Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.04.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Off Lease Only

Episode Date: July 4, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Off Lease Only to see if he can purchase a used 2017 Audi A7 at the advertised price on their website. 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”

WIRK-H-D-3 Indian Town, programming paid for by Vic Canales Media Group. The True Oldies Channel 959 and 1069, broadcasting from the Robes Studio. Injured recently, call the Robes Law Group, where winning is a habit. 561-5705700. 561-570-500. Robs, winning for you and our community. The True Oldies Channel for the Palm Beaches and the Treasure Coast. Good morning.

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

He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. We're back, and we're live, and we're in the studio here to talk to you by various means. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. We've got an extremely exciting show. I think talk shows always say they're extremely exciting.

You're not going to say, hey, this is a dull show, but sometimes you really do have an exciting show. We've got an extremely interesting and well, I won't say well known, his company is well-known, a guest calling it at 9 o'clock. His name is Mark Fisher, and he's the founder of a used car company called Off Lease Only. Off Lease Only. They're huge in South Florida. They outsell CarMax and all the big guys. and they started from scratch

and that's a story we'll probably hear from Mark when he calls in but he's an amazing, amazing guy and we have a lot of respect, admiration, you can learn a lot, he'll be calling in at 9 o'clock and the other highlight

before I stop my pontification here I'm going to tell you about our mystery shopping reports. A lot of folks are new, they don't know we do these it's a very, very unusual thing to go live on radio and Facebook and YouTube and Twitter, live and talk about other businesses, car dealerships and independent

garages. We visit them. We pretend to buy or lease a car. We should do more, pretend to service or repair a car because that's a whole different issue there and we don't do enough of it. But we go in and we name names. We report to you the exact results when we visit a car dealership somewhere, usually in South Florida.

further north. But we do it every week. We've been doing this for 17 years. Can you believe that? How many car dealerships have we missed our shop? We've lost count. We go back now and shop them over again. And we get a bad report. We go back and try again. We try to get some good reports. We have two lists. We have a don't buy a car from this dealer list and do buy a car from this dealer list. We grade on the curve because there are no perfect car dealers, including myself. I must say that in full transparency, I do want a car dealership. I've been a car dealer since 1968. I've got one dealership now.

But it's not an infomercial you're listening to, folks, I promise. This is a consumer advocacy show to help you understand better how you can buy in lease a car. It's very treacherous out there, and we're going to try to help you. Your calls are extremely important to us, and that's the reason we ask you to call the number. 960-9960. That's 877-960. And you can text us too. It's 772-497-6530. Again, that text number is 772-4976530. We have something that nobody else has, and that's an anonymous way to call us. You don't call us, you email us. And that email address is, you're anonymous. anonymousfeedback.com. Just the way it sounds, your anonymous feedback.com.

You email us at that, and we get to them mostly. We get a lot more than you would think. A lot of people prefer to remain anonymous, and that's fine with us. I would love to hear from your anonymous feedback.com. Now, in the studio with me, and I'll go from left to right, I have Nancy Stewart, who is my co-host, and next to Nancy is Stu Stewart, my son. Stuart, my son, who's a general manager of our dealership, and to my right is Rick Kearney,

who is a technician, computer auto scientist, who's been with me as a technician for many years over a quarter century, right, Rick? Yes, sir. But let me go to Nancy Stewart first. She's our female advocate. She is a very important part of the show because she single-handedly over the past 17 years has built our female caller list up to close to 50. And she does that by, well, bribery.

I don't know. That's a terrible word. Incentivized. Nancy, tell us what you do and how you do it and all that kind of thing. I would hope it would be encouragement. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. We've got a great show, just like girls said, and I'm going to be real quick. First of all, ladies, your calls are very important, and we would like to offer you

$50 for the first two new lady callers this morning. $50 bucks. And you can give us a call at 877-960-99-60. And for all of you that may be a little shy, you can text us at 772-497-6-530. And I've been, well, reminding our listeners and our callers of your help with what we want achieve. And that's by getting in touch with Attorney General Ashley Moody. We've talked about her for the past, oh, I guess, month by giving out her phone number and you giving her a call and ask her to support us. She has a lot of duties, and that includes providing consumer

protection. So, therefore, her telephone number 850-4-1-1-2-1. 34, 3,300, give her a call, let her know that we really need to, you know, well, get these car dealers in shape and asking them to please do business the right way. It's encouraging that we have a lot of car dealers who do business the right way, and it generates a lot of traffic in their direction, including women. So with that, I'll turn the show back over to Earl Stewart. I totally agree with you on that Ashley Moody thing. Attorney General, and every Attorney General we've had in Florida since I've been on the radio, I think the first one was McCollum, has been deferential to the Florida Automobile Dealers Association, which is a lobbying group, a big lobbying group.

And the car dealers are very, very much against any modification in the way they do business. And Florida, consequently, now is probably the most corrupt state in the union. And by the way, happy independent state, everybody. Most corrupt state in the union when it comes to deceptive and unfair trade practices. So Ashley Moody, come on, do something about it. Sue, Sue Stewart is my son, who is our cyber detective. He's the one that sends the undercover agents out. He's also got a lot of hands-on knowledge about the car business because he's

our business because he's a general manager of our dealership, and the day-to-day, he really, really sees what's going on, and he's more on top of things, and I see things more strategically. Stu sees things more topically and daily, and as I say, the mystery shopping report is the highlight of our show. Stu? Well, today is an exciting day, not just because it's the birthday of our country, but it's also because I think this is the first time that we've known for sure that. and then an owner of a car dealership is listening to a mystery shopping report when we've shopped their dealership.

We always hope that was happening, and we've always, like, week after week, Earl's begging, imploring car dealers out there to call in and have a conversation with them or maybe debate them. We're going to have a conversation today with a part owner of Offleas Only. So it was originally the founder and then sold out 80% and kids. Yeah, 20%, yes. Yeah, and so it was kind of exciting, and I'll admit I was really nervous because we never know how these shopping reports are going to turn out. And so as I was waiting for Agent Thunder to submit his findings, I was sweating a little bit thinking, is this going to be an awkward, uncomfortable conversation?

And I'm not going to give anything away, so you got to stay tuned until about 9.30 when we read the shopping report to you. But let's just say it was different. so that's about it we got some texts already coming in we have some anonymous feedback coming in so I look forward to get to that yeah absolutely

and Rick Kearney what can I say about Rick the guy is he ought to have his own show there's so much out there people like to talk about selling cars and leasing cars that's the glory of the car dealerships the new car department

and the service department they call it the back end that's the vernacular and you say how's business he'll tell you how many new cars he sold and then if you really want to get into the detail you say how's the back end doing

and that's where Rick is not very flattering is it Rick the fact of the matter is though he prefers fixed ops well we get used to being the butt of the joke sometimes yeah yeah very good

but the point is that's where the money's made that's where dealerships can stay afloat that's very good the butt of the joke And therefore, it's another advantage, another reason we have, Rick, is you get taken advantage of the service department far more often than you do in the front end. So, Rick, tell us a little bit about your qualifications. Well, I've always heard it said that the sales department sells you your first car. The service department sells you all the rest of them.

And that's very true. Depending on how you get treated, when you're bringing that car back in for service. Exactly. If you've got an honest service department that's really treating the people properly and you get loyal customers coming in for service, when that car finally reaches an age that they feel, okay, I want the next new model, I want the one with all the new toys, or it's time for me to pass this car to my kid and get a new one for myself.

They're going to go right back into the sales department to buy a new car. Versus if you have a shop that's constantly just beating them up, feels like they're robbing them all the time. They seem tricky. They seem like they're messing with the customer. They're going to say, yeah, okay, when it's time for another one, I'm going over to the dealer down the road. Statistically, and try something else.

They've measured this exact thing that Rick's talking about. And when a person buys a car from dealer A and he is pleased with the service department, if he returns for service, he's 50% more likely to buy another new car or use car. So the service departments are not only important because of the profit center of selling service, but for the fact that you're 50% more likely to come back to a dealer that treats your right in the service department. And you build a relationship with that customer.

It's not just somebody stopping in because they like your store every six months. No. They feel like they can trust you to take care of that car. I mean, face it, folks, when you're driving your car, you're in charge of a 4,000-pound barely good. guided missile, the screaming down the road on four little tiny rubber patches. That's the only contact you have with the road is about four square feet of contact space. You're scaring me. I'll never drive again. I mean, you need to make sure that you have a mechanic and a shop that you can trust so that you know your car is in proper condition to keep you safe. So if you have

some questions about your car during this pandemic that were on, people don't like to drive around and take cars in. I don't even like to go to a doctor for a check-up. I'm not going to go to a doctor, and I'm going to stay away from a hospital. I'm probably going to stay away from a car dealer unless I have to go in. So if you've got a problem with your car,

squeak, a rattle, an odor, some sort of a symptom of your car that you're worried about, but you're saying, I don't want to take it in, but I don't want to get stuck on the turnpiker I-95 either. Call the show, describe the symptom that you're going to,

car is having and Rick might very well diagnose it. It might be something that you don't have to worry about. Might be something that you should have taken care of. So we've got two hours. You can call Rick at 877-960-99-60. That's 877-960. Or text Rick at 772-497-6530. That text is 772-4976530 and he bats about 990. He can answer answer almost any question about a car. If he can't, Colonel Google, we will Google it for you. Absolutely. We'll have an answer

for you. 877-960 960. Let's start. If we don't have any call, there's let's start with text. I got a good one, and I have a visual aid. I send it to your phone so you can show the camera. Gary in Lake Park

sent us, last week we were talking about start-stop technology, which is a feature on a lot of modern cars now that stops the engine when you stop the car to stoplight while you're still on drive. So it does run the engine, you don't use gas, and then as soon as you lift your foot off the brake pedal,

it starts the engine again. I'm holding up the picture you sent me. Yeah, so most, the consensus seems to be, it's really annoying, and not people, not a lot of people like it, even though it does save you a couple miles per gallon. Gary and Lake Park Center's a device here, and it's called Autostop by TRL,

it's a device, and I'm not advocating for it, because I don't know if it could destroy your car. I'll let Rick weigh in on this. It's called Autostop by TRL. You plug it into your OBD. What is that, the Dataport? Yes. Okay.

The Dataport, and it stops your vehicle from shutting off at stop signs. So before you go out and buy one and do it, we don't know if it hurts your car, but we'll look into it and get back to it next week, but that sounds like a potentially promising solution to an annoying feature that is not necessarily welcome. We pointed out last week that you can disable the start stop while you're driving the car, and as long as your car, your ignition is running, it will stay off until you turn off the car yourself and restart it,

and then you'll have to remember to turn it off again. And I said last week, I said it again this week, a terrible idea for the designers and manufacturers that are pushing this. It's just something that the American buyer doesn't want to fool with. Yeah. I mean, if it was something that was imperceptible, I think the American consumer is all for saving gas and being more environmentally friendly,

but something that, you know, so it really is a noticeable thing that, that affects the, you know, the driving experience. You know, if something was, it was quiet and you didn't know about it, it wouldn't be a big deal, but this is obvious. You feel your car shutter. You can't go silent. The air conditioner gets a little bit warmer.

And, yeah, so that's not a good thing. Talk about technology. And that is auto stop. Auto stop. By TRL. Just kidding. Plug it into your port, data port. And there you have it.

We're going to go to Tom, who is calling. from Jupiter. Good morning, Tom. Hey, how you doing, everybody? Great show. I love this show. Just a couple, wait now, let me turn, where I don't get blasted in here.

Just a couple of things. One of you just mentioned as far as this auto turn off. It reminded me of I had a 1974 Triumph Spitfire, and they had started doing this thing that you had to have your seatbelt buffled in order to start the car. Uh-huh. Well, I had the car

stall in the middle of a U-turn and scared of crap because I had to unbuckle the seatbelt and re-buckle the seatbelt in the order to start the car. And that feature only lasted a year or so. I thought it was extremely dangerous. The other thing you guys touched on a couple of weeks ago, just very likely that you said you might do a whole show on sometime. And that is, I've got some friends that insist on buying all

American, everything, all-American, everything. And they're on a Ford edge. I hate to tell him that I looked up, and 90% of it is made in Mexico, probably with Chinese parts there, and he thinks he's buying American. That's true. That's true. But I bet it's not more than 3% to 5% of the total revenue from the sale. goes back to Detroit, probably.

Yeah, if you want to do that, if you want to do that, you can't find out the cars with the most American content and the cars that are built in America and so on and so forth. But you're never going to find a car that's 100% American back in the day. That was possible, but all vehicles now manufactured, they're all over the world. Unfortunately, the parts suppliers are all over the world, too, which can create some problems. Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he's got himself fooled anyway, you know. But at least he thinks he's buying All-American.

Yeah. And I just think it's kind of funny, and you just touched lightly a couple of weeks ago, and he said maybe you'd do a show sometime. But anyway, you guys do a great job. I enjoy listening to you when I'm in the car. Well, Tom, thanks for the call. Thank you very much. Call again, please.

Sure. All right. Bye-bye. Have a great weekend. Happy 4th of July. Our phone number here to get in touch is 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-4976530. And I have a text from Joseph, and he is relocating to Florida.

And he asks me, he says he drives a convertible, and he wants to know if it would be, he wants to sell his convertible before he relocates to Florida and he wants to know what would be a better idea to sell it in Pittsburgh or to do it after he gets to Florida. Well, Joseph, I'll turn this over to the guys in a second but I'll give you my opinion.

Coming to Florida, I think that you're going to probably get a better price for your convertible because there's always someone looking for a convertible. convertible in the sunny state of Florida, so you might just get a better price for it. And it's always a good idea to go to three different dealerships, and you'll find that you'll get three different prices. So, guys, what do you have to say?

I think you answer the question perfectly. I would also say that you could probably save a trip first before you do it. Put it online. There's people willing, like Nancy said, we get questions all the time requests for convertibles. occasionally we get lamb-baseded by people who are upset that Toyota doesn't have any plans for a new convertible because they had canceled the Salara years ago so people are dying for one and if you put it online I bet you get calls from all over the country. Yeah, it's not like it used to be where, you know, the Celica convertible, you know, it was easy to get

or the Salara. They're few and far between. What I would recommend when you come to Florida and you sell the car, which we should wait, as Nancy said, the market demand for convertibles much higher in Florida than Pittsburgh. And the other thing I would recommend, instead of putting it online or trying to retail the car yourself, I try to just wholesale it. You want to sell it Carvana, you got any car, buy any car.com, you've got Vroom now, it's another one, CarMax, Auto Nation, because retail in the world, they buy a lot of used cars directly from people

that are just trying to sell their cars. most car dealers right now love to buy cars use cars are in short supply and convertibles especially in Florida so get a wholesale price that way you don't have to screw around with people that don't have enough money they want you to finance it for them or there might even be a you know a con man out there trying to take advantage so wholesale carvana we buy any car.com car max it's the best world now to be able to sell a used car and make a profit Yeah. Do you think that I would have got more money for my barracuda if I would have brought it down to Florida? Let's go back to Stu. That's a ha-ha.

Earl Stewart doesn't like talking about my barracuda, so I'm constantly harassing him about it. Now we'll go back to Stu. Okay, the text here says, I would love to hear all about Nancy's barracuda. I'm just kidding. Hey, I did want to follow up on Tom's about the most American. American car. It used to be the Toyota Camry, but did you know, and by the way, Colonel Google told me this. I didn't know this off the top of my head. It's currently the Jeep Cherokee right now, which is, seems more intuitive a Jeep, however, it's owned by an Italian

company, right, if I, Fiat Chrysler. So let's see, we have one here. It says, once a consumer purchases a car through the auto broker, who gets a copy of the contract to the purchase? Does the auto broker get a copy of the consumer's contract of the vehicle, or the dealership that the broker represents gets the copy of the contract. I'm curious because I recently just watched your video on YouTube about auto brokers, and he's talking about the bill of sale. Well, the auto broker might see the bill of sale, the purchase order and the paperwork, and he might make copies of it, but no, that is your deal is with the dealership.

An auto broker is not licensed to sell cars. an auto broker is a car salesman, and he calls himself an auto broker, but the car dealership in the state of the state, you have to be licensed by the department motor vehicles as a dealer before you can sell a car. Even a manufacturer cannot sell you a car. There's one exception. That's Tesla. That's right.

He's just the middleman putting you together with a dealer, and the dealer will pay him a fee, a pretty big fee sometimes. It might be thousands, thousands of dollars depending on the profit. that the dealer makes on the deal. We have a text from Brian from the West Coast of California. He's got a question for Rick today. He has a second car,

Ford Fiesta ST, that only gets about 5,000 miles put on it every year. A few months ago, I brought the car in for its first oil change. The dealership put the standard service sticker on the windshield to say, come back in six months for your next oil change.

Being that, I don't drive the car this much, do you think on this car I can get away with getting the oil change once a year by the dealer. Thanks as always and looking forward to the show. Stay safe and be well. Well, my first question would be, is it a synthetic oil car that, according to the factory maintenance plan, is the oil change itself required every six months or just every year?

Because I know with Toyota, an oil change is once a year or every 10,000 miles. So I would check the factory owner's manual first, and question, maybe they put a sticker up there saying, okay, your reminder is because you need a tire rotation at every six months. I got a question. We've always said, and it makes sense to me, that even if you're not driving, when an engine sits idle for a long time or it doesn't get used that much, there is still an effect on the oil, so it's important to still clear it out. Is that the same case with synthetic versus conventional oil? It is, but at a slower rate.

They still recommend once a year on synthetic. Okay, great. Here's a text says, If I get into an accident and have my car repaired by professionals, why would a dealer give me less money on my trade if the repairs are perfect, and you can't tell there was ever any damage? Well, that's a very interesting question, and I'm jumping in here because I talked to Mark Fisher,

the founder of All-Lease Only. We talked about that very thing. When a car is damaged, it can have technically structural damage, and it might even say that on a CarMax report, but the car might be fine, perfectly safe. If a car is repaired to perfection, and there's no safety issue, in many cases there's not, some cases there are. You have to have an expert to determine that. A CarMax report, Carfax Report, Carfax Report, will only tell you, they'll say substantial damage or, The airbag went off, and it could be structural, but it could be a perfectly safe car. The reason you should be concerned about a car that's been in an accident, other than the safety factor,

is if a car's been in any accident, it diminishes in value, and that's because put yourself in the position you're buying a car. And the car on your left, it's a Honda Civic in 2008. The car on the right is a Honda Civic, 2008. They're identical. The car on the left has had $2,000 worth of damage. But it's repaired to perfection. You can't even see it. The car to the right looks perfect too, and it is perfect, because there's been no damage.

Which one would you prefer? You would prefer the one that's never been in the accident. Even though there's no logical reason for it, you feel better about not wanting to buy damage merchandise. So by diminishing the value of the car, it should be disclosed to the customer because it's something that you have to take in consideration when you resell it or trade it in. Rick. It's kind of like when you're in Publix, two cans of soup on the shelf, one's got a little

tiny dent in the side, the average person grabs the one that's not dented. It's just that perception thing. You took the humorous analogy away from me, so I won't use mine. Sorry, Stu. That's okay. Another point that you made also is in the environment of an auto auction, a lot of decisions are made quickly, and if a vehicle, and the dealers walk around, the wholesalers walk around with these meters and give you the paint, the thickness of the paint, they're going to bid less

on a car with that, so the dealer's appraising the car is probably thinking he's going to get less money if he has to sell at the auction, too. So the whole thing just drives down the value. All right, we have a text from Rick in New Jersey, and it's for Rick. It says, hi, Rick. I'm considering the purchase of a car-specific 3M clear film to apply to my car's rocker panels to protect against debris. What's your thoughts on this?

Well, hello, Rick. I've seen a lot of cars with that clear film added on and usually they put it on the hood for prevention of rock chips the only drawback is that after a while it does start to look a little questionable from where on it the sun and that and the edges of it become more visible as dirt and buildup collect on it but I think they're a great idea especially down on the rocker panels where it can help protect better

and it's a little less visible. The reason I don't like them is because when you look at them, sometimes it looks like a scratch on your car. Yeah, oh, they look terrible. It depends on how the sun hits the car. I can't tell you how many times I've driven a car with one of those, usually in the front for the ones I've been driving. And I'll say, who scratched my car?

Oh, that's not a scratch. No, there was a time we were walking out to go to your car. You had a black car at the time. It looked like somebody had keyed a straight line right across your hood. And we were impressed with how straight the keying was. and then we realized it was just the edge of the film. And you do have to plan every couple of years to replace it. Otherwise, it's going to look horrible.

I don't like them. Take away from it. Now, let's switch over to anonymous feedback. This came in after the show last week, last Saturday. It says, Dear Earl, I was surprised to hear you talk about quality rating for Kia by J.D. Powers. It's long been known that J.D. Powers is bought and paid for, and their reviews are more advertising than actual unbiased reviews. This is self-evident by their outstanding reviews of a Dodge Chrysler vehicles.

Well, let me say first I do agree that J.D. Power is nowhere nearly as accurate as consumer reports. J.D. Power does something that I don't like. They allow the manufacturers whose cars they measure in quality on advertise the fact that J.D. Power measured them. So how can you be totally objective? Consumer reports will not allow anybody. You can give a car dealership, I mean, let me, car, you can give a manufacturer or a particular model car, a very high consumer report rating is prohibited for that manufacturer or the dealer or anybody to advertise the fact that consumer reports gave them a good report. So that is pristine objectiveness.

With J.D. Power, you've got to wonder if you give the General Motors really, really high ratings on their cars, does that mean General Motors is going to be saying that and they're advertising and are, is that another reason why you should have that objectivity? You don't have the objectivity with that. Now, the other thing about the J.D. Power Survey that they're referring to is that is only the number of times that the new car buyer in the first 90 days has had problems. Some new cars, you'll have six problems in the first 90 days. Some cars you'll have 100 problems in the first 90 days.

a lot of times those problems are just small problems and they get fixed and there's nothing to worry about. The true test of a good car is after consumer reports checks it and it's been out there for two or three years, that really tells you the quality of a car. I agree, consumer reports definitely trumps J.D. Power. But J.D. Power is something to be considered and you should look at it as well as consumer reports.

Next. Okay. It looks like Nancy has that. I am going to go to Roadrunner, Steve, in Boynton Beach. Good morning. Let's hear about that, Cooter. Okay, I got two things for you here. At one time you were talking about Nissan dealership

was selling all those cars from Hertz. Yes. Okay. Well, I got a text from that Green Acres, Nissan, about that, and there was a $999 deal this fee. Yeah, that's a greener. Green Acres, Nissan, I believe, and yeah, it's a Terry Taylor dealership, a total deception. The advertisement they ran actually used the Hertz logo, yellow and black colors, and Hertz never sold them a car.

None of those cars they had were cars that Hertz was disposing of, and they were misinforming the public. It was totally deceptive. And once again, where is the Attorney General when things like that happened? They're still going on the ad Full page ad The Palm Beach Post As well as other advertisements, I'm sure Okay, my other

question is I own a Nissan pickup truck And I went to the Boyton Beach Mall I wanted to get a custom plate For it Okay So before I went there I looked at the front of my truck

I noticed on new vehicles There's no place to put a front plate unless you drill Through the bumpers What's to store me with that? I think it has to do with a state that they sell them in. Some states require that you have a front license plate. Florida does not.

And my guess is that go ahead, Sue. They do have, there's little dimples in the front bumper that are covered by paint and they're little soft spots to make it easier to screw. They're designed for the screws. And they'll even come in a lot of times in the trunk. There'll be like a bracket that used to screw on there. but yeah you literally have to drill

through the plastic of the bumper to get the plate on I would never understand why they do that yeah weird okay my third question is what kind of motor did you have in that cuda

Earl just put his hand over Nancy's mouth I give up go ahead then talk about your barracuda what kind of a motor did you ask what kind of a motor

did you have in your barracuda How old did you have? Oh, gosh. I'm going to say, you've got to remember now. I'm pretty elderly, so that was quite some time ago. I'm going to say that it was a six-cylinder. Oh, the slant six. Mm-hmm.

That was the best motor Chrysler ever came out with. I had one of them in my 69 barracuda. I drove it for three miles with no oil in it until I got the oil fixed, and the motor still ran tops. Oh, Mr. Roadrunner, I love you. I can't get early interested in participating in a conversation with me about my beautiful blue barracuda. It was hot.

That's what color mine was. It was sky blue with a white vinyl top. I'll tell you what. A 1969. What year was yours? Mine was a 68, I believe. I'm not sure. Okay.

A same button, you had the coop or the fastback? Fastback. Well, that the two of you form a barracuda club. On Facebook, you do a group. On Facebook, you do a group on the barracuda club. Google it. Maybe there is a barracuda club. You see what I mean?

Everybody have a safe fourth of July. The same to you. God bless America. Thank you. God bless America. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, your anonymous Feedback.com. We'd love to hear from you.

And give us a call at 877-960-99. And ladies, I'm sure that you know by now that you buy half of all callers sold in the United States. And this purchase is just about as important, if not more, as buying a home. So please, give us a call this morning. I have $50 for the first two. New Lady Callers, 877-960. Now back to Stu. That's kind of you two of these are dying to talk about.

Well, I got one who came in, I love the idea of this. Guy Larrabies asking, he says, dash cams are becoming very popular and are quite useful in case of accidents. Are there any plans by Toyota, or pretty much anyone else, to offer these as optional equipment on the new cars? I have not heard of any plans, but I've been thinking that myself ever since I put that al-dash cam in my car. cameras are common rear backup cams there's cameras that should give you a bird's eye view of your whole car

why can't they just aim on that's a great idea let's go to Toyota and talk about pushing to do it the public awareness and it's a safety device because if you have a live camera showing the inside and exterior of your car 24-7 when you drive that car it makes you a lot safer people see that it's just like a burglar alarm sign on a car If I'm a bad guy and I'm going to go do something bad, I'm going to find one without a webcam on the dash. Great idea, Guy. Thank you. Okay. We have Jay on Facebook says, hello, I've had to replace my battery twice in the last three months. How often should we start the car and how long should we drive to charge the battery?

That's a Rick question. At least once a week, if you can. Once every two weeks will work as well. but then you're going to want to take the car out for at least a 20 or 30 mile drive to give it a chance to charge that battery back up. 20 or 30 miles? I would say yes. Man, if your car is sitting all the time.

Ain't going to happen.com. You're not driving your car, and every two or three weeks, you're going to go on a 30-mile drive to keep your battery. Ain't going to happen.com. Well, my suggestion is take a cruise out to Indian Town to the Seminole Country Inn and have a nice breakfast. You know, I'm not driving my Avalon. that often. And that happened the other day. And I was gone for a while. Earl called me on my

cell phone. He's, where are you? I said, I got to drive 20, 30, 40, 50 miles from the house just to get this car, you know, going. Okay, let's move along. You recall that? I do recall on Facebook. I'm going to get you to giggle. He's like, he is giggling. I'm giggling. I can't see it. I got the mask on the mess. He's smiling. He's got a big toothy grin right now. www. Inc.andahappan.com. Steve on Facebook has a great question. It says, if Florida dealers are as bad as you describe, should Snowbirds shop up north? And I've thought about that a lot, because I do know that in New York, and snowbirds come from all sorts of states up north, not just New York.

New York caps their dealer fee, I think it's $75, like California does. I don't know their position on dealer installed equipment, and I don't know how aggressive or dishonest the dealers are up there. But at least the dealer fee things covered. Jersey has no cap on their dealer fee, but the average dealer fee in the entire state is about $300. So it's a little less aggressive. Well, you can be taken advantage of in any state, and if you have an unethical dealer, they're going to take advantage of your car dealers. By the nature of the beast, car dealers try to sell the car for as much profit as they can.

And you go to any car dealership in the country, even the reputable ones, you'll find that all the cars, in most cases, I mean, there are one. one-tenth of one percent of the car dealers that will really sell cars at their lowest price. The guest speaker, or the guest caller that we're going to have for off-lease only, Mark Fisher, off-lease only, has the one price, their lowest price on the car. But most all car dealers, use car, new car, will show it as much as they can get away with. So if you live in New Jersey and you go in there and say, how much is that car, and you buy it when they give you a price, you pay too much.

If you come to Florida, you'll pay even more. But you've got to be careful wherever you are. I wouldn't come to Florida to buy a car. I would find the most honest car dealer I could find in the area that I lived in to answer your question and buy it there. Come down here, it's a while, while west. It seems to be like more of a tradition with a whole lot of logic. We sell cars to a lot of snowbirds, and we welcome your business. But it becomes a ritual every year you come down around November or December, you visit the car dealership,

stay here until about April or so and you go back up and it's just a tradition but um like Earl just said you might be better served and this is running counter to our interest to do it up there if you can find an honest deal or buy it yeah um go ahead okay this is from janet and she wants to know what um car dealers don't charge a dealer fee here in florida i honestly uh i think we had one one time easy own in north pond beach is a small use car a lot And Mullinax Ford and Apopka did not charge any dealer fees and no commercial here, but Earl Strait Toyota has zero dealer fees. Yeah, I hate to say it because it's self-credit, you know, what am I trying to say? What's the word?

Self-promising. But we are the only dealer that, the only large dealer I know that doesn't charge a dealer fee. But there are a few others, Molanex and Apocca is one. Okay. Anonymous feedback here. There's a few critical of Earl. Dear Earl, please take some advice from No Doubt and Don't Speak, referencing a hit song from the 90s by the band No Doubt. They like that comment so much. They said it in twice. Yeah. I saw that. I thought there was a subtle message there, and I actually went, because I've never heard of the group. I Google the group. And then I actually got the lyrics for the words. And the lyrics for the words were that this was someone who loved me a lot. Yes, it was a love song.

It was a love song. And I had spurned that person. And I said, who do I have out there that I've spurned that's in love with me? And I said, that that can't be it. I think it was just telling me I got a big mouth and just shut up. Exactly. That's what it was. I doubt the commentary even heard the song themselves.

There's another one here. No More Earl Stewart. Okay. By the way, it's kind of cool when we get those because we know that we're ruffling feathers. You know, if we're rough on feathers, that means the word's getting out. And when you want to attack me or whoever you're attacking, send the anonymous feedbacks further spaced apart because I see that usually my insults come in pairs or triples. And I think the one that you're referring to came like really early in the morning. and it was like 2.37 a.m.

Another one at 2.47 a.m. I look at that every now and then to see. Yeah. Well, that also gives you a clue on maybe where in the country they're coming from. That's true, too. You have to be a time change thing. Or, you know, somebody with severe insomnia. Then there were several anonymous submissions that came in, and I'm not going to get into too much, but we are international,

and they're from Canada, and they're asking people to check out the CBC marketplace, and that's the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and it's basically they do a lot of consumer investigations so Google it on their YouTube channel they did a mystery shop of a I saw that. I watched a part of it and it's excellent

and I was going to ask if we could possibly maybe post that so people could access it it's a long YouTube about getting ripped off in service departments and I was talking to Rick about it before the show started

but in Canada apparently you can record people and video people and talk about people and they went into several Honda dealerships and after they had their 2008 Honda Civic inspect very carefully and found out it was perfect and they would take it into different Honda dealerships in Toronto and Ottawa and they were getting recommendations of $2,700 and $600 and $1,000. There was one that... A perfect car.

One was, I think, saying they need to replace the spark plugs, spark plugs and they explain to the mystery shopper that the spark clubs were the brain of your vehicle and that got a lot of laughs. Rick's over there laughing. Spark clothes are not the brain. That would be the ECU, right? It made me think we should be doing this, and I talk to Rick, and I think we'll get our video guy and Rick, and we will do some shopping like we've been promising to do for years. We've got to get out there and do, and we have to comply with the laws where we don't record people or video people. I got a question. Do you think a dash cam? So I know in Florida, the privacy losses, if there's an expectation of privacy, you can't record somebody.

But in public, in a restaurant, Starbucks, you can be recorded because you're in public. I wonder in a service drive with a dash cam, is that considered an expectation of privacy? I think it would be considered if you were using it for purposes we're discussing. If someone were accidentally recorded by your dash cam, I think you're good to go. But if you point the dash cam at them, then it's... It's how you use it, yeah. Do we have any calls right now? No.

Okay, so we have anonymous feedback. Great question. We've talked about this before. Why can't the auto manufacturers sell online like Tesla does? Does Tesla have a special deal? State laws. Every state in the union, all 50 states, have very restrictive laws about who can sell cars. So basically, the car dealers through their lobbying power, the National Association,

and their state association, they bribe attorney generals, they bribe legislators, they offer some some money to get them elected, and they have them in their pocket. And therefore, if you're a car dealer, you have an exclusive right to sell that car. Nobody else can sell a car unless you're a licensed car dealer. Even the manufacturers, with the only exception, is Tesla, and they do that by selling their cars online. Some of the state laws are a little bit more rigid than others, but in general, only people can sell cars are car dealers that are licensed, and we have got that ability, and we can get away with murder. And the large manufacturers, like Toilet or Ford, they won't sell online because of the agreement with their dealers, so they can't compete against their own dealers. You can't buy, the only product that I know that you can only buy from a dealer, you can buy an Apple watch from an Apple store,

or directly from the manufacturer, they own the store, you can buy any product on Amazon in the world except an automobile. Refrigerators? I'm guessing. I don't know. I don't know. I've never bought a refringe from Samsung. Yeah, you can buy anything except an automobile, and that's because of the state franchise laws.

Okay. Oh, boy. Okay, this wouldn't be a good one. Maybe Mark, when he calls in, can address this. And that'll be in about 13 minutes. Okay. So this came in on anonymous fees. feedback says your mystery report today is on the worst of the worst.

They claim to sell cars cheaper than anyone else. But the truth is you will spend more on the car. You buy from them in the long run after all the problems you will incur because the poor quality caused by the accidents. You will also get ripped off by their finance department. They are aggressive and sneaky. Stay away. Well, I can answer that almost for Mark.

And I'm sure he will agree with this. Mark is like the Sam Walden. uh... walmart sam walden of the used car business he came up he came up with the idea that if i have large volume and low prices uh... and i treat

the the people correctly then i will prosper and he did so as he's an amazing guy what what he does buy cars that have been an accident and as long as the car is safe they sell it anyway uh... he's right to the extent that the texture and honest feedback is correct If you're not careful, if you buy a car from any car dealership, including off-lease only,

you should have it checked out by your mechanic. Off-lease-only will not deliberately, in my opinion, and we shopped them many times, and we've had them on the recommended list for a long, long time. If you're going to buy a car, you need to have it checked out. They do buy better cars and worse cars, but not unsafe cars to their knowledge. As far as the F&I Department goes, this holds true. the finance department for every car dealership you go into you should shop and compare the interest rate you should look at the terms you should be sure that you get your best rate in terms from

your bank or credit union if you go into a car's F&I department whether it's off lease only or any other car dealership you're not doing yourself justice okay another anonymous feedback why is earl sitting in the middle of a desolate desert highway I don't know. We've got to ask Jonathan that. You know, I got an idea. We could take suggestions from listeners on what should go on the green screen behind you. It could be anything.

How about a sunrise? Oh, it's got to be contrast with the blue shirt. Can we do anything patriotic today? Can you slip in like fireworks going off behind them? Too late for that today? Maybe we can use a Zoom background, one of the Zoom backgrounds. I'm saying you can come up with anything. Yeah, silent fireworks.

That'd be a great idea. We're going to go to Tampa where Sydney's been holding. Good morning. Welcome to the show. Morning. I'm doing this morning. Good. Great.

I have a question for it. I know I called about this problem before. About my car is drinking oil. So he told me there's something in the engine that needs to be replaced the seal, I believe. Burke? What type of car is it? It's a Toyota Highlander, 2013

4-cylinder Probably the piston rings or the valve guide seals If it's using a lot of oil You need to We'd have to diagnose the car to find out What's letting the oil get burned It would be looking at an engine overhaul

Wow Because it doesn't have any oil leak No oil leak, nothing It just bone in oil Okay I would like I can address that. I would say this, because we talked about an engine overall. Based on the year-make model of your car, a mileage condition,

you need to evaluate what your value of your car were today were you to trade it in or sell it. And if the cost of the engine overall, which Rick has going to tell us, what's the range of the cost? On a four-cylinder engine for the Highlander, I'm going to say to put rings, bearings, and all the seals, probably going to run about $1,500 to $1,500. What your car is it that you're driving now with a problem?

Hello? Hello, me? Yeah, I was asking, what, what, 2013? In 2000? 2013. Yeah. I have 146,000 mileage on it. Yeah.

Well, I think it's probably worth returning. You're talking about $1,000 maybe. I would consider that a worthwhile investment in that car. Have it checked out by at least two service departments. Take it to your dealer that make car and have a check out and then go to an independent. to an independent or another dealer of that make car. When you're talking about an expensive repair, you should always get three bids before and three diagnoses.

You might find out one dealer says it's one problem and the other service department says there's another problem. But if you're going to spend $1,000, get at least three bids. Because I bought it brand new. So I'm not changing it. I prefer to fix it. I buy it brand new with 22 mileage. I love that car.

So I'm not changing it. Well, get to check out, and call us back, let us know what the three different service departments you spoke to, what they recommended and what the estimates were. It's always interesting to see the difference in cost. Usually on a thousand dollar repair, you'll see a thousand dollar range and cost between the different, and you'll want to go with a quality repair shop who also has a competitive price. and also I have another question every time I turn my AC on there's a noise and I work in a

technical school I have them check it out they say is the AC compressor that's going bad they said because it's going bad when you leave the AC on you turn the car off and on it messed up the

the compressor I don't know if it's true or not. No, no, you can leave the AC turned on all the time, and starting and shutting off the engine, that'll never hurt the air conditioning. It's they're designed that when you start the engine, the AC stays off for a moment or two until the engine gets running, and then it will fire up the AC.

So, no, that couldn't cause any of that. Where are you hearing the noise? Is it under the hood or inside the car? Under the hood. And when you stand next to it, too, you can hear it. Yeah. And, well, air compressors, you know, the AC compressor, it's a moving part, and they do eventually wear out. So, 148,000 miles, yeah, it's probably about time for a new one.

And you can give that part of the estimate with the three different quotes you get from three different service departments. Yeah. And also, do they clean the S.C. filter in the car? Well, you should replace it about every 30,000 miles, the one that's in behind the glove compartment. Okay. I mean, you can pull it out and shake out any leaves or anything that's in there, but when it starts getting a lot of dirt in it, it's better to replace it. Okay. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Well, thank you. Have you very much and let us know how the bids from the different. different service departments were calls next week please were you wondering what I was laughing about thank you that's that's the noise I make when I snore at night oh well it's very ladylike okay now let me just say this we've got Mark Fisher calling in at nine o'clock that's five minutes from now and you want to stay tuned for that that's the founder of all please only it's going to be quite an interesting discussion yeah definitely an interesting discussion don't forget

ladies and gentlemen W W WW your anonymous Feedback.com. We'd love to hear from you. And give us a call at 877960-9960. And don't forget we requested earlier in the show that you get in touch with the Attorney General. And it's easy to do so. 850-414-3300. We can't do this alone. Let's take care of all the fraud and the deception that's been going on for a long time. Now back to Stu. Anonymous feedback. At first I thought this was a simple. question, but I think it's really good. Is there a solid method to email a dealer to purchase a car? And first I thought, my first reaction, no offense, was, well, duh, you just email them. But I realized it's not that easy to find a workable email address for a car dealer.

Now, you can go to their website and you could submit a form, like a lead forum, request for a quote form, but some of them will have info. You don't know where those emails are going. So that's a great question. I would probably try to find. And they're an internet manager if they list the email addresses. I mean, you might be forced to just have to fill out a form and give up a lot of information. But the textor, the anonymous question, is if you send out, you could send 100 emails to 200 emails to every dealer asking them for their best price and sort through it. And the ones that will give you an out-the-door price are the ones that you'll communicate with and see if you can get the best deal. But I realize it's a great question because, and I don't have a great answer.

Do you have any thoughts on that, how to find a working, good email address? Well, I think every dealership has an email address. It might not be, as you say, it might be. But when you pick a car out on their website, during the process of getting a price, there will be an email address. It might not be a personally email address to an individual, but it will go into the system. Yeah. Well, usually it's a forum, and it'll ask for other information that you might not want to give up, like, a phone number.

And you're phoning it up. We always advise that use a different email address. If you're, you can get a Yahoo, you can get a Google, you can get a Microsoft, they're a different Yahoo. You can get a free email address. Use that. Don't use your regular email address. And when they ask for the number, make up a phone number. You have somebody you don't like very much, give them their phone number, and they'll get all the calls from the car salesman.

And then use fictitious address. So all you want to do is have an email. a free mail dress, that when they respond, they'll respond to you. And that's the way you shop. Okay. Nigel and Sebring says, great show. He'd love to buy his wife a convertible. Are they like the old days when the roof leaks?

I don't know. Rick, do you know? Well, it's kind of hard to cut the roof off a car and not have it leak. Most convertibles, when they design them, they take a standard coupe, and they redesign it by removing the roof. So what you wind up with is a unibody car that no longer has all of its support and has a canvas roof added on. And they rattle more, too. They do.

Now, if you get a car that's designed to be a convertible with a hard type convertible, now you've got a different animal. Yeah, those are a few and more expensive animals. It's the same with a sunroof, just like, you know, changing a convertible. When you start changing the dynamics of something and the originality of it, you are going to have problems. I got a perfect text just before Mark calls in. It's from Jonathan Wellington. Let's hear the barracuda story. We told the barracuda story.

I had some posters made up of my barracuda, and I'm going to start sending them out to a lot of people. Okay. A terrific thing, this is from Bob. It says, a terrific thing you starts are doing. Can you tell us, can you tell us, announce what radio stations you're on? Thank you. Well, we are on 95.9 FM, and I think that's WIRK.

I'm not sure of the call sign, WIRK. We're also on 106.9 FM, and we're also on, let me see if I can remember, the AM stations in 95. No longer. Nope. No longer. No, not on the AM station anymore. There you go. So 106.9 and 95.9.

Exactly. Okay. It is 859. dare I ask another question of Rick? Rick, I have a 2015 Rout 4. When do I need to change the transmission fluid? That's Joe and Boynton. Never.

Wow. One word answer. That's great. I'm going to get a plaque for that answer. Oh, I mean, that's, you mean. All right. If a vehicle... Harassment.

Jamie in Massachusetts wants to know. If a vehicle has been for sale for four months, what would you recommend replacing when you buy it? battery plugs etc okay folks we're going to go to the wonderful guests that we have this morning and his name is mark fisher i'm sure that you heard all about him before we even did our introduction so welcome to the show mark hey mark this is earl and thank you very very much for calling and we had a long talk the other day i'll give you a quick introduction here I've talked about you before, but Mark Fisher is the founder of all-lease-only.

All-Fleash-only is one of the fastest growing use-car companies in the nation, and growing like wildfire. And we've always had, as far as I can recall, all-fleas-only on our recommended list. I just, I'm very honored and pleased to have a guy like you call. And Mark, just tell us what's on your mind. to hear about how you got started and how you ended up where you are today. Well, good morning, Earl. Nice to be on the show with you.

And morning, everyone, and happy 4th of July. Thank you. Good morning. Happy 4th of July. It's been a long time in the car business, actually, Earl. We started very, very small. Actually, my wife and I started together right after we got married probably in 1991. That's how long ago we've started this.

And we only had a little bit of money from when we got married. We took our wedding money. We bought our first car. And we continued to buy and sell cars ever since until we've grown into what we are today, which is basically we're the largest independent youth car dealer in the United States by volume. Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah. It's been quite a long road.

And, you know, and a lot of the things and principles that I've heard you talking about for years on your show are some of the things that we've put in play to found our company. And, you know, the use car business has associated with it a lot of stigmatism over the years, but we've tried to change that. We've been very strong on our customer reviews and making sure that everybody is happy. Even though you sell use cars as is, there's still the right way to do it and a way to provide a very good value to your customers and have a very good following for many years.

Most of our customers buy three to five cars, tell their family, their coworkers, their friends, and that's what's really built office only.com to what it is today and offering a good value we're a one price selling operation we put the cars out at the right prices we don't play games if you see a car online it's advertised with that price it's the same price at our dealership we disclose our fees accordingly where they're nice and clear there's never a hidden fee there's never extra fees for people with their credit all the things that go on in this industry today that that still need to be taken care of they make sure that the consumer is getting, you know, a level playing field when they're shopping for use for. Mark, when we talked on the phone the other day, you were talking about the hidden fees, the dealer fees, and you really got into it. I could see you were getting passionate about it and how you've gone and lobbied. You've talked to, I mentioned you talked to AutoTrader about the hidden fees, and I was thrilled to death that you were able to accomplish something.

We couldn't. But after you got through talking, I said, I feel like I'm listening to myself talk. because you and I have the totally same philosophy about Florida being the wild-while west of all the states and the way dealer fees are completely corrupting the way cars are advertised and sold. So speak a little bit to the dealer fee issue and how you came to fight it. And sometimes you have to kind of compromise in some cases. But what are your thoughts on the hidden dealer fee in Florida? Well, the biggest issue that's facing the consumer right now that's unaware of what's going on, especially in Florida, it's going on in other states as well, but Florida is pretty much out of control at this point, that many dealers, when you're searching online for the lowest price of cars that you're searching for, whether it's any make or model, and you're searching by price, you're trying to find the best deal.

It might be a cash buyer, and you're looking for the best deal. You might be a finance buyer that's looking for the lowest payment. It's the same thing. and you go on a lot of a trader or cars.com or car gurus or any of these third-party providers and you're looking to search for your best price. Well, when you go for the lowest price, you're going to find that there are people out there like off-lease only that have actually the lowest price, but it appears that there's other dealers that have a better price.

And what these dealers are doing to appear that way is basically they raise their dealer fee to a point to make their price of their car cheaper. So basically, if you have to hire a high price. highest dealer fee on the third-party websites right now, you have the lowest price of car. And when I say highest fee, there are dealers in the South Florida market that have fees in excess of $3,000 on top of the advertised price. Al Hendrickson Toyota in Coconut Creek is the third largest toilet dealership or fourth largest in the United States. And he has about a $3,000 dealer fee. He advertises the price of a new Toyota, and he can advertise.

I said $3,000 less than another toilet dealer because he packs on the extra $3,000. Hey, Mark, this is Stu. I have a question. Are you guys working with car gurus or trying to get them to make changes too? Because in addition to them not addressing the fees, they also grade the price, you know, good to worst, based on the price without fees. So, Sue just said on a topic that I've been fighting with for probably three or four years now with car grue specifically, who, by the way, Carguroos does not recognize the fact that they've gotten themselves involved by saying, what's a good deal, what's a great deal, what's not a good deal.

They've crossed the line, and a couple of these third parties have followed after Carguer's. Carguer's was the first to start this. When you start telling the consumer this dealer is a great deal and the other dealer is not a great deal, you better be really sure that you're sending that consumer to that great deal because those great deals, what I'm finding on Carguer's, are those dealers that are adding two, three, four, five thousand dollars on top of that price. And let me tell you about dealer fees. The word dealer fee is also, people don't understand the word dealer fee.

There's many different fees that can be considered a dealer fee. And that's part of the problem, too, in Florida, where Florida's language doesn't really specify that you must call it a dealer fee. There's some new fees that you'll see that make it sound like these are official fees. There's things I've seen, such as what's called an EFF fee, which is electronic filing fee. like a very official state agency fee. Well, it's not. It's a made-up fee that the dealer made up so he can charge you a fee and make it sound like it's something that they have to pay that everyone pays. It's not. The only thing you need to be paying is tax, tag, and title. Those are the things

that you have to pay. Now, if a dealer wants to have a fee, and I'm going to tell you, awfully so only does have a fee. We have a $3.99 pre-delivery service charge, and that $399 does include a lot of things that we give our customers, you know, that there is value behind the $399. And we disclose this fee very clearly. We disclose it in every piece of advertising we do. We have window stickers on our cars, and it's on the window sticker. There's no surprises when you come to us as far as what fees there are on top of

tax tag and title. So that's the thing that you don't see on a lot of these dealers advertising. Many dealers may put it in the fine print. You may see an 899 EFF fee, and you don't even know what that is. Well, that's a dealer fee. And there needs to be something done in the state of Florida. specifically at this point, that that says the dealer fee is a dealer fee and it can't be called by a different name.

I'm seeing dealers advertising actually in their advertising, and they say there's one competitor of ours in South Florida. He actually says no dealer fees and big letters on everything on his website, on his advertising, and he has placed pre-delivery service charge. He changes the name. Unbelievable. You're getting as excited as I do, Mark. I swear I feel like I'm listening to myself.

It's so good to have a pro like you that really you've been through it. You've done it all and you see what's going on. And you said to me on the phone the other day when we were talking, you know, the reason we have the worst situation in Florida of all 50 states is because the dealers in Florida are leaning on the legislators and on the attorney general and anybody, the decision makers, the enforcers, they've got them all in their pocket. The dealers are pushing and pushing. somebody's got to have the nerve to step up to the Florida Automobile Deals Association

and the National and all the other dealers that are that are trying to keep the law from being enforced. If they did nothing more than enforce the dealer fee law, dealer fee law says that you have to include it in your advertised price. That's in the statute. And that is a law and nobody follows that law, do they, Mark? No, it's a big problem, Merle, and I agree with you, it is in the statute. It's not being enforced, and it's specifically not being enforced because there is big lobbying power.

The new car dealers, I hate to single out, you're one of them, but the new car dealer lobby has lobbied the state to not enforce that law. Because obviously margins are tight on new cars, and that's a way they can make profit. So they've gotten together, they've pulled this off. But now that it's gone into the used car segment, which there's a lot of new car dealers trying to compete with off-leash-only prices, and the only way they can do it is to have a bigger dealer fee to make their price seem similar to hours or lower than ours. And when you go there, you may not even know when you buy the car that the dealer has the fee. That's even another issue that goes on. These dealers are very, very good at hiding these things.

So you may get the car and think you've got that price, but you better check your paperwork really closely. Well, I feel like I have a new ally, and you and I need to work together, and I invite you to call the show anytime. referred to earlier, I don't know if you were tuned in, is the Sam Walton of the used car business because Sam Walton came up with the idea of Walmart in Sam's Club by just having an honest business that they buy a lot of volume and they sell low. You sell your cars are price lower than almost any other used car you see out there and what you see is what you get and you're buying as is, but you have a right to have it checked out by your mechanic.

You've been on our recommended list, and you'll always be on our recommended list, off-lease only. I'd love to have your call in any time. And if you have, is anything else you'd like to add, Mark? I'd love to hear any of your opinions, thoughts, ideas. I think we could go on much longer than your show world today to discuss. We are very much aligned in the things, you know, it's just right and wrong and the right way to do business.

And really, it's the digital age. It's the 21st century. You know, I've been in the car business before the Internet, so of you. And this is going back to remind me of, like, bait and switch back in the 1980s is what's going on here. You get there, the price of the car isn't the price of the car. It's almost like, you know, taking this into the 21st century now, and nobody doing anything about it, especially in a world that's supposed to be much more transparent and much more ethical.

This needs to be addressed. And I believe there, ultimately, and I hate to say this because I know there's a lot of opposition to this, A dealer fee should be cap. There should be a reasonable dealer fee. A dealer is allowed to charge a small fee to recoup some of their overhead and their operating costs and their expenses associated with selling the car. I get it. We have a $3.99 fee and we're not hiding it and we tell people.

And I think that somewhere between that price, maybe $500 would be a reasonable fee, but I don't think anything over $500. I think the advertised price of the car needs to be the advertised price once it goes beyond that figure. And it makes me upset because there's many dealers not even putting it in their fine print. They have these huge fees, and they're not even putting it in the print. And they are supposed to edit to the advertised price. That is the law in this state. And obviously, it's one of those things.

Well, if I edit to my price, then the guy that's got the bigger fee, he's even cheaper than me. So how do I compete? And it's not just me. It's not just me. I'm speaking for the whole industry. There are many, many hundreds and thousands, actually, of car dealers that do things the right way. and they're being hurt by these big guys with that that are playing this game

and this game needs to stop. It's really, and it really needs to stop. Mark, before I'll let you go, Nancy, my wife here, was very impressed. She was doing some Googling of you, and she saw a picture of you, and your wife's name is Eileen.

That is correct? And Nancy. Good morning, Mark. You know, I'm very, I'm very impressed, and I have a new name for these fees, and that's called B.S. But on a more serious note, you're to be to commend it, I mean, for defending and protecting your brand and the way you do business. I'm very proud that you were able to call this morning.

And what a great story just reading about your wedding present and what you did with it. You and I lean buying two cars. And it's definitely, you know, people think that things come easy and they do. don't and what a journey you and your wife have been on and I just want to thank you for being the type of car dealer that you guys are and thank you for calling in you're very welcome and thank you so much yes it has been quite the journey I will say that this didn't this didn't happen easily it was a lot of hard work many many years hard work and when I say hard work I work 24 hours a day for 20 years to get this company where it is and

It's a lot of ups and downs, and like I said, there are a lot of, a lot of people out there think that things just come easy, and it definitely doesn't. And your story is phenomenal. Mark, after the pandemic, U.I, Nancy and I, Lane will have lunch together. That sounds great one day I'd love to do that, Earl. But the thing that it does prove is good things do come to those who work hard for them. That's something to put out there to everyone. that, you know, anyone can do anything if they put their mind to it. Yeah, and I have a picture of you and your beautiful wife.

I have it right up here on the camera. I was just really impressed, and the both of you sound so, well, you sound so passionate. And just her standing right beside you, she just looks the same, just so passionate about what you guys do. And I can't say enough. I appreciate that. Thanks again. Thanks again for taking the time to call in, and let's do this again someday, and like I say, we'll have lunch when this damn pandemic is over, and I'd really like to talk to you directly face-to-face. That would be great, Earl. Have a good day. Have a good show, and we'll talk again soon. Bye-bye.

Happy 4th of July, Mark. Stay safe. 877-960. And you can text us at 772-497-60. Don't forget to your adonymous feedback.com. Man, that was really great. It was, yeah. I mean, I'm in awe of what they've accomplished.

I mean, at first it was like, who's this newcomer? And then, boom, I mean, they became the biggest thing in town and beyond. Yeah, they were on Lake Worth Road, and they had this dirt lot. And it was just the very basics. And it was kind of like, remember the old movie, Butch Cassie and Sundance Kid, was saying, who are those guys? And the dealers who started saying, off-lease, what is that? Off-lease-only?

What is that? And then he was selling 100 cars a month. How does he sell 100 cars a month? Pretty soon he's selling 1,000 cars a month. And they're saying, who are those guys? And then he opens another lot and another lot. And I hate to tell you that in our management meetings at our dealership, I'm screaming and yelling at all my used car people and managers. How is this little dirt lot out here selling so many cars?

What are they doing? Why can't we do that? And he's just a pioneer. Yeah, it was almost like an explosion overnight. And it was just an amazing, like I said, an amazing journey. Okay. Okay, text. Yeah, we have it on Facebook.

Terrence is, he's got a 2015 Honda Civic hybrid. He wants to get a new one. He's got about 14,000 miles on his car. He wants a recommendation on how he can go about either trading or selling that rev for, I mean, that, uh, Civic Hybrid, I'm sorry, Honda Civic Hybrid, yeah. Honda Civic Hybrid, uh, greatest market today for getting best value on your trade in or when you're going to sell your car, there's a shortage of used cars for most of your make models, and the prices are higher, and everybody wants your used car.

So it's a seller's market, and you take advantage of that. I mentioned Carvana. It's Carvana.com. You got buy-anycar.com. You got CarMax, you have AutoNation, you have Vroom.com, VR. That's an auto-trainer. and then you go to three different Honda dealers to use car department and you say I don't want to buy a Honda I don't want to buy another car I'm downsizing give me a bit on the car I'm going to two other Honda dealers I'll get a bit from them I'm going to sell to the highest bidder so you really got a perfect market you should get the maximum amount of money for that Honda and take advantage of it don't don't sell to the first person to make you an offer give several bids okay and let's go back to we we are Right before Mark called, we had a question, it was for Rick,

and he's looking at a car that's been for sale for four months. So I guess he's seen it on the Diro lot. It's been there for four months, which, by the way, that deal, that's too long to keep that car on your lot. But what would you recommend getting replaced after you buy it? He's talking about things like the battery and plugs. I wouldn't necessarily recommend replacing anything right off the bat. However, I would have the battery tested,

stopping at a local auto parts store and have an independent place have them test the battery I would highly recommend take the car out on the highway and get at least five or ten miles on the highway because the tires have likely

been sitting in one spot and dealt flat spots on the bottom so heating up those tires will smooth them out and if you feel any vibrations after that I'd be looking at the tires there's really not a whole lot else that would be an issue there, although I would consider an oil change very quickly.

All right, I think we are all caught up with text. Let me just double check. We are all caught up. Do you have any YouTube's over there? Well, I've got a couple of questions that I had answered on YouTube earlier, but I'd like to bring these out anyways. One question to Mark Ryan asked, he says, what's our opinion on the Fumoto or Valva Max oil drain valves. And what these are is it's a little brass valve assembly that you take out the

drain plug on the oil pan and install this valve in place of the drain plug. And it's supposed to make it easier to drain your oil. You simply turn a little knob on it to let the oil drain out of the engine. The only drawback that I've seen with these is most drain plugs are down very low on the pan and sitting at an angle the greater amount of oil will drain out. These valves would then be sticking down at an angle, and if you run over a piece of water or something on 95, and it hits that valve and breaks it off, boom, all of a sudden, you've got a catastrophe because all the engine oil is going to flood out on the road, and you could cost yourself an engine.

A long time ago, I wrote a blog on the Achilles' heel of your car as the drip pan, where you take the plug out, the plug. The plug. The oil pan, yeah. And that was because back, this is so long ago, it might not be true today. I'm asking you this question. Does that, do the threads were out on the drip pen and where the plug is on, even today like they used to? Yes, they can. As a matter of fact, one tool that we require every single one of our technicians to use is a torque wrench dedicated for putting in the drain plug on the oil pan. to make sure we don't over-tork that drain plug. Exactly. If you don't tighten it when you put it in,

or you over-tighten it, either way, you're creating a problem. Sometimes if it's over-tightened, once you pull it out, the threads are gone, and you've got yourself a whole new oil pan. You've got to replace the pan. So that's a long way of getting to the idea, if you have that valve, and it was something that would be reliable, and it wouldn't strip out, it might be a good investment if you're going to keep your car for a long time, other than the caveat, if it's in the wrong place, it's going to get knocked off.

Now, some cars that I would say would be a great idea, a lot of trucks have a splash shield, metal splash shield, underneath the vehicle, so that the oil pan actually sits up above that splash shield, and therefore that valve would be protected. So if your vehicle is designed where the valve would sit up high enough, that it's got some protection, then I'd say, yeah, that's a great idea. Okay. Do I have time for a commercial?

Yeah, yeah. Okay, commercial for my book, Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer. And before you get too excited about the fact that I'm doing something commercial, 100% of the proceeds of my book, Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer, go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. There you go. And Big Dog Ranch Rescue is the largest no-kill shelter in Florida. We save hundreds, thousands of dogs.

We save dogs from all over the world. Even China. Hurricane victim areas, Haiti, Bahamas, the Carolinas during hurricanes. We bring the dogs in. We fly them in. We drive them in. And they stay at Big Dog Ranch Rescue. That's a Moxahatchee on Okachovia Boulevard.

It's like a campus. It's like a college campus. We've got swimming pools. We have bunk rooms. we have a veterinarian, we have everything that you need for a dog eat, and we take care of them. Rick? And I'd like to announce today is five years to the day since my little girl Harley Quinn came home with me from Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Oh, how nice, happy anniversary.

So you go to Amazon.com, you buy a book of Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer, 100% of the proceeds. I'm not just talking about a few bucks. 100% of the proceeds of the book is about 1995. 1999. And it goes all the, everything that Amazon sells us, sends us,

they take a fee out. Everything that we get, we give to Big Dog Ranch Rescue so you can learn. This is a handbook on how to buy a car without being ripped off by a car dealer.

You can give it to your kids. You can give it to your grandchildren. Give it to a friend. Anybody that you want to protect from the car dealer predator, let them read this book and they'll never be taken advantage of them i got a i got a commercial too please tune in to our facebook page every wednesday because every wednesday we feature a sponsored dog of the week

uh we're doing it uh with uh with zoom we're doing it remotely because of the pandemic but we feature a dog every single week you get to see the dog big dog ranch rescues there telling you about it and if you adopt the dog or sponsored dog but we'll pay the adoption fees for you because we we just love supporting big dog ranch rescue i i think it's a little more exciting the way we're doing it now because you never know what's going to happen because we're all at different locations but back to big dog ranch uh i just wanted to tell everyone you know doesn't it what a package you know you got the book and you got these uh you got lory uh who owns big dog ranch saving all these dogs and just recently she was on the news and she had gone out and her and her

volunteers, and they saved 260 dogs from being euthanized. And it's just, you don't really think about it, you know, and it's definitely a very, very important cause. So, Big Dog Ranch, and Earl's

book, 100% of the proceeds, goes to Big Dog Ranch. We're going to go to Mark, who's been holding. He's a regular caller from Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, team. I just have a quick thing.

I spent 37 years in the auto body collision business and spent seven years at a Toyota dealer. And I have a wonderful 2017 Camry. And unfortunately, due to illness, I've become handicapped and lost my right leg. And I'm interested in looking for suggestions and possibly if you have someone that you know, of how to get my car made to where I can enjoy driving it again.

Isn't there companies out there that can make my vehicle into a half-handicat-friendly so I can take my car back from my kids? Yes, we use one company. I think Stu's looking up the address now, or he doesn't have it there. We have a company that we do use for handicapped conversions. and they're local. Action mobility. Action mobility.

A-C-T-I-O-N, Action Mobility. And we've been using them for many, many years. They're, you know, South Florida, a lot of elderly people, a lot of folks that have different kinds of handicaps, and we've used them for years. They're highly reliable, priced competitively, and I think Stu's looking for an address or a number. Yeah.

It's in Lake Worth, but I'm not seem to be. I'm not fine again. Let me give me a... I'm sure I can look it up. I appreciate that. Do any of you have any idea how, not how it's done, but what the end product looks like? Is it a shifter or have you guys not seen the actual done or completed product? Rick had a point.

The address, 1925, 10th Avenue North in Lake Worth. And do you have any idea how these conversions are done? I mean, with the hand controls to, Mark is missing his right leg. I've seen many varieties of it. Some of them, they actually shift the pedal by way of special controls. They'll put the pedals reversed. Others, they'll use a hand control for one pedal or maybe a hand control for both. So I've seen there, right now, it's not like there's one set design.

they custom build a setup to match what you need as an individual depending upon, you know, what your situation is. Are there subsidies available from the manufacturer, I believe, Toyota and other manufacturers when you do a conversion, maybe it's only on a new vehicle, but when you do a conversion, they will often subsidize. So what make your model car do you drive, Mark? 2017 Camry XLE I don't know if they do it on retro

on older vehicles but we can check for you on that Mark see if Toyota has anything in the way of a subsidy or help they could give you on that conversion that would be great because I guess I will contact them to get a

estimate of what something like that would cost exactly yeah and even though we recommend them you probably ought to get another bid we could probably help you there too as far as other it's always i don't i hate to use the word keep people honest but if you go to somebody and you hear the price and you buy that price the chances are great that had you gotten two other bids the price would be lower so it's just

the fact of the economic system you need to get a couple more bids i i do know obviously a safety issue as well yeah exactly i i do know from my mother's experience when she needed an electric wheelchair, Medicare, there's different companies that will assist financially and through the Palmage County and the government in that. So I'm sure Action Mobility probably has set up with different companies for the financial aid and aspects like that.

So they probably have a lot of that information available right there. Good point, Root. I just also want to chime in. It looks like they changed their name. It's no longer Action Mobility, it's Mobility Works. So that's why I have a lot. hard time finding it. Mobility works. Same location. Great. Well, thank you all so much for the information. I appreciate it. And as it's always said, you guys make a great team,

and there is no eye in the word team. So you all have a wonderful holiday, okay? Thank you, Mark. Take care of yourself, Mark. Give us a call back and let us know how that all turned out for you. Interesting topic. We'll see you at sunrise. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay. Yeah, we got a text about the book. This is from John in California. It says, best book I have ever purchased. I read it cover to cover in a week and a half once I got it,

and I've used it two times since I got it. First time when I got my wife's car and the second time, when I got my truck, let me tell you, it did help a ton. Thanks for the book, Earl. I got news on that, by the way. I have contacted your publisher. Oh. And I have indicated our interest in a sequel.

That does. Or at the very least a revision. We don't have too much pressure on you We've got to get going on that She's very anxious to work with us again Do we have time to get to Frank? He's holding from Jupiter Farms One of our regular callers

Always time for Frank Hi Frank You guys are so nice Thank you so much Oh you're welcome Nice to hear from you Wonderful Yeah you trigger so many different

Emirons and memories On your show every week It's the Barracuda right Yes we do Yes, it is about the barracuda. I'll tell you my barracuda stories. There's several about I'll tell you just a brief one. My mom actually bought her first brand new car in her life back in 1965

down on far away in Miami. It was a 65th barracuda with a slant six, 225 engine like that gentleman talked about. And I remember the first time in North Carolina with it that summer. we had a red light and as the light is starting to turn green the car behind us seems to bump us and my mom gets you bumped our car and the North Carolina

person said no you actually rolled back into my car I guess with the clutch and stuff but I guess the most memorable memory of that car was unfortunately one day I was delivering some chicken food to a handicapped person that had an unbelievable accident he had dove off his boat

as a commercial fisherman and hit his back on a turtle and he's handicapped and paralyzed for the rest of his life. Oh, my God. But I'm delivering this food to his house, and I'm going a little too quick as a teenager in wet water, and the car hydraplane into a canal and sank. Arakura didn't swim. I got out on the car, it didn't time before it sank, because the windows I could roll down and climb on the roof. When my mom came there, she could care nothing about the car, only that her only son was all right. It really instilled a lasting memory.

It is. Memories are fun, aren't they, Frank? I tell you, the older you get, the more precious the memories are. I have things coming back to me like you did just there that you haven't thought of it in a long, long time. It just takes some little song or a word or a face, and then the memories come back. The memories are really cool to relive them. Thank you for sharing that with us. Our moments, they move so fast, and you just,

don't realize at that moment, you're building memories. Oh, that's for sure. It's just amazing. The gentleman that called in today, it sounded so refreshing to hear someone has actually the same, you know, outlook about Dealer fees as Earl's been talking about for years. Yeah, yeah. It is. I mean, I wish I'd known him better a long time ago.

I knew of him, but I didn't know him. And had he and I gotten together five years ago, it would have been a great thing. I think we will make a great team. And now, finally, that I find them, and we realize we're of the same mind, we can't get together because of the pandemic. So I can't wait to this thing, blows over, and we can talk. But, yeah, it's funny. Who knows maybe the next guest will be the Attorney General.

What do you think, Frank? I never know. I'm not going to hold my breath on that one. One last follow-up from last week's mystery shopping report. I called and spoke to that sales and you all mystery shop with. What an unbelievably gentleman, his name is James Vernon Lloyd. And he spent an inordinate amount of time speaking with me, and I told him about the board pickup.

I got the dealer up in Palm Bay wouldn't show me the knobs and buttons. You know, bring it in. I'll teach you everything you need to know about your truck. And it's just absolutely unbelievable. Well, that's a great. What a great story that is. Thank you, Frank. you have a good day

and happy fourth thanks Frank solely is a pleasure to talk to you happy 4th of July we got a couple by bye bye thanks Frank

we got a couple of quick anonymous feedbacks that came in we get to before the mystery shop report the first one says did Earl Stewart Toyota hit one of their stepped up bonuses

last month what exactly did that end to hit what day did it end to hit the bonus the answer is Toyota canceled all those during the pandemic

because of the the huge impact of business and also the inventory supply. So that didn't happen. It's still not in place. They're going to put it back in August. So we'll report on that. And the other one came in says if you're fine with off-lease only's $3.99 dealer fee, why don't you charge one? Well, that's a great question. We don't charge one because we can get away with it. In other words,

That sounds counterintuitive there, but we are able. We've been around for 47 years at the same location, and we built our brand and location over many, many years. You have to have a lot of trust in potential customers' mind before they will come to you, even though they see a lower price advertised out there. And the off-lease hasn't reached that stage yet. They haven't been around nearly as long. as we have. So we evolved to our position

of no dealer fee, and I wouldn't wish that on a new dealer. As long as the car dealers are charging these ridiculously high dealer fees in Florida, it's almost a necessity of survival to charge a dealer fee.

When I get angry at a dealer, it isn't so much because he charges the dealer fee, it's because he hides the dealer fee and sneaks it in. If you have a dealer fee and you clude it in your advertised price, there's no problem. It's just not needed, but there's no problem. So, yeah, I don't blame off-lease only for having a small dealer fee. CarMax has a small dealer fee. In fact, it's about the same as the

off-lease. Anything under $500 in Florida is considered small, and there are dealers out there that charge $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, and higher. So to answer your question, we get away with it because of our brand and our reputation, people will come to us and say, I've got a price from this other Toyota dealer that is $1,000 less than your price, and then we say, but this other Toyota dealer is going to charge your $1,500 in hidden fees, and we don't. we get the opportunity to make that, have that conversation. If we weren't well entrenched in the culture and society of South Florida

and people know and trust our brand, we wouldn't have the opportunity to make that argument. But we still lose a huge amount of business because people who don't know us will buy from the seemingly lower price. I think, too, that with offlease.com, you know what you're paying for whenever you walk in. You don't, it isn't going to hit you. They're not going to hit it.

I can dig it, you can dig it, we can dig it, they can dig it, graze it in the grass on the true oldies these channels. Before that, Jay Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers. I was playing golf the other day with a guy who grew up in Fort Waterdale back in the 60s. And I asked him if he ever heard of Wayne Cochran. Ladies and gentlemen, I've got another fantastic call him, the white James Brown is what they called him. And he was so soulfully had this big. to buy a car during a pandemic.

A blonde hairdo. I mean, it was about six, seven inches high. And he's saying great songs. But he actually had recorded and written one song called Last Kiss. How dangerous it is to go out as a record and it didn't do anything. It flopped. But Jay Frank Walson heard it one day. And he recorded it, became a big hit.

And Wayne Cochran wrote that song. And he told me when I. I interviewed him one time. He told me he actually read that story about a guy and a girl. And she died. And the guy was holding her in his arms when she passed away. And he got the inspiration to write the song. The story or not, I don't know.

Coming up, Beatles. Next on the TOC. Okay, Mark, I thought Mark Fisher, a founder of Offleys County, I hope you're listening. we have had your Offleaf only recommended for my news cards for a long time

shop to you many times in Mr. Shopper Alpleases only in Palm Beach there are three other locations I believe Offleash only is a remarkable Cardio and still don't understand

what Independence Day is all about man like this guy Call your wife tell her it's over Boom declaration of independence The Redwood and Brews commercial-free 4th of July celebration All-day commercial-free on Paul Beach's finest rock For years and years and years

All-Pleece only has been so successful You can buy the name off-lease.com And the going price is like a lot of money But because of the same shows a very interesting Howdy folks, Kurt Sanders here When it's time to eat, there's no more You don't have to cut. So get a $20 fill up from KFC eat, choose from eight pieces of original recipe,

extra crispy chicken, or 12 tenders. It comes with all the fixes to feed your whole family. Order ahead at KFC.com. KFC drive-thus are still open, or stay in and get contactless delivery by Grubho. With Bucket to Love, Colonel Sanders. Every time only at participating locations over the price of Mayberry, tax and substitutions extra delivery service and additional piece of money. All right what's what they do with them.

Now, I'm beginning to understand it. We have been shopped off-place only, maybe a dozen times. For the most part, they've always done well. They make no secret of their business model. They buy cars cheap at auction and sell them cheap to the public. And that's the Walmart. Walmart. They buy cheap.

They buy in volume, and they sell cheap, and it's an amazing model. Hilstor on cars has placed off-place only, and it's recommended to do a list for the tiny ad script. know what you're getting into. And Mark Fisher, when you were talking to them earlier, when you call them in, it's these cars are sold as is. Your responsibility when you buy used car, whether it's someone that's playing,

they have a checklist, a certified car, or whatever they want to call it, you still should check it at yourself with an independent mechanic. We recommend that for our dealership, they're off-lease, or any place you buy a used car. The used car is a used car. And therefore, there may be problems. And you can't tell by looking at a car factory before, or any sort of representation by the seller, certainly.

And the book they do is have a reliable independent standard check it out. At least they're not a bit off-free. Many of the cars get off in the sale have actions in the past, making them less desirable to allow your time with the auctions. Lower demand is with real prices. they're buying for left. Now this is the secret of the essence of off-week-only success. They realize that the cars are in action can be first percent depending on the action, the amount of damage to a car. So as a car is in an action and it's safe and you can buy it for a couple thousand dollars less by virtue of the fact that's just been an accident and the car's been repaired

and it looks like a new town. Hey, I'll pick that car. I'm buying $2,000 less than somebody else would buy the car. Had it not been an instant, and I'll pass the savings rail along to the buyers. And that is the essence, though, off-lease only secret, my selling cars left. There are major making sure of all over numbers. Just the cars checked out, are you independent of the family.

We've been very clear on this show that an accident in the vehicle's history does not necessarily make it a bad car. are one that will give us the only problem. Most police only understands this. In fact, they discovered this. They clearly discovered their profits before online and in person with a customer. Since they poor actively do this,

we have no problems for their business partners. I'd even picked up some ideas from off-lease only for my own youth cell department. We actually have copied some of their practices. And what was the name of the company's studio use frame something true frame and true frame is used by

off the only market I talked about this the other day they take the call they buy it the auction they buy it cheap because it's been in an accident and then they have true frames check it out say they pay them what do we pay $200? 200 bucks

They certify it and true frame certifies it and it's been safe now the whole system out there on high, auto actions, everybody, they have, there's a word called structural damage. Structural damage can be a tiny amount of damage, or an eighth of an inch of a dent that's not going to buy. And they will call that with the unibody construction today, they'll call that structural damage. It sounds terrifying, and therefore, people will shy away from buying their car.

All right buys the car because it's safe, and they pass along the savings, and that's the secret of their success. Our only issue with them over the years has been their performance on our Takata test. They do not square well. We failed them numerous times for failure to actively warn the customers about the dangers of Takata airbag. And of course, they're willing to show a U-star with this defect. You know, in the brains feeding up ends and the prevent in the coronavirus pandemic. I'd be funny how the Takata Airbag doesn't seem a terrible enough. people are talking like

and they're trying to say people are buying and since the Chicago area that gets a Whitskill series and I'll say this about offleash all the dealers of we know

virtually are calis even only other motorbridge whole manufacturing are calis and all the manufacturers

don't take a series so I'm not going to gig offweets only because they've had difficulty in full disclosure and warning people against the bad airbag. This issue is what led to a brief legal skirmish, we add, with law police only. We received a cease and desist letter from Mark's attorney.

Hi, this is a YouTube video in which to discuss the failed process is a related to selling cards with the effective careback. Our attorneys responded with our position that everything was paid on the air and on the video was accurate. And let's stop there. Further, I'm black. She goes, now that I've known, of a known marketer, and I know the way to run decisions,

I think he's an honorable and honored person, so I'm glad they did have a lot. This was Mr. Caw, of last week's only focus on their sales experience, not to care, to cut airbag. She sent agent Funger in closing as a real customer who needs a car. We did not collect a car to vehicle.

We had no idea whether the car thunder would choose, We've got a same history report on what we called, two women blind with no agenda, on sort of like almost all customers as they do. This report is if I was 8,200. I ride at 1 p.m., walked to the big purple entry of Wayne for the main building, off-place only. I was greeted by a friendly mask-wearing investment. That's good. This is I was telling her why I was there, a mask-wearing.

No question ran up and said, hello. His name was wrong. And he informed me with the second to it in the day. Father asked if I've been there before. I said, I hadn't. He said, cool, let me tell you about us. He went on with a store at the all-range contract. He said, a person's story and told them, as in.

Right, yes, not. Hey, there's no smoking news. We sell these cards. The way you see it is what you get. Okay? If it comes in with just three formats, you only get three formats. Because it's at that, we saw the weather. with them. I mean, I...

The truth of them and honestly and candid. He said they buy in both and they do. They sell a youth number of cards. They buy each other's cars. They have to buy almost all the cards they sell. They call they don't get that many trades. He said other dealers try to make about $3,000 to sale, which is true.

Some deal is going to make $4,000 or $5,000 for sale. But off leaves only, but whether to sell more cars to sell. cars for people's prices I can't remember what we've calculated as we've heard their average profit was that I make $1,500, $52,000

trust me. A good car and the dealer makes $1,000 to $2,000 is not an absorb of the property, it's a fair problem. And typically, if you're shopping a pair, just kind of a better place

to be somewhere. Rob let me have a line of computers. Every other computer is swapped off for social business and things good. There were markings on the floor, directing people where to safely spend, good. He asked me what kind of car I wanted. That's what I was thinking about a luxury vehicle to drive clients around in. All police think that was very good supply of luxury vehicles. We buy a lot of link from BMWs and Mercedes, Mercedes.

a lot of them. It was not to talk. I said I was thinking about the New Evil, and I thought I was a real-fit agent and I thought I was a real-fit agent like that I was kind of like you and stuff. God said he had a place to vote is in the browser.

One of the world, incredible in 2017. By the way, they can't be seen a very charge I used to like it. Totally their website and the Jersey and everything. I've asked me if I wanted to

do the first phone like to get. Grab my life. We went outside by the car, found the car, while I did a fellow job that he did a job as an Aldi give a trip and realized that we think he sold more how they did it. Probably, yeah, probably. I asked him if you'd ever been in an accident, Rob replied that he didn't know,

but he'd find out. We reviewed the podcast report. Had I done my mind, I could have looked at least the podcast report on the personality of myself. Our conversation on the test drives is a nice balance or small self-indic. After this, CERN is 1.1.7 and the future about each of the 5th,

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A one-price store. I told them that I should have heard. I don't want to haggle, and asked me if I was financing in cash. I said cash. Back inside, you walked into the car back before, nearly pointed out an accident on a lovel the side flight. He showed me the direction did not result in the airbag being disbord and the two-boards and climbed to the damage of mine.

I popped into the workstreet and said the price is $32,99, after taxes, your total is $36,028. I asked them to hand me to shoot for the study of me. So I wanted to know everything I had to pay and asked if you have any DAP. Rod said, no choice has everything required by the state. That's not the right answer. And once I'll see what I think we probably should mention that for Rob and that particular location of all this name. I looked at the worksheet, the top line was put into my 99. Then they added a $3.99, free-delivered service card, which is a U.S.

kind of like Merrick Byrne, he calls it a $3.99 to deliver fee. They copied Carmack's on that. He told me that in the conversation. They had sales tax, a $500 estimated tag fee, and a $20 temp tag fee. A temp tag fee is technically a dealer fee, and a $99 tag agency fee, that's also technically a dealer fee.

So, Mark, if you're listening, you're looking actually legally technically, the $399 plus $20.99 is the actual... $519. Exactly, yeah. So, Mark, as he said earlier in our conversation, he thinks, and he's lobbying, as a matter of fact, awfully certainly to have a law pass capping the dealer fee

at something $500 or less. So as long as everybody has the same fee and has the same name and they disclose it, then the dealer fee is. neutered. There's no advantage to a dealer fee, and everybody can compete equally. That's all Mark Fisher wants for all, police only.

The only thing we want in this show is to have everybody have the same advantage when it comes to advertising the price of their car. I asked Rob what the pre-delivery service charge was. He explained it was for pre-prepping the car

and taking care of everything on our end. I asked him if he'd mind if I took a sheet home with me to look over, with my He said, it'd be fine, and we'll be here when you're ready, no pressure, and was able to give him a copy of the buyer's order, which is something, or the word sheet, which is something, sometimes you have a hard time getting from a card yard. We elbow bumped, and we said goodbye. Pretty damn good, with the exception of the dealer fee thing. It was about as good a mystery shop as we've ever done. I asked H.O. Thunder about his read of Rob's dealer fee explanation.

He reported that he felt Rob believed what he was saying. And again, a lot of times when you buy a car, we blame the dealer for everything. Well, I guess you can still blame the dealer for hiring a salesperson that wasn't properly trained. But sometimes it isn't the master evil plan of the dealer or the manager. Sometimes it's a careless salesperson or a salesperson that wasn't trained properly. So it's a minefield out there. And the crimes can occur from the salesman to the sales manager to the general manager and sometimes just the dealer. this case with all police only the owners and the general managers are good people that are trying

to do their best and there are problems that occur at the lower level so there we are and we have time to vote on that and uh let's go around the room who wants to Rick you get some votes waiting for him to come in right now okay so I have two to come in I have two A's and a B and I'm going to go with a B plus Nancy I'm going to go with an A yeah I I'm going to give off lease an A. I think that we're never going to find a perfect report, even on a dealership like off lease only, even on our dealership. And I hasten to say that I've been accused.

I think one of my anonymous feedbacks, one that was using the term earlier, putting yourself up as a holier than now. If I do, I apologize, I shouldn't because I make mistakes and my dealership makes mistakes. I meant to mention this last week, but I have a confession. I'm a recovering car dealer. Here's another confession. I had a customer call me two weeks ago that was into my dealership on a Saturday and saw some people without mask, face masks, including the receptionist.

And I had a massive temper tantrum. And Stu and I and my son Josh and the other managers, I explained it, again. and again to our managers and we cleaned up our act and now if you go in there everybody's wearing a mask so here I am preaching to everybody about there all the other dealers about wearing masks in my own dealers we had some people that were not following the policy same thing happens with dealer fees explanations and things like that you have to shop your dealership okay here they come we've got Mark Anderson with a C-minus hidden dealer fees so part of the deal Kyle Smeltz

C They still have dealer fees and should be called off auction only, if they were being honest. Steve E. with a B. Donovan, C. Mark Ryan, B. Plus, and Wayne Vait, a big A. Very good. More have come in. Linda, who is usually the black window of grading, gives them a fabulous B plus. Martha gives them an A.

Steve gives them a B plus, and Sue gives them an A. So that's a good GPA. Well, fantastic. Well, Mark, I hope you're listening. out there and we would like to tell all the other used car dealers that if you want a model to follow, you've got off-lease and you've also got CarMax. CarMax runs a clean operation. If you want to buy a used car, you could do a lot worse than either CarMax or off-lease only. Trust us. We know. You'll probably get a better price at off-lease. I think

that you'll find the dealer fees are about the same, and you'll find that the cars at CarMax are probably inspected a little bit more, but by the same token, you should have every car car you buy was used car checked by an independent mechanic. At offlease.com, they're up front with everything. Everything is completely up front with a lot of other dealers, it's BS fees. Offlease only. If you go to Offleys.com, you'll get an offer to buy the site.

And, Earl, I've got a quick one here from Justin Thomas. He asks, Lexus RX-350, a brand new one he's looking at, MSRP of 51,000, with atoms such as heated seats, GPS, and everything else, the bottom line MSRP is coming up at 58K,000. What is a fair price for me to ask for when he's starting his negotiations? Offer 20 grand. Well, you don't want to, I mean, negotiation is the hard way to do it. And if you're good, you can negotiate tough, you can get a good price.

Real simple. Go to three Lexus dealers. I would call J.M. Lexus and Coconut Creek, there are one price. They have a small dealer fee and get their best price and start there. and then get at least three prices on your lectures. Okay, folks, that's our mystery shop of, mystery shop of Offleys, Palm Beach. And I want to wish everybody a happy 4th of July

and a safe Fourth of July for those masks. Stay safe. Stay home. There you go. Right, go. Right, go. Right, go, too. Right. Go.

WIRK.HG3, Indian Town. Programming paid for by Vic Canales Media Group. The True Oldies Channel 959 and 1069. Broadcasting from the Roeb's Studio. Injured recently, call the Robs Law Group. Where winning is a habit. 5-6-1-570-5-700 5-6-1-570-5-700

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