Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.16.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of West Palm Beach Nissan

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits West Palm Beach Nissan to see if she can purchase a 2020 Nissan Altima S at the low advertised price on their website. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us is my son, Stu Stewart, our linked to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting self-forwarded dealership.

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Your auto experts are back. I appreciate all you folks that listen to us almost every week. and we've got some really, really great listeners and callers. We hope to get a new audience. We ask all of you who appreciate this show and listen to it regularly to spread the word.

We'd like to grow the show. We're on a show on how you can buy or lease a car without being ripped off by your car dealer. There's no other show like it anywhere, to my knowledge. And let your friends know, and your neighbors and acquaintances. We're international now. We're all over the world. we've actually had a call from Bali and I was surprised to learn because I do a

live video and we have people I do a sunrise and I have a man by the name of Stephen Chimelda who called the show and he lives in Bali and there's somebody asked him on the live video what time is it in Bali he says it's 8.30 p.m. I know I was doing it at 6.30 or something this morning and he said He says, we're 13,200 miles away. Now, that's just about as far away as you can get, right? 25,000 mile circumference. It's a long haul.

I thought, in my mind, I'm thinking Australia, New Zealand, I'm thinking North Pole, Antarctica, but Bali is about as far away as you can get. So that's kind of cool. Earl and Cars is being listened to in Bali. And it's also South America. We know we have listeners all over. So spread the word, please. Your regular listeners, get the word out.

I don't know about the car dealers in Bali come to think of it. They might not be as bad as they are in South Florida. In fact, I don't think their car dealers anywhere are as bad as they are in South Florida. But we have our problems in the USA, and I would venture to say that most states are a little bit below the average way retail buyers expect to be treated. and my evidence and my proof of that is the Gallup Annual Poll on Honesty and Professions, honesty and ethics and professions. You might want to Google that. Just Google Honesty and Ethics and Professions, Gallup Annual Poll, or Gallop Poll,

and you'll find the results dating back to 1977 of all your professions, businesses, and you'll find at the dead bottom, at the last and least honest, least honest, least ethical are car dealers. Now you'd think, you know, how many, 40, 50 years ago, you think that somebody would have gotten the message and you think that the car dealer somewhere would have said, hey, let's get together. I mean, there is a national automobile dealers association. You'd think somebody said, hey, we've got to have a meeting, something we've got to do about our image. Well, if they did have that meeting, and it's nearly a half century later, you're doing the wrong thing, guys.

It's not working. And we have this mystery shop that you'll hear at the end of the show, toward the end of the show, where we send out an undercover agent to shop a local car dealer. We do this every week, and we've been doing it for years and years. And this is live radio, so all the car dealers know what we're doing. And you'll find out from this mystery shop, and almost every mystery shop,

the quality of the retail experience when you buy a car is really bad. Now we pass a lot of dealers and we even have a recommended list but we grade on the curve. So, you know what that means? I mean, we have to take the best to the worst and say we recommend you

because if we didn't, you have no place to buy a car. People need cars. Maybe that's part of the problem. You know, when you have to have something, they kind of got you. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of gasoline.

You know what happens every time there's a hurricane, a crisis and there's a shortage of gasoline, they hike the gas price. Why? You have to have the gas. So if you're paying $3 a gallon, they start charging you $4 a gallon, there's not much you can do about it because you have to pay because you need it. You have to have a car. Not everywhere. I mean, there are some places where they have mass transit, but I can tell you if Florida is a place where you really have to have a car. California is a place where you really have to have a car. And I guess New York City, you don't have to have a car. Texas, maybe.

Texas, maybe, yeah. Texas, you almost need an airplane. Here we are. Thanks to all of you for tuning in. We love your calls. We would have terrible ratings without you callers. We've got some folks out there that are very smart. You know who you are. I tell you, I compliment you because I love smart people.

And you're very, very intuitive and frank, candid. I love it because you tell it like it is, like we do on this show. We named names, we name places. We've never been sued in 17 to 20 years. I can't remember how long it's been we've been on the air. We haven't been sued? Why? Because the truth is a perfect defense against liable and slander.

We name a car dealership. We say, you did this, you broke the law. ABC dealership, you broke the law, and this is wrong. Now, if that weren't true, boy, would they sue me. They'd sue the radio station. They'd sue everybody. You can't call somebody a crook on live radio. and not face the consequences.

So we haven't done that. All we've done is tell the truth. Transparency, as a matter of fact, that's what we're lobbying for on this radio show. Transparency. We want car dealers to be honest and transparent and open in the selling and the leasing process and the repairing process for that matter.

So before I get to continue this rant, which I have a want to do, I want to remind you that we're a team here. and I'm the coach but one of our star players is Rick Kearney. You regulars know Rick very well

he gets a lot of calls because he's pretty much the only expert in the room when it comes to technical things technical things about your car. The computerization of your car, they're very complex machines, computers, whatever you want to call them today. And every

day, every day Rick's in the garage at the dealership fixing problems. He's a problem solver. And he's got a lot of computers. He's got access to tech support. You can talk to the top engineers. He can, he has all that information. He learns hands-on every single day. If you've got a car and you're driving around and you've got a little tick or a squeak or a rattle or a roll and you want to know, should I bring it in, I don't want to bring it in. I don't want to go into that dealership because sometimes they don't wear a mask in there. and maybe I'm in a senior and I don't want to expose myself

this is a COVID pandemic. I don't want to go to a car dealership. You don't want to go out and call Rick Kearney. 877 960-9960 877-960 990-60 and if you want to go straight to Rick I mean just straight to Rick, he monitors

our YouTube channel. So at Erloncars.com for slash YouTube. I'm sorry, I got the one. YouTube.com forward slash our own cars. YouTube.com forward slash own cars. Go right to Rick. He'll know about it before I know about it.

And we'd love to answer your questions. In fact, what would be cool? If you want to send them a video or a picture or an audio file, you could even listen to that. Diagnose your car online. This is a 21st century, folks. It's a digital age, revolution.

You can get your car diagnosed and maybe fixed right here on radio or YouTube. or streaming, Facebook, we're out there on Facebook, we're on Twitter, we're all over. I want to introduce my wife, it's our 18th wedding anniversary, Nancy Stewart, and she's my partner on the show from the get-go from back on the day when we were around for half an hour. She's a female advocate, she has built the female membership of the show to parody. We're pretty close to 50-50.

As you will know, women buy more cars than men, at least as many, sometimes a little of a few. I think they're at 51 percent now. And I think they bring their cars into service more than men, too. So they deserve total equality, and Nancy Stewart will tell you about that. She's got a special deal for you ladies out there listening. Good morning, folks. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-99-60. You can text us at 772-4976530.

And ladies, did you know that you're in the majority when it comes to the buying market in the auto industry? And this morning, I have something short and sweet for you. That's $50 for the first two new lady callers. The first two new lady callers. I'd love for you to give me a call. and share your negotiating skills and how they really, well, clenched the deal, whether used, whether new, whether it was in service.

I'd love to hear from you. We all would. Again, that number is 877-960-99-60. And as Earl said earlier, folks, you are an important part of the show, very important, and we do enjoy. your company and your knowledge. So please join us this morning. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, as I said,

the most interesting part of this show is our mystery shopping report. It's interesting, entertaining, informative. And we have the Spymaster General sitting right across from me here in the studio. Also happens to be my son. And he dispatches Agent Lightning

and Agent Thunder. We've been using Agent Lightning almost exclusively for the past. several weeks, but they're both extremely capable, and one's a female and one's a male. And sometimes they don't get treated the same. It's very interesting to see the perspective of a mystery shop from a male and female. So, Stu, I think we've got a particularly interesting with the day. We always say that, but in this case, it is interesting.

Tell them about it. Well, every week is a, there's a little bit of research, there's a little bit of plotting, a little mischievousness that goes through us. We're trying to figure out because we also, as informative as we want to be, it's also important to keep listeners engaged and keep it entertaining. And sometimes, you know, we'll be honest, sometimes they're just kind of run into the mill, and sometimes we run into something special. I think this week qualifies for that.

Really interesting thing. We shopped a Nissan dealership, West Palm Beach Nissan, and we've been doing quite a bit of that recently because we've noticed a phenomenon with Nissan dealers just being a little bit rougher than their other import dealer counterparts. and in our dealership side of things we have a new representative from Toyota and he came from Nissan so he told us a few things about the way Nissan

does it, it's different than other dealers and one thing has to do with this concept we'll talk about in a shopping report called Clustering where they encourage one owner, one dealer to own a bunch of dealerships in an area and so we'll talk about 30 years ago who did? It didn't work too well. Who did?

Saturn. Oh, Saturn tried that. Yeah, General Motors Saturn. And Ed Morris, for example, I think, he had all the Saturn dealerships from southern Palm Beach County all the way north through Martin County. Maybe up to St. Lucent County, I'm not sure. But Saturn didn't work, but that's what Nissan's going to try. Yeah. So really interesting.

It was kind of – it's nothing that they announced. Nobody really knows about it. It's just something that occurs in a market. And it could be good or bad. And I think in this case, in most cases, it's bad. And I do have some exciting news. It's not for sure yet. Earl was just talking about Agent Lightning,

and she's actually been since, I think, her first mystery shop was back in August. So it's been, we're getting on several months now. She's getting really, really good. We also have Agent Thunder on the bench. Agent X might be returning. Oh. And we don't know.

You surprised me on that one. I know. The legendary Agent X. Right. So we are in negotiations, and there's a very good chance that you might hear a mystery shopping report in the coming weeks that was authored by none other. Agent X, for those who don't know Agent X, he was one of our original and longest shoppers, and he's totally fearless. He will go into the gates of hell and never blink. I've never seen a brave room.

He's the guy we always tell our shoppers, if they ask you to run their credit, you don't run your credit. Agent X is like, yeah, they can run my credit. So who'll give them their Social Security number? No, no fear. I say fearless. That's not an exaggeration. He's done things that have scared Stu and I. And he gets away with it because he's got that ability to look death in the eye.

So I don't want to over-promise, but I'd say we got a 60% chance at this point. Good. That's pretty good. You know, mentally, I don't think that he's ever really left us. No, he hasn't. Well, he hasn't because he constantly messages. me for the last several years. You too.

Yeah, we keep in touch. He's, I feel like as if they lives next door to me. So, anyway, hope he comes back. Did you know that they only have Toyotas in Valley?

In Bali? Did you know that? I didn't know that. Are you kidding me? No. Only Toyotas in Bali? Steve, he just shared that information. Oh, be darned. Do they have just one? Stephen, if you're listening, do they just have the one dealer?

I mean, how big is Bali? I mean, it would be a, I'd love to have a toilet. Bally High Toyota. Bally. That's what I would mean in my dealers. I think we're moving to Bolly. You need another dealer in Bali, right? Yeah. We better, we better get to Howard.

Otherwise, he's going to hang up on us. Howard, thank you so much for your patience. Good morning. You there, Howard? I hear him. I hear some. I wouldn't blame you for dozing off. Hey, Howard.

Yeah. Hi. I'm here. Sorry about that. Yeah, I'm not hearing your earl. I'm hearing music. Okay, that's interesting. Can you hear me now, Howard?

Yeah, got you. Okay. Okay, great. All right. Good morning. You're on. Good morning. I hear you.

Okay. Good morning. Good morning. Do you have your radio on, Howard? No, I just turned it off. Okay, great. Okay, so I'm ready to go. Okay.

Okay, so... Ask a question, Howard. Okay, here's my question. Should I use dielectric grease on the battery terminals? No, dielectric grease really won't help on the terminals too much because it's actually a bit expensive. I would use just an ordinary battery protector spray or maybe just simple vasolene. Just something to keep the air from getting to it, really. Okay, so in other words, that's not a good application.

What is dialectic grease? Yeah, I was kind of the same question. It sounds like a dialectic. What is that? dielectric grease is a special grease used mainly for the spark plug tubes because it doesn't conduct electricity very well oh i say it's a dialecticate the rubber boot goes on the spark plug but it won't let the electricity short out to go through it to the block of the car i got you that was marxist grease that that was dielectric materialism exactly yeah okay how are the next next question is if i want to change my battery

on my 2017 Camry, if I don't, if I unhook the terminals, all the settings will be lost, correct? Nope. Just about every system in the 2017 Camry has got a backup power supply already built into it, so the settings won't really change any at all. The only thing you might have to reset is your clock. Your radio won't lose the stations, none of that. Well, that's good to know. I had no idea. I thought I would lose everything. So you're saying before 2017, it would be different?

Probably about 2013 to 2014 was when most of the systems really started getting their own backup power supplies in them. And even some cars are a little older than that going back as far as like 2011 and 2012. Okay. My next question is, will Toyota, actually, Camry, I'm interested in Camry, have a car that will prevent the side collision? In other words, if you're driving and you make a mistake and you turn right, you'll hit a car and you're right. But I know a Porsche, my son-law has a Porsche. It actually pulls them away. and physically pulls the car away to avoid a collision. Did you ever hear of this? I haven't. No, that's a new one on me, but all the new car companies are coming out with some of these new systems so fast

that it certainly wouldn't surprise me. Vehicle detection systems and, like, lane keep assist, it'd be a very similar system. If it detects a vehicle in your path, it's going to try to steer away from it. So I could have seen how that system would work. Yeah, BMW needs to get that because the drivers are all crazy. And when they turn in front of you now, they can save your life and their life.

Just kidding, Howard. I hope you don't have a BMW. What I like about the cruise control, when the cruise control is on, I can't crash into a car in front of me, but it holds me back. Oh, what's the same? That's no fun. Even if I step on the gas, it will not, it will, it will, It will not permit me to accelerate into the car.

You want to turn that cruise control off when you want to ram the car in front of you, Howard. But I like that. Most cars now have pre-collision that if they detect an obstacle that you're going to hit, it will apply the brakes to stop you. They'll try anyways. That's a great feature. Okay. Those are all my questions for today.

And thank you very much, Rick. Thank you, Earl, and you have a good day. You too, Howard. Thank you very much. You know, it keeps me thinking. Every time we talk about this high-tech safety things, I really believe, and if you can imagine it, it can happen, I believe that, too. I believe we're going to have a car that you can't crash.

I think it's going to be, of course, eventually it'll be autonomous, but I think we're going to have vehicles in the not too distant future. I'll say within 10 years that you could put a person into the car and say, look, try to wreck the car, and they couldn't wreck it. I mean, I believe it. They could do it within the next two years. Yeah. I think it's coming sooner than 10.

Absolutely. I mean, right now with the emergency stopping for pedestrians backup, I just don't see it. And think what that will do for people that are... Bad drivers. Well, they're bad drivers, yeah. I'll be kind, but I'm talking about seniors, I'm talking about people

with disabilities. I'm talking about people that they take their licenses. I mean they're easily distracted let's call them they try to take my license away one time I had a person report me anonymously as an incompetent driver was that 10 years ago

yeah but that was a scandal that was completely I know but the point is it does happen and I've talked to people seniors largely and you get reported and they take your license away how cool would it be if it were possible to have an accident and everybody could drive

all their lives I mean, all their lines, literally. Like four-year-olds. Yeah, and you wouldn't be driving anyway. It'd be autonomous because after 10 years, that's going to be. You wouldn't have to be 16. If the car can't crash, you can put a 2-year-old in the car. Hey, that's happened.

It's been on the news. The kid goes out. It wasn't matter. You can send your dog to take the car. Go get me some eggs and milk. Happy birthday, my 6-year-old, happy birthday. Here's two cars. Okay, guys.

You pull out your house. We're getting silly. We're getting silly. Nancy. Yeah, we're getting into weeds. Hey, I have a lot to talk about here. Okay. Okay. I want everybody's attention. Please, please. Guess what? Earls? Wait a minute. I'm going to do this right. Okay. Jonathan, I'm counting on you. You can't see the top of the front now. No, I want to go on like this. You just look like a fool. You have to put the, you had to put the. Did you say I got your hand on sideways. Did you say I look like a fool? You better pull yourself together, boy. Hey, Jonathan, you better have me on camera. Okay, now let's turn that baby around. There you go.

Earl's Vigilantes. I'm sure you heard of it, because we've mentioned it every single week. Come on, join us. Earl's Vigilantes. Okay, that's all I'll say, and I'll turn it over to Stu. He's got a lot to say about Earl's Vigilantes. Well, I've got good news. We have shipped out the hats, so you vent vigilantes.

Keep an eye on your doorsteps or mailbox, wherever it's going to wind up. I think we did UPS. And so they're on the way. We have a website, Earlsvigilantes.com, and that's where you go to get a hat. But more importantly, that's where you go

to become an important part of your community, helping others who need help, buying and service from their cars without getting ripped off. We can't do it all. We're just here every Saturday. But we've got our vigilantes contact information online. You go to Earlsvigilani's.

Find a vigilante. Look for your state. You'll find, if we have one in your state, If we don't, then maybe you ought to volunteer to be a vigilante. Well, let's send a hat to Stephen Chimelda. We need a vigilante. Oh, wouldn't it be great? Viguanian in Bali.

Text me or email me your address in Bali. Yeah, Stephen, we need you. We need you, Stephen. And a credit card number, because we're going to charge. Just kidding. We'll cover the shipping. And the vigilantes, by the way, you don't have to be an expert. I think sometimes we overstate that.

You just need to be a concerned person. or someone that realizes we have a problem with automobile retailers and taking advantage of people. If you have a friend that needs help, even if you can help them, you can notify us, and we will act on your behalf to help your friend. You can help the people in your community, you know, by volunteering. So, earlsvigilantes.com, sign up and help not only us,

but the people in your community. And get a hat. Yeah, we're going to have hats and t-shirts and we're going to have all kind of stuff. I'm looking at myself in the camera here. I look kind of frightening now with a mask and the hat. It is. I think it's probably because you have your hat over your headphones, so it's making it. Yeah, and I wouldn't want to walk into a bank like this, right?

I mean, maybe. That's what people do now. I wore a mask into a bank the other day and I got away. Everything was okay, yeah. Hey, we have to get our female mystery shopper a costume. them. We have to get her some kind of a Wonder Woman thing. Yeah. We got a YouTube over there, then.

We do have a YouTube over there, but first, I am going to give out that telephone number. 877-960-99-60, and remember, ladies, you make a lot of decisions, half of purchasing a new car, used car, service. You are important.

$50 for the first two new lady car. Now we are going to go to Mary in LaBelle. Good morning, Mary. Welcome back. Good morning, Nancy. Thank you. You're welcome.

And speaking of vigilantes, Earl's Vigilantes, I made good use of Mark, who is one of your Florida vigilantes, specializing in insurance. That's fantastic. It's the first time I made an insurance claim, and I was quite unsure about how to proceed. He gave me excellent guidance. We are starting the actual repairs Monday.

So I'll have more to say next week. This is our first vigilante success story. I think this is fantastic. Thank you, Mark. I know you're listening. You listen every Saturday. That's great. Yeah, and Mary, thank you for the email that you sent me, you know,

with all those compliments about the terminology and everything that you've learned right here on Ruan cars. We do appreciate you, and we appreciate you calling back. Well, and one of your other vigilantes, Dawn Brown, you made a comment last week about, you know, maybe she knows Donne. Well, I do know Don. And he's given me some guidance in the process, too.

So two of your vigilantes are quite active. That's great. What a plus. I finally know what Don looks like. He sent me a picture. He's exactly what I imagine. Vigilantes.com or was at earlsvigilantes.com. Earl'svigilantes.com.

You know, Mary, I feel like as if that now we all know each other, I mean, literally all know each other, you know. We're not just, you know, verbally exchanging, you know, conversation back and forth. It's a really nice connection. And it's because of you. Thank you. Well, I thank you guys. And next Saturday I'll let you know how the repairs are progressing.

Okay. If the insurance company does what they said they were going to do. Well, you give them hell. Thank you, Nancy. That's the faris sour to me. Okay, Mary, thank you. Thank you. You're welcome.

Have a great weekend. Hey, don't forget, youranonymous Feedback.com. You can take advantage of that. Youranonymousfeedback.com. Oh, well, there you go. Yeah. Looks a little bit like Van Dyke. Who's the actor from back in the 50s?

Yeah, yeah, the Ruffman, Tumbleback. Anyway. Rick should know. Okay, can we do the YouTube now? Yes, we can't, definitely. Okay, this one's from Rico West. He says, I'm wondering why any dealer wouldn't be happy to sell a new car for any amount of profit, or is there really such a shortage of new car stock?

Can't they just order more stock? Well, they do sell. new cars for all kinds of different profits. And it's the term by the skill of the buyer. Because if you are not a skilled buyer, they will charge you a huge amount of money for the same used car that a very skilled buyer will pay thousands of dollars less for.

One of the problems with new car buying is that no two people pay the same price for the same car. You walk into a car dealership and it's Katie Bar the door. They're going to get all the money they can from you, and it becomes an adversarial competition every time you buy a car. That's why the reason we're here, Earl, on Cars, is to try to equalize the car buying experience.

We don't have a problem with car dealers making money on a car. We just want them to tell the buyer how much the car costs and give the buyer the opportunity to shop and compare prices, and you get the lowest price. That's what you do on Amazon, that you do it, That's what you do at Walmart. Any retail store of publics, you shop around and you get the best price. And you are denied that right.

I think it's like an American constitutional right for the free marketplace that you should be able to have that right. The car dealers take that away from you. Yep. And is there a shortage of new cars right now or are we having trouble getting cars in? Inventories are a little low. I mean, we're having certain models. We are. We just got a notification that Chandra production is going to slow down.

There's some kind of problem. Industry-wide, it's recovered a ton from back in the spring and early summer when the COVID crisis cut down on production. Right now, it's probably just more of a typical... We're talking generally, too. Within every situation, right now there is no shortage in general, but there are pockets of shortage. Like we're experiencing one.

Yeah, and if you want to buy Nissan, they've got plenty of, in nissons because people don't like to buy them. If you want to buy a fiat, you can buy there's plenty of fias. Certain models are in high demand, low supply. But within any manufacturer's inventory group of dealers, there are cars that are plentiful and other cars that are short. So there's nothing wrong with that. That's called the marketplace supply and demand. The low supply high demand cars should cost more than a high demand high supply. It's tough though when you got like a car that's almost a commodity. I mean I can speak just for like Rav 4 like Rav 4s are in short supply now but it's a tough deal to try and sell

it for a big big market you still got to sell them I mean probably a little bit more than you would a month ago. Well if the R4 is in low supply then people are going to be buying CRVs and maybe the CRVs in higher supply. You're always going to have shortages. You're always going to have short supplies and high supplies but it should be up to you to determine the car you want and then buy the market price. I don't mind paying too much for a product. That's the one word. I don't mind paying a lot

of money for a product that I can afford to buy as long as I know that I'm not being played a sucker. If I have to pay list price for a product that used to be discounted a year ago

or six months ago, and everybody else is paying list too because of the supply and demand, popularity, But that's okay. You play the market price. For a car dealer, they don't sell at the market price. They sell a special price based on the competence of the buyer. And that isn't meant to be derogatory. You take a young person fresh out of school, never bought a car before.

It isn't the fact he's not smart. It's the fact that he hasn't never bought a car. He's an experience. You take a lawyer, a knock-down, drag-out, a good negotiator, he's not necessarily that smart but he's a negotiating genius he can walk into a car relationship and buy a car near cost

that's not the way it should be everybody should be able to buy the car at the same price given the supply and demand situation of that model and that's a great point a great point and that takes me to the ladies gosh I'll tell you what your negotiating skills

amazing so take advantage share a story with us $50 for the first tune new lady callers $50 to the first two new lady callers and Gail please give us a call back I'm really sorry we're a little backed up with our calls we're going to go to Marty in West Palm Beach thanks for holding Marty hi how are you we're great thank you what can we do for you this morning here's my question theoretically in West Palm Beach in this area you should be since you don't have a dealer

you should be the lowest price of any Toyota dealer. Do you agree that that should be, or are there dealers that can beat your lowest price? We agree that we should have the lowest price. The reason we don't show, or the people don't know, and I'm not going to say the lowest price, nobody can have the lowest price all the time. Sometimes we have the lowest price, sometimes we don't.

but we put our lowest price on every car. The competition advertised their price without their hidden fees and without their dealer-installed accessories. So when they advertise a price, you think it's lower than ours, but it may not be. It might be, but they're going to add it back in on average in this area. It's over $1,000 in hidden fees. We call them dealer fees.

And on top of that, you've got another $1,000 of dealer-installed accessories that are pre-installed in the car and you have no choice. They're going to say you have to take this protection package, this paint sealant, and this nitrogen on the tires, you have to take it because we put it to the car before you got there. So the whole crux

of the problem that we have in dishonesty of the car dealers is advertising a price that you can't buy the car for. Okay, well, but in other words, theoretically nobody should be

lower than you out the door? Well, that's not true. Marty, I'd love to say that, but it wouldn't be true. You know, we have to make a profit, and we make a profit on most every car we sell. And my profit is based on what my overhead expense is, what my variable expenses, supply and demand, the market, and I have to make a business decision. I can say on this car, I want to make $1,000. And the market price and the supply and demand should support me making $1,000 on this car.

Another dealer might make a decision. I can sell the car and only make a profit of $700. So his price will be lower than mine. But this is the free enterprise system. This is capitalism. This is supply and demand in the marketplace. And that's the reason that every product out there, I don't care. when any seller of any product says,

I guarantee you the lowest price, he's lying. How can you? There's 17,000 car dealers in this country, and how could I know or any other dealer know that the price he's going to quote you is the lowest price? You can't do it. There's always somebody that'll have a lower price if you won't look long and hard enough.

Okay, then my next question is, let's say you go to another Toyota dealer. and they give you an out-the-door price. That's the true out-the-door price. And then you go over to your dealership, and your price is higher. So if you say to them, listen, here's my paperwork, they will give me this car for X dollars out the door. Would you match it, or would you say, listen, we have to make a certain amount so we can't match it?

I would not match it. And the reason, not because I have to make a certain amount, but we have a credo, we have a policy, we have a promise that we put our lowest price on every car. And if I were to sell you a car for a dollar less than your next door neighbor, I would be dishonest because I promised that neighbor that was my lowest price. And you just have to be true to it. And if someone did that, and it does happen, we've had people come in and they will take our price and go to another dealership,

and that dealer will give them a lower price. We say, we're sorry to lose your business, but we will not be untrue to our lowest price. We promised you that was our lowest price it was. Congratulations, you've got a lower price. You should buy the car from the other dealer. And should any surprises occur, we'll be here. Yeah, exactly.

Because oftentimes are surprises. But if it's true out-the-door price, if that's the premise, and that's true, it really was, then you should buy the car from that deal. How about the thing that was happening with Al Hendrickson recently? We had somebody on a pretty hard-to-get car recently. We have our posted price. Al-Henrickson down in Carl Springs promised them an outdoor price that was represented a large loss.

And we said, we didn't believe, we didn't insult the guy. We said, okay, well, you got to go find out our price is the price. He went down there and got the car at the price, I think 3,000 less than ours. And, you know, that's a novel. That was the end of the year, end of the month, and he was going on. for a sales record, and he actually sold the car for below his cost. It does happen. Dealers do do that.

So you have to shop. No matter who you think has got the lowest price, there's always a dealer somewhere. If you're good enough, you can buy it for less. Okay. All right. Very good. Thanks for your help. Thank you, Martin.

That was a great question. I think about that a lot, and I appreciate your bringing that to our attention. Yeah, definitely. It was a great question. Keep in touch, Marty. I'd like to hear from you again. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-960, and you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And to Gail, again, give us a call back.

Sorry that you were on hold. And for the ladies out there, as I mentioned earlier, what great negotiating skills that you have. And I'd like for you to share them with us. And you can do that. And you can also, as a new female caller, receive $50, the first two new lady callers. Now, back to the recovering car dealer. I think Stu's got some anonymous feedbacks and text over there. I'll start with a text from Anne-Marie.

Okay. Sorry, Anne-Marie. I'm going to have to go to our next caller, and that is Dorsey. Good morning, Darcy. Hi, good morning. Welcome. I love you, your show. We listen to you when we're in the car Saturday mornings, Nancy and Earl.

Oh, thank you. And appreciate all the info and also on other vehicles other than Toyota's. My question is, do you know of any plans for an electric Toyota? Yes. Right now, Toyota is launching one in China and getting one next year for the European market. pocket. And so we'll see it probably in 2022, 2023. Toyota is admittedly behind the ball. They put all their effort into hybrid technology, which is great. And they were the hybrid leader. The Prius is really a great car. And also, I was watching the news one night, and it said, I don't

remember what year, but they're going to be worth a lot of money. Maybe the first one. I don't know. Anyway. Yeah, Toy is definitely going to play catch-up with all electric cars. And unfortunately, and this bothers me because I'm kind of a tech nut. I love all this high-tech stuff. And I would love to see an electric Toyota, like, right now. But they're going to introduce it into areas of the world where they have stricter emission controls.

So China is really kind of ahead of us on the whole electric vehicle thing. But we'll see it eventually. I think it's the way the whole industry is going. We're going to see the end, you know, in our lifetimes of gas engines. I mean, they'll still be there, but they'll be a, just that they'll be an edge, yeah. Excuse me. Did you ever think that we would come to this, Darcy?

I mean, what an explosion, and it is really going to be something. When I heard of the Tesla, the electric Tesla, I thought, uh-oh, I hope nothing can go wrong with them as you're using it. When they're self-pilot, what is it, autopilot? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm looking to buy a car. in the next year and we're looking at electrics right now and hybrids and there is a website you can

go to for the new green cars or the newest green cars sorry um but anyway thank you for the information i've owned five toyotas and i've always had very good service with my toyota cars Well, thank you. Two celicas, a Camry, and a Tersel. And the first time, that was three celicas, the first time I ever used a Toyota, it was a late model 60s, and my fiancé's father worked for Ford Motor Company in Indiana, and that was his car, and we drove it to Disney and then to Indiana.

and anyway, they're great cars. The only thing I ever had to do with any of my Toyota's was tires and brake pads other than the one with the clutch, which was the Selica, a 74. So that's good service. Wow. And where did you say you lit? No, I'm just kidding. Is that a convertible?

No, I've never owned a convertible. Okay. Well, it's great. Silica's a great car. Darcy's thanks so much for giving us a call, and give us a call again. We love hearing from the ladies, and have yourself a fabulous weekend. And let's all have a better New Year than last. Without a doubt, we will. 100%. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. We can all sleep better then, too. Yes. Thank you. Okay, thank you. 877-960 990-60 Let me jump in there because that was a commercial for Toyota and I always get nervous every time we do that

It's inadvertent and we thank You know the lady caller very much for 11 Toyotas but I have to say That there are cars out there that are as good and better than Toyota's And go to consumer reports and you'll find out You take almost any model car And you'll as you shop around you'll find there's some pretty good products out there there the Asian products typically

the the the Japanese and the Korean vehicles are high quality and we've got some good good quality domestic nameplates you really can't say domestic nameplate anymore because you got cars that are American nameblades made in Mexico made in Japan and you got Toyota has a has factories in Kentucky and Indiana and California so you just have to do your research. And there's no one car that dominates. Toyota has about 15% of the market. That means 85% somebody else has. So there's good products out there. And it's great to be able to share that with the audience. You know, there was a time whenever

we couldn't say something like that, but the list is just getting longer and longer. They're really, you know, building better cars. And there's a lot of options out there. So take advantage of that. We're going to go to John in Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. Two fast questions. One is for Rick. One is for Earl.

First question, Toyota was fined $180 million for clean air violations, models, models 205 to 215 to 215. I want to ask Earl as an owner of one of those cars, how do I know, because we don't have an emission inspection in Florida? How do I know that I have the right emission? from one of my cause. Well, I didn't know that. Stu, did you know about that? Rick, did you heard about that?

What did you say the amount of the fine was, John? $180 million. It was in Friday's paper. Really? And it's nothing compared to what happened to, you know, Toyota's the second largest company, but Mercedes was the largest, and there were billions that they were fined for their diesel. Yeah, there was some, of course,

there was some crime involved there. where they were actually fraudulently modifying the software and the vehicles to make the environmental protection agencies think they were okay and when they would put them on the tester, the software could detect the tester and change the emissions just for the purpose of the test.

So one of the top executives for Volkswagen, I think, went to jail for that. Toyota, my guess is that they made a mistake and they paid for it. Yeah, I just looked at it. Absolutely. That's all it was. Yeah, the fine was $180 million. It was for...

Well, fine, $180 million. And it's only from 205 to 2015 on Toyota models. It was for failing to report them in a timely fashion. So apparently they were reported to the federal government, but these were late fees, I guess. So I would have guessed if there are any defects that they would have come in in a recall or a technical service bulletin. And John, to answer your question, the way you can check that, if you have one of those, if you're curious, I think we could put it on a machine, right, Rick? I mean, we know we can measure emissions, can't we? Any Toyota dealership can measure that kind of thing.

Actually, we don't have gas analyzers anymore because they did away with the testing. Oh, is that? I didn't know that. So we don't have them anymore. Yeah, they deliver reports. Our text room computer would definitely tell if the car is operating properly, and it would show if there's any information coming from. from Toyota telling us that this car needs to be updated or changed. Yeah, we're not seeing anything that there's like existing defects is that, but they were slow to report.

Oh, it's slow to report. So, okay, there you're, there's your answer that I, I didn't understand it. But yeah, your car's okay as long as you're not getting warning indicating lights because Toyota got in trouble, not because their cars on the road with emissions because they didn't report them to the... They said, it specifically says it's not treated as an attempt to cheat on a mission, emission test. they're just slow. So now they have to give compliance reports twice a year now. Second one is for Earl.

Earl is a former General Motors Pontiac dealer. What is your opinion about the new General Motors Largo that they came out with? I don't know anything about it and I'm really amazed that

General Motors, and Mary Barra, the CEO has performed a hat trick, a a miracle to get General Motors back on track. And she's, they're going, all guns blazing, to build an electric car. They are, you know, they, time will tell. The stock hit an all-time high last week.

And I think she's a great leader. I mean, I counted General Motors out when I was, I think a year ago, I said on this show that I didn't think General Motors would be around in 10 years. Now I'm wondering about some of the other manufacturers. Looks like General Motors is in for the long haul. They're making money. They picked up the slack on the electric car, but I don't know anything about their new vehicle.

Well, no, it's the new logo. You know, GM. Oh, I thought you meant a new vehicle. You'll probably see it on a computer, and she's doing a great job. The CEO, Nancy, will be very proud. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, she's a strong force.

General Motors stock within the last 52 weeks have gone up 57%. Yeah. What is the logo, John? What's it look like? It's quite, it's, I can't explain it exactly, but it's not straight like GM, you know, it's like off graphics. And I don't know what they're reason for doing it. But the reason I question is, in the past, the largest beverage company,

company, Coca-Cola changed the not only a formula, but the can, and they immediately had to go back to the old Coke. And then the second thing, in 1962, the largest brewery at that time in the United States was from Ballantyne, at the biggest ale. They changed completely their label, and they crossed on the front of that 125th anniversary. And from then on in, it was downhill. They lost the Hispanic drinking market because they thought it was a different formula. And thereon in, it was a slide that caused them eventually to go completely out of business. So when you're fooling around with corporation logos, you have to be very, very careful because it does have an effect mainly probably on old timers, but people, they've resistance to changes.

You remember when Dodson changed from Nissan, that was a good example. Dawson was a popular car back, was it 50 years ago with one of the earlier Japanese popular cars with Honda and Toyota, and they changed from their name, Dotson to Nissan. Oh yeah, Rick just found the logo for me. Yeah, I like the old one better, but that's just me. I agree with Earl 100% of an old time. It says nothing says electric like lowercase soft blue letters. Well, I just want to get an opinion.

and thank you for the answers. Thank you, John. Thank you so much, John. 877-960-99-60. And Mary Barra, she's the first female CEO, I believe. She's been in that position since about 2014, and like I said, she really is a strong force, best decision that they could have made.

I think that we have, Stu has... All sorts. We'll start with the Emery, a long-time listener, a long-time texter. Emory says, I'm not as fond of a sun or a moonroof as I thought I would be. I do like my leather seats. They're easier to slide in and out compared to trying to slide into a vehicle with cloth seats. Very true. Is it possible to get a vehicle with leather seats but without the moon roof?

If so, which models? Simple answer to your question is yes, but let me address that. A lot of manufacturers tend to pair up these high dollar options together, so moon roofs, typically come in a package with leather. But if you are, play it the right way, you can get a lower model and have leather added separately. So a lot of the manufacturers will have it, their distributors can install leather at the port, as they say, or, and believe it or not, aftermarket leather is a really quality, good value product. It's usually about $1,000. But don't, it's not quite as good as a factory, isn't? Not true, not true, not true.

Do they hit all the areas that the factory leather, everything's leather, like the factory? There's a full leather package where you can do that, and then you can, there's lesser versions of that. But if you do all the seats with it leather, it's usually about 1,000. For a car, a larger SUV might be $1,200 a little bit more. That's a hell of a lot cheaper, right? It is cheaper than the retail price of what the manufacturers are charging. But the cost is cheaper, isn't it? But what the dealer is charging, that's the whole trick, because the dealer might be charging, you know, a ridiculous amount.

The dealer's cost, if you know this, a dealer's cost for a car, it's going to be about $700 to $800 for their cost. So if they're charging you $1,000, a reasonable markup, yeah. If they're charging you at $2,000, you know, you've got to do better. But it's the same thing. You negotiate an out-the-door price, including the leather, and compare dealers, that's the best way to do it. We use, and most dealers in South Florida use a place called Classic Soft Trim, and in some cases, it's even better than the manufacturers. If I want to buy a car in Palm Beach County, I'm a retail buyer, can I go to Classic Soft Trim and buy Direct? Yes, I believe so.

And you'll save a ton of money, right? I'm not sure what they retail it for. I think a dealer's probably more likely to negotiate. They're probably going to be as strict, you know, this is what it costs. Classic Soft Trim and West Palm Beach? I think they're based in, they might be based in Broward County, but they have locations all over there. But you want leather, check with Classic Soft Trim. If you buy the factory leather, you're going to pay.

pay through the nose and you might even pay for the nose if they hire classic soft trim for them because they'll mark it up so see what you can negotiate with classic classic soft trim if you want leather and also there's another company called s a t and they mainly deal with dealers but i also believe they have a retail okay we have got to go to the back to the phones and uh jolo is calling us from west palm beach hi welcome Thank you for taking my call. I have a question. I want to buy.

I have a 2017 Camry. It's a very good car, but I want to get the 2020, but I can't afford it. So I'm looking to buy a use, I believe, 2019 is the same as 2020 Camry. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. Now, do you have on your used car lot at 2019 Camry or 2020 use Camry that I could purchase? Yes, probably.

Most Toad dealerships will have late model Camrys on their use car lot, including us. So my question is, my English, I'm sorry. No, you're good. So what I want to find out, If someone in the used car of Earl Stewart, I'll travel from West Palm because I got a good vibe from you, that you do a good job. But I needed someone to speak Spanish to me. So I don't know. And you're used to use.

I feel better, you know, someone speak Spanish. Absolutely. Yeah, we do. We have sales people. Like I said, most dealerships in South Florida, you have to have Spanish-speaking sales associates. you do as well, and our use car manager. Listen, my English is okay, but

sometimes I have trouble with a certain word. Yeah. It comes out wrong when I say certain things, you know. So, the 2000, one other question. 2018,

19, 20, 21 cameras the same, correct? That is correct. Okay, so. Well, let me give you my use car manager's cell phone number. Do you have your pencil handy? No, no, I'm sorry, I don't, but... I remember, look, in Cuba, I used to work on cars, so I have a good memory.

Yeah, check it. We used to remake American pots, actually, and I had to have a very good memory for that. That's great. If you give me the number, I will put it into my head. Okay. 561-255-05-0-0-7-18. And that's Jose Garcia. Jose Garcia.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay. Okay. Bye, everybody. All right, thank you. Have a good day. Thank you. Stay in touch. Once again, I have to do my disclaimer about this not being an infomercial.

We appreciate the caller. We appreciate the business. And I just want you to know that we're not on the air, to sell toyotas. We do have a toilet dealership and we are not a dealer on the air. We are consumer advocates. We're here to help you buy the right car for you

and most cars are owned by some or another manufacturer. So you probably don't wanna buy a Toyota. You probably wanna buy something else and that's the reason we're not trying to sell you one. We just want you to get a fair deal whether you service, buy or lease the car. This is not an infomercial. don't pay for this time in the air. We are a consumer advocacy show. You know, the better

that you get, the harder it will be for you to, well, not talk to somebody that's calling about a Toyota. Can't hang up. Can't hang up on, right? I can't hang up on him. That's all right. Okay, folks, we got another call, and that's from West Palm Beach, and we have Bobby. Good morning, Bobby. Hi. Good morning, everybody. I've been complaining about service problems lately, and I wanted to call in with what seems to be kind of a newer trend, and I wanted to get your opinion on it. My nephew has a F-150 Ford pickup truck, and he needed to get a, if you pull a trailer, you need to get a plug installed so you can plug your trailer into your car and get the brake lights to work. and it's it's a pretty standard kind of item but apparently you need to go to ford it works better if you go to ford because there's a couple things in the computer that they need to change to make it work correctly but the reason i'm calling is in these days of covid he called mullinacs ford to get a price for that And it's not, it's nothing unusual.

They refused to give him a price. They gave him an estimate, they gave him sort of a range of prices, but would not give him a price. And I've noticed that J.M. Lexus goes out of their way, not to give you a written estimate for a price also. And I'm, I'm just wondering how far do you push these kind of things?

Because I get this sort of impression that if whatever I'm asking for, is a $700 job, and I push them on it, and they don't want to give me a price, they're going to end up saying $850 just sort of to cover themselves. What do you guys think of that? I think it's deplorable, and I think part of it could be just incompetence. I think sometimes when you call car dealerships for service, you end up with somebody where they call it a BTC, which is a group of people that handle phone calls and make appointments,

and do things like this. They have a general training technically and basic things like oil chains and filters and things like that. But if you call, you're probably getting somebody that's not trained to give you a price, and it's awfully difficult to give through to the person that can give you a price.

These people are called service riders, assistant service managers, they're basically service salespeople, and they're real busy. I mean, the car business is booming, and the service business is very busy too. So it's difficult to get someone that can give you the price. They should have told you that

instead of just saying we won't give it to you. I would stick to my guns if I would say to a person, well, I appreciate that you can't give me a price, but if you don't give me a price, I'm not going to come in. I'm going to keep calling Ford dealers until I find a Ford dealer that will give me a price. And sometimes that works. and also putting a request in the form of an email.

Sometimes it will get through. But to get an instant price on service at a car dealership is probably very impossible unless you're talking about routine maintenance. Rick? Well, installing a plug like that should be a very straightforward. That's kind of like saying, hey...

Well, Rick, I'm talking about the BDC. They don't know how long it takes. They don't have a manual there that shows a number of hours. They should have transferred them right to the service department and given them a fraction. The problem is nobody answers the phone in the service to Bourbon. Sorry, sorry, Rick. I know you don't know that, but it's one of the problem.

When people are busy, sometimes the phones don't get answered, and they just have to do the best they can. Shoot from the hip. That's true, and just in general, if I'm standing at the counter in whatever dealer, to speak to somebody who's actually performing a service is, you know, I mean, it's, I don't know if it's like speaking to God, but it's certainly like speaking to St. Peter because you certainly have to go through a bunch of hoops to do it.

Yeah, it's very difficult. And sometimes they don't want to give you, I'm covering up in a way because sometimes they don't want to give you the price on an expensive process. They'll tell you what the old change is, because that's published, but if it's a unique service that you don't have, have. In other words, if you need a price on the car, that means they can charge you more because you don't know what the price is. You know what oil changes cost. You know what tire

rotations are, and you know the basic maintenance. But you don't know, transmission, air conditioning, in this case here, an unusual situation, installing a plug on the Ford pickup truck. So if you don't know the price, when you come in, they can charge you more than you want to pay. That's part of the reason. Do you think I'm on the right track, though, that if you really, really push them for a price that they don't want to give you, that they'll end up giving you a higher price? I don't know. No, I think you're right. I mean, it's like anything else, you should be entitled to get a firm price quoted to you on the telephone or by email to have to physically drive in to a dealership.

And that's what you do when you buy a car. And I'm afraid that they want to do the same thing to you. for any kind of an expensive unusual repair. They don't have a published list. Most car dealerships, the price they get is the price they can, they charge is the price they can get away with. And the service department for their non-published prices. And the service advisors are paid on commission.

So if they can sell you a transmission job for $2,000 instead of $1,500, they'll do it. If you say, I'm going next door to your competition to have the work done, they'll come down to 1,500, just like the car salesman will come down when you tell them you won't buy the car at the price they quoted you. So you have negotiation, haggle, hassle, and service departments just like you do a new car department or a used car. Well, they sure do beat us down, that's for sure. They do. It's terrible.

Great way to put it. Thanks for the information on the show. Thank you, Bobby. Thanks, Bobby. Or you can text us at 7724976530. And don't forget, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And we're going to go back to Rick and get some YouTube from him. Sorry, Stu.

I know you're trying to get to the list you have there. Well, this one shouldn't be too bad. Pretty quick. Donovan is asking, he says, I bought a Porsche from Mazda of Palm Beach, and I was promised a second key, as the car only had one key, with it. Keeping the story short is two months later, and I have no second key. Ten days ago,

they were only willing to pay for half the cost of a key once they realized their key guy could not do it, and it would cost $840 from Porsche. They have since stopped talking to me. How can I get them to pay for the key? I have a Wii O sheet that says, or it does not say they will only pay for half a key, so I'm guessing it says they'll pay for the key. And he says, I'm very disappointed at how they handled this situation, Mazda at Palm Beach, because really is not a great place to buy a car from. Well, unfortunately, it comes down to the fact that if you have a promise it from a car dealer, get it in writing, especially in the purchase process.

They promise you anything. Free loaners, this case here, the key. The salesman will say whatever they have to say to make the sale. And then the salesman will deny he said that afterwards. I advise you never go car shopping alone, have a witness, have all promises committed to writing on the vehicle buyer's order or at least anything, email, text, anything in writing. But the salespeople will deny knowledge of what you claim they said.

Rick? He says he has a Wii O sheet that says that they will pay for the key. They would get him a second key. Okay, so they have that in writing, a Wii O sheet, which is an internal document that he has a copy of. that should work. I would, I certainly would tell them that you'd prefer not to get a lawyer and you have a written promise for the, for a service, part of the, part of the sale process with written a promise, and you'd rather not have to hire a lawyer. And I'd go to the general

manager or someone up the ladder, the owner of the general manager of Mazda. Is that Mazda, West Palm Beach or Palm Beach? Palm Beach. It says Monaster of Palm Beach One right there on North Lake Boulevard Yeah, go to the general manager The dealership used to be Grico They sold to somebody else

Do you know the new owners too? No, I don't Yeah, but take it to the top So you got it in writing and then if they don't Hire a lawyer and the lawyer will do it on a contingency And plus the fact they're going to have to pay your attorney's fees Because that comes on to the unfair

and deceptive trade practice act Where you're entitled They will pay your attorney's fee so it's a juicy it's a juicy bone for the for the lawyer because it's a slam dunk you have it in writing okay we're going to go to uh bob and he's giving us a call again from poem beach gardens welcome back bob well thank you i'm pleased to be on with you this morning up two questions for earl uh just goes back to comments he made i think two weeks ago now one that was on the onset of COVID, all of a sudden his business died, and he was very concerned about his survival.

And then all of a sudden, people started coming to their showroom, and they started buying cars. And I'm curious as to what his theory is, as to why people started buying cars. I have my own thoughts on it, but I've interested in what Earl feels about that. I'm not a psychologist. I've heard other people share in my opinion. I think, personally about the way i feel bob during this covert pandemic i feel very safe in my car nancy and i will sometimes just get in the car and drive somewhere you know nancy'll nancy'll go to a she has an appointment somewhere and i'll say can i come with you uh you know i'll go somewhere nancy said let's go together uh we feel safe in the car and we're tired of being holed up in the

home i'm 80 nancy 78 and uh this pandemic has gotten worse and it's not better. And everything is getting screwed up, include the vaccinations. People are wearing no mask, ineffective mask. So I get my car. I'm happy. I'm safe.

People are buying cars because they love the feeling of having a car. And they want to be in a newer car. One of the, it's just the opposite of restaurants. You know, the restaurant business is decimated. The automobile dealer business is booming and the manufacturers because of the safety of being in a car during the COVID pandemic.

Now, that's just my opinion. I haven't seen scientific proof of that. Yeah. Well, let me state my own view of it from what it made before. I think that buying a new car is a very happy experience for most people. They really enjoy the opportunity to get a new car, the freshness and everything like that. and I think it kind of gives you a moral boost, a moral boost, I should say. It makes you feel a lot better about life.

You know, I needed a new car. Yeah, I did it. Good point. And now it's a big help to me right now. The other question is that you mentioned as well that you think, you know, it might be best for a person if they're looking for a new car that is a new to them car. that I want to consider buying one to two-year-old used car. Yes. And I presume the reason for that is that you feel it's a better value.

Yeah. Well, I wrote a blog on that, ErlanCars.com. The title of the blog is, the right used car is a better value than a new car. If I weren't in the business pub, if I weren't a new car dealer, and I was going to buy a vehicle, I would always buy a two- or three-year-old weight model certified used car.

I would never buy a new car. Interesting. I bought, oh, maybe almost a year ago now, a 2018 Camry. And I couldn't be happier than I am. I mean, it worked fine. It had no problems, no damage, no abuse of any kind. And I'm thrilled I got it at a price that was for me, because I am retired, was really a good financial decision on my part rather than buying a, brand new car you're smart it's a smartest thing you can do yeah all right sir that's all I've got I enjoy your program very much I listen to and want you every week thanks very much thank you

Bob thank you so much isn't it a great statement I make you know you buy a car and it's so uplifting great word uplifting we're gonna talk about uplifting we gotta get back to Stu I'm gonna lift everybody up

gazillion with inspiring text and anonymous feedback. We'll start with Facebook. Stu is an inspiration. We'll start with Facebook. A guy on Facebook has an interesting question. He says, does Toyota have an aging policy for dealer's inventory? For example, a date by which all 2020 cars must be gone to benefit from dealer and customer

incentives. And no, they don't. The dealers are on their own. So you can't sell the car. And we've seen this. We've seen, it's 2021 now. And I guarantee there's a new car dealership somewhere that has 2018. and 2019 models on their lot.

It's not going to be common, but it'll be out there. Well, they incentivize the dealers to sell those cars because they discount them. Right. And they also penalize a dealer that doesn't turn his inventory. If you want to have a fresh inventory, you have to sell cars. And there's a lot of pressure on all car dealers, new car dealers, to sell cars quickly because if you want to have them replaced with new inventory, fresh inventory, you have to sell it first. If you have a lot of cars sitting on your lot too long, you don't get the fresh

inventory and your competition does. Yeah, and then what happens is if there is an incentive on it, at some point the manufacturer will give the final payout. They'll say, we don't care if you sell or not, if there's a $1,000 incentive, here's your money, good luck, and then the dealer's on his own. Okay, the next one. This comes from Cheryl to text. She's a good morning.

This is Cheryl. I went to Wallace Kia to purchase a new telluride, and I noticed on the sticker a $10,000 add-on. When I asked the salesman what it was, he says, because this car is undervalued. What's your take on this? You can hear the tone in my derisive laughter, my chuckling at this is my take on it. It's just a lie. It's a scam.

It's just a, we talk about it all the time. It's the phony-monroney. It's added on. It's just, it's just to create a higher starting point for a negotiation. And sometimes it's real. I don't know anything about the tell you ride, but. It's a big old SUV. Toyota had a Super that came out,

it's two drives one, and about about a year ago. And has it been a year on the Super? Well, yeah, it's been, yeah. Yeah, and well, first came out, we had dealers that we knew, Toyota dealers, they were selling them for as much as $50,000 over a sticker. At least, it's got a $55,000 sticker.

They're selling for $150,000 plus. Yeah, so it's supply and demand sometimes Dick takes the end-up sticker, but it's imagined supply and demand, that typically dictates it, they will try, and they will tell you it's high-demand, low-supply, but it's not. So anytime you see a denim label 99 times out of 100, it's BS.

Sometimes it is a low-supply high-demand. In most cases, that same sticker is going to be on every car in stock, regardless of how special that car is. So it's just a bunch of garbage. Let's see. I think we have a call. in the corner of my eye there's flashing

and there's beeping going on over there something's going to say anything we're not going to get through any of these texts that I'm just letting you all know right now okay we're going to go to Mark who's holding and Mark's calling us from Palm Beach Gardens good morning

good morning welcome back thank you I just wanted to I hadn't heard any of the callers mentioned I just wanted to wish Erwin Nancy a happy anniversary. Oh, thank you.

Oh, thank you. And at the same time, I wanted to give Earl a little bit of advice myself, especially on your anniversary, never mention your wife's age live on the radio.

You might suffer on your anniversary. That's good advice. I'm afraid I put my foot in my mouth there, didn't I, Mark? Mark, it came with our It came with our relationship from the very, very, very beginning.

I won't tell you why. All right, good. A subject for another day. Have a wonderful day. Thank you, Mark. Thanks, Mark. Back to Stu. Okay.

Let's stay over here. Why can't car dealerships just price their products like everyone else? What is the purpose of haggling for the best price? car dealers claim that their profits and sales are down. Maybe that's a clue that this method isn't working out so well for them. Maybe if they try doing the same way we buy lawnmowers and dishwashers, they could control their sales profits and make it a better experience for their customers. Well, the car dealers, there's a lot of car dealers.

They take Chevrolet. I don't know how many thousands of the Chevrolet dealers. You go in any market, and there's a whole bunch of each dealer within just a few minutes drive. So a Honda is a Honda is a Honda, a Chevrolet is a Chevrolet, you know, a Corvette at this dealership is the exact same product as a Corvette at the one five miles away. So you're selling the same product, and if you put your price on the car and said that's it, then you are empowering the consumer, the shopper, to buy the lowest price. You say, well, that's what I do with all the other products. The car dealers don't like that. I will say this, too.

The manufacturers bear some responsibility in this because in many markets, we call it over-dealer. They put too many. Why do you need to have five Chevrolet dealers in Palm Beach County metro market? I'm not sure whether it's four or five, but that's too many. You're talking about a high-price product.

The average Chevrolet sells for $40,000. Why do you have to have five dealers? The manufacturers do that because they can do it, because they can add the dealers, and the more dealers they add, the more Chevrovers they sell. Why? Because the competition between the dealers, the cutthroat competition, induces them to sell more cars. And it's a vicious cycle, causes the dealers to resort to skullduggery and lying and cheating to sell the car. So it backfired on the manufacturers. It's not real competition. It's deceptive competition.

It's impossible, in most cases, for a car dealer, to put a price on the car and stick to it. I mean, it's called one lowest price, and some dealers, most dealers just can't do it. Very good. Let's jump over to anonymous feedback. Hey, Earl, I used to work for you. wanted to say your way of doing business and your conviction that your way is the right way changed

me for the better as I moved on with my career. My favorite anecdote was the time one of our customers had a car seat and his salara gets stuck. He was quoted by us for an expensive repair, but that wasn't the whole story. Do you remember this? I would love to hear the story again on the air. Gosh, I'm sorry. I remember this. We had a customer who had a salera convertible and his car his seat stopped slut going back and forth so um he came into the service department and was quoted a really expensive repair maybe a seat replacement and he declined it but he went home and got in his garage got a flashlight and he found out there was a penny they got stuck in on the tracks and he called you and you met him and he gave you the penny and you still have this penny

it's in your well it's in your office at work you've been there during the covid thing but um and you invited him into the our management meeting it was a lesson about, you know, taking a step further. And the service manager was in the meeting, of course. Yeah, and everybody heard it, and it really was. It was a great story. And it was an exercise and be able to, you know, admit in a mistake. But also taking, you know, don't, you know, we get caught up in routines.

All businesses do, and you just make assumptions. And it just takes a little bit more thinking. So I remember that. That was a good thing. Well, you know, that's the case for, I'm hoping we were just stupid. I'd always rather be stupid than dishonest. So we just didn't do a good job of diagnosing the problem. And we charged and we quoted the gentleman a huge amount of money.

And it was just, fortunately, it was so high, he laughed at it and went home and found the penny in the track causing the problem with his vehicle. I think it was similar to, we did analyze it. It wasn't intentional. It was definitely a mistake. But it was, I think there was, we assumed it was the motor had gone out in electric sea. because we had seen this happen more often, but it just took a little further investigation. But it made us all a little more humble

by having him in our meeting with the service manager, and he told the story, and we all felt humbled on the fact that you've got to believe the customer is right, and sometimes you have to give the customer the benefit of the doubt. And now, see, it came back. There's a karma, right? And he calls the radio show, and we tell the story, and thousands and thousands of people hear it.

Thank you very much for the text. And we told the story, and now you paid me back because now we pick up business as a result of that. And I'm doing my own infomercial. You're doing it. But I remember you carry the penny with you all the time. You got the penny dead? And he kept the penny as a reminder.

Yeah. Great story. Excuse me, Stu. We're going to go to Jupiter Farm, so where Frank has been holding. Good morning, Frank. Well, good morning to you all. it's always appropriate to let you know what's happening in my life with some of the car dealers and things and especially since you've been talking about service departments i have um 2018 ford f-150

less than 5,000 miles and um last few months ago it had a battery issue so i went up to um way up in fort pierce where you mystery shop with burn i said let me go see these guys um it's about a five-hour wait while they test your battery and then retested. And they finally gave me a new battery under warranty, which was nice. And I guess when they don't reset things, maybe Ford doesn't have quite the memories that the Toyotas have. But the, what do you call those things? The running boards wouldn't come out and things like that. Anyway, it went back and got them all reset. But that worked out. But by not completely resetting, all of a sudden, I tried to drive the truck, and it wouldn't turn, no steering. So I thought, okay, I'm an old guy. I'll just look under the hood and see

if maybe the fluid's low. Couldn't find any fluid. There is no power steering fluid. It's electric steering. And so it had to be towed in, and I called different dealers. Because I did not buy the truck from them, they did not want to bring it into their service department. I bought the truck when I retired on the Air Force up near Melbourne, Cocoa Beach, Patrick, and I wasn't going to towed 100 miles back to them. Finally found a dealership down here that would take the truck, Al Packer on military trail. I don't know if you mystery shopped those guys recently, but... No, it's been a while.

But anyway, they brought the truck in, and they said, it's going to be a while because this is well before Christmas and the holidays. So it sat there for nearly three weeks. But they gave me a truck to use in the meantime, which is a very nice, a loaner vehicle. And so anyway, then they called me a couple days ago, and it's fixed. and all it was was it had just reset the electric something happened in the electric when i guess the battery removed and it just locks up i mean you can't turn that daggum thing it's just it goes straight and that's it so anyway they also took care of another trim piece under warranty so they were very very good here's where it comes in for a little bit of um for your mystery shop i was bringing

the truck back not sure where to turn it in and so i'm in the parking lot i see a kind of a large heavy, possibly overweight, salesman with a couple customers. I say, may I answer your question? On with customers. I'm not going to talk to you. No, no, no. It's just a simple question.

Where did I take this truck? On with customers. Oh, my gosh. Okay, interesting concept. I said, let me keep that in mind when I go to come back and look for a Merchard or Lincoln, whatever it is. But anyway, so I sat in line,

I guess they really do a lot with the police because there were so many police cars and county vehicles in there. I think I was the only non, you know, person with a regular, regular truck, but they were very good, very polite. It all worked out well, and everything works good. And so just to let you know that, and it was zero, they didn't pay, didn't charge me a dime for anything. And luckily it was all under warranty, and they were, they were pretty good. But you hear these different tails, and you're right, they just, they'll just see, they'll charge you whatever they can get away with.

Yeah. I had drawn, I needed some trim work done between me. Molok and that people up in Stewart, there's about $200 or $300 difference for some trim between the hood and the windshield. So it's amazing. You got to do your shopping and you got to do like you guys tell, you're out-the-door price. And sometimes they are very sensitive and wanting to give that information to you.

I'm just astonish how rude that guy was to you. Oh, I know. And I told one, he said, just sit in line. So I sat in line for about 20 minutes. No one came to me. I said, okay, let me get out. I have my mask on. Everyone, likely, most everyone did have masks.

I got to give them credit there. And I saw this one guy named Jim, and he was very apologetic, and everything worked out. They're making so much money on the cops, they don't care about the other customers. That's true. Here's my little weird joke for the day for you guys. Back when I was 20, the 70s were pretty good. Now that I'm in my 70s, or 70s, the 20s aren't so good. I'm sorry.

It's nice to be able to live long enough to make those jokes. That's great. It's funny that we're calling we're in the 20s again, the roaring 20s. Yeah, the roaring. You might recall several months ago, I came in with my son to buy a pickup truck from you guys with the Costco price. And I thought, oh, you know me. I call on a lot. Maybe you'll give me another couple of dollars off.

You guys were so good and so firm. It's true. Well, your price is your price, and I don't care if you're Frank or if you're, you know, Donald Trump, you're not going to get a change in price. So I admire that you guys stick by your guns. Thank you. No, thank you. We have to be true.

No, you are. You're very good about all that. So you have a good weekend, and, of course, we'll say happy anniversary like everyone else is doing. Thank you, Mark. Thanks so much. Thanks so much, Frank. And thanks for all the compliments. Okay.

we are going to go back to Stu and anonymous feedback lightning round here we go oh boy I have an idea that will solve the problem of and this is in all caps no one ever using their turn signals an annoying alarm that sounds if you change lanes or make a turn without first turning on your directional signals genius it is genius and it is available already it's called lane keep assist or lane departure alert and it is an annoying thing and I use it to shame my wife if she makes it turn changes lane without putting on the signal because it will beep loudly and it is annoying the problem is you can turn it off it saved me it saved me from a collision a couple weeks ago yeah it's a it's a high-pitch annoying beep and it's there to annoy you so you don't move into the lane without looking but it does would have the extra effect is if you don't signal you get it alerts you but you have to keep that button you have to keep it turned on

I don't know if this is this a commercial. I just wanted to say that the 2020, 2021 Rapp 4 is a perfect vehicle. Thank you for selling me one. You're welcome. That was kind of a commercial. There aren't those perfect vehicles. You'll find that out. Wait, you have a big surprise coming.

Just kidding. With more new cars going to CVTs, and that stands for continuously variable transmission, what are the warning signs that it is failing? or about to fail. And that sounds like a Rick question. Kind of hard to say because I haven't seen very many of them fail. They had annoying drivability problems when they first came out.

There were a couple as the growing pains with any new system. You know, it's going to take some time from workout bugs. But truth be told, they've been pretty reliable for the most part I would say pretty much you're going to look for normal things like you would with any part that's going to fail. Odd noises, vibrations like when you're accelerating, maybe just slipping in the transmission. Lightning around, let's go.

Earl, I've heard many times that competition is good for consumers and business. In that regard, your dealership and credo are the ultimate competition to all the dealerships around you to keep coming up with better business models or better dirty tricks. On the flip side, I have to believe that those dealerships are also there to keep you in check. To the point of you providing at all

times your out-the-door price, I really appreciate this as a benchmark so that I can go shopping all across the nation to find dealers with the best price for me. And we offer that. Well, congratulations. See, that's exactly the way life should be for the consumer.

I do that on Amazon every day. I mean, I'm a buying fool. I'm self-quarantine. Nancy and I are a home a lot. I'm buying a bunch of stuff. So I do, I take my Amazon price, then I go to Target, then I go to Walmart, then I go to Costco, and I'm buying at great prices, and it's a wonderful world environment for the consumer, except if you want to buy a car. That's right. So by all means, take, if you can find a dealership that you know is being true,

to putting their best price on a vehicle, out the door, take his price, and don't buy it from him. Go to another dealer and be sure that you get an out-the-door price from him and keep on doing that. Be careful, but keep on doing that until you get the best price. We talked about this earlier in the show. It's impossible for someone to guarantee the lowest price. If you see a car dealership advertising, I guarantee the lowest price.

He's a liar. And if he wants to sue me, sue me. because I'm telling the truth. You cannot guarantee the lowest price on any product, much less an automobile. That's right. And I just love going to my computer and spending money because I have so many choices. And speaking of choices, pick up Earl's latest column. Go to Earl on cars and you can find it choosing and buying cars in the digital age.

Choosing and buying cars in the digital age. now back to stew anonymous feedback dealers such as greco ford with their market adjustments and fake fees clearly exemplify how they view their customers also why cardioles are held in such low regard by the public okay um does it damage a vintage car engine by running unleaded fuel if so what would happen do you advise adding a lead additive to avoid damage older cars don't have the hardened valve seats, which is one of the items. So, yeah, the unleaded fuel can cause issues with older cars. So a lead additive is kind of required for running those old engines. Just throw a fishing weight in your gas tank and you're good. Don't do that. Hi, Rick.

This is anonymous feedback. Hi, Rick. Can you explain, oh, I always wanted to know this. Can you explain how a clutch with a manual transmission is able to start an engine with a dead battery, because I used to do that all the time. Yeah, basically, you get the vehicle rolling with the clutch disengaged, and then hop in, you kind of, or have someone in the car, and while it's actually rolling, the person pops the clutch basically, just lets it out quickly, the speed of the car.

And the guy pushing the car falls down because suddenly, you know, I just had a flashback. When you first pops it, they usually wind up putting the slamming a face plant against the car, then they fall down. The spinning of the engine... Young people have no idea of what us. Just enough power from the alternator to start the engine. Yeah, I used to do it myself. We'd run alongside the car and hop in the seat.

You're actually turning your engine into a generator for a few moments so that it will create electricity to start itself, and then if you let it charge up enough, it can restore your battery sometimes. Very cool. Next one. I live in Pennsylvania. there is a road tax put on every gallon of gas how will electric cars be able to pay this tax they will not be able to pay that tax well change the name of the tax of all the electric

tax yeah but you don't have to worry about the states figuring out a way to charge your taxes yeah that actually was brought up by one of our callers a while out back where they mentioned that the electric cars might be getting an additional charge on their registration each year because of not using fuel. Sure. The revenue will continue, folks. The politicians have no problem. We've not.

We've not for our government officials. All right. This should wrap it up here after this one. This is for Earl. You're going to remember this well. Did sales of the Pontiac Firebird increase when it was in the smoking of the Bannett movie in 1977? I watched the movie last night and recalled you talking

on the radio about being a Pontiac dealer in the 70s. It may have been before the concept of product placement and advertising started. Before you get on this, let me just tell you, as a kid in the 70s, and I love that movie, and when you had the Pontiac, the black one in the showroom, the Bert Reynolds edition with the big fire brig on the hood, and I fell in love with that. I've never been a car guy, and I don't know what happened to sales. All I know is that my mom drove one for a little while, and I was the coolest kid in school. No, the sales did obviously spur.

I just have to a little anecdote here. We sold Bert Reynolds' father. Didn't sell it to him. We gave him because he bought it or probably it was given to him a limited edition Black Trans Am who lives in Palm Beach County. So we delivered that to Bert Reynolds' father. My other claim to fame is Bert Reynolds and I

went to the same high school. And he graduated in 1956, and I graduated in 1958. but yeah the firebird was hot and Pontiac was rock and roll back in those days it was number three in sales nationally which that was only for about about a year or two before they went out of business there was a Bonneville in front of me the other day on the road

like 80s era with an antique plate on the back of it I'm thinking really this just sit in my driveway antiques hey Stu trivia question for you in the movie what did Bert call the car Oh, God, man. Don't do that to me, baby. Trigger. Trigger, okay.

I remember Snowman and Bandit. Last one, we have a text, and this is a good one that says, Good morning. As a consumer, isn't Gap Insurance the service and the service of the car is supposed to be included in the finance charge? Also, as a consumer, can't we purchase a car with just our signature under the Truth and Lending Act?

gap insurance is not included in the finance charge of the car in a lease most manufacturers will include gap insurance because they own the vehicle and they'll be included in the lease and so you're not paying well you are probably paying extra I'm sure that cost part of the cost but yeah and as far as purchasing a car with just your signature in the truth in lending at I'm not quite sure if I understand the question correctly without a down payment I'm not quite sure what the question is if you want to send a

clarification of what we'll try to answer that. But I think we're ready for the mystery shopping report. Okay. Yes, the lines are all shut down, and we really need to hear from you, Fuel Texas, how you rate the mystery shopping report. That mystery shopping report is from West Palm Beach, Nissan. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

Okay, this week we visited West Palm Beach, Nissan, and Riviera Beach, Florida. This was right out there near an I-95, right across from Edmore's Honda. And this is another Nissan that we shopped in recent weeks. Overall, we've observed Nissan dealerships tend to behave a little more aggressively with regard to advertising sales taxes

with this sort of thing and our mystery shopping reports. We've received calls and comments from listeners who call out Nissan dealerships for poor customer experience. Nissan also ranks at the bottom of the annual NADA dealer attitude survey. Nissan has the lowest

number of satisfied dealers. I trip a lot of this to the fact that Nissan aggressively goes with the stair-step incentives, where it's kind of like having a horse whip out on your dealers that you have to sell a certain number of cars or else you don't get a kickback from Nissan. And they have to sell cars aggressively.

Otherwise, they can't compete with the other Nissan dealers who do sell, of course, aggressively. So they have this incentive that you have to sell X number of cars every 30 days or every 60 days or every 90 days. If you don't, it can cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars. So they have unhappy dealers, they have unfair incentives driving them to do unfair things to you, the consumer, and the whole Nissan experience is a mess. Also, and I just, and Stu just got, he did the report here. I forgot about this.

Nissan is pushing for the ownership of multiple dealerships in a market by a single dealer. And I said earlier, when he mentioned this, that Saturn tried that, you know, 30 years ago, whatever it was. And it gives the dealers a control. I mean, it gives them a monopoly. So if you have one Nissan dealer that owns all the dealerships in the market,

then he can fix the price. prices and he can charge anything he wants to. That takes away your right is competition to be able to find a lower price. And of course the dealers have already taken away that right in other ways. Nissan just wants to pour gasoline on the fire. They call that clustering. I didn't know that. Reduces competition.

Okay. Around here, mega auto group owner Terry Taylor owns two-facing Nissan locations. Southern 441 is a Terry Taylor store and Green Acres in Nissan is a Terry Taylor's store. We thought he owned West Palm Beach Nissan and Sue and I talked about this at the beginning of the show. I think he still does own it. And what we believe he's done

is registered West Palm Beach Nissan with the state of Florida in a corporation called CD Corporation System and it's Florida CD Corporation. And that's a registration company that is all over the United States. And if you want to own a business in a particular state, you could use CT to a corporation system, and nobody knows who you are.

And it's registered legally in the state. And so if you get sued, the person doesn't know who to sue. Yeah, CT stands for Could Be Terry. Hmm? It stands for Could Be Terry. Yeah, could be Terry, yeah. I like that. Very good.

Almost as good as Josh. In any case, it's been three years since we sent Agent X to West Palm Beach, Nissan, to investigate far too long. So this week, we sent Agent Lightning, our female agent, to look into an ad we found offering a $6,504 discount off a new 2020 Nissan Ultima. Although the ad implied there were 19 Ultimans to choose from, the fine print, I love the fine print, indicated otherwise. Instead of the old stock number trick, that's where they put a stock number in there, Each car's got a stock number. They use the VIN number, far easier, but too many digits for me, 17 digits on a VIN. So if you want to buy that car, the fine print says, you can only buy this one car.

And if it ain't here, you ain't going to buy it. www. www. Ain't going to happen.com. Okay, here's the report. I'm speaking of the first person as if I were Agent Lightning. My husband dropped me off at West Palm Beach, Nissan, mid-morning. My plan was to tell the salesperson

I'd take a lift to the ship and I tended to leave in a new Nissan. I love that. Did she think of that herself? I love it. I entered the show of Roman and was immediately greeted by a mask wearing salesperson named Kevin. I told Kevin my story. I've been borrowing a female member's car for the last year

but I had to return it unexpectedly. This made me carless. I said I found the ad for the Ultima on their website and hoped it was for real because I wanted to drive the car home today. I expected to pay the price I saw in the advertisement, putting the pressure on it. Kevin asked how I got there.

I told him I had to call Lyft. All right. I was led to his desk and Kevin got right to it, collecting all my personal contact information, writing it down on some kind of forum. I gave him everything he asked for until he wanted my social security number. You know, I mean, that's,

It's just so gross. I mean, you just don't ask. Even companies ask for the last four digits. What's the last time anybody looks in the eye and said, tell me what your social security number? I was in college. Just not right. I told him I wouldn't be sharing this since I intended to pay cash for the car.

Kevin then began to try to persuade me to give up my social security number, saying that the best deal would be for me to get the best cash rebates, and then finance through PNC. He said, what's the PNC statement? It's a bank, obviously, but People's National Bank? I don't know. That sounds kind of communist, I'm not sure. I don't know whether that. That would be PNB. Anyway, he said they worked closely with them, and they have the best race.

Now, what he really was, Kevin was really saying is they have a reserve agreement with PNC Bank. And a reserve agreement is what dealers have with the banks that they finance their vehicles through. and they get a kickback. So when they charge you 3%, they get a percentage of that 3% kickback onto the table that you don't know about. And sometimes they get

1% of the loan, sometimes you get a half a percent, a quarter percent. Whatever they can negotiate with their bank, they get a kickback. It's called a reserve agreement. You're not really financing your car through the dealership, you think you are. You're getting through the bank and they're getting their

money onto the table. I waited outside for a couple of minutes and then saw Kevin pulling up in a gray Nissan Ultimate. I walked around the vehicle, read the Monroney label. This was the same car. Now, this is interesting. This is the same car that was in the ad. That is really almost unheard of. And the then, same then, exactly.

I tried not to look surprised. We took a short test drive, and when we returned, Kevin went over the features of the vehicle. He informed me that he was throwing in window tent for me. Give me the tent free. We went back inside the showroom. Ked led me to his desk and excused himself to speak with his manager. I sat down and waited for 15 minutes, at which point Kevin came over to say it would be just a couple minutes more.

He said his boss was working on my deal. He left, and I waited another seven minutes. You know, that's a long time to ask anybody to wait. It happens so often in car dealerships almost regularly in a mystery shopping report. and just, you're sitting there twiddling your thumbs. Even when the dealerships aren't busy, you're waiting. I don't know. Kevin came back with a worksheet.

He took $2,254 off the $25,435,000, 435 MSRP. Then he took off another $2,750 rebate. Sounds good, right? The total discount was $5,04,000, not quite to $6,500, about 1,000 short, off the promise in the end. But, of course, the discount wasn't really even 5,004. Here come the ads. He added 1795, 1,0795, for an appearance package, and that's just pure BS. Just put in your memory bank, folks.

Deer appearance packages, BS, highly inflated, worthless product. And he added a $999 dock fee. That's a hidden fee, aka. dealer fee and a number of other names. So they got $1,000 for a hidden fee and $1,800 for a BS in appearance package. Next came what appeared to be legitimate sales tax and non-tax fees. By effective price was $23,225, $4,294 higher than the price in the advertisement. What? I told Kevin this will not do Kevin wanted to know what was wrong

I looked at him like he had two heads and said the problem was the price he just gave me Kevin asked what do you want it to be I mean car dealership lingo that's a different language they speak you come in they advertise the price you say you want the ad price they give you a price it's not the ad price

and then you say and then they say, What do you want it to be? I'll make it anything you want. Just tell me what you want it to be. I told him I wanted the ad price and asked about the appearance package in Dockfeet. Kevin explained that the appearance package

included storage guards and window tent. I said, I thought you said you were throwing it in and you're given to give it to me free. Kevin said he was. And? Well, you're just, you know. You can't make this stuff up. Kevin excused himself, came back with Brian as boss.

We named names, folks. Really, Brian, and really, Kevin? Brian seemed very concerned. So Kevin told him that I was unhappy. He asked me to tell him the price that would make me happy. It was surreal. I love Agent Lightning because I didn't realize she'd been doing this for almost a year or two. No, no, since August, so five months, four months.

But I mean, you know, so she is her, she's not in the business. She's not in the, wasn't involved in the car business before. So she's able to look at this objectively, and her shock is real because this is what a customer feels like when the same thing happens to a real customer. I ask that at this point, not much can make me happy. Brian picked up the worksheet and said he noticed a mistake. I love this. I'm an Academy Award. Oops! Wait a minute.

Got a mistake here. He left, returned with another worksheet. The numbers were the same, but Brian began to write notes on it, saying he could have taken another $500. Oh, I just found a mistake with $500. After scrambling, he asked, does that make you happy? It didn't make me happy. He started explaining that I could theoretically get an additional

50, and here we go, now we're getting into the deep, dark web. This is a dirty little secret that he didn't want to talk about. I could theoretically get an additional $1,500 off if I qualified for the military rebate. Was I wearing my uniform? I mean, was I... It's all theoretical. The college grad rebate, well, how does she know?

How does he know she wasn't a college grad? You never asked her. And the Nissan Loyalty Rebate. How did, you know, maybe there's a family member that had a nice son. So then that is just pure BS. I think they established that when he was at the beginning on the information sheet in the beginning. Oh, okay. Yeah, I think she mentioned that.

Oh, you think she said they asked her if she was a college judge? They went through. Oh, okay, okay, okay, there we go. Okay, and, but it wasn't on the, it wasn't on the fine print. I don't think so. No, it wasn't. I checked it. It was not on the prime print.

So there's a, there's a violation of the law. I mean, the fine print itself. as violation of law, but in this case here, they didn't even say that the price is based on, you have to be a college graduate, you have to be in the military, and you have to on Nissan. The odds against that are about

like the odds of asteroid hitting the earth. You have to multiply each probability together. Exactly. Exactly. I brought up the appearance package and suggested he could start there, take that off. Brian asked me, if he took off the appearance, if I take off the appearance

package, will you do the deal today? I won't do the deal. I love this. I mean, Agent Lightning. I won't do the deal if the appearance package stays. So she didn't answer the question. She came back in and bam. And I love that. Brian opened the calculator on his phone, tapped away.

Seriously, for a few seconds, I scratched out the appearance package. Academy Ward time again, and wrote down 23, 293, 25. He said, that's your new, out-the-door price. And I said, can I get something official? I asked him, Brian Lyft, came back in a minute, with a new worksheet. Worksheets not official either. It says rather than a worksheet, this is not a legal document. Well, an out-the-door price of 23-155, a little lower than what he just told me.

Then he made yet another handwritten adjustment. I mean, he is really tap-dancing. He's tap-dancing, he's blowing smoke, warring the out-the-door price by another $82. saying that represents the accurate tag title fee. Now that makes me wonder, do they inflate the tag and title just to get a few more bucks out of the poor customer? Maybe.

It adds up over time. It adds up, yeah. Brian asked if I was ready to sign in, I said, No, I need to leave. Kevin and Brian looked a little puzzled. Kevin asked me how I was getting home. Lift, I said. So there we are, folks.

I mean, this is a classic. old school, highly structured car dealership, something that dates back to the 1960s. I mean, that's how old school this is, manager, salesperson, old school. And we were able to price a 2020 ultima at truecar.com, but a comparably equipped 2021 model came in around the same effective price, $21,000 after dealer fees. dealer equipment. This tells us the West Palm Beach Nissan was overcharging for last year's models. So you could have bought current 2021, and they were trying to sell with 2020 for about the same price, which is ridiculous. There we are. And it's voting time, and we have to decide now grading

on the curve. We're going to give them an ABC, D, or F. You can grade it. You can count D. They'll still be on the list, but they'll be at the bottom of the list. And we're restructuring our good dealer, bad dealer, and the recommended and un-recommended by having only the worst to the worst and they do not recommend. And the recommend in the list, you'll have to choose one on the top or the bottom, and that'll give

you more flexibility in choosing your dealership. Okay, votes. We're getting them coming in. We have Linda, of course, gives them a big, fat F, and we also have a D. Who gave us the D here? Doesn't matter. I'm

going to go with that. With a D. A D? Keep them on the bottom of the recommended. Now, I do want to say we are remodeling the whole recommended and you're going to like this. We're going to combine the mystery shopping reports with the recommended dealer list where you should be able to, and that's why it's taken a little bit longer, click on the dealer with who just has a grade and we'll rank them by grade. And you can make your own decision whether you think they're recommended or not.

Then you can click and see if they have mystery shops. It'll link right to the mystery shops. A little bit more dynamic way to do it. Wow. That's great. Okay, who else has got some boats, Rick? Well, we've got Wayne with a D-minus, Guy with an F, and M-Av, an F, Donovan, F, Tim Gilliland, tell Kevin we know how math works, D-minus,

Tom Steckle with an F, and Mark Ryan F, and he says, happy anniversary to Earl and Nancy from your loyal listener in Iowa. Oh, well, thank you very much. Well, my darling wife and a companion in crime, what do you say? In crime. Well, first I've got to see, it seems like something from Candid Camera, and then we've got Fred Astaire, the tap dancer,

and what a shame, unfortunate. F. Okay. And they continue to pile in, a range between F and D minus. Yeah, I think I'm going to go with a D minus. I'll say, I almost want to fail them. Here's why I'm on the horns of that dilemma, because they did break the law.

And when I say break the law, the fine print is breaking the law because it's supposed to be conspicuously displayed. Anything that modifies the advertised price must be conspicuously displayed. Fine print is not conspicuous. In this case here, they didn't even have them to find print. So I just changed my mind.

When I said it, it sounds so bad, I'm going to, I'm going to give them an F because that's, you know, if you're going to, we're great on the curve. And most of the other dealers out there on the recommended list, I think all of them, hopefully, I'm not wrong about this, when they modify the price, they put it in the fine print. And we can't, that's a law break because the Federal Trade Commission says that's the price, but everybody does it. On the curve, I think we've got to fail, West Palm Beach, Nissan. You know, I have to ask, did West Palm Beach, Nissan, did they think that they could just take advantage of a desperate situation because that's, you know, what they understood the female mystery shopper to state? All she was doing was saying, hey, you've got a pretty good chance.

if you're honest if you give me the deal I'm here to drive away and she was so clear and then they had the audacity to ask her again and then she had to shout

I don't see the mystery shopper the female mystery shopper shouting about anything but she did say lift yeah I don't have a doubt at all that their behavior was guided by the fact they thought she was stranded at the dealer have no car

and she's got to take it home and I'm sure that was the reason why she said that just to make them feel a little bit more free to do their worst or do their best as the case would be exactly you know it was just a done deal

she couldn't run out the door because she didn't have a car get in there they could still work on her while she's waiting for lift to show up yeah kudos to our female mystery shopper what a how did they

say what a what a spiders and weaving this web and what a tangled web we weave yeah so they just fell right into it all right that is the mystery shopping report from westbound beach nison and we have i think two minutes left uh so well actually we have one all right time for us to wrap it up another great show ladies thank you for all your calls gentlemen thank you so much for participating and making us party your morning. We'll see you're right back here next Saturday morning. Have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe.

Vettombe Vettom Vettom Vettom Vettom Duk Duh Thank you.