Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.29.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of I-95 Nissan

Episode Date: January 29, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a local Nissan dealer to see how much over sticker price they will charge for a new 2021 Nissan Rogue Sport. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart are 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 South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. This is Earl Stewart Live. You were just listening to Earl Stewart recorded. This is a live show. I got to stop saying that because when we have a rerun I kill it by saying it was a live show but I'll worry about that some other time

South Florida is this a rerun? Is this a rerun? Yes it is I think no it's not. It's a winter wonderland here in South Florida and that big coal fronts coming in on us not cold for you guys up north

and we are all over so I have to remember we're reaching a lot of people in much colder areas in South Florida, but it was about 40 degrees this morning where I live and it was in the high 30s and other areas in South Florida and it's going down even lower. So we got cold. But here we are to bring you a nice warm show, help you out during this unprecedented time in our automotive history of buying cars, retailing cars, It's very, very difficult out there to find any kind of a car that you want to buy. And when you find one, you're not going to find a price that you want to pay. That goes for newer used cars.

You may already know that. If you don't, you really should. You have to be extra careful now. And, you know, before the show came on the air, I mean, back, you know, in the dark ages, We've been on for close to 20 years. It was pretty bad buying a car then. It was very difficult to negotiate a price and get a fair deal on financing

and trade in values. This show's been around for a long time. And I'm not trying to pat myself on the back or pat all of us here in the studio in the back by saying we're doing an extraordinarily valuable service now, but we are. It's even more necessary. We advise you that you should not buy a new or used car today.

Now, some of you out there know that I'm a car dealer. I've been a car dealer for a long time. I still am a car dealer. I have a toilet dealership in North Palm Beach. Let me say, this is not an infomercial. I'm not here to sell you Toyotas or sell your cars from my dealership. This show is strictly consumer advocacy to help you. So, you heard me right.

I still say you shouldn't buy a car, not from me, not from anybody today. You will find that car dealers are charging you many thousands of dollars over manufacturer-tested retail price, MSRP. And the interesting thing about it is they're not even being timid about it. They're telling you, which in a way is refreshing, because pre-COVID, pre-pandemic, free microchip shortage in this huge high-demand low supply situation we have in the world on cars, they led you to believe that you're getting a price that you weren't. They led you to believe that you're buying their car oftentimes near their cost or maybe even below their cost.

It was a bait and switch. Really a nasty way to do business. Today, ironically, they're being honest with you. You come into the car dealership, and they say, look, we only got one. You want to buy a Nissan Ultima? We have one. You want to buy a Honda Cord? We have two.

They don't have inventory. And they say, we're charging less over MSRP. In other words, they'll say, I'll sell your car for only 5,000 over MSRP. That reminded me of the day back when we used to have a dealer fee, and that was our claim to fan. We had a smallest dealer fee in town. You've got to still a dealer fee. Exactly, yeah. And some dealers still say that.

So I read an article in automotive news. That's a trade journal for the car dealers and for the manufacturers. And Cox, the newspaper media chain, did a survey. And they found that the buyer satisfaction for car buyers in 2021 was actually a little higher than it was pre-COVID. And I'm saying, what? The car buyers now are paying literally thousands of dollars over sticker MSRP. Now, how could they be happy about that?

Well, you know, I guess people feel happy even though they pay a high price as long as you're being honest about it. And to one degree or another, the dealers are being reliably honest compared to the pre-COVID situation. And they're saying, you know, we got you. We, a mystery shopped one car dealership where on the door said, the car that you think about buying today will be bought after you walk out the door tomorrow. I mean, words to that. By the person who was thinking about it yesterday. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, they're telling you the truth. If you want to buy a car today and you go into a car dealership, you just have to

find out how many thousands of dollars you're willing to pay over full sticker price. And that's the kind of thing we need to talk about. Anyway, the point I'm making is that if you've ever listened to the show and you've ever heard our suggestions and recommendations and you do have to buy a car today, and some people do. And to be honest, some people just want Nancy and I were talking to the car on the way in. And we talked to people and we say, hey, why don't you wait a few months and they don't. They don't have to buy a car, but they want to buy a car. A minute's face it, buying a new car, or for that matter, the used car you want to buy,

this is an exciting emotional thing. People want cars. I'm a car dealer. I love selling cars. People want to buy them. Cars are fun. And they're part of our lives in America especially. Most people in America, you think about, you know, if I really arrive, I really make it,

I want to have my own home and my own car. And sometimes the car is more important than the home. So here we are. And we've got a studio full of experts. I've got Nancy Stewart, my co-host sitting to my left here in the studio. And she is a strong advocate for the field. strong advocate for the female buyer. We all realize that the ladies in the audience are different in the way they buy a car. I think differently about it. They are more demanding.

They actually are more analytical. And oftentimes they're not looked upon seriously and they're taken advantage of. That's the reason Nancy has a special program that she's going to offer in a minute to any lady buyer or intending buyer or whatever that calls the show for the first time. First time new female callers she has a special offer for. And to my right is Rick Kearney, who was our certified master diagnostic technician. And we focus too much oftentimes on buying cars instead of maintaining and repairing, especially in today's climate. when I'm saying, don't buy a car, what you should be doing is taking better care of the car

you have. Be sure that it can run well for you, that can serve you well for another six months or a year. And then if you want to buy a car, buy a car then. Rick will tell you how to avoid expensive repairs and how to be sure if you have to have a repair that you get the best price. And maybe how you can actually fix the car yourself. There are a lot of things that you can do that you don't have to pay anybody for. Or you can have it. we'll tell you that the problem you're worried about isn't that serious.

A little adjustment you can make. So Rick Kearney, if you call the show at 877 960-9960 That's 877 960 90-90-60 Or Nancy Stewart on my left

give her call, same number 877-960 9960. Now, of course we're on Facebook Earl Sturt on Cars I'm sorry Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars

We're on YouTube YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars And we have an anonymous feedback line Something unique You may have never heard of unless you listen to the show It's a URL, it's a web address Your Anonymous Feedback.com

Just the way it sounds. Y-O-U-R A-N-O-N-Y and U.S. Anonymous Feedback.com. You go on that URL, you send us a question or comment, anything you want to say. You're totally anonymous. We don't know who you are. We get a lot of feedback that way. People, they don't want to chitchat, they don't want their name used. Or maybe they have something to say they're afraid with illicit response

they wouldn't like to have. I don't care what your motivation is. A lot of people prefer anonymity. And if you like that, Tell us what's on your mind. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We also have our website. You can go to asherluncars.com. And a lot of what we say on the show is right there. It's a world of information.

If you haven't got time to listen to the show, write that down. Erluncars.com. Click on that website. And you'll find a lot of things that will help you out, whether you're leasing, buying, maintaining, or repairing. I'm going to pass a microphone Oh, forget my son, my son, Stu. He's sitting over there.

Stu is our Cybermaster. He's also our mystery shopping expert. And we send a dispatch mystery shoppers out into the cold. Today, it really is the cold. And they try to buy a car, pretend to try to buy a car, lease a car.

And we report back to you. So a lot of times we were doing dealers in South Florida. We have a mystery shopper that ventures all over the U.S. now. We've had Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and we'll be stretching out even further. But we actually will report that back to you exactly the way it happens. We maintain a list of good dealers and bad dealers. And the ones that pass our test on the mystery shopping report go on our good dealer list,

the ones that don't go on our bad dealer list. And you can read that anytime you want to it. www. or good dealer, baddealer, or is it Florida good dealer? Just good dealer, bad dealer list. Just good dealer, baddealer list.com.

So we'll have a mystery shopping report coming up toward the end of the show. If you haven't listened to the show before, it's probably the most entertaining thing that we do, probably the most educational thing we do. Real live dealership, we name the dealership, we name the managers,

the salespeople. The only one we don't name is our mystery shopping, we refer to her as Agent Lightning and we also have a male shopper, Agent Thunder, and occasionally we have other shoppers. But we use pseudonyms naturally so they don't get busted or confronted when they walk into a cardio with you.

Now, Nancy Stewart sitting on my left will tell you about that special offer I alluded to earlier for you first-time female callers and also a few other things. Good morning, folks. We're here for you. the show is all about each and every one of you and how we strive to protect you out there in the minefield it's very important to us and I think that you pick up the vibes

every single Saturday morning and we're true to you kind of like Consumer Report and we just want to remind you and let you know give us a call toll free at 877 960 9960 or you in Texas at 772-49760. And we'd like to extend a small gift to the ladies. The first two new lady callers. Give us a call. You can win yourself $50 this morning. First two new lady callers. Tell us about your, well, maybe your hesitation to purchase a car today in light of the environment we're living in. Maybe you want to share your story about service.

We'd like to hear from you. 877-9-60-99-60. And also, there's a very, very important website, as I mentioned just a moment ago, about this crazy environment we're living in and the car dealers taking advantage of the consumer. And, you know, it's kind of like an Easter egg hunt looking for that

MSRP. So with all of that said, that website is www. Florida Protecting Carbuyers dot com. Jot it down. You need it. You definitely need to take a look at that website.

And Earl rewrote the well, all of the blah blah blah blah blah that they have to confuse you. and he broke it down, especially for you.

So you can pull that column up at Erwan cars. And that column is how to know if a Florida car dealer is breaking the law. And boy, there's a lot of shenanigans out there, as Jonathan would say. We are going to go to our first female caller. Welcome to the show. Good morning. Good morning. May I have your name?

Renee. Renee? Renee and Jupiter. Renee and Jupiter, welcome to the show. You just won yourself $50. Welcome. Thank you. My question, Nancy, is about nitrogen tires.

Okay. I have a friend that needs to replace her tires, and the question we have is, does it have to be with nitrogen tires, and if not, will the car's computer be affected with showing the air pressure in the new tires? You know, first of all, I'm going to answer,

then I'm going to turn it over to our panel here, let them kind of chime in. Nitrogen is definitely a rip-off, and there's a lot of car dealers that are really taking advantage of just one more fee that they can charge you, and they can convince you that your tires are going to fall apart

or the world's going to end no to nitrogen. Earl? Yeah, it's... That's what I thought, too. Yeah, well, I'm glad you advise your friend. No, to specifically answer your question, you don't need to buy any type of tire

that will accept or reject it. You can put nitrogen in any tire. It's just worthless. And consumer reports did a study on it not too long ago that came up for the fact that there is zero value to adding nitrogen to these tires. Rick, you have any comments on that? The only thing to say is that with today and the next couple of days

getting some rather cold air that we're not normally used to, normal natural physics, as temperatures go down, pressures go down as well. That's just physics. And so your tire pressures are going to go down a little bit because of that colder air and it may turn on that tire warning light. It's not something

to be worried about. It's just stop in at a local gas station or service station and add a little bit of air back to your tires. Check your tire pressures. Just make sure they're up to where they should be according to the sticker on the door jammy of your car. So you got your answer

to your question. Nitrogen is not necessary and your friend should buy whatever tires she thinks are best. Actually, I'd refer to consumer reports to buy a quality tire at a fair price but on nitrogen is something that the car dealers came up

with to make money and the tire sellers don't even recommend nitrogen so nobody recommends nitrogen except car dealers well there's someone who recommends there's someone who recommends nitrogen and I don't know maybe you are

well going to race in the Daytona 500 and you probably would need that nitrogen. But do you sound like a smart consumer? And no, the computer won't be, it won't have any problems with the computer that will cause absolutely no change. Yeah, we've answered the questions.

Thank you so much for calling. Thank you. We appreciate the input from the ladies. Spread the word. Also, leave your contact information and I'll get that checkout to you for $50. How's that sound? All right.

Thank you so much. much, Nancy. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Okay, we're going to go to Marty, who's holding. Good morning, Marty. Welcome to the show. Hi. Good morning. I have a question for either Earl or Stu. I got rid of my lease, which was a Toyota lease for a Honda, and the Honda dealer bought the car.

I was told now that you cannot sell your car to, like, a third party anymore. and that you have to either go back. If you have a Toyota, you've got to go back to a Toyota dealer if you're not going to buy the car yourself. I just want to know if that's true or not. Well, in the case of Toyota and Southeast Toyota, it's not really true. You have to go through a dealer. They'll only provide the payoff to the manufacturing dealers, so you can go to another Toyota dealer. But if you went to a Honda dealership, they wouldn't give the payoff to the Honda dealer.

So you can sell it to a third party. They're just making it difficult to do so. Oh, now, in other words, are you saying that I would, in other words, have to buy the car myself and then trade it in or then try to sell it? Well, you could exercise your option to buy it out, or you could use that equity as part of a trade-in on a new car. But the only way, if you went somewhere to buy a car, let's say you went to Edmore's Honda and you wanted to trade in your Toyota or just, they wouldn't give the payoff to them. So you have to go to some Toyota dealership.

All right. But I mean, in other words, if I get the payoff, let's say they would give it to me personally, since I have the car. Can I just tell the Honda dealers that they had the payoff? Yes. That's what I'm saying. They're not prohibiting. As long as they're getting the payoff in the residual value, they don't care who buys it. They're just trying to help their dealers by steering customers back to the dealers, lessening choice for the customers and giving an advantage to the Toyota dealers. And Marty, if you read my latest blog and the steward, so you can get that exact title to that blog, I address that issue exactly. And some manufacturers, you can, depending on the manufacturer,

more of the manufacturers now will actually deal directly with you if you want to buy the car. And it didn't used to be that way. You used to always have to go through dealers, and dealers were adding whatever they wanted to. I mean, hidden fees to the price. They would be the middleman to allow you to buy your lease car back. But in most cases now, if you're near the end of your lease or at the end of your lease,

the residual value is a bargain. And you can deal directly with Toyota, Southeast Toyota, and I think Ally Finance and some others. But that's in my latest blog, and we're scrambling around now to get the title of that. Oh, I got that for you. It's called leasing or owning a vehicle today is a valuable hedge when buying or leasing another vehicle. Yeah, it's a valuable hedge, Marty, because it's worth a lot more on the market value than what the residual. And if you have to buy another car or lease another car, you should have taken advantage of that low price you can buy it for. That way, it kind of offsets the cost an extra high price you're going to pay if you buy another car. or if you lease another car.

So if you can make $3,000 or $4,000 on your lease that you buy back and apply that $3,000 or $4,000 as a down payment on your next lease or apply that to the purchase of a car that's going to be overpriced, it kind of mitigates the extreme cost you're going to have today if you buy or lease a car. Yeah, because my deal that I did was back in April, 21. and apparently they changed the rules. Yes.

Because in April, they let me do it without any problem. Yeah, that happened over the summer. Okay. All right. Good question, Martin. I'm not ready to get. I'm not, my wife's lease has still got two years from this coming April, so we got a while to think about it, but we'll see what happens.

Well, you're lucky because you're paying a good price now. I mean, your lease payment is a fair one. And by the time you're ready to trade or at least another car, prices are going to be way down. I mean, everybody thought prices were going to come down sooner than they did. They're coming down much slower, but they are coming down a little bit. And in two years, I promise you, it's going to be a great time to buy a car. There's no way the shortage supply will last. Typically, when you have shortages, ups and downs, whether it's a stock market or whatever product you're buying or selling,

markets always overreact and it'll overreact for low prices just like it overreacted for high prices so you're in the driver's seat two years is a good time okay all right thanks a lot have a good day thank you for the call Marty

remember ladies and gentlemen we're here for you yes for you guess what what a great show and you know why all of our opinions, all of our advice, all these answers that you get from Stu, from Rick, from Earl, from myself, it's free. No strings attached. 877-960-9960.

And don't forget, www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We are going to go to Sarah, who's in Boyntonby, Good morning, Sarah. Good morning, everybody. Welcome. I didn't mention I was going to tell you a story today, and it's a short story, and it's just meant to be funny, but it's not funny. This is a reality that happened last Saturday.

I was driving. I had a low, flat kind of tire. So I was going not in the way of BJs. I went to the place I go to. I ended up having to go to Tire Kingdom. I had a nail in my tire. So I left it there and was picked up in two hours to go back. I came home, and the following day, Sunday, I went to walk a dog.

My tire was flat. I went, put air in it, came back home. Would you believe that that screw was still in my tire? They gave me a new valve. I don't know why. The whole thing was $47 for what I don't know. So I went back in the morning I was there at 7 o'clock

They said they opened at 7 but really not And they then fixed my tire for nothing of course But what a headache That was crazy situation You might have gotten a nail in the same hole in the same spot Maybe that happened Okay never mind I don't think I was a nice thought too

Just thinking Anyway I want to tell you all your show is amazing That is an amazing story Sarah Sarah, were they surprised to see you when you came back? He just didn't. They couldn't believe he saw him. He didn't know why. Did they run?

They didn't have any. Pardon? Did they run? No. Kill them a kindness. Baffloom or bullshit. You know how that goes. That's right.

No. There you go. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for being part of the show. Good day.

See you tomorrow morning. Oh, bye. Oh, very good. I hope we see you. We'll have our snob. We'll have our snowsows on. I'm going to tell the story. I hope you have gloves and scarfs and all that, too.

Great. I'm going to tell the story that is precipitated by Sarah's story about Tire Kingdom. Three or four years ago, maybe longer. We did a mystery shop of a Tire Kingdom. And it was not a good shop. And there were some things done that weren't proper. and we reported it and as a result of that

I got a call from and actually a letter from the president of the entire kingdom and it was actually quite a bit after we ran the mystery shopper report and he wanted to assure me that

this problem had been remedied and that the article I wrote had run again and they don't do that anymore it was bait and switch kind of thing. So I apologized and said, I'm glad to hear that. I didn't know it had run again, and I will check with the newspaper to see that if we do a rerun, we won't rerun that one. Well, somebody reran it again, and I just got a, I had another letter, you know,

threatening legal action from Tire Kingdom. And be honest with you, I forgot about it until just now when Sarah called. So, you know, the point is, a chain is only as strong as it's weak as like. You go in, people make mistakes, and sometimes the mistakes they make are, you know, whether they're intended or accidental or, nobody's perfect. So we report these cases, buyer beware, you go to the entire kingdom, and be careful. You go into any car dealer, be careful, doesn't mean that the car dealer or the owner or the president of the company or anybody else is a crook.

It just means that when you have a bunch of people working for you and you're paying them on commission, which entire kingdom probably does, just like all car dealers, you pay somebody a percent of the price of the product they're selling, you have to keep an eye on, you know, and expect what you expect. Yeah, it doesn't matter where you go, what you do, you've got to stay focused, you've got to stay knowledgeable, you've got to stay alert, no matter where you go.

There's good stories, there's bad stories, just like there's good dealers, bad, dealers that we have posted on our own cars. I have a great story about Tire Kingdom. It happened probably about, I don't know, 10 years ago, but I ended up at Tire Kingdom. I was stuck. It was an emergency.

I really needed help. They couldn't do any more than what they did, and they paid attention to me. They took a look at my tire. They made sure I was safe on the road, and it was a great experience. and guess what? They didn't charge me a dime. So it was just a moment that there was an emergency

I needed taking care of my tire and they took care of it. And that was in, I think that may have been Juneau. I'm not sure. That was because you were wearing your Earl's Vigilani hat. Excuse me?

You are wearing your Earl's Vigilani hat. That's why they took care of you. So I'm going to start wearing that out. Folks, 8779. 960, 9960, and you can text us at 772-4976530. Rick is in charge of YouTube. There's a number of ways to get in touch with us, and as I said earlier, free, free, honest advice for you because we're here for you, and that's what the show is all about. And don't forget that website that I gave you about the car dealers, they're crazy.

They're even crazier today. I think they're wearing the crazy hats. Just to warn you when you walk in, www. Florida Law Protectingcarbuyers.com. Take advantage of that. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, let's get through a text or YouTube.

Is that anybody got any texts or YouTube's too? We have the text from Amory waiting for us here. Oh, good morning, Amory. Good morning. And Amory says good morning. I hope everyone is safe, warm, and healthy. I've got a question about older technology today. Why don't both original equipment incandescent headlights or taillights fail at the same time?

Thanks, Anne-Marie. Well, I'm not, Rick, before you answer that, it's called random. You have any product is manufactured. There's no two headlamps are exactly alike, even though they have the same number, and they're for the exact same year, make model car. And that goes where everything on the car, all mechanical things, are just a little bit different. Light bulbs in your house, you can go into Home Depot

and buy 20 light bulbs and put them in 20 lamps, and they're not all going to fail at the same time. So same thing with incandescent headlamps. Chaos theory. Exactly. It goes down to quantum stuff happening at a very, very small level that we don't get to see. And if we could see it, our minds would explode.

All right, just kidding. actually we have a text came in from on Facebook and from Blaine he says what's going to happen in a few months or years when the cars are being built now waiting for components arrive and flood the dealerships with inventory just to answer that there is such a big backlog of orders and demand that as inventory and production increases and these cars are made available to sell these these existing orders will be filled and eventually dealers stocks will start to build up again. It's not going to be like a sudden floodgate is going to be released with millions of cars and now we're stocked up again. It's going to take a while before the inventories build up again, but it's going to be a gradual, gradual thing. And there's a law that requires manufacturers when they discontinue a part or a car of that part that they continue to maintain an inventory for a period of, Rick probably knows the answer. Is it five years? Ten. Ten years. 10 years.

So, even when Oldsmobile disappeared, and when Pontiac disappeared, the federal law required General Motors to have parts available for Oldsmobiles for another 10 years from the date they went out of business. So you're protecting someone. And after that, there's a huge resource out there. We have a lot of use for, used parts sources, and they get them from wreck cars, they get them from older cars. It's digitalized, computerized now, and we're always amazed that the parts we can find when we can't get one from the manufacturer is almost unheard of that any particular part is not available somewhere.

And you might have to pay a little bit more for it, but they're available. There you go. All right. You got any YouTube comments over there? We actually have one interesting one from Nagan 1. I'll just kind of paraphrase because we've kind of been discussing it back and forth. His comment was to, what will happen with the increase of electric vehicles on the roads, as they're not using gasoline, the states are not getting the gas taxes,

how are they going to pay for the roads? Well, they'll raise some other taxes. Exactly. California, I know, has increased registration costs for electric vehicles. And Negan won brought up an interesting comment, the idea that, well, that's a little unfair to someone who doesn't drive a whole lot versus someone who drives continuously. They're both paying a massive increase in registration.

One is overpaying, one is underpaying. Well, a lot of the politicians are saying that's the reason they should tax electric cars. So they say, why should the gas-consuming cars have to absorb all the costs? Why doesn't, if people are buying hybrids, they're buying all electric cars. and of course you hate to tax something that you're trying to promote you incentivize buying electric cars and it's always controversy but one thing I never worry about

is how the government's going to get our money they always figure out a way to get our money that's for sure I wouldn't worry about that at all where there's a will there's a way yeah 877 960 or Texas at 772 49760

I believe by the look on Stu's face, he has some text, but we just got a call. Right. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to Phil, who's calling us from Jupiter. Good morning, Phil. Welcome to the show. Good morning. Just had a situation come up that I think made kind of amused you a little bit. I was looking for a Lexus, and I went to Palm Beach, Lexus, and to get a car on there a lot, signed to me, you had to put down a deposit of $5,000 just to hold a seat. So I went down to

J&M Lexus down on the bar gate. Is that absolutely nothing? They don't charge anything to get on their list. They charge MSRP and there's no dealer markup of any kind at J.M. Lexus. Yeah. Well, you just named our favorite Lexus dealer. We've been recommending J.M. for a long time. And this, for information purposes, in case you don't already know,

J.M. Lexus is owned by the Jim Moran Foundation, the Jim Moran, whatever you want to call it. Jim Moran was the founder of the Toyota Distributorship in Southeast United States. He was also one of the most famous car dealers of all time, originally out of Chicago. At one time, he was the largest Ford dealer in the world, and he was the largest, there was another Hudson, he goes way back, but J.M. Lexus is the largest Lexus dealer of the world, and they also operate best, most honest, the prices are fair,

they have a very small dealer fee, but not much, and as Phil, as you just said, you can order a car, they're not going to charge your $5,000, hold your feet to the fire, make you take delivery if you change your mind, they'll order it for you anyway. So, and you get a fair price. Let me tell you, Lexus is, particularly J.M. Lexus, but all the Lexus dealers are one of the few car dealerships that are charging the only sticker. If you can buy a car today for MSRP without any hidden fees and dealer installed accessories, you're getting the best deal you're going to get, which is a lot of money. MSRP is a lot of money, but if you want the car, you're going to get a fair play from just. James Lexus. Thanks for the call, Phil.

But have you ever heard a dealer charging that kind of money, though, just to get on the list like Palm Beach, the dealer did? I mean, $5,000 is that kind of exorbitant? I mean, that's a lot. Yeah, that is a lot. There's

one thing, anytime you put a deposit on any car, if you're a Florida resident in another state, they have different laws. In Florida, if you your deposit, there's only a refund if it's stated so in writing on your receipt. So when you get a receipt, you don't want to take a salesman's business card as a receipt for your deposit.

You always want to get a company receipt from the dealership, and you look at the print on the dealership, on the receipt, and it says refundable, and Florida, that means you get your money back. If it isn't, then you're committed, and they could give you a big argument, and I don't know if it would hold up in court, court, but you would sure have to probably hire a lawyer to get your money back. So

most Florida dealers will honor that. Some don't. You need to read your receipt. Okay. Well, thanks for the information. Appreciate it. Thank you, Phil. Stay warm out there. Hope to hear from you again, Phil. Thanks for calling the show.

877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now we're and I'll go back to Stu. Okay, we have some anonymous feedback that came in while we were busy working in the past week. The most recent one came in. It's about our most, I think it's our most viewed video.

It's Rick's video about how to free a lock steering wheel, which has got like over a million something to use. Regarding your video on how to free a lock steering wheel, tow trucks can still tell your vehicle if your wheels are turned. The best way to prevent a tow truck from taking your car, either pay your car payment, or don't park illegally. That's interesting. I think, listen, tow trucks can get you no matter how you park your, turn your wheels or park your car,

because they will drag your car. Your wheels will be pointed one way and they can be pulling it the other way. And so that's, and they can damage your car too. I mean, a lot of damage can happen. You're probably better off not trying to do that, make it easier for them to tow your car.

I have got to say, I've met a lot of tow truck drivers over the years, and these guys learn very, very quickly how to be very, very good at their jobs. And if they need to pick your car up, regardless, they're going to pick it up. Yeah, you can block your car when somebody else's car. They'll drag that car away just to get your car. Whether they're getting you from the scene of an accident,

and they've only got millimeters of space to get your car, to get a roadway cleared, or if it's a repossession or an illegal parking job, they're going to do it. All right. Okay, next one says, can you guys mystery shop more luxury brands like BMW or Mercedes? They are significant in South Florida as you see them almost as often as economy cars now. You know, and we keep coming back to that, and we do. I mean, obviously there's less of them out there, but in our area, they are much higher.

Each luxury brand, like you mentioned, Lexus or BMW is a much higher market share than they do in most parts of the country. And it does affect more of our listeners. So we will do that. Typically, we have a pretty good experience, though. It seems to be a better, a little tamer. Yeah. Well, you know, when you're luxury dealers, particularly in luxury areas like South Florida, you know, they make so much money, why, you know, why cheat and steal?

If you have a Lexus franchise, you're a multimillionaire. You know, a lot of these Lexus Steelers are net a million dollars a month in net profit. And BMW, you know, Audi, a lot of the luxury cars. we find better treatment. You're paying a ton of money. You go to the service department and you're paying a huge amount more than you'd have to pay.

I always advise people that are buying luxury cars like Phil just called. He bought a Lexus. If Phil wants to save some money, he should take that Lexus into a Toyota dealer for service

because he'll pay about half the price that he will at an Lexus dealer. And if you have a Chevrolet, If you have a Cadillac, you go to a Chevrolete dealer. If you have a Honda, if you have an Accura, you go to a Honda dealer. If you have an Infinity, you go to a Nissan dealer. Take the low-price spread, the other cars of the manufacturer bills, other than the luxury, and have your service done there and save a ton of money.

All right. We're going to go back to the phones a bit. That, what Earl just said, lie, cheat, and steel. Wow. Does that sum it up? It's out there. Ladies and gentlemen, take advantage of www.W. Florida Law Protecting Card Buyers.com. These car dealers, they're just using this trick to get you to overpay, overpay, overpay, and it's illegal. So take a look at that statue. www. Florida law protecting carbuyers.com. I'm going to ask you. John, to be patient. Our lines are lighting up, and we're going to go to Cape Cod, where Ashley is calling us for the first time. Good morning, Ashley.

Good morning. How you doing today? Great. Welcome. You've just won yourself $50. And I just lost power. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah, we're supposed to get about two feet of show movie. Oh, interesting. Well, I hope you can keep warm. You won yourself $50, so you can get in touch right now when we're finished talking with Elise, and she's in the control room, and she is our first female producer, Elise. So we're adding ladies to, well, everything. We have our hands in everything today. That makes us happy.

What can we do for you today? I have an older port escort and I've always got a change when I got it with the old type of oil and I'm wondering if after so many years if you use conventional oil if you can switch to synthetic or just stay with the conventional. I think Rick can really answer that question. I would stick with conventional simply for the reason that switching to synthetic you're going to pay a lot more for the oil but it really is not safe to try to extend the length of time for the oil changes. You need to stick with that same interval, which I'm guessing

you're probably either 3,000 to 3,500 or 5,000 mile intervals. You need to stick with that same interval change. And to save money, I would stick with a conventional motor oil. Okay, thanks so much, Rick You're very welcome Okay, Ashley, thanks so much for calling Thanks for helping us build this platform here at Earl Stewart on Cars We so appreciate your call this morning

And spread the word to other ladies to give us a call All of the information, everything that we do here is free Have a great weekend We're going to go to John well no we're not John give us a call back John's calling us from Palm City and he is a regular caller

we're going to go back to Stu let me ask I want to ask Rick a question regarding Ashley's comment you surprised me a little bit without answer what year Ford escort was that she

she said it was an older one she didn't really specify the year but switching to synthetic oil on a car that you're definitely going to be keeping for a really long time can help make the car last a little longer because it does help to tend to clean the engine a little better. It helps transfer the heat better and can make the engine last a little longer. But if you've got an older car that you're probably not going to be keeping for another 10 or 15 years, sticking with conventional oil and sticking with that original 5,000 mile service interval. You're saying 5,000, you said 3 to 5,000. You know, I've never heard anything less than 6,000, but... Older cars, the manufacturers recommended every 3,000 as you get older.

You know, instead of say older, what year are you talking about? How far back do you have to go to change oil every 3,000 miles? Some of the cars back in the 90s even. We're on a 3,000-mile interval change. That's an antique. Well, I'm an antique, but... No, the synthetic oil is about twice the price, but you have to change your oil twice as often with the low price spread. So the cost, as long as you adhere to the recommendations, is about equal.

So it is a cost-heading thing. And if you get better care, obviously the synthetic is considered a better oil. So, well, anyway, I just... Well, I just... My only thing is, if your car says to change your oil every 5,000 miles, regardless of what oil you use, you should change it every 5,000 miles. Oh, okay. You need to stick with what the manufacturer says that interval should be.

And on some of the older, older cars, yeah, it was every 3,000. Some cars now, it's every 5,000, every 7,500, every 10,000, depending on what type of oil is involved with the car. And there's even some new cars out there now with synthetic oil. Yeah, I understand. It's still required every 5,000 miles. All I'm saying is that very few people are driving cars today that are, don't recommend synthetic.

Synthetic has been recommended for, what, the last 15 years? Yeah. Okay. They started transitioning over about 12 to 15 years ago. Yeah, so, okay, let's move along. Stu, you got some text over there? Yeah, we have an anonymous feedback. that came in. But I think we have a caller.

We do, John's back. Thanks so much for your patience, John. Welcome to the show. John's from Palm City. He gives us a call every week. Good morning. Good morning to everyone. You hit my topic right in there on the head. Luxury vehicles. The CEO of Rolls-Royce

made an announcement this month that they sold more Rolls-Royces than they ever did in a 117-year history. They sold exactly 5,586 cause, which is a 49% increase from 2020. It gets better than that. He gave the reason for it. He said there's a fear of people dying from the COVID-19,

and that's what he claimed, that the reason for their tremendous increase in sales, and it goes down the line. Bentley sold 14,659, cause in 2021. That's a 31% increase over 2020. It goes down the line even more. Lamborghini, 2,417 cars in 2021. That's 11% increase from the previous year.

So it's unbelievable. But the statement exactly from the CEO of Rose Royce is that people are buying with a fear that they're not going to be around with the spreading of the COVID-19. And if they can afford it naturally, they're going for the car of their dreams. And that's why their sales have a tremendous increase, which is a lot, 49%. And I want to just say also, Stewart is not a very big town.

In Stewart now, as it matters, Earl knows it, the dealer. It's a Maserati dealer. Unbelievable. You wouldn't think a town like Stewart would handle such a high-end car. And it's being sold in a special showroom now right on Route 1 in Stewart. So it's kind of amazing that the people still, there is the fear of dying, and that luxury vehicles are an increase like the ones I mentioned. Well, John, there's another reason that they don't like to talk about, and this is the wealth cap. You know, there's more billionaires today than ever before.

Today, everybody's a millionaire, and then you put your lower, your lower income people are having a problem. worldwide problem. But the rich are getting richer and the poor getting poor. And that's the reason people are buying Lamborghinis and Rolls Royces. The person, these guys were, you know, 10, 15 years ago, they were buying Cadillacs and now they're buying Rolls Royces. So everybody's moving up the ladder. If you look at the cost of collecting items, paintings, even cars, new prices are being set, your price records are being set on all your luxury items, diamonds, rose royces, and everything else.

Yeah, it's amazing to think in a time of the worst crisis the world has ever seen that luxury dealers, no matter what they're selling, are thriving. Rick has got on. Absolutely, I agree with you. 100%. What's your point, Rick? And you can see, again,

the empty car field, the luxury cars, and auctions, The prices have gone completely crazy. You can see it happened two weeks ago, and then Mietam walks in. I was mentioned about a 51 mercury that's all customized, and the iconic car. They expected to sell for a million. It's sold for $1,950,000 for a 51 mercury that's customized. Unbelievable. Yeah.

Rick? I see that as a genius move on the part of that Maserati dealer. As the crow flies, he's about a. as far from the north end of Jupiter Island, which is a huge money area as the Jaguar, Maserati, and Ferrari dealers are as the crow flies from Palm Beach, the ones here in West Palm. So all the rich crows, the rich crows will be buying the Maserati's in Stewart. And up there in Stewart, I guarantee his rent is probably a third of what it would cost if you were to try to get a place in West Palm Beach.

Genius. John, thank you very much. We appreciate the call. Okay, have a good day. You too, my mind. Thanks, John. Stay warm. Errol, do you remember the other day you and I, we were on the road and you said, is that another Rolls-Royce?

I said, yeah, we're seeing a lot of them, aren't we? Yeah. To John's point. Yeah. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-39-30 and www. and www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. There, you can express you.

yourself. So take advantage of that and I'm going to remind you about Earl's vigilantes and he has a beautiful hat that was designed by Stu. Does that mean I have to put the head on? Yeah, you have time. Yeah, over the headphones. Yeah.

Well, yeah, it doesn't do much wear it like that. Even my head will walk. But it is a nice hat. At any rate, sign up, go to Earl on Cars. You can volunteer. Help us help everyone and you can be part of that. You can help

the people in your community. You don't have to be able to disassemble an engine, but you will be helping the community and leading them in the right direction. Earl's vigilantes, also we need volunteers to

maneuver some of us through the internet with purchasing a car, financing, everything. So you can play a big part in that. So take advantage. Go to Erlon Cars

where you can find everything we talk about, the show, you know, all the columns, all the advice. So 877-960-9960 or you can text us

772-4976530. We're going to go back to Stu, I believe. Yeah, some more anonymous feedback. I like this one. It says, yo, your video on

freeing lock steering wheel was amazing. I just got off working a 12-hour day just wanted to hurry home and watch the playoffs I get in my car and the steering was locked I had so many thoughts at that time I then watched the video and like magic it works thanks a bunch

I see I love the comments we get comments all the time we should share more often Well Rick I remind them about what I didn't know the other I think it was last week or the week before if you have a push button start versus a regular start How does that affect the lock steering wheel? Well, the original video was based on the idea of cars with a normal key that you put in the ignition cylinder and turn,

and the steering wheel lock, which is a security feature, if it were twisted a little too far to one side and binding, you'd have a hard time turning the key. Right. So you wiggle the wheel and pull it to the side that feels loosest, and that would help relieve that binding so you could turn the key. However, cars with a push button start won't have that issue because it's an electric motor that engages and disengages that steering wheel lock, so therefore you will never have to worry about it actually being too hard locked because that electric motor can lock and unlock itself without any problems.

So I tell you, the changes in technology and the improvement in cars is absolutely amazing. We complain about prices and we should, but I'm telling you, today's car. We're talking about old car versus newer cars, a 2,022 car compared to even 10 years back. And 10 years is not a long time now when it comes to reliability. You've got a 10-year-old car, you take care of it, it'll last another 10 years. But in terms of technology and advantages, they are just night and day, especially on safety items. So I'm not trying to talk to you in the buying the car today, but I'm saying if you've got to older car. You take care of it. I respect that. I admire that. I just, I like people. People that

really take care of the things, cars, and everything else. I respect that. But you should check it out if no other reason. When prices come down, check out a 2002 car. And for that matter, a late model 21, 19, or 18. Anything newer than 10 years up around current cars, they're just amazing. what they've improved the cars do. Great information. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget, we have the Mystery Shopping Report coming up, and it's from Agent Lightning, our female, mystery shopper, and she went out to I-95 Nissan,

so you want to stay tuned for that at approximately, say, 9.30. And one more thing, I'm going to talk about the Super Bowl for a minute. You know, we all get all pretty excited about the Super Bowl, but not only that we get excited about the commercials that they run and Vroom will be right there again they returned to the Super Bowl this year and it's pretty interesting they're pretty interesting and they have

add highlights of their ability to buy cars from consumers a lot of people know what Vroom is the R-O-O-M tell them what Vroom is do you take the floor well they're just a one of these new companies that popped up there's got to be a dozen or more

now I can remember a few of them. We buy on anycar.com Carvana and Vroom. V-R-O-O-O-M. A year ago I never heard of anything like that. They hopped on the scene and they're making a ton of money buying people's cars because

the prices of use cars are so why that they're buying them from unsuspecting people and they take it to the auction, selling them to dealers or they're selling them directly but you have got a piece of gold in your hand if you've got a nice used car today and don't sell it's the first person that wants to buy it don't sell it to vroom.com or anybody else and Nancy's point is here's a company that didn't exist a year ago now they're making

so much money they can afford to buy an ad in the Super Bowl and most of the auto manufacturers don't buy ads in the Super Bowl is so crazily expensive. I'm going to say it's at least $3 million for one 30-second ad. It might be twice that. I'm not sure. Every time I look at the prices for ads in the Super Bowl. So that'll tell you how valuable that car you're driving right now, that either an off-lease car, if you have a lease,

you have an option to purchase, and you can buy it far below the actual market value when you exercise that option. And if you have a trade-in, you're really protected. when you go to buy a car at too high price because your trade in is over a price too. Absolutely. I couldn't set it any better. You know, what caught my eye on this commercial that's aired that I've seen before is it's a, I don't know, a 30-second spot. And there's a woman who's dancing down the city street, and it just really catches your eye.

In the Vroom commercial? In the Veroom commercial. And also their thirst is Varum is just amazing. And they're looking for cars. They're looking for used cars. So you might want to check that out during the Super Bowl. And so many other commercials that are in the Super Bowl, it's just amazing. And it's exciting, but I get excited over football of any kind.

We are going to go to Stu, who probably has some. text messages that I've backed up. Yep. Let's see. We have another NOMNUSFITA that just came in. It says, thank you for your expertise. Sincerely appreciated. My husband has passed away and he always took such good care of our cars. Now that I'm responsible for the care of my car,

please recommend the best quality products to wax the car, care of tires, interior leather seats, surfaces, etc. I currently earn a 2014 cheap Grand Cherokee Limited. for sentimental reasons, I want to keep my Jeep as long as possible. I do know that on the wax, I don't have the specific brands, but we learned from Allen that a Carnuba wax, which is a natural wax product, is the best wax for cars. Can you spell that?

I think it spelled C-A-R-A-N-U-B-A, like Carnuba. I'm looking at Rick. He knows these things. And it goes on like a regular wax. That's not a brand. That's an ingredient. Yeah, that's the type of wax. And when you buy a wax, it has the highest percentage of this carnuba.

Yeah. What is carnibah? It's a natural wax. No, Carnuba is an ingredient in wax. What is the carnuba itself? Carnuba actually comes from, I believe, it's some sort of a seed pod from trees generally found in Central and South America. And it's a natural chemical, natural product. It is a wax.

It makes a waxy surface. It's a wax from a palm. Yep. It's a wax that's extracted from a pond. I don't think you could take Carnubo if a palm tree and wax your car with it. I don't think you do it personally. It has to be processed. Yes.

I'm looking it up. Carnuba is a wax that's extracted from the leaves of the carnuba palm tree. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't think it's not commercially feasible. You have to, you find you buy waxes with other brand names. Right. I have a higher percentage of Carnuba.

Well, you can't just go out to a canola field and get all. oil for you know or olives to get oil you gotta it's got to be processed so anyway so that's for the exterior of the car I have a good tip for the interior is it's vegan if anyone cares it is vegan yeah so on the interior there's a whole industry of you know products and stuff like that you can save a lot of money usually on the interior of a car with a soft cloth and some water and just a little bit of dish detergent not a lot you can clean anything in the car for the leather seats you probably want to get a good leather conditioner after you do that. And I don't have a brand to recommend.

But a lot of the auto parts stores, pet boys and things like, if you ask them a question, what's the products they recommend? We can do, I looked up, leather honey came up high, highly regarded. And Consumer Reports has a lot of information on how to keep your car looking good. And they recommend the same thing, just using clean cloths with some little soapy water. And that takes care of probably 90% of your car. Is Carbon Nuba on gluten-free? It is gluten-free.

I don't think it has any weak proteins in that. Just in case I get hungry. And I recommend hit YouTube up and watch a few videos on, from the professional guys, on cleaning your car and maintaining the inside. Yeah. You will get some fantastic advice. Yeah, it's easier than you think. And some great little tips, too, about how to get those looks and cranes.

While we're yaking about products here, and the question was, how do I get a good wax for my car. I hate to tout Jeff Bezos's the richest man in the world or second richest on Amazon. You go to Amazon

and you've got to give him his due. He really knows how to merchandise products. Just go car wax and then sort from the best reviews to the bottom. You get the little four star plus reviews

and you get an auto wax and you start there, you can sort by price, sort by availability, sort by customer review, and you get the best auto wax automatically. And for my personal opinion, if you're going to actually do that work yourself, which it takes a lot of elbow grease to really do it right, I like Mother's California gold for one simple reason. It's got a very pleasant cherry fragrance. If you're going to be outside there working hard to wax your,

car you might as well have that nice cherry fragrance and it's a good has car nuba in the wax that's a very good high quality wax and does a good job yeah and it's an incentive for you to stay out there and wax like you know i really miss some great information rick i really miss allan i remember when he was talking about wax and he was talking about our windshields and what to use on them and how um the rain just beads up on the windshield and the wind show So my lead-in here is, is Alvin coming back? I don't think so. And as a matter of fact, I got another recommendation here from Donovan, who's one of our buddies.

Hey, hi, Donovan. Let me go back to Mother's California Gold on Amazon. It is $11.19. Brazilian carnival cleaner, wax-based. It is four and a half stars. and that's also a prime deal. So there you go. There you go.

Mothers, California, gold. And Donovan recommends, let's see, Turtel Watt, he, oh, McGuire's gold, which, yeah, McGuire's is a great wax, and he also recommends Turtle Wax Hybrid Graphene Spray Wax, and that that with the graphene in it apparently works quite well. Amazing. You know, our leader here, the amazing man behind me,

to Mike, Earl Stewart, you know, we get everybody's perspective and here he is, he's, you know, Amazon Crazy Man, which is a good thing and he's talking about this wax four and a half stars. We have Rick, who has a different

perspective, genius, and Stu. I mean, the amazing amount of information that comes from Stu and everyone here and I just have to remind everybody, it's all for you. We love you.

We love you tuning in. We love you being part of the show, and we love giving you free information. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to go back to Stu. We have a joke from

Frank in Jupiter Farms. He sent us some car humor. Here's the joke. Brad lives in California. He was sick of the world. Of COVID-19, Trump, Russian, belligerolence, China, global war, racial tensions and the rest of the disturbing stories that occupy the media headlines. Brad drove his car

into his garage and sealed every doorway and window as best he could. He got back into his car, wound down all the windows, selected his favorite radio station, started the car and revved it to a slow idle. Two days later, his worried neighbor appeared through his garage window and saw him in the car. She notified emergency services

and they broke in pulling Brad from the car. A little sip of water and surprisingly he was in perfect condition, but his Tesla had a dead battery. Very funny, rank. All right, we're all caught up with text. Do we have a phone call? Is John back on the line?

John? You asking me? No, I'm no phone. Who's she talking to? I was cross-eyed there for a second. Okay, we don't. Okay, guys, we have plenty of time. Give us a call.

877-9-60-99-60, or you can text us at 7-7-2-4. 4976530. Now back to Stu. Back to Earl. Here's something that I need to alert you folks about. The car dealers and the manufacturers are always looking for ways to make more money. And a couple months ago, we had something that called up about a question about a subscription on the Toyota that they were a little bit unhappy about.

Stu, do you remember what that was? It was, we had a conversation about it, had to do with, requiring a subscription to make something work on the car. Right, that was, it had to do with, we were speaking about Toyota Connected Services. Yeah, yeah. So for the remote start, it used to be featured that was on a remote, and then it became part of a subscription, a free subscription for, I think it was a year, but you could use it with your app, but then it expires,

and you'd have to do the description to start the car remotely. Well, in the current automotive news, there's an article, And the automotive news is the trade journal, I always say this for the manufacturers and the dealers. Everybody in the automotive business in the world reads the automotive news. Anyway, the new huge profit center for the auto manufacturers are subscription services. And they're going crazy. Ford just came out with a subscription service that you have to pay monthly to protect the valuables in your car.

No, I'm not going to go into the detail, but, you know. Isn't that called insurance? Right. So now you have to watch out for the fact when you buy a car, what are you subscribing to? And even after you buy the car, you have to find out when you get the notice from the manufacturer, if you get a B of W, you get something in the mail, or you get an email or a text or whatever it is, they're going to try to sell your subscription services. So be careful.

It isn't just a check you wrote out for the car or the installment sales contract if you financed a car. It's subscriptions that they're going to be looking for. And just something else you have to worry about when you go into buy a car. Another interesting article in the current auto money, it was full of good stuff.

I had a guy the other day said to me, you know, I'm going to wait and buy electric car because I want I don't I'm worried about the battery range the how far I could drive the car I said well you know Tesla's got 350 miles and they're even talking about 500 miles there's a company that I never heard of and this was in the as I said the automotive news and this company they're right down in China and their building is C-A-T-L contemporary amperex technology limited and they're they're building battery swapping changes

that you can swap out a electric battery battery in one minute think about that now that'd be that'd be great now a huge portion of the cost of a car is a battery so if you didn't have to buy the battery in the car in this case you wouldn't and you were able to swing into a gas station that's really a battery station and get out faster than you could if you had to pump gas you drive over it something comes down and pops back up like a pit stop yeah I mean it's absolutely to me that's an astounding so you folks playing the stock market out there I don't even know if it's publicly traded C is in cat A is an apple T is in Tangle L is in Lima C ATL

Contemporary Aparix Technology Limited. They're building hundreds of these stations in China. I mean, I think I read something about this, like even years ago, about the idea and the concept just makes sense. As a matter of fact, it makes more sense than anything. Like when I use, for example, I got a wireless vacuum cleaner with a lithium ion battery. I'm doing my house. When it runs low, I don't plug it in and wait.

I swap out my other battery, pop it in and keep going. And Israel figured this out. I want to say five, ten years ago and then it kind of faded up and I remember thinking about it and I remember thinking to myself well Israel is such a small country you know if you go from one end to Israel or the other

you're not going to be worried about it but this company here is in China that's not a small country and they're building hundreds of these things I can see possibly the electric vehicle of today as we're looking at it with these huge batteries my Tesla has got three huge batteries.

And I'm going to guess that those three batteries are probably 25 or 30% of the total cost of the car. And when one dies on you, even with a hybrid car, you have to replace a hybrid battery. You're talking a lot of money. You've got $2,000 or $3,000. On an all-electric vehicle, you're talking $10,000 and $15,000. Bellas. Forget about it. If you can charge a battery in one minute, even if the range of the battery is only 300 miles, you're far better off than having to buy a car with a big fat and expensive battery. So check it out. Interesting information. I really like being a passenger

now in the Tesla after the other day. A lake when it's parked and you leave it running. I just really like calling it out, opening the door to see if the alarm goes off. opening the door to turn the radio back on, just playing with it. Anyway, we got our calls backed up here, so we're going to go out to Buffalo, and we're going to talk to Buffalo, New York. We're going to talk to Kevin. Good morning, Kevin. Welcome to the show.

Good morning. Thank you for the fun and intelligent conversation with your team. I've got a couple of questions. My first question is, what is the function of traction control button on your car? We can turn it off, turn it on. Traction control. Traction control basically means that the computer will apply the brakes or power to each individual wheel is necessary or available in order to help keep you under control.

There are certain cases, though, certain times that you would want to be able to turn traction control off, such as if you're going to be pushing the car or rolling the car with the ignition on but the engine off for a little bit. or even times when, you know, somebody just doesn't want to have traction control on. Yeah, Kevin, you're in, you're in Buffalo, New York. You get a lot of snow, you get a lot of ice, and the roads are really hazardous. So if you have a car with a fourth-wheel traction control, the car, the wheel that's on the ice have no power applied to it, and the wheels that are off the ice will have power applied to it.

So you're going to get a smooth, straight, safe ride. But traction control is very valuable for you, especially where you live. now you brought up these cars that are called all-wheel drive or four-wheel drive do they have power to all four wheels on the vehicle yes they do okay my other question is we're talking about Alexis earlier and obviously that's a premium version of Toyota what is the advantage of buying a Lexus or what benefits of buying a Lexus compared to buying a Toyota would be. It depends on the model. There's some models

of Lexington that Toyota doesn't have a counterpart for. On the basic level it does, like the Camry and what the 350 is that the Lexus. So other than that, it's kind of like the gingerbread, I call it. It's the, you know, you've got a plush your interior. You might have

a fancier paint job. You might have a couple of accessories that you don't see. Real wood instead of fake wood. Underneath the skin, they're the same thing. But probably the most important thing is cars are worth what people want to pay for them. And when you put a Lexus brand, you put a luxury brand on a car and the nameplate, it has a higher resale value. You can actually own a Lexus for not much more than a cost on a Toyota. Because if you keep trading in the Lexus on another Lexus and you keep trading in the Toyota and on the Toyota,

you're seeing the image value. image value, the brand value. Friends of mine, you know, I have friends that are buying, you know, they used to buy toilets from me, and then they'll call me up and say, Earl, I'm going to buy a Lexus side. I said, why? I said, well, my wife says she doesn't want to park a Toyota and the garage, I mean, and the driveway. So, you know, you want to move up, you go up, you tell the valet to come get your car and say, I'm driving the white Lexus. sounds better than I'm driving the white Toyota. So image, brand, merchandising,

a lot of that has to do with the value, perceived value, which translates into actual value. Okay. Yeah, one of the things my wife always hates when I say to us, some people, the car makes them, but I make the car I always tell her, and that doesn't go very well with her. So the other thing you talked about the Rolls-Royces,

there's even a few couple of Rolls-Royces in Buffalo, but when I look at the cars today compared to an old rolls right it looks like a fort tourist to me it doesn't look anything special anymore really i'm like you i don't like the new look i think you know to me if i'm driving the rolls i want everybody to know i'm driving a rolls i've seen some rolls and other electric cars on the road that i didn't even recognize because they're trying to keep up with the current styling on all the other cars but a rolls royce is rolled royce i you know i i want to be sure by knows I was crazy enough to spend a quarter million dollars on that car.

All right. Thank you for all your knowledge, your fun. And also, Earl, thank you for supporting the Big Dogs Foundation. Very nice to you to do that. Oh, thank you, Kevin. We love to love it. Thank you, Kevin. Stay warm out there in Buffalo, New York.

Thank you. I had a cute. Stay warm. What do you do? What do you have, I have, for it? We are warm when I'm listening to you, Nancy. Thank you. Thank you.

We're going to go to John. I believe he's still holding. Morning, John. Hello, how are you? Well, thank you. And by the way, John's calling us from Jupiter. Welcome to the show. I've got basically one point of information a couple months ago.

You guys were talking about the northeastern flooding. There's actually a website that people can go to called M-I-B-B-org. That's National Insurance Crime Bureau. Anybody can go to this website, and you can use. enter the Venn number, and people know you can find the Venn number on the dash on the driver's side or on your door town. But you enter that digit, the 17 numbers in the van, and you can actually see the car history if it was a flooded car or something like that. So that might be useful to your buyers. Yeah.

The next question, yeah, and the other question, again, it's nICB.org. I'm on the page right now. Yeah, it's a free service. The next question is, I've been looking for, I'm a long time, Toyota driver. I've been looking for a Venza. Is there some kind of delay in the production of those cars? Well, the Venzo was just reissued with a brand new redesign last year. And production on all vehicles, all toot is slowed down.

So every Toyota vehicle is hard to come by, and the Venza is even harder to come by because it's such a small part of the overall mix. I think that we typically, in the beginning, probably only stocking maybe 10% of Earl, our whole inventory was Venza. But with this inventory crunch and the production slowdowns, there's zero in stock. Well, does Earl still stand by his statement that he thinks by April that this thing will kind of ease up where cars will be more available? I stand up on the statement there'll definitely be more available,

and there'll be a lower price, just how much lower we don't know. My advice to a lot of people out there that are having to buy cars and they order them, first place a lot of car dealers don't like to do that. They like to sell the car that they have on the ground. And they do that because buying cars, emotional impulse oftentimes, or desperation. And if you have the car right there, you haven't got time to think about it. So most dealerships sell the cars when they come in and they sell them to the highest bidder. And sure enough, if you're not the high bidder, they will sell that car the next day or the day after to somebody else.

If you go to a dealer that will give you a firm price, here's what you should do. First of all, find the Costco dealer. Find someone as part of the Costco auto buying program. And then make the dealer, and if you won't find another dealer who will, who will, sign a buyer's order, a contract with you that says, when that car comes in, I will sell you that car at the Costco member price. Costco requires the dealer to sell their cars at a lower price than they will sell the car to anyone else. So let's say you buy a Venza and you go into a car dealer, a Toyota dealer, and you say, they're going to tell you

A VINSA is going to take you two months or three months to come in. And who knows what the prices are going to be in two or three months? Well, you don't, and he doesn't either. So you say, you're a Costco member dealer. Whatever Costco says is my price on that Venza, that will be my price when it comes in. And why shouldn't he agree with it? And if he does agree with it, you have peace of mind. You'll be buying the car at a lower price and he'll sell it to anybody else for.

And that's all you can ask for. microchip shortage is still here, but at least you're getting the lowest price available. Is your dealership a member of that program? Yes, we are, yes. Okay. And one quick question, another question, Earl. I've been reading on the Internet about the, because you're a big electric car guy, that they're making progress on making these batteries where you can charge them in 10 minutes

and you can go 3,000, 5,000 miles instead of just 300. Have you heard anything about that? Yeah, I was just talking about it. But you can, there's a company now that has 200 installations in China. They're coming to the United States and they're growing fast. They will charge a battery in one minute. One minute. And not the battery in your current electric vehicle.

This is one that you would have to have a car with that brand battery. And they swap it out. In other words, I said charge it. I misspoke. They swap out the battery at one minute. Tesla, their supercharger, all the Tesla charging stations are super charging, but the ones that have the fast charge, they're rapid charging, will charge a battery to, I think, about 200 miles and 10 minutes, which is pretty fast. Yeah, I used it coming home from Orlando. It was really cool.

Yeah. Ten minutes is not bad for 200 miles. That's not a full charge because, you know, my Tesla will go. 350 miles on one charge, but that has to be a slow charge, a rapid charge. Well, you can have the rapid charge, a full charge, but it takes you longer than 10 minutes. Right. Okay. Well, I appreciate it. Have a good weekend, guys. Thank you. Thank you. John. Thank you for being part of the show. 877960, or you can text us. 772-4976530. I think we've either have some

YouTube's or we may have some texts. All is quiet on the texting front. Okay. Yeah, I've got, I've told Nancy this morning we got the, well, she subscribes a lot of money to do as I do too and this is one of the more interesting information

than I've seen in a long time. There's we're saying transparency a lot more manufacturers are pushing it. The manufacturers, many of them, are aware of the reputation car dealers have. They're recognizing the consumer quantum leap and intelligence and education.

And so they realize if they're going to retail cars in the world, they're going to have to start treating the consumer a little bit better. And it never kind of led over to the service department. But there's an article in today's automotive news. If you happen to have one, it's on page two of the current automotive news. And Toyota and Lexus are working on a program. They have pilot dealers with Toyota and Lexus. And it is a transparency in the service drive where you have an app on your phone

and you know when you should service your car, you know what the service should be, you know what the price is, you know what the factory recommends that you have done. You have all this in the palm of your hand on your smartphone and the dealer has the same information. So instead of driving into a service drive, if they implement this program with all the dealers, and just saying, what do you recommend you do to my car or, you know, what is the recommendation? Well, every dealership now, has the recommendation it's a dealer recommendations

and then there's the factory recommendations if you listen to this show you've heard to say over and over again when you have maintenance and repairs on your car or maintenance you do the factory recommended maintenance you don't do the dealer recommended maintenance the factory

now you'll have an app that it will tell you it'll probably it's probably linked I would say probably I don't know this but probably linked to the mileage and time on your car I think there's no reason why an app through Bluetooth probably couldn't get communicated to by your car to tell you the mileage. And certainly the time is a no-brainer.

So your app is going to come to you when you come out to go to work tomorrow morning and say, guess what? It's time to change your oil, and this is what the oil costs. This is the type of oil you ought to get, and there's where the dealer is. And that way you're going to know you're paying, not to you shouldn't shop it. compare the price anyway, but you're at least going to know you're not going to get slam-banged when you go in and take advantage of it. So I salute the manufacturers, Toyota Lexus in this case, for trying to bring transparency to

the car servicing business. It's a great article. Yeah. It is really a great article. And guess what, ladies, this is really interesting, the automotive news. And the reason it's interesting is it really puts you in the driver's seat and keeps you up to date on all this technology that's happening and boy i'll tell you what there's a whole lot at first whenever i looked at the automotive news i thought i don't know if i'm interested in this or not but then as i began to read and the months went by um i found it quite interesting uh you gals know out there it can be kind of boring so i'm not recommending that you spend your saturday or sunday you know, leaving through the automotive news, but if you get a chance to grab a subscription,

I recommend it. We're going to go back to the phones, and this is our last phone call, and it's John who's calling from Fort Pierce, and then we're going to be getting to the I-95 Nissan Mystery Shopping Court. Welcome, John. Good morning. I watch your show quite often, and it seems at the early. It seems at the early Stewart, dealerships are pretty good. I emailed your dealership in Palm Beach, North Palm Beach, whatever it was, and curiosity about a particular automobile.

Two or three days went by, and I got a response saying, is this email valid? I responded, yes, it is valid. Two or three more days went by, and they called me again. I said, did you get anything? I said, I got absolutely nothing. I was just curious, what mistake did I make by emailing your dealership to ask about a specific car?

We didn't make any mistake, John. We made the mistake. And, you know, Stu is probably aware that my blood pressure just went up 20 points. But, yeah, it's inexcusable, which is called stupidity on our part. We should monitor our email or text, our phone calls. And getting back and responding to customers is an extremely important part of any business. And I'd be liant to you if I said that wasn't the first complaint I've gotten. I've been guilty of it myself.

I'm not getting back promptly with email. But the best thing to do when you have someone that doesn't respond any business, especially my dealership, is to call. And if you have to call me, the owner, you will get through to me. and don't accept it oftentimes the owners of the business don't know what's going on in the trenches especially today with COVID

and all the other things going on and whether you're dealing with public or you're dealing with a target or you're dealing with a car dealership when you try to communicate and someone doesn't get back to you you should go up the ladder go to the first let you go as high

as you have to go somebody in that business really cares and they'll find out who dropped the ball and they will coach those individuals and the supervisor that allowed it to happen and maybe it won't happen again

but no my sincere apologies and I'm glad you called and let me know if you need to call me personally if you call the dealership and ask to speak to me the calls go directly through to my personal cell phone and you can always get hold of me thank you so much I appreciate it.

Thank you, John. Appreciate the call. Thanks for the call, John. As I said, earlier, we are going to freeze the lines now. We're going to go to the mystery shopping report, and the mystery shopping report is on Nissan, and it's I-95 Nissan. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, I keep the text coming out because it's still early.

We'll be through the mystery shopping report before the end of the show. Yeah, excuse me. I did forget to mention you're a big part of this, Shopping Report, everyone out there. So please text us with your vote at 772-497-65-30. At 772-497-65-30, you are an important part of the Mystery Shopping Report. We love your thoughts and your opinion. Now, back to the recovering car dealer. This week, we mystery shopped I-95 at Nissan, formerly West Palm Beach, Nissan, and Riviera Beach. Overall, we've observed Nissan dealerships

tending to be a little bit more aggressive with regard to advertising sales taxis. We see this sort of thing in our mystery shopping reports. We've received calls and comments from listeners who call out Nissan dealerships for poor customer experience. Now, I hate to pick on Nissan as a brand. There's always exceptions. In fact, I believe there was one in Nashville, Tennessee, we shop.

Extraordinarily good report. So when I go after a group of dealers or brands, there's always exceptions to every rule. And that goes for the good dealers. I'm bragging on Lexus dealers a lot, but there's some Lexus dealers out there probably that leave a lot to be desired. But back to the Nissan issue.

I have a little insight on that, mainly because I was trying to buy some Nissan dealerships at one point, and we talked to some people in the higher-ups, and we learn some things about Nissan. We talk about automotive news on this program all the time, and automotive news talks often about Nissan's adversarial relationship with their dealers. Put simply, so you can understand, Nissan dealers don't like the manufacturer Nissan, and Nissan doesn't like their dealers.

I'm not exaggerating. Even in speaking with executives directly, when we're talking about buying Nissan dealerships, we got that same sort of feedback. Nissan has got some top echelon management that have taken the past, and they're still taking extraordinary measures to force Nissan to sell a lot of cars. Other dealerships, manufacturers, have got a very positive relationship. How do I know this? Well, the National Automobile Dealers Association does an annual survey,

and they ask the dealers, how do you like your manufacturer? They'll ask Jeep, how do you like Jeep, Crescent Deep? They'll ask Chevrolet, how do you like, how do you like the manufacturer, Chevrolet, dealers, how do you get along? And you tell the truth, you know, do they overcharge you for the cars, do they pay their bills on time, or, you know, whatever it takes. Nissan dealers dislike Nissan

and they say so they typically at the bottom in terms of satisfaction so think about it you're a Nissan dealer and the manufacturer's mad at you and you're mad at the manufacturer

what kind of an atmosphere does that put you in when you go into buy a Nissan probably not a real positive attitude so that's the reason we say and it's just not just a generalization we have a reason we're saying

Nissan dealers sometimes just don't treat their customers right, and partially because Nissan doesn't treat them right. Another interesting fact about Nissan is a tendency for Nissan to push the ownership of a lot of Nissan dealerships in the same neighborhood. All the other manufacturers do the exact opposite. The other manufacturers feel like if you have competitive dealers in the marketplace and you take any marketplace

you probably have you know in a metro area you have two or three Chevrolet dealers or maybe four or five depending on the side of the metro area same thing with Toyota same thing with Honda so they're all owned by different entities

while they compete because they're owned by different people if you have the same person owning all the Nissan dealerships or all of any other brand why are you going to compete against yourself? If someone wants to buy Nissan and they go to dealership A

and you own it and you give them a price and they go to dealership B, they're going to get the same price. So beware when you're shopping and comparing prices, who owns all the dealerships in that market? And Nissan cases, oftentimes, it's the same owner.

Now, we don't know exactly who owns I-95 Nissan. We think it's Terry Taylor. He also owns the other two dealerships in this metro area. So you have to ask yourself, how much competition are you going to see between dealers or the same guy owns all the dealerships? And that's something else that I don't like. I think it's probably, I think there should be some antitrust laws against that.

I call it clustering and other brand, other manufacturers or other products, do the same thing. Around here, a bigger, a holder group, territorial house two, and we think he owns a third. I just said that. We're not sure who owns I-95 Nissan, but we think it's Terry Taylor. I do. I think I can find out. I think I know somebody in the Terry Taylor group that will tell me, and I'll find out if Terry Taylor owns I-95 Nissan.

The name changed to I-95 Nissan August in 2020. In any case, we sent Agent Lightning in to investigate their sales practices in the midst of still raging pandemic, in the second year of a historic inventory crime. So if it was bad before Biden and Nissan, it's probably going to be even worse now. And I think you will, when you listen to this report, you will agree with me.

This is a report on speaking of the first person, as if I were agent to lightning. I arrived late afternoon, and I didn't show him. I was about to ask a receptions for help in the salesman approach putting on a face mask as he introduced himself. when you hear this you wonder if he wasn't wearing a face mask

when I came in he probably wouldn't have put a face mask on if I weren't wearing a face mask my point being there's no policy in that dealership you have to wear a face mask if I were buying bread or television says or cars

I don't want to go into a store unless people are wearing face masks but that's me he put on his face mask and he introduced himself his name name was ram where do you get that am I just an old-timer ram is that an unusual name

well we're in a multicultural society so yeah I know ram I don't know all I think is rammer ram a ding dong I know I told ram was interested in a new where'd that come from we never know there's got to be a song

it's purple people eater I told it's reading in the nights Well, Google it. It has a birthplace, Rammer Ram and Dingdo. I told Ram I was interested in new Nissan, preferably a smaller vehicle, but I wasn't sure. I asked that we could browse the new car inventory, but Ram said inventory was scarce, it attempted to narrow down my search. He asked me a series of questions, and I agreed that the Nissan Rogue, a small SUV, best fit what I was looking for.

This was fortunate because Ram said they had just received a shipment with 10, rogue sports on it. Now that is amazing. To get 10 of one model and a shipment in today's market of woe supply item is amazing. And as I said earlier in the show, a lot of dealers won't take orders. In some dealerships, they'll take an order and the car will come in two months, month, three months, whatever it is, and the car is pre-sold and they take it off the truck going to deliver it at the price they agreed to. But most dealers don't do this because they'd rather

have an option. So they get those rogues in and they're going to sell those rogues to the highest bidder. And that's what's going to happen. You can't order a car for these guys. And if he ordered a car, they sell it to somebody else at a higher price and say, too bad. So that's the way it is during this pandemic.

He led me over to a group of rogues and I chose the gray one with an MSRP of $27,580. Now, I know most of you out there know what MSRP is. Nancy and I were chit-chatting, as we often do, driving in. I said to her, I said, you know, some people don't even know what MSRP is. I'm not to do a, you know, a whole thing on it now, but it's the official suggested retail price. Deals have their own prices, and they call them list prices, they call them sticker prices.

but unless it says manufacturer suggested retail price, it ain't the real thing. And this MSRP of 27580, there was no addendum. We always look at that and I said, whoa, that's good. There was no addendum. Of course, the truck just came in. I relaxed a little and Ram said he'd need to run inside to get the key and he left. I waited outside by the car for five minutes and Ram was back with a key. He offered a test drive, which I accepted.

Dry was brief and quiet. We returned to the dealership and I waited for the trial clothes. All car dealers are the same. They always have the trial clothes. But it didn't happen. It didn't happen. Again, the sign of, who cares? If you don't buy the car, somebody else is going to buy it.

That's what I was thinking. Yeah. I'm not going to go through the trial clothes. I'm not going to play a game with you. I'm going to get an arm and a leg for this car. And if you don't want to give me your arm and your leg, I'll get it from the next guy that walks to the car. the door and that's the way it is uh graham suggested we go inside find his desk as he walked

to explain that all their cars have a three thousand nine hundred ninety five dollar did them can we just say four thousand we can four thousand dollars over sticker folks over msrp even though and we're not through we're just getting started even though they were not yet posted on the vehicle so that's the reason the addendum's weren't out there uh they saw them so fast they don't have time to put the addemps on at his desk he showed me the one that had been ripped from another vehicle the 3995 was for did you cut window tent I hadn't heard that one before who did you cut you know it's kind of like did you cut your finger off yeah that was like oh it's Josh that's just that's good that's

good at my brother okay you're going to supplement your input We are sending you to the comedy corner. Tell Josh, I said that way. He might be listening. Yeah. With a one-year orty, and also anti-teft. Anti-tift. Any-teft.

Be careful. That was a, was it printed or written out? It was printed. Printed. So they actually printed. The emphasis was mine. It's supposed to be theft. Is it T-H-E-S-B?

Anti-theft Wheel Lox. The Ram spelled it theft. Well, he didn't. He didn't. Somebody did. Whoever typed that thing up, anti-teft wheel locks. Nitrogen filled tires. We had a little conversation about nitrogen

early on the show. Totally worthless in case you don't know that. That breath you just took was 78% nitrogen. Nitrogen is free. Nitrogen is free, yeah. So it was the area breathe. And permaplate paint protection.

I hear a lot of that perma plate paint protection. So that's the garbage they put on there and they jack up the price. $4,000 for stuff that's totally worthless. He also had a brochure, a little plastic stand, and explain what permaplate was. I kind of like that. What's the guy?

Alliteration. A lot of perma plate. A lot of alliteration. Perma plate paint protection. I love that. Permapace. Okay. I told Ram, I didn't think I wasn't going to get a good deal.

He said he'd do his best for me. It was beginning to dawn on me. Right. When Ram returned with a price, he was quick to point out, that I had received a big discount. He said it was unheard of in today's market to get a discount like this.

There's Ram, telling the truth. Ram said that a lot of dealerships are going $6,000, even $10,000 over MSRP. And that is true. In fact, we've seen them go $40,000 and $50,000 over MSRP.

Then he told me that since they just received a shipment and I see him ready to buy a day, he may be able to get the manager to come down and price even more. Ron asked if I was a recent college graduate or a military veteran. I was neither. Now, of course, this is a way to get somebody in the door and tell them that they don't qualify because they come up with these obscure discounts.

And it's kind of a justification for a discount that they're not going to give you anyway. We looked over the worksheet, the top line was MSRP 27, 580. There was a $1,000 discount, you know, that sounds good, which someone had highlighted in yellow. Then they added $4,000, $39.95, and actually labeled the line, new vehicle addendum. I never seen that. Oh, yeah, that's interesting. They also added $287 in taxable fees. Now, a taxable fee is a phony fee, taxable.

Real fees, government fees, you don't tax. Government fees, they're already taxed. That's a double taxation. The $297 is a hidden fee that they're calling it a taxable fee. And they're also adding another $999 dock fee, which is also taxable, but they don't call that one a taxable fee. They call it a dock fee. So they call these things anything they want to because Florida law,

allows dealers to call hidden fees anything they want. And they typically try to find something that sounds legitimate. Taxable fee sounds, yeah, sounds fairly legitimate to me. And doc fee, we all know a documentary fee, that's, if you're born a house, you know, had a loan recently, documentary fees, you see that all the time. So these are hidden phony fees with phony names. My real price was $31,861. Now we're up to $4,281 over MSRP.

That was after a $1,000 discount, which was the biggest discount that he'd ever seen. And I'm already up to $4,000. I'm losing ground. I asked how much it was, and he said he wasn't sure. Oh, I, oh, that's right. I skipped ahead. He left something out. The perm plate only covered the exterior.

So the worthless permaplate protection didn't cover the interior. I'd have to pay more to get the interior protected, and the interior is already protected from a factory warranty for three years or some period of time. So all this stuff is worthless. I told him I wasn't keen on paying that much over MSRP and wondered out loud about waiting this market out before buying. Graham asked me if he could get me closer to MSRP, where we have a deal. Then he asked me to excuse him. So he went back, we're playing the game now,

running back and forth to the manager, the salesman, back and forth. He came back with an assistant sales manager, who was probably just the other salesman, calling himself an assistant sales manager. It's like the service department. Everybody go to the service sales department. It's like a bank. Everybody's a vice president. Well, a car dealership, everybody's an assistant manager. and the assistant manager didn't introduce herself. She just asked if I'd be interested in leasing. She said she'd give me an extra $2,000 off if I lease. Now, if you listen to this show, if you read our blogs,

you know that dealers on the average make $2,000 or $3,000 more when they lease a car than when they sell a car. And that's the reason you've heard this term, as you listen to the show, the lease flip. salespeople are trained to switch a person from a purchase buyer to a lease buyer because you can make more money that way

and they do make a lot more money when they lease cars to you anyway I declined excuse myself to the restroom when I returned to the desk Ram was waiting the general manager Ali Ali asked me to follow him

and led me to his office he said he really wanted to make his work for me today and showed me his computer screen to justify his price. He said he'd get me a great deal and wanted to get me to around $32,000 out the door. He actually, that was a pretty effective thing. I didn't include the picture he showed or a screen of V-A-A-O, which is our, mainly it's the pricing program and the inventory program for used cars.

But it gives you, it tells you what the market price is out there. And so he was showing her on that screen that this brand-new rogue, a used one, a 2021, is worth as much used as the brand new one as the MSRP. And that is true. Yeah. Now that's interesting. In V Auto, remember that name

V Auto because it's a predominant pricing tool that virtually all dealers use, right, Sue? And they actually get their data directly from the transactions so they know what any Eurmake model car, new use

or otherwise, what these transaction prices are and they tell dealers what they are so they don't sell it below what the transaction it gives you an idea so like when you get a when you first put a use car for sale you can adjust it so if let's say

the average market price was 20,000 you can say all right well for the first week I'm going to put up there for 21,000 and then I'm going to lower it over over time it's pretty handy so remember that term V as a Victor V auto and if you're talking to a dealer if you're doing some research

try to find out what the V-Auto number is on the vehicle you think about buying. If you can buy it at that number below, you're not getting taken advantage of too badly. Where am I here? He said he wanted to get me around $32,000 out the door. Yeah, yeah. He typed on his computer for a few minutes before printing a new worksheet of revised figures.

This time, there was a $3,200 discount from MSRP, before adding $39.95 back, and then he had done it the $9.95 and the $287, so another $1,300 in round numbers on top of the $4,000. This time my price was only $2,081 over MSRP. Funny thing, that's not really too bad. I mean, it's not MSRP, but it's probably below the average addendum over MSRP that we're seeing, today. I told him my appreciator's effort to move in my direction, but I decided to wait until the

market normalized before getting a new car. He warned me it would be a while. So, and he may be right. We don't know. I have to admit, I confess, I thought things would be back to normal before now. They're not. Prices are coming down. And there are dealers.

We talked to a caller of the show earlier that bought a Lexus for MSRP, and there are other instances that we've had mystery shopping reports where cars were sold at MSRP or for a few hundred dollars so those opportunities exist but you've got to work real hard to get them so now we're at the point in the show where we vote and we remember i always remind if when you vote out there we we grade on the curve if we if we grade on a straight abcd everybody would fail. And that doesn't make sense because we have to have a recommended list, and we have that on our website.

And we recommend the better dealers, and we don't recommend the worst dealers, and that's the curve. So, percentile-wise, how do you look at I-95 Nissan? Percentile-wise, how do you think they compare with other Nissan dealers? And remember, Nissan dealers in general are pretty bad. I say that, and I can back it up. So if you want to sue me, sue me.

I've been doing this for 20 years, and nobody's ever sued me because the best defense against libel and slander is the truth. And I'm telling the truth. There we go. Let's hear the votes. All right, we have grades coming in from the Internet. On Facebook, Andrew gives them a C. Tim in Yuma says, I-95.

I don't, I think not. F. Ken says, for truth in advertising, the sales person should have said to all prospective customers sucks to be you today because when you purchase an overpriced bill from me, I will get an arm and leg from you. I grade him an F because I can't grade him a G. And going over to some text, Jonathan Wellington says, I-95 Nissan, keep driving. Unless you have so much money, you don't care about getting cheated with nitrogen-filled tires and other worth its items, not to mention great discounts, in quotes. I'll give them an F. we have a D minus too many games by from a Nissan in Nashville Frank says such another bad dealership D minus and then Bob says C for I-95 Very good I'm going to go with a

A C minus Because we've got a little time before we get the scores from Rick and Nancy I want to show that I was right I got the name as Ramma Lama Ding Dong Ramma. It's a song by Rutgers sharp in the replays, and there it is. I know that song. Ramma-Lama-Ding-dong.

The song was written by George Jones and he performed it with the Edsels. There you go. Then, Rocky got it afterwards. There you go. Most. Mark Anderson with an F. Neagin'1. F. Get Out Fast. I've got,

let's see here. Tom, with a D, too many games. What a contrast from Nashville, Nissan. Brian, Hidden fees get an F from me. Mark Ryan. F. Too many old school tactics and hurdles the consumer had to overcome. Wayne with an F. Scott with an F. Cram 1624. I'll permanently wait to buy from Nissan. F. Myself, I'm going to give them the D plus. I'm going to say, all right, you don't quite get C with that 3995 addendum. But it was all kind of a bunch of.

board they you know they brought it right out in the open but you know you got you're gonna have to fight if you want a fair price out of them I think you know we never we've never defined when we agreed on the curve do we do we do the curve within the brand of the dealership in other words among Nissan do we do it in general for all dealers though yeah I it's all it's very informal I think it's a general thing but you know but when we talk about Nissan they were a little but better than most Nissan, so I see what you're saying. They could actually be above a sea.

Yeah. Okay, let's move along. Nancy? I'm going to give them an F. There's too many games for me. I don't like games. And, boy, I'll tell you what, the Nissan out in Tennessee, that was a pretty refreshing mystery shopperry report

because there are some dealers out there that, you know, even though they're out of state. We got spoiled by them. Yeah. and it sticks out in your mind and it leaves a sour you know taste in your mouth whenever you read this mystery shopping

for from I-95 Nissan I'm you know I'm gonna we have to clarify this the future but I'm gonna make an assumption we should start grading on the curve within a brand

as I'm thinking otherwise all Lexus dealers would get an A and and all the Nissan dealers would get an F I'm going to give them a I think they're an average Nissan dealer. And I think Nissan dealers leave a lot to be desired.

And I think the manufacturer bears a lot of responsibility for that. I agree. Official grade is a C. Yeah. And we've got two minutes. I'll just say one more thing about Nissan. One of the things that really the dealers hate Nissan about the manufacturer is their stairstep incentives.

And Nissan does a very, very nasty thing to all their dealers. They just, I think they think about stopping it, but they make the dealers sell a certain amount of cars or they penalize them very badly. And they push them so hard, they have to push the customer so hard that it creates a brand image and a brand problem. Yeah, absolutely.

To all you folks out there that YouTube, who texts, who called, who listened, you know we're here and we're on your side. Stay tuned next week, same time, 8 a.m. Have a wonderful weekend.