Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.31.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Pat Fischer Nissan

Episode Date: March 31, 2018

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits a sales event sponsored by Pat Fischer Nissan of Titusville. Earl Stewart is one of the most successful car dealers in the nation. This podcast gives you the benefit of his 40+ years as a car dealer and helps you turn the terror of buying, leasing, or servicing a car into a triumphant experience. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.trueoldiesfla.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. Watch Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. We're back. Hello, regulars. Hello, newbies. If you're a true oldie fan and you're looking for some music,

I'll have to disappoint you for about two hours. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer in the name of this show is Earl Stewart on Cars. and we're kind of a how to do it, how not to get ripped off by your car dealer. I'm not alone, by the way, in the studio here at 106.9, 95.9 and 960 a.m. I'm in here with an auto team. We address all issues that you may have with automobiles, not just buying and leasing, but repairing and maintaining. We try to answer all your questions.

The most important part of this show, by the way, is you, because we want. want to know what you want to know and we'd like to hear your comments here and your criticisms uh we love to solicit calls from automotive related people people may in the retail business or even manufacturer related people the industry as it were but mainly consumers because consumers are not treated fairly by automobile dealers now that's the truth in the nutshell It's one of the most strangeing phenomena of the 21st century that we have an industry, a very large industry, thousands and thousands of car dealers all over the United States that are doing business the way they did business back in the 1950s in the mid-20th century. All of the retail virtually has evolved to keep pace with the consumer.

The consumer is highly educated. They're much higher, and it isn't just the person. It's the availability of information. Today's consumer has huge amounts of data information. I could say that in one word, Google. You have so many sources on the Internet to learn how to buy a product at the good price, at the best price, a reliable product, a safe product. It's all there for you.

50, 75 years ago, you didn't do that. And the car dealers are operating today as if you do you didn't know they were ripping you off. The problem is they're all ripping you off. It's a slight exaggeration. There are some honest car dealers out there, but they're far too few. I'm going to give you a little fact about a Gallup poll. You've heard of the Gallup Organization,

arguably the most reliable polling organization in the world. And they've been doing a poll in the United States since 1977. They do thousands, tens of thousands, a poll. That's all they do is take polls, but that's not true. They do a lot of other stuff, consulting and things like that. But their poll is honesty and ethics and professions. Honesty and ethics and professions. So in 1977, they did the very first one, and they've done it every year, over 40 some odd years. And they say, this is the best profession in terms of honesty and ethics, and these are the worst professions. They do 40, 50, 60 different professions,

It's the major professions that we deal with every day, businesses, as it were. Now, the only reason I bring it up is car dealers rank at the bottom. They are the least honest and the least transparent, the least ethical at the bottom. Now, they're not always dead last. Sometimes they're next to last, like last year, 2017. They were next to last. Guess who was below them? Congressman.

Is that surprised you? I don't know. And the best I've ever seen them, I think, too. three years ago, they were third from last. So that's the need for Earl Stor and Cars, and that's what you're listening to now. This is not the true oldies, well, this is the true oldie channel, but this is not a true oldie show. That's correct.

Nancy is by a co-host, by the way. Good morning, everyone. If you just tuned in, that was Earl Stewart, and he was giving you an idea of what our show is all about for the next two hours. So with that said, if you'd like to speak. speak to him or any one of us. We've got Rick here. We've got Stu and myself.

877-960-99-60. Or you can text us at 772-4976530. Again, you're listening to Earl Stewart-owned cars. So, got a whole lot of information to get to, and you are going to be very surprised. And because I always say, the good, the bad in the other. ugly, we're going to go over all of it. So stay tuned. And ladies, $50 to each one of you. First two new lady callers, $50. Again, give us a call. 877-960. 9960. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Nancy, by the way, is a very, very strong female advocate for female consuming consumption.

I can just drop my video cam here. And she addresses the dirty little fact that car dealers often take greater advantage of women than they do men. And that goes back to the mid-20th century, too. There's a lot of female advocacy conversation going on now. You can't turn on the television or read the newspaper, or radio, or go online without hearing about Pound Me Too. that's the cyber version of it. But women have been taken advantage of you up many times

and this is not the way we treat half the scissors. Oh, okay. I hesitated there because I thought Rick was going to attack me, but he was actually just adjusting my microphone. Rick, by the way, is a very large man

but he's a very nice man. I thought perhaps he'd snapped. I was a big teddy bear. I wasn't sure. At any rate, Nancy is the one that will speak in your behalf. A lot of women out there can take care of themselves, believe me. There are a lot of them that can more than take care of themselves. The women that seem to be victimized most by retailers, mainly car dealers, are the older ones. And those are the group that grew up in the 50s and born in the 50s and 60s and 70s.

And they're in their 60s, and 80s now. These folks go out there. did not make the big decisions in the family as they grew up. And widows, oftentimes, they pre-decease their husbands, and they're taking advantage of. Well, Nancy's going to talk about that, and she will be your representative. And that's the reason we're paying the first two new female callers, $50, cash, no condition. If you call the show, 877, 960, 9960, you call that number. We'll pay you 50 bucks.

No conditions. You don't have to do anything. You just call the show. If you haven't called the show before, the first two. more female callers. We have now, we had about 50% last week. That was great. Usually we only have maybe 10, 20%.

So we encourage you women out there to be heard. And if you have a comment you'd like to make or a suggestion you'd like to make, if you were treated well by a car dealer, let's hear about it. If you were treated badly by a car dealer, we want to hear about it. That's what the show is all about. 877-960. If you haven't, got a question or comment. Now, write that number down.

get a pencil piece of paper write the number down you will have a comment later on i promise you and you just won't have the number handy and i'll probably be yakking and uh the text number by the way is 772 4976530 that's 772 4976530 and i just got some text here so they just came across that's great love to see these texts come in uh the text i'm looking at now says, have you heard of a term called carry-over allowances? Supposedly this is a tactic related to dating the buyer's order when new cars are introduced in the fall in order to get an extra amount for leftover cars from the previous year's inventory. Is this legal?

And that's Garrett and West Palm Beach. Boy, that's an inside term, Garrett. That's very interesting that you would be aware of that. You may have had some contacts in the car business. It's carry-over allowance. That's true. So what the manufacturers do, many and most manufacturers, I guess, at the end of the model year, to help the dealers sell the old models, they have a percent. It could be 5 percent, it can be 2 percent, it varies from manufacture to manufacture, and this extra money they will give to the car dealers to able to move out the old inventory.

So this year, we've got the 2018s of the new cars, but there's still a lot of time. 2017 is that need to be sold. And the carryover allowance is to help those dealers. That's secret, by the way. It's an inside term. And most consumers don't know that. I always say when people are talking about buying last year's model, rule of thumb, don't. Buy the current model.

If you're an educated consumer and you do your shopping, competitive shopping, use true car, use consumer reports, you really are a smart shopper. You can get a pretty good deal on a 2018 current model. you have to get an awful huge discount, including carryover allowances, to be able to justify buying last year's model. The depreciation that you see on last year's model inherent when you buy the car, it's a year old. Five years from now, when you trade that in, they didn't know you bought it late in the model year as a new car. All they know is it's one year older than the other cars, which are the 2018. So be very careful about buying those old cars and thinking there are bargains.

here's another text we got this from Tina who was one of our famous female callers famous and very knowledgeable extremely knowledgeable unusually knowledgeable for a man or a woman in terms of mechanics and consumer tactics and dealer tactics is really sharp really sharp well she's not on the well yeah that's right she's not on the phone but she's listening and and Tina says found another good YouTube channel your car angel she's giving us a lot of really good your car angel she's amazing so write that down your car you are car angel your car angel so that's fantastic great news Tina thank you very much and is that all the text I got steward do I have any more you have one more that came in after

that okay let's see here if I can find that one here it is right here okay I have two questions good morning what is a difference between traction control and all wheel drive I to take a stab of that, but I'm not going to stab. I'm going to turn it over to Rick. Rick, what is a difference between traction control and all-wheel-drive? And I'll give you another one, too. The follow-up is all-wheel drive is great for snow.

Okay. There you go. Okay, well, we'll start off with just a basic description of all-wheel drive, which basically means just what it says. All four wheels are in power mode all the time. In other words,

it's a four-wheel drive, but all the wheels are getting power all the time. Gotcha. Traction control can be on a two-wheel drive car or an all-wheel drive car, and what it simply means is that the computer will use the ABS system and the throttle control in order to send power and braking to each individual wheel as it needs to to keep your car under control. So the computer knows when the wheels are slipping on the snow or the ice or the sand or whatever it may be.

and automatically accommodates the wheel. It puts the power where they can get traction and takes the power off the wheels that cannot get traction. Exactly. Very good. Okay. We've got another call, another text, I should say. Nope.

No, that's it. Oh, the final part of that was, we live in Florida, where the advantage is to having a vehicle with all-wheel drive here, I would say very little. Actually, you might be surprised with the rain and sand and issues that we get on certain roads where the dirt and sand blowing across the roads, construction, but especially the rain, I'm sure everybody's aware of that first minute or so of rain when things get super slippery, all-wheel drive can be very, very helpful.

I feel very safe. It's a good point. It's a cost-benefit thing, I would think. And I would think, you know, snow and ice, have you ever driven on snow and ice? Yes, I have. Okay, so you've got to have an all-wheel drive if you're on snow and ice. But in Florida, it would be a question of how much you want to spend. How much extra is a typical all-wheel drive cost?

Oh, gosh, I don't know. Some of the models like the hybrids, and I can only speak for Toyota's, but they come standard with all-wheel drive. Yep. Like you can't get a Highlander hybrid without it. And it feels, you know, you feel really secure on the road, especially. It's in the thousands of dollars, I think, in terms of... As a matter of fact, Subaru is one of the vehicles that I think almost every vehicle they make is an all-wheel drive.

And they saw most of them up north, as a matter of fact. True. But they also do pretty well here. You've got to give Subaru their credit. Those are awesome cars. A lot of people are buying all-wheel drives and SUVs for the, you could call it the charisma. And a lot of trucks and SUVs. People are buying, I know, Toyota Land Cruises because they look cool.

And it's kind of the joke about the pickup truck. Next time you're on the road and you see your pickup trucks, count the number ones that have something in the back of the truck. and when you talk to a guy driving a land cruiser, asking the last time he was off-road. So it's a macho thing. If you want to spend $5,000 or $6,000 to look cool, that's okay with me.

I kind of laugh at you see a lot of pickup trucks driving down the road and they're raised up in the air with massive, huge mud tires and $10,000 or $12,000 worth of modifications. And then you look at the front end and you realize that's a two-wheel drive truck. 877, 960, 99060, write the number down, 877 960, 960, love to hear from you. And as Nancy reminded you earlier, 50 bucks cash, no conditions, unconditional, 50 bucks to the first new female callers. I want to hear from the ladies. You have a lot to say, you buy half the cars, you need to be making half the comments, in my opinion.

And the text number is 772-4976530. That's 772-497-6530. And you got another text? Got another text. Boy, this is cool. We have a lot of people that want to remain, well, not necessarily. They just don't want to be on live radio, maybe. People don't want to talk on the phone anymore anyway.

Everybody texts. Isn't that the truth? I don't want to talk on the phone anymore. I never did. Texting is the best thing that ever happened to me. My wife will tell you, I'm the first one. I never want to talk on the phone for any length of time. Oh, that's funny.

Okay, here's what this text says. There's a button on my dash to turn off the anti-lock braking feature. Since I live in Snowfl, Florida, should I keep this turned off? Rick would probably disagree with me, but I would say yes. I have never heard of any car that has a button to turn off anti-lock brakes. Well, this guy's got one, Rick. Now, there is a button on a lot of cars to turn off traction control when you need it. But to that texter, if you could send us a follow-up text as to what make-and-model car that is,

I honestly have never, ever heard of any car that you can turn off the anti-lock brakes. You can turn off traction control on a lot of cars, and there's sometimes reasons for that, but people that like to race or they want to spin their tires deliberately. but Thank you, Rick. Thank you very much. That's it. We have something, yes, Nancy.

Yes, I am going to mention to our listeners. It's just a reminder. If you're unable to listen to our show or you want to listen to any of our past shows, you can always subscribe to Rolls Strodon Cars podcast on your smartphone. Is that wonderful news? Your smartphone or your tablet

using any of the following podcast apps, Apple Bobcast, SoundCloud. Don't you dare make fun in my accent? I can see it on your face. Stitcher Radio, tune-in radio, pocketcasts, and overcasts. And if you'd like to watch highlights of our show, go to YouTube.com slash Erlon Cars. I hope everyone caught all of that with me moving back and forth. I'm trying to adjust to the mic.

Okay, so heads up. We're making a splash here, and ladies, I'd like you to take a splash with me. Give me a call at 877-9-60-9-90-60, and I'd love to give you $50. First two, new lady callers. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Now the highlight of this show, everybody tells me that, is the mystery shopping report. And the mystery shopping report for you new listeners is something unique in radio or for that matter TV. I don't know any media that does what we do.

We send an undercover agent out somewhere in the marketplace in South Florida to a car dealership. We pretend to buy or lease a car. We respond to ads. Sometimes we look for Takata Airbag-equipped cars that have not been fixed, see if they'll sell them, which is a terrible thing if they do. A lot of reasons we go out. Sometimes we just go out to recheck dealers because we've been doing this for over 10 years. So we've checked hundreds of dealers all the way from Viro Beach to Fort Lauderdale, and the dealers never know where we're going to visit.

And we use different mystery shoppers. We use men and women. We use even families. so it's a pretty realistic undercover operation when we go in and we find out exactly how they treat you when you go into this dealership how do they treat you when you respond to an advertisement every week I talk about how exciting this is it is exciting and usually I think I use too many superlatives and I say wait to hear this mystery shopping report is one of the most

exciting or interesting so I feel like I've run out of superlatives and you know what happens when you use too many superlities, people just don't believe you anymore. But we've got one now, I swear to God. This one's for real. This one's for real. This one is the most... You're swearing to God. This is the most outrageous.

That's big. Outrageous shopping report. I've seen, and we've been doing it for over 10 years. This shopper, this car dealer broke all the rules, and he broke the rules not just affecting the customer, but also other car dealers. He violated rules for the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Federal Trade Commission, the state federal consumer protection law, the federal FDUPTA, what does that? FDUPA stands for.

Florida's deceptive unfair trade practices. Florida deceptive unfair trade practices. FDUPTA, lawyers call it FDUPTA. Florida defective, unfair. It's fun to say. It is fun. FDUPTA. FD.

Florida Unfair Deceptic Trade Practices Act. So he broke all the rules, broke all the laws. And the amazing thing is that this event is going on today as we speak, live radio. This is the last day of a big sale event. And I don't want to tell you the name of the dealer. And I don't want to tell you too much about it because this is kind of like we want you to stay tuned kind of a thing. So I say that unashamedly. We want to bet you, but we will not switch.

No, no. And I'll tell you, I'll tell you where the sails going on. The sales going on is the Palm Beach Outlet Mall. Correct. In West Palm Beach. The Palm Beach Outlet Mall, which is, you know, a legitimate place, but there's a big tent sale going on out there. And that's what this mystery shopping report is all about.

And it's an expose like you've never seen. If you're heading there now, turn around, go to breakfast. Well, if you're heading there now, you can go out there. There'll be a big line of people because it is fooled a lot of people. Nancy and I were talking about this on the car coming into the radio station. And we're talking about how could people fall for such a thing? And a lot of people, our listeners, we're preaching to the choir in a lot of ways. We're preaching to the choir.

Our listeners are usually fairly sophisticated, educated people. They listen to the radio. People, you know, it's almost like people, people, that read consumer reports don't need to read consumer reports. People that listen to Earl Stewart on Cars, this radio show, probably really don't need to listen to us that much. Hopefully you will listen and learn a few things. And share it with your friends.

Or share it with your friends. But the people that really need it, they don't listen. They don't read consumer reports. They don't go to Edmonds.com or Kelly Blue Book. They don't avail themselves of all the information that we have. And these are the victims of the world. And the victims are the very young. I mean, I don't want to get political about this,

but there are some that say it's every man for himself. They don't say man and woman. They typically say every man for themselves. Byer beware, that if you can't take care of yourself, if you can't do your due diligence and you deserve to be fleeced. I mean, there's a school of thought out there that believes that. We don't believe that here at Earl Stewart's. We feel that there are certain classes,

people who, for whatever reason. I mean, you were young once. Everybody out there was young once. And when you were young, you were more gullible. And then you will be old. If you're not old, you will get old. I think everyone is a potential target. And as we get older, we're less sharp.

And how about English? We have a lot of people in this country that English is not their first language. I don't want to get into politics there, but we have immigrants. We have legal and illegal. We have second generation people. A lot of people out there, especially today, it's become greater and greater, who English is not their first language. Now, how would you like to be in Germany or Spain or France and go in and buy a car?

You know, parley-vous francaise? I don't. You put me in a French car dealership, and they could pretty well tell me anything or show me anything, and I'd have to believe them. A lot of people are just like that in America, and they're buying and dealing with English-speaking sales. people responding to English-speaking

advertisements and they're victimized. These are the people that you'll see standing in line at the Palm Beach Outlet Mall right now who are being victimized. They're there to win prizes. They're winning prizes. Interestingly enough, and I'm talking about it just tuned to a mystery

shopping report, we exposed a car dealer who you will find the name of the car dealership later on. I'll give you one more hint. If you go out to the Palm Beach Outlet Mall and go through the process, you still won't know the name of the car dealer. Nope.

Now, the car dealer is anonymous. He's having a sale at the Palm Beach Allet Mall, which is a violation in itself, and pretending he's a bank, pretending he's a bank, pretending he's representing a bank, and the cars are being sold by a bank, and that's what's happening in the Palm Beach Allet Mall. For all details, stay tuned. Yeah, sure. If you're out of the Palm Beach Outlet Mall now, call him. Yeah, 877-960-90-90-60.

I'd love to have somebody out there. Maybe you're standing in line. Yeah, or if you'd like to text us, you can do that. You can text us at 7-72-497-6530. We're going to go straight to Dawn. Gosh, I haven't heard from Dawn, from the Bill, in a long time. How are you, Don? Hey, Don.

Hey, very good. How are you all doing this morning? Doing good. Great. I had occasion to go out to a car dealer in Fort Myers last weekend. There's a dealer, Fusillo, Kia, who does a lot. I don't know if you've heard him over there, but he does a lot of TV advertising. It's just constant.

So he's been in business out there for a couple of years now, but he's big in New York, and he's got some dealerships in Charlotte County, and I think somewhere on the East Coast, I don't remember where it is, maybe Fort Pierce or something. But anyway, so I kept seeing all these ads, and I was just curious what he's doing. So I went over there last weekend because he was supposedly having a big antique car show with a thousand cars. So I went over there and said, okay, where's the ass-a-sales guy? Where's the antique car? He says, what's the anti-cars?

We don't have anything here. It turns out it was edited. another dealership that he has up in Port Charlotte, but he didn't disclose that on his TV ads. So anyway, so I said, well, can I look around at your new cars and he says, sure. And the first thing you'd notice when you walk in there is the pack of sales people, literally in a pack, and they have some sort of a code. You know, it's like a heads up or I couldn't figure out what they were doing.

They're kind of like giving signals to each other, who gets this next person, and what kind of car he's driving or something. It was very weird, but they're all yelling and screaming, and it's just crazy. So anyway, I talked to the one sales guy who apparently had been there for five years, and I says, you know, let me look at your Moroni sticker and see what your prices are, and I discovered the bump sticker for $295, that's $2,995 for a bump sticker. And I says, do you do this on all your cars? He said, oh, yeah, yeah, because we give you the appearance package with the door guards, the pinstriping, and the nitrogen tires for $3,000.

And I said, well, what good is the nitrogen tires? And he says, well, he didn't answer. And so I said, well, let me look at some of your other cars. So I walked around. It's a huge place. They must have 1,000 cars out there. and so I looked at all the bump stickers, sure enough, the $3,000 bump stickers.

But on one of the cars, it was like a sports car, I'm not sure what model of the key it was. It was literally $9,000 bump sticker. Holy mackerel. And so then I was getting ready to leave, and I met up with the original sales guy. He says, hey, you know, I went in and asked about the nitrogen tires, and they told me that it gives you about two miles per gallon more.

I says, well, who said that? And he wouldn't answer. And I says, what's the source of that? He wouldn't answer. So it was just surprising that a five-year veteran salesman did not know the answer or at least didn't want to give the answer to nitrogen tires. That's a long time for a salesman. Based on the turnover, he must really know how to take advantage of people

being there five years with Vitullo. Yeah, you would think so. And his business card said senior sales representative, he's been there for the five years. So anyway, I'd probably just pass that along that at least that big dealership is adding at least $3,000 and $9,000 in other cars to their Frony Moroni. Don, that is truly amazing. And I'll tell you something that's even more amazing. Fuchillo is the largest Kia dealer in the world.

And he is outselling Toyota dealers in that market. Wow. He, I think he may have a Hyundai dealership over there, if I'm not mistaken, but I do know that he sells more Kia. He sells a typical Kia dealer around here. We'll sell maybe 75 cars a month. Fuchillo, and I'm going from memory now, is selling in the hundreds of cars a month. I believe he may be selling four or 500 Kia's a month.

That is almost, that's for the Guinness Book of World Records. It's huge. Huge. A huge deal. That's his cashphrase. And his commercials, have you seen his commercials down on TV? Oh, yeah, yeah, they're constant here. They're giving away cruises all the time and some tearing up contracts. Yeah, he does this outrageous stuff.

Like, you remember the, you don't remember, but unless you live in California, but I've heard stories about the dealers in California back in the day. And it was like a show in itself. The commercial was so crazy and outrageous. A little bit like what O'Rigo does here, but not nearly as outrageous. And Fuchillo is, he does such an outrageous ad. It just attracts hordes of people. He sells thousands of cars every year.

It's just absolutely mind-boggling. Yeah, well, the sales guy told me that they were selling about $600 a month, and I think he was saying that particular store, and he said when they first opened, they were selling $2,500 cars a month. It's just amazing. It is, and I've never been to that dealer shop. I probably ought to go over there. It's a long trip from the East Coast to the West Coast,

but I've heard so much about him. I know of no other Kia dealer anywhere that's outfilling the Toyota dealer. And the poor Toyota dealer over there, I mean, he's just scratching his head. You know, the Toyota, you know, they're number one. They outsell all the other imports in every market in the world except for Fort Myers' market. Right. And that's at Fachillo.

So he's a true phenomenon. I'd like to meet the guy, even though he's a crook. I'd still like to meet him because he does what he does very, very well. And it's amazing that he has a salesperson that's been with him for five years. A salesperson clearly is making a lot of money. So, Don, that's a great call. Yeah. I asked about the turnover, and he kind of admitted there's a huge turnover, you know, as there

is in most dealerships. Yeah. but it seems like, and you might know more than me, that they're catering to people with not good credit scores would be my guess. That might be why they're selling so much. Yeah, I was talking earlier in the show about victims. I should have added that when people have poor credit,

and unfortunately we have too many people in this country with poor credit. When people have poor credit, they're desperate. A car is more important to most people than a home. You've heard the story. You know, you can sleep in your car, and you can't. can't drive your home to work or to school or to the doctor. So people will sleep in their car, and they'll use that, and they'll let their home be repossessed or foreclosed upon before they let their car.

So they'll make their car payments sometimes, and they have to have a car. It's a necessity of life, and when they're desperate, they can be taken advantage of, and that's what happens to that class of victims, I call them, the elderly, the very young, the credit challenge, the English language, not their first language, and that sort of a thing. These are the people that Fuchillo feeds upon and sells vehicles do. You know, one thing I was wondering, Earl, that I didn't ask the sales guy, is do the salesman there get paid on that bump sticker? Because, you know, it's added accessories so the dealer could say, well, we're not going to pay the salesman in commission on that because that's our cost. Well, they probably get paid on the bump sticker.

That's an interesting name. we call it an addendum label and the dealers call it a market adjustment addendum or they'll call a lot of other things but the bump sticker that most accurately describes is the bump over the manufacturer's suggested retail price they probably get paid for that what they don't get paid on probably is a dealer fee

because most dealers will have the bump sticker and then they'll also have the dealer fee in fact they'll have multiple dealer fees usually the car dealers don't pay the salespeople commission on the dealer fees multiple dealer fees, electronic filing fee, tag agency fee, etc. A bump sticker, they probably treat as part of the gross profit, or at least a chunk of it would be part of the gross profit. And the typical commission paid a salesman would be 25%. So if a $10,000 bump sticker would be a

$2,500 commission if they paid the salesman on the full $10,000, it's essentially the cost of the nitrogen and tires and the other little items that they have to justify. the bump sticker are virtually worthless so it's almost pure profit a good salesperson gets paid 25% of everything he can make from the customer and you can some salespeople if they get a victim that is totally unsuspecting can make several thousand dollar commission I mean it's not unusual for a salesperson to make a two or three thousand dollar commission for selling a car if they make a $12,000 profit, 25% of that is $3,000.

Yeah, their dealer fee was $7.95, but I was thinking, you know, some unscrupulous dealer may very well tell their salesmen, well, our bump sticker or phony Moroni is not a market adjustment. It's actual equipment. So our costs for our pinstriping and our nitrogen and our bumper door guards, you know, it's like $1,000, so they wouldn't pay the salesman because they're going to say it's actual cost. You're exactly right, and some of them do that, I'm sure,

and I would say that probably most of them exaggerate the cost of the bump sticker and take, you know, basically profit out of the salesman's pocket. There's class action lawsuits, several. There's one in effect now by a group of salespeople suing car dealers based on their employment contract, a car dealer will tell a salesperson, if you come to work for me, I'll pay 25% of the profit on the car. And unless they disclose the fact

that they're excluding things like bump stickers and dealer fees and dealer fees by other names from the 25% of the profit, and that's fully disclosed, they're violating the employment contract laws, and 25% of the profit should be 25% of the profit. But if they don't pay them on the dealer fee in the bump sticker, they're probably in reality only getting 10% of the profit. And that can cost a dealer a lot of money. And dealers have been lost huge settlements and verdicts in court for taking advantage of their own salespeople.

And that's what they do with the dealer fees, by the way. They rarely ever pay on the dealer fee. The bump sticker probably varies from dealer to dealer. But your observation is exactly correct, Don. Yeah, well, it would be interesting if sometimes you could do a mystery shop at one of those dealers over there on the East Coast, whatever it is, the key or the Hyundai, and maybe go in as a bad credit person and just see what kind of stuff they pull on them. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, we should do more of that. Part of the problem, when you do the bad credit shopping, you have to have a salesperson that has bad credit because they're going to do a credit application.

they're going to run a credit application on you. And so we need a mystery shopping report with someone that would have something like a 500 beacon score. And then you would also have to have the real name. We use pseudonyms when we send salespeople in. But we could probably do that. We just need to find a mystery shopper that wouldn't mind having his credit run,

and he has bad credit. But once you have that identified as bad credit, then you've really got yourself watch out because they will they realize at this point you're desperate to buy a car you look like a lamb chop you won't be able to

argue about price you won't even be able to argue about the type of car they'll sell you the car they want at the price they want and you will thank them if they can get you finance and that's a sad fact of people with bad credit but Don that's a great suggestion we'll focus on that

we're going to find ourselves a shopper that will allow his credit to be run with bad credit, and we'll see what happens. I think you'll really be surprised how bad a person like that gets treated. Thanks, Don. All right, very good. I look forward to the Mr. Shop today. Good talking to y'all.

Oh, thank you so much. It was great hearing from you. You know that that Ficello Kia of Cape Coral has maintained an FRAD with a better business bureau for many, many years. That's not right. Many years. And they describe all the violations, so many of them, you know, that prey upon these customers that just don't have a great rating.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm talking about, well, being taken advantage of by a car dealer. Earl's mystery shop for this week is phenomenal. You definitely want to stay tuned for that. But most of all, you are an important part of the show, and we'd love to hear from you. Our phone number here is 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And remember, ladies, $50 for each two new lady callers. Give us a call, and we need to hear from you. Okay, the show is complete.

Drum roll? anybody got a drum roll there we go okay Tina you have been announced do your thing girl oh wow I get a drum roll I feel special

I feel very special and ladies and first time lady callers the $50 is a real thing it's no joke it is a real thing so just putting that out there and I hope to hear more because I think I'm the first woman caller this morning

no to I'm not okay there was another lady You didn't hear any? You didn't hear it because there are. No, actually, I was in the middle of getting ready this morning, so I didn't hear the first one, so I missed that. But anyway, I wanted to give like a mini-review of Rick Case Auto, VW, specifically, and Davy. I don't know if you ever reviewed them, but this was before I got on to your radio channel.

And I will say three things really briefly about Rick Case, if you're driving down there. they do charge a dealer fee and they will do everything they can sort of standing on their head to get you to buy that gap insurance for the value of your car versus the actual value in an accident they'll add that on sometimes they won't even let you drive off the lot if you don't buy that and if you're buying a car this weekend

and banks are not open during the weekends usually they will try to get you or they will get you to sign a spot delivery forms those are three things you really need to be aware of if you go to a recase this weekend the gap and the spot delivery for them. What was the other one? The dealer fee.

Dealer fee, of course, yeah. Absolutely, yeah. You know, the interesting thing about Rick Case, by the, we just talked through talking about Fuchilla in Naples, Rick Case is also a huge volume dealer and sells thousands of cars.

I believe Rick Case outsells a Toyota dealer with Honda in his market. Yes. And that's a very rare thing. So, The sad moral to this story is that highly aggressive, highly unethical, in some cases, dishonest dealers can be successful. In fact, they can be outrageously successful. It's one of the few retail companies, auto dealers, where the really, really aggressive,

tricky businesses, can succeed, even being. on some of the more honest dealers. So I don't know what to say about that other than the legislators and the regulators that are really dropping the ball. But thank you for that information, Tina. You're absolutely correct about that. Now, because it's the holiday,

is this weekend normally a pretty big weekend for car sales? Holidays are made out to be great times for car sales. The car dealers jump on every holiday, even Easter, sadly. They, you know, National Groundhog Day, they jump on. Every holiday is a special sale. Every holiday, they're going to sell you cars for less money. The fact of the matter is, they probably sell the cars for more money in their holiday sales when they do on the day-to-day basis.

They live from sale to sale, and the sales are all bogus. Yeah. I was going to say something else about Fusilokia. He's one of those people on TV, either love him, or he, you don't and I think he's hilarious but I have a client of mine that's a lawyer and she says that you still look here he makes more money on car repossessions than anything else because he markets that he'll sell to anybody with that credit he's the master at it but he makes more money on repossession well it's interesting that would indicate that he

may be uh carry his own paper which is a slang term for financing the cars yourself and he could have a buy-here, pay-here operation. That would be, I can see where he could make more money financing the cars, because when you have marginal credit or bad credit, the interest rates are virtually almost users. I mean, they're right on the edge of usury. Use cars, they can be charged 25 and 30 percent annual percentage rate, which is just a person with good credit now can buy something and finance it for 2 percent.

people with bad credit are paying 30% is almost obscene. The law should be changed. And they also have special financing fees, which they disguise is they really should be part of the annual percentage rate. But they will get maybe a $2,000 or $3,000 finance charge up front just for financing people with bad credit. I do believe that what Chila makes a huge amount of money financing. in terms of the actual act of repossession, possibly. I haven't heard that. Usually when you repossess a car, you take a loss,

but in Fachelo's case, he might just repossess them so fast that he gets them back with equity. Yeah, probably. And another thing I find interesting about this conversation so far as most dealers don't really want to finance you. They want to get you into a bank or into a loan as quick as possible. So I find it very unusual that a first-seller car dealer will want to finance their own vehicle. for someone that's got bad credit. Usually that's not the case. That's kind of different.

It is unusual. It is unusual. I'm going to have to look into that. I was in the buy-here pay-year business myself years ago. It's a very, very, very difficult business. And today, the car dealers that do this, the buy-heer, pay-hear dealers, they will put GPS devices. They even have switches on the GPS device so that the payments, if it isn't made,

they can stop your car. and literally know where your car is and then come in with a wrecker or the tow truck and tow it away. You know who does that? You know who does that? And this is not a used car dealer, not a used car lot, but Mercedes with their lease vehicles, they will do that with their lease vehicles. I've heard a few stories down here in Naples of people who are like a day or too late with their lease payment, and guess what?

Mercedes remotely locks them out of their vehicle. I did not know that. That is very interesting. Yep. That's pretty rough. Some of these buy-here pay-here people are weekly payments, and a lot of people get paid weekly. And so the buy-here-pay-here people want to be sure that the payment of the car is made

the day you get your paycheck. So you get your paycheck on Friday, then you owe $100 on Friday or $200 on Friday. And if you don't pay on Friday, Saturday morning your car won't start, or it'll stop in the middle of the street. It's a terrible thing they do. And I think there should be lost against it. I think it's unsafe. I mean, to be able to stop a person's car for a third party like a bank or a buy-heer pay-her lot is a terrible practice.

And I did. I'm shocked that Mercedes would do that. We'll have to investigate that, Tina. Yeah, I don't know if it happens now, but this was a few years ago as to the best of my knowledge. I had a lady come into the salon and she said, I had to call Mercedes because, you know, I was a day late and I came it and they couldn't start my car because they remote wasn't locked it out. That's terrible. So she had to make a few phone calls in order to straighten that out, and it was very nerve-wracking for her, and it was shameful for her, too.

I don't blame her, you know. And another thing about those buy-heer, pay-here places, they don't make it convenient for you to make the payment. You have to actually go to the location to make the payment. You can't call it in with your credit card numbers. You can't do an online payment. None of that stuff. They do not make a convenient for you.

That's something that you have to be aware of. Say, for instance, if you drove from where I live, to say West Palm Beach. And you wanted to buy a car West Palm. Well, every time you make a payment on that car, you have to drive all the way to West Palm, make that payment. It's something to think about.

It's a total control of a victim that is desperate and has to have the car. And, Tina, again, your calls are pure gold. You bring up things that I don't even think about, and I wish I had. And all of these points you made here about people that are victimized by credit are solid gold.

I thank you so very much for making the call. And also for telling the women out there that they really do get $50 if they're a first-time caller. Because I'm a card dealer, they don't believe me. They believe you, Tina. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, and two more things before I go. Yes.

The state of Florida is not an ashtray. Please, if you are a smoker, put your cigarette butt out inside your car. Do not throw your cigarette butt outside the window because Florida is a cinderbox right now. And another thing. There was a news report about distracted driving regarding cell phones, and I have a tip for the ladies. Every time you go to your car, put your purse in the trunk. Don't worry about getting pulled over. Keep both your hands in the steering wheel and tell the officer, heaven forbid, if you get pulled over, my purse is in the trunk. Don't worry about it. Just throw your purse in the trunk. Don't even think about it. Great advice, Tina. Great advice. It's always a pleasure

You're hearing from you. Thanks, guys. I really appreciate it. You're quite welcome. Talking about Rick Case, you know, it's Auto Nation Toyota in Weston that they're out selling. Just last weekend, they beat them by, I have the real data here. Rick Case Honda, 66 new Hondas last weekend, versus 53 from Auto Nation Toyota. Okay, I've got a caller here.

We got Paul. Give us a call, toll free at 8779. 609960 or you can text us at 772 4976530. Now we are going to go to Paul, who has been holding. Thanks for your patience, Paul. He's calling from Port St. Lucie. Yes, good morning. Before I asked my question, I had lost your radio program and I didn't know what station you're on and I called for service appointment and your folks down there were able to tell me where you were now. Meanwhile, my Toyota has electric power steering, and my question is, is everyone gone to electric power steering now? Correct. The greater majority of cars are going to electric. It's more reliable, and you don't have to deal with hydraulic fluid leaks, pump issues. It takes less

power to actually run that electric steering than the pump does drawing power off of the motor all the time so it's it's actually a better system and of course the other big advantage is electric power steering the car can help control your steering actually for lane departure assist and it's another step towards autonomous cars saves my distracted driving quite a bit exactly if you're Your car is not in motion. If you just turn the key on, will you have power steering if the engine isn't running? No. You will have a greatly reduced amount of force needed because the system is actually designed to be easier to steer, but you will not have the electric power steering. They make sure of that because it does require a higher voltage level and an inverter to create that for most of the cases. All right. Well, you've been most kind, and I appreciate to help. Thank you.

Thanks for the call. My pleasure. Rick, tell me about this Tesla recall. Do you know anything about why their power steering isn't working? Kind of surprising a Tesla, I thought you'd recall. Yeah, I only just spotted that just recently this morning, as a matter of fact. And I believe it's something to do with the bolts on their power steering. Apparently, they weren't torched properly or something. so they're looking at getting a lot of these cars back in right now for Tesla.

And for my edification, you think a car dealer would know the answer, electric power steering versus what hydraulic power steering? I mean, there's no, so if you have an electrical failure with electrical power steering, does your power steering fail? Yes, it will. Now what about would you, if you had electrical failure, would the hydraulic continue to operate? Well, that would depend on whether the engine is going to continue to run or not. Because if you lose engine power, you've just lost your power assist.

True. Now, the big advantage with the electric is that because it's a lighter system and designs differently, it's easier to turn a car with electric power steering when you have no power assist than it is with the hydraulic system because the hydraulic system, you're actually trying to push the fluid around inside that rack as well. well. I got you. So you've got that fluid force back against it. Thanks, Ray.

Do we have another caller, Nancy? Yes, we do. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530, and we have a caller from Jupiter. Her name is Maria. Or Marie. Good morning. Welcome to the show, Marie. Thank you very much.

Congratulations. You just want you. yourself $50. Oh, how wonderful. I didn't know that. Yes. I just woke up and I heard your voice or your voices and I knew what this was because I've heard your show before and thank you for taking my call and thank you for your service

to the community. You're welcome from all of us here. Maria, you stay on the line after you ask your question and I will get your contact information and get that $50 out to you. sure thank you very much okay what can we do for you today well um my husband and i instead of buying our most recent car about two years we rented it or we leased it um and uh according to the contract we can only put on 10,000 miles a year we've exceeded that when we traded in for a new rental or whatever we do um are we going to have to pay the penalty or is

some way we can get around that. Well, Marie, unfortunately, the only way you can get more mileage is to pay for it at the onset of the lease. Typically, there's options to go to 10, 12, 15,000 miles, but you pay up front every month more than you would for the 10,000-mile lease. Do you know how much your mileage is per mile, excess mileage is per mile? That should be in your lease contract. Probably either 10 cents or 25 cents. Yeah, it will be probably not as little as 10, but if you're lucky, it would be maybe 15.

25 is fairly common, and it can be even higher than that. There's not much you can do. Do you have more than one car in the family? No, just the one car. You should do the arithmetic on that and take a look at what the ultimate outcome is going to be. You can trade that car in, and sometimes you can lease another car or bring it in early.

A lot of the leasing companies actually promote leases coming in early and will give you sometimes even a waiver of payments. You can't count on that, but this is what manufacturers do and dealers do to try to keep you leasing another car or buying another car from them. But do the arithmetic, get your lease contract out, take your current mileage,

extrapolate that to the end of your lease. Do you have a 36-month lease or what is the length of your lease? 36 months, yes. And how many months have you driven? We're 24. 24. Okay. So you've got 12 months to go.

Figure out what your average mileage is per month and multiply that times 12 and see what your total is going to look like and then do the arithmetic on 25 cents a mile or 15 or whatever it is see how much it's going to cost you that'll tell you how serious it is but unfortunately the leasing company is not going to negotiate with you about the only safety net you might have if you got real lucky at the end of the lease you have the option to buy that vehicle it's in your lease also it's called the residual value and there's a price that they put on that lease

when you leased it from the very beginning that gives you the right to buy that car from the leasing company at that price now if you're real lucky the market value of the car might be higher than the residual value meaning the wholesale market value could be let's say i'll just pick a number out of the air $25,000 that might be the market value you might be able to buy the car for $23,000 because that's the actual wholesale value and I mean that's the residual value I'm sorry so you could buy it for 23,000 residual and you would have a $2,000 profit you could then sell the car right back to the dealer for his used car lot or he could retail it whatever he wanted to do with it and you got a

$2,000 profit which would offset your extra cost of over mileage so that's only going to be if you're real lucky but by looking at the residual value now you could talk to somebody who's knowledgeable about cars they could give you a guesstimate of what that car might have a market value of in 12 months okay okay that sounds more than fair yeah after you get send me the actual numbers marie you can you can call back next week or you can call me anytime give me the actual numbers uh text it to us we have our text number which uh if you haven't written it down i'll give it to you again text the information to 772, 472, 4972-497-6-5-3-0.

Perfect, I've got it. Okay, 772-497-6530. Text me your cost per mile overage, the amount of miles that you're allowed, which you've told me, and you, in fact, you'll exceed it, and then put the residual value down and give me a complete description of your car your make and model and what your accessories are. And that way we can even give you an estimate of what the market value will be, then I'll have the residual and I'll be able to calculate the penalty

and then I can advise you more specifically about what you might be able to do. Oh, you're wonderful. Thank you so much for taking all this time to help me. I appreciate it. Okay, don't forget you $50. That'll help. To pay some of that penalty for you. Yeah, thank you so much.

Thank you so much for calling. and spread the word that we are here every Saturday morning at 8 a.m. until 10. Again, thank you for calling. Ladies and gentlemen, we've got a whole lot to get to. You want to stay tuned for the Mystery Shopping Report, and if you want to read Earl's column, he is in the hometown news and the Florida Weekly, and that column is treated badly by,

a car dealer and then you have five steps you can take to resolve it's a great read florida weekly and the hometown news uh give us a call you make up the show we love hearing from you eight seven seven nine six oh nine sixty or you can text us at four seven seven seven seven three zero and we have pat on the line from palm beach gardens she's the first time call Hi Pat. Hi, how are you? Great. You just won yourself $50. Oh my goodness. Isn't that fantastic? Yeah. Nice Easter present. Yeah, and it's fantastic that you've tuned in to Earl Stewart on cars. So if you stay on the line... Yes, I know because we are looking for our car right now. Great. My question is, what SUV at this point gets the best car mileage? And I would want a either all-wheel drive or, what's the other one, four-wheel drive. Four-wheel drive. Well, Pat, I'm not in an encyclopedia of data like that,

but I know where I can get the information, and that would be consumer. Google. And we have our fingers flying right now, and we're going to give you an answer. But I don't want to pretend like I knew the answer. I'm just going to tell you what we found out. Do you care how large an SUV you have? Or you just want the, because they have different size SUVs and they have crossovers, the ones where the best mileage would probably be an Asian vehicle, I'm guessing.

And I would say it would probably be a Honda, Toyota, Nissan, or maybe even a Subaru or a Hyundai, maybe even a Kia. Yeah, there's so many choices. It's amazing. I see Rick is looking at the... I found them. And Marie, I'm going to tell you. There's smallest UVs. There's mid-sized. There's large ones. So there's a whole lot of them. The smaller ones are going to get the best gas mileage.

So Honda CRV, Toyota Rout 4, Kia Serento, and things like that. The larger ones, you might have to go to a hybrid. Yeah. The Consumer Report really empowers the consumer. and if you haven't picked up the consumer report April edition, I think that's on the stands right now, isn't it? Yes, it is. Yeah, and Marie, they have about 250 vehicles that are rated and reviewed right here.

So with all of that information, you're going to make yourself the right decision. Back to the recovering car. Yeah, to pick a vehicle, any vehicle strictly on gas mileage, would not be the right thing to do, you should take into consideration other factors. I mean safety, reliability, cost of maintenance, cost of insurance. So what I would recommend you do is you look at the top 10 vehicles from Consumer Reports. I think we can pull that up right now. And the top 10 vehicles for Consumer Reports would take in to account all the factors, safety, reliability, maintenance, insurance costs, and as well as fuel account,

economy. So let's tell Pat what's the highest rated consumer reports SUV is for 2018. Does anybody pull that up? Nobody can pull that up. I'll tell you what, you stay tuned and we'll have that information for you, Pat. And stay on the line. We're going to give you the, we're going to give you the 50 bucks, but you have to give us your contact information and we'll send you a check for $50. Thank you very, very much for the call. Well, thank you. Keep on listening, Pat, and spread the word. Give us a call toll for you at 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, I've got a text here, and the text asked this question, and I think all of you are aware of this situation. What is your take, Earl, on the self-driving Uber car that hit the pedestrian? I just read that Uber settled with the family of the deceased and is avoiding a lawsuit and trial. Here's my take. It was bound to happen. We're in the very beginning of driverless cars. No one ever said that autonomous cars would not have problems.

And even when they're perfected, quote unquote, because there's no such thing as perfection, there will be accidents. And there will be deaths, there will be injuries, even with autonomous cars. autonomous cars. So what we're talking about now are numbers. And I don't have off the top of my head the number of traffic deaths last year. I'm going to say it was in the 50,000s, probably around 50,000 Americans died in traffic accidents. And worldwide, I don't know how high it would be. If we could cut that death down from 50,000 to 500, I'd say that'd be a pretty good deal. But we would still have deaths. Every death is a tragedy. And there's a family affected. And it's It's a very sad situation. Hopefully we could even get it lower than $500 ultimately. But this death with the Uber car, I don't know the specifics. I do know that it didn't surprise me and that there will be other deaths.

But we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater. We just want to say no autonomous cars because we had a death or an injury. They will happen. It's a matter of numbers. Rick? You know, I was wondering as I read about that, that the car was unable. able to detect a bicyclist. And I thought, well, you know, one of the biggest things with bicycles is it's hard to see

them, even when they have lights and reflectors sometimes. But how about a simple solution of a microchip, like what we use for Sunpass, installed in a reflector that when a driverless car, which is already using its radar and everything else, would suddenly get a signal back from that microchip and suddenly it knows exactly where that bicycle is, I think that'd be an awesome. some idea to increase the safety factor. I'll give you John Kraftich's email address. He's the

CEO of Waymo. You know what? I watched the dash cam on that. That bicyclist came out of nowhere. I couldn't imagine a human being avoiding that car. It was a dark road on a curve in an instant that bike was there. It was really, it was hard to watch. Well, if it had been

a mistake, I'm saying, if it's been a failure of the system, then accidents happen. It's just the way it is. Computers have glitches. You know, this iPhone I've got in front of me, you know, how many millions or billions of dollars of research

have gone on that iPhone? It's got glitches. Every new vehicle in the world has glitches. Every computer has glitches. So there will no, we will not eliminate accidents with autonomous cars. We'll just radically reduce them. I think we have a caller, don't we? Yes, we do.

John from Palm City. Welcome to the show, John. Good morning to everyone. I have a comment that you've made on autonomous cars. They're inevitable. They're right around the corner, so are electric cars. And I don't have the 2017 auto accident figures, but 2016 deaths caused by the automobile accidents with 40,200. Now, the autonomous cars are predicted 90% of auto accidents will be eliminated, and they will save at least 35,000 lives.

But it's inevitable, it's around the corner, it's just a little setback, and the news plays up this accident, but it's here, and we need it, no question about it. Now, on the electric cars, which also is coming, we have addressed a problem that nobody mentions. There are minor problems with that. If you buy an electric, fully electric car, there's nine states that charge higher registration fees, anywhere from 50 to 3,000. $300. The reason for it is they're losing gas taxes, state and federal gas taxes. And second thing on electric cars, 75% of all electric power used for electric vehicles comes from fossil fuels, ordinary oil, gas, and coal. So that's some address problems that are going to be foreseen with an electric vehicle. And the big one is there's another six states that are going to raise

of registration fees when you register an electric vehicle. That's outrageous. That's crazy. Here we are trying to have a cleaner planet. Here we are on the road to total electric vehicles. And here's the federal government subsidizing manufacturers to build electric vehicles. And you've got some moron states that are charging higher registration fees. Did you know the names of these states, John? No, I don't have them, but I can get them for you. And it's a fact. It's anywhere from 50 to 300, and there's another six or eight that are contemplating to do it to the future, and that's just ridiculous.

But again, you've got to remember some of these states with their ridiculous rules. The latest is on a coffee. I mean, they're going to put on a label any coffee coming into the state of California warning and cause cancer. I saw that. I mean, that's absolutely ridiculous for states instituting. One wacko judge, and there you go. Yes, it is.

But by the way, China. has the largest fleet of plug-in electric vehicles. And does everyone know what the number one seller of electric vehicle in the entire world is since 2010? I don't. Can't guess what it is? I don't know. Nissan Leaf.

They sold over 280,000 cars since 2010. Wow. So it's around the corner for both of them, and it's here to stay. And China now is building the largest electric vehicle, battery plant in the world, the number one I think in the world will be Tesla's plant that's building batteries. So China needs it bad. They've got more pollution there than the rest of the world combined, I think. Exactly. It's true. But, you know, it's inevitable, and we really need

as much as people are fighting it and trying to downplay it, autonomous vehicles are right around a corner, and they will save lives, and they also will reduce traffic congestion. And they will extend your driving life and my driving life because we're both old-timers and we don't want to give up our keys and we don't want our kids to be taking our cars away from us. And if we have autonomous cars, you and I will be driving to her 115 years old, John. Absolutely. All right. I'm going to hang up, listen to the report.

Great call. Great call. Thank you, John. Thanks, John. I'm ready. Autonomous cars. Let's go. Give us a call tool-free at 877-966.

So, 9960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. We do have the mystery shopping report coming up. We've been talking about it for the past hour and a half, and it is a doozy. The mystery shop of, we're not sure, probably Pat Fisher-Niss-Niss-on. Okay, that's the name of that mystery shop. Interesting? Did I pique your interest? Okay, you can be part of the rating of the mystery shop by texting us at 772-497-6530.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, how about Howard? Just going to let him sit there in a hold. Oh, Howard. Howard, do you have Si with you? Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Howard. Great.

I have a situation here that I believe it's the only situation in all of the United States. And let me preface by saying, I've never heard of anybody else that had this problem with the car. Hello? Yeah, we're listening. We're waiting, Howard. There's a problem with the car. So I'm piquing your interest now. Okay.

Yes. Here's the situation. Let me pick up another phone. This phone is not working correctly. Can you hear us okay now, Howard? Oh, he's changing telephones. Okay. Okay.

Here you loud and clear. Okay, I'm okay now. Okay. All right, here's the situation. My son used to live with me about 15 years ago. He had a Mustang, and then what he did did, he sold the Mustang down here, and he moved back to New York. And I've been noticing in the past two or three years that I've been getting violations sent to me, since he lived in my address,

he has the same last name, the violations come to me, and they're saying he's got a ticket in Northern Florida in St. Augustine, and he got a ticket in Tampa, whatever. And what I would do, since the violations came to me directly, I would call up and nullify them.

I said, wait a second, my son doesn't have the car anymore. He said, a second. So they checked it out. There's a South Carolina license plate which has the same number, numeral equation as my son's caught. Exactly same thing. And the person has been

driving around, getting tickets and it's been coming to me. So, and this is as far as I'm concerned, I'm talking to a lot of people, they never heard, they never heard of such a thing, and it's like incredible. Now, when I

before I purchased a car from you last year and when I went up to the tax people they said you can't your title is no good because you have a violation I said well what is this

is you have a violation and it gave me all the information and then I spoke to one of the people, one of the cashiers and she gave me a printout of the violation which was in Northern in Florida, and she said Google it, you'll find out more. I googled it, and I called up,

and I spoke to the person, and the person said to me, yeah, your son got a violation. I said, wait a second. First of all, what car, you have a picture of the car, right? It says, yeah, it's a 2012, no, it's 2003, Kia. Oh, Kia?

Yeah. I said, my son had a Mustang. He said, and it's not my, someone's driving around with the same license plate number as my son. So she said, that's impossible. I said, it's not impossible. And then I explained that this has been happening to be before I call up. So she checked it out. She said, you're absolutely correct.

This is, I've never heard of this before, but I'll take care of it. And I was able to buy the car because my title was cleared. Now, I haven't had anything, and by the way, some of these violations don't even come to me. I just find out when I try to purchase a car. Now, how can I clear this up? Howard, I'll tell you, that's a real challenge. We've had similar challenges with the Department of Motor Vehicles and Registrations. It's a bureaucratic nightmare, and it almost requires somebody with a Ph.D.

and automotive titling. We have something like that that I can present the challenge to, and that's what I'll do. Every state has different titling laws, and there's supposed to be cooperation and reciprocity between all 50 states. But you can imagine 50 separate bureaucracies

all addressing, registering, and titling cars, and with all the little loopholes, So it is a challenge. For the consumer like you, it's an impossible challenge. I'm going to present it to Janet Getz, who is our controller. She runs our accounting, and she started out as a title clerk years ago, and she really understands this kind of stuff real, real well. So do this.

Give me a week on this, and I'll talk to Janet, maybe have her contact you directly, and we'll see if we can't clear it up, and we'll get back to you and solve the mystery. Okay, and my son's coming down He'll be down next week And what I want to do I want to go with him to the tax people And try to straighten it out there But I doubt it they, you know

I want to know if there's any other violations You know I think this is You've got a doozy here We're going to do our best I can't promise you We can untangle it But I would say we probably can

If Janet Gess can't do it Nobody can And we'll get this thing fixed for you And thanks very much for the call That's the most interesting problem I've never heard of that before. Great call, Howard. Thank you very much.

You're welcome. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-90-90-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Hi, I just wanted to mention on, I believe it was Pat, was asking about the SUVs. Consumer Reports, their top 10 list there. I noticed there were two SUVs.

that made the top 10. One of them was the Toyota Highlander and the other one, the Subaru Forrester, rated very, very high. There you go. So that was a Pat, right? Yep. Pat, if you're still listening,

I would take a look at those two. I'd look at the Subaru Forrester and I look at the Toyota Highlander. The Subaru Forrester mileage, well, you can look it up. I think he said 26. 26? The Highlander was...

28. 22 26 and 22 hybrids of 28 yeah yeah and they could you could find probably a SUV with higher mileage or better mileage but these are the best of the best and you want to take it to consideration all the criteria especially great maintenance and reliability yeah that consumer report is worth its weight in gold i've got a text here i've got two texts go ahead 877 960 9960 and earl's got a text at 772 497 6530. Yeah, this text came in some while ago. We're getting so many texts today. I'm overwhelmed. And sorry that we're responding so late to this text, but it's an excellent question.

The biggest rip-off off dealer is drive time. If you know anything about that, and this is Stephen from Port St. Lucie. Drive time, we know a little bit about drive time. We've mystery shopped them twice. And they fail twice. And they're terrible. We're going back in for a third time.

As I recall, they failed the Takata Airbag shop big time. Not only did they try to sell us a car with a defective Takata airbag on the driver's side that could not be repaired, but they also lied about it and said that the car had no recalls and that was perfectly safe. The rest of the shopping activity was also terrible. And so I can only say, Stephen, for Port St. Lucie, we totally agree with you. We recommend people to stay away from drive time. They're a national used car outfit, by the way. They specialize in people with bad credit,

and Tina from Benita Springs brought that issue up. The terrible situation where people with bad credit are victimized, and I should always include those in my list of victims. So they're very young, the very old, the English language impaired, the undereducated. and now we have the people with bad credit and drive time unfortunately the national company specializes in people that have bad credit and take advantage of you I have a second text that I just got as I say we have a record number of text here there's one more coming so

there's another one coming this is really exciting this one says it was just announced that the Trump administration was reversing the CAFE standards that would require the average efficiency to be 54 miles per gallon. Is that a good idea? There's not a big hue and cry about that. We are becoming, we see the trend toward hybrids, all electric vehicles. The prices, the price of gasoline has come down. we've become a net exporter of oil and import less the squeeze is off on cafe and by the way cafe i forget what it stands for but it's basically your federal standards on the average gas mileage for a manufacturer so if you take gentle motors the cafe standard would say that in 2025 your average vehicles and your all the cars you're cell general motors has to get at least 54 miles per gallon now the downside to

having a unreasonably high gas mileage attainment is it forces the cost of of the vehicle up so there's two sides to every argument i think uh i think there was a consensus that to lower the cafe requirement a bit was not such a bad idea i'm sorry i'm waffling on that, but I don't have a firm opinion either way. We have another text already? I think so. And that is, by the way, that CAFE is corporate average fuel economy. Yeah, corporate average.

If a manufacturer does not comply, then they are fined a considerable amount of money, $10,000 per violation, not a line of cars, but per car. So if you have 10,000 cars of one make out there and they violate the fuel economy, then it costs you. millions of dollars of fines. There's also a lot of cheating going on you, so where Volkswagen got in trouble by phonying up the software that measure the gas fuel economy when the Environmental Protection Agency measured it.

So the manufacturers are extremely frightened of not being able to meet their targets. Rick? I read somewhere that that's part of their incentive to get more electric vehicles because bringing even one electric vehicle, into that mix that is that brings the average down.

You know, infinite fuel economy obviously brings that average way up for the other cars. The most profitable cars are the larger cars. And when you build an SUV and a big truck, a big issue or a van, the profit margin

the manufacturers have is huge compared to the small ones. Cars, you know, we're selling fewer and fewer cars. The profit margin in cars is negligible. The profit margin in an electric car or a hybrid is well the hybrid is marginal electric car is negative

people manufacturers lose money when they sell when they sell an electric car so the momentum is turned all the manufacturers are going toward electric cars and by scale is the battery batteries are manufactured in greater

greater volume the cars are sold in greater volume the profit margins will climb it's not going to stop the march to the future but there's still a huge amount of profit made on a big truck compared to selling a hybrid car or electric car we're going to switch gears here a little bit and boy during these almost two hours we've talked about two terrible car dealers

and it's drive time and also Fuchella Kia and well we're going to our that's the opening for our mystery shopping report what a doozy it's well I'll let the recovering car dealer share with you the mystery shop we're not sure probably

Pat Fisher Nissan it's all yours okay I'm going to do another text this is the last text we got I'm looking at an SUV can you do a comparison between a RAV 4 platinum and a Honda CRV compare a vehicle also what are the benefits

of buying a new 2017 other than a price to a 2018 model. Well, we'll get to you that information on the RAV and the Honda CRV comparable vehicles. I see Stu's fingers flying over his Mac. And I can text a link to the comparison.

Absolutely, absolutely. We'll text you a link and we'll also announce it on the comparison. But I can answer the second part of the text. The benefits of buying a new 2017 other than price to a 2018 model. 2017 are just in general not a good buy compared to a 2018 the dealers will lead you to believe they are they'll say a 2017 is a bargain and price wise it will be a bargain but the price you pay is not the full cost of the vehicle the full cost of the vehicle is what that vehicle brings you in terms of trade in value three years four years or five years hence whenever you decide to buy another vehicle the depreciation the first year depreciation the first year depreciation is huge. 20, 25%, or it can be less, but I would say a round number, 15 or 20%, that's a large

number of the MSRP. And you're not going to get that big a discount on last year's model. So try to negotiate the best price on a 2018. You'll pay a little bit more probably than 2017, but it will more than offset the depreciation. That is my answer to the text. So we could not move along, and we will get into our mystery shopping report, which, as I said earlier, and if you hung on for a while while we were at the beginning of the show, I said this is the most outrageous mystery shopping report we've done in the 10-plus years that we've been doing mystery shopping reports. As a matter of fact, in the studio, we passed peanuts and popcorn. Yes. It's a circus. I smell it right now.

Yeah, cotton candy. This week's mystery shop is the oddest investigation we've ever done. It wasn't just terrible. It was unusual, odd. It was a very good word. It began with a mail solicitation that was sent to Agent X. It's not interesting.

Our star undercover agent received a direct mail solicitation. Now, direct mail, when you get a direct mail solicitation from a car dealer, don't just throw in the trash can, burn it. direct mail solicitations are the worst or send it to us yes they send it to our mystery shopping agent the reason direct mail are so bad is because they can target exactly where it goes if you put a television ad or an online ad anybody can access it if we had regulators that were worth their salt they would be checking newspaper television radio online ads because it's easy as to do. It's almost impossible to check direct mail because the direct mailer, the company

chooses to whom they send the mail. And they're not going to send one to Pam Boddy, our attorney general. They're not going to send one to the president of the Better Business Bureau or to the chairman of the county officer consumer affairs. They will send their direct mail to their targets. And even with social media now, the targeting of advertising It's becoming such a science. The huge hue and cry now about the last election and the fact that the Russians targeted certain people. So direct mail is the old-fashioned, however, very effective way to target victims.

And they target victims. And that's why you can't find it. They fly under the radar. So continuing on with the Mystic Shopper report, this direct mail piece, this direct mail piece, it looked like a casino county fair traveling circus all combined in one shiny cardstock. It was just talk about bright, bright pictures. It had a picture of a car key.

I've got it here on my iPhone, deal, dollars of fortune. It's got beats headsets, bonus days. It's got a, looks like a wheel, a rally wheel, like a wheel of fortune. It's called deals of fortune. It's got a scrape-off thing where you imagine. numbers it got a key on it I mean it says it says as seen on TV yeah it's seen on TV it's one of these litsy things that get and I just gets victims excited I feel yeah this should get a right exactly sorry for interrupting you but play for up to

$25,000 cash that's pretty exciting yeah at any rate this is this is what was sent to our mystery shopping agent ironically and it's promoting a big tent sale and the tent sale as I said earlier is at the Palm Beach Outlets Mall on Palm Beach Lake Boulevard in West Palm Beach so if you're in the car now and you want to have some fun and you're anywhere near the Palm Beach Lake's Boulevard Palm Beach Palm Beach swing on in there. There's a big tent and you'll probably see a line of people and these people now some of them are out there for the free prize because they advertise they're going to get about $5 or beat headphones.

Beat headphones. It sounds pretty good. We talked to somebody from Port St. Lucie a couple of weeks ago that said he'd like to go into these car dealer free gift things because he got something that's worth $5 or $10. You get to some Tupperware or something cheap. You can buy cheap. In this case here, they have a... But you'll spend more on gas getting there.

Well, you spend more on gas. Well, if you live close to the dealership, it's not such a... bad thing. So anyway, we have an outrageous ad that I feel I'm preaching to the choir because you out there listening to us right now. It wouldn't fall for these things.

You throw them in the trash can. They're laughable. I mean, when I go through my mail, first of all, I hate to, I'm just tired of snail mail. I go out to my mailbox now. In fact, Nancy and I just had to buy a bigger mailbox because we get so much junk and

I can't throw it in the street. I've got it to dispose of it so I have to go all the way to my garbage can and I'm sure recycling bin of course recycling bin of course yes and then I go through it and I just throw it all in the recycling bin and the danger is every now and then I get something important in the veil you threw your amic statement to I've thrown and excuse me ladies and gentlemen guess who it belongs to me I've thrown important things away here's the here I don't think I've ever discussed this You live to go down that driveway. You live to go down that driveway.

As I was saying, I have found out something. I knew this could be a whole new career for me. People that are forced to send refund checks are making the refund checks look like junk mail. Now the junk mailers are making the junk mail look like checks. So if you have something that comes in the mail that looks like a check, throw it in the trash can. If you have something in the mail that looks like junk mail, open it. because it's a real refund check. Our disclaimer is to read what it says

before you throw it out. Well, it makes me open stuff I don't want to open. I look at stuff. I said, this is junk. I said, well, I threw a check away one time. And anyway, I'm digressing. You're not even supposed to get on the driveway.

I'm digressing. I'm allowed to digress, Nancy. I'm the mystery shopping report reader. That's right. Okay. Okay, as I said, there was a key taped to the mail piece with a caption, your key to winning.

Now, I've got to digress again. I'm going to let Nancy digress again. Oh, no. Because I know of no one that ever won a car. Yeah. Anywhere in the world on one of these promotions. But Nancy, tell us your story. Okay.

It's going to be a short story because we've got to get to the mystery shop report, but this is sort of about the mystery shopper. Okay, my sister, she lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This was probably, I'm going to say, oh, 75 years ago. Let's move along here. See, you should have told this story. All right.

Anyhow, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she received the key in the mail. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, that's all I'm going to say. I don't need to say any names. She had, she was, she received the key in the mailbox. She won a car, right? She won a key in the mail. So she goes to the location where they're giving a car away. Bring your key, and if it fits, the car's yours.

Well, guess what? The key fit, and she won herself a brand new car. So, with that digression under our belt. I got to add something. I want to give you a sneak pre because it's not in the shopping report. There was no car giveaway. They told Agent X that was just to draw people in. They weren't even giving away a car.

They just thought the key was a nice touch I didn't see that report Very good So anyway This is outrageous so far But you ain't seen nothing yet They were giving away a pair of beat headphones Now beat headphones

Are good headphones You tell me I'll give you a set of beat headphones I'd say fine I love it love it They had a prize wheel With a prizes that include Thousands of dollars in cash Car giveaway

There was a $1,000 cash drawing And I like this a promise of over $452,000 in cash and prizes waiting for a long time. So there's a word there, waiting, right? They don't, I mean, it sounds like we promise we're going to give away $452,000 in cash and prizes. They didn't say that. They said, it's waiting, and it will wait forever. Because it will never be given away, but it is guaranteed to be waiting for eternity.

Yes. and there were photographs of recent winners. I mean, the suckers, I'm sorry, I hate to use that word. P.T. Barnel is a sucker, whatever. But there's a line of people. Probably stock photos of people. They're not winners. Yeah. Promises of 50% off original MSRP. Prices is low as $995.

All of this in this huge, glossy, shiny mailer. In short, it was the most mind-boggling. sensational car ad we had ever seen. I've exaggerated for 10 years when I talk about mystery shopping reports. I'm not exaggerating. This is, and we will never top this, this is the most outrageous advertisement we've ever seen. What was noticeably absent was the name of any dealership.

Now, that's a violation of the law. And a matter of fact, a newspaper will not run an advertisement on TV, online, you can't do it. Direct mail, as I said earlier in the show, direct mail is the root of all evil. Direct mail, they can do things that they can get away with that no other media can get away with. Flies under the regulatory radar.

Unfortunately, our regulators have the radar turned off anyway, but if there was a radar, the direct mail flies under the radar. There were references to a spectacular auto sales and my auto credit. But neither of these are car dealerships, as far as we could determine, as you'll hear later in the report, and we did eventually discover

who the dealer was. We think, probably. In fact, we have the buyer's order with the dealer's name on it. Naturally, we sent H&X who received this direct mail piece so it was perfect. His name was on it.

So he had totally... Actually, not really. It was addressed to Lucky Winner. Oh, lucky winner? Or a current resident. Okay, report. I'm speaking. Agent X now in the first person. I received a gigantic mail piece at home earlier this week. It was

addressed to a lucky winner or current resident. It was the craziest car I had I'd never seen, so I took it to the Earl Stewart on Carr's team to inspect. I knew I had something good because it rendered my handlers speechless. I've never seen Stu speechless. So this truly had to be, I've never seen Nancy speechless, but truly he was speechless. That was a shot, Nancy at both of us right there. So Thursday afternoon, I headed to the

outlet mall on Palm Beach Lakes to see what it was all about. Remember, if you're listening to this in the car, and you're anywhere near the Palm Beach Outerlet Mall and West Palm Beach on Palm Beach Lake Boulevard, swing on in there. Have a little fun. Turn around. Don't do it. Swing in there. I mean, look

at all the people in line. uh look at uh you the characters of this play that were about ready to read you you're not going to believe this you're going to think i made all this up i found the big tent uh soon after i parked the place was busy and it looked like a carnival i saw a line of people and that wasn't even the weekend this was like uh yesterday it was Thursday yeah yeah i saw a line of people standing in front of a table and a man told me uh that was that was where i was supposed to go register okay this is where the control starts you get in line and they register you I got to control you.

I was in line for 15 minutes. Big line on Thursday. The line today is probably wrapped right around the block. Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, Palm Beach Outlet Mall. I'd love to have somebody out there call us. I just want to, I'd like to see, I'd like to have a visual reported from somebody out there. FaceTime us. 877-9-60-9-69-6-0-877-9-6-0.

Call us if you're out. at the Palm Beach Outlet Mall. Every one won, by the way, I'm talking about the big line now. Everyone won a $5 gift card. Now that's probably legitimate. I haven't seen the gift card, but it's probably, they pay you five bucks to get you out there. And people will get out, they'll drive out there for $5. They forget what $5 worth today, and they forget the fact that they're going to spend $5 on gas or $10 to get the $5.

but that's what they do. When it was my turn, a man named Jewel, J-E-W-E-L, greeted me. That's an unusual name for a man. He had me spin the wheel like everyone else, and I want a $5-hour gift card. Whoopie, surprise. Jewel said he was in charge of the event and asked me if there was a particular model of car I wanted. I said I wanted a Toyota Forerunner. He said they have several of those in stock.

Now, we don't know who the dealer is. There is no dealer's name on the direct mail piece. Nobody, no signs out there. Nobody, this is just a big sale. We don't know who the dealer is. Jewel went on to explain that they were essentially liquidators. Whatever that means. They're liquidators.

And are giving great deals on bank-owned vehicles. I asked him to explain further. He asked me if I had ever heard of a foreclosure. I said I had. He said, when I pick out a vehicle, they were. would call the bank and be told what to sell it for. He said it was like a short sell. He's just thrown out terms.

Yeah. It sounds important. Foreclosures, liquidators. Liquidated banks. Short sell. The man is lying through his teeth. He's a terrible person. It's a lie.

Jewel, you are a liar. I hope Jewel's got his radio on. That'd be great. Jule, you ought to be in jail. Call us, Jule. Terrible. I bet you Jules not his real name anyway. Well, I'll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen, I know you're out there listening,

and most of you are in your car, so if you're over there at the Palm Beach Outlet on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. 877-960-99-60. Earl is doing the mystery shop, and that mystery shop is, we're not sure. Probably Pat Fisher, Nissan. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Joel then said we needed to start with a credit application.

I told him to hold his horses. I hadn't even seen the vehicle I like yet. Jewel apologized, offered to get one of his salespeople to help me. He grabbed a man named Carlos and introduced me. Carlos walked me over to another table where he gathered my basic information. While we were talking, an angry woman came over and interrupted. She said she'd been waiting for over an hour to get a price on her car. Carlos excused himself, and Jewel came back over to me.

He told him to go look around, and when I found something, I liked to give him the stock number. Before I left to find my forer, Jewel asked me if I wanted the set of beats headphones instead of the $5 gift card. I said, I would. I mean, who wouldn't? Oh, yeah. Would you read it five bucks or a pair of beats? In a heartbeat, I said, I'll take the beats headphones. I wanted the rows of cars until I found a 2017 Toyota Four Runner SR5.

The sticker said it had 8,800 miles, but there was no price. I wrote the stock number down and I went to find Jewell. And if you're just to and again now, this is a mystery shopping report and we don't know who the car dealer is. No indication, not on the advertisement, not on the signs of the tent sale, the Palm Beach Outlet's Mall. Anyway, when I found him, I gave him the stock number and then I exchanged the $5 gift card for a sheet of paper instructing me to get the set of beats headphones. A beats are good headphones. I mean, you know,

anybody would rather have the beach headphones. Here's what I had to get to beat's headphones, and I'd already give them back to five bucks. I'd have to pay $49.99.95 for shipping and handling. $49.95 for shipping and handling. So I gave up the five bucks, so I could pay $50 for a set of Beech's headphones. which probably are phony headphones manufactured in Hong Kong or Taiwan.

If they're legit, that would be worth it, but we don't know. And you're never going to get them. You're never going to get them. And you paid 50 bucks. I got your 50 bucks. They're beats, but it's spelled B-E. Yeah, that's right. B-E.

Yes. Before I could comment on the headphone scam, Jule said Carlos was busy, but he would get his nephew. Okay, I'm pronouncing this correct. Jewel is going to get his nephew John Boy Right Tonight John Boy I'm not kidding John Boy

We got Jewel and we got John Boy These are real names, right To help me He said John Boy was a pro As a matter of fact He would be taking me Over the whole operation No no John Boy is going to take over the tent sale operation

Oh he's going to take over the tent Yeah yeah He's a precocious kid He's inheriting it like it's kind of He's an apprentice. Okay. John Boy came over to the table and said, let's go drive this beautiful forerunner.

We walked over to the forerunners. I told him I had a car I may or may not trade. He said he would get it appraised. When we got back, I said, I was paying cash. When we got back to the ball, I asked John Boy, what the price was. He said he needed to call the bank for that. I asked him what dealership he was affiliated with. He didn't answer.

Just didn't answer. Repeated to be right back. After he got the price for the bank, he began to walk away. I said he had to tell me who I was doing business, where he stopped and said, Pat Fisher, Nissan. I handed him the keys to my car to get a praise. Pat Fisher, Nissan is in Titusville, Florida. A relatively low-volume Nissan dealership, who we've never heard of,

a Google search reveals poor online reviews with several complaints about Bates and the Tetsail Mailer event. John Boy and Jewel, now this is a Titusville dealership, northern Florida, selling cars in West Palm Beach with no name at the outlet mall. John Boy and Jewel came back with my first pencil. That's the first, you know, game. They wanted me to buy the used 2007-2017 Toyota Forerunner SR5 for $41,875. They were offering $7,800 for my 2014 Toyota Corolla with 60,000 miles. A new 2018, new forerunner, identical, would be.

be selling as an MSRP of 36,000, 109. A good price would be about 34,000. Agent X's Corolla is worth 9,000. Terrible deal. Terrible deal. I said they had to be kidding if they needed to do better. Jules said, let me talk to the finance guy. And walked over to another man at the adjacent table.

I wonder what his name was. Just finance guy. He never got the name. I heard him asked loudly, how low will the bank go? There's no bank, folks. There is no bank. How low will the bank go? That's called playhouse acting.

Yeah, the finance guy said $39,875. Jule walked back to me and said the finance guy said $39,875, but he liked me and would take another $2,000 off for me. It was the best he could do. He said, you're paying cash right, and I said, right. He asked if we had a deal. I asked if $37,875 was out the door, Jules said, no, there were fees in taxes. other stuff. John Boy and Jewel walked me over to the finance guy and then disappeared. I wouldn't see them again.

The finance guy asked me if I was trading in 2014 Corolla. I said I wasn't. I was trying to sell it on my own. He printed the buyer's order for me $37,875 plus $799.50 dealer fee, $199, $199, electronic filing fee, $189 sound and safety package. Don't know. Out the door, 41,907. He asked me if I was paying cash. I said I was. And I picked up the buyer's order, stood up and said, wait, I need to ask John Boy something. And I walked off, found my car, and left with a buyer's order.

Now, we have the buyer's order. We have the buyer's order right here. And that's how we know for sure it was Pat Fisher in Titusville, Florida, Pat Fisher, Nissan. So this mystery shop was the first of its kind. Agent X really stumbled onto something special. Pat Fisher and Nissan gets the blue ribbon for the crookedest car selling show in town. Their mail solicitation was a glissy bait-and-switch scam designed to lure in the naive and trusting and the ill-equipped and desperate. The whole sales process at the event was based on lies, foreclosures, liquidators, the bank setting the price.

There is no bank. the whole sales process to the event even the prices were scammed the agent $5 gift card and we were still

they took it away from them I give them credit the $5 gift card was legitimate and they took it away and gave him a certificate where he had to pay $49.95

to get a pair of counterfeit beat headphones and I'm assuming and I think that's a safe assumption they're not legitimate beat headphones anyway

so they're not even giving away the five bucks well you know what we have the forum we'll send it in see what comes back okay we will i think that's a good idea we'll definitely do that okay the initial asking price was almost $9,000 higher than what you can buy a brand new one for and the final price given on this used 2017 for runner was still almost $5,000 higher than what you can buy a new 2018 for unbelievable the sad part of this folks i mean we're laughing

at this i'm preaching to the choir there are a lot of people out there that paid these prices And if you're out there at West Palm Beach, I'll let them all now at the tent, and you see the line, those people, a lot of these people are buying cars and they're being scammed. How many laws have been broken? Well, a lot of laws have been broken, lots of laws. It's illegal what they're doing. And here's the irony. They're cheating the car dealers.

It is against the law for a car dealer. Again, the Department of Motor Vehicles does not allow a car dealer to go into another car dealer's market. So here we have a Nissan dealer. and Titusville sneaking into the backyard of West Palm Beach, Nissan. We also have the new Nissan, 441, 441, what is it? Southern 441. Southern 4441. Terry Taylor bought Royal Palm Nissan, and we have Wallace Nissan up here in Stewart.

We have three or four, we have Nissan del, Nissan of Delray. We have four or five Nissan dealers, and this Titusville Nissan dealer is breaking every law in the book. The Department of Motor Vehicles could take away his license to retail cars. So it's not only the dealers, but it's the consumers also. He screwing the dealers, he screwing the consumers. About some state franchise laws, what's that in place? Violation of his franchise. He could be canceled by Nissan.

These are all could be. The chances are, and this is going on right now. Now, here's the amazing thing. You didn't read about this in the paper. You didn't see it on TV. What are our regulators doing? here's a scam in the heart of West Palm Beach going on as we speak right now there are lawyers listening there are regulators listening there are judges listening to this show we've got like 20,000 people out there

listening to the show is there anybody out there that cares that there's a crime being committed on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard in West Palm Beach right now it's a Palm Beach Island Mall a crime a crime you said it you said it exactly right if you're there finish your hot dog can get out of there. Yeah. And if they gave you that $5 gift card, run. If you live close, I'd go get the $5 a gift card, but I wouldn't even believe that you're really going to get the $5.

It's probably something there that we don't know about that. Hey, guess what? We've got to stop. We've got to make before we head to any other direction, because I'm going over. How much you want to make a bet? I get what I want over there. If the line wasn't so long, I would go.

See, they don't know me. I could go there. I could go there. They wouldn't even recognize because it's the Titusville dealer. Yeah. That's what I should have. You might win $452,000. I could have shopped it myself.

We could have done a remote? Hey, is that right, Colin? Could we have done a remote out there at the outlet mall? Maybe you can call in the kiss my ash. I think this would, my headset would probably be. Do a report for the field. Are we out of time? I think we're out of time.

No, we've got four minutes left. If you're anywhere near the West Palm Beach Outlet Mall in West Palm Beach, and you see the tent, we'd love to have a call. 877-960-960, 877-960, and this is the scam of the century going on right now. Just go out there, video it. Take your smartphone out there, take some pictures, do a video. Get a picture of Jewel and John Boy. Yeah, folks, get involved. I will pay $100 cash.

I'll pay $100 cash if he can send me, email me a picture of Jewel and John Boy. I think he's the picture of his ring. It's in the report. So ladies and gentlemen, $100. $100, ladies and gentlemen. $877, 960960, a picture of Jewel or Johnboy, 100 bucks. He's got a lot of diamonds in that ring. On the paper for the beats headphones, I noticed it said there's a company that you send your money to is all in events incorporated.

in Port St. Lucie. So I'm on their web page right now and all in events says they specialize in promoting dealers with high energetic, high impact direct mail campaigns, promotions, staffed events and training. And then on their web page it says

we turn gift seekers into shoppers and shoppers into buyers. And they get paid a lot of money for that too. An event like this would cost $20,000. or more. Pat Fisher wasn't alone. They went and got professional help.

Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly that. And let me repeat, ladies and gentlemen, $100 if you go down to the Palm Beach outlet on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, and you video, is it you want, John Boy, you want Jewel and the diamond ring? No, I just want either, you know, I get 200 bucks for Jewel and John Boy or 100 bucks apiece. Picture of Jewel and John Boy. And we know what they look like.

We'll have Agent X verify the picture. Yeah, this sale's going on. So just don't take a picture of your neighbor and send it to me. It's got to be Jewel or John Boy. Yeah, that's right. I think that we have a couple minutes left, and I'm going to just a reminder to the ladies and gentlemen, if you're unable to listen to our show,

or you want to listen to any of our car past shows, you can always subscribe to Earl Stewart on Cars or Car Podcast on your smartphone, or tablet using any of the following podcast apps. And that's Apple Podcasts, SideCloud, Google Play Music, Stitcher Radio, tune-in radio, pocketcast, and overcast. And if you would like to watch highlights from our show, go to YouTube.com slash Erlon Cars. Ladies and gentlemen, we are out of time.

I hope that you enjoyed the show as much as we did. And we'll be right back here on Saturday morning to all of you. Have a wonderful weekend.