Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.04.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Southern Palms Mazda

Episode Date: September 4, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Southern Palms Mazda in Royal Palm Beach to see if she can purchase a 2021 Mazda 3 Hatchback at the price listed on their website. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning again, everybody. You heard the recorded introduction. Here we are, the team live in color in your studio here. We're the team that's going to answer any questions you may have. at least try. You heard me introduce them on the recorded introduction. And we have the real crew. Sometimes we have substitutes. We got the original crew here, including Nancy Stewart, my wife and co-host of this show. Back in, I can't believe how long it's been 20 years. Unbelievable that we've been doing this so long. Start out a half an hour, an hour up to two

hours and changed days a couple times. But here we are Saturdays, 8 to 10, Eastern Standard Time. And it gives you plenty of time. If you haven't got time, you're having your coffee or driving to wherever you're going. When you have a chance, stop and give us a ring. 877-960. That's the old call-in number. You can text us at 772-497-60. So, The main thing is your calls, main thing, or your comments. And you get the flavor, you get the energy going on the show. Give us something controversial. I mean, tell us about a good experience you had of cardiolorship.

That would be unusual. If you have a bad experience, of course, we'd like to hear about that. Probably get more calls I'm thinking on to Rick Kearney. He's sitting to my right here in the studio. and he's looking good. He just had a new haircut. If you're streaming us on Facebook or Twitter, you've got to check out his new hairdo. Put your sunglasses on. Looks like, I think what happened is the clippers slipped and they just went ahead and even it out. And now we've got a skinhead Kearney sitting next to me. But I like it. I told him

earlier. He looks good. And what's more important is he's a certified diagnostic master technician. Boy, that's a lot of words there. But what it really means is he knows everything about automobiles. And he's been with me for a long, long time, 25 years or so. And he's about the best technician I've ever worked with. If he doesn't have the answer, he'll find it real fast. He's got most of the answers. Cool thing about it is here we are COVID pandemic.

I don't need to remind you about that. People a little bit nervous about having to fool around getting a routine thing. done like getting your car fixed. And maybe you got something wrong with your car, a little squeak or rattle or roll that you get diagnosed on the air. You call Rick and describe it. If you have an audio recording or video, you can even send that to us. But if you give it a good description and tell them

what it smells like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, he can get you a pretty accurate diagnosis. You can at least remind you that you have to be careful that you don't want to go and just say, fix it. say, fix it. You don't want to give any car dealer or independent mechanic for that matter a blank check. It's just not a good idea. So, most exciting part of our show, really, I think, is the second half of the show, actually the last 25% of the show, about a half an hour or maybe a little less. We devote to our mystery shopping report. And my son, Stu Stewart,

he's also the general manager of our Toyota dealership and I say that with total transparency because I don't want to this is not an infomercial folks if you haven't to do then before I know your regulars are tired of me saying that but we're not here to sell you anything we're here to help you

and when I say that I kind of think about politicians you know what's the biggest lie in the world the politician that says I'm here to help you or it used to be what was it the government. Yeah, from the government. I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you.

But we are here to help you to guide you and buying, leasing, maintaining, or repairing your car. And this mystery shopping report that he engineers, he dispatches the undercover agent, he decides who we're going to mystery shop. Stu Stewart works with the agent, agent lightning in this case, we've changed mystery shoppers for a while

over the years I mean we've had a half a dozen or more and Angel Lightning is one of the best we've ever had she first of all she's our first regular female shopper and boy does she do a great job and he just dispatches her discusses it and he writes the mystery shopping report from her notes and comments and does a fantastic job so you've got to stay tuned for that

But he's also the real life, this is the way cars are sold today, expert, because he's in the dealership every day, and he sees all the little nuances and changes, and boy, have there been a lot of nuances and changes in automotive retailing in the past year and a half during this COVID pandemic. It is, it's, I've been a car dealer for over 50 years, that's right, over a half a century, literally and I've never seen anything like this I don't I think most of you folks out there can say that same thing about whatever you're doing this is a unprecedented in our history anyway and Nancy Stewart as I say my co-host I'm going to introduce

here just momentarily but she has a very special position on the show and you probably have noticed that the women's movement the women's rights or whatever you want to call it, is really taken on and gaining momentum daily, and it's still got a lot, a lot of ways to go. And Nancy is a pioneer, she's been pushing ladies' rights for the 20s, for 20 years and more. And it must have been a lot more than that, but on this show for 20 years. And we have really got ourselves a good following of female listeners, and she's a very

She's responsible for that. We've had to incentivize that, and it's worked, and we incentivize it. We have very good callers to come in, and Nancy will tell you about that, and he'll send in about 30 seconds, and then they like it, and you like it, and we like it, because we finally hear from half the world. Half the world, if you haven't checked lately, are women, men or the other half. So they're at least half as important, and they need to be heard, and they're heard on this show, thanks to Nancy Stewart. So I will turn the show over to Nancy.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Yes, here we are again. Saturday morning. You're an important part of the show, and we do appreciate your company. Calls, YouTube, Facebook, everything, including www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. I have a question for everyone, and that is the lease that you're in right now. If it's up, are you considering purchasing that lease because there's a possibility you're not going to find what you would like out there in this huge shortage that we're going through?

or did you find that you, well, were offered thousands of dollars more for your use car? There's some advantages out there, even though we are facing the shortages at the dealerships because of the microchip shortage and shortage of inventory. So, well, call us. Give us your thoughts. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-4-7-2-4. 497 6530 and ladies for you and for me because it makes me real happy first two new lady callers you win yourself 50 dollars this morning so give us a call give us a call share your thoughts

your opinion 877 960 9960 and we have john on the line from palm city who is a regular caller good Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. I want to start off with saying shame on General Motors. Shame because it is Chevy Bolt and has turned people off at buying an electric vehicle. We know electric vehicle, how fabulous they are. AAA just did a survey. 96% of the people that own an EV say they will buy another one again.

I mean, we can't get better. Packet motor car, which was a luxury car maker, had a saying in their advertising. Ask the man who owns one. Ask anybody that owns electric vehicle, including Earl. They'll tell you how fabulous is. Now, a GM with this boat has patted out since 2010. It first came out in California, Michigan only. They can't seem to put their act together on this car whatsoever.

It's unbelievable. Many mistakes we discussed of GM, the diesel engine, as Earl discussed on the show, how that fell apart. People forget that GM went into turbocharging in the old F85 and 1962. It was completely bombed out. They made 9,600 cars that year at the F85,

and 80% of them had to be called back and put back to the four-barrel carburetors. I mean, it's unbelievable with General Motors, a big company like that, can make mistake after mistake, and the word is on this bolt is terrible. The publicity is getting, the press has been playing it up, but they should have put their rack together,

and electric vehicle we know not only got a car of the future, but anybody that owns one, how fabulous and how great they love them. So shame again on General Motors, and they also had an electric vehicle in 1997, which nobody talks about it. It was an EV-1, okay? They wouldn't sell it to you. You had a lease it only.

It was for leasing so they could take it back. Well, they did take it back, and I had to destroy them. Two of them, I understand, survive, but they disabled the engines in them. I think both of them are in museums. So there was another total failure with an electric vehicle going back to 1997. It was a front-wheel drive, two-seater, kind of sharp looking. It looked like something, car of the future. but it failed totally

and General Motors wouldn't even sell you one you could only lease it so again with all the history I same shame on GM they're a leader

in cars they should have had the number one and the best electric vehicle and guess what they bombed out on this bolt Chevy bolt I have to agree with you John

I was thinking while you're describing that very accurately by the way part of the person with GM is surviving and when you have the pressure on you daily and you're a CEO like Mary Barra and you're on the board of directors and you have a fiduciary responsibility let's face it corporations have a very serious fiduciary responsibility to make money and it's almost the holy grail in the in business

with one exception that's Tesla and Tesla never that pressure. They got a little bit of it now, but they're actually not, Tesla is even actually losing money now if you take away the carbon credits so they get from the US government. So with no pressure to actually make money, they could devote a lot to research and to development and to safety and things that don't give you an immediate return on your investment. Whereas with the General Motors, if they slip for one quarter, the stock plunges, managers lose their jobs, including the CEOs, and the directors get a lot of pressure and heat. So I'm not making excuses for General Motors, but it's interesting how we laughed and laughed at Tesla about losing money,

and all these people buying their cars, and they kept buying cars, and they were still able to continue, and now they've got a lead, a huge lead, on the electric industry. But your observation is very accurate, John, and thank you very much for that call. you're quite welcome okay thank you I look forward to the shopping report today

oh it's another good one thank you so much John we love hearing from you always filled with a lot of information okay back to the recovering car dealer how are we doing we got a YouTube over here I see Rick's got his skinhead Rick has got to sign up

hey if you're screaming you gotta look at Rick he's really really he looks cool he's got a black mask on and he's got his head shaved he's really cool Looks like a Navy SEAL. Yeah, right. Well, from Charles Reeves, he says,

Good morning all. First-time car buyer who lives in New York City. Better type of Toyota for the urban jungle. And which one is best for him, do you think? The Toyota Ravre for Adventure or Toyota TRD. Much obliged, Godspeed. I would defer to Stu. He's a hands-on.

The best thing to navigate the urban jungles of South Florida? No, no, he's talking about North City. New York City. True urban. I was going to say, take Uber and don't buy a car. New York City is definitely more urban and more junglish than South Florida. If you had to drive a car, I would say a small car. There is parking issues.

I mean, if you ever just watch a movie about New York City, it's almost impossible to navigate traffic-wise. I was there during the shutdown. in the pandemics and you could actually drive around, you know, without a problem, but as it gets busier again. So I would say a small car, a hybrid, because you'll get great gas models, because you're going to be doing a lot of stopping and starting. This is definitely not a whole lot of highway driving in the city. So yeah, I would think a small hybrid, a Honda Civic hybrid, I don't know. He seems to be looking at the Toyota RAV-4, so I think the RAV-4 hybrid would be a good room

form? It would be, and it's a smaller where it's mid-size. That's what I drove around New York City, and I'm had an easy time, but like I said, it wasn't very crowded, so the smaller, the better, there you go, that's my advice. Yeah, that was good. Okay, how about some text? We got any text over there, too? We do. We always start with Amory, as long as she provides us with one every Saturday morning. Here we go. Good morning. Automobile manufacturers have a limited supply of vehicles

due to the chip shortages. There's only so many vehicles to go around. Louisiana in the Northeast just got pummeled by Hurricane Ida. A lot of people will be needing to replace their vehicles due to the destruction caused by Ida. Yeah, no kidding. That prompts me to ask. One, how do manufacturers allocate where and to which dealers their vehicles will go? Two, do manufacture shift vehicles to hard-hit areas where there will be an increased demand?

And three, how has it changed since the pandemic slash hurricane? came along. Thanks. P.S., if you're looking for a fairy friend, please check out your local animal rescue like Big Dog Ranch. There's a lot animals from looking for forever homes. And also, that's going to spike with

the Ida and all that because we always see a lot of dogs coming in after a natural disaster. Yeah, Big Dog Ranch is bringing along a lot of dogs from the flood areas in Louisiana, hundreds of them. So they're doing their job. A lot of puppies. A lot of puppies came in from Louisiana. Take advantage of

of that, folks. So I'll take a stab at these. So how do manufacturers allocate where into which dealers' vehicles will go? I'm most familiar with Toyota. I do believe most of the other ones have similar allocation systems, and it's based on what's called a turn and earn, which

means when you sell a car, you earn another one to replace it. Do they shift vehicles to hard hit areas will be an increased demand? I haven't really seen that. If the dealerships are severely damaged, for example, back I can't remember the name of the hurricane.

It was a big one that hit the Japan handle. Wipeed out a Panama City Toyota completely just destroyed it. They were out of business for a short period of time. They began rebuilding, and the manufacturers will probably work with and support the dealers that were hurt by it, but I don't know what... I believe they do. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking of the last time there was some big flooding in Texas, and I can remember reading something about the manufacturers.

General Motors comes to mind, but it could have been other manufacturers, too, that were targeted. Of course, it would fit with their turn and earn because, obviously, if you have thousands and thousands of cars that have been disabled and flooded and you can have to scrap them, you know that the demand is going to be high, and you're going to have to have more there. So I think, you know, we'll have to verify that, that they will target the hit areas, hurricanes, floods, and anything it requires. I'm going to bring a high demand. The problem right now is there's no cars.

My heart goes out to those people that got to have a car. I would lean heavily on my insurance company. Hopefully you have good insurance, and they're supposed to pay the replacement cost, and the insurance company should bear the increase in price, a huge increase in price. Yeah, we have a friend who has a dealership just outside of Houston, and when I think it was Harvey hit or Maria hit Houston

and had that devastating flooding he lost his entire inventory and it was replaced by insurance and now the difficulty, yeah, this with an inventory shortage how quickly they can replace those. But I was speaking of the consumer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If your car is flooded and you're in Louisiana

and you have state farm insurance, you lean heavy on state farm to be sure they understand. I'm sure they do, but make sure they get it, that the prices are sky high to replace that car and it's their problem because, hey, you paid them premiums to replace that car whatever

the cost is. All right. Then she wants to know how has it changed since the pandemic or hurricane came along. Actually, there has been a change, at least in Toyota's they switched from for the allocations, how we get cars from the turn and earn to a turn rate. So, because

you can't, if you can't sell a lot of cars, you can't earn a lot. So they're basing on how fast you're selling them. So they measure it in how rapidly, how long car sits in a lot before you sell it. And so they've done some modifications. Now, theoretically, that turn and earn is a good thing for the consumer. As a matter of fact, it's the dealers consider too good a thing for the consumer because if you get a manufacturer, if you're selling Hondas and you get 100 hontas and you let them sit on the lot and hold them to try to get a high price for Rihanda, your turn rate would be

very low. And the guy down the street, the Honda dealer that says I'm going to sell these fast because I'm going to discount him fast, he turns them very fast. So the dealer that holds onto the cars to maximize the price, he doesn't sell the cars fast enough. The frequency of sale is so slow that he doesn't get more cars. Meanwhile, the guy that's selling them like they're going out of style and discounting him, he's getting more and more cars. So the bottom line is he might not make as much per car, but he'll sell twice or three times as many cars as a deal that's holding out for high prices, and in the end, he comes out ahead. The total profit he makes is greater.

That's supposed to be what happens. The problem with the pandemic is everybody is out of cars. I mean, with a biker chip shortage, nobody has enough cars. So the dealers can all agree, and that's what we're seeing in our mystery shopping report, you. Stay tuned. You'll see what I'm talking about. We see that all the dealers are just saying, hey, this is all the cars I'm going to get for a while. I'm not going to sell this Monster 3. I've got on my showroom floor for less than $2,000 over a sticker. And if you don't like it, go find another Mazda dealer. And guess what? You're not going to be able

to find another Mazda dealer because he's got the same problem. So we're in a situation now where the turn and isn't helping. Nope. Great point. It does help with the turn rate thing, I'm sure, but when there's just no cars to go around, I mean, it's getting worse before it's getting better. You know, for example, our expected or objective this month is 70 cars less than it was last month, and because we're only going to get about 100 cars this month, so it's crazy. And, excuse me, Stu, folks, as you can hear, we're covering it all right here on Earl Stewart on cars, and heads up, keep your eyes open, do your home.

work. Those flood cars, they're going to make their way into Florida and everywhere else. So it, you know, it's desperate times. There's a lot to consider. And like I said, knowledge is power. Give us a call toll free at 877-9-60-99-60. And ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And if you want to remain anonymous and get in touch. with us, www.w. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to go to Moshe from Pointe Beach. I hope I pronounced his name correctly. Good morning. Oh, Moshe. Good morning. How are you guys doing? Welcome back. Doing great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I wanted to find out my issue is that you probably don't recall.

I'm trying to buy out my car at the end of the lease, and I have one more payment to make, and they tell me that my bank is ally bank. I have to go through a dealer. Yes. Originally, I contacted a dealer that I purchased a car from, and it was Schumacher, Del Rey, and it seems that they wanted to hit me with additional fees, which I did not think were, you know, should belong, which I know you addressed many times before. Among them, they wanted $400 for an inspection fee, which I was questioning because I said,

I'm keeping the car. Why do you need to inspect it? I will inspect it. You pay me $400. So we started with that, and then the salesman that I dealt with promised to get back to me and never did. I could hold a week or two later. We apologize, promise to get back again, never did, and I can't deal with people who don't keep their promises. So probably because they don't compensate their salespeople to handle a lease return.

It's just probably a busy paper. Yeah, that's rude. So actually, you'll find this interesting that in looking up Ally Bank and their affiliations, your dealership is on their recommended list. so that's a good news for you because there seemed to be a very reputable bank so you may find that interesting for yourself they used to be GMAC motion

they used to be a General Motors finance arm and they spun them off the GM sold the GMAC or closed it or whatever and the spun off ally right well it was good I was trying to find out where I can go and that's Unfortunately, Ally is not the only one, so we can't pick on Ally.

Even Southeast Toyota Finance and a lot of other banks just won't even provide a payoff if you're not at the selling dealer, and they won't even honor, they'll have a different payoff for, you know, external buyouts instead of at the dealer, so you'll pay more also. I think this is a reaction to the inventory shortage. People want the lease returns to come there, and it's definitely consumer unfriendly. It's helping the dealers, but it's hurting the consumers. even though it's stated the residual value stated explicitly in my contract they can charge more for the they get around it by charging additional fees which I mean I think that should be

illegal but we've been fighting this battle for a long time the whole thing with the inspection is just a liability thing they can inspect it for free the only point the only reason they do that is because although you've driven that car for the last three years if you resource sold it, you know, dealers have deep pockets in a lawsuit. They go for the, you know, the entity with the most money. And so somehow a dealer could theoretically get involved in, you know, a lawsuit. But it's just dumb. If they're worried about that, they could check out the car, do a half-hour inspection and not charge anybody. You know, it's not a, it's just a way to glom a little extra cash. Is it, of course, but is it, is it, if I don't want to pay that inspection fee, do I have a leg to stand on? I mean, I think they can legally do it. I mean, you could make a big stink. You could get the general manager involved.

It's definitely not a law. They're not required to do it. It's a choice. Moshe, I think you would have, I'd give it a 50-50 chance. The problem would be you'd have to find an attorney that would handle it. It would be a lawsuit. And it depends on how much time and aggravation and potential money you might have to spend.

Stu's absolutely right. What they're doing is unethical. It is not in good faith. If I were an attorney, that's the, I would go on the basis of the kind of, you have a contract with LA and they're not dealing with you in good faith. They will claim that they're dealing with the letter of the contract,

which technically they could make that argument. I think the better argument is you were misled and they're not dealing in good faith and a good attorney can probably win that but meanwhile you'd have to pony up who knows how much in potential attorney's fees

because if he loses you're stuck in fact if he loses you're stuck with the attorney fees for Ally so that's the reason more people don't sue big guys like Ally or Toyota or Honda

because they have unlimited funds kind of like suing the U.S. government And if you lose, God help you. I understand. Okay. One other question, if I may. I'm told that if I, whenever I do the purchase, I have to pay for registration fee and tag fee.

If I buy the car, I guess we're a dealer in Toyota, which apparently is the law. My question is, the car is already registered to my name, and the tag is on the car for three years, and I have the registration in my hand. Do I have to pay, again, a registration fee and a tag fee? If it's registered to you, you would pay a lower amount would be a transfer fee instead of a new tag. Typically, at the end of a lease, the registration, it's to you and the bank, so it's like co-registration, and then if you bought it out, you would get a brand new registration. but some people have their own tags on their lease cars like you,

but you'd still have to pay a renewal fee. Moshe, is this a Jeep Cherokee? Jeep Cherokee? Yeah, right, yeah. And, of course, Ally owns the vehicle. They're the owner. And as you say, yeah. So that's a, it's a change of ownership.

And when there's a change of ownership, and there's a new registration and a new tag, that's the reason they have to pay the state fees. Gotcha. Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I thank you. You got it.

Good luck, Bush. You're a great caller. Listen, we love guys like you, and please call again, even on different issues, because you really have some insight and understanding about the way cars are leased and sold. We love to hear from you again. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to, you know, I try to keep my took us out of the fire. Exactly.

Comment. Thank you so much. I'll just try to rekindle your memory a couple of months. Once ago when I was in touch with you back in May, I sent you information about a guy called Robert Schreiber who sued Ally. Yeah, I remember. And I sent you an email on that. And he won't close to $20 million against North Miami Jeep because they charged above and beyond what was stated at a buyout.

Well, he's my hero. I mean, when people do that. But for every Robert Schreiber, there's a lot of guys that try it and go down in flames. And we've all been tempted to sue the big guys. And the system is stacked against a little guy. If you have billions of dollars in cash and you have to spend half a million dollars on a lawsuit, that's pocket change. But for you or me, Moshe, nobody wants to have to be out of pocket.

pocket a half a million if you lose it. And the odds are never 100%. Anytime you sue anybody or they sue you, there's always an element of risk on both sides. And they just don't care about the risk. It's just not fair. But then again, life is unfair, so there we are.

Time and money. Thank you, thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mark. Keep up the good work, guys. Take care. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. 877-960. Give us a call. Ladies, I'm still waiting. there's two new lady callers. Win yourself, $50. Toching.

Yeah. www. Your anonymous feedback.com. Stu, I have a question for you. And it's in reference to the shortage. Would you say that Toyota motorcars has been avoiding, so to speak, it might be a, you know, I might need another word to refer to. But they really avoided, you know, a lot of their inventory being affected.

and now we are taking it in the chin and we've been affected, I'd say, because of the shortage, a 40% hit. Would you agree or disagree on that? Well, Toyota announced that they're going to slash global production by 40% in the coming months. But Toyota seemed to weather it a little bit better earlier on. But then we have the double whammy of COVID and the chip shortage. And a lot of the delays more recently are COVID and Delta variant-related. So that's kind of affected the pipeline, so to speak. So they actually took cars away from us that were allocated.

Then we got them back a week later. So that just shows it's a fluid situation. They're trying to figure out. I know that Toyota and also all the manufacturers have a lot of smart people trying to figure out how to get this going. but it's just at the end of the day, eventually we are going to hit a wall, and I'm not sure if we're hitting a wall right now, or if we're just having a temporary dip. So we had a little bit of an improvement in our allocation situation.

We're actually going to get, I think, clustered to 150 cars. And just to keep that perspective, normally we would get 300 or 400 cars in a month wholesale to us by Toyota. Yeah. That's not a happen. It's a fraction of that. It's a real balancing act right now. And gosh, how has it all affected you, this, what can I say, it's a laundry list right now of COVID-19, the variant that's out there, the floods, on and on and on. So give us a call.

Give us your thoughts. How has everything affected you? And are you in the market to sell that used card that's worth thousands of dollars, 877960, 9960? or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to Stu. I have a couple of texts from Bob up in Stewart. Oh, we have a caller coming in? The lines just lit up, and we're going to talk to Marty from West Palm Beach.

Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How's everybody doing? Great. My wife had a 2019 Camry, and we ended up. trading that in, she didn't like a RAV-4 and we got a Honda CRV. They actually, the Honda dealer, bought out the CRV seven months early on the lease. And with your previous caller said, they didn't give us any static.

Whatever that seven months, you know, that was added to the payoff or whatever the residual was, plus seven months worth of charges and they gave me actually a little extra to make the deal and it was very smooth, there was no problem now that the lease was with South East

Toyota so I don't know if it's just that they're a better company than allied but the only thing that I thought was funny is Honda does not give you the two-year maintenance so when I went into the finance

dealer, or the finance officer, he said, would you pay $10 a month to get two years worth of maintenance for free? I said, no. He said, well, will you pay $93 a month for two years worth of maintenance? And I said, well, that sounds a little better. And so my lease went up by $0.93 a month. But everything was very smooth, and I don't know, it was with that Morse, and they were, I usually have never, you know, I usually have stuck with Toyota's, but since my wife didn't like the RAF4 as well, I thought it was a good deal. Marty, I got to ask you to repeat that. Did I hear you say that he dropped the price from $10 a month to $92 a month?

Yeah, 93 cents. And just in one fell swoop. He just said he came about $9.8 a month. Ask and each shall receive. Hey, we're going to If you're not a vigilante We've got to keep you on You're a good negotiator

I don't Either that or The guy at Edmorsanda was a fool That's not even good negotiation I told them I said look To get that in writing I said But I say you're lucky

You got me in here or not But we didn't have any Of course we got this In April So I don't know They hit plenty of CRVs on the last I just wanted to ask you one other question.

I always felt that if you're going to buy the car, you're better off buying the car in the beginning rather than leasing a car and then buying it at the end. Are you an agreement with that? Nancy and I were talking about on the way in, and the answer is yes and no. Usually yes. Yeah, you're, yeah, it's, but you have to look at the lease

and the purchase. puzzles and negatives and the manufacturer and the incentives and a lot of other variables. But rule of thumb is purchasing and leasing you could get a great deal on if you have the right situation. Yeah, I always felt if you're going to buy it at the end, I mean, if that's your intent, you should buy it in the beginning. Yeah, it's... Because in most cases you're going to overpay buying at the end. Yeah. for what the cars should be worth.

The residuals, Marty, are not usually accurate. In other words, your purchase option, they're close. But typically, we've seen them where there were way high, and the manufacturers do that on purpose, so they can lease more cars, and then they eat the overridge, if you can say, but they really don't eat it because they pack it in when they leased it in at the beginning,

and they have all the controls. And there have been eras since I've been a dealer where the manufacturers really screwed up and the residuals were way, way too high and they didn't want the car back and they were begging the customer to please take the car and they would even extend the lease indefinitely and do all sorts of things to get them from bringing the car back

where they'd be stuck with a car to have to take a big wholesale law. I always say, listen, unless you're a sharp operator and you'll do your homework and you'll get all the details buy the car, you're less likely get hosed if you buy it than if you lease it. Right, right. What would you say, just one other quick question,

what would you say is if you have, let's say, a $35,000 car, what do you think the total lease payment should be to say you've got at least a fair deal? Like 30% of that or what? No, yeah. Barney, in the first place, every time you see a car advertised for a lease,

it's never the payment you'll always have a down payment lease cars years ago there weren't a down payments that was the reason people leased cars because they didn't want to have to come cash out of pocket and suddenly the dealers jumped on the fact that leasing have low payments so they hide $10,000 or $5,000 down payment

in the fine print and then they deceived you in the advertisement by saying what are some of their terms to no money down Yeah. But then there's going to be first payment tag, registration fees, dealer fees, dock fees, the list goes. But what I was going to say is, what would you say is fair, including everything, I'd say a $35,000 car. Depends on the car.

13,000. Yeah, it depends on the... No, it's a depreciation, Marty. You're around 50% or more. Yeah, the rule of thumb is 50%, but you've got cars out there that are going to be. 60% cars that'll be 35 or 40%. So the... Actuaries figure that out.

Yeah. Yeah. And there's a company called AI. Is it AIG? ALG. ALG. And an auto lease group guide. Guide. And they're the Bible. ALG is the Bible to all the dealers. And they get their crystal balls and scientific and whatever computers.

And they predict what the value of all. Honda Civic will be in three years. Predict the value of Rolls-Royce, you know, whatever, and four years. And it's pretty good. They're pretty accurate, and that's the way. So to answer your question, get an ALG guide and pick the year to make model car you want to lease,

and they will give you the residual value, and that'll be your answer. But rule of thumb, 50% in three years. Okay. All right. Have a good day. You too, Marty. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-497-6530. Stee, I have another question for you.

Yes. With all this talk back and forth, with leasing and buying and so on and so forth, and how complicated everything has gotten. Can you answer this question? If I personally have a lease and that lease is up. Yes. What are my options? options, where am I going to save the money? Purchasing that lease? Go out and look for another car that's equal to what I was driving as far as the brand is concerned, all the bells and

whistles, in what direction do I go? I would recommend right now calling the lease company and extending your lease. You could probably get up to six months. It's just your same payment you're currently at. Keep driving it. Get on the other side, if you can, of this inventory situation. because now there's a whole bunch of new pitfalls to watch out for. If you turn in your lease, the likelihood of you finding a car that you want at a good price is slim to none. The pickings are slim and the prices are high. If you had to buy it out, the good news is that the value of your car now is probably worth more than what that residual is, so you're kind of getting a good deal.

but things are going to stabilize. You're still going to suffer depreciation on that car. It's still a high price when compared to normal times. So if you can delay the turning in, delay it as much as you can because the inventory should only improve. Prices should come down, and it will be better for you. So that would be the best advice. But in normal times, you can buy out your lease.

We just discuss all the gatches and catches that you can get from dealers with extra fees when you buy out your lease. And also we just learned recently that, And most times your lease vehicle isn't worth what you would be paying for it when you buy it out at the residual. So usually turning it in, most people turn it in and release and they continue this cycle for years. And don't believe the dealer when he says he'll take care of the lease at payments you owe because he's trying to get his hands on that car so he can sell it used and make a big profit. And he's also going to add the payments to your price on the new car that he sells you. So just, I see advertisements all the time.

Dealers are doing it all the time. Even if you owe three payments, four appointments, six payments, it does make a difference. We'll pay off your lease. Well, yeah, they'll pay the lease off. Then they add what they paid, the leasing company, to the price of the car that they sell your lease. When they say they'll bake the payoff, they're going to mail the check, but the money's coming from you. Exactly. Yeah.

There was a great article in the Wall Street Journal that Earl found out. It was last week, and it's when car leasing makes sense. And you might want to pull that up on the Internet. There's a lot of information right there. And as Stu pointed out, and there's a lot of loopholes. Things have changed considerably with the climate that we're in right now. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-530. and again, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers.

I think that Rick's got some YouTube for us. We do have. Markham 50 says, hello from Vermont. I was wondering, where are Toyota dealers getting the low mileage 20 and 21 models to sell us used? Very interesting question. I don't know. We'd like to know. I'd like to know these days.

Okay, but if we took a time machine back two years ago, They're buying them from themselves. There's called program cars and rental cars that come in that are separate from the normal allocation system that they can use for rental or not and then sell them internally within the dealership to the use vehicle department. So they do this a lot. So that sounds like, oh, what a nifty way to get cars, but it's also a nifty way to cheat the advertising agreements. And so we've seen this a lot where dealers will advertise a current model year used cars. with very little miles, but it's been titled, it's a used car, and they can advertise it

for a price much lower than they're allowed to advertise it for, and it sees the consumers. They hide the tiny little words that says pre-owned. Sometimes they'll use CPO, and does anybody listening know what CPO means? It's not Chief Petty Officer, you know, for you guys in the military. It stands for certified pre-owned, and most people don't know what that means, but they can actually put a car, say, CPO, 2022, Honda Civic for $12,000. That's an example.

The manufacturers let them get away with that. And it's pure deception. CPO. You're exactly right. What kind of assurances that give you when you see CPO? Well, it makes you think that it's a new car because you just don't pay any attention to this. Some I advertise 2002 Honda CPO Civic. Yeah. What are you going to think?

That's a new car. Kind of opens a door to, you know, a lot of questions. Yeah. So, also, we do it at our dealership, but we don't do the deceptive advertising part. We'll buy cars occasionally, and they'll use them for rental. Sometimes we'll just let them sit and depreciate and then sell them as used cars because it's good for the used car inventory. But you've got to make sure.

Hopefully, if you actually go in and buy one, you'll learn at some point that it is a used car, and you know you're signing in on a used car if you buy it. But there's no miles. You're still, it was titled and registered. Therefore, it is a used car. so you have that inherent depreciation from a title, registered used car. But no other butts have graced that driver's seat. Plus the fact it's eating up the factory warranty.

So if it's been in service and registered for six months, you lost six months of a new warranty. So you've got to know up front. The only way you'll find out is in the F&I office if you read the papers that you have to sign and nobody does that. We've seen the salespeople who are probably embarrassed by the practices of their dealerships do an early disclosure. Just so you know, this one's you.

but there's no miles on it, so they don't want to get caught up in that trek bag. It's probably the policy of the dealership to keep that secret. No miles on it, but you'll allow six months with a warrant. Exactly. Interesting. Rick, I have a question for you about the floods recently in the Northeast and in New Orleans. What kind of advice can you get the consumer right now with so much going on? Desperation, deception.

What can you add to all of this? any used car you're going to look at have it inspected thoroughly and specifically request please look for any signs of water intrusion or flooding that because it's potential that any car might have come from a flood area they can't rely on car max or you can't rely on car max you can't rely on what's the other one

auto check auto check they miss it And insurance companies will report it. Sometimes it isn't picked up. Sometimes it's not reported. Yeah, I'll keep trying to avoid the insurance. What Rick said is the only way to do it is to be sure is get a good technician and have them thoroughly inspect the car. A good technician puts the car up on a lift.

He looks on the side panels. He looks under the mats and the trunk. And a good technician can say for certain, this car has or has not been on a flood. And that's what you have to rely on. Rick, do you have any, now in this 21st century, is there anything magical as far as gadgets or anything is concerned that can really pick up a flood car? Your nose and a flashlight. Without it being visible. Your nose and a flashlight, really, that's about it.

You just basically get a search. I got a great idea. I got an idea of floodcar dog. There you got. You know, then you train them to pick out flood cars. That'd be a great idea. Maybe we'll train one from Big Dollar Ranch. We've got to find a bunch of flood cars to train them with.

Yeah, we'll come up with a cool name and save a lot of time. We can flood the cars ourselves. Yeah, we've got a bunch of cars. We'll have them sniff out of anything like that. We put a hose in your Tacoma, Rick, and then... No. Okay. That's what you say I look like whenever I can smell something.

You can't... I can pick up anything. We can use zero-flexus. Oh, yeah. We can we stick a hose in your Lexus and then flood it and see how it's Absolutely. Well, you've got to do it realistic. We'll drive it down to the boat ramps and just run it right on it. You can do that. I'm not getting it. We're joking about it. You could do that, right? Yeah, it's a serious, serious situation. He can spot a car from 300 yards. Yeah, dogs can find drugs, diseases, sniffing for the mold. What do you think, Jonathan? He's all for. He's all for. He's all for. No shenanigans. Folks, you can see that you can hear that we're having a great time here. You're a big part. You're a big part. of the show and we enjoy your company. Join us and give us a call at 877960 or you can text us at

772-4976530. Rick is right here. There isn't a question he cannot answer and he is about to say something very important right now. As a matter of fact talking about used cars, Donovan just keyed in with one, an interesting little rant here. Donovan. He says, I have a small rant about car dealers and selling used Teslas. I've been shopping around for three weeks for a friend to trade in his car and move him into a Tesla. The

amount of dealers that marked the Carfax report saying oil and filter was changed or transmission service was done is amazing. I even had one local dealer in Palm Beach tried three times to get me to come in saying the car is just going

through service getting its oil changed and will be ready shortly. Next, they're going to try to tell me that they're filling it up with gasoline for me. Hey, Donovan, YouTube, or text or whatever back in, name that dealer. That is really funny. He deserves it to claim they're doing routine

combustion engine maintenance on a Tesla. That is very funny. We love hearing from Donovan. Give us the rest of the information, Donovan. We'll wait to hear back from you. Any more YouTube's, Rick? Just one quick note from Fun Photos, she says, your recent caller mentioned EV-1, the electric vehicles. She says, I trained people how to drive them back in the day.

I was a real rental agent at a very large rental company, and we were the first ones in Northern California to rent them out. Wow, cool. For the old EV-1 cars. 1997, John from Palm City mentioned that. Yep. First, I guess, electric car so whole was General Motors. They had that, and you had to lease it, right? I mean, you couldn't sell it, yeah.

Interesting. Okay. Okay, I got a text here. I have a visual aid. I'm asking Jonathan, he can put it up on the screen if you're watching. Is it going up in a second? It says, good morning, this is Buck, your ex-UPS driver and Home Depot employee. Seeing you've got a new Tesla now, I'm willing to take one of your two other vehicles off your hands for free, of course.

Hey, you've got to negotiate with Nancy. I don't know how well you're going to do. We have a little blast from the past, a picture of Nancy in Buck at the Home Depot pre-pandemic. Oh, you both look adorable. Yeah, we'll be. Definitely. All right. We got a, oh, I love when I get a text from Negan.

It means Rick's not getting a text from Negan. It's probably your name. You know, Negan doesn't like Rick. Actually, he alerted me earlier. Let's see. He said, good morning, Rick and everyone. sent Stu a link on EV recharging. Okay.

All right. That was first thing. These are still Walking Dead jokes. Earl and Nancy doesn't get it. Characters named Negan and Rick on a TV show. He's the guy who carries a big baseball bat wrapped with Barb Wired. Oh, boy. And Rick is his nemesis.

Okay, so good morning, everybody. Negan here. Ford just patented the idea of flat towing EV vehicle to recharge it. I think of the business opportunity to have a tow truck recharge an EV that ran out of charge. you could tow to recharge the car have the truck with a large generator to go out and recharge a stranded EV driver might be a nice retirement gig when I retire in five years now here I looked I clicked the link and looked at the patent they're talking about towing vehicles behind semi-tractor trailers and now now my mind starts going my imagination and I'm picturing you're running low on an EV charge there's a semi-trucker with this with this hookup

and you refuel in-flight like a fighter you hook up and now you're getting towed behind the thing you don't have to stop you're still heading towards your destination but the rolling of the wheels is going to charge your car while you're moving I think that's really cool that's a great idea yeah now there is one thing to be cautious that that's going to have to be specially designed because I actually worked on a hybrid Highlander that came from the Gardens Mall their security company was using it there we sold this and they the battery the 12-volt battery had died on it so they towed it with another vehicle

to their Sears store, and by towing it, something like a half a mile or so, the generator producing the electricity actually shorted out the system because it wasn't designed to be done that way, and it literally melted down the inverter assembly and the wiring on the car. I sure hope Ford's patent addresses that issue. I hope so. That sounds really cool. Could you imagine doing that refueling in flight, so to speak? vehicle on the road.

One vehicle pops out a little bar with an electromagnet. Yours comes out with a magnet. They connect up and toes you along and when you're ready to release you hit it. The electromagnets separate and the way you go. I think that's great. All right, let's see here. What do we have? Oh, Donovan says it was Napleton, North Palm, Hyundai was the one with that.

Surprise. Is that right? Well, thanks, Donovan. What are doing? They were doing combustion engine maintenance. It's a routine combustion machine on a Tesla before they would sell it, and they didn't even know what a Tesla was, I guess. And he says, and University Mitsubishi is one of the others that likes to mark the cars saying oil and filter changed.

Get out of her. Oh, boy. We have two texts from Bob. One we missed last week. He came in at the end of the show, and one came in this morning. Last week he asked, Good morning. Is it possible when you look at auto trader that Carvana is selling, through them. I think

that's, I couldn't quite read it, but I think is Carvana selling an auto trader, and they are. Auto Trader is an open marketplace, yeah, and anybody is selling cars, including new car dealers. So Carvana, that's really cool for AutoTrader. Just remember that, folks. Autotrater.com, if you're going to buy a car, you know,

buyer beware, but if you want to see a whole bunch of cars, and the best way to get a little price is to be able to shop and compare different dealers, Every car in America virtually is on auto trader. And then you decide where you want to go by putting in the zip code. You can sort and choose by price, color, make-year model.

It is really an amazing website. Just remember the prices that are advertised are not always accurate because they do not include hidden fees in the price. So the price you see could be off by $3,000. Bear that in mind. But you start out with AutoTrader, no better way to find the places you can shop and compare what vehicle you want to buy. Absolutely. And you can change your search radius.

So you can look, if you want to look for the entire country, you could do that as well if you're willing to ship or travel to get the car. So you don't have to stay up with your local market. Yeah, Autotrater.com. Write that down. It's a way to start, whether you want a used car or a new car, Autotrater.com. And get on that website, play around with it, and you can really, really save yourself a lot of time, especially in money. Yeah, that's it, folks. It's like the Zillow of Cars.

Yeah. Can you believe it? Or Zillow is the auditor of houses. Everything is free. We're giving out all this free advice. It's how too many free things today? We accept donations, though. 877960.

Or you can text us at 772-497-36. Zero. And don't forget, we'd love to hear from you at www.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We're going to go to Jersey, and we're going to talk to Warren. Good morning, Warren. Yeah, hi, guys. Hi, guys. How are you? Hey. How you doing?

Hey. Well, I can officially say I was one of those people involved in a flood, although I was lucky because my car survived it. But everyone around me has lost their cars. guy next door lost two cars and my name another guy lost everybody lost their cars but I was lucky because I parked my car a little on an incline and it didn't get damaged too much but everyone on this block has lost their car oh good for you and the water came up so rapidly we lived a little near a brook and I never thought it before the brook rose so fast and the street was flooded up to the

above the doors of the car. Very, very unexpected. It was totally unexpected. Warren, what's the talk on the street? What can you share with us these cars that you're talking about, your neighbors? What measures are they taking? Well, they call the insurance companies, and the insurance companies are now at a holiday weekend and everything.

But with that complication, because a lot of them, like a friend, a friend over here, a close neighbor, he left the Cadillac, and he's a couple of years old, and he said the insurance address is going to come down next week. So he's stuck with his car, can't do anything with it. So because of the holiday, they're stuck with his car. The insurance company will come down and pay off. Or they said immediately, they'll come down with checks, where if there's a payout, you owe the bank money, or that kind of stuff they're going to take care of.

But they all have to get new cars or use cards or whatever. And I'm talking about at least 10, 15 people here on this block that the cars are the workers. Amazing. And Warren, what they should be doing while they're waiting for the insurance, which I should have come out, is get on a computer, auto trader, it would be a good place to start, and find out what the market value and what they're selling, that particular vehicles that they own. Your friend with a Cadillac, your make model, check it out. You could probably go out and check 10 or 15 different dealers.

that are selling that car right now. So when State Farm comes out and says, we'll give you a check for this, then you'll be able to say, that's fair, or I couldn't find anything near that price on AutoTrader, and I need more money for my car.

Well, the guy that's in the door, he's got a Cadillac and an Avalon. Okay, he's got both of those. And the Avalon is new. It's only about a year old. And he spoke to the insurance company, he said, they'll pay off the rest of the loan. and I don't know he bought it in leases so I don't know if he had gap insurance or what the deal

you know all these people like go out and look for new cars I mean they're you know they lost two cars that's going to make the market even more you know crazy over here you know situation a very unfortunate situation and who dropped the ball I mean it's a rhetoric question, but goodness gracious, we had our eyes on New Orleans. Who would have thought that in your area, the whole Northeast would have been affected like they were off guard. Nobody was prepared. Well, in fact, a friend of mine, again, with a Cadillac, and probably last two in the world alone, he was visiting a friend in Queens, and his Cadillac guy could be bought a used at the beginning of the pandemic

he got a pretty deal on it unbelievable the car was like he paid 30 grand with 10,000 miles on and that's a goner one goes above the door and it gets into the engine as you know I'm not telling you if you know

it's a goner because the whole electrical system has got and you know I've seen them come yesterday and a couple of cars where there were cars abandoned all along the streets and they were picked up by the city but I don't know what you know

how they're going to do with the insurance going to come up and take these cars out because they're not drive them. You can't drive them. Oh, and you can't get a rent-a-car. If you want to hear this, rent-the-car companies are charging $500 a week.

That's in New Jersey, and in New York, I heard it's worse. You can't get a rented car, even if you want one. Terrible. Supply and demand. That's a killer, because I think you have to pay. They give you a rental car allowance, and that's not adjustable. So that's where you're really going to get screwed

is because you're going to give you $30 a day. Something like that. They're giving $40 a day, and he's got to pay $500 a week. Well, you know, that's less than half of what. He needs the car. You know, what are you going to do? You just got to suck it up and, you know, pay. And, you know, he doesn't know how long it's going to take to get a new one.

You know, you don't know these things. And the realization doesn't hit until I was lucky because I parked on a little bit of an incline. So my car has this old Ford tourist. It probably shows what it gave me more than the car's worth, but who needed that hassle? that's number one. But some people who parked in another hill on another street, the water cascaded up so fast,

it brought the cars down the hill and smashed them. Wow. It went up the hill, the water, and you're on a hill you're safe. But then the water went up so quickly, and it came down, it took the cars all in place. You know, when it was done,

I walked over, it looked like demolition derby. You know, like the cars were all smacked up. And some of these cars were expensive on Lexuses, sobs, you know, all kinds of expensive cars that you could possibly imagine. So I don't know how these people. If you don't have GAAP insurance, what happens?

You're screwed. It gives you what they want? Well, they're going to give you what they want anyway, but then you're not going to be able to cover the difference. So that's, you know. My goodness, how terrible. If you're going into a deal without equity, you know, you've got to get GAAP if you're financing.

Well, I hate it whenever you don't have any options. Warren, thanks so much for the conversation. I just said one more quick question. Sure. If you had a lease, okay, if you had a lease, not an Indian buy, and let's say a far argument, say you had a year left on the lease, and the car was destroyed, you have to have gap insurance. Yes.

But what happens? If you had like an Avalon, for example, and you had one year left on the lease, like this guy has two years, but anyway. So he goes into a Toyota deal and says, they have to cover, in other words, he's covered automatically with the gap insurance, insurance and those paying $500 a month and now they want $600 a month they have to give him the difference on that yes if it's if it's totaled if it's not totaled you still are obligated to the lease yeah I think about all these cars if it's not total you're in luck

because they have to take it off your hands when the lease is up and otherwise it would be your responsibility and anything has been in the flood is going to diminish in value considerably and that's what everybody should watch out for all these cars, Warren, you see all around you that are totaled, they're not going to be taken out the junkyard and mashed and sold for scrap steel. Those cars, a lot of them are going to find their way to states like Mississippi that wash titles. New Jersey happens to be a culprit and you can go through about five or six states. They wash the title, meaning that it'll give you a clean title to that car. So if they take it to Florida or some other

state, all they see is there's no flood history. There's no total. This car was totaled. They don't know that. So a lot of these flood cars are going to be retailed, and it's buyer beware. So three months from now, watch it when you buy a used car. All right. Well, thank you, guys. I just want to let you know. I saw it firsthand, and it's not pretty. So, again, you can tell people about the flood cars. Now, like the guy, Avalon, who's this door to me. I mean, it looked pristine now. It's like, you know, it looks like there's nothing wrong. It won't start. The electrical system is all wiped out. But you would never know. I mean, if they take that car, I guess I don't know what they would do with it. But, you know, you say,

oh, wow, I'm going to get an Avalon to $10,000. You know, so you're 100% right. You've got to watch it. Yeah, exactly. Warren, thanks so much for the call. We really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing all that from Jersey. 77960 or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Gosh, what a time to be really, really careful. I mean, they got you coming and going. I think that we're going to go back to Rick. He's got some YouTube to share with us.

Kit Kat is asking, What's Nancy think about Toyota not building avalons anymore? Well, it was... Depressed. You know, I think not positive, Stu could probably give me his opinion, but I was very disappointed, really disappointed. What a great car. I fell in love with the Avalon, and, well, I didn't think that I could fall in love with another car, but... After the barracuda. Absolutely, the barracuda. Oh, what I would give for that barracuda.

But the Camry was a great car that I drove, and I really enjoyed that for many, many years, and I didn't think that there would be something that could replace it, and the Avalon definitely did. And some of us just fall in love with our vehicles, and we, well, more or less, move in to our vehicle, and that's what I did. But I'm looking forward now, moving along, to driving the Tesla. I'm still while waiting for the test drive that Earl and I are in an adventure on someday, maybe this afternoon. We have to figure a way to get out to the salt flats in Utah.

Right, then you don't worry about anything. Nothing to hit for miles around, just floor it. But back to me involving Stu in this answer. Is that simply temporary? Is it the Avalon going to come back in a few years? Well, there's no way to know. Cars have gone away, only to be reintroduced years later.

In Toyota's case, Venzo was one. They canceled the Venza, then it came back. And then we've seen that happen with other manufacturers. But they don't really come back. They just use the same name. Same name, right. They don't look anything like it. I wasn't surprised.

Avalon's a lovely car, but it didn't sell very much. And Toyota made the decision to can it. It was interesting because they did call it the flagship vehicle of the lineup. And, you know, to kill the flagship vehicle seems extreme, but it's all economic. They won't sell them very much, so there you go. The list is getting pretty long as far as discontinuing cars with Toyota. I mean, what a great car the Salara was. What a great car. When you see one of those on the road, and I'm getting a thumbs up from Jonathan, you just fall in love with it, and someone will offer you the moon, you know, is. You know,

just a great vehicle we're talking too much about Toyota well it's a great brand so is Honda and there's there's fortunately for the consumer there's a lot of great brands out there right now so we're gonna go to I think Rick is finished with his view tubes and I'm very excited because I'm gonna go to our first-time female caller and excuse me lady caller and that's Jackie from Riviera Beach welcome welcome Welcome, Jackie. Hi.

Hi. You just won yourself $50. Oh, that sounds awesome. Thank you. You can send me your contact information, Jackie, and I can mail that out to you. Okay. I will. I'll email it to you.

Thank you. You're welcome. Just email that to me. What can we do for you today? Well, I have a new car, a newer car now. Unfortunately, I'm disabled. can't drive on the highways as much. So another friend of mine was saying that if you don't drive on the highway, if you don't do that every so often, you mess up the engine. And I just

wanted to know if that's true. If you keep a car, you know, sitting or maybe just a street driving, you know, and you don't go on the highway for maybe a year or so, does that mess up the engine? You know, that's an interesting question that Rick can answer, but you hear so many people say to you, you know, you need to take her out, and you need to open it up and get on 95 and just clean out that engine. But I'm going to let Rick, who is the expert, answer that question. Well, you actually had the terminology right about right, is cleaning it out. Getting out on the highway, letting it run at a higher speed for a while, Basically what that does is it heats up the oil and heats up the engine properly and running at those speeds at 60, 70 miles an hour, the slightly higher RPM's, the carbon buildup that collects in the engine will be given a chance to break up and burn away.

And it basically just, it's kind of like running the dishwasher with super hot water for a good long period. It breaks up all that gut on the dishes and gets it out. I hate to disagree with an expert because I know you know a lot more about mechanics and I do. But I just want to ask you this. Are you thinking more in terms of the past and then the current cars? I mean, the cars today are a lot tougher. And a lot of things that we used to think of when we broke in cars and ran cars and speeds, I was under the impression that if you bought a brand new car today, almost any make,

and you didn't drive it on 95 or the turnpike and you drove it probably how many miles do you put a year on the car, Jackie? Oh, probably only 2,000 if that. Okay. If you drive that car for 2,000 miles a year around town, I think it's going to be a lot of years before not driving it on the highway

is going to come back and be a problem. I wouldn't hesitate to get another car because I didn't want to drive it on 995 of the turnpike, if you buy a new car today, almost any make, I think you'll find out that it'll last a long, long time. Am I wrong, Rick? You're not wrong. Okay. And the systems in the car, the computers will actually compensate for it, but what'll happen is things like your fuel economy will drop a tiny little bit.

You know, you'll see some minor changes that you probably won't even notice them. Yeah. But it's just, it's kind of a good idea. Every once in a while, if you can, to get it out on the highway and give it a chance to really exercise it a bit. But if she doesn't, it's not going to be the end of the world. No, it won't be the end of the world on it. Now, just for argumentous sake, though, I recently had a car, an engine on a car that the vehicle was about two years old and had 13,000 miles on it. Because of an issue, we had to tear that engine down, and it was amazing how much carbon buildup had.

gathered in those cylinders in just that short 13,000 miles. It's just the modern cars are such tight tolerances now that that carbon really does build up kind of easy. And that'd be covered under warranty, wouldn't it? Well, it was, the repair was covered under warranty there. But carbon build up again, it's kind of a nature of the beast. And it won't get to excessive amounts because once it really gets to a certain level, then it starts burning through anyways. But again, just that chance of getting it out on the highway once in a while does help clean it out and if you're like me that you're going to keep a car for a really long time it's a good idea a lot of people just don't like to go on the highway i don't like to go on the highway and 95

is like the indianapolis 500 and i would nancy and i were on the sawgrass express when we're down going down in cleveland clinic and if you're not going 85 miles an hour oh it's run right over. So I don't blame people for not want to go on the highway. I wouldn't let that worry to me, Jackie. I'd go ahead. 2,000 miles a year. You're going to be under factory warranty for a long time. If anything does happen, but I'd go ahead and buy a car. I wouldn't let the fact that you can't drive it on the highway prevent me. But I still wait for two or three months because the cars are sky high now. Don't buy a car for at least another two or three months. My other recommendation is take a nice drive out the B-line highway that's just an easy run road and go right out to Indian Town to the Seminole Country in and have a nice Sunday brunch

Oh, that's a good idea, yeah. Safety first, that would be a great place to go. But Jackie, the more you take care of your vehicle, the more your vehicle is going to take care of you. So I don't drive my Avalon as often as I did and, you know, I really made it a practice to get it out and run it because that's what it's meant to do. Jackie, thank you so much for your participation at Earl Stewart on Cars, and I so appreciate your call, as all of us do, and you're encouraging the other ladies to give us a call.

You're an important part of the show. Email me your information, and I'll get that check out to you. Okay, great. Have a good day, everyone. Thank you, Jackie. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to have the Mystery Shopping Report coming up shortly, and I believe that it's from southern of, southern, what am I trying to say?

Southern Poems, Mazda. So stay tuned for that. We're going to go back to Stu. Okay. We have the second text from Bob up in storage says, Good morning, the shortage of vehicles going to dealers. Are the prices inflated to the dealers also? They're always inflated.

Well, they're inflated because they're knocked down the dealer incentives, and they don't actually have an official announcement of a price increase because of the shortage, but instead of the incentives, which are always on cars, on virtually all cars, they just cut them back. So that's the same thing as a price increase. Yeah. But the official invoicing were making a ton of money, dealers are making a ton of money, and

the consumers are paying for all of that. Record profits for all the other manufacturers and record profits for most car dealers and it's all being paid for by you if you buy a car today and if you wait two months, you'll save yourself thousands of dollars.

Yep. Great information. Stu, we're going to go back to the phones and we're going to talk to Phil who's calling us from Jupiter. Good morning, Phil. Hey, how are you doing? Great. What can we do for you this morning? Yes, I'm a customer of yours, and I'm very interested in getting your Venza.

With the way the market is, how in the world do you even get a car to test drive? I mean, do you actually have to replace an order for the car? Yeah. How would you do that? In many cases, and I'm going to probably say, well, I'll double check with the Venza. Yeah, people are buying vehicles without driving them. We don't always have a car in stock. We have about 30, 40, 50 cars in stock in any given time during the month.

So there's a chance of it. But, I mean, just being honest, the one that you want with the right configuration is probably not going to be available. How long would it take them to get one? Six weeks-ish, I'm going to say that's my standard rule of fun before I look in the actual locator system to see what it is. Phil, what I'd recommend you do, choose the car. You want to shop it around with different. dealers, choose a car you want, order the car you want, and even if they have a car in stock that you might want, don't buy it. Order exactly the car you want, right color,

equipment, everything you want. If it takes six weeks or two months, that's working in your favor because in six weeks or two months, the prices will be down. And my other advice to anybody out there that really has got that drive, you get this burning desire, I got to buy another car. If you have to buy another car, join the Costco Auto Buying Program and go to the dealer and say, I want the Costco price at the time I take delivery. And if the dealer says no, then find another Costco approved dealer that will do that for you because the Costco guarantees the lowest price to you of any price that dealer will charge any customer. So you have your cake and eat it too. You get the exact car you want.

and you take delivery in six weeks or two months or even three months and the price comes down dramatically and you get the best price that the dealer sells the car for to anybody. So Costco auto buying program and order the car you want and wait a couple months. And one last thing. We do show five in stock that you need to please call first to verify an availability. The way all these websites work is once a vehicle is sold, it'll come off at midnight

so if there's a possibility if you might see one it could be not there the next day it's the best we can do so call any dealership ahead and just tell them that if you get there and that car is not there to look at you're going to go throw a manuclear on them so scare them a little bit

but if you want to take it we're showing five here but I can't from what I'm looking at I can't tell if they're all truly available to drive okay and one other question I have is about the electric car I see that Toyota is going to have their own all-electric cars soon, maybe next year. Yeah, BZX.

When this starts happening, do you foresee Toyota dealers offering charging locations for their cars? Similar to what Tesla is going with the Tesla. I mean, if something like that actually happened. Yes. As a matter of fact, we were, well, I can't remember if we were required for lead or by Toyota to install. We have four charging stations, I'm sorry, six charging stations at the dealership. Yeah, any forward-thinking good business person is going to see the need for these and invest in charging stations. Toyota is behind the times on this one, so Toyota dealers might be one of the last to start outfitting their properties,

but we are getting one. Toyota is getting an all-electric vehicle next year probably in the spring. And so, yeah, the dealers will have to make that investment and prepare for the future. well that sounds good okay I appreciate it thanks a lot you got it you're welcome Phil great hearing from you 877 960 9960 and I have $50 left here for the second new lady caller so take advantage of that we're going to be running out of time and I know you could use that $50 and to Lou Weber I haven't forgotten about you so if you're listening please send me your

contact information, would appreciate it. Now back to Stu. Or no, we've got to go back to Rick. I got a couple of them here. I'll see. Donovan says, I'm curious as to what brands Earl thinks might not be around by the end of the decade as we're transitioning to EVs. Some seem to be taking it more seriously than others. That's anybody's guest, Donovan. The ones that you know will be around in a decade, will be Tesla, Toyota. I would probably say Waymo. That's a Google version. It's going to be a different world out there

because you won't really have auto manufacturers. You'll have software combines with manufacturers. The whole electrical concept is technology and software. And I'm talking to autonomy, by the way, because with the electric car, you're going to have autonomy. And that's really part of the whole problem with people. The autonomy is highly complex, artificial intelligence, super high technology. And practically, there's so many car manufacturers out there, only a fraction of those have the capability of doing it. So I'd say Toyota, Tesla, maybe Volkswagen, maybe Waymo.

there'll be a few that probably going to make it. For GM, forget about it. And John Durrell, sticking with our tradition of we read them, you send them, we read them.

Goodbye, folks. I'm unsubscribing. You're wearing masks in your studio is ridiculous. It muffles your voices and makes both watching and listening much less enjoyable. Felicia?

John Darrell. I thought it was by Felicia. Sorry. Hi, listen, I know that there are a lot of people out there that don't believe in wearing a mask. A lot of people don't believe in getting vaccinated. Unfortunately, you're in the minority. I think most people do. And we don't want to get political about it.

We're open about it. We believe that this Delta variant is extremely serious. There was a record number of deaths in Florida. yesterday of the entire COVID issue. The Florida is a hot spot. The infection rate is rampant. And if you choose not to get vaccinated, choose not to wear a mask, that's your call.

In our dealership, everybody wears a mask, and we require, we have 80% of our employees vaccinated, and we're pushing to get 100%. So that's what we do. If you want to find a dealership, Nobody wears a mask. There are a lot of them out there. We got one in about 10 minutes we're going to be talking about.

And people just are saying there's no problem. Large majority is to understand. Good luck to you. I hope you're healthy and safe. And I'm sorry we lost you as a listener. And Markham says, my dealer's website, now this is the fellow from New York that was asking about seeing so many cars on the lot, new ones.

He says, my dealer's website has seven 2021 certified Tacoma's with less than 9,000 miles. It's been that way all summer. Do you think he's buying back lease customers' vehicles? No. Prices are greater than MSRP. No, not for 9,000 miles. But I would say they could have been possibly rental cars or purchase cars. dealers can purchase cars at the auction current model cars.

They come from a variety of places. But, yeah, charging over MSRP for a new one, that even sounds excessive now, even with the inflated prices. We're seeing them in the ballpark of new car pricing, but to be over the MSRP of a new one, and how old are these, three years old? They're 21s. Twenty-ones. Okay. Yeah, these were probably programmed cars, maybe demos.

Who knows? but they probably didn't come for the normal allocations. And one possible, he really doesn't have the cars. He just advertising them. That sounds. I thought I understood it to say all 9,000 miles. Seven car, seven Tacoma's, they're all 21s, and their Tacomas. And they all have the same mileage.

All less than 9,000 miles. Oh, less than 9,000 miles. Okay, yeah. We know, I mean, dealers will advertise anything, whether they got them or not. And so that's, no, Stu's actually, the analysis is. correct. If he really has them, that's what they are. I'd say an equal possibility is he really doesn't

have him. You come in and he's going to switch you to something else. We've never seen that happen before in this show. We never seen Ghost Corrus. Rick, was the odometer messed with? That's possibility. Anything's possible today. Of course, I wonder if it might be similar to like when they have the Honda

Classic down here, the golf tournaments, and the Honda dealers give them a brand new cars to drive, for all the various people, the dignitaries coming in. It would be demos, yeah. Then they wind up selling those. Here's a great way to get absolute certainty as to whether a dealer has a car.

You call them up on the phone and you say, I want to buy the car. I'm going to give you, I want the out-the-door price, and I'm going to come down with a cashier's check for that full amount. I'm going to drive the car home. And if they gives you an out-the-door price, then it's a fair price, then he's got the car. and you go down there and pick it up. But nine times out of ten, or 99 times out of 100, the answer is going to be hama, hama, hama. And they won't, they'll be tap dancing and blowing smoke, and it won't happen.

Yeah. Sounds like Jackie Gleason. Hey, we're going to go back to the phones, and I believe Mimi is a regular caller from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Mimi. Good morning, Nancy. It's nice to hear your voice, and I'm glad you're being careful. Thank you.

Oh, you're welcome. Two things. I just heard you say someone that they can wash a title, which means that a person like me when my 2008 van dies would not be able to know if it was flooded. That's correct. That's correct. Oh, my goodness. There are some states out there, and Mississippi and New Jersey come to mind.

There are three or four. Most of them, Florida happens to have some very. very good title laws. And you can trust a Florida title on the car. But there are a lot of states out there. There are a bunch of vultures around that every time there's a big flood or a disaster, these dealers buy up these cars from the disaster area, and they have it down path. They know where to bring the car, and that's where the word term, wash the title. Because the car will have a title to say it was in a flood, it was totaled, or whatever terrible thing has. happened to the car, you go to the state with a loose title laws and you wash your title.

You get a clean title. You've got fake documents. You go in there and you wind up with a duplicate title that doesn't show any of the problems with the car. And then you take it anywhere you want and sell it, even in Florida. But in Florida, if you see that it was previously titled in Mississippi or New Jersey, you've got to be very, very careful because that's where most of them come from. Okay. Oh, wow.

Well, thank you for the hint. That's amazing, isn't it, Mimi? I mean, we've got so much to be concerned about, worried about, you know, so much information to look up. And, gosh, it's crazy out there. It's a minefield. Yeah, it's not fair. Yeah. What I, oh, yeah, about the 2008 van, I followed your advice, and it's a conversion van.

And what I did is I took it to the dealer. I know if you remember, it's my mechanic said it was electrical, and he couldn't do it. So I went and I let them diagnose it. I really didn't say too much. I mean, the stuff is on the dashboard about the big brake light and I forget what else. The swerve light was on and another one. Oh, they said ABS. So the diagnosis comes back.

It needs an ABS module and a hydraulic system, hydraulic something. So the bill was going to be $2,080, and so I'm figuring I guess I have to do it because my man can't do it. I didn't know if he could do that. So what happens is I say, okay, go ahead. And then they tell me they can't do it because the ABS modules are on a back order for the whole country. and so they said they cut my $200-something dollar diagnosis to $100 and said we're so sorry we can't fix it we'll call you when the ABS module is available well I get in the car and it's driving very well the ABS light is no longer on I don't see the brake light coming on I don't know I mean the

swerve light is on and the other the other thing that goes next to it but I was wondering I can't imagine have you any idea why the ABS light is no longer on do you think they disconnected it no what will happen is sometimes when when the module starts to act up and the basically it's a booster pump that hydraulic pump when they start acting up they're not having a problem all the time it's kind of an intermittent thing. It'll work and it sticks and then it works and it sticks and it works. So as part of their diagnosis when they were checking it out in order to see, you know, verify the codes in that, they would have cleared the codes out of it. So at that point it

it wipes the memory of those old problems and that shuts off the lights. Then if the car is running normally, you know, if everything's working good for right then, you'll, you'll feel fine, but it's very likely that problem is going to come back. So I would watch it very closely, and just be cautious as you're driving, you know, watch the brakes where you're driving. A very good

chance that it's going to come back and you're going to have that condition and start acting up again. Mimi, how badly do you need that van? How many miles a year? In the next year, how many miles were you put on that van? It's my only transportation.

How many miles? It's not that many. I guess $8,000 at the most, if it did $8,000. I think, you know, with those lights out, I hate to inspire any deviousness, but I don't consider deviousness against devious car dealers, devious. I'd consider selling the van. You could get the maximum amount of money for that van today compared to how you'll get, any money you'll get in the future to get more money for the van today.

and the fact that the indicator lights are okay, I try to dump the van, get as much money as I could, and figure out some way I could get by without the transportation until I could buy another car in two or three months for a lot less money. So if you could survive two or three months and you're only putting 8,000 miles a year, you know, you can look at Uber or Lyft or a carpooling or borrowing a friend's car,

even public transportation of some kind. I don't know how big an inconvenience would be to you, but economically that would be the ideal experience. So how much approximately, how much more do you feel I would sell a 2008, Dodge Van for that, if I had to sell it now versus waiting until three years from now when I decide to change vehicles.

I'll tell you what, Stu could give you a better idea than I can. He's active in the appraisal and use cars today, but the best way to do would be to get an appraisal on the car, get an offer on the car, and shop it around to two or three sources. Stu, do you have a ballpark for? I don't. I could load it, and I was doing something else. Well, Stu's looking that up. Mimi, has the van, is it handling any differently?

Well, actually, well, yes, because the brake light doesn't go on and I feel a little more confident, but I still have to warm it up for about three to five minutes. Otherwise, it doesn't want to engage nice and smoothly into reverse, so I can get out of my parking spot. previously it would buck and not and act really strange that it you know because you could it sounded like the engine and the transmission something was desperately wrong now if the engine does sometimes pick up a little so I know it's not perfect in there and that's why I'm you know it's old so you do notice you do notice the handling that is a little a little different and from the that you made, it sounds like as if you're really not in the position to take that initiative to sell the van right now, even though, you know, there's a light at the end of the tunnel with it being worth more than it, well, originally was.

Well, how much more, you know, it's just a matter of, you know, $1,000 more. At least. Finances, yeah, exactly. At least. Yeah. And as Earl said, at least $1,000 more. So, Stu, do you? It probably passed it to get an email, and then I couldn't give it a thing.

But Earl's advice is the best is to get an actual appraisal. Things are so fluid right now. And so even, you know, over the phone, it is a difficult thing to do. And what I wouldn't want to do. Yeah, I'd have to bring it in and let them try it out. It only takes about 20 minutes or so. Yeah. Okay, well, I appreciate that.

And have a wonderful day. Oh, thanks, Mimi. Thanks for following up with us, and give us a call again. 877-960-90-60. Well, actually, you can't take advantage of that number right now because we're going to turn the phones off. We're going to shut them down. But you can text us.

You can text us at 772-4976530, and you can grade our mystery shopping report agent lightning what a blessing she is she does a fantastic job and also with stew's work and creative writing we have just a fantastic mystery shopping report weekend and week out and we're going to go to southern poems Mazda as you can remember we have been in and out of Mazda the past couple of weeks So take advantage and vote 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

Well, I like this pattern. I like the idea of going to the same make and dealers in the same market. It gives you a really good feel for comparison if you happen to be in the market for that particular make car, Mazda. So for the last two weeks, we targeted Mazda dealerships. Last week, it was Wallace Mazda, Stuart,

and the week prior was Mazda, Beach, both received low but passing scores. Neither enforced any kind of mask policy shocking and whether we had a criticism earlier about the fact that we're wearing masks. It's unfortunate we have a small minority. There's people out there that think this Delta variant is some kind of a joke and unfortunately with the death rate hitting new records in Florida we don't think it's a joke. So we've shop to third time, and Stu mentioned in the shopping

report here, our area, has a 20% COVID positivity rate. Now, you know what that means? If you're in a room with 10 people, two of them have COVID. Probably more than two when you're that high, it's undercounted. So, when you're out and when you're out and about folks,

you're passing people all the time, every couple of minutes, someone's walking by you with the COVID. So if you don't want to our mask, I started to say, understand. I really don't understand, but I respect you're right. I don't really should thought of being on a ventilator. We decided to keep the theme going, so we picked another Mazda dealership, Southern Palms, Mazden, or in Palm Beach. We've been to Southern

Palm's Mazda a couple times before back in the February of this year, back in March of 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. That expose was actually the second mystery shop we did after the National Emergency was declared on March 13th, 2020. Three years ago, Southern Palm Mazda was Royal Palm Mastra, a Penske Auto Group store. This is confusing to me. I can imagine how it seems to you, but car dealers changed names a lot and changed ownership a lot. And lots of times you don't even know about it. I mean, a Rigo Dodge was sold, a RICO, Chrysler Jeep Dodge.

Three or four stores was sold a couple of years ago, and people still think it's a Rigo, but it's owned by the Morgan Auto Group. So, car dealers are like a game of cards. They're wheeling and dealing, and you don't know who owns the dealerships oftentimes, in this case, it's typical. We're not even sure who owns it. We think it's a guy named Terry Taylor, who is kind of like the Howard Hughes of car dealers. He's very mysterious, and we don't know where he is or what he owns. No one's ever seen him.

What's that? No one's ever actually seen him. He's like Howard Hughes. Really? No, I'm just kidding. three years ago Southern Poppso I did all that

the name of his company I forget it because it's such a you know automotive management services that's an exciting name you remember and he's got Terry Taylor owns more car dealerships than any other private person

in the world and they're kind of you know let's say they're undercover and you don't know who owns them Royal Palm Toyota became Southern 441. Royal Palm Nissan became Southern 441 Nissan, Yon, and Royal Palm Mazda became Southern Palm Positive. Okay.

At least we think Terry Taylor, we think Terry Taylor owns it. Terry Taylor, Torrously Stoffy. There wasn't much news to be found online about any subsequent sale of the Mazda dealership on Southern Boulevard. We spoke about Terry Taylor's preferred anonymity during the recent show. In both of our recent Mazda mystery shops, Agent Lightning picked out a new Mazda 3. Okay, that's good.

Both dealers used the ongoing inventory shortage to justify prices way over MSRP. I mean, paying over a sticker? Yeah, everybody's paying over sticker now. With Southern Palm's Mazda follow the same path? We sent Agent Lightning back into the field to find out. Here's a report I'm speaking as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived at Southern Palm's Mazda early in the hour.

afternoon. I parked my car, got out, walked the inventory while I made a quick phone call. A woman came out to greet me, and I let her know I would come in after my phone call. We're seeing a lot more women on salespeople, the same is like. I wonder it's because Agent Lightning is a woman. Do you think they do that? Maybe. You think they're that smart? I don't know. Women are very smart. Yeah. A minute later, a young man came out to greet me. I told him someone else that already helped me, and I would come inside in a few minutes.

finished my call, went inside. I saw the woman that approached me outside. She saw me and made her way over. She asked how she could help and told me her name was Caitlin. I told her the same story I used at Mazda Palm Beach and Wallace Mazda. Third week in a row, as I said, Mazda dealership, Mr. Shops. I was shopping for a new car and had settled on the Mazda 3. Okay. Same model. I love this. I also let her know when I really really didn't want to overpay from my new car, and I had already experienced what I felt was price gouging at a couple of other Mazz dealership.

Now, that sets Caitlin up pretty well to know she's not going to be a laydown. We talked about the vehicle scarcity, and she acknowledged it wasn't the best time to buy a car. Nice to admit that. Selection is low, prices are high, outside of that, it's a perfect time to buy a car. When I asked about the availability of the Mazda 3,

Caitlin perked up. She enthusiastically let me know that she just received a new shipment of vehicles, and there was one Mazda 3 hatchback in it. It was still parked in the back lot waiting inspection. She said we could take a look at it, and let me back in. Let me back in. The Mazda 3 was parked in the back, as promised. It was still covered in protestant plastic film from transport.

So nobody touched the car. That's the way their cars look when they come up. the truck. They're covered in plastic. So nothing had been done to the car. The MSRP was 24,845, and there was no addendum, but I don't think it had been there long enough to get an addendum. You know, that's exactly right. Caitlin went over the vehicle and pressed me with her knowledge about the car. She said the keys were with service and the service department, but if I truly wanted this vehicle, she could run the numbers for me. If I was happy with the numbers, they would rushed the inspection process and get it back for me to take home today. I told Caitlin,

I hadn't really considered a hatchback, but seeing one in person, I decided I really liked it. I said, I'd like to work a deal on one. We went inside, found the seat at her desk. Caitlin entered my information on the computer. She asked if I was financing and leasing or paying cash. I said, I was paying cash, maybe financing. She asked me, what was the most important to me, price or payment? What I tell you? I mean, that's a smart question, and that's the way you maximize your profit. You hope they say payment. If they say payment, they gotcha. Car dealers love payment buyers. Then she asked what my ideal car payment would be. Now, that's very smart. I mean, she's been through school. I mean, she's asking and saying all the right things.

I told Caitlin that all I cared about was the out-the-door price. Whoa, she hated to hear that. I said, I was able to get prices from 200 Mazda dealers in the last couple of weeks. Okay, now remember that. Don't talk payments. Talk, out-the-door price. Learn from Agent Lightning. Caitlin told me she needed to be up front with me, so I wouldn't be surprised she's preparing you now.

She presented the numbers. I don't want to, I don't want you to faint. She didn't say that. I said that. She said the car already had some packages pre-installed. Now, that's strange. Think about that. Because it's still a plastic wrap. They couldn't even have all the stickers out.

How could they've installed anything? She said the car came with Lifetime Window Tent. Lifetime window tent. Paint protection and nitrogen, the famous nitrogen. Folks, it's hard to believe that so many car dealers are still shoving that nitrogen on their customers. And so many customers aren't complaining. Check consumer reports, nitrogen is worthless in your tires. It does nothing.

Okay. Caitlin asked me to give her five to ten minutes to speak with her manager. Wait a minute. Oh, I skipped something, didn't I? I asked you how much all that stuff added to the price would be, and she said she'd have to check because the price was changed regularly. I mean, the price changes regularly every time somebody knew walks in the door. The price goes to how good you are.

good you are, if you're a sucker, you get all the money, the highest price. If you're a smart shopper, you get the best price you get, and the today's market is still going to be high. Anyway, I told you I didn't need any of the garbage, nitrogen, and the like. The market value selling price was MSRP, 24, 845. They added to the sticker, nitrogen for $99, perma plate. paint protection, yeah, for almost $500, $497, Lifetime Tent, which is dumbest thing I ever, $397. Total purchase price was $25,838, and on top of that, they have $285,000 in taxable.

That's a key word, taxable fees. Taxable fee is a hidden fee. A real fee is a government fee. taxable fee BS government fees okay and a $999

knock fee hidden fee all told the real selling price was $2277 MSRP I took the sheet and studied and I said yeah this isn't going to work

I told Caitlin I was getting better deals from the other Mazda dealers I'd shopped now normally that would work on a car salesman or dealers but it doesn't work today

she said I really couldn't get embarrassed and she was showing me a hatchback I agreed but I said I had no intention of paying for the worthless add-ons and the add-ons hadn't even been added on

the car was still in a plastic wrap I said I would consider taking it home today if she would take off all the extra charges the certificate price way over MSRP Caitlin asked if I could give her some more time to speak with her manager

back and forth. Here we go. She came back after her she said that her manager told her to ask me what price I had in mind and he'll tell me if he can do it. May I have this dance? Now we're going to dance, okay? We're going to do the, if I

could, would you dance? And Agent Lightning doesn't want to play that game. I replied that I would not get into that game with him. I said, I wanted to see a new sheet with a price minus all the add-ons

read my lips okay now this again would work in a normal market not this market Caitlin returned to her manager she was back in a minute reported that our manager said

we weren't comparing the same cars and although he's willing to work with me he needed me to tell him what my price price point was so that's he's gonna stick to his gun guns. Why can he stick to his guns? Because somebody else is going to buy that car. When Agent Lightning walks out if she were a real buyer, they will sell that car at the price

they're asking because there's only one. And the other dealers only have one or maybe none. I shook my head, told Caitlin, I wasn't doing this anymore. I told her they would have had a deal if they hadn't gotten greedy with all those unwanted, items. I stood up and thanked Caitlin for time and let her know it was her boss at cost her the sale. P.S. The manager never came out to try to stop me. Again, usually they would. But he said, why? I don't want her. I don't want to give her any concession. I don't want to give her any discount because 20 minutes from now or maybe tomorrow, I'll sell the car for all the money. And as I said earlier, not a single person. And then

this dealership was wearing a mask. Not a single person. And probably most of them aren't vaccinated. The place is a beehive of COVID and they're dumb enough. I don't know. I'm getting off a topic here. Epilogue. I'm with you. This report sounds eerily similar to the last two Mazda shops. Is this supply and demand or price gouging? I'll answer that. Unfortunately, it's supply and demand. Price gouging is a bad thing, but so is what they're doing. It's unethical. Price gouging is, by legal definition, gasoline is by price gouging.

Necessical medicine. Water. Yeah. Water is price gouging. You don't have to have a car. So because it's not a such a, usually you don't have to have a car. But in this case here, just unethical, deceptive behavior is all it would be. and it ain't that unusual. Now we've got to vote.

Yeah. Well, we got some coming in already. Oh, good. We have Jonathan Wellington says BS fees are unacceptable. I'll give this dealership an F. And the foreign buyer does not purchase a vehicle based on a curve. And then over here on Facebook, we have Linda, another F. Good gosh. I'm going to kind of disagree with that.

I don't like the addendums, and I don't like, yeah, it's don't like the addendums and the fees. They could have handled it better. I think it was more rudeness to tell you the truth. I mean, even at our dealership, you know, we're a one-price dealership. We don't, and we've had people, and this has happened recently where someone came in during this pandemic, during this shortage, and wanted to get discounts, and we didn't do that. But we handled it up front. We explain what our process is, and a manager will come over and apologize and say, I'm sorry, we can't meet the price. But the back-and-forth thing is ridiculous.

And we've had situations where people didn't want us to negotiate and we wouldn't. They left and the car was sold within hours of them turning it down. They changed your mind and came back and the car's gone. I mean, that's happened, but I think they were rude about it and mishandled it.

Martha on Facebook also gives them an app. But I'm going to go ahead and give them another low passing grave like the other Mazda dealerships. I'll give them a D plus. Rick? Well, I've got Mark Anderson. Is Mark from St. Louis? F add-ons were only added on to the price. Tom Gilliland, or Tim Gilliland, sorry.

Different dog, same fleas. D-minus. Tom Steckle, F, owner didn't go to Penn State. He went to State Penn. Brian said, Lico, with a D. Give me five bucks with a big fat F. And for me, I'm going to go with the D, say, D minus, passing grade, But you've got to be ready to do a nerd.

We're getting some. Amory came and this is D for crummy behavior. All too common, not felonious, just obnoxious. And I'm right with Amory. I like that too. Nancy? This stinks. I'm sick of it.

First of all, unethical price gouging, supply and demand, whatever you want to, you know, classify it, name it. No masks? None. Was anybody wearing a vaccination pin? Was there any sign of anybody who was taking this pandemic seriously? And please, when was the last time I was asked, what do you want to pay for this? What can you afford? Goodness gracious. Wow. Music to my years. Anyway, old tactics. I give them an F. We've got a couple of minutes. I just want to read something from the Wall Street Journal. This is today's Wall Street Journal. For you folks who think about buying a car. Meanwhile, car companies are pulling back on discounts

and dealers are increasing prices, resulting in buyers, often having to pay top dollar. Some shoppers are shelling out several thousands of dollars above sticker for certain high-demand models. Throughout the summer, the average transaction transaction price on a new vehicle has continued to hit new highs and jumped, jumped, nearly $6,000 in August. Do you hear that, folks?

The average new car price in August went up $6,000. So you want to buy a car today, you're probably going to pay $6,000 more than you'd have to in August prior to your month to reach a record 41,738 per vehicle. So there are the statistics. You make the decision, do you want to buy a car today? I'll leave it up to you. And how would you vote on this mystery shopper report? I'm going to copy a Stu's grade of a D-minus.

I pass them. I don't like the way they operated. But they're still, they're not much worse than the other Maza dealers. The purpose of shopping three Maza dealerships was to find a sanctuary where you may be able to buy a Mazzar. of this market there are or not I just I hate hearing that you know well the other dealerships and every everything is so I don't know give and take and it just stinks so anyway we have two minutes left and I want to what where did you

quote that from was that the Wall Street Journal this morning today's Wall Street Journal yeah okay folks if you want to take a look at that it's in the Wall Street journal this morning, enlightening for sure. $6,000. Wow. Anyway, we're going to be right back here next week, and you can stay tuned at 8 a.m. next week, and gosh, we enjoyed the time that we spent with you, and have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe and be well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.