Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.09.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of King Hyundai of Deerfield Beach

Episode Date: February 9, 2019

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits King Hyundai in West Palm Beach to purchase a car on the new Hyundai Assurance Program from the dealer's website. 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. Good morning, everybody. We're back. It's my favorite time of the week. I hope you like it too. My name is Earl, and I'm often referred to as the recovering car dealer.

For you newbies, you folks that haven't heard the show before, folks that have tuned in the true oldie station, are going to be disappointed because I'm not going to sing to you. This is a live radio talk show. But I think if you just give me a minute here, and we can tell you a little bit about what the show is all about, you might stay tuned because it's unique. We are truly the only show, I think, anywhere on radio,

that does what we do. And basically, we're going to tell you how to avoid being ripped off by car dealers. Yes. When you buy a car, lease a car, for that matter, maintain. or repair your car and you go into a car dealership chances are you've had some bad experiences and this show

is a tell it all it's a expose we have a mystery shopping report we visited a car dealer and pretended to buy a car we'll tell you all about that in the studio with me here I have a team of experts

on various things in fact I want to tell you our regular listeners we're thrilled to how Alan Knape here with us, our collision repair guy, body shop. He's in high demand. He doesn't come on as frequently because you don't wreck your cars frequently as you buy a car, especially when you maintain a repair. So welcome back, Alan. Welcome back, Alan. Thanks. Glad to be back. Alan. Good morning. Alan. Miss you guys. Alan's making a cameo appearance. We are impressed to have him here. It's not a cameo. He's still part of the team, but if you have any questions about,

insurance companies especially I mean next to car dealers insurance companies are the ones you really got to watch out for and dealing with auto insurance collision repair things of this nature Alan's an expert and of course he's also he's a body shop manager he runs a collision repair shop and he's been in the business a long long time and there are a lot of tricks to the trade there are a lot of angles that you need to work to be sure you get an honest repair you get a safe repair so anybody who out there in radio land or Facebook land or YouTube land

You know A lot of lions That's right You haven't been on live in color have you I don't believe I have Yeah so in living color You're looking at Alan Napier A handsome young man

There's cameras everywhere Exactly like a movie studio now So call Alan anytime during the show 877-960 Call any of us We also have Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and she is kind of a generalist like me. She's not a specialist, or a specialist.

We have one other specialist. I'm going to introduce to you just a minute. But Nancy Stewart, if she had a specialty, she's a female advocate. You know, hashtag, me too. She is a person that advocates fairness, honesty, transparent to women. Now, we want fairness, transparency, and honesty to everybody, but, you know, women have lagged behind that because of us men. I mean, let's sell it like it is.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. And you ladies, she has a special offer for you. I'll let her tell you about it in a minute about why we encourage the ladies to call the show. Special bonus for you. And lastly, but not least, is Rick Kearney. Rick Kearney is a certified diagnostic master technician. We used to call him a mechanic, and then we start calling. him a technician and now we call him an auto computer scientist because folks you're not

driving a car now you're driving a computer on four wheels and it's going to get even more of a computer pretty soon it'll be like remember 2001 the space honesty Hal you're going to get into your car to say Hal take me to the Taco Bell and hopefully Hal doesn't have a breakdown like he did on 2001 the Space Odyssey but Rick he's got all the answers I'm sorry Earl according to your Doctor's latest reports, I can't do that today. Artificial intelligence, that's what we're dealing with. I mean, isn't it funny back in, when was it, 2001 of Space Office? That was the 80s?

Actually, 2001 of Space Odyssey, I think he wrote that back in the 70s. Yeah, I think you're right. The original book. But interesting how they kind of foresaw artificial intelligence, and what worries everybody about artificial intelligence is, What if it turns on you, like Al did? Okay, 1968. 1968, Rudy's got it in the control room.

That's Rudy over there in our control and our control room. And, you know, for our listeners and viewers, if you don't recognize Rick, it's because he's clean-shaven and he's got his baby face going on today. Absolutely. It looks fabulous. Well, a minor issue with a prototype flamethrower, that's all I'm going to say about that. The beard was a minor casualty there, but... Oh, but you fixed it. Okay, you look good.

Well, and any reports of a large fireball seat over Western Lake worse in the last few days wasn't me. That one was not me. So any of you out there can talk to any of us here in the studio. That's what it's all about. We want you to call us. We want us to text us, I should say, and we can be on Facebook at facebook.com or slash Roland Cars.

Facebook.com, forward slash Erlon Cars, and, of course, our YouTube channel. I think, do we have a caller? We do have a caller, but before I announce Tina, who is a regular caller, ladies, and I want to let you know that you can win yourself $50 this morning. First, two new lady callers, $50. So give us a call, $877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. Tina, welcome to the show. So.

Hi, everybody. How y'all doing this morning? Hi, Tana. Hi, can you hear me? Yep. Loud and clear. Good morning, Tina. Oh, good.

Even Alan can hear you. He's right here in the studio with us. Morning, Tana. Oh. Hi, how are y'all doing? Perfect. Watch up. Well, the Ticada Airbag news has mushroomed into gigantic proportions, 1.7 million cars, including

Mercedes Ben's, BMW, and. in Ferrari. So I don't know how this is going to get fixed. I honestly don't. How is Takata going to be able to pick this up? How are they going to be able to make amends? I mean, I wonder if maybe an aftermarket company might take up the slack and make some money doing this by selling a good product at a lower price. That's my thought. But it's just terrible. Now there's so many used cars out there that people have to overlook because of the Takata airbag issue. You're absolutely right, and what you said, maybe not totally seriously, it's actually a very intelligent, obvious solution to the problem. Why are legislators and why the manufacturers don't do it is, well, they can only be one thing as an economic thing.

They can do it, but they don't want to do it. But you're absolutely right. No reason why somebody shouldn't go out there and fund some aftermath suppliers given the specifications and say build these inflator and replacements and you should do it and give them a period of time we could clean up the whole problem if at least in terms of availability of parts to fix the to cut airbags in six months given the funding they could do it but it's something that the manufacturers I know I sound like a conspiracy theorist because I am a conspiracy theorist I think there's a conspiracy

between the manufacturers, the auto dealers, and the legislators, lobbyists. I think it's a massive economic, maybe not, they didn't have a meeting in a smoke-filled room, but I think there's a silent understanding between the giants involved in this that somebody, they better be quiet about it because if it gets too noisy, there's going to be a huge cost because all these cars that are on the road would have to stop. They'd have to be not driven anymore. The cars would have to be replaced, and it would be literally billions of dollars on the world economy. Yeah, I agree with that.

And not only that, but, you know, 23 people have lost her lives, can we really afford to lose anymore? There are families of those 23 people that are grieving because of a simple airbag issue. Yes. That should have been addressed a long time ago. Well, all we can do is hope, interestingly enough, my son, Sue Stewart, who was normally on this show, he went to Washington, D.C., with some lobbyists from Toyota manufacturing and some other dealers. And he promised me that he would address our legislators for Florida, our congressmen,

and our senators that will be talking to, and ask him the question directly, which is, why don't you introduce a bill into law making it illegal for dealers, car dealers, new or used, to sell used cars with unfixed dangerous recalls, you know, specifically to kind of recalls, but bear in mind that there is no law making it illegal for any car dealer to sell a used car with any kind of unfixed dangerous recall, it boggles the mind. Well, it doesn't really boggle the mind to me. we've had this discussion before that the lobbyists for the auto industry, specifically the used car auto industry, they're pretty strong, especially in the state of Florida. Yeah. And they're going to fight back because this is going to affect the bottom line.

If they have a whole row of cars, they can't sell because of the airbag issue, then that's going to potentially put a lot of the little guys out of business. Exactly. And it's going to affect the big guys, too. Yeah, Tina. I think Rick had a comment. I'm just a couple of advocate. I think that the airbag issue should be.

Definitely six because it's life-threatening. Oh, absolutely. And there's kind of an odd twist that a lot of folks may not be aware of, especially if folks haven't heard our show in the past here, a lot of airbag inflators that are being put into cars right now as replacements for those old degraded inflators are actually the same original identical inflator that they had before. Four years, I got the same problem.

brand new. Four years I've got the same problem. Right. So this situation is not going to go away because in another four to five years, those cars are going to get recalled again to get hopefully an updated inflator that will not degrade. Yeah. Steve from Jupiter, I know you're holding. We'll be with you in the minute.

We're speaking to Tina from Bonita Springs now. So, Tina, what else did you have for us this morning? I'm sorry? I just want to tell Steve that we knew he was holding and the hangar. on the line, and I ask you, what more did you have for us this morning? Well, the other thing I have is I was looking at, I think it was Jalapnik, and Apple Play is a big thing, and Android also has their own application for use in vehicles. And I was reading the comments about, like, oh, Toyota's finally gotten into the Android

end of it with the Android app, so people were saying, finally. But I couldn't believe the amount of people saying, well, it was. If my car, if the car I'm going to buy doesn't have one of these applications, then I'm not going to buy the car. And I'm thinking, yeah, they're so spoiled. You know, I'm distracted enough with my Bluetooth. I leave my Bluetooth off and my phone off.

Really, have we gotten to, I mean, I wonder if the legislators are going to say, listen, these electronic gizmos are just too distracting they're causing problems and if they're not going to be regulated out. Dana, the legislators do what they think will get them the most votes. so it's not a question of right or wrong or safety or anything like that they do the polls they take the polls find out if i support this will i get reelected and i know that sounds uh you know very uh what's the word but uh negative but the fact the matter is all the congressmen and the senators all of our legislators if you tell the truth you can't get elected uh you have to tell the people what they want to hear and what you expect a politician to say is what you want to hear

that'll get you elected. If you're the minority, you're not going to hear what you want to hear, but if you're the majority of the voters for his particular party, he'll tell you what you want to hear. Then he gets elected, he won't do it anyway. That's my, unfortunately, attitude toward politicians. It's a good attitude. I challenge a politician to call and debate that with me,

because that's my feeling. Yeah, and now, Tina, I'll tell you what, we have been fighting this fight for, well, too long, but we're not going to give up. We here at Earl Stewart-Aron cars are going to let the public know exactly what is going on, and the agenda in D.C. certainly hasn't changed, and we've not received any help from them, so it's up to us to continue our fight, and Earl is doing a fantastic job. Ellen, did you want to say something? Getting back to the Takata thing, something I find disturbing about it. Toyota approached me last week, a rep, with a nice slick brochure about us throwing a kind of a hot dog and Coke function and doing mailers to get customers to come in so that we can scan their cars to see if they need an airbag. Because they're having a hard time reaching that last 15, 20% of the people because the cars have changed hands.

and what strikes me about that is they spend so much money on national TV ads and regional TV ads. They truly wanted to reach those people. They could just do a TV ad. Well, if they want to reach the people, Alan, they could get the registrations from the State Department of Motor Vehicles instead of sending the mailers out to the people who bought the car new. Stu, my son, owned a vehicle three or four years ago, and he got a notice in the mail, a Toyota, that the airbag replacement was ready. He hasn't owned the car in three years,

so they sent it the wrong person. The person that's driving the car didn't get it because Toyota or the other manufacturers don't buy their registrations from the states. It's a public record. You can buy them from any state, get the current address and name of any VIN number. But the manufacturers aren't doing that.

So my question is, do they really want to fix the inflators? I don't know. Well, and you hear about it on the news, and it catches R.I. whenever there's a story on it, but a lot of people are still unaware that there even is an airbag problem. So I'm thinking that's why they won't do like a commercial just begging these people to come in to fix their cars because they don't want to inform the people that don't know

that they've built a defective product and the other manufacturers as well. If they just wanted to spend a little bit of money, they could get the rest of those cars. What a great idea, Alan. A fantastic idea. Tina, thanks so much. for giving us a call and stay tuned next week and we'll look for you. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers, we're going to go to us. No, we're not going to go to Steve. I want to look at Jupiter because he was holding it too long.

Steve, I apologize. We kind of got, ran on a little bit there, and we apologize. If you'd call back, we'd love to hear what you had to say, Steve from Jupiter. 877-960-99-60 that's 877 960 9960 and you can text us we get a lot more text actually text and postings than we do otherwise our text number is 772 4976530 that's 772 4976530 and you can post on Facebook our Facebook is just www. facebook.com 4 slash

Earl on Cars and we usually get a lot of posts like that. And don't forget ladies and gentlemen if you want to remain anonymous your anonymousfeetback.com take advantage of that and excuse me also with that mystery shop that we have from

King Hyundai in Deerfield Beach, you can vote on that by texting 772-497-6530. I think we've got some text. We do. We have a couple already. And it seems to be the day of the Steve's, because we had Steve on hold, and we've got two texts.

Both came from Steve's. Maybe it's Steve who hung up because we talked too much. One of them could be. This one is Good Morning, Steve from New Jersey. I just found out my 2011 Outback, Subaru Outback, just got a recall for the passenger side airbag. My car's VIN, the vehicle identification number, is on the list. Are car manufacturers knowingly selling new cars with defective airbags, frustrated and concerned? Well, Rick, you answered that question because you answered it a minute ago, and it bears repeating.

And the fact is, there are some cars that are being manufactured right now still with those defective airbags that will degrade over time, and as they get older, they are being added onto that list. And can you believe that, folks? what Rick said, manufacturers are selling cars now with the same inflators, the same ammonium nitrate that degrades over time from

humidity and heat conditions, knowing that in four or five years that airbag inflator can explode in your face. And they also know, now listen to this carefully, they also know that only one out of four recall notices

are successful. They know that 75% of those cars that they sold today with an inflator that was going to go bad and four years will not return isn't there somebody out there with a conscience is there a congressman or a senator with a conscience i'm going to shut up right now because we got another caller yeah we're going to go to arthur he's calling from del ray welcome to the show arthur uh good morning good morning good morning uh you guys good morning you guys are doing a terrific job you for about a month, and it appears that you're safety-oriented. How about the safety

after the car leaves the dealership? I drive around and see cars that have broken lenses in the back, no brake lights working, headlights that are missing. I'm from Massachusetts, and in Massachusetts we had inspection once a year for safety and every other year for mission. Why don't they have something like that down in Florida? Arthur, I think the answer is, well, politics, a lot of answers. People hate the inspections. We had inspections in Florida many years ago, and people hated the idea that they had to take their car in once a year. Actually, the car deal was kind of like it because they had to go and get their car fix somewhere, but the voters didn't want it. And if you were tuned in from the beginning

of the show, I made the congressman. me, the statement that the legislators are politicians, all they care about is what's going to get them reelected. So you can campaign on the fact, if you elect me, I'm going to eliminate auto inspections, and you get elected. If you do that, you're creating safety problems. You're going to have injuries and deaths, but injuries and deaths don't count when you're talking about a politician being erect. Again, that's my cynical view of politics. But Arthur, I should share you concerned. Right.

I drive down the road, the iron department put on the brakes and no lights come on. I don't know how I let that go. Massachusetts, you'll be off the road. But anyway, thanks for taking my call and I listen to you every morning. Thank you, Arthur. Please call again.

We love to have these questions ask that there are no answers for because hopefully we can embarrass some people by speaking about it on live radio. Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and the whole nine yards. I mean, we're blasting this message out there. We know

the politicians are listening. We know the lawyers are listening. We know the auto manufacturers are listening. And you can stake your life on the fact that the car dealers are listening because we mystery shop one every week. And they want to know if it's them. You know the safety inspections

in Texas, we have those and what I found is I never owned a car that could pass a safety inspection when I was a young man in Texas back then 10 bucks was a lot of money so you paid for your safety inspection he gave the mechanic 10 bucks and he put your sticker on your car and he told you if uh if you get pulled over with that broke windshield you tell them it just happened yeah you know so it was just a big money thing but good point yeah interesting nothing really got fixed no uh we're going to go to our first female caller of the morning and that's dawn she's

calling, excuse me, she's calling from West Palm Beach. Welcome to the show, Dawn. Hi. Hi. You won yourself $50 if you stay on the line and give Rudy in our control room your information. I'll get to check out to you on Monday. What can we do for you this morning? Well, I have a leased vehicle and I've been getting lots of promotional calls and things in the mail about coming in and upgrading. Is that something that I should do, or am I going to be charged extra for that? Well, Don, the manufacturers and car dealers love leasing far more than selling because they have that control. They know who you are. They know where you are. They own the car. You don't. You're leasing it. And that means that before your lease expires and you become free to do what

you want, they have that string. And they're going to use that advantage, and they're going to call you they're going to email you and send you mail and they're going to give you offers and the offers will be legitimate they factor that in to the whole process of leasing they will try to make you an offer that maybe their competition can't make matter of fact there's something hidden in your lease that you probably may or may not know about if you don't lease or buy a car from the same dealer manufacturer that you lease the first one there's a disposition fee so it's almost like being fined if you don't stay

with that particular manufacturer there's also a fee that if they think you have unusual wear and tear on your car beyond what is called normal they can charge you thousands of dollars tires body repair paint stains on the upholstery so yes you are going to be bothered probably from about the time you're six months before your lease termination. And you should look at these offers carefully because some of them are legitimate. They'll actually sometimes waive a certain number of lease payments or give you some sort of a special bonus if you continue.

But what you're experiencing is totally normal. And just be careful and get competitive pricing when the time comes to make a decision. Great. Thank you so much. And, Don, one more important thing about turning in your... your lease, it's really important that you take pictures of your vehicle. And when you, you know, like they say, a picture's worth a thousand words because anything can happen to that vehicle once that is left at the dealership and you'll be held responsible for it. And also the number of miles that are on your vehicle. So I hope that we answered all your questions and enjoy that $50,

Don, and give us a call again. Okay, thank you. Welcome. 877960. Or you can text us at 772-4976530. And remember, your anonymous feedback.com. We'd love to hear from you, and you do remain anonymous, 100%. Rick, do we have any more texts? Well, we do have one other from one of the original Steve's there,

was asking about his 2008 Ford Edge as to whether, because he just had his airbag replaced and he was wondering could he have gotten an original type? And it is possible that it was a what they call a like for like replacement. The best thing you can do, Steve, on that count,

is double check with the manufacturer with the dealership that installed it because if they replaced it as a like for like replacement, that will be in their paperwork. They are required to disclose that. And if it was replaced with a

updated inflator that is the safer version, they will be more than happy to let you know that as well. Interesting. 877960-9960, and you can text Rick at 772-4976530. We'd love to hear from you. Now back to the recovering card dealer. And don't forget to stream us on Facebook. Hopefully we have enough bandwidth.

We've had Comcast representative here this morning because we've been trying for months to get our bandwidth. with going and uh well we're actually a yo-yo on that right now it's going yeah it's been up and down up and down up and down yeah but the the Comcast guys are here working on that issue for Facebook and for all of our transmission issues uh through the internet and we will have that solved fortunately we have a lot of ways to get in touch with us so that's very we all love Comcast don't we we I don't know anyone that's ever had a problem with Comcast so they're responsive you call them on the phone

with a complaint and they fix it immediately. I'm being sarcastic folks. Who do I love more AT&T or Comcast? Well, let's not get too far carried away because they can hear us right now. They're listening as they're working on our issues here. I know they can hear us. That's what we're here for. That's the reason we're on the radio.

20,000 people can hear us. We just want to encourage those guys out there. I'm going to do a special segment to what Earl just said about. Comcast. No, I changed my mind. Okay, 877-960. Comcast or the IRS. Who do I love more? I had to look and see what a Ford Edge was. It's a station wagon. I wasn't sure if that was a car or truck. Oh, boy. Station wagon. Yep. 772-4976530. Give us a text. Give us a call, or you can go to Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We'd love to hear from you.

I have something I need to do and say it's almost like a legal matter, and I received a letter from the CEO of Tire Kingdom, Chief Executive Officer Eric Olson. And basically it was kind of a nice letter, but he did threaten the sum me, but he did it in a gentlemanly fashion. And I respect that. And I called Eric. I left him a message. What I did was wrong. I ran an article on Tire Kingdom a few years ago in the hometown news and my blog, and it was called Buying Tires Caviatt Amtore.

And it wasn't a very good shopping report. I won't go into detail, but I was contacted by Tire Kingdom at the time. I told them about the shopping report, and we had some discussions, and I told them I would shop them again, and we did shop them again, and they cleaned up their act. And that was years ago. Accidentally, we ran this same article in Florida Weekly. And also got run again on the hometown news, I believe.

That was a mistake. And to Tire Kingdom and to Eric Olson, I apologize. It will not happen again. And as a matter of fact, we reshopped Tire Kingdom to see how you're doing. And we will cover that a little bit later in the show. But it'll be a short shop. We actually went in to a Tire Kingdom store, bought a set of tires for one of our used cars on our used car lot. By the way, full transparency, I'm a car dealer.

I'm a recovering car dealer, but I am still a car dealer. And we did a shop on Tire Kingdom. But I want to say that Eric Olson and Tire Kingdom, they run a good operation, and they give you good prices on tires. And I'll give you the details a little bit later on. But, Eric, if you're listening, I do apologize. It won't happen again. Please don't sue me. Thank you.

That's when you guys went on your vacation and they pick old articles to rerun, and it was just kind of random. Yeah, absolutely. I think we have a caller, don't we, Nancy? We do. Tiffany, and she is a first-time caller. Wow. And she's giving us a call from Lake Worth. Good morning, Tiffany.

Congratulations. You won yourself $50. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Great. All right. So I had a question. Like, my dad lived to see all the time, and he was telling me about, because I've experienced it, my dashboard on my Toyota is melting.

So I've got a really back glare and it's hard to tell the distance between me and the car in front of me. So, like, how would I go about, like, getting that replaced? Rick, what do you say to that? Toyota's right now have been doing an extended warranty on those melting sticky dashboards. And so if you have a dash that's starting to glare, go in to see your local Toyota dealer and talk with them about it. Odds are they will be able to get you on that list to get a new dashboard ordered and get it replaced. I think there might be some question on that. and I think your best bet is to focus on the melted dash,

the reflection in your eye, and the fact that it's a safety issue. Yep. Now, they fix those dashes for a long, long time, and, well, it's kind of a long story. Let me back up a little bit. For a long time, they wouldn't fix the dashes, and it wasn't just on Toyos, it was on Honda's and a lot of other vehicles. The dash manufacturer must have supplied a lot of people

in high humidity, high heat areas, sun-belt states, Florida, they melt, and they crack, and they look terrible. So for a long time, they replaced them. And then they gave an extension, and I believe that extension of time has been reached. You really have to push them on it now, Tiffany, and if you have difficulty, feel free to call me, and I will try to go to bat for you on this particular issue. But your best bet, if you have a defective dash, it's melting, and if it melts, it glared. and the direct sunlight reflects into your eyes,

and you can't see. That's a pretty serious safety issue. Safety issues will be addressed a lot faster than cosmetic issues. And that's my advice. If you strike out with your Toyota dealer, let me know. All right, because, I mean, you said the extended warranty, so, I mean, it's probably been briefed. Like, I've only owned this car for about seven years,

and I've dealt with it, but it's starting to get pretty bad. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Go in to your Toyota dealer and go on record. You can put it in writing. Be sure you tell them it's a safety issue. They will be required to report that.

Any safety issue, the Toyota dealers, all car dealers, have to report to the manufacturer. And rather than have a big issue with the media or the lawsuit, oftentimes they will take care of these things because you do have a legitimate safety issue if i if i could say one thing tiffany when you go to the dealer if when you go to the dealer if the service writer says no there's no coverage i can't help you good point uh make sure tell him i want a repair order written on my car and i want you to state that in writing yes a lot of times people go to the dealer with a concern there's a verbal exchange yeah uh the customer leaves and they have no proof, no verification that they were there. And to build a case, you need documentation.

So make sure, even if he says, I'm not writing a repair order, we're not going to repair anything. Say, I want my concern documented, and I want a copy of it, and I want it now. That's excellent advice out. And, Tiffany, call us next week on the show. Contact your Toyota dealer, see what was said, and call us back and report it, good news or bad news. we'd love to hear if it's bad news, then I'll personally intervene and try to help you.

I appreciate that too much. Okay, well, stay on the line. Nancy wants to give you $50, and if you tell Rudy in the control room your contact information, it won't go out over the air, but we'll have the information so we can send you the check. And spread the word, Tiffany. We're trying to create a platform here for the ladies to feel comfortable to give us a call with their questions, comments, and anything that they can advise us to. do better. Look forward to hearing

from you again. All right. You guys, I'm ready to say. Thank you. Come on. 877-960 is our regular telephone number. And our text number is 772 4976530.

That's 772 4976530. And, of course, Facebook. Facebook.com 4-slash Earl on Cars. Post your comments. And Rick's got a couple of posts or text or something.

We do indeed. As a matter of fact, they're pretty much related as well. One of them is from Steve in New Jersey again. He's in the market to buy a brand new car. And he's wondering, is there a way to determine if the manufacturer is putting in a known defective airbag or not? I can't really speak for all the manufacturers. However, for Toyota, the last year that we had any of those Takata airbags was in in 2016 in the Sion X-B and 2015 in the forerunners and all the others were 14, 13, and older.

They've all gotten a different manufacturer with an upgraded airbag that will not degrade. And we have another... But his question was, how does he find out? Right. You'd need to research with that manufacturer. So if you're going to look at a Ford, you'd want to talk to Ford and find out have they, gotten their Takata airbags straightened around now do they have a new manufacturer you know what i would recommend is that you again as i said to tiffany earlier and and alan so eloquently pointed out

verbal doesn't cut it when you're talking to a manufacturer or a car dealer you want to put everything in writing email is the best form text is okay uh a letter yeah will suffice but whatever i would ask that manufacturer, Steve, Steve, I would ask that manufacturer by email, is this inflator that you're using to fix my airbag of the same manufacturer as the one that failed? Right. And as a matter of fact, I would even ask them if they can print out an official form from the manufacturer. Because like right here, I've got a form from Toyota that shows which of these vehicles are. available, you know, that no longer have the old airbags, and they can, they will have that information available to the public that can be printed out and handed to you.

So you've got it in your hands a hard copy that shows that that car, whether it has a defective airbag or not. Or you could just ask your salesman, all this writing letter stuff. You don't have to do that. Just go into the showroom, ask a salesman as the airbag in that new car safe. He'll be honest. Oh, yeah. For folks that don't know, Alan Napier.

because he's not on the show often anymore. That's his dry sense of humor, so please don't take his advice. Oh, the salesman, they know everything, man. That's just Midwestern. It's as dry as Arizona. Kansas City, going back to Kansas City. Hey, you said you weren't going to sing. Oh, got you.

Brick, Jennifer has text me asking about her headlights. She's had the same headlights for probably about 10 years. they are just in need of other cleaning, repairing, replacing. What's your advice? They make a lot of good products out there for cleaning up those old headlights. The only drawback to most of those, the only last about a year or two. If you're only going to keep the car for a little while longer, I would invest a small amount in one of those cleaning products

and just have somebody do the elbow grease because with a lot of those products, the more effort you put into actually using it and cleaning them properly, the better results you'll get. And otherwise, if you're planning on keeping the car for a good length of time, you might consider replacement headlights.

They do make some aftermarket headlights for most of these cars now that have a little better quality now that this has become a recognized issue, and so they may not degrade. as easily. Plus, you can get higher quality brighter headlights, which can be quite helpful. What's the price tag on replacing them? That's going to depend on the model, but I would pretty much guess that an average headlight for most cars, like say a Toyota Camry, is probably

going to be around $250 to $300 each headlight. Oh. So, yeah, they can be expensive. Interesting. And that being said, there are some $12 and $1,400 headlights out there as well. Very true. Oh, it's crazy. Some of these shaped form headlights, they've almost become a part of the body, and they wrap around. Yeah. Yep. Some of those are $1,400.

Goodness. So that may be a better encouragement to get out that elbow grease. Yeah, exactly. And use a good, high-quality product. I suggest to go on YouTube and look at some of the videos and compare the ratings on the different products to find out what those polishing compounds are and how well they work. And unfortunately, Jonathan's trying to give me the high sign. No, toothpaste doesn't work. We tried Crest, we tried Colgate, we even tried aqua fresh.

It's meant for your teeth, folks, not your headlights. Okay, Jennifer, we gave you some great information and a little humor. So we're going to go to John now, and he's calling us from Palm City. He's a regular caller. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. Hi, John. I just want to mention the future of auto cars.

sales. It's available right now. What it's called is use cars. Reason for used cars, 46% of families in Florida can't even afford basic needs. That was on NBCWPTV news this week, Channel 4. Middle class, really, cannot basically afford a new car. So who do we have? We have internet buying. We have the nation's largest new car dealership, auto nation, just advertised. constantly used cars, buying used cars, and one pricing, one stop pricing on their used cars, and they also buy cars, which never before that they pushed. Now, CarMax is also expanding. There's a new CarMax was open last year here in Martin County, which is not one of the largest of the 67 counties in Florida. They did have the one that still have it in the Benton Beach. in Palm Beach County, but new car dealers are expanding their lots.

One is right here in Stewart, Wallace. The reason is on a used car, a new car dealer, makes much more money than they do on selling you a brand new car. People have no idea what they paid for the car, and if there's a particular car that somebody wants, it's not so easy to shop that same model and same color and same equipment. the used car dealer, I mean, the new car dealer or a used car dealer, he has the car that you need, and it's affordable. Why is it affordable? Because the average new car loses 50.2% of its value

in the first five years, 50% now. And some, like a BMW 7 series or a Mercedes S-class, they lose 70% of their value after five years. So a used car, I mean, you've got to look at the consumers reports a good buy probably because it only appreciates 62% is a Chevy Impala after five years but the history is here right now Carvanna on the internet car guru I mean this is what the future is of car sales it's not so much on new cars because of the fact that the average middle class person can really not afford a new car myself included. I haven't bought a new car in quite a few years. I am lucky enough to found a last car I bought was a snowbird car. I had to go all the way down to Hallandale, and it was only

three years old, and it had 4,800 miles on it. Well, John, you're also an educated consumer. A used car is probably a better buy now. It has all the latest equipment, and it's a good That's a good deal, 50% loss in five years. A tip for the listeners, if you're buying a used car, Autotrater.com is a great website to go to. You're absolutely right, John, that car dealers make more on used cars. They make sometimes a lot more on used cars, they do a new car. But if you go to AutoTrader.com, virtually every car dealer, and independent, for that matter, in the United States, has their inventory listed, their used car inventory lists on AutoTrader.

and you can sort by price your make model it's really a wonderful site the one thing you have to be careful of when you're on auto trader and you're buying a used car if you start from lowest price with that particular year make model car to bond you know you're going to get your best price they don't include the dealer installed options or dealer fees dealer fees are added after the fact at auto trader but in florida everybody's charging dealer fees so you're going to get the same thing when you go in to buy don't ever want to walk into a used car lot without checking auto trader first cars.com is another good source you can get a good price if you do that homework before you go into a car dealer on a used car and is a good use car the right use car is a better value so it's not just a question of if you can afford it or not if you can afford it you're smarter to buy the used car with some research consumers report an auto trader than to buy the new car that's a good call john thank you very much Okay. We're looking forward to the shopping report. Thank you, John.

Thanks, John. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-49730, and you're going to also reach us at your AnonymousFeedback.com. You will remain anonymous. By the way, speaking of AnonymousFeedback.com, a great website, I got an anonymous feedback back. And I'll try to read it to you here briefly. Dear Mr. Earl, I look forward to each week's episode of your show. I'm not finding myself cleaning any new insight into car shopping. I'm kicking myself for not writing to you or calling you to ask you this question.

But the caller by the name of Bennett struck up the right conversation that is so desperately needed as part of your content. payments, trade-in, discounts, and dealer tactics, and moving the money around to close on a deception of whatever part the deal you object to. Your meeting an eloquent discussion of this topic was extremely fascinating. Can there be more of this discussion? That refers to what I call the four-square system, and this is just an example of what you can ask me or what you can ask anyone on the show at www.

Feedback.com, www. Your Anonymous, A-O-M-O-U-S, Feedback, F-E-E-D, B-A-C-K, dot com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. You can also tell us what you think about us. And if you don't like this, tell us. We've got thick skin, and it'll be anonymous. And we have a caller. We do.

Howard is giving us a call from Jupiter, and he is a regular caller. Welcome to the show, Howard. What can we do for you? Hi Howard, you there? Whoops, we lost Howard. Howard, sorry about that. Someone pushed the wrong button, or maybe you pushed the wrong button, but please come back. We'd love to have you back.

Hey, here's to prove Alan's popularity. Where is Alan? That's right. That was on the island's feedback. It really was. Did I tell you guys I got new puppies, so my life right now is even more consumed with puppies. There's another Alan. Oh, how nice.

Great story, Alan. Okay, we're going to go to Alan. Who's calling us from Jupiter? Yeah, hi, good morning. I'm a new listener to the show, and I really enjoy it. My question is, I was fortunate enough to have enough cash on hand, and lease a new car for three years, and I paid the total fee up front.

Is that a smart? move. Alan, it's a matter of personal choice. And of course, you need to do the arithmetic on that. You just basically look at the value of your money. Let's say you want to make one payments or one payment lease. You can pay $20,000 or $10,000 right out of check and you have no lease payments. Or you could take that $10,000 or $20,000 and invest it. It depends on where you want to invest. You could buy a treasury bond for 2.5% or you can invest in in the stock market and have an exciting three years and find out what happens average return over the stock market forever is about 10% and if you could get

10% you're probably better off to invest that 10,000 and lease your lease factor or your interest rate on a lease is usually around 4% something like that so it's a matter of personal choice and I would say most people can't afford to do that. But in your case, it's a close call, usually, depending on interest rates and investment returns. One side question is that at the end of the lease, they usually have a turn-in fee, i.e. $695 on up when you turn the car in off a lease. Is there any way to avoid that other than going and leasing the same car again? There's no way it's a got-you. And they do that. Usually you don't realize it until the lease is about up. It's called a lease disposition fee.

And you have to lease her by another vehicle of that make. Don't have to go to the same dealer, but you have to buy the same year make. Otherwise, you're going to have to pay that. I sometimes wonder if they take into consideration of the fact that you didn't lease her buy another car when they do the inspection of the car and send you the bill. if you bought another car or at least another car from that manufacturer and dealer, you got a little bit more leverage. And when you get that invoice from the leasing company in the mail,

you can raise a little hell with them and they make them back off. Because if they lost you entirely, they're going to be cold-hearted. So they really had, that's the reason they like leasing so much. They really, really know they got you and they can keep you

in the fold for a long time. So I would think twice before I, if you don't like the car and you find a better deal, fine. But if it's about 601, I'd stick with that same make and manufacturer. And if you don't stick with that same make, does the deposition fee vary? I mean, could it be more? From manufacturer to manufacture, typically around $300 or $400. Is there any wiggle room on the capital cost? Is it a capital cost same as the sale price of the car?

I mean, can you negotiate that cap cost? Alan, you sound like a very educated consumer. Yes. A few people ask that question. The cap cost is what you would pay for the car if you bought it. And I have a saying, always buy the car before you lease it. And that means negotiate or use true car or Costco competitive bidding, whatever way you want to do it but get the very best price that you can buy that car for

and then say to the dealer whoops change my mind i want to lease the car and be sure they take that purchase price that you negotiated or got a true car or Costco and put it where it says cap cost on the lease the capitalized cost is a should be the selling price of the car but if you don't insist they can make that cap cost whatever they want to and they'll jack up that cap cost as high as they can and that's their profit well thank you i appreciate all you're doing for the consumer i am a consumer and i'm trying to be educated so thank you very much for the show and i appreciate it please call again allan thank you yeah you're doing a great job allan thanks for giving us a call 877960 or you can text us at 77249760 we're going to go to howard he is a regular caller

from Jupiter. Welcome to the show. I finally got on. Howard. Yeah, nice hearing from you, Alan, hearing you on the radio. Thanks, you as well. Actually, my questions has to do, you can answer

these questions because it's right up your alley. I'll do my best. Last week, I was told that white cars, white Toyotas 040, do not have clear coat. Is that true? it's my belief that that is true

well depending on the year right because the older cars clearly didn't have it yeah 040 I still don't think that it does and what makes it tough is Howard is the people that we can talk to at Toyota they don't really know either and you know on a black clear-coated car you can you can go with a piece of sandpaper

and rub it and of course the the powder that you get is white. That's the clear coat. So you can go to any other color car and hit it with a piece of sandpaper until it's got clear coat on it. It doesn't work on a white car because you're going to get white whether there's clear coat or not. What about a paint meter? How could a car with clear coat and without clear coat show a difference on a paint meter? They still they still show about three and a half to five mills of paint when you gauge them. Now they're a believe there's some new technology coming out on paint mill gauges. The ones that we use now are basically, they look like they're computerized because they have a digital

readout, but it's still just a magnet measuring resistance to gauge the... Well, let me jump in here a minute. Howard, what we're going to do for you, we're going to find out whether or not that paint code has clear code because someone knows the answer. And just because the folks at Toyota, we talk to, I mean, I could call... Tokyo Toyota. I'll bet you Arkio knows the answer. I bet he don't. You're probably right. I bet you'll find out the answer if you wanted to. Here, the solution. But I bet he could find out the answer. Yeah. The solution of this problem is, and I'll make the sacrifice, you need to fly me to San Antonio. There you go. Arrange for me to tour the truck plant. It's probably going to take a week or so. It's a big place. At least. I promise you an answer next week. I will find out.

Okay, part two of my question. Since my car may not have clear code, should I wax it more often than a car with clear codes? Yes. I always say wax a car just as often as you can stand to do it or you can afford to do it. You're never going to get too much wax on there. Hey, Alan, what's your opinion on these new ceramic coating? I haven't studied it a whole lot. I've had people approach me trying to sell me the different.

products and they've tried to sell it to our new car department as an extra thing to sell with a new car. I think there's some really good products out there, but price-wise, it scares me when somebody wants me to finance a $1,500 to $1,500 wax job with my vehicle purchase. Wow. That is gracious. Regardless of the guarantees. With that said, we're going out to Toledo, Ohio, and we have got,

Larry on the line. Good morning, Larry. Holy Toledo. Holy Toledo. What can we do for you this morning, Larry? Hi. Well, can I give a little information? I caught you guys on my YouTube on my... About 30, 45 days ago. And I listened to every bit of the advice that comes up from Rowan.

And so I have a couple of questions about the potential of buying another vehicle. Great. You too. Love it. You still there, Larry? Oh, boy. I was worried because I heard a dial tone before, and then you were still there, and now you're gone. Hey, Larry. Holy Toledo. If you're listening, give us a call back. We have an awful lot of calls coming in this morning.

the lights are going off, and your call is very important to us. So the number is 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. It looks like a disco club. All those lights are just taking me back to the 70s. I thought somebody was under the control desk with a flashlight, I didn't realize. No, that's the... And also, take it very... advantage of your anonymous feedback.com.

We'd love to hear from you. And as I said before, you remain anonymous, totally anonymous. I really wish Larry could have gotten through because I was a Toledo. He's back? Okay. Hey, Larry? Yes. Hey, we're back.

Sorry about that. Thank you for being patient. Not a problem. Not a problem. rebates. If a manufacturer has a rebate, let's just use the figure of $1,000. And do I, is it the best way for negotiating to say, I'm going to take the rebate and then try to negotiate discount from the sticker price

after you tell them that you're going to take the rebate yourself? Because many the dealers just want to say, well, here's the discount because you're getting a rebate. Larry, the best thing to do is let it be known up front that you know there's a rebate. A car dealers will know about the rebate. There's two kinds of rebates, by the way.

There's a secret to rebate that goes to the car dealer that is not advertised and then there's the customer cash, they call it, that you're supposed to know about. But you probably don't know about it. The dealer knows about both of them. So right up front let them know that you know about the rebate.

Then, if you're going to go that becomes that's off the table and that way you negotiate from the thousand thousand dollar rebate from the manufacturer doesn't cost a dealer a nickel but it could mean profit to the dealer because when you sign in and you don't know about the rebate you'll there'll be a little form you don't even know you sign that says I'm assigning all customer cash to the dealer yes okay now to a question about smaller auto manufacturers in specific Subaru and Mazda, at least in my area of the country, they do not have much in the way, they

advertise much in the way of anything with rebates or discounts. And some friends of mine that have bought Subaru's are not able to negotiate much off of the sticker price because they sell them so easily at near sticker price. Do they have the same ability, and say Toyota and all the other bigger companies to discount the vehicles more? Larry, it's supply and demand issue. Subaru is a high-quality car, ranked by Consumer Reports, very high. As you say, it's a small manufacturer. They don't build a whole lot of Subaru's.

Therefore, the supply and demand are pretty close, and the dealers have the luxury of being able to hold on the profit, and the manufacturer have the luxury of not having to offer discounts, rebates, and cash incentives. The manufacturers that you see offering the most incentives are the ones that are in the most trouble. Chrysler, Jeep, I take that back. Jeep is pretty high demand. But you'll see Fiat and other manufacturers that have too many cars and not enough buyers.

They'll do the big cash rebates. You're better off oftentimes to pay more money for a high-quality car that's got a high-ranking because the resale value is much higher. So if you get a $1,000 rebate of a car that the manufacturer and the dealer can't get rid of, can't give away, that $1,000 rebate is going to look very small compared to the extra depreciation that you suffer from a low-demand car. But Subaru is a great buy.

Negotiate as best you can, but you're not going to be getting big discounts or rebates. What do you know on that end about Mazda? Because Mazda has a pretty good vehicle. I'm looking at a SUV, what is it called, CX-5, and they're right at the top in quality for that size of SUV. Mazda, the same thing. They're a small company, but they don't offer much in the way of rebates

or incentives or discounts. Yeah, Mazda is not in the class with Subaru. Mazda is not a class act. I was the first Mazda dealer in the Eastern United States. I just have to say that. I digress. Old guys like to do that. 1970. But they were confused in a mess then, and they're confused in a mess now. Ford bought part of them, and then Ford, I think, sold their interest in Mazda.

Financially, Mazda is about the only Japanese company I know that's still struggling. The quality is not there. Now, that could be different from an individual model. I don't say that there are not some model Mazda's that are not high quality. Most of them are. are not up to Subaru. And I don't know why they're not offering more incentives and rebates, because they sure can't sell their cars very fast. It could be because they can't afford to offer the incentives and rebates. But if I had to choose between the average Subaru and the average Mazda, I'd take that Subaru in a heartbeat.

OK. Well, I've been a Toyota person. As a matter of fact, I'm standing in the service waiting room. I'm having my, I've got a 2016 wrap. Rav4 Limited Hybrid, having it serviced, and my lease is up towards the, around the 1st of October. Yeah. So I'm semi-in-the-market figuring out what to do next. So I do have to ask you an opinion about the redesigned Rav-4.

I'm standing here looking at one in the showroom right now, and what do you think of the redesigned Rav-Four? Well, I can say this from a supply and demand standpoint, they're flying out of the dealership we're selling more than any model we sell. I'm going to let Rick, who is our expert mechanically and technically, comment on the new Ravre 4. Here's my answer to that. We picked up ours, my wife and I, Tuesday evening, and I haven't been able to drive it yet. I'm not allowed.

But my wife and I just bought a brand new Rav 4 Tuesday evening, and she loves it. You can't get a better endorsement than that. A technician, been in the business, Toyota for 20-plus years, says the RAP-4 is a great buy. They're awesome. Yeah. I think they're a beautiful car. Hey, Larry. Well, yes, sir.

Larry, it's Alan from the Body Shop. Hey, we have our first 2019 Rav-4 in the Body Shop. It has 285 miles on it, and it got rear-ended at a stoplight. They're much easier to work on than the previous models. Really? Okay. I heard the story about when the guy that hit him was doing like 40 or something. Yeah, they had them hard.

That's great information. And yet the folks walked away from it too. Interesting. Well, I appreciate your time. You know, I'm calling from what, about 1,400 miles away from you guys, and I find it your program and your YouTube stuff extremely interesting. More people need to get caught on to it, in my opinion. Thank you, Larry.

We appreciate the endorsement. from Toledo, Ohio, YouTube. Wow. Really cool. Okay, yeah, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? It'd be that far away. Anyway, I don't want to take any more of your time. I appreciate you answering some questions for you. Thank you, Larry.

Thank you for the call. And thank you, Jonathan, for your YouTube expertise. We're going to go to Bob, and he's calling us from Jupiter. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. What can we do for you this morning? Well, I've got an odd situation. I have a 2000, or that's 2000 Honda.

I bought it in the original year that they came out, so it's a 2000. It has 5,700 miles on it. I'm in, it's pristine. I'm in a position where I'm old enough that I decided to sell it. When I put it online, if you sell it, Carfax, picked up a report that the car had 16,000 miles on it. Oh, boy. And it was when it was two years old at an Ohio environmental inspection.

And obviously they didn't know how to read the speedometer, but I can't get it off the Carfax report. How can I do that? Because I've had offers of over $26,000 for it. But the, you know, the buyer backed out when he saw the Carfax report. Bob, let me ask you a question. How can you be sure that there was no odometer fraud? 5,700 miles on a 2,000 Honda sounds too good to be true.

And when you saw the 16,000, you say that they misread. the odometer. Is it possible that there was odometer fraud involved in this? No. I owed the car from the day it was made. Yeah, he bought it new. Oh, you bought it new. Oh, I see. He can verify the mileage. Okay, that's good. Yes, you can have that corrected on Carfax. And Carfax, if you will contact them on their website,

they have provisions for changing things that they get wrong. They'll ask for evidence and they'll check it out. check it out, but they're a very good company, and they will, oftentimes they'll report an accident that didn't occur. And if a car dealer, for example, can document that, they will make the change in their database. So I'm sorry I misunderstood the question, Bob, but you contact Carfax, and they will change that odometer for you.

We have done that, and they haven't changed it. So I'm running into a wall. I went to the dealer, regrettable the dealer's change. Penske now owns the dealership in Indianapolis. Shocking. And I asked them, I said, if I can bring it in, can you read the computer and verify that it's got 5,700 miles on? And they said no.

So I'm kind of stuck. You know, one of the things I hate to do is refer anybody to an attorney, but it might be that you don't have any recourse. I think you should be able to consult with an attorney without any charge and give them the situation. Carfax is what they call a fat cat. They got a lot of money. They're a very big corporation. And the fact, I'm shocked that Carfax would ignore your request.

If you can document that this car positively has only 5,700 miles and they refuse to make the change, you might be in better shape if they refuse to do it than if they do do it because they could be sued for a lot of money but I think a letter from your attorney would get their immediate attention Oh boy, I see your trouble Okay I agree I hate doing it

You might try one more call or email Put it in writing to Carmack say I don't want to have to involve my attorney but and make their request, and if they turn it down then in writing, then you have to make the call. Okay, thank you. Bob, would you do me a favor?

Will you call us back next week and let us know how that worked out? I'd really like to know. I deal with CarMax all the time, Carfax. Carfax all the time, and I'd like to find out what their reaction was. Please call the show and let us know. Okay.

Thanks, Bob. Give us a call, toll-free. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6530 we've got a call from Vancouver can you believe that

we've got a call from Vancouver Canada and that is Boston good morning Boston good morning it's quite early in Vancouver but I'm up for your show well thanks

So my parents are looking at buying a new car. My mom, it's for my mom. She currently drives the O3-530I. Original owner, 1207,000 kilometers. And she wants to upgrade to SVV. Now we've done lots of research, and she's test drove the cars, and we've narrowed down to a BMW X-5 at 2018, just because of reliability last mall year.

she wants something that she can drive for another 10 to 15 years and be happy with it like her current car now you have a computer on hand yep we do indeed if I could get you to search up Brian Jessel BMW that will help with my question just so you can kind of see the cars and all that what was that name again sir Brian Jessel BMW thing go to pre-owned Brian Jessel BNBGESL

Ah, here we go Okay So just a little in background This dealer is the largest BMW dealer in Canada And they move like 300 cars a month Which is unbelievable

Wow Okay, I get their Pre-end inventory To go to The pre-owned And go down to models go down to x5 and then click on 2018 year minimum let's see this is exciting we've never done this before much less from another country so you

really sound like an educated consumer and we're we're gonna enjoy this go ahead so if you are you at their used car section under x5 under 2018 I've got X5, it's showing 48 of them, year minimum is 18, you said? That's correct. Okay. So if you can see there, they have 34, so you can see how there's some with 8,500 kilometers, some that are basically brand new, 302, 301, 2,000. They used to have 45 with them, but they sold 10 in the last maybe 10.

days or 15 days. Right. And they're all with 300 kilometers, like they're all low mileage, right? So my first question is, where are these cars coming from? Because obviously they're not going to drive or

demo brand new cars with then put only like 200, 300 kilometers on them. Hmm. I know that BMW has a program in the United States that gives a special compensation to the dealer

to sell their demos. And Brayman is a huge BMW dealer in the United States. He's one of the largest. He sells about 300 BMWs a month too, interestingly enough. I would say that oftentimes the dealers will kind of manufacture their demonstrators, and that was going on with Brayman

at one time, a long time ago. They would collect the rebate from, BMW manufacturer and then he was selling the cars as new cars, which was a no-no. We called them on that with a mystery shop, as a matter of fact. So I don't know what's going

on in Canada with this particular dealer, but it's possible that he is manufacturing used cars by putting some kilometers on it to get the rebate from BMW and then he's able to make a more profit and or sell you

the vehicle for less. Yeah, so the dealer might be selling himself his own rental department or courtesy car department, the cars. Then they get registered under that name. Yes. You know, Brian's rentals, they let them sit. They have to sit for a certain amount of time. Now it's a used car because it was registered under one of his other company's names. Then they can sell them as used cars with very low.

And most BMW dealers have a whole lot of loaner cars, so there's probably a lot of inventory goes in and out of their loaner car program. Okay. So now part two of the question is, so my mom created a spreadsheet outlining all the different cars with all the different packages and all that because it's like an all-a-cart, you add this and you have to add that. So I'll give you the stock number. It's, or it's actually the very top, it's the BP 7590, the very top one for 629.

BP 7590, yep. That's correct. So now that car, the original MSRP, based on the package it has, was 86,700. Now, there's another one with the same mileage. It's actually has 10 kilometers left. It's the BP 7599. Boston, let me interrupt here briefly. We're coming toward the end of our show, and we've got callers holding.

How much longer, if we could move this on a little quicker. Okay. Okay. So just fast forward. So there's two cars in particular, and for MSRP price, the difference is about $3,000. Now, my question is, what is the best? way to negotiate the price down because these cars, obviously, they're all within the same price range, and they're very close now. One has 8,500 kilometers. What is the best way I can

negotiate the price down to get below $60,000 because of the mileage compared to all the other cars as well as cash or finance to get the best deal? Boston, do they have an auto trader in Canada? yeah okay i go on auto trader and you can look at every use bmw in canada and the united states on auto trader you can sort by price and you sort sort by the make and model so uh i would use auto trader to find cars of the description you want to buy and see what the other dealers there's no better way to negotiate than to tell your dealer that you there's another dealer that has a better price i'd start right there is true car available to you and Canada?

No. How about Costco? Unfortunately, not. They only do Lincoln Ford. Yeah. No, that's a, so I would use AutoTrader, and from there I would find a competitive dealer with the same description vehicle, BMW, that you're looking at, and go to your dealer and say, if you can beat this price or meet this price, I'll buy it from you.

Okay, but the problem is because the 2018s, they're clearing them out. There's not very much left. And this is the kind of lost dealer with all the cars. The only other thing I can say to you is there's nothing that will get a dealer's attention or a salesman's attention more than turning around and walking out the door. You walk in with your checkbook and hand and you make a checkout and you show it to them and say, this is my final offer. If you don't meet it, I'm out of here and you'll never see me again.

And then you're not bluffing. The best bluff is when you're not bluffing. You turn around to a 180, you walk back to your car, get it. on the car, crank it up, look at your side window, if the salesman might be running toward the car because they'll push it all the way to the time when you crank up the car

in which case you made a deal. If not, drive away. Oh, okay. Boss, a great call. I love out-of-country calls. You're our first out-of-country call, and we would love it if you'd call back again. We have all sorts of...

Earl. I really appreciate it. You guys are great at what you do, and I want to thank you for your honesty, and I really appreciate it. Thank you, Boston. Thank you very much. Talk to you soon, we hope. Take care. I had to look at the weather in Vancouver, mostly cloudy, chance of snow. Mostly cloudy, chance of snow.

Oh, boy. Back and forth. Hey, we're going to go to our caller in West Palm Beach, and Bennett, thank you for your patience. Good morning. Good morning, all. Good morning, Nancy. I love you guys. You're the best.

Oh, thank you so much. My two questions, and I'll make it sure, is if you can, Earl, if you can be honest and let the, listen to know, what is the markup typically on a car, if you can answer that? And number two, what happened a couple of years ago that you were taken off the air? What were the repercussions of that? And I'll listen to you, but thanks a lot. Thank you, Bennett. your first question about what is the markup on a new car I'm not dodging the issue and I will be honest with you it depends on the year-make model car

BMWs and monsters and Honda's different models all that different markups the markups vary I'll give you a range from as low I would say is maybe 9 or 10 percent all the way up as high as 30 40 or even 50 percent percent the markup also varies with the same year make model car because the manufacturer varies a markup by dealer incentives and customer incentives so you can never really make an intelligent decision buying a car by banking on knowing the markup that goes to trying to find out what the dealer's cost of the car is it sounds like a good idea and the dealers like it when you think that, because they always want to tell you, here's what my cost is. There's a sure way to tell when a car dealer's lying, his lips are moving, or he just told you, this is my cost of this car. Car dealers will not tell you the cost of their car.

In fact, you're not going to believe this, but sometimes the car dealers honestly don't know the cost of their own car. It's very complex, and I could do a whole show on that, but with customer cash, dealer cash, incentives, and all the other nonsense that goes with pricing cars, holdbacks. There are multiple holdbacks in the cost of a car. So forget about finding out the dealer's cost or their markup. What was the second part of the question? Why were you kicked off the air? Come on, come clean.

I always kicked off the air by C View Radio a couple of years ago because I told the truth. I told the truth about the car dealers, mystery shopping reports. I told you, the radio listeners and whatnot, why they were telling you lies about the prices on their cars. And the car dealers all ganged up, and they got together, and they went to the owner of the station, and they said, if you don't get Earl Stewart on cars, if you don't cancel, Earl Stewart on cars, I'm going to cancel my advertising. The general manager came to me in my office and sat down with them.

a general manager whose name is Chet Chet Tart Chet Tart and we're friends today Chet Dye. He's with a radio station He was with another radio station He says Earl I'm sorry This pains me I like you You got a great show

But the owners of the show said If we don't fire you they're going to cancel their advertising So we're off the air for a year or two And now we're back New owners bought the old station And we have some brave people here that JVC, they know they're honest, they're reliable, they are not afraid of pressure by advertisers,

and they love our show, and we have their support. I guess I should knock on wood. Yes, absolutely, and you know something? It certainly has been an exciting journey to two of us together. Bena, thanks for the call. You're a great caller. Please call again next week. We're going to go, we're going to Miami,

and Tom has been holding good. Good morning, Tom. How are you doing everybody? How's everybody going? Great. Good. Thanks for the call. First time caller.

So for me, it's a pleasure and an honor to talk to everybody there. Thank you. I've got a question for you guys. Friday, I went to car shopping. It was not the best experience because, you know, a salesperson came out without saying to do themselves. Hey, I'm Soutencha. I'm here to help you out.

Start a walking, make a deal. told them what I'm offering for the vehicle took a test drive I offer what I was expecting to pay for the vehicle back and forth the salesperson and the manager came back in again and so I can't help you that because

I'm losing money on the vehicle so well how about deducting the transportation fee that you're already charged him twice there and the dealer fee so we can make a deal he never heard about it and pretty much I came in between ways

of, okay, let's go ahead for a 29. That's my max. So I went up to that. So by the time I sat down and they were writing up the paperwork and almost signing, I saw some sketchy numbers there that I was not satisfied. I just stepped up, walked

away, and everybody was in shock. I said, what happened? I said, well, the numbers are not matching up. So I'm not going to stand for that. I'm not here to play. I'm here to all few cash. I got pre-financed by, you know, Chase, and I'm ready to go. I'm not here to mess around, so I'm very displaced with you guys. You got my number. You know where I'm at. Everything's done. You need to finish it for me. So if you want to do our numbers again, I sit down and

give me a call. I'll be back. Good for you. But now I'm going shopping somewhere else. Great. Hopefully that, you know. But I was looking at, like, another question for you guys. DMB fees. They were showing plate fees, lemon law fees, registration fee, title fee, lien fee, agency fee. Are those legit payments for a title?

Tom, there are small fees. You mentioned lemon law fee. That's legitimate fee. Any fee that is paid to the government, it would be at the state of Florida or the U.S. government, any fee that is paid doesn't go in the dealer's pocket is a legitimate fee

there are small fees some dealers charge them some dealers don't they're really almost too small to care about but anytime you see anything over two or three or four or five dollars other than sales tax it's not a legitimate fee the best way to

the test of a real government fee is their sales tax charged on that amount so when you're buying a car and look at the total when they put it on the vehicle buyers order did they calculate the 6% Florida sales tax on that thing they called the fee. If they did calculate it, it's not a fee, it's profit to the dealer. Gotcha. Okay.

Because I'm going out today again in a different dealership and see what the fee they offer because they have the same vehicle for much less what I was offering from the first vehicle dealership. So I'm going to see if they can honor that type of price. Tom, you're in the wild, wild west of Miami. It's bad in Palm Beach County. It's worse than Broward.

Miami, be careful. Protect yourself at all times. I mean, you sound like you can handle them. Stand your ground. Oh, yeah. I mean, my daughter was upset and said, Dad, I hate, you know, you being scanned of, you think, they think you're stupid or dumb, I'm not understanding what it is.

I say, listen, I saw all the eclipse of YouTube Earl, and I'm prepared to do any negotiation. Fantastic. Exactly. I can't wait to hear back from you. And don't forget Truecar, Tom. Truecar.com. Oh, I'm using them.

Beautiful. So that's why I'm going to that. Oh. Oh. I want to, makes me want to come down there and go shopping with you. I'd be fun to watch. How excited. I'll be, I'll be a pleasure and honor that you stand next to me.

Yeah. You know how the game's played. Please call again. I got to hear back from you. Down there, I worry about you, too, Tom. If you don't call me back Saturday, next Saturday, I'm going to be worried about you. We're going to come looking for you.

Please call. Well, there are anything I worked on Saturday, so I'm just taking a little break in between, so I'm able to hear your show as much as I can. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure talking to you guys. Thank you. Good luck to you.

We're going to go to West Palm Beach. John's been holding. Good morning, John. Hey, John, we still got you? Yeah, you got me. Hey, good morning. Hey, hello. good a wonderful morning you just talked to my wife earlier dawn oh fantastic

I'm here at the dealership now and we were looking up true car and we're she doesn't like the car that we're in at the lease and we traded in the odyssey for a CRV and the lost room in that we just didn't realize but anyways my question is on true car I found something we're looking for it but it said a different dealership because the dealership doesn't own the car that We got our lease from. Can I take it to any Honda dealership? Yes. Return the car for the lease?

Yes, you can. Any Honda dealership. We'll take it back. And as we always remind, Leshors, please take some pictures and see the inspection report made. Be sure they don't hit you with any damage in the turn-in that you didn't know about. Well, when we bring it in, I'm not going to take pictures. I'm going to videotape the whole thing. Oh, beautiful.

And the discussion that we have and just keep the video. Beautiful. And then my second thing goes, I tried to get in last week to comment on the caller who was worried about the little plug-in from, like, progressive, you know, for instance, insurance and the information that's being sent were stored. And I remember having to reset my dad's security device on his Ford Flex. When I was looking for how to reset it, I came across an interesting page, and I don't know if they're on all the new vehicles, but he's got like a 2010 and I know the vehicle but the black boxes in the car this page and you guys may have seen it is for the lawyers or it says if you're ever in accent the lawyer may ask the information and there were four things that's recorded on the car when you turn the car on if you have your seatbelt on is the radio on are your is your phone plugged into this Bluetooth how loud was the radio really you have windshield wipers on and you know and it records all that stuff wow Wow. How loud is the radio? You're an app.

Wow. I'm impressed. I never thought about that. You know, you know these nuts driving down the road, and you can hear their radio, and you've got your windows up, and his windows are up, and you can still hear his radio. You wonder how safe they could be driving. Right. But if they've installed that themselves, you know, they may be bypassed the box.

Oh, I see what you're saying, yeah. Because the factory box, that little black box, records all that stuff and the lawyers pull that when there's an accident to record what was going on at the time you know the, let's see, the four things were seatbelt

speed breaking distance and and then dash controls you know like the radio you know where your lights on and things like that so they can build their

tape and I and I appreciate that stuff. I'm not afraid of it. I appreciate it because I'm pretty much a safe driver. I use that Everdrive. It's a great app that monitors you're driving while you're driving. And so anyway, it's a, I like it because it protects me. Sure.

So anyway, so that callers. Thanks for that information, John. I really appreciate it. And we hope you can call again next week. And have a great weekend. you too thank take care uh we're going to squeeze dug in he's calling from boca this will be our last call we're going to take good morning hi duck hi how are you guys we're good allie says good morning meow meow what can we do for um okay so it happened to me again i i chose two different gas stations this week, Chevron on Hillsborough, and then another Chevron that's on West Hillsborough, and I tried this gas, and on one gas, I got three to four more miles per gallon, and the other one I got left, and so I'm still, this is a mystery thing for me. I don't understand why it's

happening, but it's definitely happening. Well, you told us last week, and I was, I was skeptical, old Doug, but do it two weeks in a row. That's very interesting. Maybe we should do a little a minute. We'll check that ourselves. And we're trying to, for the people that didn't hear Doug last week, he goes into a gas station and he gets a chavron or Sonoko or whatever it is. And it measures his gas mileage. And then he goes into a different Sanoco station and gets another tank full and he gets a different gas mileage. And it just doesn't sound, there's something going on that we can't figure out. I appreciate that, Doug.

We'll do our own Rick Kearney test on that and see if we can't come up with a theory for you. But that's very, very interesting. You know, I almost wonder, you see that sticker on the pumps that says it can have up to 10% ethanol. I wonder if it's maybe one has 8% and 1 has 9% or 10% if that, that would be enough to make that big a difference. Let's research that. Tough to figure out. We can't get into it in detail because we've got the mystery shopping report coming up.

But, Doug, I promise you, we'll do a little research on that. And please call on again next week. Okay, you guys have a great day. Thank you. Same deal, my friend. Thank you so much. That mystery shop that's coming up is from King Hyundai in Deerfield Beach. And I want to remind our listeners, we'd love to hear from you and how you feel about

the mystery shopping report so text us your grade at 772 4976530 now let me ask in the control room there is it possible that we could do that Hyundai commercial if we can put that on video and audio and the reason I'm asking kind of wave at me Rudy when you can hit the button on that anytime do it right now okay Super Bowl Hyundai commercial one of the best commercials i've ever seen it was in the super bowl it's hilarious so if you got facebook uh watch it if you don't listen to it but it's very very humor yes absolutely and i can guarantee you it was better than the super bowl this is cole like a lot of people cole isn't a big fan of all the time and effort it takes to shop for a car that's why he's very happy that hunday is

introducing shopper assurance Cole just chooses his car and enters a time and place to test drive and the car just shows up Cole thinks this is a much better way to shop and he wonders why most other car companies don't do this yeah why don't other car companies do this in fact we're doing all sorts of things that make buying a car easier for people like Cole

he'll love the transparent pricing he can calculate his monthly payment find out the value of his trade-in and even check his credit from the comfort of his own home. And when Cole does make it down to the dealership, he'll be in a better mood. Since all the hard work is already done and he's just there to pick up his new car. Who knows? He might even end up hugging the car dealer.

And should Cole have a change of heart, no problem. He can exchange his car for another new Hyundai thanks to our three-day worry-free exchange. Cole thinks all these things are better. It's all part of something that we're calling Hyundai Shopper Assurance. It's making the car buying experience better for, well, everyone. Okay, folks, Rudy, you can cut that off now. That was my fault.

I think that was a wrong clip. I thought we'd sent a video that had the guy that got in the elevator with his wife, and he's going down to hell. He says, going down, and they bring him to different floors, and each floor is a different kind of hell. One of them is a vegan dinner. One of it was colonoscopy. Another one is that talk that your father has.

has with you about sex. And then the floor that is the most unpleasant experience is a car dealership. And then the guy in the elevator says, wait a minute, I have Hyundai buyer assurance. Oh, well, you don't have to get off in hell to buy a car. You go out by it from a Hyundai dealer. So it was very funny. It was very clever. And I'm sorry.

I thought we had it. That was my fault. I sent the wrong clip. So what we did to find out about this Super Bowl commercial that promised the world that if you buy a car from a Hyundai dealer, you'll have total transparency, you'll get a money back guarantee, you'll get a streamlined purchase, blah, blah, blah.

So we said, let's shop a Hyundai dealer. And that's our mystery shop. First, we tried to find a local Hyundai dealer, but none of the local Hyundai dealers had the Hyundai buyer assurance. Go figure that out. So we looked all over. North, we went all the way up to Orlando,

couldn't find one. finally south we went all the way to Broward or actually Dave we went to King Hyundai So it's a voluntary program They didn't tell you that on the Super Bowl commercial Apparently most of the Hyundai dealers didn't like it And King Hyundai did so

That is our mystery shopping report I'll just read it Some of you saw the Hyundai latest commercial during the Super Bowl It was a humor spot that poked fun of the car business by comparing it to getting a root canal, jury duty, attending a vegan dinner party, among a couple of other unpleasant things. Unfortunately, these comparisons are appropriate, as is evidence year after year, by the Gallup Organization's annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions.

I've referred to that many times. Car salespeople have ranked at the bottom of this study for as long as I can remember. 2018, the last year, dead last. I'm sure Hyundai's clever Super Bowl commercial struck a tone with millions of viewers. Specifically, this commercial was meant to introduce Hyundai's Shopper Assurance Program. According to this ad, the program promises transparent pricing. Remember this one, folks, transparent pricing. Flexible test drive, streamlined purchase, not sure what either one of those mean,

and three-day worry-free exchange. this used to be money back i googled it and they changed it to an exchange you won't get your money back but you can buy another hunday sounds great right transparent flexible streamline worry-free are not typical the terms most people use to describe car shopping has hunday finally figured out a way to bring their business into the 21st century well the earlun cars team is here to find out we began our investigation like most people do nowadays by doing a google search for the hunday shopper assurance program we landed on a slick looking web page with an introductory video the list of the same bullet points as the

Super Bowl act and for our facebook and our youtube people i'll hold this up it says transparent flexible streamlined purchase and there's just a quick little look there uh too quick you couldn't read it but i'm rushing here apparently the shopper assurance program is not a available with every Hyundai dealer. In fact, very few. Upon entering our zip code, we discovered that the closest one was King Hyundai in Deerfield. It's just outside of Palm Beach County or, yeah. This must be a very special program indeed. It's almost 40 miles away past several other Hyundai dealers. No problem. Agent Thunder, our new super agent fears nothing and no one. And definitely has no problem with a little drive down I-95.

Agent Thunder was instructed to go to Hyundai's website, see just how simplified and experienced the Hyundai Shopper Assurance Program really was. Here's a report I'll speak as if I were Agent Thunder. My online search led me to King Hyundai's website. The Shopper Assurance Program was promptly displayed on their home web page. I selected 2019 Hyundai Sonata with MSRP of $33,115. was a button below the price that said see payment options after clicking this i was prompted to enter my name telephone number and email address in order to unlock my savings i assume this would reveal the transparent pricing promised by the assurance program sure enough after ending this

into a greatly this info a greatly discounted price of 28,482 dollars was displayed so far so good next I went back to the previous page where I had noticed a button that said schedule a test drive this seemed like the obvious place to explore the flexible test drive promised by the commercial and website it prompts you to again pick the car model and a day in time for the test drive I selected 1.30 p.m. the same afternoon a representative called me shortly after saying congrats congratulations on looking on selecting my car and proceeded to ask me what time I would come in.

My response was that I was under the impression that I'd already scheduled the time of 1.30, and he said, okay, we'll see you then. It seemed like it was just a landing page requiring my information, but didn't actually schedule a time for me. Okay, not a big deal. I arrived at King Hyundai at 1 p.m., headed for the front door of the building. I saw, I'll skip that. He sees a cigarette butts.

That's too much detail. It was sloppy. We don't care about that. We care about honesty and transparency. I entered the building and walked around for a couple of minutes with no one coming to greet me. That's not good, but it's not involved with the assurance program. I finally walked to the front desk and asked if I could get assistance

and that I'd schedule an appointment online. My initial feeling was that of an old-school-use car lab. So far, this was not the modern, modern streamline experience that the website and commercial promised. They set me up with a gentleman named Michael. It was very nice, presentable. He was an older gentleman who sat down next to me, got his computer, pulled up my information from the appointment I'd made online.

We discussed the car. I was interested in, made some friendly conversation, and then we left to retrieve the car. To kill some time, I got up and walked over to the manager area, not sure how I knew it was the manager area. I approached the desk and started small talk with a man named Frank. I told him how I used to be in the business a few years back, asking what it's like today. He said in a gruff tone, the car business is the car business. You know how it is?

All we're trying to do is heard those cars out like cattle. I chuckled, I felt like the stereotypical car buying. In my day, we used to say, we've got to move the iron, move the iron. At that point, Michael came back. I asked him about the three-day worry-free guarantee. He explained that it's an exchange rather than a return policy. You have three days to make the exchange, but there's no option to get your money back. He implied that they would offer a true return policy because people would take advantage of the program

they would not offer one because people would take advantage and use the cars for quick vacation. I mentioned that. After very thorough presentation in test drive, Michael asked me the closing question. If the numbers were right, would we have a deal today? I said, absolutely. We arrived back to the dealership where we offered me water, showed me the numbers. The dealership discounted the MSRP by $2,633, down to $30,000, 482 and there was a two thousand dollar rebate from Hyundai that brought down to 28,482 and that

was the price that I unlocked on the website to this okay here we go folks transparency this is a Hyundai Assurance program where they promise you transparency to the transparent price that I got they added seven hundred ninety eight dollar and fifty dock fee, which is a dealer fee. That's not a government fee. It's profit to the dealer. $798.50. And then they added a $79.50

tag agency fee, which is also not a government fee. Transparency, folks. So that's about $900, close to $900 bucks, and non-disclosed hidden profit to the dealer. Hyundai Transparency

Assurance Program. doesn't cut it. Of course, they had a $425 license fee. We assuming that's an honest fee. $8.50 Tire and battery, that's okay. That's a government fee. It's something called

MVWEA fee. I have no idea, but it's only two bucks, so forget about it, right? But we know that the almost $900 in dealer fees were not disclosed when they unlocked the price. Right. They unlocked the Hyundai

transparent price. But they did not unlock door number two that have the dealer fees in it for about $900. I asked him what the dock fee was. Get this. Get this, folks. This is humorous. What time is it? Ah, we got time.

He says to the dock fee, it's another way to make the dealership money. So there we have. Michael was honest. Honest and transparent. It was honest and transparent. So maybe that's what the hundred people. Sunday Assurance program means that their dealers will lie to you about the dealer fee, but the salesman will tell you that they're lying to you. Maybe that's what they mean.

I don't know. I brought up the fact that Earl Stewart has no such fees. He said, yes, they do. They just don't show it. Earl Stewart hides his dealer fees in the price of the car. Well, that's where the dealer fee is supposed to be. Is he in the price of the car? Don't argue about it.

The salesman said, they're hidden. He said the out-the-door price of $31,750 was all that mattered. I asked him to get me to $31,000, even out the door. He looked back to the manager. They said, yes, I thanked him. I'd be back with my wife and quickly headed off the door. So the Shopper Assurance Program, by Hyundai, is a lie. In Florida, all car prices.

or lies and yeah let me tell you something interesting when you unlocked when you hit the button on the website to unlock the fee and then you had to put in your name and email address and phone number you know what that was that was a loophole premeditatively used by King Hyundai to make it legal to hide the dealer free from you because if you have the email address and the name of the customer. It's not advertising. If you give out a price on the web or any other way, the law says you have to include the dealer fee. Well, they don't include it anyway, but the law says

you have to include the dealer fee. But if you have the email address on the advertisement, and that's what you did, you unlock the price, you had a specific customer. Now you don't have to include the dealer fee. So, wow, they violated the morals and ethics, and I think legality of the Hyundai commercial but they complied with Florida law because anybody can apply with Florida law and even if you don't comply with Florida law

they're not going to prosecute they're not going to state attorney will sit on their hands in Tallahassee and ignore it all the regular leagues will ignore it so there we have another situation of Cardio in Florida stinking in the hidden profit called the dealer fee and it's time for the vote.

And we have, do we have any votes online, Rick? We've got one so far. Unfortunately, our Facebook feed has been very bouncy because of the Comcast guys working on that Internet issue. I see. But Linda goes... Comcast has been here for two hours working on... That's correct.

Yeah. Amazing. Okay, we'll have another vote on how much you like Comcast after we vote on the mystery. Shopping report. Got two of my best guys on it right now. Well, Linda goes with a big F. F.

Okay. Well, while we wait some other votes to come online, let's poll our in-house staff here. Alan, what do you say? I like the salesman. Are we still ranking the salesman and then the dealer? I like them, too. I can tell you.

I'm going to go with a B on the salesman. And the dealership, I'm going to do a salesman. C minus because they're doing what every other dealer's doing. And they probably won't be on the Hyundai Assurance program long because it really doesn't sound like they're doing anything but putting some signs up. How many millions of dollars do they spend? I said in the car on their way to the radio of the show,

I said to Nancy, I can't believe that Hyundai spent a million dollars on that television commercial and that's nonsense. And then Nancy said what? I said they spent $4 million or $5 million. And hey, guess what? It's just as good as red lobster whenever they put that. Sizzling lobster on it? Yeah, they put the shrimp that's like the size of a tire.

And it's only the size of a Q-tip. Four million dollars to lie to the world. And what is your vote, Nancy? I want to know what MV-W-E-A means. And I Googled it. It's only two bucks. Who cares? Two dollars.

They made it, you know, it's important enough for it to be in the, Mystery Shopping report, I googled it, and it's just another fee. But for $2, we're getting a little, you know, we're doing a lot of tap dance in here. For Michael, hey, this is just the car business. That's the way it goes. I give him an A. King, I give them a D. Okay, we've got a grade on the Kerr, a few folks that haven't heard the scoring process.

Please understand that our grades are not absolute. If we pass a dealer, even if we give them an A, that doesn't mean that you can walk in there and sign on the dotted line. Do your research. Buyer beware. Every Florida car dealer, buyer beware. But we had to have some dealers to recommend. Otherwise, nobody could ever buy a car. We would kill the economy.

Nobody would buy cars in Florida. The whole state would go into bankruptcy. So our recommended list and our do not buy list are graded on the curve. Rick. Um salesman I'm going to give them a B because I kind of liked his transparency there with A

that doc fee is just another profit and for the dealership I'll give them a D minus they pass but they're just like all the others so we're CDD on the dealer so far I'm going to pass them too we got a few minutes left we have some more

online scores I've got M Ave AVE from YouTube gave an F and Doug from Facebook gave an F. Yeah, I can see why the F are coming in. You just don't like to be lied to it. If you saw that Super Bowl commercial and you finally found a Hyundai dealer that signed up for it,

most of them apparently refused to sign up, or maybe Hyundai said, these guys are too bad, we know they won't sign up. I don't know why most of the Hyundai dealers did not sign up for the Hyundai Assurance Program. But finally you got one that signed up, you'd think that it would be a pleasant experience. But I see why the I've came in. But we have to, we're going to recommend Hyundai in King Hyundai. Now, I have transparency, I have to say that I know the King family. Us old guys like to digress.

My father, who started in the car business retail in 1937, was friends with Lewis King, Sr. who had to use car a lot in Fort Lauderdale. And my father's used car lot was a cross street from Lewis King, Senior. And then my brother, my half-brother, Doug Stewart, went to dealer management school with Lewis King, Jr., who was obviously Lewis King's son. And Clay King, who owns King Hyundai, is the third-generation king, who I know, and he owns King. So, Clay, how are you? We passed you, but you're not doing the right thing out there, Clay, with those dealer fees. Yep.

And I know you're a good man. So you might think about dropping that dealer fee, but that's the digression I used. And I do have a mini-shopping report, because I know we've got a few minutes left. And my mini-shopping report goes back to my early conversation that I had with the CEO of Tire Kingdom. And the CEO of Tire Kingdom, and I have his card in my pocket, here it is right here, he threatened to sue me, and then we got to be friends because I apologize for Mr. shopping report I did a few years ago, which accidentally ran recently in the Florida Weekly. I told Eric Olson, I was sorry. I also say the Tire Kingdom has cleaned up their

act considerably since we did that shopping report. It should never have rerun again. And it was wrong. It was a mistake. So I'm apologizing to Eric. We went in and we actually did a mystery shopping report, and I lost it again here, of King Hyundai. And where is it? I had it here, I lost it. Tire Kingdom. The new one down here on North Lake. King Hyundai is what's in front of me. And I just misplaced the thinger.

Oh, here it is right here. Here's the mystery shopping report on Tire Kingdom. This is our actual employee that went in to buy tires, and his name was Haywood. And I said, they have an advertised price on tires. Buy three, get one free. Buy three, get one free. Which sounds like a great deal. Not my phone's ringing.

And I got to turn that off. That was Howard Kauf, a friend of mine. Buy three, get one, buy three, get one free, with a $20 per tire mounting and balancing in sales tax. And the complete out-the-door cost was $880. We did a little research on the invoice, and what they charged for, in addition, was they charged $28 to mount an install fee, a one-time balance of $39.96, and a $32. lifelong balance for rotation and flat tires for life none of those were optional or negotiable and they were added to the advertised price now it

sounds a little shady and I guess it is a little shady but wait until you hear the bottom line and I hope Eric Colson is listening to this the bottom line was that I got confused on this by the way the bottom line total was six $672.62. The price I gave you before was what I charged for tires. I charge for the same set of tires $880. So the tire kingdom price was really good. And even with the additional fees that should have included in the advertised price, it was really good price. And as I say, they beat my price by $200. Wow. I've got Jeff, our parts manager, going crazy now, wondering why. Tire Kingdom, we could buy those cars, those tires for less, and we're going to investigate that. So I can say this, Tire Kingdom has got some low-price tires, and those were Misholans. The only ones who could sell that low were the Misholans. We speculate that Mishlin had a special deal for Tire Kingdom, but if they did, they'd pass along a good part of those savings to you.

Good for them. There is my second story. Great report. We're getting close to the end of the show. We definitely are. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for spending your Saturday morning with us. We do appreciate it. You are a very important part of the show.

Have yourself a wonderful weekend, and we'll see you right back here next Saturday morning. Vett go. Fet no. Fett go to.