Earl Stewart on Cars - 11.14.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Roger Dean Chevrolet

Episode Date: November 14, 2020

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Roger Dean Chevrolet to see if she can get the $10K discount advertised on a 2020 Chevy Trax LS. 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 is my son, Stu Stewart. are linked to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting self-forwarded dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody.

We're back. Wide and Living Keller, right here at the studio. And we're going to talk to you about how not to get ripped off by a car dealer. In my introduction, you heard about all the folks in the studio here. We've got a lot of wealth of knowledge here. I guess I've never added it up, probably over 100 years' worth of automotive retail knowledge. And we've got the type of knowledge that you need on a regular basis, which is how to repair, maintain your car without being taken advantage of.

We've got Rick Kearney. and he is extremely knowledgeable on, I hate to use the word mechanic. I say the mechanics are no longer mechanics. It's electronics, and it's digital. It's like everything else in the 21st century. Pretty complex, and a lot of this COVID thing is creating an atmosphere of, I don't want to take my car into the garage.

I don't want to go into the dealership. I don't want to go into the Independent Service Department, but I got this clicking, I got this noise. Rick is the guy to call. Rick Kearney, and you can call him at 877-9-60-960. By the way, this show is going to be slanted a little bit more than normal to our female listeners. And I know you're out there, but we're getting a little bit worried

because we haven't heard from you in a couple of weeks. And it's interesting. We were at about 50% for a long time. and something's happened we're not sure what it is hope it's not our fault but we love to hear from you female listeners and I'm going to turn the

mic over to Nancy Nancy Stewart, my co-host in just a second and we're going to tell you again how much we'd appreciate your calls. It isn't it's not an ego thing with us we're not trying to have a

politically correct audience all we want to do is be sure we reach every one of the audience that needs advice. Now, there's some surveys out there that say that men need advice more than women. They say that women take their time more, they do their research more. They don't tend to buy on a motion. Men tend to buy, hey, I like that hot-looking red convertible. They jump in there and they sign on the dotted line and they drive home.

Women don't do that. Women take much longer to buy and they study more. So possibly, since you don't need your D.R. advice, and whatever the reason, the change bothered us a little bit. So please consider calling. If you have an issue with your car by getting it fixed, for example, that's the reason I gave Rick Kearney's name and number, 877-960-960, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-7-7-7-2. 4976530, that's 772, 4976530. We have an anonymous feedback line that I don't think anybody has.

We're kind of unique in that. It's really cool. You go to youranonymousfeedback.com and you can message us and say anything you want to. We cannot learn your identity. We don't know where you're from, who you are, We don't know numbers, telephone, email. We know nothing.

We just know your question. If you choose to give us your name, which, you know, even though it's anonymous, you could do that. But we certainly don't ask you to. And if you feel a little bit embarrassed about a question, some people just don't like to ask a question because they're afraid they'll sound stupid. And the bottom line is, every time we get a question that you might feel was stupid, There's probably a thousand people out there and say, well, I'm glad they asked that question.

But if you feel nervous about asking a question, your anonymous Feedback.com, and especially directed on this show today, we're especially directing this to our female listeners. And we have a female mystery shopper, and we brought the female mystery shopper. Her code name is Agent Lightning. In fact, she did the mystery shop

that we'll be talking about in the second half of the show. So Agent Lightning is giving a whole new idea of what happens to the average shopper. The average shopper is half female and half male. You have 50% buying cars and male and 50% female. So Agent Lightning is seeing life and buying and servicing your car from the female perspective. So we're trying to put that spin on it. And again, if you're a female, if you're out there, consider. calling the show with any comments

you might have. Let me turn the show over to my co-host Nancy Stewart and she has a segment that she is going to play a recorded segment that she'll cue Mike in the control room to play. It's about 60 seconds.

It's a little dialogue between her and a caller which sets the tone of the type of calls that would be interesting if you felt like making them or would make them to the show. I'll turn the mic over to Nancy Stewart. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Earl Stewart on cars. We're here to have a great time with all of you,

and I always let everybody know every week because it's important that you are a big part of the show, and we really appreciate all your feedback. I'm going to get right to it, and first of all, I want to congratulate the Miami Marlins. Can you imagine hiring the first female general manager while the world is definitely changing. Women are definitely getting involved. So that takes me to my topic, and I'm always interested in a shopping experience that the ladies may have had,

whether it's negative or it's positive. And every week, we'll offer the ladies $50, the first. two new lady callers to the show. Give us a call with your experience, or if you just want to say hi, we would definitely appreciate it, $50 for the first two new lady callers, and that telephone number is 877-960-99-60, and if you'd like to text us this morning, you can do so at 772-497-60. As Earl said, I do have, well, it's a video that we're going to play in just a moment. And, you know, there are so many ladies that I speak to.

Well, let me retract so many ladies. Let me say a handful that are still being taken advantage of, and even some guys out there. But they're just embarrassed. They're really embarrassed to share their story. And I want to emphasize that you don't necessarily have to, you know, identify yourself. We do have www. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and you can just pour your heart out to me. And you'd be helping so many other consumers. So with that said, I'm going to ask Mike to go ahead and roll that video.

We're going to go to charge for mine. who is calling us from Tamarack. Welcome to the show, Lori. The reason I'm calling on what Nancy was saying about female is going to dealerships, I am not an expert on cars. I never claimed to be, but I have a general idea as to what to ask, what to look for, or whatever. Many, many years ago, I went into a dealership.

My brother-in-law had a deal for me on a car. I can't take you to the dealership right now. He was working. Why do you go in and just, you know, try the car out and see, and if you like it, you know, I can get you a deal on it. I wanted to go a dealership, and I said I'd like to, you know, see the car. I like to test drive. know what they said to me? Well, unless you're going to buy today, you can't test drive it.

I said, excuse me? And they said, no, you know, it wasn't a rainy day. It wasn't a busy day. It wasn't a holiday weekend. The guy would not let me test drive the bloody call unless I was going to say I would buy it that day. So I said, okay, to let you know, every time I go buy that dealership, I hear it advertised. Let's just say a few curse words. I will never deal with anybody in that area for that dealership. Not to mention, I've told other people about that dealership, not to even go there. Is this familiar? It has happened so many times, and therefore it was worthy of mentioning this morning, just to remind you why we here at Earl Stewart on Cars is encouraging everyone to give us a call

and share their stories with us. As I said, if you don't want to identify yourself, your anonymous feedback.com. And in this climate today, in this 21st century, unfortunately, there are still those dinosaurs out there that are working in the boys club. And you may get taken advantage of and not want to share it because you're embarrassed. Well, we have a way for you to do just that, men and women. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And don't forget, $50 for the first two new lady callers in addition to sharing your story. Well, I'll mention this later on in the show, just to remind everybody.

But right now, we are going to go to Howard, who's on line one. Good morning, Howard. Howard calls us from Jupiter. Good morning. How are you guys doing? Very good. Thank you. Good.

Okay. I just was reading something about the metal fragments from an exploding airbag inflator. It killed the driver of a older Volvo. So this article was saying it's not a tecotta airbag. It's a ZF-T-R-W airbag. And the inflator rupture caused the death of this guy driving a Volvo S-60. And Volvo said it would replace the driver's airbag at no cost to customers. So I thought it was just a Takata airbag.

Now, Volvo has nothing to do with Takata, but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, you know, there's a connection. I read that too. I read that too, and I surprised me just like it surprised you. I didn't know that there was other airbags out there that were doing the same thing. The article, I think, said that it had the same symptoms, same. Yeah, there's a suit in California on this thing. It's a German airbag.

Yeah. Yeah, but here's the story. I was driving a 98 Toyota Camry, and on the visor, it said, you must inspect the airbag after 10 years. I'm sure I remember that vividly so now if the airbag is more than 10 years old I think all of them are not safe what do you say to that

I think we discussed this on the show before and I'm really glad you brought that up it is a I think it's a dangerous crack in the system that there isn't some rule on that and I believe but Rick shaking his head I think that you know

If I come in and I've got a car and I say, I've had this car 10 years, please inspect my airbag, what would we do? Well, the only thing that we could do is hook up a scan tool, see if there are any codes, and otherwise just a visual inspection. And even then, you can't even see the airbag without disassembling the dash. That's what I was thinking. And if there were an issue with the airbag, there would be a sensor that would warn you, and we would then take it. Yeah, hopefully. Well, but, so the question is, what do you do? At what point? Is it 10 years, five years, 20 years? There isn't any industrial guide as far as I know, and I should know. I'm a automobile dealer. And if I don't know, shame on me. But yeah, another glitch in the system. When you buy an old car, a lot of people are buying older and older cars, mainly because they're more and more reliable.

And you can buy a car now with 200,000 miles on. And it can be a great car. And you can keep a great car. it for another 200,000 miles if you take good care of it, but that car might be 20 years old by the time you sell it or scrap it or whatever you're going to do. And what's the airbag like? It's an industry glitch in the system. Well, not to mention also the fact that we mostly concentrate on that passenger front airbag. There's also a driver's airbag. Of course, yeah.

Airbags in the seats, curtain airbags that come down on the side, airbags for your knees. Has there been any research, like the studying, at least to have some sort of a label on a car that says this can expect to have a 15-year shelf left or a 10-year life? No. Yeah, I mean, they should have some research just so we would know. Howard, you just hit on another serious problem, and people just kind of ignore it. You know what does happen a lot of times with cars with defective airbags, they get exported. And we have rules in this country. You have to have an airbag, an operating airbag.

where you can't sell the car. It's illegal. It's just like we have crash rules in terms of this fender, this hood, this bumper must qualify for the crash test. If you're going to South America or the Middle East or a lot of other places, you can export a car and get a lot more money for it there than you can in the USA. That'll cover your shipping cost and then some. Okay, I have a question for Rick. Rick, if I brought in a 1998 Camry to you, and I said to you, please unhook the airbag, would you do that? Because it's safer without the airbag than with the airbag. What would you say to that?

I would put you in my service manager's office, and I would let him make the call on that because due to the liability issues of it, I personally would not do. it. The answer is... Because of the liability. Well, it's illegal. You know, you can't do that. And we can't even adjust a seat. I mean, you get, you're violating the National Highway Traffic Safety Association rules

if you will modify a seat because it's part of the safety equation in a car. And if there's anything, if it's the head of the safety equation, it's the airbag. So, the only thing you can do is, you know, if you have a passenger side, you could just don't have anybody riding the passenger seat, have them riding the back seat. But if you have it, if you request someone to take it out, you would probably have to take it to a outlaw shop somewhere to do it. Yeah. Well, information.

Okay, thank you very much, guys. Thank you. I always interesting calls. Thank you. Thanks, Howard. Bye. 877-960-90-60, or you can text us at 772-49-60. And again, www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

Take advantage of it. Say whatever you want. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, we haven't talked to Stu about his function, Stu Stewart, my son. and a gentle manager of our dealership. He's our cyber spymaster, and he is in charge of our secret agent, lightning, and thunder.

And, uh, why don't you, I got an idea. We got to get thunder back in the game. Yeah, we got to get thunder in. Why don't, uh, why don't you give them a little, uh, preview? I think, you know, the mystery shopping report is probably the most listened to, watched, uh, whatever you want to do. part of the show, and it's at the end of the show, and some people miss it. So give them a synopsis of our, you know, without letting too many of the exciting

platform. Oh, I won't, because I'm so excited to talk about this one, because we've had a, the last four weeks, we had a methodology in our mystery shopping reports. We just let Agent Lightning go in and just let the flow occur, just get swept away by the sales process and see what happens. In the past, we would check out advertisements, and those are usually a little bit more exciting because there's this trick. There's a device we're trying to uncover. Well, I got really excited because we're flipping through the ads this week, and we saw one of those really big discounts.

So it was $10,000 off a new Chevy. By the way, the shopping target this week was Roger Dean Chevrolet in West Palm Beach, and they've been around forever. And I think you were friends with Roger, weren't you, at some point? Yeah, he tried to get me to marry his daughter when I first started the business. Oh, Patty? Who was Patty? I can't remember which one he had $2, but he was trying to hook me up with his daughter. I had to explain to him I was already married.

I'm glad because that would have really had a big effect on my life. But really big discount, and normally we look at these things like, okay, you see a big $10,000 off they're talking about. It's going to be off a, you know, F-350 trucks on like $100,000 vehicle. but this was off a $22,000 car, so it's practically half off. So when I saw that, I'm like, we got to send lightning into that. So we're not going to reveal what happens. You could probably predict that she was not able to buy the car at the ad price, but it's still really interesting to see how it's explained

and how they get out of the promise in the ad. It's nice to get, it's a great contrast. We did Infinity of Stewart last week, and that was a refreshing. What was the average score B? B plus? I mean, just an extraordinarily clean, honest, transparent experience. And I can only say that this one was, you might say, the other end of the spectrum. Oh, yeah, I hope Linda's listening.

Because if Linda's listening, I know we're going to be entertained by her grade. Truly old school. In a way, it's interesting to me because I see, you know, if that had happened 30 years ago, it would be SOP. Yeah. I mean, that was, in fact, Roger Dean, Chevrolet. I don't want to slander anybody, but there were comments when Roger Dean Chevrolet opened up many years ago. Roger Dane, I believe, started in Ohio, and he had a little problem, I think, reported to have a problem with the Attorney General. Oh.

And in Ohio. And so he left and started back in business down here. And then he wasn't really a rough deal. He was, uh, he spawned many other dealerships by taking in partners. And, uh, but one of the things that sticks to know, if you've been around town for a long time, was the, it was a great, we had a, the Leaky TP, the West Palm Beach Auditorium. How many of you remember that? And, uh, they had a giant sale, which dealers didn't have at that time.

And Roger Dean rented the entire West Palm Beach auditorium. And he had a big sale there. And he advertised in the Palm Beach Post, which was the only advertising venue there. Might have done some TV, but it was a long time ago. 50% off. We're selling these cars at 50% off. And because at that time, it was unique and it was extraordinary. And nobody had ever heard that before.

And today it wouldn't even, you know, look at an eye. But then everybody said, so thousands of people rushed in. The police came, and there was almost like a riot. They were directing traffic, and they had to stop the sale. And he had to swear never to do it again. And I forgot all the ramifications. But he was a, what's the word? I can't use the word.

I have it in my mind. Wildcat. He was a wildcat. Is he still advertising in the paper? Oh, yeah. I looked deliberately in the paper this morning. He wasn't in the Palm Beach Post, I don't think. But usually he is once a week.

In old school. He can't drop that habit. Last time we mystery shopped him back in February, they had a $17,000 off. That was off a big Silverado truck. And now, Roger Dean Stadium. I mean, respectability. And, you know, he's evolved.

Well, it's funny when we talk about our dealers. You think of Napleton, Grico, and all that as the bad guys. Roger Dean, he seems like one of the good guys. But after that auditorium sale, I think he got frightened into a little bit more transparency. I think we were a little bit frightened about 30 years ago. I don't know, Okotovie Boulevard. When we were selling cars, I think, what was it, a dollar or something? Buy one, get one free?

Yeah, a liquidation lot and a Stewart's for like cars, yeah. I don't know. Hey, Stu, there was one thing that was missing from the mystery shopping report. What's that? We don't know that. Well, we got to ask Lightning. She didn't report on what they're wearing other than whether they were wearing a face mask or not.

We went back in time with this mystery shopping report. Well, say, too, and it will be in the second half of the show, and it will be an exciting report. They were wearing white shoes, though, with gold buckles. Oh, really? Interesting. You know, ladies and gentlemen, I was talking earlier about a call, and we shared it on the air about a female

that had a young lady that had called me. And I'm going to remind you that if you didn't catch that portion of the show, that it's, we're recording and you can go to www. YouTube.com or on cars or our podcast, Stitcher Radio, or Applebot podcast. 877-960, or Texas at 772-49-7-6530. Don't forget. anonymous feedback.com and we are going to go to Dave in Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Dave. Yes, good morning. I had a question for you and I think you may have addressed this once before, but it's about the Highlander white paint job and something about the finish on it or something that was raising questions about that particular color and

Maybe you shouldn't buy a Highlander in white, and I think you did address it, but I cannot remember what the outcome of that conversation was. Can you update that? Well, Dave, there are several models that have been identified by Toyota, and other manufacturers have these paint issues, too. Unfortunately, the warranty is only three years or 36 months on most cars on the paint finish, which is a crime. it should be better. And then sometimes you have to battle them because a lot of things are not covered by environmental fallout and things like that. But on your

question of White, White is a chronic problem with some Toyota's. In fact, they're talking about expanding the models, and they know they have problems and some other models. Rick, Stu, help me out on

Prius hasn't been included yet, but it may be included. Either as Highlander yet. Yeah. These are a little bit older models, and what they did, they extended the warranty to 14 years from the original three. But they are adding different paint colors and different models to it. It's way too soon to tell if they're going to have the same problem on a current model. These are cars that are going back a few years. Well, we found out, from our own personal experience, that they are having problems on other models,

and we believe Prius will be coming in. We knew that was in other models and also in other colors. even blues and reds might get included into this extended warranty thing. I'm saying the more recent vehicles haven't been affected yet. If you have the problem, then you can still file the complaint with the dealer. The dealer can take it to the manufacturer, and there's a good chance that you have it covered. So just because you don't see anything online about a paint problem

on a particular model you're driving or your model or color, if you have something, we call it, the problem is it called, delamination and the paint actually peels off and the way we test it and the way car dealers are supposed to test it is you take some tape like a duct tape or masking tape it's like masking tape and you put it on the put it on the horizontal services the car the roof the fender the hood the deck lid these are the ones that are getting a most direct ultraviolet raised from the sun Leave it on for about 10 minutes to then peel it off.

If the paint comes with it, you've got a problem. I don't need to tell you that. Bring it to the dealer and say, look, I bought this car four years ago, and I got some tape of the car and I pull it off. They'll call the manufacturer, and there's a good chance. They'll take care of it for you. Great tip. Okay, so let me just follow up real quick,

and let's say you've got a used Highlander on your lot for sale. I purchased that vehicle, and before I purchased it, would you be able to perform that test to know to give me confidence as a consumer that I would be purchasing a vehicle that was not problematic in that respect, and then if it was okay, and I did buy it, and then something happens a year down the road, and all of a sudden it becomes a situation that becomes, you know, if I perform that same test and that paint started to peel or whatever, could I bring that back to Earl Store Toyota for you to address that in a way that, you know, solves that problem, whether it be a new paint job or whatever would be available at the time. The only problem with that is that the Highlander isn't covered under this campaign at all right now. Now, it could in the future, so it would be kind of a risky move to try and rip off paint and then have no ability to have a Toyota pay for it.

Well, again, this is speculative on my part to some extent. But I know that manufacturers, I know Toyota especially well, but if you have a defective paint on a relatively late model car, I'm not talking about a

you know, 2,000 car, 20 years old, but if you have a car that's out of warranty and you would perform the tape test and the paint peeled, there's a very good chance you would help from the manufacturer to have that paint repaired, even though it wasn't named. We know, for example, now that we're experiencing complaints on the Prius, a white Prius,

but it's not covered yet. The other thing with the tape test, it's not applied, it's only applied on an area that looks like there's some appealing or bubbling. You can see that there's something going wrong, and then they want to see if that paint comes off. If the car looks fine, no one's putting tape on. the car and trying to see if the paint it's usual start to see a bubbling some indication that something's going wrong and then the tape test will reveal that it's like extensive again i hate to

disagree with my son on live radio but i think if if you if you have a concern and you put a piece of tape on the car and you leave it on every 10 minutes and pull it off and you have someone witness that and the paint comes off then i think you would be you should you should actually be covered by the manufacturer, Rick. Video record it. Have your phone out and record video when you're doing that test. That way you've got proof that...

Well, Dave's question, if he's buying the car. If you're buying the car, then ask that that be done as a condition of buying the car, and if it's clean and everything's okay, then you'll be satisfied. I still maintain my position that you're possibly damaging the car. So if you apply tape, it's not the proper tape.

I guess if you have the body shop do it the way they do it, but if you, you know, rip the paint off the car, you might be risking. We're talking about masking tape. Let me ask you this. Does the weather affect this test? Do you have to have your car in the garage, out of the sun, whatever? No. Does that affect it? No.

Okay. Okay. Well, Dave, I hope we didn't confuse you. I'm confused now, but. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate you addressing that problem. And, you know, I noticed you had a couple very nice white ones on the lot, actually, as I was online. And, you know, one thing that it immediately pops into a consumer's mind, when they're looking at a vehicle with very low mileage, and it's a very late model, and it's beautiful, you say, why would someone get rid of that car when it's not a lease period that has expired?

It's very low mileage. it looks beautiful and it's not even it's even way lower than a normal annual rate of miles to be put on a vehicle so me you know you just have to ask why why would someone do that when you have to invest x amount of dollars to begin with and then when you trade you're never going to you know come out on top in that respect so it's just you know I don't do the salesman know anything about the story oh sure the vehicle that you may be interested in sure that's a great question You should always ask to speak to the previous owner. You should do a Carfax report.

And the one thing I recommend, I don't care, how late model a car is, always have it checked out by an independent mechanic. It's just the old of the car, the more important that is. But you say a late model car, why do they trade it in? I'd want an answer to that. The best way to get the answer is called a previous owner. You could ask the salesman, but you might not get an accurate answer. But used cars are a great value, but you've got to do your homework.

You've got to do the Carfax reports. You've got to have an independent mechanic, check it out. You can see the previous repair history on Carfax. Now, it used to be it was just damaged to a car, but now you can actually see the repair maintenance history. Rick? If you write down the VIN, the vehicle identification number, and go to the manufacturer of that car, a dealership for that model, quite often they can run a service history and tell you

yeah this car was very well maintained and it gets much more in depth to show you what parts were put in and what services were done that's a great idea with now right now the manufacturers when they repair a car the then number goes into the database

for every Ford in the United States and as long as they take it into a Ford dealer for their maintenance it'll appear in the database So there are a lot of ways you can check on the history of a used car, and you should take a lot longer checking out of the used car, the new car, obviously. Okay, well, how would one get in touch with the previous owner that was, say, on your lot for sale, you might be very interested, but, you know, you had some questions.

Well, you can't always do that, but the dealer should tell you, and then the dealer probably would respectfully check with the previous owner. Right, you would ask. Just ask the salesperson, and they can find out. and they can call them on your behalf and see if it's okay. Okay, all right. Great. That makes sense. You're a very careful guy and you're very smart guy. I wish more people thought like you before they bought a used car.

It wouldn't be nearly as much trouble out there afterwards. So you're thinking right. Well, you know, I remember you saying at one point that you really don't need to be that concerned about buying a used vehicle. As a matter of fact, I think you said, You would probably buy a user as opposed to a new one because of the depreciation, et cetera, et cetera. But the mileage factor of having a used car for sale on your lot that might have 20, 30, 35,000 miles on it even

is not really a big risk or a gamble because of the longevity or the quality of, say, the engine or the, you know, mechanics of the vehicle. So not to really be worried to the extent that, you know, you're going to pass that up and have to be forced to go buy a new one and then suffer, you know. You're on the right track, Dave, call again, and thanks so much for that question. A lot of people were thinking the same thing you were. Please call again. I'd love to hear from you.

Great call. Thank you, thanks much. Thank you, Dave. Bye-bye. Great call. We love our educated consumers. The listeners, it's great. And Dave's been listening to the show, obviously, by his conversation.

Give us a call tool-free at 877-9-60, or you can text us at 772-497-65-30. And, you know, Linda was asking about the pearl white. She thinks that that's the way to go. Well, it's, you know, these aren't pearl white that are appealing, too. Yeah, yeah. It looks nicer. You can't go on basis of the name. of the color. It's just of the question. We talked before about going to chat rooms or going

online. Chances are if you have a peeling problem, maybe somebody else did. So a lot of it is research and homework and being careful. That's all. My question, my point is this, if you have the problem, you've got to ask for help. No one's going to say, I heard you had a problem, I want to paint your car for you. You've got to go, you've got to have to go to the dealership. you're going to have to go to the manufacturer and you're going to have to be firm and when you do that we found in our experience

if you're firm about it not abusive or confrontational but firm and show them the proof then they're going to help you and take care of it so we don't want to make a bigger problem out of this than it is most of the painted cars out there are doing just fine. Yeah just reach out hey let's have some fun and talk about

an announcement that we made a couple of weeks ago and that was about Earl's Vigilantes. Yeah. Would you like to comment on that? Well, I'll ask us too to comment on that. Do we have any more? We've had a few more. I should, I don't have the website up,

but we've expanded our states. Now we have Michigan. We have New Jersey. We have Tennessee. We're starting to develop a backlog here in Florida, but that's only national because we're based down here. So we have, I think, five or six in Florida. So we're over a dozen now.

But keep them coming. And if you're interested in helping out people in your community, go to Earlsvigilantes.com and click on the button that says volunteer, or I want to help, and just sign up. All we do is we post your name, your email address. And we just ask you to just let us know a little bit about your background and why you think you can help out your local consumers. Somebody just came in the studio.

Just kidding. We have an audio thing coming through here. Something comes up in somewhere. This is there's memory. All right. It's our laugh track, because I'm funny. It was just natural to have a laugh track. But, yeah, Earl Vigilani's.com, sign up today.

Yeah, it sounds real good. You can really help out, you know, other consumers in your community. And there's a lot more educated, well, and informed people out there that can help out with Earl's Vigilantis. Now, back to the recovering car dealer. I think we're probably got some text on Facebook and YouTube, don't we?

Yeah, once we start with Thrift. Right now, I've got nothing showing up, actually. Rick, I'm going to have to interrupt you. I see that Jay's been holding from Boynton Beach. Good morning, Jay. Good morning, guys. I have a simple question. How often should you start your car or drive it?

I didn't drive it for six days, and I had AAA come out, and they said they'll charge it, but I'd have to drive to Jacksonville to get a full charge. They wanted me to take it to a car place, and get my battery charge. And is it better to drive it or just let it sit and run for half an hour? Well, Rick can answer that question. You've heard it before.

The best is to actually drive it because when the car sits, your tires all the way to sitting on the one spot on the tire, and they'll develop what's called flat spots. So then when you do start driving the car again, you'll get this horrible vibration for a while until that kind of smooths itself out. It will fix itself as the tires heat up. The flat spots will straighten back out.

But the best thing is to go out for a nice leisurely drive somewhere. Just something that gets you up around 35, 40 miles an hour, and a good half hour. Say about every other day if you can or every two or three days. And highway driving is better than city driving. Yeah, because it's a nice, smooth, easy drive on the highway. It gets the best charge back to the battery. and the engine actually runs a lot smoother and you get better fuel economy running at that. Now, if you can't do that, if you do have to have the car just kind of sit,

I recommend a battery charger called a trickle charger. And what this does is it connects to the battery, you plug it into an electrical outlet, and it actually puts just a very small charge into the battery continuously so your battery never gets run down. Is it all the electronics that run the battery down? Yeah, because the computers in the car are still drawing a little bit of power, even while the car's off. It's keeping the memory alive for the radio, the computer systems, and the various electronics in the car. Well, I've been driving from Boynton to the airport around the loop there and then back on 95, so.

That's a good run. Yeah, about every two or three days I would do that. And if I keep driving it, will it recharge eventually every day or something, or do I need to bring it into a place? and have a charge for like eight hours? No, if you get it charged up, you know, from driving, the charge will come back unless there's a problem with the battery. And even if they, you know, if you were to go somewhere to have a charge, they'd really only need to charge it for about three or four hours at the most. Okay, all right.

Thank you so much. That's very helpful. I'll just start, you know, driving it more. You're very welcome. Thanks, Joe. Good luck. Bye. Where you can text us at 772-4976530,

and we'd love to hear from you from www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to Rick. We're caught up at the moment for YouTube. Okay. I was going to say that Jay's question is another very good question because people are not using their cars as much. And in our household, we don't use our cars as much.

and, you know, people are just not, so it's a good idea to take it out and exercise your car a couple times a week, and you never know. It's going to be, it could be an emergency. You've got to get to the hospital. Absolutely. You know, get the doctor, and your car won't start. That's pretty frustrating. I learned by experience my car was dead, and I just never realized that that would happen. And now I do, you know, take advantage of that.

I believe that Stu is ready. Excuse me, Stu Warren is on the phone from Pompano. Good morning, Warren. Good morning. How are you today? Great, thank you. Okay, my question is it's really because you were mentioning about the paint job.

I met my cousin last thing. I still look in Northern New Jersey and coming down right after Thanksgiving. And I don't know whether he's got a recall notice or he read about it. I'm not sure about the paint job. and he's got a white Toyota Cammy, and he said that he's going to bring it in, and they're going to repaint it's about 10 years old. But the question I had, if it does come to that, is that it's banged up,

and obviously if they repainted, they're not going to fix the bang-ups on it. What does he do? He just goes to somebody to get all the bangs out of it or whatever, and then they repaint it because they're not going to fix it. It's just repainting it. What would he do in that case? Well, that's probably what he should do. You have to pay, of course, for the hammer and the dents out.

But you could still repaint it with a dents, but it wouldn't be the right thing to do. You could have yourself basically a new looking car. You get the dents fixed, and then you get a free paint job, which should normally. The paint job normally costs around $4,000, so it's a great value, even if you have to pay a few hundred dollars to get the dents pounded out. Okay, and the question is, do you know, like I said, he lives up here in Northern New Jersey, was it a recall, or he just read about it? Because he asked me last thing, because you listen to that show, and I'm trying to ask you. He said, you know, Toyota's about 10 years old.

It's not a recall, let's say, it's a warranty extension. You know, it's a notice that they send out and they say to the dealer, whether it's a Honda or whatever. models having it delamination is the most common problem meaning the paint just peals so it's a defect when they paint of the car they did something wrong they taught technically it's a customer support program yeah and you're not going to get your car painted if you have an old car that's faded in the Sun after 15 or 20 years but these cars were talking about the good paint that should be good

peels off and the way you test it is with the tape test you put the masking tape on when the customer comes into our dealership we put the masking tape on the area that would look most likely to peel it looks suspicious

and we leave it there for 10 or 15 minutes and we peel it off the paint comes off with a tape you have a problem we take this information we give it to Toyota Toyota says go ahead and paint the car and that's the process well let me just let me just ask this last question if he gets the dings and he's got a pretty big bang

in the back on the side on the fender there when the guys does it or somebody does that aren't they going to ask when we repaint it like what do you tell the person who's going to repair the car that's the right if you fix it and you know the paint comes off you know that's the thing that would be puzzling like what do you tell the person who's fixing the dings

and the bangs on it well they're not going to fix the bangs they're unless you ask them to and they're going to suggest it if he brings it to somebody else if you bring it to somebody else you know repair places who'll do those oh i see what you're yeah i would i'd be a little bit careful about that uh because you don't want to you don't want to have a situation where when they hammer the dent out they could say well you know you you're damage to paint when you hammer the dent out and uh I would be sure that I would let the dealership do the dent repair

because they're the ones that got the approval and they're going to vouch for you that we didn't bang the car up we just did the dent at your request you paid us for it and then we painted it under the manufacture coverage okay because you asked you about that yesterday and I sort of gave the same answer you did I don't recommend you going to a second party and bang it out And the dealer will say, well, look at the damage. This guy did it.

Yeah, exactly. I'm not going to touch it. Okay. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Jay. You're welcome, Warren. Give us a call again. Thank you.

877-960. Or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And don't forget, www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And ladies, really, if you have something to say, and you just want to remain anonymous. You too can take advantage of that. www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

And don't forget, I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. Now we're going to go to Stu. We got some interesting information from Eric on Facebook about Roger Dean. We were just talking about Roger Dean earlier in the show. He said a while back Roger Dean, Buick, GMC, and Fort Pierce was sold to Garber Automotive Group. Also, Wallace Automotive Group purchased the Roger Dean, Chevrolet, and Stewart. The old dealership was demolished and Wallace built a new building there. And also, he said, Bev Smith, Kia in Fort Pierce, told me when I was there for service

that my problem with my paint on my 2014 Kia sole was not covered by any warranty. So it doesn't look like Kia is doing the same thing that Toyota and some of the other manufacturers are. Yeah, I would say, don't trust Best Smith Kia, Kia, take it to another Kia dealership or even contact Kia directly to be sure. It would be interesting to see or hear the age of the car. It would also be interesting to know if Best Smith Key and I don't know this, if they have a body shop or a collision repair center there. There might be too much trouble for them to refer this out to a body shop

that can handle the paintwork. Excellent point. Let me say this. Great point. Strangely enough, this is insider knowledge most people don't know. Most car dealerships today don't have body shops. And it's a not as a profitable division as a used car department or service department. And most dealerships just have the heck with it, it's not worth it.

So there are still dealerships that have body shops. And if you're going to have a paint problem under warranty or goodwill repaired, okay by the manufacturing. you're better off to take it to the dealer that does have the body shop simply because they are more expertise in fixing a Honda. You have a Honda dealer with a body shop. If you take it to Joe's paint shop, you might not get the job done right. And I think there could be some issues with the manufacturer. They want to be sure that they get what they're paying for.

If they're going to give somebody $4,000 to paint your car, they don't want to get a $1,000 paint shop. So try to find the dealer that has a certified paint shop, collision center they call them now, body shop. That's right. Because the guys that don't, they just send them out to another body shop. Yeah. And you never know what you're going to get.

And then might not want to be worth of trouble. Right. As you're saying, your point was about Besmouth Kia, they don't want to be bothered because I got all the paperwork. I'm not making money off this. I'd have to tell you, I'd have to send it to a body shop. and handle the supplement and i'm not getting paid for that a lot of paperwork yeah a lot of paperwork yeah and you know back in the day boy i'll tell you what you want to

depreciate your car go ahead over to joes and see what happens whenever it's time to trade that car in i can report that uh best smith kea does have a body shop so uh the the point in this case is moot they just uh who knows what who will well i still check with another key ad you know check with Kia, there might be, maybe they just, you know, a lot of things we accuse dealers of doing because they're conniving, it's just because they're just not informed. And, you know, dealers are not all crooked, and they always try to take advantage of it. Sometimes it's just give you misinformation because they don't know. And so you go to another dealer, and it's like you to go to another doctor. You get a second opinion, get a third opinion. If you've got something

expensive like a paint job, give a second or third opinion. Yep. Great information. We are going to excuse Sue for a moment, and we're going to go to Palm Beach Gardens where Mark is holding. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, everyone. Being as a tight department is my specialty in my work experience. I just wanted to say a couple of things about Earl's 100% right, especially, I'm being a dealer owner, is that the body shop department is least profitable. And most dealerships that have them today, it's more of a customer service, you know, a service to the customer by having a collision center rather than the profitability department.

Second thing, definitely people talked about having repairs done prior to a warranty paint job. You definitely want to have it done at whoever's doing the paint work. Otherwise, they won't guarantee any work as over the top of somebody else's repairs. Good point. You know, if you go to another repair facility and they fix your dense and your scratches to prep it for a good paint job, you know, as close to factory as it can get, they're going to say, hey, we're not going to cover adhesion to those repairs because of somebody else's primer. They may not have prepped the surface properly or sand to get properly. So they're going to put a top coat over it, but they're going to tell you, hey, our work is not guaranteeable because someone else has done the work. If we do the work, we can stand behind it more so than if someone else does the work.

And thirdly, paint the lamination. I tuned in unfortunately late, right in the middle of you guys were talking about this subject. But, you know, when you go to prove to a factory lamination, yeah, you know, I would understand Allen in the game going ahead and proving that with the tape test. But if somebody just does it in their own front yard and gets your neighbor and says, hey, hold the camera. And they put a piece of tape over the paint and go, hey, let's see if this stuff feels. And then it comes up with the tape, and then you go into the dealer and say, hey, look, I've got a delamination problem. Well, the factory rep's going to sit back and say, hey, you know, how I know. That's all I was saying.

I agree with you, Stu. I agree with you, Stu. But Earl's point, have the Body Shop Department do it, and they say this is something we should do. Yeah, yeah, that's different. Yeah, that's the only way you could do it. Otherwise, the factory rep is going to be super crucial in my 30s. seven years of dealing with factory reps is they're going to look and maybe it's different with different manufacturers but they're going to look for any excuse to try not to cover

a problem like that unless you know it's within a warranty period or close thereafter but a 10 year old vehicle they're going to try to get out of pain for that every day if they can't so anyway those are the three areas that I just wanted to comment and unfortunately like they I apologize for not getting into the conversation earlier, but I did a little sleeping in. I'm prepping to go into the hospital for a couple of weeks, so I didn't get to tune in until a little bit too late. Well, you sound good. Are you okay now, Mark? Well, I got a major infection with my amputee.

I'm a double amputee, and I got an infection in my system that's attacking my amputations. So I got to go in for therapy, but it could be a week. It could be a month, so who knows. Well, good luck. We'll still be talking to you on Saturdays, and I'll still be talking to you at sunrise. You'll have a great day. Yeah, Mark, I'll tell you that you're a man of experience and you're funny, and God bless you with your procedures. And please give us a call again, and thank you for joining us on the International Sunrise.

Yeah, and I'm glad to be one of the vigilantes. but, hey, in today's world, if you can't smile, you've got a problem. But have a good day. Thanks, Mark. Thanks. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. I think we better get back to Stu immediately.

I'm going to get Amory's text. Amory texted in, but I thought this was kind of funny. I don't know if Earl can see his background. So, Earl, your background is pretty spooky. I'm worried that the headless horseman is going to sneak up on you. I can't see the background, so I don't know what's going on. It's all green. No, it's just some winter.

winter-wintery-looking roads, some trees, a little misty. I think it's the same person who keeps commenting on the background there. I love those autumn leaves. I would like a wild wild west background. Can we do that? John can put anything by it. Be careful. Yeah. All right. Okay, let's jump over to Anne-Marie's text. Good morning. Dealerships are the hallmark of American automotive industry. Customers can buy and get their vehicles maintained at a dealer.

If a Toyota, Ford, Chevy, Volkswagen, Honda, et cetera, has a recall, the vehicle's owner can just bring it to the dealer, assuming the parts are available and get the vehicle fixed. Tesla has a different business model. They have showrooms rather than the usual dealership. Their cars are gorgeous, but they are machines, and machines can develop problems. I can't help but wonder what would a Tesla owner do if Tesla had a recall, where and how would it get fixed? Just wondering, and that's Sam Marie. Well, they do have a network of dealerships, and there's one on, what is it, Blue Aaron Boulevard, or we've been by there. They have a showroom in the Gardens Mall, or the Gardens Mall, so they are available, and I think they've got it pretty much covered.

I think that if there's a problem, there is a pickup and delivered, they will give you a loaner to use, and they take the car back, ship it back to the plant for repairs. But like Anne-Marie said, there's not, there's a lot less that can go wrong on a Tesla. A lot of the problems they would have would be software-related, and a lot of those things would be delivered over the air. Well, if the dealership on Blue Heron Boulevard, I might have that, it's in that area. I think it's just a service area. They have a service department, yeah. So they fix it, right?

Yeah. I still don't know how widespread those are. Yeah. Okay. Robert in an, oh, do we have a call? We do. We have a call from Palm City, and that's John, a regular caller. Good morning, John.

Good morning to everyone. I want to speak about off-road vehicles that people can use every day. They run a tremendous increase before we mount. The one number one is the Jeep Wrangler. And then Ford announced the Bronco in July, and so far they have 165,000 deposits. They said they'll sell 200,000 next year. And it's an amazing vehicle for one reason. You can take off if it's a two-door or four-door, you can totally remove the door.

you can even take the roof off. Oh, wow. And Land Rover now came back now after 23 years, the defender that's returning with them. And you've seen the new ads. It's crazy. It's probably $100,000 plus for the new Hummer. Crazy.

1,000 horsepower. The GMC is spending so much money. You see it all over TV. The ads for that, but boy, that sure must be an expensive vehicle. So they seem to be a tremendous increase of demand for these off-road vehicles. I live in western Mon County, and that's two or three acres that people have and land where they can use, especially if they go to Okachobi. But it's a tremendous increase on these off-road vehicles, and I think one of the hottest announcement is Ford coming back with the Bronco, and the basic price on the Bronco was 28,000,

so just by the amount of deposits they have on the car that looks like it's a winner. John, I think a lot of those off-road vehicles are popular because they look cool. I have a feeling that most of them are never driven off-road, and it's kind of like a pickup truck. You know, when you're going down the road, often you see anything in the back of a pickup truck.

People buy cars for emotional reasons, and because they look good in the car, cars and you know I don't drive off road so if they're out there I don't see them how do you know what's going on everybody every once in all he does anybody out there with an off road vehicle

call the show and let us know if you've ever driven it off road well I can speak to that I'm sure Rick and our sales manager Jason Lady he has a 4x4 Tacoma and that's part of his weekend recreation he takes it out to these muddy areas and just has a lot of fun but I think that's the exception I just don't

I don't know, there's a whole, I'm telling you, there's a whole community out there. Rick probably doesn't do it. I agree with you. I see them running around, but they're always clean. Yeah. How much can they be using them off road? Well, it's like a boater. You know, you take your boat out of the water, you hose it down, you do the same thing with your truck.

Right. The SUVs, which you see in your sales department, I mean, even the municipalities a couple of years ago got smart, and for the police cars, they buy nothing but the SUVs instead of regular four-door sedans. and probably because of the resale. I mean, myself, I wouldn't really buy a used police SUV, although on the Florida title, they have to show that it was used as a taxicab or a police car. But I just can't see, even though it's cheaper,

a car that was run so hard. Some of them around the clock would run 24 hours, and they do appear on you'll see them on used car lots. Usually can tell them because they have the different brakes on them, and they're not great on gas because they have a more powerful engine. And I just, it's my opinion, even though you can buy them cheaper, I just can't see buying a use SUV. That's for only a police car.

Your opinion? I agree, depending on the police car, it might be maybe Palm Beach or Jupiter Island police car. Probably not too many high-speed chases. Who knows? you're right it's true if it's a municipal or town

it's probably better than one that was used like the highway patrol yeah Los Angeles would be a different story one of the suggestion too on the mystery shoppering

it's not that far away if you go over to Okachobie which is northwest of West Palm Beach there's the dealership I think most of them are owned by one person and then you go north of that

Sebring It looks to me like going to that town. Every car dealer, it's like a Wallace Plus. It's owned by one family. So if I could just make a suggestion, it's really not that far away to the future if we could have mystery shopping reports for those particular towns, Ocichobie and Sebring.

It's not about that guy. What's the deal over there in Sebring, Jay, something? Yeah, Jay, gosh, you got me on that one. Because, see, I ran for Toyota dealer counsel, and he eked me out, and I was the alternate. You know, it's right on the tip of my tongue. And there's been so, I have talked to so many people up there because I have some relatives up there that have complained about this dealer who has several dealerships. Okay, well, we're going to shop him.

That's a good idea. I think he owns every dealership in the town. That's it, Alan, Jack. Great idea, John. Alan, that's him. We'll do that. Oh, you see, running around has his sticker on it, no matter what the brand name is. We'll be there.

You don't have to give me an excuse. We need a... Oh, no, I won't. He ran against me for a dealer of the year, FADA, dealer of the time dealer award. That's what it was, yeah. He beat me out. All right. I'm going to get even with him now.

Just keep an eye on the Broncos. It looks like they got a hot number. Yeah, exactly. Wow. Thanks so much, John. Everybody remembers the OJ's info on the TV. The world's most famous Bronco. Oh, absolutely.

Thank you so much. There's a winner. It's always in Ford. Oh. Thanks so much, John. Okay. Look forward to the shopping report. Thank you.

Always a pleasure. 877-960-9960, and you can text us at 772-49-30, and we're going to skip right over to Stu. Okay, dokey. Robert in Annapolis, Maryland, who is one of our vigilantes up in Maryland, it says, good morning, everyone. With the resurgence of another COVID wave, would it be a best practice for you to turn off the recirculated air on a vehicle's air conditioning on a test drive as an added measure to reduce the spread or also and shared rides such as Uber and Lyft?

Thanks in advance. I think that's a great idea. What do you think, Rick? It couldn't hurt. I mean, especially if you're in their car with a guy with COVID, I mean, so yeah, I think it's great. As a matter of fact, I asked my air conditioning guy if I could do that in my home, and apparently auto air conditioners are the only ones that allow you to do that. I think some commercial air conditioners and buildings will allow that, but yeah, bring in fresh air from the outside.

I would encourage you to roll all the windows down and wear masks. Yes. But I think it's a serious question. And Serge's answer would be, yes, it's a good idea to recirculate. Yeah. This is another text here says, Rick, I have a brand new 2020 Honda Passport, and I have had problems with the infotainment system. It periodically shuts down without warning.

Everything goes black. Then I get an error message saying service unavailable, and then the system boots back up. Honda dealer can't reproduce the problem, and so far hasn't been able to help me. What are your thoughts, Rick and Earl? Well, I'll go first because I'm out of the technical. guy, but I'm a business guy, go to another Honda dealer, and then I'd go to another Honda dealer until someone can fix it, and then I'd even use the L word, Lemon Law, and I would suggest that if you can't fix this, you're going to be getting me another car, and of course call Honda

directly, but it's just inexcusable when you bring a car to a franchise dealer, and you have a serious problem like you just described. And they say they can't help you. That's just unacceptable, and you need to get a dealer that knows what he's doing. I look online, too. Rick's always suggesting checking up forums and things like that. Online will verify a problem, but it won't tell you how to fix it. And when a dealer says, I can't fix the car that I'm franchised to service and sell, you've got a real problem there.

For me, step number one, set up your phone to record video of that radio. And so that when it occurs, because obviously it's intermittent, but when it occurs, you've got video evidence of it, then you take that to the dealer and say, look, here's what is doing. Great, great idea. Step number two, I would go online and Google for technical service bulletins for the Honda Passport for any radio issues, which sometimes is just a software update, and they may not be doing due diligence and checking for those themselves, which they should be. be. And number three, I would check in the forums to see if someone's had a similar case and if they have what was done to fix that one. And of course, like you said, I would definitely check with a different dealership and say, look, I've been having this problem. It's a brand new car. I want it fixed. And remember, polite persistence pays off. Absolutely. Great

advice. We are going to go to Paul, who's giving us a call from Missouri. Good morning, Paul. Hello. How are y'all doing today? Great. Welcome. I got a question for you. I'm in a position where I'm going to be firing a new Toyota, and for the lack of a better word, I've been pretty well. I don't want to say this. I've not had good experiences with cars that I've bought, paid too much for them, all that kind of thing. And I'm going to have a hefty down payment on a brand new. I'm looking to buy a new toilet. My question is, the sales process, do I haggle, if I want to haggle or talk about price and that sort of thing, do I talk to the salesman or do I talk to the salesman? Or do I talk to

the finance plan about those kind of phones. You're always better if you want to haggle

which if I were you I wouldn't want to there are better ways to buy new Toyota and the other

kind of car. Are you familiar with a company called True Car T-R-U-E-C-A-R?

Yes, I am. Okay. Go online and check the True-Car approved Toyota dealers in your area

in Missouri and you can probably find a couple and it would be over a wider spread of geography, but find the first one to be the nearest one to where you live. And you can go online and they will give you, you're going to have to give me your contact information.

You can make it up if you want to, as long as you have an email address that will reach you, and they will give you that car dealer, that Toyota dealer's price, including any extra fees or extra accessories. So that will be his best price. and then you can take that price to another Toyota dealer and say if you'll beat this price I'll buy it from here

it gives you a starting point to at least get a reasonable price it's not necessarily the lowest price you're ever going to get but you can use it to get an even lower price my second question is do you have a Costco warehouse anywhere near you no sir I don't not that I know of okay we don't have to have a Costco

if you want to join it because I just mentioned that because the Costco auto buying program is an excellent one. They will give you Toyota approved dealer, Costco certified, approved dealer, and the location. You have to go in to the dealership, unfortunately, and you ask to see the Costco price sheet, and they will give you a very good price. So that's true car and Costco are, to me, much better alternatives

than to be going in there and haggling. But if you want to haggle, I would haggle with the sales manager directly. And if you're going to haggle, you also have to go to at least three dealership. That's a lot of work because you're going to use a lot of shoe leather and gasoline driving around, but it'll take you longer. But always get at least three competitive prices. And if you can haggle with the sales manager, do that. Okay. Another question I have real quick is if you don't buy all their, like their extent, warranties and stuff like that.

Are they less likely to work with you on the price? I wouldn't let them know that. I would get my best price before I even talked about. In fact, I would even lead a car dealer to believe that I was going to finance with him. And the car dealers today

make more money by far financing the car than they do selling the car. A latest report came out, Auto Nation, the largest retailer of cars in the United States, just came out their public traded, so their numbers and their accounting is all public, they're making, I can give an exact number in the last quarter, they made on the average, $2,154 on every new car

and used car they sold, average, and that's only, that's not just the ones they finance, that's every one. Sometimes they didn't finance a car. So that would mean that the average, the average on cars they finance, they're making probably $3,000 or $4,000. on those cars. Whereas when they sell the car, they only make about 500. So you want to be, you want to keep it a secret that you're going to not finance with them. And you definitely shouldn't finance with them, by the way. But if they think they're going to have a shot at you to make a big fat profit in the Fance Department, they're likely to be more lenient with you in the price that you pay up front. So you'd get a lower price by them thinking you're going to

get financed it. And then you could say, Surprise, surprise, surprise, I'm going to use my credit union or my bank. Right. Okay. Well, what I was talking about was there, like the extended warranties and that sort of thing. If you don't buy that, they still have to treat you like a customer if you have a problem with your car. Oh, sure. Yeah.

Again, it goes with the same theory of financing, selling the extended service contract. If they think they can sell you one, they're likely to be a little. easier on you in the price during the negotiation. And then you can after that, if you decide you're not going to buy the extended warranty, then you just say, I changed my mind, I don't want to buy one. Yeah. And you just stand firm on that.

Yeah, I just, yes. And you've got the out-the-door price then, and there's nothing like that. Nothing they can do. They're not going to lose a sale because you change your mind about the warranty. They won't do that. Okay. All right. Well, I appreciate you. You all have become an addiction

every Saturday morning for me. I'm sitting out here at the park. Y'all ever make it up to Missouri? No, but I think Nancy has a daughter out there, don't you? Yes, she stays out there from time to time. Consider being a vigilante for us out there, Paul. I mean, you can check it out on Earlsvigilandies.com. We're looking for representatives around the country.

We don't have a vigilante in Missouri yet, and we're trying to get all 50 states, and that way you can consult with people that are having difficulty in dealing with dealers and you can contact me directly or Stewart, Nancy, or Rick and get some answers and help your fellow Missourians out when they're buying or maintaining a car. That's right.

Show me. I might do that after I figure out how to do that myself. But I appreciate, I'm pretty dumb when it comes to stuff like that. Anyway, I appreciate all that. do for us and I enjoy listening to y'all every Saturday morning thank you Paul say thank you sound like you sound like an auto expert well I'm not that's the that's the big lie going into all this and it scares me to death we'll get you there just keep listening well you continue to listen and we appreciate your call stay in touch

let us know how your uh how the transaction went we know you that you are the show me state thank you one more question I have for you real quick is it a good idea to go in with your credit score

so they don't have to look it up they can maybe do a deal based off what you've looked up yourself so what is that a good idea absolutely go in there do not let them run your credit until you're comfortable with everything but if you can get your credit score

from a service and you just and you let them hey listen I know my score is blank work up your deal based on that. Okay. And if my wife is going to be a co-signer, or, you know, her name is going to be in the title, too, she probably needs to have her credit score as well, right? That'd give them a better picture.

You can still get just a working deal to see where you are. If you guys have, you know, good credit, you can say assume excellent credit or assume a certain score and just give them a hypothetical. But Paul, just remember, your bank, and if you're a member of a credit union, will give you a lower rate. Unless you're buying a manufacturer's subsidized interest rate, Toyota, the Honda, and all the manufacturers now incentivize lower interest rates, those are legitimate.

You can get 1% or 0%. That's legitimate. But if it's not a manufacturer's initiated special low interest rate, you're going to do better at your credit union or your bank. okay all right all right I think that answers

all my questions and I'll be calling you back you kind of hard to get a hold of but I kept persistent thanks Paul I appreciate your persistence again yes thank you and Paul if you can't

remember all the information that we gave you our show is recorded so you can take a look at www. YouTube.com Erlon Cars jot down all that information

that'll really help you but please please give us a call back and let us know how your transaction went. Okay, I will do that. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Now back to Stu. All righty. This is really interesting. Everett texted us. So good morning, still love your show. I heard on a radio news report something about Florida and the state of Florida a recall incentive

for recalled Honda-Tacada airbag automobiles. And he wants to know, will this incentive be extended to Toyota and other makes? I hadn't heard of that, so I googled it. And last month, it was actually, Ashley Moody announced this, or Florida Attorney General, and it appears it's only for Honda. So there's about 50,000, 52,000 Floridians available. And if you've had your Honda air, I mean, if your airbag, the kind of airbag replaced on your Honda vehicle, you can get reimbursed or get an incentive, a debit card worth anywhere between $50 to $150. And it can be activated once the airbags are replaced. So this is an incentive to get people.

I'm sorry, you get the card, and it gets activated once you get the airbags replaced. Now, that is amazing. We should have known that. But that is great information. Honda or Accura, which are the same. Yeah. In a way, it's kind of a sad statement that you have to pay somebody $25 to save their life. But if it works, and I salute Honda for that, I wish all the manufacturers would do that.

But, you know, the strange thing, and I think it's going to work. We have an example in our dealership with COVID testing. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Excuse me, Stu, we're going to go to Delery Beach where Scott is holding. Good morning, Scott. Good morning. Welcome.

I was coming home from work this morning, and I heard a part of your show about the paint issue. And I wanted to call and tell you that I have a 2013 Kia that had surface rust on the, just above the windshield of the front of the vehicle. And it's interesting that I took it to my local Kia dealer that we purchased from in Delray, and they basically said, good luck. You know, they weren't going to help. I then took it to a bunch of different shops around here, and nobody wanted to even touch it. I finally found a shop that gave me a fairly decent price, and I had to sign a paperwork that said that I understand

that the windshield could break when they pull it out, and I'd have to pay for that. I understood that there was no warranty or guarantee on the work. And then I heard you guys saying that maybe you could contact Kia directly on something like that. Now, I apologize because I didn't hear the entire discussion this morning. I was just curious if this was something that you all have dealt with. God, surface rust isn't what we were talking about. Surface rust on a 2013 vehicle, I'm afraid they'd be apt to on environmental issues with the paint was worn thin.

The rust warranty on a car is only on rust that comes underneath the paint. If the rust comes from the outside, surface rust, as you described it, then it's not really. usually the warranty covers perforation so if it goes through the actually starts eating into the metal and it perforates that's what it kicks in so you'd have an uphill battle on that and we were talking about something called a delamination which is actually a defect of the paint and the paint it looks fine on the outside or it can look fine but it will peel off eventually

starts the bubble right because it's coming from underneath understood I was actually pretty lucky I found a local a collision shop that did the work. They didn't break the glass and it was surface rust so it didn't go down into the channel of the glass or anything. So

we were actually very lucky. But I did want to touch base with you. Thank you for that information. Thank you all for your show. I enjoy listening each morning on my Saturday morning on my way home from work. And please, everyone, stay safe, wear your

masks. You too, Scott. Good idea. Thank you so much, Scott. We enjoyed your call. All right. Keep listening. Bye-bye. I think we're going to run back to Stu. Yes, we are.

Okay. We have a text from, let's see here, from Bob. He wants to know, how often should you change your oil if you drive a car less than 1,000 miles per year? Well, Rick, I do that because that's a very misunderstood issue, isn't it? Most manufacturers still recommend every six months, or actually I beg your pardon, every six months for tire rotations, but it's about once a year now on synthetic oil. And if you're really not driving much, the tire rotation doesn't become that big of an issue, but the oil change still should be done about once a year because the contaminants and moisture in the air can begin to collect inside the engine. And the oil is what cleans all that out and helps get it out of the engine. So it's still a good idea to do it once a year.

Yeah, it's especially a good idea when the car is under warranty because technically you're supposed to maintain your car by the owner's manual recommendation. And that is exactly what the recommendation is. Time and mileage. It's either or. So if you're a low-mile driver, you still have to use the time guideline. And as Rick just said, for synthetic oil, it's one year. even if you put 25 miles on the car and sat there for a whole year,

you're still supposed to change your oil once you're because of the humidity and the, what is it, the contaminants in the atmosphere. And oil degrades for a lot of reasons, not just from driving. And it's also a good idea to bring it in, let a qualified mechanic look over it. Make sure you don't have any other issues coming up. Yep. Okay. Okay, here's another one.

This is from Shannon B. in West Palm Beach. She says, I'm planning to purchase a full-sized truck before the end of the year. I have narrowed my choice to the Ford F-150 and the Chevrolet Silverado 1500. What's your opinion of these trucks? Please help me make my choice. That's from Shannon. I'll give a shoot from the hip. I'll say the Ford.

The Ford is, I think, pretty much considered the standard in the industry. One of the best trucks, and Chevrolet comes in second. Consumer reports would, I check with consumer reports, But I think they would confirm that. Yeah. Yeah. Now, Shannon, I believe it was last month's consumer report. That's a great way to go.

Great suggestion from Earl. And that will give you all the information that you need. So go to Consumer Reports. Okay, do. Excuse me, Stu. We're going to go to Frank and Jupiter Farms. Good morning. How are you, Frank?

Well, good morning, Earl, Nancy, and the rest of the gang. as always, it's a good day, especially when you see another sunrise. Yes. Two in a row. Yeah, a couple of quick questions. In regards to my girlfriend's Amory, 2008, Lexus, RX, 350. On the top of your head, do you know how many quarts of oil that takes for an oil change? What was the car again one more time?

2008 Lexus Rx 350 should hold about five and a half on the 350 because it's a 3.5 liter engine okay okay very close here's the other question we went in for a place and we unfortunately didn't take your dealership this time we tried something a little closer they did a little change and they rotate the tires since we and then they charged us for an extra quart of oil for $12 because they said it totaled six quarts, which I thought it was unusual. But anyway, since we got the tires rotated, it has a pretty heavy pool to the right. And let me add a little something else before that. When we had to left the car, one of the guys called and said, oh, we did a battery check,

your battery needs to be replaced. It's going to be $150. And I said, no, that's a gate. We got a battery. I mean. So anyway, they were really disgruntled when they were. pick up the car and did not have paid for a battery. So since we picked up the car and now it pulls to the right, I'm just curious, just curious,

if we bring in to you guys this week and get the alignment checked and done, of course. Can you tell if anything has been kind of fooled around with, making it what a pull or is just possibly by rotating the tires could cause that? It's the tire rotation. 99.9% of the time, a tire pull is caused by what's called tire conicity or rolling resistance. And the first thing that we're going to do is take it for a drive to verify. Swap those two front tires left to right, drive it again, and odds are it's going to be fine. Wow. Okay. Let's talk about that week. I always learn something new every day,

and you just proved that point for Frank Nash. Thank you. Okay You're very welcome I'll let you guys Get back to the other customers As always We totally enjoy your show Thank you very much

We enjoy you Frank Thanks for the call Good luck I think it works out of YouTube He's been sitting on for a while over here Yeah I got a kind of interested one Naked One says Hello Earl

What do you think of the high horsepower Cars and Trucks Like a thousand horsepower 700 RAM TRX do you think there will be a government limit at some point as to how powerful they can make these different cars and trucks, the muscle cars like the challengers in that and these heavy trucks that are hugely overpowered?

You know, they've been talking about that for as long as I've been a car dealer, and there seems to be an appetite for horsepower. I think it's largely with men with too high testosterone. I'm not sure what it is. That's an interesting way to put it. Existed with me when I was 18 years old. And now that I'm 80, I don't want the 1,000 horsepower car in Marza. Maybe there's some sort of correlation.

But, no, I think because the men make the laws, they'll probably consider, you know, 1,000 horsepower cars really cool. I read about it. I look at the Wall Street Journal, New York Times. every time they come up with a huge high horsepower SUV truck sports car

the more horsepower the better and even now here we are in the age of electric cars and everybody's really excited because you can go zero to 60 and 1.9 seconds now why the hell would anybody want to go 060 to 1.9 second? It feels good.

You know I like the way you referred to that you defined testosterone I think you've been hanging with me too long. Anyway, is that Megan? I don't have a fast one on it and I got a little tea.

That's a great question. No, when I was younger, I really enjoyed it. Wait a minute. What about their Tesla we were in? Yeah, well, I got to admit I got a little temptation.

You loved it. Still a little fire in the furnace. You're scared. You're just scared. I saw those horns coming out and you were behind the wheel. I think Nancy threatened you if you got a Tesla.

That's what I think. It's kind of like, I think you threatened them if you bought a Tesla. You know your life would be in danger. It's like when I go out. I'm a seasoned driver with him. I order the steak. I order the steak, but I just can't eat it.

I mean, it's just, the idea of a 500-pound, 500-horsepower, Hummer, you know, my mind says, that's cool. And then my brain says, that's really stupid. And so my brain wins the arguments now. Well, here you are taking charge of a two-ton. That's the goal. That's the goal in growing up. Have your brains start winning. I like that. Well, thank you, Megan. We loved hearing from you. I hope we answered your question.

We have some anonymous feedback we can get to. First one I got here says, what is the invoice price on a $40,000 Rav4 hybrid? Is this a good starting point for negotiation? The supply seems to be low here in Denver. Any idea what the reason might be at this time? Thank you. I can address it. We'll first answer your question. Invoice price on a $40,000 Rav4 hybrid is, oh gosh, I just headed up there right in the second. It's about, oh gosh, I lost my place. It's about $38,000. But at invoice, there's also about $2,000 worth of holdback in there. It is not a high supply vehicle. It's more available than some, like, let's say like a Highlander hybrid. But, you know, we stock. out of a, say, 40, 50,

RAPFORS in stock about 10 to 14 hybrids. And we are actually, you know, currently at our dealership where we're selling for about 700 over invoice right now. But I would recommend skipping the whole negotiation game, whether you're in Denver or anywhere in the country, try true car and do what we say on the show every week. Just try and compare several different dealers and then give the shot to the guy that gives you the lowest price.

And just so the new listeners, we've said this before, invoice is the worst source of information to make a buying decision. Invoice sounds like the cost of the car. It sounds like it may be at least near the cost of the car. The fact of the matter is, on average, more cars are sold below invoice than are sold over-invoys. When a dealer gets an invoice from the manufacturer for the car that you bought when he got that invoice. He got kicked back thousands of dollars after the fact. And the kickback is profit.

They call that cost and invoice. It's a lie. Invoices are a lie. They do not show the cost of the car. If you have to use a measuring stick, get the MSRP. It's the same. And then you get the maximum discount from that MSRP with three different dealers, buy it from the dealer that gives you the best discount off of the same MSRP. But don't play with the invoice. It's too tricky. It is. It's a shell game. If you look at a Toyota invoice, for example,

it'll show you the MSRP and then the cost. The dealer actually does pay the manufacturer that whole amount of the invoice, but then down below in a small paragraph it will list the holdback. And that holdback, for example, on the RAF or hybrid that we're talking about adds up to about $2,000

and that is given back to the dealer at the end of the month or during It's not just holdback as things like advertising subsidies, floor plan assistance. There's a multitude of ways the manufacturers can secretly, and that's what it is, secretly give the money back to the dealer, leaving them the customer to think that invoice really has got something to do with what he paid for the car. Next one, anonymous feedback. When you're haggling with a salesman, is it necessary to give them a down payment of anything

to proceed to the next step. And I think what they're referring to are these deposits. Unfortunately, and we have a small version of this in our mystery shopping report, it's used to, and I don't know why, I was trained this way a long time ago by Earl. To get a commitment, if somebody makes an offer, so I'll pay you $20,000 for this car,

and they go, all right, can you give me a deposit to take to my manager to show them that you're seriously making a commitment to buy? You know, back in the day, I'll tell you how crazy it was, you know, 40 years ago, he always had to get a commitment. So the sales manager, they call them a closer, they sit in his little glass den office, and then you send the troops out to argue with the customer, and he comes back with an offer from the customer, because now we're haggling, comes back from the offer, he says, did you get a deposit? He says he didn't bring his checkbook.

did you did you have any cash no I said go get his watch I'm serious I mean you the sales manager would not talk

with a customer unless they had made that commitment and if you said if he brings me a casio you're fired but yeah that's commitment it's a way it used to be done and it's the way it's still being done if they ask you to do that

I'll use Earl's advice leave and if you ever do give anybody a deposit for any reason be sure that you verify it's refundable. In the state of Florida, for example, you should get a receipt, and the receipt either says it's refundable or it's not refundable.

If it doesn't say it's refundable, technically the dealer doesn't have to give you the deposit back. Great how things have changed for the better. We are going to take a quick call from Fort Pierce, and that's David who's calling. Good morning, David. Hey, how you doing? Can you hear me okay?

Yes, you're loud and clear. very good hey uh is ero are you servicing guy there is you familiar with jeep granite charities uh

enough to stay away from them sorry well okay that's not what I wanted to hear but that's okay I have a question for you sure I ran out of gas in mine

one day and I was stuck in the middle of an busy intersection and the first First thing I did was put it back in part, got out, raised the hood in the name of safety, and called somebody to come give me some gas. Well, in the meantime, some people came by and tried to, they were going to push me out of the way to a safer spot.

Well, it would not go into neutral for me to push it. Huh. And I've gone to the dealer, and they don't seem to have a solution for me. and I'm very frustrated. I've been trying to get a hold of Jeep but it's like trying to get a hold of the Wizard of Oz it seems like. Oh, boy.

Nobody seems to have a solution as to what to do if you want to move your vehicle. I asked them, I said, what if I had a faulty gas gauge and I was unaware that I was running out of fuel when I ran out.

Right. I'm going down the road. I said, what would you do to move the car? Because you can't move it in part Now, what years your Wrangler? I bet you

Grand Cherokee. It's a 2018 and it's got 19,000 miles on and it would not let you get it into neutral.

It would not go into neutral and the funny part about it is I went back to the dealer and they didn't even want to walk

outside and look at it. They just told me they'd check into it. Oh, my. Oh, no. Somebody somebody should have

about and look at that vehicle. That's wrong. Well, try this. I believe that used to be. It's probably still a regal Chrysler Jeep Dodge, but it was bought by a man named Larry Morgan, and his son, Brent Morgan, is the CEO of the Morgan Auto Group.

And you tell him that Earl Stewart told you to call Brett Morgan about the problem, but if you can help him out, he won't call Brett Morgan, but just use that name. Sometimes you just have to get the attention of someone, and the new owner of that dealership is Larry Morgan and Brett Morgan, the Morgan Auto Group. And you just tell him Earl Stewart's going to call the father or the son

and complain about your issue if they don't take care of you. Well, the thing about it is I went up and talked to one of the salespeople. Yeah. And we went to one on the serving floor, 2020. I said, see if you can get it in neutral without starting it. It wouldn't work. And I'm just wondering, how do you get it in neutral if you're in a situation like that? I don't believe that that should be the case, and I think you need to get a technical expert.

They should have said this. They should have a technical person come down from, you know, wherever their office is, and look at it. Now, I think Rick's Googling and probably Stu's Googling, and we're going to see if we can find anything on chat rooms or Google about Jeep Cherokee's not being able to go into, you know, outer neutral or into neutral when they're out of gas. It just doesn't make sense. Well, I was curious if Toyota had any setup like that in any of their vehicles.

No. That you may be familiar with. Never heard of it. Well, the closest we have to that would be the Prius, where it's an electronic transmission with an electric park feature that if the battery were to die completely on the car, the 12-volt battery, where you couldn't start the car, you cannot put it into neutral. You can't you, the cars, you have to have battery power, but even on the Jeep, if your battery is strong, there's no reason why that car should not be able to be put into neutral.

I think you're getting some bad, I think you're getting some bad information and you need to talk to somebody that, knows and one way to get their attention is say you're going to call the boss. Well, I've contacted the Jeep customer service and I've gotten no response from them whatsoever. Shocking. All I want to do was, I don't even want to get into that. They were useless. Let me put it out way. Well, call back next week and we're going to do some research and we'll hear if you have a luck and if not, maybe we'll have some research and help you out. Well, I did just find about a 30-40-second video on YouTube that shows how to put it into neutral. Are you starring it? Starring in the video?

Nope. Not me. But it shows, I'm just watching it here now, and it shows the guy basically he's pulling up the little leather boot around the shifter and then hitting the button inside the override button with a pocket screwdriver. So all you need is just a very tiny screwdriver. Yeah, we're going to have to move along the mystery shopping report, but I'll tell you what, if you'll give us your email address, we'll send you that link that Rick just found. And just send it to 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530, and we're going to have to move along down to the mystery shopping report.

Thanks very much for that call. Thanks, David. And if you want to re-watch our... recorded stream you can go to wwww youtube.com or on cars okay thank you so much roger dean Chevrolet now who wouldn't want to save ten thousand dollars i've got a little picture here of the ad that we responded to and ten thousand dollars off you know on any kind of car sounds pretty cool uh we do we do this looking for big discounts on this show we've discussed it many times. In fact, we've even seen bigger discounts than that.

By the way, the reason for the Monroney label is to measure discounts. If you have that as a point of reference, you can't choose the best deal if you shop at least three dealerships. We've investigated about every kind of car dealer bait and switch ad, and we usually know what the catch is before going in when we send our shopper. Typically, the really big discount makes a vague promise like up to $9,000 off, new 2020 models. The operative term, of course, is up to, kind of like virtually. But the full $9,000 discount can only be applied to the most expensive vehicles. Typically a truck, SUV, land cruiser for Toyota has a huge margin,

and they'll sometimes hide that in a fine print with the $10,000 discount is only available on one land cruiser, which maybe doesn't exist. What makes this week's investigation interesting is that the really big discount that Roger Dean Chevrolet and West Palm Beach is offering is quite specific. $10,000 off MSRP on a new 2020 Chevy Tracks, TRIX, a small SUV.

They even provide details in the ad. The MSRP is 22-295, 22,295, and the sale price is 12,000, 220. $195, practically half off. And earlier... Roger Dean likes that whole half-off thing. Yeah. Maybe it was Ghost.

Maybe that was Roger's Ghost decided to do this. And it is kind of humor. I talked earlier in the show, I can't do it again. We don't have time. But there was a big sale by Roger Dean, and he did 50% off. And it was a riot at the West Palm Beach Auditorium. Moving right along, there was some fun. along. There was some fine print. It was very difficult to read. It looked like it indicated

something about dealer retaining rebates, additional fee, stock number, but we couldn't be sure. Let me tell you something. When we can't read the fine print, you're talking fine print. I am getting older. I mean, a few years ago, I could read it all, but it's a... Well, I couldn't read it, and I was, I was, had my magnifying glass out. We last shop Roger Dean Chevrolet in the pre-COVID area way back in February. Oh, God. It didn't seem like a decade ago. It does seem like 10 years ago. Then as now, they were advertising a really big discount.

I mean really big. $17,000 off. And of course, the catch was on one vehicle, the silver auto. Trucks had huge parkups. The catch was pretty straightforward. When a shopper tried to buy the truck, Roger D. He just inflated the list price

by arbitrarily adding $11,000 the MSRP so discounts mean nothing and you know if you don't adhere to MSRP manufacturers just as retail price you just add an addendum label how much you want a million dollar discount okay slap the addendum label on there I'm not going to the market value but there wasn't even an endendum on this one they just they just made the price on the bar's order 11,000 dollars higher yeah and then to give you a shipment exactly so we sent an agent lightning our female agent undercover shopper to investigate this week's ad. Here's the report. I arrived right when

Roger Dean's sales department was opening for business. Folded print out of the ad for $10,000 of the new tracks in my hand. I approached three salesmen sitting around a desk, only one of whom was wearing a mask. Shameful, truly. The mask wear stood up to greet me. His name was Andrew, and he asked why I'd come in. Good thing that guy stood up. Yeah, I mean, I guess They're going to sit around in a group, a bottle, one with a mask, because he's going to talk to the customer. Now, the two that have COVID are talking to him. It makes no sense. I showed him the ad and said, I want to buy this car immediately, as if on cue, all three said, it's sold.

It was unbelievable. It was just like they were trained, and they all said simultaneously. Like a group of parents. Yeah. I said, you're kidding, and asked if they had any more. And to acknowledge they had another new tracks, but said that would be about $4,000 more. Now, old school, folks, you're going to be hearing along this term. This is old school.

More than the one in the ad. He explained that the ad car was a 400-day old unit in stock over a year, and they sold it two days ago. You have to take their words for that, right? By the way, the Federal Trade Commission says when you advertise a car, this is the Federal Trade Commission, when you advertise anything, whether it's toothpaste, cars, TV sets, you have to have a reasonable amount of the product available. And they don't tell you what reasonable is, but I can tell you one thing. One, ain't reasonable. Great point.

So I said you're kidding and asked if they're doing. Andrew offered to show me what they had, led me out back I complained along the way that their ad was a trick to get a person to come in. Andrew disputed that characterization and told me this dealership was as transparent as they come. Yeah, I can see right through you. Well, they used to be as transparent as they come, but because all viewers did business that way, Roger Dean Chevrolet is standing out now

because most dealers don't do that now. Now they do a lot of of that stuff, but this is old school. Andrew sought to reassure me by promising that it was going to take care of me and get me the best possible price. Then he brought up the ad again. He said that the car was still listed. Listen to this. You're not going to believe this.

The car was still listed. They're still advertising it because it takes about four days after a car sold before it comes off the website. That ain't true. The reason for the delay explained... He keeps on going deeper, doesn't he? Yeah. The reason of the delay explained...

was the time needed for processing a bank paperwork. I mean, that's just stupid. And so here we have, there's one thing about a lie, and there's something else about a dumb lie. If you're going to lie, be clever about it. Who would believe either of those statements? So here we go. Digging deeper, I advised Andrew

that I expected him to give me a price close to the ad price. Andrew was direct. He said, he said, he'd been there long enough to know that this was not going to happen. He said the 400-day old car was costing the money and had to be sold. It was a special case. Well, I'll tell you what, they could have sold it any time they wanted to. They didn't have to run an advertisement with no disclosure or transfers. If you want to sell a car at half price, you sell it.

But don't advertise it and imply that there are other cars. at the same price, which was exactly what they did, is clearly deliberate, premeditated misrepresentation. So we found a 2020 Chevy Trax, a white L.S. model with an MSRP of 2390, Andrew left me to wait by the vehicle while he went inside to get the keys. We took it for a test drive. Andrew told me a story about how he wound up selling cars and sell for it, blah, blah, blah. I wanted to stick to business. I asked him how many days his tracks had been in stock. He said he had no idea. And he'd check. Back at the dealership, we entered an office, sat down. Andrew took my license and entered things into his computer. He asked me a series of questions. Was I a Costco member? And this confused me. Maybe Stu can.

I have no idea. He said, am I a Costco member? And had I been a Costco member for longer than two months? Neither one of us have any. any idea why. There's no requirement that I know of. No, you can join Costco today and get an auto discount tomorrow. We don't know why I ask that question. Maybe it's a special thing with Chevy. It could be. I don't know what. What vehicle did I currently drive? Do you want to know would I be trading an end? What did I plan to purchase? I answered his questions and left to speak to, and he left to speak to his manager. The manager was at a desk not wearing a mask. Andrew appeared to diverse with the manager who was typing away on the keyboard as he spoke for about eight minutes, came back to ask me if I had leased a vehicle in the household, and I said no,

and I asked why, and Andrew said there was an incentive available if I did have a leased vehicle in the house. In other words, the Chevrolet. He returned to his manager's desk. This time he was away for 15 minutes. It looked like he was waiting for his turn to speak with the manager. When Andrew returned, he had a sheet of paper, handwritten figures on it. He said that this particular tracks had a remote start, so it'd be a little bit more, he thought. I said I wanted to see something official like a printed document. I said I had a bad taste to my mouth from the ad, and now this is starting to feel sketchy. Andrew said he will give me something printed, but he needed to know, listen to this,

but he needed to know if I would give them my business if the price was right. So, you know, the old conditional, you want a good price? Are you going to buy the car? Are you going to give me your business? I mean, no sense I'm giving you my real price. If you're not going to buy it, I'm not going to give you my price unless you buy it. I mean, that's just so ridiculously old-school. I said I would, and then he asked me to sign the handwritten paper commitment.

Give me your watch. Your earrings. You're a female shopper. I want your earrings. Apparently, there's some indication of commitment. I signed it. Okay. Andrew left for 10 minutes.

And 8, and 8, 60, and 10. We've had 26 minutes of exchange between Andrew and his manager. He came back with a print of worksheet titled Purchase Agreement, which it really wasn't a purchase agreement. It was a worksheet, and it was no legal. Maybe there wouldn't be. They call the purchase agreement. I think that's sloppy on Roger Dean Chevrolet's part.

The top line was MSRP, $23,090. The selling price was $20,594. A hefty $804 in government fees. That sounds like a lot of money for tax and tag. Yeah, well, that didn't include tax. So I guarantee that's electronic processing, filing fee, tag agency is lumped in there. They're not government fees.

And they call the government fees. was added to that. That came a $995 processing dock fee after sales tax was added and a $4,250 rebate was subtracted. The out-the-door price was $19,053. Now I looked at the worksheet or the sales thing and they had another fee.

That was the, as you said, well, you have the worksheet, then there's the true car one below there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they had it, yeah. Anyway. snaky, snaky, sneaky all the way long. I told Andrew he was in close.

I asked him how he could expect me to be okay with a price. It was $8,000 higher than the ad for the same car. I know the car was older, but come on. Twice the discount. Makes no sense. He returned to his explanation of the 400-day-old car and how that was a unique situation. He said the ad should have come down,

but it was the back office handled it that way, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, think about this. You have two identical cars, okay? I think he said they have the remote start, but two identical cars. That only adds $395, so. Yeah. Yeah, so they're identical. So you have one because it was older. They discounted

an extra $4,000. But they're going to sell the same car to you for $4,000 more. I mean, it boggles the line. epilogue from the obnoxiously obvious bait and switch add to the chicken scratch customer commitment form this was plain old school we checked it to do a true car to see what a good price was should be on this model and receive an offer from roger dean chevillet roger dean chevillet turned out to be the true car dealer the roger dean true car price was within a few dollars of the price given agent lightning so it was there if they wanted to sell the car for a price the bulk of the discounted both the true car and the in-store prices came from a Chevrolet customer

rebate. Yeah, so I just wanted to point out with that because it wasn't like Agent Lightning was given this great deal. There's a pretty good rebate on it. Yeah. And it's a low-priced car, so there's not as much markup as you normally see. Yeah, yeah. And so that's the reason if you have a true car price,

we say it's good in the sense there's no hidden fees. There's no added accessories, but it gives you a base for comparison, from shopping with other dealers. Don't use a true car price as the price you're going to write the checkout for. Use it to start

your negotiation and go to at least two other dealers. But true car is a good benchmark. You've got a benchmark. Otherwise, you're flopping around you don't know what's a good price. Yeah, get you in the neighborhood. We have grades coming in. I will start with Linda, who was listening earlier

and she says lies, lies and more lies. Big, huge F from Linda. And then And also, Jonathan Williamton says, F, they're lying crook, shut them down. That's a very impassioned grading. Mark gives them an F, says deception. Anne-Marie says, only one person wearing a mask, lying, bait and switch, leaves customer sitting there, handwritten agreement, fees, et cetera.

It's all old-school rudeness. I'll give them an old-school grade, F. Okay, Rick. Let's see, I've got Tim Gilliland, no mask, I'm out the door, F. Donovan they clearly get an F here and Karen is this one is easy a big fat F definitely a big F from myself F F F F F it's just F because I mean I just yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna give him a B I'm sorry what type of B a B for big F I'm gonna fail I'm going with the flow yeah it's been a while since we give another have

Yeah. I mean, we've been on a pretty good streak. We've had two really good ones. Extreme swing between last week and this week. It couldn't be any more different. Very extreme. Very extreme. I got to tell you that ladies and gentlemen, this is the reason that, you know,

I just mentioned when we began to show that there's still these people out there, dinosaurs, these dealerships that are just. of unbelievably old school. And you want to buy a Chevrolet, you go to Schumacher Chevrolet, right? Yeah, they're on the list, the good list. Okay, we're good to go? No, you're great. What?

You're great. Oh, my grade. I got a grade. You got a grade. Yeah. I mean. Thanks, Jonathan. You are great, though.

Yeah. You're great, but we need your grade. Yeah, yeah. We've got to feel somebody that premeditotally lies to a customer. I mean, it's just unacceptable. I mean, it's not a curve. We're at the point now where we don't see anything this bad normally. And I've got Mark Ryan and Wayne Vait coming in both with F-Zil.

We've got about three minutes. Just quickly, and I alluded to this earlier, just a heads-up out there. Car dealers are focusing on finance and insurance income. They're making about $2,000 on every car they sell, whether they finance, on the average. So some of them they don't finance, that means on every car they finance, they're probably making $3,000.

And I'm using around numbers here. So remember, the pressure is on the car profits up front, and online buying is helping that phenomenon. So buy a car, you buy it online, you use a true car for a benchmark, you can get a good price on that car. But don't throw all that away

and go into the finance department, and get slammed dunked with a $3,000 or $4,000 profit. So use your bank, use your credit union, and you're home free. Stay away from the box. Stay away from the box. If you can, unless you have a manufacturer's incentivize interest rate. You have to out-fax the box. Yep.

Out-fax the box. I like that. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We certainly enjoy your company, and we will see. you next week. Stay safe. Have a wonderful weekend and go Steelers. Thank you.