Earl Stewart on Cars - 05.16.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Wallace Nissan

Episode Date: May 16, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Wallace Nissan to see if he can purchase a 2020 Nissan Sentra for the advertised lease price of $99 per month. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

We're back, your automotive team, and I hope you recognize us. We're doing the coronavirus get-together. We've all got our mask on, and I'm wearing it. some gloves and we're being careful. We're taking care. If you're new to this show, we are a show all about how to avoid being taken advantage of by automobile dealers. And let me tell you, in the coronavirus crisis, this is even more difficult to navigate. I always call a minefield when you go into a car dealership. given the stress and the pressure on business and the economy, the car dealers, the danger now

of being taken advantage of is probably greater than ever before. So I'd love to bring you some good news about some positive developments and car dealerships. All I can do is point out the facts, and we're prepared, all of us in this studio at the moment. I introduced everybody in my recorded introduction to my right as Rick Kearney. And it's a time like today, you're afraid to go to the doctor. You're afraid to go to the dentist. You're probably afraid to go to your car dealership, or many of you are, to have your car service or repaired.

And you might have something wrong with it that, you know, I give you an example. I broke my tooth about two weeks ago. But I'm not going to the dentist. I'm going to exist with a broken tooth. until I feel good about sitting in a dentist chair and having somebody put their hands on my mouth and so on and so forth.

I feel the same way about my car. So if you've got a situation with your car, give us a call at 877-960-99-60. That's 877-9-60-9-960. And as for Rick Kearney, if you have a little noise, you don't know what it is, is worrying you. And maybe your car had a dead battery. maybe you

there's all sorts of scary things are going to happen check engine light comes on that's among the most common problem so you have Rick Kearney a call during the show you can text us at 772 4976530

at 772 4976530 and Stu Stewart my son is in the studio with us also and he is our we call him the what I call call you. I forgot now. The spy master general. Spymaster general, the

the M of our intelligence operations. James Bond. And it's the mystery shopping report is the focal point, probably the reason most of you tune in, because it's something you can't find anywhere else. You can get advice all over the web. You could go YouTube, and you can get all sorts of advice about buying cars and repairing cars. But one thing you cannot get, is real-life experiences going in to dealerships.

I wish we could get our legislators and our regulators. I wish we could get them to just go in and mystery shop on their own. It would be a revolution in new enforcement and new laws to protect you, but no, they don't do it. They have almost like immunity. If you're a senator or congressman or you're an attorney general in the state

and you go into ABC Chevrolet or D.E.S. have Honda, they're not going to take advantage of you. You're going to get a good price. There's going to be no hidden fees. There's there going to be no dealer installed accessories. They live in a bubble world. They think everything's just fine. If they would go in as a mystery shopper and take off their senator-congersman suit

or their attorney general suit and go in a mystery shop, there would be a huge change in the way car dealers sell cars, but they don't do it. So we try to fill in for that, and that's what the mystery shopping report is. We put the mystery shopping reports in archives. You can access all of them at Earl and Cars. And you can go back years and years. We've been shopping on car dealerships in Florida for 17 years, and every week. So how many shopping reports is that?

I lose count. And if anybody doubts the fact that most car dealers take advantage of you, They use bait and switch advertising. They use hidden fees. They add accessories to the car that you didn't even know existed. Nitrogen in the tires, pinstripes, some phony protection packages. And this goes on after the advertised price and the quarter price. Stu is in charge of that.

And if there's anybody knows more about the shenanigans that go on with cardio, It's Stu Stewart. If you have any ideas about new and infinity ways to take advantage of customers, Stu's the guy to talk to. And next to Stu is my wife, Nancy. She's also my co-host. We got into this business together 17 years ago, a little radio station called Sea View, and we were on for half an hour, and we had no idea how we could possibly talk for half an hour.

Half an hour, you know, sweat was poor in office, and sometimes nobody would call it all. I was scared for you. Yeah, and we actually had Jonathan call us to pretend like he was a customer asking or a, you know, caller. And we begged people to call us, we begged. Well, I can testify. I remember the very first show.

I wasn't on it, and I listened to it at the dealership, and I was terrified for both of you because neither one of you have any experience in radio. And I just want to say something, and Nancy's going to blush under that giant mask. that she's wearing. I thought that you had like some secret life and radio that you never told us about.

Because when I heard you talk and I'm like, you got a radio voice. I was so impressed. And then it went from there. Thank you so much. I do have a hidden talent from a long time ago. And I hope everyone's looking at it right now.

I colored my own hair and I cut it. And boy did I cut it like crazy. And I think I'm sorry. I'm not sure. That looks great. It looks great to me. Tell the folks out there, Nancy, what, well, I'll brag on you a little bit. When we started 17 years ago, no women called.

We had a bunch of guys. Finally, we built our audience, which we did, by the way. We might have one caller, two callers, three callers. Now we have a huge number of callers, but she's built the female audience amazingly, and she's got one thing that she's done that's really helped. Tell us about that. I will. But first, I want to thank Stu from way back then.

And, boy, I'd be shaking in my boots because we didn't have anyone calling. And there was that airtime that felt like as if that it was a lifetime. And I'd be on the phone with Stu. I knew it'd answer his phone. And I was like, help! And he was right there to add to the show. And encourage people, consumers, you know, listen or whatever. Back when I worked in the shadows.

Yeah. Anyway, ladies, I want to thank you all for calling me this past week. And I certainly can't remember every single. single one of you, but boy, what an outpour. And I just want to thank you all so much, and thank you for your compliments and this unique way that we represent you, we respect you, and we think you are just as important as any other consumer that's going to go out there and purchase a car. So our way of thanking you is. to offer you $50 for the first two new lady callers.

And we welcome your calls if it's just to say hello, or if you have a question, $50 for the first two new lady callers. That number is 877-960-9960, and you can text us at 772-497-6530. And please don't forget that you can go to www. W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Okay. Say what you want.

We'll listen. Okay, Stu, do we have any text or anonymous feedbacks or anything like that? We do. Excuse me, Stu. We do have a caller, so we'll go. We're going to go to Jupiter and talk to Howard. Good morning, Howard. Good morning.

I hope you all safe. Yes, we're going right. Okay, great. This is a follow-up, and the last time I called you, concerning an owner, I live in the Blobs, and we have a condo. And the owner was installing a charging station, you know, a... Oh, yeah. So let me read very fast what the Homeowners Association said. It said the board has approved requests by an owner to install an automobile electric charging station at the owner's expense.

This request is aligned with our community. initiative. Elimination of the use of paper for community notices and meetings was our first program in the area. The approval is contingent on a permit from the town of Jupiter and Florida and light. The permit process has not started yet, but we'll be kicking off next week. Once all permits are granted, a registered license electrical contractor will install the charging station and the town will confirm it. It was installed per town regulations. To date, we have selected a location for the unit and the central location for a central location for all owners just south of the first gate. A concrete pad has been installed in the ground properly.

The entire expense of the charging station, permits, insulation, maintenance of the unit will be paid for by the owner who made the request. The charging station itself will be property of the community. The cost of electricity will be played by whoever is using, actually that would be whomever is using this charging station as it is a common practice.

So everybody could use the, now my question is if someone else uses the charging station, how will he be billed? Well, that's my question for you, I thought you said that whoever uses it will pay for it, but

is there a meter on there that you can measure? that so you know I guess you go up and say my name's Bill Smith and I'm plugging in now and then the meter starts and then when you fill up or your batteries fully charged it says $19 and $10. It wouldn't say that much

it's like $5.10. And then they'd have to have some sort of an allocation identification system so the right guy pays for it. I think they'll have to go to the office and they log in and make sure

You know, I think it could be handled from the office. You know, still had a point. Well, yeah, a lot of the, there's a, I think there's one main, like, network of charging stations called ChargePoint, and I assume that there's others. And they use an app. So basically, there is a meter on the charging station. You can find the charging station using the app, and then you're billed through your account. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes.

It's nominal. Obviously, most of the time you charge, it's like a one charge. You don't leave it there. So there's a work on all charging stations? I'm not sure. I think they have to be part of the charge point. network. No, I'm not sure if the manufacturer of the charger is

charge point. I think maybe that's just a service they use to link other charging stations. We have about 10 of them at the dealership. Very cool. Well, that's great. It says something for the Bluffs. Kudos to the Bluffs for the Green Initiative there and hopefully other people.

Howard, do you know how much it cost a guy to put it in? They're pretty expensive, aren't they? Yeah, very expensive. And he started started doing the work, he's an engineer. So what happened is he started digging, and I caught him digging. I said, what are you doing?

He said, don't worry about it. I spoke to the board. I'm an engineer, but I have to get permits, and they're going to handle the rest of it, and you don't have to report it. So I said, I believe them. And it's true. You know, I'm not a rat. You know, I'm just brought up in Manhattan, so, you know, I can't rat on people.

Nancy and I are streaming the Sopranos now so I love it when people say the word And if they say to me You know, you better tell the office I say, forget about it I can't do that Not in my DNA I have a question

Concerning Breaks Is Rick around? Yeah, he's right here Look at him here Yeah, okay Now, to do it A question about rotas If the rotor

You have to mic the rotor to find out it's a rotor as good if before you do the break job is that correct yes by micing the motor you means we use a micrometer to measure the thickness of the rotor in several spots around it to make sure that it doesn't have excessive changes big runout or that it's not too thin to be cut okay now let me ask you this question I have a 2017 car with And it has 30,000 miles on it. The break padding, you know, checked it out in, you know, Earl Stewart, and it's okay. But will I be, will there be a noise like a squeal to tell me that the, the rotors are going bad?

Well, they won't be for, if something happens to the rotors, that you'd normally get a feeling. Something built in to make a noise? Not for the rotors. Now, if you mean when the pads wear down, then yes. Because when the pads get thin enough, there's a little metal, it's just a thin piece of metal scraper that will rub against the rotor when you hit the brakes, and it will make kind of a screeching sound. And it doesn't really do anything to hurt the rotor, but what it does is it alerts you that, hey, these pads are really thin, and it's time to get them replaced. I can't believe I didn't know then. They actually, so that's, it's a pre, the noise is designed to happen as a warning.

It's a little spring clip that goes on the pads. There's usually one on each pad. And when the pad gets thin enough, that spring clip will come in contact with the rotor, and it will just scrape on that rotor to let you know. Would it be too expensive or more difficult just to have an alert light on your dash? I mean, much more expensive because that spring clip costs maybe a penny to make, if that. And so in each time we simply transfer it over to the next set of pads. I got you.

Lexus and some of the other big-name brands, they actually have a little sensor built into the pad. And it makes the pads more expensive. And when that sensor rubs on the rotor too much, it wears it down. And then you have to replace that sensor. And they can be $60-70. dollars. Interesting. Well, how about, did you know that, Howard? Do you know that they had the metal and the

pads was put there by design? I thought that when you had the noise and the brakes, it was just because you're in trouble and it would make me worry. And so, God, I must be down to the bone here and my brakes aren't safe, but it's an actually pre-designed warning

thing. Did you know that? Yes, I did know. That's why I'm the only guy that didn't know him. My question to you is that every month car has that or just Toyota? I know Toyota has. All of them have it. They all have a spring clip to let you know.

It's just a little warning. Okay. So when you do a break job, I'll make it fast, I don't want to be on too long. When you do a break job and you take the pads out, right? And let's say the rotors are okay. You mic them. You still have to cut them a little bit. At the beginning, or can you put the same rotors in and put the pads right on?

You can actually just slap on a new set of pads, but really the best thing is to resurface those rotors, give them just a light cut. And the reason is then you've got a perfect fresh surface for those new pads to ride against, and they actually do what's called seating in better. It kind of mates the pads to the rotor in a better fashion, and so you're breaking. will stay quiet and feel good and you won't get any of that weird chattery feel or an odd feeling the brake pedal when you're stepping on the brakes. Okay, one fast question and I'm through. Ceramic pads, semi-vitallic pads or metallic pads, which is the best? My preference is ceramic because the semi-metallic and metallic pads, although they'll last

longer, they also wear the rotor a lot more. pads are less expensive. They're like $10 really well. I'm going to say they'll start it around $10 to $15 for a set of pads. They're really inexpensive ones. Metallic get much more expensive. They'll last longer but the rotor which can be over $100 on some cases can be damaged and worn out a lot faster by that metallic rotor or the metallic pad.

So ceramic pads really are best because I'd rather replace just a set of inexpensive pads resurface my rotor and have that rotor last a whole lot longer than to replace everything all at once. I tell you, I'm getting an education today. So when you go into a service department with a brick issue, you should request ceramic pads. Yep.

Well, most pads that we sell from Toyota, the Toyota factory pads are all ceramic. Okay, so everybody's recognized. It's when you go aftermarket that you'll hear a lot of the places they want to say you the metallic, because then they'll sell you new rotors, too. Gotcha. What do you think, Howard?

In other words, when you do a break job, you leave it up to Rick, and Rick knows what to do. Okay, that's great. Don't ask me. All right, thanks very much. Stay safe, everybody. Thanks, you too, Howard. Thank you, Howard.

Thanks for being part of the show. Ladies and gentlemen, that phone number, if you didn't jot it down, is 877-960-960. 9960, and you also can go to the text number, which is 772-497-6530. Not only do we have a wonderful mystery shopping report that's coming up, but, you know, we want to entertain you at the same time as inform you and share some wisdom with you. And of course, all of this is definitely, totally two hours of free advice and information. And if you did,

speaking earlier of ceramic, if you didn't take advantage of Earl's latest two columns, please, please do so because they definitely are very informative. And the first column that he wrote was for Attorney General Ashley Moody. And, you know, enforcing Florida laws regarding advertising and honest car prices, We've been preaching for, gosh, I don't know how many years, the same topic, and we have definitely haven't received a response. I've written letters to Bill McCollum years ago. He was Attorney General.

He ignored me. Pam Bondi wrote her a letter. She ignored me. And now I'm giving Ashley Moody a try to see if she has anything in her heart to defend the victims of car dealers. And all we ask you to do is enforce a law. it's already there, but apparently the Attorney General's just don't like

to enforce it. I'm going to go look for her response and ain't going to happen.com. Yeah, exactly. And Earl hasn't given up his mission. He is definitely driven by the passion for the consumer and always with them in mind, first

and foremost, more or less like Consumer Report. And also the second column that he wrote was, you know, about this this coronavirus and it's right there it's like the elephant in the room and it's deadly and if you didn't catch that column please read it your car's interior can be a coronavirus can be coronavirus resistant as the cabin interiors of billionaire private jets and boy is that a great read

I couldn't believe that this, they have this on burlopads, on tennis shoes, this barrier that keeps these places from absorbing that coronavirus and becoming polluted and infected. And it is a very interesting column, and it protects surfaces being re-injected after it's applied. So all that and much, much more right here at Earl Stewart on cars. Back to the recovering card dealer. Yeah, let's get back to the text. You know, YouTube's, we got the... Yeah. So the first one, would you have somebody on the phone?

I don't mind. I just wish I could drink coffee. That's the problem. I got my mask on. I'll leave my coffee in the car. Really? Whoops. We have a call from Philadelphia.

And I think that's Philadelphia. That's Mark giving us a call. Hi, Mark. Hey, Mark. How are you guys doing? Well, thank you. Good morning. It's, uh, yeah, I've been listening for quite some time and I would say that you guys are

definitely doing a great service, not just where you're located in Florida, but I would say across the whole country. Thank you. If we're up to me, I'd bless you. I'd syndicate you all over. Oh, thank you. But, uh, here's my question. So I'm on the verge of buying a new 2020 kiosol, and I've done my Earl Stewart for.

done my Earl Stewart homework. I've looked in the consumer reports, contacted multiple dealers, out-the-door prices. And I think I've negotiated a price that I believe is fair. I feel pretty good about it, right? So that was until

I did some research the other day on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website. And on that website, I see that there's a nice collection of different responses from owners of the car. I saw 26 complaints about the power train of the new 2020 T.A. soles.

And these are really like problems ranging from CVT transmissions flipping at highway speeds, RPM shooting up when they shouldn't be, in cases where the whole transmission have to be replaced. Wow. So I have basically two questions. One may be more slighted for Rick is, I know every transmission is different per manufacturer,

but in your opinion, are CBT transmissions still being proven out right now? They're really new. There's only a few cars actually that are running what's the continuously variable transmission. My impression on them, I think we need more, because unlike a normal transmission... You mean more design and improvement? More of them. More of them, okay. They obviously, the improvements will come, you know, as they work the bugs out of them.

But if you only have a few cars out on the road with them, you're not getting enough feedback, really, for the engineers to figure out how to improve them. But if you're Mark and you're thinking about buying one, you don't want to be part of the test pilot phase. He'd like to, I think you're saying that Mark ought to wait and go with a vehicle. that has a more of a proven transmission than being part of the testing program. Yeah, I'd be a little nervous if Kia's got that many complaints about them, though. I'd be really nervous about that.

Toyota's had them for a while, though, right? As a matter of fact, our corolla's been running them for many years now, and we did have our growing pains. Toyota, we had a few problems with our corollas. And they're fixed with software updates, really. It's on timing, yeah. And it all relates to how that system operates, but the best thing I see about a CBT is that it keeps your engine in a more narrow power band

where it produces the most power, the most efficiently. And that's the best thing about them versus a normal transmission. Your engine's not revving up and down all over the place. It stays at that narrow power band. Mark, was this endorsed by Consumer Report when you checked the key of soul out to 2020? Did they have any comments about the reliability and mention the transmission? It sounds to me like they recommended it. Well, you're leading right into my next question, Earl,

because when I look at consumer reports, the predicted reliability, even with the transmission, the engine, everything is green, and it looks great, and they recommend the car. Interesting. And that was my next question was, how do I weigh, like, a refuge? source like Consumer Reports versus what I'm seeing there out on the National Highway Traffic Safety website. Well, I would, you know, that's a tough question to answer. I would, I can, I would trust consumer reports.

But the thing with Consumer Reports is they have two types of tests. When a new car comes out, they'll test it, and they'll, the Consumer Report people actually do the testing. the testing because there's not that many cars on the road and they'll say the 2020 kiosol or whatever it may be we give it a high rating or a low rating or medium rating now they also have older cars that they test and that's much more reliable because they can test a car that's been on the highway for five years and then they contact the owners of the car and they talk to them as well as testing it so they've made big mistakes before on the new car.

One of the classic ones was a Tesla. I forget which model it was, but Tesla passed with, they got a 100 rating, the highest rating consumer reports had ever given. Two years later, consumer reports removed Tesla

as a recommended car at all because you can build a great new car and you can drive it for 90 days and it just seems really fine. And then you drive it for 10 years or five years or three years, you can get all sorts of problems. So my question to you, and I haven't seen the report on the Kia Soul,

was this a brand-new car, the 2020 Kia, or was this an overall endorsement of the Kia Soul since it came out? This would be the third generation of the Kia Soul, and it's actually this is the first model year of that redesigned. Okay, so there you are. So the continuous aerial transmission just occurred in the 20th, And that's the reason that Consumer Reports doesn't have the data. And apparently, so you did double research with NHTSA and NHTSA, I think, saved you on that one because Consumer Reports is probably going to gig the key of soul when they find out about this transmission problem.

If they don't work the bugs out, like Stu said, you can fix these problems sometimes just with software changes. Okay, I agree. One last question then. Do you think it is worth my effort in time to maybe call different Kia dealers and call their service departments and say, hey, have you had any problems with the transmission of this car? Do you think they would be honest with that? Well, you know what you could do? You could probably do it better, and I think Rick will agree with me. There's something called a technical service bowl, the TSB. technical service bulletin. And you can Google that and you can go online and just put in a technical service bulletin, Kia Soul, CVS transmission. And sometimes the dealers, first of all,

they might not be honest with you. No Kia dealer likes to say bad things about Kia's, but more likely they just don't know about it. There's usually a mountain of technical service bulletins and whoever you talk to on the phone might not have seen the bulletin. So you could do it yourself and get accurate information rather than call the Kia dealer. Yeah.

But also it takes a little while, right? They have to have enough cases before the manufacturer will issue that TSB. Right. So if it's pretty new, you know what, I would imagine because, you know, in most car dealerships, there's not a whole lot of, you know, solidarity between the service department and the sales department. You'd probably get, you know, an honest answer from a service advisor or a technician. Or you might know, or they might not know. I mean, you call a service advisor at any dealership,

chances are he's not well-versed on all the technical service boards. Because there's thousands of them? They're more than that. I couldn't even give you a guess. He might just have some anecdotal evidence just from customers. You know, they've written up a few of these problems. There's not a day goes by. I don't see a technical service board coming on something.

Well, one other resource that I'd recommend checking out is go online and search for a Kia sole owner forum. and you'd be amazed at how many people are on these forums that, you know, they've been driving Kia Soles that have the new ones, the old ones, and it's incredible how honest and how easily these folks will offer their opinions, especially you put a line in there, says, hey, I'm considering buying this new one. What do you all think? You will get so many opinions.

You'll kind of have to win through them to find the true gems in there, but it's a great resource. I love that idea, Rick, and guess what? I did that too, transmission problems. And that led me to call on you guys today because I'm at the point now where I'm about to back out of this only because it just, to me, it seems prevalent.

That's all. If you're the least concerned on it, I'd back out. Now, Mark, I'll tell you one thing. If all our listeners were as smart and educated, as you are and do the research and the homework you've done, we'd be out of business. We'd have to close the show down because you are

doing exactly what we are begging people out there to do. And I'm so happy that you listen to the show and you're a real asset. You are a role model to everybody of the way you've got to do your homework before you go out there and pluck down the money for a new car.

I tell everybody that I know that's in this situation to listen to your show because I learned it from you, sir. So thank you. Thank you, Mark. Stay safe and have a great day. Okay. That was a great comeback whenever you said Mark, you know, really he does his homework and he's a good rule model.

You know, so I'm glad that we have so many that are taking advantage of our information that we share with you on Saturdays. Ladies, if you missed my announcement earlier, $50 for the first two. new lady callers and you can give us a call at 877-960 or you can text us at 772-49760 but let me be specific you do have to call us to win the $50. I think that we're going to go back to Stu who has been trying to share some texts with us. That's okay. I'm getting organized. When I don't speak, I'm over here organizing. So the first one we'll go to is a series of texts, and we'll try and get to a series of questions within one text, and we'll get to them in rapid fire style, I think. So here are. Question number one, is it a good idea to extend the lease month to month at the same

cost than to buy in these uncertain economic times? Yes. Okay. Number two, and by the way, most lease companies that will go beyond their normal, we found out, beyond 90 days, six months even on the lease extension. And that's great. You're in the same deal. You're used to it and buys you some time. Okay, why does Toyota Financial not reduce residual value even when I provide them trading quotes on KB and Edmonds? If I decide to drop it off, won't they just be in a loss? Well, I guess the question is, why is the residual value so high? Do you want to buy the car? And why is it not a reversible? Yeah, they do it to sell the car or at least the car. And it used to be that the residual value was a real number,

and now the manufacturers or the leasing companies have turned it into a way to lease the car to lower the lease payment, which is a good thing. It just takes away the practicality of the option to buy. Yeah, and a nice way to look at it, make you feel a little bit better, is you got that money. So they established the lease based on the ALG leasing guide, and then they add money to that. They had a percentage to it. So on a residual enhancement is what they call that, it's like getting a $2,000, $3,500

and cash incentive that you're getting a benefit of. Let me say this, too, as I flash back into my history in this business, it's a premeditated overstatement of the residual value, and so they calculate that into their profit structure and everything else. So they're not getting hurt by that high residual. They're doing it as an alternative to a rebate or something. Now, years ago, before the manufacturers of leasing companies were sophisticated, they were not too good with the crystal ball as far as knowing what the residual would be.

And they used to make some big mistakes, and leasing companies used to go broke. Toyota almost went broke, the Southeast Toyota leasing company. Late 90s. In late 90s, because they got overly aggressive jacking up their sigils because you get that instant gratification of leasing a car, but they forgot about the fact in three or four years that car, comes back and they got to sell at auction, they were losing literally billions with a B, billions of dollars because they'd overstated, and it was a real crisis for Southeast

Toyota. It doesn't happen anymore. They're far more sophisticated, and they learned their lesson. And they have a really sophisticated network of resailing these lease returns amongst the dealers. It's online, and so they sell them all over the place. One thing that it makes you angry, though, we just defended the practice, but when you lease that car, they have a big fat acquisition fee, you know, $700, $900. And then when you turn it in, you have a disposition fee of $350. So they have over $1,000 that cushions that blow if they take a loss when they sell that lease car to auction. So don't feel too bad for them.

It's like a leasing company dealer fee, a hidden fee. I hate hidden fees, whether it's from the manufacturer or from the dealers. If you got a fee, they should take that and put it in the lease price. put it, you know, hey, when you lease a car for $297 a month, that should have everything in there. Yeah. You shouldn't get screwed coming in with a acquisition fee and a disposition fee. And the same thing with the over-milege fee. It should all be set up and clearly, transparently disclosed.

Yeah, that's definitely part of their whole calculus, because the question, the texture is absolutely right, will they take a loss? In some cases, they will take a loss. And so they work that in there to make it easier for. for them but it's not good for the consumer great information stu we're going to go to new york uh where lisa has been holding good morning lisa good morning how are you well thank you welcome to the show are you a first time caller i am a first time a caller yes you just won yourself fifty dollars lisa oh that's wonderful thank you so much you're quite welcome and thank you

for joining us in building this platform for ladies here at Earl Stewart on cars. And if you stay on the line, when we're finished talking, you can share your information with Mike, who's in the control room. And I'll get that checkout to you. Okay, great. Thank you so much for that. What can we do for you this morning? So, you know, I'm here in New York and at the center of the pandemic right now. And in the time of COVID, I have serious concerns about traveling on a plane. So being in New Yorker and never having had a car before, I am looking for a used car right now.

And with unsure economic times, I can't really afford a new car. So I'm looking for a reliable used car for long-distance travel. I would like to make the trip back and forth from New York to Florida. My parents are living in Florida like a lot of New Yorkers. And I was wondering if you could recommend a reliable, safe, used car, and how to go about that process. You know, that's an interesting question, Lisa, and Earl and I were talking about that this morning and about the use car market and where there was once a shortage, there's too many of them out there now. So you've got a lot of options, but I'll turn this over to Earl and let him talk to you personally. Well, Lisa, the used car market now is in even greater turmoil than the new car market, you know, with this whole impact of coronavirus.

economic impact has been huge. Used car prices to the dealers have plummeted, and the value of their inventories has dropped. It's starting to come back a little bit now, but there are a lot of dealers that have cars in their inventory that are overpriced because of the bottom dropping out of the economy. It's an opportunity in a way for a buyer, but you have to be very careful.

There's a huge amount of lease cars coming in now. rental car companies are dumping cars on the market and that's one of the reasons that's dropped the wholesale value to the dealers. Unfortunately, this creates a chaotic situation. Even though the value of the cars is dropping, some of the dealers are trying to get their money out of the cars, meaning they're trying to sell them for more money than they're actually worth. So buying a used car today, you need to be even more careful than you did before the coronavirus. Another thing putting the pressure on the used car business today is the fact that the new cars are so incentivized with the 84 months, zero percent financing big rebates by the manufacturers that the new cars are competing with used cars.

you can actually find a lot of new cars at a lower monthly payment than you'd have to pay on a used car. So that puts more downward pressure on the used car. If monthly payment is very important to you, you might want to start looking at new cars and some of the legitimate offers by the manufacturers where you can get a lower payment than you would if you had to buy a used car. Stu had a point he wanted to make.

Yeah. So it is a precarious, but it's an opportune time to get a good deal on a used car. On the reliability question, we always use consumer reports because they don't just rate new vehicles. They also rate used vehicles. And I pulled up the most recent best use cars, most reliable under 20,000. And I don't know what your budget was, but real quick, are you looking for a small car, like a SUV or what were you thinking? Yeah, definitely a small car because I'd like to park it in New York. city. I live in Manhattan. Okay. Oh, cool. My son's going to be going to school there in the fall,

hopefully, if they let people back on campus. Small cars, the consumer reports currently ranks for small cars. The most reliable is the Honda fit, and those are between 2011 and 2013, and also 2016 and 2019. The Mazda 3 between 2011 and 2018, and the Toyota Corolla between 2010 all the way up to 2018, the Prius up to 2015 and the Prius C up to 2016. So if you have an account with Consumer Reports, you can access this yourself, or since you're sending us your contact information, I'll just save a PDF for this page and we'll email it to you. How's that sound? Oh, that's great. Thank you so much. No problem. Yeah, there's so many ways that you can go about this in researching exactly what you.

you need and as Stu mentioned about the consumer report on in the May edition 2020 there's some great articles that advise you on the best car picks for for every driving style as you mentioned you'd like to get from New York to Florida and there's a whole lot of research to do on something like that remember what I said earlier just be sure that you're very careful on the pricing you need to get comparative competitive pricing before you buy because Because the dealers now are these cars that they would have in their inventory, they have too much invested in them, and they're trying to sell out of the cars. There was also an article in the trade journal for car dealers, automotive news, advising the dealers that have too much money in the cars they have an inventory, and they don't want to cut the price because they lose money to try to make it up when they finance security.

car. And so that's what dealers are doing. They're using deceptive ways to overcharge you with hidden fees and a lot of money in the finance office when you finance it. So when you get this list of recommended cars from Stu and that came from Consumer Reports, just be sure that you shop and compare prices with two or three dealers before you finally sign on the dotted line. Yeah. Whenever you finally accumulate all that information, I hope we're not over. overwhelming you. You can go right to your computer and go to the Internet and you can protect yourself from, well, anything that they may try to take advantage of you as far as it being a female. So they don't know who you are when you go to the Internet. And I advise just to take your time

and research, research, research. You can't do enough of that. And that way you will definitely get what you want. Okay. Well, thank you, Lisa. Hang on. I hope you all. Hang on because Mike's going to get your contact information so we can get that $50 out to you. Thank you very much. Please call back next week or the week after whenever you make your decision. We'd love to hear how it went for you and the purchase of your used car. Thank you. Okay, Lisa. Thank you very much. We have $50 left here for the next new lady caller. As you heard, Lisa gave us a call from New York.

877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 77249-9-7-6-530. Don't forget, www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Back to Stu. Yeah, we're still on the first text, the multi-part text, but they're such good questions. We're going to keep going through them. This is one of Earl's favorite topics. Will gasoline engines be a lot less valued in the next five years due to Tesla and everyone else? else with hybrid or complete electric cars? No, not in five years. Combustion engines will be around for a time.

This whole corona thing with the economic impact has really slowed down everything. It's inevitable. The combustion engines will be obsolete and the value will drop and it will be all electric. But this huge earth-wide crisis that we have that is so mind-boggling is going to everything on hold and all the predictions of when all electric and autonomous cars are going to happen you can push that back probably years as a result we're getting a little like a glimpse of the future right now i read an article that said um that renewable energy is um overtaking coal as a percentage of like the the electricity in america right now it has overtaken right and that's due to uh

just a lot less activity business is being closed so uh that's kind of it's a little glimpse of the future. We're going to go to Frank, who's calling us from Jupiter Farms, and we love hearing from Frank. He is a regular caller. Welcome to the show, Frank. Well, good morning, Nancy and Earl and the rest of the gang. It's always a pleasure hearing you every Saturday morning, just laying in bed and not getting up and having the time to get further enlightening out of shop for cars. Wow, that's a great point. I like that. I'm jealous. Yeah. Yeah, wonderful. Thanks, Frank. I know. You guys get up early and drive in.

But, yeah, a few weeks ago, you helped me tremendously, as I mentioned last week, with my daughter's purchase a car out in Utah. Yeah. Yeah. So, of course, her other brother down here in Port St. Lucie heard about it and said, well, Dad, can you help us get a car? So, yeah, of course, I went there. Oh, my goodness.

I mean, Johnson, Honda. That was interesting. But luckily, from the things I've learned over the years from your show, I was able to try and punch some holes in it and, of course, bring it and say, hey, your internet price should not have the dealer fees added on all these other fees.

Oh, no. Because, you know, we're allowed to do that. I said, no, it's against the law. Oh, no, we put the asterisk there. Our lawyer says, that way you can't sue us. Oh, yeah. Well, this would be a thrill. So then, then here's where it's coming in for today.

The other son, down in Miami, you help Melody get her. her car. You help Tony get his car. What about me? I need a truck now. Oh my goodness. So he goes on the internet and he sees 10, 12, 15,000 not the price of a new Ford pickup truck or zero percent financing, but he doesn't think it's or he thinks it and zero percent finance. And I said, no, no, no, read the little fine print. You've got to be a teacher. You've got to be a pair of rescue. You've got to be a fireman. You've got, by the time you do all this, there's no person in Dade County that's going to fit all those things at Sunshine Ford to get that $15,000 off.

And so he said, okay, well, I'm going to do the 0% financing. Here's a problem. He's 30 years old. He works at Federal Express for a couple years. He doesn't have any credit. He has zero credit. They would have given financing in the 20s, about 25%. with 15,000 down.

Oh, my God. I said, okay, this is like... Usory. So I said, okay, maybe I can help out by co-signing. And here's my question to you. If I co-sign, because my credit history is in the 800s, thank goodness. My mom taught me well. What's my, I guess, I could be stuck if he doesn't pay the payments, correct?

Oh, yeah. Yes. That's on you. I'm talking from experience, Frank. Which son did that to you? Daughter. No, I have three daughters, and I've purchased a lot of cars, but just the one time I was a co-signer. I'm going to knock you off that chair.

She gets emotional when she thinks about that, Frank. I never did that to you, Dad. I didn't mean to open up any wounds this point. After a while, I wore a sign on my forehead. I do not co-sign under any circumstances. Wow You know what Frank I mean this is simplistic

But first advice is like Don't let him shop for cars down in Miami That is the Wild West down there I mean for every manufacturer it's insane Have him come up to visit you You know in the driveway because it's official distancing And then you know Send him to a Ford dealer up here

Mullinax up here is a pretty good dealer And yeah I think Let's get him out of the jungle It's bad down there It is it's terrible I tell him I'd say for sure I mean, I told them to come up here because I actually spoke to Molax. They were very nice.

I think I sent you a picture a year or two ago on their bottles. No dealer fees on their water bottles. They have a little one, but, you know, we won't hold it against them. I recall that. Excuse me. Yeah, well, like I said, here's, I guess, a question because, and it's just like your show you, he found that out real quick. The use car prices don't.

can't compare it with the zero financing firm oh my goodness i think it's 84 months as port is doing if you got you know it's just amazing payments can be down in the 300s versus you know but with it with no credit without no credit i guess he's really stuck though right yeah they they really keep that you know the qualification is uh you know tier one you got to be in that 740 you know the average person doesn't qualify and that's that's deceptive just in itself uh they say in the fine print you must have very good creditor you know it says what's a 720 now so well they break it down like even like Toyota Financial has like a tier 1 plus which is 740 and higher yeah I mean you're one is 720 yeah I think the average credit scores and what

the mid 600s yeah 650 something yeah well very good like I said well I haven't come up that would be nice little car riding come up on the tri-round I'll pick them up there you yeah you can be it you can use this There's a mystery shopping report for us, says you and your son go in there and just make mental notes, and you can call in. We'll have two mystery shopping reports. There you go. Yeah, it's fun. I mean, like I said, you guys are great.

Oh, thanks. One other, a total different question, total different question. Saw something on TV with Bush Wildlife yesterday and Big Dog Ranch with bringing possums and stuff to look at the puppy dogs. To your knowledge, are they still down? I mean, they still have their right, they don't have anything here in Chupor with big dog ranch, do they? No, they're still located in Laxahatchie Groves. And, of course, they're still, I mean, even from that location, they're one of the biggest adoption centers for dogs anywhere,

and the largest by any comparison as far as a no-kill shelter. So they don't euthanize any dogs out there. They find homes for, you know, like 500, you know, I think like 2,000 dogs last year. yeah so they're taking we're talking about that while we're talking i got a compliment you again about when you sell your book that all your proceeds go to big dog ranch that's very noble very considerate and very kind of you thank you thank you very much thank you for mentioning frank and you know as a parent you know your your grown children are very lucky to have you and uh all of the knowledge that you share uh you know with them to save them from the heartaches that

most of us adults went through. And I want to thank you for tuning in, Earl Stewart on cars and using us as one of those tools. And also mentioning the Big Dog Ranch, because I have to take advantage of the book that I'm holding in my hands. And this book, I'm sure, Frank, you've heard of. And it would be a great gift for both your children. I think you said you had too. And that's Confessions of a recovering car dealer. There's so much information. in this book, that it is going to save you from every corner that you turn that might turn into a disaster. So I hope that you can see the book on Facebook.

And as you said, 100% of the proceeds goes to Big Dog Ranch. I'll go ahead and send him a copy of that book, and they'll teach him something before he gets out of the county, that's for sure. Thank you guys again for everything you do. Thanks, thank you. We love hearing from you. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to Stoop.

Okay, dokey. All right, rapid fire. As a consumer, it's my responsibility to read lease documents, but there are fine clauses in them that dealers won't highlight. How are we supposed to know them? Not everything is black and white with documents, I assume. Well, you know, it's a huge problem with everything. I blame it on the lawyers. The lawyers created the whole fantasy of fine print and contracts that are understandable.

I've signed so many contracts in my life. I've never read a contract. Our society is based on trust. You know, as a car dealer, I have to borrow large sums of money. I do a lot of contractual dealings. And I sign things, and I don't read them. And that's the way everybody does it.

The judge will say when you take the person to court that took advantage of you, did you sign the contract? Yes, Your Honor, I signed the contract. Did you read the contract? And that's when you feel really stupid. but I don't feel stupid because it's impossible to read contracts and even if you read the contract you can't understand it because it's in legal lease

I wouldn't have had the time to sign I refinanced the house Nancy and I refinanced our house we read these contracts for you yeah and the person from the attorney's office came in we had our gloves for a mask and we she comes in and she's got a stack of papers this high and I said here take them back and go to another office and put a little yellow markers down where I'm supposed to sign them and even then it took us 20 minutes half an hour oh a little longer than that hey we knew we were in trouble when she pulled up at

the in front of the dealership and she was in a U-hall and I looked at Earl or looked at me and I said to him didn't you say that there were a lot of contracts that you have to sign when you purchase a vehicle i think we're in trouble so that's the answer we have anything else planned today yeah you can't read so you have to rely on trust is the bottom line so you need to find a dealer or person within the dealership uh to know can that we'll deal honestly with you either that or you come up with the price and you take the out-the-door price approach and you know you got the price that's a good one because that's what you give them the check for so that's all i can tell you yeah the system is terrible bottom line is the only way you can be 100% secure is to bring an attorney

with you and most people don't do that i did that one on my first house on a mortgage and they and he went through and he found a whole bunch of little fees and stuff in there and took and had him take them out but that's just not common practice nor is it practical it's really very overwhelming 877 960 or texas 772 497653 3 zero. We're going to Georgia, and we're going to talk to Linda. Good morning, Linda. Good morning, guys. How are y'all? Are you sunrise, Facebook, Linda? No, I am. Linda, are you a first-time caller? No. No, I've called...

I get brave calling a second time. I want to know if you've heard anything from Tina. No, we haven't heard anything in the last several weeks. We were... talking about that on the last show. Last two weeks we've been mentioning Teanuk, and we thought that if there was anybody out there, she's from Benita Springs, if there was anybody out there that could give us a call

and let us know how she is, because she has just suddenly disappeared. Ah, scary. Yes. I hope she can get that virus. Well, I think with the pandemic, you know, there's a whole

lot going on in her life because she did have a business, so that may be it, I'm hoping. Oh, yeah, bless her heart. And my next thing is to Earl, will you please hide all the scissors on Nancy? Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, Nancy gave me a haircut. Actually, you know, I didn't finish it. They don't let her own hair. Are you streaming where you can see my hair? It didn't look bad. No, it looks good. I didn't finish Earl's haircut. We might get to it today.

You know, actually being at home, we are more busy now than we, before the pandemic. Earl and I were talking about how tired we were, and I said, just let me make a list of everything that we have to do that we didn't do. And also, Linda, take a look at this girl's hair. Me, Nancy, I colored and cut my own hair. I want to see you color Earl's hair. And I wasn't drinking. I don't drink. Oh, okay, Stu's made a request.

He wants me to color Earl's hair. And I've been talking about that for years. And I could really, I could read it's white. It could do any color, no problem. I want to be a blonde. I've always wanted to be. Well, no, it wouldn't be anything like that. It would be something so subtle, so discreet that nobody would even notice it.

You'd have to look at them for a couple of weeks straight before you noticed what I did to them. Match hair, hair, color. Match the shirt. Okay. That's Stu's John's job. We've got to get back to business. Linda, you got any current questions? No, I just love my Toyota's.

Oh, good for you. Well, thank you very much. Linda's a sunrise member. We do a Nancy and I do the sunrise every morning. We do it for years, and we film the sunrise. And we have a sunrise, we call it the International Sunrise Club. And Linda is one of our most faithful members, and she's out there every morning at sunrise to watch it with us.

She's one of our faithful followers. She not only watches the sunrise with us, but she is very dedicated to Earl Stewart on cars every Saturday morning, and she is alive, and she makes her point across, and she's part of us. Yes, I love y'all to death. Thank you, Linda. Even, too. Stay safe, and please call again. We appreciate it. Thank you, Linda, for being part of the show. $79960, and like Linda, there are a lot of ladies out there who, I've spoken to her, just a little bit bashful, but I'm offering you $50, and if you give us a call this morning, you can win yourself $50, and I know you could use it, and the number is $877, 960, 9960, and you can also take advantage of our www, your anonymous feedback.com.

Let's give Rickl to Laird time here. We've got a YouTube over there. I know that. I've actually got a couple here. Great. The first one is, let me get scrolled back to this, Guy Larrabee, he says, wholesale used car prices have dropped by roughly 15%,

yet retail prices remain high. What's your take on this, Earl? I alluded to this earlier. The dealers are kind of caught between a rock and a hard place. This coronavirus impact, economic impact, was so fast, so sudden, that all the dealers, including us and our dealership, got caught with a lot of cars in inventory, and suddenly the bottom dropped out of the market. So what the dealers are doing, a lot of them, are not riding the cars down, not lowering the prices,

because the problem was not priced. The problem was people were afraid to go out and buy anything. So they're sitting on the cars that are overvalued. And when they were taking him through the auction, the wholesale auction, to try to raise cash because dealers are losing lots of money, we lost over a quarter million dollars in April, and hopefully we won't lose as much in May, but we don't expect to make money. So the dealers are losing a huge amount of money. You take up to the auction, they can't sell them because they're trying to get more money than they're worth. The money is worth what people will pay for it. And people are not paying much for used cars right now.

So we have the lady from New York, Lisa, I think, that's going to buy a used car. I was very worried about that because she's going to be walking into the car dealerships trying to buy a vehicle that they have too much money in. In other words, they might have a Honda fit that they've got $19,000 in that is only worth $15,000, but they're going to try to sell it for more than $19,000. So it's a difficult time for the car buyer to go into a used car lot. We're coming out of it right now.

All I can say is if you're going to buy a used car, it was buyer beware before the coronavirus. Now it's double buyer beware because the car dealers are going to try to get you in the F&I department to make up for the loss they have in the car. They're going to try to, they call it retail out of a car. Retail out of a car means the car. car is worth $3,000 less than it was a month ago, so they're going to have to sell it for more money than it's worth to break even. And they don't want to take it at the auction.

If they take it the auction, they'll lose $3,000, so they'll charge you an extra $3,000 to retail out of it, and retail out of it, make money in the F&I department, spells you get screwed either way. But it does give you a good opportunity. If you go in there knowing, because that use. car manager knows on that Honda Fit that you're looking at. If you don't buy it and the next guy doesn't buy it, he's

going to have to pay the Fittler at some point and take it to the auction and lose a ton. Boy, do you have to be tough. You've got to be tough. You can say, I know you're going to lose thousands on this car. I'm going to offer you less than 19, but it's a better deal than you're going to get at the auction. Yeah. But you've got to be tough. You probably better talk to the used car manager because

the used car salesman can't make those decisions. You're better off to get up high and let them know you know what you're talking about. Or a general manager. Because you might have a used car manager who is living in a delusion who thinks he's eventually going to sell that car. The GM is going to be a lot more practical and say, you know what,

this is a better deal for me and sell the car for less. Rick, you got another one? As a matter of fact, this one fits right in. YouTube moderator says, Earl, I want to trade my 2012 Camry plus cash for a 2015 Avalon. Would a dealer

normally accept a trade-in on a used car or only on a new car. Oh, sure. I mean, dealers will accept trade-ins on anything. And actually, we prefer, dealers prefer trade-ins. It's very difficult to get good used cars. And typically when you go to the auction to buy a car for a used car lot, you pay more for it than when you trade the car in. You don't have the auction fee. You don't have the transportation fee. And oftentimes you can screw the customer a little bit by taking the car back for less of those. sell value. So yeah, trade-ins are an important part of the business. The more cars you trade in,

the more money you make in the used car department. And one last one here from Comas, who is from Houston. He's asking, did he get a good deal on this? A 2020 Rav4 EXL, he says he got it for 26,000 out the door with 3.95 APR after bargaining and after a rebate. Do you feel he got a good deal that one? Still, you'll have to you're going to have to give me a minute on that. Run the numbers on that. It's the information you give us

is impossible to give you an exact answer because in different areas of the country the Toyota's actually have a lower or higher dealer cost. What part of the country was that from? Houston, Texas. Okay, they're in

what's that Gulf State? Gulf States. Yeah, Gulf States is a private distributorship. They pay a different price for Toyotas from Toyota, and they charge the customers more. For example, Southeast Toyota is a distributor we're with in the southeastern United States. Our average car costs us about $1,000 more than the dealer in Albuquerque or the dealer in New York. Gulf States, where this caller is, He pays more, but I'm not sure how much that distributed is probably about $1,000 more. We know that one of the Toyota dealers in Houston.

What kind of RAF4 was it? In 2020, what trial? He says EXL. Probably means an XLE. Okay. And he says 26,000 out the door with 3.95 APR. And he says he got a rebate on it, but also which was included in that. And says he bargained for that one.

We need a lot more information, like the MSRP. and some other. If he wants to submit that as another comment, then you can forward that to me. Okay. We can get back. MSRP would be great if you could give us that. That's all we really need to give you an opinion.

Yep. Okay. You all caught up right? Yep. That's got us the... Okay, ladies and gentlemen, give us a call at 877960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-60.

I have a text, and this is from... Melissa and Melissa said this is short and sweet. I unfortunately was laid off and I went to a dealership in Fort Lauderdale and it was very disappointing. I was got I had my surgical gloves on I had my mask on I was all set and ready to go and I thought that I might find some empathy or even respect as a female but indeed I didn't and I had to walk away, and I really need a car. What should I do? Well, Melissa, I'm terribly sorry for the ordeal that you went through. Besides being unemployment and dealing with the pandemic, it was an unfortunate situation.

You're not going to find empathy at a car dealership, at least most of them. They're not your friends, you know, and, They are educated in selling cars every single day, and I would suggest to you that you start at home, get on the Internet. Well, the fact that she doesn't have a job is going to make it difficult. She's not going to be able to finance a car if she is unemployed. Well, I think at least until something positive happens as far as her employment is concerned, and a lot of other things that she needs to take into consideration. that she, you know, take advantage of Consumer Report.

There are a lot of vehicles out there that you can afford. And I'm coming from a positive side of the room. I'm thinking you'll get called back to work. And you'll already have all the information that you need, not only from Consumer Report, but from Earl on Cars. And you can go to that website. And I can't, I don't know if I covered everything, but I'll turn it over to oral.

What do you have to say? Well, you just hit on the core of this horrible situation we find ourselves in. Millions and millions of Americans and people around the world without jobs. And people without jobs cannot get financed. They cannot afford even oftentimes to buy things for cash. And so that's when they stop buying.

And then it's a self-fulfilling prophecy that more businesses are going down and then more people are out of work, and that's where we find ourselves. So it's a terrible situation. There's no simple solution. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet, and you won't have a car for a while. If you have a little bit of money, you might consider renting a car. Rental cars are having a terrible problem. They're liquidating their inventories.

I'm guessing now, but I'm thinking that if you were to run a car, you could probably find a very good rental price, even though it's more expensive typically than buying or leasing. But you'll have to find something temporary, as all I can say, and hopefully get that job back. And then with a job, you can usually get financing. Yeah, definitely. And Melissa, you know, again, I spoke about my own experience earlier

with purchasing vehicles and being without a car. And, you know, where there's a will, there is a way. and time is on your side, and you may just get called back to work and find yourself with a pretty good deal as far as a car is concerned because you did so much research in advance. Good luck and stay in touch with us. 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-530. We're going to go to John, our favorite caller, and he's a friend,

and he's calling us from Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. The good news is the sun just came out. Oh, good. It's sunny, shiny, brightly now. And this show is about the good, bad, and the ugly. And my philosophy is, when you're good, people should know about it.

So what I want to mention is where I go with my own car, they're a Lexus and Toyota specialists. They're in Stewart on Dixie Highway, and it's called E&M Motors. Dixie Highway. yet that would be in or right near A1 it's on Dixie and the owner Gary Keys is a master

ASE technician he's got so many degrees in his office when I'm in a waiting room including in Doco he specializes in all makes a cause but as I say his specialty is Lexus and Toyota

and he's been in business since 1974 and I can't recommend him more highly. He's got more certificates than my vascular surgeon in his office, unbelievable technical schools. And what he does is he personally analyzes every automobile that comes in and test drives it afterwards. Do you have a phone number? Do you have a phone number for it, John? Yes, 772, 283, 4610.

Again, it's called E and M Motors. Fabulous place. And I'm sure Rick would say something about his degrees as an ASE master technician. Well, the hardest thing to find is an honest mechanic, independent mechanic. Car dealerships typically charge more. They have a lot bigger investment. They have a lot higher overhead. and if you can find a mechanic

that a guy like E&M if you come in there with a problem that's beyond his expertise and sometimes with a late model car you don't have the diagnostic equipment, he'll refer you to a dealer but if it's something that he can't fix he knows what he can't fix and what he can't fix he'll charge you a price half of what you'd have to pay a typical car dealership and the one question get more than even worse should I buy a car is do I know a good mechanic because people are

afraid to go in to car dealerships for how much it cost in a typical cardio ship. So that's golden information, John. I really appreciate it. E&M Motors in Stewart and its telephone number I'll give it out again. Write this number down. 772-283-4610. 7-7-2-283-4610. and you got yourself an honest mechanic that specializes, and you say Lexus and Toyota's, right? Yes. But every brand of cars, but that's a specialty. Gotcha.

And I just want to give you, for instance, I was in there Tuesday with my Lexus, and he checks everything stem to stern, and I said, I think it's due for the cabin filter. So he took a picture, came to me in a waiting room, and said, this is how good it is. You don't need it replace. It's not dirty enough yet.

And then on the second thing, he did a battery test, and he said a test week. But he says to me, I'm not going to recommend it, because he said, I looked at the label, and it's a Walmart battery, according to the codes. It's still under full warranty. Wow. And bring that battery back to Walmart, and you'll be fully warranted on it. So that's unbelievable. That is unbelievable.

You really got yourself. That's a solid gold, totally honest mechanic. That's great. I recommend them highly. Thank you, John. John, thanks for joining us every Saturday morning. We really appreciate your company. Okay, what do we have?

We got text. We got anonymous feedback. We got what do you want? Oh, we got it all. What do you want? Okay. All right, we'll do a text. Surprise me.

I'm going to jump off the, because technically you've only answered one texter's question because there's nine or seven subsections to that text. Anne-Marie texted us, though, and Anne-Marie has been texting us for years. She says, good morning. I hope everybody is well. I'm a bit of a mother hen, so even though things are opening up a bit, and we feel like puppies who have slipped their leashes, please remember to wear a mask and social distance. The COVID-19 virus is still out there and is still very dangerous.

Earl, your blog mentioned ways to disinfect vehicles and keep them protected for a few months. Could you please share those details to the radio audience? Thank you very much, and that's from Anne-Marie. Yeah, I do some flying with a outfit, a private outfit called Wheels Up. And I got an email from the CEO of Wheels Up about a product they were using that coached the interior of the aircraft with a microbial agent. And that's something that will protect over time. You've got to be careful. It's an anti-microbial. Anti-microbial.

And it's a product acts like a surrounding shield on all the services with an aircraft. And net jets, you know, Warren Buffett is one of my heroes. He owns control of net jets, Delta private aviation. It's using hospitals and operating rooms all over the world. But it's a fascinating profit. Stu, if you can pull up the blogger, there's a company that sells this product. I know all about it. Okay.

You take over. You know better than I do. Well, so NetJet's, they brand it's called Clear Cabin. They use it for planes, cabin of an airplane. It's called Preventex. And it's been used for decades. And they think about it for a second, like a plane is a metal tube in the sky, and a bunch of people get on it, and they drop food, they breathe.

And it's a, it's just a potential petri dish. So they've been using this to prevent microbes from growing on the surfaces. So it's not just viruses, it's bacteria and mildew and fungus and just keeps it a cleaner, more sanitized place. Now, viruses don't grow on a surface, but what they do is when somebody coughs and it lands on a seed or a handle or something like that, it'll survive there for a while. Eventually it will degrade and break down. This PreventX accelerates that.

And so they've done studies on this as recently as earlier this year that show that this is really effective on viruses too. So this is what people who spend a lot of money, who do a very good job of protecting themselves, trust this product to do this. So they're offering it to their clients and they all took them up on it. So without making this a commercial, we started using this on our service customer vehicles, our rental vehicles, our new vehicles and use vehicles, because any advantage that we could possibly help give, that's you want to take it. Yeah, you disinfect, you still should disinfect your car. or have some disinfected for you. But once it's disinfected, when this product Preventex is sprayed in the car and dries,

then it can't be reinfected because, let's say you have your car disinfected. You get in the car, somebody gets in the car, and they touch something, they sneeze, they cough, they can reinfect the car an hour after you had it disinfected. With this anti-microbile agent, it protects the car over time, and then you have to. to have it. 90 days. You have to have it renewed every 90 days. Once you have it disinfected and then coated with the Preventex, you're safe and good to go in your car for up to 90 days and then you need to do the process over again. They use also like the Miami Heat and a whole bunch of other professional and college teams use this in their locker rooms

because another environment where you have a closed environment where it could be a dangerous you know, a potential for growth from microbes. So it's a pretty cool stuff. Yeah. Amazing product. And without getting into the science of it, but it's really neat. So like if you looked at this stuff after it dried and cured under an electron microscope,

you'd see an entire network of tiny little pins, like these little sharp things that literally it, the microbes get torn apart on them. They can't what's that? Should they Google Preventex? Yeah, Google Preventex. Actually, we have I mean, on our website, we, well, we're not navigating to it.

Well, we're going to have an informational page. It's already set up. But if you want to contact the show, I can send you a document that has all the, you know, what it does and then the evidence from the studies that they were done that shows that it's effective against coronavirus. So it's a, you know, it doesn't keep you from getting sick, doesn't cure it. What it does is prevent those surfaces from being a transmission spot for you. Just one more way of staying on top.

of things. And as Stu mentioned, they're using it on so much. It is so impressive. It dries in 15 to 30 minutes at last 90 days. But as Earl mentioned, about using a disinfectant on the interior or wherever you're using the Prevent X, that's the first step. And it's just, it's amazing that the Miami Heat, the Washington Redskins, Orlando Magic, I mean, I could go on and on. And in my very own kitchen, Brillow. Dr. Scholl's feet inserts. Oh, yeah, that too, that too, uh-huh, and new balanced shoes. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we are almost to the point where we're going to be going

to the mystery shopping report, so please get your questions, your comments, and give us some advice. We can always use that at 877960, or you can text us at 772-49-30, or you can text us at 772-497-30, and don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. We have Warren, who is holding from Pompano Beach. Good morning, Warren. It's Warren. Good morning, guys.

How are you today? Hey. We're well. Thank you for calling. Enjoy your show. I got a question for Steele. Uh-oh. Okay?

Still, last week in the Mystery Shopping Report, I know you talked all about it, and the fact that the person went in and the car was $25,000, and they gave him a discount. count to 20, but then they built it back up again, all kinds of hidden fees. I was just curious, the person who was doing the shopping, and I know you don't want to have a confrontation with the salesman ranking, but what if they just said, well, wait a minute, you just have the car for 25, you told me it's 20, and now you built it back

up to 25. You know, that's ridiculous. I mean, why didn't, I'm just curious, like, why didn't they just, like, confront the salesperson or the salesman at that point and say, you just flimplanned me, and, you know, you're just, you He said, you told me he gets $5,000 off, and now you're giving me the $5,000. You're taking the $5,000 back. I'm just curious. Why they wouldn't do that?

Great question, Warren. So we have experimented with different personas that we ask our mystery shoppers to use. So one of them, and we name them, one of them we call Larry Laydown, and that's actually taken from, that's a old car business term to, it's a degrading term to describe a customer who is unprepared and is uneducated and is a sucker. and comes in, he just lays down and takes what you give him. Then we had, I think Agent X, he was an old mystery shopper that we had who moved out to Kansas, and he had one he called Brutal Brutus. And you're talking about Brutus. So Larry Laydown goes in there and takes everything the salesperson says,

and so that sounds good to me. Oh, that's a great deal. But Brutus goes in there and does exactly what you're saying. So we've done shops like that in the past where their mission is to go in there and terrorize the salesperson. Most people are Larry Laydown, and that's just personality. The average person doesn't like confrontation, and this is what the car dealers bank on. Their salespeople are trained to take control from the time the prospect comes into the showroom floor.

And they're very good at it, and there are schools of it, and CDs and videos and training, how to take control. And that's what happens. if you're a type of person and Warren you sound like a guy that you could not be you wouldn't be taken advantage of you know actually I'm a little bit of a Larry laydown I mean I don't sound that way but I just life is too short I don't like confrontation and if I agree no yeah yeah I agree with you I mean I don't really I wouldn't really like confrontation either if it's a small item or something but we will do that I mean we'll definitely go go back in there and have a different style of shop.

Sometimes, and the reason for that is you get different kinds of information on these investigations. So if you go down as Larry Laydown, we get to see how far they'll go. In other words, what's most likely going to happen? Now, if you go in there and you challenge them on everything, you say, hey, wait a minute, the ad said this, or you just told me that, that doesn't mean you're going to get a better deal. We might pull out some very interesting, you know, lies and some.

interesting behavior when we do that. So just stay tuned, Warren. We're going to, we'll do another one of those. No, I just want to know, basically, to me it would have been one question or just a statement and say, you know, I pay 20, it was 25, you're telling me the end of it for 20, and now you put it on, and now I see the sheet, now you want 25. So it's like, you just dazzled me here with the same, in other words, it was some kind of slim phlegm or something. And I just curious what the sales in the second. I have a second quick question. No, I was going to say sometimes, um, I was going to say sometimes when we have a good idea of what the ruse you know what the catch is going to be sometimes by challenging them they've become a different type of customer and we never get

to that point so like a sales manager might say all just give them give them the discount don't fight them we want the deal so if there's a certain if there's a certain type of information we're looking for we won't do that but you know but we will do that again so you and and more into this topic you know I got to ask everybody is it really a confrontation I don't know. For me, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. That's my motto. And I take it from there.

And as far as Larry laid on, if he's laying on that floor and he has that tool that I invented for the out-to-door price, I'll tell you what, he has control. So that's my opinion. I got one other quick question for you. When you're buying a brand new car and they put in all the sales tax and everything, else. If you said to the new car dealer, I don't want to pay the sales tax. I just want a temporary plate, and I'll pay the sales tax on my own, so they're not charging all these extra fees and on top, you know, I'll just give me the price of the car. Can you do that

and say put a temporary plate on and then I'll go registered online or I'll go down a motor vehicle and I'll pay the sales tax. If you buy a new car, you have to charge them the sales tax. They wouldn't let you do that, Warren. The dealers are held on responsible for collecting the sales tax and paying it to the state and they get audited regularly. So I don't think any dealer, I wouldn't as a dealer, trust a customer. Unless they're registering it out of state. Yeah, in which case, then you're documenting it. But if the customer says to you, I'll pay my own sales tax and I want the car now,

they wouldn't allow you to do it. Okay, I just said this is curious. But if you say it's taking it out of state, then how do you follow it? up, what I'm going to say, I'm taking it out of state, and I don't really do that or something. Well, you don't get a tag, you get a transit tag, which will last for 30 days, and you're not going to have a tag after 30 days, so we give you a temp tag that will let you get back to Massachusetts or New York or wherever, and get your DMV up there to take care of the registration, and then they collect the sales tax.

All right. Thank you, guys. I appreciate you. Doing a great job, and enjoy listening to the show. And I just had one more comment. Last week, I talked to Earl and he said they had all these cars on the docks in Newark and Port Newark. I try to follow up on it, but I didn't see anything. They just weren't taking any more cars, I guess, from Europe. They were like stacked with them, so I still don't know what they did with them. Because up here you cannot sell cars. They're sort of stacked, and all the dealers are still closed, all the cars on the lot.

So I'm curious what they did with these thousands of cars stuck in Port Newark. Yeah. We're going to monitor that. I'm glad you reminded me, Warren, because that's going to be a chaotic situation when they open up. And, you know, the rest of the country is going to be lower on inventory and trying to catch up. New York is going to have a huge surplus of inventory.

I don't know what's going to happen, but whatever it is, it's going to be really interesting. Okay, thank you, guys. Thank you, Warren. Thank you, Warren. Thank you for listening. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to be going to the mystery shopping report shortly. Yeah, shortly, yeah.

And don't forget that mystery shopping report from last week, what a doozy that was. You want to take advantage of the shopping report that's coming up at 9.30, and we're going to go to Stewart to Wallace, Nissan. Now back to Stu. Let's jump over to some anonymous feedback this came in this morning. So I just wanted to say that it's a great time to finally take. take care of chores, tasks, and projects you've been putting off. This includes repairs to your car. I had mine picked up by my dealer for maintenance, and while it was there, I finally had

all those shopping cart dings taken out. Very convenient. Good point. Yeah, if you're not using your car, you might as well let somebody, you know, and take, you know, do something with it. Okay. We had a series of advice on gloves and masks, and I think we're going to skip it because I think we've beat that to death.

I think everybody's kind of clear. on that. And I will say this. I'll talk about it later. We are very disturbed by the number of dealerships that are not observing the rules and they are not wearing masks. Our shoppers are having to ask them to wear their masks. And I just got to wonder how many times people, we actually have people shaking hands or wanting to shake your hand. It's like some car dealerships either didn't get the message or got the message and decided to ignore it. We have have found out that the masks are there, they're just not wearing the mask. But to walk up to a guy today without a mask and stick your hand out and want to take

shake hands with somebody, you just got to wonder. Yeah, they've been living under a rock. Melissa mentioned out the, I went from Fort Lauderdale, about her experience, about no mask that I forgot to mention. Okay. Yeah, the other thing that's really important, you're not just, I mean, obviously the main reason for these things, I said we wouldn't go on a mask tangent. but as obviously to prevent, you know, transmission of the virus.

But if a car dealership, and this is the advice that they're getting from all the manufacturers, if you get somebody who test positive in your dealership, you're closing down the dealership for a couple of days to do a big inspection. And also to make a big, to be honest, just make a big show of it so people see that you're taking it seriously. That happened to Daytona Toyota, El Hendrickson Toyota. They had somebody test positive and they closed down the store. And like Earl mentioned earlier, the huge amount of money is that, that car dealers are losing right now, every day is crucial.

You're making some sales. You're servicing some vehicles. Card dealers cannot afford to shut down. So for the dealers that we're shopping, we see they're not wearing masks, and they're exposing their employees to it, they've got to get serious because they're facing a real risk of a shutdown. Even if it doesn't, you know, if somebody gets sick at a dealership, doesn't necessarily mean if the place is infected, but they still got to do it.

It's interesting with car dealers because dealerships have come. were considered an essential business, and essential businesses stay open. Now, the problem is if an essential business stays open, there's going to be a lot of people within that essential business say, I don't want to be out in public. I don't want people coming in to the dealership without masks, because if the salespeople aren't wearing masks, a lot of the customers aren't going to be wearing masks.

And there are people working in car dealership state that just don't want to be there. But they want a job, they have to get paid. And there's a lot of talk about that right now. Employers requiring people to work. The meatpackers were up in arms about this. And you should not, there should be a rule that says, if someone is generally concerned about his or her welfare and health, and they're working at an essential business,

and the owner of that business says, you must go to work or else I'll fire you. You know, they won't give you a furlough with pay or they won't give you a furlough to guarantee you're going to get hired back. I mean, that is a very uncomfortable situation. Front page article in the Automotive News, our trade journal that we read,

Automotive News, has a story about this very thing where a salesman was fired because he expressed concern about working with the coronavirus. And they fired him. a lawsuit so it's a bad situation yeah can you imagine having to sign something that you're not going to hold the owners responsible that was part of the lawsuit I mean in an incredible time an incredible situation another thing that came up I don't know if you're aware of it Palm Beach Toyota and we just confirmed it this morning just found out Palm Beach Toyota

actually closed down for a customer who tested positive and when they did the contact tracing had indicated that she was at Palm Beach Toyota buying a car so they closed down on noon at two o'clock on Thursday but they opened Friday morning so it wasn't a multi-day thing it was basically about a about a day spanning over two days well it's responsible they probably did a complete disinfection yeah that's that's good you know the responsible thing to do but it brings up another question you know and this is something that we that we're struggling with too is like how do you you can you can tell your employees what to do but customers who won't wear a mask or observe social distance.

Yeah, exactly. It's interesting. We've talked back and forth on this. And some companies like Costco are requiring all customers to wear a mask. In our dealership, we decided to recommend that all customers wear a mask. And then we have a designated area for those who refuse or choose. And we have masks to give them as well. And we have masks.

We give masks to anyone that wants. But some people don't want to wear a mask, so we have a mask. we're a mask so we isolate them in a different area so they're not exposing anybody else like the smoking room in the Atlanta airport yeah exactly and there's some people that really become offended you know and you just don't want to turn it into you know a tug and pull and an unfortunate situation but we do have to protect ourselves and you have to protect yourselves so we can all work together All right.

Okay. Are you ready? We have some more, but I think it's a... If you've got anything interesting. Oh, yeah. They're all interesting. Here's a decent one. I just skipped over.

Okay. Errol, what's your opinion on aftermarket rust control treatments in salty snow belt regions? Rust control? Yes. Yeah, that's a thing of the past. Our cars today are treated with anti-corrosion products in extreme conditions. The car is going to rust. in rock salt on the roads up north type of thing

on the ocean in south Florida exposed to the soil there there's nothing that can survive against the Florida salt air Nancy and I are working on another generator that rusted out after about 10 years and our fans on the patio rust out

but don't spend the money on the product it's a money maker for the dealer and it isn't going to improve your chances of your car surviving. The manufacturers are doing as good a job as they can. Okay. Okay. So we get to the mystery shopping report, and then we can come back to the text later.

Let's do it. If we have time. Mystery shop of Wallace, Nissan, and Stewart, Florida. Bill Wallace, I know, I just in full disclosure, he's a good guy. He's got a lot of dealerships. and he sold out his Ford dealership many years ago in Del Rey to Water Nation

and made a ton of money signed a non-compete agreement and after the non-compete agreement ran out he spent a lot of that money and bought up all the dealerships in Stewart. That's a slight exaggeration but Bill Wallace owns the majority of the car dealerships in Martin County. We shopped a lot of his dealerships

and we shopped one. It was a buy here, pay here, a used car lot that had, I guess it was a perfect shopping report, wasn't it? Easy-own. Easy-own. Easy-pay. Not sure. Easy-paying on it. So this is Bill Wallace, Nissan. Last week we talked about the age of coronavirus being the golden age of deceptive car

dealer advertising. A combination of fear and desperation of driving car dealers to engage some of the worst behavior we've ever investigated on this show. Just in the last two weeks, our mystery shoppers were subject to false bait-and-switch advertising, high-pressure, misleading, and aggressive in-store sales tactics. Both of the dealerships we most recently investigated, also mentioned some serious morally questionable practices. Bev Smith twisted a credit union financing incentive for health care workers and first responders into a bait and switch and a TV spot online and online.

You can't get any lower than that. Using the coronavirus issue to lure people in to bait and switch them. That's the worst we've seen. Napleton, Chrysler Dodge Jeep, combined four or five practically impossible to get rebates, including one meant for, I shouldn't laugh at this, one meant for people with physical disabilities to show you that there's just no limit

to what people will do, to advertise the price, discounting the price by rebates where you have to be disabled to get the rebate. And the one I just talked about, you have to be a first responder, a fireman or a policeman, or an emergency room worker,

to lure people in that can't possibly qualify debate and switch. We set out to find another coronavirus related ad this week. What we found, which you've probably seen all over TV since this pandemic started, lots of zero percent interest rate offers,

payment deferrals, and the like. There was so much to choose from, but we wanted to spice it up some to try something different. Then we found a new car special on Wallace Nissan's website. They were advertising a new 2020 Nissan Century,

centra for just $99 a month. That's the number, right? I mean, $99. That works for me. I just don't know who sees a new vehicle advertised for $99 that would believe, but they do. I mean, history has proven,

and over the many years we've done the shops, people will fall for just about anything. I just, the P.T. Barnum thing, but a terrible thing. There's a sucker born every minute. And there truly is. And these people are victims that are taken advantage of. Sometimes I feel like we're preaching to the choir here on Earl Sterling cars because most of the people are far more educated and careful. But $99 a month. This wasn't exactly what we're looking for, but that was an eye-catching low payment for a new car. The 2020 Nissan Century has an MSRP of 20,000.

A $99 payment is just Stu wrote phenomenal. I say stupid, but People find this believable. Excuse me for a second. I got to mention this. You know, we're not preaching to the choir. We're preaching to the Attorney General Ashley Moody. We're about to dig a little deeper to uncover the catch. Probably coated deep in the fine print when we decided to pause.

Very interesting. We decided to let ourselves be surprised. I'm like, I don't want to know. Yeah. What's going to be? Yeah. Normally, we briefed the shopper, Agent Thunder, and everything. We know what's going to happen. Agent Thunder knows what's going to happen before it goes in. But we thought it would be kind of interesting to some Agent Thunder in just. Ignore it. Yeah. We're not going to tell Agent Thunder what's going to happen.

And I think it'll be more natural, more believable. So that's what he said. Go to Wallace Nissan, lease a new 2020 Nissan Centra for $99 a month. That is your assignment. And just tell us what happens. Here's the report. I, as Agent Thunder, arrived at Wallace Nissan the late afternoon. Exited my vehicle and took a few moments to walk around outside,

trying to attract a salesperson. You don't have to read the next part of that. I love this. It's funny. This is really funny. This is Stu. I asked Josh if I should put that in there. I'm like, did.

Did Josh come up with it? No, I did, but I said, is this too weird? That's good enough. That's Josh worthy. So, Stu referred to walking around the outside by Agent Thunder, waiting for the salespeople to pounce as the mating dance of the mystery shopper. I love it. The mating dance of the mystery shopper. I can just.

Just strolling through the cars, all the salespeople charging them. I love it. Standing on one foot. No one noticed me. I went inside to find someone to help me. I was greeted immediately by a matchless salesman named Tim. Here we go, massless. I looked around and no one was wearing a protective face covering.

No one at Wallace, Nissan, and Stewart, Martin County, was wearing a protective face covering. Shocking, unbelievable. And I guarantee you, Bill Wallace doesn't know that. No. I've said this before. I believe Bill Wallace to be an honorable person. I believe he's an honest person.

You know, there comes a point in time when you have so many dealerships, you just don't know what the hell's going on. I mean, it's like automation. They've got 200 and some odd dealerships. How do you know what's going on in the trenches? Bill, your guys at Wallace, Nissan, and Stewart aren't wearing face masks. Yeah, and hey, Bill, your guys, they're doing the mating dance. without the mask, without the surgical clothes.

What's up with that? Agent Thunder's doing an amazing meeting. Tim began to qualify me, and I told them about the new car special. New 2020 Nissan Centra for $99 a month that it brought me in, as Tim as a salesman. He moved to deflate my high hopes right away. Tim said, I have to be completely honest with you.

I mean, there's something funny about that. Yeah, we talked about this. No, you don't have to be completely honest. If you were completely honest, you wouldn't lie about that. That's just an expression. But do you think, are they instructed by management, like, listen, before this crap gets out of control, you better diffuse this? Because we've seen it the other way where they waited an hour into the process before they, you know. They probably role play it.

I'm sure with a rookie anyway. I mean, otherwise a rookie would fall on the floor and start to. cry when I mean that's right just collapse into quivering I mean we didn't we didn't prepare age of thunder if you didn't prepare the salesperson it would be it could be a physical

confrontation hey here's a little history did you know back in the old days if you used the word honest and you didn't utilize it you lost your tongue no I didn't know that I think that was in Babylon wasn't it or ancient Samaria that was in Sicily

that Tim came up with was it will take quite a bit of money to get that payment. That sounds like a candy bar, a bit of money. I asked them why they would even advertise like that. Tim implied, replied that they have a lot of customers willing to put a lot of money down on leases. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I said I wanted my payment to be manageable and ask him how much money was required to get the payment in the ad. Tim didn't tell me and said he advised me against putting much money down on the lease. Now, you advertise the car for $99.

a month, that you have to put a lot of money down on the lease. I come in and you tell me, I advise you that you shouldn't put a lot of money down. Like we offered. But that's the only way you're going to get the $99. Now, I just... There's a word for the

in logic and some kind of fallacy. I'm not quite sure. Can you use it on the air? Yeah. He described a scenario in which I, oh, this is, I love this. He described a scenario in which I put down a lot of money, wrecked the car,

and being out of a lot of cash, I'd never get back. Well, that is just the biggest cock and bull story of all time. If you have insurance on the car, the leasing company owns the car, they require that you have insurance on the car. The insurance company pays for the repair, and if they do a good repair, which they have to, or you don't accept the car, then it doesn't cost you anything. If you own the car, it got you something, but it costs the leasing company.

The only good thing about leasing a car is if you do wreck the car and get it fixed, it doesn't cost anything in terms of... Re-sale. Yeah, it's a resale. So it's not only a stupid lie, but it's a huge lie. Of course, Agent Thunder, I said... I told them that made sense to me. It makes sense.

Duh. Do that makes sense to me. Okay. Well, we told Agent Thunder to be... Larry Lee, I guess maybe we didn't. Tim went on and said the ad car was the S-Trim level, and he could get me a better deal on the V-Trem level. Additionally, there were more features available on the V model.

You like it better. I nod along, and Tim suggests we look at the vehicle, but first he took me to the desk where he took my driver's license, gathered my personal information, then he left to pull the car to the front of the dealership. He came back to me after approximately. 25 minutes. We had it outside. I asked somebody he had a mask he could wear. I had to ask to wear the mask. I mentioned that I noticed that no one was wearing a mask. I also offered

him an extra mask that I had my car. Tim thanked me and said he had one in his desk drawer. He ran back to get it. I mean... Wouldn't it be interesting if the mystery shopper would have pulled out a thermometer along with a mask? Yeah. We stopped in front of a white 2,020 the Eason century S-V, MSRP, 22,040 bucks. It was an addendum, you know, endendum. They all got

addendum, folks. I don't know very many dealers. What would you say, 90% have addendum still? Yeah, I mean, there's a period of time where we didn't see them, but now they're kind of... There's a phony monoronee adendum. They take about 1,000, 2,000. I've seen. The world's record addendum was

West Palm Beach Kia at one time. $10,000 addendum. on an MSRP addendum for Kiya, Westbounders Kia. Typically, they're about $1,000. It's to the right of the Monroney label, and it's printed and the colors, the fonts, everything. It looks like Monroney. It's a phony Monroney.

It added another, in this case, here, $1,77 to the MSRP. Walls' list price, and that's where they fool you, was 23, 837, and that's after jacking up the real MSRP, by 1797. And even worse, like part of that the MSR, the addendum was $999 for

Southeast Regional Adjusted Market Value. So you're not even getting for it. They're just saying it's, things are worth more here on the Treasure Coast. And it's not true. Coast cars don't sell for more on the Treasure Coast. And even if they did, you can't change the Monroney label. That's what they're doing. That's a federal law that

you have a Monroney label. To me, this would make a good class action suit. You attorneys out there, I see advertising all over now. Go after the car dealers that use addendum labels. Come on, Stanger, Isko, and Green. Yeah. That just flowed.

Yes. Tim opened all the doors to hood, the trunk. Butterfly on it. Loving me around the vehicle talking about the features, paused periodically asking me for feedback. That's pretty impressive, right? You can see the value in that, right? You know, get the head going like this.

If you get the customer saying yes, yes, not in his head, and then you hit him with a ridiculous price, hopefully his head will still be going and he'll agree. That's the stupid logic and that closing technique. We drove the car off the lot, head up and down US 1 and returned. If we parked him, says something to the effect, Agent Thunder is going to be difficult to get you to $99. He didn't really say Agent Thunder, I just do that in there, blank. Don't want to give Agent Thunder's real. name. But if he can't get to you, but if we can't get to you to where you're comfortable

and happy, would we have a deal today? Here we go. Here we go in the close. I said, let's see the numbers, but yes, we probably would. We sat down to the desk. Tim asked, he was going to get the numbers, but first we'd like to know how much money. I would like to put down. I said $2,000 to $3,000 tops. He came up with a worksheet that showed a few lease options to me. The far right option sold a payment of $99 a month, 10.00 of the first and said the ad payment, he said it would

take $5,606 down to get that payment. We finally get to it over $5,600 to get that $99 payment. That's just down. That's not total out of pocket. Down, yeah. To get that payment, yeah. And this is a leash number. I'll try to explain, for $1,000 down,

my payment would be $2.35. For $2,000 down, I pay it would be 205. The right side of the worksheet showed the cash purchase option. The sale price was $21,680. From that he took off a $20, I love this. He took off a $2,318 discount, and a $675 rebate that Tim said his manager threw in for me. Nice guy.

And then they added a $7.99 dock fee, which is a hidden fee, aka dealer fee, inexplicably, this is a new one. the sales tax was calculated incorrectly, grossly incorrectly, it was just $374. It should have been, what, twice that? Yeah, around $1,300. It should have been about, yeah, $1,300. No, got four times that, huge. A call to find out why this happened, and we haven't got a return call.

It's got to be stupidity, right? I mean, they couldn't possibly be defrauding Florida by understating me. It's got to be an error. Tim asked if he could prep the car for delivery. I ammed and odd. Eventually saying I needed to check with my wife. Tim assured me my wife would approve an emphasize. I love them.

Yeah, I know your wife. And discounted the car, $2,300 and included the rebate. I thanked him for the great deal. I said, I need to talk to the wife. Sit up. Tim offered me his hand to shake. Again. What?

Yeah. What shall you guys living under? I mean, two or three days after the coronavirus, I actually shook hands. I mean... He shook hands with the mayor in North Palm Beach, and I chastised you for it. Yeah. And then, you know, I'm dense, so it took a lot.

But here it is, into the heart depth of the coronavirus, I didn't think anybody was shaken hands. Anyway, I'm wrong. Here's the epilogue. Details on the ad of stuff we didn't read earlier said this. For 36 months, 7,050 do it's signing. offer plus tax tag, dealer fee $7.99, and dealer installed options. That wasn't visible on the online, was it? Yeah, that was online, but I didn't look at it. I still saw the payment. After we

sent him to go, then I pulled it up and looked at that. So it was about $1,400 or $1,400 higher than the down payment that Tim told Agent Thunder. Gotcha. Still a lot of money. Obviously, we could guess what the catch was going to be. Same catch we all be seen. a super low payment, big out-of-pocket. Selling price was in line with what we found on true car. So the selling price was actually in line with a true car price. That wraps it up. Here we are at the end of another show and end of another mystery shopping report.

And this is where we go to the grades, which are difficult. I just like the part on that phony Monroney sticker where it was $600 for nitrogen in the tires and auto butler, which must be some sort of like Scotch card and that was without the touch-ups. You had heard of that. It was the auto butler. $600.

Yeah. The senator's rolling over in his grave. Yeah. He had nitrogen. You had the market adjustment, which was BS. And then you have the auto butler, which is some kind of a wax that they theoretically put on the car.

And then you have to come back and pay to have it reinstalled every year or something like that. anyway the thing is everybody does that and you hear this every dealer we said 75% have the phony monroney but they all have the

hidden dealer fees and we're going to score now so remember we score on the curve so we can't give somebody for doing what everybody else is doing who wants to score first I'm sorry we have Linda she always cracks me up

She votes a big, fat, dirty deal F. Andreas just popped in. Thanks, Linda. Andreas is paying close attention to the curve. It gives them a C. And then we have George and Rick who texted in both D's. And I've got Mark Ryan with an F. Mr. Hand, F for Public Health, D for sales practice,

a clear and present failure. I liked it. And Wayne Vite with a big F. Oh, yeah. no grades from me ladies and gentlemen i'm just asking you asking you to write attorney general ashley moody send her a letter send her a note send her a message help us yeah we have we have jonathan wellington gives them a big fat f i'm i'm not going to fail them i think on the curb i think the the ad was crappy um uh d plus yeah i'm i'm going to give them a c i think it's just about

average. If I was going to fail them, I'll take that back. You know what I'm going to do? For the handshake and the no mask, I'm going to take them down to a D-minus. There you go. But it's just a, it's just a sin, literally a sin, what they're

doing to not consider human life in your business. And I think it's terrible. You know what I'd do? I guess you guys are, I'm never, ever going to get a chance to do a mystery shop. you can't with that mask on no one would recommend it. I will never get a chance to walk

into a dealership and do a mystery shop I know that for sure. We'll get bail money. Because my technique took the words out of my mouth. You know what I said Ashley Moody was and I'll say it again, go to our archive. We have all their mystery shopping reports. We've never been sued which means that we are telling the truth.

Look through some mystery shopping reports and see how many regulations and rules and laws. The car dealers of Florida are breaking. So Ashley Moody, I know you're not listening on the show now, but I know there are people listening to the show that are going to tell you about the show. And you did get the word. You know about this. We're advertising that blog up in Tallahassee, so it's all around her. Yeah, Earl on Cars, go to the Mr. Shopping Archives and read a few. Look in the online ads on your PC smartphone and see how many laws are being broken. run another time. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here. Erlon Cars. We'll be right

back next week at 8 a.m. and we so appreciate your company. Have a great weekend. Stay safe.