decline all of them and the price of the car does not change. Anything sold as mandatory on a car already advertised at a price is worth a second question.
And the rule applies to registered dealers. A private seller is not a dealer, has no advertising obligations under this act, and is also not covered by the compensation fund a registered dealer pays into. That is part of what the price difference between a dealer car and a private car is buying.
Compare drive-away totals rather than advertised prices, and the whole question gets simpler. The calculator does that part for you.
Sources
Every claim in this guide either comes from one of these, or is worked out in front of you by the same engine that runs the calculator. Figures we hold in our own dated assumptions file are listed with their sources on the assumptions page.