Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.10.2024 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Bowser Chevrolet of Monroeville, PA

Episode Date: February 10, 2024

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels back to Pennsylvania to visit a Chevrolet dealer in Monroeville, and find out what they will charge for a new 2024 Chevy Equinox LS SUV on their lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, your automotive team on how not to get ripped off by your car dealer in the service department or the sales department, we're right here on the job, alive and in color, right here on the True Oldies Channel. we got a lot of regular listeners out there for you new folks we're different I know you don't like to listen to the same thing

over and over again but we are truly different I know of no other live talk show that has what we have we speak extremely candidly about how you can not be taken advantage of when you buy or lease or have your car maintained we name names we name places we name dealerships we have a list of recommendations into dealers and a list of dealers that we say please don't buy from them. We have a mystery shopping report which I guess 60 minutes, Mike Wallace, some of you remember that a long time ago. 60 minutes are still there but they don't do the Mike Wallace thing where they spring in

on a business and just surprise the owner and the managers and tell it like it is. I'm surprised they got away with it as long as they did. Maybe they didn't. Maybe that's the reason they dropped it. But we're still doing it. We surprise a car dealer every week, and we've been doing this for 20 years. I can't believe it. We sent a mystery shopper in to some car dealership. This mystery shopping report is from Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I don't know how many of you know where Monroeville, Pennsylvania is, but that was my first real job. I started out working for Westinghouse Electric Corporation back in 1964, I think it was, 1964, maybe it was 1965, and I was in Monroeville.

So we actually, mystery shopped a, what was it, a Chevy? Chevy. Chevy dealer? Yeah. I didn't pay any attention to car dealership back then. I was an electronics engineer, and I didn't even know what a car dealership was. Actually, I did. My father owned a dealership. But anyway, it's very interesting to see what these live reports are like. We do most of our shops in Florida. We're located in North Palm Beach, Florida. We're just about, what, 75 miles north of Miami.

South Florida is the Sodom and Gomorrah of the car dealerships. This is where you enter a car dealership as your own risk. Car dealerships, as you know, and you've heard B. say on this show many times, Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and profession. Card dealers are last. I mean, sometimes they get lucky and they're only next to last. Number one is nurses. The nursing profession is the most highly respected, honest, transparent profession that we see in the United States.

And the worst are car dealerships. So that's why we're here. And we've been doing this for 20 years. And if you think we're not. tell them the truth, then you have to ask yourself this question, why haven't we been sued by a car dealer? I feel like, every time I say that, I feel like I should knock on wood, but I don't have any wood to knock on. So, but we have not been sued, and that means what we're telling the truth. You lawyers out there in the audience, what's the perfect defense

against libel and slander? That is the truth. And I've been tapped on the shoulder by Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and that means we must have a telephone. call? Because we interrupt everything when you call us at 877-960-99-60. That's 877-9-60. And then she has a caller. We do. And that number again is 877-9-60-9-60. Or you can text us at 772-497-3-0. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We're going to go to Gainesville. where Stephen is holding. Good morning, Stephen. Hello.

I found you about a month ago. First off, if you don't mind, I want to tell you how I found about your show and your car dealers. They're on YouTube. I've done a ton of research, and there's a show on car buying, and there's a YouTube channel called

Kevin Hunter's, the homework guy. I don't know if you're familiar with him, but his video says, in the title of the video is tips for finding better car dealers and in parentheses the unicorn car buyer's guide

and it timestamp 704 out of the 10 dealers she mentioned the honest ones and the good ones is your Earl Stewart Toyota so you can look you want

but uh well both Earl and I used to live in Gainesville and that's very touching they both went to the University of Florida a long time ago Yeah, that's how I wound up here at the University of Florida. Anyways, I'm on a long journey to buy a Toyota, Seattle, Seattle, Seattle, and a platinum brand new front-wheel drive.

Now, I want to hear your opinion because there was two dealers actually in Florida that made the top ten list for Toyota. One was you, and one was Toyota Nation, our Auto Nation, in the Winter Park, Florida, near Orlando. So anyways, I visited both of you guys. I made a 600-mile trip, a round trip, and just visited both of your dealers now. And I've also ordered a Twitter sent him from another dealer,

which he charged $5,000 more than you guys. But my main question is, one of the salesmen I ran into it, I think he gave me the honest-to-God truth, and I want to hear what Earl asked me. Anyways, I was told by the Toyota Salesman to Auto Nation of Winter Park that Toyota does not really build personal orders. He said that Toyota, wait, say I order a, I want a fully loaded in a minivan, platinum, with all the bells and whistles, the 1,500-water inverter, you know, their digital rearview mirror, everything like that. Right.

Actually, we don't want the entertainment center that folds down from the screen from the ceiling. I don't want that. But anyways, I said, so I put in my order to two different Toyotas. They kind of acted like they were going to eventually make that for me. Both of them said it would take one to two years, and they couldn't even promise that. But eventually it would get in. So I figured, well, I'll be in line behind maybe some dealers that are going to get some Janus. But then one Toyota salesman says, you know, Toyota doesn't do personal orders.

So what I would be waiting for is in a lot. that came in exactly kind of like what I ordered and then they would call me so I'm not ever really in line so I could be waiting for never. What guy... That's the truth

but you are in line depending on how they're if they're faithfully honoring their order bank. We have a big order bank for different vehicles, especially the ones like the Sienna or the ones that are taking a long time to get just because Toyota is only allotting them to our region

and much smaller amounts than say in California, where they have more strict emission standards and things like that. I'm only talking about the hybrids and the plug-ins and electric vehicles. That's true. There are two allocations of new vehicles for Toyota every month, and the dealers do not get to actually order a specific vehicle. What we do is we find the closest match. There's X number of models and X number of trim levels in each model,

and you're basically waiting in a line for a kind of like a like a lottery ball to pop up kind of and and you're just waiting your turn so they can fill the order on an allocation so that means usually you know you get two two allocations a month there's two shots a month to get it but there's another another thing that happens is the dealers have inventory managers and they might not get your the van that you ordered in the configuration you wanted it, but they'll see with our locator system that another dealer got it in that allocation, and they'll make a phone call and say, hey, I need this white one, I can give you back this silver one, and they wheel and deal and try and get the match the, let me jump in there. Stephen, the key is to stay close to whichever dealer you decide to buy it from. And by say, stay close is have a contact there that will answer the phone when you call. And as Stu says, two allocations a month. So there's two things you need to do. I'd call them, I'd call them weekly

if I were, had a CNN order like you do. And I would say any news, because there's two things that can happen. As Stu said, they will have an inventory control manager that can look and scan the inventories of all the other toilet dealers. And if they see a Sienna allocated to another dealer that's like the one you want, then they can negotiate a trade with that dealership. So the squeaky wheel gets to oil.

When you find the dealer, it has the best price that you can trust, place the order with them, and then call weekly with a contact, get a name and a cell phone number of a person you can talk to, and get an update

buy monthly. And that way you can stay on top of it. The person that's sits on their hands and doesn't do anything, is going to have to wait longer. So that's the best advice we can give you. Can I add one thing to take about a minute or two? Okay.

I did, I did, I've watched 200, probably 200 videos on CNN, every one I could watch just to learn about them. And I did actually order an all-wheel drive originally, but then I learned that the all-wheel drive, you have to watch out for the circumference of the wheels, make sure they're all good, goes bad, you might have to buy all four tires. So that one, actually, everything I wanted, but with all-wheel drive, came in in nine months.

But when the guy told me it was coming in, he said, oh, we found one that it's coming in as red, but I wanted white. He said, well, it's still being built. We can get it painted white. And so basically that's what happened is. I wouldn't do that. And then it came, but then at the last minute, I learned about the all-wheel drive. I didn't know that you had a good point.

You raised a good point. If you can be flexible on a couple of things, whether it's color or, you know, a package or something, it does make it, it will shorten the time you wait for that reason. It can make a huge difference, Stephen. If you can take three variables, color, trim, and maybe an accessory that you really don't have to have, give the dealership that flexibility. That way, the dealer trade person that is in charge of finding cars that other dealers, all over the country, actually, typically in this region, but they can go anywhere they want.

If they see one that came in and they're good at their job, they can beat the system, the allocation system, and get you a Ciena a lot quicker. But if you stick to your guns and won't have exactly this trim color and accessories as described, you could wait months and months. It depends on supply and demand and the manufacturing of Toyota. And don't paint a white. don't think the red one white that's a bad idea yeah exactly you know Stephen I I had to talk someone a customer into changing the color that they had chosen because they waited for

almost a year and guess what color that was ruby red so as Earl and Stu said flexibility is really important staying in touch is even more important so I hope we helped you out this morning. Can I just have one real one quick question? When you say two allocations a month, is it per dealer or does it go by volume? Like with a huge volume, Toyota get maybe three allocations. Just real quick, the whole, yeah, Toyota nationally has an allocation. The southeast region gets an allocation of, you know, 100,000 cars, whatever.

And then those are allocated to the, there's about 175 dealers in the southeastern region that we're in, that you're in. And they get allocated the amount. based on what they have sold prior. It's called a turn and earn. So if a car dealer is typically selling 150 new cars a month, they're likely to earn roughly about that. You know, it's not exact and everything.

Sometimes we get smaller allocations and big, giant allocations. But basically, it's going to, they maintain, they get what they sell roughly to maintain their volume. Okay, thank you. I'll put my deposit. He shouldn't put a $500 deposit, and I'll do that. All right. Sounds good.

Very good. All right. Say hi Gainesville for me. Thanks, Steven. 877960. You can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback. We are going to stay with the phones and we're going to go to Phil who's calling us from Jupiter.

Good morning, Phil. Good morning. How you all doing? Great. Great. I got a phone call for a phone call. a phone call, a question for Rick. I've got a 2024 Prius and a 224 Venza.

It's very lucky to get these cars. And, but I'm going to ask him about the first oil change. I read some YouTube articles where it would be good idea to have your first oil change within the first thousand miles. And I just wanted to ask, Rick, is that true or is that a waste of money to do that? Or what should be? Well, if you've got about $75 that you just want to throw away, I mean, you can just toss it to me. I'd catch it.

Brick says I'll change your oil for you. You don't need to do that. At 10,000 miles is your first oil change. Modern engines now, they run them in the factory. Before the engine even gets to the installed in the car, it's already been tested and run. And there's no break in anymore. They don't even worry about the idea. Remember, it used to me when you got a new car,

they would tell you you have to do a break-in period where you don't keep the same speed for any length of time. You'll bring it up and down and all these different things. All that's gone by the wayside now. Stephen, the thing you need to do, if you haven't already done it, is get your owner's manual out and look at the factory recommended maintenance. And that's the gospel. They are conservative, but they are also completely.

complete, and they also have the warranty on the vehicle. So don't buy any more service or maintenance if it's not printed in your owner's manual or online, however you're looking at it, and look at your car, and for every year you're going to be required based on mileage and time to have some maintenance done. It's minimal. You'd be surprised. I don't know how long was before you bought your 2004s, but if you go back 10 years, the amount of maintenance is probably triple what you have to do. today, and you have very limited maintenance. Mainly it's your tires

and your oil changes, and after that it's very small. But don't have it done. Don't let the dealer or the independent shop sell you anything if it's not in the owner's manual. Not to mention, your first five services are free. Right.

Good point. Exactly. Well, in this article I read, it even said metal shavings or something like that could come off the engine when it's brand new. And that's why you... Uninformed. The matter who wrote that is living in the past.

That doesn't happen anymore. Okay. All right. Well, good. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Stephen. Okay. Thank you, Phil.

Ladies, I have $50 for you this morning. The first two new lady callers, give us a call, tool-free, and maybe share your experience with us as to whether you bought or maybe you took the car, your car into the service department. just to chat and say hello 877-960 and for everyone else you can text us at 772-4976530

we are going to go to Doug in Boca Good morning Doug Ella says hello and so does Sam Hello So I was the lucky guy to get the circuit three weeks ago I got a call from Eric and I said well wait a minute I'm on the waiting list

and he says well do you want it or not and I go okay but I was kind of taken off guard there and I have it and talk about a car that's hard to chat this one has to be at the top of the list and you know what I went through, so I'm just calling a thank you

to give me an opportunity to have a car that's not price at 8 to 20,000 over, you know, Yeah, there's a dealership in Hollywood. I won't name who they are, but they charge it, they're charging 20,000 over MSRP.

Wow. Yeah. So maybe you guys should have charge me a little more. So, Doug, you didn't pay market adjustment? No. So the car is kind of, it reminds me of, I don't know, a race car. It's very, but you can drive it pretty calmly.

I think Sim either likes it or hates it. I'm not sure yet. And I can't get Ella in the car either, but not yet. So the first oil change, that's what I call them. Is that 3,000, 4,000? What model car? I have the Corolla GR circuit. Oh, the GR Corolla.

The first service is at 5,000 miles, and it's a tire rotation. and an oil change, because the G.R. Corolla gets oil changed every 5,000 miles. Is it a Toyota engine? Yeah. Okay. But did they make it in concert with anybody? I don't think so. And it's a three-cylinder engine.

And that's why. It's a zippy little thing. Yeah, that's, okay. They move. It was actually made in a part of Japan where they have a racetrack or something. Maybe it's got, gazes. or whatever. Gazoo racing.

Gazu, yeah. Yeah, it's their whole racing division. It's like a cartoon character, I think. That's because of the former president, Akiotoyah, he made every. He got that whole thing going with Gazoo, and he put the whole fun and the driving thing. And he's definitely, you know, found a whole following of enthusiasts for that. Yeah. Well, I promised Cyril, too, that he could try it out.

out. Okay. Well, great. Thanks so much, Doug. You picked out a aesthetically, boy, did they change everything on the Corolla. And that is a great-looking car and driving car. Congratulations. Thank you. And I found out that actually the transmission and the shifter and everything are supposedly cable-driven, not direct drive. So, I mean, I didn't even know about table-driven shifters. Well, you're learning all kinds of new things. It's a racing car kind of thing, isn't it for better control? Yep. Yeah. You really got yourself a heck of a car.

I tell you, I am. I would like to drive it someday. So maybe we get one and I'll give it a try. We'll do that, and then maybe I'll bring my faxophone. We can have a whole little, you know, party. There you go. By the way, did you know that Gazoo? where it actually came from?

Yeah. That was the little animated green guy from the Flintstones cart TV show. Yep. The great gazoo. Oh, my God. So I do have a cartoon. You do have a cartoon car. You have.

Yep. Well, thank you again. I really appreciate this. I waited a year and a half, and then when Eric called, I said, you're joking, right? He said, no. He says, not in a message. No, not at all. Doug, thanks for the call.

No, I'm not joking. Have a great weekend You too See it's sunrise Bye bye We're going to go to Bob In Lake Park Thank you for holding Bob

Oh good morning Good morning Good morning Sometimes I think we are living in a cartoon I agree And I would make one statement You've got to be very careful What you see on YouTube

Because there's a lot of A lot of stuff on there That's a lot of noise on YouTube sometimes, you know. But I do have a theory, and I was wondering what you thought about my theory of why do you think the NADA decided to file a lawsuit in the Texas court?

Because they're trying to stop the regulation. Yeah, but why did they choose Texas? That's my question. Oh, Texas is like the politics. It's the same reason Elon Musk moved his business to Texas. They got their very business. friendly people, unfriendly kind of a state and they've got a very strong dealers

association that supports the dealers and to hell with the consumers and the car buyers. So if you're a business person and you want to have favorable treatment, Texas is a good state. I mean, I'm not being negative. I mean, I'm a businessman. So if I had a really big business, I'd probably think about relocating Texas, too. They favor you against the consumer. Well, they used to have a name for that. Didn't they used to call that kangaroo court?

All right, cattle court. Oh, cattle court. In Texas, it's cattle court. I wanted to ask, if you ever had a chance to... They got some kangaroos in Tampa, though. I saw that. Did you see that? I did.

What's up with that? I don't know. It must have been somebody's cat that got loose. I got a blue. I don't know. Have you ever had the chance to shop? dealership in Bell Glade? No.

Long, long time. I think we may have, but it's been so long ago. Stu doesn't remember, but I think it's possible. They don't have very many dealerships in Belgrade. At one time, they had one dealership that sold just about everything, and I think they splintered up as Bell Glade got a little bit larger. For you folks who are not familiar with South Florida, Belgrade is a very rural area, sugar hurricane and farming, and some great corn, by the way.

But, yeah, not many dealerships. Well, I know we, you know, went out there years ago with my father when he wanted to buy a Cadillac, and their deal fee was like half the half of what everybody else charged around here. You know, they were much, much because they were trying, at that time, they were trying to get people from Wellington to drive out there. Oh, yeah. That's all of a trip from Wellington, you know. And we see that the rural areas, the smaller towns,

tend to be more transparent and honest than the bigger the town, the greater the thie I see. It's the less likely you're going to run into them again. Yeah, that's very true, yeah. In a small town, if you screw somebody and you really take advantage of them, the whole town knows about it, and you can cause your business. If you're in Miami, you can screw it 20 people a day and never see them again, but they've got enough of a population, the victims just keep running in the door.

So that's... I never thought about it like that, but you're absolutely right. I mean, it's a complete... That's funny. Well, if you ever get a chance to go out there and shop that place, I think that would be pretty interesting. We should do that.

We'll put that on the list. See how competitive they are. I had a question for Rick about a Magna Ride. Are you familiar with Magna Ride? Nope, that's a new one on me. It's adaptive dampers that they have in the... They have it in the Mustangs, and I happened to test drive a GT put a performance package with the Magna Ride. And I really, you know, I put it on the, on the mode, the driving mode was normal.

It wasn't sport or track. And I couldn't really tell. They told me that it's on all the time, and supposedly it adjusts depending on what drive mode you're in. Oh, okay, so it's an adaptable suspension. Right. Yeah, all right, yeah. Adaptable. Yeah, I've heard of plenty of those.

Toyota had the X-Reyas system for a while. There's been a bunch of iterations like that. Right. Does Toyota currently have anything that has adaptive dampers on it? No, not right now. They're coming out with one. There's a really cool one coming out on the 2020 for Tacoma. only on certain models and actually built into the seat.

They have this hydraulic computer control system that keeps the seat. Right. They said, so you can drive this thing over boulders at 100 miles an hour and your head stays nice and stable for the truck. So it's built into the seat. It's an active control in the seat. You can see on the back of the seat. You can see the hydraulic customs.

Yeah, I've seen that one. When the car jerks this way, it's going to counterbalance. Right, but it's only for the seat, not for the entire vehicle. Right, exactly. Yeah, the adaptive suspension they're talking about is actually for the struts and the shots. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, try to keep the entire vehicle. Well, don't we have things when they have sport mode and things like that?

Do they, is that sport and normal? Yes. Okay. Is it a tighter feel or is that just artificial? Because we had that x-ray that used hydraulic pressure would change it. But, yeah. Well, I see they're going to build a ground convertible. Did you see that?

I did not see that. I knew they're doing a crown the crossover, but I didn't know about the convertible. Yeah, definitely the crossover. Yeah, the production rate is going to be one. Interesting. That sounds about right. It's going to be a one-off. I don't know who's getting it, but somebody's going to get it.

Well, Bob. Thank you, Ben. Thank you very much. You guys have a great weekend. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much. 877-960. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers.

Give us a call. 877-960. We're going to go to Tricia, who's calling us from Bocco. Good morning, Tricia. Welcome back. Good morning. Yes, I'd like to continue, excuse me, the tire hour from last weekend. You remember? Yeah. I had some questions. We were talking about Tarners a lot, and I thought after that I have continued questions. um my question was you know my tire um my tires keep wearing out i'm a bad driver like earl has admitted it's a lot of stop and go a lot of left and right so let's assume my my driving habits aren't going to change i told you a discount tire you know i was having constant problems the tires were wearing out uh only after 10 20 000 miles very frequent

They said, okay, get a more expensive tire, the Michelin defenders, get your alignment. Well, I did that, and guess what? I think I told you last week my defenders wore out, you know, 10,000 miles off. I need another one. And they blamed it on the alignment. Oh, the alignment must have been out, okay? So my first question is to you, do I believe that BS? Or that second question is, now that I know my driving habits aren't going to change that girl,

do I stick to least expensive tires instead of $200 tires, get $100 tires, and do it that way? And they also said, because you didn't rotate it after 5,000 miles, that will wear them out. I said, guys, it's only one rotation. I missed. Not five. So those are my question. Well, you're never going to change, Trisha. I've been trying to change for 83 years.

And I just love driving. And it's fun to drive. And I like to take corners faster. And I like to stop fast. And Nancy's been trying to change me for about 40 years. So you just enjoy your car. Enjoy driving. Drive safely.

I mean, I don't think I'm unsafe. You're not unsafe. But you're an aggressive driver. You probably, it's fun to drive. So I would say, just shop tires. You can get a great deal on tires at Costco. If I were you, if there's a Costco anywhere near you, that's where I'd buy my tires. And you get a really good deal on tires at Costco.

And just enjoy yourself. Okay. So, but are you saying because of what is going on, I don't. I don't think. spend a lot of money. You can still have your, I would recommend, and I do the same thing, because we have to, is you need to get your tires check probably at least once a month. You want to check the inflation and check the alignment.

The way you drive and I drive, we should do that. If you do that, then that's all you can do. I mean, if your tires not in the line or they'll take care of it right away, if it's underinflated, overinflated, they'll take care of that right away. They don't spec to be sure you don't have a damage to your tire. My problem is damage to the tires. Yeah, Trisha, as far as tires are concerned, go to Consumer Report. I mean, you don't have to spend a whole lot of money,

and it sounds like as if that you're going through your tires. So you can find some top-rated tires, and the Consumer Report, Sto. Yeah, I was just going to say, to answer your question, I don't think that buying cheaper tires, you know, or, you know, like less quality tires because you're going through them is a good idea. like Earl said, get the most quality tire that's going to last the longest, but get the best deal on that one. And like he said, go to Costco to check that out.

But, yeah, just, you know, buy, you don't want to buy $200 tires, but those are ones that are going to last the longer are going to stand up on the best, too, you know, like a fun driver. And they can inspect your tires, too. They check your tires when you go there. And they'll tell you, they're honest. I mean, you go to Costco, you can get an honest price, a good price, and it will be an honest evaluation.

Do you need alignment? Do you need inflation? And that's what I do. And, Tricia, you know, your tires, you know, it's going to give you, it depends on what you have, and it depends on the PSI, like Roles said, you need to check the pressure in your tires. And also, it's just really important because your PSI, your tires that you choose, it affects your gas, you know, it affects the ride, it affects the tire, it affects the tire, it affects the tire, wearing out. So there's a lot of things to think about as far as you getting that comfortable drive. Okay, guys, but I did tell you, I spent a lot of money on my Michelin defenders. I do keep the

pressure up. I do check that. The only thing they told me is because your alignment probably went out and you didn't rotate it. So I disagree that one missing one rotation is not going to wear your tires down missing a bunch they'll wear unevenly and that's that's the problem it doesn't cause them to wear faster all around so um to Costco um talk to their tire department uh they're going to give you a whole different experience uh they'll you know i think you're going to get better advice and and better tires and you could do that even though you're not a member i think you need to be a member 65 a year trisha spend the 65 i'll own you the 65 dollars join Costco yeah and you'll love them and you'll want to repeat that.

It's a great place, mainly just because you don't have to, you know, keep your hand on your wallet. They're giving you fair price and honesty. It's a great place to go. Great products, great prices. I shouldn't believe them when they say, well, your alignment went out and you didn't get a rotation. If it's Costco, I would believe them. I don't know who you're going to.

And you can knock your alignment out in 20 minutes. We have new cars that come in from the manufacturer on the truck, and the first thing we do is check for their alignment. They've never been driven. They're on the truck, and we check them in 10% of the cars that we check that come off the truck have to be realligned. Earl Canock is a line on out in 10 minutes. Sure. Right, right.

I'll probably see that, but with that wear out, the right front outer edge of a tire. But, Trisha, the first thing that I would say is if they're saying, saying that your alignment was knocked out, I would have your alignment checked and get a printout to show whether your alignment is out or not. Because if it shows that your alignment is in specification, then you go back and say, here, here's the printout with the date, my VIN number, and it shows that it's in specification. Therefore, you are wrong and you replace my tires under a warranty because my alignment is not out. That's good advice. Trisha, we got to go. We've got a whole bunch of

calls holding yourself. Calls back next week and let us know how that works. Yeah, Trishy, so that's your homework. You have got Costco, you've got consumer report, so get back with us and let us know how things turned out for you. And my alignment. And your tires.

Thank you. Thank you so much, Guy. Okay, we're going to go to Jersey Mike, our regular caller. Hello, I'm Jersey Mike from West Palm Beach. How are you doing, Guy? Good morning. I like a medium.

with extra pastrami, please. They're going to be pretty busy for the Super Bowl Bank. Yeah, I know. That was started in Red Bank, New Jersey. And I know the man who did that. That's not me, but that's what you're talking about. Oh, I thought that was you. That's the reason. It was so nice to you. We thought maybe we could get some pretty submarines. Well, the game's going to be great.

Got some questions. One thing, first of all, I mentioned this before. I'm a veteran in Myanmar, and Are you going to do the Big Dog Ranch thing today or not? No, we don't have a dog this week. We don't have a dog, so let's give us a little. Tell us something good about Big Dog Ranch. Yeah, and Mike, let me tell you this. First and foremost, they're looking for volunteers out there.

They're in desperate need of them. One of the reasons we don't have a dog today is because lack of, you know, volunteers. years. So if you can, get on out there. I want to let everybody know out there. If you go out and get a dog, which I'm going to do, because I need one again, and I've already done it once before, and I'm going to get the third one. You can then call me three dog night. Three dog, Mike. So anyway, the last time I went out because you had one on there, and by the time I got there, it was gone.

Oh, really? Which one? Oh, that was a while ago. Like two months ago, okay? I was wondering if it was our Lilo from last week. We had a big to bit nastiff. No, no, no, no. This was a couple months ago.

Okay. Let's go to cars, okay? I had one of the last muscle cars back in the era, which was a 69 Corvette. I did the work on. I took the heads off, racing car job, you know, racing heads and bought for the cam, and it's side pies, the diner out around 490 horsepower. I could do zero to 60 in 4.0 a second for the stopwatch, okay? So it's great.

That's a beast. Listen, I can't get over how people buy these Corvettes that are automatic. Why would you even buy a sports car if it's going to, if you can't play with you, follow me? It makes no sense. Well, I'll tell you the fact is they're faster than the sticks. And that's the reason they do it because it's all about speed. And interestingly, one interesting little tidbit from, I think it's consumer reports,

the highest loyalty of any car, meaning you buy one, you buy another one, the highest percentage of loyalty of all the cars, including Toyota, Lexus, and all these great cars, is the Corvette. So it shows you what a love affair America has with the Chevrolet Corvette. I mean, it's not a perfect car. It has flaws, but people love it, and that's the reason they buy another and another. They're sexy. Let's go to cars.

around here, okay? I want to go out to Bell Glade if there happens to be a Subaru dealer. There is not. There's only a Beoke dealer. Only a Chevy Bjoke dealer. Oh, okay. Let me, and the reason why I want to do that,

as I found out, I can get a Subaru at least right here from Brayman in South Florida, which I've been invited by you folks not to do in South Florida by a car. But would there be anything wrong with that? If it was a brand new car out of a local dealership? No, no, no.

No, no. We just say, we say don't buy a car in South Florida. We don't subject yourself to the torture that goes with buying cars. Oh, I know about that. I've been doing it for a law. You can get a good deal in South Florida if you follow the advice. You've got to love to argue and scream and yell and negotiate. I have no problem. Or, you know, if you don't love that, then do it online. And I. And I had a deal with junk fees also, especially when the salesman says, oh, I'm going to go over and talk to the man in the booth over there, imagine. You know what? No, no, no, no. You We're going to go over there together, and I'm going to talk to the man in the booth, okay? Because I know how that works, you know, and don't get yourself stuck on that folks out there. Those dealer feels they'll kill you with that. You don't look at at least $3,000 to $4,000 in that junk fee.

Mike, you know how that originated, the back and forth? Back in the day, back when I started in the business, and I was evil, all the, we call them the closing booths, where the customer and the salesman said, we bugged them. and we had hidden microphones and speakers, no speakers, just the microphones. And then they were all in the manager's office. So Mr. and Mrs. Jones come in and you start talking about price, what's the best we could do, blah, blah, you get them thinking. And they say, well, excuse me, let me talk to my manager.

The salesman runs to the manager's office. They turned the speaker on, and they listen to the husband and wife talk about, well, we're not going to go a penny over $5,000. and they get everything that they're saying and that's the way the whole the whole game originated and then of course what happened was the FBI got onto it and they were they were raiding dealerships I think mainly Texas is where it really started and and every dealer was you know the fear of God was put into them so that's when they stopped bugging offices and that was like you know 40 years ago well listen I bought a car from your dealership out on the end of north lake boulevard and you have a big billboard down there along the way it said no dealer fees

and i'll tell you what when i got it the people there were very nice to me i bought a uh a 28 kea and that car had and they gave me the car fax you know right that and i didn't even ask what they gave it to me which was really nice so i thought this man had treated me very well that car went with 18 that would only had one owner and it was never an accident was never leased it was He was one owner, 18,000 miles, and I drove that car to 38,000 miles and never put anything into that car whatsoever. And I gave it to, I gave it to a relative as a gift, and they've got over 60,000 miles in it now, and there's nothing wrong with it. It's just, nothing ever... Amazing.

Thanks, my question, we've got a whole bunch of people all waiting. Always a pleasure to hear from you. Don't forget, folks, Big Dog Ranch, 50% off on anything you adopt. If you are a veteran. Thank you. And those dogs come out with everything taken care of. Chip, manicured, there are shots, and you get all the documentation stores. It's a great place.

And, by the way, the most important thing is it's a no-kill. Yes. A plow. And a lot of people don't understand what that means. But if you go out of these other places, they do kill dogs. Thanks what you do for Big Dog Ranch. We really appreciate that, Mike. Yeah, thank you much, Mike.

Give us a call again. By the way, the last guy like I had to put $328,000 miles on it before I got. rid of it. The good old days. I thought that never end. Have a great weekend. We're going to go to, before we go

to our next call, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers, give us a call at 877-9-60-99-60. We're going to go to Marty in West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How's everybody doing today?

We're great. Yesterday, I did my own mystery shopping at southern 441 Toyota and I went in there and I was looking just walking around they happened to have a lot of Camrys you know more than normal you know wasn't like you could buy one that day right but anyways I looked at a crown I liked so I said well let me see if they'll give me my price now my price is usually not the easiest price to get the car for. So anyways, the guy comes out, the salesman take the car for a fast test drive. I said, very good. Go down, get the paperwork. Guy comes out

in two minutes with the price and gives me a price that was very, very high. I got up right away, I follow Earl's rules, and I'm ready to walk out after talking to the guy for two minutes, and the guy says, just a minute, just a minute, comes back, lowers the price by $13,000 with his paperwork, and it was still almost 5,000 more than that. Well, listen, I can't like, when, I wish, I mean. I know it's in the moment just to say, like, what would it happen if I didn't say that? Just one little sentence. I would have been shelling out 13 grand more.

All it takes is one little, hey, I'm not doing it. Yeah, I said to the guy, well, when he showed me the first price, I said, oh, okay, very good. Thank you. And I just got up. See, Marty, back of the day, I would have fired the, back when I was evil, we would have fired that salesman and the manager. too, because you don't ever, we used to say, drop your pants that far, that fast, because it scares the customer. You always come down a little bit at a time.

So if you've got to come down $13,000, you have to do it, you have to go back and forth 13 times. And that way you wear the customer down, and they're exhausted, and they're just, they just want to get out of there, and you keep on, and then, of course, you hide his trade in or the keys, so if he wants to go home, he can't. You can't find a scar. And then here, another little trick I'll share with you back when I was evil.

We used to give, after we kept him there for as long as we could, hours to two hours, we used to give them some ice cream and say, this is our gift to you and take this ice cream.

Be sure to get it in a refrigerator real fast. So they couldn't stop at another dealership and compare our price because the ice cream would melt. I'm not kidding. And after this guy

dropped the price by 13,000, I said, well, if they dropped at 13, I'm only still 5,000 off that what I really want to pay. I said, well, let's see if they ever call me back. Hey, Marty, are you still wearing your shirt, the negotiator? But it's really, when I see that, I say, how much profit has to be in a car at just MSRP, I mean, these guys are, you know. Now, this car stickers for $52,000, because I want the one with the camera. Which one was it?

It was the Crown Limited, but the one with 360 camera. Yeah, there's no limit, Marty. $20,000 profits happened. There was a class action suit in Martin County, elderly people, and they had a group of dealers. there that we're charging $10, $15, $20,000 over a sticker price. And it's all they can get, and it's a while, wild west. So like Stu said, all you got to do is blink and they'll drop the price.

The people that go in and buy the car at the price they ask when they walk into a dealership are really getting hoes real bad. Yeah, I mean, so far, well, I'm 79, and I haven't bought a car. it's sticker ever. So I'm hanging on to my car, so if I could make it to 99, I don't know if my camera will last that long. But I'm in no rush to overpay for a car because my car's running good.

So you have the advantage. That's right. Yeah, I mean, if you need a car, obviously... It's different, different situation. Yeah. But you're in the cap bird's seat. It was a pleasure talking to. Give us a call again.

speaking to you okay if they call me back and lowered by the five or six thousand more there you know there you go 19 we never said that this wasn't serious business definitely is in Florida we're gonna go to Frank and he's calling us from Jupiter Farms good morning Frank and good morning and Nancy and Earl and the rest of the gang. Another Saturday morning I wake up, and the first thing I do is turn on the radio and listen to you guys, and it motivates me

for the rest of the day. Thank you. Oh, thank you. Earl's smiling over there. Well, I got a couple things I do have to talk about, but hearing from your other customers, first let me tie into you guys about Costco and tires. I had taken your advice,

and I've shopped at Costco for a long time for tires, but for my Mercedes, I knew with special tires. They were staggered and they can't rotate them. Anyway, we actually picked up a nail or a screw in a left rear tire down in Homestead Air Force Base and trying to get things. They did a great job.

There's a five-year warranty. They give you on your tires for road hazards and everything that's included. And so they took the tire off, patched from the inside, rebalanced it, put it back on, and it was under an hour and when I seen you're in Costco you go inside and walk around and check things

yeah buy a chicken and get a hot dog that's what I said that's the only reason to go to Costco for some people yeah I actually I know these millionaire guys and they go to Sam's to get their hot dogs

I said no no more hot dog we're going to go to Costco they got better hot dogs holy cow I mean go buy at real meal somewhere so yeah good advice and for the $65 fee, you get that money back, and you'll save it and other shopping things, but that's pretty good advice.

I heard they're going to crack down on membership sharing. Apparently, like, they don't really care that much now, and now they're going to enforce it at the door. Oh, they do it at the door, and you can't check out. Oh, I didn't. So they look at it. I mean, it's fine. I mean, it's the shame that people, I mean,

I'm sure people do that with their Netflix and account and other things. but um abuse led to this decision yeah and the air ride suspension we have that on our um sq5 the malady and it's like it's a day and night difference uh i got a tester of a car the other day that there's not enough time this morning talked about i did a little mystery shopping report ourselves at course and it was a remarkable i'll tell another time when there's more time okay um and but what my here's my call for you guys this is the serious part um Sue will remember, I bought my son a pickup truck, and Nancy remembered I should never co-signed for the little rat, what I did.

Now he was to pay it off early for whatever, oh, the reason is he's tired of paying high insurance rates down in Miami because he said, I've got to keep insurance because it's under finance. So yes. He wants to pay it off and drop the insurance. That's what he was to do. I said, and then what are you going to do if someone hits you and you don't have insurance? And now you're out, you know, a $35,000 truck. Um, that's not good.

And if there, zero percent financing, I'm trying to get the, the little guy to call you. I mean, he's not literally six foot six. But I mean, have him, you know, have you guys come, why would you get rid of zero percent financing? Because, um, for whatever reason. I mean, insurance is just, but anyway, here's my question to you. Since my name is on the title with him, how do I go about getting my name off for, God forbid. He hit someone. And the lawyer sees that, oh, his dad's got a big house in Jupiter Farms.

He's a retired airline policy. He's retired military. Oh, here's a good time. This needs to be a priority for you, yeah. If he pays it off, it can be signed over. You can, I would speak to maybe just an attorney or maybe somebody you know who can advise you. Just write a performer, you're actually basically, he's buying you out of the car for $0. You might be able to do it without that.

I would call, if you call a student. or me and we'll hook you up with our accounting department look at the title department. It seems to me that they're not going to add a name to a title without a lot of, you know, legality. But if you want to drop your name off a title and you certainly should be able to say legally, I want to remove my name from the title. If you're getting divorced or if you had whatever reason, you can, you can separate that. We'll hook you up with our title clerk. Call me on Monday. And And I'll talk to the title clerk and we'll figure out the best course for you. But that should be a priority.

Yeah, your thoughts were right on the money because, yeah, you could get in trouble there. Frank, back in the old days, that was pretty easy for me to do. But I can't share that information with you on the air. My thoughts on insurance, I would let them know back when I first started driving, PIP and liability were generally relatively low cost. and adding things like collision and uninsured motorist those raised the insurance rates quite a bit

those numbers have now reversed PIP liability those are your huge impact ones because everyone's more worried about how much damage your vehicle is going to do and that's your big expense collision uninsured motorist the things that are going to help you out

what's the other one there comprehensive insurance, those are pennies anymore compared to the other side of it. So dropping that portion of the insurance, you're not going to save, but maybe $10, $20 a month at the most. It's pennies.

The PIP and liability is always going to be the lion's share of your bill, and those are state required just to drive the vehicle on the road. So you're not going to get rid of it. You're not going to save much by trying to drop your insurance. It can't. he wanted to in other words you know frank i have to share with you the fact that you know we have

talked about insurance on this show forever and you can go to consumer report you would be shocked at how much you can save on your your insurance you're having insurance is extremely important wow yeah no i i mean i've had it for you know 60 years yeah but knowing how to buy and save that's good as i'm sitting here i i got to share this i don't know if i could get a picture or not i'm looking through my kitchen window out towards the trees and i see not one but two perfectly round symmetrical spectral spider webs glowing in the um sun um where they're strong between trees i'm going to i'll send it to you guys but real quick um real quick as um it's winter time now and here's my question to you since this you know cold weather and everything

what should we feed the children in the morning for breakfast you know oatmeal you know no no no here's this frost it flakes uh very good it's the cornyest thing i've heard thank you for that frank do you get that hear what i said we have to run now you can hang up by have a great weekend all right okay scooter thanks for holding you've been there for a while Scooter's calling us from Hope Sound. Good morning. Good morning. Is this Earl Stewart on Spider-Web?

I'd love to talk. This is Earl Stewart on Cars. No, a longtime listener, I learn so much every week listening to you guys. I appreciate the show. I have a two-part question, though, and the second part's more important. But the first part is, is the golden age of leasing cars over? And I asked this as someone who's leased my last six cars, like 15 to 18 years. going back. And it was always such a good deal. And I'll give you an example. My last two leases

are Toyotas. It's a $31,000 Camry. And in 2018, the payment was $2.60. In 2021, the payment jumped 110 to $3.70. But it's still a $500 and change car to buy out right. Now that I'm up for a new lease, the payments are looking like $480, another $110 jump where I could just buy the car for a little over five, and that makes me think, do companies not want us to lease anymore? And I'm just wondering, is the glory days of paying half of what you buy the car for over? Well, Scooter, are you shopping the lease just like you'd shop a purchase? Because I don't see any difference. To me, the big difference between leasing and buying is if you're not an educated consumer,

the dealer can take advantage of you a lot easier with the lease. It's a lot easier to flim-flam a customer with a lease than it is a purchase. But when you boil it down to the arithmetic of calculating a lease and the arithmetic of buying a car, if you are a smart buyer, there are six of one, half dozen of the other. I always recommend buying rather than leasing because the average consumer gets host when they lease a car. In the average car dealership, the profit on a lease is roughly double the profit on a purchase.

But if you know, understand capitalized costs, you understand lease factor and all the other residual value and your option to purchase and all that, which is complicated. If you understand it, it doesn't make any difference whether you lease or buy the car. I personally think that as customers become more educated, which they are, And if the transparency comes to light more and more with the FTC regulation, combating auto retail scams. And with the reform of car dealerships, the way they treat customers, I think leasing will be predominate. At one time, it was a third of all transactions, and then it dropped off to about 15 or 20%. I think it'll be 75% because it's more convenient.

you can tailor the lease to your cycle. Some people want to get a new car every three years. Some people want to get a new car. I've always been, yeah. Yeah, so, no, I don't think it's dying off. I think you just need to shop and compare more and look at the numbers. Well, I mean, with the pricing, like, you know, so I always, I go to you guys first, I get your price, and then I shop it to every dealer in South Florida,

and most of them are $200 more a month than you guys are. Not that I've gotten every lease from you, but typically you're the best price. I mean, I had Toyota dealerships on the Treasure Coast, quoting me $250 more a month for the same car. But it's just weird that now they seem like the price is it's creeping closer and closer to buying it. So at this point, I'm going to buy my next car because the price, it doesn't make sense. When it was $2.60 a month for a $520 a month car, sure, I'm paying that price. You know, it's possible. Now it's almost the same.

Here's a possible, you know, a serious factor, real factor that might affect leaks prices today. I just thought of it. The leasing companies and the dealers, mainly the leasing companies, really got surprised with this whole COVID thing and with the supply chain interruption. So the residual values that they had on the car were way off. See, with a lease, a 36-month lease, I'm a leasing company. I have to say, what is that car going to be worth in three years in the future? Now, you look at your crystal ball, and you've got to be pretty good to know what a car is going to be worth in three years. And the leasing companies really got surprised when they found out what happened with the value of cars.

So the smart buyer was buying their cars at thousands of dollars below residual. So I think it might be an overreaction on the part of leasing companies, and perhaps the average lease price today is higher, and maybe today a purchase price, if you're shrewd, you're a good negotiator, will probably be better than leasing the car. No, I mean, you're right, and I bought out my last two leases for that exact reason, and one was in the middle of COVID. And yet now my buyout from Southeast Toyota financial is about 19,000, and my camera is at 21 with 16,000 miles.

It's worth like 25K. So it makes sense to buy it and sell it on my own and make the money. But like I said, now it's for me to lease again, now I want to buy. But that comes to my next question. I want a 24. The 25 all-hybrid camera doesn't excite me that much. I like the body style now. So I want to buy a 24.

What's the latest I could put it? I want to customize it. What's the latest I should do that to ensure I can still get a 24? because I know at some point this year they're going to stop producing them. So I'm wondering, like, what's my sweet spot for going in to customize my car and get a 24 made? Well, depending on the model, I mean, the 25s are introduced at different, you know, it used to be in September all the new cars came out. Now they come out in the beginning of the year.

You've got to, you know, sometimes in January of a year, you can buy next year's car. and sometimes you have to wait until September, October, or even the following year to buy next year of car. You have to talk to the dealer who's going to be shoot straight with you and say, this is what I want to buy. I want to buy a 2024 at the latest possible time or the earliest possible timer. And this is the model that I want to buy. That way, he can check with the manufacturer.

If the manufacturer will share the information, he'll give it to you. but a lot of times we dealers don't know until they keep it pretty close to the vest. And oftentimes we find out what a new vehicle is going to be introduced by reading the paper. They'll go, they'll release it to the public before they're telling their dealers. It's funny, I spoke with Kirsten at your dealership this past weekend, and she kind of said the same thing that we don't know when we just can't place an order for a 24 anymore. She was saying maybe due April to guarantee that I can get a. the 24 that I want. You think April would be okay? I want the package on a Camry S.E.

Tell the deal, I like with us, if someone places order with us, they can cancel any time they want to. We don't, unless you order a purple car with a green interior or something like that. But if you order a normal car and you change your mind anytime you change your mind, that's fine. Because we order cars all the time without people, you know, buying them in advance. So we order cars for inventory. So we would just flip the switch and say, okay, this owner doesn't want to take the purchase and then say you can wait and order another one next month. We had one listener to the show here. I think it might have been Marty.

He did that several times. We just had, you know, he would cancel the car and then order a different one. So find a dealer that will work with you that way. You don't have to time it perfectly. Yeah, and that's what I'm trying to do. I mean, I'll order it to you guys, and if the price doesn't work, and like you said, I'll, you know, I'll surrender it. won't get it.

Yeah, we don't care. With the XP package, which I think might be a little more rare. I don't know if they'll stop producing the XP package at some point this year, or as long as they're producing Camrys, they'll make that specific Camry or how that works. Yeah. Well, it's a, it's a big, again, we're the last to know. They've canceled cars. The hottest car we ever had was a solar convertible.

And I'm still crying about the fact why they canceled that. car, I'll never know. Nice car. I got to remember, it's a worldwide company, and when they look at the market and supply of demand, they're looking at the whole globe. We're looking at South Florida, so I certainly understand that they've got to do what's good for the whole company, but we don't know until you know, usually. One last comment before I go, and I'll, I know you guys are Tesla people, or, you know,

you have a Tesla. Tesla's leasing options are actually really good. I mean, it's $367 a month with $4,500 down, which is more than I want to put down, but $3.67 to buy the same car with $4,500 down is $6.72. So it jumps massively, but I do know with Tesla, you have to give that car back. There's no buying it out when you lease it. But that was interesting that their payments, it passed the price of a Honda Accord, which is just absurd to me, but it's still their car.

I didn't know that about Tesla. I didn't realize that you couldn't. I bought mine, so I didn't lease it, but I didn't know that they don't give you the option to buy. That's very interesting. Listen, we got a move here. We got a bunch of lines. I got a ton of call, scooter. Love the show, guys.

Thank you. Thank you. Stay in touch. Okay, we are going to go to Kim in Boca, who is a first-time caller, and she has won herself $50 this morning. Welcome, Kim. Hi. Oh, my gosh. I can't believe I got through.

I tried last week. I'm the one who wrote the Tesla question. Okay, Kim, before we get started, it's real important. that you stay on the line after we're finished talking. And you talk to Jeremy in our control room and give your contact information so I can send you out that check for $50. Oh, thank you very much. What can we do for you?

First of all, I want to say how much I appreciate all of you. Thank you. My husband passed away before the pandemic, a couple months before the pandemic. He had just retired. I'm sorry to hear that. 60. Thank you. I was in my early 50s. And I was like, we were going to keep our cars a long time. I have, I'm still driving my same car because the pandemic came. And who's going to go shopping for a car? If you got a car that works. My car is a 2002 Lexus, RX 300. Do you remember that car?

How many miles on it? Over 213,300, something like that. Okay, so it's broken in. It's maturing nicely. And they're telling, and my daughter's car, I have one daughter, 28 school teacher in Miami, but she's on my insurance. I heard that other question about the insurance. Everything that happened today, every question was for me.

I got that. Fantastic. I'm telling her, she runs over, nails, Miami go to Costco. I bought her the membership. We'll go to Costco from now on. No more of that tired cake. Great. Anyway, I have learned so much, and I am a Tesla fan. I'm an Elon Musk fan, and I'm the road-in-belt. I've been wanting a Tesla. I love Lexus. And I thought about getting another one, but part of me is like, why should I go into another gas car when I keep cars a long time? Exactly. You know? I bought it new in Palm Beach. We bought my Lexus new.

in Palm Beach Lexus, when the Highlander had just come out, Toyota Highlander, and couldn't get one. So they talked me into the Lexus, and they gave me the Costco price, and we paid like 30 grand. And so, and my husband had a Ford Mustang convertible on 99 that I got short on Haggerty's until I got rid of it during the pandemic early on. Should have kept it because I probably could have got triple, but it was dumping oil in the garage. The 99 Mustang, he did not give it enough love. He was a Harley guy. So he had two Harleys, and I had to sell those.

It was crazy. So anyway, my fear was, what do I do if one of us needs a car? Now, at that time, interest rates were zero. And then, you know, then we're like, forget it. Let's just keep our cars going. My daughter and I put a new radiator in my car and a second timing belt. just in case. It didn't need it, but I figured we did it so long ago. I went to Jam Lexus. There's a guy there who's, like, sells you the Brooklyn Bridge. Did my time be built. Yeah, he's still there. I won't say his name because someone might know him. But anyway, I stopped going to him, but he got, every time I came in for something that they were supposed to do for free, he's like, well, you should do your timing belt now. It was like done it, like, 60-something thousand miles.

So by the time I got to over to 100, I said, I'd better just Tommy built again. So the car is well-loved, well-dinged, and I don't have to worry until something, you know, still it doesn't want to work anymore. Exactly. But people are saying to me, oh, I'll buy it from you. But here's the thing. I'm a little nervous. I got my policy this couple weeks ago for my cars.

our cars and my house it's bundled together and when I saw the car policy I went into shock for three days then I started processing it I'm like what the heck happened we were always in the same range for years and years and years

and now I'm in Palm Beach County Boka I don't need sometimes I don't want to leave the house because it's just crazies on the road they say it's because of uninsured motorists and and so yeah the bodily injury the uninsured voters, that was probably the highest part of the policy.

My agent AAA guy wants to, he's saying, well, maybe you should drop the collision on the Lexus. And I've never dropped anything. We have like, you know. How much would you save if you drop the collision? Rick just made the point that collision is very inexpensive today compared to the personal injury protection. It is. So we're talking, you know, nickel and dimeing to get the insurance down. Our insurance, between the two of us, the insurance went up $1,200 for the two cars.

Yikes. Yeah. Wow. Our policies were like $1,200 or like $1,100 each, and then they went up to like $3,400, something like that. Wow. That's interesting. Yeah. Tim, you know, we have a lot of calls backed up, but I do have to, you know, I want to share this information with you. There's so many, as I said earlier in the show, there's so many ways for you to save on your insurance.

And some of the ideas that are in Consumer Report are shocking. You wouldn't even think that you could save tremendously on your insurance, especially you said it's you and your daughter on the same policy. policy? Yeah, unless I take your office. Take a look and research that, definitely. If you haven't shopped and compared prices on your insurance, your car insurance in three or four years, even though insurance rates are high, you will get a lower premium, my promise, if you haven't shopped. When's the last time you shopped? The only thing is, have you ever heard of, you know how it's hard to get homeowners here? I've been with AAA for a long time, and it's bundled. So the agent said to me, I said, I'll lose my policy, you know?

And he's like, well, yeah, you will because you won't have a bundled policy anymore. But maybe he was trying to trick me. Didn't mean I wouldn't have a house policy. Right. You can have a bundled policy, but if you, I mean, you might want to re-export that. It might not be the most, the best set of you. You just got, you have to look. You can't, you can't take anybody's word for it.

But it just, it isn't going to cost you anything to shop and compare it. Take it out of the bundle. See what that does. your overall cost of your home and then shop the car insurance with three or four or five other places and see if the net effect is a reduction i think you'll be happy okay and get back with us kim and let us know how that went and don't forget stay on the line give jeremy your information thank you so much and have a great weekend okay uh we are going to go to uh quickly we're going to go to some more calls and I think that we're going to go to

John in Palm City. Good morning John. Hey John, you're there? Yes. Good morning. Last call is what I'm calling about. Thanks to Nancy Stewart. I've been listening for 20 years and thank for building up the female audience to this show. And the proof of the pudding is not only with call-ins that we're getting, but what's going on in the industry, Mary Barrow, which is the GM executive, and the GM Racing Division.

There's a woman called Laura Kouser. She's in charge of that complete division, big responsibility. In June of 2023, she helped design a hybrid Cadillac, which is a 24 Lamont's version, 670 horsepower. It goes first.

the most famous race car driver in industry was a woman that just died called paula murphy she had a terrible accident in 1973 driving 300 miles per hour she broke her back tremendous amount after she recovered a few years later she went back in and set all kinds of records in racing so it gets further than that too it's very interesting about females was just celebrated a birthday, a 116-year-old woman in California, and she's the oldest person in the United States living outlaw. One other person in another country outlived her, but at age 116, and that's a new record for any person living in the U.S. And it happens to be a female. So I can't say enough, and thank you to Nancy Steele.

it for building the female audience and call-ins like the last caller we had with educated people that listened to this show, and it's just a pleasure to hear that women being educated and consumers. Thank you, John. John, your words are priceless, and we appreciate you coming in. Thank you again, guys. Thank you, Nancy. We can.

Thank you, John. Speaking of women, Rita Case was named Tyne. dealer of the year. And if you're not familiar with Case, that is the Rick Case Automotive Group. So that was an interesting

pre-line. Let me give you a little inside observation there. Typically people are out there thinking, oh yeah, so her husband died and she inherited the dealership big deal. The fact of the matter is from the get-go, Rita called the shots, and Rick Case was a figurehead

and that's all. She ran the stores. She made the smart decisions. She oversaw the expansion, the incredible expansion. Rick got all the glory, but she deserved that. And I think she's only the third woman to be the time dealer of the year, but she really earned it. Yeah, they're down there in Sunrise. And can you believe this?

That there were, I think I remember them selling over a thousand, thousand cars a month. Yeah, a thousand cars a month. And it's just an interesting read about Rita. She has really, really been a very strong female figure. Okay, we are going to go to Dominic, who's calling us from Coral Springs. And Darren, hang on, we'll get right with you. Good morning, Dominic. Good morning. Thank you for waiting. What can we do for? you. Oh, thank you. That's two things, right.

Number one, my daughter wanted a new creas. You wanted to turn in their old one? I said, you're going to wait forever. Right. Go up to work to do it. The next thing I know, she calls me up. She said, I'm going to pick up my car in four weeks. Said, how the hell are you going to do that?

Everybody's telling me that it takes over a year. So, like, you call the credit union. They have a service where they have car, car brokers that go out and find cars for you. And they found a brand new 2004 Prius, and she's driving it now. That's awesome. That's great. The great services is all I have to do is call up. They take care of everything.

There's no hassle, and they just get you a car. And I don't know. I guess they shop all over the place. Find out where you have to go. She had to go to Miami to pick it up. Right. No, that's in South Florida, car brokers, car broker services are very common. We do business with them.

We have a sales department that deals directly with the brokers. And, yeah, they charge a dealer, like a finder fee or referral, and they handle all the legwork and everything. And it is interesting. I mean, there is typically, I don't usually see younger people using brokers. Usually they're older. They just don't have a lot of time to deal with the car shopping. So that's really cool. I didn't know that, you know, there was that, yeah, that's...

My God is older. She's in there between 40 and 50. Okay. All right. Well, that's still pretty young. I'm older than 50. And she's my youngest. Okay.

There you go. I'm getting, I'm in your position. The other thing, I just quickly want to say, and it's not a sexist kind of a thing, but I know they're calling for women to call, and I know one of the grecks that I have, As in when they're driving, the passenger seat is a place for their pocketbook. When I get in, it's the backseat. And invariably, it's like, will you get me this? Because it's in my pocketbook.

And it's, is there, you know, I see cars over the years. They've been designed and lots of changes. Now every car has a sunglasses holder. Yes. And is there a bag holder, a large bag holder? I've seen some center consoles that are pretty cavernous. And one that was, my wife can put, you know, a smaller bag in the center console of some of these cars. But I've seen cars that have hooks, so maybe having a hook on the side of the car or maybe an accessory that hangs the bag in a more where you don't have to break your shoulder or your neck to reach it.

Right. And I was just wondering if some women call up and say, I found a great solution. Well, let's put this question out there to the listeners. If somebody has a little break, I have a solution. My wife actually hangs her purse on the back of her driver's seat by looping it over the headrest. Oh, okay. She puts the handles right over the headrest, and it hangs on the back of her seat. And reaching into it is easy?

Well, she can grab it. I'll pull it up. Grab the strap and simply pull it up and bring it around quick and easy. I didn't expect the answer to come from Rick. On this subject, I mean, lots of answers come from Rick. I'm a well-rounded individual in more ways than one. Why not? And you got the insurance answer.

Well, Dominic, we have another call. Do you have any other questions? No, that's it. Appreciate it. Thanks, Dominic. Okay. All right, bye. Share you.

Thank you for sharing. We are going to go to Darren. Darren's calling us from Ohio. Good morning, Darren. Good morning. I was calling for an update on my engine from the Equinox I was telling you about like two weeks ago. Okay. So I went to the Chevy dealer.

I purchased the engine from to the parts counter. They said that I had to have the service department verify if any parts were bad. So I go to the service department, and they said they'd have to charge the, you know, diagnose because they didn't put it in. So I asked him what the fee would be to firm to look at it. And I was like, first to look at it, it's $149. Just look at anything. I go, and he goes, well, I already know the main seal's bad and the PCV valve.

And he goes, well, we would just stop there and just tell you that's what's wrong. I go, well, I need to know if there's any internal damage. What would you charge? I go, I want an actual quote. What would charge to look internally into it, see if it caused any other damage? So the servicemen left, talked as manager, came back, told me they would charge me 33 hours of labor at $6,600 to look into it. No. So, needless to say, I left and...

Yeah, I mean, it makes sense when, I mean, to diagnose something that requires a breakdown, a lot of labor, it can be more than a $100 diagnosis fee. I don't think charging full labor rate in it sounds like a complete, what do you, Rick, that sounds excessive. 33 hours, I mean, if you're bringing an engine to me

that's out of the car, 33 hours is complete overhaul time. That's, strip it down and put it all back together with new gaskets and new bearings everywhere. So that's a repair. That's not the diagnosis. That's overhaul time.

Yeah, they, said it was just to inspect it, so. You've got to find another, another shop. I mean, well, my mechanic took, they actually took it, came and picked it up, took it back to his shop. He pulled the engine, replaced the main, rear main, and put a new intake manifold in it.

And he said it didn't, he doesn't think there's any internal damage, but he said, with the way they're built now, he's going to be crazy for me to tear it apart. Yeah. Without, you know, so. It's running good now? It runs nice.

now? Yes. Yeah, I've been running at work and stuff, so. Good. Good. I mean, I guess down the road, you'll find out if there was something that caused by it. Fingers crossed, nothing happened. I did have a contact, I have a friend that's an ancient Europe for GM in Detroit,

so he referred to so email is going back, and just wait for a response back from one of them there. Okay. People up there to see what they do. So I will give another update once I hear something else. Well, so far this update, it sounds like a good one. I mean, it's running. You have some questions, But, yeah, let us know, please.

This is very, very interesting. All right. Thank you. Have a great day. You too. Thank you, Darren. We have our mystery shopping report coming up later on the show. And the mystery shop is from Bowser Chevrolet, right out there in Monroeville, Pennsylvania.

Bowser from Sean Nana. So stay tuned for that. And don't forget, you can vote. Yes, we love to hear from you. and how you feel about these mystery shops. So you can do that. It's 772-497-6530. 772-497-6530.

Now we are going to get to our texters and our YouTubers. Yay. So, Stu, Rick, the show is yours. Emery. Emery's been waiting patiently in my inbox. Amory says, good morning. I checked out a used car website. just for the fun of it.

What is wrong with you, Amory, for the fun of it? I checked at the U-Skore website for the fun of it, and I'm completely mystified by some of the terms I encountered. Could you please explain some of the following terms? Okay. One, what is an islet tie-down removal? I'm going to guess in a truck that has those little eyelet tie-downs that you can strap over cargo,

they charge you to remove them. That's my guess. Sound like a good guess, reasonable? Yeah, but I don't know. What was she looking at, our website? Not our website, just a use car website. Oh, used car website. All right, so the next one.

So I'm guessing an is because I know what a tie-down is, and I know what an islet is, and I know what removal is. So that's self-explanatory, I think. The only other one I could think of is a lot of cars have a little plastic knockout in the front level. Oh, for trip for transporting. Yeah, there's a in the... Well, Anne-Marie's point is we're not supposed to know what this is, and that's why they do it. So it isn't a quiz.

No, no, there's a bunch, and there's answers to these. See, what the dealer is doing is jacking the price up by putting something down. No, because there's not charges for these. There's just baffling terms. Oh, I thought she was looking at a used car. No, on a website, and there's a bunch of things. So, like, I think our next one is what is SET digital portfolio? That's strange.

It's a used core website. Well, not entirely. They must be having, like, the window stickers. SET digital portfolio is all the pictures they take of the cars at the port, so the dealers can put it on the website, and there's no charge for that. What is a drop ship indicator? I've seen that before, and that's just the port thing. I see that on Toyota Windows stickers.

It's an XX, and it doesn't, there's no charge. It's just some internal thing for the port. This is a used car website? Yes, used car website. When does the SAT have something on the used car? Well, they might have, well, most used car websites will have the ability to look at, they have the window sticker reproduced on the website. So these are options on cars.

What's a rack risk? It's on a 2023 crawl across. I know what a roof rack is. What is gold certified? Okay, gold certified is just the name of what the dealer internally calls the inspection of their used cars. That means that they've gone down the checklist. and according to the checklist, they've inspected certain components. And, okay, and should a prospective buyer still take a gold-certified used vehicle to an independent mechanic?

Yes, to be checked out because the gold check certified is not from a third-party certifying source. It's a dealership is certifying it themselves. And also, it's a big question whether they really did it or not, because they could just check the boxes. You give it to a technician. It's a piece of paper. He checks all the boxes, and he may or may not have done the work. It's just a piece of paper until you actually have somebody verify that stuff. And Emory signed it confused.

And I think you still might be confused after this because there's a couple things we didn't know. P.S. May your favorite team win the big game, whether you're watching the Super Bowl or the puppy bowl. I'm watching both, I think. All right. And then that's it for text. We go to YouTube. We're actually a little quiet on YouTube today.

everybody's just been listening to all the phone calls. A lot of phone calls, yeah. Here's something I'd like to ask people to read my blog. Normally, I get emotionally involved with some of my blogs. This one is on earluncars.com. All my blogs are there, earl oncars.com. And the title is how to buy a new car with a lease, effort and stress. now there's a letter or text or an email however you want to convey it and I write it for you

and I basically I'm not going to read the whole thing here it's not that long but I won't read it because we're short on time but it basically is a way for you to communicate to the dealership that you want to buy a car that you are going to buy a car and you will buy it from the dealership that gives to you the best out-the-door price. And it's worded in a way where they know you're serious and that if they don't respond,

they'll never hear from you again. You're not going to call them back or text them back or anything. If they give you a price that's fair and the lowest price, you'll buy from them. It says, look, you're probably not going to get my business because they'll probably be a lower price,

but if you don't respond or give me a high, high price, you'll never hear from me again. So take a look at urancares.com, go there. The latest blog is how to buy a new car with least effort and stress.

You can copy my letter and just fill in the blanks with the car that you want to buy. And I promise you, if you send that to 10 dealers, and you can send it to 20 or 100 if you want to, send it to many dealers that make a car that you want,

I promise you, you will get a real good price. We get emails like this from time to time, and well, we're one price, but back even the day before we did that when we did negotiate on price, when we got that, it was like, all right, what's the lowest? Because it takes no time.

Just respond. You don't even know if you're going to get a response, but sometimes you get it and you send your lotus price. Dealers won't do that. I mean, some will. The majority will ask a question. Well, and Dr. and Coffey, no, no. I said all I needed to say in the letter.

There's no more information required. Yeah. You stayed in the letter. It's addressed to the sales manager. I stayed in the letter that if you don't reply or you call back or email back with a question or anything other than what I've asked for, you'll never hear from me. Right. I'm dark.

I'm a ghost. And you use a phony email address. You don't give them your telephone number so they can't put you on the harassment list. I got something cool for you guys, by the way, a little helpful tool. It's built in with your, if you have an iPhone, which is probably more than half of our audience. If you have an iPhone, the iOS allows you, it'll make up an email address for you.

So you can use it for like when you sign up for something, like an email list or you buy a product. It's called Hide My Email. And whenever there's a form that asks you for an email, it will say, do you want to use your real email address or do you want us to create one? It will create an email address on the spot for free. Great.

It will be forwarded to your inbox, so you don't have to log into another account to find it. And then you can change it. But you can change it later. You can go into the settings and have it create an email address for you. And then you could use that. Or it's automatically in a pop-up. And we can use that now when we mystery shop car dealers by email.

When you do it on the form, like if you go to a website, most dealerships have a form to request information. It's all it is, it generates an email. So that form is going to ask, your phone's going to say, do you want to use your email or make up one? And you just make one up. Great. And just, yeah, cool stuff.

Technology is making things easier. Absolutely. Okay, where are we? We are in the studio in Lake Park, Palm Beach Gardens, approximately. Well, I'll do the Mr. Sheper Report. Listen, if you're, we're starting mystery shopping report a little early. So if you have a text, send it to 772-4976530. We'll probably have time to get to it before the end of the show at 10 o'clock.

So our text number again, 772. 4976530, and YouTube. YouTube.com, or slash hurl and cars. YouTube.com or slash hurl and cars, and we'll do this mystery shopping report, and then we'll check the text, and check the YouTube's, and we'll get to your question. Sounds good.

Okay. Okay, that mystery shopping report is coming from Bowser Chevrolet, and they are in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Earl has some history. Yeah, I just, this is where my first real job started in Monroeville, and before Stu was born, and I was there about 1964, 63, 64, and going through the Westing out, I was an electronics engineer for a Westinghouse, and that was where my training began in Monroeville, so I'm back in town after 60 years.

That's been a long time. Yeah, a long time. Mystery shop of Bowser, Chevrolet, Monroeville, PA. Speaking of the first person as if I were Agent Lightning, our crack undercover agent, that does a magnificent job. Does amazing job. Weekend and week out. Thank you, Agent Lightning.

I arrived mid-afternoon, spotted a pretty blue Equinox. It was parked out front. It was a new 2004 Chevrolet Equinox LT, all-wheel drive with an MSRP, with $33,240. That's pretty low MSRP. Yeah. $33,040. There was no addendum.

Okay. Good sign. Green light, no addendum. I decided this was going to be my choice for this week's shop based solely on the color. I waited inside for about five minutes before a salesman, who was with two customers, walked past me and asked, had he been helped yet. I let him know I had not, and he replied, let me see if I could find someone to help with it. I decided to walk back out to the car, and he came back to let me know that they were unusually busy on Fridays, and many of the salesmen are off today, and he apologized.

He then said, C.J. will be with you shortly. I unlocked the car for me to take a look at it, and I looked it over, just since C.J. came out around the car and introduced himself while shaking my hand. I let him know I'm very interested in this equinox. CJ then went over the safety features, told me all about how this how safe the car is. We then went for a test drive, and he continued sharing how much he loves his car, and let me know they have several more in stock. Love to hear that. For the past couple of years, we haven't been saying that. So the inventories are building up, folks, and that's to your advantage.

C.J. said, if you're unsure, I could show them to you, too, the other ones he's referring to the other equinoxes. I said, no, I really love this color and like to see a breakdown of what the price would be. He agreed. We headed inside to his desk. He asked me if I had been waiting long and mentioned that they are always short-handed on phrase. Second time he said that, you kind of wonder why they don't change the staffing. Well, he's not the boss. He's the guy suffering from it.

Anyway, he'd probably just make a conversation. I said, about 10 to 15 minutes, and he said he was very sorry. I had to wait so long. C.J. asked me for my license. I ended up to him and let him know that I was going to be registering here under my son since the insurance is much cheaper up here than in South Florida. We just had a lot of conversation about that today. Sky high. I think Florida is the second highest state. I can't remember the first, but second highest in insurance now, auto insurance. I mentioned that I didn't want to bring him with me until I saw if the numbers made sense. He took my son's local address, asked our credit score, and then headed off to see his sales manager. He has gone for about five minutes, returned to ask me my son's name as well, and then how soon I was looking to do business.

I last said, before I fly back south on Monday, the sooner or the better. He asked if I was going to be financing or leasing. That's a standard qualifying question, of course. And what my credit score is like, you always have to answer those questions. I always ask him. I said, high 700s. And he said, great, you'll have no problem qualifying for special rate financing

but may not qualify for other incentives. It's either one or the other. It's refreshing that they brought that out because sometimes they, I think, want you to assume you can get both, but you can't typically when it's a finance incentive, but it's either or.

He then asked what I do for a living, trying to qualify for me for rebates. C.J. then said he thinks they can make it work if there's a Chevy registered at the address where my son is staying. So if you're a Chevy owner, a General Motors car owner typically, then you qualify for a rebate. I said, yes, my brother-in-law just bought a Nekonox a few months ago. He asked, what year? I said, I believe, it's at 2023 or 22. He said, perfect. I'll be right back. So he returned a few minutes later with two worksheets and pointed out that one is with the incentivized rate and the other with the cash rebates.

He said, for the special financing, you'll lose a $500 rebate, but you make up for it in the interest. And again, refreshing that he would bring that to your attention, I would say this, that when you're doing this and you face a similar dilemma, rate or a finance or rebate, You need to look at how long you plan on keeping the car. So if you're going to trade the car in quickly, the rate incentive may not be as much as you get for the cash incentive. If you take the cash incentive, it's money in your pocket and you get it right away.

If it's a rate incentive, it has to earn out over the length of your financing. So if you finance the car for five years and you get a $1,000 rate incentive based on the low rate, you don't really get that if you only pay the car off in three years. So keep that in mind. Almost all manufacturers have that rate or rebate. The cash worksheets' top line was MSRP, $32,240. There was a $2,500 rebate, which bought the adjusted price to $30,704. Then he added, here we go, $2.99 for edge anti-theft, $1,195 for resist-all paint and fabric protection.

and a $464 dock fee, which by South Florida standards is chump change. I mean, South Florida, we're talking $4,000 junk fees, and $3,000 is common. Anyway, my real price in Monroeville was $32,698 of $542 discount from MSRP. So, we're back, we're back, folks, if you're in Monroeville anyway, $542 off of MSRP. It's so rare even today to buy a car for under MSRP, but it's happening. The other worksheet was identical except for the smaller rebate. He pointed out what they put up, he pointed out that they put a protection package on all the vehicles, but quickly added, it was optional.

So he's not beating you up there. That's a plus. Give a thumbs up to Monroeville, Chevrolet, for that. And you can decline it and save $20 a month, which you should do, by the way. Definitely. I said I'd probably pass it on the protection package, but we need some time to think about the deal.

I thanked him and said, I'll be in touch. And so there you have it. Pretty nice. There you have it. Mr. Schaubb of Bowser, Chevrolet, and Monroeville, Pennsylvania. I don't think Monroeville was small when I was there but it's probably not small anymore

so we need to vote on that, we grade on the curve if you've been listening to the show for a long time you know that we have dealers that we mystery shop that should be in jail we have dealers that we mystery shop that are really

clean we give Fs to the ones that should be in jail, we give A's to the the one that are really clean, and they're, needless to say, very few Fs and very few A's. In between is the curve, and so we go for A minuses and B's, and we go for D's instead of F's. But when you flunk somebody, you have to ask, should they be in the slammer? If you give them an A, ask if they are a saint, if they've been, you know, they're perfect. And as you know, there are no perfect dealers.

So we'd love to have your votes You can text them You can YouTube them And we have the phones turn off right now So I do want Amory did follow up on the on this Strange Terms on the website It was from our website

And she sent a picture It was a picture of the original options on a used vehicle And it included including the port options It was printed with codes on it that didn't make any sense Because that's the same thing on the window sticker, but there you go. So this is the original factory options. So why do we put that on there? Because we want

people to be able to see the original window sticker and see that, you know, originally how it came in from the factory, but there's things on a window sticker that are, there's lots of codes and things on there. So it's not always confusing. We're just fighting the system, that's the system. That's right. But anyway, back to the mystery shopping report. We got

grades coming in, and I have good feelings about it. The only thing that turned me turned me off a little bit was the package that they put on there the etch and the protection package the salesperson's good but it doesn't let us know if all the salespeople are good

you might have the guy at the desk next over saying we don't know what's going on but the salesperson was good and the experience was good and the pricing was good so I'm inclined to give them a B plus yeah that's a and that's a very good point sometimes we could damn a dealership

We give them a bad grade, and we laugh at them and call them names. And we're talking to one salesman, and maybe one manager. So there are rotten eggs in every barrel, or I guess there's rotten apples in every barrel. There's rotten eggs in every, what, egg crate? Anyway, you know what I'm trying to say. So we've got bad salespeople, and maybe not today, but we've had bad salespeople, and maybe today. And we've got about 30 or 40 salespeople. So for me to say, I know every salesperson is treating our customers the way we want them to be treated would not be true.

At all times, because sometimes salespeople are great most of the time and they're going to have a bad week or month or day. So they're humans. And so it's never, nothing can be consistent. So the message, so you can use this information is when you have a bad experience with a salesperson, it would be a good idea to try to talk to a manager or another. salesperson, you have the control if you haven't bought the car. And if you don't want to talk to a particular salesperson, ask for another salesperson or ask for a manager. And sometimes you just get a guy that's, you know, he's not treating you right. And there could be a lot of

reasons for that. Yeah. And so I got some grades coming out online. Jonathan Palm Coast, this has great MSRP selling no addendum, attentive service, makes this mystery shop a total bore. But I must give them the grade they deserve an A. And yeah, it's not as exciting as most of them. Bob gives a B for Bowser, and Frank says from what he had a hard time hearing because his radio is getting a lot of static. He said, if you heard, it's a good shopping report, gives him a B plus, just like me. And Anne-Marie says, Mr. Shopping Report, I give him a B, better than the average car dealer here. And that's true. On you, Rick?

Well, a couple quick comments here. Kim appreciates life, says she just copied and pasted the recent blog, How to Buy a New Car, excellent info. and she says, thanks for taking my first time call today. I'll be back for sure. I was nervous today, but I watched the live show almost every week. So thank you very much, Kim. Oh, thank you, Kim. And Negan 1 says the Monroeville Mall is where the 1970s movie, Dawn of the Dead, was filmed.

Get out of here, really? That's fantastic. Man, Negan, you the best. Okay, and Negan also gave him a grade of a bee. Mark Anderson, grade B. Straightforward salesman did not use any verbal gymnastics. I like that term. Joseph Kelleher, B. Would have been higher without the fees. Let's see. Over on this side, Johnny Z. Freedly.

Wowser. Bowser only had a $2.99 add-on, and the other was optional. It's a B for me. Tim Gilliland, not too bad, B-minus. Brian said Latko, I like the name of this dealership. I'll give them a B. Mark Ryan, B Plus, appreciate the highlighted optional on the protection package. Fibinocci says B Plus, not the shady stuff we're used to in Florida. I'm going right with that trend. I see a B plus.

Again, if they hadn't tacked in those fees, that would have been an A for me. I mean, it sounds like a very nice place to go, have a pleasant experience. And the Sharper had a good salesman. Yeah, and get the car. Maybe they got all good salesmen. I don't know. So, yeah, I agree. Yeah, if you're going to Bowser, Chevrolet, request C.J.

Yeah. And then that's the answer. We should do more of that. We used to do that. Yeah, because the salesperson is just about as important as a dealer. You can have an honest salesperson. He just needs a job. Yeah.

And he can work wonders for you, even at a crooked dealership. Well, I mean, not to say that we're crooked, well, I don't know. You might have been crooked, but when I was, we had back when we used to negotiate, we have a guy still with us, John, and he's been with us for 30 years. And even back when we negotiated, he was just, he kind of did his own thing. And he had his customers and he didn't have to get involved with the sales managers. And his customers were getting better deals than the people that had to deal with the sales people. So, you go ask for CJ up at Bowser Chevrolet in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. And tell him your name is Mario and your brother, Luis.

you will become a long shortly. You know, I really enjoyed this mystery shop and kind of made me feel just a little warm and fuzzy. I really liked CJ and I liked his honesty. And I wasn't crazy about the fees. But again, CJ was honest. So for that, they would have gotten an A-4. from me, but with the

fees, I give them a B plus. Yeah. I think it's the first time I ever had an identical score to Nancy. B plus. Why don't you make it interesting, just give them a B and it's the first time you ever had a lower score than Nancy. Wow. No, I think you've tied before.

Maybe, I don't know. Impossible to know. We've got a little time left. Do we have any more text? I actually, maybe here. Real quick, I had something from Negan. Yeah, let me just real quick. He sent a picture.

This reminds me of our old our old Pontiac in the showroom that we got up there. I'm going to send the picture to Negan's to John Nathan. We have no anonymous feedbacks. I forgot to give the URL out.

Yeah, I didn't have any new ones. Okay, so Negan sent a picture. He just inherited his father's his old car. It was his it's a 1963 Impala with the original winter sticker. Oh, cool.

It was $2,800 MSRP back in 1963. Was that before the Monroney Act? Yeah, 58 was a Monorne Act. Oh, so it was after the Monarch. Okay. So he has, anyway, he inherited this from his father. It's 22,000 original miles. And I don't know if Jonathan has it streaming yet,

but I send him the picture. And it looks like, remember, like we have an old 1937 Pontiac in the showroom. The window sticker was the invoice at the time, right? It wasn't a Monroney label. It was basically the price of the car. Yeah, we just took the invoice. Yeah.

So that's what this looks like. It's just an old yellow piece of paper. It looks like it was typewritten. Our dealer fee in 1937 was $6.50. Well, that could buy a lot back then. That's probably a $1,000 dealer fee today. Well, I'm saying. You could probably go to Disney World on $6 back then.

Did you see it get it on screen yet? All right, cool. So that's just kind of a cool thing, Negan. Thank you very much. Power glide transmission That big two speed Oof You already had power steering on it

Nice With two speed wipers Now that's a classic car in the Hip Hop community Well the 64 Impala 63 is the old style Is it? Yeah that's

Well there's an old They love the song by The old group NWA Cruising down the street In my 64 He's talking about 64 Impala All right. I can't use,

I can't recite any more of the lyrics because they're all, they're all inappropriate for that radio. Yeah. One of my first cars was a 71 Bel Air. Really? And I'll tell you, that was a huge beast of a car to drive on the road.

Let me talk about something that would be valuable to our listeners here. That's a good idea. The new JD Power survey has come out. And I talk about consumer reports over and over again. JD Power does some good stuff. One of them is there, is a reliability survey

and they talk about the problems that you have with your car, a two or a three-year-old car, and they rank cars by problems per 100 cars. And it's always interesting to see the average by the way over

a three-year period, the average number of problems is 190 complaints. The top cars are Lexus, Toyota, and Buick, is interesting. The bottom cars are, let's see here. Oh yeah, the bottom car is Chrysler and then Audi and the Land Rover. So if you Google JD Power Quality Survey, it's pretty good.

It also breaks it down by models within the make. So you can see the mid-sized car, the medium premium, mid-sized premium car and the problems during the first three years. Consumer reports tend to road test the car itself and their observations are based on their tester testing the car. JD Powers

is based on surveys with the people that actually own the car. So if you take the JD Power Survey and the Consumer Reports and put them together, you've got a really good guide for what you should buy and not buy. Yeah, you can't go wrong. You know, speaking of Consumer Report,

Just a heads up on Rivian, the owners of Rivian, the satisfaction score for them as to how many of them would go back and purchase the same vehicle? 86% of those buyers out of 100 would go back for the Rivian. Really? And number two, you're not going to believe this, the many. 77% 70% of owners would go back to buy statistically that's deceptive because these are

these are the first guy on the block I got to have the car kind of like when we bought the Tesla and in terms of quality and everything else the Tesla doesn't do all that well about the Cooper though I'm the same thing well Cooper's been out for a long time

mini Cooper forever yeah years. Yeah, so that sounds like real retention. But who's going to buy them any Cooper? It's a little bitty car. Seventy-seven percent of the people bought them will buy it again. But hardly anybody buys them. So there's ten

people that buy them and seven people keep buying the car over again. A very small population. I find this interesting. The Subaru. Everyone loves the Subaru. Everyone. And only 70 percent. Subaru has a very small market share too.

Only 70 percent. Not compared to to purchase that vehicle. Ladies and gentlemen, we sure did have a good time here today. I hope that all of you enjoyed yourselves and that you'll have a great weekend. All kinds of stuff going on. This is the Year of the Dragon if you didn't know that. And I want to wish everyone a happy Valentine's Day

and enjoy that. Super Bowl, ladies and gentlemen, it's going to be a doozy. We'll be right back here next week, same time, 8 a.m.