ERAC's illegal price discrimination

Enterprise has long practiced a form of price fixing on used vehicles that is illegal. The corporate remarketing department (the department in charge of wholesaling cars to dealers, wholesalers and auctions) sends a list of "Non-Local Buyer Minimums" out to each remarketer, usually twice a month. This list is comprised of current model year cars with set, minimum prices that remarketers may not go below when selling cars to wholesalers who will take those cars to other markets. These set prices are almost always far beyond what any dealer would pay for a car.

This is ERAC's way controlling prices in local markets (they would call it protecting prices). This prevents wholesalers from buying a current model year car from ERAC in a market that has low demand for that car, and then selling the car in a market that has a high demand for the car, thereby making a profit. This way ERAC seeks to eliminate the wholesaler from the equation and consequently get a higher price for their cars. The policy enforces ERAC's goal of selling cars cheaper to dealers than to wholesalers. Most of the wholesalers around are aware of this practice and it's illegality but do not have the wherewithal to go after such a corporate giant.

Here's a quote from the Robinson-Patman Act, a law enacted to prevent price discrimination:

"(a) Price; selection of customers. It shall be unlawful for any person engaged in commerce, in the course of such commerce, either directly or indirectly, to discriminate in price between different purchasers of commodities of like grade and quality, where either or any of the purchases involved in such discrimination are in commerce, where such commodities are sold for use, consumption, or resale within the United States or any Territory thereof or the District of Columbia or any insular possession or other place under the jurisdiction of the United States, and where the effect of such discrimination may be substantially to lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly in any line of commerce, or to injure, destroy, or prevent competition with any person who either grants or knowingly receives the benefit of such discrimination, or with customers of either of them..."

I write this in the hope that this information will reach someone who is able to hold Enterprise accountable for this.

Interesting. In fact I have found several posts relative to ERAC's financial activities interesting. As a retired Special Agent for the U.S. Treasury I feel compeled to bring this information to the attention of my fellow agents who may need to do some further "investigating". ENRON, WORLDCOM, TYCO - maybe ERAC will follow suit.

[Jeahho]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Interesting. In fact I have found several posts relative to ERAC's financial activities interesting. As a retired Special Agent for the U.S. Treasury I feel compeled to bring this information to the attention of my fellow agents who may need to do some further "investigating". ENRON, WORLDCOM, TYCO - maybe ERAC will follow suit.

?????, you forgot to log in before posting. Oh, wait... nevermind.

[tryingtoinform]

You're right I did forget to log in before posting, but I'm not ?????. I truly am a retired Special Agent out of Newark, NJ, and while there is mostly nonsense on this site, there are some things that seemingly have some merit and could warrant further investigation. That of course will be left up to the non-retired agents who have been notified with regards to this site and several posts that have the appearance of truth regarding real illegalities in the accounting practices of corporate ERAC. Of course, if there is nothing for Mr. Taylor, et al to hide, then there is nothing for him or anyone else to worry about.

You never know when the "real" big brother is watching.

You are a complete idiot. If what Erac is doing is so illegal, then someone would have acted upon it by now. Obviously someone has there facts wrong. Good luck in wasting your time.

Regardless of your skepticism, Sand, two facts remain: 1.) ERAC's policy toward wholesalers is as I have stated. 2.) The law on price discrimination is as I have quoted it above.

Both of these facts are verifiable. I encourage you to research them, rather than throw out some unfounded armchair skepticism in this thread. ERAC may have some legal loophole. If that is the case, please educate me.

I find most of your posts to be in the category of nonsense. You often revert to name calling for no reason, except for that is probably how you were raised. I will not be wasting any of my time as I am retired and if there is nothing going on, then a simple audit will prove just that. However, if there is any truth to any of the posts to which I refered, then it will be fleshed out. After 25 years in the business of criminal investigtions, I found that there are many companies that run for years doing things that are illegal that never get caught and others that got caught pretty much out of the gate. There have also been many companies that started out doing things the right way, but somewhere along the line started to do things that were "not above board". They tend to figure that they were checked on and were OK back then, started to do some small stuff here & there, didn't get caught, so now they never will. Some get away with it; some don't. To me it was all in a day's job. In this instance I really don't care if ERAC gets a quick "looK at" or is investigated for years. I just happened upon the site, tried to inform potential customers of some of the problems with some of the ERAC cars (apparently some sites do better than others in taking care of their vehicles) read a number of the various posts and found some to be interesting from a former agent's stand point. Of course, the agents in ERAC's corporate home base may be so busy they may never look at them. Then again, an agent may be looking for his/her next "big" case and do some checking. It may or may not lead anywhere. Who knows? Only time will tell.

Originally Posted by tryingtoinform

You're right I did forget to log in before posting, but I'm not ?????. I truly am a retired Special Agent out of Newark, NJ, and while there is mostly nonsense on this site, there are some things that seemingly have some merit and could warrant further investigation. That of course will be left up to the non-retired agents who have been notified with regards to this site and several posts that have the appearance of truth regarding real illegalities in the accounting practices of corporate ERAC. Of course, if there is nothing for Mr. Taylor, et al to hide, then there is nothing for him or anyone else to worry about.

You never know when the "real" big brother is watching.

In a different thread you said you used to service Erac's vehicles, now you say you worked for the Treasury dept. Which is it, or did you do both? Sounds like you are trying to dig up some info to nail Erac, if so, good luck with that. The power of Erac is beyond most peoples comprehension. Yes, they seem like just a rental car company, but the reality is, they pretty much rule the new car market and could cause GM, Ford, etc. to crumble if they so desired. That is a fact.

ERAC works just like EVERY OTHER company out it all supply and demand if there is high demand on a certian car and they have a low supply of course they will charge more .........just like SONY with every new playstation they have come out they always have an excuse why the supply is low and drives the price through the roof if you remeber the PLAYSTATION 2 when it first came out was over $ 400.00 now you can buy one fro less tha $ 100.00 so what ERAC is doing is not illegal just comon practice.

[quote=Unregistered]Enterprise has long practiced a form of price fixing on used vehicles that is illegal. The corporate remarketing department (the department in charge of wholesaling cars to dealers, wholesalers and auctions) sends a list of "Non-Local Buyer Minimums" out to each remarketer, usually twice a month. This list is comprised of current model year cars with set, minimum prices that remarketers may not go below when selling cars to wholesalers who will take those cars to other markets. These set prices are almost always far beyond what any dealer would pay for a car.

This is ERAC's way controlling prices in local markets (they would call it protecting prices). This prevents wholesalers from buying a current model year car from ERAC in a market that has low demand for that car, and then selling the car in a market that has a high demand for the car, thereby making a profit. This way ERAC seeks to eliminate the wholesaler from the equation and consequently get a higher price for their cars. The policy enforces ERAC's goal of selling cars cheaper to dealers than to wholesalers. Most of the wholesalers around are aware of this practice and it's illegality but do not have the wherewithal to go after such a corporate giant.


The only thing ERAC is doing is destroying the market on vehicles if anything, When August hits and ERAC dumps 1000's of cars into the market, mass depreciation happens on a national scale, they kill the market for any other remarketer out there, because of there poor fleet plan. I hear GM is raising prices on ERAC and not allowing them to get special vehicle purchases, this should screw ERAC pretty bad this year. In other words flip is about to go to a very thin cycle, so you better make sure your OP is in check or you may find yourself a little light in the pockets.