Abe Was Right! You Can Fool Some of the People All of the Time

Almost everyone has read Abraham Lincoln’s popular saying, “You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” I think Abe meant this to be a positive assertion that government may get away with deceiving us for a while, but in the long run, truth justice and the American way will prevail…and I think he was right.

However, it doesn’t work that way with unethical car dealers and car buyers. It always has been “caveat emptor”, or “buyer beware when it comes to buying or servicing a car. Unfortunately for a buyer to “beware” he must be “aware” …that is to say educated, mature, sophisticated and experienced. This excludes a very large segment of our population including the very young, the very old, the uneducated, those with low I.Q.’s and those not proficient in the English language. This is one reason why our regulators and elected politicians don’t seem to care or act with respect to the rampant unfair and deceptive sales practices of a large number of Florida car dealers? Most elected officials and regulators are lawyers and are highly educated and sophisticated. They don’t have a problem buying or servicing a car. In fact, the car dealer that tries to take advantage of a lawyer, regulator, or politician is asking for trouble.

I’ve been writing this column/blog and broadcasting my radio show, Earl Stewart on Cars, for about eleven years. I sometimes feel that I’m “preaching to the choir” when it comes to advising people how to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. You, my readers and listeners, largely fall into the category of the educated and sophisticated, “aware” buyer. Most of you aren’t taken advantage of when you buy or service your car because you won’t allow it.

Unfortunately, there are enough uneducated, naive, and otherwise vulnerable consumers to feed those unethical car dealers who prey on the defenseless among us. All you must do is read, listen to or watch some of the car ads. To the educated, sophisticated buyer, these ads are funny; that is until you remember that so many fall prey to them, and are taken advantage of by the car dealers.

For example, it’s hard for you or me to believe that anybody would respond to an advertisement without reading the fine print. Many dealers today are advertising prices that, when you read the fine print, are understated by many thousands of dollars. When you or I see a dealer stating that the car price is plus “freight”, we are educated enough to understand that the law requires that the freight cost be already included in the price. A shrewd buyer knows that “dealer list” is not the same thing as MSRP and that a large discount from “dealer list” means absolutely nothing. We know that the “lowest price guarantee’ is worthless if the dealer reserves the right to buy the car from the other dealer that offers a lower price.

There are those who argue that all buyers have the responsibility to guard against unethical sellers, to take care of themselves. In fact, that’s the literal translation of the Latin legal term “caveat emptor” …let the buyer beware. That’s sounds good, but what about the elderly widow whose husband recently died and who never had to make the decision on a major purchase in her entire life? What about the young person just out of school with no experience in the real world? How about the immigrant who struggles with English? Should we be concerned about our underprivileged classes who often drop out of school because they must go to work to support themselves or their family? You and I know lots of good people who, for one reason or another, simply can’t cope with a slick car or service salesman.

My bottom line is this; since we can’t rely on our regulators and politicians to protect those who “can be fooled all the time”, maybe we owe it to society to protect these folks. If you know someone who is thinking about buying a car or has a service problem with her car and you feel she may not have the ability to fend for herself with the car dealer, offer your support. If you’re one of the people who needs support, ask someone who can go “toe to toe” with a car dealer to come with you when you are car shopping. By the way, nobody, sophisticated or not, should car shop alone. Two heads are always better than one and it’s always a good idea to have a witness to what was said during a negotiation. And, of course, if you don’t have the time to help a person or you’re that person, you can always call me…I’m always here for you.

Open Letter to all Florida Law Enforcement Officers Ticket all vehicles with open safety recalls:

Dear Florida law enforcement officer,

If you’re with the Florida Highway Patrol, County Sheriff’s Department, or local city police, you’re empowered by Florida law to issue citations and warnings to unsafe vehicles on Florida’s roads. You typically exercise this duty by citing drivers of vehicles with faulty tail, brake, and head lights, unsafe tires, or even a noncompliant license plate frame.

My suggestion to you is to prioritize citing drivers of vehicles with dangerous safety recalls, especially Takata airbags. There are more deaths and injuries from defective Takata airbags in Florida than all the other 49 states. This is because of Florida’s above average heat and humidity which causes the airbag inflator to EXLODE, sending shrapnel throughout the inside of the vehicle, killing and maiming passengers. Furthermore, SEVENTY-FIVE PERCENT of the cars on the roads with safety recalls have never been repaired. Most of these dangerous cars are older and are being driven by a 2nd, 3rd, 4th or later owners. The manufacturers of these cars are unable to contact most of these endangered drivers because of old, inaccurate addresses. There’s also the apathy of many drivers to take the time to bring their car in for repair. Lastly, thousands of vehicles on the road, especially those with defective Takata airbags, have NO FIX AVAILABLE. The huge Takata airbag recall demand has exceeded the manufacturers’ capacity to build the airbag inflators. Some vehicle owners are waiting over a year for a replacement airbag.

Your squad cars are equipped with sophisticated computers which can cross-reference the license plate number of any vehicle on the roads and display the VIN, vehicle identification number, aka serial number. You have direct access to the National Highway Traffic Association’s (NHTSA) database (www.SaferCar.gov) This source, with the VIN, tells you if the car you’re driving behind has an unfixed Takata air bag or any other dangerous safety recall. The NHTSA data base will also tell you IF there is a fix available for this recall.

I suggest that you first issue a warning to all drivers of vehicles with unfixed safety recalls, giving them 7 days to have the vehicle repaired; if they fail to comply, issue a suspension of their driver’s license. If the NHTSA database tells you that the safety recall has no fix available, you should require the driver to drive immediately to the nearest dealership of his vehicle’s make and rent a car or receive a free loaner.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I’m going directly to you, our Florida law enforcement officers, because our governor, legislators, and regulators have all let us down. Clearly, it should be illegal to sell a car with a dangerous safety recall, but our governor and lawmakers will not act. At the very least, it should be required that the buyer of a car with a dangerous safety recall be advised prior to sale, this has not been done either. Therefore, thousands of used cars with dangerous safety recalls are being sold to unsuspecting Floridians daily.

I believe you have the authority and the responsibility to take dangerous vehicles off the road and you can exercise this authority under our existing laws without waiting any longer for the politicians and regulators to act. Furthermore, I believe your action will put the pressure on the politicians, regulators, auto manufacturers and car dealers to do the right thing. The legislators and regulators have “sat on their hands” because of the huge lobbying efforts by auto manufacturers, car dealers, and their associations.Once the drivers of Florida, most of whom are also VOTERS, begin to be pulled over by law enforcement and warned or have their license suspended, you will see our politicians and regulators suddenly begin to do the right thing.



Thanks very much for considering my suggestion,



Earl Stewart

Cell Phone 561 358-1474

Don't Get "Flipped" to a Lease!

One of the most popular weapons in car dealers’ arsenals is the infamous “lease flip”. This is car dealer jargon for switching a customer who originally intended to buy a car to leasing the car.

Of course, the motivation to do this is more profit for the dealer and a bigger commission to the salesman. That’s not to say that leasing a car is always costlier than buying one, but it can be if you’re not careful. And not being careful is exactly what happens when a purchase intender becomes a lessee.

Here’s how it happens. You come into the dealership to buy a car. You may have seen the dealer’s advertisement in the newspaper or TV for a model you love. More than likely, you’re prepared to make a down payment and/or trade in your old vehicle. You have a monthly payment in mind because almost everybody has a budget and we usually translate most purchases into if we can fit them into our monthly budgets. You negotiate the best price you can to buy the car, or maybe the sale price is good enough.

Now the salesman, or more often the F&I manager/business manager, tells you what your monthly payment will be. Let’s say that you have a trade-in worth $15,000 and aren’t going to put any cash down. The F&I [Finance and Insurance] aka business manager, tells you your monthly payment will be $427 per month. But that’s way more than you can afford and you tell him you can’t buy the car because you can’t afford that big a payment. He asks you how much you can afford and you tell him it must be under $350 per month. Now he has you set up perfectly for the “lease flip”.

“Mrs. Smith, I think I have just the right thing for you. What would you say if I told you that you can drive that new car home today for just $349 per month?” You say, with glee, “We have a deal!” Guess what? You’ve just been flipped. If you had bought the car at the advertised price or negotiated a very good price, the dealer probably would have made about $1,000 profit. and the salesman would have made about a $200 commission. Not that you’ve let yourself be flipped to lease, the dealer could be making $15,000 and the salesman could be making a $3,000 commission!

I’m not exaggerating. I get calls weekly from victims of lease flips. Many of the callers are elderly and many of them are widows who never bought a car before, but had relied on their husbands. There’s no law that limits the profit that a dealer can make when he sells or leases a car. $10,000, $15,000, and even $20,000 profits are made and usually on leases. The dealers can do this by using the trade-in as a capital cost reduction on the lease but allowing less for the trade than it is worth. In the example above, your trade-in may be worth $15,000 but you were allowed only $5,000 to reduce the capitalized costs of the lease. Also, the dealer could have raised the price of the car you negotiated or the sale price to MSRP or even 110% of MSRP which is allowable by the leasing companies.

By manipulating the number of months of the lease and the down payment [capitalized cost reduction], a dealer can give you as low a payment as you ask for and still make an exorbitant profit. Most buyers are so focused on monthly payments that they don’t carefully analyze what they are agreeing to and signing. The shorter the number of months of a lease, the greater impact the down payment has on the monthly payment. A $5,000 down payment reduces the monthly payment on a 36-month lease by $139 per month, $208 on a 24 month lease, and $417 on 12 month lease.

Incredibly many victims of the lease flip, never thought about the fact that after the 24, or 36, or 48-month term of the lease, they own nothing after the end of the lease. A car with a good resale value should be worth about half of what you paid for it. Many people who have never leased before think they can bring their lease car back early if they want. Leasing is not renting, and you can bring your car back early only if you make all of the remaining lease payments. If you had bought the car for $30,000 and financed it for 36 months, you would have about $15,000 in equity at the end of 36 months and no monthly payments. You were building equity with every monthly payment in the purchase but you were building zero equity with your 36 lease payments.

As I said before, don’t let this frighten you from ever leasing a car. Leasing can be a good choice and sometimes the best choice. You can find six blog articles I’ve written: “Lease a New Car before You Buy It”, “Car Leasing Booby Traps”, “Be Very Careful When Leasing a Car”, “The Lease Acquisition Fee…the Bank’s Gotcha”, “Buy or Lease Your Car at the Right Time of Year”, and “Should I Buy or Lease My Next Car?”