Earl Stewart on Cars - 05.14.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Schumacher Buick-GMC

Episode Date: May 14, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning revisits a family-owned Buick/GMC dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much they will charge over sticker for a new 2022 GMC Terrain SUV. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. We're back again, and we're full of vigor and energy. And it's a big day for us on Erlon Cars. I think we really enjoy our show as much. maybe more than you do. It's just so much fun. Your calls are what makes the show. And I've been reminded that a lot of people are new. They tune in and they're on true oldies. And I say, who is this? Well, this is a show, as my recorded introduction said, about how not to get

ripped off by a car dealer. But the question sometimes pops up. I would think in a lot of people's mind is, what is this guy, Earl Stewart and his team? What qualifies them to give me advice? on how to buy a car or have my car maintained or repaired or whatever it may be. Well here's where we we are in the business and in full disclosure we are car dealers in this and this group all of us in this studio here with except that Jonathan but Rick Kearney and Stu Stewart Nancy Stewart we're all involved in the auto retail business. My me I've been in since 1968 longer than most people that I know I was a car dealer I began being a car dealer back in

1968, and I've been continuously a car dealer. I still am a car deal. I've sold off a number of dealerships that I owned earlier, and I kept one, a toilet dealership in North Palm Beach, Florida. So there's a bias concern I can see you're thinking about now. Well, here's a car telling me how to buy a car. I ain't going to trust him. Well, that would be a good instinct, good first reaction. But what happened is I had a transition. I had a transformation. I even wrote a book about it, Confessions of a recovering car dealer. So after many years in the business doing it the wrong way, I decided I was going to become a consumer advocate. It wasn't quite that fast.

It evolved and the questions I get asked over and over again, why, how, you know, what influenced you? Well, you can read the book. And by the way, all the proceeds of the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Rick? You didn't do the woof-woof. There you go. He was chewing on his bone when you said that. Big Dog Ranch Rescue is the largest no-keel shelter for dogs anywhere.

And we find dogs' homes for thousands of dogs. And if you go on Amazon.com to buy Confessions of Recovery Car Dealer, 100% of the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. I don't get a nickel out of that. You buy it from Amazon. what Amazon pays me goes to Big Dog Grants Rescue plus you get a handbook

on how to buy a car without being ripped off. So that kind of says it all. I learned, I came, I saw, I did it, I did it the bad way and now I'm doing it the good way and I'm telling my story and that's what this radio show is

it's a continuum. It's a continuum of the story, the evolution of how the cars are being retailed. And we're here to help you be part of the good side, of car dealers. We mystery shop car dealers every week. We tell you the good ones and the bad ones and the in-between ones. And we listen to your phone calls. That's the main thing. And you call us at 877-960-99-60, 877-960, and we prioritize that call. It's a phone call. It's not a

text. It's not a Facebook. It's not a Twitter. It's not YouTube. But we are on all of the above. Rick Kearney, for example, does YouTube, and that's YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars. Stu, he does Facebook.com forward slash earl on cars. And as I say, you can just listen to the radio. We're right here on Trualdives, do this end, if you're local. We reach all over the country now. We're getting calls from Missouri and Pennsylvania, California, even Bali. We're international, actually.

Wherever you are, if you're listening, you have questions about how to buy or lease a car, have your car repaired, especially during this incredible, I hate the term because it's become just everybody's using it, new normal. What is the new normal? Well, I sure hope this isn't a new normal because we have a huge shortage of cars. Prices are over the top. Average price, several thousand dollars over MSRP. Believe it or not, car dealers are actually taking new cars off the truck when they come into their dealerships and selling them at the auto auction wholesale for MSRP. And rental companies are buying these cars at MSRP. So the retail value used to be less than invoice

because everybody thought invoice was a cost it's not but less than invoice and now retail cost is NSRP plus several thousand dollars so if you ever had to be careful when you're buying a car it's today

we have a special guest I'll mention it'll be calling and you know you always wonder we're doing this year after year after year and I talk about it I say, are we alone? Is there anyone else out there that is trying to help you car buyers?

I think I found somebody. It's a online service, came into business about 2019. Your Advocate Alliance, YAA, and it is amazing. I've joined up, Nancy's joined up, Stu's joined up, Rick will probably join up, and we're going to have a co-founder, and his name is Zach. Zach Shevska. Zach and his dad, Ray Shevska,

founded this, Your Advocate Alliance, YAA. It's online. We'll talk more about it later. And Zach's going to call in, call him to the show. And we're excited about having found each other

because we're going to work together as a team. We're both national, international. We both help consumers buy cars and lease cars and a lot of his tips are similar to the tips we give you. So, with all that said, I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy Stewart, who was my co-host, been with me for, well, been with me for longer than that, but she'd been with me pretty close to 20 years just on this show. That's about how long this radio show had been on.

She's our female advocate, and she talks a whole lot about ladies and their rights and their, how did their treatment when they go into buy a car or have the car repaired. So I'll turn the mic over to Nancy right now. morning everyone as the recovering car dealer said we have an exciting another exciting show ahead and one of the things that i want to mention as we begin the show is that how grateful we all are because you the ladies have been instrumental and getting me right here on this platform and continuing to support me weekend and week out and i want to just take a moment and thank you Also, our way of thanking you would be to offer $50 for the first two new lady callers this morning, so give us a call.

And I'm also going to mention a video that has been airing for the past week, and it has everything to do with the ladies, and it's all about the crash dummies and how they have not moved forward as far as right. recognizing, well, aesthetically, that females are built differently, and it's just, it baffles me. We've talked about this on the show a lot. It's a national highway traffic safety standards standard for crash testing. All cars have to be crash tested, and the NHTSA standards require this, which is a good thing. The bad thing is, as Nancy just said, the dummies they use are all male dummies. And they found out some startling things, haven't they? They did some studies.

And continuing here, I just, I want to thank the U.S. representative, Kathy Kaster, for bringing to the attention to the National Highway Safety, excuse me, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, that it is time. It is time to recognize women. Let me give you a few statistics here as far as accidents are concerned and deaths. 73% of women who are traveling in a vehicle with a man have the, well, they're more than likely to be in an accident and get hurt real bad. 17% of those women in that car will die. Ladies, how do you feel about that?

Gentlemen, you too. You're an important voice in this show. Give me a call. Give all of us a call at 877-9-60-960. And you hear those numbers, ladies. I know you are 73% more likely to be injured in an accident than a man, and you're 17% more likely to die. So that ought to get your attention. I'd love to have you call the show and talk to Nancy and the rest of us about that issue. And it's finally come to light nationally. So glad to see Lester Holtz talking about it on WPTV. That's our local NBC affiliate. or NBC nationally everyone has had a chance to see that's been on some other network so call the show ladies if you think something should be done about that and if you didn't see

that video this been aired you more than likely see that this morning during our radio show so stay tuned for that as I said we have an exciting show to get to now back to the recovering car dealer you know I forgot to nom I said anonymous I forgot to mention our anonymous line to come in One of our most popular Appenews for speaking to us to the show and remaining totally anonymous. Nobody knows what you said or what you said, but they won't know who you are and why you said it. You can say anything you want at Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Go to the web, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Put in your question, comment, criticism, say anything you want.

We'll edit it for expertise and profanity and vulgarity. You won't edit the meaning and the essence of your message. Say anything you want at Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And as I said, we prioritize calls. 877 960-9960. We stop whatever we're doing. Nancy will tap me on the shoulder or hit me in the head and say, look, quit talking. We have a phone call.

877-960-99-60. And, of course, our text number, I forgot to mention that too. You can text us at 772 4976530 That's 772 4976530 Stu Stewart sitting right across from me Is our Cybermaster

He dispatches our mystery Undercover shopping episode every week We have a female agent We've been using a lot lately referred to as Agent Lightning And he will cover that He's already written the report.

We'll cover that in the last half hour of the show. He also monitors Facebook and text. How are we doing on the text and Facebook's too? We have a few to get to. Good morning, by the way. We'll kick it off with Amri's text. Now, she sent a couple of texts. The first one was apologizing for a very long text, and she summarized it.

But I went back to look at the long text, and it's great, Amory, and I want to read it because it's important. Amory says, good morning. Normally, I'm a mild-mannered little old lady in tennis shoes, but lately news stories has triggered me into becoming a fire-spitting dragon concerned about consumers. We love to hear that, by the way. A few months ago, there was a story of a California dealer who marked up a Ravre for an extra $40,000. Jalapnik reports on a story and consumer reports that listed which new car models had the

highest dealership markups. The car buying data was obtained from True Car. eight Kia models, one Hyundai and one Nissan model ranked as the 10 worst offenders with the average transactions ranging from 18 to 21% over MSRP. And we knew that. Hyundai and Kia. Kia, all those guys. Kia, Hyundai, Nissan, we see it in our mystery shopping reports. Yeah, you're right, yeah.

And then Amri goes on to say, your own mystery shopper, the Fantastic Agent Lightning, rarely finds a dealer that will sell a vehicle at MSRP. Most deals are 1,000 over MSRP. Last week, you indicated that you've made a handsome profit just sticking to MSRP. Nowadays, that's incredibly restrained. A few manufacturers have indicated they're opposed to price gouging, but I haven't heard of any of them enforcing it. Some Attorney Generals and other states have gotten involved in protecting their citizens from predatory dealers, but not here in Florida. Miami Herald reprinted a Bloomberg article spotlighting Elizabeth Warren's legislation that would require a company, earning more than $100 million to explain their price hikes.

The legislation also provides a billion for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price gouging. Every day I read stories about incredible jumps and prices for food, fuel, cars, housing, medicine, etc., which prompts me to conclude that an unrestrained capitalist system needs some ethical guardrails. Just because one can charge the moon, one doesn't mean you should. Oops, the old dragon in me keeps popping out. You may not agree with me, that's fine. I'm open to understanding various viewpoints. But one, how would you define predatory gouging?

Where is the boundary between healthy, reasonable profit and predatory behavior? Two, if you had a magic wand that could constantly fix things, short of eliminating COVID and supply chain issues, how would you deal with the price gouging predators out there? And three, are there any ethical guardrails you'd like to see in place? Thank you, your friendly dragon. Before you move into that, I want to thank Anne-Marie. isn't this the icing on the cake for all of us that are sitting here all of us in this studio

that our listener textor brings this to our attention and everybody is listening one more person on board well my hat is off to the dragon thank you for joining us our question is and our quest the question is very good about you know how do we how do we address it and How do we define predatory pricing or price gouging and the rest of it? I think we have to be careful, and I know that it's tempting to say that someone selling a product over what was the previous normal price way high is predatory and price gouging. I think the way it's defined now, and I think it's a pretty good way to define it. If you have something that is vital, pharmaceutical medicine, I think that they should hang to people that are price-guaging medicines that are required for health and even life.

That is, to me, a capital offense if you do something like that. Then it comes down from there. What about other items? And a good example right now is you hear the news about baby formula and a shortage. You know, here's a contradiction, kind of an irony in the whole thing. The reason, in my opinion, one of the reasons why there's a baby formula shortage is not only because of the supply chain issue, but because the manufacturers and the retailers are hesitant to mark up baby formula. I mean, it's so obviously something that would get people stop buying product at your store

or stop buying product from the manufacturer. My God, did you hear Acme, a baby food company, is marking up triple baby formula. Well, you go out of business. So you don't do that. Well, when you don't do that and you sell to the normal price, then you have a huge shortage. they haven't talked about it, but I assure you, mothers are hoarding baby formula right now. I would if I were a mother, and we did the same thing during the COVID crisis with toilet paper. If you in your home are short of something and you know that there's going to be a rush to the shelf

and prices are going up, what do you do? You buy more of it. Instead of a two-week supply, you buy a two-month supply, and therefore, then you have nothing on the shelf. So it's a complicated question. Ann Marie. I didn't want to rant and rape about that, but I don't, I think before we, before we brand car dealers evil, because they market it up over MSRP, I don't like it and we don't do it. But I can't call them evil and price gaugers and predatory. I don't, I could just quite yet. But if you're doing the same thing with, as I say, with medicine or baby products, you know,

then I could, I would be glad to say. Vital, vital items. Vital items, things that are necessary to life and health, yes. So, Rick? A couple of examples that I found recently. A dealer in Clearwater has put a price on a 23 Corvette Z-O-6 that you must sign a form stating that you agree to pay $100,000 over MSRP, to secure a 23 Corvette,

and a dealership in Massachusetts, a Toyota dealership, is selling the new 23 Corolla GR, which quite a few people are looking for that car, at 10,000 over MSRP. Well, that's great, right, that makes my point. A fat cat can afford to buy a new 23 Corvette anyway, and if he's so fat that he can afford to pay

100,000 over a sticker, let him do it. I mean, I don't care. I mean, I'm laughing at him. You know, it's called stupid money in my book, but he's not. The dealer's not a price coucher. The dealer is, you know. We don't like them because it's not just the pricing. It's that and a whole lot of other behavior come by.

And my wife just told me this. Her friend was putting an order after I don't even know what kind of car it was. They gave her deposit and they said, all right, it's going to take about six months. When the car comes in, we're going to call you. If you're not there that day or we can't reach you, we will sell it to the highest paying customer on that day. And they were very plain about that. And that's just kind of crappy behavior.

Okay, and let me address that, because Stu and I have had conversations about this very subject. And it's too complicated to get in on the air. But one of the reasons that dealers want to sell cars that were ordered quickly is because if they sit on the lot, it costs that dealer money, big money. And it costs them money in the sense that he's docked. He is the manufacturer will not send him. as many new cars is a dealer that sells his cars quickly.

So this dealer that Stu's referring to probably overreacted to give them one day. But if I put a $500 deposit on a new car, it takes six months to come in, and I don't pick it up and it sits in that dealer's inventory for another 30 days, it costs that dealer a lot of money because he is not getting that car replaced by the manufacturer. It's also costing other customers time. and how fast they can get through cars. It's a complicated issue, and it's easy to run off and say you're a terrible person because you're charged too much money.

Some of them are terrible, some are not so terrible, some of them are just okay. So I feel like a terrible person, and so does Stu, and Nancy and Rick, because we're charging MSRP. I mean, that's a lot of money. We never charged MSRP for cars before. Now we are. Are we evil? Maybe a little bit. I don't know.

I mean, I think that capitalism and supply and demand is something that is unique to America. And that's the reason I glad I live here. People have the right and the freedom to charge what they want for their products. What do you think about the legislation that's proposed that, and this would be for big companies, it probably prompted by the stories of the oil companies with the high gas prices but making record profits, legislation that would require companies to disclose, explain their price hikes? I think that's political stuff. I think, I do.

I think that, you know, capitalists, the reason we are a great country is because of capitalism, in my opinion. And capitalism, the purpose is to build a product that is so popular and in high demand that people will come to your store and buy the product. And you sell the product for as much money as the value you put in it, and the customer will pay. and if that value is $10 per unit then it works if it's $100 per unit and it works if it's $1,000 per unit the amount of profits you make on a product

isn't the evil part it's the value and the demand and usually value and demand go hand and and so it's easy to get mad at a businessman because he charges too much for a product everybody loves Elon Musk and that's not true but a lot of people

of Elon Musk and Tesla, did you know that the Tesla markup, on wholesale markup, when Elon builds a car, a Tesla and he sells it, he makes about 23% on the cost of that vehicle. When General Motors or Ford or Toyota or Mazda sell a car, they make maybe 5%. So Elon's making four or five times as much percentage-wise on the cars. But everybody, you know, all the people that would condemn General Motors and Ford and the rest of them, they think Elon's a great guy. But he's making money hand over fist. They only laughed at him when he broke the window on the truck. Exactly. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we have, again, I'll remind you a whole lot to get to ladies, $50 for

the first two new lady callers. And with all this talk of Well, Earl's wife, who has a friend who was told, hey, listen, you better keep an eye on that order that you placed because if you're not in the dealership, the car is gone. So it's very, very important. Also, keep that car of yours that you're driving around. Locked up car theft is on the rise as everything else that has to do with the vehicle catalytic converters.

We want to remind you that there is a website you can go to if you have a problem and you want to share it, report it, and that is Florida law protecting car buyers. It is an important site to go to 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We're going to go back to, we are going to the phones. where we're going to speak to Bennett from West Bone Beach. Good morning, Bennett. Hey, good morning, guys. How you doing?

Welcome. Thank you. So I have a couple of questions, and let me get my glasses on. Now, of course, this is in your opinion. I've been listening and watching the show for many, many years. And my wife and I'm on the market for a car, and it doesn't have to be three months or six months

and getting to your show you know you said to wait a while yes so the question is do we buy or lease and they understand if you lease a car and we've done that many

a couple times but many moons ago we leased a car that insurance is extremely believe higher than if you buy a car and if you buy a car say in six months, maybe longer, should it be a combustion engine or a hybrid or all electric

and one of the pros and cons of all three of those? And I'll listen to your answer. Thank you. Thank you, Bena. I'll say, to simplify, without getting too complicated, I'd say that you should buy a car. leasing is more complicated, and the dealers know that, and they take advantage of it.

Later in the show, we'll be talking about a big breakthrough in South Florida. Anyway, I was interviewed by WPLG investigative reporter, Jeff Weincier, and I did a Zoom interview a couple days ago. And there's a big lawsuits breaking loose, Brickle Motors in Miami is being sued, and Gunther Volkswagen and other Gunther dealerships are being sued for hidden fees and leases, a lease contract, according to the attorneys that file these lawsuits, has to disclose the entire cost of the lease. There can't be anything that's added in there that you didn't know about when you lease the car. So that goes to what I said

earlier, Bennett, about dealers always try to lease you a car when they can. Their leases are easier to make a big profit on the average lease profit is typically twice what the average new car profit is on when you sell it now with all that said as an educated consumer you've been listening to the show for a long time you are an educated consumer you can lease a car too as long as you're careful you just have to be more careful and be sure that you're dot all the eyes and cross all the teeth but rule of thumb is to buy the car and if you're waiting as I said before you're you're You may have heard me say this before. Use a Costco certified dealer, find a Costco dealer, and order the car from him.

As you say, it might take you six months or longer, maybe if you get lucky three or four months to get the car. And in the contract with the dealer, written understanding with the dealer, tell him that you want the Costco price, Costco member price, available. at the time your car comes in. Because if I'm right, and I'm guessing, I've guessed wrong before, but if in three months or six months,

prices have come down significantly, then the Costco member price would adjust. So that way you'd had your cake and eat it too. You'd have a good price, and it'd be the lowest price of the market by definition with the Costco dealer certification program. And you might not have to pay more than you'd like, but it would be the lowest price

anybody else would pay. Okay, and what about the three different types of engines? I would say, again, shooting from the hip, a hybrid. I'm driving a Tesla now, I love it all electric vehicles. Hybrids are really the best of both worlds right now. You pick the right hybrid, you can get some incredible gas mileage, you have the advantage of range, If all you do is local driving and you're only putting, you know, four or five thousand miles a year on your car, then all electric would be a good choice. Right now, Tesla is one of the best, well, it's by far the best-selling vehicle.

So I can recommend a Tesla to, you know, I drive one, and there are other good electrics out there. There's a better choice of hybrids. If you go to consumer reports, there are a number of hybrids out there that are excellent. But if you don't like a Tesla for being an all-electric and you're a low-model driver, then you probably ought to look at the hybrids anyway. Check consumer reports. I'm sorry. Let me tell you the vehicles that we're interested in.

Okay. And we were interested in the Lexus, the NX model, which is like the in between from the U.S. and the R.S. I'm sure you're familiar with. Yes. Yes. It's an outstanding vehicle. Outstanding. So it would be the LX, I mean, I'm sorry.

It would be the NX, either the 250 or 300 model. Can't go wrong. It's a high group. You can't go wrong. You love the car. Your Lexus bills the best car in the world. So, and Consumer Reports ranks them all the time, very high. And the hybrid, I think, in your low-mile-age driver,

I think that's your choice. That would be the one you'd want. What about the RAV-4? Does that come hybrid yet? Oh, sure, yeah. The RAV-4, you know, if your Alexis is a RAM-4 very similar. I mean, Toyota, of course, builds the Lexus and the Toyota. So if you want to pay less money, a RAV-4 would be a really good buy. If you want the prestige and the quality, you know, all the extra extras you get on Alexis, that would be your choice. If you want to save some money and have the same basic vehicle, then the RAV-4 would be your choice.

And again, on the Lexus, all-wheel is always better than front-wheel or rear? Yeah, all-wheel is the technology of the future, and it gives you a lot of advantages. Rick gets asked that question a lot, and with all-wheel you have better handling, better control, and you've got all the features that get you out of a, you know, if you're in a snow or ice or slippery roads, sand, wet areas. Yeah, down here I question whether you need it. I mean, they're more expensive, and if you're with good roads and without doing off-road stuff, but still, there's still an edge.

If money were not an object with me, I would buy the all-wheel drive Lexus. right one more question the maintenance on a hybrid since you have combustion electric is it more maintenance than the other two yes

a hybrid has less maintenance a hybrid car I always go back to the Prius the original hybrid the one everybody left at people ask me all the time, should I buy a Prius? And I say the Prius was the best car Toyota ever built. And the hybrid is just, you know, if you're moving parts, you've got the electric motor,

the powers the car, the combustion engine charges the battery, so it doesn't work as hard as a combustion engine on a full combustion engine car. So the maintenance on a hybrid is very small compared to a all combustion engine. Would you agree, Rick? Yeah, they're slightly lower. And hardly spend anything on brakes. Yeah, the best part is that your brakes seem to last a lot longer. And it almost seems like most people that drive hybrids are a little more conscientious about not driving as hard.

They're not, they don't seem quite as abusive to the vehicles. That's a good point, Rick. I like that because it's true. And Bennett, you know, there's not enough attention brought to how much a cost to keep a car on the road. So I like your question. Okay, great. Listen, guys, you're the best. Thank you so much for the information.

And, of course, more questions will be coming, and I'll call back. Thanks, man. Good luck. We're going to go to Marty, and he's calling from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. I have a question for Earl and, or Stu. How do people finance a car that's $40,000?

probably somebody that paid $40,000 over stick or probably paid cash. But are banks or finance company having a problem financing cars that are $10,000, $20,000 over MSRP? That is a great question because we're not encountering that at our dealership. So, you know, the banks that we're dealing with are still their normal advances. I would think that large down payments would be required. people have enormous amounts of equities and equity in their trades. I'll give you an example. My mom just recently got an Avalon lease in order to keep her,

because all the incentives are gone, to keep her payment the same, she had to use all this equity she had in her prior lease. But to answer your question, I don't really know if banks are making specialist exceptions to accommodate dealers. I would say no. I mean, a bank, they have a fiduciary responsibility.

You know, most of them are publicly owned companies, and they're collateral. I think everyone knows that if you pay $30,000 or $10,000 or $20,000 over a sticker today, that five, six, seven years from now, whatever the finance term would be during that period of time, probably within a couple of years, the value is going to drop precipitously. And if you don't get payments and you have to repossess the car, you don't have the collateral to cover. So, cash or equity. They'll look at a, just like they look at a used car. They'll look at the actual, they look down, like I'd say, if I have to pick up this car 12 months, 24 months, 36 months, if I have to go get the car, put it on the tow truck, and bring it back because you didn't make your payments, how much money am I going to lose?

and if you pay $20,000 over a sticker, they're going to chop that probably by quite a bit. And I can tell you what, though, that everybody in those loans, those banks are maxing out those advances, though. Those people will be buried in those cars for a long time. They're going to be advancing 140% over book value. Yeah, I'm looking at it the same way as they gave people mortgages, $200,000 mortgages that made $25,000 a year. and they just had a, you know, got the house back. So to me, it just doesn't seem like they would allow you to buy a car unless you're putting all the money down.

Yeah. Well, they will, but it's such an extreme situation. So if a bank will max out and loan 140% of NADA loan or whatever trade value, that's a lot of money to borrow over the value of a vehicle. So everybody's just maxed out, but within the parameters of the... the bank. Right. All right. Very good. Let me see what happens. I think this is going to go on for a while, though. I think you're right. It was great hearing from you. Thanks, Marty. Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Our number here is 877-960-9-960, and you can also text us at 772-497-6-5-30.

And don't forget, you can subscribe to Earl Stewart on Cars podcast using any of the following podcast apps from your iPhone and your Android smartphone. That is Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, Stitcher Radio, and SoundCloud app. So you can get in touch with us many, many ways. We are going to go to John, who's been holding, and John is a regular caller from West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Hey, good morning I'm addressing this to Bennett

I believe he's still listening And my suggestion Bennett to you is Rent a hybrid for a week And then also Test drive Tesla

You know sign up for their test drive program And drive that around And see which one you like But his seemed like he was also concerned with maintenance. If he goes with Tesla, there's very little maintenance.

Because Earl, when was the last time he took your plan in for maintenance? I haven't. I haven't. So my suggestion, he knows what an ice car runs like. You know, but go rent both.

Rent both and see what he likes. See, that's not fair. You're taking advantage of the fact that Tesla is a huge, just so much fun to drive. And I think that's one of the reasons why it's so popular. I probably ought to give that advice because I agree with you totally. I just, you know, I talk about maintenance, reliability, reseal value, and all that practical stuff. But how do you quantify fun? I mean, when I get into my Tesla, I'm a happy man.

I mean, I just love. I mean, sometimes I just beg Nancy to take a ride with me. I just, you know, I love to drive the car. So the fun quantity is very, very important, and you're right, I should have pointed that out to Bennett. Well, I don't know. If he lives in our, in the West Palm Beach area, he lives in the area.

He should come rent a Ravrefour from you or another hybrid that you may have, and then take him for a ride under Tesla. And you know what, John? There you go. That's great advice, and I think you've been listening to our show for quite a while because you must have been listening to Rick. He has given that advice over and over again. And getting back to the Tesla, I love driving the Tesla now. I'm really adapting to it well.

I have a problem with the lumbar system, but other than that, in maintenance, zero. And it is a great vehicle. I recommend it. I think Hertz also rents Tesla's another. electric cars as well yeah there's more and more of it out there now yeah yeah and renting a car gives you a chance to really drive it for a while unlike just a simple test drive at a dealership yeah exactly John thanks I have go ahead thanks I'm in my Tesla now but I'm getting ready to take a trip up to

Michigan in it and the the mapping system that I'm gonna use is called a better route planner because it gives you all the charging stations and all the info like when you arrive and things like that for the Tesla owner you know because anyways

a better route planner is a great app and that's it John can I ask you a question as a fellow Tesla driver do you ever get tempted when one of these hot shots in a Corvette comes alongside

you have the stoplight and you know he's got the top down he's got his blonde hair waving in the wind and you know he's going to he's going to scoot out do you ever just kind of shock him a little bit with a little tap on the Tesla well I'm

mostly in chill mode all the time and I have the base three model and I did go against the Ferrari I don't know if the guy in the Ferrari or if he just

if he's afraid of his car but he didn't keep up. Yeah, no, they're hard to keep up. I shouldn't confess on the air, but I dusted a new Corvette the other day. I just couldn't hold myself back. He was just, he was taunting me, and I just, he's still,

I think he's along the side of the road with his mouth open, even now. He doesn't know what happened. Yeah. Yeah, and like I said, you know, the base three model that we have is not a slouch. No, no, no.

No, for that matter, a hybrid, yeah, they're all good. Electric cars are faster. That torque is incredible. And John, I haven't fallen prey to that when I drive the Tesla. I know I'm on a fast car, and I don't need to prove it. Right, right. There used to be a YouTube channel called Tesla Racing, and I watched one of their videos where the Tesla,

roadster, the guy actually took a sport bike, well, like an 1,100 series sport bike. Who can out accelerate a motorcycle like that? But that's it. That's it. Exactly. It was amazing. Okay. Well, thank you so much for the call. Thank you. Thank you. We're going to go to Jack. We are going to go to Jack, who has been holding. Good morning, Jack.

Good morning. Welcome. hear me yes yes good morning i enjoy your show i listen to you on the way to golf course every saturday um if if i may i'd like to pose uh this to the whole panel um i've been listening for weeks now of course you all preach that this is not a good time to buy a new vehicle and if you've told some callers that a car they bought even a year or so ago might be worth more than what they paid for it so with that background this is my question. I'll try to be real quick. We have a 2021 Mercedes E-350 sedan. We purchased it new

for cash in November of 2020. The MSRP on the car was 60,000. That includes a $1,000 transportation and handling, whether that's a legitimate fee or not. It was part of the deal. And we paid for the vehicle, excluding all of the other, you know, taxes. and all that, 57.5. My wife hates the car. And we have 7,800 miles on it. My wife hates the car. She wants to get rid of it. And we're going to be away until October quite soon. So she's saying to me, should we just sell this car out right now and then go car shopping when we get back in October? or should we trade it and we do want to buy a new SUV we're not sure what kind yet and we do want to buy a new SUV come fall if prices are better then so that's kind of my

question to you given the market and all of that what would you do if you were in this situation I think there's a good chance of selling it and at least getting what you paid for or maybe more and it's so easy to do you should check it out you know you've got to so many to go. If you're near a CarMax dealer, get a bid from him, go to your Mercedes used car department, go to Carvana, you got We Buy Anycar.com, Vroom, V-R-O-M-O-M-com. So many different sources to get a bid on the car, and I think you can do exactly what you want to do. Sell it, get out of it, or maybe make some money, and buy it later. The other factor that you need to consider is if you wait until October, there's still a highly likelihood that the inventory situation will be the same.

So there's a long wait for cars. So you just have to plan that in there how long you can go without that vehicle because it still could take six months or longer to order a car in October. What about order? What about if we did decide on what we want, go to the new car dealer, put an order in now. and then use this vehicle as a trade, you know, a swat, you know, just a traditional trade in come fall. In other words, we're putting our name in now and filling in the paperwork to order a vehicle help us in terms of availability. It would, but it would be advantageous to sell the vehicle now because when the car, when the ordered vehicle comes in, the appraisably based at that time.

But you can sell it now. it now, yeah. And order your car. If you order the car, if you're listening to show earlier, I recommended a Costco auto buying program and contract with the dealer that you buy it from that you will be offered the Costco member price when the car comes in. So when the prices come down, the price will be whatever the Costco member price is at that time. I think it'll be much less than it is today. Okay. I missed that part. Sorry, I didn't hear it this morning, But you just go to the dealer and tell them you're a Costco member and do that. Are you a Costco member?

Yes. Okay. I'll go online to Costco auto buying. Costco Auto.com. Costco Auto.com. And look at the zip codes around, find the dealer, if you want to buy another Mercedes or whatever it is, the certified dealer by Costco. And that way you will know where to go in.

Costco contract with the dealer says they have to sell you the car. It's the lowest price they sold that same car to anybody else. So today it would be a high price because everybody's paying all the money and then some for a new car. Car prices come down in three months, four months, five months. Whatever that lowest price is then will be your price if you're a Costco member. And I have one little wrinkle to add in. if you trade it in you don't pay the sale you only pay the sales tax on the difference so if you sell it out right now you factor you get an additional six and a half percent um by trading it in value in that car so just keep that in mind too

but the additional will cover that and that's why i kind of thought maybe it might be better to do it as a trade yeah and listen if you if you have a good if it's a reasonable dealer now we've done this at our dealership and i don't know um you can work it out as a trade ahead of time you trade it in they buy and it's held on their books as a trade and you get the tax credit. And we've worked that out with our customers. But that's kind of a personalized sort of thing. Sure. But you can bring it up, ask them if they would do that.

But you're saving a 6%. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah. The 6% in Florida sales tax you're saving, I don't think, in my opinion, is going to be equal to the amount of money extra that you'd get for the car by selling it today. But if you can get your cake and eat it too,

that should go for that. Yeah, I got you. Okay, one last thing. I did go just for curiosity, and I've accessed this because I have a way to do it. The blackbook.com, and they always like extra clean versus clean. Now, this car clearly with 7,800 miles, would be one or the other. I'm just wondering, like, what do, normally what would qualify as the Durham being extra clean and clean? Well, the Black Book isn't really regularly used as a, I mean, it's one of a lot of things the dealers look at.

And when they say, and this is frustrating. When they look at clean and extra clean, they're not literally talking about the car. They might say that a, you know, a two-year-old Mercedes with 70, 100 miles on it, by definition, that's going to be an extra clean car. I mean, unless you're damaged. Jack, when we appraise a car, we don't think in terms, dealers don't think in terms of extra clean. It's in there. We see it. But you just don't see extra clean cars. If we see a real nice car, we call it a diamond. We call it Clean Book. And Book is only a guess anyway today because you have the online Mannheim auto auction numbers, which in real time will tell you daily what cars are worth. If you can get the Mannheim on your car, that's a lot more accurate than Black Book. But even better than that, if you just do the Carvannas and Vrooms, get the online car maxes, that's real figures. Those are numbers that they're going to write checks for, and they'll give you that number online.

So you can look at Blue Book and Black Book for retail values, but you've got something really neat going on right now. Everybody's overpaying for these cars, so you can go to Carvana and get a real buy figure, and that's going to be, that's the real deal. True. Yeah, and the three you mentioned were Broom, we buy any car, and Carvana are as good as anything. I need to try. Yeah, and try CarMax. I don't know if they have an online purchasing thing. They do.

In that case, go to CarMax, too. And Auto Nation is more legitimate in general, because of the largest retail publicly held company. Auto Nation is buying cars like crazy, used cars. So you have a huge number of resources to get bids on your car. You call Mercedes dealerships. Yeah, Mercedes, Hughes Car Department. Okay.

Great. Well, listen, thanks very much. I really enjoy your show, and as I say, I listen to you every week. Well, have a great game. Thank you so much, Jeff. I hope you shoot bar. Thank you. It's a good time for you.

It's a great time, and you've got a lot of options. Stay in touch. I hope we helped you today. We're going to go to John in Palm City, and John's a regular caller. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. Every time you see them mentioning the price of gasoline, past the gas stations, You see, it's crazy.

On Wednesday alone, I passed a gas station within an hour. The price was up 20 cents. But nobody really mentions the main source that we have for the economy is that price of diesel. The average price of diesel, as of Friday, the average is $5.56 a gallon. Yeah, crazy. I mean, everything is dependent. All our deliveries, you're talking about new cars, use cars, deliveries, it's done by a diesel truck. but they don't they keep on talking about gasoline

but they don't tell you how serious the price of diesel and why we're in the fix that we're in with all the goods or you name something it's delivered by a diesel truck yeah you know why I feel sorry for us they say used cars are up but Earl on your used car lot

would you handle like a used diesel Mercedes or Volkswagen I mean does that make sense or are people shying away from them due to the price of diesel fuel. They should. Yeah, take that in consideration. I mean, diesel diesels usually are

higher, and sometimes in Europe, you know, it's interesting, I never understood this completely. Diesel prices are lower in Europe typically and higher in the United States. But, yeah, you've got to take that in consideration. We don't sell that many diesels.

They're used cars. There's not that many diesel sold in America compared to anywhere else. For a long time, there were a lot of diesel is being sold until Volkswagen, we found out Volkswagen was lying about the emissions, and suddenly Volkswagen, which was probably the largest seller of diesels, they stopped selling diesels because of the fact that they got caught by the NHTSA. Well, not only that, Rick will mention that the mechanic that works on a car is a specialist.

There's different degrees. Is that true Rick? My brother, no, was certified in diesel. He said it was a truck mechanic, and he showed me certificates all completely different working on the diesel than anybody that works on the gasoline engines. So that's another complicated deal, especially if you buy or use diesel, there's certain people only that will work on it and know it. Very limited, right, Rick? What degrees for working on it? Absolutely. The ASC certifications for diesel are completely separate, and there's actually certifications for normal diesel.

cars all the way up to the tractor trucks and school buses. There's something like 40 or 50 of them now for diesel. Rick, I bet you didn't know I was certified on a diesel, did you? I did not. I went to Ingeman school in Broaden, Connecticut, when I was in the Coast Guard. I knew this. And I had to learn all about diesels and GM diesels. So did I.

When I was a little kid, he had to teach me all about them. But have you kept that certification current? Yeah. If you have a 50-year-old diesel. We do it online. We do it online every year. I like that, Rick. Just one fast comment on Tesla.

No car is absolutely 100% perfect, but Tesla sure is there almost 100%. And if anybody's interested in one, I mean, I'm reading a report about the plant in Germany that it only opened up in February. They're full capacity and very strong rumor that the 1st of June that Tesla was going to stop taking orders

because of the fact that they can't produce them fast enough. So I just want to make that comment. I mean, Earl will testify himself about the quality and the performance of a Tesla car. Yeah, amazing car. You're right about that, John. I am finally ready.

If you don't get your order into, it's naturally going to be a higher price. Yeah. So time to act is now. Yeah. And if they don't stop taking orders, it's a, you know, a crisis. Exactly, and I'm ready to order.

I finally, I've been in the Tesla driving it enough that I've made the decision. I'm ready. Well, you and Earl call that out from the beginning. You test drove them way back when when they first come out and had nothing but good things to say about it. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, John.

Earl had to talk me into it along the way, and those talks helped, and I feel good, and it's easy to drive. Thank you so much. much, Sean. Packard said themselves, asked a man, packet motor car company, asked a man who owns one. Yep. That knows it all. That's right. Thank you, John. All right, guys. I'm going to hear a report on the top of the shopping report. Thank you. Have a great weekend. Hey, 77960. And you can text us at 772-4976530. I changed my mind. Let's go ahead and put that the video on that. Jonathan, we're going to go ahead with a crash dummy test, so if you could alert the control room.

If you're just tuned in good, we're talking about a video that was on NBC National News about how more dangerous it is for women being involved in an accident today, the NHTSA has dropped the ball big time, and there's some effort getting to change this. But a lot of you ladies out there that I know a lot of you are listening, did you know that you were 73% more likely to be injured in a crash in an American car than a man? And the reason for that is the NHTSA requires safety testing of all cars, but they use male dummies. And there's a big difference in the injuries, the type of injuries, the severity of injuries, and female. So how can this be in the 21st century that our government is more concerned about protecting men and collisions than women?

It just doesn't make sense. This should be, it is national news, and we've been talking about it on this show for a long time. So Jonathan's got this thing. He's queuing it up now. He'll give us a high sign. We'll show it to you, and we'll continue the show until he is able to get it up. Consumer Report really gave it a lot of attention quite some time ago, and can you believe it? I mean, we're talking about the National Highway Traffic Safety.

We're talking about these people that are supposed to be. protecting us. And here we are. I mean, they're using male crash dummies. It's just, you know, it's it's time to move forward. Let's take a look at the video. Back now with the controversy over the crash tests used to rate car safety. Turns out they're using decades old test dummy technology that often doesn't reflect the types of injuries women and girls suffer in a crash. Here's Tom Costello. Somehow, a family of four in this small SUV survived after being hit head on by a pickup at 70 miles per hour. But Hannah Shank and her 10-year-old daughter, Myra, suffered neck, spinal, and severe abdominal trauma. We had similar injuries that our lower intestines had been completely destroyed by the seatbelts and they had to do emergency surgery to save our lives.

Hanna also suffered a brain injury. while her husband and son's injuries were less severe. Exactly what researchers have found for years. Females in the front seat are 73% more likely than males to be injured in a crash, 17% more likely to die. Since the 1980s, the government crash tests that give out those five-star ratings have relied on smaller male dummies to represent females, even though women and girls are often more petite with less muscle mass. New high-tech female dummies have been available for years, but the government doesn't require them. This is the old female crash test dummy used for decades. This is the new high-tech version, much more anatomically correct.

From the legs, the pelvis, up into the spine, the neck and the head, 150 sensors, including a soft abdomen to detect any seatbelt injuries. The closer you are to the dashboard, the higher the risk of injury, and that particularly for women might be a factor. Chris O'Connor runs humanetics, the biggest maker of crash test dummies. The biggest injury is in the lower legs. And so it has a combination of their anatomical nature and also the way they sit in a car. European and Asian safety regulators are already using new female dummies. But while the U.S. Transportation Department has been studying them for nine years, it still doesn't require them. It's completely ignored women. They continue to completely ignore women.

Government regulators say gender disparities are unacceptable and concede the approval process has taken too long. But while men are more likely to cause crashes, women are more likely to die. Tom Costello, NBC News, Detroit. You know what I'd do if I were a manufacturer and I saw this coming out on the press and it's going to continue, I would insist that my cars be tested using female dummies and I'd beat everybody else to the punch and said, if you want to buy a new vehicle only fill in the blank only Honda only Ford

how would you like to be able to say that you had the only vehicle that was safety tested for women you got half the audience out there that would be buying your car so you manufacturers I hope you watch NBC News and I hope you're listening to the show

and I hope you do the right thing nine years ladies and gentlemen they've been testing they've been studying come on this is a 21st century. If this video doesn't get your attention, I don't know what. I don't know. It's a, well, it's sad. 877-960, and you can text us at 772-4976530. I think we're going to go to either Stu or Rick on YouTube. I'm good with either one of us. All right. We have a text from Jim and Rivera Beach. He said, just a heads up.

It's illegal for a license plate to have any part of the lettering covered by the license plate bracket. I've never heard of anyone getting such a ticket, but the right circumstance one could be issued, and that could come back to Honsha. That's from Jim Rivera Beach. Yeah, and additionally, I looked up the law because that changed somewhat recently. A lot of car dealers had to adjust their plate frame practices because it covered up portions of it. About 10 years ago, yeah. Yeah.

Well, I guess I'm getting older. That seems recent to me. But I guess the argument was, well, if it's cover up, it was a bit of it. the word Florida or something like that, they can't cover up anything. And also, I've seen these on the road. Those clear license plate covers, whether it are tinted or clear, are completely illegal. You can't, nothing can cover it. So you could get a ticket. They've really made some big changes. Yeah. Another great question here, because we do talk a lot about electric vehicles. The question is, how did the $7,500 federal government tax credit

to consumers for buying EVs work. Well, it's each manufacturer, it's for any vehicle that is plugged in. It can't be more than 14,000 pounds or whatever, but it's got to be a car. But they phase it out. It's for the first $200,000 for each manufacturer.

So Tesla is completely done. So if you want to buy a Tesla, you don't get any federal tax credit. And then also based on how much of a pure electric car gets the full $7,500, but if it's a a plug-in hybrid, you get a little bit less. But there's still a lot of, I think, GMs all out too, GM.

There was an Oracle Automotive News. The new Subaru gets the $7,500 credit, but the equivalent Toyota doesn't. So they were using that as an example. The new Subaru competing with the new Toyota. Yeah, they're in partnership, the BZ-4X is the Toyota Electric, and Subaru has their version.

I wonder what's different about Toyota is that they don't qualify for the... Oh, I know. Because we sold so many Clark and hybrids already. Yeah, maybe we've already hit the limit. Because it's under the brand, yeah. Yeah, so that proves we're not infomercialing. We're recommending you buy the Subaru Electric over the Toyota Electric because you get the $7,500 credit.

Good luck at either one of them. And if you buy one, you're going to pay thousands, and thousands over sticker, and you'll never get it. You'll get it when the other electric vehicles are available. Interesting story there. I read an article recently where Ford is bringing out the lightning truck, which, you know, electric truck, and the Ford manufacturer has told the dealers, each dealer will get one vehicle to have in their showroom for display purposes

so people can actually see it and get hands on. However, they are not allowed. to sell that truck for a minimum of six months and Ford has already received over 200,000 requests for the truck orders for that truck which they predict about 150,000 year the production what do you want to bet that doesn't work and they do sell the truck anyway well here's here was the trick in the article they said first off they would receive a 25,000 dollar fine for selling the truck market up a hundred thousand dollars but they also

that dealer would also no longer be able to participate in any of the pre-production vehicle programs that Ford has so any other vehicles they wouldn't get anymore because the dealer protected by the franchise law yeah all right okay we got a question from bob he says good morning my question is are this is the sienna hybrid and camry hybrid on the same platform I think so. It's the TNGA. Which one's that now? Sienna hybrid and the Camry hybrid.

Yeah, the drive lines are basically the same. And the platform. It's called Toyota New Global Architecture and all the cars in certain classes all all fit on the same platform, so to speak. Yeah, the basically the unibody construction of it is pretty much the same. But it's interesting because the Sienna and the Camry with a car and a van, but all the crossovers and the vans are all in the same platform. form the trucks around another one and so forth.

So it's interesting engineering stuff. Bob also has another question, says, with the Costco buying program and the participating dealers normally selling over MSRP all the time, would they use the lowest price that they sold their selling over MSRP? The Costco program will determine if the price that the dealer submits to them fits into their parameters,

whether they'll post that vehicle for sale on their site. And I don't think they will with these crazy markups. So you might run into a limited amount of vehicles that you'll see on the Costco Auto Program if the dealers are marking them up too high. And that's something we should research because the dealer, if they don't want to have to worry about Costco, they just don't list that. I think Costco probably should require them to have a reasonable number of cars listed. Well, they submit the prices, and if Costco says it's too high, they won't post it. it. Yeah. They won't, yeah. Yeah, well, if they don't have any cars posted, they shouldn't be a

certified dealer, so, well, that's something we need to check out. That's a good question. Yep. And I think I'm caught up over here with texts. Rick, how are you doing with the comments on YouTube? I've got a couple here from Kirk in West by God, Virginia. He says, I love Subaru's, but the charge time on the new Solterra has horrendous charge times. He says, the best charge time right now is the Ionic 5, which I believe is it, isn't that the Kia? Yeah. Ion Q. Ionic with a Q. Okay. It's 20 minutes for a 20 to 80% charge. He's got, I think he means 20 minutes to get to an 80% charge.

I never heard of that. No, no. I don't know. I actually have not had my Apple Watch can do that. I wasn't listening. What car was it? The Ioneek. Okay, well, it's the Kia electric vehicle. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, because the reason I, my ear's per job is that to what a Tesla is is 20 minutes for an 80% charge. On a supercharger, on the ISDC charger.

And maybe they got a supercharger. Which, it's funny to me, everybody's like, oh, that's such a horrendous amount of time to me. If you're going on a trip and you stop at a recharge station and it's, you know, a local like a Buckees or a Wawa, something like that. I love this. 20 minutes, you're going to spend 20 minutes. It's getting out, stretching your legs, getting a slurpy, the restroom, you know, stretch a little, 20 minutes goes by pretty quick. I don't see a problem with that. I think it's pretty awesome.

I'm fine with it. All right, we have some anonymous feedback, too. Actually, I got one from Kirk and by God, West Virginia, too. Kirk. There's another guy from West By God, Virginia, in there? Well, Kirk is the main one who we see here. Oh, I thought that was another. There's Kirk, and he's coming through multiple channels.

He says YAA also sells a very competitive VSC, which is an extended warranty. Yeah, Kirk's a YAA member, yeah. So he says, for only $500, you can get an extended warranty over their cost. It's amazingly good, and it's the same as most manufacturers vehicle service contracts. Another anonymous feedback, and I know why it's anonymous because they don't want Toyota to come kill. them, it says, is there any way to update maps on the Toida navigation system for free? The old ones, no, it's like a couple hundred dollars, but the best thing is don't use Toyota Maps.

Use Apple CarPlay and use your own maps on your phone, and then you'll never have to pay to update maps again. Or by a Tesla and they update for free. Exactly, exactly. Let's see. On your mystery shop of Sendell Subaru, Alicia shouldn't be buying a new WRX if she just filed bankruptcy she must be a slow learner I am well you know that's a that's a good question is the bankruptcy is not as bad as it sounds I mean it's certainly bad

as the person that happens to but the banks how many years do after a bankruptcy does it disappear off your credit report it's seven years I'm not sure if there's a standard of the judge to yeah there in other words banks are not stupid I mean bankrupt if you have a bank bankruptcy and you recover and you're back in, you can finance a car to get a pretty good deal. You can rebuild. Like we said, it's not a killer. It's tough, but you have to go through some pain, but then you can recover from that.

After a period of time, it's no longer. If you took bankruptcy last week, you won't be able to buy a car with credit. If you had a bankruptcy five years ago, you can. And they will see what happened. There's a status, bankruptcy discharge, and that's important. So if the banks that's been discharged, then I guess that means the terms have been settled and then you can move on with your life. Okay, we're going to interrupt this discussion because our caller that we've been expecting,

Zach Schiske, is giving us a call and they are advocates, your advocate alliance. So good morning, Zach. Hey, Zach, this is Earl. Let me, before we completely start talking because I talked about you earlier, I just want to mention that your Advocate Alliance, YAA, that you and your dad founded back in 2019, just really knocked me out of my socks. I saw that. I said, there is someone else doing what we're trying to do,

and we love to team up with you. You guys have got an amazing website. Thank you for calling in. I invited you to. And, Zach, just tell us about your organization and what you do, and thank you so much for calling the show. well earl and sue nancy rick johnson appreciate you guys um and what you do and it's it's a humbling moment honestly when i saw earl that you joined our community and you've been

engaging on our forum and and helping folks find your dealership and find your show um i'm so proud of what we built at y a a and you're right girl it's my dad and i and actually is my co-founder Arash back in 2019 we all sat down and my dad spent 40 years doing what you've done Earl and I looked at him and I said hey I want to I want to go out on my own I want to help people he had actually tired after my mom passed away and he looked at me and he said I really don't want to work again but I got him behind a camera and we made YouTube videos started coaching and teaching people that way and over the past two years it's really blossomed from a YouTube channel into an online community as you've seen Earl we care people with coaches help them navigate

the process we try and leverage the community to help share information and I'm so proud of what you do what we're doing and honestly just feels good to help people make smarter more empowered decisions Jack tell the folks listening how to go to your way up page and how you go about joining, and I have the information here, but you could give it out better than I. I was practicing before I called in, or I'll say, yes, if you go to join yAA.com, or if you Google search, the letter YAA, we have a free membership, we have a premium membership. Really, the distinction between the two is access to our, what we call auto advocates.

So we have some people on our team that man a phone line, man a live chat, you can text with us. The whole idea being that I really wanted Earl for everyone to have the same experience I had growing up, which was if I was at the dealership or if I was at the repair shop, either my dad who spent 40 years in the business was standing by my side or he was on speed tile. And so as a premium member, you have access to those coaches. And being a free member is a great place to be as well. As you, I'm sure, have seen, Earl, lots of great conversations, insights into how the industry works. We have resources like Heal School, which is, I think, a six or seven-part series that just walks you through, asking for the out-the-door price, how do you negotiate buy rate on the finance side?

And what's really neat, Earl, is it's not just me and my dad. It's this whole community. It's so interesting, you know, people don't want to get taken advantage of. It's when systems are put in place that, you know, kind of prey upon those that can be taken advantage of. I think that's why it's so important that we, you know, people listen to your show, people listen to our show, that they stand up for themselves and they have support to do that. You know, what impressed me when I first started playing around with the YAA, join YAA.com, write that down, folks. YAA, your advocate alliance. That's what it stands for. Your Advocate Alliance, join YAA.com. Go there.

And the thing that oppressed me most when I first tried is it's almost too good. I mean, you have covered everything we cover with the YouTube's and the testimonials. And you have the dealership recommendations and the experiences that all your members have with different dealerships around the country and then you have your advice from your experts that you have on your staff and then you have regular members like we have people that call this show all the time and in Texas all the time they're like sub authorities and we have our vigilante committee out there so you have everything we've done and it's you have to spend you go to your join yAA.com and plan to spend a while seeing all the different sources of information. So I can't believe I didn't know you were there.

And between the two us, we're going to have a synergy and we'll promote each other. And we both have the same goal in mind. Yeah, Earl, it's inspiring, honestly, because at the end of the day, the consumers, the individuals, if there was a platform out there that brought us together to make more informed decisions to help bring us up rather than push us down. You know, I think a lot about, I hate to say it, but the true cars of the world,

you know, there's a lot of websites out there that proclaim to help consumers navigate buying a car, getting repairs, selling your car. And you know this as well as I, and I'm sure everyone listening knows this too. How do they all make money? They sell information to dealerships. They sell leads to repair shots. And, you know, part of the reason we have a quote, premium membership is because we're trying to figure out how do you actually make money

from the community and that way you you never get pulled in multiple directions you you only have to serve one person which is that individual and you know I look at I look at the landscape out there and someone's going to do this and I'm damn proud to be kind of at the tip of the spear trying to trying to push it forward and to be aligned and associated with you or I mean we started this over two years ago and your name popped up within a month you've done an incredible job you and your family and your team of really building an incredible reputation in the history we're going to put your link join yaa.com on our earl on cars.com so we'll we'll get that certain and you're just another source a huge source

of information so we've got it going now and And we'll keep it rolling until we get this whole crazy way cars are being sold in this country turned around. I'm seeing signs now, and you're the biggest light of the end of the tunnel I've seen in a long time. So congratulations to you and your dad, Ray, and we hope to hear from you again and all your members out there. That's how I found out about it was, by God, Virginia. Kirk. Kirk, from my God of Virginia. It was a YAA member, and that's how I found out about you.

And Donovan was also involved. Bonovan, yeah. Definitely. And, Zach, I can't thank you enough. You know, we are here weekend, and we got just to help the consumer and myself as a female advocate. We just want to share, you know, with the audience that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and we're here to support you, just like you. and what an amazing effect that you have had on all of us

and I can't say enough about your advocate alliance and I love the part where you can share personal experiences and I'll tell you what that's better than any type of advertisement and my hat is off to you and your father thank you so much thank you guys I really appreciate you spreading the word and inviting me and maybe we'll get my dad on the show in a future from now. And I'll just comment one final piece here. You know, Nancy, we just launched one of the initiatives I'm most proud of,

which is a community, an invite-only community called Driven for Women. And so if you are a woman out there and you are looking for an environment where you don't have to worry about comments that may or may not be offensive and some of the prejudices that exist in this industry or in this process, Driven for Women is an invite-only women's community that we recently launched. And if you want to join, just post on the forum to say, hey, I'd like to join Driven for Women. We are so passionate about building kind of the Marvel Avengers of Advocacy. And I look at Earl Stewart on Cars as one of the superheroes there.

Hopefully Driven for Women can be a superhero there for someone. I greatly admire and respect what each of you do. And thanks again for letting me call in. Thanks, I call again. Thanks, sir. too we invite both of you anytime thank you guys all the bet i'll be taking advantage of that driven for women wonderful okay um 877 960 9960 and you can text us at 772 497653 0 don't forget your anonymous feedback dot com now back to stew uh well i think i'm all caught up

with uh text and anonymous feedback right now and rick We're a little caught up. I want to go back to what I talked about earlier. If you just tuned in, there is a huge breaking news in the auto department of South Florida, the taking advantage of customers by other dealers. And we have the Local Channel 10 in South Florida, that's the NBC affiliate in Miami and Fort Lauderdale. They're big. and they have gone, their investigative reporter, Jeff Weinseer, has reported on two big losses.

We have, and make a note of this, we have two attorneys that I need to talk to personally. One is Josh Fasin, F-E-Y, O Fagan, F-E-Y-G-I-N, Josh Fagan, and Johnny Kane, Attorney, and Josh Fagan attorney, I will contact them, and we will try to have them call the show, and they both have big lawsuits in effect, and they both have to do with hidden fees, junk fees that we've talked about so much. Now, they're focusing on lease cars, and these lease cars, hidden fees,

are coming to light now because of the fact that so many people are driving lease cars in South Florida and all over the world, for that matter, but so many are driving lease cars, and the value, the residual value, and the option to purchase value is a bargain. So people are exercising their option to purchase, and they're finding out the hidden fees and the junk fees

that the dealers are adding to the lease car when you come back to buy it out of lease from the leasing company. And come to find out in the theory of these two attorneys, John Fagan and Johnny Kane, a lease contract, the law says that all of the costs, have to be disclosed in a lease and that includes the cost of the option to purchase so uh they're going after the gunther stores in south florida and brickel i'm not sure how many stores brickel has but you're going to see a lot more losses i i know this because i was called by

jeff wines here in a tv zoom interview talk to me for must have been a half an hour and that will air shortly. So if you're driving a leaf car right now, keep your eyes on this. If you want to make a note of these names, Josh Fagan, F-E-Y-G-I-N, I don't have his number. I'm sorry. I didn't have the chance to do that before the show. An attorney Johnny Kane, K-N, K-A-N-K-A-N, again a South Florida attorney. They are experts now, legal experts on this issue. I'll show you the headline that I printed out from the why are car dealerships adding extra fees to those buying

out their leases? Why are car dealers adding extra fees to those buying out their leases? And that is, the other article they did is, did you pay a dealer fee when buying out your lease? If so, you're entitled

to a refund. Now, that's huge. Because how many people have turned their cars in, thousands, tens of thousands of people have turned their cars in, and if you turned your car in, chances are they added that hidden fee, that dealer fee, to the price for the lease when you bought it out. And that's a violation of the law. Did Josh tell you about the Southeast Toyota finance thing that you could buy directly from them? Yes, yes, yeah. You're about to get to that, weren't you? Yeah. Sorry for jumping on your toes. Yeah. But we didn't know because in the past, hardly anybody bought their leases out because it didn't make sense to.

And we clarified this on Thursday, at least with Southeast Toyota Finance, if you're in the southeast leasing of Toyota and you want to buy out your lease and you don't want to deal with the dealership experience, you can buy it directly through the bank. That's interesting, and we can talk about this some more later, but the theory according to these attorneys is that you can't buy a car, you can't sell a car back if you sell more than three cars a year. and the leasing companies have not been able to qualify. So somehow Southeast Toyota leasing is qualified where they can sell directly. Sell it directly. Yeah. Because they give you a number including tax and then you send you a check and they send you the tax. So we need to hook these attorneys up with southeast toilet leasing to see how that goes.

But this is going to be huge. You're going to see lawsuit after lawsuit and a third of you out there approximately listening or driving lease cars. and that is going to affect you, and this lawsuit will affect you big time. So we'll be talking about this next week. I'll be doing more blogs on this and press releases. You know, I have to mention, before we say anything else, what an amazing time. Does everyone feel the energy?

We came, we saw, and now we are conquering, and my hat is off to the recovering car dealer, the leader, and what an amazing job he has done and we're all on board with him. We are going to go back to the phones and we are going to talk with Bill from West Palm Beach. Hey, Bill. Hello.

Good morning, Paul. Bill, welcome. Hello. Hello, can you hear us? I hear you. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, I wanted to tell you about a previous a Prius, and I have a couple questions on it. Yeah. Okay, I bought this Prius here a few months ago, and I had to go out to home in Arizona, which is about an hour and a half south of Vegas.

I drove it the first time I ever drove one of those cars. I can't understand it. You pull up to a red light, and the thing gets off, and I thought I'm stranded, and you just put it up on the gas, and it goes. And then the motor starts up. But anyhow, after 3,000 miles, I'm kind on to it. And I don't understand why there isn't a line for people to buy these Priests.

I just turned 100,000 miles with it. And I filled it up in Houston coming home, and I drove all the way to Pensacola, Florida, before I needed gas again. I get 54 miles to the ground, it's 2011, and I don't understand what's the problem with, you don't plug anything, and you just buy your gas wherever you want, and it gets 500-some miles to the turn. It's great, yeah. So there's some problem that I'm going to run into?

No, you're locked out, doing. The other foot is not going to fall. I can't. I mean, how many house could I sleep on this thing? Well, you know, you just found out about the best thing that happened to the automobile industry in a long time. The hybrid came along first with the Prius back in. I always asked Rick to get that. 2001 in the U.S. 97 in Japan. Yeah, so you're talking about 22, 24 years ago, and everybody laughed at it. I can remember the President General Motors at the time.

ridiculing the hybrid in the Prius and everybody laughed at it and they were the only ones building the hybrid was Toyota and I had the last lap you you bought the best car Toyota ever built and a lot of copiers out there and you're you know you heard I you've heard of early and tender bill you're a late in tender you've gotten in on the Prius real late it's almost ready to be replaced by all electric so but you'll you'll love your Prius for as long as you own it. If it makes you feel better, there is a line to get them now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So is it unheard of to get, uh, you know, 200,000 or 300,000 miles on it? No. No, Rick, Rick is, uh, babyed and loved on thousands of previous, Priuses. I've, I've seen Priuses with over 300,000. It's still going strong. Yep. I'm glad you love it. Glad you love it, Bill. yeah i just can't believe it uh i mean uh you know and now i put the cruise on like 768 miles an hour

and uh some people pass me two and three times but that's okay because they stuff for gas and i keep going that's right but i cannot believe the mileage that i get out of this thing you know when i get 15 to the gas it'll come up 502 miles 510 miles and i can't believe it so uh i'm thinking it's What's going to happen to this? I turned 100. I mean, do I put another $20,000 and motor falls out or what? Bill, I'd ask you to do a testimonial commercial for us, but you're too late. The secret's already out.

You bought the best car. You've got to possibly bought it, and you love it. But it's not a secret. Everybody knew about that, except you, Bill. I say that with love. I say that with love. Well, thank you. Thank you very much.

Yeah, I believe it. I'm sticking with it. Yeah, good for you. Thanks a lot. Drive carefully. Oh, yeah. Thank you, Bill. We hope to hear from you again.

Are we going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report? Yeah, we can do that. It's just about 933. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to mention join y-a-a-a-com. If you didn't hear the interview with Zach, you need to watch the show again. and you can do just at yester i missed a text from bob it's for rick i think we should get to it before we get to the mystery shop here okay all right so bob says he has a 2022 mada cx 30 one day after getting a complementary oil change at the dealership they start we started getting a

message that says low voltage risk 12 volt battery start engine the car has been running fine do you think that something happened during the oil change uh unlikely but i would have the battery tested very quickly. Okay. So bring it back to the dealership or bring it over to... Go to the dealership is the best way because going to the local parts stores, they're in the business of selling you a battery, and that new of a vehicle should still obviously be under warranty. I would go right back to the dealership, say, hey, I've been getting this message. What's going on? All right. I would add to that tip there, even when you go to the dealership, they're also in the business

of selling your batteries. careful and be sure to get a load check and be sure you check the warning on the battery. I mean, all batteries have different warranties and batteries are different ages. And as Rick said, the dealers and the independents are in the business of selling your batteries. So you want to be informed before you make that decision. Right, but if the vehicle's still under your three-year 36,000 basic warranty that most new cars have right now, it should be taken care of for free. So you're talking about the car warranty and there's a right. car warning and there's also the battery warranty.

Right. Yeah, they got two warnings. Yeah, he sounds like he's still under his complimentary maintenance period. Yeah. It's a new car. All right, that's it. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we have our mystery shopping report and Agent Lightning mystery shopped Schumacher, GMC, Buick. And it's a great report again from her.

She works hard at this and I just want to mention her. And of course, Stu, with his Delegant writing and all his hard work as the by Minister General. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay. Mr. Shop, Schumacher, GMC. Buick. This week, we're back in familiar territory for our Mr. Shop, Schumacher, GMC, Buick, and West Palm Beach, Florida.

We're in North Palm Beach. We're here in South Florida, the Solomon Gamora of auto dealers. We talked a lot about the endangered family-owned dealership last week when we, mystery shop, Roundtree Moore, Ford, and the Schumacher Auto Group is another excellent example of one. Dying breed, family-owned opera. This used to be the typical. I mean, there was no business that was more typical of family businesses than car dealers at one time. And the landscape has changed quite a bit.

Schumacher's slogan is, come join the family. We get a laugh out of that. It's kind of slightly creepy. Yeah, we're not sure. We're not sure where the family is. I think of the Manson family. We know where Chuck Schumacher is. He's in Montana at his ranch.

Is that a threat? I'm only kidding. Chuck, if you're listening, I'm only kidding. Sounds like a threat. The Shoemockers have been around since the early 1970s when Dick Schumacher opened the Buick store on Ok Chobie Boulevard. His son Chalk runs the show now and has expanded the number of franchises in the group

to include Infinity, Subaru, Volkswagen, Volvo, Chevroo, Chevroo, of course, GMC. Burka. Now, I have to go back in history, being an old guy, and we do this. We wax philosophical. Cochran Buick was a dealership before Dick Schumacher came down from Chicago and bought out Cochran Buick. And Cochran, which was a sleepy little dealer, and Ed Cochran, he was friends with my dad, and my dad was Earl.

Well, everybody, all the males are Earl and my family. Back then, everybody was Earl and Dick. Are you doing, Earl? And then last week I went to my high school reunion. There's not an obvious left for a reunion. So we had a combined three classes, 1956, 57, 58, and the class of 58 was Liz Cochran. Liz was a, she was a real haughty, and she was up, I shouldn't have said that, that's time. I said that back when I was 158, yes.

Yeah, that's what. That was an 18-year-old Earl. And she dated, this is history. She dated George Hamilton. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And she was really cute. And he went to your high school too, right?

Yeah, yeah. Bert Reynolds, George Hamilton, the Concordes. Enough of the waxing. Okay. Chuck Schumacher actually bought my Pontiac franchise. Stupid dealership, not actually the dealership. He bought the franchise from me in 1999, and he operated it under General Motors,

until General Motors eliminated the brand about a decade later. I got a little bit of a laugh out of that. Every time, Stu and I would be out to lunch, and Chuck would come in, and he would say, you really got me on that Pontiac, didn't you? Like you knew. Like I knew. Well, I did know. Well, I suspected, yeah.

You knew it was weak. JD Powers predicted that Pontiac was going to be eliminated, and the J.D. Power spokesman in my 20 group meeting said, you Pontiac used, plans are, General Motors, to eliminate Pontiac. so I knew about it long before it happened. We shoped Schumacher dealerships dozens of times over the year and for the most part they do pretty well. We have some issues with them during

our Takata campaigns but as far as car sales go they're relatively tame. Now we got them on one of the things too I made a note on your notes on your shop report remember they were adding extra fees to the Costco price and we turned them into Costco. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, they had, they said they took their dealer fee off, but they didn't take their tag agency fee and their electronic filing fee off.

They try to go on like the semantics. Yeah. No, we got rid of the dealer fee. Yeah, we got them. So, Chuck, if you're listening, we ratted on you to Costco, and that's what we do. And when we're back to do. We rat on dealers. You know, that's what we do.

We're rats. We're rats, right. It will be very interesting to see how Schumacher dealership is handling the bizarre market conditions. we've been living through for the last year. Not all family dealships invests a lot of them in their reputations, but Chuck Humacher certainly does. I'll say this, his commercials have got class. Stu says they're a little creepy, but yeah, that's...

I'm from a different generation. I mean, they're a lot better than the ones where they scream at you and wave at you and jump up and down and say they're going to pay you $10,000 more for your trade than it's worth. Schumacher commercials, Chuck Schumacher. In fact, he does, his own commercial, at least he has a snippet in his commercials.

That's Chuck Schumacher. And he, you know, it looks pretty good. As opposed to some of the other dealers that do their commercials. And you could say, I left myself wide open there, but I'll go ahead. AnonymousFeedback.com. You look at our billboard.

You look great. Tell me how stupid I look on my commercial. Oh, come on. That's fine. Okay. Agent Lightning set out to answer that question for us about family dealerships. Are they better than the biggies like Automation, Penske, Sonic, and the rest of them? I walked around a lot.

I'm speaking the first person if I were Agent Lightning. I walked around the lot for a little while waiting to be noticed, then headed inside. I continued exploring, hoping a salesperson would approach. Now, as a car dealer, I have an observation that drives too crazy. but as a car dealer I hate it when customers come onto the lot and they aren't immediately acknowledged

I don't want to be rushed jumped on, thrown on the ground and hogtied I don't like aggressive salespeople but I think it's rude I think it's rude to smile I'm rude and not to smile and say good morning

and acknowledge and what we have now is the seller's market and they don't have any cars in their dealership but they had very few and they know they're going to sell them all, and you walk on the lot, there's a tendency to say, well, you know, I don't care where they come in or not, because I'm going to sell that car we got to somebody

in five minutes that they don't do it. So I think there's a lot of that lack of daysical attitude now on a lot of car dealership. Anyway, I continued exploring hoping salespers would have posted. Finally, a guy walked up, asked if I'd been helped. I said I hadn't. And he asked what vehicle I was looking for. I told him I wasn't quite sure.

and I was hoping someone could help me decide. I told him I was interested in a hybrid. For a few minutes, the guy went over the pros and cons of hybrids and electric vehicles, but then another guy came over and introduced himself as a sales associate. His name was Alfred. The first guy walked away. Alfred told me the first guy was Dean, the sales manager. I told Alfred I was looking for an SUV with great gas mileage,

which is why I was considering a hybrid. I told him I liked the Toyota RAP-4 hybrid but was curious to see what other brands had to offer. Alfred suggested the GMC terrain. He said it was in a one-and-a-half-liter turbo, gets 30 miles per gallon, the RAP-4 gets 41 miles per gallon. He said they just got one in and we could head out to the back lot to see it. Alfred got the keys, led me to a big Acadia SUV. Is that Acadia?

Like Acadia, like the mountain range. Yeah. We hopped in and he drove us to the back lot to find the terrain. He apologized for the condition of the vehicle. It was still wrapped up in plastic and explained it that literally just come off the truck. A lot of that now because cars are going as quick as they get off the truck. There was no Monroe label. We've seen a lot of this recently.

There was no Munrooney label on the vehicle. It apparently shipped without it. in its place was the most unusual sticker I'd ever seen I beckled that as Agent Lightning said and Stu said it was clearly from the factory and I haven't seen this before

I mean I you saw a sticker right it looks like it from GMC I can't believe it's legal to do this I mean it's a violation in and of itself and it says this label is a fixed for shipping purposes only because complete vehicle pricing

information was not available at time on shipment this vehicle is not for sale nor should it be displayed until manufacturer's price label with complete retail price information is the fix well well it's literally they're kind of displaying it and they're playing it in the back and they know it's not going to be done and uh who cares right we have other things to fight you're not going to take on general motors alfred and the maroni label alfred said the marroni label would be shipped to them in the next day or two and offered to print a replica of the money label out. Well, if you can print the replica out, why do you wait for the ship it? I don't know.

I don't care. Alfred Lyft helped me figure out the unusual gear shifting set up to the terrain and describe the other specifications. I don't know what that is. Unusual gear shift. Oh, I didn't go. I figured it would be too much detail for the short report. Basically, it's like some kind of push button thing in the center console that was not a typical

gear shifting thing. No wonder they're not marking it up like the other. card. Nobody wants the weird gift shift. People don't want it. I don't mean, you don't change stuff like that. We talked about the ship shortage, chip shortage and inventory crisis. And now GMC is shipping cars without all the features working, heated seats, for example. He said the only way you can know if you have the features, like heated seats, if you push the button, if the light goes on, the seats will heat up. If the light doesn't come on, you don't have heated seats. My Tesla has heated seats and cool seats. I'm still not.

sure what turns them on off top it just when my fanny gets warm it has a what it's cold has a probe in your fanny that texture temperature i told alfred i'd like to see the numbers on the terrain so he led me back to the katia and then we drove back to the showroom we walked inside and asked him if they were adding markups to their prices alfred said they were not marking up the terrain now that would worry me the only car would on market is as this sucker we We can't sell it. We can't sell them. Well, you know what?

When you get to the numbers, yeah, I think that might be the case. Well, there's a rebate. Could be, could be deception. But they were marking other models up $5,000 over MSRP. And by that, we're probably talking addendum, marking it that way, because we know there are other ways to mark up cars. He was able to print a copy of the Monorney label from their website. The van matched and the MSRP was 34,

35,000, 375, 35, 375. Then he left for a few minutes to get the pricing for me. He came back with a buyer's order. The price was MSRP 35, 375. They added $39, you know, why mention it? $39 for a private tag agency fee. And then, you know, he can mention this, $379 for electronic registration filing fee.

That's a hidden fee. That's a junk fee. That's deception. And $9.95 dealer prep junk fee. They didn't call a junk fee, but still wrote it in. So, and $750 rebate. Now, it's funny because my interview from the reporter from W.PLG Channel 10, Jeff Winsauer, he couldn't understand dealer fee and electronic filing fee

and junk, I try to, you know, it's hard for anyone to fully understand the whole thing. You say, electronic, they made that up. They made it up, yeah. At a whole cloth, just made up the electronic filing. Well, they were paying that. They came up with an expense and turned it into a fee. Exactly. And that's exactly what a lot of people can understand, and I won't wax on about that.

I told Alfa, I could see the numbers on this range, so he led me back to the Acadia, and we drove back to the shoulder market. Okay, oh yeah, 5,000. I already read that. So, we're, all the other models are marked up 5,000. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Althador, okay, thank you.

I got way back up. Althador was 39 and 169. Well, here we go. You had everything and compare it to 35, 375, which was MSRP. So they're marking it up to 39, 169. Well, it had tax and tag, too. Yeah, I know that tax tax tax. Anyways, they didn't mark it up $5,000,

they market up a couple thousand and then there you are so I was over MSRP with junk fees but I wasn't kidding there was no market adjustment so that's good he handed me the buyer's order I thanked him I told him my time

it was so much better than what I Nacy's hitting my elbow Radio we're on the radio oh we're on the radio yeah okay I said I'd be in touch the next day or so and left. So that's about it. And now we have a, and now we have a chance to vote. We have a family dealership. Thank you. That we are comparing with large, high pressure, publicly owned

normal dealerships and multiple change. And we say, is there a, is there a calming down of the aggressiveness and the acceptance and family dealership, we will see. Shea, Margaret Buick, is a family dealership. I think Agent Lanning picked the wrong car because maybe she had picked another one. I'm not blaming her, I'm kidding, but she would have seen the market adjustment. So the salesperson is saying that they do practice the markup, but it just lucked out in the car, which, by the way, had a $750 rebate. I have not seen rebates, cash rebates on any new vehicles.

I'm surprised, yeah. Yeah, it's... Can we check it out? I'll check it out, but they gave it to her, but, you know, it's... We've had rebates in earlier shopping reports, but Stu's absolutely right, and we've talked about this on the show before, and that is the fact that manufacturers don't always announce their price increases. There was one announced, and everybody was saying, well, it's not very big,

it was like half a percent or one percent, and what that meant was they raised the MSRPs by half a percent or one percent. But that's not the way the manufacturer really raises prices. They raise prices by eliminating cash back to the dealers and cash back to the customers. Discounts are huge. Normally, when the time of availability and high supply, low demand, you've got rebates and incentives coming out of your ears. And when they knock out those rebates and incentives, that's a huge price increase, but the media doesn't know about that. They don't announce it on the news. So trust me, folks, the manufacturers have increased their prices considerably to the dealers,

and you know the dealers have increased their prices even more than considerably to you. So you're paying lots of money for new cars today. Just checked it out. GMC, it is a 750 customer cash-back legit offer, so they're having a hard time selling this car. The terrain, you know, the terrain is a dog, as we say. So, and Sue alluded to the fact that this transmission is difficult to understand. That's one way to turn off a buyer. Yeah, I don't think we've ever experienced Agent Lightning having to learn how to drive the car before she drove us.

And there was a comparison between the gas mileage of that hybrid compared to it. Well, it wasn't a hybrid. That was the other thing. Oh, it wasn't hybrid. I thought it was hybrid. I don't know if they had a hybrid available in stock. So he walked her to probably the best fuel economy car he had in stock, which was the train, and did his best selling job. The grades are coming in. I've got bees coming in. That seems to be the consensus.

I'm not going to be that generous because they are still doing the markup thing and they had the fees. I'm just going to give them a C because I think they are about average. And I've got Negan 1 with a D for bogus dealer fees. Tim Gillland, not the worst, but too many fake fees. D. Tom, D. fake electronic filing fee is outrageous compare West Haney

GMC Chevy no dealer fees or addendums Brian said Laco I'll give them a C Give me five bucks D for the junk fees Mark Ryan with a D And myself I'm gonna agree with Stu

But I'll give them to C minus They Rub you the wrong way Yeah It's just If they're trying to be so So cultured They should have at least

Get rid of those fees Class it up I mean, if we're going to join the family, a nice family. I don't want to be the red-headed stepchild of the family. No, I don't either. I'm going to give them a D and I'm not interested in joining the family. And ladies and gentlemen, negotiate how important it's a minefield out there.

And Kirk in West by God, Virginia, with a C, open a note, relatively transparent. but junk fees and no attached to Monroey label. Yeah. Yeah, the menorone label is probably the least of the problems, but I certainly agree. I'm going to go with a, I'm going to go with a C-minus. That's the lowest score we've ever given Schumacher, and I'm not sure why either.

I'm kind of like Rick. You're disappointed. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think we had higher expectations for Schumacher. I honestly thought, I mean, I predicted no markup, but I didn't think that was going to be, all the other stuff. There are very few dealers that are not marking it up somewhat.

And our advice to you buyers out there is if you can find MSRP and even just a few hundred dollars over MSRP, you've got yourself a pretty good buy. Absolutely. We've got about five minutes left. You know, I have to say that building a brand takes a long time, a lifetime. And at this point, do you really, you know,

know, want to, you know, do anything to change that brand and come join the family. How many of you saw the commercial forever and ever and ever and ever and felt warm and fuzzy? Well, today I don't feel so warm and fuzzy, so come join the family. Maybe another family. It's a rarity to have any business that goes in it for the long run. and there are a few businesses that do. But think about it, we're all living a 30-day cycle, sometimes a weekly cycle, maybe a quarterly cycle,

but CEOs and high supervisory positions, executives, and businesses live on a very periodic thing. What did you do for me last week? What did you do for me last year? And it takes a lot of foresight, and very few companies see way in the future. I hate to advocate Toyota as a company because I am a Toyota dealer, but I do advocate Toyota to look into the future.

They've always looked ahead 20, 30 years, and they came out with the pre-aspect in the late 90s, early 2000s, and they foresaw the future there when everybody laughed at them, and they lost money on every pre-as they sold, and they saw the future, and they see the future too. So this is what we're not seeing in a lot of companies today, because people do have a memory and they will come back and remember. Okay.

All right. Absolutely. You know, I want to thank Ray and Zach Schiske again for calling the show. And if you haven't joined, go to join YAA.com. And that stands for your Advocate Alliance. And we had a great conversation. You can go back and watch the show and pick it all up. Your Advocate Alliance.

I'm going to talk to Ray and Zach about maybe changing that name. What if we just called it, YAA. Yeah, YAA, but your advocate, maybe get auto or car in there somehow. Your Advocate Alliance. Your auto advocate alliance. Yeah. Give them a call. Here I'm already trying to tell them how to run their business.

How about yaw.com. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you. We want to thank you all for joining us this morning. And it's been fun and educational from all of you. You teach us something every week. We'll be right back here next Saturday morning at 8 a.m. Have a wonderful weekend.