Earl Stewart on Cars - 11.07.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Infiniti Stuart

Episode Date: November 7, 2020

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Infiniti Stuart to see if she can best deal possible on a 2020 Infiniti QX60. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Well, here we are back. Your dynamic, what are we, quintet? No, there's four of us. We got a quintet with Jonathan. We're your auto team, and we're here to help you buy a car, lease a car, maintain a car, to give you some good advice. A good percentage of you are regulars. We've got a good following all over the United States.

For your new folks, this is something that you won't see anywhere else. It's a live, I say radio, it's live Facebook, it's live YouTube, it's live Twitter. We're streaming all over the world. And they've got a pretty good size audience, but I know of no other venue that will openly and directly, by name, criticize bad behavior by car dealers. And if you've ever seen the Gallup Poll on Honesty and Ethics and Professions, you should take a look at it. You just Google Gallup Poll, Honesty and Ethics, and Professions, which has been going on since 1977. coming up on 50 years, you'll find out that the car dealers rank either dead last or next to last. They just don't, they're not held in very high esteem by the people that have to deal with them.

Hence, the show was born about 17 years ago. Just Nancy Stewart and myself, got together for a half an hour on a little old radio station called Sea View Radio. And then we got fired after about six or seven years because the car dealers ganged up. up and boycott of the radio station. So you get rid of Earl and Nancy or else we're not going to advertise on your radio station. So we were in a major depression for about a year

until we found another radio station and here we are. And we're back in business. I salute this radio station. True oldies for what they do. They're journalists. They're journalists in the finest word of the definition

of the word because they're not afraid of being boycotted. They want the truth to be out on the airwaves, and that's what you're going to get today. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. And we'd love to hear from you. That's a main issue. We sometimes don't get enough calls, especially from our female callers, and I'm going to let Nancy address that in a minute, but you can reach us a lot of ways. 877-9-60-99-60. I ask you to write that number down, unless you're driving, of course. Write the number down. because you might have a question later.

We're on for two hours. I mean, you might have nothing on your mind now, but who knows, an hour from now, you might have something on your mind. You'll hear something, and you'll want to comment. So write it down, 877-960-99-60, or you can text us, 7-7-2-497-65-30. That's 772-497-65-30.

And I mentioned Nancy Stewart, I've got to mention Greg Kearney, and he's alluded to in the introduction, my recorded introduction. But today, because people are visiting car dealerships more often, in fact, they always visit car dealerships more often to maintain and repair their cars. You only buy or lease a car every four or five years. You get your car service probably twice a year. And so you're exposed to car dealerships and independent garages, and you have to be on your guard. I mean, they have a lot of deceptive and unfair practices in the service departments. But even maybe equally important is you don't want to go into the service department today as much as you used to. You might be in a COVID, intense COVID area.

Florida happens to be one of those. And you just don't feel like hanging around a customer lounge or standing in line somewhere with people without mask or whatever the situation might be. You might have something you can fix yourself or you might have something that you can postpone. So Rick Kearney can diagnose your symptoms. You can describe it to him. Call the number. Say, Rick, I got a squeak

here. I got a noise. It sounds like this. My car won't start right. My God, yeah. You know, all the symptoms. I got a red light. I got a green light. I got a yellow light. All those trouble lights that come on your dashboard. What does it mean? Do I have to bring it into a dealership?

You might be pleasantly surprised that you can delay it or maybe fix it yourself in a simple manner. So 877-960-99-60 called Rick Kearney and Stu Stewart, my son, is our Spymaster General for our Mystery Shopping Report. And you can go to Earl on Cars.com and you can see a list of all the place we mystery shopped website on Mystery Shopping Reports. We have a list of recommended dealers and do not buy from this dealer. list and we also have the actual mystery shopping report and you could go back and

just about any dealer in South Florida you'll find the name there and you'll see what happened when we walked into the dealership one of our mystery shoppers pretended to buy or lease a car or sometimes service the car not often enough we should do more service reports and read what really happened we name names we named the salespeople the sales managers the dealership if the dealer broke for law We say they broke the law, and I always say that because it's dangerous to tell on live radio that a company is doing something illegal, if they're not, because you can get sued. I can get sued personally, and a radio station will get sued, but you know something? In all these years, nobody sued us, and the truth is a perfect defense against libel and slander.

As long as we tell you the truth, we're home free. So, with that said, let me introduce Nancy Stewart. And as I say, she's our female advocate, and she's my partner and co-founder of this show. Nancy? Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars. We so appreciate your company. We appreciate your taxes, your phone calls.

And speaking of phone calls, ladies, please give us a call this morning. I have $50 for the first two. new lady callers i'd like for you to share your car purchasing or or serving servicing experience and i'd love you to be willing to share it with us and so many ladies that are listening and their experience so give us a call 877 960 9960 or you can text us if you'd like to chat at 8777. Excuse me, 772-497-6530. Back to the recovering car dealer.

And Nancy really wants some calls. We didn't have any female callers last week or the week before. Right. That's never happened before. Just about the time we were bragging about having parity, about 50-50, something happened to you ladies out there. So heads up, ladies. if you haven't called the show before, there's a quick 50 bucks.

Cash, we sent your check, no strings attached, all you have to do is call the show. If you haven't called the show before, then you're female. And if you have called the show before, just because we're not going to give you $50, doesn't mean we wouldn't love to hear from you. And you have valuable input. Let's face it, women and men have somewhat of a different experience when they go into a retail establishment. Absolutely.

It shouldn't be that way, but it is that way. and we want your perspective. So please call the show. Yes, definitely. I want to introduce Stu Stewart. Stu is our cyber, you know, he's the our undercover director. He takes our agents, Agent Thunder and Agent Lightning, and he directs them as to where the mystery shops are going to take place.

And I'm going to introduce him. I'm going to ask him to talk about TrueCar a little bit because we haven't talked a lot, about true car but recently since they've changed the way that they assign a price to a dealer I'll let Stu you explain it why did we stop using true car as a measure and then we started up again well as a quick recap a little history there when true car came out they there's there's always been a lot of these car buying services where you get up you submit a request and it goes into to a dealership as a lead true car changed that model by actually giving you a

an out-to-door price right on their website and to list your prices you obviously you had to show your best hand if you were a car dealer and the moment it was launched it got a huge amount of pushback from car dealers they hated it we liked it because we that's kind of our thing transparency but they were totally disrupting the industry with their model what happened was a lot of car dealers began to drop out of their program and they started to lose money and they re I guess they reorganized, they changed their model, and it became increasingly difficult for consumer to go to their website and just easily get a price. It started to show market averages, and to get into the actual business of buying a car, you would have to talk to the dealer. And that was kind of the

beauty of TrueCar was that you're able to get your out-the-door price without ever speaking to the dealer. So you can avoid pressure, you can avoid all the games that people want to avoid. But recently, I've noticed that it's become a little bit easier to get a price from true car. You still have to interact with the dealer, but everyone I've tried in the last couple of months, when you go and you configure your car online and you hit submit, you immediately get an email from a participating dealer with a detailed out-the-door price in your email inbox. Yeah, and it's the only source, and Costco is really our preferred source. But with Costco, you have to go into the dealership.

Truecar is the only source that you can do entirely online, and you do have to give your email information, but that can be an email that you get only for this purpose. You don't have to use your regular email address, just an email that allows them to contact you because otherwise they're not going to be able to send you the price. And you can give them any name you want, and you don't have to give them your real phone number, do you?

No, you don't. You can make one up? Yeah, I've been using. the same anonymous account for years. And they don't limit you on how many leads. Sometimes I was wondering if anybody was paying attention why this one guy is asking for leads on every make known to mankind for prices on these.

So let's reinstate Truecar. Yeah, I would. You should, Truecar.com, www.truecour.com. Any car you're buying anywhere, if you want a bar to measure the price you've been getting. And this is an out-the-door bar. True car will give you the price including hidden fees that you would otherwise not know about

until it's too late. And dealer-installed accessories that you would otherwise not know about until you've driven the car home, maybe. I mean, it's really sneaky the way the car goes to it. If you want an out-the-door price, you can go to TrueCard, get it online. It might not be the lowest price,

but it's not going to be a really bad price. and our experience, it's been a few hundred dollars within a good price. Yeah, I mean, typically the true car prices are better, and it's not dramatically so, but they are definitely the best prices that we're seeing. Another interesting thing about true car is they actually power a lot of other buying services out there, but it's not branded as True Car. True Car start off as Zag, Z-A-G. Good point.

And so they're partnered with American Express, Consumer Reports. Yeah, Consumer Reports. That's our Bible. Yeah. And if consumer reports trust True Car, you've got to believe in True Car. AARP, if you go to the AARP car buying service, it goes through True Car. USAA is, the military insurance program, has been partners with them since the beginning. But that's ending this year.

And True Car is kind of scrambling to figure out a way to get the military market out there. Do we have a caller? Great information, ladies and gentlemen, and show is going to be fantastic. So sit tight. you're going to accumulate a lot of information, 877960, or you can text us at 772-497-60, and we already have a call from Jupiter, and that is Paul. Good morning, Paul. Good morning, good morning, everybody. I have a question for you about the Costco program. The previous broadcast, I've heard Earl say that with the Costco program, the dealer can't add anything extra, such as a dealer fee.

I just am tinkering with Schumacher on a pickup truck, and the dealer fee was still added. Costco gave just $1,000 against the manufacturer's retail price, And then the dealer fee, I asked them, I said, can the dealer add anything to the equation? And they said, they didn't know anything about that. They just had to give you the $1,000. That's all they could give you. Okay, did you get, was that told you by the Schumacher that, or told to you by Costco,

that they couldn't do anything about that? My wife brought home a brochure from Costco. I actually have it right here to save on your next vehicle purchase. and it has it was specifically a GMC vehicle that I'm talking about yeah and we called the number and Costco you know answered the phone and said that they would pay you take a thousand dollars off and that would be it well still has a point yeah the Costco program does not say that um that they can't charge dealer fees and every every shop that we have on the Costco buying sheet it will list the prices what they say is that you don't have to pay for the dealer added equipment

equipment. I'm almost 100% sure that Costco allows them to add a dealer fee. Okay. Again, I apologize for Stu and I having a question on that. My thought was that the list of prices that the dealer is required to have and show the Costco member separately lists dealer install accessories and dealer fees. I thought that was true. two doesn't oh yeah I'm sending you a picture of a Costco sheet from from Del Rey Toyota though here's this is what we used to rail about was that you don't get to see the Costco buying sheet until you get to the dealership they won't email it to you you have to actually so so Paul the answer is it's almost

this is a semantics almost they allow the dealer to show the quote-unquote Costco price and then on the top of the sheet they will say dealer fees a $1,000 dealer install expressories, $750, and you have to mentally take that $1,750 and add it to the Costco price, but they're required to show you that sheet. And in practice, what happens is you don't see the sheet. You have to ask for it and sometimes insist on it. Now, we mystery shop, Schumacher, a couple of years ago, and we found out that they were not listing all of their hidden fees on the Costco.

sheet. We reported them to Costco, and Costco purportedly require them to change that. But the reason I prefer the true car now is because it's so much simpler. It's easy to manipulate,

but if they did not at Schumacher show you the Costco price sheet and at the top of the sheet the extra fee and the dealer installed accessories that they're violating Costco policy, You call Costco, report them, and Costco was supposed to call Schumacher and say, look, adjust the price for Paul, or else we will cancel you as a Costco dealer.

Yeah, Costco will come back around and ask to see all the deal of paperwork if there's a complaint, and they'll review it to make sure they did it, do it right, but it requires the consumer to call. On the dealer installed items, it just says the vehicle you select may have an addendum sticker with items such as pinstriping and things like that. And then it says, in bold, Costco members receive these items at no cost. But there's no mention of the dealer fee. And it is, the dealer fees are listed on the Costco buying sheet. And Paul, if you want to go. Yeah, well, this vehicle is having to, this vehicle is having to be gotten, gotten from another dealer. So I didn't even get to see this sticker.

But he did show me the invoice of what appeared to be an invoice on your computer. And a couple other things, he should, I have my, my purchase. agreement right here. And he's showing electronic registration fee, 379, and then battery fee, which is incidental. Tag fee was only $23, but of course the $9.95 dealer prep fee, which is the dealer fee. Did you see the dealer, the Costco price sheet? Did he, did you ask for it and did he show it to you, Schumacher? No, the problem with this is the vehicle is that another dealer, they're actually out of these particular trucks. And I can't. I'm just. He's trying to get it transferred from another dealer because it's closer to home to deal with Schumacher.

They can still show you the Costco sheet. That Costco sheet is irrespective whether they have to trade it in or if it's a car in stock. Yeah, they will have that particular truck and they will have how much over-invoice they're going to charge you. And so it's just a matter of taking the price over-invoice and adding on the sheet if they're required by Costco to have their deal. fee and their dealer install accessories, which you will have to mentally add to the Costco price. They must show you the sheet. So before you buy that truck, look at the sheet and you will have the invoice amount on the amount of the truck, and then how much over that they're charging you. Okay. I'll do it. And feel free to call me about that. I know Chuck Schumacher. I've known

him for many years and he was father. He's an honest guy. If you've got to somebody there at Schumacher GMC truck that's trying to flim flam you. You call me. I'll call Schumacher and we'll get us straight now, but you shouldn't have to go through that. And you need to report this to Costco if they're flimplamming. They'll cancel Schumacher and he doesn't want that. He wants to be a Costco certified dealer. Very good. Well, thank you. Thank you, Paul. Appreciate the call. Yeah, great call. Ladies and gentlemen, 877-960-99-60, or you can get us a text us at 772-497-6530.

And I'm going to take a moment to mention this exciting enhancement to Earl on Cars. And that is a, well, we want all of you to join us in saving all of these people that are being taken advantage of. And it's called Earl's Vigilantes. And do you consider yourself? An expert, tired of car dealer dishonesty, we could use you. We could use your help. So go to Earlsvigilantes.com and join us.

Back to the recovering car dealer. Well, let's go back to Stu. What do we got over there and will you text? Oh, we got some text, but I did want to jump on what Nancy was saying on Earl's Vigilantes. Right now, we're standing at about seven Vigilantes across the... the country, we have three in Florida, we have New Jersey, we have Maryland, et cetera. Please, just go to Earlsvigilani's.com. And there's a forum that says volunteer now. Just click on and get you posted and you can start helping the consumers in your area.

We got some texts that came in. The first one, he always gets in early, which makes me wonder how, when he goes to bed at night, but he's out in California. It's Brian. It says a few weeks ago, Earl suggested I joined Earl's Vigilanis. I will, absolutely do that soon. I work at a popular grocery store chain, and even during COVID, both Thanksgiving and Christmas will still be chaotic for us. So once things settle down after Christmas, I will have more spare time and definitely join the group. Thanks, Brian. With the help of your show, I successfully leased a car at a great prize last year and also bought my dream car at a 2018-2018 Mustang GT all within a few months of each other. I've become the guy at work

to help coworkers with car dealers, and I've helped a couple of them so far. Every day I drive that dream car and this show always crosses my mind because you guys saved me about $160 a month just by following important details covered every week in this show. Even though I don't send a text every week, please know I never miss an episode. I love you guys. You help change my life. And that's from Brian. Wow. Wow. $150 a month. I think if you extrapolate of that, you'd be looking at several thousand dollars of profit to the dealer. We see this a lot when people are taking advantage of, it's usually by a lease, and we've seen $10,000 profits from people that we're taking advantage of. Usually, I call them victims, people that elderly people, young people

that are not savvy about negotiation and people that are maybe not fluent in the English language, people that are easy marks, they walk in, and they'll pay a $10,000 profit to the dealer. They might not even know they're leasing. Not even know they're leasing. And right behind them, who comes in the door? But the Schick attorney, Sharpe's attack, bought a lot of cars. He's bought them cheap. He's aggressive.

He's not afraid of car salespeople. He'll buy the same car for near the dealer's true cost. Oh, yeah. And so you got the little old lady, pardon the expression, and you got the slick lawyer, pardon the expression, paying $10,000 for the exact same. the same vehicle more or less. And you know what?

It's not right. You know what? And sometimes that lawyer doesn't even have to negotiate that hard. Once the salesperson identifies the type of buyer, he'll go back and tell, we've got a lawyer here, or we have an accountant. In the sales business, in the car business, an accountant walks in, they just go,

forget about it, let's not even do the back and forth and they get a better deal. Or he's an engineer, he pays attention to the detail. Let's just get to the bottom line and get him out of the door. When they see the old lady, or they see the person, person who struggles learning English or something like that they like that's when they begin to salivate okay okay um back to Earl's vigilantes you know we sure could use your help absolutely use your help and this is an exciting program and you'd not only be helping us but

you'd be helping consumers in your own community so go to earls vigilantes.com and sign up We are going to go to Dennis, who is in Lake Worth. Good morning, Dennis. Good morning. I have a little question this morning. I have my first car I ever had with a recall, and it's one of the Toyota Camrys that you guys were talking about last week with the fuel pump problem. So I just wonder where proceeds.

Now that I know I have a problem, you know, like I say, I've had lots of new cars, but this is the first one that's ever been under one of the recalls. Well, you're lucky. Rick, why don't you describe the fuel pump recall? You can tell them about how long it'll take and the availability of the fuel pumps themselves and so on and what procedure should Dennis follow. Dennis, do you say you have a Camry? Yeah, I bought it from you guys last year and after the show last week I went and pushed in my, you know, check my VIN number and it said it was under the recall. Right. Camry's, it's not active.

right now on Camrys. Other models are active, but Camrys will be coming on active shortly. And what will happen? What is active being? What is on active? What that means is that the parts for the Camrys

are not available right now. We can't do the campaign on the Camrys right now. They will give us a release date soon. They'll tell us, all of a sudden they'll come up and they'll say, okay, it's now active, and everybody with Camrys, call them up, set up appointments. We'll bring your car in, and it'll take a couple hours, maybe three to four hours total time.

Worst case scenario, what can happen to Dennis' new Camry that he paid so much money for because it's got a faulty fuel pump, and we can't replace it because we don't have one, and Toyota isn't able to supply as one? What is the worst thing that could happen? The worst case scenario is the car would stall out while you're driving. You would have to get a towed to the dealership. Oh, great. And we do have a limited number available for that situation so that we would be able to get you back on the road.

But for replacing them, for ones that have not yet failed, we simply, we have to wait until they allow us to say, okay, yes, it's active. And then we can bring you in. We'll replace the fuel pump and get you back out on the road. it's definitely one-day type turnaround thing, three to four hours at the most. Dennis, contact me after the show, and I'll see if I can't help you on that. This reminds me a little bit about the old sudden acceleration thing a long time ago, where it was a psychological issue, and I would certainly, if I just bought a new camera, and I thought that the car could stop when I'm on 995 doing 8.5-9.

I was just going to say, is there any warning or if I just driving along? Does it all of a sudden just stop? That's a scary scenario. I'm going to see if we can't get you a fuel pump, and if you'll, do you have my cell phone number? No, but if... I'll tell you what, you can do this. Just text it to our text number. You got a pencil?

Okay. 772-497. 497-6530. All right. And just text your name and number to that. I'll call you back and I'll get you a fuel pump. Okay, well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Dennis. Okay. Bye now. Thanks, Dennis. Give us a call, toll-free at 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. And don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com.

We'd love to hear from you. Now back to the recovering car dealer. I've got a YouTube over here, Rick. I've got a couple, actually. First one, Guy Larrabee's asking, with the tech being put in all the new cars, prices keep rising. It wasn't that long ago that a Camry was $20,000.

Working people are slowly being priced out of the new car market. Your opinion? I think if you look at cars today and measure them with cars of yesterday, and I've been way back in the yesterday year, I started in 1968, and we thought that $6,000, $7,000 was a lot of money for a car, and today the average car is around $40,000 or $50,000, if you look at disposable income and actual the real value of the car versus what you bought 50 years ago, actually, I believe that new cars are a smaller percentage of your income, average income, in real dollars than they was 25, 40, 50 years ago. But with that said, a late model used car is a far better value than a new car. So you're going to have your cake and eat it too there. I think you're still getting a value with a new car, but you just get a better value with a used one. You take a certified two or three-year-old car, a Honda or Chevrolet or whatever it may be,

and it's got maybe a little factory warranty left on it. If not, you have a certified factory warranty on the car, and all that sloppy depreciation that happens as soon as you get in the car and drive it off the showroom floor disappears. It doesn't depreciate like a new car. It's a certified use, and it's just as good as a new car. So you can save yourself $2,000 or $3,000 up front, and that's what I do. And Mark Ryan's asking, during Toyota's recent earnings call, Akio Toyota stated the following.

Tesla has not created a real business in the real world yet. Any thoughts on this? Well, let me just talk about Toyota's profit. I was talking to Rick and the guys in the studio here and Nancy about that when we drew. drove in. Hang on your house, folks. Toyota forecast a profit in 2020 of $4 billion. Now that's net profit on the bottom line, $4 billion with a B. That ain't too shabby, right? Well, you're going to have to sit down for this. When COVID hit, and COVID which enveloped the world, and Toyota is the largest auto manufacturer in the world, they had to revise

their forecast because of the pandemic. Now guess what they revised that $4 billion forecast to? They revised it to $12.6 billion, almost $13 billion, more than three times as much with the COVID crisis. Now, I, you know, I'm happy for Toyota. and I'm even happier for me because I'm a Toyota dealer. But you see the irony here, don't you? People are buying cars like they're going out of style, personal safety. And no one foresaw that. And so the car dealers and the car manufacturers are making a ton of money.

They all are. Even General Motors, record profits. So I don't know what the moral to the story is. other than you have to be careful out there when you're buying a car, the prices are higher, the transaction prices are higher, and it's easier to sell because the demand is higher. And that's what this show does, is tell you how to be very careful when you buy a car because the profits are being made on every car you buy today is higher than it's ever been before.

Absolutely. We're going to go to Howard, who's holding, and thank you for your patience, Howard. Howard is a regular caller, and I believe he is officially in Florida. He's down. Yes, I arrived last week, about 10 days ago, and had a nice trip. I took the Amtrak, put the, it's not a commercial for Amtrak, but I drove down from New York, went through New Jersey and Delaware and got the Lawton, Virginia, put my car on the, Amtrak, and then got off at Central Florida, and Sanford, Florida, and I drove to Jupiter,

so I've been here 10 days, and I've been to your dealership, and I had, let me tell you about what I did. I was going to get data for my cell phone so that I could use it for navigation. So when I went to the store, they were charging me too much for unlimited data. So I went into your dealership, and I spoke to Josh, and he updated my navigation system so that now it's up to date where if I'm driving and they change things like one-way street becomes a two-way street or a street name changed, this will be updated so that I will be able to drive. drive safely, which I'm doing right now, so I saved a lot of money by not getting the data and having my navigation updated in your dealership, so I'm very happy with Josh, and I just wanted people to know that you could do that. I don't have Apple Play. I have a 2017 Toyota Camry. No Apple Play. So I was using my cell phone as my navigation, because it was

better than the old navigation that wasn't updated. So I would suggest that if you have a car with navigation system that's three years old or four years old and you don't want to pay for data get it updated.

What do you say, Earl? Totally agree. I love I use my iPhone. I have a navigation on my Lexus, but I use my iPhone instead. It's Apple Play so I can have That's a car play.

Carplay, yeah. And I love it. I mean, I love my navigation because I live down here all my life. I was born in Fort Lauderdale. I grew up in West Palm Beach, and you would think I would know my way around. But no matter where I'm going now, if I'm going to someplace I haven't been before, even places I had been before, I checked with my Google maps and say which is the best way to go there. Google can tell me if there's a lot of traffic on US1 or less traffic on I-95,

and two different days, you might take two different routes based on the traffic. So if you haven't used your navigation system or your Google Maps or whatever, I don't go anywhere. I mean, I save five minutes easily any time I go somewhere just by checking with Google Maps. Okay, where are we? That's great. Yeah. Yeah.

One other thing, a question for Rick. On Google, I was told that I could clean my windshield wipers with WD-40. What do you say to that? No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Are you sure Google said that? Yeah, absolutely, yeah. Wow.

Well, I thought Google was the greatest. I'm sorry, you two. It was on YouTube. Oh, you too. Yeah. Bad idea. Very, very bad idea. You know, I'm worried about rubber and WD40 that doesn't mix, you know?

No. Oh, it's not that. It's just that WD40 is a fish oil product, and once it's on your windshield, the rainwater would mix with it, and you would wind up with smears that you wouldn't be able to see through. And let's just say, I don't think I have enough elbow grease to clean that off. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you.

Okay, I'm sorry. I just got a phone call. Okay, thanks for taking my call, and I appreciate all your information, and you have a good day. Oh, thank you. It's great hearing from you. Welcome to Florida. I wonder, is Howard on the vigilante list? He is not on the vigilante list. I think he would make a great vigilance.

And I think that he is, you know, he would consider himself an expert at an audience. expert I think that he'd be he would be great so Howard if you're still listening please go to earls vigilantes.com and you can help people in your community whether it's here in Jupiter or it's in New York you'd be a great asset to that list we have a lot of callers that are qualified and I know it's you're donating some of your time but there's so many people out there that need your help you can either give them advice directly as an Earl's vigilante.

And this is going to grow, by the way. We're trying to get this off the ground. We're going to have a logo. Stu is designed a logo for Earl's vigilantes. And we're talking about hats, shirts, identification. And you can either directly help some of the people in your community. You'll be identified on Earl on Cars.

We'll have your picture if you so desire, and your qualifications. And people all over the country can go to the Earl Vigilante list at Earleoncars.com, find out to, let's say, Howard volunteers, then we would have Howard in Palm Beach County, and we have Brian in California when Brian gets on the list. So people all over the country, if they have a question about a car, they'll go to the vigilante representative, Earl's Vigilante. They can hopefully help them directly. If not, they can contact us directly. and we will spread the information all over the globe. Exactly.

I know we all have something in common, and that's dealer dishonesty. And what a great show we have. I have to say that myself, because we're involving our listeners, we're involving our texters, all of us. You're part of the show, and we're all working together. And I truly mean that you're a great asset. So sign up. Burles Vigilannys.com.

Some thought went into the name Vigilani. I've had at least one critical comment about the term vigilante. Certainly Vigilante can have a negative connotation, and vigilanteism today can be really a bad thing. But the original term vigilante came back in the days of lawlessness in the West and other places, I guess. And so it was a necessity in early America to influence. the law because there wasn't the law wasn't being enforced by those that were supposed to be enforcing him and this is what we have now it's kind of an interesting situation we chose the term vigilante because if you listen to

the show if you're regular listener you will see many times where I say this car dealer broke the law he advertised the price of a car for example and he did not include his hidden fees that is a violation of for law and we're talking about this worldwide, literally, right now, and yet these car dealers that we have identified by name are still doing it. The reason they're still doing it is because law enforcement is not enforcing a law, hence vigilante. And so therefore, for those that are critical of it, we're doing it because the law enforcement

agencies are not doing their job. Ashley Moody. There you go. The Attorney General. She's a chief law enforcement officer in Florida. And she's allowing all of these violations to take place without doing anything. We need vigilantes. Yeah.

Got to have vigilantes. It's got a little click to it. And we're looking forward, as Earl said, to the hats, to the shirts, all the logos. And it's really, it's very, very exciting, very exciting. And we certainly do know a lot of auto experts. So go to Earlsvigilantes.com. Let's do some more tech. Okay. We have two, a two-parter from Anne-Marie. They're both really good. Okay, good morning. Who in the world comes up with the names of Toyota's paint colors? Some of the colors on Toyota vehicles include Blizzard Pearl, Opulent Amber, Lunar Rock, Blue Flame, Blueprint, Celestial Black, Ruby Flair Pearl, and Sea Glass Pearl. Interior colors include Boulder, Birch, Java, Nutmeg, Toasted Caramel, and Moonstone.

Did we not have this conversation yesterday? Do you recall that? Yeah, we did, yeah. I said, who comes up with these names? There's this person sitting in a little room, you know? Right. Well, your car gets stolen, and you call the police, and they say, ma'am, what color is your car?

She says, Moonstone. He says, what? You missed one of the best ones that they ever had. Ula La Moulon. That's right, yeah. Remember that one? Be on the alert for the Ula-Lah. Now, this is, I have an interesting story to tell you with this.

Our office, when we stocked in cars, try to simplify it. So we would put it on, just stock it in and call it basically, you have three color interiors. You have beige, black, and gray, you know, and beige might be oatmeal or creme brule or something like that. But it needs to match up because people search for these colors because Toyota puts it out there. So we had to fix everything and actually start putting in the silly names for the colors on our website. when people are searching for cars. But you're right, there's three different colors. And if you're calling the police, don't tell them you're looking for a ruby red flair, pearl.

You're looking for a red car, or don't say Jasper Pearl, it's green. So, very funny. Now, the second part is very similar. Who in the world comes up with the names of vehicles? That too. That too. General Motors had the Chevy Nova. In English, a Nova is an exploding star.

In Spanish, Nova means no-go. That's true. Novi. Humble Oil Company had the ENCO brand. Enco is the Japanese word for stalled car. Toyota's now brought back to Venza. It said that Venza comes from Venture and Monza. The Detroit News reports that Venza sounds a lot like the Japanese word Benza.

Benza is the Japanese word for toilet seat. Reportedly, Toilers Japanese executives are amused by the idea of people driving around on the toilet seat. I'm sure they're laughing all the way to the bank. The vehicle is great, but it needs a new name. Please tell Toyota to change the name. Thank you. And, Amory, I agree with you. I don't like the name.

Yeah, I have a lot of opinions that Toyota that totally ignores, and it's unfortunate that a lot of manufacturers or, you know, don't listen to the folks in the trenches. You know, we deal with customers face-to-face. We talk to them every day. A guy in the factory and wherever he may be, whatever car manufacturer they really talk to customers

I guess they sit around a room and smoke a little weed and come up with an idea just get creative you write that down Murray I like that yeah Henry what a great text that is well let me get to this part of this whole

all these names oh la la and all that what about reselling your car it depreciates like crazy because black, silver, white, that's the popular car. So do you agree or disagrees, too, that the car really depreciates whenever you're looking at lime green or... Yeah, there's just like, usually if you're going to want a lime green car,

you're probably in a very small class of people who would want a lime green car. And so it's just a smaller market to resell the car. So, yeah, you'll get less money for some crazy, exotic color than you would for something a little bit more standard. But the real reason Toyota names, you know, I'll use Earl's, well, my favorite term of Earl's puffery, it just makes it a

little bit more exciting and emotional. Here's a beige car. I mean, that just sounds boring. Who wants a beige car? You know, a creme brulee car, now that's exciting and tasty. Cremblele? Oh, yeah, you're thinking, huh? Well, that's a bunch of shenanigans is what it is, as Jonathan would say.

Okay, let's move along here. But before we move along, ladies, I'm still waiting to hear from you, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Share your experience with us, and you'd be helping so many other women that are listening. Help me build this platform. I can't do it alone. 877-960-99-60, and for those who would like to text us, 772-497-9-7-9-0. All right, I've got another text here from Andy.

It says it looks like there's some bad weather coming our way in the next few days. Any advice on how to prepare for this car-wise? That's a right question. My best advice is wash your car, get a good coat of wax on it. So if you do have to keep it outside, you'll at least be protected from some of the dirt and mud. And if you do have a garage, keep your cars in the garage because you're going to see a lot of winded rain. and a lot of debris going to get blown around. The only real danger is from flooding, I think.

Maybe he was thinking about flooding. Now, if you do have to drive, which with the kind of weather we're going to see, especially tomorrow and Monday, I advise staying home if you can. But if you do have to drive, if you see standing water, any puddles, stay away from them. Do not drive through the puddles unless you absolutely have to. And if you really, really have to, go nice and slow, super slow, idle speed, just creep through it very gentle. And if you see another vehicle coming towards you, like one of those guys in the big trucks and are throwing up a huge wave,

I'd almost recommend shutting your engine off and wait until they get past, then restart, let the water settle down. Because those trucks throwing that huge wave, that water can wash up onto your engine, get sucked into your. engine and boom your engine's locked up. I can always tell when we've had some really bad weather because my body shop manager and my service manager is smiling. And you can have some really, really heavy rain. You can have engine jobs and there's nothing more profitable to a car dealer than putting a new engine in a car. And the body repair is pretty good too when you're driving recklessly in stormy weather and we get a lot of collisions. So, Yeah, it's just be careful and use common sense and you're nutty if you drive fast through a puddle or because it might be deeper than you thought.

And not only that, do you get water in your car, folks, the inside of it? Boy, I'll tell you what. Good luck because that mold, it just grows quickly. Now, if you do happen to get a little bit of water inside the car, my first advice is immediately get damp rid, several containers of it, put it in your car. and change it out like every day and keep running with damp bread there's no more damper there is no more really nancy bought it all she bought it up all the supplies huh you know she's been buying damper she's storing it for many years hey you're going to start selling it next year right after the store i'm stockpiling dampret oh rick what a great product well your other thing is you can always buy like 2 000 of rice and put your car in the rice to fill the car to the brim of rice excuse me folks

we have to go to Becky who's been holding and she's calling us from West Palm Beach good morning Becky good morning Nancy how are you I'm well thank you thanks for the call long time listener love your show just needed some advice about leasing I have a family member his lease is coming up he's leased for the last three years of 2017 a Honda CRV, and they're thinking about trying to buy it instead of getting a new lease. First of all, he's got very bad credit. He makes like $150 a week. I'm just wondering what he's going to face going in there because nobody knows anything

about leasing, and I'm afraid they're going to, you know, put them over a barrel in his car. That's a good way to put it. So, Becky, did he, on the lease he's in right now, did the lease he's in right now, did the the credit kind of go south during the lease? I mean, or is he on the lease contract? He and his mother are. No, his mother's retired on a fixed income also doesn't have good credit. No, his credit before, like his credit cards, he has like a ton of credit card debt that he hasn't paid off. So is that something they'd check, I imagine. Well, there's a couple of things to be concerned about. One is just even buying the lease at the end of the lease anyway,

because it's probably going to be pricier than a comparable Honda, you know, the same year make a model. So he'd be paying probably too much for the car. But the other issue is, like, with that income and also the bad credit, he's probably going to need a co-signer again.

Stu, is he leasing this car now? But he's on with his mom's his mom, co-sign on the lease. He would have an option to buy his current lease, which might possibly be a good deal. But it could be, but most likely not. Honda is really known for their lease incentives, so they have, they enhance

the residuals, and I know I'm getting complicated. You're asking for clarity on a lease, but the result is that the lease end value on Hondas tend to be higher than they should. It's still worth exploring. Well, used car prices are higher now than Honda thought they would be when they leased a car in 2017. When they projected values, they set the residual based on what they thought in 2017, they didn't foresee the COVID prices. And his car prices are higher today. We're seeing them settle down quite a bit. It's worth exploring to find out.

But I think the main issue is, you know, how are you going to buy the car if it's going to be, you know, going to get a loan or if you're going to lease it, or we can't lease it again. But it is tough with, you know, with the income that you told us that he, that he has and the bad credit score. So most likely he's going to need his mom or somebody else to, go on the uh alone with him and Becky is she is she the co-signer I believe so pardon me both of them are on it but she has dementia and she says I'm going to go up there and talk to that life it's not a good idea oh oh they they're both on the lease is there anybody else in the family that can um co-sign with them if he buys that car or a new

car I can't think of anybody I mean it's worth a shot um there are lenders that you know will extend credit it just sounds from based on those the thing that jumped out as a red flag for me was the income if he's making a hundred 150 bucks a week yeah that's that's you know his total monthly income is almost about a car payment so yeah it's on the high side but it a bank would definitely would probably want to he'd need to be able to show he makes more money than that so it's that's kind of a tough deal the interest will probably be out of reach you know. Yeah, another lease, yeah, by himself, certainly. He wouldn't be able to lease a new car.

Well, they already told him they wouldn't lease him a new car. He had three options, but, you know, we've got this letter thing here, your options. Earl, what do you think? I mean, what kind of? It might be a long shot, but a temporary solution might be to ask a lease extension, all you're doing is postponing a difficult problem, but he could possibly get a 30 or 60-day extension, and they might not do it. But, it's worth asking for normally they would. I'm not sure what they would do given the situation and how many lease payments he may have missed to, you know, create the problem with his credit. So if he's made his payments on time, it's worth asking for an extension.

Yeah, so we'd have the same problem in 30, 60 days, huh? Yeah, but it buys a little bit more time to do some research, and he might wind up, you know, looking at a used car an expensive car that you can pay for cash until he can reestablish some better credit. That's what I said, there's even an extra car in the family. I said, why don't you just let him buy that car and turn in the lease? Well, they don't want to sell in that car. And I said, that is crazy because that's the way out, in my opinion.

Or buying an older used car, but at least we know this car that's in the family. We know it's reliable. He only drives like a mile to work. That's all this car is certain. Yeah. There's so many special programs out there, too, for you to look in. too. So, Becky, I wish you the best of luck. And please give us a call again and let us know. Hold.

Hold. Thanks so much. Love you guys. Oh, thank you, Becky. Stay safe. Ladies, again, I'm going to remind you, I'm waiting for you to call $50 for the first two new lady callers. The first two new lady callers, you'll win yourself $50. And I'm going to take a moment to mention Earl's latest blog and that is to nominate

your favorite car dealership the best of the best in 2021 and that's a great read and you can vote and we'd love to hear from you. How about the website they can go to the road? Okay you can go to nominate

bestcardealer.com nominate best cardealer.com That's the best in Palm Beach County So if you're in Palm Beach County, you know, the best, what we try to do now with our mystery shopping reports is give you a recommended list of dealers and a list that you don't want to buy from. And word of mouth and your personal experience, you should share that with your neighbors in Palm Beach County. So if you had a really good experience and you trust a car dealership, go ahead and nominate them. And if you're in Palm Beach County, he'll be able to brag in 2021.

if he wins the contest votes are actually in December but be sure you get him nominated so they can vote on him in December and you'll have somebody that you feel safe with and you nominate they get elected and he can say I'm the best car dealer in Palm Beach County. Yeah it's great

for everyone and Palm Beach Post introduced this award and you have until November the 11th to vote so take advantage to that To make sure it's nominee, because if you nominate, you've got to go back and vote again in December. Oh, okay. Thanks, Stu. And nominate best car dealer.com.

Now back to Stu. All right, I got another text here. Hello, Earl, Lewis here. I recently had a nail in the sidewall of one of my tires. I took it to Firestone, who said it couldn't be patched or plugged, and they wanted to sell me a new tire. I agreed, but I'm uncomfortable with one new tire and three old ones. Should I be concerned? Rick, you answer, though.

if the tread on the other three tires are within two to three 30 seconds of being the same as the new one I wouldn't have a problem with it at all yeah and I'd also say that if you're at firestone and they weren't trying to sell you all four tires they probably felt pretty good because that they're in the business and selling tires absolutely so if they didn't say you needed four I think you're probably pretty safe um this looks like one from for Rick it's from Kelly in Del Rey my steering wheel started shaking in the last few days I was hoping Rick could tell me what's happening. My car is a 2015 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk four-wheel drive. If it's shaking when you're just driving along at highway speeds, you've probably got a tire out of balance,

or if it's shaking it even at lower speeds, you might have a loose suspension component. If it's shaking only when you step on the brakes, it's most likely your front rotors are warped, and you need to have the brakes replaced. Okay, great. repeat that because whoever's listening you'll make a note of that one of the biggest problems you take a car into a car dealer or a garage and they misdiagnose it so you just gave something that you could diagnose yourself so repeat that for other people if it shakes when you're say you're driving at highway speeds and you step on the brakes and it only shakes when you step on the brakes it's usually the front rotors are warped a little bit front rotors front that's very very It's very common. Right.

If it shakes when you're driving at highway speeds but only, say around 50 to 70 miles an hour, it's most likely a tire out of balance. Okay. That's the cheapest one, right? Yeah, because it's having your tires balance is very inexpensive. If it shakes even at lower speeds or if you feel it mostly at the lower speeds, it's probably either a suspension component or you might have a tire with a broken belt. I've seen that quite often also, but it could be a suspension component loose, something in the steering or in the front suspension that's starting to loosen up.

Most likely it's going to be a tire belt or a tire balance issue or even the front brake runners. So that's the most common things, really. And there's a huge swing and cost there between the least expensive and the most expensive. So I just, I can't over-emphasize how important it is to get a good diagnosis because the same. Septim is very similar. If you go and say, look, my steering wheel is shaken, you can get three or four different realities and three or four different costs. And you want to be sure you're not overpaying. And it could be something as simple as a tire needing to be balanced. And you don't want to have to end up paying for brake rotors because some guy misdiagnosed it either accidentally or on purpose. Well, if the mechanic says, hey, if it's vibrating when you're doing 60 miles an hour, he should charge your own. He should be checking your tire balance. Lower speeds, if it's a broken belt, something wrong with the tire. He should be able to take you out and show you

the damage on that tire, show you where that belt is breaking or show you a suspension component that is loose, worn, or broken. So when you've got a high estimate of a cost of repair, always get another opinion like anything else. Go to a different dealership, go to a different garage. If it's a lot of money, you know, if it's not a lot of money, then maybe your time is worth more than the effort. But if you're going to have to pay several hundred dollars, get another opinion, just like a doctor.

You get another opinion. All right, this is from Tom S in Winter Springs, Florida. Love the program. Best treatment for a windshield is to clean it with denatured alcohol and then apply a thin coat of new finish. Water beads up and the wipers are quiet. Bugs also don't stick. Thanks for being a pioneer and no dealer fees.

And that's from Tom in Winter Springs. Well, thank you, Philan. New Finish actually Googled it to see what that was, and it's a car polish. You use it on your paint too. And then I was reading a little bit more. It got sucked into the little rabbit hole. They said you put new finish on all your glass services.

There's a guy saying he puts it on his flat screen TV because his kids go up and they like to touch the screen because it makes the smudge his white. off easy yeah he does it in his shower the glass in a shower so it doesn't fog up oh I'm like that's pretty cool so I'm picking up a bottle of new finish to do my shower is that and you or any of them and you I'd have to try that on my glasses how I'll be ordering that on Amazon on the way home exactly I have Amazon up right now okay let's see let's jump over to anonymous feedback

because we got a bunch of those that came in it's a good one this week You go on for a long time on this one. Earl, didn't you have several dealerships back in the day? I'm pretty sure you had some independent used car lots. What made you to decide to focus on just Toyota? Well, the product quality. I mean, I hate talking about commercials. I started out with my father and the Pontiac business.

I started selling used cars with my father in 1968. And, you know, I thought it was a good product. and back then it was like a pretty good product. At one point, Pontiac was number three selling a car in the United States. And it was also a kind of reputation for racing and they had fast cars. I thought everything was really cool.

And as time went by, I acquired more dealerships. I did have a used car, independent used car lot, two of them at one time, called a liquidation lot. One called Stewart Select Cars. I had a car rental company, consumer car rentals, I had a Fiat, a launch of a franchise, Pujo, Checker, Mazda, and I had all these car dealerships. And then I got the toilet dealership in 1975, and I suddenly realized what a high-quality vehicle was. And as time went by, it was also not only the most quality, it was also the most profitable.

and I realized I realized I couldn't run six or seven businesses simultaneously very well so I sold the ones that I was making less money on and kept the one that I made the most money on also happened to be the best car you were running from one dealership to another dealership I was yeah your travel time on the typical workday was probably 50% of your actual work time and back then you squeezed in stopping to see your mother that's right All right. This is another anonymous feedback. This is a follow-up. Last week we had an anonymous feedback that described a situation where a nun was having a problem at Toyd of Hollywood, and it was very upset, and they described a pretty ugly scene. And we did say that, you know,

obviously we can't validate or we can't verify, you know, the message that we come in. We do read them. And so just as a, just to being reasonable, we said it might be true and might not be, but the person followed up with another anonymous message. It says, Dear Earl, I message you about the Nun and the Toad of Hollywood dealership. I looked at their employee list on their Toyota Hollywood website to try to find the sales manager who left the Nun crying in the showroom. That sales manager wasn't listed, and I can only assume he no longer works there. The sales manager I worked with was Herbie, and he was decent. I tell you, because I don't want you to think this is just a Toyota of Hollywood bashing.

I, as a single female car buyer, found the Nunn's situation traumatic. even as a bystander, and I'm no shrinking violent. I haven't forgot about it, and I think about it every time I drive down 441. I didn't know about your radio show then. I would have called in and put the nun incident on blast, had I known about your show. I didn't know how to help this none who needed advocacy, and now I know better. Well, yeah, we have to be careful with Anonymous, and usually the information seems to be very accurate.

We get very few assassination attempts of false information. But by the same token, Hollywood Toyota is a big toilet dealership, the second largest in the United States. I don't know if you knew that. And we know the owner and we know him to be an honest, honorable person. That doesn't just say terrible things happen. Terrible things happen in our dealership. I mean, I can, you know, I've had some very embarrassing things. If you have a, I would guess Hollywood Toyota probably has 200 employees, when you say

Stewart, 250 employees. I'd go way higher than that. 300 employees. At least. Huge. It's a huge dealership. And you can't have that many people under one roof if you don't have one rotten apple. And clearly if that was true, and I think maybe it was, you got rotten apples, it's a terrible

thing. And I can see where it traumatized the anonymous feedback. person and I can see where you know I just I just can't put certification of accuracy on anonymous I have to leave open the possibility just a little asterisk yeah that was a great you know anonymous feedback and I got to take advantage of this moment ladies it's so important for you to give me a call if you want to say hello that's fine but more importantly your car buying experience your servicing you'd be helping so many other women who are listening to this show. And $50, I mean, it's a win-win situation.

$50 for the first two new lady callers. Share your experience with us. 877-960-9960. Brooks, how are you, too? Got a couple here. Paul Swilly is asking, what credit score model do financiers use to determine your credit worthiness? You know, 500 is terrible, 800 is fantastic, average is around 700.

You can get financed in the 500s. You pay more money because the interest rates higher. Sometimes there's a fee to have to accept someone with a very low credit score. Special finance lenders do that. But yeah, that's the average person is around $7.00. the lease a car, you've got to have about a 720. Is that about a right, too? They'll go down into the upper sixes, but you'll get a little higher money factor, so you'll pay a little bit more. Do they use, like, TransUnion or Equifax? What company would...

Well, they use different credit. There's a beacon, and there's a... FICO, FICO. Yeah, that's the Fair Isaac Company. But most car dealers will use pick one. It could be Experian or TransUnion or Equifax. And most cases they'll just run the one credit report with that bureau. But they're using either the Beacon or the FICO score. Right, Equifax, yeah, they each, well, Equifax branded their scores called the Beacon, and I think the other ones call it something else. And the scale is pretty similar.

So if you, a 500 on one scale is pretty much the same as a 500 on the other scale. Yeah, but what you'll see sometimes is, let's say you wanted to lease a car and you went in there and they ran your Equifax Beacon score and it came in at 690. Well, you can lease the car, but you might have a higher rate to see if you can go get a higher tier in other words a more preferable rate they might run a TransUnion Credit Bureau and you might come up as 710 or 701 just past the threshold and get a better rate so that's why they'll do that now you got to do beware when you ask a car dealer to run your credit

and you agree to ask them just to just to do it once just one bureau at first and only go to the next one if it's absolutely necessary now you can run your credit when you're shopping for a car and it doesn't impact your credit score until it becomes excessive. So if you visited four different dealerships, not very many people do that, and at four dealerships, they ran three bureaus at each one that's 12 bureaus, it's probably going to have an impact temporarily on your credit score. And Donovan Lewis says, do not put new finish on your TV screen, please. There are coatings on new TVs that will be removed the moment you put that on the screen. Thank you, Donovan. I was headed for

my TV screen. Do you get a lot of smudges on your TV screen? No, yeah, there's always smudges. Oh, on your computer screen. Yeah, he keeps touching the screens. I don't know why. I have a recommendation for that, by the way, for a screen. There's a product called Screen Mom, and I'm not making this up, and it's just a harmless

liquid spray, and I use it on my computer screen and phone screen, and it's great. Isn't it the same product that Josh uses? Yes. He told me about it about a year ago. Yeah, Screen Mom. Screen on. He goes on to say that TVs like phones have oleophobic coatings on them, and any polish will take that right off, and you'll have a blotchy screen.

Oh. Hey, Rick, I have a question for you. What about bounce on your windshield or your... I would avoid that. Would you? I would actually go, myself, I would go with the dedicated product like Rain X. Yeah. For your windshield.

Really, that's the... If you put it on properly, follow it. the directions, you really use that elmogrease, put it on properly, and polish it in good. Rainex is one of the best products for your windshield. How about your eyeglasses? Could you put them on your eyeglasses? I've never tried that. I might consider it, because I'll tell you, with wearing a mask, and I, you know, we wear a mask all day at work, and I'm getting hot and sweaty in the shop and running like crazy. They fog up like insanity. I took my glass off a half an hour ago because they were fogging up.

If I had Rainex on them, maybe it wouldn't happen. There's no way I can get the smudges off my glasses. I have the solution, guys. And I wouldn't put Ray and X on your glasses because it's designed to go on glass. Your glasses are made of polycarbon, and it's a plastic. There is a product at dive shop that you can get that they put in their mask. And it looks like a chapstick. You rub it in and wipe it out, and that would work on your glasses as well.

Okay. Wow, we're acquiring a list. That's right. Another list. Or else you're on skin diving. I did that without Google. Okay, here's a text that came in. Hi, Earl, and Gang. First time listening to your show was last week.

I caught you in time for your secret shopping report. Have you ever been sued for doing this? Remarkably, no. And I knock on wood every time I say that. It's proof of the pudding. As I said earlier in the show, the truth is a perfect defense. You ask any lawyer, you can't sue somebody for anything.

You can't win a lawsuit on libel or slander if the defendant was telling the truth. And if you tell the truth, you can say anything about anybody as long as it's the truth. So we have never been sued, which is verification that we call them the way we see them. And we really haven't been wrong.

All right. Let's jump back over to anonymous feedback. Hi, Earl, and this is a good one. Hi, Earl, I'm a regular listener to the show. Thank you for all that you do for the consumer. I recall that Agent Thunder was recognized when he attempted to do a mystery shop at Infinity of Stewart and was kicked out of the dealership. Is there any chance that you can send Agent Lightning in for a future shop?

Well, I have a surprise for you. That anonymous feedback, which we got a couple of days ago, triggered our next mystery shop. So Earl will be reading the report for Infinity of Stewart in about 15 minutes. Exactly. So ask and you shall receive. See, this stuff really works. How are you doing over there, Rick? I got a bunch.

I don't want to hog all the airtime. Let me give you about that phone number one more time. A77960-9960, where you can text us at 772-497-6530, and your anonymous feedback.com. It goes a long way. So jot that down. Rick? Well, Paul actually asked a follow-up on the question about the FICO scores. He says, I have credit karma, which I've heard the credit karma.

is not always reliable, is my FICO score, he says, eight or nine, what is it? I think what I've heard of the FICO scores normally anywhere from what, like 400 up to 850, is that the maximum you can have? 890, I think 880, or? Yeah. Well, the car, when the Cardioleship runs your credit, they have it, it's weighted towards car.

The score is actually, will not be exactly the same. but it will be in the ballpark. So if you use credit karma, which I use, it's great because it gives you an alert any time your credit report moves and you congratulate you. Your score just went up and I scold you if your score went down.

And it puts you in the ballpark. So like I've run my credit at the dealership just out of curiosity. And it's usually within a percentage point of the actual score. It may be different's been maybe eight or ten points. So you can still get a good idea. using credit karma. Now, you can't go in there. Now, the difference is if, let's say,

your credit karma says your, your beacon score is 720, and they run your score at the dealership, and it comes in as a 712, they're not going to go on your credit karma score. They're going to go what the Bureau tells them. So. Right. But if you're in the middle of these tiers or these increments, you're fine. Okay, folks. We got another call here, and it's from Jupiter. And good morning, Tim. Good morning, folks. Hey, my wife has a 2019 Jeep Cherokee latitude. It's got around 30,000 miles, so it's still under warranty.

And starting at about probably 15 or 20,000 miles, the electronic stability control light started coming on now and then, really, for no discernible reason, we can figure out. It's when she was driving at different speeds, making different kinds of turns with the vehicle. We took it to a dealer here in the area. They couldn't duplicate the problem, but they found a, and I'm looking at the service sheet right now, they found a service bulletin for electric power steering, which is, in my mind as a layman, not the same thing, but it may be, and they performed what they called a flash update. Since then, we drove to Tallahassee, and the problem recurred numerous times.

The SUV doesn't lose power, but it loses the ability to accelerate easily, which obviously is dangerous, so we end up pulling over on turnpikes and freeways, turning the car off, waiting for a few seconds, turning it on again, and then the problem abates for a while. but it's happened, you know, it just probably happened eight or ten times on the way up and back last week from Tallahassee. So I guess my question is, should we, you know, what should we do? Should we take this back to the same dealer?

Is there an art and a science involved in running a diagnostic, or is it strictly, you know, science and what comes out on the readout? Should we try a different dealer, or should we maybe take it to a, garage in the area that we, you know, to deal with and know, I know a couple of, you know, very well-respected garages in Jupiter, but I, but, you know, that may invalidate the warranty. What do you guys think we should do? Well, step number one, and this is to, not only to help bolster your case, but also to assist the mechanics a little bit, if you can get it to occur again, get a video of it, record a video

on your iPhone showing the instrument cluster and when that light's coming on and then you know step on the gas and show them a video that shows what it's doing that may actually give the mechanic a little extra clue as to what he's looking for um the next step is I would go back either to that dealership or to another dealer tell them what's been happening and make sure you give them all the information you can as to what the road surfaces were any odd situations at that time so that they've got a good chance to really dig in and find this out. If it's been occurring more than once and you've already been to the dealer once, then they should be really stepping up and getting the engineers from Jeep involved to try to figure out

what's going on. Can't let me jump in there too. Your car is still under new car warranty. it's subject to the lemon law. The lemon law requires that you, before it's declared a lemon, that you give the dealership two opportunities, three opportunities to fix it. So let me ask you this question. Did you or your wife talk to the service manager, not the person of the service drive,

but the man in charge of the entire service department? Yes, yes, we did. Good. I know that for a fact. Okay, then I would request that they contact the Jeep Specialist, Chrysler Jeep, Dodge, all the manufacturers have specialists. They operate maybe out of another location, Jacksonville or maybe Atlanta, and when you have a problem that your local technicians or the dealership cannot diagnose under warranty,

the specialist is supposed to be consulted. Now, you can do it online or do a Zoom meeting, or they can physically come into the dealership and analyze it. But you use the word safety. You said the car's acceleration is being affected. Therefore, it's a safety issue. So you can mention, if I were going to give you a word track, I'd say, I don't want to have to file for the Lemon Law,

and I don't want to have to contact the manufacturer I would like you to get a specialist to get this fixed and get their attention. But you've got a situation with Chrysler Jeep Dodge. You have one owner of most of them in this area that recently changed hands, by the way. O'Rego no longer owns the Chrysler Jeep Dodge dealerships in this market.

He sold to another large automotive group. Okay. But it shouldn't have to go to that level anyway. The hierarchy is still the same, and you just have to give their attention because they should fix that. They should not have...

And of course, giving them additional information, as Rick said, and they should have... You just have to put... They'll probably put their top guy on it. Dealership of that size maybe have 25 or 30 technicians. The guy that worked on your car could have been on the job for two years,

years. You want the guy that's been on the job for 20 years and is one of the top technicians. And if you get the right guy on it, they'll get it fixed for you. This is all great information, you guys. I'm going to take all these steps, and this is just absolutely super. I really appreciate it. You're very welcome, Ken. Thank you for the call. Thank you so much. Call us back. Let us know how it went, will you? Yes, definitely. Give us a call back. I'm going to mention the weekly, excuse me, the Palm Beach weekly Florida news and it's a newspaper that you can pick up a magazine I guess you might call it and what a great article how can I learn the dealer's cost of a car and there's so much information

in this article and Earl has received a lot of phone calls in reference to this column how can I learn the dealer's cost on a car whether you're going to buy a car or not right now It's just a great read, and that's the Palm Beach, Florida Weekly. Now back to Sue. Okay. Anonymous feedback. Okay. Okay, so the anonymous feeder got an email from Chase, Chase Bank credit card provider,

with a new auto-buying concierge service. So here's a text that he pasted from the email. It says, welcome the concierge car buying, shop online inventory from Minneapolis, area dealers. With Chase Auto Preferred, you can shop online for a car. You'll love at a discounted price from the comfort of your home, yada, yada, yada. So he wants to know our opinion on the Chase program. I had heard about the Chase program. It's not a lot for me, I'm Chase. Chase, like Chase Bank. Oh, Chase. And it's not available in Florida yet, or at least not in South Florida, but I would be a little bit suspect of it. So they call, they say the concierge car buying,

Well, the concierge comes from the car dealership, and so it sounds like a version of the Costco auto buying program where you go in, there's going to be somebody who is known as the Chase concierge, but it's going to be a salesperson at the dealership. I read their FAQ, the frequently asked questions page, and the discounts, it's a little murky on how they establish the discounts, and how they share them with you. and it is but it does specifically say it doesn't apply to any documentation fees aftermarket products extra equipment so right now I guess it's too soon to tell and if it comes into our area we will explore it more because if it's something that's worth doing then we will probably participate but if not we won't we'll tell you tell you how it goes it's a good time to repeat our conversation with true car not the whole conversation but true car we consider to be the single best source of getting a measurement of what a good price is on that exact car you're

thinking about buying. Not necessarily from the true car dealer, but truecar.com will give you a price that includes the fees that would otherwise be hidden, dear fees, they often call them, and the dealer installed accessories, which are typically added after the fact. You see a car advertised, You get quoted a price, you go in to buy it, slam. They slide in, hidden fees, and dealer install accessories. You can go to TrueCar online, remaining at your home, working off your smartphone, your computer, not have to go through the pain and get an out-the-door price from TrueCar. Now, with armed with that price, you can go to any dealership you want.

And if you say, look, I got this from the True Car dealer. Will you meet it or beat it? They will. so you can buy the car at a fair price isn't necessarily the lowest price you'll ever find but you won't be slam-dunked and you won't pay a ten thousand or five thousand dollar

higher profit to the dealer than some other guy you'll you'll find out it is a good price on true car okay jumping right back over can a car is more anonymous feedback can a car dealer run advertising for their dealerships in another dealer's territory of the same manufacturer

how far same state, out of state nationwide? Yes, they can. It's legal. Going back many years, there was a dealer that I forgot where he was now. He was in the Midwest, Southwest, somewhere. And he was selling Chrysler products at dealer invoice. And people

were flying hundreds of miles, thousands of miles to buy cars from them. At that time, invoice was really invoice, and now it's no longer invoice. But yeah, you can advertise car dealership in any market you want. You can't have a dealership there. You can have cars on display, but you can advertise. Actually, I think you can't even display a car. Yeah. So you can put a billboard right in front of the other dealership if you wanted to. Okay, more anonymous feedback. Bike charging system came on saying charging system maintenance was required, plus

the battery icon was on for 15 minutes or so. Then the whole thing went back to normal. If someone can tell me what's going on, I would appreciate it. Thank you. Ricky. Charging system maintenance. I've never heard that one before. I'd wonder what type of car this is. Yeah, if you're listening, can you just send another anonymous response in

to let us another you're making model of the car and maybe point us in the right direction? I know one of the newest things that we've seen that has caused a bit of customer concern is like on Camry's and Avalon's with the new dash, that has messages that will show up for the customer, if you turn the key to your on position but don't start the engine, it will come up and say charging system problem simply because you're not running the engine. And there's nothing wrong with the cars,

just that you've only turned the key just to the on position without starting the engine. And people actually gotten a little bit of panic over that until we told, no, it's okay. It's just that your engine's not running. I think sometimes the manufacturers need to look at this and say, wait a minute, let's think about the message we're sending and not put people in a panic for no reason. You could send that in as a report.

Yeah, I did. Oh, good. That'll handle it. Yeah. Here's another anonymous feedback. I got my first Rav4 hybrid the other day, not from your dealership. The other morning when we started up and backed out of the driveway, I was terrified to hear what sounded like a screaming banshee sound,

a ghostly screaming banshee sound coming from the front of the car. What is that? That's the song of the angels. It is. What that is, because I know that, because my whole family drives hybrids,

the cars are so quiet when they're in all-electric mode that a pedestrian can't hear you coming. So they make an artificial noise sound to alert people. There's a vehicle moving near them. And it does sound like a disembodied voice. Oh, like a host of angels.

singing quietly. It's actually kind of pleasant. It scared me at first. Now I know what it is. I know it's a good thing. Why don't they have something to say, get out of my way? Well, I've joked around about that for years. There's all sorts of sounds. You've got to have a string quartet. I'm backing up. Get out of my way. You could have Red Fox, you know, make a jokes. They should have a customized sounds. I thought they should have the sound effect from the Jetsons. Yeah. Yeah, or Chitty Chitty Bing Bang. There you go.

Okay. More anonymous feedback. unless we've got any collars going on. I go one quick ones to do here. E.C. Olson says, I took my 2014 Kia Soul to the dealer regarding paint clear coat deterioration and was told it's not covered unless paint protection was purchased

at the time of vehicle sale. Not under warranty, but that's, yeah. Wow. So they know they've got a problem, They offer you a paint protection at the time of sale, not telling you, hey, you will need this in five or six years. The question you want to ask anybody trying to sell you paint protection is ask them to see a copy of a warranty claim that they paid. If you go to a car dealership and they sell that, I promise you, you will never be able to find any evidence of any repair ever paid for by the policy you paid $1,000. dollars for it is purely smoke and mirrors BS and they're taking your money paint

sealant fabric protection covers nothing it's just money for the dealer okay let me mention something that's really important that I mentioned earlier and that's Earl's latest column nominate your favorite car dealership the best of the best for 2021 awards remember the non Beach County the nominations for 2021 will, they will be accepted up until November the 11th. And you can just click on the website at www.w nominate best car dealer.com. Okay, more anonymous feedback. I had complained to you before about Bev Smith, Kia, and Fort Pierce. They were not providing new tires on my tires for life program.

Surprisingly, last week, I went in for service on my Kia Soul, and they said all four tires were worn enough for replacement. I just had to pay taxes and installation. Maybe others had complained before about the prior practice of not replacing tires. Well, it's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I don't remember the first complaint or the first time they, I don't know if it was if they said it had to do with the tires had not worn down to the threshold that Bev Smith requires or they just outright refused. You know, the best thing, and I talked to it earlier caller, you always want to be a to be sure you're talking with the boss in the department.

The problem in service departments at car dealerships is everybody says I'm the service manager and they have a title to the service salespeople. They call them assistant service managers and sometimes they make themselves service managers even when they're not. If you say, I want to see the service manager, the guy will say, well, I'm the service manager and he's not the service manager. So go as high as you can when you're having a problem at a car dealership. Ask for proof that you are talking to.

A service manager runs the entire service department. He has, you know, in a normal-sized dealership, at least 20 or 30 people working for him. In a big dealership, he's got 60 or 70 people working for him. The service manager in the service drive, he's a salesman. He's not a manager. So take it to the top. oftentimes your problem will be resolved. Exactly.

All right. Hi, what items, if any, are worth buying in the F&I office? I know you say don't buy a gap at the dealership. Love the show. It depends on your needs. It depends on your philosophy of insurance. It depends on the car dealership. It's really a bag of worms when you go into a car dealership,

F&I department. It's the most profitable department of the dealership. making more money from doing the product sales and financing interest than they make when they sell you the car. So they're out to make money, and the products they make a lot of money with. I extended a warranty contract, they can make, it'll cost you $2,000, and it probably costs them $500. So you need to shop around. You need to, my advice is, make the purchase of any product that you buy after you bought the car as source of as much homework and research as when you bought the car.

Don't buy the maintenance contracts, the service contracts, the gap insurance, the paint sealing, all the other garbage. Don't buy anything until you read it, understand it, and have shopping compared prices. And if you've done all that, if you need it. My philosophy on insurance, I don't buy insurance unless a claim would be hurtful to me. Nancy and I have fire insurance on our house because of our house burned down, it would be painful to us to have to buy a new house. But when I have deductible on a car, I don't have $50 deductible or $500 deductible. I have a high deductible because it's not going to be painful to have to pay $1,000.

Well, I'm not going to enjoy it, but it's not going to be a challenge to me. So it's a complicated thing. Best thing to do is when I doubt, don't buy it. There you go. Because you can always buy it after the fact. Exactly. And if they tell you have to buy it today or you can't buy it, they're lying to you. Yeah.

The problem is, okay, when most people are buying a car, they spend, weeks or months researching the car and least educated consumers, our listeners do this and before they make a decision. And the same effort is not made into figuring out what they're going to try and sell you in the box. So do that research ahead of time or know that you have a little bit more time. You can buy it after the fact and you don't have to buy it from the dealer. But you'll have the opportunity to compare prices. Like gap insurance, the anonymous commenters mentioned, Earl says don't buy it there. And that's because you can buy gap insurance from your car. insurance. You can buy gap insurance from Geico

and Progressive and all that. You don't have the dealership. Now, that's not to say all dealerships don't have competitively priced insurance products, but you need to be able to compare them before you make a decision. Next, anonymous feedback. What is the difference between a station wagon and an SUV? Do any

manufacturers still make station wagons anymore? Why did they die out? Well, a SUV is just a tall station wagon. Isn't it? Probably. But there are still manufacturers that are making them. Subaru Outback is a station wagon. The Mercedes still makes a few wagons. Volvo.

I can't remember the model, but Volvo makes station wagons. XT90. And then if you want, I know there's a couple of Porsches that I think you wouldn't be out of line by calling their car as station wagons. I don't know if it's the Macau or something like

that, but they're still out there. But I still remember as a kid in the 70s riding around in the back of a station wagon definitely a Pontiac in the rear-facing seat in the back without seatbelts. And I cannot believe that was ever actually a thing.

Honestly. Let me jump in here. I got a text directly to my iPhone. Tim Pagel, P-A-G-E-L, said he's been trying to call into the show and was unable to. I'm sorry. I don't know what the problem was. And Tim gave me, if you're listening,

I have your cell phone number. We're running short on time now. He had a question about maintenance. I will call him after the show and answer his question and will ask the control room if there was a problem with the phones. Anybody else having a problem calling in, please let us know. You can text us at 772-4976530, 772-4976530 if you're having trouble calling the show or this just might have been a fluke. And also let me mention that at a certain time our calls are cut off. It is just about 937 right now.

Yeah, that could be. And that possibly could have happened. So your call is very important, and I'm really glad that you text Earl. He'll get right back to you. Okay. I think we're ready for the Mr. Shopping. Yeah, we're pretty close to the Mystery Shopping Report, but I'm going to mention, you know, just one more time,

Earlsvigilantes.com. That is the website where you can join our team. eelsvigilantes.com and you can help everybody in your community we're tired of this dishonesty the dishonesty among dealers so earlsvigilantes.com now we're going to go to our mystery shopping report which is infinity of Stewart yes we've had multiple requests from listeners for a mystery shop of Infinity of Stewart this week we oblige. And it was a text earlier about this issue. And that's the reason we went back because we were asked to do it. We were reminded of the last time we tried to mystery shop,

Infinity of Stewart, Agent Thunder was identified by employees there, and he was run out of the store. Not literally, he was politely but firmly asked to leave because they knew he was our undercover agent. Of course, we had to abort the mission, and Thunder moved on to a secondary target. Please accept our apologies for not going back sooner. Earl Stewart and Cars typically conducts mystery shops on non-luxury dealerships. We do this because luxury brands represent a lower share of car sales in most markets. And we try to advise the broadest group of consumers that we can. We can help more people by shopping a Ford dealer because Ford's market share is about 14% of all manufacturers

contrasted to BMW 1.8%, just a minuscule. amount of people buy BMW compared to Ford, and therefore Infinity, the one we're talking about, 0.9%. Not too many people buying infinities out there, but we should address it. In South Florida, luxury brands command the larger share than a lot of the markets, and they do nationally in our area. Our listeners are much more likely to own a Lexus or Mercedes than an audience in, say, Daytona or Calais. So we'd be doing our listeners a disservice if we We didn't include luxury dealers at all, our mystery shopping target. That's what we did.

We got a luxury dealer for you. We have to acknowledge this is a bit more difficult to investigate a luxury brand. These types of dealerships normally keep a low profile, and they're not really known for outrageous sales practices or marketing gimmicks. The expectations for luxury dealerships is that they will provide a superior customer experience and offer higher amenities to their sales and service customers. This brings us back to Infinity of Stewart with Agent Lightning, our female

relatively new, been with us for, what, three months? Yeah, since August. We're finally able to return to the scene of the crime where Agent Thunder had his cover blown. Agent Lightning continued this week with the same approach, and she's done this for two or four months or weeks now, just goes in like you would. You shouldn't do it, but you do.

the average person just goes in with no prep, no agenda, go in and say, I want to buy a car. So here's the report, speaking in the first person, as if I were agent, Lightning. I enter the showroom of Infinity of Stewart around 11 a.m., approached the receptions for the large desk. The receptionist was not wearing a mask. Shame, shame, shame, shame. Nor did she have a plastic barrier, sneeze guard that are very common. I mean, it's kind of shocking, and this is Martin County that don't require mask or shields. They recommend it. And it just makes me sad when I see this. There was a gallon of

hand sanitizer on the desk, but no mask on the receptionist. The receptionist called over to a salesman named Bill. Thank heavens. Bill did wear a mask. I told him I was looking for a new 2020 QX60, a mid-sized SUV, preferably white. Bill acknowledged this, said, led me to his office. At his desk, he advised me that the inventory of 2020 models was limited, however he assured me there was not much of a price difference between the 2020s and 2021s. I thought that peculiar, but that's what he said. He went on to say that his manager would be more apt to give me a better deal on a 2020 model, especially if it were a lease. and I don't quite understand that either because the lease, the residual on a

last year model would be much slower. I think it makes sense. It's because if they have any enhanced programs like with the toilet is right now, there's a better lease than the 2020s. True. But leasing or buying, the Earl Stewart recommendation has always go with the latest model.

If you have to pay more money, still pay more money. But if you're leasing, you don't have to worry about the resale value. Yeah, exactly. But you want to look about the lease payment. Yeah. that's comparing. You'll have to pay a little bit more for 2021 than a 2020 per month, but it's a better value for you. You get on a new car, not a year old. I told a bill that I was only interest in purchasing. I said I would buy the day my significant other, and I

agree with the numbers. He said, okay, let's get to work. Bill searches inventory on his computer showed me at 2020 QX60. And we talked earlier in the show about names. I hate these names. What the hell is a QX, a QX60? I mean, first of all, only 9% of the market is sold to the affinity buyers, and a QX60, nobody knows. That's why they're only selling 0.9%. Yeah, exactly. MSRP was $49,025. He asked me for my driver's license and phone number.

I provided both. Then he asked me to meet him outside. He'd pull the vehicle around up front. He'll pull the QX60 up to the front of the dealership. opt out, he asked me what I currently drove and whether I plan to trade it in. I pointed to my Honda, park nearby, and said I was keeping it. Before we left for the test drive, Bill told me you wanted to be honest with me and said he'd only been selling infinities for about a month

and not quite up to speed on product knowledge. He promised that he would find the right answer for me if there was something he didn't know about the vehicle. Now, this could not have been a ploy. it's a really smart thing to say that you're new on the job. You get the sympathy of the customer and they feel sorry for you

and you develop a rapport. Or it could be absolutely true. I don't know. Be aware, some people have been new on the job for years because it elicits of sympathy. That's what my old sales manager used to tell me. Yeah. You're brand new for the first couple of years.

Yeah, exactly, yeah. Until they come back and buy a car from you again. And I think I worked on Agent Lightning, to be honest with you. think she believed him and if you listen to the report you'll see that she still could be true she felt warm and fuzzy about yeah you'd be honest with me yeah poor guy he's nervous i'll be nice to him maybe he'll buy a car only i don't know on the test drive bill said he wasn't too familiar with the area there he goes he lives down in del Rey i said it was okay we'll keep making right turns until we wound up back of the dealership and of course we both laughed at that i think this put

him at ease and the rest of the test drive was enjoyable with easy conversation. Bill actually did know quite a bit about the QX60. He learned fast, I guess, and I told him he was doing a good job. Back at the store, Bill showed me more features on the vehicle, opened more about himself. He told me he drives all the way up from Del Rey because of the way most dealerships operate further down south. Well, let me tell you something. The dealerships further north operate that way.

too, especially at Martin County. There's just more of them down south. More of them, yeah. He appreciates the way the owner and the management of infinity of Stewart's tresses being honest with customers. He said working at this dealership is way less stressful than

any other dealership he'd worked on. That's very good, good salesperson. That's a smart, good salesperson. Back of the desk, he collected my information, entered it into his computer, then he left to get the numbers. When he returned, Bill explained that the 2020 model qualified for zero interest, but the price would be a little higher because

there was a cash incentive for outright purchase if you don't take the 0%. It can't be combined with a special financing rate. I asked if I could see both scenarios. Bill said, sure, left to give me what I asked for. He was back quickly with two worksheets, one for the 0% option and the other for the cash purchase. The 0% option showed the market value selling price, which is MSRP, 49,025. It was a $4,500 discount, which gave me an adjusted price of $44,525. Then came $669 in 95 cents in taxable fees. And you know what we say about taxable fees.

They're not really fees. They are dealer profit. Bogus. So there are $699,95, in hidden fees, pretending to be real fees. that are government fees, but they are not. And, but wait, there's more. Here's another taxable fee, but they call this one a dock fee. So he really had, let's say, around, was that about $1,600 in hidden fees that are really dealer profit.

And I say that with animosity and scorn, but everybody does it, folks. It's just the way it is. I mean, you can't find a car dealership, well, it's pretty hard to find a car dealership anywhere in Florida without these hidden fees. And next came the sales tax and the $2502.20 and non-tax fee. Now, where there's no tax on it, that's legit. It's a government fee. Out the door price, $49,161. The cash option had the same market value selling price, but the discount was $7,500, another, what, $3,000?

owners? Yeah, another $3,000 because you didn't take the 0% financing. My adjusted price was 41, 525. Same fees were added. Out the door, 45, 97, 85.59. I said I needed to review with my significant other before making a final decision. Bill told me to take my time. He said it was early in the month. That's refreshing. Take your time. You got to buy it today. Not the prices are going up at the end of the month. Take your time. Class. That's class. And that's honesty and that's transparency. He said it was early in the month.

The incentives weren't going away anytime soon and may even stay the same through the end of the year and maybe get better. Honesty. Love it. I thank him for such a good experience. I told him I believed he would do very well there. And here's the epilogue.

Wow. This was the easiest and most pleasant mystery shop in a long time. It was a pleasure for Agent Lightning and for the whole team. We checked the prices against Trucar to gauge how good a deal Bill offered. Infinity of Coconut Creek was a true car dealer. Send us a price, inclusive of dealer fees and added equipment. $40,085, about $600 less than the Infinity of Stewart deal.

Now, that's not a lot of money, folks. I mean, I would go if I were shopping, I'd go back to Infinity of Stewart. and say, look, I'd rather not drive to Coconut Creek, but I can buy the car for $40,885 bucks. That's $600 less. If you meet that, I'll buy the car for you, and they would meet it, I can almost guarantee that. So that's the value of True Car.

It gives you a measurement, a tool to find out if you're getting slam-dunked or you have a pretty decent price. We've got a pretty decent price at Fenni of Stewart, but it could be $600 less, and True Car proved that. So there we are. We need to vote on that, and we'll go around the table. Any votes coming in to anybody? I have one from Linda, who's usually pretty brutal,

but she gives infinity of store a C and an F for the lady who is not wearing a mask. I think that's fair. I am inclined to give them a high score because it was easy and appear to be pretty transparent. But I can't give. I know we're great on a curve. It's just my personal policy. Nobody gets an A if you have all those fees. So I give them a B plus.

B plus, okay. I've got Andrew with a B plus and Tim with a B minus saying a receptionist with no mask sets a bad tone. Yeah. And I'm going to agree with the B minus because of the fees and no mask. You know, I know Mario Morgado and I think he might survive it. I'm not sure. He used to owe an infinity of Stuart, but he may have sold it. And I can just say he's an honest guy, and he would be very upset about the receptionist not wearing a mask. In fact, I think that if anyone's listening there, I think the next time someone goes in there, my guess would be she would be wearing a mask.

Mrs. Sunrise, Nancy Stewart, what are your score? Thank you. I'm going to give them a C. and boy how refreshing it was to hear Bill say take your time you don't have to buy right now I'm going to give them a B plus I felt warm and fuzzy about everything they didn't pressure her to buy today

they they were honest about all the time that she had I mean, he said he gave her to the end of the year. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's very unusual. Yeah.

I mean, compare it with the Wallace dealership we did where when she went, when the, when agent lightning got ready to leave, they dropped the price $5,000. Yeah. And they were going to let her to go out with the price because they felt it was a fair price. You don't, you don't let a customer walk with a price when you know they could beat it anywhere. So that tells you it was a good price in his mind, and I give him a B-plus. I'm going to retract my vote, and I'm going to give Bill a B, but overall a C for the ones who weren't wearing a mask and some other details that we don't need to get into. A couple more grades coming in. Mark, who's one of our vigilante, gives them a B-minus-minus-minus, and then Anne-Marie gives them a B-minus also, but she does clarify her like Nancy does.

the salesman but she deducted for the receptionist who wasn't wearing a mask. Well, if you want to buy an infinity, folks, you go to Infinity of Stewart if you're in the area and you deal with, what was the name of the salesperson? Bill. Bill. Bill. Deal with Bill. He's an honest guy.

Likeable? I would drive from West Palm Beach. The Infinity dealer here is Schumacher, and he's a friend of mine, too. At least I like him. He might not like me, but I like Chuck. And I'd go down to Infinity of Stewart. I think you can't beat that. And we'll give Infinity of, you know, West Palm Beach.

We'll give them Schumacher Infinity. Another chance. We'll shop them. But I think Infinity of Stewart just did a dynamite job. Yeah, how nice. How refreshing. I've got Guy Larrabee with a B plus, Mark Ryan with a B, Casual B, Al-Sucre, B-minus, and Wayne with a B-plus. Yeah.

Okay. Where are we now? We got any of text to lay it around here? I think we've got a couple of minutes to go. No, we're all caught up with text and anonymous feedback. Okay, let me mention something that I mentioned earlier in the show that I think is important for the general mindset as we shot now during the pandemic. I've said it before, but the dealers are making money hand over fist. Dealers are making a lot of money. The manufacturers are making a lot of money, and And they are charging you higher prices now. The average transaction price when you buy a new car is higher than it's been in a long time. You heard me say a few minutes ago that Toyota is making three times as much money this year as they thought they would be.

Honda is making twice as much money. The dealers are not making twice as much necessarily, but they're making more money. and they're charging more for vehicles. Now, what that means is you have to be even more careful when you negotiate. The average transaction price is higher. So even the true car price is going to be a little higher. Don't ever walk into a car dealership and buy from the first dealer you talk to. You will be paying too much money for the car.

you've got to get at least three prices and during this COVID situation the prices are high and you cannot afford to let your guard down please absolutely all right we had one more text that came in Jonathan and Wellington gives his first bee ever first passing grade I don't say passing grade to infinity of store it so it was refreshing for our listeners as well yeah we haven't given my I would say bees I remember the Bill Wallace, buy-your-payer store, pay, what was it, pay? Easy pay, easy pay, easy pay, yeah, easy pay. Easy pay got a B or?

They got an A. Hey, okay. And, you know, we've been talking about this for a while. We might want to have three lists, the extraordinarily good dealers, and that would be like Easy Pay and Infinity of Stewart, and then have the acceptable dealers and then the don't buy from dealers. Because it'd be nice if we could get at least one

of every franchise on the exceptional list. Yeah, exactly. And we can list it just by make so people can find it easier. Hey, who knows, maybe we could push Infinity's market share in the Treasure Coast area above 0.9%. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and we need to shop, let's see, what else, well, we need to find Mollinex, that was a Ford dealer that got a good grade. Yeah, the one up in, but that was the one up in Central Florida.

I can't remember the town it was in. It'll come back to me, but they actually had zero dealer fees. Yeah. Wasn't that up for Sebring? It might be in the area. I can't remember the name of the town. It wasn't Sebring, but, yeah, because the Mullinx down here, They still say they don't dealer fees, but they do have the mini-dealer fees.

But the one up in Central Florida, it was true blue, and they got an A. Well, folks, before we sign off, I'd like to mention again, nominate your favorite car dealership, the best of the best, 2021 Awards. Excuse me, the 2021 Awards is the best of Palm Beach County. And your nomination is real important. So go to WWW, W, W, Nominate, bestcarddealer.com. We'll be right back here next week. I hope you can join us. Have a

wonderful week and stay safe.