Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.16.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of CarMax of Royal Palm Beach

Episode Date: July 16, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits the local branch of CarMax used cars to see what they will charge for a used 2021 Toyota RAV4 XLE SUV. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Here we are again. Your automotive team. Your international, almost. Well, yeah. But we're definitely all over the USA. And we're here to help you make one of the most difficult decisions. It's uh, anyone has to make financially. Uh, do I buy a car?

Don't I buy a car? Do I buy a used car, new car? And if I do, how do I get to lowest price? How do I avoid being taken advantage of by car dealers? It's the bottom of the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and profession. So, uh, that's our task. That's what we do here. It's what we've been doing for nearly 20 years.

And, uh, you'll make the show. I mean, pure and simple, your calls. If you haven't listened to the show before, listen, please. I mean, just listen for a little bit. If you don't want to listen to us, you can listen to the callers. The callers are interesting. Textors, the callers. We hear and learn things, and we're experts.

Rick Kearney is with us in the studio. This guy knows more about cars than anybody I know. He's been doing it for over a quarter of a century. He's on top of it, too, because the current car. is just absolutely a scientific marvel. I mean, they're almost too good. They're too complicated because it's hard for the user, you know, the drivers, to really understand everything on them.

Rick Kearney understands it all. And you'll tell you right now that there's some challenges out there. You buy a car, new, used, you're going to have some questions. They're complicated. Hi-tech. Rick is a high-tech guy. and that's why we like you to call the show. We can tell you about buying and selling. Rick can tell you about fixing and repairing, maintaining.

And so we've got a pretty good group here. We have a call-in number. We prioritize that. So if you call 877-960-99-60, you might want to write that down just in case, if you can, if you're not driving or something, but the number again is 877-960-99-60. Nancy Stewart, my co-host, co-founder of the show, by the way,

female advocate, strong, strong supporter of you ladies out there in the audience. She will monitor her laptop or her text, and she will be notified of your call. And our calls get number one priority over text, over anonymous feedbacks, over YouTube, over Facebook, because we have all those other avenues. But if you call us on the phone, we're going to get you. We're going to stop what we're doing and talk to you.

So 877-960-99-60, and for a lot of folks out there, you don't want to be live on radio. I don't blame you. I mean, I know I'm a little strange. We're all a little strange in the studio because we love what we're doing. But most people are a little bit nervous about speaking to thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people all over the world. You just, it's a little stage fright. Don't blame you. Text us. Text us at 772-4976530. 7-7-2-4976530. Question, comments, criticism. Some people are nervous, shy, you know, too polite.

to be critical, we got something for you too. It's called Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Unique. I don't know any talking show, call-in-show, anybody that's got this. We have a website that is bulletproof, privacy-wise. You contact us via Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We don't know who you are, where you are. All we know is what you say.

Yeah. It's not our, it's not our website. No, no. We pay for this. Well, we pay for it. Yeah, it's actually from, was it, incognito. Incognito, N-E-A-T, N-A-T, O-N-Cog, N-A-T-O dot com, or is it dot something else? Incognito. If you want to have your own anonymous website, you can go to incognito with N-E-A-T-O-com, and you can buy it. and we bought it. A lot of blue chip companies like Adobe and some other big companies have that. I think if the companies that do have it, we have it at our company and we have it for the radio show. We have it personally. We just happen to believe that we'd like to know what people think about us.

The good, the bad, and the ugly. I mean, if you're, you know, it hurts our feelings sometimes. We get embarrassed sometimes. We get angry sometimes. But hey, that's life. Would you rather be a little bit embarrassed and angry and maybe have your feelings hurt every now? then or live in a world of make believe we don't want to live in a world to make believe if you like us we want to know it if you hate us we want to know it if you have constructive criticism we'd love to know that and that your anonymous feedback.com if you don't want to be identified and I don't blame you again if you're listening to the show for the first time a highlight of the show clearly is something called our mystery shopping report nobody's got this

Nobody sends an undercover agent secretly into a business every week. The businesses we use are car dealerships. We go to use car dealerships. We get a new car dealerships. We even check occasionally not often enough, but we do service mystery shops too. See what treatment our people get when they come in. And they go all the way through the process. I mean, price negotiation, looking for models, asking a lot of questions.

taking frantic mental notes we're not allowed to do a video or record this and so our current secret shopper is agent lightning we don't identify them for obvious reasons and she's all over the country i mean she travels out of state certainly out of south florida and uh she visits card dealerships so uh for we keep her identity secret and she hasn't been busted yet i don't think to. Has she ever been... I don't think so. I think she has had moments where she thought the jig was up and went outside, texted me in the panic, but we persevered, pushed through. And years past before Adrian Lightning, we have been busted.

We've had, we've had, I won't say, had the mystery shopper run out, but move out quickly. He's deceased now. Yeah, that's right. It was Scott Cadmus. He can't get in trouble now. Yeah, that was... I think we had to call. Scary.

So anyway, if you do nothing else, stay tuned for the last half for the show, actually the last quarter. We're on from 8 to 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, and the last half hour between 9.30 and 10, we usually air that shopping report. If you want to call us, call us anytime. We turn the phones off close to the time of the mystery shopping report. So calls before that, and that's the best. The best are the calls, the real live calls. 877, 960, 960. Now, I'm gonna let Nancy Stewart, my co-host, my wife, co-founder of the show, strong female advocate, tell you new listeners, especially you female new listeners.

We have a little surprise, a little nice gift for you, that if you're calling the show for the first time. Nancy will tell you about that, and she would have really loved to hear from this. many ladies out there. We know you're listening. We just want to hear your views. They're very important to us. Nancy? Good morning, everyone, and welcome. I'll get to that topic about the female caller in just a moment, but let's start the show off with a question to our audience, and you can give us a call at 877-960, and you can also text us at Your Anonymous Feedback.com. me. But my question this morning is asking you if you were trading your car, do you feel ethically obligated to, or if you were selling your car, do you feel ethically obligated to let

that person know that the car's been in an accident, that there's mold? I think you get the point with those two examples. Give us a call with your answer at 877-960. That's an interesting question. I mean, we get mad at dealers when they don't reveal issues, problems with cars that you buy. So if you're selling a car to the dealer, Traygan, then, should you bear the same burden? How do you feel about it? I have a long established opinion on that.

You know? Of course, people have an ethical obligation to disclose things. I think just in general, hiding things and lying about things are, wrong and dealers shouldn't do it and then average folks shouldn't do it either in my opinion how about the longstanding a tenant of uh law starting with english law kavia mTOR yeah um i understand but i think that's a defense in court you know oh sure um but i think uh that just general like morality the we're talking ethics we're not talking legality we're talking that's a great question talking ethics uh let's take it to another level what do you think about uh car

Max, Carvana, we buy any car. Do you think they too have the ethical application to disclose honesty? Honesty about that vehicle, the history of it. Give us a call at 877-960-99-60, and, you know, not to cover you up with a lot of questions, but this is food for thought if you'd like to give the show a call. Let me ask you this second question. How do you feel about car dealerships that are adding extra fees to those buying out-their leases? We talk about ethics.

I got an opinion on that, too. We talk about ethics every week. Let's talk about, you know, the higher-ups. We're trying to elevate the opinion of these dealerships. We all need to work together. Stu, your opinion? My opinion. No, no, no, sure.

I've already given my opinion. Yeah, we'd like to call us to feel free to say their opinion. First of all, the businesses we already in law are required to tell you if there's something bad about the product they're selling. You can get fined or go to jail. There's rules for that. There's no rules, as far as I know, for the seller, if you're a private individual. That's the reason that's such an interesting question.

Well, what about Carmex? What about Carvana? Is it a law? Yeah, there is a law, yeah. That's very good. Okay, now to get to another important issue, that's the ladies. ladies give us a call this morning tell us what you think answer maybe some of my questions or just say hello at 877 960 9960 and for the first two new lady callers you can win yourself $50 this morning so sit back enjoy the show and we appreciate your participation and we look forward to all your phone calls YouTube text messages it's going to be an exciting mystery shopping report also. We are going to go to the phones where Mark is waiting from

Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Nancy. Earl and Stewie. Hey. And a mechanic buddy there. Nancy, you've provoked my interest on your questions. You know, when it comes to a public person, you know, going ahead and being truthful with a potential buyer of their vehicle, you know, I think the ugly truth is a lot of people will think, you know, what can I get away with? I want them, especially in this economic climate, you know, people want to get the most for what they're selling and I think that people would have a tendency not to tell the truth I think you're right well Mark we know that but do you think it's ethical that they do that let me finish let me finish please Earl um the question is can people sleep at night

if they haven't told the truth and I wouldn't consider the average person worrying about what even if there was a law on the books about a private seller declaring damage or so forth, I myself would declare it. I would probably go up. By the way, there's scratches up front. There's a thing over here. You know, I didn't always change the oil, all the exact mileage. But honestly, I think the average person would first think about being deceitful.

I'm sorry, Earl, what were you going to say? No, I just said, you said what I said, a different way. I said, it isn't a question, I said, it's a question of ethics. How do you feel it is ethically? And then you said, would you be able to sleep at night? So you're saying if you can't sleep at night, then that's an ethical, you violate your own ethical code. So, yeah, your conscience or whatever you want to call it. Yeah, that's right.

I just, I'm glad to hear your opinion, and I just, I don't really have one. I think, and there's two lines with this, by the way, there's the, there's a sin of a mission when you just don't mention the fact that your car was an accident, and then there's a direct sin when the buyer says, has this ever car ever been an accident, and you say no. Now, that's a higher level of sin than just not mentioning it. So I personally feel that as long as you're not overtly misrepresenting your car, the professional that you're trading it into or selling it to bears the responsibility to check it out. But even that, you know, there's people that feel two ways about that.

Everybody's a little bit different when it comes to ethics and morality and sleeping in night. There's scenarios. I see some customers assume that the dealer, the appraiser will find out in a history report. don't have to mention it. They're going to discover it. They don't have to mention it. They're not necessarily like lying by omission. They just assume it's going to be going to come out.

So what if they don't, what if they don't discover it? That's even a tougher one. Oh, seriously, because you can wonder like, well, what is, what's the standard of this business? Do they not, do they not care about accidents? Well, let's let's hear some other opinions. Mark, thank you very much. Mark, do you have anything else for us? Well, I was just going to say, you know, what if somebody had their

car scratched on the side of both sides of the car as you be painted they wouldn't consider that an accident but yet that definitely affects the value of the car sure but if they're in a front-end collision where the airbags go off they're going to probably say something about that but you know when you have somebody that had um you know scratches like that the average person isn't going to consider that um collision damage and they're apt not to report that and that probably affects to value the car as much as an accident. Thanks for taking my call. Have a nice day.

Thank you, Mark. It's always great hearing from you, Mark. You know, some people, you know, might feel like they're finally sticking it to the dealer. I mean, some people might feel justified, and ethically they are getting, making things even karma is being achieved when they, when they, that's what we're going to find out. We're going to get some more calls and find out how our listening audience feels. Absolutely. And I'm going to reiterate the $50 for the first two new.

lady callers and I just would love to know your interaction with whether you leased a car, whether you bought a car. If you did it from the internet or you just walked into the dealership unfortunately and found it, excuse me, there were new cars. So how do you feel about all that? And your opinion is very important, ladies. So give me a call. And that's 877-960-99- And don't forget that text number, 772-497-6530. Rick has something important to say. On the question of cars, Negan 1 is asking, I have a question. Does Earl think the used car market bubble will burst soon?

Actually, the used cars are a great question. The used car market bubble has burst. It's just, burst is the wrong word. There's a slow leak. And prices are coming down slowly. I mean, very slowly. We watch it closely. And I'm speaking largely from this region that we're in the southeast region.

There are pockets of all over the country of different economies and so on and so forth. But I really think that we're seeing wholesale prices come down, and that generally reflects retail prices. But not a lot. Use cars are still way over price. Okay. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget that Earl, he has. He wrote a column, a blog, quite some time ago about the Florida law and these Florida car dealers breaking the law.

And that website that I used to repeat, I'll remind you all again, that you can go to www. Florida law protecting carbuyers.com. you know if your voice is not heard if you don't you know make it heard nothing's going to change in this auto industry that we're all involved in and working in so there's more information for you please give us a call at 877 960 9960 and you can also text us at 772-4976530 we have no more calls to do you have some texts for us Yeah, we have Amory as a text. I was waiting for us when we got in. Amory says, good morning. Jalapnik reports that Toyota will be bringing back the Toyota Crown to the United States for 2023. I'm familiar with Camry's, Corollos, and even the Cresida, but I've never heard of the Crown.

One, what is the Toyota Crown? And two, how does it differ from a Camry? Toyota Crown was a luxury, is a luxury car. It's a luxury car. It's a flagship car of Toyota. They were too young to know what a crown. Probably. But it's sold in Japan.

And as a matter of fact, the only thing I knew about it before was it was kind of like a boxy old luxury car. And it was only sold in Japan. Oh, I said it was sold here. We had crowns here way, way long time ago. That's the reason I said, Anne-Marie was too young. Oh, okay. But they're currently one of the top luxury cars in Japan. And anyway, it's not much like a camera.

It's more like an Avalon or more like an L.A. less 500. One of our service advisors has sent me in Earl an email with a whole bunch of information on it and we'll study that later. But it's coming and it's I saw a picture of it and it's a really nice

looking car. Yeah, and the crown has returned. Anne Marie, after decades, decades. The return of the crown. There you go. Sounds like Game of Thrones or something. I'm going to straighten my crown.

Hold on a second. Anne Marie, honestly, I mean, I think you read my mind, or maybe you're in the house looking at my notes. Anyway, I found this article very interesting in the automotive news yesterday, and the Crown has been sold, like I said, for decades in Japan, and it was certainly never recognized here. Well, in fact, it premiered yesterday, and it was built and it was sold. Everything was Japan.

but if you know anything about the Avalon you can't get the Avalon anymore has been discontinued hence the crown has taken its place but the crown aesthetically does look a whole lot different Rick

there's actually going to be up to five different models of the crown we're talking too much about Toyota's folks I mean it's a hybrid but also available in all wheel drive yeah yeah okay all right what else we got okay we're going to go is are you finished with

Emory? Okay, we're going to go back to the phones and we're going to talk to Warren, who gives us a call from New Jersey. Welcome back, Warren. Good morning. Welcome back. Thank you. How are you guys? Well, thank you. I just wanted to the comment, Earl, a situation happened to me exactly about what you should tell

somebody buying your car. Last year when we had the flood up here, my car didn't get damaged that much and the neighbor said to me, I'm very interested in buying your car. car. So it's a four tourists at 175,000 miles. But the fan had broke on it, and I had to go fix it, which was about five, six hundred dollars. The first thing I told them was the fan is broken on the car, and you're going to have to fix that. Because in good conscience, I didn't want somebody taking a car and getting stuck on the highway with a kid or something, and the car overheated to make a few dollars more. I wouldn't do that. Especially your neighbor. Yeah, and not only that, I mean, I said, another thing, the car's been ding, bang.

I mean, you've got more dings and bangs, you know, all over the place. Now, he's going to go to the body of the car, as far as I'm concerned, I'm not going to mention it. And, you know, if he asked me, I mean, it's in pretty good shape. And once I six the, you know, the fan, the air conditioner, anything worked. But I just feel it's a safety issue. I think in good conscience, you really, really have to mention it. because how could you live with yourself if the guy drove off with it? Good point.

And then the next year, he got stuck in the middle of someplace, and then he got a kid or no car overheats. I agree with you 100%. Yeah, that's, I agree, Warren. Warren, didn't you give us a call? It was quite some time ago when you were talking to us about so many of the cars around you were subjected to this flood, but you were parked on a hill and your car didn't get affected? Yes, yes, yes.

okay I recall that's why the neighbor wanted the car because I was on the hill and I was able to avoid that and it was in the middle of the car shortage and the reason why I hadn't fixed the fan at that time I was thinking about buying a new one but of course when I found out the new cars or used ones didn't exist it just you know I paid the piper and I paid whatever it was to fix the fan and I still got the car and uh but I just thought I wanted a comment and I think you know in conscious if it's a safety issue like an airbag or something like I said, I don't know how anybody could do that. It's probably a dealer or an individual or something like that. On the other hand, like I said, it is buyer beware. The guy wants to take the car, I take it to a mechanic, you drive it, you know,

and tells me, you know, three months later, you know, the heated seat didn't work. Well, you know, then I'm not going to lose sleep about it. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we go on this show a lot and we really beat up dealers and talk about how unethical dishonest they are and misrepresenting what they're selling. is actually even scarier to buy a car from a private party.

And so I think we're, you know, I'm not, I'm not condoning what the dealers do. They're professionals. They have licenses. They have rules and regulations. They should abide by. But from a practical standpoint, you're still better off dealing with a dealer, an honest dealer, or someone you can at least hold accountable, even if he's not honest. But if you buy from a private individual on the Internet, you're really asking for trouble.

And a lot of the people that sell your cars on the Internet are not as honest as the people that you're listening to calling the show. Ethics and a good night's sleep and feeling responsible for the safety of the buyer. A lot of that doesn't exist and a lot of private sellers. So it's a rough, tough world out there. Absolutely. You're better off to go with the professional solar cars. I have an acquaintance who wanted to buy a vet, a used one. and he found he went online all over the place and he's up here in jersey he finally found

somebody at all places in seattle he was ready to fly out there and everything then he came proof to the title the title was all screwed up the guy was divorced and found out you know it was a whole mess i don't remember what it was and of course he ended up not buying the car but like you said when you buy from a private person it's all sorts of crazy things to get involved in it that you may not be aware of so you know sometimes it's worth the extra money to go to the dealer you know you're not going to have any problems get the title and you're on your way yeah today that's very true you know but uh i can definitely give you my opinion of back in the 60s or the 70s i was looking for a private person to purchase a vehicle from and i felt perfectly comfortable

knowing that i got a car that was 100 percent and i didn't have to question anything about it Rick? Yeah, and just the one last thing. Sometimes, you know, people go to the dealers or something, and I don't go to a dealer to get my car fix at this point. But when my father was alive, he gave his Ford Focus to my daughter who was going to commute to law school. And he said to me, and I had a driver from Florida and New Jersey.

He said to me, take it to the dealer, and I want to look at it. And I said, that's a lot of money. I don't care. It's a safety issue to me. And I don't care what a cost to fix up the car. Let them do it. They got the parts. They got this.

He's, I'll sleep at night and I know when you're driving up to Jersey with it. My granddad's going to have the car, and I'd rather have the deal to do it than some mechanics. So if I pay a few dollars more, I could care less. So sometimes, you know, you just, sometimes it's just a safety or, you know, whatever. It's an investment. I'm just, you know, like, so I'll never forget this. He says, what do I care? He says, I, I, but of course he's $500 more, or course he's $500 more, knowing full well that she has to drive the car in the debt of winter up here.

If you had about a 45-minute drive to go to school, and he said, you know, once with it comes, you know, then you want to make sure the tires are good, this is good, that's good, so he says it's worth it to me. Good grandfather. He's a good grandfather. It's an investment. It's a safety issue. It's everything, and it is worth it. Thank you very much, Warren. Great call. Thank you. Bye-bye. Warren, give us a call again. We love hearing from you. We love talking to you. Okay, thank you very much.

From New Jersey. Okay. Thank you. From Jersey, gosh. Yes. I can relate to that. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com.

We're going to go to John, who also is a regular caller from Palm City. Good morning, John. Welcome. Good morning to everyone. I have two questions, two problems, actually. One I want to ask Rick, have recently, have you had any car towed in, mainly an SUV that has four flat tires? Did you run across that recently? No, not recently.

Okay, what's going on is throughout the whole country, especially on SUV, the environmentalists are picking on SUVs and they're knifing the tires, all four tires, because they're claiming that the SUV is bad for our environment and using too much gas. So it's a problem. You've probably seen it. It's even on the local news. And I hope that doesn't continue or get worse because basically there's not much we can do about it. You know, I read that, John, and I just couldn't believe it. I know I read it and heard about it, but I just couldn't believe it.

That seems like such a well-thought-out plan. And then speaking about Manhattan, that's the second thing that I want to talk about. De Blasio, before he retired at mayor, he allocated 100 spots, parking spots, for the electric charge EV charging stations, and some of them are in the process. Con Edison, the local utility, is getting the revenue from them and plans to build them. But what's happening, and it's going to happen in here, it's going to happen everywhere, is people are starting to use them as parking spots, because as everybody knows, you're sort of on the news this week. They just raised

the parking fees in West Palm Beach. A lot of the meters that used to expire at 7 o'clock at night, they're continuing to go through the whole 24 hours, and people are getting a little smart about the charging stations, so they're going to need a policeman

or security or meter readers or something to stop this from going on, because they're going to tend to more and more use these EV stations at parking, especially in the bigger cities. And then I want to tell you something else. They're really too slow to build these EV stations.

I pass in Martin County, a Wawa station, and all of the spots are always taken. Their Tesla charging. They're always taken, which means that there's not enough of them. And in 2021, the government allocated $7.5 million to the states to build these fast charging stations, and their goal was to have, in the federal, law, one charging station every 50 miles off interstates. I don't see that going on so far.

And I don't, you know, it's an old saying they get behind the times and here the cars are there and then there won't be enough parking, you know, spots to charge the cars. But I definitely see that happen. You mean solving, John, that the federal government has done something stupid? I can't believe that. Yes, yes. That was actually allocated by the government under Biden administration to have every 50 miles off the interstate to have these charging stations. But it doesn't seem like much of movement is going on already, and it's a problem. Well, that's why Tesla is leading the EV sales by a landslide.

That's why all of their models are in the top ten. and that's because they had the foresight to build their own charging stations nationwide. Now, you said the Tesla station, there are people in line there. I call that a good problem. There's nobody in the charging stations of the non-Tesla chargers, and that's the reason people are using them for parking spaces because nobody uses them. But, yeah, the federal government is useless to a large extent

when it comes to things like this. They have no foresight, no vision. and they don't understand reality. And I'm not talking about Biden or Trump or anybody else. I'm talking about the whole damn government. Whether you're talking local, state, or federal, they're just inefficient. I mean, the best government in the world, I mean, we're very fortunate to be in America. It's the best one.

But they sure are inefficient. Thanks for sharing that with us, John. I just want to say the proof of the pudding is they've already started in Texas that you can only charge your electric vehicle at certain times. because they've got the power grid problem. Oh, boy. It's summertime, and, you know, extra electric is being used. So, again, it's everything governed behind and planning.

Yeah. It's just like done. It's still in the stores. There's still a shortage of baby formula. How long is it going to take them to get caught up on that? Hard to believe. Terrible. Yes.

Well, let's hang in there. We know the EVs is coming, but let's plan that they'll be able to handle. all of them. Absolutely. Good point, isn't it? John, thanks so much. We love hearing from you. Thank you, guys.

Have a great weekend. 877-960 and you can text us at 772-497-3930. Rick, your point? Yeah, just a quick thought on that tire thing. Yeah. It seems like such a well-thought-out plan to destroy brand-new tires, which will then wind up in a landfill because they'll have to replace the tire. And so we're adding more tires to the garbage, which we have an issue with already.

Doesn't make sense. Really good for the environment. Well, thought out plan there, folks. Let me jump on that SUV hating thing for a minute. This really, it's an automotive news this week. Germany just passed a law that increases fines on SUVs. So if you're running red light in an SUV or if you're in an accident with SUV that's fault, you're fined. call, your fines about twice as much as it is with another car.

Reason being that an SUV is, well, it's a gas guzzler. It's big. If you hit another car with it, it causes more damage, then you hit it with a smaller car. So they're penalizing people who buy, I wonder what a Hummer cost in Germany if you wreck a Hummer. But I thought that was interesting. I've never heard of a country actually discriminating between your, make, model, cars as to how much the fine would be. Point of interest. Interesting.

Very. We're going to go back to the phones. We'll talk to Marty from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How are you? Well, thank you. I have a question for either Earl or Stu.

Every so often I go on the internet just to look up the used car value, just using it as a trade-in. And I see the value is going down, whether it's Carvana, whether it's Carvana, whether it's it's car mix, whether it's anything. However, on the new car side of it, nobody's discounting their cars. So right now it looks like if you're trading in a car, it looks like you're going to be paying even more money than you were two months ago.

That's true. I mean, that's absolutely, you're absolutely right. I mean, these cars are becoming easier to come by. I mean, the prices are still high, but like I said today, there is a leak in the balloon, and you can hear a squeak. I always had a balloon when you said that I was going to make the noise for you. And so it's, yeah, it's coming down.

So that big advantage, that offset the high new car prices is it's not as big as it was. It's still, you know, it's still better than it was ever before, but it's not as good as it was. Yeah, I mean, the discount on a new car, which you used to be 3, 4,000, which they're not giving you anymore. And if not, charging over sticker, you're losing even more money. Well, Marty, you know, I'm glad you mentioned that because it reinforces something we've talked about on the show for a few weeks, and that is taking advantage of the seller's market. I know the use car values are coming down a little, but it's still a seller's market, and the prices are still very, very high. And I wrote a blog a few weeks ago, I think I was, I think I entitled to The Greater Fool Theory. I talked about the greater fool.

The greater fool means it's a Wall Street term. And when you're a seller and you buy something at too high price, you can usually find somebody that'll pay an even higher price, and that person is the greater fool. And it's kind of tongue-in-cheek, little facetious, but very sophisticated Wall Street traders use that. You should use it in all folks that are trading a car and are selling a car. And I had a personal experience, I'll share with you, and I don't know, Stu knows about this, but Nancy does.

A friend of ours, father, had to sell a car, a Highlander, and she called me up and said, you know, can you get us a good price? So I checked with our wholesale person at our dealership, and he checked around at some sources. We said, Chop the car, Carvana and all the other sources out there. and get the highest price for our friend, and we did. And then the friend called me back and said, thanks for everything you did. But we took the car to CarMax, and they paid us $26,000 for the car. Well, the highest we offered, I think, was $25,000.

So I was a little bit unhappy with that, and I investigated it, and come to find out that when we had looked at her car, we found out that there was actually some mold from dampness in the roof and there was also an accident, a minor accident that I hadn't been reported, but it was still an accident. And so we did not mention that to CarMax, and neither did apparently the person that brought it in there to sell it, and they paid the full 26,000. Neither that where CarMax didn't care, or they care. They just said it was still worth it. My point is greater fool theory. I'm a fool because we didn't pay enough money for my friend's car.

And CarMax got the car. They were the greater fool, but I still feel the responsibility. So I'm a professional. I'm a car dealer. If I can make a mistake on a car of $1,000 for a friend, you out there in Radio Land can also make a mistake. So shop until your shoes get worn off. That's figuratively quirk.

because you're going to be on the phone and call there's at least a half a dozen more than that actually sources to sell your car to you should shop as many as you can and in a day or two you could probably shop 15 of them and one of them out there will pay you considerably more than the others and that's the that's the message for the day and thank you marty for bringing that to my mind okay have a good day you too my friend thanks marty always great hearing from you You know, I want to remind the ladies how instrumental you have been in helping us here at Earl Stewart on cars. And we have increased the number of calls from women. And I want to thank you for that.

But I also want to remind you that we need to stay at this. We need to, this platform has to be built from concrete. And we need to hold on. And we all need to participate that leads me to this. invitation. First two new lady callers. Give us a call. Fifty dollars for the first two new lady callers. Share your experience or just say hello. 877-960-99-60 or give us a text at 772-497-6-5-30. Rick, do you have something for us? I do have one interesting question. Earl, have you seen the reports that BMW you is charging $18 a month to activate your heated seats in your car?

Yeah, almost all the manufacturers are doing something similar. That's more than Netflix. Even Toyota is doing it. This is a new thing, money-making opportunity for auto manufacturers. But it's like it's heated seats, which are flip a switch, the heater comes on. Yeah. But apparently they can, if you don't pay your subscription, they'll deactivate your heat. Seated seat.

Don't chill your butt. In a car that you bought and paid for. How about serious radio? I mean, it's a switch. You know, flip the switch. It doesn't cost them anything whether you listen to the radio or not. Right. But I can understand that because you're paying for a streaming service.

To keep your fanning warm, that's a service. But you bought and paid for a car. And you bought and paid for the heater and it's all there in your car. You bought and cold paid for the serious radio because it's good. They turn it on for six months to get you used to it. And when you're used to it, they turn it off. and say now you'll have to pay this much for the rest of your life. Well, Sirius cares if you don't use it, then they don't make money.

So if you buy a BMW secondhand, then you have to get a subscription to get, wow, that just, okay. More good news. We're going to go back to the phones, and I thank you, Chuck, for holding. Chuck's calling us from Oklahoma. Good morning, all. How's everyone this morning? Great. Welcome.

I bought used cars all my life. I heard you talk about used cars. My thing was, of course, I would scour all the newspapers and whatever I could find. And then I'd find the ones I liked. I'd call them, get the feedback on it, go to the house, talk to the people, see what kind of home they lived in. And then what I like to do is make sure they had records on everything. and one of my biggest thing was if I could ever find one owner if I knew it was one owner

had the car and I was talking to the guy I could get feedback immediately and I could read people and say okay this guy is a solid guy I could probably trust this car and then if they had the records from all the maintenance records I knew I'd hit the jackpot and then test drive it I never even took it to a mechanic. I mean, you know, take it to your mechanic. Of course, I used to work in a shop, so I was pretty good at being a mechanic myself. But that was part of my deal for getting a good-use car.

Well, that's kind of a seat-of-the-pants way to do it. It works. I think today you can do a lot of that digitally. But, yeah, I like that. Years ago, we had a sales manager. His name was Terry Chapin, and he worked for us at the dealership. anytime we had an appraisal, he would always inspect the car.

And if it was sloppy, if there was a spilled milk chick in the front seat, cigarette butts, you know, all the roaches, you'd be surprised what some cars look like when they come in. Now, chances are they would clean it up and wash it before they traded it in, but he'd look at the car before there was even any discussion of the trade-in. and if you had somebody that was really, you know, couldn't even keep their car neat and clean, you wonder what they did mechanically in terms of upkeep and maintenance. But, you know, I like that, seeing where the owner lived and talking to them.

And, you know, personality of an owner of anything is often reflected on what they own. That's a very good idea. Now, I had a friend just recently. His wife loves the Corvette, and so she went on the Internet and found, one in Illinois, and they have about five different cars, BMWs, so they, you know, he's got like a five-car garage, but he's a car guy and a motorcycle guy, and they just like that kind of stuff. So they jumped in our BNW and drove up to Illinois and picked up the new Corvette for 70,000, drove it back to Oklahoma.

Yeah. You know, the average distance people are driving now to buy a used car is over 400 miles. So a lot of people are doing just what you describe. That's an average, so that means people are driving 2,000 miles. Of course, people are driving next door. But the average distance is over 400 miles to buy a used car. Today, you know, putting in modern terms, two things that I always hammer, Carfax Report and an independent mechanic.

You do those two things, you can't get hurt too bad when you buy a car. Carfax and take it to your mechanic, not the mechanic. recommends not his mechanic certainly but the one that you that you that you hope you have one that you can trust and if you checks it out and you get a good clean CarMax Carfax report you're pretty safe right and you know we're talking about why do people buy the SUVs and the big vehicles I would I grew up in the 70s and back then when we had the gas crunch that was the whole thing everybody said oh oh we got to buy these

the Toyotas and all the Europeans were building a smaller vehicle, you know, fuel-efficient vehicles. So the big three automakers, they said, uh-oh, we're going to lose all our market share. We've got to start building. Well, of course, they were late to the game. Yeah. But eventually they put in all the smaller vehicles. You could still buy the big ones if you wanted them, but they knew they had to go in for

the fuel efficiency or they were going to lose their market share. Yeah. I wonder where it would have been, if it weren't for the Japanese, I wonder how long it would take them before they'd have figured out. Fuel economy was important. We'd probably be out of oil by now. Right. Well, but here's the funny part. Like, I live in the country, and everybody and their brother has a giant, the biggest pickup truck they could buy.

And not, I mean, a lot of them need it, sure. But then I lived in the city of Houston, and everybody there had a giant pickup truck, and nobody ever drove it ever. off the road. Right. It's a macho, you know, it's kind of a status symbol. The joke used to be, look at the pickup trucks on the road and tell me what percent of them have anything in the back. And most people don't have anything in the back of the pickup truck.

But yeah, you're right. It's become cool, cool to drive a big, loud, heavy pickup truck. The reason I never bought one is because I knew every one of my friends was going to call me up, want me to move them out of the apartment. Rick thinks he's cool driving around on that pickup truck. Yeah, he does. He thinks he's real cool, actually. It's real cool, yeah.

It's real cool how clean he keeps that truck. This looks brand new. Last week, I helped a buddy of mine move over 300 pounds of aluminum cans from his house to the recycle center. That's a lot of cans. I thought they were full of beer. Wow. Very good one.

I appreciated that. Earl, I did get a, I did get a, I did get a, My best used car was a Cadillac Grid, Midnight Blue with a Half Silver Top. Oh, boy. Wow. It was actually my wedding car. And the funny thing is, when I pulled up to that house, they had a couple of beautiful BMWs parked out front. So I thought, oh, these people are really high end. And sure enough, the guy's father was leaving the country and selling the Cadillac, and he actually owned a dealership.

but it was his mother's, I think it was his mother's car. Anyhow, that Cadillac was fantastic, and I just kept replacing parts brand new on it because I wanted to keep it, you know, because it was so nice. Anyhow, the worst part of the story is,

me and my friend were out to the golf course one Sunday morning, and the guy ran me off the road. Oh, my. And, believe it or not, luckily we both had seatbelts on, but we hit the barrels going off the highway they're up real high it was like NASCAR the car flew up in the air flew upside down and came down on the top oh my god you're lucky to be here and we walked out of there

were just scratches that was the end of the car huh what a story i'm never going to see this car again i didn't think i didn't think they were that exciting in oklahoma that sound like smoking in the band Oh, Houston, okay. Yeah, I'm 610 loose. Well, thanks for the call. You always make a great call, and you always got some great experiences. Thank you very much. Nice to hear from you, Chow.

Okay, folks, give us a call. Toll-free 877-960-99-60, and you can also text us at 772-49-6530. I have a question, another question for our audience, and that is in reference to whether your next car would be a gas only? Oh, my allergies, excuse me, gas only, or would it be a hybrid or an electric? Give us a call. Get some water. Well, we have some anonymous feedback I can get to unless we have callers holding. While I choke.

While you choke. Let's fill in some air time. Do you have any callers? Okay. Anonymous feedback says, I watch your report for Starling Buick of Stewart. I would never patronize a dealership that tries to screw a customer. But wait, who would buy a Buick anyway? Oh, that's mean. I don't think that many people do relative to the whole market. Next anonymous feedback says, boy, times have changed. I don't know if this is a shot at us or, but I'll just read it. This is boy, times have changed since you did the mystery shop of

Wallace Nissan. Just two years ago, we judged people by whether or not they were masks. Wallace Nissan lost big points to their lack of masks and the salesperson's Tim's handshake. I don't remember that one particularly, but yeah, I mean, a couple of years ago, I mean, that was a big deal. And, you know, it was a different situation. I mean, we're not wearing masks right now. Yeah, that's a very perceptive goal. It shows you how things change and you don't know what's coming next. Before that, it was a Takata Airbag. I mean, boy, you sold a car with the Takata Airbag recall. We just nailed you. And it was terrible. And now we don't even talk about it. There's probably just as many cars out there with defected Takata airbags as

there ever was. And we don't even talk about it. So everything is a matter of priority and what's going on in the world today. Exactly. Okay. It's like the headlines. The news about maybe two days you get it's it's everything and the next day it's a new news cycle yeah absolutely i'm going to interrupt stew to get back to the phones and we're going to talk to john from west palm beach good morning john good morning good morning and i called to answer your question uh our next car purchase is going to be another tesla um or or bad uh eve um um just do the experience with the one we have now. We completely love it.

And it may not only be a Tesla. It may be one of the other EVs. Wish Toyota would get out with their EV. Yeah. John, let me ask you a question. What is your driving style? Do you do a lot of long-distance driving? Do you do strictly local?

How many miles do you put on your vehicle in a year? We bought it in September. We've got 18,000 miles on. Now, we brought it brand new. And we have the standard version, not the extended miles or anything like that. Just went to Michigan. I'll probably be heading back up there again. And the whole trip from West Palm Beach to Houghton Lake, which is in the middle of the state, cost $70.

Wow. So that was driving. And, you know, you put your destination in, but that's not where you're going. driving some supercharger to supercharger. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, good point. And I think I called and already told you that. Yeah. But I drive about 30 miles a day because I work in West Palm, but, I mean, I live in West Palm, but work in Jupiter, Florida, and drive the car.

The, charge it every other day. And we'll be looking at another EV. And you feel, you feel, you feel kind of a. almost guilty sense of gratification and happiness when you drive by a gas station and see the $5 gallon gas, aren't you? I mean, you know, I didn't, paying high prices for gas is not fun, but you know what? I just dislike having to stop. I just like having to stop for gas, and I'm, you know, I drive an EV. I just like that. And I also, it was, to me, I'm six foot three and they put the LCD readout display for people that are five foot three I think

I has a stoop down to read it and then if the sun is in the wrong place it reflects off that I can't see how I get a receipt I can't see how many gallons I get I can't see the price and and then and then I'm waiting and then there's a guy that parks in front of me and he could pulled up and given me access to the pumps behind him but but so I just hated gas stations so now every time I go by I just smile but don't you don't you just think about me saying to you stay in the car or I'll pump the gas I love pumping the gas and when I get home when I get home I just plug into my car and I go I go in the house I go in the garage I play yeah I'm but I don't drive a lot that's the reason I ask you how much

you drove and you do quite a bit of driving so you're comfortable and as you say with Tesla one of the reasons they're the leader in electric vehicles by a mile is because they have the foresight to build a network of chargers all over the United States and they've got a lot of superchargers and for people who are not familiar with that a supercharger will charge your Tesla to 80 percent so it'll typically give you about 300 miles of range for in 20 minutes Now, I guess you could get in and out of a gas station in less than 20 minutes, depending on how busy they are, but that's not too long. You go in there, you get a Coke, you get some crackers, you stretch your legs, you go to the restroom.

20 minutes is not bad. So charging is not an issue for Tesla owners, but for everybody else, I was curious as to how big an issue it is. I think it still is for some. Earl, the reason why I say you don't look at the destination, the final destination, You're looking at the superchargers because you don't charge fully. What you're doing as you're driving, you're charging up to get to the next supercharger. Yeah, yeah. And then, you know, so your charging limits are like 10 to 15 minutes.

Good point, yeah. And then, you know, and it gives you enough charge to get to the next supercharger. What happened was sometimes if I'm not familiar with the, where I'm going, I just went ahead and charged it fully. And we happened to be fortunate when we bought our car. we have the European model where we can charge our battery up to 100% instead of the 80%. Oh, I didn't know that. That's great. I have to drop it down, otherwise it shortens the life of the battery. That's good to know. Right.

Now, John, could you repeat that again? What model did you say? A European. Well, yeah, we have the model three. Model three. we yeah but it's uh it was the european model uh and the and uh the chips and all that stuff so when they so when they brought it here when it came in um we we were one of those four we didn't have to wait when when we test drove the car on one of those half hour test drives we asked you know are there any cars for sale they said no you know you got to buy it through the computer

and that and then the young lady said wait a second and she remembered that there was a shipment of 300 Tesla's coming into the state. Some for Miami, some for Fort Laudan, some for West Palm Beach. And so she helped us get on the website and we bought the car right there. Wow, great. And I understand, I know your

story of your waiting period for your plat. Yeah. It's even worse now. So, Nancy wants one, but she's talking a longer wait than I had for my plan. Well, you know, that's a good problem for Elon Musk, right? He's cranking him out as fast

as they can, and he can't meet the demand. Actually, production's up to the United States, but in China, he got in a lot of trouble. Some of his gigafactories in China slowed way to way down. So, anyway. John, are you trying to achieve autonomy in your Tesla? No. No, I'm not.

No, I'm not. I like to drive. I mean my hands on the wheel. I like to drive. If I wanted to be a passenger, I'd let someone else drive. I see. Is that a yoke? No, I don't have the yoke, but I am looking at the, from Hanshow, the little adapter that goes,

behind the seat, the heads-up display that shows everything from the computer to it, so it puts it in front of you instead of having to look to the side. And one thing that, for the Tesla on us, you know, we've developed a little bubble in our steering wheel in the leather wrap. and they're fixing it for free. They already have the steering wheel in stock and they put it aside for us and that's one of the problems I've seen and, you know, it's a little thing,

but still, you know, it's a, you know, we paid a lot for the steering wheel with the car. Well, listen, thanks. It's always good to talk to a fellow Tesla enthusiast. And you're as excited about yours as I am mine and we're going to have to get on to our next caller because I don't allow us to talk too much about

Tesla's or Toyota's on the show because we're prejudiced. Thank you, John. Give us a call again, John. Very good. I'll call you when I get my Hummer EV. There you go. Oh, please. We'd love to hear from you.

Now you're talking. All right, thank you. Okay. Guys, what do you have for me? Okay. I got text. I got text. Jonathan and Wellington.

We're going to talk about Tesla for a second. The question for Earl, how much did it cost to set up your electric car charging station in your home? I think the charger I order, if it was $400 for the charger, and I don't know what you paid the electrician to put it in. It was like $1,400 total. For the installation. That seems about average, I think.

It's close what I paid for mine for the installation. So it's going to cost you about $2,000 to set up a charging station. So that's another cost you've got to consider eventually that will, you know, amortize down. Well, you've got a two-car garage, and you've got two electric vehicles. You can use the same charging station. That's true. You'll fight over the plug. Yeah.

Well, you just have to switch sides of the garage. Nancy and I were having that discussion. A lot of competition. What if you don't have a garage? Well, then you'll have. Are they waterproof? Yeah. They are.

I got mine set up not in my garage. Mine's outside because I use my garage as a storage for hoarders. Oh, okay. Yeah, all the charging stations all over the country are not in garages. But they're waterproofed, yeah. Okay. We got a text from Bob. He says, I'd buy a hybrid due to being retired and not putting on much mileage.

Also, I believe that it would take years to recoup the additional price of an EV. I also believe it's going to be years from now to be able to drive an EV wherever I wanted to go. I think that's a great answer. I mean, if I weren't who I am, and I'm not a normal person, if I were a normal person, I would buy an EV. Rick is going nuts. Oh, okay. Trying to get you closer to the microphone. I'll just say, get closer to the microphone.

I'm not good on signaling me. So anyway, yeah, good answer. hybrid car is the best person for a normal driver. I'm abnormal. Nancy's shaking our hand. Very much so I got some anonymous feedback.

Do. This is a good one. I read this a couple of days ago. Earl, you made a reference to going to Hershey for a mystery shop and Saturday show. FYI, there are no new car dealerships in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Wow. We had a Chevy dealer, but

closed years ago. Hershey is a few hours drive east of Irwin and Earl. Mars makes M&Ms, not the Hershey Company. Oh, Hershey's. They make kisses. That mistake is akin to blasphemy here in Hershey. There is a Mars chocolate factory nearby in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Yeah, it's funny because Hershey does not allow Cardinals. I don't think it's because cardinals don't want to be in Hershey. There are certain communities. Now, Jupiter. Jupiter does not allow car dealers. You say, oh, you got a car dealer, yeah. Somehow Brayman got in there. And then with his BMW, and I think I won't speculate on how it happened. But I know, because I tried to build a car dealership in Jupiter, and I know a lot of other dealers that tried to build

car dealerships in Jupiter, and Jupiter doesn't like car dealers. Boca Raton has no car dealerships. They don't like car dealers. I mean, at some point, you was, the car dealers should realize, why don't people like me and I'm just saying her now we know uh I got a great folks out there were national now well your community does your community are you living in a community that does not allow cardioles Boka Jupiter and Hershey let's see how many let's see how long a list we can get what about Weston well what about Weston we're about a third away through the through the anonymous feedback here Weston take a take a look at a drive-through in in Weston they have I mean they got more

code enforcement down there They have Auto Nation in Weston is a big Toyota dealership down there. There is? Oh, yeah. So, and by the way, I don't think they said Hershey doesn't allow them. He says the last dealership, the Chevy. They didn't say that, but Boca Raton doesn't say that either. I'm not, I was talking about this.

He says the Chevy dealership closed a few years ago. Oh, okay. Okay, so back to the chocolate place. Fun fact, this is about the Morris Chocolate Factory in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. They just recently had someone fall into a vat of chocolate there. think about Augustus Glute from the Charlie and Chocolate Factory movie. I'm a native of Pennsylvania, and that dock fee seems to be standard. I wonder how long after he fell in, they discovered that.

How many bars are they sold before they discovered? I don't know. That's gross. I bought my last car in 2021, and the dock fee was $394, which is in line with what your mystery shop showed at the time. Yeah. So is that all our text? That's just the last one.

I got more if you want it. Yeah, let's keep your. doing. This is anonymous feedback. Scottie Kilmer has a YouTube video that talks about the hidden cost of electric vehicles. The last part of the video mentions that full self-driving mode for Tesla may be as much as $10,000. Not maybe as much, it is $10,000. They reduce the price. Okay. It may not be as much. Seems like there will be a lot of additional cost to operate in addition to the high cost of the vehicle. Yeah, and the Ural's talking about like additions, like subscriptions. Even Tesla has that. There's a full connectivity subscription that gives you access to

internet radio and some other stuff, and the full self-driving thing is an upgrade. Well, every time someone talks about a new vehicle, new technology, and the high cost, that's always the case. And so the answer is always volume, competition, and it will come down. So we're not saying that people can, everybody should buy EVs now because they are very, very expensive. But, you know, in 10 years, 15 years, that won't be the case. Rick, you're waving on me again. I was just looking online just like two minutes ago. A Tesla Model 3 is according to the online thing after savings, around $51,000, just the basic car. And it said for the full self-driving, it was an additional $12,000. So they may discount it from there, but online,

it's listing right now, $12,000 for the self-drive. Well, you know, that's almost academic because full self-driving is illegal. Yep. So even the limited amounts that they authorize, you still have to sit in the car with your hands on your wheel and your feet poised over the brake and accelerator. So that's full self-driving, but it's not really what we want. Full self-driving is what they have in San Francisco now. There's a small company out there that has a fleet of.

taxi cabs, they are full self-driving. That would be wonderful. And you hit your app, they pull up in front of you, and you hop in the backseat, there's nobody in the car, and it takes you wherever you want to go. That's full self-driving, but the fully autonomous are talking about here with Tesla's

and the rest of them for $10,000, $12,000 or less, it's not really full autonomy. Okay, we're going to get back to the phones. We're going to talk to Douglas from Wellington. Good morning. Good morning.

Welcome. Thank you so much. I'd like to hear some feedback that I recently had with the Costco Auto Program. Oh, good. And I know that Earl has recommended that, you know, very highly in the Florida Weekly columns that I've read off and on for several years and on the radio show. So I'm looking for, like, 2015 to a 2019. Toyota Corolla. Could be a

Corolla, could be a Civic, Kei Forte, Hyundai Alonters, and like that, but I'm really leaning towards the Corolla. So, I called Costco like Thursday, and we said

the closest possible dealer to you is Earl Stewart, Toyota. Wow. That's good. The Use Car Program is is different than the new car program, but certainly it's a safer way to buy a car,

so I appreciate that input. Sure. So anyway, and one of the reasons that I wanted a used car or a pre-owned car is, you know, maybe I'm old-fashioned in terms of technology, but I like to have a CD player. So anyway, I went to R. Stewart and I met with Mike

Magic Mike. Oh, yeah. Okay. This is a, you know, maybe two or three nights ago. He was very friendly, very knowledgeable. A little short guy, right? Yeah. But, you know,

he just didn't have the inventory. There was only a couple of cars and, you know, he was nice and everything was fine. But the inventory was So I called back, called to go to the next day, and said, you know, I had a good experience at O'O. Stewart, but they didn't have what I was looking for. So they said, okay, well, the next closest dealership to your zip code is Al Hendrickson, Fliota.

Oh, oh. This lady, just better. so um i i i contacted them yesterday and did a couple text messages and i rise around seven and my contact that i had texted with was was no longer was had already left it so i go in there and it's like there there there didn't seem to be any sort of um you know formal contact person nobody introduced themselves, but there was a guy who kind of seemed like a manager, and he looked at his computer, and he found a 2019 Toyota, Corolla, that I had actually found online earlier in the day, but I didn't say anything about it.

So he put me to one of his guys, we looked at it, it's nice, you know, took it for a little drive. Anyway, the bottom line is that the price was $20,800 and something. What got me is they threw in all these extra fees. They did not have a formal Costco work fee as supposedly there is, but I know there are sometimes a dealer's fee of $400 or $800 or whatever they charge, there were like two different deals for $800,900 each. There was a reconditioning fee of $1,7,160, $400, so I walked away. Douglas, let me, did you, at first you said you didn't tell them you were a Costco member.

Did you eventually tell them you were a Costco member? No, I did. I told them that up front. Oh, you did, okay, good, yeah. Yeah, what I was going to say, the Costco auto buying program, for you folks who don't know about it, it's a great program. It's even greater when we don't have a COVID epidemic and a huge shortage of supply and extremely high prices. The only thing, the best thing about the Costco auto program for new car is the requirement is that the car be sold to you, a Costco member, at a lower price than you sell that car to anyone else for. Now, with the used car program, Douglas, it's a little different.

We didn't used to be members of the used car program. The used car program required us to discount the car $1,000 from what we sell, from what we advertise the car for. Now, because we advertise our cars for the price we actually sell them for, we have a low price to begin with, and we didn't want to have to take $1,000 off on the use. car. Well, we finally, we did it anyway. So now with the used car prices so high, we're able to take $1,000 off and still make a profit. But there are two different types of

programs, and a dealer can be a member of one new car only or used car only, I think. And the thing it protects you from is exactly what Al Hendrickson violated, and you should report this to Costco. They're supposed to have a Costco member price sheet. And the that price sheet is supposed to fully disclose any extra charges and it's also supposed to have the actual price that you pay. So he didn't do that. He violated that. You should make a phone call if you've got the time, if you care, to Costco and say,

Al Henderson, Toyota is violating the rules of the Costco program because they added, what did you say, $1,700 in fees and never told me about it. Right. Yeah, I mean, they showed, you know, they had a worksheet. You know, it didn't formally say Costco. Right. And when I said, when I, you know, I said, okay, well, you know, I take this worksheet with me so I can go over it. They said, no, we don't let it go out of town.

Yeah, that's Al-Henrics. You know, he's the third or fourth largest Toyota dealer in the world. It sells a huge number of vehicles, and it's amazing when he gets. away with. But yeah, that's a direct violation. They should cancel him as a dealer or make him comply. And they're supposed to shop and compare. You know, they're supposed to go into their members, dealer members, and see if they are complying. So we haven't tested Costco in a long time. We probably should. We should be doing some mystery shops and maybe just testing the program again. It's a good company. I love Costco. But you really, a bad deal. A bad

can become a Costco member, unfortunately. And there's too many dealers out there for Costco to police all of them. So, buyer beware. Costco membership, way to go, but be very careful. Don't buy it without saying the Costco member price sheet. If they don't have

one, they're in violation of the rules. Yeah. And, you know, they were giving me that whole thing, oh, you know, I can knock off a couple of hundred bucks here. And I'm like, you know, you know, what will it, you know, what will it take for you to walk out the door tonight or something like that? Oh, yeah.

I was really surprised that, you know, supposedly Costco is a good program, so I think I'm certainly entitled to complain. Who should, yeah. And by the way, the Costco program is a, there's a subsidiary. Costco is not behind the program.

Costco calls it the Costco program, but there's a separate company they deal with. So you can still complain directly to Costco, but then they go to the company. You know, Stu and I have had a couple of meetings with the Costco group, and

you know, they're honest, but they're a little difficult to deal with, to be honest with you sometimes. They're car guys. Yeah. They are car guys. They are car guys. Yeah, yeah. So if you complain, they will enforce the rules. That's all I could tell you. I don't, I wish Costco themselves

we're administering the program, but there's a separate company they use, and that's another story. I've written a blog or two on that, I believe. Okay. Now, is each dealer required to offer the same Costco discount, or is that different? The Costco discount is only what the dealer is selling the car for. So if I have a new car and I sold that model, the least I ever sold it to anybody for was $20,000, I'd have to sell it to you for below 20,000. That's the rule. Costco does not tell you what to sell the car for. Costco says, sell our members a car below your lowest price, and they sign a contract to that agreement, and that's what they

have to do. So, you still want to, ideally, you would shop two or three Costco dealers because three Costco dealers would probably all have different prices, and you should take the lowest price between three Costco dealers. But if there's only one Costco dealer, you're supposed to be assured that that car you bought was never sold to anybody else for less money than you pay for you know for less money than you paid right and i know sometimes it's a little harder with the used car you know because you're not comparing apples to apples oranges to oranges yeah different i'm not crazy about the use car program but we're members uh we discount our car our use cars a thousand dollars off of what we advertise the car for

unfortunately we advertise the car for what we really sell it for while all the other dealers get to add that thousand and they get to add the thousand back with the dealer fee exactly they get their thousand back and then some so we don't do that all right let me ask you what what is a normal fee for registering tag tag and title like i'm not transferring i'm doing a new tag a new one uh it could be 250 to 400 all right so a new tag would be 400 250 to 400 What would be considered a reasonable dealer fee? They range so far. There are no reasonable deal.

The lowest one we've seen recently is like $400. We saw a CarMax was $390. CarMax is $3.99. And the highest we've seen is Al Hendrickson. Funny we should say that. The highest one is Al Ingridson, which is about $3,000. That might have changed, but we've seen $3,000. They have multiple dealer fees and it changed.

But at one time, we mystery shopped Al Hendrickson, and it was $3,000. The average in this area is probably around $1,000. Yeah. So a reasonable one, if you want a reasonable, it was less than that. See, they don't only have hidden fees, junk fees, dealer fees, but they also have addendum labels, which have worthless addendums, not which are in tires. So they have a plethora of ways to screw you and charge you, overcharge you for things that

cost them $100, they charge $1,000 and then fees, they pretend to be government fees, and they're just profit to the dealer. There's a lot of ways they add to the advertised price. Doug, thanks for a great call, and

we've got some callers here waiting, so please call again next week. Thank you. Thank you. I'm hearing from you, Doug. We're going to go to Steve has been holding in Boynton. Good morning, Steve. Good morning, everyone. Everybody, how's everybody doing? Oh, my man, the roadrunner.

Oh, there you go, the roadrunner. I'm all right. I got a question. How do you adjust the points with a push-button start car? How do you click it on and off? You've got to get this word link tools out, and the flux capacitor has to be set to negative 43 points. Trick question. Okay, my thing is I compare electric cars.

to CD, music on CDs. You know why? We started out with A tracks. Then we went to cassettes. Then we went to CDs. So now we go from gas cars to electric cars. But the funny thing is now, everybody wants to go back to vinyl records.

As a matter of fact, they opened up three or four new places to start making vinyl records again because people like the sound and the quality of the music. Right. Well, people ride horses, too. So, you know,

there's always going to be, combustion engines, there will always be horse and buggies. There'll be a big comeback in the trend like in like 40 years from now. Yeah. That's what I was old is new again. That's what I understand.

That's right. Hey, Steve, don't forget the back in the 40s. There were cars that had record players installed in the car. I'm sure that went. They actually worked pretty well. I had an 8-track playing in my 69 barracuda, but that got heisted out of there from the hidden place under the seat.

Somebody stole it out from under the seat with that. I know you like that story. How come last week it was so busy? I couldn't even get on. Because Josh was here. When Josh is on the show, the phones light up. Oh, okay. that was us everybody nice and healthy so far yeah yeah we are thank you thank you

i've been meeting a lot of stories on on the internet about the electric cars going on fire then i was reading about the fords they're telling you to keep them outside because the motor's going on fires and everything like that is half these stories true or not true yeah probably probably Gas can bunch of cars and have never caught on fire, though. Steve, what are your thoughts on what you just mentioned? Of course, the latest Tesla accident that killed two people. It was just unbelievable.

And it's under investigation, so nobody really knows. Okay, was the car driving itself? That's under investigation. That's a good question. Right. I mean, would you feel comfortable sitting in an airplane with no pilot and you're going on a trip it's going to happen it happens already it's going to happen well we're not well i'm not going to be flying what are you think

you don't know if the pilots are doing what do you think they're doing on the cockpit they're not flying they're playing cards they're having a party with the flight attendants they're having a party with flight attendants this isn't the 70s i got four flights coming up in august and september well steve what i said fluttered in that sometimes the mind is quicker than the computer sometimes. Yeah, exactly. So what do you think to... Yes, go ahead.

What do you think, Steve, of the Tesla autopilot chief who just quit because there's an investigation going on on the expanded safety rules? I guess you didn't want to be indicted. Yeah, we don't. We don't care.

You're a real comedian. Yeah, but that's the truth. Right, if you're under investigation, you get out of town. That's why you have a sock, draw. We're talking about two people killed in a fire crash and an electric vehicle. Meanwhile, there's 200 people that were killed in combustion engine fires that we don't even know about. Yesterday. Yeah, that's yesterday's news.

Doesn't even make the front page anymore, is it? Yeah, it's a... Like I said, sometimes when I drive, I'm looking at head five or six vehicles. Okay, I'm not looking at just... the vehicle in front of me. I'm looking ahead. What if you're behind the big truck, how are you looking ahead? So is Earl's Tesla, though. Earl's Tesla sees three, how many vehicles?

That's what the people were doing that got killed, and that Tesla, they were, they just slammed right into that parked truck. Right. Well, what happened to the morning? There goes, be, beep, beep, beep, when you're getting too close. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, back to the auto, the autopilot chief that quit.

When the feds get involved, I get out. I run for the hills You get the money And you cut out of town Yeah there you go You don't know what a sock drawer is right No That's where you hide the money

That nobody knows about In case you got to leave in a hurry There you go It's a New York day It's a New York thing It's always a pleasure to talk to you You're quite entertaining and informing Okay

Everybody have a safe and good weekend Thank you have a great weekend Okay 877-960 and you can text us at 772-4976530 I'm going to go over to Rick I think he's got some YouTube's yeah we've got several first one is from Casey says hey Stu Casey here am I still number two on the BZ 4X wait list let me check if so any idea of the person in first slot is still interested and when will you get a car thanks Casey Let me check.

And the B-Z4X for those folks that don't know is the new someday going to get here, Toyota, full electric car. Can I just do an informative thing on that subject? We talked this last week or a week before. If you're looking for a car and you want to order a car, be sure to get on the waiting list, even if there isn't a car being built and you don't have a VIN number, stay on top of it and track that car through the dealership. until you get a VIN number, and then you'll have a legal contract with the VIN. But stay on top of it.

It's worthwhile just going on an informal waiting list, even without the car VIN, because at least that gives you priority, some priority, if you have an honest dealer that will keep you where you're supposed to be. But that's what we're operating now. A lot of our orders are on waiting list because the car hasn't been built yet. Okay. Okay. I'm going to, Earl, I have a question for you.

to ask you earlier because someone else asked me what would you say the percentage of customers are that come into the dealership to purchase a vehicle compared to the internet right now today in this climate well a lot of them are coming in the vehicle isn't there but they come in physically to the dealership we have very few people that consummate that initiate and continue and consummate the entire purchase online it's a very small percentage it is yeah okay we're gonna go back we never answered the question but if you have a phone call we'll get back to it okay okay we're gonna go to Port St. Lucie where John is holding good morning John good morning long time listener and

one of your vigilantees it hasn't been called but to answer your question Nancy I'm I've always done my own work in my own cars and So I didn't even have hybrid on my radar. And one of the things that frustrated me in looking for a new car is nobody had one on the lot that I could drive. So you're almost asking a customer, not yourself, but all dealerships, to on good faith, buy something that they don't even have a chance to try out. That's true. And I was lucky enough to, we were snowbirds up until just recently. And up in Saginaw, Michigan, I was looking for a RAV-4.

And when we went and drove a RAV-4 up in Saginaw, Michigan, neither one of us, my wife or I really liked the car. And it was a surprise because I know it's a very, very popular car. But it was noisy. And so the salesperson up there said, well, let's try a hybrid rev for. And even at that, there was a lot of road noise. But when we got into Avenza, it was a different story. It was a lot quieter.

And so even though I didn't start out looking for a hybrid, I'm on your list to buy a Venza. Yeah. And it was all, and it was not a gas mileage thing. It was quietness. Yeah. A lot of these cars are good just because they're really good cars. We get hung up on labels. And the Prius, for example, the original hybrid, turned out to be probably, and I'm not saying this because I'm a Toyota dealer, but Prius turned out to be one of the most reliable cars ever built in terms of low maintenance costs, insurance costs, repair, ease of use. Everything. So people started to buy it because it's a hybrid and it was cool to be driving a Prius, be seen in a Prius and all that. All the Hollywood movie stars were driving them. And now people come in and we say, listen, about the most reliable car we sell is a Prius. So you're right. Hybrids have come of age and someone called in earlier in the show, said, should I buy a hybrid or an EV? I said the average person probably ought to buy a hybrid today. Yeah, you were talking earlier about what kind of usage, and we're in that transition period

because previous to coming down here full time, you know, we went back and forth to Michigan and we did a lot more driving up there. Now, down here, I suspect we are going to be very local and really not much in the way a long distance. I have a daughter in Jupiter, but, and, you know, three relatives right here in Port St. Lucy. So I doubt if we're going to be putting many more than 5,000, 6,000 miles on a car a year. Well, you've got a great car. You'll get a lot of good use of it, and as I say, that's just because it's a hybrid because it's a good, reliable car.

And a lot of hybrids out there are tested and check consumer reports. They'll tell you the same thing. Even if you check all cars, you'll find hybrids ranked at the top of the list. Yeah, I'm pretty, I'm very happy with my choice. just unhappy about having to wait like everybody else. Oh, man. Oh, it's terrible. Yeah, I've never seen anything like it. It is. Yeah, absolutely terrible.

And the problem is, I don't think it's ever going to totally go away. I think the car dealers are learning now how much money they can make when supply doesn't exceed demand for years. For years and years, it's almost the advent of the dealer system in the United States. the manufacturers cranked out cars as fast as they could crammed them down the dealer's throats, insisted they take more cars, pressured them

take more cars. They had too many cars, so they get on the they advertise the cars for less than they can sell them for because their competitions line. They have to be a big liar than the competition. And consequently car dealers were losing money in their new car departments.

If you broke even in your new car department five or ten years ago, you were doing great. All the money was made and used in service and the rest of it. So now the dealers are getting filthy rich because of the low supply high demand. I have a feeling that when the manufacturer comes back, the microchips and all that, everything's fine, you're going to find the manufacturers and the dealers in a silent agreement, secret silent agreement, that you're only going to have a few cars and we're only going to supply a few at a time and you keep those prices up and we'll keep our prices up and the consumers will

pay through the nose. I have a horrible feeling that might happen. Well, what's interesting is I've been around long enough to know what car selling was like in the 50s and 60s, at least in small town America. And it was. You had actual demonstrators that the salesmen had to take home and give to their customers. And if they liked it, then they came in and they ordered the color and interior that they wanted. And, you know, six weeks later, you got your car. That was the model back then. That's right.

Okay. So we're back to the past. Thank you so much. Pass is prologue. Isn't that the truth? Boy, I'll tell you, this microchip shortage has really wreaked havoc. And it's just amazing. Here we are.

Anyway, back to Stu. Let's see. Oh, that's right. We had a question. It was a YouTube question. Yep, that was from Casey asking about the BZ4X. Okay. I don't know.

If you're on the list, nobody changes positions on the list unless the customer asks to come off the list. So you're still in the same position you always were. I think that the first BZ4X is going to be allocated for some reason in my mind. I thought I saw it. So I actually checked our system here, and I didn't see it unless I just did something wrong. But so there's going to be one this year. Every dealer is going to get one. And that will go to the first person on the list.

And then probably in 2023, we'll get another one. So that should be yours. And if you buy it from the average dealer, you're going to pay thousands and thousands over a sticker. Right. And the good news is maybe, I mean, hopefully Earl's nightmare scenario doesn't come to fruition. And prices do come down. There's a chance that your 2024 BZ4X might be below MSRP. Well, I believe prices are going to go.

I know prices will come down. They just won't come down. Stu knows this because, you know, he's in the business. The average profit that a dealer made on a new car before the COVID issue was maybe $1,500 or $1,500. So now the average profit they're making is something like, what's to $8,000? Yes. So it's just huge compared.

I think it's going to come back up when we get to a, the normal comes back instead of an average profit of $1,500, they'd probably be making right around sticker price, which Apple does the same thing, right? You don't complain about paying sticker for a Mac or an Apple Watch or an iPhone. No, I finally got used to paying over $1,000 for a cell phone years ago. I don't complain anymore. Yeah, well, that's different story, but for something you buy it directly from Apple.

And one other one here is Richard is asking, Have you noticed a big increase in repossession rates? Oh, huge. Yeah, it is, yeah, yeah. Definitely. Absolutely, it's going to be bloody. Repossession, evictions, the list is long, unfortunately. Hey, Stu, how big is the, about how many people are on the list for the BZ4X?

Donovan's asking that one. Not too many. I honestly think there's only a handful, maybe four or five. It's an image car. It gets people to talk about. like we're talking about now, you come out with, it's like the Super we had, every car has an image car, Corvette, the Chevrolet, Sting, you know, Corvette. I mean, people talk about it, they don't buy it, they dream about it,

and they go into the dealership to look, to see what it looks like, they can't afford it, because the dealer's marketing it up $20,000, and they buy something else. So that's what the, that's what our electric car is. It's a image car, create interest, create talk, and nobody's going to be driving them. You'll probably never see one. Unless you go to California, and then you might see a couple. And it'll be being driven by a celebrity. It's right.

Absolutely. Be Larry David. Okay, where are we? I'm all caught up with incognito, or sorry, anonymous feedback, and text. I've got a, I'll open the automotive news here. There's the NHTSA National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Chief has announced that they're going to try to make the emergency braking feature. required on all cars and I hate the government to require anything but in this

case here I think it's good a lot of our cars have that emergency braking feature and it is it'll save your life you know the only problem with with these features a blindside recording the lane adherence a lot of these things you become so dependent on them that you rely on them and then if one of them fails, that's my nightmare, is if you start to rely on your backup camera, you start to rely on your, you know, there's a car coming behind you at Publix and you don't look, then you're dead meat. So, but I like this emergency breaking feature.

It is really cool. Oh, it's happened, it's worked for me before. Yeah. To answer those questions, there's three people on the BZ4 list right now. Three, three people. And the lucky person will get it. And number three, we'll get there sometime in mid-decade. You know, it's interesting what you said, you know, about safety features.

And with me driving the Avalon and driving the Tesla, it really is a change. And I'm referring to looking in the rear view mirror, checking out my side view mirrors, checking out my dash, and then things that are different on the Tesla. And it's just, you know, a little different. I have one more important thing before we get to the Mr. Shopping Report, and then we're talking about this in the car coming to the studio. We've talked before about car dealers that are cheating the manufacturers by saying they sold cars they didn't really sell

and saying they delivered cars they didn't really deliver. And all the dealers do this virtually, and all the manufacturers are victims because you get shipped a car as soon as the manufacturer thinks you sold it. So you trick the manufacturer into thinking you sold the car by reporting it sold and they ship you

another car. Well, when you have high demand, low supply and you're making $8,000 a car by cheating the manufacturer out of a car that should have gone somewhere else, you're stealing $8,000. So they're doing it. But the thing I didn't think about, and this was the editorial in this week's

automotive news, is the customer's getting cheated too. Because if you report a car sold, And the car doesn't actually get really sold and delivered for 30 days. When you buy that car, you got 30 days less factory warranty. If you have a 3-year, 36,000 mile warranty, you really only have a 35-month warranty because the car really got reported sold. And when you take it in for that warranty work, the manufacturer is going to say,

in a week under three years, they're going to say, I'm sorry, your car's out of warranty. So this is something that finally, because the public, started squawking about it. General Motors has cracked down on their dealers. Toyota theoretically cracked down on their dealers, and the question is they're still doing it. I mean, I guarantee you it's still happening. So advice to you, if you're taking delivery of a new car today, be sure you find out the date that car was reported sold. And then if you put your foot down then, you can get an adjustment in the warranty. And you need to check to see, because some of these cars might

have been reported sold two months ago. You lose two months of new car warranty. Interesting fact. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a mystery shopper report to get to. I know everyone's been waiting for it, and it's from CarMax in Royal Palm Beach.

You can be part of the voting process at 772-4976530. And you can also check out good dealer, bad dealers list. Or is that plural? Dealers? Good dealer, bad dealer list.

And don't forget to vote at 772-4976530. Now we're going to get to the mystery shopping report. Okay. As you said, CarMax, Royal Palm Beach. I've never been there. I've been to the one in Boynton, and CarMax, the largest seller of used cars in the world. we've been reporting on these crazy inflationary prices

we focus exclusively on new vehicles first of all it's more fun to go after those flashy new car dealers but the roots of the inventory crunch are found in new car production that's been cut away backed by some plain chain chaos most famously microchip and of course one of the big things with used cars is the fact that all lease cars are not as many of them available anymore because the lessees are whising up to the fact that

even if they don't want to extend the lease of that car, they should exercise their option to purchase it and show it to somebody else. So the dealers don't have these off-lease cars feeding their inventories and prices are going up and up, although we talked earlier on the show. They come off a little bit, a little bit of a shift in the downward of use car prices.

On this show far, we focus on trade values. The one aspect of this craziness is that actually benefits consumers, The flip side is the high prices used car payers are forced to pay. So at least you had a little bit of relief when you traded your car in. We advise people, be sure you maximize the price, shop it, go to several sources, and you can get a good price on the used car. Several months ago, we told the story of a man who ordered a new rap for from my toilet dealership. You waited a few months and paid MSRP for it when it finally came in.

We draw the line at the MSRP. Sounds like a lot of money to me, but it sure is. today. It's thousands of dollars cheaper than everybody else. He bought that from us and what rap for from SRP. Then he drove to Boynton Beach and sold it to Carmack's for about $4,000 more than he paid me for it. Now that's hard to believe, right? But the part we never talked about was a customer who would eventually buy that Rav4. Now that's Carmx bought it. They paid $4,000 over MSRP. How much did they charge the next person

that came into CarMax to buy the car? So their cost basis was MSRB. You know they marked it up several thousand. That's what's crazy. I've shown in the show before. If you're going to buy a used car, I almost sound silly saying this, but if you're going to buy used car,

find out what that car costs new today. There actually is happening today. You're seeing used cars, over greater than the new car. Because the whole market is topsy-turvy. It's crazy out there. CarMax's cost basis was, oh, okay. The same thing is happening all over the country.

It's a shame because buying a used car these days is the only viable option many people have. When new cars taking six months to a year to order, there's a little choice. And that's true. I mean, almost literally, we don't have any cars on our inventory, in our inventory. We're a large volume dealership.

We sell about 300 cars a month. And we have no cars. I mean, no new cars in the military. Everybody that buys a car from us virtually orders a car. If you go to a used car a lot, we have a used car a lot. We've got about 100 cars you can choose from. Cars are way price high, but at least there's 100 cars. And you don't have any new cars to choose from.

So that's the reason it's such a dilemma. We have new or used car. We shopped CarMax they are the world's largest retailers I said before and because they bought our customer Raffour, customers Raffour that we sold them an MSRP new and paid several thousand dollars

more for it. That's crazy. We sent Agent Lightning into CarMax and Royal Pond Beach and this is the first time for us we've only investigated Boynton Beach and Jensen Beach before the other two CarMaxes in this area. Speaking, the first person, as if I were Agent Lightning, I arrived at CarMax at 1230.

I entered the building, found my way to the front desk, where I was greeted by Scott. I knew this from his name tag, but he didn't properly introduce himself, but he did have a name tag. I love name tags. He asked how I was, and if I had an idea of what I was looking for.

I showed Scott their listing for a 2021 Toyota Ravre 4XLE premium on my phone and asked if it was available he said if it was on their website it was available and that sounds almost like a smart aleck remark but it's a very important remark a lot of car dealers are advertising cars on their website that they don't have

ghost cars sometimes new cars sometimes it's an accident because the manufacturer interferes, in our case, Toyota. And we have to explain that these cars that are incoming, but they're not here yet. So you always want to be sure that the car you come into a dealership for, be it new or used. If they say it's there, just verify it, because sometimes it's not.

In fact, a lot of times it's not. Scott pointed me in the direction of the Ravre for a lot, said it should be unlocked. I headed over to it and took my pictures. I'm Mr. Shopper, Agent Lightning, as you forgot. The price on the window sticker was $1,000 less than the online listing, $35,998. That's strange. I didn't include this later on.

It was explained that it had a regular price drop, and so when she saw it the day before, she had screenshot it, and then they'd lowered the price like dealers do. I was complimenting Carmack's when I said that was strange, because they're straight up. They're honest. They're not perfect. and at least in past times when we shopped them,

I'm not through this report, I might change my mind, but they're a straight up out of it. If I were going to buy a used car or send a friend to buy a used car, you could do a lot worse than CarMax. I headed back inside and found Scott. I said I would like to see the Althador price on the Raff War, but Scott now seemed very stressed and preoccupied,

aren't we all today? He apologized and said he was trying to finish up a couple of things. He asked me to wait for him by the front desk. As I waited for Scott, another employee approached, and asked if I had been helped. I said, I was waiting for Scott. He asked Scott had taken my name and number and entered it in the computer. I said he hadn't, so he sat down, gathered the info, put me into the system, and was finishing up when Scott found us. They had some conversation about appraisals.

Next thing I know, Scott was no longer my salesman. And the new guy was. By the way, Kermak does, like we do, they don't pay commissions to this. salespeople based on profits. They pay the salespeople based on the number of cars they sell. So they don't care how much the car costs. The number of cars is how they're commissioned. So Carback salesmen are a cut above the average salespeople. By the way, no one has introduced himself to me. That's just being sloppy. It's not being evil or conniving. Name tag is a good thing, but people sometimes don't wear name tags. Some people don't introduce them.

sales. That's just not good salesmanship. So I asked a new guy for his name. It was Blake. Blake asked me if I knew the stock number for the RAP4 I was looking at. I showed up a listing on my phone. Blake pulled up the vehicle on his computer banking and began to go over CarMax benefits, which included 90-day 4,000 mile warranty and a 30-day limited return reward. All warranties virtually are limited returns. So you have some crazy people that have There's a mileage, I think there's a mileage thing. And it's a return. I don't know if it's a money back.

It is a, yeah, it is a money back. It is money back. Then he pushed an extended warning on me, but did tell me, that was a very good question, Stu asked, because you really have to watch warranties. And when they say, we have a 30-day return guarantee, as Stu said, that could say, okay, well, you don't like that car. Take that one.

You said, well, I don't want that one. Well, I'm sorry. but that's the only one we got. Right, that one. But you had a return. Well, you returned it, right? You got to pay one. And then you, but now you've got to buy that one.

So, be careful. You've got to read the fine print and find out exactly what these warnings are and guarantees are. Then he pushed an extended warning on me, but did tell me it was optional. And he obviously said it were I could understand it because I declined. That's something you usually don't see. You find that warranty when you get home. look at your paperwork. You didn't even know you bought it. I asked for the price of 35,098 was negotiable. I told him I'd been shopping for a new one but couldn't wait to order one. I showed

them that MSRP for the new model new. It was almost $6,000 less than a used one. And that's quite a bit. So that's what we're just talking about. That's a lot. So it's craziness folks. Again, carbacks are they're honest and and they can they buy. inventory for what they have to pay and they they had to pay probably 3,000 over MSRP to buy that car and they marked up another 3,000 to sell it to me and now was 6,000 but that's what they have to do to stay in business and I don't hold them as responsible as I do new car dealers who sell way over MSRP because new car dealers have a source they have a manufacturer they're franchise they can get new cars at dealer costs. CarMax can't. They have to buy their new cars and they have to pay the dealer too much money. So there we are. History repeats itself. Don't buy a used car until you check the new car price. And then you might still want to buy it because the new car price is probably more outrageous than the used car price, but that's your decision. Blake was very nice, but his explanation was basically, it is what it is. And that's tragically the true.

truth today. He said prices were high because of the inventory shortages and nothing can be done about it. I asked him for a detailed breakdown of the price. Blake did some stuff on his computer and printed a complete buyer's order for me. You were the caller earlier, if you were listening to the show and Al Henderson, Toyota, he also had a print out, but he was not allowed to take it with him. You can't, you can take it. You can't take a picture of it and you can't memorize it. You can look at it. You look at it. Only for four seconds. That's all you can look at it. You have four seconds. That's all you can look at it. You have four seconds to gaze at it. Okay, the sale price was a posted 35-998. They had added a

$399. That's their dealer fee. We were asked earlier in the show what are the dealer fees in our area. This is the lowest I know of. $399 and there are dealers doing $2,000, $3,000. It's crazy. They call there as a processing fee. All dealers, call their fee, something else. Dealer fee has become a generic term like aspirin. So aspirin means it can be a bear, what are they, Bayer, Walgreens, CBS. Yeah, I mean, it's a generic term.

Or Kleenex for a tissue. CleanX, exactly, a tissue, yeah. So dealer fee is tissue or aspirin. It's got a thousand names. And they also have a $27 optional. All right, electronic filing fee. That's cute. don't know what that means but that that requires the person looking at the bars

order to go this is optional oh can you redo this without the $27 yeah how many people do that I don't know either that or I I don't know we'll have to check that up before adding sales tax and a legitimate government fee so Blake sympathized with extreme pricing encouraged me to reconsider order a new car I thanked it for my time and I'll repeat this CarMax again to say something positive on the wholesale end of the CarMax I shopped a car for a friend of mine, and I shop several sources, and I missed CarMax. CarMax paid my friend more money for the car than I would.

So I got accolades for CarMax. They can pay you a lot of money for your car, but they also pay you a little, too little for your car. CarMax has a very sophisticated inventory system, computerized, and they have an algorithm that tells them very accurately how badly they should need to buy that car. If they need to buy that car badly, they'll pay a whole lot of money for it. If they don't need the car, they'll pay a whole

little money for it, but always get a price from CarMax. My friend did, and got $1,000 more than I was going to pay him. So as embarrassing as that is, that is an accolade for CarMax. And now it's voting time. Okay. The first

one that's come in is from Jonathan in Wellington. It says CarMax and Royal Palm Beach sounds like mass confusion. Sale prices are too high. Dealer fee is unacceptable. Shop here at your own peril. But grade C, typical for these days, but not worth being taken advantage of.

And Mark just came in with a C as well. I'm going to go better than a C. I'm going to give them a B because the experience is one of trust. You go into CarMax and at least if you trust us, we're telling you to trust CarMax and you go in there and you don't, it's not the Wild West. And yeah, the prices are high, but that's not, that's not CarMax's fault. And also, Bob is just Texas with, he's, he's on my wave length, B for CarMax.

Okay, we got Kirk in West by God, Virginia. CarMax sales models is their sales model. Honesty of the model was superior. 399 processing fee equals junk. In this era, I would say a solid A minus. And I've got Mark Anderson, Mark from St. Louis, B. No games, no crazy fees, no pressure. Tom, with a solid B plus. Kyle, CarMax is very overpriced, but refreshingly honest and transparent.

B for the $3.99 dealer fee. Tim looks like a B to me. Brian, straightforward dealership, B. Eric Mings, that's a B. Didn't try to bait and switch up front and honest, and I can respect that. Mark Smith with a B Negan 1 C minus for CarMax

Negan's going tough on them but still a passing score and for me I'm going to say a B B and Martha on Facebook gives them a B huh interesting I too am going to give them a B Blake was very nice he said it is what it is

and Carmex I would go to CarMax It's a great place to go to And you feel You know You feel good about the place Because Because of their reputation

So I give them a B I'm going to give them an A I mean I just I mean they're the best In the best anywhere And we're great on the curve So they're not perfect I don't mean they're perfect

I just mean that I don't know another used car place you could get any better treatment and they've always They kind of wrote the book We copied them in some other things We you know One price

I mean they were one price before we were on used cars And their deal of fee is very low So I think they're a great outfit And they actually lost money In the first quarter of 2022 But their prices are No, they didn't lose money I'm sorry, they made money

But their sales were down So they're selling fewer cars and that is commensurate we're having to take too much. We're all selling fewer cars. I'm making more money. So I can't recommend anybody if you're buying a used car more than CarMax.

But I do recommend this. Don't buy a used car or a new car today if you can avoid it. We are, I'm predicting for the third time, I've been wrong each time. I'm predicting prices will be coming down at the end of the year. We'll let you know when we see it.

Yeah. So just stay tuned, but don't buy a car now. Don't buy a car now. Exactly. Ladies and gentlemen I can't say it enough Wait to purchase a vehicle Whether it's new

Whether it's used to hang on to that car that you have And play it safe for now This microchip shortage and inventory shortage We're not in a good place Thank you all for tuning in to Earl Stewart on cars We definitely appreciate you spending your morning with us We'll be right back here next week Same time 8 a.m.

Have a great weekend.