What are the obligations of a car buyer when it comes to honesty and integrity, PLUS how great service changes perspective
My Car Guru Podcast
What are the obligations of a car buyer when it comes to honesty and integrity, PLUS how great service changes perspectiveMy Car Guru Podcast · Jul 14, 2026
The Toyota Sienna is a family minivan. Here, it’s the exact model the customer was trying to buy, and the story is about how pricing and deposits were handled between two dealerships.
A deposit is money you put down to reserve a specific vehicle or purchase slot at a dealership. In car buying, it’s often treated like a commitment to proceed, so using it while shopping competing offers can feel like breaking that commitment.
Topic
car buyer honesty and integrity obligations
The speaker is talking about doing the right thing in car deals—being honest and keeping your word. They describe how support can disappear when times are tough, and how good partners still show up.
A temporary tag is a temporary license plate that lets you drive your new car legally while the real plates are being processed. It usually has an expiration date, so you have to get the permanent plates soon.
Floor mats are the removable mats on the floor inside the car that help keep the carpet clean. The speaker is saying the dealership promised them but didn’t deliver.
The Ford Fiesta Active is a small car that’s styled like a mini SUV, meant for normal daily driving. It’s brought up because the podcast is talking about how cars can have problems and require repairs. The key point is that breakdowns can happen with any car, including this one.
Technicians are the mechanics who actually work on cars in the shop. If they’re uncomfortable or stressed, it can make it harder to do careful, high-quality work.
“Fix your car right the first time” is a service-quality goal meaning the repair should be correct on the initial visit. In practice, it reduces repeat visits, rework, and customer frustration when problems return.
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Hey folks, Lenny Lawson here, the Car Guru, and I am really trying to stay on the cutting
edge of automotive news, automotive trends, you know, the goings and comings of car dealers
and all the different things that they can do to you, whether it be in the sales department,
finance office, service department. You know, most of it's good. Most of the things that they do
are good. Most of the players are good. There are some bad apples though. I was talking to a good
friend of mine and a very loyal customer about how the business has changed over the years,
and she was just fussing a little bit about, you know, how she went to this one dealership
to look at a Toyota, what was it? Toyota, oh, the van, the Sienna, and they gave her a big discount,
good price, and she was in Bristol, and so she drove, was driving back to Greenville,
and she had happened to go right past the Toyota dealership in Johnson City, and she saw this big
row of Toyota Sienna's, so she pulled in and salesperson waited on her, and they ended up
giving her a price on one that they had. It happened to be lower than the one
that the other dealer in Bristol had given her. Not much, but it was a little bit lower,
and so she called them and said, hey, I'm coming back to get my deposit check,
and they said, well, can we ask why? Well, I found one cheaper in Johnson City.
Well, ma'am, could we possibly maybe talk about reducing the price a little bit? No, absolutely
not. She said she would not give them a chance to meet the price in Johnson City, or to beat the
price in Johnson City, and I'm sitting there looking at her, and I'm saying now, and then I said her
name, is that really fair? I mean, I'm thinking about this. She left a deposit at the dealership
in Bristol. Shouldn't she have just driven right past that Toyota dealership in Johnson City and
gone home? I mean, what is a deposit? To me, it's kind of a promise, isn't it, that I'm wanting to
buy this vehicle? Would you hold it for me? I mean, that's what it is, and but, you know,
the promise is broken when you continue to shop. Is that okay? Does that fit with your values and
morals? You know, the way I feel about it is, if I'd, what I've stopped, I don't know if I would
have. If I'd seen that big row of CNNs there and actually saw the color that I really wanted,
and the dealership in Bristol didn't have it, then yeah, I might pull in, but by golly, I'm going to
give that dealer in Bristol the shot, the first shot to earn my business. I'm going to call them
back and say, listen, I found the color I want, Johnson City, and I stuck around there and they
ended up giving me a really good price, but I talked to you first and I did leave a deposit.
I think, just see what you can do. I'd rather try to buy it from you guys since you were so nice.
To me, that's what you should do, but a lot of people don't look at car dealers like they owe
them anything. Are you like that? See, I don't just look at them as just being car dealers,
I look at them as being humans, human beings. Yes, many of them are flawed. We all are, right?
We all have our flaws and we all have our little idiosyncrasies, but you know, a promise is a promise
and I think we ought to try to stick to that. How do you feel? I mean, if you were having a yard sale
at your house and you had a pretty green wheelbarrow and you're asking $25 for it, somebody left you
a $5 deposit, hold this for me as I go home to get the rest of my money. You say, well, sure.
Well, in the meantime, there's three or four other people come by and they say,
yeah, how much for the wheelbarrow? Oh, it's already sold. Oh, okay. And then that happens
and then the person shows back up says, um, can I have my $5 deposit back on the wheelbarrow? How
come? Well, I was driving home and I saw another yard sale and they had a red wheelbarrow and it
was $20. So I just decided to buy it, but you left a deposit on mine. I know, but you know,
you're going to do the right thing or not. Well, what is the right thing? She passed up on four
other wheelbarrow sales that she could have had just for you. I know what I'd tell them. Well,
you don't have to buy my wheelbarrow, but I'm, I appreciate you leaving me the $5 because I'm
keeping it. I'll be right back. I like old sayings sometimes. I like this one especially what goes
around comes around or is it what comes around goes around? Whatever it is, you know what I mean.
If you do a good deed to somebody, then more than likely if you ever need to talk to that person
again or deal with that person again, they'll, they'll do the good deed back. And I think when
people are dishonest when it comes to the way they do business, the way they interact with other
other human beings, that it will come back to haunt them. And that's one of the things that
I have been very watchful about and my dad taught me early on to live up to your promises. Your
integrity is all you have in the end. When you pair it all down, you get rid of everything else.
What kind of person you are, what kind of standards you hold says a lot, says everything really
about you. And it allows other people to feel comfortable doing business with you. I have been
through some pretty difficult business times in my life. And during some of those times,
there were certain bankers that I needed that really didn't want to do business with me when
I was hurting. As long as I was doing well, sure, we'll own you money, no problem. But when I really
needed them, they said, you know, the business climate doesn't look that good. We're not 100%
confident in the car business. You know, they would come up with all kinds of excuses.
But there was this one particular bank that said, Lenny Lawson, we believe in you.
It's not just the business and it's not just the industry as a whole or your business and the
way things look now. We believe that you will make this loan good, that you will pay us back.
And they were there for me. They stood up for me. I'm not going to name the bank here. It is a local
Tri-Cities bank. But I will be forever loyal to them because of what they did for me
when I really needed them. And that happens in a car dealership as well. When you buy a car,
everything is just so happy. The sales people are all happy. The sales managers are giving
everybody high fives, including the buyer, and they give you balloons and take your picture.
And then you have a problem. You've been waiting for 30 days to get your tags and your temporary
tag is getting ready to run out tomorrow. You call the dealership and say, where are my tags?
I need them. My tag is running out. Oh, let me check. And then they forget to call you back
or they end up calling you back and say, well, they're still not here. And you say, well,
what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to just park my vehicle? Oh, no, you can come in and get
another temporary tag. They just don't make it convenient. And plus the floor mats that they
said they were going to get you, those have never showed up. Sales person forgot to order them.
And then you come in for your first, first free oil change and they present you with a bill
and you say, I thought it was free. And, and they say, oh, this is one of those. Okay, no problem.
Um, we'll, we'll figure it out. You just go ahead. Here's your keys. No apology. No gratitude,
you know, for your being there. It's sad. That's the state of affairs in a lot of car dealerships.
A lot of businesses. I say car dealerships. That's what I do. But it's a lot of businesses,
a lot of people that they have on their front lines. They couldn't care less
whether you do business with them. They don't own the place. And sometimes I think,
even if they did, I've seen some pretty sour owners before, you know, and they,
they take you for granted. They don't wait on you very quickly. And when they finally do look up,
up at you, it's with a scowl, you know, like, like you just kick their cat. I mean, it's just,
it's very common. And I guess that's maybe because of the world we live in.
Really, should that matter though, should the world we live in matter about how you treat
other humans and your personal interactions with them? I'll tell you one thing. When I get
a good greeting, when I walk into a doctor's office and people smile at you and they're
happy to see you, hope you're doing well, ask about your family and, and then you go to sit in
a waiting room and you don't have to wait for two hours to get waited on. You get back there in
about five minutes. And again, they know you, they know your name. That is just so comforting to me.
And then I go into some other doctor's office, maybe down in Knoxville, where I have to go
see a specialist or something like that. And I just feel like I'm, I'm cattle, just a number.
You know, I'm waiting for the electronic thing that they, they shot cows with to hit me in
the rear end as I'm walking down the hallway. I mean, it, there's just no real customer service
there. Does that matter to you? Does it make a difference? You know, we vote with our dollars
and the dollars follow the businesses that care about their customers.
Again, I bring up the pals organization. I was reading, well, I've got this book right here.
It's called pals. It's a small little book. It's autographed by Powell Barker. It says,
Lenny, welcome to our total quality management class. I went to their class up in Kingsport.
What's a car dealer going to a class being run by a fast food joint? Well, because these people
know how to do business. They know how to treat their employees. They know how to hire the right
people. They know how to be consistent as far as quality, keeping costs down.
They know how to maintain their facilities. At this particular time, let's see, when this
book was written, they had seven restaurants was written by pal. They had seven restaurants and
they talked about how they kept refining their system and their performance and very impressive,
very impressive book. And I read it and share it with my salespeople because excellence is not
limited to a particular type of business. It is, it is available to everybody in any business.
They have to find out first, what does the customer want? And then how can we deliver that in an
efficient and effective way to keep them coming back and to maintain an acceptable profit margin?
Because it's not a charity. It's a business. And the workers want to get paid a good wage.
The owners, the people that have money at risk, want to make a good return on their investment.
And trust me, the people at Powell's do well. I call it engineered for excellence.
It's the way their business is built. And it's not easy. You know, you can't just put up a hot dog
stand and make the kind of money those people make. There is no way and a loyalty to them. It's
amazing. And so I brought this back. It's raining outside. You might be able to hear it on my metal
roof that leaks like crazy. Yeah, I brought this back for my employees and we read this book.
Yep. We sat in the meeting and we didn't read it all at once. We took about a week to go through
the entire book. And we had some really good discussions about it. And I finally convinced
my people that it's not the product. It's not what you're selling. It's how you run your business
and how effectively and efficiently you deliver that product to your employees,
I mean to your customers, so that they love you and want to come back. Now we've been in business
for 55 years now in Greenville, Tennessee. And it's a small town. I mean, we probably have
18,000 population, probably approaching 80,000 in the county. We're about 30 miles from Johnson
City, 30 miles from Morristown, much larger towns on either side of us. And for some reason or
another, we've been able to make a living selling thousands and thousands of vehicles for 55 years.
And it's not been easy. We've been up and down just like through economic circumstances that
everybody has faced. But there's two things that we have always done. And number one is
treat your employees right. And in reality, you have to put them first because happy employees
will deliver happy service. Angry, spoiled, bitter employees who don't feel like they're
getting paid enough, who don't feel like anybody listens to them and nobody does,
they don't deliver a high quality of service. So you got to put them first.
And then at a close second, I mean really close, come the customers and the customers
have to be wild. W-O-W-E-D or W-O-W apostrophe D. You got to wow them. You got to give them a great
experience. And that's hard, especially when you're dealing with manufacturers who won't send you
enough product and, you know, you've got cars that aren't absolutely perfect. None of them are. I
don't care if you're talking about a Mercedes or a Lexus or a Porsche or a Ford Fiesta. They all break.
It's not a question of whether they are going to break or not. It's a question of when and what
you're going to do about it when they do and what's that experience like. I mean one of the things
that has really saved us over the years is we invest a lot of money in service. We buy the best
equipment. We have the best facilities. It's one of the main reasons that when we built this
dealership, I decided to air condition the service department. You talk about a big bill
every month. That's big. Now we don't have to run it in the winter, but we certainly do it when the
temperatures are over, you know, 90 degrees or 85 degrees. You know what that does? Of course you
do. Comfortable technicians can concentrate better. They'll do a higher quality level of work when
they're not sweat and dripping into their eyes. That's a hard job. I want them to be cool and
comfortable because I want them to fix your car right the first time. So you've got employee
expectations and you've got customer expectations. They don't always overlap, but if you let either
one of them down, you're going to lose. If your technicians are unhappy, they're not going to do
high quality service. They're going to have comebacks. You know, they're going to take too long.
They're going to order the wrong parts. There's so many different things that can go wrong,
but a technician that's really dialed in that's happy and well, maybe not happy, but content
and comfortable, then they'll do quality work, more quality work. Are they going to have a
comeback every now and then? Yes, they're going to at any store, but it's a rarity. And then the
customer, their expectations, they want their car fixed. They want it fixed promptly. They want to
know what it's going to cost if they have to pay for it. If it's under warranty, they don't want
to have to worry about it. They want your facilities to be clean, you know, your bathrooms to be
clean, the coffee to be hot. You know, they just want a good atmosphere if they have to wait.
And then if they're not going to wait, they want frequent updates on the status of their vehicle.
You know, I've never thought that it's the customer's responsibility to keep themselves updated on
the repair status. No, that's the service advisor's responsibility. We have to be proactive. We call
them. We text them with updates at their preference. You know, if they want text messages, we do that.
If they want phone calls, we do that. If they don't want anything, we can do that too.
But when we promise that the car is going to be ready at three o'clock on a Thursday, it needs to
be ready at three o'clock because they have a life. And we do not want to negatively interfere
in their life. And we certainly do when we mess up any aspect of their car life.
They want it back and they want it back right. And they don't want to bring it back again.
You know, it doesn't matter how many cookies that you send them or nice notices or requests
for them to give you good Google ratings. If you do a bad job and you don't live up to your
promises. Okay, I'll be back in just one minute. Okay, enough business philosophy for today.
Sometimes I get a lot of requests for that. You know, one of the things that I think about
is that what are your expectations as a customer and when they are not delivered to you? What is
your responsibility? Most people would say, I'm having a responsibility. I just go somewhere else.
Well, again, being a human, it might be nice to find a manager and tell them what happened to you.
And this allows them to improve their business. So the next time you do business with them,
it's better. There's nothing wrong with that. It may not be any of your business other than the
fact that maybe you like the store and you like their product and you prefer to do business with
them. And if they're screwing up in some way, they really do need to know about it. You know,
sometimes your complaint may not be received, I guess, with the right spirit. And a lot of that
has to do with the workload that those people are under and the mindset that they're in. You
know, sometimes it's hard to shift gears when you go from 110 miles an hour and all of a sudden
you have to slow way down and listen to a suggestion or a complaint. Sometimes they don't
write it down and they don't receive it in the spirit that you wish they would. But they hear it
and maybe it'll come up in their next manager's meeting or maybe they jump right on it right
now. Every time I get a complaint, I thank the customer because they're doing me a favor.
Because what they're doing is they're saying, hey, if you fix this, I'll keep coming back to you.
If you fix this, you will continue to receive my money in exchange for what you do.
And to me, that is something to be grateful for. And I'm also grateful for you, my listening
audience. If you have any issues that have to do with your car, your car life, feel free to let me
know. Just send me a text with your question, 423-552-2020 or send me an email to LennyLawson2020
at gmail.com. And I'll see you on the next edition of my Cargoogre.
About this episode
A car buyer’s integrity starts with honoring commitments: a deposit is “kind of a promise,” and “A promise is a promise.” The show also flips the lens on service—great dealerships earn loyalty by keeping promises, proactively updating repair status, and treating employees well. When expectations slip, the buyer’s role is to communicate honestly and constructively to a manager, not just disappear. Lenny’s stories about delayed tags and a “free oil change” highlight how honesty and follow-through shape trust.
