Earl Stewart on Cars - 06.01.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Ed Morse Delray Toyota Part II

Episode Date: June 1, 2019

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Female Mystery Shopper, Agent 26, visits Ed Morse Delray Toyota, a participating Costco dealer, to purchase a car on the Costco Auto Buying Program. 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”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart, Stu Stewart, and Rick Kearney. Reach them with your questions at 877-9-6-0-960, and now, here's Earl Stewart. Good morning, everybody. Every Saturday when I say that, I just say, how many times have I said that? Good morning. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer, and I've been doing this for about 16 years. I'm losing track of time, and what I'm doing and what I'm talking about I'm doing,

is telling you how to avoid being taken advantage of, I say ripped off sometimes, taken advantage of ripped off by car dealers. And car dealers are, they're kind of like a protected species. They're endangered because they do business the way a lot of other businesses did business 100 years ago. That's about how long we've had car dealers. But they're frozen in time. They really haven't caught up. And they're still using a lot of unfair and deceptive advertising.

tricky sales tactics, lying, cheating, and stealing, to put it bluntly, and to back up those harsh words, because I know there are a lot of dealers out there listening, a lot of car dealer employees out there listening, that are saying, how dare you? Gallup Poll, Honesty and Ethics and Professions. The Gallup Poll has been conducted on this subject, honesty and ethics, for, well, 1977. You do the math, 40-some-odd years. And every year, car dealers rank at the bottom. They've been dead last. Last year, 2018, they were dead last in honesty and ethics, about all the professions.

And this is a USA poll that's taken for all the consumers in the United States by the most prestigious polling organization, the Gallup Organization. And they're used for, they're the gold standard of polling. I know people don't trust polls. talk about polls, I don't say that you can believe every poll, but if you're going to believe a poll, believe a Gallup poll. And that's why I'm here, and that's why Rick Kearney, and that's why Nancy Stewart and why Stu Stewart, this is the group that is in the studio this morning, and we're here

every Saturday morning to talk to you, listen to you, hear your comments, and we have a few comments of our own. We have new stuff and old stuff. We welcome candid comments. We welcome people to call in and tell it like it is. A lot of people are embarrassed

when they get taken advantage of. I am. I mean, nobody likes to be a sucker, right? We don't want to be taken advantage. Sometimes we hide it. When we hide it, we do a disservice to everybody else because our story probably has been repeated by others.

Maybe we're afraid to talk about it, too. So if you've been taking advantage of, we'd like to hear about it. Don't have to identify yourself. You can just call in. You can text us. We're on Facebook now. You can post. We're on Twitter and Periscope.

The number is 877-960-9960. You can text us at 772-497-3530. Facebook.com. Ford slash Earl on Cars. and as I say Twitter YouTube as well YouTube yeah as a matter of fact

we got the the duties divided up here Rick Kearney takes care of the YouTubers you can post on YouTube and Stu is taking care of the Facebookers

and Twitter and Twitter and Periscope yeah yeah Nancy she takes care of everything and she also takes care of the in calls

and she has a special role Nancy Stewart is not just my co-host but she's a female advocate a women's advocate and has done an amazing job on the show if I want to go back 15 years it was like a miracle

when a woman called the show and it's gradually gradually over the years last week how many calls did we have to see how many female callers eight wow it was even eight and eight so we had 16 total calling 50 50 so congratulations

that's an amazing job and while we're talking about it share with our listeners our special program for first-time female callers. Yes, ladies, we have a special platform for you right here at Earl Stewart on Cars. And the first two new lady callers, you can win yourself $50 this morning. So join in the fun. Give us a call.

That phone number is 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 77249-9-30. But you must call if you want to win your phone. herself $50. Back to the recovering car dealer. And thanks to Nancy, she pushed and pushed and pushed and says, we need to get some female mystery shoppers. And we dragged her feet on it, frankly, and I apologize. But we now have a really good female shopper, mystery shopper, and she's been out last week, and she was out this week in our mystery shopping report, which, by the way, if you're new to the show, it is really kind of cool. I mean, It is unique.

There's nothing like it on radio or TV, for that matter. We actually send an undercover agent, you know, pretend buyer of a car, or lease her of a car, and we go into some dealership in South Florida. We've been to North Florida, too, for that matter. We've been to the West Coast. So we blanket the state, but primarily we concentrate in South Florida, and we go in and pretend to buy or lease a car, and it's a lot of fun. It's entertaining, even though it can be tragic and disturbing.

and we keep a toll, we keep a track, we keep a score. The car dealers that do an average job, we put them on the recommended list, average or above average. And if they don't do a very good job, we put them on the don't buy from this car dealer list. And now we have this female shopper going in. So we can kind of keep an idea, keep an eye on, are women being treated with courtesy, respect, understanding, empathy? are they being you know back in the day and some of the car dealerships

are still mentally back in the day women would be told to come back with your husband you know or let me show you the cosmetic mirror on the rear visor they wouldn't open the hood they wouldn't talk about the technical features

of the car because they were talking to women that's faded out a lot but there still exists some pockets of male show them it's less blatant that it's there. Sottle male shows. And thanks to hashtag me too.

So that's Nancy's primary role. My son, Stu, he's our connection with outer, I started to say outer space, cyberspace. That too. Sometimes he's in outer space, but we won't talk about that. And he's connected to the Twitter, Periscope, YouTube, Facebook. He is, we are broadcasting our signal all over the world, really. I'm dying to get a call from South America, Europe, the Bid East. She's still laughing at me.

No, I'm laughing with you. Outer space. But this is exciting because we have to be careful now because you see us. You can't look at us. If you're on Facebook, we're on YouTube, and there we are. So we can't make rude gestures. What am I looking at? out of space

you know we need a camera in the control room because Rudy and Jonathan think like they're immune we need a camera we'll do that next week maybe in the new studio in the new studio yeah exactly yeah so they have to behave themselves visually but anyway

it's a lot of fun and we're getting a lot of calls from out of state I mean Kentucky and Massachusetts and all over the United States I'd love to have an international caller and it'd be cool on my personal Facebook page

I have callers or callers I don't have callers I have people that post from England and Egypt and South America

Australia yeah so you folks out there out of USA love to hear from you and 877 960 9960

and you texters a lot of people just don't want to fool around with the AIA they just want to get the question out

the comment out and that text number is 772 4976530. That's 772 4976530. And every time I read that text number, I'm thinking, Stu, we really need to get a easy-to-remember

text number, something that would be that... Maybe it spells something. Yeah, we'd spell something. Maybe it already does. Auto hotline or something like that. But people can remember easily. But 877-960-9960 in Texas at 772-497. 6530. I want to talk about something quickly here. It's our blog in the hometown news this week.

And we talked about it last week, especially the $100,000 dealer fee challenge. It's a challenge to all car dealers to debate me live on this show any Saturday from, you know, 8 to 10. And that's where we're on right now. And we're going to debate the legality. of the dealer fee basically should the dealer fee be made illegal and by dealer fee i mean hidden fees i'm so happy the consumer reports uh has an article coming up in fact they already have it online about hidden fees and nancy has uh read that stew has read that uh Rick may have read it uh that's really getting some attention when consumer report gets on and so you car dealers out there I announced it last week I haven't heard from anyone 100,000 dollar challenge and I donate if I win to Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

If you win, you get the $100,000, you can give it to Big Dog Ranch Rescue or your favorite charity or keep it, whatever you want to do. $100,000, how can you turn me down? And I believe, do we have a caller? We do. Good morning, Michael. Michael's calling from Port St. Lucy. Hello? Hi, Michael.

It's Martin. Martin. Oh, hi, Martin. I apologize. How are you? I'm good. I don't know if you remember me. I haven't spoken to you in three or four years.

It's been a while. Yeah, I recognize your voice. How are you guys? We're doing well. Thanks for the call. I want to just make a remark about you. I really don't have a question. But Earl hooked my best friend up in Miami with a new Highland, I'm sorry, a new 16-4-runner

that she bought from you. guys, and she drives all the way from the Redlands in Miami, if you know where that is. It's a little, just a little north of homestead. And two things. The only way to buy a car, new car, and I think that you do use ones now, is truecar.com, which you hooked me up with when I bought my car. And my other remark is, Earl, you are just like me. You do what you say you're going to do, and I'm the same way.

My friend Barbie, she comes up for her oil changes, and the tire rotation is every 5,000 miles, and if you do that at your dealership, when you need tires, she get a new set of tires, no charge, and she did that, oh, I don't know, it's three, four months ago, and by the way, they're good tires, they're Cooper. And I don't think they're new car tires because they don't last as long as replacement tires. We all know that.

Well, Martin, thank you very much. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the call. And I want to say to the listeners, this is not a infomercial. No, it's not a solicited call. Earl is the real deal. And I told you guys probably four years ago, because I used to call occasionally. And I'm probably the most secular. person you'll ever want to meet

and somebody needs to bless you and Nancy because you are just fabulous incredible people. Thank you Martin. Please call the show again and I hope to hear from you. You're an interesting guy and of course you're very complimentary so I have to say I appreciate that and I just noticed that all of our switchboard lines were lit up. If you're trying to reach the show

and you get a busy signal, please call back but hey that's a good thing. We have a lot of people out there waiting to get on the show and we're going to try to get everybody on that has a comment or question. And again, Martin, thank you so much for taking the time to call the show. And thank your friend. I'm so happy to hear from you. Stay in touch.

And Rudy is our next caller? Michael? Michael. Okay, I said Martin before it was Michael. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning.

I heard an advertisement for Car Shield, and what they indicate is if you have a problem with your car and you bring it to the dealer or a mechanic and you have it fixed and they will pay for the whatever the charges are. And my sister had an issue the other day. She started subscribing back in April and she had an issue with her car and brought it to the dealership. It came to about $1,500 and Car Shield refused to pay because they indicate that they'll only cover for the transmission, the power train or the engine. And that to me was very misrepresent. presenting because they indicated if you break down, you know, you could just bring it to the dealer or a mechanic and we'll pay, you know, the cost. So are you familiar with it? I believe it's called car or auto shield. It's like an insurance plan on your car.

Yeah, Stu is familiar with that, Stu. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head, Michael. It is an insurance plan. It's a remarketed extended warranty. And it's kind of presented out there like it's a brand new thing. It's the same thing that's been sold by dealers since probably the beginning of the car business. and also third-party sellers. But it's an extended warranty. Technically, it's called a vehicle service contract, but all it is is an insurance policy. You pay a premium, and more likely than not, you're going to pay more in premiums than you'll ever see in benefits.

The bottom line is ignore any solicitation from any extended warranty or coverage plan like this if you get an email or a snail mail or any kind of solicitation. And if you have to have an extended warranty or you have to have a maintenance plan, analyze it carefully, see what it does not cover. That is the big thing. And what it does cover often is, as you say, is power train, engine transmission. And that is something that isn't going to come up.

If it's just power train, then. Yeah, exactly. So stay away from the world. The thing of it all, I think it was about $100 maybe $13 a month. I think she made one or two payments. And I told her to call her credit card and dispute the charge because to me, it's misrepresentation. I mean, the way they advertise, if your car breaks down, we'll take care of it. And certainly, they didn't go into the details about transmission, engine, or power train.

These extended warnings are one of the biggest scams on the market. I even get them in the mail, and they're blanketing Florida with it, probably the whole USA. But just totally ignore them, throw them in the trash can. And if you want to buy an extended warranty, you go take it into the dealership and be sure it's a manufacturer extended warranty. And even then, I don't recommend you buy it if you've got a quality car. If you're buying a Honda or Nissan or a good quality consumer reports approved type car, you don't need an extended warranty. Well, thank you for the information. Appreciate it. Thanks for the call, Michael.

And we've got another caller. We do. We're going to go to John in Palm City. Good morning, John. Hey, John, you there? Yes. Hey, John. Hi, John.

Yes. How you doing? Good morning to everybody. Good morning. It's funny talking about schemes. According to USA article, there's so many scams out there, you can't believe it. The Federal Trade Commission just shut down four illegal robocall firms, major firms, billions, not millions, of illegal calls. The first topic that was on it was auto-warranties.

Second was home security. Third is debt relief. Four, and we're talking about billions of illegal robocalls. That's number one. Then, according to scamicide, scammicide.com, federal trade commission, again, accused dealers in the state of Virginia and Maryland of sending out notices to 21,000 vehicle owners, send out postcards mostly, warning. their phone number on it, the dealer, to call this number, there's a recall, dangerous recall

on your car, bring it in, there's no charge, okay? You call, you make an appointment, they bring the, you bring the car in, then they call you or contact you and said, well, that's taken care of, but we found this and that other new problems that are not covered by this warranty and the owner must pay. So, good information. Some of the things that are going on with scams. I thought scams were bad when I lived in New York City. Boy, this is nothing what's going on today. It's unbelievable. You know, there's an old saying when I lived in New York's, be careful. Somebody might try to sell you to Brooklyn Bridge. Well, these scams are very serious because people are, I mean, you get a postcard, especially today

with all the recall notices that are out there and you think it's absolutely legit. And there's the dealer on a postcard, name and number to call, and actually you bring it in. So what happens, they sock it to you when it's in there. They said, oh, we fixed the problem. First of all, anybody on recalls, call at number www. www.com. Yes.

That's very important. Yes, that's dot-gov, GOV, www.w.w.com. www.w.com. Right, dot-gov. Okay. I'm sorry. Oh, no problem, John. Thank you very much. But I want to say is, I mean, just to give you an idea of some of these scams, people have been getting calls, and it's your phone number on it.

I don't know if anybody has gotten that. Yeah. People that I know myself, I've gotten three or four. That's your phone number, so you wonder what's going on. You pick it up. John, there's a app out there that you can use that automatically blocks robocalls. It's called Robo Killer. I use that on my phone.

R-O-B-O-K-I-L-E-R-B-O-K-L-E-R-B-E-Robolk, download it on your iPhone. I don't know if Android's have them, but I get no robocalls anymore. This is a great web. site. It's called scamicide.com. Scamicide. People have time. Go look at it. Very good. And these dealers, this is a lot, 21,000 notices that went out in the two states of Virginia, and they said it exists in other states of the United States. I didn't see anything about Florida, Your Honor. Yeah, huge amount of that. Thanks, John, for the heads up. You're

absolutely right about that. Yeah, thanks, John. We're really backed up with some calls. We really appreciate your call. We'll hear from you again next week. You always have a great amount of information to share with us, 877960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. We're going to go to Tina, who also is a regular caller from Benita Springs. Good morning, Tina. Hi, how are you guys doing this morning? Wait, do you hear that? It's your theme song, Tina.

I'm trying putting you on speakerphone. Hold on. Just one moment. Keep going, Rudy. Can you hear me a little bit better? Yeah. He was looking for a soul to steal. He was in a bind because he was way behind and he was willing to make a deal.

Thanks, Rudy. That's for you, Tina Bonito. Thank you, Rudy. I love it. That is awesome. Anyway, oh my goodness, I'm almost so flustered. I can't even think about what I want to talk about. But, okay, it's come up in my mind.

All right, this is probably not unique. I am not the first person to think about this, but we all know about that dreaded dealer fee. And we know that there's many car dealers that just won't take it off. They'll say, I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm sorry, sir, but we have to leave this on. So here's my tactic. Say, for instance, they offer me $10,000 for my trade. And I know their dealer fee is about $6 or $700.

How about I say, okay, well, we have a deal as long as you give me $11,000 for my trade. How do you think that would work? I think that's a very good thought. You know, it's some of the dealers of the mindset that the salespeople just are told, in no case can we wage a dealer, waive a dealer fee. And they'll even lie to their own sales force and say, if we charge one customer or dealer fee, we must charge all the customer's dealer fees. So the fact of the matter is, that's not true at all.

But you take away their argument and just say, reduce the price or increase my training allowance. Stu had a point. If you're doing that, that's a great idea. just make sure that you've already done your due diligence on your trade and you are sure you're getting the most for your trade because if they're undervaluing your trade, that's not going to do much, it won't be much help to you. But if you had a few vids from some other dealers, maybe Corvana, things like that,

then that's a great tactic. What about Kelly Blue Book or Kelly Yellow Book? I mean, that puts you in the ballpark of the value of your trade, but a trade-in appraisal is really a subjective opinion, and you can get somebody who does really well selling your particular. model. So it's always in your best interest to still get three bids on your trade. You can use Kelly Blue Book as a guide, but you need to really check it in the real world. The best value, true value for your car is what somebody will actually pay you for it.

And when you go to a car dealer, let's say you're trading in a Honda, you go to a Honda dealer, use car manager, and say you want to sell them the car. That's a real number. That's a real value. And then you go to two other Honda dealers, and you really get an accurate number of what your car's worth. But all the books, the black book, the blue book, the orange book, all the books are just guides. They're not actual numbers that you can sell the car for. Yeah, and the thing is that as far as the retail price for your used car, will there ever be a time that you could possibly get the retail price trading for your used car if your used car is in really good shape,

or is that never going to happen? That's never going to happen. They might lead you to believe you're getting the retail price. They can make you believe you're getting the retail price just by raising the price of the car you're buying, and that's what a lot of car dealers do. They call it an over-allurance. Let's say your trade-in's worth $10,000, and you're buying a new car for $20,000.

They'll raise the price for the $20,000 car to $22,000, and they'll give you $12,000 for your trade-in. But it's not really true. It's all smoke and mirrors. Exactly. I was going to say you have to really do your homework, ahead of time before you trade in your car, and you have to be one step ahead of the dealer, which is always the toughest thing to do.

But if you're one step ahead, it could save you thousands of dollars down the road, no pun intended. Yeah, the silver bullet that will kill the dealer is competition. And if you truly subject him to intense competition, if I'm a Chevrolet dealer, I would rather die than lose a deal to my competitive Chevrolet dealer. And so if he knows that you're going to take his deal to two other Chevrolet dealers and you work all three of them against each other, it's a lot of work. You know, True Car, Costco Auto Buying Program, there are easier ways to do it. But if you're out there and you're a smart person, you're something like you, Tina,

you could really, really get a good deal on a car just by shopping, three competitive dealers. They would cut it to the bone to sell you a car. competition can really get you a great price. And location has something to do with it, too, because I know from people, like I'm a hairstylist and some of my clients have talked a little bit about their car buying experiences, and one of the rules I found out from people that are not necessarily all that wealthy, they will go to LaBelle, they will go to Court Charlotte, they will go to Pondagord to buy a car rather than Fort Myers and Naples, because Fort Myers and Naples

being a wealthier market, they charge moving to their vehicles. I know somebody that had bought a brand new, beautiful Ford F-150 truck. He went to LaBelle, and he got a deal that was $7,000 less than a dealer in the deal. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And the neat thing now is we've got computers and smartphones, and you can shop online at any distance. I mean, years ago, just for fun, I got on my computer,

and I started shopping as far as away as Tampa just to get an out-the-door price at all different car dealerships and you get a huge, it's just geographically, sometimes you get it too. I haven't heard of a $7,000 swing, but I believe it.

And use your computer and shave your shoe leather and your gasoline by driving around for car dealers, get online out-the-door prices, and there's no limit to the number of dealers you can shop. Heck, you could even shop out of state if you wanted to. The nice thing about,

about getting a real low price, even if it's far away. You can take that price to your local dealer and say, look, this is what I can buy it for. I don't feel like driving to Tampa, but I will if I have to. If you match the price, I'll buy it from you. Exactly, that's a good idea, be willing to travel a little bit. And for those people online right now that are maybe not so Internet savvy, which there's quite a few, and there's no shame in that, if you have a younger relative or someone else that's really computer savvy and your family,

sit down with them in front of their PC or their mobile device or whatever and patiently go shopping for cars online, especially if not, you know, if you're like a lot of the older generation, they still don't have cell phones, they have flip phones, they don't have mobile device necessarily, but a younger family member could be a real help. Exactly. And interesting points you make there because, I talk about victims and I talk about very young, very old, English language impaired, lack of education.

You know, a big class of victims we have now, Tina, which you identified, are the non-Cyber savvy. We have a whole group of people in their 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and they don't have computers, they don't use computers, they don't use smartphones. If you don't use online tools today, smartphones and computers, you are being taken advantage of. We have two-tier pricing, the Internet price, and we have the walk-in-the-door price. If you call or walk in today and you don't get the Internet price, you're paying too much. And a lot of people, as you say, Tina the elderly, just don't know how to use a computer. Get your grandkids, your kids, your friends, somebody that can help you and shop online with their assistance. yeah and then the other big trap that we've talked about before especially with the elderly

is avoiding the lease trap because they may think they're buying a vehicle when they sign that paperwork and they find out too late that they've signed a lease and that could really be problematic so like we said before the golden rule of car shopping is never go by yourself never yeah thank you so much you know you hit on a lot of hot topics Tina and the bottom line never go shopping alone. Thanks so much for the call, Tina. Oh, thank you. We'll hear from you next week.

Give us a call toll free at 877-960, or you can text us at 772-49-30. And like Earl mentioned earlier, we do have that mystery shopping report, and it's a doozy, and that's from Edmores, Del Rey, Toyota. and we're going to call it part two of the Costco program. Back to the recovering car dealer. I think we'll get some text. Stu's got some marks on his pad there. We do.

The first one comes from James H. Question is, can I register a new car on my own and avoid the exorbitant dealer registration fee? I think the answer is no. I used to think you could, and I think there was a time when you could. But I think that the Department of Vehicle in Florida, and I can't speak for other states.

Department of Motor Vehicle in Florida made a change. They eliminated a lot of offices. I think it's for just regular consumers can't do it. I think if you have a tax-exempt situation, like you're a leasing company or another business, I think you can do some registration on your own, but it's not for your everyday consumer. Yeah, they used to have two lines of the DMV,

it was a physical location, and they had a line for retail people just coming in to register their cars, and they had a line for dealers. And now they just don't have any more DMV offices. And it's most all done online. You'd have to travel a long way to find a physical DMV office. Lake Worth.

Military Trail just south of Lake Worth Road. It'd be interesting. Let's make a point. If you wouldn't mind, Rick, check it out and see if you're a retail buyer you want to take care of your own registration. Can you do it? See what they say. I've got next Friday off. I'll go in there and find out.

Okay. You can call, too. Yeah. Rick to the rescue. Thanks for the text, James. We've got some more here. This is from Jody Presti. Do you have any suggestions on what to say to the dealer sales rep to refuse the dealer fee?

That's a good question, and we've heard it many times. It depends on the dealer. I prefer just the way to take the dealer fee away from the dealership or this car salesman, the way to take it away is a tool for them to make more money. is to focus on the bottom line price. And that way you don't have to argue with them about the dealer fee. You don't have to ask them to reduce the price of the car by the amount of the dealer fee. All you say is you can have all the dealer fees you want.

You're going to have all the hidden fees. Hide them. I don't care where they are. But what I want is the bottom line price, meaning I want to write out of a check and hand it to you and give them my car and go home. Include all the fees you want. But when you give me that price, I'm going to go to your competition and I'm going to say can you beat the price and I'm going to go to another competitor and I'm asking the same question. Heck, I might even go online and go to 10.

So you're saying to yourself now as I'm talking to you, Mr. Car Salesman, the chances of me selling this person a car are pretty slim and you're right. So let's say you've only got a 30% chance to sell me a car if he give me your best price. If you don't give me your best price, you have a 0% chance because I'm going to turn around, and walk out and you'll never see you're a gambling man yeah you understand odds that's the best way just don't give them now now we also have a really cool product and nancy stewart invented this product and she'll tell you about it right now as to far as question being how do you handle the dealer fee okay we have a caller okay let's do it right after the call and i'll take care of that after the caller matt's calling us from stewart good morning matt

Good morning, folks. I enjoy the show. Thank you. Thank you. I've got a high lander from Earl Stewart and running good, very good, and enjoy the vehicle. I had to clean the terminals and unhooked the battery, of course. And the question for Rick, you know that little screen up on the dashboard? Not the big one, but the little small one up on top. Yep.

I can't get everything to come back up on that. Why is that? I can't remember everything that's on that, but I think the oil gauge, there's a little oil gauge. There's like five things on there. But not everything came back up on that. And I think the big screen, not everything's on that, too. Well, your settings...

My wife drives the car. Yeah, the settings... may have gone back to a default setting so you may need to go in and turn those back on your owner's manual will help you get right in on that otherwise it i would say probably it's just a case of going back to that default setting and you simply need to turn those back on because there's really not much you can go wrong with just disconnecting a battery okay so does it say default settings I just need to go to default settings? Well, you'd need to go into each individual thing and turn it back on.

Because quite often, what they did is they made it to where you can turn on and off various features so that things that you don't normally want to use, that you just don't want them bugging you, you can turn them off. And they keep a lot of things turned off in the default, and then the customers can go in and activate them as they like. I see. Okay, thank you very much. no problem

thanks for the phone call I'll just make a little editorial comment before we get over to some of the text actually Nancy had something to cover but I think these cars are really too complicated today I include Toyota and most of them I think they really need to take a lesson and user friendliness

for the average driver and I consider myself you know for an old guy I'm pretty cyber savvy and pretty good technically and I get buffaloed on my car and Nancy and I have spent some time with her car trying to navigate around to figure things out. Why? I mean, there's got to be, you buy a car so easy to get from here to there.

You don't want complication. I'm going to keep this manufacturer anonymous so it doesn't sound like a commercial. But I do know that car dealers are, I mean, car manufacturers are aware that their navigation and their user interfaces just, well, it's not a profan. They suck. And so they're working on it. So there's one particular manufacturer who is currently testing their new audio-visual interface. They say there's a standardized score that the industry gives to usability. And they said currently most car manufacturers, their head, what they call their, what they call the head?

Heads up display? No, the head unit with the radio. Combination meter and the... Yeah, they score in the low 30s and where like an iPhone scores around 83. And so that's the relative ranking of usability. But they are saying that they tested these upcoming things and they're scoring in the mid-80s now. It's good to hear.

Fantastic. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And we are going to Miami, my favorite place. And we're going to take a call from Chris. Good morning. Good morning, Nancy, Earl, Rick. How are you? I'm going, wow.

Chris, I have $50 for you. I have a question, a kind of a two-part question. If I were to buy a new car in the L.E. trim and say I like the L.E. trim, but I like the wheels on an S.E. Can

I get the wheels, purchase them, say, from the parts store and put them on a new Toyota Ellie without having any warranty issues and then speak maybe to even aftermarket wheels that if I want to put on a new Toyota just to jazz it up a little bit. I think it's definitely worth asking the question of the dealer if they are available as a

retailer's after-sale item. In a lot of cases, some of the factory, and I'm only speaking for Toyota, I'm most familiar with that, it might come in a package or standard equipment, and it might only be available as a replacement part. Now, some dealers might swap them from another vehicle that they have in stock. That can involve a cost. I do believe that it's put on by the certified technician and it's handled it, and it's a OEM equipment.

Chris, I would say you want to be very, very careful. I'll give you a rule of thumb. Don't do it. We have had, in my dealership, we have some of our most chronic complaints about people who have either bought specialty wheels on their own or inadvertently had them switch somehow or other. A car is designed with the wheels that came on it and the tires that came on it.

And you can vary a little bit, as Stu says, you can vary a little bit. But let the buyer beware. It's one of those situations there. Once you buy a $1,000 set of wheels, you're going to want to keep them because you're not going to want to waste the money and you're going to have possibly vibration problems

and other problems with a car. So once you vary from the design of that car, it is at your own risk. Yeah, it can become a pretty complex problem, Chris. I hope we answered your question. You did. You know, I love the L.E. car, but I like the S.E. wheel, so we're kind of in a conundrum. So we'll figure it out.

Yeah, I can understand completely. Chris, just be sure you talk to a dealer that can look you in the eye. the technician and tell you that you will have no problems vibration or otherwise tire wear there's so many things that wheel change can do and have them put it in writing

as they try to get that yeah and that way it'll be on them if you have a problem and they say you sold me the wheel and you told me it was going to be okay and so fix it and that'll be the ball will be in his court to take care of you yeah that'll add you I got you

Hey, Chris, stay on the line, and Rudy will take your information, and I'll get the $50 out to you as a first-time female caller you qualify. Great. Thank you so much. Have a good day. You're welcome. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-1930. Rick's got some YouTube, I believe. As a matter of fact, I'm going to take these a little out of order because, Frank, of course, just asked a great question.

He says he's going to test drive a 2016 Mazda CX5 today for possibly purchasing it. It does not have some of the features, the safety features, like lane departure warning. And he's asking, is it possible to add such features to the car? Well, there are some features that you can add aftermarket. Blind spot monitoring, one of Earl's favorite. can be added after market. It can be a little expensive, but you can add this on where they will install the sensors

and you'll get a warning light that actually goes, instead of in the mirror, it's usually on the A pillar. And it's still, you know, it gives you the warning light and lets you know. What's the A pillar? That's the pillar that goes between the windshield and the front edge of your door. So you'd still have it right within a few inches

of where the light would be if it was in the mirror. lane departure assist i don't think would be available after market that's more of a very specialized design it would be more intimate they're all over the place backup cameras well for 2016 it should have it because they were federally mandated for 16 can you hold up your phone and do a selfie shot behind you to see it's kidding you could try don't do you can try but uh such things as parking assist the sonar sensors for parking assist all over the place. Go on the internet and just basically

Google some of the new tech devices available aftermarket for cars. You'd be amazed at some of the great features that you can get to add on to older cars. I'd go on Amazon. I think more people are going to Amazon now

than they are Google for getting ratings. Go to Amazon, Google what you're looking for, and then check the ratings. The ratings are very good. You could read them and make an intelligent decision. Right. Well, my favorite is I like to use Google to get to the tech articles that tell me what these things are. Then I go on Amazon and look at their ratings to determine is this a worthwhile thing.

And I do love those. Okay, and Cash Money Monkey. I didn't choose the name. Hey, welcome aboard, sir. We welcome you here. Can you tell me if the service packages offered in the finance, offices are negotiable? I say maybe.

I would say also just be very careful depending on the packages. You're talking about maintenance, the service package, I presume you're talking about maintenance. It's a simple way to decide because you look at the menu or the prices of the car dealer charges if you just drive in the service department and you add up with the owner's manual recommended maintenancees and see if you're saving money on the maintenance package. If you're not saving the money, there's no reason to pay it. The car dealers make their money on the maintenance packages, by the way,

for people that buy the maintenance package and just don't come back for maintenance. Unfortunately, that happens all too frequently. People do not maintain their car, according to the manufacturer's recommendation, which is not a good idea. But sometimes these maintenance packages are priced very well, and if you buy the package and you can save money, say 20% over it would cost you, if you came into the service drive, buy it. just be sure you come in and get all the maintenance done.

Did you know there's a local quick-loop place, one of those little jiffy loop-type places on North Lake Boulevard, that for a synthetic oil change, would you like to guess how much they charge for a synthetic oil change on an average four-cylinder car? $100. Exactly. $100. Do I get a prize? $50. As a matter of fact, yeah, the next time you bring your car in,

for service. I'll find somebody to work on it. Thank you very much. Okay. It's very expensive for maintenance anymore, so folks, keep your eyes open on these. Okay. Folks, remember that Earl's got a $100,000 dealer fee challenge, and you can go to Earl on cars, and you can read all about that challenge.

But he is just... Yeah, it's hard to believe. I mean, I'm just... My mind is boggled. boggled my mind's boggled that a week ago they're like that's like buffaloed right yeah I put this out I put this out on the on the air there's

tens of thousands of people we did a blog we've told everybody in Florida we reposted too so yeah and I said to all the cardinals out there here's my cell phone number in case you missed it 561 358 1474 5674 561 358 147 4 call me I'd like to debate you on the legality of the dealer fee. We will have an impartial jury, which will be the listeners to the radio show, and we'll each have equal time.

It'll be by the kind of like the parliamentary rules of debate. You'll have five minutes. I'll have five minutes. You'll have a rebuttal. Totally fair. And it's fair. Let me do a commercial for it. And $100,000 I will pay you to do with as you feel.

And if I win, I'm giving it to charity. Big Dog Ranch Rescue. No phone calls. What? No phone calls. I got to tell you, it isn't fair. It's absolutely not fair. That's like telling them, I'll give you $10,000 if you can prove that the sun is not going to come up tomorrow.

That's not what to tell you're going to. You're inviting them to come in and put themselves. It's a lot of money. They can't fight it. It's a lot of money. How could you resist? But they can't fight it. Do you know a car dealer?

Maybe he's not doing so well. Let me tell you, car dealer's got a lot of money, let me tell you. Okay. Hey, Chuck Schumacher. Let's call him out by name. Yeah. Napleton. What's it?

Ed Nabilton. Let's get him alive on. Ed Nabilton, Jr. We'll take him either one of them. I think he's busy. Anybody out there that wants to be vindicated because I'm punishing them every week on this radio show saying bad things about hidden fees. If you have a legitimate reason, for charging these hidden fees, debate me.

And if you don't think it's fair, tell me what you think is fair. You don't like the idea of the radio show. How about the West Palm Beach Auditorium? How about Channel 5? How about, you name the venue, the place, the time. How about at your dealership in your office? Yeah, in your dealership. I want a public audience that can vote, and that's all it is $100,000.

And the silence is definitely. The Arrigo voice. Yeah, Jim Arrigo. Jack Smith or Frank Gonzalez, or at the same time. Yeah. The list is endless. Ladies and gentlemen, you know, you can give us your opinion about all this. Go to Your AnonymousFeedback.com.

That's a great idea. It's just like Your AnonymousFeedback.com, your anonymous, nobody knows who you are. Voice your opinion. How do you feel about what Earl just said? $100,000 dealer fee challenge. Youranonymous Feedback.com. Exactly. And it's real money.

It's not the candy bar. So that way a car dealer can use Your Anonymous Feedback.com and they can negotiate the terms and conditions. And you could talk candidly because I don't know who you are. You call me on text me or, you know. Type at you. Yeah, type at me. Your Anonymous Feedback.com and say, listen, I don't like the idea of the radio show. Let's use another radio show

Or let's use a physical location Maybe in your backyard The only thing I'll insist on is the public We have to have the public vote We have the man on the street The woman on the street That's buying a car Judge whether I win the debate

Or you win the debate Your anonymous Feedback.com Tell us what you think And we can negotiate anonymously And come up with something And meet in the middle so we can do this debate. You know, you're like one of the boys back in my neighborhood.

You've got this here about you, the Italian thing. It's all with the hands and the arms and the face. I don't know. I don't even know I'm doing it. And I like it when you go like this. By osmosis. You guys been together for 35, 40 years. It's going to rub off.

We're going to start looking like each other. Huh? Well, I wasn't going to say anything, but. Hey, and I have a whole lot more to say about that dealer-feet job. challenge and let me ask you this question before we go to our next caller have when you're not buying a car and it comes to the final deal and you're saying hey listen uh dealer feed uh nitro fee all these fees and they say to you that these fees are regulated by the state that is bull so give me your opinion horse feathers pure horse feathers at your at your at your anonymous

Feedback.com. And that's Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We're going to go to Dennis. The calls are rolling in, and he's from Lake Worth. Good morning, Dennis. Good morning. I just like to make a comment about my wife and I bought a car from you guys about four or five weeks ago. And after I listened to your show last week, I had a question about the pricing. So I called and I talked to Stu and got to say, it was, you know, quite the amazing experience. He looked up my pricing, said there was an error in the pricing, sent me a check for the difference. And so all I can say is you guys do exactly what you say you're going to do. And the next time we buy another Toyota, we will certainly come back to your dealership

because you walk to walk and talk to talk and do exactly what you say you're going to do. Well, Dennis, thank you. Very kind of you to call. And I did not put you up to that. No, I get it embarrassed sometimes. I told Stu, I was amazed at how quick everything was he took care of things on the phone. and just did it, you know, and just can't say enough about what he did and how quick he did it. Thanks, Dennis.

Thank you very much, Dennis. I really appreciate that. Thank you, Dennis. Give us a call again. Okay, I will. Thanks. Bye. You know, you talk about being embarrassed when things like this happen.

You know, it's really difficult not to say thank you. And these people are coming to the dealership, and they're coming to the dealership because there's so many car dealers. It worries me about... That are doing business the wrong way. People will accuse us of doing an infomercial. There are car dealers that buy time on the radio, and they pretend to do a show, but they do it for self-enhancement, and that's the reason I get a little bit embarrassed.

I can understand that. We've never bought anything in 14 years. We're not getting paid for today. We didn't get paid for yesterday. It should be. We're last week. And by the way, I resign. You remember a long time ago

Our listeners might remember I think it was down like Kendall Toyota Mark Jacobson He was the general manager He's actually a dealer now He's got a dealer out of state now But he put on a nighttime television talk show That looked like the tonight show

Like a Johnny Carson thing It reminded me that or Tom Snyder It was pretty well done I think they had a band Oh goodness That was an infomercial I just want to assure all the listeners This is strictly consumer advocacy

People ask me what I do now I say well I'm a car dealer but I'm also a consumer advocate. And I say I spent probably more time advocating for the consumers with the blogs and the public speaking and the radio show and other things I do to try to help the car buyers. It's all free. Yes, exactly. Free, free information. Speaking of free information, ladies and gentlemen, we appreciate your information that you share with us.

There are certainly a lot of knowledgeable callers that give us a call and steer us in the right direction. direction. Our phone number is 877960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. And whenever I have the chance, I'll speak of the dealer feet. Let's knock down. Stu's got a backlog here. Rick's got one. Let's catch up with Stu on the text. Okay dokey. This is from Jackie. Speaking about great safety features, I just bought a new Rav4 and has a camera rearview mirror. It's very cool. It gives you a clear view behind the car and things like people in the back seat do not obstruct your view. It also doesn't matter how the mirror is adjusted or how your head is positioned. The view always stays the same.

That's from Jackie. That is a pretty cool feature, and I think a lot of car manufacturers are starting to add these things because consumers are demanding it. You know, it makes me a little hesitant, nervous about how fast is technology is improving. and I used to like to brag about cars that were really well constructed and high reliability and it was a thing we'd have service customers come in

with 200,000 or 300,000 miles people would say I've had my car for 10 years and it's running like it was brand new and it was like a thing that was really a thing of pride and prestige. Now I get nervous They're like smartphones now. Exactly. If you have a 10 year old vehicle today

the car is obsolete. A lot and safety-wise. And a year? Yeah, exactly. The cars today are infinitely more safe than they were 10 years ago. So if you took really good care of your car and it runs like a top and you maintain it properly, you still have, relatively speaking, an unsafe car. So I don't know what to do.

What do we do with these unsafe cars? We're going to trade them and someone's going to buy them. But just beware. This might lead into how ride sharing and people, the traditional car ownership is changing. subscription service down in the future might be the way to go because that way you're always have like a smartphone you're always on top of the technology and the safety features exactly uh rickie did you have a point uh no except to say that uh right now i don't think they have the video camera rearview mirrors available but i bet they'll be out very soon after market

oh they do they they are right it's on the new ref or yeah well i know it's on as a factory option yeah but i'm talking like an after market camera that gives you a rear view full size like that. That would be to make. That would be pretty easy to do. Yeah. I mean, you've already got a backup camera

and you can already run it to a large screen. All you got to do is have just a flip a switch and boom, that screen is showing you what you see. You guys can talk about that after the show. That's great. Let's get to the next text. All right. Next one is from Edgar Pinto in Huntsville.

Hey, we've got an out-of-state texture. Why doesn't Toyota offer a larger van than the Sienna, which only fits seven passengers? I see Ford's, Chevys, even Mercedes, with larger bus-like vehicles, but they don't have the same mechanical quality as the Toyotas. Do you have any connections? Can you put the word in, Edgar Pinto? Edgar, the car manufacturer's problem today is too many combinations.

Toyota and Volkswagen and all the worldwide manufacturers have a huge number of models. They may well have a model in Japan or India or some other place that we don't have the United States. I think they probably do. They tend to build cars, trucks, and vans for the locale to the best of their ability. A lot of the European streets are very narrow in Asia and different parts of the world. So the big problem of today is too many models and not having enough. And everybody would like to have something a little bit different. But they're trying to narrow the model selection.

Rick? I know for a fact that Toyota has a Mexican version of a 15-passenger van. coaster that you can buy in Mexico. Unfortunately, not available in the U.S. Exactly. Admission controls make it unique to the particular locale, especially the USA. You can't take a car that qualifies for Japan or Mexico, for that matter, and breaking the U.S. goes to the emission control.

Great information. We're going to go to our first-time female caller from Hope Sound, and that's Christine. Welcome to the show, Christine. Good morning. How are you? Well, thank you. I have a question about this dealer challenge. Are you only accepting challenges with dealers in the state of Florida?

Yes, it is in Florida because I don't know the dealer fee laws in the other states. I would certainly consider making an exception, but I would probably want to familiarize myself. For example, in California, dealer fee is permitted, and they have a fixed price and it has to be called a dealer fee, I believe it might be some other name, but they can't

change the name of it and they can't vary the amount of it. So that's a good situation. I don't have a problem if you have a small dealer fee and identify it and all dealers charge it and that's the way it is. I have a problem in Florida where there are no limit to the number

of dealer fees. There's no limit to the amount of a dealer fee and there's no limit to the number of names You can attach to the dealer fee. You can call a dealer fee anything you want. I think that's outrageous. But to answer your question, my challenge is stated in my blog, and as I've discussed it on the radio show, is for the state of Florida. I would entertain making an exception from another state with a caveat that I'd have to read and familiarize myself with that law.

Okay, well, what about a big dealer that has dealerships in many states? So they have all kinds of different rules. They probably have to follow then, right? Well, they would only have to, in the Florida dealership, they'd only have to follow Florida law. For example, Auto Nation has dealerships in all 50 states, and they sell cars differently in all 50 states. In Florida, Auto Nation does charge dealer fees,

and in California, they charge a dealer fee, but they have to call what California designates, and I believe the cap in California is $75. dollar nation dealers in florida charge eight nine hundred dollars and more and then california family charged 75 wow well i know a dealership that one of the dealers fees that i didn't find out about till after was they etched their name in the glass on my windows in the car yeah and put that in as a charge not something that i wanted wow exactly that's cool me for a window they put it on and they put it on every window interesting that's pre-installed

Christine and they they like to pre-install products that cost them very little that they can hopefully have a higher perceived value and they overcharge these are typically marked up a thousand percent you heard me right a thousand percent they'll take something that cost them twenty dollars and charge you two hundred or something cost you cost them a hundred dollars and charge you a thousand and it's just a way to jack up the price of the mononi label the MSRP Right. Yeah, it's just one of those dealer fees that, you know, they don't tell you about. They don't ask you if you want. And then, you know, there's an extra $1,500 tagged on to your cost of your car that you're not expecting.

Exactly. It was like insane. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, Earl mentioned California and the dealer fee being $75. California is one of those states that do have a cap. And in 2011, it was $55. So, They're subject to change whenever they want accordingly. So you're really a buyer beware. Consumer Reports has the article we talked about earlier in the show. And this July, hard copy of Consumer Reports is online now. They found that a couple in Pittsburgh had paid $1,833 in dealer fees on the car they purchased. It was 2019 Honda, CRV.

and $1,8333 in dealer fees in Pittsburgh. And I say that varies by location. They did a, this Consumer Reports article, Christine, was interesting because they did hidden fees in general. Dealer fees, car dealer, hidden fees were just some of them. But cable companies, baseball games. I didn't know they had hidden fees in baseball games. Airline tickets. Yeah, concert tickets, airfare, car rental, and hotels.

And the total dealer fees or the total hidden fees that this. couple in Pittsburgh paid over 12 months was $3,278.93. The dealer fee part of that was $1,833, which is 55% of the total hidden fees are charged by car dealers. So the car dealer hidden fees are the big, big problem. Yeah, and it's really totally outrageous because if you go back to 2011 in Pennsylvania, you'll find that the dealer fee then was $122. dollars so uh with what earl just quoted from the consumer report uh can you even imagine and that's the

reason why this is so passionate uh to us we we just believe in getting the truth out there that you don't have to pay these fees and they're not regulated by the state so uh buyer beware that's all i can say well i appreciate what you guys put out there because you know on sunday Saturday mornings and whatnot. I always listen to you guys, and it's helped me out a lot. I wish I would have known your radio station before I got a new car. Well, thank you, Christine. Thank you so much, Christine.

And if you'll stay on the line, Rudy, you'll get your information, your contact information, and I'll get a checkout to you for $50. Spread the word. We're trying to build a platform here for the ladies to feel totally comfortable with her car buying experience or service leasing, anything at all that has to do with the auto industry. Thank you again. I appreciate you guys. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. Okay, I think we're, we get some more text here. No phone calls right to the second. We do. Hi, Earl, from the texter. Hi, Earl, what is a good starting offer when negotiating on a used car? 30%, 20% or 10% below the asking price? Well, of course, it depends on the dealer and it depends on what the markup is.

I always recommend that you check some other sources. You can go to AutoTrader and you get a general relative idea of what prices are. You go to the used car of your choice and you can sort by price. That way it will give you an idea of what the car dealers are asking for their cars in different locations. Bear in mind, though, that they will also add dealer fees. But it gives you a relative idea. Then I'd look at some of the lower price, let's say you're looking at a, for a 2016 Honda Civic, and you go on another trader, and the prices vary by $3,000.

When you go into your local dealer, you can start by going in at the lower price on other trader as an offer compared to what his higher price was. Tell him about the car that you saw. Exactly. I saw the exact same car, similar miles, same condition, same color, for $3,000 less. Exactly. Nothing like competition. It is the car dealer's Achilles' heel.

I can tell you the vulnerability, if you really want to get a car dealer's attention, talk about it's competition. If you're buying a Chrysler product, you're buying a Jeep, go to two or three Jeep dealers, and let them know you're checking it with two or three Jeep dealers. They get emotional about it, and they will do anything to win that price. Yes, they will. Yes. And Stu is looking at me because, you know, in my other life, I'm the car dealer. I'm a consumer advocate.

When I go to my dealership, I've become a competitive maniac. You still leave the consumer advocate hat on. I do, I do. And I know a lot of cars. You're covered. I've been doing this for 50 years. I know hundreds, maybe thousands of car dealers. And the one weakness we have is the competition can drive us to our knees.

So use the competition against the car dealers. stories of car sales people chasing you out to your car if you're leaving that's usually because they know where you're going yeah exactly stop them it's amazing how far we've be how far we've come and that there still are so many stories out there and we're not giving up we're going to fight the fight there's a million stories and we're going to be here every single Saturday to share one more bizarre story with you but on the flip side of that coin there's more and more good news out there for the car buyer. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-6-5-30.

Let's do Rick's. He's got a YouTube there, and then we'll go to your affidavit, and I see. Okay. This is from Ernesto Ortega, and he says, good morning. A YouTuber car salesman says to mention the trade early and not at the end. because it slows and adds time to the process. But you say to mention the trade at the end, who's correct? I am. Yep.

Yeah, you want to keep the trade out of it. I mean, the trade, there are a lot of opportunities the car dealer has to make a lot of money on you. One of them is by pricing the car too high, the new car, whatever car you're buying. The other one is to allow you too little on your trade in. the other one is to raise your payments way high by increasing the interest rate and adding a lot of nonsense like extended service contracts and gap insurance and window wedge and things like that so you take you take one of the variables away from him and you say I just want to buy the car I don't need to trade in my car I'm going to give it to my daughter or my son you

just I want the best price you give me on the car and then you negotiate the price you check with the competition the Achilles heel of that car dealer and you You get to the lowest price you can. Then you say, I've changed my mind. I believe I will trade my car in. What will you pay me for the car is a trade-in? And by the way, I'm going to two other used car lots of I'm buying a Honda, okay? Two other Honda dealers, and I'm going to see what they'll pay me for the trade-in.

Keep it separate. And I think the key thing here with Ernesto's question is the YouTuber video that he looked at was a car salesman. Oh, yeah. So that may be the indication. that they're trying to sneak you and uh yeah rule number one do not view youtube uh buy car salesman for advice on not a buy car oh no you should definitely view it because and then do the opposite of what he says okay good point learn the enemy hmm okay soon we got another text over here we do um here's a nice one i love what you do for the dogies earl and auntie and stew i'm assuming that you're the

voice behind the camera and your dog dog adoption videos on facebook Well, I am. And what kind of safety equipment is available for dogs and cars? Are doggie seatbelts a thing? I believe that they are. They are. They have all sorts of restraints for dogs. I'm not sure.

Do they have a doggie car seat? They do. I think they do, yeah. We could do another show on dogs. We may, you know, maybe one day will. But there's just about nothing you can't buy for your dog today. for health, comfort, or anything else. The problem is the cost of that, and it's outrageous.

It's a huge industry that has come up because humans love dogs today more than ever, and humans have dogs that are like their children. And it's sad that dogs don't live as long as humans, and we spend a lot of money on nutrition and health, health care, even insurance, car restraints, and things like this. So that's almost another show. Yeah, it is definitely another show. And ladies and gentlemen, don't keep your dog on your lap when you're driving.

And that is, well, a story we don't have time for. Well, I have a barrier that I put up in my pickup. My dog, when she goes with me, she's in the back seat with a big grill mesh barrier. So she cannot come into the front seat for her safety and mine. And she's comfortable in the air conditioning, not. outside, no chance that she's going to lunge out of the vehicle, and she's happy and comfortable. Can she stick her nose

out of the window? I'll lower the windows just a little bit, but remember, folks, if you put the window down with your dog in the car, put the window locks on, because if your dog accidentally hits the button and that window goes down all the way, and that's happened. Be careful.

That's happened. Okay, it's like talking about bagels. We're talking about dogs. We've got to get back to cars. Yeah, yep. Here we go. Earl, you always recommend doing your shopping on the Internet, and I agree. But when can we, as consumers, actually buy a car on the Internet and have it delivered on, delivered like on Amazon.com? And this is from Barry and Boynton.

Yesterday. Well, I hate to do an infomercial, and I won't. We have that capability in my dealership. The thing you have to be careful of a lot. Carvana. Yeah, Carvana, there's a good point there. Carvana's huge cars. You can't buy.

I don't know very many dealerships. truly have a click-and-buy Amazon experience you they advertise they do but typically they don't right now the best you can do and hope for is to shop online and do the communication by email or telephone and get your pricing as best as you can to get an out-the-door price online make it very clear when you finally find that price that you think is the best you have to be sure use this word track, I want you to understand that this is, I expect this to be an out-the-door price. I'm going to bring you my check from the credit union for this amount, and I'm going to hand

it to you, and then I'm going to get in that car, and I'm going to take it home. If that's the price you gave me, be sure, because I'm going to be extremely unhappy if it isn't. True online car buying is a great convenience, but all the rules, everything we talk about, still apply. You still have to compare because that online price might be too high. Exactly. And there's still a lot of things that make it, you know, just speaking from experience, like registering your car and things like loans with banks. A lot of the stuff can't be done online yet, and it's not the dealer's fault necessarily.

And so there's still a lot of traditional things, even when you do an online car buying. So you still can't let your guard down. Great information. Yeah, it's true. Same thing applies. We talk about other ways to buy cars, true car. We talk about Costco. Whatever you do, the program may be pure and honest, but the car dealerships aren't.

And so there isn't any banner or logo that you can trust so much that you also trust the car dealer. That's the weak link in Costco's chain. And we'll talk about later in the mystery shopping report. Costco has got an amazing car bargain. Costco's prices are so good that the car. dealers don't like them because they actually can't make money on a Costco deal yet they sign up for the Costco program so they are really adversarial when you walk into many Costco approved dealerships and if you're not if you're not very careful you will not get the Costco price so

as Stu said online car buying true car Costco uh whatever you do shop and compare competition is your best friend. 877-960 9960. And Nancy, let's hear, Nancy has an affidavit she's been trying to tell you about, and we've got to do this. It's very important. Yeah, this is real important,

guys, so listen up. You can save yourself a whole lot of money, and I'm working on a video in the future on this particular topic, dealer fee. I have a question for you. Did you know that almost

Every car dealership in Florida adds hidden fees to the price of their advertised, that they advertise and quote to you. These fees are often disguised as government fees and slipped unnoticed into the final price. You're signing all the papers in the F&I office, also called the business office. In South Florida, these hidden fees add an average of $1,000 in the business office. I'm about to show you a way you can avoid being tricked by paying these hidden fees as well as unwanted, valueless dealer-installed accessories, which are often added to the supposed out-the-door advertised price or the price you were quoted by the salesman.

Simply click on www. Out-the-doorprice affidavit.com. That's www. out the door price affidavit.com and download this legal document insists that this form be signed by the manager of the car dealership excuse me the form guarantees that the price you saw in the advertisement or were quoted by the salesman is the out-the-door price plus government fees only tax and tag so remember that you can say give time by emailing or faxing this form to the car dealership for a signature. And you ask yourself, what should you do if they refuse to sign the form? Leave.

Earl's holding up that affidavit that you can download. Well, it's great. It's just, what is that? W.W.W. Out the door priced. That's correct. www. Out the door price affidavit.com. out-the-door price affidavit and goes right to the form,

download it, put it in your pocket, or you can fax or email it to the car dealer if you're shopping online. And if a car dealer or car salesman, you want a manager to sign this, refuses, then there's something wrong. There's something rotten in the state of Denmark. And they're trying to slip something on you.

So just don't buy from that car dealer. Exactly. And ladies and gentlemen, I can't emphasize enough, you know, whether it be the dealer fee, whether it be a conflict, in personalities whatever it is you're always in control and the doors are not locked when you walk through the dealership where you can't leave so anything at all that you don't agree with you just simply leave and ladies and gentlemen i'd like to know how you feel about this affidavit whether you

would download this affidavit at out the door price out the door price affidavit.com Go to Your AnonymousFeedback.com and give us your opinion. I know I gave you a lot of information, but you can go to Earl on Cars and you can get that information if you missed any of it. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6530 and don't forget, $100,000 dealer fee challenge. Yes, Earl is challenging the car. dealers. Okay, we're back. Text are backing up.

Rick, let's go with you first. Okay. Remy is asking, is it true that brand new cars take an oil change or two to achieve the rated gas mileage? My forester was supposed to get 30 miles per gallon combined. I'm averaging only 23 miles per gallon, having driven 2,000 miles. Can I guess? No.

Absolutely correct. Thank you. No. Correct. Your car should be getting. getting the advertised fuel economy right from the get-go. There's no break-in period anymore on cars, and it should be doing just fine. That being said, it may be a combination of driving habits, tire pressure,

and a few other issues like the incredible heat we've got in South Florida right now that are affecting your fuel economy. Remember, the hotter it is, the harder the air conditioner has to work, and that uses more gas. so all these little things add up but it can't hurt to stop in and check with the dealer just ask them make sure everything's

operating properly on the car and also look around and make sure you're not carrying too much stuff in the car that adds weight and it's going to cut your fuel economy very good we're going to go to Peter who's calling and he's calling us from West Palm Beach good morning Peter

If Peter's still listening give us a call back at 877-966 9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Boy, there's some interesting texts. Oh, yeah, they're coming in. Wow. The first one is on our Facebook live stream, and it's from Cable. Cable says, was car shopping recently in the West Palm area when the sales associate said

the mandatory dealer fee was $995. I immediately challenged him, said, I didn't care for the fee, and I clearly cited you, Earl, on the subject. he then visited with the dealership manager and came back with a, quote, solution. They would not waive the fee, but instead reduce the price of the car by the equivalent $995. Weird. Cable, you won. And it's weird.

The whole dealer fee, hidden fee thing is weird. But that's a great way to approach it. I mean, there are other ways to approach it. We talked about go ahead and glue your dealer fee, but give me the lowest price, and then I'm going to shop it with your competition. But what you did is just as good. You got them to take it off. They just took out of the price, which is the same thing. It's funny.

We have the same argument that the dealer fee dealers have. They say the only number that matters is the bottom line, and that's true, until you throw in the monkey wrench of dealer fees in advertising, or early on in the presentation of a sale. Next one. A lot of your advice is fine for people with an aggressive personality. I don't think I have the ability to challenge all the sneaky tactics like hidden fees. What's an introvert to do, Kathy, and Palm Beach Gardens? Yeah, I have, I feel for most of

the folks, you know, Nancy, for example, is, she's a very aggressive negotiator, even more so than I, hard to believe. But, you know, I'm a patsy when I'm, you know, I'm buying. I don't like to lay down and hassle. I'm a laid down. Early laydown. And Nancy has that personality. Most people don't have that. Nancy keeps raising her hands. Yes, she's very aggressive. I was asked that question, you know, for the past couple of weeks. No, I'm not exercising. Yeah.

And I told some of the lady callers to go to the Internet. Okay? Go to the Internet. You could do a lot of negotiating there. So the main thing to do is if you have that, an average personality, and you don't like the confrontation. Remember, you're playing with the pros. Car salesmen are professionals. They're trained.

They are selected psychologically for that job. Every morning in most car dealerships, they have a raw, raw sales meeting, and they whip them into a frenzy. Bloodthirsty, frenzy. It's like, you're playing against the house when you walk into a car dealership. You never win when you're playing against the house. So as Nancy said, you don't have to have that confrontation online. And a lot of people, by the way, you might be a docile, calm person in person. But some people get pretty aggressive online, and you can sometimes be more aggressive in an email or text than you can when you're on the phone.

So whatever suits you, if you don't have that aggressive personality, do your negotiating online. Rick? I would call Nancy and bring her to do the negotiating for me. Well, that's a great idea because Nancy would probably do it. But you have friends, you know, people. Most attorneys are nasty, aggressive people. I take that back. I'm only kidding.

I like a lot of attorney. But attorneys are good negotiators. And if they're not a good negotiator, they're probably not a good attorney. If you have someone and you know people, business people, attorneys, you know people in your crowd. Take them with your car shopping relatives. There's always someone that's a little bit more forceful and you should never go car shopping alone. You know, there's not a school for negotiating, for sure. But sharpening up your negotiating skills, just little by little, I don't care if you're going on to buy windshield wipers.

Everything is under negotiation. You can apply it anywhere. So I hope that we answered your question. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-60, and we're going to go to Joe, who's calling us from Fort Lauderdale. Good morning, Joe. Good morning Good morning Everyone I enjoy your show

Thank you I have a I have a 2017 Highlander And I like it very much It's a gas model I want to buy a 2020

Platinum Highlander when they come out I'm debating whether I want to go gas or hybrid And I guess my question Is it too pot

Is it more expensive to maintain the hybrid and with all of the bells and whistles on the car, does it make sense to keep it longer than the warranty? I'm afraid four or five years will I have a problem with the navigation and all the electronics in the car. Am I better off leasing for three years or buying it and keeping it for five or six years? Joe, you can keep a Highlander for five or six years. all the cars today, not just Toyota's, are far better than they were a few years ago. Your problem is going to be what's going to be the state-of-the-art in technology, safety, especially in five or six years. The way it's going now, if you bought a car five or six years ago, safety-wise, it's obsolete today.

Five or six years from today, I'm not so sure. But you're not going to worry about maintenance and repair. These cars today, Hondas, Toyotas, Chevolets, Chevroletes, uh most every vehicle uh you had a consumer reports and you get a recommended car that car will last you for 10 or 15 years three 400 000 miles so that's not the problem problem is safety and you can check it out three years four years uh start doing a little car shopping they might have some safety features that are so critical that you don't want to drive a car without it Stu has a point.

Yeah, Joe, also for Toyota, there is no good lease program on a Highlander hybrid. They don't consider it a car they're trying to incentivize. It's a relatively low-volume car, so the lease payment is not going to be very attractive to you anyway, so I'd recommend against leasing that vehicle. Okay. Joe, does that answer your questions? Thank you very much for yourself. Well, thanks for listening all the way down there in Fort Lauderdale.

And if you have any friends down there in the area, spread the word. We love to spread the signal around the whole state, so thanks for the call, Joe. One other thing, you should do some mystery shopping down in the Broward County area. We have, and you're kind of in the wild, wild west down there, and you've got some car dealers that are really, I think, borderline insane. Yeah, scary is a better word. And we have done. We've done two or three dealers down there. The further south you go, and you get into Miami, it really gets dangerous.

and we actually had a physical confrontation with a mystery shopper as I recall in Miami one time our mystery shopper was trying to take the vehicle buyers order with him and he almost was physically assaulted to get it back so it's dangerous down there but our mystery shoppers are very brave people and quick on their feet

one last question I think last week you said the cheapest way to buy a vehicle at your place was through Costco Yes. It's the cheapest way to buy a vehicle any place if it's a Costco-approved dealership if you go by the rules. And if you stay tuned for our mystery shopping report coming up in just a few, very few minutes, you will see what we're talking about. If you're a Costco member, you should go by the rules. The Costco rules are you call the dealership, you get the name of the Costco member, and they will email you back. You will get the- Go to the Costco-a-com website first.

Exactly. Got to go to the Costco auto.com website. You have to put the zip code in, and that's where you get the information is for the Costco certified dealers in your area. And then you go by the rules. You should see the Costco member-only approved price sheet, and you should be sure that the price they give you follows all the rules. If you have a problem, you can call Costco because you registered with them.

But, yeah, Costco is a great auto buying program, but you've got to be very, very careful. Thank you very much. Thank you for the call, Joe. All right. Okay, Joe, thank you so much. 877-960-90-60, or you can text us. It's 772-497-65-30. Got some text.

They keep coming in. Here's a good one. Let's see. Why do dealers use Costco and True Car if they lose money? I don't believe you. Costco? That's a great question. That does sound like I'm lying.

Why would you want the Costco auto buying program? Very simple. It attracts Costco members, and then you trick them when they come in. And I don't want to give away any secrets, but that just may have happened in our mystery shopping report, so you'll have to stay tuned. By being on the Costco member approved program, people come in, Costco members, and you walk into the dealership, fat and happy, and say, I'm a Costco member, give me the Costco prize, and the car sales. says, no problem. Here's the Costco price, and you buy the car and you home, and you paid $5,000 too much for the car.

The Costco dealers oftentimes are using that as a lure. True car, Costco is a way to get you in. So you have to be extremely careful. Go by the rules of the program. Verify you're getting the Costco price. Verify you're getting the true car price. And also, you've talked about this on the show a lot. you know, why would they lose money?

Well, we talk about stair-step incentives, and you can lose money on a dealer two or ten as a dealer and then receive some big, big bonuses from your manufacturer. We talk about, like, the last day of the month, people lose money on the last day of the month to get money. I talked about on the way in. We were talking about the pretty same thing, and I explained to her that a car dealer can break even

or lose money on a car, but in the long run, it's a plus because it's one step further to his big, big, fat bonus. The manufacturer gives them at the end of the month or at the end of the quarter. And a big article in automotive news today that a lot of the car dealers are up in arms. Nissan is up in arms, the car dealers, stairs step and senties with the manufacturer Nissan. Nissan finally has been beat into submission, and they have said, off the record, at the end of the year they're dropping stairs step and senteys because the dealers are getting ready to sue Nissan. So that zero profit or loser deal is something car dealers are forced to take sometimes to get to their quota.

Okay, we have a text from Joe and Boynton, and this is for Rick. Why do some cars have timing chains and some have timing belts? Is it all about cost to build the engine? Multiple reasons. Cost to build the engine can be one. Timing chains are more reliable. They last longer. They don't have a maintenance interval.

change them however when they do wear out the damage they can cause can be a much more extensive one of the main reasons that they've gone away from timing belts and gone back to chains is that the heads the cylinder heads are getting a lot smaller and they don't have the clearances for the valves so if you in the old days if you broke a timing belt the car would simply stop and a 800 to a thousand dollars for a new belt and everything else else, you are back on the road. Now, if it breaks a chain and causes major engine damage, that could be $8,000.

Okay, we've got time for another texture, too, before we get to the mystery shopping report. They're not ending. They're just coming in. Okay, this is from longtime listener and longtime texture, Ann Marie. Good morning. And, by the way, that's a great question. I've thought about this before. Good morning, Ann Marie.

Good morning, yeah. Why do car manufacturers place the horn where they do? My long-gone 1989 Honda cord had the horn on the edge of the steering wheel away from the airbag. Nowadays, the horn is placed in the middle of the steering wheel where the airbag is. If you are blowing the horn when you're in a collision, I'd think your hand would be propelled into your face from the airbag. Am I wrong? And I've imagined that, too, that's you holding on desperately on your horn. That's an interesting question.

Yeah, very interesting. I think why they put it in the middle is because that's where you think it is, and how many have been in a car and suddenly you have to hit the horn and you're slapping around, you can't get the horn. Maybe it's a different type of car. Change cars. I think people expect the horn to be there, and that's

where they hit it, and it's an instantaneous reflex, and if you miss the horn, you know, it could be a problem. But, Anne-Marie, I love your question. You got a great brain. Yeah. We need to find out about that. We need to talk somebody that knows

and find out maybe that's a bad place for the horn. It's a good place if you have a Dakota airbag, and you can block the shrapnel. Oh. Sorry. This is from Thomas and Lake Worth. How is the software on dashboard items like CarPlay and Maps updated? Don't know.

Actually, since he mentions CarPlay, as in Apple CarPlay, that all runs through your phone. So every time the navigation in your phone updates, then it would be updated. in your car, especially if you're using such programs as Waze, scout GPS, or any other navigation system that operates through your phone. On my car, I get a little thing comes up on my display that says we have a download. Would you like to take it down? Would you like it to do it in the background? And so it's all done automatically. And that would be on like Entune and a lot of others.

Most of those updates come over the air. Yeah, GPS. Or in some very few cases, Toyota This is one of my big beefs with Toyota One of the things that I Am furious about Our navigation systems for years The only way to update The navigation maps

Was you had to go buy an SD card From Toyota And swap out the SD card And it was like $250 or more To change out that card to get updated maps And I call that ridiculous It's so old-fashioned. It's absurd.

And especially now that cars are finally getting Apple CarPlay to where all the navigation maps are in your phone, they're updated all the time constantly, and it's always accurate. Thank you for that, Rick. We're getting past Mr. Shopping. We're holding our

calls on the phone right now, but we still have time for another couple of texts. We'll do this rapid fire. First question is from D in Naples. Why are interior colors so limited Some cars only offer a black interior, which makes no sense in the Florida heat. I said earlier that car dealers are having a challenge now with different models. They're also having a challenge with different combinations of equipment and colors.

Think about it. You try to please everybody, and you come up with all the different colors and the combinations and the options and the accessories pretty soon to have a selection of cars. You need 6,000 cars in a dealer's inventory. It's almost that bad today. You give too many selections of colors and trim, and then you force yourself into bankruptcy in terms of being able to build too many cars and make it too complicated to buy.

So the manufacturers are trying to simplify to optimize the sales process. There you go. And the last one will be caught up. This is from Robbie and Stewart, and she's texted us multiple times over the years. Great question. Can you go to any Costco dealer if you're a member, or are you restricted to the town where you live? You can go to any Costco dealer, and that's not a bad idea.

There's not that many Costco warehouses, but you should get a comparable price if you go by the rules. And because the price is so low that you're not going to find a real variation in the real Costco price. Costco mandates that you have to have a lower price on every car for a Costco member. than you sold that car to anybody else for. And as you know, car dealers sell cars for all different prices to all different people for different models. And the lowest price they sell any particular model for is quite low.

And the Costco price must be even lower. And if you really get that Costco price, man, you've got yourself a deal. I think, Rick, I've got to get to the Mr. Shepard. I've got one here. If we can squeeze one more on. Okay. George is asking, my question is, I'm in the market for a $20,000. 15 S550 or a 2015 RR Supercharged, I believe these are Mercedes models, should I purchase a CPO certified pre-owned or an extended warranty and which is more reliable?

Certified pre-owned, a good use car is always a better buy value than a new car. So I would recommend that as far as a warranty, if you're buying a quality car, it's just like you're going to pay probably more premium than you pay. repairs but it might not happen if you sleep better at night with an extended warranty and it's from the manufacturer go ahead and buy it okay okay i'm going to mention one thing for our listeners and that is the florida weekly where you can go and you can pick you can pick that up or you can read it online good people make good car dealerships and also the other column is a hundred thousand dollar dealer fee challenge so there are two for you to take a look at and a lot of information.

Yeah, we've got the phones on hold now to do the mystery shopping report, but you can text us our post, and if we get through the mystery shopping report, we'll address your post or your text on YouTube or Facebook or Periscope or Twitter, whatever you want to talk to us. But we can't have the calls come in because we've got to get through the mystery shopping report, which is the highlight of our show. Absolutely. And that's also probably more entertaining and educational than anything else we do.

And our listeners can definitely vote on that mystery shopping report from Ed Morris Del Rey at 772-4976530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. As Nancy said, this week's mystery shop wraps up a four-week project looking into the Costco Auto Program. We investigated two car dealers who are official participants in the program, meaning the Costco program, Ed Morris Del Rey Toyota, and a Berkshire Hathaway dealer. Del Rey Honda, Warren Buffett's store. I wonder if Warren knows what goes on on all of his car dealerships.

I doubt it. I got it. Agent Thunder handled the first visit and went through the proper procedure described below. The second visits were made by our newest and female. Agent 26 on her visit, she intentionally avoided going through the proper channels and only casually mentioned

that she was a Costco member. Remember, folks, that's a no-no. You got to go. by the rules of the Costco Auto program your first rule is go to the Costco Auto.com www. Costco Auto.com and follow the rules. Put your zip code in and you'll find the dealers available, you go to that dealership and you'll know the name of the approved salespeople for the Costco program.

Do that for sure. To fresh everyone's memories, here's a brief recap on how the program works. Costco Auto Programme requires its participating dealers to offer their absolute lowest price to Costco members who go through the program to buy a car. Now, that's unprecedented, unheard of. No other auto program does that. It is, we don't like it at our dealership. In full transparency, I am a car dealer. And we are a member of the auto program.

The Costco prices are so low that we, we're not happy with it. I mean, it actually could be a net loser to us when we sold the car. We do it, as Stu alluded to earlier, we're a Costco Auto program because we need it for the volume. We need it to sell more cars. And competition. And to meet the competition. So the Costco Auto program is a necessity, and we go about it honestly.

So it was a great question earlier on the text. Why do you do it if you lose it? money you have to do it and Costco has got the greatest program at all time the alternative is worse um Costco members go to a Costco Auto.com enter their zip code they select the vehicle they want to buy and the participating dealer for that make and model is revealed the Costco member will then receive confirmation emails from both the Costco Auto program and the dealer explaining the process now you're in the system okay now you're safe anything happens you're in the system and you go back to Costco and say they really took advantage of me

they lied to me man they will cover you they will go to that dealer and they will make him comply or else they'll kick him out of the program and i wouldn't be surprised if they wouldn't take care of the discrepancy if you lost money in the deal you will be protected if you are registered in the program but you've got to go to Costco auto.com and and register The Costco member is then instructed to ask for one of the authorized dealer contacts identified in the confirmation email and present their Costco membership card. In my case, it's a visa card. I have my Costco member as a visa card. So you present that to the car salesperson who is the approved member.

The member must also be shown the special member only price sheet. that shows the exclusive pre-arranged Costco member savings this is a little complicated as I say it you know there's a lot of steps here register you got to go to the website the Costco website and then you have to put your zip code in and then you have to find out the certified approved dealers and then you have to see the certified approved salesperson at the certified approved dealers and then they have to show you the member-only price sheet see it's a lot involved here and I can tell you right now most people don't do this and

And that's why people get taken advantage of. Here's what we've learned so far in our previous shops. Del Rey Honda failed to follow the prescribed rules for the program on both mystery shops. Failed, Berkshire Hathaway Corporation. Delray Honda failed. They winged it when Agent Thunder went in through the proper channels, and they winged it when Agent 26 came in without the proper channels, and they were respectful and professional.

and to Del Rey Honda's credit. They gave our agents pretty good prices, but they played loose with the rules and kept the details of the deals out of sight of the Costco Auto Program. So that's not good. Edmore's Delray Toyota, on the other hand, went by the book when Agent Thunder came in

the previous time we shopped them on Costco. Invested them on April 12th. Our only criticism concerned their large dealer fees. That was at Edmore's Del Rey Toyota, and we put them on the recommended dealer list. So they didn't do exactly right, but we put them on the list. Now, this is the second time we're visiting Del Rey Toyota, and here's the report, speaking in the first person as if I were agent 26. I arrived at Edmorest, Delray, Toyota, 9.16 a.m. parked, entered the showroom. I asked a receptionist per salesperson who was told to the sales staff were in the morning meeting for another 10 minutes.

She asked me if I would like to sit, but I declined, should I walk around, look outside. I wandered with a lot, looked at the vehicles for a while, headed back in at 9.39 a.m. Agent 26 is very precise. She is. I like that. Yeah. The salespeople were still in the meeting, and the receptionist assured me it'd be no longer than five minutes. A minute later, the sales staff entered the shoreroom en masse. Is that right?

Or is it en masse? En masse. On moss. A bunch of salesmen came out the door. The receptionist caught the... attention of a woman who then veered from the pack as a pack of wolves and headed my way she introduced herself as Danny that made me think of Game of Thrones by the way yeah I was picturing the mother of dragons exactly Danny started the conversation and everything yeah Danny started the

conversation with a familiar line brought what brought you in today and I said my car no I just made that up my feet I was very specific a new 2019 Toyota Camry SE and silver. I said, I knew the one I wanted, and I'd even save pictures of it on my phone to put on Instagram. That's kind of, you know, millennial thing. She's a young millennial. A young millennial.

She's almost Gen Z, I think. Danny Green, that I certainly knew what I wanted, a lap. She asked to see the picks I had saved, and I showed her. I saved them off their wood fight earlier. We talked about why I love the silver one so much, and what had led me to consider the Camry, Danny was high energy, and I was at a good. enjoying the conversation. So here we have a female shopper with another female salesperson, and they're hidden

it off. This would never have happened 30 years ago. It wouldn't happen 30, exactly. Dandy led me to a desk where she collected my driver's license and left me to get a key. She returned quickly. We took an elevator to the second floor of a parking garage. We found the car, a new 2019 Camry, S.E., in Celestial Silver, metallic. MSRP was 27-791.

there was an addendum for unlimited nitrophil. I like how they spell nitrophil. They leave one of the Ls off of the word fill. Well, that saves money on ink. $39.99. Now, I was also very happy to see Consumer Reports has attacked nitrogen in cars again. They've done extensive testing,

and they repeated their nitrogen is worth nothing. So here we have Edmore's Delray, Toyota, charging $400 bucks. Can I round that $3.99 up? Yeah, $400 for air. $400 for nitrogen. Unbelievable. And tent for $2.99.

Side note worth about $150. Yeah, half that. Danny opened the doors and asked me to get inside and drove us downstairs. She did a test person who's walk around, asked me to give the driver's seat for a test drive. Things were less fun on the test drive. I was very unfamiliar with the area and was nervous about driving. Danny didn't speak much. And after a few minutes into the test drive, she took a phone call.

I wasn't sure where I was going. And I felt I'm comfortable to run for the phone call to ask for guidance. Danny finished her call and noticed I looked stress. I said I was lost and started to freak out a little bit. She apologized and got me back to dealership. Now, that's just not good salesmanship, but it's irrelevant to our purpose here today. Not smart, not the way you treat a customer. But I think it does describe something that a lot of customers might go through.

you had the dealership and I'm certainly you're part of this town. Exactly. Back of the desk, Danny gathered personal information from me. That's when I told her I was a Costco member and that I understood I was entitled to a special discount. Now, if you just tuned in, and people tune in, tune in, we're in mystery shopping, Ed Morse del Rey Honda. We have a young lady named Agent 26, code name, who is shopping. And we're trying to get a Costco price, but we didn't go by the rules. We went by, oh, by the way, I'm a Costco member, and this is when she sprung it on the salesperson.

So she says, I'm a Costco member, and I'm entitled to a special discount. Danny, the salesperson, said, she's looking at her keyboard. She just kept typing, nodded without looking up, and said, Costco, got it? Okay. She said she'd have to get the Costco deal from our manager and would be back. A few minutes later, Danny returned with a worksheet. It looked like I was getting a $4,470 discount off a sticker MSRP. That was $27.791.

Exact same price as Agent Thunder's Camry, by the way. Yeah, and that exact same price. Well, same vehicle, the same MSRP, yeah. MSRP, yeah. MSRP, yeah. And then she added $593 for the nitrogen and the tires and the tent. Well, and said Costco price. No, they did, and they called it the Kotko price.

Yeah, the Cockcobrised. They misspelled Costco. Okay. But we don't gig them for that. We don't gig them for... Entertainment value. For spelling. We don't gig them for talking on the phone.

Still funny. Dig them on ethics and honesty. I'm sorry. I'm a grammar, not saying. You are. You're very anal. Next game, taxable fees for $291.25. $899 dock fee.

Absolutely outrageous. Sales tax. And $690 in non-3. tax fees 690 and 90s and do you know what a non-tax fee is folks it's a dealer fee it's a hidden fee it's BS non-tax fees so we got here at the latest edition $1,589 but there's more that you'll find out later in the report and added BS I said that the initial price looked good but with all the extra fees added it was pushing the deal out of my range of affordability I said I thought the Costco price was supposed to be ridiculously low, and it is.

Danny said the Costco price took into account the fees. She had that a lot of fees are regulated by the state, and we couldn't do anything about them. Shame on Danny. Danny told a big fat whopper. Unless she's talking about registration. And I'm not talking about hamburgers. She told a lie. She's on a Big Mac.

Exactly. A wop is a put a burger. I go for a wopperking. A burger. dated myself. A water burger is a water burger. I asked if I can get an official buyer's order. Take with me to review it home.

Danny looked perplexed. She queried, you're not taking it today? I imagine the sound like this. Oh? Yeah. You understand, folks, huge amount of pressure put on salespeople to spot to live with a car. If a salesperson sells 15 cars in a month and they spot 14 in the 15, they probably get a bonus.

Yeah. spot the car over the curb make them take it home puppy dog take it home Danny wasn't happy She wasn't happy The first customer of the day She was pumped up after that salesman

She came out and then I said I might buy it this evening But I would need to think of it over And maybe call my dad To discuss Danny wasn't happy She wasn't rude But there was a mark change in her demeanor She got up to go to her manager

For a buyer's order returned a few minutes later The numbers on the buyer's order matched the worksheet but the bottom line was two thousand dollars less at first i thought she reduced the price because i was leaving but then she pointed out a two thousand dollar deposit was printed in error my bottom line was the same 27 342 92 that's interesting and it could well have been an error or it might not have been an error it made it look like it was less yeah so uh where did that 2000 come from the customer yeah yeah yeah But what caused it to be in the computer?

Yeah, to make the price look lower, the jury's out of it. She pointed it out, so. Here's the summary of the law. Well, you missed that part interesting about the other fee. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, right. It's very important. I'm sorry.

There was another, I believe, unheard of fee right below the title and net registration fee of $475 other fees. Other fees. So, Edmore's Delroy, Toyota. Invented a new dealer fee. Yeah. They've really, I mean, what do they got here? I think I itemized them here. I'll jump ahead a little bit.

It was like 18. Yeah, we've got here. Or 1,300. Okay, we got the Nitroint, Costco price. We have the dock fee. We have the, oh, not it. That's not it. I get the last page here.

Oh, yeah. Excuse me here. Silence is deadly on radio. I shouldn't be doing it. Don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, you can vote on this mystery shopping report at 772-497-6530. We are mystery shopping at Morris Delray Toyota, and this is part two of the Costco follow-up. And Earl's going to quote a few numbers to you. Thanks for covering for a year.

I found it. Better in humming. So we have $199.95. sent electronic filing fee we have eighty five dollar attack agency fee we have eight hundred ninety nine dollar doc fee we have two hundred thirteen dollars and ninety cents and other fees and that totals up to be one thousand two hundred ninety seven dollars and eighty five cents now this approaches a new record and lots of fees and they are all BS they are all phony hidden fees to bump the

profit. In this case, $1,297. Let's call it $1,300. So that's what we have here. We've got a, we've got an obvious effort to bypass the program by Costco. I guess I should be back at epilogue here. In contrast to the superb performance in part of part one of this investigation, Edmarshdale-Roy-Torily did poorly when dealing with the Costco member who does not go through the official process. Did Agent 26 get the Costco price? Well, the discounts were similar. Remember, $4,478 for Agent 26 and $4,500, $220 for Agent Thunder.

Nope, Agent Thunder's discount was applies to the invoice, which is the way the Costco program is supposed to go, an invoice price for the Camry. But Agent 26 price discount was applied to the MSRP. And to top it off, she was charged $593 for worthless nitrogen and $150 worth of a window tent, which is half the cost of double the price or what they paid for. 3M pinstriping that you can buy for $20 a roll and places like that charge you $200. Yeah, this is a window tent.

All told Agent Texas Costco price was $2,470,000. $27 higher than Agent Thunders comparing out the door price. So we also found, as I said earlier, a brand new dealer fee called Other Fee. And the rest of them. I want to make a logo for that. No other fees. So four dealer fees, folks, four dealer fees, ranging from $85 for the tag agency fee to $19975 for the electronic. No, the pre-delivery service fee, pre-delivery service fee, they called it something else.

They called it a dock fee before. On the worksheet, they called it a dock fee, and on the buyer's order, they got a pre-delivery service fee. So they don't even know. They had two different names for one fee, whether you're on the worksheet or whether you're on the buyer's order. I know a lot of inconsistencies between the two visits. First one, Agent Thunder, there was no addendum stickers on the car last month, and they were this month. uh there was um on it almost looked like they pre-printed that kutko price on the buyer's order and that wasn't there last time so sounds like a dealership and disarray confusion i would say

and uh that's not the reason we're voting folks we're voting for honesty and ethics and professions and we have to take a vote now yeah we do let's uh let's start with our facebook post votes and see see how that went we have four uh we have three facebook grades that came in and one on text uh on Facebook. Linda gives him a, you guessed it, a big fat F. Leah gives him an F, Ed gives him an F, and then Textin as Amorye. She also gives

Ed Morris Del Rey Toyota a big fat F, and I'm going to concur F. And Rick's got some YouTube's over here. I've got Angel Al Shukri and Ernesto all agree F and I agree F. I don't even have

to ask. There's an angry mob out there. Do you hear that? Angry up. Pitchforks and torches. Do they have torches? And pitchforks. That's all head down the Del Rey. And this is Black Widow.

Yes, I'll refrain. She gives them a G. From any long, you know, detailed answer. And, you know, I could because we talked about this on our way in. Just put this, the icing on the cake for me. So, at any rate, I won't go into all that, but I give me enough. I'm going to fail them, and we're going to put them on the Do Not Recommend list. We'll flip them.

I think that's the shortest tenure of a dealer on the recommended dealership in Earl's store on cars history. It is. Three weeks. Yeah, and one of the reasons is that we really, really love the Costco Auto Buying Program and to bastardize it in this manner. And that's probably not a politically correct word anymore. No, it's okay. But it's just wrong.

And here's the problem, folks. And I talked about this too. as we drove to the radio show this morning. Why do the salespeople do what they do to the Costco program? Why did Danny, and why did Danny's manager, collaborate and conspire to mislead a Costco member into the program? They did it because they're paid on commission. And they knew that Costco would know about it.

Danny either received no commission on a Costco purchase or a very small one, and the manager also does. The big picture is to take the Costco deal. because you need the volume. But the managers don't see that, the salesmen don't see that, they see commission. And when they see Costco customer, they see no commission. And it angers me that Costco doesn't understand that, and they do not police their programs more carefully.

We will send this shopping report to Costco and to the powers that be, the executives, and hope they do something about it. Yeah, well, what makes me happy is when women support women, and, you know, you may not agree with me, but it doesn't matter whether it's in a car dealership or it's at a gas station. Women's supporting women. And when you pick up on a woman's demeanor, I want to tell you what, I think that you would rather hear her verbally share the demeanor. Do we have time for a quickie? Yeah, Susan Mills text me, asked about buying a used car on the Costco auto buying program. We are a Costco member on the new car. We do not participate on the used

car and there's a very good reason for that. I would recommend that you use a Costco use car auto buying program, but shop and compare. The Costco auto buying program for use cars requires a stiff discount of their asking price, but their asking price can be

anything. If they have a very high asking price, they can give a stiff discount and it will not be a good use car price. Very difficult to compare use car prices. Shop and compare even Costco membership prices on used cars, Susan. Thanks for the text. I hope everyone enjoyed the show today and from everyone here from Earl Stewart on Cars we want to thank you we want to

send out a special thanks to Rudy and to Jonathan for helping us out as they do every single week we'll be right back here next week have a wonderful weekend Go! Go! Oh! No. Oh! Oh!

Go! Let go! Let me go.