Earl Stewart on Cars - 02.16.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mercedes Benz of Palm Beach

Episode Date: February 16, 2019

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

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. Welcome back. We're back. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer.

And the name of this show is Earl Stewart on Cars. It's just not about cars. It's specifically how you can avoid being ripped off by your car dealer when you're buying or leasing a car. huge amount of leasing going on these days almost as many people lease as buy and of course repairing and maintaining your car you only buy a car maybe every six or seven years four or five for some people but you maintain or repair your car at least twice a year you should it doesn't seem like if you have a if you're a low miles driver a lot of people don't think about that but you really should have your oil change at least twice a year unless you use a synthetic will

and you can do it every 10,000 miles. But if you don't have someone to look at your car twice a year, you're asking for a problem. Although today's cars are much more reliable. I mean, much, much more reliable than they were 10, 15 years ago. This is a very unusual show in the sense that we tell it like it is. We don't pull punches. We name names.

We name car dealerships. And we have a mystery shopping report. I mention this every, every week because it's unique. Nobody dares do this. 60 Minutes does it sometimes. I don't mean on car dealerships, but to go into a business

and pretend like you're going to buy or lease a car, undercover agent goes in. And they go through the whole process. Typically comes in with an advertisement online these days. Sometimes we use television advertisements and we find a really good price on a really good new car, maybe a used car, and we walk in there,

and we go through the personing process, just like you would if you were going to buy a car. And it's amazing to me. It's amazing to me what happens to a shopper, a car shopper today when you go into buy a car. I can't imagine going through this with any other product, refrigerators, television sets. It just can't happen.

But we accept it, And we have no choice. Very interesting. It's a unique situation with car dealers. Car dealers are ranked dead last in the Gallup annual poll in honesty and ethics and professions. Last year, 2018, was the first, most recent year, and car dealers were dead last.

Just above us, eeked us out for last place. I say yes, because in full transparency, I am a car dealer. Just above us was congressman. And does that surprise anybody? just turn on the news folks it's a joke politics is a joke Congress is a joke senators representatives I was gonna say could you imagine if Congress people had franchise laws but they got stuff just as good yeah franchise laws that's the reason car dealers are protected we're a protected species and we have been for many

years it's one of the best kept secrets people don't like to talk about it but to be a car dealer you have to have a franchise agreement and that is between you and the manufacturer. And the car dealers have lobbied them heavily for close to 100 years, I think. Yeah, probably since the beginning. I mean, the franchise system has been around for a long time. And they lobby to protect themselves against the manufacturers. And then they continue to lobby to protect themselves against the consumers.

So car dealers can pretty much get away with most anything. That is a very interesting common thread. The car dealers are like incumbents. It's very hard to. seed and incumbent, just like Congress people. Maybe that's why people don't like us. Yeah. And they have no choice.

So that gets back to this show. We, mystery shop, car dealers every week, we have a recommended car dealer list and a do not buy from this car dealer list. And then we always disclose that on the recommended list, it's still buyer beware. Because even the good dealers, quote unquote, have some tricks up their sleeves.

And they will take advantage of you. Occasionally we get a pure dealer, very, very rarely. I can't remember the last one. I think it might have been the Bill Wallace dealership in Martin County in Stewart, Florida. The buy here, pay here, the low price. Yeah, it is. Give me finance kind of a lot. Easy pay.

Occasionally. And a lot of times the pure honesty comes from one salesman or one dealer, perhaps. But usually there's a lot of things to be aware of. So stay tuned for the mystery shopping report. By the way, we shopped another luxury dealer this time. We've been shopping luxury dealers. We kind of skipped over him for a while. We shop Palm Beach Mercedes.

A very interesting report. We were discussing this before we went on the air because there were some surprises in there. I won't talk about it now because I want you to stay tuned. Don't get the idea, although I've been doing all the talking there, Stu is my son. He just chipped in here with some thoughts about franchise cars. But we also have Rick Kearney and Nancy Stewart in the studio. Rick Kearney is a certified diagnostic master technician. He's been in the business a long, long time, over 20 years.

He's lived through this renaissance of technology. Is that a good word for it? We just, the technology has exploded in cars. Went from the old days when you could tinker with a car yourself. I'll pop the hood open, identify most of the components. If you're really good, you could tune your car up or, you know, clean your carburetor and, I mean, all sorts of cool stuff that a lot of hands-on kind of people did. And then suddenly, no, it was suddenly, it evolved. And suddenly there was this explosion of technology and computers and no more carburetors.

And when you open the hood now, you don't know what you're looking at. It's a huge monolith with modules, and most people can't work or identify their cars. So Rick Kearney's been through that. He's now an auto computer scientist. He used to be a mechanic, and now he's a scientist. Isn't that amazing? Rick, I don't know how you did it. All I know is every – whenever I say, where's Rick?

He's at school. He's studying something. He's learning something new. It's been a wild ride. That's all I can say. Yeah. But if you have a question, and you should have more than ever before, give Rick a call. Well, sometimes we get sidelined on the show with devious efforts by car dealers to take advantage of you.

But we've got to remember, you've got a lot of questions about your car. Strange noises. How often should I repair this? How often should I preserve this is? Do I change the fluid? What about a should I flush my radiator? Should I flush my transmission? I know you have a lot of questions, and there are no dumb questions,

because everybody in the back of their mind has that same question. And Rick will answer it. Well, if you go to your car dealer once every five years to buy a car, and you go to your car dealer twice a year to have your car serviced, that gives them a whole infinite number of possibilities for them to rip you off. Or for them to be honest with you and treat you right. I looked up the other day, 71 months is the length of average new car ownership. When the average person now buys a new car, almost six years, 71 months,

I was amazed. It's a testimony to the reliability of our new cars and the low maintenance requirements. And the irony is, if you bought a car six years ago or five years ago, it's obsolete now in a lot of ways technologically. And a lot of those technological obsolescences are safety-related. And you're driving, a relatively speaking, unsaved car if it's six years old.

I'm not trying to sell you a new car. In fact, if anything, I'd recommend you buy a used car. It's a better value. But be careful if you're driving a five, six-year-old car. Nancy Stewart is my co-host. She's also my wife. And Nancy is a female advocate. She is really in there with a hashtag me too, kind of a don't take advantage of women thing.

And she speaks out on this show. And she has developed a following. And we have a lot of folks out there, female folks, that call in thanks to Nancy. Nancy actually offers a reward for female callers that I'll tell you about right now. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome. Thank you for tuning in to Earl Stewart-on-Cars.

I offer, or we offer, the lady-callers, first two new lady-callers, $50. Yes, $50 free to give us a call and share an experience with us or, you know, help us improve our show. Also, I want to address my Nancy at earl-oncars.com, and I apologize, but I am unable to reply to all of you. And there are some emails that I am going to address during the show

that Roberta has shared with me. It took a whole lot for her to share this story with me. It's very personal, very hurtful. And also, I'm going to get to Gina. So the first two new lady callers, you'll win yourself $50, $877960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-9-30. And we have a caller, and he's calling us from Vancouver, and I believe he has become a regular caller. And that is Boston. Good morning, Boston.

I asked Boston a call us back and let us know how I went with those used cars at the, it was at a BMW dealership. Yep. Was that last week? I think it was. I missed last week. Oh, that's right. Yeah, last week.

Boston, tell us about it, please. So I just wanted to finish off last few questions. I know you guys were quite busy last week. But there was, so I explained to you how there was a whole. thing with X-5s at Brian Jepo, BMW, and all that. Now, being that, this is a unique situation where this is one dealer that basically has all the

X-5, and the rest of the dealers in the area, there's about five BMW dealership within 100 kilometers. And they're all, they don't have any other stock, so Brian Jess was the only one. with the x535i so my question is um in order to get the best deal now we've done some homework and all that and the approach we're taking is we're going to we've already emailed the dealership we haven't gone in we've told in the email we said that we're serious about buying a car we're ready to buy if the price is right and my question is how can we get the best

price. We've talked to the sale manager directly, and we're not sure what's bettered cash or financing. We're going to be keeping the car for a long time. And have you made a, did you, I think you told me you don't have true car available to you in Costco. No. Yeah, now I'm, I can't hear anything. I've got, I think he cut out just for a second. Okay. Boston, he's cutting out on my, on my, if anybody can hear Boston, relay the information because I can't hear anything now.

First, I could hear out of my right ear only, and now I can't hear anything. Can you hear me? Yeah, you're coming in and coming out. Yeah, it might be your phone, Boston. Could it possibly be that if you moved around? No, I'm sitting down right now. Okay, I hear you, I hear you clearly now on my right ear, so let's proceed. if we can okay that better that's fine thank you so um where where did i leave off that um you were

i believe you were asking if it would be better to lease or to buy the car oh no um would be better to do a cash purchase or finance because i've been uh i've been getting mixed messages um some people saying cash but then other people said finance because if you finance it, you can negotiate further down on the price. Yeah, you should always negotiate on the cash purchase price, whether you're going to lease or finance or pay cash. The reason for this is that it gives less wiggle room for the dealer to manipulate the actual price. So as you're talking a cash sale, and you are doing your shopping around with the other BMW dealers or whatever means you have to do a shop and compare consumer reports.

I assume they have consumer reports in Canada, don't they? Boston. They do. Consumer reports has a great, it's a charge for it. It's $25 or $30, but they will do an analysis for you on the best price of the car. At least they do in the USA. I hope they do it in Canada. But anyway, you do negotiating on cash.

Then, if you choose to lease the car, then you require the dealer to take the price, you negotiate your low price, put it in the capitalized cost on the lease contract. That way, when they calculate the lease payment, they're calculating it at the negotiated low price that you got. And the same thing, if you're going to finance the car, you want to be sure you get a low rate you check with your credit union you check with your bank

for the lowest interest rate the best terms and whatever down payments you you find best but mainly the interest rate and then you take the negotiated price and plug it in that way they can't take advantage of you on the purchase and you covered yourself on the lease and if you want to pay cash that's fine the there is no advantage to bank paying cash over installment sale financing, you're saving the interest money, but then again, a lot of people would rather take their cash, let's say you're, whatever you're paying for, let's say you're paying $30,000 for the BMW, you can invest that $30,000 as you see fit. You can invest in bonds or stocks or something that you feel gives you an adequate return. Today, you can generally get

a pretty safe return that's higher than the cost that it would be to borrow the money. It will probably cost you around. I'm speaking for U.S. now. I'm not familiar with Canadian interest rates and whatnot, but I would say in the U.S., you could finance a car for about 3%, maybe 3.5%. You can generally get 4% or 5% with a fairly conservative investment. So speaking for me, I'd rather invest my $30,000

and then finance the car than I would pay cash for it. But that's a personal decision. By the way, I want to mention something. that I found out in the past week since we talked, luxury car dealers, in fact, car dealers sometimes get subsidies. They get cooperation from their captive lender lessors. For example, BMW leasing or BMW financing. Most of the manufacturers have their own leasing financing arm operating just like a bank or a leasing company.

And some of them, for example, Mercedes credits a dealer and allows him to lease a car for less money if it has up to 3,000 miles on it. So if it's a demonstrator, a company car, some car that for whatever reason could be from dealer trades or whatever, a car accumulates mileage, but it still has the certificate of origin and hasn't been titled, Mercedes will allow you to get a break on the lease. leasing price. Now, some dealers will take advantage of you on that and you go to lease a new car and you won't notice it, but they'll put $3,000 or 3,000 miles or just under 3,000 miles, say, on the contract. They'll get credited amount from Mercedes. It could be $1,000 that they can put in their pocket or they can possibly give you a lower price. You mentioned that these BMWs had miles on them. And that would be a good question. if you lease to ask the BMW dealer. Does BMW give you a subsidy of some kind? Are you credited

for something that would benefit me in a lower payment? If BMW is passing it along to you, can you pass it through to me? Be a good question. Yeah. Well, definitely, we know it's either going to be cash or finance. The only reason why we're considering financing was because of the fact that people were saying that because it's a longer, if you do, if you, if you, if you, finance it through BMW financial you'll be able to they'll make commission on it so therefore you'll be able to have more negotiating room and if you do a longer loan it you'll there's more interest charge however there is one one little loophole which you probably don't know it's like this down the state but you're allowed to pay off your loan faster so you

could essentially pay off the loan in five six months if you really want to or even three not the lease you mean you mean a purchase installment sale contract no not not a lease financing yeah Boston be careful I know they're they sound like they're encouraging you to lease leasing is okay but leasing is definitely advantageous to the dealer it's advantageous to BMW all the manufacturers now that I know are pushing leasing when they lease you the car this isn't necessarily bad but when When they lease you the car, they have you on a string because you have to make your lease payments to BMW. They know where you are.

They might even have restrictions or you're leaving the area, the country, because they own the car. You don't. BMW owns that car. And they know that you have to come back to them before you choose another vehicle. And if you choose a Mercedes, they don't like that. There will be a disposition fee on that BMW when you turn it in. if you don't lease or buy another BMW. There will also be a charge and penalty for above average normal wear and tear.

There will also be a penalty for over mileage on the amount of miles they allow you, say 15,000 miles. If you put 20,000 miles, they might charge you 18 cents a mile. So there's a lot of things that you need to be aware of when you lease. It can be advantageous, but just be extra careful. Yeah. Yeah, we're not, we're planning on keeping the car for about 10 years. so cash or financing would be the best option.

Very good. Awesome. Thank you so much. We love your call for a lot of reasons. First of all, a very interesting situation. You're a very sharp, articulate guy, but coming from out of the United States. You're one of the first calls, maybe the only call we've had out of the United States. And thank you so much for calling, and we hope you can become a regular caller.

Thank you, Earl, and team, for your honesty and always. As always, your guys are great at what you do. I look forward to watching the rest of the live stream. Thank you, Boston. Have a good one. Thank you, Boston. From all of us here, we want to thank you. Thank you again.

Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-90-90, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And the ladies, if you're listening, $50 for the first two new lady-cullers. And believe me, ladies, I have not forgotten about you. you have played a big part in creating a platform right here at Earl Stewart on Cars. And I do apologize again for not being able to reply to you whenever you do email me at Nancy at Earl oncars.com. I get your emails, but I can't reply and it's being worked on. And I hope that the problem is eliminated soon because you are an important part of the show. And again, Roberta, I am going to address your email

later on in the show. I think we've got some text, don't we still? Yeah, they're starting to pile up this morning. We actually got one last week after the show later in the afternoon, so I'll start with that. We'll go on chronological order. And this is also from a listener in Canada. So we are international, folks.

Okay, so good morning from Eastern Canada. Question for Rick. A friend of mine has a 13 Prius with a very annoying audible alert every time reverse is selected. I've reviewed the owner's manual for a way to disable this, only to learn that one must proceed to a Toyota dealer to have it done. A YouTube search returned one hit.

However, it was for a 2008 model and did not work for the 2013. The vehicle's onboard infotainment also did not offer an option to deal with this. If a dealer solution exists, then why would Toyota not allow its customers similar access? I wait word from the inner sanctum while continuing to enjoy your show. Well, I really can't tell you why Toyota won't simply have that as an adjustable feature that the customer can do. Is it possible, Rick, that it might be a legal issue that maybe there's some municipalities or even countries that have a requirement that when you back your car up, there is an audible alert? That is possible. That certainly is a possibility.

In the U.S., we don't know about it. Right. Their legal department may have plenty of reasons why they're. they restrict that access to that feature only to technicians. However, as a technician, I can take my scan tool, plug it into your car, and I can switch that beeping from a continuous beep to where it will simply be a single beep when you put the car in reverse. Can you make like a pretty like a ringtone shine, like a pop song or anything like that?

No, I wish it could, but. So how would, apparently the technicians in Canada that he's talked to haven't learned this, Can you say in simple lay terms, without getting too technical, how you do that? For the techs in Canada, it's a simple thing. You plug the scan tool in and go into a section called customizable features. Customizable features. Yep. And in reverse, it'll show where you can switch it from continuous beep to a single beep.

Okay. Well, there you are. Tell the tech that this is what he got to do. And if you've got a question, call Rick Kearney in the United States. There you go. Taking calls next week on the show. Calling code 1 plus the number. Okay.

The next one, also going in chronological order, we had an email sent to us yesterday afternoon. It says, Mr. Stewart, I am reaching out to you as a person that can hopefully help me. I have listened to you on the oldies radio and weekends answering questions to listeners on car buying. I didn't want to call in, but I wanted to write. I've been a Wellington resident for 20 years. I find myself in a huge bind that worries me daily. from what I hear and what I know of you, maybe you can assist. I have a 2013 Kia, upside down on the balance.

Over the years, we had to defer payment due to health reasons and out of work during that time. My warranty, and during that time, my warranty on the car has expired. I have over 100,000 miles on the car. Our credit is less than perfect. My husband and I both work full-time for the state, but of a fixed, limited income. My problem is I cannot trade the car in,

so I've been told because I'm upside down. I do not have the money to place along with the trade. Daily with me, I find myself being sick and afraid that the car will break down, and then I would have nothing. The check engine light keeps coming on. It's beginning to make small noises. My question to you, if I can please, what are some options for someone like me in my situation? Any help you can give me with direction would be so much appreciated.

It's hard for me to ask for your knowledge out of embarrassment and pride. Thank you for reading, and I hope to hear from you soon. Well, I think the first thing you need to do is establish the exact state of repair needed by your Kia. And if you haven't had it in to a dealer, the mechanic that you can trust, you need to get some sort of analysis or estimate as to what it would take to turn it into a safe car. car. It's possible it can't be. And it could be that the 2013, the car is five, six years old. It might not be worth the money you have to put into the repair. On the other hand, it could be, and it could be far less than you think. 100,000 miles is really not that many miles on a 2013 vehicle. And those used to be 100,000 miles was a huge amount of miles

on a car. Today, 100,000 miles isn't a huge amount. In fact, Kia properly maintained, could last 300,000 miles and maybe even more. Kia is a, and I don't know the model do you have, but it's a relatively reliable car. It's a relatively safe car. Find a technician, find a dealership that will do an analysis on your car and, Ask them up front if they can check it over for you. Explain, to be honest, I can't afford to spend money right now. I just need to see how much it's going to cost me. Rick, what would you say?

Is there anything that you would recommend that they ask that mechanic for, that technician for, to do that would help clear up the picture as to whether she should keep the car? Not really. That actually covers it pretty well. I would simply, the only other thing I'd mention is if their check engine light is coming on. Excuse me. I would recommend run into your local auto zone and just ask them to pull the codes because they'll do that for free. Exactly.

And once you have that code, you can go on to Google and you will find a huge assortment of sites that will tell you what that code means. And whether it's something that is really important to be taken care of now or something you can just get. kind of live with and ignore for a while. So the check engine light is not going to give you the code. It should, but it doesn't. So you have to go into Jiffy Loop. What'd you say? AutoZone.

AutoZone is one I know for a fact. We'll do it. Free. AutoZone will do it free. And there are auto zones all over the place. And they will be able to plug your car in. And it could be more than one code. And they will tell you what the code is.

And you could probably ask them what the, what the code means or you could go to Google and it'll go it. Well, odds are if they pull the code, they're going to be trying to sell you the part to repair it, obviously, because that's how they make their money. And if you simply say, I'm okay, well, you know, I need to double check this or I just want to get a second opinion. And you even say, well, is it something really important right now? If they can't answer those questions, I would just go home and Google it, and I guarantee you'll find plenty of information.

on what it means. I have a radical suggestion and something that might become more common as we get into the future here and it's if the car repairs are something that they can't afford to pay and the car is not going to be something that can continue driving.

Ride services like Uber and Lyft have begun offering like a subscription service. Lyft announced something late last year for $300 a month, which is close to a car payment where you get about $450,000, dollars worth of rides. So if you're retired and basically you're just heading up to the

grocery store and, you know, the movies here and there, it could be a viable solution for somebody who can't afford a car anymore. You don't have to work about maintenance or insurance. That's a great idea. Bear in mind, that would be $300. Without insurance. Not including what you'd have to pay for insurance, not including

what you'd have to pay for gasoline, for tolls. It covers all your transportation. For the maintenance, tires, oil changes. So that'd be a pretty good deal. Yeah, I brought up. It's been around for a while and you've mentioned it before. How many miles

are trips? I did the math on it before. It's pretty good. It's basically it'll get you to the storm back every day of the month. We can Google that because that is an incredibly good thought for a lot of people for a lot of reasons

health reasons, financial reasons. I personally know somebody who's getting into that situation right now where they're not capable of driving and also concurrent with that, their car is falling apart. And so this is the solution we're investigating right now for the front of them. Fantastic. Okay, well, I think we gave you an answer.

I think you have a backdrop there with the UberLift solution, and we'll get the details on that a little later in the show. And meanwhile, you just need to get that check engine light diagnosed and see what the potential cost of repair is, and AutoZone will do that for you to give you the codes free. you can Google the codes or perhaps they will interpret them for you get an estimate and then you can make a decision of what you want to do thank you for a text that a lot of people have in their mind is how do i repair that car that i got that i don't want to keep and can i afford it yeah it's a great solution and i do think this is going to become more and more common yeah as we let's get the number out we'll go to another text in a minute but let's yeah i'll give out the number and that's 877 960 99

60, and the text number is 772-495-6-730. We'll get some more text, yes, we do. Okay, before you go to that text, I have word that Roberta is listening, and Roberta, I'm going to go ahead and read your email that's really very important. Love your show, have learned a lot, so glad you're getting the word at. It seems a case where the general population says it's always been done this way, and they accept it. I'm a gal in a 2007, and I went to West Palm Beach, Kia, and bought a new spectra. Big mistake. Never should have gone alone. We'll never do it again.

Besides getting really ripped off financially, after the sale was complete, one of the salesmen well I'll polish this up a little bit was very offensive and stepped over the line and I had never been treated like that in all my days I am single and dating no one has ever come right out and asked me that awful question Roberta my apologies first of all able to get back to you. I explained earlier that Nancy at Earl on Cars.com, I receive emails, but I can't respond. So if you would be kind enough to call me at 561-386-6-4-98. Now, to the situation that took place at Kia, you know, I always tell the ladies, and that, it goes for everyone. Do not go into a dealership. alone. That's number one. And don't do business with a salesperson that's pushy,

disrespectful, or intimidating. If you've seen Earl's commercials, he talks about just turn around and leave. And most of all, express yourself. Let them know exactly how you feel. Again, I apologize for the disrespect that that car dealership. gave you, please give me a call. I'll say just one thing to Roberta and anyone. If you get treated this way, a man, woman, by a salesperson, or any employee in a car dealership, go to the supervisor and then go to the next supervisor, and ideally go to the general manager of the owner.

Car dealerships, I have 180 employees in my car dealership. I'd be dishonest if I told you that all 180 perform. perfectly all the time so if you have a problem with one particular employee you want to find out about it if you are a good supervisor manager owner of a business car dealership or otherwise you want to hear about it but when you mistreated at any level in any business go up as high as you can in the chain by the way how high you can go in the chain is indicative of how much the owner and the general manager cares about his employees if

If the owners and the general managers exist in a protected room somewhere with no phone numbers and no way to contact them, that tells you a little bit about the business. But if the owner will open himself up to calls and visits and emails and text, then that means he cares. If you go to that person, he'll correct the problem. Roberta shared with me that she was unable to go to that level. And I don't know exactly what was going on that day in the Kia dealership, but it seemed like as if that, well, they ganged up on her

and it was four different men in the Kia dealership and it's really unfair. This is the 21st century if everyone hasn't gotten the memo by now that women should be respected and that they should be given the same respect that men get. So Roberta, I hope that we've addressed your problem. Give us a call tool free at 877-960-9960

and you can text us at It's 772-4976530. We're going to go to Rosemarie, and she's been holding. She's calling from North Palm Beach. Good morning, Rosemary. Good morning. I would like to know, is there such a thing as your tire is having dry rot? We leave our car here over the summer and go back north,

and Adela told us that we had dry rot. The car is 2012, and it's the original time. Well, 2012, I believe the recommended replacement on tires is five years? It actually varies because some manufacturers will say simply to inspect them at five to seven years. Others will say five to seven years is kind of the age of the tires when you should consider replacing them. from a technician's standpoint, I usually will look at the tires closely. If it's just minor small cracks on the sidewall, dry rod, I mean, would you have to be an expert? No, not really.

What you're looking for is on the tire itself, if you see on the sidewall the tire, just what looks like minor little surface cracks on it, I wouldn't worry about that at all. if you look in between the tread of the tire if you see any large cracks between the treads of the tire then i would might be a little more concerned about it and i would consider replacing those tires just for safety's sake is there a possibility there may be what would happen would i suddenly get a flat or a blowout or it would be hard to say but uh it certainly is possible that if If the damage gets deep enough, that, yeah, the tread could start to separate, and it could cause a blowout. I mean, it'd be a very rare occasion for that. Rosemary, what make tires do you have?

Genoa. Goodyear, Mishlin, Firestone. Malibu. It's the original Malabo. I don't know. Look on the tire and ask your dealer or your service folks to check with the manufacturer. They can always go there, and that way you'll get two things. Even if they say no, they'll tell you whether the tire is safe or not.

Manufacturer will have to be honest with you because it's a safety issue, and you might possibly have some sort of a proration warranty if there is a defect of some kind of the tire. It's worth your time just to find out. The car only has 15,000 miles on it. Yeah. Yeah, so how long have the tire's been on the original? Original tires, yeah, really.

Yeah, I'd get someone that is a tire. You know, I would ask Goodyear, Michelin, or whatever the manufacturer of the tire, you can go to a Michelin, go directly to the tire dealer, let him look at it. He'll give you an honest opinion. Well, a car dealer did tell me that because we had a flat tire. My husband hit something and got a flat tire. and there's no spare in that car.

So we had to have it towed to the dealer, and they were holding the car there, and we said, what's taking so long to change your tires? Well, you have dry rot, and they wanted to replace all the tires immediately. Well, understand, Rosemary. The manufacturer of the tire, not the car manufacturer, carries the warranty. Car dealers do not have any warranty on your tires. Even if you bought the car there, they don't want to. warranty of the tires. So that's the reason you need to know the make of the tire. They're either

Firestone, Michelin, something. And then you go to that dealer, tire dealer, not car dealer, and then let them look at it. You'll get a more honest opinion, I believe. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Rosemary. Appreciate the call very much. Keep on listening, Rosemary. Thank you. Thank you. I'm a first time caller, too. Oh, you are, Rosemary. Congratulations. You've won yourself $50. Stay on the line and give us your information. I'll get that check out to you. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for being part of the show. Thank you. I listen all the time.

Thank you. Okay. We're going to go to Denise. Denise is calling us from Asheville, North Carolina. Good morning, Denise. Denise, are you still on the line? I am. What can we do for you this morning? How are you? we hear we hear you denise how can we help you hi um my name's denise and um i'm actually from ashville north carolina have you ever been there yes love it thank you yeah me too so i have a

very nice car it's a honda accord it's a 2011 but i also happen to have five grandchildren ages seven to three and i need a new car, but I don't want a van, and I don't want a gigantic automobile. I also, when you live in the mountains, it's really kind of nice to have some kind of truck.

So, and when it snows, it rarely snows there, but I would like something so I could drive around in the snow. Most of the time I just stay home if it snows, because it's usually gone by the next day. So I want to buy a new automobile, but I don't want to spend a fortune because I'm close to

retirement, so I don't want a lot of bills. Mm-hmm. Can you help me? Mm-hmm. Yes. My son has got some comments about new cars. Well, I would say one thing you want to consider is a late model used car, certified. I've always said that used cars are better values if you choose the right one, much better value than a new vehicle. You've got a 2011 now.

You could go up until 2015 or 16 and have a main. manufacturer-certified use vehicle, and I think there's so many SUVs on the road now for the very reason you described, Stu. Well, I was just going to parrot everything that I learned from my dad. I was going to say start with consumer reports and make sure you're finding a highly rated mid-sized SUV. That would keep you out of a van, give you the room, and you can find all-wheel drive SUVs. So look, start with consumer reports. Honda's pretty highly rated. The MDX is their mid-size SUV and there's other ones like that. Yeah, and find a certified one that's a few years old. You'll save a lot of money and you'll know you're going to get a good reliable car.

All right, I think, and I have my consumer reports right by my, where I sit on the couch. That's so helpful. They rate the use cars too, don't they? They'll say the best. They do. They do. And also, when you decide you want to buy Autotrater, Autotrater.com, is a great source of where and how many and what the price is. So once you choose the vehicles you want in consumer reports, use vehicle, they have a great information on late model use vehicles.

Then you go to AutoTrader and you take the models that you want to find, and you can find all the dealerships around Asheville. You can put on the zip code and you can find dealers, say, within a 10, 20, 30 mile radius of where you live. and they will list you can sort by price or whatever factor you want to sort by you can go from the lowest price to the highest price you get a carfax report available to you on auto trader that way you'd be sure you're not buying something with a to cuttie airbag recall and if you do all that start with consumer reports then going to auto trader i would end up maybe even buying the car through the auto trader i mean through the consumer report car buying program you can buy a used car or a new car you can also use truecar.com and if there's Costco there are Costco stores in Asheville North Carolina then you can also use that program but auto trader remember these auto trader true car consumer reports those are your

sources of information so what I hope we helped you help Denise but that consumer report congratulations for having that right by your side and and oh yeah I have it I love that book. Do you think it's foolish to get the one, you know, I don't have five children with me all the time, but the three rows, do you think I really need that? Yeah, my personal thought is a personal choice. I'm not a fan for the third row.

You know better than I because you know you're driving habits. You got a bunch of kids. Stu has a comment. How many, there's four grandkids? Five. You might need the third row. Yeah. Because a lot of the, in the SUVs and the vans, too, the backs, they might have captain chairs in the back seat where you can only fit two kids in the back.

So depending on one of them is big enough, you can squeeze one in the front, two in the back, and then you're kind of out of it. So the third row is kind of crucial. I know because I've spent the last 16 years trying to grandkids into SUVs and minivans. So I'm kind of an expert in the matter. Squeezing them in here like little sausages. Yeah, you got to have, you have to have the third row, and you've got to have hopefully bent seats in the mid row. And Denise, you know, research the car, whether you want a truck, whether you want an SUV, whether you want a car, you know, research all of that. And as Earl, you know, shared with you earlier about Costco, auto trader, true car, these are amazing places to start the problem.

process. But most of all, I love going to the internet and getting the pricing because they don't know who you are. They do not know who you are. So you don't have to fear being taken advantage of. I hope we helped you. And I love Asheville. Hey, Denise, do the grandkids get along because close proximity sometimes will play a factor in what vehicle you select. That's where those inside DVD players are awesome. He keeps touching me. He keeps touching me. I know, I know. And you know what? I just realized that my youngest one just got married, so I'll probably have more grandchildren. So I need to plan.

You might need one of those big... So this is the first time I've ever come to you, and you've been very helpful. Yes, putting a plan into place. I'm thinking a blubert bus at this point. There you go, yeah. Denise. I do need a bus.

It was a pleasure talking to you. I hope to get to North Carolina. Earl and I had a great time in Asheville. Many, many years ago, we were young, and we had a ball. You live in a beautiful part of the country. I love it there. Except you can't buy liquor.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Can't buy liquor. I have a funny story to share it with you, Denise, before you go. I hid Earl's liquor. He couldn't find it, and he couldn't purchase it in Asheville. Well, I'll tell you the rest of the story in another show. Thanks, Denise. Okay.

I was back in 1930. Give us a call tool-free at 877-960 or you can text us at 772-49-60 or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And I think that Stu has a few more text. A matter of fact, a long list of text. Yeah, we've got to knock these down. But we did get a caller who hung up who had a question about the Lyft subscription service. And I looked it up. It's $299 a month.

and it gives you 30 rides up to $15 each. If you go over, you pay the difference. So that would be a amount to, if you live, driving around locally, you got one ride a day every day of the month for $299. I know you don't know the answer to this, but I wonder what $15 ride, how, what the distance would be. I know that an Uber, you know, it's going to depend on the time of day and all that, just to give you an idea.

Recently did an Uber from West, downtown West Palm Beach to Jupiter, and it was around 9 o'clock at night. It was about $30. So that's kind of a long ride. If I went down the street to my grocery store, I'm sure it'd be a fraction. It's probably Google average cost of ride by Uber, but that's great information. And I think this is going to be an important solution to a lot of people, particularly older people, people with medical problems. Fantastic.

Okay, we've got some text here. Yep. Given your past history with Ed Morris and Seview Radio, as you discussed last week, do you plan on doing another mystery? shop on an Edmores dealership, and that's from Randy and DeQuesta. Well, I think we're long overdue, Randy, and I think that we probably should. Ed Morris has got several dealerships. He's a major factor in the market, and we need to check with him. We've got Edmores Honda, we've got Edmores Honda, Edmores Cadillac, that I can think of immediately.

Are there other Edmore stores in this area? I know he has some of the Tampa area. Yeah, there's plenty to choose from, and we have a brand new mystery shopping agent who is unknown to any Edmore's dealer. So yeah, we guarantee some Edmore's mystery shops coming up. Okay, we'll do that. Randy, thanks for the suggestion. We'll put that on our schedule.

Okay. We have one from Bob and Stewart. It says, good morning. My question is, does your dealership service department follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule, or does your dealership have its own maintenance schedule? Our dealership has recommended maintenance schedule. Of course, we follow the manufacturer. manufacturers and our policy is to be fully disclosed anytime we recommend something that

is not on the manufacturer's recommended list. When I advise listeners to have only the manufacturer's recommended maintenance done, that is with a slight reservation because there are sections of the country, there are climatic conditions. There are road conditions, temperature conditions that can be extreme. It's a big world we live in. When you build hondas or you build Toyotas, you got them in the Sahara Desert and you got them in the Antarctica. So you can't just say the manufacturer suggested maintenance is going to suffice all the time. But it will 99% of the time. Rick, you have a point? Yeah, that's especially true when you're comparing someone that lives in downtown West Palm Beach.

versus someone that lives out in the Loxahatchie Grove's area on a dirt road, their air filters are going to have vastly different rates that they need to be replaced. Same with the cabin filter. Good point. I have a question because I don't know the answer to this. I believe that Toyota recommends a cabin filter replacement at 30,000 miles. In most cases, yes. However, now they're actually recommending, like for the Camrys, more often.

They're actually recommending it at 15,000. My question is, what if I have a vehicle with 30,000 miles and the manufacturer says replace the air filter, shouldn't I ask to see the air filter? Sure. And if the air filter is crispy clean, should I just say don't replace it? You have that option. That's absolutely right. Okay.

So there you have it. The answer, Bob, is that as a rule of thumb, just adhere to the manufacturer maintenance. if you live in some sort of an extreme condition as Rick said, a really dirty road, dusty road, you should listen to a recommendation. It makes sense. I would say this though, stay away. Remember the word

flush. Stay away from flushes. Yeah. Fleshes are very expensive and they're really unnecessary. Transmission or radiator, not needed, right? The only one thing I will say on that if you ask to see your cabin filter and it's been

30,000 miles, take a quick look at it first because it may be dirty enough that it may make you a little concerned and a little queasy seeing just how much dirt did not get blown into your face and was collected by that filter.

I have seen some of them that are just packed with dirt as horrible looking. But that's all the stuff that it prevented from being blown into your face from your air conditioning. If you've got a low mileage car

that lives in a pristinely clean area is entirely possible, 30,000 miles is too soon. Yeah. What else we got? All right. We have, this is from Robert and Stewart. He's got some advice for Boston who called from Canada.

He says for Boston buying the BMW, we have a BMW X-5. They are number one on depreciation and number one on maintenance costs. The older the car gets, the worse. So, caution. Oh, wow. BMWX-5. Is that right? And I also, I can add into that is it's one of the most prevalent to Cata-affected cars.

as far as BMW goes, that's usually one of the go-to ones when we're searching for a Dakota car as a BMWX-5. I don't want to give anything away, so I won't talk about the mystery shopping report, but I will say that we've learned recently there are some cars out there with defective airbags where the replacement inflators are not available until the year 2020, in the middle of the 2020. So you basically got yourself some vehicles out there. BMW is one of them, where the Ticcata airbags cannot be fixed for close to a year and a half. It's frightening, scary, and amazing that the legislatures will make, that it's legal to sell a car that not only can kill you, like a hand grenade going off in your car, but you can't fix it for a year and a half.

It's perfectly legal to sell that vehicle and not disclose it. I'm hyperventilating. Yes, you are. Give us a call to all for 877-9-60-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-65-30. And Boston, I didn't mean to leave you at. I do know that you did email me. I hope you know that I'm just unable to reply to your email. We're going to go to Jeannie, and she's calling us from Ocean Sea.

City, New Jersey. Hi, Jeannie. Good morning. Good morning. How are you doing today? Oh, we're doing wonderful. Thank you for giving us a call. You just won yourself $50. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah. Stay on the line and give us your information. We'll get that check out to you next week. What can we do for you today? Well, I have a kind of a simple, basic car, I mean, car question. I had recently a low tire pressure gauge on my car. I took it, and it took it to my local dealer, my local car repair man, he filled the air, the tire up with air, and then three days later the same thing happened. Again, I brought it back in, and it was a nail in the tire. So they repaired it for me, but I'm thinking, is that really okay? Is it okay to repair a nail that's in the

tire versus I should just get a new tire? Rick can answer that. My question. Well, as a matter of fact, I'm going to be repairing a nail puncture on my wife's brand new rev four. that she's had for 10 days. And yes, it is absolutely safe, provided that the nail is in the center tread portion of the tire, if it's not in what's termed the shoulder, which is the very last section of tread on each side of the tire, if it's in the middle and it's just a small puncture,

then it can be very safely repaired with what's known as an internal patch and they're completely safe. We do them all day long, and we've never really had an issue with them. Okay, well, that's good. I really trust my mechanic, and I figured it was okay, but then I thought about it, and I thought,

hmm, so I thought I'd give you guys a call. Well, thanks, Gene. Are you watching us on Facebook or YouTube? How does you catch us in New Jersey? I'm visiting my dad right now down in Florida. Oh, fantastic. He is a loyal fan. and he listens to you guys religiously.

He's a car person. Wonderful. Hey, I bet you're enjoying the weather a whole lot more than you would in New Jersey. I'm sitting out in the backyard and it's lovely, yeah. Thinking of your friends. It's nice in the summer, but it's nice to be down in the warm weather, yes. Yeah, absolutely. Jeannie, thank you so much for giving us a call, and thank your dad for listening,

and we'll get that 50 out to you. Thank you. I feel much more secure now about that tire. Oh, thank you. Thank you for listening. Have a great day. We're going to go to Donna, who's calling from Palm City. She, too, is a first-time caller.

Good morning, Donna. What can we do for you this morning? Hey, Donna. We still got you there? There she is. Hi. Good morning. Good morning.

Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. And I just wanted to share an experience that I had a couple of weeks ago with the Infinity dealer here in Stewart, went in to test drive a youth vehicle, and it was a Volkswagen C-Guan that apparently had the tuner installed on it. When I started it up, it was just horribly noisy, and I made a comment to the salesperson. I'm like, that's awfully noisy, and that shouldn't be that loud. And he's like, oh, well, they put a performance exhaust system on.

on it so you know it's going to be loud like okay well what he didn't know about me is I've been around cars all my life so you know I'm probably better educated than most females about it so I knew something wasn't right and you know the car was nice and everything so I had my husband go look at it husband went and looked at it got up under the car and there was no muffler on it so they were trying to convince me that the loud noise on there was because it was the performance package, and they didn't have a musseler on it. Wow. So that was number one.

That was the first thing. And mind you, too, my husband grew up in a gas station and repair shop. So both of us, you know, have a good background in automotive and cars. Oh, good for you. So anyway, the next thing, we're talking to them about, you know, what to buy the vehicle, and they send me the deal sheet. I had them to email me the deal sheet. So I asked them, I said, can I want to see an itemized breakdown of all these fees on the deal sheet?

Well, that's just our fees. And I said, well, I want to see what the dealer fee includes. Well, by law, we have to charge that dealer fee. Wow. That's a... No. That's a fib. So needless to say, we did not do business with them.

But I wanted to make you aware because, you know, then they were, then they agreed to put a muffler on it. and after, you know, told them it wasn't interested any longer, they were still hounding me for about two days to come in and take a look at it. So I just wanted to share that experience with you. Yeah, I appreciate it. And, Don, let me, if you've got a pencil, Andy, I know the owner of the Infinity Store, and Stuart,

his name is Mario Margato. That's the last name, it's spelled M-U-R-G-A-D-O, Mario M-M-G-A-O. And we were talking earlier about sometimes the person in charge doesn't know what's going on in the trenches. I'm sure he does know about the misdiagnosis of that problem you had with your infinity and the noise. And he probably doesn't know that his salespeople are telling you that law requires they charge a dealer fee. In fact, I know Mario Murgato not well, but I know him by reputation. and we served on the Florida Automobile Dealers Association,

the board of directors together. If you wanted to email him, I have his email address here. You could email him, and I believe he'll respond. He's very responsive to customers. His email address is Mario at Mergato.com, M-A-R-I-O-M-R-G-A-D-O-R-G-A-D-O. com, email him and tell them what you told us, and I think he'll make some changes over there. Okay.

Yeah, and the thing with the muffler, too, it, I couldn't believe that they were doing that, and then talking to the sales manager about it, and he's like, well, yeah, you know, we're finding that people don't like the noise, in fact that it doesn't have a muffler on it. Mario needs to know about that. It's ridiculous. If you don't get an answer or don't get an answer, call us next week, and I'll give you a cell phone number. But I think we'll start with his email address, and then I'll give you a cell phone number. Okay, well, I appreciate it.

I just wanted to make you aware, because I don't want anybody else having to deal with that kind of experience. Thank you, Donna. You're a first-time caller, right? Okay. Yes, I am. Thank you. Why don't you stay on the line? I feel like giving out another $50.

What do you think about that? Okay. I think that's nice. Thank you. Very good. I'll get that check out to you next week. Give us a call toll free at 877-960 or you can text us at 772-4976530. And don't forget your anonymous feedback.com.

Let us know how you feel and you will remain anonymous. We're going to go to Tina. She is a regular caller. I do appreciate her every week as we all do here at Earl Stewart on Cars. She calls us from Benita Springs. Good morning. How are you doing, Tina? Good morning.

I'm doing great, and thank you very much to the ladies who are participating this morning. And yes, the $50 is actually a thing. So if you're a new caller and you want $50 and your female, please call Earl Stewart on cars this morning. Oh, thank you. Anyway, JD Power reared its ugly head again this morning. I was noticing another J.D. Power article, and it was saying how there's one American car company that's just as good as the top three. It's in the fourth position. It's Chrysler, and we all know how good Chrysler is not. So I just wanted to, I know that we've talked about J.D. Power before and how you really need to ignore them.

But there's something called the J.D. Power Industry Standard, and I was wondering if you guys could kind of expound on that a little bit. and explain to the listeners and the viewers on Facebook how worthless this is. Now, J.D. Power, Tina, they're a big company. They've been around a long time. I knew the owner at one time. And my one problem with J.D. Power is they do a lot of surveys. They do a lot of rankings. And then they sell the right to use that to the manufacturer that wins the,

the price. So if you get an add-a-boy reward from J.D. Power, it might be legitimate. I'm not saying it's not. But I just don't like the idea with money-changing hands with rating services. The reason I love consumer reports, when they give a car a good rating, they will buy the car from the dealer. They won't even accept a gift to the car from the manufacturer, much less the dealer. They will not accept advertising for the dealer. There's absolutely no consideration in legal terms that changes hands so all of consumer reports revenue comes from contributions and donations it's a not-for-profit they're pure JD Power I say I just take everything with a grain of salt but they do have a standard by

which they judge car dealers and and manufacturers and I have to tell you that I've seen I've seen high-rated car dealers are very suspect to me, and I wonder why they got the high rating. So I don't know if that's the answer you expected, Tina, but I wouldn't disregard J.D. Power? No, it is. I quote them myself, but I just always, consumer reports is so close to my heart.

They can't touch consumer reports in integrity. Yeah, and if you don't have consumer reports, there's always carcomplaints.com. That's a really good resource, too, especially if you love looking at things online, and it's free. Carcomplaints.com doesn't cost you a dime to enter into that one. That's an amazing site. Yeah, but one big issue I have with JD Power is unlike consumer reports,

it only judges like short-term reliability and build quality, it doesn't go long-term. Yes. And long-term is where you want to go, especially if you're buying a used car. Yes, you're absolutely right. Yeah, Consumer Reports also has a short term, but they follow up with a long term. If you recall, Consumer Reports ranked Tesla 100 perfect, and that was the initial car they put out. They tested a brand new car, and they gave it a perfect score, 100.

They had never given any car a 100 before. Four years later, that car was on the don't buy list. They took it off their recommended list. So, yeah, a brand new car can be really, really nice, but when it gets a couple years old, things happen. And that's what J.D. Power isn't looking at. Yeah, they're definitely not looking long range. But I think people, because J.D. Power is so well marketed

and so popular that people put a lot of stock in it, and people need to kind of take a step back and realize, hey, listen, just because it's a major market leader and because it's so popular, Don't put two cents worth into it. Kind of take a step back and do your own research. Doing your own homework is going to tell a lot more truth than some company that's paid for profit. Yeah. Absolutely.

To use an expression, they're in bed with the manufacturers and they're in bed with the car dealers. They're very close. The way I knew the owner, he used to attend meetings that I attended. We call him 20 group meetings. And he was a guest speaker and we paid him. I mean, you know, once you start paying people money, you're not going to. kind of get an objective view and that's what that's the problem with jd power objective view yeah how many how many how many how many people have the moral scruples to offer an objective

review these companies just want to get in the pockets of other people and get paid and you know it's not about safety it's not about quality it's not about reliability it's about just make me a little wealthier that way i can make my stockholders happy yes like buying a car from a car salesman he gets 25% of the profit that he makes. The more profit, the higher the price, the more money he makes. Now, what kind of objectivity and honesty you're going to get? I mean, that puts, even if the car sales

person is totally honest, when you say if you make $1,000 on Tina, on this sale, you get $250, but if you make $2,000, you get $500, and he's got a family to feed, and he's got a budget, that really tests even the most honest person.

So I think that money and commissions, bonuses that are paid to people, puts them in an adversarial relationship with the customer, and that's just not a good thing. No, it's not a good thing whatsoever. And the better, like we talked about a long time ago, the better you treat your customers, the more business you're eventually going to get, the better your reputation.

It's going to build your business, and the other guys, they're a little less than dishonest, will not like you. And guess what? That's their fault, not yours. Amen. Thanks, Tina. There you go. You're great call.

You know what I think about you when I'm driving the show? I'm thinking about Tina. I'm now thinking of you as Tina Bonita. I don't know why. Benita Springs. Tina Bonita. I know. Tina Bonita.

As long as you don't call me late for dinner, it's all good. There you go. That would be your nickname. I feel the same way, Tina. Thank you very much. Hey, thanks for tuning in and thanks for calling. Stay with us. Thank you.

Have a great weekend. Give us a call to a free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text a text at 772-4976530 and Earl's latest column and blog most Florida car dealers break the law every day. And you can read that not only at Florida Weekly, but you can take, go to Earl on Cars.com. There's a few different ways that you can take a look at that. It is very, very interesting. As Stu said, hometown news. Yeah.

Okay, dokey. That's more text. Yeah, yeah, we got a few to get to. We have one here from, we don't have, oh, Boris, I'm sorry, we have Boris in South Florida. His question is very simple. Carwax, Hydrocylex, how does it compare it to Carnoba wax? And I can answer that question. Good.

That's because I texted Alan, our collision repair and insurance expert, and he got back to me. So Hydrocylex is a ceramic coating, and Alan says, I'm not going to take credit for it. He says, I think the ceramic coatings are great and actually have a better shine and luster than traditional wax, but he cautions. A lot of people try and sell professional installations and they can cost up to $1,500 to get that on your car.

Alan says, it's ridiculous, don't do that. You can buy the stuff for the same price as car wax now and you apply it the same way with an excellent result. I looked at Piderosilix online, and they do sell it. It's a squirt bottle, so you can do it yourself and save yourself a lot of money. Wow, I didn't know that. Wow.

That is fantastic. You can buy the stuff just like wax. Yes. Actually, I think it's a liquid. It looks like I closed up the website, but it looked like just like a bottle of cleaning, like a windex or something. Yeah, you're luxury car owners out there.

You're the ones that are paying the high price for this. So you buy himself a Mercedes, BMW, or Rolls-Royce, and then they sell you this ceramic high-buck stuff for $1,500. Of course, if you're buying a Rolls-Royce, you don't want to wax the car yourself anyway. I'll wax it for you. There you go. So there we go.

So thank you, Alan, if you are listening. Alan, as convalescing, he has a little surgery you've got to go through. Minor, he's fine, but he's doing good. His first surgery. His very first surgery. His first doctor, I believe. Yes, he's never seen a doctor since he was delivered way back in 1984. It will.

So the next text comes from, there's no name on this one here, but says, I was told by my mechanic that if I haven't changed transmission fluid after about 70,000 miles, I shouldn't change it. I shouldn't change it now at 155,000 miles on a 2007 Mazda 3. Is there anything to this? Rick? Hmm. There was an issue years back with Ford transmissions that the friction material on the clutch disk would start to break down,

and it would actually saturate and get in with the, fluid, and if you change the fluid, you took away all the friction, and the transmission would quit working. On that new of a Mazda, though, I find that very unlikely. That being said, however, at 150,000 miles, that may be not even a need to replace that fluid. I would check your owner's manual for the recommended maintenance on your transmission, and if Mazda says that it should be changed prior to that, then I would go ahead and do it. But otherwise, Can you tell anything by looking at it anymore? I mean, back in the old days, you used to look at your transmission fluid.

Can you see anything? If your car has a dipstick for the transmission, which a lot of them now don't. You have no access at all. You can pull the dipstick out, wipe it on a paper towel, look for any signs of heavy grit or shiny material, shiny metal particles. And as silly as it sounds, sniff it. If it smells burnt, I'd be concerned to get a. a mechanic to evaluate it. But most times it's going to be kind of a

brownish color, not really red anymore. It's going to be a dark brown. It won't be black and it shouldn't be real watery or runny. It should still be kind of thick. I wonder if you could train a dog to sniff transmission fluid. He would have much better nose and his opinion would be much

more accurate. Probably, but you'd have to teach him what burnt smells like versus regular toast. You have to train him. Yeah. Well, we'll make a note of that. We'll try it and see if we can. I will get Harley on that immediately when I get home this evening. I will start, because she's a hound dog, so I mean, hey, she's got a great nose. Okay, got another text, too?

Yes, this is from Steve in New Jersey. Steve says, hi, Earl, Steve from New Jersey. Last week, I found out my Subaru, had an airbag recall, called my dealer, who scheduled me for repair this Thursday, quick service. It took Lexus eight months to replace my airbag in my wife's car, wrote to I-I-H-S, who confirmed that to knowledge. I-I-H-S knows of Node 2019 model your vehicles that are being manufactured with Takata airbags with effective

inflators. So that came up the week before last about the new cars being manufactured. That's a insurance institute? Yeah, that's the Highway Safety and something like that. Oh, NHT, okay. No, no, it's I-IHS, which is the other one. They do the crash tests, I believe yeah. Yeah, I think it's the insurance group.

That's good to hear if that's accurate. Absolutely, very good. Speaking on that subject, I did get an anonymous comment on my email from someone with accolades for Honda. And he talked to the, apparently some Honda manufacturing folks and reminded me, and I mentioned this on the show, Honda, of course, has more Takata Airbag recalls than anybody. But they also have jumped on the bandwagon, maybe necessities of mother of invention. They had to jump on the bandwagon.

They are really being proactive in getting those cars off the roads. They're going to junkyard. They're going directly into communities. They're getting on their advertising. They're checking with their dealers. They are proactively going out there trying to find these hondas with his effective airbags. So kudos to Honda. They're trying hard.

You had to. They also cut off all relationships with the Takata. And, of course, Takata's bankrupt now. And they're owned by somebody else. The name escapes me. But they do no business with the Takata manufacturing folks. They have a brand new supplier. to caught inflators. Good for them.

And we have one last text and we're caught up. Oops, I just lost my spot. Here we go. The question was about Blizzard Pearl Paint. We talked the week before last about not having a clear coat and white paint and how it fades and degrades

easily. The question was, does Toytis Blizzard Pearl Paint have a clear coat? And the answer to that is yes. The pearlized specialty finishes have a good clear coat. You're not going to run into the same issue. It's the flat white. With Toyota, it's color code 040, and that's the one that will oxidize and fade, you know, even when you take care of it. Yeah.

In my, I have so many campaigns going on. One day, if I get you up after I get caught up in Takata, some other things, dealer fees, I'm going after the folks that don't clear coat their paint and don't disclose it to the customer. You go into a car dealership and you buy a car, and not many of them, but some of those cars don't have. clear coat. That means your paint's going to fade a lot faster and it won't be covered by your manufacturer's warranty typically after about three years. So that's good. That's my next campaign. Shouldn't happen. Shouldn't be legal. Rick, you got a point. Actually, we've got another text in from the YouTube channel. Frank, of course, is asking any thoughts on

Carvana? He says, we don't have them in Canada yet. Carvana? Carvana. Carvana. Yeah. Carvana is a very large company. They are a publicly traded company. It was a venture capitalist kind of a thing. They sell used cars. They have great advertising. They have great marketing and they get a lot of good publicity. They built some sort of a huge garage with a vending machine kind of a thing. So they got that pizzazz and this and they're selling a lot of used cars. what worries me about carvon is they're losing money hand over fist and to use car business is a very competitive business kind of like Tesla they're selling a lot of cars but they're

losing a lot of money too I could sell cal manure if I sold it cheap enough you can sell anything if you sell it cheap enough and you sell it below the cost that it takes to acquire it So Carvana, I would be hesitant to go and buy a car from Carvana if you're worried about will they be around 10 years from now or two years from now to take care of the promises that they made you. Right. Right now we're in an era of like rapid change with the car business. You know, we talked about Uber and Lyft already. We've talked about autonomous vehicles.

And there is a huge desire for a better way to buy a car. And so we have a lot of companies spring up like Carvana, which are seeking to, you know, to serve, you know, that demand. And if you guys remember back in the 90s, there are hundreds of these dot-com internet companies that do not exist anymore. And some are going to spring up, some are going to last. Call them.coms, they're gone.

A lot of them, I mean, does they remember, pets.com? Carvada, by the way, one of the ways we know why they're having a problem is we know from the wholesale of cars. They pay unreal money for used cars at auctions. They pay more money than the other dealers will pay because they don't care. And I guess they sell the car, either a low profit or no profit. And they're doing this similar to what Lyft, not Lyft, Uber will be doing when they go public. When they go public, you raise a lot of money and then you can lose a lot of money.

But that's a whole Wall Street. But they lost $1.8 billion last year. Tesla has used the money. huge amount of money. All right. Well, we're all caught up a text. We do have an announcement to make that our dog of the week. Reading my mind.

Jonathan and the control room and Rudy, can we do the Facebook video on the doggie? We have a dog of the week. And this is kind of a commercial. I say we don't do commercials on this show. We do do Big Dog Ranch Rescue. But Big Dog Ranch Rescue is a not-for-profit. but totally, totally, not for profit. And if you buy Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer

on Amazon, Amazon.com, you can buy this 100% of the proceeds, not just the profits. There are no profits. Whatever you pay for this book, I give to Big Dog Grants Rescue. And we have a Big Dog Ranch Rescue commercial. That's it here. But we also have a dog of the week. And we have a dog, a doggie named Asher.

and we have a video of Asher. We're going to play that video on the air when someone gets me the high sign. Can't do it. Can't do it right now because we're having technical difficulties. But remember the name Asher. Remember Big Dog Ranch Rescue. I'm going to give you. Quiet, Asher.

A website, yeah. We're going to get to it, Asher. Asher is a beautiful dog. Oh, he's so lovable. And he needs a home. And if you go to bigdog ranch rescue. dot org www.

BDRR Big D like big dog ranch rescue RRR W www BDRR go there

You can see all of our dogs And we save about 500 a month Oh yeah It's crazy I mean we save

huge thousands of dogs every year And Asher is one of them And please think about Asher If you call the ranch And this is not a commercial for Earl's dealership, but we have a great video on our Facebook page.

If you go to just look up Earl Stewart and toyed on Facebook, and you can see Asher in action cuddling Nancy, getting his belly rubbed. Getting his belly rubbed. He loves getting his belly rubbed. Trying to steal our popcorn. I'm telling you, he really liked that popcorn. Hey, real quick, I'm going to get to Gina's email that she sent me, and it is about something that's near and dear to your heart, and that's nitrogen. Yeah, yeah.

Nitrogen. Here's Asher. Oh, that's a spider. Asher does not look like a spider. There we go. Let me hold this up for the camera. I'll get right back to you, Janda. Is that a board a camera seeing it?

I think so. That's a cute puppy. That is Asher. We had to bring up the webcam photo, but that is Asher, folks. Asher's a dog's dog. Okay. As far as Gene's, is concerned. Gina emailed me about nitrogen, something that's near and dear to Earl's heart,

and a lot of us here, you know, here at the show. So anyway, Gina's in the dealership. She's purchasing a vehicle, and she is trapped. They want her to have nitrogen put in her tires. And I emailed Gina and told her it was worthless. And that, But as you always say, Earl, 78% of the air is nitrogen. And they also told her that it was going to improve her fuel, her fuel mileage. And she wants you to respond to that. Well, positively not. Consumer reports, I know I sound like a broken record, did a massive study on nitrogen

tires. They tested every tire sold in the United States for one year. And after one year of exhaustive study, they found out that nitrogen and your tires does nothing for you. It doesn't improve the wear. It doesn't improve the... Fuel? Yeah.

It's just... Worthless. If it's free, there's nothing wrong with putting nitrogen in your tire because, as Nancy said, the air that you put in your tire now is already 70% nitrogen. You know, I once heard a guy that was... He ran a motorcycle shop, actually, and he was a big fan of nitrogen in the tires. And he said, it keeps your tires from wearing... out on the inside.

Uh-huh. That's a big problem. And I sat there scratching my head, trying to figure out what, where's the inside of a tire? Well, maybe when he wears out the outside, he turns the inside out and rides on the inside. It must be because it'd be a pretty good mattress. You know, as a last plea by the salesman, he said that Palm Beach County Sheriff's Department, public vehicles, they all have nitrogen put in their tires.

So, Gina, the answer is no, no, no. And I'm glad you got out of there without dotting signing on the dotted line. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We do have the Mystery Shopping Report coming up, so don't go anywhere. And we really appreciate you voting on the Mystery Shopping Report. We look forward to it. We're going to go to John, and he is a regular caller from Palm City. Good morning, John.

Good morning to everyone. I just want to talk about, it's the 10-year anniversary, 2009, the government program, which allotted $3 billion. Everybody, I'm sure, remembers it. It was cash for clunkers, and a thorough report was done last year by the Foundation of American Education. You can look it up on a computer. They estimated that it's a total failure. Of the $3 billion that was spent by the government on it,

in absence of the program, the estimated consumer spending would have been $4 billion higher than the actual spending that went on. New car buyers paid as much as 20 to 23% more on new car purchases. Also, some defective things on it, The dealer could keep $50 of the salvage price that they get for the car,

with exception of one state, it was Oregon. They required that the dealer paid you exactly what the salvage yard paid him for it. And Earl will probably tell you that was a big discrepancy because the different salvage yards would charge all different prices for the car, also that the dealer was required to put some kind of liquid in the engine and destroy the car completely mechanically. And I'm sure Earl could briefly tell you what he went through. But the main thing is, and also many of the cars were not salvaged.

My friend was a car dealer. He passed away now in the state of Maine. And he had a very good reputation. He was offered some fine used cars that should have been destroyed and weren't. But he didn't touch one of them because he figured with the serial number of the automobile, it could be in the government computer. And he didn't want any part to take a car like that. But some fine automobiles was saved, which shouldn't have been.

They should have been destroyed. So with the finding of the Foundation for American Education calling it total, total failure. I just want to get Earl's opinion on that. Has it been 10 years, really? Yeah, well, the advantage of 2009 was the $3 billion that the government spent on the program. It was a great month we had. Yeah, I was going to say that the advantage of being, and I always disclose that I'm a car dealer, but talk about mixed emotions.

I'm a consumer's advocate, and I'm also a car dealer. So when this program came out, Cash for Clunkers 10 years ago, I was violently against it. I blogged, I spoke on the radio about it, that it was just a terrible program, and it was going to cost the taxpayers too much money. And during those months of Cash for Clunkers, my dealership made more money. than we made, I don't know when. When we look back... July and August. July and August of that year,

I look at the financial statement and we made more money than we ever made and it was the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. I just feel guilty that I admit that. But we found out also, as John alluded to there, that what the dealers were doing, they were taking these clunkers in and they were giving the $50,

or $75 to the owners, and they were turning around and selling them to other people for a lot of money. We auctioned them off to the different people that bought these cars. We would get a clunker that the other dealers were allowing $75 for, and we would get $750 for it, or $500 or $400. And pass that along to the customer. So even though we didn't cheat the customer, we still made too much money at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer. So cash for clunkers will go down in history as one of the biggest boondoggles that ever happened. Didn't stimulate the comedy. The only thing that stimulated were card dealers and made them a ton of money.

Do you feel guilty about that? I do. Wasted money. John, thank you very much. And we're only to prove for the pudding. But this foundation is a thorough report that they issued, and they call it absolutely a total, total failure. John, give me that name again.

I want to write the acronym. Okay, foundation for American education. Very good. Thanks, John. I appreciate the call very much. Okay. We look forward to the shopping report. Thank you so much, John.

We'll talk to you next week. Have a great weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, I do have to tell you that in order for us to get to the mystery shopping report, we do have to, we did take our last call. And your calls are very important to us. So we'll be back next week at the same time. And either that or you can text us too, and we get a chance after the mystery shopping report, he might be able to get to them. Yeah, and we have a text. We'll do our last text.

We got one from, I mean, we are all over the country and all over North America this morning. We have a text from Don from New York, and he says, my question is, I've been looking for use trucks. And last Saturday, I went looked at one at a local dealer. I didn't talk to them but looked the truck over. Last night I was on the dealer website and noticed that the price had jumped almost $1,500. Is this a normal practice, or should I steer clear?

Well, that'd be a red flag down. That's unusual. The prices usually don't jump up on the website. They usually go down. Yeah, unless somebody made a mistake. Here's my conspiracy theory. They have security cameras on the lot. They saw you looking at this truck,

looking very interesting. salivating over the truck, and they said, this guy's going to be back. Let's check the price up. You know, what would be fun to do is check an auto trader. Chances are that dealer has the same car listed on Auto Trader. It would be interesting to find out if the price was different than what he had on his website. Well, usually most dealers are using a pricing tool, so it kind of propagates out, but still check. That's a good thought.

Very unusual. That's a new one. We haven't heard that. And it's time to get now to our mystery shopping report. Can I throw just one quick funny story out from Cash for Clunkers? I recall, didn't we have at least one car that when we were doing that silica gel stuff that you had to put in the engine to lock up the engine, then you had to run it until it quit?

We had one that the engine exploded and the car caught fire. And how, didn't it take a couple other cars? We had so much, so many trade-ins from the cash. for clunkers thing that we ran out of room at the dealership we had a rent space down the road in riviera beach and we had a lot set up in ted kibush our wholesale guy he was kind of overseeing everything and he poured it in there down at the lot and it caught on fire and i think caught another car in fire the fire's apartment had to come we got a great video of it and we put that up on youtube and it drew a lot of a lot of comments a lot of people that felt very strong like you did

about the program and people are saying you deserved it. I hope it catches the whole dealership on fire. Wow. Stu's brother, my youngest son, got hate mail because we did a video of Josh running the gel on the engine. It was the last one we had. Yeah, the last one we had until it seized the engine and blew the engine up.

And we had people out there because it was such a nice looking vehicle. I can't. Was it a truck? Yeah, it was in 1996 Dodge Dakota. And it looked great. And we killed it. And we actually had to shut down comments on our YouTube channel because of the hostility. And some were actually violent.

Yeah, threats to it. Threatening Josh's life. Yeah, exactly. Josh was upset that I put his name on. Well, you could hear his name in the video, and there he was. You know, we've had a few hateful emails, phone calls, attacks, you know, through the years. It's been quite a journey. Okay.

I make waves. Mr. Shopping Report of Mercedes Benz of Palm Beach. we haven't shopped them ever ever ever at the request of our listeners we've made the effort in recent months to mystery shop luxury brand card deals we've investigated jaguar acura Mercedes and found out these guys often have behave as badly as regular cardinals you know I had a misconception about luxury cardios and the mystery shopping report changed my understanding because they do take advantage of people and I got to thinking I had a I envision the average BMW Mercedes Rolls-Royce guy gal as being a sophisticated consumer

that was difficult to be taken advantage of and that the electric car dealers would be afraid to take advantage of if they were an ordinary Joe, Joe Sixpack kind of a guy. But I think about it, you know, we have a lot of, to get serious, a lot of luxury car customers are older. and we have a very high elderly population in South Florida. We do. And unfortunately, we see older people being taken advantage of and more older people visit luxury car dealerships. So I think that's the answer,

and my misconception is changed. The same to set-bea advertising sales tactics and the hidden fees that we see with Kia and Nissan dealers are just as prevalent at the sophisticated high-end dealerships. One of Agent X's worst shopping experience, experiences actually happened in an Acura dealership that was Napleton Accura back in 2017. It's not just sales tactics, luxury brand dealers are just as likely as their middle-class

counterparts to sell a used car with a dangerous Ticada Airbag recall. We shot Mercedes Benz of Fort Pierce last November during the Great Romaine Recall. I want to remember that. That got more publicity and interest than the Tricot Airbag, Romaine lettuce. But we shopped and discovered that they were representative safe, a used Honda accord with a defective Takata airbag. That was one of the most egregious. They actually proactively looked the mystery shopper in the eye

and said, this is a safe car. And it could, not only wasn't safe, it could not be fixed. For today's show, we chose another Mercedes dealer to investigate Mercedes-Benz of Palm Beach on Okotroby Boulevard in West Palm Beach. Mercedes-Benz of Palm Beach is one of three months. Mercedes dealers in Palm Beach County. The other two are Mercedes-Benz of North Palm Beach and Mercedes-Benz of Del Rey.

Now, the one in Del Rey is owned by Auto Nation. The one, the two, North Palm Beach and West Palm Beach, and the one we shopped today is Palm Beach, but they're in West Palm Beach, are owned by a group. Mercedes, not Toyota. Mercedes, I apologize. I've got Toyota on my mind because I'm a Toyota dealer. It's the only natural.

Who owns them? Is it Gulf Stream Motor? I was Googling. If you can find... I couldn't. I searched that. I googled, too. I'll get that information.

They're owned by a large owner of Mercedes dealerships based in New York. Is it Gulfstream Motors? Gulfstream Motors. The Gulf Stream is the old, not one. Gold Stream owner, Ernie Baston owned Gulfstream. I bought out Gulfstream motors. I don't know who owned Gulfstream. And Ernie Baston bought about in the 60s.

And he ended up until like the 90s. And then they sold out to this large group. of and it could be a family type of thing but one Mercedes group owns a bunch of Mercedes dealerships and they own West Palm Beach, Palm Beach Mercedes and North Palm Beach Mercedes. Of the 83 used cars offered for sale, this is really interesting, of the 83 used cars offered for sale on Palm Beach Mercedes website, 77 were Mercedes vehicles, highly unusual, only six were off brand. Initially we thought this would hamper our search for Takata car, but we checked National Highway Traffic Safety

Association's Recall Spotlight page and learned that there are a bunch of Mercedes that are potentially affected by the Takada Recall. So attention, Mercedes buyers, owners. And if you're Mercedes owner, go to... Nearly every model. Yeah. Most every model has a, you have a high likelihood having a dangerous airbag. So you go to safercar.gov. Safer Car.gov, that's the NHTSA, National Highway Traffic Safety Association, NHTSA, go to safercar.gov, and you will find out, put your VIN number in, you'll find out if that vehicle has a defective Takata Airbag. We found two right off the bat, 2012 C class with no fix, passenger side, Takata Airbagger.

In a 2016 E is an Earl class also. with no fix takata here back recall both were advertised for sale on mercedes palmbeach dot com mercedes palmbeach dot com according to a mercedes bens usa recall website parts for the 2012 class will not be available until january 2020 and get this the parts for the 2016 e class e class will not be available until may of 2020. Shocking. Shocking. And again,

I know we've got some Florida legislator folks out there. I know we probably have some U.S. legislative folks out there listening. If not, we have people that voted for you.

The governor, our new governor, we've got a lot of folks have the Attorney General. A lot of, this is a pretty well-listen-to radio show. And when you add YouTube and Facebook, in my blog. Everybody knows what's going on.

Someone out there, you attorneys, how can it be possible that you are making it legal for Palm Beach Mercedes or any car dealer, anywhere, to sell a used vehicle with a defective airbag that cannot be fixed?

This one can't be fixed on the 2016 until May of 2020. 16 months. Shocking. I'm starting to hyperventilate. Again. Yeah.

Anybody got a brown paper bag? I have the, I need to breathe. The divilator? Yeah. Okay, we sent Agent X. Nope. We sent Agent Thunder to determine the Mercedes-Benz of Palm Beach would disclose the recalls and to see if they were willing to sell these extremely dangerous use vehicles.

Here's our report. Speaking in the first person, this is if I were Agent Thunder. I arrived at the dealership at 1230. p.m. I exited my vehicle, approached the showroom, immediately greeted by a young salesman named Ryan. We name names, folks. Ryan gave off good vibes. He smiled warmly, expressed a genuine friendliness in his conversational style. He asked if I had come to see anything specific. I said I was open to anything, but I had seen a low mileage, 46,000 miles, 2012 C-class online. I told him that I noticed the listing said to call for the price.

And that intrigued me. That's pretty, that's kind of old school call for price. Yeah. And that was, that was rare on their site too. Most of them had the prices. You see call for price, run. Don't walk away. Don't call.

If asked, if I happened to remember the stock number, I pulled out of paper, I had printed from the listing, I told him it was stock number P-3995A. P-7395A. There's a bit of trivia, P, in car dealer, fanacular language, code means purchase. That means it wasn't traded in. Well, the A suggests it was traded in on a purchase car. Yeah, but this means... Like somebody bought a purchase car, yeah.

Anyway, who cares, right? I'm just rambling. I'm digressing. Industry stuff. Ryan left to go check. He returned quickly, apologized. He said it wasn't available for sale due to a recall on the airbag. We were so happy when we saw that.

Now, I'm giddy, as my son liked to say. I asked him why they couldn't just fix it. And he replied with an unanswer about being an older 2012, and they couldn't fix it. Now, I'm a psychologist. I play one on TV. That's what the salesman says when he doesn't know the answer. He makes up one because it's silly. They're not fixing it because they can't be fixed.

They're not fixing it because it's an older model 2000. 12 and they couldn't fix it but you want to give them a quick answer that's what happened there so we're positive now right we're on a roll as nice as ryan was i had the impression he was not educated on the takata issue i changed the subject and informed him that there was another car i wanted to see and told him about the 2016 e class ryan checked if you just tuned in we're mystery shopping palm beach toyota on okechobee boulevard Palm Beach, Mercedes. What do you call that when you keep saying the wrong thing over and over?

An obsessive thought that you can't clear from your brain. Perhaps a mini-stroke? No, T.I. I hate to stop. Mercedes-Benz of Palm Beach. Mercedes-Benz. A Freudian slip. Freudian, could be Freud.

That's more like it, Rick. Cars, you know, they are sexual. That is something that dealers exploit in terms of the emotional. I digress again. Yes. I waited longer this time, but around. eventually pulled up to the front of the showroom in a beautiful white 2016 e-class I walked out to meet him he walked around the car sat inside it was nice it had a red and black leather interior and the miles were super low only 10,000 that is low 2016 10,000 miles makes you wonder why they traded it back in could be because they found it out it had a to cut airbag recall we drove it I asked Ryan about its mechanical condition he said he was

was in it was in perfect shape i couldn't disagree it drove great i was falling in love with it i asked him about accidents as we pulled back into the parking lot he said it had never been in an accident ryan opened the globe box and took out a printed copy of the carfax report he said he'd bring it inside with us he did that we found ryan's office and sat down he had to be the carfax report and asked me how i like the car total open transparency here i said it was amazing as i thumbed through the carfax report when i saw the takata recall that read status remedy not yet available i asked him about it ryan said they fixed the issue this is this is where it gets cloudy and confusing when i asked about the remedy not yet available black and white i'm looking

at it he said he was pretty sure it had been resolved and that he could sell it i moved on disturbing. Now we confirm this because when I read this, it confused me. So we confirmed with Agent Thunder, please clarify this is not really making sense. He says, I asked him again. He says it's been taken care of. And we also confirmed later by checking it with Mercedes. Mercedes-owned recall website says that the parts are not available until May of 2020, as of this morning. So unless there was a mistake somewhere that they haven't cleared up, this is. just blatantly untrue.

He asked if I was financing, and I said I was, I told him I had impeccable credit, and I'd be putting $10,000 down. I said, you're asking $36,9.95, are you flexible? Ryan replied that they were pretty much one price. So he'd write it up at the asking price.

I didn't protest. He left and returned with a worksheet. Pires wrote out. For those of you listening, and we're off the Dakota temporarily, if you're negotiating with a salesperson and they say that they're pretty much one price, that is the signal that they're not one price. Even if they say they're one price, they're probably not one price.

When they say they're pretty much one price, the signal to the good negotiator would be. But Agent Thunder is a new. He is, and I think he was, he adopted the, well, he adopted the persona of a well-to-do. Larry Leighton. What do we call a well-to-do Larry Leighton? A Lawrence Laydown. down Lawrence lay down, exactly. I'm as quick as Josh sometimes, aren't I?

Sometimes, sometimes I am too. Now, he's selling the car for $36,995, plus, here it is, $845 dock fee. That's where they dock you for $845. Yeah, yeah, boom. Sales tax and $611 in a non-tax fees. Now, that's good that they put that there because it reminds me to remind you the way you tell a dealer fee is if they charge sales tax on it if there's no tax on a fee

it's legitimate if there's sales tax on a fee it's illegitimate so 845 dollar dock fee is illegitimate and they charge them 6% sales tax on that the non-tax fees were 611 there was no sales tax on that that's the acid test sales tax or no tax he pointed out i were i could be at five hundred six dollars per month for 72 months with ten thousand dollars down i said we were really close i want to be just under 500 but i wasn't crazy about going 72 months you're right about that shouldn't be crazy about that i said i need to talk to my wife i suggest that i go home to discuss with her and that we talked to his boss by getting me down under 500 with a short term ryan said his boss would be more willing to come down if i were in the showroom

it showed more commitment i declined and we should cancel left now that's old school that's the way cars are sold that's old school selling and uh you don't want them to go home with the best price so you leave a little tickler there we'll come down if you'll stay here for a while we'll come down if you're going to leave you're going to have to come back to find out how low we were going to come down that's old school car selling Here's the epilogue. We're not sure what to make of that. Agent Thunder's take was that Ryan was confused

and already had bad information about the town to Colorado. His earlier comments about the 2012 not being able to be fixed because his age indicated that he was not completely informed or maybe he was misinformed by his manager. Agent Thunder did not feel it was intentional. In my conversation with Agent Thunder, he says he got the feeling that for

some reason Ryan was associating the age of the car with the ability to fix it like no one has ever discussed this with it. Yeah. Now in summary, what this tells to me, tells me and I'm looking at the Carfax Report now where it says

in red, recall incomplete remedy, not yet available, and then further on it says it's not available until May of 2020. So it's a travestee that they're selling this car. I think that the real travesty, and I'm going back to our regulators, our legislators,

that allow this to happen legally. Because people just don't care about it anymore. The salesmen aren't filled in. The managers probably aren't filled in. A lot of the dealers probably have forgotten about it. And the Thuccott Airbag has become a non-event, and there's millions of them on the road. They're becoming more unsafe every day. The ammonium nitrate and the inflators are degraded.

every day with the heat and humidity so today there's hundreds of them on the road that are potentially explosive that weren't yesterday and tomorrow it'll be hundreds more and there are currently millions on the road and here's this travesty of justice risking your life when you buy a car so we've come to the end of another shopping report we've got a little bit of time left here some grades and my Apple watch says I should stand I can't do that now because I doing a radio show. That's okay.

Well, we have grades that are coming in online, and they're almost unanimous. So we have Nick gives it an F with three exclamation points, Ann gives them an F. Becca gives them a D-minus. You're too kind, Becca. Kyle gives them an F, and Neil gives them an F. So there you go.

That's the feedback. Well, so far our texters, our listeners have failed them. We'll wait for a few more inputs because we've got some time left. And I have a little, it's not a digression, I have a little interesting thing that I learned. I won't accuse Palm Beach and Mercedes of anything. But I had a conversation that arose from my anonymous feedback blog where I asked car sales people to talk to me about the dealer fee anonymously. And I had a car sales person that came in to speak to me anonymously. and I spoke to him for 45 minutes, long conversation, and it had to do with Pompey's Toyota.

He told me, and this is all alleged, so you attorneys out there, you know, put your pencils down. This is alleged from anonymous purely, and I'm using this conversation now to educate the consumers. He told me, and I believe this, because I did check it out, that the manufacturers, some manufacturers, will allow, the dealers credit, and I mentioned this early in the show, if you lease a car with a few miles on it, up to 3,000 miles. One of his allegations

was that Palm Beach Merchides was doing this. And they were putting in 2,900 miles when they leased a car so they could pick up the profit on the lease, not disclosing it to the customer. So the reason I'm bringing this up now is

when you're leasing a car, be sure you check to see what mileage they're putting down on that lease contract that is going to the manufacturer because if they are putting a higher mileage then exist on the actual odometer then they're stealing from the leasing company this would have been Mercedes leasing if this were true and I don't know that's true if it were true it would be stealing from leasing company and the reason I'm just stuck in my mind is because I've been in the business for over 50 years I didn't know about

that this is new to me that I this is another way that car dealers can steal, and they can steal this case from the leasing company in manufacturers. So if we have some more grades from our listening audience, we can listen to those. Otherwise, we'll go around the table, start with Rick Kearney. Rick, how do you score Palm Beach Mercedes? I'm going to give him a C, but I'm giving Ryan a D because I think he needs to be educated. I think he's, he's, he sounds uneducated on this situation. Yeah. And that, that's something that, uh, you can't sell a car if you don't know what you're selling. Exactly. Nancy, what do you think? I think that Mercedes-Benz of Palm Beach

should receive enough and Ryan should receive enough. You're tough. You're really tough. I was going for, uh, the, the full, full fail. Um, then Rick did make a point. point, the dealership itself, you know, a second, I'm going to correct myself mid-thought. I'm giving them an F. It's the dealership's responsibility to train their salespeople on this sort of thing. I mean, I do believe that Ryan was just confused and ignorant about the situation. However, you can't make mistakes like this. This is a, the only silver lining to the whole thing is that it's a 2016 vehicle, and it's not in the most dangerous stage of the degradation of the

accelerant. Getting close, right? Yeah, so it's three years. You get six, seven years, then it's going to, you know, so that's the one saving grace. But the problem is, is that nobody takes it seriously. If they took it seriously, they would train their salespeople. Even if they wanted to keep selling it, they would at least disclose the existence

of these recalls. Yeah. Let the, because if Agent Thunder was a real customer, he would have bought that car, driven off the lot, completely unaware, because he would, he had been told. cold that it was taken care of. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, I waffled on the grade, too, but, you know, if we don't draw a line in the sand

when a salesman tells a customer that the car they're buying, when he tells a customer that's been fixed, that's proactively misrepresenting. It could be accidental, but we got to draw the line somewhere because everybody's going to say, you know, I thought it was. all the written information on the Carfax and he could have checked with his own dealership you could go into the service file you could go into the computer

it would have shown that car had been fixed you could have called Mercedes you could have done so many things when they pointed out that the Carfax had no fix at that point Ryan should have gotten up and said let me check on this and asked around and he would have found out yeah and the fact

of the matter is this is not in the mines the consumers either. We have to keep reminding ourselves that most people out there, you can talk to, stop somebody on the street and say, Taccata Airbag, the odds are about 50-50. They'll punch you. Well, they won't know what you're talking about. What'd you call me? Right.

You know, I think I'm going to change my grade down to an F on them. Because the more I'm thinking about it also is from the report, even Agent Thunder, who, granted, he's little new, little green. but even he said he was falling in love with that car. And once the emotions start taking over, I know myself, when my wife started driving her new rap, the emotions took over. I could have told her that that car was going to suddenly fire

or steal darts at her. She wouldn't have cared. Bring it on. I mean, it just... Sure drives nice. Good point. Yeah, so she, you know, he would have driven away in that car

and never known that had that issue. I wish we could get, you know, as long as we're talking about that, this sort of apathy. I wish we could get a politician to call the show. Have we ever had a politician call the show? You had a debate between Carl Domino and Brian Miller about 15 years ago. Yeah.

I remember that? I'd forgotten about that. Yeah, Carl Domino, you're out there. He didn't get elected, but he ran. I'll even accept somebody that ran and got defeated. Why are politicians so reluctant to call the show? I would just like to have anybody. You might have better luck with somebody that lost the race.

Yeah, you're right. Carl, Carl Dominoe, are you out there? Call the show. What do you think? A regulator, somebody from the Attorney General's office, somebody from the county office of Consumer Affairs, the Better Business Bureau. Somebody, I mean.

Jupiter Town Commission. Somebody. Somebody called. The dog catcher. Yeah. Where you at? Come on, Rudy. Where's the bar?

It's barbaric. You allow someone to buy a car without disclosure that could kill you. It's barbaric. Yeah. All kidding aside. You know, it is just a damn shame. Let me give out the anonymous. Maybe you want to be anonymous.

You politicians, you be anonymous. Tell me your politician. We don't want to know your name. Anonymous Feedback.com. Your anonymousfeetback.com. Y-O-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S. Feedback, F-E-E-D-B-A-C-K.com. www.

www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Tell us, if you're a regulator, if you're a legislator, tell us why you won't make it illegal. Okay. We're out of time. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Let us know why these car dealers should sell the cars anyway with this exploding shrapnel that could kill you.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end. of the show. Thanks for tuning in, Daryl Stewart on Cars, and we'll be right back here next week. So you can tune in at 8 a.m. on Saturday morning. Have a wonderful weekend, and thank you. Welcome! Welcome! Oh! Oh! Oh!

Oh! You know. Thank you.