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Dealership Drama: Craig and Landreth Cars (Louisville, KY)
Dealership Drama: Craig and Landreth Cars (Louisville, KY)
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About this episode
A dramatic dispute between two car dealerships, SwitchCars and Craig and Landreth Cars, unfolds over a $900 fee that escalates into a viral controversy. The hosts share recorded phone calls revealing unprofessional behavior from Craig and Landreth's management, leading to public backlash and negative reviews. Legal insights are provided on contract enforceability, and the episode highlights broader issues of trust and ethics in the car sales industry. The discussion also touches on humorous anecdotes and automotive news, making it a captivating listen for those interested in dealership dynamics.
Topics:
dealership disputes
contract law
customer service
viral controversies
automotive ethics
recorded calls
car sales practices
legal insights
industry relationships
public backlash
Cars:
BMW 6 Series
BMW Z4
Chevrolet Corvette
Chevrolet Express
Fiat 500
Ford Mustang
Porsche 911
Volkswagen ID.3
Volkswagen ID.4
Doug had an interesting interaction with Craig & Landreth Cars (Louisville, KY) concerning a vehicle they had an agreement on. If you haven't heard the full story by now, we'll dive in a bit deeper this week.
Plus, we'll cover the story of a Priest who defrauded an auction at their parish to... win a Corvette?
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Articles mentioned in this episode:
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"Separate corporations. We'll get to that later. And they had a 2010 portion, 9-11 advertised on their website on Craig and Landrith cars website, craigsbestcars.com."
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Welcome back to Switchcast Season 6.
I'm your host, Doug Tabott, here with my co-host, Tyler Sanders, and we are the
automotive news and entertainment show that's not just for car people.
Ethan Huffnagle is our assistant executive to the regional producer.
I messed that up, but anyway, he's all of those titles, except assistant.
He is his own number two.
He couldn't find anyone else that he could trust.
What's that title?
Assistant to the assistant to the regional manager, getting deep into office references.
Switchcast is a podcast where we know what we're talking about, despite evidence
to the contrary.
I love that.
It's so good.
We need to get that on a shirt.
That could just be our tagline.
With the negatives of our faces.
I don't want to wear my own face, but boy, that would be a good time.
Oh, boy.
If you enjoy this podcast, help us out with the algorithms.
Like, subscribe, share, leave a five-star review, and consider subscribing to our Patreon
where you get exclusive content and support our sponsors as well.
We're very thankful for them and their continued support of the show.
What is fueling this podcast tonight?
It's not what the bottle that Tyler is holding in his hand is actually cinnamon rolls, which
my wife made for her birthday.
Yeah, it works that way.
She forgot the egg, though, but guys, what's the ruling?
Absolutely delicious.
Yeah, these are good.
I think if anything, they're slightly, they're like a little more dense, not as airy, which
I think the egg could bring, but the flavor's there.
They're delicious.
I thought you were talking about blonde people.
All right.
New.
Easy.
Whoa.
I'm also drinking whiskey after the cinnamon roll.
I'm not trying to, I don't think they'd go well together.
Let's see, warming up on our warm-up lap, that's right.
If you ever get out on the racetrack, you need to make sure your tires get warm
and your fluids, et cetera, before you hammer on your car and, you know, put it into a tire
wall because you're on cold tires.
My fluids are warm.
I tell you what.
Mm-hmm.
Yikes.
Hurts, according to AutoBlog, Hurts has been in the news quite a bit after, lately, again,
after receiving customer complaints based on the AI damage estimators are using
drive-through cameras and stuff because they're not using employees to validate the estimates
prior to sending bills to customers.
So, you know, there's an article on AutoBlog, but, you know, what's, it's nothing new
for Hurts.
They've been in the news lately for all sorts of questionable business practices.
Oh, really?
Oh my gosh.
The last couple of years have been crazy.
When I think of Hurts, I can only think of the, didn't they have the Mustangs?
Yes.
That's all I can think of.
So, that marketing worked because I'm like, oh, they had the black and gold Mustangs.
Yeah, for you, but the last couple of years has been a number of articles that are not
a good look for them, but anyway, according to this article on AutoBlog, it's Congress
wants answers from Hurts and, you know, it's all well and good, but, you know,
I don't understand why Congress is getting involved in this, right?
They're kind of hypocritical.
Like, we want answers from Congress.
Congress is overspending and, you know, they're, they're, they have questionable
investments, right?
All these Congress people getting rich off of their investments.
They're not questionable, Doug.
They're just very conveniently timed.
Yes.
Right, right.
So, I just, I thought that was ironic.
That's like, oh, Congress wants answers from this company.
And it's like, let the consumer system work itself out, right?
Like, this does seem like an odd thing for Congress to be involved in.
They're not like, what are they?
Also, they can barely make the tech companies like follow the law.
What are they going to do to Hurts?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I thought of a incredible marketing thing for Hurts, though.
I can't believe they haven't done this yet.
Is it gold and black Mustangs?
No.
Repurposing the song.
Love Hurts like an ad for them.
But like, instead of Love Hurts, it's Love Hurts.
Yeah.
And like, I, I feel like that could be their main marketing campaign.
I, there, now I find it so hard to believe that somebody wouldn't have tried that
already and the band that or the company that owns the like copyright to
that song said, no, you can't.
No, they license it.
You just buy the license to it.
Well, but they can say no.
I guess.
Maybe the whoever likes that they would want that cash.
Anyway, follow up.
We love Nazareth.
Who Nazareth?
Yeah, yeah.
Hurts so good.
John Mellencamp.
No, you don't like that one as much.
That I mean, I feel like Love Hurts is a more just like, it's like a command.
You're telling someone.
Yeah.
Love can go both ways.
Love does hurt or you must love.
Hurts the company.
It's better.
It's better.
So this is why I don't work in marketing.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Follow up to our last podcast about swerving to avoid pedestrians and animals
where we said it's not a good idea to serve to avoid animals.
There have been a number of accidents caused by that that were far worse
than the running over of the animal itself.
Well, sure enough today and this is not.
Please don't take this as a see I told you so moment.
That's not what I'm trying to say here, but it's just it it happened again.
The seven three liter power stroke group on Facebook's very specific group.
Boy, they really just narrow in on a on a great engine.
There was a bad accident.
One of the members, they were towing a truck on a trailer with their truck
and they served to avoid a deer, which is not a choice I would probably make.
If I'm towing a trailer, but they wrecked hard and landed on a train track.
Everyone is OK, sort of.
There were some pretty bad injuries, but like everybody's mostly good now.
Our thoughts are with them as they recover.
And our reminders are with you, the listeners hit the dang deer.
Gosh, swerving with a trailer.
Yikes. I mean, unless you're in like a Fiat 500, maybe you want to swerve
then, yeah, especially if it's an eight pointer.
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I was personally involved in an interesting interaction this week,
and I'm going to do my best to present this to you as a podcast host
versus the dealer who was allegedly wronged in the scenario.
But it certainly went viral on the internet,
and it was basically just a dispute over nine hundred dollars.
So why did a dispute between two dealers over nine hundred dollars go viral?
And I think along and short of it is because people are absolutely
sick of being treated the way I was treated by car dealers.
Period. And they identified with it.
So let's give you a rundown of the scenario,
and I'm going to play the actual recorded calls of the interaction.
Switch cars, a dealer in Ohio,
contacted Craig and Landrith cars, a dealer in Louisville, Kentucky,
not to be confused with the Craig and Landrith Inc. in Indiana.
Separate corporations. We'll get to that later.
And they had a 2010 portion, 9-11 advertised on their website
on Craig and Landrith cars website, craigsbestcars.com.
So advertised for fifty two thousand five hundred.
Switch cars buyer said, Hey, we're a dealer.
Can we buy this for whatever?
Fifty one to fifty is the price they were agreed upon.
I don't want to quote the negotiations because I wasn't there.
Said we want to buy it wholesale.
The salesman said, Let me see how to get this done
because typically salesmen do retail deals.
Wholesale deals are handled with somebody else,
use car manager, whatever.
But, you know, really doesn't matter.
The salesman gets a commission if they sell the car.
So said that the the chief operations officer
and the owner are having a meeting tomorrow morning.
Have to ask them how to do it.
And after that, they sent us back a purchase agreement
for the price of fifty one to fifty plus
an additional dock fee of five hundred eighty nine dollars and fifty cents.
We'll call it six hundred bucks.
We pushed back and said, Hey, we thought this was a wholesale deal.
There shouldn't be a dock fee on a wholesale deal.
And the salesman said, Nothing I can do hands are tied.
We didn't really want to pay six hundred bucks more
than we had agreed to.
But we're like, Whatever, I think the deal's worth it.
So fine, we'll sign on the dotted line.
We signed a purchase agreement.
We signed a form for a non refundable deposit of a thousand dollars.
The reason we did not finalize the deal immediately and fund them in full
is because they were fixing a part on the vehicle.
I think it was a front shock had to be replaced.
The part was on order already.
That's an important detail because we had offered to buy it
just without the service being done and say just like discount us
the amount of that service.
And they said, No, no, no, we're going to fix the car.
We already have the part on order.
So we said, Fine, put the deposit down with the intention of finishing
the deal once that part had come in.
The next day.
They called Brian, the buyer at Switchcars and said, Hey,
there's a problem with this deal.
Essentially, we were told to charge you for the service, which is 900 bucks.
And that was not OK, because, one, we had already agreed on a deal.
Two, they had already increased it by 600 bucks, but we had signed
contracted deal deal, given them a deposit for a certain price.
So I said, OK, well, have the owner call me.
Because I'm thinking dealer to dealer owners talk.
My intention was, since we had not done business with them before,
I figured, Hey, they don't know who we are.
I can say less than I think there's a pretty good potential relationship here
because I value industry relationships a lot.
We would not be anywhere without fellow dealers that we trade cars back and forth.
And I thought that, you know, maybe there was something to be said there
that would inspire him to want to just, you know, forget about the 900 bucks.
So you would trade cars back and forth with other dealers
because somebody might have a client or a market that could handle a car
that maybe you couldn't and vice versa. Exactly.
If I get a Hummer on trade, I probably don't want it.
Craig and Landryth cars, they specialize in those types of things.
Wholesaler that I know sells them a lot of cars.
It's always lifted trucks.
It's stuff people in Kentucky want. Gotcha. Right.
Doesn't look like they do a lot of Porsche 911s.
We do a ton of them like, you know, specialization of labor,
selling to your demographic like you.
We don't do stuff above like 250 K on a frequent basis.
So when we get that stuff on trade, we don't want to buy it.
We have other dealers that we have a good relationship with, you know,
everybody scratches each other's back and it makes the industry work.
We're not islands. Anyway,
apparently he did not see things the same way.
And this is where it gets interesting.
So he called me and left me a voicemail,
which I have recorded here and I will play for you.
Hey, Doug, Joey Craig with Craig and Landryth cars return in your call.
Thank you for calling me.
But the the deal is, if you all want to buy the car,
what I instructed the manager as, and I hope you don't want it.
So you can call me back if you want, but you're wasting your time.
Now, that was quite surprising to me, not the professionalism I expected.
Sounded like he kind of came out of the gate swinging there.
So I called him back a little less confident that we could come to terms,
but I still at least wanted to try because we had made a deal.
And I thought that that was only fair.
And this is the call.
The entirety of the call unedited.
OK. How you doing?
I'm good. Good.
Good. I'm wondering where we went wrong here on this deal.
What? Why do you not want?
Where they where they went wrong, as they shouldn't even have sold it to you.
But it's pretty simple.
I told I told the manager, if you all wanted to pay that,
I'd go on and sell it other than that.
I'm not interested in selling it.
OK, well, let's back up.
We have a contract and a deposit.
Hey, let's let's let's do this.
Let's do this. OK, it's real easy.
We you you don't have shit. OK.
You're just like me.
I got a thousand dollars that you give us on a credit card.
If you decided you weren't going to come, I wouldn't have shit at a price.
Yeah. OK. Yeah. OK.
But it's real simple.
If you want it, let me know.
You all are going to pay that much for it.
You don't want it at the deal that we agree to that that you're
a certain that's not happening.
That's not happening. OK.
So you're going to violate a contract.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm overrated.
Why? Over over nine hundred dollars.
But I don't want to sell the car in the first place.
OK, they shouldn't have sold the car.
But I'm going to I'm going to I'll be glad.
Why do you want to sell the car, buddy?
Let me take some. OK, this is the last thing I want to be doing
is talking to you about this. OK.
I don't care if you buy the car.
You can buy the car for the nine hundred dollars more
or whatever the number is, is what it takes.
If you don't want it, it's OK.
OK, Craig, on your website,
it says we believe fair prices, superior service
and treating customers right. I don't want to do me a favor.
OK, I don't want to hear all that shit.
OK, you're buying the car wholesale.
Do you want to buy the car or not?
This is your website.
I would love to buy the car at the deal.
It takes it takes what I said to buy the car. OK.
Whatever whatever the manager has told your guy,
that's what it takes to buy it.
If you don't want it, please don't.
We have in writing what it takes to buy the car.
You have a piece of paper.
Are you sure? Are you seriously wasting my time?
I think you're.
Are you? Are you?
Are you?
No, you really want to know I'm not right with me.
Yeah, let's do it. OK.
Let's do it. You ain't got shit. OK.
Now I'm not going to even show you the car. OK.
So have a nice life.
So that is the Craig and Landryth
car's definition of treating people right, apparently.
Who we?
Yes, now. But he called your buddy.
I'm not. Hey, I'm not your buddy.
It gets spicier from there.
But before we get too far down the road,
because we posted that on social media, it went crazy viral.
People were review bombing the Craig and Landryth cars,
Google page and other pages,
which is side note, not a practice I agree with.
I don't think it's right for anyone to leave a review
for a company that they have not interacted with
because that sort can cut both ways.
And it's just ineffective, right?
So they have gotten all the reviews removed.
Not sure how, but anyway,
that was an unintended consequence
of publishing that phone call on the Internet.
So one thing I wanted to ask is,
did you have a counter signed contract?
No. OK. But and that is
that is the most common objection
to our case, essentially, or our cause.
That came up on the Internet as people agreed
with Joey Craig and said, you don't have an agreement
because it wasn't signed by the manager.
And that's what Joey Craig said as well.
He said, you don't have crap.
All I've got is a deposit, which I want to clarify.
Him saying all I have is a deposit.
In my opinion, implies that there is an agreement
because I signed an agreement that said it's a non refundable deposit.
And he admitted that if I didn't show up to do the deal,
all he would have is a thousand bucks,
but he would have a thousand bucks, which is damages.
Right. Like to me, that's implied damages of,
oh, you didn't honor your side of the deal.
So I'm keeping your thousand dollars.
But I, as the buyer, am not allowed to have damages.
I don't have crap because they didn't sign it.
So he wants it to be one sided
the enforceability of the agreement
where he's got a deposit in case I walk,
but I have nothing in case he changes his mind.
Yeah. So does them taking the deposit mean anything?
Well, let's call up our friend Kevin Burton
from the Rubenstein law firm, who is an attorney
and he can shed some light on this
because this is the most common objection to
to our video.
That was what most Internet legal experts said
is you don't have an agreement.
Hello, Kevin speaking.
Hey, Kevin, you are live on Switchcast
and my co-host here just asked what everybody else
has been asking is because our agreement
with Craig and Landryth Kars was not counter signed,
did we have a real agreement?
Is there any enforceability to the contract?
Well, let me start by saying this.
All right. And you know this,
but I'll just explain it to everybody.
I'm a Michigan attorney.
I'm not an Ohio or Kentucky attorney
where your dispute is.
However, they all lie in the Six Federal Circuit
and they all generally apply the same principles
of contract law.
You paid the thousand dollars, as I recall, Doug,
from our conversation towards the vehicle
and you haven't received that back, right?
We did receive the deposit back.
They voluntarily refunded it
after they canceled the deal.
Okay.
Still going back to the issue
of not having a counter signature on the contract,
and I mean, I don't wear a black robe, I'm not a judge,
but my opinion on it would be
that you paid what's known in contract law
as valuable consideration for your deal.
You tied up a thousand dollars
in efforts to purchase this vehicle
for the agreed upon price.
So the fact that they didn't counter sign
the agreement doesn't mean anything.
And I don't know how familiar you are
with the term statute of frauds.
Have you ever heard of that?
No.
So statute of frauds basically is something
that typically applies in dealings
where both parties have to sign the agreement.
Most states wouldn't find that this transaction
that you had falls under the statute of frauds
that requires it to be signed by both parties.
There just has to be some kind of consideration
that's tendered, a.k.a. your thousand dollars
towards the purchase of the vehicle.
So my thoughts would be,
yeah, regardless of them not signing it,
I think it's still an enforceable agreement.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
What are your thoughts?
So I mentioned what is not a legal term,
but essentially like implied damages.
So I signed the agreement that says
it's a non-refundable deposit.
And Joey Craig admitted that if I didn't show up
to do the deal, he would have a thousand dollars.
So they're basically saying,
well, if you don't come through with your end of the deal,
we keep your thousand dollars
because that's our damages for you
not upholding the agreement.
So it's like he wants it one way, but not the other.
Yeah, so in terms of your question you're asking to me
is in terms of what your damages are
for not getting the vehicle, right?
As I understand it.
Right, and just kind of like he's admitting
that he has damages if I don't go through
with the agreement, which to me says
that he actually is validating the agreement
because he's keeping the thousand bucks
if I don't go through with it,
but then he's saying if he doesn't go through with it,
I have nothing, I have no grounds to stand on.
Well, yeah, absolutely.
His statements to you.
And I mean, I actually just about an hour or two ago,
I just watched the video and then I got to say
he was wildly unprofessional in my opinion.
But aside from that, you do have like
an opportunity cost lost here
in terms of what you could have sold the vehicle for.
So there is consequential damages is the legal term for it
and it flows naturally from the breach of a contract.
And I agree with your point that you just made.
He did ratify the existence of the contract.
In fact, you even asked him in the video,
he said, are you going to violate this agreement?
He said, yeah, I'm gonna violate it.
So right there, him saying that acknowledges
the existence of an agreement.
I mean, that would be,
if it were to play out in court,
that'd be a pretty crucial fact
and that'd be a pretty crucial fact
that in my opinion favors you.
Great.
Well, I appreciate the opinion.
It's always good to have real professionals on our podcasts
as opposed to us just spouting things that we think.
So I greatly appreciate that.
And I think our listeners will as well.
And that'll help me as well responding to the internet,
the TikTok attorneys.
Yeah.
Well, thank you for having me on.
I appreciate the opportunity to come on
and speak about it a little bit.
And you guys have a good night, all right?
Yep, you too.
Thank you, Kevin.
All right, bye.
I will admit the, yeah, I'm gonna violate the contract
is pretty in my non-legal opinion damning of like,
well, if there wasn't a contract,
why did you say that you were going to violate it?
Now, a few people, I saw this comment too.
And I am incredibly outside of this world.
So I'm not taking the side,
but outside of it being a one-party signed contract,
some people said that you can back up up until the point
that delivery of a vehicle is taken.
Is there any truth behind that at all?
There could be in certain states laws
that protect the consumer in that regard.
But I don't think it applies to contract law.
I think it's talking about specific,
like when I look at the rules that govern finance contracts
and delivery of vehicles,
there are specific laws state by state
that govern the dealers in the sense
of we have to operate fairly.
But I'm not aware of anything that,
like any principle that overrules contract law
that's like, oh, well, until you physically have the car,
like that's crap,
because you could fully pay for the car,
contract it and say, hey, I'm gonna pick it up in a week
because I'm on vacation.
They can't just like send you your money back
because of that.
So I don't, I think again,
that's just TikTok attorneys being TikTok attorneys.
The crazy thing is post posting this
after posting this,
the dealer doubled down
and have been sending me crazy messages
or responding on social media with some really crazy stuff
and have done anything except take responsibility
for just breaking a contract.
I mean, Joey Craig said, oh, it's real simple.
I'm saying, no, it's real simple.
We had a deal, all you had to do is stick to it.
But you wanted 900 bucks more
and now we have this whole debacle.
I got an email from Austin Fox
working for Craig and Landrith,
sent from the Craig and Landrith company email.
The email reads in its entirety and I quote,
Doug, unfortunately for you,
you do not have a signed contract.
I understand in judging by your inventory
and pictures of your quote dealership,
you probably don't have a lot of experience
with actually selling cars.
So you are probably unaware
of what a actual signed contract is.
If you and your dealership want to continue
to play stupid games like uneducated brats
that you obviously are, period,
you will win stupid prizes.
Just know we here at Craig and Landrith
are rooting for you guys
and we hope you can recover
from losing probably the only deal you'll have this month.
Stay in there guys, have a blessed day.
I love to have a blessed day at the end.
They're just like I am in the right and better than you.
It sounds like professionalism runs
from the top down here.
Austin Fox then sent me a follow up email.
I think he went on chat GPT to get his law degree
and sends me this email cease and desist.
Final notice regarding online activity and legal claims
is a subject of the email.
Reading it in its entirety and I quote,
Doug, this will serve as formal notice
that the ongoing public commentary
on social media and Google reviews
whether by you or individuals associated with you
must cease immediately.
These actions are not only could be damaging
to the reputation of our business
but are also could impacting the livelihoods
of over 100 employees and their families.
We take these matters seriously
and we'll take all necessary steps
to protect our business interests.
If you believe you have a legally binding contract
we encourage you to pursue appropriate legal action
through the courts.
However, based on our records
no such enforceable agreement exists.
This communication constitutes our final warning.
Any further attempts to damage Craig and Landrith's
business reputation or interfere with its operations
may result in legal action.
End of email.
Nice.
Definitely didn't proofread any of that.
Chad GPT would never make those grammatical mistakes.
No, but it would have dashes.
It would have a ton of dashes.
It would have a ton of dashes.
Right.
And it would explain oddly what a cease and desist is
somewhere in there as if you asked it.
Right.
So again, they are unwilling to simply admit, hey guys,
our bad, we should have sold you the car
for the agreed-a-pron price.
So what if the, so I don't know and I don't know
if much of the audience knows like how a wholesale deal works.
Like I can't just call up a deal.
I can't call up switch cars and be like,
yo, I'm a wholesale dealer.
Sell me this car at wholesale.
It'd be a pretty sweet hack if that worked.
Right.
What if the, like, does the sales associate or manager
you talk to even have authorization
to do a wholesale deal to sell at such a discount?
What if they were taking a loss
and this is all a huge thing?
Right.
They didn't get the right approvals.
Like.
Correct.
That's a valid question.
And I'm not going to answer you legally,
but to the best of my recollection,
talking to attorneys about this is the salesman
is acting as an agent on behalf of the dealership.
So yes, they do have some sort of authorization
to make deals, but that is irrelevant anyway
because he said in his text messages
that he had to ask the COO and the owner
after their meeting about this deal.
So he said, I've got to essentially go get authorization
to then send you a purchase contract at this price.
And it was not a stunning discount.
It was 1,250 bucks off of their asking price
plus a $600 dock fee.
So it wasn't this massive discount.
It was a fairly small discount.
I think they just realized maybe that they underpriced it.
I don't know what motivated them to want to change the deal
other than in my opinion, straight up greed.
Because we've made mistakes.
We have undersold cars before and we knew it
before the deal was finalized.
But because we had a deposit and or had signed a contract
and given our word, we honored it.
And it cost us money.
And we said, oops, we need to learn from that mistake
and not do it again.
Whether it's pricing our cars better
or not making a typo on a sales invoice, which we did,
like he had authorization to make this deal.
And at no point, well, I'm sorry,
in one of the phone calls, which was not recorded on our end,
the Joey Craig Jr. did say,
oh, the salesman wasn't authorized to sell it for that.
Which in my mind is a bold phase lie
based on the text messages that we have.
And speaking of lies,
the representatives of Craig and Landreth cars
in various capacities and in various places
around the internet have continued to double down
with untrue things in response to this.
In response to the Google reviews
that people of their own volition left them
and were all removed as of this filming,
we did not in any point say that people should do this,
imply that people should do this,
but they responded to multiple reviews
saying that Switch cars has paid people
to leave negative reviews for Craig and Landreth, paid.
They've said in multiple places
that the contract is not binding.
A couple of their sales representatives
have posted places that we illegally recorded the call,
which is not true.
On a number of counts,
one, Ohio is a one-party state where I called from.
Kentucky is a one-party state,
which is where the other side of it is.
No way, really?
They were recording the call
and when I hit to record,
it sends a notification to the other party
in audio recording saying this call is being recorded.
So they knew it was recorded because they recorded it.
I told them and I didn't need to tell them in either state.
Wait, so that, okay.
That dude knew he was being recorded
and he still acted like that?
He was on his recorded line.
And I told like, unless the iPhone thing didn't work,
I hit the button after we started the call
and it says audio prompt being sent in three, two, one.
Wild.
Wild.
They have posted that we had called them multiple
or gave them multiple harassing phone calls
prior to this interaction, which is not true.
They have posted that the cost of the service changed
hence why this deal changed.
I mean, it's just, it's excuse after excuse after excuse.
And it's really pretty ridiculous.
We did get a notice from an attorney today regarding this,
regarding this deal though,
representing Craig and Landerth cars.
Nice.
But not the Craig and Landerth cars in Louisville, Kentucky.
Oh, whoa.
This situation has gotten so much attention
that there is a different company,
Craig and Landerth Inc. and Craig and Landerth
pre-owned that are Indiana corporations.
Now way back when they were the same corporation
but when the original founders sold the companies off
sold to two different owners.
So the companies in Kentucky, the Craig and Landerth cars
with whom I have the dispute is not the same
as Craig and Landerth Inc. in Indiana.
And they wanted to make darn sure
that they were not associated with them.
Wow.
And the attorney basically said,
they should have changed their name a long time ago
but it's never been a big deal until now.
Woof.
So it's kind of humorous
and the attorney was very professional, great conversation
but it is kind of humorous that even the other Craig
and Landerth is like, no, no, no, this isn't us.
Please don't, you know, wrap us in with them.
I do really like that their website says
now you're thinking smart.
It just doesn't, woof.
And the car is still there as of recording.
But Doug, I gotta say,
I gotta really just be honest with you as a friend
and as a co-host, the website clearly says
Craig's best price and you violated that.
It's there on the website.
His best price.
I don't know what you wanna do is right there.
Podcast over, I don't know.
Podcast over.
You know what, one of the funniest,
speaking of the website, one of the funniest
and this is just semantics
but one of the most frustrating things to me
as someone who works with websites
with this conversation was you reading
what I'm assuming like core values of the company
and him brushing them off, referring to them as BS.
It's insane.
It is absolutely insane.
Yep, that's all I gotta say.
And there's so much more.
We could be here all night reading comments
on my social media, directed at me,
what I view as kind of underhanded personal attacks
by their employees and or ex-employees,
one of them even accusing us in a Google review
of being bigots and discriminating against this person,
this man and his husband
and basically playing the LGBTQ card.
Falsely, we found the person
and they had never inquired on a car
but they accused us in the review
of doctoring pictures, of being fraudulent,
all this different stuff.
I mean, it's crazy the attack that they're taking
but the long and short of it is in all of this,
the organization is refusing to take accountability.
Every message posted, every comment from their team
has been blaming me for posting this stuff
instead of taking a look at the root cause
of people's ire, right?
People on the internet identify with my situation
and they can't believe how I was treated.
I simply published the facts of the situation
and the recorded call.
It totally could have backfired on me.
I remember telling Ethan when I sent him the files,
I'm like, this might not go the way I want
because people might just say like,
oh, whatever, you're a dealer who cares
but it was the truth, we're gonna put it out there.
So if the internet decided that I was being a troll,
it could have backfired
but people made their own decision
based on what they heard
and that's what inspired all this backlash
against Craig and Landrith.
It's because of Craig and Landrith cars
not because I published it.
It's like getting mad at the police who chase criminals
because the criminals crash
and cause injury during a police chase.
No, the criminals caused the crash
because they ran from the police.
One thing that I did wanna mention that I did see though
was they, at least maybe it's just my service
down here isn't great
but I think they may have deactivated
their Instagram account or something.
And I don't know if this is the cause,
this is entirely speculation on my part.
I do not know if this is the cause of it
but while this was transpiring
and one of our videos was gaining traction,
people were commenting at Craig's Best Cars
or whatever his Instagram handle was
like, is this how you do business?
So the link to his Instagram profile
was readily available in the comments on these videos.
So people could find it and people went there
and I did notice on some of the most recent videos
they had posted where they had just dealership employees
and young women just walking around with a microphone
talking about what's in the shop
or not what's in the showroom, stuff like that.
And people were saying some of the nastiest comments
directed toward these women in the comment section
on these Craig and Lander with Instagram reels.
Some vile things, some of the most vile things
I think I've seen recently.
It just seemed like there has to be a line somewhere.
That's like writing the Google reviews
having that be the take away is,
I guess that's maybe one thing again,
we don't condone that but like just verbally going
after someone like having that be your action
coming out of seeing a video like this
seems incredibly inappropriate.
Right.
Well the reality is there are some great people
who are working at that dealership
who don't necessarily identify with these practices.
They're just there to do a job
but personal attacks of any kind
in relation to something like this
are unconscionable in my opinion.
Like we're getting some and I don't think that's fair.
I think it's right to address the truth of the situation.
When we posted our video,
it was here are the facts of what has happened, done.
I didn't call anybody any names.
I didn't ask for anybody to do that
and it is an unfortunate, I guess, trend.
This is just the internet, right?
As people hide behind the perceived anonymity
to throw insults and say absolutely terrible things
about people that are not justified.
You know, like I don't think Joey Craig
is a good business person.
I haven't said anything about his personal life
or like I just, that's a line that shouldn't be crossed.
This dispute is about the fact that he showed
a complete lack of integrity in business dealings
and doubled down on it by verbally berating me.
I think that shows a lack of character
that may translate into other areas of his life,
but that's not what this is about,
nor am I gonna attack somebody for that,
let alone unrelated employees.
That's not, that's not cool.
What I think is, so this went so viral
that I again had a couple of people like text me
a TikTok link and be like, oh my God,
look at this, a buddy of mine texted me
and said that he has had two situations
where cars have been sold out from under him
and one of them even, the salesman told him
when he said he had a signed purchase agreement,
the deposit was taken and the salesman said,
hey, we gotta cancel the deal,
the service manager bought the car
or the sales manager bought the car
or something like that.
It's like the same situation you were in,
but then somebody from the dealership
just comes in and buys it anyway.
So this, like shady but still kind of legal
or not worthwhile to pursue it kind of situation
seems to be happening all the time.
And it comes down to that,
it's usually not worthwhile to pursue it
and the dealers know that
and that's why Joey Craig was so arrogant about this
is because he goes, I don't really care
if I'm breaking a contract
because you're not gonna sue me.
And I've been told that before by dealers
on way bigger deals than this.
But there are situations
where dealers need to get out of a contract, right?
Like I've heard of valid scenarios
where a dealer legitimately expects a service bill
to be two grand and it's 20.
And they go, hey, listen,
you know, we didn't have the right contingencies in place
but we can't sell you the car for this money.
And the customer could absolutely enforce that
and say, you have to sell me the car
but sometimes there's a reasonable interaction
where you go, okay, I get it.
Or you have the car listed in multiple places
and somebody clicks by it now on eBay
while a salesman's making a deal and takes a deposit.
You have two legally binding agreements
that you didn't intend on having at the same time
but there's a reasonable way out of it
for reasonable people.
And for somebody to want out of a contract
but then to verbally berate the person
who's calling them out on it
that I think is what,
like that was the spark that lit this whole fire
is it wasn't just like, hey, listen,
we sold the car too cheap, I'm really sorry.
It's screw you, you don't have crap.
And that is an unbelievable arrogance to me
in response to violating a contract.
It's really incredible.
And that's I think what people identified with
is they just see that all the time with car dealers
and that's par for the course, unfortunately,
but that's the car world for you.
They also, and they're definitely afraid of the truth
and transparency because I responded
to their allegations about me,
their false allegations on their Facebook page
simply with facts and they deleted my comment,
blocked me from their page and turned off comments
for all their recent posts.
So they're really doubling down here
instead of just facing the situation head on
and facing it with truth.
So with that, boy, let's go to the shrew negotiator
appropriate sub-segment here.
There's a heavily modified Lamborghini
on Facebook marketplace.
Some friends tagged me in this one, it was great.
The Lambo, the model is listed as IDFK.
Let you figure that one out.
Nice.
It's for sale for $100 with the description,
quote, I just need drug money.
Honesty is the best policy.
Right, but based on the wild
and in my opinion tasteless mods,
I'd say he already spent quite a bit on drugs.
So that description might be correct.
He's out of money.
It's pretty wild.
Needs more.
I think you gotta be a little bit high
to even find that car attractive,
but I guess whatever,
beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
The Sheffield brand was recently revived by Jake Turkbus,
an owner of an original Sheffield All Sport Diver
he received from his parents in 1970
when he was just 11, beginning his love of watches.
As an adult, Jay used his extensive expertise
in product development and marketing
to revive the brand that started it all.
He set out to develop watches with a high level of quality
and specification at a value price.
His first effort and a successful one on July of 2023
was the debut of the Sheffield All Sport Diver 1.
It had the kind of build and movement
that much more expensive watches use
and his debut price of $108 was equivalent
to the $13 his parents paid in 1970.
Since that debut, Sheffield has expanded
to a wider range of automatics and chronos,
many designed around vintage Sheffield dials of the 60s.
The Sheffield well of clever and unique design
remains his inspiration as well as maintaining
the goal of high quality,
very affordable range of automatic and quartz watches.
Sheffield watches value on merit, not just price.
I love mine, so get yours at sheffieldwatches.com
and be sure to mention you found them on Switchcast.
Let's try to make this one light.
Yeah.
That was a pretty funny story.
Yeah, as funny as a priest stealing money
from a Corvette raffle can be.
But that's what happened according to the Catholic
newsagency.com and youriri.com,
the sources we used for this information, this news story.
The Pennsylvania priest has been placed
on administrative leave after he confessed
to local prosecutors last month to falsifying the results
of a high level fundraising raffle at his parish.
Father Ross Michelli allegedly admitted
to publicly falsifying the results
of the grand prize winner of a raffle
for either a Corvette or a 50k cash prize
at St. Jude the Apostle Parish in Erie.
I did look him up or try to look him up on their site
to see if I could get some recent sermons to see
if he preached about greed or love of money
or anything like that.
But he has been removed from his job there.
He's no longer on the website.
And I really didn't have time to go back
through a whole bunch of masses to find him preaching
on something that made him a hypocrite.
I'm sure it was there, but.
You know, I wonder if when he did the confession
to the authorities, if they had to put him
in a dark room with a screen between them.
Oh, you didn't.
You didn't.
That's good.
That's good.
The Catholic parish hosted the Winnevette raffle in 2024,
allowing buyers to purchase $50 tickets
for the chance to win a Stingray 1LT Corvette.
I don't know if it's a one of one, but.
Of course it is.
It was the one made on the Wednesday.
It's the only one that's ever been raffled in the 2024
Winnevette comp.
Right.
On Christmas 2024, the church announced
that Martin Anderson of Detroit had won the grand prize.
The reported winner chose the cash option.
But there were some concerns about this,
and warrants were issued, and the county prosecutor
got involved, and the priest reportedly
admitted that he fabricated the grand prize winner's name.
Yes, he allegedly committed the falsification
after a, quote, problem with the raffle system
left the grand prize without a winner.
Let's see.
What's weird to me is there's a huge gap in between the lake.
Well, this happened.
People thought something smelled fishy,
and then warrants were issued.
But I can't really find details on how.
So I guess there was some sort of somebody
within the church might have known something, and rumors spread.
There was an employee at the church
that suspected something and said that the priest confessed
to him, which, hence, the alleged, right?
Because it's not recorded or whatever.
Another confessional, yes.
I wonder if I.
How the turns of table, Mr. Father.
No, it's how the turntables have.
Make me short circuit over here.
A search warrant, let's see.
He allegedly also confessed to awarding some smaller prizes
to favored parishioners and friends.
Sounds like a mob boss.
A search warrant executed at the church office
in Rectory in February uncovered high-end electronics
and new Tesla brand name sneakers.
Which those are expensive.
Well, getting sneakers is as hard as me finding a GT3,
apparently.
I mean, they had to have been New Balance, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Disney collectibles owned by Father Michelli.
Look, I mean, you do what you got to do.
The affidavit also mentioned the discovery
of high-end resort cards and casino membership cards.
Vices.
Yeah.
Woo.
Oh, boy.
What was the name of the fundraiser again?
It's their Corvette raffle.
Isn't it like Winivette or something?
Oh, yes, Winivette.
Could be Steela Check, Roba Church.
That's all I came up with.
That should have spent more time on those.
Ethan said, not bad.
We're doing all right.
Just because I didn't say them.
Oh, man.
Like, I wonder where that.
Oh, one of the accounts stated that the church
is trying to sell the car back to the dealer
that they bought it from, which doesn't make sense to me
that if you have a $50,000 cash option or a Corvette
that you would buy this Corvette in advance
or after the raffle for that matter
if the winner chose the $50,000 cash option.
Yeah, that seemed a little odd to me.
Wouldn't you partner with the dealership
to have them like reserve it for this purpose
or something so then they could sell it out?
That's weird.
You would likely get an insurance policy for this raffle.
Those exist.
OK.
But you don't buy the car in advance.
It seems like poor planning.
Yeah.
Yeah, interesting.
Well, maybe this guy was driving the Corvette.
No, he wasn't.
He was driving a Tesla.
Well, if that wasn't one giant flop,
that brings us to the props and flops of the week
brought to you by Switchcars.
As you know, Switchcars is the enthusiast dealership
where we buy, sell, and consign only cars
that we like ourselves.
Check out our handpicked inventory online
at switchcars.com and mention Switchcast
for special pricing.
You can find more information online at switchcars.com
or even come visit our showroom in Twinsburg, Ohio.
Doug, what is the pick of the week?
You know, I think my special pricing
is going to be $900 off each car, Doug's best price.
There it is.
The tribute to Craig's best car is just, yep, $900 off,
if you mentioned that founded on Switchcast.
We'll honor that deal.
Can't wait for the guy like two years from now
to reference that and be like, $900 off, Doug.
It's going to happen.
Our pick of the week is a 2006 BMW Z4 3.0 SI 3-liter inline
six six-speed manual low miles, red over black,
proper wheels, proper car for just 20 grand.
Ethan, my guy, time for you to go shopping at Doug's best cars.
I mean, speaking of our 25 for 25, that was on our list.
I mean, it was the M, but I'll take the 3-liter SI.
Ethan, you could have it for $19,900.
Was it $600?
$300.
$19,300.
That's got to be Doug's best price.
It's plus the Doug fee, that's right.
Hi, Tyler, what's our flop of the week?
Alrighty, so we have learned that Volkswagen is locking horsepower
behind a paywall.
The specific article I've got in front of me right now
is from motor1.com, and it goes on to explain that in the ID4,
I believe ID3 Pro, they're essentially shipping the same car,
but if you pay a monthly subscription fee,
you can get access to additional horsepower
in terms of new software for your car to go faster.
It's in here somewhere.
It is.
Oh, God, we're at a no-show.
20-something, right?
It's like, yeah, it's not a lot.
27.
It's not.
You can buy it.
And what's the subscription price?
The subscription is 1560 pounds per month.
Oh, goodness, I'm on a European website.
I don't know the conversion off the top of my head.
It's like $300.
But outright, I think it's like $800.
Oh.
You can do a one-time fee price, whatever, of $800,
or it's 20 per month or 200 per year-ish,
which is ridiculous to me, because that
is, in the purchase price of a car,
this car, allegedly, per this article costs around $50,000.
That's a rounding error, in my opinion.
You don't care about that kind of additional cost,
so just put it in the car.
But in my opinion, this is just a way for Volkswagen
to extract more value for their shareholders out
of people leasing cars or not really knowing what they're
getting themselves into.
The you will owe nothing and be happy to have a deal.
Yes.
God, this is like, who do you think?
This didn't work out well for BMW.
Yeah, didn't they do the heated seat thing?
I think it was a turn signal subscription
and nobody paid.
No, don't need that, not the BMW.
I hate seeing something I love drawn to the same kind of BS
that like DLC and video games has created,
where you don't buy a full game, you buy a thing,
and then need to spend two or three times as much money
to get the full thing that you paid for.
So.
OK, prop of the week.
Volkswagen allows you to purchase extra horsepower
for $31 per horsepower.
What, Doug, that was that we've just done the flop.
Yeah, and I disagree.
OK.
That is actually darn cheap horsepower.
They allow you to purchase it outright.
They don't make you pay for it monthly.
You can just buy extra horsepower and 31 bucks a horsepower
because 877 bucks or whatever for 28 horsepower
is incredibly cheap.
As anybody who's modified their car can attest to.
But let's look at a couple other comparables.
The Mercedes-Benz 212 E63, the P30 package,
adds 32 horsepower.
What did they do to add that horsepower?
A tune, basically.
You also get sport suspension.
I'll give you that.
Well, that's probably 32 horsepower, 28 horsepower
from Volkswagen for 877 bucks.
Any idea how much 32 horsepower costs from Mercedes?
I'm sure a lot.
$7,700 Porsche 911 996 Turbo X50 package.
Here we go.
You get a bunch of extra bits with that, though.
But it's all to make the extra horsepower.
It's required in order to give you 31 horsepower.
So this is my rub.
With the Volkswagen situation, the stuff is there.
The stuff is all capable of it.
The E63 is all capable of it.
I will give you that one.
You can do an aftermarket tune that gets you more than 550
horsepower.
Turbo X50, $17,800 20 years ago for 30 horsepower.
Adjusted for inflation, that's $2.4 million for 30 horsepower.
See what you did there.
I disagree very strongly with the Porsche one,
because there were so many other bits
that they put on that engine to do.
Even if the end result was that horsepower,
it still was extra bits that are
different from the stock car.
This is the same Volkswagen with a fancy tune.
I am calculating this right now.
This is really important.
$593 is the price per horsepower in 2003,
which is when you could get an X50 package.
That is $1,034 today.
That means it cost you more for one horsepower on a Turbo X50
package than the entire 28 horsepower from Volkswagen.
I feel like you're missing them.
So they're giving you a deal.
I disagree very strongly.
The Mercedes, the tune package is sure.
The tune is just fancy softwares.
Just look at it as a tune.
Don't they put a different oil pan,
and there's different heads or cylinder bits on it?
The X50 was a whole thing.
Oil pan, yes.
Turbo, intercooler, tune.
Those are all parts.
That you have to do that to get the horsepower.
Yeah, exactly.
So you're getting bits.
You're getting stuff.
You're getting it's a different car.
But you can't tell that you're getting the bits.
You're going to tell me you can look under.
You've got to tell everybody.
Tell the difference between the K20 and the K24 turbos.
No, what you've got to do is what everybody on Facebook
does is do, I've got a 2003 911 Turbo X50.
Oh, I thought you were going to say put
a mirror under your engine bay at the car show.
Almost.
We're getting there.
Not quite Corvette.
I'd love to say 911 people should start doing that.
Look at my turbos.
Look at my split case crankcase.
Honestly, no lie.
When I get my GT3, I'm going to do it.
I'm going to just sit there and look at it.
Be like, no, look at that dry sumps.
Oh, it's so good.
I've wanted you for so long.
Look at my non corroded engine bolts.
Look at my working IMS barrier.
No, mine's working now.
It's fine.
Thank you for joining us for Switchcast with Doug Tabott
and Tyler Sanders, produced by Ethan Huffnagle.
Switchcast is an automotive entertainment and opinion
show, and nothing we say should be taken very seriously.
We do not give tax, investment, legal, emotional,
or professional advice.
And the only licenses we hold are driver's licenses.
The opinions expressed on this show
are exclusively held by the people
pontificating at that moment, and do not
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