Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.11.2024 - The Best of Earl on Cars with Mystery Shop of Hyundai of Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

This is a replay of a previous episode of the Earl Stewart of Cars program. If you have a question for our auto expert team, you can text it to 772-497-6530 or online at www.youranonymousfeedback.com, and we'll answer it during our next live program. To purchase Earl's book, "Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer", go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl's Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt a dog please visit their website at www.brrr.org.

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 listeners. 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 is my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn cyber. 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. We're back. We're here. I'm talking mainly now to our new listeners. Hopefully we get new listeners. Your old listeners already know this. The purpose of this show is to help you buy a car, lease, car without being taken advantage of by car dealers.

You've all heard me, your regulars know that the annual poll, Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions, ranks car dealers at the bottom. Been doing that for about 50 years. Every year, they're either next to last or last, and it hasn't changed. Now, there's light at the end of the tunnel, and we've been talking about that on this show. Very exciting news about Federal Trade Commission regulations, and we're going to enlist your help to see that these regulations go into effect in July this year, July 30th. But as you might guess, the car dealers, they're fighting it. A tooth and nail, the National

Automobile Dealers Association, has joined with the Texas Auto Dealers Association to block it in the courts. And I'm actually working with the Federal Trade. Commission. I've had several conversations, and I've giving them my statement to present to the court to help prevent this. It's called the combating auto retail scams, cars. I love that acronym. Combatting auto retail scams. As I say, the Federal Trade Commission is going to try to have those rules go into effect in July, but there's a fight going on. So we'll talk about that later in the show. The essence of the show is a here and now.

The here and now is most people are driving combustion engine cars. Most people are buying cars at regular car dealerships that create problems for them. It's a real, real struggle. So we're here to help. Remember the problems not only rely on the buying and leasing, but in the maintaining and repairing. We have in our studio, all you regulars know, Rick Kearney,

A lot of YouTube followers are following Rick Kearney right now. Rick Kearney is a certified diagnostic master technician. Now, that's just a fancy way of saying he can fix just about any car. And we call him cars, we call him a mechanic, but he's really a computer specialist. That's what cars are today, a computer on wheels. And they're challenging to you and me. a lot of us who grew up with cars and grew up with combustion engine cars

we were used to tinkering or we would do a lot of things ourselves and cars were basically simple today they're extremely complex so when you have an issue with a car you're pretty much at a disadvantage when you go into a car dealership to have a fix

or for that matter an independent mechanic so we say call Rick Kearney at 877 960-9967 If you have a friend or a relative or yourself and you have a car that's making a noise, maybe you smell something that isn't quite right, maybe something's dripping out of the car on the garage or the floor, you want to be sure that something more serious doesn't happen,

especially when you're driving the car. So rather than blindly drive into a repair shop and say, I've got a problem with my car, please fix it, Here's my checkbook. That's what you're doing. Because if you go in there unprepared, you can really be taken advantage of. Call Rick. 877-960-99-16.

Rick can steer you into the possible fix, or maybe it doesn't need to be fixed, or he might also suggest that you get three or four bids on the repair. But he could pretty well diagnosis. That's the key. Once you have the diagnosis, you can establish. the price, and you can also be able to negotiate the price by getting competitive bids. So, 877960960, or text us at 772-4976530. 772-4976530.

Now, we're streaming the show, so we are in video, and we're streaming it on YouTube, and that's the channel that you, well, Rick is channeling. everything today because my son, Stu, is not going to be here. So he'll be looking at our text at 772-497-6530. We also be looking at YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars. That's YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars. And if you will just tell Rick or tell us, tell Nancy Stewart, who's sitting to my left, what your problem is we can get Rick to address it.

We could also help you with buying, leasing, give me advice on how not to be taken advantage of. Nancy Stewart is my co-host. She helped me when I founded this show about two decades ago, and we were just a little bitty half-hour show on our radio station called Sea View. Now we're two hours, and we're on every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.

Eastern Standard Time, live right here in North Palm Beach, Florida. And as I say, you can streamish, you can check our podcast. There's so many ways that we disseminate information out there that you can tap to help your car buying, car repairing, car leasing life a little bit easier. Now, we have a special thing that we do to try to keep the ladies involved with the show. if you're my age or even a little younger cars are kind of a guy thing you know and fixing cars and mechanics kind of a guy thing well no more

it's become well it always has been that the ladies influence a huge number of purchases now they buy about half the cars they should be of extreme importance to the car dealers and they certainly are for the manufacturers so Nancy has a special offer to encourage the ladies in the audience, the listening audience, to call the show.

Call the show, express your ideas, your views, your opinions. If you have questions, we will address those questions. And if you haven't called the show before, Nancy was going to tell you about a very special offer that you will get. It sounds too good to be true, but I promise you, it's not. Nancy, the mic is all yours. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to this fantastic morning. Great weather, isn't it? 877-960-99-60 is how you can reach us.

And ladies, do you have a car purchasing or service that you want to share with us? Or maybe just give us a call and talk? Our number here, again, is 877-960-99-60. And I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. Yes, $50. for the first two new lady callers. So take advantage of that in call us at 877-9-960. We have Emerson, a mixed breed, and he is just so cute.

He's just a little thing. And when I say a little thing, he's about 11.5 pounds. And his name is Emerson. And he's just as cute as he could be. So stay tuned for that. just about 9.30 this morning. We're going to go straight to the phones, and we're going to talk to Howard, who's been holding, and we'll get right with you, Rick. Hi, Howard. Hi, good morning.

Good morning. Well, in this frigid, Florida, and I don't know what's happening, but I've been here for two months, and it feels like I'm still up in. New York. However, not really, because it's 15 degrees in New York City today. So I'm happy to be here. I have a question

about car rentals. My son's coming in the 24th of February, and he said, I'm going to rent the car at the airport. And I told, be careful because it's going to cost more money. Now,

my question is, why does it cost more money at the airport, and where can he rent the car and get a good deal? Well, it's called supply and demand. It's kind of a captive audience. You come in, if you did not look ahead in your trip, which we recommend you always do, if you're going to rent a car, you can always find a lower-priced car. Even if you have to take an Uber to the rental agency, if it's off-site, the rental car agencies represent the airports pay a ton of,

money to the airport and rent. They have a very high overhead, and they pay that extra money because they get the first shot at people that need to run a car but forgot to make reservations before they got on the airplane. So here they are in the airport, and they're in a strange city probably, not familiar with the city, and that's why they're renting a car, and how are they going to find a lower-priced rental car when they don't know where to go? So Hertz, Avis, National, typically these are the ones that you see in the airports and they will charge you an arm and leg you're right I have I would recommend I even if I forgot to make the reservations I would probably grab a do they have phone books anymore I guess I

guess I go to Google and I would say localized rental cars in Syracuse or wherever you may be landing and they'll have a whole bunch of information and then you grab an Uber and you take it there and you rent the car, you save yourself you may, 10, 20 bucks a day. I mean, the money that the airport rentals get are huge. No, I'll pick him up from the airport.

Yeah, Howard'll pick you up. Yeah, so a question, you rent cars, don't you, Earl? We have a rental car company. My dealership does and we have we'll rent a car to anybody. Now, the truth of the matter is today,

rental cars are overpriced because cars are overpriced it's it's an inflation in the automotive world and extends I know we have a certain size fleet we're usually out of cars and that probably is the case with a lot of independence where you know if it's a supply of demand the insurance companies kind of set the market because they rent a huge amount of cars for they're insured and and what they will pay tends to be what the uh rental car companies will have for their lowest price car if you want anything beyond their basic car you're going to pay a

whole lot more so um yeah uh there's always a car available inside the city that you're flying into that's going to be a much less expensive than the one that you rent the airport but even that car that you rent at the lower price quote unquote rental car company is going to charge your ten dollars more a day than it would cost you five years ago good information uh one other question uh actually it's a state a friend of mine uh has uh has a genesis and uh his radio wasn't working so he went to napleton and they they wanted six hundred dollars just to diagnose then he went to listen to this one

then he went to Stewart I don't know the name of the dealer and Stewart and they only wanted $250 so you can see what a crook

Mapleton is then he went on the internet and they told him to disconnect the battery and connected and his radio started working so I can't understand why that happened

Well, you know, to be honest with you, I kind of don't understand how Napleson exist either. For your regular files, Howard, you're a regular, you've heard all the story, the Napleton stories. I mean, you could write five books on the way he's taken advantage of people. The interesting thing is that he has, he's a large dealership group. He owns, I want to say, 25, 30 dealerships, and they're scattered around, a lot of them in Florida, but in other states. He's a, his father started the business and, and he continued it. Now is, I think his daughter is in charge. It's a family-owned business.

And the Federal Trade Commission has just, has been all over him in multiple cases. He's been involved in multiple lawsuits with employees and customers. Even the manufacturers have sued Napleton. He's had big fights with Nissan. I don't know about 100. But I think all the manufacturers that he represents would love to get rid of him. I think they're just, they're stuck with him. You know, the franchise that car dealers have is something that is almost impossible for the manufacturers to get out of.

And that's the reason that car dealers are the only place you get by a car, with some exceptions like electric vehicle manufacturers. Tesla sells you directly, but that's a loophole in the law there. But, yeah, why does Naples exist? Every time the Federal Trade Commission goes after him and finds him a ton of money, we go out and we shop another Napleson store and he's worse than he was before.

So he doesn't care. He's got so much money, I guess, I guess, and he feels like he could get away with it. And I guess he feels like he can make more money stealing than he can doing it honestly. And I hope this Federal Trade Commission proves him wrong in July. Well, I hope they have repercussions now because he was free and clear.

No one did anything. Maybe he was fine something, but it didn't matter to him because he was making so much money. No, no. He's not, he lives in Palm Beach. But, in fact, a lot of people live in Palm Beach. Look, Terry Taylor, the mystery man, we'll talk about that later in the show. He's a billionaire. He's the largest owner of independent.

dealerships in the world, Terry Taylor. So I think Napleton, Ed Napleton's over at Palm Beach. He's probably playing golf and having a ball and he's got all these dealerships and they keep sending him money and he's trying to spend it as fast as he can. So

he doesn't know what's going on. He probably doesn't even read the newspaper. I guess we don't have newspapers anymore, do we? I do. We have a lot of newspapers. Okay, guys, I'm going to interrupt you. Howard, the bottom line here, Napleton is living up to their reputation, and we certainly hope that the Federal Trade Commission really can help us,

you know, with every week, week in and week out for years, stressing to the audience, dishonest dealers. So the FTC is going to come around, and I have a lot of faith in them. So July, I believe, I believe Earl said July 30th. We're all going to be looking at that date. And Howard, it's a pleasure talking to you. I got about five calls backed up. Do you have any other questions?

Thank you very much. Have a good day. Thanks, Howard. All right. Thank you. We're going to go to Rick, who's calling us from Hope Sound. Hey, Rick. Good morning, Rick.

Hey, good morning, everybody. Nice. I listen every weekend. Great show. It's funny Howard just mentioned the dealership up in Stewart. Because I was there yesterday, it's the Hyundai dealership. I've been buying from them about almost 10 years. Great place.

So he's right. Great. I did know. I got an offer yesterday, and there was some fees on it that I questioned. And maybe you can help me out with this. Well, one was a registration fee of $450. Electronic filing fee, $159. A tire fee was $6 and change.

Actually, the dealer fee was on $8.49. So is $450 for a registration fee? Is that normal? Well, it's hard to say without knowing the car. The license and registration varies with the car and with your date of birth and whether you're trading a car in or buying a car outright. But $450 is not way out of line, but it could be. I mean, it depends on the specifics.

The question to ask is, is this fee being paid to the state of Florida? and that's, we call all the, most of what you listed there, Rick, are the junk fees. There between a junk fee and a government fee, which is a legitimate fee, is the dealer doesn't keep the money, he pays it to either the federal or the state government. The tire fee, the small one you mentioned, I think it's probably $6.50, as small as that is, that's a legitimate fee paid to the federal government. The registration course goes to the state of Florida. Sales tax goes to the state of Florida.

Those are legitimate fees. So the test, if you really want to, if you're going to have to argue with the dealer about it, check the buyer's order, the vehicle buyers order. And if they calculated Florida sales tax on a quote-unquote fee, then it's not really a fee. It's profit. You have to pay sales tax on anything on the car that is not paid out to the government. So an Althodore price on that Hyundai you want to buy.

is got to be plus federal or state taxes only. And that's an out-the-door price. Everything else is a junk fee that they added to the price they quoted you. Any electronic file fee, you mean? What's that? Electronic file fee, yeah. See, that's one of the most devious fees because somebody gave that some thought and say,

we need to trick our buyer, the customer, into thinking this is really a government fee. So this sounds pretty good. Electronic filing fee. Electronic filing fee is a, there are companies out there. We use a company that does our registration in my dealership, and we pay them $10 for the, for the, it's not a government fee, by the way.

I pay my salesman at Commissioner 2 and I pay my light bill. All my expenses should be baked into the price of the car when I quote it to you. The electronic filing fee is not really a fee. It's a cost that dealer pays a private company to do the registration work. And he pays about $10. Then he's charging you hundreds of dollars and trying to trick you to think they're paying it to the state of Florida. State of Florida doesn't see any of that money. Okay.

Getting back to the registration fee, the manager, I questioned it. And I said, it doesn't cost $450, change my plate over to that car. He says to me, you're probably right. It's probably only about 200 or something. Then they're really in trouble because if they're not paying Florida sales tax on that $450, let's say they're only paying the sales tax. Well, they're cheating the state of Florida because the state of Florida won't let them get away with omitting sales tax just because they call a junk fee a registration fee.

If it's not a registration fee paid to the state of Florida, and they don't pay sales tax. They've probably been doing that on hundreds or thousands of cars. They're subject to audit by the state of Florida, and they can charge them back hundreds of thousands of dollars. So you could call the Department of Motor Vehicles and say, I'm buying this car, I'm trading in this car, and my date of birth is this, what should my registration fees be? And they'll tell you exactly, you could actually have the car registered by them. They will tell you what the real registration fee is. And if Naples, if the dealer in Stewart is lying about the registration fee, he's really getting himself in big trouble.

You could tell the Department of Vehicles, they'd audit him on that. Okay. Thank you very much, Rick. I appreciate the call. All right. Take care. Bye. Thank you.

We're going to go to Bob in Lake Park. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. How is everybody this morning? good good I want to talk to you about last week with a shopping we a local Ford dealer and remember there used to be called Paul Harvey and he would tell a store say this is the rest so here's the rest of the story here's hey Bob hey Bob you're cutting it out you're breaking up

you go to another phone or give us a call back? Yeah, yeah, I could call you back. Okay, thank you. 877-960 9960. I hope he does, because I love those old Paul Harvey. And now, you know, the rest of the story. I'll tell you, there's nobody who will replace him. No. That's for sure. 877-960-99-1960, or you can text.

us at 772-497-6-5-30. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call. And, you know, let me ask you this, just to put this out there, ladies, what was the first question you asked before buying a car, that you asked yourself or asked anyone? And did you go straight to the Internet? 877-960-960. We're going to go to Wally, who's been holding from Boka. Good morning, Wally. Hi. Hi, good morning.

Morning. Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. I enjoy listening to your show every Saturday morning. Very interesting and educational. Thank you. I have a question. And it's in reference to an extended warranty directly from the manufacturer, not from a second or third party, directly from the manufacturer, who is BMW.

I bought a 2021 re-series BMW off of my lease. my lease was expiring in October. My car only has 33,000 miles on it. It's in perfect condition. I've constantly had it. Oil change maintained according to BMW

what they require at the BMW dealership, whether it was in Florida or it was up north in the Boston area. as I said car only has 33,000 miles I just brought it in for an oil change

and the dealer did a I would I would guess I'd call it an inspection if you would at that time BMW

whether they required or not I had it done it cost me probably around I don't know, maybe $300 or so. My question to them at the time was, whenever I bring a car in, I automatically get a video of, from the mechanic.

And whether it was an oil change or a front end alignment or whatever. And I was told that, no, this is different. This is a total check sheet that they go through, which is fine. Anyhow, bottom line, the car came out. perfect. So this is really my question. I talked to the dealership, and of course, according to BMW, you have to buy an extended warranty, excuse me, through the dealership. So I sat down with somebody at the dealership in Coconut Creek, and they were totally decent. The bottom line is

to extend the warranty from BMW that covers everything that the car covers for the first four years, I'm looking at about $1,100 a year. So with tax and all, I'm looking at roughly $3,500 to extend the warranty for three additional years, up to $75,000. miles. I only put on 10,000 miles a year, so that would absolutely cover the mileage. That's not a problem. But my question is, what is your feeling about the extended warranty where labor rates are so expensive at BMW dealerships for anything at all? I could see spending $1,000 without a problem in a year or $1,100, whatever.

So with that said, I'm going to ask you for your opinion, please. Well, I basically have this philosophy about extended warranties. Now, you've done the right thing by considering only the manufacturer's extended warranty. That's number one. It's legitimate. They're not going to lie, cheater's deal. If you buy an extended warranty from one of these independent companies or through the dealerships, many dealers own their own.

warranty companies and sell you, and they designed their own warranties, and it's very, very risky when you buy that. BMW is legitimate. Now, you've owned that BMW for, you didn't own it, but you leased it, so you know the car pretty well. You know, probably ran well for you. You like it. That's the reason to exercise your option to purchase it, and you've had good experience. You've maintained the car properly. I don't see any need to spend that kind of money on the extended warranty. I promise you that on average the dealership and

BMW are making a ton of money by selling those warranties. And that's simply because the repair cost, if they have to take care of when there is a claim on the warranty, is far less than the premium you pay. $1,100 a month for

three years or whatever. There's your four years that you're going to keep the car. You could put that in the stock market, put that in the bond market, put it in the same account and draw on it if you needed it for repair. But BMW is basically a good car and you take care of that car and you spend a lot of money taking care of it. I don't think you should add an expense of an extended warranty even though it's a BMW. It's safe, but I have my own warranty company in my dealership and I have for many years. And it's one of the most profitable things I

have the tax the tax code favors insurance companies and in Florida and probably a lot of other states the wordy companies are actually insurance companies so they get they get favorite tax treatment and the money that's made is is quite good so insurance companies make more money than just about any other company and they are a lot of them sell extended words so I say pass put the money away. Sounds to me like you can afford to do a repair if you have to. You'd be paying that $4,000 for peace of mind. Is your peace of mind worth that amount of money? Mine's not. I'd rather save the money. My question, no, and I appreciate your answer. I just want to correct one thing. You said $1,100 a month. It's $1,100 a year. That's what I meant to say, yeah. I'm

certainly not a little, yeah. So I'm looking, I'm looking at approximately 33, 34. $100 over up and above when the manufacturer's warranty expires in about six months from now. So this is what they said to me, if the water pump had to be replaced, I could easily spend easily $1,500 between the part and the labor. Sure. Does that sound true? Well, yeah, you can only shop and compare prices. But the point is, they're trying to scare you into buying the warranty.

It's extremely profitable. The person that's selling you the warranty gets a big commission. Rick has a point. Bob, what year is your BMW? 2,021. Okay. And what is the factory warranty on the power train? Four years.

Only four years? Yeah, four years. Wow. 48 months. All right. So you've still got at least one year of factory warranty. Um, about, you're about nine months. Yeah.

Right. I myself, I would, I would find it highly unlikely that you would have any sort of a failure on a car that you don't drive near as much. You, you, from what you're saying, you drive about half as much as most people do. I don't think you're going to see failures on that car. Uh, pardon me? Put the $3,300 in the stock market. And three years, it's probably worth, be worth $4,300.

So, and if it's nothing, you can draw upon that, but I would not give them $3,300. I tend to agree, I tend to agree with you, and I'll probably take your advice. One thing I do want to say, when you mentioned scare tactics, when I walked into the office where this person, you sit down with this person, they tell you about the warranty, they have a sign on the wall that was done on a printer. and it says hourly labor rates for BMW at that dealership $340 something or $360 something

dollars per hour. So to me when I saw that I knew right away that that was a little bit of a scare tactic. It is, yeah. And I can tell you, for personal experience one reason that this show is pretty accurate

is because I am a car dealer. I minute. And I do a lot of the things that the car dealers out there are doing. I know how much money I make, and I know there's no more money made anywhere than on extended warranty. So it's a insurance companies are winning and you're losing. Hey, we've got a bunch of calls backed up. Thank you. Thank you for your advice. Give us a call next week and let us know what you decided. Thank you for calling, Wally. we're going to go to Bob in Lake Park. Thanks for calling back, Bob.

Oh, how's this? Am I better coming in better? Yes, so far. Oh, okay. Well, I have one thing to say you can't, if you shouldn't buy a BMW unless you can afford to fix it. They're expensive cars and expensive to fix. So you know that before you go in and you buy one of those things. But I would like to get back to what I was saying before about.

the rest of the story. So you shop the dealership last week, the local Ford dealership, and he gave them good marks and all. And... Molandex. Yes, they're pretty above board on their sales. The problem is,

the rest of the story is, how are you going to get the car service? Because their service department over there is a disaster. Oh. They've lost all their mechanics that worked there for years. They're all gone.

I had a friend of mine bring his F, 150 over there at 2016. He had extended warranty from Ford with a $100 deductible. The truck was running at a low RPM at idle. About 475. It should be running at $6.50.

He brought it over there four times. Four times. Once they had it for six weeks and they replaced the throttle body and everything. They could never get the thing to run properly. And they told him, don't bring it here anymore. We can't fix it.

Well, Bob, you know, it's one of the reasons that I always advise people, unless it's warranty work, shop the independent mechanics, shop the independent... This was a warranty. He had a warranty. Well, then, well, you talk about a manufacturer's warranty or an extended warranty? Extended warranty from Ford Motor Company with $100 deductible. Then I would go to another Ford dealer. Well, he did. Eventually, he went to Al Packer, and he brought it.

there once and they fixed it well that's that's that's competition is our friend and uh if you have a problem with a dealer and you feel like you need a dealer and there are a lot of good things about dealer service departments they have their their mechanics are trained specifically in that vehicle they have the extremely expensive diagnostic equipment they also have direct access to the manufacturers engineers and uh people that that are really at the top of the skill level in fixing cars so There's a lot of good things to be said about dealer service departments. The worst thing I say about the service department is the huge cost compared to what an independent would be. So if you have to go back to a Ford dealer, your friend did exactly the right thing.

Went to a different Ford dealer and found satisfaction. I get it, but, you know, if you buy a vehicle from a local dealer, Why should you have to travel 50 miles or 40 miles to bring the car to be serviced somewhere else? Well, if you're in South Florida, you only have to go about five blocks because there's so many dealers down here. I think there's four or four dealers in Palm Beach County. At last count, there might be five by now, but usually if you're in a metro area, there's probably one or two or three other dealers within a half an hour drive. and when you're talking about spending thousands of dollars that half an hour may be a cheap drive to make

well i had an issue over there too i went over there for an oil change and they're supposed to put six quarts of oil in my car they only put five that's good to know i you know we spoke very highly at molnakes in the sales department and we probably should do more uh mystery shops in service departments because uh i think we give a false sense of security when we give a high score on the sales department and then they found out the service department is going to give you a hard time or overcharge you so i i appreciate you're making that point about malnick yeah well not only that but you know they did that they do a checklist like they check all these other things yeah and i my car notoriously the the negative battery terminal always gets corroded well that's a good

thing and a bad thing because honestly it's a good thing to be able to have a checklist uh but it turns into a you for them to try to sell you more stuff that you don't need. Well, the problem is he never checked the battery cable. When I got the car home, it not only was stored on oil, but the battery cable was corroded. So I went back there, and the service advisors said to me that in order for them to clean the battery cable, they would have to charge me. So I just did it myself. I mean, I know how to do that. Yeah, take it up the line, Bob, when you have a problem like that and try to try to get up.

to the general manager level. Well, I took it to the service manager. Yeah. And his name is Elizor, is his first name. And he was very put off on trying to help me. I mean, I eventually got it taken care of it, but it was a contested issue, you know, trying to get the service done properly. And I'm just saying they lost all their, they lost all their good mechanics.

All the people that used to work there are gone. Yeah, that happens, Bob. You know, you sound like an educated consumer, Bob, and unfortunately, I have about five calls backed up. Well, have a nice weekend, everybody. Have a great weekend. $50, ladies, for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call, and you can win yourself $50. We have a great mystery shopping report coming up from Rick Case in Fort Lauderdale, so stay tuned for

that. We're going to go to Jersey, Mike, who's a regular caller. Good morning, Jersey. Good morning, folks. You're doing a great show again as usual. I've got to compliment you. Thank you. Let me say this about Big Dog Ranch, first of all, then I'll get the cars. That's one of the greatest organizations I've ever found. I'm a veteran. I adopted a dog there, and a lot of people that may want to be going out there are buying a dog, and there's a lot out there, can receive a 50% discount on any dog that they purchase there if they're a veteran.

And they are so large they actually have a center as one of the buildings that's solely for veterans. You can go there and because of that, you'll get treated anywhere there correctly. But if you go there, if you're a veteran and you find the veteran

building, it will get a little extra exceptional courtesy service, such as a dog vests, which can be used very heavily, that you might end up spending $80, $90 or whatever in a dog store, you know, a fence shop. Thank you, Mike. I guess they go out there and take a good look at what's going on. And by the way, they are a no-kill, whereas other places, I don't want to name who they

are, but the biggest one right here in West Palm Beach, everybody knows who it is. That is a, they do euthanize their animals. So I would strongly support Big Dog Ranch. A little bit of a drive out of town, but it's a very nice country ride, and you'll be enjoying it if you're interested in finding a great dog out there. Well, we have a dog of the week coming up later in the show, so stay tuned. Well, it's not true. And when you get that dog, it's fully serviced.

It's chipped. It's got a chip in it, so you can find it if ever gets lost. It's been groomed. It's been checked by the veterinarian. It's not just a dog that's poured off on you. They take care of what they're doing out there. They know what they're doing. And if you have a problem in the future with your dog, you take it back there

and you can get a diagnosis for free with a veterinarian. You're going to a veterinarian someplace else that's going to cost you $3, $400 to find out what might be wrong with your dog. Well, thank you, Mike. We're going to talk about the dog in a little while, too, so I appreciate the comments. Because. I have a friend who bought a baby. BMW 2018

he purchased it he's paying $850 per month on it he's put $6,800 and change into this car

in repairs from the same place from which he bought it here in West Palm Beach of course I advise him initially don't buy any cars anywhere in South Florida and up north

go up to Sebastian go up to Jacksonville or Orlando whatever. I've been advised that one of the worst things you can do is buy a car here in South Florida. And I don't want to take away a lot of business from dealerships here. But, you know, what is true is true. And so he didn't listen to me.

Therefore, he ended up and this, that, everything else. And by the way, he never even got a car fax on that car when he bought it because he didn't know to ask for it, which I advise all your people to do. And before to even buy that car, take it to an interesting. independent, reliable service center someplace and have it checked when you take it for your test drive. Yeah, you're exactly right. And you go to $99. They'll give you a seven-page report on the car.

You buy a luxury car and you expect to get hosed when you go into the service department, whether it's a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley or BMW, land rover. If you're going to buy an expensive imported car, they're going to get you. I don't, the way I look at it is if you can afford to spend that kind of money on a car, you better be prepared to be able to spend the money to get it repaired because it's going to cost you. And actually, they build pretty good cars. BMW's a good car. There are a lot of good, well-built luxury cars.

BMW is one of the better ones. I wouldn't buy a Land Rover on a bet because they're terrible cars mechanically. But, yeah, it's, if you buy something like an accident, Accura, you go to a Honda dealer, you buy a Cadillac dealer, take it to a Chevrolete dealer to get fixed. If you buy a Lexus, take it to a Toyota dealer to get fixed because the Toyota dealer or the Honda dealer will charge you a lot less than the Accura election dealer will charge you. But it's just marketing. People know. You got that right? Yeah.

One last thing about that is BMW. Yeah. I showed him that if he went to Rock Auto, he could have bought a steel water pump for $375 of which the dealership that he bought it from, charged him $850 for a plastic water pump, and then they charged him another $4.00 to install it. I said, you know, we could have done that in my driveway here. I got to get my motorhead. You know, in 20 minutes or half an hour, it's no big deal.

You know, you take the permit tax, feel it after you take the thing off, and bingo bangles is done. And so, you know, his problem was he didn't get the car diagnosed from the beginning. I advise all of your listeners, get that car checked out thoroughly. To your satisfaction, make sure you ask the right questions before you oblige yourself to have to buy it. And if it's a finance car, I think you've got three days to decide that you don't want the contract, and that's a state law, I believe. Jersey, Mike, thank you so much for informing our listeners.

You've done a great job this morning. And you guys keep up the good work, because I think you're great. You're one of the best shows on the radio. And I listen to the radio almost 24 hours a day. I'm not sleeping. We appreciate that. You're welcome. Have a great weekend.

Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers, $50. How was your service when you took your vehicle in? You know that there are more ladies who come through the service department than ever before. $50 for the first two new. lady callers we're going to go to mark we have all of our regular callers calling in this morning all the guys mark good morning mark's calling us from palm beach gardens good morning nancy earl stew and rick um i haven't called in i haven't been at sunrise oh jonathan i'm sorry um anyway i haven't called in and haven't been the sunrises for

two and a half months as being in the hospital for major surgery and so forth. Oh, my. So I haven't forgot about the sunrises or the Earl Stewart on cars. Hope you're feeling better. Yeah, I am. Just, I lost 58 pounds.

Oh, good news. Anyway. Hey, Rick, quick question. I got a 2015 Camry, S.E. Now, the front turn signal bulb is burnt out in the side of the bumper or front corner of the bumper. And I don't see any screws on the outside

where you could take the lens off and put a bulb in. The question is, does a bumper have to come off to do that or a splash shield underneath it so you can get behind it? It's the easiest way it's a splash shield. Probably a half dozen screws and a couple of plastic clips. And unless you have a lift, you're going to be laying on your back to do it. But you've got to reach up under the bumper from inside once you get that splash shield down. Okay. All right. Well, being a double amputee, I can't get on the ground, but I was wondering if one of my kids could do it.

But anyway, all right. We'll see about bringing it in. What would I be charged normally, a guesstimate? Is that always a minimum of one hour? We normally would, that one probably, we would do it as the one-hour diagnostic that we would do. So it would be a $99, $100. and in the cost of the bulb would probably be about $12 to $15. Okay, cool. Well, I'm going to keep you. Thanks, goody, listen to you guys again, and have a great weekend.

It was great hearing from you, Mark. God bless and take care. We're going to go to Marty, another regular caller from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How are you? Fantastic. I have a question.

question that probably Rick or Earl, I'm sure, and you might know, doesn't apply in Florida, but they had a lot of news stories on with this bad weather up north and now west and everything, that EVs lose their charge in real cold weather, and it takes a lot longer to charge the car in cold weather. and they had people waiting six hours in line to get to a charger. They interviewed one guy and he said, he's going back to gasoline. Really? I saw quite a few stories about that, yeah. And the pictures, now I'm sure they were playing it, you know,

sensationalizing it quite a bit. But even if you take that sensationalized story, And you cut it by 50%. That's still kind of a rough thing. Like, you know, if Earl right now were somewhere up in the middle of Colorado or, well, like where my friend is in Ohio, and that much snow and that cold of temperature, matter of fact, Mark Ryan on your YouTube channel here says it was minus 10 degrees at his house. I don't think your Tesla would be getting around too well. in that or all the, I think you'd have to have a full charge on it to get yourself down your driveway and back. I think they should move to Florida. I think, you know, we hear,

we hear all these complaints about charging in cold weather, but I lived in Troy, New York for a year. I lived in Lafayette, Indiana for two years. I've been in Elmira. I've been in the frozen wastelands of the north, and I remember having huge problems with my car. I mean, I couldn't start my car, I couldn't drive my car, I couldn't park my car, I was afraid I was going to wreck my car. It isn't the car, folks. It's the weather. Come down to Florida. Forget about, forget it.

Why do people live in sub-zero areas? I don't get it. Mike? Well, I'm from Rochester, and I can tell you this, except for jobs, everybody should be living in Florida. Oh, boy. So we have Marty and we have Earl, who are now working for the Chamber of Commerce, come down to Florida. Well, let me ask you a question, though. In somebody's garage, will the cold weather affect an EV?

If it's working in your garage, I think these people were looking for outdoor chargers somewhere. Outdoor cars, I think. Right. And having your car in your garage, obviously, it's actually. out of the wind, so you're not getting the wind chill effect. But even then, that garage still can get pretty cold. So it's going to have an effect on it. It's going to shorten the range temporarily.

But, you know, you're just going to have to deal with it like folks do with normal gasoline cars. My garage got down to 65 degrees last night, and my car charged just fine. Yeah. Well, my step sister up in New Hampshire probably had negative 12 in her garage. And I know when they have their Halloween or their holiday parties for Christmas time, they don't bother with the fridge or their freezer. They set their food in the garage because it keeps it ice cold. You know, so, I mean, but it's the same idea with gasoline cars.

A lot of times you have to use block heaters that plug into the wall. Yeah. So, I mean, there's just things that you have to do. We're joking about this a lot. But the fact of the better is, that is an issue. And I know that the electric vehicle manufacturers are addressing. it and the answer is yes there will be a solution because Elon Musk wants to sell Tesla's in Buffalo, New York, just like he does in Miami. So he's going to come up with a solution that where

you will be able to charge a car in cold weather and it's probably going to happen later rather than sooner, but there are a lot of glitches with electric cars. Just because it takes longer today to charge electric car in sub-zero weather doesn't mean that we're going to be driving combustion engine cars forever. We're not. We're going to be driving electric vehicle cars. In about 25 years, you won't be able to buy a combustion engine car. You'll be buying, and 18 states have already made combustion engine cars illegal

in 25 years. So it's going to come. That's not going to bother me because I'm 83 years old, but it's going to, you know, my grandchildren will not be driving combustion engine cars. They will be driving EVs. Yeah, for now, already, combustion. I know one thing they told the bills people, they got to bring, either they bring or they give you a shovel, so you can get a seat in the Bill's Stadium for Sunday night.

Because Buffalo had, like certain parts of Buffalo, had about 70 inches of snow this week. Thank God. Thank God for all the volunteers. Yeah, I don't. think any car is going to make it through there whether it starts or it doesn't start yeah Marty thanks for the call have yourself a all right a great weekend I hope your cough I hope your cough gets better thanks okay me or Rick both both of you thank you better stay away from

Earl right yeah thanks for feeling sorry for me I feel like I'm between two coughing machines you Earl is a cyborg he doesn't get sick yeah you want Rick to stay away from tomorrow? I'm being facetious. Hey, on Morty again, thank you. Have a great weekend. All right, you too. Bye-bye. Okay. We're going to go to John in Palm City, who's been holding. Good morning, John. Good morning. I have a question for Rick. It's about my mechanic, not on my car, but just replaced the front-end struts on a car, and it was very long mileage. And here's the reason why he told me, he said that the owner of that car is like a hot rodder. When he sees the speed bumps,

He doesn't slow down. It's quite rough on the car. And he said that's the reason why the shock absorbers, which basically what a struts is, once so soon, I think the car only had like about 60-some odd thousand miles on it. So what your owner's manual doesn't have a time period to repay struts, what's Ricks, how do they check a struts when the car is bought in?

And after they put the struts in, does the car have to be realigned? I'll take that last one first. After you replace any front end steering or suspension component, the alignment should be checked and adjusted if necessary. And for testing struts, it's a time-honored way, a simple jounce test, a bounce test. We basically will, you walk up to the car,

you put your knee on the bumper, and you start bouncing it up and down, And once you get a good rhythm with that car really bouncing up and down, you step back, and it should move maybe one to one and a half, maybe two more bounces, and then it should settle right out and be smooth and stop. If it keeps bouncing more than two or three times, it means that that strut on that corner, the shock absorber, is worn out. Well, these speed bumps that they have on many roads and parking lots,

and if you don't slow down to like two miles an hour, would that be very extra rough on it? Yes, it can be. If you're driving on, you know, hard, heavy roads and that shock absorber is having to basically beat itself to death, that can cause damage to the inside seals and the fluid, because basically all it really is is it's a tube full of fluid, another rod moving in the center with a big baffle. And as it moves down through the fluid, the fluid has to squeeze past that baffle, and when it goes back up through,

it has to squeeze past the other way. So the fluid is supposed to slow down that up-and-down movement, make it create resistance, and slow it down. If that baffle inside starts to break down by being shoved too hard up and down against that fluid, you know, over time, that has a big effect on it, and suddenly with that baffled not moving that fluid properly, that rod just slides up and down very easily, and your shock absorber doesn't

absorb the shocks. Well, the point is the way they put these speed bumps in, it's ridiculous in some areas, but everybody should just slow down as much as they can, and it's hard on a car if you don't. Oh, absolutely. And some roads that just have massive potholes and the repairs on them, they get humped up high in the air. So, you know, you're still in the same situation. That shock absorber is being beaten up and down really excessively. And at higher speeds, that causes damage to the baffles. I don't know if it's true, but I heard as a federal law on an interstate or an exit of it, they'll never put a state. speed bump. And the reason is that a person does go too fast over it, they can lose total control of the car. Absolutely, yes. You'll never see speed bumps on any road that might have higher speeds possible. Well, it's sad. Some associations in private streets, they have it so high, it's ridiculous.

Well, and the other effect of that is that also affects emergency vehicles such as the police and the fire department when you're on a residential road that that fire truck should be able to do 30 miles an hour to get to your house that's burning and instead they have to slow down to two miles an hour every hundred feet that's a great point i never thought about that i mean to to me i got to tell you if you know i'm 55 years old i'm a big guy and suppose i was to have a heart attack I would rather have a nice smooth road going to my house rather than one has speed bumps every couple of wives and know that that fire rescue,

the guy that's coming to save my life has got to slow down every couple feet. A great big fire truck, would they be affected the same as a car going over a speed bump? More so because of their weight and their size. Yeah, wow. They have to really slow down. Well, thank you, Rick, for that information.

It's interesting. Thank you, John. You're very welcome. Thank you again. Thanks for calling and stay tuned for that mystery shopping report that we did at Rick Case in Fort Lauderdale. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And when you went out looking for a car or you got on the Internet, did you look at the cost of the maintenance on a vehicle you were interested in? it's real important

whatever it will cost you to keep that car on the road so good luck in purchasing a vehicle whether it be new or used and give us a call for the first two new lady callers

877 960 9960 and I didn't mention earlier and it's real important your anonymous feedback dot com your anonymous feedback.com and you know it's been a long time since we've mentioned earl's vigilantes

and if you're all wondering out there it still exists and you can join by going to earl on cars and checking out that website and it's a it's a win-win situation you can not only help others but you can help you know somebody even in your neighborhood so go to Earl on Cars and check out Earl's vigilantes. We're going to go to Ron, who's holding, and he's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Ron. Hi, how are you? Hello.

Hey. I am actually Jersey Mike's friend with the BMW. Ah. Yeah, I heard, I heard them. Um, the question I have is, uh, it's a 2018 BMW. I love the way to 2018 looks and I, I had $52,000 on it when I got it. Now it's got about $58,000 on it. The first thing that happened was the water, uh, it was leaking some coolant.

And, uh, I had a diagnose that was $180 just to tell me that the water pump needed to be replaced. So the place that I took it, I'm not going to, I'm going to get all my ducks at all, I'll call you back next Saturday with everything, because they still have the vehicle now. That was in October, and I finally got it back in a few days right before Halloween, and it was still leaking, and I took it right back again, and it was a O-ring that's got an elbow that goes to the top of the head towards the firewall. and it was O-ring. Now, the first of all, the payment I was $1485 for the water pump. Now it was another $2,100 for a O-ring that pushes into an elbow, like a fiberglass kind of elbow. And so the O-ring cost me $2,000 after that. And I drove it probably about four miles.

And now the computer, they had it since then. and the computer went crazy, and they had it since the beginning of November, like November 1st, 2nd. And now my question is, how many times do they have to try to fix this computer part? Because they already dropped the ball on the water pump once, and it wasn't a water pump.

It was actually that old ring. And how many times does it? repair garage that is BMW certified and I'm not going to next week. I'll just do what they do by Monday with this computer stuff and next week I'll let you know. Okay, so they put a CES module in it. Okay? They told me that's what it was. I had something to do with the security. That in it. So the integrated supply module

they put it that in, it still is not fixed. And now I'm way up over the $2,000 mark again. already um have you taken it up the line if you talked to the service the the service manager or general manager of the dealership yes i did uh i talked to them and they said they they're almost there they almost they are almost able to figure out they're testing the wired wiring diagram and they said there goes possible that there is water inside the vehicle have you have you contacted the manufacturer No, I haven't.

Sometimes that gets the attention of the dealers. You know, they operate with a franchise agreement. They have a contract with BMW, and they have technical representatives. If you go to BMW and you say, I'm having this issue, they would be a conversation between the BMW technician and the dealership technicians and the service manager. I think it doesn't cost you anything to make that phone call, and you certainly have every right to be concerned.

Normally, I would say, take it to another dealer, but you're in so deep with this one dealer, and they have the history of what they've done wrong, unfortunately, and so you're almost stuck, but try to call it to the attention as high up the ladder as you can. Is this a Brayman dealership or a... No, it was, they're actually on my side. They said if I could get it there, they're going to give me another one.

It said it was a car lot. So we're very well known. They sell high-end cars. It's down on the, it's actually, they're treating me well with it. Car factory, down in, down in Wake Worth on military trail. Oh, so you use car. Yeah. No, I would, I would, if I were in this deep, I'd take it to another,

mechanic. There are a lot of really good qualified foreign car mechanics, especially German cars, BMW, Mercedes, Volkswagen, and a lot of these guys are really good. The price is much less than it sounds to be like what you've been paying. But try to go up the ladder to the guy that runs the dealership or the place you bought the car and then maybe go to the menu. If this isn't, this is not a BMW franchise dealer, you're saying? I'm being totally honest. I don't, I don't know that. I don't know. There's only two BMW dealers in this area that I know of Brayman and Vista Motors. No, it's not then.

Okay, so it's not a franchise dealer. So you are with an independent repair facility now. I try to find out who owned the place and say, hey, help me here. Your technicians are not able to help me and I need to have something done but it's you're you're I feel sorry for you because I uh uh it's you know you're you can't leave now because you're already paid them too much money and whoever you saw next is going to have to start all over again so you're stuck with where you are uh insist on seeing the guy that owns the place okay I will do that all right and I'll call us back and let us know what happens will you I will. I'll call you next week and let you know what happens.

Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Ron. Thanks for being part of the show. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 77-492-497-6-5-30. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. Earl's going to get to that in a couple of minutes. We're going to stay on the phones, and we're going to talk to Lance, who's a regular caller from Tennessee. Morning, Lance.

Good morning, Earl Stewart on Tars. Hey. You got a song for me? Are you kidding? I've got an album for you. Earl, we've got snow on the ground here. Oh, my God. Snow in Tennessee.

How much snow you got? We had about nine inches of snow in this little thing. Wow. Could you say on the grass? and I'll tell you something that we're trying to find out up here I'll tell you, don't eat yellow snow No, that's not a good thing I've heard that, yeah

We never did that in Pittsburgh Well, I've got a little quick tune for you Let's hear it And I just want you to know We appreciate you, Nancy and Rick and Sue and you're just very charming, delightful to you, folks. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Well, if the car is broken, you are too, let's do Earl Stewart on cars. You'll tell you what to do. Stay away from dealer fees. He'll tell you where to go. He'll help you with you. And just remember, Earl Stewart on cars on Saturday morning.

Well, I'll tell you what. You need to go on the road with that. I think you should be playing in nightclubs. I'd love to see you in person with a band behind you. Well, Earl, we're on the road with it, but we're just trying to stay on paved roads. Well, thanks so much for bringing happiness and cheer to our show every week. We would miss you if you didn't call.

So thanks again for calling, Lance. Have a great day. You too, my friend. Thank you. We're going to go to Frank from Jupiter Farms. Oh, good morning. It's always hard to follow some of your guests that are in front of me. It's like a hard act to follow.

Yeah, that's true. Very true. I got jokes and not singing. A couple of things for you guys. The first one I would be for Rick. We have an Audi that's coming up on its two-year point for an oil change. And when I spoke to them about making an appointment, they're saying, oh, the two-year check, they're going to pull the spark plugs.

They're going to check the air filters, a cabin filter, the engine filter, inspect the brakes, I mean, on and on. And after last week, when you're talking how the engines pretty well tune themselves, you know, as your drive, it would really be worthwhile pulling spark plugs that only, 15,000 miles to look at them and break in the seal, factory seal, or does Rick think about that? Pulling spark plugs at 15,000 miles? We haven't done that since the early 90s. If they're iridium spark plugs, which they probably are on an Audi, they should be at 150,000 miles, not 15.

Now, inspecting the rest of the car, obviously, you look at the filters, you look at the brakes, you know, that's getting under there, shining a light all around, looking for anything that, you know, sometimes things happen. Even on the best of cars, sometimes things break. Well, that sounds like this outfit does know what they're doing. I'd get out of there. That sounds like they're trying to feed you a whole line of making their service sound way better so they can charge you a little extra.

That's almost fraudulent to, pump it up a bit. I'd recommend 15,000 miles changing spark plugs. That sounds like either they're stupid or they're dishonest. Yeah, and I myself as a mechanic, if the car's not running bad, if the car's running normal and smooth, I'm not going to pull out spark plugs to look at them. I'm going to pull them out to replace them and then at the appropriate mileage. I see no, unless the B.M or the Audi owner's manual,

their service manual recommends doing this, which I couldn't see why they would do that, I wouldn't do it. That just sounds like asking for trouble. Thank you. That's exactly, that was exactly the red flag I felt when they told me that. And I said, well, this is perfect. I don't take it in for two weeks.

I get to talk to you guys and reaffirm that my initial thoughts were rectified. rectified. Yeah, and if you want to have a little fun with them, if the motor is accessible enough, if you can get to where you can see the electrical connector that goes on to where the spark plug boot is, the coil pack, usually it's a coil

over the top of the spark plug. Get a little bit of like nail polish or model paint and just like a little dot that if they unplug it, it's going to disturb that and break it. And so you can go back and look and see, did they actually do that? I mean, because, you know, if they say they're doing it, okay, if they do it.

But if you put that little dot of paint on there and then you go back and you look and they didn't do it, I wouldn't even bother walking back in their office. I would simply walk away and I would tell the entire world on the Internet with photos, hey, they said they did. They didn't. I'm not going back there. I like that. That's a very great suggestion. Okay. Well, the other thing, too, I really want to say thank you for your construct, test, and explanation earlier on the show.

They say you can learn something new every day. Well, it's now been proved twice today. I appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, I sent you guys a picture of a Florida license plate that didn't have a month and date expiration. It just had two letters. Oh, yeah. And that was me. And so that's a rental car. Again, I learned something new today.

Yep. I saw that recently myself a while back, a car that the license plate, instead of having the month and year, it said PM. And I thought, now what is this? And it turns out Florida now will, they give those license plates to the rental car companies and as their permanent registration, so they don't have to re-register the tag, which it kind of blew my mind a little because I remember back in the 70s when 70s and 80s they were upset about how all rental car tags

were always the same month and year, you know, the same month for the re-registration. And if you went to tourist places, you could recognize the rental cars and criminals would target them to break into them because they knew it was a rental and usually had good things that to steal. so now you just made the tag blatantly say this is a rental car it's it just they were like always done in june they were all these months number six right yeah florida well very good um you got a few more minutes or you got a bunch of people on the line no i don't think we have a few more minutes do we go ahead okay this would this be like a little test for rick but also for your viewers i was on the um

I'm going through a knee operation rehab. So as you sit on a bike and you pedal for 10 minutes, all these numbers appear on the screen. And I was thinking about the symbology of like 225. What motor did that stand for? And a 283 and a 327, a 340 and a 348, 383, 389, et cetera, et cetera. But it was an interesting way to remember the motors that were in different cars I had. The 225, do you remember which motor that was?

I want to say the Ford Mustang 65 I think that was a 289 What's that What's that, Jonathan? Chrysler 6 cylinder

That's coming from Jonathan Yep, that's good My mom That was our first new car She bought in 65 And Nancy would love this It was a Plymouth Barakuda Hey

It had a 2.25 A 3 speed rolling stick On the side of the steering wheel It was a neat car. It was really a nice car. And we were in North Carolina up to Maggie Valley one summer, and the car got bumped. She gets down and says to the person,

you hit my car. No, ma'am, you were sliding backwards on a hill because she didn't know about, you know, how to release a brake and clutch real quick on hills. So, yeah. But anyway, and then I had a 340, another barracuda, and a 380, and anyway. So with that,

last thing great stories they're talking about buffalo new york and the snow yes one might here's my quick buffalo story in 1977 i was i was working for eastern airlines and i was looking to get a little better job i still got down i just got down to college i'm waiting to go in the air force so um a better paying job open up in buffalo to work the ramp and that was a winter of 77 the car i had was a Ford Pinto with no heater. That's the year they would have found me dead on the road in the snow melt that summer. But I didn't go.

But it makes me think of Buffalo a lot for that. Let me let you guys get back to the other folks. And as always, it's a pleasure to hear your show each week to learn something sometimes and be reaffirmed on other things that were in my memory banks from the days of time lights and feeler gays and bubble. That makes us happy, Frank. the old school stuff

thanks for being part of the show you take care bye bye bye bye we're going to go to lorry and uh lorry's calling us from palm beach gardens and uh she has given us a call before good morning larry well good morning i am asking

for my daughter-in-law about her car the front bumper looks like saran wrap that's all wrinkled oh boy and melted that's not good

how long has it been that way she had gotten the car not too long ago and then it started and they told her it to be from the sun but she's parking in normal spaces that other people park yeah that that sounds like

paint delamination like the clear coat on the bumper is delamination is delaminated. It's literally it's it's not sticking to the color code underneath anymore and it's peeling up and that's why you'll see that that kind of looks like plastic wrap on it because it's the clear paint didn't stick properly. Unfortunately that is a condition that a lot of cars have got my own pickup. I've got that on several areas on it and it looks horrible because that clear coat just peels away and it flakes off and unfortunately the only way to fix it is you've

got to go to a body shop they're going to have to sand it down and reshoot that clear repaint the clear coat on it is that something that should be covered under warranty uh depends still under warranty if it's still under a three-year 36,000 mile warranty I would go immediately to the dealer and say, hey, this needs to be fixed. And, Lori, this problem's been, is existed for quite a long time. And there's a good point that you just mentioned about the warranty. You sound like an educated consumer. And there has been a lot of fixes with a warranty as far as that concerned.

So I would definitely entertain that idea. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome, Lori. spread the word okay tell all the other ladies to give us a call 877 960 9960 and earl's going to be getting to our you know anonymous feedback soon and uh rick's going to take care of some texts and some uh youtubes that are coming in we're going to talk to john in stewart good morning john good morning everyone good morning yes good morning can you hear me yes yes Loud and clear. Okay, so I got a good buddy that he buys these Lexus RX 350s for his wife. And so the last one that he had is 2016.

And so the navigation screen went off. So he took it up and it's going to cost $4,000. So he takes and he goes to the Lexus dealership here in Palm Beach, and he buys an off-lease car for his wife at 2021. R-X-350. And so he said that he would sell me his car, and he'd get the screen fixed for $4,000. He would take and do all the service on, have it all the service done, and he'd sell it to me for $12.50. So that's a pretty good price, I think. But would Rick or Earl or somebody would, would you buy that, would you buy, are those pretty dependable cars? It's a 2016 R.A.

6.350. Well, it's like we advise anybody when you're buying a used car, have an independent mechanic, check it out. Even if the seller doesn't know there's a problem with it, you might have a problem. And it would be doing yourself a favor just to

spend a couple hundred bucks, take it to a mechanic you trust, certified, ASC certified, and say, I want to buy the car, give it a once over, and see if there's anything that needs to be fixed or adjusted. A lot of times the sales continues and goes through, but the sellers say, hey, I'll take care of that.

If you're going to buy the car, I'll fix that for you. So $200 is the best $200 bucks you'll ever spend before you buy a used car. And from the fan boy side of it, a 2016 RX350, I would definitely want it looked over real close, but those are pretty cars. I love that Lexus. It's a beautiful car. Yeah, I'm going to buy it for my wife if we get it. But I just wonder if there's any history. I try to look up to see if there's anything that is problematic with that year.

But they had a bunch of little things, but nothing big. Well, a couple things you can do. You can get the VIN number and run that through safercar.gov, the website on the internet. And that will check for it. any open recalls on the car, so you can look and see if there's any safety recalls that need to be done. And if you have that VIN number, if you go to a Lexus dealer, they will quite likely be happy to look up the history on the car, and it's a national history. It'll tell you any time that's been at a Lexus dealership, and they can tell you if there's

been any serious issues that have been checked over on that car. Okay. All right. That sounds like a good deal then. Like, buy usually Toyota's, but Lexus is a, because he would always take and have all the oil changes and the work done at Toyota dealers because he said that they work on Lexuses because they're a Toyota product. And it's a lot cheaper that way. Oh, yes. Yes. Okay. But the Lexus just has the finish above. Where's your friend buying his new Lexus from?

The Palm Beach, Lexus of Palm Beach over there on Okochobe, because they had a bunch of cars to return and their leases. Tell them to call J.M. Lexus and Coconut Creek, it's a bit of a drive, but even if you don't drive down there, they'll give you a price on the phone. And they are the largest Lexus dealership in the world. They're honest, transparent, and they'll give you a really good price. If your friend doesn't want to buy it from J.M. Lexus, he can just take J.M. Lexus' price to pay. Palm Beach, Lexus, and they'll probably match it, or if they won't, then you drive 45 minutes, and you'll

get a better deal. Oh, okay, so it's J.M. Lexus and Coconut Creek. Coconut Creek. Fort Lauderdale area. Yep. Fort Lauderdale. Okay. All right. Thanks a lot, guys. Appreciate yourself. Thank you, John. Have a great

weekend. We're going to go to Karen, who's a first-time caller, and she's calling us from Pompano Beach. Good morning, Karen, and welcome. Good morning. Hello. everyone, hope you well. You just won yourself $50, Karen, by being the first-time caller. Well, thank you. You're welcome. I'm very excited about that. Karen, stay on the line and you can speak to Jeremy in our control room. Give him your contact information. He'll pass it along to me and I'll get

that check out to you. I appreciate that and can I talk you about my car after that? No, you can talk about your car right now. Great. I have a 2008 Lincoln 10. car. It has 90,800 miles on it. I bought it secondhand when it had 50,000 miles. And the last year has been really disaster. I had leaks in the front under the maps. One time it was so bad, the passenger side leaked over an inch of water in the back seat. I had a sit, and it still has water coming in. My windows broke open. They fixed that, but they're not right yet. I went back twice. I also had door locks that would not open or close. I was locked in and out of the car.

That was replaced. And the gentleman replaced him said they could not guarantee it because of the age of the car. And I'm just concerned in the situation. I love the car. I don't think it has a lot of miles on it and like to keep it up. You know, you've got one of the most, it's a very old car. You're right, but the mileage isn't bad. And the old Lincoln Town cars had that trunk space,

and it was kind of a favorite car of a lot of people, older people like me and you maybe, that love that. So if you ever decide to sell the car, you can shop it around and get prices. You could probably sell that car for, surprisingly, a lot of money, but if you've got some serious problems with the car now, it just doesn't make any sense to be throwing good money after bad. You've named a number of things, but I check and see what I can sell the car for

and maybe find something else. Okay, well, it's not an option for me because I'm above-knee amputee, and on the roof of the car I have an automatic... Oh, I'm saying. Thing that takes my wheel to turn in and out. I understand. The most concerning problem I have right now is power steering that went and gentlemen fixed it, and it's still not, it's very hard for me to turn the wheel.

I'm having trouble with my arm because of it. And I just don't know if I have recourse to go back to these people, because they can't fix it the first time. I'm wondering what they're going to do the second time. That's always a large concern. Most shops, independent shops, and dealerships alike, they want to earn your business the proper way. And sometimes, I mean, we're only human. The mechanics, we're human beings.

We do make mistakes. But we do try to fix it when we do. We want to try to do right by you. The best thing you could do is call back to that shop, ask to speak with the owner, and explain your situation. polite persistence is a term I love to use. Be nice, be polite, but say, hey, I really need some help here. You know, I've paid for this repair. It's not right.

What can you do to help me? And, you know, in a nice, friendly manner. And in most cases, they're going to want to do right by you because the person that they make happy is going to tell 10 people how great they are. The person that they make angry is going to tell 50 people how upset they were. So, you know, they're going to want to try to make right by you. I would talk to them. Rick is just, that's excellent advice and speaking to the owner is, and in a polite manner and explaining your situation, give that a try and then calls back next week.

I think that'll work for you. And Karen, I can't, I don't blame you for wanting to keep that car in spite of everything that you've had to go through. Boy, what a gym of a car. And like I said, I don't blame you for wanting to hang on to it. Is that a dealership in Pompano Beach? No, this was in Coconut Creek Market area. Okay, Coconut Creek. And you've been dealing with them for how long?

Well, I haven't dealt with the deal. I've been going to service stations, which I think is my. mistake. The last situation I had, they turned off the air suspension. So I have electrical problems with the car because I think of that. And I'm just wondering

if I went to the dealer and he checked it out, would they be able to give me an estimate on all repairs before I make a decision to do it? You know, it's a Lincoln dealer? Yeah. Yes, I would... It's going to cost you more money.

I would go in and I would ask them tell them you've had some issues you want them to do an inspection on the car and tell them like they would do for say a used car that they were going to put on their lot they'll normally should charge you about one hour about $150 make sure you get that in writing first

of how much they're going to charge you and then you'll authorize just that amount and they should come back and give you the list of everything they see and be able to break it down for you and tell you what items are important and should be done soon, what items

are more minor and can be left go for a long time and what items are just power steering is a problem. Information to you but wouldn't need to be addressed. And Karen, I think that's a great idea, you know, I mean $100 or $150 would

be an investment in this Lincoln Town car that you really want to hang on to and you want to. You want it to be on the road. That's right. I appreciate this information about the inspection, and I'm going to do that. Yeah.

It's a fantastic idea, just putting things in perspective. Well, thank you so much. What a great program. I'm learning a lot. Oh, Karen, thanks so much, and spread the word. Help me build the platform here at Earl on Cars. Stay on the line. And yeah, I'll give Jeremy your information so I can get that check out to you.

I sure. Well, thank you so much. You're welcome. Have a great weekend. God bless. Okay. I think that we are at the hour or half hour that we need to address your anonymous feedback and also YouTube and we have some texts. Well, we're a little quiet on YouTube, but let's see what we got for text here. Well, we'll go straight with Anne-Marie, but interesting and enough, Early, you started right out with her almost the same thing as what she sent with her in her text here. Basically, she's good morning. Last week you said you would donate money to Florida senators or congresspersons favorite charity if they would state their position on the FTC rules for cars, the FTC Cars program.

She wanted to know, did we get any responses from anybody? No, I'm very disappointed, and I won't say surprised, but of course, disappointed. Yeah, there's some breaking news on that, too, is that the Federal Trade Commission, much to my disappointment, has had to put on hold the implementation of the combat auto retail scams, the Cars Act regulation, they're supposed to go in effect on July 30th because the National Automobile Dealers Association and the Texas Automobile Dealers Association launched a complaint with a court

and it's a delaying tactic. That's all it is. We knew this was going to happen. We knew NADA was coming on strong. They got the Texas Dealer Association to go along with them. And I found out, about this they kept it pretty quiet the NADA did I got a call from the Federal Trade Commission and I've had several calls from the Federal Trade Commission they

asked for my statement to give it to the court I have the statement here and I send it back to the Federal Trade Commission but basically I'm stating as a dealer in this statement to the judge who is going to make the ruling of whether or not the Federal Trade Commission can proceed with the combat auto retail scams regulation, they're going to hear the arguments. And as a dealer, I'm saying I want the Federal Trade Commission Cars Act regulation to be implemented. And I also say that this is not only hurting consumers what the car dealers are doing, is hurting honest dealers like me.

And it's awfully hard for any car dealer that wants to play it straight and transparent to advertise or quote prices when its competition down the street will lie to the customer to get them in and say, this is my price to get you in the door. And when you come in the door, they hit you with $2,000 for the junk fees, dealer installed accessories. They hit you with an addendum label. It makes a lot of honest dealers say to hell with it. I'll fight fire with fire.

So they start whining and cheating and stealing to combat the people that started it. So it's a vicious cycle. And I gave my statement, and I hope they found some other honest dealers out there that gave their statements. And the judge will decide. The federal judge will decide. as to whether or not this regulation will continue to be implemented. But it's going to be a fight, folks. The entire way cars are sold in America is on the line.

And if this thing doesn't get past, it'll be business as usual. I can't imagine at 2024, us having a retailer that sells such an important product as the automobile to continue to lie cheating the steel, and that's what's going on right now. And the Federal Trade Commission is trying to stop it. So, Anne-Marie, very perceptive of you, and I have the offer open. I started with the Florida U.S. representatives

in Congress and the Senate, and I said to our senators, Marka Rubio and Rick Scott, I will donate $1,000 to your favorite, charity if you will just go on the record with the Federal Trade Commission's Cars Act and say you're supported or you don't support it. I'm not, I'll get the $1,000 to your favorite charity even if you say I'm not going to support it. And the reason I'm doing that is I'm not trying to tell you what to think or do.

I'm telling you don't be sneaky about it. If you're going to be brazen enough to tell the Federal Trade Commission, they can't keep dealers honest, I want the voters to know that you feel that way. So Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, $1,000 to your favorite charity, and I'll double that if you'll let me give the money to Big Dog

Ranch Rescue. I'll give $2,000 to Big Dog Ranch Rescue and or you can have the $1,000 for your favorite charity. Just go on the record that you support or do not support the FTC Combat Auto Retail

Scan Regulation. And ladies and gentlemen, can you imagine 72 million, 72 million hours each year that the consumer spends shopping for a vehicle? We've got to get control of this bait and switch tactics, the hidden fees, everything, and Earl is leading the charge. And here's my blog, combating auto retail scams. You can get that at earluncars.com. Demand your congressperson, make known their support. Demand your congressperson, make known their support for the cars. Combat auto retail scams regulation.

I'm doing this for the Florida U.S. representatives and the Florida senators. Call the representatives and the senators in Congress, the U.S. Congress, and let them know how you feel. But if we don't fight this, the NADS. and the other dealers association like the Texas Auto Deals Association and the Florida Auto Dealers Association every state dealer association is fighting this so we need to rally the troops I I just can't believe that the Federal Trade Commission would put this on a hold I to me they should have just left it official for July 30th

but it's it's reported that they put it on hold and I'll be talking to the Federal Trade Commission people again, and we'll find out about that. But call your call, write, email, text, your representatives in Congress, and tell them you want them to go on the record. If you're going to support the FTC, let us know. If you're not going to support them, let it know. And then tell Earl Stewart, and he'll donate money to your charity. And by the way, ladies and gentlemen, whenever Earl says that he's talking to the FTC,

he's talking. He's on the phone. They've called me many times, yeah. Absolutely. And he is, you know, like I said, leading the charge. And he's doing it for me, you, for all of us. So help us out, okay? Combating auto retail scams.

That's cars. And Anne-Marie found this story not only on Jolopnik, which is one of the really good automotive information sites, That's J-A-L-O-P-N-I-K, Jalopnik.com. And she also found it on USA Today that there was a story on it. Apparently, the court has agreed to hear the petition. The issue is whether the FTC even has the legal authority to enact the rule. The dealerships call the rules an abuse of discretion, whereas the FTC maintains the rules do not.

impose substantial costs if any on law-abiding dealerships notice those words law-abiding dealerships and the rules just guarantee a more even playing field for dealerships and consumers by eliminating junk fees and hidden costs she's excellent memory thank you very much I forward me that text and so I can refer to that that website I haven't seen that. But yeah, that's, I'm glad you're on top of that, Ann, Mary. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Oh, and Johnny Z. Freidley mentioned for the fellow with the 2016 Lexus, where the screen had gone out for the GPS unit, he mentioned you might want to check in on

aftermarket units. Such places as Best Buy, sometimes they can replace the aftermarket radios, replace the factory unit with an aftermarket radio that has the latest technology. So you'd be able to get like Apple CarPlay, Google CarPlay, all of that in your older car. I know, I did that some of my pickup. We're in the short of time, Rick, we've got to get to this. Okay, so on we go. But, yeah, check into that before you spend a whole bunch of money replacing that screen. Thank you.

For a quarter of that, you can get a fixed. Absolutely. Great information for. Rick. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a mystery shopping report that, well, stay tuned. I won't give it away. Rick Chase, Hyundai, Fort Lauderdale. You can share your grade with us at 772-497-6530.

That's 772-4976530. can grade right there and Rick will pick those texts up. That's Rick Case Hyundai in Fort Lauderdale. Rick Case Hyundai, some of you know regular listeners would know Rick Case passed away a year or two ago. And Rita Case, his wife, is running the very large group of dealerships. And he has one of the largest dealerships in the country, Hanta dealerships. I say he, now is she, Rita. They've been partners. They were partners throughout the years. I'll speak in the first person as if I were the mystery shopper, Agent Lightning. And I arrived mid-afternoon and started looking at a car that was open in front of the dealership

before I could get in a very energetic salesman hollered out to me. If you sit in it, you have to buy any joke. That's pretty good. Very engaging, friendly, good salesperson in terms of being smooth, I should say, probably a smooth salesperson. I laughed and replied, glad he caught me before. sat down. He extended his hand for a handshake. My name's Donnie Barnes. How can I help you today, ma'am? Well, I'm in the market for a new car for my daughter, something new for a good value, I explained. Donnie responded with enthusiasm. Well, the allotros are great cars,

and here in Rick Case Hyundai, we double our warranty, and this is what you get. 20 years and 200,000 mile warranty, free Rick Case, and this is free, it's a five-year, 60,000 basic limited, three years, 36,000 maintenance, 7,7,500 miles oil changes, three car washes at any Rick Case dealership, there's several in South Florida, and a five-year unlimited mile for roadside assistance, so this is all free, he says. We sell about 500 cars a month. I believe that's accurate. I'm not sure that's, I think that's probably new and used, but that's a large market there in South Florida.

We have lots of inventory, which is, you know, you've heard, listen to the show. This hasn't always been the case, but the inventories are building up. And if you've been out of the water, afraid to go back in the water to buy a car, it's time where you will have some ability to negotiate because new car inventory are climbing. Again, the salesperson says, let's take a walk around and let me show you what I got. He mentioned he's been at that dealership for 15 years, which is unusual for a car salesman, very unusual to have a car salesperson that's worked for the same dealer for 15 years.

Curious, I asked, what's the best deal and the best vehicle you think you have for me today? Well, kind of being wide open about giving him the ability to steer her or whatever car she wants, again, our mystery shopper. He laughed. Now, you know, everyone pays a different price for every car. I can tell you that. Now, that surprised me, so I'm going to repeat it. It's true. That's why the Federal Trade Commission is trying to take action.

But here it is, a salesman actually laughing about this, and this is what the salesman. person told me as I'm the mystery shopper. Now, you know, everyone pays a different price for every car. That's true. I mean, the same car, five people come in, they get five different prices, and they pay five different prices and go drive the cars out. Unbelievable. Playing down my ass, well, isn't this window stick of the price?

I was born to the Munrooney label on the new 2024 Hyundai Alontera SGL. The MSRP was 26,000. 825. MSRP, 26,825. Donnie, the salesman, replied, well, we have fees and then we can work from there. Flip the dead real casual life. We have fees. Yep, you've got fees, all right.

He added, I'm here for you and we'll do whatever I can do to get you into a car. How soon are you looking to buy? What a shame that the game has to be played this way. way the old I'm on your side and we're going to team up against that mean old sales manager and then we're going to go back and forth and bag and forth and haggle and then you'll get a price that'll be different from anybody else that bought the same car but that's that's the way it is folks today if the price is right right now I said I'll buy the car that's the answer to his

question how soon am I looking to buy he liked my answer suggested we head inside for him to work up a price. Once it sided his desk, Donnie mentioned again his long tenure at the dealership, and that's admirable, I have to say, give him credit. He was having problems logging into the computer, complained about the systems. After about seven minutes, he walked

away, came back, apologizing someone must have been using his PC. Finally, he asked for my contact information. I'll be back with a price, he said, excusing himself. Come with me for a minute, I forgot to show you something. He said,

leading me to another vehicle, a new sonata in the shore room. All our vehicles have this additional sticker on them. Whoops! Now we know we're going to have some more fees, and now we know there's an additional sticker. It was an addendum label for Rick Case Benefits that listed some prebees like Lifetime Car Watches, as well as $1,07 or $95 charge for a protection package

with no details. maybe they're going to protect the driver I don't know $1,795 and $595 decor package also a breadth of explanation

so there's $2,390 dollars they're going to add to the price No explanation Just because Just because, yeah You're actually confused about why the car we'd seen earlier didn't have one Well, it confuses everybody

That's the whole purpose of it I expressed my disappointment about over-sticker prices back at his desk, yes. What was the window sticker on the eulantra? Didn't you take a picture of it? Yes, I confirmed it was $26,825. He showed me their price on his worksheet and tried to justify the markup. Now, this is really tap dancing. This is really smoke and mirrors.

He was selling it for $28,825, starting $2,000 over MSRP, starting, at 2000. He added a $799 dealer fee. Very few people use the old-fashioned term dealer fee. That's used to be the only word, but they still call there's dealer fee at Rick Case. A $132 electronic filing, if we had an earlier caller complaining about that, it's a favorite, and that's just profit to the dealer. And $1,295, this is really evil. This is really illegal, and this is really stupid. $1,295 for inland freight.

Now, freight is baked into the invoice and the MSRP of the Hyundai that the manufacturer Hyundai manufacturer sold the Hyundai to Rick Case for. So, it's already in the price.

And now Rick Case is double dipping and charging twice for the freight. 1295. You can't make that stuff up, folks. My real price once the smoke had cleared and the smoke in mirrors was $31,000, $4,226 over MSRP. You can't believe them for asking, right? Well, I blame them. Donnie said the price we pay for a car versus the witness sticker isn't much less.

Now, that's an out and loud, bull face lie. Donnie, you're a damn liar. It's absolutely, read a case, do you hear this? I hope you're listening. It's just unconscionable that this salesperson would be blatantly lying. I mean, if you're going to lie,

be clever about it. It's not even clever. Frustrated, I replied, I'm not here to play games. I've been up front about looking for a good deal today. You said you got me, that you'd get me, but this above MSRP isn't acceptable. I'm done here. Donnie, take on the back question. What do you mean?

You owe my best price, but you aren't even buying a vehicle today? I told you, the price is right. I was buying now, I retorted. He offered to speak with his manager, but I was skeptical after a brief wait. I decided to leave frustrated with the experience. I don't blame Agent Lightning going to bed. You see where you're going when you get a salesman like Donnie.

He's smooth, he's slick, he's likable, and those are the dangerous ones. And he's been doing this for 14. years and he's been getting away with it or otherwise he wouldn't be there for 14 years. So this guy is dangerous and that's that's my analysis of that. We've got pictures of all the addendum labels and the rest of it and we now have to get to the vote and we've got very little time left. So let's count the votes. Rick, you got any over there?

We've got a couple already coming in. I'm waiting for my folks here to get this up and going here. Okay, here we go. Anne-Marie, Illegal equals automatic F. She keeps it short and sweet right to the point. Bob from Maryland, F for frustration and false information for Rick Case Hyundai. Again, short, sweet to the point. Let's come over here and we've got Joseph Kelleherr simply says F.

Tom Steckle, quite a case study. F. Illegal freight charges and addendums. Sad that they're stealing charges and are sad that they're stealing from 500 people every month. Compare with Central Florida Hyundai owned by Mullinac's. Kirk and West Buy God, Virginia. Now you know every dealer gets a different grade. based on their performance.

Oh, you have fees? There's a downgrade there. Oh, additional sticker, another downgrade. And lies to boot. Solid F-minus. Mark Anderson, F. Double dipping on freight charges. Wow.

Okay, and over to this side, let's see here. Piajo Albano. I feel that a simple out-the-door price on a new car would help increase sales. Total agreement, sir. Johnny Z. Freidly, D. Oh, he's being nice. He says, I bought a new 1980 Civic from Rick Case's first car dealership in Cleveland.

Back then, they didn't have all those markups. That's right. Brian said, let go. If I wanted to double dip, I would go to Baskin Robbins. My grade is an F. Mark Ryan, D minus for Donnie and F overall. And Tim Gilliland simply says D-minus. For me, as you say, we got to keep it on the curve.

So I'm going to say D-minus. It's hilarious what they're pulling there. And I think maybe we should consider a stun gun for a part of Agent Lightning's protection package there because she might need it with some of these salesmen coming up. Nancy? Absolutely. Well, ladies and gentlemen, if you had any doubt as to why we talk about the Federal Trade Commission, if you're wondering why Earl is talking to them, right here, right now, here's a dealership that is, I'm not going to waste any words,

but the bait and switch tactics, the hidden fees, it just says it all. It's time for the FTC to get involved. and you know how I feel about all this it's an automatic F he can keep his car washes and he can put them well never mind well as most of you know I don't give out F very often

and almost never and I'm going to put an F on this one it was absolutely terrible and I'm also going to send this Rick Case Hyundai Mr. Shopper report to the Federal Trade Commission.

I've got several contacts up there that we're texting and calling back and forth. Maybe I could get to them before they go to the judge in Texas, federal judge, to make this Federal Trade Commission Act not happen. But this is one of the worst reports. I'm going to have to think about this. We might have a new Napleton here,

and I don't know what happened to Rick Case. Rick Case used to be an okay dealer He passed away a couple years ago Read a case, maybe you're not watching the store Something that's going on And you need to take a look at your Hyundai store I think we're going to shop some other Rick Case dealerships To see if this is spread

Good idea Okay ladies and gentlemen I want to thank you for joining us this morning And to remind you We'll be right back here next week From 8 until 10 o'clock Have a great weekend And thank you again for joining us.