Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.05.2019 Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Fuccillo KIA of Cape Coral

Episode Date: January 5, 2019

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits Fuccillo KIA of Cape Coral to purchase a car with an identified Takata Airbag Recall. Earl Stewart is one of the most successful car dealers in the nation. This podcast gives you the benefit of his 40+ years as a car dealer and helps you turn the terror of buying, leasing, or servicing a car into a triumphant experience. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.streamearloncars.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. We are now on Facebook Live every Saturday between 8am and 10am. Go to facebook.com/earloncars to also watch it live or to watch a replay in case you missed it. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. Watch Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Well, good morning, everybody. We've been gone for a little while. Did you miss us? The past couple of weeks, Nancy Stewart and I, my co-host on Earl Stewart on Cars.

We took a little vacation. I had a couple of reruns here. And we're back live in the studio. Very excited about it. Believe it or not, we look forward to the show probably more than you do. We just have a lot of fun, and it's just not Nancy Stewart and myself. We got Rick Kearney, we got Stu Stewart, my son. We got a team of four folks here, and we got Jonathan and the studio.

By the way, speaking of the studio and Jonathan, we have finally been successful in widening our bandwidth. And we now have a consistently super-fast Wi-Fi. So we'll be talking to people all over the world. We were talking about that before the show came on. I mean, this is not exactly 5G, but we are humming, and we're talking Facebook, Periscope, YouTube. We're all over the place. So if you have any problems with the audio, the video,

you know, breaking up a little slow, you can get us anywhere. Facebook.com, ord slash Earl Stewart, Toyota. I'm sorry. That's how Facebook.com forward slash Earl Stewart on cars, Facebook.com for it slash Earl Steering on Cars. Or you can stream us

at stream earlarkars.com. Nancy? You know, I want to give congratulations to this great team that we work with and great team meeting everyone from Rudy at the controls

that keeps things rolling along and how important a job he has. And Jonathan, where would we be without his expertise? and Stu, Rick, it's just a happy New Year, everyone, and we are so fortunate to be able to be working with such a spectacular team. Thank you, Nancy. For a lot of folks out there who still don't know us, because we're growing, we're unique.

It's not just a normal kind of show. First of all, we're on True Oldies, which is a musical station, and maybe one day we'll change the name to include the fact that we have a talk show, live radio talk show, very exciting. And not only that, but we talk about something nobody else talks about. We talk about car dealers. We talk about buying, leasing, maintaining, and repairing your car. Now, I know this is old stuff to our regular listeners,

but if you haven't listened before, if you just tuned in Goldie True Oldies channel, 95.9, 106.9, and you're looking for some 70s and 60s music, and you heard me, you say, what the heck is this? Well, Earl Strow and Cars is educational, it's entertaining. We do a mystery shopping report. If you haven't tutored us in before, you've got to stay tuned for that. We visit a new dealership every single week.

We've been doing it for how many years. I lose track. It's been a lot of years, and we have hundreds of mystery shopping reports. We go in and pretend to buy or lease a car, and we just take it through the whole process. is if we were going to buy or lease a car from this dealership. Some dealerships treat you right, some dealerships treat you wrong. Actually, we have more dealers on the approved list than the do not buy list.

But we don't have any perfect dealers out there. In fact, we're grading our mystery shopping reports on the curve because if we said ABCD by strict standards, we wouldn't have anybody pass. We have too much deception, too many unfair and deceptive. trade practices, as they say in the law, which is violating people's ability to make an intelligent choice when they buy anything. And just a huge amount of deception out there. So you're going to love that mystery shopping report.

We have one later in the show. The largest, I'll give you a hint, is the largest Kia dealer in the United States. And I'm talking a huge Kia dealer. He calls himself huge. He sells hundreds of Kias every month. He sells more Kia's than the Toyota dealer or the Chevrolet dealer sells their cars there. He's the number one volume Kia dealer and car dealer, for that matter, in this whole market. Very exciting report.

It took us, it's 280 miles away. I think that's about almost the furthest we've driven. Pensacola is like 700, but, yeah, it's still pretty full. So that's what we do. We do this because we know you had a hard time when you bought a car last time. you bought a car or if you lease a car you had a hard time for that matter you had a hard time maintaining your car taking into the service department the car dealers of the world especially in the u.s.a and especially in south florida are operating pretty much mid 20th century if you

want a car if you're old enough and you bought a car back in the 50s 60s or 70s and you bought a car today you wouldn't see a whole lot of difference in the way you were treated they treat you with a lot a disrespect. They treat you as if you're not intelligent enough to make a choice. They lie, they cheat, and they do a lot of things they shouldn't be doing. Car dealers are frozen in time, and if you're interested, we could talk about that. I've discussed it in past shows. There's justification for why we do this show. We always quote the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions. It's been conducted every year since 1977, and every or car dealers come out on the bottom. Number one, nurses, of course, who doesn't love a nurse.

And on the bottom, I say car dealers, sometimes it's congressmen, sometimes it's lobbyists, politicians and lawyers and lobbyists fight for the bottom place position with car dealers. So that's been going on since 1977, 40 plus years. Hey, that's why this show is on the air. And this is why we have a good following, like 20,000 folks out there on the radio and i don't know how many folks we got out there on facebook and on periscope and on on what else we want to do we're on everything we cover the you name it yeah we're we can't yeah exactly we don't have time to name them all we're on webo we're not we're not we're not we're we got a break into the china market soon but anyway and we uh most exciting thing we do is speak

live to folks that call in yeah and we do have a caller right now and we're interested interrupt ourselves to take the phone calls and we're going to talk to Tina and Tina's a regular caller. Happy New Year Tina and welcome to the show. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed your vacation. We did. We need a vacation from our vacation. Yeah, now it's back to the salt mines, but I know that this is the most enjoyable part of your week so I know this doesn't feel like work. This feels like this is your passion. This is what you enjoy talking about. This is what you enjoy doing. And that's great. Exactly.

What's up, Dana? Well, I was looking up, I have a couple things, electric cars, you know, the electric car bandwagon is really going on. It used to just be Tesla, and then it was Chevy, and now every major

automaker is going to come out with an electric car. And this is a great thing because people get sick and tired of paying for gas, they want to save money. The only problem is a lot of these electric cars, entry level electric cars pretty expensive. However, there is a silver lining. I just read an article in auto trader about why do electric cars lose value so much so fast. And that's good

because if you really want an electric car and you're willing to be patient and wait a year or two, you can get what you want at the price that you want, which is really great. You're exactly right. This kind of happened back in the 2000s when the first actually late 1990s when the first hybrid cars were coming out and the hybrid car the Prius when it first came out the manufacturer Toyota built the car and lost money but they saw the future and they had the courage to devote a lot of resources kind of like what Tesla is doing now with the all-electric you have to have the wherewithal you have to have the capital to be able to invest and you have to be able to sell a car to Tina and lose two or three or four thousand

and sell 100,000 or 200,000 cars a year and lose millions of dollars to build your production up so you finally reach that point of efficiency of production and volume where you can break even and finally make a profit. So we're seeing that with electric cars and you're right, an electric car depreciates very quickly because when you get ready to trade it in to buy another electric car, the technology is made what your car's got obsolete. It's like a cell phone. Exactly.

Or a smartphone is there. Exactly. Smart phones are a great example, computers, the electronics that we buy today, you know, it used to be we fixed things, you know. Now we throw them away and buy another one. And that's probably what will be happening with electric cars. I don't know that we'll really throw them away, but we'll probably do something. They'll be recycled.

Recycled, yeah. Every component will eventually get reused somewhere. Yeah, exactly. But you're very, very astute observation there, Tina. Oh, thank you. And I think it's great because, like I said, you know, if people are price conscious, they're looking for a good value, like, I was just looking at the Nissan Leaf. I'm not a real fan of the back end of the Nissan Leaf. It's not exactly a pretty car.

It's very quirky. If you're into quirky, it's great. But when it first came out, it was a $35,000 car. Now you can pick one up for $7,800. Is that right? And that's really a good get. Yeah, you can pick one up for $7,800. Now, it might be like a 2012, $2013.

but it's depreciated that much. Okay, I see what you're saying, yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's, you know, I never thought about the used resale market for, you know, volts and leaps and things like that, but you're absolutely right. I had no idea they could buy a nice Nissan LEAF for $7,800. Rick, you had a point?

The only thing I would really be curious about with the leaf, I know with the Prius, we have found that the high voltage battery, the electric drive battery, they've pretty much got a lifespan now of about 200,000 miles and about 8 to 10 years. So if you buy a used one, you're pretty much looking at the idea that you're going to have to put a couple thousand dollars into it very soon, putting a new battery. And then once you do, you're good for quite a while yet. But I wonder with that leaf, what their lifespan is on the battery.

Rick, can you take a leaf or a Prius or a Volt to a technician, a hybrid, technician, can they look at the battery and give you some idea about what the estimated remaining life would be? Unfortunately, no. I really, even with Toyota, I have looked at every parameter that I can see on our scan tool computers, and it really doesn't give me anything that gives me like a percentage. Like in your iPhones, you know, you can go in there. There's a spot in your settings.

You can tell what the lifespan of your battery really is based on its charging rate. but unfortunately they haven't given us that for the cars yet which i think would be a helpful thing for the techs you know at least give you an idea but you know some of these little cars like that they might be a very worthwhile thing still for a little daily run about the city yeah and the of course the battery represents a very high percentage of the total cost of the vehicle too so if you have to replace the battery it's uh it's gonna be expensive i'm sorry earl i don't mean to interrupt you. But there are companies, like there's a company here in Fort Myers.

They specialize in replacing batteries, refurbished batteries. And you don't have to spend a couple thousand dollars in the battery. You can get a really good battery with a warranty for like $800. Now, what is a warranty on that? I think the warranty is about three years, possibly. That would be. They probably have a mileage on there, too. That in $800, $800 for a refurbished battery, you don't have to put $2,000 into your car all over again.

That's true. I would call that fantastic. If you can get some specifics on that, I'd love to investigate the company and spread the word, give them some business because that's a real bargain. With a Toyota Prius, you're still talking about, what, $1,500 on a refurbished? To have a Toyota dealer do it with one of the refurbished Toyota battery. batteries. You're looking right around 2,500 to 3,000 to have that battery replaced for a dealer. For the dealer to do it. Aftermarket shops, I've seen a wide variant in ranges. The ones that I would call reputable, you're looking probably around 15 to 1,700. However, just to be aware, folks, do your

homework on these shops that are doing these replacements because I've seen a couple of them where the cars have come back to us because they just did some really, really bad, bad work. Yeah. And they messed up some cars. Yeah, be sure that the company is reputable, that they're going to be in business when you do have to have the warranty honored and try to get some references on it. But that's a very interesting information. And we will spread the word once we investigate them a little bit and see exactly what their reputation is. and get the word out, because what a deal that is,

a leaf for $7,800. You said about a 2013 to 2015, if you can get that with a three-year warranty on a refurbished battery, that's not a bad deal at all. No, that's fantastic. Well, thank you very much, Tina. You and Tina, thanks for always bringing us

brand new information. You're an asset to the show. Oh, thank you very much. I appreciate it. One more thing before I go, Um, I was wondering if you guys can talk about reselling your car, not trading it in, but reselling your car because, you know, Craigslist has a lot of shady people on it. And when you're privately selling your car, you always have to never trust anything the potential buyer has to say. And I was wondering if something like CarMax or Auto, like one of those used car lots would be a good, that buy used cars would be a good, a good alternative. Well, if you want to retail the car, did I understand you correctly, Tina, that you want to sell your car retail? Well, sell my car for the best price possible, like go to up, like any place, like AutoTrader or CarMax or any place like that.

What would be the best option? Because sometimes, like I said, you know, you might not want a stranger coming to your home. You might want to do a money deal with a complete stranger you don't know. and even though Craigslist might be a good alternative, we know that Craigslist is not 100% safe. To my knowledge, there are no auto traders or CarMaxes out there that will take a car on consignment and retail it for you. There are some dealers that will do that. Very few, and it's dangerous.

You're really risking your car, because sometimes they'll sell your car and keep the money in. I think that there really is, For you, Tina, with your sophistication and knowledge, you could probably deal, direct, and sell your car. I'm not worried about Tina. I'm not worried about the average person. I don't want to sell my car.

I love my car. If you can sell it to your family or a good friend, and then you can come up with a price. There would be somewhere between retail and wholesale, save money for your friend and make a little more money for you. That's the way to do it. a car to somebody that you know it's very dangerous to do something like that to a stranger go ahead nancy uh tina you know the point here is i think that you meet the profile and i'm proud

to say that there are more women out there that do meet the profile just like you and it would be a safe way to sell your car privately and uh you have all the time in the world to get the price that you want so uh again thank you so much for calling we always look forward to you and I think Stu has something to add to this. Yeah, a true car has a service called True Cash Offer. That's worth checking out. Now, it still works with the dealers,

but it kind of puts your car out there for bid. So if just go to TrueCard.com, I think you can find a link there for a true cash offer. And you put all the information of your car, your VIN and all that, and then they kind of send it out there to a bunch of dealers who will bid on it. Well, half the battle is selling a car TNA is finding out

a price that they'll sell at. Trust me, I'm a car dealer, and that's our biggest problem. Where do we set the price? And one way to set the price on the car that you want to sell is to go to the dealers. You go to a true car, and you could go to an auto trader. If you're driving a Honda, you go to three Honda dealers.

You've heard me say this before. Go to the car manager, say, I want to sell my car. What will you pay for it? That's a wholesale price, but once you find out what the real wholesale is, now you know about what a retail would be. you can make $1,000 over a wholesale on a car, you probably ought to grab it and take a, the car dealers try to make $10,000 on the car, and they haggle and hassle, and they will eventually take a lower deal.

But if you can sell a car to a friend, a relative for $1,000 over true wholesale, it's a good deal for you, and it's a good deal for them. Yeah. And one last thing, a special service that only we offer. If you send me, Tina, the information on your car, I can plug that. software that helps auspriced cars and it kind of goes out there on the internet takes the car you know the year make model miles color all that and gets the market price what what's the average selling price out there in the world and so if you send that to me i can i can give you back that information yeah and it's just a little bit that's nice it's just a little bit harder to get taken advantage of uh today tina because uh once you set that foundation and you go from there

you know subconsciously what you want for that car again tina Thank you so much for calling. Thank you for inviting me on your show every week. I appreciate everybody out there. Eastern Standard Time every Saturday morning from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Be here. Thank you so much, Dina. You know, I'm going to take a moment and let Craig know that we know he is holding.

But there's something real important here that I have to mention, and that is our telephone number. That number is 877-960-99-60. And if you want to text us, you can text us at 772-497-6530. And remember, ladies, every single Saturday, our goal here in part of this show is to build this platform for ladies, for all of you to be able to come right here for your suggestions, for information that we can give you. and also we give each one of you the first two new lady callers, $50.50, can't go wrong. $50 for the first two new lady callers. Now back.

Well, we'll go also, I want to mention again, too, that we have that mystery shopping report coming up, and that is the highlight of the show. And we've got, well, we've got some video to share with you on the shopping report and it's going to be an exciting show. We're going to try to get to a whole lot of information. So right now we're going to go to Craig, who's holding, and he's giving us a call from Palm Beach Island. Good morning, everybody.

Thank you very much for being there. It's always an interesting morning to listen to you, folks, talk about things. Now, my thing is we bought a Tesla, and I have always loved the outside, idea of electric technology, not to save the environment. I'm not an environmentalist, but I believe that the electric technology is far superior because it's efficient, it's efficient, 85% efficient as opposed to about 18 to 20% with internal

combustion engines. And the Tesla, when we bought it, now the deal is no longer in place, we have free charging forever if I put a million miles on that car I never have to pay to charge that car it is so efficient

that we never even bothered putting a home charger in we just go to Tesla there are Tesla charging stations popping up everywhere and the this man you know I don't know if Tesla is superior I know that they were the first one.

This guy Musk thought of, well, you know, I'll spend $0 on advertising, and I'll just pump all my money into charging stations. So they're everywhere. We have been everywhere with this car and never once have been, oh, my goodness, we're going to run out of electricity, and they have the supercharger. The longest it's ever taken us is 40 minutes to charge. Greg, give us an example. Where have you traveled with, you?

your Tesla and being able to find charging stations all along the way? Well, we have gone over to the west coast of Florida. You can go up to Florida Turnpike. There's charging stations on the Florida Turnpike. And just where the normal gas stations are. If I go to Melbourne, there's one in Port St. Lucie. There's two in Riviera Beach. There's one of the new Wawa station.

And there's one at the Tesla, I wouldn't call it, a dealership, the showroom. and one in Port St. Lucie. And they're almost always in a high-end mall, where if you wanted to, you could go in and get a cup of coffee or something, you know, browse a bookstore. The only problem, now I haven't had it personally, are these imbecils driving four-wheel-drive diesel trucks who, for some reason, hate Tesla.

And they have gone in and blocked. for pumped. Oh, no. I just read an article on that. We have personally had people come up and they do a thing called coal rolling where they've tuned the diesel to pump out black smoke and they drive up right next to you and try to locate their exhaust underneath your car. But, of course, we have like hephilters.

You know, you can pump diesel exhaust all day and it's never going to permeate up. at the cabin of that car. Yeah, that's terrible. I hadn't heard about that. But, you know, Elon Musk, you know, the Nissan leaf, it's okay. It's a commuter car, but the early leaves, their range was 48 miles. That was it. Now, Musk's getting, he's working with Panasonic, and they have these, the replacement cost of the batteries is getting

lower and lower and lower and once they go to a solid-speed battery, they're going to go to 800-volt charging where you can charge in 10 minutes. So if you have charging stations, like I said, I have if you plan a trip, I want to go

from here to Jacksonville. I just punch into the dashboard computer Jacksonville and it tells you, you know, you can stop here. We recommend you stop here or here or here. Because they know, How long do you want to trip to lift?

How long do you like to drive before you want to get out and stretch your legs? Craig, let me ask your question. How do you feel about the price cut that Elon Musk announced? I guess it was the last day of 2018, $2,000 across the board price cut. I said to Nancy, when I heard that on the news, I said, I guess I'd feel pretty bad if I bought a Tesla in December and found out the same car was now, was $2,000 less. maybe it wouldn't be so much.

I think the effect had to do with the fact that the tax subsidy had been reduced, and he was trying to compensate for the tax subsidy that had been reduced. Did that concern you or bother you at all? No. We paid $109,000. We bought an X. Top of the line. And, you know, I'm an older guy.

I've never spent that. I mean, that's just about how much I spent for a condominium. that's not the kind of money that I would normally spend on a car. But, you know, you have a vehicle that has, you know, 20 moving parts as opposed to 2,000 moving parts. And, you know, as a matter of, this is the last car I'm probably ever going to buy. So, but the biggest concern for me was like when I bought my first computer back in the early 90s, the technology doubled every 18 months. So you always felt like, well, I should just wait for the new technology.

I know that this will be obsolete probably in five years. Unless they can refit it with these solid-state batteries, we could never sell the car because the electric technology is going so quickly. But, you know, I'm not here to get your buyers to buy Tesla. what I'm saying is the electric car business and a lot of people don't even understand it. Yeah, you're right about that

Craig. Hey, Stu's got a comment. What was your comment? Well, I was thinking about what Craig, when you mentioned about the truck owners that are blocking Tesla owners' cars at the supercharger stations and I know I'd read an article about it and yeah, they call it icing and the ice is an acronym

for internal combustion engine so that's like a revolt against these electric cars. So they block him in, but I know I read it on the website that Tina likes Jalapnik, and actually on Wednesday they have an article, and you got to check it out on Jalapnik, and

it is a Tesla owner hooking up a tow cable to a large Chevy Silverado that's blocked him in. And the Teslas are known. They have incredible towing power. You know, they've got the four full torque. Yep. So they tied a rope up to it. The guy has his emergency brake on. He drags the

Chevy Silverado away from the charging station with no problem at all. Oh, I love that. The message is don't, don't mess with Tesla. Well, you know, I'll tell you the truth. We had just a slight incident yesterday. We were pulling into a bank up to an ATM and some guy in a brand new four-wheel drive, you know, jacked-up vehicle, diesel,

and he was, you know, the hand gestures. And, of course, I'm from New York, so I'm a wise guy. And I'm going to hand gesture them back And my wife says, you know, don't even bother Yeah, don't do that Because I could see it really escalating For some reason, I don't understand Are we threatening their way of life or something?

You know, I just don't get that And there's a real animosity in that You know, I'm a conservative, I do a little radio show myself And some of my conservative friends are angry at me because they think I'm going over to the liberal siding and I'm trying to save the planet. I said, this has nothing to do with saving the planet. It's a great car.

This has to do with a superior technology. It's called change. People can't accept change, Greg, and can't accept the fact that we're moving at warp speed and technology. You sound like an older guy. I'm an older guy. We're one of the few. Most of the old folks just don't get it.

That this is the way the world. is going to be. And their times are changing real fast, and I'm having a ball. I love watching it happen. I won't be here a whole lot longer to enjoy it all, but I'm having a ball watching it happen. And Rod, let me ask you a question. Isn't it just easier? I mean, you just said that you have your own show. Isn't it just easier for people to say, hey, let's blame it on the lives. Let's blame it on the conservative. Instead of using their mind and realizing that we have moved into the 21st century and everything is changing and you just have to accept that this is just like i mean this has gone on for for a very long time since the ludite movement

since the luddites set the looms on fire and in britain you know 300 years ago when they when they develop looms and the weavers lost lost their jobs i mean they actually burned down factories because they were so fearful and this is we all right between the horse and carriage and automobiles. This is the same, you know, I'm sure that blacksmiths were panic-stricken when they saw cars. Greg, what's your radio show? Let me give you a plug. When is your show on the air?

Oh, it's called The Craig Any Show, and we're on from 9 to 10 Eastern Standard Time, and we're on the Internet now. We used to be on WPBO. We did three hours. I'm an old guy. I only do an hour now. Craig Hennie Show, 9 to 10, Eastern. What day?

Monday through Friday. Monday through Friday, okay. I'm going to tune you in. I think I've seen you on Facebook. Are you on my Facebook page? Yep. Yeah, yes, sir. Absolutely, and we do guest appearances out in New York Dakota twice a week.

We do political commentary out in the Great Plains. So we have quite a following. ourselves and uh like i said it's you know i'm on i take all positions i take the position that i believe is the truth i don't go well i'm a republican and i believe all things i believe what what is the truth and and what is the best yeah there's too much of that going on i believe that electric cars i think are you know if people uh just examine and don't feel so threatened i actually had a guy who graduated from harvard he's a neighbor of mine he he he was was so upset, he said, what's the poor guy that owns the gas station going to do?

They said, I'm sure I don't care what he does. If he's smart, he'll put in charging stations. Same thing the guy that sold buggy whips did. Yeah, he has a plan. Find something else to do. Craig, thank you so much. You're a great caller. I hope you call again.

Great show. I really appreciate you. I'm going to tune you in. Rick had a comment. What was your comment? Just for the fun of it, I pulled up a quick map showing the, the Tesla charging stations, and just using a range from approximately PGA Boulevard in the north to Okeechobee in the south and going west just a little past the turnpike, 15 stations in that area

for Tesla destination and fast charging stations. Interesting. I'm surprised. Interesting. Craig again, thank you for tuning in and stay with us and give us a call again. Interesting conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, if you didn't jot that telephone number down, 877-960-99-60 and remember you can text us and stew will soon be sharing some texts

and that number if you didn't jot it down is 772-497-6530 and we're going to go to Rod who's been holding he's given us a call from West Palm Beach good morning Rod good morning everybody I hope I hope you well rested from your from your trip and everything I know it was a tough time hey I hope he got his picture of an older Pontiac there when you all were in Cuba They were all over the place I couldn't believe it saw 57 Bonneville

All over the place Really a lot of fun Amazing You get a good picture of that Who knows You might be able to write off the whole trip Anyway Excuse me anyway

As far as these of these cars with the electric batteries and all this stuff. It's, who knows, one day, one day might be able to just get them from Walmart or something, who knows. I'll bet we can. Oh, excuse. Anyway, I just wanted to say welcome back and hope all is well, and I hope that you're being able to stream, stream, I hope all that's all fixed now. Well, thank you, Ron.

I think so. So far, knock on wood, took us long enough and a lot of persistence. And finally Comcast realized they had some defective equipment here in the studio. And they replaced a router. And here we are at warp speed, streaming all over the planet. It is warp speed. We're getting like 400 megabytes. You got to shake the bushes with Comcast.

They're using dinosaur stuff. That's why Accentis D's doing well and all this other stuff. But when you let them know that you're going to bring. each contract with them all of a sudden they seem to come up with the modern-day equipment. I don't know who I hate worse. Why you have to do that?

I don't know. That's because they can. They're a monopoly, and they get away with it. They're almost a monopoly. Thank heavens they're not a monopoly, but I share your sentiments about Comcast. Rod, thanks very much. And thanks for following us on Facebook, and

we really did enjoy Havana, Cuba, and it's our second trip there. So it might go back again. You can't believe it. I mean, all the cars are these old American cars, not literally all of them, but 90% of them. And if you grew up in the 50s and 60s, it's just like, it's like you're going back in time. It's just amazing. You keep blinking. You see these old fords and Chevroletes and Pontiacs and Cadillacs and they're just absolutely amazing. You know, it was amazing to me that I saw as many women smoking cigars.

I think there were more women smoking cigars than there were men. Really? And that was stunning. And they were all very young. They were like in their 20s and 30s. Let me some pictures. Okay. 877960-9960 or you can text us at 772-49765.

Rod, did you have anything further to say? You'll appreciate the call. Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to go to Gary. Gary's been holding, he's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Gary. Good morning. I have two cars, and they're about 15 years old, and I got them brand new.

One's a 2004 Honda accent, and I took it to get it worked on at a garage, and I had a break job. and an oil change and they work on the CV axles and I got it back and I took it back and they said it needs struts and it's got 75,000 miles on it. I also have a 2004 Saturn View with 121,000 miles on it and I think I noticed the transmission was starting to leak The accent, I've already put over $700 in on it, and it's basically worthless because it's so old. And I hate to put any more money into it, but I was told it needs struts.

And I just wonder, is it worth it to hold on to these two vehicles any longer, or should I let them go? Cut your losses, Gary. Cut your losses. I say you've got all your use out of those. I'm amazed that you bought those new and you had them for 15 years, but you really got all the use out of them. And Rick is dying to tell you how to fix it, but I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you that whatever you spend additionally on that Saturn and that 2004 Hyundai is going to be far more than you should invest based on the value of those vehicles. Stu, I'm not along with you.

I want to hear what Rick says that. Yeah, Rick. Go ahead, Rick. Actually, my thought is this, the Saturn, I would put that up for sale right off the bat because you've got a lot of young kids right now in high school that are going to be looking for cars very soon for the summertime. And that would be a great beater for some kid to get hold of

and tear it up over to summer as he's learning. So we're in agreement then. We all think you ought to sell those ESAP. Well, the only one with the Hyundai is I would take and just walk to the front and back of the car and bounce it a little bit and if it keeps bouncing a lot then yeah the struts are pretty worn get rid of it otherwise if it doesn't bounce a whole lot i'd drive it until it does i wouldn't put any money into it even but i wouldn't sell it right off even it bounced a lot i'll take drumamine before you drive it yeah the front end that bounces real bad especially over a bump

yeah then it's i i would let it go i wouldn't put money into it yeah so you get so you got to be careful you find a guy like Rick Kearney because he loves to fix things. I do. He likes that. You can bring him a terminally ill car, and his challenge is to make that car run. And Rick could make that Hyundai and that Saturn run like a brand new car. He could do that for you, but you spend far more money then if you bought another car. I can fix it if it takes every left dime you have.

Exactly. All right. The Saturn View, I've had it 14 years. It's been about the best car I've ever owned. Really? Wow. Must have been the only one. I mean, I would hate to let it go, but I'm 72 years old, and, you know, it's the best car I've ever owned.

That's great. As far as no trouble. My first car I bought in 1970 from Stuart Pontiac when it was down on South 2000 South Dixie. Wow. That was the second year. I was in the business. I started with my dad as Stuart Pontiac in 1968. I probably saw you there.

I bet you was my commercial that brought him in. That was two. Yeah, I was just fresh out of the Army from Vietnam, and that was my first car. Is that so? What model? It was the 70 Pontiac Tempest. Tempest? Wow.

Those were awesome. That was a Chevy called theirs the Nova, and I think we called ours the Tempest, and they're both the same car with a different nameplay. But, yeah, those were the days. Wow. Well, that's really great. And I just wondered, you know, should I put any more money into Hyundai to get the front struts? Because I got an estimate from one place for $490.

And the place I originally took, in other words, I took my car for an oil change, and they found, well, it needs very. I go, okay, I haven't had brakes to 75,000 miles. So then they did the CB joint. And when I got the car back, it just rode like a, I don't know, like a thrashing machine. Yeah. Well, you know, Gary, sometimes you have to take into account personal feelings. It sounds to me like you're in love with that Hyundai, and it has been the best car you've ever owned.

Some people even name their cars. They like their cars so much. You probably had a lot of repairs done underwarnity because, as I recall, all, Hyundai's got a real extensive warranty on the car. So, you know, if you want a practical decision mathematically from an economic, you should sell the Hyundai too. If you really love the car and you're used to it and you know how to drive it and you're happy with it, then spend too much money and keep it for a while longer.

But economically, it's not a wise decision. But life isn't all about economics. Life is about feeling good. And will you feel better if you keep that hunting for another couple of years? That's what you have to ask yourself. Okay, all right, I appreciate your input. Gary, thanks so much for the call. You know, some of these older cars, people just, I mean, my friend Matt had a 2,000 Echo, I think, 99,000, 2,000 Echo, really old car, drove it until it's on his last legs.

He said every traffic like people would pull up and make them offers on it. It almost has a cult following. Yeah, yeah, that happens. That really happens. Well, you know, Gary, our last caller, he sounds like my situation that I had whenever we got back from our vacation. You know, I knew for sure that I was going to fix the ice maker no matter how much time it would have taken me to do it. And because it's an old refrigerator. It's out in the garage, but it's the best refrigerator that I've ever had.

So I worked on that thing. I pulled it apart. And finally, I got it working. I felt so good. I was so happy. The hardest part was getting it back together again. But guess what? I got it back together again.

That's my success story. Did you watch YouTube for the repair? No, no, I just went out and tore it apart. I'm impressed. Actually, your dad got it out first. Can you fix my dishwasher? You're listening to Earl Stewart on refrigerators. Earl Stewart on appliances.

And, hey, ladies and gentlemen, I have a really, warm and fuzzy story for you later on in the show and it's about dogs we all love dogs and isn't it terrible that they have oh there you go really isn't it awful that the dogs have to go through so much on fourth of july on new year's eve with all of this noise so stay tuned i have some information for you 877 960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 we're going to go to John. John is one of our most favorite callers from Palm City. Happy New Year, John. Happy New Year, and welcome back from vacation. Thank you. It's on my favorite car. My neighbor bought it brand new in 57, a pineapple convertible. It wasn't fuel injection. It had

tri-power in it, and I can still picture that car today. It was just gorgeous. It was red. But anyhow, when I want to ask a question, the manufacturers now are getting a little carried away. I don't say they're getting crooked, but some of the dealers, but they are pushing their cars very heavily. First one I want to mention, and Earl's opinion, Chevrolet during the holiday time, mentioned employee discounts for everyone. Is that a legitimate statement from them? It is. A manufacturer's employee discount. A manufacturer's employee discount. A manufacturer's employee discount is legitimate. And there are other Ford offers that and sometimes the promotions to the public.

I would still do a shop and compare before I took their word for it. Stu's got a point. I remember during the financial crisis and the beginning of the recession, a lot of manufacturers went out there with the employed discounts, and it is real because it comes from the manufacturer. However, usually the dealers will still try to, well, they'll get you with a dealer fee. addendums all the same tricks so just because you see that doesn't mean it's necessarily the best deal it's like a rebate but how the dealer behaves when you get there is up to the dealer sure yeah

it's always buyer beware john you know that better than any of our listeners and i sure you would never be taken care of being taken manager but the second thing is too and Chevrolet was one of my favorite cars i always bought them brand new in the past the second carter they used to buy you was Cadillac now the new Cadillac ads you see it's a brand new model of the SUV. It's a number four. I couldn't read the back of it. I think it's an IV4, and it's at SUV, and the ad shows, listen to sit down for this one, from $35,000. But the disclaimer on the bottom shows this car, as shown, it says, it's $21,500 more of $53. So it just shows you, read the fine print it sounds awfully cheap when you see the ad at $35,000 but that must be a very

very basic stripped down model so like everything else the disclaimer is important and that's not the price that you're going to buy that car for hey john speaking of the septive advertising you're from new york and our mystery shop today is from a dealer by the name of fochillo and he's got 30 some odd dealerships most of them are in new york if you heard of a dealer in new york named fochillo if you c i l l o if you c i l l o no i never heard of that one yeah uh he might not be in he's in rochester chenectady um greece new york i think there's he's all over the place yeah he's the largest kea dealer in the world and we mystery shopped him he's who we he's who we'll be talking about in a little while.

Well, you know, while you're talking about Kia and Hyundai, I was also away on a cruise 15 days, six different countries, and I want to tell you something, it's very scary. I'm going to tell you why. One of the stops was in Panama, and going through the Panama Canal, there's all different type of ships that go through, and they give you a chart, and you can identify, you know,

what's on them, the cargo. ships is the, you know, the main ones that you see. But the auto-transporters are closed vehicles, and you don't really know what they're from. But guess what all the majority was on them? There were keys and hundas coming into United States, coming into, you know, who knows what other country. But here's what I observed in the six countries that I visited. I haven't been visiting on a cruise ship in the last two years. In all the six countries I visited, used to be Toyota, Honda, Nissan, and then some Mazda's. Now, all of those countries that I visited was Kia, Hyundai.

The buses were even Kia, the tour buses, and also another company called Daywood, which I think is a Korean outfit also. Yeah, Daewu. So it's scary. This to me is like the 70s and 80s where we had the invasion of Honda, Toyota, and on. And now, boy, I'm telling you, it is Kia and Hyundai. And that's what your report is going to be on today. And like I say, you can't tell on the ships going through the Panama Canal which vehicles are on that transport is. But the guy on the tour said, mostly all of them are Kears and

hundas. Yeah. They're owned by the same company now. They merged and they are a significant factor now. They're given the Japanese cars, which are obviously super huge. So it was between Korea and Japan, America's getting a whole lot of competition. Well, I really observed it in the different countries that that's so popular. And they buy him because of the price, they told me. But the taxi I was in in Colombia, in Panama, that he said that they don't hold up very good compared to the Toyota and Nissan's that he used to buy in the past. So that's a comment from the taxi driver. Interesting.

Hey, John, have you received any mailers recently? I haven't heard from you. No, but I want to tell you something. Everybody, if you want to know about Cuba, and I was never there, go by the issue, the latest issue on the newsstands of Classic Car Magazine. It not only has pictures of the 50s and 60s cars, but it's a very interesting history on Cuba. It goes back to Batista and the early history.

I got to do that. You sent me a message on Facebook, I think, and your dad called that to your attention, I think. Yes. And that's the February edition of Classic Car Magazine, February edition. It's by Hemings Motor News. It's on all newsstands. I got you.

And it's a very, very interesting. Dick Buick that's on the cover looks pretty original to me, but from what I understand it, you would say that, too, many of the cars were altered, and a lot of them have diesel engines in them, but you probably saw firsthand, you know, the variations that were done. There's no original cars. I used to think that some of them were original,

but obviously, how could you have an original 1955 Chevrolet? You know, everything has been rebuilt, and there's a whole industry in Cuba now of making parts, actually, making parts. on obsolete old tools. A lot of it came from Russia and they actually build from scratch.

I'd love to have some of these guys working for me. It's difficult for us to find parts, right? Rick, sometimes you have to buy a whole module and these people can build the components that make up the module. Yep. It's amazing history, John, in Havana. It is

just so amazing. Last year, whenever we visited Havana, you know, Earl and I went into these body shops and it was just amazing that they were able to just out of scratch you know get these cars running and build these parts so not only is there a whole lot of history in havana that you talked about but the automobile industry over there is a just amazing beautiful beautiful antique cars on the road and they are meticulous there isn't a car you see on the road that it's just amazing

it's almost like as if they keep the cars in a garage my next trip is Cuba because I enjoyed seeing the car the old cars. Yeah. You guys have a good day. I look forward to this chopping report. Oh, thank you so much, John. Keep listening. Give us a call tool-free and ladies and gentlemen, don't forget. You can text us at 772-4976530 and ladies, if you didn't hear me earlier, you can win yourself

$50. First two new lady calls. you can win yourself $50 just for calling the show and saying hello or sharing maybe your car buying experience or anything at all with your vehicle and again the mystery shopping report is going to be pretty interesting and I think that Earl might get a chance to go over a deceptive mail that he got I think it was last week and immediate responds to the notice requested and they just scare you to death in order for you to get back to them and walk into this trap. I'm going to pass this over to Earl through Rick. And if he gets

a chance to talk about that later, that's great information there. So do you have any Texas for us? Yeah, we have a few. Some came in on our Facebook live video. Actually, the first one was from Craig, and who called in. And by the way, I love Craig. This, I think, was his first. call but he's on Facebook every week and he's he's always commenting he's got great insight so Craig had a comment earlier on if I can find it about service departments he says at almost every service department they run the same formula be vague tell customers they must diagnose and will never commit to a price until the car is in the back yeah and you know and you know what Craig in the February 2019 edition of Consumer Report

They focus on, can you trust your auto repair shop? And there's so much information in that consumer report you might find an interest on. And you need to insist on getting an estimate because by law, I think it's within 10%. They have to, that's what they have to deliver. So if they're going to be vague, push them for a number. It's got to be over $100. Anything over $100, they have to give you a written estimate. But you must ask for it.

If you don't ask, you don't get it. Right. So there you go, buyer beware in the service department. The next one comes from Guy Larrabee. He says, I'm a snowbird currently living in Jensen Beach, a point of interest in Ontario, where I'm from, by law. Dealers have to advertise all inclusive price except tax and tag. Is this Nirvana? Didn't know that.

That is Nirvana. And technically, that's the case here in Florida. They just don't follow the law. And then the last text comes in. There's no name on this. It says, I was suckered into a Toyota dealership in West Palm Beach, not yours, Earl. I saw a great price on what I thought was a new Corolla. When I got there, I found that the price was thousands higher.

After I complained, I found out the ad was on a used one. I insisted what I saw was on a new car, but they showed me the ad, and in the fine print, it said it was used. So I worked a deal, only to have them add a $999 fee, I did what you said and left. Good for you. Yeah, it's amazing the number of people. When you hear on Mr. Shopping Report, toward the end of the show, and you see the deception, I'll give you a little, I'm probably giving you too much information,

but there was a lot of deception involved. And you realize that this Kia dealer is the largest in the United States purportedly, but if he's not the largest, he's the second largest. He sells four or 500 Kia's a month, which is more than the toilet dealer does over there. Toil dealers typically sell the most cars in the market. And so there are a lot of people buying cars, and deception works, unfortunately. Yeah. So it's buyer beware.

Yep. And as we were speaking, another text came in, and this is from Chuck up in Stewart. Is it ever necessary to clean the outside of an engine? Years go by, they used to steam clean engines. What's the harm today? It actually is not very necessary because modern engines don't have the kind of seepage and oil, seepage and leaks like they used to have. so it's really not a big necessity for steam cleaning however that being said cars that are run up north

or cars that are constantly very close to salt water here in south Florida when you're near the ocean and that salt water I do recommend having it cleaned every so often just lightly sprayed down with a hose be careful around the electronics not to get water in anything there but just enough to try to remove some of that salt residue and of course northern cars have specialized car washes that wash the underside and will spray up into the engine compartment some to get that road salt off of the cars. I'd be too scared to do that. There's so much electronics. It's better to go to a professional shop where the equipment is designed to do so safely.

And, of course, and if anything happens, their insurance is going to cover it. You don't want to give the hose to Josie and tell her to clean the engine. I'd give it to Josie before I did it. I would destroy my car. Okay. The apple doesn't fall, far from the tree. I'm a little bit upset with Josie. I mentioned the radio show, and she says, what?

I go, you know what I do every Saturday morning? She goes, you're on a radio show? Oh. And then she wasn't exactly clear what her radio was, so I had to explain. Oh, okay. All right, yeah. She's 11 folks, so that's why. Oh, goodness gracious.

She's 35 years old. I thought she had her in a partner. I thought she had her in a partner. No, not yet. Don't do that to me. Before you know it. Well, Nancy alluded earlier to the current consumer reports, as you all know, we were very, very strong advocates of consumer reports. And the February edition, the latest one of the newsstands are online, that's something that I think is fantastic. I've ever seen anything like this before. Air friars?

And I'm going to get to it, but we've got a caller. Steve's been holding it from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Steve. Happy New Year. Good morning, Mr. Stored and Rick in the company. Happy New Year. I had a question, too. I know we talked about the Koma Airbags,

but I pick it up in any of the media. But, you know, Ford just recalled almost, it said, 950,000 Tacoma Airbags for all different vehicles. And also, my other question, Part B, is there doing the self-list or the automated cars as a test market in Miami-Dade, and I'll hang up and let you all respond what you thought. Well, thank you, Steve. Yeah, the Takata thing continues.

The only time you see it in the media is when there's a fresh recall. Meanwhile, there's a huge backlog of cars that haven't been fixed. So the real news is not the fact that 100,000 or a million more cars have been recalled. The real news is that all the ones that have been. recalled are not being fixed and they're being sold as we speak legally every single day thousands and thousands of deadly cars with recall to cut airbags and other dangerous recalls are openly being sold to you and people all over the world which can kill the person that buys the car so unfortunately the media only sees the news release and it comes probably from nhtSA national highway

traffic safety administration whenever they issue a recall so they read it and then two days later everybody's forgotten about it and uh rick is uh looking at me i know he wants to give out the website with what you should do you know i love that one write this down rick's going to give you a website to go to and check your car out or the car you're thinking about buying W-W-W-W-S-F-R-C-R-C-A-R-C-A-R-G. Exactly. Write it down, and you can put your VIN number in. You can find out if you're driving a time bomb or not,

and the car this dealer wants to sell you, he won't tell you, and our mystery shopping reports, we've proved this time after time. They will sell you the car and never tell you that there's a defective airbag in there. Sometimes these airbags cannot be fixed because the inflator that needs to go in to replace the defective one isn't available. And often, more often than that, they're just not fixed and there's no excuse for it. So put that VIN number into www.safeiffercar.gov. Find out the car you want to buy is defective because the dealer will not tell you.

877-960-99-60. If you want to call us on an old-fashioned television, phone or if you want to stream us you can go to stream earl on cars.com www.w.w.com or stream earleoncars.com or just go on Facebook. We're on Facebook right now. Facebook.com. slash earl on cars. And still, I'm surprised we're not getting more posts. I know why.

Why? We've got to read out that, read the number out. So you've got to text us. Yeah, 772-49-765-30. That's 772-497-6530. Well, shame on us. And, you know, Earl, you were about to mention earlier the Consumer Report. You know, I want to tell our audience,

we, Earl and I talk about how important Consumer Report is. But let me tell you, I would love to do a video in our home of the two of us fighting over a Consumer Report subscription. So, lo and behold, things got so in. intense at our house that we had to finally have separate subscriptions. Earl has his and I have mine. And sometimes he picks mine up, well, not intentionally, and he gets busted like he did this morning. So ladies and gentlemen, I can't stress to you enough. You're in the market to buy a car to get your car repaired, tires, insurance, everything. Consumer report is something to pick up. It'll

save you a lot of money stew text work don't they stu yes and we got three just came in as we i was writing up the number again it works so good 772 4976530 that's our text number you folks love the text i love the text the world loves to text 772 4976530 and we got a little backlog here it is funny though about texting i want to talk to my best friend last night i'm like you know i'm not going to text them i'm going to call them and as i started calling like i don't want to call him i don't want to call on. I'm just going to text them. Isn't it? What point do you reach in your life whenever you do that? Because I find myself doing the same thing. It's almost like as if you could just get to the meat of the topic.

Right. A phone call is too much of a commitment. You don't know how long it's going to last, you know? That's what I, so anyway. You can just cut it off. I digress. So, okay, so the first text that came in, I watched a show called Adam Ruins Everything on the show. Adam explains the truth about how things really work. The episode I saw, he exposes why Cardiolors are so bad i could have sworn i was listening to you errol adam blamed it all on state french on the state franchise laws i recommend looking this show up it's totally worth it and by the way i do watch that show i didn't see that episode um it's on true tv and it's if you got a cable package you can watch it and it's it's a pretty good show but and i saw the commercial for the car dealer one

i got to see that yeah adam ruins everything okay the next one oh i'm sorry we got a lot You know, we have a first-time female caller, and she's giving us a call from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Ann Marie, and happy New Year. Good morning. Thank you. Happy New Year, and welcome back. Thank you so much. You've won yourself $50.

Thank you very much. You're welcome. You stay on the line whenever you're finished and give the information that I need. You can give it to Rudy in the control room, and he'll pass it along to me, and I'll get that checkout to you. Thank you. What can we do for you this morning? Once upon a time, one could change out seats and cars and vans. Of course, that was long before airbags and stuff.

I was wondering if someone, if they want a new more comfortable seat, whether they can replace seats in, say, a Highlander, or would one have to replace a new vehicle, basically get a new car, is what it comes down to. Are you speaking about the airbags, Jan Murray? I think she's speaking about the seat itself. Oh, the seat? My brother has a bad back.

And it's gotten worse over the years, and he'd kind of like to get a more comfortable seat in his highlander. I see. But he wasn't sure you can just put in new seats anymore, whether he'd have to just get a new car. Well, I'll let Rick answer it, but before I let Rick answer it, we get a lot of requests to change seats,

and the seats are a safety issue, because the seat that is designed in a car is designed to work with the airbag and with rollover and collision and a lot of other things. A car is a bunch of components that have got to fit and they've got to react in microseconds of time when you're in a collision. So it's illegal for a car dealer to change the seat the way it was designed to be. Now it's probably fine to replace the seat with another factory. seat but it's probably extremely expensive that's all i know i'll turn it over to rick i would find

it pretty much um i i'm going to say it's almost going to be impossible really to try replacing a seat in one model of car with a seat from another model simply because the the i'm saying frames yeah i'm going to match up yeah i'm if you have i'm saying if someone brought a uh 2016 a Honda Civic into a Honda dealer and said the parts department please order 2016 Honda front seat

you could put that into the 2016 Honda Civic right right that's yeah yeah that's what I see that's exactly was that your question Ann Marie? Pretty much yes thank you be sure it's factory and be sure you don't let

someone you know adjust something that would maybe be dangerous for you And you know something, Ann Marie, this is Nancy Stewart. It's funny that you call and mention that particular problem. You know, just recently, I read an article about, you know, the consumer, you know, concentrating on so many different factors, and this is a big transaction when you purchase a car or buy a house. But there wasn't enough consumers that were really focused on the comfort of that seat for them. And they found what you just spoke about.

And the problem exists with so many more consumers with their back and what to do about it. So the bottom line here, the article was suggesting that you spend enough time test driving that car, not for 15 or 20 minutes, but take the car for a day or so and, you know, just establish whether or not there's enough support in that car, in that driver's seat. before you sign on the dotted line. Okay, where do we go now? Thank you very much. You're welcome, Ann Murray. Thanks, Ann Murray. I think we've got a couple of texts, don't we still?

That's right. The first one is our dealer, this is from Jake and Riviera Beach. Our dealer prep fees for used cars also considered profit when you consider the extra labor and material that a dealer has to perform in order to make a used car look like it's ready for sale, Jake and Riviera. Well, Jake, there's a lot of things that car dealers in all businesses have to do to us be in business, and they're called expenses. And when you have a product, you are supposed to take all the expenses that you have to have while you're in business, pack it into the cost of the product you're selling, and preparing a used car for delivery, or a new car delivery,

or paying your advertising, paying your phone bill, paying a commission of the, salespeople, there's thousands of expenses. I'm a car dealer and my expenses are huge and I have to account for all those expenses when I sell you a car. You don't want to sell a car and advertise a car and quote a price to a customer and then have him pay you back some of the expenses that you have to pay every day and every month to be in business. That's what happens and dealers pass it along if it's legitimate. Right. When I explain it to my kids and I'm not trying to infantileize our audience, but they had experience with lemonade stands. And I said a dealer fee would be like you charging, you spent $10 getting your lemonade

together, but then you charged a sugar fee on top of it. A cup fee. Or a cup fee, exactly. Great example. Yeah, they understood it. It's just being sneaky. It's a way to understate the price of the product, whether it's lemonade or a car. And then, bam, when you sign the papers, suddenly you see the cup fee.

and the straw fee. Exactly. Buy a cup of lemonade for $25, but then you've got to pay a dollar for the cup. Yeah, exactly. Outrageous. All right, Steve in New Jersey texted us, and he says, welcome back. It's good to be back. I don't think I've heard you talk about this topic.

I've been thinking about buying a new car, and I've been reading about concierge car buying negotiation consultants. What's your opinion of this? And that is just a fancy word for a car broker. That's what I thought. That's exactly right. Now, that's an interesting question because car brokers are older than car dealers, I think. They probably had buggy brokers back in the day.

And a broker is just somebody that has the negotiating skills and the connections and so on and so forth. And allegedly, that he should be able to get a better price for you because he knows the dealers. The dealers know him. He knows more about the cars and the cost and all the other things that you have to do before. you get a good price on something so the bottom line is this if you have an honest broker that's truly skilled i know people i spoke to an attorney the other day uh in miami and uh matter of fact this is the attorney i'm speaking to uh about a class action suit against several large car dealers for unfair and deceptive trade practices regarding the dealer fee now here's a very super smart sophisticated

attorney and by the way this lawsuit is in progress we will announce more about that in the next few shows but this dealer has never bought a car himself i mean dealer this lawyer has never bought a car himself he uses a broker and he has a broker that he trust who has a lot of skill and he negotiates the price and he buys the car through the broker so brokers are good caveat be sure he's honest and be sure he's giving you a good price be honest with you If I had a broker, I would keep him honest from time to time. I would do a little shopping on Auto Trader or Costco or some of the other ways we recommend you price your car out. And then you go to your broker and he comes up with a price.

He says, hey, Charlie, I can buy an true car for $1,000 less than the price you got me. So keep your broker honest, but an honest broker is a good way to go. Absolutely. So we're caught up on text, but just a touch on that. I mean, I think you might have mentioned this, but the broker's fee is kind of. coming from the profit on the dealer. So the dealer is not going to lose money. So if you got a good broker, he does a lot of the legwork.

If you consider all the time that the car research process takes, it can actually save you, well, it saves you a lot of time. And as they say, time is money. So you've got to balance the whole thing out. Yeah, dishonest broker will actually, if you trust a broker too much, and he says, I want you to go buy a Mercedes. 80s for me and and he says well I think I can get you this model for you know 82,500 and that's a good price and you believe him he'll go to a dealer and say I got a sucker

out of here that'll pay 82 5 but I won't know it's a $10,000 profit to you but I want half of it and a broker can't collect any fee that he can negotiate with the dealer The dealer pays the fee, so buy the price of his car, and you're just getting a terrible deal, so keep him on us. I have a question for Rick, and just recently somebody was talking to me about a 2011 Tahoe that they were going to purchase from a private owner. He talked to me about this word cluster, and I went ahead and Googled it, and I came up with something that was. associated with the odometer. Can you shed some light on that? He's questioning the number of miles on that 2011.

Okay. Well, the cluster basically means the instrument cluster. It's the section of the dashboard where it's got all the gauges and the instruments. And in that is the odometer, which tells you how many miles that car has been driven. Now, it was a thing back in the day, back in the 60s and 70s, dissonance. dishonest mechanics and dishonest car dealers could actually find a way to go in there and they could play with that odometer

was a mechanical device and they could actually turn the miles back nowadays that's pretty much impossible because if you do a Carfax report and the Carfax report shows that that car was in for service at 85,000 miles and you're looking at an odometer

that says the car's only got 60,000 miles, something's wrong. Oh, okay. And I have actually seen this in one case where a customer had bought a Camry hybrid sight unseen from some fellow on the street down in Miami. The car showed that he had approximately 40,000 miles on the odometer. And when we started looking at the history and ran a Carfax report, we found that car had actually over 200,000 miles.

somebody had bought an odometer from a junkyard and replaced the instrument cluster in that car so that the odometer showed an incorrect mileage. 772-497-6530, the magic text number. And I apologize for forgetting to give that number out earlier in the show. And every time he give it out, something amazing happens. People text us. So please write the text number down, 772-497-6530,

That's 772-4976530 to Texas. And, of course, you can call us old-fashioned phone. [phone], 877-960, and we've got a huge amount of bandwidth. We're really shooting out a signal all over the planet. Facebook. You can listen to us on Facebook, YouTube, Periscope, Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars. that is correct and we're all over the place just a quick recap here

a couple weeks ago we had a customer called in a caller that he was driving a 2018 Camry and he said he felt a bit of lag between when he stepped on the gas pedal and when the car responded this is actually kind of unfortunately it's a nature of the beast

and he put in one of these K&N air filters and it just ran from Well, somebody recommended replacing his air filter with a K&N air filter. So we wanted to do some testing just to see what we could come up with and to find out was this actually a viable thing. So one of our employees at the shop, one of our service riders, has a 2018 Camry. So I got a K&N and put in for him. And he's been driving it for a couple weeks now.

He says he's seeing about two and a half miles per gallon increase in fuel economy. Really? So there is a small increase in fuel economy. Now I got hold of it before I replaced the filter, and I did some driving in it with my scan tool hooked up, and I was looking at what's called the mass airflow meter that tells me how much air is going into the engine. And I compared it between the factory filter and what the K&N was able to do.

And the mass airflow meter showed me about a 1.5 increase in the amount of air. coming into the engine so it did have some some effect however here comes the other side of the coin let's say you keep a car for four years it didn't help the lag that was the question it really didn't help much did not okay they said to help a little bit they said a tiny bit it felt like it did but it really didn't give that much because that lag is mainly the community the computer communication time from when you step on the pedal to when the computer tells the throttle body to open and it responds. So there's another downside. What was that? Right.

Here, if you, say you kept the car for four years, Toyota recommends replacing that air filter every 30,000 miles or two years based on 15,000 a year and the cost of the air filter plus the cost of the labor to put it in if you have

the technician do it. For total, for that four years would be about $76. Less than $100 to replace those two filters and if you were doing it yourself it's basically two metal clips open the box pull the filter out put the new one in and you're done now the k-and-n filter however was $48 for the filter itself which is a one-time expense then a cleaner kit that's needed every 30,000 or every two years

at $14 per and then the labor to actually clean and re-oil that filter which is quite a process on K&N's website. It's going to be about one hour labor for most shops. So you're looking about 140 bucks most places. Total for that four years time, $356. Okay, let me ask you this. You said he got two and a half miles per gallon better. Now, two and a half miles per gallon, you said isn't much.

But it sounds like a lot to me. What is the gas mileage on that vehicle? Camry's running west to about 22 to 23 on the 18 Camry On the four-cylinder? Yes, four-cylinder. We're using just a SC Camry. Let me look up. I think we're a little bit higher than that.

But anyway, on a 20-gallon tank, at two and a half miles per gallon, you're saving, you're getting another 45 miles. Okay. On a tank of gas. Okay. City 441 Highway. Okay. So if you're saving, how much gas are you saving at, what is it, $3 and how much you're paying?

Oh, like $250 right now? Right. $250 a gallon. I think it would be a function of how much driving you do. If you do a lot of driving and you can use another 2.5 miles per gallon, it could justify the increased cost of the... I think it could offset a good portion of it, but I don't think it would quite meet up to all of it. Yeah, it would depend on how much driving it. Right, and how long a drive.

If you were in the car all the time driving a lot, then I think you would see a change. Stu, do the math on that for me, will you? Two and a half miles per gallon, and let's say you do. Say 60,000 miles in that four years. And while you're working on that, while you're working on that. Jonathan, will you do this? We're all fighting for time here.

I'm fighting for time. I want to go to this article on Consumer Report. I want to give out the telephone number and the text number because we have an Well, you have a lot to do. So that's text number of 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530, or you can reach us on a landline or a cell phone for that matter. At 877-960-99-60. Now, there's a great article in Consumer Reports here that I really would like to get to before we get to our mystery.

shopping report, and Nancy talked about that earlier in the show. I've never seen this in print, but they actually rated service departments, and I'm ashamed to say that the magazine just came in. I didn't have a chance to read it in detail. They ranked independent service departments, and they rank dealership service departments, and the old consumer reports ranking. Now, I'll tell you the number one place to have. have your car serviced we talk about this over and over on the show uh as a company i've never

heard of uh it's uh these are independent shops uh where am i here uh it's a canada company uh but here's here's the top independence uh good year auto service and jiffy lu that's an 88 rating uh the 87 rating is very high Napa Auto Center and AAA car pick up the February consumer reports I'm not going to read all this to you the lowest rated independent was 79 it's a Mavis or Mavis discount tire I've never heard of them and the dealerships now this is not by individual dealers but by franchises and one of the higher ratings are less Texas and Volvo. That's an 83. But that's lower than most of the independents. And then there's Toyota Accura and Honda. The lowest franchise dealership service department was Volkswagen.

Interestingly enough. But I'm just giving you the headlines here. It's a February consumer report. It's entitled auto repair chains. Who can you trust and not? So pick up the February, go in line with the Consumer Reports because we get more calls on this show than anything else about having problems getting your car fixed. And this gives you national change and national dealer franchise service department ratings. It's really good, yeah. It's a fabulous way to get a lot of information, accurate, perfect information, because guess what? Consumer Report, they're not there to give us information. to protect the auto dealers or anyone else.

They are there to protect us, and they are giving us the information that is priceless. Right now, I'm in the studio. I got about five consumer reports sitting right in front of me. That's how important it is. This year, last year, wherever you can get your information. So that's great information from the recovering car dealer. 877-960-97-9-1960, 772-497-6530, and we're going to go to Howard real quick, and he's calling him from Jupiter.

He's a regular caller. Happy New Year. Welcome. Happy New Year to you. It's a pleasure speaking to you, and I hope you enjoy your vacation. Yes. My question is concerning the Apple Play. Now, I purchased a 2017 Camry, loaded XLE, and I got navigation. And I plan to buy a car every three years, so I'm going to buy a car in 2020.

Now I heard that you have a navigation system that I use my own, my Apple phone now, and you can't get the regular navigation system. Can you explain that to me, please? I can touch on it a little bit. A lot of car manufacturers have paired up with Apple, and it's basically a system. It mirrors a lot of the apps that you. you have on your phone right onto your display screen and one of them is Apple Maps and i believe

also ways i think uh works with it and google maps as well that's right and it's it's kind of nice uh because let's be honest most of the car manufacturers navigation systems that excuse my my french suck and so uh and if you're used to using your own map on your phone which which i am and a lot of people are it makes it a lot easier to throw an extra thought in there that's very interesting Well, to throw an extra thought in there, Howard, here's a comparison. Apple and Google and Ways all update their maps usually about once a year, sometimes more frequently. The data information on all the streets is updated. Factory navigation systems, now I can speak specifically I can speak for Toyota.

We come up with map data updates about every two years, so a lot less frequently. and would you like to hazard a guess as to how much it costs to get that updated information for a Toyota factory system? $200. How much does it cost? Like Mr. Stewart just said, $200 for the new map data when Apple and Google and Ways all give it to you for free. So if your car has Apple CarPlay,

you're getting that map data updated instantly. every time for free and here's another kick the Google Maps has that the the information about traffic and construction areas and up-to-the-minute information on weather and such things that will affect your travel as you're following your route and that comes through on Apple CarPlay I know it because I've got Apple CarPlay in my pickup and I've used it okay so How does it hook up? Do you hook up your Apple, tether it, to the, you know, some part of the car?

Right now, it's a wired connection. A simple USB cable. That's it. Boom, it's done. Yep. And then it recognizes the phone, and you don't have to do really much of anything. It kind of knows what's going on. Now, they are going to have a wireless, at least in the Toyota's, I know.

Some of the manufacturers, I think you can go wireless. and in future updates you'll be able to hook up the car without plugging it in with the USB cord. Howard, a great question. A lot of people worry about that, and they're difficult. It's a shame it's one thing that all the manufacturers need to play catch-up on Apple, and you've got a very valid question. That's very interesting. Okay, thank you very much.

Thanks, Howard. Thanks for being part of the show. Do you foresee any changes in the 2020 Camry, or it's going to be rolled over from the 2019? There probably won't be a redesign, just the small, they'll do some small changes, maybe some trim stuff, but nothing major. Okay. And I was told that the best time to trade a car is after three years.

Is that correct? It depends on the car, Howard. Three years is about an average. maybe not average, it's a little sooner, four years, five years with the cars today. There's no need to trade a car any sooner than three years. In fact, I would say now four years is probably a more economical cycle for you. I got you. One other question.

With all these new technological things in a car, does it pay to get insurance when you buy the car? extended warranties so that it covers everything. I spoke to Alan Napier, and he told me that it really pays to do that because of all the technological things that's happening now.

What do you think, Earl? It's a piece of mind story, Howard. Alan, it depends on your psychology. I'm a numbers guy. I'm an analytical guy, and I know that when I buy an extended warranty, that the insurance company,

the warranty company, is making a lot of money on me. And I bankroll it myself. If I can afford to pay the repairs, I will go ahead and bankroll it, and I'll save money in the long run instead of paying out a bunch of insurance premiums on extended warranties. It's particularly true when you're buying a quality product. You buy a quality product. You don't need to waste your money, in my opinion. Alan might sleep better at night because he knows that he's not going to have to pay anything, but in the long run, the insurance company is a winner. Okay, I understand that. Thank you very much.

information happy new year happy new year i now get i get apple care on all my apple products now that's your side i feel i feel better i feel better yeah okay we're going to go to another female caller uh dailene from fort pierce she's a first time caller good morning and happy new year well and same to you thank you for taking my call oh you're welcome and you can stay on the line because you won yourself 50 dollars when you're finished talking to us and you can share your information with Rudy, and I'll get that checkout to you. Thank you. My question is, I lease my car, and I'm coming up to the time to lease another car.

I have about six months left on the lease. The car is about 27,000 plus a few miles, and I am always hearing about all these hidden fees. My question is, what hidden fees are involved in leasing a car? well dailene we don't have enough time left on the show to tell you about all the hidden fees it's really a minefield i'm just kidding i can tell you you have something called an exception fee uh which could be for 300 400 400 you have a over mileage fee which is at the end of the lease when you drive more than the allotted annual mileage allotment

uh you have a disposition fee which is when you turn the car in they charge another three or four hundred dollars of course there's a standard dealer fees I say plural that are on top of the lease anyway and I always recommend the people that when they're leasing a car unless you're sophisticated unless you're willing to take the time to redefine print and and get full disclosure and transparency on everything in that lease you're probably better off to do a simple purchase but if you decide you're going to lease, pick the exact year-make model car you want to lease, apples and apples, exact same

year-make-model car, go to at least three dealers, give them the same terms. In other words, 36 months, $1,000 down payment, or no down payment, and 48 months. Give them the exact term, the exact down payment, the exact year-make model, and do nothing more than compare the monthly payment. That is simple for you, easy to understand, and you are going to be able to lease that car from the dealer that gives you the lowest monthly payment. Okay, I appreciate that. You're very welcome, darling. Thank you for the call.

Okay, I think we're getting right up here on the mystery shopping report time. We have a bunch of text. We've got a backlog. Yeah, we've got a backlog. This is a fairly straightforward mystery shopping report. Let's take those texts. Yeah, I think I get through. Oh, we got, no, I'm sorry, now there's another one.

Okay. Excuse me, Stu. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to end our show just a little bit earlier than we normally do, and that's at 10 o'clock sharp, so we're going to try to get the rest of these texts in and get to that mystery shopping report and the video that goes with it. Okay. On Facebook, one of our live video viewers, Steve says, Toyota bases, sorry, Toyota leases use of 15,000 miles a year.

For trade and purposes, they use 12,000. 12,000 miles. Many cars are advertised for lease allow only for 10,000 miles. Why are there such differences? Well, the lower the mileage, the higher the value of the car at the end of the lease. So a lot of dealers will intentionally use, and manufacturers, for that matter, a low mileage annual allowance so they can advertise a low lease payment. And then there's no disclosure or transparency when you come in. We get calls from customers that have been putting 20, 25,000 miles a year on the lease that they only have 15 or 12,000 mile allotment from the leasing company, and the charge can be huge up to 25 cents a mile, and I've actually

seen it higher. So you take 25 cents a mile, and you find out that you're 40 or 50,000 miles over the limit, you're talking $5,000, $6,000 in terms of a surprise payment. So that's why they do that way, and you should always have the mileage that you drive poor most in your mind when you're leasing a car okay moving right along uh steve in new jersey says hi nancy you suggested taking a full day test ride to make the make sure the seats are comfortable my wife's had two back surgeries and i really need to do this um but all the dealers have said no i'm looking at lexas and bmw um they said oh i spoke to eight dealers near my home and none of them allow for

this um what can i do about it and i guess you've got to find the right dealer but you've been through eight, I don't know what to tell you. One possibility would be to rent a car. I think, I'm really shocked that the dealers are reacting that way. It's really stupid. If you're a good prospect to buy a car and pay them a nice profit, letting you drive a car for four or five hours on a single day, would make all the sense in the world.

It could be maybe a New Jersey thing? I would take it up. It's possible. I would take it up the line. I would talk to the general sales manager or maybe even the general manager. I'd get on the telephone and I would call the dealership and say, listen, here's my problem. I want to buy a car and they will not let me drive the car. I have the back problem.

I have to drive it for a few hours to be able to see if it's going to be compatible with my back injury. And that way, you're not going to have to worry about going from car dealership to car dealership. It's very commonplace down here. Yeah, definitely. Sometimes it's abused. We call the puppy dog or the D-horse, but an overnight test drive is very common. And, you know, you'd have to get a calculator out to figure out how many hours you would spend in that seat. I mean, the driver's seat, I mean, you're going to purchase that car.

And guess what? You're probably going to spend so much money on all these crazy pillows that they sell and all these other things. When the easy way to do this is to find a dealer that's going to let you drive the car for maybe four, maybe six hours. because you are a potential customer, a potential buyer. Okay, we've got some more text here, I think. Yep. I got a nail in my tire. The service manager at the dealership said it was okay at a patch

because it was in the middle of the tread. I was uncomfortable with this. Is this safe? Should I have insisted on getting a new tire? The patch was free, but I don't want to risk my safety. Patches are fine. If they're on the tread where the rubber meets the road, you'd never want to do it on the sidewalk.

That's right. Exactly. Okay. Rick Hello Hi When should Toyota owners Change transmission fluid in the car

This is from Joe and Boynton Three different types of transmission fluid in Toyota's The oldest ones right now on the road Use type T4 About every 60,000 miles If you have Actually we'll stick with the two most common The T4

And the WS Which is the latest one and Toyota has no service interval for WS. We got a lot of, you know, everybody out there has got a different requirement, right? I mean, all the manufacturers. But WS, you don't need to change it unless you're in severe conditions, and then about every 120,000 miles. Okay, hardly ever.

And Jay and Jupiter asks, actually says, Consumer Reports is available free online after logging in to your public library account here in Palm Beach County. Thank you for reminding us. I didn't know that. We were told that once before. It's amazing. All the libraries in Palm Beach County, all you have to do is have a library card. Go down there, log on, and you can do consumer reports.

And if you buy anything expensive without doing that, you're nuts. You really should take advantage of that. Or I'll read Earl's login credentials for his account on the air. I'm not going to do that. They'll shut you down probably. We're all caught up a text. And you know, we haven't even mentioned for a moment your anonymous feedback. That's because we're running out of time.

Would you like to mention that? No, I don't want to mention that now. I'm going to mention it after the mystery shopping report. Sounds like a great idea. Okay. Mystery shopping report of Fuchillo. I guess I'm pronouncing that. I think it's Fusillo.

I think it's Fusillo. Fucillo, Fuxillo, Fouc, I-L-L-O, Fisilo, Kia of Cape Coral. We decided to kick off the New Year with a huge mystery shop. I'm going to call them Fuchillo. Okay. Puchillo Kia of Cape Coral may or may not be the largest volume Kia dealer in the United States. It depends on who you ask. Rick Case Kia in Centerized Florida makes the same claim.

Every dealer is one of my little jokes as a dealer. I said I always wanted to advertise that I was a world's largest dealer in this area. Because you're 267 pounds. I'm kidding. You're not anywhere. Yeah, because I'm, you know. At that time, I was 6'5. So Rick Case says he is, Fuchillo says he is.

Based on what we look fine online, it looks like Rick Case probably is. I believe that, but not by much. When you consider all seven key dealerships in the Fuchillo Automotive family, Pichillo definitely wins out in terms of volume. And he's huge. He's just all over New York, 31 total stores in New York and four in Florida. Billy, they call him Billy. Billy Fichillo is famous for his commercials

and his memorable catchphrase is going to be huge A huge Huge There's variations on how he says it And that's his stick That's his thing that he does in New York That's the reason I ask

John from Palm City If he'd heard of him Sounds like he's famous or infamous Okay We're going to play a little bleep here A little blurb of a commercial And listen to this You're going to enjoy it very very much

much. Oh my Lord. I never thought there were so many Hyundais here in heaven. They're building new roads to accommodate all these new Hyundais that get over 30 miles a gallon that have 10 year warranties. It's very similar to Ridge Road in Greece. They're enlarging that road to accommodate all the Hyundais that are going to be sold because you know they get over 30 miles a gallon. It's the best buy in the market. It's huge, Roger. You, I'm sorry. Now, I probably shouldn't digress here, but I always marvel at the success these commercials have. And Nancy and I watch Prime Auto commercials.

They are absolutely nutty with a clown. And they're done well. They're entertaining. That was very entertaining. I love that commercial. And it's something about a commercial that you love to watch, even if it's a big lie, They are extremely effective. Folks, this Kia dealer is very close to the world's largest Kia dealer.

Fichillo Kia, Hyundai, this is a Hyundai commercial. He's got 35 dealerships, and this is his style, and he sells hundreds and hundreds of thousands of cars successfully. And the claims are outrageous, but they're entertaining and they're funny. So there's some psychologists out there in the audience. I love to hear from a psychologist. What is it? Why does this work? Why does this work?

I mean, I want to try it myself full of transparency. I watched a lot of videos last night, get done this together, and there is, it never ends. Go ahead. Continue, please. Okay, on with a mystery shop. I'm going to remind our listeners that you can vote on our mystery shopping report by going to 772-4976530. Send us a text. Tell us what you think.

Everything about Fuchillo's dealerships are over the top, and Billy Fuchillo promises has a lot to get customers on the door. Free cruises, free cars, drips around the world, even a free house. Free house with every Hyundai. There was one commercial. He stands in front of a house. He goes, this house can be your. I'm like, okay, I've never seen that before.

His online reputation isn't nearly as spectacular as his marketing. And it's really, and the guy is a marketing genius. He has just a 3.6 star review on Google for his Cape Coral locations. If we had time, but we don't. His Facebook reviews are even worse. I was thinking about reading the three-star reviews, you know, the zeros and the fives, read the three. It'd be interesting. We might do that later.

I mean, not on this show, but on another show. In any case, the hype is just too huge to ignore. So we sent Agent X all the way to Southwest Florida. And we had to pay Agent X extra for that. A little extra amount. To play the role of a customer to see what happened. Cape Coral, Florida. 280 miles away from where we are.

Here's the report, speaking in the first person. It took me just over three hours to get to Cape Coral. When I arrived, I was impressed with how huge the chilo Kea's lot was. The showroom itself was that big, but the property wasn't that big, but the property was expensive. They even had food trucks in the parking lot. As I look for a parking spot, I noticed a tent that served as a sun cover for a lot. group of salespeople, the Wolfpack. I could see they noticed me too. I parked as far away from the tent as I could. I wanted to collect my thoughts and get my game plan together before I was

greeted by them. One of them must have sprinted after me because as soon as I put my car and parked, a man was smiling at me through my window before I could open my door. He was already tugging at the handle nearly dragging me out of the car in the process. At this point, I already knew what I'd got myself into. The man didn't introduce himself, shake my hand, or even asked my name. First, he asked if I was trading in my car, and then he asked what I wanted to buy.

Before I could answer, he slammed my door, shuttle alley, startling me. He was way too close for comfort, totally invading my personal space. I felt agitated, and I needed to get away, get something out of the back seat, and I backed away from him.

I mean, Agent X is a tough character. Let me tell you, he's seen some of the toughest dealers. And for Agent X to be intimidated, this is rough, rough stuff. I retrieve my note. I'm Agent X. I'm speaking like I'm Agent X. I retrieved my notepad from the back of the car, thumb through it for a second, regaining my composure,

then told the man I was interested in a new Kia Optima. I also informed him I was not trading in my car. The man told me to follow him. he said we needed to get a golf cart. I complied not being able to stand his name while or asking him what his name was. He said it was Oscar. He mentioned that, not even introducing yourself.

And he was apparently not interested in learning mine. Didn't get it. My name was. That's rough. That's old school real. That's very good. We haven't seen this rough before. Oscar led me to the showroom.

It seemed small considering the size of the lot. Inside it resembled a name. internet cafe, small tables instead of desk, scattered around. There were a lot of signs promising free cruises with every new Kia purchased. Oscar picked up a key, led me out to the golf cart. We drove around the lot, found the optimist, and then stopped when I pointed to a gray one that interested me. We climbed out of the cart. Oscar asked me if I wanted to drive it. I said I did, and replied he'd have to head back to the shroom to get the keys and a plate, license plate. Oscar asked for my driver's license, took it from me, and drove off in the car leaving me with the Kia Optima.

The MSRP was $26,285, but there was an addendum stuck right next to the Monroney label, the MSRP for an additional $3,000, $2,995 next to our equipment. If you can call this equipment, how about final delivery detail? we had a text earlier the manufacturers are required the manufacturers require the dealers to prepare the car for delivery and they get reimbursed for this

so final delivery detail he's already been paid for now he's going to charge you part of that $3,000 extra to do something that he already got paid for doing full tank of gas manufacturer that's a lot right yeah manufacturer

requires and he reimburses you for the gas so he's charging you twice He's double dipping you on the fuel and on the delivery detail. And then he's got something, a 3M appearance package, which is really just a pinstripe, a plastic pinstripe, which cost him 25 bucks, maybe. Wheel locks, nitro-filled tire, nitrogen-filled tires. And this is a real doozy. Haven't seen this one before, a spare tire.

He's charging you for spare tire. What an ingenious thing. A lot of the manufacturers are not putting. spare tires in the car so he's saying and the reason they don't do is fuel economy and space so he's going to put a big spare tire in there and he's going to make it part of the two thousand dollars or three thousand are you sure they're going to put a spare tire and they might not even put in there there's no spare later you'll see there's no spare in there i mean this is ludicrous hard old school really rough the extra stuff included final okay i got that oscar return unlocked the car for me

I looked on the trunk, there was no spare tire. And Stu said, will there ever be a spare tire? Probably not. Maybe they give it to them an F&I. Yeah, people don't read this. They don't see it. Yeah, you get them stacked up in the office. Here's your paperwork.

Here, pick up a tire on the way outside of the car. We drove the car, returned to the shore room, and sat down at one of the cafe tables. Oscar told me to wait, and he left. Let me look and check my way out plenty of time. He returned shortly with some paperwork, including a credit application, which he slid over to me on the table. I asked if you could tell me the price and he replied abruptly that he needed me to complete the credit

application in order for him to give me the information. Now, that's really, that's old school, but it's not too old school because you'll find that almost everywhere. Most car dealers, they don't want to give you the price and they want to get the credit application.

I told him that was absurd. And then Oscar, the salesman, he laughed. I mean, that's hard. I mean, I'm upset. I'm upset, and I say, that's absurd that you're going to make me fill out of the criminal up. Here you go, fill it out. I mean, this is really, really amazing.

So I took the pen, I wrote my name in the space for my name, and I put the pen down, and I pointed to my name. I said, since you haven't asked, and Oscar looked and said, oh, sorry, I should give my manager. He left and returned with Hugo. When I get into a dealership this rough, I wonder, are these aliases? Right. I'm going to be Bruno. You'll be Hugo. What we should do is next time we should ask, Agent S, to see his driver's license.

Right. Are you really Hugo? Well, the business card says. You're going to treat me this way and give me your real name? I don't know. Okay. Hugo was also abrupt. He began by saying, Oscar tells me you want to buy this Optima,

but you won't let us run your credit. Very confrontational. I mean, that's pretty, right. You have the gall to tell me you want to buy this car without filling out of the credit application. Right. I inform Hugo that I would let them run my credit score after I knew what I would be paying for the car, after all.

I mean, if it's cheap enough, I might not, I might be able to pay cash. including all the fees. Besides, I told him I had a freeze on my credit and would need my wife's okay to X as a great excuse without having to be confrontational because you can't freeze your credit. It's a smart thing to do, and it's a good excuse to give the lying car salesman

when he says he has to have you fill out a credit application. Hugo told me that was not how they did it here. Hey, that's not how we do it here. I mean, that is arrogance, right? Hey, we don't do it that way here. I asked him, I mean, and people fall for this. If someone said that to an intelligent consumer, he would do 180 on his heel and walk right out.

Just walk out. But a lot of people respond to an authoritative statement has fact. Once again, human psychology. We need a psychologist. That would be a regular call on this show. I have a lot of questions in human psychology. So I told him my score, my credit score was 627, and now that he knew he could tell me the price, Hugo laughed again, and asked my name. He told Oscar he liked me.

I like this guy. I was imagining like a mafia scene. It is. I like this guy. It is, yeah. And we're not allowed to say mafia was a mob. Sorry, an organized crime guy. And said he'd be right back.

walked to the tower, still laughing. He was gone for, Joe Petchie. I said Joe Petchie. I was picking somebody bigger. He was gone for 15 minutes or so. I saw him talking, it was 15 minutes. So I'm talking with the salesman, other managers, is I made small talk with Oscar.

He returned with the first pencil. That's a car vernacular for, you know, write up. The first trial, they put a price down, and okay, and then they cross out that, and they put another price down. a lot of you have played the game he showed me a price of $25,397 but he arrived there this is cute by using a $2,500 manufacturer's rebate there's a rebate that you're entitled to anyway and then this is this this is classic and car dealers do this in their advertising by the way the manufacturer's rebate $2,000 cash down from me my down payment so he's showing me

the price after I give him $2,000. He also added, now he's adding, he's been subtracting, my money is subtracting, and the manufacturer's money he's subtracting, and now he's adding his money to build the price up $795 and some other items. We haven't even talked about the addendum sticker. I asked him at the $2,000 down payment I'm giving him, on the down payment on the loan he said yeah then I said so the price is two thousand

dollars higher and then he said no have you ever talked to somebody that was like that I do and I just stopped talking to him I mean you say something that is just a black and white simple question and they give you an exact opposite logical or stupid it's either illogical or it's stupid. But to me, I just stopped talking to them. And again, I do the 180 and walk out. But we pay Agent X not to stop talking. Exactly.

So that doesn't, your theory just does not apply. A lot of people don't stop talking. I asked him, $2,000, okay, I did that. Hugo directed me to the financing terms he came up with 12.75% for 72 months. That's a long time.

That's a lot of interest. So 12.75% on a new vehicle for 72 months. He asked me to sign the worksheet accepting the terms. I said I'd like to talk to my wife and ask to hold the worksheet. Now, this is classic. Hugo said he couldn't do that. He wouldn't even let me hold the worksheet, much less keep the worksheet. I asked why, and he said, I might leave with it.

Imagine a leaving with the price of the car. We can't let you out the door with the price that we quoted you. I asked him if that would be a problem. He said the sheet stays with the dealership. Yeah? Okay. I asked if I could at least get a closer look. Listen carefully.

This is funny. He slid it closer, keeping his hands on top of it. I held up my iPhone to take a picture, and he snatched it away. He says, you can't do that. Amazing, isn't it? Wow. I'm telling you, tough.

Rough tough. He gets real tough here. Yeah. He said the only way that forum is leaving with me is in my new Kia Optima. I mean, how much insult can a customer take? And this is the biggest key idea in the world. He sells more Kiyahs than anybody.

Huge. It's the commercials. He is huge. That's the cruises. I replied angrily that I didn't feel like they wanted to sell me the car. Hugo replied that they do want to sell me the car and point out that they were the number one key of dealership in the nation. He also reminded me that I would get a free cruise at the end of the year if I did the deal.

I told Hugo that I needed to review the deal, the whole breakdown, including fees, with my wife. Hugo asked me if it was that important, why didn't I bring your wife? Why don't you bring the old lady in? Why didn't she hear? Oh, those were not my words. Bring the old lady in if she's got to make your decisions for you. You've done this before, haven't you? I reverted to my email.

You did. You lived it. Hugo said that he asked the GM, but he knew, who wears the pants in the family anyway? You're going to tell her? What kind of man are you? Anyway, I asked him to give me. a minute to call my wife. I was so shaken up. So I went outside and I called Mission Control. He called me. Called this too. Mission control. I told him, I said, go back in there. I go,

if you can get the bars there, I'm going to pay you another $200. Oh, really? Yeah. He said, all right, let me go for it. I returned the table. So Hugo, he had to give me the buyer's order. Hugo stood up and said, that's not going to happen. I stood up and said, I guess that's it. And I left. I mean, this is absolutely. Amazing. Two minutes. This could go down. I don't know if it's the worst, but it's the toughest.

That's scary. And Hugo and Oscar. Is what Oscar? Hugo and Oscar. Yeah, rough guys. Really rough guys. And we got to do a, we got to rate this show. This mystery shopping report.

I hope we've had some call-ins. Yeah. Mainly on Facebook. We're running out of time. It's a no brand. It's all F's. Lenda gives us a big fat F. I like those. And we were getting Fs early in the shop, by the way, we've even got to the conclusion.

I mean, and yet he shouldn't be in jail. He was just so rude. I can't say he did anything illegal. He probably did, but he was so atrocious outrageous. Doug doesn't have a grade. He just gives us a wow. And I think Olli gave us an F. So, Cicillo Kia of Cape Carl, the largest Kia dealer in the world.

This is the way he sells car. Okay, we got a minute left. A huge. Huge. Hey, I have one question. What is the definition of a cruise at this dealership? It's a canoe. Is that something?

Is that? I read the mystery shopping report, and I'm thinking maybe a little boat on the canal. Oscar paddleship to Trapper Johns. So they get a huge F. All the way around. Ladies and gentlemen, that's the show. Thank you so much for tuning in to Earl Starrant. Geron Cars. We had a great show. Our first show of 2019. Stay tuned next week. We'll be right here

to entertain you and inform you. Thank you.