Earl Stewart on Cars - 04.25.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Braman Honda

Episode Date: April 25, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Braman Honda to see if he can purchase a low mileage 2012 Honda Accord to see if the sales rep will disclose the Takata Airbag Recall from the CarFax Report. 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. “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 LinkedIn site. through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting self-warded dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. Well, it's good to be back. We're back live. I guess if I say that, we can't use this for a rerun in the future, but the recording you just heard, of course, was a recording of my voice. and now I'm live in the studio with the team. The regular team that a lot of you have been listening to for years, almost

17, maybe over 17. I lose track of the years. We've got Nancy Stewart, my co-host, also my wife, got Stu Stewart, my son, and he's also our, as I said earlier, on the recording. He's our cybermaster. He's our mystery shopping expert. Got Rick

Kearney sitting to my right here. Rick's Rick's worked for me for over a quarter century. Makes me feel old when I say that. Makes you feel old. Makes me feel old. So Rick is the world's, I won't say the world's foremost authority, but the most authoritative person I know on the mechanics and electronics and the computerization of automobiles.

Anyway, we're back live. We took a couple weeks off. You may have heard about the pandemic. I mean, you've got to laugh at it, folks, right? biggest crisis really in human history. Some people argue that 1918 the Spanish flu was pretty bad. My father lived through that. But as far as I'm concerned, I was born in 1940. I'm seeing nothing like this. So thank you folks out there and radio, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, wherever you're following this. Thank you for being a part of the show. We consider you

the essence, the most important part of the show. Your questions. and calls, your text, your YouTube post, your Facebook post. This is the fodder for the show that we need to answer questions and listen to you with what you had to say. Special time during this corona crisis. The show will continue talking about automotive because that's what we do. We're not going to hear stories about the corona crisis. We hear too much of that already.

on the news and everywhere you turn. But we're going to be talking about how to buy or lease or maintain or repair your car without taking advantage of. We talk about that all the time, but during this very unique crisis that we're in, we find ourselves in an interesting dichotomy. It's very scary to buy anything. very scary to go outside the house. But there are some great bargains out there in retail,

and particularly in automobile buying and leasing, even repairing and maintaining. But you have to be very careful. We're going to be talking about that largely. There was some blogs that I did recently from Earl on Cars. And by the way, anything that I say, you can usually find it on our blog. one of the most recent blogs is called

buying a car during a pandemic best of times and worst of times and I say you go to rollancars.com and you can read all these blogs we'll talk about them a little bit on today's show and here's another one I did earlier compassion

car payments and the coronavirus that's an interesting look at how you can get relief from lease payments buying your installment credit payments. We're seeing a lot of this for giving of debt and helping the people. We give you some guidance now

if you're having a hard time with your lease payments or your car payments. And they'll also be talking about, and this is another blog, coronavirus, car dealers and consumers, online shopping. We've always advocated online shopping. Now online shopping is becoming

the standard. And when this is all over in a month or two or three or whatever, you're going to find you'll be buying a whole lot more of everything online. It's the safest way if you do it right to buy a car. And we'll talk about that today. If you have any questions, as I said earlier, you are the most important part of the show. And our call-in number is 877-960-99-60. I'd like you to write that number down, please. If you've got a pencil handy, 877-960-90-960, we'll prioritize the phone calls

because that's more personal. We'd like to hear your voice. And Nancy Stewart, my co-host, in just a minute, is going to tell you about a slam-bang-duzi of an offer for first-time female callers, the first two female callers. I'm going to let her tell

you what it is. But if you're a regular listener, you know what it is. But if you don't you're not going to believe this offer for the first two female callers to 877 960 and you can text us you can text us it's area code 772 49730 again that's 772 4976530 if you haven't listened to the show please write the number down the text are kind of cool because we accumulated a backlog as we go through the show, we're on the air from 8 o'clock this morning until 10 o'clock, 8 to 10. And if we get into a subject and we don't get to the phone calls or the text,

we usually catch up toward the end of the show. So that text number is 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530. And as I said, please write the number down if you don't, if you have them. already done that and we will prioritize as I said earlier phone call so let's move over and I want to welcome Nancy Stewart back by the way in full transparency one of the reasons that we missed a couple shows is Nancy had had some symptoms and she was tested and she came through clean she's healthy and happy and before that Emily Stewart Nancy or Sue's wife my daughter-in-law also had symptoms and

Stu had to quarantine himself at the home. And so there was another reason. So it wasn't just we decided we didn't want to do the show. We had some pretty valid reasons. And we have doctors approval now. And then she got her doctor's approval yesterday. And so we're all approved to be here. And we're being very safe.

I have my little mask here. And I have my little gloves. I've got my Purell. You look a little bit like a cereal. Yeah, I got my Lysol. And we're all here to be very careful. And so with that said, Nancy Stewart, the love of my life, my co-host, and my wife, tell us about that fantastic offer we got for the ladies out there.

Oh, shucks. I'm speechless. What an introduction. Hi, folks. So glad to be back with all of you right here in the studio, including Jonathan, who keeps us, you know, on the straight and arrow with all of his technology that he blesses us with and the show goes pretty successfully you know there's so much negative media focus out there and we're going to focus on a whole lot of positive because there is a lot of positive in the auto industry

especially for you know auto insurance online shopping the best best time to purchase a vehicle if you're careful. And also, on a positive note, the ladies? Yes, the ladies. If you give us a call this morning, you can win yourself $50. And the first two new lady callers, 50 bucks. So get on the phone. Give us a call, 877-960, 99-60.

and you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And don't forget to go to Earl on Cars where you can read all of the latest and greatest information on the coronavirus car dealers and consumers online shopping. Buying things on the Internet, hasn't that skyrocketed? Welcome to the 21st century. Who would have thought it would have cost more for one? water than oil.

Who would have thought that there would be 13 states out there, 13, where you can purchase gas for a dollar and under. It's crazy times, and we got one crazy show for you, including the mystery shopping

report. I hope everyone understood what I said. I've got a deluxe mask on. So back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, well, let's talk to Stu Stewart. He's our spymaster in charge

of mystery shopping and general manager of the dealership that we own and we would like to have his view on things and mystery shopping report. Well it was kind of nice having a break for two weeks. The mystery shopping report

that we have today is actually from two weeks ago. It went out on April 9th, I think. He went out in the field Agent Thunder did. And so that's been in the can waiting for us to go. waiting for Nancy to get cleared for the show. But, you know, it's been an interesting time. You know, we talk about the change to the car business

and the age of coronavirus, and we're living it. So we're watching, like, almost a study in human psychology, watching the customers. We're obviously at the dealership. All the car dealerships in Florida are considered essential businesses, primarily for the repair portion of it, but also for providing vehicles for people to drive. So that puts us in a kind of in a tough situation.

You know, we want to make sure that we're doing all the proper safety precautions for our customers and for our employees, and we're accomplishing that. But it's a challenge because there's a lot of fear and uncertainty, but we're making our way through it. It's kind of interesting, you know, living in historic times, you know, there's no real precedent in our lifetimes for it. So we're just kind of adapting. One of the phrases we're using a lot at the dealership is, you know, there's not an owner's manual for this.

There's no set of instructions telling us how to get through it, and we're kind of just using our best judgment, and hopefully we're doing the smart things. And the radio show is a great outlet because we're hearing not just from the people that come to speak to us at the dealership and our friends and family on Zoom and Skype and FaceTime. We're hearing from a whole wide swath of the community and their concerns. And so I feel really good about being part of a reliable information source to help people get through this. Yeah. Rick, as I told you, I've done the business for over half a century, over 50 years, and I've had a lot of technicians, and he's about the best. Certainly in modern times, there's nothing about a car.

Whether it's a Honda or a Chevrolet or a Toyota, he knows how to fix him. He knows how to diagnose problems. He can steer you in the right direction. We're just talking before the show. And I was talking to Rick about how business was. When this thing first hit, the business almost stopped. And now it's starting to pick back up again to give you a little pulse with the way things are going locally in Palm Beach County.

But Rick was, all the dealers now are doing pickup and delivery. And that's an interesting change in the way business is being done, both in buying, retailing, and servicing. So Rick, give us a little brief idea of what's going on in your world. You always say, welcome to my world when you do a speaking engagement. Well, it just seems like I spend more time at work than I do in my living room. It's because I do enjoy my job. I have a lot of fun with it. And I'm one of those that when I get a problem child car that it seems like nobody else can figure it out and they pass it along to me, I just turn into a bulldog and dig right in.

I love figuring those out. But with this new situation, the new world here, the way things are going, things are changing a lot at our dealership. we're seeing customers that aren't sure what maintenance needs their car might need, aren't sure what repairs they want to do. They're not driving as much. A lot of people simply aren't driving at all anymore. A quick hop to the grocery store once every couple days. And because of this situation, they're all staying home.

As a matter of fact, Mark Ryan, one of our YouTubers here from North, let's see, let me make sure I get this right now because we have two marks in Iowa and Mark Ryan is the let's see northeast Iowa and we have Mark Smith down in southeast Iowa but Mark Ryan's asking

he says are there any special maintenance suggestions for cars not being driven as much and my best advice there is stick with what the factory recommends don't deviate you don't need to change anything just stay with that like

with the average Toyota it's every six months or every 5,000 miles is what the factory recommends. Stick with that with your cars. However, for your home maintenance, I would recommend go out and start the engine up and just maybe even drive around the block a few times. Sure. But let the engine run at least once a week for about half an hour to 45 minutes just to kind of charge the battery up, exercise the engine, get that oil flow

through it, get its heart pumping a bit. Yeah. And just, even just a little short drive, just to make sure everything's loosened up, make sure your tires don't get a flat spot on them. I would add something also for the fact that these cars are sitting and a lot of people are self-quarantine.

And as Rick says repeatedly, you have to service your car based on the owner's manual recommendation. And the owner's manual looks at time and mileage about equally. And if you don't drive your car, you still need to bring it in for your routine maintenance on a time basis.

For example, if it's six months or 5,000 miles, you don't put any miles on the car. You still need to check the car out in six months. Now, with that said, because of this special situation here, manufacturers, I'm believing, I know Toyota is doing this, and I believe most manufacturers are showing some leniency when it comes to service and repair. And I would do this. I would check with my car dealer, and I would say to him, I feel uncomfortable about bringing my car in.

Now, your dealer may offer free pickup and delivery. If he does, that's wonderful, because then you can add your car service and you don't have to pay extra for the pickup and delivery. If that's not the case, and they don't do the pickup and delivery, or they want to charge a lot for pickup and delivery, I would go on record probably with an email or a text and a phone call also, but have it in writing and text and email,

say, I know I'm due for my six-month inspection. I feel uncomfortable about bringing it in. Will you waive that for me in terms of my warranty or any other requirements that you may have for me bringing my car in? I'm seeing a lot of this with this unprecedented pandemic. We're seeing forgiveness of mortgages. We're seeing extensions of monthly car payments

and lease payments. There's a lot of understanding and empathy and kindness going on in the world, but sometimes you have to ask for it. And I wrote a blog on that, by the way, about car payments. If you have a car and you're making monthly payments and you're laid off, you don't have a job, and you're finding it difficult to make the payments, call the lender before the lender calls you. And the same thing with anybody that you owe money to.

be surprised the amount of forgiveness you can get. And if you don't want to come in, and I can see that to a place of retail installment, it might even be against your doctor's orders, particularly if you're elderly. Just go on record of saying you're not going to do it, and 99% chance it will be forgiven. And one other suggestion, folks, maybe take a little bit of this time that you're stuck at home and bored. Consider cleaning your car out a little bit. Look for all those old napkins and tissues that might have gone underneath the sink, underneath the seats, the center consoles, spots where soda and coffee may have spilled, a little bit of those chlorox wipes worked into there. Those places are breeding grounds for bacteria and other

issues. It might be worth an idea of spend a little time scrubbing that car out as well as cleaning the house and keeping your hands washed very, very often. Okay, how are we doing on phone calls? Very often. We haven't received any yet, but that's great information, Rick, and don't forget that trunk. We sometimes drive around with everything but the kitchen sink in our trunk. So, give us a call toll free. Let's give that phone number out again a few times.

Give us a call toll free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 7-7-2-4-9-0-6. 676530 and don't forget www.W.W. Your anonymous feedback.com. So you encourage someone to call just now. We're going to go to Craig who is calling us from Pensacola. Good morning, Craig.

Good morning, Craig. How you doing? Hi, good morning. Dr. Pembert Pines. How are you? Very good. How are you? I'm actually in the market for a Chevy truck, and I looked at, I don't know if I can say the dealership name down here, but they are exorbitant with their fees. And when I told them, I wanted to get my own financing, they said I could do that to get all the rebates, but I have to pay an accessory fee on top of the dealer fee, on top

of the electronic filing fee. And I said, $2,500 in fees is absolutely ridiculous. I know I saw your other videos about fees, but that is like ludicrous. Yeah. Well, Craig, I really think that you have a good chance now to get the best deal on a car you ever did. And if you're buying a Chevrolet in the Pensacola area, just remember there's thousands of Chevrolet dealers. And you might not be able to drive to all of them, but you can go online. And I would just get out my map, and I would draw a little circle, and I'd be looking for Chevrolet dealers.

within a radius of my home and go to three or four or five or six Chevrolet dealers and do it all online. Explain that you want an out-the-door bottom-line price and if they give you one, they'll be in the running. They will have a chance at your business. If they refuse to give you an out-the-door price, then they're out of the running

and you will buy from those dealers that will give you that. If they want to charge your fees, that's okay. Let them include it in the Althador price because competition is your friend. If they know that you're going to two, three, four, five other Chevrolet dealers, and they have a higher Althador price, you're not going to buy from them. So some sale at some profit is better than no sale at no profit. I think you'll be very surprised at the price you get.

But don't play their game and don't try to negotiate on their fees. Just say, charge me all the fees you want to. know the price that I can write a checkout for, hand you that check, and get in that car and that Chevrolet and take it home. That's the definition of an out-the-door price. Give that a try. I think the dealers are desperate, Greg, the manufacturers are desperate. Business, our dealership business is off over 50%. Over 50%. I mean, we're losing money. I'll be honest with April we will lose money in our car dealership and customers are especially important to us today and we will do virtually anything legal to sell a car use that to your advantage and you

will find I've been trying I've checked I'm in South Florida I'm in Pembroke Pines oh Pembroke Pines okay yeah I've checked the dealerships around here and my opinion I think that they're not willing to make good deals yet because of these cars they haven't stopped were around before the pandemic started, and then the dealers, the factories have all shut down. And once they start building again, then they're going to need to move those off the last to make ways to do one. Yeah, that's possible. It's going to get better before it gets, you're going to see particularly, this is April. We're getting toward the end of the month.

I always advise, even before the pandemic, one of the best times to buy a vehicle is toward the end of the month or at the end of the month. Take your time. Time's on your side. If you don't need the new Chevrolet today, every day you wait, the deals will get better, especially as we get to April 30th. And keep on trying. But remember, if nothing else, the out-the-door price, and that has to be defined. Because if you don't define it, they'll start sneaking these fees in, the dealer-installed accessories. And you can say, I want you to understand that I'm going to come in with a check in my hand.

that check's going to have the amount of the price you give me and if it's one penny over that price I'm going to turn around and I'm going to go to your competitor and buy the truck from M or the car from M. Okay, I appreciate it. Love your show. Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Craig. Give us a call again.

You know, you mentioned the word desperation and, you know, that can lead you to, you know, a lot of trouble as far as purchasing a car right now. and keep in mind that these lenders are they're really willing to reduce or relax monthly payments right now and if you make a special effort to make a phone call and get really involved in your car that you own right now and you can't make the payment or the car you're going to purchase you know that's really in good faith to make a phone call and I just love speaking to someone and finding out how they can find out how dedicated I am to paying off a loan because when you don't get in touch, there's more likely, you know, to have trouble come out of that.

So moving along here, if you didn't hear me earlier, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers, so give us a call. We have a mystery shopping report coming up, and that mystery shopping report is, of course, unfortunately another doozy, and it's from Brayman 877-9-60-960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. I hope you're taking advantage of www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. And remember, everybody, we are live, and I know we missed two shows,

and some of you may think, I can't call. You can call. You can call. You can text, you can YouTube, you can Facebook, and you can also do Your Anonymous Feedback.com. If you'd like to say something in confidence, we can never know the source of the question, the comment, is for that purpose that people will be candid and honest or whatever else you want to call it. But www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

How are we doing on text now? We got them coming in, but I had a thought on just the timing of the best deals. be careful right now just a little insider information Toyota is beating their estimates for this forecast and there's a feeling in South Florida and I'm only speaking for the Toyota dealers that not that business has come back we're far away away from that but business has picked up and I think that's probably the result of a lot of smart consumers who recognize that there could be some desperation some need on the part of the dealers to give good deals so we're seeing that right now. So if just

a word of caution as the dealers start to feel better and a little bit less desperate you might start to see some of those you know those great deals become just good. So just you know pay attention to the media, see what the car business is doing, listen to us because there has been a little bit of an uptick in the last couple of

weeks. On that note, on that note of caution a lot of the manufacturers are coming out with special offers and you have to be careful to differentiate between the manufacturers offer and the dealers offer. And the dealers will deliberately confuse the offers because they'll use something like extended payments and zero percent, no payments for 60 days, 90 days. Deferment. Deferment, deferred

payments. So some of the offers from the manufacturers are quite attractive, but you have to go and separate the dealer's discount. You should buy the car based on the dealer's discount, competitively speaking with his competition. Jack same car with other dealers. That gives you the best price. Then the conditions like deferred payments and low interest rates or rebates and incentives, that's to sweeten the pot

that you've already gotten the best price from the dealer. And be careful, even with the manufacturer's offer, because some of that is, it's legit, but it might be a little confusing. We looked at the Ford offer, and they had six months no payments. Now, three of those were deferred payments that you paid interest on.

during that time so you don't get away from that and the other Ford paid for the other three payments but the rebate that was available was less so you actually end up paying more for the car that was a real eye-opener Stu and ladies and gentlemen you know here we are knowledge is power more so today than ever before

separate fact from fiction and some of it is a whole lot of gibberish so with that said 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6-530 we're going to go to tequesta where anne-marie has been holding welcome to the show anne-marie hi thank you how are you I'm well thank you are you a first-time caller I am I'm listening to your show thank you congratulations you just won yourself $50. Oh, great. Thank you. You're quite welcome. What can we do for you? Well, I just wanted you to know that I use your service department and Randy is my service rep and he has been

awesome. He has been taking care of my car for three years and I have a 2008 Lexus. It has over 100,000 miles on it and it's running perfectly fine. And, you know, if I have a problem or anything, I call him, and he just does an awesome job. Well, thank you very much. I'll pass that word along with Andy. It'll make him very happy. Thank you. Oh, great.

Thank you. Okay. Well, thank you for the call very much, Anne-Marie. And you'll give your contact information to the person in the control room, and we will get that check for $50 right out to you. Right, Nancy? Yes, absolutely, Anne-Marie. And thank you for helping me. build a platform here at Earl Stewart on cars. We certainly have more lady callers at this point

than we have had in the past, and you are definitely part of all of it. So I ask you to spread the word and let the ladies know that they can, well, I think that you can use $50, right? Yep, yeah, absolutely. Spread the word with your friends, and I look forward to hearing from you again. And as Earl said, stay on the line. Make sure that you give Mike in our control room your contact information so I can get that check out. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Have a great day. You know, Anne-Marie said something that reminded me to remind you, if you have a luxury car, she has a Lexus, but she has its service to the Toyota dealership. If you have a luxury car like an infinity, don't take it to the infinity. Don't take it to the

infinity dealer, take it to the Nissan dealer. If you have an Accura, take it to the Honda dealer. If you have a Cadillac, take it to the Chevrolete dealer. The prices at the luxury car franchises are much higher. For common

things like tire rotations, wheel balance, oil changes, repairs, anything that you spend in the service department, the lower price brand will give you a much better price. You can call up and check, but you're spending more money you don't have to

if you bring your infinity into an infinity they kill you on those big service intervals like the 30,000 and the 60,000 I mean you can see a $600 or $800 maintenance visit and the vehicles you know Alexis is a Toyota with a lot of extra accessories I'm exaggerating slightly but the infinity is a Nissan the Accura is a Honda but they sell for a lot more money they doll them up they put a lot of more bells and whistles on them, and people like the prestige of having the luxury carp nameplate, but you can get them repaired and maintain a lot cheaper at the Chevrolet or the Ford or the whatever.

Lincoln, you go to the Ford dealer. How are we doing on text, too? They're piling in. Let's hear one. Okay, I'll start with anonymous feedback here, and this looks like it's from a concerned listener, who's worried about us. Why are you in the studio today? You took two weeks off, that made sense.

Now there's 2,500 coronavirus cases in Palm Beach County. How is this safer and how does this make sense? Not setting a good example. Well, that's a good question. And believe me, we wrestled with this. I mentioned we missed the two weeks because we both had issues with a possible infection and we elected not to come in. The radio stations is extremely good.

The studio is cleaned every single day, top to bottom, disinfected totally all the equipment and everything we all are healthy in the studio and we're careful to be sure of that we maintain the the mask and the gloves when we come into the studio when we leave the studio we just exercise a lot of care and I think I mentioned at the beginning of the show if you miss it Nancy checked with her doctor we've all checked with our doctors to see if we were doing the right thing. Excuse me, I checked with three doctors.

Three doctors. And the mention of pure hand sanitizer is real important. The Lysol wipes are very, very important. And also, the number of people that are inside this studio is very, very important. So we take safety very seriously. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for your concern.

We appreciate that. Yeah, we definitely do. We're going to go to Warren, and Warren is from Pompano Beach. Good morning, Warren. Hey, Warren, you're there? Guys, I got to touch a few. I'm actually up here. I have two homes, one down in Pompano, and up in Fort Lee, New Jersey.

I'm stuck up in Fort Lee, New Jersey now for this whole field, and the car dealers up here are closed. Only for me, and only open to me. they're stuck with thousands of cars up here that finally does open. How much of a bargain do you think to get on a new car, but all the dealers, borrowers and it could be a Toyota, a Chevy, whatever, you think you're going to get, you know, when they do open again because they're stuck and they can't tell them. Well, Warren, this is Stu.

I think, yeah, you're going to see even bigger and bigger rebates, and it's going to depend on the makes that are moving. And that's going to depend on their whole production plans. So if they are, if they're smart and they manage to manage the production and stop the glut from getting too big, then you'll see lesser incentives. But you're going to see the ones that we're having a hard time selling cars before the pandemic are going to have the hard time selling the cars now. I'm talking about Chrysler and GM, certain GM cars. I would guess that you're the popular imports like Honda, Toyota, Nissan, things like maybe not Nissan. in Toyota might be doing pretty good.

But yeah, you've got to watch it. You've got to see. But to your point, different states with different lockdown policies, that's going to affect it. So, for example, in California, they're considering the service departments to be essential, but the new car showrooms are shut down. In New Jersey, it sounds like you're in the same sort of situation. Are they closing down the service departments, too, or just the... No, service departments are open. The showroom, and that's used cars, too.

That's every kind of car. I mean, you can go to your local gas station, or you can go to the local Toyota dealer to get the car service, can't buy one. The other question I'd ask you, because you cannot buy any cars here whatsoever now, up here, would you think the price of used cars would go down as well because manufacturers have all kinds of rebates to buy new ones?

Why would you buy new or use one if you could buy a new one, separation isn't that difference. I don't know. There's a time bomb happening with the used car market because for those very reasons when they start to flood us with gigantic rebates and things like that, that depresses the market.

It trickles down to use cars. The other thing that used car dealers, which is pretty much every new car dealer too, faces is with that big inventory sitting there, the values have already gone down tremendously and as they sit there, they continue to depreciate. And what's going to happen is

tens of thousands of car dealers across the country are going to be stuck with cars that are way worth way less than what they own them for. And so that's another little economic bomb waiting to go off a little bit down the road. I just want to get into a quick question. Do you think like up here in Jersey where I can't sell any cars? Will I make the next model year or they just try to get rid of the inventory, or hold the model year off to January or something? I mean, I can't conceive

when you've got with 21 in September and October. That would make no sense. I have no idea what would you think. I think there'll be delays for sure. I know that the one I'm most familiar with is Toyota. They've shut down over a month's worth of production in North America and also, I believe, also in the other manufacturing plants

around the world. So that is going to clearly, it's kind of a little halt on the production calendar that they talk about. So I could see some delays in the new model years coming out. It's all going to depend on what happens to business over the next few months. Right. And from your point in the Toyota deal, are zero financing? Do you see that, I mean, all models are the ones they can't get rid of?

Like, I see it advertised in television now, but it doesn't make any sense to me now because they can't buy a car up here anyway. Do you think they're going to have zero financing or that's something to come on? The amount of the, well, the sweetness of the deal that's offered is going to depend on the desperation of the manufacturer and the dealer. Some manufacturers do not believe in long terms for car loans. It's generally not good for the consumer. You're kind of stuck in a car for a long time with a payment on a very old car. These 84-month loans with zero interest, they sound very attractive. And to be honest, I mean, there are some people.

really that a low payment is the only thing that matters right now. So that's going to be attractive and people take advantage of it. But even Toyota is doing it. Toyota has 0% for 60 months on their most popular 2020 models. And that's about as long as they're going to go. One way to do it is interest rates by themselves are super low anyway. You could do a take advantage for a larger rebate, do a shorter term, and still get a great low interest rate.

I do caution against getting too excited about those long-terms with zero interest rate, though. Okay. Guys, thank you very much. Be well, and good luck. Thank you, Warren. Same to you, Warren. Give us a call, toll-free, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-49-6-5-30. I can't mention enough, www., your anonymous feedback.com.

Take advantage. I wrote one of my blogs recently had to do with online buying, and there will be a quantum leap in online buying of everything. Cars will be included. And if you haven't tried it before, now's the time to really try it, because you have, you're holding all the cards when you're in your home with your smartphone or your computer, and you're talking to dealers and getting prices. they will not when they have you in their dealership when you are in their territory that's where the games

begin and that's when they start talking about adding dealer fees and dealer installed accessories if you're not there and they don't have control they know that you're going to buy from the dealer that gives them the best price and you make that clear

now's the time because I think a year from now when this is all behind us more and more cars will have been sold online than ever before and will be sold so learn how to do it now you've got plenty of time

you're sitting home you've got the computer you can shop 5, 10, 15 as many car dealers as you want and insist on the online price being an out of the door bottom line price Rick you're waving on me

well you've got a question from Paul DeMore that fits right in here he says if I buy a car when I sit down to sign all the contracts, if something just doesn't feel right with all the excessive fees and all, can I still walk out at that point? You can walk out any time before you sign, but the point is if you have not gotten the out-the-door price before you even start signing, before you agree to sign, I wouldn't even, you can sign online, by the way. there are a lot of dealers are offering electronic signatures the main thing you need to worry about is a total complete understanding between the salesperson the manager of the dealership and you on what that alphador price is i use this because it's so easy to understand mr jones i'm talking to the salesman i'm going to write a checkout on my bank and it's going to have the total price that I'm going to pay you, including tax, tag, hidden fees, unhidden fees, whatever you want to put on there, put it on there, but I want to know, I don't want to give you one more penny.

I'm going to walk in there, I'm going to hand you that check, I'm going to get in that new car I bought, and I'm going to drive it home. If you ask me for one more penny, you'll never see me again. That is an out-the-door price, and if you can get that across to all the people that you're shopping online, you will get a better deal on a car today than you ever, ever have before. Wow. Okay. Stu.

All right. Let's jump back over to anonymous feedback. Okay, this is one just letting us know that Toyota of Hollywood is selling, and it's a link to a Carfax report, selling this used 2019 Corolla with an unfixable recall. And unfortunately, that is happening all over the world, all over the United States. Here's the deal. So we've talked about this for, what's 2020 now, so we're on four years of preaching this message.

There is no law against a car dealer selling a used vehicle with a dangerous recall. There is no law against it. There is a law against a new vehicle, manufacturer, dealer, from selling a new car, but used cars. There's not even a law against not disclosing it. Correct. I mean, you know, some people would say,

okay, buyer beware, you come in and you're going to buy a car with a dangerous recall that can't be fixed, and the salesperson says to you, I just have to tell you, Mrs. Jones, this car has a dangerous recall, it's a dangerous hair back, you can blow up your face and kill you. And if I sell you the car, you can't get it fixed because there's not a fix available.

And then Mrs. Jones says, that's okay, I'll buy it anyway. There are people that say, that's okay. I don't think it's okay, but there are people say that, but the dealers don't even have to tell you. They can hide it and not tell you, and we see that repeatedly. Right, and the extent that the new car

manufacturers get involved, they frown at it. They do a little, just a little frown, and they say, you can't represent this as a certified vehicle that's backed by this manufacturer. For example, Toyota of Hollywood, Toyota says you can't represent a car with a, with

a recall, fixed or unfixed, well, I'm sorry, fixed. As a certified car, but you can sell it. Just take the certified logo off it and have at it. Okay. Any more text? Oh, yeah. This is just a thank you on anonymous feedback. Says, Hello, Earl. Thank you for putting on a message that the radio show was canceled last week. It saved me some time looking for it. What else do we got here? Here we go. Earl, you've indicated previously that Toyota has a 17% share of the market. Is that a total U.S. figure? It seems higher here in South

Florida. Do you know the market share that Toyota has here in Palm Beach County? I do. So do you? 13, 14%. It's lower than the national average. It's around 12%, 12%, 13%. And that is largely due to the unusually large number of luxury vehicles in this market. With Palm Beach Island, a lot of wealthier residents. We see actually higher market shares for BMWs, Lexuses, Accurus, and Lamborghinis and Bugatti. All right Rick do you got any text over there I don't want to monopolize No we just got caught up on YouTube

We're doing good here Then I can keep going Okay I have one text that's really very interesting And it was from Greg out in Denver And this may interest you even more Rick But this is in reference to The service technicians are producing High Quality Detailed

Narrated videos to help customers see what needs to be replaced or fixed on their vehicles. The multimedia effort is helping the store increase repair approvals, avoid potential litigation, and make house calls during the coronavirus pandemic. Do you think that you will all ever, you know, put that to work in need? We've actually done quite a few videos for maintenance items showing solutions and ideas, things like that. One of the weapons that we've been using quite often now

is a simple cell phone where if I see a problem on a customer's car, I'll take a picture of it and have the service writer send that picture to the customer say this is what we see. This is why we think it should be fixed. And a picture's worth a thousand words. Absolutely.

Or use Skype or FaceTime. Mancy is actually visiting our doctor by Skype and FaceTime. And I think the world's changing. I think the way cars are fixed, the way patients are diagnosed, even after this is all over, I think we're going to find a real efficiency in this sort of thing. I have to agree with you, absolutely. You know, what we knew as, you know, everyday behavior, things will definitely change. And they'll change, they're changing for the best.

And Greg, thanks for your question. And you can see we're on the cutting edge here as far as taking pictures, as Rick stated, videos and everything. Because, as Rick said, a picture's worth a thousand words. Those videos that Rick has up there are among the, not among, they are the most popular videos that we have on our YouTube channel. Hundreds of thousands of views. And I get all the comments and questions that come in and every single day. there was one that Rick did, was titled How to Unlock a, well, how to Free a Lock steering wheel. Yeah, Jonathan posted it.

Hundreds of thousands of views. And every day there's a comment coming in, heartwarming comments like, I was in the Walmart parking lot and I thought I was going to be stuck there forever. Thank you, Rick, you saved my life. Yeah, there was one that came in on Thursday that said, thank you, Rick, I thought I broke my company's van. Because they thought that they had broken the steering wheel. Yeah. Yeah, that's just great, you know, it just keeps you so driven and keeps a lot of us very honest. And whenever you show a picture to a customer potential service, they're coming in for service, showing them that picture, you know, that is really great.

It's not only great to show them a picture of what was wrong with their car, but you're taking on a, well, I'm going to say like an intimate kind of exchange, between the two of you and that customer feels pretty special okay let's get some our calls about 877 960 or you can text us you can text us at 772-4976530 we're gonna go to our favorite person John from Palm City hi John good morning to everyone I'm glad to hear you staying safe and you were checked out by the doctors yeah Rick's advice was so wonderful at the beginning. I need to start the car,

but let it run about a half hour, at least 15 minutes, to get the oil warm and more important in the exhaust system, the exhaust, the moisture builds up, and it can rot the actual system. This burns off the vapor, water vapor, that comes from a cold surface and a hot exhaust gas. And that's very important, too, not to let that sit in there.

But what I want to say was, in the old days, and Rick could answer this, the exhaust systems, especially in the foreign cars, used to rust out beyond belief, especially when I lived up north, in the salt on the roads, and even down here if you lived along the seashore. But today, you don't even hear about,

like, the biggest business then was Midas, you don't even hear about anybody replaced in a muffler or a tailpipe. What is the reason that that changed, so radically like that. Rick can answer that? Changes in material. They have changed the material on the exhaust systems

dramatically. It's about the same reason why drive belts that you used to replace every 20,000 miles are now lasting 120,000 miles. They've finally figured out ways to make exhaust that don't rust out like

they used to. Well, that's for the better. good. And the second thing is what I want to say is not only to start it up and get that oil circulating, but the battery, and I find there's an item that's already out in some places, the unit you want to get is a green unit. It's called battery tender. Okay? That stays on there 24 hours, seven days a week. Doesn't do any harm. It doesn't, you know, wouldn't short out, and it keeps that battery up and well charged

and that's at this time that's something we could all use and actually you have to have the sensibility to an electrical outlet but this is an absolute wonderful thing it's been proven friend of mine he has about 21 collector cars right here in Stewart

and every one of his automobiles are kept on that and he finds that the batteries last as much as five seven years and beyond just by using this system and it's safe. It's not the old type of trickle charger where it just put it on, you know, as it needed it. This stays on 24 hours and it's perfectly safe. So I wanted to mention that that's an important. And then the third thing about letting the car sit is you're

going to see the sensor light. The tire hasn't been circulated. It's been sitting. It could even get flat spots sometime. And that unit that senses the tire pressure is a item that I always was curious about. So I asked my mechanic, and he gave me an old one that he took off recently, and I was absolutely shocked. I looked at it. You know, you can't take it apart. One side says, made in sit down for this, Japan, and the other side is made in Mexico. So what I see now is Burrell mentioned a couple weeks ago about a shortage or some manufacturers may even go out of business, but I participate a definitely shortage of automobile parts

with some smaller or even bigger automobile parts manufacturing that will go out of business. What's your opinion about that? I think you're right. I think it's entirely possible. We're going to see a major economic disaster

with the automotive industry. We have too many manufacturers. There have been too many manufacturers for a long time, and we have some that are struggling. And I hate to predict doom, but the weaker manufacturers are not

going to survive. If they don't survive, they're not going to be building parts. The parts suppliers will stop supplying the parts So you can see a major shift. I'm not going to make any predictions now, but all you have to do is check with your local stockbroker and look at the bond ratings of the manufacturers. Ford, I hate to pick on Ford, but their bond rating has been downgraded to junk.

And Ford has been around for a long time. Hard to believe that Ford Motor Company could be gone. But I don't think they are going to be around a year from now or two years from now. And the same goes for other manufacturers. The strong will survive. You've got two things going on, John. You've got the effects of the pandemic and the economic impact of the pandemic. And then you've got the rapid change in technology where we're moving into all electric, possibly autonomous cars.

And there just aren't enough customers to go around and technology expertise to be able to build the car. that the consumers are going to be demanding. So you're right. It's going to be unlike anything we've seen on our lifetimes. And stick with the cars that you can be, the manufacturers that you feel will be here with a high bond ratings, with a high financial analyst will tell you,

like buying a stock. Don't buy this stock, buy that stock. That's the best way I can recommend you buy a car. Well, the proof is a parts manufacturer, that can't produce is just as you mentioned earlier, there's cars with recalls on them and the parts are not available.

Takato is a perfect example that they declared bankruptcy, but nobody was so fast to take over and continue to manufacturing with the seatbelts, with the sensors. So we can see a little bit ahead of time even,

but after this is all over. I mean, when I went to South Carolina to visit the BMW plant, there's many automobile parts manufacturers. One of the biggest one was right near Michelin over there. And that's, I mean, those are tremendous plans, but who knows if they're all going to reopen or some of them don't go out of business. Exactly. Well, thank you very much, John. I appreciate the call very much and your loyalty. As you said earlier, you're our most loyal caller. You've been with us for many,

many years. Thank you for all your concern. Stay safe. Take care of yourself. And thanks for your concerned for me and Nancy. I know you were concerned about us. Yeah, and all the information. I'm happy to have you all back. Thank you. All the information, John, you sent us a lot of information. It was great information. We really appreciate you. Thanks for listening to Earl Stewart. Okay. You have a great weekend. Stay safe.

877-960-9960, where you can text us at 772-497-3-0. And, hey, guys, I was checking out gas buddy and check. this out. There's prices that have dropped to a dollar. In 13 states, gas prices. Could you ever imagine? When was the last time you saw that? And that's in Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Wisconsin. It's not ironic that the car, just when the car prices, gas prices go down, who cares? Right. I mean, we got a funny meme.

Somebody sent us here. He says, anybody else getting three weeks to the gallon on their car? Did anybody see the day? I watch the stock market a lot. In about five or six days ago, oil prices went negative. And everybody was scratching their heads. And it basically means that if you're selling oil, you have to pay somebody to take the oil. And I'm just wondering, you wonder what's going to happen to oil changes.

And, you know, what's an oil change cost today? If oil has a negative price, we'll have to pay the customer. We'll have to pay the customer to get an oil change. That's why I said earlier, did you ever think it'd come to a time whenever we pay more for a bottle of water than oil? And then also to Earl's topic that he's talking about, it costs more to sell the oil. milk. Did you see that also in the news about them just throwing it away? It just wasn't worth their while. So there's a whole lot of stuff going on, crazy stuff. Send me your milk. How about, we're going to any text to go to? Oh, yeah. I got a great one here.

Excuse me before you go to that. We're going to go to Frank, who's a regular caller, also, and he calls us from Jupiter. Morning, Frank. Good morning, Nancy and Earl. I've listened to your show for years, and I've I've used your advice many times in helping friends purchase a car or even for myself, especially for Nancy, this will be good for you, is any of the women people I know, I say don't go by yourself because they are just bait. And here's my question dilemma. My oldest daughter who lives in Utah needs a car. She's actually looking for a RAV-4 hybrid.

I did Earl's due diligence. I went on Costco to try and get a price. There's only one dealer in the entire state of Utah that does Costco. They won't give me a price. You've got to go in there and they'll give you your special price when you're in person. Is that? Is that normally how it happens with Costco or don't you get a printout? Yeah, with Costco, they, I don't like that about Costco, by the way, Frank.

I've told them that. I've talked to their executives about this. they have a price sheet and they have a Costco price that is supposed to be the lowest price that you'll sell that vehicle to anyone for but they won't give it to you they make you come in the car dealership if the dealer adheres to the rules of the program

it's a great program but the problem is navigating that minefield of honesty with the dealer who is the Costco dealer We know a dealer in Utah That's the reason I was asking What's the name of the dealership? Hang on just a minute I'm trying, I've got it back on my email

We can give you the cell phone number Of the dealer. Is she anywhere near Provo? Actually, I can't give the cell phone of the dealer anymore. He sold it. Oh, we did? That's right.

I forgot. But I still know the general manager. Oh, do you? And I believe he's still working there. Is she anywhere near Provo? Actually, they are. Is it Mark Miller's Toyota or a different one? I don't think so.

It used to be called Brent Brown Toyota, and he sold his dealership last year. Thankfully, he kept most of the employees, and it's a pretty good dealership. Watch out in the finance department, and they do very well there, but I could give you a referral. I can text it to you and give you the phone numbers. You have my cell number. I'm the one that's saying about the guest and the dogs. Frank, I got another idea. look on our website and go into the car that your daughter's interesting in buying in Utah

and you can get an out-the-door price on our website. Then take about $1,000 off of that price because in Utah, we're in a southeast Toyota distributor. We pay about $1,000 more for our cars in the southeast United States than they do in Utah. They buy directly from Toyota. So take the RAV-4, go on our website, get our price out the door, subtract $1,000 from it, and that's the price they should be able to buy the RAV-4 in Utah for. Oh, okay, that sounds great. While we're talking about prices, because the Costco dealer was a different one that's near my daughter's house.

My daughter has bought two different Toyotas from this one dealer, and she thought that might help her going back. I said, it's very tough. But with that being the case, this one dealer that's owned the Costco, I said, by the way, what's your dealer's fees? He says, oh, they're $2.98. I said, no, that's what we all around here. I didn't have the heart telling what they do out here in South Florida.

Yeah, Florida is a wild wild west. Even dealers we know, we talk to, they find it hard to believe what the dealers in Florida get away with. There's no one can touch Florida. Not only does Florida have the highest dealer fees, they have the most. In other words, typically in other states, there's one dealer fee. They call it, you know, a doc fee. But there's one fee.

In Florida, they can have as many fees as they want, and they typically do. They'll have at least two. I don't think anyone has one dealer fee. And sometimes they'll have three or four, and they name each one a different name, because in other states, you have to call it one thing. I think in California. I think this is your fault. Possibly.

You brought so much attention to the term dealer fee, and that was the main term that was used. And they said, we can't call it that. They'll know what they're, Earl's telling them all about the dealer fee. So it's crazy and it's embarrassing in a way. But, yeah, California, I think it's a $75 dealer fee. They call it a dock fee. And who cares? And they all have the same fee.

You know it's going to be there. And so it ceases to become a source of profit to the dealer. when every dealer has the same fee and they're competing amongst themselves. In Florida, it's dangerous because every dealer's different. You can go to dealer A, his total dealer fees are $1,000. Dealer B could be $3,000. Dealer C could be $900.

So it's impossible to be able to calculate the right price without having an out-the-door price. And the guys with the biggest fees, their ads look the best. Yeah, exactly. What's behind Door 1? Door two, door three. You know, Frank, it's really a surprise that it wouldn't be a whole lot easier for your daughter to purchase a vehicle. You know, I don't care whether it's Costco, true car, whatever, especially during this pandemic,

and that they would make things just a little bit easier and, you know, just make them easier. That's all. So that's my thought on this pandemic and purchasing a vehicle. Good luck to your daughter. Yeah, she's 30 years old, and she just went through a divorce. And so she's got a lot of drama in her life. But her husband was military, so she has a dependent ID card of various other things that would help. But as you mentioned earlier, they said that the cars weren't selling about two weeks ago,

all of a sudden everything picked up out there. So I guess it might be a little harder as it's going on right now. Well, I'll text you, Frank, and I'll get you. the information and maybe if you give me her name through text, I can let them know to expect her and warn them off any sort of mistreatment. No, I appreciate that because she also thought about maybe flying down and getting the car from you guys because you're so good, that's a long drive back. Yeah.

A long drive. Well, here's proof. Quick one, with a Rav4 hybrid, I know they're not given the 0% financing, but on regular Rav4 as they are. Yeah. Is the fuel economy that much better as we're going to different? Yeah, it's really good. Both my wife and my daughter drive Rav4 hybrids, they're getting over 40 miles to the gallon. The gas one's got good gas mileage for a small SUV, but I mean, you're getting like Prius range with the, well, not current Prius range, but Prius from a few years ago range on the Rav4 hybrid. It's a great car. And you don't need to plug it in or anything, right?

No, but not to confuse your situation or hers. They are coming out with a RAV4 Prime, which is a plug-in just like the Prius Prime, which is actually doing pretty well, too. So that's coming out next year. Oh, well, okay. Yeah, well, her RAV-4 has 252,000 miles on. It's still going, but it's breaking down more often than not, so she figures time to trade in. The RAV-4 hybrid, that's a really good choice. Okay, thank you so much.

And Frank, you mentioned that your daughter was 30 years old. You know, this is proof right here in the 21st century that women are dominating the industry, you know. And if the car dealers don't get that, it's their financial loss, truly. And at 30 years old, it sounds like as if she is definitely pretty mature. And that route four is a great vehicle. I drove it. Yeah. Oh, I got the Toyota dealer. I went on my other email. It's called Tony DeVina Toyota in Riverside, Utah. Probably not where you guys were talking about, right? No, no. I've been out there once. It's a beautiful country.

Oh, it is. I would fly out there except with the virus thing. We're kind of stuck here. Oh, here, I can't help myself. You may not let this go in the air, but this is a good. What does the coronavirus and the Boeing 737 max, what don't they have in common? What's the difference between the virus and the Boeing 737 max? I'm going to guess the 737 max is not airborne. Very good. You just want $30. Thank you, Frank. Oh, that's bad.

We got a laugh. All right, Frank, thank you very much for the call. we love you're one of my most intelligent callers we appreciate it. Yes absolutely. Thanks for the humor also. I'll text after the show. Stay safe. On the subject of getting a good deal during this

coronavirus it has to talk about the pay plans for the salespeople. Now I said our sales were off about 50% they're starting to come up a little bit but all the car dealer sales are off If they come back a little bit, that's going to be better, but it's still going to be off.

The car salespeople get paid typically a percent of the profit they make on the car. Now, think about it. The standard commission is 25 percent of the profit. So when you walk into a car dealership or you deal online when you're buying a vehicle, whatever the price that salesperson sells you for, he gets 25 percent of the profit. The higher the price, the more he makes. A car salesman typically will sell cars, a good salesman will sell 20 cars in a month. His lowest price profit will probably be maybe $100.

They'll probably give him a flat commission of $50 or $25. His highest profit could be $4,000, in which case he'd make $1,000. Now think about this. Every commission he gets is different. and he has to maximize his earnings to feed his family. He's got to put food on the table. If he goes from selling 20 cars a month to 10 cars a month, how is he going to be able to afford to put the food on the table

when you cut his sales in half? The only way he can do that is to sell higher price, to increase the profit, so his commission will be higher. So that's the reason one of my blogs, best of times, worst of times, coronavirus, buying cars during this period of time. When you negotiate with a car dealer today, that dealer and that salesperson

has to make about twice as much on the car as he did when sales were brisk. When he was selling 20 cars a month, now he's only selling 10. So you have to be extremely careful. If you are careful, you can get a great deal because they want to sell some sales. He'd rather make 50 bucks than nothing.

And if you're hard and tough, then you can get a deal. That fits right in with a question here on YouTube. Gearhead 10 is saying, trying to buy a new Toyota at six different dealers, I price checked all of them are at MSRP. I was told they're not offering discounts due to low sales. These are all Toyota dealerships. Are you guys doing the same? No.

No, I'm amazed. I don't I question that I would be amazed if that were true I'd love for you to contact this and tell us which dealers were quoting MSRP online and saying they won't budge off of MSRP Now there are a lot of dealers that don't put their price online

and MSRP is the only price that you'll see Yeah But that's just to control the customer Yeah No if you if you contact a Honda Toyota Chevrolet any dealer today and you ask for their best price

they will not tell you MSRP is our best price probably they won't tell you the price they probably will tell you that you need to come in that's where you have to play hardball and that's when you have to explain it to them and the explanation is listen I'm going to buy a car

in the next three days I'm going to buy it from the Chevrolet dealer that gives me the lowest price this is a specific Chevrolet I'm going to buy. Give me your out-the-door price, the price I can write a check for, drive that car home.

If you don't, there's no way you're going to sell me a car. You won't make a nickel. If you give me the price, you might not sell me the car because your competition might beat you, but you have some chance or you have no chance.

It's your choice. Earl Stewart's old axiom, never believe anything you see in a car dealer's ad has never been truer. Ignore them. and I'd like to segue into an ad that Susan just sent me. I've never seen anything. This is pretty bad.

As a matter of fact, it's a Toyota dealership up in Vero Beach, known as Toyota of Vero Beach, and this is a Facebook ad that she sent me a screenshot. I just forwarded that to our Toyota rep because it was so egregious, and he responded back if I had reported that to Toyota National yet, and I haven't because we're on the air. But Toyota Vero Beach's Facebook ad says, announcement, $320,000 stimulus at Toyota Avera Beach. If you owe more than your car is worth, or even if you have negative equity, which is a, you know, that means the same thing, sorry guys,

Toyota has, Toyota has teamed up with Toyota of Vero Beach and allotted $320,000 and pay off assistance for the residents of the Treasure Coast. We recognize that many people in this area owe more than their vehicle is currently worth. Worry no more. no payments for 90 days don't miss out on this that is true there is a total of payment deferral then it says this event is running for five days only

Wednesday April 22nd through Sunday April 26 message us now to reserve your payoff stimulus certificate that is a complete that's one of the worst things ever saw that's the worst ad I've seen from a Toyota dealer and Toyota

is kind of tough on those sort of ads and I'm just flabbergasted that they would see they can get in a lot of trouble by doing that unfortunately first they get a warning and to me that's the

sad part there is one hidden caveat one little clause within that Toyota advertising covenant and that is if anything is considered to be blatant or just like just blatantly knowingly do it you get an automatic strike oh that's blatant this might get into that

yeah The other thing, just to fact-check this ad, Toyota and lots of manufacturers, but Toyota is offering 90 days deferrent, and that runs through July, folks. That doesn't end on April 26th. Yeah. Yeah, we actually have, oh, yeah, here we are. Nancy just handed me this. This is the Attorney General, our Florida Attorney General, Ashley Moody,

actually issued a warning against a dealer in northern Florida. and this dealer sent out a stimulus relief program similar to what Toyota Viro Beach was doing and here's a copy of a check stimulus relief program this check is for $3,344.64 and 68 cents and it's sent to the prospective customers

I'll hold that up for the Facebook and oh here we are and this is I thought the most egregious advertisement I've seen until I heard the Viro Beach one, which is equally egregious. And this is a kind of desperation. They got slapped down by Ashley Moody, the Florida Attorney General, and also the direct mail company that put this together was fine. So desperate times, make desperate measures, and this is what's going on.

You're seeing some terribly cruel, I would say, is not too strong a word. to take advantage of people's fear and actually make them believe that stimulus checks are being sent to them so they can buy a car. It's just unbelievable that people would try that. It is, it is, it's, you know, that's the way of the world now. Yeah. It's really unfortunate. How do you sleep at night? Do you have a conscience?

Yeah. Okay. Let's move along to some more text here. Yeah, we got some anonymous feedback. Here's one that says, hi, Earl. I'm riding from Northern Maine, and I've been doing a lot of research on different vehicle types. I've looked at Toyota, Subaru, Honda, and Kia brands. I want an SUV and previously test drive with the Highland Air Forrester and the CRV.

I've watched the reviews on the Kia Telluride and like the safety reviews and overall performance, but I haven't been able to test drive, and the closest dealer is over 200 miles away from where I live. In this new age of buying online, could I ask for delivery and test drive without the commitment to buy? I don't want to waste anyone's time or effort, but I want to waste. want to make an informed decision. And then he has another question about seeing an offer for 18% below MSRP. I'll jump on that real quick. That sounds like a great discount, but the only thing that really matters is the bottom line price.

Don't know what the fee situation is up in Maine. Just make sure that you're comparing apples to apples like MSRPs or identical MSRPs in the bottom line price because who knows what gets added to that. Great question on the buying online. how do you test drive the car? You've got to ask the dealer, the salesperson, if it's something they'll do. I honestly would be surprised if there's many dealers that would refuse to do that, bring a car out to your house.

Car sales are depressed. They are picking up a little bit, but I think while they're still struggling, I think anything they can do to help sell a car, I think most salespeople would do that. Our dealership does that as well. I think most in our area are doing the same thing. Yeah, if they don't, John, then I wouldn't deal with. I can't imagine a dealer refusing to allow you to test drive a car well without the obligation to purchase and be bad business.

And if they said that, I just say, it's like buying a used car. You need to take it to your independent mechanic to check it. If they won't let you take the car, they want to sell the used car, the independent mechanic, don't buy from them. You hold all the cards until you sign on the dotted line or give them your check, you are holding all the cards. Just remember that. They'll bluff you sometimes. but all you do is do a 180 and start walking towards your car, you'd be surprised how quickly they'll come around.

Yeah, and with these online sales, this is going to be a really tough one to do, but if you can find a dealer that guarantees, it gives you a money-back guarantee, you know, without any, you know, hidden conditions or things they can get you on, I saw Carvana's running ad, and they said they have a seven-day return policy.

I didn't see the word unconditional in there, so I'm not sure exactly what the conditions are, but ask about that, make sure that they, that they can help you if you don't like the car because that can happen. Even on a new car, you might not like it. And remember what I said earlier

you've just tuned in. The car salespeople are very hungry now. They know that they're not going to sell as many cars as they did last month or the month before, and they're not sure when they'll be back up to normal. Nobody is. So basically, because

they're paid on commission, they have to make considerably more per car. And they have the control to set the price. There are very few dealers out there that will put their lowest price on a car they sell. They will always leave it up to the discretion of the

salesperson, and that's the reason that the car buying procedure is such a crazy thing today. It's an adversarial relationship between the customer and the salesman. The salesman wants to sell the car at the highest price

possible because he gets 25% of the profit. And the customer, you want to buy it at the lowest price. So today, with car sales down 50%, be looking for that car salesperson to push, push, push for a higher profit. You have to be more careful than ever. But you still hold all the cars if you stay home, shop online, and get an out-the-door price.

If you get that, you're going to get a great price on a car. It's probably the best price you ever got. Yep. All right, Jim texts us and says, wants to know, How do you handle test drives in this environment? He would rather drive it by himself. Same thing. Most dealers are allowing customers to do that.

And even in normal times, some dealerships do permit that. They do have these insurance policies called garage keepers policies, which covers them and people who drive their cars. So you provide your driver's license and proof of insurance, and they should let you take it for a spin. It'd be nice to take it home overnight. We talk about that on the show a lot. because that gives you a little bit more time to shake out the things,

see if you can be comfortable in it, and see if you can figure out all that complicated electronic equipment in there as well. But, yeah, I think asking to go solo on a test drive is a completely reasonable request in the age of coronavirus. Not only a reasonable request, it should be mandatory, whether it's a pandemic or not, anytime you buy a used car or a new car, new cars especially. We find a lot of people

because they owned a new Honda cord and now they're buying another new Honda cord they say well I know what it's like because I own one I bought one three years ago the one you're buying today is different

in fact cars are different even the same year I mean you can take three different Honda cords 2020 on a lot and drive each one of them and they're a little bit different but year to year

they can be a lot different don't ever buy a newer used car until you thoroughly test drive the car. Absolutely. And one of Earl's many columns, he did address that. I'm not sure exactly one, but you can go to Earl on cars, and you can find all of his columns that will take you a long way for many miles. Our phone number is 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-65. And we're going to go to Lori, who's been holding from Palm Beach Gardens.

Good morning, Lori. Hi, Lori. Morning, Nancy. I want to tell you that I'm glad you're feeling better. You sound a lot better, and welcome back to the show. Thank you. Thanks, Lori. Yes.

So I have a question. It's not my first time calling. I've called many times. I do flower deliveries in my vehicle. and I have a fairly new Dodge caravan with the stowowway seating so it gives me that flat you know van back after a while I went to lift up the seat and found that water had gotten in and now I have mold growing on the seat oh boy yes so sir and they are leather seating surfacing, I can clean it off, but it does kind of have a little bit of a musty smell, and how do I really get that off? Rick, you're an expert on that.

My recommendation, the real fix for it is you would have to strip the interior and have a company like Service Pro actually come out, and they can professionally clean and scrub everything to do it. but you're talking a huge, huge undertaking at that point. Kind of a side trick for it, what I would try is, you know the damp rid you can get for putting in musty places in your house? I would go kind of medieval style on it. I would, like, quadruple up the amount of damp rid

and put five or six containers of it in the van, let it sit in the sun for at least a full day with that. The heat will build up that moisture, and hopefully the dampred will just suck it all up and kill off that mold and musty odor and get rid of it. And from there, go with a good coating of febrize. And, of course, from that, just kind of really watch for those little bits of water spills. Now, we've seen some real issues with little bits of things spilled in a car that can grow into a real horrible nightmare. So you actually use that technique and it works. I actually had to do that on my wife's Highlander

when our daughter spilled a milkshake that got underneath the carpeting and I had to imagine a milkshake about two weeks later when it really started to get that odor a variety of odors and Lori I used dampred in my vehicle and let me tell you

I find great success with it and the second half of Rick's suggestion was the Fabriz. It really works, Lori. You really have to stay on it, but eventually it's successful. So the damperid will actually hold the mold, or that's just going to be for the owner? Well, the dampred will get the moisture out of the air, and without moisture, the mold will die. Mold and Mildo can only live in a moist environment.

So getting rid of that moisture, getting every bit of moisture out of that vehicle that you can, that's where our Florida sunshine, you know, the heat that we get here in Florida really works because the inside of a car can hit 130, 140 degrees. And with that damp rid in there, every bit of moisture kind of gets boiled up into the air and the damp rid sucks the moisture out of it. Yeah. And Rick, are you talking about the damp red, do you use the damp red that's in the envelope? or do you use the container?

Well, I use just the little bucket style. I get two of those buckets for the issue we had. But, yeah, I would get those buckets that are meant to handle, like, one bucket will handle an entire room. And I'd put three or four of them in the van just to really overkill it. That's what I use. It's worth it. That's worth it. You know, I kind of was embarrassed to ask that question, but I am so glad I did because you guys definitely gave me a fix.

Well, accidents happen. I mean, things get spilled in cars, and, you know, sometimes cars leak. You know, you get a roof leak, something like that, and water gets in there, and you've got to figure a way to handle it. Well, thank you so very much. Well, thank you, Lori. I appreciate the call very much. Yes, stay safe and have a blessed day. Same to you, Lori.

Thank you so much. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497. 16530. Don't forget, www.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. I guess we better hurry through the show because we have to say happy birthday to a certain person. Yes, I know.

I'm paying attention. It's somebody's birthday. Exactly. Okay. Do we have Texas? Do we have YouTube? Yeah, yeah. Jim and Riviera Beach wants to know if Toyota, if it's true that the Toyota CHR is going to stop production in the near future. There is no truth to that rumor.

I know that's going all around town. Just kidding. I'm exaggerating. No, there is the 2020 CHR model that is out now, and I've heard about changes coming up in the 2021. So don't think there's any plans to kill that model. Okay. I got another Toyota model comment.

It says it looks like the best thing. I think this came in between this show and the last show. as we were talking about the Toyota Super and how consumer reports recommends it as the best sports car, he says, it looks like the best thing about the Supra is that it's a BMW. And that's true. It was built in conjunction with BMW. It's kind of like the twin to the BMW Z4. And I'll tell you what, I don't care.

It actually made me like BMWs a little bit more because it's a pretty good car. You know, the thing I like about the Toyota Supra is it proves the point that, We talk about a lot. When a new car comes out, an exciting new car, don't buy it until it cools off because you're just absolutely wasting your money. The Toyota Supra was such an anticipated car. They talked about it for a year ahead of time,

and there was a countdown, and then there would be little pictures it would show, oh, I think I saw a Supra, and the excitement billed. And suddenly the dealers had a few of them in the showrooms, and these dealers, I believe they marked them up as much as $100,000. Yes. I would love to get a video or just recording of our show in the beginning of last summer because this is the best cautionary tale, the most clear-cut example of our advice coming true.

You said, do not buy it on the show. Don't buy it. Watch this. It's going to come down. And it was about three months later. And three months later, we couldn't give them away. Yeah. Yeah, we sold ours at MS. sticker, which is a good profit for us, and we don't mark anything up over MSRP. We think that's morally wrong. And we sold the ones that we sold, the people that bought them.

We thought they really got a good deal because all the other dealers were charged in 20, 40, 100,000 over. The price plummeted below MSRP. So even the people that we thought we were given a good price. Price plummeted below cost because Toyota offered a $1,000 rebate on it. Yeah. So the rule is... That's why I bought mine. Don't buy a new model.

Wait. Price always goes down. It's hard to do. You get excited. Look, I'm going to have the exact same problem this fall when the new iPhone comes out. I'm going to be up at 2 o'clock in the morning waiting to order mine online. It's a little bit different, though. That price doesn't come down in a few months.

Okay. Do we have any normal text or are we getting as the anonymous feedback? Hey, listen, I've got to have me a couple. I started jumping around, so I have lost complete control of the order that these came in. But I think we're actually, we're all caught up right now. Oh, okay. Yeah. Well, let's say, Sue, happy birthday.

Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Stu. Happy birthday to you. May the good. Sorry. Thank you very much. Borno, Campino.

Happy birthday. Thank you. Please, Compliannals, yes. I turn 21 today, and I'm going to head to the bar, get my first legal drink. Absolutely, yeah. You can look forward to getting carded all day. Yeah, I'm sorry.

That was 31 years ago, folks. Did we ever get the second new female caller? We had the one. I don't think so. I don't think so. Ladies? Let's remind the ladies. Yeah, if you didn't hear me in the beginning of the show, $50.

I have $50 in these little hands of mine. That's left for the next female caller. If you're a new caller, I have $50 right here in my hands. Olive oil and garlic saturated hands, $50 for you. So give us a call. 877-960, 99060, where you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to go to Robert, who's calling us from North Carolina. Good morning, Robert.

Hello, Robert. Morning. How you doing? Doing fine. How are you doing? Doing good. I'm talking about the question about the Tota Camry, the 2020 model, since they have different recalls on them.

And one of them has not showed up quite yet is the steel pump. The other one was the engine crack? Yep. Yeah, Rick could speak of that. Rick, you want to talk about those? Yeah. Well, it was fairly limited. I think there's 44,000 and the engine cracking one.

Yeah, the engine thing was a very small number. There's a lot of cars, Ravours, and Camrys, that were inspecting for it, but there's a very small number of engines that are involved in that. The fuel pump is a much wider issue running across many models of Toyotas, and right now Toyota is still working on what their repair is going to be. That's why it's still in an interim phase, so we're waiting to see on that one. When that hits, we're in the shop, we are going to be busy. Yeah, I think actually the crack is only like a couple of hundred of them with the cracks.

Right. Right, it's an incredibly small number. This seems like expecting only the Tota Camry that are manufactured in the U.S. Yes. Yes, and the RAV-4. There's the RAV-4 and the Camry that they're suspected, but it's such a tiny number of engines. We're talking like maybe a few hundred engines out of thousands and thousands of others that are just fine.

Well, the question is, Ken, Somebody still buy a Toto Camry that's been fully manufactured in Japan? Oh, I'm sorry, Dan. Most of the production, if not all, of the Camry that you're going to buy in the United States is made in Georgetown, Kentucky. So they're all domestically made. We actually export cars to Japan. It's kind of a crazy world. You build a car in Kentucky and send it to Tokyo.

It's a global thing we're doing. Yeah, the reason I asked, because I got a 1996 Toyota Camry. and it was fully made in Japan and I had hardly no issues with it and when they're having such manufacturing issues with the ones in the manufacturers in the U.S., I'm like pushing

the quality to the product now. There's an interesting fact I'm thinking about when you're talking about recalls. You know, recalls have a stigma. I mean, obviously when you build a car and you don't build it right and you got to fix it

later, that's a stigma on the brand. But car dealers actually like recalls because the manufacturer pays this nicely for recalls. Rick makes a nice living off of recalls. The dealerships all make a nice living. And when business is slow, when the service business is slow, car dealers are actually thrive on recalls. And it sounds almost like a negative thing that you have a car dealer that's actually hoping that there are more recalls come in because it can make the money when he fixes them. Here's my opinion on this, and this is simply my own opinion,

and there's going to be a whole lot of people, probably three of them in this room that won't agree with me, but a few years back, Toyota high-ups, the CEO, the top guys in Toyota, all started pushing that they wanted to be the number one, biggest car manufacturer in the world and they started cutting corners and they cut a whole lot of little corners and pushed to be the biggest and the baddest they wanted to be the best at the biggest and they forgot about the quality of the cars for a while and Toyota got

smacked in the head we hit a whole bunch of recalls popped up and even Akio Toyota finally stepped up and said, hey, it looks like we goofed a little bit, we went a little too hard trying to be number one, and they backed off now, and Toyota now is starting to concentrate more on quality, and the worm is turning. We're going the other way.

We're getting our quality back. You're right. I disagree with you. And if you look at consumer reports and you look at Lexus and Toyota, they have the highest quality of all the cars reported there. Compared to the other cars, yes. If you look at, yeah, that's what we're talking about.

And if you look at the percentage of recalls and the volume of Toyota, it is very, very small. So when you're, you know, Toyota's the largest manufacturer of Volkswagen was a large manufacturer. When you're Chrysler or when you're Nissan or when you're even a small manufacturer like Kia, the percentages look. much worse because you don't sell that many cars but if you're selling that many cars

and passengers are not good. Okay, let's move along. Ladies and gentlemen, I think that if there are no more texts or YouTube to share with our audience, it's time to

close the lines, ask you to please vote on this mystery shop that we're going to get to and that mystery shopping report is from Bremen. Yeah, and if you're new to the show, hopefully we have

new listeners tuning in all the time and the mystery shopping report is something that's totally unique. No one that I know of, television, radio, I just don't know anybody that does this type of report. We not only do

a different car dealership in Florida every single week, and we've been doing it for 17 years, but we do it and we name names and we name dealerships. We talk about the salespeople involved by name, the sales managers, the car dealership. And we cite the actual violations. Sometimes there are very few violations. Sometimes I don't remember ever being no violations, but nobody's perfect. But we tell it like it is. And I always brag about the fact that in 17 years we've never been sued.

and that will tell you that we're telling the truth. Rick? Frank, actually, on YouTube, was just asking, he says, with the new, the way things are going with, not going to car dealerships, are we still going to have a mystery shop in the future? It's just something to throw out. Maybe we want to mention.

Yeah, we will always have. How will we do these? Well, we'll always have mystery shops. And because they're fun and they're educational. And so they help clean out Dodge. I think we've actually had a positive effect on the car buying experience in South Florida as a result of our mystery shopping reports. Car dealers never know who's going to be next.

We've hit most of them, certainly in Palm Beach County, Martin County, and even Northern Broward. We've really hit a lot of car dealerships. So the target today, and actually it was two weeks ago because we were off the air for two weeks with repeats, mystery shop of Bremen Honda. For this week's mystery shop, we're taking a break this week from the COVID-19 related car dealer marketing and returning to another public safety crisis that Takata airbag recalls.

It's a shame that with the severity and the very nature of this pandemic, the Takata always was taken not seriously enough, and now it's probably considered almost a minor event. But we have to, duty calls us to tell you that you have to be careful. And when you hear this mystery shopping report, you see exactly why you have to be careful any place you buy a car today. Before our world was turned upside down by the coronavirus pandemic, we experienced a huge surge in Tocata Airbag recalls.

Millions of defective vehicles were added to the recall list in December of 2019. in January of 2020. There's a certain absurdity to this round of recalls that many of the bad airbags were actually replacements. Yeah, I mean, we actually replaced bad airbags with other bad airbags. It just sounds, how could that be?

You think somebody, a regulator, a legislator would say, you can't do that. I don't think they had a choice, right? It was like... You have a choice. You just don't sell the car. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And it was an economic overriding safety. And that makes me a little nauseous to think that human lives are trumped by the sale of dangerous vehicles. And so our legislators, our leaders said, okay, you have a dangerous airbag that can explode and kill you. And we're going to recall that airbag. and we're going to bring those cars back in and we're going to replace it with the same airbag that we just replaced because it'll take four or five years

before it boils up again. And we know that only 25% of the folks are going to get that airbag fixed. So you know somebody's going to get hurt but the economy trumped safety and human lives. Anyway, as I often say, you can't make this stuff up.

and we're not making it up, I promise you. We found one of these double-tacres airbags being offered for sale by Braymond Honda and Green Acres, that's Lake Worth, Southern Palm Beach County, Central, I guess. 2012 Honda Accord with only 45,000 miles asking $10,940 bucks. Now, that's a highly desirable used car. I get a lot of calls from people, friends, customers. everybody's looking for a car about that price, $10,940, that's a good price. And for a car of that age, 2012, 8-year-old car with only 45,000 miles, makes me want to be sure it's a valid odometer.

I check the odometer on that, to be sure. But it's probably odometer readings are valid today. They're pretty safe. But you can check Carfax reports to be sure. We've missed a shopped Brayman Honda a few times in the past. The last time was January 2019. That was our former Star Mystery Shopper, Agent X. That was his last mission for us.

During that visit, the Brayman staff did a good job. We put them on the recommended dealer list, and we faulted them for their high hidden fees. But we passed them in a way because we grade on the curve. And by the way, you can access our restaurant. recommended dealer list at our own cars.com. Just go to our own cars dot com and we have a list of

recommended dealers and dealers we don't recommend. And that's one of the reasons we do this mystery shopping report. This is the first time we put Bram and Honda to the Takata test. Agent Thunder was called up for duty. This was also the first time we ever sent

a masked mystery shopper wearing a mask into the field. Here's a report. Speaking as if I were Agent Thunder. I arrived at the dealership, 1.30 p.m. made my way inside the showroom. I was greeted by the receptions who offered to help me with a salesperson. She waved to a gentleman, seated a desk, and quickly jumped up and headed my way. Jim said hello through his light blue mask, and I returned a muffled greeting. He began making small talk and

asked, I was holding up through the outbreak. The conversation should. shifted to what brought me in. I told him about the advertisement for the 2012 Accord. I said I was buying this for my live-in mother-in law. I explained that she was staying at home because she was older and couldn't risk exposing herself quarantined with us in her home. Jim nodded emphatically and I continued. I said if I like the car, I go home and talk to her about it unless she objected I would return tomorrow and pay cash for it. Jim appeared to like what he heard he asked me to make myself comfortable and he pulled the car up for us to see it and less than five minutes jim was back to walk me outside he gave me a full walk around

presentation of the honda core 2012 asked me if i went to test drive it i asked if it was okay if i could just drive it around the lot by myself he agreed you know with the corona thing on the way back i asked him if he was aware of any mechanical or safety issues we do this on all of our Takata airbag shops. He said he could pull up the Carfax report inside. He also said he didn't think it had gone through the mechanical inspection. Yet, he said it was a good car and he didn't expect anything to be wrong with it. But the final sale would depend on the results of the inspection.

I asked him why it was listed online. I was wondering the same thing. Why would you advertise a car that you hadn't checked? and he appeared to brush off the question, said he would check it out soon. We found a desk inside. He asked me to wait. When Jim came back, he had a printed Carfax Report

and a sales worksheet. A quick list came through the Carfax Report. And if you just tuned in, we're shipping, mystery shopping, Brayman, Honda, and Green Acres, Lake Worth, Central Palm Beach County. He didn't mention their big call, just said that the Carfax Report looked pretty good, and there were two owners and no accidents.

That's a little suspicious. Because the Carfax report does show all the recalls. And they would also show the fact that there's no fix for this. There's a lot of information on Carfax Report. You should read it yourself before you buy any used car and read the whole thing. They can be lengthy. Just don't look at the first page.

Read the whole Carfax report. Jim gathered all my info, made copies of my driver's license and insurance car. Then he said, I know you can't get the car until tomorrow, but would you like to put down a thousand dollar deposit so we can get car serviced and ready for you when you come back? Another curious question. I asked him to tell me why would I want to do that? I was coming back in in less than 24 hours.

He repeated that it would get the car. I mean they're not going to service the car unless I put a deposit down they're not going to inspect the car yeah they just pulled that out of that yeah strange we haven't heard that before I asked him if whether they would they be doing this anyway I mean I would say I could understand him saying if you put the deposit down we'll hold the car for you and we won't sell it to somebody else but to say that we won't inspect the car I don't know yeah maybe he meant that he'll prioritize it if they think it's they can prove to the service manager it was sold yeah hey

we got money in house he addressed me and not as mr thunder i'm sorry we uh asked that we just want to make sure we get the car service for you that was a sales manager that came by to help out the salesman i responded by telling him and i hadn't even seen the numbers yet and you're looking for a thousand dollar deposit i haven't even seen a work order buyers order i wasn't keen on forking over $1,000 bucks at this time. The manager seemed a little embarrassed. Paddy Jim on the back and walked off. Jim took the worksheet, and before reviewing it explained that it would take a, he would take

a, I could take a picture of it, right? I get the picture of it, but he can't give it to me. And here's something else I haven't seen before. He folded the top of the worksheet over, so I wouldn't identify the car. Right. And the reason for that was so that if I took a picture of the worksheet and I went to shop the price with this competition, I couldn't validate the fact that it was for this type of car.

And so all they would have is a price, and I couldn't compare a similar car. I'm guessing that's probably what it is. Car dealers hate for you to shop and compare prices. What I think was he folded it over because if it hadn't been to the shop, there could have been a big bill, the prices are going to change, and they didn't want to prove that he got a quote on. of that vent. That's my suspicion. A lot of guessing. Yeah. He went over the numbers. They didn't resemble what I'd seen online. The retail price was $13,990, but I was showing a savings of $4,02.

Before I could feel good about the big discount, I saw they added back $1,495 in accessories. That brought the price to $11,483, about $500 more than the online price. But then they added a $1.99 electronic filing fee. That's just another word for dealer fee. And a $998, they call that one, dealer services fee, another dealer fee. So here we got $500 plus $199,99,000 added to the advertised price, and they didn't add the cost of the title. Or the registration now, the point being, Florida says that you must sell the car

for the advertised price plus government fees only, plus tax and tag only. So, Bram and Honda violated Florida state law because they added their dealer fees and their dealer install accessories on top of the advertised price. Rick are waving your hand. I'm pretty confused here. The car has not gone to the service shop to be inspected or find out what repairs are necessary.

How then did they add accessories, and what accessories would you add to a used car? I think the answer to that is no accessories were added to that. That's pre-printed on their worksheets. That's what I think. And if they do add accessories, they do it at that time. In other words, they could put window tent, they could put stripes, they could put nitrate on the tires. There's a lot of things you can do to a car, and they probably hadn't got around it, whatever they do. I do have a little updated information.

check the car now. This was two weeks ago. They have since sold the car, so somebody is driving the car. The good news is, and by the way, the reason this thing was silly, this is the Honda dealership. If you have a recall on your car, how hard is it to get the recall taking care of? And you make money. Honda manufacturing pays the dealer nicely. The technician makes a nice commission. The dealership makes a nice profit.

All you have to do is fix their recall. But the car has been sold, and the recall has been completed because it doesn't show up anymore. and to help Jim out, the car was serviced on the 9th. That was the day, because at least the Carfax record reports of servicing by Braymond Honda on April 9th, the same day that Agent Thunder was there. The only possible reason for not mentioning the recall is he didn't want to throw in a monkey wrench into the conversation about the sale. People could say, oh, there's a recall, maybe I'll look at something else. I'm not sure what.

but there was no monetary motivation for him not to say there's an outstanding recall and we can fix it now. And I think the idea of recalls has become such a minor issue with car dealers and our regulators and the legislators and the legislators. It's just considered a no-brainer. Don't worry about it. Why should we worry about it? It's not our lives that are at stake. It's a customer. I can't wait to hear a salesperson tell or shopper,

hey, you're far more likely to die of coronavirus than you're in a recall. Yeah. And here's the advertisement that we responded to. And you can see that the $10,000, $940, $490, $490,000, $490,000, $4.9,000,000,000 to price. That's the advertised price. And it does not include either of the two dealer fees or the dealer installed accessories. So that's a violation of state law. and if I'm lying

Bramanda sue me but you are not complying by the law so we've got to vote and we have we have grades coming in we'll start with Linda big no I'm sorry

she didn't say big she says fat F oh my gosh Ari Gives him and this is unanimous Eric gives him an F John gives him an F Marvin Marvin gives him an F and William gives him an F

I give him an F that's kind of I'm, you know, Nancy? F. F. Frank goes with an F and I'm saying F. Yeah, I have. This is just undoubtedly to cover up a recall that you don't even have to cover up. To have a Carfax report in your hand and say it looks pretty good, knowing that there's a recall and not even mentioning it. and advertising the car without any disclosure whatsoever the dealer installed

accessories or they asked and it's a shame because Bram and Honda has been on the recommended list for a long more time Rick I've got Mark Ryan with an F Mark Smith when an F Karen with a fat F F F F F F F F F and Nate Ward F that was bad and we shot a used car and that raises the issue We were talking earlier in the show about used car prices, and we're saying use car prices is being soft. And Stu was talking earlier about the fact that these cars are sitting on dealer lots, they're not moving, and they're depreciating. The cars are going to the auction are soft because the dealers supply and demand. The dealers are not buying the cars at auctions, and a lot of dealers are losing money on the cars that they sell.

more so than they normally do. So you'll have an opportunity in buying used cars and new cars, perhaps maybe even a greater advantage in buying used cars because there will be a surplus of used cars. Theoretically, if the manufacturer shut down and the economy comes back, there could actually be a shortage of the right new car, but I don't think that shortage of the used car will exist.

No, owners are going to hang on to them longer and they're not going to trade them in. In a way, the slowdown the business is helping. I mean, use car, you can't buy a used car. You can buy it online, but no one is really buying any at the auction. Trade-ins are down, just follow that down.

If car business is down 50%, trade-ins have been cut in half, so use-car inventories are not expanding rapidly, but that's the same thing. Bide your time. They might be adjusting their inventories, dropping the prices, just taking the hit on the depreciation.

and you can benefit from it. Keep an eye on it. You've got to be tough. You've got to be the top buyer, and you've got to be immune to the offers that are out there. And as Stu said, the prices are going to get better. They're not going to get worse. And the end of the month, we're coming up on the end of the month.

Days April 25th, Stu's birthday. And we have five days. If you haven't done your homework, don't think about buying a car on the next five days. but if you've been looking and you've decided the car you wanted and you've checked consumer reports and you know the year-make model and the accessories

and you've started to shop and compare, you can get yourself a dozy of a deal on April 30th, if that matter, May 1st. The month typically carries over for most manufacturers until they close the books. So you can get a great deal on April 30th,

May 1st, May 2nd, and just be sure that you get and out-the-door price, definition, write a check for it, give it to that car dealership, and you drive that car home without paying one more penny. And if you do it by getting that best price from three or four dealers with that make car, you will get a dozy of a deal. And if you can't do it this month, you can do the same thing next month. Time is on your side.

Absolutely. And what Earl says is gospel, but it does, you know, flip that coin. can get taken advantage like never before because it is desperate times do your homework ladies and gentlemen knowledge is power and i believe that jonathan said we have about three minutes left i'm going to get to a text real quick and that's from marianne from pennsylvania miriam wanted to know if it is really important to check out how much it would cost to run your car to drive your car for a year and marian let me tell you this is this is really important you need really need to take that into consideration there's a lot of people who really don't whenever they

purchase a vehicle but you have to be able to afford to maintain your vehicle and drive it so you do have to take that into consideration consumer reports that's one of the main things they always when they rate a car they rated on how much cost to maintain the car and you have high maintenance cars you have low maintenance cars you have high insurance low insurance i know people get tired of me talking about consumer reports but if you don't subscribe online or the hard copy of consumer reports you're costing yourself a lot of money what's consumer reports cost 30 bucks a year worth every dime yeah it's right you're going to say three thousand dollars a year i guarantee you three thousand dollars just by subscribing

Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, we can't thank you enough for tuning in to Earl Stewart on cars, and we do appreciate your company. Have a safe weekend, and stay safe, stay healthy. Thank you.