Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.10.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Southern 441 Nissan

Episode Date: October 10, 2020

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Mystery Shop of Southern 441 Nissan to see if she can lease a 2020 Nissan Rogue for the low monthly rate featured on their website. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “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, are linked to the car. 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.

Good morning, everybody. We're back. This is Earl, the recovering car dealer. I'm live, and I'm in the studio with a bunch of other live folks, too. We're here to bring you another interesting show. I just hope that you listeners out there and the regulars I know, you do enjoy the show and get excited about it. New folks that are joining us, I hope, every week, get as interested and exciting as we do. You know, they say if you love what you do, it's not work, this isn't work for us.

We look forward to it. It's just a lot of fun. And every Saturday, I'm thinking, and my mind's going, and we're all just enthusiastic. enthusiastic about being able to help you buy a car without being ripped off by a car deal or how to have your car service. It's a niche in retail that has never caught up with the intelligence and demands and expectations of the consumer. Just about every other retailer he can think of has figured it out.

If you treat your customers with courtesy and respect, transparency, then they'll come to you and they'll buy. is always a factor, but to the educated consumer, price is something that they have to shop and compare. You deny them that right, and you alienate them. If you alienate your potential customer, you're never going to sell them a vehicle, even if you do have a lower price. You have to treat your customers with intelligence and courtesy, respect, because the customers

today are educated. we have a vast source of, you know, internet, I mean, it's only been around for a few years. Think about it. Google hadn't been around that long. For that matter, computers haven't been around that long. Now we have a huge database available to all the educated consumers to find the best price and the best car dealer and the best way to go about buying the best car consumer reports. Whereas 25 years ago, which is about the mindset of the average car dealer today. Twenty-five years ago, these things were not available to any of us. Sometimes I feel like we're preaching to the choir here at Earl Stewart on Cars. Most of you out there are

educated consumers. We'd love to have the word spread. I'd love to get people that have never heard the show in. If you can invite your friends and you just kind of spread the word, we'd really appreciate it. I'm in the studio here with the folks I introduced earlier to my right is Rick Kearney, a certified master diagnostic technician. And Rick has been doing this for over a quarter century. He can fix anything that rolls on wheels. And he, well, nobody bats a thousand, right, Rick? I mean, especially his Toyota, I mean, but trust me, he works on all different

makes of cars, and he stays on top of his profession, meaning he's going to school all the time. I think there was, you know, if you go back 30, 40 years, if you know how to fix a car, you know how to fix a car. The technology didn't change that fast. Now it's a whirlwind of technological change. I talked to a customer the other day in full transparency. I am still a car dealer. Been one for 47 years, actually longer than that, over 50 years. But the customer was saying to me that, you know, I've had this car for two or three years and I don't really needed another car, but I think I should buy one because the technology is changing so fast. So the customers are becoming aware that we're on a whirlwind of technology, and Rick

Kearney and all technicians have to stay up to speed. Otherwise, what they know is obsolete five years from today. I mean, five years from now, if they never attend another school, then you better not go to that mechanic. I might say the same thing about doctors, by the way. You know, I used to be nervous. Remember, was it Duggy? What was his name? Dugie Houser. That was a big joke.

You know, I'm not going to go to a doctor that's a kid. Today, I'm looking for young doctors. If I go to a doctor that's my age, I sure pray that he's been keeping up with the medical technology. Because if you haven't kept up with all technology today, whether you're selling cars or curing people as a doctor. you're obsolete, can't do that. We're going to try to keep you up to date that Earl Stewart on cars today.

We try to stay on top of it. That's another reason why it's good that we are car dealers. We do have a dealership, and we stay on top of the technology. We stay on top of buying, online buying, a whole new way of buying. And if you're not buying online, you're paying too much for your car.

We'll talk about that today. Let me start out with Nancy Stewart on my left. Nancy Stewart is my co-host. Been with me since the early days when we had a little half-hour show on C-view Radio. And Nancy has done something unique.

First of all, she's the only woman in the studio here. She calls it sometimes the old boys club. And to some extent it is. There's one, two, three, four old boys. I'm the oldest boy. And then there's Nancy. And Nancy has built our audience

from virtually zero female 17, let's call it 20 years ago, to what we are today, which is very near parity. We're about 50-50. And if you don't think that's important, then you must be a man. Because if you're a woman and you're living today, you realize you're just not getting a fair shake,

and things are coming around. And thanks to Nancy Stewart, this show is now at parody. So Nancy, tell us all about what happens if you could get a couple new female callers to the show. Well, before I get to that, I have to say that the ladies are helping me build this platform, and we're changing history. And I want to thank all of you who have helped me along the way. But as get to Earl's point, $50, $50 for the first two new lady callers.

Is that exciting? Boy, I'll tell you what. We appreciate the ladies whenever they give us a call, and this is our way of rewarding you. If you could share with us anything at all, whether it was a purchase, whether you had something to share with us as far as your servicing experience on how that went. Anything at all, call and say hello. $50 for the first two new lady callers, $877-960-9960. And, of course, if any of you want to get in touch with us and you're a little bit shy,

you can take advantage of the other number that we extend to you. And that is the text number 772-497-6530. And, you know, I want to mention something else that's really important. And that is in reference to our Attorney General, Ashley Moody. You know, in light of some of the mystery shopping reports, you know, we really need you to get in touch with her. We do a pretty good job of exposing these car dealers, but if you could make a phone call,

if you could make a phone call and help us, it would really go a long, long way. That phone number is 850-414-3300. Give her a call. Let her know how you feel about the consumer being taken advantage of. Now back to the recovering car dealer. And, of course, we have to remember we're entering, national now. We're all over the world in terms of reach with Facebook and YouTube and Twitter.

We're streaming live all over the planet. That's Florida's Attorney General, Ashley Moody, and we're working on her because we're in Florida. But all you folks out there in all 50 states or wherever you are listening to, Earl Sturdon cars, the Attorney General is a cheap law enforcement officer in every state. And it's a good place to start. And you file a complaint with the Attorney general on any business, you get their attention. So Florida, Ashley Moody, and do the right thing, file a complaint. If they don't have the complaints, they don't act. It's as simple as that. Let me talk to Stu Stewart here, my son. He's a general manager of our retail dealership hi that we have and uh he's uh he's uh also the uh cyber space um undercover agent manager he uh he's in charge

of a mystery shopping report is what i'm trying to say so i think that's one of the most important things that we do in this show certainly most entertaining and maybe informative it's the highest pressure job i have all week it's way harder than the uh managing a toyota dealership yeah well it takes some creativity and i well i'm exaggerating a lot but it is it is kind of stressful because we got to keep it interesting and we could sit there and do the same thing over and over again so we're conscious the fact that we are on radio and we want to have listeners and so uh we don't predict and we certainly don't script what happens it's kind of it's a surprise to us every week and usually we do the report on Thursday or sometimes Friday and um but i got to tell you

it's rare that we get a boring one. It's rare when it just goes, okay, that's what we expected to happen. There's always a twist or something unexpected happening. This week, I mean, I don't want to give too much away, but we went back to looking at deceptive advertising again. We were going to kind of break away from that theme we've been doing, but we ran into one that was just too good to ignore. So we got a special treat for you.

It's for Southern 441 Nissan, Mount on Southern Boulevard. What was that, Royal Palm area? Yeah, West Palm Beach, rural Palm. Yeah, it's out west. And I forget who, is that the Terry, the Terry Taylor Group, I think, owns. Terry Taylor, yeah, he's the largest private owner of car dealership chain in the USA. Yeah. So it's a pretty big deal.

I know that his, like, his structure, he doesn't actively participate in the dealerships. He hires a general manager, puts in the strong GM, makes them a partner, a financial partner in the ownership, and kind of lets them run it their way. Yeah, we too often we personalize car dealers who put their name on their dealerships. Terry Taylor does not do that. And that's probably a good idea. But there are a lot of car dealerships that do that.

We do it, but we only have one dealership. But I'm also a named Earl, too. Yeah. And the guy that runs the store, if they're 12 stores, a good example would be Schumacher. Chuck Schumacher owns 12 dealerships, Schumacher, you know, Nissan, Buick, Chevrolet, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Now, he can't possibly be personally responsible. Well, he is personally responsible, but he can't control 12 dealerships himself.

He has to have the right management in place. The people watch me fool with my mask on Facebook. I apologize. You don't have your clip then? I have in the back, like that. So Bill Wallis is another example. he has about the same number of dealerships. And when there's a

problem, these are good people. I know both of them personally. And they're not trying to screw the customers. But if you're not careful, when you put a person in charge and you have a commission structure and you pay a person, 25% of all

the profit they can make on a customer, you know, you're putting the fox on the henhouse. So you have to be sure that you have someone with morals and ethics that trump the the dollar. And that's pretty rare. It's pretty hard to find. Now Warren Buffett once said

when I hire a manager, I look for someone with energy, talent, and integrity. And if he doesn't have the last one, the first two don't count. Think about it. If you don't have integrity, you don't want that person running your car dealership or, for that matter, being a salesman

or a sales manager. So I didn't mean to go off on a rent to do, but sometimes I think people get mad at Chuck Schumacher. and Bill Wallace and we were talking about Terry Taylor and yeah obviously you know Chuck Schumacher if he even wanted to visit every single one of his dealerships the entire day would be taken up by his travel time so I imagine he makes a point to visit each one maybe once a week whatever is possible but it is it is really hard you have to be on site to see what's going on otherwise a general an owner or even like a general manager of a group sometimes well

all the information they're getting is from their people it's coming from their managers problems are whitewashed and filtered out to make his people look good they're trying to project themselves so if you're not on site and that's just a that's an advantage of having a single dealership versus a big group you can really have a personalized touch and I think we see that more usually get better shopping reports out of like a you know a single point dealer we got a good one today so I'm I'm excited I can't wait until 930 yeah it sounds good But we are going to go to our first female caller. Great.

And that's Teresa from Port St. Lucie. Good morning, Teresa. Good morning. Thank you for calling. You're welcome. What can we do for you this morning besides write your check for $50? Yes. And you know what?

I don't even deserve that if it's coming from you guys because Mr. Stewart, honestly gave us some very good advice when we went through this situation that was worth way more than $50. Well, thank you. Okay. Yes, thank you very much. You're welcome. I'm glad you could use that information. Yes.

So do you want to just know generally what happened? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea, Teresa. I'd love to hear. We all would love to hear. your experience okay and we read the articles and they've helped us and they've helped many of our friends i just want to let you know but the situation was our daughter went into a dealer to buy a car for her brother she had money that she had gotten from her taxes her brother was down in the

dumps and only had a motorcycle and she was worried about him driving out in the weather and all this just to go back and forth from work but she was going to use her money to buy him a car and he was going to pay her back. So she went to the dealership, and then they saw what kind of car she had and kind of started talking about, you know, well, hey, we could get you in from a car with 72 months no finance charge and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. She was already upside down in her payments for this car that she drove in. And she's 24, young.

and they talked her into trading in her car, and then she ended up with $20,000, you know, on another car. So, in other words, not only was she upside down, but now she's like double upside down with 72 months of no interest payment. So we were very upset, you know, and we didn't even know about this for a month as parents, and she just kind of said something to us, and the amount of payments.

She's a single mother. He's a single mother with a seven-year-old child. She's not married. And now she's in this situation. So the bottom line of this is we didn't know what to do. We tried to talk to them, and we did not get anywhere with them. Not one little place, and every solution that they ended up telling us was going to cost more money. Terrible.

Put more money down on this. Yeah, we'll get you in a lower car, but you've got to put $8,000 more down to uh get into this car it didn't make any sense and as parents we we left there several times in heated arguments with you know the managers and everything like that just feeling like we can't do anything of course and so we ended up actually i emailed mr stewart and i left my number and he called us back and several times spoke to us you know just in several things that we could actually try to do which were very helpful and i believe he actually actually called the dealership so it was he went way beyond we didn't even buy the car from him so it ended up

we came to a solution and we have to live with it it was okay it wasn't what we wanted she still has that car but you know we got a little bit out of it but not much so you know you still have a bad taste in your mouth about it you do you definitely what happened just saying don't go to the dealership by yourself, especially if you're a young girl, single. Great advice. And there's other things you can learn from this. Yes, great advice. And with the columns that Mr. Stewart does, and all of the advice from the radio show on Saturday mornings, you came out of, you know, with a little bit of leeway. You would have loved to have had more, but, well, it's a learning experience.

it's a big learning experience yes it is of course yeah but the advice that you just shared with us as far as going into a dealership uh by yourself especially whenever you are a female and you're 24 years old it doesn't cut it it doesn't matter you know uh i mean it doesn't matter how educated you are how prepared you are you just need uh that second set of ears Yeah, I just wish they would have had a conscience and said, you know what, why don't you bring somebody with you? If you have a parent or a friend, let's just talk about this. You only make $10 an hour. So I don't think this is a good decision to do with this.

You're really treading on thin ice. Yeah, absolutely. She didn't get it. Yeah, absolutely. This happens, you know, and it was great that you were there in her corner. Mm-hmm. Yes. Well, thank you, Theresa.

I remember your call, and I'm sorry I couldn't do more. Do you mind if I name the dealership? I know the owner, and that's when we talked. Well, the thing is, is that we signed something that we wouldn't try to do anything else, so I'm not sure if that would be a good idea or not. I got you. Well, I won't in that case. Well, that's interesting.

Your call has helped a lot of people out there. there and it's an experience that is not uncommon and when we started the show off this morning I talked about when you have a car dealership and you're paying your salespeople 25% of the price of the car the higher they raise the price to the buyer the more money they make that incentive plan in itself is just asking for trouble so when young people and very old people people that are English language impaired people that don't have the necessary vacation. I call them the victims. When they come in, unfortunately, it's like, it's like walking into a wolf pack. And all the people that you're dealing with are getting a piece of

you and based on the higher the price. They can, and they see a young lady, did you say make a $10 an hour? And they put her in a car she couldn't afford and she probably still can't afford. But your message is so important. Thank you for calling, Teresa. We really appreciate it. I think you're a first time caller. She is the first time call. and Teresa, you know, I might reiterate, you know, what Earl said, you just don't know what you have done this morning by calling the show and sharing your experience because there are a number of ladies that are listening and they're just a little bashful, they're a little nervous, they don't want to call.

But in order for me to build this platform is people like you sharing that helps. And I just want to let you know that. So good luck. And I thank you, and we'll get that out to you. And we thank you, and we don't deserve it from you, so we don't even need that. We just wanted to let you know. Well, you can take the $50 and donate to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. How about that?

Okay. All right. Thank you, Teresa. Take care. Be safe. Thanks so much, Teresa. You're welcome. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-27-49-30.

And don't forget, www., your anonymous feedback.com. I won't mention the name because she signed a confidentiality agreement that she wouldn't take it any further. But I will say this. Does that happen often to sign something like that? I don't think so. I don't recall that. It came up in a conversation on the show. Somebody asked about non-disclosure agreements.

Maybe this was just because there was a conflict and sort of a resolution they tried to. to work on so they did that yeah they did they did mitigate it a little bit for and um i think it was a lot better than where it started out uh but again it had to do with the owner i because i've been a car dealer here uh for 50 plus years i know a lot of the car dealers personally can you say his name like in pig latin no i wouldn't do that i wouldn't want to jeopardize her settlement or whatever you want to call it but but uh usually the people that i talk to uh that are are the owners I said earlier in the show, they have a conscience, and they will usually take care. If you have a problem, if you can get up the ladder, wherever the problem is,

if you really get taken advantage of, you've got to go above the salesman and sales managers. They are the toughest ones, and then take it up to the general manager, ideally the owner or the dealer. But things went so far south that she just had to sign something, a waiver, that she wouldn't share her story. Well, they... Or excuse me, not her story, but the name of the dealership. They did something for her that they didn't have to do,

and they didn't want to give her part of what she asked for and then have her hire a lawyer and sue them. So that's a business decision. You know, you say to a customer, I can't give you everything you're asking for, but I can give you half, and I don't have to give you this, because you signed all the paperwork.

Remember, whether you're 24 years old or whether you're 84 years old, when you sign a contract, you signed a contract. And if they make a $10,000 profit on you when the average profit's only 1,000, that's not illegal. You can charge as much you want for a service, for a car, for a lease.

If I could sell a new car for a million dollars, that's perfectly legal. the MSRP might be 50,000. But I would sell it for a million dollars. That's legal. If they signed the papers and gave me the money, they can't get their money back. Well, Teresa, if you're still listening again,

we thank you for calling in. Stu was talking about the mystery shopping report, and I don't think he passed himself on the back enough because his creative writing really puts this mystery shop together in such an eloquent way that it just... doesn't it doesn't call it reporting and instead of creative writing because it's uh it's

it's very factual it's quite eloquent it's definitely factual pardon me it's a very descriptive journalistic style yes okay uh well call it what you might congratulations and uh as far as the mystery shopping report is concerned you read it and you just want to read the next word the next paragraph uh because it is put together in such a way. I think about you every week when I write it. Because it will keep your attention. We, 877960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. We're waiting to hear from you on www.

Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We are going to go to John, who is a regular caller from Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone I just want to talk about a car Of the future, but it's here right now Earl and Nancy predicted this car As a very very hot number right from the beginning

Almost purchased one There was just a stockholders meeting In Fremont, California By the way, I think Earl would know Is that the plant originally That Toyota and General Motors I think was called a view That had a joint ownership

Yeah, that's at Rick and Stuart Bowers Yes, that is. Well, here's the greatest news. Leon Musk promised at the Stockholder's meeting within three years to have a $25,000 Tesla. Now that's

$12,000 less than the lowest price model 3, which is now starts at 37-9. That was last month, that was lowered by $2,000. His SUV was lowered from 84-990 to 79.

All his models along the line were reduced $2,000 and $3,000. But here's the top of the news of the $25,000 car. He promised a car that they're going to make with a battery that's going to last 1 million miles before it needs any maintenance or doesn't break down. So it's all great news, people that were hesitant, there's a car that will be reduced as low as $25,000, and it's nothing but good news. He's a man of his word, and I believe that this will be a fabulous car, and there'll be a lot of competition from the big three, especially, and we're well on our way to the electric, full electric cars. So I had to mention this meeting. By the way, it was held outdoors,

and a lot of enthusiastic owners with Teslas attended that meeting with their automobiles. So there's nothing but great news. Tesla will be in the will of a lot of people. Now, you'll leave your Tesla to your son, and then your son will leave it to your grandson. I mean, think about it, a million miles. And there's no way, very many parts, right, Rick?

electric car, pure electric car, just has so few, what is the word, moving parts, really, your wheels and your tires, and what else is there? I mean, if that battery will last, which is a huge part of the cost of a car, you could just keep it forever. Well, you've got the electric motors, which are the only real moving parts, bearings and brakes electronic components the only thing I'd be concerned about is one lightning strike and

oops it's gone well that's the same thing that happens with lightning strikes you right? Oh yeah yes it's true I mean well people have predicted the success at his car and a test drove it years ago

and it was Earl and Nancy Stewart well thank you John I tell you I had no idea. If you had told me back then that Tesla would have a battery that would last a million miles, I would have bet you, I'd have bet you a million dollars. He wouldn't do it, you know, five years ago. It's amazing what this man and what this company is doing. And all the manufacturers are jumping on the bandwagon, too. But electric cars are just so exciting. Thank you very much for the call, John. I would seriously consider buying one of those myself. But I'm a die-hardtoy than nuts. Because you're a drag racer. You like the acceleration? No, actually, I would like to have just that peaceful, quiet, silent acceleration.

Drive like the winds. Silent drive. That's all I like. Thank you, John. The good point is that when did you have a hair of a brand-new car that comes out, and they're actually reducing prices of it? That's impossible. Exactly.

Usually every year, he goes up that it comes out, and here is a $2,000 and $3,000 reduction on present models that they have that shows you what this company is. Yeah, definitely. I remember when I was a Pontiac dealer back in the 70s and the Bonneville came out and the sticker price, the MSRP was over $10,000. I said, that's it. We'll never sell another car.

No one's going to pay $10,000 for a car. And here we are now. Now, $50,000 is the average price. I'll tell you what, John. And every week that we talk about Elon Musk and the Tesla, well, I become more and more interested in going back and taking another test drive and maybe talking Earl into purchasing one. I probably will. I probably will buy one. I mean, it's a funny thing Earl mentioned to Pontiac.

I was in high school, and my favorite car even today, I don't have one, I wish I did, is a 57 Pontiac-Ponneville convertible. Wow, that was a hot car. Yeah, that was a hot one. I didn't know you had one. Was it a fuel-injected? I didn't have it. I wanted it, but I didn't have it. Yeah, they only made one per dealer, 1957 Pontiac-Banaville convertible, and it was fuel-injected.

They had one per dealer. I'll bet you could probably check it out for me, John. You're an antique car guy. What's a 57-Ponniac fuel-injected car in good shape go for today? I'm going to guess, what, a quarter million? Yes, some of them all. Remember, there was only one per dealer. one perponegular was built

so they're very high the rarity exactly but I did I was lucky enough to have a 57 I bought it used Chevrolet and it didn't have fuel injection but it had the two fours yeah well John thanks you're

you're a great caller and you always have something particularly this week this million mile battery wow thanks very much for that unbelievable thank God definitely interesting conversation John thank you so much

877 I thought you dozed off over there Oh goodness gracious This is live ladies and gentlemen Give us a call tool free 877 960 909060 And don't forget Ladies out there

I have $50 for one more One more female caller If it's the first time that you call it's the first time that you call you win yourself $50. Give us a call. I'm waiting to hear from you. I can't do this alone. 877-960-99-60.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. You know, I haven't talked to Rick, and I just want to remind you out there that Rick Kearney can answer your questions about anything, any year, make model car. And my blog in Florida Weekly, I'll hold it up for you, is it how to service your car during a pandemic

without getting yourself in trouble. And Rick really wrote this. I did the, I put it on paper, but I used it with the information from Rick Kearney. And I know a lot of you, I get calls every day now. What am I going to do? I don't want to bring my car in for service. Am I going to avoid my warranty

because I'm not getting in service according to manufacturer's recommendations? So if you have any questions like this, Rick Kearney is right here to answer them for you, 877. 960, 960. He's monitoring the YouTube. In fact, he's got a YouTube inquiry right now,

or you can text Rick at 772-497-5650. Let's go to your YouTube, Rick. You know, before Rick goes to his YouTube, Scott has been holding, and Scott's calling from Del Rey. Good morning, Scott. Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars. Good morning.

Thanks for taking my call. You're quite welcome. What can we do for you today? Well, I kind of have a bit of a technical question. I have a 2013 Kia Soul, nice older car, and we had a problem with the key fob. And in that particular year and car, the car will start. It doesn't have the chip in it to start it, but you do like to use the remote to remotely open, lock, and unlock your vehicle. and one of them had cracked and broken, and so my wife wanted to have two, and so I went online

and was able to purchase a key fob, and I took it apart, and I didn't have to cut the key because I used the old one. You know, I'm trying to save myself some money, because the key fob purchased from a dealership that is sometimes as much as $350. Yeah, definitely. so I was able to get the key fob and move the old key over to the new one and I contacted a dealership as well as a locksmith and they wanted an awful lot of money to do that connection between the car and the key fobub so I did some research and I found that you could buy a device online and I did that and I was able to make the remote talk to the car and it locked and unlocked it. I don't know if you guys, I mean, you're technical guys, I'm sure probably are familiar,

but I couldn't get it to do both of the keycops. I'm only able to get one of them to work. And I was curious, and mind you, I had to do an awful lot of digging online to even find out about this device. It just seems that it's not well known. There's not a lot of information out there. There's no manual, and if there is, it's in Chinese. But I was just curious that any of your technical guys know how

when you connect the device to the reader that's underneath your steering wheel and it connects to the vehicle, if there is a way to tell it that you want to do too. It just doesn't seem to be obvious. Rick should be able to answer that question. Well, I'm not real familiar with the aftermarket devices, mainly because a lot of those now, they're pretty well obsolete on the newer cars because people are getting hold of those and using them for illegal purposes, obviously, to steal cars.

So a lot of the newer cars now, they have restricted access to program. those keys and remotes, and they're keeping it to dealership only. And, of course, their reason being they don't want to make it easy for someone to be able to copy your key, say if you use a valet parking somewhere. I'm guessing that that system may only be able to communicate enough just to program one key in at a time. However, the dealership should be able to program that in. normally we only charge like one hour labor which is about $150 to program all the keys and even if you do come with keys from eBay or something you know we will at least attempt

to program them and let me jump in there a lot of people don't understand we say one hour labor what that means is it's a charge it's a flat rate charge it doesn't mean it takes one hour to do the work right and I would guess that Rick your experience, you can program the key, right? I mean, Toyota Keys, yes. Toyota Key, so when someone gives you a Toyota Key and says, please program that in terms of clock hour and minutes, how long does it take you?

20, 30 minutes is the most. Okay, so it's about 20. I'm surprised it takes that long, to be honest with you, but you will know. Some of them or less. Yeah, so let's say a half an hour on the average. If it's an interruptor, meaning that you can't start your car with it, that's much more difficult, and it does take.

quite a bit. But to just get the remote, to talk to the car, I can do it with this device in maybe 10, 15 minutes. But like I said, I'm lucky in that I have an older vehicle. It's a 2013. And like you say, the newer ones, it's much more difficult. I probably wouldn't have even tried. Scott, the reason I was pursuing that line is because that I think $125 to program something that takes somebody a half an hour to do is a lot of money. And I think if you shop and compare, I would call three or four Kia dealers and explain your dilemma and say, listen, I just don't want. They're all fairly expensive and that's why I went looking for locksmith because they can do them.

They were not much cheaper. And to be honest with you, at one point when before COVID and when I had all, all my hours, I probably would have just gone and taken it to the dealership. But now I, like everyone, I think that's being affected by this, I don't have as many hours and I don't have as much money. And to me, $150 is an awful lot of money. That's why I went looking online and I, you, like I said, it's hard to get the information, but I was able to figure it out.

And you have to make sure for anybody else that hears this and there's like, oh, I could do that. You need to do some research because sometimes you will have a newer vehicle that you can't use it for, or you might have a vehicle that that particular device isn't designed to help you with. Scott, can you give us the name? Can you give us the name of that device that you bought? I mean, I'm interested, just curious. I will get that information to you because at the moment I'm,

sitting in my car, I just got home from work and it's in the house. Yeah, okay. I will call back and I will give that information to you. Okay, I appreciate it. I know it's like something keys 100 plus, but I will get that information to you so that you can. Thanks, Scott. We learned something new, and you told us on we didn't know that those devices are available, and Rick explained why you don't see more available because of the security concern. I'm curious that it only programs just the keyless portion and not the amount. mobilizer as well because most smart key files we program the mobilizer you can do both for

it does do both for certain cars that's like I say you um have to find out if your car is listed and sometimes it's a like they had the kea USA but it didn't have my year and then it had just had kea and it did have my year so I tried that and that was what enabled the remote to work but I guess my particular year doesn't need to have an interrupter programs. Well, Scott, thanks for that information. Thanks for calling. I love to get that name

of that device, so later on we really appreciate you. I will get it back to you. I will actually call back in about five, ten minutes and give that information. Give it to Mike in the control room. You've got it. You'll right now. Thanks so much. Yeah. Take care. Thanks for taking the call. You all stay safe. Oh, thank you. The same to you, Scott.

Our callers are amazing. They can give us information that we just don't have, so you are an important part of the show, ladies and gentlemen. We can't emphasize that enough, and we thank you for tuning in every Saturday morning. 877-960-99-60, give us a call. We'd love to hear from you, and I'm still waiting for that second, first, new lady, caller to give her the $50 that she rightfully deserves. And also you can text us at 772-497-6530. So take advantage of those numbers. Okay.

YouTube. Rick's got a YouTube over here. Let's see. First one we had to come in, it was Guy Larrabee. He says, I recently bought two used cars from two different dealers' Internet sites. After much squeezing, I was able to get about an 8% to 10% discount. Why is it so hard to get a good deal on used cars? Use cars are high demand, low supply currently.

That situation is rectifying itself. It peaked about a month and a half ago. It had to do with the whole car buying frenzy with the pandemic. And counterintuitively, everybody, most everybody was surprised that during the pandemic, car buying, retailing actually accelerated considerably, especially with used cars and Carvana, as an online car. car company. I was watching the CNBC Financial Network on Friday. Their stock has doubled recently. And so used cars are hot. So it's a seller's market. You pay a lot of money for

a used car today. Be careful. Okay. Do you have another YouTube over there? Oh, we got a couple of comments from Donovan on the, let me get this scroll back a little bit. He says the big three are going to be the ones to miss out on the time of the start of the electric cars is, in his opinion, Tesla and the European brands are really on the frontrunners for electric cars. Tesla's going to need about three years for that $25,000 car, but Volkswagen says they'll have a $30,000 all electric car made the U.S. this year. If you can believe anything Volkswagen says, their little Their CEO is currently doing a trial for criminal activity, but their previous CEO, I should say. No, I mean, I think the manufacturers themselves are not going to be able to come up with a battery.

They're going to have to affiliate with software companies, basically the Googles of the world. Panasonic. Yeah, and battery. So it'll be a merger activity. It's going to be a thinning of the ranks. because the auto manufacturer that cannot come up with a good battery is going to be out of business. So it's going to be a desperate situation, and it's going to be a technical accomplishment. They either do it or they perish.

They should buy them from Tesla. Tesla, yeah. If they can make them. Yeah, Tesla's, but they're not the only, Elon Musk is not the only genius in the world. There are a lot of geniuses out there, and when you have all the geniuses in the world, focusing their minds on building a million-mile battery like Elon Musk says he's going to build in two years, it's probably going to happen. I think the battery life is going to be the big one.

And Donovan also mentions that the Volkswagen is rumored to have a 250-mile range, three years of free charging, and they're also building thousands of charging stations all over the country, kind of like Tesla has right now. Well, we'll see. I mean, Volkswagen has made some big promises before. Three years ago, they promised they were going to be the number one manufacturer in the world. And that didn't happen because they were lying about their emission controls to make that happen. They were selling diesel cars in the United States,

and they were jury-rigging the software to fool the EPA, and they were fined, what was it, a billion dollars, and people were going to jail. So as I say, to me, Volkswagen has lost their credibility. And we'll see. Maybe there's a new sheriff in town, and they're going to get their act together. Yeah, we hope so. Scott did call back. And he gave us this information.

I'll pass that over to you. Yeah, Scott's Auto Key Pro Tool, CK100. I'll have to check that out, and we'll see. That was the auto key. Yes, it's auto key pro tool CK hyphen 100 plus Thank you Scott

Yeah, how about some normal text over there We got them I don't know which one to pick I'll start with Facebook I already answered in line He says it's from Muhammad He says Earl why are you wearing a mask I replied I said

Because he is performing minor elective surgery on Rick at 10 a.m. Oh So Well the reason I'm wearing a mask I'm sitting in a studio I think Muhammad knows why you're wearing a mask. Oh, okay. I mean, just come on. Oh, okay. Where have you been, Muhammad?

Yeah, right. Everybody's wearing a mask. Hopefully, I don't know where you are, though. We'll go to a text from Brian from California, the west coast of California. It seems like every week on the show we hear a sad story about someone that's trapped in a lease. Earl says he gets stories from people all over the time

that are trapped. My driving habits have changed during the pandemic, and I decided to get rid of a lease car I had It was a Ford Fiesta ST, had 21 payments left on the lease. I listed an ad for my car on swapelise.com. You list your car on there, and then if you manufacture support swapping leases, go through them to do the lease swap process once you find the right person and take over the lease. The person then takes over your lease exactly where you left off,

and then you wipe your hands clean of everything. It took a ton of time, persistence, and patience. I went through three people until I found the right person to take over the car, and then it took forward a full month during the process to complete the transfer. So they participated. I didn't know that. I saved myself thousands of dollars by doing this. It can pay off if your manufacturer is willing to swap leases, and not all are for it.

If you have the right car and the manufacturer, it can be done. So don't give up. It worked for me, and it worked for you, too. So take care, and I'm looking forward to this show, as always. Well, that's good, Brian. You are a super-educated consumer, and unfortunately, the average person doesn't have the intelligence and the situativeness to do what you did. There are leasing companies that will not allow you.

I didn't even know this. I was talking to another person with a problem like you had, and I found out that Toyota will not, at least Southeast Toyota leasing, will not allow you to change. Reassign. You have to keep the lease. You can't swap.

When you do swap a lease, and swap a lease is a good app. It's a good company. They've been around for a while. you have to remember that the leasing company that you're leasing from has to agree to the swap. Now, think about it, you're a leasing company. Rick currently leases a car from you, and you're making your payments for 24 months. You've got a 36-month lease.

Now, Rick says, you know, I don't like that car. I don't like the color. I want to get rid of the lease and get something else. And the leasing company says, I don't want you to. You're making your payments, and I'm making money. And you say, well, I got another guy here I can take over my payments. And they say, how do we know he'll make the payments? We checked you out very thoroughly.

And you've got great credit, and you pay on time every month. Why should I let somebody else take it over? So my point being, swap a lease could very well find a third, another person, to take over your lease. But why should the leasing company agree to that? First of all, they have to go through their due diligence all over again, investigate the new person, and there's a chance that they won't make the lease. payments, but the guy they got that was making the payments, they know he's going to make them. So it's an uphill battle, and I congratulate Brian for winning it, albeit it took four months,

I was going to say your lease was up, right? I mean, the fact that it took so long to go through the process, it's an alternative, but it's not a very good one for the average person. Next. Okay. I wonder if Toyota Financial Services allows, I know Southeast Toyota doesn't. Good question. I was just playing around on the website.

They have a lot of Toyas listed. So maybe the national financing armatoida, maybe they permit it. Don't know, but not here in the southeast. We know that. Okay. We are, well, first, I have breaking news. Alan Navier is attempting to give himself a coronavirus haircut. And he has to share that.

He's trying to make his head look like the coronavirus with those, like, things sticking out. Because that's what he's going to look like if he's doing it herself. Honestly, I'm not sure he says he has to be a contortionist. Okay, thanks for tuning in, Alan. We are going to go to Frank, and Frank's giving us a call from Jupiter Farms. Good morning, Frank. Well, good morning to all the stewards and co-host. I got a question that might pertain to other people in the listening audience besides myself,

especially with the coronavirus and maybe not want to come into the dealership that much. With the truck I got for my son back in May, and for the, you know, to keep the warranty in effect, I guess the oil changes on the Tacoma is, what, every six months or 5,000 miles to keep the warranty in effect. Right. Rick goes off. I'm sorry. I was just reading some comments on YouTube. It's 10,000 miles or one year on the later model trucks, the synthetic, synthetic oil. Oh, well, that's interesting, because I had someone to call me, supposedly, supposedly from Toyota saying that your warranty is going to be no-in-voy to jump bringing in before six months for 5,000 miles.

What year a truck did you say it was? It was brand new, 20. Well, there's still six-month intervals, but you only do the oil change on the, for 10,000 miles. 5,000 you do a rotation and sometimes some other service. You need to rotate and balance your tires, check the tires. The car needs to be checked, but the oil is good for 10,000 miles or one year. Yep. Well, thank you.

That's because it's really hard to talk to my son. He doesn't talk to me if I make the payments and everything else, but I don't want that warranty going bad. Well, even so, even if you don't do your services at the dealership, if you do them yourself even or outside, you know, an aftermarketplace, all you have to do is save receipts showing that you did those services. according to what the factory recommendation is and your warranty is in effect.

They will not avoid your warranty because you used outside services for your maintenance. And I also have a message that will make all the dealers and service departments out there mad at me, including my own dealership probably, but the fact of the matter is I've been a dealer for over 50 years and I've never known a manufacturer

and I've had a lot of dealerships with a lot of different manufacturers, I've never known a manufacturer to not fulfill the warranty obligation because somebody missed a service or two services. Right. Or three services. Now, if you drive your car for 30,000 miles and don't ever change the oil and the engine locks up, you're probably not going to get that covered. Exactly. If you abuse the car to the point where the car self-destructs because you didn't put any oil in it, that's a different story.

But if you have a warranty issue that's not related to your service. service, like oil changes or, you know, your air conditioning goes out, they're not going to avoid your warranty because you didn't bring it in. So, but that's a great way to get you in the door, and I want to be sure that my dealership's not doing that. Sounds to me like, if someone told you that your warranty was going to be voided because you didn't bring in for service, I needed to look into that. No, no, it was definitely not your dealership, but the calls sound like one of the telemarketer

type things. Oh, okay. Maybe from South East Toyota or who knows what from. Really? But on a positive note, we'll have one other quick thing. The other day after we shopped at Costco, my girlfriend and I decided she wanted to go look at the Mercedes-Benz SUVs. So we stopped at the dealership just down the street from y'all. And you would be very proud to know that everyone was wearing their mask.

In fact, one gentleman that didn't have the mask on when they saw us coming in the dealership, reaching his pocket quickly to put. the mask on. So your, how should I say, word is out there and people are following in. And when I mentioned about Earl Stewart, surprisingly, it wasn't the normal, you know, they all had very positive things to say about you. So it's nice that you're well received down there by some and hated by others. You know, just a little story. When they first opened that dealership, that's a relatively new Mercedes dealership. And when they first opened, they copied our no hidden fees

and they had a dealer fee hidden fee and we mystery shopped them years ago when they first opened and we kind of went after them like we do dealers when we mystery shop and then after that they dropped their dealer fee and then after that's the good news the bad news is about a year later they reinstated it a lot of car dealers that we've been

impacted in the South Florida market have dropped their hidden fees, but they can't make a living without it, and then they go reinstated. But interesting story. Thanks, Frank, for sharing that with us. Yeah, one of the salesman named Mark was a truly respect to you and your family. Great. And what was interesting, too, you go into his little office cubicle, and there was York peppermint patties, the salt peppermint salt from Costco. And then he says, oh, well, that's nothing. opens up his cabinet drawer where all the books and magazine it was loaded with goodies he says my customers will never go away hungry so he's an interesting guy but it's very very um very kind and oh it was even more important the day we're there was a friday it was his day off and he

probably spent an hour and a half to two hours of amory and myself on his day off i mean he's he's truly someone like if you ever left mercedes i would say you you guys need to talk to him like that gentleman up in stewart that's at the four dealer that said um well thanks for saying that's nice things about mark i might try to hire him there you go you all have a nice weekend thanks for um straightening me out about the warranty stuff i really appreciate that thanks very thank you thank you for being part of the show frank stay safe have a great weekend give us a call toll free at 877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 remember i have 50 dollars for a second new

lady called or this morning share your experience with us or just give us a call and say hello and you can take advantage of calling if you call by 915 that's the shutoff so take advantage 877 960

9960 or you can text us at 772-49760 6530 now back to Stu do you have more yeah I can spend the rest of the show with us? Oh, yeah. I could take up the rest of the show doing this. The first one will go to Anne-Marie who texted us a great question. I think Earl will get a kick out of this too. Good morning. Why do people kick the tires when looking for a new vehicle? Where did that come from?

And that's a great question because I don't know. And I don't think people still kick tires anymore. But people who, but car dealerships dealers still refer to customers who aren't buying as tire kickers meaning they're just going to walk on the lot and poke around but you know but you got to know that's funny that she should mention that because I did that the other day I thought for sure I had a flat tire so I get out of my car go walk up to the front end and I kicked my tire and I don't know why why did I do that I don't know this tradition I'm gosh with you I don't either my guess is what people do when they don't know what to do and they're walking around they want to look like they know something. So kicking a tire

kind of looks like it's an authoritative mood and maybe you're trying to see if it's got mud on it and we'll see how much treads left. Oh my goodness. I cheated and I googled it. Oh, it's a means of determining whether a vehicle's roadworthy and dates to the early days of trucking

with so many tires on one axle a tire could look inflated but be flat because the other tires were holding it up. So you kicked all the tires to determine whether you had a flat. So there. there you go Earl takes that back

when I was too I said I didn't know Google knows everything Google knows everything When I was two years old Earl put me in a commercial for Pontiac And I drove around the lot And my tricycle I was very cute

And I stopped in front of probably a Grand Prix or something And some Pontiac And got up and he kicked the tire And then my uncle handed me a big lollipop And I was famous for a little bit When I was in preschool Oh, interesting, sorry. Do we have YouTube? We do. I have a really good one here.

John Reed is asking, why doesn't anyone talk about the hazardous waste from batteries from electric cars? And I'm guessing he means for manufacturing them and also disposing of them. Yeah, I've heard something about that. I had a friend of mine calling me the other day about that, that there was more hazardous waste that comes from battery disposal than comes from nuclear or something or, I mean, it was, you know, all these tests they throw back and forth. I don't know the facts on that. I think that, I'm

guessing, knowing Elon Musk and knowing technology, this will be coped with in some fashion. Of course, if you have a battery that lasts for a million miles, then you're not going to have very many batteries to throw away. But... Now, that'll make the difference, I think. I don't know the facts on that. Anybody knows the facts

on that? We could Google it, but I think... currently it's probably a lot bigger problem than it will be yeah i guess um recycling will be play a bigger role of it i'm sure the components will be able to repurpose for other things i don't think they're going to throw giant tesla batteries in the landfill i mean there's probably some good stuff in there that could be used yeah um text here uh earl don't you think uh i think they're referring to something we talked about earlier earl don't you think the reason car manufacturers know this and keep trickling on new tech and safety equipment to make us think our

cars are obsolete after a year or two. I believe they have all this stuff already developed and are holding back to keep us wanting more, more often. No, that's not accurate. I think that there's a race to win the tech war, and I think that the winner will be the one that can come up with user-friendly technical innovations that would basically be hands-free. You should be able to get into a car and not have to have an owner's manual this thick to read to learn how to operate your car. So the winner, the manufacturer, the wins the race will be the one that will have the most technically advanced car and the most user friendly. And user friendly, I never knew what that meant 20 years ago,

but when you have a device, like the iPhone. You're the user. Here's my iPhone. You want that device to be friendly. This is fairly complicated. And yet, I learned how to use it. You have to the guy that comes up with an iPhone that is so user friendly you don't have to learn how to use it it's just you use it a baby could use it exactly but the technology the technology revolution is a reality and it's going at warp speed and it's crazy and I don't think it's going to slow down and I don't think anybody is holding back I think they're probably if anything they're probably moving too fast they're changing

things that they haven't perfected and are not able to be learned by the buyers of the vehicles. Exactly, and Apple does that. Apple, there might be some tech that they have developed, but it's not, you know, it hasn't been road tested. It's not reliable, so they kind of hold back until it really, until it works well. This is for Rick. Rick, how long can a hybrid car run once the gas runs out? I mean, I know the hybrid system needs both a gas and motor and electric motor, but doesn't the hybrid, doesn't the hybrid, to have an EV mode. So I mean, how long can it drive an EV mode without gas? First thing I'm going to say, folks, don't run your car out of gas. It's not good for it.

Second thing, it's going to depend on the car, but you might get as little as 10 miles to as much as 30 miles. But the most important factor, please do not run your car out of gasoline because you can actually damaged the car by doing that. Let's Google that because I'm surprised that you only get up to 30 miles. I think that... Well, it'll depend on the state of charge of the hybrid

battery at the time when it runs out. I know that I had the Prius Prime, which is a plug-in one. I had 22 miles on a full charge. That was the total amount I could get. And I think they've increased it a little bit, but I'm not sure. We have a first-time caller

and her name is Lorraine. She's calling from Hope's own. Good morning. Welcome to the show, Lorraine. Good morning. Well, thank you. It's nice to be on. First of all, I'll start out by thanking all of you and your staff there and Earl Stewart in this wonderful program, knowledge, and honesty. I just have a comment about what I learned from your program in the last couple years about OTD out the door and never thought I'd be in a position to have to use it. But I was in my first time ever at 5th, February. My car, which I loved, it was a 1,000-7thamara with 47,000 miles on it. It was totaled. By the grace of God, everybody was fine other than myself, and I've been fixed, but I needed a car.

When I got all sort of done, I ended up with $4,241. Not much of money to buy a car with. and I kept looking for a while and had some help from my son who lived in Indianapolis and booked up for things morning. So I found a car, liked it, drove it, and it started out on the lot with $11,995. It was a 2014 condi-alanta with 90,000 miles on it. And I said, well, that's way, way, way out of my ballpark. And I said, so it's very, very nice, very logical, took him to a little tubercle, started doing figures. And before I knew it, a guy came there and said, well, this is our president's day weekend, we ship life.

He said, this is just been reduced to $9.95, which is a couple thousand dollars difference. And we can finance you and with that. I said, well, I said, here to see it. I have $7,500. Lorraine. Lorraine. Lorraine. Lorraine.

Lorraine. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but we're having a difficult time understanding you. Are you on a speaker phone or a different type of phone because we're having a difficult, you're kind of fading in and out. Yes, yes, I am. I only have one kind of a phone, and it's my cell phone. I'm sorry. Yeah, we didn't really get much of anything you said there.

Is there any way you could call us without the Bluetooth? Maybe when you pull over? No, I'm not, I'm not, I am pulled over. I'm sitting still. Okay. Yes, I am sitting still. I can take you off the speakerphone and put it up to my ear if that would help. That probably would.

It might help. It might help, Lorraine. Try that. Let me try. And we apologize, folks. Sometimes, especially in the car, we have difficulty. Sure. Is that better, sir? Oh, much better.

Yes. Okay. All right. So my story was about getting a cost. Found one that I wanted. I had $4241 to work with because my car was total. And I had to use my own money, of course, for the rest of it. I talked to my son about my finances and he borrowed me some money.

I had $7,500. That was that, period. We started at 11-9-9-9. and then with President's Day sale, they went to $9.95, and then two or three people came in after one. It was very kind, very knowledgeable, I mean, very nice, just saying that we can't do this, we can't do that, but we can do this. We can finance this. We can get to a new car for payments, and I said, well, I said, you know, you've been most time. I said, let me think about it. So I went back the next day, and the guy that I did working was so nice. And he told me right from the start when I said, listen, I said, I've done some research, and I said, I have an OTD price, and that's what it's going to be.

So just before I walked out the second day, a gentleman came in, and three other people would come in, and long story short, I got the car for $7,500 out the door because they said, you know, we have these dealer fees, we have to have them, or we blah, blah, blah. Anyway, it's all because of you guys that I was able to do that. And I tell my story to my friends, and they all say they want me to come with them whenever they buy. Thank you so much. Congratulations, Lauren. I love to hear those good stories, and I appreciate you sharing it with us, and the fact that you learn something from our show makes it even nicer. We really appreciate it.

And I couldn't have said it any better. That experience that you shared with us will go very far for other ladies, and it will encourage them to give us a call. So thank you so much, Lorraine. You're welcome, and I just wanted to say that that is true for women. I lost my husband on Christmas a few years back. So I've been on my own, and being in my mid-70s, this was all new to me, and I had been, we'd always listen to the program.

So we, I just kind of was always in the back of my mind, and I heard so much about OTD. I never even knew what it was until my husband explained. to me and until I started reading about it and there's columns in the paper that I get, what I used to get. So thank you very much and God bless all of you and be safe and be happy

and God bless America. Thank you, Lorraine. Please stay in touch with us. That's one of the nicest calls we've had. Yeah, absolutely. I really make me feel better about this show because you wonder sometimes

what we're saying is it being applied and when we hear a story, like that. It's really great. Okay. Great information. Knowledge is power, and it goes a long way. Again, thank you, Lorraine. Okay, Stu, let's get back to the text. Okay, Robbie and Stewart

is following up on the call that we took earlier. This is good morning. The lady who called in earlier about the 24-year-old daughter being taken advantage of at a car dealer. Is this still a concern at a highly reputable car dealer? Like you, Earl. Are the salespeople trained for this? Thank you. And once again, that's from

Robbie and Stewart. Robbie, I love your question because it's a tough question. And the easy answer would be, no, that could never happen at my dealership. The fact of the matter is, I have about 30 salespeople. We have a pretty stable sales force. I stay real close to my customers, and I usually hear complaints when there is one. I know that it rarely happens at my dealership, but when you have a total of 170, employees, which is how many I have, and 30 of those are salespeople, and then if you add another

dozen that are service salespeople, that's 42 salespeople, there are people that are taken advantage of. We're a little bit different in our dealership because we don't pay on commission. We don't pay a percentage of the price that the salesperson sells the car for. So I set the price on the car. Stu sets the price on the car. We put our lowest price on all of our cars. So that limits the temptation for people on commission to try to raise the price. Every other car dealership you go into, the salespersons get 25%. He can raise the price of the car that you want to buy by $1,000. He can put $250 more in his pocket than his normal commission. He can raise it $2,000. Then he's talking $500 more. So

It's an adversarial relationship. But the truth is that I have had complaints on my salespeople that irritated me. And there's always a rotten apple in the barrel. And you have to stay on top of it, which Stu and I, the family dealership, Nancy, and my other son, we stay on top of it. And that's what we have to do. But, yep, we make mistakes. And when we do, we try to make it right. But there are no perfect dealerships.

No. Be careful. Buy or beware. Absolutely. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-60 we're going to get back to stew in just a second but first we're going to go out to Dallas where Justin is calling us good morning Justin good morning how are you well thank you I wanted to call it and just say thank you so very much I've been watching your program every Saturday from

Dallas because I was interested in buying a car and sure enough every single thing that you said on your program came to pass they had they had a phony monroney it wasn't on the car itself he had it at his desk and it was the nitrous it was uh they wanted me to pay for the insurance for them to ship the car even though they already had it 400 dollars Something called an IPAC, I-P-A-C, $500. He couldn't even tell me what it meant. That's like a counterfeit iPad. And then he wanted to charge me for all these weird things.

And then at the very end, he said, so what's the Internet price? He said it's $42,000. And then with everything out the door, it was $47. And when I looked on True Car, it was going for $37. Five days later, I emailed him and said, I only want to, it for 38. And sure enough, 24 hours after that, he said he could do it for 38. Wow. I'll tell

you what a story. I don't know if I want to buy it though, because I don't trust the dealership at this point. Yeah. You know, it's amazing. Your story, Justin, I'm so happy that you learn from our show. We've got two in a row. Boy, I tell you what.

Amazing. I'm overwhelmed. I think of the victims. They aren't educated to buying. And they would pay $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 more than you paid simply because they weren't informed. Well, what a wonderful story. Thank you for calling.

Thank you for the service you do for everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you so much, Justin. Please give us a call again. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-49-30. And don't forget, you can pick up, you can go to Earl on Cars and read his latest column. Competition is car dealers

kryptonite. Wow. Is that an interesting read, just like so many others are that you can pull up from the past. So take advantage of that, urancares.com. Now back to Stu.

Let's jump over to some anonymous feedback. First one that came in, a simple question. Are used cars better to negotiate a price? No. You know, really, used cars are more difficult to negotiate a price because there's no two used cars that are exactly the same. And the smart car dealer uses that to his advantage. When you stop and think about it, a new car, a new Honda Civic is a new Honda Civic, is a new Honda Civic.

Whether you buy it from dealer ABC, or whether you buy it in Paducah, Kentucky, or Key West Florida. So it's a commodity. It's like copper or gold or silver, and everybody has the same cost. It's just a question of how much more over their costs they can sell you the car for. So used cars, you know, different owners, different mileages, different maintenance care, has it been an accident, has it been on a flood, you really don't know. So it's very difficult to negotiate a good price on the used car. That's the reason the average profit on a used car is higher to the dealer than it is on,

than the average new car price, which is counterintuitive. And on our mystery shopping reports, we counter that a lot. A lot of dealers will say they're one price on a used car, and they actually, they are. New cars is a different story. Yeah. Okay, here's more anonymous feedback. I'm trying to buy a car with credit problems from experience. I've been burnt by the car dealership pressuring me to take the car home right away.

Ten years ago, I also gave into this and was called to say I needed to keep bringing more more papers. Then I was told I had to do a new contract and come up with more money. The interest rate went up and the price went up, but I had a little choice but to do it. This time around in 2020, I'm running into the same thing. How do I get through this without the same thing happening again? Best thing is to deal with your bank or credit union. If you can't borrow the money from your bank or credit union, then you have a real challenge and then you have to find a dealer that is going to be honest and transparent.

And that's a big, you know, the people with martialized credit, bad credit, they are one of the biggest victims of car dealers. First place, never assume you have bad credit. You might think you have bad credit, but you would be surprised that lenders today, and there are lenders that will make a loan to a person with lower credit than 20 years ago, they ever think about. So that's the reason you always check with your bank or credit union,

check with a couple of credit unions, a couple banks, and then shop around for the best deal you can get. Once you admit you cannot get financed by anybody else, the dealer owns you, because what the dealer will then do is he will sell you the car that he can't sell to anybody else, and all you want is transportation, and he'll charge you as much money as he possibly can for interest and he'll charge you a fee that he's not supposed to charge you but special finance lenders to people with bad credit have a fee it can be $2,000 that is not supposed to be added to the price of the car the dealer is supposed to pay that but he passes that along to you so it gets very very expensive when you have to admit and everybody after investigation you say i got

terrible credit you're going to be victimized I'm sorry yeah the other what happened also to you was what you know wrote blogs about this it's called a yo-yo or a spot delivery no they let you take the car home thinking that you have an approval but you probably don't have an approval from the bank and so they're going to they're going to change the terms of your agreement to get you to say to get approval they'll say the bank called in some cases they really did they had no idea what the bank was going to say also in any case even if you have bad credit or good credit, do a little research before you go in to find out, you know, what is

a good rate for good credit, what's a good rate for a medium, what's for a bad credit. Because they'll lie, even with people with good credit, you'll say, oh, here's a 6% loan, that's great, but right now interest rates are near zero and you can get a new car. It used to be the 600 Beacon score was a cutoff. Now, a 525,

beacon score, 550 Beacon score? People get approved down in the low five or even into the fours, actually. Those are them where they have this big bank fees. So if you have If you have a Beacons score, you know, over 500, used to be, it had to be over 600. And the lenders are smarter and they're more careful. And therefore, they can afford to buy deeper, we say, out of the business, where they can buy people with lower credit score.

So don't give up and shop around. Always shop around. Because if you just go into one dealer, you will really be victimized. Shop with several different dealers. That's what Mama told me. Always shop around. Earl, did you just say salespeople will make 25% of the price of the car? That is insane.

How many cars do a typical salesman sell? Are most car salesmen rich? I said of the profit on the car. If they can increase the price by $1,000, that's increasing the profit on the car. They get 25% of the profit. So if a dealer costs on a car is $40,000, and they sell it for $1,000, and they sell it for $50,000, then they make $2,500. It's a lot of money to sell one car.

More anonymous feedback. Earl, can you tell us more about your educational background? I heard that you are a physicist. I got my bachelor's in physics at the University of Florida in 1963, and I got my Master of Science at Purdue in 1964 in Industrial Administration. Very good. I knew that. Yes. anonymous feedback

when we have 100% if when we have 100% all autonomous vehicles will drinking be permitted by the passengers this would be very convenient if permitted thank you interesting story I

I kind of doubt it but we've heard it very convenient if you had if you had an autonomous car an electric

they said 100% autonomous In order to stop a drunk can still do things in an electric car. If they could create a car for drunks that when you got in the car and programmed in the destination, you couldn't change it. You know, you see what I'm saying? Or if you grab the wheel, I'm thinking because I know that at some point, you know, there's going to be autonomous taxi cabs and autonomous ride share. It'd have to be a drunk-proof car. Yeah, definitely. You have to sit in the back seat behind a cage.

and then drink all you want. Remember, folks, you're going to hear it here. This is breaking news. Please, don't touch that dowel. That's crazy. All right. All right, this is jumping all over the place. Just a compliment.

Love your autumn background photo. Earl doesn't know what's behind him. That's always a surprise to him. You know, it's green. It's beautiful. It's green. I was going to say something about that earlier. It is just gorgeous.

It is. I love all those autumn colors. It's making me feel. like we're in fall even though it's hot. Really? Thank you, John. Thank you. But they have a question. There's a real question.

See? I told you yesterday. The day is growing. I told you yesterday you were going to break into song. Yes. Because you break into song when you do the international sunrise. So there actually is a question attached to the compliment for the background photo. There seems to be a trend towards glossy piano black interior trim.

It is a magnet for finger prints, dust and scratches, a deal breaker for me because I keep my new cars for many years. Does feedback from dealerships have any influence on changing it? It does, and Rick can address what is known as a DPR. Dealers have a reporting system, at least Toyota does, where if I, as a technician, have a customer come in and say, this is a problem on my car, even if it's something that they just don't like I can file a report to Toyota called a dealer product report and as soon as it goes in

it immediately gets inspected by higher ups, engineers and that and in some cases those reports can wind up on the factory floor with changes being made on the car within days I mean it's amazing some of the times that they have told us

how our individual reports have actually caused changes in the assembly line within days to change something. Yeah. And others are simply, they will take it into account for the designers for the next generation or for the next redesign on the car. I suspected for a while, Twight was putting, I believe it was putting a lot of chrome trim on the interior. I was driving in Avalon, and the sun hit it, it became, for me, a safety issue. Suddenly, like the sun was in your car. the following year there wasn't any chrome trim, so I imagine they probably started to get feedback because it was pretty pretty pretty great. They got a lot of people said, hey, we don't like this.

Yeah. More anonymous feedback. Is there a way dealer websites on dealer websites to see the actual inventory when seeking a particular model in color? You should be able to, but I'm sorry for jumping on your toes. Most reputable dealers will show their inventory. It's usually attached to their management. system so as they sell the car it comes off the website when the new car comes in stock it automatically appears but be aware there are car dealerships particularly ones with multiple locations which will list

all of their inventory they could have 10 stores and they could list all their cars on their website and it might appear that they might have a thousand new cars but you might find out that the one that you want is a thousand miles away at another location so um yes technically but you got to be careful make sure you're looking at the right location. I'm going to jump in here, interrupt everybody, unless we have a phone call or waiting, because I've got something that I want to do that I've thought long and hard about on the show,

and I was contacted by a reporter about a few weeks ago, and I get contacted by a lot of reporters. I have a reputation of having a big mouth, and I've been on CNN, I've been on Fox News, I've been on, in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, I mean, everybody calls me because I tell it like it is, I tell reporters

what the truth is in my eyes, and I don't get a lot of calls from local reporters, but I do get some, and I had one from Channel 10. What's that, the PLG, something in Fort Lauderdale or Miami? You're identifying that. way back. Well, no, that's not the one that I talked about. I had one from my TV station, South Florida TV station, a few days ago. And the reporter called me and said, look, I've been reading your blogs and I've been reading your radio, listen to your radio show,

about the hidden fees. And I'd like to do a TV expose on this. And would you be willing to cooperate? And I said, sure, I would. I'd love to. And this is all an email. I'd got the emails right here. I was going to read the emails, but I won't read them. It's too long. I'm saying this to make a point. First of all, I'm not going to name the television station. I will say it's a major South Florida TV station, a major affiliate of a major network. And it's very, very important. If I gave you the name of the owner of this television network, you know who I was talking about. But I don't want to get the reporter into trouble. and I certainly wouldn't mention the reporter's name.

When I responded to email, I said, you better go to your editor in the advertising department in the TV station because car dealers advertise very heavily on television and it's a lot of revenue. And if you offend the car dealers in the area about hidden fees, you're going to lose the advertising revenue. He says, I'll check and I'll do that. Well, I didn't hear from him for a...

week and I went back and I said, what happened? He says, well, you were right. They stopped the story. He says, I'm very disappointed. Well, this has happened a lot of times. And so what I'm saying to the journalist and the reporters and the media, whether you're radio, television, by the way, this radio station right here, God bless them, and for their courage and their ethics to allow this show to exist. Because there are a lot of cardios that advertise on the show. this radio station and the owner of this station has a courage to let earl stewart on cars exist for a long time i was fired nancy and i were fired at cview radio uh years ago because the car dealers ganged up and said we're going to boycott seview radio if you don't get it

get rid of earl and nancy and they did get rid of this and it took us a year before the seview radio went broke and the new owners came in and bought this station and, as I say, thank you for having the courage. Also, for hometown news, also for the Florida Weekly. There are journalists out there that have the courage to say the truth. But why don't the major television stations and radio stations and newspapers have the courage? This reporter wanted to do an expose of the hidden fees of car dealers all over South Florida, and they wanted to go to, in his words,

maybe we can embarrass Ashley Moody into doing something. And his boss said, no. The editor probably was told by the advertising department because the advertising department and the television and radio station runs a show. Well, maybe, I understand, you've got to make a profit. If you don't make a profit, you go broke. and what is better to have a radio station or a television station that tells some of the truth or you don't have a television station at all.

I get it, but I don't have a solution. I mean, whatever happened to journalistic ethics and honestly. And anybody out there, if you're a manager of a radio TV, newspaper, whatever you are, think about this. here is a wrong that's being wasted on the car buyers of South Florida and all over Florida and nothing gets done about it

because you protect the car dealers because they spend so damn much money on advertising absolutely that's the end of my rant I love it I really do and you know the proofs in the pudding turn on your TV are you listening are you hearing are they giving you the truth

that's all I have to say about it you see a lot of advertisement don't you a lot of car advertisements which are the biggest joke the lawyers or the car dealers and they're advertised there I'm not sure which or the politicians I left the pot

this is hands down the politicians win the clown contest right now and then number two would be the lawyers and number three would be the car dealers yeah it just makes you it makes you want to just turn the TV off you know I want to mention real quick

Linda called last week and she was sharing with us that You know, she had a little, her husband was driving the car, the Highlander, and we gave her some advice, and she took it, and she's already cutting a check to Allstate, and she's going to get that bumper fixed. So thank you for listening, Linda, and thanks for taking our advice. We hope to hear from you again. You don't call very often. All right. We actually obtained a photograph of Alan's coronavirus haircut.

That's beautiful. I think Earl has it on his phone if he wants to show it to the camera. I was only kidding when I said it was going to try and resemble the coronavirus, but apparently Alan went to a specialty salon, I think. That's right. And they worked out something. Orr was finding that on his phone. Oh, there we are.

This is kind of an inside story. Most people don't know Alan Mayfier. We love you, Alan. He's my mentally disturbed body shop manager, and there he is. It's beautiful, Alan. Bring your car in. Well done. And let Alan take care of your car for you.

You just killed our body shop business. He's a very skilled pursuit. He will greet you with wearing that hair fit. That's going to go viral. And I'm starting to catch the giggles because the next anonymous feedback, it starts off by saying, happy Thanksgiving, all. All right, we're not even at Halloween yet, but thank you for the sentiment. The question is, is the infotainment software in-house designed or outsourced?

Lexus seems to be worse than Toyota as far as ease of use. And Rick, I'm sure it could be the guy to chime in on that. Well, it's generally from the manufacturer of the radio. Pioneer, Fujitutan, JVC, whatever company has designed that particular radio, usually gets their software from whatever source. Yeah, the automobile manufacturers do not build radios. Yeah. So that software is probably going to come from another outside company

to the radio developer, and then they're going to set it up and have it integrated to the car. Well, to all of you that are listening, you can pick yourself up a consumer report, and they are talking about the best and the worst. car infotainment in systems so there you go that's great interesting September edition very good all right anonymous feedback great question here is there a way for potential buyers doing their homework to find out if there's extra dealer

incentives or dealer cash to sweeten a possible deal and the answer is for the most part yeah if you go to truecar.com there's a lot of sites that will get that together KB Edmins but if you go to truecar.com navigate through to the make and model that you want to get, it usually will accurately list the incentives, whether it's a cash rebate for the customer, consumer cash, or if it's dealer cash, the kind of incentive that can be hidden from the consumer. So great question, but I recommend TrueCard to find that information. Yeah, they used to publish that in Automotive News, which was a trade journal, and I think

there was so much heat from the dealers saying, don't put this in writing, because we're afraid somebody will get a hold of the copy of Automotive News. I didn't realize that True Car did that, so that's great. Is there any other source? Edmonds or Kelly Blue Book? Kelly Blue Book and Edmins both will do that when you do

the pricing thing. I think it's a little bit more cumbersome. It's a little bit harder to find where you're going because they're these huge sites. True Car is right to the point. You pick your Yermake model, and then you find your deals. But, yeah, you can find them in other sources. I think Rich out of YouTube here

as it looks like it's a good one. Kevin Lewis is asking, why does a row run for office in Florida only to get a bill passed to end dealer fees? Everyone can understand a 1,000 dealer fee is a scam. I got some good answers for that question because I get asked a lot why I don't run for office. My favorite answer, my funniest one is I could never pass the background check, which is probably true. I mean, as a recovering car dealer, I got some things in my past that I am ashamed of. The real reason I don't run for office is that, and I don't say I'm a bad American, don't say I'm anti-democracy, but the fact the matter is you have to be a liar to get elected

to office. In our system today, when you run for office, if you tell the truth, you can't get elected. And so you either have to withhold the truth or modify the truth, and I just, I'm, you're How many of you know recovering alcoholics, recovering drug addicts, I'm a recovering cardio. You know, we tend to be extreme. So when I recovered, when I got into recovery, I became an extreme person in the sense that I can't stand to tell the lie anymore. I can't stand to withhold the truth. And it gets me in a lot of trouble with a manufacturer, Toyota, sometimes with other factors.

you know, people are waiting to sue me. So I could never get elected. If I thought I could get elected and be honest, I probably would. I don't think I'd run for president, but I might run for something, you know, mayor. Mayor of Jupiter Inland Colony. You'll never do that again. I think you were a president of a condo association once. You did enjoy it.

I don't want to get, you know, off the subject, but isn't it sad that to get elected today, you cannot tell the truth? It's a sad fact. It's been going on forever. Ladies and gentlemen, we have an interesting Mystery Shopping Report coming up and at Southern 441 Nissan and we would love for you to participate in, well,

given us a grade, pass them, fail them, whatever, and that helps us to create a good list and a bad list of these dealers. So 772-497-6-5, three zero that's where you can go why you act too much we're in time for one more we get one we'll be all caught up with our I'll read fast it's a it's from a potential competitor once how does one open up a new car dealership if I were to open up a toy at a store how much

would I need and what is the process are there many new dealerships opening up these days great show keep it up guys south Florida cost you at least 50 million for a for a good toilet dealership there I go that's pretty succinct let's go mr. shop of southern 444 41 Nissan. For the last two weeks, we focused on bait and switch car dealer advertising. We must reach up Wallace Jeep twice, first with Agent Thunder, our male agent, and Agent Lightning, our female agent. So cool having a male and female to send out. Wallach Jeep was advertising a new 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee with a payment of just 189 a month. Both of our agents experienced similar treatment, which was somewhat surprising. They were told that to get the low payment,

that would need to qualify for a military rebate and a special Realtors Association rebate. Other texts were used as well, including statements that the ad car had been sold. The second mystery shop, Agent Lightning, female, was pressured to buy a red vehicle, even though she insisted no red. She said, the only color I don't like is red,

and they tried to sell her a red car. Unbelievable. We placed a Wallace Jeep on our Do Not Recommendalists two weeks ago after Agent Thunder's investigation. And we were sad to do this concerning all of Wallace's dealerships were recommended by us. So Wallace is one of the best car dealers out there. Bill Wallace is a good man, and he's an honest man, and we felt bad. But he's got too many dealerships.

He can't stay on top of all the dealerships, and there you go. But in a dramatic reversal, we return to the recommended list, put Wall's back on the list. After Agent Lightning's visit, having performed marginally better, still had too many glitches, we let Wallace squeak by with a D. After all that, we decided to move on from the bait and switch ad theme and try something new. However, during our weekly reconnaissance

of car dealer advertising, we stumbled on an offer that we couldn't ignore. Southern 441 used to be Royal Palm, Southern 441 Nissan, online ad for a new 2020 Nissan Rogue Sport with a low, low payment of $87 a month. I mean, you know, be old too good to be true? There it is.

There it is. This is the case with really low payment ads. We have a good idea of the catch. A big down payment, huge usually, unobtainable rebates, like are you a farmer? Are you a veteran or you, you know, whatever. This had, however, was just a little trickier. If you could get trickier, it was. The headline read, no pay drive away.

No pay drive away. Now what does that tell you? You can drive away and you don't have to pay. right you know which implied a sign and drive same thing no money don't reach for your wallet your checkbook get in the car you go home no money out of pocket uh no security deposit i mean that how certain can i be that i don't have to come up with cash i think you skip part oh well i'll let's go below the main headline oh yeah i'm i was just ad lipping so you know no money down no payment until 2021, no security deposit.

That nails the last nail in the coffin. I don't have to pay a nickel. I could just drive this car away for $87 a month. So that's pretty bizarre, pretty absurd. But there are people that believe this stuff, folks. I mean, they're still in business, right? There are some people that believe this stuff. That made it pretty clear there was no money required to get the $87 payment.

Sounds great, but of course, there was a small matter. I like that, the small matter of the... fine print. That is funny. Small fine print. Get it? Yeah. Here's a, here's a fine print. Plus tax tag title, $899 dealer fee. $3,77, do it signing. Hey, what about no pay, no drive? No, no pay drive away. 3777 do it signing. 12,000 miles per year, zero security deposit required with approved credit. So we won't read the rest of it. Basically, some of the fine print was on a 2020 road, not even the car we were coming in on. So it was a finance deal on a 2020 Titan truck.

I theorized that a lot of dealers do this. They like to glom a lot of fine print. If you see too much fine print, your mind just fogs over and you'll say, I'm not going to read it. If you have a little fine print, you might squint and try to read it. But when you have two paragraphs of fine print, you say, forget about it. Too overwhelming. This ad was confused and confusing. We sent Agent Lightning in to figure things out for us.

Okay, here's the report. I opened the showroom door. I opened the showroom door at 9 a.m. immediately greeted by Marcio, Maricio. Mauricio, yeah. A mask-wearing salesman. I like that. Who was that mask man?

He offered me an air fist pump, which I reciprocated. Maricio asked how we could help, and I shared the ad. I'd come in on the new 2020 Nissan Rogue Sport for just $87 a month. Right away, Maricio sought to discredit the ad by warning that a big down payment and other eligibility would be required to get the advertised payment. He also said there were other add-ons as well as introducing their, including their dealer fee. Now, here's a guy that's been through the wars, Maricio, where, there and everybody comes in the door at Southern 441 Nissan has seen one of

these ads and so they just right up front Mauricio says ain't gonna happen you know you have to qualify you have to look at the fine print I went with a flow said let's say well we can work out a lot of people just say I'm out I'm out of here and they run for the car but I went with a flow Mercer to be right back advised me to read the fine print Now, you're in the dealership, now you read the fine print, which I had on my phone. He left me in the showroom, and in the spot, we'd sit talking. You know, one good thing about phones is you can increase the fine print, yeah.

He returned five minutes to inform me that he had no more inventory of the Nissan Rogue's Sportist models. Okay, here we are. The ad card, we don't have any. Right. All right. That's not good. That's bad enough. Yeah.

I'd like to win the ad. He said he'd be happy to call me when one came in, adding he thought there were about 95. That's crazy. Or so a ride of the coming weeks. Ain't going to happen.com. Now, you don't get, that's a one, one model. We don't even stock 95 cameras. It doesn't happen, right.

I told them that I couldn't wait, and I needed a vehicle with super low payment. Immediately, I showed him another Southern 441 Nissan. I found, with my phone, a new 2020 Nissan, for just $97. dollars and off another 10 bucks a month. Maricio said he'd find one to drive and asked me if I had any color preference. I said I want a silver one. He left to find the car and the keys

telling me to meet him out front and he pulled up. I stood in the show him, waited. We hadn't set out of the desk yet. Maricio pulled in a silver centra, found one, silver, MSRP of 20,650, and there was an addendum for $1,973 for either an appearance for them. No, it's just an appearance

package. Yeah. We went on on test drive that covered about three miles. Maricio focused on and described the safety features. He received a phone call from his wife only last to the minute. He directed me back to the store. We found his desk. Prepared to review the deal he had for me.

As we were just sitting down, Maricio told me to ask me for my social security number. That's kind of strange. I mean, fill it out, but when someone looks in the eye, says, what's your social security number? It's kind of scary. That's very scary.

It's like... You just scared me when you said that. Yeah, you know, it's like, what size underwear do you wear? I mean, it's a personal question, right? I told him that I was not ready to let him run my credit. I needed to see the numbers first. I shared him that my credit score was in the mid-700s. Maricio didn't accept my word and wanted to know how I knew my score.

Here we have not only old school, but aggressive. Aggressive, a tough guy. Maricio is a tough guy. I don't like tough guys. I told him I subscribe to a service that keeps me up to date on three credit bureaus. I said, I keep a close eye on my eye. I just said that.

This seemed to satisfy him. He grabbed his clipboard, a cup of coffee, and went to a small assemblage of sales managers behind some glass. At least they're protecting themselves from the COVID virus. I watched Maricio interact with a manager talking and drinking coffee for 20 minutes.

This astounds me the length of time that they will waste of your time. You're the buyer, I'm the buyer. 20 minutes. And each in line to describe the score as not busy. I think she was the only customer at the time. Yeah, I didn't know that. He returned with a worksheet that showed only a payment grid, different payments based on varying down payments.

There was no price breakdown on any other indication of other fees, so worthless for me to ponder. There was no specific payments either. Only ranges, 36-month-leash, $5,500 down payment, 103 to $113. That's a wide range. With $6,000 down, the payment was $89 to $99. With $6,500 down, the payment was $74 to $84.

Big, big down payments. I told them that payments were great, but I would need to see an itemized breakdown of what I was actually paying for the car. He said, I'd be paying my down payment plus the total of all my payments. At the end of the lease, I could buy the card, keep it or turn it back. I mean, that's a smoking mirrors thing. I reiterated that I needed an itemized breakdown and asked to see a purchase option.

Rishi seemed annoyed. I mean, just not only is he aggressive. He's not a good salesperson because you don't look mean. You've got to look happy. I mean, if you're going to screw a customer, make them like you. Don't anger a customer. This is like one of Earl's old sales meetings.

Yeah, exactly. Listen, listen, you got to win over the customer. You've got to learn how to smile when you kill. If you're going to slam dunk a customer and make, if you're going to make a 10 grand slam dunk, they've got to love you. You better get a hug afterwards. They got to love you.

Here's another old saying, I digress. We haven't got time. I can't help myself. We used to say in the old days. you. The customer that you make the most money on is the happiest customer. The customer that comes in and chisels you and knickles and dimes you and makes you sell the car near your cost, he never stops complaining. But the little old lady that comes in and you sell her the car and make a $10,000 profit over sticker price, she never complains. So all we're trying to do

is have more happy customers by selling. That's your job. That's your job is to make as much Much money as you can, because the ones that you lay away, they never complain. That's right. Remember, you heard it here first. Pull yourself together. And you want to know why I won't run for political office? That's why I won't run for political office. Anyway, I digress.

FAA, will endorse your opponent. Okay. Okay, he returned. The purchase option. He returned in 10 minutes. 10 minutes, okay. He showed me $5,250 discount from MSRP, which brought the selling price to $15,400. Then he added, I digress so much, this is Royal Palm, the Southern 441 D-San that we're shopping.

Then he added a $1973, $1,973 appearance package, which is just BS from the addendum sticker. Next game, $345 in taxable fees. Remember, taxable fees are hidden fees. So right now, the total goes up. We got $193 plus $3.45, $899 dock fee. And then you've got your sales taxed $102 not tax fees. So we had a total of $3,217 in bogus fees. That's a lot of dealer fees, folks.

That's a lot of hidden fees. $3,270, $270 at bogus fees. So it makes your real discount from Ms. R.P. $1,800. The lease payments were the same, and below that, he totaled up the down payment and all 36-monthly payments to the sum of $9,208. What you said was, that's what you're paying for the car.

That's what you're renting the car for. You're not paying it for the car. You're renting it. A lease is not a payment, and you don't own anything. you've got a bunch of rent receipts after 36 months. You've got 36 rent receipts and they own the car. You don't.

I objected to the appearance package but Maricio said it came pre-installed. And that's the sin in the guilt. When you pre-install something knowing that you can't take it off and the products that you're

charging them for are near worthless. You might not be able to take it off but you can charge them what they're worth. With their worth, it's got window tents and pinstripes, you pay 150 bucks, you're good. Yeah, exactly. He said the Windsor Tent was guaranteed for life. Well, that's good. He went on to say how amazed he was with a deal.

His manager put together way low MSRP. I said I would speak with my financial advisor about it and get back to him. I took pictures of the worksheet named Maricio. I'm surprised that he allowed me to take pictures of the worksheet, and I left. There's a note. 50% of the employees visible to me were masks. That means 50% did not wear a mask. I tried to find some hand sanitizer.

At the test drive, three of them were empty. I found one with sanitizer in it. So careless with COVID. We should have that as a designation. CC. Careless with COVID. Not COVID certified. Yeah.

So here we are, bait and switch. I go back to the no-pay drive-away. Ain't going to happen.com. No money down. a lie and this is a you know as I go before the Federal Trade Commission says you can't put anything in the fine rent that substantially change the selling price of the car and this substantially changes to sell the price of the car so it's illegal it's unconscionable it's unethical and outside of that it was a really good shopping report right other than

that miss Lincoln how is the play Linda sends them an F just a regular F we also have an F from Jonathan and Wellington, and I don't feel the least bit guilty by weighing in with my F for Southern 441 Nissan. I don't like them. Rick? I've got Tom Gilliland with no fine print here, a big bold F. Donovan, they get a total F. That dealer is a complete hellhole. No one should go there. 1900 for an appearance package is a joke. Mark Ryan with an F, the appearance package fee was a complete joke. Kit Kat, no mask, empty hand sanitizer, bait and switch equals F.

And Karen with a big fat F, cow go F from start to finish. Okay, Nancy, you're up. I'm going to hold that addendum label up so you can see what, it's a little foggy there, but that $19.73 appearance package is

on the addendum label. Yeah, interesting. I mean, I don't know. I don't know what to say. hairs on fire. Is there anything worse than enough? There is a G. Incomplete. And it stands for... You have to repeat the course.

It would be an eye. You give an eye. Oh, wait a minute. I'm sorry. Your question has answered. Martha on Facebook gives them an F-minus, so there you go. And Lee gives them an F as well. So not too many people are happy with the performance of Southern 441 Nissan. Okay. Jonathan was

pointing at me, I think. You need to vote. Oh, it's time for your grade. Oh, I've got to vote, yeah, that's right. Uninquivocal F, just, I don't hesitate at all. A terrible report, and we asked Southern 441 to get the act together. That's right. Terry Taylor, if you're listening, ah, you don't care.

Sorry. That was mean, I don't know Terry Taylor, a little. Anyway, do we have any more content for our listeners? Because we have four minutes. Oh, just a, you know. I go back to renewing. I know the media is listening to this. Radio, TV, newspaper, all of you out there.

Let your reporters, your ethical, your, your moral, your, what is the word for a really good reporter? Someone that wants to tell the truth. Let them free. Let them tell the truth. Build a reputation as being the TV station or the radio station that cares about. The consumers, it might pay you dividends. Don't squash the reality of hidden fees at car dealerships. How about Attorney General Ashley Moody?

Boy, she sure can. This is what I was talking about, ladies and gentlemen, in the beginning of the show. You know, we really try very hard to expose all the car dealers and how they're taking advantage of the consumer. But we can't do it alone. So we, you know, implore you to, to, like, give Attorney General Ashley Moody

a call. I gave out her number earlier, but I'll give it to you again. I can't repeat it enough, and her phone number is 850 414-3-300. Let her know how you feel. That's Attorney General, Ashley Moody.

All right. And a quick shout out to my 13-year-old daughter. Happy birthday. My youngest is 13. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Josie. Happy birthday to you. Hey. Happy birthday, Josie. Okay, folks, we've had a great time.

Jonathan has kept us on the straight and narrow, and we want to thank all of you for tuning in to Earl Stewart on Cars. And as you can hear, we love doing the show from all of us here. We wish you a wonderful weekend, and stay tuned next week, same time, from 8 to 10 o'clock. Have a blessed weekend and stay safe.