Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.03.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Wallace Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram Part II

Episode Date: October 3, 2020

Earl and team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl's female Agent Lightning visits Wallace Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram for a second time to see if she can purchase the same Jeep Cherokee at the advertised lease price that the male Agent Thunder failed to do in the previous week. 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 link. 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 South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Well, good morning. Another good morning to all of you out there. And YouTube, Facebook, radio, we're all over the planet. And this show is, I hate to brag. I just think we're unique. I think it's a special show.

We tell it like it is. There's not a lot of shows out there, radio or otherwise. I really tell it like it is. We don't have any kind of individual personal agenda. This is not an infomercial, although many of you know that I am a car dealer. In fact, all of us in this room are affiliated with a commercial retail automobile dealership. And it's just not an infomercial. It's a consumer advocacy show.

and we're pretty good at what we do and I think we're entertaining and the mystery shopping report is just out of sight exciting and informative and probably the most important thing that we do in the show because it's real life

it's about as real as you can get we name names we name dealerships salespeople sales managers we tell the good the bad and the ugly Cardiola does a good job we put them on a recommended list We put them on the don't buy from this car dealer list. We've got tips on just about everything.

The world is chaotic today. I hate to use these superlatives, but what else can you call it? President of the United States has been tested positive. He has a COVID virus and First Lady. And what a shock to the world. What a shock to all of us. And just like all the other millions of people that have been affected,

we all hope and pray for his recovery. I think it's kind of sent a message to a lot of us to, it's not over till it's over. The fat lady definitely has not sung yet, and we have this COVID issue we have to contend with. So in this show, hopefully we can help you a little bit more on how to deal with the issues we have. The blog that I did in the Florida Weekly, this I'll hold it up for you. It's how to take care of your car, service, maintain your car, and view of the COVID situation. Some tips largely, like I credit to Rick Kearney, who was sitting in my right, because we get more calls on the show now than we ever have about, what do I do?

I don't want to come into the service department unless I have to. I don't want to venture out. We have a lot of people that are 55, 65, 75, 75, and older, and they just don't want to go. into a place where a bunch of people are. Some of them wear a mask, maybe, and some of them not. But they don't want their car to break because they've got to have the car. They're not going to take a bus. They're not going to take a train or airplane. The airline industry is crashing, looking for federal aid. So you've got to have your car. Your car has always been very, very important, and now it's become a vital necessity, and you don't want

it to break. So any questions you have, I urge you go to earluncars.com. You can read it there. You can buy a Florida. Florida Weekly's are free. You don't have to buy it. Look at the Florida Weekly. Or you can call Rick Kearney. 877-960-99-60.

That's 877-9-60. A quick interruption. Howard, give us a call back. I just couldn't get to you quick enough. Howard was calling from Jupiter. Yeah, by all means, Howard. You're one of our favorite callers. If you'll call back now, Nancy, you'll flag me, and we'll put you right on the air.

We love our callers, and we love our texters. 772-4976530. Please text us at 772-4976530. And, of course, Your Anonymous Feedback.com, a unique way. I don't know anyone that does this. I don't talk shows. Nobody does this. An anonymous line on a website, and you go to www.

feedback, just the way it sounds.com, and you go online and you can ask us from that website, tell us, ask us, beg us, scold us, shame us. We don't care. Well, we do care. We'd like to have the praise, but we get all sorts of comments. And we accept them gladly because we know that you are not afraid to speak out. And it's not a thing that you could never be retaliated against. It's anonymous. We get a lot of a lot of those. In fact, a lot of them are just very constructive comments that, whatever

reason, you just, I don't want to be annoyed. I don't want you to have my email address. I don't want you to have my phone number. Your anonymousfeedback.com. Does Howard call back yet? He has not. Well, Howard, please call back. Let me introduce Nancy Stewart

sitting to my left. She's my co-host, as most of you know. My wife, as most of you know. She was with me many, many years ago. We're coming up on two decades. I'm hung up on 17 years. I bet we're probably getting close to 20 years that we started this show with a half an hour

on a radio station called Seaview Radio. They're no longer in business. And this station came along, and we got on this station, and we evolved from a 30-minute show to a two-hour show. And we're kind of like in prime time now. We have a large audience, and then the Internet happened, and here we are all over the globe.

So Nancy Stewart has got some special reasons to talk to you, especially to the women. Yes, two decades. That sounds scary. Yes, I'd rather use 17 years. Anyway, real quick, because we do have a caller. Ladies, give me a call. Please, 877-960, 9960. You know, I tell you every week, you are an important part of the show.

I got $50 for you. First, two new lady callers, $50. $877-960. 9960. Now we're going to go straight to Steve, and remember, Howard, we want to speak with you. So good morning, Steve, from New Jersey. Yes. Hi, good morning. Welcome. Thank you. Yeah, I'm a long-time listener. I most often text and once or twice I've called,

but I just wanted to call back this morning to reiterate some advice they're all given many times about buying a car. I bought my car while it was delivered in June of this year, and I did expensive test drives on a number of cars. This particular car I bought was evolved, but I had about a 150-mile test ride before I purchased. I ordered it new. And one of the things Earl's always said is make sure you test drive the car before you buy it.

It sounds like that would be an obvious thing to do, but I think many people don't, or if they do test drive, it's a relatively short test drive. And in my case, I knew I wanted to use this car for long-distance driving. And my test drives that I had with various cars proved that. Like the visibility of some of the cars wasn't great, and also the seat comfort wasn't great for long distances. And thank goodness I did, you know, take that advice and go on some extent of the test drives

because the car I did buy, I've used now for three five-hour-plus trips to New England with my wife, who's has serious back condition, and she used to have to use an orthopedic cushion to help with the pain. And with this car now, on our various long drives, she's never once been in any pain. and matter of fact when we arrive at a destination which is my son's house five hours later she can feel free to walk around pain free and that wasn't true of all the cars with test drill so I'm just calling up to just say you know unless you're going to buy a new car for going to the local supermarket and back and that's about it you definitely need to test drive

a car for a long distance in my case is about 150 miles I test drove it overnight And thank goodness I did. Steve, thank you very much. I appreciate that. It's probably the most, I won't say the most, but in the top five of the most common comments I hear from my callers, my textors, I'm out in the public, and so a lot of people call me,

and it's usually with after-the-fact problems. Typically a lease, you know, I had a gentleman call me two days ago. He leased a Volkswagen, and he'd had it for about six months, and he hates it, and he's got a 36-month lease, and he's trapped. And he wants to buy a different make car, the particular car. Volkswreck, it's a great car, but for him, for whatever reasons, he just hates the car. So thanks very much for reinforcing something very important, and you always, always test-drive a car before you buy it. And test-drive it extensively, Steve, you said you drove yours about 100 miles.

That's great, and you should get a dealer that will cooperate with you that allow you to have. the car for the amount of time and miles that you feel comfortable about making that big, big decision. I would also add that people shouldn't be fooled by the price of a car in terms of especially the comfort of the seats. Seek comfort is really a personal thing. And what I found in my test drives is that even many of the more expensive cars, and my car is reasonably expensive, but many expensive cars, the seat comfort was no different than the less expensive cars. It's all about seat design. So that's why really people need to, if you're going to spend any length of time in the car at all, you really should test drivers for, I asked for overnight test drivers in all the

cars I was looking at, and luckily I was able to do that. Well, you're an educated concern. With the amount of money that it costs, it seems silly not to do that, in my opinion. Well, you got a lot of people's attention. I'm glad you guys are doing well health-wise and continue all the good work you're doing and practicing all the safe protocols. Yes. Thank you, Steve. Call again. Thank you very much for the call.

Boy, what a great call. You're welcome. How many times have we heard that complaint? No. 76272-497-6530. Don't forget, www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Well, let's, Stu, let's talk to you and tell us what's on your mind, Stu, as a general manager of our dealership. And the nice thing about that is he is a day-to-day guy.

He sees exactly what's going on. And, you know, one of the amazing things, and I'll just throw the bowl over in your court, you do with it what you will. business is fantastic yeah huge demand for automobiles and people are buying automobiles faster at a faster pace at least in our market here than I've ever seen I don't understand it no I don't either I kind of understand it but yeah we know we have all sorts of theories and but I keep waiting for the other other foot the fall or the other shoe to drop because you know when this first when we were first figuring all this out back in in March and April

you know, we had, you know, predictions of doom. I mean, I don't know if you mentioned this on the show, but we are actually running stress tests on the dealership, running models like financial models. Yeah, we figured we could last a year at the most. Yeah, with zero sales and zero service business. And fortunately, we had some assistance from the federal government. Fortunately, we had a resilient team.

And fortunately, I mean, just to pat ourselves in the back, I think we manage a crisis pretty well. It's kind of insane. the number of pretty, nothing compared to the coronavirus pandemic, but the crises that, you know, we've been through in this business from tsunami is disrupting, you know, production lines in Japan to the great recession. And so we thought this was the big one. And we, by May, we were climbing out of it. And then the summer months, June, July, August, last month, were record-breaking months. I mean, we are doing relatively better than a lot of dealers are.

but overall the business is booming and we're still kind of scratching our heads on, you know, what that phenomenon is all, you know, what that's all about. You know, we're not looking to give to a horse in the mouth if we're fortunate because, you know, it's not the same case with a lot of businesses. I think a big thing as the car, as I said when I, at the beginning, it is now an absolutely, it's always been a necessity. It's even more a necessity now. You know, when you take away most of the other areas of transportation, who's going to Uber, lift,

trains, planes, and automobiles. The only automobile you're going to get in is your automobile. You don't want a taxi cab driver. No. And you want a car that you know has been disinfected, is safe, and you and your wife and your kids are in the car. It's like a capsule. You're in a little bubble.

I don't want to breathe anybody else's air. You're a safe bubble. So it's become people are just obsessed now with having an automobile that can feel good about. I think that they're so scared that it is definitely driving, you know, car sales in. I really mean that scared. 2020, what else can we take?

Yeah, so we're just looking at it's where we're forecasting, Toyota's forecasting, all the manufacturers are forecasting a very strong rest of the year, even as we're looking at apparently an inability to get the pandemic under control. It's not going in the right direction. And so like I said, I'm still cautious. I'm naturally a skeptic and a worrywart. And so I'm waiting for the bad news to come, but it hasn't come yet. So that's good.

In the meantime, it's nice to have a forum like this, we can kind of talk about it, and we've got a lot of great opinions from our listeners. Some of our thoughts on why people are kind of gravitating to buying cars now came from our listeners, and so we thank everybody for that. And then this week on our mystery shopping report, I just can't tell you how cool it is to have two really good mystery shoppers to choose from because it keeps opening up new scenarios. I'm not going to, I mean, I like doing the mystery shopping report,

but sometimes we get into these ruts and it's kind of like all right not again you know what's what's the angle on this one and we just it's all new again so with age can I correct myself yeah all you YouTube and you Facebook people out there I held up the wrong prop

this is a different blog this is about leasing the one that we were I thought I was talking about because I didn't look at it when I held it up is minimize the risk of servicing your car during a pandemic that's at earluncars.com The previous one was an earlier week, important on leasing, but this is on servicing, and Rick Kearney, he wrote this because I just listened to him, and I, what you see is what Rick wrote, and it's ways that you can avoid having to come into a car dealership, sometimes fix your own problems, sometimes not worry about them as much as you would, but it's a very important blog.

Please take a look at it. Sorry, Stu, but I had to set myself there. Fact checking in real time, that's important. That's what you get here on an Earl store on cars. No, I was just saying it's kind of nice having Agent Lightning, who is our newest. She's been doing mystery shops for about a month for us now. And it just opens up a whole lot of opportunities to go into the dealerships, namely this week. You know, we went to the same dealership back to back, and we can do that because we have two qualified investigators and go in there. They won't be recognized.

So it's good for follow-up. We always say that we might. have a bad experience at a car dealership so let's give them a chance we'll send somebody back in the future and we'll see if they they clean up their act or you know fix the problem uh we can do this immediately now which is great good we got any text or anything backing up over there yeah let's let's start with one from anne marie uh she's uh she had one waiting for us when we got to the studio uh am marie says good morning uh what's with some toy to hubcaps mine are okay but i have a friend who's gone through several sets of hubcaps because they keep breaking.

She's frustrated and has now given up replacing them. Her vehicle only has two hubcaps now. What can be done to retain hubcaps, zip ties? She's right. I mean, they're made out of plastic. They come off. I mean, I've seen some that are great and some of it are just peeling, banged up. The clips come off and Rick's probably get more expensive with that.

I can't tell you. Which models are, I agree with what you said. They're less common now. It used to be, you know, to get, you know, to get alloy wheels to not get the hubcaps. And that was a, you know, special upgrade. And a lot of the cars come standard with it now, but there's still some. I think the Prius still has plastic wheel. Are they still crappy?

Yeah, pretty much. They're plastic, yeah. The good news is, and I just know this from in used cars, you can get a, you can a replacement one for, you know, $25, $30 on Amazon. And so that's the tradeoff. I remember back in the old days, you come home. this big old Bonneville, Pontiac Bonneville, and you probably had these chrome hub caps on it. I imagine if those got dented, it would be pretty expensive to replace.

And so the trade-off here, you get crappy hubcaps, but you can replace them fairly cheaply. And the labor to put them on is nothing. You just snap them on. That's an interesting topic, hubcaps. I remember back in the old days, Rick, do you recall the location? You could go over and buy any type of hubcap. I spent many a day over there. I think it was on Okachopee Boulevard.

there was one on Okachobie and there was also one down on military there was a bright pink building and they're all in a hubcap warehouse or something like that. I always wonder about their source of supply. Hubcaps from everywhere. It was just so exciting. No, we don't have any

Buey Cub Cubs tonight but come back tomorrow I think a shipment's coming in. Inventory changes daily. We'll call our supplier. Just a little walk down memory lane. I'm going to interrupt Stu and we're going to go to Loxahatchie. where Mike is waiting. Good morning, Mike.

Hey, good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my call. You're quite welcome. First time caller. Fantastic. If you were female, you'd get 50 bucks, but unfortunately, you sound like a male. This morning, I woke up and I buy it as a female, though. Be careful. We can make a mistake pretty easily. I do have a question about my car and check engine light.

Sure. Okay. Love to hear it. So I've got a 2012 Mercury Mariner and I went and I got a scan for

from AutoZone yesterday. And I was told it's not really a big deal and I've got the code and it was told that I need to replace my EVAP and it's like a $25 part. I don't know how involved that is, but the AutoZone

gentleman told me that I should first disconnect my battery and try first a fuel injector cleaner, and I know you guys believe that's really just snake oil. So I'm looking for some advice. And the error code is P-0455 and P-0457. Okay. Okay. The four-five, 57 one, I may have to look up because I don't usually see that on Toyotas. However, the 455 is extremely common. That's what's called a gross leak.

And the number one thing that causes that is your gas cap. And so I would start with replacing the just the gas cap itself. Or maybe just tightening it first. Yeah, make sure it tightens. Make sure that it feels like it's clicking in properly. Yeah, 457 is just another leak code. Um, quite often, I can't do the gas because I've got one of those, um, uh, fuel fills that has the, uh, the metal, uh, spring. There's no gas cap. Hmm

Boy, I've never heard of a car You know what I'm talking about? So you open it up There's no gas cap And there's like a metal door So when you put the The pump in It pushes through the metal door

And I went and I cleaned it And you know Tried to activate the spring And move anything out of it So I do not have a gas cap Mercury Mariner Not on that beautiful Interesting

That's a new one on me I've Of course you know I don't work on Mercury's very much at all so I've never I've seen after market fuel caps that had that little flapper on them and believe it not most of those never seal tight enough so we wind up having to replace them when it causes a check engine light but if that's the way it was designed you may have to go in and talk to Mercury about that

to find out what's going on but let me interrupt here what would happen if he totally ignored that I know we haven't talked about 457 yet but what would happened if he just totally ignored that. Nothing. Yeah, so the thing to keep in mind is that some of these flashing lights, check engine lights, are purely about emissions. And as long as you're not concerned about our green planet and what your car is doing to make it not green, it's not going to hurt your car at all. Well, it's going to be a very minor addition to any problems like that. But as long as the car is running normally, and it's just an emissions code,

I would ignore it and just every couple weeks or every couple of months, recheck the code to see if any other new codes have come up. But basically what you can do by yourself is look under the hood and see if there's any vacuum lines that may have become disconnected because a disconnected evap line could also cause that code to come up. anything that basically the system can't seal itself and there's a lot of different things that can make that happen anything from a bad fuel tank itself the charcoal canister or one of the vacuum switching valves or like I say one of those hoses you'd really want to have a mechanic take a look at it if it starts to concern you otherwise I would just ignore it

how involved replacing that how involved is to replace that $25 evad valve I haven't investigated it yet but Evak valve usually that's up on the engine and you're going to see a hose come up to it and another hose go from it into the engine and what that does is simply gives it a chance that when the fumes have built up the engine can turn on that valve to draw it into the engine and burn it. It's maybe one bolt and an electrical connector and two hoses, and it's done.

Yeah, but you were a mechanic for 40 years, exaggerating slightly. Yeah. What would it cost them to have that done if he took it in somewhere? Probably an hour's labor. Okay, you're talking 125, 150 bucks. I try to negotiate that down, and I think you probably could. just say, I've diagnosed this, I know what I want you to do, and then you keep your fingers close, I hope I'm right, and if you do this for me, I'm not asking to say it's going to fix

it, how much will you charge me? Because otherwise, an hour's labor sounds cheap, but it's not cheap anymore. It's at least $125. Sounds great, gentlemen. Love the show, and always appreciate the advice. Well, thank you very much for the call, and good luck. Call us back and tell us how it worked out. I'd love to hear from you next week.

Yeah, definitely. 877-960-90-60, or you can text us at 772-49-3-0. Don't forget, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We have got a great show this morning, and you're a big part of it, so we'd love to hear from you. We've got a great mystery shopping report coming up. You're going to love it. The mystery shop is from Wallace, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram, and this is part two. So we're going to go back to Stu and check on some texts.

Okay. Jonathan and Wellington has a non-car related question. He wants to know, is Stu Stewart my real name? It's an odd question, but I've always been curious. I'll let Earl explain that one. He named me Earl, so I took on a nickname. So I'm Earl the third. That guy is Earl Jr., and my granddad was Earl Sr., and so I'm the third Earl around here.

It started out as we called him Tewy Bird because he was so cute. You know, he was like one or two years old, and he was really cute. I don't know what happened to him, but he was really cute, trust me. And so his mom and I used to call him Tewy Bird, like Stewie, and then we would do the baby talk, Tewy Bird. and then they evolved when he graduated from college he says dad do me a favor quit calling me Tui Bird

and I'm only kidding we stopped doing that a long time ago so now he's just Stu you put that on my business card when I came over front Hey don't mess with his cuteness daddy He's got two teenagers in the house now One's gone to college

And he's got two teenage women I guess when your last name's story You can't avoid I think they called you Stu or Stewy when you were a kid My son who's not in her old His name's Jake. His friends call him Stewie just because it's the last name. Oh, really?

Oh, okay. Interesting. So that's the thing, I guess. Okay, folks, we got John from Palm City. He's a regular caller. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. I want to talk about an accessory.

For some reason, dealers, maybe they don't make enough money on it or whatever. They don't seem to offer it on new cars. And the item is wheel locks. It's a very important item. Anybody can put it themselves. and the reason for it is there's a big surge in stolen cars and accessories in New York City alone. Stolen cars, it's down up 70%. And what I want to ask Rick, the wheel locks, what is his opinion about him?

And if Rick would get a car and to be serviced and they don't have the lock for the wheel, Does Rick have a way that he can remove it without having the accessibility to the locks? Personally, as a mechanic, I don't really care a lot for wheel locks because they take extra time to mess with. But I understand the need for them, and they are very important, so someone doesn't come and steal your wheels, which we actually had a big run of that in the Palm Beach Gardens and North Palm Beach area. just person would come out and their car is literally sitting on the ground with no wheels left on it and if they are factory locking lugs the ones that are made for Toyota by McGard we do have a set of master keys that we can take those off however if they're an aftermarket

set and you lose the key to them well it can get expensive because we actually have to use special sockets, and if those don't work, hammer and chisel. John, my feeling is that they are more trouble than they're worth, and of all the complaints I've heard over the many, many years I've been in this business, is one of my technicians or another technician and another dealership not being careful and screwing up the wheels because of the wheel locks, or they can't get it off or charge the customer extra

because he lost the key. I mean, a constant source of complaints about wheel locks. I would think, and what I would do is I would Google and go to Amazon and all that and find some way to have a theft deterrent on wheels that is not involved locking the wheels on there. I think some of your conventional auto thefts, auto theft to turns, would go off

when you started messing them with the guys' wheels. Does anyone know about that? Some of those alarms do have a sensitive enough shock sensor to detect that. If you're jacking up a car, the alarm's going to go out, right? Not if you're going nice and slow and smooth, and you take it up real easy and only a few inches. Okay. I guarantee you that on your Lexus, with all its security, I could take the wheels off without setting off your alarm. Yeah, my Al cam would show you working around my car.

You know, I got the cam, it goes on... You're going to jail, Rick. Yeah, but he'd show a guy wearing a mask. Well, yeah, but it would also alert me in my iPhone, and I would call the police, and you'd be in jail. Hopefully, yeah. He'll run out with his... Anyway, we digress. John, the reason I brought it up

It was an article in a New York Post It was a Saturday afternoon like 2.30 And the woman just had a brand new Honda And the streets of Brooklyn, a good area I think Red Hook, she came out And believe it or not, but it was up on Jacks. Now it makes you wonder why nobody called To police, maybe they don't respond on

And the second thing Rick mentioned, I remember in the 1990s, I met a guy he worked for Wacken Hut security, and one of their biggest jobs was at night to watch, I think then it was called Schooley Cadillac, 45th and 95, and they had a major problem with people coming up from Miami and South and stealing the wheels on the brand-new cars, wheels and tires, and that's accessible, you know, from 95, and that's before Auto Nation owned the dealership. But it's an interesting thing.

He said what we did for a while is we put an unmarked unit on in the area, and it was even more effective for some reason. He said what they did discover was they found a employee of the dealership, which was trusted with the keys to the gas tanks, for new cars, and they found him coming late at night and stealing the gas and filling up gas cans, so one never knows what they can find, and it just shows you, you know, risk involved and expensive in running car dealerships with this weather we've been having lately. On Route 1, I saw a used car dealership.

Half of the cars were pretty well flooded, not up to the doors, but it makes a dealer kind of frightened, and especially in South Florida with the hurricanes and it's just an increase in cost and insurance of a new car or used car deal to do in business. Yeah, you're right, John. Well, thank you very much.

That's a wheel lock thing is certainly a problem. You know, when some of us differ on that, I think factory wheel locks are probably the way to go. If you do the aftermarket, I'd be worried about somebody tearing my wheels up costs me a lot of money, but it will still.

stop the theft. I think about getting the thief angered. You know, sometimes, even though they can't get it off, they get angry, and they start tearing up your wheels, and then you come back, they didn't steal your wheels, but they ruined them, and then you've got to buy a set of new wheels yourself. Not to mention, if they

bash out your windows or something like that, just in a beat of anger. Yeah. Exactly. I agree. Thank you, John. Appreciate the call. You're our most loyal listener. I think you probably started with us back in the day, right? Yes. Half an hour.

Oh, yes. I couldn't remember C-Vue Radio half hour. Exactly. Well, you guys have a good day. Thanks, John. Stay safe. Be well. Bye-bye. Stay safe. Give us a call. You're a big part of the show. 877-960.

Where you can text us at 772-4976530. Every week we mention Attorney General Ashley Moody, and we want to expose these dealers that are really taking advantage of the consumer. Believe me, there's a lot of good dealers out there, and there's, well, too many bad dealers. So give her a call, and, you know, encourage her to help us. We can't do it alone.

And her number is 850414, 3,300. Ashley Moody, the Attorney General. She's there to protect us. True. All right, we got some anonymous feedback. I'll jump over there. Hi, Earl. Love the show. Dealership demo cars. Do dealerships get these free or a discount for the manufacturer? I'm looking at one that has 2,000 miles on it. It's a 2021, but it's only being discounted $1,500. It's got a $50,000 MSRP.

How much should I try and haggle off these types of cars? We're always told the car depreciate so much, so as soon as the new car leaves the lot, why wouldn't this apply to demo cars? Before you get to that, Mark is back. Mark, good morning. Thank you for calling back. Good morning, good morning. I've hardly been stumped twice by. I had questions written down, and they've already been asked. But here, I would give it try. First off, I was a little depressed that this morning I'm not a female.

I sure could use of 50 bucks to be a first time call it. Anyway, the other thing was that one of your callers already mentioned or Earl spoke on was I thought that the car sales were going to be down, and I was getting ready to call in. I heard Stewie talk about how the marketplace is booming. I wouldn't have thought about that. But anyway, with all the different making models of cars, are there any dealers that because of the COVID situation are suffering from sales? My original question was, is any manufacturer, you know, in question of going out of business because of a low car sales.

So, I guess that question does pertain. Yeah, not really, Mark, not really at all. There are a few dealers that are in really high density COVID pockets were intense. And then you see, but that's an anomaly. you see a big market and you'll have an area where you know for whatever reason you have a lot of COVID and then that affects employees and customers but it's a it's a not very normal at all manufacturers all the manufacturers probably are thriving in other words there are a lot of automobile manufacturers that are shaky Nissan is one of them Ford is one of them even yeah

And so the demand is actually helping. COVID, you know, counterintuitably, is actually helping the manufacturers prolong their existence. We're moving to an all-electric vehicle market, and there are a lot of them aren't going to make it. And there'll be, of all the manufacturers you see today, I think there'll be half that amount 10 years from now. And counterintuitably, as I say, the COVID thing is actually letting them survive a little longer. Right. And one last thing is I've gotten an apology to the audience and to Earl. A month ago, when the COVID thing first started and you were really pushing the issue on masks, I believe I'd sent in a text to Stu where I was questioning the effectiveness of the mask.

and I thought that it was really kind of a thing that really, you know, wasn't a big deal and that I didn't believe in it. And you had commented on my statement, you know, and it sounded like you're a little perturbed that, you know, that you're pushing it was kind of useless. But with all being said now and with all it's going on, I apologize. I was a little ignorant of the situation. And I obviously do now, nothing to do with the president, but for several months now, I changed my feelings on masks and, you know, you guys push it enough, but also to say to the audience, you know, here's a guy out here that didn't believe in it, that now it was a mistake, and I'm damn lucky that I didn't get COVID. But I do, with my medical situation, I don't get out much, but when I do get out, I definitely wear my mask and to, you know, let the, you know, the listeners know that you are right.

It takes a big man to admit he's wrong, and I salute you for that. It's not easy. A lot of us, including me, you know, we take a stand on something, and then it takes forever. to drag out the fact that we made a mistake. But I really respect you coming on the air and saying that, Mark. You're not alone. I mean, a very large percent of the population felt the same way you do. And hopefully now things are going to be, you know, people like you will see how important.

Probably the single most important thing you can do is wear that mask. And, you know, one last funny thing before I go is, you know, before COVID, I can't remember when the last time I really washed my hands. You know what, right now, even being home, I guarantee you I wash my hands a minimum 12 times a day. Good for you. Good for you. I mean, it just really is. You're a nice hand cream. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Now my hands are getting scaly because of dryness. But anyway, you guys have a wonderful day and allow me to come on and voice my opinion. Thanks, Mark. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for the encouragement on the mask. I remember there was a day so long ago that Earl would tease me about washing my hands. And he said, you know, he had never met anyone who washed their hands as often as I did. And now, well, things have changed, huh? Washing your hands can save your life the same as wearing the mask. It can save someone else's life and yours. 877960. Or you can text us at 770. 2727-497-6530, and Howard from Jupiter is right back here and wants to speak to us. Good morning, Howard. Good morning. How are you all feeling this morning? We're great, Howard.

That's great. Okay. I have a question about breaks. Can I address this question to Rick? Yeah. He's a last minute. Okay. Okay. Okay. And I have a 2017 Camry. Do I have on my brake pads something that will alert me to the brakes when they get worn down to a certain degree, like a certain noise that the rotor makes?

They squeal like mice. They do. There's little clips on each of the pads that has a little piece of metal to pokes out. And when that starts to rub, on the rotor when the pad gets super thin, it'll start making a squealing sound. Is there any visual warning or indicator gauge, light, anything? There's no visual warnings, but just that little metal that when it starts rubbing on the rotor, it'll make a nice, loud squealing noise. And hopefully, you're not hard of hearing. Toyota and all the other manufacturers, why the hell don't you come up with something that would be a visual indicator on something as important as brakes?

I guarantee 25% of the elderly population cannot hear the high-pitched noise. It's very, very high-frequency noise. Yeah. Well, but on the other hand, every time you come in for service, I'll guarantee the technicians are looking at those brakes to see if they need to be done. What if I don't come in for service,

then I'm in serious trouble, right? Well, but that means you shouldn't be driving your car because you'll be sitting home. People are afraid to bring the car in the cargo ships because of the COVID-Ship. We love you, Rick. My next question, a fast question. I purchased the Camry in 2016.

It was a 2007 Camry. My navigation system is really outdated because when I try to go to Alton in Jupiter, you know, Palm Beach Gardens, wherever it is, it does not have the capability. It doesn't have that programmed in it. So, it's antiquated. So can I have that upgraded, the navigation system? It can be upgraded, but it's expensive usually because the card that comes with that you have to change out.

Toyota's very proud of those. I think they're running like $200, $15, $200 just to swap out that little memory card. my best advice really is just use your cell phone with the Google apps or the Google Maps or the Apple Maps and run that right in through your USB port and you'll have the nice loud sound tell you where you need to go on it where is that v port the USB port it'll be it'll be kind of low in the center of your dash where you can plug your cell phone in and it will let your music play through the voice will actually come through as well from your maps but you'll have to use the cell phone screen for the maps oh i understand you're sticking the console or the cup holder that'll

hold your smartphone yep and then you'll be able to look at the screen and not have to touch it And just to be, it's better than the navigation that Toyota gives you. The Google Maps is far superior to what Toyota offers, especially for the 2017. Okay, my next question is, when is the 2021 chamber coming out? Stu? The 2021? They're out now. The 2021 cameras.

Oh, you're out now? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're still, we're in that kind of like the middle phase where you're still a lot of 2020 models. and the 20-21s are arriving as we speak. Okay, so what would be the added features or, you know, different features on the 21 compared to the 20? It's the same exact thing. Yeah, there's not a redesign, so for the most part,

and I always put a little asterisk when I say that everything is the same, because occasionally there are some differences. We ran into something recently. It had same body style. There was a, we had a customer who had, at least, I think it was a 2018 or 2017, came up for a lease, just wanted to reproduce the car, get the same version in the newer one, and we said, it's exactly the same. Well, it turns out it didn't have the parking sensors on it.

And for some reason, Toyota decided to make that available on a different trim level. And that was shame on me and my brother for not knowing that, but we don't get the intense training that the sale people do. But for the most part, yes, it's the same vehicle. Okay, what are the parking sensors? What do they do? They're the ones when it uses a little sonar transmitters and receivers, so when you get close to something, it starts beeping.

You know, if you're parking your car, you get too close to a bush or a curb or a car next to you, it alerts you if you're getting too close. Howard, once you get one, you won't want to own a car without it. They're fantastic. They're very helpful. Okay, one other question. I know one car manufacturer, I think Hyundai, had the car now. that if after a certain speed, if you're getting too close to a car, it pulled you away.

Did you ever hear of that sensor? Yeah, we have a lot of manufacturers do. That's the laser cruise control. So when you're actually going at, you know, on highway speeds, and you said it will actually slow down, it detects the vehicle in front of you, and you can adjust the sensitivity of that. So let's say you want to have a good distance between you and the car in front of you, you can adjust that and if the car slows down

your car will slow down commensure a little well that's I can't even pronounce that word but your car will slow down too okay what about getting close to a vehicle having the car being pushed away from the vehicle and said in other words

your car's going straight and you're getting close and then a sensor says close and pulls you away is that available he'll hit the brakes for you it stops you it happens to me all the time Too often.

Every time I pull into my garage, Nancy gets hysterical because the car stopped suddenly because I didn't. Errol puts on a blindfold unless the car do it for them. There's a couple other things, too. That's like the emergency braking. So if you're coming up on a car, let's say you weren't paying attention, you look down, and you're about to hit car in front. The car will apply the brakes. And there's something else called Lane Keep Assist, which is pretty cool too.

If you start to drift, it's a little unsettling the first. first time you experience it. If you drift into the other lane, the sensors know you're doing that, and the steering will turn you back towards the, into your lane without your intervention. And it's a little creepy at first because it feels like somebody grab your steering wheel, but when you get used to it, I think it's a great tool. I don't know if it's saved my life, but it's definitely saved me a couple of those moments. Oh, boy moments.

That answers my question. Now, in the 2021 chamber, all those features available? Yes. That's good. Okay, great. Thank you very much. Thank you, Howard. Call again.

Appreciate your calls. Yes, we appreciate the call, Howard. Ladies, just in case you didn't hear me earlier, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We'd love to hear from you. Each. Give us a call and say hello. Each, these get one. You don't have to split it.

50 bucks each. Yeah, there you go. Give us a high, or you can share. some information with us. We're always ready to get new information. $50 for us two new lady callers. 877-9-60-99-60. Now back to Stu. Yeah, we had a question about dealership demo cars or demonstrators. The question was, just a recap, how do car dealers get these cars? Are they given to them by the manufacturer? Do they get them at a discount? And there's all kinds of demo cars and Earl or I could

cover that? I'll just jump in you give it the specifics I'll give with a generality. Car dealers advertise demo cars to get you in the door and sell them to you. A demo car may not

be a demo car. A demo car is because the car dealer says it's a demo car. If they take a new car and they let a customer drive it around the block they can call it a demo car. There aren't very many programs that the manufacturers have. Some do.

Most don't. And typically, the demos sell for a price equal to what the new car sells for. The car dealers make you think you're getting a discount when you don't. So that's the generalities too can give you the specifics. Yeah. Well, most of the demos that dealerships have are just cars that they have. It's a new car that they let a manager or a sales. person or an executive drive.

And yeah, you should get a discount on that. If they're doing it properly, they're lowering the price. We call it depreciation and sell it to it as a discount. The warranty is accounted for, so you're not responsible for the miles. So you bought it had 2,000 miles on it. But you should definitely look at it as a used car because that's exactly what it is. Let me interrupt there. As legally it's not a used car.

right and five years from now nobody knows that it was a demo because it doesn't appear on the title and so that that's one thing is i use cars definitely worse than a demo the other thing i was going to say is uh in florida if a car has been driven by somebody else a third party there's a form that you're supposed to be disclosed most dealers don't do that and and you get a car and it could be a demo and they don't tell you it's a demo. What I would do if I wanted to buy a demo from a customer dealer that was advertising demos, I would find the exact same new car and I would get the best price I could on the new car. And then I would say, okay, I changed my mind.

I don't want the new car. I want the one with 3,000 miles on it as a demo and you've got a sale on demos. How much less expensive will this exact same demo be than the new car? If it's a couple thousand dollars less, then buy it, it's a good deal. Yeah. Another kind of demo actually does come from the manufacturer. They call those brass hats, and those are, like, for example, and I don't, Toyota doesn't do this, but I think General Motors did Ford maybe where executives, you know,

for Ford, the Motor Corporation and for GM, those would be sold to the dealers at a discount. And they call those brass hats, don't know the origin of the term. Yeah, I don't think they do it anymore, but, yeah, you're right, they used to do a lot of Yeah. And you'd see a lot of that up in Michigan and Ohio where these companies were located, where the executives live. And they did find their way around the country into the car market. But I imagine those are treated the same way. But no matter what, just like Earl said, you've got to look at it as a used car. And if you're buying a current model car, even if it's a 2021 and it has 3,000 miles on it, the value has gone down. And your price should reflect that. Okay, we are going to go to a first-time caller, and that's Joyce, who's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Joyce. Good morning. How are you? Great. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Yeah, this is actually our first time listening, too. Great. So my question is, my husband has been bothering me about a truck, a new truck. So we're undecided with Ford or a ramp? what do you think is a better truck? A diesel. Between a Ford and the

Ram? Dodd Ram, yeah. Well, as loath as I might be to say it, because I have a hard time when I have to work on Ford's, I would go with the Ford. I think it's a more sturdy truck. I think Ford

just simply has the history and reputation with their vehicles. Ram and Dodge Unfortunately, their trucks have gone down quality-wise a bit, I think. And my only real beef with Ford, it seems like if I want to take a part off, I've got to have 17 wrenches because you've got 17 different-sized bolts holding one part on. But other than that, I honestly, I would look at the Ford's. Joyce, what's your dad going to use the truck for?

Is it commercial? I wanted to say, I know Earl's going to say. Let me jump in. It's actually my husband. He wants to, he's not going to use it that often. It's like a weekend. And maybe you can pull it from once you get a camper again. Joyce, we always recommend consumer reports.

And I just picked consumer reports up and pickup trucks, the highest ranked pickup truck is the Honda Ridge Line. number two is the ram classic number three is the ford ranger number four is the toilet tundra and number five is the Nissan so go to consumer reports online and use that information for you and your husband to pick out your next truck everybody's got an opinion about trucks but consumer reports is the true authority yeah that's the way to go Joyce okay great thank you guys so much. Okay. Stay on the line and Michael will take care of your information. Speaking of Consumer Report, I'm going to tell you what, there's just so much information they can get

from Consumer Report and you know that Earl and I talk about it all the time. You know, for instance, you can preview the Ford Bronco in the October edition and then the Best and infamous infatement, infatement, and that's pretty interesting about all those symptoms. And the technology on gas, the gas saving that they did a study on, and Consumer Report came up with some great information, and if you want to save some money, best-use cars under $10,000. Yes, best-use cars under $10,000. So consumer.com, get yourself a lot of information.

Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget, your anonymous feedback would like to hear from you. Now back to Stu. Okay, we got a text from Steve in New Jersey. He's a longtime text, Darren, listener, and sometimes caller. It says, good morning, Earl. I'm considering applying a clear point. plastic 3M film to my headlights to protect them from scratching due to road debris.

Do you know if clear film helps retard lens clouding, which can happen as a vehicle ages? I'll defer to Rick on that. As a matter of fact, my pickup, I am in the middle of testing that over long term. I did a restore cleanup on both my headlights, left one of them, just simply left it alone, and put a 3M clear plastic onto the other side. So I'm comparing left to right, so it goes as scientific as I can get it. And so far, right now,

the one with the 3M piece on it is the best one. We have an armadillo alarm. Nobody panicked. I can explain. There will have a ring cam. He has a pesky armadillo that's bothering him and Nancy, and he set up an alarm. and the alarm just went off.

So this is real live radio. He's taking care of it. He's probably pulling the armadillo up on a security camera right now. I've got to call Bush Wild Life. Yeah, you've got to humanely relocate that poor armadillo. You know how many times I've been to our house? I trigger the automatic armadillo trap,

so we now have our third armadillo. Oh, boy. I'm sorry, that would just call me totally off-cover. Where are you? We lead an interesting life. I think I was going to read a text message. Excuse me before you read the text message. We're going to go to Linda, who's a first-time caller.

Welcome to the show, Linda. You're from Georgia? Yes, but I'm not a first-time caller. Oh, you're not? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for calling. Thanks for calling.

No, I'm a sunshine watcher. We know who you are, Linda. Yeah, I know. Hey, I got, we've got a Highlander in 2017, 16, excuse me, 16, and can you add the sensor to this, to that car? Yes. Because you can? You can. It's not cheap, and the reason, this is fresh in my memory, because the little snafu we talked about earlier, we explored different options. for the customer. You can get aftermarket parking sensors on. It's about $1,000 retail, maybe 700 dealer costs to do. They look pretty good. They paint the little sensors so they blend into your bumpers. But I can't vouch for, you know, how, I know they work. I just don't know

how long they are, or if they're reliable or not. So we ended up with the, they are pretty reliable. So Rick's given me the nod and the thumbs up over there. I guess, you know, it's, It's definitely cheaper than buying a new car. But, yeah, I think down here in South Florida, they're running about $1,000 to install it. Yeah, that's not too bad. Because my husband went into a pole at the bank, and so we've got a bit of damage to the bumper and all that stuff.

It's cheaper than damaging your car. Absolutely, definitely. So we might have to look into that. That's the boo-boo you were talking about. Oh, yeah, you sent me the pictures, Lynn. right i forgot um oh yeah i'll send those to jonathan if he wants to work something on the video later maybe we can work the pictures into what happened but um yeah it looked like a pretty pretty nasty little hit there and it wasn't going to be cheap i guess you have to we have to take your deduction

and so the one person said it would cost um two thousand dollars to have a fixed yeah so then we went to uh we decided to go with the uh insurance company and they checked it out and a lot of the pictures were from them and they said it was going to be like $850 just a laborer but wasn't no parts had to be replaced yeah how many prices did you get on that linda just just the just one well one from the adjuster one from the insurance company okay you got a third one to get that's what i keep telling my husband, but, you know. But you decided you're going to go through insurance, right, Linda?

We thought about it because she were doing it that way. And they would waver the $500 that was the deductible. Oh, good. Then that sounds like a pretty good solution for you. And then you invest in some parking sensors, so it never happens again. That's right. Or drive it with me in it all the time, which is impossible. Okay, guys.

Well, Linda, are you going to take Tina's place? Can I expect a call from you every week? I know. Because to my knowledge, it's been a long, long time since you called. So we need, we're looking for Tina. I know her schedule's changed, but maybe you can commit. But she's more knowledgeable about cars and stuff. I'm not.

I just act goofy. Well, you can wing it. But we love you anyway. Wing it. Linda, it was great talking to you. Have a wonderful weekend. Thanks. I got my puppy dog laying it in the bed with me right next to me.

I'm jealous. I tried to keep along in my blanket. Oh, how wonderful. Have a great Saturday. Have a great weekend. Bye-bye. 877-960. Or you can text us at 772-497-30-back to stew.

Okay. I feel like I'm hogging all the time. We have any comments on our YouTube channel? We actually have a couple right now. I've got two of them that I can kind of mix together for RM and Guy Larrabee. RM is asking, I'm thinking about buying a 2020 Highlander. Should I wait to the end of the year or buy now? And is there much of a difference between the 20 and the 21?

And Guy is actually asking along with it, does Toyota offer any manufacturer-to-dealer incentives to move the 2020 models to make room for the 21s? that can be used by the dealer to lower the price of the car. End of the year. That's when they get the best. Now, the only thing that you risk by doing that, and it's, is they don't make room for,

I mean, the 2020 ones come out for some models at one point in the year, and the 20, it's, there's no consistency to it. The only thing you risk is if there is a dwindling supply of the old ones, the older ones, the 2020s will have bigger rebates. The newer cars will not have these manufacturer to dealer incentives. But most manufacturers, in Toyota in particular, has this, at the end of the year, they call it Toyotathon, and they just crank up the incentives on everything, and they try to get a big sales boost before the year ends. And so that legitimately is the best time to buy a Toyota, and it starts in the second half of November,

and it goes into the first couple of days of January. And I imagine most manufacturers have something similar to. It's just a big end of the year, you know, blow out. It sounds corny, but they actually do make the incentives better. And what I'll add to that is that the reason the manufacturers are offering the incentives is because they can't sell the current inventory fast enough to make room for the new model. So they have to offer the incentive, and they're able to do that because their cars are worthless. Cars depreciate.

Even a new car sitting on a lot for a year depreciates. It depreciates a lot faster when you drive it off the lot. But if you buy a 2020 vehicle, new vehicle in 2020, or if you don't buy it, at the beginning year or the end of the year, it still depreciates for a full year. People don't know three years from now what time a year you bought it. I mean, they say, well, this is 2024 and this is a 2020 car, so that's a four-year-old car. You say, yeah, but I bought it at the end of 2020. It's really only only three years. Who cares?

What's the mileage? That's important. That's all I think. What is it on paper? So my overall recommendation is buy the newest vehicle that you can. If you have to wait a couple of months to get a 20, 2021, wait a couple of months, get the 2021. And if you buy the 2020 now, 2021's come out. You've got a year old car.

and you haven't done anything. Now, if you're leasing the car, it's a totally different situation. That doesn't matter. And during these big year-end things, they'll also put out some pretty attractive, you know, the lease things. But then we also warn you, too,

that can be a trick-bag because they put out a lease incentive. It looks great, and there's all sorts of pitfalls. Manufacturers' car incentives are almost mainly for the dealer. the dealer is going to keep that incentive if he can do it. Remember, when you come to a car dealership, everybody that comes in of Rick and Jonathan and Stu and Nancy and I

go into the same car dealership on five different days to get a price on the exact same vehicle, we'll each get a different price. And the one that was the best negotiator who did their homework or whatever they did, true car Costco, they'll get the lowest price. The average person, the range, on the exact same car over a week period would be typically three to four

thousand dollars so who cares about a thousand dollar incentive from the manufacturer what you're doing is you're paying maybe the reason they make a lot of money on that car because it did have a manufacturer's incentive that you didn't know about and when you signed all the papers in the finance office you sign a form that says all incentives come to the dealer so you waived away the incentive that she didn't even know about. And the dealer got the money, and he made an extra $1,000 of the car.

So it isn't something you should be thinking about. Thinking about buying a fresh car for as little as you can and do your homework and do your true car, Costco. It's everything that we advise on the show can get better with big incentives, but you still have to go through the process. Never think that the dealer's going to do. take care of your, of your good price for you.

If they can keep the incentive, they will. As a matter of fact, no matter what, even if the dealer gives you the incentive, you're still signing away that right to that incentive. And so, you've still got to negotiate the out-door price. Yeah, Earl wrote a great column on leasing, and you might want to take a look at that.

Boy, you really have to be careful when you're leasing, as the guys just stated. Erwin Carr's, a great, great column. All fine print, every advertisement, TV, online, newspaper, fine print always says this, all incentives to the dealer. So that makes it, at levels of playing field, there's no advantage. The dealer gets the incentives, and he's advertising the price, so let the games begin. Absolutely. Frank, give us a call back.

We'd love to hear from you. I think that you're, I think that's Frank from Jupiter Farms, I'm not sure. but give us a call. Give us a call back. 877-960-960, and the text number is 772-497-6-5-3-0. No back to Stu. Okay, anonymous feedback.

This is a good one. Has Toyota Fixed the white paint peeling issue for the 2021 models? Probably not. I'll turn that over to you. I don't know. I hope so for the 2021 models. I mean, they're painting a huge number of

cars. And we're very happy about that. We hope they don't fix it. Because they're paying us a lot of money in our body shop to paint these cars. But it's for the older models. And I think the 2021s, I got to believe they fixed it. And I think they fixed it for the 2020s. I hope so. Yeah. Well, they're not on the list. But we'll see as they come, you know, as they keep coming along. It's interesting because for years and years and years, it wasn't the pearl paint.

That was the issue. It was that white flat, the zero four zero paint that faded. And then there's another issue with the pearl paint peeling off a lot of... You know, what you can do is, if you think you have a paint problem, you take some masking tape, and you take it on the flat surfaces of your fender, your hood, even your roof. It's like waxing your car. Yeah, and put the masking tape on there and then peel it off. And if the paint comes with the masking tape, you have a problem. And you can have the manufacturer repair that.

It was a Toyota. But you have to... Let's put this way. If the paint comes out with masking tape, even though it hasn't come out up until now, there's something wrong with your paint. And that's the test. That's the test that we use when someone comes in with a problem. We use the masking tape test. It typically happens where the sun is down at 90 degrees.

Got some defective paint there. We're going to go to Frank. Thanks for calling back, Frank. Welcome to the show. Well, thank you guys. Good morning. Good morning. I always love listening to your show because it triggers some memories that might have happened to me way in the past or in this particular case in the recent past when you're talking about armadilloes and cars and things like that.

So here's my story and at the end there is going to be a question of the best way to handle this. But I came back two weeks ago and my pickup truck, I noticed how the windshield wiper pulled out like open. You know, I'll have these people sometimes do that to clean around there. And I go, wonder who messed with my windshield wiper? So when we played back the security cameras, I noticed that some young black buzzards were in my yard, dozens of them actually, for whatever reason. And they started attacking the truck. They actually got up on the hood, and they started pulling on the wiper blade.

And then when the wiper blade sprung open and stayed out, They all flew up in the air like they were scared. Oh, boy. And for about the next 35 to 40 minutes, five of them were on the hood, chewing the rubber that goes between the cover over the wipers and the wiper motors and windshield washers. And they really destroyed. They destroyed.

I mean, there's a lot of big holes. I'm sorry. And then they were attacking the rims. The chrome rims, they saw their pictures in the rims, and they were attacking that. I mean, you know how on the commercials with, what's that one insurance company on, the farmer's insurance? Yeah. This would be a perfect thing for their, for their advertisement.

But here's my question to Rick. With that rubber protection device, is that really important to get that, it's $500 for the parts for the two pieces. I mean, it's unbelievable. Is it really important to have that? Is it really going to stop the rain, or is it windchews see? more underneath that, more like a decorative. Well, the windshield is sealed, but that cowling under there helps keep debris from getting down into the metal wiper tray underneath, and it can actually go and plug up the drains

at the bottom, and then the water wouldn't be able to drain out, and you'd wind up with some serious rust issues. Oh, boy. Okay. I guess, and then my next question is, would that be, because I only have $100 deductible, so it wouldn't be that much out of pocket. Although I hate to, I switch from USA after 40 years to Geico. And so I hate to have a new claim on a policy I have for a few months.

You need some bird security. Well, and I can set you up. Anyway, that's it. Like I said, you guys trigger a lot of different thoughts and memories. And I don't think anyone's ever had buzzards attack their own vehicle. No, that's a new one to me. I'd love to hear the conversation with your insurance cover when you told him what happened. I said, hey, I think this guy's been drinking.

I'm so sorry I'm laughing. That's what you need to put on YouTube. Yeah, that's terrible. Well, thank you guys. As always, we enjoyed listening to you. Hey, Frank, go to our Facebook page and take a look at that armadillo that was scared to death from the sprinkler. It's called a reflector, I think, isn't it all? It's truly funny.

Oh, boy. Okay. Well, thanks for being part of this show. We love hearing from you. Thanks, Frank. 877-960. We still have some time, some phone calls. And also, the ladies, remember, we have $50 for the first new lady caller.

So give us a call. Or you can text us at 772-4976530. And we're going to go to Rick. From John Strine, are you aware of any dashboard re-design in the works to do away with the afterthought of a screen in the middle of the Toyota dashes? He says, I dislike the screen. It looks out of place. He wanted to buy a Toyota for his daughter. She took one look at the dash and said no and bought a Honda instead.

And he's looking, would like to buy a Rav 4 in 21, but he doesn't like that screen. sticking in the dash and the trend is I don't know the answer is no there's not current plans I mean obviously in the future that could change that seems to be a trend and I think Tesla might have started that so instead of I think they're talking about the way the screens almost look like you've kind of affixed a tablet to this you know it's not like you integrated in and it kind of sticks out it looks like it should be a removable iPad that you could simply disconnect and take with you somewhere that would be pretty cool now that would be cool but it's

but we're seeing that a lot of the manufacturers I guess as honda's is different um that's the reason we love Honda because they are great cars great competitors and they keep uh yeah we're toy dealers so we it keeps Toyota sharp sometimes Toyota has something that makes Honda look silly and it's on that makes a positive change for the better and vice versa so competition makes the world go around we love it and it keeps everybody sharp but you can't go wrong and uh we just checked the pickup trucks Honda Ridgeline, that kind of surprised me for the small pickup truck. Consumer Report's number one recommended truck.

So, yeah, shop around. Sometimes, you know, you don't say I'm a Toyota person, I'm a Ford person, I'm a Chevy person. When you go out to shop, buy your new car, check out and see what's new. Things change. And the car that you've been buying all these years, there's probably a better one out there from another manufacturer, so shop and compare. Yeah. I'm looking at pictures like the Accord Interior.

I don't know if it's all the models, but it looks like they're kind of going along with the same trend as well. It's a great-looking interior, by the way. This is a 2020 Honda Accord. But they have the similar thing where it looks like there's a, like an iPad affixed up on the radio. But like I said, it's the trend. Okay. What else we got? Any more YouTube?

We're clear right now. Okay. We have a question here on a text that says, does Toyota make any more vehicles with bench seats in the front? my last Avalon, 1998, had a steering wheel mounted shifter and a front bench seat. I remember those. They don't anymore, but they did that back in the 90s. It's a safety issue. I think they found out that the restraint that you have in the crash

with being cupped into a bucket seat is, I love the bench seats too, but think about it, you're sliding all over the place in the bench seat, and you know, you can no more truly put three feet three people anywhere in front or rear because you don't have bench seats anymore yeah that's right uh what is a balloon payment is that anything like a lease and is it something car dealer still offer and that's from susan in north palm beach well that's a that's a goalie-oldy uh balloon payments used to be a big deal and car dealer stumbled on those and they would advertise a low payment and the fine print said on your 36 payment is $11,000 because that's a balloon payment and they just

take a big chunk of your total cost of the vehicle and give you a little bitty payments for you know maybe $100 a month until 36 months and then you get the bill for $11,000 and you have a heart attack that's the way that happens but something there's still some things out there like that and you have to be careful but now I haven't seen a true balloon payment advertised in a long time I remember it was when I first came to the business late 90s I remember

seeing those as an option it quickly faded out so not in this century is the answer okay we have a question from Scott says hi this is Scott are Toyota commercial vans or buses available in the US I see Nissan's forged GM vehicles

all over the place but no Toyota's what gives. I don't think they are. I mean, I know there's a pro-ace, which is like a cargo van, which is really cool looking. There's one called a coaster, which is a big bus, and that's overseas. I know in Latin America, UK, Europe, they have them. But I don't see them here. And I did have a friend of mine who I grew up with who was 13 kids.

You heard that right, he's 13 kids. He was looking for a Toyota coaster, which is a big bus that he rented down in Costa Rica. and he asked for my help years ago trying to import one to the states and we were unable to do that. It costs the manufacturers a huge amount of money to build a car that meets all American specifications.

The United States has stricter requirements in terms of emissions, safety, and everything else. So be glad you're buying a car in America. You know, I'm not waving the flag. I'm just saying they build, the manufacturers here have to build a better car, gas mileage, emission control, and safety. And if you build the exact same car visually in Australia or Europe or anywhere else,

you can't bring that car to the U.S. in most cases because it won't admit. It won't make the crash test. It won't make the emissions test. All right. Got another text. What happens to all the unsold new cars sitting at dealer lots? Example of 2019 brand new Volkswagen that never has been driven or sold? Do they sit at dealers until they're sold? Are they auctioned off? Since the car is two years old, do you subtract two years of depreciation? That's a great question. It's great. I've always said, I've been a car dealer for over 50 years, and it's, you know, it's funny. With the manufacturer, they sell every car they build right away. And the way they sell every car is they make the dealers take the cars. So they crank out all these cars, and they shove them down the

dealer's throats, and they sit on the lot. Now, the dealer, he's got to find a real buyer. And they just sit there and some of these cars sit there till the tires are square. The batteries are dead and they forget they're there, just sloppy management. And so what do they do? They tell the salespeople, okay, we've got to get rid of this 2019 Honda, you know, where 2021s are coming out. Anybody that sells that car there that I wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole because it's too old, God only knows what's happened to the car sit.

Put them in the car or you're fired. Yeah. So, but we'll pay you $500 or maybe $1,000. Or more. We call those flat commissions. And so you come in and you've done all your homework and you want to buy a new 21, 2021 And the salesman says, have I got a deal for you? Follow me. This little beauty is a bargain.

And he tells you everything you can to make you buy that car because he's going to get an extra bonus of $1,000 to sell you that car. That's the reason when you go into any car dealership, be sure you know exactly the year-make model car you want to buy. Don't vary from that. The salespeople are incentivized to sell you the cars that they can't sell easily, and they can make a lot more money selling you a car. Our mystery shopping report coming up, very interesting. The salesperson tried very hard to sell our mystery shopper a red car. now a red car is okay to people that love red

but it's not on the top popularity list of colors attracts buzzards we've talked about that many times not popular no there is like it's funny

you know in my entire history we've never not sold you know a new car didn't never stay there forever but there are times where there is it gets a little bit more desperate you asked about the auction

yes sometimes that happens we've had we've sold new cars at the auction that were older. In most cases, if there was damage, I remember we had a big vent tower fall on a Highlander during a hurricane. And, you know, we had, you had to disclose the damage. We repaired it, but nobody really wanted that car. We ended up selling it and taking a loss at the auction. And then there's the other issue with manufacturer incentives. At some point, as the car gets older, they start increasing the rebates and all that. At some point, they're done with it. They move on. And they give the dealer what's

called a final payout. And so they should apply that. Another dirty trick. You refuse to get rid of old cars. We're telling war stories now. I'll tell them one of my favorites. I have a very good friend that bought a new car from me. And when he took it home after a couple months, he called me up and he says, hey, Earl, I got a problem. What? I got rats in my car. I said, bring it in. Let's check it out. Sure enough, you had rats, chewed up everything. They weren't our rats. They weren't our rats. So we found out that another Toyota dealer had dealer traded. We had swapped cars with his other dealer and had rats in it.

It was Treasure Coast and they had a dirt lot. So we incentivized our inventory manager to get rid of the car and we went back and traded it back to the other dealers. So there's a dirty story that probably is going to get me in trouble for telling. So many stories. I have a question for you. Has red always been an unpopular color? I remember in the early 80s I was very popular

it depends on the model I drove a red Selica convertible and everyone was trying to get one well that's the perfect car for a sports car convertible that would be expected to have something like that like our first that super special edition was bright red

looks great but it wouldn't be great on a red Rav4 is not a popular the police love a red convertible I learned that quickly I bet you did All right. Good morning, everyone. John here from California. This is touching on what Rick was talking about. I have a friend that tried the 3M headlight film, and it ended up turning

yellow as well. There's a video by Chris Fix and Sweet Project Cars on YouTube that helps with that issue, so it might be worth looking into. All right. Thanks, John. Well, as I say, I'm in the middle of the test. I'm letting it go for several months to really get a good idea on it. Rick is doing a Jinchi Jambutsu. He's going and seeing for himself. Yep, exactly. All right, let's jump over to an anonymous feedback. This is a sad story I'll get through it as quickly as I can. It says I got a 2002 RAM 2,500, two-wheel drive pickup from credit acceptance for $7,000. I traded in my 94 RAM, 1,500, and I got $1,500 for it.

After I signed the contract, I got a letter in the mail from the place. I got the vehicle saying the vehicle price was really $11,000, not $7. and not even a week after getting it, the motor locked up, the rear end went out. I called the bank that the company went through that sold me the truck and was sold as an as-is vehicle. I got looking through my contract that was printed, and they have black bars over signed lines. So just under six grand later, he spent six grand getting it running and driving,

but now the transmission is slipping. I still owe $10,000 on it. Does anyone know, is there any legal action I can take, please let me know? I find a good consumer, a lawyer, maybe that specializes at automobiles, and see what he can do. I think that there's some room there. As is warranty means that you bought it with all the defects, et cetera, but there's another rule from the Federal Trade Commission that trumps as his warranties. Any vehicle, any product when sold, if I sell you a bottle of Purell, then even though it's sold as is, there's something called a warranty of merchantability, meaning that the Purell is got to do what you advertise, it'll do. A car is advertised to transport you.

If you buy a car that will not transport you, then you can sue for the fact that they violated that warranty. But it's a long shot. But find an attorney that will take it for you on contingency, and we'll give you a free consultation. All right. More anonymous feedback. Here's a good one. I must admit that I've never laughed so hard during your mystery shop of Wallace and Stewart. As a gold star parent for this dealership to be minimizing a service member service to this country is a disgrace.

How do they think a sergeant in the Army would have time to be a farmer to already own a Jeep at the same time? sergeants pays about $35,000 per year. He'd have no use to belong to a credit union because he'd had no money left out of his paycheck to put in the bank after he got done paying for his current Jeep. You're right, Ashley Moody, needs to put a stop to deceptive advertising

in this state. Wow. You know, I just have, Rick's got a YouTube that we'll get to the second but I wanted to say that we talk about Ashley Moody all the time and I had a call, email, I was too, saw it, I'm not going to mention the media, a major local media reporter, news reporter, contacted me, and he wants to talk

about the hidden fees and some of the other skullduggery going on by car dealers. And he mentioned the attorney general, why the attorney general isn't doing anything. So there's a local media person that wants to do a story. And unfortunately, this person is going to have to clear it with his editor. and probably the advertising department is a media company that I won't mention, because they don't like to do negative things about local car dealers because the car dealers like to advertise in the media. And those stations and those TV channels and those other sources out there of media

that will actually run a true, a true negative story. It's got to be true about a local company. They've got a lot of courage. That's what calls, that's journalism, that's ethics, that's honesty. But my guess is I'll never hear from this reporter again because his editor will shoot it down. Ashley Moody is sitting on her hands, doing nothing, and she should be called out for it by the media.

That's the only thing that gets their attention is the media. That's right. All right, Rick. Mark Blanchard has got a comment for Linda with her damaged bumper. He says she should have it removed to make sure they have no, hidden damage, and once she gets the proper price, while the bumper's off and they're getting a new one, have the sensors installed then.

By mixing the two together, she may save a little bit of money from the body shop. Great idea, Mark. Thank you, Mark. That's the reason I love this show. I mean, we have a, it's a think tank, our listeners, our viewers, and we're

all on this great think tank, and we trade ideas, and some of them are fantastic, like that one. Thank you, Mark. And I've got Richard Popliss is asking What color is the hardest and the easiest car to sell? That's easy What color? What color?

Oh gosh, it depends on the model. I mean, you see these day glow yellows and greens And they look terrible But in certain cars like a Jeep, a day glow orange Jeep It's probably a great seller You put that on a family sedan And you couldn't give it away Right.

The question of what's the easy? color to sell? What's the hardest and what's the easiest? Oh, Earl's got the right one with the day glow color if it's the hardest and the easiest. It's white. White, yeah. You can sell a white anything. Yeah, they look great. Or black anything. I think black and white

you can sell anything. Silver. Yeah. And then you start going to the other colors. All right, anonymous feedback. Earl, I really question your business sense. You've lost my business forever. Oh, geez. I've purchased four vehicles from you since the early 1990s. I always dealt with Terry Chapin, Hey, Terry, who always gave me a personalized deal and generous discounts.

That's what you think. I'm just kidding. Your team is now, your team is now very nice and well-informed, but refused to budge off the price. I asked your son if he was willing to lose a customer over a few hundred dollars, and his answer was that he gives everyone his best price. I don't believe it. You couldn't stay in business that way.

It's a shame how things have gone downhill. I'm very sorry. Well, essentially, and we still have a few diehards like this person, a nice guy, probably a great negotiator. And if you're a great negotiator, you don't have a problem with dealer games. You go in there, you're tough, you're learned, you're informed, and you beat the salesman of death, and you go to another dealership, and you do the same thing, and you buy some cars at great prices. So there's maybe 5%, I don't know what percent of the population, are really, a lot of them are lawyers.

I mean, there are people out there that can get a great price by negotiating. And if you do, then by all means, go out there and negotiate hard and beat the salesman and get a great deal. If you're smart, it'll work. But 95% of the population doesn't want to do that. So we put our lowest price on every vehicle. We're the only dealership I know that does this. And we encourage people to take that price to the competition and beat it.

And you can beat our price sometimes. Normally, we do sell more cars than most dealers, but obviously we don't sell all the cars. So it's a great place to shop and compare. Take our price like this gentleman, scold me, just did. and he could take our lowest price and take it to two or three other

dealers and get a lower price. Just be sure you're not getting any hidden fees or games as long as you're getting a real honest price. Buy it. That's competition. That's the way I buy things on Amazon. Nancy and I every day. We just bought a hot dog machine the other day. We shopped around.

We got a really good deal on the hot dog machine. There were no hot dog machine fees, no hidden fees. There was no extra accessories. I'll tell you what, folks. We live an exciting life. They put those in the bars, but they're called dog fees. It was so much fun.

Or dock fees. Are they dog fees or dog fees? I think we're going to be consuming a lot of hot dogs, but back to the techs, compare, compare, compare, compare, and you know. You should have shopped Terry Chapin's price. That's so that'd be my price. All right. Terry

ripped me off. I bought a Corolla. Oh, no. I'm a kidding. I paid a dealer fee. All right, that was a long time here. All right. Terry didn't rip anybody off. Terry's a great guy. Oh, he did, but I loved him.

Well, Terry gave a very personalized service. He'd sit down with you for six hours at his desk and talk about golf. And we love Terry. We miss him. More anonymous feedback. I understand that you are about 80 years old, Earl. While I am pleased to see that you were wearing a mask, I'm concerned that you are exposing yourself to unnecessary risk by working in a busy

cardiol ship and a small production studio for your radio show. I've also been told of various earl sightings in recent weeks. Is that a thing? Earl sightings, like when you're spotted in the wild. Absolutely, absolutely. I've been told of various earl sightings in recent weeks, considering that the most powerful man on the planet was unable to avoid infection, aren't you concerned for your and your wife's health?

Well, first of all, we all are tested, and we have, we're tested. That's what Trump said. Yeah, we're tested bimonthly. We are wearing a qualified mask, and we, the studio is disinfected before and after. We carry this with us. We carry this with us. I'm holding up Lysol disinfected wipes, holding up Purell. That Earl smells like a doctor's office.

We're ultra careful. You know, we don't just walk in here free and easy. There's a lot of work behind all of this. Well, thank you for your concern. Yeah, keeping all of us safe because there's three other people in here with us, and Earl and I are close to 80. Well, Earl's closer to 80 than I am. I'm closer to 78.

But believe me, we are quarantined at home. We work from the office. We definitely don't go into the dealership, and we couldn't be any more quarantined. We're very, very careful. We could be. You know, life goes on. Life goes on and we, yeah, we could stop doing the show. We could never go and leave the house.

And we could, you know, live the rest of our lives locked in our home. But, yeah, everything is a calculated risk and we try to minimize it. We're dealing with the new normal and we're doing it well and we're doing it. Fortunately, you know, we are so set up at home for the dealership that we don't even have to leave. that office so we're very blessed with that but believe me we're concerned about the people that were around and we're around very very little but we do have to live this new normal so that's it before i get to the next one just real quick without at risking being political i can assure you that the earl and nancy take more precautions than the white house did just from my my observation

experience they're very very careful um here is the another anonymous feedback says, good morning, Earl. My P-Brain is lost on the intent of the out-of-the-door price affidavit, and last week, show a caller asked when to break out the affidavit. You said just before signing papers. I thought the purpose is to get the hold the, I'm sorry, that makes sense, get the dealer, hold the dealers to the quoted price during the quoting step

when there are, I'm sorry, please clarify the use of the affidavit. Yeah, the Althador Price Affidavit is a tool, even if you don't get it signed, which I think it would be very difficult. Most businesses, if you go into the Apple store, if you go into Walmart and you have a legal document and you walk up to the sales clerk and you say, would you please sign this, they're going to say, I can't. I'm not allowed to sign things for Walmart. I'll have to take it to my supervisor. Take it to the supervisor. I can't sign things either. So it's going to be a difficult thing to get signed.

Not impossible, but difficult. But the mere fact that you had the affidavit and you explain what it was, the explanation is almost as valuable and important as the signing. You're not going to get a sign, I think, in many cases. But if you say, this affidavit says that the price you're giving me is the price I can write my checkout for, hand it to you, get to my car and go home. That is simple and understandable.

And when you alert them to that, you have communicated exactly what you want to communicate. Don't worry about getting the affidavit signed. Submit it, ask him to sign it, and then explain it the way I just explained it, and you have had the full power and impact of getting an out-the-door price. There you go.

And really quick, there's only two. We're all caught up and we get to the Mystery Shopping Report. there's two questions one anonymous feedback one's a text both are about new car warranties so the first one says on new car warranties what is normally not covered especially in electrical and high tech items

on new car manufacturer it's covered the only thing not covered in a new car warranty are the tires and that's the reason I get mad when they call it a bumper to bumper warranty because the last time I checked the tires are between the bumpers that's right and they do not

cover the tires the tires are covered by the tire manufacturer that's right And then the last question, we're all caught up, says our manufacturer warranty is transferable. For example, if I purchased a used 2019 car and it still had low miles, will it still have the warranty? Yeah, the warranty goes with the vehicle, not the customer. Exactly. Okay, we are getting close to the mystery shopping report, and we'd love to hear how you feel about the mystery shopping report. So, text us with your vote at 772-4976530, and that's,

That mystery shopping report is from Mystery Shop of Wallace, Chrysler Jeep Dodge Ram, Part 2. Well, welcome to the second part of our look into the new car advertising of Wallace, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Rand. And we'll call that Chrysler Jeep. For the rest report, it's a tongue twister. Why Chrysler doesn't change names, I don't know. Why do they do that? Bad advertising, bad marketing. To recap, last week, Agent Thunder investigated an online ad from Wallace Jeep that,

that promised a really low payment. Now, most of you know Agent Thunder is our male undercover agent. A really low payment on a new 2020, GERC, that was the Laredo, right? Yes. We knew as soon as we saw the ad, it was probably a bait and switch.

When Agent Thunder went to Wals to find out, we were surprised to see how old school the salesperson and sales manager got. Almost every trick in the book was used to switch thunder and that's our secretly undercover agent from the bait. Impossible to get rebates the offer being available on a particular unit. Just absolutely, old school is like 20th century.

If you bought a Jeep in 1950, you'd go through the same sort of shenanigans that this is going on there at Wallace Jeep and Stewart. It was disheartening to put Wallace Jeep on our Do Not Recommend list, which we did last week, for the most part, over the years, the Wallace Group distinguished itself from other dealers and occupied more spots than anyone else on our recommended list. And the Wallace Group is about eight or 10 stores,

quite a few dealerships in the Martin County area. We returned to Wallace this week for two reasons. First, we wanted to offer them a second chance to redeem their per performance from last week. Bill Wallace is kind of a friend of mine. I've known them for 50 years or longer, and his family has been in business, his father, Earl Wallace.

So I like the guy, and he's an honest guy, and he runs a good business. So we went back mainly to get them to redeem themselves. I thought Word would get back to Bill Wallace. Bill Wallace would shoot somebody out of the dealership and say, what were you thinking? This is not the way we treat our customers. So we went back to see that happen. Second, we wanted to see if a woman, then we used Agent Thunder.

Now we're using Agent Lightning to see if a woman would be treated different. differently in the same situation. With Agent Lightning in our ranks, we're able to conduct our experiment is our first, full-time female mystery shopper, thanks to Nancy Stewart, who has been on us, on us, honest, on us to do this, and we finally did it, and we are very happy

that we have Agent Lightning, and we can find out how a woman is experiencing buying a car compared to a man. We all know it's not the same. And for a lot of reasons, A lot of complicated reasons. We saw the Walls was running the same ad, amazing. I'm surprised, $189 a month for a new 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Here's the report.

I'm speaking as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived at the dealership around 9.30 a.m. It was raining, so I came into the service department, made my way to the new car showroom. I passed several employees who were not wearing any protective masks. Very disappointing. I was sure that these employees were salespeople, they did not acknowledge me. I wondered if they thought I was a service customer because I arrived through the waiting

area, which makes sense, probably did. I found the reception area, the woman behind the desk, wore a mask, around her chin and neck, and lifted it up, placed it properly on her face when she noticed me approaching. Now she did lift it on my comment, people, or feel uncomfortable wearing masks. You know, we sit in this room here, five of us, and we wear these masks for two hours, and we don't take them off. I mean, you know, if we leave them, we use the restroom, we might, but I'm just saying that while we're in here, we don't do it. Leave the mask on. Leave your mask on.

Customers feel uncomfortable when you're close to them, and they come over, then you move the mask up like that. Anyway, I told her, where am I? I told I was having trouble getting a salesperson, porn to the guys who walked past me. The receptions chuckled, confirmed my suspicions. They probably thought I was coming in for service. She summoned the salesperson name. Is that pronounced Ronnie or Roney?

I guess Roney. Ronnie? Yeah, only one man. To help me. Roney led me to a desk and logged into a computer. I told him I was there for the Grand Cherokee ad with a 189 monthly payment pulled up their website. Ronnie said he needed to first let me know that the payment was for a lease.

not a purchase and that it allowed for standard miles of 10,000 miles a year. And we did this in the last report. Here we are. Bate attempt number one. I guess you could say number one was a lease and the other one was even realistically low mileage.

Average mileage is 15,000. So 50% less mileage than a normal driver. And so therefore you can lower the payment. So that's bait one and two. I nodded a long Then Ronnie changed the subject and began asking me questions about where I was from, what I did for a living.

It was a decent attempt to build rapport with me. It worked for the most part. Ronnie seemed like a nice person. After 10 minutes or so, the conversation returned to the Jeep. I told, that's a long time to be chitchad, 10 minutes. I told Ronnie I was leery of leasing, and he spent another 10 minutes trying to convince me that leasing was the way to go. and I showed you this article in the Florida Weekly why dealers and car makers want you to lease

they do simply I'll give it to you in a nutshell you can make a lot more money leasing a car car dealers make probably twice as much on the average lease as they do the average sale you come back sooner yeah and they love leasing so Ronnie is trying his best to talk me into leasing I would have a new car payment Here's the pitch If I lease it

I have a new car every few years Paying lower down payment Lower monthly payments It's all good when you lease Not true Not true I said the mileage restrictions were a problem for me But Ronnie said I could pay more for miles up front

Yeah, I could pay more miles from up front And you just raise the price of the car You don't tell me about the miles I saw the 10,000 I tell you I put $15,000 or $20,000, now I've got to add another $3,000 or $4,000 to the lease cost to get my mileage. This is the point entirely. The idea is they use the low-miles leech to get a low payment, and that's not realistic. Exactly.

He asked me what color I liked. This will crack you up. He asked me what color I like. I told him I preferred black or white, but I was okay with any color except red. Black or white's okay I'll take any color Just don't give me red Okay Ronnie left to get the keys

Returned said he would find the car Bring it up front because it was raining That was nice of him I waited the front door And couldn't believe it When Ronnie pulls up on a red Grand Cherokee I mean

I mean you gotta have I mean He's got a lot of brass right I mean she just said he might have been forced into that but well yeah probably forced probably forced into it

sure this one she didn't want to see it show it to her anyway if I had actually been there during the shop I don't thought he was kidding I'd laugh I know I did that's pretty good now go get me the car exactly but

I waved him off signaling I wasn't interested in that red car Ronnie got out and came over and tried his best he had me considered the red one he asked me if I could become I love this line. If I could become colorblind for the right price. That was so corny.

I laughed. It is funny. Agreed to drive off on the condition. He'd find me the color I wanted. Now here we have a case, too, of a very personable, charming salesperson. Ronnie, and I hope I'm pronouncing your name right, Ronnie. It's just a delightful, likable person. Let me tell you something, folks, that sales cars, likability.

sells everything, sells Apple computers. Terry Chapin, who we talked about earlier from the textor, would say, listen, when you're inside your car, you cannot see the outside paint. It doesn't matter. The only color that matters is the interior color. He did say though.

Yes. That's true. And people thought it. You let me drive the Jeep, and I headed out on the U.S. 1, drove it about a mile before making a U-turn, heading back to the store. I saw that the MSRP was 35, 585, and there was no addendo. That's good.

No Phony Monroney. At his desk, and Ronnie asked if I'd be buying today. I said I was. He left to get the numbers. And the same thing happened last time. Alone for 15 minutes. That's old school.

Let him sit, let them wait. I don't get it. I mean, the modern technique is move the process fast. Get the customer in efficiently. She said that they weren't busy at all. All school, you know, 15 minutes. I saw the website with a vehicle listing on his computer. she's looking at the screen.

He was working numbers on a 2020 Grand Cherokee with the radio, same as last week, with an MSRP of $35,055,000, same as the one I drove. The online price was $29,459 after a $6,126,000 discount. When Ronnie came back, he won't know if I was retired military. Here we go. A member in some real estate association, or if I currently own the chief. And, of course, no, no, no. He said that it's funny that he didn't pause there and say anything.

He just ran right over it. He said that he had a white one en route to the store, but a white cheek, but he would be presenting numbers on the red one I just drove. I guess that means that these were only on the red one because nobody else will buy this damn red Cherokee. And so, or maybe they would. I don't know. It's a nice red.

Yeah, I guess red's better for Cherokee than it. It's not like fire engine, right? It's a nice, warm, it's a good-looking one. He promised I'd be happy. He also advised that I should let him run my credit so he could let me know my actual annual percentage rate. He was selling the Grand Cherokee for $30,000, $8.35 after $47.50 discount. But he added, here we go, $1.35 filing fee,

and dealer fee, hidden fee, $799 dock fee, and dealer fee. additional profit and here's I this is a involve name now non-tax fees five hundred fifty six dollars five hundred sixty six oh what's that out to do uh don't don't make me do arithmetic in my head six uh fourteen fifteen hundred dollars fifteen hundred dollars in hidden fees uh thirteen hundred dollars worse than the online price I saw on Rani's computer no I think there's non tax fees are legit oh non tax I'm sorry I

But it's a lot. Taxable, yeah. But if that's for a tag registration, that's pretty high, really high for a tag. That was my mistake. I thought I was reading taxable fees. Non-tax fees. Yeah, taxable fees are dealer fees. Non-tax fees are legit.

There was a table that showed payment options that ranged from $494, $494 for $84 for $894,000 down to $630 a month for $6.30 a month for $6.6 months with $2,000 down. I said I wasn't happy with any of it, the cheapest payment with more than $1,000. double, what the ad said, also the price was higher than what they said they had online. Ronnie asked, what was more important to me, the price of the payment? I should put that on the wall, because that is in, that is the classic. Okay, let's work on the payment. That is what every car salesman wants you to know. They know the payment is more important to you.

Everybody thinks payment, I don't care who you are, and so they always focus on the payment. It's like saying, what's more important to you? numerator or the denominator they're part of the same place exactly those same things but the payment seems less and that's the reason I push payments I said both were perfect answer he tried again to convince me to lease remind me that he had the payment was for a lease and push and push and push and push and get that lease I told Ronnie I would have to do a lot of thinking before I could make a decision he asked me to wait to me the sales manager I said I've been there

long enough and excuse myself Ooh, I acted to the showroom. I ran to the car in the rain, and as I was driving on it, I saw, yeah. Yeah. I saw a woman running toward me, waving. Stop! Stop! But I drove away without stopping.

I received several texts on a phone call from Ronnie throughout the day. He had selected a couple of certified U's Grand Cherokees that he thought he could work within my budget, and that's the bottom line. Agent Lightning's interesting. Fair enough, Agent Lightning, the female shopper, experience was better than Agent Thunder. I mean, if you didn't hear last week, you could say, that was a good experience, you should have heard the one last week with Agent Thunder was a terrible experience.

Ancient Lightning, as a female, was actually better. So there was no discrimination here. There was no picket on her because she's a woman. Didn't happen. Ronnie was a good salesperson, and it's unfortunate. He's required to adapt to some of the dealership sales tactics. I don't know if I agree with that. Yeah, that was just kind of my take after talking to Agent Lightning.

My impression was, and I could be wrong, and I'm a sucker for a good salesperson. We're all suckers for nice people. And you just have to harden yourself and say, listen, when I go into a retail establishment, these people, I mean, I'm a dealer, and I have a lot of salespeople. And when we hire somebody, likeability, likeability. I mean, you can have the smartest, hardest, hardest working, most talented individual on the planet. But if they're not likable, they can't sell. Selling, unfortunately, you have to overcome that initial impression. When you see somebody, if I've never seen Rick before, sitting right next to me,

and he walked in and said, hi, my name is Rick Kearney, I would form an impression of Rick. Jonathan's the same way. anybody you meet. So when you have a retail salesperson, if they have a really positive likability experience, they are pure gold, but they can really take advantage of you.

Someone that you love and trust can take advantage of you a lot faster than the guy that you see in the cartoons with the white shoes and the gold chains. They don't do that anymore. No, no, they got smart. And Agent Lightning sent a bunch of pictures of a lot of people

not wearing masks, I mean, receptionist, managers, salespeople are not taking not good. Now in fairness to them, which is not really an excuse, I think Barton County's mask mandate has expired. Here's one right there. Has expired. I'd like to walk into a car

dealership and see that. Yeah, not me. Yeah, it's just not good. Not good. We got some grades coming in. Okay, let's start out. Well, Linda gives him a big fat F, Big Fat F, great. Get it together, Wallace. We got a D coming in here from, who's sending in the D? Tony. I'm sorry.

I don't have a name on that, but we have a D. I'm feeling a little sympathetic. I think the worst crime was committed by the advertising. I don't know. I'm going to give him a D. Let's see. We've got Karen, a big fat F. Mr. Hand, fail, certified failure. Wayne Veit with another F. Tim Gilliland, no need to make them wait 15 minutes for their old school grade F.

Donovan Lewis says they get an F for putting an insane 84-month term on the price sheet. Anyone would be upside down for the majority of that note. That should always be a last-minute option. Mark Ryan, F on all aspects, really sad. And myself, I'm actually going to agree with Stu. say a D, if you do your homework, you know, maybe you can get a reasonable price, but you got to just follow your rules for buying a car. We've got to let more F's coming in for them.

One who said we'd increase the grade to a B if they're wearing masks. Yeah. Nancy, what do you think? Oh, they've rubbed me the wrong way. They get an F. Yeah. I'm going to go a D and I reluctant D. I'm very sad because Bill Wallace is a good guy.

He's honest, and he's got a store there, a rogue store, and that's how Wallace's Jeep and Stewart. And Bill, you've got a rogue store there. They need to get their act together, and I know you will eventually make that happen. But I'm giving you a mercy D. Are they going to come off the bad list, go on the good list? Well, I'm going to give them a D, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's a, you know, it's not a happy D. It's just a D because it's better than last week. And Guy Larrabee agrees. He says, I give him a reluctant D. Ah. Okay, I think that we're ready to wrap it up again,

and we've had a great show, and we want to thank you all again for joining us. Excuse me. Stay safe, everyone, and we'll see you right back here. Same time, same channel. Have a wonderful weekend. Go! Let's go!

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