Earl Stewart on Cars - 01.18.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Grieco Chevrolet of Delray Beach

Episode Date: January 18, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Grieco Chevrolet of Delray Beach to see if the sales rep will disclose the Takata Airbag on a 2014 Suburu Outback. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart, our link to side. 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.

Here we are. I am the studio, and we have to pat ourselves on the back and brag a little bit because we are a unique show. Welcome back, all of our regular listeners. I'd like to get a count on that. We need to get the Nielsen ratings and see how our show is doing. I keep thinking about that, but I haven't done it about a year. We're doing pretty well. Countless thousands.

Yeah, 20,000 round numbers, folks out there. And I'm particularly interested in the new folks. Sometimes I get the idea that we're preaching to the choir because we've got a lot of very sharp listeners, educated consumers, and they've been watching the show. I'm not saying they learned everything from this show. A lot of them already were very sophisticated consumers. I'd like the new folks to tune in because we do have something to offer that a lot of, well, nobody offers, really.

I don't know, radio, TV, online, I don't know, any place you can go and listen to a car dealer. And actually, it's a group of car dealers. We're all in the business in the studio, Rick Kearney, Stu Stewart, Nancy Stewart, even Jonathan in the control room. We all make this an important part of our lives, buying, retailing, maintaining, repairing. This is what we do. And so we can tell you the facts. And the other interesting reason, the reason we're unique, is that we're needed because the car dealers of the world by far and large do not sell cars, lease cars, or maintain and repair cars the way they should.

they're kind of lagging society in ethics and morals. And this is proven every year by the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions. It's a shame. You know, there's a line between legality and honesty and ethics and morality. There really shouldn't be. I mean, it should be you're good or you're bad,

but if that's not the way it is, you can be unethical and you can be immoral. And in many cases, if you've got a good lawyer, and you find the right loopholes, you get away with it. And the really sad part about retailing, and I'm talking mainly cars now, vehicles, is that you can be wildly successful by tricking the customers. And that's sad. It truly is sad.

We have a large segment of our society, too large, that is not educated in consumerism and they're subject to being gullible and tricked and lied to and deceived and like I said a minute ago sometimes I feel like I'm preaching to the choir I'd like to think of all of you regular listeners that call in with some of the most intelligent

observations and criticisms and comments questions and if you know we could like make you like deputies out there in the field to talk to others and help others that need help. There's so many people out there that are being taken advantage of. I hope we have a few of you listening today

and if you listen you'll find there's no show like it. The highlight of the show I mentioned in the recorded introduction is our mystery shopping report. Now it's kind of scary every time I think about this. We send a mystery shopper into a different

car dealership, a real live car dealership somewhere in South Florida. We do it every week. We've done hundreds of times. And we've covered virtually every car dealership in our area. And we name names. We name the dealership. That's what so many people don't do. They'll say, hey, car dealership in South Florida, did such and such. We named the name of the dealership. We named the salespeople. We named the sales managers, the dealership, the owners. And we tell you the listeners what they did right, what they did wrong. And we've got

one for you today. We do every, every day. And I think you'll like it very much. It's a, I'll tell you this much, it's a Chevrolet dealership. And we went in and pretended to respond to an online ad to buy a vehicle, a

used vehicle, and we'll tell you all about it in the second half of the show. Meanwhile, I got to remind you, and I'm doing all the talking now, that it's your calls that make the show. I mean that truly. We literally learn from you, and it's not a show goes by when you don't say something to one of us that doesn't spark something to say, hey, I've got to figure this out, and we'll spread

the word and pass along your suggestions to the rest of our audience. You can reach us in many, many ways. Our telephone number is 877-960-99-60. That's 877-960. Our text number, even more popular than our phone number. It's the time change, technology. I mean, texting is almost replaced telephones for some people. The text number is 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530, unless we forget, cyberspace. We've got Periscope, we've got YouTube, we've got Facebook.

Facebook.com forward slash Erlanskars. Facebook.com forward slash Erl on Cars and you can make your posting there we get that, we got Rick and we got Stu monitoring all the cyber space stuff

and the one I usually forget Nancy reminds me is our anonymous feedback that's become unexpectedly popular. It's a link that you click on and then you can go in total anonymity and you can

say whatever you like to us we get the email that comes in, but when you go through this particular website, and that website is youranonymousfeedback.com, your anonymousfeedback.com, you go through your anonymousfeedback.com, and you're scrubbed for security, you're indemnified against anybody knowing who you are, and you say anything you want. and that's become very, very popular. And I use that in my business. As a matter of fact, we use that for our employees and our customers.

Sometimes people want to talk about something. They just don't want to get involved. Sometimes they're embarrassed. Sometimes they just don't want to be troubled. They just want to say something and then get on with their lives. So if you want to say something to us and get along with your life anonymously, just go to your anonymous Feedback.com. and we'll answer it right here on the show.

Don't want to get the idea that we are strictly talking about buying or leasing, and Rick Kearney is such an important part of our show. I encourage you to think about how is your car running. Just before we came on the air, I asked Rick a question because he's got almost all the answers. And we had a customer complaint in my dealership, and full transparency, I am a automobile dealer. and I asked Rick about this issue about YouTube pairing with an iPhone and he had the answer.

So I learned from Rick. You can learn from Rick. A lot of the things that callers learn from Rick Kearney are how to operate some of the bells and whistles and buttons and the things we have on today's modern cars. They're just complicated. You've probably got things on your car that you've never used. I do on mine.

If you want to find out how to use everything you got on your car or how to get something fixed on your car that's not working. It's like flying a spaceship or a jet plane. It's like being in a cockpit, a high-tech. Rick can really help you and just call 877-960-99-60, 877-960-9-960, or text us is 772-497-497-60. Nancy Stewart, sitting at my left, my co-host, and she's been with me for 17 years on this show.

Been with me for longer than that because we're married. And she started out as the female advocate. When we started this show 17 years ago, the only people called were guys. It was like a man's talk show. And we should smoke cigars or something. A lot of grunting. Yeah, a lot of grunting and macho.

Boys club. And half the world out there wasn't calling. And that half was the female half, arguably equally important or maybe more important, and they buy a lot of cars, and they get a lot of cars serviced, and they're not exactly treated the way they should. So Nancy Stewart, my co-host, is not only knowledgeable in the car business, but she is very, very much an advocate for females. Nancy, let's hear about that special offer we have for our first-time female callers. We do. We have a special offer, and that's $50 for the first. two new lady callers.

So ladies, you have an opinion. You have a question. You want to advise us. We're right here, 877-960, and you can take advantage of a text that we offer also at 772-4976530. Right now, we are going to go to Mimi, who has called us before. And maybe she's going to share an update. with us good morning mimi good morning um nice to hear your voice again what i have is an interesting

thing with my 2004 mercury grand marquis we went away for about nine days in november came back and the car started right away i don't use it very much anymore because i just be tired what happened was four days ago i was um in it and i ran the battery i guess because i was was listening to music while I was working on some things in the car, and then I drove it over to the hose, and I washed it, and then I brought it back. So I went into it yesterday to turn it on because I wanted to take it out for a little drive, and it wouldn't start. So I noticed that the lights went on by the radio, but I didn't hear anything until I put my foot on the break and then I heard click, click, click, and I took my foot off the brake, and it still went

click, click, click. Meanwhile, I'm trying, I took the key out, and it still went click, click, click, and I put the key back in and tried to turn it on again, and now nothing, no lights by the radio, absolutely acting dead. But the click, click, click was still going on when I took the key out by the break. So I had to put some things between the seed and the brake, because I could still out there forever. And so it wouldn't go click, click, click anymore and run down my battery. I have one of these little battery charges. I think it's called bolt, something like that. Anyway, I brought it over and I tried to start it and it wasn't able to do it. It said it didn't work. It's like all the lights went off on my little bolt and it said possibly the battery doesn't need to be charged.

so I wanted to know is this like an electrical problem do you think since I can't move the car I was going to take the battery over to that little on 45th Street advanced auto place they've been nice to me there and ask them to diagnose the battery again what do you think yeah the first thing I would check is the battery because it sounds like you've got a definite electrical issue the battery is the first suspect because having the car all the and doing things electrically without having the engine running that can put a kind of drain on the battery and hurt it a little bit and then if you don't drive it enough afterwards it doesn't recharge enough to really bring it back so I would start by having your battery tested well thank you okay I'll take it out and bring it over there and let them have a look at it but do you have any idea why when you put the brake on I mean when the break wasn't on it would make a click click sound have you heard it next for by itself there can be many things for that but the cars have got so many electronics on them that when the battery is weak the computers get confused and they will make all kinds of odd noises when the battery is really weak it's because the computer doesn't have enough power to really start the car and to run its system so it doesn't really know what to do like i say you need to really you got to start with a known good battery

first before you can do anything else all right thank you very very much well thanks for the call maybe maybe before you go on is this the same Mimi that spoke to me a couple of times last week yeah me did you get your phone fixed if you did send me their contact information you can send it over by text I went to I went to AT&T and they said something to do with my plan it's a 10 cents a minute phone it's more like a walkie talking it's not a real phone this is the phone I use it's my house phone okay if you like yeah I gave the information to the gentleman when he answered the phone today here is that not enough or do you need me to call you at

yourself I'm sure he'll pass it alone to me okay well thank you it's so nice to know there's a resource Mimi if the check doesn't arrive give me a call again on myself like you did earlier Okay, that's 386-6-4-98. Correct. All right, well, thank you, and have a wonderful day. Thank you, Mimi. Yeah, I love the way Rick answered that question,

talking about the computer, and you said the computer was confused, and, you know, I think we're trying, we're personalizing computers now, and we're so close to artificial intelligence. I flashed back to 2001, Space Odyssey, and Al, and the conversations, and, you know, and, you know, you know, the computers, if they're not lifelike today, they will be very shortly. And we tend to, I have to admit this psychologically, Nancy will testify to this. In our home, we have Alexis all over the place, you know, the Amazon, Alexa.

And I literally got mad at Alexa the other day, and I was in the kitchen. And we have two Alexis in the kitchen, and I use one Alexa to control the television, and the other Alexa does everything else, like Raise the Shades and, you know, adjust the air conditioner so the television Alexa is kind of takes care of the TV but if the other Alexa is listening and I tell the television Alexa to change to Channel 5 then the other Alexa will interrupt and say something to me so I got mad at the other Alexa and I cursed at her it's just we're entering a world where we will not be able to differentiate computers from human beings I think

Alex is aware of this. Okay, kids. Do you ever thank Alexa? I do, yeah, yeah. There was a poll taken recently on that very question. Is it men or is it women that thank Alexa more often? We'll get into that later. Folks, Earl and Alexa, have become a couple.

At any rate, let's go to Howard, who's been holding. Good morning, Howard. Hello, Howard. Good morning. How are you doing this morning? I'm doing it. I'm feeling fine. Good, great. Here's my question.

Concerning wheel alignments. I was told that if your car goes straight, you take your hands off the wheel and go straight, there's no problem. You don't need a wheel on. But then Rick told me at one time, I don't remember how long ago, that that's not true. And also that the road's curved out to the right.

So if your cars go straight, and it shouldn't go straight, it should start curving to the right. So my question is, first question is, how do you know whether you need a wheel alignment? Number two, how do you know which place is best to have the wheel alignment done? And question number three is, how does this affect the tires if you don't have a wheel alignment? So those questions are for Rick. Well, to try to keep this short, because it could turn into a two-hour show by itself just for that, knowing when you need in wheel alignment, the only way really is to get it on a computerized machine that can measure all the angles. Just driving the car, if it's just going straight down the road, odds are things are going to be okay, but there are certain adjustments that could be out of whack, even if the car is going straight, they still could cause wear problems on the tires.

So that's why we recommend an alignment check at least once a year or any time you're going to get new tires, have it checked to make sure it's in adjustment. If it's not, even though the car is going straight, it could wear out the inside edge of your tires or the outside edge, and instead of getting 30,000 or 40,000 miles or more out of your tires, you might only get 10, 15, or 20,000 out of them. that sounds good how do you know where to go I would find a good reputable shop

there are so many different places is the dealership better to go than the let's say firestone explain that a little bit well a dealership of course is always going to be my first recommendation simply because the guys that are working on your car there work specifically on that brand of car

So they know the idiosyncrasies of the car a little more. It's quirks, shall we say. I mean, I can do an alignment on a car and give you a printout that shows everything is in the green, and yet that car would still try to make a left or right-hand turn when you're going down the road because of the way it's set up. Let me jump in there, Rick. You're giving good technical advice to recommend a dealership. I shivered a little bit when you said that because the problem with dealerships today,

and this is what this show is all about, is they really tend to try to take advantage of people in the service department. And the same thing applies to an independent. But if you know an independent shop that has an honest relationship with their customers, you can't get hurt there. To me, the criteria is go to a place, dealership or independent, that has got integrity and maybe through references or Google reviews or Better Business Bureau, you trust them. But also that they have state-of-the-art alignment machines. And there's some places out there that have got 20-year-old alignment machines.

The current alignment machines are very sophisticated, and you should be able to get your alignment check free. Some places still charge to check your alignment. So I would say a place you can trust, a place with modern, alignment equipment and a place that will give you a free alignment check and then ask to see the printout because the printout will tell you exactly and probably an understandable you know this is green and that's red and that's yellow this is a good your vehicle is in alignment yep i agree wholeheartedly great information okay thank you very much i appreciate your information thanks howard you're a great caller and we love you and please call again next week. Yeah, we love hearing from you, Howard, so stay in touch. That number is 772. Excuse me, that text number is 772-4976530, and you can contact us at 877-960. Ladies and gentlemen,

once you listen to our show, it really becomes contagious, and you'll want to tune in every Saturday. And gosh, we have so much information to share with you, so much knowledge. and you are an important part of the show because you teach us every Saturday. So stay in touch, and we have a great show ahead of us. We're going to go to Carol, who's been holding, and Carol is calling from Atlanta. Good morning, Carol. Hi, Carol. Hi, how are you guys?

We're doing great. Good morning. Good morning. How can we help you this morning? And so what happened was I purchased a car back in August from a dealership and didn't pay the dealer's fees, which was good. And they showed me an auto check report, and that didn't show anything, so that was good. So in November, I was in a car accident, a minor one. And at first I wasn't going to get it repaired because it was just a couple scratches.

And I decided, well, let me go ahead and get it repaired. And my insurance company called me about the diminished value. And they said that they couldn't give me very much because the car had already been in an accident back in April. And so I pulled the car fax, and it showed an accident in April, and it showed structural damage. so what I did was the place I was fixing my bumper I asked them to inspect it for structural damage and they said the car was okay and that they couldn't even see where it had been repaired that you know the seals were there they couldn't even see where it had been painted or anything like that and so my question is is there any way that you can I guess change the car facts Carol, that's a great question.

When you buy a used vehicle, you can only hold the dealer responsible if he knew the car had been in an accident when he sold it to you and represented that it had not been. If he didn't know about the accident and sold it to you, then he can't be liable. He had an auto check report that said it was not in an accident. The only thing that could have been done better, you would have done a car factory check to see or taken it to an independent mechanic. We always recommend on this show before you buy a used vehicle, even with a Carfax or an auto check report, take it to an independent mechanic that you can trust and ask him to check over it. It will be a check of maybe $100, $125, $50 to go over the car with a fine tooth comb.

Be sure that the car is as represented. and it's a relatively small investment typically when you're buying a used car but the insurance company's position is accurate you know you're if the car had never been an accident and now it wasn't an accident then there is diminished value but the fact that it had already been an accident with structural damage it's already incurred the largest amount of its diminished value when you bought it so I'm sorry it sounds me like you're kind of stuck and I I don't even think the dealer was necessarily at fault

he did have an auto check report so what I was asking was since I did take it to a you know a collision center to check it for if it still had structural damage and they said that that it didn't and that sometimes whoever puts it in Carfax they just say whatever and this is true yeah the car that structure structural damage used to be serious and for some reason the terminology has remained the same. And now that we have, you know, we have different types of, we don't have a frame. Unibody. Unibody. It was a word I was searching for. And they still call it structural damage. But it can be serious or it might not be serious. But there should be a change in the rules

and there should be some sort of a way that you could look at a Carfax report and say this has serious damage or it's not serious. There's a company called True Frame. that will go out and they have their independent from the dealers, and they'll go and they'll inspect the vehicle and see if it caused any safety or any kind of issues from the structural damage. Is that available to customers? No, it's got to go through a dealer, but I think I'm not sure the costs. My dealer will probably do it. Yeah, if you ask them, they can contact them, and then you can get a third opinion.

Very good. Okay. I think what she may be asking is, can a Carfax report be corrected if bad information was sent in on a previous accident? Yes, it can. And Carfax, you go online to Carfax, and you indicate the mistake they made, and they will check it, and they will correct it. Yeah. Oh, okay, good.

Yeah, you can go to Carfax.com. That helps the next guy, but it doesn't help you. It doesn't trade. But on trade, though, if you wanted to demonstrate that if a dealer tried to devalue your car because of a thing on the Carfax report, on Carfax.com, there's a dispute tab. you can go on oh is there okay i'll do that because my i already talked to my dealer the dealer that i bought it from and and he said that he would help me any kind of way you know that i needed well carroll you sound like an informed of consumer and uh is this your first time to call the

show yeah i just found y'all's youtube channels this week because i was looking about car frame damage uh well congratulations we were we're very happy to hear from you. And you also won $50 as a first-time caller. If you'll stay on the line, you can share your information. Serendipity, Carol. You didn't even know you made $50. No conditions, no loopholes. We're going to just send you a check for $50. We love new female callers. And you're in Atlanta. They've got a lot of females in Atlanta. Spread the word. For the first two new female callers, each week, we pay $50. Okay. I'll tell my friends then. Thank you. Thanks, Carol. Thank you.

Bye-bye. Okay, we're going to go to Henry, who's been holding. Henry's calling us from Jupiter. Hello, Henry. Good morning. Good morning, Henry. Hey, I bought a new GMC Sierra 2019, and when I bought it, I was negotiating the deal,

and I didn't like the wheels that were on the floor model that I was looking at, and I had them swap out a pair of rims and tires from a Yukon. Shortly after getting the car home, I started washing it, and I found those chrome wheels were somewhat pitted. So I first made an inquiry to Schumacher, which is not where I bought the car, and after they put in a claim for warranty, GMC came back and said that car was not built with those wheels, so we won't do anything for you. Yeah, that's true.

Well, there's still GMC wheels. I mean, they came off with a different brand, new vehicle. So it ended up, I went back to the dealer that sold it to me, and they were nice enough to swap another set from off their car lot. Unfortunately, those wheels had some pitting already as well. Now, it's a $3,800 upcharge for the 22-inch wheels, and they're basically telling me that I'm stuck with whatever happens from this point forward because GMC won't stand behind the wheels that's a shame yeah that's kind of surprising you got a three or 36,000

mile warranty on new GM products yeah and they don't include the wheels I guess they're going on the technicality yeah they're going on the technicality I mean it depends on the manufacturer how willing they are to bend their own warranty rules to me it sounds like your position is completely makes total sense you bought a brand new GMC you got brand new wheels because it doesn't match the vent it was manufactured with they're getting out on technicality it's just that's just a shame yeah I'm not even sure it's a valid technicality I think I'd run that do you have an attorney you know Henry that you could talk to without having to

put you on the clock and get an opinion I'd like to get a legal opinion on if you have a new vehicle under new manufacturers warranty and you're using the OEM part for that vehicle but it is a part with a different VIN from the original manufacturer that doesn't make sense to me as you could have bought you could have purchased out of their parts department upgraded wheels that she could become governor of the warranty just because they swapped it on another inventory piece yeah first I check with another GM dealer check with another GM dealer and and then I get a legal opinion it sounds to me like they're jerking you around on that

Henry yeah I sent a letter to GMC corporate explaining the problem and what i was expecting good and i just sent that off so we'll see what the response is yeah well keep us posted i'd love to hear the answer to that meanwhile we'll do a little checking ourselves and uh you know we have a dealership also and and in my dealership if you have a new part this for the model you're driving whether it came from the parts department or it was on the car when it came in makes no difference the warranty is the warranty is a warranty. So I'm amazed that General Motors would have a different policy, but

if you could call us next week, I'd love to hear from you. All right, thank you. Thank you, Henry. Have a good one. You're welcome. Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, www. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Don't forget, you can share,

you can ask questions, you can share an opinion, give us some advice. Right there, you remain anonymous. www. www. Your Anonymous Feedback, We are going to go to Pennsylvania where Michael is holding. Good morning, Michael. Good morning.

Good morning. Hi, I called maybe a month and a half ago, and I got some great advice. I'm a new caller. I'm new to your show. I'll forget the gentleman's name, the master technician that you have. Rick, yeah. Rick, yes. I called about a 19 Toyota that I bought that was brand new,

and I was having some shifting issues. I don't know if you remember that call or not. And he explained to me about a service bulletin that came out. I believe it was November the 1st. And, yeah, great advice. I can't thank you guys enough. I brought my vehicle in, made them aware of it. They weren't even aware of this bulletin because it was so new.

And they had my car for about two hours. And when I got it back, oh, my gosh, it's just like butter. I mean, I can barely even feel the shifting. The car was just was bucking, and it was, it was. just shifting horribly and man it just shifts great now i mean it feels like i'm i'm driving a lexas compared to a Toyota just it's amazing the difference is amazing well that's great well thanks for letting us down i wanted i wanted to run this by you and see if you thought this sounded normal or not the the dealership um i had been complaining about it and they really didn't know what to do and

were kind of hemming and hauling um and i finally contacted the general manager because i was really upset and didn't really know what to do. And once this was all taking care of, I got a phone call about a day later to make sure I was okay with the update and how the car was running from the general manager, which I was kind of impressed with because I figured he was probably a busy guy. And he said, what I want to do for you, he said, because I know you express some concerns about the transmission and could there have been any issues, could there have been any damage you worried about regarding the weird hard shifts that you were having before we did the the software upgrade he said what I want to do for you is I want to go ahead and

give you a gold vehicle service contract that'll cover your car for seven years 60,000 miles and would normally cost about $2,400 if you were buying it and I said well if you're willing to give it to me sure I'll take it and they did send it to me and Toyota sent me like the proof of it and I filed it away is is that a big deal or Did he go above and beyond, or is there something, some trickery that I'm not aware of? No, that's a big deal. I've never heard of that. And Stu, Rick, have you heard of it?

No, it's, you know, if you want to give that dealer a plug, we'd love to give him a plug. If you want to name the dealer in Pennsylvania in this location, there is an honest dealer. First of all, the fact that the general manager will call you, as you said, usually with most car dealerships, you can't get through to the general manager, much less the owner. and the fact that he truly cares about you and then to give you an extended warranty on your vehicle, let's give him a plug. Fantastic, yeah, they've been great to deal with.

It's Hanover, Toyota, and Hanover, Pennsylvania. Hanover, Toyota, and Hanover, Pennsylvania, all you folks in that area, an honest car dealer, red alert, honest car dealer. And you can go in there and be treated with courtesy and respect and transparency. and heck, I drive 100 miles to get to Hanover, Toyota and Hanover, Pennsylvania, and I appreciate your calling back, Michael.

They're good guys, and do you mind if I sneak one more quick question in on you? Oh, please. Okay, I was wondering if you've ever heard of this guy. I'm a fan of cars, and I don't really know too much about him. I try to educate myself by looking at Google and YouTube and wonderful shows like yours. I don't know too much about him. He seems to be a trainer that has YouTube videos that he airs on, He puts on YouTube, his name is Steve Richards.

He goes around to, like, I think he calls them Motor Trend Dealerships, and he trains their salespeople and stuff like that. Have you ever heard of him, or have you heard of a Motor Trend dealership? I was just kind of curious. I have not. Rick and Stu, Nancy? No. We have not heard of that, but I appreciate your mentioning it.

We'll check them out. And the more information, the better, and it sounds like a pretty good deal. Yeah, it's interesting. Just like your show. Thanks a lot for all of your help, you guys. Thank you, Michael. You're a great caller. Yeah, it was great hearing from you, Michael.

And the reason is you're from my home state. Give us a call again. 877-960-99-60, where you can text us. It's 772-497-6530. We are going to go to Debbie, who's calling from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Debbie. Good morning. Thank you guys so much for doing,

I listen every Saturday, and I've been listening for years. Thank you. So I've learned a lot just from listening to you. That's why I'm calling. Oh, thank you. I have a question. I leased a vehicle in 2016, and when the lease was up last year, I bought it. A couple days after the purchase went through, I got a call saying that there was a recall,

and I needed to bring it in, and they would have to. keep it for three months and they would give me a loaner three months there was a yes sir there was a problem with the the shifting mechanism and they'd have to keep it for three months they'd give me a loaner but guess what good news you don't have to make a car payment while we have the vehicle i said really they said yeah i said okay took the car in this is in september i took the car in And October went through. So when the car payment, which was due October 31st, when the car payment was due, I didn't pay it. And within a week, I started getting the emails, and then I got a letter.

So within two weeks, I got another letter sitting that the, you know, the car payment late, so they called. And they explained to me that nothing was ever, that should not have happened where I would not have to make a payment for three months. So I made the payment. Then I went and I spoke to the, I called the person that helped me with the sale. Lo and behold, the part had come in early and my car was going to get put at the top of the list. This was in the middle of November. So I got the car back. So I told them what happened as far as the payments because now the first payments late.

and I got a late charge. Thank God it didn't go over 30 days. So they said, I said, well, can you call and have that fit? Well, I don't know if there's anything we can do about that, but what we can do is credit your accounts for one month payment because of the inconvenience that we've caused you. That was in November. I'm still waiting.

I was just wondering, yes, go ahead, I'm sorry. No, I just was, could you tell us what the type of car you have? and where the car was financed. Schumacher, it's a Volkswagen. Oh, interesting. I've never heard of anything like that. I've never heard of an issue with a recall, and it must be through Volkswagen leasing

that they said you didn't have to make the payments. I think they should have some liability if it affects your credit rating. credit rating and if you check with your credit report and see if there's any negativity about the late payment or no payment or whatever I think they definitely bear the responsibility person's credit score is pretty important I'm also oh you know I think I know I bet this had to do with the emission control problem on on Volkswagen's I know that they were they were required to

bring these cars in and hold them that's a special case The emission, you recall Schumacher, Volkswagen, had misrepresented to the U.S. Government, the Environmental Protection Agency, that their cars were clean on emissions. And they, in fact, were tampering with them to make the EPA think they were clean, but they weren't. They got caught, and then they had to bring the, recall the Volkswagen's, but they didn't have any way to fix it, because they didn't know how to fix the emissions that quickly. So apparently, Volkswagen of America or the finance company must have decided to waive the payments for liability purposes because they could really have a big liability.

The only thing I could advise you now is to check your credit report and be sure it's clean. If it's not clean, then you have to hold Volkswagen responsible for it because they did tell you not to make those payments. not only did he tell me not to make it this is the finance manager he told me that he would for the problems that it caused he'd credit the account for one month's payment that's the part that's annoying because i've spoken to him several times he won't even call me and let me know yes or no and i think that's the part i think that's the part that's really frustrating because how dare you tell me one thing and when I'm trying to work through to find a remedy you can't even give me the common courtesy to say yes or no or turn a phone call I went down on

January 4th and he said oh the accounting department is closed so I'll find out first thing on Monday morning and I'll call you this was the fourth of this month and I haven't heard a call and email, nothing. I have a solution. I think that's what's a little frustrating. I have a solution for you. Debbie, I know Chuck Schumacher. I've known him for many, many years,

and he's an honest man. He has a whole lot of dealerships, and he doesn't get involved in the day-to-day activity. But he's got a finance manager there that's not doing his job properly. Try this. Call him a finance manager and tell him to a friend of Earl Stewart, and that Earl Stewart has said,

that if he will not fulfill his promise to you, then he will call Chuck Schumacher or give you Chuck Schumacher's cell phone number, which I have in my contact information. And if the finance manager still refuses, then you call me back, and I'll either call Chuck directly or give you his cell phone number.

Okay. Okay. I'll do that because, you know what, Listening to your show, you're a recovering car dealer, and listening to your show, the honesty part of it is really what makes me listen every week. Thank you. Because everything comes out on the table, and that's why every morning I walk the dog and then I walk, and I listen to you the entire time, you and your wife. Well, thank you very much. It's a great, great con. Yes, I do.

Thank you, Debbie. That's what may be called, because I said to myself, how can he tell me he's going to call and just not call? And that's the part that is for 20 years of been a Volkswagen car owner. Well, I appreciate that. I'm dying to find out if he takes care of you because it would be kind of fun to call Chuck Schumacher and tell him he's got a finance manager that's lying to his customers. And I don't think a finance manager will want that to happen. Okay. I'll reach out to him next week and see what he says. And I'll call you, yay or nay, and give you an update.

Okay, Debbie. I anxious to hear from you. Debbie, I know you said you've been listening a long time. Are you a first-time caller? Yes. I've never really had a reason. You know what I mean? Yes. I listen. I understand. Yes, I am. Debbie, you represent the women very, very well.

well. You are definitely an educated consumer. If you stay on the line, you can check with our control room. Give them contact information, and I'll get a check out to you for $50. And keep us updated. I will. I will. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Have a great weekend. Thank you. You're welcome. 877-960. Or you can text us at 772-497-9-7-9-7-6-5-3. We're going to go to Tina in Benita Springs. Good morning, Tina. Good morning. Hi, y'all doing. Hey, Tina. Doing great.

You know, I have a few pet peeves in life, and one of the pet peeves in life I have is junk now. I don't like junk mail for ecological reasons, just because it's kind of in length. But I've got a really interesting piece of junk. It looks like a check. Oh, junk now. And this is for a Toyota AutoNation Toyota Portland for having a special event this coming up weekend. And everyone who attends will receive $10 in cash. Now, they're not saying store cash.

They're not saying micro-loading. They're not saying we're not saying this $10 in cash with stones attached, obviously. So I just thought it was really interesting. But it bothered me because I'm looking at this and it says, oh, this is paying. for an overpayment, like, who did I overpay? Is it a legitimate sell company?

Nope. It's automation, Toyota, and my eyes. Yeah, I get these sometimes, and I am, I fancy myself a savvy consumer, and I get these things, and if it looks real enough, I'll open it up. You know, you get these checks, because I'll get checks from, you know, my home insurance, like a refund and things like that, you overpay, and so it looks like a legitimate thing, and they get you. On that $10 to everybody comes in, they could probably do that.

You figure like 200 people showed up to get it. It cost them $2,000, you know? You know, I've thrown away good checks because I'm so leery of checks being fake. So now I force myself to open even the fake ones. And I think on the other side, this is my theory, that some of the companies that are really sending you a check try to make it look not very important so you throw it away. They should put a bunch of like hype and puffery on it and you'll throw it out.

You know, Tina, if you think that. your junk mail is bad, where do you see the junk mail that a car dealer gets? So every direct mail company vendor out there that is sending things out to you, they send us these packages. I'm not kidding. It'll be a giant two-inch-thick manila envelope that's got to weigh three pounds, and it's got every sample of every mail piece they get. And I get it from the mailroom, and I walk over to the recycling bin,

and I drop it in there, just like I do it home. Yeah. I get one on Facebook. It's called Rich Dealers, is the name of the company. And rich dealers, and they give you ways to screw your customers. Yeah, well, see, to get a car dealer's attention, you have to make them think they're getting a prize or something like that. But I'm not exaggerating.

I'll probably get 20 pounds of junk mail a week at my office. That's a lot of trees. It's a lot of trees and plastic, too. They send you plastic things. It's crazy. And this thing, of course, is this is after you open it from the envelope. When you get it out of the envelope, it says, There's no test value

Most trouble 1,000% customer So when you see it in the window You think it really is a bit it's not So All I can say to Automation Perrida is

Earl Stewart on cars listeners and viewers Are way smarter than you And we're not going to be following for your tactics Sorry There we go Christina

And I just wanted to say To the lady That called before I hope that she does phone set of effects, but there's a really sad truth that at least felt with Florida. There's a lot of very wealthy people that

can afford to ride a whole chip for their cars. And these are the people that a lot of these car dealers deal with probably in a 75% to 80% basis. They don't deal with a lot of people that finance some of these I hope to have

a special protection, but there's a good thing to really well- Yeah, we're listening. Yeah, we're listen yeah yeah Tina are you on a different type of phone or are you what type of phone are you using yeah it's a the sound quality on this end it leaves a little bit to be desired so you're fading in and out yeah hold on this one moment does that sound okay yeah better yeah okay I just had to unplug it because I was just going to see that large volume is if they exit one or two customers or a few here and they they're really

not by that person because they're interested in everybody else who's wealthy and for their car in total so but i do that's true that's absolutely true well thank you Tina as always a great call and you're like almost our pioneer you're like Nancy, you help encourage more and more women to call. And look at this week, I bet we've got, what, 75% female caller so far? We do. And thanks to you and Nancy. Thanks, Tina. Thanks for all your help.

Keep it going, ladies. Keep it going, ladies, Nancy, and I can't do it by ourselves, and thank you so much for participating. Thank you, Tina. We appreciate your call every week. That telephone number is 877-960-99-60, and, Our text number is 772-497-6530. Speaking of Texas, I know that Stu at this point is covered up. We're never going to get through these things.

Wow, that many. Rick's got something, too. Just one quick note. Ernesto says that Steve Richard trains car sales representatives and specializes in Motor Trend certified used cars, which is from the Motor Trend magazine. It's a certification program apparently that they've, started where their certification is supposed to be a step above what a general used car certification

check is. Interesting. I'll have to check that out. So apparently Motor Trend is doing their own extended warranty certification type thing on used cars. Oh, we'll check it out. Interesting. Okay. We'll go on to Facebook. We got a question about technology and repair facilities. Some places use computer equipment. Some use older or pre-computer, older equipment. How much improved is newer equipment and how much is the mechanic influencing the outcome? And it's just a general question, I guess, the state of car repair in 2020. Huge. For modern automobiles, if you do not have computerized testing equipment, you cannot diagnose cars reasonably for anything that is within the last 10 years.

Most diagnoses now are done or most repairs are done as a computer flash. And the only problem now is you have to bring them into the dealership to get the flash. Next phase, which is the next year or two, it'll be a Wi-Fi flash. As our previous caller just said with this Camry, and like I experienced with my new RAV-4, the shifting issues, you know, where the transmission was not shifting properly. And a reflash in the computer, it changes to software, boom, everything's working normally. A lot of the manufacturers, if not most of them, are going to these connected cars.

Toyota has them already, and right now it's like maintenance reminders, but just like your iPhone in the future of these updates, you will be able to do over the air. Yeah, and jump ahead five years, 10 years, you will never have to bring your car back into the dealership for repair. How does that make you feel, Rick? Obsolete. Well, you know, we joke about these things, and we're all in the automobile business. This is our transparency.

We are car dealers in this room. and all of us are very nervous. I mean, we wonder, are we going to have anything to sell? Will cars be autonomous? Will it be ride-sharing? Will there be no repairs required? The world's a changing folks, and it's changing fast. And it's good for you, the consumer, not so bad for us car dealers.

And I think a lot of car dealers are very nervous out there. A lot of them are in total denial, and it's not going to happen tomorrow, and it probably won't happen in five years. But in 50 years, I'll be absolutely safe. In 50 years, I won't be here. But in 50 years, there won't be any car dealers and there won't be any auto technicians, as we know them today. You might be in a remote room somewhere fixing cars in Vermont

because on your smartphone. Well, you'll still need someone to change the tires and the brakes. A few other items. Maybe not. Maybe not. That's true, too. We'll just do radio a full-time. Okay.

We'll just stick to the radio. Yeah. All right. Nate on Facebook says has an idea for the mystery shop for used cars. Ask the salesperson if you can take the car to an independent mechanic for a pre-purchase inspection. It would help further identify an honest dealer. I've always asked this question. If they say no, I go.

Perfect. I couldn't say it better. I like that. If they say no to an independent inspection, go. If they say no, I go. I go. That's a great. We should buy a website.

This is just a question, just some advice. I don't know if we have an answer. Margaret wants to know she's considering getting a used vehicle, and she's narrowed it down to a 2017 Lexus RX-350 R-Wil Drive and a 2019 Toyota Highlander, X-L-E-V-6, all-wheel drive, both similar miles, both similar price. What should she do? You know, it's kind of tough.

It depends on what's, you know, I think maybe the Lexus might hold its value longer. The Highlander's a couple of years newer, so maybe it might have some features that the 2017 Lexus doesn't have, but I don't know. My suggestion, Margaret, would be to drive all three of them, and I just mean to run them around the block, but really you drive them like you drive your normal car, and by the one you like the best, they're all great cars. Okay, Bobby has a question about the gentleman called in with the swap wheels. As an attorney, the argument would be that the local GMC dealer who sold the vehicle and performed the swap was acting as an agent on behalf of the manufacturer and swapped with OE equipment.

This would be a small claims court case. The jurisdictional limit was recently increased to $8,000 for small claims court. Oh, thank you very much. Makes a lot of sense. And thank you, Mr. Attorney, for calling in. I love it when attorneys listen because we have a lot of things that, you know, just borderline. We don't know the technicalities and any attorneys out there that ever want to call in.

We'd love to hear from you. Okay. I'm going to jump over to your anonymous feedback response. before I get to the actual texts. I think we had some cranky people, some grumps in the last week, but we'll read them because we don't hide from anything. Absolutely. All right. Obviously there's no name here.

You don't have time for Rick to elaborate on a technical topic, but you do have time for a circle jerk with Justin Lynn. What a massive waste of time having them on the phone. You guys didn't have a discussion in regards to consumer advocacy. Yeah, we now know he's out there, but Google can tell you, can tell us that too. And if you just wanted to get his name out there, then mention his name and move on. Well, I'm probably going to get myself answering this in trouble with attorneys, and we know their attorneys listening out there. It's hard to find an attorney that really cares about you.

It's like a doctor. You know, maybe you're lucky enough to have a personal physician that really cares about you, and he's just not worried about jacking up the Medicare or the Medicaid or the earnings. And you turn on the television, there's only one thing as annoying as car dealer commercials, it's attorney commercials, and I'll get you $5 million, and this guy here will get you $10 million. And we get more money for our pay if you got run, if your toe got run over, you tripped in publics. Attorneys are just like car dealers. There's a few really good ones.

and most of them don't fall into the really good category. So we found a good attorney. His name is Justin Lynn, and he has a license of practice. He's a bar certified in New York and Florida. We thought it was worthwhile telling you an attorney that if you get in trouble that you need help, he'll take care of you, and he'll really be it transparently and honestly because he cares about you. And, you know, Rick, Rick is also a valuable source.

and so as an honest attorney, a valuable source. Wow. You are the master. Thank you. That's right. Mr. Anonymous, that's what we do here. We sort out the good, the bad, and the ugly. Wow.

You need to run. I'm telling you right now. We love your text. Okay. I like this one. Earl, all caps, sorry, I made Earl John. Earl. I can't believe he'd suggest that we ought to try to plead for goodwill repairs

after the warranty runs out. I just visited Goodwill. I don't want any parts from Goodwill to be used in repair of my car. Folks, that's what we call a dad joke. I love a corner joke. This guy thinks he's hilarious. And he is.

No, I read that. And when I first read it, I didn't get it, and then I had to read it again. Yeah, first I thought it was like a crank. He's talking about Goodwill stores. Right. And that was kind of a play. Very, very punny.

That's pretty good, though. I like that. But it also makes a point, like so many things. Nobody knows the word goodwill when it comes to manufacturers and companies. In fact, it has different meanings in different companies. Goodwill for a car dealership means the blue sky, which is the intangible value of a dealership franchise. Goodwill to a manufacturer means it's out of warranty, but because we want to be good guys, we'll take care of it out of warranty. So that's what goodwill is.

And it's good that you know that terminology, because it's not. If you don't know about it, you can't ask for it. Always ask for a goodwill adjustment from an auto dealership when your car is slightly out of warranty, mileage or time-wise. That's right. Excuse me. We're going to take a pause, and we are going to go back to the phones. Nick, good morning.

Nick's calling us from Jensen Beach. How can we help you, Nick? Hey, good morning. I got a question. I saw a show one time that said the way they date tires. is you, apparently on the inner wall of the tire, the date of manufacture, and they said that a lot of times people will buy tires that are new,

but they're really not new. They're actually pretty old. And I was just wondering, does that still exist? Yes, it still exists, and Rick has the code memorized. You have to be careful, as you said, when you buy tire, that are new they might just be new to the tire dealer because he just got him from the distributor and there might be even to be new to the distributor or not because who knows when he got him from the manufacturer long story short as long as he just got the tires he'll call them new they haven't been sold before but they might be five years old and the Department of Transportation says you shouldn't buy a car I mean the tire shouldn't buy a tire that's six or more years old because you can have a situation of dry rod but look at the uh code and rick can explain how you interpret that code yeah the d o t numbers actually on both sides of the tire but it on one side it's only a short

version of it the other side that has the long version you're going to look for the last four numbers now the first those last four digits say it's uh 419 that means the fourth week of 2019 so that means that tire would have been made the very end of january of 2019 so those first two digits will be anywhere from zero one to 52 and in the last two digits are the year for 2018 19 20 whatever if they're not current year don't buy them yep no i get it and i'm aware of the code and the reason why i'm calling in is that there may be a lot of people out there who are not. Ah, great call, Nick.

You're absolutely right. Very few people know about that. I'm sorry, sir. No, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to comment about attorneys. I'm a retired police sergeant, and I worked for 20 years in the Manhattan DA's office, and there was about 800 assistant DAs.

And I've got to tell you, in all those years, I don't think I could count on one hand, maybe five really top quality people because, you know, they were a gender-driven, career-driven, for example. You worked a case, and you were the best thing in the world to them. After the case, you didn't exist. Because it was really to feather a cap for their own career after they left the office. So, you know, it was pretty disconcerting. I got to tell you, I don't have much of an opinion on attorneys.

well most we don't we we we we we struggle to car dealers or attorneys fight for last place in the honestest and ethics profession and sometimes attorneys beat us out sometimes we car dealers beat them out there you go great call Nick thank you thank you thank you thank you Nick don't forget about Congress people Congress people yeah they're down they're down here in the you know all around nurses are number one as far as the best people in the world. It was just in the USA today. Yeah, who doesn't love a nurse, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, what are they going to do wrong anyway? Yeah. They don't all they do is do good. They smother you sometimes. They could. They're going to be murderous

nurses out there. Yeah. Well, let's just say when you go into the doctor's office and they're going to stick you with a needle, they usually get to choose where they're going to put that needle. That's right. Nurse Ratchett. Be nice to them. Yeah, what is the nurse going to lie to you about? I don't know. She can just have bad bedside manner. Anyway, let's move on. Hey, I have a question for you, Mr. Recovering car dealer.

Am I the best nurse in the whole white world? You are. I mean, the nicest. Nurse Nancy, absolutely. Okay. Okay, here's a, well, I'm going to go back to anonymous. We're not done with those. This one came in yesterday.

It says, please don't waste time patting your buddies back on the air. And then they actually signed it someone anonymous. That confused me too Until I think it was the same guy that had tech did the other Feedback thing from a few days ago So you heard Earl's answer Okay, wow Okay, I need to replace the battery for the built-in key fob for my 2014 Camry

Should I get the battery from the dealership or somewhere else and from where? Amazon Amazon I just said that because it's like a reflex I Amazon, Google, are an important part of my vocabulary. Rick, you have a concern. Do you have to reprogram? Walgreens.

The battery inside your remote is just one of those little round watch batteries. And all you've got to do is just pop it open with the little screwdriver and just read the number off the battery matched up to the new ones of Walgreens. And they're like three or four dollars. And you will see a huge difference between that and what you pay a car dealer, I guarantee you. Oh, yeah. You don't have to do anything else.

There's no reprogramming. He's just putting the battery in? No. Good. You know, we live in such a wonderful world of competition. Competition is your friend. And I can speak personally and I think most people I know are buying smarter and paying less today for most products than they've ever paid before. I've got a little thing in my, you know, here's my, here's my purchasing world.

Costco, Target, Walmart, Amazon. And if you check with those on a product, and it takes you two minutes with your smartphone to check all of them, you will get an unbelievably low price on anything you buy. Now, the only exception is cars. The car dealers have rigged the system, and the state laws, franchise laws, have rigged the system.

You cannot get competitive prices on cars. The manufacturers collude with the dealers to keep you from being able to shop and compare prices. So that's why Earl Stewart on cars exist to help you overcome that handicap. Absolutely. All right. More anonymous feedback. If service departments want to sell more services, why are the cabin and air filters still higher than most parts stores? If they were at the same price, I would have the dealership replace those items instead of doing it myself.

service departments would sell more of those services. Car dealerships are in trouble because there's still, the parts departments are trapped where the dealerships were with the inability to recognize that there's competition out there. And the average markup in a parts department is about 40%, which is a high markup. Some parts and parts departments are marked up 100% or 200%. you can take almost any part that a car dealer will sell you

and find it at Walgreens or find it on Amazon or find it somewhere for less money. And I have a middle block. Rick will tell us the name of the part company that I always forget the name of. Rockado.com? How can I forget that? Such a cool name.

Make it a song with it. Rockado.com, yeah. You go to rockado.com on any automotive part and you will find it for less than the dealer will sell it to you for. Substantially less. You just wrote a jingle for Rock Auto. Yeah.

Rockado.com. Hey, Johnson, I hope you got that on camera. Did you get that? You need to rerun that. I like that. I love anonymous feedback. All right. That's for you, Earl.

You sure like correcting your auto computer scientist a lot. I believe him, not you. The rest of your listeners are probably confused. Signed, not Rick. well you know I get corrected too and I mean that's what makes this show fun and sometimes when I correct Rick it's from a from a dealership retail I'll give you an example a little while ago a customer of caller asked about where should I have my car check for alignment and Rick said you should take it to a dealer now

Now, Rick works at a dealership, my dealership, and he's worked there for 25 plus years. And he takes care of his customers. He cares about his customers, and he knows the way alignments are checked, and that's his world. That's Rick's world. In fact, when he does public engagements, he says, welcome to my world. He lives in the world of computer auto science. I live in the world of lying, cheating, stealing. I'm a recovering car dealer.

I started out in 1968, lying, cheating, and stealing, and taking advantage of my customers, and I evolved into a recovering car dealer. So I put a slant on some of Rick's answers because I come from a different world. He comes from his world that is one of honesty, integrity, precision, and what he tells you is true. but I have to flavor it with the real world.

And if you just go into a car dealership today and say, I think I might need an alignment, guess what? You're going to get an alignment because they get $100 for the alignment. And one way or the other, they're going to convince you that you needed an alignment. You need to go to a trusted technician,

but they can't be a dealership. Like if you go to Rick, you can trust him with your life. If you go to another dealer, you're taking a chance. So that's the reason sometimes Rick and I correct Rick a little bit. And he corrects me sometimes. And that's a good thing. But that's why we're here is because you need to hear two sides. You don't want a yes man sitting in this chair.

You want someone that's going to challenge. And I need you to challenge my answers too. Exactly. And the callers challenge our answers. And they've caught us more than once. Hey, that's what life's all about. Honesty, transparency, and mistakes are a part of life. That's why this show is a discussion show and not just a,

you know, a hammered down in stone, and that's it. Yeah, this is the word. Good point, Rick. Give us a call toll free at 877960. 9960. Would love to hear from you. Or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And don't forget, we just love hearing from you from www.

Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Really? You can just tell us whatever you want and you remain anonymous. Keep our show interesting. Now back to Stu. Hey. By the way, Barry O'Brien says hello on Facebook. He's listening, watching right now. William on Facebook. Barry O'Brien used to be on the radio. That's right. Barry, are you still on the radio?

Selling him by and with Barry O'Brien. I was on CDU. Years ago and then he moved to a different station. Great night, by the way. Yep. William on Facebook says, good morning from Palm Springs, California. We're moving to Florida in the next few months and we'll be purchasing a new car when we get there. We've watched most of your videos and thank you for all the great information. You've pointed out the way that dealers sneak in dealer fees. What about the lines on the buyer's order for tax and tax? Can we just assume they are calculating these fees correctly or do they also sneak in additional profit for themselves in those categories? And that's from Bill.

They can sneak phony fees into tax and tag, but they're really risking big time problems because most card dealers get sales tax audits. And when the state of Florida, or any state, I presume, when they check a car dealership, that's a lot of money because 6% of 40 or $50,000 or $50,000 is, that's for a Florida sales tax, 6%. And cars sell for a lot of money. So the state of Florida wants to be sure they get their revenue.

If you have something in the sales tax portion of the vehicle buyers order and it's not accurate, the revenue inspectors that come, in once a year or more to car dealerships can get you in serious trouble. You can lose your license. If you lose your license, you're out of business, you're broke, and you're out panhandling. Yeah, just caution you also look for lines that look like tag fees. Like the electronic filing fee, it looks pretty official, but it's just another hidden dealer fee. The acid test is sales tax charged on the fee. And if they don't charge the sales tax on the fee, then it's probably a legitimate fee.

That means it would be like for your license plate or your actual sales tax itself. Yeah, they don't tax tax. They don't tax tax. Usually. They shouldn't. All right, this is a text. It says, I have a 2017 Honda CRV. The battery went dead at 1,200 miles.

It was replaced under warranty. I had several incidents where the battery died over the next three years, but the battery wasn't replaced. At 35,000 miles, the battery had to be replaced again. I'm now out of warranty, and I just had another battery died. on me. The dealer is not helping me. Is there an ongoing, no problem they don't want to tell me about?

Rick, what do you say? I'm not aware of one, but I'm going to check Car Complaints.com real quick. That's 17 Honda, right? 17 Honda CRV. You've got the battery manufacturer's warranty, and then you have the dealer's

warranty, or the manufacturer's warning. The thought just occurs to me, based on the battery manufacturer. warranty there might be some pro rata adjustment that would be to you yeah and it's worth checking I mean if you if if the dealer did not check with a battery manufacturer he should have on your behalf yeah all right well Rick's looking for that I'm gonna go to a text from Anne-Marie Amory is a long-time texter smart lady very smart and we met her she came into the dealership said well we're

doing a dog video yes and Mary says good morning I realize that many manufacturers have eliminated full size and even the space saver tires, aka the donut, to save weight in order to increase fuel economy. Since you are a Toyota dealer, I'd like to keep this specific to new tootas. One, are there any Toyota vehicles with full-size spare tires? And two, are there any tootas without a spare tire at all? And I actually, I know the information to this. The trucks, Tacoma's and Tundras, have full-size spare tires. So does Forerunner. the larger SUVs, and most of the other vehicles have the temporary, the donuts. Land Cruiser probably got a spare tire.

Land Cruiser has a full-size spare tire, where you're going to see vehicles that don't, Toyota vehicles that don't have a spare tire at all. Those are going to be some hybrids. Certain models, not all of them. For example, the Prius has two models with a temporary spare and one with the tire repair kit. And same with the hybrid Corolla. I believe they have two models with the temporary spare of the donut and one with a repair kit. So most of the Toyotas have a spare.

I just had a question, I have a question generated from that question. Does anyone know about an accessory that would permit you to carry a spare tire somewhere on the roof or the back of the car? I mean, there are people that get... Contractor bag. Yeah. What is it? A contractor bag and throw it in the trunk. Yeah.

No, some people freak out about not having a spare. And, you know, I can understand that. But for you manufacturers out there, if that's not such a product, it might be kind of a cool product so that you could carry a spare without too much inconvenience. The biggest issue is the weight and the room that it would take up in the trunk. Yes, clearly. Well, that's the reason I'm saying somewhere else. You have a plastic thing that had a hub that you could put the wheel on and kept from rolling around. Yeah, people carry kayaks around and people carry bicycles on the back of cars.

If you didn't carry three bicycles on the back of the car, you can carry. Continental kit. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. It's a thought for someone out there in a small business. You want to sell some products. There's a market for people that want to spare. And the car manufacturers are taking away the ability for a lot of cars to have a spare. If you want to spare, then the success rate would do it.

Yep. No name on this. It's just a text. Says, what is the actual profit margin do dealers actually make? And is the profit margin is different for different auto manufacturers? Yeah. It's big, and it's variable. Lutgery is like 10 to 15% margin.

Well, a manufacturer comes out with a car and, let's say a new model car, and he'll establish an MSRP and he'll have a cost. And that's that year. Next year, the cost come down. He still has the same percentage. He typically keeps a percentage. Car sales slow down. So what does he do? He kicks back money to the dealers and calls it.

dealer cash or he kicks back money to the customer and they call it customer cash so all manufacturers vehicles have variable margins and the ones that are standard margins are kind of a smoke and mirrors they don't mean a whole lot we've we've seen margins on the toy of sion as low as what 10% oh no it's way smaller than that 8% no you're like 2% or less yeah there's maybe on a cyan they didn't have any kickbacks on those and it was about uh well here's the thing you got to consider this. It was like $600 on some of those signs. It was the total markup on a $20,000 or $18,000. Is that right? Yeah. I mean, generally speaking, here's the thing, here's what gets confusing is because when they report, well, first of all, you have, you get a look at the net

profit margin versus the gross profit. You're looking at just on the sale, dealers are hiding money. So the dealer fees are part of the profit margin, but it's only reporting two to three percent. A luxury car is probably getting 10 to 15 percent. I can tell you that our dealership were about three percent typically speaking to try to not over complicate this the bigger the vehicle the big trucks have very high margins and the small cars have very slow margins but this margin we're talking about are the MSRP margin right and oh no I thought I was thinking about the profit margin that the dealer actually makes no no I don't think that was a question yeah it says what is the actual profit margin does a dealer make oh and does that different by manufacture

And it definitely difference by manufacturer because a Mercedes is going to have a much higher profit margin than a Honda. You'll find this hard to believe, but the average dealer doesn't make very, it makes very little in his new car department. You've got a used car, you've got a parts and a service, and you've got a body shop maybe. But the new car department is struggling for profit. And there are a lot of car dealers out there that routinely break even or maybe. lose a little money in their new car department, and they make it up in the used car. The finance department is a separate department, but the dealers will take that profit and add it back into the new car department.

But really, if you take out the finance profit, I think it would be fair to say that 90% of dealers lose money if you don't take the finance money and put it back into the new car department. I agree, but the way it's reported, so it's manufacturer, like every dealer submits their financial statements every month to the manufacturer and so they're they're going to ignore a big chunk of that profit and that's from the dealer fees yes and that goes they say the parlance is that goes below the line it's called it's called additional so now that we've totally confused you and no one

understands what we're talking about I will say this take that take the fact that dealer pricing and margins and markups are confusing part of it is by design because it confuses you part of it it is just the nature of the deception has become so intense with car dealers that they honestly don't know what they their true cost is on cars. Now, I'm telling you, does that sound insane? I've been a dealer for over 50 years. I can tell you right now that most car dealers honestly don't know their real cost on cars. There's rebates, there's incentives, there's holdbacks, there's advertising money

there's finance money added in there's dealer fees maybe added in maybe not it is one of the most amazing things about the retail automobile business if the retailers don't know what their cars cost and if they don't know what the car costs

you're not going to know what the car costs and you don't want to play that game competition will give you your best price yeah this is a text on a similar subject that says not considering any other services and products that are sold, no dealer would sell only bare bones new cars. The point is that there

is not any irony in these low profits. Consumers are still being shafted one way or another. And honestly, $400 net profit is not bad at all if you consider a reasonable example. A quota could be 200 cars a month with a below average net profit of $400.

That's a net profit of almost a million a year, and that's probably on the low side. Well, that's a very, that's a dealer. Sounds like a dealer, yeah. A dealer sent that in, and he's absolutely right. The dealers are struggling to make a profit, because think about it. If you sell Chevroletes, and then you're in a metro area like Palm Beach County, what are there, four Chevrolet dealers in Palm Beach County, they all sell exactly the same product.

And you can go from one Chevrolet dealer to the other Chevrolet, You can cover all four Chevrolet dealers in one afternoon, and you can compare prices with four Chevrolet dealers, and they want the business so bad, they will give you a very, very low price, probably below their actual net cost because Chevrolet pushes each dealer to hit a certain minimum quota of cars.

And if you don't hit your minimum quota, you don't get your kickback at the end of the month quarter, or annually perhaps, and then you're really in trouble. So it's intensely competitive among dealers. And it's just, it's not a good business to be in today, be honest with you. And a lot of dealers rationalize and say we have to lie cheat and steal to make a living. In some cases, it's true.

Yeah. They're looking for all sorts of ways to make that up. That's the reason you see these huge addendum labels. And if they can get a little bit of that, it makes up for it. but you hit the nail in the head. It's that profit center is being shifted to use car department. And, but we're getting scared because service, yeah, but the cars are requiring less and less repairs.

So it's a dangerous time for these cars. That's spiral. And when people get desperate, they get dangerous. They do. Right. It's going to get worse. On that note with the Honda, the 2017 Honda CRV, car complaints has got a total of 18 complaints just on battery issues,

on that specific year and model, which when you figure that's a tiny sample, they're listing it as a fairly significant issue, and they say, for the most part, Honda doesn't really have a fix for it, but they're seeing, apparently that's quite a few battery issues. We talked about Goodwill. On the Honda CRVs.

We talked about Goodwill earlier, and here's a perfect case to know what Goodwill means, and you go to your Honda dealer on the CRV, and you're having a battery problem. Believe me, They know about it, and they are telling you your car's auto warranty, there's nothing to do. Then you say, I want goodwill adjustment. Go to the Honda manufacturer and give me a goodwill adjustment.

That's where they will fix your car when it's out of warranty. And then bring your phone in and show them that car dealer complaints and show them that's a known issue, and it's out there. And that's evidence you can use to support your case. This is quite sensational. I will read it anyway. We cannot vouch for the authenticity of the information in this text. Anonymous? No, it's from Eileen.

Or just Eileen. I might have mispronounce that. I went to a dealer to buy a new car. They asked from my keys to, quote, unquote, check out my car. But I said, no trade in. Then they blocked my car with a tow truck and didn't move the tow truck. It was their own dealer tow truck. So I went to the ladies' room and I called 911.

and reported hostage situation. Then I called the local news and reported the situation. Came out of the ladies' room and went outside and waited for the police and my car, which was blocked in. News van came out with a second police car following, and the salesman ran and hid so the dealer-manager had to explain why I was being held hostage. The dealership and GM wasn't very happy being on the evening news and in the morning newspaper. Guess the dealership did not know how to treat a southern lady. Yeah, we need to Google that We might be able to get

And we can verify the authenticity We get some names That is a surrogle I'll tell you what We can't vouch for that You're my twin You're my twin Right

No we can't vouch for the I don't know this guy to misuse The 9-11 system for something like that It was very stressful I understand that it might have been It would exist And that should have been national news really I mean

I'm surprised it was localized but we know it's in the south and we know we could use the you know keywords we should Google that you know it's not you know it's not that unbelievable I mean people I've read newspaper articles or sorry I don't read articles there posts

of people calling 911 at McDonald's because their fries took too long you know so it happens yeah exactly Island Eileen I love your energy stay in touch with us all right so right now we're caught up and back to you

Well, we've got one on YouTube by Partha Sarathi, I hope I got that right, is asking, what would be the best out-the-door price for a 2020 Honda Odyssey EX? Well... 28-990. I don't know. We'll look it up. Yeah, we'll look it up. You know, one of the problems with getting prices these days is because of something called the minimum advertised price.

Honda participates in this, and several manufacturers participate. In fact, I made a list here because I wanted to talk about it. Subaru, Honda, Accura, Nissan, Infinity, Toyota, Mazda, and Mercedes. All those manufacturers have a law, a rule, that their dealers may not advertise a price below the dealer invoice. And if you listen to the show before, you know that the dealer invoice is not a good price, because it packs in a lot of profits of the dealer. You can easily pay a dealer $4,000 or $6,000 profit

when he sells you the car at invoice. Over half the cars that dealers sell are sold below invoice. That's the market price. So the manufacturers prevent you from advertising that price. So here we have a Honda and she wants to know the best price. The dealers cannot advertise the best price.

If they do, they get slapped to real hard by Honda and find a lot of money so they won't give you the price on the advertisement cost them a lot of money you're literally over $100,000 yes $200,000 I'm looking on true car this might be a futile effort true car also had it been to work with the rules of the manufacturers so just a few years ago you could go on true car and get an itemized detailed list of what the lowest price you're going to pay and it was pretty accurate now because of these restrictions it's almost impossible. But you can look at the bell curve and the true car will have the actual transaction prices. And if you look at the bell curve, you can get a pretty good idea

of what's a good price and what's a bad price. So we can look that up. Yeah, I'm looking it up. You can continue and I'll jump back in. Okay. I want to talk about an email I got from a person in the Port St. Lucie area the other day. I won't mention his name. Maybe he wouldn't want me to, but he had a lease car from Best Smith Kia. And he wanted to exercise his option to purchase this Kia at the end of the lease. So we went to Best Smith Kia and had an option to buy for a good price, he thought, on the Kia. And he said he wanted to buy it. And then Best Smith Kia added $900 in dealer fees. And so that's what he called me about. and this is common

and it isn't just Beth Smith Kia it's all manufacturers out there that are doing this and I might have that wrong it might be Bill Wallace Kea Bill Wallace have a Kia I'm not sure

it's not important because all manufacturers and all dealers are doing this I told him that if you have a lease contract with a leasing company and you have an option to buy at a particular price and I hope some attorneys are listening now.

Option to buy at the end of the lease for a price. That it should be a violation of the contract for the dealer to insist that he adds an arbitrary dealer fee. As we know, dealer fees can be of any amount. We have dealers that have dealer fees in the thousands of dollars. To be able to take the option purchase price and add arbitrarily a large amount of profit and call it a dealer fee, sounds to me like a simple violation of the contract Rick

Bev Smith and Wallace both have Kia dealerships in that area Wallace is in Stewart and Bev Smith in Fort Pierce This was Bill Wallace Now it came back to me Bill that was Bill Wallace

In fact I told him to call Bill Wallace And tell him he was a friend of mine Just like I told the earlier caller to call Chuck Schumacher I terrorized dealers I realize that See I used to be one of the guys I hadn't recovered yet

and you know I was one of the guys and then I... Chomping on cigars laughing chomping on cigars lighting them with a hundred dollar bills And now I evolved into an honest person And you've got to wear a bold-proof vest When you go out to dinner

Anyway That's what I would like to You attorneys out there to address Isn't it a violation of the contract On the option to purchase To add a dealer fee? I think so. And I think it's a juicy class action suit for one of you hungry attorneys out there

is find somebody to represent the class and sue every car dealer in Florida for adding that dealer fee to the purchase option price on leases. A lot of money there. Just saying, trying to help you attorneys out there. Send some business your way. Okay. I got an answer on the Honda Odyssey X, but I can't voucher. It's a good price.

I went through the true car steps. I got an email from Ed Morris Honda. And for a Honda C, EXL, it's got an MSRPA of $39,055. They're discounting at $3,734. But then they are adding back in $1,198 in fees. So the actual price becomes $36,519 to that, The only thing that should be at it would be your registration and sales tax. So out the door, you're probably looking around $30,000, $39,000.

Thank you. You know, I just, I know I sound, I repeat myself a lot on the show. We have a lot of new listeners, but competition is truly your friend. And the nice thing, it's bad for us dealers that we have so many dealers of our make. I'm a Toyota dealer in full disclosure, and there are three other Toyota dealers in Palm Beach County, and there's one right across the border in Martin County. So for all intents and purposes, there's five Toyota dealers in this area.

Now, if you come into a toilet dealer and you give them a price that you got from another toilet dealer on a specific car, they will meet the price. Now, they might try to Mickey Mouse and add hidden fees and all the other, But if you hold their feet to the fire and say you want an out-the-door price and give me the price that I can write a checkout for right now, and you take that price to all five toilet dealers, man, well, you get a good deal. I'm telling you, if you can do that, you can't figure out dealer costs, you can't figure out markups, you can't out guess a dealer. They know what they're doing. Let them do the work for you.

Yeah, all, but they are so intensely competitive. And I speak for myself, I speak for all the other dealers in the market. Car dealers will do anything to get your business, even light, sheet, and steel. So you have to block the light sheet and steel door and keep it open to meet the competitive price door. That's all you got to do. Yeah. I mean, this show could be absolutely, if people just followed that advice because, and we met, and we meet consumers all the time, and they are expending a ton of brain power,

trying to analyze the lease, trying to analyze the breakdown, trying to figure this and ask a lot of legitimate questions because it gets confusing, and all you've got to do is ask a big set of dealers, you know, like a nice sample size, and you're going to get the best price. You can go and we're, I hate to talk about my own dealership because people say infomercial, he's trying to sell cars. No, you can go to earl Stewarttoll.com

and you can get a price, Althadore price, on any Toyota that's sold. Now, if you're in Jacksonville, you can still go to Earl Stewarttoidav.com, get the price on the Toyota you want to buy from the Jacksonville dealer. Get the out-the-door price. And he'll beat it.

And take it in the Jacksonville Toyota dealer, and he will beat it or meet it. And it's a good price. Because we put our lowest price on all our cars. It's got to be a low price or we'd never sell a car. But it can be beat. And that's what you do.

Whether you're in Pennsylvania, no, that doesn't work. Five southeastern states, if you're in Pennsylvania, we pay $1,000 more for our cars in the southeast United States. Let's just talk about Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama, and Florida. I said Florida twice. Anyway, the five south-eastern states, you can take a, if you want to buy a Toyota, go to our website, get the price on that, and go to your local dealer, and you can get a heck of a deal. There you go. Dennis says another game Dealership's play is with your trade-in.

They'll take it back to the maintenance bay to do the inspection of the car. They will hold on to the trade in the maintenance bay for a long period of time while they are running you through their BS. You can't get out to leave because they still have your trade-in in the maintenance bay.

And that is probably the oldest trick in the book. That's old school. Yeah, they used to throw the keys to your trade in on the roof. That was one of the old tricks. Hide the trade. There's literally nothing car dealers haven't come up with.

and it's amazing and some of the interesting to see some of the dealers I see in the south like in Mississippi and Alabama some of them are still deep into the old school yeah yeah when you get there

it looks like an old dealership like an old converted gas station Kirk I love Kirk's style I started getting tremendous deals on cars motorcycles etc as soon as I learned to walk away from the salesman almost to the point where I actually

wanted to walk away every time be firm and walk the, I can say this, I walk the F out as soon as the hint of games are shaking the starts, they will call you back. And I've got incredibly low prices this way. And that's an old ancient tenant of negotiation. Yeah. Be prepared to walk away. Absolutely.

A lot of great texts this morning, and we thank you for all of them. I have one here from Angela, and she asks, how important is it to check your tire pressure? Well, Angela, first I'll answer, and then I'll hand it over to Rick. It's very important. And, you know, picking up a pressure gauge is really important. Keep it in your car. It's pretty, they're very easy to use today. But getting back to what you asked, that air pressure, it really should be checked once a month.

And believe me, it does affect your wear and tear on your tires, your gas, the safety of your car. there's a whole lot of issues so it's real important not only all of that but you must check your PSI when your tires are cold so once a month

is what I advise Rick you covered the basis oh wonderful you got it okay what do we need you for we have our mystery shopping report coming up and that mystery shopping report is going to to Baffle you and that's from

Braco Chevrolet of Delray Beach We got one more thanks Love Grico Chefs Batteries and modern vehicles have larger drain from modern electronics Do they require more frequent starting and running for longer sessions to recharge than classic cars from the

1900s? Loving people Jay and Jupiter No not really because most of the modern electrical systems actually although they use more power for certain things they draw less power for others

so now the alternators now recharge your battery just fine there you go okay it's greco right greco is greco I'm just going to say the opposite what you said how can I possibly don't know how to pronounce I think it's up to the

beholder to the speaker absolutely right Greco I'm gonna say Greco okay Greco Mr. Shop of Greco Chevro Chevrolet of Del Rey Beach, Takata test.

2020 is underway, and as I predicted on the show, the Takata crisis is not going away. Anytime soon, I just have a, this was Consumer Reports. Nancy brought this in yesterday. A whole bunch of Subaru's just called back, and they're getting into the second phase of calling back Takata airbag recalls that were fixed with Takata airbags.

Now they've got to call them back again. So here we are. And last week, prompted by a new massive round of Takata recalls, we mystery shop Mercedes-Benz of Del Rey and AutoNation Store. Mercedes-Benz of Del Rey was selling a used Jeep Wrangler with the Takata Airbag recall. We sent an Agent Tempest to see if they would mention the airbag defect and would they proceed with the sale of it came up. Although they technically failed the Takata test, Mercedes-Benz of Del-Ray did pretty well compared to most dealers in the same. circumstances. We struggled with that. Agent Tempest salesperson even said he would look into having the vehicle taken to a Jeep dealer for the repairs, but it never actually

materialized his offer, never materialized. We gave Mercedes of Del Rey a low passing score of D and put them on the recommended dealer list with an as-risk. This week's mystery shop takes us to an old familiar place, Greco Chevrolet. All the Greco dealerships are familiar places. They have provided the setting for our most dramatic and shocking exposés. The Grecoes are the bad boys of the South Florida car business. Used to be Napleton. Has Greco replaced Napleton? Yeah, the young hot shots.

Yeah. Come to take over the new sheriff. They're trying to knock Napleson out of the bad boy. They want to be contended. Yeah. So that's what we did. The Grecos haven't done well with on our Takades either. I mean, the dealer fee and the rest of the flimpland, they do bad.

And in the past, they also flunked the cicada. The last one was in June of last year, spectacular failure. I think we called it a debacle. Debuckle. So we returned this week with Agent Thunder and his three-year-old daughter, Agent Adorable. You know, that is really cool. I mean, how can you be more undercover than a guy walking in with his three-year-old daughter? Right.

Do we have to pay Agent Adorable or is she free? We made a deposit in her college fund. 529. Okay, that's good. Okay, the target this time was a used 2014 Subaru Outback with a fresh Takata airbag in later recall that we found on AutoTrader. Autotrater.com.

Agent Thunder called and confirmed it was on the lot and ready for sale. It looked like business was slow at Grico when I arrived with my daughter, Agent Adorable, speaking in the first person. in the early afternoon. We entered the showroom and walked up to the receptionist. I told her I'd come to see

a used Subaru Outback I found online. I just told you, Subaru just had a big new recall and this was one of them. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. Yeah, and second phase. I mean, Subaru could have replaced this

to cut out of airbag with a new one, and now they called them, recall them again. It took me 14 seconds to find that car. It's so refreshing. Yeah, yeah. The receptionist said it would take a minute to find a salesperson and mention they were short-staffed in sales.

Agent Adorable and I sat down to wait and eat chick-fil-a nuggets. Not very healthy, is it, for a three-year-old? That's delicious. It keeps them happy. That's not right. You should be feeding Agent Adorable something healthy. Well, maybe it's just a treat. Could be.

It could be. It could be a once-a-month thing. You're right. She had probably already eaten the fruit. Yeah. The apple slices. We heard the receptionist page for a salesperson on a loudspeaker, and within a minute a female salesperson approached,

Jordan extended her hand and greeted us. She was young, friendly, and made an instant connection with Agent Adorable. Of course, she would. Jordan said that the receptions told her I was interested in the used outback. She asked us to wait for a few minutes for her to get the keys. I'll find the car. She said she'd bring it up front for us. We didn't wait long.

Jordan came back, asked to make copies of my driver's license and insurance card, S-O-P. then she let us outside and opened all the doors of the Subaru. I let Asian Adorable inspect the interior. I can see it now. While I walked around the car accessing the exterior condition. Jordan asked me if I, I wonder how he briefed Agent Adorable. They say now for mystery shopping?

I didn't even ask that question. Don't blow them cover. I mean, Asian Adorable, I said, my daddy's a mystery shopper. Right. But she didn't say that. I think the best way to handle that is just to keep the kid in the dark. Yeah, get to get in the light of the kid. Don't let them know.

We're really buying a car. Anyway, Jordan asked me if I like to drive it. I said I did, but I needed to grab my daughter's car seat out of my car. I picked up Agent Adorable, and we left to get it. When we returned, Jordan helped me to install the car seat in the back seat. As I drove, I told Jordan that my wife was at home because she was. felt like she was coming down with something and she was eight months pregnant and I said that given to my family situation we chose a Subaru because of its

reputation for safety and it does have a good reputation for safety I asked her about the car had it been in any accidents or have any safety issues you know let me back up I said the Subaru does have a reputation of safety you know we have a serious problem in the there's a word for this but the Safety is defined today as did it pass a rollover test, the collision test, you know, that's really that's basically it. Airbag recalls or safety recalls are not part of the lexicon. Is that the word I'm looking for?

Of the vocabulary describing safety. And you don't, you say this car is safe because it passed all the NHTSA safety tests, but they don't say anything about dangerous recalls. So they rate the safety on the assumption that everything is working properly. Yeah, yeah. It's designed, but if the airbag explodes the wrong way, then.

So I can look a guy in the eye because the NHTSA, a rank mine is A plus and safety ratings. But the NHTSA doesn't talk about recalls. Well, it does, but on a different page. On a different page. Right, exactly. It should be on the same page. Exactly.

Okay. Yeah, does consumer reports do that when they talk about safety? That's another good question. I don't know. They should. So, anyway, I asked her about the car safety. Had it had been any accidents or have any safety issues, Jordan took out her phone, said she'd check it.

And a few seconds, I guess she called somebody. She just pulled up the car fax. Oh, yeah, yeah, on her phone, yeah. We're in the age of smartphones. She didn't call. She looked. Testimony of my age. Pick up the phone.

Right. Right. Hey, Bob. Is this car safe? Right. I thought, I'm thinking there was a guy on the dealership that you call and he tells him. Yeah.

Silly me. She said he had, she pulled up the Carfax report. The report looked good and no accidents. She said it had four previous owners, routine maintenance. She said it was clean. And even, we talked about consumer reports. We talked about the lexicon. We should talk about Carfax reports.

Basically, there's no accidents. They go clean Carfax report. It's on page three. And how can you have a clean Carfax? One owner, no accidents, it's a safe car. Oh, it's clean. Yeah. Clean Carfax.

It's clean. The grenade that can blow up in your face is squeaky clean. Shiny. Shiny, yeah. Jordan stopped herself and said, hold on. There was one open recall. She said it was a Takata airbag one, and then she would need to check it to see.

it had been fixed. That was a first, by the way. Yeah. First time I met him to say, at week, it's Takata. Yeah, yeah. As we headed back to the dealership, Jordan talked about the car and engaged Agent Adorable. When we pulled in, Jordan hit me with a trial closed. She asked me if I liked the car and everything looked good, would I take it today? I said, yes. You'll always hear that when you're buying almost anything. A house, a car, TV set. And they say, you know, if everything, if everything, you know, if

everything were right and the price and everything we're right, would you buy the car today? Would you buy the TV set today? Would you buy the house today? I got a little advice. Never tell them that you're going to buy the car that day. Or if you tell them, don't really buy it that day because it's a mistake. Don't act on a motion. A car, you should take at least two weeks before you make a finalization. But if you tell them you're leaving, they're going to think you're going to shop them. You get a better price. Yeah, you're right. Exactly.

Okay. Jordan helped me take the car seat out of the back. We went inside to sit down. She got an information from me, typed away on the keyboard. Then she asked how I was going to pay for the car, told her cash, but we consider financing. We would consider financing. Jordan won't know if I ended up financing, how much of a low, how much of a down payment I plan on. I told her $6,000. Jordan had enough information and left to get some documents. When she came back actually hand me a printout of the NHTSA recall web page and said that the recall has not been repaired but that they could take the car to a Subaru dealer for me that's good see a lot of times I don't even say that yeah I found it later this was never confirmed but the offer was there and I think it I think in her heart I think she really would have done that it wasn't mentioned of this would occur before or after I took delivery and I forgot to ask uh Jordan went over the purchase sheet the price was what I saw online 15,900 now that's an advertised price folks you lawyers out there when you put a price online for a car that's an advertisement that's an

advertised price they call it one price yeah yeah one price uh the fees uh all the fees crawled out of mining 249 dollars for Zurich shield boy that sounds good Zurich switzerland Switzerland, right? Zurich, honesty, integrity. Implies precision. Precision. Right. $2149.

And all of this is rust and dust. It's just a Mickey Mouse paint ceiling that doesn't work with a darn. And then they had a dealer fee. Isn't it interesting that they actually called the dealer fee? I mean, they call it, most dealers called anything but a dealer fee. The Greco boys are owning it. Yeah, the Greco's $999. And we got $2.49 for the rust and.

dust nine hundred ninety nine dollars for the uh hidden fee and we got another hidden fee electronic transfer fees so they they did get creative another dealer fee for 130 132 95 I'm getting excited you have to slow down yeah and we have the another one seventy nine dollars I like this private tag agency fee let's remind everybody it's legit to use a private private tag agency to help register the car It cost a dealer $10. Yeah, exactly. So you add it all up, and you got $1,559, and $95, and hidden fees.

And they are hidden because they weren't the advertised price. Florida law says you must include all of your fees and the advertised price. They broke the Florida law. If you showed 100 people of that listing, and they'd say, what's the price of that car? 99 of them would say $15.9. Yeah. But that wasn't the real price. Yeah.

And what do they say in their advertising was the Grego? brothers the lowest price I guarantee it the lowest price well you know they probably do guarantee the lowest price before they add all of their hidden fees and that's the way they can have the lowest price by having by my my making it a lie the real price is 14509 and 95 cents higher so the advertised price 15900 no real price seven $159. That doesn't sound as good.

No. It was then when I informed Jordan that I needed to take the numbers home to go over with my wife. Jordan suggested calling her, but I told her that I also need to get Agent Adorable, wind down a little bit and take a nap.

That would melt Jordan immediately, right? The River Jordan. That's right. I don't know why I said that. That was really stupid. It just came to me. Stream of consciousness. That convinced Jordan to let me go.

I said I'll be back the next day. Epilogue, this is a tough one. It's probably one of the best disclosures that we've seen on the Takata Airbag. This was also paired with an offer to have the car fixed, which I think it was sincere, Jordan, really meant it. However, there was the ambiguity on whether the repairs were predicated on making the sale first.

Yeah, we don't know. Don't know. Also, the recall was announced on January 9th, 2020. 2020 and that was this thing that I Nancy had last week on Consumer Reports. It was a second round of Subaru recalls. We fixed it once and now we're going to have to fix it again. We're not certain that Subaru has the parts available. They probably do because they wouldn't have an ounce of recall. Yeah. Yeah. Well, sometimes they'll have, they'll say you will be notified. And it doesn't say in the Carfax report that they're not available.

available. So we'll soon may probably are. If we're going by the standards by which we judge the Mercedes-Benz, Auto Nation of Del Rey, or Mercedes-Benz of Del Rey, then we would have to pass the Greco Chevrolet. Their performance this week is certainly magnitudes of order better than their Takata debacle last summer. I mean, it was terrible. So things are improving at the Greco Brothers dealership. And now we, it's voting time. All by the way, I looked at the, there, oh yeah, this is the Carfax.

Interesting. Stere on if you notice this. I haven't seen this before. In the Carfax report on the Takata, they say, this is where cars sold or registered in the states of Alabama, California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Puerto Rico, American Samoa. And we haven't shopped Americans in Guam, the northern...

I'll do that one. Northern Mariana Islands, Saipan. Where do you see in that? This is on the Carfax Report. They're talking about... NHTSA, yeah. Yeah, they're talking about NHTSA. I'm sorry.

NHTSA. They're talking about the Sun Belt states and countries, because they're talking about. talking the Virgin Islands and they're talking in Saipan and American Samoa. So they're talking all over the world where it's hot and humid. So this prompts me to remind

you that of all the places where cars are being brought back Florida has the highest number of recalls and incidents of injury and death. So Florida is a hotbed. Now we've got to vote and we're running short on

time. Nancy what's your vote? F. Okay. Nancy, the black widow, fails. Greco. We have five that came in online. The best one we got is from Nate.

You give them a C. They disclosed the recall and offer to get it fixed before delivery. We don't know if it's before delivery, but they did offer to get it fixed. Dean, we have some harsh ones, though. We have Dean gives them an F. John gives them an F.

Gwen gives them a D, and B. Gives him a C minus. Rick? Well, I've got Mark Smith in Iowa, says a B. and myself, I think Jordan saved him. I'd give him a C-plus. Yeah, I like Jordan.

Yeah, I like Jordan, too. Can we call her up and offer her job? Okay. Yeah, let's give Jordan a call. She sounds like a nice person, and we need more female salespeople. I'm going to give them a C-plus, too. Yeah, me too.

I mean, I could hardly get that out because it's a Greco dealership, but it could be that this is a, yeah, could be a change in the Greco scene. You don't think so? No, but they did well with the, maybe it's just Jordan. It could have been Jordan, yeah. Yeah, but they get an asterisk. Astrosk, yeah.

Caution. They did well at tap dancing. I give tap dancing an F. And Ernesto gives them a C. Ernesto gives them a C. Okay. And Mark Ryan, a B. Okay.

And we have all the votes in? Yes. Except for Linda's. I'm waiting for that one. Okay. In the meantime and in between time, I'm going to read real quick an email that I received from Mark Ryan. I'm a regular listener to the show from Iowa

and recently encouraged my daughter, Caitlin, to call the show with a question she had about her 2009 Camry. As a first-time female caller, she received a check for $50. As a young college student, the extra funds are quite welcome as she begins the spring semester.

Since her debut on the show, I have heard her sharing the experience with her friends and encouraging them to tune in in as well another female helping to build the platform on the other side on the on another note I teach a personal finance course at the college where I teach and have adopted Earl's book as part of the curriculum when I cover the car buying unit I am extremely proud to use this resource I also use several of your YouTube videos Earl thank you as always for everything you do and more important

Certainly, your kindness and generosity to my daughter. Kind regards, Mark Ryan. Wow. Thank you, Jonathan. That is fantastic. Thank you. YouTube's are great. Very informative.

If there's ever a reason to do a new revision for that book, that's it right there. Remember, all proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. All proceeds. You can buy on Amazon. Ladies and gentlemen, we've reached the end of another show, and we thank you, as usual, for tuning in with us. believing with us. All of us here wish you a happy and wonderful weekend. Enjoy those last football games. Thank you.

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