Earl Stewart on Cars - 04.17.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Off Lease Only

Episode Date: April 17, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Off Lease Only in West Palm Beach to see if she can negotiate the online price for a used 2017 BMW 330i Sedan. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Well, it's a beautiful morning in South Florida. We are telecasting, broadcasting, and getting out all over the world, so I hope. It's also a beautiful morning where you are. It's like 68 degrees here, clear skies. It couldn't be more perfect. Well, you heard the introduction, and we are what we say we are. We're a show about how to buy or lease a car, maintain a repair car in an intelligent,

a consumer-friendly fashion. I've also worded it this way, how not to be ripped off by car dealer. to anger some people. It should. And I will say this, in all fairness to the retail auto industry, things are getting better. I mean, we've been doing this show for 20 years, and I wouldn't be honest if I weren't saying if there are improvements. We see it in our mystery shopping reports that we do every week. I mean, that's pretty intense. I mean, we've got hundreds and hundreds of car dealerships we visited, and we've even gone out of state. We've been all over the state of

Florida. We focus primarily in southern Florida. And I will say this, Southern Florida is the Dodge City of the auto retail industry. It's a rough, tough place. The regulation in Florida is very loose. I hope the Attorney General's listening. I hope all the regulatory agencies are listening. But we do have some laws on the books, and they're just not enforced. You can go online right now, and you can pick up a newspaper, you can tune on a TV broadcast, listen to watch a commercial, and you will see violations of the law. Now where you have a violation of law, you should take some action, but it's not taken. And so with loose regulation and also shabby laws, South Florida and Florida, the whole state of Florida, is pretty much a rough and tumble for the consumer. You have to watch out. So this show started out, aimed at consumers and we found out that a lot of states have problems. I know no state that doesn't have issues with car dealerships. So when you're listening, if you're in Utah or Wyoming

and North Carolina, wherever you may be, check your state laws and be careful, be careful out there. The car dealerships all over the world incentivize the people, both in the service department and in the sales departments, new and used cars, by commission. And it's based on the profit. There's nothing wrong with commission. A lot of businesses work on commission, but when you base the commission on the profit that you make on the customer, then you tempt those with loose moral kind of guidelines.

When you allow the salesman, either in the service drive or the sales drive, to basically set the price, it should be set by the dealership, the business, and it should be set competitively so that dealer can compete with other dealers. Competition on the free marketplace is what allows you to get a good price on anything, whether it's a tube of toothpaste or a refrigerator or an automobile bill. you walk into a car dealership and whoever happens to greet you probably has price control. Now you say, well, there's at least a sticker on the car, the MSRP. Well, that doesn't work either.

You know, the law doesn't say it can't sell the car for more than sticker, and it happens a lot. Low supply, high-demand car, cars go thousands and thousands of dollars, tens of thousands of dollars over sticker. So if you're not educated, if you're not informed, if you're not prepared, Rick? I saw a recent post on Facebook where people were talking about GMC trucks are selling 5,000 over MSRP right now. Great example. Yeah. We'll supply high demand. You get what you can get.

Now, you can say that's free enterprise because a businessman is supposed to be able to sell his product for what he says. it isn't so much that fact it's the fact that the educated consumer can go out and buy that same truck for less than that, a lot less than that. Now not as much as he could if there were an oversupply

of a vehicle, but that's okay. I think the cap should be the manufacturers suggested retail price. MSRP that's the Monroeney label. Federal law, 1958. Senator Monroney put that into law. The sticker

It's supposed to be fully disclosed, and it's supposed to be the suggested retail. And then you can negotiate down from that, or the selling dealer can price it lower. Anyway, I don't want to go into a long land about pricing. There's too many other things on the show, for example, maintenance and repairs. And that voice you heard earlier, Rick Kearney, is a certified diagnostic master technician, and this guy knows about all there is to know about automobiles and how to fix them, and how to maintain them. So we encourage you to take this opportunity for two hours.

We're here. Rick's available. You can call them right now at 877-960-99-60. Write it down. You might not have a question now, but you will later. If you listen, long enough. 877-960-99-60. Call the show.

We try to give priority to telephone calls because we also have a text line and we can read a little bit on that and catch up later. We can't catch up on a phone call. We've only got three or four incoming lines, so we prioritize that we jump on those calls as quick as we can. Sometimes we drop the ball, I'll be honest with you, because this becomes a busy show. We build the momentum bills as we move along. Text number is 772-497-6530. 772 497666530. And if that's not enough, I mean, the conduit's coming in

for communication, they're really cool. I think we've done a good job on that. We can pet ourselves on the back. Your anonymousfeedback.com. Just the way it sounded. Your anonymousfeedback.com. That's a URL that you could click on And you can talk to us anonymously.

We don't know who you are, where you are, say anything you want. You can ask for a reply or you don't even want a reply. You can elect not to have a reply, or you can ask for the reply on the air. So you've got something that you're a little bit timid. You just don't want the invasion of privacy. A lot of people don't want that invasion of privacy. Your anonymous Feedback.com goes right to Stu's phone over there, and we will put it on the list along with the text input

and we'll answer that. So your calls make the show and Nancy Stewart sitting to my left co-hosts from the get-go back in the old days, 20-some-odd years ago when we were a half-hour show and she has built the show to a forum for the ladies too.

I mean it's no secret that ladies buy half everything including automobiles And if they don't buy it, they probably influence the purchase on a lot more. So, very, very important out there. But somehow they got left in the lurch when it comes to car dealers. And they don't participate in the show, at least they didn't used to, until Nancy got on them. And then she came up with an offer you can't refuse. She made an offer to the ladies they can't refuse.

I'm going to leave that to Nancy to explain and tell you what's going on. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars. I'm here to take your calls, so don't waste any time. If you have a question, please give us a call at 877960, and we have something here for everyone, as Earl said, and for the female caller that we so encourage to give us a call on Saturday mornings. Please give us a call at 877960. so 9960 and you can win yourself $50 if you are indeed a new female caller and that is for the first two lady callers to take advantage of that this morning and also for you folks out there

that are listening did your car make a well an unusual noise for everyone did you go into the dealership alone do you have any stories at all to share with us we certainly would enjoy that and right now well www your anonymous feedback.com don't forget that if you well don't want to give us a call or text us you can text us at www.w your anonymous feedback.com we're going to go back we're going to go to the phones and I see where we have Howard holding good morning Howard Good morning. I hope everything is fine with all of you, a beautiful day. And my question is, our comments, is for Rick. Concerning batteries, I noticed that the, I have a 2017 Camry. The 2018 Camry has a different battery, and I believe that's 18, 19, and 20. Can you explain why the battery was changed? actually it's all the way through 21 so far and they did increase the they went to a different design of battery because Johnson controls incorporated changed their design and they actually have a battery that is a same size physically but it's higher output has higher cold cranking amperage so it's just an updated design and the change just happened to come between the 17 and 18 model years So it was an improvement, in other words?

Absolutely. It improved. Okay. So what would happen if I took that battery and put it in my 2017 Camry? The 2018 battery and put it into 2017, would it fit? As long as the physical size will go in, which they should be the same physical size, maybe a quarter-ish difference here and there, that'll fit in just fine, and it'll work perfectly. So it would be an improvement for my car, then, to put this, the newer battery in.

Is that correct? It might last longer than the original battery, yeah. It probably would. Yeah, but how much more expensive is it? Now, that's difficult to say because, unfortunately, we don't get Johnson-controlled replacement batteries. Our replacement batteries actually come from, I want to say, not excite. Oh, I'm having it in mind blank here, Steve. not important yeah they they come from a different battery company and they'd supply us with

the Toyota true start batteries which are what we use for warranty replacements so that's all that we would have in stock as for getting hold of that Johnson controls industry factory original battery I really couldn't tell you how to go about that okay so in other words when I next year I'm gonna need a battery it'll be like five and a half years if I come into your dealership and say please put into 2018 battery would you do that unfortunately we would not be able to the only thing that we would have available and jonathan just reminder there by interstate is we have the interstate batteries that are the toyota true start there they're made for us by interstate i got okay one of the question the

battery have now has uh has cells with the distilled water in it you know now um you The question is, are they making batteries with the filled water in each cell, or do they, are all batteries now sealed? No, because the True Start batteries that we're getting do have vents, and you can remove the caps and add water, distilled water to it. Okay, one question. If I don't have the sealed water, can I boil water and use that water instead of the stilled water? That'll work. That'll work. Well, let me jump in there.

Boiling water just kills the bacteria. What you want with instilled water is no minerals or other stuff that could coat the anode and diodes. The solutes. Yeah. So you want to use a distilled water that is pure than boiled water. It's not about drinking. It's about how the battery will function.

True. Okay, now I went into one of the car stores, I think it was O'Reilly. And I asked for a little reservoir that I could fill each cell, and they don't have them anymore. So I had to get an eyedropper to fill the cells. They used to have a certain thing that was like a reservoir, and you would push it down, and it would fill up each cell.

Yep, I remember those. You remember those? They don't sell them anymore. Now, because Mel, went to the simple answer, a turkey baster. I bet you can find them on Amazon, Howard. Don't say turkey baster around Earl. No, no, he just gave me the answer, a turkey baser. Very good. He's having a flashback.

I'm still in shock. I'm telling you, this is something else. Okay, so thank you for your information. And as always, I learned something today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Call again.

Appreciate you. You're a great caller. Thank you. Yeah, Howard. If you get a chance, pick up a consumer report, where they have a lot of information about batteries and how you can save money and how you can choose the best battery.

877-960-99-60. Give us a call with anything. There's nothing we can't answer right here, Edel Stewart on cars. Now back to Stu. Hi, this is Stu. I didn't know I was... That was a surprise.

Boy, you're sharp as much. you remember is your name. That's good. Well, I'm great. Yeah, exactly. Good thing I was paying attention. The only thing I have to report this morning before we get on with the show and to text and everything is the mystery shopping report. So we, this week will give you an example of why we got to keep going back to car dealers. So we were at this, well, I'll tell you, it's off-lease only in West Palm Beach. We were last there last July in the summer, so like eight, eight and nine months ago.

And we got a bunch of information. We followed it up with an interview with Mark Fisher, who is the founder and owner of Offley Solney. He was the owner. He was the owner. That's right. He's sold out. He's on a mega yacht in the Indian Ocean right now.

He's still got about 20%, I think. He's in the Seychelles. No, I was kidding. But, and we had a great interview with them. We were talking about all sorts of things in the car business, especially about hidden fees and things like that. And also, uh, the Offley's only's business. business model, you know, and they will, they buy cars cheaper, and they sell them cheaper,

and there's a lot of controversy with that. And after the show, we've continued to get some hate mail about our endorsement of off-lease only, and I think a lot of it is maybe there's some education that needs to be put out there, and that's what we're here to do. We're going to educate. But we also learned some stuff that wasn't so great either. So let's see, it's a mixed bag, and you tell us what you think after the, after the mystery shopping report. And that's all I got. well how about some text let's go to the text okay let's do it

we'll start over here with our kickoff text every week it's amory and amory has a kind of a follow-up from last week and last week she was talking about the key fobs and getting having somebody break into your car so here's what she says good morning here's a quick

recap from last week I had a friend whose wallet was stolen so I tried to ask about everything could want to know about keys and key fobs so here's our final questions and I think a lot of these will be you know Rick-type questions. Can one accidentally lock their key fob in a car like a regular key? If so, can AAA still get the vehicle open? We'll do this rapid fire. No, you cannot lock the key fob inside the car. It's electronically prevented.

AAA can still open it by means of mechanical lock-picking going down through the window and stuff like that. That's right, and I've tried that. So if your key is sitting on the seat and you hit the lock, the lock will lock and open right back up. Number two, a recent news story said police caught some guys with equipment that intercepts the signal from a key fob, which can enable them to steal a vehicle. What's the range of a key fob signal? Depending upon where the key is sitting in the interference, it can be anywhere from 25 to 30 feet or quick tip for anyone. If you're in a parking lot, trying to spot your car, hold the key fob underneath your chin, and you can hit up to 70. 100 feet. Especially if you're 6'5. It works on your fore.

Yep. You basically, you're turning your body into an antenna, right? Yeah, it's really strange. It's kind of cool. I mean, it's, you know, just, I had to quit doing it because people thought I was retarded. And it really worked because so you all don't know Earl, Earl's sitting down, but he's 6 foot 5, so he's got a

really, he's like a radio tower. So he really does that. He's unlocking cars down the street. Let me ask you a question, Rick, is with the new security features, in the more modern key fobs and smart keys, aren't there rolling codes so an interceptor is not something that's really usable on those things?

The problem is that those interceptors, which they are very rare, they're expensive, they're hard to come by. And so it's not like every car thief on the street, everybody out there has them. These are like a 1 in 100,000 case, but there are those that, yes, if they can get your key signal,

they can, they will roll. along with it and they will have a short window of opportunity that they can access your car that's that's disturbing because I think my garage door opener has the same rolling code technology so I guess the same equipment could be used on that somebody wanted to get there is the potential but again you know sort of equipment is hard to get yeah people that worry about these things are just you need to loosen up and relax I mean if a if a crook wants to seal something he'll figure out a way they'll they'll hack your computer they'll

hack your smart key and you just got to relax because the odds are against it all right most people are like are more worried about the scariest possibility not the most probable probability so so don't worry about it no one's going to you know there's nothing more startling than to go park your car go in to the store earl and i this has happened several times and uh to come out use your remote to open the car and lo and behold, it's someone else's car. That would be very disturbing. Earl? Unless it's a nicer car.

That hasn't happened a long time. I think that... Are you serious? It just happened just a couple of weeks ago. Yeah, yeah. You drove home in the wrong car. You don't remember that? We were in Tequesta.

And you said, oh, that doesn't look like my stuff in the car. I said, it isn't. You're like, that's a Camero. Okay. Emery goes on and says, please recommend that you lock your vehicle with your fob, while standing next to your car to keep the bad guys with technology for intercepting your signal and stealing your car. Don't click your fob unless you're next to your car is not only realistic. I've come out of a store and run the parking.

I'm not clicking my fob trying to find. It seems to me if I'm unlucky that bad guys with the right technology could fine and steal my car before I get there. I'm going to just reiterate we just said, yes, they could, but they're not going to. You know, Ann, Mary, I love you, and I know that you, you know, I think there's a certain curse to being. so smart because you're right. You know these things. Every possibility. And of all the other things you have on your mind, I would say that, you know, the odds, I'm a statistics and probability guy, and I look at odds. You too. And a lot of people don't think that way, but I do. But yeah, I can get hit by lightning. I can have a negative reaction to a vaccine. I can have a lot of things

that can't happen, but as long as the odds are over a million to one, I don't sweat it. Right. You're pretty good at $100,000 to one, too, if you think about. Don't sweat. Don't sweat the small stuff. I mean, there's too much big stuff you've got to worry about. Get on the plane. Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Light up that smoke. No, I'm just kidding. Don't do that. Right. Right. All right. Let's jump over to Brian. Do we have any calls? I just want to. You know, I have to interrupt you because I want to read a text, and it's from Andrew. And thank you for listening to Earl Stewart.

on cars, Andrew, and thank you for the text. I'd like to read this to our audience. You mentioned women by 50% of vehicles, actually probably 70%. My wife, as many other ladies, significantly contribute to the decision of what vehicles to buy and who will sell us the car. We have walked away many, many times from a deal because my wife felt, well, He says, Uncle, with the sales team, manager, finance people. Andrew, thank you so much for joining us here at Earl Stewart on Cars and putting that information in a text. So I'm going to take advantage of this moment and tell the ladies, I remind you,

please give us a call with any question at all, or just to say hello, $50 for the first two new lady callers, 877-960-90. 960 and don't forget www.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com we'd love to hear from you and would love to hear from some volunteers. Earl came up with well he was inspired you know by the vigilantes all of the other things all the other

ideas that he's come up with and because I'm going to say what it was like 1998 whenever the internet exploded and Google came about so in this day and age and how you can go to the internet there's a lot of seniors a whole lot this is a melting pot here in Florida for seniors and we implore you to join us volunteer to help the seniors buying leasing service maneuvering their way around the internet and there's a lot of savvy people that are listening to us right now so look into that at Erwan cars and see if you can help not only us but the seniors

out there now back to Stu all right we got a text from Brian in California and we'll start off as hey guys Brian from California today April 17th is World Mustang Day and I have a question for Rick in regards to my 2018 Mustang GT My car has a six-speed manual transmission, and there's always been a little bit of transmission wine. Most manuals have a little. Over the last week, my transmission wine has gotten way louder in first through third gear. And there's no wine in fourth through six gear or in neutral. I took it to my Ford dealer, and he did a 15-minute test drive with their lead master tech.

He was polite and attentive, but said the amount of wine my car had was normal. I asked why mine had gotten louder over the last few days, and he said he wasn't sure. he told me obviously he makes a living on repair jobs so if he thought there was a problem he'd be the first to investigate he went on to say that he's been at this dealership for more than a decade and I can trust him they told me I had nothing to worry about but I'm not quite satisfied because I feel like there's something wrong I've driven the car for one and a half years and it's been the same up until a few days ago only 17,000 miles on it and the car still shifts perfectly fine in any gear any idea on what I should look for or what direction to take on this thanks for everything guys yeah if you We've got an increased noise. I would go check a different Ford dealer because it sounds to me like they're trying not to open a can of worms on what might be a case where Ford warranty is going to argue with them about whether or not to replace it. I have another thought.

I see this all the time with our customers and when you measure a problem with a diagnostic machine, it's usually pretty accurate. You paid enough money and got the good machine. Right. But when you diagnose something with your senses, be it smell, hearing, or whatever. It's subjective. Well, it's not only subjective, but it says everybody hears differently. Right. And you can take 10 technicians and you give them a hearing test and the variance and frequencies and ability to hear very intensely. This technician, Brian, that you took it to, he is paid on commission. and he would have an incentive to help you and fix it

if he thought there was a problem. He's probably an honest guy, but honest people sometimes have a hearing problem. I'm honest, I have a hearing problem. Get another technician, and nobody likes to admit they have a hearing problem. You just say, I'd like another technician. Who's the second best tech? I do this all the time in my dealership

because a customer calls up, complains sincerely about a rattle or a noise, and they're told in our service drive, we test drove it, we don't hear anything. Well, somebody else test drives it, guess what? They do hear something. So especially those types of sensory detections, have them checked by somebody else. Yeah, that's why I would suggest if not they're another dealership, especially go for a ride with them, if they'll lot.

I know COVID right now has caused some issues there. Bingo. That is very important. Because if you say to somebody in the car, there's the wine, he says what wine, then you know, either you have a hearing problem or he has a hearing problem. Chances are he does because the wine's intermittent and only comes in forth and, you know, gear or whatever. So, yeah, always go with the technician. The technician can hear it. Get another technician and try another test drive. I've had times that I've driven customer cars, could not hear the noise they were talking about.

I get the customer, and the way they happen to drive the car, suddenly the noise appears. I'm like, oh, my, well, I wasn't doing it that way. So that's why if you drive the car, you show them the noise that you're looking for, because I actually had one of years back that I spent hours chasing what I thought was the noise, and I went after something the customer hadn't even heard, and then they showed me their noise. It's like, oh, well, I could have that fixed in 10 minutes. real good point. We are going to go back to the phones and talk to John, who lives up there in Palm City, and we love hearing from him. He always has some great information to share with us. Good morning, John.

Good morning to everyone. Anne-Marie hit the nail on the head. Right on the local news in Woodson, Lucy, a regular policeman, not the sheriff department, was patrolling a hotel parking lot. That's that I-95 and accessibility. And what he discovered on just for routine patrol, two men, they showed the equipment on TV, it looked like a home computer, the size of that, and what the key fobs, here's what they were doing. They had key fobs from Lincoln, Ford's, Honders, and it's not to steal the car so much

because at a hotel parking lot, people tend to leave their items, their goods in the car, and they were breaking into the cars with their key fobs. And let me tell you what they warned. The police said, if you stay close to your vehicle, as close as you can, this equipment will not work. So that's what their suggestion was. Do not try open your car from a distance or a couple of cars away, as you discussed earlier, and that would avoid that problem.

But again, it's not so much these two men of stealing. the automobiles. It's using this equipment and to break in and stealing whatever items are inside the car. So that's a good news for people just to avoid that and use that key fob closer to the vehicle as you can, and this equipment will not work. Good tip, John. I remember saying that, I'd forgotten about that. It was going to be news about a week and a half ago. Yeah. And that's another thing I want to mention, too, which is good news for used car dealers. dealers or a new car dealers, but an increase in March of 27% of used cars across the board.

That's quite an increase in the month of March. Unbelievable. Yes, definitely. They're in demand, and they're selling, and it's really hard to get a good, use automobile, and people now are searching because naturally with the price of a new car, used cars are probably the best buys that they've ever been in history. And another thing to mention with that, also just the exact of today, gasoline is exactly $1.7 a gallon higher than it was at this date last year.

So, you know, people are observing, they're careful, especially with SU vehicles, people are demanding now more of two-wheel drive than four-wheel drive because we don't really need the four-wheel drive that much in Florida and naturally Rick will confirm it the two-wheel drive is better on gasoline per miles than a four-wheel drive. Another question for Earl, Earl, a brand-new car that you can't make in America. You can't even buy it. There's a two-year waiting list. I mean, if dealer would have one, it's way, way above the MSRP.

Can't I guess what the car is? Corvote? Yes, you got it. Right on the button. Good guess. They can't make them. The shortage of parts, and it's impossible. The used car market, a brand new one, you know, or with low mileage on it, is going through the roof with pricing.

The car is in demand. It's the first year with the mid-engine. drive, and they just can't be gotten. It's a waiting list beyond belief. It could go up for two years, and it's unbelievable that a car made in America would be in such demand. Chevrolet's very smart.

They keep that low supply. You can pretty much... It's a great car. Don't get me wrong. Corvette, I mean, what a gorgeous car and high performance and quality. But they don't sell that many. I mean, if they had to live off Corvette, they wouldn't be broke.

They make their money off their big trucks and big vans and SUVs and the Corvette is an image car and people talk about just like we are right now. So yeah, people pay all the money for that new Corvette, but not very many people, unfortunately. Well, as you mentioned earlier, there's no limit to somebody that they can pay above the MSRP. Yeah. And this is a perfect example. Exactly. You just can't get them at all.

It's like a collector's item. You keep on the, keep a Corvette long enough. You sell it for more than you pay to work. Absolutely. I followed it from when they first came out in 1953. Yeah. Never own one, but I can follow it. Well, thank you, John. You're a great caller. I really appreciate it. Okay. Looking forward to the shopping report. Thanks, John. Well, it's amazing what has happened with the Corvettes. There are a lot of people that I know. that are waiting I would say that most of them are men and the way they explained

it to me is that they were going through a midlife crisis and they kind of giggled but they they don't care how long is going to take but they're going to wait for that Corvette and they're driving a Corvette so it looks like a terribly uncomfortable I remember you brought a Corvette home yeah I just didn't have a back seat they're uncomfortable. I'll tell you one thing. I'm glad there's not too many of them on the road because they're one of the few cars that can

beat my car and I don't want I'm ruining my midlife crisis, so let me enjoy it. Okay, I think that we're going to go to Rick. I see his little YouTube sign down there. There's a little YouTube flags going on. I've got an interesting one here.

Nagin 1, our friend from out in Arizona, says, good morning. Consumer Alert, I recently found out that Carfax is reporting minor damage for parts that a consumer buys through a dealership using a VIN number. Example, tail lights are the grill. He says, my friend was recently trading in his vehicle, and his car fax showed minor damage. He was never in an accident.

He bought a new grill because he wanted to paint it a different color, but because he went to the dealership and used the VIN number to ensure the correct part, which is standard procedure, it was reported to Carfax and this was through a Ford Ford's system is also reporting in Carfax missed oil changes and missed tire rotations Is that right?

I thought on that. I know that years ago Carfax opened up reporting from dealerships so they can hook in so service records would appear on the Carfax report I'm wondering if it's an algorithm that interprets like a replacement of a part that's not a oil filter something like that it triggers something that something that damage must have

occurred but I do know that you can appeal to Carfax so I'm not sure you probably have to go to the website I would say to this the person to give the message and see if you can't clarify that with the dealership's records because that will hurt the value of the car and and it clearly that wasn't that's not right we had a we had an incident with Carfax that reported damage and there were there did not report damage right and their positively was damage. So yeah, Carfax isn't perfect, and this is interesting. So a part actually installed on a car, the VIN numbers of parts that are defective? Well, it's not a defective part.

The guy, he wanted to buy a grill for his Ford. Because he wanted to paint it to make it a pure difference, change the look. I see, yeah. And Carfax shows it as accident damage, which, you know, technically that diminishes the value the car, like Stu said. And that was just the point. point that Neg and Munn was making. So it should be able to resolve it. There's an 800 number you can contact. Let's verify that. That sounds like a stretch to me, and I'm not

questioning. I'm sure the YouTube person... Well, if you could text us the VIN number, we can do a little research, and I'll look on the Carfax report, and you know, if there's anything we can do, if there's an error, we can... We don't want a bad mouth CarMax if it's not true, so...

Carfax. I mean, yeah. There's too many, yeah. are too close okay uh we're gonna go back uh to the phones for a moment and we're gonna talk to marty welcome back marty hi how are you well thank you good i wanted to tell you a couple points a couple weeks ago you had a mystery shopper report on al hendricks and i have to agree everything you said in there was absolutely correct they're a very tough dealers to work with, but if you don't mind it, and I personally don't mind it, you can get a good deal there, but you have to be persistent and you have to have the time, and you have to be willing

to walk out. Like, my last deal that I made there, I had to walk out four times in the same four hours. And as far as them, your place is like the Taj Mahal, and theirs is like, is like, like going back, I don't know what year, that place opened, but it looks like they haven't put 10 cents into it since it opened. Is that right? I didn't realize that. Yeah, if you ever go down, have you ever take a ride down there, the place is a dump, you know.

Well, they're a huge volume of store, Marty, and I know you know this, but they're like in the top, what are the number two or three now? They're number three right now. Three in sales and the whole USA. The world. Oh, yeah. They will, but you've got to be willing. First of all, you've got to know your stuff, and you've got to be persistent,

and you can get a good deal. Sure. Oh, yeah. Maybe at the time of the month or whatever, but they're tough, they're tough there. If you're really good like you are, Marty, you're a tough guy. You're a gunslinger, and you go down there, you not only get a good price, you get an extremely good price because they have what every consumer needs to understand when they're shopping for a car.

They have competitive fever. Al Hendrickson wants to be number one in the United States. Right now, they're number three. And they're making so much money down there. They can afford to sell cars below cost if they have to. So if you're really smart and really tough, you can go to Al Hendrickson Toyota and buy a car for less money then you can buy it from just about anywhere. But if you're not.

If you're not, if you're not, then God help you because people will go down there and pay their hidden fees, which are the highest hidden fees in Florida, thousands and thousands of dollars in hidden fees. So it's their profit comes from the average. Marty goes in there and he buys a car for no profit. And then the little old lady goes in there right behind him, buys the same car,

and pays them $8,000 or $9,000 profit. So that's the way things are at El Hendrickson, Toyota. It's the truth speaks. And it's, you know, if you're smart and you really, really know what you're doing, and you don't mind. You just heard, Marty, how many times you go back and forth the same day, three times? Yeah, three, four times. Yeah.

It's going up and down the stairs. A lot of people. Starewell there. You're a tough guy, Marty. I tell you, that's really great. I got one other question that maybe Rick can answer. Yeah. On my 2020 Camry, I was getting the text on the screen so you could read the text and you press read and, you know, they read it to you.

So all of a sudden it stopped coming in. And I stopped at his, I stopped in your service department and the service advisor says, well, we got to take it in. and you may need a new radio. I said, now look, I said, I don't need a new radio. I said, I can tell you that. I said, I just need somebody that can play around between the iPhone and the car and get it to work. So nobody in the service department,

they didn't send me to anybody in the service department in order to get it fixed. They sent me over to sales. and most of even the salesmen don't know how to do it but fortunately again I'm persistent and I found the right guy in the sales department that came out to the car and he took him about 15 20 minutes but he got to get back on the screen so my question to Rick is do they know anything about iPhones and in the car system in your service department unfortunately a lot of our guys really are not up to to snuff on it, simply because, well, some of them use Android, so they're not familiar

with iPhones, but that's not really the thing. Mechanics are generally, we're wrenches and sockets. A lot of our guys are just not right there with the electronics and the, shall I say, the media, the multimedia systems. Yeah, you guys are great with electronics, but just the phone, the multimedia thing. in our dealership and I think in every Toyota dealership that the hooking up of that stuff is does go to the sales and it's usually done like when you get the car then the people that are really proficient in it we use them if somebody comes in the service with an issue like that well Stephanie or Patricia who are just excellent with it just do it because they're faster and it doesn't require a repair or a charge or anything like that it's just something it's a specialist position that is something that requires someone with special training to handle that okay well you know on the screen itself if you go to like notifications and everything on your screen there was a button that I pressed

when I first put it on there yeah it was in real light print and it wouldn't press you couldn't get it yep you know it's like locked up or whatever so the the salesperson that actually fixed it for me was playing around with my phone for I guess a good 10 minutes and got the thing to work again so I just wondered if your grandson could have probably figured it out too Marty that's right yeah it's a matter it's a matter of youth and high tech and people that are raised in it and born to it and they buy the products and they understand the products and you don't go to anybody else over 40 they're not going to be able to answer your question you'll send your grandson

Eli over there next time. Exactly. I'll have him do it with the next time. All right. Thanks, Marty. Have a good day, and you've got a great show, and your dealership is a great dealership. Thanks, Marty. It sounds like as if you've got a lot of virtues, and knowledge, persistence, patience,

it takes all of that and more to go into these dealerships today. We're going to send Jacks. He's nine months old now. He's getting that. I promise you. Our great-grandson, and I think that he can take care. Five minutes. He can take care of the issue.

He can't speak completely, but he can use an iPhone, that's for sure. Okay, Marty, thanks so much. Ladies. All right, have a great day. You're welcome. You have a great day also. Ladies, we still have a whole lot of time. Give us a call toll free at 877-960.

And the reason I give that invitation exclusively to the ladies is because the first two ladies you can win yourself fifty dollars and don't forget www.w your anonymous feedback dot com anyone notice earl's hat that he's wearing today it's great a great looking hat that's earl's vigilantes and there too is one of earl's great ideas and that was inspired also by his ideas and uh to ask you skew you don't have to change an engine let's put it that way but you can help us out and you can help the people in your community and you can become a vigilantes by just signing up i'll tell you more about that later right now we've got a call from scott and boca good morning scott

good morning people good morning welcome back thank you very much so earlier you guys were talking about smells and stuff like that. And it dragged my memory. I have a 2011 Honda Fit. And when I roll up the ramp coming up on the

95, coming up the speed, and not always, but every once in a while, I have a smell, and it kind of smells like, I don't know, burnt hair. I was wondering if any of you guys might have a clue, because I don't. Might be a mouse.

Is that a stick shift or automatic? It's an auto. I did actually open up and look for furry animals and stuff like that. Didn't find anything. I thought maybe it was something, you know, when you're coming up to speed, maybe it's getting hot, burning off oil or something. But it just strange smell. And it's not always.

I just had a, you know, when you think of something funny and it's too late, how about this rewind the tape have you seen your cat recently oh no oh please don't say that are missing any patches of hair oh you guys are giving me flashbacks here no from horrible i'm sorry i think that was a famous line from the war of the roses no that poor cat oh my god oh this is bad remember that my first thought actually is the Possibility. The reason I asked if it was... Oh, Steve, please. No. We won't even go there with opossums. No.

The smell you described, I was thinking maybe a slipping clutch, but that would be only on a stick shift. I would wonder, is there a possibility maybe one of your brakes is starting to hang up a little bit and starting to build some heat, and that would also cause a little bit of an odor, especially when you're on-ramp on 95, as you're going around that corner, it's going to put pressure onto one wheel

where the brake may be dragging a little bit, creating a lot more heat, and that would cause that odor to come in. I would have somebody check your brakes to see if they might be dragging a little bit, just to be safe and sure. And, of course, the easy way is they simply... Rick, let's rewind the tape your early suggestion.

and test drive the car with somebody and make that smell occur. You said going up the ramp on 9.95, let him smell it too. Because instead of going there, say, check by brakes, have him smell, which you smell. The only concern with that, it may be a little difficult where we're all wearing masks. I've noticed I don't smell much of anything anymore with the mask on. Just a thought that direction, but that's where I would go with it. right and as you guys were earlier saying though it's not always replicable because like I said I've noticed it maybe once or twice or you know it's not like I smell it every time you know I go to

I go up 95 to go to work every day it's like every once in a while I'll smell it and I'm like what the heck is that that's the hardest thing to find diagnosed and I don't care where you take a car If you have an intermittent problem that can't be duplicated, you're just going to have to suffer until... Is it the same on-ramp each time? Pretty much. I mean, I wonder if there's something just local in that area. There might be a pep crematorium like on the corner there. Okay, we're doing a Sherlock home thing, so...

That's an idea, at least maybe next time, if I do smell it, I'll roll down the window and see if it's outside and not inside. that's what I would try that's a good idea well thank you very much everyone wear your mask stay safe and thank you very much for all that you do thank you thank you Scott

thank you from all of us 877 960 9960 and you can text us at 772-4976530 www your anonymous feedback.com now back to Stu I have an important thing to

announced before I jump back into the text. It was triggered when Nancy brought up Earl's vigilante's Earl's vigilante you had that he's wearing right now. We have our first vigilante success story that I have to report on. And it was textbook. And the credit goes to our vigilante in Maryland. This is Robert. And Robert was what I think our first or second. He might be our first vigilante to volunteer. And the cool thing was the person and elderly woman who needed help found out about Earl's vigilantes on nextdoor.com which is a social media network for neighborhoods and you know you're like you know where do I find a good window cleaner and things like that so it was a recommendation to this woman and she

reached out to Robert and the thing is really cool it sounded good enough to her she thought there was a fee and Robert assured this was a free service so I want to reiterate that to everybody's listening this is free we're not this is complete just out of the goodness of our listeners hearts who want to help us in the mission with our show and Robert did that so she sent Robert a very detailed email of what she's looking to get she's looking for a Subaru she's terrified and she's overwhelmed with it Robert's response sound like it could have come from Earl Stewart himself he touched in all the best advice that we we talked about and condensed it tailored to her did research for her sent her links to vehicles in her price range gave her the caution her on the pitfalls

when she follows up on those listings, and he did it as good as we could have done. I want to thank you, Robert, for being the first one. I hope by listening to this, people see this is for real, and if you were hesitant before and you wanted to help, find out your, go to Earlsvigilinies.com, or go to Earleoncars.com. You're going to find it going both places

and look for a vigilante in your area. Let's send Robert a copy, a free copy, of Confessions of Recurring Curdealer. He may already have a copy, but it'll be an extra copy. and I'll autograph it. That's right. Autograph copy of Confessions of a Recovered Car Dealer. And you can either use it yourself, Robert, or you can give it to a friend.

And thank you so much. Yeah. That'll be the Vigilani Above and Beyond Award. Yeah, that's fantastic. Good job, Robert. Yeah, fantastic. We need to get the contact information so we can mail the book. Do we have it? Oh, fantastic.

Oh, yeah. Fantastic. Fantastic. Yeah, ladies and gentlemen, listen to that story. Is that a great story that's great, yeah. Just shared with all of us. And if you're tired of these car dealers and their dishonesty, we can all work together. All of us can work together, and there's proof right there.

Remember that all copies, all sales or confessions of recovering car dealer, go to big dog ranch.com. And that's right. I got a great bark. I've got a lot of respect for Rick for his knowledge, but that's one of the greatest dog barks I've ever heard. It is. It's gotten better.

Practicing. It wasn't a few years ago, wouldn't I get it? That's not electronic folks. That's Rick over here barking. Oh, man, you messed me up. I was just going to ask our audience who they thought was making that barking, that great barking noise. So you just gave it away.

877960 or you can text us at 772-49760 and as you can see we're having a whole lot of fun here and sharing a whole lot of knowledge with you you know when Scott was mentioning all that information about his car and what was going on I often wonder if most people that have a problem with rodents or you know cats or or or whatever do they store their car during the winter and Rick I think I think you can answer my question is it more prevalent whenever you store your car opposed to you know driving all year round because this rodent situation is much greater I think than anyone thinks it's big enough that consumer report did an article on these rodents and how they have to you know know, keep their teeth sharpened and so on and so forth, and they just love to chew.

Well, here's the answers. The problem is trying to get away from fossil fuel petroleum being used in making plastic, which is what we coat the wires, you know, when they put the insulation on the wires, they're actually using now soybean to create that plastic coating on the wire, the insulation. And, of course, the rats and mice love the. the soybean. They do. They also love that nice, warm, cozy engine. Soybeans are rubber. It's very, very healthy for them. But they also love that nice, cozy warm engine compartment, which also cats do as well. So when it's cold out at night, they'll keep an ear

out. You may have a kitty cat up there too. Unfortunately, rats and mice can cause wiring damage massive amounts overnight. They don't need to. Your car doesn't need to be stored. Your car can be parked just from 7 o'clock in the evening, and by 7 o'clock the next morning, it may not run because they may get in there and start chewing on things. That fast. Amazing. As silly as this sounds, mothballs actually can help chase them away. Other things that I've heard is people will spray pepper spray, little bits of it, not the actual stuff you're using, but they get like pepper oil. or peppermint oil

and they'll spray that on various parts in the engine. A bagel discussion right now, right? It's getting close to it, yeah. It's making me hungry. But unfortunately, the manufacturers are working on this. Honda even came out with a special tape

that they will wrap on certain wires to try to keep the rats away that actually has capsaicin red pepper impregnated in it and is specially marked with a simple, so that any technician that sees it knows to wear gloves

because you get that on your hands and touch your face. Oh, you're in trouble. Thank you very much. Let's move along. I read how severe the problem was in the Consumer Report. Thanks for that, Rick. I appreciate it. Now back to Stu.

I'm not going to, I had a joke, but I'm not going to share it with you guys. All right. Now, let's back some texts. This is from Ernesto. It says, Stu, good afternoon. I hope you're well. This came in yesterday. I have an idea for the Mystery Shopping Report.

on the show. It's been mentioned people pay different prices for the same car. I was thinking maybe send Agent Thunder and Lightning to buy the same car, not necessarily the same venue, the same dealership on the same day. One is a well-informed customer, and one is a not-as-well-informed customer to see the price difference. What do you think? I'll have a great day. We actually did that in October. It was Wallace, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, so we sent, it wasn't the same day. They were the following days, but they tried to buy the same car. And I've believe agent lightning got the better deal which we are surprised we thought that she might have been victimized or targeted because she was a woman it turned out but that is still a great idea and we will do it again it's just that it makes a little bit harder to manage the two but we'll get it done and report another but if you want to see what happened you can go to earluncars.com just check out the archive mystery shopping reports and you can you can read what happened or you could probably go on our YouTube channel. I'm imagining, Jonathan, you probably

have those posted on YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars, and you can watch the report as if it was live. Okay, I'm going to interrupt you for some breaking news. We have a first-time female caller. Good morning.

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars. Is it Lola? Lolly. Lally, good morning and welcome. You just won yourself $50. I love it. Thank you.

What can we do for you this morning? Well, a friend of mine asked me to ask you, because she's shy, she has a 2012 Prius, and when she backs up, it makes that beeping noise, but it's really, really loud inside the car and not that loud outside. And she wanted to know if that was normal or if there's a way. of making it quieter in the car because she's really annoying. Yeah, controlling the volume. I think Rick can answer that.

It is normal. That beep is there to let the driver know that they're in reverse. It cannot be adjusted volume. However, your dealership can turn it from beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, down to just a single beep when you put it into reverse. Therefore, it would only beep one time and then not beep again. until you'd shift it out of reverse and back into reverse. That'll help. I love that idea.

Cool. So she just needs to take it to her dealer? Yep. And ask them that she wants to have the reverse beep setting turned down to just a single beat, and that can be done in the customized settings with a scan tool. How much does that cost for it? Most dealerships do that for like a half-hour labor. Some actually do it for free.

If you're in for a normal service or something like that, a lot of places will just they'll just take care of it for you yeah you know you get on the phone you call two or three dealers and find one that do it for free i can't imagine charging for something like that so but that's a great information really yeah lilly thanks so much you know um earl and i have a few issues out with the lexas and the avalon where you have this really high pitch and oftentimes as you said it's annoying you know it really gets on your nerves but i'm glad we could answer your question and your friend uh maybe you could encourage her to give us a call but for your you know i can't thank you enough for i will i can't thank you enough for talking for her

so you won yourself 50 dollars and i can get that out to you if you go ahead and give the control uh the room your information and uh that's mike you're going to talk to you just spoke with them you have a wonderful weekend give us a call again hold on and he'll get back yeah thank you you're welcome now back to stew okay um i got one from larry it says hey it's larry again any word yet on when toota's electric vehicles will be sold in the u.s i'm so glad that you asked that question because i've been wondering myself and um recently toota teased a new all-electric vehicle um that will be likely introduced a 2022 model two of them which will be introduced in the United States, possibly by the end of this year.

One's a crossover, one's a sedan. They're called the BV series, so they're going to call them, like, and it stands for, or they're BZ Beyond Zero. I also saw an interesting report that Toyota and Tesla may be getting together to build a joint electric vehicle. Oh, that's really cool. That with Toyota's production capabilities, and Elon Musk Tesla knowledge. Right.

Who, boy. They're also, as they said, by 20,000. 25, and this is for the nerds and the geeks out there, they're going to be using a solid state battery, which is way more efficient and also charges much faster, and it's better than the lithium ions that are in, that's what the lithium ion in most of the, so that's really exciting. That's by 2025, but as, you know, we're Toyota nerds ourselves, so, but it's really exciting because Toyota, you know, in my opinion, made a big mistake by not getting on this bandwagon a little bit sooner, but I'm glad they finally are. They could have led the world in electric cars. Mm-hmm. They might still. Okay. I got some anonymous feedback.

I'm going to jump over to. All right. Here's the question. If you give a fake email address and a fake phone number when asking for the out-the-door price online, then how on the earth can you get a response? Well, I saw that, and that was my fault, I think, when I verbalized that. An alias email address. Yeah.

Yeah, you get a free email address that you own. only use for the purpose of shopping for a car. So you get a free Yahoo or a Google. Google Gmail. Yeah, there's half a dozen out there that you can get free online. You just don't use it for anything else except for shopping for a car. That way, it's not going to invade your privacy, your personal life, or anything else. Right, cool.

Actually, I just got a text from my brother, from my brother Jason, and he just said something. listening to the show and we were talking about the used car market and uh he just sent me a screenshot just to illustrate the example of one of a brand new uh 2021 tacoma double cab it's being sold now for $32,000 a brand new one and then the other screenshot was from a 2018 double cab a two year old vehicle with miles on it being sold for about a thousand it's got 30 000 miles a thousand dollars more than the new one, and it's two years older with 30,000 miles. So that's just... When you say being sold for, he's using actual data, tell them about the database we use for measuring the actual market sales prices.

Well, you can look at that. There's a program that we use called V. Otter that shows the average market price. That's what I mean. Yeah, he didn't send it from that. He was just showing it was one of our vehicles that we have priced at 30, a brand new one's priced for $32,000 and then a used one. somewhere else that was over $1,000 more than that. But that's just a good illustration of what's going on here. So if you've got to use car and you don't need it,

you should shop that car around, talk to two or three dealers, talk to V. Talk to Carvana, talk to Vroom, talk to CarMax, and shop your car. If you don't need a used car, you're never going to get more money for today. That's right. I mean, six months from now, the price will be far less. than it is right now exactly they're skyrocketing thanks for that information jason we appreciate it we are going to go to whoops uh we're not going to go back to the phones we're going to go back

to stew sure more anonymous feedback here's somebody yelling at you dad i think it's from last week because we were talking about um getting a unpopular color on your car can affect your resale value so this guy this is got an exclamation point oh you are wrong about an unpopular color on a common car will lower the trade in value some but no sorry it will lower the premium some but not two thousand dollars exclamation point well uh you know i respect your opinion it might be if you're on a Lamborghini unfortunately i know i'm right so i we see it every day and uh there is nothing and we didn't even talk about what color i mean let's let's face it if you have a family sedan let's take you let's take a uh luxury sedan or a regular

sedan, and you put an outrageous color on that vehicle, and remember, people can paint cars, too, and they do. So, you have a luxury sedan, and you paint it bright purple. Right, with stripes. And nobody wants to buy it. And the price is determined

by what people will pay for a car. I just also want to clarify, defending my daddy. You didn't say that the wrong color will cost you $2,000 as it can. It depends on the car. It might cost you a $501 type of car, get a higher end car it could cost you $10,000 if you get the wrong, you know, upper end Mercedes

possibly. So it's a, yeah, the point is to illustrate that it's a really important consideration when appraisers are looking at the vehicle because they want to find the broadest audience to resell that to. Yeah. It's definitely very, very important. What color you think you choose because you have to remember, you know, depreciation and it comes in many forms in that color. Let me tell you what. I know a few people personally that have lost a lot. lot of money by choosing something that's lime green or purple. Who wants that? It's like remodeling your apartment to your needs and then trying to put it on the market. It doesn't work. They have different needs. Another factor to consider, you see a lot of people will

have their car painted with like that pearl paint that does the color shift or the chromatic paint that changes colors almost entirely depending on the angle of the sun. Some of those paints will fade and deteriorate so fast that within two to three years, they look horrible. There's too much stuff mixed into the paint. Yeah, and you've just lost the original thousands of dollars that you spent on having that paint job done. And then, unless you're going to get it repainted, you've just lost more money on your resale, plus the fact that so many paint jobs, when they go to look at your car with a

paint meter, you've just lost more money. So be careful if you consider to do things like that. If you're going to keep your car forever like I do, that might be a worthwhile thing. Different story. But if you're planning to trade and sell it after a few years, watch out with those. Good point. We're going to go back to the phones. We're going to go out to St. Louis, where Glenn is calling us.

Good morning, Glenn. Good morning. Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars. Love your show. I've got a question for Rick that I imagine he has never been asked before. I'm intrigued. Well, okay, and I'm not expecting a lot because this is a Ford. I bought a Ford F-150 truck, and I know you guys love dogs, and I have a beautiful lab that I love.

And I have a farm a couple hours out of St. Louis, and so it's very common. I drive up here with my lab in the passenger seat. when I do the entire way up my seat felt like things like she's not buckled in he's not buckled in I'm sorry which is you know well okay but but then when I see my um airbag light for the passenger side it says it's off so it seems like he's got enough weight to trigger the sheet salt beeper, but not the airbag. Exactly. Child weight.

How heavy is your dog? He's probably 65 pounds or so around in there. So he's right in what we call the... It's like a third grader. Well, we call it the smaller person zone. Any weight that you put on that seat that is more. more than about three to five pounds is gonna activate the seat belt light.

Almost any amount of weight. If you put a briefcase on your passenger your front seat, it'll activate the seatbelt light and say, hey, you need a seat belt on whoever that is. However, because airbags can be very dangerous for children or small adults, really small adults, sitting in that front seat, below the weight of around 65 to 70 pounds, sometimes 75,

Depending on where the manufacturer sets that threshold, the airbag will not be activated. Glenn, you're not feeding your dog enough. I was going to ask. It's a chihuahua, though. As long as your dog is a happy, healthy weight, I will not agree with that one. But the quickest answer, if you just want to keep the seatbelt light up, go ahead and just buckle the seatbelt, which it should be attached anyways through a harness on your dog anyways if they're right down the front seat. just for safety factor because I'm I love my dog but she's a maniac so I actually have to have a cage to keep her in the backseat

she's a nutcase but yeah that's that's simply that gray zone in between those weight parameters for turning on the airbag so it's nothing to worry about that's completely normal I thought it wasn't nearly as sophisticated I thought there's one little weight switch and it would, you know, do both of the things. But I'm going to, I'm going to try to add a little weight. I'll put something underneath him. Yeah, put an encyclopedia. And she is, you know, I'm not going to put him in a harness. Or maybe I should. I don't know.

Well, that's just a personal thing. But the easiest thing to do is, believe it or not, if you have it, a couple of weights, like from a weightlifting set or from a, sandbags, a couple of sandbags that'll weigh, you know, that 40 or 50 pounds and increase that weight up closer to 100 pounds, and you will see that light, will, the airbag light will turn on. Well, Rick, I'm sorry, I didn't give you enough, enough, I didn't think you could, I didn't think you could help me, but you've been nothing but help, sir. Well, thanks for the call, well, I think that's our first call from St. Louis. Please call again, Lynn. but I love to hear from you.

I'll call again. Thank you, sir. Thank you. You're welcome, Glenn. Hope to hear from you again. 877-960. Or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And don't forget, I have $50 here for the second new lady caller. We're waiting for you.

Please give us a call. Anything at all. If you'd like to talk, share your experience in the dealership, 877-960. Now back to Stu. Okay, we have a text here from Michael in North Palm Beach. He says, hi, Earl, what's the percentage a buyer can discount the sticker on a new Camry? I try for 20%. I'll just jump in.

We had a very similar question last week, and we'll keep reiterating, is don't focus on that because there's so much fluff and fees and all that. you've got to focus on the bottom line, the out-the-door price, that you would actually write a check for. That includes sales tax. Discounts vary even on the same model car from dealer to dealer. And from time to time, there's too many variables when you shop discount. You shop absolute price. And that way it takes into consideration dealer cash.

These are undercover price reductions you don't know about. And there's customer cash, which sometimes you don't know about those either. And there's also the competitive situation in the marketplace, the time of the month in terms of how frenzy the car salespeople are to sell cars. So forget about discounts, forget about invoices, just go to one thing, the out-the-door price. And then if you get a low outdoor price, buy the car then if you need the car, because next week or next month, that out-the-door price will vary. And also because everybody wants to know, we're not being caging, we won't say this. I'll give you the actual data. Currently this month, and like Earl just mentioned, there's different incentives.

So there's dealer cash that changes month the month. There's also incentives to the dealers, which affects their ability to, that's the stair-step pricing that Earl was talking about. So there's cash that goes directly to the dealer that you'll never see. They get it after the month's over, and that can affect their pricing too. But to answer your question specifically, there is currently on a 2021, Toyota Camry, LE, just basically equipped $26,000 MSRP, it's a 17% markup from dead cost. So it's about $4,600 of profit. If the dealer sold that car, that they paid for, including all those incentives we talked about,

they're going to make about $4,600, and that's a 17% markup. So you're not going to get that 20%, but if you try a little harder, you might get close to 19 or 18%. And that's just the average, because you're going to find out that the average profit on a Camry is probably around less than $1,000, maybe less than $700. It's a high-volume car, doesn't have an availability problem, and it's a very competitive thing. It's a advertised special often, so $4,600 would be a home run. Yeah, it would be a very exciting thing for a dealer. and a salesperson to get. Okay, let's go over to some anonymous feedback.

Oh, Nancy's got a caller. Awesome. Okay, we're going to go out to Kentucky to a regular caller, and that's Michael. Good morning, Michael. Welcome back. Good morning. Thank you.

How you doing, Michael? I'm doing fine. I have a couple questions and let you all go. Shoot, go ahead. It's 42,000 miles, sort of half. on the 2020 Nissan Pathfinder S.L. I was asking $26,000 for it. I'm sorry, they bought the CVT and the Miles.

You haven't bought that Pathfinder yet? No. This is going on a year now. No, not that last. I know, I'm kidding. I was in Nashville yesterday. Okay. Okay, so the question, what was it, 2019, you said?

It's a 2020. 2020, I'm sorry. 42,000 miles and are asking how much? They had 26-4. Okay, I don't know what kind of fees you're dealing with up there. I remember looking this up. You're in the ballpark right there, but what you're going to watch out for is the extras that they'll try and add.

You're in Kentucky? Right. Okay, I remember that. I don't know what the dealer fee or the hidden fee situation is up there. there I know what and you're looking for a very specific one so like you know you're not likely gonna have a whole bunch to compare them to I would go just to make sure that you're seeing the same stuff I am going to Kelly Blue Book it's not an authoritative site but it does put you in the ballpark and I remember

thinking that you are right in the pocket there at the 26,000 the only variable I don't know about are the fees they might try and add so don't let them do that and be prepared to walk away if they do because if you pay those fees, you're paying out of the market for that Pathfinder. And I think Rick, I'll talk, and on the CVT, don't worry about that at all. Don't even, it's, I mean, we sell Toyot's, Nissan uses CVT, and they're problem-free, really. Nissan actually had a CVT out a couple years before Toyota did, and they've been pretty bulletproof. I mean, they had a few issues here and there, but not for the most part, they're awesome.

Yeah, they've had years and years of doing this stuff, so there's not. And we googled it after we spoke to you before, and you can look for, like, if you, if you, problems on a 2020 Pathfinder, if you Google that there's forums and people are online, if there's something wrong with it, people are talking about it. So you look for patterns. And we didn't see any with the CVT, so I think you're in good shape there. Okay, one more time let y'all go. I used the thing I learned in the book, this is y'all a lot of time, but a lot of times tell them to get mad at me. You know, when they come and meet that stuff, and I tell them, you all tell me. tell them they get mad i know but remember what nancy says they're not your friend you're there to

get a good deal for yourself and you can be friendly um it doesn't mean it has to be confrontational but they're visibly angry then you know that's not that's a terrible salesperson right there you know salesperson they get lucky sometimes and sometimes they don't make a big old commission and they got to grit their teeth and smile and shake your hand anyway or fist bump you because we don't shake hands anymore yeah amazing what a red flag you got it yeah walk away that's right be prepared to walk um okay uh anonymous feedback um congratulations earl for winning best car dealer and the post awards you deserve this every year and thanks for everything you're doing hey thank you those very excited you know we don't normally pat ourselves on the

back and uh you brought it up you know i think there is a business purpose to to mentioning that uh for three years in a row our dealership is one of the best car dealership in Palm Beach County. And I think it speaks to the fact that honesty and transparency sell cars. And we have a whole lot of people that think we have the best car dealership. It was voted on by the public. And yeah, we campaigned for it. A lot of dealers did. A lot of businesses. It was all the different, all retail businesses in Palm Beach County. it's an award by the Palm Beach Post. And to me it's encouraging that you're seeing that transparency, honesty, and ethics are being rewarded.

So it was a special honor. We're very proud of that. Okay. All right. Let's jump over to a text here. This is, I don't have a name. Kyle. It says, good morning, Earl and Friends.

I've gotten dozens of trading quotes over the years of all different types of cars I've owned. Dealers always say you can't go by KBB value. Yet whenever they give me the offer of my trade, it's always within a few hundred on KB on trade anyways. I know you guys look at auction prices. Wouldn't KB base their pricing on that too? According to KBB, they get their data and they base, they get their values on a bunch of sources, private sales, dealership sales, auction sales, and they use an algorithm to kind of crunch that together. In the past, I would say that KBB was way, way off, but it does seem to be closer to real values now. You put in a zip code, and it'll calculate based on your local market.

I don't think that's always going to be true, and especially when there's a volatile used car market like now, it's really tough to figure out. Now, Kyle went on to say, I also don't think the increase in used car values are just the chip shortage. Before you get off the KBB thing, this is the second time. a row, it's been mentioned by callers. Kelly Blue Book has become an authority and people look to it. We recommend it. We talk about it. It really disturbed me the other day. I don't know if you saw it. CarMax bought Kelly Blue Book. And so here you have a retail, the biggest retail

used car dealership in the world, buying a source of information on used cars and reliability and prices and I'm not saying if there's any collusion going on but you know the reason I hammer consumer reports so much is they would never do that consumer reports never compromises their integrity by buying a company that is out for profit I don't care what you say maybe there's no funny business going on between Carmacks and Kelly Bluebook but there's a suspicion of it yeah I yeah That doesn't sound good. Doesn't sound good at all.

No, no. But Kyle was saying, he goes also, I don't think the increase is just the ship shortage, is with get federal governments printing trillions of dollars and short time every more money, and that's driving it up. Kyle's correct in the sense that when, you know, when demand increases, this is simple macroeconomics, demand increases, prices will go up, also when supplies go down.

In this case, it's probably, it's maybe a combination of both certainly with supply, because I'm telling you right now, from our dealership as firsthand experience. We normally stock 200 used cars, and we're stock in 80, 90, and selling them the second we get them. So it's definitely a supply problem, I think, is a little bit more impactful than the demand increase. Okay, I'm going to interrupt you, Stu. We're going to go to Lanterno, where we have our second female caller, and that's Heidi. Good morning, Heidi, and welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars.

one yourself $50 oh wow thank you um i appreciate your video show it's very informative thank you what can we do for you this morning and you don't have to ask a question i think we just wait if you anything on your mind um i have a radio problem with this prius where it will go on when I first turn it on and then go off a second later or five minutes later or 20 minutes later and sometimes come back on if I leave the radio on and just blips in and out. No, I've tried turning the car to see if it's maybe a loose wire that I can get reconnected or something. And my husband has changed all the fuses that say audio on them. so I don't I don't understand what's going on here

what years you Prius 12 probably I hate to be the bearer of bad news but it's probably the radio head unit itself and my advice is go to Best Buy

or one of the other local places like that and look into the idea of an aftermarket radio the reason be the factory radio for your car, just the part alone is probably going to be over $1,000, maybe $1,200, and then there's labor to change it out. If you go to Best Buy for about half that price, they can put in an updated radio that will blend right in perfectly. They have all the different dash components make it blend in perfectly, and it will actually

use all your steering wheel controls and will give you 2021 technology such as Apple CarPlay and Google CarPlay. Rick, before she buys another, and you might be the better option there. Before she buys another radio, should she have someone actually check it out and, you know, we're going on just maybe there is a problem that could be fixed relatively expensive. What would it cost at our dealership or typical dealership to check the radio out? diagnose the problem so she knows that it is the head. It'd be, for our dealership, it'd be about $100. Some places may charge as much as $150. And really about the only thing they could do is what her husband's already done,

check the fuses, or the other option is simply unbolt the radio and just make sure the plugs are tight in the back. And as long as those plugs are in, solid, then there's really not much else for diagnosis. $100 you might get lucky, Heidi, and if not. then of course a really good radio today would be better than the one that you have in that 2012 and it'd be much cheaper so you have two options there you might get lucky thank you very much for my options I love options oh great I love options I love options

Heidi thanks so much for calling have we answered all your questions yes you have you given me something to think about thank you so much you're welcome Michael, take your information. I'll get that check out to you. Thanks again. Let me give Best Buy a plug before we get off Best Buy subject because Rick loves Best Buy.

I love Best Buy. Everybody loves Best Buy. They're copying Amazon now and there's going to be a Best Buy Prime. And it's a lot of money. But for $200 a year, you have unlimited Geek Squad. Anything goes wrong with your electronics.

They will not only fix it, they will help you set up new purchases. It is absolutely, it eliminates the guy or the gal that doesn't understand high-tech stuff, which is most of us, and you buy something, and as long as you'll pay $200 a year, you will never have to pay anybody to fix anything that you bought from Best Buy. Does that include stuff you bought somewhere else? No, no, no.

Only stuff you bought from Best Buy. Yeah, of course. I was thinking a whole man yeah I mean the question is well it worked it isn't available in all states now it's only available in a few states but they started the program and they're expanding it so yeah very cool that's a heck of an idea yeah interesting okay we got some anonymous feedback okay we're gonna go to Bob and and he's calling from Del Rey good morning Bob hi there good morning all I wanted to tell you that I joined up as one of your village vigilantes as soon as you announced it. And I was surprised that I didn't get more phone calls. But I did get a call from a young man. I believe it was in South Carolina, inquiring about a Mazda.

And it was really a pleasure helping him through the process. He had already gotten a lot of information from you. But I think he just needed a voice on the other end of the phone. Okay. And as I said, I just wanted to mention it was nice to be able to offer that assistance. Well, Bob, thank you. We're going to send you a copy of Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer, and we're going to make that a tradition. Anytime we get a report like that from one of vigilantes to show our appreciation, so autographed copy. Oh, thank you very much. Thank you.

Oh, you're welcome. Is there any other questions, Bob? No, no, I just want to have no questions. I wish my opinion. Oh, great. Love opinions, definitely. Thank you for calling and give us a call again. 877-960-99-60. And, you know, I have to say something real quick about used cars. You know, I got a couple of questions this past week about selling a used car. And the consumer, you know, really needs to take into consideration that that's gold. And you don't have to take that car into the dealership. You can go to three or. more different places and like I said it's gold and you can get the highest price for that used car everyone's looking for one and if that's not enough you know how I love consumer report well April edition has the best used cars for under $20,000 can you believe that so if you

need a used car now is the time to purchase now back to Stu okay anonymous feedback here says, I read that the semi-conductor shortage will last well into 2022. How are you faring with inventory and how long does Toyota anticipate the shortage affecting its dealers and customers? So, well, it's affecting, that's for sure. Our inventories and new cars is as low as they've ever been. But Toyota is assured us that we will start to see this thing start to relieve in the summer. So that's a few months for us. the rest of the industry and other industries will

I read the same thing that the rest of the year will be facing shortages and I'm sure Earl can weigh in on that because he's addicted to CNBC Well it's like anything else The reaction always overreacts Pretty soon it will be up to our eyeballs and micro circuits

And there'll be too many of them And pretty soon there'll be an excess supply of vehicles And there'll be prices will drop like a rock So, you know, if you want advice, as far as buying, I wouldn't buy right now. I'd sit back and wait, especially on used cars. I think that market is going to turn around. And I think the same thing with new cars. It's a seller's market today.

The dealers are getting rich. The used car dealers are getting rich. The new car dealers are getting rich. And the price per car is higher than it's ever been. And if you have to have a car, just be real careful. shop and compare. Only thing, you're going to pay a higher price for a car today, you just don't want

to pay one that's a lot higher than everybody else is paying. Especially if you're paying more than a new one. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Well, Stu. Yep, we have another anonymous feedback here. It says, I think we can

help this person. This sounds like an easy one. Earl frequently mentions that if you want to check multiple areas with Costco car buying service, because when I log in in an automatically picks the local dealers and I don't see a way to enter an alternate zip code. As you know, when you start the selection process, dealers are notified immediately and the game begins. That's true.

Well, Costco will help you. If you call the 800 number, they can help you. You don't even have to mess around online. And I'm a little confusing. When you go to Costco.com, the first thing that comes up should be a box with a zip code where you identify your location. But if that's not coming up, maybe it's a computer or browser issue, I believe, on that first page, there's an 800 number and you can contact them there's definitely a contact yeah there is right here 8-1-800-755-2519 and just say hey listen I want to

find a dealer in this area or this and they'll do it for you so they're really easy to deal with and that that will solve that problem there are a lot of people that commute they work in one area they live in another area Costco understands that and we've we've done it in the past we've done it ourselves to try to shop mystery shop Costco so yeah it's not easy to get different dealers at Costco you say they make it a little harder but you can get around it by calling them

I got an interesting text here this might be an interesting conversation we'll wrap it up soon because we have the mystery shopping report coming up it says are salespeople more likely to acquiesce to the negotiation tactics of someone who they perceive as physically strong versus physically weak

what customers are salespeople most intimidated by you know there probably is a subconscious feeling of intimidation with a larger person. So I would say, yeah, that's a natural reaction to a big, imposing-looking person. But I will tell you... Except for big, dumb people.

Huh? Maybe. Big dumb people. They don't care. They get in trouble all the time. But this is what customers are salespeople most intimidated by, and I'll tell you, I said, what most intimidated by are the shrewd negotiating types. Everybody has a character.

So the Earl uses the high-powered negotiating attorney. Those are That's who intimidates people. Salespeople are not intimidated by people who they perceive as weak from a negotiating standpoint, a young person, a minority, an older person, someone who doesn't speak, English is a first language, anybody where they sense weakness there. But the person that comes in with a stack of research and folders and all that, they tremble. As a matter of fact, and oftentimes they might even cut to the chase and give you a better deal just because they don't want to deal with your negotiating. knowledge is power ladies and gentlemen you don't have to work out to intimidate a salesperson you just got to be you have to have knowledge knowledge is power that's right and let's see I think I have a couple more we can wrap it up this may sound like a stupid question

but could you guys not take your new cars at dead cost and sell them as profit as used cars or is that not extreme you're a genius because guess what that does happen but there's a little bit of an issue when you see sell when once you a new car reported it as sold to the manufacturer it can't be sold as a used car um for a period of time and it's 120 days so if it's registered before that any incentives that the dealer earned on that car gets charged back it's taken away from them so um they can but the problem is you have to let the car sit there for a few months and who knows what the market's going to be like in three months um we buy new cars for our use car inventory and small little handfuls here and there and we do that and and the cars lose their value over time,

and then we sell them recoup the profit. That's a little complicated, but it does get done. Good on you for figuring that out. Years ago, when Prius first came out, and it really caught on, and it was high demand, low supply, Priuses were going for crazy money. Deals were marking Priuses up back in,

what was it, 2010, 2011? Well, that was the first wave. The big wave was 2006, 2007. It was insane. So they were marking the dealer, thousands of dollars and they were auctioning them off actually so they're paying way over MSRP and we ran a Prius through the auction just to see what dealers would pay for it and it cost we were able to wholesale we did a lot of that you know so

what we were able to tell customers that were had just recently bought Prius's maybe three or four months ago we said listen we'll give you what you paid for your Prius including all the sales tax and get a brand new one and then we take that trade in that we paid you know full list everything and then we take those of the auction and and make a couple of thousand in each one it was really crazy good times what a plan that was the era that was the Prius era that was when Prius was king and and then we were the we were king of the Prius's anyway I think we're all caught up I'm all cut up Rick do you have any YouTube's down there not at the moment

Okay. However, on Negan, where his question about the Carfax thing, I just said, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to do a little experiment. I'm going to pull a Carfax on my own vehicle and then I'm going to buy a part, a body part that might be considered something that could be damaged in a small minor accident and then wait a couple weeks and then I'm going to do another Carfax. We'll see if that anything comes up with that. I'm going to play with that a little bit.

There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, we're not taking. any more phone calls because we are getting ready to go to the mystery shop. We went to off-lease only in West Palm Beach, and we've been there before, and it's an interesting mystery shopping report, and that's why I ask you to go ahead and vote on the mystery shopping report because you are an important part of the show. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, off-lease, as Stu mentioned earlier in the show, they're a pretty cool dealership. There are used cars

and it's unusual to see a large volume used car, I mean really large volume, come from such, well when they started out, they had a rotten little lot on, what was it, Lake Worth Road, I think. Yeah. And it was just a scuffy place and lousy building and dirty cars and

packed in there and it was almost a joke. We We used to laugh at them. And suddenly, somebody figured out what was going on, and now it's grown into a huge, huge used car dealership. They're actually out selling the biggest of all used car max in this area. They don't sell more cars than CarMax nationally, obviously, because CarMax has so many different outlets.

But they're big now. They have four locations, off lease only. West Palm, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami. And they sell thousands of used vehicles every month. They dominate franchise new car dealers, used cars, and independents. And they're amazing. H. Craig, they outsell them. So private, now they're not private anymore because Mark Fisher, who founded it.

And you got to have credit to this guy. He's like the Mark Zuckerberg or the Jeff Bezos of the used car world. He came, started out with a little bitty store, and he's turning it into, I can easily see them being bigger than CarMax one day. They have the formula, the Walmart of used cars. Nobody figured this out, except Mark, I give them credit, and... And Mrs. Fisher. Yeah, and, exactly, and Mrs. Fisher. Thanks, Steve.

So, around the time we last shopped off-leaves-only, we actually had its founder, that was Mark, who's talking about, as a guest on the show. He called in. We discussed Offleash Only's business model, including the sale of damaged vehicles. Now, counterintuitively, that is the secret to their success. They realized a long time ago, before any battles even thought about it, that just because a car had quote-unquote frame damage,

that was the term in the industry, He didn't touch you. It was like a leper. Oh, that car's got frame damage. Don't buy it. Don't retail it. You'll get sued. Frame damage. Well, it turns out, first of all, there's no frames anymore. The cars had become unibody without the frame. And so the damage to a unibody can be bad or it can be nothing.

And it can be fixed. And the car is perfectly good. And so Mark Fisher figured that out with awfully zomi. And he'd go to the auction when all the other car dealers are passing, they don't want to bid on these cars, they don't want to buy, and they don't want to trade them in. So he's buying these cars hand over a fist, and he knows that they're safe, and nobody else realizes it. So that's how he got his foot on the door. Now more and more people are starting to come up with it, but even CarMax, or Carfax, I should say, hasn't caught up with this,

and they oftentimes will mention cars that have frame damage as if it was something really, really bad. Well, it can be, but not necessarily. Anyway, here we are, and we talked with Mark about the dealer fee in Florida. That was another thing that we respect and admire about him, and they fought this. They tried to, their legal team was trying to get the dealer fee fixed in Florida, and at a low rate. He never dreamed that he could have it eliminated. And Mark felt that he was charging a $399 per-delivery charge, and it was okay.

and a $99 tag agency for our fee and said, that's okay. So we let them slide on it. We don't like it. We don't think if you're going to have a hidden fee, dealer fee, called what you will, it should be included in the advertised by the car. Why separated? Well, we know why it's separated, so you can increase your profit. A lot of controversy from Mark's interview on the show, and we are still getting calls, and criticism. A lot of the dealers out there, because off-leash-only has become such a factor now in the used car market,

they're trying to assassinate them. And I think some of these anonymous feedbacks we're getting on-offlease-only are other dealers that are jealous because they are selling so many used cars. Offleash-only in all of our previous message shop... You skipped... What I skipped? previous paragraph. Oh, yeah, well, I just talked about the unibody damage does not necessarily mean anything. And that's something that you need to check out because even the Carfax report will give you how serious it is. They'll say serious, but it might not be. People truly

don't understand. Take your car to a qualified technician, preferably a collision repair shop, But any technician should be able to look at a car and say, yes, this has unibody damage, but it's definitely going to affect the performance of the car. So we gave them a pretty good score. Another thing he slipped up on mentioned in the report here is the Takata Airbag, but just about everybody's slipping up on the Takata Airbag, and we don't even talk about it on this show anymore. We have so many other recalls.

Can't find them anymore. Yeah, there's so many other recalls that are ignored. Why pick on the Takati Airbag? So anyway, as I say, we have a B on the Good Dealer Bad Deal List.com, and I guess that's about the highest, one of the highest scores for any used car lot. We still recommend off lease only. What we did this time is we look for a 2017 BMW 330I, that we found that had a damage, and it was reported damage on the Carfax, a vehicle history report.

In addition to the accident, the Carfax also reported that the seller disclosed a structural damage based on the results of visual inspection. So structural and frame, and this is all the buzzwords that people talk about, that, again, can or cannot be serious. You just don't know. There should be a more definitive measure of what damage is serious. Well, that's why the next coming up with the company that they use is very important. But this is true frame is not something the public is aware of, and they don't use it, and we don't talk about it on the show,

except we're talking about it right now. But true frame is a report that does a thorough job on inspecting a car as to whether or not there is how bad the body damage is. This particular true frame report identified previous damage that was repaired. It also had a certificate of inspection, but nothing that stated that the vehicle was sound and free of issues related to the prior damage. So the reason I brought up is because I got confused. The true frame issues a certificate when they bless it as being structurally sound.

and we couldn't figure out if this was a good or a bad report. It did identify some of the damage on the car, but it didn't have the, like, True Frame has a thing called Certificate of Integrity, and that wasn't on this report? Actually, it was, Stu. I've got it. Secretary of inspection. Yeah, no.

Now they mention, if you read the fine print, it says on the certificate of inspection that it is a certificate of integrity. It's in the front print. which I don't know why they did that, but. Okay, yeah, they changed it because it used to be the headline was certificate. Exactly, exactly. Maybe it was, they were going too far with that, and they said, well, they can't really say that,

but they're saying they've inspected it, yeah. Yeah, so it says here, has conferred upon this vehicle certificate of integrity, and the title is certificate on inspection. So they just change the title, and it's confusing. confusing to us and we're professionals consuming to the consumers so work needs to be done there well what concern I mean I don't want to give any too much away was that that would be a great tool for this dealership to really show that to the customers and it wasn't mentioned by the salesperson as you'll find out so we get into the shopping report and what a great tool to justify that that damage was

exactly as you said inconsequential to the ownership of the car salesperson probably didn't see it either I mean, I just, I called ahead to make off, I'm speaking as if I were Agent Lightning now, our female chopper. I called ahead to make sure offleash only still had the BMW, I was targeting. I spoke with Jessica, was also able to confirm that it was available. She still asked if I could hold for a salesperson, you could have the car ready for me when I run. I agreed, and a moment later, Marcello was on the line. We agreed on 9.30 a.m. appointment and Marcello said that he had the car ready for me. I arrived at 9.30 on the dot, parked, walked inside the sales building. Everyone wore a mask.

I give him a plus for that. It was immediately greeted by a woman who asked if I had an appointment. I said Marcello was expecting me. Another salesperson overheard said that Marcello was out back getting a car ready for a guest. I said that was me that he's getting that ready for it, and he offered to lead me back to find him. started following, but Marcello showed up, and we introduced ourselves. He said the car was ready, parked out back with his first question was unexpected. He asked me if I'd seen the Carfax report. That's a good sign. Online, I said I hadn't.

Marcello took me over to a computer, said he was going to review the vehicle history report with me. Looking at the computer screen, he remarked that their price was much lower than KB, Kelly Blueboat value. And again, I mentioned earlier that, you know, Carfax, the retail store. CarMax, Retail Store. Somebody ought to change their names. One of the other one. I don't know which one, but anyway. CarMax, the retail store, bought Kelly Blue Book, and that's worrisome.

It said, probably had been an accident at some point. Marcello pulled up the Carfax report, quickly pointed out the accident, and damage report from 2017. He showed me on the diagram where the damage had occurred and marked it was just a small accident and really shouldn't be a problem. Marcella moved on to highlight other parts

of the report, like the fact that the car only had one owner. And the answer, I would still take it for a test drive. I said, of course. We walked out to the car, Marcelo had to be the key. He asked for my license and insurance cards, said he'd be right back and return

with a form for me to sign, accepting responsibility. were damage to the vehicle. I took to her out myself, but before I could, I had a security checkpoint to get through, I had to pull up to a security guard who scanned my driver's license

and asked me to present the signed test drive form. And I did, and then I had to wait to someone else attached a license plate to the rear of the car. All that for a 10-minute test drive. Well, it's, you know, every now that people steal cars

and they wreck cars, so they're being careful. I returned, parked around Marcello. He asked me how my test drive was. I said, I really liked the car. He asked if I was ready to move forward so he could get the final numbers for me. We went over to his desk. He sat down, Marcello went through some qualifying questions

like whether I was paying cash or financing. I said, I had pre-approval from Capital One. That's a bank. Marcello said, I need to get that letter for him. He went over the numbers, printed on a worksheet, the top line purchase price was $20,999, same as the online price. Okay, here we go. $499, not $399 as it was eight months ago, $4.99 pre-delivery service charge, and there's also a $99.99 was an electronic, yeah, a tag agency fee. and one that isn't mentioned here

and you wouldn't find out to later I saw it on the form another $20 charged for a temporary tag yeah that's just the cost of the dealership yeah exactly it's a fee I think there is part of it I think that goes to the state but I'll look into that it could be legit

temporary tags are something the dealer elects to buy not you and a dealer doesn't have to put a temporary tag on a car you know he doesn't even have to do the tag work for you exactly so any any cost a dealer also has to pay a commission the dealer has to pay his light bill the dealer has to pay his phone bill but he doesn't dealer doesn't have to charge you for that and add it to the advertised price of the car so hidden fees dealer fees whatever you want to call them they are profit and they are

cost to the dealer which should be borne by him you know cost that you pay for is So profit is profit any way you look at it, and it all should be included into the price that you pay and are told about or it's advertised. So this says $600 dealer fees, it's a little over $600 in dealer fees. That's a little troublesome, troubled student me that these dealer fees are creeping up and there's something that should be confronted. I say the same thing to J.M. Lexus. They have a very small dealer fee, and I talked to the general manager there. He's uncomfortable with it, too. If you advertise no hidden fees, as off-lease only does, you should not have no hidden fee.

What is the hidden fee? A hidden fee is something that's added to the expected price, the price that you recorded or advertised. Martell asked me what I thought. It looked great. of the price was negotiable. He said no and assured me that it was a great deal. He reminded me that the car was still under factory warranty and then I

could return it for a full he just hit me ahead with the microphones do. You're making me mad. Thank you very much. Wacking on the head. Yeah. You're getting farther from the microphone. Yeah, I'm saying that but I okay. He said he had to get it cleaned up. I said that it would be okay

because I needed to run home and get the Capital One letter. I'd forgotten it. That was my excuse. We agreed that I would call them back before it came. I also cautioned everything may have to wait until the next day because I had some appointments coming up.

So here's, here we are on the epilogue. A lot of worrisome things there. I think we're worried about the dealer fee creeping up. I'm worried about the fact that I have a full-page ad

I saw on the Palm Beach Post a week ago. That's when I asked that we shop off lease only, and then the full page ad in the Palm Beach Post, the dealer fee was in a fine print practically unreadable. In fact, it was unreadable. I literally had to use a magnifying glass on the actual ad to read it. Now, my eyes may aren't as good as they once were, but when you have fees, they should be clearly displayed. First of all, you shouldn't have the fee. But if you're going to have the fee, don't hide it and include it in all of your advertising and your quotes.

So that was troublesome too. The way they advertise, and they say no hidden fees. In the advertisement, the big part of the ad, they say no hidden fees. And that's not true. There's a hidden fee, something you add to the price that customer didn't expect to pay. At any rate, we did talk about the true frame.

report and there was a confusion over that. True frame changed the name and there was an integrity and there was an inspection report and this was an inspection report but it said it was the integrity port and the fine print on the guarantee. So I have shame

on them I think they should call it what they've been going. And Marcelo if you're listening that's a great tool. Use that with all your customers. It's better than just your word. You said hey it's probably not a big deal and it turns out it wasn't a big deal but you get something to back you up you're going to sell more cars if you use it. For all I know Marcella's selling 75 cars a month.

I have no idea what he's doing. You can always sell more. Exactly. So there we have it. We're coming to the vote now and all of you can vote and we're giving online votes. Yeah, we got, they're coming in. Guy gives him a C plus mainly because of the fees. That's why he's not giving him anything higher. Otherwise it's

good. Linda, a little tough there. It gives off-lease only a D. Jonathan Wellington, who is, I would venture to say almost as brutal as Linda is, and he gives him a C says they initially sounded reputable, but then he didn't like the numerous hidden fees, and I think we're all on the same page. And then Mark's, it says straightforward, informative, and company, gives them a B.

I'm going to say, I would have given them a higher than a C before, but the amount of their hidden fees is now rivaling a South Florida average, so they get an average score for me. I'm going to give awfully only a C. I've got Mark from St. Louis with a C-minus for creeping up dealer fees. Tim, dealer fees strike against C-plus, Mark Smith, C-minus. And for me, I'm going with the C-minus, not because of the amount of the dealer fees, but the fact they say they don't have them, and they do. Yeah, good point.

Yeah, that was, to me, I'm going to lower their score from a B to a C because of the fact that they're, if you have fees, we'll let you slide. But when you say you don't have fees and you do have fees, then that's not acceptable. So, Mark, I hope you're listening. You've got my number.

I've got your number. If I don't hear from you, I'll call you, and I'll refer to that. You probably didn't see the end. I mean, Mark is not active day to day now, and hopefully you still have some influence, Mark Fisher, on how off-lease advertises, because, you know, it's still your store.

It's your baby. I know you feel like you created this, and it's quite an accomplishment. I don't think you want your name tarnished. And I've also got Wayne coming in with a B-minus. Very kind of generous on this part, I think. I'm going to give up. Does that bell sing them at the end of the show?

The gong? There you go. Hey, I'm going to give them a D and the reason $20 temp tag, please. In these troubling times, let's take care of these people that come in and respect you and want to buy a car at your place. Thank you so much, all of you, for tuning in to Earl Stewart on cars,

and we'll be right back here next week at the same time. Have a wonderful weekend. Go ahead. Right. Right, go.