Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.27.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Murfreesboro Nissan

Episode Date: February 27, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels over 800 miles to visit Murfreesboro Nissan in Tennessee to see if she get the large discount featured on their website. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

You're How to Not Be Ripped Off by a Car Dealer Team, right here, live and in color, on True Oldies Radio. Been hearing a lot of music this morning, and we're not going to have any means. We're going to talk to you. We're going to email you. You're going to email us. We're going to text. We're going to post on Facebook and Twitter and YouTube. We're going to be communicating like crazy for two hours.

And we're going to help you to get out there in the world and buy a car, lease a car, maintain or repair your car, without fear. And we can really help. I think since this show's been on for the past 20 years, 20 years, we now are establishing a bunch of vigilantes around the country. Now that we're international, we're looking for volunteer vigilantes. A vigilante in the positive sense, we want you to volunteer to be an extension of this show to help people in your community buy a car.

If you do nothing more than refer them to the show, or the blog, ErwanCars.com, this movement that we have going is really starting to get legs. very excited about it. I think we all are very excited about it. I always remind you when we get started on the show that it's easy for me to pontificate to stand here and talk and talk and talk. I have a tendency to do that. We all do. I think we're bubbling over in the studio here, the people I introduced earlier in the recorded introduction, Rick Kearney, Nancy Stewart, Stu Stewart. We're bubbling over with enthusiasm to try to help. We've been on the car business a long, long time. We have a dealership.

and we've been, this dealership, we've been operating for close to 50 years. And so we've been there and done that. We've done it the wrong way. We're doing it the right way now. That's the reason I call myself a recovering car dealer because I was born into the culture. My father was a car dealer.

I was born into the culture. And I grew up doing things the way I thought everybody did them. And I'm not going to go through my enlightening because you can read that in my book, Confessions of Recovering. car dealer available on Amazon. All proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. You can find out what evolved in my mind to make, bring me to the point now of being a consumer advocate for car buyers. And here we are. Your calls are so important. The telephone, the personal

way to get through to us, we prioritize calls that come in to our switchboard because we don't watch a whole thing for a long time. Plus the fact we only have three or four lines. And that number is, and I'm going to give it to you a place where you can write it down, not the car, please, but if you're a place where you can write it down, the call-in number is 877-99-60. That's 877-960. We also have a text line. That was the second thing we did in our technical evolution. We went for just a telephone. to text because texting you know many years ago started to usurp the telephone and it has I believe to a large extent

so if you want to text this and you can write this down to 772 where you go 772 4976530 that's 772 497-650 Texas and we will get through to almost all the text. Sometimes we let them wait. We prioritize, as I said earlier, the audio, the phone and calls. And we have a really cool input that nobody that I know has. I've never heard of a talk show. I've never heard of just about anybody other than some blue-chip companies like Adobe

and Amazon. They use something called anonymous feedback. And it's from a company called Incognito. And they screen and they protect the communicator. The communicator, when you communicate with us, we don't know who you are, totally anonymous. And you can go online to Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Your, Y-O-U-R, Anonymous, A-N-O-N-Y, M-O-U-S, feedback. Everybody knows how to spell Feedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Say anything you want.

Call me names. Call Rick names. Call Nancy and Stu names. We don't get much of that. It's amazing. When we first opened this anonymous feedback source, I figure, watch out. I mean, this is going to be rough. It hasn't been too rough at all.

We get a few candid, shall we say, comments, but most of it's constructive criticism or not just criticism, but suggestions and ideas, and we use those ideas on the show, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now, I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart, my co-host, been with me on the show. She's a co-founder, and I want to salute her today. Salute Nancy. Nancy had foot surgery on Wednesday at Cleveland Clinic, and she is in the studio. She's a real soldier, a real trooper. She got her foot up on a thing with a cast,

and here she is, because she loves this show as much as I do and as much as we all do, and she does something that hasn't been enough, done enough of in this country, and I think you will all agree, you. Women's rights. Women become equal partners with men on this planet. And that's what she is on this show. She's not only very knowledgeable in the automobile business, but she's also a strong advocate, and particularly of women's rights. I know she's been talking a lot this week about safety of automobiles, and I know that's on her mind right now. Our cars are safe for females as they are for males, and if not, why. So with that, I turn the microphone. over to Nancy Stewart.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Our mystery shop, guess what? It takes us to Tennessee this week, and it's going to be, well, very exciting. Also, for the ladies, you are an important part of the show, ladies, and you can win yourself $50 for the first two new lady callers.

Give me a call, and give us a call. Let me know how you're surfing. went, or maybe you purchased a new or used car, just share some information with us. And if you would just like to call to say hello, that's great too. The number is 877-960-9960, or if you want to text us, you can do so. That's 772-497-6530. I'll hold that sign up there in case you're on Facebook or Twitter where you can see this. And we also have our vigilante link if you want to become and volunteer to be a vigilante.

Absolutely. And ladies, you're an important part of the show. We're building a platform here that's pretty important. And with the continuation of speaking to the ladies, you know, every week, you know, whomever might call this morning, you're encouraging the ladies that are, well, watching us on Facebook or YouTube. And, you know, maybe they'll, you can spread that, you know, encouragement, and they may call. Again, that number is 8779-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. I feel weird sitting over here.

I feel like I'm in another building. How you doing, Stu? Okay, www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And I can't see you, Jonathan, but am I close enough to the mic? Five by five. Okay. Now back to the recovering card you are.

Well, thank you. I'm going to turn the mic over to Stu. He's my son, general manager of our dealership. He's a hands-on expert. But what he's most famous for is being our spymaster general. He dispatches undercover agents into the field. And Stu is very excited about our Mr. shopping report this

week because well, mystery shopping report is the most exciting part of the show. We literally have an undercover agent go in and pretend to buy or lease a car and they report blow by blow. They name, names, dealerships, salespeople, sales managers,

exactly what happened. Does the dealer break the law? Did he obey the law? Did he, was he ethical? Was he unethical? Did he use bait switch and advertising? Did he not? And then we can buy a good dealer, bad dealer list, I'm going to let Stu tell you the rest, but we have a particularly exciting mystery shopping report we've never had before. That's right.

And Nancy is signaling me. Before you get started, Howard, hang on just a couple more seconds. Stu has some great information to share with you. Howard, I will make it brief. I'm really excited, as Earl mentioned already. Two weeks ago, we had planned to bring you our record-setting long-distance mystery shop all the way up from the National Air. in Tennessee, Agent Lightning was on a very special long-distance

mission, and if you've been paying attention to the news last week, we had massive winter storms over most of the United States, and Tennessee was smack dab in the middle of it. Everything shut down, including car dealership. So Agent Lightning bundled up, got warm, and waited for the thaw, and as soon

as it got a little bit warmer, she went back out there and took care of this mission. So it's really exciting, and I'm not going to give anything away other than it's not anything like we expected. It's going to go down as one of the most different reports. Let's be as vague as possible so people tune in. All right, Howard, we're ready for you, I think. Okay, thanks to Howard.

Thank you for waiting. Good morning. Good morning. I hope everybody's fine. It's a beautiful day today. And my question is, it's not a question. It's actually a statement. I think that Genesis did a very good job

saving Tiger Woods. Now, I'd like Rick to explain exactly how many airbags there was and how they actually cushioned him. And is it because it was the flagship car in the Hyundai that was protected that way? And would, let's say, a lesser car, you know, have as many airbags? and how was the genesis compared to the Hyundai?

Is the Genesis safer, or was it that it was an SUV and it was safe? So, Rick, take it away. Howard, it was seven airbags that went off. Anyway, back to Rick. Truth be told, I'm not very familiar with how many total airbags are available in a lot of the different models. but I can say that pretty much every manufacturer, they are packing these cars with airbags anymore. Granted, the higher-level cars will quite often have more airbags than the lower levels.

Like Toyota, for example, you've got driver-side airbag, passenger airbag in the front, you've got a curtain airbag on each side, you've got knee airbags that pop out to protect your knees, Some cars in the back seat will have airbags in the back seat itself designed to actually push your legs up and back in order to force your body back into the seat as well, even in the back seat. There are side seat airbags.

Yeah, there were exactly seven airbags in that car. That's how many were in that genesis. Well, that's how many blew. I'm not sure how many were in the car. Was the seven? If you saw a picture of the car, you know, they all blew. They all went out. And not surprising.

But, I mean, it comes down to the idea that safety in cars now has reached a level that almost any new car is designed to basically crumple and fold and protect the occupants at all costs. Yeah, I thought the media kind of missed the ball on that when they were announcing it. They kept focusing on the terrible condition of the car and how could he survive, which is okay as long as you go on to say that the worse the car looks today. in 2020, 2021, is the safer of the car. Compressability of the front end and the back end. The passenger compartment, if you notice, if you look for the pictures, was pretty much untouched. Tiger had some injuries, but very minor, not minor to him, but they were minor compared to the intensity of the crash. And I think when they come out with the speed, after they get the black box and measure the speed, they will realize how

what a miracle it was and the miracle was due to the design of the car the Genesis is a Hyundai I found it also interesting that the media had never referred to it as a Hyundai but two years ago it was a Hyundai and then they made the Genesis a separate car

it's kind of like Lexus a lot of people the manufacturers don't want people to know the Lexus is built by Toyota Infinity doesn't want to know the buyers to know that's built by Nissan and Acura buyers don't want you to know that it was built by Honda. So it's a luxury image thing, but it's a Hyundai.

So congratulations to Hyundai for building an amazingly saved car and saving Tiger Woods' life. And just imagine, had that been a similar-sized SUV that instead of being a brand-new car nearly, suppose that had been a car from like 1995, the odds are very good that he would not have survived that accident. Very much so. Rick, whenever you talk about the airbags, you talked, you mentioned, I heard you say knee. Are you saying that the bags where the airbags were located right around that area to protect his knees? They're actually on most of the newer cars now. They're in the dash down low. So basically right at the level of your knee caps and they pop out of the dash towards your knee so that your body is not going to slide.

forwards and it protects your knees and lower legs you got that you got that in your car nancy yeah and you know also they um really investigated this in the speed that he may have been going to all that is going to you know be in the black box but what a difference between 10 miles whether you survive you know if you're going 40 or if you're going 50 all likelihood you won't survive if you were going 50. But I firmly believe that the inside of that Genesis really protected them. The airbags, the seatbelt. Let's go back in time. Whoever thought, you know, there are people still on the road who don't use their seatbelts. Thank goodness he had his one. And by the way, as a matter of fact, those seatbelts also play another part because they'll have what's called

a pretensioner. At the moment of impact, this actually is an explosive charge in the seatbelt that pulls the belt back tight to strap you harder into the seat because you'll see like race car drivers the airplane pilots they're pulling those straps down super tight on their body so that their body

does not move around in the seat if I lean forward too fast in my car to adjust the radio the pretensioner stops me then I have to back up and move forward slowly that's a force limiter that's yeah that's the force limiter but the pretensioner when it deploys it goes

off literally with the sound of a shotgun shell, and it yanks that seatbelt back so tight that that seatbelt will never move again. Well, functionally, it's the same thing. They're keeping you from a record, yeah. You have two preventions, very scientific, very high-tech, very effective. Howard, great question. We're all, everybody in America and the world knows about that accident, and hopefully it will raise the awareness of the safety of cars, and I hope the Genesis,

the Hyundai Genesis gets credit for building a great car. Great information. Thank you very much, and have a good day. Thank you, Howard. Thanks. Thank you very much, Howard. Our number is 877-9-60-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-60.

And ladies, there's still time for you to give us a call. Share your story with us, anything at all. Call to say hello. and you can win yourself $50. First two, new lady callers. We're going to go to Dog Walker Dave from Palm Beach. Dog Walker, Dave. Good morning.

Good morning, guys. Good morning. How long everybody? Yeah. Listen, I have a guy I'm doing some work for in his garage. And the shelving on the walls was sticking out so far that he couldn't get his Tesla all the way into the garage without, well, he just has a lot of trouble parking this car anywhere. And I was wondering with these autopilot parking features,

if there's something that can be incorporated into the system, the program on the car, to auto park the car in a garage, much like they would park on. the street. That is a great idea. They don't have that. They have auto park, but it's parallel parking, and I'm not sure every garage would be a little bit different, but I'm sure the technology now is available with cameras that it could customize an auto park and do exactly what you're saying. Rick, you have something. As a matter of fact, a hobby that I'm into is flying drones, and the drone that I have has collision sensors that actually can see something as small as a tree branch

and avoid it. So I don't see why they couldn't simply install those same simple collision sensors that exist in a $900 drone. They could put those in those cars easily and it would be able to see those shelves and stop before hitting them. And then as you were saying that

and after what I said and talking to Dave here, One of the problems is, I think we get excited. I know we do one of the show, I think, engineer, design engineers, the manufacturers, and, of course, the guys that run the dealerships, I mean the manufacturers, because they want to have the edge on the competition. And they keep coming up with these great ideas. They're very high-tech, very technical, and the more complicated, and they're complicated. So the more complicated you make these cars, the more difficult it is on the user,

you Dave, the guy that drives the car and pretty soon and we're there now. They're so complicated now that I don't know what year model you drive Dave but my guess is you probably don't know how to use all the functions on your car. Maybe you don't care

to know. You probably haven't read the owner's manual and the average person that buys a 2021 or 2020 car probably knows less than half of the features on the car and the more we add the more difficult we make to drive drive the car, which is the fundamental purpose, to be able to get from point A to point B.

Anyway, I didn't mean to run on, Dave, but that's such a great idea. Yeah, it would come in really handy for this poor guy. He said two-car garage, and of course they are putting two cars in it. But the poor guy keeps knocking the mirror off of one side trying to get in and out, they back into the garage instead of pulling straight in because their driveway is a little difficult to back out into. And it just occurred to me that, you know, something like that. I mean, even if it was a, I don't know, like a do-it-yourself sensor kit, once you get the car in a right spot,

you put some markers or something down on the garage floor that the car would understand and place itself in exactly the same place every time, something like that. It's going to happen. Anything that you can imagine, Dave, and this is not a dream thing. This is a real thing. If you can imagine it today, it will occur in the not too distant future. Rick?

I have seen one low-tech solution on something like that where a fellow basically just took his wife's car. She was having issues getting her car lined up properly in the garage. So he put her car exactly where he wanted it to be, took a tennis ball that was brightly colored, hung it from a string, and to where it was just touching the windshield at a certain point. and he told her, when you're driving in, you line up that tennis ball at exactly this spot on your windshield, and when it just touches, that's it. You're there. That would be, you know, the first choice, but like I said, these people are backing their cars. Right, so you'd simply back it in and line it up to have the tennis ball,

or maybe one on each side, just to touch the back window at a certain point. How about a soccer ball? Would that work? That would work, too. I would color it brightly, bright, bright colors. Dave, thanks very much. You're a great caller. Say hi to your doggy for us. Does he listen to the show too? Well, they all do. I walk up on the dog. Oh, how sweet. Thanks, Dave. Saturday morning. We're committed to Saturday morning. There you go. Give us a call again, Dave. Please do. Okay. You know, this advice that Rick gave out, he gave us 14 years ago. You remember that day? That moment? Just teasing. He did give us that information, though. if you're listening, give us a call.

877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Ladies, you still have time, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Now back to the recovering card deal. We cut them off earlier, and also you've probably got some text or anonymous feedbacks. Yeah, I don't want to give too much away about our mystery shopping report from Murphy's, borough, Tennessee. But we can jump in some texts. They've been accumulating. And we give the honor every week to Anne-Marie for the first text. So here's from Anne-Marie. Good morning. I hope that everyone is well and wish that Tiger Woods has a speedy recovery. The photos of the

genus GV-80 that he was driving shows that the SUV was crunched up and mangled. But the passenger compartment appeared to be pretty much intact. That prompts me to say thank you to all the unheralded, engineers, designers, and others who have created all the various safety features on today's vehicles. You've enabled people to survive what would have previously been fatal crashes. Hooray for safety features and the people who create them. Amen to that. I remember when cars only had size and sheet metal to protect the occupants. They did not have seatbelts of any kind.

Incredibly, they were grumbling about Big Brother when lap belts were finally required in new cars back in the 60s. That attitude held sway for a long time. I walked into a Plymouth dealership in 1978 and asked about the safety features on their new cars. The salesman looked at me as if I had two heads and was speaking Martian. He basically told me, safety doesn't sell. I walked right out. When and why did automakers and dealers start taking safety measures seriously? They obviously did because nowadays we have seatbelts, multiple airbags, traction control,

analog brakes, backup cameras, all-wheel drive, cell. parking cars, blinds to by indicators, collision avoidance systems, etc. What is the dealer's perspective on safety features over the years? Thank you. Thank you, Anne Marie. Well, nice thing about being an old guy. I've been there and I've done that. I'm ashamed to tell you, again, this goes into my recovery as a car dealer. Back when they introduced seatbelts, and I was in the business then, when they introduced seatbelts, we hated seat belts. We thought it was an annoyance. They were just not, they didn't retract, they just lay there on the seat, and They get stuff down, and every time you move the car on the shoreroom floor,

you had to stretch them out and make them look neat, then they'd get messed up again. So a lot of times, deals would just hide them. So you'd buy a car, and you never knew even have the seatbelts, and there was no rules or laws on seatbelts, and we just thought it was an annoyance. Then we really got mad when they came up with airbags. Airbags cost a fortune at that time compared to the cost of the car. I mean, you could buy a new car back in the 70s, in late 60s and 70s for three or four thousand dollars.

And so even though a seatbelt was only a 50 bucks or whatever it was, percentage-wise, that was a big piece of change. And why spend that money on a stupid seatbelt? Airbags were like $1,500, forget about it. And we hate it. We fought as dealers, the dealer associations, National Automobile Dealers Association, every car dealer, we hated airbags.

And how ashamed. should we all be, that we're fighting those so many years ago. How many millions of lives have been saved worldwide? How many tens of millions of lives? Yeah. So, yeah, it was, you know, education and awakening in all businesses and amazing things, too. Yeah, when I first got into the business, all they had was just the driver and passenger airbag, and then side airbags started to come out.

But the manufacturers all made them an optional thing because it was expensive. So it was to get side impact airbags in the same. seat bolster airbags, that was something you'd probably $700 to $1,000 for that option. And I just could not understand it. And I remember I was selling cars as a salesperson, and I would present this as an option. And hardly anybody ever took that up. Even the customers would rather take their chances and not spend the extra money. It was only in the following 10 years or so where it became standard equipment.

Now they realize that contrary to MRE salesperson in 1978, the safety does. cell and it's demanded by consumers and if you don't have a car that doesn't have all the safety equipment you're not going to do well and the other awakening we had from the old days the dark ages of we don't understand or care about safety we thought that the thicker the metal on a car the heavier the car the heavier the car was we didn't understand the compression absorbing energy saves lives and so you go out there and buy the biggest thickest steel heavy car terrible gas mileage. I was one of the few checker franchises. You remember the checker cabs in New York? And you could actually sell those after checker went out of the business. They began manufacturing

checker cars. And these were like a tank. I mean, I don't know how thick that steel was. But boy, I used to say to my customers, you want to talk about a safe car, meaning what it really means when you tell them that, that means in a car with thinner steel, you could just crush that car. You know, top speed was 45 miles an hour and got four miles of the gallon. Well, I didn't understand then. And I guess maybe after I majored in physics in college, I realized that just because you have a thick steel around you, when you hit something hard, it's the impact, the transfer of the energy crushes your body. Whether the steel crushes or not, you die quicker.

And then we figured out, then let's make it like an accordion thing. and that's what you saw in Tiger Woods accident, that Genesis just collapsed like an accordion, absorbed all of the energy, or most of it, and I know he was injured seriously, but he's alive, and he would have been dead had that not happened. Yeah, exactly. Okay.

Let's go to John, who's calling from West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Hello. How are you? Hi, John. Yeah, hi. I wanted to comment on the gentleman who was, I got halfway through the conversation there, about pulling into the garage and hitting the mirrors.

Yeah. Okay. And he's wanting sensors so that, you know, for his neighbor, whoever it was, there's a quick fix until they get those sensors. What you do is you take your car, you pull it into the garage, you know, where you want it. And then what we've done for people is you take a string in a tennis ball. You hang up from the ceiling, let the tennis ball touch the windshield, and then when you pull into the garage, you follow your nose to the tennis ball,

and you know exactly how far far to pull in, and how far to the right or left you need to go, and when the windshield hits the tennis ball, you're safe. You know, that's a great idea, John. Rick had mentioned that earlier. You missed that, but I'm glad you mentioned it again because people tune in and tune out of the show, And this is something that could save you probably $500 for having to buy some sort of fancy-dancy, you know, radar or LADAR or some other high-tech expensive item.

But a tennis ball hanging from the string is an old-fashioned. It takes you, what, 10 minutes or five minutes, and you can even use a golf ball or soccer ball. Very good. All right. Yeah, like I said, I caught halfway side. Yeah. Thanks very much. That's a great suggestion.

Oh, hey, by the way, I purchased my Genesis from you, used, and I tell you what, I have the sensors. You know, there's a little button. You press it, and it lets me know if I'm too close to something, all the way around the car, whether I'm backing up or on the side, and sometimes I have to turn it off because it continues to beep and beep and beep and beat while I'm at a drive-thru. Well, that helps you at public from Costco, doesn't it?

You know, when someone's going along behind you, you can't see them at all. I love that. proximity detector, I think they call that, yeah. Yeah, it's a great feature. But it does have that radar all the way around. Amazing, yeah. It's nice when you have high-tech stuff

that you understand, know how to use, and that's one of them. We really appreciate your call, John. Thanks. All right, bye, bye-bye. Give us a call again, John. We love talking to 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-65-30. you know we're talking a lot about safety features and what we used to not have but it's really

interesting sort of well upsetting that there hasn't been that much testing done with for females and they've come out with some amazing numbers of how a female can survive a crash compared to a male and it's just you would think that the you know you know know, the Consumer Report, National Highway Safety, National Highway Traffic Safety, would have, you know, by now, done a whole lot more. So that leads me to a story that I believe, Earl found this story just this past week in the USA Today, and we're moving forward in this auto industry, and we're recognizing the fact that, you know, 50% of women, you know, are right there, either purchasing, leasing, whatever, they're there.

So here is an article about a senior design release engineer, Sandy Jackson, and it's just an amazing article as to how safety features are put together for this Buick out there in Detroit. And, Earl, I think you read this article, didn't you? Yeah, the Buick, this model Buick that was featured in the article, you can probably find that. I forgot what it was, but as the highest percentage of female buyers. There was, excuse me, 56% of females owned this Buick. Yeah, and if you can look up that, you've got the article there. This particular model, Buick is number one of all import, export, every model,

and the reason is because they have a female design engineer. And here's the really interesting part. This female design engineer, Buick, she's five feet tall. Five feet two. Oh, that's cute. I shouldn't have said that. But small women are smaller than men. You know, men are different than women.

And it hasn't been acknowledged or recognized by design engineers. Buick was smart enough to say, hey, let's see if she can. We'll get a woman design a Buick. And she did, and guess what? Number one, among women, is this particular viewing. And she was, according to the article, she says, I get into the car, and I want to be sure that I can reach everything. And she's five feet tall.

She wants to be comfortable that she can see the visibility. How many complaints, Rick, Stu, and Nancy, do we get from our customers that say, you know, can you adjust my seat because I can't see something. I can't see the dash. I can't see out the windshield road. and we tell them you have to use a cushion because legally we can't adjust a seat. It's part of the safety feature of the car.

So the manufacturers build the car for a man. I don't know what the average man is, probably 5 foot 8. And I don't know what the average woman is, probably several inches less than that. So why are all cars designed for men? It makes no sense. And as Nancy said, half the buyers out there are women. How about all those little compartments that they have in that Buick that she you know as the engineer is responsible for instead of things flying all over the

interior of your vehicle you know she made it just so convenient organized you know where everything is it's out of your way it's not going to endanger your drive but it is a very interesting article and what a genius she is because it simply is going to increase the traffic that goes into Beulik I mean between Mary Barba and Sandy, it's just an amazing article about females and how they can trust that particular vehicle. Okay, how are we doing on, I think we've got a YouTube over here from... I think we got a really good segue to that topic.

Okay. So this came, a text that came from Sarah A. Oh. She says, I've had a problem with cars my whole life. I'm small in stature, and I have a very hard time reaching my door handle to close the door when I'm seated in the driver's seat. It appears there are fixed distances the door is calibrated to stop at. The furthest position is too far, and this has been the case in every car I've ever owned. Can these positions be adjusted to make it easier for me to reach?

And I feel you, Sarah, because I'm 6-2, and on the widest opening on my car. I've got to lean all the car to get it. I was really surprised when you shared it with me, because I was having the problem on 5'2. I don't know. Maybe it's the design cars from medium-sized people, but can you adjust those, Rick? You know how they, like you open up a little stops and then you push it again? that's called the door check okay and unfortunately no there's they're designed with just a midpoint and an end point they're designed for orangutans yeah they a lot of them they

i mean i literally have to get out of my car to reach my door yeah i have buick that's my advice yeah that's probably probably the only one that model there's only one you can actually reach that's the case i think with everything you know up until the mid 20th century everything on earth was designed by men for men. And so we're just starting to see then. And I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but I mention there's countless other products and situations that women were not considered when the product was designed.

And if you think about it, I'm sure you come up with something. Yeah, Sarah A, thank you so much for that text. Don't be timid, ladies. You know, you've been pushed around a lot over the ages, and you know, you've emerged. but you're still discriminated against and ignored, and it's not right. So Nancy especially would love to hear from you. We all would love to hear from you.

And the smart manufacturers, like General Motors, hey, by the way, is it a coincidence that Mary Barra is the CEO of General Motors? And Buick is the only, is the car that has the greatest number of female buyers? It's not a coincidence. So call then, let us have your opinion out there. And if you're a first-time caller, 50 bucks, ka-ching. female callers we have two rewards and

Nancy will send you 50 bucks cash no conditions 877960 960 we got a couple of YouTube's old band J. Motoring says good morning when is the bubble

going to burst on these high used car prices due to the pandemic any guesses I think it's going to be coincidence when the bubble burst on the new car they're kind of tied. You know, a lot of the supply we get from

from used cars is from new car trade-ins, and you know, it could work in reverse, come to think of it, but it's people coming to buy a new car, they end up buying a used car, people come to buy a used car, and they end up buying a new car. The surge in demand

is working on both. I think that's keeping the used cars available, actually, more so than you might think, are all these cars, and we're getting a lot of cars in that are at least because there's been a leasing surge, a huge number of cars. They're manufacturers out there, dealers that sell over half their cars, lease as opposed to purchase. What would you say the average was to, 35, 40% now?

Probably low. We're on the high side and we're in the like mid-30% range. I would guess around 25 to 30, maybe a little bit lower than that. It used to be 10 or less. So, yeah. But it's for the foreseeable, it's a seller's market, folks. If you're out of I want to buy a car. You know, we're car dealers, so, yeah, we love you to buy our cars, but the point is you're going to be paying more today than you will a year from now. I guarantee you. So if you don't need a car, wait, and especially this is a new model introduction time,

so you got everything going against you. You have a microchip shortage, which is making certain models hard to buy. And if you've got a good, reliable car, and it's safe, it's a good, you're a good, and it's safe it's a fairly late model uh you know i'm talking about the past six or seven years they're pretty damn safe uh wait a year and you'll get you'll get a much better price great advice uh we are going to go to john who's giving us who's giving us a call from home city good morning john good morning to everyone have a couple of questions for rick and we're going through the temperature that happened in texas oh we never happens to us but my first question

is every new car that's delivered, for instance, a car that's delivered in Maine or a car that's delivered here in South Florida, are they all winterized with antifreeze to the same protection, or is it different variants depending on the part of the country? No, actually, coolant, radiator coolant, is designed to handle extremely high temperatures and low temperatures, both, and most of it now, like for Toyota, is already pre-mixed. It's all the same, and the cars, when a car shipped out, the manufacturer doesn't know where it's going to be sold. And cars are swapped, a dealer traded, and ordered. So if you're building a Honda cord, then all those Honda cords will be the identical winterized, summer, all conditions.

Although it might not be a bad idea to have a winter package manufactured car for some guy that lives in Minneapolis, and he's going to stay there. but that's not the way it is. Okay, well, I want to ask you then for a used car, should a person be checking and see that it's properly winterized and can somebody, like in a cold area, run pure, or any freezer, does it have to be mixed with water in order to be efficient? No, it should be mixed, and actually most manufacturers now

are the coolant is no longer coming as a concentrate that has to be mixed. It's now pre-made, pre-mixed to the proper. levels and it should be the proper ratios and most of it now you don't mix with water you simply put the coolant straight into the engine and right in the radiator and you'll be perfectly fine with it okay worth case scenario that somebody doesn't have any coolant in it and it's an older car and it's probably basically mostly water the old cars used to have like if it froze they had freeze out plugs in the engine that they still load out today

that the engine block won't crack, that a freeze-out plug will come out first? Yep. Is that still the same case? Yep. Okay. But I want to ask you also, the item that everybody was forgetting, and it's a run on it in Texas, is people are forgetting with the expansion tank on the radiator, which is usually a plastic bottle that they forgot to winterize it,

and it just cracked, and they have to be replaced. and sometimes they're not so cheap, and sometimes Rick will tell you, they're in a bad spot like an offender weld, so they're not the easiest to change. So that's an important thing that people overlook. And is there an item that I can buy in the auto store, something I think years ago,

I think they called it a hydrometer, that I can check actually the water in that tank and see that that's proper for the windshield washer fluid? Not for washer fluid. Washer fluid is generally input in as either water or a concentrate, and normally most folks will buy the blue bottles for 99 cents and just pour it straight in, and that has anti-freeze capabilities to it, unlike normal engine coolant. So it's actually two different systems. Make sure you don't get those chemicals mixed up. Don't put them in the wrong spots.

But the hydrometer that you're mentioning was actually used for testing the concentration of, coolant versus water in the radiator system and we use those back in the past but like I say now modern coolants are intended not to have any water added to it you simply top it up with coolant anytime it gets low so in other words what you do physically if it's an older car to come into the dealership you basically check it with your finger and see that it's not just pure water that it has a fluid in it for you know cooling right Well, you can tell by the color, because almost all of them now, for the past 25, 30 years have been using a specific color. Some use pink, red, green, blue, orange, almost any color of the rainbow now, but each manufacturer will have a color that you can tell whether it's got the proper concentration or not.

And John, if the truth be told, most dealers in South Florida never even look at the color, and all they care to see if it's full of a, when they do their check, or a gold check or whatever they call it. I'll bet you you could put water in a car in Miami or Palm Beach County, and the technician would never notice. So it's a very good point. If you're buying a car and you live up north, you're buying a car in South Florida, you probably ought to check that yourself or tell them to check it, because I don't think they do.

Most cases, we look just to see, is there some sort of a color there? Yeah, that's you. Yeah. But you're a certified master diagnostic technician. but the windshield washer fluid, it's actually better to put the additive to it, and it probably does a better job cleaning the windshield, too. Yep. We'll try that on a shopping report, John.

We'll go out there with a car, and we'll put water in the radiator, and we'll take it to our dealership. We won't tell Rick, and we'll take it to two or three other dealerships, and we'll find out how well they all did at alerting the shopper, that there was only water in his radiator. Well, I'm only pointing it out because of what these poor people in Texas have gone through. Yeah, I know. You're a good point.

It's dead. Yes. All right. Well, welcome back, Nancy. I hope she heals fast. Thank you. The Cleveland Clinic is the greatest, in my opinion, a hospital in the United States. And they found in that Cleveland Clinic that I had vertical.

And that's after years that I had hospitals in New York City, including Columbia Presbyterian. Really? never even discovered it, but guess what? It got discovered here in Florida and at Cleveland Clinic. Well, I totally agree. I totally agree. We recommend Cleveland Clinic. Nancy and I both go there. We refer people there, and I'm amazed a number of people that I talk to that have figured that out. And, of course, they're buying up hospitals in this area. Thank God for that. They really know what they're doing. Yes, definitely. Thanks, John. I hope Nancy heals fast.

Thank you. Oh, thank you. Have a great weekend. or you can text us at 772-4976530 and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com and if you haven't joined Earl's vigilantes yet, well, we're wide open and we're waiting for you. We're waiting for you to sign up. Help us, help the people in your community. I mean, you don't have to be, you don't have to take an engine apart or be an auto expert to help all of us and we would appreciate you volunteering

for girls' vigilantes. If you're in the Nashville area without giving too much away, Nashville needs some vigilantes in that area. They do, yeah. They badly need a vigilante. That's what I heard. Need a good southern boy there that can take care of these.

Exactly. Okay, we're going to go back to Rick, I believe, who's got some YouTubes. Oh, we've got one. Sung Sam. had contacted us a little while back. That's a scary name. Son of Sam.

No, Sung. It's like the Samsung phone. Oh, son. But with the two. I was going to say, it's either a Korean guy or a serial killer. I prefer to think he's a true gentleman. Or a Korean serial killer. Anyway, he says he was looking at buying an ACRA

with a one-pay lease that, in other words, you pay the lease all in at the beginning. Three years, one pay lease to Accura. He received a letter from Accura to pay $300 property tax for leasing the car in Texas. He says, he argued that they own the car, therefore they should have to pay the property tax. Yeah, you're right. He says, they refused. They're saying when you lease a car in some cities in Texas, you have to pay the property tax, even though you don't own, but you lease the car. And he says, how do I fight this? He called the dealership and Honda Finance and got no real help. He says, at the time of the lease, the one-pay lease,

they told us they would not have to pay. And now he says the one-pay three-year lease covers. At the time of the lease, they told us one-pay lease contract would cover the property tax if any of that is applied. I got the answer. You hire a class action lawyer, a really good one, one. And you give him the opportunity to file a class action suit on the half of everybody in Texas that has paid that $300 and you sue Texas. And you sue Texas. And I think you're totally right. I happen to know that when you lease the car, this question has come up on it for a different reason. People that lease cars and the husband and wife lease the car and then the one party passes away

and then it goes through to the estate. But if you have the lease and only one name, well, it's another story. But yeah, class action suit, I think, would get somebody's attention. That's what I would try. Okay. And Negan one mentions,

is, Rick, there are aftermarket door checks available for different cars, and yes, there are aftermarket, but most of them are going to be built to the same specifications as the factory door checks, therefore they would still open the door to the same positions. And plus, actually changing a door check

requires disassembling the door itself to get inside to where the body of that door check is. What's that, 500 bucks? It can be that or more. Yeah. I think I'd figure out how to live with it. Yeah. I would think maybe a rope tied around the door,

just a simple piece of rope that you could just pull the door. That'll work. Anyway, let's see. Ernesto's asking, I heard the residual value, especially for Toyota, is based on MSRP. Is it true that residual value is based on the MSRP? And if not, what is it based upon? No, it's not based on MSRP. It's based on two things.

The most common is the anticipated value of that vehicle, no matter what the MSRP is, regardless. the anticipated value of the car at the end of the lease. So if you've got a 36-month lease, you go to your crystal ball where there's actually companies, and one company in particular, that specializes in that, and they do a forecast and what that vehicle is going to be worth on the market in three years. Difficult to do.

The other way they do it is they use it to incentivize the lease of that car, and a lot of the manufacturers are putting higher than realistic, residual values so they can lower the lease payment when they lease the car. So they increase their volume and that's the way. But the MSRP has not got anything to do with the residual value. And the last one I have here is Andy Zaprizala. Says, good morning. I would like to be a silent slash mystery shopper in the Atlanta area.

Is that possible? Absolutely. As a vigilante? Oh, as a mystery shopper. I would recommend that they start as a vigilante and we get a communication going. Yeah, we need your qualifications. And if Stu's absolutely right,

we have to be careful because we have credibility. We have to be accurate. And we're sure you're sincere or almost. And we'd probably do a little background check on you and talk to you, interview you. We want to make sure you're not a salesperson and a dealership trying to badmouth your competition. You know, that could happen.

But if you're willing to go through the background check, we would love to put you on. It's not an intrusive. We're not running your credit. Basically, you find out what you do, what your history is, and kind of get an idea. So go to Earlsvigilini's.com, volunteer, and then we can get you going. Exactly. Okay. That's got us caught up on YouTube for the moment. Hey, going back to the property tax thing, I did a little Googling, and there are nine states

and where even when you're leasing a car, you're responsible for state or local property tax. And nine states plus, Juneau, Alaska. Not the entire state, but just Juneau. That's even bigger class action suit. Arkansas, Connecticut, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Missouri, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia, according to Honda Financial Services, even when you lease a car, and even though the bank owns the car, you're still responsible for property taxes. You lawyers out there, think about it.

I'd love to hear from a lawyer. Justin Lynn is one of our favorites, consumer lawyer that Nancy and I know personally. Any folks listening in that are lawyers, what do you think about states like Texas and Stu says there's seven or eight other that charge a lessee, someone's leasing a car? You're renting the car,

and the car belongs to the leasing company that's leasing it to you, and the state's charging you, property tax when it's not your property makes no sense done i guess we'd have to look at the statutes there yes we're going to go to the phones where mark is holding good morning mark good morning gang uh i hope all is well with with everyone in your toes doing okay um i got a question for a rick this morning and being in the business so long i should know the answer to this but i do not. I had to go down to West Palm to have a CAT scan done and I had to spend an hour drinking

this wonderful banana contrast. So we had to wait. So we decided to go sit down by the water across from Palm Beach and just, you know, just sit around and spend time waiting for the contrast take effect. Anyway, my daughter is sitting there. We're listening to the radio, but I noticed the car is running. So I said to where I said, Why don't you shut the car off? She said, because then we can't listen to the radio. Years ago, you know, the key and the ignition, you used to turn it, you know, to 4 to start the car,

but you used to turn it backwards to, I believe it was ACC, and it allowed you to play your radio without the car running. Now, Rick, can you do that today? This is a 2017 Camry. Shelly, can you play the radio without having the car running? Yes. If you have a normal key that has the ignition cylinder, you'd put the key in and turn it just one partial turn, you'll feel a little detent, a click.

And that's the accessory or ACC position. That will let you have usually the radio and sometimes the power windows. And if you turn it one click further to on, it will turn on the ignition, which will give you the blower fan, the power windows, everything will be powered up, but the engine will not be running because you haven't turned it all the way to the start position. Now if you have smart key, which is the push button to start, do not step on the brake pedal, but simply push the button one time and release it, and it will go to the ACC position with shots you play your radio.

I didn't know that. Did you know that, Stu? Push it twice, and it will go to ignition on that will give you power to everything in the car, but without starting the engine. I love this show. Thanks, Rick. Mark, you're in the business. You were in the business. I didn't know it.

You didn't know it. Rick, you're a genius. Just experience. I play with things. I'll tell you, when she has to put the money in the car for the gasoline, it shouldn't really bother me. But, you know, you're sitting there wasting gases. Thank you so much. Then again, you're right, Earl.

I can't believe I didn't know the answer to that question. I've only been a car dealer for over 50 years. No excuse. Anyway, thank you, Rick, and thank you, Mark. All right, great. Well, you all have a wonderful weekend, okay? Thank you. You too.

Thank you. Don't we just love our callers? Yeah. And, of course, the icing on the cake, Rick. Rick, would you do that repeat that again? I want to make notes. I got the fact you can turn it once for the radio, but tell me about another click. The second click will put it to on position, which means everything in the car will be on just

as though you had started the engine, but the engine is not running. Oh, okay, good. And with the smart key is push it once and release for accessory, push it twice to get full ignition on. Without your foot on the brake. Without the foot on the brake. Yeah. We're taking notes. Remember one thing.

Don't do this for very too long, you know, no more than like 30, 40 minutes at time because this is drawing down on your battery. So if your battery's a little weak, you want to be careful that you don't draw too much energy. Or if you want to play a dirty trick on somebody, when they park their car, you can just go in there and push it twice, and he won't know it, and his battery will go dead. Ah, but the key has to be in the car. Ah.

It's got to detect the key or it won't work. Great information, Rick, really. You know, it is. How many times have I asked, I said to Earl, while he's pumping gas, you know, I want to listen to something on the radio. And anyway. Well, you didn't go, uh-huh,

because you thought the same thing I did. You didn't know what was possible. Yeah, you can't leave. Oh, that's great, yeah. Yeah. Now you can listen to the radio. Yeah, my talk show. Of course, I remember a time

when I get out to pump gas from my mother's car and she decided she wanted to listen to the radio, so she turned the key back on without starting the engine, and the power antenna all of a sudden came right up towards my face and almost caught me in the nose. So if you push it twice, you probably wouldn't want to do this, but if you pushed it twice, you could also put the air conditioning on without the engine.

The blower fan, yes. And with what? It would be just the blower fan itself. Oh, just a blower fan, not the compressor. Right, it'd be just circulating air, but without running the compressor. Well, that might be good enough when you're at the gas station. Sure. I love it. Oh, man.

Great, great. i love i love this show i'm telling you we learned something new every single saturday and our listeners followers they do a great help to bring you all to the table we are going to go to warren who is holding he's calling us from pompano beach and he's been with us before good morning warren good morning guys no are you we're well thank you uh i got any i've had a question from the state, you were talking about sacred, human only towards the end, but if you remember, the

book that was written by Ralph Nader was probably... Unsafe at any speed. But it was unsafe at any speed, and he started off with the Corvette, not the Nets of that, the Corvair. The Corvair.

Yeah, and the Corvier had the motor in the back, and sometimes you hit that thing in the back, you know, like five miles an hour, think you could explode. And his book, I think, was the most important book ever written about car safety because it showed that the government had a hidden test that if you got hit by sometimes as low as 7 or 8 miles an hour, you could cause a fatality if they're hit in the right place. The cars would just cave right in. And, of course, the manufacturers were used to, you know, acknowledge all it until they had a congressional investigation, right?

This was in the early 60s if I remember the, I mean, I don't even remember that. but it's sort of like that happened. Is that correct? I believe you're right. They really, I know that General Motors had hired detectives to follow Ralph May, or they really, they got busted big time because they talk about an invasion of privacy. He was doing so much damage to the GM brand that there was even rumors that they were going to take him out. I mean, it was, it was back of the day when there was, well, I talk about me being a recovering,

car dealer, the manufacturers are recovering manufacturers. They did some nasty stuff back in the day. So it's, I believe that Ralph Nader truly was a hero. I used to hate him. I mean, back when I was a car dealer, everybody, he was a villain. He was a terrible person. He's hurt in business. And I, as soon as heard this story, so some of you people out there. But the first car I gave my first wife, Stu's, Stu's mother, was a Corvair. Oh, I've heard the story before. Did you know that you used, in order to change the spark plugs, you actually have to lower the engine partway out of the car?

I didn't know that. Dave. Corvairs were in a very interesting little vehicle. It was with the safety, I think you had covered it, and I don't want to get to the call to something, but there was somebody who was on the radio. This guy was telling me that he went to the grid up in Massachusetts. And again, on the radio every day, dreaming, you know, our liberties

of being taken away, that, you know, that the police are to come into your home and take your cars away because of seatbelt. And if the government made you wear seatbelt, what are they going to do next? What are they going to take away from you next? Exactly.

You know, and you know, you could go on to what you ever think it is. But, all right, but just like to mention it. The other thing that I wanted to ask you was, it's about leasing your car, nothing for me. I have a relative. and he's a lawyer. And every time he wants to lease a car.

What he does, he calls up a dealership, whether it be a Honda, Toyota, whatever. And he says to that, this is what I want. And I want the lease what I'm going to pay for. In other words, I want nothing down. And this is what I want to pay for. Can you accommodate me at all? And to call five, six, seven dealership,

is that any way to go about it, Or is that really backwards? Yeah, you want to be real. I wouldn't do it that way. You know, even if you get your number, you might be leaving some money on the table. The best way to do it would be simply to call the same number of dealers,

say nothing down. I want to lease a car for the same number of months. Be sure you get the exact same car, MSRP, your Meg model. And then say, the low bidder is going to get my business. Give me a monthly payment, zero down, 36 months. on this MSRP Chevrolet Corvette and take the lowest monthly payment. Be sure it's Althador Price with no hidden fees, and he's a lawyer.

You'll be able to spot check that. I think he'd get a lower lease rate if he did it that way. Yeah, I mean, he's done it. I don't know how many years, right, when the lease is up, you know, he'll go back to, you know, the leasing company who he leased it from originally, we'll say, well, we'll put you in this one or that one. Then he'll go up and he'll just spend the time to call different deals. And like I said, he doesn't care if he had a Toyota or he had a Nissan or he had a ship.

As far as he's concerned, it's a lease. So he's not worried about durability or, you know, if it's the better car or whatever. You know, this is what he wants. And if somebody can accommodate him, fine. And, you know, he was unhappy with the original leasing company and went to somebody else. And, in fact, he did a Nissan. Yeah. Okay.

And he did a Nissan, Ultima, because they called him back and said, we can get him. give you this sort of ad and somebody said, well, it's not the best question. What do I'm leasing? Yeah. Well, the problem is he might be paying $550 a month because that was the lowest number. Meanwhile, there's another deal that would listen to him for $500. You can save $50 a month. But he's a lawyer probably making a lot of money. He didn't care about $50 a month. He'd like simplicity, and that's what he's got. Yeah, that's basically what he's got. You know, have the car ready. I'll come down. you know, take a look at it, yaddy, yet it. But, of course, what's funny is because he's always telling me what he did.

But in the end, the last car he got, of course, the guy calls when he gets down there, he says, you know, for 50 bucks more a month, we can put all this stuff in. Did he fall for it? And he fell right into the trap when he got there. After telling me all these years where he does, they showed him the other car. $50 months more, you get this gizmo and that gizmo, and the leather, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. He went, all right, I'll do it $50. He ran into a sharp salesman.

That was a very good salesman, and that's what they do. They do it real well. Yeah, he's been stupid. I was laughing. But you said he's got money. He doesn't care. He has nothing to him. So he really doesn't, you know, $50 and he's nothing.

So he's going to pay $4.50. Now he's paying $5.50, like I said, he's got $500. that he can care less so but the salesman just shoot him right into the other car just right he's going to pick up the other one he showed him that he's a different one and had a little more gizmo and 50 bucks 50 bucks and shoot him right into the next thing now he drove out with that one yeah well thanks Warren I appreciate that input that is very very much enjoy you guys have a great show enjoy you my friend oh thank you Warren 877 960 9960 and ladies we're still waiting for you to give us a call to win your $50.

The first two new lady callers, $50 for each one of you, share your experience. And that text number is 772-4976530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to student. Well, I got a text here. I don't know if this is a joke or not. It says, I'm a college student in New York.

I came home last night for spring break in my car, which is parked in my parents' driveway for the last couple of months would not start. My dad is on a consumer advice radio show that focuses on cars. Should he have known better and started my car a few times while I was away, J.S. and Jupiter.

Jake, did you really say that? I'm a conflict of interest here. I'll turn this over to Rick. You let J.S. know what his father should have done while he was away at college. Well, my first question to J.S. Did you make arrangements with your father, and do you have a contract in writing that was notarized and witnessed in silence?

He never said anything. Oh, boy. Come on, Rick. We had no agreement. Oh, boy. All right, let's move on. Thank you very much. Thank you.

I will step back from that one now. I like that. I did the same thing that I said, I'm married to a car dealer. Why doesn't my car start? Oh, my gosh. All right, let's go, Brian, from the west coast of California. So a couple of weeks ago he had texted us and told us about his friend

who had a terrible experience at a Subaru dealership bought a brand new I think he got a Impraza sport. Anyway, so this is a follow-up to that when he bought it, he noticed there were some small scratches on the paint and the front bumper's in the driver's side door.

So then a person claiming to be the general manager of the dealership said they would fix it no problem and he put it in writing. So my friend brought the car on Friday for a After waiting for several hours, they told them to bring it back the following week because they said they'd have to take the car to a body shop instead. He brought it back on Monday, and then he didn't see the car for another week until the following Tuesday. He went to pick up the car and all the scratches are still there.

To make things worse, someone also trash the interior with dirt all over the place. They promised to fix it this time. So on Thursday, the 25th, which is two days later, they said the car was ready, and they scheduled it. pick it up on the 26, so now three days later. They said it looks like there's more issues, and they won't be able to pick it up until the following week. This was a brand new car. The dealership is called DCH Subaru of Thousand Oaks.

DCH is huge out here, and they're owned by Lithia Motors, which is a massive United States auto dealer, big group. We have letters to Lithia Corporate and Subaru Corporate without much help. My friend is a loner car, but what do you think our next move should be? This wouldn't fall under the Lemon Law or anything like that, and thanks for everything, guys. Yeah, sometimes your best recourse is to go through your complaint services. You probably have

the Department of Motor Vehicles in California is probably really tough on dealers, and they probably get to their attention. I would go to the Better Business Bureau. I would do bad Google reviews. I would call the 800 hotline to Subaru. If you barrage them with enough complaints, I hate to recommend an attorney because it's going to cost your money. If you've got a friend who's an attorney, a warning letter might do the trick. Let me go back to what really happened here.

And this is some good common advice, Brian, that all people listening can understand. When you go into a dealership with a complaint, the person you're talking to is always going to identify him as a manager, kind of like a bank. You know, everybody's a vice president. you're in a dealership, everybody's a manager. They do that for a couple of reasons. They don't want you going over their head. If you go in and ask to speak to the general manager,

you probably got, at best, a sales manager. When you go into the service department, you talk to somebody that says he's a service manager. He's probably not. The service manager is somewhere inside the Taj Mahal in his office hiding from the customers. It's difficult to get through to the actual manager. Real managers that run the show, especially the GM,

the guy like, well, Stu is the general manager. If you can get through to the general manager of the dealership, he wants to make you happy. He probably understands customer satisfaction, and he understands, if nothing else, the Department of Motor Vehicles and lawyers, and they wanted to. But the guy in the trenches, he just doesn't want the aggravation.

of having to argue and then follow up and see that you're satisfied. So I suggest you demand to see the real general manager, and when they say the general manager, ask to see his business card. Look him up on the web. Go to the website of the dealership. Find the real general manager, or better yet, the owner. I mean, I'm an owner, and I know this from hands-on experience. People call me all the time with complaints,

and I say, did you speak with the service manager, or did you speak to the sales manager and I say I spoke to Bill Jones I said well Bill Jones is not the sales manager so it even happens in my own dealership be sure you get the real guy that can make a decision usually the top guy has your best interest for the heart

not always sometimes they're the cause of the problem but usually the head guy in a dealership will do something sincere to try to help you okay folks give us call 877-9 960 or if you'd like to send us a text we're right here at 772-4976530 and if you haven't signed up for earl's vigilantes you can go to earl on cars and check it all out and see how you can qualify I think we're going to go back to stew yep next text it says thank you for all the great info I have a question regarding Florida fees I hear the e-filing fee and private tagging fees are fake is this true and if not

not, what would be acceptable costs for each? Also, do dealers add to the cost of actual registration and DMV fees? I've seen title fees for 200 when the DHSMV fee is $77. And I can address that real quick. Yes, those are all fake. There are other dealer fees, they're hidden fees. They are dealerships will pay an outside company to handle just the legwork of doing the title work and they're charged a fee. That's a cost of doing business. Typically it costs, what, $10, $12 or something like that to get the work done, and these are marked up.

In Florida, there's no regulation that stops you from, there's no cap. So they could charge you $200 for something that costs them $10. So that's not a legit fee. And no, the dealers can't mark up the actual title and DMV fees. So if they give you a registration price to transfer a tag or to buy a new tag, they're not allowed to make profit on that. You say they can't, but they do it anyway. Well, they do it with those other fees, so they get, yeah, so it's on a separate line.

But if you see on that line on your buyer's order and it says tag registration, $33, that is, that's the cost of the tag. And they should be able to show you that on the registration. And tell them the acid test of a real fee. Yeah. If you're paying sales tax on a fee, that's not a state fee or a legit government fee. That's a dealer fee. That's, in other words, the dealer made that up. and it's actually part of the cost, the price that you're paying on the car.

What I always do when I do the mystery shopping ports, and you'll hear Earl say use the effective selling price or the de facto selling price. What I'm doing is I'm taking the sale price that the dealer is writing on the buyer's order as the price, and then I'm adding a dealer fee, I'm adding the added unwanted equipment, I'm adding the electronic filing fee, I'm adding the private tag agency fee. When you add all that up, all the things that you pay tax on, that's your real price. That's your effective price. And the reason for there's a, there's the reason that's different, the charges are different,

because there is a little, there's a little formula that goes into how they come up with this cost. It depends on the vehicle, how close it is to your birthday, which is the typical anniversary date of renewing registration. So it will vary depending on the time in the year that you buy the car. But typically a brand new tag, somewhere 300 in the $400 range in Florida, transfer tag, $120 to $180, that's the range that you're looking in. Just remember, this is premeditated deceit. They think about this. They don't just come up with e-filing fee or electronic filing fee or tag agency fee.

They thought about that. They wanted something that sounded exactly like a government fee. And when they write it on the virus order, you believe it. And it's deceitful. They shouldn't be allowed to do that. In California, for example, they have a good law. Oh, dealers, you won't have a dealer fee? I think they call it a dock fee.

They have one name, whatever it is, call it a dealer fee in California. I believe it's maybe $100 now. They've raised it. So for $100, you know that's additional profit. And every dealer in California charges you $100. if they have anything else they're breaking the law and they get in bad, bad trouble. In Florida

you can charge any fee you call anything, any fee you want, you can have one fee or 50 fees, you can call them anything you want and you can tell the dealer, I mean tell the customer that these are legitimate fees. These are fees. I'd like to see Florida require that all these fees

be labeled as bogus fees on buyers. Then you can argue about it after you see the the bars order. We're in the wild, wild west. Okay, we are going to go to Michael. He's a first-time caller, and just calling from Kentucky. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome. Welcome, Daryl Stewart on cars. What can we do for you? Well, I'm trying to purchase a 2018 or 19 Nissan Pathfinder, and I saved up to money my down payment. My question is, when do I let the finance officer know that I have a down payment?

Well, your down payment, if I understand it correctly, how much percentage-wise or how much? He's got a down payment. When should he tell the finance manager that he has a down payment? Well, I think it depends on what you're one to accomplish. I think if I would say off the, top of my head say wait until the subject comes up the the grittier down payment of course the lesser monthly payment and I think that that should be in your mind what your budget would want to be and how much you want to come out of pocket if

your goal is to come is to have as little out of pocket as possible I would either say I don't want to make a down payment or give them a lower number than you would that then you would not feel comfortable with and see what they counter with. It becomes kind of like part of the negotiations. Stu? The other thing that they're, finance managers want to see a big, big down payment

because when you're getting a loan on the car, the bank is going to limit the amount that they're going to loan for that car based on that car's value. The more money you put down, the more the bank can finance, which means that finance manager can sell you more things that you probably don't need or want.

Good point. So if you're, if you go in there and say, hey, I got $10,000 to put down on this $19,000 car, in the case of your pathfire, maybe a $30,000 or something car, they're going to start drooling because that means they can sell you the kitchen sink. If you're putting

no money down, the amount of the money the bank is going to loan is going to be based on a percentage of the car's value, and on a new car, it's something like 120% of the value, so they can't sell everything they have. The more money you put down, the more they can sell you. And what I would do also on that note, and I didn't even think

about that, I'm glad Stu mentioned it, Go in with as low a down payment or no down payment, and then there'll be a discussion on, maybe almost an argument, that you have to put more money down. If you make them believe you can't put more money down, then you're going to force them to cut their profit to the point, as far as they'll take their profit, in order to get the bank to buy the deal and finance the car. So once they drop their profit down because you say you can't come up with any more money, then you can say surprise, surprise, surprise, I have $1,000 I can put down.

So now you get the best price, and you lower your payment at the same time with a nicer down payment. Okay, all right. Thank you, sir. You're very welcome. Good question. I hadn't even thought about that. So that should be very helpful to a lot of people out there. Exactly. Very good. Great call, Michael. Give us a call again. I bought your book to be here Monday.

Oh, really? Thank you. Enjoy it. And the dog's the Big Dog Ranch Rescue, thank you, because everything you paid for that book went to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Thank you so much. There you go. Thanks, Michael.

All right. I think we're going to go back to Stu. That was a great bark, by the way. That sounded like my first dog sparky, didn't? Like a big, big dog. Kane, Corso. There I go. Doesn't sound like my little dog.

This is a good one. My steering wheel is a mess. the leather is cracked and splitting, are steering wheel covers safe and approved by the NHTSA? Well, I don't know. I don't think so. I feel weird about that, yeah. You know, number one, I would, there's probably different kinds. I've seen steering wheel covers that snap over it and literally just kind of slide around until you grip it.

Something tells me that's a bad idea. I know you can get a wrap steering wheel cover like a leather thing. I would think that would probably be okay. any case I would make sure that if you, you know, do it at a dealership if they have something approved by the manufacturer and have it installed by somebody knows what they're doing because you don't want to mess up on your steering wheel.

Or you could just wait and buy an autonomous car without a steering wheel and you don't have to worry about it. Exactly, exactly. All right, let me see if I'm missing anything. I'm going to jump over to some anonymous feedback. Okay. And let's see here. Why do car manufacturers,

car makers make it so difficult to reach items that fall to the side of your seat. Wouldn't a simple cloth barrier prevent the loss of keys, phones, pens, French fries, and sunglasses, all things that have been trapped in the side of my seat in the last year. I know tracks and other mechanical apparatus are necessary for modern seats to function, but a simple addition would prevent a lot of frustration for car owners. They don't do it because it doesn't help sell cars. It costs money. And you'd be surprised how cheap a manufacturer is when they're designing a vehicle, pennies. When you're selling millions of vehicles, if you can take five bucks off the cost of a car or ten bucks, you're

talking about big, big net profit. It goes right to the bottom line. And anything they can sneak by that's not going to affect government regulated safety, or more importantly, to them, supply and demand. When the salesman's selling a car, they're going to say, now let me tell you about this other feature. If you drop something, if we have this little cloth thing that'll pick it up, that's not going to sell the car.

He's going to sell... They're going to sell the sexy stuff that you can talk about that'll sell the car. But the designer in Detroit, she thought about all that, so you need to get yourself doing it. I felt this anonymous commenter, because things go down there. You'll spend

15 minutes cutting your hand up trying to find a pen or something like that. It's crazy. They have devices available after market. I'd have to look at the pockets. What the proper name is. It actually is a foam filled, cloth wrapped and sewn up. They're about

a foot and a half long, most of them. It's got a little loop at one end, and what you do is you put that loop over the female portion of your seat belt and tuck it down between the seat and that center consoles will land on that and nothing can get past it to go down in between the seat and the console yeah true to what you said I love this show I'm getting one of those they're fantastic all right another more anonymous feedback says I'm trying to buy either a

new car I'm trying to buy a new car and just about every car dealership has told me that CD players are either unavailable or extremely rare I have a huge CD collection and I'm not about to take all these salesmen's advice and have my grandkid put all this music into my phone. What else can I do? I got a, you can buy a portable CD player. It will plug into the auxiliary outlet of your car. It won't be pretty. You might have to sit it on your central console or your seat, but you could still play your CDs through that. And I'm going to guess Rick has probably knows you could probably, and that's a cheap solution because you can probably get one of these things for $20.30. And I'm going to guess, Rick, am I right,

that new headset, like you could probably buy one at a Best Buy that will work and fit into your car's dash with a CD player, but that's going to be considerably more money, you know, would have to be installed by a technician. What do you know about that? Aftermarket radio installs, you're looking at the cost of the head unit. Then there's usually a fit kit to fill in any gaps around it, plus the wiring, anything interfaces to let your steering wheel controls work. adds up you'd be looking even for an inexpensive head unit somewhere in a neighborhood of four to five hundred dollars at Best Buy having it totally

installed by them which by the way I highly recommend them they do a fantastic job with the after market they know how to get all those interface modules to work properly make everything work great and personally I think it's an aftermarket radio is a much better investment in an older car it's four or five years old because you're getting a brand new technology unit versus the radio that would have been five or six years old that's going to cost double or triple that at a dealership. And we've seen this happen over the years as cars changed and as the technology for music and entertainment changes, I remember back when cassettes were phased out of cars and I'm sure

Earl and Nancy you guys remember when 8 tracks were phased out. And I love the 8 track. and if you've got a good dealership we've had you know and these salespeople have suggested your grandkid doing it I mean I don't know it's it's not crazy for you know for the salesperson to do that you know especially for an older customer I remember we did that with some customers who had giant cassette collections and we transferred to CD and then they probably came back later and had those transferred to MP3s for their to play on their phone but it keeps changed and it is frustrating especially if you have a big collection and you don't want to get rid of that it's hard to put back together. Okay. Have YouTube over here. We actually have, this one's kind of interesting. Boris was asking, what can he do to keep the headlights clean and clear on a newer car? Now, there's a lot of companies out there that do headlight restoration. You can buy the kits themselves to do it, but we actually did a little experiment. I did it on my own truck. I restored the headlights, cleaned them up, had them shining and crystal clear.

And on one side only, I got a product from 3M that I found on the internet from a vinyl wrap company that is just a clear vinyl that goes over the headlight. Now, I'm going to be the first one to admit I am no good at installing these things. I basically just put on a very large section over to front of the headlight, got it on with the adhesive, and it looked really decent for what I did. If you're going to do this, find some place that does automobile wraps and have it professionally done on your headlights. They're going to run you probably about $100 to $150 to get your headlights done. What's the name of the product? The one I use is just a vinyl wrap from 3M.

I know, but if I go on Amazon, what do I look for? Well, I found it on, let's see, it's custom vinyl lettering.net is the company that I bought mine through. What did it cost you? And they were about $25 for the two pieces there. And the really awesome part about it was once I installed it, I've had it on there for now going on about 10 months. The one headlight that I did not put this on has already started fogging and going dull again,

and it looks terrible. The side with the vinyl wrap, you can see a huge difference. just between where the vinyl is and where the other part of the headlight is. If your car is relatively new, I highly suggest go and have this done and... Or do it yourself. I mean, how hard could it be? Trust me, it can be tricky because you're going to need a heat gun, because you've got to stretch this vinyl to get it around the contours of the headlight.

You may need to trim it in various areas. So I highly recommend... It's kind of like having pinstripe done. If you want a proper job... We should start a selling... those at our dealership and then we can market up a thousand percent and preload it on all of our cars and that would be a fantastic idea but I would highly recommend get somebody that is trained to know what they're doing to put those on properly. Somebody I get that exact Amazon name

and we will recommend that and then we'll ask somebody what it would cost to install that and we will sounds like a great idea. It made such a a big difference. It's incredible. I got to say that to me was a very inexpensive little thing that made a big difference on my headlight. Well, we're definitely going to check it out, and we will have the facts for you next week. Yes, we will. Okay. Where are we? Text? What will we got? Anonymous feedback. It's not uncommon to find that cars manufacture today lasting for over 200 to 300,000 or more miles with little to no major problems, assuming that the owner follows the manufacturer's guidelines for routine maintenance.

In the 60s, 70s, and 80s, cars were not expected to last that long. Certainly, they were made with thicker steel and higher quality components. What, in your opinion, Earl, was the reason they did not last that long? Well, I disagree with a higher quality. I think that they were made with thicker steel, and that was a big mistake because that hurt the safety of the car, counterintuitably. you know, big bulky car is a dangerous car, not only for you, but extremely dangerous for the guy you run into. So in general, on the highway, you don't want to have big, thick steel cars.

The reason why cars are better today is just quality and safety awareness, and I hate to say it, because I'm not a big guy on regulation, but government certainly has its place, and one of those is to keep people safe, and sometimes it can. and be intrusive and annoying. But I've got to say, I don't know where it would be today without the NHTSA in terms of enforcing safety rules. I look back, we had a discussion earlier in the show about seatbelts and airbags

and how the manufacturers and the car dealers fought those items, hand and nail, or whatever, tooth in nail is the word. And so, yeah, the cars last longer now because they're built better and they're built safer. And the good thing about having been in the business as long as I have, I go back to 50 years ago when I started the business, and the junk I sold then compared to the amazing machines that I sell today,

there's no comparison. So, you know, we're just doing a good job. Competition is there. I credit the Japanese for getting the Americans' attention. Actually, it started out with the Americans getting the Japanese attention. The Americans, our assembly line production, got the Japanese cranked up in the automobile business after a war two, and then the Japanese attention to detail or quality and gas mileage got the Americans' attention. They combined the groups, and they come up with the best cars in the world.

So, yeah, it's all about intelligence and ability to build higher quality cars. Okay, where are we? Anonymous feedback. The next one says, I often get telemarketing calls for extended warranty services even though I don't own a car, so how could my car insurance aspire?

Or why would I need an extended warranty? Personally, I think it's a scam, people's personal credit card information. What do you think? Biggest ongoing scam there is. I get the calls, I get the letters. I think they shotgun them out. A lot of them come out of Nevada,

and other areas where the states don't have the regulation. It's just kind of crazy. If you have a state with terrible regulation, they can shotgun it out to every state in the country, and people, I guess they don't have the time to enforce this stuff. So here's the rule of thumb. It's not even a rule of thumb. It should be a rule period.

Ignore any solicitation you receive by mail, phone, text, any other form. Nobody's going to call you and try to sell you a warranty that's legitimate. Manufacturers don't do that. dealers do it but they're not legitimate either so stick with your manufacturer's warranty and then when you want to buy another warranty buy an extended warranty from the manufacturer pay no attention to the solicitation very good next one I read an interesting article written by a lawyer who deals in auto loan

fraud he said that one of five contracts contained fraudulent statements most common is when the buyer signs documents and takes their copy home with the car car dealers will then change the loan agreement before submitting it to the banks Car barters usually do not catch the fraud since they may not see the final copy or just assume it matches the copy of what they brought home when they bought that car. Exactly true.

This has been going on for a long time. It's too common to practice. I won't say it's common. It's a violation of federal law. The penalties are very severe, but guess what? It's not enforced. The way it's controlled is indirectly because the lenders pick up on what's going on

when people don't make their carpet. So a man comes in to buy a car and he hasn't got a job. He lies and says he's got a job. They fill that out on the thing. They counterfeit with Adobe Photoshop, the W2 forms and the 1099s. He comes across is making $100 grand a year and he hadn't worked in three years. And so you sell him a car. Guess what? He doesn't make the payments.

The car goes back. The lender suffers a loss. And he says, why is this dealer that I'm doing business with sending me all these people, me all these people that have supposedly good credit, but they don't make their payments, and they cut the dealer off. But then the dealer goes to another lender and fools them for a while. So, yeah, be very careful. You can be on the hook. If there is misinformation on your credit application, be sure you sign it, be sure you get a copy of it, and be sure you read it carefully. If you're being misrepresented, unfortunately, not to go on and on, oftentimes a misrepresentation is the buyer of the car because he's tried to get credit. Well, there's a third potential culprit in that, too, and that's the actual buyer at the bank.

They have, now, obviously it's not the owner of the CEO of the bank is aware that's going on, but they have buyers, and these are the ones that review the credit applications and make the decisions and whether or not to give a loan or not. And they have brokers that you deal through, they're not even lenders, and they get the deal. bought and they shop it around till they find a lender that will buy it and they phony up things so it's there's a lot of collusion between multiple players and it's very fraudulent and it's in this anonymous text or hit the nail right on the head we have one more and I think we can go over to the mystery shopping report even though it's a very long open-ended question when shopping for a new car how do I find a good salesperson oh gosh you know don't go on instinct don't

going whether you like the person or not. I'm not really sure how you find it. I don't even if you go on a referral or not. You know, you can't go on the basis of likability. If they're smooth and you love your salesperson,

that's almost a bad sign. I go, you have to go on the reputation of the dealership. A boring salesperson would be good. Well, it's amazing word of mouth how that travels. That is, that's one point. Well, that's a good point. We mentioned salespeople on this show in Mr. Chaplin reports, and we say this is a good honest person.

If you have a friend that bought a car every year, you respect the friend's ability and knowledge, and they bought it from the same salesperson, I would follow that salesperson wherever you went. But there's no objective, place where you can really get the information. Beware, and shop online. Try to keep the salesperson out of the equation. You should have the price and everything's set online, and you go in the salesperson simply processing the transaction, or product knowledge, teaching you how to use the car. Salespeople should not be part of the pricing, but they are, and you can't trust most salespeople. You walk in, and if you click with them, fine, and if you don't, you just turn around, or you ask for somebody else.

Right. Simple as that. Exactly. And now to illustrate that point, Earl will go to the Mr. Shopping report. we're all excited over this one we're always excited over the mystery shop from we're going to, this is the Nissan dealership this is going to be exciting from Tennessee

Murfreesboro, never heard of it, Murphreysboro, Tennessee, suburb of Nashville. Today we set the record for the longest distance mystery job in the history of the show. Agent Lightning traveled, and that's our female shopper, mystery show undercover agent. I traveled 809 miles to Murphy's Borough, Nissan, and Murphy's Bureau, Tennessee, in the Nashville metro area. The previous record was 6001 miles back when Agent X, our original shopper, drove all the way to a Florida panel handle,

investigated Allen Turner Hyundai. Our expose, this week, is especially interesting. Not only will we get a peek at car dealer behavior in a distant state with a very different culture. We'll also get a chance to see if Tennessee Nissan dealers are as crazy as Florida Nissan dealers. We've established a pattern of anti-consumer behavior at nearly every Nissan dealership we've investigated. On this show, we've discussed some of the structural reasons for this, including the practice of clustering, kind of like monopolizing a market. One dealer will own all the dealerships in a particular geographic area, and they might even have different names. You don't know that.

And that's to me anti-competitive, and it really is like a license to steal for the dealer. Another thing with the Nissan, so if a manufacturer, Nissan, is very abusive, and it has punitive rules in for their dealers to get volume, unrealistic volume. And when you push a dealer too hard to get volume, he's going to get the volume if he wants to survive, and he'll get it any way he can, and it might not be good for you, the buyer. That's what's happening to Nissan. Agent Lightning brings us our report this week after having to a border emission last week to the massive winter storms. I mean, we know about those, don't we? The direct havoc, it's wreaked havoc as it's too. Ricked havoc across the U.S. after several days of heavy snow and temperatures and single digits.

All Nashville area car dealerships were closed now. And so Agent Lightning had to, well, I guess she was going to be there anyway. So she did it the following week, and here we go. The mission was patterned after a recent mystery shop of West Palm Beach, Nissan, where Agent Lightning tried to get the honor and ad promising $6,504 bucks off a new 2020 Ultima, and they didn't do it. They said they would, but they didn't do it. Murphy's Bureau, that's a mouthful, Murphy's Burrow. They agree, they shortened to borrow. Oh, Burrow, that's right.

Burrow and Nissan also had an ad for a new Ultima. That's probably when they did it, yeah. Only their offer was for $8,000, $8,750 off MSRP. Oh, man. You know, if you get to forget about it. It's just so ridiculous. Why do people believe it, but they do. Agent Lightning saved the out on her phone.

Smart thing to do. Made her way across Rutherford County to her target. Here's the report, speaking as if I were, Agent Lightning. arrived at the dealership after wandering around a lot near the front door for 10 minutes. I was finally greeted by a salesperson. He introduced himself as Patrick. He was not wearing a mask. Patrick asked me what brought me in.

I replied that I was looking for a 2020 ultima. I did not mention that I had seen this ad for $8,750 off. I asked him if they had a decent selection of 2020 models. Now that's its 20, now 201. Patrick assured me that he had plenty in stock. I think it's observed here further about the mass.

I googled that when I got to this point when I was reading the mystery shopping reports earlier this morning. It's interesting that Tennessee has about a 10% COVID infection rate compared to Florida, which is about 5%. So all the deals that we shop now in Florida, all wear masks.

And in Tennessee, we went to this place, nobody's wearing a mask. The only person wearing a mask was one customer. Now, can you believe that? 10% infection rate, that's pretty serious. And here we have Tennessee, a different culture, outside of Nashville. Just, you know, people are bopping around without masks. Why do they do that? I don't know.

And they have a mask mandate that's officially ends on April 28th, So they're violating the Rutherford County law. Yeah. Instead of heading straight to a desk, like I'd come to expect, Patrick letting me outside to find the Altima. That's highly unusual, bad salesmanship. We walked the inventory until I spotted a white one

with the same MSRP as the one in the ad. 265.30, same MSRP. Very sharp of Agent Lightning. There was no addendum label. That's a plus. might be the last plus you hear, but I don't want to give it away. Patrick did not offer me a test drive.

Another bad salesmanship. We went inside to show them was very dated, shabby, country music blared from over-red speakers, long fluorescent lights, about half of which are not working or flickering. Kind of really cool place, right? Yeah. Dim, dingy, covered. You can show the picture. It's pretty.

Yeah, as I said earlier, one person wearing a mask, and I was a customer. and probably Agent Lightning and this too because she was wearing a mask. We sat, Patrick said uncomfortably close to me I scooted away from him

he asked me for all my info wanted to know how much money I was putting down I said that if I financed I had $2,000 to put down I said I wasn't sure if I was paying cash for financing though he wrote everything down on a sheet of paper

no computer I know they have computers in Tennessee so let's not make those checks Let's not paint the whole state negatively. I asked Patrick what kind of a discount I could expect off MSRP. He told me not to worry about that. He would be getting me a great deal. That's really relaxed.

When you hear that, where I heard that, I know everything was going to be okay. At one point, a young woman and customer approached him. A young woman customer approached him. Patrick accused himself and said he had a delivery for a car he sold earlier. He left with a woman, said he'd be right back. I'm surprised they're selling any cars at all, but they are. He was gone for 10 minutes, sat back down. He must have a timer, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes.

He showed me that he was all mine now. Well, that's a relief. He said he needed to take my info to the computer, entered into the system, and he left for another 10 minutes. They do have a computer, you're right. After return, he had a familiar-looking worksheet. The top line labeled Market Value Selling Price. We see that all the time. And that happened to be the same as the MSRP. Usually isn't, but two days in a row or two shopping reports

in what has been. MSRP, 26, 530, the next $1,250 discount. What? And that made my adjusted price $25, $2.80. Then he added borough care. I didn't know what that was until I realized they'd shortened Murphy's Borough. And here's Borough Care. $2,0.94.95 for a window tent.

Nitro, that's nitrogen in the tires, wheel locks, and four masks. Man, oh, man, oh, man. That whole package may be $500. It's only overpriced 500% by about $2,000. So what the value of that whole package would be. Next game, $795 dealer dock. And that's like if you have an accident around there, they call the dealer dock.

They're for car dealers. If you get in an accident, they take care. And here it is $200 plus 72 for non-tax fees. That's another term for hidden fees. Non-tax fees. My de facto selling price, including hidden fees and dealer accessories, was $28,770, $2,240 over MSRP. We call that in the trade, the business, going for the jugular. That's when the dealer goes for the jugular.

$40 over a full sticker. And that's compared to the $8,750 off MSRP. Right. That's like an 11,000 swing between the promise and the reality. And that's old-school textbook. Back in the day when I was evil, we would tell our salespeople, now listen, start them high. Start them as high as you can.

You can always come down, but you can't go back up. If you give them too good a price, and we won't accept that price. You can't raise it. You've left money on the table. So if you really want to be the hero with the customer, start it way up in the stratosphere and then peel them off the wall

and then you could come down. You come down in increments. You go back and forth to the manager and you keep coming down. Finally, you hit their number, and that's the way the game is played. Patrick saw the shock on my face and asked me, what was wrong?

I said, I didn't come there to beat him, up and told them I saw that they were listing the exact same vehicle online for $17,780. Patrick made a face like I was crazy and said, skeptically, really? I picture him like, really. Yeah, really. I showed him the ad on my phone. He didn't expect that. Patrick said, I'll be honest with you. I love this. I'll be honest with you. The online pricing is aggressive to get people to come in. Now, we seen this before. Poor guy, Patrick, I mean, he needs a job.

He's trying to sell cars. His sales manager is responsible for this. More likely the general sales manager or a general manager, maybe even the dealer, or probably all of the above. And he's a pawn. He's a pawn on the chessboard, and he takes the beating up.

He's the one that you yell at because you feel like you're being lied to. But it's a guy hiding in the ivory tower there that's responsible. responsible for this, and he's just following orders, because he's got to make a living. Patrick said, okay, I asked him what his point was. Patrick sort of emphasized his honesty and said, if I'm being honest, he throws that word out again, that pricing is more likely for somebody with a trade. So he's basically saying people that have trade-ins, we under-allow by thousands of dollars what is really worth,

and we call that stealing the trade. So you caught me with my pants down. You don't have a trade, and you came in on the air, I got so excited with my glasses for a long. And so you don't have a trade. How am I going to steal your trade? So we got to jack the price up that we advertise. So again, he's being honest, right?

I asked him, what is, okay. I interrupted to point out that nowhere in the ad doesn't mention anything about a trade. This is great. And then he said it might be for a Nissan employee, yeah, he actually said that, Nissan employees only. I mean, does he mean, does he mean manufacture of Nissan employees?

He's not Nissan, he's a dealer. He was being, so if a guy that works at a plant somewhere in Texas, the bill's nissons happens to come out there, they get a really good deal. Yeah, and they advertise that on their website for every week's. Yeah, for Murphy's Burrow. Without clarifying that on the website. Exactly, yeah.

I laugh, asked if you really expect me to swallow that, and I love Agent Lightning. I mean, she has really got what is the right word? Moxie. Moxie, yes, and she's got the... Hutzpah. Hutzpah, yeah, she's... I was just going to say.

She's got this. She's really got a lot of guts, I'll use that word. Anyway, I said, if you want my business, you better talk to someone and give me that online pricing. Patrick said, yes, ma'am, I'm here to work. They always say, ma'am in the south. Yes, ma'am,

I'm here to work for you. At this point, you're my boss, and he left. That's right in the book. Side with the customer. Become the customer's friend. Make the sales manager the enemy, and get the customer to like you. And we'll work together to find a mean old sales manager and we'll get you

a really good price. It's got some good material. That's the game. That's the game. I waited for 15 minutes as I watched him talk to someone in a glass enclosure, ivory tower, across the showroom. After all that, waiting, Patrick returned to ask me if he was able to get the online price

would I take it home today? Classic, classic. Okay, if I get you the price, a little glimmer of hope, oh, maybe I'm going to get the price. But will you buy it today? at home today? Yeah, yeah, I will. Okay. And she played it perfectly. I went another 10 minutes, Fimer, before we return on another worksheet and another salesperson. Saxon. Okay. Now we got Saxon in the equation. We name names. Saxon. This time, the discount was $3,000,

and there was an additional $2,250 rebate, but they still added the $2495 borrow care, the $7.95,000, dock and the 190109 non-tax fee. So that was, what we got here? $5,250 more that they took off. So that's a pretty good cut. I mean, they just slashed the price with one argument. She was, you know, Agent Lightning got tough. Bam, they came down $50, $250.

And that's the way the game's playing. And she's playing it. She's a tough competitor, playing it the old-fashioned way. My effective price on the second pencil, we call it in the trade, was 24-761, 1769, off MSRP, better, but many thousands higher than the online price. It's actually complained that the online price was only for people who were part of their VPP, or is that VIP? She wrote VPP, so I just, I wrote it the way he, when she reported it. Current Nissan owners and employees. I asked him and said that I didn't believe him

and that nowhere is that stated in the end. Saxon said it was in the fine print. I told him to show him he couldn't. At his point, I told Patrick and Saxon that I had to leave, and I felt like it had been played. Saxon asked for me to give him one more chance, volunteered to speak to the manager. Jeremy, we got Jeremy now.

These are all Southern names, aren't they? Yeah, Jeremy. He asked me he was able to give me, closer to the 21,000 out the door, but I then take the car. I said, sure, plan, plan, good. They're playing her, and she's playing him. And then he said, I'm not sure if I'll be able to pull this off, but I'm going to try. Perfect.

That's the way we used to do it in the old days. I don't know if I can do it, but I'm going to try. Boss is the bad mood today, but I'll try to. I'm on your side. I mean, he's tough, but I'm on your side. Between the two of us, we'll double teaming. We'll get that price. I'll try.

I waited for 10 minutes, and Patrick came over and said he needed about 30 more minutes to finish working as manager. So, yeah, Patrick's working the manager, and the manager's working him, and he's working me. I mean, what a game. He said he thinks he may be able to get him to get me closer to 21,000 out the door. I sort of went off, and I'm bringing up the bait and switch, and all the times he'd already forced me to wait. Patrick conceded the online listing was misleading,

said he was sorry, I had to wait so much, he claimed he had no responsibility. I'm innocent. It's not my fault. He had nothing to do with this. There are policies of advertising. He's really trying to ingratiate himself. He has to work for this crooked dealership. He's being honest there.

Yeah, he's being honest. I mean, but it took him a long while, and his commission is about ready to walk out the door. He's fine with all these policies when the customers aren't yelling at him. Yeah. Remember, Remember that he started out probably with a, what, $1,000 commission? Oh, easy. Cut it to about $500, and now they're trying to knock it down to $200.

So his profits are going down, the dealership's profits going down. Anyway, Agent Lightning, again, I am Agent Lightning. I sat there thinking and not saying anything. Patrick asked if we were good. Are we good? I said, you know what? We're not good. I'm taking my business somewhere else.

I got up and I walked up. So there we are. So the heart of the south, Nashville, Tennessee. Who's in the glass enclosure that Patrick is having the conversation with? Probably Jeremy. That was Jeremy. Is that bulletproof?

Huh? It should be. I think they were in a hunky-tongk in Tennessee. Yeah. Well, voters, let's have the votes out there. We got to Facebook. We're getting them out. Yeah, they're coming in.

We got to YouTube. Yep, Linda, another big, huge F, good grief. Pablo gives him an F. Tom on Facebook gives them an F. Jumping over to text messages. Mark Lightning Struck, D-plus, very charitable. Bob on a text, F for Borough,

Nissan, Jonathan, and Wellington. More games than I have no time before. Jailorship gets an F from me. And finally, Emery, I give them a good old-fashioned F for their old-fashioned tactics. I concur with the crowd. F. Rick?

We're waiting on YouTube. Mark Ryan, coming in with an F. Mark Smith with an F. And let's see, Richard Poplis. Okay, he's got a question. Donovan with an F. And for me, that's an F. That's just the bait and switch there was ridiculous.

Okay, Mrs. Sunrise, Nancy. I think I blacked out for a moment. I'm not going to Tennessee anytime. Somebody give Nancy some smelling salts. I think that I might give them, let's see. Yeah, I'm going to fail them too. And I just, I feel a little tinge of guilt because we don't know what the culture like is in Tennessee.

It would be horrible if everybody was that bad in Tennessee. Maybe we'll do another one. had a guy on our 20 group in Franklin, Tennessee, which is right down the road from Murphysboro, a bunch of Toyota dealerships. They end up selling the Terry Taylor, as a matter of fact. So we know Terry Taylor's operating big time in that area, and we see what he's doing down here, so my hope isn't that high. Yeah. So what's up with the Nissan product? I mean, the dealer's. Well, that's the reason I wonder. I don't think everybody could be that bad. Maybe it is a Nissan thing. Hey, we only got one minute. I thought it was right here. Okay, guys, thank you

for joining us this morning. We'll be right back here next Saturday. Have a wonderful weekend. No, no one way. Oh, go. Oh, go. Peknot. Peknot. Pekno. Pekno.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.