Earl Stewart on Cars - 04.03.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Al Hendrickson Toyota

Episode Date: April 3, 2021

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

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

Your auto-how-to-buy car without being ripped off by your car dealer team is in the studio, and we're chomping at the bed to help you navigate that minefield out there. successfully and safely you want to buy or lease a car or for that matter do you want to maintain or repair your car and come out unscathed and not be a sheared sheep

you want to get some advice and you want to hear your fellow callers give good advice. We've got some of the most amazing texters and callers on this show if you'll stay tuned even if you don't like to hear what we have to say listen to what your

fellow callers have to say We learn, literally we learn from the callers to the show every week. And since we become international, I say that because we had one call from Bali. But we did get calls from all over the United States. Because we're international, we hear about different regions of the country. We have some great textures from California and Oregon and New York, Texas, Wisconsin. I know I'm leaving out a lot of places in New Jersey, New York, all over the United States. And we hear how cars are bought and sold and how cars are repaired and maintain all over.

It's very similar. There are some states that have a few little different laws, but by far and large, car dealing is a very, very scary experience, or buying, I should say. And we'd love to hear from you. We have various means of being reached, cyberspace, mainly Facebook and YouTube, just heard Twitter went down. We have to figure out how to get on Twitter, and we'll figure that out. Periscope is gone, I should say. Twitter has a registration issue, but we don't get a lot of Twitters, and we don't get a lot of Periscopes anyway, so we're not going to miss them. YouTube, texting, Facebook, and a good old-fashioned radio.

I mean, that's what we are. We're a radio show. Love our callers. We have some regular calls. We love new callers. And if you're thinking about calling, let me ask you to write this number down. If you have a pencil handy or something,

if you can type it in your computer, send yourself an email with this number on it, I'm going to give it it out twice, and you can write it down. Love calls because they're personal. And we give priority to you callers when you call this number. 877-960-99-60.

That's your pencil? That call-in number is 877-9-60-99-60. Write it down. You might not have a question now, but you will. Love to hear from you. And you ladies out there, hang on, because Mrs. Sunrise, also known as my co-host on this show, Nancy Stewart, she's going to tell you about a little offer she makes to our first time new callers, if you're a lady. If you haven't called the show before and you're a female, we've got a heck of a deal for you.

No strings attached. She'll explain it to you in just a minute. Now, we have a line that suddenly leaped into popularity called You're a Nine. anonymous feedback.com, your anonymous feedback. All you have to do is go to that URL and you can send us an anonymous message. We don't know where it came from. I mean, that's the definition, anonymous, right?

Some people just prefer it. I'm not like that. I mean, I've given up on privacy a long time ago, and I don't mind it. A lot of people do are very careful about their privacy, and you're probably smarter than I am. For those who value their privacy, and not that you want to attack the show,

but you can't, see, that's the beauty of it. You get on Your Anonymous Feedback, Your Anonymous Feedback.com, you can say anything you want to. And the thing that surprises us is we don't get blasted as often as we think we would. I mean, you know, I mean, we've had, haven't had a death threat so far.

Where's some wood. That's not wood, but anyway. But we've had some insulting, but very few, maybe one out of a hundred. Yeah, that's right. Most of them are very constructive, honest, and we don't want you to agree with us. I mean, this is talk radio, folks. What's more fun than an argument on the radio? And we won't be mean, even if you call in.

We always treat you with courtesy and respect, and value your opinion, And even though we don't share the opinion, that's what makes the radio fun, is that type of thing. You've all, if you listen to Talk Radio, the most popular talk radio hosts are the ones that have that little flavor of controversy. And that's what we value on the show. Let me tell you, every car dealer in the United States virtually disagrees with us. We love calls from call dealerships, car dealerships. We like to dealer, occasionally we get the dealer himself called them. We can have salespeople calling, not as many as we like.

But let me, all you out there in the auto industry, retail or wholesale, I promise you will be treated with courtesy and respect on this show. And we'd love to hear your true opinion. So, the text number, I didn't give the text number out. 772-4976530. We'll get your text, if not now, a few minutes or toward the end of the show. It's a nice thing about the text. We can archive them and get to them later. We're 99% on to the text.

A good chance, if we don't get to you right away, we will get to you. We try real hard. And that number again is, write it down. 772-4976530. And your anonymous feedback.com offer you, of course, YouTube.com forward slash Erland Cars. YouTube.com forward slash Erlund Cars. Rick Kearney, to my right, my certified diagnostic

master technician, Carl Roel Genius, he monitors the YouTube channel. So if you really want to get Rick directly, just fire him YouTube, YouTube.com ford slash Earl on Cars, and of course, Facebook.com for slash Earl on Cars. And those are all the different things, too. My son sitting right across with me, he monitors the Facebook channel. In fact, everybody, Nancy does too, and so does Rick, but he's a Facebook specialist. Rick is a YouTube specialist. Now, let me introduce to my left in the studio.

of the wife, Nancy Stewart, my co-host, who was with me from the very beginning of the show a couple decades ago when we were on the radio only for half an hour. And she's been with me through thick and thin, through all of this, and we built this show. And she is single

handedly responsible for building a significant female following for the show. Nancy? Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Welcome, Daryl Stewart on Cars. And well, as I say every week, you are an important part of the show so please give us a call and share your story with us

or if you have some information you think we can use give us a call 877 960 9960 and don't forget ladies we'd love to hear from you and as a female advocate I encourage you I encourage you to give us a call and share your experience with us whether it was purchasing or service, whatever brought you into the dealership, or maybe you were working, you know, from your PC to purchase a car online. Our number is 877960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. And ladies, $50, yes, $50 just $7.00. for calling in and sharing your story with us,

the first two new lady callers. And don't forget Your Anonymous Feedback.com. You certainly can take advantage of that and share whatever is on your mind without offending anyone. www.w. Youranonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

Well, let's jump on the text to Anonymous Feedback or whatever. we have and get going and you call us out there. Usually we have a call by this time, so I'm going to give that number out one more time and we will prioritize your call. If you call in, we'll get to you right away. 877-960-99-60. 877-9-60. Okay, Stu. Here we go. We're going to go to the first text of the day and it's from Guess Who? Anne-Marie. Henry says, good morning. Wednesday morning, I watched the Today Show story

featuring your team helping people get vaccine appointments. Even if one is tech savvy, it is a frustrating exercise to get, trying to get a vaccine appointment. Hooray, and thank you to you and your staff are helping people get appointments. I did get your email with the link to the video.

However, in case people out there who missed it, one can go to to Today.com and type in vaccine appointments and buy the magnifying glass, the search link and the link to organizations help older Americans get vaccine appointments online should pop right up. Once again, thank you for helping

people get their vaccine appointments. Vaccines are the best public health measures to help us beat this pandemic so we can get back to normal as soon as possible. She goes on to say, I remember when polio was a terrifying scourge that seemingly struck at will. Kids lived in iron lungs and ambulatory used crutches and wore heavy metal leg braces. It was a godsend when the polio vaccines came along and we didn't live in fear of

becoming paralyzed anymore. After that, if there was a vaccine that could help me from getting sick or dying, I rolled up my sleeve. Thanks again, Anne-Marie. Wow. Well, and once again, thank you, Anne-Marie. You're the best. Yeah, thank you. I want to tell you that we were really proud to be featured on the Day Show, and we see Earl Stewart Toyota COVID Rescue Team, a group of nine or ten, varies from time to time, but nine or ten employees in our dealership that devote their time. They volunteer their time, an hour, two hours, three hours, Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

We've made, what are we? Pushing 200 appointments now? Yeah, and it really amped up once they opened it up to, you know, 40 and younger, and now it's basically, and in a couple of days, all adults will be able to get it. Yeah, we started with featuring the seniors, because we know, and Nancy and I are seniors, and we have a lot of seniors working at our dealership.

We're not as tech-savvy as some of the millennials and younger folks out there. And it's really hard sometimes to be able to get online and get that Publix or that CVS or Walgreens, Walmart, Target. It's hard to do. And there's a huge rush, and the online lines are flooded, and you can't get in, and then you get shut out. Palm Beach County fills up, blah, blah, blah. So we formed this team and we've, and we're still doing it.

As Stu said, we're getting down to the younger folks now. Plus the exposure from the today's story, we started getting some calls from people, so we're helping some people that we haven't even met before. Yeah. And also, Nancy, I talked about this in the car. We were talking about the very same subject. And I said to Nancy, you know, I'm just kind of brainstorming this now. I'll throw it out on the air this morning.

what do you think about this? We're thinking about maybe an Earl Stewart Senior car buying rescue team and I don't know how it would be formed and how we would do it

but we push online buying is the best way to buy a car I wrote a blog about that a long time ago and now during this pandemic it's become extremely obvious to everybody if you're not tech savvy if you're not computer savvy,

and you want to do just about anything, much less buy something, you're in trouble. And if you're a senior and you don't know how to use a computer that well, unless you have a grant kid or a kid that can help you, or a friend that can help you, you're out of business.

And that's the reason the seniors are victimized, especially in areas like Florida, where we have a lot of seniors, Palm Beach County, especially. And so that's the reason, I think it's a vital service. So we're going to kick around the idea of having an Earl Stewart car buying rescue team. And maybe we can, Stu and I and Nancy and Rick will discuss it. Maybe we can kind of meld it with the vigilante somehow. And if we could have pockets of rescue teams around the country, that you could go, if you're a

senior and you could go on you could go to them and say look this is what I want to buy get me a price online if we can help that way we'd be interested in your comments what you think about that give us a call and see what you're going to say I think uh yeah I'm going to interrupt you for a second we're going to go to Bob who's calling from Palm Beach Gardens uh good morning Bob from all of us good morning to all of you I have is kind of a puzzling, I think it was a call that I received or an email I received from a little store at Toyota telling me that I had an appointment for service on a Sunday, I think it was last Sunday at 12.15 p.m. So I called back and I said, I don't understand the

appointment. I was only in there about six weeks ago as fully serviced. Why am I getting this call? And he said, well, if you don't want to come in the CERA, we'll just cancel the appointment. And I said, I'd like that to happen. And he did. And that was the end of it. I'm surprised. I don't know how to answer that, Stuart. Do you know anything about that?

We call everybody, I'm sorry, I was going to make a joke. It sounds like a mistake. You're set up for a call around just before your six months. So if there's only a couple of months, maybe there was an error of some sort. Do you have the text line number? If you can text me your name and phone number, I can look into it and see why that happened. But, no, well, we don't call anybody that shortly after a sale. I appreciate your heads up.

As well, as you know what happened. Yeah, thank you. That's my only interest. I don't, I'm perfectly satisfied now with the answer. It was, I think, an error, and they were very courteous about it. And it's a closed issue now. I don't go back again until June for service. Well, we'll look into it.

If it happened to you, it's likely happened to some others, and so we must have a glitch in the system. Thanks very much for the heads up. Okay, you're very welcome. Thank you, Bob. Thanks for all the good things you do for us as customers. I'm a steady customer of Earl Stewart. I've been for a long time,

and I've always been happy with your service and the way you treat people. And I enjoy your program every Saturday morning, and I always watch it. Thank you, Bob. Thank you. Thank you very much, Bob. Have a great weekend. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-49-7-2-49-7-6-5-3-0.

Don't forget, ladies, we're waiting to hear from you. First two new lady-callers, you win yourself $50. Great weekend to win $50. The first two new lady callers and spend some, well, get yourself an Easter-Buyter. now. Now back to Rick. Donovan has got a great question here, is Illinois auto dealers are suing the state and Rivian and Lucid motors to try and stop them from setting up direct sales and to protect the dealer franchise laws. What does Earl think about this? And with other brands trying to follow the Tesla model of direct sales, Polestar from Volvo, also does this now. The brands seem to feel that direct sales are a better fit for electric vehicles. Well, that's a threat to the franchise system, which has been developed and it's

now solid stone, rock hard. You can't break the franchise system. The automobile retail franchise system has been built almost over 100 years to protect dealers from any sort of competition on the outside, even including manufacturers. So the law is in almost every state that you have to be a franchise automobile dealer to sell a car. Manufacturers can't sell cars. General Motors cannot sell a car directly. Ford cannot sell a car directly. They have to go by law, not state law, through the franchise dealers.

And it was the law evolved because in the very beginning, when the car dealers were first franchise, the manufacturers were exploiting the dealers. And the dealers got banded together, and they formed the National Automobile Dealers Association. In every state has an association. Car dealers make a lot of money, so they fund it well, kind of like trial lawyers. And they have a super strong lobby. And they were able to, in each state, make a lot of money. themselves bulletproof where they have to be the one that sells the cars. So it's almost

like a miracle that Tesla has been able to kind of skirt the issue a little bit. But even then, most states will not allow Tesla to deliver a car from a physical location. You can order a car online and Tesla will send you the car, but you cannot buy it in a normal retail fashion. But yeah, the franchise system will disappear. It's our cake. It's a dinosaur. It doesn't need to be there anymore. And the protection that it was designed to afford isn't necessary. And people don't like having to go to a car dealer. They'd rather buy directly. I mean, would you rather buy something from Amazon or Apple directly? Or would you rather have somebody with a franchise that's going to jerk you around and be protected against

any sort of discipline so that's my answer great answer uh we're going to go back to the phones and we are going to talk to a warn who uh is a regular caller and he's calling us from pompano good morning how you how you doing guys great thank you for calling i just heard earl say about the senior citizens thing i think it's a great idea and i'll tell you why is because i'm 70 years old And when I got to do anything on the computer, it is very frustrating to me because punching the little numbers and little holes drives me insane. It's not that I can't do it. When I do it, it just makes you crazy. And then if you make a mistake, you can't figure out where you made it.

And so anytime I have to do one of those things, it drives me crazy. But I think the idea of helping senior citizens would be a tremendous idea. Well, thank you, Warren. That's exactly why I threw it out. I wanted to get some feedback. You know, some seniors are a little bit embarrassed about admitting it, and I don't see why, because, you know, I didn't even know what a computer was when I was in high school. And my education, I actually had a technical education.

I majored in physics and mathematics, but I had very little laptops didn't exist, smartphones didn't exist. And so how can we be expected as seniors? I'm 80. I'm three years older than you, Warren, and I can easily see why we're being frozen out as seniors. We're being frozen out to be able to compete with the millennials and the younger people. They're getting the good prices, and we're paying the high prices. And that's the way car dealers sell cars, by the way. Everybody walks into a door of a car dealership or goes online, gets a price a different price on the same car. If you go online, you get the low price.

If you walk in the door, you get the high price. And the average price is what keeps the dealers afloat. It gives them a profit. So they have to take advantage of you and me as seniors to have the big fat profit because the youngster that goes online shops three or four or five or seven or eight dealerships. They get a very low price. You can buy a new car today, Warren,

Warren, or almost any make, for as little as the dealer's cost. We've actually seen deals at the true net cost of dealers. I've also seen deals of obscene profits, $10,000, $15,000 profits on one car. And that's how they're all averaged together at the end of the month. The dealer figures that as profits. So we're subsidizing the savvy, the computer. speed or savvy youngsters, the seniors are subsidizing and buy overpaying. So I'm glad you think it's a good idea.

And if we get more feedback. I'll just tell you this, but the last time it had nothing to do with cars, there was something that had taken out every month. Or they wanted to take out of my account every month. And they said if you sign up online instead of paying the bill the normal way, you have it taken out. So you had to fill all the stuff online. And sure enough, I screwed it up by putting in the wrong number of my bank account in there.

in there. When the bill didn't get paid, I didn't know it for two or three months until I get a letter saying that I haven't paid the bill in three months. I later I found out that I put a wrong number of my bank account in there, and of course nothing was coming out. And I said, after that, I said, I can't do it. It's just too frustrating for me. You know, put the little numbers and little boxes and little letters and little boxes, and sometimes they want to capitalize, and sometimes they don't want to capitalize, they want a dot, they want to dash. You know, this stuff drives me to insanity and like you said if you're younger you know like my daughter who's a lawyer I mean she does this all day long yeah I don't do it all day as well it makes you makes you crazy

so I just thought it was a great idea well thank you Warren I we're going to move forward on that we get some more input like that we'll definitely form a team I think you know instead of calling at the car buying rescue we may maybe ought to call something like the senior you know car buying for seniors online assistance or something like that. So we'll come up with a name and we'll move forward on that. I just did one other quick question. I called last week or a week before I forgot about the article in New York Times about the different paints or something. I wonder if you had a chance to look at that, about, you know, how the different colors that a

paint sell better and all that kind of stuff. You had a chance to see. I'm embarrassed to tell you I forgot. I did make a note of it in my radio show. right here and with your reminder I promise I will do it and thanks for the reminder one that's being a senior anyway exactly okay thank you very much guys I love you thank you Warren thank you Warren okay to hear from you again you know let me mention for a second you know we're talking about

forming a lot of teams and gosh I'll tell you what they have proven to be a a great idea by the recovering car dealer. And if you see him wearing a hat right now, that reason is because we formed another team, and it is called Earl's Vigilantes. And you can, it's a cute hat, handsome hat, and you too can have one. All you need to do is just to sign up, and you don't have to consider yourself an auto expert. not at all All you have to have in common with us

is that you're tired of car dealers and their dishonesty so you don't have to know how to take an engine apart that's for sure so go to Eran cars and sign up for Earl's vigilantes and help consumers in your community there is a lot of consumers out there in need of our help so earls vigilantes.com win yourself a hat and we have shirts coming

and some other things so it's going to be a whole lot of fun and we're going to learn a whole lot from you as we always do 877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772-497-30 and we're going to go back to the phones where we have Michael who's calling us and Michael's calling us from Kentucky. Good morning, Michael. Good morning. How y'all are doing today? Well, thank you. Good, good.

I got one question I let you go. First of all, I've been reading that book. And so I'd like to know what would be a good price to pay for a 2019, past founder SL and they're asking around 269 foot what would be a good I could do a price for me

well Michael I'll ask us too to see what he could find on that and for anyone buying a used car your best source and we talk online now I don't know how

comfortable you are online but auto trader.com you can sort by that specific Pathfinder year and model and you can get prices on true cars and other source that you can sometimes get good prices

and she's working on it right now. Okay, I appreciate it. I'll tell you what, if you give me a second, we can move on and I'll look that up. It was a Pathfinder X-L? Yeah, yeah, S-A-S-L.

S-L, okay, and all right, so what I'll do, I'll look that up, and then if you're listening to the show, I'll chime in just in a few minutes after I have a good price for that. Okay. All right, thanks for listening. Thank you, Michael. All you folks out there that were listening to that question, your best single source for used cars is autotrader.com, A-U-T-L-T-R-D-E-R.com. It virtually has the inventory of every used car sold in America by car dealers.

And you can go online and sort by zip code, by price range, by your make and model, of course. And you can also sort by price. And they'll give you the price from the lowest price down to the highest price. Now, here's a caveat, the warning. AutoTrader allows dealers to put in their sneaky fees, their hidden fees. So start by getting the lowest price that AutoTrader shows you on the particular vehicle. then contact that dealership online preferably and get the true out-the-door price. Because hidden fees are commonly added to the auto-trader price.

But it's a good way to start. And I have a lot of friends that use Auto-Trader when they're looking for specialty cars. Because virtually any car sold, you'll find it somewhere. You might have to go a thousand miles, but you will find just about any used car you want. Yeah. Just looking at the wholesale value on that car by the books is around $12. 24-4 with average miles, but right now the used car market is a little goofy and these values are considerably higher. So I would push that into the 25,000 range for wholesale. And that

means typically a used car dealer is going to make around $2,000 profit selling the car on average. It doesn't mean it's always that high or that low. Anything less than that. So I would say if you can get that thing for less than $27,000, then that would be a good deal. door plus sales tax and license plate only. No fees. Don't let them at any dealer fees or any other hidden fees to that. And certain areas your dealer fees are significant. I'm talking thousands of dollars. So be sure you get a, how much do I have to write my check for and hand it to you the price? Don't let them sneak in those fees. Okay. We have any more? Oh, we've got a YouTube over here? Well, Guy Laramie just wanted to say, when you mentioned the international listeners, don't forget

our friends to the north of Canadians. We have a lot of Canadian listeners and viewers on YouTube. Well, thank you very much. Well, well, how about some calls from Canada? I think we've had, we've had, okay, good. Yeah, we've definitely have. Speaking of calls, we're going to go back

to the phones where Doug is waiting. And Doug's part of the international sunrots. He's part of Earl Stewart on Cars. And, well, we're waiting for him to sign up for Earl's Vigilante. I wonder if he's interested. Good morning, Doug.

Good morning. I'm here with Sim and Ella, and wish you guys a happy morning. The sunrise wasn't so pretty today. Yeah, sorry about that. I thought you were going to be taken away by that ocean. Oh, man, I'll tell you. It was something.

I have a question. And I have a condescetic side, which I like a lot. But the tires are really noisy. Is there anything I can do about that? I mean, they're getting so noisy that, I mean, it's loud. Doug, you talk like road noise, wind noise, that type of thing. You're not getting any. Yeah, road noise, really.

Rick? Are the tires cupping, or are they wearing smooth and evenly? do you have an issue with tire wear maybe they've always been kind of noisy these tires and they're not cheap yeah but they're just they have a lot of road noise and i've complained about them and um not gotten it anywhere yeah unfortunately noisy tires is generally due to the the design of the tread and some cars are just more susceptible to picking up noise from the tires, unfortunately, the best answer really would be to switch to a different brand of tire, a different brand and model of tire.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. So what would you think, Jeff, this is... My personal favorite for tire brands are Toyo or Michelin. Toyos, to me, have been just fantastic tires. T-O-Y-O. Yep. And Michelin, of course, is, well, I mean, they're... They're the Rolls Royce of tires.

Michelin just flat out, there's a reason they're expensive. It's because they are usually the best quality and the best tires. But what you might consider is go on some of the Honda Forum sites nationwide and ask others, you know, ask in there if anyone's had this concern and what brand of tires they're running on their cars that they, you know, would consider nice and quiet. you probably could get some really good interest on that and get a lot of opinions there and help you pick a brand of tire that would be just, you know, as quiet as can be on your car. Okay, because I'm getting tired of this, get it.

I hear you. I hear you. You know, that's a great way to go, Rick, and also another way to go is the Consumer Reports is just an amazing magazine. And, Doug, you can take a look at April's edition, and it has. the great it has a issue filled with great tires for less if you you know you're having a problem with replacing these tires because you said they're very expensive tires they're good tires and you might be able to get yourself some sort of a well a remedy for your problem so pick up an April edition of Consumer Report and you'll find everything in there that you need to know about

tires oh and about vigilante if anyone needs help with computers i'm a computer expert and i teach people any age how to you know work with computers and iPhones and all that stuff oh wonderful i can help you in earl if you ever needed well fantastic well we'll put you on the number on your number one on our list of the new uh senior car assistant buying program you so much dog that's it that's a great fine for us this morning because there are so many people out there that need help yeah i'm willing to help absolutely thank you well thanks again say say hi to ellen sam and uh and call again you haven't called them well i see it sunrise every morning but yeah call the shore more often we really appreciate it i love your

show and i love you guys you guys are amazing awesome oh thank you Was that Samarillo that I just heard? Yes. Your cats are so smart, I never know for sure. We hear from the whole family, Doug. Yeah, I need coffee, Earl. I feel the same way. Doug, thanks so much.

We love hearing from you. Okay, thank you. Tell the family we said hello. Okay. Bye, guys. Okay, have a great weekend. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

Take advantage of that. Let your voice be heard. I think we're going to go to Stu. Yeah, let's get through some text. We have one here. There's not a name on it. It says, Good morning. I have a question about negotiating dealer fees via email.

So I've received four quotes for used vehicle in all. All the dealers said they wouldn't offset it by taking the dealer fee off the car. Each dealer is located more than three hours away from me. I feel without physically being there, I lost the leverage of threatening to just walk away. Do you have any advice on how I might make some progress by email, or do I just need to physically go to each dealership? Yeah, you don't even want to have to argue the dealer fee issue. What you need to do is focus on one thing, out-the-door price.

some dealerships have a flat policy, they will not remove the dealer fee. Some salespeople actually believe they cannot remove the dealer fee because the salespeople would remove the dealer fee in a heartbeat if they could get away with it because they don't get paid on the dealer fee. And if they could lower the price of the car to you increase the chance of them selling you the car and take off a $500 dealer fee or $1,000 deal fee, they would do it. So the dealer says, you can't take it off.

So the way to go around the dealer fee is you is just say, I want your lowest alpha door price, and I'm going to take that to your competition, and if they can't beat it, I'll buy it from you. If you don't give me that price, you have no chance of selling me a car. If you do give me the price, yes, there's a chance you could lose the deal to your competition. But would you rather have some chance or no chance? Don't play the dealer fee game.

They're going to win that game, whether it's a dealer fee or whatever they call their hidden fees. They're not going to take it off in many cases. And if they do take it off, the price still might not be competitive. The only way you know you've got the lowest price, it's a price you're right to check out for, hand it to the salesman and drive the car home. That's the lowest price. Okay. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones where Marty is holding.

Good morning, Marty. Good morning, how are you? Welcome back. We're fine, thank you. Good. I just have a quick question. I have a leased Camry and I have an owned Camry. The Least Camry is up in November.

My question to you is if I don't buy another Toyota, I have to pay a $350 disposition fee. Is there any way to have them agree that since I do have since I do have another Toyota to waive the 350 disposition fee. Marty, that's charged by the leasing company. And then this area is southeast Toyota leasing. So the leasing companies do that. I think it's unconstitutional. I don't like it.

The dealer doesn't have the right to remove that. But the dealer will certainly take that in consideration. and you can, in selling you the other car, they might even agree to absorb the V for you, but... I don't think he's buying another one. He's not buying another one. No, I understand that, yeah. No, the thing is, is my wife wants a Honda CRV.

So, rather than a Rave 4, obviously it's an incentive to buy a RAP 4 because you're getting the $500 coupon and the $350 disposition. but if you rather have a different, you know, brand, you have to do it. What I'll try to do is you've known for some of my similar calls. I'll try to get the $350 off the Honda dealer. Yeah.

Yeah. You say, listen, yeah, I got this expense. Marty, we've tried. Excuse me, sir. When you do that, Marty, be sure you wait until you've got your best price and then springing on them just before you're getting ready to sign. Because if you tell them up front, please take up the three.

You see what I'm saying? Okay. Yeah, so, Marty, in the past, we actually had some success talking to it out of charge in the dealer fees. And then in the last couple of years, they're hard and fast. They don't waive it. But that's a great idea of using that in your negotiations for the Honda.

And I just wanted to make a comment about your other caller when he's talking about the dealer fees. I bought a car from a different Toyota dealer to, and they keep their dealer fee on the final invoice. But as Earl said, and I agree 100% is what you pay out the door. So you have to negotiate the price. And whatever they want to call it, they can put in $2,000 dealer fee. But if you're getting the car for $3,000 less than anywhere else,

you're still saving money. So the bottom line is the out-the-door price. Exactly. Okay, so I'll wait to November and see what happens. Sounds good. All right. Keep us posted. Bye-bye.

Thank you, Marty. Have a great weekend. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-30. I think by the look in Rick's eyes, he's got some YouTube's over there. Got a couple of them. Donovan's asking, what's the best way to get an extended warranty canceled, and refunded. Lou Backroot Chevy and Coconut Creek

has been refusing to do anything with a warranty cancellation request. Well, the key thing to remember, that has to be within 90 days. Stu is shaking his head. Well, not for a full refund, but you can cancel it at any time during your loan. Yeah. That's what I was going to say. Okay, sorry. So,

they'll flat cancel it if you have not used the warranty for the first 90 days. One of the reasons they're dragging their feet at Lubach, Chevrolet, probably, is so they can tell you, I'm sorry, they won't cancel it. The warranty company won't cancel it. So you have to get through to somebody in power that will do the right thing, and you have the right to cancel it. First thing I do is I'd put it in writing.

I'd send an email to the general manager of the dealership and saying, this is my formal request to cancel my extended warranty, give them the VIN number of the date of the price, date of the sale. they're stuck, they have to comply at that point. And as Seale was saying, you can cancel an extended warranty two or three years later, but they're going to use the rule of 78, they're going to charge you a high percentage of which you paid for it. And when you do cancel it, by the way, they're not going to take it off your monthly payment. It'll be taken off the total price of the car, and the sum total of your monthly payments,

you'll get the break on, but you're not going to get the payment lowered by taking the extended warranty off, even within 90 days. And the other one I have here is Negan 1. Good morning. I have a question for everybody on the show. What was their first car they learned to drive on? Mine was a 1980 pinto with bald tires in the snow in Chicago.

Not sure how I survived that at 16 years old learned real fast. I bet I got the oldest car. Mine was a 1951 ponier. Stu, how about you? It was a 1984 Toyota pickup truck, four-wheel drive stick shift. And

Earl brought it home because he thought I should learn how to drive a standard transmission before anything else, so I did. And it was a small truck, but it had big tires, and it was really fun to drive. And then my first car was a stick shift, so I was one of those old folks who could drive a stick shift. Nancy? Oh, you know me, my barracuda. Yeah.

Jonathan, how about you? New Barracuda. 1973 Mercury Capri with a stick shift. Casey didn't hear that. Jonathan's was a 73 Mercury Capri. Nice. Stick ship. Yeah.

There you go. And my own was a 78 Ford Pinto, not the hatchback, had the little trunk on it. Pinto. And again, a stick shift. Yeah. Did you drive that to North Shore High School? I did for my junior year. There you go.

I don't know if I remember it. It was a long time ago. 1985. Long time ago. 84 and 85. Oh, wow. Okay, guys, we're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to take our first female caller, who wins herself $50 this morning as a first-time female caller. Welcome, Deb. We're happy to hear from you. Thank you. It's good to hear from you all. Wonderful show. Thank you for all that you do information for us.

Thank you so much. my question is my husband and i have a disagreement about headlights i usually leave them on on the auto where they come on and off by themselves all the time and he always feels like you need to turn them on so can you just educate me a little bit if there's a little difference between those two or if you know i think rick certainly rick talked about that last week and i like Rick's answer. My personal preference, because it's a matter of preference, but for me, I like to have my headlights on, actually on, all the time, because that way I have both the headlights and

my tail lights, and it improves safety because it makes my vehicle more visible from a greater distance. Now, just make sure you don't have the high beams on, turn, set it for low beams. All right. But on the automatic headlights, that won't have. unless it gets really really dark and cloudy right so I'm I'm I'm I'm different I don't want to be as safe as Rick is so I use the automatics so I'm not doing what your husband recommends I leave in an automatic setting so I

don't forget about it and it will turn on if it you know as it starts get darker in the day I don't think there's anything wrong with it I don't think it helps the car by turning it to the off position when you stop the car so no no it really doesn't yeah and I'm like Rick I keep my lights on I just want to be visible that's a good idea I had thought about the visibility and making yourself for your presence known there for the drivers I have a question for Rick though I'm not sure how many cars if you leave it on in the on position to automatic not all cars have automatic off is that correct true so you run the risk of

burning out your battery if you get out and you don't realize you left your light on and an attack on Rick that's probably easier to do in the daytime in the middle of the day when you park your car so there you go I'm doing it right. You're doing it wrong. We're both doing it wrong. Would all newer cars, like I have a 2015 Jeep, would that have an automatic off where it would at least alarm if I turn the engine off? You've got to check it out, but by 2015 it was common to have automatic off headlights, yeah. And most of the newer cars also, if you leave the headlights on and turn the ignition off and open the door,

sounds a buzzer to let you know your headlights are on. So Rick's right and I'm wrong. Okay, well, thank you all so much. Oh, you're welcome, good. I appreciate the call, and congratulations on the 50 bucks. Spread the word. Well, thank you. Wonderful weekend. Thank you.

Happy Easter. Okay, folks, we have, as you can hear, a great show, and we thank you again for joining us here at Earl Stewart on Cars. Give us a call about anything. 877960-99-60, or you can text us at 7. 772-4976530 and again your anonymous feedback don't forget back to stew okay we got a text from Dax from California this is good morning everyone I need your help what is your opinion my daughter is in the market for a new car her first

car she's saving up for she's sitting up for a down payment she's that has enough for 20% down I'm thinking of paying the tax title and a tax title and tag processing fees separate from financing as a graduation present so it won't be part part of the amount she she'll be financing in my mind this would help her lower the monthly payment is this possible and yeah all you have to do is when you get the amount of that add that to her down payment and she won't be financing that amount and then he wants to know where would where's best start looking for incentives the car manufacturers website the dealerships websites um and he appreciates all that we're doing um most manufacturers have national incentives

so you can go to the manufacturer's website so in any given month you can see what kind of special interest rates or rebates they have some manufacturers might have regional incentives so probably the best way to do that was maybe look like google local like you're in california local los angeles kea dealers or whatever you're looking at to see if there is a regional thing other than that i'm not quite sure how you would find out if probably just through the dealer but it's got to come from the manufacturer ignore all dealer incentives and jack not to overanalyze this but sometimes the cars that have the big biggest incentives are the least popular and the ones that are hardest to sell.

The ones that are in high demand, low supply, tend to have no incentives. And those same cars, high demand, low supply, typically will have a high resale value. So sometimes you're better off to pay for a car a little bit more money with maybe no incentives, because when you trade that car in, your daughter, three or four or five years from now whenever, they will have a higher residual value, a higher trade in. So look at the value of the car from the point of buying to the point of disposal, and put that in contact with the incentives. I see huge incentives to, directly to customers and additional incentives to dealers.

I see incentives on cars of $10,000, $15,000. So if they're willing to knock $15,000 off the price of a car, they're not selling it too well, and they're trying to motivate the sales. So take the full picture of value before you go for a car with the highest incentive. Okay. Next text. No name on it. It says, I bought a used car about a year ago.

It's a great car, but the driver's side seatbelt retracts a little slow. I brought it to the selling dealer who checked it out and reported that the seatbelt was operating properly, that the slow retraction wasn't affecting the way. the seatbelt worked, but they agreed it would be frustrating if their own seatbelts worked that way, so the service manager somehow got the seatbelt replacement covered by the manufacturer warranty. I couldn't believe it. My car is three years out of warranty. Can you guess the dealership? That's right, it was Roll Stewart. Thank you very much. Well, I'll tell you a secret about that. I don't even know this for a fact, but I'd be willing

to bet that we were able to get the manufacturer to pay for that. If there's anything, a manufacturer is sensitive about, it's a safety item. So if you have anything, especially a seatbelt, an airbag, even your seat or your windshield, things that you can verbalize as causing you with safety risk, you'd be surprised how far the manufacturer will go to take care of that with no charge. They don't want a customer on record complaining about a safety issue and having the dealer say, I'm sorry, it's on a warranty. The customer says, well, I can't afford to fix it, and they drive it off the door, and something terrible happens.

Next thing you know, you're looking at a multi-million dollar lawsuit. So push safety issues with your dealer and go directly to the manufacturer. If you have to, you'll often find them. They'll override the dealer's decision. Yeah, one kind of cool thing here in Florida. A lot of folks don't know. You mentioned windshields.

If you have a crack in your windshield that is more than a couple inches long, your insurance, your auto insurance, will cover replacing that windshield, no deductible, no charge, and you can call it pretty much any glass company that does automotive glass, most of 90% of them will come to you and do the job wherever you are. And they get reimbursed because it's a safety issue. A very good example, Rick. Thank you. Definitely. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones, and we have got Kevin, who's calling us from Buffalo, New York. Good morning. Good morning, team. Hope everybody's happy and happy Easter. Yes. I was really impressed listening to you, Earl, and it's a compliment to you and your entire team about the effort you're doing for the senior citizens about getting, you know, vaccinations and things like that. Thank you.

I'm a little younger than you, Earl. Just this morning, I could not punch in the number on my computer. I couldn't figure out why, but I never had the numbers locked on on the side keypad. So it's always confusion, at least for me, too. I've done that many times. But the good news is I learned what to look for, and I realized what mistake I made. Also, I did not realize that when I bought a book for my recovering car salesman, that the donations went to a rest dog rescue.

That was very nice to do that, Earl. And if you and your key giving to the community, it's very, very good. Thank you very much. Well, I'm going to take it as an example to put a whole up the book, Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer, and you write it from Kevin. You buy that on Amazon, I think it's about 20 bucks, and all the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Woo!

All right. That's a big dog ranch rescue. his talk is very good and you know I'm talked about to Canada I'm just over the border from Canada from Ontario Canada so we've been shut out from going to Canada for the last year and a half because of COVID but hopefully we'll get back in there this is my concern or a question was brought up to me my friend's wife has a BMW X3 and I don't know nothing about BMWs and what's an X3 but my wife said to her friends she was having some trouble because my cousin listens to this guy named Earl on the radio, so maybe he can help you. And her concern was, or her problem is,

she's got a 2019 VMWX3, and it only has 5,000 miles on it, and it's been in a shop numerous times with a check engine light. Not like in Florida, but in New York, you get an annual inspection, and if you have a check engine light on, it will not pass inspection. So it's been in and out of the shop numerous times for that, and now it's in the shop for four weeks now. But they can't figure out the problem. I would have. She said, well, could you give me a comparable car? This is just a lemon.

And according to BMW corporate, they don't have a comfortable car that's a 2,019, same style with your 5,000 miles on it. But they offered her this. Go out and take a car off the lot, similar, and we'll trade it like that. Well, their trade was, yeah, both trades. She paid two years on her five-year note already, but they wanted to extend a note so another five years, plus she put $10,000 on the original car. That doesn't sound like a fair deal to me,

because you bought a car with in good faith, and now they just can't figure out what's wrong with it. Any guidance in giving her some advice in how to resolve her situation here? Kevin, the car should be under warranty, and I'm sure New York has got a lemon law, all states have lemon laws, they're all a little bit different. But the first thing she should do is file a written complaint with the dealer

and copy the manufacturer. In Florida's lemon law, you have three chances to correct a problem. And if not, after that, it goes to a judge or an arbitration panel, and they can refund the money on your car, prorated based on the amount of use you've already had with it. But the best way to get a dealer's attention and particularly the manufacturer's attention is to file a Lemon Law complaint. You don't even have to file it. You can just say, listen, I want this fixed.

You put it in writing, email or text, or so long as it's in writing, and say, this is your notice. You're on notice now that you have one more chance to fix this car, or else I'm going to file a Lemon Law complaint. They hate that. So I think you need to get the manufacturers involvement. There's no reason why this car should have the check engine light coming on over and over and over. Now, I know what Rick's thinking, and I thought about it too. It could be different issues. Well, that's highly unlikely that over a short period of time, you'd have the check engine light come on repeatedly.

So it sounds to me like the dealer doesn't know what he's doing. You either need to go to another dealer or you need to file a lemon law complaint. All righty. Thank you. I know it's complicated because of all the computers and the technology and things like that. Yeah. But I have a question on the technician's side of it.

Now, it's been in a shop this time four weeks. When a technician, you get paid for doing warranties, and it's still under warranty in 2019 and only 5,000 miles. Yes. A technician gets money for being working on it to try to diagnose this problem, or would they just be something that he would not get paid for? It's baked into what they get paid. There's a included as a diagnostic charge there.

What technicians don't get paid on normally is extra long diagnosis. In other words, you have a problem that's difficult. And if you spend too long, they draw the line on how much time is permitted for diagnosis. But they do. But they do. Technicians make good money when they fix something under warranty. And there's no reason why a technician should hesitate. You go back years when I was. years when i was the first of the business when i was young the car dealers uh hated

warranty work they sometimes would refuse to do warranty work because the manufacturers wouldn't pay them uh you know you'd come in to have a warranty work done and the dealer would say take it somewhere else you didn't buy the car from me uh today uh the laws required that the manufacturer pay the dealer the same price that he charges the customer and generally speaking but it is a very generous payment to the dealer to do warranty work if the technician makes good money on it. Rick? Typically, this is what would happen in a Toyota situation. If I had a car come in that I was flat out unable to figure out what was going on,

if I had even just two chances at it, the second time around, I contact Toyota, our technical assistance system, and if they can't give me a proper turnaround, direction. They will send a field tech specialist out to us, who is one of the engineer-level people, and they will come out, and not only will they be working on the car, but they'll also be in contact with engineers that they can access through Toyota. And, I mean, Toyota will stand by it. They will really do quite a few things to try to get a car fixed to avoid a Lemon Law buyback. If the dealer lets them know about the problem. So, in this case here, the B&W dealer is incompetent and he's not doing what he should do that that sounds like

what's going on there they're not getting proper assistance like they ought to be hmm okay because you know if I was a technician trying to find an unusual problem that's hard to diagnose or complicated I get frustrated and say I got to step away because I just came up I don't know what's going on so I find out that might be a part of the problem too exactly yes thank you thanks very much for call Kevin Yeah, it's great hearing from you, Kevin. I don't take anybody else's time, but thank you for all the help you provide for everybody. Thank you.

Oh, please call again. You're a good caller. We thought that was a question that was probably on the minds of a lot of people out there. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you. Every question is important, every opinion. We love hearing from you.

877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-65-35-3-0. Now back to Stu. Sure, we got a text from Gary. It says, good morning, Earl, on the headlights. Leaving the headlights on, that was a rate when you could just change the light bulb. Now it takes $150 to take half the car apart to change a light bulb. That's why I don't leave mine on. There you go.

Or the LEDs, they pretty much last forever, don't think? LEDs will outlast anything. And the H-I-D, high-intensity discharge bulbs, they'll do, I don't know, three times, four times, the lifespan of the regular incandescent bulbs that we used to use. But you do that still have to take half the car apart to change it, so Gary's still right. I'm kidding. It's still

expensive, though. We got a question for Rick from Dennis. He says 2008 Ford Fusion, airbag issue. In below freezing temps, the airbag warning light goes on until an engine compartment is warm enough for it to go off. Any ideas? Dealer doesn't know, but is willing to tear into a

it and see what happens. Thanks for your great show and that's Dennis. My first thought is that one of the connectors does not have a good proper connection and in the cold temperatures contraction and expansion of by heat it's something's losing contact and that's what's causing your light to come on. They need to check each of those connectors and check the wiring to see where something is contracting back a little bit due to cold temperature. and losing his contact. Yeah, that's a good way to kind of look at any time. I mean, the way cold affects materials, expansion, contraction,

that makes complete sense to me. We have a new name on this. It's a Texas. Have you seen this special land cruiser that Toyota built that was designed to deliver vaccines? 400 doses at the cold temperatures required for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. They made it to deliver doses to remote areas

in underdeveloped countries. Impressive work by Toyota. Cool. I hadn't seen it. There's a link to the article, so we can share that with each other. Here's a great question. We do get this from time to time. How do I get rid of an ant infestation in my car?

Nothing seems to work. Sprang, traps, help me. Best advice that I know, and I've actually had to do this for customers and even from my own, is the raid fumigators. The dry smoke fumigators, don't be afraid to set off like two or three of those in your car. be very careful that you have the ignition off and open your windows and let it air out for a couple hours afterwards but that'll get rid of them okay I repeat that again the Rade dry smoke fumigator Rade like in Rade like the product RID and

it's a little plastic cup with a metal can inside you you pull the foil lid off it pull the can out you put about a quarter inch of water in the plastic cup then drop the can back in, and it begins a chemical reaction that starts letting off this white smoke. Do you use one can per car, or can you shut it off? I would do two or three. Once it starts, you can't shut it off. It just goes. It's like a bomb.

Yeah, they come like two or three in a package, and just set them inside the car, maybe one in the trunk, couple of them up in the pasture compartment, and just let them go. You can get them at Publix or anywhere. They're designed to put, like, in a cabinet if you're a row. and things like that. Will it permanently do it? I mean? Not permanent, but it will kill every living thing in that car.

All the current ants. Nothing's going to live. You're killing humans. Oh yeah. You don't want to be in there with them. I'll leave any pets in there. I'll tell you what, folks. Where can you go for all this free information right here at Earl Stewart on cars?

It's just amazing the questions we are asked and the answers that we receive and all of you are very important. very important part of the show we're gonna go back to Stu who has some texts over there we're gonna jump over to some anonymous feedback first one says I watched your YouTube video on license plate scanning and how dealers can obtain my credit history from the reporting agencies I have freezes on my account with all three of my bureaus could a card dealers still get my credit history information I looked that up because I saw this came in the other day and the answer is no they cannot a credit freeze will protect you against regular

credit polls and also the soft credit polls that we spoke about last week. For anybody didn't hear the show last week, we were talking about how through your driver, your license plate, a scanner can ping over the internet, the Department of Motor Vehicles, find the VIN, and find out who you are, and do what's called a soft credit pole. And it's a way of running your credit. It doesn't show up on your credit report. And it is legal for credit creditors like banks. Whenever you get a pre-authorized credit card in the mail, they've run a soft credit pull on you, and car dealers are also legally allowed to do this, as creepy as it sounds. They are legally?

But if you have a freeze on your credit, which I recommend, that's one of the coolest things in the world that I've ever seen. I've known people who do this. No one can run any credit report on you, so you're protected against identity theft, and also it's kind of great at a car dealership because we've used that in shopping reports when car dealers try to pressure you to fill a credit application all you can say is that you have a freeze on your credit and which is a good idea to have anyway and that prevents them from running the credit so it doesn't there's a downside no negative to that except you have to take it off when you make a purchase right so if you you know there's a few steps I don't think it's any harder than going online and and checking unfreeze

but it adds an extra step whenever you're trying to buy anything with credit yeah But which is great because, I mean, how many people haven't had a fraudulent on their debit card or something at some point in their life? Without this, you can kind of rest assured that you're no one's spending your money. Okay, the next one. Hey, Earl, between the mask, the hat, the headphones, the glasses, and the microphone, your face is nearly completely hidden. I've forgotten what you look like. When will we see your handsome face again? Okay, ready?

that's all you get pretty soon we're all vaccinated and we're going to be pretty soon Rick's vaccinated Sue's vaccinated Nancy's vaccinated I'm vaccinated we're getting Jonathan vaccinated and so the whole crew will be

and we'll be maskless probably in a couple weeks right I've got two and a half weeks to my second dose. Very good. Me too. On the 12th. So you'll be able to understand us just a little better. Exactly. And we've kind of gotten used to the slightly muffled sound to our voice.

The audio quality of Erlon cars is going to vastly improve the summer. Okay. Okay. You have a call? Yes, we do. We have a caller, and it's Bob who's calling us from Delray Beach. Good morning, Bob. Hi.

How are you? Good morning. Good morning. I'm great. Thank you. Hope everybody is well over there. I just wanted to share a story about a friend of mine who had a car, and he brought it back to the dealer after about 7,000 miles

because there was a problem with his brakes. And the dealer insisted that it wasn't covered under warranty and that they would have to pay for the break job, which that in himself was fishy anyway. He ended up paying for the break job because he got paid. frustrated and walked out. And for some reason, he had decided to do a Google search on it

and came up that there were a lot of problems with this and that some dealers had it replaced it under warranty. He took the manufacturer to mitigate, or not an arbitration, I guess this. And the judge

soared and immediately paid him. So my point would be that when people have issues with their vehicles, Sometimes it's a good move to do a Google search and see, you know, what's out there what people are posting. Yeah, Bob, excellent point, and it kind of reinforces our discussion about seniors and cyber savvy and being able to use a computer. Frankly, I don't know how anyone gives through life without Google, but we have a large number of people who don't use Google and don't have the way to access Google. but you have a huge tool there

and back on the brick subject I alluded earlier in the show safety items get everybody's attention when you say a break problem the dealer mistakenly thought that it was a maintenance problem and warranties do not cover maintenance but

they misdiagnosis apparently because after you say your friend got online found out it was a chronic problem and then everybody snapped to attention and took care of it. But it was a sloppy dealer that would not look hard and close at any kind of a complaint about a brick problem. You're asking to be put out of business. The funny thing was that he was about to buy their new SUV, and instead he went back to the previous car that he owned and just let that car again.

Yeah. But I know what? I would just like to add about your seniors. It's a terrific. idea and you know a lot of people a lot of seniors are worried about a COVID ops of course so Zoom would be an excellent way to walk through somebody with screen sharing yeah it's just is the online process is is great for a lot of reasons one reason is you maintain your privacy they don't know who you are so you avoid the harassment the phone calls the follow-ups the may the emails, and you can contact an infinite number of dealers, not literally, but, you know, instead of checking with two or three dealers, which I always recommend, you can check

with 20 or 30 dealers online, and a fraction of the time it takes you to go into one dealership. So you have these people that are tech savvy, cyber savvy, and are using computers, are buying the cars at fantastic prices. If everybody could buy a car that cheap, the dealers would be out of business. So they have to make it up on the people that don't know how to do it. And these are the seniors that don't understand how to use a computer. Well, I get it. I was a car salesman 100 years ago.

That's when I met my wife. But, you know, it's a great thing. And anything I could do to help, as a vigilante, I'm happy to do so. And it's a great service you are all providing, and I thank you for being there. I appreciate it, Bob. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you so much. Very welcome. Have a great day.

Have a great weekend. Boy, what a great idea that you came up with. There are a lot of consumers that are very interested in that. And we have a couple that have just text and said Bob's on board, Doug's on board. Cool. And then Bob from Del Rey. So it's a good thing. Cool.

I need to come up with a cool name. I'll let it churn around I'll come up with something good Yeah Churn? It's churn, my brain does You can hear it If you're quiet You can hear my brain

I do a lot of churner It sounds like a mop in a bucket Sounds like my popcorn popper Ooh All right So let's go back some anonymous feedback We have one here I don't remember

What we were talking about That prompted this We were talking about last week It says Earl Don't expect me to stop to help you When I see you stand it on the side of the road you were offered an extended warranty several times.

I don't know if that satire, like, you know, they're playing the role of an FNI manager who warns you that your car is going to break down and you're going to be screwed if you don't buy the warranty or if it's response to your, you're talking about warranties. But it's pretty funny. Well, just for what I was worth, I don't know what people promise you

when you buy an extended warranty, but one of the things you don't get is they're not going to give you a roadside assistance. That's another product. So they'll sell you the extended warranty, but if you break down the side of the road you're still screwed because nobody's going to come and help you. Exactly.

Yeah, exactly. You've got to get to the dealership. Last week, you disagreed with a caller who called addemums and hidden fees price gouging, but in 2011 your blog posted an article titled Gas Price Gouging as illegal. Why not car price gouging? And the article you cited the law that said it was illegal to charge a price

that grossly exceeded the average price for that item. What's the difference now? Before you answer, I looked up the blog, and there was some context there that the poster left out. You were specifically talking about there was a parts and a car shortage because of the tsunami that hit Japan in March of 2011. And immediately after that, dealers,

Toyota dealers began putting these huge market addendums because of the shortage of cars and parts that were coming out of Northeast Japan. And in that case, it was a situation, situation, kind of like a hurricane, there was a natural disaster that prompted a lot of dealers to do some unethical behavior, and that's specifically

that we were talking to. Now, in fairness to the caller, you were talking about addendum stickers and all that sort of stuff, but these were, if you see a $5,000 addendum today, which you just might in the mystery shopping report, we were talking $10,000, $15,000 adenums back in

April and in May of 2011, and I remember that clearly. Yeah, I read that in anonymous feedback. I'm going to be a little harder on myself than you were. I think I was wrong about that. You know, price gouging has two definitions, the literal price gouging meaning you're charging a lot of money higher than you charge everybody else,

and then it has a legal definition. Price gouging legally is when you have a necessary product and short supply. For example, during a hurricane, you need water, you need water, you need gas, gasoline, and it is against the law. The price gouging is a legal term, but in cases of cars, just because a dealer charges a little old lady a $10,000 profit,

but the sharp, high-pressure attorney comes in and buys a car for cost. Literally, legally, literally it was price gouging. Legally, it was not price gouging, because, unfortunately, it's buyer-beware. When you go into a car dealership, the price you pay is going to, depend on your negotiating skills or on your online buying skills. And that's the way it is. It's buyer beware, caveat emptor. That's right.

I like that. There's a distinction between moral price gouging and then legal. Yeah, we see the moral stuff every day. More anonymous feedback. I have a question about doc stamps. What is it and should I pay it? It looks like a legitimate government fee, but I've only seen it on one quote out of many.

The dealer said it was a DMV fee when property is transferred, thanks. That's not what Doc Stams are. Domstacks is a fee paid to the bank when you finance a car. Yeah, Docsamps, even if you finance the car, the bank is charging the fee, not the dealer. And the amount of the fee is not anywhere near

what the dealer's charging. And so in some states it's illegal, I believe North Carolina is one of them and I believe Missouri or there's another state that makes it illegal to call your hidden fee a doc fee. Doc stands for documentary and as Stu

said it's a lending institution that has to charge that. It's a tax that they have to pass along to the federal government. So it's a legitimate fee. Dealer calls it a doc fee, it's profit. And in several states it's illegal. It should be illegal

of Florida. But Laura lets you, you can call your hidden fees anything you want to. You'd call it chop liver. Larry. You can tell it a, you know, pay, you got to pay Larry, $700. Right. But we have seen dealers that are using that specific term, doc stamps, as another little mini, a dealer fee. We've seen in Mystery Shopping Reports, and we just find that kind of funny because these are on like cash purchases, and they're putting dock stamps, which is only relevant when you're speaking about a loan and you're financing. I'd like to see that tested in court, because it would be like saying, sales tax. Sales tax is a tax that has to be remitted to the state. Dock fees are tax that

have to be remitted to the federal government. So when you tell someone that you only $180 in dock fees and you think you're paying the federal government a tax, you're not. Why isn't it the same thing as the sales tax? Why can you lie to a customer about a dock fee but not lie to a customer about sales tax? It makes no sense. Yeah, we found a few dealers, even good ones. I think The Linux at one point had a buyer's order that had docks stamps. And it was a small amount. It was like $27, but it was definitely improperly used. We have some lawyer listeners out there.

You lawyers out there listening to the show. Let's hear your opinion on why is it legal to lie to a customer and call your hidden fee a dock fee when the bank's getting none of that, and neither is the federal government. Okay. One more anonymous feedback. What is the best way to approach dealer fees? Should I address it directly and ask them to offset

in the price of the car, or should I just negotiate the out-the-door price and deduct the fees for my offer? Would dealers be more likely to work with the fees using one way or the other? I answered that before, Stu, you can, you're obviously going to know. Yeah, I think, I mean, we do sound like a broken record sometimes, but you can kind of ignore the dealer fees when you, all you want is an out-the-door price. when you're looking online and you're looking at prices and advertisements

and things like that well number one forget about the advertisements but if you're looking at online listings you've got to remember that those price are going to be dealer fees are going to be added to that price so when you're getting your prices don't ask for the price your best price ask for the best out-the-door price

what you'd be writing the check for and if that's the case then it doesn't matter what the dealer fee is we once ran an ad in the paper where we It's that we were selling a brand new Camry for $1. But then in the fine print, by the way, and it wasn't fine, we did a giant joke fine print that said that we had a $20,000 dealer fee.

Here's another reason you don't want to play their game. Dealers can call the hidden fee anything they want to. Dealer fee has become a generic term for it. So we have dealers out there advertising. We charge no dealer fee. So their $1,000 dealer fee, they change the name to dock fee. where they change the name to tag agency fee, or they change the name to administrative fee.

You can call in Florida, in some states, they have more regulation, but in Florida, you can call the hidden fee anything you want to. We talked about that also. So don't play the dealer's game. You can say to the deal, listen, I know you've got fees. You don't have to argue about it. All I want is the price of your car that I can write you a check for and take the car home.

you give me an up price so I'm going to take it to your competition shop it compare it and if your price is the lowest I'll be in to buy the car with my check but if you try to slip something in on me I'm out of there so don't play the dealer fee game just get the bottom line out the price game and to back you up we have another anonymous feedback that just came in says I can vouch with Earl for Earl about the dealer fee and out-the-door pricing I was able to get Lexus at Jacksonville who has a dealer fee beat the outdoor price out-the-door price for J.M. Lexus and Lexus Orlando

who are both no dealer-fee dealers. I played the quotes of each offer, but the dealer-fee dealership came in $1,000 less than the others. The vehicles are extremely similar, and we're on their lot for less than two weeks. So that's the perfect application of what we're talking about. Fantastic. If you want to get an out-the-door price on Lexus,

call J.M. Lexus and Margate, and Margate floor there around Coconut Creek and Fort Lauderdale area. They're the largest Lexus deal. in the world. They're legitimate, they're honest. I know the general manager that's a real nice guy. His name is Stephen Smiley. And they treat you right. And it's a pleasant experience.

And what they do that practically know what their Lexus dealer or car dealer does is they put their out-the-door place for sales tax and license plate only on every car. So if you live in Jacksonville or if you live in Kentucky or you live somewhere else

and you want to get a better price from your local dealer, get the lowest price from J.M. Lexus take it into. As a matter of fact, Jam Lexus puts their out-the-door price with tax and tag online. They use the same set up we do. Right. You write the check for it and you drive the car home. They have a small

fee. They call a tag agency fee for I think it's $80. I was talking to the general manager about why do you do that? And he says, I'm thinking about it. I'm wondering why we do it. When you're buying $100,000 Lexus, $80 is not going to break the deal.

I just thought it would be better to be squeaky clean and say no hidden fees go all the way yeah you know uh ladies and gentlemen it's tough maneuvering your way around this uh i'm gonna call to minefield and uh we're just so happy to be here and to be answering your questions and uh we hope that we've been a big help to you uh ladies out there i have one more uh i have one more winner i'm waiting for and that's $50 for that next new lady caller. $50. So I've got some time left, ladies.

Give us a call. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-3-0. Now back to Stu. Okay, we got a couple more texts that came in. Joe texted and says, My grandson is thinking of buying a 2021-D-challenger S-E-T. cost is $90,000 plus $30,000 in add-ons.

A total is $120,000. Is it fair to assume the profit on the add-ons is 40% and the profit on the actual car is 25%. This is helping me form a fair offer. I know there's plenty of wiggle room on the price of the car. I'm going to be presumptuous and just say, stop thinking about that. You don't know what their margin is.

They don't know what their margin is. 25% or 40%. Every meg model's got a different market. Don't even worry about that. Even on a this doesn't mean that they're going to price the car very low. These cars are these high demand, low supply cars

that we've talked about. So it doesn't mean that you're going to necessarily get the offer. But you still got to play. There's plenty of Dodge dealers out there and so you've got to play the dealers off each other. And also, we forget about some of the other resources. Go on to Truecar.com. It's probably

fair to say that these dealers will not have these cars in the Costco auto buy-in program because they're kind of a one-of-a-kind vehicle. But true car should give you an idea of what the pricing should be, armed with that in multiple quotes from different dealers. And on a car like this, I would say it would be a good idea to kind of get out of your local area. I mean, you can get quotes all over Florida, I'm not sure where you are, but all over your state or even outside of your state. Because a car like this is something that you've got to put some time into to get those competing quotes. and that's how you're going to get the best price. Competition, competition, competition.

It's the biggest enemy of the dealer. It's your best friend, and dealers are insanely competitive. This mystery shopping report we've got coming up very shortly has to do with a battle between the number two and number three highest volume toilet dealerships in the world. They are insanely competitive. They're only a few miles apart, and they will do anything to outsell the other dealership.

they are, they can't help themselves. So when you work one dealer against another dealer, they're killing each other. Competition, they'll do anything to sell a car. So don't play the dealer fee, addendum, you know, don't play any of that. Play the competition weapon that you have. Tell them, don't keep it a secret. Say, look, I'm going to this dealer, this dealer, this dealer,

that sells the exact same product you do, and I'm going to buy it from the one that gives me the lowest out-the-door price. That is the most powerful way to get the best price. Yeah, it stands your ground. I do it online, so you don't have to get in an argument. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes you're going to run to a dealer who just doesn't feel the same way about these rare cars.

Case in point, Al Hendrickson, who we missed your shop today, we lost a deal on a Prius Prime, which is kind of a hard-to-get vehicle, and we priced it according to what we thought the supply and demand situation was. And we thought we had a low price, but we thought that it was respect to the fact that these were hard to get. And Al Hanksians didn't care about any of that stuff,

and they blew this car out for, like, nothing. So you might find a Dodge dealer who will sell you that car for a really, really, really low profit. So we don't know. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones where Lari, first-time female caller, is calling us from Palm Beach Gardens,

and she has won herself, $50 this morning. Good morning, Lori. Good morning. How are you? Well, thank you. Welcome. Thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. And happy Easter to you both. Thank you very much. What can we do for you this morning? Well, I have a 2008 Mazda MX5 and I don't drive it. enough to change the oil very often. Is there a certain amount of time that I should have the oil changed, even if I don't hit the 5,000 mile mark? I mean, I'm talking, it would take me maybe a year. I'm one of these drive it to church on Sunday. So I'm afraid that if I let it sit, I mean, I might ride it up and down to the store, but everything is so close here that it don't get a lot of miles. So I don't know if I should have the oil change.

changed at a yearly interval or if I should just wait for the 5,000 miles? There's six months on synthetic, on fossil oil, regular oil, and it's 12 months on synthetic oil. So if you're using synthetic oil, you should have a change at least once a year. Yep, and I'm looking at the maintenance schedule for the MX5 that calls for an oil change once a year regardless of miles. Okay. That's counterintuitive. A lot of people don't understand that. And it is a little, even to me, when I hear it, I say, what?

But Rick is the expert, and he'll tell you that oil sitting and not being driven is hurting the oil about as much as driving it. So if you get condensation, you can get pollution moisture, especially in high humidity, hot states like Florida. So even if you don't drive the car at all, you should change the oil once a year. Hi. Thank you so much. Thank you, Lori. Oh, you're welcome, and thank you for calling. And spread the word. $50 for the first two new lady callers every Saturday morning.

Thank you. 877960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And, you know, I just noticed our phone lines are going to be shut down for now because we're going to go to the mystery shop report. Stu probably has a few texts to share with us before that. Actually, it's perfect. We have one more text. The timing is perfect.

Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen. Oh. This is from Steve in New Jersey. Rick, pay attention. Good morning, Earl, Steve from New Jersey. Rick, last Saturday you said that it's difficult to apply clear, protective film to the headlights. I respectfully disagree. I purchased film that was pre-cut to my specific car

after spraying a very light soapy solution the film was easily positioned I encourage all particularly with a new car purchase to try this a very easy DIY M-I-O and for those who don't know what that means it's do-it-yourself in my opinion different product

I will disagree for one point the shapes of headlights can vary greatly and some cars yeah it would be a very very But he said it was custom-made for his car. I don't know what his car was that he's driving, so it could be the shape of his particular headlight was one that's very easy to apply. I see what you mean, yeah.

You look at like a Prius Prime or even some of the newest Priuses, those headlights have got long, they've got curves, they've got long angles to them, and those could be incredibly difficult to really get it to stretch right. You would need a heat gun. it's kind of like putting the wrap on a car when you're putting that vinyl wrap on cars. Some cars would be very easy.

Others, who-hoo. I know Steve has a Subaru. I'm not wondering if it's the Subaru. I came from what model it was. Steve text me, let me know what kind of car you're driving. I'm glad you had a good installation with. I'm glad it went well for you. And I guarantee you're going to like the outcome of how long that plastic, that

vinyl wrap will protect your headlights, and how great a job it does well great us anonymous media just just popped in last one and says and this sounds like a joke for the guy from new york the simple solution is to take advice from others and leave the state problem solved all right we're done ready for the mr shopping report okay ladies and gentlemen like stew said we're ready for the mystery shopping report and we'd like you to vote on it and the mystery shopping report is from al hendron in Toyota. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

Okay, this is, I guess, I guess it's, we probably shot down a hundred percent several times. And they're kind of far from this area, but because they're so big, they are, I would say, when we say the largest Toyota dealership, we're really saying the largest car dealership, because Toyota in this market down in South Florida, and in fact, in the South East, East region, Toyota is a number one selling vehicle. And so, Al-Henrichson Toyota is the number two or number three volume cardio ship in the world. And Hollywood Toyota is a number two or three.

And they're vying for being number one or two or three. And insane competition going on there in South Florida area with Toyota. When you hear these numbers that are being retail, by the way, the largest Toyota dealership in the world is Longo Toyota, and they're in Los Angeles or near Los Angeles, huge. I mean, they've been, they were so far ahead

of everybody else for so many years. And now we got Al Hendrickson and Hollywood Toyota nippant Longo Seals. Now Longo is no longer with us, he passed away. It's owned by Penske, and it's owned by, actually Greg Penske, son of Roger Penske of the Penske of the Penske automotive group and also Roger Penske the famous race car driver so that is the guy that runs long-go Toyota now

and they're huge and back in the back in 1967 on well let's say in 2020 during the pandemic long-go sold 11,200 new Toyotas Think about that. 11,200 new Toyotas. This year, they were, this year before they sold 14,590 to keep this perspective. I can't even imagine numbers that big. And in my dealership, I sell 3,500 car in Toyota's a year. So it's a huge number and we're considered a large dealership at our Toyota dealership.

So anyway, the bigger you are, the more competitive you are, and the more insanely you want to be number one. I talked about this earlier in the show. Competition is your best friend, and it's a dealer's enemy, because it costs the money to be competitive. We got, as I said before, Toyota, Hollywood, and L. Hedickson, Toyota, and you could go down there to both places, and you get to buy a car. What you have to remember is that they make...

their profit on the people that are not savvy on negotiating and or online buying. If you really know what you're doing, you can buy a car for less money at Toyota of Hollywood, a Toyota for less money at Toyota or Al Hendonsohnickson Toyota. If you really know what you're doing, then you can't anywhere else. But if you don't, watch out. If you don't, you're dead meat. And the prices down there, they have huge hidden fees, huge addendum labels. And every guy and gal that walks into those two dealerships, in fact, it's all car dealerships, pays a different price for the exact same car on the same day. That's the game.

So if you're savvy and sharp and tough, boy, what a great place to get a good deal on a car. Nippigant Longo Seals, and we just talked about that, our Toyota, and Al-Henrichson, Toyota now currently is number two in volume in the world, and along comes Al-Henrickson to challenge that. In the last month, Al-Henrichson outsold Hollywood Toyota. They're number two in the world for the month of March. Right behind Toyota of Hollywood, in third place, that's all, okay, they're at Coconut Creek. And 2020, Alexman sold 7,422. I mean, I say these numbers I choke. That's a lot of new Toyotas, a slight increase from their pre-pendemic sale volume of 7,384 in 2019.

Allahenrichson has been climbing up the volume, ranking of the last several years. They finally edged out Houston, Texas, Fred Haas, Toyota World, for the show position number three in 2020. And you're an interesting little personal note. I know, I knew Fred Haas, I know Al Hendrickson, and I know Craig Zinn, the owners of Al Hendrickson owns, of course, Al Hendrickson Toyota, Craig Zinn owns Hollywood, Fred has owned the Fred Hatt Toyota in Texas, and they're nice guys. All these are really individually owned, even long ago is individually owned. not part of a big group, even though I don't even think long ago is part of the Penske

Automotive Group. I think it's owned separately by Penske. So three individually owned dealerships, and that's where the egos really get involved. If you're going to get, if you want a deadly ego to work in your favor, buy from a dealer that owns the dealership himself and not from an automotive group. even the Penske Auto Group, Sonic, there are a number of large retail auto groups. They have controls that they don't let the cars be sold for insanely low figures. They won't allow it.

So if you really want to get somebody's attention and you want to buy a car cheaply, buy it from somebody like Long Go, Harvey, or what I just say, Al Hendrickson, yeah. Where are we? Okay. So to get to be number one, Alahap Shatoya seems prepared to do just about anything. They're all known for being an old-school, rough-and-tumble type of dealership with big hidden fees and addendum stickers. They're planning to become number one by being nice guys. I just read that.

They aren't. I'm sorry. That was a typo because of my broken keyboard. They're not, they aren't planning. Yeah. Yeah. My son. types this and his computer has a keyboard issue. Yeah, keyboard issue. The battle between Al Hendrickson, Toyota, and Toyota Hollerwood reached a fever case three days ago during the close out of March's sales. Heading into the month of March, Hollywood led Al by 17131 cars to 1462, 269 car lead. Al Hendrickson pulled out all the stops to cut Hollywood's lead.

They began selling new cars into ridiculously low prices and spending a ton of a ton of advertising. My dealership witnessed some of this during a few cases when we had mutual customers comparing prices. In each situation, we lost the deal to Alan Hedrickson, who sold their vehicles well below the prices we were willing to sell them for. I think I must be the only card you're going to go with it miss. If someone beat my price. On the radio, like on the global radio. Yeah, right. Al Hennigson ended up dominating Toyota of Hollywood in March, by 1,237 cars sold in one month to 10,000 to 181. Now, their car dealerships, most car dealerships don't sell 1,200 cars in the year.

And we're talking about Al Emerson sold 1,237 cars last month. Right. And that's about 40 cars a day. That's about 40% of the cars we sell on the year. That's 40 cars a day, and they're open seven days a week. And that's a lot of cars to sell them one day, and that's what they do. The last day of any month is a time of excitement and desperation. We've talked about this many times on this show, car dealerships.

They go crazy. The manufacturers go crazy. It's the last day the books are open, and the last day for salespeople and sales managers to earn bonuses and top off commissions. Last day of March, 2021 was bound to be very exciting and very desperate at Al Hendonkton Toyota as it closed in on Hollywood.

They reported 184 new car sales that day. Holy mackerel. How do you sell 184 cars from one dealership at one location in one day? Well, it happened. That was our January objective.

Yeah. To see how desperate and exciting things when we were down at Elhawkes for Toyota, we sent Agent Lightning to investigate. To be precise, we sent Agent Lightning, and we've never done this, we sent Agent Lightning to investigate it to literally buy a new car. The plan was to send her to Alexandria Toyota with a printed and signed official legal document vehicle buyers order from my dealership with a price so low it would really hurt to honor. Agent Lightning would also go in, check in hand, ready to pay for it, and

full, okay, no nonsense. If Al Henderson did the deal, then we'll buy the car back from Agent Lightning, and we'll sell those used car. And we still make a few bucks because we'd buy the car so cheap, we could call it a used car fully disclosed it, so it's got no miles on it, and we could still make a promise. A great car to buy. That was a plan, best way he plans, the mice and men. We chose a new 2001 Cruel L.E. with an MSRP of 21, 632. The selling price was $3,000 below invoice. I remember what

I say about invoice. That's not the price that dealers pay for cars. Our car, the true cost, this was really about $2,000 below true cost. Yeah. And we call it hard

it's, I call it triple net. Yeah. The $3,000 was $2,000 below was a net cost. It would cost them out of pocket that amount of money. They'd lose money, literally, is what I'm trying to say. Anyway, Agent Lightning was instructed to explain that she had a good deal from another toy dealership, backed up by our official signed buyer's order, but preferred to buy from a dealer closer to her work.

She was also to explain that she had heard that Al Henderson were doing. some great deals this month. So let's see what happened. I'm speaking the first person, and as if I'm Agent Lightning, female. My husband dropped me off around the side of the dealership as I walked back towards the front door. I saw a large group, we call them a gaggle of salespeople. They sat on benches in the shade of a tree. We got a picture of that. Yeah, got a good picture. Just as I noticed of salespeople, I was surprised by another one who had approached quickly from the opposite direction. His name was Wilson, and he won't know what brought me in.

I said I was there to buy a new Corolla, and then I had been shopping around, and was focused on getting the absolute lowest price I could get. I said I'd call the dealership earlier and ask if Al Hendrickson, Toyota, would beat a competitor's price, a deal, and someone named Anna had assured me they would. Well, what do you expect? You'd call any car dealership and ask him. Sure. Of course we will.

Sure. Wilson confirmed this and said he would definitely beat any competitors, deal, definitely, remember this. There's two promises. We talked some more about the Corolla. I said I wanted a basic LE without any frills. I preferred black, but I'd take white or gray. Wilson confidently said he had a huge inventory, and they do,

and would have exactly what I was looking for. By the way, when I say huge inventory, What would you see as a thousand cars at least in sock? I didn't look, but I think of their volume, and that would make sense. And by the way, they don't have exactly what they're looking for because you can't find a completely stripped corolla there. They preload it with some stuff. So there's Toyagard and an LED package, but a $200 worth of stuff.

Exactly, yeah. He asked my driver's license, introduced me to Robertson, his assistant. That's interesting. Normally, you don't see salespeople that have assistance. Wilson probably sells 100 cars a month. Wilson then handed it in my license. The sheet of paper you have been taking notes on during her conversation. Wilson returned to the subject of my competing offer

asked if it had anything in writing. I said that I had a sales order from Earl Stewart Toyota. Wolf would ask if he could see it. So I took it out of my bag, handed it to him. It was signed buyer's order. He said he'd be right back, walked over to wherever several sales managers were gathered. He came back with one of the managers. Ken, Ken had the Earl Stewart's buyer's order in his hand.

He pulled up a chair near me and sat down. He said he worked for many years for Earl Stewart's direct competitor, and he never saw Earl Stewart do business as low. Ken also said the deals they occasionally see here aren't this aggressive. Ken lowered his voice and said I just have to be honest with you they're trying to pull one over on you they won't honor the deal

he pointed out that the date on the buyer's order was March 24th and today was March 31st and Earl Store Toyota will use that to get out of the deal that's common if you read the fine print in a lot of advertisements that will say price good today only

and so that's that was a pretty good observation they made there We don't do that, but I mean, there are dealers that do do that, and it's a great way to get out. Buy the car today at that price, because tomorrow the price is going to go up. I said that the sales manager who signed the buyer's order for me, said they would honor it through 31st. Ken said, there isn't any other way to say this, but that offer is BS. They know you're shopping around, so they gave you this crazy low price, so you'd have to come back, because no one will beat the deal.

Now, that's called shooting someone in the foot, by the way. And it's called a low ball. They don't get very far. Right. It's called a low ball. And it's common practice, old school dealerships, when you know you can't get them to sign in today, you give them a price that you know the competition won't beat,

and you know they're going to come back because you know the competition won't beat it. And then they wiggle and squirm and lie and cheat, And now you say, well, they're not going to convince me, are they? Well, you came back, and sometimes you're so tired. I mean, in this case here, it's like a three-hour drive or at least a two-and-a-half-hour drive, and you're worn down.

You just beat to death. Plus the fact you've told all your friends, what a great deal you got. And so sometimes you just roll over and buy it. And just this happens. Unfortunately, the low ball does work. And, of course, the low ball is much better than giving them the price that you really sell it for, because anybody will beat that price.

So there you are. Inside, look at car dealerships. Again, I said that I was told my deal was for real. Ken then offered that maybe they made a mistake. So I said, I'd call my salesperson at Earl Stewart. I excused myself, but outside, and I called Stu. He was a spymaster general, and I explained what was happening. Stu told me to stand by, and he's sending me a picture of a new buyer's order, text it, or emailed it, and the date of it today.

So there we are. That covers that objection. I went back in, told Ken and Wilson that my salesperson confirmed that my outdoor price was indeed $16,700. $100. I said I'd get a text any minute with a new buyer's order. I got the text, showed Wilson and Ken. They held my phone and studied the buyer's order. All the numbers were the same, but the date printed on the top was March 31st. Now they're stuck, right? You got them now. They both got up, walked over to the manager's area. I waved over to Robertson, Williams' assistant, asked if he could get the car clean and filled up with gas. Lutter.

Just get it ready for me. I love it. Robertson said he had a check with Wilson first. Then Ken came running over excitedly. He told me that the vice president of sales told him to make the deal happen. The vice president, yeah. He said he believes they're going to match the Earl Stewart deal. Wow.

Now, remember, this is 2,000 below their hard cost. $2,000 truly, if they sell this car at this price, they're going to lose. Al Hendrickson, Kachang, out of your pocket, Al, $2,000, if you do the deal this way. But the vice president has approved this. I'm sure that's a real position. Before I could really react, Robertson interrupted

and said he could show me the car. I followed him outside. We found the black sand pearl, 2021, Corral, L.A. in the sideline. It was just about identical to the one from Rolls-Jourge's Toyo except this one had Toyo Guard and a massive add-inum next to the Monroney label. These are add-ons, and Al Hendrickson has on every car, and this addendum is a sight to behold. The addendum label, you better sit down for this. The addendum label, another $5,593, huge, that's a huge addendum label, on top of the Menroni.

remember what I said earlier everybody pays different prices some people pay that folks I know not many but some people pay that's how they afford to do these crazy deals that's how they can do one of those deals buys 15 of the little deals

exactly the little old lady is hammered for a $10,000 profit on a corolla and the sharp attorney comes in buys it at cost or maybe below cost or even lightning does so included the $5,593 $895

dealer services fee You could call hidden fees or anything you want in Florida. A $559.55, don't forget the 55 cents. Electronic filing fee, another hidden fee, by a different name. And there's also a $3,995 market adjustment addendum. Well, wait, there's more. $144 private tag agency fee. I mean, they really hammer you with the hidden fees or the Al-Nembersome.

if you let them. But if you don't let them, you can buy a car at Al Henderson for less than you can anywhere. Al Hendrickson's list price, and that's with all his nonsense on, is $28,425. Robinson started up the car, went over the features for me, then asked if I really wanted to test drive it,

since I'd already been to several other toilet dealerships, I agreed that I didn't need a test drive. I said I was anxious to get the paperwork done and go home. Robertson led me back inside, started with my paperwork. I didn't see Wilson at Ken anywhere. After a minute, Robertson excused himself, headed to the manager area. I texted Sue to say they were doing the deal. Just as I sent the text, Robertson returned looking dejected.

He said he hated to be the bearer of bad news, but they weren't going to do this deal. He said the top boss said it would take too big of a loss, and he was right. $2,000 hard loss. He said they're going to sell over 1,200 cars this month, and even this deal is too much for them. I looked around for Wilson or Ken, but couldn't see them. They're gone. They're out of here.

I asked Robertson, if they could at least get me the best out-the-door price for the Corolla, I'd go back to Roald Stewart to get the car. But if they lied, my kid said they would, then I'd come back and buy from Al Hendrickson. Robertson left to find the manager. He wasn't going on for long. He came right back, sat out, folded his arms,

and said, they aren't going to give me anything in writing. Of course not. Because I just use it against them. I mean, how dare you? Take my price and I ask someone to beat it. How dare you? He said they told him, I should buy it from Earl Stewart. Okay.

Let Earl Stewart lose $2,000. I got up to leave, but as I walked across the showroom, I spotted Wilson, sitting at a desk. I admonished him for disappearing and for telling me they do the deal then reneged. I said I want to speak with a sales manager

and get an explanation. Olson said he was sorry, but as you can see we're extremely busy right now. No one is available. I didn't accept this, insisted we find Ken. I said I didn't understand why Ken would tell me the vice president of sales okay the deal.

But then go back on that. Go back on your promise. Wilson said he tried to get him to come over and left. I had the feeling Wilson wasn't coming back. So I called Josh, to his brother, for further instructions. Just as Josh Stewart answered, I heard someone paging Ken over the intercom. Customer waiting. Kent came over to me to another desk.

He hedged, but eventually admitted that he did not tell. They did tell me. He did tell me that, boy, you've got to get that computer fix. They tell me that the vice president approved the deal. He reiterated that it was too aggressive, even for them, even on the last day of the month, he said he gave me their best price and began typing at his computer. He said I could, it would be 18,000, 677, but the door, out the door with all fees and taxes included. He handed me the business card and said, if things don't go, don't work out at Earl Stewart, give him a call.

I asked for something in writing, but he refused. I said I was still mad at that before driving all the way down. I was told they would beat a real predators deal. I said I felt that this was a big waste of time. So there we are. It was one of the most epic, interesting, educational for us, and hopefully for you too, experiences we've had at the dealership,

and you have to look at it from a positive and negative. The moral of this story is simply, If you are super sharp, tough, do your homework, and really, really, really don't mind the combat, you can get one hell of a deal that I'll hang for a Toyota. If you're not, they'll eat you for lunch, and you will pay an obscene amount of money. You'll pay deal with you. You'll pay thousands of dollars over sticker. So when you're to vote, don't we?

Yeah, so there's not that many grades coming in. we do have Jonathan and Wellington, who I think gives a very fair grade. He says, I'll give them a C. They do need to make a profit. You better be really, you really know your stuff if you go to Al Hendricks and Toyota. And then on Facebook, Bob gives them an F. For me, I'm not going to fail them. I still think it's a rough and tumble experience.

I personally, as a consumer, wouldn't have an enjoyable time down there. But I'm going to give them a C-minus. Sure. I've got Tim with a. D minus. So far that's it for YouTube grades. For me, I'm going to agree with Stu with the C minus. Andy with the D. Nancy. Rough and tumble is right, Stu. That's for sure. Knowledge is power. Be careful out there, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to get them a D minus. You know, I wish that we had a different scoring system. I'd like to give an A plus to the people that are super

sharp, savvy to go down Dale Hengerson and give a D-minus to the average buyer. Because if you're just average and you haven't got the moxie, don't go on down Hanks for them. If you're sharp, you can get one hell of a deal. So what's your final grade? I'm going to give my C. Okay. Very good. All right.

Spire beware and put on your body armor. A body cam would be good, too, so you can prove. Emphasis. Yes, emphasis on buyer beware. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us this morning, and we hope you have a wonderful Easter, and stay tuned right back here next week at 8 a.m. We look forward to being here with you. Thank you.