Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.11.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mercedes Benz of Delray

Episode Date: January 11, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl's newest Agent Tempest visits Mercedes Benz of Delray to see if the sale rep will disclose a Takata Airbag recall on a 2014 Jeep Wrangler Sahara. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “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”

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn's side. space through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership.

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. This is the recovering car dealer live. You're listening to a recording, my introduction. And I have to tell you that we have a particularly good show today. let me say this depends on you if you participate so your calls are what makes this show a good show

but what I meant by being a particularly good show is we have a couple of very interesting callers we have a former executive with a large auto dealers group that we hope will call in for quite an interesting conversation we have an attorney that we've talked to before on this show it's always nice to have a legal

slant on the show. We say a lot of things that I think some people listening and wonder, hey, can he say that on the air? I don't mean profanities. I'm talking about accusations of illegality and unfair and deceptive trade practices.

We go after the car dealer sometimes pretty hard. We name names. And so I think we walk on the edge. We walk the fine line on Earl Stewart on cars. Most of our regular listeners know that. I have to say to you new listeners, that you'll never hear it on the show like ours.

And I'm not bragging or patting ourselves on the back. We're just saying that there are very few shows, television, radio, online, or any media form that will tell it like it is. And by that I mean specifics, a particular name of a car dealer or business, the individuals within that dealership, and the actual acts of impropriety or illegality,

or illegality that we find. And we do this in the mystery shopping report towards the end of the show about 9.30. If you can't catch the first half, please stay tuned or tune back in, I should say, at 9.30. Now, I don't want to give the idea

that this is all about buying cars, certainly not, or leasing cars, certainly not. We talk about cars in general. We talk about safety in cars. Recalls are big. Ticata airbag recalls are big. We've got a particularly interesting story about Ticcata. and also how to just operate your car properly.

Cars are complicated today. We have Rick Kearney in the studio with us. He's been with us for quite a while. He's been fixing cars for a long, long time. And every day that goes by, it gets more complicated to fix a car. I read the newspaper this morning that Hyundai is working with, who are they working with? They're working with Uber.

Hyundai and Uber are working together to build a flying taxi. Now, if that doesn't get you excited, I mean, a flying taxi. I mean, it's kind of like the Jetsons. Ain't going to happen.com for me. But my point being cars are complex. Maybe we don't hit the flying taxi stage, but we're well on the way toward very complex automobiles, and you're driving some right now. So call Rick if you have a question about the operation of your vehicle.

I mean, common question, my Bluetooth won't work. You've got Apple CarPlay in your car and something's wrong. There's a whole bunch of different type of smartphones out there. Some smartphones just don't work as well. Some manufacturers don't have the Apple Carplay. Some manufacturers have their own type of technology. And it is complicated. So if you have a question, call Rick Kearney.

He's the best, I promise you. You will not be able to find a question that Rick can't answer probably. I've got to throw that in there. But we have our backup. We have Colonel Google in the studio. And Colonel Google knows all, sees all, and we cannot be stumped because we have the sum total of human knowledge right on our smartphones. The Colonel was here the week Rick took vacation.

That's right. He sat in Rick's chair. And that voice you just heard was my son, Stu Stewart, a spymaster general. He operates the secret undercover shoppers that go out every week. You know, we've been doing this for 17 years. When I talk to reporters, people, reporters call me about things in automobile, what's going on because I know I tell it like it is.

I'm not telling you, I'm always right. I've been wrong, and I'll be wrong again. But I believe what I say and I tell the truth. I name names. But when they call me, the thing that impresses them the most, because I say things about car dealers that car dealers don't appreciate. I say to the reporter, you know, every week for 17 years, I've been sending a secret undercover agent out to car dealers in Florida. And I go into the dealership, the undercover agent goes into the dealership, pretends to buy a lease a car. And we tell it like it actually happened.

If the salesman treats the mystery shopper with courtesy respect and honesty and transparency, we say so. And we put that car dealership, we name him, we name the car salesperson, and we put it on a recommended list. If he tries to lie cheat and steal, and I choose my words sometimes less carelessly than I should. But if they try to take advantage of the consumer, the car buyer, then we put that on do not buy list. So when I say that to the reporter, they say, ooh, really? Then they Google me, and they go to Erloncars.com, they go to car shopping archives, and they can look at the car shopping reports, and they can see that I did do this. And then they probably could Google a little farther and see that I've never been sued by a car dealer

for anything I said on this radio show. So that means I'm telling the truth, because, boy, would they love to sue me? And they threatened to sue me, but they have not actually sued me. And if they sued me, they would not be successful because I have not told a lie about a car dealer. I might have been misinformed. I might have said something incorrectly, but I didn't do it maliciously. So that's our show. Let's talk about Nancy Stewart, my co-pilot.

Nancy is my wife. She's been with me for the whole 17 years. It was just Nancy and me alone 17 years ago. We were on for half an hour with a different radio station. We did similar to what we do today, but we got fired because the car dealers ganged up on us in Palm Beach County and said, we're not going to advertise on that car station, your station anymore unless you get rid of Earl's tour. So Nancy and I got fired, and we're off here for about a year. It was about a year and a half.

Anyway, Nancy is our female advocate, and she represents the female point of view, and she single-handedly has brought this radio show up to very close to parity, almost 50-50, with female callers. And the females buy half the cars, they do half the repairs. I just read the paper today. Do you know that females, for the first time ever, hold more than half the jobs in the United States. Females have over half the jobs. So an extremely important part of our economy. in our world and our lives and this is nancy stewart thank you for the introduction good morning

ladies and gentlemen uh yes uh we have come a long way baby since 1920 when we were well officially allowed to vote and ladies i thought you were talking about the radio show i didn't think it had been that long i feel that old uh but at any rate um boy i'll tell you what i can't thank all of you for helping me build the platform here at Earl Stewart on Cars. You've been a big part of it as you are in changing how the car business looks at women. And this morning, the first two new lady callers, you can win yourself $50, and you can do something with that $50. At any rate, again, I thank all of you. 877-960 and we have a great show ahead of us and you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30.

We're going to ask Tina to hold on for a moment and Kirby. Kirby's calling from Oklahoma will be right with you. Yeah, I think let's get right with them. The calls are the most important. The text are very important. You've given those numbers out. I'll do it one more time. And then we'll go to Kirby and then, Tina, how's that?

877-9-60-99-60. That's 877-9-60-99-60. And you can text us at 772-497-65-30. Okay, let's go to Kirby in Oklahoma. Welcome to the show, Kirby. Thank you. How can we help you this morning? I had a question about some of the more troubles that I've been planning.

Okay. I actually, the dash lights have been flickering for about a week now, and I've never experienced that before. And yesterday I was driving from the interstate doing about 75, and the car just completely shut off. And I lost steering, and I had to kind of, like, drift off to the side of the road. Wow, that's scary. Let me

What type of a card do you have make, year, and model? 2009, Monday, Alontera. Hmm. I'm going to ask Rick Kearney, our consumer expert on mechanics and electronics and cars to answer that question. The first thing I'd be looking at this for you, Kirby, is, obviously it's an electrical issue. I'd be looking at the alternator possibly not charging properly because that can cause those dashlights to begin flickering at odd times and it can definitely cause your car to just suddenly shut down

otherwise I'd be looking at any of the ground sources from the battery like the negative terminal the negative cable where it connects to the body of the car and this is getting a little complicated I think for a non-tech but I think she should probably get the car immediately to the dealer And if it's a Nissan, a Hyundai. A Hyundai. A Hyundai. Get it to a Hyundai dealer immediately to have a towed probably, because it sounds like a dangerous problem.

Yeah, because a shutting down issue, this sounds like an electrical issue. And to me, my first suspect would be the alternator. And we could probably Google that and see if there's any other complaints. There should be something. If yours is not the only one, typically there'll be some chatter on the Internet about that. and you might be able to Google and come up with more, and you'll have more ammunition when you talk to the Hyundai dealer.

Okay. Where's the car now, Kirby? I had it towed to my house. Okay, great. Yeah, I'd call the Hyundai dealer, and I'd ask them to have it towed to their dealership, and then you can maybe do some Googling and see if you can come up with some other evidence

of problems with that particular year-making. model Hyundai and insist that they get it fixed that's a very dangerous problem. I can't imagine anything more scary than having my car turn off on the interstate when I'm doing 70 or 80 miles an hour frightening.

Kirby? Do you think it would not be smart to drive it because it still starts now the battery lights on? Kirby, I wouldn't. I'd ask for a loaner car. The manufacturers are usually receptive when there's a safety issue.

And if you go on record, and I would confirm in writing, if they give you any trouble on that, I would ask an email or a text that you are formally asking for a loaner to replace your Hyundai because it's dangerous. It stops suddenly and has come near causing you an accident on the interstate, and being in writing about that, they're more likely to accommodate you with a free loaner.

Stu's got a point. I have a question. It's a 2009. yeah yeah so it's going to be i mean i just want to give you a heads up it's going to be an uphill battle i mean it's because it's probably five years out of war i don't know how long is the hunday warranty no is it an eight year i think a hundred thousand uh hundays actually are uh five year six five year 60 thousand bumper to bumper for the original owner and the power train warranty is the uh 10 year 100 000 but again that's only the original owner

Otherwise, it's $560 on PowerTrain. You need to get the service department there in the Hyundai dealership to work for you and try and get some kind of exception made on a warranty claim for this thing. So you start off real nice and see if you can convince them that they can talk to their reps and take it up the ladder. Safety is a key word, Kirby. Safety trumps warranty and things like that. No manufacturer wants to have their company's name on television about a problem

that caused an injury or a death, and they will usually go beyond the warranty to help you with a safety issue. Okay, that's very good to know. Hey, Kirby, how long have you been driving a car like that? It just started flickering about a week ago, and the first time that it just completely shut off was yesterday. Okay. Well, the recovering car dealer has advised you, you know, and I, and agree with him it's a dangerous situation please stay in touch with us and let us know the outcome

also I'm going to ask you are you a first-hand caller yes ma'am stay on the line and talk with the producers and they will take care of your contact information and thank you so much for calling we'll send you fifty dollars Kirby thanks very much for the call and hopefully you can call next week and let us know how everything turned out have a great day oh wow thank you too you're welcome give us a call tool free at 877960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 we're going to go to i'm going to ask kathy to be a little

more patient and we're going to go to tina and benita springs good morning tina good morning hey tina and thank you so much to kirby for being a first-time female caller, congratulations. You called a great station. You called a great show. We need more women like you. Anyway, I wanted to reprise an old subject that I brought about the first time I called you back in November of 2017.

A lot of people are going to be buying cars this month because it's the new year. There's a lot of new deals. And people are also going to be going to not just new car dealers, but use car lots. and I wanted to bring up the subject of spot delivery again and my solution for signing a spot delivery form because as you know when you sign papers to buy a car

you sign two inches of papers it's just unbelievable the amount of paperwork you have to sign to get a car in Florida anyway but the spot delivery form is like okay you take the car home with you today but you make it financing right away So my solution to that, because it can be a big trap, is if the dealer makes you sign a spot delivery form and lets you take the car home right away, say, you know what, go ahead and keep the vehicle, I will drive my used vehicle home, and you let me know when the financing goes through. That way you don't lose your car, because some unspeakulous dealers can take your car and dehorse you, as is said,

in car dealer terms. Yes. That's absolutely right. You know all the vernacular. That's right. Diorce and Spot and that's what car dealers would do. One of the things about what your advice is exactly right, what the car dealer may respond when you say,

I will not take delivery of the car, is that the price is only good for today. And they'll try to Mickey Mouse you and pressure you to take the car. Purpose being, once you take the car, you're far less likely to return the car. you go home and tell your friends and neighbors and everybody thinks you bought this brand new or newer car and you started bragging about it

and the low monthly payment and the next thing you know you get a call from the dealer that says I'm sorry to tell your financing didn't go through we need to talk to you again come back in when you come back in they want $2,000 more down payment and your interest rate went from 6% to 12%

there's any number of reasons they do that and they're all bad but the agreement you're talking about is legal term is a rescission agreement and you sign that unknowingly that says that you agree that should your financing not be approved that you'll bring the car back and if you don't they'll charge your 50 cents a mile or some exorbitant amount and blah blah blah this has been challenged legally in the state of Florida and there's actually some law now in Florida that says rescission agreements are not legal

It's funny, well, not funny, ha-ha, but people ask all the time, is there a rescission provision in Florida and you buy a car? And we always say, no, there isn't. Once you buy the car, you own it. But there is, but it's for the car dealers, not for the consumers. Yeah, and it's questionably legal. But great advice. No, don't take that car home.

And if they tell you the price is only good today, I say, okay, then I'm just not going to buy the car. really you hold all the cards and they want to sell you a car real bad and say if you want to sell me the car you're going to give me a couple days until the car's right my credit is approved and everything has been taken care of the eyes are done the T's are crossed then I'll pick up that car and that was very good advice thank you Tina yes thank you too yeah and if oh you're welcome and also like the scare tactics you were saying like oh the deal is only good for today the price to go up tomorrow, blah, blah, blah, that scare tactics, and you should walk away from that

dealer with a clean conscience saying, you know what, I don't have to listen to anything you say because you're just trying to scare me, no thank you. I got one bit of warning if you try that tactic and you say, let me take my trade in home and then we'll exchange vehicles when it's all done. They will try to tell you that now the vehicle belongs to them and it's covered under their insurance, not yours. This is not true into the deals consummated, so you can still drive your car. Yeah, so the operative thing is that, yeah, you got to just watch what you're signing.

Even if you see a spot delivery form, I would say out of an abundance of caution, if you see a spot delivery form, just get up from the table and walk away right away because you're getting yourself into a trap. Exactly, yeah, refuse to sign it and have no part of it. A lot of car dealers, the more reputable card dealers, are not using those anymore, but they still exist and just don't let them get away with it. That's a great call, Tina. I really appreciate it. Yeah, that definitely is, Tina. And, you know, it's a minefield out there. And you talk about vernacular, spot delivery, puppy dog syndrome. I could name a hundred. And everyone would

agree with me. So thanks for bringing that to our attention, Tina. And we'll talk to you again. Okay, have a great weekend, everyone. Thank you. You too. Tina you remember a long time ago we used to actually write an agenda for the show or you would write an agenda a list of topics to talk we don't do that anymore because we have all these callers but but Tina kind of comes in and gives us these great agenda items that we never think of yeah yeah from the past so thank you Tina yeah thanks we're gonna go to Kathy from Palm Beach Gardens good morning Kathy good morning how are you oh we're great what can we do for you this morning I kind of have a three-part question

This is my first time calling. Oh, great. Oh, great. Congratulations. You won yourself $50 this morning. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I have a three-part question.

Number one is, first of all, my husband bought a rev four from you guys two years ago. He loves it. And it's like, well, when my car is ready to die, I'm going to get one, too. Well, guess what? I have a 23-year-old 1997 Toyota Corolla. Oh, 154,000 miles. And it was like, when this thing dies, I'm just going to go over to Earl Stewart and buy a new car. So, yesterday I'm going to public, the road there, and I guess I have an oil leak.

So it starts smoking whenever I called my husband and he came down. We bought a couple of quarts of oil. Got it home, and I guess that's what it is. So, number one, what is the best price internet versus the Costco program? That's my first question. My second question is, do you allow anything for a trade-in? Now, this thing, I'm either going to have to have a tow or push or walk in or something. That's my second question.

My third question is, I have some money that's expiring or it's coming, maturing in, Actually, January 26th is the CD, and so I was going to use that to buy a car. So how do I – the third part of the question is, do you guys finance a car or give it to me or something for two weeks until it expires? Or do I just go ahead and take the money out now? Okay, that's a great question. Not a lot of people out there. I have the similar thoughts in their mind. Costco, first question, is definitely the best way to get the price on a car.

And at our dealership and at all car dealerships at our Costco Auto Program members, the rule is that we must sell you the new car of your choice at the lowest price, at a lower price, that we will sell that car to anyone else. So our Costco price on a RAP for any other model we sell, new vehicle, is the lowest price that we have sold it, lower than any price that we've sold it. Second part of the trade-in, you have an interesting trade-in that you might not have thought about. It's a very old card. It might even have a... Is it a 97?

97, yeah. It's not currently running right now. Is it an engine went bad, or what happened to it? I think it's an oil leak. Actually, I know it's an oil leak, because when it started smoking, I pulled up into public. And some lady said, your car smoking, get out, and it's going to cut fire or whatever. And I'm like, oh.

So my husband came, and we put some oil in it, and we drove it home, and it smoked all the way home. So it was actually in my parking lot now. So I can't drive it without either having it towed, having it fixed, which is probably going to be over $1,000. So anyway, one of the line is I'm 154,000. Yeah. In running, you know, in good running condition, it's, you know, it could be worth $1,500 around that.

I mean, they do hold their values. You don't see too many 23-year-old cars, you know, on the road right now that's worth that much. Not running, it really depends on what's, what's causing the problem. And if it's a, if the engine's about to go, it's not worth that. It's worth something, though. My comment was a 97 car is a very low mileage, is unique. There aren't too many cars that that hold that have, you know, low mileage like that.

And if Stu says if it's not a major problem, then people will pay more money for that. Retail probably around $4,000. Yeah. I would, we would shop your car once you decided you wanted to trade it or want to see what you could get for the trade in. We'd probably, you could check it yourself with Carvana. We buy any car.com, CarMax, and AutoNation will buy. car over the curb there's a lot of sources now for buying cars and you're you're on the verge of almost being a collector's car a night you know in 1997 it's not quite there yet but uh you know

20-year-old is an antique and uh actually it's 30 now 30 has gone to 30 uh and then and to go to your last question about the cd if all your investment your savings are in CDs uh you you're Certainly, my car dealership and most car dealerships would be glad to wait for two weeks or whatever it was until your CD matured if you wanted to pay cash. If you have other investments, you'll probably find that with good credit, you'll probably find that the interest rate to finance a new car today is so low that you can earn a better return in stocks and bonds than you would with the cost of the car loan. as car loan rates and interest rates in general are still historical lows. In 1997, if you bought that car new, the interest rate financed the car would probably have been 6% or 7%. And now it's about half that. So you might consider financing it and keeping your money invested.

Hey, Kathy, does the air blow cold in the car still? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's great. It's great. everybody it's a wonderful car yeah we would shop your car uh with other sources and try to find out uh once we determine the actual problem and uh try to maximize the trade in just looking at auction i mean i'm looking at auction transactions on it and it runs anywhere from 800 to a little over 2 000

2 000 um they're under 100 000 so do i so do i tow it into your dealership and use that as a down payment on it actually i'm going to be buying a new camry from you guys sure uh you can do that You know, we'll have a toad in for you. Oh, you will? Oh, sure. And you should shop other car dealers' prices. But as I say, the Costco price, you won't find a legitimate price lower than Costco. Okay, so I should come in and tell you about my car.

And if we come to some sort of a deal, then you will arrange to have it towed in, number one. And then we come up with a price off the price of the Camry. That's what we'll do. Okay, and then also, I'm not going to be financing the car. It'll be cash. Right. That's wise. So, again, I was going to say, I don't want to finance it, but there again, you know, can I buy the car today?

And then with the understanding that you'll be getting your money on the 26th of January or whenever I can free out the money. Sure. Or do you do that? Yes, we do that, yes. I know when my husband got his car two years ago I think the same thing He had to get some money in I guess a CD also

But it was He had to took like two or three days for him to get the cash But he actually got the car But do you guys wait Would you wait for like the 26 which is Yes we will And I want to encourage you to shop And compare prices and trade-in allowances

With other Toyota dealers And, you know, I get a little bit nervous when it seems like I'm selling a car on the air because we are a consumer advocacy show and we don't try to sell cars. And there's, you know, in our market area, we have Palm Beach Toyota, we have Delray Toyota, Southern 441 Toyota, Treasure Coast Toyota. There's a bunch of Toyota dealers, so get the price from my dealership and compare it with the prices from all the other dealerships. We don't, you know, we want you to get the best price, and if another car dealer can come up with a lower price, they should have the opportunity. Just be careful of hidden dealer fees and this sort of thing, but you don't ever want to buy a car and just talk to one car dealer. Competition is what keeps car dealers honest, and you have to do that whenever you buy a newer used car. And thank you very much for the call.

I really appreciate it. something that everybody would have asked and you're a first time caller yes she is and you're going to get you a $50 cash and you're going to stay on the line then she'll tell you how to do that hey Kathy what a great call a great call right it's a great call because you called and you won $50 it's a great call because you just got all kind of great free information so stay in touch with us and stay on the line and you can talk to the producer he'll take care of your contact information and spread the word please we're trying to build a platform here for the ladies okay okay let's see how we do we do any texts coming in yes we do

we always do oh good what were you about to say nessie 877 960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 we have a great mystery shopping report coming up for mercedes of del ray and of course our couple of phone calls that'll be coming in. So don't go anywhere. Stu is going to enlighten you with all of the text messages that are flowing in. You know, we got a really interesting one that came in. We were talking about it right before the show started. That was a couple of weeks ago we were talking about Carvana,

and somebody asked us if drive time, that's that use card chain in Florida, if they had anything to do with Carvana. And we said it didn't, but we were corrected. And we verified it. We asked Colonel Google. It says, the texture says, great show. Again, last week, two weeks ago, got caught up on them, yada, yada, yada. Okay, as texture said, asked if drive time owns Carvana, and we said, no, however, that texture was correct.

Drive time is the majority owner of Carvana. And we looked it up. That is true. Well, wait, there's more. There is more. The operator of Carvana, and I lost the guy's name. I think it was Carlos. I can't remember the last name.

He's the majority shareholder of Carvana. Carvana runs Drive Time. I don't know if he owns it, but he's part of history. He's a convicted felon involved in the Keating scandal. If you guys remember back in the, I think it was late 80s, maybe early 90s, there was a banking scandal. I think John McCain, Senator of John McCain was involved, and a lot of people went to jail, and apparently this guy was one of them. So he was the, he's a CEO of Drive Time. Correct. Well, it says operator, and I lost my my Google search page that I was looking at. One of the, well, let's find his name because in Florida,

car dealers are not allowed to be convicted felons. If you're a auto manufacturer and you want Rick Kearney to sell your hondas for you, and Rick applies for a franchise, if you found out that Rick was a convicted felon, which he is not, by the way. I don't think any of us are. If we are, we won't admit it. You cannot be a car dealer in Florida. if you're a convicted felon.

Now, it's interesting that the CEO of Drive Time, which is a large chain of used car dealerships, is a convicted felon. No, I don't know what his role is. So the CEO of Drive Time is Don Reese. Oh. And but I think the majority shareholder is Ernest Garcia. And that's the guy that went to jail there

back with the Keating. Okay, so the majority shareholder is nothing about owning stock. stock, you just can't run the place. So the majority shareholder of Drive Time is a convicted felon, and Drive Time owns the control of Carvana. Correct. Yeah, that's kind of scary. I think we may have broken some big news here. Stu did in his research, but you folks out there in the media, you ought to play with this a little bit. Now, I'm not saying that a convicted felon can't be good guy and honest guy. I mean, I'm a recovering car dealer. I'm not a felon, but I did some pretty bad things back in the day, and I am recovering, and I don't do that anymore. So I'm

an example of a bad guy that became a good guy, and this person who is frantically searching for his man. I found it, and it's strange. Okay, so the Forbes article, and Forbes is a reputable of a journalism source. So he says today, Garcia operates drive-time automotive, the fourth biggest used car retailer in the country. And he is separately the biggest shareholder of Carvana. But when I, another search, it said that drive time was the, was the owner in Carvana. So, yeah, the guy's doing very well. He's worth $2.5 billion.

And yes, he's a former, former, well, I guess you're not a former felon. You're a felon forever, right? You don't get to lose the. He's a recovering convicted felon. Yeah, I'm sure he's a nice guy. I don't know if that would qualify if he went to court and had his civil rights restored. At that point, they may take the felon and make it ex-felon. I don't think they do that. I think having your civil rights restored, I mean, you can

vote again. Civil rights, but civil rights don't include being a car dealer. That's a business right. And if he did have his civil rights restored, it would probably be in the Forbes article. Anyway, we've... He's doing great. I mean, drive time's all over the place. Carvana. We gave them good reports. Drive time got good reports. Carvana's good reports. Just thought, everybody should know about Garcia. We don't have his first name, do we? Yeah, we do. It's Ernest Garcia.

Ernest Garcia. And I believe his son's involved, too. There's Ernest Garcia the 3rd as well. Ernest Garcia and Ernest Garcia the 3rd. Kind of like Earl Stewart, the 2nd and Earl Stewart the 3rd. But you're junior and I'm the 3rd. Ernest Garcia the 2nd and Ernest Garcia the 3rd. Okay.

The junior is the 2, of course. Yeah, but they're actually, they call it too. He's got two Roman numeral 2. Okay, let's move along. We've beat that to death. It was a good one, I thought. We have cleared up that Rick is not a felon, so that was a good point. Rick Kearney is definitely not a convicted felon.

You left Jonathan out. What are we going to do? We don't know anything about Jonathan. We just met him. Rick was found out guilty. Just kidding. I'm still in the program. Okay.

This is from Steve in New Jersey. Steve says, hi, hi, Earl. This is Steve from New Jersey. I have a situation that you may not have addressed on your program before. I'm seriously considering the purchase of a 2020. a factory order of Volvo station wagon. The dealer has offered to provide a similar 2019 car for a full day to test drive. I'm not sure if this is a used car on their lot or customer loaner car from their service department.

If my wife's okay with it and we agree on the price, I will factory order the 2020 model to my specs. The issue is liability insurance. My insurance company said my existing car policy would only cover the test drive car if I signed a rental agreement with the dealer. If they just loan the car to me, my insurance company said the owner of the car. The dealer's car is liable. Have you encountered this in the past? P.S., I get a no-cost consumer loaner from my Lexus dealer each time I leave my car at the shop. In the future, I will need to verify insurance responsibility.

Also, I'm more concerned if people are injured in the test car, not the potential damage to the car. Well, car dealers are protected on a loaner when you have the vehicle of the customer in your position, like you're repairing it in the shop, or if you're holding it. at contemplating sale. As far as your protection, I'm not sure what covers you. I know what covers the dealer. I think possibly your homeowner's insurance

might even cover you on something like that. I do know that the rental agreement is something that if I loan you a car and do not have your car within my company's possession and I loan you the car, I have to have a rental agreement signed according to my insurance company.

But as far as your protection, and I believe it's under your homeowner's a policy. Yeah, I'm not clear on that. I'm not sure about that. I do know that if somebody takes a vehicle overnight and they leave their car with us that goes on a rental agreement, they're not charged.

We'd pay for it, but, yeah. I think you should check with your insurance company because every insurance company is a little different, and if you're with Allstate, just pose the question of the Allstate agent, and that's the way you should abide by that. Yeah. Got a great question on Facebook.

Karen says, for the Costco car program when there's hardly any profit made from doing so. You know, that is such a good question. You got to be in the game, that's why. Yeah, the answer, sadly, is that the car dealers, a lot of the car dealers that do sign up for it, don't abide by the rules. Costco, one of my complaints about Costco, and I love Costco, Nancy and I shop there all the time, and it's one of the greatest retail stores anyplace.

and they're honest, they're transparent, and they do so many good things. I have to preface it before I say that what they don't do is they subbed out their auto buying program. Costco themselves are not the auto buying program. It's another company. The affinity group. The affinity group.

Affinity group. The affinity group. And the affinity group is not really good about enforcing the rules with the car dealers that are approved by Costco. So the car dealers that are approved are not, not audited, they're not inspected, they're not mystery shopped, they're not held to the high level of integrity that they should be. So a lot of the Costco dealers do not abide by the rules,

and that's the answer to your question. Why would you sign up for the Costco program? I can tell you this because we do abide by the rules. I've actually had... I don't like it. I've had discussions with my sons and my wife who are involved with the dealership. and they say, why are we in the Costco program? Because we sometimes actually lose money on a car, or sometimes we sell a car that we could sell for more money. We're losing money. Not on all of it.

It depends on the model. My big problem with it is, listen, there is benefit to dealerships just for volume. So you sell a certain amount of cars in the factory reward you. It gets complicated. But the one price thing, that's what bothers me. And you have to, like I said, you have to be in the game. Costco offers a great service. So the bottom line is this, check with your Costco dealer that's certified.

Watch yourself carefully, watch him carefully. Be sure that you deal with the Costco, number one, be sure you go online and register with Costco. So they know who you are and what you're doing. You get the dealer that's approved. they will give you the name of the member that's an approved Costco person. When you go into the Costco dealership, be sure you look at the Costco

member prices. Costco member prices will give you what the price discount should be on the car that you're buying. And they will also have disclosure of what additional charges there are they should about dealer fees, we call them hidden fees,

and dealer installed accessories. Once you have you know, identify all those potential mines in the mine field, then you can buy from a Costco dealer. And they will try very hard to flam you, switch to do another car,

or add hidden fees, or add dealer install accessories. So Michael sent us a text and also asked us on Facebook has a question about lifetime warranties. He says, Earl, how does Toyota car dealerships provide a lifetime warranty on Toyota's? Is there a hidden fee in the price

that the average consumer doesn't know about? I see this at select dealerships, such as Fort Pierce and Southern 441, and full disclosure, we do too, so you can address that. Yeah, I love questions because I love embarrassing questions, and you would just embarrass me a little bit. The lifetime warranties are not good warranties. They're power train warranties. Power train covers only the lubricated portions of the vehicle, and if you abide by the owner's manual, recommendation the those portions the power train fails once in a lifetime it just they just don't fail so the cost and value of a power train warranty is

very low that's the reason they can afford to give it to you free we did a survey at my dealership here's the embarrassing part we did a survey at my dealership and we've we asked our customers among different things what they considered very important that would induce them to buy a Toyota And we found out that high on the list was free lifetime power train warranties. The highest. It was the top. Number one.

It was perceived value. Yeah. What do you think is worth the most? Yeah. And so the perceived value of these power train warranties is high. So we begin offering them free, too, because it costs us nothing. We think that we do this because it's a business purpose. we also offer free tires if you have all your practically recommended maintenance done with us

and we have customers actually come in rather than opt for the free tires they take the free power train warranty oftentimes this is because they live way way away and they can't come all the way if they live in Jacksonville they don't want to come to my dealership in North Palm Beach to have their tires rotated in balance so they opt for the free lifetime warranty that is a source of concern to me and it was a great question and I hope a lot of people understand that the free lifetime power train warranty and they don't say power train they just say free lifetime warranty is worth very little it's worth like dinner maybe right a nice dinner yeah and McDonald's yeah it's probably worth you know I mean what dealer costs sometimes would be as

$50.75, 100 bucks. Right, with drinks. Right, an appetizers. Well, you've got to include the drinks. Ladies and gentlemen, you're listening to Earl Stewart on Cars, and you are an important part of the show. So give us a call or text us that toll-free number is 877-960, or you can text us at 772-49-60. Or you can text us at 772-49-6530. Stu, I'm going to share a text before you go on. I think this is really important. And Carla asks, when will Alan be back? I miss him talking about insurance.

Alan doesn't, Alan has stage fright. And Alan, he comes on the show and he's warm. And he's such a interesting, happy, lovable figure, extremely knowledgeable. But, you know, there are people that just don't. enjoy being on the radio he doesn't know how good he is he doesn't know how good he is i think what you if you would if you would email us and text us and tell us how much you love alan we will show these to alan and we will beg him to appear on the shore more more often we'll do a petition yeah i mean a came a cameo appearance you know alan is our collision shop manager and he knows

so much about insurance companies and about body repair damage and he is a fountain of information And we'd love to have them out. I wonder if Jonathan can figure out how to, like, Skype Alan into the show. Like, Alan could be in his office in the body shop. Oh, God, you know, he doesn't want to be on video either. Maybe we could do, like, a memeji avatar, you know, like your iPhone, it doesn't, it looks like you, but it's a cartoon. Yeah. We should do that.

Maybe if he wore a hood. Or just any, or a funny mask. He likes to dress up. Yeah, funny mask. He showed up at the dealership dressed up as a old-timey sheriff one day. I saw that. Okay, let's move on. And it was not Halloween.

That was a luxury of it. Carla, as far as Alan is concerned, he just doesn't realize how he has dazzled the audience. And he doesn't realize that he informs so many about insurance. And the reason is because he feels so passionate about it. So maybe we should go with Stu's idea and we'll get a petition signed. Yeah, grassroots movement to bring Alan back on the air. He can't say no to that. All right, the next one, Rick sent to me,

I guess he wanted to give me the pleasure of reading this. This is from YouTube, right? It is. It's from Tim, somewhere in Florida. When you mystery shop, are there beautiful women throwing rose petals on the ground in front of you? I think Earl also throws money up in the air as he walks around. Is this true?

I don't know. I've never seen you do that. No, I once flipped a quarter, and I lost it. okay i think they're trying to picture like a scene from coming to america it's a flashback it could be it could be i throw rose petals around yes you do and that is true it's to celebrate the recovering car dealer's birthday rose pedals everywhere exactly i was worried about the carpet but they came up pretty clean okay the next one this is from your anonymous feedback dot com which we didn't talk about yet

today you can send in your comments or questions and nobody can know who you are It completely encrypted, totally anonymous, your anonymous feedback.com. Hello, Earl, love the show, but I have a bit of a criticism to share from your last show. You and the crew were talking about alloy wheels, sorry, and Rick was expanding the talk with more info about the wheels, and you got a little short with him and shut down his thought, and I was really interested in hearing the rest what Rick was saying. What's up with that? Anonymous. Well, let me apologize.

And again, you've got Mr. total transparency. Rick has a tendency every now and then to go into great detail on things. And when you're as smart as Rick and you know everything about cars, and I'm not being facetious, he knows more about cars than anybody I know. So he's an expert on just about everything with an automobile. And the question about the alloy wheels had been answered, and we only have two hours on the show. We have a mystery shopping report. So I'm the coach. I have to kind of manage things and every now and then I have to cut somebody off. It could be Stu, it could be Rick, it could be Nancy, and I even cut myself off because I start to ramble and I slap myself

on the face and say, we got a show to do. No, that's me. I'm slapping. I'm slapping. Nancy stuff myself. But out of concern for what you said, do you remember Rick, do you remember where I unplugged your microphone? Nope, don't remember that part. For my own side of it, though, I absolutely do get carried away at times. I want to share my knowledge, but I get carried away. And when someone gives me the highest on, hey, you calm down a little bit, settle down there, turbo. I take it as a total grain of salt.

It's like, oh, okay, yep, I need to back off, and that's, you know, sometimes just constructive criticism. I get excited. It gets into struck and he cries all the way home. But no, listen, Rick, what about the alloy wheel? What can you tell us about alloy wheels that we should know? I think we've pretty well covered them last week pretty well. About the only other thing I might add is with steel wheels,

they're sometimes easier to repair. I've actually straightened bent steel wheels and brought them back to true, whereas an alloy wheel has to be either replaced or fixed by a professional company. You weren't ever a lot of detail about the expense, about maintaining them. I thought we covered it pretty well. Yeah. Okay. Next.

Okay, the next one is also from Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Earl, two years ago, someone recommended that you seek out Steve Leto and Steve Richards as a possible guest for your show. Did you reach out to these gentlemen? Long time ago, you expressed interest in having out-of-state mystery shoppers. Is that still a serious consideration? And if so, what kind of individual are you looking for? Thank you all. Okay.

To be honest, we have not seeked out Steve Leto or Steve Richards. we should and I apologize for that I will assign this to Stu to reach out to these two gentlemen and see exactly what their platform is and how they could help the listeners and watchers to Earl and cars I apologize the second part of that question was what was us to the second part of the question was out-of-state mystery shop oh I was say mystery we do have some out-of-state mystery state mystery shoppers. We have to be careful. We control our local mystery shoppers. They're employed by us, and we can double-check facts and be sure we're getting accuracy. It's very

important that we have accuracy, because you've heard me earlier say how we name names. We call car dealers criminals that have committed crimes, and we call car dealers liars when they lie. We do some pretty serious stuff. So we got our neck stuck out of country mile, and we've got We have to be sure the information is accurate to rely on shoppers that we don't know from other states to send us information. How do we know that those shoppers are not just mad at a car dealer or trying to set us up for a lawsuit? Or a competitor of another car dealer. Exactly. That's probably more likely than anything.

So we're a little bit reluctant to put a lot of faith and reliability and pass along, certainly not naming names of dealers. But if you're out of state and you have an experience, with a dealer. We would be glad to relate it on this show, but we would have to have the caveat and the disclosure that we cannot verify exactly what you're saying. Exactly. Okay, we have another one. It's a little bit long, but I think we can get through it. This is from Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Earl, I'm a car shopping helper, and I've been selling cars for four years now. It is tough.

I was dismissed from my first employer due to poor sales performance. It was difficult for me to hook the customers with buddy, buddy, sweet talk, fake promises, and low finance promises, even for credit challenge folks. I personally didn't handle the credit lookup, but I'd read back the results and promise low financing. At my current, and low is in quotes, at my current employer, it is not quite so aggressive. I sell four cars a week.

So far, management has not told me that I can't do what I do, and that is show people all the cars they want to see and always talk towards the low trim level because these typically have 80 or 90% of the bells and whistles that I hear people ask for. Now, some higher term levels do, in fact, appeal to many, and I stress that they should be gauged added to the cost, taken directly from the Moroni label versus their assessment of what the added features should cost. A lot of people don't like that, and leave the lot, and I make no sale. I feel better and worse about that at the same

time. I help them, but I didn't help myself either to a higher paycheck so that I can tuck away more money for my children's college education. I'm considering leaving the business to take on a new career. My wife likes the extra money from the sales, I do as well, but I can't do it in the manner I need to get the commission. I feel that I need to work at a place where the main purpose is to help, such as Batteries Plus, Hobby Lobby or IKEA. For all the car shoppers, listen up. My current and past employers hate competition. If a sale goes south, my manager demands to know who the other dealership is that won the business and by how much, by how much money. A dealer's quote to you is exactly that. There's a quote prepared for you and not another

dealer. In my opinion, if you're asked who won your business, then it's up to you if you care to share that. However, I consider unprofessional if someone takes a quote that I prepared and dangles it in front of the competition. I prepared that for you, not them. My manager doesn't like it either, but he wants to know everyone else's quotes. Crazy standards. That's very interesting. I've never heard of a job description like that within a car dealership. And the fact that you say you sell four cars a day. A week. A week. Well, that's pretty good. Yeah, pretty good.

Above average. And I think the way I look at your text is you're having difficulty with your ethics and morality standards and the dealer's ethics and morality standards. I understand that.

And I think there are a lot of car salespeople that are in your bucket and they don't last in the business. That's the reason. There's such high turnover among car salespeople. I do have a comment. I do take an issue with the last part of the comment, and that is preparing a quote for a customer and having them use that to shop a better price. I think that's, we all think this is a basic right of any consumer is to be able to compare

prices. So if you prepare a quote for somebody, you've got to give them your best shot, and it's got to play out how it's going to play out. This is something that is the hardest thing for any car dealer or any businessman, whether whether you're building houses or whether you're selling roofs or lawns or refrigerators, every retailer that sells any product, they don't like the idea of their price. They'll give you their best price. They don't like the idea of you taking it to their competition. And it goes on worldwide.

It's only natural. We're unique and the fact that we don't stop that. You know, we like it when somebody comes in and buys a car from us just because they want to buy. But we feel better about it because we do afford them the right. And to be honest, I'm not sure how many of our salespeople. We've got 30 salespeople that actually say to the customer, like we want them to, here's our price. It's our best price. And you should take this price and shop it with the competition. To be honest with you, I don't think a lot of our salespeople do that. That's what we

wanted to do, but I don't think they really do that. It's very hard for any retailer to, with gusto and enthusiasm, say, take my price and try to do better. Because the fact the matter is there's a pretty good chance if they're smart and tough and they are careful, they can do better. People love to beat the price of their competitors, and that's the reason we say to you out there. Now, competition is your friend. Never buy a car without shopping and comparing the price, even if the car dealer is a friend of yours. Even if you know that car dealer and you bought five cars from him, don't fall into the habit of buying that car from him. You have to keep that car.

This is the phrase, I don't like it. Keep the car dealer honest, okay? Same with insurance companies. Allen Napier earlier. If you've been buying Allstate insurance for 25 years, you're paying too much. You need to go to State Farm and Geico and find out a lower price

and you'll probably get it. Competition is your friend. And then Allstate will come back around and lower your premium. Yes. That's how it works. Yeah. And the most important thing is, I mean, it sounds like a simple thing to do, but it's not because most car dealers will not give you an outdoor door price. That's worth anything that you can shop with. So that's

the first thing. You've got to get that totaled up with everything. And that's they'll say that's my best price but if you beat it, come back and I'll give you a lower price so there's a contradiction right there. What is that what is that term and logic that makes no sense?

I just had a flashback to my evil days. I'm going back to the 70s and 80s. Here's what I used to do. And talking to a customer would come in and they say, is this your best price? I said, no. I said, but I'll tell you what, I'll beat any price that you do

because I will give you the lower. price. Then I'll take out my business card and I'll write down a price on the business card. I didn't really write a price, but it looked like I was writing a price. And then the customer would go like this and I would take the price and I put it in my pocket. And I say, here's the price. So after you shopped around with all the car dealers, you come back in. And I will give you this lowest price. And boy, did that work? That worked. Because when they came back they had a price and then I would take out another card

and I'd write a little lower price on there and I'd show it to them and I'd sell them the price. All the dealers listening right now just wrote that down. Great idea! We've got to do that. This is from Steve. It says, hi Steve. I recently shopped two dealerships for

the same brand that are owned by the same person. I asked for an out-to-door price from their Costco sponsor dealer and the other, which is not affiliated with Costco. Each had my identical build sheet. The Costco price from the Costco sales rep was quoted in writing at over $4,000 more than the non-cosco dealer. This is for a factory order car. It always pays the shop around. Yeah. Excuse me for a moment. I'm going to interrupt you to John who's been holding from Palm City. We'll be right with you. And also Justin Lynn has announced

that he's up and making coffee and he's getting ready to call in. So you have a all that to look forward to you know on the Costco issue where the one Costco dealer owned by the same dealership as a non-cosco dealer the the non-cosco dealer gave a $4,000 better price the non yes yeah so that's called lying sheeting and ceiling and Costco attention Costco other buying program your dealers are doing this and you need to audit you need to check in a mystery shop you're going to have the best program in the world and the and the tightest rules in the world but if your car dealers don't pay any attention to it. What's the point? And we've talked with some pretty high Costco executives

or the company that Costco uses and they said they're going to look into it. But they don't because their revenue comes from the car dealers. The car dealers pay Costco auto buying program and they, affinity group, they get paid. And if they enforce the rules too rigorously, the dealers would say, to heck with it, I'm not going to be part of the program. I'm not going to write you at checkout every month so that's the truth now let's get to john hey good morning john thanks for waiting how you doing still with us john or would we keep you waiting too long john from palm city are you there call back john he's probably he's getting a cup of coffee we apologize that was my fault i just got a yakking i couldn't control myself i couldn't reach i was

going to unplug your microphone but i couldn't reach the table's too big there you go hey um this is a text from Tony and Tony asked what vehicles has the most recalls and Tony off the top of my head I'm going to say Dodge Durango

but I know there are a few probably Mercedes I would say Honda they Honda sells a whole lot of cars and they have the highest number of Taked Airbag recalls so that would give them a I'd say ask Colonel Google

And by the way, how did you come up with Colonel Google? Was that just on the fly? Epiphany. Colonel Google? I have these things come into my head. The older I get, the more epiphanies I have. You know like General Google better? Oh, geez.

According to Car Complaints.com, the three worst vehicles for customer complaints. Now, this isn't actually recalls, but customer complaints, is the 2002 Ford Explorer, the 2003 Honda Accord and the 2011 Hyundai Sonata. Thank you. The question was recalls. Yes, recalls. And I'm not sure if we're talking about percentages.

Mercedes. That's what I thought. Mercedes. You know, the most recalls. There's no way I could know that. That was from Colonel Google, of course. Mercedes, and that was the actually Mercedes Ben C class followed by the GMC Sierra, the BMW 3 and 4 series, Dodge Durango. in the Nissan Pathfinder that's probably a percentage I doubt very seriously if they have more absolute recalls in Honda well I can drill down into that but you know so

Tony I hope we answered your question we'll finish up on that later we're going to go to John who's called back good morning John hey John I think we're having maybe we're having technical problems maybe John is still Okay. Well, we have Justin Lynn calling at 915, so hopefully things will be better. Well, I'll jump to text. We'll wait for John to call back, or we get the phones fixed, whatever is going on. We don't know.

Referencing a discussion, this is a good one, referencing last week's discussion about the scum that collects on the inside of your windows from off-gassing, as an old detailer, I've got a tip on removing it. Do not get any expensive window cleaner. The most popular stuff changed its formula a few years ago, and it streaks. get yourself a gallon of the cheap straight blue windshield wiper fluid just the cheap blue stuff a couple of bucks a gallon has a lot of alcohol and dries almost instantly get a dollar score a dollar store spray bottle spray and wipe and repeat again easy as pie wow a windshield cleaner i'm doing that today that's very good well thank you very much we'll try that and uh if you're gonna one of you guys really do it today and then we can report back yeah i need to do it it's really annoying i experienced it all the time and it's happening it's happening it's happened to my windshield right now all right anne marie texted us good morning in the old days when everything was analog it was easy enough for anyone to switch out batteries radios or other

instrumentation nowadays the whole car is computerized is it still possible for the average person to swap out a battery or radio or anything else without messing up any of the onboard computers thanks amary what do you think rick one more time too can an average person today like swap out of a radio or or do their own battery some of these simple operations that people have done you know for a hundred years with all the computers do you mess things up when you do that batteries quick and simple no worries there installing a radio anymore much more complicated because a lot of radios especially in the newest cars are more integrated with the various systems in the car air

conditioning and a lot of that runs through the radio so those I'd be a little more concerned with yeah very good do we get John with I mean John back no we have Okay. All right. So we have an anonymous feedback question. I think this is going to be very relevant today. It says, good morning, Earl. Have you heard about the Subaru and the other car recalls on Takata airbags? The 2015 Takata exploding front and side airbags on Subaru were replaced with new defective exploding front and side airbags on Subaru. Now Subaru is recalling them all again. Yeah, I did hear about that. I was very encouraged because last night, Nancy and I were watching the evening, news, local news, WPTV, and they were talking a lot about it, and I said, this is refreshing to see that someone's actually talking about to cut airbags again. So this morning I got my newspapers, I subscribed to a lot of newspapers, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Palm Beach Post, and none of this was mentioned in any of the newspapers. So I think it was a local fluke that they care about this, but the news is simply that we have, we,

We've reached the stage now where airbags that were replaced are being replaced again. They didn't have the good airbags, the safe airbags, when Takata first became a problem. They knew they were defective. They would explode sometimes on impact and kill her main people in the cockpit of the car. So they started putting in Takata airbags to replace Takata airbags, knowing that they would fail in four or five years. So another wave just came out with Subaru, close to a half a million. My question is, what about the people that didn't bring their car back in?

Every time you replace these airbags with either temporarily good or better, they're going to fail in four or five years. Only 25% of the people get them replaced in the first place. So of the wave that they're replacing now, what about the ones that didn't come in for the first wave? I mean, eventually you're going to have people out there with 10, 12, 15-year-old airbags that are truly, truly time bombs. The older the car, the more likely the thing's going to blow up,

and the less likely they'll ever have notification. Only one out of four airbags or recalls period ever comes in to get fixed. and Subaru is not the only one doing that all the manufacturers have been doing that since this whole thing began including Toyota we have we're on round two on some of the Toyota vehicles they're older one round three yeah

so I wasn't clear on that too when I was looking it up so it could be worse than than it looks here in the story it was so of the Subaru's it might be that those were the ones that were fixed that's still a half a million which means the original batch we're not even talking about the ones that were never touch. Seventy-five percent of them were never touched. People don't bring the cars in

for recall. They just don't do it. Part of it is ignorance. Part of it is apathy. Part of it is a lack of the communication of the media, of the importance of it, action of our legislators. It's just, this will go down is the biggest scandal of the 21st century. So circling back to the question about which manufacturers from Nancy's text that she got. Here's the data here. And this is the, it tells you how many cars sold versus how many recalls. So there is a percentage, and the highest percentage is, I think it is, it might be General Motors. No, I'm sorry, it's Nissan with a seven, no, I'm sorry, Subaru actually has a .73 recall rate.

But I think the number one in terms of sheer volume is General Motors. But that's not fair because there's four or five car lines. That's the Sierra. All right, all right. Well, it's still 93 million recall. But if you pick Chevrolet or you pick Bueck, I mean, you know, that's a... Well, I mean, but it's still the manufacturer. True.

They're the ones who decided to put different stickers on the cars. It's still the same thing. That GMC, is that the Sierra? Yeah, I think so. And then Toyota's up there, but with a point... I'm sorry, they have a 0.8 recall rate. BMW is a 0.9 that's approaching 1% of all their cars or recall. Ford is 0.93.

So, oh, I'm sorry, Mitsubishi, 4 point, I'm sorry, 1.09, so over 1% and Hyundai with 1.15% recall. What's Honda? Honda is not as bad. It is. They're the highest in Takata, so that's the reason I thought that would. You know what?

They're not on the list here. So they're not in the top 15, so. I think we have found an error in the stats. Colonel Google. Well, Colonel Google told me this is on Forbes, so. Oh, Forbes. Forbes made the mistake. Okay.

We got a text from Justin Lynn saying he's ready to go, and I don't know that he's gotten through the switchboard yet. Why don't you run over and talk to the producer? Nancy? Oh, yes, Jonathan? Okay. Justin, are you there? Yeah, if you're there, we can't hear you.

We're having phone problems. I can't run, but I will trot. Okay. Okay, trot. My apologies to all our listeners because we go into waves of technical problems. Our phones have been good for a while, and now we're back in the dumps, and we apologize, and we do the best we can. We don't own this radio station.

We don't operate it, and all we can do is cry and complain and apologize. Rick's got questions and comments from YouTube. Okay, let's move along. We've got John Strine says, Just before your family vacation, I sent Stu an email an example of purchasing a new Toyota from a Toyota dealer in Michigan that included an out-the-door price.

It was almost exactly $1,000 less than your price. Yes. On one of the Saturday shows, Earl mentioned your dealership paid a premium for new cars because of the geographical area in which you do business. Exactly. Can you comment?

Sure. Southeast Toyota LLC has been an independent distributor since the late 60s, and they're one of the few. There's one other, maybe two, but there's one other, there's Gulf States distributorship in the Texas area. And when Toyota first started in business, the manufacturer, to get started, they hired independent distributors because they weren't big enough.

and confident enough that they could penetrate the United States market. And most of those independent distributorships had been absorbed and bought up by Toyota. Southeast Toyota is an exception, and Gulf State's Toyota is an exception. So as a middleman, Southeast Toyota, which is Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama, all those states buy their cars from Southeast Toyota LLC. And Southeast Toyota LLC marks the cars up. And it's a percentage, but the average number is around $1,000, maybe a little less, be a lot more on an expensive Toyota and a lot less on a less expensive Toyota. So therefore, dealers in, let's say, California, or another state in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, in the southeast states, they would pay considerably less for the car.

So if you live out of the southeast, you should be able to buy a Toyota for a lot less. And we have Comas Schrestha. Sorry if I mangled your name there, sir. Did Toyota stop making the four-cylinder Highlander? Yes. Yes, they did. Six-cylinder only now. I wonder what the reason for that was.

Probably not of power, I guess. Yeah, people weren't buying it. I mean, I'll tell you what the reason. was worth they weren't selling them yeah yeah it's a pretty big SUV you know a little four cylinder um here's this from kyle in palm beach uh county i have a 2016 corolla that i want to sell and buy a new preas or corolla hybrid but i don't want to buy the preas for another nine to 12 months but i want to get rid of the crolla now because the insurance has cost me 160 bucks a month and i'm not using it my question is will a dealer um give me a good of a price on my 2016 corolla that i'm

selling now without buying the car right now as you would if i was buying a car right now. You know I'm missing out on the sales tax advantage, but the insurance and the depreciation savings is far more. Thank you, and happy New Year's. Best news is this is the greatest time to get the most for your use car trade in. You've got Carvana, you've got we buy any car.com, you've got CarMax, we've got AutoNation, and a lot of dealers are buying cars directly. You got an auto trader. You've got plenty of time, too. Yeah, you got a lot of time. So you can really, it's just a perfect time because one of the secret sources of profit for most car dealers for years and years and years was a trade in. They would say, steal your trade and

they'd give you a great price on the new car, and then they would steal your trade coming in $2,000 below its true value. Now, there's no reason that can happen. You are armed. Carvana. We buy any car.com. CarMax, AutoNation. Most car dealers will give you a price on your car and get the highest price, and that's your trade in value. Only caveat, you don't get the sales tax discount you don't get the you don't pay florida sales tax on the trade and value of your car so we need to take that to account when you're comparing prices ladies and gentlemen uh you're going to find all the answers that you need right here on earl stewart on cars and uh we definitely enjoy your company and we also enjoy the fact that

you inform us and uh we we love our audience so give us a call toll free at 877 960 9960 and don't forget www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com and you can text us at 772-4976530 and we are going to go to Justin Lynn from New York. Good morning, Justin. Hey Justin, let me set the stage a little bit for who you are. First of all, you're a personal friend of Nancy and me and we've known you before you became a lawyer

and now you are licensed to be a lawyer in New York and Florida, and you're a defense lawyer, and you received an award recently, which has knocked me and Nancy right off our seats, you were named the top ten defense lawyers under 40 years of age. I think that's fantastic, and I just wanted to congratulate you on the air. I appreciate that, Earl. Thank you very much.

Well, you care about the people, you can make a lot more money chasing ambulances and going around and maximizing your income, but you take care of people that need help and you really care about them and you've called the show before. That's what we're, we kind of do the same thing a little bit with buying cars, and you're talking about people that get themselves in trouble and defend them against prosecution, and I respect that. Well, I appreciate that. So, yeah, my main focus is helping people.

I have two different areas of law I practice, criminal defense and personal injury, but I don't just take any in every case. I focus on very specific cases where I can make a really big difference for somebody in their life. Sure. And particularly in criminal defense where I got this award from, I'm really motivated to help people that getting the right result for them can have a life-changing impact for them. because everybody at some point in their life makes some mixed mistakes, and whether you get caught or not is a different story, and when somebody gets caught with one of those mistakes, they need somebody on their side to really help them

and make sure that they get the right and fair opportunity to have their case heard with the court system and make sure that they get the right result they need, because not everybody needs to go to jail. I think we can all agree on that. Absolutely. Well, you know, you can't, when we are, people at our dealership, the one thing we can't train them to do, the one thing we can't

make them do is have empathy and honesty and transparency. It's all in your heart. I don't know whether it was your mother that raised you that way or whether it was just a genetic thing, but people that really care for other people, I think that's something you either have or you don't have. And lawyers are so important to our society, but they're also a huge threat. I hate to look at television now because of the lawyers out there. waving their arms and claiming they're going to give me a million dollars if I stub my toe at Publix.

I can just tell by watching those advertisements, it's 90% about the money and not really about caring about me. And I just wanted to, I don't normally plug people or products on the show, but Justin Lynn, I'm plugging you. If you're someone that needs help in Florida or New York, I would recommend Justin Lynn as the attorney. And do you mind give them your contact information and if they do need help from an honest lawyer that will really care about you? Would you do that? Sure.

My personal cell phone number is 561-756-1608. And you can find me online at justin-law.com. My last name is spelled L-I-N-N. And I give everybody all my clients get my personal cell phone number because your life's, your case is important to me, and I want to be able to talk with you, and you need to be able to talk with me. If you ever have any problems or questions, how it works, I don't have a paralegal that you call first, you call me directly.

And you'll never hear that from another lawyer, folks. No. You'll never hear it from another car dealer. We've given, on this show, we've given our cell phone numbers out. I remember the first, I did that another radio station one time, and the guy almost gagged me. He says, you don't really want to give your number out. But Justin Lynn's personal cell phone number, personal injury and defense lawyer, Justin Lynn, L-I-N-N, is area code 561-7-56-1608.

Area code 561-7-56-1608. And the only thing I can guarantee you is that he's honest and he really cares about you. And if that's important to you and a lawyer you hire, he's the guy you ought to hire. Justin Lynn Law.com. Easy to remember. J-U-S-T-I-N-L-I-N-L-N-L-N-L-N-L-N-L-N-L-L-N-L-L-N-L-L-A-L-L-L-A-L-L-O-D-com. I wish you the best, Justin, and thank you very much for listening to the show and how passionate you feel. about people. And I want to thank you again for calling. Thanks. Well, you know, I learned two things from both of you guys. One, I only try to take something from somebody, people I looked up to in my life. And one thing I learned from Earl is that you just got to be an honest person. Even if you're a big businessman, you just got to be honest and transparent. That's so super important. And the thing

I learned from Nancy is you got to call people back. You can't tell people you're going to do something and not calling back. That's all it is. You know, be honest and call people back and you're going to be a successful person. Yeah, you've got to let them know that their phone call was really important, and, you know, you're just not too big to do just that.

It just doesn't happen every day. People are ignored. Okay, John. Thank you, Justin. Thanks again for being who we are, and anytime you want to call the show, you have an open pass. We really enjoy talking to you.

Great, guys. I appreciate it. you take care that was Justin Lynn and he made the top what was it the top top top 10 defense lawyer under 40 under 40 years old that's pretty big he's either in New York or he flies back and forth New York or Florida and he's an amazing young guy he was amazing yeah yeah and he started right in our home yeah not as an attorney as an electrician started as he was an electrician when we know him yeah I think I think he just used to come over because I would feed them.

Yeah. Munge, munge. And you had a lot of electrical problems, probably. We definitely do. Okay. Back to business here. Yeah, I got a question on Facebook. It's from Timothy.

It says, what constitutes a lemon? If infotainment doesn't operate correctly, a dealer refuses to address it, but it works fine in another of the same model. Does that qualify as a lemon? Anything is a lemon that's under warranty in your car, and if your infatement Center is part of the manufacturer's warranty and it is covered by the Lemon Law. Lemon Law does not give you a new car to replace an old car if you'd have the car for a while. It's a pro rata thing. So move quickly if you want to file for the Lemon Law. If you have the car just a couple

days, you can get about all your money back. If you've had the car for two and a half years and you've got a three-year warranty, you'll get a small portion of the money back assuming you prevail. Exactly. You got any Rick? we're actually almost caught up Kyle Smeltz says wow I learned something new today from that southeast Toyota topic the last thing the car business needs

is another middleman thank you for the show guys yeah that's one of the best kept secrets people don't like to talk about that naturally my concern has always been for those dealers that are on the border states if you're in North Carolina

what about the what is it what are the What borders on North Carolina? Virginia? And anything else? Kentucky, Tennessee, you're all right in that general area. All those states up there bordering. What about them that buy their cars for less money?

And it might, I, Stu told me one time. They try to work something out. They work something out. But even then, you move the border. Yeah, they're closer out of the border. The more dicey against. Yeah, we've got to look into that more. I'm really curious.

I'll ask our sales rep if he can tell us, you know, it's not a, proprietary i don't think okay uh we're going to go to robert uh he is holding from jupiter good morning robert hello hey hey robert how can we help you good morning so my my my little issue is is that i went on vacation on the 20th of december and i took my car and i parked in my front of my neighbor's house in in dania florida and the car on the 23rd of december got flooded out and my insurance company had it towed to the nearest Kia dealership. And since the 23rd of December through this moment right now, I still haven't gotten my car back. And my concern is that I really think that the car probably is flooded out so much to where the car should be totaled. But I don't

know, you know, what my ramifications are about, you know, not getting the car back because the car, the water came up to above the hubcap across the car. And so I know that the water got into the, you know, the driver's side and the passenger side and all that's the stuff. And and so, you know, I don't know, I don't want to be aggressive and mean and tough. I just, you know, want my car back. Sure. Or get a new car or something. Who's your insurance company? GEICO. Yeah, I would stay on top of GEICO.

They're a good insurance company, and I would let them know that you're going to insist the car be totaled and that you be covered for replacement of your car. And the last thing you want to do is have a car back with a question mark as to how bad the flood damage was. Water damage is something that can manifest itself weeks, months, or even years later. And if you've had water up to your hubcap, you don't know for sure how much has really bothered the car. Rick, am I right?

Dead on. And my best recommendation is polite persistence. Yeah. And if you have to hire a lawyer, then do that. But most dealerships and manufacturers and insurance companies today understand water damage. And flood damage is something that is a huge problem in this country, an undetected, unlabeled, flood damage car

gets sold, it's nothing but problems. So they want to have that car totaled, and they want to have it scrapped, and they don't want it coming back on the market again. So let us know how you do with GEICO and with the dealership. I contact also other... I don't know whose body shop or collision repair shop you have it in,

but you might want to move it to another shop if you're not getting the kind of cooperation from the shop that you're dealing with. Yeah, and the insurance policy, I think, says that, you know, that we will tow it and we'll tow it to the nearest dealership. And so, you know, there it is. It's in, you know, down in Fort Lauderdale. And, of course, I'm up here in Jupiter. And so the car there, and I've been waving, you know, since that there,

since the 23rd to get it back. So, you know, I'm Ubering because they don't have rental insurance on the car and all that. I never thought of it would get flooded out or anything like that. And so I'm Ubering everywhere, you know, and it's just getting really frustrating. And the Kia dealership, you know, they contact me and say, hey, we should have an answer for you tomorrow. Well, tomorrow passes.

I don't hear anything. And then I get another call about we'll have an answer. But, you know, and now I've spoken to a friend, an acquaintance that owns Kia dealership in New Jersey. and he says, man, no, you don't want that car back. Are there any circumstances? He's absolutely right. You know, I think you're at the point now where you need to talk to a lawyer.

We just had a lawyer on the air a minute ago, and I can give you a cell phone number and name. He'll write you a letter telling the Kia Collusion Repair Shop in Fort Lauderdale what's going on. And when you get a letter from an attorney, I don't think Justin Land will charge you very much at all. You got a pencil handy? Roger, this number is for Justin Lynn, L-I-N-N. And his telephone number is area code 561-756-1-6-08. Okay, thanks. And another thing, since I have a car loan on it, and if the car was totaled,

does the entire car loan get taken care of, or do I still owe money on it and all that type of stuff? Would you have any idea about that? It depends on if you have, you know, what you have on the car, right? Well, they're going to pay for what it's appraised for. You might owe more than that. If you have gap insurance, it would cover the difference there. If you don't and it's worth less than what you owe, you're going to have to come out of pocket. How long you've been making payments on the car?

Yeah, I do. It's a 2017 key of Sportage. So I think I've been doing it almost two years, but I do have the gap insurance. insurance on the car. Okay, that's fortunate. That's what gap insurance is supposed to cover. So you're fortunate there, but give Justin Lin a call and have a letter written to the collision repair shop and let them explain to them that they need to move quickly or else he'll file suit. Okay, hey, thanks very much. You're welcome. Good luck. Bye-bye. A77960 or you can text us at 772-4930. And this text is from

Jennifer and she wants to know why Carfax is not always accurate well the answer is there's nothing that's always accurate and Carfax is only good as the information that they get if a car is repaired not by an insurance company there's no insurance involved that people don't know someone has to report the repair to Carfax and 99% of the cases it is reported but sometimes it's not and that's what you have to watch out for it check with, had your own mechanic checked the car, to be absolutely sure. It's known as garbage in, garbage out. Exactly.

And not only is it accident repairs or accident being reported, it's also even recalls we've seen not show up on car effects because it's up to the, I believe, the manufacturer to submit that information. Exactly. Okay, Jennifer, I think that we covered that. If you have any other questions, please call or you can text me. Okay. We've got one more.

It's a good one. It's from Mike. Earl, I just dealt with BS from Napleton, Kia of Elmhurst in Illinois. Elmhurst. Yeah, so Napleton is all over the place. I listed a great price on True Car, which seemed to be too good to be true. So I kept emailing to get confirmation of the price listed. They stated I would at least get that price.

And then I show up, and that price goes out the door. The salesman tells me the Internet Department has no power to give or set prices, but then why do they have them at all? They also try to sell me on the package you mentioned. I offered them $50 for it. I guess we're talking about the addendum, like that big appearance package. I offered them $50 for it since he said he had to include it. Who would you say I should contact about their poor business practices?

I would contact the Attorney General in Illinois, and I would contact everybody, a Better Business Bureau, County Office of Consumer Affairs. I would try to go on the record with, was this a Kia? Yeah, it was Napleton Kia in Wilmerhurst, Illinois. Yeah, I would go to Kia, the manufacturer. I think the more you embarrass them, even call the media. True car, for sure, by the way. True car is supposed to control their dealers.

And True car does have a rule that says they cannot add dealer-installed accessories or hidden fees. to the true car price the true car price by rule with true car can only have government fees like sales tax and license plate so report them to a whole bunch of people it's hardly worth hiring a lawyer when you have something like this because it's uh he said she said but i would certainly embarrass them and get them to come around yeah we got one more that just popped in while we were talking okay we got time yep a couple of weeks ago i started toying with the idea of selling my 1999 Miata, which my mechanic says is an outstanding shape, I cruised the internet for pricing. I only went to the sites that you've endorsed. I did send one or two on my email.

The next day, I started to get calls and emails from buying services that wanted to buy the car. The range of offers ranged between $400 and $600. I couldn't believe such low balls. I was offered $4,000 locally. I told one guy on the phone that I would burn the me out in the driveway before I'd give him the car for such a ridiculous price, and to never call again. So my question is, in your experience, do people really sell to these pirates? I guess you have to be outrageously strapped. I'm not sure what pirates he's referring to. I don't think he's referring to Carvana or CarMax or We Buy Anycar.com.

Those are legitimate outfits. There are people that make a living buying cars real cheap and then selling them at auction or to selling them to other people. the car selling of you know used car selling used to be so sloppy that even dealers got cheated by we call wholesalers back in my time when I before I recovered you know car wholesalers were all thieves and we finally woke up as car dealers we were thieves too but but we were we were told that wholesalers were bribing our used car managers to be able to to pay us too little for cars that they bought from us. They call themselves wholesaler.

But since that time, the status of wholesaling cars has become almost honest. Most of our selling of used cars now is online. You can check used car values very easily, and you can give multiple bids on your used car. But a phone call from somebody that wants to buy a Miano for $400. You're right. That is a joke. Yeah, and I think he wasn't specific. It was just the sites we recommend, so maybe they got to bed.

I don't know. I can't answer that. But if it's Carvana or something like that, who knows. Yeah, Carvana, well, they'll give you a quote over the phone, but it's legitimate. They're a publicly traded company, and every experience we've had or heard about with Carvana has been honest. Yeah, and I'd also just triple check the information you supplied online because there could have been a, if you had an extra zero in the mileage, that could affect it, you know, what they tell you. Yeah. Okay, were you ready for the Mystery Shopping Report?

I can't wait. This is the highlight of the show. If you just tuned in, you are in luck. We have sent an undercover secret agent into a South Florida dealership. This particular South Florida dealership is Mercedes-Benz of Del Rey, and that is an Automation store. AutoNation is the largest retailer of vehicles in the United States, and they're a publicly traded company.

It was announced that another 10 million vehicles, have been added to the Takata recall this this week. This brings the count to well over 50 million. The number of defective inflator units has actually exceeded 100 million. And that's the reason we went after a Takata car at Auto Nation. And the history of Auto Nation is interesting because a few years ago, when Michael Jackson was the CEO of Auto Nation, he would not sell a car with a defective recall, dangerous recall.

And he rescinded that about the year after it because of what? It's a publicly traded company. It was hurting their profits. So he had to start selling dangerous cars again. The new round of recalls include vehicles manufactured by BMW, Fiat, Chrysler, Honda, and Subaru. What is notable about the current batch, now listen carefully. What is notable about the current batch of recalls is that these vehicles were already recalled for the same thing four years ago. You say, what?

Yeah. They were called four years ago for defective to cut airbags, but repaired, and you're not going to believe this, repaired using decad airbag recalls with the same defect. Yeah. They were bad, the noise were having a problem here with double noise in the studio. I hope you can hear me okay. So four years ago, the earbag was recalled, replaced with other. defective airbags, and now they're being recalled again. Sounds like, I don't know.

If this doesn't tell you that Takata airbag crisis isn't going away anytime soon, I don't know what will. I just know that I'm embarrassed that our legislators and our regulators and the media aren't doing more about it. Now think about this. Four years ago, these Subarues were recalled for a defective air. bags. Only one out of four of these owners brought the car in. Three out of four didn't pay any attention to it, never got it. For some reason, the airbag was not fixed. Statistically,

25% of recalls come in, 75% don't come in. So now we have a second wave of recall. Now, the same thing's going to be there. 25% will get them fixed, 75% won't. So you have a pool, a continuous running pool of airbag recalls that are getting older and older and older, four years old, eight years old, 12 years old, and these bags, airbags become extremely sensitive on age. At some point, these are going to start exploding all over the place. Rick. I almost wonder if maybe the big powers at beer playing that game of hoping that a good majority of these cars will wind up in the scrapyard.

before they ever have to be fixed for real. Yeah, they won't drive them forever, and eventually they disappear. I mean, cars aren't unless they become antiques. They get crashed, they wind up just wearing out. On the side out of mind, yeah. They're not going to have to pay for it, that's the whole thing. They don't have to pay for it because people don't care about it.

That's apathy. They're not smart enough to appreciate the severity of it. That's ignorance. And they don't get notified, and that's lack of efficiency on notifying people by the manufacturer. There are too many reasons why these cars aren't being fixed. Sometimes I think that we're so overloaded, and this might be the reason, with information by the media, there's an endless assault of bad news on our smartphones and television.

I honestly don't like to turn on the TV. I don't like to, you know, there's so much bad news all the time. And the media is pushing the bad news that gets attention. You know, what gets attention? If it leads, it leads. What? It's saying is if it bleeds, it leads. Yeah, it bleeds, it leads.

If you have something that is tragic and gets people's attention, they will advertise it. If people get apathetic about something, it doesn't sell newspapers, is an old expression. There's aren't any newspapers anymore, not literally, of course. It doesn't get clicks anymore. Exactly, clicks anymore. That's where we are. I can't imagine 20 or 30 years ago, a consumer safety crisis of this magnitude being greeted with the same level of apathetic. it's the Takada Air Begaree call.

We haven't seen a single major political figure, state or federal, see a damn thing about it. Now, one governor, not DeSantis for Florida or the other 49 states, have put out a statement. It's put out a statement. Not the president. I've heard no other governors. I've heard nobody talk about it. We search for that. I search for that to see if there was any statements on Takata by any major political, I couldn't

So what does that tell you, folks? When there is a fatality involving an airliner, everything stops. Listen to this. The world's media focuses on it. There are investigations, press conferences, sometimes the fleet's grounded, like in the Boeing case, until the cause of the crash is identified and fixed. I didn't realize this.

Stu wrote this, by the way, and I didn't realize this. There have been exactly zero airliner fatalities, in the U.S. in the last 10 years. That is correct. No fatalities from airline crashes in the last 10 years. During the same period of time, there were at least 25 known deaths by defective to cut airbags. What's wrong with this picture?

There's something else wrong with that picture. I guarantee if for every 25 fatalities, there's another 2,500 fatalities that we don't know about. Think about it. A fatal crash. on the interstate, a scramble of, I hate to say it, blood and machines. And when you have a terrible accident where the airbags go off, it's pretty difficult for anybody, autopsy or otherwise,

law enforcement, first responders, all they see is a lot of dead people and dead parts of people. It's a terrible gruesome scene. Who knows what caused the death? there is not an investigation. And we know that when these airbags go off, at least a part of the time, they're exploding the inflator made of steel, which is sending shrapnel into the cockpit of the car.

And we know there are far more than 25 people killed. And so, therefore, it's being ignored and it's being ignored wrongly. In light of the recent Takata announcement, we chose to make our weekly mystery shop another Takata test. We went into Mercedes Benz of Del Rey and Automation Store. We found a 2014 Jeep Wrangler with a Takata airbag recall being offered for sale by Mercedes Benz of Del Rey. In automation stores, as I just said, we have never shopped before. We haven't shopping yet. We sent in Agent Tempest, a new female and very pregnant, Mr. Jopper.

And Nancy will appreciate that because she's been begging us to send in some female shopper. and we did. And our secret name is Tempest. And as I say, she was obviously pregnant. Here's the report as if I were Tempest. How many months? Seven months. Seven months. That's obviously pregnant. I arrived in Mercedes Pins of Del Rey, and I was seven months pregnant. I feel funny saying that. This afternoon to see about the 2014 Jeep Wrangler Sahara. The law was packed with vehicles, so I circled twice to find a parking place. I walked inside the shore room

It was filled with new Mercedes and looked very busy I made eye contact with a salesman Who was sitting at his desk I thought he'd jump up to greet me But he looked back down and continue to do Whatever it was he was doing That's interesting A lot of thoughts run through my mind when I hear that

He was waiting for her husband to show up I don't know or maybe The fact that he was female I don't know Oh it's a Mercedes dealership Maybe she wasn't dressed to make him think. In her notes, she felt she had been profiled.

Yeah, profile, yeah. So I went over to the front desk, a reception, and asked about the used vehicle. The receptions was nice and said she'd find someone for me. I excused myself to use the restaurant. When I got back, she still had not found a salesperson who had held me. She apologized, walked around from behind the desk,

and walked into the showroom. She returned with a guy who ignored me when I walked in a few minutes earlier. His name was Oliver. Oliver at Mercedes of Del Rey Yeah, let's call him Ollie Oliver

I told him was there Like the cat Yeah So we know Oliver saw her And didn't want to help her Maybe he was Maybe he was texting somebody Could be, yeah

I told her over there to get the 2014 Jeep I'd seen online Oliver asked me if I was planning to go on buying To plan on buying today Standard operating question Are you going to buy today? I told him I'm making my decisions this afternoon.

If I liked the Jeep and the price didn't change from what I'd seen on the web, I would leave to get my husband and return to take delivery. Oliver gathered some information from me, made copies of my driver's license and car insurance card, and then left to get the vehicle. It was back in about five minutes. It led me outside. We circled the Jeep, and he told me about the quality of their used car vehicles,

their inspection process. I told Oliver that safety was my top concern and pointed to my very noticeable baby. Bump. Probably patted my belly. Baby bump. Yeah. Baby bump, yeah. I'm seven months pregnant. I'll ever laugh. I said, of course, I asked him if there were any safety issues.

He applied that it went through a thorough safety inspection, the 2000, what I say, 14 Jeep, and said that if they considered any vehicle to be unsafe, it would be taken immediately to the auction to be sold at wholesale, really hammering the safety. We took it for a ride down U.S.1. I asked if it had ever been in an accident. Oliver said he wasn't sure,

but that information would be on the Carfax report. I asked him if it had been... Yeah, go ahead. I asked him if an accident would be considered a safety. Yeah. I asked him if it had been... Safety issue, it would be. Okay, yeah. And would it pass her safety inspection?

Oh, here we are. Yeah, an accident could pass their safety inspection because he replied that it wouldn't necessarily make the vehicle unsafe, which is true. It would depend on the severity of the accident. He said it wouldn't be unusual for 2014 vehicle in South Florida to have been an accident. I don't know about that.

I get his point. I asked him about mechanical problems, and Oliver reiterated his points about the inspection process at Mercedes-Benz of Del Rey. back at the dealership we sat down at his desk Oliver got straight to the Carfax report on the computer screen he was happy to point out that it was an excellent report

one owner vehicle and no accidents Oliver paused, frowned little and did say there does appear to be one recall I asked him what he meant by that he said that this could mean different things but in any case all I would have to do is take it to a Jeep dealer

and it would be resolved free of charge. He scrolled down to the detail area, and there it is, and my report, manufacturer safety recall, passenger airbag inflator. Oliver didn't read it to me. He said, there was no mention of airbags. Instead, he said, good news, and reported there was a remedy, and it could be fixed. I asked him if Steelership could fix it for me.

he said it would need to be done at the manufacturing dealer, which is true. A Jeep has to be fixed by a Jeep dealer. But if we were moving forward with a deal, he could ask his manager if they could send it over to the Jeep dealer for me to get, before I picked it up, and I thanked him. And, of course, my editorial comment is, you should have sent it over when you treated the car in, or when you bought the car.

But he addresses it in the next line. Yes, he does. Oliver added that until the vehicle is under purchase, they don't fix these things, which is just stupid. I mean, I don't want to be rude, but that's just stupid. If you fix it, it eliminates a possibility of error. It costs you nothing to fix it because the manufacturer pays for the recall. It costs them the opportunity.

They want that thing on the lot, being ready for sale. Yeah, for a day or two. Rick? If I was a customer walking in there, and Oliver said to me hey on the Carfax it shows this recall but we've already had it over there and fixed

it just hasn't updated yet but it's already been repaired I would be much more likely to sign on that dotted line and a whole lot faster save you the time I'd be ecstatic at that time is money that's the reason Mercedes Benz of Del Rey didn't

want to spend the time because time is money they'd rather their customer spend the money on the time than them. And they don't care if the customer doesn't get it fixed at all. And 75% of the time they don't get cars fixed. And so it's just terrible. Sad reflection on other nation, sad reflection on Mercedes-Benz, Abdelray. Oliver asked if I was going to finance or pay cash. I said I was probably paying cash, but I'd like to get an idea of payments because I may consider financing. He said he would go get the numbers, cautioned me on the things.

The payment I would see would be a little inflated. I'll have explained that on their menu sheet, they used the average South Florida interest rate to come up with the payments. My real payment could be based on my credit profile. You know, they could be inflated or they could be too low. Your credit might not be so good, in which case the payments would be higher. So he didn't point out that. He's a salesman.

That's okay. Puffery. You try to make things look. Class is half full. Class is half full. And a few minutes here's back with a worksheet. he was honoring the online price of $28,490, but he added, here we go, hidden fees, $799 documentation fee and a $149 tag agency fee.

Do you say that again the same way? Probably not. Documentation fee. Yes. $799 plus $149.49, he was $948. So there's $948 in hidden profit on this car. hidden by AutoNation. Florida State law.

You ready for this, Auto Nation? A publicly traded company. You are a big guy's biggest retailer. You're breaking the law. You're breaking the law. You have to include the dealer fees, hidden fees, and the advertised price. He advertises online,

and the customer, me, the shopper, did not find out about this until I'm trying to sign in. I'm trying to buy the car, violating the law. Okay, so he put these in there. I knew they were hidden fees. I was instructed to take note of. I told him that everything lined up as I had hoped. I said I'd be back to pick up my husband,

and we'd return for the final paperwork. Oliver said he would have everything ready for me. Thank him left. He didn't say anything about sending the Jeep out to repair the airbag. And I can tell you this, if I'm coming back that night, he ain't going to have that airbag fix because that would be too fast. Typically, it would take a day or two.

And unfortunately, when somebody comes in from another dealership with a product from the Jeep dealer, they go at the back of the line, the Jeep dealer naturally puts his customers at the front of the line to get things fixed. So it could take a day or two.

Time is money, money is time, and that Jeep would not be fixed. When I came back, would he deliver it to me? I believe he would, absolutely. Epilogue. And, of course, of the final word, he never did say anything about the airbag. Mercedes-Menz of Telleret, failed the taccata test.

The disclosure was weak. Did nothing to really alert us about the present, alert our pregnant mystery shopper, the actual danger imposed by the six-year-old unstable hand grenade in the front seat of the car. The officer takes the vehicle to the vehicle the Jeep dealer was nice. A nice touch may have led to a passing grade

if they actually did it, but we know they probably wouldn't have done it. It's just not good. And we're at scoring time again, and it's always a struggle. They're coming in. The grades are flowing. Okay.

Linda, who is my favorite grader, gives us an A-plus for this show. Oh. And a huge chubby F for Mercedes-Benzad Del Rey. She's doing a variation in her big, Big fat F, so it's a huge chubby F. Nathan gives him an F. Dan gives him a D. Gay gives him an F. Lindsay gives him an F. And then Doug, hey Doug, gives him an F. And Ollie also gives him an F. Oh, no. They didn't do well. I don't think cats are registered to vote in Florida. Well, this is an informal vote, so. That's true. I'll take it. He has to be safe, too.

Ollie doesn't. He's not going to get in that far. He's a special cat. Yeah, I don't know. I give him an F, too. Roller. Yeah. Rick? I'm going to go a little higher on the curve. I'm going to give him a D because I think they actually, he did mention the recall. They should have taken care of it, but he actually did mention it, which most of them just glossed. They won't even mention it.

Yeah, I was, my harshness comes from fact that she was pregnant and I'm like, come on, have a heart. Yeah. You know, by the way, Amory chimes in. She gives them a big fat F. Yeah, yeah. And Mark Ryan says F. Boy. You know, I hate, I'm getting tired of using the word curve,

but I have to be fair. If you're going to buy, let's say you want to buy a Mercedes. You have to buy it somewhere. And I got to believe if we shopped the other Mercedes stores, in fact, I know we have shopped Palm Beach Mercedes. and they were actually worse and there were issues with Palm Beach Mercedes that were really troubling

as I recall and I just can't say to the buyers of Mercedes in Florida and Florida that there's no place you could buy a car I have to say a D and I have to say we'll put them on the recommended list

but buyer beware you know if you're worried about your safety of you and your family and if you're pregnant woman and you're going to go buy a car. Just think about that. This was a passenger side airbag, by the way. And what about a year that baby would be in a car seat on the passenger side? In the back seat. In the back seat. It has to be in the back seat. Yeah. We're facing. Yeah. Karen from Econar, Michigan gives him an F. Yeah. And John gives him a D and Tim a D plus. Yeah. So it's a tough pass and we'll pass them.

But it is, bring it a tear to my eye that you do that to a pregnant woman. It's just sad. And the power of the buck, the almighty dollar. That's right. Damn, Sam. Yeah. Hey, on a quick related note, John Strind's asking, why are hidden fees so prevalent here in Florida in comparison to where I'm originally from Michigan?

Because of the lack of regulation and enforcement and fee, the, and the, and the, the law is very sketchy. It's too easy to circumvent. For example, in Florida, there is no cap. You know, I almost a choke when I say that. You can charge a million dollar dealer fee if you want to. You can charge, you can call that dealer fee anything. You could call it Campbell's baked beans. You can call it...

Jerry. You can call it Charlie. You can name your hidden fees anything you want. and you can have multiple hidden fees. So in Florida, it's a while, while west of hidden fees. And all the car dealers in Florida, I think we had a lot of deals coming to Florida just so they can ride the wave.

No regulation, no enforcement of the law. What an opportunity. And opportunity to lie, cheat, and steel. It's like the gold rush. Yeah, the deal of fees represent all the profits of the car dealers now. Exactly. Ladies and gentlemen, I'll go ahead and vote also. you know that's a slap in a face when you walk into a dealership and you get ignored

and that's just the tip of the iceberg I give them an F and we have come to a close we have run out of time and I want to thank everyone here Jonathan helping Nick and Stu Rick myself and most of all the star of the show Earl Stewart we enjoy your company stay tuned next week at the same time we'll see you Let me go. Oh. Uh-huh. Right.

And go. Uh-huh. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, too. Oh,

a little, too. Uh, uh, go. Uh, uh, go. Uh,

uh, uh, Let's go. Let's go. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Do you? Oh! Oh! Oh! Let's go.