Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.13.2021 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mazda of Palm Beach

Episode Date: February 13, 2021

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits Mazda of Palm Beach to see if she can get the best deal possible on a 2021 Mazda CX-30 SUV. 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 linked to cyberspace 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. Well, good morning, everybody.

This is Earl, the recovering car dealer. And I'm sitting around with Rick and Stu and Nancy, and we're in the studio here at the True Oldies. station. And we're not going to sing to you this morning. We're going to talk about cars. We're going to talk about how not to get ripped off by your car dealer. And we welcome all you regular listeners that have been some of us for 20 years. And audience has grown and we welcome all the newbies out there. We're here to help any way we can. We call this a live radio talk show because that's exactly what it is. And it's exciting. And you can, you can and called in from anywhere in the world.

We're streaming. And that's something else that an old guy like me has to just slap himself in the face to see if I'm streaming. I could be talking to Bali or Australia right now. And we're on Facebook and Twitter and Periscope and all that stuff. And old-fashioned radio.

You call us any time at 877-9-60-99-60. That's 877-9-60. prioritize you callers. I don't mean that you're old-fashioned, but it's kind of like an old-fashioned way of communication anymore. People are using texting, I think, more than they use the regular telephone. But texting can't really cut it when it comes to the personal touch, and we love the personal touch. So I think we have like four lines coming into the studio, and that's the reason we jump on the phone calls first. Now, we love the text, and we love the YouTube's, and we love the streaming or Facebook. or Twitter or whatever you're going to do.

We like them all. Rick Kearney on my right, he does, he monitors the YouTube's, and Stu monitors the anonymous feedbacks. I forgot to mention that and the text. So it's like a, we're like a switchboard here with input from all over in any sort of venue, wherever you may be, how you want to do it. And it's your comments and your criticisms

and your suggestions and questions that make the show what it is. And we don't know what you're going to say, and that's what I love about it. It's exciting. We had anonymous feedback, by the way, that came in after the show last week, and it was a constructive criticism. They're saying that we're wearing masks, and I'm wearing a mask, and we're all wearing masks. And, of course, masks and muffled your voice to some extent. And I hadn't heard that comment before.

I will try to articulate, and I will try to make myself understood, and we all will do that. But if you have a problem hearing us, understanding our words, let us know. We wear the mask because we're ultra-cautious. You know, Nancy and I are seniors, and we're cautious about that. We've actually had our vaccinations, but we can also. be asymptomatic and spread it. They're just being cautious. So we ought to courtesy to each other, we have

one, two, three, four, five of us in this rather small studio. And so we just think, hey, what the heck, let's be safe and watch out for each other. And that's what we're doing. And we will try to articulate better. So I say, but that doesn't mean I can't speak clear because I know

sometimes I get excited and I talk too fast and you can understand me. But I'll try to be careful about that. Let me mention to the new folks what we do. We're not specialists, we all kind of do the same thing here, answer your questions. Rick Kearney, his sub-specialty is technical mechanics. He calls himself a mechanic sometimes, but he's not a mechanic.

He truly is a computer specialist. That's what cars are now, rolling computers. So when those lights start blinking on, that's a computer telling the light to come on. tell them the light to come on. And the computer's connected everything on the car and your brakes and your gas tank and your fuel, air pressure, fuel pressure, everything that happens in the car

is connected to the computer. And the computer tells you something's wrong or something's not wrong or everything's, you know, whatever it wants to say. It's not as specific as we'd like it to be, but every year the cars get more and more specific. And pretty soon they're gonna be maintenance-free. I mean, they're pretty much maintenance free now.

I'm a car dealer, so I shiver a little bit because I have a service department that depends on maintaining and repairing cars. To be honest with you, we talk about it because we are car dealers, and we say, what's going to happen when the cars get better and better and better? And pretty soon, you don't have to fix them anymore. You don't have to maintain them anymore. Rick, you're shivering. What am I going to do when I got no job?

Well, what am I going to do? What I don't have a job because nobody buys a car. Everything will be ride-sharing. There'll be giant fleets of autonomous electric vehicles. And what are we going to do with our dealership? A lot of car dealers think about that, by the way. They don't talk about it publicly. But it's in the back of a lot of people's minds is what's going to have.

We know everything's going to change in that direction, but we just don't know when. When's that other shoe going to drop? That's an interesting thing to talk about. to talk about that or anything else. Please call the show. Nancy Stewart on my left is my co-host, and she is also my spouse. And she is

kind of a specialist in terms of making sure the women get their fair share of our chit-chat. And she calls us sometimes an old boys club because she's a lone woman in a room with four men, and she has to uphold the fact that half of our audience

our ladies and half of them drive cars and they buy cars and they repair and maintain cars and they don't get their fair say all the time well she's here to see that that changes and she has a couple of thoughts that i will turn the mic over to nancy uh what's on your mind this morning good morning ladies and gentlemen yes i'm nancy stewart and i'm here to take your calls and john who's been holding uh will be right with you uh first let me extend an invitation to the female audience. If you are a new listener today and every Saturday morning, we give $50 to the first two new lady callers, the first two new lady callers. So take advantage of that at 877-9-60-99-60. And you can also text us at 77-49-6. And you can also text us at 772-497-6.

and if you have any questions say uh hey is uh is your is your car making a funny noise that it never made before uh give us a call we'd love to answer your question and so many more and don't forget www www your anonymous feedback.com uh we're going to go to john who's a regular caller from poem city good morning john good morning to everyone i just want to touch what nancy up last week briefly about the catalytic converters that are being stolen so fast and so quick you really can't keep up with it um i i've been a victim not at the catalytic converter grown up in the jungles in new york city i had two cars stolen and they were stolen for the airbags and for the wheels and tires now it seems like electronic parts and the uh also the tires and wheels

very popular that they take them off one, two, three. But let me ask Rick a question. If a car comes into the dealership and it has the catalytic converter that was stolen, was cut off briefly, about what would that cost, roughly, say it was a camry? And naturally, when they cut that off so quick with a tool, portable tool,

the tail pipe is naturally probably cut, and it's no longer usable, and probably the header pipe. would be an approximate cost to replace that system that was stolen off your car. Hey, John, whenever I was looking up that information, you know, I noticed that the price of the converter, it varied from vehicle to vehicle, and the Ford, well, it's amazing how much the cost to replace that one, but I'll give this call to Rick. He's the expert. The average car, you're looking at anywhere from probably $8 or $900 to well over $2,000.

And some models of cars can be $4,000 or $5,000 depending upon the car. I guarantee you if it was something like a Mercedes or something like that, you'd be looking at several thousand dollars. You're talking parts and labor. Yep. Yeah. I was talking to Jeff Doss, our parts manager, and he said around $2,000 on the average for Toyota's. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me.

Rick, whenever I was, as I said, reading this information last week, I noticed that the Dodge Ram comes in at over $3,000. Yeah. Why is it so expensive from one vehicle to another? It's the design of the part, and sometimes it's also, instead of just being a short little piece of pipe, it may be a six or seven foot long section of exhaust that has to be replaced.

placed. So obviously the part price is going to go way up. And depending on how much damage they did underneath, the labor may be increased or you may need other parts in addition to it. And it's the cost of the metals, right? Yeah. Just as in FYI, we have had no complaints. We've had nobody that has complained about the Catholic converters. And so knocking wood in this area, apparently, we're not having a problem. Now, I think it tends to follow, like, is it the price of precious metals? I remember way back when there was, like, platinum, like, went really high, and we had a series of vehicles that were broken into. They climbed under the car with a saber saw, cut the thing out from beneath the car, and we lost a ton. These are on land cruisers, I think, expensive cars.

I think, too, you know, not only are they after the metal, and to sell that, but, you know, so these things are like a, for lack of another word, like a fad, just like they used to take your wheels. they took your hubcaps back in the day and all those other things that they could easily remove. Yeah, they resell the catalytic converters. Yeah, exactly. But that actually led to a situation

where reputable salvage yards would not take catalytic converters unless you could prove where you got it and that you had legally obtained it. Yeah, unlike the woman in Orlando who's still sitting in jail because she had a monopoly on the converter and she was stockpiling them, of all places, in her home, and there was a raid.

Yep. Well, Rick just came up with the whole problem, how to solve it. When my two cars were stolen, they were found, stripped, and the big item was the airbags. So here's what happened in those days. It was in the late 80s. The insurance company made a memo to all body shops and repair shops. We will not accept the insurance. to replace the airbag unless we have a dealer, new car dealer order that the part was wooded through them and not aftermarket or not the sources or reused or junkyard or anything.

So basically it slowed down, excuse me, almost 100% because the insistence of the insurance companies that they must have a dealer invoice for the replacement of the airbag. And if the shops were cut down now, the recycling shops, I know about five years ago, I had some excess aluminum. And I went to a junkyard, and they not only took my picture, it was aluminum cans, and it was aluminum cylinder that I had for years. And I even had a sign a paper. So I was on record of who I was, and if the police would come around investigating any of these incidences, They would know who the person was. They had my license plate and everything. So this is the fault of these recycling centers that are accepting these kinetic converters.

Correct. You know, again, I've got to mention that story, you know, from Orlando. This woman stockpiling these converters, you know, that was just amazing. But, hey, supply and demand, precious metals. So there you go. John, thank you so much. have we do you have another question yes be careful out there because like in new york city now the increase in stolen cars is 70 percent and there's a lot of things that we could do to defer

rick might have an answer to us of an aftermarket any particular company that he recommends i stopped my stolen cars in new york city by an item that they had which was like a cable like an emergency cable, it had a lock on it, and it locked the hood, and it killed the ignition items. Would Rick have any recommendation of a good aftermarket of stop, you know, alarm system? Yeah, put a tracker device on your car. They're easily obtainable now on the internet, just those little tracker chips, hide that in your car, and if somebody steals your car, you give that information to the police, they contract right to your car.

He's looking for a recommended brand. I'd say LoJack, John. That's been around a long time. And it's a tracker, but it's got a reputation and they're reliable and price fairly. Well, it's on the increase because I see the Walmart that I go to,

they never had security, and it started now during it's, and it's a good neighbor and it's due it. They have security riding around the parking lot. And you see much more, somebody told me I don't go down there anymore, but to Costco, on North Lake Boulevard, people park on the western end, which is kind of quiet, and during the holiday times, they had some break-ins. These are places that were never a problem before, and it's going on now. But I'm very happy to see at the Walmart that the patrol is constantly going around, and like I say, they've never had security. in that store about 15 years now, and it's the first, but it's a deterrent, especially

people that would take these catalytic converters, one, two, three, and zip them off. Yeah, I hadn't heard that, John. Maybe in your part of the area it's worse, and as I say, in this area here, we've had zero reports, and we've got something like 20,000 customers on the books that we've sold vehicles and service vehicles, and out of those 20,000 we haven't had a single one complaint about a stolen converter so i guess it goes from region to region yes well that's good news anyhow yeah be careful out there and good news is for the first time i got my uh vaccine and it's just like congratulations i had no symptoms whatsoever congratulations on wednesday on publics good for you and i'm glad to gear get that because i'm two years older than

earl i thought you were 65 john Hey, John. Thanks for the call. Okay. We'll talk to you next week. Okay, 87-960-99-60. And I think Nancy, you had a couple of issues that you thought would be interesting to all the people, but the ladies especially out there, you're talking about insurance, I think, and the fact that chances are you are probably paying too much, but you just don't know it.

This is true and that you should, you know, take a look at your insurance policy often because the rates, you know, change and they change according to, you know, whether your car is sitting in the garage, you know, it's just worth looking into, and there's a few places that you can go and consumer report is an amazing avenue to explore. have a little more information about how crashes affect women but i'll wait until later to mention that i want to john jonathan i want to thank you for that great backdrop i like that happy valentine's day everybody what is the two hundred and seventeen that's valentine texas population I thought that might apply. Ladies and gentlemen, 877-960-99-60, or you can text us 772-497-2-49-30, and don't forget, ladies, give me a call, $50 for the first two new female callers, and share your experience as to whether you purchase a car, whether you lease a car, if you want to share your experience on service. at all. A77-960. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Before we get to Stu and look at some text and anonymous feedbacks, etc. I want to mention that with the pandemic and a lot of people

just not putting miles on the car, a lot of people self-quarantining and somebody that normally would put 15, 20,000 miles a year on their car or putting 3,000 or 4,000 miles a year. There's some insurance companies out there that are offering you huge, savings. Normally, you'd say, I'm not going to sign up for a policy that rewards me because I don't drive my car, but if you're not driving your car, you should take a look. Call your insurance company and call some other insurance companies. If you're driving mileage drops precipitously, which probably has, it has for most people, you can save yourself a ton of money on insurance by getting one of those policy, limited policies on mileage and something

to take in consideration, even on a lease. Normally, I don't recommend going for low-low lease mileage's allowances because you have to pay a ton of money if you go over that amount. But if you could get something that limits your mileage to $10,000 or $7,500 miles, and normally you would be driving twice that. You can save a lot of money at least, too. Rick, you had a point? Folks, just remember one thing, though, while your car is sitting,

the battery is still getting used a little bit by the computers, And so it's a good idea, just once a week, go out and drive your car around for about 30, 40 minutes, just give a little exercise and help charge that battery back up. Yeah, and that can happen to anyone, ladies and gentlemen, because it happened to me. And you just don't think about it, and because of Rick, I get my car out as often as I can recharge everything. Yeah, we put a reminder on our Alexa at home that says drive Nancy's car because we tend to use my car. and when Nancy says, so we get the San Alexis says drive Nancy's car. So we get on the car and take a drive. Sue, what have we got on the backlog there for text and whatnot?

Well, before I get to the text, I want to remind everybody to visit earlsvigilandies.com. That's the website that we set up to help put people together and communities around the country. People with experience who can help people who might be a little bit nervous about getting a new car. You get a hat? You get a hat if you sign up. if you become a volunteer, if you become a vigilante. The sites for both people looking to buy a car who need some help and also for people who want to help.

So if you want to sign up to volunteer, you go to Earlsvigilantes.com, you click on volunteer, you sign up, you get a hat, then you're doing a good thing, just like us. And if you're looking for help and you're a little bit nervous or hesitant or terrified to go into a car dealership, go to Earlsvigilandis.com, click on Find a vigilante, find your state and you'll hopefully uh you'll find the vigilante in your state nearby um we don't have all the states let me interrupt for a second uh nancy and i're talking about in the car we have we have come up with a we have a lot of links we have a lot of web addresses that we throw out earls vigilantes.com is just one of them one of the many and uh can you pull up uh the home

screen of earl on cars.com and just give them a summary of the links that are available Rick can do it, I guess. I thought you wanted to show it on the screen. The links that are available because you're driving, most people are driving, most people who don't have something to write with, and so when we start throwing out link after link after link, it's real simple. The simplest

things, just go into earlunkars.com, and at that point, you can go, you can submit anonymous feedback, you can link to Consumer Reports, Costco Auto Program, True Car, check your car for recalls. You see our recommended dealer list. It's brand new, newly refreshed,

and updated. All the mystery shopping reports. You can file a car dealer complaint right with the state. You can download Nancy's out-the-door affidavit right there on the site. And then just for a laugh, you can go to Ain't going to Happen.com. And also, a used car checklist. If you're looking to buy

a used car, it has a list of things you need to check out and make sure it is taking care of on that. Wow, fabulous. Nancy's always talking about Ashley Moody, not doing her job as Attorney General for the state of Florida. And we have a complaint for them where you go right to Ashley Moody, Attorney General's office, and it's cardiac appliance right there.

But all you have to do is go to earlancars.com and you have that whole library. You got all that, but then the best part, you got all Earl's articles there. So everything you want to know, I don't think there's a subject you haven't written about yet. Boy, that makes life easy, real easy. Earleoncars.com, so you can go there and entertain and inform yourself. That's right. So also, here's the thing about Earl's Vigilantes. we don't have every state covered right now but really you don't need to get somebody it's in

your state it's helpful it's a little bit closer you don't have to worry about long distance bills anymore these days so if you're in mississippi and we don't have a vigil any mississippi go ahead and call we have i think six or seven in florida so you can go ahead and get help from any anywhere or you can wait till saturday and call into the show but we wanted to help help for everybody around the country throughout the week as well you can not only help us but you can you know help the people in your community and you don't have to be an auto expert that's for sure and look at that beautiful hat that's too designed is that beautiful looks great very masculine looking i love my hat i absolutely love my hat and you get a hat that's right all right well uh if uh are the

phone lines clear right now no we got somebody all right good let's get to a caller that okay uh no we don't uh 877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772 4976530 and don't forget ladies $50 for the first two new lady callers now back to stew all right um the honor of the first text of every saturday morning goes to anne marie week after week so we'll start with hers anne marie says good morning i read a new story about an accident this story said the vehicle was going 93 miles per hour, two seconds before the airbags deployed. I can't help but wonder, one, how much of a black box is built into any current vehicle's computer system? And two, what does a vehicle's computer system record? Three, who can access it after an accident? Four,

how is it accessed? Five, the parents let their teenagers drive their vehicle. Can parents access the black box to see how well the kids drove the vehicle? Where do they go and how fast? Bottom line, how much can our vehicles rat us out without us using the insurance companies monitoring devices? So for all the questions except for number five, I want Rick to answer because he has experience with the black boxes. He probably has a story or two to tell about how that's given us surprising information in the service. Before Rick answers, I think the black box varies in terms of rules and regulations and whatever privacy. manufacturer to manufacture and also from state to state. So there's not a federal law on black boxes.

No. And there's not an uniform law. And everybody's got into the act now. The privacy people that hate all black boxes, the insurance companies that love all black boxes, as long as they can see what's going on. Manufacturers, you know, they're in the fight. Everybody's arguing about what the black box.

can say can reveal so on so forth so Rick well you you probably know more about Florida and what our black boxes are for specifically Toyota's but go ahead the legality side of it I don't have very much experience at all so I'm not even going to express an opinion there the laws are state by state so right but for the actual physical ability my computer I have a special cable and the Toyota TechStream software that I can connect to the car and going back about three years,

three to four years now, the amount of information that is available is astounding. I can actually look back into your car's history and tell, did you step on the gas hard, excessive, hard acceleration, hard braking, hard cornering,

uh did you have a bs activate your antelac brakes you know stomp on the brake too hard and it actually activated the abs brakes i can see almost everything that your car has done driving wise there is an incident that is recorded and it's amazing how much i can actually see what just with my scan so you're permitted as a technician at a dealership to see it uh we obviously Toyota at one point you couldn't look at it because Toyota had the privilege and now you have the privilege. What about what about the owner of the car? You can certainly communicate to him what you found. Absolutely. If an owner came in and said to you, tell me what my black, I'll pay you for your time, but tell me what the black box said for the past 30 days.

I can hook the computer up and I can show them. So if he has a teenage son with a heavy foot, using the car for dating I can print out all that information and hand it to them so they can go back to Sun and say what were you doing here how about going back a year

actually I believe it takes it unless you go in and erase the information it takes it from day one and what about the beginning of the use of the car so the black box is on used car, new car?

All that information for the cars built in the last several years, last three to four years, it's all in there. So I could get the information from the previous owner of that used car? Yep. No laws against it.

Do you have to get the owner's permission or let's say the owner says to you I want you to fix my car but I have a lot of privacy concerns and you stay away from my black box. Are you, is there any rules saying that you have to listen to that?

Or is there any right? Does the owner have any right to tell you not to use the black box to diagnose a problem? You don't know. I don't know of any laws or specific things, but if someone told me that, I'd guess, I'd say, listen. I would do my best to respect their wishes. Oh, you would honor. I would say you might not get a very good diagnosis.

I'm going to kind of go in there half-blower. because that's how we diagnose things now there there is the possibility that that information may be germane to my diagnosis it may be necessary for me to look at it but I would consider it almost like a a doctor-patient relationship at that point exactly so my favorite I'm not gonna tell what happened we dad when you brought up the about the decision with a son a father and a son we had a situation where a son claimed the car spontaneously the engine just died there was a father and dog who was defending this the son's position i think rick you might have been

the attack on this and the black box basically described an incident where the kid drove at a 45 miles an hour with a fully warmed up engine into water where just the the temperature went from like what's a car run temperature on 200 something degrees or around two uh usually between 180 to 200 degrees right normal temperature so the temperature went from like 250 something like that to like 72 degrees like in a half a second so he just dunked in water Rick was the black box on the car back in the 70s and 80s no because we didn't have the computer controls back that darn it I could have found out what my daughter did to her vehicle hey that's another show i have to interrupt everybody and ask all of you to welcome carol to the show she's not a new caller

but she is a female and we love talking to the girls. Good morning, Carol. Good morning. I'm how you doing today? Thank you for holding. I love the show. If I have a 2019 van, Dodge Caravan, would it have a black box?

What year was that one? 19? Oh, 2019? Yes, because when we say black box, it's actually using that as a generic term because each computer in the car for the engine transmission the airbags and the brake system

all of those are going to have their own computer and they all have their own separate memory recording it so it's not like there's just one box that there's storing all this at one point there was one box and it was put in a secret location that nobody knew the location of it. I mean, you could find it, but that was a long time ago.

Nope. It's always been the ABS computer was the first one to have the information stored. I'll challenge you on that, Rick, but you'll go ahead. Okay. Well, I have a few questions, but one is my parents brought in their Toyota Avalon to your dealership like yesterday. they had a little oil leak on the driveway, and they replaced the oil. It says F-I-P-G oil pan, and it just seems very expensive to replace that $597.

What do you think? Well, it's actually quite a bit of work on some of the cars to remove that oil pan, and the FIPPage, as we call it, FIPG, is actually an acronym for form in place gasket material. It's almost like a silicone material that when you remove the oil pan, you take all the bolts out and you have to literally pull it loose from this silicon glue, clean all the old stuff off, get everything sparkling clean, reapply a new layer, put it back up and put the bolts back in.

But in some cases there's also the exhaust pipes running underneath it. underneath it did you have to remove and other items some of the cars you even have to loosen the motor mounts and jack the engine up a little ways to get the pan out past the frame so some cars can be a whole lot of work just to pull that oil pan down and then reseal it so it was just re-sealed there wasn't like a hole in the pan or anything I guess right well how much do you think it should cost again that's that's that's that That's going to depend upon the different cars. Yeah, because when it said the oil plant, I thought they got a new oil pan,

but it's just re-sealing it. It just sounds like a lot, $597. Unfortunately, cars are like everything else. They've gotten a lot more expensive, and the repairs have gotten a whole lot more expensive. Yeah. Well, my parents wanted to get a new, or this is 2003 Avalon and they wanted to get a newer one

and years ago my dad like was afraid to get his credit stolen so he froze his credit so technically he's got money in the bank and everything but technically he can't really get a new credit card he's trying to change that by writing the place and stuff

but do you give can he be able to buy a card from you with not technically be able to get a new credit card or something do you have your own credit like place or something i think that yeah that would have to go to stew stew what was the question um can you finance her father had frozen his credit years ago because he was concerned about identity theft and so he doesn't have a credit card or anything right now and she's wondering, can he still buy a car without credit cards or without a credit rating? Well, he has a credit card now, but you can't get a new one.

Like a couple years ago, when Costco changed what credit cards they used, they couldn't get that new one. Right, when they went from Amex to, they stopped using Amex. So, Carol, you're asking whether or not Earl Stewart, Toyota, could finance the next purchase that you're going to make, or your father's going to make? Yeah, if they could get a car without being able to do that. Stu would be able to answer that question. Sure.

It's better if you have a lot of a big established credit history to get approved for a loan. And I'm not talking about our dealership, you know, anything that you're buying with credit. Right. So the more established credit, the better situation you are. However, most lenders will consider, you know, other credit situations. So anything that helps reduce their risk. risk will help an approval on the loan. So that would be lowering the amount of the loan with a down payment, maybe getting a co-signer with established credit to go on the loan with you.

In some cases, they might even do what they can treat them to like a first-time buyer situation, whereas long there's nothing bad on the credit, there's a good chance to get approved for a loan. So because that history is limited, that's not going to necessarily stop them from getting a loan. the best thing to do is to have an application submitted once you're aware of the car that you want to get an inquiry won't hurt the credit so it's worth taking a shot provided you go through all the steps and making sure that you're getting a good deal on the car he's considering

so in other words no it's not a hopeless case it might be a little bit more difficult but there's always a shot how long has your dad had his credit frozen it's probably been about 10 years he has a credit card that he uses all the time he used it when he you know we're talking specifically about his credit being

a frozen I'm sure he's probably got credit cards and all of that well Carol as Sue said it's not you know a hopeless case you'll definitely be able to to purchase. That's Earl's phone over there if anybody's wondering what's going on.

I was getting bored. I don't think that... I was playing poker. I don't think that you have a problem with purchasing a vehicle. So, Carol, give us a call back and let us know how everything turned out for you. We loved hearing from you again. Stay in touch. And spread the word, ladies, $50 for the first.

two new lady callers. Have a great weekend. Were you really playing poker over there? No, you weren't. Don't tell anybody. We're live globally. Speaking of ladies, we have, Earl and I were talking about this article that was in the newspaper recently

about car size and women who sustain injuries. And there was a study that took place And it was quite interesting that smaller, lighter vehicles that women more often drive and types of crashes they get into may explain why they are more likely to suffer such serious injuries, serious injuries. And it was an interesting article, and I'm sure you can pull it up on Google. It just came out just this past Thursday. And among the findings were that front crashes, women were three times as likely to experience a broken bone, a concussion, or other moderate injuries, and twice the likely to suffer a serious one like a collapsed lung. And when they talked about this research that was done, they talk about women in smaller vehicles. I want to tell you, when I'm out on the road, this will be directed at Rick, I see more women driving trucks.

And I'm just wondering where this study came from. Well, the men drive the bigger trucks, and they say, you know, men, a lot of men tend to feel more masculine by having larger vehicles. And women, you know, they're the different nature is not to have, they might have a truck, they have a smaller truck. These giant trucks that you see with the diesel smoke human out, I've never seen a woman doing that. And I'm sure there is one out there, but usually. But

it comes down to the basic problem that we have, again, we're looking at equality here. Women pay the same amount of money for a car as a man does. A man has a standard on safety. So when you buy a car, the National Highway Traffic Safety Association has standards. The cars have to pass

crash test. They crash test the cars with men models, not women, and not children, just men. So the men have a car that certifies safe, but it's not as safe for the woman. And just through what we should know from selling cars and manufacturing cars, the women do tend to buy smaller cars. And if you have a large car collide with a smaller car, guess which one gets hit the worst and has the most injury? So we have a phenomenon now where women are experiencing far more injuries in deaths, percentage-wise, than men, only because they're smaller human beings, and also because the testing of cars is not for women's physical structure. So it's just crazy. You should have a car that has a safety standard that's for females and for male. Absolutely.

And, you know, it was recently within, I'd say the last year or two. that I was reading that women weren't even considered in these crash tests, and now they absolutely are. So that's a good thing. But back to this article, men and women crashed in many vans and SUVs about as equal proportions. And the researchers, they found this out also. And around 70% of women crashed in cars compared with 60% of men. And more. then 20% of men crashed in a pickup compared to less than 5% for women. So it was an interesting article. And if you have anything, a comment, give us a call toll-free at 877-960-99-60.

And remember, ladies, first two new lady callers, you can win yourself $50. So give us a call. Don't forget, www. www.a.R.9M.com. All right, well, speaking of anonymous feedback, let's jump over there and see if anybody has sent any in. And I already know the answers to that question because they've been commenting all week. We're going to start with one about tire pressure, and I think this is a critique of some advice that we gave. That came in just a couple of days ago. The pressure noted on the sidewall of the tire is the never exceed cold tire pressure.

It is typically 45 to 55 PSI, pounds per square inch, and far above the pressure recommended by the manufacturer on the sticker on the door gym, which is typically 30 to 35 PSI. It would result in a very rough and uncomfortable ride. You should direct viewers to the sticker, not the tire sidewall. To your viewer's question, the pressure goes down by approximately one pound per square inch for each 10 degree that the ambient temperature falls. Tires should be inflated to the recommended cold pressure before the car is driven. And I'll turn it over to the two tire experts that we have, because Earl is a tire expert as well.

Well, here, I'll give a... Oh, no, wait a second. Don't forget me. I check girls' tires. I have pictures of me on Facebook. I can confirm and verify this. I check the PSI. All right.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. The point he makes is that it can be a very rough, uncomfortable ride. And that was my comment, and I'll let Rick give you the technicalities. But a very rough and uncomfortable ride, or is in the fanny of the beholder. And you take two or three different people and they can get in the same car and go to the same road at the same speed

and each one of them will have a different idea about how smooth the ride is. So you have to tailor what you consider an uncomfortable ride for yourself, not for somebody else. There is one thing about a highly inflated tire as long as you don't over-inflated. We certainly don't recommend that.

But if you stay below the, the limit of what the tire manufacturer says, you're not going to have a problem with overinflation, meaning it's not going to blow up on you, and it's not going to cause uneven wear, and it's going to give you much better, much better tire wear on a highly inflated tire. But it might be too uncomfortable,

so you have to play it with a little bit, and if you have a very sensitive fanny, you might want to take it right down to the manufacturer's recommendation. and pay more on gas. Exactly. So you have to weigh the fuel savings and the tire wear savings against your comfort and it's different for everybody. With that said, Rick, it's all yours.

One size doesn't fit all. Exactly. And I agree absolutely with everything you said. I only dispute the texters one point and this is coming from a guy that I put air in, anywhere from 40 to 200 tires a day, the sidewall numbers may be as low as 35, because I've seen that on hundreds of tires,

and depending upon the make and model of the tire and the size of the tire can go as high as 60. So for the recommended safe pressure. That's usually on truck tires that are what they call light truck tires that are designed to last a lot longer, But most passenger cars, you're going to see 35 to 40 is the maximum pressure that the tires allowed to have, some of them going up to 45. Let me ask you a question, and I don't want to belabor the tire thing, but obviously there's a lot of other factors that affect the comfort of the ride on tires is one of them. Would it be less, say, in a luxury sedan like the one that you drive with a great suspension, great seats and all that,

maybe it's less important to have perfectly, you know, or softer tires as opposed to maybe a cheaper subcompact that you'd feel, you know, it doesn't quite have, that's not designed to really give you a soft right. If you have a car with a really good suspension and it's comfortable, you might not notice higher pressure in the tires. Well, I'll put this challenge out to anybody. If you have your tires set at 30 pounds and you drive that car and then you set it to 35, but you don't tell the driver that you increase the tire or you went down.

They're not going to notice. I would guarantee you there's not a driver out there that could tell the difference between 30 and 35 PSI and their tires. But if you told them, they'd know it. If you told them, oh, they'd feel it all day long. Okay, how about 40? And you didn't tell them. You might start to feel it a little bit then because the tires are getting progressively

harder. Depends on your fanny. This is a controversial. it, you know, can turn into a controversial topic because, as Stu alluded to the fact that Earl Stewart drives this luxury Lexus, I want to tell you, it's the most uncomfortable ride for me in the passenger side. And what changes that 150% is for me to be in the driver's side and holding on to that steering wheel. And the same thing applies to my avalon. but that's just me

so okay the boys club they're all rolling their eyes ladies give me a call tell me how you feel about that I just like I like

everybody there's so much humor here that nobody's catching on to this all right let's jump over to some text over here I'm glad you find this humorous I find everything humorous I love Saturday mornings

I can fix that you're going to be in the passenger seat of the Lexus No, no, no, no, no. I'm driving the day. Okay. This is really interesting. I've read about this recently, and if you have a new iPhone, you have this technology on your phone. So here's the texter.

Austin Russell is the founder of Luminar, is the maker of LiDAR sensors, and he's the youngest billionaire in the world. He's betting that LiDAR is the future of autonomous vehicles enabling them to see. And this runs contrary to Elon Musk, who believes that regular cameras and software will allow cars to see. LIDAR is used by nearly every manufacturer in their autonomous development projects and includes General Motors, Toyota, Volvo, et cetera, and it's going to be the tech used in the future Apple car. But Tesla is betting against everyone. So what are your thoughts, Earl? I'm always betting with Elon Musk. I don't know anybody smarter, and I don't know anybody that has surprised so many experts and embarrassed so many experts than Elon Musk.

He might be a silly guy, and he might embarrass other CEOs, but he's smarter than they are. So I go with Elon. You know what I don't understand? Cameras are so cheap. Software is cheap. You know, there's nothing physical there. Why not both?

I know there's advantages to both. I mean, Lider is really cool because it does 3D mapping, but it has a harder time with moving objects. And I think one part of Elon's argument is that it's still a developing technology, so it's not quite there. yet and we have cameras and software that can accomplish what he's trying to accomplish now i i mean just i'm not an engineer or a technician i'm thinking a combination of both you get the best of both worlds yeah absolutely yeah i saw the interview on squat box of this young this guy yeah he's 25 years

old i couldn't i just you know where were his beginnings he was just so amazing he's a he dropped out of stanford he's a brilliant guy he started manufacturing lasers in his parents garage when he was like 11 years old. So this guy's a genius, too. And he's hoping to sell his radar technology to every manufacturer and become an even bigger billionaire. Oh, boy. Don't bet against Elon.

All right. When it comes to dealer-installed accessories, what's worth taking? How do I handle it? If they say the accessory is already installed, so I have to pay for it. Do dealers do this just to make extra money? This is really unfair to consumers

like me who shop on a budget. That sounds like a set-up question because if there's one thing I probably overstated on this show that all dealer-installed accessories are worthless, and not literally, of course, that's an exaggeration to make my point, but they overcharge. And yes, there are only one reason for dealer-installed accessories, and that's to make a profit. In fact, that's a reason for the manufacturers installed accessories, but at least they're fairly priced or at least transparently priced. The dealers take their accessories, mark them up to 300%. And there's no factory warranty on these accessories. If you have something the dealer installed, you better hope that he's going to warrant it because the manufacturer won't.

And they usually have these accessories after the fact. You commit to a price on the car, you get quoted, you see an advertisement. And they throw in these accessories that are marked up 3 or 400% that sound good, but in fact are worth a fraction of what they're charging you. All right. This is from John in California, and he was listening to the conversation about the black box. And he says, good morning to everyone.

So does the black box store all the information on how you drive, does it also retain the info if a car has been in an accident or any type of impact? Rick mentioned that the auto technician can erase the black box info, so can a dealer do this to hide info from a used car buyer? And before we answer that, something Nancy said that got me thinking was, is it simple enough and quick enough to access this stuff if you're looking to buy a used car to say,

show me, I want to see how this car was driven? Is that something that could be accessed in a buying situation? Great question. It'd be kind of difficult because you'd have to get a technician involved with the computer, hook up to the car, and go in to do it. but it could be done, yes. Well, the question is, how much, based on what a dealer would charge,

what would be the time and the cost of someone said, tell me how this car was driven for the past X number of months? To pull up all the data and then print it out for them, be about an hour, really, at the most. That's not bad at a lot.

A dealer might charge the $150 or $200 for that. And just give us a brief summary of what everything you would. You would know the temperature extremes, you'd know the speed extremes, you'd know the braking extremes. You could say this car was driven sanely and reasonably for the past 12 months, or you could say this car was driven insanely. Yeah, for interpreting the data is a lot of it too. You have to know. It's like a spreadsheet, like a bunch of lines of stuff.

It's not, it's not like a summary. It doesn't say, hey. it actually will come up with such information as hard braking hard braking ABS activation you know somebody can make some money developing a program that we just

could summarize it and give it a score based on you know this has been driven hard break more than 75% of other vehicles like that airbag deployment would be listed yeah unless the computer was replaced then it wouldn't have that information anymore

you know for 150 or $200 and I was buying a car and paying $20,000 for somebody else's car. I think I'd pay that money to see what the black box is. This is a very... Great idea. Great idea and also a subject that's really capturing people's imaginations. Dog Walker Dave in Palm Beach, Texas, and he says, could the black box be used to determine what repairs or problems had occurred to a use car

that's something that Carfax might not provide? And that's exactly what we're talking about right now. Some of that information might be available, but bear in mind, too, that a Toyota can only be accessed by a Toyota technician. A Ford would require a Ford technician. A Lexus would require a Lexus technician because the software is different degrees. There's legislation right now in Tallahassee in Florida, and I think in a lot of other states, to make all that information available to all technicians. And the manufacturers and the dealers are lobbying heavily to keep it proprietary within the make of the car. So that's not going to always be that way.

I guarantee you eventually all this information will be available to any qualified technician. You don't have to be a Honda technician to look at a Chevrolet black box and interpret it after the legislation says it's okay. right now it's kind of like a monopoly if you want to get your car diagnosed you're going to have to go to the dealership make of dealer that you own the car to it yeah there are some things you can get now that plug into the data port and communicate with the smartphone it gives you data on your car and I don't know how detailed is if it's as good as the manufacturer's one but that's available you can get that on Amazon and you know play around with it and some of it's not terribly well that's like there there are scan tools that you can buy generic from say Snap on or others and these are that will work on every model of car, but it's only going to give you about, I'm going to say, 50 to 60 percent of the in-depth that you can get with the software that is dedicated for that manufacturer. How detailed does the information become, you mentioned earlier about Toyota, Honda, I'll throw in Chevrolet, that box that we're talking about, does each box accumulate just?

so much data? Well, the ABS computer will record anything that it sees as hard acceleration, hard braking, hard-cornering, because all the computers talk to themselves. So each of the computers has its own memory system where it stores data. So some will have a little more in-depth data than other computers in the car, but the tech stream would be, a computer would be able to talk to each of them and look at what their record of behavior is for whatever incident it might have seen. Interesting. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And don't forget, www.W.W.W.com and ladies, we've got so much going on here,

so much information. We'd love to hear from you. First, two new lady callers. You can win yourself $50. Give us a call. We're going to go to Rick, who's got some YouTube's over there. I've got a couple of my one. Jimmy, sorry about the delay here. He's a new listener, new subscriber on YouTube here, and he says, can you please elaborate on the computer chip shortage for, you know, obviously due to COVID and how it's affecting the prices of new and used vehicles? And, well, So it's affected, it's caused shutdowns.

Basically, a lot of this had to do with planning for the amount of, and last year with COVID, let me rewind a little bit. A lot of the manufacturers for the circuits, these semiconductors, were expecting to be a much harder impact on the car business than it did. Car business recovered super fast and is having one of the greatest years ever. So a lot of these, the supply chain, it kind of illustrates how interconnected all these supply chains are, was once these orders were cut back down, anticipating slow car sales, to get back that supply chain going again, it affected the production of General Motors

for all the manufacturers, including Toyota. It depends. General Motors is affected by a lot more than, say, Toyota. Toyota, it's really affecting just Tundras, which is a low-volume seller for Toyota. But it will affect the prices. It's just a simple economic fact. when the supply goes down, the prices will go up. And the shortage of microchips is not just for automobiles. There's a worldwide shortage for microchips. So a manufacturer of microchips makes microchips for cars and for refrigerators and for telephones and everything else. Everything's got a microchip in it.

So with a huge surge in high-tech industry, there's just a shortage. And it's temporary and it will go away and then there will be an oversupply. But yeah, anytime if a car dealer has a hard problem getting a particular model car because they can't build enough SUVs of his make because the microchip problem and he only has a few on the lot, he's going to charge a hell of a lot more money than if he had too many on the lot. In fact, we raised the prices on our tenders. Yeah.

As a result. Exactly. Not crazy. We didn't go nuts. Okay. Okay. I'm going to interrupt you. Got a phone call.

because we do have a first-time caller and it's linda who's calling from west palm beach welcome to earl stewart on cars linda hi nice to be here thank you conversation thank you what can we do for you this morning well what i wanted to ask was um when you do go into a dealership and buy a new car and then you sit down with the uh finance person uh and they try to sell you all the different, you know, extra key locks and, you know, different accessories to your car, as well as an extended warranty.

Do those people make money on what they sell to you? Oh, certainly. Yes. That's what their salaries mean. Definitely. Everybody's paid on the commission, so the more add-ons to the car, that increases the profit, and a car salesman will make, you know,

20, 25% of that profit. So the more garbage that they can load on, especially low-cost stuff that they can really inflate the price, that's just a windfall for any salesperson who can sell it. Yeah, that's a little icing on the cake, Carol. Carol, are you, or excuse me, Linda, are you speaking of yourself going into the dealership alone? Well, usually I do buy my cars by myself.

occasionally my husband comes with me but I I dread absolutely dread going into that finance office because I usually don't take the extended warranty I don't buy any of the extra stuff and it's just pressure and you not only did it's trying to negotiate the price on the car but then you go in there and you get beat over the head by the finance guy yeah and in times where I told them no I don't want the warranty and then when I look at my receipt before I sign it, the charge for the warranty was on there. And I said to him, what's this $1,200? And he said, oh, what's that? Oh, oh, sorry. I ended up putting it on there. I'm sorry, I made a mistake. And I'm thinking, yeah, and if I didn't really critique, if I didn't

critique this, how would that mistake ever be found? Yeah, Linda, you are definitely an educated consumer, that's for sure. And you stressing that you go through a lot of stress, it's a workout. It is a workout from the very beginning. And to be an educated consumer, knowledge is power. And, boy, I'll tell you what, there are more people today in the 21st century who have control over walking into a dealership, whether they're alone or not. And the reason for that is because they know that the people that they meet in the dealership, they're not there to make a friend.

you are there to make a purchase and you are going to have to jump through some hoops from the time you purchase a car to, well, not purchase it, but you're getting, slowly getting to the F&I department. And once you get into that box that they call it, well, it's every man for himself unless you are in total control and you can say no. right right and it and it is a stressful thing and my parents bought a car from another dealership on north lake not Earl and my dad came by my house to show me the car and I was like beautiful beautiful and he showed me the receipt and I said oh I said you both the warranty I said you don't you usually buy a warranty but you know he's in his 80s and I thought maybe he just doesn't want to have the And he said, no, I didn't buy the warranty. I said, yes, you did.

Right here on the machine. And then I was like, he bought the insurance for the keys. You bought, oh, my God, he bought everything. So he said, no. He goes, I went into the office. And the guy just said, oh, this is for your warranty sign here. This is for your ex-peas sign here. I said, no, Dad.

These are all extras. So I called the guy who sold him the car immediately, the salesman. And he said, come right back with the receipt. And that's what we did. And believe me, they did not like to see me walking in there with my parents. Yeah. It was great that you were there for them because deception runs deep, whether you're in the showroom, whether you're in F&I, whether you're in service everywhere. And you really have to, you know, be aware of all of it.

And you know what? Your dad, I think you said he was in his 80s? 86, yeah. 86, you know, how does he feel? There you are, pointing out. out the fact that he said no to this warranty and you're pointing out the fact that it's in the contract how does he feel i mean this man has been around a long time and probably taught you a whole lot and your mother and it and it's exactly and it all the way around it's just a really bad

feeling but the positive you were there to take a look at the contract but like i said deception runs deep and you really have to be careful and you've got to dot those eyes cross those T's. And be your own advocate for absolutely short. And like you said, they're not your friends.

Just look, watch. Yeah. What people are putting on that ask questions. Don't be great. Yeah, exactly. Linda, congratulations. You won yourself $50. It was great talking to you.

Oh, thank you. Stay in touch. We love hearing from the ladies. Have a great weekend. Happy Valentine's Day. Thank you. You as well. Bye-bye.

877-960. Or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Back to Rick. He has some new tubes. I got one more here. Donovan. It says, I've got a friend who purchased a car recently. and initially they got a very high interest rate.

The dealer said they had poor credit, which they don't. After refusing the rate in the deal, the dealer magically lowered the interest rate to a very low rate to close the deal. But to get that rate, they said his friend had to buy a warranty from the dealer for almost $3,000. Illegal.

They said they could cancel it after three payments were made and they were given a form to cancel it. His question is, do they actually have to wait the three payments before they can cancel the warranty? Oh, I got the answer to this one. Well, number one, that's illegal. That's breaking the law. Number two, the person trying to sell that warranty told them to cancel after 90 days

because in his pay plan, he's protected against any chargebacks or cancellations that happen after 90 days. So he can sell them the warranty illegal because he tied it to the financing. get paid a commission, and then the customer cancels in 90 days, and he gets to keep that commission. If they canceled it within the 90 days, he loses it. So this is a disgustingly unethical and criminal activity that was just described by the YouTube commenter. Wow. Donovan.

Donovan, that's real bad. As a matter of fact, we haven't even run into that on our mystery shopping reports. Part of the reason is that we don't ever really get to go into finance, which is just a shame. It's really hard to do. We should. We should try, but it's really difficult. But that was about as bad as they come right there. I loved all those adjectives you used.

It upset me. All right. You're good over there? Yep, quite a caught up. Johnny from Riviera Beach has a very interesting question. Very curious to hear Earl's take on this. He says, Earl, do you think you'll ever accept Doggy Coin as a down payment on a new car? And Doggy Coin, I had to look it up, and Johnny explained it. It's a new cryptocurrency.

It looks like it says Dodge Coin, but it's pronounced Doggy Coin. It's got a picture of a Japanese dog on it. And he asked because there's a Nissan dealer in Daytona that says they're accepting doggy coin as a down payment on newer used cars. And before we get into it, we did get set up to accept Bitcoin years ago, and we did that. We actually sold a car using Bitcoin. and my take is that it's cryptocurrencies are too volatile now to to really you know they swing so wildly in value you could take a payment on a car in the morning

and it might Bitcoin might be worth $27,000 and the afternoon might be worth $20,000. But the trick is you convert instantly into dollars so a lot of people are taking Bitcoin and there's nothing true nothing new under heaven and earth somebody said a long time ago nice thing about being in the business is long as long as I have. It's been a trick, a game of car dealers. They kind of pioneered accepting anything in payment. I took a cow one time on payment, and people, you'll take whatever people have to pay, and then you convert it to cash. So we have back a long time ago, it seemed to be, happen more then than now, but people come in and say, look, I don't have any cash, but I need to buy car, I've got a lawnmower, I've got, I got this ring, I've got, you know, and we would accept anything in payment, but first we'd go out and we would get a bid from a pawn shop

or from a secondhand store, and we would have the thing placed and bought before we took it in, and that's what they do with Bitcoin. That's what they do with doggy currency. So with the wallet, the Bitcoin wallet, you can transfer, you can convert it instantly the dollars or how long do you have to wait before you can convert it? It's insistently. Instantly. You just, you take, it's like a, you pay a commission like you do on a credit card. So if someone gave me $50,000 in Bitcoin, I could go to my app on my phone and immediately transfer it to the U.S. currency and there's no more risk.

You have zero risk. You pay a, you pay a little surcharge for the service of converting it. to U.S. dollars. Right. And for people to use it, that is considered a cash thing. So there's like, there's IRS regulations. So if you take anything that's $10,000 or more, there's a form that's been filled out. So for you money launderers out there, it's kind of, it's hard to get away with it. You know, and to your point about the value and you're talking, you know, $27,000 and, you know, maybe by, and that's a 2 o'clock and maybe by 3 o'clock, you know, it's $20,000. so I would think that that would be instant

if you're not on the ball. If you don't do that, you're on the ball. And if you've been watching the news lately, Bitcoin is everywhere and everyone is talking about it and using it. That's right. All right. Let's see what else we got here.

Well, we saw the one about the dealer installed accessories. Let's go. We're doing anonymous feedback. And this one says, I can't get approved for a car loan. I do not want to go to a buy-her pay-hair place. What are my options? Well, you've got a problem, you know, if you, when you say you can't get approved, I would question, you know, it's, you have to give us a little more information.

Your beacon score, FICA score, we need to start somewhere. If you have really bad credit with bankruptcies and repossessions, then you just can't buy a car. And it's a sad thing. Sometimes your only option is to buy-heer pay-here, and we've talked about this on the show before. Just like anything else in life, there are good companies and bad companies on the buy-heer pay-hair. There are people that are honest, but even the honest buy-year-pay-here companies charge high-interest, and they sometimes require significant down-payments often. So if you don't have a significant down-payment and you have bad credit, you're just not going to be able to.

to buy a car anywhere. Tough thing. Uber. Yeah. Renting, by the way, is not a bad option. If you shop around, you can rent a car. If you get a 90-day or six-month rental,

you have to have a credit card if you rent a car, and that can be a problem but you have terrible credit, but sometimes rental is your only option. Yeah, there's a lot of folks out there that you know, reconsider purchasing a car, renting a car, use new whatever why they consider uber lift is because they don't use a car that often and they

just eliminate that car payment or falling into these deceptive hands at i hear pay here so that's another option all right hello earl nancy at al i'm a licensed independent florida dealer and I buy vehicles on Mannheim Simulast at location throughout the country. I see Carvana purchasing vehicles with a condition report that is below a grade that my customers would accept. I wonder how many vehicles Carvana has had rejected at the time of delivery. And thanks to us for keeping up the good work, and just to let everybody know, most of the wholesale buying that dealers do is done online now. And he mentioned Mannheim.

Mannheim owns just about every car auction in the country. Not all of them. There's other auctions, but they're the big players in the business, and they have something called OVE, which is its online vehicle exchange, simulcast, and dealers with licenses can go online and see these cars that are going to run, and they have these condition reports, and the condition reports explains just the mechanical and cosmetic condition of the car, and it gives it a grade. So you have an idea of what you're buying.

And if you buy a car, it doesn't match the condition report, which is called the CR. You have a right to return the vehicle to the auction and the seller would have to return the money. So he's mentioning Carvana, which is just jumped into the sphere here with a lot of advertisement and it's online buying. And I'll turn that over to Earl. I've heard no reports that they were trying to take advantage of any customers,

nothing unethical underhanded. They do buy a lot of cars today. with the relative shortage of use cars, not bad shortage, it's getting, it will improve as time goes by. But Carvana has a very good money back guarantee. And they are very well financed, thanks for their initial public offering,

and they are losing money. And but that amount of money they're losing is narrowing. And so when you buy a car from anybody, you want to be sure to get a charge, checked out. So this independent dealer that will send us the anonymous feedback, they're competition, and

they're here to stay, and they're not the only ones. And the reason that people are doing business with Carvana is because it's online and it's easy. And you can go online, you can buy a car, sight unseen, they will deliver it to your home, they will appraise your car at your home, take the trade-in back, and leave you the new car, and you pay them online,

and if you don't like it, you're going to return it. So that's the future of the car business. So to the texter, anonymous feedbacker, my suggestion to you is go online, push your online business, try to match what Carvana does, and off-lease-only.com does, and what CarMax does, and Vroom does, and you'll be competitive.

Carvana sell so many cars because dealers have just ruined everything because they dominate for so long and everybody hates dealers. Nobody wants to go to a car dealership and Carvana offers an alternative to that and it's just resonating. We're going to ask, I already did,

I just texted our buyer, our wholesale guy, to go online just to double check that because we can do the same thing to see what kind of vehicles they're buying and we'll report on it either way next week and let you know, are they buying cars that are not in good condition or is that not true?

And the reason I say that, I'm not questioning the honesty of the texter, but it is a threat to car dealers, and a lot of car dealers are reacting the opposite of the way Earl suggested. The smartest thing they do is fight fire with fire. Give customers what they want. Don't fight them and claim that they are somehow a nefarious intrusion into the car business. They're doing something that customers want, so you better figure out that for yourself. well i'll tell you what folks have so much information this morning and our listeners sharing information with us what a great show and i just want to take a moment to thank all of you for being a part of this show every saturday morning your presence is certainly very important and we appreciate it so thank you

877-960-99-60 or you can text us at 772-497-6530 now back to stew okay more anonymous feedback I bought a Nissan up here in Orlando last Sunday on Monday I decided that the whole process was rushed by both me and the dealership I drove to dealership the first thing in the morning I had put less miles on the car than we did on the test drive but the dealer refused to take it back and said the sales final. They offered to let me trade it in on another new Nissan, but this would also require another

$4,000 from May. What can I do? Well, you're really stuck. And what you just described happens at most dealerships when you buy a car and sign in, put your name on the line, give them your money, and take it home,

you bought a car and you can't take it back. In cases they described, they'll let you take it back, but you have to trade it on another car, then you're really out of control because they could price the next car you want to buy at anything they want. And they're going to probably try to make more money than they did on the first car if they take the first car back. So the only way you can get out of that is find somebody that has a money bank guarantee. We talked about Carvanna, CarMax, Broom,

a lot of these online companies do have guarantees that are legitimate. but don't take the car home until you are absolutely sure that you want to keep it. And the salesperson's paid on the commission, his manager's paid on commission, the dealer is paid on commission because he makes a profit. And they probably made $4,500, if you're lucky, it might have been $1,000 or $2,000. The commission is 25% of the profit they sold to the car for. So when you come back three or four days later and say, I changed my mind, the salesman's thinking about reaching into his pocket and taking $500 out and given it back. And he's not going to do that. Ain't going to happen.com.

Ain't going to happen.com. And the fact that they're asking for $4,000 to help you out of the trade, that's really illustrative of the kind of deal that you got. If they were willing to help you, and we've done this, they could structure a deal that wouldn't be as painful. what sounds like they're doing is they made a full pop, as they say, on the first sale, and they want to make another full pop. And so to get that deal, they're basically, they want to make cover of their profit and the depreciation because, well, in reality, there shouldn't be any depreciation because they can stop the paperwork. It's never going to get titled. It's one day later, so they're just bad guys. And like Carl said, there's not a whole lot you can do. It just sucks.

Real bad guys. and what you can do, expose them. Do you want to do that? Absolutely. And you can expose them in every way. You can get on the Internet, and I'm going to tell you what, what a powerful place to go. And also you can go to Earl on Cars.

Ashley Moody, the Attorney General, filed a complaint. There's a lot you can do. That's not going to work because it's legal. I mean, it's legal in Florida to sell a car and have a sale final and you don't take the car back. And virtually every car dealer has that. You're better off letting us know the name of the dealer and we'll read it out loud next Saturday. Yeah, that's even a better idea, Stu. Let us know who you dealt with.

It's not unheard of. Everybody lets us know all the time. That's right. We are going to go to Jim, who is calling us from Boynton Beach. Good morning, Jim. Good morning. I have a Mazda 6, and when I pull up to like a traffic pipe or I'm sitting steady in a parking lot or something like that, my radio just randomly takes over and will start changing channels, and you basically can't control it until you take your foot off the break. I looked on Google, and I see actually a big issue with many of them, and I called the dealership, sorry.

Sorry, I call it a dealership. They said it might be a software update that I need to do, but they're talking about $250 for that update. And I was wondering, since it's an SD card that the update goes on to, can I just download that from Maz's website or would it be suggested to go to a dealership or something like that? Hmm. How old is the car?

In 2017. Yeah, so you're just out of warranty on the 336 that most of them have. Yeah, I got 142,000 miles on it. Ah, well, my suggestion, really, I would go in and talk to the service manager and say, hey, wait a minute, you know, this seems a little odd for this to be having, you know, a software update. And I'm wondering why they would charge so much for a software update. I mean, I think the maximum that we might charge on a car that's out of warranty for that on the radio is about $150 because it's simply downloaded to the computer and upload to the radio. But I can't see $250. Wow.

I don't think it's something that you're going to be able to download from any sort of Mazda website because they're probably not going to simply allow that to go right out to the public if they're making money on it. Jim, which was the dealer? Could you tell us the name of the dealer? I honestly don't remember. I just randomly called one. Somewhere near Boynton Beach, I just called because I actually bought my car through drive time. And I was just calling Mazda to see what if they've heard of the issue. And I talked to the service manager, and that's what he said.

You know, it could be as simple as an update or it could be a screen problem, which we're talking about $1,000, not more. So, you know, I just felt like it was kind of high, and I looked at if there was a self-fix to this. And I saw you can download for the navigation system, like a software update. I was wondering if that would be the same thing, or if I'm just looking to, like, cost me a lot more money by doing it myself, if I could. I'd call another Mazda dealer. If there's a, Gunther has a Mazda dealership. I'm not sure if it's near Boynton, I think it might be. but they're a good reliable dealership.

I'd call another and try to get, as Rick says, try to get through to the boss. Don't ask, don't get an assistant service manager or get the service manager and talk to a couple places. I think they're trying to hijack on the price there. And if they do say that you need a new radio, if that comes out to that,

and the factory radios, I know they can be a thousand or more, I would look into the idea of Best Buy or some other place for an aftermarket radio and get 2021 technology that you can have installed by their crew for around $500 to $600 maximum and have a top-of-the-line stereo with the Bluetooth car play backup camera the whole nine yards. Right. Now, would it be wise to call Mazdao Corporation itself because, like I said, looked on this and there's like numerous complaints about the thing that happened to many models of the Mazda that this is happening would that something to get a recall started on it or

you can call is probably all the manufacturer does is call the dealer back the good thing about that is that the complaint that goes through the manufacturer usually comes to the service manager and the service manager is who you who you want to talk to so you could do both you could do the 800 number to Mazda. They would contact the service department. The manager would see it, and you could talk to the manager directly. That would be a double whammy. It might help expedite things. Manufacturers can't tell the dealer what to do, unfortunately. They can only suggest, but they don't. The dealer is an independent businessman. Okay, okay. I appreciate your help.

Thanks for the call, Jim. Good luck, and call us back and let us know how it went. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-49760 I think we're going to go back to stew yep we have a text question it's a technical one it says I have a question for Rick can any part of a rack and pinion be serviced at all Jonathan's going to put a picture of a rack and pinion on the screen so here's a picture where mine has a small leak it looks like it looks like it can be but the dealer says it can't be. And he wants $2,200 for a new OEM part. So the question is, where he drew a circle around that. It's on the screen now. Can it be fixed? Or is the new new Well, if it's just a very small amount and it's the rubber boot, if the boot is torn, we can replace our, at our dealership, we generally will replace the rubber boot. But depending upon the design of the rack, if it's leaking at that body, or the seals inside have started leaking,

then no, we generally do not repair the racks because we just don't have the parts or the capability for overhauling it. It's actually a much better option at that point to put a new rack in it. Okay, so it sounds like they were shooting them straight. Yeah. Okay.

That's a good question, though. It's an expensive part $2,200. You better ask some questions for sure. Absolutely. It's kind of like what you always say. And get a second opinion on it. Can they show me? A lot of times you say,

show me is that one of the things that's easy to show to a car owner it can be you can get under a shine a flashlight up there quite often you can see relatively well on them some of you may have to kind of get at a weird angle to see it but okay there you go all right that's what we're here for we have one last text and it says i have apple car play and i love it for the most part i do have a problem though car play is supposed to come on if my iPhone is tethered and i turn on the car. Half of the time I have to reconnect Apple CarPlay because it doesn't come on automatically. Is this a phone issue or a car issue, and what can I do? Stu, I'm going to interrupt you and Rick. That might be a lengthy answer, and we're going

to go to the phones where I have Roberta, who is a first-time caller. She's calling us from Jupiter. Welcome to the show, Roberta. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Nice to hear from you. Thank you. Congratulations. Your female caller number two, $50. Oh, how wonderful. Thank you.

You're welcome. What can we do for you? I just wanted to see how much I'm enjoying the show. I feel like I'm a new listener. My sister had told me about the show, and I'm learning a lot, and it's very interesting, so I wanted to thank you. Oh, thank you so much for the compliment. Not only that, but for all the ladies that are listening to your comment.

You're encouraging them to give us a call. We're really building a platform here. Thank you so much. Hope to hear from you soon. Well, I appreciate it. Okay. Thank you. Happy Valentine's Day.

Thanks, the same to you. Have a great day. Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay, I can jump back over to the question. Go ahead. Now, when she says, when they say reconnect the Apple Carplay, I mean, actually unplug the phone or re-plug it in,

is I've actually noticed Let's restate the question because we got the Oh yeah It says yeah The texter has Apple Carplay And periodically they say Half the time when they turn on the car and the phone is plugged in

Apple CarPlay doesn't come back up They have to reconnect so I'm assuming And the reason I'm going to make an assumption here because this has happened to me before Happens to me too So right but mine is wireless I have a wireless connection because Most of them are tethered out of the only one that's

wireless. It comes on and you have to go into the settings and refine the phone and connect it. Wow. So, and my phone is up to day. I assume my car is up to date. So I just figured it's one of those things you've got to live with. That actually might be an issue with the

newer phone. I've got an aftermarket radio in my truck that's about four or five years old now and I was using, it has Apple CarPlay and I was using it with my iPhone 6 that I had and it was flawless all the time. I just recently got the new 12 and I've noticed that if I accidentally bumped the cable just a little bit, it cuts out car play as though I had just

unplugged the phone. Let me just jump in here because let me give a comment that I think will apply to everybody. You just heard three people that are all experts, especially Rick, having problems with something that's supposed to be so great, which is Apple Carplay, different cars. And Apple CarPlay is great. And speaking from a guy that bridges generations,

a lot of generations, and who got his feet firmly planted in the modern 21st century, and I'm pretty cyber-savvy for an old guy, you have to have a temperament that allows you to get along with Internet technology that's

It's so complex, we're really ahead of everything. And when I get in my car, I just have to calm down and realize something's going to happen. When I go home, Alexa's going to have a problem. My automatic air conditioning thermostat is going to have a problem. All these things. It can be a variety of problems. It can be Comcast. It can be AT&T.

It can be Bluetooth. It can be an electrical issue. can be somebody unplugged your modem and didn't plug it in properly. Usually the simple answer is something actually. But you just have to roll the punches. If you're from my generation, I was born 1940, and you brought a car when things were really basic, and you're buying a brand new 2021 today, prepare yourself for a crazy wild ride of technology and relax. Don't let it get you upset. And it's just going to happen.

It's going to be, you're going to have these problems. I think it's basically what they call chaos theory. These systems have gotten so complex that there's just so many, one little thing can cause the whole system to go haywire because it just seems like that butterfly effect. One little change, it expands the issues out. And the fall lies with the manufacturers who are pushing the technology, because when they advertise it and show it to you,

they don't show it when it doesn't work. They show it to you when it works perfectly. And when it works perfectly, it is so cool, everybody's got to have it. Then you buy the car, and it starts out where the salesman doesn't understand it when he sells it to you. So he doesn't explain the car to you. And even the technicians sometimes don't understand it.

When you bring it in to get it fixed, every dealership's probably got one or two guys that really know their stuff. really know their stuff, and the others don't know how to fix it. You get the wrong guy on the wrong day, you've got a problem. So all I'm saying is don't feel like the Lone Ranger when you're out there with the technical problems with the Bluetooth, and the Wi-Fi, and all the other, because everybody's going through the same thing. Just have patience and...

Yeah. Yeah. It's a delicate situation, you know, no matter which way you look at it, but, you know, Earl, as savvy as he is, and with so much technology knowledge, it's just amazing. And I feel really sorry for anyone out there that isn't up-to-date with the technology because it really requires education and re-education. And to the texter, the first thing I do, though, is make sure your phone has the latest software. Check, see if it's got the absolute latest software update. And then double check to make sure, you know, stop at your dealer.

check and see if your radio software is all the way up to date and possibly even try a different cable just for the fun of it to see if that makes a difference the cables that's that's that right I do that solves a lot of problems sometimes yep all right one last anonymous feedback and we might want to get to the mystery shopping report car max in Maplewood Minnesota is selling a 2019 Toyota Camry with two open recalls due to the vehicle may stall It's dated January 13th, 2020, in October 20, 2020.

The car's life started in Florida in April 2019. In May, 2019, was registered as rental in New York. It seems odd how it could go from Florida to New York to Minnesota and still have two open recalls for stalling for over a year. I assume recalls are repaired free to the car owner by the manufacturer, and CarMax would not have done that. And, well, the number one you touched on a big, big problem is that what percentage of recalls ever get done? Most don't get done, right?

I think only, I believe, 25%, usually. And if you're kind of new to the show, then you're not as familiar with our total exasperation with the fact that that's the fact that recalls are just not repaired. Use car dealers, and I'm not picking on CarMax, but I'm just saying use car dealers, it's kind of a pain in the butt for them to do that. they get a car and they want to sell it. In some cases, and it might be with the stalling recall, this could be the fuel pump thing it sounds like, in which case there's not a remedy for a lot of the cars out there, so it might not be possible to have the recall repairs done.

You know, what the government could do, we talked about this earlier than show, instead of making the recall repair on a new car, or any car, used car, recall repair has to be done by the manufacturer. Why? Well, because the manufacturer is trained and qualified to do it with the proper machinery. Make that available to anybody. But build a manufacturer.

CarMax, listen, you're going to have to pass, you've got to these technicians, you have to buy this equipment, you're going to have to pass the test, and once you're qualified to do diagnostics on Hondas, then you can do the, and they fix them themselves. CarMax doesn't want to have to wait to send their car to a Honda dealer because the Honda dealer puts them on the, at the end, of the line. Their customers, that Honda Dealer's customers, go to the front of the line. Another competitor, and CarMax is a competitor, goes to the end of the line. If Carmack sends their car, their used car to a Honda dealer, it'll be there for two weeks. Time is money. So the recall doesn't get fixed. The federal government should make any qualified technician licensed to fix the recall. And it could be a money-making proposition. You put market forces on it,

and the manufacturer with the recall has got to reimburse the dealer who fixes it. Exactly. There we go. Hey, we're all cut up with text, anonymous feedback, and everything else. Great. We have a mystery shopping report coming up from Mazda of Palm Beach. You want to stay tuned and stay right where you are and listen. And also, before we go to the mystery shopping report,

I want to remind everyone that in the Palm Beach Weekly, the Palm Beach, Florida Weekly, column appears and it's a it's great it's really very informative and it's answers to top 10 devious statements made by car salesmen and if that's not enough you can read auto dealers think and act differently from their manufacturers and that too is a great read all of that at uh earl on cars if you haven't picked up the poem beach florida weekly or the hometown news so now we're going to get to the recovering car dealer, and folks would like you to vote. So stay tuned, listen, and vote. Okay, Palm Beach, Mazda, it's changed hands several times.

In 2017, Greco Mazda on North Lake Boulevard, North Palm Beach, was sold to Don T. Leah, a car dealer from New York, who I've never heard of. Interesting phenomenon. We're getting a lot of people that are coming to town and buying up dealerships, and new people from out of town. Don T. Leah is one of these. You know I'm my pronouncing Leah right or is it Laya?

I think it's Leah, and we actually, when that happened, we actually considered buying that dealership, and we felt the asking price a little too steep, and Don T. Leah came down from New York and paid the full Monty on that. Leah Auto Group, 22 dealerships. He's a big guy. Normally I've heard of dealers that have that many dealerships.

He's in Connecticut and New York, Massachusetts. Now he's in North Palm Beach. Greco Monster was actually sold to a company called Palm Beach Autoplex LLC, which is owned by Leo, which is, you know, his holding company. Yeah, right. He renamed the dealership Mazda Palm Beach. Okay. It isn't interesting.

You're going to, it's always had the same name, and people go in there and they don't realize they've had the different owners. I want everybody to appreciate the pain in the butt it is to find the owners of the dealership because of the different little secret companies that they have. Exactly, yeah. It's just a shame that you don't know who owns a business that you deal with. I would think if I'm a put my consumer's head on, I would want to know who I was dealing with. And many car dealers now are remaining anonymous. And even if there's a family name attached to the dealership, that doesn't mean they own it. For example, Arrigo Dodge is not owned by the Arrigo's anymore.

No, no. And Terry Taylor owns a lot of dealerships in South Florida, and he doesn't put his name on any of them. And he's the largest privately held auto group in the country. And so it's always an anonymity of ownership I don't like. Me neither. When the Grick goes on this location, we mystery shopped it all the time. Some of our greatest reports, most entertaining.

reports came out of Grecoe Mazda in North Palm Beach and there was something that we referred to as the famous ghost car and that was a Greco Mazda and it was a car that they didn't have they kept advertising and they kept advertising we kept trying to buy it and it was never there now we go in and we would average and we go back in and asked for the same car that they told us was sold and and it went for months then it appeared at their Del Rey location Yeah, the same car. It moved around.

It moved around. I wasn't there either. At any rate, Leah took over. It's not unusual name. Don Leah took over. We've only investigated once back in 2017 just a few months after the change in ownership. That mission, courtesy of legendary mystery shopper, Agent X, put the dealership back on the recommended dealer list. Agent X was still subjected to the usual usual.

common, old school, rigmarole, but it wasn't terrible, and it was a major improvement over the Greco treatment at the time we noticed new management had done away with an endem stickers, and that's a real plus. Maybe being from New York and Connecticut, maybe they're illegal up there. I don't know. This week, addendum stickers, if you're new to the show, is a counterfeit Monroni label. It's a sticker that they put alongside of the federally mandated window sticker. which is the manufacturer's suggested retail price. And virtually every dealer in Florida uses that to bump up the MSRP to make more profit from you. This week we found an ad from Mazda, Palm Beach, for a super low lease rate.

I mean, this was super low, $69 a month for a new 2021 CX5. When I read stuff like this, I wonder who believes it. And the funny thing is, people believe it. You have to adjust your minds when you hear these things because people do go in and believe it and God help them. We're prepared to send Agent Lightning in on this ad, but we ultimately decided to change things around. We knew exactly what would happen, and Agent Lightning, of course, is our female shopper. And we knew exactly what would happen if Agent Lightning tried to get the deal in the ad. an enormous amount of cash would be required

on a super low miles lease. Either that or the car would no longer be available. You know, all the games that they're going to play to get out of what they advertise because you can't believe any dealer advertisement, much less a lease on a new Mazda for $69 a month. Ain't going to happen.com.

Okay. Agent Lightning's best reports is when she takes the wheel and does her own thing. So we said, do your thing. I give her the option, work with Elisa or improvised, and she improvised. And that's what we have here. That makes her good. Absolutely.

Here's a report, speaking in the first person. I decided to go to a walk-in shop of new 2021 Moss to CX30. I went online to mottesda, palm beach.com, to check out the inventory. It's good first step. Get an idea of the pricing. The first thing that jumped out at me was their website indicated they had, listen to this, 783 new vehicles of stock.

Now, you know, some dealers down here that have three or four dealerships around the area, group them together sometimes. This dealer's from New York and Connecticut. Yeah, I don't know how they did that. How do you come up with 793? Anyway, they all exaggerate to sound good, and just the golden rule. Don't believe any dealer advertising. That struck me an improbable

that you would have 793. I drove by that a lot before. There was no way anyone's fitting that many cars in that space. No, I just sent a screenshot of the Google Maps of the dealership. You can see the layout of the land. I don't know if you can get it on the screen. Yeah, kind of thin. There is no way.

733 cars are sitting there. There were, Bruce King Chevrolet used to be on that corner many, many years ago. I don't know. Who would remember that? There were 42 CX30s listed. also. That's a lot of Mazda, a lot for a Mazda dealership that sells maybe 100 cars a month. That's low volume for the dealership, 100 cars a month. They also claim that to have 253 CX-FIs, Mazda CX-5s in stock, at first I thought maybe they were listing incoming inventory,

but there's no way this little dealership has 253 CX-5s on the way in. Just brook just interjecting, I don't know what, I thought maybe it's a pooled Moss to inventory with other dealerships. They don't have any other locations. You can't just, and they have vins. These cars have VIN numbers, so I don't know, I haven't figured it out yet. Well, they're never challenged,

and you design the ad, and you do whatever you do, their marketing company, agency, places the ad, wherever they place it. Nobody questions. I remember about 20 years ago, dealership got in big trouble, a used car dealer for advertising cars they didn't have on the lot. Yeah.

And there's like Palm Beach Motor Cars or something like that. Yeah. Well, a specific car that you advertise, you're getting more trouble than just saying I got a million cars. Well, they have vents? Yeah. They actually have vins and stock numbers? Oh, they do, the vint. And it says in stock.

It literally says in stock. Well, that gives us an assignment. We'll go out and figure out how they did that. We'll check the vans, find out where they are. In any case, I got an idea of pricing. The CX30s ranged in MSRP from 23,000 up to 30,000, with most around 25. I drove over to the dealership in the early afternoon. I parked, tried to find the interest to the showroom.

It wasn't obvious. I was greeted by a mass salesman as I walked in front of the building. He asked me if I was there to see a newer used vehicle. It makes me think, you know, if you had read this a year and a half ago, being greeted by a mass salesman would be a terrible thing, wouldn't it? Just don't argue, just give them all your money. Exactly, yeah. I told him about the CX30 as we entered the showroom together.

He affirmed my choice by saying I'd picked out a very popular new model. We walked over to his desk. He showed me a Moroni label for another CX30, he said, was from another deal he was working. He said they had a CX30 floor model in the showroom, encouraged me to take a look at it while he found the key so that we could take a drive. I poked around the floor model for a few minutes. Salesman came back. A license played a key in a forum for me to sign. He asked for my ID so he could see if I was old enough to drive.

standard joke he probably uses with all the ladies he asked for more information to put on the forum like my phone number a car insurance company policy number etc then he asked me the sign he said he needed all this so he could let me take the car out by himself that's kind of unprofessional and questionable typically you salesman wants to sell the car wants to be with the driver when they've never driven this car before, perhaps. But at any rate, that's what he did. Take it out yourself and told me where to drive. I think he told him, recommended a route. On a license plate on, the car had an MSRP of $30,045. He closed the hatch, started walking toward the shoreline. I called out and asked him

to tell me his name. He said it was JD. Then he told me the best route. That's right. like I was familiar with the area, which I was, but how did he know that? J.D. went inside. I sat at the CX.30 for about 10 minutes, trying to figure out how to adjust seed beers and other controls. There you are. I took the car out on the lot, drove my own route around North Palm Beach, and returned to the dealership. It's just not good salesmanship. I mean, I'm not saying unethical or illegal or immoral. I'm just saying he's just not a good salesman. I found J.D. inside. He asked me how I liked it. I said I really liked it and wanted to see the price. We both stood by his desk because he leaned over and typed things in his computer.

Both chairs were covered in paperwork. There was nowhere to sit. I sent that picture. If you zoom in on the picture later on, you can see where he was. So, you know, just, so I wanted over to the floor model I looked at earlier, opened the door, sat in the driver's seat. J.D. found me sitting on the car, asked me how much money I was putting down. I told him $2,000. He said, that was great because that way I'd not be financing my taxes and fees. And then he left. A few minutes later, J.D. returned the car, leaned in through the passenger window and present the numbers to me. That's also interesting that he's closing the deal. He's just doing the deal on the car in the car.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, because, Okay. I was still sitting in the driver's seat. Yeah, yeah. I was sitting in the driver's seat. The top line was market value selling price, but it was the same as the real MSRP, $30,000.45. He took off $2,000 in total savings before adding on a list of one wanted extras. $269 for Lenditon, $495 for Resistol, which we don't know what that is, but it's probably some sort of a paint seal on or fabric. protection, $189 for all weather mats, $176.45,

taxable fees, another word for dealer fees, hidden fees. And then here's one that's a dock fee, which is a dealer fee. It's a hidden fee. And $999.99. No, $999. My real price was $30,492, $447 over MSRP. And that's not a good price. That's a high price.

He quickly added the price included add-ons. And if I didn't want them, he could probably get them taken off. So again, that's being honest, but it's not a good salesmanship. The dealer put them on there to have you sell them, and you didn't even try to sell them. You just said you'll take them off, which it's good for the consumer because they're worthless. I give them points for that. I give them points for that, yeah. But he's very, very, I would say arguably, the least professional salesperson.

And again, that's not, we're not going to fail the dealership. We rate the dealerships based on their integrity, but just sloppy. Maybe he just knew on the job. But he said he highly recommended I take the extra protection package because we're so close to the ocean. I don't know. Well, it protects against fish. crustaceans. Yeah.

I said I was interested and asked him to take them off. It wasn't interested, please take them off. JD complied using a ballpoint pen, drew lines through the young one-in-place. Miles said, I need to do better than that. Judy looked puzzled, and I said, I needed a new buyer's order with a new total. He laughed, excused himself. Came back at five minutes with a new worksheet, without the add-ons, this time including bogus hidden fees. My real price was $29.2.20 an $820 discount for MSRP. Well, that's not bad.

We're getting somewhere. He asked me what I thought, and I said, I had to think about it. I asked me how long he could hold the price. He said a few days. I mean, it wasn't like you got to buy it today or else the price going up, so, you know, he'd cut me some slack. I asked if I could take the sheet with me. He said, sure. So, again, no, we're snatching the sheet out of her hand. Nobody saying, no, you can't have it. So a lot of the nasty stuff, devious stuff, was not employed here. I'd rather have this kind of salesperson than the other kind.

He's not a good salesperson in terms of technique, but his honesty. I don't want a good salesperson. Yeah, yeah. It felt like we were done, JD, wasn't pushing with a sale, nor was he making me speak with a man. As a matter of fact, I saw very much. very few other employees the entire time I was there. J.D. was right. It was pretty dead. So I might have skipped over that part. I think it kind of understands why they got somebody there isn't a good salesperson.

Because good salespeople don't like to work in dealerships where nobody comes into my car. Earlier in the report, he said, business had been pretty dead, so he thinks he can get her a good deal. Yeah, that's right. Well, that's kind of a strange way that tells a business. You have a hard way to tell him somebody you love them. I mean, nobody ever comes to here and buys anything from me, and they don't like this dealership. And so I really got to give you a good price. He reminded me in The Simpsons, there's a sad sack salesperson character they have,

and he's always on the verge of making that next big sale. I feel like coming, maybe this is. Anyway, a summary, standard treatment, nothing too outrageous, checked up at True Car, found a Monster Palm Beach, was a designated dealer in the Zip we chose. true car price, including fees and accessories, was $29, $46, $176 less than Agent Lightning's price, which is pretty close to a pretty fair price. So there we have it.

I mean, certainly no outstanding illegal activity or unethical or anything other than just sloppy. Yeah. But as Stu said, I'll take sloppy rather than dishonest any day. Okay. So we've got to get some boats. Yeah, we have great grades are coming in right now, and they're kind of mixed. Jonathan and Wellington gives him an F, and Jonathan is a pretty harsh grader, but I think he's a purist. You know, he doesn't, the curb thing doesn't move him very much.

We have from Andrew on Facebook a B, and that's one of the best ones. And then, believe it or not, from Linda, you know, gives him a C, and not even a big, huge C, just a C. and we have a Sue on Facebook gives them a C. We have a C minus. And my grade is I would give them a C with the exception of some of the sloppy, like making or sit in the car and wait for how to figure out the stuff. So they get a C minus for me,

but overall, it sounds like a pretty decent experience. Yeah, Rick, how are your scores? I've got Steve with a B-minus. I've got RICO with a C, Karen with a C myself, I'm going to give him a I think a B plus or a B minus actually

I go to the B minus it was sloppy but he was honest it was like I felt like I could trust the guy I agree Nancy Yeah it definitely was refreshing compared to what we went through

last week with the mystery shopper report that brought tears to your eyes So today I think that they were a little sloppy, but actually they were good, and I give them a bee. Wow, that's the highest period I ever remember from Nancy. And I'm going to give them a bee, too.

I just think, like Sue said, you summed it very well. If you're not looking for a slick salesperson, you ought to go to Austin at Palm Beach. At least, the one they have is definitely not slick, and he's not dishonest. and study your product and be sure you know what you want to buy and what you want to pay and you'll probably get a pretty good deal there. Absolutely.

All right. Absolutely. It feels good to have one that's not so horrible. Yeah, it is. We've had a run in the last few weeks than they've been pretty bad, so this is a good one. Yeah. Horrible was last week.

That's right. Okay, we ready to wrap it up? I think that we're going to be here for another hour. How's that time, guys? All kidding aside. Thank you so much, everyone, for joining us here at Earl Stewart on Cars. Another Saturday, another successful show.

We love all of our listeners, texters, and everybody who's involved in the Earl Stewart on Cars show. Happy Valentine's Day and stay safe. We'll see you next week. Go ahead. Let's go. Let's go. Oh, .

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