Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.27.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Essential Ford in Stuart

Episode Date: March 27, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits a new dealership, Essential Ford in Stuart, to see if she can get the online price on a new 2021 Ford Mustang, 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-forward a dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody.

Well, we're back. We're back in action. It's the Earl Stewart on Car Show. and as the recorded introduction just told you, you just tuned in, we're here to help you avoid being ripped off when you buy or lease a car, or for that matter, when you get a car repaired or maintain your car. It's kind of a minefield out there, and we're here to help. And we do it by listening to you.

You can contact us in a variety of means old-fashioned telephone, 877 960 9960 you ought to write that down if you don't have a question now which you probably don't or maybe you're driving your car

of course you can't write it down can you if you're driving the car but I'm going to give it out again anyway slowly 877 960 9960 now we added a text line about

what 15 years ago Stu London's something like that you know when texting and listen to a big thing, and now it's huge texting. I use text more than I do the telephone, I think a lot of people do. And that text number is kind of cool because we keep a bat log and we can catch up or we can get ahead, we can use it to fill in. But we always get to the text.

And that text number, 772, 4976530, 772, 772, 772, 472, 472. 976530. So you tell us what's on your mind. Ask us questions, give us constructive or non-constructive criticism, your choice. We'd love to hear from you. What makes live radio? We're a live show, man. I'll tell you, it is exciting. My adrenaline is going on my man. My blood pressure's up, my pulse is up, and I'm happy. We all feel that way in the team here. Rick Kearney, Stu Stewart, Nancy Stewart. We love the show. I'll tell you you're going to be able to tell if you listen for a while that we do love what we do. And we've got a lot of high-tech ways to listen, depending on your view of life. Facebook. That's kind of an old fogey's game now. When it first came out, Facebook to me was like 21st century state of the art. But Instagram, we got YouTube, we got Twitter, we got Periscope, a variety of cyber ways to

get into out to the world. We are worldwide. We're not just international. We actually had a caller from Bali. You know, Bali, hi, I'm calling. Okay, hey, I'm going to interrupt you. We have a first time caller. Oh, cool. And her name is Margaret. And she's calling from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Margaret. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. And first of all, Earl, I loved your Bali high. So I thought it was right away for all of us to wake up in the morning. Thank you.

Now, my question to you is I'm a 70-year-old woman, and I have been leasing a Mazda for the past six years. I had two leases with them, and it's getting ready to end. And I just thought, well, I have limited income. and for somebody who's in my position, buying a car and having to maintain it, someone told me was worse for me than leasing, where I don't have to worry about the maintenance and all that. So I'm presently, I wanted to get a rap for, but that's out of my league, unfortunately, I'm sorry to say. but I'm now looking at the Hyundai on North Lake, on Naples. Yes. And my question to you is I'm dealing with actually two dealerships who don't return calls.

Oh, boy. Is that, I mean, what is a, I don't want to sound like a cranky old woman. That's standard. But at the same time, what is an acceptable amount of time, since I'm obviously on a time frame and trying to compare the lease deals that they're willing to give me, what's an acceptable amount of time for me to be waiting to get a return call? And when I do call them, I called them, I called Napleton's yesterday, and I said, you know, I've waited over 24 hours.

I haven't heard anything, and they apologized and yada, yada, yada, and we'll talk to our managers now, and still didn't hear anything. And that was as of yesterday morning at 11. Yeah, Margaret, that's, as Steve said, that's unacceptable, but unfortunately too often, it's fairly commonplace. It's especially true today because the car business is better than it's ever been, and the profits are high, the salesmen are making a lot of commissions, the dealers are making a lot of money, the manufacturers are making money hand over fist, and, you know, counterintuitably, this pandemic COVID situation has been a godsend to the auto industry. people are buying a lot of cars and new and used. So it speaks to the character of the dealership you're dealing with and the efficiency, and sadly, it's not very good.

And even in the worst of times, sometimes it's not very good either. I hate to say this, but the least of your problems is having people not return your phone calls. You need to be very careful. You mentioned a very important choice, and that is leasing versus buying, and you did say that you were 70 years old. Well, I'm a lot older than you, and one of the things that would cross my mind if I were not a automobile dealer

and I were going out to get another car, a new car, oh, should I lease her by? When you lease a car, and a lot of people don't understand this, you are tied in. You've leased Mazda's twice, 36-month leases. When you sign that lease contract, you're obligated to make 33 lease payments, whether you drive the car or can or cannot drive the car. So, God forbid, Margaret, something should happen where you couldn't drive. Right now, Nancy has had foot surgery, and she hasn't been able to drive for months.

But if she were leasing a car, she'd have to make those monthly payments. Leasing companies have no mercy on whatever. You could have a visual condition, you could have a surgical condition, or you could even pass away. 36 payments will be made on that Mastda one way or the other. I would recommend that you buy this time and put your mind to rest on the maintenance. Mazda is a very good vehicle. They're reliable. They're low maintenance.

Your cost of maintenance for the first two or three years is almost negligible. If you had all the factory owners, factory recommended maintenance, it would be negligible. Repairs, it's all under warranty while you're driving the car. So your cost of maintenance and repairs are minimal. So unless a monthly payment is extremely important to you, now a monthly payment is going to be lower on a lease. And the fact that you've been leasing for six years, you probably have gotten kind of used to that monthly payment. So if you buy a car, you're going to have to come up with a larger monthly payment, I mean a larger down payment to keep your monthly payment down if you want it down.

Just remember, the price is the same, whether you're paying low monthly payments or high monthly payments, because when you're buying the car, you're building equity. Your monthly payments are actually building you equity like a savings account, whereas a lease, it's like a rent, you get nothing. But that's the main recommendation is to consider purchasing and settle these things. As far as the Mazda dealerships, you could try a third Mazda dealership to see that they won't return your calls. Or I would recommend. Well, listen, Mazda. Mazda has been very active in, you know, obviously keeping my business.

Oh, you're talking about Hyundai. I'm sorry. You're right. Exactly right. I got to. You know, I tried the other one, too, on Okoobie. And he was, you know, giving me all the pros of their dealership. And, you know, of course I'm wary because I'm being somewhat educated as much as I can be from you and your program, which, by the way, I'm sure people have because I listen to you on my way to Walmart every Saturday. I'm telling you, you're a godsend to people, and we need people like you out there. and for those who you're people that go in on our behalf and on their own behalf and try to find out who's good and who isn't

and who's giving you an honest deal and who isn't. God bless these people. Thank you, Mark. We have a Hyundai dealer on the recommended list. I will check right now. I don't have high hopes. Yeah, Hyundai typically has a lower caliber salesperson and sales management. It is not one of the most desirable franchises and they struggle.

So sometimes you get second-class salespeople at Hyundai dealships. Stu, you got one? The best grade that we have is King Hyundai in Del Rey. They have a C-grade. Unfortunately, Napleton's on a, have a D and an F. But the King Hyundai shop, I think that was about three years ago, so we don't have a super recent good shop. Yeah, I call King Hyundai just to see if you've got a return phone call.

And you might find out you've got yourself a better option. There's a long drive to, Del Rey possibly for you, but it's worth of trying. And, Margaret, I do have to say it sounds like as if that leasing has been, well, a convenience for you. Would you agree with that? Oh, definitely, yes. But I don't think it's an economic good deal.

I mean, I always thought, well, it's the same thing as rent. I always tell people, you know, when I first came to Florida, I rented. And someone said, oh, you know, the rent keeps going up on you. you need to buy and i said oh no no no i can't buy i can't buy what if i can't pay it and they said but when have you never paid your rent you know think of a mortgage as your rent well this is this is more of a you know a personal decision on your part and if leasing has worked for you um i would definitely stick with it as far as a dealership getting back with you um and you you know wanting information ASAP uh i can honestly say that uh you know and

and i'm very thankful the auto industry is on fire right now i mean it's just an unbelievable situation everybody wants a car whether they lease it whether they you know buy it it really doesn't matter so it sounds like an excuse but everyone is really busy but at a courtesy i definitely would expect a callback um most definitely because you're working in a time frame if you have a lease right now and I would give them you know a 24 hour period and after that I would move on

all right and if I may ask if I do or I'll take your advice and go the buying route what fees can I negotiate or get rid of completely well

are you a Costco member Margaret no Sam's Club okay Sam's has an auto purchase program like a Costco. And I would recommend using the Sands Club auto purchase program. I would also recommend a Truecar. You could go online to Truecar.com.

And that gives you a, truecar.com gives you a good idea of what the competitive pricing is on the specific model Hyundai you want to lease or buy. And that way you know that the bottom line price that you get from the dealer is either unreasonable or reasonable. You're not necessarily going to get the lowest price by looking at true car. Sometimes you will, but you'll never have to pay an outrageous place.

You will see the pricing, the average price in the market for that particular vehicle. You'll also see the lowest price and the higher price. So you want to state either at the average price or better yet to the left toward the lower price. It gives you an idea to shoot for it. That's an out-the-door price. And then... And that is out-the-door. That's no...

By the way, now we have a $1,000 extra that you have to pay up from. Yeah, they're going to do that. All the dealers do that. They add the hidden fees and the dealer addemps, and you listen to the mystery shopping port at the end of the show, and they do it. All dealers do it. But what you have to keep saying over and over,

you'll get tired of saying it, and they'll definitely get tired of you saying it, is I want an out-the-door price, the price that I will write you a check for and you will take the check and let me drive the car home. That is an out-the-door price. And once you get the out-the-door price, you will have a good point of reference on true car.

As I said, Sam's Club will also give you a good point of reference and it will be a better price than if you walked into the dealership and said, where do I sign? Car dealers today, when you sell a car, I'm saying selling, but the same applies to leasing. It's their profit. they will make on customer A, $100 over their net cost or below, believe it or not. They sell cars today at unbelievably low prices.

Dealers are losing money in their new car departments, many of them. But the next person that comes in and buys the same car from the same dealer will pay a $5,000 or even $10,000 profit. So the customers, the prospective customers that walk in and don't do their homework, that are careless, subsidize the dealer for the ones that are sharp, educated consumer that know what a good price is. But you be the educated consumer.

You use Sam's Club, you use a true car, and you get an out-the-door price. You'll be the one that gets a really good price, and then the person that comes in and buys that same car the next day, they'll pay an obscene profit to the dealer. That's the way the business is today. It's the way it's always been, but it's even worse today. Well, it's good and bad, I guess.

Good for people who are, as you say, well-informed and sad for the ones that aren't. You do have an advantage, and, boy, there's nothing like free information and advice here at Earl Stewart on Cars. One other thing before let's go, Margaret, Consumer Report is a great place to go, as I always. say knowledge is power and you can get so much free information the internet is just so powerful there's so much you can do from right there from your PC and you know I don't know whether you you know well this information wouldn't apply to you so I won't share it with you anyway Margaret I hope that we've helped you and I'll continue to listen and I want to take a moment and thank you for

helping me build the platform here at Earl Stewart on cars and the ladies uh we we do have a powerful voice and uh there's a lot of us out there uh there's power in numbers has margaret the first time caller does she get 50 bucks and um every saturday morning i mention the first two new lady callers you're the first and you just won yourself fifty dollars oh my gosh that's wonderful i know i've heard it before but I wasn't expecting it so yes most definitely we appreciate your call and Mike who's in the control room will get your information and you can pass it alone to me thank you so much and let me say again I appreciate all of you and what you're doing and I'm sure many

of your viewers do as well thank you so much thank you have a great weekend thank you same to you Nancy keep continuing to get better thank you 877960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget, www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, let's get some of my text or YouTube. Is it a Rick's got a YouTube over here? This first one is from Ernesto Ortega.

And he says, good morning. Is placing a factory order truly as complex as most dealers make it out to be? Most seem to not want to work to place factory orders and only sell from in-stock inventory. Thank you. I can answer that. Okay. Doing a factory order is simple and easy and takes almost no time at all, but they don't get paid for several months, possibly. So it's a simple question of selling on the lot.

They want to commission. They want to make money for the dealership. The sales manager, all the way up to the general manager, they don't want to do a special order. They don't even want to do a locate that takes a day or two because the moment you leave dealership the chances rise that you're going to buy from somebody else and so that's why they they dissuade you they want you to buy now yeah that's all pressure if you do order a car be sure that you get a refundable deposit and you get a receipt they will ask you for a deposit and you have to you should get a receipt and then note on the receipt does it say

refundable or non-refundable yeah make sure they write that down because I think you've told you taught me this. In Florida, if it doesn't say non-refundable, you give somebody to deposit, they can't keep it. And it's so dumb because what did you get in return for your money? Nothing, but they can do it. Yep. And Negan 1. Earl, what are manufacturers saying how long chip shortage is going to last? I work with industrial automation, robots for large snack food manufacturer, and it's starting to affect industries. U.S. repair, long lead times, We had to slow down production as well. Who would have thought COVID would affect us a year later than when it first hit?

News is talking only of car manufacturers, but other industries are being affected as well. That's all true. It varies from manufacturer to manufacturer. So Hyundai might have a bigger problem than Honda and Toyota might have a less of a problem in Ford. It affects each manufacturer differently. And it's a fact of life. I mean, it caught everybody by surprise, and people are purchasing, and it'll be, my guess, within six weeks or eight weeks, it'll be resolved, and it'll be a...

It is starting to lighten up a little. Does anybody else think snack robots are cool? What is this good? Snack robots. Large snack food manufacturer is robots that make the snack foods, I guess. That's a snack robot. Okay. Yeah, I saw an article today, I think, was that I believe the Jeep,

corporation is shutting down a couple of plants because they're having chip issues. That's a real issue, yeah. And bear in mind that when you buy a car today, if the model you want is not available, and Stu alluded to this earlier, you will be pushed into a different car, and you will be persuaded and begged and conjoled and any other thing. Because as Stu says, car salesman makes a commission when he sells a car. If he sells a car today, he earns a commission. He earns a commission. If he sells a car today, but it won't be delivered for two months, he's got to wait for that commission. He might not be working there in two months. And we might be talking about a big commission. The average commission is something around $300, but a salesperson can easily make $3,000 commission. So you don't know what the commission is because you don't

know the profit that was made on the car. That's the way the salesman is paid based on the profitability to the dealership. So if you can buy a car today and the salesman will make $500 or he can wait two months for the $500, he's going to tell you that car over here is a better car and you shouldn't have to wait and he will do a number on you to try to persuade you not to wait. So be careful when you order a car, you're going to get a lot of pushback. I just thought of a brilliant consumer tactic. You know what they do to get you to buy the car in stock instead of waiting?

They'll do anything, right? They'll lower the price. They'll strip it down. Go into a dealership and tell them that you want a special order the hardest to get car in the world, knowing that you'll let them convince you to get something in stock, but only at the right price. You might get a great deal. There's also, again, I don't want to beat this one up,

but we see it all the time. In time's a shortage, you see more and more of it. The models that the customer wants are not. available now when you order that car it's going to take longer than they told you unfortunately there's a saying that you should under promise and over deliver car salespeople over promise and under deliver so when the salesman tells you when you finally stick to your guns and order that car and he's told you it'll take two weeks or two months or three months or whatever it may

be double that at least because it's not going to be here when they tell you it's going to be here it's always longer And sometimes it's not of his control, sometimes it's not. But you will never get the car 99% of the time when he says you will. So be prepared to wait as you're going to. You know, there's always been a wait. But would you say with circumstances as they are today, it's a much longer wait? Yes, I would say that.

Okay. Okay, hey, let me mention real quick Earl's Vigilantes. Nobody has talked about it yet this morning. It's very important to you and to us, and if you would like to, well, help out your community in some way or us, you can sign up for Earl's vigilantes, and you can help us, well, get these dishonest car dealers under control. You get a hat just like this, too. And we're passing out hats just to give you a little identification when you're out there, and you might be. you know, among your friends and your neighbors. But help us out, sign up, Earlsvigilantes.com.

You can go to Earl on Cars and you can get all the information. Now back to Rec. I actually caught up here, but Nagin 1 did say, though, the robots actually packed the snack food bags, so I guess they need chips to make the chips. Okay, let's move along here. Chip chips. Amory.

Amory always has the honor of the first text of the day. And Amory says, good morning. Good morning. I confess I'm an analog type of customer. I like an old-fashioned key for my car, knobs for the radio, an air conditioner, and a gear shift. However, modern vehicles are getting much more control features on their touch screens, and they're eliminating knobs.

Goodbye, analog controls, Hello Digital. With more controls going into the touchscreens, I can't help but wonder. One, what's the life expectancy of a touch screen? screen. Two, do different vehicles have different touchscreens with different life expectancies or do they all use the same technology with the same life expectancy? Three, how much is a replacement touchscreen cost? And four, are the touchscreens so relatively new that their life expectancy hasn't been established yet? And these questions are prompted by a story I read. Motertrend.com is reporting that Tesla is eliminating the gear shift and moving the shift mechanism

to the touchscreens for the Tesla 2021 Model S and Model X. No screen, no go. Hence, the longevity of a touchscreen will become more important as more features are controlled by touchscreens. Not convinced this is a good idea? What's your viewpoint? Well, before I give this to Rick, because he can do two hours on this.

I don't think anybody knows the answer. I got a thought, too. Now, let me make this one. Of course, I need to say this. Dan Marie, it's another one of your fabulous questions. I don't know how you do it. Here's what I think. I think that the touchscreen is a terrible idea.

I think it's a quantum leap from what we had before with buttons and switches and things like that. But voice recognition is the name of the game. We're there now. I mean, think back when voice recognition first happened and the improvement with artificial intelligence and big data, voice recognition will be able to understand. people that even you can't understand.

It's almost silly now that I know some cars have Amazon, I don't know if the, I mean Alexa, I don't know if it controls your controls in your car, but just to tell your car, make it cooler, it makes a whole lot more sense than fiddling with the controls. I use voice recognition for all of my texting and it is better than

I am when I write. I mean, if I do a long text, voice recognition, it's much more accurate than what I do if I do it with my thumbs. So, Rick, give her the answer as far as a reliable This one is, I say everybody on earth now is a smartphone, and how many times have you tried to do something you had to restart your phone? That's annoying with a smartphone in a car that you can't put into drive or reverse.

Dangerous. That's very bad. Absolutely dangerous. I am a huge techno geek. I love all the new technology. However, I agree with Amory that certain things need to have a mechanical manual backup. That's why we still have... Answer a question.

How much does it cost to replace a touch screen? Over a thousand. That's a question that really doesn't have an accurate answer because you've never done it. It can be as simple as the small touchscreens in the Prius that were $6,700. Well, we've replaced radios with touchscreens. Yeah, but as far as the question is a reliability of a touchscreen. I've never heard a customer complained to me about a touchscreen failing. I think the question is, I mean, they seem to be pretty reliable, but I don't know how long they're reliable for.

I mean, what happens after seven, eight years. And we've never had one fail as far as I know. I don't know if that's the case. I know there's been issues. I've had discolourations I've seen. That's the reason I asked Rick, because he's never had one failed. We do have some fail. Yeah, he didn't say that.

The touchscreens are our radios, which are the same technology. Okay. We have seen certain cars like Camry's, I believe it was, where the majority of them, one certain manufacturer of Fujitin had the line of their radios that the bottom third after so many years the touchscreen would begin to fail and you literally

could not touch the buttons on the bottom third of the radio and it would stop you from upward and half the radio. Is that the only instance that you can recall? For the most part that is except for such things as the color activation or the being able to view

the touchscreen properly. The bottom line is they're super reliable and we've had virtually no problem. Right now, they're very reliable. As for a lifespan, we don't know. I have never heard anything yet that says there's an actual lifespan. I got a question about those.

I noticed that when you're using the touchscreen in your car, it feels different than the touchscreen on your phone. Touch screen on your phone feels, it's that capacitive thing. You don't have to give it any pressure. I notice that in a lot of cars, there's a little you have to give it a slight push. Are those designed to be, in your knowledge, a little bit more robust? Is that why

they're like, because I know that my touchscreen on my phone on the wonderful Apple iPhone periodically requires me to restart my phone sometimes that happens yeah it doesn't happen to me in the car is it just more of like a heavier use type of screen or well the nice part about the touchscreen in your car is every time you shut it off and turn it back on it's restarting and it's rebooting the whole system before we get that to an incredible detail here i think we've answered anne marie's question well i think so yeah okay am mary you're a breath of fresh air we uh definitely enjoy hearing from you give us a call tool free at 877960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-3-0.

Back to touch screens, I want to tell you, you know, they have their place, and as far as dictating into the telephone, I think that for the older folks, I'm going to say the baby boomers, it really is definitely an advantage, because if you think about your hands and how much you use them, some of us like myself, arthritis and it's tough to get you know the texts across when you want to so just taking and dictating is much quicker anyway folks we're wide open for questions all the free advice in the world and we're here to answer your questions right now we're going to go back to the phones and we're going to go to new jersey where we're going to be talking to steve welcome back Steve.

Hi, thank you very much from taking my call. I appreciate it. Thank you. The reason I'm calling this morning is I just want to say thank you to all of you on the program. I'm probably pretty typical of a lot of your listeners. I'm retired, but I'd like to still stay active. But as I think we all get older, sometimes things aren't as easy as it used to be. And I had hesitated for a long time in buying a new car, you know, basically on a pension when I want to try to control expense as much as possible.

But listen to your program, it really convinced me that I need to look at it more from a safety aspect and to help with my driving. And I don't think I ever would have done that without really listening to what you guys have to say. And I just want to say a few things just for all the listeners. You're thinking about, you know, why might I need to or want to buy a new car to help? I'll just say some of the features on my car that I never had before that I really, really rely on now. One of the things I have is 360 cameras on my car, which really helps me when I'm driving into my garage in a tight space and other places like that.

Yeah. Um, the other thing is, uh, I, recently now with these large trucks and large SUVs, I found myself in, in store parking lots, trying to back out of my, my spot. And on either side, I couldn't see any traffic coming. Yeah. And with, with my car now in reverse, it has a 160, 180 degree camera. Yeah. You can see objects. It can beep if they're coming.

It can stop. If I don't stop, I didn't have those aids before. It was a real problem. Yeah. It's amazing. The other things I like, I go on long-distance drives and I always had cruise control, but this car has smart cruise control so it can keep a safe distance when somebody jumps into my lane. Yeah.

And the other thing is this car has dramatically improved safety technology for whiplash mitigation. and, yes, they made tremendous improvements on reducing traffic fatalities, but whiplash is like probably the biggest injury or the most prevalent injury that people get in car accidents these days, and it can be really bad. Definitely. See, let me ask your question. What year did you have that you traded in? Because you sound typical of the person that is just amazed with the incredible safety

features. How old was the car you traded in? Well, that's interesting, too, because I usually keep my cars anywhere from 15, believe it or not, to 20 years. Wow. The car I traded in was a 2011 Subaru Outback, which was a pretty safe car for its time. But even with that said, it didn't have any of the things I just mentioned. So the car was only eight or nine years old, and it still didn't have all these features. Yeah, it's a, it's very, it's very, it's very gratifying to have you to do that because there are a lot of people that keep their cars and take good care of their cars and they're proud of it. And the cars are, Subaru, amazing and reliable.

You could have driven on Subaru probably for another four or five years, but you now have driven. That's what my wife said. I had a harder time convincing her. She said, the car is perfectly fine. It starts all the time. I said, that's not the point. I wanted something safer

so what you told me actually helped me to talk to my wife that's fantastic Rick has a point he wanted to make you I beg to differ with you that Subaru probably would have lasted another 14 to 15 years

or more I think you're right my neighbor has it I sold it to them and they're happy with it but that's them I wanted something safer yeah it must have been a huge leap for you

after owning a vehicle that long and knowing you would have to learn the safety features on the car you were purchasing, because it can be very intimidating. But now there is so much out there, again, the Internet, our world. And you can go there, and you can get these videos that just show you exactly what you have and how to use it with your safety features. So there's an advantage. There's just a big word that you've got to use here, and that's patience.

So congratulations. The cool thing about it, Steve, is you're retired, you're an older guy like I am, and I'm probably more tech savvy than the average old guy, but I can tell from your experience that these new safety features are intuitive and they are automatic. You don't have to be a high-tech genius. You mention that blindside indicator and your cruise control. You talked about the cameras.

You don't have to do anything except look, and you're warned and notified of that car in the public's parking lot, the supermarket parking lot coming behind you, you hear the warning signal, you see the car coming, it's all automatic. You don't have to be a tech genius. These safety features just take care of you. It's like something that you never had before.

Yeah, I mean, it's... I even to this day that, my wife still wonders why didn't we just keep the super room? but I do most of the driving. There you are. And, you know, it's, you know, it's, it's, it makes it easier to drive. It doesn't mean that I'm not paying attention in and more because I am. Yeah.

But it's less fatiguing, especially when I go on long trips. It's less fatiguing because it, it, it really just helps me be a better driver, I feel. Absolutely. Thanks for sure on that. Yeah, we loved hearing from you, Steve. Well, you know, I, I, I heard you mention this topic. A few weeks ago, but I wasn't able to call back until today, because it was about two, three weeks ago. We actually talked about all these safety features and that, you know, people should consider, at least, looking at these new cars.

Even if they don't want to buy one, just look at them to see what the difference is for what they have. Steve, it's the most important thing, the best reason to buy a car today. You can talk about styling, you can talk about price, you can talk about anything, payments. you should buy a car today if you're driving a 10-year-old car. No question. You are increasing your level of safety for you and your family by, I'm going to pull the number

out of the year. 50%. I'm probably being conservative. But your likelihood of death or injury in a car today, I'm going to say it's 50% less than that car you're driving 10 or 15 years ago. Absolutely. And how much is that

worth to a person versus how much they can saved by driving their old car. Exactly. That's what I kind of looked at. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, change can be intimidating. But, Steve, we have to tell you,

thank you so much for opening the doors and letting our listeners know that, you know, you did it, and it can be intimidating, but we need those safety features to keep us all safe. Well, thank you, and keep up to good work. All we got, Steve, bye-bye. 877-9-60-99. or you can text us at 7724976530. Take advantage of your anonymous feedback.com. It'll take you a long way. You can express yourself. Now back to Stu.

Let's look at some anonymous feedback. Cudos to you, Earl, for all the efforts you've made and the success you've had getting more people vaccinated against COVID. Do you require your employees at your dealership to get one? This is becoming common in some colleges are now requiring a shot to come onto campus. Well, you asked me a question that Stu and I have discussed at long length with other managers. We haven't come to a final decision on requiring our people, of course, right now, a number of our people of the dealership aren't qualified for the vaccination because of age and health. But when everybody's qualified, we have to ask ourselves that serious question. All adults said on April 5th.

Yeah. So we'll have to cross that bridge. We're going to be, we're going to, right now, if you see I have a badge, and Sue has a badge, and Rick has a badge, and Nancy has a badge, because we've all been, we've all been vaccinated. The employees that are, the employees at our dealership that are, that are vaccinated will be identified by the badge. And those that are not, will not have the badge.

I think we're probably going to get close to 100% participation because not only the best for you and the employees, it's the best for our customers and we're over what would you say 50% 60% vaccinations? Of the people eligible? Yeah. Oh, easily. Yeah. I think more than that.

But it opens up next week to, on Monday to 40-year-olds and we got a lot of those. And then on the 5th, on the 5th of April, everybody, so we're going to get an assessment of how many people did it without any convincing, and then probably we'll try more of a positive sort of encouragement campaign, and then we'll see where we are. But it is incredibly important to get us back to normal

after this pandemic. Yeah, we were supposed to be on the Today Show featuring, we called our team that makes appointments for our customers and appointments for our employees and also our employees, family members. We call them the COVID rescue team. And NBC came down. Carrie Sanders, the NBC journalist, came down

and did some filming. And so we were supposed to be on Friday, but because of the tornadoes in Alabama, the South there, he had to fly there because he will be doing in the live introduction. Hopefully we'll be on next week, so you'll have the COVID. the rescue team that we use are all volunteers and they meet Monday Wednesdays and Fridays

and we make appointments for anybody that needs an appointment that is qualified. Great job you've done. Over hundreds. That's far. Yeah. I think Rick had a question. I was just going to say anybody that gets vaccinated should get a free puppy from Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

Free. We need the revenue. They get to cuddle a puppy. Yeah. They can cuddle a puppy. that'll work yeah they should have a puppy cuddle room out there that's right we can set one up at the dealership um hey listen guys i'm going to throw a question out here and uh let's uh i'd like to hear from all of you we all would and uh earl and i were talking this morning and uh we were just wondering

is there anything that you have um on your car that concerns you and due to the pandemic and so much going on you've hesitated to go to the dealership and, well, we're trying to encourage you to give us a call with free information. Rick's the guy. You've got a noise, a rattle, a squeak, Rick, Kearney, will answer your question. Yeah. And even the recovering car dealer.

Okay, where are we going? Facebook, YouTube. I've got some more anonymous feedback. Oh, good. All right. This one sounds like a Rick question. My car makes a rotational thumping felt in the steering wheel when I accelerate hard. and it thumps harder when I go up a hill.

If I'm on the highway or driving with little effort, it does not make any thumping. The car is a front wheel drive. It's got 130,000 miles. It's a 2012 Accura TSX. Tires were just replaced and even had tread and have been balanced. What's going on, Rick? A vibration like that and a feeling thumping and banging like that under acceleration,

the first thing I'd be looking at is your CV axles. I would have wanted to know did the thump before they put the new tires on. It sounds like it didn't. Well, they said they had tires balanced and checked. Yeah, okay.

Read one more time on that part, Stu? Tires were just replaced and had good tread and have been balanced. Okay. Has good even tread. Maybe a thump before, I don't know. Yeah, if it occurred

since they put the tires on, the first thing I'd be checking is I'd be checking to make sure the lug nuts are all tight. But if that's not it, I'd have them check the tires. And otherwise, on a car with that age, if you get a vibration, a thumping feel like that when you're accelerating, these drive axles are the first place I'd be looking. I'd look at the tires anyway because...

Oh, yeah, first, yeah. I mean, I'd rather check the lug nuts and replace the axle. And you've got to be careful when you're talking to a car deal. sometimes they tend to go toward the most profitable solutions exactly it's only natural all right okay folks uh we are going to go back to the phones where john i'm on a phone i'm on a hey john you there good morning i have a question for rick yes do you hear me we do loud and glare okay i was upstate and the toner area and unfortunately it was a lot of traffic it was bike week, and I stopped in a racetrack,

and the pump was going very, very slow, and it took like 18 minutes to fill it up, and I had no patience, so instead of the trigger, I put it on that automatic lever where you just don't have to hold a handle. And it overflowed tremendously to the gear. There's a Toyota product now, and I just wondered, with the overflow and gas spilling out, which they absorb right away.

Did I do any damage to the canister of the evaporation system? And the reason I say that is afterwards, every light that you can imagine lit up on my dashboard, including check engine, some kind of three-letter code, and another one circle thing down there,

which looks like skid marks. And I really got kind of shook up, but I checked the oil and everything was fine, the radiator. So I, believe it or not, on the way home, I kept on loosening the gas cap and putting in a different position. And believe it or not, all these flashing lights, I'm telling you it looked like Rockefeller-cented Christmas trees and, you know, season. And everything seemed to have reset itself.

But how do I know that there's no damage done to that charcoal, which Rick's talked about, the charcoal canister? How's the car running right now, John? Does the engine run smoothly? It never affected the running of the car, but these lights flashing on the dashboard, including one that showed something like traction, like a skid mark screen on it. And another one was blinking with a three-letter code,

and actually the one that says check engine light, which is an orange one, was on all the time. Yep. But on the way back, I kept on stopping in service areas, and I loosened the cap and put it in a different position and finally, I'd say maybe about 75 to 100 miles away from that, it cleared. It sounds like you got pretty lucky. You probably got a little bit of liquid fuel, got into the charcoal canister,

but the system was able to basically clear itself by letting that liquid fuel evaporate and burn through as the normal evaporative emissions like it's supposed to. So you got very lucky. what happened most likely is it triggered a check engine light and when the check engine when the engine computer sets a code a lot of the other computers will set codes as well

and we call them sympathetic codes and all it's really doing is all those systems are saving the data, the freeze frame data on what they were seeing at that moment so that if there was a malfunction the technician will have more information to help him solve what's going on. So it's going to be normal

for a lot of the systems to all trigger at the same time, but it's not a serious issue at this point, and if the lights have gone out and the car is running normal, then you're going to be just fine, and all those codes will eventually erase themselves from the memories.

Well, I thank you for that because I really, being away from home, I got pretty shook up at the time. Sounds like it. About mechanics that the car was running, fine, the engine was good and there was no missing, and the oil and radiated

fluid was fine. The second thing I want to mention, too, it's at the Volkswagen dealers now. Volkswagen, I think, believe it or not, that the number two carmaker, I think they're going to wind up back to number one again, and I'll tell you what's going to do it for them.

Right now, the new model is out. It's called an ID4. Last year they had an ID3 total electric car, It was in Europe only, and last year they sold 230,000 units of it. Again, it was in Europe. But this ID4 is a base $40,000 car, $7,500 government rebate. Volkswagen is spending $800 million at their factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee,

and what their technology is called toolbox technology. No idea how it works. It's a modular electrification toolbox, which means that Volkswagen can build this electric car for much less than what it costs to build a diesel or a gasoline car. So I think this is well worth watching Volkswagen, again, being number two now, and people talk Tesla, Tesla, Tesla, but here's a car that people are maybe just the future electric car, and it may be beaten them all.

know. I just thought it's worth mentioning. And by the way, bad news, Ford is leaving their Ohio plant, and where are they going? They're building them in Mexico from the Ohio plant. Yeah. So, it's both good news and some bad news, but I

do think that this ID4 total electric Volkswagen is a vehicle to watch. I think you're right. Absolutely. Boy, that was a real experience for you, John. Oh, my God, it shook me up because, I mean, I've always been a Toyota product, a buyer,

and I first time anything like that happened, but it was totally my fault. And by the way, be very careful. This station I knew was a problem, but there was a big lineup for gas, and I was going to change lanes to go to another one because it was pumping so slowly, but I didn't want to wait again on it, and I guess it's a lesson to stay away from when you see a pump that's pumping so slowly. slow that there's got to be a major problem with it. Well, that's

actually a malfunction on the gas stations part. It means the filters in that pump were getting full and plugging up and because of that the automatic shutoff system on the gas pump did not operate properly. So that's their fault, not yours really.

And people should be very careful. Never fill above. When you get the shutoff comes on, don't even try to round it off to the next even number. Right. You just stop immediately then and don't go on. But I didn't try that. It's just a shut off that didn't work. And boy, it sure goes with spilling out. Not a good reason to save your receipts from gas stations. If you do have a problem with the gas

station, you know, you want to know and have proof where you bought your last tank of gas for a lot of reasons. So that, fortunately, you didn't need that situation, but you can go against the gas station liable for repairs in your car, but you've got to prove you bought the gas there. Yeah. Well, I already contacted just to let them know. It's racetrack, and it was on Route 44 at I-95. So I just, I'm sure they were aware of the problem with the slow pump. Yeah.

But I just contacted them, and I'm waiting to hear from them. Yeah, definitely. Somebody else probably wouldn't have been as, oh, well, shall I say, in control like you were. So thanks for the information, John. It's always great to hear from you. Right, and a fast recovery to you, Nancy. Thank you so much, John. Have a wonderful weekend. Hope to hear from you soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, folks. 877-960-960 and your anonymous feedback.com. Go right there and let your voice be heard. 877-960. As you can hear, there's a lot of ways to get in touch with us, take advantage. Earlier, I mentioned a question. I was asking the audience about their cars, and And if there was something in your car that concerns you, and you've just been procrastinating on it, you can get all your answers right here.

Now back to Stu. Okay, we've got some more text. Carlos says, good morning. Is Greco a car dealer or a construction company? Looks like an interesting business model. The one we're talking about is a car dealership. It's a car dealer group. I think they're originally out of New Jersey, and they've got a bunch of dealerships down here.

I did Google it, and there are lots of Greco construction companies, but no, we're talking about the car dealers. Okay, then we have another one from Dax. Dax has a lot of things to contribute, and we're going to stick with just the first one in the interest of time. He says, hello, good morning, everyone. I need your help. Coming from a friend, she leased a vehicle. Now it's coming to the end of the lease. She loves it and wants to buy the car.

What are the legit fees she has to pay? and my idea is as follows one depreciation of the car two TTL which is tax tag and title and a lease buyout fee he says most YouTube videos are concerning negotiating to buy a car

and none for leasing negotiation and I can turn it over to Earl but I can tell you know the answer well number one the depreciation of the car that's included in her lease payment so when you lease a car you're paying for the depreciation divided up over the number of months you're leasing it for, and also a rent charge.

So that's already taken care of. Tax tag and title, yes, when you buy out your lease car, you will have to pay sales tax on it, and you'll have to register it because the car was originally registered to the leasing company with her as an allowed driver. Then the lease buyout fee. Usually that is the one thing you're going to face. Every leasing company has a disposition fee that they charge. It's $3.50 or something like that, that they charge you at the end of the lease,

less you lease a new car from the same leasing company. And they'll waive that for you. But if you buy it out, they'll charge you. That is something you could probably talk to the dealer about. Maybe there's something you could work out. But other things you need to worry about. Even though it's her car. Well, this position fee goes to the leasing company.

That's correct. So the dealer can't waive that. No, but he could work it out on the buyout price. So they can say we can make up for that by giving you a little bit more for it. He'll tell you he'll tell you. He'll do it. I'm just, yes. Okay.

Okay, so then the other is the dealer fees, which they will charge also. So if you buy a car, even though it's your car, you didn't come in on that, they will attempt to add every single one of their hidden fees to that price, even though it's your car. So those are the things you have to watch out for. You should shop that car with other dealers of that make. So all dealers of that make don't have the same hidden fees. Some are higher, some are lower.

You might get lucky and find one that will just do it without adding the fees, because there's no reason. It's unconscionable that you're buying your own car, really. I know it's a lot of the leasing company, but technically only. It's your car. You just want to buy it, and they're doing you a favor, and they're charging your hidden fees.

That's right. And it's unconscionable, but they all do it. So shop around and find a deal that will minimize the hidden fees they charge you. One final thing that's not even a likely, it's not likely to happen, but it's possible. So she's going to buy that car out for the buyout price that was set at the beginning, the residual of the car, which he leased it. In some cases, a vehicle is worth more than the residual buyout, depending on the car. It's worth looking into.

In that case, you might be able to take a little cash out of the transaction. And don't forget the number of miles that you have on your lease vehicle that you may be over. Be aware of that and the charge. If you buy out the vehicle, they don't care about the lease miles. So you can drive the matter of fact, that's a great solution for somebody who's gone way over miles is to buy the car because the leasing company is not getting it back. So at that point, they don't care how many miles you put on. Oh, great information. We are going to go, are you finished with that question?

We're going to go to John who's calling in West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Hey, good morning. Welcome. I have a simple question. that maybe others might have a question about. I have a 2002 Avalon, and it's got the little overdrive button on the stick shift. Sorry about that.

This overdrive button on the stick shift. When do I engage that? Do I start from a dead stop and then press the button once I get through the gears? Or do I leave that on all the time if I want to be an overdrive? What's the correct way to use that overdrive function? Just leave it on all the... Yeah, just leave it on all the time. Overdrive is simply means that it's fifth gear.

It's the one extra gear for a high-gear travel, like when you're on the highway. It gives you better fuel economy and less the car travel easier. The only time you'd really, that they left it in that you can turn that off, is say if you were driving in the mountains and you wanted the car not to, shift up into that extra gear so it would give you a little more speed control but it's it's really not necessary just leave it on all the time won't hurt a thing okay very good thank you that oh thank you john i appreciate it thank you and uh ladies uh you know i have to say i'm gonna remind all of you this is uh women's history month and this is look at my watch saturday it is the 27

of the month. So let's not close this show with one, without one more, female caller. Who can win $50 this morning by sharing a story with us or just saying hello? 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to Stu. I think works out of YouTube. Those two of you too. All right. Larry actually has a couple of questions here. His first one, he says, let's get back to it here. Earlier you spoke of special orders, and it sounds like you can special order a Toyota, but Toyota's site says your local Toyota dealer can advise you whether a preference can be submitted for your desired vehicle. Keyword being preference. Can you expand on that? Yes, absolutely. There is a system that Toyota offers the dealers, and it's called the preferencing system. That is what the dealers do every single month. They go on the computer and they say, I want this number of the L.E. Camry and this number of the S.E. Camry. And I'd like this amount in silver and this amount in white. So they preference for their allocation. It's not a guarantee that you'll get the cars. That's different than that.

a special order. So the preference is just how dealers stock their inventories, their new car inventories. A special order has another fancy acronym called DPMS, and that's called the dealer pipeline management system. And what that is, that's the special order. So basically, you give up a vehicle that's coming into you. It's destined when it gets built to have X number of equipment to be a certain color, and you can change that. And that is switch with another dealer anywhere in the country. So that's how they do the special order system. That's actually a DPMS.

So there's a difference between that and preferencing. And his next question, if you're buying out a car, are you required to use a dealer? Can't you just deal with the leasing company? No, they force you to go to the dealer to buy your own car, and I'm assuming they're talking about lease. Yes.

And the next one I have here from Donovan, it came out yesterday in a company meeting that Elon Musk said Tesla is on trust to build 1 million cars this year. They built 500,000 last year and they sell every single one of them. It seems adoptions of EVs is starting to take off. One million from a brand the size of Tesla is a lot of cars. Earl, what do you think the car market will look like in the next 24 to 36 months? Do you think the brands could be on the way out or any brands could be on the way up because they're not moving to change fast enough with the times.

Oh, you've already predicted this. Yeah, well, I don't think anything's going to happen the next 24 or 36 months. I think that this is going to happen over the next 10 to 20 years. And it's going everybody's going all out to be all

electric, and I don't know if a manufacturer anywhere that hasn't made at least a verbal commitment. Some of them are ahead of others, and of course, Tesla's ahead of everybody. But everything's going to be stable and normal for probably a good five years, and you'll start to see the fallouts after five years would be my prediction.

And actually a little caught up right now, except Kyle in Pennsylvania was asking about the idea of changing transmission fluid in his car. Lifetime fluid is what each of the manufacturers have, and his particular case because he drives huge amounts of miles He was wondering whether that's considered heavy use. And truthfully, for the most part, manufacturers define heavy use as when you're towing something, something is putting an extra strain on the transmission that might require changing that fluid. But otherwise, even for high mileage vehicles, the normal factory fluid, you're safe just to leave it be.

And he says he actually travels 60 to 70,000 miles a year and can put 4,000. to 500,000 miles on a car before he gets a new one. But you're still pretty safe even with that. Transmissions are incredibly reliable anymore. Let me tag on that as a tip for everybody listening. The service on cars is very important to the car dealers. Believe it or not, they're not making a whole lot of money selling cars. I know you think they are, but they're making money, but they're not.

We're making more money servicing cars. Auto Nation is the largest retailer of cars in the world. And 15% of Automation's sales are service parts, body shop, we call it the back end. In other words, 15%, 1.5% of AutoNation's revenue in sales is not from cars. Okay, that's a small amount of their sales. But guess what percent of the profit automation gets from the service? 70%. Now, car dealers are caught between a rock and a hard place.

The manufacturers are building the cars better than ever. They're highly reliable, low maintenance, very little repairs. A new vehicle today can last 3, 400, 500,000, miles. It can last 10 or 15 years. and the maintenance is minimal. I mean, I'm talking in the first three years of a few hundred dollars, maybe. Yet somehow car dealers need to continue that profit stream.

So Rick is talking about transmission flush and transmission change, the fluid, and he said, don't do it. But they're going to tell you to do it. They're also going to tell you to flush the transmission, and they're going to try to sell you all sorts of stuff. So, it's interesting being a car dealer today. The profits are being driven down on car sales

because consumers are getting more sophisticated and they're doing their homework and they're listening to this show and they're getting good deals on cars. If everybody got a good deal on a car, the car dealers would lose money big time in the new car department and they're not able to make it legitimately in the service department.

So when you go into a car dealership, going to try to get you in the service department, and they're going to try to get you in the sales department, the educated consumer is going to win, and the one that's not is going to pay the piper and the price to keep that car dealer in business. It's a desperate situation, folks, so please, please be careful when you get your car service. Next, anonymous feedback. Okay, well, we're going to stick to text right now. John's call reminded me, and there's no name on this, John's call reminded me of advice I have to give, The gas pump goes much slower when two cars are pumping at the same time on both sides of the pump.

If you can help it, pull up to a pump that has no cars using it, you'll fill up your tank a lot faster. Oh, great tip. I didn't know that. It makes sense, though, doesn't it? Yeah. The next one. When cars are in shortage, it's called price gouging when the dealer tries to rip you off. Well, price gouging is the legal term for price gouging is it's a necessity. In other words, gasoline is a necessity. medicine is a necessity you can say during hurricane season

duct tape and ladders and water are necessities so cars aren't necessities I'm very critical of car dealers but I don't go so far if I use the word price gouging for car dealers even though I probably have said it

I shouldn't say it It's called supply and demand, it's called educated consumers and uneducated consumers. Car dealers will charge the highest price they can get, but you don't need to buy the car. I mean, at least you don't need to buy it from that dealer, go somewhere else. And that's what the competitive marketplace is all about, freedom of choice. So you should shop around, find the deal that will treat you right, and give you the lowest price. Price gouging, you're a hurricane, when you have to have gas for your car, The gas stations, they should put them in jail because you have to have the gas or you have to have the protection for your home or you have to have the medication.

The pharmaceutical companies should be put in jail for what they do. That's price gouging. Food, water, ice. Food, exactly, necessities. Okay. The next one. A few months ago, you were simultaneously praising the Costco Auto Program and warning about it. You explain that the program was actually run by a third-party company.

Costco is so good at everything, why can't they administer it themselves? Well, I'll tell you, that is the greatest question. It's something Stu and I have fought. We've actually met with the executives of this third-party company. What are the alliance? What's the name of the third-party company? I think it's alliance. Yeah, they're a third-party company.

They're owned by Costco, or they're contracted by Costco. owned by Costco. And Costco, of all the good things they do, I can only say two things negative about them. The nitrogen they put in their tires, even though it's free, and their service department, and they're outsourcing their auto buying program. Now, with that said, they do have good rules, and it is the best game in town, but nothing's perfect. I wish Costco would either take over the whole, either fire alliance and start their own member buying program or take control of alliance so they could enforce the rules. The problem is with the Costco auto buying program, when you go into a car

dealership, the car dealerships are so crooked that they will lie to you about the Costco auto buying program. They'll tell you that they're giving you the Costco price and they're not. Now with that said, you can can go to Costco and report them and they will eventually get to the dealer to straighten out. But why should the burden be put on you? Let Costco administer their own auto buying program. And they're making money on it because I guarantee you, Alliance is paying Costco. And why shouldn't they get involved?

So I love Costco and I love the Costco auto buying program, but they're not perfect, and that's the reason I criticize it. They manage their hot dog sales. Yeah, best hot dogs and their chickens. $4 or $9. How can anyone be starving in the United States when you can buy a chicken at Costco for $4.99 and it feeds two people,

three people. Lots of protein. You can live off chicken and never, there would be no starvation hunger in this country. You should call. Hey, we are. Nancy's cutting off. We are going to go to,

there's a lot of people that are really hungry. Anyway, maybe they should just pass them out free let's go to warn he's in pompano beach and he is a regular caller good morning war good morning guys hey i got a question for you and earl sort of about the leasing going back to that uh first of all i just want to say one thing uh i was thinking about buying my daughter's car off a lease because she hasn't used it but up in new jersey you just pay directly to the bank or the leasing company you don't have to go through the dealer because they inquired about it they said you know, you want the car, just send a check

and obviously tax and tag and all that kind of stuff. Oh, I didn't know that. But you don't have to go through the dealer at all. I think it's Florida law. It doesn't allow dealers manufacturers to sell. Well, as New Jersey law does, too. But it must be another quirk of the law. But that's great information.

Thank you, Juan. Yeah, you just call them up, and they told me the price of the car. And then, you know, they said if you want finance, but it's a couple of months away. So I was thinking about it. And they said, you know, send this and check. and obviously we'll add, you know, tax and whatever's on it.

And that's the end of it. So you don't have to go to the deal at all. The other thing I want to ask you about leasing, and I know you're the doctor of cars, and I'm in no way saying you right or wrong. But my theory is I'm 70 years old and I'm thinking about leasing a car. And my theory is about leasing,

and I could be wrong, tell me, is that you can lease two cars to the price of one car over six or seven years. Now, obviously after seven years, you're going to be ahead of the game. But do I really care for 77 years old that really matter to me that much? I'm just curious what can you answer. Well, no, I understand.

And listen, the advantage to leasing is the low monthly payment. And you look at leasing when you compare it to buying only if you're looking at a long-term situation. I'm 80 years old. I'm not looking at long-term as much as I used to. But if I was a younger person and I was buying cars, I said, look, I'll probably buy 15 cars. over my lifetime, and I'm going to start out, I'm going to buy the car. When you buy the car, Juan, you are building equity in the car, and you are the owner of the car. So after three or four years driving a car, you build enough equity so you can trade that car in

on another car and get a big down payment and have yourself a lower monthly payment. When you lease a car, you're pretty much trapped. You lease a car, then you lease the next car, and you lose the next car. if you change your mind, you're in for a shock when you finds out what your monthly payment's going to be when you decide to buy the car. You'll either be shocked by the high monthly payment or the high down payment that you have to make

to make your monthly payment the same as it was when you leave. But it's all a mental thing. It's a shock. The fact of the matter is, yeah. No, I agree with you. Again, I don't think there's any right or wrong. No, you're right. And I wake up when I'm 77 and say,

I may have been sick. And, of course, who knows what can it be late 70? Sure. The other question I had for you is you were saying about paying off the lease as you're sick. Don't you have to pay the car off the lease. You can't drive because you still have to pay the payments? Say that again, one I didn't catch that. Okay, let's say you buy the car and you get sick and you can't drive.

Okay, you bought it on payment. You still have to pay the payments on the new car, as you would, on the lease. I mean, you're not going to let you off the book. Well, sure, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you still have to make the payments, but the point is you might even have equity in the car and you can sell the car. You could actually make a profit on the car.

But yeah, if you just bought the car and you had 60-month payments, you have to make those 60 payments, even if you're 2.6 to drive the car. But once you're at brick-even, you don't have negative equity, it's an asset, not a liability. But during the time it's a liability,

you've still got to worry about making your payments. Yeah, and one last question. There was an article in the New York Times yesterday, and it said the color of the car makes a lot of difference in what the value of the car is. And it looks to the colors, and I don't want to go into that. I mean, obviously, you guys could read the article. But I just, you know, if you read the article,

I wonder maybe if you comment on it, the next time and the next year was, too. Yeah, absolutely. What day was out in the New York Times? I believe it was yesterday. Well, let me refer it. It was yesterday, it was Friday. It was either Thursday or Friday.

I get the Times online. Sometimes there are a day in an evening ahead. There was a pretty big article about the color of the paint and, you know, all the things that go into the paint and, you know, yada, yada, yada. But I thought something you would be really interesting if you wanted to take a look at it. I'll catch it, yeah. I subscribe to the Times. I'll get that copy, and I'll take a look at it. We'll talk about it next week.

All right, thank you, guys. You've got a great show. I enjoy it. Well, it's talking to you with me. Well, thank you, Juan. I appreciate an info about New Jersey and leasing, and you folks in New Jersey are very lucky that you can deal directly with a leasing company

when you buy out their lease. You're avoiding a lot of hidden fees. I've done that twice in my life. I called them. Yeah, you want the car when the lease is up. and just a check, and, you know, you've got the car. We'll send you to pay for work, you know, and all you add is tax, whatever. The real fees are, and there are no position to add anything on.

So they'll just send you with the fees of the date, if you want to register in Jersey, you want to register in Florida, whatever you want to register, we'll just put the tax on that state on. Great information. Thank you very much. You've got a great thing. Okay, thank you one. Great hearing from you. 9960 or you can text us at 772-4976530.

Ladies, we have some time left. I have $50 here for the next female, new female caller. So let's not close out the show with one more female caller. Margaret, maybe you can give a shout out to one of your friends to give us a call. I'm sure there's somebody out there that had a experience at a car dealership, whether it would be service, sales, anything at all. Share it with us this morning. We'd love to hear from you.

Again, that number is 877-9-60-9-9-60. Now back to the guys. All right. Got a text. Hi, this is Larry again. How can I get oil stains out on my concrete driveway? It's a great question, and we hear that question a lot. It's really tough to do, especially if it's dirty oil.

The oil gets in there, and unfortunately, It's really tough. I don't think you can't. I don't think it is you can't get it out. Right. We've seen products. No, we've seen products. We've tried them and they don't work that great.

Now, there's one solution other than getting a new driveway that we have had success with, and that's staining in the concrete. So usually when you have a driveway, most of himself or just the plain concrete, there are companies that do a standing can bring it down to like a slightly darker gray, and that will hide the stain. We actually, we've done that before where we screwed up where we've had an oil leak in a driveway where we didn't tighten an oil cap well enough and that was the solution and it cost

several hundred dollars but it did get rid of the stain or it hid the stain it didn't get rid of it. You could just pour oil over the entire driveway. That's basically what they did. That's basically what they're doing with it not using oil. Do you ever go out your front door, look at the driveway

and you go, oh my God who was that? They turned around in my driveway and they left oil. Oh yeah. And the tire marks too. Rerun the camera. Exactly. All right, here's another text. If I get a price online from a dealer on their website and I print it and bring it in, it's in writing.

Don't they have to honor the price? No. Care to elaborate? No, it's just all BS. I mean, you get a price online from the dealer doesn't mean anything. You'd be surprised. The price is a lie.

And it takes me back to my attacking our legislators and our regulators for ignoring the constant breaking of the law by car dealers, and they do it all the time. Our Mr. Shopping Report, I won't give anything away, but it was a lie in the online price. So listen to the show more often and listen to these mystery shopping reports. There is a million ways they get out the price,

and we call it out every time. The ultimate disclosure on their website was like, dealer is not responsible for typographical errors, so anything printed on the site can be claimed to be an error. and also there's rebates that you will not qualify for that are included in that price and there are fees that will be added to them there's no way it's a mess and yeah we share your frustration that's why we started a radio show our maximum number 202

totally ignore all dealer advertising yeah okay we are going to go back to the phones it is a happy moment we are going to close the show with another female caller thank you for your support and welcome to the show, Trish, and you've won yourself $50. What can we do for you this morning? Well, I had an issue with when I brought my first call from a dealership, and they told me that because of my credit wasn't so good, that I can refinance after two years of paying on time

and making sure the payments are always. always there. And after the two years was up, and I made you all my payment, they tell me that there is no such thing as refinancing the loan because of the type of loan I have. Trish, that's not true. It's that they were untrue in what they told you. You can refinance your car anytime you want to. It's usually not a good idea too soon into the loan because the financing. will give you a prepayment penalty, the bank or whatever, will charge you a prepayment penalty early. But at the right time, it definitely does pay

if your credit improves to refinance your car. And you should look around. You also should have not believe the dealer when he gave you the first payment because you always should get several quotes from different banks or credit unions. And if the dealer wants to give you a quote too, that's fine. that's fine. But typically when you look at two or three places, you'll have a lower interest rate

than if you just take the dealer's word for it. The bank that he used, he got a kickback, a commission, and the higher the interest rate he charged you, the higher the commission he made. But yes, you should be able to refinance it, go directly to the bank, don't rely on the dealer, go to your bank and say, what will you charge me in terms of prepayment to refinance the car and how much will I save? Probably will save a lot of money. Yeah, because I was doing 29.9% that's a lot of money.

That's a lot of money. And what they charged me for interest rate. Plus, I had to put down almost, like, 2% to 5%, something like that. Well, if your credit is much better, if your beacon score, your FICA score is much better and your credit is much better today than it was two years ago, you'll save a lot of money. yeah definitely about 200 points different yeah amazing just you know doing doing a little research

and you know Earl and I we get three estimates on everything so you know looking all of that up your financing you know a way ahead of the game is you know it'll really definitely take you a long way and there are three or four of them that you can look at your own bank and several other options and it will save you a lot of money I can do it sounds good okay Trish I hope we've answered your questions and we want to thank you for being a female caller and helping us here to encourage other ladies to give us a call oh no problem thank you I'll wait to hear from you have a wonderful weekend you too thanks you're welcome eight seven seven nine six oh nine

960 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget we have the mystery shopping report that will be coming up shortly from a central Ford. And it's a doozy. Okay, we are going to go back to YouTube. Kyle's asking, if the value of a car is several thousand less than the buyout price, how negotiable is that price with a leasing company? repeat that again the buyout price if the value of the car the the the actual value of the car is several thousand less than the buyout price can you negotiate that buyout price when dealing with the leasing company nope nope the buyout price is in the contract so it's just it's set and that's it that's why most people don't end up buying their lease returns a leases at the end of the lease In some cases, it makes sense, and sometimes, like we talked about earlier, you have to get out of the lease, and the only solution is to buy it out. But now that's set in the contract, and you've got to pay that price. Lessers are so aggressive now that they're using the residual value to keep the lease payment down, so they've raised the buyout price to keep the payment down, and it's premeditated so they can lease more cars. They've suddenly realized that leasing is hugely more profitable. to them because your likelihood of repeating with someone you lease from is much higher than

repeating with someone you buy from. All right, we got a text. Oh, do we have a caller? We do, sir. Awesome. We're going to go to West Palm Beach and talk to Bobby. Good morning, Bobby. Hi, good morning, everybody.

Welcome back. You were talking about, thanks. You were talking about service as a profit center for the car dealers, and I've used some of your advice, Earl, and had some success with it in that I go to the different car dealers' websites and pick out the coupons for what service I need. So I'll go to Palm Beach Toyota and get the oil change coupon, and then I'll go to Del Rey Toyota and get the alignment coupon. And then when I call to make my appointment, I'll just tell them I'm going to use more than one coupon. If you want my business, you've got to take all the coupons. And

for the most part it seems to work they they make it sound like i'm changing i don't know changing one of the commandments or something to do it but um but they usually go along doing it and and the alternative is okay then i just won't get my breaks done there i'll i'll take it to the other place that has the coupon and see if they want my business and that seems to work so you don't have to get you don't you don't have to get too mad at the people you're talking to um but you do have to be sort of firm about it. Yeah. Sounds like you're in control.

Yeah, it's Bobby. That's great. I love it. And these coupons are a lost leader. Car dealers don't like the coupons, but they're a necessary legal. They want to get you in the door. And you're using their tool against them, and it works great. And you know, the popular items, maintenance items like will changes, tire rotations and balance,

they have to advertise and talk about those prices. And they give you coupons. coupons and so it's something you can really actually get an oil change where you actually make a they lose money I mean there's some of these specials they advertise they actually can't make money on so you're you're using that to your advantage and you hit it big with the brakes or the transmission or anything if you have an expensive repair that's where they really get you because you can't find out what a transmission over all costs you can't find out Really, usually, sometimes what a breakover haul will cost.

It's harder to get the prices on the high-priced items. And they get you in the door so they can say you have to have this expensive repair done and you shouldn't drive the car the way it is. And then they got you. They lost $10 on the oil change and they made $1,000 on the repair. So you're on to their game and you're beating them at their own game. Congratulations. And one other thing, I hadn't been in your car dealership in a while, I guess, but it's really nice in there.

You have it all fixed up. It's a nice place to be, even given the pandemic. Thank you. Everything's all fixed up, and it really looks nice. Well, be sure to check out the fish tank. We have a thousand-gallon fish tank there that we're very proud of, and a beautiful seawater aquarium with all sorts of really cool fish and coral. take a look at it next time you're on okay i will and it's nice you got your own car wash now yeah absolutely thanks bobby thank you bobby i'll talk to you again i think we're going to go back

to stoop yep uh text for rick says hi rick steve from new jersey months ago you mentioned installing a clear plastic shield to protect your headlights what were the results of your test thanks p s i did the same with my new car and the lights have been well protected It worked. All right. It worked. However, I do recommend find a professional with good experience to have those installed because of the shape of the headlights and to make them look good.

It could be a sticky mess. Very frustrating. Oh, I fought with it. Yeah, I could imagine that. Sounds like a project that can get out of hand very quickly. Yep. Next text says, looking to buy a car for under 3,000 from a private owner at a local auto shop. shop. Should I have the car checked out at a different shop to be sure it's okay, or should I just buy it?

Also, what should I look for before purchasing? You know that answer. So I do. Yeah, definitely take it to another shop. Hopefully the guy selling it won't be offended, but this isn't personal. It's business. You've got to protect yourself. If you bring it to a trusted mechanic that you know, somebody who's not selling it, they can go over and point out the things. Rick could chime in on some specific things you want to look for. But the best thing to do is get it to a third party just to take a look at it.

And you should do that whether you're buying it from a private buyer or a dealer because oftentimes problems are passed along to the new owners. Rick, what specific should they be checking out that should be obvious to them? Obviously any maintenance items, brakes, tires, looking at the filters, light bulbs out. Look for any electrical problems that they might be able to see any drive ability. issues, you know, take it for a good test drive. Basically, you're going to need to try to add up how much it's going to cost to make sure that car is proper and safe for you versus how much is the car really worth in order to determine

that value. That's right. And you can use that in negotiating with the owner of the vehicle. If you take it to a third party, they say it's going to cost about $750 to get it acceptable. You need to go back to the guy and say either fix these things or. work it out of the price so I can pay to have them fixed. All right, we can jump over to some anonymous feedback. Hey, Earl, how is it possible that Toyota has access to live satellite imagery?

The bird's eye view on the latest cars is great, but isn't this a national security issue if anyone can get a live satellite image of their car? I hate to break it to you, anonymous. The bird's eye view is really cool. It looks like you're looking from above your car, but that's a computer image, and they use cameras around the car to see the surroundings on the car, so you can see if somebody to the side, if you're pulling into a parking spot, or if there's somebody hiding behind your car waiting for it to get you. But that's not satellite imagery. There's actually little cameras under the rearview mirrors, right? And there's some up in the front of the car, in the back of the car. That's really cool.

It's really real, though. It looks like you're looking. You're flying over your car like a bird, and I can see how. I glanch you might wonder if that's a zoomed image from outer space, but it's not. I'm going to tell the secret. Okay. It's actually an invisible drone that hovers over your car all the time giving you a downwards view. I'm going to get my dad really angry because I'm going to have a silly sidebar.

I would like to see cars come with a drone that's docked in the car, so when you're in a traffic jam, you can launch it up and see where to go. Live traffic report. You've already got that. Apple Maps gives you an idea what the traffic is. It does. Talk about the cutting edge. It's not perfect. Okay.

We have another anonymous comment. Regarding New Highlanders, one thing a couple of YouTube reviewers have mentioned is the door armrest not being well positioned. They say it's a bit too far away to rest your arm while still holding the wheel. What's your experience? It's a deal breaker for me.

I would say you need to sit in one of these vehicles and find out for yourself, because everybody's shaped differently. My wife drives a Highlander. I don't know if your stature, she's 5-2. She loves the car, and she's really comfortable, but that's her. So any car, you need to sit in it and drive it preferably for more than 15 minutes if you can get an overnight test drive or at least a few hours

and really get a feel for it because there's nothing worse than spending $50,000 or $45,000. You know, CarMax is advertising overnight test drive, and every manufacturer should do that. I mean, every retailer should do that. You should take a car for at least a day, preferably 24 hours. And if you want to, ask a dealer for a couple days. Every car is built for different types of people. And as Stu said, if you rush into a car and you find out there's something uncomfortable about it,

after you take delivery, you won the car. when you buy a car and you drive it home the dealer will not take it back 99 out of 100 dealers will not take it back we've seen situations where it's so uncomfortable people have been willing to spend thousands of dollars just to get out of their car six months down the road a year down the road when it's when it's too late to return the car and they're willing to take the hit just to be comfortable you know it's it's just amazing the number of people that don't take a test drive you know and take into consideration

that front seat that driver's seat that you're going to spend so much time in there's no turning back once you sign on the dotted line and if you got back problems wow yeah like the dealers like to say you're an owner and you have deal with it rick has a point over he's raven on me it might even be worthwhile to consider finding a rental company that has that car available and rent it for a day or two that's a great idea i mean at least if the dealership won't let you borrow the car you know for whatever reasons for a day or two just to see yeah you need some time that's a great great advice for you got time for one more anonymous sure okay why does Toyota I'm thinking this is a Rick question why does Toyota have a DRL that's daytime running lights why does Toyota have a DRL offsetting on the signal stock instead of in the settings in the car system so they're saying on your your turn signal thing that you use if you want your DRL on you're forced to

What is a DRRL? I already defined it. Daytime running lights, DRL. Does anybody know what that may? I never heard of it. DRL, that's what the user for you. I know, I know. Yeah, usually like if you're on the websites anywhere that says DRL.

So yeah, maybe they're trying to make it catch on. Let's make a catch on here. Anyway, if you want your daytime running lights on, you're forced to use the auto function. Why can't Toyota change this? So in the off position, the daytime running lights on you're forced to use the auto function. The daytime running lights stay on. Also, second question, most new Toyotas have LED headlights. How long are they supposed to last forever?

And do you have to replace the entire housing if it burns out or prematurely fails? Last question first, yes, if it fails, you've got to replace the whole assembly. LED the headlights are fantastic and they do last, are supposedly forever. It's possible for them to fail. Things can go wrong, but they're not going to burn out like that. they last way longer than anything else as for why they don't switch the daytime running lights i don't know that's the engineers but my personal opinion they should do away with daytime running lights you should have normal headlights and tail lights on 24-7 while the car is operational yeah

because you see a lot of people driving around with their daytime running lines on that night how we just bought a funeral by the hearse by the and the escort motorcycles. But you can see people at night with headlights with no tail lights because they're using daytime running lights and they don't know they have no tail lights on. Mystery shopping report, right? Okay, before we get to that mystery shopping report, let's take a look at Earl's Confessions of a recovering car dealer and the best news of all, besides there being so much information

in this, I call it a Bible, is that 100% of the contribution that you're going to pay for this book goes straight to big dog ranch straight to big dog ranch you can go to amazon and you can that dog's putting on some weight i think anyway you can go to amazon and you can pick up confessions of a recovering car dealer take advantage of that it's a great book it is quite an investment now we're going to get to the mystery shopper report from Essential Ford and the lines are closed and we'd like you to vote on the mystery shopper report. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, we didn't talk about the mystery shopping report at the beginning of the show, but this is the unique

feature of the show. This is an undercover shopper that we sent in secretly to pretend to buy a lease a car and we do this every week and it's a high point of the show. Our mystery shop is was said, Essential Ford in Stewart, Florida. We set out this week to mystery shop Advantage Ford of Stewart, Florida, but then we experienced the hiccup. There's no longer an Advantage Ford.

Didn't even know that. We learned this from Agent Lightning, our female shopper, who during her mission prep, discovered that Essential Ford kept coming up whenever she Googled Advantage Ford. Lightning, contact the team to make sure we

hadn't made a mistake. None of us that Earl and Cars knew that Advantage Ford of Stewart had been sold. A little research uncovered the buyer, some we know very well. A lot of people know very well, John Stalupi. John Stalupi, in addition to being a yacht builder and a philanthropist, has been a titan in the car business for decades and is the owner of the ninth largest dealer group in America, the Staloupie Auto Group. John is well known locally, especially for his provocatively named Mega Yots, all after the James Bond series.

And he got diamonds only or octopusy or, you know, all the names of the James Bond. And these are huge. And he's also known because he bid on the first 2020 Toyota Super and won and bought that Super for charity for $2 million. $100,000. The Saloupi Auto Group has 43 dealerships all across the country and boasted 62,000 750 new vehicle sales in 2019. The most recent data we had. There's also John Salupe and his son, and I believe they're both owners and they may have two different groups. I'm not sure how that goes, but there is a son who is more active now, I think, in the group than Sloopy. Sloopy, John Sr. has got a lot of other interests, and I think John Jr. is

focusing more on other sales, auto dealerships. I happen to John Sloopy. You said very well. I know him. I know him. Mainly because I've competed with him several of his dealerships, and his antique car museum and his major offices are right across the street from my toilet dealership, and that's in North Palm Beach Lake Park where the village shops. The old Twin City Mall. All Twin City Mall, yeah. Anyway, Stu says real fun relationship with John Sloopy.

Don't really have time. I know John for a long time. He's kind of like a recovering car dealer. I mean, we go way back to when I first started into the business, really. And I used to have lunch with him, and he's a great guy, he's a lot of fun, and extremely interesting guy. He used to own Palm Beach Toyota, right?

Yeah, yeah, Palm Beach Toyota, exactly. I don't think we've ever mystery shopped a Sloopi dealership. It's tough to tell. John Dutton put his name on his buildings, however, we shopped this particular location when it was Vantage for Stewart. We were there last in May 2020 when Agent Thunder investigate an ad for Memorial Day sale

that promised a 17,500 off of sticker MSRP on new F-150s. Of course, the ad turned out to be bait and switch, and Advantage Ford was given a poor grade of C. By the way, Advantage Ford, I think it's been there for a long time. Family-owned or one person owned it, it had to be there 25 or 30 years. I'm really surprised that Stolupi bought him out, but he did. and maybe you'll be making more moves into this area.

A change in ownership means huge changes in all aspects of a dealership sometimes. Sometimes a new owner, Cleans House, replaces a large number of employees with his own people. Sometimes they keep almost everyone except senior management. In case with the Regal Dodge, the Stanley, what was that, Larry Morgan. Larry Morgan group, big group, about the size of Loupies,

bought out all the... the Arrigo stores, but the Arrigo brothers kept the name on the stores, and they also are doing the advertising. So you know the clowns you see on TV, very entertaining commercial Arrigo. That's actually Larry Morgan owned now. They bought them about, what, six months ago? Yeah, it was earlier this year. Yeah.

So it was interesting to be, see what happens with Stalupi buying the Advantage Ford. What kind of impact will this have? Well, we're going to find out. Agent Lightning went in, and hopefully we'll find out. Here's the report. I'll be speaking as if I were Agent Lightning. Before heading up to Stewart, I went online to find my target vehicle on EssentialFord.com. That's their website, EssentialFord.com.

Found a new 2021 Ford Mustang GTCoupe premium in Shadow Black. The MSRP was $54,687. And the online price was 52,000 or 97, or was it? You'll see what I mean by that a little later. MSRP, 54,000, manufacturers suggested retail price. The 52,097 price had a line crossed through it. There was no context or explanation, but the implication was that an even lower price was possible. When I got to the dealership, stepped inside the showroom, I was greeted by a very nice young lady who was

a mask. Everyone was wearing a mask. That's refreshing. She asked how she could help, and I told her I was there to buy a new Mustang. She said she'd get me a salesperson. She wasn't a salesman. She was a greeter. She returned with Alex, who led me to a nearby table and offered me a seat. Alex was a salesperson. I told Alex that I tried to buy a car there three years ago when it was still Advantage 4. I said I had a terrible experience. He ended up buying from Mullanex. Alex said, I had good timing. Advantage Ford sold out and was under a new owner. He said, the new owner fired everyone except maybe four people. I asked him who the new one was, but he didn't know. It didn't know the new owner. However, the new owner does want to

change the way customers, employees are treated. And of course, you'd expect him to say that. Alex went on to tell me about himself, and now he'd leave the restaurant business because of COVID. Well, the people did. It was very unfortunate. So far, he really loves the car business. He seemed like a genuine guy. We talked about the car I wanted, the 2021 agent Lightning. I wanted the 2021 Mustang GT Premium.

Then Alex collected my personal information, driver's license, and so on. He found the shadowed black one. It seemed to be the same car I saw online, but the MSRP was 53-295. And the one online was 54, 687. I told you to remember that. But it was close enough, and I let it go. Alex left to get a key, disappeared in the back.

He came back a minute later to ask me where I wanted my payment to be. Here we go. Car business. I think somebody made him go back out there and find out. I'm in Publix and I got the T-Bone steak and the cashier says, no, where would you like your price on the steak to be? A dollar. Let me get the manager.

Let's talk turkey. I just want the steak. I want you to get a deal on this. Are you going to take the steak home today? I said I wasn't connected with payment, a concern with payment. I want to know what my bottom line out-the-door price would be. Boy, they've got to hate that. Alex said he'd get the specific numbers later and asked if I was okay with $50,000 to $60,000.

It gets you the stake for between $8 a pound and $25 a pound. Is that an acceptable range? I mean, yeah, $10,000 range. I said that was okay. And he left again. Okay, he was back at a minute with a plate and a key license plate, and a key asked me to stand out front. stand out front, and he said he'd pull the vehicle around.

Now, we went outside and saw Alex parking a beautiful black Mustang. It was a stunning car. And I'll bet you this is what they told you. This is what Ancient Lightning told you, right? Yeah. She probably said, oh, man, that was. And oh, it is. She sent me about a dozen pictures of the car.

Oh, man, that black. And see, this is where the car salespeople, you've got a gorgeous, sexy car. Man, man. your hormones take over your mind goes in neutral and you act on emotion I love that black Mustang I'll pay anything for that

and that's where they get you folks I'm telling you I walked around it taking pictures and she really did that was because she wanted to and she sent them to stew she loves the Mustang Jonathan just had the image up on the screen streaming so you can see the car yeah and it is a gorgeous car and she loved it she really did.

And she probably would have bought the car and paid too much money for it. Had she not been in training. No, Agent Lightning is now season. Oh, not now. No, no. She's a better position. I'm talking about before we trained her.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And now there was also an addendum sticker fixed to the glass near the Mononi level. The addendum added another $1,392 to the MSRP. It was for tent. Vin H. Oh, man, that's Mickey Mouse.

$200 for that. Wheel locks an auto butler. Now, that sounds like a good deal. I mean, I got a butler for only $700. I mean... What? I'm just kidding. A butler. A buddler.

I got it, yeah. I'd love a butler. Auto-bubter, yeah. The dealer's list price was $54.6.87. Dealer list price. Whoa. I realized this was the online price. the listing online included the addendum labels

it also labeled it MSRP now that's not right in fact it's a federal law violation it was $1,392 more than the MSRP and we've got to believe that this was probably not premeditated

but it could have been we don't know you don't know could have been the person that put the ad together could have been the sales manager you just don't know why that happened it's likely an automated thing because it's on all their listings

so yeah it might be something they overlooked it's a serious thing to overlook we took a great test drive this thing was fun on the way back I gushed about the car I told Alex I wanted to see the numbers we re-entered the showroom found the same

table I sat down Alex went over to the sales manager's lair he was gone for 15 minutes. We're going to return, Caleb, the sales manager, was with him. Okay. You've got Alex and Caleb now. We both sat down and Caleb began presenting figures to me that were printed on a worksheet. The top line label market value selling price was 54, 687. That included the addendum. My total saving was 750, made my adjusted price, 53, 937. Here we go. Hidden 50. fee, they call it a dock fee, $8.99, added along with a staggering $8333 in non-tax fees. Now, non-tax fees, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, it can be. It can be. It can be, I don't think. It could be that high.

Yeah, it could be. I shouldn't say it can't be. There's no reason for the legit fees to exceed $500. All this, you know, meant my actual selling price was like $55, $1,000. $1,8141 over MSRP, over. That's a lot of money, even for a hot car. My off-the-door price was 59-036, and look at that. I gave in the range up to 60K, and they came pretty close, didn't that? If I had said yes to 40 to 70, it would have been...

69, right? Yeah, 69, yeah. Caleb asked me what I thought. I told him that this wouldn't do. He didn't seem to like my answer. Asked me what I had in mine. I unlocked my iPhone, showed him his ad with the $52,097 price. $52,097 price.

Caleb referred to the worksheet, said it was just a start. There we go. Let the games begin. He said he was sure he could get his boss, Ryan. So I got Alex and we got Caleb and we got Ryan to come down and some more. So Alex and Caleb walked back to the manager's outpost. In two minutes, both men walked over in tandem.

Caleb had a new worksheet. I had what appeared to be the online price, which didn't seem so great now, knowing the addendum. Indendum was included. This time the discount was $25.90, and my adjusted price was $52.97. They add the same hidden fees and taxes,

out the door, 57, 0.7.7. Now, my effective selling price was about 52,300 MSRP. I had negotiated way down to MSRP. Got them all the way down to sticker. Yeah. Yeah. Caleb asked me if these numbers look better. I said they weren't what I expected to be paying today.

I told them he needed to do something about those fees. He asked me if I was committed to buying today. Old school, old school. And he said he could get me a best. And he said he could give me a better deal if I would make sure I was taking it today. I'm sorry, Mr. Stewart, you can't buy this T-Bone. I can't give you the best price on this T-Bone steak unless you'll take it home today. That appears we were at an impasse, sir.

What do you want me to say? I can't commit until I get the price. Exactly. I said I couldn't promise I'd take it a day. I said that I wanted to call my husband and go over it with him. Caleb said he'd talked to Ryan and he and Alex retreated to the lair, the managers hideaway. They were back at a minute with bad news. Ryan would only agree to go lower when I committed.

I said, Ryan ought to be committed, is what it should be. Right. You want me to commit. You need to commit yourself. I said we appeared to be at an impasse. I said I'd go home and see if I could get my husband. see if I could get my husband to come back with me, we said our goodbyes, and I left. Okay.

Several samples of typical car dealer. This is old school. This is the way car dealerships operated 50 years ago. It's old school. And you know something that works, and it doesn't work at all markets. It does work in Martin County in St. Lucie County. And to some extent, Palm Beach County, there are markets where this would not work, but in most cases, this is a way car dealers make a ton of money. Our shopper here is an educated consumer, and she will give the good price on her car if she wanted to.

The next person that walks into, what is it, New Ford, what's the name of the dealership? Essential Ford. Oh, yeah, yeah. Essential Ford used to be advantage for it. The next person walks into a central Ford will buy that Mustang for several thousand dollars over sticker. And then the educated consumer will go in there and buy it for several thousand dollars below sticker. And the average is what keeps essential Ford afloat. That's the way the car business is conducted.

So there we have it. It's voting time. We vote on the curve. and we have to have Ford dealers on the recommended list because we would have no purpose in life of having a mystery shopping report

if nobody was ever recommended. So, relatively speaking, what is your vote for essential Ford? John Sluppi's new dealership in Stuart Florida. Well, we have grades coming in online. Amory has chimed in. She says, federal law violation

automatically deserves an F rating in my book. The routine old school games may be common, but it's still off-putting. F from Anne-Marie. We have one. There's no name. It's a text. A clear, classic dealer nonsense. Love the comparisons to buying food.

Big F. Jonathan Wellington says, same old dealership head games. Jacked-up costs. If used with items, hidden fees, and verbal tricks that you don't experience at good dealerships. I give them a D. And then over on Facebook, Linda, mercifully gives them a D.

and Tom gives them a D says too many old school tricks I'm going to be a little bit more generous to give them a C minus D minus C minus okay right we've got Andrew with an F Donovan total F Ernesto F F mark Ryan F

and that does not stand for Ford Andy with a D minus Rico F for funny how the sales salesman thinks that all people are gullible and myself, I'm going to give them the D because it's just, you know, it's like

the same games, passing, but just barely. Yeah, it is the same game. Quite a struggle. I'm going to give them an F. An F? You know, Anne-Marie really got my attention. You know, how do you adore a federal law violation

and maybe I'm getting my my heart over the way my logic. I think she's probably right, but I'm going to be merciful. First of all, because I know John Sloopy and it's just for all

time's sake, John, I'm going to give you a D minus to have you on the list. And we're not going to, I'm not going to fail you, but get that corrected on the MSRP. You can't advertise the price and we'll give you the benefit of that I'm sure that you weren't involved with this at all.

And I'm speaking to the management there at Essential Ford. Be sure your advertising company, whoever puts your ads out there, doesn't mislabel the MSRP. That's a federal violation. So be careful about that. And we'll go back pretty quickly and chop you again. And bring that up from a D minus. We'll keep you on the list temporarily.

D minus. D minus. all right well that sounds like okay that that sounds real good that's kind of a warning from Earl Stewart and again I'm going to mention earlsvigilantes.com you can go to raw and cars and you can get all the information on that

this here is just an example of what you can help us with we we try to expose these guys every week but it's really difficult without your help that's Earlsvigilantes.com With all of that, we thank you for tuning in to Earl Stewart on cars. We are happy to be with you. Hope we've answered your questions this morning. We'll see you next week, right back here, Saturday morning, 8 a.m.

Let's go. Thank you.