Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.29.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Roger Dean Chevrolet

Episode Date: February 29, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl's female mystery shopper, Agent Tempest visits an old school Chevrolet dealer in West Palm Beach to see if she can purchase a 2019 Chevy Silverado pickup at an unbelievable discount featured in their Television ad. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Well, we're back, and I want to apologize you folks out there that are regulars that we had to do that rerun last week. It had to do with Nancy Stewart, my co-host, having some surgery. on her foot and I had to take care of her and Nancy is at home today as a matter of fact listening from home so hello Nancy Stewart honey Mrs. Sunrise and all those things we call you I hope you enjoy the show I hope you can be back real soon for the rest of you folks my name is Earl and I'm a recovering car dealer this is a real live Earl you're listening to you heard my recording introduction before and I think you're really going to like the show if

If you haven't tuned into it before, we are unique in the sense that we tell it like it is. We have something very exciting, which is unheard of in television radio or online or anywhere these days. And honest to gosh, mystery shopping report, kind of Mike Wallace style. Remember Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes used to go in and scare the heck out of businesses and other organizations going in and asking some very candid questions. Well, what we do is we go in and we visit a car dealership somewhere in South Florida, pretend to buy or lease a car, and tell you all about it. We name the dealership, we name the salespeople, the managers. It's a lot of fun.

That comes later on in the show. But for two hours between now and about 10 o'clock, we're going to be listening to you, and hopefully you'll be texting us and emailing us and calling us. we try to answer your questions I'm not saying this to flatter you our radio listeners and our Facebook listeners and Twitter and everybody else you really ask some amazing questions

questions we haven't thought of we can answer about 99% of them and for the 99% we can't answer we have Google I call them Colonel Google Google knows all and here's all and I think we have a telephone call right now We'll jump right on that. Rick Kearney is monitoring the phones today.

Good morning, folks. And we have Ashley from Richmond, Washington. First time lady caller. Wow, Ashley, good morning. Thank you very much for the call. I don't believe you've called the show before, have you? I have not, no. Well, I've got some good news for you. If you haven't called the show before, and I know Ashley sounds like a female name, and you win yourself. $50 cash. We're going to get your contact information after we're through chit-chatting, and we'll send you $50 because we're trying to build our female audience. Nancy Stewart, my co-hoes, who's out with a little surgery convalescing today.

We'll always talk about that because we've got our audience for females built up to about 50%. So thank you very much for calling, Ashley, and how can we help you? Okay, so I am going to be hopefully getting a new vehicle soon, and when I do, I was thinking about, you know, getting a job like with Uber or Lyft and, you know, something like a ride to your company. So I was trying to see, like, your recommendation on, you know, a good reliable, dependable, good mileage type vehicle. advice on the my first choice on that for a car like that would be

a Corolla or a Honda Civic or Honda Accord I would also consider Hyundai or Kia one of their smaller four-door sedans also they make fantastic cars nowadays and they all get

good fuel economy but they all have really good reputations right now. How about a hybrid Wouldn't that be something would really give a boost in fuel economy? A hybrid is certainly something to consider looking at the different options now and as a matter of fact

a lot of these cars all have a hybrid version available as well like I know the Civic, the Accord, Key and Hyundai both have hybrid sedans and the Corolla's available as a hybrid as well. Okay, that's great. Okay, thank you.

Very much. I appreciate that. And actually also, So if you check with consumer reports, they just came out with their auto issue. The newest edition of Consumer Reports, you can do it online. In fact, I'm not sure in your area. I think you're calling from Washington. Washington State, right? Washington State.

And libraries in Florida, where we are, if you have a library card, you can access Consumer Report online at no charge. But Consumer Report's current issue gives you recommended new vehicles, and they classify it by fuel economy and reliability and cost of maintenance and it's a really great comprehensive coverage it also tells you the cars you want to be careful to avoid and you can't be consumer reports okay that's great I will actually have been to that too thank you well I'm a ask you to stay on the line Ashley and and we will give get your contact information in our control room and with your address we'll send you $50 cash for being one of the first two new female callers this week.

Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ashley. And we have another call. We do. We have Ann in Boynton Beach. Wow. Anne in Boynton Beach.

Ann, are you a first-time caller? Yes, I am. Wow. Nancy Stewart's listening at home, and she's thrilled because her dream is to have as many female callers as we can. And right now, we've got two in a row, so she's got a big smile on her face. And thank you very much, and I'll tell you the same thing after we're through chatting. If you'll stay on the line, we'll get your contact information and send you a cash, a check, not cash. We'll send you the check for 50 bucks.

That's great. What about questions? You got any automotive questions on your mind? Well, actually, I came from Long Island. I'm down here in Goiton Beach. We just moved down. And when I was in Long Island, I was going to buy. a new car and I was at a Volvo dealer and they had told me that I really wouldn't

have to buy a four-wheel drive up there, that if I'm going to move to Florida permanently, I would not have to do that, that the four-wheel would just be more expensive and I would just need to have the two-wheel drive because I wouldn't be driving in snow any longer. Is that correct? Well, you know, there are other advantage to four-wheel drive. We do sell four-wheel drives in Florida, not as many as we would up north because the snow is an issue. More and more cars now, we're going to the all-wheel drive, which is really the way of the future. I think eventually all vehicles will have all-wheel drive.

But the four-wheel drive is more expensive, and if you're living in Florida and you're on flat surface, we don't have a lot of mountains down here, no snow. And I think you can save yourself lonely and go with a two-wheel drive. Rick Kearney is our technical expert. Rick, what's your feeling on that? I'm pretty much right in there with you, just with a little caveat that, you know, if you're planning to go back to visit any friends or family up north or possibly wintertime vacations, it might be worth a consideration there. But if you're pretty much just going to have it just here in Florida,

now there's really not a huge advantage. a four-wheel drive down here. Okay, that's great to know. Then they would correct, even though they could have sold me the car up there. They said, take a look at the dealers down here. So I guess they were right in their assumption that steering me into the right direction. Well, they did. You found an honest car dealer.

Congratulations. And please stay on the line, Ann. We'll get your contact information. And two or three days, you'll have your $50 check. mail. Oh, that's great. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ann. Call again, please. Yes, I will.

877-960-960 are the calling number. 877-960 9960, and we have a text number because a lot of folks would rather do the text. We like the text number because you build a backlog, and we get to all the text,

but sometimes we don't get to them right away, and if we have a little lull in the radio show with callers or whatever. We have the text to drop back on. That text number, 772 area code, 4976530. That's 772. 4976530. And we have another call. I just got to introduce. Somebody just walked in to the studio. And he used to be a regular. Now he's irregular. I mean that in the broad sense. And his name is Alan Napier. And he's an expert on collision repair, insurance company. And for you regulars out there, you all know Alan.

You love Alan. He's just a foxy, knowledgeable guy that can answer anything about paint and insurance claims and dent offenders and just about anything. So stay tuned. Alan will be talking to you shortly. And we'll just kind of jump over to our next caller. And we have Sharon and West Palm Beach. Good morning, Sharon. Three ladies in a row.

Hello, Sharon. Good morning. How you doing today? Doing great. How you're doing? Good. I want to ask, I have a Toyota Highlander. It is a 2014, and I was wondering, thinking about getting new one. Are there many new features on a new one?

Well, the new one is the 2020 model, and that is, I think, that might even be two body style changes since you're 2014, so the list is long, yeah, there's quite a few changes. Is it going to be much bigger inside or anything? It is a little larger on the interior. I don't know the specific measurements, but all that's online. You can go to Toyota.com and it'll show you all the size and all the other specifications. Sharon, there's probably quite a few technological safety improvements,

and this is going on like I've never seen it in my 50 years in the car business. In the past 10 years, it's been astounding with the technological safety. safety changes and uh it's not something that jumps right out at you but uh the car today in 2020 is so safe it's amazing compared to you you have a 2014 six years ago a real quantum leap in safety so whether you buy a toyota highlander or any other car all the vehicles have just done an amazing job increasing the safety yeah do you guys have many new ones on your lot uh yeah the only We have are the 2020s, us and the other Toyota dealers too. Yeah.

Okay, great. I'll have to stop down. And don't forget the consumer reports. They have the current issue. I know people think I get paid by consumer reports, but they don't pay anybody. They are totally funded by donations. And one of the few totally honest, transparent organizations that will recommend without any bias or any hidden agendas. And look at the current issue.

consumer reports because it's a new vehicle issue and they show the 20 best vehicles in all categories they also tell you the vehicles to avoid and before you run out there and buy a Toyota Highlander check and see what consumer reports have to say about the other SUVs okay great thanks so much well thank you Sharon please call again we love female callers as you know and I'd like to have you call again next week every week we love to hear from the ladies Bye-bye. Okay, 877-960-99-60, and Eric, and for texture, 772, 497-6530. And boy, the calls are pouring in.

We've got another caller here. Moving right along with Doug and Ollie. Oh, boy. Meow. Ollie, a few folks who don't know if my mind snapped is a kitty cat. Is a cat. And he's Ollie's kitty cat. One of the most amazing cats.

what is he about 18 years old now Doug? No he's 21 Wow man Time flies 21 year old kitty cat Named Ali well we're very happy to have Ollie and you listening Doug What's on your mind this morning

Well I wanted to tell you the final Thing that happened to my car It broke down two more time And State Farm Called me yesterday That's the one that got hit by lightning right Yeah Wow

They called me to let me know that the car was totaled out. Right. And to my surprise, what happened was, and I want to ask you, I was really shocked. They gave me money back from the leash. Wow. That was a nice surprise. Well, I tell you, you did a good job of complaining, Doug,

because I've never heard of that. That was during the time when you were unable to drive it. but you're still being required to make lease payments? Yeah. Well, that's great. Well, that's real kudos for State Farm. We got Alan Napier here, who not only does he know all about collision repair, but he knows all about insurance companies.

And, Alan, you probably would have a comment on that. I have never heard of an insurance company compensating somebody for, it's basically, it sounds like punitive damages, like they're apologizing for me. making him drive with that uncertainty and stuff. And you just don't hear, you don't hear that kind of kindness and goodness coming out of corporations anymore.

So I'm a bit shocked, and I'm proud of you. Yeah, you did something, right? Congratulations, Doug. You did a heck of a job negotiating. I mean, it was quite a bit of money, too. I was like, him and I were, like, totally like, what? Wow. Like a good neighbor?

Yeah. that the car had a residual value and because of that they only paid a farm a certain amount and then i got the arrest from honda which is like what it was very very bizarre wow did you hire an attorney or did you handle this all my that's amazing i'll tell you next time i get in trouble i'm going to call you instead of an attorney because you you negotiated a better deal than anyone and you heard alan he he he he he That's what he's been doing for years and years, and it's awfully difficult with these insurance companies to get them to be reasonable. And when they go beyond being reasonable, that's almost unheard of. So congratulations, Doug. Hey, thank you, and I hope your other half is doing good.

It's her recovery. Well, she's listening to you right now, and she appreciates that, and I appreciate it. Hopefully she'll be back next week, or at least the week after, and she's feeling better. Thank you for asking. Okay, thank you, guys. you for helping me when I was going through this if you were really good and thank you for

helping my mom with a new car to appreciate you guys you're part of the family dog you and ollie and sim and please call again next week have a good one 877 960 960 text number 772 497 6 530 still we building up any text over there yeah they're coming in we had a few from anonymous feedback and we also have some comments from YouTube. I don't know if Rick has them, but Jonathan sent them to me came in the last couple of days. All right, we'll start with the most recent text. Okay. It's Steve from New Jersey. It says, hi Rick, Steve from New Jersey. A few months ago, you said you might apply a clear film to your headlights to ward off clouding the plastic over time. Did you do this? And if you asked, what were the results? I ordered a new

car, which is scheduled for delivery on May 6th and want to mitigate headlight clouding. I actually have not yet done that. However, I did just get the headlights restored on my truck. I got them totally polished, and I'm going to be ordering that clear tint piece for my own pickup and give it a shot on that. I want to see how it works on headlights that have been cleaned once and see what this does for keeping them clean afterwards. Where did you see that? How did they advertise it? Somebody had mentioned it, and I found a company online here that I'm going to try. called R-Tint Chameleon.

It's vinyl film wrap, and they make wraps for the headlights. And the claim is that it will never yellow or never cloud? That is their claim, so we'll see how it works. Alan, you heard of anything like that? Because you get involved in that a lot. No. The headlights are basically Lexan plastic, which is the same thing that a motorcycle one shield would be made of.

So it's a petroleum product, and my belief has always been that it's the high heat of the halogen bulbs that are causing this. I guess we'll find out with all of these new LED-type bulbs if they continue to yellow up and crack. But the only thing that you're eliminating with film is oxygen on the outside. And I don't know. I'm going to be in the I need to see it to believe it. category because i i think everything else all the other elements are still there it has to be some pretty tough plastic yeah i you know there's there have been so many snake oil products introduced uh to the market to prevent and to clean these headlights and so far nothing has worked

so i the jury's out i hope it works well test results we'll have them maybe next week well i'm going to get it installed but we need to wait a few months to see how it works we'll do the preliminary and see what it looks like when you installed. Let's go back to some more text. Well, Anne Marie just chimed in. She said, good morning. I hope Nancy has a speedy recovery, and congratulations on winning best of the Palm Beach is 2020.

Thanks, Anne-Marie. You know, a lot. I'm trying to think of a word that won't scare people off. Just say the skeptic in me or the consumer advocate in me forces me to say something I really don't want to say but I will thank you very much and Anne Marie is referring to the fact that we were voted number one car dealership in Palm Beach County for 2020 and we were also voted number one in 2019 and the guilt flooded my body when Anne Marie made when you read that text because we didn't know about

this contest it first happened last year and we were told that we won a vote of the best car dealership in Palm Beach County. And we don't advertise in the Palm Beach Post. It was a surprise. It was a surprise. So we started investigating, and we found out that they had the contest, and if you wanted to advertise the Post, they would advertise that fact. And up came 2020.

And when we investigated, we found out that the best in Palm Beach County allows you, to vote every day from, what were the dates? Like December 22nd through January 10th, something like that. Almost close to a half a month, two weeks. And you can vote twice a day or? No, once a day. Once a day. But you can vote like 15 times.

And you can spread out, you can spread out the votes. So what happens is the other car dealers, you mass a army of voters and you recruit voters. and we actually did a little bit of that ourselves because we realized that the competition was doing the same thing. So being voted number one in Palm Beach County, the first year really meant a lot to us because we didn't vote for ourselves

because we didn't know about the contest. And then we got pulled into it and the fear of having the other car dealers cheat and knock us out of first place forced us to do the same thing that they did. But we won anyway. So, Anne-Marie, thank you anyway for that compliment and it's kind of a dubious honor but nevertheless i've told the truth and

i feel honest and transparent and like a good guy all right let's move over to anonymous feedback this one came in uh just in the past week hello erlin team and one of your recent shows you discussed the need for automobile manufacturers have a replacement date on the airbag i was watching this video on an old Mercedes Ben ML SUV, they're pointing out at 2242. He puts a link there that there's a placard on the door jam with the replacement date for the airbags in the car. I do like your show, but sometimes I feel your team speaks out definitively on topics that you have not done the research on or speak in absolute terms for issues that are not black and white. I do learn from listening, but I take many things with a grain of salt because

this one's not the first time I found out that you are not completely. completely correct. As we all must do, stay humble and seek knowledge. Thanks for allowing me to share back. I answered that in the reply on the anonymous feedback, and I'm going to answer it again. But first, we have a caller, and we always try to prioritize the callers because they're having to hold. We have Rubin in Miami. Good morning, Rubin. Good morning, Mr. Stewart. Yes. How you doing, sir? It's like perfect timing, because. I'm in the process of purchasing a, like, a new-used car.

And I was looking on YouTube at many people like yourself that give advice. And I came across you, and you just hit a lot of, you hit a lot of areas that were relevant to the deal that I'm currently making. And then I wanted to get like some clarity on this deal that I'm making that sounds a little bit awkward. I went to a dealer, a couple dealers actually, and I'm in the process of buying a Hyundai. And it's like this last particular Honda, well, this last particular car was the selling net a little under $12,000, right? and so the the when they gave me the the the payment for the next 72 months it came up to like $400 I told a guy I didn't want to pay that much money I wanted to pay something like $200 or $300 I don't have a down payment and the the interest rate was I'm guessing like

16%. Wow. Does that sound like a fair payment for the next 72 months on a car that like under $12,000? No, that sounds like when I do the math, when I do when I do the math, when I add that up at the end of 72 month, I'll be paying like $30,000 for it. Is this a new Honda Rubin? No sir. It has 30,000 miles. Oh, I'm saying, yeah. No, that sounds like

an outrageously high payment and an outrageously long period of time. I would recommend you do this. Instead of negotiating and trying to buy a car based on payment, go back and try to compare prices with the different cars you're looking at. Try to find a bank or a credit union and talk to them about payments. Car dealers make more money when they finance the car than when they sell the car financing profits can be thousands and thousands of dollars to a car dealer and when they do a 72 month loan at a high interest rate they can make an awful lot of money i would uh go go to the to your bank where you bank or if you have a credit union or even if you don't have a bank go to a bank when you go to a dealer they're dealing through a bank uh and they are

the third party they don't finance the vehicle directly the bank does And then the bank pays them a kickback. And that's why the interest rate is so high. When you finance through a dealer, the dealer is bumping the price of the bank charged to get a profit to supplement the profit that he made on the car. But 72 months is way too long to finance a car. The car is, you're lucky if the car's going to last six years. And you've also got the problem of, once you sign on the dotted line, you're committed. You're in a very heavy negative equity position.

And if you want to trade the car before 72 months, like in three or four years, you have to pay extra in your negative equity to come back to even to add to the price of the next car you buy. So get your own financing room and then stay away from the dealer. So try to get my own financing. Yeah, yeah. Like I went to the bank yesterday, but the bank didn't approve me because they said something. about my credit was not the best

and so I probably would have a chance you think at a credit union or somewhere else? Yeah, I try more than one bank and if you can get a credit union so you can actually join a credit union if you're not a member but I would check with more

than one bank your interest rate is going to be based on your credit history and in some cases you cannot get financing from a bank, which case you have to work with a dealer, and that's just a tough situation. If you have to work through dealers, then I would compare the financing with different dealers. They have what they call buy here, pay here lots, and they actually finance the cars themselves.

But they compete, too. And you can always negotiate. If you deal with one dealer, they're going to charge you all the money, whether it's interest rates or the price of the car. If you talk to two or three dealers, and they know you're comparing interest rates and price. the price will come down. But if you've got bad credit, you're going to have to pay high interest. You just have to resolve that and do the best you can to make payments on time, and then you can improve your credit score. The next car you buy, the interest rate will be less. Okay, the thing about that is, okay, the interest rate is the interest rate. Let's say even if I was given the bank 20% interest rate, which is very high. On a $12,000 car, those payments shouldn't be $400.

The payment that they gave me was a payment like on a $20,000 car. No, you're right. So where is this extra money coming from? Where is, like if for every $10,000, there is, it's a $200 payment more or less. And interest, hypothetically speaking, is 20%. That would be no more than $2,6. no more than 300 on a if you don't know what you're doing yeah why are they charging me an extra hundred dollars are they financing like extra fees yeah yeah you hit it on the head and if they

yeah you hit it on the head a lot of them will have is that what for the uh yeah this is still i just kind of chombed in here the um some banks will require a very large fee from the dealer and the dealer it has to include that in the price of the car you selling it to you so that would also inflate what you would be financing. That could have definitely made that payment go really high. Yeah, Rubin, I just avoid this dealer that you're talking to right now and shop around

because sounds to me like he's really, really trying to take advantage of you. And he's bordering on the board. He's bordering on dishonesty. You're not supposed to be able to take the financing fee and add to the price of the car. That's illegal. I'd shop around, find another dealer.

I find two or three other dealers. And you'll find one that you feel like you can trust and you're going to have to pay a higher interest rate because of your credit but everything should be transparent and disclosed and if you shop and compare you'll get your best deal it won't be as good a deal as you want but it'll be the best you can do and just find someone that's treating you honestly so realistically speaking could i go in there with no down payment no tax payment like everything included inside the the payment and get like a three hundred a deal for whatever amount of...

Rubin, I can't tell you, I can't tell you that's possible that you cannot buy a car without a down payment. Again, it's based on credit history type. Buy a car with zero down payment usually requires good credit. And so I think you're going to have a tough road to hold there. I think you're probably going to have to come up with a down payment and just do the best you can. Sometimes there's not a good answer.

And not knowing all the specifics, I don't know your beacon score, you're... FICA score or your credit history so I can't comment but I'll tell you what you want to do if you want to if you want to text us give us some specifics just text us at 772 4976530 that's 772 4976530 and give us your specifics in terms of credit history and we'll send your credit application assigned we'll take a look at it and give you more specific information, but I'm just guessing right now. I don't want to guess. And I appreciate your call very much, Rubin, and good luck. And thank you. Call back next week and let us know how you did. Thank you, sir. I appreciate your time. Thank you. You're welcome. Bye-bye. Okay,

87-960. And we probably have some texts. Do we have any more phone calls? Let's go to the next text, too. All right. From Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Unlike Allstate, when going into the box at a dealership, you are not in good hands. Keep that in mind. That smooth-talking finance manager is quite possibly the highest paid and highest profit-making employee at the dealership, and that person is not your friend. Well, that's true. The finance and insurance department has always been something to be afraid of for many, many years. The box. The box, yeah. And the more competitive car selling becomes and it's extremely competitive today the profits on new cars are declining and therefore car dealers are resorting to anything they can find to try to build the profit

back up and the finance department is the target automation the biggest retailer in the world for automobiles is a case history a case study and how you can use the finance department to survive automation is actually raised price on their new cars and they have 200 plus dealerships nationwide. They have all different franchises, Mercedes, Chevrolet, Honda, you name it, automation has it. And they decided that they could not get the volume they wanted selling new cars and be profitable. So they raised the prices on all their new cars and then they went head first into the finance department and they have increased their average finance profit

to close to $2,000 a car. And that's far more than they're making in the sale of a new car and brought themselves back to profitability by focusing on finance. So all you folks out there that are thinking of buying a car and we just talked to Rubin about financing a used car, be sure you check with your bank and your credit union to get the best interest rate in the most fair terms and down payment.

We do have a comment on YouTube. I'm just going to read this one out because, folks, we're just not going to be a show that we're going to be afraid to read these comments. I'm afraid right now. This is from Rant Rant Joe, and I'm guessing in reply to Rubin. He says, the guy just plain out cannot afford this car. Just go look for a $5,000 car and pay in cash if you cannot take public transit. Well, easy for you to say.

Easy for you, rant, rant. Yeah. You know, people are pretty dependent on their cars. And in a state like Florida and other areas where you don't have transit, you know, mass transit, if you want to get to work, if you want to get to the doctor's office, if you want to take your kids to school, if you want to get to the pharmacy, you need a car. And a car is more important to a lot of people than a home because you can sleep. in your car, but you can't drive your home to work. So people need cars, and car dealers take advantage of that, especially people like Rubin that have marginal credit. And I've written a bog on victims of car dealers, and people with bad credit are one of the leading victims,

the elderly, the very young, people that can't speak English very well, people that don't have a huge education, people that are just not sophisticated negotiators. And you really have to have a car. So they know that. And when you come into a dealership with bad credit, they charge you exorbitant interest rates. They inflate the price of the car. And they give you a car that they want to sell,

not a car you want to buy. Well, you've often said there is a place for buy here, pay here lots, that they have a purpose. Exactly. And I'll give you my own personal view. My daughter's fiancé, just recently, his credit has been very not good

and he needed a car. So we went down, we found a little buy here, pay here a lot in West Palm Beach and found him just a little 99 carola and yeah he paid a little more than what that car is really worth, but

the car's running, it's in decent shape for its age and it gets him from point A to point B with a payment that he can afford for just a couple years so that he can get back on his feet and get things straightened around. And he gets around in this little car just fine. And if you have to resort to one of these buy-here, pay-year loss,

be sure that they report to the credit bureau. If they report the credit bureau and you make your payments on time, your credit-in-prew. Yeah, and you can go to a conventional little bank, maybe next time and finance it. And I used information that I've learned from you so that I could help him with doing this and get it done. Oh, I'm glad to hear that.

Okay, how are we doing on that? text. We get quite a few anonymous feedback responses to get to. This one says two weeks ago you had a caller who leased a beat. Let's back up. I forgot to answer the one I said I was going to answer about the airbag. Airbag. I took the shot and I and I deserve the shot. We do shoot from the hip sometimes. We thought we were right about airbags. The question was, and it's come up a couple times. Why isn't there a limit and a warning when you buy a car to tell you when you need to get a new airbag? Because if you keep a car for 20 years, and some people do, it's probably not a good idea to have the airbag that you originally bought the car with, or at least not

check it, and be sure it's been inspected or replaced. Airbags are a pretty important piece of equipment. And this anonymous feedback said that on the door jam of a Mercedes, there was expiration date and advising the purchaser to, I guess, have the airbag checked or replaced after this period of time. So we're going to have to go back to the drawing board on this and find out how the other makes do. Alan, we haven't asked you this question. Do you have any knowledge of an expiration date on any cars that you've seen in the body shop? No, I don't, and I, regarding the Mercedes, I got to wonder, is that a retrofit label that since the to-cata thing that they've started putting on, or is there a label on a door from the manufacturer, and it's also in the owner's manual as basically a maintenance item, you know, with your scheduled maintenance, because the airbag, I'll be honest with you, I just traded my 20-08 truck in, and that was a, one of my concerns, nothing has ever went wrong with that truck. And I'm, you know, like

anybody else, I'm thinking, well, things are going to start breaking. But I also considered the airbags because I am so aware of the Takata issue and all that. Well, my airbags are almost 12 years old. And I didn't know if they would deploy if I got in a wreck or not. You know, so it did affect my decision. They do need to list these things as maintenance items. determine a lifespan and list them as a maintenance item so people can plan ahead for it in their budget for their vehicle maintenance in the future because some of those things are expensive. Let's ask our audience out there, is there anyone listening that knows anything about the expiration date of the airbag in their vehicle? My thought when I got this anonymous feedback was okay if Mercedes does in fact have something on the door jam that says the airbag should be. replaced in 20 years or whatever it said that's not a very good way to inform a buyer of a car

I think in fact if if this is something that can kill you there should be some sort of absolute positive way to notify the buyer that car that now the car needs a new airbag maybe a red light on the dash flashes or something but does anyone driving a car know when their airbag expires if if they nobody calls and nobody and tells us, then we do know that the manufacturers are derelict in their duty and not doing this. Okay? Yeah. Let's move along. Yeah. Even the most that we've been able to get from Toyota as a technician. The most that I've been able to get from them is you inspect it by checking for diagnostic trouble codes. And if the airbag does not show any trouble codes, then they consider it to be okay. That's interesting. I didn't know that. So there is a. diagnostic trouble code for anything that can cause an airbag not to inflate.

Well, it would be for the electronics for a short or open in the airbag, but that's pretty much all there is, and that's not very much. Yeah, but it doesn't talk about deterioration of materials. Exactly. The material, the explosive. Right, the chemical breakdown deterioration, the fabric itself. Sure, I mean. I didn't tell you when it's about to go bad.

I mean, you've got a balloon, really, blowing up. You know, something you can inflate like that is not real thick. And termites, I'm only kidding. You're going to have something happen to the bag, and you don't want that to happen. Okay. Next, anonymous feedback. Okay. Two weeks ago, you had a caller who leased a Buick after leasing a Toyota and incurred a $175

lease disposition fee because he turned his toilet lease into the Buick dealer. Would he have incurred the charge if he had used an auto broker instead of the dealer? Yes, so it's the dealership. It's the manufacturer's way of holding you as a captive when you lease a car. It's the penalty if you stray to another manufacturer. And I don't like it. I think it's bad. It's certainly not transparent.

Most people don't know about the disposition fee. But if you lease a Buick and you don't buy or lease another Buick, you have to pay the fee. Okay, we have a just a short one. here. So Camry Lease $99 a month at Get Old Toyota. Ain't going to happen.com. You know, you know, the leasing

advertisement, actually just about all advertisements boggle my mind. How can the manufacturers, I mean, the dealers I understand, I mean, dealers do what dealers do, but how can manufacturers run

advertisements with fine print down payments? If you say, if you say it's It's a good deal to lease the Chevrolet for $199 a month, and it requires a $5,000 down payment that you don't know about. How does Chevrolet General Motors, how can they do that? I mean, why do they get away with it?

And then why do people believe it when you see the ads? We got a YouTube. Well, this one I figured once again, let's just pull it right out here. Tim in Florida, Earl, two weeks ago today. I was with someone who bought a used 2018 Nissan Armada from your dealership. Buying the vehicle was a pleasure, but your finance guy wouldn't stop trying to sell the extended warranty. Very aggravating. Well, that's a shame on him.

We do have extended warranties. This is what happens in the finance office, the box, as they call it. But we shouldn't high pressure. I'd love to hear the name of that person because we don't. We already have that. Oh, we do? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, we will certainly coach that individual. We have a friend of a guy. Very good. We, by the way, we're one dealership and other dealerships. Some do this. We have cameras that record the transactions in our finance departments. And we do this for the protection of our customers and also for training and also for kind of like a warning sign to the people that are in the finance department.

office. And a finance office, one of the reasons it's so dangerous is you're in, we call it the box because it's a small office, and it's just you and the finance manager. It's kind of like a one-on-one situation. And we want to be sure that nothing has said that is not our company policy. And high pressure is not part of our policy. The finance manager, the customer, and Earl in every office. Exactly. Earl is there all the time. And now we've got Howard in Jupiter on hold. Hello, Howard. Hi, Howard. Hi, Howard.

Nice talking to you. Nice talking to you. I finally made it. It's hard to get up on a Saturday, Howard. I know what you mean. Yeah, I used to be in your position one time, so I know what you're talking about. Okay, here's the story, Alan. You remember years ago when the airbags first came out, on the visor, it said you must replace it after 10 years.

I remember that specifically. So when they first came out, they must have known that after 10 years, it's not going to be viable. Did you ever see that on a visor? I don't recall that, Howard, but they may have been being cautious in the beginning, and then they got overconfident thinking we've got this down. We understand these 110%. and I think that the modern car, you know, regardless of what the guy said about the Mercedes, Marlin, my coworker at work, Googled it and texted me a while ago,

and he said that now they're saying that airbags are going to last for the life of the car, that you're never going to have to replace them. And I think that's pretty bold after all the Takata stuff. Well, I've got a 1937 Pontiac, and I don't think the airbag, I'm only kidding. But, no, I don't. And I've been doing this a long time, too, Howard, and I just don't recall ever seeing that warning on the visors. Okay, so now let's talk logistics.

If you live in Florida, right, where you have the humidity and the heat, as compared to Montana, wouldn't the airbags be more, you know, apps to fail in Florida than, let's say, Montana? Sure. Do you agree with that? Yes. I think that in the tropics, I think some of the fatalities from the Takadas began in the Philippines and Malaysia and stuff like that in the more hot, humid areas. Yeah, so it makes that happen a lot faster being in our climate.

It's a huge challenge when you stop by thinking about it. When you build a car, a manufacturer's day built worldwide. I mean, you don't have cars in the Sahara Desert. You're going to have them in the Arctic. You're going to have them. I mean, when you think of the challenge to the engineers to come up with a car and then you have a warranty and you have to have some semblance of uniformity, I'm glad I don't manufacture cars.

That would be a huge challenge, but absolutely. Environment has got a whole lot to do. Temperatures below zero to temperatures over 100 or over 150. It's just a real challenge. Howard, there's... Probably in Alaska. Yeah. Probably in Alaska, the airbags will last much longer.

Yeah. But it's compared to Florida. It might, I don't know. You know, cold weather versus hot weather. But I say it's a real challenge. Anytime you buy a car and somebody tells you, like Howard, you said the manufacturer should last as long as a car, that depends on where the car is.

I mean, it can be in the Sierra Desert. It could be in the Arctic. And I promise you, one of them's not as good as the other. It couldn't possibly be. yeah okay i'll have one more question for you uh can you clear up the uh the 040 uh paint and super white paint can i buy a car now let's see a new car uh 2020 with that color paint would be okay or should i stay away from that color we won't know that for a while how i'm explaining to the listeners that might not know what that is 040 is a code the toyota

uses for white paint and it did not have clear coat at the time, and I believe that may have been remedied since, but it's a paint that would fade rapidly as opposed to all the other colors that did have clear coat. Yeah, the O4O, it's called Super White, and

they have changed it. I don't know why they kept the same code, the O4O code, because everybody is well aware that that paint they had two problems. One was an oxidation problem where they would chalk up, and you couldn't

get wax to stick to them. They're not doing anything about that, but the delamination where the color code is actually coming off of the primer, the factory primer of the car, they're doing a customer support program for some of those people. Getting back to your question, is the new 040 better? I have to assume it is. I think, I hope, after a decade and a half of selling cars with effective paint they've learned their lesson but they did reformulate I believe in 2018 and

up we should be good because they did change their processes well Howard thanks again for the call and I know you're thrilled that Alan's backing he'll be back in four or five years I'm kidding I'm casing him

did you know Alan is shy and that's why he doesn't like to read it I may not be around at that time but it's okay Okay. Have a good day, guys. He has an open invitation. He just doesn't want to, you know. We have an open seat. We have another caller.

We have Tina and Benita Springs. Oh, Tina Bonita. Good morning. Hi. How are you guys doing this morning? Welcome back, Alan. Thank you. Hi. What's on your mind? You know, well, I was listening to your mystery shopping report this week, and I was actually horrified. I think you gave them too high a grade, Earl. You should have given them. I'm an F-minus minus.

You were kind of merciful last of it. Yeah, I felt, yeah, I agree. Maybe I was just feeling, I don't know. Merciful. Yeah, merciful, yeah. Magnanimous. Well, anyway, I thought today would be a great day to talk about zero percent financing and the trap of zero percent financing,

because it does get people in the door and they think they're getting a great deal, but sometimes they're not getting a great deal. So I wonder if we can kind of talk about watching out for the 0% financing trap. Well, 0% financing from the manufacturer is legitimate. The manufacturers will offer interest rate zero with no gimmicks to get people to come and buy a car. And it's no different than a rebate. As a matter of fact, they typically pair the choice. You have the choice of the rebate or the choice of the 0% financing.

And then you have to do your arithmetic. to depend on how long you're going to finance the car and how much of the cost of the car you will finance. But 0% from the manufacturer, for example, Toyota, Honda, General Motors, is legitimate. Where you have to be careful, 0% or any special interest rate by the dealer. Because a dealer can finance the car with you at any interest rate, including zero, if they call buy down the rate. And I haven't actually seen too many dealers doing this.

We used to do it back in the day when I was, before I'd become a recovering car dealer, we could do 0%. So you'd go to, I was a Pontiac dealers, we'd call GMAC, and we would say, how much do I have to pay to offer this Pontiac Bonneville for 0%. They'd say, well, if you pay us $3,000, you can advertise we'll finance this much is 0%. So I'd raise the price to the car by $3,000, and I'd advertise 0%, and people would flock in and believe they were really getting 0%. Well, they did get, they really got 0%, but they paid $3,000, yeah, way much for the car. Yeah, that's the trick I'm talking about.

And also a lot of these dealers, they'll have 0% financing with a dealer, but instead of having a 48-months loan, you might have a 72-months loan, so you're paying so much more for that car than if you just went of the straight four years. Exactly. There's also something called a balloon payment that I used to do back when I was evil, but apparently the dealers don't know about it. Maybe I shouldn't talk about it because they'll start doing it. But you can get a real low payment, you know, $300 a month instead of $500 a month. And if you don't read the fine print, you don't see the fact that your next to less payment is $5,000.

So balloon payments are common and normal loans, but not so common. and car loans, but you can do it and you can deceive and trick somebody by doing a balloon payment. Well, all I can say is if somebody is a shyster, all they have to do is move to Florida, get a dealer's license and set up a shop because they can get away so much stuff legally. It's really a shame. So I think one of the best weapons is not only bringing somebody with you to the dealership, but bring your calculator to and make sure you see how that loan it amortized because that's

the most important thing. Yeah. Now, you come in with a calculator and one or two people and a notepad and a pencil. I mean, right away, you look like a formidable, you know, like they're... They'll surrender before you. Exactly. They're not going to jump in and really try to take advantage of you as quickly. So that's true. Psychologically, you are putting them on the defensive, and you don't ever want to go in by yourself. That is very, very true. I'll never do that again. And I've done a couple times on a necessity, and it worked out.

But, I mean, not everybody is a step ahead of the game. So the whole point of Earl Stewart on cars is to get everybody one step ahead of the dealer. You know, back in the day, Tina, they used to call another thing as pipe smokers. And back in that time, you know, when somebody had a pipe, they were like a professor or something like that. And us car dealers used to hate pipe smokers because they came over the pipe. they were slow to make a decision they wouldn't take the car home today they wouldn't sign on the dotted line

and we used to hate pipe smokers now there are no more pipe smokers I used to be a pipe smoker that's very true now there's vapors but that's a whole different subject well Tina thank you you know thanks to you and Nancy our first three callers today on the show

we're female and you and Nancy working in tandem have built up our audience where at least I think we're over 50% now. And it's just great. Half the world's population are ladies, and you buy half the cars, you do half the service, and you should be represented by at least half. And on Earl Stron cars, we are. And thank you very much, Tina. You played a major role there. Thank you. And ladies, Nancy and I can't do it by ourselves. We need more of you. And thank you

so much for your participation. That's great. It makes me feel good. It should make Nancy feel good too, because she spirited the whole thing. Okay, then. Call again next week. We always wait for your call. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Tina. 877-960-99-60, and text us at 772-49-3-0.

We're getting a lot of anonymous feedback, but let's get some text. 772-497-6530, and we do have a caller. We have Mark in Palm Beach Gardens. Hey, Mark. Good morning, all. Good morning. I got a question. I could have this reversed a little bit, but 2017 Camry X-L-E, tire pressure light comes on and goes off, comes on and goes off.

And it seems to be arranged around the temperature, the outdoor temperature. Now, being a little fan of racing, I do know the tire pressure changes when a tire gets hot. I'm just wondering about the potential problems when we start car and we ride and the tire pressure light comes on and then it stays on and then it goes off or I mean it stays on but then the next morning we start the car up and the tire pressure light is not and it seems to change or be more active at certain temperatures talking with my daughter I can't remember whether it's when it's hold out or taught out, is that possibly a censor issue, or is that just simply because of the outdoor weather? Well, I'm going to let Alan, I'm going to let Mark, Rick answer that. Or Mark Allen, one more time. Rick answered that. I just want to say one thing.

This is the time of year when it's going to, we get a lot of complaints with our dealership about this very phenomenon because normally it's warm in Florida. This morning when I got up, it was in low 40s. So a lot of tire pressure lights went on. Here's what I recommend for you folks out there who are seeing this happen is put a little bit more in your tires. You've got tire manufacturer's recommendation for PSI, and then you have the auto manufacturers recommended of PSI. So somewhere between the two, the higher tire pressure recommendation is by the tire manufacturer, and the auto manufacturer has a lower pound per square inch that they want you to put in, so you get a smoother ride.

So split the difference. If you have eight pound difference between the two, put an extra four pounds in, and then you don't have the fluctuation that you normally get during low temperature times like today. And Rick, as far as the sensors go. Let me just intersect something here. Insert something is when you have tires for life. And, you know, you mess around with the, or even splitting the difference on the PSI. And you may have an uneven tire wear across the tread face.

Can't that cost you in the end when you come in for your tires for life? Yeah, if you put a whole lot of air, yeah. Tire. If you overinflate your tires, you're right. You will get tire wear in the center of the tire overinflation. That's very rare. As long as you keep your tire inflation below that recommended by the tire manufacturer, you're not going to have uneven tire wear.

So keep it below the maximum recommendation, which is the tire manufacturers. That's stamped on the tire. And then your owner's manual, you'll have the recommended tire inflation by the auto manufacturer. Stay between those two ranges. You'll never have an uneven tire wear problem, and you're far less likely to have the tire pressure sensor go off during when it's 40 degrees. Okay, and is there something that your mechanic there wants to add?

Yeah, Mark, you were talking something about how you could actually adjust the sensors. Well, a quick note on that word about the uneven tire wear. I'm going to disagree with you a little bit because there are some of our vehicles like the tundra and the sienna that are so top-heavy, they're so large, that the right-side-tire We'll get an outer edge wear on them. And we know this. We understand it. It's because when you're doing left-hand turns, you're going a little faster.

The vehicle roll causes that tire to wear a little more on that outside edge. And we don't hold that against our customers with tires for life. We consider that, okay, when we start seeing that wear, if that wear pattern gets below 3.30 seconds, like on our rules, we're going to get tires on your car. So we understand that. But what we're talking about is inflation. Yep. On the tire pressures, the tire pressure sensors on your Camry, you should have a button

under the dash that is sort of hidden up under there, but you'll be able to see a little black button that will have that tire pressure symbol right near it. And what you're going to want to do in order to set what's called the threshold level, this is the pressure level where the light will turn on at, you can actually tell the car to set that to a lower level. And what you're going to do is set your tire pressures down to about 26 to 28 pounds, then turn the key on and press and hold that button,

and the light will blink three times kind of slow, and then go out. Wait about 15 or 20 minutes, and then go ahead and reset those pressures back up to where they normally would be, and what that'll do is that light will not turn on now until those tires go below that 26 pounds, actually minus a couple pounds after that.

So it'll be about 22 to 23 pounds is when that light would turn on. Well, that'll help you, Mark, I think, between the slightly more inflation, and you can actually adjust the threshold. So that'll help you. And don't forget we live in Florida, so it's not going to be coal much longer, so that'll help you too. Well, one thing I can say about your dealership is that we've never really run across a problem with any issues through many of the Toyotas that we bought and serviced there. Well, thank you very much.

That across everybody in the family drives Earl Stewart Toyotas, by the way. Well, thank you. We've never had a problem with being questioned on any tired tread or where. You guys are very friendly as far as your service customers goes, as far as taking care of the customer and making sure they get those tires. So it's just something that while we ride on the road, there's a gabbing going on between my daughter and I, so at least now I can tell the truth. And Mr. Kearney, as far as I should have set my recorder on in order to tape what all that long thing you said about changing. the pressure. That's something that we could come in

at free of charge and have that adjusted by someone in the service department. Well, for you, Mark, we'll do it. And thank you very much for the call. And the nice things you said about our dealership, I have to tell everybody this is not an infomercial, and we did not pay Mark

to say those nice things. But we thank him anyway. And I'll say the same thing about it, that everyone else said is welcome back, Alan, and you guys have a nice day, okay? you, Mark. Thanks, Mark. Okay. 877-960-99-60, the call-in number 877-960-9-60, and text, 772-497-6-5-30,

772-497-65-30. We've been getting a lot of anonymous feedbacks, and that is Your AnonymousFeedback.com. We get, if you go online and you send your comment in there, We don't know who you are. Totally anonymous. Some people like that. And if you have some things to say to us, you don't want us to know who you are. That's fine with us. We'd love to hear from you anyway.

Youranonymous Feedback.com. How are we doing all the texts on the anonymous feedbacks? We get quite a few to get to, but here's a text. Why are so many automakers manufacturing cars with red and color turn signal lights versus yellow or amber colored? I find the amber colored lights much. much easier to see, especially when the sun is bright out. Well, we have a caller. We'll be right with the caller. I'm going to guess at the answer to that, and correct me if I'm wrong, Rick or Stu or Allen.

I think there's such a thing as national, international standards, and I think that there is a, if you go to Europe or you go to China or go to the United States, when somebody steps on the break, you see a red light. And I think red is the danger signal. Amber, I like amber too, but if you had different color lights based on the manufacturer, it could be confusing on the road. Yeah. Does I like the right answer? I think what they may be asking about is like a lot of cars, they double duty the brake light as a turn signal and blink that one light that's red in the back versus some cars have an amber light in the back specifically for the turn signal. And myself, for the ease of simplicity, I like the amber light being for turn signal, but maybe a lot of manufacturers in order to reduce costs, they simply make that bulb do double duty as a turn signal.

I've never pondered. I don't care of one way or the other. As long as I see something blinking, because I hate when people don't use blinkers. We do, Frank, in the Jupiter Farms area. Yeah. Hello, Frank. Well, good morning, Earl Stewart and Nancy. Well, Nancy's not here. She's home, but she hears you because she's listening to the radio. She's having little convalescence from foot surgery.

Oh, well, sorry about that. In any rent, this is Frank and Jupiter Farms. We have called several times. But for the last few weeks, a friend of mine has been in search of a car, a female, and we've listened to your show enough not to let her go by herself. And I just got to share a few of the experiences. Oh, great. Anyway, we went to, well, I sent you through your text a receipt from Napleton, Kia.

Yeah, we have that image, Frank. Jonathan's going to put it up on the screen for the video, so. Oh, good. I got it in front of me. This is one of many, but this is one that stood out a little bit more. you can put it up anyway we got there

and it's just like I mean anytime you pull in the people come out at you like piranha or a pack of wolves yeah exactly so

this one particular car she liked and if you look at those prices says the MSRP which is on the sticker the Moroni sticker 27600

and because of Costco and because of military and because of AARP and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. They took off 3,500, or 3,400, I think it was. So then that brought the price down, basically real quick math to 24 and some change. Well, then you see all the different administration fees and destination charges and adjustment and da-da-da-da-da-da-dealer service fee.

And it goes on that by the time the final selling price is now nearly $31,000 on the car with the MSRP was 27. Yeah. Wow. So that's the most dealer fees I ever seen, basically $6,000 you put back on the car. That's, we saw, actually, one Kia dealer we saw I had a $10,000 addendum label, and that was West Palm Beach Kia, but they changed hands since then. Yeah, this one's pretty bad, though.

This, you're actually, the actual selling price is now over MSRP. Yeah. And, of course, we went to the other Toyota dealer down by the airport that you had. had on their show a couple weeks ago and um that was also another unique experience to say the least and um it just goes on and on and we feel like we've been mystery shopping all these places and um it's just it's i actually after 25 different test drives and 25 different dealers i i end up in the hospital with our heart problems for two days and that's not joking i really did oh no i'm sorry to hear that that's okay i was going to go we did go to see you guys and um

I'm not going to mention the guy on the air, but unfortunately, for some reason, I met him last year, and he's still there, and I mentioned about the Costco price, and they don't do the Costco price. This particular guy, I'll call you off the air, and he needs to be retrained about how that handles. Well, thank you. Well, Frankie, I tell you what, I need to put you on the payroll. You've really helped us before, and I appreciate that. It's unbelievable. we mystery shop ourselves usually twice a week and I advise all the car dealers listening to this show

if you really want to keep a clean, transparent business operation mystery shop yourself, send undercover folks into your service department, your sales department, find out what really goes on. You know, a typical dealer in this area probably has 100 or more employees and if you think there's not a rotten apple in the barrel, you're wrong. There's no such thing as 100% integrity in any organization. And you need to root out the folks that are creating problems. And Frank has helped us in the past.

Thank you, Frank. Okay, and then real quick, with the Napleton, I also sent how they disregard the handicapped parking. Yeah. But, no, and I got to tell you, your name is like a lightning rod. on the different dealerships. You just mentioned it, well, Earl Stewart

doesn't have dealer fees. Oh, my goodness. They go up, their blood rate must go up at least 50%. Do they tell you, we hide our dealer fee in the price of the car? Oh, yes, of course. Yeah, of course, right? Yeah, no, there's this MSRP, so you've got a special

MSRP label that the other Toyota dealers don't have. We enjoyed, but as it all turned out, I think she actually found a car down in Tamarack near where she lives. I'm thrilled in Paul Springs. But it's been an experience to say, Louise. Well, Frank, you are the greatest.

Oh, one last one. You talked about service. Randy, in your service department, the far end of the thing, has treated other customers I know from church, unbelievably. I actually went and saw him. Oh, thank you. He's a fabulous person and a real nice personality, and very fair. Okay.

Well, thank you very much. You guys got some good guys here, but, yeah, I will call you off the air sometime and mention them. Yeah, we got to find out to give us the name of our rotten apple, will you really appreciate it? Well, I'll tell you, I'll just text it to you. That would make it easier. Okay, thank you, Frank. You have a nice day. You too, take care.

Bye-bye. 877-960-960, and we have another caller. Boy, we're setting a new caller record today. We're just rocking right along. Good morning, John from Palm City. John. Good morning to everyone. In regards to Nancy, hope she makes it back next week.

What I want to say is, and many people follow it and watch it, we're driving the safest cars ever made today thanks to a lot of the technical features. And the proof was, if you watch their Daytona 500, with an accident such as that, you would swear that the person was died immediately. Could not believe it. And two days later, they showed him walking out of the hospital with his two daughters. and a lot to do is features from 201 when Dale Earnhardt was killed in the same lap to final lap not only when they hit the wall this time by 200 miles an hour with the impact additional impact

but see features in the car which were unbelievable padding and a fire extinguisher that gets set off automatically and most of these features many of them are incorporated into our car that we drive every day So it's an absolute miracle to see an accident like that. And the person two days later just walked out of the hospital. So it's a great feature. I remember it started. I was still in school. My neighbor board, I used caddy, and it had optional seatbelts.

But in 66, that was the first government move that was made with mandated the seatbelts and padded dash and the other features, two-way windshield wipers and a four-way flash. We hated those back in the day. Yeah, we used to take the seat belts and stuff them in the seats, so they didn't get in your way. Yes. So we are lucky today that we're driving the safest cars ever made in America. Yep, you're absolutely right.

John, thank you very much. I thought I'd mention that. Yeah, that Daytona event is still in my mind's eye. I can't get that crash out of my mind, and the fact that these cars are so safe today, that's an excellent point. A lot of that research has probably come from racing. The only thing that I say about the safety,

and it's quantum leap in safety in the past five or ten years, the cars are also a lot more expensive because of that, and Alan is sitting beside me today. And a lot of the sensors and a lot of the other high-tech safety issues features when you now ding your car or hit your bumper, it costs a whole lot more to fix. But maybe that's

a small price to say to pay to be safer. Two upsetting things is there's still today people that I see not many of them that they'd refuse to use their seatbelt. They don't think it saves lives and how wrong they are.

And I see now with the new law with texting and driving, I constantly see people driving and texting. So it's just people that I don't understand but you know what? They need more law enforcement to get after those people. Well, sooner or later we'll have autonomous

cars and people won't be allowed to drive so that'll be the ultimate answer. John, thanks very much. You're our most regular, reliable caller and Nancy really appreciates the emails and you stay in touch and you're one of our best callers.

Thank you very much. Well, thank you. Look forward to the shopping report. Coming up soon. Thank you. Okay, we've got a YouTuber over here, don't we? We've got actually two real quick ones. First one, Donovan Lewis, says, what is Napleton's VIP experience? Who would fall for that?

What is that? I'm not really sure. It could be anything. Yeah, they could call it anything. It's smoking mirrors. It could be maybe a maintenance package, or maybe it could be a trade-in, bonus?

Maybe they bring you a fresh cup of coffee all the time while you're waiting? Free Wi-Fi? I'm not sure. And give me five bucks, says, did I hear right where Toyota Land Cruiser is being discontinued? Okay, I never heard

about that from any official channels, but there was some story that came up in my news feed. I read it, and there's supposed to be a big change coming into the Land Cruiser, like in 2025, going back away from this, like, luxury sort of thing like a true off-road sort of thing, but just rumors.

You know what I was amazed in the newest edition of Consumer Report that I mentioned before, Land Cruiser got an extremely high rating. And I never, we don't see many land cruisers. And my thoughts for Land Cruiser's over the years were that they, you know, it was a nice, it was a really big, rugged macho SUV. We used to export a lot of them and sell them to the U.S. government. You see them all over Iraq and Dubai.

Things like that. But I never thought of them the land cruises being a high-quality car. Oh, no, that's solid. Solid. Yeah, they're awesome. That's the reputation. You just don't see them because they're $85,000 to $100,000.

Yeah, I mean, but as far as off-road capability, even though they're pretty, they're still brutish. I take it across the Serengetty. Not to mention there's a place in Stewart that specializes in the old FJ40 body-style land cruisers when it was basically just a box that was indestructible. Yeah. Okay. Kind of nice.

Okay, here's, we got a text here. He says, good morning. Just wanted to give a shout out to Lexus of North Miami. We bought a pre-owned car cash, and there was no haggling. When we went to the box, it was just as we agreed, and no attempt to sell anything else. Maybe it was because it was a cash deal. So, well, good job, and it's nice to hear. Well, we know the owner there, don't know.

Is that one of Craig's Inn stores, right? Lexus, I think so. Yeah, Craig's in. Or is it Lexus of Hollywood? No, it's not, there is no Lexus of Hollywood, I don't think. Anyway. Unimportant. A good job, yeah.

We'll put a bell on the shopping list. I mean, we should go for high-quality, transparent dealerships, just like we go after the Napletons. So we'll do... Shine the lay-up. Absolutely. A little farther south. Okay, we got another caller.

Well, I can't believe it. I think we set a new caller record today. I think we're up to seven or eight, but we've got Rich and Palm Beach Gardens. How about we got more than seven or eight? Okay, Rich, good morning. Good morning. My question is, I have some leftover rec 90 gas for my generator from the hurricane last year. And how long is that gas last? And can I use that in my car? I would save that, put it in the lawnmower and run it out pretty quick. Any fuel that has been sitting in a gas can more than three or four.

four months, I would not put it in a car. Too much chance of water contamination, water vapor, other things getting into the fuel cans. I wouldn't put it in the car. I do use it in my lawnmower, but how long does gas last? Even in the lawnmower, if it's been more than a year, I would dispose of it. Okay. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, thanks for the call. Please call again. Okay.

More text. Thanks. Yeah, we have a text from Gary and Lake Park. It says we have a 2003 Honda that we bought, brought in for the airbag to be to the Honda dealer North Palm Beach that they supposedly replaced the air bag. And they addressed a whole mess of little things that were wrong with the car, with the air cleaner of the air cleaner, this and that and the other trying to get you to spend money. We get the car back on the airbag light is still on. They never addressed why they are. airbag light was on and they never addressed this and the fact that it is still on.

What do you think, Rick? I think they dropped the ball entirely because, in my opinion, when a car comes into my bay, even if they're there just for the campaign and all they want is that airbag to be replaced, if that airbag light is on, I'm going to diagnose why and I'm going to let them know why. because the airbag is a safety issue and safety issues should always be addressed first primarily on a car. Yeah. And the bad thing is that warning light, it doesn't tell you.

Is it just a sensor up on a frame rail or is it the airbag that's right here in my face is going to fail if I get in an accident? You don't know because there's just no specifics. There's an apathy about airbags. you know sometimes when you have a crisis or you have a danger when you keep talking about the danger there's some sort of a psychological phenomenon when you talk about it so much people just forget about it I mean even the coronavirus thing that has dominated the media if this goes on long enough I think it'll just kind of fade and you know and it goes away I'm so I'm so upset and focused on this

Ticada thing and the airbag thing that I have to wonder why isn't the general public concern. We talk about it on the air. I was shocked the other day. I was talking in a management meeting at the dealership. I learned that Toyota leasing is taking cars that are off lease with TACA with airbag recalls, not Ticada, but an airbag regals. And they are wholesaling those. So here's Toyota, a manufacturer.

Selling cars granted wholesale at the auction, but the people that are buying those cars at the auction are retail people, and these cars are being taken and sold to you, the public, and there's no fix available. These cars are Toyotas without fixable airbags. The Toyota, the manufacturer, is selling themselves. They say you can't certify them. And you can't certify them. But you can sell them. Because you have the Toyota, you know, that means a toilet dealer can't sell it to you, but a You can sell them, but you're on your own, is what they're saying.

So the apathy spreads to the manufacturers and the dealers, and you, the driver, are the one that's paying the penalty. So we'll never know. We'll never know how many deaths have been caused, deaths and injuries, because when these accidents occur, there's no autopsy. I mean, nobody's going to do forensic study or even analyze the airbag or the car. They don't dig in to see when you have a horrible accident,

and part of the expression mangled people in a car is a fatal accident and that's the end of the conversation. You don't know exactly what happened. How many airbags have caused deaths that we don't know about? Anyway, let's move along to another text.

Okay. This is probably for Rick. 2020, Raffor Hybrid. Are you aware of a gas tank problem and not filling into full capacity? And that's from Bob. There is a TSB, a test. tech tip actually out. Toyota's aware of the issue and they're working

on it. Apparently there's an issue where the pumps are kicking off the gas too soon. And Toyota's looking at this. They're trying to figure out what's going on. Hopefully they'll have an answer for us very, very soon on that one. Okay. Rick used the term their

technical service bulletins for you folks that haven't heard this discussed on the show before are kind of like a secret warranty. Many recall. People don't know a many recall. And the dealer gets a bulletin online that says TSP technical service bulletin and says we have the problem with this car and this is what you're supposed to do to fix it, but you're not supposed to tell the customer about it unless they complain. And if you have an issue with a car and you're concerned about it, Google it

and you can go or you can ask your dealer to check and see if there's a technical service bulletin, A lot of times you can find more about what's wrong with your car online or through a technical service bullson than you can by asking the dealer. Okay. All right, so this is from Steve. He says, hi, Rick. Following up on an earlier all-wheel drive caller, while my new car is noted as having all-wheel drive, in reality, it's a front-wheel drive car that when or if needed can engage the rear wheel for propulsion up to 50% distribution. To me, this is the best of both worlds, front drive gas economy, and all-wheel-drive safety.

All right, good. Let me do a little promotion here. We have a column, I have a column in Florida Weekly every week, and the column we have, and the current four weekly is quick reference guide to fine print in car advertisements. So you're going to get this in hometown news and also the Florida, weekly. I happen to have a copy of the Florida weekly here. I'm holding it up. You can also access almost all the information that you get here on Earl Sterling Cars as we are on radio and Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and all that by Earleoncars.com. Just go to www.orgoncars.com.

We have thousands, hundreds, hundreds anyway. Well, I'll figure roughly one a week since about 2003. Yeah. So we cover a wide variety of anything you might want to do in terms of leasing, buying, maintaining, repairing, hurlone cars.com. And we also have a book available. It's called Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer. This is available online, and no, I don't make a nickel off this book. Amazon will charge you. You go to Amazon, buy it. But 100% of the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And that's right. Exactly. Very good. Do that again.

That was good. I like that. And Big Dog Ranch Rescue is the largest no-kill shelter in Florida. We rescue 5,000 dogs a year. Amazing. It's amazing. It's amazing. It's a great place. Bringing dogs in from China and from all the hurricane areas in Puerto Rico. The Bahamas.

The Bahamas. We saved a lot of dogs with Bahamas. So buy a copy of Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer. and save a dog at the same time. So these are all the different resources that we can offer you to not be ripped off by your car dealer. That's right. How are we doing on text?

We got a few to get through. Okay. Good morning. I know you don't like infomercials, but oh well, that's what happens when you treat the public right with honesty, integrity from your sales to your service department, all first rate. A matter of fact, my wife would never set foot in the car dealership without me.

We bought our new 2019 Forewinter Limited from you and took delivery. My wife said she could do that going forward. She even takes it in for service now. I do have a question about the replacement of the tire program, which we have with you. Do you replace them with what the manufacturer had on them? Thank you, and that's from Robbie and Stewart. Thanks, Robbie. Well, the answer is no.

We use the best tire we can get because we actually feel like there are tires because we have to keep replacing them all the time. So we always try to go, whether it starts. The manufacturer's tire, by the way, is not always the best tire for the car. The manufacturer has unique specifications, whether it's a Chevrolet or it's a Rolls-Royce, or whether it's a Volvo. The manufacturers of each car design the tires, and they go to Firestone or Michelin or whomever, and they manufacture that tire to the manufacturer's specifications. And these aren't really available as such to the public.

They also tend to specify tires with softer treadware in the neighborhood of 400 instead of maybe 500 or 600. The higher the treadware index, the longer the tires last. So we tend to replace our tires with a higher treadware index than the index that you got when you bought your tires, when you bought the car new. and we have a YouTube bar. Specifically for our Tires for Life program, we like to use Kumo, Cooper, or Toyo for the most part. Mark Ryan is asking, do car manufacturers issue software updates for infotainment systems?

And if so, how are customers made aware of this and approximately how much should it cost? The basic answer for that is yes. Yes, there are updates for your radio and entertainment system in your car. They come out incredibly often with some cars. The fastest way is contact the dealer, just bring your car in, and ask your dealer to check and see if there are any updates available for yours. Incredibly often, does that mean, every day or every week?

Some cars I've seen as much as once a month until they get the system right. I've seen them, they'll update and then update again a month later. So you ought to call just for the heck of it because you might have an update, you don't even know there's a problem. About once a year I would ask if there are any updates and if your car is under warranty, here's the insider trick. Go online to the forums for your model of car and ask and see, you know, search for technical service bulletins related to your radio system or ask any other user there, have they had updates done? and what was the specific problem that they're looking for then go in and say intermittently my radio does this whether it does it or not

because you're saying intermittently they're going to say okay well let's start with the update and then let us know if that worked for you they'll update the system and boom you've got a free update in there if you're out of warranty and you're looking to get it updated just to make sure you've got the latest greatest software Most places will do so for about a half-hour labor, which is going to run you pretty much anywhere from $65 to $100 depending upon the dealership. Thank you, Rick.

All right. Let me ask you a question, Rick. How far away are we from updates like that just happening automatically with all the satellite communication that our vehicles have? And why do we get charged? It's like on my Apple iPhone, it says it's time. to upgrade your software. I push a button and it upgrades and they don't charge me a dime. I've already paid. So why should I pay for you to install your improvements to something that you designed? Now you've improved it and you're going to charge me to do it. Anyways, my main question

is, when is this just going to happen automatically? Within the next year or two. It's already, it's starting now. It is starting now. If you buy a 2020, vehicle. A lot of the newest cars have automatic updates for your infratainment system. And I would say within the next two years, there will be no more updates done at a dealership. They'll simply come directly over the airways. It happens all the time. In my Lexus, I get up to say, well, you have a software update. And what you like to do it now? I say, okay. Now the cool part is... It shows you what you got coming.

The really cool part is that I predict within the next four to five years, That same system is going to work for updates to the software that operates your transmission, your engine, your ABS system, your airbag system. All of these systems have now updatable features to them. Unfortunately, the only way to update it is to show up at the dealership and have them connect this computer to it. But within a couple of years, you're going to see that be able to be updated and they'll have it automatic. We're getting close to the Mystery Shopping Report, do we?

any more text? Yeah, we have one. A few more, but we'll get through them quickly. Good morning, picked up a new 2020 Camry XSE from ES Toyota two weeks ago. Brought it in due to excessive rattling inside the cabin area, console, front doors, and trunk deck. Is this a known issue? Rick? It's not really a major known issue. It's not something we see a lot of, but some cars do tend to make a little more noise inside than others. My recommendation, and rattles, squeaks, noises, things like this, be sure that you rot test the vehicle with a technician when you bring it in, or at least a service advisor.

And then when you pick the car up, road test it again. So many times, if you try to describe a rattle or a squeak or noise or a smell, there's nothing like real life. So make it happen with a technician by your side. And then they'll know exactly what the problem is. and when you drive it again before you take it home you'll know for exactly that the problem's been solved but one of our most common complaints at our dealership

is that I brought it in for a squeaker rattle and I took the car home and it still squeaked and still rattled and that's because the communication broke down between the customer and the service department. Absolutely. I have Mark from Palm Beach Gardens as I am sitting here watching and listening to your show

are there any other dealers in Florida that have radio with this type of concept informing consumer of things that most dealers don't want us to know? Well, it sounds self-enggrandizing, but I definitely don't think there's anything like what we do. And we go so far. I get embarrassed. I blush a little bit when people compliment us on our dealership. But we had one caller, and she just tuned in, who had a criticism of our dealership because we had a salesperson that didn't do the right thing. And we talk negatively when negative is what happened.

We talk negatively about Toyota. I just bashed Toyota 10 or 20 minutes ago for wholesaling cars that have unfixable airbag recalls. So what we just tell it like it is. It's kind of fun to be honest and transparent. People sense that and understand it. And I get embarrassed when I get too many compliments because the dealers that do have radio shows, and there are car dealers that do, it's pure self-engrandizement. They're just trying to sell cars, and it's an infomercial.

I hate infomercials. If you're going to have a commercial, call it a commercial, and don't pretend like you're trying to help people. Just go out there and sell your product, but sell it honestly. Next. We're all caught up. Oh, fantastic. Shall we have a YouTube or anything?

I got one quick one here. Give me five bucks says, I have a 2019 Honda Civic SI that drive. driver side weather stripping is coming off. Should I bring it to the dealer as this seems to be a quality issue? And the answer is absolutely you should go in there and say, hey, this is pulling loose. I want new weather stripping. And they should take care of that immediately.

If you have a vehicle that's in warranty, and particularly when it's almost out of warranty, be real careful to call anything that is suspicious to the attention of the dealership. because even if it doesn't happen again, if you're on record with the dealer that this issue occurred while it wasn't warranty, they can use that to get the warranty covered by the manufacturer. If you just ignore it because you think maybe it'll go away or it's intermittent, then you come back in after it's out of warranty,

you're going to have a hard time convincing the manufacturer to cover it under warranty. Not to mention that something like this with a piece of weather strip, It may be a common issue and it may be something that they've come out with an updated part so they get that new part on there and instead of you just gluing it back yourself you'll get a much better quality

part for the lasted life of the vehicle. Before we get to the mystery shopping report and I know a lot of our listeners have heard me say this before but with Google I'm an old guy and Google to me is like a miracle. I mean it really is part of my brain

and I am so, as a car dealer, and we all do this now. Within the dealership, we go to Google to find out things about Toyota's, and we're a Toyota dealer. The chat rooms, the people that own a particular make car go online to talk about problems they have, and if a customer complains to us about something that goes wrong with a car, we sold them, and we haven't had any other customers complained, We'll go online to see if anybody has complained, and if other people have complained, that gives us a guide as to what we should do.

YouTube? One other quick one, R.L. Edmonds, one, why do we need rustproofing on today's cars, and how do we find a reputable applicator, Bob? I'll probably be corrected on this, but I'm going to say, I don't think you need restproofing on today's cars. and I'm getting an affirmation here from Alan Napier, who knows very well. Undercoding and rustproofing was one of the most profitable things that we had years ago in cars, and then later on up north with assault on the roads and that sort of thing. I still hear people say that they undercoat their cars. Maybe I shouldn't be saying this because I'm implored, and we don't have that situation.

But, Alan, what's your opinion on any sort of rustproofing, even for cars up north? I think the dealer applied rustproofing and undercoating is snake oil. If you want to call it sound deadening, it is a good sound deadener to put undercoating under a car. If somebody is just really bothered by road noise in us now, sell them a sound deadener, but don't call it rustproofing. The rustproofing that we do like inside of a frame rail when we weld, yeah, that's absolutely necessary. but a new vehicle that's already been seamsealed, paint, and painted,

you don't need to add anything else. You've got a warranty for that. In most cases, they used to be five years, 100,000 miles. I think it's the time is unlimited now, or the mileage is. Stu, do you know? I think it's unlimited mileage. It's five years unlimited mileage, I think. And we're in Florida, and you don't get any more soul.

Then you get in South Florida, particularly near the coast. And we got two guys here that see a lot of cars, Rick Kearney and Alan Napier. And we don't see rust on cars, right? We see it when they live right next to the ocean, but only like on the brake rotors. Okay. Internal. So if you're going to rust-proof a car, you don't spray it on the brake rotors. Nope.

So there's nothing you can do to a car, folks, that's going to rust-proof it that the manufacturer hasn't already done. Yeah, save your money. Okay, let's get to the Mystery Shopping Report. I'm ready. And we mystery shop, Roger Dean Chevrolet. Now, Roger Dean Chevrolet has been around for a long time. Roger Dean was kind of like an icon in the area. He came down from Ohio, and now his daughter, I believe,

their family owned and operated. And this is on Okochelebe Boulevard. Kind of an old school dealership, I would have to say. and when we talk about red flags to watch out for when you read or watch your car dealer's advertisement, the first thing we warn you about is the really big discount. They love the huge discounts. I look for discounts.

I was ordering some mozzarella cheese from Publix the other day. He's that guy that stands there for 10 minutes looking at cheese. And I looked at the mozzarella, and I was going, And I said, oh, look, there's a discount on this one, and then there was one right alongside of it that had two mozzarella trunks in the package. And I did a little middle calculation and found out the discount was really a good deal.

And it was better than the one that was a discounted than I had two, the same brand. So it's a good criteria, and car dealers know that. And a huge discount sells a lot of cars. This really big discount is probably the most eye-catching element in car advertising more so. than the really low payment. The reason for this is that payments are relative.

A $500 payment is pretty low for a Mercedes, but it's also really high for a Honda. The really big discount is something anyone can understand. It's an absolute dollar amount. $5,000 off of anything is a big deal for most people. If you tell someone they can save $5,000, they can easily imagine what they can do with $5,000. They can pay off debt, take a vacation, save it for retirement, those sort of things,

you're tangible things that we can do. $10,000 off, that's even better. That's like a decent discount off a house or a condo purchase. We've actually seen this amount promised in car dealership has $10,000. The higher the discount, folks, the worse it gets. It's just absolutely believability thing. It's hard to ignore $10,000. I bet people who aren't even in the market for a new vehicle.

would pause to check out an ad with a discount like this. It's hard to miss. When I saw an ad for a new 2019 Chevrolet for $17,000, that's right. One-seven with three- zeros. $17,000 discount

by draw-drop. This discount is greater than the MSRP of many new cars. $17,000 is a dazzling amount of money to most people. It's about the annual income, of a person making minimum wage in Florida. I just knew this stuff.

Yeah, Sue wrote this, by the way. And I'm impressed. He was really on a roll. It's three times the average Floridians' annual health care costs. That'll get your attention. $17,000 would pay off the average college graduate student death. Amazing. So you're going to run out and buy the car just so you can pay off your student debt.

Exactly. It's irresistible, but you've got to resist it because you know the really big discount, it never happens. It doesn't happen. Ignore all car advertising, especially discounts. When we mystery shop, because we use a really big discount in their ads. We never know how they're going to get around to rationalize a discount. But somehow they always do. Usually the discount is applied to the dealer list price. Remember, we think a list price as being MSRP manufacturer's suggested retail price. No. List price means nothing. And dealer list price means it's something the dealer thought of. The list price is an inflated price invariably. It's always higher than the suggested by the manufacturer. And they justify it by adding a bunch of crap, cheap and unwanted equipment and services that they make up were at low cost to them.

and a high perceived, hopefully value. And they put it on a market addendum sticker. Sometimes they just mark it up, and they call it market adjustment, meaning that the market price by their measurement is much higher in Delray or much higher in Boca Raton. They make up a number. And they put it next to a federally mandated Monroney label. 1958 is how long that's been around

and a senator U.S. senator named Monroney came up with this great idea and somehow got it through the U.S. Congress and it became a law that this goes on every car. One of the best things that a U.S. senators

ever done for car buyers because it gave the U.S. the Monroney label gives you apples and apples comparison of the Chevrolet you want to buy or the Honda you want to buy. If you go to three different dealers and you get a discount on the MSRP, the Monroney label of the same MSRP on three different dealers, then you just take the one with

the biggest discount. But they have completely trashed the whole concept of Monroney label by going to the phony and Monroney. And that's what happened here. At any rate, the way they get around these things justifying the additional the high high discounts they say you have to qualify for a bunch of rebates like you're a farmer believe it or not I mean I'm telling you the truth there's actually a farmer discount there's a teacher discount there's a recent college graduate discount there's there's a are you an active member of the military discount and they lump them all together and if you unless you're qualified life for all of them you don't get the discount sometimes you do a combination this is what

we expect to find a Roger Dean Chevrolete okechobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach we did a little research on the new 2019 Chevrolet Silverado HD 250 they're advertising it for $17,000 discount on TV online and print ads did you actually check all three yeah and we know it's on TV yeah TV in fact we've got the TV ad we can run that for you. I'll pause here, and we're going to look at this television ad and telling me what impression are you going to get. There we go. It's running.

Put the fun in your tax refund at Roger D. Chevrolet. You'll double your tax refund up to a total of $10,000. Like a new blazer and up to $8,000 off. Release from just $274 month with $9.95 down. Silverado and up to $17,000 off. And Roger D. Chevrolet, your hometown dealer since 1960.

On the Okenthalmi Boulevard just west of I-95, West Bombie. Okay, you're sitting home. You saw that TV commercial. Tell me you don't believe that they told you that you can come in and buy this 2019 truck for a $17,000 discount. And it just, it sounds, I mean, he's so enthusiastic. that sounds legitimate.

Did you see the fine print? Well, the fine print completely trashes the whole concept that you're getting a $17,000 discount. We found out from independent resources that General Motors is

offering only a $4,000 rebate on this particular vehicle. We also know there's a pretty big markup from cost to MSRP over $6,000. With that rebate and the normal profit margin. The biggest discount that you could come up with if you wanted to give the truck away or make no profit would be $10,000. So $17,000 discount off a sticker is impossible.

So where were the other $7,000 coming from? We figured it had to be a phony Monroe, which I alluded to earlier, with a lot of dealer, I call it equipment that just trash, overpriced, undervalued garbage that they throw on the car so they can discount it. This hypothesis was supported by the confusing breakdown on Roger Dean's website. The MSRP was listed at 69,940. I don't even mind they put it up there, but the price after discounts was listed as $81,667. So it's just... Like a line through the 69 and just they went the wrong way.

They went the wrong way. I guess people just hear the $17,000 discount and don't even look at what's written. This is confusing, but bear with me. Next to series of discounts were taken off the $81,667. The price off discounts, as it was indicated. Okay, you got $10,672. That's a Roger Dean discount, whatever that is,

and it's available to anybody. A $4,000 GM consumer cash rebate, generally available to everyone. Okay. A $1,000 Roger Dean trade discount only available if you trade on a vehicle. If someone offers you a discount if you trade in your vehicle,

what does that tell you? Are they going to give you a fair price on your vehicle? Of course not. I'll give you a million dollar to trade in discount if I make you pay me a million dollars to trade the car. I mean, if they control

the appraisal, then trade discount that you get means nothing there's also a thousand dollar Roger Dean finance discount only available if you finance with Roger Dean that's questionably illegal and what does that tell you that he's going to get you on the financing charge so high that he can give you a thousand dollars so if you read and think you're not going to be taken advantage of in these things folks what really happens I think in reality you see the $17,000 discount, you get emotionally involved,

you rush into the dealership, and the next thing you know, you're not even looking at the truck you came in to buy, you're looking at something else, but the $17,000 discount before your brain could cut in and before you could examine it, got you in the dealership. And these impossible offers do get people in, and then they buy on a motion, and that's when they get themselves in trouble. So obviously the 81,667 including a massive addendum with unwanted dealer-installed equipment and services.

So we sent in Agent Tempest, our female shopper, mystery shopper, to find out, but spoiler alert, we were pretty much surprised when he found out what they were really doing. I headed down, I'm speaking as if I were Agent Tempest, I headed down to Roger Dean Chevrolet to investigate the the big discount we reviewed in their first TV ad. My cover story was that my husband and I owned a successful art restoration company, and we needed the large heavy-duty Chevrolet truck to transport large sculptors and equipment between our clients' homes and our studios. I like that.

It's a good story. Frankly, Frankie. Frankie was my salesperson. After greeting me, he led me to a private office to consult with me. I ran to the cover story. He told him that being able to save that kind of money on a truck like a silver auto 250 would be wonderful. Frankie indicated if the ad was for a particular unit, but they still had it. So there it was.

Only one available. But if the devil, it's due, it was still there. It wasn't sold. They could find it. And we've heard a lot of stories on the one car they advertised. But it was there. It was parked near the entrance. Before leading me outside, he ran over the details of the ad.

explained that the discounts totaled $17,000 and included a GM rebate as well as internal Roger Dean discounts. He added if I was trading in a vehicle and whether I was trading in a vehicle and whether I was financing or paying cash. I said I didn't have a trade, but I did plan to finance. Frankie said that I would miss out on the $1,000 Roger Dean trade discount, but he would speak with his manager to see what he could do. maybe you help me, maybe get me that $1,000 anyway. I'd go to work for you. He never asked if I currently had a GM lease in my household. I don't know why he didn't ask that, which was part of the fine print.

None of the discounts or rebates appeared to have anything to do with that. I told him about extra fees. I asked him about extra fees. Frankie said all they would add would be sales tax, standard lot fees, which I don't know what a I asked if we could look at the document of some sort that would itemize these. Frankie said, he couldn't get me anything official until I bought the car. Now, that says a lot right there. We won't show you what we're really going to do until you tell me you're going to buy the car.

Until you're in the box. Now, that's old school, right? And finally, when I pressed, he said, I really shouldn't be doing this. and then you offered to write it out and he wrote it out on a piece of paper and on the piece of paper he put down things like e-file title fee, $248

$9,995 dealer fee and what else do you have here? A tag fee. Yeah, he let the tag fee out because he said he didn't know. Yeah. But yeah, so

yeah, the top of the sale price, though, was MSRP. It's just hand written on a piece of paper, no signature. Okay, Frankie talked to me about payments and ballparked them around $1,500 per month. Wow. $1,500 per month for $70, it is a mortgage. It is a mortgage, $72 months, six years, $1,500 a month. He said, I could pay it off sooner without penalties. We didn't investigate that, but I find that doubtful.

I don't know any lender that doesn't have prepayment penalties. We'd have to look into that. I have to look into that. Familiar at GM Capital. It's the least of the sins here, but it is a sin because I don't believe it. We went outside of the truck, Frank did a great job showing me everything. He was a truck expert, railed off the specs like tow capacity, et cetera. There was no addendum of any kind on the truck.

The addendum was all in the fine print, but there was nothing on the truck. It turned out it was just an arbitrary figure, the high price, $81,000, $667 is something they created. Yeah, that's the price. I tried it again to get a buyer's order. Frankie said he can't get it for me. I said we would be back over the weekend. Frankie warned me it might be sold, and they wanted deposit. I said, I'm not going to do it.

And that's it. And here we are. They advertised a $17,000 discount. They arbitrarily decided the list price was going to be $11,727 higher than the MSRP, purely arbitrary. and that is just mind-blank going hard to believe. And then they came up with the $17,000 off. And you saw the advertisement. We've got about four or five minutes left.

We probably ought to vote on it, so we have time to do a complete vote. And if we have time, we'll play the commercial for you again, the TV commercial if you have YouTube or Facebook, and you can look at it. So let's go around and see what the votes were. I can start with Linda on Facebook, who gives them a huge effort.

Oh, huge F. Let me some text here. Melanie F, George F, Lee, F. So we've got a bunch of F. Love F. What do you got, Rick? We're waiting for the grades to come in on YouTube, but for me, it's going to be an F.

I mean, that's just ridiculous. I'm going to vote for Nancy and me, because Nancy right now is livid, and she's sitting at home, beating her head on the wall. She's watching the Facebook. Yeah, she's so upset. So F for Nancy and F for Earl. Alan, what's your vote?

It's got to be an F, and it breaks my heart because the legacy of Roger Dean. I just love the guy. Roger Dean Stadium of the ballpark. It just breaks my heart. You know, they got to play the game that their competitors are playing, I guess, to get them in a door. And all the truck dealers are advertising these huge, huge discounts.

And being in the business, I know what the deal is. but it looks good on TV when you see 10,000 off. That's enough. Yeah, by the way, Amory just texted and can't leave her out. F minus, but they deserve a D, a Z, I'm sorry. Yeah. And we try, you regular listeners, no, we try hard to rationalize. And last week we actually passed somebody marginally that I was questionable,

whether I should pass them or not. But when you don't, this is, they're not even trying to protect themselves. They're just arbitrarily. marking up a vehicle with no rationale and then discounting. That's pure deception. And we've got Mark Ryan, F, give me five bucks, F, John Strine, F, Steve E, F. And Mark Weiss says less than F, but they do say up to 17 grand off. The up to gives them clearance.

Up to, another way to lie and change the story. Yeah, well, it was up to, but they offer the $17,000 to the shopper. It wasn't up to to the shopper. And this is one of the worst reports, and I'm very sorry that Roger Dean did that, and I hope they don't do it again. We're going to put them on the do not buy from list if they're not already there. And we will be back. We will be back.

Get your act together, Roger Dean, Chevrolet, whoever's run on that store there, and don't make up discounts that you can't deliver on. Where are we now? Do we have time to run the commercial again? Let's run the commercial again. Roger Dean Chevrolet, $17,000 discount. And if you're on the radio, you can hear it. If you're on Facebook or YouTube, you can see it.

Put the fun in your tax refund at Roger Dean Chevrolet, where you'll double your tax refund, up to a total of $10,000. Like a new blazer, and up to $8,000 off. Release from just 274 month with $9.95 down. Or buy a new Silverado and up to $17,000. dollars off and Roger Dean Chevrolet, your hometown dealer since 1960.

My Okeechooby Boulevard just west of I-95, West Fombie. WWW, Ain't Gonna Happen.com. I had to go. I'm going to get my new truck. Well, you know. Well, folks, thanks very much for tuning in to Earl Stewart on Cars and Nancy Stewart. I hope we did a good job without you. We miss you a whole lot and hope you can make it back in next week. See you all next week, folks. fantastic weekend. Bye-bye, y'all.