NEVER Answer THESE Questions At the Car Dealership | Episode 939

Happy Holidays! Want to give your host a gift? Consider subscribing, rating, and reviewing the show this holiday season. It really helps the show grow. From all of us at Believe, have a Merry Christmas everyone, and a Happy Holiday!

It's noon here in Ventnor City, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C. This is what the hell I'll work our edge live for Thursday, October 9th, with your hosts, me, Ray, here in Ventnor, New Jersey. I got called out on my pronunciation.

And, Zach, I don't know where the hell he is today, but my God, it looks beautiful. Just don't jump off of that bridge.

That's actually New River Gorge. Pops did an interview this morning with a CBS affiliate in West Virginia, so had to set the green screen to my favorite place in West Virginia, New River.

Gorge, here's the deal, Pops. We're going to be talking about the questions you should never answer when you're at the car dealership this morning, and then we will turn our attention to some of the news information out there.

We're going to be talking about them. What happens when car dealerships go out of business and defraud investors of billions?

And a foreshadow to tomorrow's show, we will have Josh Fagan from suyordealer.com on the show with us documenting some of these incredible things he's seeing down in the state of Florida when it comes to dealer deception.

And unfortunately, customers getting screwed, so you have to tune in to tomorrow's show.

Well, thank the sponsor of today's show in just a couple minutes as well. Go for it, Deb.

Doesn't the term dealer deception and customers getting screwed belong in one sentence?

You know, I don't believe you can have one without the other.

Tune in tomorrow for a weekend show having Josh on with us.

As today's show, however, CarEdge.com is the proud sponsor at least for a few minutes here.

Then we'll talk about our friends over at Delete Me, folks.

If we can help you shop for new or used cars, use our car buying services, car edge insights, or the research center, there's so much available back at CarEdge.com.

And I encourage everyone to give it a try, play around back on the website.

Now, Dat, you Google search questions to never answer when buying a car.

And you know what? It's us and Chevy dude showing up right here.

So let's run through a few of these.

Let's try and make this as educational as possible.

The first question that the Google machine is saying you should not answer at the car dealership.

What's your monthly payment goal?

Google saying this shifts your focus from the total price to the payment amount,

which can be increased by extending loan terms or by adding more costly items.

Deb, let's spend a few minutes on this, in this one in particular,

because it also comes on the heels of out of the state of Arizona.

We're doing some work to try and help a customer there.

Let's talk about what happens when you get fixated on a payment.

For example, here's a loan with a 75 month term with a $562 a month payment.

$562 a month might seem like a fine payment.

The issue becomes when you see that it's a 30% interest rate and you're paying off $23,449 in finance charges on an $18,767 vehicle.

So, Deb, why is the first question to never answer at the dealership?

According to the Google machine, what's your monthly payment goal?

Well, let me preface this by saying, as the customer, you need to know what vehicles price-wise will fall into your monthly payment goal.

So, that way you won't allow yourself to be looking at vehicles that won't fit that payment goal.

So, that's first and foremost.

You need to know what you're going to be able to qualify for and what type of vehicles cost-wise you can look at so that you can fit into your monthly budget goal that you're going to keep to yourself.

And if I may, Deb.

Yes.

Just to show.

All you got to do, use the car edge, car search.

Let's click on this Ford Maverick that's right here and scroll down, folks.

It's just under pricing info.

There's the out-the-door price once we add in taxes and fees.

Here's your monthly payment calculator.

In this case, it's $854 a month for $42,127 financed.

Add your information in here.

Would you be putting cash down?

What loan term?

What interest rate?

Put in the exact offer from CarMax that you're getting, your trade payoff, and that'll ultimately calculate if you have trade equity or negative equity.

Resources exist and they are more accessible than ever before to figure out what you can actually afford.

So I just wanted to demonstrate that for everyone right there.

And I appreciate you doing that.

And the reason you do that is so that you concentrate on the out-of-the-door price.

The total agreed upon selling price of the vehicle, including all fees and taxes.

That's your focus point.

That's the only thing that you need to keep your eye on that price.

When you convert to a payment, when they ask you what's your monthly payment that you're trying to stay at, at that point, you have given up discussing the price of the vehicle.

You are just talking about the payment of that vehicle.

Normally, you're not talking about loan terms or loan amounts.

Just tell me what my monthly payment's going to be and either it fits into my budget or it doesn't.

So you need to keep your eye on the price.

The price is the out-of-the-door price, including all fees, so that you're not...

It's kind of like magic tricks, okay?

We want you looking over here when you should be looking right here.

And so that's the thing.

So just never answer what's your monthly budget.

And then I say something about that contract you pulled up a moment ago, which I have looked at.

Originally, that was a $13,000, almost a $14,000 car, okay?

And somehow, between interest and everything else and no money down,

that poor customer is going to pay back almost $43,000 for a $14,000 car,

because this particular customer just concentrated on payment.

And you're talking about a seven-year-old car with more than a six-year loan.

It is abject financial suicide.

And this is, I think, a perfect example of going to the dealership

and answering the what's your monthly budget question.

In this case, imagine you're going to say,

okay, I want to be around $550 a month for my payment.

Next thing you know, in this case, you're buying a, what was it originally to have before the taxes?

It was $13,000 in change.

It's a $13,000 vehicle that you're spending before $2,000 on, but you hit your payment goal.

And that's exactly why we preach.

And more than likely, in order to reach the payment goal,

the dealership had to extend the terms further from 72 to 75 months

to make it fall under, I don't know, $565 a month.

Otherwise, you know, the payment would have been $580 or whatever it was.

And that might have been out of reach for the customer.

Sit out?

Yeah.

That's why if you're just fixing it on payments,

you'll end up where they extend the term in order to get you to the payment that you're desirous of.

Absolutely.

All right.

So that's why number one on our questions to avoid answering is what is your monthly payment goal?

Now, let's do number two, and then let's thank the sponsor of today's program.

Number two, how much are you planning to put down the Google machine says

that revealing your down payment allows the dealership to use it to their advantage

rather than focusing on the overall vehicle price.

Is this another moment of misdirection?

Why are we saying that you should not answer the question?

How much are you planning on putting down?

Because if you do that, then you have shifted the focus from getting an out-the-door price understanding

what it is that you're actually being charged for the vehicle.

You're shifting the focus from that to, okay, what's my monthly payment?

And here's how much I'm willing to put down to get there.

And that information is used by the dealership to be able to maximize their profit

by never really discussing with you what the total price of the vehicle is.

They have you fixated on all the wrong things.

Now, let's face it, 85% of customers out there are payment buyers,

and that's the most important thing to them.

But you have to, as a customer, understand what makes up that payment

and what price range of car you need to be looking at in order to keep that payment

where you would like it to be based on a term that is acceptable for the age of the vehicle.

A six-plus year loan for a seven-year-old car is not really acceptable.

48 months, 54, 60 months max, but not 75 months, not six and a quarter years.

So they get you to fixate on all the wrong things.

Dad, we don't want folks to fixate on the wrong things

and we also don't want them having their data sold online.

We've got to take a second here to thank the sponsor of today's program, our friends at DeleteMe.

Now, Dad, you and I both know there are people out there selling our information online

and anyone can buy it.

Things like your social security number, phone number, home address and so much more

are sold online and they are available to marketers, scammers, heck, even a car dealer.

You could probably get their hands on your data if they wanted to.

Now, DeleteMe, the sponsor of today's program, helps you take control over your data.

DeleteMe removes your personal information from hundreds of data brokers on your behalf.

My dad and I both personally use DeleteMe and every single month behind the scenes

it is removing our information from hundreds of data brokers.

You can get started today with a special offer for the CarEdge community.

Just use the promo code CarEdge at checkout or click the link in the top of the description down below.

Join deleteme.com slash CarEdge.

Take advantage of this opportunity and, Dad, it's a quality product that you and I obviously both use.

And may I say this, when you say we use it, yeah, we don't do a thing.

DeleteMe does it all for us.

So by using it, it's set up and it operates in the background and they take care of everything

and we don't have to really do anything.

Thank you, DeleteMe.

Now, Dad, you just mentioned it again.

It's all about this misdirection, trying to get you to look over here when actually we're going to, you know,

focus on the Alpador price.

And also I would say that when you disclose how much you're willing to do for a down payment,

it just gives some extra fuel to the dealer's fire in terms of now they have a variable

that they know that they can manipulate to get you to that payment goal.

And they can also try and get you up from that payment amount.

It makes me want to show you the way that we've trained our AI negotiator.

I just want to show this briefly.

If any of you are using the AI negotiator, this thing is just dead set on getting an Alpador price.

This is the agent.

This is the dealer.

Hi, Bobby.

Please email me a revised Alpador price that removes all the dealer installed add-ons,

including the Desert Protection package.

Okay, my manager's working on it.

Okay, send it to me.

Let me keep scrolling here.

This is the sales manager.

Ask me to get back in touch with you or available for a quick phone call.

The agent's going to respond here, Dad.

No, it wants the Alpador price.

It doesn't want a phone call.

Send me the Alpador price and don't include the Desert Protection package.

I'm just sharing this because we make these videos all the time,

whether it's a live stream, an edited video, a written blog, and it's monotonous.

It's the same thing over and over again, but that's a perfect example of what happens

when you don't just ask for the same thing.

They're going to ask you the questions.

They're going to say, hey, can we get on the phone?

When you get on the phone, what are they going to talk to you about?

Do you have a down payment?

Do you have a this?

Do you have a that?

What's your payment goal?

Or what's your monthly budget goal?

No, this is why the AI is trained to do what the AI does.

It just stays myopically focused on the one thing.

Yeah.

T-House says it's their script.

Well, now we have ours.

Yeah.

No, and dealerships have scripts and dealerships have word tracks.

Sales people are trained to get whatever your monthly budget is.

They're trained to continue to ask for how much money are you planning on putting down?

Yeah.

They're trained to say whenever you answer either one of those questions, well, what's

your monthly budget?

Well, I don't want to spend more than five, 50 a month.

They are trained to say and follow up with up to and they will allow you to bump yourself

and you'll go, okay, no more than 600.

Well, 50 dollars a month for 75 months is a lot of damn money, ladies and gentlemen.

So when you give in to their desires of giving them the information that they're looking

for, many sales people are going to tell you, oh, we're doing this so that you won't

land yourself on the wrong car.

Okay.

That's why we ask.

No, that's part of it.

But they also want to maximize their profit because their pay plans are set up that way.

So yes, it is incumbent upon you as the customer to understand what it is that you can afford

and not allow yourself to look at the things that you cannot.

Let's do two more, pops, two more.

Do you have a vehicle to trade in?

The Google machine is saying that dealers use your trade in information to potentially

inflate the price of the new car or undervalue your old one.

So Dad, why is not answering the, do you have a trading question important?

Or maybe the question is, when do I answer that question?

How do I answer that question?

You answer that question with simply this, I may or I may not trade in my vehicle.

I haven't decided what I'm going to do with it yet.

My neighbor has expressed a desire in my vehicle for their teenage child.

So perhaps I'll sell it to them.

Perhaps I'll sell it to someone else.

Or perhaps after we've established what the outdoor price is, we can discuss my trade in

if I agree to trade it as a separate transaction.

When I was a closer and I used to say to people, you don't realize that we have this,

you and the dealership have the same exact goal.

Here is what I mean by that.

You are trying to buy my new car as inexpensively as you possibly can.

When it comes to your trade in, we are trying to do the same thing.

We want to do the same exact thing you're trying to do.

We want to buy it as inexpensively as we can.

If you understand that concept from Jump Street, then you can realize, good, let's work on the new car first.

After we've established that, then we can work on the pre-owned car.

We can work on my used car.

Dealership personnel are going to tell you, yeah, but your trade in impacts the outdoor price

because in many states, the trade allowance amount impacts the sales tax.

Great, so you've established an outdoor.

Now, you're going to work on what the value of your trade is,

and then they can adjust all the figures accordingly once you've agreed upon what your trade is worth.

Could it lengthen the process to some degree?

It might.

Could it save you lots of money more than likely?

Love it, Pops.

I just pulled up and I'll share it on the screen.

I dropped the link in the chat.

We've got a great guide, the trade in tactics for success.

You wrote this probably five years ago.

We update it all the time, but that's exactly why you don't answer that question,

or why there's a strategic way to answer that question in a thoughtful way.

I encourage everyone here to go to the car trade in tactics for success.

Just Google search that and it'll pop right up.

Let's do one more, Dad, and then we will switch gears and do a little bit of news on today's show.

What type of credit do you have?

This one, Google Machine is saying you should know your credit score,

but it's best to keep this information private until after you've settled on the car's price.

Why is the Google Machine saying we shouldn't be answering the credit question?

Well, it is incumbent upon you as the customer to know to find out

prior to ever going into the dealership or any dealership

to know what your auto-fight go score is.

How can you find out?

Go to your credit union, go to your bank.

Gee, I'm considering buying a car.

I'd like to get pre-approved for a car loan.

They're going to run your credit, and when they run your credit, ask them,

what's my fight go score?

Okay, now why do you want to keep that to yourself?

Well, if you have good credit, then once you've established that out-the-door price

with your trade-in and everything else,

now you have leverage when it comes to what the interest rate is going to be

because you already know what you should qualify for.

If you have bad credit, then get pre-approved somewhere before you go to a dealership

so that you don't end up paying 29.99% interest on a loan for 75 months.

Keep the credit score to yourself until you've established that out-the-door price.

Man, I sound like a broken record.

Then you can discuss that with the finance manager when you're closing the transaction.

I think it also goes back to always coming in with a pre-approval.

They might ask you that question.

You can say, you know what, I have a pre-approval already.

We can talk about that in the finance.

There's just an opportunity there as a customer to flex your knowledge.

Don't worry about micro.

I already have a pre-approved.

I want to pull up one comment here.

This is from Glenn.

I had this in banking once when I turned down a loan and they got it through the dealer.

It was a neon that they were financing for $42,000 worth, maybe $6,000.

I guess maybe $4,000 with the finance charge and everything like that.

This again goes back to what I posted over on Twitter the other day.

This is an example of a real car deal.

This was on a used Mazda that ended up.

It was at $13,500, something like that price for the vehicle that ultimately taxes and fees got to $18,767.

But then ultimately is costing the buyer $42,217 because of the 30% interest rate over 75 months.

This is a perfect example of what not to do when you're buying a new car.

I will give that dealership credit for one thing.

They did sell GAP insurance to the customer for $1,000 because God knows that customer needs it.

The issue that was GAP typically only covers up to 150% in terms of what the chip owed.

It could help.

Now, Dan, I want to turn our attention to one other thing we talked about yesterday and then we'll do a quick news story here.

CDG just reposted this, the silent dealership margin killer inventory aging.

Of course, the average car sits on a dealer's lot for 45 days before being shuffled off to another store according to the auto.

Folks, if you weren't on with us yesterday, we spent a ton of time back on the car edge car search showing how every single vehicle we have,

how many days it's been on the market.

One of the pieces of functionality I'm most proud of on the car edge car search is the fact that you can actually filter over here on the left by days on market.

You can look at vehicles that have been sitting for more than 45 days or you may notice occasionally some vehicles,

wasn't that on the dealer's lot, but now it's on another dealer's lot in reset.

That's some of the gamesmanship that we were talking about yesterday, whether it be pricing strategy or moving the vehicle from one lot to another.

But I think it's just a perfect example.

Again, after we spoke about it so much yesterday, dealers are really, really, really concerned about vehicles sitting for a while.

And that's why yesterday we were talking about when is the best time to buy a car as used car inventory starts to build up and new car inventory starts to build up.

This is CDG saying that he represents the industry.

I mean, this is a perfect example of how important it is to car dealers.

Yeah, and you know, dealers will move vehicles within their own dealer network if they have multiple dealerships,

especially pre-owned vehicles.

If they have an aging policy of 60 or 90 days and they haven't sold it rather than take the loss at the auction,

oftentimes they'll ship it off to one of their other stores.

Oftentimes, one dealer will work out an agreement with another dealer to swap aged units,

where they agree upon what the real market value of the units should be.

And one dealership will sell one of their aged units to another dealership and in return buy one of that dealership's aged units so that everybody can go away happy.

You know, the idea is you have to turn the inventory in a timely fashion.

And if you can't, sometimes you play games like this in order to make it appear as if you have.

From Jerry here, Jerry on the CarEdge team, one of our concierge.

Just folks, if you're not using CarEdge concierge for your next car deal, you're missing out Jerry and the team are incredible.

Moving a unit to a sister's store restarts the clock.

Exactly.

Doesn't improve the value of the vehicle, but it does restart the clock.

Dad, one more here.

This is the news story I wanted to cover today.

This also comes from CDG, citing from Bloomberg.

We've talked about this automotive group called Tri-Color.

They were the seventh largest independent car dealer in the United States, and they recently filed for bankruptcy.

Now we've learned about 40% of their 70,000 active loans were promised to multiple creditors.

Now, Dad, you're going to have to explain this like on five.

Last time I checked, you can only take out one auto loan at a time against a vehicle, right?

But this is saying that almost half 40% of 70,000 active loans for Tri-Color customers were collateralized to multiple lenders.

They had multiple loans on the vehicles.

That seems bad.

Well, at the very least, it's fraud.

It's not too bad.

And so, fraud, as a rule, is bad, okay?

But that's what it is.

When you take a vehicle and you promise that vehicle is collateral to multiple lenders without either lender knowing,

and then that doesn't become an issue until, well, the whole thing blows up and there's somebody holding two loans.

There's two banks holding loans on the same car and they go, what do we do now?

So, yeah, it's...

Yeah, does one bank get the repossessant first and then the next bank gets the repossessant second?

I mean, this is bad.

It's not like you can't have two loans on a vehicle, okay?

You can.

You can buy a car, get a loan.

You might actually even have some equity in it.

You can go to, I don't know, payday loans or somewhere else and you can get a secondary loan on it, okay?

Where it would be listed as the second lien, not the first.

You know, just like you can get a second mortgage on a house.

So, but to just sell the loan to two different banks on the same car, that's not a legitimate way of doing business.

Yeah, there's a ton of fraud caught up in this.

I think it was to the tune of over a billion dollars that Wall Street could be out as a result of what's going on here.

So, it's pretty scary stuff.

It's scary stuff because the banks that are helping dealerships like that, providing them with the credit lines to be able to do what they're doing,

aren't necessarily inspecting what it is that they're expecting.

So, if you don't inspect, then this is what happens.

And so, if you just believe that every dealer you've signed up as a bank is just going to operate on the up and up,

well, you're being foolish as a lender.

You need to check.

That's why banks do floor plan checks once a month.

You know, if you haven't paid off a car that you've sold, well, the bank wants to know why, where is the car?

And if that practice tends to grow, then the dealership normally gets sued because they're out of trust,

what's known as out of trust because they're not paying off the vehicles as they're selling them as they've promised to do.

So, you know, people do strange things when they are financially stretched.

Well, and also when they're financially motivated, right?

Like this dealer group wanted to sell cars, get stuff moved.

Well, not only did they want to sell cars to get stuff moved.

They wanted to sell cars whether you had a social security number or not.

They wanted to sell cars without running a credit check.

You know, and so they would write these loans and then they would turn around and sell these loans to banks.

And, you know, if the banks are already asking for any of the documentation associated with the loans to find out if the people that are in these loans actually have the ability to pay them back,

that's shame on the bank.

You know, what's the worst that's going to happen?

They get the right it off.

It's going to cost them a billion dollars.

It gets written off.

They won't have to pay as much in corporate taxes because they had these losses.

Yeah, it works out really well for some people.

Let's come here from Matthew.

Thank you, Matthew.

Really appreciate it.

The example from earlier makes me want to negotiate an $18,000 car to $15,000.

Agree to a crazy rate, then pay off immediately just to stick it to the dealer.

Happy Gover in Europe taking delivery of his vehicle.

Enjoy that, Matthew.

Yeah, if you think about that, you sign up for a 30% auto loan, but then you pay it off a week later.

The dealership would be saying, what the heck?

Yeah, well, you know, when we were having separate conversations with the person that we were talking to in regards to that loan,

I said, now my suspicion is that the customer didn't put any money down.

And lo and behold, the customer didn't put any money down.

So, unfortunately, people that get roped into these type of loans or who allow themselves to sign up for these type of loans

don't have the financial wherewithal to, I don't know, go pay it off in two weeks and screw the dealer and the bank.

You know, it's just a shining example of a dealership taking advantage of financially ignorant customers.

Yeah, which is why subscribing to our channel here, CarEdge, live for the main channel over at CarEdge,

is so important.

If you enjoyed today's show, please do subscribe.

And please, folks, check out our website, caredge.com.

So many things over here that can help you out.

Learn why shoppers turn here first.

Use the research center.

Google for the CarEdge Community Forum as well.

Go spend some time there.

Please, please, please be an informed shopper, be an empowered shopper.

Leverage the resources we have out there.

There is no excuse today for anybody to be that uneducated when it comes to car loans and things of that nature.

There are too many websites out there that offer up the information that you need.

And I would guarantee, as much as I guaranteed yesterday that the customer had not put any cash down on the new car that they bought,

I would guarantee that if they don't have a computer at home, they have one in their hands.

They have a cell phone.

And because everybody has a cell phone, even people with bad credit.

And so, just utilizing their cell phone, they could have availed themselves of information that would have prevented them from getting into a situation like this.

And so, there's just too much information out there to ever allow yourself to be taken advantage of like this in the future.

So, please, folks, share the materials, share what we're up to. We really appreciate it.

We'll be back tomorrow again.

We've got a special guest joining us, Josh Bacon.

So, please tune in to tomorrow's show.

And Dad, enjoy your afternoon.

You do the same, young man.

And that's a lovely looking area.

What is that red river gorge?

What is it again?

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NEVER Answer THESE Questions At the Car Dealership | Episode 939

About this episode

monthly payment goal

loan terms

interest rate

finance charges

Ford Maverick

out-the-door price

monthly payment calculator

trade equity

loan amounts

monthly budget

six-year loan

seven-year-old car

financial suicide

dealer fees

down payment

payment buyers

Alpador price

dealer installed add-ons

Desert Protection package

trade-in

pre-approval

finance manager

taxes and fees

aged units

turn the inventory

sister store

collateralized loans

financially ignorant

Request an Explanation

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