Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.20.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of JM Lexus

Episode Date: March 20, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits JM Lexus to see if she can get the online price for a 2021 Lexus ES-350 as advertised on their website. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

We're back. Your automotive team, if I sound a little breathless this morning, the time changed a week ago kind of caught up on me, and ran a little late this morning on the way to the show. Set a new land speed record between Jupiter, Florida, and North Palm Beach. But here we are, Mrs. Sunrise and I. Matter of fact, the only reason I knew about the show is because I was doing the morning sunrise, and a couple of my sunrises says,

you're going to be late to the radio show. And I looked at my watch, I said, oh, oh, that's not exactly what I said, but I can't repeat it on the air what I said. Anyway, here we are, and if you're new to the show, Irwin cars you're in for a treat I say that with a lot of the immodesty I suppose but we're very proud of what we do here we arm you to deal with dealers car dealers as it were we give you the inside school as to how car dealers are deceiving you and not just in Florida we're worldwide but for all practical

purposes we're all over the country United States. We have calls from Wisconsin, California, Missouri, Texas, all over. And we're on Facebook, Earl on Cars, on Facebook, Facebook.com, port slash Earl and Cars. We're also on YouTube. We're on Twitter, Periscope, streaming constantly out into cyberspace. We'd love to have you call the show. That's the most important thing about what we do here is listen to you. I think probably the first few times I said that when this show started 20 years ago. Maybe I didn't really believe it. Well, maybe the reason I didn't believe it 20 years ago is hardly anybody called the show.

I mean, we're only on for half an hour. We would sit here, sweat bullets, praying for people to call. Now we have a pretty good bank of callers, and we also have tweeters, and we have texters, Facebookers, posters, and YouTubersers. And I'm going to give you the basic number, the number that is the most personal. That's a call-in number. Remember the old telephone? Well, that number is 877-960-99-60. That's 877-960-99-60.

And then down the chart of priority, but it's also very effective. And we like it because it gives us a little archive during the show to drop back on. for the end of the show, we usually pick up all the texts. We have a text number for both those that are a little bit camera shy, Mike shy. Still want to get their point across. The text number is 772. That's here you code 772, 497-6530. 772

4976766530 and a unique number that no show that I know of has I don't know any anyone that uses this anonymous feedback as a URL it's a link

that you can go on to the website and send us a message and it's anonymous it goes to a you know I don't CIA, NSA. I mean, it's absolutely impervious to hacking or anything like that. Nobody knows who sends these in, but we get them loud and clear. It's AnonymousFeedback.com. Real simple.

You're, I should say, Y-O-U-R-Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-Y-M-O-U-S feedback, just like it sounds.com. Anything you want to say, you can be harsh. You can be frank honest transparent. I mean, there are no holes barred. Actually, we get some of our most constructive, interesting on this. We don't know why, but we do. So there you go. All the venues to communicate, which is what make the show what it is. It's a dialogue. It's not a monologue. It sounds like a monologue right now, I know. But I'm going to shut up pretty quick. And we're going to get into the meat of the show, which is you're called. your Facebook's your YouTube's your anonymous feedback I also have to mention to that it sounds like we're all about buying and selling cars and getting ripped off and how not to get ripped off it's also about maintaining and repairing cars and Rick Kearney he's he's my sidekick here to my right they've been with me

for over a quarter century does that make you feel old Rick when I say that yeah that and the arthritis and the mastic back and aches and pains and Anyway, Rick really knows his stuff. He's a technician, auto computer scientist, a mechanic. Can't call him a grease monkey anymore because that's politically incorrect, I guess. Yeah, but I'm old. I don't get offended anymore. No, you were a grease monkey.

When you started, he was a kid. He started out playing, putting engines together. You know, you have to have a natural ability. And you have to love that because you don't stick to it. And then he stayed on top of it all these years. I'm amazed. I mean, it was like the Wright brothers. You were flying a biplane, and now you're in a rocket ship.

I mean, you're in a spacecraft. So he stayed on top of auto technology up to today. Let me tell you something, today is challenging. A lot of you folks out there have questions about your car. If you bought a new car recently, you probably don't know how to operate half the stuff on the car. Your Bluetooth or something like that. You might have a strange noise you don't know anything about. The more complex and good, you could say, that safe and reliable cars are, the more complicated

they get. That's almost counterintuitive, right? I mean, you think that it would, but it's, there are challenges. And I'm speaking as a car dealer, I've been around for 50 plus years as a car dealer, and I don't know how to operate a lot of the stuff on my car. Every week or so, I discover a new switch or a button or something I didn't even know was there. I said, oh, that's really cool. And anyway, Rick Kearney, you call us at our audio number,

877960, or our text number, 772-4976530. Or you go on YouTube, Rick monitors the YouTube channel. And if you go on YouTube, YouTube.com port slash rolling cars, you go straight to Rick. And if you go through the text or something else, he gets the message anyway. So if you have any kind of a question about the mechanics or electronics of the computerization of your car,

just ask for Rick Kearney. And I can, I look over at my lovely wife and co-host Nancy Stewart. She was just experienced one of the most daring drives of her life between Jupiter and North Palm Beach of the radio studio. I didn't think about that. I did set a new land speed record

and I wanna thank the police of Jupiter, Juno, Juno, on Lafam Beach, and all the other municipalities I went through that didn't pull me over. No, I'm serious. I'm a safe driver. Sometimes I have to speed up a little bit. And here we are. Nancy has got her some stuff together. I think she looks pretty good over there.

And I think she needs to tell you why it's important that you ladies out there participate. And she has a, for you new folks, if you're female and you're just tuned on the show, listen of this you're going to hear an offer that's too good to be true but it is true and uh it's it is honest and it's something to induce you to call the show i am i uh introduce you to nancy stewart my co-host it's all yours honey good morning everyone and welcome to erl steward on cars we definitely enjoy your company you're a big part of the show and we have a lot to get to this morning and uh the first thing that i'd like to get to is offering the ladies $50 for the first two new lady callers excuse me ladies

that's a lot of money you're coughing you're thinking about that writing those checks how many checks do you think you've written over the years a lot right thousands yeah yes so ladies how did your how does your car excuse me let me start over again how did your transaction go this past week or this past month. How were you treated when you went into the dealership? Did you have a certain way that you saved money on your purchase? Share your ideas with us and win yourself $50 at the same time, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We'd love to hear from you 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-2-4976530 and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com well Stu Stewart is the one remaining member of the group here that

I haven't introduced most of you know him he's my son he's a general manager of our dealership and full transparency we are an active automobile dealership we've had a toilet dealer for 47 years in North Palm Beach. But this is not an infomercial. I hasten to mention that. A lot of car dealers accuse us of being disingenuous about this show, but it is a consumer advocacy show. And the highlight of the show, probably the reason

we have such a good following, our ratings are very good on this show, I say that immodestly, is probably because of the Mr. Shopping Report. And he is in charge of that. He is Stu, Stewart, actually Earl Stewart, we call him Stu. And he runs that operation. He's got a team of undercover agents. He chooses car dealerships to visit.

Some out of state, some in-state. I think we have a caller. We do. We have a caller from Jupiter. He's a regular caller, and it's Howard. Good morning, Howard. Good morning. I hope all of you are feeling fine.

It's a wonderful day today. I hope the sun stays out, and actually we need a little rain. But anyway, I digress. I want to show you how it's easy to get ripped off by service department. A friend of mine who knows nothing about a car, and he drives a Hyundai. Hyundai is a pretty good car. However, he knows zero about it. he had a problem with his axle.

The boot was leaking. So he brought it into, I wanted to say, with dealership, and they wanted to charge him for the axle. I told him, no charge, because you were under warranty. He said, I don't understand it. Why am I under warranty? I said, that's part of your drive train. So I wanted to ask Rick about that.

You considered the axle part of the drive. drive train. Yes, it is. As a matter of fact, now this is going by Toyota rules, but I'm sure Honda feels the same way on it. Because drive axles are internally lubricated, the boots are greased, they are considered driveline component, and as a matter of fact, even the front wheel bearings are also driveline, and therefore the warranty on those is the five-year 60,000. Whereas the non-driven wheels, such as on a front-wheel drive-wheel, car, the back wheels, the back wheel bearings, are only three year 36,000. Okay, so what he did, the boot was leaking, so he called me, he knows I know something about cars, and I used to do this many years ago. I used to put a split boot in there. I'm sure, Rick, you know what a split boot is. Yeah, I hate them. Yeah, I know. I said, they don't need sell them anymore.

Rick, I don't think you'd get a split boot anymore. No, I mean, I did it in my car, and it lasted about six months, but it wasn't a good idea. To explain to the other folks who might not understand, a CV boot is kind of, it looks almost like a funnel-shaped piece of rubber that's slightly corrugated, and it's meant to be able to handle the flexing and turning of the axle as is going in different angles. And it's sealed, it's got clamps on each end, it has a bunch of grease in. it so that the axle joint is nicely greased. When that boot gets torn or split and starts to leak, all the grease comes out, it will eventually destroy the axle. So somebody came up with the idea that you could simply cut off the old boot

and have this boot that wraps around it and clamps together with little screws to hold it together and put new clamps on it with new grease in there and that would give you a quick get-by. The problem with that is that those little screws didn't seal very well and eventually the grease would come right back out of that old boots you'd have you'd be right back in the same situation but in this case here your friend he should have gotten a brand new axle and he's totally covered should have cost them nothing and they were trying you wonder you think it's more stupidity or I don't think it's dishonesty on their part they're just they just weren't educated why would

they want to do something and have the customer pay when they get paid either way is it was just at the end almost at the end of his warranty he was maybe days but he was still in the warranty yeah maybe they slipped up on that you know well also might be and again speculation a car dealer can charge anything he wants for a customer what we call non warranty customer pay and they probably were going to charge him a lot more than one Hyundai manufacturer would pay under warranty they have a they put a cap on what they will pay on a particular repair. Actually, it's a fair payment to the dealer,

but if they want to make 50% higher, they can charge anything they want for customer pay. That's probably what it is. I just answered my own question. Yeah. Okay, but they asked them, said, did you buy the car here? He said no.

And the guys, you know, I think if you were bought the car at that place, they would have done the job. Yeah. But they refuse. Howard, are you sure you don't want to mention? mention the name of the dealer we named dealers here if you if you feel uncomfortable about it I won't pressure but part of the value the show is alerting people to

dealers that take advantage in service and sales you know I would mention it but my friend's not here so I don't want to you know okay I understand sure over his head maybe maybe he what doesn't want me to mention I understand certainly mention it but anyway the places has a name similar to a place in Italy Okay, that's a clue. Let's see. I know. Is there a city in Italy called Naples?

Naples something? I don't know. I've never been to Italy. I don't know. Howard, thank you very much. These real life situations are the best way to underscore and press up on people that you've got to be careful in service departments,

just like you do the sales department. And if you have something that you don't understand, be sure you talk to somebody. Fortunately, this guy had a friend Howard who did understand, and otherwise he'd have been victimized. I know. And Rick, can you tell us exactly what the drive train is and how long does it usually have a warranty for, let's say, Toyota?

So people understand what a drive train is, how long the warranty is, and what you should do if you have, problems with the warranty well every manufacturer will set their own length of warranty time some some manufacturers now are like ten years a hundred thousand miles on the drive what they call the drive line or drive train warranty basically that is the engine the transmission and the drive axles and the bearings out at the end of those drive axles everything that's lubricated but it's yeah

stuff that is lubricated or coolant is also considered a lubrication. So a water pump, anything in the engine, anything in the transmission, but anything that is not lubricated or not touched by the coolant, except for the radiator, radiator's not five years, 60,000 is basic, the basic warrant. These things hardly ever fail if you maintain them properly. And that's the reason car dealers also give free power chain warranties. A lot of dealers are advertising free warranties. They don't mention except in the fine print that it's a power train warranty. Power train warranty, as Rick says, is the ones that the manufacturers give, you know, five, 10 years. They don't care. If you come in and maintain your

car according to the owner's manual and your lubrication the way it should be, the power train rarely fails. It's very surprising to hear about an axle of failing, but they do fail once in a great while. You never want to pay for a power train warranty, and if someone gives you one free, It's kind of like nitrogen in your tires. If it's free, it's not going to hurt your tires, and a free power train warranty is going to hurt you either, but not likely to do you much good either. Yeah.

Thank you, Howard. You can explain the difference to you the power train warranty and the drive train warranty? The same thing. It's just two different words, but the same thing. Okay, okay. Thank you very much for the information. Have a good day, guys.

You too, Howard. Thanks, Howard. Nice hearing from you. where you can text us at 7-7-2-497-6-5-30 and take advantage of www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, we just introduce things, too, to talk about our mystery shopping report, and I say this maybe too frequently, but we really have one that is unique today. Stay tuned, the second half of the show, because it surprised all of us, I think,

and I won't say anything more. Let's talk about it. We're not going to give anything away, but it's nice when we have a good variety of mystery shock reports when we go from the worst to the best. Maybe that was a clue there, but we returned to Alexis dealership

because we seemed to be on a Lexus theme the last couple of weeks. Return to Alexis dealership, J.M. Lexus, that we were last there in 2019, so almost two years ago. And on that report, they did great. And they had recently launched a one price, a brand. They totally changed their selling process.

They went to one price, one person. Lexus made a big deal about it nationally. They selected just some dealers to pilot this thing, and the goal was for Lexus to become a brand that was all one price. I think the last time that ever happened was Saturn. It was the last time a whole manufacturer went with that route. And they did really well. And so the nice thing about having a big stable of mystery shoppers,

we can go back and see how things changed over time. So having Agent Lightning as a mystery shopper gives a huge example advantage because we do give these grades and we've talked about on this show how changes in management, changes in selling policies can impact the consumer experience. So one mystery shop won't do it.

We always got to go back and we always got to see how they're behaving a few months or maybe some cases a few years later. I think dealership's got like 25, 30, 40, 50 salespeople, and really it's a one-on-one experience that makes it or breaks it, and you can have a dealer with very good attention. So he's got two or three rogue salespeople, hard to know exactly what's going to happen

when you have that buying or servicing experience. That's right. So stay tuned. They'll come around 930 or so. we'll get to it. And that'll be J.M. Lexus down on Margate, Florida. Very good. Yeah. Okay. Have we got any texts that have come in yet? Any

any anonymous feedbacks? Just a whole lot of good mornings from everybody. Everybody kind of checking in. Good. All right, no problem. Then let's kick it off with a text from Anne-Marie. Ann-Marie, our most intelligent, intelligent, provocative, useful caller. Thank you, Anne-Marie.

I love it when her text is waiting for it's the first one so yeah exactly excuse me still good morning amory and thank you for joining us every single week with the most amazing questions and information that's right the ladies love you and she's listening and that because sometimes she'll comment by text on the show okay so here's amory's question says good morning i haven't been off i haven't been off road mud bogging or sliding around icy roads on snowing mountains so this question is much mostly theoretical for me. What is the difference between AWD, all-wheel drive, and four-WD, four-wheel drive? This next question is not so theoretical, which is better for maintaining control

in I-95 when a very heavy rainstorm pops up and hydroplaining is very likely? This is a perfect question for Rick. All-wheel drive versus four-wheel drive in lightness. They are almost the same thing except four-wheel drive is generally on a vehicle that you can switch from two-wheel drive to four-wheel drive and back again. All-wheel drive means you're all four-wheels are getting power all the time. They should call all-time all-wheel drive. That's pretty much just what it is, all-wheel drive. And the best thing about having all-wheel drive, which I'm hats off and applauding Subaru for this

because I think every one of their cars is all-wheel drive, and it provides. an incredible change in control the ability for this car to control itself in any situation for highway whether you're on a dry clean road or not having all wheel drive will make a big difference if you get in a panic situation somebody cuts you off and that's because your attraction is measured and the computer senses the fact that if you lose traction on one wheel it'll take the traction and put it on another wheel so you're not you're not going to spin or you're not going to swerve, it gives you the traction where it can be close to 100% traction

and keep you from the direction you're driving. Exactly. So years ago they have the posit traction, they called, I think, General Motors, and that was just for the rear wheels, that was a rear wheel drive sort of thing. But if your right wheel had no traction, you're in the snow, it would give you traction on your left wheel to get out. And that's what all-wheel drive does all the time. and it should be. Subaru, as you say, we salute Subaru because every manufacturer should make all their cars and even when they're electric. I mean, it makes no difference.

They should be all-wheel drive. Absolutely. Ann Marie, another magical, very intelligent, useful question. Thank you. Thank you, Ann Marie. Okay, we'll jump over to a text. This is from a, he's Texas a few times. It's Tom in West Alice, Wisconsin.

He asked us a question last week. He says he has a dog-related question for his next question. He says, I was taking my car in for an oil change, and I thought I would clean up the interior of my car. We have a dog that sheds, and it seems near impossible to get all the hair off the carpeted areas. Any good tips for getting the hair up to be vacuumed? And how much would that depreciate or hurt the resale value of the vehicle? Tom, I actually found a product because

I've had dogs my whole life and I have one dog now but at one point I had three and dog hair was definitely a factor in my life so we found a product called Fuzz Off and it's like almost like a stone like a pumice stone

it's actually made of recycled glass I think and use it and you rub it over the surface of the carpet and it just it pulls up the dog hair really efficiently and then you can kind of vacuum up the fluff that you get. It's called Fuzz Off F-U-Z, no I'm sorry I'm sorry, it's not fuzz off, it's, wait, let's go furs off.

F-U-R-S-O-F-F, and you can get on Amazon and PetSmart and all these things, and any pet website. And the second part of your question, is it going to hurt the resale value of your car having dog hair in it? No, for a detail, for a professional detail department, getting rid of the dog hair isn't that big of a challenge. They can get it out, and so it's just part of the normal car cleaning. process other things like we talked about smoke in the car that will affect it because it's difficult to get rid of if it's a just a part of a routine reconditioning process that they shouldn't charge you more to give you less because you have dog hair are you saying through that even today if someone is a

heavy smoker and shame on you if you are but they still exist and you know the type of person that doesn't even open the window when you smoke and you trade that car in, a used car manager appraising that car would devalue the car based on the fact that it would be unlikely that they could ever get it totally out. Is that right?

Yeah, so it's a lot of times when a used car manager is appraising your car, they're considering the reconditioning cost. It's going to cost me $400 to replace those tires. In the case of something like Smoke Smell, he can spend all the money he wants on it. It's never going to completely

come clean. It's just a So now the fact, what he's processing now is like, okay, well, I need to be able to price this thing low enough to convince people that it's worth buying despite the smoke smell. So, in other words, they can say, well, I get this great car over here for a couple of thousand dollars less, but it smells like Marlbrose. Or hopefully they find another smoker to buy the smoker car, but it's so hard. And there's technology, there are vendors, they have ozone machines, there's sprays. I hate to say this, but if you're trading a car in, you are a smoker, you probably should have it spend the money to defumigate it to trick the guy that's a brazen the car.

Buy yourself a couple of days. Am I being immoral to do that? I mean, it is competition. You know, the car dealers do it to you. Why not do it to them? Because a smoker car is traded in. They will use all their powers to defumigate it. But as Stu just said, it's not going to last,

and you're going to end up with a car. that you didn't want to buy that really isn't worth what it was stated value so uh the other reason not to smoke i always advise anybody trading a car in car dealers are human beings they see cars just like you do to some extent and if you have a car that's detailed out very nicely and it smells good and it's shiny inside and out you will get more money significantly more money in the appraisal usually when you trade the car in so it's always a good idea to just don't jump in the car and take it and say what you get me from my car I spend a hundred hundred hundred hundred two hundred dollars doing a super

super detail on that car including defumigation yeah and you'll get what five hundred dollars more for the car yeah well it depends on on the car but a good percentage more based on the car and now the thing is it's not a hard fast rule it depends on how much smoking's been in the car so you could have a car that's the chain smoke how much somebody chain smokes in the car with the windows up, and I see people on the road still doing that, forget about it, that car's done.

Somebody who sticks their hand out the window or makes an effort, it's a little bit easier. But I don't think it's immoral to suggest cleaning your car before you trade it in because that's just a common sense thing to do and deodorizing it to the best your ability is okay. A good appraiser, if it's in there, they're going to detect it.

And you also, just like we advise people, how to figure out they're getting a flood card to smell for perfumes and things that mask odors a used car manager is going to smell for the deodorizers and things like that. It's always there. A good nose can pick up a smoke smell. That's a giveaway. Let me take a moment here and Yvonne please give me a call back. I'm sorry I couldn't get to your

call quick enough. Your call was very important to us. 877-960-9960 and our text number is 772-772-49-39-30 and I have a question for all of you out there in radio land would you consider buying your next vehicle entirely online give us your thoughts, how you feel about this digital age that we have reached. I believe back in the 80s, I don't think that things had escalated as they are right now. But is it something you would consider? 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-2-497-6-5-0. Ann Yvonne, thank you for calling me back.

we're ready to take your call good morning oh good morning welcome and congratulations you've just won yourself $50 that's a good way to start today it is how are things

good good we listen to you every Saturday but we haven't listened early enough to call in and talk to year and with the time change that's pretty crazy yeah so what can we do for you today I have a question about tires we bought our 2016 Corolla at your dealership and was driving down 95 and a strip of the tread came off the tire I

immediately pulled the side of the road, but the tire didn't deflate, so I drove very slowly to your dealership for help, because I have the free tire promo, and the defective tire was replaced right away, but I didn't feel comfortable with one new tire and three old ones. So I asked to have the opposite tire replaced the suit, because my husband had always told me, it that's not good to replace one tire you need to replace at least two on the car but my question is is my thinking long about that would i have been okay with one new tire and three old ones there was nobody at the dealership that helped me make my decision i just went on what my i see right i'm going to have rick take this question because he's the genius that sits on

our table every Saturday morning. He's got all the answers. I got one question before Rick answers. How many miles were on those tires that you had? What was the, what was the age of the tires before the one? And you say, and also a second question, you said the tread came off the tire? Yes, it was about 20,000 on the tires. 20,000 miles on the tires and the tread came off one tire. I haven't heard of that happening on a new tire. Have you, Rick? that's the it's a new one on me that's first time I've ever heard of that I've seen it on what they call retreads on big tractor truck tires but that's because they're original yeah my first reaction would be that's a defective tire and it probably should be covered by the tire manufacturer but we're getting into a Sherlock Holmes here and I I don't know how we can pursue but Rick go ahead and thanks for the basic question as far as on the if the tire had 20,000 miles on it it's getting it's definitely had some wear to it so yeah I would I would prefer to have two tires matching on the

axles in other words not mixing an old and a new tire if the tire only had like two or three maybe four thousand miles on it it really isn't going to be worn enough to where you could match it with a new tire and you'd be just fine but matching a new tire with an old one that's much more worn it can cause a pull it can cause the car not to feel right to ride kind of funny so I always would recommend doing tires in pairs at least or all four at the same time I know but my the The three-trior tire promo on our car would not have replaced more than just the one. Correct?

Well, actually, under the Tires for Life program that we have there at the dealership. Are you talking about Ardyship? Yes. Or we'll start to you. When does this happen? How long ago? How much ago? Huh?

It's been a while. Maybe 12 months ago. Like I said, we usually get on the line, you know, to listen to your show, but too late in the morning to get through. Why don't you do this? I think that we need to investigate that, and I appreciate your calling it to our attention. Text the show is 772-4976530. Do you have a pencil? You can write that down?

Yeah. Okay. I'll give it to you again slowly. Area code 772, 497-6530, and give us the information. We already have your contact information. If you can get the, just as a reminder to us, because we have your contact information because you've won $50. So we will contact you and we will address that issue you had at my dealership. you say about a year ago and thank you for I'll look up the date okay thank you very much I appreciate that and we'll get we'll get right on it and I'll call you back thank you

thank you very much for giving us a call this morning your your call will encourage other ladies to give the show a call and we hope to hear from you again and spread the word to your lady friends $50 for the first to

new lady callers. Our number is 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. With anything at all, just give us a call or a text, and we can answer your questions. Now back to the recovering car dealer. I think we'll discover you too. We do. This is one probably for Stu. Larry R says When, if ever, will supply of the Toyota RAV4 Prime meet demand?

Do you have any comments on the RAV4 Prime's driving performance? I don't think it's ever going to really meet demand. It's considered a niche product right now. It's the

third plug-in. Tell everybody what a RAV4 Prime is first. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Rav4 Prime is a hybrid drivetrain Rav4, which is a small SUV with a plug-in capability. So it works like an electric car and a hybrid. So you can plug it in, and you can go on all-electric mode for about 30 miles, I think, roughly on the Rav-4. And when the battery, EV battery, wears down, it kicks into the normal hybrid operation. If you're not familiar with that, it's pretty cool.

It just uses the gas motor and electric motor, and the computer determines, which one runs and you save a ton of gas. In California, the plug-in vehicles are much more popular, and that's probably instigated by their emissions laws out in California. And Toyota's made a few plug-in vehicles. They did a plug-in Prius years ago. They only sold it in California or maybe a couple other places. And the sales volume was incredibly low, just, I mean, maybe a thousand nationwide.

I don't know how that. Yeah, there's so much talking about electric cars, 300-biles. range here you got a 30 mile range so you charge it overnight and you got 30 miles which is okay if you're driving 20 miles round trip over a 600 mile range when you factor the whole thing in there so you get a ton my son drove a Prius prime same thing but on a Prius and just due to his his radius of traveling well when he was here in town always plugged it him always used electric power because his he had about a 20-mile daily round trip so he was able to use all electric so essentially he had an electric car but if you want to drive further he could get it out of town and then the other stuff. But it's probably never going to be a vehicle that you walk

into a dealership and see it on the lot and pick it out. I mean, we're going to go to all electric vehicles before that happens. So it's an intermediate step for Toyota. And I think Chevy Volt is also a plug-in hybrid as well. So these are, don't get to, I mean, I don't get too excited about these, about these cars. It's kind of like a placeholder until we go all-electric. Commenting on the drive, I have not driven a Raffour prime myself. I have driven the Prius Prime. Drives like a Prius. So like a decent drive and great gas mileage.

Okay. And Michael Elliott has asked. Excuse me, Rick. We're going to go to Marty. He's a regular caller from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning, Nancy. How are you?

I'm well, thank you. Welcome back. I just wanted to mention when you ask about would you buy a car online, I can only tell you my opinion. First of all, of all the cars I bought in the past 50 years, I've never paid the first price that any dealership ever gave me. I probably never paid the second or third price. So I would have a big problem buying a car online if you can't negotiate the price. so I don't know how you would do it online it's a lot it's a lot easier for a dealer

to bring the closer in sit down with the salesman and then intend to walk out and in and out and all kinds of you know problems that you couldn't do online I'm gonna politely disagree with you I think that that online and I'm not suggesting that you buy a car online if you don't feel comfortable. A lot of people just don't like dealing online, and that's understandable.

But if you are comfortable just operating online to be able to use a computer, you can actually negotiate more and wider with more dealers than you save a whole lot of time. When you're online, and you have a deal that will give you a legitimate online price, and that's an out-the-door price and the out-the-door price is the car, is the amount of money that you write a check for and hand it to the dealer and take the car home. If you get

if you can talk to five different dealers or ten different dealers in a matter of an hour or two, I say talk deal online and you might get out-the-door prices maybe on half of those but how long would it take you to get out-the-door

prices if you walked into these dealerships physically and played the game with the negotiation, as you say, car salesman says, I've got to see what my manager will do back and forth. It would take you weeks, months, to do the same thing. You're a great negotiator. You've called the show before, and I can see where you'd like to deal face-to-face. With you, it probably works a lot better.

For a lot of people, they prefer the anonymity and the ability not to have to go through the game playing. But some people enjoy it, and I think you're one of them, Marty. No, Marty, also what I was going to say is that the dealer, he understands that this is his one and only chance to sell you a car. So they're going to give you the best out-the-door price, and they're not going to let loose of you until, you know, they can sell you a car. So there's a whole lot more control whenever you're choosing, you know, to purchase a vehicle online. It's the same with financing. There's so many advantages.

But unfortunately, there's a whole lot of people that aren't, you know, savvy in this digital age. And they feel somewhat compromised. So whatever's comfortable for you. My other problem would be for the most. part I'm doing a trade-in so now there's I've never found a dealership they'll say okay they always tell me you got to come in so we can look at the car you can give them your model you can give them your XLE or whatever and you tell them I've got this that that this several dealerships will give you a different price on the trade-in sure would like to

comment on that yeah well first of all we're kind of we're all getting ahead of ourselves with There are very few, very few dealers that are actually doing online sales right now. Carvana is one of them. And to answer your question about the trade, that's what they're doing. And the dealers that are selling truly online and not making them a commercial, our dealership is doing as well. You will get a trade vote as long as it matches the description. And most of them have functions where you send pictures, and they guide you, take a picture from each angle and you send it in. So they get a really good idea what the trade's like.

and they will give you a firm offer on that trade unless there is something grossly happens like you wrecked it on the way to the dealership. And it's the same thing. So if you were able to find three dealerships that were doing true online selling, you would accomplish the same thing you're doing with all that negotiating, doing it online.

You only pull the trigger with the one who gives you the best out-the-door price. And if they're really doing true online selling, they're going to give you a figure on the trade, and they'll honor it unless there is something drastically different when the vehicle is actually given to them. Yeah. Well, I can only tell you my experience, like I said. In my experience, I can go into a car dealer. The guy will tell me, what, we're going to give you $10,000 for your car, and you say, listen, I want $10.5. The guy will say, look, this guy's leaving in two minutes if I don't give him $500 more. They get it from you somehow.

Yeah, I understand. So you're not, yeah, it's. I understand that every car dealer makes a profit. But I can only tell you, for my experience, so far, that's how I feel better. Now, maybe on a straight lease, where it's strictly, you're not dealing with a trade in it, it's a lease. I can see online very easily because it's either they give you the price, either you like it or you don't. Well, Marty, you're a match for any car dealer, and if there are more people like you, I don't think we'd have a show. because you're tough, you're smart, and you actually enjoy the process.

And if I weren't a car dealer and I wasn't in the business, I would love to have you for a friend because I'd bring you with me anytime I bought a car. And I bet you have some friends that ask you to do that. But, you know, there's no... You're very well-informed and you're tough. And part of it is some mental toughness. It's hard for the average person to go in

with a professional car salesman who was trained. And he'd been doing this for years. He's trained how to do it and you have to go face to face with him. Most people don't have a chance. But a good, tough guy like you that does his homework, you go in there and you win the battle.

So, unfortunately, there's only about 2% of the population that can do what you do. Most of them are attorneys, by the way. Well, I just wanted to tell you That was my, when Nancy brought that up, I thought that's a very good question. And I guess for me, I have nothing to do so I can go to car dealers and spend my time. Why should you? You're having a ball.

And being online, we'll take all the fun out of it for you. All right, well, thanks a lot. Thank you, Marty. Oh, you're welcome, Marty. It was great hearing from you. Give us a call again. 877-960-99-60. Or you can text us at 772-4976530.

And we can't go another minute without mentioning Earl's vigilantes. Yes. I forgot my hat this morning. We were a little rushed. You're lucky you have your shirt on. But at any rate, yes, Earl's vigilantes. And you can sign up and, you know, give us a helping hand. and maybe a few people in your community.

You don't have to be an expert, that's for sure, but it would be a big help for you to join us, join the team at Earlsvigilantes.com. And you can go to Earl on Cars to get, you know, any information you need in regards to signing up. And we have free hats, free shirts. No shirts, I don't think. We've got a lot of hats, though.

Oh, we don't have the shirt? Okay. Well, I'll give them one of mine. Okay. Anyway, on with the show, 877-960, or you can tax us at 77249-9-30. You know, back to Marty, I really, you know, I find it very interesting and very encouraging, a lot of positive things whenever you can just go online and you can have complete. control and you can remain anonymous that's what I like of it it really protects

you not to beat that whole concept of death but I talked to Stu the other day about something a friend of mine the guy he's not mine he's not as old as I am but he's he's getting up there in years a lot of people don't feel comfortable online and long story short he recently bought a used truck he called it online completely online turned out he bought it on the telephone and remember you don't have to use a computer to deal hands-free away from the dealership without the hassle. You can call a dealer and you can talk to their internet department and you can do it that way and you can get prices and you can get your whole point across.

You don't have to tell them who you are, where you are, and you can say, listen, I want an outdoor price and you can do the same thing with your financing. This friend of mine bought a car and somewhere, I mean out of state, a truck it was, out of state, he went through the whole process paid for it uh got all all the guarantees i'm sure there was email involved to some extent but it it was uh not having to go in the dealership and play the game experience and he was very happy so you can do it either way we recommend that you that you do that you not go in the dealership and play the game with the dealer if you can avoid doing that yeah exactly okay i think that stew is ready yeah absolutely we actually actually that we have

have a two related messages one's a text I'm from Dax in California and then we have an anonymous feedback submission and they're on the same topic at least part of it is so this is really interesting so I'll start with Dax's text and Dax's texting us from California is hello good morning everyone what is your take on when a salesman takes the driver's license for a test drive do salespeople run a credit based on the information on the driver's license is this true and there's a second part for Rick and then I'm going to jump over to the other question from anonymous feedback and it says is it true that car dealers can run your credit

using your license plate not driver's license without your permission and the answer is yes and it's called a soft credit pull and the first Dax's question had to do with the driver's license now I to me it's that's evil genius because I never I don't know of any car dealers that are actually doing this but there's no reason why they can. I do know about using a license plate and what it does is it, what it does it pings the license plate, gets the VIN,

finds the public information associated with you, and does a credit check. Corvana does that. Right. And it does not hurt your credit, but when you think about it, it is feel a little creepy and a little intrusive. It doesn't impact your credit because

it's not you making the inquiry. The reason when you make a credit inquiry that's called a hard inquiry, when you're applying for credit for a credit card or a car loan it's signaling your intent to borrow money and when you start signaling that intent that gets the creditor's attention because it's possible to take on too much debt so not getting too much in the weeds but I would not be surprised if this does not become a bigger trend especially I like the idea of a license number we're talking about appraising that's the way

Carvana will appraiser car you give me a license number which is a lot easier to get, then your VIN, because they're hard to find and read when you find them, and they're too long, there's too much room for air. Get your license plate number, and then you give them the condition of the car, but they know a lot about your car just from the license plate number and the VIN. They only even have to type it in. The reason I know about it is because there's a system, a bunch of dealers use it, and basically it's an optical scanner.

It reads your license plate from a camera in the service drive. so when you pull in now they use that for all sorts of information it gets it finds out who you are based on your license plate it can start the repair order you know service process but it also can do that soft credit pull alert a salesperson who comes out and tries to sell your car while your car is in service what information is only solved credit pool from the vent I'm surprised I never really thought about it but I googled it here after I saw this text when you use a service like credit karma and and you run your own credit, that's a soft credit pull. So you're allowed to check your credit without hurting your credit score. So I use Credit Karma, and I get an alert every single time my credit score goes up or down, and it's running soft credit pulls all the time. Yeah, but it's not giving you information. Well, it does.

So when you look on Credit Karma, it has all of my credit card counts listed, my balance is, my credit card utilization, my mortgage is on there. How can that come from your license plate or vent number? it's a soft credit pull that doesn't require a social security number. Oh, so you're someone that goes in and does this. Well, it's all automated. So what happens is the camera reach your license plate. It finds the VIN and the DMV, pings it matches it up on, it's all instant online.

Well, I don't know that, but I didn't know. I didn't know. So they might have, they have your credit cards. Wow, that's interesting. Well, everything that's listed on your credit report. Now, as a caveat, I don't know if the salesperson's, sees that information or if it gives them a summary. You know, good, bad, great,

you know, on a credit rating. A soft credit poll will not suffice for a hard credit poll when you buy the car. So everybody is driving around with a license plate sticking out in the back of their car. Yes. And they are exposing personal information. A guy, you look at the license plate, you know he's got a visa card and an American Express.

Like I said, caveat, I don't know it's visible to the salesperson or the dealer, whether that's... Visible to somebody. Well, it's visible to experience. or Equifax or TransUnion who sees it and they might send a summary that says you have excellent credit and then the salesperson knows I should be able to give him this rate

but when you tighten it up and you do the actual deal. Privacy folks out to listen to the show that's shocking to me. I think there ought to be an investigation of some kind. I can see the VIN. It hasn't been forever. I mean, it's a somewhat recent thing. When I first learned about the license plate scanner

for the service drive, I was pretty shocked myself. it really does that and it really it really does that okay but we have oh we have a caller yeah we do okay yeah but before we go to our female caller I have another question for the audience and that it's for it's for everyone but I'd like to state that I'm sure that all the ladies know that you know we buy nearly half the cars at the when we go out shopping and I'd like to ask you ladies what do you concentrate on and do you take someone with you are you concentrating on safety dependability give us a call tool free we'd love to hear from you and get your opinion 877 960 or you

can text us at 772-4976530 there's so many ways to get in touch with us and if you want to remain anonymous you can do so by going to www www your anonymous feedback.com now we are going to go to lorraine who's calling us from hope so on welcome back lorraine hi how is how is everybody we're well thank you great hearing from you great talking to you thank you um i have a this is a thank you call uh in one way and then tell you what i what what I found out for myself because of your show and me listening to it as long as I have and the information and the kindness and the caring I have learned a lot and a lot of my learning has been to do research on things that go wrong with my car and here's my story I

had a um are you hearing me okay yes loud and clear blood and clear okay okay thank you i had a little man go on on my um elantra my 2013 it was a red airbag and i didn't know what it meant and so i went to our good friend advanced auto in oak town where i live and he came out and looked at it and said that um it could be a number of things but his recommendation would be to um go to a garage and let them check it out So I went to another hometown place that I take my car to for alignments and things. And great people, his name is Brooks, and he came out, put it on the scanner. I said, you called the scanner, and came back in and said that it was the clock spring.

The clock spring told me all about what it did, amazing information. So I went home, and I said, I asked him for a price. gave me a price, which was to get it fixed. It told me the labor was a little over two hours, that the part was, I think, he said, 169, but the total would have been $394, almost $400. I said, I don't really have that right now. Can I still drive the car? And he said, yes, he said, but he said it isn't something that you can ignore.

It would have to be fixed eventually, because I know then they didn't pressure me. So I went home, I did some research, and because of my learning on your program, I put in about the Clack Spring, the Allantra site came up and said that there was a 15-year extended warranty on the driver's side airbag Clack Spring. Wow. You have to put in your VIN number, which I went out to the car and got, and come to find out that it's completely covered. So my appointment is at Hyundai on, excuse me, April 19th at 930, and I attributed my savings of 494.86 or whatever it was, excuse me, what it was to your program and your wonderful information. And so I send you thanks and blessings to all of you for just keep doing what you're doing for us ladies out here that really, really need you. Oh, Lorraine, what a great story. congratulations knowledge is power as I always say and there are a lot of people

listening to you right now and I I thank you for the phone call would you like to add anything to that Earl no I just think it's a marvelous very rewarding to have people listen and follow through on some of our advice and I think that the the internet to me you know it just amazes me the information available I have to be reminded myself, but every problem that you have in your life, with your car or anything else, you could pretty much Google it and go online, and somebody's already had the problem and solved it. And it's just magical. So you have a problem with your car. I'm going to put Rick out of business right now. So if you have a problem with your car, if you can articulate that problem the way Lorraine did and go online,

you'll find a chat room, you'll find a club of Toyota, Nissan, Honda. owners, you'll find something. I have customers call me, as I say, I'm a car dealer too now, and they will call me and bring things to my attention about my product, Toyota's, that I didn't know that customers had experienced in other parts of the country, maybe, but the Internet is well information, and you found the holy grail to solving problems with your car, Lorraine. Thank you so much for sharing it with everybody. And Lorraine, I have to, I have to, I have to tell you this um you know it's amazing the amount of time that women uh spend in researching they spend a whole lot more time than men whenever they're purchasing a car or whether they're

having service done and i thank you for bringing that to our attention just sort of confirming what we say every week absolutely well you're wonderful to listen to and i pass it on and this will be another story for my coffee church class that we go to and I've had a lot of feedback from my people there saying how much that they've learned from me from you oh wonderful start you're going to start your own shoulder right that's great well happy spring and god blessings on Easter and everybody stay safe during this and it looks like we're seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel yes yes we are well you'll become a real hero if you spread the word about the $50 for the first two new lady callers.

Thank you so much, Lorraine. God bless you. You're welcome. Yeah, God bless. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 877-960-90-60, or you can text us at 772-497-25-3-0. We're going to go back to Stu with some texts.

Yeah, we're going back to the second part. Dax had sent a question. He was asking about these soft credit polls, and we talked about that. that. But he has a second question for Rick. He says, hi, Rick. What's the process on servicing brakes on these vehicles with electronic handbrakes? Is there a special tool involved when pushing in the pistons? I try to watch your show, but always miss it. Keep up the good work. More info, the better. And that's from Dax in California. Actually, there are several changes that have been made now that the, what he's talking about is the electric parking brake on cars now. It's actually a small electric motor that's mounted onto the brake caliper on the rear wheels. And when you put the car in park, it will activate and it actually locks those rear brakes. So not only is the transmission being in park going to hold the car still,

but the rear brakes are actually locked up as well. And in order to service them, one of the ways that I know Toyota now has is we can use a scam tool and actually tell the brakes to unlock those wheels. And another way is there's certain cars you can basically work the switch in a certain manner and it will turn off that electric parking brake. So you can actually then disassemble and the piston will actually be retracted

by the electric motor. Is that the old emergency brake? Yeah, basically it is, but it's not the old one anymore. It's all updated and brand new. So when you push the park, or you put the park wherever then your emergency break is automatically engaged absolutely I never knew that I'm going home I just learned my thing for the day well you know it was this button that I stared at for like a couple of

years and finally asked Rick what it did he told me okay yeah so we have some oh sorry good well we got a couple of YouTube's uh let's see let me to the first one here. Michael Elliott says should the tax license and registration be a part of the out-the-door price? Oh boy, you hear people say all the time. That's a good question. That really is a good question. And I apologize for even my ambiguity on this. I feel that certainly, literally, it should be part of the out-the-door price. Any fudge wiggle room you give a dealer, he'll use it against you. So as a

purist, I would insist on an Alpador price including sales tax and license plate. One of the reasons that they fudge you on that is they say, well, we can't give you the exact figures because we need to know your date of birth, and we

need to know whether you're trading in a car or whether you're buying a car outright. Well, that's true. But you can give them that information, and then they can't. give you an exact number so our mystery shopping target this afternoon gave us I'm not giving away to anything they gave us a high figure on tax and tag because they didn't know the when they posted it online and they don't know who's going to buy

the car if you post a price online you don't know whether whether the date of birth and you don't know whether it's a trade in or not but yeah I would I would I would go for the out-the-door price, including tax and tag. That way it removes everything. And that's the reason I say an outdoor price is what you can write a checkout for. Hand it to the salesman, get in the car, and go home. And Rico is saying, hoping you all have a little more spring in your step this morning. Does recharging electric vehicle batteries, when only partially drained, form a memory on the battery?

perhaps not allowing it to fully recharge. Now, I know with hybrid cars, this is not the case, because that battery is always being charged and discharged continuously while you're driving the car. But with electric vehicles, of course, you're charging the battery up at one point and then running it to discharge. Now, it does get some recharging back from the regenerative braking, but not enough to actually cause it to make a big difference in the amount of power in that battery. however the manufacturers have made them to where they do not get a memory that's

mainly because most of them are a lithium ion battery and unlike the old nickel metal hydride rechargeable batteries these do not form a memory so the answer is no the answer is a no and the last one I have right here is Ernesto Ortega is saying is it true on an all-wheel drive if a tire needs to be replaced you need to replace all for because of the all-wheel drive. And is this true for a four-wheel drive as well? And actually, I'll go back to my earlier comment with our caller. We had, Yvonne, I believe.

No, if you have one tire replaced, you should have two done as a pair. But because it's all-wheel drive or four-wheel drive, you still can only do it just as a pair of two tires or if you need all-four. And that's based on the mileage. If you have a set of tires with 2,000 miles on them, you don't need to replace both tires. Right. No, you can still do completely safely replace just one tire. However, you should make sure to match the tire, the brand, and the model of tire identical on the same axle.

Sure. You don't want to run two different brands of tires because, again, that creates a difference in the rolling resistance, and it can create a pull. Okay. Okay. We do have a caller, a regular caller, from Minnesota. Bob. Good morning, Bob. Welcome to the show. Good morning. How are you today? We're great. Welcome back. A question in regards to online buying. When you talk to a dealership, is there such a thing as the internet department? Are you talking to a salesperson? Yes. They are commissioned, usually. Salespeople, just like on the floor. And more and more, the salespeople are the same.

They do internet sales and they do floor sales. Some dealerships have a special department that they do only internet sales. I recommend that you always ask for the internet department because there are still old school dealerships out there that will quote you $1,000 or $2,000 higher than the person in the Internet department. Yeah, because when I went to a good dealership, they had a person who supposedly was was the internet department, but then I asked him again, he said, well, anybody can handle that before you. We're not just one person here.

Depends on the dealership, and you have to be careful because the old school dealerships will try to charge a higher price. They're fewer and fewer of those, but they're still, they still exist. Rick has to do at a point. Yes, that's another example of playing fast and loose with titles such as managers and trying to give a, like Earl X used to have heard puffery. So in the Internet Department, their Internet departments are comprised of salespeople, and they have a different task, so they're asked to, like, answer these submissions for Internet leads, you know, request for quotes, but they are just salespeople, but they'll call themselves managers. It's kind of like in the service department. Everybody is called a manager there.

It's to give the... Or advisors. Or advisors. Well, the part of the manager is to give the customer the feeling that they're dealing with somebody important, somebody's. authorized to make decisions that the regular sales people are not allowed to do. But like Earl said, if they're putting their best foot forward, when you're getting a price through the unit department, it will be considerably less than the traditional floor salesperson. The other question I had, you're a one-price dealership, is that correct?

Yes. You also have a Costco program? Is that correct? Yes. which you got two different prices there then one price and Costco are two different prices that's correct you deal with that it's called cognitive dissonance and it we hate it it's so it's saying we're a two-price dealership doesn't make any good marketing sense but a small minority of our customers are a Costco members Costco's agreement requires us to offer the lowest price that we'd offer to anybody to

their members and it is enough of a volume and significant enough of a program that we do participate. And so it is a kind of like an educated customer sort of thing. If you're a Costco member, you're going to get a better deal at pretty much any dealership that you buy a car from, including Earle's dealership. One last question. The Toyota Corolla, I seem to find a hard time finding that car around this city. is there a shortage of that car or is it just

I'm not sure what's what caused that no we're not experiencing any shortages with with corollas right now it's the trend has been a way right now the number of one selling car that we're selling is a Rav4 it's a small SUV and that's outpaced the Camry which was the our bread and butter car

in our area up here in northern Palm Beach County the corolla sales are lower than the rest of South Florida. And when you get down to Miami, it's a much bigger selling car. I'm Bobbed in Minnesota. Oh, sorry? Sorry, Bob. I thought you were my neighbor. Then to answer

your question, I have no idea why you're not seeing very many croas in Minnesota other than, they're not offered in an all-wheel drive. Maybe they're not the best for winter driving. I don't know. You got any thoughts to add? No, I think it's probably just an anomaly. Go

online, Bob, and go to auto trader.com and they list all new and used cars everybody's got everywhere put the corolla in that you described that you would like to consider and you will find a whole bunch of corollas even in Minnesota might maybe not in your immediate market but it'll be pretty close there are a lot of corollas out there yeah because i can't really i'm trying to find it my son is looking for a corolla he can't find a car to drive around here that's that's the problem thing. Yeah, I would go to AutoTrader.com

and you'll get a zip code of the location of the vehicles of your choice and I'd be interested, give that a try then. It calls back next week. I'd be amazed if there was a scarcity of corollas in Minnesota because it's a very

high production, popular, high-volume car. Okay, very good. I appreciate your answers and I always watch your show it's very interesting well thank you so much Bob spread the word really appreciate it cool in Minnesota I bet chilly out there

50 degrees today so it's nice that's a heat wave our snow is finally gone thanks so much Bob have a great weekend okay let's move along here okay got a text yep here's a text

says I have a Toyota and I understand that the factory required maintenance involves service visits every 5,000 miles or six months. My problem is that I put very, very few miles on my car. I have 2,000 miles on a 2017. It is very low. I've been repeatedly warned by my Toyota dealer that by refusing to do the rotations would result in the voiding of my warranty. I did not want to accept this, so I called your dealership and spoke with your son, Josh. Finally, I got some information that made sense and gave me the reassurance I needed. He told me he could not I imagine a scenario in which Toyota would deny a future warranty claim because I rotated my tires once per year instead of twice per year, especially considering my extreme little miles.

Finally, I found a human being with common sense to help me out. Oh, thanks. Very nice to say up my brother. He is a human being, and he has common sense. But he told you is absolutely right. He's not nicer than you. He's nicer than me, but he's not as smart. But he's correct here.

That's a common thing. That's a common thing I hear all the time. They say, if you don't do this, it's going to avoid your warranty. Let me, well, here's a deal. If your air conditioning went out under the three-year warranty, and they said, ah, you missed the tire rotation last year, they are not going to deny that claim. It's completely unrelated. On the other hand, if you went 20,000 miles and never changed your oil and something having the engine,

yeah, you might have a problem. Well, let me address the question directly. The dealers today are desperate for service business. The manufacturers are building all the cars. I just tell you this. All the cars, quality is high, maintenance repairs are very low, a lot of free maintenance programs out there. Car dealers who used to hang their head on the profits they made in the service department are struggling.

And they have to sell service because the competitive business of the new car business is so vicious that a lot of dealers don't make much money selling new cars. Some do. But the average profit base is in parts and service. So the evolution of this amazing high-quality vehicles, they're going to do anything they can to get you in. One of them is to say, look, if you avoid you, if you don't obey the warranty and the recommendations in the owner's manual, you can void your warranty. You know, you could put a person on the stand there, and he can make that statement, it's not perjury. Technically, the manufacturer can refuse to warranty something, fix something on a warranty if you didn't do the requirements.

But it's about like winning the lot of or lose. You can't, they don't do it. We've been to a toy dealership for 47 years. I've never known the manufacturer to refuse a warranty repair because of lack of maintenance. Now, that's a slight exaggeration. But once in a thousand times. And it's when you do not do a maintenance that directly cause the failure in the warranty. But the tire rotation has got absolutely nothing to do with anything, except the tires.

Yeah, it doesn't have to do with very much at all. So you still got to rotate your tires, but this gentleman is putting, or lady didn't identify, has 2,000 miles on a 4-year-old car. And you also don't have to take it to the dealer. You can take it anywhere you want. Take it to your favorite mechanic. Get your receipts and save them. And then you were totally protected, but you don't have to go to the car dealer for any maintenance.

I mean, there is, there's a nice aspect of it. Your car gets inspected for any, you know, developing problems. But this gentleman is 202,000 miles on every four years. I don't think there's much going on. Now, I would advise him that if this continues, at some point, he's going to be dealing with possible dry, right issues on those tires. Eventually, those tires will expire, but right now he's fine. It's a good idea to have your tires checked.

I mean, you have somebody else, check them yourself. tires are important or a safety issue and you don't want to go a year without having anybody look at your tires look at the inflation level, check it for cracks but he's going in once a year so he's perfectly fine so that's good let's see here

Stu last week at the end of the show you mentioned an article that listed the best cars for dogs can you read that list this morning that's from Dan G and PBG okay Dan G PBG I think I have the link here hold on you don't mean dogs to buy those cars you mean to ride in the car now the dogs to buy the cars yeah uh here we go uh this are the 12 best cars in 2021 for dogs number one is well these are not ranked in order they're just all 12 uh super 2021 Subaru outback and i'm not going to read all the reasons but in the

article um it goes on why it is a big cargo space easy to get in and out for dogs to jump it so that sort of thing. So we have the 2021 Subaru Outback. We have the 21 Chrysler Pacifica, which is a big van like SUV. The 2020 Volvo V-60, another mid-sized SUV. You have the 2021 Kia Telluride, which I was riding behind on the way of the studio this morning, and I was admiring, what a nice looking car it is. The 21 Toyota Sienna is on the list. The 21, Earl's going to hate this one, the 21 Jeep wrangler but i'm looking at the picture they have here if i was a dog i would love to jump in that thing right or right i guess dogs don't like luxury cars no dogs don't like dogs don't like doors and windows okay the 2020 Honda fit it's a little car the 2021 kia sole a little tiny SUV

the 21 oh this is cool the 21 Tesla Model 3 because dogs like quiet electric rides No Bentley's Rolls Royce. Not yet. 21 Subaru Cross Tech. 21 Honda Odyssey. 21 Toyota 4-Rourner. And that's what winds them all out. So there you go.

Dog cars. And no BMW on the list. Yeah, you don't need to go fancy for the dogs. Dogs, they don't ask for much. They just want to be loved. That's right. All right. Next one.

What is the current status of the semiconductor shortage and how does it continue to impact vehicle inventory levels and availability? It's still a huge impact. Fred, I think it was some GM plants are shutting down Lansing this month. Millions of vehicles are not being produced that would have been produced normally. And I don't know you read more about this than I do. I don't know when the end is in sight, but it's affecting Ford and General Motors profoundly.

Yeah, yeah. It's a pandemic phenomenon because of the huge demand on the type of goods that require microchips, not just cars and the other products are competing for the chips and with the car manufacturer so it's a real problem that's right okay this is perfect we got some anonymous feedback and we should wrap this up in time for the mystery shopping report okay it's not one there we go uh china has banned Tesla for members of its military or other government employees because of all the sensors and cameras they're worried it will spy on them. Hmm.

It might, I don't know. I mean, who knows what that car is doing? It's like Alexa. Well, somebody asked, Elon's an honest guy. Somebody asked Elon if he's spying on the Chinese. I seriously doubt he's spying on the Chinese. Well, I mean, you know, I think he's spying for the Chinese. I think he has a credibility, you know, even though he's a little crazy, but he's smart.

And if he told the Chinese that he promises he's not spying, and maybe it would read. Well, I mean, the proof is that they're actually doing it. So if they actually banned it, I thought when I first read about that, that they were responding to some of the fears that Americans have over Chinese and their electronics. You know, are they using their electronics? Because it's so ubiquitous.

Everything has Chinese components in it. Is there a secret Trojan horse spying where in there? Let me tell you. Let me tell you. We just learned on the show. I just learned on the show earlier that you could get somebody's Venn number. and run a credit report with a VIN number, I mean, with a license plate number. So every time I'm going to get in my car and I'm going to drive home

and everybody can see my credit report, it's on the back of my car. Well, not everybody can. Well, listen, if Carvana can, then everybody can. And we're going to do it because we're going to find out how to do it. Well, we do it, but we don't do it without permission. We have a soft pull function. So if somebody goes on our website and they want to find out what their credits like, it's on a hard pole they go in there they can do it and it gives an idea of a rate but we only do it with the customer's permission we don't do any

but the customer doesn't know you do it that's yeah and i'm saying that's yeah we do a soft pull but if i have a friend at a car dealership i can see a license plate on the i hate this guy and i need to get some information on i read down his license plate number i call my friend charlie in napleton uh Hyundai and say i run the run the license plate i want a credit report on this guy and now I've invaded his privacy unless and he never knows it hasn't unless because we don't want to cause a panic here because I did but I did say before I said I don't believe and I'm not sure within the dealership of any personnel is access to see the details of that report oh okay well I mean you mean that depends on the management of the dealership no no no it depends on the company that's providing the soft poles and those are the credit bureaus so the credit bureaus are still bound by their privacy law so I don't know what is I honestly don't know next week we'll have to come back and explain the listeners what is visible

to a business that is utilizing that function. Yeah. Okay. I mean, but... We're blaming Tesla and the Chinese for privacy. My point being that privacy is the thing of the past, folks. Just give it up. We don't have privacy anymore.

I will never give it up. Well, but I know everything about you. And there's nothing can do about it. Well, there's nothing there. almost everything all right more anonymous feedback earl's causing uh panic in the ruckus all right um every day it feels like we are accelerating to a very different future as has as this conversation has demonstrated especially concerning the car industry bmw just announced that their mini brand will be all electric by 2030 that long i think they'd be all electric by 2025 uh all electric by 2030 the time

they are changing. Yeah, that's true. That's become a theme of the show. We didn't start out that way. Yeah. We start off with evil car dealer ads. Now we're talking about self-driving cars. We've got a YouTube over here.

All righty. This one, it's a little long. I'm going to read it quick as I can. Donovan Lewis, a long story that I'm going to try to make sure. I've been looking to buy a Tesla Model 3 for a few weeks and really struggled to get a dealer to work with me on the price.

Apparently he was looking for a used, a pre-owned Tesla. It is used? That's what he was looking for, was a pre-owned Tesla. Because one price, Tesla is one price of new cars, yeah. He says it seems most dealers and the people of the dealers have no clue about a Tesla and how Tesla prices their cars and that a Model 3 has basically no options other than color and how long the range is. A standard Model 3 from Tesla is 37,5005.

yet every dealer who has a used one in our area is charging more for a used car than a new one sometimes $4,000 over what a new one costs. I found one at Edmore's Cadillac and Del Rey and they were way overpriced. I tried twice going in to get the car at a lower price. It didn't work and they didn't understand how the car was overpriced. Yesterday the used car manager who was on vacation reached out to me and he clearly understood or knew about the price of a Tesla and corrected the situation for me right away. We got to a fair price for a used car, and I went over and purchased the car.

In the end, they did the right thing, and the experience was great, so I have to give a shout-out to Ed Morris Cadillac and Del Rey. But anyone looking for a used Tesla do not pay more than what a new one costs from Tesla. Well, yeah, I'll jump in there. This happens. It's called supply and demand. It happens all the time. used cars can't sell more than for the same new car.

It doesn't happen often, but for a high-demand low-supply vehicle, Tesla's an unusual vehicle. Auto-trader is your best friend. You need to shop around more than you did otherwise. But he didn't make a mistake, I don't think. He tried to sell the car for that. You objected to it, and then he lowered the price. That's what happened.

You can price the car out. how many people know what a used Tesla cost? You don't know. You have to find out, that's the reason you go to AutoTrader and you get that exact model in there. You can find out everyone for sale in the United States and you'll see what the prices are. Then you have some basis for comparison. And he finishes up by saying, and you actually can get one direct from Tesla in a day. They have inventory in Orlando and Miami waiting for purchase.

Wow. Amazing. That's the way it should be. That's a wave of the future. That's the way cars will be sold. You won't have dealerships with these giant brick-and-mortar Taj Mahals with a thousand cars in inventory. You'll have satellite locations, and you'll order your car online. It'll be your lowest price, and they'll deliver the next day. Tesla's ahead of the ballgame. I'm actually figuring that by the time I've worn out my Tacoma pickup, my next vehicle will probably be an electric car. Yeah, probably.

I hope so anyways. Okay. That's me. Hey, Earl, are you familiar with the emerging, are you familiar with the emerging automobile base fitness trend in which people exercise in their cars while commuting are going to the supermarket? Some exercises involve using wind resistance to strengthen your arms, gluteal contractions to strengthen buttocks and lower back muscles. One question, is this safe? I'd be, I'd watch the buttocks exercise myself because it would probably cause you to bounce up and down in the car. And depending on, depending on. on the size of your buttocks. Actually, I had an instant picture in my head of Fred Flimsta with his feet down the ground peddling his car a lot. That is dangerous. I don't think you should exercise in your car.

And the other thing is if you're using wind resistance to exercise your arm, you're going to have an, if you're driving the car, you're going to overdevelop a left arm because one's on the wheel and the other one, you're good. Well, and the old Burma Shave commercial, don't stick your arm out too far. It might go home in another car. I get all the exercise. I need when Nancy and I are on the Sawgrass Expressway. And I'm terrified and my hands are frozen in fear to the wheel.

And I'm in the right-hand lane and people are passing me at 110. That was on the way to the studio this morning? Well, yeah, that too. There's one great exercise that you can do in the car whenever you're driving. And that's your abs. And it really, your abdominals. Oh, okay. Yeah.

And it's an isometric type of an exercise, and it's really neat. And it also helps your muscles in your back. Yep. Okay. Okay. Anonymous feedback. When using the Costco customer pricing on a new vehicle, is it possible to get different prices if you try three different dealerships from Costco on the same vehicle? Yes, great question.

Yes, you can, but you're kind of spread out because each Costco dealer is assigned to a warehouse. so you would have to go to another Costco warehouse so you might get spread out. You can call Costco and you can explain the situation. And I recommend your Costco member they will give you a zip code of your nearest dealer. Call them and get the 800 number and say, listen, I need the Costco dealer in this zip code

and if they ask you why you can tell them because I work there or tell them or whatever you want to tell them, I'm moving there, I don't care. But you can get three, Costco dealers, and you should. You should always, in South Florida, there's probably at least three Costco

dealers for every make car sold somewhere in South Florida. And you should get those three numbers, because Costco requires you have the lowest number you sell to anybody that may or may not be true for the dealer. They may are, and it may not be true to the program, but you

should get three, always get three prices. Yeah, all I was saying was that, because it is centered the each Costco is associated with the dealer like for example us we have every Costco in in northern mid central to northern palmage county that's unusual yeah so it is unusual but you can do that and you should do that by the way that's because Costco doesn't necessarily guarantee that the dealer is going to play by the rules and Costco well they do guarantee that they'll play by rules it doesn't mean the dealer will listen to them yeah and also the pricing varies by dealer so they make their own pricing all right last anonymous feedback um

Hey, Earl, how come you can't change the sound of your car's horn like you can, your phone's ringtone? We could have special holly sounds like jingle bells and such. There's something to do with safety in HTSA. I would think that a regulated, reasonable, I'm not sure what the language is of a horn would be probably a safe. I mean, let's face it, if you had any, it was a while while west on horns, you could scare the hell out of something. they wrecked their car right or I think the serious answer to that is um it has to be recognizable that a vehicle is warning you so if you had a horn that sound like an elephant that might startle you but you might not think someone's about to smash into you so I think

we should all settle on what an acceptable sound of a horn is and stick to that yeah an elephant sound would be terrifying great all right let me just double check if we don't have any other text and we just have some nice well-wishes nothing no questions yeah and we're all fit so we're all caught up yeah let me do this because I've been carrying this card around in my briefcase for a long time this is one of these typical BS wordy solicitations and I get them I get two or three a week I mean it's unbelievable and they come in envelopes they come in postcards motor service motor vehicle service notification and you know it's a bright pink looks official and it's just

one of these BS things that you get online you get them probably texted too and a lot of emails in the mail and they're worthless they are usually power train warnings we talked about that earlier in the show they don't cost anything and then they charge you a thousand dollars or two thousand dollars huge rip off these companies should be arrested and put in jail with us, but never, never, ever buy any automobile warranty on television advertising, TV, direct mail, anything. Don't buy it. Just forget about it. Okay, I have a question for you.

You talk about mailers. I get a lot of phone calls. Are you getting as many phone calls as you are mailers because I'm getting an enormous amount of callers? I get both. It's getting crazy. You know, they're making a lot of money. Thank, gosh, for the spam identifier on your phone. Well, you know, that works too, but then they get a little creative

and call from different numbers. Oh, can I tell you something really funny real quick? Yeah, I coined a phrase, I was very proud of myself. I've been hounded by a salesperson. See, guys, all you consumers out there, yes, you have our heart with these evil car dealers. But us car dealers, we're hounded by salespeople in every day. They're trying to sell this marketing stuff, and some of these guys are really aggressive. I get this one guy's been just haunting me.

months sending me messages he never texted me he's leaving me voice messages and i'm probably not handling this the best way i'm just like i'm not responding to him so finally he texts me he goes hey i landed your voicemail again he goes anytime i can swing by and i said hey listen i'm not really interested please take me off your list he goes great i'll tone it down how about i follow but next month i'm like i go tone it down i replied i go tone it off i go we're done oh i like that yeah tone it off all right never mind yeah i like that okay Let's get the mystery shopping report, and this is, we've revealed the name, maybe we accidentally did before, mystery shop of J.M. Lexus.

J.M. Lexus is in Coconut Creek, Florida, which is like in the Fort Lauderdale area. Margate. My big word? Margate. Margate. Margate. Margate? Yeah.

It's in Margate. Is Margate near Coconut Creek? Yeah, it's close enough. Because Al Hendrickson is in Coconut Creek. Yes. And it's next door to Al Hendrickson, Toyota. The address of Jamlex's is Margate, Florida. Okay.

Okay. Anyway, called Fort Lauderdale, because most people don't know where Margate or Coconut Creek is, called Fort Lauderdale. They're the world's largest Lexus dealer. J.M. stands for Jim Moran. Jim Moran was the founder of Southeast Toyota, and it's a phenomenon. That's where I bought my Lexus, and I recommend people to this dealership. isn't a commercial for them. I recommend that you shop and compare Lexus prices like anything else. Four years ago, Jay and Lexus joined the Lexus Plus program, a pilot initiative that began with a handful of Lexus dealers that sought to revamp the luxury dealership experience. I should have asked you about this before, Stu, but are you sure it was a bunch

of luxury of Lexus dealers that got together, or was it Lexus? It was Lexus. It was the corporate. the manufacturer. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, began with a handful, meaning that they selected a handful. Yes, they asked several dealers to join this pilot program. And with a promise of fixed transparency, pricing, and a single point of contact with customers. In other words, they want to make a quantum leap for car dealers and Lexus dealers in particular so that you could actually have a normal, happy sales experience, just like when you bought any other product in the world. And it was a radical move for them when they made it. And they had very few Lexus dealers that followed them.

J.M. Lexus was one of them. And they have very few Lexus dealers. They ultimately follow them. I would say less than half, I don't know. Well, since it's over four years since that happened, and that's definitely not the main way to it. Most Lexus dealers are not doing it. So I don't know how.

Yeah, Palm Beach Lexus is not doing it. do now. They did it for used cars, but not for new cars. Well, that's just the automation thing. Basically, Lexus introduced a one-price selling model. One price is a negotiation-free process that promises a fair discounted price without the need for haggling.

Like, as I say, every other retail product in the world. The idea is to offer complete transparency in a less stressful and drawn-out way. The one-price selling model is older than you may think. I even tried it back in 1990s in my Pontiac dealership. It didn't work out very well for me back then, and I eventually went back to the old-fashioned way of car selling. And the reason it didn't work for me is because people didn't trust me.

If you say to a customer, I'm going to put my very lowest price on this car, it isn't going to work if they don't believe you. And they didn't believe me because I was a radical. I mean, I was a dealer that said, I'm going to put my lowest price on every car. And they said, well, nobody else does in the world. Why would you do it? And it didn't work. I didn't believe either.

My sales dropped. My sales dropped. And I lost money. I mean, I was losing money. And I just, finally after a year, about a year and a half, I said, enough of this and I quit. But it's definitely not new. But it just hasn't been able to be implemented by any. anybody, or very, very few, as it were.

I went back to my old-fashioned way, I said, and then I implemented this at the dealership, the toilet dealership, what, 15 years ago, still? 2012, so nine years ago. Nine years ago. Nine years ago, we went to the one price of my dealership, just like Jay and Lexus is doing now, or says they're doing, you'll find out later in that report. Lexus Plus adds a modern twist to one price by adding a one person or, single point of contact component.

This means that consumers, customers, will only deal with one person during a transaction. You don't go from person to person to person, and you don't have a F&I manager and an accessory manager and this manager and that manager, and they pop you around, and they don't do that. One person takes through the whole process. So it's calm or cooler, and as I say, the way every other retail is conducted. And here is a quantum leap by Lexus to bring this to all Lexus dealers. They just haven't been able to do it yet. Lexus Plus also makes another promise to the customers of its participating dealers no hidden fees.

We last Mr. Shop, J.M. Lexus, two years ago, with the attention of finding out if all that one price stuff was for real, Agent Thunder, led that mission, our mail shopper, and was pleasantly surprised to find out it was for real. The only thing we fall to them for was they charged a $59 electronic filing fee despite promising no hidden fees. Now, the amount of money is so

small. You talk about a lot of money for a new Lexus. So for 59 bucks, I'm not going to worry about it. I don't know why. I mean, why do they do that? I mean... They sell more Lexuses than it adds up. Yeah, why not be pure, I guess so?

You sell 500 Lexuses. I guess so. Since last week, we targeted the Lexington dealership, Lexus of Palm Beach. We figured that would be a good time to return to J.M. Lexus and see if they're still being good. We selected Agent Lightning, our female shop, lead to the mission to Margate. Once again, she chose a new 2021 Lexus ES 350, this time in Nebula Gray. I hate those names. Before heading out, she found J.M. Lexus online price for the VIII.

She wanted. The MSRP was 46,715, 46,000. And it was listed for sale for $42,290. And that included a $1,500 manufacturer rebate. Okay. How sweet that is. Everything's listed there, right online. Don't have to go in. You get it. Anybody could get it. Surprisingly, James Lexus also listed their out-the-door price with an itemized list of all taxes and fees. The format was similar. They used the same online platform that my dealership uses. Yeah, they use Roadster. Huh? They use Roadster. Yeah, Roadster, yeah. So the buyer's order they put online with everything you're going to pay. And this Alexis thing came out after we did what we did. We were flattered when it happened because we said,

hey, look at that. Lexus, finally a manufacturer, is going to copy something that we did in our dealership. It made me feel good. listed among the automized tax fees was GM Lexus says oh I just said that no no no there's a reference it again okay $59 electronic filing fee that was a mini dealer fee and as I say you know if you're listening and folks at GM Lexus take the $59 out I mean it's not a big deal but you know somebody who's gonna beat you up on that get pure be pure be pure be pure where where okay there's a glitch

that we saw. Yeah, it was a glitch. We thought it was a glitch. I think it is. Ours does it automatically, so it was just missing the registration fee. It had only part of it had a, so I think it was just a technical thing. Yeah, well, tell them about it. So in other words, the price that they had

should have been higher. It needs to be about I'm going to guess, usually for that kind of car, it would be around 500 they would add. I got you. The out-the-door price, online price was 45-7-54, but it should be closer to 46, 200. if they correctly added the registration fees. I totally agree.

That would be a mistake. Yeah, that's not. Here's a report. Speaking of the first person, if I were the female shopper, Agent Lightning, I arrived at 12.10 p.m. Park, I started to walk around the lot. The place was huge.

I could see activity in the showroom, but out in the lot, there wasn't much action. After not being noticed for 15 minutes, I headed inside. I stepped up on the front desk, but no receptionist was there. I decided to wait while I did a couple of other customers lined up behind me. Finally, a man approached from behind the desk,

plexiglass shield, and asked if I had an appointment. I said I didn't, but I would like to see someone about getting a new ES350. Now, this little experience here is a car dealer that bothers me a little bit, and I think it's a fluke. I do, too. And I just don't think that, you know, you should have somebody there, You don't have to wait for somebody to come up to the receptionist. Or maybe they were so busy.

I don't know what it is, but again, efficiency is something that you're probably going to find a lot of at J.M. Lex. So this is really an anomaly. The man behind the plastic said he would give someone for me. Ask for my name and phone number. And he directly to sit in a waiting area and said I could expect to wait five minutes. Nice touch. You just don't let somebody plop down.

down and say I just lick my mask I was trying to turn the page the salesperson approached me in about a minute he had me a card says his name was Ryan so they said five minute wait only took a minute under promise over the liver and they made up for the little weight at the reception desk yeah exactly his card said he was a sales manager and we think that everybody calls themselves the sales manager and there's nothing wrong with that because they are they do everything yeah There isn't a sales manager. Yeah.

You go into a bank, everybody's a vice president, right? So everybody's a sales manager at J.M. Lexus. We walked around the showroom and asked me what the vehicle I was interested in. I told him about the nebula gray ES350 I wanted. I said I had a not-so-great experience last week had another Lexus dealership, Brian, express sympathy. He asked me how familiar I was with the ES 350, and I confess that I wasn't very well-versed. I said I'd compare models online and I sort of settled on the nebula gray one. Ryan went on to describe all the different variations and options for the ES 350,

but ultimately I've returned to the one I came in on. Ryan led me back to the waiting area. He'd go find the keys to the one I wanted. I waited a good 15 minutes before Ryan returned, and he apologized profusely. Now, waiting is something you see in almost all cartilage, but the apology. It doesn't happen in all cordially ships. So here, here's the class, the professionalism coming through at J.M. Lexus. He had been able to find the keys, but he bought, he had been unable to find the keys, but he brought the keys to a 2020 demo model. He

sure me it would drive just like the 2021. And that's probably true. We went on to test drive and Ryan split his time teaching me about the vehicle and explained GM Lexus selling process. One price, one person. And other policies like having no dealer fees. He said that even though there are no haggle dealership, their prices are $500 to $1,000 lower than any other Lexus dealers because of the dealer fee thing. Now there's a little puffery there, folks. Yeah. A little puffery. It can be true, but not always. It can be true. So we recommend

that even with a one-price dealer, you shop and compare. In fact, if you want to buy a Lexus, and if you're in Florida, I'm sorry to say South Florida, but if you're in Florida and you want to buy a Lexus, go online to JM Lexus, get their price on the money you want to buy. They're out-the-door price. And then go to your local Lexus dealer and say, will you beat this? Okay? Seriously, if you're a Lexus buyer, that's what you should do. you can get your out-the-door price on a Lexus or J.M. Lexus. And I think if you try hard enough and you understand that you've got to get the out-the-door, the price you can write the check for, and hands it over to the dealership and drive that Lexus home.

If you get the price from J.M. Lexus, that's what you got. But you have to get the same thing, only lower from your local Lexus dealer. That's the way to get a heck of a deal on Alexis. But make sure you beat them by a lot. Don't buy a lot? They beat them by a lot. They beat them by a hundred bucks. Oh, yeah.

Buy it from J.M. Lexus. Well, it depends on how far away you are. I mean, if you're in Appalachicola. Yeah. You know. We returned to the dealership, park, the demo, and went to look for the nebulae gray one I wanted. We found it quickly, walked around and inspecting it was the correct car.

same MSRP and the stock numbers match there was no addendum sticker that's refreshing very few car dealerships in Florida can make that statement no addendum sticker they almost all have them

we went inside to see the numbers I told Ryan that I was big cash needed sorry my auto correct is about to drive me and saying it's needed oh and needed to withdraw the necessary funds from a trust

I explained that I would need a document with an itemized breakdown of all cost and out the door figure I like that trust angle in my trust it requires I like that she's a trust one baby yeah

in the amount I would need to write on the check Ryan said no problem another refreshing thing that you will only get from a upfront honest dealer that will give you his real price best price and he doesn't mind giving it to you

you already got it anyway because you're online you saw the price and you could when you shop in the price go to the J.M. Lexus website do a screenshot of the out-the-door price and take that into Appalachical Alexis, there's no such thing. It's even cooler. You can click, share details

and you'll have that thing will appear on your phone. Exactly, exactly, there you go. He printed a worksheet at his desk and put it on his desk and put it on the desk between us. The top line was MSRP, 46,000, $1,715. He took off a $22.95 discount and a $1,500 rebate. This made my price, $42,920 exactly as posted online.

And I put an explanation point there. Amazing. You actually are getting quoted the same price that you saw online. It doesn't happen very often, folks. there was a $59 $0.59.5. And a $6.50 for Florida waste tire battery.

That's legit. Yeah. Now, the $6.50 for $6.50. Who cares? $6.50? It's $1.50 for the battery and $5 for the tire or vice versa. Yeah, yeah. Nicholson dives.

The $59 is just on the cusp. I don't like that. See, this electronic filing fee is something that all cartels use. It costs about $10. It's their cost of doing business, and they're taking that 10 bucks, and they're mucking it up to $59. Petty, petty, petty.

And I just don't think anybody up in the hierarchy of GM-Lexus understands what they're doing. And it's so petty, I shouldn't be talking about it. Out of the door, I was $46,234, also right in line with the outdoor price of their website. And it did calculate the tag correctly. if it calculated, in fact, correctly, which would have to be, how would they know if I was going to trade in or not? I don't know. He asked me if this worksheet would be sufficient for the dress. I said it would. He often walked me to the door, and along the way he said he would be ready whenever I was ready to move forward. No pressure. Pressure list, transparent, incredibly

good experience, of my opinion. And there you are. I think this was a, so. What a hell of a good mystery shop? I do, too. It was a big difference, a big improvement over Palmage Lex's experience last week. Let me go online and see what we got coming in here. Let's see. You know, I think our listeners are so shocked they don't know how to grade a good mystery shot. Isn't that the truth?

Yeah, come on. I'm waiting for you, Lynn. I want a big fat A. But here we go. Tim on Facebook gives them an A. And let's see if there have any text coming in. Not yet. I think people are trying to sort this out. Oh, Jonathan gives them a B minus.

Their initial sense of urgency is lacking. The customer's time is valuable. And that was definitely a less than favorable mark on the experience. But like I said, sometimes, who knows, maybe the receptionist had an emergency. We don't know. I'll give them some leeway on that. And I'm going to give them an A. and I don't care about the $59

because like you said in the totality of that price it's not that impactful to the consumer but they got to get just they could be perfect if they drop that. What did we get published Lexus last week or two weeks ago? Oh gosh don't ask me what was it a

I think it was a I think it was a B plus no no they didn't do so well because with the with the addendum I think they might have gotten a C minus here I'll I'll pull it up. You guys give grades and I'll pull it up.

My point being, Jay and Lexus should be a much better grade than the Palm Beach Lexus. Rick, what have we got here? I've got Tom with an A. He says only Earl gets an A plus. Mark from St. Louis with a B and a big wow. Mark Smith, an A. John Strine. A. He says, I'm actually in the market for a Lexus.

So John, hey, check out J.M. Ernesto with an A minus. Mark Ryan with a an A. Wayne with an A plus and RICO with an A. And for me, I'm going to give them an A. Yep. Linda gives them an A. Bob gives them an A. And last week we gave Lexus of Palm Beach a B. You know, let me ask you this. Do they deliver? We should have found out. They deliver cars and they also deliver service cars. They're an amazing Lexus dealership. you might even be able to buy a car from J.M. Lexus and have it delivered...

You can't. They use the... It looks like very familiar, doesn't it? Because of ours is red. They use Roadster and they do a home delivery. I don't know what their policy on if it's free or how far, what radius it is for free delivery, but I'll look up and we'll inform our consumers. But they do home delivery and you can do 100% online buying with them, J.M. Lexus. Okay. What have we got over there and ask?

So you got me? Well, what I have is I'm very happy, number one, with Lexus. And number two, so be the $59 electronic fee, the $6.50 for the waste or whatever. Maybe they need those few nickels and dimes to purchase donuts. Who knows? but I give Lexus an A and that what is it? Nubola

gray? Nebula. Nebula? Yeah. That's the new, I believe that that is the new black Is it? For Lexus. And by the way, I was checking out these colors

in the coding for Lexus. They have so many different and you wonder where they come up with these names for the colors. And it's just, It's very interesting. So there you have the new block, and I give Lexus an A. Okay, it'll be an A.

Just remember that you should shop the price anyway, but we recommend GM Lexus if you want to buy Lexus and get their price and see if somebody could beat it. And those students are trying to get them to beat it significantly. Yeah, because I believe JM Lexus deserves some credit for putting their best foot out there with a buyer's order online. And so the other guys, you make it too easy, you know, for them. So make them really work for your business.

Absolutely. Okay. Are we all ready to wrap it up here? You need to grade. I need to do. Your grade? What's your grade? Oh, my grade.

Oh, of course, A. Yeah. A? Okay. And by the way, if you don't want the gray color that they have, you can get a caviar mica, just throwing out out there. Okay. have our caviar mutton yeah there you go hey ladies and gentlemen i saw caviar market what is that what

color is that exactly ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for spending saturday morning with us we do appreciate your company and we'll be right back here next week saturday morning 8 a.m so we'll see you then and have a wonderful weekend. Bye-bye.