Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.19.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Online Shop of 4 Ford Dealerships

Episode Date: September 19, 2020

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

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

We're back. Your auto team are here in the studio live to help you buy a car or lease a car. Leasing is really going nothing. these days. It's increasing at a greater clip than we've seen in years. Average over one-third of the cars on the road now released, and it's climbing. We're here also to talk about help using service in your car, maintaining repairing, how not to be ripped off by a car dealer in a nutshell. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. I've been doing this for 50 years plus and started out doing it the wrong way, and here I am recovering. I'm trying to

I guess account and redeem myself for all my sins in the past because I used to be a bait and switch guy and I would sell everybody that walked into my dealership a car at a different price. The price was different because I would sell the car for as much money as I could

possibly get from the customer. I could take the same identical car sell three of those on the same day and the profit to me would vary from maybe a few hundred dollars to a few thousand dollars In fact, my dealership had something called the slam dunk club. And if we could make more than $4,000 on a customer, we gave a plaque and a reward, cash reward bonus.

And a steak dinner at Ruth Chris. Exactly. Steak dinner at Ruth's Chris. So here I am many, many years later telling you about those same things still going on. And we're trying to help you navigate that minefield out there we call car dealerships. Mr. Shopping Report, we have got. a slam dunk doozy of a mystery shopping report today. It's the best mystery shopping report that we've ever had on Earl on Cars, Earl Stewart on Cars.

And Stu and our new mystery shopper, Agent Lightning, I just got to congratulate both of them, especially Agent Lightning, because we should have been doing this 10 years ago. We mystery shopped four dealerships, and we did it the way. you're supposed to do if you're an educated consumer. We did it the way we ask you and suggest that you do it on the air. In the past, we've been doing it the way the average person did it, and we're asking you to learn from their mistakes. That seems backwards.

I suddenly, I think we've been doing it wrong. We're going to show you how you should do it and then show how it works out in real life. So we picked four dealerships, four Ford dealerships, And we went to them online, and we went through that game with the chat room and the email and the telephone call. And then we found what purportedly was the best deal, and we went physically in to see what happened. It's a great report. So stay tuned.

That'll be in the last half of the show. And don't miss it, please. We would also, I get carried it with sales, and so I have to remind myself and you that we've got a guy. a guy named Rick Kearney in the studio here, who's just amazing. He knows all about your car. I don't care whether you're driving a Rolls-Royce or a Kia or whatever. He knows cars. He knows Toyota's better than most of them, but he knows all cars very well.

And, of course, we have Colonel Google that we can find answers to. And we'll get you the answer one way or the other. I mean, we're not batting a thousand, but I bet we're batting night. and every now and then we get stumped but it's very rare so if you have a little problem with your car please call 877 960 9960 you want to you might want to write this number down because you don't have a question right now probably but you might later on write it down put it on right in the palm of your hand if you're driving don't write it on anything but 877 960 9960 877 960

960. I emphasize the old telephone because it's a warmer, more fuzzy kind of a way to talk. You get to know people, their personalities, you get to know us, and there's nothing like a real audio dialogue. But we have a text line. And actually, we get more on text than we do anything else because it's easier. So don't hesitate to use our text line. 772-4976530. 4976530 and use that because you will maybe don't get to it right this minute but before the end of the show we get to almost all of them and our biggest source surprise everybody anonymous feedback we we have a link out there that you can go on this link and you can send us a question of objection criticism

profanity you can call me names you can call Rick names you can call anybody name don't call Nancy names There's no way to treat a lady. Okay, that goes back to an old song. I digress. www. Youranonymousfeedback.com. Youranonymousfeedback.com.

Great way to get so. I'm not going to call you. No one's going to know who you are. Your friends won't know. You can be anybody. You can be my best friend. And you could come in and tell me that I'm really a stupid fool. I'll never know you did that.

And you'll still be my best friend. And so Your Anonymous Feedback.com, get a huge number of those. And usually they're all, most of them are legitimate. Every now in that we get the nasty one. We try to read them all. Sometimes we can't read them because they're too nasty, if you know what I'm talking about. And we are, what are we? A family show.

The federal, what is it, the FCC? FTC. Yeah, right. Yeah, the Federal Communications Commission could cancel the radio station, although we do have a delay, I think. So anyway, we don't do profanity or obscenity. on anonymous feedback, but we do everything else. So your anonymousfeedback.com. I'd like to turn the mic over to Nancy Stewart, my co-host.

She's a co-founder of the show. I say 17 years ago, it's probably 18. I get frozen in time. And I've been here a long, long time, start out a half an hour show. And we've evolved to this two-hour show every Saturday. Nancy is my wife, and she's active in the business.

and she's an active female advocate for Lady Byers out there. She was instrumental in goading and prompting Stu and Me to finally find Agent Lightning. So we now have a regular full-time mystery shopper female. And before we'd always gone with male shoppers. Wrong thing to do. And now we're back. We're evolving.

Kaisen, continuous improvement. We're getting better. And I thank you, Mrs. Sunrise. Nancy Stewart for that and tell us a little bit about the special offer we have for our female listeners out there well thank you and good morning everyone that special offer for the ladies they have really become a big part of the show and we want to encourage that number to grow so therefore we have $50 for the first two new lady callers and we encourage you to give us a call, whether you have something to share, whether you have a question, or you just

want to say hello, and the number is 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 77-249-9-7-6-5-30. So don't forget, ladies, give us a call. Help me to build that platform that we're so deserving of 877-960-99-60. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, let's shoot it over to Stu. He's Mr. Cyberspace, Spymaster, and I'm sure he's accumulated some text, at least anonymous feedbacks, and other comments over there. And so let's start out with what you have on the wire.

Any comments you might have before we start the show? I definitely wanted to jump on what you were talking about with the new mystery shopping format. Now, that's not going to be a permanent thing. We'll still, you know, in the future we'll investigate a crazy ad. But as we get further and further into the 21st century, you know, I think less and less people. And I'd like to say that we should get a little credit for that, at least in this market. Letting people know to be really skeptical about all car dealer advertising. You know, at our dealership, you know, we can attribute, you know, the source of our inquiries, you know, people come to the showroom, people who come in online.

And it's switched the other way now. Most of our, you know, opportunities to talk to a customer are coming from online. And most of these things start with a Google search. And that's basically, it's kind of, that's pretty much what everybody does these days. You serve for something on Google, and then you start looking for relevant search results. Then you click through. And so that's all we did with Agent Lightning. And you're a little bit wrong when you said, we picked four dealers.

We didn't pick any dealers. We just said, pretend you need a car. can tell you what kind of car you need, whatever car you want, and then go about trying to find it like you normally would. And so that's what Agent Lightning did. She Googled Ford dealers near me because she was thinking about getting the Ford, and that's how she got the ball rolling, got the process started. And it was really interesting to see even when you are following our best advice on the show, it's not as easy as it sounds. I mean, we say, oh, just could get four competing bids and in the real world it's it's sometimes that's a difficult process you think it

sounds pretty simple but car dealers are being dragged kicking screaming into this new way of doing business so they so agent lightning is thinking about buying a ford yeah okay that proves our arm's length transaction we have here we have our own mystery shopper and as you know we're car dealers and we don't have a four dealership but agent lightning is going to to buy a Ford. Ford's a good car. I mean, we're not here to sell you anything. Our own mystery shopper is buying Ford's. So, please don't think this is an infomercial. Sorry to interrupts too. That's okay. But we think it's a more natural description of what, you know, what the pitfalls are. And I think what we've discovered in this one, sometimes it's just a lack of a

willingness to give information. But that's so much better than experience than that once you're already in the showroom. If you're at home and you're trying to get a quote, nobody answers you I guess your attitude is kind of like well that's too bad for you you're missing out on the chance to sell a car and you move on so it's a it's a really good mystery shopping report and like I don't last time we did this many dealers in a single mystery shopping report is when we shop 20 to kind of cars you know all over South Florida so this is kind of interesting to do for it does present a particular challenge you got to edit it down to so it fits in within our two-hour radio show

format there's a lot of information there but I think we did did a good job at condensing it down to the most important information. Okay, good. Any text over there? Oh, yeah. They're starting to come in. I'm going to start off with anonymous feedback this time. Let's see.

This came in at the end of the show last week, so we're going to play a little catch-up. Hi, I enjoy your new background photo. Being Lexus is like being like Lexus does, okay, this is not, I'm having our time. I'm just going to read it. Being Lexus, like does Venza, come with real leather as Lexus does. I think they might be referring to the new Toyota Lexus, which disappeared for a couple of years and came back redesigned as a hybrid. And to answer your question, no, it comes with something called softex. It's a synthetic leather.

And before we jump on it and call it vinyl, I can't tell the difference between it and leather. I've been fooled in it. My son's Prius has softex, and I can't tell any difference. But it costs a little bit less than leather. It is easier to clean, and it doesn't wear out like leather. So I know I'm sounding like I'm selling softex, but that's your answer. And cows really like the idea, too. There is no animal products used, so if you're a vegan, you can feel really good about softex.

And I don't know, I remember vinyl. Vinyl is horrible. It's stretchy. It felt like rubber or plastic. This is, I guess, high-tech materials from the 21st century. You know, the chicken takeout place with the billboard that says... Chick-fil-A. Chick-fil-I says, eat more chicken, and they have three cows up there.

That's what they're saying about using synthetic fabric. That's right. Cows are going to put up a billboard says buy softex. Right. I don't blame it. All right, here's a little critique of you, Mr. Stewart. When Rick is speaking, Earl interrupts, and that's from someone in Parrish, Florida. Well, that's a, it's true.

And I interrupt Nancy, I interrupts, too. You know, we all like to talk. I love to talk. I talk too much, I admit that. And the conversation that Nancy and I have coming in every morning is about, are we gonna have enough time? When should we start the mystery shopping report? The most important thing that I look for

is your call and your comments. And what I would like to do is I would like to have your question, hopefully something that everybody has on their mind, answered precisely and accurately, and in short enough context that it is, doesn't go on beyond the answer to your question. We're all very knowledgeable. I'm not patting myself on the back,

but no one in this room is more knowledgeable than Rick. Rick could probably build a car from scratch. He could probably go to the part store, buy the cars, and build the car. That's how good he is. So there's a temptation on his part and my part, and it's probably Stu and Nancy's too, to be able to expound on our knowledge

of what we know about the question. So you can ask me how to, what time it is, and I can tell you how to build a watch. I know you can ask Rick what time it is. He tell you how to build a car. So I try to keep things short so we can hear more questions. And if I'm rude, I apologize to Rick. I apologize to all that.

I'm the coach. It is Earl and Cars, and I am the coach, and I try to keep the show running so we can hear more feedback and information from you So we can reflect it out into cyberspace, and more people can learn from your question. See what I just did? I talk too long. And I'm being critical of myself.

That's okay. This is a talk show. Yes. So that's what we're doing. More anonymous feedback. Hi, Earl. I just wanted to say that I really appreciate the open and honest way. Your dealership does business.

My parents bought both of their Toytas, new at your dealership, and it was time for me to buy my first car. I also thought of your dealership. However, I was looking for a used Volkswagen, and I had a lucky strike when I found a listing for a used jet on your lot at everything I was looking for, and most importantly for me and my family, the price was clear, no dealer fee. There are a couple of issues with the car. We noticed right after the sale, and the salesman we work with went above and beyond to help resolve them before I went home with the car. My family and I were very happy with the experience. Fast forward a few months, unfortunately, I was involved in an accident where that car was totaled. When I was finally in the market for a new car, I finally experienced the headache it was when looking for a used or new car.

What was most frustrating to me was after the list price of the car, all of the extra fees could total an average of 4,000 more on the list price for just dealer fees, dock fees, and even a reconditioning fee. That was $2,000. I'm pretty sad on buying a Jetta, but I wish I could personally do business with your dealership again. Wish you also had a Volkswagen dealership. Ha ha. My parents are going to upgrade their cars in a few years, and I know exactly what we're going. So that was very nice, but I think the point of that was you go out there and it is the Wild West. Yeah.

This is maybe not relevant, but when I think I just read the paper they day that the CEO, the head of Volkswagen, is going to trial for criminal charges. And, you know, of course, the CEO of Nissan has fled the country. He's an international fugitive. And, I mean, you can go around, not just in the automobile business, but there's, I think there's a moral dilemma. I'm not the dilemma is the wrong word, a moral crisis in corporations today. What's the name of the big electric truck manufacturer that is trying to compete with Tesla? Oh, yeah. Give me a few cents.

Anyway, they came out with a commercial, and they didn't have an electric truck yet, but they had. had a body and they pushed it up to the top of the hill and they let it go down the hill and they said the TV cameras filled the TV commercial and they were talking about how quiet it was and and how fast it was going there was no no motor and there was no battery there was no electric motor in there and it just came out what they did okay what is it Nicola or Nicola which is interesting because that was Tesla's first name how do you spell N-I-K-O-L-A. N-I-K-O-A.

Nicola, so they, I mean, how, and then General Motors invested, I want to say 200 million. I'm probably off by a lot of millions, but they invested a huge amount of money in Nicola. And this was after they disclosed that they were lying about their TV commercial. Now, their argument is, well, we have, we really have an electric truck now, and it really will go good. but that doesn't make any difference you lie to millions and millions of people we're saying that in Volkswagen GM basically they own 11% of it

that's their stake now so I had very little to do with that called I just did what I said or text hey listen when the phone's not ringing we got to do the talk and you know it's kind of funny even you know Elon kind of does that there was the word that you used in car dealer advertising puffery

that rolling the car down the hill I think beyond puffery a little bit beyond puffery Elon Musk engages in quite a bit of poverty, but he's still, you know, he's showing up and he's producing, but he knows how to promote himself for sure. Rick, you had. Oh, Rick's got a YouTube over here. Let's hear from Rick. Well, Derek Lopez says, good morning.

Thank you for answering my last week's question. Today's question, do you feel that buyers' unrealistic expectations, and in quotations, we all know the guy who says he got 100% off MSRP, Do you feel that that has made car selling difficult? Well, car selling is supposed to be difficult, Eric, and retailing, and it's a tough business. Competition is both the best thing that ever happened and the worst thing that ever happened because it makes a retailer's life a constant challenge. And, yeah, you have buyers that actually come in and they expect a lower price they could possibly get.

you also have buyers that come in and will misinform you to get a better price. They will say they got a better price from your competition than they really did. And that's competition. And that's the reason we have such a, what is the word, energetic, you know, our free market system in the United States beats everything. And a lot of other countries are catching up to us. But the free marketplace where you can go out and negotiate and you can, I, I, I, I, I, If I want to buy detergent, I can get on Amazon and go to six different places,

and then I can go to Target, and then I could go to Walmart, and then I can go to Costco. And you're doing all this on your phone, of course. And you do it all in your phone in 15 minutes. So it's a tough, tough business out there. So yes, Eric, it makes it more difficult, but it's supposed to be. And if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. It's not easy being a car dealer. It's a tough, frustrating job for a car sales person, too.

the best car salesperson probably is selling three out of every 10 people he speaks to. That means 70% of the time he goes to work every day is a majority of rejection and a letdown. Yeah, exactly. And so, you know, when we uncover all the tactics, you know, a real factor that we put in there, and we've seen that in Mystery Shopping reports, you've got a salesperson just burned out. I mean, he's tired of doing this, you know, he's frustrated, he's kind of, he's lost his mojo, and he's expecting now the next guy, he talks to the next woman he speaks to. he's going to let them down so that can create some bad attitudes and you know it's just it is it's

really tough okay another text yeah going over to anonymous feedback all right the waiting game happened to us the salesman said he could not do the deal we shook hands walked to our car salesman and manager followed i told them i couldn't pay their price and the manager said he would call me later i never answered his call we ended up another dealership the next week so that the The waiting game is a tactic, by the way. What happened there was you might have wanted to go back in just to find out what they had to say because they were holding their best card close to their chest, and then when you walked out, they're going to run out and say, okay, we can do a better deal.

And we see that, once again, on mystery shopping reports all the time. Sometimes the parting word of the manager who comes over to thank you for coming in, and it's like, well, give us a call again, we might be able to take another 500 or 1,000 off, let us know. I've mentioned this before, but back when I was evil, Here was one of the cleverest weight of game tricks, because you never want to give the customer your final price, because he can take your final price and go to your competition, and your competition will beat it by $100, or maybe only $50, but the competition will usually always try to beat the price. So what I would do, one of the customer back when I was evil, is they say, is your best price?

I said, no, I want you to go around and shop all the other car dealers. And he says, then I'd say, then I'm going to give you the best price. Then I would take my business card, and I'd go like this. I'd say, now, that's my best price. And I'd go, and it's right there. After you've been around to all the other dealers and got your best price, you come in and I'll show you my best price. And I guarantee, I promise you, that'll be lower than anything you've seen.

But you won't believe that until you've shopped it around. so please come back and see what my price is okay i mean it worked like a term absolutely that would not work today ladies and gentlemen i want to remind you that uh our number is 877 960 9960 our lines are open and as you can hear this morning so far we're exposing you know some deceit that's still out there and we'll continue but we're here to help you to help you weed them out. So it is the 21st century. It's been going on for a long time. Give us a call.

Tell us what you think. How was your transaction? Hey, 77-960, or you can text us at 772-4976530 and continue to send us your feedback on www.com. Okay. More anonymous

feedback. They keep coming in. Here's another waiting game one. I experienced the waiting game a few weeks ago. Over the phone, the salesperson, committed to the price I wanted. Then I was in the dealership the next day for six hours getting the deal that I was promised. It was crazy and not my idea of a fun day. You know, kind of jumping back to what we were talking about earlier,

even with the modern, sophisticated ways to get a price, the games are still played. So this person did it the right way, went online, got a price, got a commitment, and when they came back in, the show started all over again. The name of the game is get them in the door. And I know that sounds crude and rude, but it's just life in retail, especially in the car business. And you go to your advertising agency, you tell your salespeople, nothing happens until you get them in the door. After that, you worry about it later.

You get them in the door by promising them a price that you can't possibly give them. It is so difficult to sell a car in today's extremely competitive market that the dealers feel the only way they can get you in is to lie to you in their advertising. And they don't like to use the word the lie. You know, they will over-emphasize something. The reason they say I'm not lying is because they'll take a fine print snapshot on the television screen that was there for one nanosecond and say, look, it says right here, dealer fee, dealer installed accessories, and only if you're a member of the farmer's credit union is this price good. And so if you put all these impossible disclaimers, and they get you in, and that's how they do it. And the same way with the salespeople, the same way with the sales

managers, the culture of the way cars are retail today demands that salespeople and dealers be dishonest. In today's market, what would you say, are there more people taking advantage of, I'd say, True Car, Consumer Report, Costco, and it's a whole lot easier, or are they still coming in to the dealership as they did before? Most of them, but more and more people are going to True Car and Consumer Reports. And I forgot to mention the Internet. Absolutely, yeah.

I would say, I think it's overwhelmingly Internet. I mean, if you look at this, now not every single internet inquiry that we get is, you know, somebody who is really, really in the market for the car. Somebody might be just like playing around looking at numbers, but, you know, we, you know, get over 1,000, you know, internet inquiries for a dealership bar size, and that's quite a bit more than the people that actually just show up or walk in the dealership. So it's definitely gone that way. Unfortunately, the true cars and even the Costco's, as we've uncovered here on the show, the same games get played. and that is not a guarantee of a safe experience. Yeah, they're definitely not always honest, all of them, Costco, consumer report, or true car. A funny anecdote is when I first started selling cars back in the 90s,

and it was at the very beginning of your awakening. And my sales manager was a guy named Gerard, and I would have an appointment, and I would get all excited, and I wanted to make sure, and I'm not trying to sound like a Boy Scout, But I wanted to give the customer a good experience. So I wanted to prepare everything. I want to know, give me an idea what their trade might be worth, what's the pricing going to be like? I wanted to have everything, the table set from the guy here.

And I'd go to them, and Gerard would say, you go, settle down, settle down. Show starts when they get here. I'm like, can't you tell me what you think their car's worth? Show starts when they get here. Like, there was no effort really to, like, have a good experience. It was, we're going to put them through the process when they get here. We're going to, what if them? We're going to do trial closes and the whole shebang.

Numbers near him. Yeah. And it had nothing to do with how the customer might have felt about it. They're not people. Their numbers are coming through the door. What an interesting time. What I'm going to ask for some questions, here. Hmm?

Oh, you got some more. Okay, yeah. Here's one anonymous feedback. I have a crazy idea for a car dealership. How about the person selling the item tells the person who wants to purchase the item the price that he would expect? And I think what they're saying is,

why can't they just be straight with the price? Now, a question is kind of funny, harking back to, when Gerard trained me, it was always a question for the customer. You know, what number did you have in mind? What would you like to pay? Well, to answer the question, why can't the salesperson give the buyer the potential customer the price that they expect or whatever is because it's something that's endemic to the car

business. Think about it. A Chevrolet Corvette with an MSRP of $85,900 is identical at every Chevrolet dealership in the country. And how many Chevrolet dealers are there thousands of Chevrolet dealers? More than Todd's? So now when we're online, a customer perspective of a buyer of a Corvette can get prices from thousands of places, and it's the same thing.

It's a generic product. It's like it's not really branded. Chevrolet but if there's a thousand dealers and they all are selling the exact same product it's a buyer's delight it's a buyer's world all you have to do is go out there and some dealer is going to be the lowest price and the price is going to be so low that that probably is not going to make any money but that's the way competition works so the dealers are all selling the same thing a Toyota is a Toyota is a Toyota A Kia is a Kia is a Kia.

The one that ABC Kia sells is no better or different than the one that CDF Kia sells. So they have to have a way to get you in, and the only way they can get you in is to advertise a lower price, but they can't afford to sell you the car at that price because they lose money. So they get you in on the price they can't give you, and they add dealer fees, dealer install accessories, they undervalue your trade in, and all the other tricks that we cover in this show. We love sharing all this information with you, and we love your calls, text, YouTube. So that telephone number again is 877960, and you can text us at 772-497-6530. And we're going to go out to Georgia to talk to Tony, our first caller this morning.

Good morning, Tony. Fantastic. Good morning. I think you've got a fantastic. show. Thank you. Thank you. I'm in the market for a Honda Odyssey. There is a club that does a spreadsheet for the last two years, and it's nationwide. Evidently, the Honda buyers are contributing to the out-the-price, out-the-door price, and then they show the taxes and stuff, all right? So basically, what I'm asking is,

If I showed this spreadsheet, because it's given all kinds of, it's given at least a $5,000 or $6,000 spread on the cars that these people are buying, how could I use that with a dealership when I got the prices that people have paid for the same model all over the country? Well, Tony, your challenge, and that's a great question. I'm not familiar with this club. I'm a little surprised that Honda is endorsing that with, you know, and a dealer is joining in, but, because I have a feeling it's not legitimate. I think what you have to do is find the dealer that gives you the lowest, quote-unquote, out-the-door price, and test, is that an out-the-door price?

And the easiest way to test it is just to say, I'm writing out my check now, or my credit union is going to give me a check. I'm going to bring it to you and I want to give that check to you after I give that check to you can I get in my new Honda and drive it home because I think without fail you will find that when you call and say that they'll say no we have some other fees

that will go to that and then you get into that game are they taxable fees non-taxable fees are they fees they really have to pay the government or they don't and they will boost the price sometimes with dealer installed accessories They'll put lowjack, or they'll put window tent, they'll put nitrogen in the tires, and they'll have a plethora of other.

May I interrupt you for a second? Please do. Okay? Because I bought your book. Okay? I bought your book last year. I've been in the market, and I've been around the dealerships, and you're perfectly right. They play that game.

Right. Because they think you don't have the information on what other dealers have actually sold the car for. Yes. Okay. And what I'm saying is there, I have a spreadsheet that's covering now two years nationwide from, from a forum, okay? Anybody can look up the forum. Most clubs have, most cars have some type of forum. Okay. And these, these are, this is data that's input by the purchaser on, on what their base price was plus transportation and then what the out-the-door price is. right for the model now if i'm sitting in front of a salesman or sales manager and i've got this list of data for people who contributed in his state and they got they got a lot of them in florida okay how can i best use that data because we let's say we got legitimate data on what people have paid for the car and thank you for your patience no no problem my thought this is still

my thought is i think that's it's worth a shot i mean you I think you should present that when you're there or possibly even over email online so you can say yourself a trip. It's definitely not a guarantee that they're just going to say, okay, well, we're going to give you the lower range. They'll still try and put you through the system. If you're going to use something like that, I would definitely use it to inform, you know, do what we say on the show every single week, you know, send it out to three or four condo dealerships and maybe even attach the spreadsheet, so I'm basing it on this. But that's almost kind of just a little extra touch, I think,

just by going to the multiple dealerships and comparing the price, you could use that spreadsheet that you have just to keep them honest and take a look at it. If you have all four bids coming out considerably higher, then you can maybe go back for another shot at them. But I think it could be a tool in your arsenal. And I don't think any of us here at the show doubt it's legitimacy, but I could imagine a salesperson or a sales manager calling and to question that.

And the reason I say that is in car dealerships, there are things like that, of that Kelly Bluebook, for example, people come in and they'll look at a used car value and say, hey, Kelly Bluebook says it's worth X. And a typical answer from a sales manager as well, can they buy your car for you? Will Kelly Bluebook send you a check? And a typical used car manager at a dealership might say something like, well, can you buy the car from that spreadsheet? You know, we have the car here.

It's the car. So I think it's a tool, and I think you should try and see if it helped you get a good price. Yeah, Tony, send us a link, will you? And or give us a link now. We'll write it down. We'd like to check that out. We'll do a mystery shop with some of the dealers on the list and see what their prices are like. I really appreciate that.

It is done. It is the Honda Odyssey Forum, and they have a part of there called the price. Okay. And they've covered the last 18, 19, and 20. Okay. All right. We'll check it out. It's got 145 items.

Appreciate it. Honda Odyssey Forum and the price. The price. We'll do that. Tune in next week, and we'll get to a report on that. I can't thank you enough for the call. It's really interesting. I think it's fantastic.

Okay. Have it. Stay safe. Bye-bye. Thank you, Tony. Give us a call again. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget, www.

Your Anonymous Feedback.com. That sounds like a grassroots version of True Car. Yeah, yeah, interesting. We'll check it out and see what it's all about. You've got a YouTube. Let's figure that. We do. Mark Ryan is asking,

do you specifically select each new Toyota that comes to the dealership or does Toyota provide you with an assortment, colors, features, et cetera, based on what inventory they have available? Well, we choose, but to a limited degree, they offer what is available, and then we make our choice based on our sales rate. Go ahead, Stu. Exactly. It's called a turn and earn, so it's a chicken and the egg thing. So you get allocated, in other words, they tell you how many vehicles are going to send you away based on how many you sold. So if you sell one, you earn one.

then the dealers do have the option like Earl mentioned to say I don't want that the car I don't it's called you turn them down and the manufacturers really really discouraged that they want you to have those cars on your lot because they believe it helps you sell cars faster but it is up to the dealer to determine which you can order a car built to your specifications in most cases sometimes they come from overseas the problem with ordering a car built to your precise specifications it has to be built somewhere and And it might be built in Japan, it might be built in Paducah, Kentucky.

But it's going to take you probably a month or longer, sometimes several months before you get that car. Sometimes there are price changes between the time you order it. And the understanding, of course, with whoever you buy it from, is that the price would be passed along to you. And sometimes there's an incentive on a car you want. So the motivation is try to buy a car within a few weeks. You never want to buy a car the same day. But when you order a car, it's going to take you a long, long time, and many a slip twigs the cup and the lip. Yeah, and dealers also have leeway on the mix of colors and equipment they get to.

So there is a say in it, and hopefully a smart dealer tailors it to what his customers are looking for. But like Earl said, don't, if you're shopping for a car, do not feel that you have to take what they have in stock. Because, and they might not want to do it, but if you push them to either do a dealer trade or do a special order, you should be able to find what you're looking for, provided it's a, you know... Every car dealer, whether he sells 20 cars a month or 2,000 cars a month, has thousands of cars in his inventory because we are in the 21st century and everything's online. So any dealer on any brand, any Kia dealer can look in his computer and find out hundreds of thousands of keys, and he can usually negotiate a deal with another key dealer to swap,

and that's what happens at 25, 30 percent of time. In our case, we do it close to half the time. 40%, yeah. You know, just out of curiosity, because I've had some customers that would want, you know, a special type of vehicle, and it has always taken so long for them to get their truck or their car. Why is it today, it still takes as long as it did, and I don't mean this literally, but yesterday, why can't there be an easier process? I think one day there will be a process that you will literally have manufacturers that will build

to order the two. They will build two. You walk in like Tesla does. And you get exactly what you want. You get it within a week or two. People don't mind waiting a week or two or three to get something. But they don't want to wait three months. But it will happen. Today it can't happen. It's just not set up for it. Right now, and I can speak for Toyota, it's about a four to six weeks. from the time the vehicle is actually built until the time it arrives at the dealership. That's a shorter time. And it used to be because most of them are built in the United States. They could go on a rail car to the distribution centers.

So even on an order like that, but a special order, you know, it can take up, like you said, 120 days, which is, you know, that's four months. Yeah, the great thing about that happening when it does happen is going to take away one of the greatest hidden deceptions that dealers have of manufacturers.

You never buy, virtually never buy the car that you wanted. The car that you saw advertise and the car that you came in and looked at usually is never available and I say that

because tongue in cheek because a dealer doesn't want you to buy the car that you know the right price on. He wants to you to buy a car that you haven't thought about. In fact, he wants to lease you a car because he doesn't want you to buy because you've already done your homework

on buying. Now he flips you to a lease and he can make a couple thousand dollars more because you're not familiar with it. So once we can go into a dealership and buy the exact car we want, that will be the day the dealers really have a problem and take advantage of you. And you know, this is a heck of it. I'm going to mention this. In my experience, I found that there are more men who want a special order. It's very rare for a female to say that they want this, this, and this on their vehicle.

it's an interesting time and it's been like that for quite a long time. Okay. Just my observation. We are going to go to, whoops, John, if you're still listening, give us a call back. We'd love to talk to you. 877-960

or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Yeah, we apologize, John. We try to prioritize callers because we know you can't hold for a long time, especially when you're driving. And next time, if someone calls, we'll try to do a better job to ship to the phone quickly. That's John from West Palm Beach. Yes, so give us a call back, John.

Okay, Sue, let's go to some more text or YouTube, whatever we got. Yeah, now I miss feedback. I bought my last card, a one-price dealer. Buying a Tesla I did just as well as the next person. I was in control either do or not do the deal. Oh, Tesla is the future today, and it's a wake car should be sold. I give Elon Musk, even though he's a nut, all the credit in the world. He's an innovator, and he understands you, the buyer, and Nancy and I have been into a Tesla

dealership. We almost bought a Tesla. It was a delightful experience. It really was, definitely. We're going to go to John, who did give us a call back from West Palm Beach. Welcome, John. Welcome. I just wanted to encourage that guy who's looking for the Odyssey. You know, he's done two years worth of research, you've given them all the tools that he can use and he wants to sit in front of a person to buy the Odyssey for the price that he's got on that data sheet. He just needs to be patient and hold his ground. I don't know what advice you guys gave him, but the last thing I would tell the person sitting in front of me, I can either take my data sheet home or I can go home with an Odyssey

and just put it back in their court. I'm sure you guys hear that line all the time. Are you going to let $100, you know, keep me from buying this? But, I don't know what he's trying to purchase, but he needs to stand firm and continue looking for what he's looking for. And take the data sheet. Well, John, you sound like... You sound like a guy that doesn't have a problem

negotiating and dealing with car dealers. And there are a few of you out there. Like, there's not enough. There's only, I'd say, 5 or 10% of the population. They can go to head-to-head with a car dealer and play the game and go through the whole nine yards. You have to have thick skin, and you have to be able to take a little bit of abuse, and you have to be strong. You're a good negotiator. Unfortunately, the people that pay the huge profits to dealers are the ones that are more passive

and not as well as informed as you are, but I can see you've been through it before. Yeah, I've been through it before, and now you've just got four out, tired and that's why I bought my car from you. It was a lot easier and less pressure. Thank you, John. You're welcome. See you. All again. Take care. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Yeah, I really didn't think that the spreadsheet idea was a terrible idea. I've been searching on the Odyssey Forum. I haven't found it yet. I did find something similar like a discussion on prices a few years ago from 2017. I'll keep looking. But I just want to emphasize, you know,

when I hear people say, I go to the dealership, I go there, I tell the sale, I just I can't believe anybody's still doing that. Like, I can't even go into a Starbucks to buy a cup of coffee. I've got to do it online and save so much time. We try to, what we should do on the show, we don't always do it. We get a little complicated sometimes, but we try to keep it simple. And the simplest thing is to get an out-the-door price.

I know you've heard it a thousand times on this show. You're probably going to hear it another thousand times. Out-the-door price, you have to say, I'll write your checkout. You don't mean literally, but I, you know. give them the cash. In other words, you're going to give them the payment of the out-the-door price in whatever form it may be, and you're going to get in the car and go home. That's an out-the-door price. Now, if you can get that number from three or four different dealers, and stay tuned for our mystery shopping report because that's the process

and what we did in our mystery shop. We went to four dealerships online. We visited it online. It took Agent Lightning maybe half an hour to go online and get the information from about 4-4 dealership. And then she chose the one that had purportedly the lowest price and she visited that dealership to confirm. So this is what you need to do. I mean, it's so simple. It's easy. You save yourself the aggravation, you know, the migraine headache. Let me interject. You might not say aggravation, you're going to experience it still, but I would much rather be aggravated at home

where I didn't have to get back in my car and slip across town if some guy lied to me after I invested two hours of my time. If I'm investing 30 minutes of my time, it's a little bit easier to deal with, and you move on to the dealer. That's a good point. I'd rather be aggravated at home than I would out in public because I don't know how I would agree out.

And if you're a passive personality, And most people are, I think, then you can accomplish more online. When you're face-to-face with a pro, and he is a master at intimidation, you are your cooked meat, you're dead meat. He can eat you up and you have another chance. For some people, yeah. Online, you can be anybody. You're the incredible Hulk.

They have no idea what you look like, how you talk, what you sound like, you can be a tough guy. I mean, if you're a negotiator and you do walk into the dealership and you, Say, hey, you want to dance? We'll dance. But it's just a little easier in the 21st century to sit at home, like Stu said, and negotiate. And you know what? I really think that that's coming. It's going to happen.

And the out-to-door price is going to happen. And consumers are going to realize that this is the best way to do business. 877-960-99-60. Or you can text us at 772-497-6530. I'm glad you found that so humorous. You want to dance? That kind of scared me. We can dance.

I know you didn't mean dancing. You got that line in front. We're watching a new TV series, Person of Interest. So if you want a great show and they have a lot of very tough female characters. No, that was my neighborhood. Yeah, they have a lot of very tough female characters in there, and that sounds like a line from that. Full disclosure, your girl does work for NBC Universal and, just kidding.

Anonymous feedback. At your dealership, which Toyota models do more of your elderly customers purchase, which sedan, which SUV, thanks for North Carolina. That's a great question, and my initial answer is they buy every model that we sell for the most part, but thinking about a little bit harder. I would say the Camry, well, first of all, we sell more Camry's. most Toyota is killed that's their top volume car.

Can I answer that because I'm elderly. Our elderly customers buy cars in general, there are exceptions. I spoke to one the other day that was thinking about buying a super I probably killed the deal because he says how do you like the super? I said I love the super but I can't get in it

it's very difficult and when I do get in it I can never get out of it. So he laughed and we both agree he probably should be looking at something like a Camry or and SUV because the SUV like the RAB 4 and this onto CRV, the

ones that are higher and they're easier to get into, slide into and slide auto. Right. And so thank you for answering the question for me because my next statement was would be the Rav 4 which are the two big volume cars. You know, like I don't see

but we also see, you know, corollas you know, it's really kind of a, it's a big mixed bag, but overall Camry and Rav 4. Yeah, when Toyota Okay, I'm going to let you talk in a minute, Rick. When Toyota came out with a Sion years ago, it was supposed to be for the first new car buyer, kids 19, 20 years old,

and they had a, it looked like a box. You probably saw them around. Honda copied it, the element. Yeah, nope. To what I copied that element came out before the XP. Anyway, whoever copied, whoever, the point being that they were really easy to get it out of, and so who bought them? The old folks.

face it, you know, when you're older, it's harder to get it out of a car. And that's the thing we hear over and over from people. And it's also sometimes hard to see out of a car. And they want something that has a high seat. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago on the show. You can go online consumer reports, and they'll tell you the cars that are better from a short people standpoint. So that's basically what old people buy. I'm an expert. Yeah. Well, you know, to your point, I can honestly say that there There are more younger people, not more than the seniors, but there are a lot more today younger people

who are having back problems for some strange reason. And once you buy that car, you are stuck. I mean, if you're not going to be comfortable, you are really stuck. Rick is the youngest guy here, and he has a point. Well, one model that I was amazed did not catch on when it first came out was the RAV-4 two-door. The doors on it were extra long, which for an elderly person, it can't bend their knees as well, made it much easier to swing your legs in and out of the car,

not to mention that when you were looking behind you to back up, the back of the car was right there. Okay, I haven't answered to it. Great visibility. I have an answer to that because I don't like big doors. And the reason I don't like big doors is they're harder to close and harder to open, and you slam into the car next to you. And they swing back and hit your legs. when you're getting in the car.

Well, one of my problems now, when I get in my car, if the door is open, I've got to lean all the way out. And again, hook my finger in something that I can get onto and try the strain to pull it in. But if you want an expert on being old about cars, I'm the expert. Okay, next text. Next, anonymous feedback. I believe we have used all our anonymous feedback.

We're going to jump over to the text messages. This comes from, well, no name, but somebody in Dallas, Texas. Hello, just bought a car in August, and I honestly want to return it. Is there any way that I can? I have the gap coverage, if that means anything, and then there's a little smiley, laughing emotion.

It doesn't. The reason why is because I'm paying too much for it, and at the moment it was okay, but no, I realize they don't like it. Also, the dealership never told me my APR. Once again, that's from Dallas, Texas. I'll let you take this one, but there's not a whole lot you can do, Dallas.

It's the biggest nightmare of anybody. You're rushing to buy a car? and you make a mistake, I can tell you you're lucky you didn't lease it, then you'd really have a problem. When you buy a car and you return it that quickly, you're going to get killed on resale value, and they're going to buy it back from you, no problem, except for the fact it'll be for thousands of thousands of dollars less than you paid for it.

So you buy a new car, a used car for that matter, but used car is not quite as painful. You lease a car, you're really messed up, and I'm getting a lot more calls now because you're a lot more leases. people that bought at least a car and the doctor says I talked to a woman the other day she'd have an operation must have been a pretty serious doctor says you can't drive anymore well she leased a car six months ago and it's a 36-month lease and so that's a that's a real sad story make your car buying process

a intelligent and as long as you have to take you should you should never make a decision on buying a car in less than two weeks probably a month would be better, and do all your online resources, and then drive the car, drive the car, drive the car. Drive it in the same streets and conditions that you drive your current car. Drive it to work, drive it home, drive at the grocery store, drive it on the turnpike, the I-95, do every condition, and then look in the rear view mirror, look at the side view mirror, can you see out the back door? All these things, because I'm telling you, the most common problem we have that we can't fix with our customers. Our customers have bought a car too quickly

from us. And they come back in six months and say, what am I going to do? I made a mistake. We try to help them. But depreciation is something that happens and you can't fight it. And the depreciation is going to kill you to get out of a car you bought six months ago. Absolutely. There's a lot of, there's a lot of emphasis on that comfort of the inside of the car. And, you know, certainly I don't really think that we've kept pace with the back seats and safety features and comfort. But it's something to what you said about driving the car, taking it overnight, you can't drive it enough because once you purchase it, it's done. And if the dealer won't let you do that, don't buy the car from the dealer. And you can always rent a car where there's no obligation.

But, you know, be sure you keep that car for, you can do it in a day. you don't have to do it overnight, come in the morning, and one day you can drive that car in just about every condition that you'd have to. But if you want to do it overnight, then they should let you take the car overnight. Great advice. And then also the other component of that is,

what you consider is affordable. So it's really easy to get excited about a car. And as a matter of fact, that's what the most sales training is. They say, get off the price, get off the payment, talk about the car, build value, build value. and you want to get excited and it is excited

I mean it's a big purchase and they're cool and all the technology but slow down and really take a hard look at your budget and don't let somebody ask you to increase like if you come in and say I need to be at $300 a month and they go if you really like the car

could you get up to maybe $350 and then you go yeah if I really liked it up to well maybe $370 next thing you know you've just increased what your budget and then as they say in the car business you come out of the ether you settle down and the emotions subside, and you go, oh, my goodness, I can't afford this.

So just don't do that. Andreas is Texas Suss. He sent us a couple of pictures of some alloy wheels. It says, good morning, Earl. This is Andreas. My wife purchased a brand new car a few months ago, and suddenly the wheels clear coat is peeling off. And I can see in the pictures here, it looks like alloy wheels,

and flaking clear plastic-like shards are sloughing off these wheels. Is this a warranty issue? If so, what's the best approach to start conversations and who those conversations should be with the dealer or manufacturer? Yeah, that is on a brand new car a couple of months old. That's a warranty issue. Unless the dealer put on aftermarket wheels, and we hope that didn't happen.

But, yeah, it should be. If they're factory wheels, they should be under warranty. Yeah, I'm looking at the thing. I can't see the logo. I'm sure Andreas will let me know. It looks like either a bit of a Toyota logo or possibly Lexus, I'm not sure. But the person to speak to is not every car dealership has a collision or a body shop where they do the exterior stuff. Bring it to the service department, if they're the manufacturer wheels, those just need to be replaced.

Rick's got our YouTube over here. Kind of a long one, but Donovan makes a great point here. Donovan Lewis is, speaking about all this online shopping for cars, what is with the U.S. not respecting privacy in 2020. They sell your information in a moment after buying a car. Car dealer websites have some of the highest number of trackers on their websites or ask for your devices location with no need for it. In the age of GDPR and CCPA, I'm not sure what those initials stand for on,

I believe car dealers are in for a world of hurt without a change or without a change in direction of how they handle users' privacy and personal information information. I purchased a used car in July, and every three days I'm getting mail about service, warranties, I get the serious XM offer once a week in the mail, and a crazy amount of junk email from that dealer and others in their network. We're quickly moving into an opt-in-not-opt-out society when it comes to privacy. You're absolutely right. You are tracked like crazy when you go to a car dealer's website. They use like every retailer on the planet, they use cookies. They're little snippets of code that go onto your browser that can identify you so their ads can appear

to you. Let's say you go on a car dealer's website and your price load of Ford Explorer. You'll find out later that afternoon when you're on foxnews.com or any other Palm Beach Post, you're going to see ads for that car dealer. And that's what happens. I honestly, we know a lot of cars, I don't know any car dealers that are selling the information to a third party because they want to use that to sell you a car. Now one thing that we do see a lot after somebody buys a car and we and it's from public records registrations, people will start getting solicited by warranty companies. They know you've bought a car and suddenly you're a target. They get that from the DMV. Yeah, exactly. It's public records. I do know that and this is

from seminars and advice, you know, from our manufacturer and our legal teams, that privacy issues online are serious and we are encouraged we have a privacy statement there's our website and a lot of dealers do this ask is it okay if we know your location lots of things are there to put for the consumer's protection but just be warned you shop for anything online you're going to your your information has given up and donovan responded back also with GDPR is the European Union Privacy Act for all EU citizens globally and And CCPA is the California Privacy Act that applies to all California residents. You know, I'm going to make an editorial comment here.

I think that we have entered an era in our lives. No, I'm not talking about a pandemic, where privacy is not going to exist. And I think those of us that think we can keep our privacy are diluting ourselves. It's a really good thing and it's a really bad thing. and that's what life is in general, really good and really bad. But my personal solution to the problem is I'm relaxing and enjoying it. I'm finding out that having my habits known to the world, I'm actually seeing products I'm interested in.

I also see some. I'm not. I have people that tell me that they're going to, you know, someone compromise my bank account, and I have all these hackers that come through. And that's a terrible part about loss of privacy. But if you're careful and use reasonable controls, you're pretty well protected. And I just think it's not going to get better, folks, it's going to get worse. You get on the Internet, you get online, you've lost your privacy. And the most annoying aspect that I heard in the comments were the emails.

And for 20 years, we've all been dealing with spam. and it's kind of neat that right now we're at a point where does it really matter anymore because let me use earl as an example he barely uses his email anymore i mean he does and important information goes back and forth the primary communication that most of us are using now is messaging either either through a social media like facebook or through your message or on your phone yes and the emails unfortunately i think it's just a fact of life it's it's kind of a repository of solicitations and that's kind of the bulk of what i see in my email between junk and our clutter I get about 200 a day I don't know I think I

think I top anybody 200 a day and I have to delete it by like if I forget a few days I've got thousands and I have to go through and delete you know where a lot of that comes from is because you list your private information on the website sure I gave up on privacy a long time ago yeah your email address is there so any any solicitor who wants to sell some new Cardi alerts right there I think we're all a little more accepting of the whole thing Stu pointed out the spam

thing, you know, and who cares? You know, so it's just the way of the world today. I surrendered to it. Yeah, it's the 21st century, you know, you just pick and choose your wars, so to speak. What's bad, though, is I'm starting to get spam on my text message, and that's started,

I don't want to see that, get a foot hold, that's terrible. No, not at all. Ladies and gentlemen, you're a very important part of the show. We just love talking to you, and we love you taking advantage of the 877960 number, and you have a whole lot to share with us, but I do want to let you know you are an important part of the show. So thanks for tuning in, and we're going to go to Mike, who's calling us from Loxahatchie. Hey, Mike.

Good morning, Mike. Yes, good morning. I am curious to how long you would let gasoline in a can stay and use it. rather than ruin the carburetor or fuel injection. Because after a while, it gets rolled. My own personal feelings, I would not use any gasoline from a can that has been more than, say, five to six months at the maximum. I see.

Actually, I'm talking about for a more, it's a little different with a car because a car's got 20 gallons of gas. And if you put in five gallons, it's going to dilute it better. But so you say five to six months. Yeah, even from, now modern lawnmowers, they're a lot more lenient, small engines like that. They're a lot easier to handle the fuel like that. But even at the end of six months, I would be thinking find a place your local auto parts store where they will take research. old oil, they'll take old gasoline as well.

Yeah. And do you believe in use and stable? And how long could you keep it then? Fuel stabilizers like that maybe would increase it by a month or two. But even then, for the cost of fuel nowadays, you know, you're talking five gallons at $2 a gallon. That's $10. Myself, I would rather take that $10 of old fuel.

old fuel and dump it off at Pet Boies and get fresh fuel rather than take a chance on messing up the lawnmower that's a hundred bucks or more. I'll ask a stupid question. I think a lot of stuff I don't know. I know nothing about lawnmores. If you had a can of gasoline and sitting there for four or five months, would it last any longer if you shook it or turned it upside down and stirred it? I know it's stupid, but would it help?

I don't know if that would actually make a difference because it's a deterioration of it. Okay. And the fact that you've got water vapor that is going to get in and out of that fuel. I got you. You know, that's what would make me nervous on it. And I'm not really a chemist to know how it breaks down and deteriorates over time. But again, it's, we're not talking about a product that really is that expensive to replace that small of an amount. But, Mike, the answer is four months.

well okay well thank you for the calls I appreciate it very much and we don't get a long more questions if you leave the in a shop would it get less moisture in it it would probably help it a little bit but again it by about six months

that fuel is starting to turn to varnish a little bit and it's starting to break down it'd be time to get rid of it okay all right call again Mike thank you very much you're welcome stay in touch Mike Ladies and gentlemen, don't forget, we do have a great mystery shopping report coming up at about 9.30, and our mystery shopper went out and, well, shopped, I think it's four Ford dealerships. That's Mullinex, Alpacard, Wayne Acres, and Advantage Ford. So we did something a little different this week, so you want to stay tuned for that. And don't forget, you can read Earl's latest.

just call them at Erlan Cars, why car dealers and manufacturers want to lease instead of buy. It's really very interesting. You might want to pick that up, or excuse me, go to Erlon Cars and read it 877960. And you can text us at 772-4976530. And, you know, I mentioned a mystery shopping report, but I didn't mention Attorney General Ashley Moody, and we have beckoned to her to more or less help us out. We're trying to weed out, you know, these deceptive car dealers. And believe me, we do have some great mystery shopping reports, and then again, not so great. So don't forget, you can get in touch

with Ashley. You can get in touch with her, and you can help us out as Attorney General Ashley Moody. You can reach her at 850-414. 300. So help us out. We can't do it alone. I believe Stu has some texts. Well, I've got another YouTube. Let's get you a Rick's YouTube. Guy Larrabee's asking, how important

is the after-sale manufacturer survey to the dealer? Can the threat of a bad survey response be used to one's advantage in price negotiations? Not very effectively because the surveys are even recognized

by the manufacturers. as being tampered with and manipulated. They're using a new platform of just measuring loyalty for car buyers, loyalty to service customers. And it's just too easy to manipulate. Sometimes you could probably bribe a dealer, but those times were long past, too. They are moving away from the surveys,

but still a lot of car dealerships have it tied into how they pay their salespeople so they get a bad survey. But I mean, I'm not doing this to do this defend any unethical car dealers out there I think it's bad you know going in going into a negotiation with bad face and give me a good price or I'm going to hurt you later is probably not the best way to you know to do that and I don't know how effective it would be you're better off to use Google or or what's the other one oh Google Yale Facebook cars dot com there's a million

reviews yeah your your modern independent surveys what's that when the dealer does a survey or for that minute any store does a survey you're playing their game uh be honest on your google replies be honest on your yelp replies and uh you'll you'll be more effective than if if you use their survey that's a perfect segue to the next text because somebody actually oh you have a call stew i'm going to interrupt you we're going to go to dawn in palm beach gardens good morning don good morning how can we help you I just want to comment on a Tesla battery that I think Earl commented on, I don't know, three weeks or so ago. I've owned four Teslas.

I was one of the first ones, I think 14, to come with a Model S, and then I purchased another one, and then the Model X. And we never had a battery problem. I do understand that the cost of a new battery on a Tesla was right around between 8 and 11,000. $8,000. However, they have original Tesla from 14, I believe, running around in test mode with over 850,000 miles on it. Really? And still has 85%. Yeah, still has 85% of the battery left now. Wow. They are coming out Tuesday with an announcement, and I think it's going to be a million-mile battery guarantee.

Wow. I think that's what you're going to hear on Tuesday. I also own a Toyota, so. Yeah, that's amazing. I think the technology the Tesla has is unbelievable. I just wanted to kind of clear that up. I don't know. I can tell you for a fact that we've never had a battery issue with any of our cars.

And I've not heard of any serious problems with them. And the first thing they'll tell you about any electric cars, they're worried about running out of juice. It doesn't seem to appear to be a problem. I mean, you know, how many people drive over 100 miles a day unless you're going on a trip? Exactly. And these cars are both 350 to 500 miles. We don't even plug ours in every day.

I mean, we plug it in maybe once a week, and we drive a lot. I drive 25,000 miles a year in my gas car. And I don't believe I ever put on over 120 miles a day. So, you know, they shouldn't be concerned about that. I'm a gear-head guy. I have race cars. I drive race car. my son had to drag me into getting me one of these Tesla, but I think, yeah, they're really

Well, Don, you're making me want to go out and buy a Tesla. I told you before we almost did, and Elon Musk is a certified genius. I think he will go down in history is, you know, he'll be known in history worldwide for hundreds of years. He is really unique, and this Tesla car is an amazing car. skeptical, everybody was skeptical, and now I'm a total believer. I used to be a half believer, now I'm a total believer, and you're right. You're ahead of the game. You foresaw the future. I just never really believed it was going to be as good as Elon said it was, and now it's being better. I mean, my, Lord, a million-mile battery. I just can't even imagine a... Trust me, these cars are fast. Yeah. Oh, God.

And I drive race cars, and I cannot believe, you know, how fast. Well, that's one of the reasons I want to buy one. I mean, I'm kind of a 1958, a 1960 drag race guy. And when someone told me I could get a car that goes zero to 60 in two and a half seconds, I said, show me, that's not possible. And they do it. And we were back, I'm a year age, so I'm back in the day if you bought a factory car with 400 horse power, they thought you're nuts.

Yeah. They won 14 seconds. That was really fast. Yeah. We got a 6,000-pound Tesla. I took it out to the track, runs 11 O's 125 miles an hour. I mean, that's crazy. I'm just wondering if these other, now these charging stations, of course, you know,

like when everybody wanted to go to propane, that was a great idea except you couldn't get it. Yeah. But now as far as Tesla chargers go, are these other manufacturers like Toyota? I think following the same plug-in kind of deal where you could use Tesla chargers or vice versa or are they all going on their own way. The Toyota is used, and most of the manufacturers are using, there's a standardized adapter.

We talked about it, I think, last week on the show, and they can't use the Tesla adapters now. And I heard that there are adapters you can buy that allows you to use a Tesla supercharger. because I know he shared his technology with everybody, but I don't know if you're using it or not. I just wanted to kind of clear that up a little bit. I'm half serious.

I'm half serious because of you. I'm probably going to buy a Tesla. Hey, save your money and buy one of those trucks. I got one. Okay. They're going to be fantastic. They look like, you know, something else, but I guess they're pretty nice.

All right. Nice talking, Earl. Thank you, Rick. One of my favorite videos lately is the guy that pulls up at a gas station in a Tesla, and he's literally searching the car, trying to figure out where he's supposed to put fuel in the Tesla. It's hilarious. He must have borrowed his friend's car. I think he did, and he was trying to figure out how to refuel it and didn't realize.

Okay, how are we doing on text? We're good. Yeah, so we started to get to this one. somebody had asked over there on YouTube, Rick, you know, about threatening a bad survey, a bad survey which wants. We talked about the online reviews. Coincidentally, somebody says, if I have a problem with the dealer,

is an effective tactic to threaten to post bad online reviews if they don't take care of my problem? And what about threatening to call news stations? And I do think, I think that, well, I think handled smoothly, it could be an effective way if someone is giving you a hard time I'm picturing something in the service department something went wrong

and they're not helping you to say listen I'm going to go online I think maybe you should soft sell it and say listen I would love to give you a great review but right now I don't feel like I can but dealers do take it seriously particularly those that have very low number of reviews if you have a one five star review

and somebody gives you a one star suddenly your average is two and a half stars so you guys got thousands of reviews it won't hurt, but nobody wants to see them bad mouth publicly. Yeah, and I'm going to almost sound like a car dealer here for a minute, but anytime you complain, you should do it as pleasantly as possible. State the facts, be nice, be courteous, be respectful, and take it up the line as far as you can.

Sometimes people that you, because they're a good thing about me being a car dealer now, I can tell you right now in my dealership that if a customer comes, in and he's profane, abusive, aggressive, and sometimes almost physically, I mean, when you have a customer that is crazy and we, you know, it just goes nuts, even though we still want to help that customer, I could just tell you from personal experience, human nature is that you want to help people that treat you with courtesy and respect. So I think you can do the, I think you can be aggressive in terms of a bad survey, you can certainly call the Attorney General. You can do all these things, Department of Motor Vehicles.

Sometimes you have to resort to those weapons. But first exhaust, taking it up the line as far as you can, so you find a person who you can talk to and communicate with and do it with courtesy and respect. Oftentimes you can solve the problem that way. Yeah. Like you said, car dealers and salespeople and the service representatives, they are human. A really professional one will take the abuse and take care of you. But you're more likely to run into something. They're going to shut down the moment. You start like that.

They're probably going to be like, there's no way I'm helping this person. In my dealership, we have the nicest person, and my dealership is my youngest son, Josh. And when we have a customer, when we have a customer that nobody can make happy, we give him the job. Josh is such a nice person that I've seen him

in tears. He will never. react he will never respond to abuse with abuse but he'll respond with his heart and I've seen him cry because he couldn't make a customer well the joke is if I have a difficult situation I have to channel Josh before I begin the yeah channel Josh how would Josh handle it and I just let it wash over me and you just get yeah you digest that and it turns out to be a great thing the second part of the text has said what about threatening to call news stations. I do not think that's effective. Lispo, every week we uncover all this horrible behavior.

When's the last time you saw an expose on a bad car dealer on the news stations? Yeah, the news stations, television stations, radio stations, don't like to attack cardiolas because they spend a ton of money on advertising. And it's very rare that you'll find, you know, local channels, WPTV, WPEC, the other one, whatever. You know, they get a lot of advertising from Cardiol's, and they're not going to attach. attack a car dealer because of the loser advertising. Exactly.

Okay. We are going to go to Frank in Jupiter Farms, and I believe that Frank probably has an interesting, hopefully end to this saga, at least for his sake, I hope so. Good morning, Frank. Well, good morning, Nancy. Not to ruin the day, but unfortunately, it's not one. working out. No.

I truly, truly regret not listening to you three or four months ago. The help that Stu did, which was tremendous and also very appreciative, doesn't allow me as a single party to do what I needed to do. I'm not going to be very specific in case someone's listening on the radio show that knows what's going on. Sure. But I'm still working on that. Once that gets resolved, I'll probably be able to.

will sleep for once in the last two months, one night. But it's been other things draining me, too, which I got to get with Stu also in regards of a much higher matter as far as finances. So with that, it's not always fun listening to your show. It triggers so many different emotions and memories. One of them, when that guy just spoke about the Tesla, if I recall correctly, a year or maybe 18 months ago, I believe you and your husband was going to go out. to the show to look at the Tesla somewhere.

Yes. So, you see, I remember, it's just I do pay attention in case you ever quiz me. Thank you. That was a fun experience, I think, on the test drive. You guys did the ludicrous mode or the insane mode and accelerated? Yeah, it was crazy. Oh, man. Crazy.

Ludicrous, yeah. I'm asking it was in the back seat. Hey, Frank, is it okay if I kind of inform our listeners as to the topic that you're referring to? or would you rather? Sure, you can. Yes. I'll tell you what, maybe one more. I'll let you do it.

Yeah. Well, okay, yeah, I'll give Nancy credit where the credits do. Several months ago, my children decide they need cars. And we'll start with the good and then the bad and the ugly. The good was my daughter who was out in Utah has a Toyota Rav 4 with well over 200,000 miles. And things were starting to go. and instead of pouring more money into an old car, she would look for a Rav Ford hybrid,

which they weren't taking a penny off MSRP. I was going to help out with the down payment some things, and thankfully your son, Stu, or maybe Earl, called one of his buddies out in Utah that no longer had a dealership but had some influence, and my daughter went in there and saved $4,000 off MSRP, which the salesman and said, I've never seen this in my 30-year career. Who are you?

Which was pretty impressive. It made my daughter feel that her dad actually had some clout. Which is always good. I mean, you can puff up. And then she kind of got to me when I put a $2,000 down payment on my credit card. And she said, oh, thank you for the $20,000. And when she texted me because we were doing all my texts, it was like a five-hour deal. I mean, anyway.

And I see the $20,000 and then before I could. you know, call 9-11, she texted back, oh, typo error, it was only two. So she has a sense of humor. So that's the good part. And then, and then when they went to buy the extended warranty, which I think was like normally around $6,000 or something for, you know, whatever, miles of years, somehow it got down magically to $1,500 in the salesman said there's just got to be something wrong. And they go, no, they called and that guy and said, no, that's what her price is going to be. And again, it was just a very happy, very warm, great experience.

I went up in her eyes as a fibrous father because it was, unfortunately, through a divorce situation that she never heard very many good things about her father for, you know, decades. But that's another story. And then my other son down here needed a car. I co-signed

for him. This is where it got me messed up. I co-signed for him in 2008 after he got back from doing missionary work and he had zero credit history. Zero. So I had, I, I thought, go sign down at Morris for a Honda Accord in 2008. He's still driving that car today. I mean, he's just going to drive that thing to the wheels fall off. And now he has credit, and he was able to get a house and all sorts of things,

thanks to, you know, that five-year perfect payoff. So that's another good part of the scenario. So now the daughter gets a car, the oldest son gets a car, and now the youngest one, he says, what am I, the black sheep? I want something. And so we go, and he was a Toyota on a Tacoma. And, of course, we did the, as you referenced, we did the Costco buying thing, which made it even more savings than we would have gotten just by, you know,

walking into a dealership. And, of course, your son was very adamant about staying at the Costco. I figured, hey, you know, I called it on a radio station. Give me another $100 off. Well, you know, he used to tell me, and, you know, Anyway, it was fun. I said, let's negotiate. Let's see, we'll play the mystery shop, really.

We're going to buy it at the truck. So anyway, and that son, it was just turned 30 last month, had zero credit. He never had a credit card. They were never given a clue about finances. So I go, well, maybe I'll do what I did for the oldest son. I'll co-sign, and over the five-year period, and with zero interest, I mean, it's like, hell, can't even tell you your credit. you got zero, you must have a really good credit score. Well, yes, in the 800s, because I lived my life, you know, in a very, you know, right manner.

And my mom taught me very well. It's not how much money you make, but how you spend it. And after working for not one, but two bankrupt airlines. And, I mean, you know, so I understand what it's like to be careful with your money. So I co-signed, and he made the first payment. Actually, he didn't really make the first payment because he didn't have enough money in a checking account. I don't want to be rude, but

let me cut you off here. I know, and it's kind of big tears to your eyes, I'm sorry that you had to go through that. And you're right, somebody might be listed on the other line. I think, you know, but you've told us enough here to,

well, you've got a great message to get out there to a lot of people, is that never let your heart get in the way of making a serious credit decision. And there's nothing more serious than co-signing for anything, a car, anything. And sometimes I've done the same. We've all made the sane, and you learn the hard way,

and we're so sorry that you had the bad experience. But really, a lot of people out there listening parents, grandparents, how do you tell a son or a grandson or a granddaughter, I'm sorry I can't do this, but I think it's something you'll be glad that you did. and I hope it works out for you, Frank. Thank you very much. I got one quick question for Rick, though.

Sure. One quick one if I'm now. I got 2012 Mercedes E350, and the battery is shot. So I called Mercedes where I bought it. It's almost $500 for a battery for Mercedes. And I go, oh, my goodness. I said, well, let me do what Earl would do. Let's call Costco.

It's too old for the car for Costco. So what about the op-oom? battery, O-P-T-I-M-A, Optimone. Do you know much about those? Yeah, Optimus are a, they're a company that specialized in making what they call deep cycle batteries. They're almost like marine grade. There usually have been a very high-quality battery and very decent, good, well-worth-it type prospect, you know. The price is usually a little higher than others, but you're paying a bit more for the quality.

Yeah, if you got a Costco, it's probably quality. I was going to say they don't sell poor quality. They go through a rigorous inspection of any, if they sell something at Costco, they tested it out very carefully. Oh, yeah, no, I'm very happy at Costco. I mean, I've been going there probably not as long as you because I'm not quite a older year, but that's all right. Yeah, I'm very happy Costco.

They just don't, especially online, they don't have it. Although the local cost of the other said they might have something. something to bring the car in. Oh, I got you. So anyway, and then one last real quick thing about the gasoline with the old gasoline. Yeah. Growing up in Kendall before Kendall was Kendall back in the 50s, there was no garbage service. So my dad had an MP 55-gallon drum, some holes in the bottom on cement blocks.

You would put your garbage in there, throw some gas in, and light it, and it would go and burn. Yeah. If you put too much gas in, it became like a 55-gallon mortar. the stuff would blow up and the garbage would go flying through you here about 50, 60 feet. It was the best-looking Roman candles you could ever have. But here in Jupiter Farms, we do sometimes burn some wood and stuff. And it's amazing with some older gas. You put that on, you throw the match, and there's no...

It's almost like lightened diesel. I think it's from all the sugar they're putting in the ethanol and the gas nowadays that really deteriorates. And you're right, if it's five months old, I wouldn't put it in my Walmart. I wouldn't put, even if I put on my fire, it's like you can almost stand there and drop a match. It's like barely lights. But you put fresh gas and only your son you hear that rave. I mean, everyone knows. But anyway, like I said, your show triggers a lot of memories and a lot of things.

Well, that's good, Frank. It's not all bad being an old guy. I love being an old guy. And the memories are the wonderful thing about being old. We got a lot of them, don't we? We do. And I did get a test rider. one of the guys at church, who was a pretty important lawyer down in Miami,

had one of those Teslas, and he took me out for a ride one night. And it's just like, wow, it's Gary Fest. All right, I'm buying one. Well, thank, Frank. You hang in there, my friend, and please call again next week. Nice talking, do you, Frank. Have a great weekend. Good luck.

Okay. We have a couple more. I think we get some text before we get to the Mr. Shopping Report. Yeah, we got you two, too. Go ahead, Steve. Okay, we got one from Amory, and I didn't want to make her wait for her answers. Oh, great. Yeah, so Amory says, good morning, and the best of all possible worlds, we would always have perfect

driving weather, but we don't, and it's not unusual to hit heavy rain while we're driving. I know we can use Rain X for better visibility, but I was wondering, why do windshield wipers have only two speeds, normal and fast? With our heavy rains, we really need wipers with a third speed, turbo. Why don't they have wipers with extra fast speed? Now, Amri, I know you drive a Toyota, so I think you know you do have an intrament speed, but you're looking for an upper end, like, really fast thing. Or a continuous, just a continuous.

You should have a rheostat kind of a thing, like you do when you're dumb lights. Great idea, Ann Marie. Well, a lot of them, like the automatic ones are pretty cool because they kind of do it for you. But I think she needs, I want to ask Rick, is there anything you know to, can you hack or, you know, a jail break your windshield wipers to make them go even faster? No, because you actually might wind up with those blades, literally flying right off of the arms. Well, you set the limit. All you do, listen, I'm going to patent this.

Quickly, I'm going to get to my attorney right after the show. A continuous, like a light dimmer, and then you can go, and of course you do need the intermittent. I agree with that. And then you set the red line. You obviously can't go past the red line, but I do it all the time. It's starting to rain. the rain changes and I find myself obsessed with getting the right rhythm and I'm not focusing if I had a continuous switch I could get exactly right let's move along but first I have to mention

really really quick that recently our old ran out of windshield wiper fluid and I'm really proud to say I knew she shouldn't resist that I was so proud I popped that hood on his Lexus and I put that windshield wiper fluid in there and now we can drive safely we have so much construction going on in our neighborhood. They couldn't see out the windshield. Okay. No text. Good morning. My name is Gary. I went to a car dealer called Bargain Auto Sales, and they put me $16,088 for a retail out the door.

And I try to get them to remove the $895 dealer fee, which they would not do. They said they couldn't do that because that was profit, which was the truth. I offered him $16,000, actually. They wouldn't take my $16, so I got to walk out the door. and then a week later, the salesperson texted me saying that they were sorry, they couldn't meet my offer, but their offer still stands at $16,800. So it went back in, bought the vehicle.

It came to $16,900 tax tag and title. They were great to do business with, no lies, no pressure. I mean, they were honest about it. Gary, when you argue about dealer fees with a dealer, you're playing their game. I love the dealer's answer, by the way. You know, nothing would surprise me more than an honest answer. I can't take that dealer fee off.

that's part of my profit. Yeah. Why didn't you put it in the price when you advertise it? Anyway, the best way to play the game is to you control, you say, okay, put the dealer fee on there. I don't care, but I'm taking your price

to another dealer. And if he can beat it with or without a dealer fee, I'm going to buy the car from them. So don't argue about deal at least, argue about the out-the-door price. Okay, YouTube. I've got a YouTube over here. Girl Strickland is asking,

if you have excellent credit, is it okay to let GM or Toyota finance your car? Of course. That's the only safe financing is the financing by the lender, I mean by the manufacturers lending branch. And they're the ones that have the legitimate 0% 1% 1% 1% all those low ball interest things you see those are manufacturers of lending companies that they own and they're legitimate. Where you get in trouble is when a dealer starts

talking interest because you can tell when they're lying about interest because his lips move. Dealers are not going to tell you the true interest, and they're going to make a lot of money on the interest, but the captive of vendors, as we call them, is a good deal. That's right. Real quick, and we'll finish him up, says, good morning, Earl.

This is Steve from New Jersey. During my most recent new car buying experience, I would say 95% of my time and effort was spent on researching safety options, owner feedback, reliability, cost to own data, driving reviews, and actual test drives. Only about 5% was spent on dealer negotiations

which was entirely done via out-the-door requests for quote emails to competing dealers, just like we advise. The negotiation portion of the process was easy, and the price I got was satisfactory. In my opinion, it's the most important, it's most important, that one gets the car that best suits their needs, for example, safety, comfort, et cetera, in addition to your price. Well, car buying can be fun. You know, you're an educated consumer, you do your homework. It's actually kind of fun and rewarding.

I'll bet you Agent Lightning, and we're not ready to get that to report, I bet when we talked to her, she said, that was kind of fun. Because Stu gave Agent Lightning her lead. She threw the reins off, and she ran with it, and she did what she would do. She's a very bright person, by the way, and she did what she would do to buy a car. And that's what this report is about how to buy a car. I bet you she would say that was fun. I enjoyed it.

Yeah, definitely. Last text. How does one rid their car of an ant infestation? Bomb. Raid fumigators. The dry smoke fumigators are the best. I've used them several times. Can I say a corny joke?

An ant infestation. Get some uncles to get them out there? It's better than an uncle infestation. I knew your brain was going somewhere. We're all caught up just in time for the mystery shopping room. I got one other quick YouTube comment on. Donovan Lewis says have to disagree with Errol on the privacy. not going to exist, he, meaning you, using an iPhone,

and the latest OS version automatically blocks all website trackers and apps that track are now, the track now you have to opt in to allow them to track you. And the user has to give consent to tracking. So to your website or any other, it looks like no one is there. Android will follow this in 2021. Yeah, I think that, yeah, I know, I know, about that because I have the new was it 17 14 14 I just do the 14 a major

software update yeah there's a lot of it's a constant battle on privacy and the battle will continue and I think all I'm saying I'm different than a lot of people and I just I just surrendered and I want people to know what I do where I am what I say and people track me I tell what I'm seeing products that I really I'm gonna say I'm saying like I agree with you 100%. I would rather see the cool stuff that I like to buy than somebody show me ads for fleet animas or just stuff they're completely irrelevant. You know what I'm saying? I mean I get stuff that really interest me for the most part so I opt into the

tracking. It doesn't bother me. I bought products that I didn't know existed that I that I love that I wouldn't have known about have they not searched me out. Technology is moving so fast now that you get a new product and you can find the right customer that's perfect for that product. The product is perfect for him. Boy, I think that's really cool. Anyway, let's get into the mystery shopping report here.

Mystery Shop, multiple Ford dealers. First time we've done four dealerships in this manner and we shop Mullinac's Ford, who are on our recommended list now, Al Packer Ford, Wayne Acres Ford, and Advantage. When Advantage Ford is in Stewart, Florida, Wayne Acres is in Lakeworth, alpacres in North Palm Beach,

and Alpacres in West Palm Beach, and Mullinac's is in North Palm Beach. By the way, in the way of total disclosure, the former owner of Wayne Acres Ford is a friend of Stu's and mine. His name is Les Acres, and he just sold his interests, I believe. I think, too, yeah, Peter Buller from the Baltimore Ravens is his partner. Yeah, we haven't shopped, less of stores before

to have a relationship with them but here we go. We love less. And okay, here we go. This week we continue to explore the car buying experience from the point of view of a consumer doing it the right way. Did it last week and up until then we did it

you know, here's what you're trying to get screwed, be careful and we're doing it, just do it this way. We're setting a positive example. Getting multiple quotes from at least three competing dealers, at least. Last week we signed two dealers to Agent Lightning with the instructions to get online quotes and then visit the dealership with the best prize, too. Last, we made things

more realistic this week by giving Agent Lightning free rein to set up the investigations. We asked her to go through the steps of buying a car exactly as she normally would. Our instructions simply were for her to pick out a new car of any make, get multiple quotes, and visit the dealership that appears to offer the best deal. And it turned out she is getting ready to buy a Ford. I wouldn't be all surprised as if a result of this, she didn't buy a Ford, probably from the dealer that wins this competition. So our heart and soul is in this as well as her mind and her brain,

and there's a doozy of a report. What follows in this report is typical of what car buyers experience when they ignore dealer advertising. Ignore all dealer advertising. Ignore, ignore, ignore. And try a more modern approach, and here it is. Speaking of the first person as if I were agent lightning. I began my mission with Google Search.

Absolutely best way to go. Four dealers near me. That's so cool. I love that, you know. I do it all the time. Taco stand near me. Chinese near me. Car dealers. near me. I love it. You got a taco stand near you?

Yeah, we do. Taco Bell on... That's not a taco stand. Well, you know. And continue. I'm an old guy. I'm an old guy. On the search page results, the four closest four dealers, Ramonix Ford and Lake Park, that's near North Palm Beach.

I'm laughing because we're in Lake Park and we tell everybody our dealership is in North Palm Beach because nobody's heard of Lake Park. Now everybody in Lake Park hates me because they know we're Lake Park is, but you know, we sell cars hundreds and thousands of miles away. Somebody who lives in Kentucky doesn't know where Lake Park is. I have Abed and I digress.

Lake Park, Advantage Ford and Stewart, Al Packer Ford in West Palm Beach, and Wayne Acres Ford and Lake Worth. My next step was to visit each of their websites to find my desired vehicle new. Here's what Agent Lightning is going to buy, probably. She's going to buy a new 2020 Ford Express. XLT and this one had an MSRP of $38,170. Three listings had links that were labeled to imply that clicking on it would reveal a price for the listed vehicle in all car dealers you're doing this.

Wayne Acres Ford read, Get Today's Price. Malnick said, get today's out-the-door price. Al Peckers was, Get Today's Pecker E-Pricing. Yeah, it just sounds like you're gonna get a price. www, ain't going to happen.com. Only advantage for its listing implied the online price was the price. They link read simply, I'm interested.

Yeah, that means like, I saw your price. Hey, let's talk. In every case, the links open lead forms. And lead forums are supposed to provide your name, email address, and phone number, and any comments or questions. This is what all people hate to do. I learned my lesson from last week's mystery shop and the deluge of phone calls that I received

and she's still getting them. You know, we should have warned her. This time I put all zeros for my phone number, good, and only gave my email address. I always say instead of all zeros, you can take somebody you don't like, maybe you've got a next door neighbor that you really don't like,

just put in their phone number. I'll do that on the next message. Anyway, here's a lesson to learn when you're doing, remember, as we're saying here, put in a phony phone number and put in an email address that you don't normally use. You can easily get an email address today. If you don't know how to do it, that's your grandson, your son, or your daughter, and you can get a Yahoo address, you can get a Microsoft, I mean, a Outlook address. Hotmail, Hotmail.

They're free email addresses anywhere that you can get. They use that, and they just only use it for this kind of stuff, that way they get driven crazy. No phone numbers, and certainly not your name. Use a phony name. And with all that information, you can get a precise quote. I think you're okay using your real name. All right.

Where possible indicated that I wanted to communicate by email in the comments section, put that in there. I say that I wanted to receive an out-the-door price on the listed explorer with an explanation of all fees. Okay. Since prices were not revealed by clicking the get-my-price button, I assume that I would be receiving emails were the best prices. You're never going to get a price by get-my-price button because the dealer will not give you his best price because you'll beat his best price by going to his competition. And the car dealer doesn't want you to beat his price, so you're not going to get it that way.

Here we go. Number one. Advantage Ford online. I submitted my forum then for the heck of it. I tried their online chat, but their chat appeared to be nothing but another way to get me to get more personal information. I asked the chat agent about the explorer and the agent offered to get me the information. That's what you'll always get. These chat rooms are sublet companies. They're not the dealership and 99% of the time you're not talking to the dealership. You're talking to somebody in Syracuse. or maybe Bangladesh or New Delhi. There's a huge call center in Valdosta, Georgia. I asked the chat agent about the Explorer. But then she couldn't find it, so she needed my email phone number for her team to contact it. I contacted me. I gave her my email and waited. A few minutes later, I received an email from Jalissa with a price in sparse details.

My price was $38,886. Now remember, the MSRP that I told everybody I wanted was 38,170, so right away, they come back with a different car than I'm looking for. The out-the-door price on this was $42,636.99. That was an advantage. This supposedly included all taxes and fees, but there was no itemized breakdown. Almost impossible to get that, by the way. No MSRP was indicated. you always, always have to get to the MSRP.

And they didn't indicate that was. But I was given a VIN, okay, VIN vehicle identification number. A lot of people go have a serial number. I searched their vehicle for the website for the VIN and identified a 2020 Ford Explorer XLT with an MSRP of 42,0310. Very clever of Agent Lightning. And to shop the VIN, I love that.

If you know the van of the car you want, I'm even thinking about modifying some of my advice. Get the van. And that way you can always find exactly the car you're going to buy. And you can search it out on the website. Okay, now we move along to Wayne Acres for it online experience. I got the fastest response from Wayne Acres. Les, are you listening? Our friend.

Good job, Les. Good job, Les. Fast response. I received an email from Sabrika, explaining the thing. explorer one I acquired about had been sold she included two out-the-door quotes for two other explorers both quotes were sparse or details no itemized breakdown or fees no detail about options or anything else you know what I would have done and I would advise agent lightning next time is say okay well

you sold the car but what was the price yeah okay you sold it it should be easy to do it should be easy to tell me what you sold it for and what the outdoor price was. And it'd be kind of fun to see what they say. Probably, we can't give you that. It's private information. One of the prices she got, by the way, from Wayne Acres, was a used 2020 explorer with an outdoor price of 41,225.

Now remember, I'm looking for a new car, a new explorer, but they gave me a used car price. The only indication this was used was a U. The letter U at the beginning of the listing, I confirmed it was used by searching the vent on their website. Now, here's the weird thing. The other one, which was also used also, that had an N in front of it, so I have no idea what's going on.

Les. No, Les doesn't get he sold. Al Young, he's the general manager. Al Young, what do you think about that, Al? Do you know that's going on? If so, do something about it. Al Young, general manager of Wayne Acres Ford. If you had anybody out there

wants to talk to the boss, his name is Al Young. I've been around a long time. The other one was another use, and as Sue said, Althador Price 37,704, but I had an end on it. So, yeah, a little hanky-panky going there, either that or sloppiness,

we can't be sure. Now we go to Al-Packer Ford, shopping ford dealerships. Like I did with Advantage Ford, I tried Al-Packers chat service, and it was identical subbed out service, New Delhi. No help from the chat agent who wanted to collect my contact information. I did receive a few emails from Joe, though, Joe, at Alpecker Ford. The first one didn't have a price quote.

It was just an introduction. The next one was very, it was about as helpful, meaning not helpful. I wanted to know if I had any questions about the Ford Explorer. I was interested in. I never got a quote. a quote. So nothing from Alpacler Ford. You know, there's still some old school dealers out there that will do that. You know, they say, you don't give them a price online. If you give them a price, we're going to lose the business. They'll go to a competition and get a better price. And we can't

allow that. So they don't give you a price. If they won't give you a price, don't go in the dealership. I mean, in fact, steer miles away. You're talking about an old school. I remember Del Rey Toyota did that years ago. And we used to laugh at them. And now they're 21st century, and they're quoting prices online. But, you know, it's a real red flag if they won't give you the price. They want to get you to the door. After 30 minutes, I still have, okay, where you're doing, okay.

Okay, I received an auto response, similar to the alpacres from Mullinix. After that, I received a price quote. the quote was the only one I received on the actual car I inquired about, the only one. A new 2020 Explorer XLT, MSRP of 38,170, Mullinix Ford in North Palm Beach. I emailed back to get an itemized breakdown and waited for a response. Okay, after 30 minutes, I still had no response, but I made up my mind to choose Malnix anyway. They were the only one to quote me on the specific vehicle I wanted. Great.

So they also had the lowest top line price was $33,833, and the promise no dealer fees. Molonex Ford advertises no dealer fees. Nolenex4 on-site experience. Okay, if you just tuned in and we shop four dealerships online,

we chose the one that had the best experience to visit in person, and that was Mullinx, and that's what we did. Couldn't find a parking spot. The tiny convoluted a lot in front of the showroom. room, found a place to park, a guy in a straw hat came up, told me to move, I drove

back to the park a lot. I'm not sure why we had that paragraph in there, but we'll move along. Inside the showroom, everyone wore masks. Good. I asked the receptionist for a salesperson and said I prefer to female associate impossible. Let me back up. Masks are not a big problem online, are they? So that's another reason you should do online buying. If you got to go into a retail store and you got to wear a mask, you got to worry about it, why go into four, go into one, the one that offers you the best online experience, okay? And that's what we did. Everyone wearing masks in Mullinix Ford, and you could ask for the type of person you want to talk to. If you're Hispanic, you say, may I speak with someone that's fluent in Spanish?

If you're Haitian, may I speak with someone that's fluent in Creole? If you're an old guy, Can I speak to one of your senior citizens, you know, salespeople? You know, you see what I'm saying? And this is a female. May I speak with a female? I think most females would probably rather deal with another female. In fact, a lot of males would rather deal with a female. Anyway, ask for the salesperson that you'd like to speak with,

not the guy that's standing in line and has the next up. Inside the show, okay, I just said that. Instead, she summoned Brian, didn't get who she wanted. Brian offered me an air handshake and chuckled. I told them about the Explorer and that I had received a quote online. You know, what she could have done, she could have said, I'll wait for when a female's available, or she can call me. I'm going home. You might find out that one female salesperson suddenly becomes available.

You're in control, folks, and you can really call the shots to stick up for what you know, is right and you will probably get what you're asking for. And as I said, they only had one female customer and she was busy with the customer. Brian, he pulled the vehicle up on his computer, then report that had been placed into their loaner fleet. Ooh, a little red flag there. Car came in, is not available, they're putting on the owner fleet. What's he really up to?

Excuse me, while I turned the page without licking my phone. page without licking my finger because I got my, forget about it, lick my finger, put my mask back on. He said he had a different one to show me if I agreed. I said, okay, assuming I was about to be switched to a more expensive model. Instead, I was surprised that he took me to the twin of my desired vehicle, the twin. Same year, make model trim and MSRP. That is really good, really good. So kudos to Molnick's Ford. Brian scanned my license with his phone. He drove the vehicle out of the garage parking lot for me for a test drive.

When we were returned, Brian asked if I was ready to make a purchase today. That's good. Preliminary close, trial close. I replied, I would, if the numbers look good. We went inside. I was asked to wait while Brian got the sales figures. You returned with a worksheet, itemized cost breakdown, the MSRP, was $38,170,

Brian applied a $1,087 discount and a $3,250 rebate to get to a selling price of $33,833. Same as my online quote. I asked Brian if it was okay if I grabbed some lunch and thought things over. Oh, I missed that.

Yeah, I missed a paragraph. He added $2,411 in taxes. I'm glad you called me on that because this is important. remember that. He added $2,411 in taxes by the sales tax should have totaled 2079, though I didn't catch this at the time. I should have caught that. We did contact him this morning during the show, and Agent Lightning spoke to Brian himself again, who said that it was calculated with 6% plus 1% on the first 5,000, which is the correct formula, but the total is still wrong,

so it should have been $2,079.98. So there's something going on there, either a problem in their computer program or they're hiding something in there. Well, I'll tell you why I think they're hiding it, and I don't mean this to slam Molonex. You're on a recommended list. It is a good dealership to buy a Ford.

We recommend that dealership in the past. I have gone all the way to the Molinix himself and talked about this smaller dealer fee. I believe they called an electronic filing fee, and they have a brainwrecked, wash themselves into believing this is part of the tag and tax. It's not. Electronic filing fee is an outside service they used to do the tag work and it costs a dealer about ten bucks and they mark it up to 190 or 200 or whatever the number is and they pass along

to the customer. It's profit, profit, profit. It is not a taxable, it's not a taxable fee. It's not a government fee. Government fees are non-taxable and they hide it by calling it being fee, and it's not, but it's not really a fee as profit. Okay, and I'm making that assumption, unless they can prove me wrong, otherwise. Getting near the end here. They added 311 for tag in registration and nothing else. Yeah, and we checked the price with true car.

True car had a little bit lower price, but not much. And I think if you factor the dealer fees, I think Molinax probably came out higher than the true car, I mean, better than the true car average. Oh, it did? Well, it was, okay, we had 33 at Molonex. Without the dealer fee. And the average, without dealer fee is from TrueCourse.

So if you had $1,000 of that, your Mullinx gave them a better deal. Yeah. So there you have it. There are no perfect car dealers. And Molinex, in this case here, won the competition. So even before the vote, I can tell you, if you're considering whether you're going to buy the car from Mullinx, Alpacar, Wayne Acres, or advantage, you want to buy it from Mullinx

if you want to afford and you're in Palm Beach County or Martin County. Yeah, don't have any grades coming in yet. You know, here's what I'm going to do. I want to give them an A. You have Mullenax forward an A. I think that there's something going on.

There might be that little extra fee in there and Brian doesn't know, doesn't understand it. You're almost out of time. What do you got? I'm giving them a B plus. Nancy? Okay, I'm going to get them a B. I'm going to give them a name.

Thank you so much. Great mystery shopping report. Tune in next week. We'll be right here at 8 a.m. We certainly enjoy your company. Have a wonderful weekend. Thank you.