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The independent audit and revenue layer for automotive retail

Proof of what your dealership actually said and did.

Argus360 runs mystery shops across voice, text, email, and web form, scores every interaction on two axes, compliance exposure and operational performance, and delivers it as a recurring Report Card. The mystery shop is the input. The Report Card is the product.

Designed to land in 30 days and go live in under six weeks, contract to first Report Card.
In beta at the founder’s store; general availability anticipated Q4 2026. Nothing gets installed in the store, which is why the timeline is short.

Every channel your customers use, scored against the enforcement risk in the state where each store operates.

See your state
ARGUS360Compliance snapshot
New YorkWhere your rooftops sit
Call recordingOne-party
Enforcement riskHigh
What Argus shopsVoice, text, email, web
Call recordingOne-partyA shopper can record the call.
Enforcement riskHighFAIR Business Practices Act
What Argus shopsVoice, text, email, webCalls recorded and scored.

Two axes, one score

Compliance opens the door. Operations holds it open.

A dealer principal in 2026 opens an email about FTC exposure before anything else in the category. That is the reason to look. Operational performance is the reason to stay, because missed revenue shows up in every rooftop every month, whatever the regulatory weather.

Compliance exposure

Scored against current enforcement

Every interaction is graded against the FTC's flagged practices and the state rules that apply where the shop ran. The Report Card leads with an exposure figure a principal reads the way they read a settlement number, with the specific rule named on every finding.

Operational performance

The revenue leaks you can measure

Hold times, lead response, qualification quality, and follow-up cadence are quantifiable gaps in every store. Operations carries a lost-gross figure, widens the audit past the principal to the GM, the BDC, and fixed ops, and gives every department head a reason to read the report.

Why dealers are looking now

$75M+

Charged to consumers by Lindsay Auto Group and now subject to full refunds, plus a $3.1 million civil penalty paid to the Maryland Attorney General. FTC and Maryland AG, April 2, 2026.1

97

FTC warning letters sent to dealer groups on March 13, 2026.2

$4M

Stipulated final order against Manchester City Nissan, its owners, and its managers. FTC and Connecticut Attorney General, August 19, 2026.3

$4.89M

Judgments entered against two Manchester City Nissan managers personally, stipulated as consumer injury and suspended on sworn financial statements. D. Conn., No. 3:24-cv-00012, October 2025.4

1 FTC and Maryland Attorney General, Lindsay Auto Group, April 2, 2026: a $3.1M civil penalty to Maryland plus full refunds to eligible consumers, who were charged more than $75M between April 2020 and December 2025.  ·  2 FTC warning letters to 97 dealer groups, March 13, 2026; recipient list published May 28, 2026. The letters carry no individualized findings.  ·  3 FTC and Connecticut Attorney General, Manchester City Nissan, August 19, 2026: $4M consumer redress under a stipulated final order, D. Conn., No. 3:24-cv-00012, signed August 19, 2026.  ·  4 Hartford Business Journal, August 2026: judgments of $4.89M entered against each of two sales managers, stipulated as consumer injury and suspended on sworn financial statements, D. Conn., No. 3:24-cv-00012, October 2025. Argus360 scores against the law as written and does not provide legal advice.

See where your states stand on the interactive Compliance Map, consent and enforcement exposure for all 50 states and DC.

The half that has nothing to do with regulators.

Enforcement opens the conversation. These keep it open in any climate.

Dispute-proofing

When a customer says nobody told me, the answer is a timestamped transcript, not a memory contest. Chargebacks, complaints, and he-said-she-said end at the recording.

Customer trust

Stores keep the customers they can be straight with. Proof of what was said protects the deal, the review score, and the next referral.

Your own people

The same evidence that defends the store clears your good people and coaches the rest. Most principals have never had proof of what their floor actually says.

How the audit works

We run the mystery shops. You get a scored Report Card.

Four steps run on a monthly cadence. Nothing about the dealership has to be instrumented, and nobody on the floor knows the shop is a shop.

In all-party consent states, Argus360 shops by text, email and web form. Voice shops run only where one-party consent applies. The compliance map shows which channels apply to each of your rooftops.

01

Shop

Controlled test interactions go out across voice, text, email, and web form, in states where one-party consent applies.

02

Capture

Each interaction is recorded and transcribed. A SHA-256 hash is computed at the moment of capture and stored with the record.

03

Score

The engine grades every interaction against the compliance rubric and the operational standards, department by department.

04

Report

Findings post to the dashboard and roll up into a monthly Report Card, each one linked to the evidence behind it.

The Report Card

One document a principal can read in twelve minutes.

The Report Card opens with the Trust Score and the two pillar figures, names the three findings that matter, and shows the trend since the first audit. The detail and the evidence sit behind it.

Executive summary first. Trust Score, compliance exposure, lost gross, and the trend line on a single page.
Department by department. Sales and BDC at launch, with Service, Parts, and Complaint Escalation coming next.
Built to export. The report goes out as a PDF with a transcript appendix and chain-of-custody metadata attached.
An Argus360 monthly Report Card showing a Trust Score, compliance and operations figures, and the top findings

Product concept. Design partner build in progress.

Evidence, not opinion

Every finding ties to the recording and the line that triggered it.

Argus360 documents what was said and done. Findings are stated in plain language, the rule is cited, and nothing is paraphrased. Open any item to hear the call and read the transcript line that broke the rule.

Hashed at capture. A SHA-256 hash is computed the moment a record is captured and stored with it. If the record changes, the hash no longer matches.
Recording, transcript, timestamp. Each finding carries all three, so counsel can check it against the source.
The principal decides. Reports go to the dealer principal first. Argus documents. Your team acts.
An Argus360 finding with its evidence drawer open, showing a waveform, transcript lines in monospace, and the SHA-256 hash recorded at capture

Product concept. Design partner build in progress.

Coming Next

The deals your floor missed, worked back to warm.

The audit already finds the lead that went to voicemail and the internet lead that sat for two days. Sales recovery acts on those findings: it runs the patient follow-up your staff skip when the floor gets busy, in your dealership's own voice, then hands a warm buyer to your salesperson.

Pulls missed opportunities straight from your audits, each one carrying the gross it left on the table.
Re-engages across voice, email, and SMS on your timing, with review or auto-send so a busy day never stalls a lead.
Argus stops short of the close. The salesperson keeps the deal, the relationship, and the commission.
The Argus360 sales recovery pipeline, showing missed opportunities, the gross in play, and leads being worked back to warm

Product concept. Design partner build in progress.

Coming Next · Enterprise

One number across every group you oversee.

The rooftop view is one store at a time. The enterprise view sits above it: brand standards scored against your own rubric, a rollup across every group in the network, white-label reporting, and an API into all of it for OEMs and holding companies.

Network-wide brand-standard scoring, separate from compliance, against the experience your OEM set.
Custom rubrics, white-label Report Cards, and a read-only partner API scoped per group.
The Argus360 enterprise network view, ranking rooftops by Trust Score and rolling brand standards up across groups

Product concept. Design partner build in progress.

Built by people who have run the floor

An audit only helps if the store trusts it.

Argus360 comes from AI Assist, a team that has spent years running dealerships rather than watching them from the outside. That is what shapes the product. The methodology is published, every report goes to the dealer principal first, and the standard is a thorough field audit, never a gotcha.

Published rubric

Dealers see exactly what is measured and how. No black box, and findings you can check against the standard.

Independent methodology

Reports go to the dealer principal first. The audit surfaces the evidence. The principal draws the conclusion.

Respectful by design

F&I leaders are professionals. The tone is a thorough field audit, never a gotcha. We document, attorneys advise.

See your store the way a regulator would.

Argus360 is forming its design partner program now. Ask for a walkthrough of the dashboard, the evidence, and a sample Report Card.