Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.25.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Wallace Mazda of Stuart

Episode Date: January 25, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Wallace Mazda of Stuart to see the sales rep will disclose the Takata Airbag Recall on a 2013 Subaru Outback. 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. “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, 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, folks.

Well, we're back, and I have to say that there's an important part of our team missing this morning temporarily. Nancy Stewart, my co-host, had a little surgery yesterday on a 10. and her foot. And the doctor says she should skip the show today, but she's with us in spirit and she will be probably calling in the show a little bit later. And she'll be fine. She'll be

back in business next week. For you new folks to the show, my name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. And I've been doing this show with Nancy. She's only missed one of the show and that was a double knee replacement. So she's a real trooper.

She rarely misses the We've been doing this show for 17 years and a different radio station when we started, start out half an hour, built to two hours, and we've got quite an audience. We're different from any other show you've seen because we're candid, we're real, we're transparent. We tell it like it is. We talk directly to the issues of buying cars, leasing cars, maintaining and repairing your cars. repairing your car. And the highlight of our show is our Mr. Shopping Report. I talk about that a lot because it truly is something that nobody dares do. We visit the car dealership somewhere in Florida. We've visited hundreds of them over the years. And we go in there pretending to buy or lease a car.

And we name names. We name the name of the dealership, the car salespeople, the managers we deal with. and we tell you exactly how we were treated, or the mystery shopper was treated. Current mystery shopper is pseudonym Agent Thunder because this is probably what would happen to you if you walked into this particular dealership. Then, after we grade the dealership and you vote on it at the end of the show, we in the studio vote, and then you vote, and we take a consensus, and we grade on the curve, and we either pass the dealer or fail the dealer. Those that are passed are on a recommended dealer list, and those that fail, of course, we warn you, don't do business with this dealer.

Now, we give all dealers second, third, four chances, and we go back in our mystery shopping report this afternoon, or this morning, I mean, is a third or fourth time we visited this particular dealership in South Florida. So, wanted to clue you in, stay tuned. That'll come later on in the show, the mystery shopping report. Meanwhile, I guess you would call it the core of our show, the meat and potatoes part of our show, the important is you to call in, ask questions, make your observations, criticisms. We love criticism. We even have car dealers that call in. Love to talk some car dealers. I work out with a car dealer.

I do my circuit weight training at one-on-one fitness, and I see him in there every morning. And he's a retired dealer from Connecticut. He listens to the show. So we have a lot of dealers out there. Love to encourage you dealers that listen to the show to call in. This dealer is complimentary of what we do. But if you have some criticism, constructive or otherwise, we'd love to hear from you. We also have other sources of communication that are very important.

Even have an anonymous source, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. You send the message to us. We don't know who it came from. It's totally anonymous, guaranteed anonymous, and just tell it like it is. That's a very popular way to communicate. We have people that really don't have anything to hide

or not embarrassed about anything, but for some reason, they just like the idea of anonymity, and I can understand that. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. The text number is the most popular, and that's 772-497-6530. Text us, and we usually have a nice backlog of Texas as we approach the end of the show, and we fall back on that sometimes when the callers don't call in. So the text number for the second time is 772, area code, 497-6530,

and, of course, the call-in number. Normally, Nancy Stewart monitors the calls. Nancy Stewart, as I told you earlier, is recuperating at home right down. And Rick Kearney is going to be watching the keyboard, the computer that shows the callers. And the call-in number is 877-9-60-99-60. That's 877-960-99-60. So with that, oh, I got to do this because... Nancy Stewart normally does this.

We really, really love to have female callers. The women, when we first started 17 years ago, no women call. Just a bunch of guys calling. Something about cars and guys and, you know, I don't know what. Women buy half the cars at least. They maintain the cars. I think more than half the women are ones bringing them in for service. So they're a very, very important economic equation part of the whole plan.

to have your calls. And Nancy has built that up by offering an incentive for first-time female callers. That incentive is $50 cash, no strings, no requirements. If you've never called the show before and you're female and you call the show, that's all you have to do. And you can ask a question if you want to, or you can make a comment or a criticism or just say good morning. If you're the first-time female caller, $50 cash. So you can't beat that with a stick. That's for the first two. Now, we can't give out thousands of dollars in one day, but we'll give out $100 in one day, $15 each to the first two female callers. Stu, Rick, you guys got anything on your mind? I got Takata on my mind. Takata. Yeah. The recalls are flowing in, and not just

Takata. Toyota, Honda just announced a massive recall. We've had stop sales on, you know, for us as a dealer, Well, thankfully they're on some motor cars, but I really shouldn't say thankfully it's more likely that new cars get the recalls fixed than use cars. It's embarrassing to us as Toyota dealers. We don't talk about being a toilet dealer because this is not an infomercial, but I can't just say I'm not a toilet dealer because I am. And frankly, sometimes I get embarrassed, and I probably shouldn't because virtually every manufacturer got caught up, didn't they? and we're all caught in the same barrel of this Takada recall. Yeah, sometimes, I mean, you might know better than me, but sometimes I think that manufacturers are more likely to fess up,

acknowledge the problems and report them to the government and put out the recalls than they did in the past. Yeah. So it might not be that cars are getting worse or anything like that. It could just be that there's a lot more transparency now. But it can be scary because some of these things are pretty dangerous. Great. We do.

We've got Beck. Becky, first-time lady caller. Hello, Becky. Hi, how are you? Hey, Becky. Thank you very much for calling. Thanks for calling for the first time. We really appreciate that.

Yeah, I'm a huge fan. I get up early every Saturday to listen to Earl Storpe. Well, fantastic. So you've listened before, but you haven't called in before. Well, thank you very much. And we love to, Nancy especially appreciates it because this is her thing. Yeah, I'm not fan today. Oh.

And I wish you're the best. She's listening right now. I bet. I guarantee you. My question is about a kiosol. I have a 2013 kiosol, and I've noticed that some of the paint is starting to bubble. And my husband said it's around the plastic pieces like the side mirror and the door handled. Have you heard of that?

Well, we hear a lot about paint problems. and all manufacturers seem to be getting into that. 2013, that would be out of your warranty on paint. And I'll ask Rick to address that in a second, but my first advice to anybody with a paint problem that's out of warranty is to take it to your Kia dealer and maybe take it to a different Kia dealer if you're not having good experience with the present one.

And explain to them that this is a defect, your key you know your Kia isn't so old as that your paint should be peeling off and would they apply for goodwill adjustment goodwill is what you can get that will extend the warranty and it has to be a direct contact with the Kia manufacturer and sometimes they'll either come up in a reimburse for the repair or at least for part of it yeah it tends to be that's the plastic right the plastic pieces or is that metal uh well Paint can peel anywhere. Yeah. And Rick's got a comment on that. It's almost like a clear coat. Clear coat, yeah.

If the clear coat is starting to peel, that's what's called delamination. And that's happening on a lot of manufacturers now. And I'll actually kind of one up on Earl here. Before you go to speak to Kia, I would go on the Internet and do some research in the forums, especially for Kia owners, and see if it's a common problem that are all. A lot of people are reporting, because if it is, that kind of gives you more ammunition when you go in to speak with them. And you've got a little better chance of saying, hey, look, you know, I'm reading reports on the Internet where there are thousands of people across the U.S. having this problem.

You know, then they know you're aware. Good. Good point, Rick. I should have mentioned that. Yeah, you can get a lot of information off of chat rooms and things like that. and if you just go Kia Soul 2013 paint problem put that into Google search and it'll come up with all sorts of links and now if it doesn't come up

with a link then you're going to have an uphill battle because there have been no other people complaining but my guess is you'll find other people with the same problem okay I'll look into that I got your book for Christmas and I love it well thank you very much

now did you say this is the first time you've called yes okay will you text your contact information to us do you have our text number yes I have 772-497-6530 text us your contact information so we can send you a check for $50 and we'll get that out very quickly to you and Becky thank you so much for being a listener thank you Earl appreciate it take care bye-bye okay 87-960 9960 and text number is 772-4976530 and we were just in the middle of talking about the takata issues and I

cuts two off because we prioritize our callers. That's right. We got to get the callers in. I know we were talking about what seems to be an avalanche of recalls in recent years and that was brought on by the announcement this past week about Toyota and Honda's I think was like almost two million vehicles. Unbelievable. Yeah and that came on the heels of another massive of Takata, another round of Takata recalls, which were, in fact, recalls, fixes for previous Takata fixes that were replaced with more Takata airbags. So for me, as the mystery shopper, wrangler, it makes my job a little bit easier to find recalls out there.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel right now. Yeah. Yeah, I didn't even mention this to you, Stu, but I had a text conversation with Ted Smith, the president of the Florida automobile Deal Association, accidental. He accidentally sent me a text and we chit-shaded back and forth a little bit. He's a president of the association member for many years

and he really has a conscience and he really has concern. He said that he did read my letter referring to my letter to the president of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, the governor of the state to Sandy's and asking them to step up to the plate, also the Attorney General of Florida,

step up to the plate and do something about making it illegal stop sale on cars with took out airbags. And he's trying to do something, but it's very difficult, even though you're the President of the Association, to get all the car dealers in line to follow something like that. That would have huge economic impact. The dealers couldn't afford probably the economic impact. manufacturers could. If there were a stop sale on all cars with unfixed

to cut airbags or any dangerous recall, meaning it's illegal, the manufacturers wouldn't permit it and the law would not permit you to do it, then the manufacturers would have to absorb that economic impact because they'd have to take care of the dealers. And that's it's kind of like you go first kind of a thing and that's the reason that's being totally ignored. That's pretty exciting to hear from you know from Ted that there's actually some interest. Yeah, he's concerned, but he, you know, he's not a dictator.

All he is is a president of association. Rick? Just one thought, folks. Most important thing to take away from this conversation, www. www.safercar.gov. S-A-F-E-R-C-A-R-D-G. This website, you can put your VIN number in,

and it will tell if there are any open safety recall, on your car and even if you've had your car repaired once for a takata recall check it again because a lot of these cars they had to put in an airbag that was newer but it was still the same takata type airbag that needs to be replaced again later on down the road so I would recommend at least once every couple months check your cars VIN to see if it's under a recall there's even apps you can get on your cell phone where you simply simply scan your license plate and it will automatically run your VIN through that site

to see if there are any open recalls for your car. You know, you just gave me a thought because we give this number out frequently thanks to you. Rick, you usually remember, and I forget, safercar.gov. And I wonder, you know, we have a radio audience, maybe 20,000 people out there. We don't know exactly, we need to get the Nielsen report on the show. It falls on deaf ears a lot of times, and actually we're preaching to the choir. The listeners that Earl Stewart on cars are usually fairly educated, sharp, saddy consumers, and most of them don't get into the trap of buying cars with dangerous recalls.

If there were some law that did nothing more than have it stamped and read on every used car buyer's order, safercar.gov, or that you required a customer to sign an affidavit or I hereby acknowledge that I was told to check my this car's VIN with savercar.gov to be sure

I mean there's so many ways Yeah, just something. I mean something's better than the status quo right now. Yeah, make it illegal to sell the car if the customer hasn't gone to savercar.com. I mean, if you want to put it on the backs of the buyer

well, they don't care, okay. If you really don't care about buying a car with a safer car with a dangerous recall, then you go ahead and go to savercar.gov, print it out and read it and says, this Takata airbag can blow up in my face and kill her maiming and say, but I don't want to fix it, and I still want to buy the car. If you want to do that, then go ahead and do it. But I think the responsibility of government should be to be sure you know what you're doing. I could not understand if there was any pushback from car.

dealers on that. I mean, I understand the argument about stopping the sale of them. They claim it's a, create a massive economic hardship, and I understand it. I think that lives trump that, but at the very least, put some requirements in

robust disclosure. Absolutely. Okay, folks, we need some calls. We've had one call from Becky, and that's great because she's a female caller. We still have $50 cash for the second, first time. female caller, and that number is 877-960-9960.

That's 877-960-99-60. And our text number is 772 area code 4976530-772-472-497-6530. Of course, lest I forget, Facebook, Twitter, Periscope, YouTube, you can post and talk to us in that fashion. We'll answer all your questions. Do we have any text? Yes, we do. Let's get to the text. I got something really good.

This came from Andreas. He's a long-time listener, Facebook watcher, and text her. Andreas sent a picture of a direct mail piece that he got from a dealer. Well, it might not be a dealer. Well, it is a, I think it's a dealer. It's hard to tell. But it's a solicitation for an extended warranty, and it's a scare tactic, and I haven't seen anything like this before. I'll just read the letter.

It looks just like a business letter. It looks very official. I'm sure it came in a very official looking envelope designed to get you to open it. It says, Dear Andreas, we have just been advised that there will be a price increase to our extended vehicle service plans, EVSP, effective January 30th, 2020. After that date, we will not be able to honor the service contract pricing design

specifically for your 2019 Hyundai Alantra G.T. Oh, my. Horrors. Please call us. Hey, by the way, I'm going to read the numbers, so if you guys want to call. Please call us at 1-866-221-3-005 so we can hold your EVSP contract at the lowest program rates. When vehicles expire out of the original manufacturer's warranty due to time or mileage, the vehicle service plan fills that hole and put your vehicle back under coverage in line with our best loyalty pricing plans, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so, and it's signed Rebecca Patterson, Vehicle Protection Coordinator.

never, never, never buy an extended warranty online. It's really got something you need to be careful of in person. You've got to read the contract and see what excluded. Typically, they read what's included in the

warranty, but they don't tell you what it doesn't cover. Typically, extended warnings that you buy cover the things that you'll never need and don't cover the things that you will need. And they are ridiculously expensive. A lot of these companies coming out of Nevada for some reason they must have very lax regulation yeah the thing and I get a

kick out of on TV there is like for us here in the room an extended service contract which everybody commonly calls an extended warranty it's just a you know it's a insurance product it's nothing new or exciting some people get them some people don't but these ads on TV they make it seem like it's this brand new thing that is this miraculous thing that will protect your vehicle and it definitely, for people who are not in the business or are not familiar with it, it looks like something that they might be interested in getting. But in any case, I'm just always amazed

about the creativity in the cunning of some of these direct mail campaigns. It works, that's the reason they do it. Yeah. Any more text? Yeah, we have one from Brian out in California. Okay. Says, hey, guys, this is Brian from the West Coast of California.

I didn't, well, maybe on Lake Tyler, they have any East Coast. Sorry, Brian, I tease. Quick question for you today. Do all manufacturers have a lease disposition fee at the end of a car lease? My dad is a 2017 Civic that is at the end of its lease. He doesn't drive a ton after retiring from work. He's trading it in well under yearly mileage.

The car already had its inspection done early, and there's no excess wear and tear to the car. It looks like a new Civic. We've leased more than five Hondas, and he's pretty surprised that they're still going to charge him the fee. In fact, he is pretty much over Honda for several reasons. He's going to drive a spare car I have around because he doesn't want to pay for any more expensive leases. Do any manufacturers not use lease disposition fees? Thanks, as always, and looking forward to the show as I do every week. I know none.

Do you still do? I think they all do it. You know, it doesn't make any less bad. It's a wrong thing to do. It's a hidden fee. And there's another little twist to that. I just learned this myself the other day when I wrote my first. blog on the option to purchase and found out that Toyota, they have a least disposition fee,

I believe, $350.350. And if you lease again or buy again, they waive the fee. So it's kind of like a blackmail thing to keep you buying and leasing. And then if you exercise your option to purchase, they rename the lease disposition fee. Purchase fee. And they charge you $350 because you're buying your own lease car back. But the whole leasing game needs investigation. You need transparency. You go into a lease a car, you should know exactly what you're paying, just like when you go into buy a car.

I always recommend all things being able to rule of thumb buy a car instead of lease it, mainly because there's too many tricks. You have, when you lease a car, you write these down. You're not going to believe this. when you lease a car you start out with an inception fee that's two or four hundred dollars and then no no no more like 700 dollars almost they've raised it okay or 900 i mean there are is that right oh yeah like the acquisition fee acquisition yeah 995 i call it inception because the opposite disposition so when you lease it they charge you just an extra fee cause you leased it

then the dealer charges you a dealer fee or more because he wants to make a profit i'm to interrupt my thought because nothing trumps a call. We have Carol from Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Carol. Good morning. How are you doing today? We're doing great. Wonderful.

My mom has a 2003 avalon and she really loves it. But she wants to upgrade a little bit. I didn't know if you had any used avalon there

at the dealership? Well, Carol, we have all of our cars posted online with our out-the-door price. We have new cars and used car. And if you go to Earl Stewart-Toylor.com and you can go to our used cars, click on our used cars. You'll see complete description,

mileage, pictures, inside and out, and the out-the-door price. I hate to talk about it, but you ask, so I'm going to answer your question. The reason I hate to talk about my own dealership is because this is not an infomercial, but I certainly can't refuse to answer your question. And the good thing about our website is you get an out-the-door price with no hidden fees, and you can take that price. You might find a nice late-model Avalon, and you can get our price,

take that price to another Toyota dealer and see if they can beat it in a car that is good, and be sure you're getting an off-the-door price from them. Give you something to shop and compare competition is a great thing when you're buying a new or use car. Okay, great. Thanks so much. Carol, are you a first-time caller? No, I listen to the show all the time.

Oh, great. Well, thanks for calling. We really appreciate it, and good luck with the Avalon. Okay, thanks so much. Have a nice day. You too, bye-bye. You know, the funny thing with the disposition of it acts exactly like the dealer fee, the hidden fees,

it just allows manufacturers and dealers to advertise a lower payment. I mean, everything, every cost that the leasing company incurs could be included in the payment that's advertised. It could be. The disposition fee could be in there, the acquisition fee.

Now the payments would look higher and not very exciting, but if every manufacturer would do that, it would be relative. That's the key. And this is spread through many industries, as you know, rental cars, hotels, airlines, all the big industries now. And they're starting to get into it.

They're starting to go after it. But you're absolutely right. All your costs should be included in your price. Your light bill, your phone bill, your rent, you know, the cost for janitorial services. All your costs should be included in the price of your product. And when you split something out, the airlines got really good about that. they got so competitive that they started charging for baggage and even a carry-on they charge and all sorts of crazy stuff I think the car dealers invented it and when they got away with it then all the other industries are following suit

they charge you for weight yeah well I mean that might make sense I don't know yeah well it should be the way I pack exactly I mean exactly I mean okay still I more text? Yeah. Actually, let's go to anonymous feedback. This one just came in right after we started the show. It says, hi, I hear you say, hear you all say the dealerships you mystery shop should fix the recalls before selling the used cars. Do you, as a dealership check all your used cars for recalls and get them fixed before you sell them? Yes, we certainly do. And it's no big deal because we don't even have to pay for the fix. If it's our product, if it's a Toyota, Toyota reimburse this quite nicely I might say Rick can do a recall and he gets paid for it and then the dealership makes a profit Rick makes a profit and the customer has a safe car

so why people don't do that I'm not quite sure why dealers don't do that their main excuse is that if they have to take it to another dealer let's say I'm a Chevrolet dealer and I have a Honda in my used car inventory I have to take that Honda if it has a recall to the Honda dealer now the Honda dealer might not fix it fast enough but I don't have to pay for the fix but I have a clean conscience because when I get the car back I put in my used car lot and I can honestly say this is a safe car so the only problem arises when when there's no fix for it and like we did with the dakata and at one point we had dozens of cars that we stored and we still have we still have seven right now and the oldest one we have actually we have a 2012 Ford Mustang that we've had in storage for 1,304 days as of this morning. Our cost, and this is true, since this started out,

is approaching round numbers, about a million dollars, that the dealership has had to pay out of pocket for not wanting to kill our customers. And it's a small price to play. Yeah, Auto Nation had the same problem. The president, CEO of Auto Nation, Michael Jackson, made the commitment not to sell a car with a dangerous recall and he held true to his promise for a year and then suddenly

the stockholders of other nation got on him and said you know you're not maximizing in our profit we want you to stop absorbing that expense so we started selling the cars again and since then just about everybody does it okay let's go to a text here this is from Stephen New Jersey he has a question for you he says were you ever able to contact the author of the Consumer Reports Female Safety article from the November issue. He's a safety advocate. I said it again?

He wanted to know if you were ever able to contact the author of the Consumer Report's female safety article. I have not. And let me think about that while we talk to a caller here. Earl, your wish just came true. Tony from Stewart,

who is a Canadian car dealer. Who? Hello, Tony. Hello, Tony. Hello. Hello, I have to tell you, I listen to your program occasionally, and you are a breath of fresh air. Oh, thank you, Tony. I appreciate that. I give you a little background on me. I started selling cars at 1964.

Wow, I was 68. You beat me. Yeah, Volkswagen Beatles were 1695 and 1895. Wow. That is amazing. That is amazing. Do you remember when the first car went up to $10,000 sticker price? I thought that was the end of the world Nobody ever paid $10,000 for a new car So did I I thought it was a little further After selling both wagons for a while

I ended up at a GM dealership for five years And from there went to a Ford deal Where I became a manager Okay And then I stepped out after five years there I stepped out onto my own And I own and operate a automobile leasing company That's a family business

That I've had for four In 33 years, I was at least likely to succeed when I left a poor dealer. Tony, in Canada, in Canada, I just want to ask you a quick question. What is the level of ethics in the country in Canada is, you see what's going on in South Florida, and you listen to the show. Does the Canadian dealers have a higher standard of ethics and honesty? Much, much, much higher, much higher. Interesting. Much higher standard.

We run a fleet of 400 cars, and I'm in the process right now. I've had an Audi, at least out to a customer of mine, an Audi Q7. It got stolen. I'm giving the man back $30,000 that he has in equity. Wow. To what do you attribute the higher level of ethics and transparency in Canadian car dealerships, is it? Because we have. Go ahead.

We have legislation. We have a thing called Omvick. Ontario Motor Vehicle People, you know, and they get involved And stuff like that And they regulate stuff like they regulate advertising You have to disclose the full price I help neighbors of mine

Buy a Lexus down here And I'll tell you We got down to the nitty gritty And I said to the sales center What's the price of the car? And the guy said 63,000 and change And I said, where did you get that price? He said, why? I said the sticker on the window

Says it's 60,200 Oh, yeah. He says, but we've added this, this, this, this, and this. I said, I don't want any of that stuff. Yeah. He said, it's already on the car. He said, take it off. You know?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then they charged my friends $500 for licensing. Yeah. And they said, we'll send you a refund if it's too much money. That's amazing. Oh, yeah, no, there was, you could make a movie about this because it was incredible. They came, I finally told them how much we were going to pay, and they came back for a $500 bump.

And I said, no, you got 50. He said, what am I going to do with $50? I said, order a pizza because I'm hungry, 10 years for three hours. Order for the sales staff. Tony, you ought to sell your services. Everybody needs a Tony. Another question they asked me afterwards. After we made the deal, the sales manager came out and said,

what are you charging these girls for your services? I said, excuse me? So I asked me, where I come from when you do someone a favor, the word money, never. enters into the equation. That is funny. That is really funny. Tony, I'd tell you what, you know, I'd like

to try to, we have a mystery shop every week. Maybe I could talk in and do a mystery shop for us. I'd love to have a guy that is a savvy as you going into a car dealership and tell us what happened to you. Well, you know, this salesman I

had tried to give me the mumbo-jumbo. I said to the guy, I said, listen, I've been selling cars longer than you've been on the face of the And the guy didn't believe me, so I asked him if he was born before 1964, and he said, no, you know. It's just, it's just horrific. I'm going to Google some websites of Canadian dealers, and now that you've explained this to me and see how their online advertisements vary. The hidden fees, the dealer fees, do they charge the extra fees? No, no, no, you cannot.

You have to disclose everything. On new cars, on new cars, they'll charge you an admin fee of anywhere from $295 to $4.95, you know. But I had a dealer. I tried to buy a used Rangler in Port Lauderdale for a nephew of mine whose daughter had a scholarship down here. And the salesman said to me, we have an $895 inventory fee, and that's not negotiable. And I said to him, and I said to him, well, wait a minute, I said, we have $40 million in inventory. And so what about the guy who sells soup and he's got $40 million worth of soup

in the back of his living? When he sells a can of soup does he have an inventory fee? I said that's the cost of doing business. What are you giving me? I mean, you might as well put the salesman's commission, your advertising expense,

and your phone bill in there. Exactly, yeah. The other thing, too, is we are being rated for used trucks, especially in Canada, Toronto, especially. They're all coming stateside. Well, you hear Tony, and he's from Canada,

and if you live on the border of the USA and Canada, I'm going to advise you to drive across the border and buy your car in Canada because you're going to get a more transparent and honest transaction. Not only that, but you're getting a 30% kick for your buck. Yeah, yeah, I forgot about that.

I sold a used truck a Chevrolet, fairly well-loaded, used truck at the auction up in Toronto. And the next day, I remembered that I left my wallet in the side door pouch. So I called the auction. They said, oh, no, we can't find it. I got a call from an Indiana dealer three days later, or four days later, whatever it was, and said, oh, we bought this truck at the Pennsylvania auction, and we found your wallet in it.

You know, and it's got $20 U.S. and $20 Canadian and this and that. I said, well, it's wonderful, thank you. We're honest to this. I said, that's wonderful. FedEx would back, I'll pay. Say FedEx up back without me paying. Wow. Well, it's nice to me.

There are some good ones around. There are. Yeah, you're right. I think I sometimes am too negative, but there's some real honest dealers, and unfortunately just not enough. But I'm so glad to hear about the Canadian operation, and we'll look into that.

Tony. Check out the OMVIC, O-M-V-C-O-M-V-V-C. Check out their website and see what they have to say. They're the regular. body for cars up there. Spell that again, please. Omvick. OMV-I-C. OM-V-I-C. Ontario Motor Vehicle board or something or other. Very good. I'll check that out. Tony, please call again. We try so hard to get car dealers to call, and we get maybe once every six months. We love to hear from the honest car dealers or the dishonest. You know, I'd like an argument with a guy that was

trying to explain to me why he charged an $895 inventory fee. I'd use your line. And I'd love to have them going. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. There's a stuff that they try and pull here, you know, and people believe them, you know. I mean, it's incredible to me. They're still, they're so gullible. But then again, you know, you're dealing, you're dealing with people who are about payments.

Well, thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you very much for the call. Please call again. Okay, not a problem. Yeah, take care of yourself, my friend. And all the very best you guys. Thank you very much.

Take care. Thanks, Tony. Bye-bye. Okay, folks, the phone's working. 877-9-60-99-60, and that's 877-9-60-90-60. Our text is 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530. And I'm so happy that we had a card dealer call.

Yeah, that was great. Tony from Canada. Really interesting. In Ontario. And I think we've got a YouTuber over here, YouTube post. We do. Tango USA is asking, can I buy a car in a different state and shipping in my state where I live? I guess he's asking, can he buy it from a dealer in another state and have it shipped to him? Sure. A lot of people do that, especially Florida because we have a lot of snowbirds. And the thing you have to be careful of is don't double the sales tax. And all states have, I say all, I think, 99% of them have reciprocity agreements. so if you pay sales tax in one state and ship it to the other state, you're not double-taxed.

So have some title clerk, we call them in a car business, that understands titles and sales taxes and just have it temporary tag, and you can drive it or you can ship it, and you only pay sales tax one time. That's right. And then you can also take advantage of shipping prices, particularly if you're going north and south, in the winter, a lot of northerners migrate down to the south and it's cheaper to get transportation going from north to south. And

conversely in the spring, there is millions of people driving back up north and shipping their cars and it's cheaper to do that in the spring. Exactly. Okay. Because it can run you just over $1,000 in the slower times, but you can get probably $4,500, $600.

You're like from Florida, New York or something. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, we've got some more text. Everick's got another YouTube, I think. Yeah, good. Richard Poplis is asking, Earl, what is the best website for a low mileage SUV? Looking for a low mileage used SUV. Well, AutoTrader is the best overall website because of the large number of vehicles it has.

Virtually every car dealer in the USA uses AutoTrader. With that said, you have to be careful because you're not going to get an honest Althador price on other trader, even if you sort by price, because AutoTrader allows the dealers to add in their hidden fees after the fact, and also dealer-installed accessories. But you can find any vehicle, you can sort by mileage, year, make, price is deceptive. You can't really, they'll sort by price, but it's not accurate. But you can sort by equipment and zip code and start. Start doing your research once you get the answer and get the person that you want to buy the vehicle from on the phone or do it by email and say, I want an out of the door price.

And that means if I write you on a check now and bring it in to see you and I like the vehicle that you advertise, I want to be able to give you my check and get in that vehicle and drive it home. That's an out of the door price. is there a specific website that's best for finding out what the what price you should pay like kelly blue book or are there competition on those what's the best one for figuring the actual price of the car i like true car because of the bell curve yeah stew what do you are well i was saying i use cars i don't know how good their information is on with true car and i was going to say as far as like edmonds dot com and kelly blue book the best you can say you can say you can see about that puts you in the ballpark no one's really adhering to that as a matter of fact like

kelly blue book retail value or uh is is used a lot by dealers to show you know fake discounts you know they'll they'll highlight it sometimes that the kelly blue book price is really inflated there's there's really no substitute from doing comparative shopping i wouldn't suggest maybe giving carvana a shot you know the yeah carvana's a good thought uh carvana buys cars and uh You could tell them, you had to describe the car you want to buy. Yeah, and sell. They sell. You buy on Carvon and deliver to your door.

Or you could get the appraisal on your car, which would give you the wholesale, so you could get the retail and the wholesale. What about this? You know, we know how to get the price, right, because we're car dealers, and we use Mannheim online auction numbers. And it's real time today. There are, what, hundreds of thousands of transactions, probably millions.

I would say millions. We have a full-time, his name is Ted Caboosh. He works for us. All he does is buy and sell cars for us. He has computers and display boards. And he goes on. Mannheim is the largest auction, wholesale auction in the world. They're almost a monopoly.

And every car that's sold is real-time flashed on a screen for a car dealer. Well, I don't want to take anything away from Ted, but I got it right here. Yeah, right. Every time somebody asks me with their cars work, I'm looking at Mannheim transactions. So if you have a relationship with somebody that works in a car dealership, used car department maybe, or they just say, I'm looking for, and you describe the car you're looking for, and say, would you please tell me the current Mannheim, M-A-N-H-E-I-M, M-A-N-H-E-I-M. Mannheim auction, auction price, wholesale price for that car.

Yeah, they call it M-M-M-R, that's Mannheim Market Report. Yeah, and then you market it up by $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, and that's what a car dealer will try to sell it for. Another tool that we have that we use, and most dealers use, it's a, they use these computer programs for stocking the vehicles. It recommends which ones to buy and how to price them, and they're called V Auto. Gosh, I can't remember the name of the other one,

but, for example, V Auto, it goes out there and literally gets the prices, all the retail prices of every car in any radius that you specify and gives you an average market price. The downside to that is the same thing that people run into when they go in an auto trader is that that doesn't include any hidden fees.

So you can mentally subtract the average, say $1,200 off the retail price and figure that would be a good price. It's inside stuff, and like you say, if you have a contact, make a friend with somebody at a dealership. And if you have a friend of the dealer,

V Auto is a great source. Mannheim, MMR, auction report, and that's about it. We have some anonymous feedback coming in. Good. Says, Earl, this is a good one. Wow, this is a great day.

Earl, I am the GM at one of your competitors. I have proposed adopting many of your practices to my owner only to have these dismissed out of hand. He truly believes that there is nothing wrong with many of the things we do, like the doc fees and spotting. He showed me his AT&T bill to point out that fees are a part of life and necessary for profitability. He says only a small minority of abnormal people pay attention and care about these things. I believe most dealers feel this way.

That is so wonderful. Thank you so much, General Manager. And this kind of puts the spotlight on why we have predominantly dishonest, non-transparent, on ethical advertising and selling. They don't think they're dishonest. Well, when everybody does something, okay, let's go to another industry. When the airline started charging for carry-ons, I mean, that's ridiculous. For years and years and years, they didn't do it.

And then they started charging. And charging for an extra bag, I'm not really conversant with all the hidden airline charges. I know the rental car companies charge things that they shouldn't charge for. They'll charge you insurance that you already own and your own homeowners, and they make you think that you have to buy it. When the whole industry predominantly does something that's unreputable, that is unethical, then the competition feels like they have to do it too. And there's truth to that.

But I'm going to say to our audience and to the car dealers out there, I understand why you feel like you have to charge these hidden fees. That's because your competition does. So if your competition has $1,000 in hidden fees, and most everybody in South Florida has at least $1,000 in hidden fees, all the car dealers, and they advertise a car they can advertise a car for $1,000 less than you can if you don't have any hidden fees because when you advertise a car without hidden fees

you have to sell it for the advertised price when your competition advertises it he's got $1,000 that he can sneak in and add it back to the price that got you in the door so it's hard to compete with people like that and people ask well Earl how do you compete? And the general manager that wrote this, tell your boss, tell the dealer this.

What we've done by not having the hidden fees and we don't have the dealer installed accessories that we sneak in either, we have earned the trust of our customers. And they believe that they're going to get a fair deal. They don't know they're going to get the lowest price because we don't tell them we guarantee the lowest price. It's impossible to guarantee the lowest price. always say we guarantee it's an honest price and it's a very low price as far as we're concerned and you're not going to get taken advantage of and that's how we're successful and we probably outsell your dealer uh that that you work for probably i don't say because we don't outsell

everybody but we probably don't we outsell most car dealers we're a high volume dealer so when when you build a reputation for honesty and transparency customers buy a lot of cars from you. You don't have to trick them to come in. I just had an epiphany. Yeah. On why dealer fees keep growing. See, if you came into the car business and

it was the way it was done, like most general managers start off selling cars. Would you agree? And then they get promoted. They become a sales manager, and eventually they work their way up. I'm 50, almost 52 years old, and I've been in the business for 23

years now. And back then, the average dealer fee was probably around $400. Oh, ours was $4.95. Yeah, we actually, it might have been a little bit higher because I think we used to brag that we had one of the lower dealer fees in town. So that was our big selling point. We don't rip you off as much as everybody else does. And so if you come in, you're a salesperson, and that was just the way things were done.

You didn't question it. You didn't do it. And then you grew with your career. And now you're running the dealership. And it's just the way it was. You never paused to think, well, why do we do? do it it's just it's it's just the way it's always been done and then it was just a simple matter of like well why don't we just increase this completely legitimate you know i put that in the air quotes charge

and they grew and they grew and not once did they ever look in the mirror and do a little self-examination and think is this the right thing to do and to explain also to those that didn't understand this concept this hidden fee they call dealer fee and multiple other names this goes straight into the dealer's pocket the salesman doesn't get a commission on it. The customer thinks it's a fee. Don't even think of it as being part of the price of the car. So think about it. If you sell 100 cars a month, we'll just use a round number.

If you sell 100 cars a month and your dealer fee is $1,000, that's $100,000 net profit that goes right into your bank account if you're a dealer. You don't have to pay the salesman or the sales manager or anybody on that. That's right. Kaching, it goes in the dealer's pocket. In fact, some salespeople will say sarcastically, oh, that's my dealer's retirement fund, or that makes the payment on my dealer's yacht or airplane.

Pays for the fuel on his jet. Yeah, exactly. So the reason it goes up, think about this. I mean, it's hard not to go up. You're the dealer. your lifestyle goes up you got yourself the private plane you got your yachts

you got your ski lodge in Aspen and now you maybe you want another ski lodge in Vail so what do you do you have a thousand dollar dealer fee you just tweak it a little bit $1,100 ka-ching that's right

now there's for a $100 increase you have just $100 times a hundred that's $10,000 additional income a month to pay the mortgage payment on the new ski lodge in Vail. What a country. Yeah, what a country.

Great country. It's harder to do in Canada, apparently. We've got some U-Tubes over here. Ernesto is asking, Good morning. Does washing and vacuuming a trade before you sell it to a dealership truly get you more money? Or is it a trick so the dealership doesn't have to do that part of the prep for resale?

No, that's a very skeptical point. It helps. It actually helps. I tell everybody, I had a woman call me the other day, and she had a lot of mechanical repairs she had done. She wants to trade the car in, and she won't know if she gets the car fixed before she trades it. And I said, no, because a dealer can fix your car a lot cheaper than you can,

and he might not even catch all the things that are wrong with it. So just get three or four competitive bids on your trade. But I added, get a good detail. wash it, wax it, interior, exterior. If you had to pay $150 bucks to get a really quality, top-notch detail, you'll get $1,000 more for the car because dealers are suckers for clean cars. And they're also human. I mean, the appraisers, you walk out to a, you know, a minivan that a mom has,

and there's two inches of crushed gold, you know, goldfish crackers on the floor. And it's just... Smells bad. And it's messed up. You get a negative impression. You don't want to drive the car. Yeah, get the deodorant. Otherwise, if you're a smoker, you know, just pay to have the scent removed.

And quit smoking. Yeah, and quit smoking. But, yeah, clean those trade ends up. And every, you get 10 times what you spend on it and trade in appraisal value. Guaranteed. Guaranteed, yeah. And Tango USA is also asking, why do local Toyota dealerships don't want to give me a price when I call them for an out-the-door price? Maddening, isn't it?

Can you imagine going into Publix and ask him how much a loaf of bread was? And they say, are you going to buy today? Yeah, that depends. And say, go to Win Dixie and bring that price back and I'll beat it. I mean, it's just hard to believe. The dealers won't give you a price because they want to deprive you of your American right to shop and compare. This is the free enterprise system. This is economics 101.

You shop and compare prices. I don't buy anything without three bids. I mean, I go to Amazon, I'll go to Walmart, I go to Tark, I can do all this online, Costco, and I can check anything I buy and get three or four prices, but you can't do that with a car dealer. He knows if he gives you the price, you'll shop it and get a better price. Crazy. Same thing is going to Best Buy, and if you bring in an ad from another place, they'll match the price. Well, that's true, and that's one way to do it.

Best Buy still gives you the price. Then you should take their price and give it to, you know, wherever you want to go. Walmart or Target or whatever. And they'll ask them if they want to meet the price. It's up to them. Competition is your friend. That's right. We got a text here.

It says Toby, I think he meant Tony. Tony is great. You need to give him a permanent position on the show. Put him in the studio. I love to have Tony in the studio. Yeah? Yeah. And I'm so happy.

I honestly didn't know that about Canadian dealers. Northwood University used to be an automotive marketing school and right here in West Palm Beach. And for some reason, their main campuses in Michigan, a lot of car dealers go there to learn how to lie cheat and steel. I'm only kidding. Northwood University does teach the legitimacy, the legitimate way to market cars, sell cars, so on and so forth. But a lot of Canadians go here at this university. And at our dealership, we actually have had them come in for apprentice work and to see a real-life dealership.

And we were honored that Northwood University considered our dealership, ethical and honest. And I even sat on a committee with, this is going to make you laugh, Jim Arrigo, Orygo, Chryslajeeb Dodge. Jim Rigo and I would interview the graduates of Northwood University after they graduated automotive marketing to see if they understood the real world of how to sell cars. But my point being, about half the students who are a third were Canadians. And I should have realized maybe they are a little bit more transparent. So we're going to check that out.

Next week on the show, we're going to take the name of the dealership that Tony gave us from... of the Canadian dealer, and we'll check out their advertising. Maybe we can shame some of the American dealers into being transparent like the Canadian dealers. Oh, we might find something that he's missing? We might. Yeah, okay, here's a question that, gosh, sometimes I wish Alan was with us.

How can I, oh, Rick, we can probably know, how can I fix the cracks on my leather seat in my car? The car is about five, it's a five-year-old Camry, or can I replace the car seat with a new one, and how expensive would that be? who repairing leather is actually pretty much impossible because once it's damaged it's it's because it's it's not actually real leather in most cases it's it's a synthetic man-made leather um the best thing really well it's the silver i mean he said it was leather yeah in in some cases it is actual leather but even then you really you can't repair cracks in leather once it's torn or damaged

it's pretty much done. So a cow doesn't use skin so soft. No, but however, there are products out there that are made for treating leather seats. And I would research them to make sure you get the best quality ones. And I wouldn't skimp, you know, if you've got a car with real leather seats, I wouldn't skimp on the price of a product to keep it clean and protected. But I would test it a little bit on like a lower bottom section, make sure it's not something that's going to suddenly dry it out or damage it.

Check all the reviews. Make sure it's good quality. And other than that, your next step would be replacing that material, which usually you can replace just the section of the seat that's damaged. And one thing you said, if you're buying the car with leather and they advertise it as having leather seats, be sure that it's genuine leather and not simulate leather coats. Absolutely. Real leather costs more.

And I thought if you advertise leather seats, they had to be leather, maybe not. Yeah, there is a trend in some of the, like even in Toyota, they don't call it leather. Like, for example, in the Prius, they call softex. Leather-ecks, yeah. Leather-ish. Yeah, leather-ish. Quas-a-leather-old. Well, there's also the kindness toward animal movement that we have.

Exactly. Also, for the texter, you had a question of how expensive it would be, just to give it, put it in perspective, a dealer cost is about $800 to do, completely put a full leather package, front and back seats. Dior cost. The door insets is about $800. So to do, you can figure maybe $400 to do two front seats, cut that and a half, $200 to do a seat. And like Rick mentioned, you can, you can do the section.

So they'll actually just like to remove the stitching and restitch in a new section. If dealer costs is $800 on complete leather seats, what is suggested retail? Depends if you're a Napleton or a Hendrickson dealership. Probably retails around $1,200. Is that all? I mean, they don't market it, double it or anything like that? No, not double. Not that I'm aware of.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Next text. Good morning. Did I hear correctly that Nancy had a total knee replacement? She did several years ago. She had two of them, and she's doing fine in that category.

Her current operation was not actually surgery. It was an injection, a very interesting injection of the platelets of her own blood into the tendon that was torn to regrow the tendon. Sports medicine doctor did it at Cleveland Clinic, and it's a lot better than having the surgery, and it's kind of cutting edge. She'll be wearing a boot. for about three months, and then she'll be good to go. That's great.

And we wish her well. Yes. Is she sore? A little sore? A little sore, yeah. I'm sorry, Nancy. All right, we have a question for Rick on our Facebook live feed at Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars.

That's from William. He says, a question for you, Rick. I am about to buy a 2020 Highlander Limited Platinum. Yesterday, I heard that I can't get the factory tow hitch on the platinum because it interferes with the sensors in the bumper. is this true if yes is Toyota working on a fix should I wait I don't know if Toyota's actually got a fix that they're in process right now I'm sure they will I would definitely avoid any aftermarket products simply because you didn't want you know the the outside companies are not going to care whether it interferes with your sensors and yeah that can be a definite problem such things is like the back hatch that open by kicking your foot underneath it,

an aftermarket tow hitch will make that completely inoperative. So it's something to be watchful for on a lot of these newer cars. Well, something they really dropped the bowl, in my opinion, to do that. While I'm thinking about that, I read an article just the other day about why insurance costs were growing up so much in cars.

And the bumper was used as an example. With all the sensing devices we have around a car now, when you're replacing a fender or a bumper, you're not just replacing the fender or bumper, you're replacing electronics and computers, and a bumper used to be, to replace a bumper would be, what, $300,500, maybe $1,000, and now you're probably talking twice that with the sensors and detectors that they have. Not to mention that once some of those sensors have been replaced, then they've got to be specially calibrated, like the blind spot monitor, you know, a system that you love,

that has to be specially calibrated with targets. Something that you desperately... To make sure that it's reading properly, so it's detecting the cars at the right location. Yeah. Yeah, you need to double-check your insurance cost if you're buying a new car. And if you've got a five or six-year-old car, you won't have anywhere near the number of sensing devices on that car that the new one will.

So check with your insurance company, just so you're not unpleasantly surprised. But it costs a whole lot more to fix a car that's loaded up the way these cars are today. It's unbelievable. It's great. We love it because it makes it safer. And it's just fun. How much, I wonder if that, you know, the cost repairs, is it offsetting the, you know,

the discounts you expect to get on premiums for the safety? Good point. I was like, are we just kind of like, you know, playing catch-up? You know, is it really helping? Well, you know, it's almost two categories. you've got the collision cost of repair, and they probably calculate that premium. Then you have the liability, which comes with injury and things like that.

And also the accident avoidance. I mean, you're less likely to get to an accident now. So I didn't think about that. I think a smart insurance company should factor that in, I would think, but if they all start raising prices at the same time. So that leads me full circle to Alan Napier, who is our collision guy. We got to just force them to come back on the show now. Yeah, exactly.

Every three or four years, or two or three years, shop your insurance premium cost. I guarantee you it will be lower. Shop and compare. I don't care if you love your insurance company. Why would you? Why? Because they have nice songs.

Oh, yeah, well, yeah, they do. I mean, Gakow, I love that little lizard. I love the little lizard, and I like good neighbors, and I like to be in safe hands. But they try to screw you on your premium. So you have to go out and shop and compare premium every three or four years. I'm just going to coin a term premium creep. Yeah, okay. They catch you sleeping.

We have a texture from Toronto, Canada. Not Tony. It's John. And he says, he's passed on some information. he just purchased a 20-20-Tundra Crew Max TRD Sport Premium. That's a nice, nice truck, very expensive, hard to get. Paid $56,200 out the door up here in Toronto. Your show is great, take care of John.

I said, that's great what was MSRP. MSRP was 54-970. By the way, just put in perspective, that is great. It's probably close to $2,000 cheaper than we are out the door on the same vehicle. So it's a testament to, well, lower cost probably for the Canadian dealer and lower fees. Well, we don't have fees, so it's still a better deal up there. So folks, don't buy from Earl Stort, Toyota. Go to Toronto.

Well, let me tell you, yeah, exactly. You know, we see, I keep forgetting, YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and all that. We've got a lot of people, if you're on the Canadian border, you know, if you're in Michigan, for example, shop and compare the prices over there. By the way, they are doing kilometer and mile per hour switchovers of the newer cars, so you don't have to have a car with kilometers per hour kind of a thing. You'll be able to use miles per hour if you're in America. And shop and compare the price over there. I don't know the tariffs to use a...

Is there a duty on a car if you buy it in Canada and driving the U.S.? I don't know. I've got to check the U.S.M.C. agreement to find out what's going on. Find out what's going on there. But it sounds to me like that you've got an advantage on the buying the car price-wise and you have an advantage of Tony's correct on honest and transparency. You don't have the dealer fees added on. You don't have the dealer accessories.

They don't flimplam you, pleasant buying experience. So if you can drive 50 miles over and 50 miles back from a market account and save yourself some money. Oh, sure, yeah. That sounds un-American, doesn't it? Not to mention, you can get coffee from Tim Horton's up there, so hey, come on. Okay. I'll tell you, when I was in Canada driving around with kilometers on the speedometer, it really freaked me out. Yeah, I know.

I did not like it. No, I don't. Especially driving around the mountains. I think I was going a lot faster than it was yet. 100 kilometers an hour. We got a text from Omar. He says, Earl, I am glad you showed up on my feed. And then he has a crying emoji, like sad emoji.

I just purchased a car from a B-H-P-H, which I interpret to me in a buy-here, pay-here, for a total of six. $6,000 down, $4,500 being finance. This is where he tells me two and a half percent interest rate per month, which I have no idea what that means. Two and a half percent per month. I think he meant 25 percent. Oh, no, two and a half interest rate per month. We'll have to like digest this a little bit more.

I'm not quite sure what it means. It's possible. Instead of compounding annually, it could be monthly compounded interest. Well, I was just going to say it was 2% a month would be 24% a year. Yeah, that's probably what they did. Yeah, it makes it sound good. That's pretty clever. Yeah.

You hear that buy hair pay hair is a new tactic. Yeah, buy here pay here. You folks that don't know is a last resort when you're credit as such or you have no credit and you have to buy from someone that will finance the car himself. When you buy a car from a car dealer, They say they're financing the car for you, but they're really selling the installment sales contract to a bank or captive, maybe if it's a Honda finance or General Motors Finance, or it could be Wells Fargo Bank or Bank America. They sell the paper, so they don't take the payments from you. The bank takes the payments from you.

Buy your pay here. They actually bank it, and they actually take the payments. So the risk is with them, and what they typically do is just mark the car up a huge amount of money, and they also charge you a huge amount of interest. And they say, we have to do it because otherwise we have so many cars we have to repossess, and our cost of repossessions are so high, we have to make a lot of money up front. And there's some truth to that. And there is a reason for their existence, but there's also a reason for not buying from these people

unless you absolutely have to always check with your conventional financing, your bank, your credit union, and use a buy-here pay-here is the last resort because we know you need a car, you need a car. And if that's the only way you're going to get it, and when you buy from a buy-here-pay-here, ask them if they're reporting to the credit bureau. Because if you have bad credit and they report to the credit bureau and you make your payments on time, no matter how painful they may be and how high they may be, if you make them promptly, you just elevated your credit score. And now, maybe next time, you can go to a bank and get a much better interest rate. And if you don't make the payment, they might disable your vehicle.

They can do that. They'll put a switch in there that will actually stop your car dead in its tracks so they can go take it back. Well, I think it waits for you to stop or turn off the car. Oh, those are the nice dealers. They wait for it to stop. They won't do it on the turnpike. That's good.

Nathan, Texas says, I have a question about a used car. Let's say a 2017 Toyota Limited, fully loaded dealer wants $39, 995, what can I do if I want to pay $35,000 cash? Hope to hear your answer. Thanks so much. Well, I'll let you check the price on this, too. I will say this. Don't ever tell the dealer that you're going to pay cash. That is something that is kind of counterintuitive.

intuitive because on just about anything else, you know, cash will get your better deal. You buy a house and you pay cash today, boy, that price of the house comes way down. Nobody likes to wait for their money. Nobody wants to negotiate, argue. So you whip out the cash, any product except the car gets cheaper. The reason the car doesn't get cheaper is because the car dealers make much more money when they finance the car for you than when they sell you the car. Typical profit, gross profit on a new car might be $1,400, $1,400.

Typical profit on a financing car will be closer to $2,000. So therefore, you say, I'm probably going to finance the car, I'm not sure, or just tell them, just lie to them, I'm going to finance the car. Because that salesperson, that sales manager mentally says, I got a shot at him for a $2,000 profit. So if he's negotiating me down from what I want to make, which is $1,200 to $800, I'll let that slide because I'm going to pop it to him in the finance office

and make my $2,000. Don't take away that possibility from him because then it'll make him tighter, harder, to negotiate a low price of the car. Yeah, and without more information, it's hard for me to tell you if that price was good, It seems incredibly high, though, to me. $39.995 for a 2017 Tacoma TRD,

unless it has five miles on it, which... Here's what you can do is go to our website, earl Stewart, Toyota.com, and you can see some cars like that, maybe not the same one. And we have on our website with the only dealer that puts the Althador price, that's the price that you're right to check for

and give it to the dealer. the real price for the car, no hidden fees, no dealer-installed accessories. And you can take our price from a new or used car, take it to another dealer and say, here's Earl Stewart's price in writing, printed out right from his computer, his website, and I can get this car for this price, write him out of check. If you'll beat it, I'll buy the car from you. Or if you meet it, I'll buy the car from you. This is not an advertisement.

We do have a TRD, Tacoma Sport 2017, and it's under $30,000 out the door. So, shop around. So take our price and take it to the dealer you'd prefer to do business with and see if you'll meet it or beat it. If you won't meet it, buy it from us. All right. Jack in California says, what happened to Asuzu? Why did they fail in the U.S.?

I used to see a lot of the SUVs in the 90s. You know, there's too many manufacturers, even Japanese, and they're falling out. You're going to see a lot more fallout. Anybody that's marginal today, Nissan, could be gone in a year. There's a name that's been around a long time. Mitsubishi. Mitsubishi. So even more likely to go down.

And Azizu was just one of the ones. I love their old commercials. Was it Joe Azuzu? Yeah, the liar. Yeah, the liar. I thought it was so innovative and creative. I loved their advertising. But, yeah, it's going to be a huge consolidation in all the manufacturers.

You got any text over there? I don't want to monopolize. Okay, good, because I have an anonymous feedback, and you're going to like this. You need to ponder this because I agree 1,000% with this person. Earl, you need to write another book or at least do a modern revision of the current one. A lot of the info is out of date. Yes. The car business has changed so much in the last decade.

cave. What are you waiting for? Oh, I feel so guilty. You know, that's the reason I love Anonymous because that hits me right in the gut. He's right. And my book is too old. Things have changed. And to give Stu his credit,

he's been telling me, he's even offered to rewrite the book for me. And I should. And you just motivated me to move on that. I mean, think of all the things that has happened since you've written the book. Online, retail, and fake online retailing, the change in the name of the fees?

I'm adding that to my New Year's resolutions. You're going to do it this year? And I'm asking you, Rick, you and Stu, and Jonathan, get on me about that. And I've got to get the wheels in motion. What should I name the book? Part two, confessions. I love confessions of Ricard. More confessions.

Yeah. More confessions. Okay. I'll think about it. Yeah. We can get creative with it. Yeah, well, you folks out there in Radio Land, what should I name my next book? The original one, we were coming up with ideas for the title, I was really pushing screwed, remember?

Yeah. And then we end up going with confessions. And Donald's feedback, you'll have fun with this. I'm asking everybody, what should I name my book? I can already think of some really neat things to say anonymously. You got a dirty mind. No, I'm just... Okay.

All right, well, that's a show, folks. I'm just kidding. I'm all caught up with text right now. I had something I wanted to talk about, and it's a tip. Can I throw one quick thing just while we were on the subject of the book? Folks, Earl will also make sure that with his new book, all the proceeds again will go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

Yeah, I keep forgetting the mention. Because that's something that everybody should know. When you buy his book for $20 right now, $20, Every single penny of it goes to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. There it is. Big Dog Ranch Rescue. What would you call it? They raise so much money.

This probably isn't a huge amount, but it's very helpful. And you can buy it on Amazon.com. And what can I say? You get a great book that helps you buy a car without being ripped off, and you help save a dog's life. And we save about 5,000 dogs a year. There's a lot of dogs. And Mark Ryan, who is a college professor in Iowa, says, I use Earl's book in my personal finance course.

I'm very willing to write a forward or recommendation for the new book. He's one of our every week, YouTube. Absolutely. Now I'm committed. I'm going to promise everybody I'm going to update the book and it'll be done this year. and we're going to go to Mark in Palm Beach Gardens Hello Mark Good morning

Good morning Earl Stu I'm Rick Hey hi I'm sad to hear that Nancy's not there But I hear she's doing well Hey uh my 2017 Camry XLE We're in July

I think we're running out of our factory warranty And uh you know you get offers And offers for extended warranties And being as I do all my business business with your shop or store. I was just wondering what do you guys recommend as a particular warranty company, you know, the ones that you have the least hassles with collecting your money and best, you know, the best service for the customer, best quality package. I was just wondering if you have some suggestions for me. Well, Mark, the R.R. Our

warranty company is owned by us and we are the insurers and we make the payments and we do the you know when there's a claim we pay the claims with that said it is a profitable company and I say to people when they buy extended warranties and I say to myself when I buy an extended warranty on a product when I buy a product I ask myself this question the warranty that I'm buying, is it going to reimburse me if I have a problem with this product for something that if I had to pay out of my pocket would be painful? I look at extended warnings, just like an insurance policy. It is truly an insurance policy, just like I do when I have insurance on my home. I have fire insurance in my home because if my home burned down, it would be

extremely painful for me to have to build another home and pay for it. That's a question, because all insurance companies make money, all extended warranty companies make money, including mine. Mine, I would take, if you looked at the insurance products that I have, extended warnings, I'd say read the policy, read the exclusions and the inclusions, and look at the cost of repairs, look at your financial situation, and do you want to pay $1,200 or $2,000, whatever the price may be for the one? warranty you want. For the peace of mind to sleep better at night knowing that you won't be out of pocket if the car breaks. With that said, you have a good product. You have a 2017 Camry. There are good products. They're highly reliable. If I were buying a Mitsubishi, I'd probably think more about buying an extended warranty or a Jeep. I would definitely buy an extended warranty. but if you have a Honda or Toyota or a high-quality product,

I would really think twice before I bought an extended warranty. You have to bank it yourself because no cars are perfect, and if two years from now your 2017 Camry has a problem and you have to pay for it, it's painful, but you would have written a check two years earlier for $2,000 and maybe not even had to use that warranty. Rick has a point. So you mean that, you know, possibly,

two years from now, if you pay for said repair, that you may have less of an out-of-pocket of $2,000. Yes, yeah. Yeah, because in total, I said my warranty company makes money. That means I pay out less in claims than I take it in premiums, and every warranty company does that. So you're betting against the house. The reason Warren Buffett is the second or third richest man in the world is because of

his insurance companies, and he'll tell you himself. there's nothing like an insurance company. You take all the premiums that you get, and you take that and you invest them, and the tax laws are such that they protect you from having to pay taxes when the premiums come in. So you can take a million dollars of premiums in,

and you're an insurance company, and you pay zero taxes. And the next year, you pay zero taxes. And the next year you might pay a little tax, and the taxes are only paid as the insurance, premiums earn out meaning they expire and it's a wonderful situation for owners of insurance companies so you're betting against the house I would if it were me I wouldn't buy the extended warranty the only thing I would recommend on it is if you're

looking for extended warranties I would avoid anything that is simply power train yes because most new cars nowadays and newer cars as much as possible yeah the The power trains just don't break. The engine, the transmission, there's very few failures there. The biggest failures that I see as a technician are air conditioning, alternators. It's the accessory type items, door lock actuators, window motors, regulators, is things that a lot of those lower grade warranties don't cover. Son Rose, Moonrose.

Exactly. Those are, and yet those are the things they don't cover. But those can be hundreds and thousands of dollars to repair. Navigation. Navigation systems. Again, excellent, because navigation, the radio screen, when you see a car that has that radio with the TV screen to it, you're expecting at least $12 to $1,500 minimum if that screen were to go out and could be as much as $2,000 to $3,000, just for the part.

When you're reading the warranty, Mark, always look to see what is not covered. they'll always tell you what's covered but you have to ask what's not covered and that's where they get you that's where they make their money elaborated much more than I expected no wonder why you guys ratings are so good and Stu I agree

it's time to force Alan back onto the show oh good I just need a little hanging in you guys have a wonderful day and Earl I'll see you on IFC sounds good one thanks very much I hope Alan's list thing right now.

International Sunrise Club. Yeah, I hope Alan's listening. Yeah, absolutely. The pressure. 2020, the pressure's back on. You know, Rick can't be a little loquacious, can't he? We all can. All right.

We have some more text coming. These are great. We have some suggestions for the title of your book. Oh. First one says, how about shafted? That's pretty good. Yeah, how about, that's shivd or never mind. Here's a few.

Confessions of a recovering car dealer, the journey continues. That's nice. I like that. Recovered reflections of a consumer champion. Well, you know, you never recover. I mean, I have to tell you this, because I was so good at screwing the people back in the day in 60s and 70s. It's going to take a long time. Yeah.

And I have to tell you that every now and then, evil thought, floats through my mind. And I'm just like a heroin addict or an alcoholic. Once you've been there and done that, and felt the exhilaration, I ran an ad one time on a Pontiac Grand Prix. And all I had was new Grand Prix, and the price was $59,995, $5,995,000.

How long ago was that? And the Grand Prix I was advertising, in the paper, big full page ad, had a stick shift. Back then, you didn't have much standard equipment. No air conditioning, no tinted glass, no white sidewall tires. That doesn't sound

like a big deal today, but back then they all had white sidewalls. And nothing. The car had a heater maybe for $5,000, and the people would flock in and I would take them to the car and say, there it is. And they say, it doesn't have air conditioning.

No, but I've got one right here with air conditioning. It's only 12.99. And they say, well, it's no tenant class. Well, here's another one, air conditioning. And that's the way I sold cars. Terrible. I look back on it, and I feel, I feel, I hate myself when I do it. But I think about it, and though I could go on and on.

Maybe that'll be part of my book. I'll do more and more about. Get him in the door. Yeah. Did you mention the, I think it was the corolla that you painted? Oh, the corolla. I ran a corolla for $2,695, a new Toyota Corolla for $2,695. And we called it the Earl Stewart Toyota Limited Edition Special.

That's probably the Lake Park. So I took a Corolla, Stewart's Lake Park Toyota at the time. So I took the Corolla, and I took it to the body shop, and I had them paint on both sides of the car from the rear bumper to the front bumper right across the whole car Stewart's Lake Park to hit a limited edition special on both sides of the car and I put it on the showroom floor and I advertised that car for $2,695 so when they came in on the ad which was like a thousand dollars or $2,000 less than anybody else could sell you the car I say here's the car and they say oh I like that car

where's the one without the sign on where they all yellow is the car If you buy the car, you have to have the sign on it. Weren't they all yellow, too? Something like that. They might have been. I don't remember. And then you had to keep painting them. People were asking for them.

Yeah, they were so cheap. They were so cheap. And then I got into a big fight with a professor from Florida Atlantic University. They came up, and he was really angry. And he called the County Office of Consumer Affairs and really got me in trouble. But I was delivering what I advertised. That's true. I did.

Anyway, I wrestle with myself and the way I did it, I cannot say I'm recovered because if I don't do this show, if I don't write my blogs, if I don't do what I'm doing, I'm afraid I'll fall back. You'll revert. You'll relapse. Yeah, it happens after all these years. All right. How about this one? Yeah, cars, dogs, and sunrises. My journey as a recovering car dealer.

I like that. It's nice. Cars, dogs, and sunrises. Wow. very creative person thank you very much yeah we have a question why do car salesman force you to wait to meet his manager before letting you go home I think it's part of the psychological strategy I think it's control you know people it's a it's a prestige thing the big shot is the last person to come to the meeting you know you want to establish a feeling of a thought

for the manager. It's a head game. It's also a, they take a last stab at you. Usually the managers will almost always have a lot more experience in the salesperson. They might ask the question, the salesperson failed to answer. Or it could just be a pressure tactic where they just sit down and they go, I don't understand why you're not buying today and have another go with the negotiation. Yeah, and they're good.

And today's modern sales manager and salesmen, it's not like the old day with the gold teeth and the checker jacket and the white shoes. That doesn't happen anymore. They're dressed very nicely. They're a lot of young, and they look like your nephew or your grandson, and they got a great smile, very white teeth, and they speak well, and they have empathy. And, I mean, they're really good.

You're picturing our old GS general sales manager, Terry Chappell. So you said the white teeth. Beautiful, beautiful teeth. They are very good. I tell you right now, you will like your salespeople at most car dealerships. When you come into a car dealer, in five minutes, you're going to like that guy or gal. And they hire people that are very likable and can transmit empathy and things like that. Yeah, and forcing you to wait is not a good thing.

I don't think it's a bad thing to meet the person. Yeah, I mean, because sometimes a salesperson could be an experience and not mention something important to you. So that's a, there's a real reason for it. Okay. Well, we've got a couple of comments on YouTube right now. Cricketer Den says, every time I talk. to a car salesman it reminds me of an expression we used to use if you can't impress them with your brilliance baffle them with your BS and they're good they're

really good they can look at the eye and they can tell you some untruth and you believe them because they're so likable I mean that is the essence of a salesperson's likeability and frankly we talk about it in our business even though we like to think we're honest and transparent if you you have a completely honest ethical business and you have a salesperson that doesn't have the charisma and the smile and the likeability, he's not going to sell a product. I mean, salesmanship is salesmanship. And today in the 21st century, you still can't beat likeability. That's right. It takes you to get you a long way.

Waitresses, waiters, you know, any place you do business, you know. sure one of the reason I love Costco is everybody in Costco it's just so nice and likable my dermatologist yes dr. qualchick yeah love him love him yeah yeah i don't know if he's any good but you know what they call you know what they call a doctor that graduates last in his mid-school class can i answer this one yes doctor that's right so if your doctor's likable ask him what what's position was in his graduating class Earl's been telling me that joke since I was four years old but it's funny isn't Yes, that's true. It's funny.

Well, Silver Hunter is also asking, why is it so hard to find a used Tacoma for an affordable price? I can't answer that. I can only say that if you shop and compare, you get the lowest price. It's the lowest out-the-door price, and by definition, that is a good price. Car dealers are going to compete against each other to earn your business.

if you're smart and tough and shop and compare and the card deal that offers you the lowest price out the door I can't over-emphasize out the door if you get tricked and they give you up a price that's low that really isn't a price and they add the dealer-installed accessories

and the hidden fees then they took advantage of you lowest out-the-door price is a good price and Marie hey Anne-Marie she has a suggestion for the book title. How about going to the dogs for their adventures of a recovering car dealer?

We've got some greedy people out there. Yeah, we do. Are you writing these down? Oh, they're on my computer screen. Okay, let's keep those. We'll go through and come up with a good title. And Donovan Lewis,

he's got a shout out here that sounds worthwhile. I found my dream car. A 2002 Porsche 9-11. It was on the west coast of Florida. The dealer worked out the deal 100% over the phone, went above and beyond, removed their dealer fee, and was amazing. Why can't more dealers be like this? Why do they have to make the experience horrid? He says, everything was perfect, the best experience I have ever had, and he says the dealer was

Crown Volvo in St. Petersburg, Florida. Wow. You know, I know the original owner of the Crown Auto Group, his name is Dwayne Hawkins. I don't even know if he's still with us. but Dwayne was quite a guy. In regard to what happened there, I'm not taking anything away from Crown, but I'm saying this, another reason to deal online,

they were on the other coast, this dealership on the West Coast, you're on the East Coast, knew he had one shot at you, and he knows there's a lot of 2002 Porsches that you got to bought, maybe not that many 2002-9-11s, but he knows

that he's going to have to be real honest and nice and competitive to get you to drive all the way from the east coast to the west coast of Florida. And another good reason to shop online and actually an incentive to shop far away online. I mean, if you're in North Palm Beach and you're talking to a dealer in Tampa, he's got to motivate the heck out of you to drive to Tampa

and buy that car. So you just want to be sure you nail it down and you get the exact out-the-door price and you tell them, say, I'm driving to Tampa, and this is the out-the-door price. I got the check in my hand. God help you, if I come over there and you try to jack me around

with dealer-installed accessories and hidden fees. Make it clear, and you drive over there, get yourself a heck of a deal. And Donovan says, also, I was driving a long way. They had the car waiting for me, all the paperwork ready, didn't have to sit around all day

or have the salespeople lie to me about the car and possible issues. So apparently, Crown Volvo in St. Petersburg, Florida. Crown Volvo. They did Donovan Wright. I got a question. He said that he took off the dealer fee? Yeah. He says they removed

their dealer fee from it. I'm on their website right now, and I'm just looking at new Volvos, and nowhere on their listing didn't even mention their dealer fee. That's pretty sneaky. Pretty sneaky. Yeah. I'm like there's no disclosure, there's nothing. Yeah, that's illegal. But once again, assuming they have the dealer fee and they took it off, they probably would have never done that if you'd been next

door, or if you'd have walked into the showroom. They would have hoped she didn't see it and socked it to you. That's right. Okay, Linda on Facebook says, make the new book with larger print, please. Huh. You know what I got to do also, I'm about the book. I got to do an audio book. yeah yeah and i'm on kindle i'm on i books um but you're absolutely right you should do bigger print if you do i if you do an ebook by the way you can make the print bigger just with your uh exactly yeah but i should do a bigger print book i agree all right shall we get to the mystery dropping reporter just a quick one real quick we have um dug dug says good morning meow and i think

that's he's passing along his greetings from ollie the cat uh linda replied woof woof so we have whole pet thing going on online right now. And let's say, okay, Steve said. I'll give a plug to my International Sunrise Club alluded to a few times. Every morning at sunrise, sunrise is at 709 a.m. At 709 a.m. on Nancy Stewart, also known as Mrs. Sunrise, and my moniker is Mr. Sunrise, every morning we're on the beach, and we video on Facebook, the sunrise. That's quite a nice thing.

We have people from all over the world, and we have a cadre of comments, and we all kind of know each other. We invite all people. You can go to Facebook.com port slash earl stew. I don't know why I did that from my Facebook, E-A-R-L-S-T-E-W. Facebook.com, Earl Stoo, and you can see the sunrise every morning. That's right. You post it publicly, so you don't even have to be a friend. Exactly.

And we have members in Australia, South Palo, Brazil, Bali, Canada, Bali, Egypt. We're a worldwide sunrise club. I wonder what time of day the Egyptians are looking at the sunrise. I don't know. I ask that usually. It's a little bit later there. They'd be about six hours later than us.

Okay. There you go. Mystery Shopping Report. Wallace Mazda of Stewart and we did another Takata test My apologies to folks out there They think we're doing too much to cutta stuff But as Stu said earlier in the show

There's been a huge title wave of new Takata recalls And it's getting scarier and scarier The Wallace Auto Group Has done better than most car dealers When it comes to selling used cars With Takada Airbag Recalls It was a Wallace buy-here pay here a lot

Easy-pay car, easy-pay car that had the honor of being the first to pass the Takata test with an A-grade. It was so good because this salesperson refused to sell the car until they fixed the Takata Airbag. Never been done before. Never been done since. This is not to say the Walls dealerships have all been perfect. Most of the half-dozener-so-wall Smith shops have resolved in average to above-average passing grades. Keep in mind, we grade on a curve. It all store of cars. A curve means that the dealer that didn't really do all things right,

kind of floundered around a little bit. If it was the best dealer that we talked to, they get an A. And if we held them to an absolute series of standards, then we would have nobody who could buy a car from. And so that would make sense. So we grade on the curve. We had one wall of store fall completely, failed completely, Wallace Hyundai back in 2018. We see a lot of inconsistencies when we investigate a larger dealer group, whether we're looking at tachari cones or sales practice.

The more locations the dealer has, the more difficult it is to manage the behavior of his or her managers and other employees. And I can speak to that personally because when I was younger, I had multiple dealerships, and it was impossible for me. of course I didn't even want to be honest back then but had I wanted to be honest it would have been impossible for me to police it was also harder to be consistently evil exactly right some of the locations didn't quite rise

to the level of evil you expect exactly exactly so I can identify where the wall is because he's got a lot of dealerships we can see a lot of inconsiderate oh yeah blah blah this problem should not be allowed as an excuse no for car dealers though

It may be harder to maintain consistent customer experience with multiple locations, but it isn't impossible, just like a Starbucks or Costco. And I threw in their CarMax. I mean, CarMax is high on our curve, recommended use car dealership. They have a relatively small dealer fee. They don't sneak in dealer installed accessories. They don't lie cheater's steel and they're transparent. If they can do it and they have hundreds of locations around the country, anybody can do it. When it comes to Takata recalls, however, the stakes are much higher than serving perfect, I'm talking about Starbucks, perfect caramel machado.

Machiados. Machiato or exclusively roasted rotisserie chicken, many of those chickens. I was hungry when I typed this up. I'm telling you, I'm salivating now thinking about the Costco chickens. Costco does an amazing job. Lives are at stake with Takata airbag and other dangerous recalls. It should be incumbent, incumbent, upon all car dealers to raise the consciousness of their employees and treat the management of their safety crisis with the care, attention, and gravity requires.

You're talking life and death, man. I mean, how can you not talk to your sales staff about what happens when you sell a car with a dangerous recall that the customer doesn't even know about? Or maybe it can't even be fixed. Every location or every dealer group should have one consistent policy for how to hand. handle used cars with Takata or any dangerous recall. Ideally, this policy should be a complete stop sale on unfixed Takata vehicles should not be able to sell a car

if it's not fixed. It's just so simple. Takata vehicle, but if this is too radical for them, then full, robust disclosure should be the only another kind of alternative. They say now, well, we're disclosing it. No, no, just pointing at a Carfax report is not good enough. And fine print, even fine print.

Disclosure is getting in the face of your buyer and saying, this car can kill you. I have to fix it, and I will fix it, but I can't deliver the car to you because it has a dangerous recall. That's full disclosure. Should be big, bold, and red. You have to scare the customer, and dealers don't want to do that. They want to sell the customer.

As big as the advertised price. Exactly. These Takata policies should be hammered into the minds of all employees who deal with used cars. I mean, they use car manager, the general manager, the sales manager, the salesman. Anyway, dealers must also inspect what they expect by auditing their inventories, analyzing their sales, and mystery shopping themselves. You know, when we first started this policy, we had to be careful. we've been doing it we've been selling cars with recalls not on purpose and not consciously but because we didn't have the dedication we didn't think about it it didn't think about it so what was it five years ago how long has it been we started in 2016 so yeah four years ago

when we started this we got a few cars slipping through the cracks well no after we stopped yeah after we stopped i think we had two that slipped through yeah you have to be careful you have to be careful Because a busy dealership trades on a lot of cars, and sometimes a car will get traded in. They want to sell two hours later. I mean, a fresh trade in, a desirable car, it can be sold before you have a chance to even wash it. So you have to have strict controls if you're going to protect your customers.

Dealers must also, there we go. And mystery shop themselves. I get criticized all the time for the mystery shopping reports so we do the competition. A lot of people don't know. We mystery shop ourselves two or three times every week. We only mystery shop the dealers in South Florida. Once a week.

Once a week, and that's not the same dealer. We shop ourselves two or three times a week. A dozen times a month. Yeah, a dozen times a month. To keep ourselves honest, you have 170 employees, and you have 30 salespeople, and you hire new people every day, people retire people quit people get fired it's a it's a cauldron of personnel coming in to car dealerships

you got to be on top of it and we pay for a perfect mystery shop we pay them 500 bucks 500 bucks if they do the right thing by our customers and that's more than their normal commission exactly mystery shopping reports you dealers out there Tony you know all you dealers out there mystery shop your own car dealership you might be a sterling guy with all the integrity and honesty that you could possibly desire. But the people down the ladder, the people in the trenches that are actually selling these cars, you might have a rotten apple. In fact, I guarantee you you have a rotten apple.

We have a rotten apple. I just don't know which apple's rotten. And that's the reason we've got to shop. We're going to keep biting all those apples. Yeah, happens. That's the real world. This week finding a decadown vehicle is easy. Remember, there was another massive round announced last month, Subaru and then Honda and Toyota.

So the waves are building, these Takano recalls, are getting larger and larger. Agent Thunder took the assignment, speaking in the first person. I parked near the used car lot at Wallace, Mazda, and this is in Stewart, Florida, at approximately three in the afternoon, walked toward the main showroom, I'm a couple of salesmen partially hidden in our old cars, both smoking cigarettes. That's not smart from a lot of perspectives. It's not smart because you're going to get lung cancer, and it's not smart because people don't like to be around smokers.

I'm sorry. I just, you know. It's true. I used to smoke. I quit. Cigars. Well, I smoked cigarettes a long time ago. Yeah, I remember briefly.

Yeah. You're having a midlife crisis. A midlife crisis, exactly. I quickened my pace. I was evil, too. It looked evil. The cigar really added to the evil effect. Yeah, yeah, everybody did, yeah.

Once inside, I was immediately greeted by another salesperson named, do I print another, Yoel? I think Yol. Y'all? Maybe Y'L. I don't know. I know. I'm going to say Y'O.L. Okay. Y'all was young, maybe late 20s, very friendly and energetic. Remember what I said before? You're going to love your salesman.

Today, 21st century, the dealers. figure that out you got to have likable salesman and I guarantee you you well was very likable I told him I was there to see the 2013 Subaru Outback asked him if he was familiar with the vehicle you will said they only had one outback in stock and knew exactly where it was I tell them I'd like to look at it drive it prior to doing anything else you know all was easy to work with he said no problem and asked me for my driver's license he was quick to in a couple minutes you will was back with a license plate and keys in hand you know when I was reading the shopping reports to write some for me when I was reading that and I saw

he asked me for my driver's license how many thousands have we done shopping reports they all asked for the driver's license now there's control the dealers know that if they don't get the driver's license and they steal their car they're probably never going to get the car back so what a great their insurance company also requires them because if the car is damaged and they have the driver's license

their insurance covers it so it's important to the dealer that the salesman always gets a driver's license and make his a copy of it before they do on the test drive it's also because they require them to put them into the database so they do follow-up so that's the easiest way to get that info

so the dealer the car dealer the owner is very motivated no matter how many car dealers ships he has, he is motivated do that. Why can't he be motivated to save the lives of his customers? By saying, I will not

sell you this car because it has a dangerous recall. A whole lot of work goes into a whole lot of less important things. Yes. Copy of your driver. I texted you a picture of U.L. by the way, if you want to look at your phone. Oh. You will. No.

It says time to stand. I have to. All right. Well, we're We're running out of time. Exactly. I told him I was there to see the 2013. I did that, didn't I? Yeah, okay.

Subaru was an excellent condition, cosmetically speaking, freshly detailed with no visible scratches or dense. The tires looked new. Didn't look like a seven-year-old car. The only problem was that it was green. But I told you well that I thought it was a nice color. That's good.

To each his own. Yeah. You all did an expert presentation. sounded excited, as he told me about the features. I said I was impressed with it, but I was a little worried about its age. I asked him if he was aware of any issue, like a mechanical problem. I said that I assumed it was out of warranty. You all confirmed that it was, but told me that I could get an extended warranty on it.

Kaching, extended warranty. He said that the car was on the lot for sale, and meant that it had passed a mechanical and safety inspection. We hear that a phrase. That's almost uniform. I responded by asking, so no safety issues. You all said they only sold safe cars. Now, that's pretty misleading, isn't it, if you're selling cars with dangerous recalls?

That's a lie if you're selling cars with dangerous recalls. I asked him about it. It's a past, like if it was ever a rental or in an accident. You all said the Carfax report would tell us everything we need to know. We don't want a test drive, return to the dealership. We sat down a desk in his office, and he asked me that the outlook was something I'd like to take home today. Trial clothes at standard. They all do that.

I said, I may buy it today, but I would need to leave to bring my wife back with me. We both want to be on the title. You asked me more questions about, YOL asked me more questions about the purchase. like whether I was financing or paying cash. I told me I would consider both. I said if we decide to finance, we'd like to do shorter term, three years, put down $6,000. I said I'd already played with the numbers and wanted to keep my payments well under $300. You all said it sounded like my figures were right on the money.

He said he would get a sales worksheet for me and a Carfax report. I asked him what the price was going to be. He said the online price was the lowest price, that was true, that they offered, he said they would add a $799 doc fee and a $129 filing fee, but that was it. So there we are, $809, almost $1,000. You all left, return quickly with documents. We looked at the Carfax report. He said it was a good report, no accidents, one order.

He trailed off, he said, there was recall indicated. So there we have disclosure. But he thought it was probably already taken care of. Then he said, Wallace doesn't sell cars with open recalls. Well, we didn't know that. We knew it about the easy pay, but we didn't know that, uniformly speaking. He said he'd better check with his manager to make sure it had been addressed. He left, waited for five minutes.

You all came back with Willie. The manager, Willie said it looked like the recall was reported very recently. It was filed on December 20th, 2019. So that's true. He said he'd be more comfortable if he could make some calls. to clear up the situation will he apologize said he didn't want to put me out but he understood I hadn't planned to take the car right then I told him that that was right he suggests I give him a day to figure out it to figure it out once we

had all the all clear I could take delivery I told him that I appreciate the way handle this and I didn't feel put out at all so there we have it we actually add a disclosure could have been done better but at least it was done and we come to a voting time and what can I tell you it's so refreshing to see a good intent

and we've seen it before with Wallace and now we saw it again we have two grades that came in from listeners Tim gives them an A and Jennifer gives them a B that's it so far that's pretty nice I would say

I always say this with Bill Wallace because I know Bill Wallace don't have for many many years back when he just had a Ford dealership in Del Rey. And his father named Earl Wallace was had the dealership before. So I talk to Bill occasionally, and I'll call him about a customer complaint from one of his customers, and he always takes care of him. How are we doing on the scores, Rick?

So far, I've got Donovan and Ernesto and Mark Ryan, all with B's. Good. Ed Overdike with an A. And for me, I'm giving an A. I see something surprising to me I see them say hey we're stopping this right now until we find out what's going on

Frank and Jupiter Farms gives them a B plus plus I'm going to give them an A too that would be at the top of the chart remember we've had the suggestion that we we're trying to say we don't just have pass or fail the gradations of the passing are failing the scores and this would go

at the top. We should put Bill Wallace Mazda at the top. Yeah, and I think Yuel did great. Willie did great. Even with the fees, I mean, he told him before we even showed the paperwork that he's going to get these fees added. So that's as transparent as we've seen. Yeah. Good job, guys. Mark Anderson from Missouri, a B-minus.

Well, congratulations, Wallace, Mazda, and Stewart, and we want to recommend you right now to all the Mazda dealers, Mazda buyers out there. By the way, Mastah's got a high-quality product. I was really surprised, because Jeremy Ports rank Maza right up there with Toyota, Honda, and some of the other really, really good makes. So Masta quality has come way up. Amory gives them an A.

Amory just texted us. Okay, folks, we've got it wrong. We'll see you next Saturday, 8 to 10. Thanks for being a part of Earl and Car. Thank you.