Capital One Just Put the Entire Auto Industry On ALERT | Episode 979

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It's noon here in Venter City,

New Jersey at our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

And this is Carage Live for Wednesday, December 10th

with your host, me, Ray here in Venter City.

Where it is windier than, well, God only knows.

And my son, Zach, in Washington,

how are you today, handsome?

Do a fantastic happy Wednesday, December 10th.

Happy birthday to my buddy, Daniel.

Excited to have to join you here today

to talk about the interesting information

that Capital One recently shared

that has the entire auto industry on alert

before we turn our attention there.

We need to remind everyone that today's show

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go to CarEdge.com, click on insurance,

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All right, dad, you ready?

Yes.

New data shows growing trust in car dealers.

Now what?

This comes, dad, from a Capital One annual survey

that they do.

Capital One car buying outlook finds nearly 70%

of car buyers view dealers as trustworthy.

So today for the show,

wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, give me a sec, give me a second.

So for today on the show,

what we're gonna do is we're gonna review the report

that Capital One has.

And we're also going to go line by line

through a new civil court case

against Morgan Automotive Group filed in Florida.

We're gonna go through a complaint

that a former finance manager said recently

against Morgan Auto Group.

So we're gonna go side by side today.

70% of car buyers view dealers as trustworthy.

And yes, y'all, I did go to the clerk website

for the state of Florida to find this court case

so that we can literally go through 13 pages,

which include, I should mention,

screenshots of text messages talking about

how we can't take advantage of the elderly,

but we can get it over on the other 98% of customers.

We'll be looking at that side by side here on today's show.

Let's start, dad, with the company.

One question about the Capital One survey.

Did they only survey dealership employees?

And that's like 200% trustworthy thing?

Let's start with the Capital One data.

Let's start there.

And then, yes, again, I think I did very good QA

up to this show.

We've got the perfect antidote

to what Capital One is putting out there.

So this was on December 4th, okay?

So a week ago.

Yes.

I'm literally, we're just gonna read it together.

The 2025 Capital One car buying outlook

reveals nearly 70% of car buyers now view dealers as trustworthy

up from 44% just two years ago.

This growth in trust is supported by an in-person

and digital shopping approach

where car buyers research online for convenience

while seeking in-person experiences

for control and excitement.

Dad, you sold cars for 40 plus years.

Do you think seven out of 10

of your customers trusted you

when they walked in the door?

Not initially.

No, no, not initially.

You know, and let's face it,

you know, the bulk of my career,

I shouldn't say the bulk,

the beginning of my career 12 years were spent

in the Atlantic City area at an Nissan dealership.

And, you know, the one thing I understood

working just outside of Atlantic City

was that there wasn't gonna be any growth

population-wise to the east of us, okay?

That was the Atlantic Ocean.

So there's only so much growth

that could be had in our area.

And so it was a relatively small population.

Yep.

I kind of sort of figured you'd better be nice

to those people because if you're not,

they're never coming back to sea again.

It's not like we were in Philadelphia.

Yep.

So initially, no, you know,

everybody walks into a dealership

with their defenses up, you know?

And I am not buying for an instant, okay?

That if you were to survey a hundred people

that 70 of them would say,

absolutely, I find dealerships trustworthy,

above and beyond reproach,

I would trust them more to my doctor.

Well, Dad, we survey the car edge community.

We do this every single month

and we're at 82% of customers

do not trust car dealers.

So we've got very different data sets here.

Capital one, again,

putting the entire auto industry on alert.

The days of being, I don't know,

disbarred and dismayed by consumers are gone.

70% of consumers trust you.

That's a huge moment for the auto industry.

In the same breath, you can find other research.

Ours, for example, 82% don't trust dealers.

And again, we're gonna look at this ongoing litigation

out of the state of Florida to talk about,

okay, what is a former finance manager complaining about

with regards to his role

when he was working within a dealership?

Let's keep going here, though,

though through some of the data that Capital One shared, Dad.

Car buyers, excuse me, familiar with digital tools

are more likely to trust dealers.

And when trust is established,

they're twice as likely to return for their next purchase.

Dealers also increasingly recognize digital tools

as a competitive advantage.

I get so nervous here.

Yeah, because everything you read on the internet

is not true.

A lot of these digital tools, quote unquote,

digital tools, they don't serve consumers.

They don't provide transparency.

A lot of these digital tools

facilitate bait and switch pricing,

which is the same crap to be clear

that dealers bemoan online as well.

Dealers hate the fact that many of these websites,

you can advertise it, a BS price, get customers in

and then flip them onto a different price

or payment pack and then all that stuff.

So digital tools, Dad,

help customers trust dealers even more.

Well, help me with something here.

Do we not provide consumers with digital tools

to engage with automobile dealerships?

Of course, yeah.

That's been going on ever since, what, the early 2000s.

So we, but we hear specifically.

Oh, like carage?

Yeah, of course.

We've spent six years building digital tools

that help people keep more confident buying car.

And let me say that one of our tactics

is to use email templates and things of that nature.

It's evolved from email templates,

you can copy paste to an AI agent

that'll use our email templates to negotiate for you.

Yeah.

And then utilizing those digital tools that we provide,

how difficult is it to get dealerships

to actually provide us with the information

that we ask for, virtually impossible?

I mean, Dad, if I may,

we've got a video obviously gonna come out soon

with regards to reaching out to 104 dealers,

but just to share, just to share a little preview folks,

we only got out the door price quotes

from 39% of dealers.

We've got 87 total across the 100

because they sent multiple

and we negotiated down the price,

but only four out of 10 actually sent out the door prices.

And we reached out to 104 dealerships for that video

that'll be coming out soon.

So like, yes, digital tools build trust, evidently.

I don't quite see it.

I really don't see it

because it's taken I think some pretty innovative things

like what we're doing to actually make a difference.

Like, again, shocked is a word I will use

to describe this Capital One research.

I would be curious as to how much automobile dealerships

paid Capital One to do this survey.

In my opinion,

This is the fifth year they've done this, Dad.

And Capital One, to be clear,

has built a massive auto business.

So I think it is worth naming

that Capital One's auto navigator

is a huge part of the Capital One business.

And yes, they do work with thousands of dealerships

nationwide to provide and serve that solution.

Obviously this fits their narrative.

They want to say that their tools are supporting better

and more transparent transactions at car dealerships.

It's just hard for me to really get excited about it,

to be honest.

I wish I was excited.

It's hard to believe.

Hard to believe it.

The results, you know, we see the comments every day.

Now, maybe it's because, you know,

only people that have had negative experiences

will comment, you know,

but that could be part of it.

But that certainly isn't all of it.

And I just, I find it hard to imagine

that if you walked up to 100 people on the street

and said, oh, by the way, just out of curiosity,

do you trust automobile dealers?

Would you find dealing with them to be a trustworthy endeavor?

You are not going to find 70 people out of that 100

that say, oh, absolutely.

It's just not going to happen.

So, you know, at a certain point, you look at information

and you think to yourself, does it pass a smell test?

This does not.

It absolutely does not.

Let me show you a little bit more about the methodology.

I also want to read one a quote from Mr. Yannick here.

I think it's either the vice president

or president of what they do in automotive.

Quote, dealers who bring together technology

with in-person experiences are creating the kind of trust

that keeps customers coming back.

So there you go.

It is, obviously it's a good narrative

if we can talk about how digital tools

help support this, which to be clear,

heck guys in our business,

we want to be able to put out the same thing,

but to be clear here, you know,

we survey 500 to 1,000 of you every month

and this is what you tell us,

82% of you do not trust car dealers.

Maybe it's a little bit audience bias as well,

that this came to be clear.

Over 2,000 survey responses from US car buyers,

either recent or future.

So they did do a really large group here.

Over 2,000 feels like a significant number.

And again, what they found is that 70%,

nearly 70%, 69% of car buyers,

view dealers as trustworthy.

So the other piece of today's show

that I wanted to cue into and really tap into here

is we've got some local publications

now covering a story out of Florida.

Former dealership execs Suze Tampa Auto Giant

alleging use of deceptive sales practices.

So this was an interesting story,

especially to juxtapose again,

the really positive news, which is again,

that 69%, nearly 70% of car shoppers

and it's getting headlines to be clear,

like over in Axios.

New data shows growing trust in car dealers.

Now what?

It feels very appropriate then that we went to the docket

and we actually pulled this case information

from this filing here from Jason Meribito,

who was a finance manager at Morgan Auto Group.

He's filing a complaint.

He's trying to get back a significant amount of money

and damages from this dealer group,

alleging that, I'll give you a bit of a summary here,

alleging that they essentially mistreated customers,

that they took advantage of customers

on products that had no value,

whether that be warranty products,

gap products that they sold as gap

or an actually gap,

as well as selling products like permaplate

and things like that,

that never actually got installed on vehicles.

And then they were packing payments as well.

So he goes in and we'll look at a lot of this as well

in the actual document,

but he goes in and he kind of hits on a lot of things

that you and I have been teaching people about

to watch out for for years.

So it's an interesting juxtaposition, right?

70% of customers trust car dealers,

yet in the same show,

we can have this very recently filed court document

talking about the pain points

that you and I have described for years.

And let me ask you one question.

I'm all ears.

Survey of trustworthiness of the...

Professions.

Exactly where do car sales people rank on that?

Give me a second.

Drum roll, please.

Oh, we don't need a drum roll.

We know how bad it is.

The drum is rolling and here it is.

Give me a second.

Americans rating of US professions

stays historically low.

That's exciting.

Let's see.

Dad, we're actually up.

Car sales people, 7% of Americans

trust car sales people.

That is the worst except for lobbyists at 4%.

So if 7% think sales people are trustworthy...

Yeah, how can Capital One publish that in Greenville?

You'd feel good about it.

Are they only surveying the 7% who think car sales people

are trustworthy so that it appears as if 70%

of survey respondents believe dealerships are trustworthy?

And the numbers just don't add up.

What's that all saying?

The math just ain't math in here.

Okay, there is no way that people can feel

as strongly as they do about automobile sales people

being, I don't know, bottom dwellers,

being the scum of the earth.

And then those people who are their points of contact

at dealerships suddenly say,

oh yeah, when we find the dealership situation

very trustworthy.

I think we gotta take a moment though, Deb,

because I wanna be able to stay on both sides

of this conversation.

And the reason I'm saying that is because

we have had really great dealer principles

join us on this show.

Where is it?

The car market has finally flipped.

Ford, Mazda, Lincoln, Joe Lewis has been

on this program a half dozen times.

The day before that was Dan LeGrange

over from Key Automotive Group.

There are dealers out there.

I'm thinking Andy Wright who posts his LinkedIn,

once a quarter this man Andy Wright

who's a dealer operator posts on LinkedIn

just absolutely beating the crap

out of third party marketplaces

who let dealers advertise BS prices

and how they never regulate it.

There are a lot of good people in this industry.

I don't think the public perception of it reflects that

because it's not the majority.

I think that's the reality is it's not the majority

and this lawsuit we're gonna look at,

this civil case that we're gonna look at

demonstrates exactly literally everything

we've been teaching people for six years

and how real it is.

This is coming from someone on the inside

now suing his former employer.

Like, there are a lot of bad apples

in this industry, unfortunately.

Yeah, Igor as well.

Igor used to operate dealerships as well.

There's a lot of good people.

You used to operate dealerships,

that you're a good man.

But the point is that there are many,

many, many, many, many more bad apples

in retail automotive than there are good apples.

You know, the ability to list dealers

who we know operate in a manner

that we would find appropriate,

you know, it doesn't take all that many fingers

and all that many hands in comparison to the fact

that there's 18,000 new car franchise dealerships out there.

Okay, not even talking about independent

used car dealership.

There is just no way that any of that makes sense.

You know, having spent 43 years on the inside

and you know, I had to confront every day

what it was that customers feared the most

of coming into a dealership.

Now, did that mean that I tried to take advantage

of people and everything?

You know, it meant that I actually listened to people

on a daily basis and tried to figure out ways

to improve the process.

For sure.

It was a very, very difficult road to hoe

because it wasn't me that needed the convincing,

it was dealership owners who needed the convincing.

So Deb, let's actually get into that.

And the thing I want to get into is

it is profitable to run your dealership in a way

that I think for many of us here

in the car edge community,

we would say is against our personal values

or the values of car edge, our company,

it's profitable to do some kind of shady things.

And we're gonna review this court filing

as a way to demonstrate some of those shady things

that happened.

And it's not just us talking about it, right?

Or saying, hey, here are the red flags.

We're gonna read through and look at text messages

that actually demonstrate potentially alleged,

I should say, you know, bad practices

because this is in court, this is not, you know,

this is America, you're innocent until proven guilty.

Before we do, however, again,

a friendly reminder, caredge.com, six years

of trying to turn the auto industry

into a more safe, transparent, and honest space, excuse me.

If we can help you with anything,

please check out the website, my dad and I started

six years ago, now we have an incredible team

and we work every day to support our community.

So Deb, again, this was filed back in July,

but there was an update recently

and that's why it's getting a little bit of press attention.

It's a case between Jason Mirabito,

who is the plaintiff, and Morgan Auto Group,

that is the defendant.

Morgan Auto Group has over 70 dealerships,

if I'm not mistaken, and this has been filed

in Hillsborough County Circuit Court in Florida.

Now I'm gonna jump around a little bit here,

but I'm gonna scroll down to the facts of the case, okay?

We're gonna read through a lot of this.

The defendant, excuse me, the plaintiff

has been in the car business since January 2000, all right?

So this guy's been in the industry for a while.

He became employed as a finance director

over at Morgan Auto Group earlier in his tenure, excuse me.

And then I wanna share here some of the things

that were going on at the dealership.

On January 1st, 2023, the dealership fired

both Safeguard and JMNA as their warranty providers.

So they had a provider for vehicle warranties

and they replaced those warranty products

under a new name called Sidecars.

The new warranties appeared to be exact

because of the warranties previously used

just with the Sidecar logo at the top.

The new warranties were identical to the prior products

and were introduced with no instruction from corporate.

No explanation as to the details of the warranties

and no explanation as to how the new products were added,

notwithstanding the similarities.

So the original warranty products initially offered

Sidecars were useless warranties

that offered little to no protection

to the consumers who purchased them.

So that's the first thing that I felt

was kind of interesting on the warranty product.

Useless to consumers who purchased them, GAP.

It was originally offered by the dealership,

now being offered alongside another product

called Equity Shield.

Equity Shield looks like GAP.

The description was very similar to GAP

and it was being sold to customers as GAP

or GAP plus if they were being sold both products.

Yet it does not replace GAP as protection

and the maximum payout according to the contract

is 5,000 for new vehicles and 3,000 for used vehicles.

Customers are being sold the product

in lieu of actual GAP

when the customers are financing considerably more

than the vehicle's worth.

When the internal cost of the product was raised so high

that finance managers could no longer

make any money selling GAP.

The dealership began selling customers Equity Shield

instead of GAP,

leaving customers uncovered, unbeknownst to them.

So there you go.

We've got another interesting one there.

We've got here, dad, where was it?

Where was it?

Yeah, objective to finance managers

trying to convince customers that this Equity Shield product

operated the same as GAP, get it continued.

Here we go.

The dealership offered Permaplate,

an appearance protection package

and Crystal Fusion, a windshield protection product.

Permaplate and Crystal Fusion pulled their products

when the warranty providers,

the dealership previously used for fire.

Sidecars had two exact copies of Permaplate

and Crystal Fusion,

but they didn't have the materials

to actually put the products on the vehicle.

Interesting.

I mean, so what are we getting at here, dad?

We're barely through this thing to be clear.

But so far, what red flags are we hitting on

that should make a consumer

maybe have their alarm bells going off

or maybe be a little bit wary of trusting a dealership?

All right, people, serious question time.

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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

You chose to hit play on this podcast today.

Smart choice.

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That's why they offer a tool called Auto Quote Explorer

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quote with rates from other companies.

So you save time on the research

and can enjoy savings when you choose

the best rate for you.

Give it a try after this episode at Progressive.com.

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Well, everything so far has been deceptive.

And here's the issue in my mind.

The entire industry, the majority of the industry

is based on deception,

starts on the internet with internet pricing

where dealers price vehicles utilizing

every incentive known to man,

that there isn't one person on the face of the planet

that could qualify for all of them,

but the advertised price includes all of them.

So it is significantly lower than what it really will be

when the customer shows up.

So if there's an industry that has based everything

they do on deceiving the customer

in order to get them in the door,

why would you ever think for a moment

that anything they tell you would be accurate?

Let me jump back into this.

Jump to that conclusion.

Yeah, dad, let me.

It's fine to me to get me here about.

Let me go, dad.

Let me go, let me go, let me go.

It's accurate.

Dad, let me go.

Equally egregious, the dealership packs

two or three year powertrain-only vehicle service contracts

into customer payments on new automobiles.

However, there are very few, if any,

brand new automobiles that do not come

with at least three-year comprehensive coverage.

The maximum length of coverage offered

on those powertrain VSCs was usually packed

with a two-year variant.

Essentially, the dealership is selling customers

something that already comes with their new car.

Listen to this stat to build off your point.

Honor around October 2023,

Ernie Sims was transferred from Honda of Fort Myers

to Jaguar Land Rover Sarasota.

Mr. Sims was brought in to revive the dealership

because the other one was one of the most successful dealerships

within the group.

Very quickly, it was understood that the success

of the other dealership was largely due to, quote,

Ernie Play.

In accordance with the Ernie Play,

a, quote, box-closed method is automatically

implemented with the sale of each vehicle.

In the auto industry, the box is what the finance department

refers to, the situation where a customer signs all

the bank paperwork and buys additional warranties,

essentially, quote, checking all the boxes.

However, the box-closed requires the customer

to sign all the paperwork with the salesperson

and floor manager, but detailed payment information

is specifically excluded.

Here, the customer is only agreeing on the price

of the vehicle after any trades.

This means only numbers the customer sees

and the only number the customer is agreeing to

and signing for is the out-the-door price

of the vehicle.

For example, if a customer agreed to a final price

of $15,000 for the vehicle,

as the total the customer should be financing

if they chose to not add any warranties.

Instead, employees were told to engage in a practice

known as payment packing whereby customers

are charged for products that the customer did not want

or did not know they were pushing.

That this is, sorry, I got so antsy there,

but I was like, everything you were just serving

is in this freaking lawsuit.

It's how the industry operates.

That's why disclosure is so important.

If a customer doesn't know what they should look for,

they're going to be taken advantage of.

If a customer is told one thing by the salesperson

and they just assume that everything

that the salesperson told them is what they're signing

for when they're in the finance office without checking,

oftentimes they're gonna be shocked

at how much difference there is

between what they had been told

and what they ultimately signed for.

Now, is it the customer's responsibility

to slow down the process and make sure

that what they're signing is accurate?

Yes, it's your responsibility

because trust me when I tell you this,

there ain't nobody out there that's looking

to protect your ass, not your state,

not your federal government.

Nobody's out there looking to protect your ass.

So if you want to protect your ass,

you got to protect your own ass.

So slow down the process.

Make it annoyingly slow for the finance people.

Go over every line, make sure it matches up.

But most people unfortunately won't do that

because either they're worn down, time,

or they're just accepting of whatever it is

somebody says to them at that point.

And so, yeah, these type of practices happen all the time.

I want to keep going here, Dad.

And I also want to remind everyone,

this is why I courage is a passion project

for both me and my dad.

My dad tried to be a good guy,

which quite frankly, the way that this lawsuit

is set up, this case, this person who's suing,

like he's the good guy as you're about to see here

in a second, he got fired ultimately.

I think a lot of ways, Dad,

you were held back in your career

because you did not take advantage of as many customers

as you could have made more money for the dealership.

What we do at Carage is a reflection of my dad's values

and my values.

I want to continue to read here, however,

upon information and belief,

defendants instructed managers to artificially inflate

the payment amount to leave room for warranties

and a higher interest rate,

both of which could then be negotiated by the customers.

Oftentimes the interest rate first provided

was well above the interest rate,

actually available to the customer,

thereby constituting a potential truth

and lending act violation.

At that point, the finance managers agreed

to negotiate the potential customers

to close the deal by offering reduced interest rate.

Now, here you go, Dad.

Notwithstanding the pressure to perform,

the defendant, or the plaintiff, excuse me,

refused to engage in the early play

and refused to payment pack.

He repeatedly complained to the defendant

regarding those practices.

And those practices, by the way, are ill legal.

Yeah.

Just so you know.

Yeah, man, this thing just goes on and on

and on and my favorite part about it is, however,

at the very end here, I'm going to go all the way down to it.

You've got actual screenshots of text messages between staff.

Yes, she got to Ernie yesterday

and said she didn't want the warranty, et cetera,

so he had Joey print a buyer's order to mail out.

It's okay.

She was threatening taking advantage of the elderly

and calling the state's attorney.

We don't need that heat.

We can't fight the elderly.

Take what we can get.

It's okay.

No one is upset with you.

We know buyers are liars.

Just can't have major heat.

Hey, the next one.

We get over on the other 98%.

It is what it is exactly.

Like, again, if you're just joining our show,

this is the coming off the heels of Capital One,

saying 70% of car buyers view dealers as trustworthy.

And it's not like our mantra here

is to paint dealers as villains.

We actually want to just paint the picture

that buying a car can be transparent and easy and efficient.

And if you go in, eyes wide open and naive,

there's a likelihood you could be in a situation

like this and end up getting taken advantage of

and no one deserves that.

One of the favorite things to do at dealerships

when they're working deals

is to ask for how much money the customer

is going to be putting down.

And oftentimes they won't even ask that.

They'll print out a proposal that'll show zero cash down,

$2,500 cash down, $5,000 cash down,

and how that equates into payments.

Yep.

And one of the things I've caught a lot of heat for,

if you know the person's credit score, okay,

and you've agreed to a selling price

and you've agreed to a certain cash down,

cash amount down or trade,

you don't have a payment range,

because oftentimes you'll see the payment will be 750 to 759.

Well, no.

If you know the exact amount that you're financing

and you know the exact rate,

you would have an exact payment, okay?

So the idea, the concept of having a 10,

15, $20 spread in payments,

that is something that's done strictly

for the finance office,

because they don't wanna actually

have to sell their products

and sell the value of their products.

They wanna know that there's,

I don't know, $20 built into the payment or more

built into the payment

that they can then just automatically squeeze product into

to say they sold something.

One of the reasons why finance managers,

business managers go ballistic

when you tell them, oh, by the way, it's a cash deal,

oh, what's in it for me?

What's in it for you is the opportunity

to talk to a customer

and show them value in the products that you have

and see exactly what kind of salesperson you are.

That's what's in it for you.

You know, you have an opportunity.

You don't have a guaranteed income,

you have an opportunity.

All you can ask for in sales is an opportunity.

Let's turn our attention here to the chat from Sweet Regret.

Thank you for this kind contribution earlier in the show.

What extended warranty for engine and transmission

do you recommend for a 2021 Ford Ranger?

We have, I don't know if y'all know this,

but back at CarEdge.com, we have a warranty partner.

So go to CarEdge.com, click on warranty.

We partnered with a company called Fair

about a little over a year ago now.

We were doing things in-house,

we decided we would get a partner.

Good people over there.

I would encourage you to get a quote over here,

see what it's gonna cost through Fair.

They've done a great job as well,

making it very clear what's covered, what isn't covered.

The idea that a warranty is a scam,

an extended warranty, a vehicle service contract,

mechanical breakdown insurance as a scam,

I think is a misnomer.

They're just typically tons of,

there's typically packed with tons of profit.

And in many cases, like we've described here today,

can be sold in ways that add absolutely no value

to a customer.

So we have a partner, we vetted them,

encourage you to go check that out,

Sweet Regret, appreciate you.

With the kind of contribution from Matthew as well.

Thank you for this Matthew.

Ray Rodehoe, not Rode, there you go.

Also sounds like this guy just wants whistleblower money,

scammers here, scammers there,

scammers, scammers everywhere, potentially.

But I mean, I think it's good that we see these things,

these whistleblower allegations come out.

And to be clear, they're allegations.

Like this'll go to court,

it'll likely get settled in a way

where there's no wrong doing.

I bet you Morgan Automotive Group's

got a great lawyer dad, like they're gonna do their best.

It's a simple case, so it's different.

But let me say this,

the one thing that this gentleman has done

by bringing this lawsuit

is he has ended his career in automotive,

in retail automotive.

There is not another automotive group out there

that is going to hire him

because he is disclosing inside secrets

about how dealerships operate.

And so he better have another line of work in mind

because it's not gonna be working

in the automobile industry.

I'm not gonna suggest to you

that he would be blackballed,

but I'm pretty sure he would be blackballed, okay?

And that he no longer has a future

in something that he had been doing for 25 years.

So will he get some money

from Morgan Automotive Group?

Who knows, but I would bet dollars

to donuts, in my opinion,

that the charges he's brought

are things that they're actually doing

and they know better

and they know they shouldn't be doing.

It's worth mentioning at this point,

my dad actually is doing expert witness work

for the state's attorney general

out of Massachusetts right now.

So he's joked to me a couple of times,

not that you have any interest going back

and working at a car dealership,

but you've joked to me a handful of times now.

You've said, okay, I think I've said goodbye

to ever working in the auto industry again.

Because I think the moment you become an expert witness

for a state AG in a case against a car dealership,

you've kind of signed your letter saying,

all right, I'm never gonna work inside the industry again.

Which I think as a community,

we should commend you for doing this work.

I mean, this is outside of what you do at Car Edge.

You're working with a state attorney general

on a case against a car dealership.

That's really incredible.

Trying to help them right or wrong.

That's all.

I mean, I have found it not difficult for me,

but difficult for people around me to do the right things.

When you screw up, put up your hand and say,

hey, it was on me, I screwed up.

When there's a problem, I used to always look at it and go,

is this the right way to address it?

Is it?

Were we taking advantage of somebody?

Were we hiding something from somebody?

Did we not disclose everything

that we should have disclosed?

And if I discovered that we did not,

then we just corrected the damn situation.

It is so difficult for so many people to do the right thing.

And perhaps maybe today,

what makes it so difficult is people don't understand

what is the right thing.

But my suggestion for automobile dealerships

and dealer principals and owners of these facilities,

do wonder others how you would like it done to you.

And if you don't wanna be,

you don't wanna shop somewhere where they had the lining

to get you in and don't operate your business that way.

This is why I'm so proud of what we've built here at Carriage.

For those of you that are unfamiliar,

scroll down on the homepage,

go to the about us section

and learn more about why we do what we do.

There's all sorts of information here.

We even have the manifesto back on the community forum too.

So please learn more about why we do what we do here at Carriage

because it is exactly what you just described that.

It's like we have values that we wanna bring out into the world

and we're on a crusade to absolutely do that.

I mean, listen, I can't sit here and tell you

that there were times that dealerships that I worked at

that there were times where people were taking advantage of.

I'm sure there were.

There were also times when I wasn't a general manager

at a dealership where I might've been a new car manager

and I could bring it to the general manager's attention

and if he didn't wanna do anything about it,

my hands were pretty much tied

or I needed to go find a different place to work.

It wasn't uncommon that I would go find a different place

to work because philosophically,

how that general manager wanted to treat customers

or that dealer principal wanted to treat customers

didn't align with the way I thought we should treat customers.

So it's incumbent upon everyone in the industry

to find a better way of doing it

and to clearly understand what's right and what's wrong

and know the difference between right and wrong

and not cross that line.

Yeah, let's end the show on this.

I used Carriage Pro, our AI agent, all of our data

to reach out to 104 dealers for the same value,

same like advertised F-150 and dad,

we've got a video that'll be coming out

on the main Carriage channel soon,

but I just wanna share with everyone,

like we've got all the data.

Yes.

If you're curious, it took 15 minutes and 30 seconds

to get our first out-the-door price quote.

That's pretty incredible.

The slowest was four days, 20 hours and 40 minutes.

On average, it took a day and 41 minutes

to get an out-the-door price quote.

We've broken everything down here.

What are the most common fees we were seeing?

What are the most common add-ons?

What were the prices for those add-ons?

You're gonna see the lowest out-the-door price

we got was $53,402, the highest was $70,000.

Again, folks, we've reached out to 104 dealers

on the same MSRP F-150.

Yet we have a $17,000 variation in price.

So stay tuned, y'all.

This is gonna be an incredible video that comes out.

And again, we used our AI agent

to contact these 100 dealers and negotiate with them.

We got responses actually this year, dad,

from over 79%, almost 80% of dealers responded to us.

Yeah, we only got out-the-door prices from 39%.

So cannot wait to make that video.

Stay tuned for it.

The data is looking pretty insane, to say the least.

How crazy it is to buy a car.

$17,000 price difference is nuts.

So anyway, I wanted to just kind of plant that seed.

That'll be out on the main CarEdge channel

in another week or two here.

Yeah, but the good news is that 70% of the respondents

to the Capital One survey find-

Trust car dealers.

Yeah, dad, you got here, yep.

Yeah, go ahead, yeah.

Is that an Arizona Cardinals or Louisville Cardinals?

It is Arizona Cardinals, unfortunately.

We lived in Phoenix for 20 years.

My children were born in Phoenix.

I was a Cardinals season ticket holder for 10 years.

Zach used to go to games with me.

I've also been a filled-off Eagle season ticket holder,

but that was back in 1962, 63, and 64.

And yeah, I am lost in my allegiance to the Cardinals,

to the Arizona Cardinals.

This is for them.

Thank you, man.

Yes, and when people say, well, what's the best way

to watch an Arizona Cardinals game?

My answer used to be, well, with your eyes closed.

And today, I would amend that for someone my age

with your eyes closed and your hearing aids out.

Okay, so you can't see it and you can't hear it,

so you can't be disappointed

because you know what's gonna happen.

We've got here, dad, from Gark.

Good to see you again.

Incredibly kind over the past week here.

We helped this individual purchase of the vehicle,

and he has been coming back day-to-day

out on the show and making contributions.

Thank you, it means the world to us.

I was annoyed with the finance guy at our dealership.

We signed a deal before sitting with finance,

and they changed the price before we signed

to take the car officially.

Super shady, let alone dishonest.

Yep, this is a practice, unfortunately,

that we see the handoff from the salesperson

to the finance manager.

We had, it was so disappointing, man.

We offer a car buying service, y'all,

and there are some dealerships that we work with.

To be clear, they don't pay us anything,

but we work with them.

We send them a lot of customers,

and so they treat them really, really well.

We had a concierge customer recently,

dad, who we ended up having to refund,

and it was really disappointing refund.

But the reason we ended up having to refund them

is when they got to the dealership,

the dealer blew up the deal,

like absolutely blew up the deal,

to the point where this customer of ours

was threatening to call the attorney general

and like, yo, go berserk.

Which I don't blame them.

The whole deal blew up

and they spent $1,000 with Carriage

to have a great experience.

This is the frustrating part.

Doesn't happen often,

but man, oh man,

there are some dealers out there

that just even with a layup, man,

a layup, the done deal,

they still shoot themselves in the foot

and they totally act shady

and it's just, it's mind boggling to me.

Again, folks, if we can help you with anything,

caredge.com, that car buying service,

I mentioned a moment ago,

man, it stinks when it doesn't work,

but fortunately, 99% of the time it does.

We're offering a promotion here, $150 off.

Meet our team and learn more about how this works.

Even get a free consultation call

to see if it's a good fit.

Back at caredge.com,

then click on Car Buying Service.

And as I said at the beginning of the show,

please shop that dog on auto insurance.

We're seeing people save money weekend and week out.

You just need to shop it.

You need to be able to compare

and we've obviously built a solution there for you.

Final thoughts here, Dan, from MJC63.

Thank you for the kind words.

Also, Dan and F and I, and love you guys.

Cheers, Michael.

Thank you, Michael, we appreciate it.

Dad, we're back tomorrow with more Car Edge Live,

aren't we?

I do believe.

I don't think we have a day off for quite some time.

So, yes.

I'm super anxious for tomorrow.

Tomorrow I hear if I got into the Chicago Marathon,

I really hope I got in.

I'd love to run that race next year.

When do they run that?

What is it, like October or November of next year?

Oh, I have no idea.

October of next year, I think.

They should wait till December

when it's really cold and snowy.

I hope.

I hope I get it, man.

Also have a 5K race this Sunday.

I'm trying to break 19 minutes.

We'll see if that happens.

So anyway, very anxious for tomorrow, Dad.

Let's see if I get Chicago, okay?

Well, we're all pulling for you.

And yes, we'll be back here tomorrow

and we look forward to having you here tomorrow.

And remember, bring a friend.

Yeah, bring a friend.

Love you, Dad.

Love you too, handsome.

When you fill up a 76, you're ready to go.

To that music festival you see posted about each year,

but have never been to.

And you're ready to go?

Do a sunrise yoga class before work.

Ah, and go dog sitting

and try to get the zoomies under control.

Now who wants to go?

Go here, go there, go anywhere with 76.

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Toyotathon, Toyotathon, Toyotathon is on.

Oh, what fun it is to drive a new Toyota today.

Hey, Jan from Toyota here reminding you Toyotathon is on.

Make your holiday wishes come true

with a new Camry, RAV4, Tacoma and more.

All right, let's sing it together this time.

Toyotathon, Toyotathon, Toyotathon is on.

Dealer inventory may vary.

Toyotathon ends January 5th.

See your participating dealer for details.

Toyota, let's go places.

10 years from today, Lisa Schneider will trade

in her office job to become the leader of a pack of dogs.

As the owner of her own dog rescue, that is.

A second act made possible by the rescaling courses

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Capital One Just Put the Entire Auto Industry On ALERT | Episode 979

About this episode

Nissan Rogue

Ford Explorer

Saturn Outlook

Fisker Ocean

Out-the-door price

Lincoln Navigator

warranty products

gap products

Permaplate

GAP insurance

Crystal Fusion

tires

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vehicle service contract

powertrain

comprehensive coverage

box-closed method

additional warranties

extended warranty

Ford Ranger

mechanical breakdown insurance

Ford F150

dealer fees

add-ons

MSRP

finance manager

Toyotathon

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