Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.08.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Bev Smith Kia

Episode Date: August 8, 2020

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

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

Well, good morning, everybody. If you're streaming us, I'm the guy with a mask on in the blue shirt. My name is Earl, and I am a recovering car dealer. You're listening to my recorded introduction, and it seems that was recorded. back before the pandemic. It's like a whole new world that we live in now and everything's changed. So I have to say that every now not to remind myself this isn't normal and maybe we'll be back to normal one day. I just hope that comes soon. But basically, we're here to help you avoid being taken advantage of when you buy or lease a car, very simply. I've been

in the business for 50 plus years. And I'm here with a team. of people in the studio that are truly experts on the automobile retail business and various specialties. Rick Kearney is our expert on electronics, computerization, mechanics of vehicles. I've got my son, Stu, who is our cybermaster. He's a general manager of our dealership, which I mentioned because a lot of people think that I'm doing this as a self-serving. For 17 years, I've been doing this show with Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and we started with a half an hour way way back then. But it is strictly consumer advocacy, is strictly to help you. And we're using our experience, vast experience here in this room,

having been there and done that in the retail car business. I mean, we fixed a lot of cars, and we've sold a lot of cars, we've leased a lot of cars, we've bought a lot of cars. I mean, think about it. And about 20 years ago or so, I started having second thoughts about my profession, my chosen profession, and I began to clean up my act. That's the reason I call myself a recovering car dealer. And I have the advantage of having been, I kid myself and kid others about me. I say I was evil back then.

I don't think I was really evil back then. I think I was just, I don't know what the word is, I was naive. I didn't. I said, everybody does it this way, and everybody advertised cars for less money than they will sell it to you for. Everybody tries to allow you to a little for your trade in. Everybody charges exorbitant interest rates when they finance cars as much as they can. And when a little old lady comes in and we try to sell them the car for, $5,000 over MSRP, that's okay because everybody does it and so I didn't think of myself as being a bad person

I don't know what happened I guess I do know what happens a long story part of it's in my book by the way confessions of recovering car dealer time for a commercial confessions of recovering car dealer this is something a handbook on how to buy or lease a car maintain a repair your car without being ripped off you read this book you don't even need to listen to the show it's a really good book 100% of the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Big Dog, Resort, and there's our... Big Dog. There's our Big Dog.

Anyway, that's what the show is. We are not trying to sell cars on this show. We don't even want to talk about our dealership. Selling dogs. We'll ask, you know, answer questions. People will call, I can't say I'm not going to answer that, but that's what the show is all about. So I'm going to go around the room here and just. just ask, I'll start out, I think I started with Rick and Dan C.B.4, I'll start out with

Stu. I'm on the spot. And he's on the spot. And he, you know, what Stu adds to the show is the fact that he's there all the time day to day. And he really sees currently what's going on. And he is also in charge of the most fascinating part of our show, the Mr. Shopping report. So, Stu, tell us a little bit. Well, what's interesting about being in the trenches day-to-day, so I have a similar role to you as well. So I get a lot of emails and calls from customers who felt they got ripped off at other car dealership. So I'm like, I'm experienced real-time day-to-day stuff in our dealership, and then I'm actually getting an influx of information from the consumers out there.

So I'm always learning about new twists and tricks to what car dealers do. and that often serves as inspiration to the mystery shopping targets that we choose every week. So, for example, somebody comes in and said, I went on this ad, I went there, everything changed. I'll look at that dealership in particular as a potential target. Sometimes I'll just find something in my search that'll lead me elsewhere, but it's a constant mental stimulation. There's never an end to the material for this show that's out there. I'm going to interrupt here because we have what we,

live for on the show. A female caller, a first-time female caller. And Nancy? Good morning, Debbie. Welcome to the show. Hi, good morning. Good morning. Just a quick question. Are there any models of Toyotas that come in a convertible? Not right now. That's a real good question, Debbie. I'm looking for the same thing. A lot of people are. Toyota, over the years, over the decades, Toyota's made a bunch of convertibles.

They had an old Selica convertible. They had an MR2 convertible. And they also had the Salara convertible, which is probably... And the Paseo, yeah. I would be surprised if there's other models out there that they cut the roof off. But solaric convertibles were the really popular ones. They were a two-door, kind of like a version of a Camry. And I stopped making them, I think, in 2006 or maybe a little bit sooner than that.

And they're in high demand. People want those cars. And they're hard to find. And unfortunately, Toyota isn't making any convertibles now, and there aren't any plans imminently for more convertibles. And I think a couple of weeks ago on the show, Nancy had a question, the same question. And Nancy made a very good point was you get a lot of problems, quality problems when you cut the roof off of a vehicle. And so there's creeks and groans, and I think there were a lot of service problems with it.

So that's why. But people still loved it because they look cool. And safety problems. We live in Florida. We like the sunshine. Yeah. Yeah, definitely, Debbie. I'll tell you what, every once in a while,

whenever I see a Salara convertible on the road, I just, I want to stop that person and make them an offer because I definitely miss the fact that, as Stu said, the Celica, the Salera. I mean, I loved my Celica convertible, and I certainly wish they would. would bring them back. Well, I just thought I asked.

Yes. If you get lucky, you might find one online and used one. What I found, Debbie, is a lot of people who had these cars baby them. And so when we do occasionally see one, either coming in for a trade-in or just a customer and service, they often have very low miles, and they've been babied and waxed and taken care of on the inside. So if you do find one, a lot of them are in pretty good shape. So that's the good news.

Yeah, they're worth their weight in gold. Don't forget to tell Debbie about what she won. Yeah, Debbie, you're a first-time caller. You want a convertible. Therefore, you have won yourself $50 if you stay on the line and give, you know, give Mike your contact information. I'll get that check out to you. Call again, Debbie.

We love female dollars. Yeah, spread the word, Debbie. I just love having these ladies to call in for the first time. us build this platform that is so much needed and the you know the the the auto industry used to be a boys club and uh i can definitely yeah i can definitely say that we've made some great strides and uh your voice must be heard and continue to be heard so thank you again i thank you very much have a wonderful day thanks deb okay sorry stee i'll catch you all over there and we were talking about uh yeah i was actually true the day-to-day guy that's on top

of what's going on i think about the radio show every week i i think about you know what kind of mystery shopping report we're going to do what kind of information that we we're going to bring to the to the people and i was just saying that there is a never-ending supply of material that comes in day after day week after week so um what i'm trying to say is uh we will never run out of ideas for mystery shopping report because the car business is just just fertile with scams, cons, good ideas, bad ideas. It's an easy job, I guess. If nothing else, they come up with ingenious new names for their hidden fees.

And I think the name of the day is what taxable fees. They're not called taxable fees. And they had electronic filing fees. But we keep looking, and now there's a COVID fee, and we're going to be looking for the COVID fee, found out that other businesses were charging COVID fees. So when you check into hotel now, in addition to all the other nonsense, charging you for your Wi-Fi and everything else, they have a COVID fee. And there's a restaurant in Miami charging 3% COVID fee because their expenses went up because of COVID, so now they're passing the COVID cost along to their customers. I guess it's probably it's tough to do for a restaurant

I was talking about that with Josh who is my fill-in host for my fill-in for the last couple of weeks if you were listening to the show and I guess you'd have to like a car dealer can change its price on the fly pretty easy I guess if you had a sushi restaurant

it'd be kind of tough to reprice your menu every time it's probably an easier as to throw that on there so I don't know but speaking of fees there's an anonymous this feedback that came in in the week and it addressed fees and um if i got time i'll read it says i'm from virginia and i found this on the poke county website and um but it turned it was actually these were florida fees i think anyway so it was a list of an increase in fees from polk county

florida and when i was looking through all they're all legitimate dmv fees but i didn't realize because i'm not a title clerk how detailed the breakdown at the dmv gets and one of the fees I don't know if you guys remember if you're listening to the mystery shopping report, I think it was a Napleton dealership. There was a fee called frivis. Remember that? F-R-I-V-S. We were making fun of it. Yeah, we're going, what's frivis?

Well, I saw it on this website at Polk County, and there's a frivis fee that used to be 50 cents, and now it's $1.25. I googled it. I can't find any reference to frivis. I still don't know. But the good news, it might be a legitimate fee, probably shouldn't have been itemized, you know, line itemed on a buyer's order, but it looks like there is a frivolous fee. Who knows what that means. You know, what they do sometimes the deal is very clever, is when they have little fees, like a battery fee, and it'll be $2 or $1. There are these little fees that Stu's alluding to, and typically car dealers are all retail businesses, absorb this as part of their overhead.

costs of doing business. But by adding them in the disclosure, if anyone gets their magnifying glass out and really looks at the disclosure, if you have enough legitimate fees in there, you can sock it to them with the electronic filing fee or the dock fee, and people just scam

over it because they see all these other fees. You're muddy in the water. Exactly. I'm looking at these fees, and I think there is another one that we saw on a mystery shop, and it was a retroreflection material charge. Remember we saw this reflector charge? That's on here, too. It's only it's $2.50. It's 50.

We better give these phone numbers. I think we have to be more digital in about that. Do you want to do it? Nancy, you want me to do it. Yeah, definitely, and then we'll get to Kristen. Our phone number is 877-960-99-60. You can definitely call us.

Our lines are open. Any question at all is a good question. Even your opinion. Would love that. We'd love some constructive criticism. Anything. 877-960-99-60. Or you can text us at 772-497-6530, and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. And Facebook and YouTube and Twitter, Facebook.com for slash Erlun Cars, YouTube, Erlon Cars, Twitter. I'm probably leaving something out, but it used to be pure telephone stuff.

And we prioritize the telephone calls, don't we, Nancy, because you've got the personality thing. You've got the dialogue going, and there's nothing like a good old-fashioned telephone calls. You have one-on-one. 877-960-99-60. That's 877-960-99-60. And callers we prioritize because we don't want you to have to hang on the line for a long time, especially if you're driving. and we also can get to the text later and the Facebook postings later and sometimes they accumulate but we get to most all of them before the show's over

but we all another reason and we only got three or four lines coming in the station and if we have too many calls come in that people get a busy signal yeah absolutely and as far as the texting is concerned you know as Stu has mentioned before sometimes we can't always get to them and he saves them from Lee last week and he'll mention them you know today on the show and by the way

welcome back Stu Josh did an amazing job was he as funny as I am funnier he has some girls out there want to know if he was single have you had that yet? Yeah usually when I leave the studio they're out by the front door and I hide

until they leave and I run out to my car yeah he was beating women off he really was they were they were trying to it they were trying they were asking they were texting me for the code to get in the front door you didn't you didn't have obviously didn't have his picture up on the on the website for us so that's that's probably right now rick has been very silent here and patiently sitting here you know before we get to rick excuse me we're going to go to christin and she's been on hold oh excuse me christian we are going to get to her call and she's calling from orlando good

morning, Kristen. Good morning. How are you guys doing today? Great. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I had a question about oil. Why synthetic would be better than conventional, and what would the interval change be for synthetic oil average for a vehicle? Great. Synthetic oil is better because it actually allows for tighter tolerances in the engines, so the engines can actually be built to last longer. It used to be 35, 40 years ago, an engine with 150, 200,000 miles was kind of on its last legs. Now, an engine with 200,000 miles is barely even hitting middle age. We see cars with 400,000, 500,000 miles on them nowadays.

Amazing. And synthetic oil is one of the reasons for it. however if your car was not actually designed for synthetic oil you still need to stick with the original manufacturers recommended maintenance schedule so if your car was intended to have your oil changed every 5,000 miles you still should change it every 5,000 miles switching to synthetic can still be a good idea though because it can help clean the engine out better to get the dirt out of the engine, and to help the heat transfer is actually better with synthetic oils. Okay.

And, Kristen, it's always a good idea to check your owner's manual and check on those recommendations, just like Rick said. Okay. I guess I was under the assumption that if you did synthetic oil, you had synthetic oil, that it gave you a little bit, like a few more 1,000 miles, but I guess that's not correct. Now, you still want to stick with what your manufacturer recommends, even though you'll see the commercials for, like, mobile, they'll say, oh, we have this magic oil that you only change it every 15,000 miles or every 20,000 miles. No, you don't want to do that because if something goes wrong, you're going to have a real hard time getting mobile to cover the cost of your engine versus having, say, Honda repair your engine under warranty. If you can show that you had your oil changed exactly on time as Honda recommends it,

they're more likely to stand behind you. I understand. Rick, why is it that there are times whenever that's extended when you have synthetic oil and they say, hey, you can go to 8,000 miles? What's the reason for that? Well, they're trying to sell their product. And if they can make their product sound better than the guy. next to them, you're going to buy their product.

Yeah. I'm always glad to, you know, refer to my owner's manual no matter what I do on my car. I feel pretty safe right there. It's marketing. Yeah. But the main one to stick with is what the manufacturer of your car says is the proper maintenance schedule. Stick with that. You can't go wrong. Well, Kristen, I hope that we answered your question. Do you have any other questions? No, thank you so much for your time. You're welcome.

And thank you for being, and congratulations for being a first-time caller. Thank you. You know, one of the things, I'm getting a lot of calls, Stu and I both get a lot of calls from just people, and they recognize the show or maybe the blog or something like that. I'm getting more and more calls about, why do I have to change my oil when I haven't been driving? A lot of people have curtailed their driving. And your car is sitting in the garage. You might have 2,000 miles on it, but it's been sitting there for six or eight months or maybe longer.

And why do I have to change more oil when I only could put 2,000 miles on it? That is probably, I get that all the time. And people don't want to go into car dealerships or repair garages now because of the COVID, and you don't want to be out there with your face mask on, being exposed to people. So people say, I just soon not have to change my oil, do I have to do it? As we talked earlier with a caller, you have to go by the owner's manual. Now, a lot of manufacturers and a lot of car dealers and a lot of service departments are being understanding about the fact that people don't want to come in.

And you should call and see, I know I'm supposed to be in. I know it's been a year since I changed more than all, but I've only put 3,000 miles on the car since my last world change. Do I need to come in now? The answer should be, no, you can wait a while, stretch it out a couple of months, and then change your oil. But, Rick, briefly explain why time deteriorates oil and not just mileage. Well, oil that's in the store is in a sealed container, and it's plugged down as sealed is protected from the atmosphere. Oil that's in your engine, however, has now been exposed to the atmosphere, and there is airflow through.

through the engine, even just when it's sitting still in your garage or on the street, that atmospheric airflow is actually allowing some small amounts of contaminants to get to the oil. Humidity, dust. Humidity, condensation, dirt particles, little bits like that are getting to that oil. And it tends to break down the efficiency of the oil, especially the water content, the condensation that builds up. It will actually, it doesn't technically mix with the oil.

but it will sit in the oil. And then when you start driving your car, it takes a long time for that water to actually boil off and burn away as steam. And, of course, that also causes issues inside the engine. So a car that's not sitting, that sits a whole lot, really it's not too good for the car itself, but that's why the oil becomes contaminated

is from being exposed to the atmosphere. And if you have anything about your car that you're concerned about in terms of your response, responsibility to maintain, so on and so forth, your warranty and other items that you're concerned about. Go on record with your car dealer or with your independent mechanic, whoever you're dealing with, and say, I feel uncomfortable about bringing my car in for service. I'd like to wait another couple of months. Is that okay? And then confirm with an email. I mean, you want to know, you want them to know, and the manufacturer to know that you were concerned about maintaining your car.

but this COVID thing is a whole different ballgame. This is, we all have to modify our behavior. Retailers, manufacturers, consumers. We've got to, you know, you're thinking about going into a place of business and contacting the COVID virus. You don't want that to happen. So oil changes suddenly seem unimportant. But go on record anyway, because this thing I'll be over with,

and someone's going to blame you if you just didn't change your oil for two years and never said anything about it. Yeah, that's a great point. You know, even before the pandemic, I can honestly say that there have been a lot of people who have thought that if they're, you know, their car sitting in the garage, they think that that's just great and it's not being used. Hey, my car's been in the garage and, you know, has very little mouths on it. And I haven't really, you know, exposed it to the elements to the pollution. But I'm afraid you're wrong because it needs maintained just like the human body. You've got to maintain your vehicle, everything from the oil that Rick talked about, to the tires, everything. So it's very important.

Anyway, we've got some great information here this morning, and we've got a great mystery shopping report. And I'm going to give you that number one more time, 877-960-99-60, and the text number is 772-49-6. 76530. Again, don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. Any text on the, oh yeah, they're coming in. We have text and anonymous feedback. I'll jump over to a text that came in early. It's from Dave and San Diego. He says, greetings from San Diego. Love the show. Even though it's very early at California time. No kidding. Question on unused cars. What is the holding cost or carrying costs per day to keep a used car in the lot? From what I've read, it ranges from $35 to $50 a day. So what is the sweet spot for how long a car dealer should keep the car on the lot before significantly lowering the price or sending it to auction? I ran into several Volvo dealers in my search that refused to lower the price on a used car

even after it had been on the lot in 100 days. And one dealer that had a car in the lot for seven months and still kept the price, the price on the car the same. And that's like I said, Dave and San Diego. You know, honestly, I don't measure it by per day cost. I could probably calculate it. I mean, right off the bat, as soon as a car dealer gets a used car, he's going to spend some money on it, so that's going to be part of the cost.

But over the time, he keeps it on the lot, before we talk about depreciation, there's a lot of expenses that occur with it. That's normal over that. Interest rates are so low today. A lot of car dealers don't borrow money to finance their use cars. Some do. But if they do, it's still a minimal cost. You have to wash the car occasionally.

You have to, you know, charge the battery. The main thing you should worry about when you're buying cars shopping and comparing the prices, even on the used car, even though it's more difficult to do. And the intelligent dealer, the savvy car dealers do lower their price on their cars, and they do have a time limit. If a car sat on a lot for six months and you can't sell it, there's a message there somewhere. Yeah, there's something wrong with that car. Either the car's price too high or is this a car people don't want to buy. You should take it to the auction. People don't like to take cars to the auction, car dealers, I should say,

because they lose money. And oftentimes the reason cars sit on dealer lots too long is he used car managers, afraid to admit he made a mistake. Oh, yeah. And also, because it'll be a, he'll take a hit to his paycheck when he sells that car. Exactly. But car dealer's got a blessing, you know, with the, ironically, with, you know, the tragedy of the coronavirus, the shortage of used cars, I think, was originally spurred by the shutdown of production of new cars, which trickled down to the used car market.

Prices have gone crazy on them. So a lot of dealers have seen a reprieve and their expense, their depreciation expense. That's a good question. Ask a dealer if you're shopping for a used car is, how long has that car been on the lot? And ask them to show it to you. Sometimes they don't want to admit it. Sometimes you can tell by looking at the stock number. but if a car sat on a used car a lot for three or four or five or six months or a year.

There's a reason for it. You don't want to buy that car. Certainly not at the asking price. I mean, they've had that asking price for a long time. Nobody else wanted to buy it. Why do you want to buy it? Well, Dave, quick question. Yeah, just the quick answer also is, like Earl alluded to this before,

dealers will have a car on the lot and they call them aging bucket, so they'll say the first 10 days or the first seven days, and they do incremental price decrease. increases over time. And the magic number is, and this is just a guideline, but a lot of car dealers are kind of sloppy in their management, they don't adhere to it, would be 90 days. Most dealers, that's kind of like the truism. At 90 days, it leaves your lot, it goes to an auction, and then you sell it for a profit or a loss no matter what. So I guess that would be the answer, but price comparisons with different dealers, as difficult as it is, is key. Okay. More text? Jessica and Sebring who I believe she texted us or she might have called us

on the last show I was on it says good morning it's Jessica from Sebring just wanted to say I really enjoy your show and I've learned so much about cars I'm a former car saleswoman so I just love the car talk and your show is a must listen for all consumers thanks for your commitment and thanks for being great

all of you thanks Jessica thank you very much Jessica from what I hear you were definitely They did very well as a salesperson. You've shared your expertise with me long before, well, women really thought about selling cars. Thank you. It was a rarity way back of the day, wasn't it? Yeah.

It was very rare when you were doing it. It's still rare. Yeah. We have a salesperson named Tana. She's a woman, and she's been working at our dealership since, I think, 1990. That's 30 years. And that's just crazy. So back then, when she started 1990, she was a unicorn.

He stood in the sea of a female car sales. Yeah, I'm sure that Jessica heard a lot of male-splaining, you know, these details because they assume that women just don't, well, they don't know anything about their car. They don't know anything about what's under the hood. They fail at negotiating, and my, oh, my, have things changed. changed. I got a great anonymous feedback here. It says the closing booth.

Be careful. A local car dealership set the phone so they could listen in on man and wife private conversations. If you are unguarded, you can unwittingly give away too much information to the benefit of the salesperson. And even though it's anonymous, he identified, Steve. And the reason I'm saying that's funny is I do think there's an old story that you have. I believe the statute of limitations is long expired. This is probably late 60s, early 70s. Spill it, Earl.

Well, everybody did that many, many years ago. And I say many, I'm talking 50 years ago. And more recent. And some probably still do it today. But think about it. The car business, you sell a car, it's had a little hassle. It's negotiation. So if you have a husband and wife, for example,

that come into a car dealership, and the car salesman does his duty, he'll start out with a very high price, knowing that there'll be a counteroffer, then you'll play the game talking to the sales manager. So there's always a discussion, and typically a private discussion between two people. It could be an advisor, a father, son, it could be a couple of, anybody, any two people buying a car, one's the advisor, once the buyer. So what better value of information to know what they're saying when they don't think they're being listening? to. So it was common practice back in the 50s and the 60s before that, and I think probably all the way up into the 80s and 90s, but it's still going on today, I promise you, somewhere.

There was a huge job from Palm City, hang on there, we'll be right with you. Let me finish this train of thought. And so back in the day, we did it at our Pontiac dealership. Didn't think anything of it. We didn't have hidden microphones, but we had intercom system, and we would listen to the conversations. All dealers did it. Finally, somebody stood up on their hind legs in Texas and said, this has got to stop, and they got the FBI involved. FBI came then and shut down a car dealership in Texas because of eavesdropping on customers, and then it became fairly scarce, but it still goes on today. What a great way to say, listen, the husband says to the wife, we're not going one penny over $22,500.

Now, what valuable information is that to the salesman, knowing exactly what their top price would be? And be very careful. When you're in a car dealership today, be careful when you're discussing things with your partner in the dealership because someone might be listening. Look at the phone. Usually there's a little display on the phone

that tells you if it's connected to a line. Yeah. Okay, we got John for Palm City holding. Good morning, John. Welcome to the show. Good morning to everyone. I want to discuss a big problem this year. It's targeting against certain vehicles being built.

The vehicle I'm talking about is mostly built by Ford, and it's the police car. Example, so far, 310 of them have been totally destroyed in New York City. The Ford employees, a large group of them, they sent a letter, a union-authorized letter, that Jim Hackett, who's the CEO of Ford, and in their letter, they're demanding that Ford stopped building all police department cars. Their reason is the cars are being used as accessories to PD brutality and oppression. Well, we all know how ridiculous that is. The answer from CEO Jim Hackett was the issue race has nothing to do with vehicles being destroyed.

driven. So I just want to mention a ridiculous situation like that. We don't want to get political on this station, but I just thought I'd mentioned Ford builds a beautiful automobile. For many years, the number one police car actually has been Ford and Chevolets, but Ford seems to be building the largest amount, and I think that's just ridiculous. That a letter like that should go out authorized by the union, which is so stupid because building these cars makes job for the union employees. So it just sounds absolutely insane, and I just want to brought up that issue. Well, thank you, John. On an interesting subject, Stu and I were surprised. Hackett, apparently the CEO of Ford is going to be leaving.

In October, new CEO Ford Motor Company, Jim Farley, James Farley, who Stu and I know personally going way, way back, to the days of Cyan. In fact, Nancy met Jim Parley. We were on a Cyan trip. I think it was in Seattle. I can't remember where it was. But all I can tell you is that he's a really, really amazing man. He went on to run Lexus after Cyan. He ran Lexus. The whole purpose of the Cyan thing was to try to sell cars the way cars should be sold by putting your lowest price on the car and without any games or negotiating. and surprise, hidden fees. He really had a great idea for Toyota. It never flew, and Cyan eventually went away. It was an inspiration.

It played a big role in your transformation and how we started transforming the ways we did about 20-something years ago. Exactly, yeah. So James Farley, if you're out there, congratulations, and we wish you the best. And I think it's a great move for Ford. Didn't mean to go off on a tangent like that, John,

but you mentioned the CEO Ford, and I think that's really good news for Ford. motor company. Well, I'm proud of his answer, that his answer said the issue race has nothing to do with the vehicles that are being driven. Exactly. That was a very good answer for him. And I want to say something else about New York City, too, because my youngest daughter lives there. It's not only a mess in a jungle, but it's affecting the car. Many of the car dealerships are not even open, or if they are, they're open just by special appointment. And some of these website, like Carvana, they will absolutely not deliver any automobile to Manhattan.

Really? I didn't know, that. Yes. You're absolutely right, John. And you can't blame them, really, because there's so much hassle, and there's so much checking points now. So they'll sell you the car, but you have to meet him in the outside suburbs. Yeah. My granddaughter, is in Manhattan. She just recently, her and her fiancé just bought a land rover, excuse me, a range rover. And, boy, I'll tell you what a complicated transaction that turned into. They drove out of Manhattan. I think they drove to Jersey to purchase the vehicle. And, oh, boy, have things changed in New York, Manhattan, the whole place.

That's what my daughter's friend had to do. It was bought through Carvana. delivery out on Long Island and Nassau County, so it created a problem because they had to take a train out there to pick up the car. So it gets complicated. But it's sad that's going on today. And like I said, I don't want to get political again. But then when they start chasing after police cars and destroying them, that's taxpayers' money. They were all self-insured in most municipalities. So it's not the insurance company. It's the taxpayer that's footing the bill definitely well you guys i look forward to the shopping report thank you john we always look

forward to hearing from you and some of the topics that you bring to the table give us a call toll free at 877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772-49760 and uh that mystery shopping report will be coming up the last half hour of the show, and we definitely look forward to you while voting on how you feel about the dealership that we shop this week. We are going to go to Marty, and he's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Hi, how are you? Well, thank you.

What can we do for you this morning? I brought my car in for service a couple weeks ago for the Toyota Care Service, and I know one of your, I guess you called your ads or whatever, says you do a free front end alignment check, and my question is, I know they didn't do it, so my question is, are they supposed to do it, or do you wait for a certain amount of miles, or I don't. I've been to other dealerships where, you know, they put those things on your wheels, and they do an actual check where you go through like a machine. Well, Marty, I'm glad you've reported that. If we told you we did a free front-in alignment check and didn't do it, I'd like to get to specific. So if you could call me later or you could call me directly any time,

I'd like to investigate that and see that the person responsible is coached on. that sort of thing. We do a free front-end alignment check because it is a computerized, a very simple check in just a couple of minutes. A lot of service departments charge for the front alignment check. You should really never have your front-in alignment done until you see that it was checked, and you can look at the measurements. So all the measurements that indicate whether or not you need to pay for the actual alignment are in the front-end alignment check. So that would be, if someone tries to charge you for a check, say no. And when they do check, I ask to see the printout of the alignment,

which would indicate, yes, I do need one, no, I don't need one. Now, should they have given me a printout? If you'd ask for it, what we typically do is we check for the alignment, and then if it requires an alignment, we'll advise a customer. we probably should advise the customer that we checked and you do not require an alignment. I'd say on the average, cars just coming into a service drive, probably one out of four needs in an alignment. Would that be about right?

Less. Maybe one out of 10? That's a little more like it. About 10% of all cars driving on Florida roads. You hit a curb, you hit a pothole, and you need an alignment. So it's something you should have checked every time you bring it in for service. but, as I said before, do not pay for the check. You have to pay for the alignment, but you don't have to pay for the check.

A long time ago, Marty, we were trying to check every single car because we actually learned that even brand new cars that came in directly from our distributor, basically brand new factory made cars, a significant percentage had their alignment was off. And so we were trying to make an effort to do that. Your car, you said you came in for Toyota Care, so your car is just pretty new. you're still under the toilet care period. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so if they did check it and they didn't say anything,

it probably wasn't checked. We've kind of pulled off checking every single car, especially the brand new ones. Rick can advise on that. We do it more. You know where the three bays are that the customer can see? Yeah. You know, right in front.

Right, they're not doing the... All I needed was the tire, you know, rotation and the basic thing. So I was watching because I was sitting outside with my mask on. Yeah, we don't have the alignment check. That's inside the inside of the shop where the alignment machine is. And, yeah, so a lot of times on those early maintenance, we're just trying to get them in and out as quickly as possible. Right, right, which I understand.

If you were requested. Because it does take time. If you'd requested it, we would have gotten it. Okay. All right, next time I've only got a. about 3,500 miles and six months on the car. So the next time when I'm in there for the first oil change, I'll ask you.

I'll ask you. Thank you, Marty. I appreciate the call. You know, everybody, if I were a civilian and I was driving a car and I was going to a car dealer, I'd always ask them to check my alignment for free. You know, one out of ten. It doesn't take too long to ruin a set of tires. I'm speaking from experience.

And sometimes you can have your car out of alignment and you don't feel the pull and you don't have a symptom per se but they can wear on the inside you don't even see the wear. So one day somebody put your car up on a lift and say, Mr. Stewart, we need to put a new set of tires on your car.

And I said, why? Because your car's been out of alignment. Well, here I am, you know, the shoemaker never getting my shoes checked and never getting my car checked. But if you're out there driving, ask them to check your alignment. I got a question for Rick.

So I know there's all different types of ways your tires, your wheels can be out of alignment. Is it possible, Rick, for them to give you, like, pigeon-toed, where they kind of both point the front tires together, like, and then you wouldn't, it would kind of negate the pole, and they would still wear the tires? Yes, that's called toe-in or toe-out. Okay. And you really wouldn't feel a symptom from it, but it can cause. Outside wear, yeah, okay. Mine is inside where I had no tread left on the inside of my tires, but. On the outside, they look fine.

And I was on a version of a blowout. Right. And this is a car dealer. This guy, you should know what you did. I was just going to say that, you know, and you ought to see the exterior. That's an inside joke, folks. I think we have a YouTube over there, don't we? We also have Marty still in the line, I think.

I just want to give you just another compliment. I've been to many. Toyota dealers when I buy a car, you definitely are the best. Well, thank your mind. And you're the easiest to work with, you know, everybody's in. I've been to some Toyota dealers. I have bought a car from somebody who is very tough to buy a car from, and they have the worst reviews in the world, but I've always got a good deal from them because I'm buying

a new car. I think most of their bad reviews came from. used cars. Interesting. And I don't, I don't want to give you their name, but I'm sure you know where they are because they're in Pappin'all. Okay, well, that's fine. And they, though, have always, you know, made a good deal.

But your dealership is a very fair, and they do a nice job. So I, and I love to, and I like the service people in there that are, you know, they're nice. Well, thank you, Marty. It's very kind of you. Yeah. Anytime I can help you, just give me a call. And please call the show again. I appreciate it. Marty, thanks for taking the time to, well, more or less, reinforce what's going on out there in the auto industry. We definitely appreciate what you just said.

So give us a call again, and we'll see you soon. Okay. Okay, have a nice day. You too. Have a great weekend. Give us a call, toll-free, at 877-9-60-99. 60 or you can text us. That's 772-497-6530. Keep those anonymous feedbacks coming in and the text. And we're all right here to answer your questions. And back on Marty's call before I forget, a lot of people, it's kind of like an old wives tale or an urban legend that when you buy a car from a particular car dealer, you need to bring it back to him for service. nothing could be further from the truth.

What you should do is shop for the best deal, the best price you can, and shop with at least three different car dealers, and buy it where you get the best price. And then you take it for service where you get the best service. I mean, a lot of times car dealers will have great service, but their prices are not too competitive. And sometimes they'll have great prices, but the service department's terrible.

You can also take your car, your new car, to an independent repair place to have the service done. You can't have warranty done there, but you can have service done there. You want to be sure that they're qualified. They have ASC qualified mechanics and that they do good work and that you keep the receipts of all the work and that you follow your owner's manual's recommendations. So armed with that, if you have a warranty issue,

you don't have to bring it into the dealer all the time. You know, you're pretty much independent as to where you choose your service, and where you buy your car. Yeah. Great point. Okay. I think we have a YouTube over. Well, on the earlier subject we had with a used car sitting on the lot for a long time, Fred Durham is asking, how about an aging brand new car on the lot?

Say it's been on the lot for six months, and can I get a really good price on it? Would it be safe to buy? Yes. You should be cautious because just like a used car, why has that new car been there? There are legitimate reasons why a new car can sit around too long. Somebody ordered too many white cars or too many blue cars, and you just, the dealer is not exercising good judgment when he orders his mix of models. Have a car been on the lot for a long time.

You're going to worry about square tires and oil change and the battery. The battery. I mean, I would always prefer, if I'm shopping, to order a relatively fresh car buy a relatively fresh car. But you're right, you can get a good price on a car that's been sitting there for a long time. Oftentimes, dealers will have a, they call it a flat commission. And if you sell a car that's been there for 90 days or six months or something like that, a salesman can make a handsome amount of money by selling that car. But that can work against you, too, because you might come in and want to buy this fresh car, and the salesman's getting a $500 bonus flat commission

to sell you that car that's been sitting there for a year. and persistent. Right. So there's a lot of manipulation goes on with customers. My advice to you is choose a Yermake model car. You want to buy the accessories and stick to it. And don't buy anything else that the salesperson tries to switch you to because there's usually an ulterior motive.

And it's always money. Buy the car that you came in to buy. If they don't have it, go where somebody does have it or let them get it for you. Absolutely. Hey, we're going to go out to Dallas. We're going to talk to Justin. Good morning, Justin. Welcome to the show.

Hello? Good morning. Welcome. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. I had a quick question. You know how like when you're buying a house, you could buy a house, you know, price per square foot? Well, is there an equivalent ratio when buying a used car with X amount of

mileage is it no one dollar per mile already driven and I'll hang up and listen thank you thank you Justin interesting question just I haven't I haven't had that question asked before and the answer is no there isn't a but I wonder a rule of thumb I wonder if we if it was if we analyzed it we'd certainly have enough data and I'm not volunteering to do this by the way but it would be interested to see if there was a correlation dollar wise I don't know there could Yeah, I think if anything, Rick brought a subject up earlier about the fact that today's cars can run three, four, or five hundred thousand miles. There was a time when a car hit 50,000 miles, maybe 30 or 40 years ago. At 50,000 miles, you couldn't even get the car financed. Banks didn't want to finance a car that had over 50,000 miles because they weren't reliable.

Today, the reliability and longevity of these cars is so great that I would, I recommend to people if they want to buy a used car, and they're going to keep it for a while, look for higher mileage cars, one that's got a good Carfax report, one that's been maintained, hopefully if you could get an original owner and really know the history of the car, if you can buy a car with 200,000 miles on it, you can get a great price because the prices sometimes are aimed at perception. And if you've got a car sitting here with 50,000 miles and another identical car sitting here with 200,000 miles, people are going to gravitate to the 50,000. But what if the 50,000 miles isn't really as good a car as a 200,000 miles?

A well-maintained 200,000-mile car is probably a better buy than the same year-make model, 50,000 that wasn't maintained properly. Somebody ragged on it. So shop around and get it checked out by a mechanic, check the car factory report, and you can get a real bargain in a high-milege car. And it's still worthwhile using that in your discussion with the dealer. if you go to like a source like auto trader or cars.com and you can list all the cars. Say you're looking for a 2015 Honda Accord. So you search that and you can sort it by mileage and you can start to see the correlation of prices. So if you see one that you like and the dealer's asking X amount of dollars for it,

with a little research, you can say, hey, listen, I've seen about a dozen of the same car out there with the same miles for considerably less. Or it gives you an idea to kind of have a conversation. There is a rule of thumb because the guidebooks, the blue books and the NADA book. You put it miles and it's going to calculate it. There's a correlation, Marty, to answer your question, there is a direct correlation between mileage and what the wholesale value is, which translates into retail, too. So I think you just brought up a great idea. But it's definitely model specific.

It wouldn't apply to all vehicles because, you know, a luxury car. But there's a mileage, and there's also a mileage adder if you have a, particularly low mileage car, there's an adder to value, but it's all perception, because how that car was maintained is not part of the Mannheim or the Blue Book, Kelly Blue Book, or the Black Book. It's not part of that. They don't know, and you need to do your own due diligence to find out and get a great buy. When you have extremely little miles, you can also throw out those books because you might have a car, let's say there's some algorithm on these sites that you plug in the miles and it's going to give you a deduction or an addition to the price. Let's say you had a 2001 Honda Civic and it had 4,000 miles, which is not unheard of in South Florida. You might have an older person who barely drove it. You put that number in the books. It's going to come up with a very low number, and I would say reject that because that's a one-of-a-kind car.

as long as it was well maintained that's, you know, forget about the books. Absolutely. I'm going to give a shout out to Jay. Give us a call back. Jay was calling us from West Palm Beach. Our number is 877-9-60

9960 and you can text us at 772-497-6530. Sorry to have had you on hold. I apologize to Jay. We got the Ackin and didn't know you were holding. and Nancy probably couldn't get our attention. I apologize.

Please call back. We want to prioritize phone calls. Yeah, absolutely. Jay, welcome back. Thank you for giving us a second chance. Oh, thanks, guys. All right, Earl, my question is I have a 2009 ES350. I have 130,000 miles on it.

I do the regular maintenance that I'm supposed to do. Yesterday, I took it in for an oil change, and they told me I needed to change the cabin air filter. They charged me $60 for it. Is that about a normal price to do that? Is that something I could have done myself and about when do I need to keep checking up on that? Well, you can do it yourself,

and you can shop around and get yourself a good buy on the filter and do the labor yourself and save a lot of money. Rick, you can address it. One of the things I always think of when I'm thinking about changing a cabin air filters is to look at the filter And I guess if it's a black filter, it's hard to tell. But if it's a white filter, you can usually tell. But Rick, you know about that than I do.

Rule of thumb is about 30,000 miles. However, it's good to inspect it about every 10 to 15,000 miles because sometimes leaves or other debris can get down into that filter and start to clog it up. It's located behind the glove box. So it can be a little bit of a trick to get to. But once you know how to get the glove box down, it's pretty straightforward. and you can buy them after market and get a good quality filter after market for $35-40. Very good.

And you can even get the ones that are activated charcoal so it helps reduce odors and improves the air quality that's coming into your car. All right, perfect. I appreciate it, guys. Thank you very much. Thanks for the call, Jay. Please call again. Thank you. Why are cabin air filter is more expensive than engine air filters? Is it just because it's easier to get to the engine air filter? Well, that's one main reason. The other reason is that the engineer filter is going to be just a simple paper filter, whereas the cabin filter is quite often, like I say, active with the charcoal. There you go.

And it's also because they can charge more. It's just a question of everything. In terms of cost is only one factor in retail price. The big factor is how much can we get away with charging it? So the manufacturers charge dealers an exorbitant price. for the part. Yeah, for the part. Yeah, I was going to say. We're a captive audience, right? I mean, we have a Toyota dealership, you have a Honda

dealers, you have a Ford or Honda or Toyota. They can charge a dealer anything they want because with warranty parts you have to use their parts. And then the dealer is kind of stuck because those are, what we call those competitive items, so these are things that are shop frequently. And so you get to mark them, it's not a whole lot of mark them.

Because I say that, because I know, like we're about, for a cabin air filter, general, around 60 bucks like the caller just asked about and a cabin air filter is about 30-40 bucks so it's a standard markup on parts for car dealers is 40% so and then you will take that's a suggested markup by the manufacturer and the parts department will mark them up sometimes 80% 200% whatever they can get away with so you're really need to shop and compare it when you're talking about higher price parts and if you generally have to market buy it yeah but generally my competitive

things like tires and air filters, you don't see these huge markups on it. And so the dealers kind of getting squeezed a little bit by the market and the manufacturer. You know, on another note here, I am really excited about your anonymous feedback and how you responded to it this morning as we had a lengthy discussion on our way into the show. So folks, stay tuned for that also. We're going to go to Bill who's calling us from West Palm Beach. Hey, Bill, you're there? Good morning, Bill. I'm here. Good morning.

Good morning. I wanted to say thank you to y'all. I enjoy your sunset on Facebook. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. I bought a car from your dealership, a Zion XP in 2005. Love my experience. And I wanted a Toyota Tacoma forever.

So I finally bought one from your dealership. And I just wanted to say thank you for everything you do. I didn't have a better buying experience. and I'd like to shout out to Paul Garrow, who was my salesman. Oh, Paul. Thank you very much. Nice of you to say, Bill. Thank you so much. And, no, thank you guys. I mean, I can't.

I researched and researched and the no fees and everything, and now I'm an avid radio listener to your show. I just wanted to say thank you guys. Have a good day. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks for taking the moment. And what's more, I have to say, this is not an infomercial,

but I'd be disingenuous so I didn't say I get a, warm, fuzzy feeling when customers call me and say nice things. But that's not the purpose of this show. And we are truly consumer advocates, and we're not trying to sell your car, I promise. Not at all. But keep those kind of calls coming. We're just here to spread the word and to take your calls, and they're all very important. And, you know, I have to mention that, you know, there was a time whenever we had a segment that included Rick, and it was try to stump, Rick, and it was always so much fun, and that leads me to something that I want to share with the audience this morning. Earl and I were talking, you know, about past shows, and I would ask

a question at the beginning of the show just to stir some callers, and I have one this morning for you, and we want you to voice your opinion. It's a topic about the retail car business. why you think it's so good during this tumultuous, terrible time with the pandemic. And you compare it to the retailers that are failing, that are laying off employees. And we would love to hear your feedback on this question. So join us this morning and give us a call 877. 960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Yeah, that's a great question.

I'm actually a little embarrassed sometimes. I talk to people. Our business has never been better. Car dealers all over the United States, with some exceptions in some areas, but in general, the car dealers are selling a lot of new cars, a lot of used cars. It's about as good as it's been, and here we are.

in a huge economic we're under depression actually with unemployment we have people that can't make their mortgage payments and they're having to extend banks are having to extend forgiveness for people that can't and people don't have enough to eat the the retail car business has never been better so great question what is what are your thoughts when you drive your car why why are folks buying so many cars You know, and that's for new cars and used cars. And Earl and I were talking, and I was mentioning the fact that, you know, with people being so cautious today, you know, it seems like a win-win situation as far as purchasing a used or a new car right now. I know that I wouldn't want to share a ride or, you know, public transportation.

So give us a call to, give us a call to free at 8, 7, 6. 960, 9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. I think we've got some text out there, don't we? I've got to YouTube. Actually, in conjunction with the conversation we were just having about parts with the cabin filters, Ben is asking, is it common for dealers to up-charge parts sold from the service department versus the parts department? I found this on a few occasions where the part was actually cheaper at the parts counter than through the service department.

It happens, and that's an excellent question. It actually is a there's a legality issue there, and I can tell you what car dealers are supposed to do. They're supposed to charge the same price directly from the parts department that they charge in the service department. Now, the retail price, they're both retail prices. Car dealers do sell parts at wholesale, especially crash parts, fenders, and bumpers to body shops, and they'll sell them wholesale. But, yeah, you should check with your dealer. If you find out that the parts department is selling oil filters are cheaper than what they're charging in the service drive, that's not right, and you should call it to their attention. Just make sure you're breaking out the difference between the cost of the parts.

and the cost of the labor so you're going to pay more oh sure just apart and they should be broken down either way and i've got one other here for stew jk is asking any word on the 2021 rav4 hybrid xylee premium specifications uh when will the pricing be released to the dealers and as a follow he's asking he was told that super white will not be available on the 21 ravs 4. Well, I will tell you that would be welcome news, and I know Earl's going to get a chuckle out of that. There's been nothing but an assorted history of Super White, fading, peeling, everything, it's always been a problem. And it's probably, gosh, with all the support programs, all the things Toyota had to do with this car, they had to have been a loser for him. But the Super White, I don't know. I know that the 2020 RAP 4, the white is a pearlized white. And that seems to be a lot more popular now. It costs a little bit more because it's a multi-stage application. But it looks really nice.

Your car is a pearlized white. Don't have any specs out on the 2021s. Usually we start to see that coming in very shortly. It's funny. A lot of people ask me about, like, future vehicles. And the truth is, we'll get, like, sneak peeks, like at a dealer meeting or they'll send out little teasers. But the actual details of the car, including the actual production date,

is kind of kept pretty close to the vest by Toyota and I imagine the other manufacturers until just a couple of months before. Yeah, car boss know more about it than we do. We read the media. They have spies and they have airplanes and, you know, they're taking pictures of cars that are being tested. And usually the press finds out about things that before the car dealer finds out. Exactly. So we're doing the same thing that you're doing.

I'm on the car blogs and social media looking for any kind of information, And especially if there's like a new exciting, you know, kind of car coming out. Like before the Super came out, I was all over just looking at the pictures. And nobody was really sure if you're looking at a, you know, fake or a real preview. But it's always exciting. Okay. Text. Well, let me jump to anonymous feedback.

I know that you guys talked about this. And Nancy mentioned it a few minutes ago. And she's got a printout. And here it is. It's clearly from a dealer. And it says, don't ostracist. dealerships. Dealerships and people who run them have families and have houses to support and they have to make a living, so give them a break. The truth is dealers don't make much or

sometimes nothing on new cars as the markups are very small. If a dealer makes $800 to $1,000, that's wonderful, $150 to $200 goes to a salesman. So now you look at the dealership's cost of bringing the car in, sitting on the lot, paying interest on it and many others. These profits don't look at all that amazing. Dealers need to come up with alternatives to compensate and make a bit of a profit. Otherwise, it would not be a car business. It would be free cars. So give them a break and stop complaining. You absolutely do not need to deal with them. In fact, they are not happy. They're happy not to negotiate with problematic little whiners. As of me, I will always buy a new car and a new car only. I know where it comes from. I know the price is, I know the price

outright, and I can maintain it as I please. It will run forever. And that is from Mr. P. Mr. P. Thank you. Well, that was such an interesting anonymous feedback. I actually I did begin a blog article on that. And the reason I did is because this is the common language from car dealers that are critical of the show and my blog. And if I were to overhear a conversation at the Florida Automobile Dealers Association, this would be dealers talking amongst themselves. They feel oppressed, they feel taken advantage of, and the cars aren't priced high enough and so on. the fact of the matter is that new cars have reached a point now where a lot of car dealers

are breaking even making a small amount or sometimes actually losing amounts of money selling new cars that has to do with the education of the consumer and the fact that a new car is a commodity it's a you know a new Honda Accord is a new Honda Accord is a new Honda Accord they're all the same So if you're selling Honda Quartz, then you're going to have to be competitive with your dealer down the street and the dealer way down the street. And if you're not, you don't sell the car. It was easy to trick and fool people 20 years ago. Today it's harder because they have a lot of data available to them. They can Google cost and they can Google competitive pricing.

And so people are getting more and more educated. So they buy a new Ford Focus. focus and they shop with three or four dealers and they end up paying the dealer a very small profit. He adds in his overhead. He's actually losing money in the new car department. But before he start crying about that dealer going broke, think about the fact that that dealer will also sell service to that Ford Focus owner for three, four, five, six, seven years. They do make good money in the service departments. They also got a trade in on that Ford Focus and they sell that used car and they make nice profits in the used car department. They also finance that Ford

Focus and they made probably twice as much money financing the car as they did on the profit when they sold the car. They have parts department. They sell parts for that Ford Focus. They get big incentives, big kickbacks from the manufacturer. Yeah. And if you if you wreck your Ford Focus, they fix it in their body shop and they make money there. So in my blog, I googled the AutoNation because that's a public company. and they have 300-some-odd retail dealerships around the USA. The average auto-nation dealership makes about $2.5 million a year. Now, that's not chum change, right?

I mean, and that's after everybody gets paid. That's after taxes. So after taxes, the stockholders of AutoNation, because it's a public health company, put $2.4 million in the bank for every dealership, 370 dealers or something like that. That's a lot of money. Autonation is making money hand or a fist. Here's an interesting thing about you people that are car dealers who are crying poor mouth. Lexus dealers have a club. It's called the Million Dollar Club.

And to get a Lexus Million Dollar Club, you have to make a million dollars a month. Now Palm Beach Lexus out here owned by Auto Nation on Okacharly Boulevard is a member of the Million Dollar Club. so they're making a million dollars a month so they're not dying I mean they're not going to they're not to go hungry weep not I just fell off my chair go in there

yeah weep no more my lady is what you're going to I knew there was something there exactly all right so this is a anonymous feedback came in last night clearly Josh Stewart sent this in and says hey Earl Josh is cute Is he single?

Do you have any single sons? The answer is, sorry, ladies, we're all taken. All right, next one, anonymous feedback. I guess this is for Rick. It sounds technical. What the hell is a solenoid? I love that. A lot of people would be, you would see anonymously, you can say that.

Most people don't know where the solenoid is, And you shouldn't be afraid. I'm not. That's correct. Well, I would be. Do it. A solenoid is basically it takes an electrical signal and changes it into a mechanical movement. So it would be like you flip a light switch or you flip a switch and a little arm would move at some point.

And it basically gives you a mechanical movement from an electrical source. Okay, good. You probably got electromagnetic stuff in there in there. That sounds good. Okay. Okay, so we have on Facebook from Linda who is like one of our biggest fans.

She's also a member of the International Sunrise Club. Yes. She's got a great question, but I know the answer to it, so I want to answer it, even though it's a right question. She says, why did Toyota change the dashboards to black? It's way too hot.

And here's my, this is my guess, because it's safer, has less reflection. It doesn't create a reflection on the inside, on your windshield. therefore it's safer, less distracting. Am I correct? Sounds good to me. Oh, come on.

I have a boon to pick with black dashboards and seats. In my car, everything's black. The seats are black, the carpets are black, the dashboard is black. Because we talk to you into it. It's like the black hole of Calcutta. If I drop something, it's just like, and I can't, yeah, it's just, there's no light. Yeah. It's like a, what is it, a star, a black hole.

Yeah, black hole. So my cockpit of my car is like a black hole. Exactly. And what's really scary is if there's any spiders or any other things down there, you won't see them coming. I go into a gas station and I got my gas cap switch right next to my hood release. So I come pulling in a gas station and I pop my hood. And now I've got to get out and put my hood down. Well, I'll tell you, I'm not making funny.

I think as you get older because it's happening to me. Wait a minute. I'm telling you, contrast is less. I experienced the same thing looking for something in the car with my daughter, who was 16, and she's, it's right there. And I'm like, what are you talking about? And she could see it, and I couldn't. So, I don't know. On the same subject, we have a text, and this is from Stacey in Atlanta.

She says, my car's interior surfaces is a freaking dust magnet. Seriously and literally, it's always dusty, and I finally realize the reason is static electricity. Is there any product that will de-static the plastic surface? is on my car's dash. I wish. I've got a dark gray dash in my Tacoma and the TV screen on the radio

and they're just always got that layer of dust. Yeah, I have a little microfiber cloth that I keep in the center console and I wipe it down and it does a pretty good job. And the next day is dusty again. Exactly. Well, there's an opportunity

and somebody should come up with it. It's a gray or something, yeah. I mean, you've got to be. a way to, I mean, it's all electronic, electrostatic, it's, there's an answer out there. Yeah, I know there's, there are products for other things like, you know, laundry. I mean, there's

anti-static sprays and things like that. I wouldn't imagine you could probably find something. All right, I've got to start thinking about that. Okay. We got some more? We got plenty. Here's an good old standard. How do you go about getting the out-the-door

prices from a car dealer by email? I find a lot of forms, but it's hard to find an email address, and that's from Sarah. It takes fortitude, and you have to be persistent, and you have to be able to walk away from a dealer, not literally, because you're on line, but if you have someone that's going to give you a hard time, just don't go there. If you're in a typical metro area and you're trying to buy a Chevrolet,

you're going to have four or five Chevrolet dealers within a reasonable distance. And of those four or five, you might have, have one or two that give you a hard time. And you can tell the dealer up front, say, listen, I don't want to buy the car until I have gotten my out-the-door price, and I'm going to check with four dealers or five dealers or whatever. You can check with 50 dealers if you want to spend the time. But you check with X number of dealers, and the one that gives you the best out-the-door price. And Nancy Stewart came up with an affidavit, which you asked the dealer to sign, right email or fax it to them yeah and they sign it absolutely go to iran cars download that

affidavit and use it it's going to get you the out-the-door price you can take and fax it over to whatever car dealer you're using and you can go from there and it is a win-win situation and just to be sure that they're not too dense about what you're talking about i have a very simplistic definition about the door price that even a car sales one can understand. The price is the number I write on my check and hand you the check and get in my car and drive it home because if you don't make it really simplistic, they will try to add hidden fees and dealer installed options. But the visual is pretty good.

And if you can see the visual, you write the checkout for $25,619. You rip it out of your checkbook, you hand it to the salesman, he takes it, puts it in his pocket. You get in the car and you drive home. That's an out-the-door price. Anything else is not out-the-door. And if you get that from three or four dealers, you're going to get the best price, I promise you. Yeah, whenever you fax that affidavit over and the manager or the salesperson takes a look at it, you know, it clearly states that there are no added installer accessory fees. No dealer fees, no hidden fees, nothing.

The out-the-door price, plain and simple. If he doesn't want to sign it, walk away. There's a lot of dealers out there that will do business with you. 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-49-7-6-5-30. More text. Oh yeah, anonymous feedback My son is using his car To sterilize his face masks

He hangs them from his rearview mirror And he says the heat will kill the coronavirus Is that true? Wow We did see something about Police car Like a police agency Had installed something

Or had modified the computer To heat up the car on the inside To like 140 degrees But I don't know We're not scientist but Rick, do you know? Rick knows everything. I've heard the cars can get up to 130, 140 degrees inside,

but I wouldn't count on that as being a proper way to disinfect a mask. My opinion, if you want to disinfect a mask, I would wash it in some seriously hot water, hit it with the isopropal alcohol, something that you know for sure is going to. going to kill the germs. Now, I read something on mass that made a ton of sense, and it was from a real authority. I can't remember who was.

They said the best way to do it, they said, and if you can afford it, you know, you have seven masks. You wear a fresh one every day. By the time you get to the seventh one, it's already been a week. There is no chance that any coronavirus survived. I like that. It's a good idea. I like that.

So just change it out. Another anonymous feedback. What is the point of in-car Wi-Fi systems? doesn't every man, woman, and child on earth have their own cell phone? We're getting close to it, but... I hate the incurr Wi-Fi. I have the incurr Wi-Fi, and I know you do. I'm not going to start about that, but I think it's a dumb idea.

It is. I mean, the only time... I mean, you guys might have other ideas. The only thing I can think of is, let's say you had a kid who had a tablet, like a iPad, that didn't have the cellular data, and you wanted to be able to amuse them with the Internet. But other than that, I think everybody's got their own. cell phone. It just sounds good. When they sell you the car, they get an extra 500

bucks because you think it's good and you find out it's not worth anything. Exactly. How are you doing over there, Rick? I've got three of them lined up. Ready for one? Okay. Army Green X-rays asking, what is the difference between a 3.0 Supra to the

A-91 Supra? Is it just a cosmetic difference? That's the real. That's right up your alley. Yeah, I know. I should know this better. I did upgrade recently from the 2020 Super 2 at 2021. There was the A91 thing and the premium. I think the A91, you know, I'm not going to open my mouth. I'm going to screw this up.

I think there are special colors. Google it. It's on Toyota.com. So I'll circle back to this for you guys. It's kind of like a trim setting, a trim level thing. Yeah, and there might be certain colors that are available with it. So move on. I'll look at it up.

And Guy Larrabee says, first I want to commend you wearing masks. Here in Ontario, it's compulsory, and our death rate is much lower. With 2021 models on the way, will Toyota likely have manufacturer-to-dealer incentives? Probably, yeah. I mean, was it on a particular car? What was the... He's just kind of got it open, with 21 models, the year, 21 model year, on the way, will Toyota likely have manufacturer to dealer incentives? Yes. And so they're ongoing, and this is interesting because we anticipated seeing like vehicle incentives being pulled back with the inventory shortages. And we didn't really see that. And now across the board, Toyota, Ford, everybody, their inventories are starting to recover. And so, yeah, right now, especially in an economic downturn, there's going to be pretty generous incentives that you'll see. And in Toyota, they've, they've maintained a fairly consistent level of these things all year.

Let me mention something on that earlier part. He talked about wearing masks. And there's an interesting article in this week's Automotive News. That's the Trade Journal for the car dealers and the car manufacturers. And this particular article has to do with requiring customers to wear masks, easier said than done. And it's interesting because we went through this issue at our, dealership and when we started out back in February March we were reluctant to insist that our customers wear masks and then as things got worse and worse and

worse and we finally got into terrible we said no if you're gonna come into our dealership you must wear a mask there will be no exceptions it's not easy to do and you're gonna lose some customers because there's some people out there that are hard-nosed but I think I think retailers and any business that has customers coming in, whether you're Target or Walmart or a car dealership, you have to have a hard and fast rule. You are responsible, a business is responsible for your employees and you're responsible for the other customers.

So when you have one person comes in and said, I'm not going to wear a mask and you're not going to make me, and that person comes in and sneezes on your employees or your other customers, you're risking their lives. It's a no-brainer. So this article and the Automotive News really made me think what sort of person would allow in a retail business to have a customer come in without a mask? I know who.

Who? The ownership of Publix. I complained to them yesterday. Well, they have a rule that says it's required, but here's the rule. I'll make it really quick. I went in there with my daughter. I saw a couple of people in there without a mask.

I saw them interacting with the public's employees. nobody said anything to them. I didn't say anything because I'm not going to create a conflict left. I went to Publix, made a complaint, and I found out what their policy was. If somebody's not wearing a mask, they won't do anything unless another customer complains about them, and then they'll approach them, offer them a mask, offer them an alternative for like curbside. If they still refuse, they walk away from them and let them continue shopping. Stupid.

I'm so disappointed because Publix is my second favorite store, Costco and Publix. I'm so disappointed in public Costco throw your butt out if you're not wearing a mask and that's a good thing. To what you just said that happened to me at Ace Hardware and I asked the cashier as I was checking out why do you have

two customers in here without masks and what they said you know and the the listeners right now can't see me well maybe they can't he went shrug to shoulders and I said you know we really all need to

wearing masks right on okay okay moving on real quick on the 891 super i was right am i guessing it's just some cosmetic things that are available like some carbon fiber special wheels uh special colors so that's what the 891 super is same technical specifications so nothing nothing different there okay and riko is asking with manufacturers now offering cash rebates on some models is it still possible to negotiate more of a discount than the cash offer from the manufacturer of course it's always possible to negotiate more I meant to talk last week about a stair-step financing and this is something that is in certain regions Toyota does this and the Southeast United States other

manufacturers do stair-step I guess it's financing star step stair-step incentives is on saying stair-step incentive is a kickback that car dealers get when they hit a certain level of volume in a month or in 60 days or in 90 days. And I'm going to stop myself because we have prioritized our callers and we have a caller. Yes, we definitely do. John, thanks for your patience. Good morning.

John's calling us from West Palm Beach. What can we do for you this morning, John? Oh, good morning. I just wanted to touch on what you were talking about previous as far as alignment. I purchased the car from you, used one. And as part of the paperwork, you had done the financial alignment already. And I had appreciated, I didn't have to ask for it. I don't know if you do that with all your used cars that come in.

My salesman was wonderful. His name's you. I know he's not listening because when I asked him if he listens to Earl Stewart on cars, he said, people listen to that? I don't know why you don't pay that through your day of dealership. Well, we should. And I keep telling my son to do it, but he ignores me. That's not true.

That's not true. But anyway, she was still asleep when we start the show. Wonderful salesman, bully back, it's every now. But like I said, we were really, as a matter of fact, it was warranted as the car that I purchased. We didn't know if it was still in their warranty. You fixed a scratch that was in a vehicle that wasn't caught when they put it on a lot. You guys took and fixed it for free. And then you even took the car down to Genesis for a warranty work because the seat wasn't working.

And we didn't know until after we purchased it, you know, You had that seven-day money-back guarantee, and, like I said, you've never had such care. You know, we're just going to bring us back, and we just really appreciate it. Well, thank you, John. I really appreciate it, too. It was a best car buying experience. I'm feeling warm and fuzzy again. Thank you, John.

Thank you so much. You know, the alignment, you had already taken care of that, and we didn't even have to have kind of used car, let alone. So, anyway. Thank you, John. Call again. I really appreciate the call. Yeah, John, thank you so much, and you enjoy your weekend. On that subject of alignments, if you let me just say this, is that I actually went to fight,

had a fight with Toyota over alignments. And what John said that made me think about that was that we had pre-checked the used car we had for alignment. Every car should be pre-checked for alignment because, as I said earlier, you can have a car out of alignment. that you don't know, visually you can't tell. And you can't feel it. So we started checking new cars for front-end alignment. We found out that one out of 10, I think it was, or what the ratio, was out of alignment. And then Toyota said, well, you can't be checking these new cars for alignment

because we won't reimburse you for warranty. And I said that we're finding out that about one out of 10 is out of alignment. If I sell it to a customer and he drives you, and he drives it for three or four or five months, he can ruin a set of tires. So we're going to continue to do that. And their argument was you can't offer an alignment check unless the customer complains about poor alignment,

but oftentimes you don't know if there's bad alignment. So we did it anyway, and then Toyota came in and audited me and really smacked me around and tried to intimidate me. But they found that every single alignment check we did was legitimate. Exactly. They got us for sloppy paperwork. Exactly, and they got us for sloppy paperwork. Just one of those dirty little stories.

inside stories i thought i would share 20,000 people out there including all you tell you other people that are really mad at me right now they've really smacked you around several times folks i asked a question earlier and if you can't answer it now you can certainly text us and we can share that with the audience next week but why do you think that the car business is is so good right now with this terrible pandemic and why more refit is retailers are failing and employees are getting laid off.

My first thought on that when you asked that question was pen up demand, but it's been going on too long for that. In March and April, the wheels came off completely. We just stopped selling cars. Everybody stopped selling cars. Yeah. And then I thought, well, maybe as people, they opened up the economy, people came back out, but this is, it's

continued to go, so I don't know. And with the exception of retailers like Amazon, you know, why are people buying so many new and used cars? So that's a question we're going to look into. Even if we run out of time today, we'll take it up again next week. You can text that question at 772-497. Excuse me, you can text that answer at 772-497-60. And we are going to freeze the lines.

Jonathan just gave me the signal at 9.30, and we would love for you to vote on the mystery shopping report that is going to come from Bev Smith, Kea. But don't stop texting. Don't stop Facebook and YouTube and goes, we'll probably finish up the report before the end of the show, and then we'll get back to those texts. Yeah, you can definitely text. We can do a lightning round. We have a little backlog of anonymous feedback and some texts. Let's do it. Okay, first one.

Anonymous feedback. Can I lease a new car through my personal bank? SunTrust is my bank. The answer is probably not. Well, yeah, it's a choice that banks make, and some do lease cars and some don't. Okay. Next, anonymous feedback.

Why does air-cooled seats option cost more on many cars? Is it more susceptible to problems? I'm not aware of any problems with the air conditioning seats. It is a wonderful option. I just, it's going to cost more, but I don't really have an answer. Yeah, I think it's, okay, go ahead, Rick. I was just going to say, RICO is asking if you could finish up for your answer on, is it possible to negotiate more of a discount off of the, below the cash offers from rebates from manufacturers?

Yeah, you know, the best thing to do is don't play the game with one dealer. The best thing to do is go to three different dealers of that make and ask for their out-the-door price. We talked about this earlier and say you have one chance at me. You can either give me your best price and hope I don't beat it and then you have some chance that I'll buy the car from you.

Or you can refuse to give me your lowest price in which case there's no way on God's Green Earth you're ever going to sell a car. So they have a choice. Usually the better dealers, the more intelligent dealers, will give you their best price and usually you'll beat that price but that's competition

and that's the free marketplace and that's the way it's supposed to be. The reality of is if you go in there with that sort of approach car dealers they look at different types of customers there's laydowns, there's tough guys and all that usually somebody comes in there yeah you have this internet warrior and he's getting quotes they don't want to waste time, they make a shot

but a lot of times they'll just go ahead and give you the price they'll make their money on the suckers that don't put up a fight. You have to nail the price down because they'll throw price out there that'll get you in the door and then go through the game of the hidden fees and the dealer in sole accessory. So you have to nail them down. You have to give them the definition of the out-the-door price and you have to mention the affidavit that you can access that are on cars. That fully completely explains what an out-the-door price is. But if you don't

do that, you're in for a big surprise, which is kind of painful when you drive maybe 50 miles to the dealer that you thought had the lowest price, and he starts tap-dance and adding hidden fees and things like that. This is from Douglas and Apopka. Earl, considering your involvement in all things doggy, have you considered lobbying the powers that be to institute laws slash regulations that would mandate vehicle safety restraint systems for dogs? It's a great idea.

I saw something in a magazine or newspaper the other day, but there absolutely should be, And I think that's an excellent suggestion. I'm going to talk to Lori Simmons. She's the founder of Big Dog Ranch Rescue, and she's got a lot of political connections, and she is passionate about her doggies. And I think we should try maybe doing some lobbying on that.

Good idea. Good morning. I was wondering what's the best place to look into if a car has been in an accident. Sometimes it seems that cars don't get reported in Carfax. My friend got a used truck from a dealer that was certified, but it looks like there is some discrepancies on someone's on the on some body panels other than carfax and auto check i don't know another way to

find out about the accidents but you check both you can check auto check and carfax that helps a little bit um getting a um a professional to inspect it um and a in a body shot possibly getting up on a lift you can see evidence of um repairs and certainly paint work uh you can figure that out with a simple little device if you i would imagine if you brought your car into a to a used car dealership say, hey, ask them to meter it. They'll know what you're talking about. They might do it for free. Yeah, it's the best thing, single best thing. If I'm buying a used car, the one thing, even better than a Carfax or auto check,

better than any, you'll have to take it to a trusted independent mechanic. Pay him to check the car out. They'll check it on mechanically and also for body repair. And they'll take it up for flood or a number of other things that you can't always be sure going to be reported by Carfax. Have a good man or a woman check that car out and pay him 150, 200 bucks. It'll be the best 200 bucks you ever spent. Okay. Hi, Earl. It's Steve from New Jersey. Hey, Steve. He's got a question for Rick, even though this should probably be directed to Alan, our collision expert. How soon after a new car is built, can you wax it? Does the new paint

have to age for a period of time before waxing? Great question. I don't know. Do you know? I've actually never really encountered or considered that I would say it's probably strong enough that within the first month you could go ahead and put a coat of wax on it here in Florida I would do it Alan usually listens to the show I wouldn't be surprised if we get a text during the mystery shopping report and if not I'll text them anyway and Steve will get that answer for you and the last bit we're here

we're wrapping it up the lightning around worked anonymous feedback with regards to faxing the affidavit to the dealership. We're talking about Nancy's Out of the Door, lowest price affidavit, David. With regards to faxing the affidavit to the dealership, when do you send it? Is it after you find the lowest price from all the dealers, or do you send it to all the dealers in the beginning of your search? That's a good question. I would say it would be your choice. I would personally, I do it at the end.

I would use the explanation of what an out-the-door price is. I would clearly explain this is your last conversation with me. Absolutely. And you will not be able to contact me in any way, shape, or form if you do not send me my out-the-door price. Once you have that, then use the affidavit as the final touch to be sure they don't misunderstand. And once they see that affidavit and sign it, it's a done deal. Yeah. After the transaction, as Errol said, after the transaction is completed, and, you know, knowledge is power, folks.

Once the transaction is completed, it's up to them. Like I said, walk away. There are so many dealerships that you can deal with. Knowledge is power. You want that out-the-door price? You can have it. There's no negotiation. You can have the out-door price.

Last text? I'm sorry. I got one quick one when you get yours in. Go for it. Can someone please explain the difference between lane keep assist and blind spot monitor? Yes. Blind spot monitor let you know if someone's in your blind spot. Lane keep assist actually nudges your car back into the lane if you start to stray across the line.

Exactly. Josh is asking, when will dealers receive the RAV4 Prime plug-in hybrid? And since it's proven to be so popular, will Toyota increase production? and availability nope nope nope it's going to be limited to states with special admission standards which means Florida doesn't is not going to get any the southeast isn't going to get any we were because we're really cool and special and smart we were able to wrangle one out of Toyota and we had one delivered to the dealership it's for a it's a sold one and we don't anticipate be able to

do that really at all that was kind of a miracle that we pulled off okay we're all caught up, ready to get. Okay, great. Keep the text coming in, because we still might have a few minutes at the end. Absolutely. Folks, before we get to the mystery shopping report, I want to mention that I didn't mention earlier, remember our friend. Well, we're trying to make her our friend, and that's Attorney General Ashley Moody.

Give her a call. Her number 850-414-3300. She can help us. She can help us to outlaw these deals. outlaw these dealerships that are taking advantage please attorney general ashley moody this is her job 850 414 3300 okay mr shop of best smith kea in fort pierce florida here's a little uh heading here meet the dealer this is the uh that that's my traditionally i put that on all our bebsmith shops yeah and uh meet dealer. I don't know whether Nick Smith is out of the dealership. Now he used to own that. That was

Best Smith's son, Nick Smith, and I think he's retired. Now maybe Frank Gonzalez does own the dealership now. I don't know. At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we uncovered a ton of bad car dealer advertising tactics that tried to take advantage of the economic anxiety so many people were and are experiencing. The worst of the worst, by far, was an ad run back in April. by Beth Smith, Toyota, and Fort Pierce. It was a twist on the very common zero interest for 84 months' offer. And here's the ad. Beth Smith, Toyota stimulus, we want to help.

It goes on to proclaim 0% APR, annual percentage rate financing for 84 months. Get a check for up to $5,000 back when you buy. Make no payments for six months when you buy or lease. Get a $25 Walmart or Lowe's gift card with any test drive, even at home test drives. Seems tame enough until you read the fine print. And you can't read the fine print. You just flat cannot read it. So we've blown it up, and this is what it says.

Offers on select bottle with approved credit, that's standard. Example vehicle new 2019 Toyota Sequoia, so that's last year's model. and it gives a MSRP and a stock number. Cashback in lieu of all incentives and rebates. For retail new Toyota contracts, first three months deferred through Southeast Toyota Finance, meaning you still have to pay them, make the payments, but they're deferred,

and they come up in a clump. For leasing a new Toyota contract six months covered by Best Smith Toyota on up to $3,000, gift cards provided by best material for new and used car drives. Okay. Sorry about that, folks. We've got a phone that one off unbeknownst. One per household prior test drives included, excluded.

Finance offer available through Space Coast Credit Union. Now we're getting into the meat of it. If you were confused, just think how confused you would be is you can't redefine print. can't read the fine print. So we get a it's a space coast credit union that's up there at Merritt Island for first responders and medical field employees only. So through one credit union that you have to be a member of and it only applies for first responders and medical field employees all offers exclude tax tag title registration 898 dollar 50 cent dealer fee. These charges represent cost and profit to the dealer for items such as inspecting, cleaning, and adjusting

vehicles, and preparing documents related to the sale. C-dealer for complete details, and it expired and it would last May 4th. Beth Smith actually took a real offer. This is really, whoa. Best Smith actually took a real offer meant for frontline health workers and first responders, limited to them, and used it as a virtually unobtainable. qualifier in their ad. Very unethical. We came down on them hard during that show and they deserved it. And they'd never complained. And I can see why. They were embarrassed by it. They

should have been. Hopefully they never did it again. Hopefully it was a fluke. We took a look this week for other bestsmith ads that would make for an interesting mystery shop. It had been back two years since we last investigated bedsmith Kia in Fort Pierce. So we started there. And for people that haven't listened to the mystery shopping reports before, We've been doing this for 17 years. So we shopped virtually every dealer in South Florida, and we shop them over again. Get a good report, we go back later.

Might be six months, might be a year, or they get a bad report. We always go back. People can change, for the worst, for the better. So this is a second shop. We hadn't shopped them in two years. Right away, their big offer of the month caught our attention. And this offer says, extended by popular demand, Beth Smith, Kia, employee pricing.

You pay what we pay. Sounds good, doesn't it? The thing to remember, if you're looking at an ad, this is not an uncommon car dealer ad, manufacturers have employee pricing for their people, and it's a legitimate deal. I think Ford has it, and General Motors has it. I'm not sure of all the manufacturers that do have that, but it's legitimate. It's a price less than the average person on the street can buy the car for. So it is a good deal.

Car dealers have employee pricing, and we found through experience over the years that most employee pricing for car dealers is paying the dealer fee, the hidden options, and the price is not much better than the average customer, probably maybe not as good as some customers can negotiate. So when you see employee pricing, first of all, if it was not extended and offered by the manufacturer of that car, forget about it. It was a car dealer, so just be aware,

employee pricing is whatever the car dealer decides he wants to sell cars to his employees. And typically, they try to sell it and make a big profit. The last time car dealers were big on the employee price it was way back during the Great Recession. Back then, some of these offers were legitimate, some were bogus, but the goal was the same to use economic anxiety

to draw customers into new car showrooms. When we saw BestBeth Kea's employee pricing ad, to be perfectly honest, we assumed it was a sham, but of course we had to investigate to be sure. We called Agent Thunder. Here's the report. Speaking of the first person, if I am Agent Thunder.

I headed a Fort Pierce to check out their employee pricing offer. On their website, the ad did not offer much information at all. The only fine print attached to the offer read simply, see Dealer for details. We kept clicking it, gone, no, nothing else. See Dealer for details. I mean, what a catch-all that is. I decided I would do a Larry Laydown, that's the name we use for. We don't negotiate, we don't ask questions, we just go in there with total naivity.

You know, how much do you want me to pay? Where do I sign? $100 bills hanging out of the pocket. Yeah, and there's a lot of people that do that. And that's one of the, to me, the meanest, most evil things about the car business, which isn't an illegal thing, but it's the meanest thing. You take someone that isn't 100% right. I've had customers calling me because their elderly mother or father was taken advantage of.

and paid exorbitant profits and perhaps dementia unless you have been declared incompetent by the court in the state of Florida and probably every other state no matter how old you are and how unaware you are if you buy a car and sign the papers you bought a car yeah and if there were no laws broken there's no you can sell a car in every state, I believe, for $1,000 over MSRP, for $10,000 over MSRP, and it's perfectly legal. And we see this happening with people that are not able to understand in their time. So that's, it's legal, but it's probably the meanest thing that car dealers do.

I was greeted by a salesman waiting at the front door. His name was Todd. He asked me why I was there. there I told them I wanted to take up on I want to take them up on their employee pricing end I said I was interested in 2020 key optima I told him I wanted to pay what he pays he's an employee God welcomed me inside I was relieved to see that the dealership was following strict COVID guidelines mass social distancing even plastic sneeze guards on this so there's been a remarkable change

since Palm Beach County made it illegal not to, you know, for retail establishments to not wear masks. So it's, before that, if you're a regular listening to the show, you'll go back a month or two. We found it hard to find dealers that were wearing masks in the dealerships, the salesman. And his desk taught to ask me what I was interested in.

I repeated what I wanted. Best Smith, Kia employee pricing, like the ad said, I want a new 2020 Kia Optima. We went through the motions of information exchange. After he entered everything into his computer, he accused himself to find another salesperson to help him. He didn't explain why. I assumed it was because he was new.

The return was Sal, who immediately began asking me questions about the Optima that I wanted. I selected a Silver Optima LX with an MSRP. I was 24,500,000, 570. left to see if they could find a match for me. While we waited, Todd and I spoke about the ad. He told me that the employee pricing was part of

Beth Smith's preferred customer program. So now we're not off, we're off the employee pricing, and they're talking about the preferred customer program. If I weren't being Larry Laydown, I'd say, but I want employee pricing, what's his preferred customer? But I didn't say

that. And people that are timid, they're not aggressive, and they're, you know, timid is the best word. They're not going argue with a salesperson. Redisant. Yeah. They're going to accept what happens. He didn't offer any more than that, just a preferred customer program.

Sal returned, said he had a silver one waiting for us out front. He suggested Todd and I take a test drive. We agreed, went outside, down the car. Todd went over the features with me. He did pretty well. On the test drive, Todd seemed more at ease and demonstrated a lot of knowledge about the car. Maybe he

wasn't as green as I originally thought. When we returned, I did a trial closed, just like a pro. He asked me if I loved it. I said, I loved it a lot. He asked me if everything worked out, numbers-wise. Would I take it home that afternoon? I said, I'll consider it.

Sell, I met us back at the desk. He asked me if I was financed or paying cash. That's a standard question. If you're paying cash, you better watch out because they've got to make all the money on the sale. If you say, I'll probably finance it, or I may finance it, they can make a ton of money on the financing, they might be a little bit easier on you on the price.

So it's a little tip. I said, I plan to pay cash, but would entertain a compelling finance offer. Sell asked how much money I could put down. I said, I could do $5,000. He asked if I needed a new tag or had one to transfer. I said it needed a new tag. That way you established the price of the tag. Much more if you have to buy a new tag.

Sal asked me if I was taking delivery today. I said, I told Todd I would consider it. if the numbers work for me. He asked me what I meant by consider. He seemed to want to know why couldn't I give him a deafening yes. He didn't push you here. He said, well, turn the pressure up. Not good.

But it's not illegal. It's just old school. I said I would likely need to speak with my wife before making a final decision. So I said I could drive the car to her to discuss it, more high pressure. I said that it would be impossible today because she's at work in Deerfield.

I declined and said I'll push some more and said the car could be sold before I made up my mind. He went through all the checklist of pressure, pressure, pressure, by the day, by the day, by the day, and that's whole school. Shell left to get the printed proposal. He returned within a couple of minutes and presented the preferred customer program. It's funny, no mention of employee pricing at all. The top line was $3,494 higher than MSRP. $3,495 over sticker. That's the top line, okay?

Jacked up the price so they could show you some discounts. Jack it up high enough, they could show you big discounts. Then he took off a $5,000 rebate before discounting and another $4,494. This was labeled preferred customer program. That's pretty big. Yes, you're looking at $9,500. $9,500, huge discount. Even accounting for the $3494 addendum that they added to the MSRP.

The selling price was $18,570. He added an $8.98.50-p. pre-delivery service fee, dealer fee, hidden fee. Then sales tax and $353 for a new tag. Out the door, I was at $21,347 bucks. Sal sounded excited as explained the figures to me. He exclaimed that it was a great deal and said it really was what he would pay. He said, I couldn't beat the deal. Said it looked fantastic.

Said my wife would enjoy going over the worksheet with me. Sal objected and said, I didn't need the worksheet if I was going to take the car. I asked him not to get upset, but my wife would really like to see everything in writing. I told him not to worry. This was indeed a great deal. Excuse me for a second. Do you think that Todd wanted to go to Deerfield to pick up his wife? I think he would have. You think so?

I think that would have closed the deal. Sal offered to make a copy for me, left, return right away with a copy of the worksheet. I said I would be in touch by the weekend. So to wrap it up, it was hard to figure out whether the best Smith Kia gave to Agent Thunder was really employee pricing. We looked at True Car to see what a super low price would be. True car is not as easy as it used to be to calculate these things, but we were able to learn that a great price on a new 2020 Kia Optima LX is around $21,900 after dealer fees and dealer installed accessories.

Agent Thunder's price was $19,468, $1,468 after the $8.909.50% dealer fee was added. This is about $1,500 less than the best price we found on TrueCar. A better deal, but we don't have any way to find out that it was really the price Salor Todd would pay. So kind of a surprise ending that there's actually apparently a very good price on the car. Yeah, that's pretty good. After all the smoke settles. Yeah, I'm not quite sure, because I know even on TrueCar, when you look at it, they account for dealer fees and addendums and all that.

So I think it's a pretty good deal. Whether it's the best deal, and it's truly, like, the cost of the car, but... Yeah, it's probably a reasonable deal, at least. It may be a really good deal. Yeah, they have a process, and it's, you know, like you said, they jack up the top line to make the discount seem more impactful, and they're probably doing that on every deal, whether it's an employee pricing deal,

or just somebody walks in the lot and doesn't know about it. So it's just a bunch of... Well, if you shop enough Kia dealers, you're going to get a better price, and this was a good price. You could take this price here, and shop it with some other key dealers and be sure this was out the door because you kind of remember

until you actually sign the papers in the business office you're working with a worksheet until you actually sign the papers to the business office they still have the opportunity to stick it to you hidden fees dealer installed accessories they can pop out at any time

and if they don't pop out in the business office they're not going to pop out at all yes Agent Thunder when he asked him if he's paying cash or financing he says cash but he's He would entertain a good financing deal. So I guarantee if he was really going to buy the car, that would be the message to the finance manager when he goes in the box.

He goes, this guy's thinking about financing, convert them. Which, in other words, switch him from a cash deal to a finance deal where it's easier to sell them more stuff in finance. Well, we've got to vote on this, don't we? We do. Okay. Let me just see if we have any coming in. I'll throw on my vote. I'm going to pass them and give them a C, I think.

That's what I'm going to do. Nancy, what about you? All the tricks of the trade. It's crazy, huh? Okay, I'm going to give them a C-minus. C-minus? I'm going right along with them to C. I think they gave them a reasonable price.

You know, I'm going to give them a C-plus. I think that in spite of the aggravation, in spite of the high pressure, if you look at them in the grand scheme of things with all the deals we mystery shop, they got a good price. and there was only one dealer fee that we know of and we don't know about dealer and solics I got to give them a C plus above average We got grades coming in on Facebook

Well Linda is giving us an A for our show Thank you Linda She's giving them a big A mean and nasty big C And since they wore a mask So it's a cool C Steve gives them a D Andrew gives them a C

Steve gives them, another Steve gives them a, no, I'm sorry, he's just saying he's feeling generous giving him the C. So, there we go. I've got Karen with the C minus, RICO with a C, Tom Gilliland, D, Mark Ryan C, Wayne Vate C.

Well, they want to recommend it list, and congratulations. I know, Ben Smith, Kia, and Frank Hernandez, and the dealership in Fort Pierce, or is that Stewart? That's up in Fort Pierce. Fort Pierce. If you want to buy a Kia, they're on our recommended list, and there's some rough Kia dealers out there, so we've got one that's recommended. Yeah, they're recommended, but watch out for the tap dancing and all the tricks of the trade.

Like I say, ladies and gentlemen, knowledge is power, and that reflects my C-minus. Ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of another fantastic show. We wish all of you a very safe and wonderful weekend, and again, thank you for tuning in to Earl Steward on cars.