Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.02.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Braman Honda of West Palm Beach

Episode Date: February 2, 2019

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

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. So my name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. And I got a lot of things going on here. I got a phone ringing in my ear because I got the owner of the radio station call me. But I can't answer the phone because we're in live radio.

If this sounds confusing to you, just think it how confusing it sounds to us in the studio. So, once again, Earl Stewart on cars. We're a show all about cars, about how not to be ripped off by your car dealer. We've been doing this for about 14 years, and we're unique. We help you explain how to buy a car without being taken advantage of, how to lease a car without being taken advantage of, or for that matter, maintain or repair your car. So it's a really interesting show.

I hope we have some folks out there listening because we started 15 minutes late, and then when we started, we weren't really on the air. But we can talk about that some other time. Let's talk about what we do to help you and what you do to help us. One of the things you can do to help us is call our show. We thrive on your calls.

And we have a phone number here, which unfortunately, I'm unable. You can give us a call at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And you do make the show, as I say, every Saturday. And do we have a great show for the next two hours? And that wonderful voice you're listening to was Nancy Stewart, who's my co-host. Nancy Stewart is a woman's advocate to help women specifically

how not to be taken up by car dealers. And sitting next to Nancy is Rick Kearney. Rick Kearney is a certified diagnostic master technician. It means he knows everything about the mechanics, electronics, and the computerization of cars. I've added computerization 14 years ago when we started the show. There wasn't much computerization in cars, but today there's a whole whole lot.

So Rick is really an auto computer scientist. And if you have any problems with your car, If you have questions with some of the bells and whistles, the gadgets, really high-tech stuff on cars today, Rick Kearney is the guy that can answer the question. And if you want to ask the question on the telephone, you call us at 877-960-9960. We're kind of a cyber outfit now, given with the Times, high-tech, and we're on Facebook. And we're also on YouTube. We're streaming.

show live. And you can see it's on Facebook at Facebook. at Facebook.com for slash Earl Stewart on Cars. www.w.facebook.com for slash Earl Stewart on Cars. And stream us live in color. Video. Very exciting. YouTube and Twitter. We're out there in cyberspace. But the old-fashioned folks can call us at 877-960-9960. And we like text. we like text because we can kind of store them I like texts and Stu is our text guy

I forgot to when to introduce Stu Stu is my son and he's my partner in the business full transparency your baby that's right baby boy loving son you're my older son but Stu is he's in touch

with the millennials and all the folks out there that are texting us and tweeting us and us, I guess, as posting on YouTube and posting on Facebook. And if you want to text us, you text us at area code 772-497-6530. That's 772-4976530. And I'll be right with you, Rick. I just wanted to say that we have something that if you haven't listened to the show before,

is just dynamite, and that is a mystery shopping report. The most exciting thing we do in the show, and I'm telling you, so you will stay tuned. And we do that for the latter part of the show. We visit a car dealer somewhere in South Florida, sometimes even North Florida, or Western Florida. We go all over. We pretend undercover agent pretends to buy a car. It's a lot of fun. And we go through the whole process, responding just only to an ad.

Sometimes we go in to see if we can buy a car with a dangerous recall, like a Takata airbag car that has not been fixed. We do all that, and we spend quite a while in the dealership. We name names. We tell you who the salesman was, who the dealer was, and then we score that dealership. We give him a grade. If he passes, we put him our recommended dealer list. If he fails, we put him on, you better not buy from this car dealer. And we have a list for that, too.

you can access all this information on our blog, and that's simply earl-oncars.com. www. www. orgoncars.com You can read the blogs, you can see the YouTube channel, you can see the Twitter,

you can see the Facebook. Everything we do is there on Earl on Cars. And Rick, you have a comment. I just wanted to say, if folks, if you don't want to text or call in, you can also comment on our Facebook page

and YouTube page because we're monitoring both of those and right here to answer your questions. Exactly. So, again, anybody that went through the turmoil at the beginning, we apologize. Live radio, I've often thought, what happens if I have a flat tire on the way to the studio? Well, I did one time, actually, and I called the studio. You drove on the rims.

I drove on the rims, and I also called the radio show, and we were able to do it. So for some reason We weren't able to start on time There was some miscommunication somewhere And we didn't start on time But we're on the show This is a two-hour show We go from until 10 a.m.

So we're going to be here for another, what, an hour and a half And we'd love to hear from you 877-960-9960 Or text us is 772 4976530. Nancy, you have a point? I do.

Ladies, good morning. I'm waiting to hear from you. Give us a call toll free. You can win yourself $50. The first two new lady callers, win yourself $50. Just give me a call. You can talk about anything.

Ask a question. Give us your comment about the show. And that number is 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And this, the woman that you just heard, Nancy Stewart, my wife, and my co-host, we often appear together at speaking engagements, and we speak all over to rotary clubs and to Juana's clubs, condominium associations, men's clubs, women's clubs, and we like to get out. So if the new folks out there has some sort of an organization, we speak before small groups, maybe 20 or 30 people, and large groups, hundreds of people. Rick Kearney joins us.

He's our technical guy. Nancy is the female advocate person, and I'm kind of the general all over person. So if you need a guest speaker, we're a team. Rick, Nancy, and myself love to book us. If you book us for, we don't have a speaking fee, by the way. In fact, I often give out copies of my book, Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer. I prefer to sell the book, and it's available on Amazon, but when we speak, I typically give out free copies. It's kind of a how-to-do-it book on how not to be taken advantage of by a car dealer.

It's a summary of pretty much everything you hear on this show. And the reason I like to sell it is not because I like to make money. I like to make a profit. but I donate 100% of the proceeds of the sale of Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. That's our favorite charity, and it's an amazing organization located on Okachovie Boulevard in Laxan Hatchery Grove. That's west of West Palm Beach, Okochobie Boulevard.

Beautiful, beautiful brand-new spread to take care of doggies. And it's the largest no-kill shelter in Florida. last year we saved over 10,000 dogs. Now that sounds, I didn't, that's not a mistake. Last year we saved so many dogs from the hurricanes that we had, that was from the Virgin Islands in Puerto Rico and South Carolina. That was about 6,000, and we found homes for those doggies. But locally we found homes in Palm Beach County about 4,000.

So 6,000 and 4,000, that's how many dogs we saved. And this year, we're shooting for another record number, and we're expanding the facility at big dog ranch rescue and if you want to look at the website it's simply www.bdrr as in big dog ranchrescue.org.org org.org.org.org.org.org.org. So please give us a call 877960. Stu has a text that came in at 772-4976530. So text is a text of of that number, we love the text. Stu, what's the tech got to say?

Well, actually, this text is a comment on Facebook or question on Facebook. Oh, good, good. It's from Donald Brown. He wants to know this, probably for Rick. Does Toyota require or recommend the Toyota oil filter for Camry on oil changes?

Would another brand be okay? It's actually not a requirement. Toyota, of course, is going to recommend their own brand, but any good high-quality brand would be just fine. Fram, Purulator, pretty much they're all going to be the same. The quality is right up there on those aftermarket brands. And, of course, my recommendation, go right to Earl and Nancy's favorite publication, consumer reports, and just double-check there to see who makes the best one.

That's a perfect answer. You know, you have manufacturers, and they do know how their product works better than anybody else, and they typically design a very good part for their vehicle. This goes for all manufacturers. However, they also tend to charge a little bit more. And you just have to decide what's your pocketbook, your budget can afford, and you can get some really good aftermarket parts. But you also can get some parts that can cause your problem.

So if you want to play it safe and you can afford to pay the price for OEM, original equipment, manufactured parts, you probably ought to do it, especially when it comes to safety. The OEM parts, original equipment manufacturer parts, where they give me a problem is with crash parts with automobiles, and we know for a fact that the aftermarket parts have never been safety tested. Rick? Just one mention, though, on maintenance items, it's actually not a bad idea to have all your maintenance is done at a dealership.

They're quite competitive in the pricing, but the best part about it, is all that maintenance information is available nationwide for any dealer of any maker model to anyone so when you decide to trade your car in or to sell your car say you're going to sell a private deal that new owner can simply go to that website go to that company and say can you pull a history on this car for me and they can show every maintenance that's been done on that car to let you know that that car has been well taken care of i got a question you know what is You know, what kind of price difference are you talking about between a Toyota and an aftermarket filter? For an oil filter, you're only talking maybe a dollar or two.

Okay. Filters are relatively inexpensive, and especially now that a lot of them are going away from that metal cartridge filter, and all it is is just the paper element. We're talking only a few dollars, and the best thing about these new paper elements is that when they are being recycled, it's so much less expensive to recycle those. that people are more willing to do it. The companies have an easier time with it, and it's better for the environment.

All right. Sounds good. And another thing, Rick made the point that you can have your car repaired, maintenance-wise, not repaired, you can have your maintenance done by a car dealer. The car dealers typically will have their maintenance items lower priced. And they do that for a good reason. It's kind of, if you come in for your maintenance,

when you do have a repair, then you're going to be in the habit of going back to that car. dealer. But that's where you have to kind of watch yourself because the car dealers will typically price repair items much higher. Another good reason to go to your car dealer to have your maintenance done is because a lot of the manufacturers now are giving you maintenance free for a period of time. The maintenance is so little on the modern cars that they can afford to give an oil change, tire rotations, because it's really all you really need for the first couple of years. After the car is out of warranty, then you get into the more expensive maintenance

typically starting around 30,000 miles. So if you really want to maximize your economic advantage, take it to your car dealer for your routine maintenance. And the first time you have an expensive repair, shop and compare the price. And also mentioned Consumer Reports by Rick, Nancy and My's favorite publication. There's a great publication here, and this was the February edition. If you pick up the February edition or go online, They have a great story on auto repair chains, and they tell you in that section there,

PEP Boys is a good one. There's a place called Tires Plus, and they mention the better franchises too. So you can't go wrong with consumer reports. No, you can't. Rick, I have a question for you. Those two filters that we just talked about, you said the less expensive would be to go somewhere else. but is there a difference in either one of the filters? No, and believe it or not, a lot of these companies actually buy that paper element filter from the same place.

Some of the design changes are a little bit there, but for the most part, the quality is just as good, especially if you're getting a good known name brand filter like Fram, Pure Lator, the companies that have been in business a long time, they're not going to mess you around. Just save your receipt so that you can prove where you got it, and you're covered. Great information, Rick. Give us a call tool free at 877-960-960, or you can text us at 77272727-6530. We'd love to hear from you.

Don't forget, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We're going to go to Brad, who's holding in West Palm Beach. Good morning, Brad. Good morning. I have a quick question. I know that your dealership does not charge a dealer fee. I was looking at a used vehicle this week. It was a luxury vehicle, and the dealer fee was $799.

But the question I have is they had an electronic filing fee for $149, and a title and registration fees of approximately $500. that seemed a little high to me, and I'm just wondering, are those normal fees? Well, they're normal, unfortunately, because that's what almost all the car dealers in Florida do. As you say, my dealership doesn't charge a dealer fee. I know of no other that does not charge a dealer fee. One. Yeah, there is one.

Mullenax and a POPCA. Mollinax Ford, Ford, yeah. Molnix Ford and Apopka. CarMax used not to charge. one, then they went back in charge one. Some of the car dealers dropped them and added, but a dealer fee is simply a generic term for

something that goes by many names and they use it to puff the price up after they quote the price or advertise the price. And it's unfortunate. It's a really disgrace to our regulatory agencies and to our legislators that

they allow this to exist. We have a mystery shopping report. We're going to cover later in the program where the car dealer advertised a car, excluding about $900 in dealer fees. He had them all together, and then popped it on when the person came in to buy the car, a mystery sharper, it happened to be. It wasn't even disclosed as it's required by law on the vehicle buyer's order, and it was not disclosed even in the fine print on the advertising.

So it's a got-your-fee. It's an extra bump in price that is illegal, but the dealer's persistent doing it. all right thank you i just was wondering about those two fees if that's a normal cost yeah it's it's illegal they're not supposed to include they're supposed to include all of their non-government fees in the price of the car if they don't do if they don't do that they're breaking the law and unfortunately the regulators attorney general's office and all the other regulators don't pay any attention to it thank you very much thanks for the call brad give us a call again 877-960 or you can text us would love to get a text from you

772-4976530 and don't forget we've got the mystery shopper me report coming up from Brayman Honda and so much more to look forward to we've got some time to spend with you we want to thank you for spending your time with us here at Earl Stewart on cars 877-960 and we got some text That's right. We've got texts coming in. First is from Johnny and Rivier Beach says, when your show didn't start at 8 o'clock, I said, oh, no, those mean car dealerships have gotten together and that Earl thrown off the air.

Thank God that wasn't true. Enjoy your show. We worried the same thing. Well, Johnny, I appreciate that. There's a huge amount of pressure. I get asked the question all the time. How do the other car dealers feel about you? And it's kind of a joke now.

Of course, they don't like me. And my standard joke always gets a laugh when I'm speaking in public. I say I have a Kevlar vest underneath my shirt. I don't think anybody would literally take a shot at me, but there's some crazy people out there, and you never know. You might get a pie in the face. I might get a pie in the face. I like that.

It'd be kind of funny. Depends on the pie. Yeah, go viral. I could do a YouTube. If it was Keelheim, it would make you happy. Exactly. Rick? I just got a question on the YouTube channel from Ed.

he was asking our views on the Tesla Model 3, whether it's a good buyer or bad. My personal view is I like the car. I like Teslas. I just, I love the technology in it. But I did look it up on Consumer Reports, and believe it or not, the 2019 Tesla Model 3 is rated as a 77 out of 80. So that's actually not too bad anymore. Well, it was 100 when they first had when the Tesla. Tesla first came out, it was the only car ever to get a perfect score.

And the quality and the technology slipped on the Model 3, just an FYI, Volkswagen is going to introduce a similar competitive vehicle to the Model 3 that will be much less expensive. The other problem with Tesla is that they're losing their, and they've lost their subsidy from the government, the electric car rebate. And they've lowered their prices to try to accommodate that. They've got some other, although they were profitable the last quarter, there's a lot of concern now whether Tesla will be around much longer. So I would not recommend that anybody buy a Tesla today based on all of that. However, it's still a good vehicle. It's not as good as it was, in my opinion.

And then I even considered buying one about a year ago. But I'd hold off before I bought a test. That would be my advice. Nervousness about that company may be going. Yeah. I think we have some text, don't we still? We got more. This is from Andrew and Jupiter.

It says, my insurance company is offering discounts on my car insurance if I install one of their tracking devices, which monitors my driving habits. How is it doing this? And should I be concerned about other personal information it may be gathering? Is this information shared with anyone else outside of the insurance company? Andrea, I would ask those questions of the insurance company, and I would want to see it in writing. My guess is there is no invasion of privacy. Of course, it depends on whether you trust the word and the written word of your insurance company. If you get it in writing, I would bank on it because if they put it in writing and they violate your privacy rights,

you might be a millionaire quite soon because a big insurance company has got a lot of money. Rick? There is another side to that, something I've been encountering at the shop. Those devices pretty much are being made by the cheapest companies they can find, because they're not charging you for them. They're simply handing them out. We have actually seen quite a few cases. Cars coming in with a check engine light on because those devices are actually shorting or grounding out,

and they're putting bad information into what's called the canned communication in the car. Excuse me for interrupting, but are you talking about, the black boxes that the insurance companies put on the car or the black boxes that the manufacturers put on the car. Those little plug-in devices that Progressive in Allstate that they hand you and they say, yeah, just plug this in your car so we can see how fast you're driving and things like that and they give you a discount on them.

Andrea, my advice is that you go for it if you are a safe driver. And even if you're not a safe driver, but you'd like to become a safe driver. I think that the psychological impact on these devices would be a wonderful thing. I would recommend these devices for anybody with a lead foot who can't control themselves. A little pressure doesn't hurt. If you know that you're saving money, and you also know that in the event of an accident,

if it's your fault, and let's say you're really nutty and you're going 100 miles an hour and you cause an accident, there goes your alibi right there because it's documented. And even if you found the little box and took it off, that would probably be a criminal intent, and you'd really be in trouble there. So if you want to be a safe driver, I think it's a good idea. But to get the comments on the privacy in writing from your insurance company. Okay. We are going to go to Fayetteville, North Carolina. Wow.

Yeah. First female caller of the morning, and that is Jen Ann. Good morning. Good morning. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much. You've won yourself $50. Well, that's an awesome surprise this Saturday morning.

Okay. What can we do for you? Well, my question is, my husband just purchased a 2017 Toyota Tacoma this week from Carvana, and it only came with one key. A mobile locksmith will charge over $100 to give us another key, and I believe toileted dealerships will charge over, I think, $250 or $260. He was able to purchase a key from Lowe's to unlock the car in case we needed to, but it doesn't actually start the car. What would you suggest to do about purchasing a second key?

I would suggest that you look around a little bit further. Have you tried Ace Hardware or some of the other hardware stores? I know you said you tried Lowe's, but have you tried? Some others? We have not. We literally just got the car delivered to our house on Wednesday, and my husband's been driving it around. So I'm going to eventually need to set a keys to have in case we have to, you know,

switch kids or meet somewhere. So, so Ace Hardware and anything else? I'm trying to deal than the dealership. Well, the reason the dealer's overcharge and the manufacturer is overcharged for these these keys. I know it's not a smart key on the Tacoma, but it does need to be programmed to the car. dealers do use some vendors that come in and do a cheaper version where they come in, they do it for their used cars. I don't know if these are available to the public.

Rick is shaking his head, no. Unfortunately, you might have to go to the dealership and just beat them up on the price of the replacement key to program it. Well, the alternative is places like Ace Hardware, they have the ability that what they get are these special blank keys. It's an immobilizer key that has the chip. in it. But what they do is they take your key, they plug it into the machine, and it reads the code from it, and simply programs their key to be a clone of that original key, and then they cut it and it works. And they're much less expensive. Jan Ann, the reason I mention that is there was a special on the local television channel

here in Palm Beach County, Florida, WPTV. And they did a consumer check of these keys, because it is, as Stu said, it's a terrible price, a very high price you have to pay for these smart keys. And the manufacturer charges the dealers too much, and the dealers mark up the key too much, so you're really caught in the middle. But a lot of the hardware stores, now, as Rick said, can buy these blanks,

and they can make these keys for you much, much less expensive. So I just Google this, and I was, Ace Hardware stuck in my mind, but they mentioned several other hardware stores, too. So I'm surprised. Lowe's was so expensive, but try some more hardware stores. And if you don't have any luck, you can call us back. Our dealership, we'd be glad to make a key for you and give it to you at our cost. Okay, thank you so much. You've been very helpful.

Oh, thanks for the call. And hang on the line so Rudy can get your contact information, and we're going to send you $50. Thanks, too much. Thanks, Chanel. Give us a call again. Thank you. Bye-bye. Have a great day. 960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30.

It was one of my projects that I have to do next week is take my remote and go out and get some pricing on it because it is ridiculously expensive to replace that or get a second key. I'm looking forward to when it's more common where you can use your smartphone to get into your car. That's available now, but it needs to become more widespread. Yeah, and for you folks that are maybe not aware of this and you just bought a new car with the keyless remotes, when you go into a car dealership now and you buy yourself a car used or new if they had the keyless remotes, insist on getting two keys. And if they won't give you two keys, then you need to negotiate the price of the car.

And when you get the two keys, you want to be sure you put the extra key in a very safe place. these keys can be very expensive. How high is to do? $350. Yeah, higher than that sometimes, yeah. $500. They're so expensive that car dealers sell insurance for lost keys. You can actually buy an insurance policy for a lost key.

So if you haven't bought a new car in a while and used to the old-fashioned key, be very careful. You might even want to take the key insurance, but you're probably smarter just to take the extra key and put it in your safety deposit box. It's a crazy world. We're in a world where phones or $1,000 and keys are $500. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's insane.

Does that make any sense? Makes you feel old again? Oh, Lord. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-530. What I was going to say about the remote, you know, it was just a couple of years ago that I tried to get one because I had misplaced by 600 in some dollars. And I couldn't believe that it was going to be that. expensive. And that was after I gave you a big discount. I was kidding.

I think it's all a conspiracy, pushing us towards autonomous cars that are going to be owned by some centralized company, and we won't even need a key anymore. Yeah. Well, you heard it first here, folks. We have the comedy team that's back. We have Earl Stewart. We have Rick. We also have some techs. And we're having a great time. Join us. Give us a call. 877-966. So 9960, or you can text us at 772-4976530, and Stu does have some text for us. I love our listeners. They keep giving us questions we've never heard before. So here's one from Anne-Marie. I hope you all are well.

However, we're coming into the peak of cold and flu season with people coughing, sneezing, and hacking all over the place. My question is, what is the best way to disinfect the interior surfaces, steering wheel, controls, seats, and handles of a car? Can a driver use disinfectant wipes, or will that damage to the interior? What is the best way to keep a car from turning into a rolling biohazard? Great question. That is. And I don't know. And I don't know.

And Marie, I think we're going to have to research that. I mean, there are some probably a million answers to that, but I don't think we have a good answer for you. But when you consider you're in an enclosed box in a car. and anything in there is going to be in the air. On the surfaces, the one thing I would probably recommend against just because my prior career in the arts, anything with a solvent like alcohol, don't put it on the surfaces

because it will probably degrade that surface. So don't smear Purell or other on your steering wheel. Here's my thought on the subject. You know, the cabin filter that filters the air that comes in. Rick, is that, does that besides, does that, besides, does, Does it get microbes out or take out bacteria? I mean, something that can make you sick? There are certain types that will.

We have ones that have what's called activated charcoal that not only do they work on some very obnoxious odors, but they will also help to reduce bacteria and other germs getting through. So if you keep your AC on fresh air, bringing in air out of the outside and you have a really good filter, you are probably keeping your car pretty clean. Yeah, that's going to be one of the safer ways. If you're on recirculate, whether the air is going to stay there. Yep. And, okay, well, I think we're making a little progress.

And, of course, if you're going to use any sort of those Lysol or Clorox wipes, anything like that, I would highly recommend try one, like they always say with any cleaner, test it in an inconspicuous spot first, wipe just a little bit, wait a day, look at it. If everything seems okay, you should be all right to use that on most of the contact surfaces. And Anne-Marie, I've used a variety of different cleaners inside my Avalon, and I don't see any damage yet, but I'm one of those people that are always looking for microorganisms in a way to eliminate them. And I've used everything from the floor of my vehicle with a Clorox cleanup that Rick just said,

well, you better test a small area. I recommend that. Also, you know, I'm, I've got baby wipes in my car. I've got Neutrogenas, which have a bit of a base oil, which would protect the leather. So there's a variety of things that I've used. So thank you for the text. Okay. I think we've got some more text.

How we should do? It's from Linda, who is our longtime Facebook fan. I'm watching the show live on Facebook this morning. I lost her text, but I know what it was. She bought a car in Georgia, a brand new car. and they dropped the ball and didn't tell her how to work all the bells and whistles

all the high-tech stuff. Her question is, can I take it to any other car dealership of the same make and will they help me? Depends on the car dealer. Exactly. It's a challenge now.

I talk about how cars have changed and cars have changed so dramatically in the past five or six years that you really need. If you've looked at your owner's manual, it's about the size of an encyclopedia Britannica now.

I don't think we have encyclopedias anymore. We have, but if you remember what the encyclopedias used to look like before Google. I do. And you're right. There's our encyclopedia. Eric's holding up his smartphone. So you really need to insist when you buy a car. Once you buy the car and you leave the dealership,

unfortunately, you're at a disadvantage in a lot of dealerships because the salesman earned his commission. And when he sees you again, unless you're getting ready to buy another car, he's not going to remember who you are. so be sure that you understand as much as you need to in that car I can tell you right now you're never going to understand everything about that car and my opinion the cars are too complex today and there's too many things on cars they got too many buttons and I have actually pushed buttons on my car

that I didn't know what they were and that's dangerous and I've pushed buttons on your car you push each other's buttons again there we have the comedy team I set them up he drops I will give my biggest secret for looking like a genius when it comes to knowing how to operate cars and I pull out my smartphone very discreetly

and I go to YouTube and I look and see if there's a video on how to pair an Android phone how to pair an Apple phone how to make that car play work how did the Google car apps, the Waymo maps, the Ways. You do that on the show, too. You mean you're not the smartest guy on cars as I always thought you were?

And you've been doing that on this show. Here we go again, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to tell you right now that I don't need to be the smartest guy because I got the world of knowledge at my fingertips. If you lose that phone, you're fired. I'm done. If I lose that phone, I'm just jumping off a cliff because I'm done. I'm firing myself.

He's got a backup phone. Folks, YouTube has so. many great answers, you know, obviously you take, watch through the video once to make sure they're not somebody being a troll, but you will find so much great information out there that can help you while you're just sitting in your car and it will show you how to work those controls sometimes to make life so much easier. Thank you so much, Rick. We're going to go to Matt.

He's calling from Stewart. Good morning, Matt. Hey, good morning. So we went down yesterday and purchased a highland. or from you at a real Stewart Toyota very very impressed with the staff

Brian Casey of the youth cars yeah Brian's great very good very nice guy my wife with her six sense of love the guy

thank you very much yeah he's a and Skyler was you know everybody's really helpful I encourage Anybody, if you're looking for newer use, the team is dynamite. They're just dynamite. Well, Matt, tell everybody we didn't pay you to say that, and I thank you very much.

No, you didn't. You're making her a blush. Yeah, I was awesome. That's why I called in. Well, I appreciate it. That's why I'm really impressed. Thank you, Matt. We appreciate the kind words. We really do. and I have to say that in transparency I have to tell people I am a car dealer but this show is not an infomercial we don't really promote ourselves and I have to tell you I do get a little bit of pride

when someone like who calls in and promotes us we appreciate it very much but we're here to serve the listeners out there and the watchers about how we can help them any way we can and you have a great day Matt and please call again I appreciate it thank you very much have a good day Thanks. Thanks for being part of the show. 877960. 772 is that text number.

772-497-6530. I think that was Bev Smith. You know, we were talking about before, and we were laughing, and I was telling, I was joking with Rick, I'm going to fire him if he loses his iPhone because Google is his brain. You know, the fact of the matter is that Google is all of our brains. And the problem is, there are a whole lot of people out there I'm one of them

I know how to use Google but I have to remind myself every time I have to remind you to use Google Stu and I will go to lunch and I'll say Stu and I'll ask him a question That's why he does it to me

And then Stu will say Had you Google it Did you Google it? So that ought to be the name of a book Have you Googled it? We all who grew up You know a few years back Haven't adapted

to the fact that we live in a world of artificial intelligence. We have artificial intelligence. This is my artificial intelligence, and we all have one of these things. And a lot of folks out there just haven't adapted. And some people, I have friends my age, that don't use Google, don't have a smartphone.

You know, there are people out there with flip phones. The people out there without flip phones. So this show is something for a lot of the older people and people who haven't adapted. You know, you don't have to be that old. This thing has only been around for, what, 12 years do? How long have iPhones existed? 2007.

Okay. So that's 12 years? 12 years. I didn't do the math. Buffett has a clip. So that hasn't, that's very recently. And so we admit freely that we use Google. We tell you, if you don't know how to use Google, learn how to use it.

It is truly a supplement to your intelligence. Stephen Goldberg, who happens to be a service. advisor who works for us commented and he's probably embarrassed now that i'm reading his text he says i google all kinds of tech information on our cars it's impossible to keep up with all the tech and new cars you want to be the smartest kid on the block be the best Googler on the block that's all it takes in the sum total of human knowledge is in this little thing right here everything that mankind has learned since the beginning of man is in here i have two kids in high school and they teach them how to do effective research using Google, how to parse bad information from good information.

Because it's really encouraging that the schools even recognize that it's a valid form. It's a, like you said, it's an external lobe of our brain that we all share. Sure. Let me get back on track with Earl Struton Cars, and Nancy will remind you of this later, but we do a newspaper column. This column is in the Florida Weekly, and the head of the title is Attention Cars, Cars, Heldsman, join my witness protection plan so you can read this in the florida weekly of the hometown news it's also on my blog site along with hundreds and hundreds of other of my blogs at

earluncars.com www wwwd earluncars.com this particular column has to do with a class action suit that we are in the beginning stages of and i'm working with a firm of attorneys class action attorneys uh to sue large dealers for violating the florida's deceptive and unfair trade practices act the dealers often call it phidopta florida deceptive and unfair trade practices act which is to deceive people into buying a car at a price and this price does not include extra charges the dealers commonly call generically call dealer fees these are not non-government fees that are hidden from the buyers and these fees unfortunately have grown to the point now where there are thousands of dollars at least hundreds of dollars they've been

around for a long time because they can point now where these dealer fees materially to store at the price that you play for the car and oftentimes you don't know even when you pay the dealer fee you think it's a legitimate government fee i have been fighting this for a long long time. My dealership does not charge a dealer fee. The mystery shops that we do always disclose the dealer fee. We've come to the point now where if dealers charge dealer fees, we don't count that against them on the mystery shopping report

because if we did, everybody would be on the do not buy list. So dealers commonly charged dealer fees. If you're going to buy a car in Florida, folks, you need to be sure that you get an Alphidor price. and that's the price that you can write a checkout for and bring it to the dealer and give him the check and he gives you the car. Total 100%.

Car dealers are the only place where you can't get that. I think we have a caller. We do. John's calling from Palm City. Good morning, John. Welcome to the show. Good morning to everyone. I just have a question. Quick question for Rick. With the extreme temperatures that we've been many of the states,

the average car, if somebody buys a use, car and if it's like a northern car would Rick recommend to do a test on it the car as proper antifreeze in it I mean Rick what's the answer what is the average car in the antifreeze what temperature is it done down to what will the lowest be I'm sure the call with minus 40 or 50 could have a problem with crack blocks with a radiator test pressure test detect Any defect with that car that was used up north? If there was any damage to the engine or radiator,

especially a crack in the block or cylinder head, or even if the head gasket itself were to start leaking, it would show up pretty quickly performance-wise. And yes, a radiator pressure test would definitely show it, as would a compression test on the engine itself. Would that be covered by warranty, even though it was a temperature environment, ameliorated issue. In other words, the power train warranty on these cars is typically at least

five years. 60,000 miles. And sometimes even longer, depending on the manufacturers. But would the warranty cover that? Unless they could find some form of serious abuse to the car where they could prove that it was abused or if it had leaked all the coolant out and somehow it allowed it to cause a problem, I can't see how that wouldn't be covered under warranty. You know, those temperatures were so drastic in this latest coal front that came through that I wonder if it didn't reach some new record lows. I mean, how far does antifreeze protect your car? What are the specs on the antifreeze?

Do you know? I don't. Google it. Let me double-check that. I'm doing that right now. Let's Google it. Just to see you out. Great question, John.

You know, I hadn't thought about it. I know why you're thinking about it. You got friends up north that are freezing to death, or were anyway. Absolutely. Absolutely. Syracuse, New York, in particular. But what I wanted, Rick, to know, if a new car, let's say it's a Honda, and it's delivered here in Florida, would that have the same protection of a new Honda like delivered in Syracuse, New York? Or are they different manufacturers have different specifications when the car is new as to what degree the antifreeze will protect to?

I can answer that. The answer is yes, you no matter where they sell the car, whether it's in Saudi Arabia or Minneapolis, Minnesota. uh... a honda civic is a honda civic is a honda civic and it's supposed to stand up in the environmental differences fact of the matter is they don't uh... but the warranty will cover you might one of the problems we have in florida high heat and high humidity you record the dashboards they were cracking and fading and melding actually in the sun uh... that was a uh... environmental issue only acute occurred in the sunbelt states but that was the manufacturer's responsibility

The manufacturer, by law, must anticipate the temperature extremes, the humidity extremes, everything else, and the car they build is supposed to work anywhere in the world. Now, to Rick, the next step part of that question, are those units that you buy in the auto store that have the specific gravity of the antifreeze? Are they accurate? Those testers relatively accurate. I mean, they're basically using an old, what's called a hygrometer. And it's...

Here we go. Well, it's old school, and we don't use them anymore. The best advice, because as a matter of fact, now, most manufacturers sell antifreeze that is pre-mixed already at a 50-50 mix, which is what they recommended as. And I'm finding a specification here that shows that for the average car, peak antifreeze says it should be able to handle temperatures down to minus 52 degrees. Now, that's going to be your base temperature of minus 52, not a windchill, because obviously windchill's really not going to affect that coolant that's inside the radiator because it's not going to be able to get to it. Would that work in Fargo?

That's weather. Minus 52 degrees. Would that work in Fargo? That would probably handle Fargo quite nicely. They've seen some record temperatures. Does that answer your question? John? Yes, it does.

But it would be still a good idea if you buy a used car to check the content. the radiative fluid, I imagine, anyhow. You got that right, boy, that's a good point. You never know what, you know, a guy might have put water in there during the summer, and then sold it, and then you'd be in serious trouble. And then diluted it, exactly. Yeah. Well, thanks for answering my question.

Thank you, John. Thanks, John. Thanks for always being part of the show. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-30. Stu is waiting for your Texas. We're going to go to Howard, who is a regular. caller also he's calling from jupiter good morning everybody

good morning are you glad to hear that see that we have sun today oh boy let me tell you I hate that cold weather I used to like cold weather Howard because I was born in Florida and now I'm getting the point where I don't like it anymore my bones ache more now they blew the forecast

they're supposed to rain this morning I'm glad they blew it okay let me ask you a couple of questions I heard I don't know how true it is. I'm trying to Google it and I don't get an answer to that. In Alaska they use alcohol instead of antifreeze. Is that true?

I don't know that. I mean it wouldn't surprise me. Antifreeze is alcohol. The antifreeze could do a job minus 40 degrees. It must have something else beside it. Well, it's, any freeze, the primary ingredient, is

ethyl alcohol or ethylene glycol alcohol. So it actually is an alcohol-based. in antifreeze and that's what provides those lowers the freezing temperature of that mixture. Howard's question might be accurate then that as long as

anti-freeze is mainly alcohol if you run on anti-freeze you could just fill your radiator with scotch. You might want to look for some lower in stuff that's scotch. I mean you can get some bottom-shell vodka in there and they'll probably do it better. My other question is

do I have to get my navigation updated after two years? How do I do that? That is a disgrace that you have to do that, and we've talked about that on the show. If you're using Google Maps or using any kind of a handheld navigation device, it's automatically updated.

And we talk about the fact that manufacturers now make you bring in. What are they to a charge to update your... $250 on average. $250. I wouldn't pay it. It's a shame. I'd go buy a smartphone. Then again, your smart phone's going to cost you $1,500, so you might want to... You can buy a used smartphone for $200, and then you've got a smartphone, plus the fact that you've got Google Maps, and it automatically updates every time you want to use it.

And it's better than any navigation I've seen in any car. I've been in cars, Nancy and I were on a vacation, and we had a guide that had a nice later model car with a big fat... navigation and he's got his iPad up there, clip to the dashboard, using Google Maps instead of the built-in $2,000 navigation. So Howard, don't spend the $200 bucks. Get yourself a Google map. Or you might luck out and find a car with Apple CarPlay, which is really cool. Exactly. Yeah, but you need data with Apple CarPlay. Is that correct? With your, you have unlimited data otherwise it costs more money. No, I wouldn't say that. I mean, just the amount of data with, you know, Google Maps or Apple Maps aren't that much.

No, it really isn't. Okay, my last question, and this is going to be a good one. There's a hydrogen car out, it's made by Toyota. It's called a Marai. Yep. And what is the future of hydrogen cells? It looks like Toyota's kind of going away from hydrogen. It's getting very dim.

It's getting very dim for them. It's an infrastructure thing, Howard. We have no hydrogen stations. They have a few in California when everybody, thought that was going to happen. And the cost of building a hydrogen fuel cell stations all over would be prohibited. Plus the fact, the electrical technology is moving so fast now, battery life, you don't need the fuel cell. They're going to have a battery. I'm just going to go out in a limb here. I didn't read this anywhere. But I'm going to say they're going to have a battery

with a thousand mile range on it one day. And it's just a matter. Anything you can imagine, conceive of today is going to happen. Okay, one other thing, the battery, charging the battery, will ever be a time where you could charge your battery in five minutes? Probably. There's actually a slightly better answer

that Switzerland's working on where major highways are going to be designed with induction coils in the road and as you're driving it actually charges your battery by induction so you're driving, it's like the

wireless charging for your cell phone. While you're driving on those major roads, it's constantly recharging your battery, and then when you go off on the regular surface streets, it runs on your normal battery running it down. Once you get back on the major roads, it starts charging it right back up again.

The problem with that is it's a huge infrastructure expense, and once you build it, you can't upgrade it, you're going to have to replace it, and if somebody comes up with a thousand mile range battery, you don't need it. So that's what happened to hydrogen fuel cell. Toyota's a pretty smart company, but sometimes it makes stupid mistakes.

Hydrogen fuel cell was a bad mistake, and they're done a 180, and they're going full force to battery and electric. I think they just had the cash to pretty much explore every possible future. So they put some money in hydrogen, hybrid, electric, and now they're going with the one that's going to work the best. Exactly. Okay. Thanks for the information.

Thanks, Howard. Great call. 877-960-99-60. Love to have your calls. We love to have your text, which are 772-4976530. The text number is 772-497-6530. And please, text. And we have a text?

No, the text has dried up. We got no text. Come on. I'm going to keep saying the text number. I'm getting bored. I'm getting bored. I'm going home. Rosalie.

Oh, no. Stu's going home. He's warned us, give him a text. 772-497-6530. You know, Rosalie asked this question about her 2011 cruise, and she can't afford to get to a mechanic right now, but she has a real toxic smell in the interior of the cruise, and she says it almost smells like a chemical.

It's a little sweet, but it smells like a chemical in the inside of the cruise. A sweet smell? very slight. The first thing I would be suspecting is coolant. And the biggest cause of that is if the heater core has started to leak inside the casing, obviously the coolant that's in there will drip its way out of the casing and run out through the air conditioning drain. But that could be that she's losing coolant because ethylene alcohol produces a very sweet-smelling odor when it's concentrated like that.

So I would definitely get that checked because if she's leaking coolant, that could be a major overheat issue coming very soon. That advice would be a big help to her. She's having some transmission problems. Would that, you know, coincide with the coolant problem? Sounds like that's going to be two separate issues. Two separate issues.

There you go, Rosalie. We have another caller from West Palm Beach, Benet. Good morning. Hi, good morning. It's Bennett. Anyway, Oh, Bennett? Good morning, Bennett.

Yeah, I'm a regular listener. And a couple of weeks ago, you guys barely touched on it. It was towards the end of the show. And it was about when you go by a car and they write everything down real quick on a paper. And they tell you how much do you want to spend a month? Is that something new? Because then they don't have to get into the specific of what they're ripping you off on. And it happened to my son and I

when we were looking for a car and they just said how much do you want to spend a month? Benita, that's right. Go ahead. No, that's it. I'm just curious about it. Is that a new way of doing things?

Isn't that wrong just to say if they come to you and say well, what do you want to spend a month for how many months, you know? Well, Bennett, that's not new. As a matter of fact, it's very old, but it's something that has been practice of dealers for years and years.

And I think it's probably something called the four squared system. That's a dealer terminology for a classic system that many car dealers used to use years ago, virtually all of them, and now just a few use it. But there's some remnants that have survived, and this is one of them. Most of us, you, me, everybody that buys expensive items, homes, cars, we're payment buyers and we don't sometimes we don't like to think in terms of that but we even if we don't even if we pay cash for something we have in our back of our minds how much can we afford per month you have a mortgage payment you have a car payment most everybody not a few

people billionaires they don't think that way but most of us do so people can be lulled into complicity by having a very low payment but a cardinal constructs you a very low payment into a huge price. When you focus on the price of a car, you can shop and compare quite easily. Apples and apples, you go to three dealerships, you get their best bid, and then you go with the lowest price. With a monthly payment, that can vary. I mean, think about it. The interest rate affects the payment. The term affects the payment. The down payment affects the payment. So you were being subjected to something that originally was called the four square system where they look for a buyer's hot button

and a hot button usually is the monthly payment but for some people it can be the trade-in allowance for some people it can be the price of the car and for some people it can be the discount so I just gave you four things discount

price of the new car monthly payment and what else did I say trade it's trade in yeah it's trade price so there are people that come in now you're talking to a car dealer right now in full disclosure since 1968, there are people come into my dealership and most dealerships

and all they care about is how much they can get for the trade in. They're obsessed. They love their car and everybody is giving them insolently low. You're right. And if they can come to a car dealer that gives them $2,000 more than anybody else did, they can make a sale. Meanwhile, the car dealer's marked up the price of the car, $2,000. Or if you have discount people, you see your advertisements all the time, TV online, 50% off. Hollywood Toyota is running big ads in our market, even though they're in Hollywood, Florida, all over our market, 50% discount on the cars they're selling. Well, that's not true. They don't really give you a 50% discount. They just want to get you in the door. Yeah, they mark the car up 50%, and then they mark it down

again, 50%. So that's what they did to you, Bennett, is they must have sensed that. They must have sense that you were a payment buyer and they worked the payment so they can maximize their profit they're not doing you a favor you know what thank you but you know what happened when we were in the financing office i noticed on the paper on dodges the extended warranty is like $3,500 but on the paper in the finance office it read like $1,500 so they could put down whatever they want and the other and the additional $2,000 is profit to them is that Well, if they did that, Bennett, they're breaking the law. Florida happens to have one of the few insurance laws that protect you against extended service contracts. Extended service contracts

or warranties that are sold in the finance office are regulated by the state, Florida State Insurance Commission's office. In Florida, you have to register your rate. So if you want to sell a warranty, and you can have your own warranty, a lot of car dealers do. They design a warranty. They registered with the state, and then you have to tell the state how much you're going to charge for that warranty. That's what they must charge. So if the dealer is charging you one thing for the warranty and then marking it up so he can mark the price of the car up, he's breaking the law. Right. Very good. Thank you for the information. Two great questions, Bennett. I appreciate your call. Thank you. You're welcome, Bennett. Give us a call

again. Boy, it's a minefield out there. I haven't used that expression in a while. If we received anything from Your Anonymous Feedback this morning? Not yet. Just checked a minute ago. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, youranonymous Feedback.com. You remain anonymous, so we're very, very fair. We can't come after you. Let me say that again, because think about it, folks, you're totally anonymous.

This site is Incognito. It's a company called Incognito, and they provide anonymous feedback for a lot of Blue Chip companies. including Amazon and Adobe and public broadcasting service and on and on and on. So these super blue chip companies use this incognito company. And it's a great source of you being able to tell a company what you think about them with total anonymity. Kind of like crime tips or IRS tips. The IRS provides you anonymity so you can turn in tax cheats. The police provide you anonymity so you can report criminals.

We provide you anonymity at Erlan Cars so you can tell us what you really think about us or about anything. We cannot determine your identity. You can even reply, we can reply to your comment, but we don't know who you are. That all goes through scrubbing so your anonymity is protected. So your anonymous Feedback.com, while you are anonymous, A-O-N-Y-M-U-S, feedback, F-E-E-E-D-B-A-C-K.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Tell us what you really think,

and you don't want to be identified. Your identity is protected. Take advantage of that, ladies and gentlemen, and we do have that Mystery Shopping Report coming up soon. So you want to stay tuned for that, and that is from Brehman Honda. Brayman Honda. Also, I have $50 to give to the second female caller,

Give me a call, 877-960, 99060, or you can text us at 772-497-6530, and Stu will get that text and get you on the air. We do have a text. Actually, we have a couple that came in. The first one, it says, what should I look for in a used truck that was previously registered in Canada? Interesting question. The Odomin would be the first thing I look at because they use kilometers there. That's correct. and then you'd want to see if it had the ability to be changed.

I think the later models in Canada, we have an expert on the subject who is suing some manufacturers for not providing miles per hour and kilometers per hour in the cars they sell in the Detroit area. But for the last four or five years, you should be able to flip a switch to go from kilometers to miles per hour. Now, as far as other considerations, Rick, do you have any idea? Yeah.

Rust. Rust. I would find a mechanic. Great. To put that car on a lift, get it up in the air, and I would inspect every surface for rust. And I would also look for signs. Now, I'm just saying,

any signs that looks like somebody might have freshly put some spray paint anywhere on the frame or body underneath that vehicle, trying to hide that rust. Why do Canadian cars rust more than American cars? It's not. so much the Canadian, but it's the northern cars because of the road salt that's used in order to get the ice in the wintertime. And, you know, Canada, they, we're hearing all about the polar vortex hitting the middle of the U.S. Well, they get that for some areas, 10 or 11 months

a year. Okay. And that heavy road salt, that tears up those vehicles. Okay. And I just look something up using my other external brain. A website says, why you should avoid buying a Canadian vehicle, and it touches on things like Rick mentioned, the climate, salt, also says that a lot of vehicles are made with different specifications, such as emissions and things in different countries, and this jumped out at me, was that Carfax has only been around in Canada for a relatively short time, so for a longer history on a used car, you might not get that information, say if an accident happened in Quebec, it might not be on the Carfax report. And I just had another thought.

I had some difficulty at one time going back a few years. Here's my advantage of being a recovering car dealer. I remember when I wanted to import some cars from Canada because we couldn't get them in the United States, Toyota's. And it was also, I think I had to do with the price was quite attractive, and we were buying them in Canada. And Toyota told me that I shouldn't do that because the warranty didn't cover them in the United States.

Now, I'm going to have to really stretch my memory, year. I think I had to fight them on this issue, and I think I won. But I would still be sure it would make no sense for a manufacturer to build a car in Canada and say that the warranty did not apply in the United States. But just to be on the safe side, you buy a Canadian car, check with your local American dealer on that make and say, well, my Canadian car warranty apply. I do remember we had one occasion also where a customer came to us they wanted to buy a very new vehicle from off our use car a lot and extremely low miles very new car but it didn't have daytime running lights and they lived in Canada and that was a requirement

so we went in and simply added a relay to where when you start turned the car on the headlights would come on automatically and that was sufficient for them to be able to get the car registered because they could prove that the car's headlights would be on all the time well there's a huge of population, you think about our border with Canada, and you take our border from the east to the west coast, think of how many thousands of people commonly they live in Canada and they work

in the United States or vice versa. So there are a lot of American cars going back and forth to Canada and Canadian cars going back and forth. So it's not a big deal. I mean, if you buy one, do the little checklist we gave you, but it's not a big deal. Yep.

And let's see. I think that gets us caught up with our text. Okay, fantastic. Let me talk a little bit more about, let me talk a little bit more about Takata. I just wanted to, we haven't, oh, we have just a text came in, I'll make this quick. The Takata issue is still with us in spades. It's bigger and better, better, it's better, it's bigger and worse than ever. As these cars, millions of cars that on the road are aging, more and more cars are becoming more and more dangerous, something that you don't see on the news anymore,

you don't hear about anymore, and Rick is the one that usually remembers to say, if you're going to buy a car, if you're going to a newer used car, you want to check, particularly the used cars, safercar.org, www.safercar.org,

that's a nitsa.gov. I'm sorry. Gov. Safercar.gov. That's the NHTSA website. www.safercar.gov. Put your Vend number in and check it. This thing is not going away. It's getting worse, but you don't hear about it except here on this radio show.

As a matter of fact, Toyota just recently released a huge mailer out to everyone they could find for sienas, corollas, and forerunners that are being covered under this, trying to get more and more of these people notified that we need to get their cars. in to get these inflators from place. I guess who got one of those mailers? You? Oh, I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got one for the newest recall. But what they're sending out now, you saw this.

But you got one for a car you haven't driven out? I haven't owned it since 2014. Right. But the new mailers are going out. Remember how when the government required cigarette manufacturers to put these horrible images of the effects of smoking to deter people? So these mailers that are going out from Toyota are showing some pretty graphic images. I mean, they're not showing people injured by the

Takata, but it's some scary stuff. One shows a picture of a crib and says, would you want your baby in front of a bomb? It's really shocking stuff. Well, my point in mentioning you used to is the fact that proves that the manufacturers are still not, don't know where people are. So the person that own that car that you have had... Has no idea. Has no idea what's going on. So the manufacturers are doing a terrible job of identifying the current owners of the car, and there's no reason for it. Which is really

dumb because you already figured out the answer. You get registrations, or I'm in the computer. You can go to the DMV of every state and they will give you the anybody that bought a license plate for a used car that you just bought. They're in their record book. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we've got a great conversation

going here and we'd love to hear from you. 877-960 and Stu's waiting for your text at 772-497-6-530 and we do have a caller and his name is Rod. He's calling from

Riviera Beach. Good morning, Rod. Good morning, one and all. Good morning. That's a nice, nice sunny day for a change. Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Lightfoot. How are you doing? What's up, Rod? I want to see

what the update is on that K&N air filter and see how it is. And secondly, where you first said this morning that you came in on a flat tire there and stuff is an update about me driving on the on the flat tire um i finally got my birth certificate there the other day so gold star on the license everything's done fantastic everything everything works with patience but uh like to really send out there to people

that uh please please make sure that you know you got your certified citizens thing going so that uh so that you can get the gold star in your license you never ever know when things all of a sudden could go whatever way, you know, do it, do it their way and be done with it. Yeah, Rod, Rick Kearney tested your air filter, did a thorough test, and came up with a surprising advantage in fuel economy, but it wasn't much. And after we went through it, I'm going to let Rick talk in a minute, but I'll summarize it, you can actually, for the difference in cost, if you're a high mileage driver, you could

conceivably cover that increase in cost by the additional fuel economy that you received. But he didn't see any advantage in terms of the starting problem that you referred to. I'll let you say that, Rick. Well, the interesting part is, as an update, I spoke with our test driver, which he's been running that K&N filter in his car all this time now. And he said, the first two weeks he saw about a half a mile per gallon, increase in fuel economy. He said that has since gone back down to about right in where he was

and it's holding the same as when he had the factory filter. So that may have been just a minor increase where the computer was getting used to that. Sudden change in the airflow pattern. But at this point, his fuel economy is within one to two tenths of where it was when he was running the normal Toyota paper type filter. in his car. And the starting issue, the hesitation issue, there was no change. He said, no, that seems to be completely the same nature of the beast type thing.

It's just the way this car runs, that slight hesitation when you step on the gas. What I was alluding to was about the extra power that you have for the extra breathing to it, not necessarily the economy, but the economy is a nice add-in. Well, here's how I did a test on that. The car has what's called a mass airflow sensor that actually records how much air is going into the engine. And so I took his car, and with the Toyota factory filter in it, I did several basically almost drag strip runs where I would start at a stop sign, put the pedal right to the floor, and I kept it that way until the car hit 35 miles an hour. And then I left off. And I recorded that data coming in from those sensors.

And believe it or not, even with the K&N air filter in it, once I did several runs on it, they all came in pretty much the same. There was almost no real difference in the amount of airflow simply because the engine is designed to look for a certain amount to come in. I mean, it really didn't make that big of a difference of extra air being drawn in to a normally aspirated engine. Sounds like it's not worth the extra money, Rod. Well, so it sounds like what I'm alluding to a lot, a lot of times if you put it down

to the floor, down to the metal, as you say, then spark retards a bit. A lot of things do via a computer. If you go half to half the 5'8s, as in, as in I.E. You're getting on the freeway or something like that, the lag that the person had called about before with the four cylinder and he was wanting to trade in for the six cylinder was why that all started was this that if you go that then you do have your spark you do have this you do have that i know a lot about computers or or you know the now antique computers but the brand new stuff i don't so that's what i'm alluding to yes yeah the only drawback that

we found with that was that most of the time that that lag that you're feeling is the actual computer lag from when you step on the pedal the computer records that signal and then has to send a signal out to the engine it's that length of time that it takes for it to receive the signal calculate its response and send it out to the engine and for the engine to respond that's where that lag is it's not so much a performance issue with the engine it's a lag in the communication between all these different sensors and the computers. Okay, so in other words, I.E., to get technical about it, you've got the lag mainly because the metronome of the cross counts of the O2 sensor

are not picking up for it, and the grams per second of the mass airflow, etc. Well, it's actually the accelerator pedal and the throttle body. The accelerator pedal sends a signal to the computer. The computer sends it out to the throttle body. But it, unfortunately, you just, there are certain things you simply cannot change. And that's one of them. Okay. Well, you know, it is, I've seen a big difference with it through the years.

And yes, so how's 736,000 miles on an 87,000? GMC Jimmy 2.8. Wow. That's a lot of miles for you. Wow, that's huge. The truck I'm in now has got roughly 300,000 on it. You're going to make a million, Ron? You got 700,000.

You're going for a million? I was trying to, but the lady that I moved in with, she hated the looks of the truck because it was getting pretty ratty. Yeah. And one day she got me another one, said, here's another one. years of present. I said, but I want to keep mine for a million. If I would have kept it for a million, it would have been half

price off at Roger Dean Chevy. Well, Ron, thank you very much. You know your cars. You know your cars. Rod, you stand your ground. I think we have a job for you, Rod. Not sure. I think you qualify. Well, I was going to get in

as the mystery shopper and something we'll talk about in a later time. Sounds good. Thank you, Ron. Thanks for calling. You know, just back on Rod's point there, I didn't want to, you know, go any further on this, but I think it just has to, it's almost the computer chip issue,

and you talk about speed of computers, and, you know, every time a new generation of a computer comes out, smartphone, it's a little fast, a little faster, and we're getting into right now to nanoc computing. So there's no question of my mind. But all these hesitations will be narrow and narrower and narrower and eventually virtually imperceptible. Oh, absolutely. Because it sounds to me like it's pure computer speed that we're talking about.

Absolutely. Coming up on our mystery shopping report. We definitely are. And that is the mystery shopping report from Bremen Honda. And I think the recovering car dealers already. Yeah. Well, we got a few texts that came out. Oh, let's do the text.

And don't forget, we're running over a little bit late today. I forgot. That's right. We're going about 15. So let's kill some time here. What did you have for dinner last night? I forgot. I didn't have dinner.

Oh, very good. Okay. Good morning. A lot of car dealers sell paint sealant for brand new cars. I thought new paint needed to cure or harden before you apply wax or any type of sealant. Is this still true today with modern cars, Robert, and Stewart? A car dealers sell paint sealant, Robert, because they want to make money and your car has good. Finish on it now.

you should wax your car. Unless you got a white one. With a good, yeah, unless you get a white one without clear coat. But the average car has got good finish. And as long as you take care of your car, if you can't keep it garage, that's good. If not, wax it more often, wash it. And you live in Florida. You've got some salt air and you've got some heat and a lot of other environmental issues

that are going to cause you a problem. But the paint seal that they charge you arm and a leg for is not worth the money. If you read the warranty on these paint sealants, by the way, you'll find out that it's usually the same warranty as the manufacturer's warranty on the paint. So Toyota Guard, for example, on Toyotas, the paint sealant has a warranty of three years or 36,000 miles. And that's exactly what the Toyota warranty is. So the paint sealant that the dealer's selling you is not going to have any better warranty than the finish that you bought when you bought the new car. Okay. This is from Aaron, no town or locality.

Are salespeople and car dealerships required to be licensed by the state? If not, don't you think considering they handle complex financial transactions and private customer data, there should be some standards of conduct regulated and enforced by state government? Nancy and I had that same conversation the other day, and there are a lot of professions out there that are regulated for good reason. and, you know, CPAs and doctors and psych. I don't think psychologists have to be licensed. I'm not sure about that.

They do. L.M.T. Psychiatists for sure. But car salespeople, you know, you can come in off the street and have no experience, no knowledge, and you can get a job as a car salesman. I think you have to have a driver's license in most car dealership, but there are no requirements.

So that's an excellent point. There are a lot of people out there. that are against any kind of regulation, any kind of licensing. They say it's impediment to free enterprise. It's also an impediment to criminal activity. And it's not just car salespeople. It's finance managers. They sit in an office with people and they give advice, financial advice,

on what people should do with their investments, whether they should lease or get a loan. I mean, they're patently unqualified to give that kind of advice. Yeah, I see just again, Going back on my experience as a car dealer, I recall in years past, you'd have a finance manager, you call them, whose purpose was to sell you paint sealant and maintenance and warranties and raise your interest rate above what you want to pay, and these are some among the highest paid people in a car dealer's shoe. So you would have one that worked for you, and I had a few that worked for me that I found out were dishonest. and I would fire them. Then they'd go to work for another dealer.

Suddenly, that other dealer was doing extremely well as selling a lot of cars to people with bad credit and also making a lot of money in the finance department. And then suddenly, two years later, three years later, the same guy would get fired, and then he'd go to another car dealership. And the dealer that would hire him would suddenly make a lot of money

until the banks found out they were phoning up credit applications and they were doing all sorts of shady things with service contracts. And that's the reason there should be licensing for these people. They're like bankers, and they should not be allowed to run free. Exactly. And even the banking laws and privacy laws, they require, when they consider it when a car dealership makes a decision based on someone's credit.

For example, someone comes in and the finance manager judged them unable to get a loan. They actually, the car dealer in the eyes of the law is the lender. So if you turn somebody down and say, hey, you can't afford to buy this car or you can't get a loan, you have to follow the regulations that are out there for the banking industry. Exactly. So by all logic, they should be required to have the same credentials and licensing as a banker. But they don't.

They do not. Another problem. Okay. We have a follow-up question on paint salient. Oh. Somebody heard my comment about white cars. Follow-up question for paint ceiling. Why did you say unless you have a white car?

We have a whole show on this. Yeah, I'll try to make it fast because, well, we've got more time. The white car's white color is different than other colors, obviously, not just because it's white, because white is the reflection of all frequencies of white. And for this reason, for some reason, I think the manufacturers decided they didn't have to put a clear coat on it. Clearcoat is an extra coat of paint that cost the manufacturer's money. They'd rather not have to do it because they don't want to have the expense on that car.

And the environmental impact. So the reason that they don't clear coat it is because the federal government has regulation on how to the environmental impact. how much emissions any particular manufacturer who has painting facilities can put into the air. They say you can only emit so much pollution. So when they are on the edge, they've got too many paint places going, they have to say, how am I going to comply with the federal regulation? So somebody said, okay, I got an idea. We just won't clear coat our white cars, because our white cars probably tend to fade less

than our other cars. Red cars, for example, fade a lot quicker. So they went with a white car without the clear-code. Well, guess what? If you don't clear-coat it, that takes away the advantage the white has. Now the white actually becomes

more of a problem in fading than the red car that now has the clear-coat. So a lot of white cars out there don't have clear-cote. And if you have a white car, you're going to have a problem. If you have a red car, you're going to have a problem.

And none of this has ever disclosed to people that buy cars. Now, this doesn't apply certain shades of white, like pearl white. There are white cars that are not called right, that are called other things like Pearl that have clear-cote. And they look much nicer than the regular white. They do. But they also charge a premium for this.

They do. Yep. Sometimes $200 or $300 more just for a different color. Yeah. Crazy. Okay. Last text. Earl, did you ever personally sell cars?

I would imagine you would have been terrible. You are too honest. Yeah, I, I, that fooled me there for a second. I started out, I started, I love that question. I started out selling used cars for my father in 1968, and I could write a book on that. I might, that was the most corrupt thing I've ever done in my life. We had a, this is 1968, we had a guy that came in every week and set back the odometer, so we could have high mileage cars and set back the speedometer, odometer, so we could a lot of people and tell them they were.

roll them up. Now, everybody did the same thing. All the car dealers, this guy made a lot of money. He went from car lot to car lot, rolling back odometers. The things that we did selling those used cars was absolutely amazing. But you're right about one thing. I was a terrible used car salesman, not because I couldn't be as dishonest, but because I just wasn't good with a social kind of guy. He didn't have the gift of the gab back then. Yeah. Yeah, I experienced the same thing. Yeah. At any way,

you know, Stu started selling Newspers now. I was, you know, I was a nice guy. I knew a lot about the product, but when it came

to like negotiating and the schmoozing, it just, it wasn't my style. Yeah. But it was, you know, we have come a long way,

folks, since 1968. That's the reason I'm a recovering card dealer. I don't want to go through it, but it took me a long time to change. But what I did back

in the day, I'm embarrassed. Yeah. I think we have a call it. I like smoozing and negotiating. You would have been great. Yeah.

Okay, Dennis is holding. Good morning, Dennis. Good morning. I've been to listen to you for quite a while. I decided to call in. All right. Great. My question is, I went out and bought a Chevy van new in 2013.

I was hesitant to buying it because of the paint falling off the car, off the vehicle. A lot of my friends have Chevy vans, and they got all this paint missing, and I was assured by the salesperson that they have corrected that problem, and it's no longer an issue. I said, I hope so, because I wasn't going to buy the van if it wasn't corrected. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I walked out and saw Peyton missing from my van. Oh, boy. So I went into the dealership, which is on North Lake Boulevard, and I asked him what they would do about it, and he says he would get back to me, and he says that,

The Chevy will split the difference with me, and they wanted me to pay $280 for it. And I said, no, this is your problem, not my problem. He would know the vehicle is, what, five years old. And I said, you know, I've been leasing cars from you and buying cars from you for quite a while. And if this isn't going to be rectified, I'm not going to buy another Chevy vehicle. And he says, well, this is the best we can do. is you think they should have honored my request to save a customer, or they should have honored the request just to fix the problem,

which has been a problem with Chevy for quite a while under the van. Dennis, it depends on the dealer. It depends on the dealers. This is Schumacher on North Lake Boulevard, Schumacher, Chevrolet. It depends on their rapport with the manufacturer. If you have a dealer who is an advocate for his customers and who has respect and trust of the manufacturer, they will go to surprising lengths to take care of cars that are out of warranty.

How many years in miles is your car, your van out of warranty, Dennis? Well, I got 57,000 miles on it, so... That's close. What year is it? However long, I don't know. What year? It's a 13. 13, yeah.

That's not that far out. You could go back and put it. you could even try a different Chevrolet dealer you could call the call General Motors directly one thing I would ask them to do for you and is ask a Schumacher if they're if they're going to pay they say they'll pay half the cost as Schumacher if they will do the work at their cost in other words as Schumacher if they will do the work for the cost of the paint and the cost that they pay the painter so Let's say the cost of labor and paint materials is $500.

Schumacher's real cost on that is about $250. Right. Say, there's no money out of pocket for you, Chuck Schumacher. Do it for what it cost you. And then as Chevrolet, General Motors, will they match that $250? Because chances are it would cost the manufacturer no more to match their costs than if you had to pay the other half. In other words, you're asking Schumacher to pay half the cost, but he's only doing that by taking his profit off. And if he values you

as a customer, he should just not make a profit on you because he's making a profit when he does that work for them under warranty. You're paying half and General Motors is paying half. He should do it at his cost. Well, that's what I would have thought. And, you know, since I bought five vehicles over the years, you would think, you know, you don't want to lose a customer over $280. Exactly. So once you give that a try and see what they say. Well, that's the thought. I'll give that a try and let you know what happens. And try to speak to Chuck Schumacher. You know, he's probably, he has multiple dealerships and he's probably not in the store a lot, but you can at least ask to speak to it. Yeah, well, it can't hurt. Yeah. If you, if you, if you, if you, if you

If you strike out, call me back next week, and I'll give you a Chuck Schumacher's cell phone number. There you go. Thank you. Okay. All right. Have a great day. Thank you.

Thank you, Dennis. He liked that. Thanks a lot, Dennis. Give us a call next week. 877-960-9960, and our text number is 772-4976530. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to be on the air just a little bit longer than we usually are. And we have the mystery shopping report coming up.

And also, I'll remind, if there's a lady out there listening and you've never called before, give us a call. Hey, 77, 960, 99, 60, and you can win yourself $50. We'll be off the air about 10.15. Is that right, Rudy, about 1015? Okay, so we have an extension granted us because of a late start, and I'll kick off this mystery shopping report. of Brayman Honda right now.

Hang on to your hats, folks. These are always a lot of fun, and they're educational. In a way, they're depressing, but, hey, that's what drama is. You've got entertainment with drama. But Brayman Honda and Green Acres sells a lot of used cars, a lot. As a matter of fact, in 2018, just last year, they sold more used cars in Palm Beach County than any other franchise car dealer. Of course, Brayman Honda, along with other franchise dealers,

was outsold considerably by the three big independent used car dealers in our area off lease only they're huge car max sells a lot of cars and florida fine cars a role of the newcomer to the area sells a lot of cars too but schumacher i mean schumacher i got schumacher on the brain brayman brayman does a great job as an independent dealer uh brayman honda is one of over 20 car dealerships in florida has over 20 car dealerships in Florida and Colorado. And he's owned by Norman Brayman. He's a billionaire. Brayman is better known for his luxury brand dealerships,

but they do offer brands for regular folks like Hyundai Kia and, of course, Honda. And Brayman, you know, I remember Brayman back in the day, you know, it's advantage of being around for a long time. Brayman's wealth originally came from his wife, whose father owned a chain of liquor stars. Really? You might not know that. He's a bootlegger.

A bootlegger, yeah. Maybe. He was also Victor Patampkin's protege, wasn't he? He trained under Victor Potanke. I believe you're right. But that's where he got his capital was from his wife's father's liquor stores. Like the Kennedys. Yeah.

And he also, I think at one time, does he still own a football team, Philadelphia Eagles? I thought he, I don't know if he still does, but that was the team he owned. And he had a toilet dealership years ago in Miami, and he had a new Twitter. I don't think he has a Toyota dealership anymore but billionaire is true and quite a name he's a very well-known man it's been nearly three years since we shopped him we mystery shopped him way back three years ago agent X investigated their claims of bottom line pricing in their ads and website the assumption was that Brayman was going to one price so we said they let's check it out unusual for dealers to quote their price and stick to it give you their best

price but there was no explanation of the process anywhere anywhere that we'd find Asian X found out that bottom line pricing was just a market slogan haggling was in full force at Brayman sales decks we found that out with other dealers Alpacker Ford is one I think they use the same term bottom line yeah pricing and sometimes I'll say no haggle. I saw an interesting TV ad by AutoNation this morning, as a matter of fact. One price, our lowest price, one price, lowest price, automation, and if you look close, it's a used car ad. They do one price on used cars, but they lead you to believe they do it on new.

And AutoNation is not one price. They negotiate in Haggle. A lot of dealerships are doing it with used, and it's a lot easier to do on use cars. It is, exactly. That last investigation landed Brayman Honda on our Do Not Recommend list. That was three years ago for high-pressure sales tactics. Hidden fees, including attempt to double-dip the manufacturer's delivery transportation fee. Boy, that's a serious crime, by the way.

It's a federal crime. You cannot charge for freight because the manufacturer has already charged for it and built into the price of the car. Brayman has long since dropped the term bottom-line pricing from its market. marketing, we wondered what other changes might have been put into place since our last visit. As a nod to their used car sales success, we chose to check out their used car department. We tried to find a used car with a Takata airbag recall, but fail to find one. Now, that's very good news.

Next, we try to find one with any safety recall. There were none. Now, this is a big dealer, folks. Yep, that's great. Big used car dealer, not one car. Graham and Honda's used car lot with any kind of a danger of safety we go. Now, that is absolutely amazing. I'll do a little aside here in the interest that we have a little time.

Thursday, still will know this, we sold a used Lexus that we've had on our lot for about three years, and we lost over $5,000 on it. And the reason that car has been sitting around for so long is because there was no fix available. and had a tecotta air bag recall. So we have a policy not to sell cars with dangerous recalls. And there was no fix available, so we just had to sit on that car for way too long. And we took a huge loss on it. That's the reason car dealers don't not sell these cars.

That's not good grammar, but they sell cars with dangerous recalls because the alternative is to keep the car. And if you keep the car, it depreciates. If it depreciates, you lose money. And you'd rather expose your customers to danger than lose money. And that's not right. Agent Thunder was sent off into the field with instructions Agent Thunder is a replacement for Agent X. And he's doing a good job so far.

Instructions to pretend to buy used 2015 Toyota Prius, advertised online by Braymond Honda for $14,999. dollars plan was to portray an easy-going customer someone who wouldn't put up too much of a fighter challenged the salesperson and we call this mystery shop persona Larry laydown and there's unfortunately a lot of Larry laydowns and Linda laydowns out there that trust car dealers buyer beware folks caveat entor here's a report speaking in the first person I headed down to Brayman Honda and Green Acres in the early afternoon to add credibility to my cover story, I brought my wife and toddler along, my little toddler, and they were in a stroller, he was in a

stroller, and a diaper bag in tow. I mean, that is a perfect shopping, mystery shopping setup. Totally, you know, he just disarms the dealer. We park, headed to the showroom once inside, we were greeted by two cheerful receptionists. As I was explaining the purpose of our visit, A salesperson named Miguel approached and greeted us. Miguel was friendly, neat appearance, knew right away to pay attention to my wife and kid, ignoring us for a bit while he cooed and made silly faces at the baby. He knew how to win us over. Very smart.

Good salesperson. Miguel rose shook my hand and asked why we'd come in. I told him he wanted to look at the 2015 Prius that I'd seen on their website. Miguel knew which vehicle I was referring to and asked if I had called or sent in an online forum about it. I said, I hadn't, and asked why he wanted to know. I went to the same thing when I read this. He replied that he just wanted to be sure I wasn't working with another salesperson. That may or may not be the case.

I suspect it may be two-tier pricing. And just as an aside, you always get a lower price on the end. internet, posted prices, and when you walk in. Miguel suggested that we go to his office first. We agreed and led the way pushing the empty stroller for us, and that was another nice touch. Very good salesperson, very polished. Once seated, Miguel asked my wife and I some qualifying questions, delivered in a pleasant

and non-pushy way, he dressed both of us equally. I see Nancy's eyes lighting up and never seemed to assume either one of us were in charge. this was refreshing and my wife commented later to me she felt the same way the one thing you can do if you're a salesperson that will really kill the sale man in with his wife or a female companion you focus entirely with a man you're costing yourself a deal because the women want to be included and they should be and this is the 21st century I asked him about the Prius making sure to fifth, the three questions about mechanical fitness, structural soundness, and overall safety. We do this on all Takata shops to give them three chances to spill the beans.

Miguel explained that the vehicle was an excellent mechanical shape, had never been in an accident, and was perfectly safe. We've heard that before. They always say that virtually. He directed our attention to his computer screen and showed us the Carfax report. Refreshing. Almost every time we hear

I'll print out later. We'll have to look at the Carfax report when we get back. I'll find the Carfax report. I'll show you. They never addressed it immediately for some reason. But here, bam, right up on the computer screen. And you can do it on your iPhone,

your Android phone. You can show a Carfax report instantaneously. No reason not to. If you're looking at the car they got online, most dealers will have a little link. It says Carfax or Auto Check, and you click it on your phone. Yeah. So when you're shopping online, which you should, because I've just told you, the prices are lower online,

you can also look at the Carfax report yourself. To go into a carfax dealership being unaware of what the Carfax report says is a big mistake. Oh, so we looked over the Carfax report up on this PC, no accidents, no recalls, or anything else that would be of concern. Wow. It was time to take a test drive, and Miguel said he would put. parked the Prius next to our car so we could transfer the kid's car seat.

We hadn't even told him. We had a car seat, but Miguel was obviously very smart and appeared to be at ease taking extraordinary care of his customer. I mean, talking about a 10. Yeah, that's a great touch right there. Yeah, great touch. He impressed me.

I think we should try to hire. I'm saying, Miguel. We should try to hire Miguel. Go to our website and apply for a job, please. Exactly. We took the Prius for a spin, discussed the car along the way Miguel knew a decent amount about the Prius and how the hybrid system worked I asked him if he'd ever sold new

Toyotas. Miguel replied that he hadn't, but the Honda hybrid worked pretty much the same way, which is true. When in return, Miguel tried a trial close and asked how we like the car. That's a trial close. Just for your identification, a good salesman

should try at least three or four. And I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with doing that. You want to gauge of how he'll want to sell a car and that's what salespeople do and a trial close so he asked to try the trial clothes and said how we liked it i looked over my wife who smiled and nodded okay making progress mcgill asked the baby i love it i asked the mystery shopper's baby if she liked it and we all laughed i bet i bet uh agent thunder melted a little bit you know because even though you're shopping you feel good about that you apply for it he respects my wife he loves my kid yeah that's really good uh let's see if me uh so the salesman let's see if this makes sense we went to mcgill's desk waiting for him to print a purchase proposal for us we went over very carefully with us

identifying all the charges if you just tuned in were mystery shopping braymond honda and green acres lake worth area in southern florida the top line showed a retail price of 16 000 quite a bit higher than the $14,999 online price. Next came a discount of $2,400. This brought us to the sales price of $14,590. Okay. I'm getting confused at this point, too. Well, part of this is, well, I won't say it's premeditated, but it probably is.

Well, it's like the caller we had earlier asking about the four squares. It's kind of the confusion of the different numbers. Then came the extra fees, okay. $3.99 for accessories, nitrophil tires and security edge. That is just pure. Bs. Nitrogen and tires is worthless. The security edge is, it costs $25.

That's like a 1970s era security. That's old tool. Then there's $199, in addition to $399, $199 electronic filing fee. another word for a dealer fee and there's a dealer services fee here's the big one. They usually have the big deal. 799.50.

So we've got three nonsense fees totaling, did I total this right? $1,397. $0.50. $1,397. And $50 in hidden fees. Dealer fees,

very, very disturbing. But everybody doesn't. Everybody. After sales tax, he had us at 16-996, 75 out the door. The bottom-blown number did not include tag and registration. I asked him to explain all the extras. He said that nitrogen fill and that were pre-installed on all cars. Yes, it is.

And they do it on purpose. You can't buy a car from Brayman without it. And they don't tell you about it. They don't disclose it. pre-installed dealer options accessories should be disclosed they should be included in the advertised price but they don't and the dealer services electronic filing fee were both standard fees charged by all dealers not true some dealers don't we don't malnakes Ford and Apopka that's right

doesn't the only one he went on to list some of the other things he's fees covered like processing paperwork getting the tag work done and that's okay maybe they do use that money that they make when they sell you the car to pay for some of these things but uh these costs should be included in the advertise price when you sell a product whether it's a tube of toothpaste or refrigerator or car you have cost you have to pay sales commissions you have to pay for advertising you have to pay your utility bill you take these you put them in your product and then you market up further with profit and then you advertise that price. You don't take your cost and sneak them in on the sales, on the customer after they come in to buy the product. And that's what

happens. I said I was a little confused about the price. The price I saw online was 1499, but this buyer's order was a jumble of numbers. Miguel said he needed to show some discounts to get from the list price to the internet price. He also said the $399 was pre-printed on the form. So what? Why do you do it? It's there. Yeah. So we had to lower the price by that amount.

He showed me that the sale price was $14.9.50 plus $399, came to the Internet price, but it didn't, almost. Very fuzzy. He asked if everything looked good and good enough to proceed, and I replied that I would like to see a better discount if that was possible. Miguel said he'd go get the used car manager. that we let the games begin. Let me talk to my boss.

Let me talk to the used car manager. Let us know if he could do that. He got up, walked out of the office. He and the used car manager had a cigarette, a cup of coffee that came back. I just made that up. Returning a few minutes later with Martin. Martin was a nice guy.

Shook all her hands, babies too. He wasn't pushy, but he was clear you really wanted to make a deal. He said that it was the last day of the month, and he wanted to get this end of January. This is true. The last day of the month, not an old wife's tale, not an urban legend, it's true. Car dealers will discount vehicles more on the end of the month because they have to. It gets earned some bonuses, salesman's bonuses, dealers bonuses.

They all are precipitated on the last day of the month. So he did. He said he'd take $1,000 off if we took the deal today. Okay. My wife asked him how late they were open. He said they closed at 9 p.m. She told Martin and Miguel they were both very helpful and nice that we wanted to buy the car from then. But we need to go home and talk it over. She explained this is what we did for every big purchase we make. We would return after dinner if we decided we wanted to do the deal. Martin said, I can respect that. And I respect that that that Martin said because a lot of times they get really pushy when you start to walk out the door.

It's going to sell. You better leave us a deposit then. It's going to sell before you get back. Yeah, exactly. Didn't do that. Price goes up tomorrow. Exactly. So, Bram and Honda.

I give them an A-plus on courtesy and sales ability. Respect for women. They were very cool, very good. There we are. There we have the shopping report. I have to say something additional here, because on their document which they disclosed the dealer fee fees plural and they had they're required by law it says purchase agreement they didn't say this is a worksheet they didn't say this is a scratch sheet they said this is a purchase agreement and nowhere on the purchase agreement is the disclosure required by federal law I'm sorry state law. Here's what it should say, and this is in the Florida Deceptive of Fair Trade Practices

statute, statute number 501.976, they should say on this purchase agreement, this charge represents cost and profit to the dealer for items such as inspecting, cleaning, and adjusting vehicles, and preparing documents related to the sale. They did not say that. Now that's a violation of the law. Also, in their advertisement, which happened to be an online advertisement, they didn't even come close to that because they do have fine print. And here is their, I'm holding it up for on Facebook, I'm holding up their advertisement. This is the fine print, which you can't read. But I can tell you, with my magnifying glass, looking close, and my bifocals, there is no disclosure in the fine print of this either so not only are additional dealer fees

undisclosed and not include in the price illegal not to include the price they're not even disclosing the amount or the fact that there is a dealer fee in the advertisement and they're not putting on their vehicle buyers order or their purchase agreement which is amazing because brayman And there's a big car dealership dealer. He has 20 dealerships nationwide. So that's a conundrum for us as we score this, and we have a little time left to score it. What is scores?

Well, we got the grades are coming in online. Miguel gives them a B, and I don't think it's the same Miguel. However, that is the highest grade that we got. So maybe it is. Maybe it's Miguel. too modest and Miguel, you're a good salesman.

Give me a call. I need a good salesman like you. If you can be honest, I'd love to hire you. You know, I'll get to migrate in the second.

So some Miguel gave him a B. Lanna, a C minus, Al, a B minus, John, a C, Linda, a D, Doug, or maybe

Ollie did this an F. Jeff said, it sounded good and hit all the fees, solid B, maybe a B minus. So,

a pass a pass yeah for my grade I'm definitely going to pass them Miguel gets an A and like everything was great

until the fees came in and we're grading on a curve and they they did nothing extraordinarily bad but they also did

a bunch of things well that's not true but I mean extraordinarily different no that's what I meant yeah I mean nothing out of the of the norm

fancy exactly I'm going to give Miguel an A plus for courtesy and so much more. And I'm going to give them a C minus. Miguel and Martin both get an A.

Brayman overall is going to get a B for me. Again, they're doing what everyone else is doing with these fees. It needs to be stopped. But if you're an educated buyer that you've listened, even though to this show a little bit, you'd know to look for those things. and fight them a little bit. Yeah. We'll pass them.

We're going to pass Brayman Honda and Green Acres, and I could just say one more time. Very troubling that he did no disclosure on his purchase agreement. That's something that even the bad dealers do. And their website, because I went back to look to make sure I didn't miss it. Yeah. There's nothing. No disclosure on the ad, no closure on the purchase agreement.

Very serious violation of Florida law. You know, it's cool. It's been a long time since we moved someone from the bad list to the good list. Yes. Yeah. It's happening today. Okay. folks that wraps it up thank you very much we are we're ready for the theme music

we're finished okay ladies and gentlemen thank you for spending your day with us your morning with us and we'll see you right back here same time same channel I don't know. I'm more away. Ha ha ha. But... Mm-hmm. M...