Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.02.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Napleton Northlake Kia

Episode Date: March 2, 2019

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl's mystery shopper, Agent thunder visits Napleton Northlake Kia in Palm Beach Gardens to see if he can purchase an advertised Kia with very attractive price. 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. 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”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back again, your automotive team, a group of folks here in the studio. My name is Earl, by the way, and I'll introduce the others in just a moment. But we're here to help you avoid being taken advantage of. I used to turn ripped off usually, but let's be.

a little more genteel, how not to be taken advantage of by car dealers when you're buying or leasing a car. And for that matter, when you're repairing or maintaining your car. You know, cars are big part of our lives in America, really all over the world, and especially in Florida, because we need our cars here. We don't have a lot of mass transit. And so we have to have cars and we have to buy cars. Every four or five years, we go in, we buy another one, new or used. I think we actually increase the length of that cycle because we don't like going into buy cars. Why? Car dealers are operating just like they did in the 20th century, 100 years ago. I know we've had car dealers for 100 years, and they're entrenched in our culture.

They are entrenched in a late-night TV comedy, jokes about car salesmen, jokes about car dealers. So we've kind of accepted them because we've had to. I constantly remind the listeners to this show of the Gallup Annual Poll on Honesty and Ethics and Professions. And I apologize to you folks that hear this over and over. We have a lot of regular listeners, but a lot of folks just don't understand why we are here

and why we do what we do. The American public considers car dealers the lowest form in terms of retail. When they have to buy a vehicle, they detest the experience. Buddy, I see you called in. Thank you very much.

I'll be with you in just a second. Let me complete this thought and we'll have Buddy with us on the phone goes callers of the name of the game. So, honesty and ethics professions. There are a lot of businesses and professions in the United States. The Gallup poll went out and asked every year, since 1977, they've conducted this poll every year, over 45 years. And every year, car dealers have been at the bottom, the least honest and the least

ethical. So that's why this show exists. We're here to help you navigate that minefield, hopefully one day laws will be changed, regulators will change, a lot of changes will happen, the franchise system for car dealers. Maybe manufacturers will sell cars. They're not allowed to now. They have

to go through car dealers. And maybe your car buying experience will become a pleasant one. But until that happens, Earl on Cars, Earl Stodon Cars is here, and that's why we exist. Now, we have a caller, Buddy, from West Palm Beach. Thank you very much for calling Buddy.

how can we help you this morning good morning buddy is also known as the old geyser i've been on this earth quite a long time and i think you're a hundred percent right that the car buying experience is a lot worse than root canal it shouldn't be but that's the way it is i called some weeks ago and you gave me some really good advice at my age and 80 years old, do I buy? Do I lease? And you said at my age and at my stage that I shouldn't lease, I should buy because something could happen. I could become incapacitated. And that really registered with me. But I have a question about leasing again. I see ridiculously low prices. $119 for a fairly expensive car for a month.

What's the shell game going on there with a lot of these low, low monthly rates? What kind of down payment do you have to put down on it? Well, you know what it is, buddy. You just said it down payment. There's a law, Federal Trade Commission, says, that anything in an advertisement that modifies the payment materially has to be disclosed in the same font. size and style, and it has to be clearly and conspicuously shown alongside of the price.

All the card dealers ignore that, and what they do is they put a large down payment in the fine print, typically hidden, or if they're doing the TV, you know how that goes. They flash it on the screen so quickly. Radio, they like to use the high-speed technique where they give all the disclosure for what would normally take a person a minute to say in 10 seconds, and you can't understand a they say. So I've seen down payments as high as $10,000. A typical down payment on a lease would be $2,500. You rarely see any down payment less than $2,000. In addition to that, they require a lot of other cash out-of-pocket, like first payments sometime, security deposits,

tax and tag. By the time you add up all the down payments plus other out-of-pocket, you can be looking at $3,000 or $4,000, which is about average. So if you're buying, if you're leasing a $50,000 car, in order to get it in the area maybe $450, $500, how much would you have to put down? I'm not that good at arithmetic, buddy. Maybe my son can tell me he is more hands-on. $50,000 car to get a payment in the $450 range.

Of course, that would depend on the length of the lease. Typical lease is $3.3 years. Three years, yeah. I'm the three-year list. I mean, honestly, buddy, that is really impossible to answer because every car is a different residual. Every bank has a different program. You can kind of get yourself in the ballpark with a little rule of thumb on figuring out an installment, contract payment. So figure for every $10,000 you finance you around $200 a month, and that changes with interest rates.

But that sounds pretty close about now. But, yeah, it depends on the manufacturer and the program that they have. Am I not coming through? Switching? Oh, okay. Yeah, they're coming through, yeah. Okay, good. So, yeah, we have these new devices, by the way. Hey, there I am. There you go. We have these new devices to prevent people hearing this coughing. So, yeah, it's kind of tough to figure out on a lease.

So, you know, I can tell you right now, like a Toyota Highlander that's approaching $50,000, is going to have a lease payment probably in the upper four, maybe close to $500. But they don't have a great lease program. So that's the variable there. Yeah. Sure. I'd like to get your opinion on electric cars. Electric cars are the wave of the future. We'll see electric cars all over the place long before we see autonomous cars. People are talking about autonomous and ride sharing and a lot of other exotic.

And they're not that exotic because they will be here one day. But the first that will be here will be electric cars. And you hear a lot of talk about Tesla. You hear a lot of talk about BMW and Volkswagen and even General Motors. All the manufacturers are going all the way in for all electric cars. Toyota took a different tack, and they changed their mind, did a 180, and they're coming back all the way for all electric cars. So I think in five years all electric cars will be very common.

Really? Yes. Now, there are some glaring weaknesses. In cold weather spots, the charge lasts 40% less time. Exactly. Yeah, that's Minnesota and South Florida, two different ball games. The battery technology is moving at warp speed, and the new technology that it will take isn't here today,

but it will be here two years, three years, or five years hence. the whole, I don't know what you call it, the intelligence explosion that we're having. You know, I read the other day that there are two billion inquiries on Google daily. Google knows all, tells all. Yes. And with a huge mass of data that we have available to us, and every device that you use today is adding more data,

your smartphone, your PC, everything, is building this huge, massive database. And then you've got artificial intelligence, and you put all those ingredients together and what was breakthroughs every 10 years, 20 years ago, or breakthroughs every 10 minutes today. And that's the reason everyone's confident and putting all their eggs in the electric basket.

In Minnesota, instead of having a 500-mile range, you might have a 300-mile range, And in Florida, you know, you'd have the five or six or seven hundred miles rights. You know, you really don't need a huge range. If you've got, we're almost there today with a 300-mile range and enough charging stations, how many people need a car that's going to go over 300 miles in a day? Very few. Sure.

I have one other question. You have a very busy block, and on this busy block, everybody's got an electric car. Is that a problem? about getting power from the electrical power station? That would be in an expert field I don't have. Rick over here, I can read his mind now because we've been together so long. Rick is talking, oh, he's not, but he's buying it wrong. They have a device, I believe, in Germany or another country

where they actually put a device, a power source down the center of the road. and it's built into their highways. So wherever your car goes, it's charging all the time. So you draw from that. Really? Yeah. And this theoretically power could be supplied by solar, because when I say technology is going at warp speed,

this type of renewable power coal will not be needed, and we will have enough fuel and renewable fuel to power the electricity. The grid, all of this is a very complex problem, and a lot of people a lot smarter than I am are saying that these problems will be solved within five years. Rick, if you didn't know what I read in my mind, what were you going to say? From everything that I've been able to read on the latest Tesla figures in that, recharging the average electric car that's available right now uses about as much power as leaving a 100-watt light bulb or 150-watt light bulb on all that. night. Really?

Wow. So it's like a, it's, they're really, because they charge it a slow rate for several hours, they don't suck a whole lot of power. It's less than a television news. I have no idea. That is amazing. You probably didn't know that either, did you, buddy? No.

I mean, this is all new information. That's startling. And that, you know, five years ago, that wasn't true because there was a lot of conversation five years ago about, hey, it was this electrical car stuff, you know. You're talking about saving fuel, but think about the power it takes to create the charging of the batteries, and that was a big issue. And even Elon Musk, he was going to do a big thing with having great big batteries in your garage that would be sucking the power off the power grid at night when nobody needed it.

The Tesla wall. Yeah. And I haven't heard he talk about that. So we invent something, and two weeks later, something better comes along. And that's where we're going now. I was talking before the show started with Rick. We have a speaking engagement, Nancy and I, and Rick will be at the Cascades Men's Club and Boynt tomorrow.

We're talking about updating our what's hot and new in technology and cars because if we said something six months ago, today, we've got to update what we're talking about. Technology is moving so fast. There's another thought I just had. This is up, and most our listeners probably won't care about it because who cares about us poor car dealers? But changing the infrastructure at the dealerships

so you can sell electric cars is a pretty intimidating and big thing to do. You can imagine a car dealer with 500 new cars on his lot. They don't use gasoline, so you have to have them all charge and ready to drive at all times. So you have to basically rip up your entire property to put in hundreds of charging stations.

So if you think a consumer's got a bed, putting a charger in his house, the billions of dollars that will be spent over the next 10 years to buy a bunch of extension cords you could do that but it's really freaking me out because it's it's coming so yeah buddy uh great question i uh it's so exciting i i'm glad to see an old guy like you see i'm i'm a kid i'm only 78 so you're you're 80 but isn't it fun you're one of these guys like me that you're sure you're going to have a big celebration in 22 years but i'm saying and you're going to have, you'll be blowing a hundred

candles on that hundredth birthday thing. There you go. Isn't it fun keeping up with this kind of stuff? I've got friends of mine and I know you do too that are still living in the 20th century, but you're living all the way in the 21st and you're excited about it, and

it's fun, isn't it? Watching what's going on. My dad was born in 1892, and I can remember talking to him about the envant of electric bulbs cars, telephones, and radios. And here we are talking about, you know, what are we talking about?

Artificial intelligence. It's crazy. Thanks again. I appreciate it. Buddy, call again. You're a great call. I really appreciate it. It was great hearing from you, buddy. I'm going to give our listeners the telephone number where they can reach us,

and that is 877960-99-60, or you can text us at 7-7-7-7-7. 722-497-6-5-30. You didn't think I'd get it, did you? It's early. Hey, we have two hours of a fantastic show. And guess what, ladies? I have $50 for the first two new lady callers this morning. So give us a call.

Say hey, or give us a call, share some information with us. And remember, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. You can go there, share your feelings, give us some, well, advice on the radio show, how we can improve it. So all that and more, mystery shopping board, sit back and enjoy the ride. Frank, welcome to the show. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

How's everybody today? We never felt better, Frank. Great. I called you last Saturday. You did. Mm-hmm. I shut you up, I think. Yeah, well, kind of refra.

A lot of people haven't tuned in. And go ahead, Frank. You want to, you want me to summarize it, or will you summarize your experience? Well, I called you last week because of the Costco salesmen, not the Costco salesman. Exactly. They didn't give me the sheet.

Yeah, they, Frank is a customer mine and full transparency Earl Stewart, Toyota. I've been in the car business at that location since 1975 and I was a Pontiac dealer before that in 1960. So I am

a car dealer and I'm talking to you on the phone as a recovering car dealer I mean on the radio and I'm attacking a lot of other car dealers and I've come across sometimes it's holier than now and it's like I do everything right and everybody else should do everything right

So my customer, who's on the phone right now on this radio show, Frank, came into my dealership and on the Costco program, which I strongly advocate as being a good way to buy a car. Costco is a great company. Nancy and I shopped there all the time. Great prices. They treat the customers properly. You have to be a member of Costco, but it's a very reasonable price. And their auto buying program requires that the car dealers have been.

participate, offer you the lowest price that they will sell the car to anybody. And they have a Costco price sheet that the Costco dealer is supposed to show the customer, Frank, went into my car dealership and talked to one of my salespeople and said that he would like the Costco price. The salesperson had given him a price, and he said, you didn't need the Costco price because his price was the same. And then Frank asked if he could see the price go, price sheet. And the price sheet, he said, either there wasn't one, you can correct me,

or you don't need to see the price sheet, and that's the way it happened. So Frank called up last Saturday and explained it, and I had a mild stroke, I think. I slumped over and was revived because it was so embarrassing what had happened. And yeah, that's the story, and we went back, or actually my son, Stu, went back, and we had some conversations and discussions, and we think we got everything straightened out. I hope so. I spoke to Frank a few times last week. So you picked up the new car. Tell us what happened.

I picked it up last night. I got there, quarter to four. I left at 7 o'clock, too many papers to sign. and I have a half hour of learning in the dark so I'm going to go back again this afternoon and this house will teach you some other things well I want to say thank you and it was a great experience

and I sent that link of that show to my Mullen Motors and New York and they call actually they call me Thursday night thank me and thank you for the plug well that's great frank you know

this is talk radio in space and this is what I really wish we could have more of people don't believe me when I say we like people to call the show and give their opinion and tell it like it is

you know there's so many talk shows out there now where it's a love fest between the host and the callers and I think they sometimes they screen the callers you know you call in the Rush Limbaugh show, if you want to say something bad about Rush, you don't get to talk to Rush.

You've got to tell Rush how much you love him. And we think it's far more interesting and entertaining. And I think the ratings on the show are better when there's legitimate honesty and controversy. So here, Frank, came in and said, hey, Earl, I mean, these are my words, not Frank. Hey, Earl, you're telling us how Costco is such a great program, what a good car dealer you are. and I went into your car dealership and the salesman didn't do anything that you said he was supposed to do.

Didn't give me the lowest price. Wouldn't show me the Costco. And I just sat there with my mouth open and I said, I'm sorry. I apologize to Frank. And we went back and I had a heart-to-heart talk with our salesperson and management and really kind of stirred up everything.

When you come across on the radio is holier than thou. It's kind of like being a priest or a pope or, you know, if you're a lawyer, you're held to a higher standard. People that profess to be honest are held to a higher standard. Rick, you have a point. Well, quite often when we do the mystery shops, we wonder if the guy that owns that dealership knows what's going on down in the trenches.

Exactly. If he really knows what's happening down in those low ends. And they really, you know, they're insulated so much. now you I can say because I've been I've worked for you for 25 years you probably have a better idea of what goes on in the bottom line of your dealership than most others thank you and yet this goes to show you know nobody's perfect yeah and but this this this is why we're here is so that if we aren't perfect hey let's let's try to make it better oh thank you and I I tend to think that some owners know but don't know if you know what I mean Willful ignorance. It's called plausible deniability.

That's a legal term. Plausible deniability. And when someone up the chain, up the food chain, says, I didn't know about the embezzlement. I didn't know about the taking advantage of the customers. I didn't know about this. The first thing the court needs to know when they sue him or try to arrest him is, did he have a reasonable, should he have known?

And plausible deniability. but a lot of car dealers profess not to know. I think more of them know than we realize. Frank, thank you again and all those folks listening. Anybody, any customers of mine out there, I encourage you, if you see something wrong at my dealership, I want to hear about it on the air live. We talk about other car dealers.

I deserve the same treatment as they. And when somebody treats the customer wrong, If I treat the customer wrong, I want to talk about it right here on live radio. And Frank, thanks so much for being my customer and for telling the truth and making the show a more interesting show. Now, imagine how nice it would be if all the dealers were that way. Yeah. Frank, Frank, thank you so much. Well, I have a comment.

Thank you. Thank you. I have a comment on what you guys just said about dealerships. And I think that some of the owners of these dealership, they encourage the culture with their salespeople, with everybody in the dealership in its total deception. And this is what they do every single day. But we here at Earl Stewart on Cars, we are trying very hard and we are achieving by giving you the necessary information that you need by reading a mystery shopping report. And Earl is taking them down one at a time. I hope that you'll take that as a compliment, recovering car dealer.

877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-6-530. And remember ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers, so give us a call. Mark is holding from Fort Lauderdale. Good morning, Mark. Good morning. I want to talk about a service experience I had this week. I think you should mystery shop the service department is

of somebody's company because I had a beauty this week at the Puerto Lord of Grico Chevrolet you familiar with him Which one Chevrolet? What Chevrolet?

Grico, yeah, yeah, yeah. Love to hear the story. He's a relatively new Chevrolet dealer in South Florida. He came down from New Jersey, I think, and bought a bunch of car dealerships and Chevrolet is one of about a dozen that he's bought down here in South Florida.

Well, I'd bought a sweet cars. I bought the first one, when it was Marooning, then I bought one with the Auto Nation owned it. And last year, last January, I bought one, the Greco owns, I think. Because I was very close to where I live. So far, we've been, but sales, no problem. The people change constantly.

But I went in Tuesday morning. I was driving by, I said, I didn't want to get my oil change. I'd like to make an appointment. So she said, when? I said, tomorrow morning at 9. Good. I show up next morning, a quarter of 9, walk in in the late reception league.

she gets up she takes my keys and she's going directly to one of the guys in a little glass boost the service advisor I soon and this girl's about

nine and a half months of pregnancy I felt so bare when she got up we could have done this sitting down but she never heard the way she did it every party she points you to waves are off and nobody

they're all by themselves but they're all wave off they were too busy to deal with whatever I had to deal with so feeling bad she takes my keys and writes my phone number she goes

it's just routine service We'll make it happen. We'll call you later. So I leave there. Now it's five and nine. So by quarter three, I'd give him a call to see if on my car. I've heard nothing. And different lady answers.

I'm very nice. And she says, who's your service of hers? I don't know. So she pumbles around. I guess I'm one hole for a good five minutes. So she transfers me to somebody, the name, excuse me. And I get his voicemail. So I got my call back.

I said, look, I don't want to talk to voice, but I want to get my car. But 4 o'clock, I got it goes with me. So she says, he's sitting at his desk doing nothing. He's not picking up his phone. I said, because I'm going to take your number down and go walk over, hand it to him, and he'll call you. About 10 minutes later, he finally calls me. And he starts, he says, I want to talk about your car. I said, well, you can talk to my car.

I can tell me what happens. Why has my car been there all day? I've never heard from nobody. He said, well, I've got your keys. You're getting really, really agitated. I didn't get your keys to 1 o'clock. I'm going to, sir, I have employment at night. fuck i was there plenty early all i want to do is get my old change next each right he turns around

he says me your car's right or pick up and he hangs up on me oh wow so now i'm like a few in a bit my neighbor picks me up i get had to get the car and i'm pulling the receptionary now the lady that checked me in the morning she's sitting in the back probably because she's tired and there's another lady out front so she finds my papers and i hand my credit card it was $49 what they did and uh and she's He said, how did you make out to ask that to our last? I'll never be back. And, you know, it was a question she had to ask, and she didn't listen to the answer.

I could have said I just jumped off the roof. But she said, she used to pay a no attention to me. So she handed my receipt. And about that time, guys walking in with a Greco shirt on. And he says, and he says, you've got to talk to the service manager. I'd love to. So he said to the lady, just took my money, can you get a hold of so and so, and so, and so. Well, he had to say it three times, and finally on the third time,

She picks up the phone and says he's not in his office. I said, well, I don't know what that means. So now I'm standing there talking to this guy with her shirt on over and say, I don't know who he is. And I guess I stand in for a good five minutes, maybe more. And finally, a little girl, Sierra comes out and she's got a piece of paper in her hand. And she goes, you know, Mark, I said, yeah, he's just you. I talk to the service manager, we credit all your money back. Here's your receipt.

I said, that's very nice. We didn't solve anything. Yeah. I'm thinking, it's time for me to get out the door. Now, here, here's what Earl Stewart was going to come in. The girl in the next booth weighs me over. The glass, the next glass enclosure weighs me over. I'm thinking, oh, my gosh, that they really cares.

She said, I'm so on and sorry, I don't mean those, and I can overhear your problem. I said, oh, thank you. She goes, I give her my name, and she goes, like a computer she sees, you know, two seconds. She has me. She goes, I'm going to do something for you today to make sense we're so sorry. I'm going to turn your own store back. Because you're going to do what? She's going to do what?

She's going to turn to your own store back. I'm going for six months for free. I said, do you the on-star sales purchase? She goes, yes, I am. I said, I didn't come here to get sold something. I didn't come here.

I said, nice effort, nice try. I mean, you know, and then, but with that, I took my paper and

and she tried to give me a gift to a restaurant for an appetizer or something, and I went out to do her. And it was never going back. Three cars I bought there. I got 100% loyal to their, especially when it was Maroney, then order on the age, they were pretty good,

but the people, yeah. It changed every time you go in there. It's unbelievable. This Grico people, their employee turnover has got to be unbelievable. Well, one of the biggest challenges, Mark, our service departments, and as I listen to your story, again, in total honesty and transparency, we've had similar problems.

Service is a real challenge, especially in larger car dealerships. If you have a lot of customers coming in, the logistics is scheduling, and clearly Grico hasn't got it figured out yet. one of the things that I would recommend you do is first of all have your maintenance done somewhere else you don't have to take your car back to the dealer you bought it from you can take it to an independent for that matter I've got a copy of consumer reports in my hand

it's the let's see it's the February edition and they have an article in their auto repair shop ratings independent shops with high ratings in our area you have NAPO auto care you have Firestone, you have Tires Plus, you have Pepp Boys, all of those have good ratings by the consumer reports. They also break down the ratings by different manufacturers.

But if you find a good technician or a good independent or another dealer, they can do your Chevrolet service, you don't have to take it to the Chevrolet dealer, Gricko or any other Chevrolet dealer. Find one that will give you quick, efficient service. You got an oil change? You want to be in and out in an hour, hour and a half max. To be there all day like that is crazy. And what Grico tried to do was nice.

You know, they didn't charge you. That was a nice thought. They wanted to give you the free OnStar. That was a nice thought. But like you say, you didn't come in there for that. You came in there to get your oil change and get out and have the rest of your life back for the rest of the day. So my recommendation to you is change. Give Tires Plus or Pet Boys.

a change. See how that goes. Well, I'm definitely going, I'm never going back in their dealership again. I actually went on your website looking for a Chevy dealer here to you recommend down South Florida, but there isn't one. No, no, you're better off. You know, you're best and bad guys. There's no good Chevy dealers here.

But that is the biggest challenge of any car dealer. I'm a car dealer, and I have to be honest with you, my service to buy them's open seven days a week, and people come in. We operate about 75, 80 percent by appointments, but the person has to coming without appointment, he has to come in. He's got something he needs done. And we're not as efficient as I'd like to be either. And all car dealers

have this challenge. And I recommend anybody other than warranty work if you can find a good technician independent or otherwise, they can get you in and out quickly at a fair price. Use them. And the car dealer would you have to for warranty work?

I think that's good advice that's what I'm going to do. I'll never step foot. And again, I bought three cars here. That string of a vent is over. Yeah, you think they owe you efficient service, but unfortunately car dealers haven't figured it out. And it's not just Greco Chevrolet.

Most car dealers, of any size, really have a challenge in their service departments. The better they are, the bigger they are, sometimes the bigger challenge. So the independents seem to have got it figured out than most car dealers. I have to be honest with you. I'm a car dealer, and I'm

confessing. That is the fact. Well, your show is fantastic. My buddies live up in the Stewart area, and before they go fishing, I sound in a morning, they listen to you. And that's how I found out. I'd be sure I've been listening for about six months. Mark, please call again. Your call was great. I tell you, your passion couldn't be made up.

You were really angry, and you had a right to be. And please call again. All right, thanks again. I'm glad you could share it with us. Give us a call, toll, free. at 877-960-99-60 and remember you can text us you can text us at excuse me 772 4976530 and remember you can vote on the mystery shopping report this morning we would love to hear from you I think that I'll hand it over to you

okay I think we have a couple of postings or text that came in we do Stu's got a mark on the pad there that's right the first one came in actually we have another one but I'll start with the first one okay so buying a car out of state they keep telling me they need to collect my state's taxes and tidling fees in Missouri how does this work when you're tax exempt in Missouri if you sell a car within 60 days for more than you bought your new car so say I buy a car in Florida for $20,000 and sell mine in my home state a day later for $25,000 if I don't have to pay sales tax, why does the dealer in Florida demand it regardless? And I think I can address this.

Well, I'm glad you do because I don't know the answer. Well, I kind of don't know the answer, but I'm going to navigate my way through this. Oh, you're going to fake it, okay. I'm not going to fake it. Here's something I do know, and this is a fact, that when you're buying a car out of state, depending, some states are considered reciprocal with the state where you're buying the car. So that means if you're buying a car in Florida, let's say you lived in North Carolina. And now don't quote me on this because I don't know if North Carolina is reciprocal. If the states are reciprocal, Florida would collect the sales tax and that money would go to the state where you're registering in the car.

Some states are not reciprocal. So that means you buy the car, you do not pay sales tax, but you pay sales tax in the state where you live when you register the car. So to answer the question about Missouri, you need to insist to the Florida dealer that they contact the DM. in Missouri and work this out because you're right it doesn't make any sense that you're going to have to cough up thousands of dollars in sales tax only to get it reimbursed later there's something here that doesn't make complete sense yeah and if the dealer won't do that for you or doesn't have

the expertise to do it then you need to talk to the department motor vehicles in florida and they would i i do know it's a big problem we got 50 states and uh i know from experience the most difficult state that we have to work with is Massachusetts. Yes. And there are other states. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And there are other states, all states have different laws.

So, car dealers, the most valuable, slight exaggeration, the most valuable employee and most car dealerships is a really good title clerk. The person that understands all the DMVs all over the United States about policies and procedures.

Because in Florida, especially, we have a lot of snowbirds. They come here, and Florida, buy a car, then they go home. And you have to know two sets of title laws. Florida's title laws and the other 49 states. So it is really a good title clerk is worth his or her weight in gold. If you have a title clerk that's not that good, then go to the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles, and they will advise you. You're not exaggerating.

I'm telling you, we get questions all the time, and it is mind-boggling. I have a sister who's selling me her car in Alaska and we're shipping it to North Dakota, and I'm getting a, it's It's going to be titled in my grandfather's name and the loan's going to be in my name. How much do I pay in sales tax? And we look at them and go, it's time to call our title clerk. Yeah. Well, we have, it's not our title clerk. We have a woman named Janet Getz that probably knows more about title law in all states than any person I know.

So if anyone that has a real hard problem, you can text us and I'll forward it to. Well, I have to be in true transparency. When I saw that text, I texted Janet. I said, help me out quick. We're going to get to this text. And I haven't heard back from her yet, and she's off today. That's fine. And so I winged it, and I think we did okay, right?

Oh, absolutely. Okay. We have a text from Amory, who is, she's a great text. She comes up with some great questions, and she listens every Saturday. So, hi, Amory. So Amory says, good morning. I see where Tesla is saying they will close their showrooms to save money. How is anybody supposed to buy a Tesla, get it delivered, and get it fixed?

if something goes wrong if there are no showrooms or dealerships. Thanks. I saw the news on that, and that really was interesting, Ann Marie. Tesla, as you know, is confronted with a cash flow problem. In fact, it was yesterday that there were a lot of loans that could come due. They owe hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's going to be challenged Elon Musk and Tesla to survive. And one of the things that he's had to do, is closed his brick and mortar stores around the United States. He won't close all of them. In some states, it's very complicated.

In some states, the law requires that you have a facility, that you have a physical presence in the state if you're going to sell cars in that state. I have to believe that Tesla will keep facilities in states where they can service a car. And in those same facilities, they'll probably have cars that you can drive. I can't imagine them being able to sell cars entirely online without cars being out there in the 50 states that they can look at.

I mean, if you want to buy a new Tesla, people like to look at it. Maybe they'd have some setup where people that already have a Tesla could get a credit from Tesla if they let you come and look at their car and drive their car for a little bit to see if you want to buy one. Well, forward that to Elon Musk. Almost like a peer-to-peer thing. That's a great idea.

Yeah, I'm not... Somebody's going to call up and say, I want to buy. Okay, I want to. I need a test drive your car. Right. Anyway, it's a very interesting thing. There was a clip on this same article, Anne-Marie, and I was trying to get the video on it.

I wanted to play it because the discussion proceeded to one of what is going to happen if Tesla is permitted to sell cars entirely online. What if the states make this okay? Are the other car dealers, manufacturers, I should say, well, they follow suit. In other words, when you stop and think about it, I'm a manufacturer, let's say I'm General Motors.

And I've got all these car dealers out here, thousands of them, and I have to service them, I have to work with them. I mean, they're problems. I mean, they are a big responsibility. If I'm General Motors, wouldn't I rather just sell all my cars directly, like Apple sells, iPhones and Macintosh computers? It would be a lot easier. Then I could have show rooms where I could show the General Motors cars, and I could have shows, I could have areas where I could fix them. Why do I need all these car dealers that make everybody so angry that they have to have a show like Earl Stewart on cars to keep car buyers for being taken advantage of?

They're going to have to fight that card dealer lobby, though. So the debate, right, the debate on CNBC, Swackbox the other day, was about this. And the people on Swackbox were saying, what do we need car dealers for? And then it got into the discussion of we can't not have car dealers because we have state franchise laws that entrenched them. I've talked about this before. Car dealers are protected species. You can't eliminate car dealerships because state laws protect. protect them. And there we are, full cycle. But Ann Marie, it'll be interesting. Elon Musk and Tesla

is going to really throw the gauntlet down, and it's going to get a lot of people thinking when they close all these facilities around the United States and they start selling these cars online, a lot of people are going to be thinking, what do we need car dealers for? Elon's going to start writing a lot of campaign checks, all the campaign contributions. Exactly. And as a car dealer, it's frightening to me. I've been in the business since 1968, that's my livelihood. That's where I make my money, my son, my wife, my three sons. We'll just do radio full-time.

Yeah, we'll have to be gone. But we talked earlier about things changing in technology. We're talking about the way cars are being sold will change. Just a question of when. It is going to change. The gentleman they were interviewing yesterday when you were trying to tape that complete interview. You know, he talked about the infrastructure. how important it was that the consumer wants to sort of, shall I say, touch it, feel, it, smell it, kind of thing.

And the car industry is going to change, but to what depth, what length, he didn't know. And just because the infrastructure is someplace that a person wants to go. I think we have a caller. I'll give you that. Stu, do you have another text until he writes that up? but we got Doug, and I'm thinking maybe Ollie is on the line. Oh, yeah. Okay, that's right. It could be a different, Doug. We don't know yet.

It is, Doug from Boa with Ollie and his wife. Good morning, Doug. Hey, hey, don't scare Ollie. That's not Ollie. Oh, no, that's our door. That's Rudy tormenting, Ollie. We don't have a meow. Do you hear that, Doug?

Yes, I did. I heard that. That's Rudy in our control room. He's got a sense of humor. So I wanted to talk about this thing with buying cars online. After leasing our cars from Honda, it was actually Del Rey Honda. I put up a good fight and I won, but still, the amount of aggravation dealing with some of these dealerships is just crazy. And I used to produce, you know, commercials for, I mean, at least nine, ten years or stuff. So I figured, you know, even when I was doing that, you know, they were still difficult. Doug, do you know who owns Del Rey Honda?

No. Warren Buffett. That's a... You've got to be kidding. No, really? Yeah, Warren Buffett owns Delray Honda. It's the, of course, Berkshire Corporation. Warren Buffett is the head guy.

And then they also own Deerfield, Toyota. But it was a Van Tile Auto Group owned it. And then Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway, bought out the Van Tile Auto Group. And that was owned, that's Del Rey Honda. It's interesting that they, I think, I don't know the dealership very well, we should shop them. But they seem a cut above. I wish you would. I used to produce commercials for that Honda dealership,

but they used to be called Who Wood Sherwood? I did those commercials, if you remember those. I do, yeah, I was friends with the whole Sheehan family, Butch Sheehan and Sherwood Sheen and Tom Sheehan, family-owned dealership, and I've known them for many, many years. Wow. I remember... Bush was an unusual guy.

Territ was an interesting character, but I guess he was upset one day until he called me in. And I just did the commercial. He said, what's going on with my air time? And I go, I don't know. And he was pretty hot. Yeah, interesting guy.

But I was going to say the online thing seems to me like that would be the future. because people, they don't have a lot of time and I know maybe the cars could just be delivered to the house, you know? Exactly, exactly. There you go, you got your car. Yeah, the cars are pretty,

if you can drive one Honda Civic, you're pretty sure that the Honda Civic you buy online will be exactly like that, and they've got a reputation. You can check them out. I think online is definitely, definitely a way for the future. And in terms of servicing cars,

there's so little service required now that the service centers could be very basic. There was a time when, you know, cars are very difficult to service and take care of, and they broke a lot and required a lot of maintenance. No longer the case. And when we get all electric, it'll even be less of a problem to service of cars

because they require practically no service whatsoever. I could see it now. Earl Stewart, in the sunrise club and there's cars on the beach we're always going look at the sunset you've got to move to Daytona for that

you know I try to keep it non-commercial because the sunrise is kind of like my transcendental meditation what Doug's talking about a lot of our listeners are wondering every morning Nancy and I go out and we actually live video on Facebook the sunrise

we've been doing it for years and it's really a a fun time. Doug is a member of the Sunrise Club, and we go out there and we watch the sunrise, that's all we do, and we see some dogs on the beach. It's turtle season, so we'll see some we'll see some turtles

laying eggs, and we'll see boats going by, and we talk and chit-chat. We have hundreds, even thousands of people. We have people from Australia and South America and all over the world. Egypt, it's really kind of cool. Then Doug, we have

fun. It's really grown. So, all you Sunrise Club members. I wanted to thank you guys for all that you do and keep doing what you're doing. You're great people. Thank you.

Thank you, Doug. Thanks for being part of the show. Did you know the Consumer Report launched the auto edition, the auto issue, 71 years ago. Wow. Really?

Yeah, 71 years ago. I was seven years old. And that was in 1948. Wow. I honestly thought like consumer reports like came to be in the 70s or something like that. You know, after, you know, the post-nader, you know, the consumer revolution. Yeah. That's weird. And their birth was in 1936.

That's great. Great news. Well, we got another text here, don't we soon? Yes, we do. And we have a text from a regular listener, caller, and texter. This is Don and LaBelle. Don says, or asks, would a salesperson and a no-dealer fee store earn more commissions on average than selling in a store with dealer fees

because the latter would not get paid on the dealer fee. And so salespeople should seek to work where there's no dealer fee, correct? Donne on the bell. That's exactly right, Don. In fact, I did a blog on something I think the title was joined the Witness Protection Program, car salesman, and it had to do with asking car salespeople to contact us regarding a class action suit on the dealer fee.

And in the blog article, I made that very point, that the dealer is not only taking advantage of the customers by sneaking the additional profit into the price after he's advertised the car or quoted the price he's also taking advantage of the salespeople a car salespeople typical pay plan in florida would be 25% of the profits you make on a car so the car salesman make a car dealer makes a thousand dollar profit on a car the salesman makes two hundred fifty dollars now if the car dealer makes a thousand dollar profit on the car Plus, he has a $1,000 dealer fee. The car dealer makes $2,000 profit, but he only pays the salesperson $250. So he gets only half the commission he should. That's called a PAC, by the way, which is another thing.

They get drawn through the ringer in multiple ways. So the dealer fee is basically a profit that they set aside and they apply their commission rate on the rest of it. But they also take out arbitrary amounts out of the commission I mean out of the profit called a pack so they might have a $500 pack so before they apply your percentage

they remove another $500 or $1,000 out of the profit. But I think that the car salespeople, I know we got car sales people listing, someone should rise up, go on and hire an attorney. I mean I hate, you know, I don't like to advise anybody to hire a lawyer. I think that there's so many

other ways to resolve issues without lawyers. We have more lawyers in Florida than anywhere else. I think in the country and we have more lawyers in the country than any other country in the world. So I've got a problem with lawyers but I'm still

going to say if you're being taken advantage of and you go to your car dealer and you say look you make we shopped a we mystery shopped dealer today that has a $2,000 dealer fee I believe

or was it $1,400 approaching $2,000 when you have he had three dealer fees. So let's say it was $1,500 dealer fee. And the salesperson doesn't get paid on that. What's $25% of $1,500? Don't make me do this.

$400 and some of the dollars. Okay. So every time he sells a car, he's taking $400 out of your pay. So all you pokes out there, $375, I was close. Oh, thanks, Rudy. Rudy did that. In your head?

Oh, wow. Mental math. Must be a math major. I'm trying to teach my 11. So you car sales people out there are being taken advantage of, and I think you've got a great class action suit against car dealers that charged dealer fees. People don't understand the dealer fee. It is so complicated.

There's so many levels of evil. Been around forever. Amazing. My father, who started selling cars in 1937. Invented the dealer fee. Well, he may have. but he had, his dealer fee was $6.50. $6.50.

I came to work for him, and it might have been lower than that. It's about $1,000 in today's money. I didn't come to work for him until 1968. I saw the $6.50 dollar and $0.50 dealer fee, and I said, oh, you know, that's what it is. That's what it is. It didn't come. So people accept things because everybody does it the same way. So Donna LaBelle, great question.

you salespeople out there think about it. Call lawyer class action suit. Your car dealer is taking advantage of you if he does not pay you your percent commission on the dealer fee because legally it is declared profit to the dealer.

And look at your car dealers have should have a compensation agreement that all of the salespeople have a copy of. It should be clear and obvious which you get paid on, which don't get paid on. See if they separate the dealer fee as you don't get paid on it. If they don't, I think it

got grounds for suit. Absolutely. So what do you think you could buy for $6.50 way back in 1968? Oh, gosh. What year did you say your dad started? 1937. 37, he had $6.50 dealer fee. According to the Dollar Times website, that is the equivalent of $116.64 today. It would have been the lowest one in town. Lowest one in town. Oh, right. See?

There is a streak of good running through us. Absolutely. All right. The next one, this is from an anonymous texter in Stewart. It says, good morning. My in-law, who is 94, just leased a car for 36 months, approximately three months ago. Now they have to go to long-term care, unfortunately, and will not be able to drive it. What is the most economical way of terminating the lease?

Thank you, with Stewart residents. president well that's a that is a sad story and uh we get so many calls like that and you recall the earlier if you were listening to the show earlier i believe it was frank called and he was talking it wasn't frank it was a buddy buddy called and he asked me last week about leasing and we talked about the downside of leasing when you're older you can become incapacitated whatever reason you can't drive anymore course you pass if you pass away This is a situation here where a 94-year-old person could not drive anymore and went to long-term care. The sad news is you have a 36-month contract, and you must honor that contract.

The lessor, the lessee must honor that contract. If you pass away, your estate must honor the contract. So a 36-month lease, you owe 36-month payments. If you're incapacitated, you still have to pay. if you pass away, your estate has that debt. We get so many comments like this because we're in South Florida. A lot of folks are elderly. And unfortunately, a large number of these people encounter this problem.

The leasing companies, at least the upscale leasing companies, manufacturing leasing companies in South Florida, or all over Florida, encountered this. And some of them are realistic enough. not to pursue it in the courts. Now that doesn't mean that they won't record a judgment, but they will not take it to court. I think they do that because the PR would be so bad

taking the estate or an elderly person who was incapacitated to court because they couldn't make their payments. It would be such a horrible human interest story that they say, we won't do this. But they will go after you in terms of they'll write the letter, they'll make the demand, make the demand it will go against your credit report and it's the same thing so i just say think

twice before you lease a car if you're over 65 and talk to your son daughter grandkids uh relatives make arrangements as a contingency find somebody that should you not be able to drive will agree to take the payments over on your lease because otherwise you are going to be on the hook for a lot money. If you buy the car, you can take that consideration with the down payment of the payments you do make. You will have equity. Even if you're break-even equity, you're able to sell the car and get out of it. You might even make a small profit on the car. You lease, then you're not going to have any equity at all. Okay. The last text we have, and this is a great one here, says, good morning. I had not heard about the Takata Airbag fiasco until I became a listener.

I went to a dealer in Fort Lauderdale and almost purchased a Lexus 430. I followed your advice and checked safercar.gov and saw the car was subject to the recall. Didn't buy. Thank you. You may have saved the lives of me and my girlfriend. Patrick. Thank you very much.

Safercar.gov. You know, if you haven't written any of our numbers down, if you haven't written anything down, write that down, please. www.safercar.gov, GOV. I always forget the Gov. G-O-V. It's not org, it's not com, it's not net, it's gov. And that is a website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, NHTSA,

www. www.safercar.gov. And Patrick followed up with a second text. He says, by the way, I'm a listener in Tampa, which is really cool. He says, also tell her I'm a lawyer. Not all of us are bad. He's like car dealers. And I, you know, I just, I just, a matter of fact, some of my best friends are lawyers.

Yeah. That's supposed to be funny. Yeah, well, yeah. Right, you're the token lawyers. I, um, I, what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is that, that if you, any lawyer has to get paid for his time. And I always suggest to people, if you're dealing with a business, try to go up the, the, the, the, the, ladder to the top guy you can get to or gal in the business. Owners are best, but if you can get a real general manager, somebody up the ladder, and you talk to them, you've got about

at least a 50-50, maybe better chance of getting it reconciled resolve there. If you deal at the lower levels, you're really not getting, you're not going to get a resolved. And if you go to a lawyer, he's going to charge you probably. Now, some of them operate on contentious. you see. But even then you could be charged for court costs. So I say exhaust all other reasonable make it. Take it as far as you're comfortable taking it or capable of taking it. Yes. And then

get professional help. I did comment to Patrick that lawyers are ranked much more ethically than car dealers are according to Gallup, so don't feel too bad. We can take shots at those guys. You know, when my I just, I got a confession of my confession

of recovering car dealer. Here's another one. One of my reasons for my negative bias toward lawyers is back in the day when I wasn't a good car dealer and when I would do things that were not ethical or not right

and I would get sued but they weren't illegal and I would fight these in court and I would I had one there's a lawyer out there named Ray Inglesby

and he specializes in suing car dealers I love Ray we love Ray and I were friends now. Today. A great story I should write a book about that and Ray sued me many, many times. It's a Lex Luthor Superman story.

Exactly. And Ray Alesby sued me many, many years ago and he won and then I appealed my conviction and I lost the appeal and then this is years now. Then I appealed the fourth district court of appeal

to the Florida Supreme Court and I won in the Florida Supreme Court how much money did I spend how much time did I spend how much aggravation did I spend it was about that time that I had my recovery and I said I'm not going to get sued anymore if someone thinks that they've been taking advantage of

I'm going to take care of them and as my witness Nancy and Rick and Stu have we been sued yes very very few times I think, like, well, yeah, I mean, in the last 20, since I've been working for you, four times maybe, three times. And so it's just so much better to resolve things at the lower level.

I think we have a call. And I got a name for your book. Ray and me. Ah, I love it. Ray and me by Earl Stewart. I just, it rings. Beautiful. Okay, we are going to go to Ken, and he's calling us from Ann Arbor.

Wow. Good morning. Hello, good morning. Good morning. How are you? I just texted you, I am fine. I hope everybody is fine over there in Florida. Yes.

Excellent. I just texted you a photo of Peep. Yes. And you're probably wondering, why do you have a photo of peeps? So I was very intrigued. I just replied, I'm intrigued. So Ken has sent us a picture of these delicious sugar-encrusted marshmallow candies that are popular on Easter. Oh, my kids love them.

All right. Sorry, Ken, go ahead. Oh, no problem. And, I mean, Earl was talking about carnuba wax. So, because of Easter, everybody has probably millions of leftover peeps. And if you look at the ingredients on peeps, you will see that they have food-grade carnuba wax. I'm zooming in now. Yep.

Holy mackerel. And it's all peeps. Now, what that means is your colon will have that nice, shiny glow. And, and your car, actually, you can use this, you know, you get an old beater car and you rub a peep on it. Yep, rub a peep on there. And it's actually cheaper than buying carnivore. Oh, I cannot say. That's the highlight of our show.

I love that. Oh, my God. We have got to do a YouTube video testing this. Peeps on a car. Michael Prussune, if you are listening, this is your next project. And so I figured you'd know the answer to this, and just as a caution, as a paramedic, two years ago, Oreos came out with peeps that were pink in color, and what happened, peep poop turned red, and you can Google this, and see, it's there.

So be cautious of eating some of the red peeps if you're going for a colonoscopy. I'm curious, so the peeps are, it's a soft, delicious marshmallow candy, but it's covered with crystal and crystal sugar. Would that be abrasive to the finish of the car? Well, you suck the sugar off. You know, you'd think so, but this is where we have to test this on, and inconspicuous. Whose car are we going to test this on? Not mine. How about like an old junker wholesale piece that we're going to get rid of?

Well, you know, it makes me feel good. Canoeba wax is edible because when we talk about, you know, how good it is, you know, it's kind of a bio-friendly thing. Yeah. I mean, it's not only the best wax, but you can eat it. And plus, when you're wax in your car, you expend a lot of energy to get hungry, so you could just scoop out a handful and take a bite. Now, we better research that before someone tries it.

Don't do that. Yeah, please. Sorry. Don't eat canoble wax. We've got to try it. We've got to test this. I was at the store when I saw the peeps. The first thing that came to my mind was Earl's.

Sure. There we go. Do you do stand-up on the side? No. You should. I have a son. My younger son, Josh, is a natural-born comedian, and I keep trying to get him to go out and try some stand-up. Ken, you should do some nighttime stand-up. You have got a quick wit. Well, thank you. All right. Well, have a great day. Thank you, Ken. Okay, Ken, before you go, have you ever seen what happened? My daughter actually turned me on this.

She said, what happens when you put peeps in the microwave? They are really big. Within a few seconds, they expand out huge, and as soon as the microwave shuts off, they just flopped down into a flat little pile of nothing. And so mystery shopper should try that. Yeah, that'd be fun. Ken, we're going to depend on you to call us every week to keep us humored. Please.

If I'm not traveling, I'll give you a call. Thanks, Kim. All right. Thank you. That's so funny. And it's so funny. I get this picture of a shelf with hundreds of peeps on it, and I'm scratched my head going, did my daughter send this to me?

What's going on here? Shopping list, yeah. That was interesting. Very interesting. Hey, I'm clinging to the 2019 auto issue of Consumer Report, the April edition, and I want to tell you, there's so much interesting. information in here ladies and gentlemen and i'll tell you earl and i made the best decision when we decide well did we decide i would have my own mystery uh excuse me my own consumer report and

you'd have your own no you did it no i did it no you did it hey listen ladies and gentlemen in that report consumer report on the last page is driving by gender i want to tell you there's a whole lot of information right there for women and men so pick it up a lot of information 877960 or you can text us at 772-49730. Every time I look at the consumer reports, I know people get tired of Nancy and I talking about it, but this is something just came out. We got ours on the mail yesterday. Might not even be on the news dance.

It's got to be online. Just to remind you all, I didn't know this. A caller told us months ago that if you remember of the live, of the of the of the in Palm Beach County whether it's true in Brower and Dade St. Lucy and Martin I'm not sure but in Palm Beach County if you're if you have a library card you can go in use the PCs or Max or whatever they have in your in your library and you can access online consumer reports at no charge you don't even have to buy a subscription but their automotive information is

fabulous literally if you use consumer reports you can go all the way you can buy a used car or a new car the best one the safest one the most reliable one you don't even need earl stuart on cars you don't need us in this studio if you use consumer reports all the way you could have a great car buying experience and buy the best safest car the other thing about consumer reports is they are totally honest they cannot be bought there is no good chance that they will try to take advantage of you in any way, shape, or form. They are a not-for-profit corporation. I think Nancy said they've been around since 1937.

1936. 1936. They will not accept advertising. When they buy a product, they buy their products, they will not accept a product. In other words, if Chevrolet said, here, check this Impala out, here's a free one. They won't accept it. they'll go to a car dealer, a Chevrolet dealer, and buy the Impala. They will not even allow a beneficiary of their reports.

Let's say they gave a really good report to the Honda, you know, whatever, a Civic. They would not be able to say, Honda could not say in their advertising that they were recommended by consumer reports. They're totally pristine and the way you should get all your information. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to go to our next caller. He's calling from Loxahatchie. It's Ed. Good morning, Ed. Good morning, y'all.

I was hoping to get a little advice for me on a problem we're having with a vehicle. My wife leased. Okay. We leased in 2018 Colorado, and she's having transmission problems at 4,000 miles. She took it back, and the guy said, and I quote, they put a thicker fluid in it, drive it for 2,000 miles, and everything will disappear. Wow.

She came home and told me this. I looked at her. I said, could the guy keep his straight face when he told you this? Right. And this was a dealer? They run, they run, yeah, Schumacher up on North Lake. Wow. That's shocking.

They run deck six. It's full synthetic. How, you know, there is no miracle in the can that I know. Because we researched it. They have a bad torque converter in them and bad fluid. Wow. That's shocking. My question is, if that fluid was bad because they were so quick to pull it out of there,

did it not hurt every clutch that's in that transmission? Rick? In my opinion, you should drive to the next closest dealership and start talking with them and say, hey, what's going on here? I want this fixed because it sounds to me like somebody is playing around with the blue-smoking mirrors. Well, his question was, is this going to affect other... And I say, yes, there's a very good possibility. possibility. If there's a problem that the fluid is contaminated, then the moment it starts

circulating through the transmission, it's contaminating all the clutch packs. And with the tight tolerances in these new transmissions, it's, you could have devastation occur. That transmission could come apart. And I would very quickly get to a new dealership before you get stuck alongside the road. Ed, here's another piece of advice. You need to go in writing. on record with Schumacher Chevrolet. Was this a Chevrolet? Chevrolet, yeah. And email Schumacher and also contact General Motors

and give them an email to document the occurrence here because this is so unusual. Clearly you were given some very bad almost, the reason I ask you if you went to the dealer, it sounded like you've gone to some sort of a shade tree mechanic that didn't know anything about cars. Yeah, the best thing was she went home, she went the next day and she called them,

and all of a sudden it's down to, well, just drive it 200 miles, and then bring it in, if it isn't fixed, we'll put a new torque converter in it. I already told her we want a new transmission because I don't want to get out of warranty and this goes down, and we're looking at big money to have it repaired.

Yeah, yeah. It's amazing how you can just drop 1,800 miles off of a repair bill that it's sad that this still happens in today's age. Well, go on record, hopefully nothing bad happens to your vehicle, but if something bad happens, it's always good to have the documentation because six weeks from now they're going to say, I don't remember having that conversation. Yeah. And when you go on record, if they didn't respond in writing, then you have the upper hand. Okay. Ed, thanks so much. That's what we'll do then.

Please call back and let us know how this gets resolved. We'll do, man. Thank you, man. Thank you for joining us. Okay, I'll let you know if we hear something. Thank you. We look forward to hearing from you. Give us a call to all free at 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-3-0.

And don't forget that Earl had a great column this week. Don't get spotted. You can read it in the hometown news. and the Florida Weekly or you can go to www. Irwan Cars and dot com and read all of his columns.

Ladies, it has been a quiet morning. We've had a few ladies text us. That's fantastic. But I'd like to hear from you. $50. You can use $50

for the first two new lady callers. And let me tell you what. If I get three, I might, well, feel a bit generous. So there you go. Encouragement.

Give us a call. Howard, welcome to the show. Good morning. I hope you're all feeling well this morning. Beautiful morning, by the way. It is. Fantastic. Right.

Okay, I have a couple of statements to make, and let's see if you agree with me. And I've experienced some of these episodes and dealerships when having service. After 30,000 miles, I was once asked, you have to change your brake floor. 30,000 miles, the brake fluid has gone. What do you say about that? My opinion, break fluid is more along the lines of 90 to 100,000 miles. Or I'm going to say five to seven years, especially in Florida with our humidity, because it's the water getting into the fluid, seeping in, slowly into the fluid that causes it to break down.

But five to seven years, 90 to 100,000 miles. Well, the first thing you should do is check your owner's manual, right? you're going to have a recommendation in your owner's manual as to whether or not what the frequency of changing brick fluid should be. Generally, they will say that it's not necessarily recommended except as conditions require. So there's your answer. Yeah, and that would be inspection. They don't recommend changing it. That's the reason why I'm calling.

Okay, here are a couple of other things. CB joint, one service guy told me before I, you know, I met you, uh in new york maybe about 15 years ago if you say if you change one cv joint on one side you should change the other one too what do you have to say about that again i would say no because the cv axles the it's called a constant velocity axle it's actually a drive axle as a rubber covered boot on each end of it so that they can spin and shift all different directions while the front wheels are turning side to side as well and unless those boots have broken or started to leak grease out of them and that lets dirt get inside the the axle joint itself then there

would be no need to ever replace them as unless they're making noise they don't need to be replaced okay is Toyota use the silicone brake fluid no Toyota uses dot 3 brake fluid DOT level 3 brake fluid silicone is actually I believe a dot 5 and that's not recommended by Toyota at all okay that's one thing I thought

that silicone would be better for using silicone brake fluid okay my next to the last question when should you when should you change the transmission filter and oil well that's again vehicle specific but Toyota actually right now does not recommend a maintenance schedule

for any transmission except for if you're towing or under very heavy circumstances then they might say okay the fluid should be flushed and changed out about every 120,000 miles but Toyota transmissions don't actually have a filter they just have a screen in there so really really all you're doing is just changing the fluid. There's no actual filter to change out. At one time, there used to be a bolt in the transmission. You take it out and you get all the fluid out. Do you remember those days? You could drain the transmission by taking that bolt out. But I guess modern cars don't have that feature. Is that correct? Well, the older ones, when you pulled that drain plug, it would drain about a third of the fluid

that's in the transmission and we would just call that a drain and refill where we change only about a third of the fluid and now they have specialized machines to hook up in the cooler lines and it flushes 100% of the fluid out puts in all brand new fluid but beware of the bolts that are on the bottom

and a lot of the transmissions because there's what's called an overflow plug and if you pull that out at the wrong time it'll change the level of fluid in the transmission I'll be real careful about that Yeah, and if the transmission fluid level is off by as much as a pint or even less, it can actually affect the way that transmission operates. Wow.

Okay, one last question. If you have, let's say, Alexis, can you service it in a Toyota dealership? And what would be the difference in prices with the service? I'll answer that one because it's one of my favorite subjects. If you have a luxury car, look for the affiliate of the number. non-luxury in the manufacturer. If you have an infinity, you want to go to a Nissan dealer. If you have an Accura, you want to go to a Honda dealer. If you have a Cadillac, you want to go to a Chevrolet dealer. And with a Lexus, you go to Toyota dealer. The prices are about half. You wouldn't

believe what the luxury dealers jack the prices up. Oil changes are off the chart, and they just take advantage of you. It's like the Ritz Carlton v. the Connollage. I mean, you get a bed and you get a TV set. You don't get the caviar and champagne but you're getting your oil changed so why pay twice as much so why don't you advertise but all Lexus owners please come to our

dealership I don't think that would be nice we did that as a matter of fact and funny you should mention that because I got a letter from the General Council of Lexus telling me to cease and desist I get a lot of letters like that I almost forgot I got a letter from Jeff Bezos telling me to

cease and desist that's right I get a lot of letters like that Okay, my last question. This is definitely my last question. If you compare a Lexus 350 to a Camry six-cylinder, what would be the difference? The skin. It's all cosmetic. Bells and whistles.

Stuff like that. Yeah. The nameplate is what sells the Lexus, and they have some unique models, but many of the luxury model cars, I mean, for example, you look at the escalade and you look at the suburban. They're the same vehicle. So you got the Cadillac and say you pay an extra $10,000 for that. You can buy a suburban and save $10,000. Same thing with all the luxury cars versus the equivalent in the lower price spread.

Yeah, the luxury cars will sometimes try out some of the new technology in Bells and Wilson Wilson first. Give it a couple of years and then the middle class version will get it. And sometimes they'll use, you know, the materials might be, like they might use real wood in the Lexus and a plastic finish piece in the Toyota. It's kind of like guitars. There's a fender is the luxury brand, Squire is the economy brand. But they sound the same when you play them. That's great. Okay, thanks for the information.

I appreciate that. Have a good day. Thanks for being a regular caller. We have a lady caller. About time. And she is calling from, I believe it's Monticelli. Hello, Minnesota. Minnesota.

Good morning, Elizabeth. Good morning. How you doing? Good, very good. Thank you. Is it cold there? A boat load of snow and then more. We have probably over a foot now. We just got six inches yesterday or four inches.

It's 82 and sunny here. It's beautiful. Yeah. Elizabeth, we're going to warm your heart up by giving you $50 for being the first female caller. So you stay on the line and give Rudy your information. I'll get the check out to you. Thank you for calling Earl Stewart on Cars. What can we do for you?

Okay. I was wondering, and they told me at the time of purchase, we have a 2019, I mean a 2019 equinox, Chevy. And they said at the time of purchase that it will turn off at a sap light and it will save on gas. Now, do you have a different answer than that? No, there are a number of manufacturers that use that feature. And it's controversial. I think some manufacturers have gone to it and then stopped it because it will save you some gas, but it can be an annoyance. And depending on your temper,

and your mindset. I, for example, when the light changes, I like to move off quickly. Nanceek will testify to that because it usually snaps their neck back when I do it. But it is a gas saver, but you just have to,

how far do you want to go to save on gasoline? You know, if you follow the rules that some people will give you, it is maddening for me to drive that way. You know, and you see, you anticipate, you come to a stop sign or a stoplight, you know, like you're half a mile away and you start to slow down.

Well, if I'm behind you and you're a half a mile away from the stoplight and you're slowing down, I'm unhappy. I might blow my horn at you. So I don't like that feature. Rick has got a comment. One thing you might want to investigate on that because I know on the Toyota Highlander that had that start-stop technology, which is what you're describing, there is a special battery and starter that is required for this. vehicle and they have an actual time, a maintenance schedule, when they must be replaced and

they are quite expensive. So the Chevy Equinox may have the same thing, and that price of that alone may make it cost way more than any fuel savings that you'll ever achieve. Well, you got it. Are you there? Yes. Did your husband provide a neck brace for you? What did you say? Neck brace.

The neck brace I gave you the pink one, remember? I said you can wear this when I'm driving. He's a funny guy. He can go from zero to 100. He doesn't need to buy the Tesla. He can do that in probably about 30 seconds. And he's been doing it for a long time, so I'm seasoned. And I definitely don't need a neck.

brace i just used my fist and uh i get his attention and he just brings it down a notch did you guys post that picture of earl giving you the heimlich on your facebook page no we didn't we got to put it up there michael didn't uh he didn't give send it over to me all right i think i can find it oh good yeah our listeners have to see that he almost crushed my ribs i'm a little bit smaller. Oh, my goodness. Well, I have a wicked finger flicks that can leave a bruise, so I have to be very, very selective as to when that is the appropriate time to use it. Well, thank you for the question. Thank you, Elizabeth. Stay on the line and give Rudy your contact information in the control room,

and Nancy will get that $50 checkout to you. ASAP. Oh, thank you. Thank you for making us all laugh here in the studio, and thanks for being part of the show, and thank you for helping us build this platform that we need to build so badly for females. Oh, sure. So is my time up, then?

No. You keep on talking. We love to talk to women. Do you have any other comments about... Am I being aired? Oh, yes, you're live. You're live on radio. 20,000 people are live.

I'm listening to you. And you sound great, by the way. You've got a beautiful radio voice. Okay. So this could be a no-brainer answer. I mean, it's easy enough for me to figure out what I think is going on, but I don't know for sure. So when the car's in the garage, it's off, and I open the door, and then I close the door, there's the clicking sound

and it clicks for a while a while that's kind of subjective isn't it a little bit I don't know I haven't timed it but what okay my uneducated answer is

it's just resetting the computers well Rick might have the answer Elizabeth what type of car is this Equinox is this the equinox you have? Yes, it's the new one. Okay. If anything, I would have to guess that it may be resetting the AC controls, possibly, or resetting what's known as the evaporative emission system. The evaporative emission system is set up to where when you shut the car off, several hours later it's

supposed to run a diagnostic check of itself. So it may be resetting some solenoids before that actually activates. And one of the thing that most of the cars will do is nowadays, because of how tight the tolerances are in the air conditioning box, it'll actually reopen various doors and blend doors to try to circulate air so that you don't get mold or mildew growing up in that air conditioning box. And, Elizabeth, what I do, if I were you, I take it to the dealer and I would get in the car with a technician. Be sure you asked the technician to ride with you and then try to simulate and have that reenacted so that they can listen to it and see if it is, as Rick described, or maybe

it's something that you don't need to worry about. It might be something that needs to be fixed. Okay. All right. Elizabeth, do you have any other questions? Well, I do have one more, but is that all right? Yes, that's fine. All right, thank you.

Can cars be turned off by satellites? Well, yes, they can. I mean, I don't know that they are using that technology now, but you can turn a car on and off with any sort of electronic signal, wireless signals, and my car, I can start it, I can unlock it, I can unlock it, I can do a lot of things just with my iPhone. So a satellite is just a vehicle means to transmit radiation or electronic beams, whatever you want to call.

But sure, you can start a car. Microwave. Yeah, exactly. You know, some kinds of car dealers, we call them the buy-here, pay-hairs that they do the special financing for people who need help with the credit. They install engine immobilizers that they can disable your car remotely if you didn't make your car payment. And that's a real thing that's actually, yeah. However, most of those do have safety features. It's not when you're driving.

They can't shut it down while you're driving. It only prevents the car from restarting once you've parked somewhere. interesting we really appreciate your call and we appreciate especially because you're a woman and we're trying to get more female callers and even more because you're from Minnesota

and we like to reach out around the whole country and if you could please call us again we would really appreciate that all right if I could come up with some other questions hopefully today's were good ones

and enjoy your weather. That's right. We'll talk to you next week. Thank you so much. Here comes Rudy and give them your contact information. Any question is a great question. We have a mystery shopping report to get to, and that it's mystery shop comes to us from Napleton,

and I just want to remind all of you that you can vote on the mystery shopper report by texting us at 772-497-6-5-30, and I believe that Stu has some texts to follow up on. Yes, we have three. We'll get through them quickly because we have an incredible mystery shopping report coming up, which I like to call the MSR. Sorry.

Anyway, this comes in. It says, no name on this one. It's very frustrating trying to watch your live Facebook video. I watch live videos all the time, and none of them have the issues you have. What are you doing to fix this? Well, funny you should ask. This has brought me and everybody in this room and the next room. to their knees for weeks and weeks.

And there's light at the end of the tunnel. It has been a complex problem. We had the owner of this station in the studio today, and he has observed the phenomenon, and it is, you're absolutely accurate. We're having a bandwidth issue where we cannot give proper resolution on our Facebook transmission or YouTube transmission, but we now have a solution. and we are moving into a brand new studio. State of the art.

State of the art, May 1st. This state of the art new studio on May 1st will accommodate. Yay! Where do these people come from? I'm telling you. And I... Rudy's in charge of crowd control. I apologize to all of you who have been so patient,

and it has really been frustrating. And it's a lot more complex than I really. realized. And I used to get mad at Comcast. I've said terrible things about Comcast. I don't take back any of those things I said. No. Because I don't like Comcast. But I don't think it was their fault. We have a technological solution. And as I say, the guy that owns this place has said it will happen. And he's spending a lot of money, investing a lot of money in a brand new studio for everybody. Rudy and everybody will be happy. It will all be happy. John Jonathan, and this phenomenal will be.

And remember you heard it here on May 1st. We got some great things coming, ladies and gentlemen, so bear with us. And for what it's worth, the feed is live right now. They did some adjustments, and Jonathan has got this thing humming right now. So I don't want to jinx it, but we're live right now. Okay, the next one, the new Toyota Super is coming out. This car is a legend, and a lot of people are waiting to get one. There are already rumors online that Toyota dealers will sell these for thousands over MSS.

Is this true, and how will you, Earl, justify doing this giving your proclaimed ethical standards? What we do, and again, when I'm forced to talk about my dealership, I do. It wouldn't be unfair if I were to, you know, take a pass and just not answer a question like that. When we have a high-demand, low-supply car, it happened back in 2001 with a Prius, when there were only one Prius allocated per dealer. We sold that at manufacturer's suggested retail. Selling cards, sticker price, MSRP, not dealer list, but manufacturers suggested retail. The Benroney label is a very nice profit to the dealer.

So we make a very nice profit, we think, when we have a high-demand, low-supply car. That's what we will do with a new Toyota Super. We will take orders, and we will take deposits. refundable. All the other dealers will mark them up, thousands of dollars. Some dealers will even auction them off. That's what happened with Prius. Toyota dealers were auctioning Prius as well. And science. And science. So you can argue. That's okay. It's the marketplace, the free marketplace, supply and demand. Price gouthing. We don't like it. It's price gulging. I call it. At any rate, that's the answer to the question.

Don't pay an addendum over MSRP if you can help it. Wait for the car to cool off. Now, if you've got plenty of money and you don't care what it costs and you want to have the first super on the block, just go into the first Toyota deal you find and pay the asking price and you'll have the first. You know what the first Toyota on the block cost, who was it? John Stalupi.

John Salupe. The very first supr. Yeah, he paid $2.5 million. $2.1 million. $2.1 million for Super. I'll give you some idea or what the addendum label might pay. Exactly. Be careful out there, folks.

Be careful. But wait, is it really worth spending $10,000 or $20,000 over a sticker just to be the first one to get it? If you got too much money? I guess. Yeah. I guess. Okay, the last one, and then we'll get to the mystery shopping report.

Rick has got another. Oh, yeah, Rick's got another one, too. Johnny from Rivier Beach asks, do your salespeople have a quota on how many cars they should sell every month? I know of a dealer that has a minimum of nine cars a salesman should sell a month. A salesman sold eight cars, but they only paid them for six because he didn't sell the minimum of nine. Now that is really taking advantage of salespeople.

We do have a minimum. It's 10. And it used to be eight. Eight? Actually, it used to be seven and it was raised to eight. Now it's 10. So it isn't like you have to sell 10 cars this month, but you have to average 10 cars over a 90-day period.

But if they only sell one car, they're paid for one car. If they sell 8, yeah, yeah, we don't do that. You get paid, but that, yeah. We just, what we do is we have a, that minimum standard. And by the way, we don't want them to sell just that, you know, just 10. That's a minimum, yeah. And we just basically, it's something that allows us to counsel with them and say, you have to have a number out there what you say for the expectations.

Yeah, Rick, you've got a text. M Avenue on YouTube is asking any thoughts on cars sold by rental agencies like Enterprise? I always thought it was a bad move to buy a former rental car and that it would hurt resale value. Is this a legitimate concern? And he also puts a later post on it saying he likes the idea of not haggling on their prices because a lot of those are a simple one straight price no haggle whatsoever. No, Enterprise takes good care of their cars, so do most of the rental companies. I know what you talk about back in the day.

A far higher car appeared on the title. Treated a rental car like it did a police car or something like that. Police cars have put hundreds of thousands of miles on the car and they go chasing people at 120 miles an hour and all that kind of stuff. If that's not a rental car, rental cars take very good care of their cars and rental car companies, and they also have one price. They don't do the haggle thing. I like that, and I think Enterprise would be a good place to buy a car.

By the way, CarMax has one price also, and I believe Carvana has one price. A lot of the newer, and I believe Auto Nation is going to one price on used cars. We haven't shopped. Yeah, we did chop them, and they are one price. But rental cars are fine. to buy. They're taking well good care of and they're usually a good purchase

as well as a lease car. Okay. I think we've got all that out of the way. We can go to our mystery shopping report and as you said, Stu, it was interesting. A humdinger. A humdinger. Mystery shop of Napleton

North Lake Kia. We have a special treat for our listeners this week, a good old fashion Napleton mystery shop. We've probably shoped Naples and dealerships more than any other. I couldn't give you an exact number, but I'm guessing a dozen. We keep going back because they're so good at being bad.

I like that. Stu wrote that line for me. That's by Rihanna. And the words, I mean, he wrote this too, I like this too. And the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and billy. I loved that part of it. I loved it.

The great use of adjectives. I'm going to read all that again. because this is very good. It's deserving. In the words of Obi-Wan Kenobi, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy than a cardiffism. Okay,

that's taken a little far. He says, I don't think so, but the truth is they hold more spots, Napleton, hold more spots on our do-not recommend Liz than any other car dealer who have mystery shop. Ed Napleton lives in Palm Beach.

I guess you get say it's a family operation, but they just don't, they just don't cut it. They just don't get it. It's been a while since we've paid a visit to Naval dealship, and that's because our former chief mystery shopper, Agent X, who was now in Kansas City, was becoming too well known. He'd been burned, as they say. That's right. In the spy trade. Burned notice. That was the biggest drawback of having a seasoned talent agent. We had to keep expanding our target radius to avoid Agent X McGone mask. I mean, we were sending them to Pensacola.

Right. He still wants to do one out in Kansas City. It's been a while since we paid a visit. Oh, that's right. My mic was sagging. It's been a while, okay. The strategy allows us to investigate more dealerships over a larger area, but we were forced to ignore many of the repeat offenders. The arrival of Agent Thunder on the scene has let us go back

and recheck the Naples and the Gricos of our listening area I never pronounce it's Greco isn't it's Greco yeah

I say Greco like Gecko like the lizard Yeah see That's a good way to remember Rico Like the lizard Gecko Okay

Without fear of losing Fear of being found out With a shrift and Did you hit your Cough button Hey we have cough buttons Look this If I cough

You don't hear me You didn't cough Yeah, it didn't go. Where am I here? Okay. With Shifting Strategy Sighton, we selected Napleson-Northly Kia, or North Lake Boulevard in Palm Beach Gardens. Napland's website was promoting a lease deal on a new 2019 Kia Soul with a tractee payment of just $139 per month. There was large print disclosure right below the payment that indicated it was 39 months.

lease and a $2,99.99 due its signing. That was in the larger fine print. It also indicated that the first payment was not included. This is not a typical condition of lease had and would add another $139 plus tax to the total amount of customer would have to come up with its signing. Yeah, I've never seen that before.

No, no. Usually when you have a lease payment and you sign the contract, that includes your first payment. Yeah. so no consistency and you really have to read all the fine print and it's virtually impossible we had to do a screenshot can you read that right there to read that i can't i'm looking at i can't either no i can't come close uh i tried it a couple times you got to blow it up yeah

uh below that disclosure was the fine print it's hard to read and the ad was on a moving carousel of offers as you look at the screen so we took a screenshot and we got to got a better look and we're able to blow it up and finally get to the full disclosure. Disclosure indicated for the payment does not include sales tax, title tag, $899 dealer fee, and $199 dock processing fee. We saw the mileage allowed per year was just $10,000. There was something else. Another fee wasn't there?

I thought there were three fees. There was, but we didn't discover those until later. Oh, we discovered it later. So there's three dealer fees. Remember, folks, dealer fee is a generic term. In this case here, Napleton called it a dealer fee, in my opinion, to make people think, oh, there's a dealer fee. So that's all disclosed. But he had two more fees that are dealer-feeed that he didn't disclose.

The disclosure also stated that the overmileage was 20 cents per mile. A 740 beacon score was required. to get that payment. The dealer wasn't responsible if they made any type of graphical errors choked on that one, which is standard, fine print. And finally, that the offer expired the day before the ad ran, which is ludicrous. But they just didn't change their website. I've seen newspaper ads where they expired months ago. They just don't read their own fine print. In the past, when I'm responding to an ad like this, our mystery shoppers were never given the payment in the ad we were about to find out if anything had changed here comes agent thunder operation report speaking as if i am agent thunder i arrived at naples north like kea

one p.m parked entered a small but very modern and clean showroom relatively new dealership he'd been across the street built a new one and this looks real nice they had a beautiful reception desk with a dramatic glossy red backdrop we took a picture of it looking at it now but no receptionist so I looked around saw a man in a white shirt in time he approached me with a welcome smile he approached he introduced himself we're going to use a different name now we're going to call him Jerry we elected not to use the real salesperson's name because we feel by doing so we may jeopardize his employment you'll see what I mean later as we go into the report Jerry not his

name offered to get me a drink of coffee or water invited me sit down at a desk to talk about what I was looking for. We made small talk before the conversation turned as to why I was there. We just tuned in. We're talking about Napleton Kia on North Lake Boulevard in North Palm Beach. I told Jerry I'd seen the lease offer on the 2019 Kia Soul. He acknowledged and said, and I said, and I was asked me if I had driven one, I said I had, and he suggested that we find a car.

take it for a test drive. Jerry got the keys and tagged first. We walked out to the car. He gave an impressive presentation of the features on the sole, then offered me the keys and suggested we take it for a ride. We had a very interesting conversation along the way. Jerry said he was disappointed with the state of the car business. Now this is kind of unusual that the salesman would say this. Now we've seen it more often than you'd think, but it's still unusual. and he felt it had to modernize the way cars were sold to risk going the way of blockbuster. It's kind of strange. He singled out his dealership specifically and described his managers as the type of typical bloodthirsty wolves consumers fear. Pretty harsh.

And, as I say, we've seen this before, but not quite this obvious. I was amazed at his candor and asked him what he thought needed. to change and he said all the dealershare processes needed to change from negotiation and commissions to f and i he said he thought about leaving the business a lot but have managed to keep going by watching out for his customers and protecting them the worst of his bosses now we've seen this before and i've seen dealers that we wouldn't recommend but we had car sales people there that took good care of the people that visited there was one in del Rey and And this was years ago.

It was a gentle mother's dealership. And he got a big following. They would only deal with the salesperson. So salespeople sometimes have to make their own little niche and survive within the hell that they work with. However, he said he would do his best to get his boss. I think he skipped the paragraph. We returned to the dealership, sat down at the same desk as before.

Jerry pulled up the ad on his computer screen. zoomed in on the fine print, he told me that it will never be $339 per month lease, even with perfect credit. He said it was just a number to give me in. Now, we've heard that. I've heard that. He've heard that phrase before. However, he said he would do his best to get his boss to give him some good numbers for me, and he left me to wait at the desk.

I waited for a pretty long time, maybe 15 minutes. Jerry came back. He apologized. He said the computers were slow. and then went back to the manager again, another 15-minute wait, Jerry returned. He had a buyer's order with payments printed on it, along with an itemization of taxes and fees. Before he reviewed it, he said that he wanted me to understand that it wasn't going to be as good as he had. But he had done his best to get his manager to be as fair as possible.

The figures on the buyer's order were nothing short of astonishing, meaning high. The base sale price was MSRP, 19,365. They added $1960 for something called Napleton VIP experience. I learned later that this was an assortment of so-called benefits like unlimited Carfax reports. That's worthless. Snacks. That's laughable. And complementary loaners for warranty services, which are provided by the manufacturer.

Now, there were a few other things in there. I think they had like some kind of like roadside assistance within five, you know, but still. But it's worthless. It's not worth in 1960. Virtually. Virtually worth us. I asked Jerry about he said it was basically worthless. The add-ons kept coming.

Okay, here we go. There was the $899 dealer fee, which they had in the original disclosure, $1.29 E-Tag filing fee, which they did not have. A $1.49. private tag agency fee, which they did not have, and a $1.99 documentation fee, which they did not have. We're breaking the law. We're doing something illegal. How can they get so many tag fees when we only got one tag on the car? I never thought of it that way.

When you have a vivid imagination, they could be a lollipop fee. The state of Florida doesn't require you could have a peep fee. The peep's fee for Carnuble Wax. You could have any kind of fee. So that's what we have here. You have those all together. You have $1,376 in hidden profit to the dealer. And only a few of those were disclosed.

And none of them were included. You got three. You got, forget about the VIP experience. Yeah, VIP experience comes under a different. That's an addendum. You get something. Yeah, the $1,960, you can add that. to the 1,376, and you spell outrage.

You spell ridiculous. $3,336 over a sticker. Yeah. Jerry said he could keep me in the mid-toes. 139 is where we're looking. He can keep me in the mid-toes with $4,500 down. Remember, the ad was $139 per month with $29.99 down. I said, Jerry, you've been nice, but I got to leave.

he asked me to stay said he'd go get the manager I waited again ten minutes later Jerry appeared I can get you to $202 tax included he said with $4,500 down

I wanted to get out of there so badly speaking as Agent Thunder so I agreed to this terrible deal verbally I made up a story about meeting my wife coming back after dinner

Jerry gave me the buyer's order and I left We got pictures of the buyer's order for you. Here's the epilogue. If the mission was to determine whether Napleton had gotten any better since the days of Agent X, the conclusion can be summed up in a single word no. That's the bottom line. One of the worst shopping reports we've seen and proved that Napleton is still in the timeout corner.

They just take advantage of their customers. And they're breaking loss. The Florida franchise, the Florida dealer fee law, the statute says that you have to include the dealer fee and the advertised price. The advertised price didn't include any of the dealer fees. They did segregate one dealer fee in the fine print, and you didn't find out about the rest until you came in. And there was a lot of subterfuge. The salesperson could have been legitimate in saying that you hated working there. But the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether it was just a ruse to align himself with the customer being the shopper.

So we've got a vote. I think the vote is obvious. I don't want to prejudice anybody. But do we have any online votes yet? One, two, we have four. They're all Fs, D&F, Donna F, Ed, F, Neil F. And the live Facebook feeds down, so I'm not seeing anything coming from there. but it sounds pretty unanimous.

And I want to chime in with my thoughts and my grade. I'm giving him an F, a big fat F. Our shopper, Agent Thunder, really liked Jerry, the salesperson, not his real name. And he thought he was earnest. This was his impression. I wasn't there, so I don't know exactly. It kind of feels to me it's possible he was playing both sides. He said he was going to work to give him the best and the fairest year old

deal possible, but he came back with a $3,000 over-sticker deal and $1,500 more down payment than the ad said. I don't know how earnest he was. Maybe he was naive, but I'm failing him. Well, let's call him and offer him a job. We'll interview him, and we'll see if for ourselves if he really wants to work honestly, or if it was just, you know, if he refused to talk, then. If we hire him, I'll watch him very closely.

Well, you'd have to do a thorough investigation and get references and things like that. Nancy, what is your take on this? There's so much here to speculate on, and I'm just not going to do that. You know, maybe, but if, whatever. The dealership should be closed down and everybody in it should be arrested. I give them an F. Harsh. Well, I've got four online votes from you.

YouTube for F all the way across the board. Didn't know we're on YouTube. Wow. And Mr. Hand says Agent Thunder rolled. And Frank asked, how about a fee administration fee? Someone who asked to keep track of all those fees. Well, they got that too. Yeah. And not in Naples

them, but that's one of the favorite names for dealer fees is administrative fee. Yep. And Frank also asked, our states, he says he felt it was a good, bad cop routine. Yes. That's my suspicion. I'm, I'm falling in line with that. I kind of

agree with them, and I'm, my own personal is an F. We're going to try to find out about Jerry, who's the name we gave to the real salesperson, and we'll find out.

I don't want to sound like I'm blaming salespeople because I think people have to make a living, and card dealers employ lots of people. Without card dealers, if there's one thing, you can say good about car dealers is car dealers employ thousands, tens of thousands of people. And there's, you know, there's something like what, how many car dealers? We can Google this.

It's going to be 15, 20,000 car dealers. Like 1,400 Toyota dealers and, you know, and each one average is probably 50 to 60 employees. Our dealership has 160 or 180 employees. So we do we do supply a lot of employment and when people sell cars are feeding their families themselves jobs are important so when you work for such a large retail organization you just can't go to work for anybody does not anything you want you say you're going to work for you know pennies or you can go to work for belks or they still in business you're going to work for Macy's you can't go to work anywhere you want to and card dealers hire a lot of people

So you have to play the game And some people are forced Of that position And I know some of them are legitimate But the one that's really the blame Is the guy's in charge And that's where That's where it falls

And I think Napleton I think he's got to know What's going on I think he does So I give him an F And we fail another Napland store Yeah we don't have to do anything They're already on

They do not recommend list So Ted if you're listening you don't have to do anything. We're going to, I'm going to talk about something else now. I think we got a little bit of time. Our blog that we had was, don't be spotted. And Nancy alluded to that earlier. It's a story about what happens when they try to make you take the car.

Right away, here's a picture, a cute little picture of a Dalmatian. and when you come in to buy a car most car dealers will do your best do their best to get you to take the car home that night it's a ruse you should never take a car home the night you go into a car dealership you should be sure that the car is prepared the car is finance your finance

has been approved or you've gotten your own approval or they've gotten approval for you all the eyes dot the T's crossed all the accessories installed, washed. If they're requiring you to bring in things like proof of income or residents have that with you that night. Everything taken care of. You also should be sure you know how to operate

all the bills and whistles on the car. The reason they want you to take the car is so they can have you taken home, think you bought it, tell your friends, neighbors, relatives, brag about it, what a good deal you got. You got finance. You got great credit.

Everything's fine. And then three weeks later you get a call and they say, bring your car back in. We have to re-contract you. What made me say this is I had a call from a customer in Martin County who bought a truck from a new car dealer. I'm not going to name the dealer. You know him. I know him. I'm not going to name the dealer because all I have is a conversation on the phone about this.

But it's so typical, I know what happens all the time. Customer had to take the call back. They changed the interest rate from 5% to 8% or 9% raised the total cost of the car by thousands of dollars. Then she said, I don't want, I can't afford it. And then she said, I want my car back, I want my trade-in back. They said, we can't find your trade-in back. Wouldn't give her her trade-in back. And she went home again.

They called me. I told her, I hate to recommend a lawyer, but you call a lawyer. they're breaking the law. And you tell them that Earl Stewart said they're breaking the law, and I so told them to call a lawyer if they don't refund your money and get your trade in back. I haven't heard back from that person. If I do, I'll let you know what happened.

But don't get spotted. Don't take a car the same day. Be sure everything is taken care of before you take that car home. Because it gives them a good argument that you bought the car. Yeah. Got some leverage. What a story. That's a sad situation. We hope we hear back from her. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning.

We do enjoy your company. Stay tuned next week. Saturday morning. We'll be right here at 8 a.m. Have a great weekend. Let's go. Oh. Oh. No. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Go. Don. Vettomte. Wendtum. Wendtum. Wendt. Let's come.