Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.12.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Napleton Chrysler Dodge Jeep of Clermont

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits another Napleton dealer location in Clermont to see how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2022 Jeep Gladiator Overland. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. We're back alive right here in the studio. We're in North Palm Beach, Florida. We're broadcasting all over the planet. We're coming to you via Facebook. and YouTube and Twitter and old-fashioned radio. Yeah, podcasts. Yeah. I keep forgetting about the podcast.

And I think a lot of people are getting their information on podcasts now. You can, they've got so many sources. So, well, all of our shows are podcasts. We have a website. It's just about all the detail at earl and cars.com. So, well, we're, if you're an old guy or an old gal, you'd understand we're an encyclopedia of information.

They don't have encyclopedias anymore. They have Google, so we're kind of like the automotive, how not to get ripped off by a car dealer, Google, for you. So you can get to us by these various sources. But the fun part is what we do live on radio. And I don't know how many have been lucky enough to be live on the airs they say, whether it's television or radio. It's exciting.

You don't know who's listening or watching. And it's kind of a, you know, they talk about stage fright and, I mean, it's an adrenaline rush. We love it. I mean, it's like a party here in the studio. And we've got Rick Kearney and Stu Stewart, Nancy Stewart, and myself with Jonathan

and the controls and the digital guy that's kind of keeping all the streaming. going correctly. And it's like at two hours, it goes so fast. I remember we start out at a half an hour and that was at shore, mainly because there was nobody listening. And that's not a lot of fun. Now we have thousands of thousands of people all over the world. And it's a lot of fun. And your calls are, of course, what make this interesting. And to us, we learn something new every day from you. I say every day, every Saturday. We'd love to hear your comments, your criticisms, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

We have an anonymous feedback line. Jump on that. A lot of people really like that. Not because, I don't know, not because you're saying something you don't want other people to know you said it. It's just a privacy thing. I get it. And I respect that. So you're anonymous Feedback.com.

Why, O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S, you're anonymous. Feedback.com. Great way to shoot a message out to us, and as I say, don't pull any punches. The only thing we'll do is censor a little bit. If you like to use four-letter words, we'll have to do a beep instead, but I'm only kidding. We don't get much of that. We usually get actually some very informative, interesting things on the amount of feedback. And if you like the conventional mode of communication, I love texting. I love texting because it doesn't invade my privacy that much I can read the text and respond to the text at my leisure

and so we have a text number and that's area code 772 4976530 what do you have on your mind? I mean if you're out shopping for a new or used car today I bet you got some stuff on your mind if you stay on top of the news you see what's going on with car prices new and used you got something on your mind so let's hear it. Love to hear your experiences. You know, you know, with car shopping. What happened? Telephone car shopping. However you did, online. Let's hear your story. And there's thousands

and thousands of people out there that would love to hear your story. So, text number of 772-4976530. I give that to you again. I know this is monotonous to our regular listeners, but we've got a lot of new folks come on every day. 772 49760 Now the favorite that we have

and this is because the personality comes through you hear the accents you hear the dialects you hear the you know the passion and people's voices real real voices and that's on our audio and that's what our real old-fashioned

I call telephone area code 877 960 9960 that's area code 877 960

9960 9960 we've only got about 4 or 5 lines and we don't like to have you wait so Nancy Stewart my co-host here and she's sitting on my left here in the studio she's got a computer screen

and when you call Pam your name comes up and we get to you AP. We try to prioritize you when you call in. So we won't, we won't keep you waiting and at least we're going to try not to. Sometimes we get overwhelmed. We drop the ball. I apologize in advance. Now, I have a special announcement to make because I always talk about Rick Kearney. Rick Kearney is our certified diagnostic master technician and he's been with our organization. We're car dealers. He's been with our car dealers. He's been with our car dealers

for 25 years, Rick? Actually, he's just the best of the best. He's just the best of the best. There's nobody that knows more about repairing cars from Rick. And he just got an award that just absolutely blew me away. Toyota gave him an award for his expertise and knowledge about repairing vehicles. And of course, today's vehicle is a very, very complicated thing. And they're so complicated that there's a lot of problems out there.

And a lot of times people don't know how to fix cars. Dealerships don't fix cars. They bring in people from the factory. Sometimes they don't know how to fix cars. The complication of the computerized vehicle is a challenge to the best of the best. Now, Rick received an award. He was number four out of all the dealerships in the Southeast United States. Now that's Georgia, Alabama, Florida, what I've been?

North and South Carolina. Northern South Carolina. And there's thousands, how many thousands of technicians participate? 4,300 techs. 4,300. Mr. Kearney here was number four. That is incredible. Top one percent.

He's a one-percenter. So that's impressive. And so if you have a question about a car, there's proof of the pudding that Rick Kearney is the man to call. And you can call them at any of these numbers. Rick also monitors our YouTube. So if you like YouTube, Rick will see your question or your comment right away.

But Rick Kearney, the best of the best, I mean I can't, I mean, that's a lot of competition. 4,300 ticks. And what is that? 100% or 1 tenth of one? I mean, you were in the 99.99% percentile. You can't get the calculator. You can't get much better than that.

Ask me to do math. At any rate, Call Rick, if you have any comments, congratulations, YouTube comments or Facebook or anything else, because you can just call 8779-9-60-772 is our text number 772-497-2-497-2-4-97-6-5-0. And if you have a problem with your car, I don't care what kind of car you drive, if you have a problem and you don't know whether you should go to the dealership or an independent mechanic, or maybe try to fix it yourself, or maybe just ignore it. A lot of questions people have. These cars are expensive.

You don't want to have a break on you on the turnpike. So give us a call. Rick can diagnose oftentimes right here on the air. And if not, you can contact him later and you can give you some more specific. So I love to hear from him. Stu Stewart, Segura across the table from me here. He's in charge of our Mr. Shopping Report. He's the hands-on guy, gentleman, general manager of our dealership, and, you know, he sees what's going on day by day, hour by hour of the auto industry.

And I'm more strategic, he's more tactical, and he can give you the, the, what happened today, what happened yesterday, what happened last week. And let me tell you, there's nothing changing faster than retail automobile. I mean, everything. It's going crazy, the whole, the whole industry. Remember, we're going from combustion engines to electric to autonomous. We're in the middle of an unprecedented shortage of parts, microchips. Prices are going so high, it's scary. People can't afford to buy cars. The dealers are leaning on you, charging you thousands of dollars over sticker.

If you have a question about the day-to-day events called Sue Stewart. And on my left is Nancy Stewart, and she's my co-host, and she's our female advocate she's been with the radio show she founded it with me 20 years ago when we were a half an hour show on a little radio station called Sea View they're no longer in business

but we're in the same studio and now we're on for two hours instead of half an hour so she's been with me the whole time the whole ride and she's a very very strong advocate for you female buyers out there she's got a special offer for you If you haven't called the show before, and you've been listening, or if you haven't been listening, and if you're listening now, listen to a special offer, and this is no strings attached.

This is not one of these. You say there's no such thing as a free lunch. Nancy's going to tell you about a free lunch. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars. If you just tuned in, boy, we've got a fantastic show ahead. And a lot of information. We depend on you. and we enjoy your company and we enjoy your calls, your texts, YouTube, all of it.

So take advantage of all those options that you can, you know, get to us and communicate with us how your week went, whether it was purchasing a car, leasing a car, servicing a car, and especially for the first two female callers, you can win yourself $50 this morning. First two female callers, you can win yourself $50. So take advantage of that. Simply call and say hello or share your experience with maybe your auto insurance. Everything's on the rise due to inflation. So auto insurance, whether you're leasing, whether you can afford to purchase a vehicle.

What your decision was in purchasing a vehicle? Was it the cost of the car? or what it would cost to keep it on the road. 877-960-9960, where you can text us at 772-497-6530. And you can also, sorry, I got distracted there for a second. You can also take advantage of Your Anonymous Feedback, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. So take advantage of all those avenues and stay with us for the next two hours and enjoy all of this free advice.

You know, I have to take a moment. Earl opened the show and he mentioned Rick and I have to say congratulations to Rick. And I can't imagine the amount of stress that it took not only on the last, you know, end of it all, but the whole journey. And what a talent, what knowledge, what excellence. And we have Rick right here, and we're certainly thankful for that. So I wanted to mention that again, and it's sort of a segue for me, to mention the recovering car dealer who was quoted in the Wall Street Journal this past week. It was, I believe, on Wednesday.

And it had to do with Ford GM and the warning to do. dealers about pricing and you know it excited me and I thought maybe all of you would be interested and it would sort of open up the lines the phone lines and you'd give us a call and let us know how you feel I'll give you just an idea of what is in the article and it talks about dealerships that can lose future inventory for selling cars above suggested retail prices and this is a quote from Jim Farley and you know it doesn't mean

that everyone's going to have a come to Jesus moment but it's a beginning as I spoke with Earl about the article and it's a light at the end of the tunnel and he is definitely warning these car dealers

and he says quote unquote I know who you are and as recent with it almost three years now All of you know what's happened with new cars, used cars, the inventory situation, the microchip situation, all the reasons for your, well, problems that we have. Anyway, I'm going to let Earl take over and talk about the article where he was quoted. Yeah, it's just a word got out that our dealership draws the line as MSRP. Matter of fact, the top guy for Toyota in North America, Bob Carter, actually said the other day that he was asking all the dealers to draw the line at MSRP.

Well, all they could do is ask, they can't make it, so car dealers are independent businessman. Unfortunately, most every dealer, and we've been doing mystery shopping during this whole pandemic, most every dealer, and we've been doing mystery shopping during this whole pandemic, most every dealer, make most every dealer is charging thousands of dollars over manufacturer's suggested to retail price. So basically they called me, a reporter, asked what we were doing. I said, we just thought that we got to draw the line somewhere. You have to have some morals and ethics when you sell cars, and people are going to have a problem when they buy a car $3,000 over a sticker because they're going to be buried

in that car. You've heard the term upside down when you pay way, way too much for a vehicle. and you finance it, you can't afford to trade it in on another car. So in a lot of ways, the dealers that are doing this are hurting themselves as well as their customers. But we'll see how that pans out. How about, Stu, how we do it on text over there? We got anything coming in? We have Ann Marie's kickoff test, text waiting to be read, and a couple of anonymous feedbacks.

Let's go with Ann Marys. Amery says, good morning. Years ago, the guys in Car Talk were asked, was there a safe speed at which to hit a deer? Okay, this is going to be a great question. Say that again. I'm sorry. Years ago, the guys on car talk, that old car radio, she says, or asked,

was there a safe speed at which to hit a deer? The reply was along these lines, don't. Bambi has a high center of gravity. It can crash through your windshield. Here in urban South Florida, we don't have to worry about deer or moose versus cars the way people have to do up north. Instead, our critter versus car threat comes from our latest inviast. of species, the iguana.

I've seen them zipping across them the West Palm Beach busiest roads as if they were playing chicken with South Florida traffic. I have two, right here in North Palm Beach. This prompts the following questions. One, have any vehicles come into your dealership that have been damaged by an encounter with

an iguana? And two, so what kind of damage was it? How bad was it? In your experience, what animal causes the most damage to cars, I guess around here? I have never heard of a damaged from the iguana damaging the car

but I can imagine somebody swerved and maybe got into an accident I can see several scenarios you know hit in the tire

slip or something like that yeah but to start at the back end first the most damage the biggest damage causing in a creature

are rats yeah they chew on the wires cost a lot of money yeah that's not what she's talking about though but the other one that I would see here

actually though is what we've experienced in the past week and a half to two weeks is when we get our temperature drops and these iguanas now bear in mind some of these animals are five and six feet long and they weigh 20 and 30 pounds yeah and when it gets cold enough they become torpid and they sleep up in trees high branches there are actually videos on the internet the people have caught where these they fall onto the car and you hear this loud thunk as they hit the ground imagine

that hitting the roof of your car on a sunroof, even a bare metal roof, it's going to cause some damage. This would be a question for Alan, if he's had any dense in the roof of the car in the shape of an iguana. That here is a question I'd be looking for. Thanks, Edmarie. That was interesting.

So unfortunately, the answer for the most damage is pretty boring. It's bird droppings, rat chewing cables, and love bug damage on your paint. So that's up here, but you've got to go north for more exciting animal damage, I think. I want to ask Tom and Ray, but they're not around anymore. That's car talk. That's the brothers. Anyway, Stu.

Okay. Let's get a little bit more, a little serious question. It says, Rick, this is anonymous feedback. Rick, I have a dim battery light indicator light that's on. What does this mean? It most likely means that your alternator is starting to give out. Okay. I would have that alternator tested, and I would also take a very good look at the drive belt for it. Okay, that's great. I thought that was maybe just they had a insufficiently bright battery light. light, but a dim light indicates something else? Yeah, generally the battery light only comes on when the voltage level of the alternator starts to drop below a certain level. And it could be, you know, you may have an issue also in a combination meter that's shorting and causing that light to come on a little bit.

But the first thing I would be testing is the alternator, because obviously if that is going bad, that's a shutdown issue. That'll kill your car where you're at and leave you stuck on the side of the road. Well, thanks, great. Rick, that's a great answer, and I've never had that question before either. See? That's what we keep talking about, these little things that our listeners are uncovering and helping other listeners learn and helping us learn as well. Great points to 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6-530.

Don't forget about YouTube. Back to Stu. Okay, another anonymous feedback. It says, are dealers with low-quality brands like Fiat, Mitsubishi, and Nissan, now selling all their cars just like their highly higher quality competitors like Toyota Honda and Hyundai like are they still

selling their cars at a at a premium sure yes everybody is doing it it's supply of demand and I talk to people in the business and you know there's no law against selling any products you have

there's a price gauging issue that comes up which has to do with vital gasoline during a hurricane, you know, duct tape and plywood during hurricanes, you know, things that are emergency requirements, you can get in trouble with that, and there's laws on most of the state books. I think there's no federal laws, but they can pretty much control people that try to charge an arm and a leg for a substance that's required for safety or health.

there's an argument to me made that you need a car could be a vital part of a person's life and I agree with that. But there are no laws on cars and you can charge a million dollars for a car that has an MSRP of 10,000. I mean, it's just, there's no law. And what happens?

This is capitalism. The dealers charge as much as they can get away with and right now it's thousands of dollars over a sticker. Right. And there is always consequences to actions and like we all mentioned earlier, you know, if you have a short-sighted view of business, you are very likely to jump in and go crazy with everybody else. We've got a little bit longer view of business, the long view.

Well, there's also the argument that people have short memories. They're gambling on that. Yeah, and there's also the fact that here's what's happened. First of all, the automobile retail business has been just a bad business for a long time. before the pandemic. Car dealers took advantage of people even before the pandemic. We know that. And if you look at the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions, car dealers are either dead last or next to last every year for over 50 years. So here's what's happening. And it's kind of an interesting phenomenon. A person goes out to buy a car. They go to Charlie Smith

Buick and they buy a car. Charlie Smith Buick takes advantage of them. And they really, really, really, anger them. So what do they do? When they buy their next Buick, maybe they love Buick's. They probably know, people are Buick families. And they go to the other guy. So they go to another Buick dealer. Well, if that dealer also takes advantage of them, four years later they'll go to another Buick dealer.

See, they blame it on the dealership, and the fact is all the dealerships are the same way. So it's very interesting. The loyalty of people buying cars from one dealership is very low. The loyalty to buying and make a car, if you decide you like Chevroletes and you never bought anything but a Chevrolet in your life, then you're very loyal to General Motors and Chevrolet. But the fact that you had to go to five or six different Chevrolet dealers and you still haven't had a pleasant car buying experience. So this is happening a little bit with a price gouging

and you're paying three or four or five or $50,000 crazy money over sticker. When it happens to you, Do you penalize the manufacturer? Probably not. You go to another dealer, and then you hope and keep your fingers crossed. Interesting statistic here. This is in the Washington Post. In January 2021, a year ago, nearly 100% of cars were sold under MSRP. In January 2022, it was 17% of all cars sold in the United States were sold under MSRP.

82% were sold over MSRP. that's how widespread is I read another article that I can't remember where I saw that I was trying to find it it was talking about all these clever little add-ons that restaurants and other businesses are doing to cope with the increased costs from the supply chain issues

including little service fees and things like that and it was interesting because they look like dealer fees and there was a manager of a restaurant interview he says well if the customer asks about it we'll take it off without any questions asked and then they went over to the car dealers and they mentioned now that the car

dealers have come up with things like market adjustments to deal with the increased cost. I'm thinking, no, they didn't just come up with this. They've been doing that for decades. And they're not doing it to cope with increased costs. They're doing it because there's a phenomenon occurring, and they're getting in when they getting's good. That's what's happening. You know, one thing that we haven't talked about on the show that we should have,

that I just got reminded of this actually from an attorney for the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. And we were talking about this subject about price. And he said, you know, the biggest harm from this that people are talking about is gap insurance. And when you buy a car and you pay $5,000, $10,000 over a sticker, well, this isn't going to last. We know I've been wrong in forecasting when they were going to come down. The price is actually coming down a little bit now. But let's say you buy a car today and you pay $5,000 over MSRP.

And you keep the car for five years. Well, five years, I can pretty well assure you. are going to be back to below MSRP, probably way below, and that's just the way economic cycles go. Now, you're going to be out of the market if you have a wreck your car and your insurance company is going to look at the market value. The market value is going to have dropped and you're not going to be able to replace that car for anywhere near what you paid for it. So you're upside down and the gap insurance is a threat to you. to you. So there's a lot of hidden threats that we are, the retail buyer of cars is encountering that he's not going to get the full impact of until the prices come back down again. A lot of

people are going to be driving the car a lot longer than they want to. More text. Okay. Let's go on to the next anonymous feedback. It says, I've noticed that you've never had a mystery shop for any Genesis dealers. Is there one in your area that you can shop? And technically we have. Most of the Genesis dealers exist within a Hyundai dealership. So the closest Genesis dealer to us is Napleton's Hyundai, which we have missed to shop many times. But we've never gone there to shop a Genesis. And we've had other calls looking for shops of luxury dealers.

And we agree that we should do those, not often, but every once in a while. And that sounds like a pretty good idea. There's a Genesis dealer up in Stewart, the town about 45 minutes north of us and that's part of the Wallace Water Group so I'm assuming it's in the Hyundai Showroom or a part of it but we'll do a little research and we'll do it we'll do a Genesis shot. Yeah I think

it's a good idea there's not that many Genesis on the road but I understand it's a pretty good car it's a luxury car is a far lower price in which you have to pay for a brand electric car like Lexus so something to consider. Actually I don't think they're electric the Genesis are just luxury

they don't think there's an electric genesis yet. No, I said, Alexis. See, it's the mask. Yes. For sure. All right. Ladies and gentlemen, excuse me, so, 877-9-60-9-60, give us a call. We have a whole lot to talk to, a lot to get to, and we're looking forward to speaking to you. 877-9-60-9-60.

Now back to Sue. Well, that caught us up, the last anonymous feedback, so we're caught up the text and non-s feedback. So please send them in. We're waiting for you. Rick, do you have any questions on YouTube? We've got one quick one here from Negan 1. He says, in regard to car prices and the issues people are going to have, what about the major depreciation hit after a couple of years?

Bad stuff. Yeah, I mean, the distance down is going to be even farther. So you buy a car for $4,000 over MSRP. Things start settling down in three years. You go to market normalizes. Your car is going to be priced normally. You're going to have a much larger percentage. drop in a depreciation during ownership.

Absolutely. That moment can get here quick enough. So, and the question is, how long is this going to last? I don't want to give anything away in the mystery shopping report, but there's rumors floating around. It could be three years. We don't know. Everybody has a different prediction for sure.

Yeah. I would trust Earle's as a source more than a salesperson. I have to wear my, you're pointing your finger at me, Nancy. At Napleton. Again. We're going to go to Marty. Earl's going to get back to what he was getting ready to talk about. And Marty is a regular caller from West Palm Beach.

Good morning, Marty. Good morning. I got two questions. First question for, I guess, Earl, would be if you're missing up, if a car's under warranty and you're missing a part because you can't get it or you've got to wait two months for it, but the car won't run. Do you give the person another car to drive, or is he just out of luck? I think that's pretty S-O-P, Marty, and I think sometimes you have to push for it,

but if you have a car that won't run and they can't fix it under new car warranty, I would think that almost every dealer would either get you a rental car, give you one of their cars to drive, and you can't have anybody. If they don't, then you have to push for it. Sometimes you might have to ask. Rental cars are very expensive now, as you well know. And so if it's an expense, it should be passed along to the manufacturer. The dealer shouldn't even have to pocket that expense.

So if they give you a hard time on that. We've seen people in rental cars for months and months. I mean, the first thing that comes in mind is the Ticata, which wasn't a warranty thing, but that was a recall issue that we couldn't get parts. Yeah, safety issue, yeah, yeah. Answer your question, Marty? Yeah, they answered that one. Now I got another thing.

I just wanted to tell you, I test drove a Genesis from Napleton there on North Lake, and the car drove terrible. Really? So when I pulled it back in, I said to the salesman, I said, yeah, this car is a piece of junk. I'm surprised. I said, this car, he said, well, we didn't have time to set it up and test it. I said, well, you shouldn't give a prospective customer a car. that doesn't run one.

And I said, I would never buy one of these, and I said, I said, it's not a good business practice. But Napleton, from my experience in there, is a very tough dealership.

But I know people that have bought Hyundai's from them, but they say they're all right, but I would stay out of there. You know, that's funny, I know a guy that's a, he's a,

has a chauffeur service or a driving service, and he bought a Genesis and he loves it and it's so I guess it's a I check consumer reports for evaluation we could probably Google that but I from by here it says it's a pretty good deal it's a you can save yourself a few thousand dollars off what a equivalent Lexus would cost I didn't say electric car but Lexus would cost and but if you had a bad experience so test drive anything for you by it. You just don't want to ever sign on the dotted line until you've

driven the car extensively. Yeah, years ago, when I was buying my kids a car, we test drove a Ford tempo, I don't know how many years ago it was, and when we pulled back into the dealership, the steering wheel came off. So, I, luckily we were going slow, and, you know, I just came to a stop. So the salesman in that place said, oh, yeah, we could fix that. I said, well, you know what? I said, keep that car. I said, because I really don't want my kids driving a car with the steering wheel can pop off. Marty, I can relate to that.

The exact same thing happened to me. And that's, it's quite a rush. Yeah. Well, that's why ever since, I'd say 2000, I've been only buying, Toyotas or Hondas? Well, you see, no trouble. Japanese cars, you know, let's face it, you look at any comparison and Japanese build good cars.

But a lot of people, it used to be they had a big quality lead. Now there's a lot of domestic cars in Korean, other cars around the world. Quality of cars have come up so high. I mean, even the bad car today would have been a good car 40 years ago. I mean, quality's come way up. If quality didn't come up, you'd be out of business today. So everything's well, even, there's still that relative difference between cars and consumer reports is our Bible.

We check on it all the time. If Nancy and I are going to buy a toaster or TV set, we always go through consumer reports and they're probably more thorough on cars than any other product. Yeah, well, look at they get rid of Panics, they get rid of automobiles. You know, and those cars were around for a lot of years. I got rid of Pontiac, too. I was a Pontiac dealer one time, so I know what you mean. As a matter of fact, when I bought the Toyota dealership in 1975,

I was so depressed because car dealers make a lot of money on warranty repairs, and the Pontiac dealership, we made as much money on warranty repairs as we did on what we call customer labor. In other words, when your car's out of warranty, you have to get it fixed, you have to come in, but you pay for it. And typically, that's where today dealers make all their money in the service department. Back then, you made as much money as a warranties. I bought the Toyota dealership, and after a few months, I'm looking at my financials, and nobody's coming in for warranty work. I said, this is terrible.

You sell these cars, and they never bring them back in for any repairs. How am I going to make a living? And now it's, they had to catch up. That happens for the Japanese, and the Koreans really, they came in, set a quality standard, and then General Motors and Ford, Chrysler, had to catch up, and the American retail buying public is better for it. Yeah, no, I don't know if you were ever familiar with Dorchell, Rick Dorchell in Rochester, New York. He had a Toyota and Buick dealership in one building.

No, I didn't know that. And he told me, now he sold it, I guess, to somebody else by now. But he's told me, he said, I've got the same amount of mechanics. Because I always was saying that Toyota was better than the Buick. And he said to me, I've got the same amount of mechanics for both. He said, we get, you know, repairs in both. I said, well, I can only tell you personally, I've had very little. problems with the Toyota.

Oh, good. Good to hear. Marty, thanks very much for the call. All right. Have a good day, everybody. You too. You too, Marty. 877-960. Ladies, give us a call. $50 for the first two new lady callers. And might I remind you that our mystery shopper

is a female? And added to that list is Elise Roberts, and she She is the producer that runs the control room. So get on board. Help us out. Let's build this platform for ladies. Your questions, your opinion, everything counts.

877-960-99-60. We're going to go to Henry, who's been holding from Jupiter. Good morning, Henry. Good morning. How's everybody? Great. listen real quick just to follow up on napleton uh not a not a fan of napleton at all and uh i went in there to look at a genesis and i was uh talking to the salesman he informed me they had a nine thousand

dollar premium on the genesis uh due to the inventory shortage wow that's like an average addenda yeah so uh and one other thing to i just ask earl i drop something off at your receptionist office or your receptionist desk during Christmas for the Big Dog Rescue. Has anybody mentioned anything to you about somebody coming in and leaving something for you about Big Dog Rescue? Yeah, yeah, absolutely still. Yeah, I gave it to, we got it over to Earl and Big Dog Ranch Rescue. So Earl is during COVID has been working remotely, mostly. So I have to deliver all gifts and packages to them, usually this morning.

right well uh you know listen i really appreciate what you guys do and i'm a fan of the four-legged friends so uh i like to do it anonymously and uh i just bring it in once a year so appreciate it yeah thanks i'm glad you brought the subject of it gives us an excuse to talk about big dog ranch rescue we've got uh if you're if you're not familiar with it uh they're probably the one of the leading no-kill shelters in the country, certainly in Florida. And Lori Simmons is the founder and the chief executive officer, Big Dog Ranch Rescue. They're out in Laxahatchie. And a huge, huge, beautiful facility.

They save hundreds of dogs every month. And as I say, if we get a dog in, and often we take them in from the kill shelters, we get them from Miami, we live from out of state. believe it or not, we get it from China, get it from Puerto Rico, dogs come pouring in because there's a huge overpopulation problem. People don't take care of their pests and their strays and these dogs are brought in to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. If you find a dog, if you know a dog that needs a home, Big Dog Ranch Rescue will be able to find a home for them. And we, as I say, we're big supporters for that. If you have a time to drive,

drive out to Okeechobee Boulevard out west-west, way west to Laxahatchie, and you can take a tour out there and see how the dogs are cured for this. There's a clinic with veterinarians. We have actually an isolation area when we bring dogs in from out of the country or out of the state. They are kept under isolation and observed and tested. They get all their shots. If they're ill, we take care of them.

We have a maternity ward at Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And the maternity ward, actually, pregnant dogs come in, they have their own local room, and when they give birth to the puppies, we take the puppies, we find homes for the puppies, and then we find, and we spay the mother, and then we find home for the mother. So it's an amazing place, and if you love animals and you want to do something, contribute to Big Dog Ranch Rescue, that's... website is B-D-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-RG and make a contribution

and let us know if there's anything we can do to help you and if you have a dog that needs to find a home, bring them out to big dog ranch rescue. We turn no doggies away. I was waiting for that. It gets better. week, by the way. What's amazing, ladies and gentlemen, is what a beautiful place it is,

and Earl certainly did describe it perfectly, and at this time of year, it's cool out, and it's a perfect place to go to take your kids, and literally it's a spa out there, and they have a pool for the dogs. It's just,

it's got everything, but you can't imagine unless you go out and just take a look around, and at the same time, you may adopt a dog and you know the ability that Laurie Simmons

has and Big Dog Branch is to go out when there is a hurricane a flood and they go to all these

different places you know everywhere they go to Jamaica they've gone to China and it's just

an incredible place and I can't end this unless I say buy Earl's book by Earl's

book. Not only is it a great investment, but you are helping out Big Dog Ranch because all proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch and that book, you put it on a bookshelf and you could just go to that. It's just, it's like

owning the Encyclopedia Britannica it's just got so much information in it and it will serve you well and your children. So take advantage. Confessions of a recovering card dealer is the name of the book and you can buy on an Amazon on confessions of a recovering cardio.

Absolutely. Okay. I just heard something really, really cool. Last year, Los Angeles became the largest no-kill city in the country. No shelter in Los Angeles is allowed to kill for space. They have a 90% save rate. The only animals are euthanites are for health reasons. Wow.

Isn't that great? Wonderful. Wonderful. You hear that? Well, you need to communicate and barking. That means get to Cat Los Angeles, right? right now. You know, we're lobbying, and actually, Lori Simmons is lobbying right now in Tallahassee.

We're always trying to get this type of law in Florida. And, you know, it's just a shame. I mean, it's almost barbaric to think about it. Across the country, like, only 70-something percent of dogs make it out of shelters alive. In L.A. before they did that, only 56 were making it out of life. I wish they all could be California. That's interesting information, too. But then again, I have to ask you,

did that have anything at all to do with the Super Bowl? I don't know. I have no idea. I hope not. That's a little joke. Okay, folks, 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And gosh, almighty, we do have a great

mystery shopping report coming up from no other than Napleton Chrysler, Jeep Dodge, Ram of Claremont. Claremont. So now we're going to go to Rick, who's been holding, and he's got some U-Tubes to share it with you. Well, we've got one here from our buddy Donovan. Oh, hi, Donovan.

Donovan is very knowledgeable about Tesla's, it seems. He says, last week you had a caller about an EV in a hybrid car. Earl gave some really good information, but did make one minor mistake. He talked about a trip from Jupiter to Hendersonville, North Carolina, and said, you're really going to have to stop for it to take 8 to 10 hours to charge the EV. He says it really doesn't take that long to charge when on a road trip. To do that exact trip, Earl mentioned it would required just three supercharger stops in his Tesla for just 68 minutes of total charging. He would have to stop in St. Augustine for 26 minutes, Savannah, Georgia for 14 minutes,

and Orangeburg, North Carolina for 28 minutes total. How do you be able to make that trip? The neat thing with the Tesla is, like, Donovan didn't have to calculate that. It works with the navigation, so anytime you take a trip, you include supercharges, and it tells you exactly when you have to stop for how long. it does add like I plotted it out I considered taking up to New York to move my son in

and it would have added a couple hours I think a few hours to the trip as much longer distance than South Carolina but the point is it is still pretty neat that it plans it out it requires a little bit more thinking and strategizing but you can do it it's just not as convenient at this time as a gas car

but even though a 15 to 20 minute break is nice it's good for you. It's something you need to do to get out and walk around and get to blood flowing again. Absolutely. Very advisable, most definitely. All right, thanks, Donovan. We have some anonymous feedback.

I think this is I skipped from last week. I'm playing catch-up. It says, and this is to Earl, it says, with regard to your video on excessive dealer markup, the bottom line is, if a customer is willing to pay more than MSRP for a vehicle, why should a car dealer sell for MSRP or less? In any negotiation, it takes agreement from both parties.

no one can force a car buyer to pay car dealer market adjustments, just as no one can force a car dealer to sell for less than MSRP, the way to stop this car dealer madness is for car buyers to collectively refuse to pay the adjustments, which is another way of saying it will never stop the madness. Well, you know, that's a very intelligent comment and anonymous feedback. I don't disagree with it. I have mixed emotions with what's happening. If you have, if you're in America and you're a capitalist and you're a businessman and you have a product,

you sell that product based on supply and demand. That's a basic 101 rule of economics. So you have to ask yourself, I think, as a businessman, are you in business for a long? run or for the short run or the medium run or whatever it is meaning there's a lot of competition out there among car dealers so if I'm a Chevrolet dealer and I am selling my Chevroletes at an average of $5,000 over sticker price and they may be I mean when you factor in the Corvette God knows how much over sticker they're getting for Corvettes so let's say you're selling $5,000 plus MSRP on your Chevrolet's now you got a competitor down the road

that's selling him at MSRP. You're making a whole lot more money than he is, but the customer that bought from him, who bought the car for $5,000 less, he's going to tell his friends and neighbors and family about it. I might even tell the press about it. Wall Street Journal article that actually referred to earlier in the show.

A lot of people are talking now about taking advantage. So, it's legal to charge as much as you want over MSRP, arguably, the ethics are arguable. I take an ethical approach to it, but I might be wrong. I believe in capitalism and free enterprise and supply and demand. So if time will tell, five years from now, when we have more cars to sell than we know what to do with, and that's the way it always is. I've been doing this for over 50 years.

The manufacturers love to build cars. Once we've got plenty of microchips and all the other parts we need, the manufacturers are going to be out there cranking the cars out as fast as they can. And they will be, in the term we call we dealers when we get together a talk, they will shove those cars down our throats. And they will threaten you and intimidate you and tell you you need to take more cars, more cars. And that's what happens when the prices precipitously drop. So, this situation of selling cars at very, very high prices is short-term.

And what's going to happen? Will the dealers that treated the customers right be remembered a year from now? Maybe not. Maybe they will. We're betting that they will be, that they will remember. But that's a good post. I can't look any dealer in the eye and say, you're a thief. thief because you're charging $5,000 over sticker.

The worst thing I would say to one is, in my opinion, you're a bad businessman because you are hurting your long-term prospects for six days. That's my opinion. And maybe I'm wrong. All right. Okay. We're going to go back to the phones.

And then we're going to, I believe that Rick, you told me you had a YouTube. Okay. We're going to go to Frank. He's been holding for a while, and he's calling us from Jupiter Farms. Frank's a regular caller. Good morning, Frank. And hang on, Larry. Good morning, Frank.

Good morning, too all. Yes, yes, ma'am. Well, as you said, things happen each week. And this last week, my girlfriend, Amory, has a Lexus RX-28, or RFC50 in 2008. And if she was coming home, she heard some noise in the brakes. And so I'm listening and driving. and there is some noise.

And I said, well, it seems like it needed adjustment. We'll see if Rick remembers or if this is still about it today. In the old days, we just back the car up and applied the brakes a little harder for self-adjusting. I didn't know if that was going to happen still to her car. And actually, it seems to work a little bit. But there was a lot of black brake dust on the right rear meal. And as it turns out, it appears that it was a rotor that went,

and then new rotors, new calipers, new brakes, and everything else. So, but does that self-adjusting still work on cars because people don't really back up very much in? Well, self-adjusting, disc brakes are inherently self-adjusting and by their design. They automatically adjust. What you're speaking of is drum brakes, which is the older technology.

And, yeah, technically, when you would put the car in reverse, every time you would step on the brake then go forwards and then backwards and step on the brake it would adjust up just a little bit if the system were working with perfection and that worked pretty well but not as well as they expected so yeah every once in a while you would have to adjust

those rear brakes on the drum but drum brakes have gone away now and I think the only vehicle left that Toyota makes with a drum brake is the Tacoma pickup everything else has disc brakes all the way around so when you say drum brakes have gone away you don't need it on all cars no there's there's still a few out there yeah but even so

adjusting them really isn't even all that big an issue it's not like it's even really needed very often because they they do adjust themselves up a little bit as you're driving but disc brakes if you've got a noise yeah you want to have that checked by a mechanic because that small noise can very quickly become a big expense as it starts to cut into the rotors if there's a problem with the pad or something and it starts to damage that the brake rotor if it's only got just a couple little marks that can sometimes be ground out with a resurfacing machine but once they get big that rotor's got to be replaced okay well that's good news now they mentioned my drum

brakes it all comes back this goes back many many years um i have a few more quick little points Thank you for about the breaks. Many years ago, maybe five years ago, I test drove a genesis up in Orlando. Oh my goodness. I know what that guy says. I came back in the test drive. Things were actually fallen to fall for the car

and inside the car after a 10-minute test ride. And they said, well, we'll take care of before you buy it. And I said, maybe we'll walk away. But on the earlier part of this show, when you're talking about what speed to hit a deer, it made me think about beers and other things you can hit on highways down here there aren't that many deer to hit like you said we actually back in my airline days we had to take it yet around because we had a deer on the

runway at wally dorm one night um other things they can get on the road down here and also with airplanes other than sam one we had to go around one time because there was an alligator yeah and um down here you can see the alligators but also some wild hogs down here like an Indian town or a choosha oh yeah yeah something else you're thinking about and then while we're talking about the deer of course you know I like my jokes on here by River Ben I saw a deer or didn't have any eyes you know what you call that deer I have no idea very good oh you guys are so smart very good thank you I love this you see this is what's great about your show you know everything

Oh, by the way, thank you. So, skew. I got my cat yesterday. I just got your picture, Frank. I like your cat. All right. Let me go you back on the cell. I got some of the way to watch.

All right, Frank. I need to see a picture with you to have, though. Oh, I like that. Take care, guys. All right, bye, bye. Thank you, Fred. Okay, we're going to go to Larry, who's calling also from Jupiter Farms. Good morning, Larry.

Good morning. I have a question for Earl. If GM and Ford are going to penalize the dealers for selling way over sticker and allocate the cars to other dealers, would Toyota do that with their dealers? I don't think. Or they'll end up getting more cars. and he sells that's sticker? I don't think so, Larry, and here's what.

As a matter of fact, I think that I salute Jim Farley, especially you know, Nancy, and Stu and I know him personally when he used to be head of Scion for Toyota, and the guys, he's a good man, and he hates dealers that take advantage of the customers. He sees that as bad, both for Ford and for the Ford dealer. So I salute what he's saying,

but the fact of the matter is, his hands are tied. He cannot tell a dealer what to sell a car for. He can, you can call that moral suasion, you know, you could call that jawboning. It's kind of like sometimes the politicians do. But you don't have any, you don't have any authority. The state franchise laws protect dealers. The car dealers in all 50 states are protected. They're independent businessmen. And the reason they call the sticker price, a bernoni label, MSRP, it's the manufacturer's suggested, underline suggested retail price. That means that the dealer can legally sell that car for anything he wants.

Now, the dealer is also protected in the fact that the manufacturer must give him a fair supply of cars. The franchise law tells Ford, listen, if you hold back cars from a Ford dealer and you give them to another Ford dealer, instead, you can get in serious trouble, the dealer can sue you for damages, and they have, they have to fairly allocate the production of their cars. So Jim Farley, Godlessam, is trying to get the dealers to pull themselves together, cut the prices some, don't take advantage of the Ford customers,

and Mary Barrow from General Motors is probably doing the same thing. But legally, they don't have a leg to stand on. And the car dealers know this. They have the legal right to sell you a car with an MSRP, $50,000. If they can find something, it'll pay a million dollars for that car. It's perfectly legal. Okay. And one other thing I'd like to mention, back in 2013, I bought a Hyundai Tucson on North Lake Boulevard.

And even back then, they had an addendum sticker, $3,600. over list price. But they weren't selling that many cars. I walked out of there $3,000 under sticker. Yeah. Yeah, they do that. See, back in the day when there was plenty of cars, they still have the addendum stickers,

but the purpose of an adenum sticker back then was to trick you. So with an adenum sticker, if you got an extra $3,000 profit to play with, every now and then you get lucky and somebody stupid enough comes in and pays it because they weren't smart enough to shop around and find out there's another dealer

that cut the price considerably. So every now and then they get a sucker and they sell it for $3,000 over a sticker back when there was plenty of supply. But even if they don't, they trick you because they say, giving you more money for your trade-in. They have the extra $3,000 to play with.

They could give you an extra $3,000 for your trade-in and still sell you the new car are arithmetically for full sticker. So, and if you're one of these people that your hot button is a big discount, they give you a $3,000 discount right away because they're still selling you the carver sticker. So it's only been during the pandemic that the markups really happen. In a way, it's almost better.

I mean, the deception isn't there. You come into a car dealership, the salesman gets in your face and say, listen, you know about the microchip shortage? That car you're looking at is the only car we have in stock, and we won't see another one for three months. If you want to buy that car, this is the price. And if you don't want to pay that price, you see that guy that just pulled into the parking lot? He's coming up in here right behind you, and he's going to buy the car, and they're not lying to you. So in a way, in a very perverted way, the car dealers are more honest today than they ever been.

They're screwing you, but they're looking in the eye and admitting it. Well, I know I'll be in the market for a new car shortly, but when the price has come down, I'm coming to your dealership. Well, thank you, Larry. I appreciate that. You have a good weekend. You too, my friend. Thank you, Larry.

Give us a call again. 877-960-960, or you can text us at 77249-9-60. don't forget. Yes. Oh, I just, something I wanted to bring up. You go ahead. There was an anonymous feedback that I, it might have happened when I was not on the show, but did you remember somebody bringing up about a proposal in Tallahassee,

a state senator and another state representative have introduced bills that would change the language in the law that requires car dealers to transfer title, put title in the customer's name within 30 days to from must to should, which theoretically gives the car dealers unlimited time to get the title transferred. Yeah, I do remember, I don't think we got to that one, but interestingly enough, this is being lobbied now. I happen to have talked with Ted Smith, who was the president of Florida Automobile Deals Association,

and he asked me, Earl, in your dealership, how many cars do you have that have been delivered that do not have registration and permanent tags? And I checked with our, you know, I checked with Billy Jean in the office and we had, it wasn't up to date, she said we had 20. And then about an hour later, she called me back and said, I want to modify that, and it had been reduced. And I think it was like a handful two or three, something like that.

So the fact is that the law in Florida that says you have to have a tag in registration in the 30 days is pretty tight. And the reason that's tight is because of the inefficiency of the state government, the Department of Motor Vehicles. And also the state government in other states because, you know, we have a lot of, we call the snowbirds in Florida. People from Massachusetts come in here and buy a car and they want to talk. and register the car in Massachusetts,

and we have to communicate with Massachusetts to work it out. We put a temporary tag on the car, and Massachusetts doesn't do their job, or Florida doesn't do their job, and it takes longer than 30 days. I'm going to pull a number out of here. For 10% of the transactions, you can't do it for 30 days. You hit the nail on the head,

and most of them are with complications, like an out-a-state title or something. Exactly, yeah. Or you don't get information from the customer. You know, if the customer comes in and buys a car, and they don't have a piece of paper that we need in the title department to process the paperwork. So it's just human error. And it's crazy. This all came from the fact that Carvana got in big trouble.

And I think what happened, my feeling is the car dealers, the new car dealers, were attacking Carvana. Because Carvana is competing with them to buy used cars, and they're doing quite a job of it, I might add. So they're going slow on the titles? Yeah, and they were slow on the titles, and so they went to the Department of Motor Vehicles, and the motor vehicles froze them, said they can't sell cars in Florida anymore, and now they just changed them. They had to the end of January. Do you know if they cleaned it up or not? They cleaned it up, yeah, they're back, they just recently okayed it for Carvana to sell cars, so. Deadlines are wonderful things.

Yes. Oh, yeah, aren't they? That's just amazing. Folks, we hope that you've enjoyed the show up until now. we have a whole lot more to get to and it's always about you and giving you the right information and guiding you on the right road. 877-960

or you can text us at 772-497-6-530 and also, you know, with talking about inflation and everything, you know, rising. I just hate that word lately, but, you know, if Alan was here, he'd be talking about car insurance. I'm going to tell you what. He couldn't stress enough that you should check your premium because it's going to be a surprise to everybody

because these car insurance companies, they're rushing to raise rates. And it's all because of inflation, Rick? Actually, that fits right in with the question here from Negan 1. He says, I wanted to ask about Geico Mechanical Breakdown Insurance. I just heard about it, and it seems better than a manufacturer extended warranty. Do you know about this? It covers more items than extended warranty, not normal wear or corrosion, and you can have car repairs done wherever you like.

It seems like it has really good reviews. I'm going to check it out. I'm not familiar with it, and I will say this, that Geico is an honest. company, but they're like any other company. They've got charged as much as they can, and that's capitalism and the supply of demand. So we'll check it out. I have a basic philosophy about insurance, and the philosophy is you shouldn't buy insurance if you can afford to take care of the thing you're insuring yourself, what you should do, and I think, you know, this is a Scotsman in me, you put away a little money every month. If you buy a car and you, instead of buying

that mechanical breakdown insurance. First of all, buy a good car, check at certain reports, one that has a very low instance of repair costs. And then, if you really want to be careful, put $100 a month in the bank or in the stock market or bond market or whatever you want to do and have a little kitty here. And at the end of the time you're driving that car, maybe five years. If you don't have any mechanical repairs, take all that money you put aside and, you know, take a vacation. And if you have an accident, you have a problem, a repair you need, then you draw on that fund. When you're paying the insurance company, you know, that's their profit. They make a lot of money. That's the reason Warren Buffett is a second or third richest man

in the world. It's because his biggest source of income is insurance companies. Absolutely. Speaking of insurance companies, check your premiums, folks, because as you well know, these car insurers have come down off of a time whenever people were off the road because of COVID, and they lost some money, believe it or not. And those premiums, like I said, it could be inflation because of a supply chain interruption, labor shortages, the laundry list is long. Check those premiums. It'll be well worth your while.

877-960-9960. And we are going to go to Stu. He has some text over there. Yep. We have one from Jonathan in Wellington. He says, where are these electric charging stations and how many posts are available each stop? How long does the person need to wait to get to the charging post,

do the lines, et cetera, and how much does it cost to charge from a trip from Florida to North Carolina? Real quick, I just, Tesla has a trip planner, and I went online and did it, so I just plotted the trip on a Model 3. It's the most commonly sold one now. From West Palm Beach to Charlotte, North Carolina, and there are one, two, three, four stops. Titusville, Florida for 35 minutes, Uly, Florida for 25 minutes, Hardyville, South Carolina for 35, and Columbia set for 15. So there's these short tops, four short stops. And it doesn't give the total price, because it, based on which, um,

the current kilowatt hour charge, the per kilowatt hour charges, but it does estimate the gas savings for on that trip, and a model of three, you would save about $16 off an average and gas savings on that trip. Then the other question is how many, well, there are four stops on this trip. It depends on the station. I was at a Wawa station, had 12 charging stations, so typically I'm seeing some for 6 to 12, and it wasn't filled up. Rick's got a question.

Actually, Donovan had come in with one that fits right again again with us. He says, the Biden administration announced this week that part of the infrastructure bill, they're spending over $5 billion over the next few years on EV charging, and the plan is to have a minimum of four stall high-speed chargers every 50 miles along every highway in the U.S. It's a huge step forward because it actually picks a standard for all the chargers going forward and everyone will have to use the same connector. It also requires simple payments and charging networks who take this money have to be open to all cars. That's great.

I mean, I don't know if I'm trying to judge Earl's body language to see if he's getting done with the electrics. But we had a visit from Toyota that came out this week on Wednesday, and I met the Toyota reps in charge of their electric vehicle planning, and they came to survey our property and they're surveying all the other dealers out there to get them ready for the charging stations. And we already set up with four charging stations right now. Fortunately, the brand we chose is the one that Toyota is backing,

so we got the right ones. But we're putting in a DC charger, and this is kind of neat. The regular chargers are just the regular, they're higher amps or higher current than the home chargers, but the DC charger is a fast charger. It's just as fast as a supercharger. And I learned something about the, I'm not making a Toyota commercial, but I was really disappointed that the new Toyota EV was going to be as slow as it was.

But I've also found it's the fastest charging in the industry. How much do we charge for someone to charge their car? Right now we're not charging anything at all. As this grows, it will just be to recoup the kilowatt hours. What do we pay? We pay on average about 12 kilowatt hours per hour. So translate that into a Tesla that needs a full charge. A full charge would cost you about seven bucks.

Seven bucks. Interesting, yeah. It costs you 90 bucks for a tank of gas, right? Well, in the 60s, 70s, it depends on the gas tank size. Usually cost me about 65 hours. Yeah, one thing, again, I know I sound like a Tesla commercial, but I can't help it. Driving my Tesla, when my Tesla gets down below a certain charge level, it pops up on the screen where the chargers are. Exactly.

It tells me. It also tells me which are the fast chargers and which are not. and it tells me which chargers are not being used, right? I mean, it's absolutely many. It's far, you know, everybody is anguishing over charging electric cars. A lot of smart people. It's a lot more difficult when you're traveling to find a gas station and at the right price, it's the right location that isn't busy, and da-da-da-da.

If you drive and I can only speak for Tesla, but that's a point. become a generic term for electric car because nobody else is competing with Tesla now. And when people say electric car, they automatically buy a Tesla. So what we're saying with Tesla, and because Stu drives one, and I drive one, I am far, in terms of gasoline anxiety and running out of fuel, I have none in my Tesla. Because you have a gas station at your house. Well, yeah, I have a gas station. a plug charger at my house

and when I'm traveling even if I'm dumb enough not to have a big enough charge suddenly the light says to be Earl you know three blocks up to the right there's a fast charger available and no one's waiting

or there is someone waiting so you have to go another 10 miles to there and also I believe that Rivian and what was the other one yeah lucid thanks Jonathan have similar things and even if you don't have

Tesla, even for all electric cars, like the charges that we have the charge point, it's an app. And so anytime you need a charger, there's a map, the same thing the Tesla does. It just doesn't do it automatically. We've all, when we drove our gasoline cars, we've all had that time somewhere, usually traveling on vacation, you're in another state, I'm here somewhere, and you find yourself on the road with no damn gas stations, and you look at your needle and you're stupid enough, and now you're on low fuel warning, that's a terrible feeling. it can't happen an electric car

the car won't let you do that the car will tell you you only got this much electricity left here's where you should go here's where you have to wait here's where you don't have to wait here's where you get a fast charge here's where you get a slow charge I mean forget about it

if you want to buy electric car buy one I am so happy every time I go by a gas station I kind of wave at a minute I was waiting for you to mention that I said you give him the finger every time you'd go past the gas station used to.

A toast. A toast to electric cars. Folks, I didn't mention this website earlier, but it's very important. www. Florida Law Protectingcarbuyers.com. Jot that down, take advantage of it. And it's a Florida statue. And you can go to Ruan cars and you can look for the article that he, or the column, that he wrote a couple.

weeks ago, I believe, maybe a month of how to know if a Florida car dealer is breaking the law. So, www. Florida Law Protecting Carbuyers.com. Our number is 877-960

9960. And I think I mentioned Earl's Vigilantes earlier. Anybody confirm that? No. Okay. We're going to mention Earl's Vigilantes. And you can go to Earl on cars and check it out

and sign up and he's got a great hat that Sue does on in areas. She's got that hat on and you can wear that free hat by helping us out and helping out the people in your community.

You don't have to have, you don't have to be able to change an engine. You know, Rick takes care of that. But you can help out the community and you can help us spread the word and sign yourself up girls vigilantes.com okay I think I have a text here it's from Rich and Hope Sound and this sounds like a Rick question this is could you

address the issue with not being able to get the wheels off on the Tacoma dissimilar metal corrosion this happens on a lot of vehicles but especially on a lot of the larger trucks where they're going to the aluminum alloy wheels and aftermarket wheels tend to do this a little more. Their metal composition is slightly different. The center hub that the wheel mounts on is made of a high-grade steel and the aluminum wheel will quite often get a line of corrosion between the wheel and that hub. So when you take the lug nuts off, that wheel doesn't move. They lock on their solid.

What we normally wind up doing at the shop, we've got the car up in the air on a lift, we've pulled lug nuts, we'll put one lug nut back on just loose so the wheel doesn't fly off, and we actually have to use what's known as a plastic dead blow hammer that has weights inside so it gets a good solid hit, and you actually have to pound on the wheel to get it to come loose to break that corrosion. And then we'll clean it up a little bit, put a little lube on there, and hopefully it doesn't occur again. But that can occur on a lot of different cars

with alloy wheels. You'll get that little bit of corrosion in there, especially if you live near salt water. That's amazing. That's an inside look at Rick's World. Detailed. That's right. Interesting.

So we're all caught up. That was the last text message we have. Let me plug the blog here for a second. Every now and then I do a blog that I really like that I think is important. And this blog is in total. title, it's on ErlanCars.com, you can access it, earlancars.com, and the title is a dealer won't repair your car under warranty. What actions you should take with the dealer or manufacturer?

The dealer won't repair your car underwater. They say, sorry, we can't help you. What action can you take with that dealer or the manufacturer? That was prompted from a call. I get a lot of calls, as you probably know, and a man called me about a Honda issue. And it was, it had to do with a portion of the condo that was auto warranty, technically it was out of warranty. And you see that a lot. Most warranties are only three years, 36,000, Hyundai and Key, and some other cars have longer warranties, bumper-to-bumper, I mean.

Now, when you're talking, when you're talking, when you're, When you talk on warranties, the good warranty is the bumper-to-bumper. But the bumper-to-bumper isn't really a bumper-to-bumper, because when people say bumper-to-bumper, you think, hey, that covers everything on the car. It doesn't. There's a lot of fine print, but it's pretty good. Bumper-to-bumper is pretty good. The tires aren't covered, for example.

The tire manufacturer covers the tires. That's another story. So your auto warranty, and the dealer tells you that, then here's what you need to do. First of all, it might be the dealer. The dealer maybe didn't go all the way for you in terms of representing you to try to get you some help. If you have a car that's within a few thousand miles

for a few months of warranty, almost always you should be able to get that taken care of. And they put it under a different accounting column. They call it goodwill. It's not warranty, but they still pay for it, and they call it goodwill. Remember that goodwill when you're negotiating to try to get something fixed under warranty.

You'll also find that certain dealers can do better for you than other dealers. This shouldn't come as a shock to you, but how dealers sometimes take advantage of customers, some dealers also take advantage of their manufacturer. And one way they take advantage of their manufacturer is to charge him a manufacturer for warranty repair,

that aren't really warranty. This happens all the time. The manufacturers go into dealerships frequently, and they do, it's like an IRS on it. They go in, everybody gets them to panic, they get the books out, they get the signatures out, they check the signatures,

they talk to customers, did they do this, what did they do? And then dealers typically get charged back. And then they walk away with a ton of money. Yeah, thousands of thousands. Tens of thousands. And then they have dealers that don't do that. Some dealers, dot their eyes, cross their T's, are careful, they're honest, they're transparent.

We got it. So if you can find a dealer like that, and sometimes you have to shop around, they will be able to go to the manufacturer on your behalf and get the car taken care of under goodwill. So don't take no, the first no for an answer. The dealer tells you no. you can check with the manufacturer or you can check with another dealer look at your Google reviews talk to friends and neighbors

sometimes you can even get an inside tip from the manufacturer they might say if you're having a problem with this Chevrolet dealer go to that Chevrolet dealer but don't tell them I said so I mean that's the kind of thing that does happen too

don't take no for an answer and the other thing I say in the blog basically is this don't get don't get tough and nasty and in your face everybody is more inclined to try to help somebody when they are asking in a respectful courteous manner so find the top guy you can in the dealership service manager or general manager and talk to him respectfully and ask for their help and if he's got a good reputation with a manufacturer he'll probably get you some help as long as you're not too too far out of warranty and one of the biggest problems we see is paint warranties these paint warranties are very difficult and they got a million

loopholes of excuses but again paint warranty or any other warranty you can often get taken care of you just have to be take some time and and get the right dealer polite persistence yeah life persistence yeah exactly i think i could write a book you i think he wrote to blotter on the appropriate way to complain at a car dealership? I did, yeah. I think a good I have some ideas that I want to contribute to a follow. We'll do a rerun

on that and modify it. Yeah. Oh, here's one other thing I left out. This is a secret I'm going to let this out to my competition out there and all the other car dealers. If a customer comes to me and says, listen, I'm out of warranty,

but the car broke, and they didn't intend it to break only, maybe only a year. I mean, this is where you really get out of it, and it's 10,000 miles out, it's two years out, there's nothing like that. Those are the tough ones to get the manufacturer to go along with. So here's my secret. I tell the manufacturer, listen, help my customer out.

Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to have Rick Kearney affixed the car, and I am only going to charge you what I pay Rick Kearney. I'm not going to charge you the markup that I normally do because we mark up labor to the manufacturer. So I say to the manufacturer, Rick Kearney, he's going to get his full pay because he's got to do the work. And I'm going to get nothing.

I'm going to make no profit. And then my parts that I buy from you, I'm going to only charge you, meaning the manufacturer, Toyota, in my case, what I paid for the park. I was under the law, I can mark it up 40% to the manufacturer. So I can mark up Rick's labor to the manufacturer. I can mark up the part to the manufacturer. I say, I'm going to make zero. Will you warranty it now?

Now, what does two things. First of all, it cuts the cost to the manufacturer considerably. It also lets him know that my heart's in the right place. I'm really trying to help the customer, and I'm willing to do the work at no profit to me. That's putting your money where your mouth is. And I have never been turned down on that that I can recall. No profit to me. I don't think that's heard very often.

Earl, I have a question for you. The relationship between the manufacturer and the dealer, has it always been, shall we say, less than, stellar? Yeah, not speaking blankly. Back 50 years ago or 40 years ago, it was terrible. I mean, it was really

terrible. So I have to say that the relationship between dealers and manufacturers has improved considerably, but there's still a lot of tension there largely because the state franchise laws and the helplessness of the manufacturers in dealing with their, you know, a McDonald's

franchise is one thing. You know, McDonald's can tell a franchisee do this, do this, do this. Car manufacturer cannot tell a car franchisee what to do because he has to check the state law. In Arizona, they got their law. In Florida, they got their law, and they all protect the dealer. They can bribe you and they can persuade you. Exactly.

This is true. Earl's column, his blog, it's a great breed, and the dealer won't repair. The dealer won't repair your car underwater. warranty, take a look. It's in, it appears in the hometown news and in the Florida Weekly or you can go to Earl on cars and you can pull it up just like all of his other columns. There's a very interesting. Very, a lot of knowledge there. We have some texts too. Currently we are caught up. And Rick? Got one here from John Strine. He says,

I've signed up to be a vigilante a long time ago and have never got a referral to help someone to get a fair deal. I don't think people know about this service. In my retirement community, so many widows should have an advocate when buying or leasing a car. How can we increase the exposure of this program? Well, you just did it. I mean, thank you very much.

Well, we're on a radio show with thousands of listeners every week. Earlsvigilaties.com, right? W.orgul's vigilantes.com, but also, I mainly talking about, Nancy, we talk about every week, we need a brainstorm other than on the radio show what else we could do. I mean, we do authorize all of our vigilantes to do independent promotion as far as as it's letting people know if they want to go on their social media pages or even at a retirement community, if you have permission to put something on the calendar or there's a bulletin board for car advice, I'd recommend doing something along those lines.

And you try to get reward or mouth spread. I mean, just old-fashioned word amount. Talk to friends and family members. And because we find that out a lot when just doing the business, in the car business, we find we get referrals all the time. Somebody buys a car. Typically, we'll ask if they know anybody else who wants to buy a car. And, you know, that's a good percentage of the time they do.

And so speak to your friends and family members about the vigilante program. And the word starts spreading more people will reach out for it to avail themselves. Yeah, as I say every week, you know, we need volunteers not only, for you to help out to people in your community. And this is our way of spreading the words, too, said right here on the radio. But we also need volunteers to help seniors maneuver their way through the Internet. As you well know, that's being used a whole lot more today due to the climate that we're living in. And it's real important.

You go to Erlon Cars, and you can get all that information about Earl. vigilantes, and also helping seniors maneuver their way around the Internet. So you can take advantage to win yourself a free hat. That's right. We have a text that came in for Rick. It says, I have a 20-year-old BMW, and the check engine light went on. Took it to my mechanic, and he says it's a throttle control, but don't worry about it. If I do nothing, can I be causing any problems?

Unfortunately, I don't know very much on the VMWs Except the BMW junkyard It would scare me to think that it was I wouldn't worry about a throttle control I'd get a second opinion on another BMW Yeah, generally because like And I know less than anybody in those roaming belt cars But I know one thing is when the check engine light comes on don't ignore it

Uh-huh So yeah take it to another BMW mechanic or a dealer If somebody Google that, let's see, BMW, throttle control issue and see what that says. When you're talking throttle, you're talking acceleration, you're talking about speed, and you're talking about lack of control. Safety? I would basically want to at least have that checked out. You know, here's an interesting article in this week's Automotive News,

and Nancy and I were chit-chatting about that on the way to the studio. This is a trade journal, a lot of money to do's for every car dealer and every manufacturer in the world reads this. And you get some good inside stuff in there. There's some legislation going on right now, federal legislation, to open up the information resources of all manufacturers to independent repair shops. And for a long time, there's been a lot of proprietary information. and Gentle Motors hangs on to Toyota, Honda. You know, this is our information, this is our research. I'm not going to tell anybody else about it because the competition will take advantage of what we've done.

You know, there's secrecy. So they're trying to remove the secrecy and open up. So if I have Charlie's Repair Shop, I will be able to access information on how to fix a new BMW. you of course you can't do it under warranty but you can fix a you would have the information and the conversation between me and nancy coming in was that's a good thing and the bad thing if you got a good technician he should have the information but beware of the guy that has information but he's not qualified or trained this sounds like it's part there's a broader movement it's called right to repair it's mainly in tech and that's exactly rude yeah about like

apple so apple all these independent repair shops bring up but to get a quality repair, you have to go to the Apple, and that's a movement. And like I said, I have some mixed feelings about it. I mean, there is a buyer beware sort of thing, but I do support it broadly. You own the car and you own your phone. I think you should have the right to pick who, if it's not fixed right, it's your property. You want to ruin it? The automotive news talks about these inadequate and outdated laws and regulations,

and they just want to change it. But like everything else, you know, you really have to be careful, you know, walking on thin ice as far as that's concerned to get your car repair. I'm sure that Rick would have a whole lot to say about this legislation and what they want to pass here. So, folks, we have the lines closed, phone lines closed, and we are going to get to our mystery shopping report. and that mystery shopping report is, as I said earlier, from Napleton, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram of Claremont. So your voting is very, very important. So do that at 772-497-6530. Speaking practically, we have a rollably short mystery shopping report,

and we have almost a full half-hour left. So you folks that have not text, you can't call because we shut down the phone lines, or haven't used to anonymous feedback. If you text us at 772-4976530, Stu will get to these texts after the mystery shopping report. Again, that text number is 772, 4976530. And, of course, anonymous feedback is just your, Y-O-U-R, anonymous. Feedback.com, Y-O-U-R, A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S, Feedback.com. And then we'll get to those anonymous feedbacks and the text at the end of this mystery shopping report.

So this is a mystery shopping report. Just read really slow. Yeah, yeah. This mystery shopping report is of Napleton, Croschley, Jeep, Dodge, Ram, of Clarem. This sounds familiar. That's because last week we presented our investigation of Naples, North, Lake, Cresla, Jeep, Don, Graham, I'm just going to leave on.

Why do they do that? None of it called Stalantis, right? Oh, really? Yeah. I don't know. No, no, the Chrysler is now Stalanta. Oh, yeah, it's owned by Stalantis. So, so this is,

the marketing guy in charge of this outfit is, is either drunk or mentally ill. And you don't change, how many out there, honestly, you can text us that knew, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Jeep, blah, blah, blah, blah, was now still in. You totally confused the buying public of the world. Are they going to rebrand their dealership, Stalantis?

And they don't sell Chryslers anymore, so they still got that in there. And all they sell is Jeep, so I'm going to call this Jeep. And ramp trucks. Yeah, and Rams, yeah. Anyway, it was really a dozy of a nightmare of a report on the Jeep in Napleson. in the North Lake. And it was just a joke. So we decided, you know, Agent Lightning would toe

or tow to the sales manager known. He didn't even give us his name last week. He said, I'm the man behind the curtain. And that's the way we laughed. And it was funny to us, but probably not funny to your average customer, when they tried, every which way to pressure Asian Lightning ended up paying thousands of dollars over MSRP.

So we talked to length about Naples of particular set of talents and how prepared they were for the crippling of the automobile, of the global automotive of a chain supply. I mean, it just completely topsy-turvy to the car business, and I say this almost every week. I mean, I've been around for 50-plus years selling cars. I've been a car dealer for 50-plus years. I've never seen anything like what's happened to the car business today. It wasn't just Naples Jeep store that was getting addendum happy.

We, Mr. Chopp, his Kia store, in December, got the same treatment. And, of course, we didn't expect anything less. Napleton is, you know, he's got a lot of dealerships, 39. He's right up there in the top 10, I think, in terms of, we think of him as a Florida stores, but 39 dealerships. His father, Ed Napleton, Sr., started in the business in the early 30s, right, Stu? 1933. 33, yeah.

Hey, excuse me for a moment. For our listeners, Stu, where is Clarence? Claremont. Claremont is just to the west of Orlando. It's central Florida. So it is in a big metro market, not as big as here. It's a small town. Small town.

Yeah, it's a suburb of Tampa, but it's really a small town. And the typical northern Florida is small town. So you don't know what Naples is going to be like in a small town. We know what they're like in Sodom and Gomorra, South Florida. So we chose Naples and Chrysler, I almost say, we chose. We chose neighbor the Jeep of Claremont, Florida. Small town just west of Orlando. The Orlando market is not a faint of heart,

but it's not known for the signature brutality of the mine, as I just said, the Miami-powered, Palm Beach dealers. Unprecedented. Having a Napleton to Napleton comparison across markets is a pretty good idea. We rarely have the chance to do things like this. Mullanex Ford and Apocca comes to mind. That was a great comparison, but they're good dealerships. Mullinx is a hero in South Florida

and is even better in a pocket and now we're going to see what happens to Napleton when you go to a small town Agent Lightning not only accepted the mission I think it was her idea but she was going to be in Bradenton anyway so she was up there she did the shop

and I'm speaking of the first person as if I am Agent Lightning arrived mid-morning there was a cluster of salespeople near the front door I laugh every time Why do they do that? I mean, it's like I refer to them as a wolf pack,

and typically you see them out in front of the dealerships. You can just drive around, and they all stand together, and are they still smoking, Stu? I don't think so. They used to, they're smoking, and they used to wear white shirts. I don't think they'd wear the white shirts anymore. A lot of places are still doing the white shirt until, yeah. So anyway, I approached a young man.

He broke free from the pack to greet me, didn't give his name. not very professional. He simply said hello and asked how he could help me. I asked if he had any new wrangler, four by fours, and stockland would be told that they're completely out. He said, they don't get many these days. Times are tough, he said. Well, times are tough for the buyers.

Times have never been better for the sellers. The salesmen went out to say they had a few used ones for sale and tried to gauge my reaction. When he pointed over to a couple of truckish-looking jeeps, That's a good description. I don't like the looks of those truckish-looking jeeps. I like the real Jeep. I think it's really cool, but I don't like the truckish-looking ones.

The Gladiator. Yeah. Jeep Gladiators for sale. That's a good name. I like the name Gladiator. I showed some excitements, and I love the gladiators, especially the Overland model. Salesman told me it was my lucky day because the white one was right there, was none other than the Overland model.

He suggested we go check it out. We walked over the Gladiator. was parked on a concrete slab next to the parking lot MSRP was $55,055,000 and $55. And it was, you guessed it, an addendum. The addendum added $12,250

to the MSRP. Wow, that's a big one. $12,250. There was Shadow Bark for $299. I don't know what Shadow Mark is. They had one last week, too. Yeah, Shadow Mark, whatever. It's worthless, I can tell you that

One year tire wheel protection For 32 Why they come up with these numbers? What do you want to charge for the wheel protection? 350, nah 32, nah Yeah, yeah, I don't know Because there's no relationship

to the cost or value, but they come up with numbers I just caught a typo, but I like it Okay, go ahead Continue One year pointless dent repair for two something before? That was my typo. It's painless dent repair, but pointless is just, pointless is just his appointment. Pointless dent repair, because you're probably not going to use it.

Well, that's where we're going from now, we'll call it pointless, painless dent repair. And for 274, a one-year maintenance for 189, wheel locks for 199, touch-up paint for 69, butflaps for $3.99, I think I'm going to do it as well. I'm a sill plate. What's a sill plate? That isn't your door sill. Oh, okay. When you open it something like for Texas. I would call it a door sill plate, but they call it the sill plate.

$3.99. And finally, a big fact, $10,000. Market adjustment. Woo. Naples list price for the 2022 Jeep and Clydeator, $67,305. Salesman asked for my driver's license and said he needed to get the key. I told him I left my license in my husband's car, but I shopped at another naval location, so I was probably in the system.

Oh, did she really forget her license, or? No, she used a different name, so she didn't want to handle it. Oh, I got you. Okay, the salesman said, I wouldn't be able to take a test drive without my license, and I replied that was fine, and I was primarily interested in getting a final price. Of course, the reason being their insurance won't cover them, and that's in their insurance clause, but you've got to be sure that whoever you take that. There's a license, doctor.

I paid my, I said my husband hates dealerships, refused to come into one until, it's time to sign I was doing the legwork the salesman never got the keys or I had much to say about the vehicle they asked me to follow him inside so we could talk to the sales manager we found his desk and he offered me

some of Napleton's famous water is that brand water is that the reason? Brand water okay so it's a marketing thing and you can buy they put stickers with your name so this is some generic water but they're calling it Napleton's famous water

as if it has so that's really on the I don't know if it says it or the guy just called it that but I'm sure it's So I declined the famous water and said and ask him what his name was I still hadn't told me who he was Selvin apologized and said I'm Benny

Benny asked me what my name was and I told him he pulled up my information on a computer made some updates then he left to consult with the sales manager about how to move forward without a photo ID Oh

Without a photo ID Okay Then he came back in 10 minutes And said There was no we could test drive the car And I said I thought we'd already cover this And I was fine

Not driving the car Unfortunately a lot of people Were fine about not driving the car I'll just a little editorial note here Please Drive the car before you buy it Yeah look what happened to Marty Driving the Genesis

I mean the Genesis Might be a great car And drives great but Marty's wasn't and so he did and there's more of that going on the day than ever before because there's a few cars and I don't know what to tell a lot of people I mean

the chances is you can actually drive the car you're going to buy are practically zero so you're going to have to drive something that's as close to that car but beware no two cars drive the same I mean you could take you can drive it when it comes in but there's something wrong you've got to wait another six months to get another car

exactly so you're I mean is just you don't have enough problem to stay with the identities and the rest of it, you're going to have to take a little bit of a gamble because you will not be able to drive the car that you're going to buy, probably. And when it comes in and you waited months for this car to come in and you get in it and it's not quite right, you're probably going to take it anyway. Consumer reports has never been more important.

Yeah, exactly. Don't take any chances. Some of the ladies that I've dealt with on the phone, you know, this is a really, real nightmare that they can't drive the car that they, you know, want to purchase in. I mentioned, you know, the amount of time that they have to wait, and it just gets really complicated, and they walk away. So I hope you're not getting taken advantage of that, there, ladies. I told Manny to go back to his manager and telling me he can give me his best price without

the extra markups, then my husband can come to the dealership with my license, and we can sign in on the gladiator. Then he went back to the boss. It's the classic game, back in for it. Just imagine what would happen if anything else you were out there shopping for, you had to go through this. All car dealers do it, so you just take it, right? I mean, that's the problem. I mean, that's the reason the car dealers have got such a bad reputation is that they all do it, virtually all. He returned five minutes later with a worksheet. He said he wanted me to tell him the sticker price before he showed me the worksheet. I was confused.

He said, I saw you take a picture of the window sticker. And when I was reading this, Stu writes these things out. I was thinking, uh-oh, didn't have a driver's license. I wonder why that was. And now they busted me, taking the picture of the window sticker. Well, everybody does that. Yeah. Apparently, yeah, apparently.

Just so you know, just pretty much every, like if I see customers, they're constantly taking pictures of the car. and sending it to friends. You should. You should do that, yeah. I found the pick on my phone and said the MRSRP is $55,05,000. And he said, no, the other sticker. And, of course, that's where the addendum.

I replied, 67,305. And Benny got a big grin on his face and turned the worksheet over to reveal. You know, it's like a big surprise. There's a surprise. price. $61,055. Wow. He said his manager was able to get me out the door, not much more than sticker price. He actually seemed to believe I was being given a good deal. I told him as impressive that discount was, I was not interested paying over MSRP. Now, a little editorial

comment here too, you're not going to buy a Jeep for less than MSRP. So in this situation here, you're about as close as you're going to get. You shouldn't be buying a car today or a Jeep day, you know, but if you're going to buy one, in Napleton, if you could get this price, at Napleton, Claremont, Florida, it's not really that better price. I had somebody called me the other day about a Lexus in Orlando, and he was trying to get the Lexus for below MSRP. I said, if you have to buy a Lexus, buy it, you're not going to buy one below MSRP. So, same thing with cheap.

And Agent Lightning, she does this to get reactions. I mean, she knows what's going to happen. She knows they're not going to give her a discount, but she's got to do it to see what they say. So you see what happens before you go into the dealership. Yeah, she gets in there and taunts them. Yeah, yeah, she has fun. We can't ask her to buy all these cars. I mean, it would cost her a lot of money.

We don't pay her that much. He asked me to tell them what price I needed to have to make a deal today. I said I needed to keep it under. Oh, no, you skipped the last paragraph about that time, yeah. Oh, yeah. I told them as impressive as that discount was. I was not interested in paying over MSRP. Benny warned me about hesitating and said it's taking six to nine months to order one,

and he has no idea when they'll get another overlay model. Now, it does take a long time to order a car. Just for my information for you, the salesperson is going to exaggerate the time. It does take a long time. Nine months is ridiculous. It's not going to take nine months. to get it. Six maybe, probably less. But you should order a car. I mean, if you really want to buy a car, you should order the car. Problem is it is going to take months. And you have to protect yourself. The way you protect yourself is you go to a certified Costco dealer and you have a clause in your contract on your ordered car that you will pay the Costco price when the car comes in.

And you start your search earlier than you normally would. Exactly. Because you have to have a car in June, start now. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So here we are pushing me into buying this. He said the white one was the first one he'd seen in months, and there's just not going to be any others, and if you only wait nine months, and that's the yes.

He asked me to tell him what price I needed to have to make a deal today. I said I need to keep it under $62,000. 62 and 63 out the door. He wrote that down on the worksheet asked me to sign on the blue ballpoint pen line. He drew the line, the dot of the line himself. Yeah.

But he wasn't dotted. Many left was going only briefly before he turned to say his manager cannot do better and the 67,000 off the door. Now the guy, the table that we shop last week, she signed and then the manager came out and argued with her and said, you said you're going to buy the car.

I mean, I was afraid they're going to try to physically restrain her. You're not leaving here. They were calling the caterers. They were selling for a night. I know Agent Lightning. Let me tell you what. She would have entertained that. Lightning.

And they would regret that. They would. They would. They would. They would regret that a lot. I know the woman personally. Benny told me it would take a long time before that happens. He said things would normalize for another.

one and a half to three years, another exaggeration. He said he personally did not believe we would ever go back to prices below MSRP. You know, there's a remote chance that could be true, folks. It's bad in a way, but it's good in a way. You know what would happen? I'm just having a brand new thought here. If that happened, if the dealers and the manufacturers conspired to go to MSRP, illegally, and you could never prove it, but I mean, it would like thought, they read each other's thoughts.

And it would probably be a good thing for you because it'd be far less deception. You'd be paying a higher price if you were an educated consumer, but you'd be paying a lower price if you were a sucker. And I say this with love, because I don't really mean sucker. I'm talking about the victims of the world. and you know who they are. They're the less educated, the people that are English language impaired. They're young, they've never bought a car before.

They're old because maybe their husband bought all the cars, and they never bought a car before. And there's a lot of people out there that are victimized. They would be protected. You shrewd negotiators out there that really know how to haggle, hassle, and beat the dealer in his own game, you'll be paying a higher price.

I don't say it's impossible that we end up with MSRP kind of like you do with Apple, you know, with Apple watches. Yeah, you made Benny very happy. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we'd be very happy. What do we still? Yeah. You know, we're selling every car to MSRP

and making a ton of money and we're the cheapest act in town. So, yeah, it's great to be able to make money on a car and still have the best price. And not feel guilty about it. And not feel guilty about it. I'm sure Napleton doesn't feel very guilty about his $10,000 addendum either. So, anyway, I, Agent Lightning, and I thank you, Bruce Stein, this is up to leave,

but he asked me to wait so he could introduce me to his manager, he came back with a manager who mumbled something, and thanked me for coming. So there we have it. Napleton and the small town of Claremont versus Napleson and Saddam and Gamora of South Florida. You can see the contrast. And the bottom line is pretty much the same, the treatment was different and I don't want to you know influence your votes but how do you want to vote we we failed a napleton of North Lake Boulevard didn't we

feel we did fail them we failed it was even though we said that it was kind of in line with what's going on yeah there was a certain elements of pressure and just the ridiculousness with the addendum and we failed them yeah we struggle we struggle with any time we fail a dealer because we are dealers and the first thing you do when you start failing dealers, as they say, oh, yeah, you're failing me. What about you? And you're trying to do that to make me look bad so you can sell more cars. So we probably err on the side of the dealer when we do these grades. So here we are. ABCDF, we're grid on the curve because there aren't any A dealers out there in terms of real life. So we do it on the curve.

99 percentile is an A. How do you vote? Well, we have one kind of Frank who we spoke to earlier He gives Napoleon Brand dealership tactics Not Nabilton, Napoleon Don't shop there He gives him a D plus I'm waiting for some more to come in on Facebook

I'll update later But I'm inclined to go with Frank and give him a D plus Okay Any other votes Okay Over on YouTube here we've got Tom with an F Classic Nabilton but at least they're consistent Mark Smith with a D-minus and myself I'm gonna give him a C-minus I'm gonna say I didn't see

anything there that was sneaky hidden or or trying to be really deceptive I see yeah they're charging a whole lot of money but they've they laid it right out in front of you they said here's the price yeah so it just it to me it just came down to that's what they were charging. And if you don't want to pay it, you go somewhere else. I'm changing mine from a D plus to a C minus. Yeah, that's a good point. That's the same thing. Yeah, that's a good point. Okay, well, I got, let's see, Brian, 10K market adjustment, give me a break, D minus. Tim from Yuma, just a challenging time to buy a new car, no deception and hate the market

adjustment. C. Mark Ryan with a D. A blast from the past, with a new car. A blast from the past, the D minus. Let's see, that's what we've got so far coming in on YouTube. Okay. Like Rick said, there it is laid up right in front of you. Okay, Jonathan Wellington gives them a C. What's the final grade? What are we going to do? We haven't heard Nancy or Earl's grades yet. Go ahead, Nancy. What I was going to say was that it is right out there in front of you, you know, all the fees. And I always say, you know, I always say, you know, I'm There's nothing wrong with the fees. There's a whole lot wrong with hidden fees.

And Napleton put it right out there. So hold on to your hats. I'm going to give them a C. Yeah, I'm going to go with the C too. And I think it's a great illustration of, I choke when I say this, the fact that by raising prices, the dealers have actually cleaned up their

When prices were totally competitive, and the manufacturers had a big part in this by shoving cars onto the dealers. Remember, manufacturers make money on every car they sell the dealer. And they could sell a deal just by the many cars they want because they jam them on them, and that's a whole different story there. But car dealers usually carry way more cars in inventory than they should. And then they have to get rid of them because they're paying interest on the floor plan, meaning financing the new cars. They can't pay cash for them.

So they have to borrow money from the bank to pay the manufacturer. So they got too many cars on a lot, and they got to sell them. And if they don't sell them fast enough, the manufacturer slaps them around, and you can lose your franchise or you can really get hurt if you don't sell enough cars. So it puts this savage competition on the car dealers. I can't believe I'm actually defending the cardio is here. And so here we are now with the price is way too high, and the customers still buying the cars,

and as fast as they can, manufacturers are building them as fast as they can, but the deception is gone. The dealer fee doesn't mean anything anymore. The addendums, the polyglyco, that's a term from the past, nitrogen in the tires, penstripes, all that... Auto Butler. All this stuff. It doesn't mean anything anymore because the price is the price. If you don't want to pay it, go somewhere else.

So it's a very interesting, unusual, bizarre world. Bizarro world. We're almost out of time, but I have a question for you. How is this shop different from North Lakes shop, which was an F? They were more polite. They were more direct. There was no, you know, there wasn't the man, behind the curtain there wasn't uh the pressure you know the pressure the flim flam uh it was just a small town atmosphere folks you get a better treatment in small towns and big towns i mean that's there's a there's a you know a accident you go go to a small town by car yeah very true uh thanks so much jonathan uh for your participation in the show today and uh asking uh the questions that you did ask uh ladies

and gentlemen, we're near the end of the show, and we enjoy your company. Most definitely, we hope that you enjoy the show as much as we enjoy you. Stay tuned next week. We'll be right back here, Saturday morning at 8 a.m. Enjoy that Super Bowl.