Earl Stewart on Cars - 12.19.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Coral Springs Nissan

Episode Date: December 19, 2020

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Coral Springs Nissan to see if she can purchase a 2020 Nissan Altima S via the Costco price sent to her via email. 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. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back at what we love doing more, I'll say almost as more, as much as we like to do anything else. We love this show. We're your team. You just heard my recorded announcement. We're sitting here in the studio, ready for another live show. And I was kind of thinking in the car driving over the studio.

I really feel that, in addition, I having fun on the show and imparting a lot of educational material, I feel like we have a deeper purpose. And I think maybe that's the reason I get a warm, fuzzy feeling every Saturday morning between 8 and 10. I hope some of you feel the same way. We've got some regular listeners out there that have been with us for years and years. We have a team of vigilantes out there that we're signing up as we speak. I was just looking at the logo.

Stu was showing me the logo for our hats that we're going to supply to Earl's vigilantes. And this is an exciting new concept that we came up a few weeks ago. And it has the purpose is to have different people in different parts of the world, mainly the United States. We have them in Missouri and California and of course Florida, other states and people that are going to be representative of the Irwin Cars philosophy of trying to improve the way car dealers retail cars, basically. We want to bring the car dealer's perception in the eyes of the public up from dead last on the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions, up near the top.

I don't say we have to be up there with the nurses and the doctors, but we'd like to be up beyond, at least above average. Right now, we're dead last in the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions, and we have been for 50 years. That's about how long this poll has been conducted. Honesty and ethics, it's a pretty important thing when you're dealing with a retailer,

and the car dealer's image suffers a lot. So that's kind of a big purpose. You know, this year of 2020 coming to an end shortly and the year of the COVID, I think it's made a lot of us sit back and think, reflect on what life is all about and all those deep issues and things. We think, and Earl Stewart on cars, we feel good about what we're doing. We really believe that 2020 is a watershed moment and a lot of things, the way everything is done, the way people. invest the way people live where they live how they live where they buy how they buy online and the digitalization I got that word out I'll try it again digitalization of the world and the information explosion big data artificial

intelligence so it's been an exciting ride it's gonna be a smoother ride in 2021 I'm looking forward to that I know you are too We'd love to have you call our show, text our show. Love to have you tune us in on YouTube, Periscope, Facebook, of course, the old-fashioned radio, and our old-fashioned radio number, 877-960-960. And you can write it down because you might not have a question right now or a thought, but you will.

If you hang out with us for a while, we're here for two hours from 8 to 10. hang out for a while, you'll say, hey, I got an idea, and you won't have the number written down. So I'm going to ask you to write it down, 877-9-60-99-60. That's 877-9-60-9-60-9-60. Got a text number, and last I'm going to get out this anonymous feedback, but that's our most popular number for some reason. But to text, you see old-fashioned text? I said, old-fashioned.

15 years ago, I didn't know what texting was. Text number is 772-497-6530. Text at 772, 497-6530. Love to hear from you. I've got Rick Kearney over here on my right. Rick has been with me as an auto dealer. I have to be fully transparent about this. I am a car dealer.

You know, I kind of hate to admit it sometimes at a party. You know, sometimes I tell people I'm a shepherd or, you know. I hate to, because you get a, once you tell something to your car dealer, then you get into it. You're in that Christmas beer right now. Yeah. My what? The alternate occupation with Shepherd.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so I think that I lost my train of thought. I was just talking about Rick, and the next thing I'm talking about is, I don't know what I'm talking about now. But I do know that Rick Kearney has been with me for, what, 25 years, right? Yep. And I guess when you started out, maybe you were a grease monkey? Yeah, you could almost call me that.

And now he's an auto computer scientist. I mean, you talk about change. And I'm not just talking about Rick, I'm talking about the industry. Cars have changed mechanically and electronically and computerization. And they're complicated now. I mean, you can't pop the hood and look at it. And I used to be able to pop the hood and pretend like I knew what was going on. Now when I popped the hood, I can't even pretend like I know what's going on.

It's a great monolith. What's that, Rick? And, you know, today actually marks six years and three days since we started this radio show back up again. Oh, that's right. Yeah. We started this for you new listeners. We've been on the air for 17 years. Then I got fired.

Nancy and I got fired because the car dealers ganged up. I was on it, boycotted the radio station. on advertising, and the gentleman's manager of the radio station came over to my office and said, hey, I'm sorry about this, Earl, we like it, we like the show, you had good ratings, but we're going to have to let you go because economics is economics, and the car

dealers have said they're going to cut off on their advertising, and we were off here for about a year and a half, and we came back, and that's what Rick's referring to, and we came back bigger and stronger than ever before. We came back because the radio station got sold, and some people with some courage and the current owners of this radio station I salute them for their courage

to be honest, they're real journalists. They're not beholden to the advertisers to say what they say and do what they do. They tell it like it is, and I salute them for that. So we got a big better show, two hours instead of a half hour, that time was an hour when we got fired. And now we're two hours

and we're on Saturday from 8 to 10. So if you have any questions about anything or automobotive, has taken use the word mechanical because it's really computerization these days. You've got a problem with your car called Rick, 877-9-60, 960, and he can tell you maybe how to fix it yourself

at home without having to come into the dealership with wearing a mask or maybe go into a dealership where they don't wear a mask. People don't like to come into crowded places, I don't blame you. Maybe Rick can help you out, tell you something, hey, don't worry about it.

It's not a problem. And if it is a problem, he'll tell you the best way to deal with it. 877-9-60-9-60-9-60. I'm going around the table to my son, Stu Stewart. He's our spymaster, spymaster general. Probably the most interesting thing we do is we spy on other dealers.

I say that shamelessly. We spy. We sneak in once a week, pretend to buy or lease a car. Make it seem so bad. And we tell it like it is. I mean, we got a doozy. I'm not even going to touch that. I'm going to let Stu tell you about it. I'm just going to tease it a little bit.

So I get worried when I read the report. I usually try to do it midweek before the show, but sometimes it doesn't get done until later. Last night I was working on it until about 10 o'clock last night. So I get the report from our mystery shopper, Agent Lightning. And as I read, I have no idea what's going to happen. And it's kind of funny how we even wind up at the dealerships. We have a plan, and then things change.

change and we adapt and we wind up at a different dealership. So as I'm reading, there is a series of just, it's not necessarily bad things that the dealer did, but just maybe some problems with process, problems with maybe competence, I don't know, but it's almost comical. So there seems to have been a breakdown in the system. So as Earl reads the shopping report to you, try not to laugh too much, but it is a little amusing. At least I found it amusing. It is.

That was a good report. That was one of the most, and it's not going to be necessarily entertaining to our audience, but to me it was immensely entertaining. I'll tell you about it when we get to it, but it is really one of the most memorable for us shopping reports that we've done. Then we found out, by the way, it is Coral Springs, Nissan down in Coral Springs, Florida, near Al Hendrickson, Toyota, which we had mystery shop two weeks ago with Costco. And we realized later, I didn't know that Earl told me this this morning.

We know the dealer. We know the owner of the dealership. We're pretty good friends with their family, and they used to have Toyota dealerships, but we used to be in a 20 group or a special meeting group with them. Probably, yes. Yeah. Still, yeah, surprise every week. Okay.

And then to Stu's right and to my left is Nancy Stewart. Nancy Stewart has been with me from the very beginning when we were just with Sea View Radio and half an hour and begging for people to call the show. and just struggling with enough material for half an hour and then she evolved and we went to an hour and that was good. We never thought we'd be to two hours, but she's my co-host and she's my wife

and she's also a female advocate. We do something special in that area because, let's face it, folks, you read the papers, you read the news. Women still are not getting, in a completely fair shake out there. And they know that, and they feel it, and they don't like it. And Nancy is their spokesperson, and I'll just turn the mic over.

Nancy, she'll tell you what she's doing to help the ladies out there. We'll get to that information in just a moment. But as our listeners know, callers are very, very important to the show. So we're going to go straight to Howard, who's been holding patiently, and he is a regular caller from Jupiter. Good morning, Howard. Good morning. I hope you're all well. Yes, Howard.

And enjoying this beautiful weather. My grandson goes to Binghamton University. It has 40 inches of snow. It's the largest snowstorm ever. Even, you know, Buffalo is supposed to, you know, have more. but Binghamton really did well. Thank God I'm down here. All right, here's my question.

Amen. Okay. And I want to know why, when the, let's talk about Toyota. When did they change the style of, let's say, the Camry and the engine and the transmission? I know 18, 19, 20 is the same car. Am I correct? Camry did not change in 18, 19, and 20. That is correct.

Yeah, over the body. Yeah, the main changes, it was the same vehicle. A little minor changes here and there. Okay, my question is, when will it drastically change? Ah, that's a very good question. So Toyota doesn't really, like, give us, like, a long-term, like a heads-up on these things. it used to be the turnaround time for new design changes on cars passenger cars was five years and trucks and SUVs was seven years and since the great recession that sped up so we've been

seeing about just under four years for cars that said we're not entirely sure but I would expect to design maybe in 2023 that would put us around the four to five mark five year mark And things also slow down with the pandemic this year, so I don't know how that put crimps in the plans to develop new, you know, redesign models. And Howard, there's also a huge effort toward the electric revolution. The manufacturers are struggling to get a handle on it.

Even Toyota struggling to get a handle on it. They were going on hydrogen fuel cell route for a while, and they were one of the last to jump over to all-electric, but they did, finally. And every manufacturer has to make their choice. Where do they go? Huge, huge change to all electric vehicles. So the normal model change, style change,

is probably going to be on the back shelf. People are thinking now, when do we do electric? How do we do it? And I'm thinking there's going to be a consolidation of models. I can't believe that they're going to have electric everything anymore. I think you're going to find there was a proliferation of models before because that way they could flip back and forth. They got the SUV.

They got the van. They got the small subcompact And then there's so many different models It's confusing to the public I think you're going to see the models cut in half And I think you're going to see mainly electric So that's going to kind of put a new twist on everything Rick had a point

Just a quick side note here I read an article recently that said that Toyota Has on the verge of announcing A electric battery for their new electric cars With a 300 mile range At a 10 minute recharge. I just to add that we are not an

infomercial for Toyota or a Toyota dealership here. So this is a consumer advocacy show and we're here to help all makes in cars. There are a lot of cars out there on the road. Toyota only sells about 15% of them. So 85%

of our listeners are driving something else. Howard? My next question, Rick, read my mind. My next question was how can you get the charging rate, you know, time down because my friend puts his car in my condo and they're in the charge, and he's there for hours.

So my next question is, how can you get it down to, let's say, five minutes? And Rick just told me they got it down to 10 minutes. Howard, it's easy. I mean, when you have, look at what happened with COVID. It took something like, typically it would take 10, 15 years to do a vaccine, and when the COVID hit, we had one in a year, less than a year. When you put the total resources of scientific engineering community behind anything, it happens fast. And it always surprises us to the good side. The recharging time on the battery is going to come down faster than anyone can think.

longevity of the battery. You've already heard Elon Musk talking about, he has designed a million mile electric battery. So who would have thought that? I could have won a fortune in a barbed that it would be one day a million dollar, a battery that would last for a million dollars, million miles in a car. And how will it take to recharge it, 10 minutes, five minutes, one minute, 30 seconds? I don't know. But it's going to happen fast sooner than anyone can realize. probably not in my lifetime but oh yeah I've seen you running on the beach

it's going to be in your lifetime okay thank you very much have a good day everybody thank you Howard Merry Christmas Okay give us a call at 877 960 9960

or you can text us at 772 49767 65 and earlier early introduced me and some of the things that I do and one of them is to well support the ladies and build a platform here for them help them to feel just a little bit comfortable encouraging them to call and you know last week I had a nice chat with a female caller who did win $50 and she mentioned to me that most of the time you know guys like to get together

and talk about vehicles and the percentages are a bit higher for the guys and that's understandable and today some women like to talk about it but they're still a little bit hesitant and I thanked her for that information she says they're very very much involved she said but as far as calling and expressing you know how they feel well they're a little hesitant so therefore i encourage the ladies to give us a call and uh the reason we have fifty dollars for the first two new lady callers yeah fifty dollars for the first two new lady callers and our number is eight 77-960-9960 and we hope that you'll enjoy this next two hours we have a lot of information and a lot of free information and not only that but because of the pandemic there are places

that you just don't want to visit and that is a dealership or a service department and Rick, Stu, Earl, myself, we have a lot of information to share with you, but as I always say, you make the show. You're an important part of it. So give us a call. That number again, 877-960-9960. And don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. Okay, let's get into the text. on YouTube? Do we got a YouTube over here? Rick? Mark Ryan's asking, I've noticed many Chevrolet commercials recently that offer

employee pricing or pay what we pay for everyone. How close to reality is this promotional deal? Well, it's always, of course, like anything else that car dealers do, it's been abused, and employee pricing means that you can buy it allegedly for what the employee pays, but how much is the employee paying? We know car dealerships that charge their employees, hidden fees. In fact, most of them do.

If an employee of a car dealer buys a car, they have to pay the dealer fees, the hidden fees, and they pay a profit to the dealer. The manufacturers typically have a pretty good plan for General Motors, Toyota. I don't think Toyota has an employee. Yeah, they do. Southeast Toyota has a deal for the distributor, yeah. Yeah, it's for their, but they never offer to the public. Yeah, so if you can really buy a Ford for the Ford employee price, it's a good price,

but it's not a good price for the deal is going to add the hidden fees. In South Florida, the average hidden fee is over $1,000. So you're paying $1,000 of the employee price, even though Ford tells you you're paying the employee price, unless Ford enforces the removal of the hidden fees, which they may say so, but they're hidden. That's the problem. Ford doesn't know they're there. Certainly Ashley Booty, the Florida Attorney General,

doesn't know they're there, or she knows you there, but she doesn't care, but that's another story. And if it comes from the dealer, I wouldn't believe it. Yeah. If you see it on a national ad, or if it looks on Ford's website or GM's website. Boy price means nothing if it's a dealer price, yeah.

If it's coming from the dealer, trust me. It ain't the employee price. Well, it might be. Who knows? Any text? anonymous feedbacks? It will start with anonymous feedback. I'll go to the most recent and go older.

We haven't talked about the anonymous feedback. We have new listeners. We keep forgetting and we have new listeners. Anonymous feedback is exactly what it sounds like. There's a company called Incognito, and they do anonymous feedback platforms for companies.

And we've elected to adopt the platform, and you just go to youranonymous feedback.com Y-O-U-R anonymous Feedback.com, and we can't tell where it came from. So people like that, the cloak of anonymity. You can have that. We just did it for people that might be real shy or real angry

or want to say something real tough. Turns out a lot of normal people are using it to become our most popular platform. So it's about ready to read one right now. Yeah, and I think some people use it, not because they're going to ask something controversial or offensive, even though we, do get those as well. Sometimes they're going to ask a question, maybe the too embarrassed

to ask, maybe it seems like a simple, like a dumb question. Yeah, people don't like to sound dumb and they're not dumb. There are no dumb questions. So this is a great forum for this. Yeah, exactly. And for example, the most recent one that came in, and it's not a dumb question, but I could see somebody, you know, maybe one would want to bring this up in conversation, but it says how come they don't make cars with removable windshields so you can take them out on nice days? And at first, I laughed when I read that, I thought it was a joke, but they do, and Jeeps do this. They fold down, right, like on some of these off-road vehicles, so you can get splashed when you want to feel that mud in your face. They used to.

I don't know if the newer Jeep still have the fold-down windshield. Well, I saw pictures. I don't know the years, but I saw it look like somewhat, like, recent models. My guess would be a real challenge from safety, depending on the safety standards, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the rollover test, the side crash test. You could certainly have a removal windshield if it could pass a test, but that would be. Probably very expensive. He probably wouldn't want to ride on the Turnpike or I-95 with that.

Exactly. But I can see your motivation. It's been beautiful out the last few days. You're driving around thinking, man, it would be nice to feel a breeze right on my face. I'm going to kick this windshield out. Well, I can tell you from having ridden a motorcycle for many years, the difference between riding a bike with a windshield and without a windshield, the wind factor at highway speeds, it's aggressive and it's pounding on you.

Makes your face feel fuzzy. Just having a simple windshield on a bike makes a big difference. Absolutely. All right, moving along. The next one. I just wanted to commend you for offering special hours for seniors to help limit our exposure to coronavirus. I don't believe there are any other car dealers or service shops that do this. With the alarming surge with COVID, this makes me and my husband very comfortable.

Thank you. Another one. Well, I just comment on that is the fact that we, and Costco was a big fan. We love Costco. recommend the Costco auto buying program and our mystery shop today was based on the Costco auto buying program and we copied Costco on the on these seniors hours Costco I think we're one of the originators and if you're at Walmart if you're 60 plus any weekday at Costco between 8 and 10 you can go in and as they

block off Costco strictly for 60 plus people they check you they card you when you go on the door to be sure not only your Costco member but you are 60 plus and the only people in there are mask wearing everybody else wearing masks and you don't have any millennials run around with a mask halfway down or no mask or any of that nonsense you're all seniors in two hours they're gone and then they admit the other people and so we copied that and thank you very much for the compliment yeah that was another one of the recovering car dealers great great ideas and I hope that everyone else that's, you know, got a place of business will follow suit. 877960, 9960, and you can text us at 772-4976530.

Now back to stew. Yeah, I saw that, I was reserving a rib roast for Christmas and Whole Foods offers. I didn't realize, offers early hours for seniors only. So if you're going to shop anywhere, check their website out first and see if they do mention it on their webpage because it is a good thing. Yeah, whole foods also restricts the number of people in the grocery store. So you go to Whole Foods. Nancy and I stumbled across it and we, and I said, I don't want to wait in line. And there was about nine or ten people.

We got up there and boom, boom, boom. We moved in, social spacing in the line and bombed me in there. And you got in there, there's just a few people in there. So I salute Whole Foods and all the other responsible businesses in the country that are taking the responsibility to take care of their country. customers. Great idea. Folks, we're going to go to the phone lines, and Marty from West Palm Beach is holding. Good morning, Marty. Hi. Hi, how are you? We're well, thank you. My question is, if you have Toyo Guard platinum on your car and you come in for service after your two-year, 25,000 miles is up, is that automatically indicated by your VIN? that you get the two extra oil changes and the four tire rotations? It should be, Martin.

It is. The Toyota Guard Platinum Plus is not a Toyota product. It is something that was invented by the Toyota distributor in the southeast, Southeast Toyota distributor LLC. This is where we get our cars. We choose not to equip our cars with this because we think it's overvalued.

$699 is what you paid for it, and the value I would say is maybe, what would you say, Stu, $100? No, no, it's a little bit more. It's like maybe $2.60, $2.50, if you use all the rentals, because there's rentals in there, too, so there's a little gray area. You're paying $700, and you're getting about a third of that in value, so we don't recommend it. But if you have it, they will know you have it, and you get basically, what, a couple of oil changes. and I think the value in service

for the last two years, about 100. Yeah, I'll also say, just watch when they say it covers all your service. Typically, during this period, you have a 30,000-mile service, which is more than an oil change in a tire rotation, and it doesn't cover that. So it doesn't cover all the services, but it covers a lot of it. But like Earl said, you're paying more for that than the actual value of the individualized services.

So at best, it's a break-even. If you're buying a Toyota, we recommend that you don't get it, as what we're saying. But they'll probably have to... Let me ask you this. If you got it on the car, and you got it, let's say, from another dealership, but you can do all your service at your dealership. Yeah. They'll know.

You automatically honor it? Absolutely. All toilet dealers in the southeast will honor it. Well, actually, at any point, you can take it to, I believe a toilet will cover it, even if you take it to an independent, I think. I'm not sure, but probably, yeah. Okay, very good. Thank you. Thank you, buddy.

You're welcome, Marty. Keep listening. 877-960, or you can text us. 772-497-6530. And Linda from Georgia would like to ask Rick about the 2016 Highlander. and she'd like to increase the lighting on the dash. And I suggested to her that maybe she should go to her manual, but the print is so small, and she thought that you could give her the short version.

The 16 Highlander, you'd need to check the owner's manual, but there will be an adjustment to increase the brightness on those illumination of the combination meter, If it's already at maximum, then that's pretty much the best you're going to get. You can look into the idea of an outside shop that might install some extra LED lighting that would help improve that. Just watch out for any reflections that might blind you from it. Yeah, exactly.

Well, Linda, I hope that, well, I hope we answered your question. And good luck with, you know, lighting up that dashboard so that you can see it. But when all those fails, the manual, always the manual. And there's also YouTube. You go to YouTube, you put it in there. I want to increase the luminosity, the light on my 2016 Highlander, and there'll be about 25 YouTube. I have 25,000.

What a great way to go. There'll be some guy there going step by step by step, showing exactly how to do it. Yeah, exactly. Well, we actually have Linda on the phone right now. from Georgia. Welcome, Linda. Hi, Nancy. How are you guys? We're well, thank you. Well, good. Yeah, you tell me to read the manual the print is so small. I can't see it.

You know, I took cheaters over top of my regular glasses to try to read something, but it's a little bit difficult. That's why I was asking the question. I'm sorry. Oh, that's all right. I'm trying to pull it up right now on the owner's manual myself, see if I can get it up here real quick for you. I'm going to guess. I'm going to guess real quick.

There's a, because my wife has driven Highlanders for years. There is a little rolling knob, and I'm not sure if it's on this year. It'll be on the left side of the dash, and you roll it forward to eliminate the dash and roll it back. The reason Nancy and Rick were suggesting the owner's manual, which I agree is too small to read, is that there's a different way to light up the dash it's different on every model so it's like it's really hard it's not like a universal thing yeah some of the newer ones it's actually a knob

that's on the combination meter yep Earl had the best suggestion Linda YouTube say 2016 Highlander dashlights I guarantee you'll find it it'll be the very first thing that comes up best way to go Linda thank you for the call well thank you do you have any other questions No, thanks so

Okay, well, thank you so much for listening I know that you are a regular viewer of the show. Have a wonderful weekend. You too, we are. You guys too. Hi, Linda, thanks. Okay, we're going to go back to Stu.

He's got a lot of techs stack it up. Yeah, so last week, Earl mentioned Cal Worthington. He was a car dealer in the 50s in California. He was one of these early pioneers of TV advertising, which today, when you say that, you're like, well, everybody averages on TV, but back in the 50s, TV was new, some smart car dealers and creative car dealers

jumped on that thing that started doing these commercials, and what set them apart was, back then commercials were pretty straight. They just say, here's the product, here's what it does. He did these entertaining commercials with animals and tigers jumping on cars, and he became kind of an icon. Anyway, I brought that up because Frank from Jupiter Farms... And those earlier commercials, a lot of people didn't realize, were live. Yeah.

They weren't video, they were filmed. They did it live. Which makes it even more astonishing because he was having circus tigers, full-sized cats, jumping from hood to hood. After the show, I went on and watched these commercials, too, and that's what Frank did. So he texted us. He said he's laughing like a fool. Watching the Cow Worthington commercials, bringing back a lot of memories.

He said in the late 70s, he was at pilot school with the Air Force in Phoenix, and he saw several of the commercials. So, Yolanda, thank you for refreshing his memory about some good memories. But, yeah, I watched about a dozen of them, and the guy was, it's very old-fashioned from our point of view, but the guy was cutting edge. Well, Jim Moran, the father of Southeast Toyota from Chicago, who used to be the largest Ford dealer in the world, largest husband dealer in the world, he used to do live commercials. They were like three minutes long, and he used to like to swim, he'd do it by the pool. and he was Jim Moran, the courtesy man.

How many of you old timers out there remember, Jim Moran, the courtesy man from Chicago? And he would get up there by the edge of the pool and his speedos, and he would do his commercial, and then he would dive in the pool and swim a lap. I mean, the commercials back in the early days, the TV, were really interesting. Very much so. You sent us a very interesting one, a modern one yesterday, at least in the last few years, just a crazy, some. It reminded me, it was just like a guy being goofy on camera,

reminded me of his old-fashioned cartuiler commercials. How about our old local hero, Chuck Curcio? Oh, yeah. Yeah, the Tire Kingdom. And the betting bar, and that was another crazy one. Yep. All right, this is from Lewis, a text that came in, says, Hi, I've seen a video on YouTube from Earl Stewart

talking about how you can get rid of a lease early and even make a profit. I'm in a crappy situation for monthly payments, monthly car payments, and I was wondering if I could get some help from me. you, like what to do and how to get rid of my lease early. I have a 2019 Honda Civic Coop and the monthly payments are $587 a month. Wow. Any advice or help? Thanks in advance, if so. Well, the fact is, it's very difficult. And this is, my suggestion is a desperation

move. There are a few ways, but it's a long shot. One way is that you are lucky enough when you lease the car to buy a particular model with the right time. that happened to spike in value beyond what the lessor speculated or calculated to be the residual value, the value of the car at the end of the lease. If you got lucky, sometimes you go out and find out the market value is actually higher than the purchase option value. So you exercise your purchase option, turn around and sell it, and you can actually get out of the lease and maybe even make a few bucks. But it's kind of like winning the lot of. It's probably not going to happen.

And there's another way to get out of a lease. And that's called, well, their companies, one of them is called Swaplease. Swapalise.com. There's an app for that. They're a legitimate company. They've been around for a while. And they try to match people that want to lease a car

at a savings for the first, you know, maybe a two-year lease that was originally a three-year lease. They find a guy with a three-year lease that's fed up with a car after two years, and they put them together. But that's another. challenge because a leasing company has to accept you as a new lessee and it's difficult so third-party matching like swap a lease and the long-shot

possibility you might be able to sell the car for more than the option price to purchase those are the two long shots you have to get out of the lease early the reason I sound a little negative on this is I am a car dealer I am a toilet dealer and I get calls all the time from people saying you know I I really like that new model that came out. I've only leased this car for a year, a year and a half. Can I get out of the lease? And I tell them the chances are about one in a million

you'll be able to get out without cost you a lot of money. You have to be careful because the car dealers will tell you the exact opposite. You go in any car dealer, you've got a 36-month lease. You've been in the vehicle for, say, 18 months or less than maybe two years and say, can I lease another car from me? You'll say, sure, no problem. problem. We'll make your lease payments for you. Yeah, they make your lease payments for you. You owe 12 lease payments on a 36-month lease that you only made 24 on. So they'll take those 12

payments and they'll add them to the lease capitalized cost of the car that you want to lease or add it to the price of the car you want to buy. You're paying for the lease payments that you didn't pay for. You're paying for them anyway. They're just hidden in the price of the new car you bought her lease. So you're stuck. When you sign on the dotted line, a lease for a 36-month lease, you have to make 36 payments one way or the other. Very good point. A lot of twists and turns when it comes to a lease. You really have to educate yourself, and a lease is a great option for some people. Earlier, I mentioned to the ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Share your experience with us. Did things go as you

planned. Did you come in for service? We would love to hear from you. $50 for the first two new lady callers, 877-960. Speaking of callers, we're going to go to Geraldine, who is calling us from Stewart. Good morning, Geraldine. Good morning. Can we help you with anything this morning? Or do you have information for us. I have a question. I bought a car from your dealership, and I've been notified that it's time for its one-year service, but I have not been able to get there yet, and I want to know if there's a time frame and I have to get there from the one year avoid avoiding warranty. Geraldine, that's a common question I'm getting these days, and the answer is no there's not a rigid time frame there's a general time frame because you want to take

care of your vehicle and you want to be able to say you adhere to the owner's manual recommendations but during this COVID time a lot of people are nervous about coming in there are a lot of options and you know in some in some cases dealers including in my dealership we pick up and do the service and deliver the car back so you don't have to come in the dealership we can also give you an And I say we, there are certain things that you do to maintain a car that are not rigidly necessary. Whether you get an oil change that's due in one year, if you get the oil change in 14 months instead of 12 or even 15 or 16 months instead of 12, that's not a problem. As long as you have the real change, you should have your tires checked, rotated and balanced.

If you let it go for a couple of months, that's not so bad. so bad. Safety items and tires are a safety item. You should be careful about your tires. They should be inspected. You live in South Florida. We have a lot of construction. There's a lot of stuff of debris in the roads. You could have a nail or a screw that came in the sidewall. A lot of things can happen to a tire. So you should have somebody. It doesn't have to be the dealer. Somebody close by, inspect your tires. Check the inflation. You should check those. At least least every 30 days for inflation. Oil is not a big deal. Oil changes. Whether you have it of one year or 18 months, isn't going to make much difference. And it will not be held against you

in terms of your factory warranty. The manufacturers understand and the dealers understand. And Geraldine, so much like Earl mentioned just now has changed because of the pandemic. And him suggesting that you check your PSI, the pressure in your tires is really, really important. You can find somebody to maybe do that, or you may be able to do it yourself if you've got a pressure gauge. I check my pressure tire because, well, a little punt on words here, it holds a lot of weight, and you'll be replacing your tires more often if that pressure is not correct. Have we answered your questions? Yes, you have.

Thank you so much, and Merry Christmas to all of you. Merry Christmas to you, Geraldine, and thank you for calling. And give us a call again, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. We're going to go to Ben, who's calling from the very, very cold, Pennsylvania. Hello, hey, Earl, can you hear me okay? Loud and clear, man. Okay, you're right, and it's cold.

I'm about a half a foot of snow here that we're slowly melting off. Anyway, I'm calling about really to thank Earl and everyone about what I've learned. I'm a longtime podcast listener, so I don't listen to you typically live. I listen to you over the course of the week in my car about everything I've learned about helping buy a car because I was able to apply it twice over this past, well, summer and fall for helping my daughters purchase two cars. My one daughter bought a used car, and my other daughter bought a used car, and my other daughter bought a new car uh... mean specifically some of the things like i learned along the way

uh... i used uh... the costco auto buying program for the for the new vehicle and uh... you have to my oldest daughter had shopped around decided what make and model specifically she wanted i i and she went to like a dealership or two just to get their cost she you know we then went to like through the costco program and uh... we went to uh... you know look

look at that that particular dealer and you know we found out that their the price was an excellent in price. You know, I think what they were giving at that time when they showed us the sheet was roughly $300 less than invoice. So, you know, we found out what the out-the-door price was. She wasn't quite, like, sure about, like, the color at that time because it was a night and she wanted to, you know, just hold off until that weekend. So that night, I emailed a dealership that I had been working with, like, for my last two Mazzes I purchased, just to see knowing that they really given me, like, good pricing before. And without any problem, you know,

whatsoever. They came in it, like, well, I will give you the exact number. What it was, well, it was less than $500 less than the Costco price. I said, wow, that's, that's really surprising knowing how much less it is than the MSRP and the invoice. So it was, it worked out well. She went that this past weekend and purchased the car, and it was a really good deal. Fantastic. Now, let me be clear. You found another dealer that had a much lower price the Costco price or did you buy that yeah that's that's that's coming i heard you preach that the costco price is always like the lowest price at that particular dealership but you know doesn't necessarily mean that another dealer won't exactly and found in fact what

after the deal was was done they the uh the salesman confided in me and said well the reason he he gave you such a good price was because she's well she's now lives in the city so he was saying that uh you know he was he's the owner of the dealership sort of saw her it was like a gravy sale, someone like a little bit extra that was out of her's territory, that if you could get it, you know, that'd be all the better for them. So that was why it was so much less for her, even like below the Costco price. Well, that's an excellent story and a very good lesson. In fact, our Mr. Shopping Report at the end of the show is on another Costco shop,

and it reinforces the need to always use the ultimate weapon of the consumer, the car buyer's ultimate weapon is competition. And whether you get a Costco price or a true car price or advertised price by a dealer, you always get at least three competitive prices. When you go, car dealers are insanely competitive, and I'm one of them. I'm insanely competitive. Use that competition that we have to really envelops the car dealers against them. and you go to three Chevrolet dealers,

and you go from A to B to B to C, Chevrolet B, I just was at Chevrolet A, dealer A, and this is his price. Boy, I tell you, he's going to beat that price. And then you go to Chevrolet C, and he's probably going to beat the price you got on A and B. That's how insanely competitive. And even Costco or True Car, you should always shop that price. So thanks, Ben. That's a great story, and I hope you stay warm in PA.

Okay, no, thank you very much, Earl. Have a good holiday, son. Thank you, Ben. Merry Christmas. We are going to go back to Stu and share some texts with the audience. Okay. Let's see, we just read Franks. We'll jump up to this one here.

It says, oh, I know someone must have asked this question before, but can someone tell me what those rubber plugs that come in the glove box of my new camera? No one at the dealership seems to be able to tell me, and that's from John in Nashville. That's a Rick question right there. Those are actually body plugs. On the unibody frame of the car underneath, there's openings for where they can put in hooks to tie the car down on the rail cars when they're being shipped. And what you'll do with those little plugs is put them in on those frames. But it's really recommended only for the northern states to try to keep road salt and snow from getting up inside there and dust and debris.

Here in Florida, we get so much rain and water. We really don't recommend installing them that often because it allows the water then to drain back out and not sit in those frame rails where it can get inside there. So why wouldn't they put those plugs in an envelope with the description and explanation you just made printed on the envelope? You would think. Why don't you send that to Toyota and put that in your...

Well, there actually is on what's called the... pre-delivery inspection form that when the PDI is done, which all our cars are done at SE Southeast Toyota, they are supposed to install those, and it's on that form with the instructions to install them, but a lot of places don't do it. Well, even in Florida, you just said we're not supposed to do it. Well, we generally recommend not to simply to allow,

because if water gets in there, it'll hold it. Shouldn't we have a dialogue with Toyota about that? I wonder if there is now because... Might not be a bad idea. This is the first time, I can't remember the last time a customer has asked about that. Maybe they're marketing. They're getting a lot better. But the problem still hasn't been solved.

So here we have. Either we're wrong and we're not putting the plugs in, in which case, shame on you, Rick. Or Toyota's wrong, in which case, shame on Toyota. We're in a different distributor. So we have a different... They're doing a different place to do in the PDI. He's in Nashville. So maybe they're doing it wrong in...

I'll tell you why they're not putting them in there because it takes too long and you're getting paid by a flat rate hour and if you have to spend an extra 20 minutes putting these plugs in which probably nobody will notice you just don't do it. So my guess is they're not being put in because

they're trying to save time and they should put them in. But it's Rick's right because it's better to have them in areas where it rains a lot we'll check that theory and see what I was suggesting was that either they're taking them out of the car now or they're notifying the customers properly because it's been about 10 years since one of our customers

had said, hey, what are these plugs? Okay, folks. People don't notice them. If I notice them, I just throw them away. I used to get asked all the time. I used to wonder about when I started selling cars, too. I didn't even know what they were. As you just heard, folks, we're here with an endless amount of information.

And you can find it right here at Earl Stewart on Cars, and we certainly enjoy your company. any questions. Give us a call at 877-960. We're going to go out to Jupiter Farms and talk to Frank, who is a regular caller. Good morning, Frank. Well, good morning to you all. It's always a pleasure to hear your station and listen and learn some information and hear some shopping report. It's obviously always great. I've got to give you a little update about a Ford truck I have. I have a 2018 F-150. And the battery went out a few weeks ago, and I decided to go all the way up to Fort Pierce, that way where you had mystery shop that one time with Vern.

And it was such a nice dealership and experience, but it was a five-plus hour wait while they'd test your battery to see if they're really going to replace it under warranty. But, yeah, that was, you know, I was there. I was captive audience, but I did get to speak to that salesman who was actually very happy. It just sold six cars a day before. I mean, six deliveries in one day. It must have been kind of a happy paycheck that week. Oh, yeah.

And then he has the best thing to say about your dad, about Earl. He says, I really admire Earl Stewart. He walks to talk. That's good to hear. I mean, it's good to hear someone saying some nice things. Does that mean I can take off my Kevlar vest? Nope. There you go. But here we're going to come up to what transpired yesterday with that truck. On Wednesday, I used a truck to tow a travel trailer down to Burns Road

and have it do a six-month check and everything went well. And then Thursday, I got in the truck to go pick up a piece of furniture and the steering wouldn't turn. The steering would have just stopped. I mean, there's like, you've got to be kidding. There's only 4,800 miles on this truck. How come the steering doesn't work? So it says service required.

So, okay, I call a couple dealers. I actually bought that truck up near Melbourne where I retired out of the Air Force. And that's too far to take it back. So none of the dealers would just take the truck because I didn't buy it there. Even though it was a Ford product, Mollamax, the one up in Stewart, I know Mullinex is in North Palm Beach, I think. Oh, I know, and I live in Jupiter Farms. They said, well, if you didn't buy it here, we don't have time to service it under warranty.

Okay. So, anyway, is that something that's now kind of going around with the dealers, that if you didn't really buy a car there, you can't bring in for the factory warranty? No. Now, that used to be back of the day, because many years ago, the manufacturers paid very little for warranty work, and the actually deals actually lost money. And then the dealers got up in arms and did a lot of lobbying and got some laws in.

And now we get paid a lot of money when we do warranty. And we love to do the warranty work. So I'm surprised that someone wouldn't jump on a warranty repair. Well, it finally got down, I guess Al Hendricks saw military because they, and then they get, I called the Ford, the Ford Roadside assistance at 10 in the morning yesterday. And only telling him was supposed to come and get the truck. And I waited patiently, hour after hour, after hour. They finally showed up at 4 o'clock, six hour wait.

Oh, my God. And this is what, here's where it gets in something little comical. This is not just sitting there complaining. I would call back to Ford Roadside assistance. And, of course, they're all over the country. They may be answering in their home in Texas or Arizona or who knows where. And you know what their excuse was? It's due to the snowstorms.

The tow trucks are tied up due to the snowstorms. One's a thousand miles from here? Yeah, I'm saying I'm in South Florida, but anyway, so it's a... They didn't check the area to code when you called. You know, the roadside assistance as you buy or it comes for the car or the rest of it is usually crappy. I mean, every time this comes up, I think about AAA, and it's a value. They're relatively competent. They're not perfect.

But if you're looking for roadside assistance, a lot of people feel comfortable with that. you is an American Automobile Association Roadside Assistance to join the club and they're pretty competent they do a good job yeah that's a sad thing I do have AAA for the last 40 years

but I was trying to keep from using one of my toes which I don't ever use anyway and in retrospect I said boy here you're you know really blew it but and here's something for is that Rick the guy that does the the servicing

I did something kind of unique yesterday say. I had to add some water to the battery for the travel trailer. And it's tough to get in there and it's hard to see. And I said, boy, you know, you use a little funnel or you use this or that. And I came up with what I thought was relatively ingenious. I took a syringe and took the water up like that. Or I guess if you want to go in the kitchen, if you have one, an old baster thing like you basture cooking with. So you do that with a syringe. You don't drop any water in the battery or in the battery compartment. You just fill it up slowly. that way and it's just a unique little thing that I came across myself yesterday was I thought

it's share so anyway I've used that trick many times oh okay I had a feeling that smart people would have so anyway that's about it I'll let you guys go it was Nancy's birthday last Saturday and it's kind of funny a few Saturdays before was mine so it's funny how they all landed on a Saturday this year so you guys take care and I thank you for talking about Cal Worthington, I actually had a hoot laughing because I remember seeing those commercials and his dog spot and everything. Anyway, you guys are great. I'll let you get back to the other things. Have a good week. That was the funny part with Cal Worthington. It was like he started, I think he started off with a dog and it was his dog spot and then he started replacing it with more and more

exotic animals. He had a gorilla who was his dog spot. Tiger was his dog spot. That was funny. All right, do you want to get to some texts? Yes. Okay, let's see. According to Toyota salespeople, the new Venza has a special moon roof that can switch between clear and opaque. I am skeptical. Rick, is this true? And if so, how is that possible?

Magic. Okay, next question. It's electro-something, electrochromic. Electrochromic. Electrochromic, okay. Yeah, there's a current. I've seen this before. Actually, there was a restaurant in West Palm Beach called Sloan's Ice Cream.

Still there, still got it. They're still there. So they have a bathroom, and you look at the bathroom, you're in the store, and you see a toilet sitting there through clear glass. You go in there, you lock the door, and the glass suddenly becomes opaque, white, and you can't see through it. And what happens is, while there's electricity running through it, it's clear. When they cut off the current, it goes opaque. So I guess they did the same thing in the moonroof. Yep.

Great idea. It's pretty clever. It does look like magic, I will give you that. Okay. Next one. I'm online all the time looking up ways to best take care of my car at 2017 Mustang. What kind of oil to use? Tread rating, what kind of wax, et cetera.

It occurred to me recently that I don't really need to know all this stuff. I have a good relationship with my Ford dealer. If I had a good relationship with a four dealer, which I do, and trust them, shouldn't I just stop obsessing about all this stuff and let them take care of my car's needs? I think you're doing the right thing. Educated consumer. You might know more about the best oil than your dealer. Your dealer is going to sell the oil that Ford tells them to sell.

And usually it's the best product. I mean, Ford, you know, OEM, the parts manufactured by the manufacturer your car are usually the best parts to use on your car. But there are some exceptions. And in terms of value, especially, you can find parts including oil and oil filters if you're careful that have a high customer satisfaction rating and they're highly regarded and they're a hell of a lot less expensive than what the manufacturer charges here. One thing you could say about all OEM parts that stands for original equipment manufacturer.

The Ford dealer sells them to the Ford dealer, and the Ford dealer has to buy him, and he has to use them on the Ford cars. Shop around. You'll be surprised. Go on Amazon. What's the big part, Rock Auto.com, R-O-C-K-A-U-T-O. W-W-W-W, I know I'm not supposed to say that, but www.w.w.W.W.Rock-A-O-D-com. Shop around for some prices, and then Google it and be sure you get a quality product with good reviews. Rick? Just a quick corollary to that. Toyota uses nip-and-denzo compressors

for the air conditioning systems. Toyota air AC compressors are hugely expensive. You can buy the exact same nip-and-denzo compressor from cold-air distributors for half the price. Wow, cold air. It is the exact same part. It just comes in a nip-and-denzo box instead of a Toyota box, but it's the identical part.

Does our parts manager know about that? Oh, we do it all the time. Oh, fantastic. I love the show. I learned something. Caller learned something. What a wonderful show this is. As long as I see, if we're getting an aftermarket part, as long as I see that it's a company, Nippendenzo or Aki Bono, one of the companies that I know provides Toyota with their parts. I know it's a quality part, and I have no problem installing it on a customer store. Yeah, forget about the fact that the manufacturers don't manufacture all these parts. They have sub-manufacturers,

and they put their name on it but if you look you can usually find the real manufacturer stamped on the product and that way you shop and compare and Nippa Denzo and cold just like cold air distributors

sells Nip and Denzzo that Toyota marks up what 50% over what? At least at least wow love it moving right along okay ladies and gentlemen

you're a big part of the show give us a call toll free at 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And if you want to help us out, you can join Earls Vigilantes. And you can do so by going to www.orgulisvigilantes.com, or you can go to Earl on Cars. And if you want to, well, help out your community, help us out and protect people from these. wild and crazy cowboys that are out there. There's eyes and ears in all parts of the world.

And here's, I just had a thought the other day about our vigilante group, Earl's vigilantes. We can have undercover vigilantes. And I think some of our potential vigilantes out there are a little shy, and they just don't want to be identified as being whatever you want to say. But they'd like to help. Use the Anonymous Feedback.com.

You can be an undercover vigilante. And now we have the vigilante hats coming out with a logo. Sue, you're listening? We're going to have some plain hats with no identification for our undercover vigilantes. But we'll have a, you know, with a name blocked out. And we'll have the, so we'll have to be like a covert CIA kind of vigilante. And who will advise us via anonymousfeedback.com. But don't wear them into the dealerships because they'll figure that out.

well eventually so ladies leave it in the car ladies and gentlemen if you're tired very very tired like a lot of us are with these dealers that are dishonest earl's vigilantes uh you can sign up we'd love to

have you take part in this uh well exciting exciting group if you want to be a public vigilante we'll put you on the website with your name your contact information that you choose to be contacted by you can then you can be there for people in your locality if you're in

paduca kentucky then the folks in paduca can call you and then we are your liaison you can call us anytime for help or assistance and you know vigilantes can also be checking out the evil car dealers in their communities and it could be like a report about shenanigans at different car dealerships so the vigilantes are going to have a wide area of responsibility and authority. Yeah, there you go. Shenanigans, we've got to eliminate it. I'm sure that Jonathan will second the motion.

And we can also do mystery shopping ports long distance online. And I did one in Wisconsin the other day. And so that's another duty for Earl's vigilantes is to point out dealers that are just not doing the right thing. You might even text us a copy of an ad. You might e-mails or something like that. And we can go into different communities around the United States, and we can do some mystery shops and expand a whole.

Well, it's amazing how this show is growing. We're going to have to go to three hours pretty soon. We're going to do a marathon, 24 hours. So, ladies and gentlemen, on a more serious side, you can help out the consumers in your community. So go to WWWW. earls vigilantes.com we need your help back to stew back to me anonymous feedback um why is every taxi cab in new york city a toyota well it seems that way i haven't been mentioning i have been

in new york city in about three years and but i notice how many toilets there are i don't know i guess it's it's like maybe uh the taxi companies who look at consumer reports i also see other models like I say one thing, there are a lot of hybrids. See a lot of Priuses, but you see other hybrids there too. I was there just a few months ago. That's right, yeah. And, yeah, it was the same situation as hybrids is what I mainly saw. So I guess to answer your question, I think Toyota makes more hybrids than anybody,

so it just kind of makes sense and they're good cars. But I saw a lot of Ravrefour hybrids up in New York last time in addition to the Priuses. Stu, in light of everything that's going on, did it really, was it a dramatic change that you saw? when you were back in New York just a few months ago. Yeah, it was definitely quieter. It wasn't as crowded as it used to be. I mean, there's people out there, but it wasn't, you know, dead, but it was, here's the key.

I was able to drive around myself in my car without problems and without too much stress in New York City traffic. So that tells you something that it was definitely. That's a miracle. Yeah, right there. Definitely. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, give us a call. We'd love to hear from you.

877-960-99-60, or, as I said, earlier, you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Now back to Stu. Let's know YouTube. I didn't see your little sign over there. Michael is asking, what's with Service Department shop charges on many, if not most, or all, Florida dealers? To me, it's added dealer profit.

This 10% charge is a sticking point with me. Yeah, it's the dirty little secret on the service department. The dirty little secret of the sales department, of course, is their hidden dealer fees. And the service department does the same thing. Almost all car dealers. I mentioned the American Automobile Association earlier. A nice thing about the AAA is they tell your car dealers, they tell anybody that wants to be a AAA affiliate with a car dealer

that they cannot have these hidden fees in the service department. So that's one place you can check. The chances are $999 out of $1,000 when you go into a service. service department, be it independent, or otherwise, there's one of those sneaky charges. And here's my advice on how not to pay the charge. You look at your service invoice before you give me a credit card, and it'll say something innocuous, something that you don't know what it is. You're going to say exactly that. Hey, what is this? I don't know what that is. It's going to say, like, hazardous waste disposal fee. It'll say sundry supplies. It'll say

miscellaneous fees, nuts bolts and whatever. What am I like a waste disposal fee? I could go on and on. It's like the dealer fee in the sales department, they come up with these ingenious names, but none of which makes sense. So when you get to the cashier, you just say, I'm not gonna pay that, take it off the bill.

Nine times out of ten they will, because they know they're stealing from you and they know you're gonna get mad, if you find it. But the beauty is, like you say, the beauty of the hidden fee is you can't find it. And that's the reason the dealers get away with it. And the service department, typical formula, 10% of the cost, if you pay 50 bucks, then the hidden fee will be five bucks, miscellaneous, hazardous waste disposal, it'll be at the bottom. And what's so insidious about it is that most people don't say anything because it is a small amount, relatively small amount. But when you think

about like a dealer fee, a car dealer sells 100 cars a month, and he charges $1,000, that's a ton of money, but they service a lot more cars than that, so that really adds up so people don't say anything because it's $5, $8, or $10. The deal of it sells 100 cars a month is having 100 repair orders a day. So he can make, if he could average $10 on each repair order, 100 repair orders, that's $1,000. He's making $1,000 a day, pure profit, and $30,000 a week. For doing nothing, for print something on his invoice. Yeah, so it's highway robbery.

It's dishonest. It's unethical and all the above. We don't talk about it enough. I'm so happy we had that text. We talk about hidden fees and dealer fees all the time. They're over $1,000 where we talk about them. But you only buy a car every four or five years. You get your car service two or three times a year,

so they're screwing you two or three times a year on the service hidden fee. Great information. You know, it's amazing to sit here. Saturday in, Saturday out, and be surrounded by four experts and with all kind of information. And it's free. And I've also added to it, it protects you from the pandemic. You don't have to go into a dealership and subject yourself to maybe, you know, an environment, well, you wouldn't want to. So, ladies and gentlemen, you have a question.

give us a call 877-960-99-60 and ladies again $50 for the first two new lady callers give us a call we would love to hear from you we have the fun lines lit up and we have lorry and guess what she's a first-time caller good morning and she's calling us from Tampa yes hi good morning good morning welcome to the show congratulations you won yourself fifty dollars that's terrific thank you and your question well um i have a 2011 honda odyssey and um thinking it may be time to start looking for a new car Are I better off going through the Costco auto purchase program or am I better off doing a search online more anonymously, you know, where you're, I can get a price from, say, three different dealers? Costco is a great option, but I'll let the recovering car dealer answer that question.

Yeah, we had a call earlier on the show on that very subject from Pennsylvania. And he bought a car for his daughter's daughter got a really good price from the Costco dealer on a Ford. And he called another dealer or two and actually improved the price. So my answer is you should do both. You should go to your Costco dealer in your market. And remember, you don't have to go to just one Costco dealer. When you go to the Costco.com, when you go online to Costco, you'll put your zip code in. They'll give you the dealer nearest your zip code.

But by putting a different zip code in, you can get other Costco dealers, and that would be another way to have your KKD2. You don't only get a Costco dealer, but you get another Costco dealer with a different price. The rule is, for a Costco dealer, they have to give you the lowest price that they sell that car to anybody for, but another dealer might have a lower price. So get at least three prices, including the Costco price, preferably from another Costco dealer or two, but at the very least, from two other dealers that sell the same Odyssey. Yeah, Laurie, there's so much information out there, and Earl has written so many articles on the Costco auto buying program, and it's definitely worth looking into, you can go to Earl on cars,

and you can read that article. It was a recent article, Costco Auto Buying Program, your best bet for a low price. So I certainly hope we've helped you. Yes, and I have one other question, if I can. Sure. One feature of the Odyssey that I love, because I have two dogs going in and out of the car, is that passenger door opening almost like a pocket door, so you have a lot of clearance.

Are there any cars, any SUV cars on the market that do that other than a minivan? Well. That was like a sliding door? Yeah. Yeah, I think the minivans are the only ones. The sliding door feature is great. Yeah. I think the minivans are the only ones with sliding doors,

except for some of the SUVs with the door, you know, with the back hatch and, you know, fold down seats that would give you a lot more room and space for the pups. And also, Lori, a great source of information is the Consumer Report, and the last couple of months has been amazing because they have really focused on the SUVs. so you might want to take a look at that also. Okay, that's a great idea. Thank you. You're welcome, Lori. And I want to thank you so much.

You know, if you don't realize it, you are helping me to build a platform. And right now there's a whole lot of ladies that are listening to our conversation, and we need more ladies to give us a call and join in the conversation. So, Merry Christmas, and have a wonderful weekend. Thank you. Merry Christmas to all of you, too. Send me your information. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to Rick.

NCR-disabled submarine vet is asking, I'm in New York and looking at a 2020 Mazda CX-9. and after I filled out a buyer sheet, I found three dents on the roof. I put $1,500 down. Can I get my deposit back as I found another car, same car, at a different dealer? Does he say if it's a new car or a used car? 2020, I'm going to guess a new car. He doesn't specify whether it's new or used.

Well, it's a new car, and you take a delivery of the car. Of course, you're going to have the argument that they weren't there when you took delivery. That's, you certainly should try because if they were there, then they certainly owe you reimbursement. They should either fix the dance or give you your money back. But it is going to entail an argument, but bring it to their attention to ASAP. I don't think he's taken delivery. Says he just, he filled out a buyer sheet and he had put a deposit down. But he hadn't taken delivery apparently.

You're good. He should be. He should be good. I mean, it would be crazy if the dealer were to hold your feet to the fire, that's the term they use when they don't want to agree with a customer, and hold your feet to the fire, say, you sign, you put a deposit down. One thing I will say about deposits is check your slip, your receipt on deposits. Deposits are required by law to say whether they're refundable or not, and you can have a non-refundable deposit. And it seems crazy, doesn't it, that you would have a deposit. products you didn't even take delivery on, but in Florida, why know the law very well?

I'm not sure about other states. But check the fine print on your receipt. Does it say refundable or not refundable? And if they're asking for a deposit, they say it's refundable, say write it on their receipt because the receipt says non-refundable, then you're good to go. And Frank Hall, when two dealerships have the same owner, will they compete as aggressively as when they don't. Thanks and Merry Christmas. Usually, strangers it may seem, although potentially not.

And there was a particular dealer in Palm Beach County area that had two dealerships that were six miles apart and each other's the same make. And they competed viciously. And one dealership was losing money and the other dealership was making money. Finally, they sold the one dealership. But, yeah, competition is a strange thing.

It even goes beyond common sense and reason sometimes. That one made more sense because it was a publicly held one. That was the Penske Auto Group. Yeah. But even with an individual owner, like when you had more than when you had Toyota and Pontiac, there was competition, but I don't think it was as fierce as it would have been, you know, with, you know, just too independent. Competition comes from the grassroots. Competition comes.

If there's anything good to be said about competition, as I said earlier in the show, it can be your best friend. So if you know about this insanely competitive spirit between car salesmen, car sales managers, car dealerships, auto manufacturers, the sense of winning of selling more cars in this market is just to the point of extremes. You can turn that weapon against them and just kill them on the price and just get a heck of a price if you do, if you just go by the rules. Three competitive bids, Althador prices, Bada Bing.

Great price. There you go. All kinds of great information here this morning, folks. Earl Stewart on cars, she can't go wrong. 877-960-99-60, and we are going to go to a first-time female caller, and her name is Caroline, and she's from West Palm Beach. Welcome to the show, Caroline, and congratulations. Hi.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be on the show. Oh, thank you so much. what can we do for you? So I have a question. So my sister, she just landed her first ever full-time job out of college to the teacher. And she's looking for a new car. She currently has a 2011 G-Patriot.

So we want to know what recommendations do you have for a good crossover that will get her to school. And also, should she lease or should she buy? Okay. So very good question. go to the default and almost boring response, which is the first place I'd go is check consumer reports. Just to find out which one

there's right now, the crossroad SUVs are like that's the hottest thing right now. They're kind of cool because they're like little small SUVs. I don't even call them crossovers. They're like to miniaturized SUV, a little bit lower to the ground and they're just huge and you see them

every manufacturer has them. Off the top of my head, you know, Honda and Toyota, Ford, I think Edge is in it as a crossover. They're all really good, and the difference is in the details. And Consumer Reports puts out a great comparison between all types of models. So that's always our first stop before we recommend any particular brand, because it changes every year. There, January issue of Consumer Reports, hot off the press, has an article that you really should read.

It's the most and least reliable cars. Now, you can argue about the most reliable. cars and just because a car is higher rated on consumer reports and another car, you can argue about that. But I would never buy a car that was considered not recommended. And I think that at least eliminate the ones you won't buy and then let your own personal taste choose between the consumer reports reliable cars and that way you can't get hurt too bad.

That's a really good point. It's like you're splitting hairs when you're looking at the most recommended. But if consumer reports are saying they're not recommending it, you don't even think, don't even consider it, yeah. And Caroline, because a consumer report has really concentrated on the SUVs and the trucks in the December edition, that subscription would be very, very helpful to you. So you might want to take a look at that and also the latest, also that Earl mentioned. I hope we've answered your question. Well, the second part of the leasing, yeah, the leasing, I think.

Very helpful. Yeah, Earl can definitely address the leasing part of it because there is a lot of pitfalls, and it can be a very good way to get a new car, but there's a lot of things that people don't expect, and it's not disclosed very well, usually by the salesperson, and so there's a lot of things to consider, and I'll let Earl take over from this one. Yeah, Caroline, briefly, I would recommend you buy rather than lease. That's my rule of thumb, and there are exceptions to that. you should be very careful if you do decide to lease

because a lot of dangers involved. You have to remember one thing. The manufacturer and the car dealer really want you to lease the car. They will try to push you into a lease. Car dealers make about twice as much on a lease car profit than they do want to purchase car profit.

So they'll push it in that direction. It's easier to make a big profit on a buyer, leaser, than it is on a buyer. Be careful. To be safe, just go ahead and buy the car. And if you decide on the lease, Caroline, what I would do is I'd go to Ron Cars and check out his articles that he has written

because there's so many twists and turns in leasing. You really have to be careful. I hope that we were able to help you out this morning. Yes, thank you all so much. I was so helpful. And I need to approve of the car because she'll probably be my personal Uber, you know what I mean? That's right.

You better weigh in on that short. Yes, exactly. Well, thank you so much. I'll definitely be doing everything you suggested. I really appreciate it. Thanks for being part of the show, Caroline. Spread the word. And for anybody's listening, we talk about Consumer Reports.

For a digital-only subscription with Consumer Reports, it's only $39 a year. So that's like $3 a month. So it makes no sense not to get it. And then you get all access, I think, where you get the actual. the printed copies, and that's for $59 a year. For about $100, you can have a Costco membership, and a consumer board's a subscription. I mean, armed with those two things, you're infensible in the market. You don't even have to listen to the show anymore.

Exactly. All these tools are so available to... We're less than $100 a year. All these tools are really available to everyone. And they're out there to protect you as we are every Saturday morning. We're going to go to Corey, who's calling us. from Palm Beach. Good morning, Corey. Hi, good morning, everyone.

In 2014, I bought a S-60 Volvo with very low mileage, about 4,000 miles. I have a six-year warranty, and it's about to expire in March. I have 46,000 miles on the car. You can see I do very low mileage. And I wanted to know, is it worth it to get a new, pay for a new warranty, or is it time for a trade-in? I would, I don't think that, have you taken good care of the car, have you maintained it according to the owner's manual?

Absolutely. Have you had any problems with it up until now? No. I wouldn't buy an extended warranty. I would continue to take good care of it. Volvo is a quality product. It's very low mileage, and you probably wouldn't end up spending a lot more on the extended warranty than you'd end up paying for the repairs on the car if you take care of it.

And, Corey, you can, you know, warranties, you know, what a slippery slope. It is just unbelievable. And if, as Earl said, you're not having a lot of problems with your vehicle, it's not a good idea. I think Rick had something to say. no it's uh i agree with earl on the warranty product warranty thing it's uh an older car like that you know only a few years old and low mileage i would just keep driving it until somebody comes along and says i want that car and offers you a huge amount of money for it 100% i agree with you rick uh so i hope we've answered your question corey yes i just wanted you to uh to say i

appreciate your um radio show every saturday i listen faithfully. Every time I bring my car in for scheduled maintenance, I get a phone call saying, do you want to sell it? So from the dealership. And I say no, because why would I sell it under warranty, you know? Exactly. A lot of last year, a lot longer. You'll be driving that car for another five or six years, and I don't think you're going to have any problems at all. And, Corey, you sound like an educated consumer. Thank you very much for your time, and I appreciate it. Keep listening.

Thank you, Corey. I do. I will. Bye. 877-960. Or you can text us at 772-497-60. And I think that Stu has some text. Let's get to it.

This is from Joe. Text says, Earl, I tried everything to stop wipers from chattering. Even new ones started soon after installation. If you have any tips, I have a BMW. Wiperman. Clean your windshield a little better. Really? It's the number one factor.

A dirty windshield will cause wiper chatter very quickly. Okay, that was the easy one. Now, what's that stuff I love when the windshield can never remember? Rain X. Rain X. Will Rain X make it quiet? It will, but it's got to be applied properly. Oh, that's your idea.

Read the instructions carefully. I love Rainier. Take your time and do it right. I love Rain X. You should put some on your glasses. I got some stuff from my glass. I haven't tried it yet. Okay.

All right. This is from Bob in Maryland. He says, what's a good adhesive to use if the material on the top of the center console is coming off? Now, I texted Alan, who is our collision

and insurance expert who has not been on a show and gosh, when's the last time Alan was on a show? Let's get him back on. He's probably listening right now. He hates me. He says 3M

sells a spray adhesive. of but he's seen mixed results from it he said this is one of his recommendations he says is to just save the aggravation and buy a new one he says because it's not going to be reliable he says or you can go to a professional upholstery he recommends one there's one local here called statewide auto upholstery that can take care of that it's called statewide auto upholstery yeah so if you have tears um we we sublet these repairs out to the you know for like damage to the interior of cars the headliner sometimes comes off or uh a less Their peas gets ripped and they come in and they take care of these things.

But if you want to save some money, maybe give the 3M spray a try, Bob. And if it's too much of a pain in the butt, then maybe go to the next route and get a professional to try and help. And I go on Amazon. I'm an Amazon maniac. And, you know, I've been putting products in there. It's amazing how user-friendly their search engine is on Amazon. And you could just say, I got a problem on my dash and just kind of. in your own words don't try to be too smart just be a person because the artificial intelligence and the search engine is so sophisticated when you put

something in your own words it takes to those products then you just look at the ratings you sort by four stars that's what I always do four stars plus and then you read the reviews and then you will only get read see the reviews from people that bought the product is very which prevents packing the the reviews like a lot of merchants do, retailers do, to make themselves look good. They actually have to have a recorded purchase before they'll put the review up. There's another good tip, too, by the way, is also the questions and answers. So there's a serious of questions.

It's very likely that the question that you have has been asked and answered to read those. And I get the questions all the time with stuff I buy on Amazon. I'll get an email and I'll ask me a question. Somebody will ask a question. And most people I do, I go in there, I answer the question, and it's a good resource. also look at the dates of the reviews make sure they're not all clumped together in like a six month period

make sure they're spread out over a year or two that's true I only look at four plus uh four stars plus products with four stars plus I don't look at anything else not interested in looking at that crap okay Anne Marie does not have a question for us but she does say good morning no questions this morning I like the Christmas street scene behind Earl

Merry Christmas to one and all Merry Christmas, Amory, thank you. We also had another text from somebody that says, Great Background Earl, Most festive. That's on Jonathan. Good one, I love it. You can't see what I'm seeing right now, but it is one of the most Christmas to see festive things ever.

It is really nice. Thank you, Jonathan. There's snow coming down? Yes. No, but it's a street scene, and there's like Christmas lights and reds and greens. I can't stop looking at it. Hey, you know, talking about good things,

there was an article in the USA, Today, and I must share it with you. You know, there's never been any attention given to headlights. And Earl was responsible for handing me this article from USA Today, and vehicle headlights are finally getting better. Can you believe it? I bet Rick is happy about that. And guess what?

All this information is based on the nighttime driving, and there's been. more than a quarter of them taking place on lit road, a pretty good significant percentage. And there's been more accidents because of the headlights that in the past haven't been adequate. So you might want to pick up that article in the USA Today. And by the way, that was in the December 16th, I think it was. I'm not positive. December 16th, yes. Or else, if you don't have an old edition,

you can just go to that handy-dandy PC and look up USA Today.com. Okay, back to Stu. All right, anonymous feedback. Here's a good one. I don't know if we have enough time. But I think there might be a caller. Is there a caller?

No, I was talking to Jonathan. Oh, I thought you were raising your hand. This is a good one for Earl. Don't take too much time on this one. Earl, did you ever personally sell cars yourself? I have a hard time picturing you young with white shoes, a tacky tie, and wide lapels, L.O.L. Well, that would be. And I had the Sanzibald slacks.

Yeah, I can picture it because all my childhood pictures, he looks like that. He's still selling cars, folks. I sold used cars, and I wasn't a very good salesman. And it's, yeah, selling cars, I mean, selling anything. Salesmanship is, I think you're born with it. and I never had that personality. I was a very mediocre salesman. I was right in the middle of the board.

We say I was an average salesperson. How would you rate yourself now? Better. I'd probably be a very good salesperson. Absolutely. Look at that. Very, very good. Excellent.

We're doing business from our home, folks, and we're really into it. I think you'd definitely be a better salesperson now. You're more at ease. You know, I think, like, I had a similar experience. I was a middling salesperson, and a lot of it had to do with, I just wasn't comfortable with the puffery that you talk about all the time. I'm just, I'm way more low-key, and you are as well. I think you can sell cars without as much puffery these days.

Did you mention middle age? We were ahead. Aren't you 18? I was. You were ahead of your time. We were ahead of your time. You feel uncomfortable. I do.

It's great feeling comfortable today, folks. it is a good feeling. All right. This is more anonymous feedback. Does anyone make big locks for cars like the kryptonite locks for bikes to use it as a theft deterrent? At first I thought that was a joke question

because I just pictured a giant exterior lock. Oh, yeah, I'm sharing a little lock. But they have, and it's called the club. I mean, it's been around forever. It was like a big TV, you know, 1-800 thing, order a club. And, yeah, it is a deterrent

because a thief looks in the window and he sees this big giant metal powder-coated rod on your steering well and he probably will move on to the next car he just want to have to wrestle around with that thing so yes i think there's other manufacturers but club is the famous one the club you know nice thing about something like that is that if i'm a car thief and i'm going through the auto mall and i'm looking for a car to steal i'm going to try to find one that doesn't look like it has a club or a lock or a is that what car thieves call talking lots so the best thing You could probably just get a pretend club and a broomstick and stick it in there. And they say, I want to get that one.

I'll go steal that one because it looks like it's protected. One of the simplest aftermarket items I saw was a little flashing LED light that plugged into a cigarette lighter outlet that would simply simulate a car alarm. You got to remember, car thieves are not exactly rocket scientists anyway. So, you know, if you can, it's easy to trick a guy dumb enough to steal a car, right? And so trick him, you know, why spend thousands of dollars on anti-theft protection when a little blinking light you pay $10.95 for will scare away an idiot car thief. It's not going to stop the professional guy that wants that specific car.

Yeah, if he's a pro, then... But, yeah, the kids that are trying to get a car for a joy ride, it's going to stop them. Yeah. That's right. You have to be able to think like a... like a thief, which you guys apparently really good at doing. I'm just kidding. Next, anonymous feedback.

Do car batteries ever need to be refilled? I never had to do this, and I was wondering if I was in danger of it running out. My car is only two years old. Thanks in advance for your help. I'll recognize that. The answer is yes to some extent, and I guess... If the battery has plastic caps on top... Plastic.

Then there's like a cap that just pop up with low screwdriver, then yes, You should top it up with distilled water, which simple bottled water is good enough. And like our earlier caller said, get an old turkey baster or a simple, a good-sized syringe, get rid of the needle, and just suck up some water and just squirt it down in. How much water do you need to add to a battery? It depends on how low it is. You want to bring it up to where it's about a half an inch to an inch from the top. So a turkey baster works great because you can watch how much it's.

going in there and fill it without making a mess and try not to overfill it because remember the stuff that's coming up out of there is battery acid every time i hear the turkey baster i was i was going to set you up for that dad we talked about earlier and i just i years ago i had i had chronic sinus problems and i had this great idea many years ago and i got a turkey baster and i filled it with uh salt water and i shot that up my nose with the turkey baster it almost killed me i don't know what it was i i came i very nearly lost consciousness yeah i just stepped out for a moment i'm not as smart as i sound i know you think i'm a smart guy i'm not yeah i was going to set you up for that i was going to say you know these turkey basters are

pretty versatile earl have you ever used one for other i stepped up for a moment folks and by the way when i opened up the front door and uh came into the apartment this happened my body on the kitchen floor. Earl's hands were bleeding. He had put liquid dish detergent, that stuff you pour in the sink. Let's move along here. We're not doing it. We've already done the turkey base there. We don't. And the place was flooded with soapses.

So guess what we did? We took advantage of the bubbles. Thank you for that. Use your imagination. Okay. I see about the question. It's 938. We can wrap it up really quick. We have a couple more. Is it possible to install an auxiliary fuel tank in my truck?

I would like to extend my driving range. No, because it would be illegal because the federal government won't let you make your truck unsafe. And they have tanks now that are very, very strictly regulated, manufacture and performance. If you can't be at annexed tanks. However, there is one thing you can do if you have a pickup truck. talk to like race-side truck and trailer, places like that. They have special, they are legal, fuel tanks that can be installed in your truck that will seal properly, and you can then pump that fuel directly into your gas tank to refill it.

I didn't know that. Okay, so it's like the extra fuel storage, but it's not connected to the system. I got you. All right, the last question we have is a text. It could take the rest of the show up. I'll read it out loud and leave it to you how much you want to answer it. It's a very, very broad question. Please explain the lease return process for me again, and that's from Danny.

Be very careful. I'm seriously, I'll make it quick. Be sure you get a lease inspection, an official lease inspection, that the leasing company dictates. Be sure you're present for that lease inspection. Take pictures and video. Verify the information. Have them sign off on it. You sign off it.

Take pictures to document the condition of your car. you turn it in, including tread depth, odometer, everything about that car that you could possibly be charged for. And one last bit of advice. Get all of your information on what you're supposed to do from the leasing company and not the dealer. In some cases, dealers will give you information, but most people who end up getting screwed with extra charges, listen to a salesperson, didn't follow the steps that Earl just said, and they wound up getting a big bill a couple of months later. You know, I know I said to make it brief, but we see this as the biggest problem on lease cars.

Leasing companies shame on all of you, including Toyota. They take advantage of people when they turn their cars in. They over, they inflate the cost of above average wear and tear. And you get a bill for $1,000. If you argue, they'll cut it in half. Sometimes they'll take it off. Sometimes they won't. But it's one of the dirty little secrets about leasing companies is they screw you on the return on above-average wear and tear.

Take advantage of you, not right. Great information here, ladies and gentlemen. Okay, we're in a little short of time here. Our phone lines are closed, and we want you to participate with the Mystery Shopping Report. You're important, and the Mystery Shopping Report comes from Coral Springs, Nissan, Costco-style. So, stay tuned. Here is the recovering car dealer. Last week, we cut a break from our series of Costco auto program theme mystery shops.

When we sent Agent Lightning, our female agent, to the west coast of Florida for a visit to Fichillo, Nissan of Clearwater. Given Billy Fichillo's hunger, huger, huger than life reputation, we expected more craziness than we got. Fichilla and Nissan did better than we expected, and we put them on a recommended dealer list. Don't get me wrong. We were treated to some old-fashioned bait-and-switch advertising a huge addendum

for a practically worthless dealer install package and some colorful salesmanship which was entertaining but in the end for Chilo Nissan gave agent lightning

a pretty good clothes price. That surprised everybody and that's the reason we passed them really. Another reason we expected a rougher experience last week was because

we shopped a Nissan dealership. Overall we've observed Nissan dealerships tend to behave a little more aggressively and that's just one word adjective I'd come up with, I'd say unethically and

a lot of other things and a lot of car dealerships with regard to advertising sales tactics. We see this sort of thing in our mystery shopping reports. We've received calls and comments from listeners who call our Nissan called out Nissan dealerships for poor customer experience.

It was only natural to choose a new Nissan to do our next Costco-style mystery shop, Agent Lightning, was given their permission, pick out any new Nissan on a Costco Auto.com, and go for the process. Just leave it up to Agent Lightning. Pick out the car and go try to buy it on Costco.

Here's a report, speaking as if I am Agent Lightning. At 1.30 p.m. on Wednesday, I filled out the inquiry from a forum on Costco.com for a new 2020 Nissan Ultima 2.5. and immediately received the confirmation email from the Costco Auto program. Costco Auto.com, if you're going to buy a car, go to Costco Auto.com. The email acknowledged my inquiry and indicated that Carl Sprague's Nissan was the approved Costco dealer. They explained what would happen next. The authorized dealer contact would reach out to me shortly to schedule an appointment.

It explained I would need to bring my Costco membership card to the dealership, and that I'd be shown a member-only price sheet. So I waited to hear from one of the seven authorized dealer contacts that were listed in the Costco email. I think his name and pictures, actually, too. Pictures, nice. Choose a female or a male. It's your choice.

I didn't hear from anyone in the dealership. I checked on my email several times during the afternoon and evening and nothing. Next morning around 10.30, I called the Costco Auto Program to find out what to do. Nice thing about the Costco Auto Program. You call them, they're there, they give you advice, they help you with the dealer. You don't have that with most auto-bine program. The woman at Costco I spoke with was very nice, apologize. She offered to resubmit my inquiry, and I thanked her.

Still, I received nothing from Carl Springs, Nissan. The next morning at 8.30, I attempted to contact the dealership directly. I called the numbers given for the authorized dealer contacts. There was no answer at one number, but it was 8.30 at the morning, I consider that they may not be open yet. Then I call the other number, which appeared to be for Hesus. Haseus answered. It sounded very sleepy.

I told him by Costco inquiry and that I hadn't heard from anyone. I told him I got his number from the Costco response. Hesus said he was sorry, but he was off. He said he called me the next day. So I got Hesus at home on his cell phone, apparently. In bed. I waited a while longer than called the main number.

Again, this time Adam answered. Adam was not one of the authorized content. but he said he could help me. I went over everything with him, expressed my frustration that it's taken two days to speak with someone, anyone. Adam looked at me in their system. I said they did not, and said they did not have an email address for me,

but Costco had already said they have it, but he didn't have it, just a phone number. I gave them a Google Voice number I used for mystery shops. That's a great idea, by the way, Google Voice number. If you want to give a number, give a number. They could call you on, but they can't find you. It's just a number you don't normally use. He said they've been calling me for two days. I don't believe it. I gave my email address and said someone would get back to me soon with the pricing information on the

2020 altava. I waited for two hours. I was not contact to Adam, as he promised. I called Costco again, and another nice woman told me about my problem. She confirmed, she had just trying to lick my finger with my mask on. I have to turn the picture. Got it. Oops. Carl Springs, Nissan received my inquiry and said they had my correct email address. She didn't understand why the deal was not getting back to me and off-desplate the issue and find another Nissan dealer.

I declined until the woman, I will go to Carl Springs. Now, this is the contrast to Al Hendrickson. When we shopped for Costco, bought a Bing. Immediate response. Everything was seamless. everything was efficient in the Costco Auto program without Hedrickson Toyota so I believe it's Carl Springs Nissan there's just kind of a confused disorganized group of people I ride for the dealership at 2 p.m.

I know the showroom the receptionist was asked and sitting in a mass sorry masked and sitting proper sitting behind a large plexigrant shield where I could see everyone was properly masked I told the receptionist why I was there told her in a little longer the difficulty I had getting to some someone to contact me. She called for Adam. The same guy promised me on the phone that I'd be getting pricing email to me. Didn't happen. Adam seemed astonished that I never heard from anyone. He told the receptions to call a salesperson to come help me. I overheard her telling someone named Shemal to come with the front desk. Shemal came out to greet me.

I went through the whole story again. He asked me, led me to a desk, started working on his computer, found my name of the system, then started looking through the inventory. After a while, she grown. I asked, what's wrong? Shamal said there was only one 20-20 ultimate stock. It wasn't even an S-model. It would cost a little more. A little red flag there, right?

Shamal assured me that I'd get the Costco deal on that one, too. He took my driver's slice of stuff, said he'd be right back. I waited for just over 15 minutes before Shammal returned to tell me they had sold the last 2020 Altima that morning. And we checked later after the show was over, or after the shop was over, and found out they showed 20. Nine. Nine. None of them.

None of more S's. They were all more expensive models, but they were not yet. At this point, I was ready for anything. I asked him what I should do. Chimal recommended getting a 20-21 model and said he'd be able to do better than Costco prices. And by the way, just because they don't have a vehicle in stock doesn't mean they can't locate one, and they should. they should be able to find one at another dealership and swap cars to get the car from them. All dealers are the same make do this.

They cooperate. In this case, there was no mention. It is getting a little bit tough with some of the 2020 models. It could be. It could be, but there was no effort made. No effort. Jamal led me outside. We found a 2021 ultima S.

MSRP, 26205. There was an addendum of 1495 for the Coral Springs Nissan Advantage. the BS addendum level. Worthless products, these are especially worthless, like first time world change is the biggest value.

Lifetime car washes, that's smoke, lifetime shuttle service. All car dealers give you shovel service, so that's free anyway. They're going to give to you for $1,495. Lifetime multi-point inspection.

Come on. You know what that is? That's the way to find out on your car, something they can fix and charge you a lot of money for. Every car dealer does a free multi-point inspection so they can find something to fix and charge you a lot of money.

So that's one of the most undervalued addendum stickers I've ever seen. You're paying a lot of money for that privilege. Yeah, exactly. We own a very short, one-mile test drive during which Jamal did not wear a seatbelt. Now, this is strange.

Causing the seatbelt charm to ring incessantly. Now, Nassie does that, and it drives me in Bong, bong, bong, bong, and for the whole test drive, Shemal, is sitting here with those seatbelt on, and going bong, maybe he's deaf. I was going to say maybe he has a hair and disability. We returned to the desk and Shal waved over his sales manager, Ray. Ray was ready for a Costco, Ray was, was ready for with a Costco member only price sheet in his hand. This is something you have to see, insist on sing, and Costco will remind you to ask for this. that. The Costco member only price sheet. It appeared to be on the same vehicle we just drove

MSRP and Van Match. There was a $2,904 discount taking off MSRP. Then they added $647 half the price of the worthless addendum package. So $647 for an end of a package worth zero. For one oil change. That basically what's for. $647. So I'm going to send the shopping report to Costco, and I'm going to report this dealership because, really, they're violating the program, and you ain't seen nothing yet.

Then they subtracted a $7,050 Nissan rebate, bringing my Costco member price to only $22.198. To that, two hidden fees were added, a $799 dock fee, and a $349 tag agency fee. I asked about the addendum package, and Ray proudly stated that as a Costco member, I got that for half price, yeah. $4.0. Price was $1,200. He said it to me for $600. That's not going to happen. I said I didn't want any of it, but he said he's never seen them take that off for anyone, but he would ask.

Ray asked me to leave through a packet that elicit a bunch of company makes. I love this. I wish I didn't have to rush this report because it is truly hilarious. He asked me to let him know if I or someone in my family worked at any of these. I saw Walgreens listed and told him, I had a family member who worked there. Ray said, yes. And then he could get another $600

off. Now that's total nonsense. No verification. He just said, yeah, I have a family member that works at Walgreens, right. Ray and Shamal excused them again. He returned at about five minutes with a bare-bones worksheet. Ray said he was able to get

them. Who is them? He's the man. He's the manager. Well, it's the next level. He's going to. That was a Kenny Page, the owner, to take off the whole addendum for me. How about that? They actually took off the addendum worth nothing. So now you went from value of nothing added to a free, nothing added, instead of $647. Feel better about the free. The top line was MSRP, 26205. There was a $5,254 discount, which was added $1437 in taxes. and this is strange, $1,141 in fees. Now, there are more hidden fees there, folks.

Trust me. There was no explanation of what constitute fees. Okay? Out the door was 24-1-29. Okay, now I guess the same thing with this very thick report we got here, and I usually don't have this number of pages to turn, but after reviewing the worksheet, re-informed me that he was authorized to take another $500 off.

if I bought it right then and there and now. Now listen, seriously, because you're going to love this. He said he was a salesman, and salesman understood that if the customer leaves, they've really come back, especially at Coconut Creek Nissan. They run screaming out the door, and they never come back. He said that by offering me this, okay, is Costco listing? Actually, Costco is listing, because I spoke to Costco last week,

and he told me he listened to the show. the Costco representative. So listen carefully. They said that by offering me this extra $500 discount, he was technically breaking the Costco agreement. So we have a confession of breaking the Costco agreement because the Costco price has to be the lowest price. So he's saying that I gave you the lowest price all said to anybody, but I just told his customer I was going to give them a better price.

And he's probably not telling the truth anyway, but if he were telling the truth, He'd be violating the Costco price. Hey, he's grown all the other customer customers who paid more. All the other customer paid more. And that's the whole purpose for the Costco price. I said he was generous, but I never buy a car. In the first day, I go

car shopping, you're all so smart, agent lightning, couldn't have said it better. You'd never, ever buy a car the same day. I thanked him, and I left. Appleog. It was difficult to decipher the Bear Balance worksheet. If we totaled out what the price

is applying the additional discounts, promised by Ray, we get an out-the-door price about $400 less than what's on the worksheet. There has to be more hidden fees, as I said earlier, and that $1,741 just had fees. For what it's worth, the last price given to Agent Lightning was about $600 lower than the prices we found on TrueCar for a new 2021 Nissan Ultima S. And my last two blogs, or my last recent blogs, so that Costco was the best place. program to buy a car

and I said the true car was almost as good well that followed suit here but there wasn't a bad price and so in spite of all the other shenanigans and deception and BS somehow Agent Lightning came out with a fairly decent price

yeah okay I'm looking at grades that are coming in we have an F from Jonathan and Wellington and then over here on Facebook Linda gives them a what the heck fat F and real quick this is not doing the shopping report but Amory did text she said she read an interview with Colin Powell a general Colin Powell who did

the exact same thing you did with the dishwasher put dish soap in it and flooded their kitchen with soap so you're in you're good company with the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Secretary of State thank you all right so I'm going to give him we got Fs are coming in got you know what I'm done with the curve F boy I still haven't run on an F for the long time I don't like them

so F for me okay move on I've got Donovan Lewis they get an F for fees Tim Gilliland too many red flags for me D minus

Nate Ward this was a dumpster fire from start to finish I tried they need to lose their Costco dealership status D minus and for myself

I'm I'm going to go with a D minus myself, just barely passing because I think they gave for a good price, but they just played so many games. If you know what you're doing, you can work the system and work them. I see? F. Yeah, I'm going to do an F too,

and I tell you why I'm doing it is because they are so abused and contorted and, The Costco Auto Member Program is a great program. And they just tore it apart. And they didn't execute it. They offered to break

the rules. You know, I just, for no other reason, because we're recommending on this show the Costco auto buying program is the best. And not the only one. You should always shop and get three prices, three different prices. Remember, if you're a Costco

member, you can put in different zipcos. You could get three different Costco prices from three different Costco membership dealers. Even, and maybe one of them is a little bit too far. But if you get that price, then you at least know what you can buy the car for if you did buy it from that dealers. So I'm going to fail them, put them on the do not recommend list. Yeah. For me, it was the totality of everything from the incompetence and then ignoring her to everything. Yeah, so that's not hard for me. And one of the thing I've got to say about Nissan,

I think the Nissan manufacturer has something to do with the overall underperformance and deceptive performance of Nissan dealerships. They put too much pressure on the dealers. They have the stair-step incentive I've talked about on the show where they force dealers to go to outrageous means to sell enough cars so they don't get canceled as a Nissan dealer or they get their performance bonuses.

So shame on Nissan, the manufacturer, for creating an environment of deception among your dealers. Well said, that is Mystery Shop of Coral Springs, Nissan. Costco Style. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us this morning. Stay safe. We'll see you again.

Let's come.