Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.10.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of AutoNation Chevy Greenacres

Episode Date: March 10, 2018

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits AutoNation Chevrolet of Greenacres to purchase a car featured in a television ad. 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.trueoldiesfla.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]. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @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. Let go. Let go. Let go. Thank you. Are we on the air now?

Okay, Earl Stewart on cars. Hi, folks. Welcome and good morning again. Plug out here in the control room. Now we've got the plug back in, and I'm going to explain who this strange voice is on True Oldies. This is True Oldies 95.9 and 106.9, 960 a.m. And the music is stopped, and you're listening to a car dealer.

That's right. Don't turn the dial right. now. Let me explain who this car dealer is. This car dealer is Earl Stewart. I'm a recovering car dealer. I've been recovering for a number of years now. And this is a consumer advocacy show, a how not to get ripped off by your car dealer's show. And that's what we do for two hours. I'm sitting in my studio here, 95.9, 106.9 FM with a team of experts. And we've got Alan Napier, who's sitting immediately to my right, Alan is not on every week, but he's on at least every month. He is an expert on collision repair, and he's also an expert on

auto insurance. So hopefully you haven't wrecked your car in a while, but if you have any needs in that area, this is something that you'll want to call the show. And to his right, we've got Nancy Stewart, Nancy is the co-host, been with me for over 10 years. We've been doing the show for over 10 years. Good morning, everyone. Start out at a half an hour, now we're up to two hours. We also have Stu Stewart. Stu is my son, the general manager of my dealership.

He's a cyber guy. He's, you know, old guys like me. We're not into the Instagram and the Snapchat and the Facebook and tweet and all the other. But he is, and he's our communication king when it comes to cyberspace. He's out here tweeting and Instagramming and Facebooking. And you can communicate to us via. these high-tech media, if you like. And, of course, this is the old-fashioned radio works pretty good, too.

Love to have your calls. We are, it's a two-way street here. We're not here to lecture you or sing to you or to be, there's no monologue involved here. It'll sound like it. But we ask you to call us 877-960-99-60, 877-960. As I say, we're more interested in what you have to say, really, than what we have to say. It's our responses to your calls that make the show interesting. Live, talk radio is exciting.

It can be a lot of fun. We don't want everyone to agree with us. I welcome car dealers to call, and I welcome employees of car dealerships to call. 877-960. You can also text us as 772-497-6530. I encourage you to write those numbers down. Don't do it if you're driving. But if you're at home and you've got a pencil and paper handy, write the numbers down.

You might not have a question now or a comment, but I promise you, if you stay with us for a while, from another caller or from something maybe Nancy has to say or Alan has to say or Stu or I, you'll have a comment, and they'll say, oh, what was that number? So write this number down. I'm going to give you the call-in number, 877-9-60-99-60, that's 8-8-8. 7-7-960. Got that written down? Now, I'm going to give you another number.

This is a text number. A lot of people don't like to be live radio. You call it. You can be anonymous, if you wish. Just text us at 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530. Now, we've got kind of a mixed audience out there. We've got our regulars.

We changed stations a couple months ago, and we changed times. And we lost a lot of our regular listeners. Because as I say, Earl Sturt on Cars, we've been doing this for 10 years plus. So we went on to the True Oldies channel, which you're listening to right now, 95.9, the 106.9 FM. That's got some great 60s and 70s music, and that's what you tuned in for. A lot of you did that. So we've got our regulars.

We've got our Goldie Oldie regulars that are hearing us for the first time. And that's the reason I'm harping a little bit on what we do. there will be no music. I will not be singing to you between now and 10 o'clock. We're going to be talking and listening to you primarily. We want to hear what you have to say. Now, we have it. Nancy, you have a comment? I do. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for tuning in and spending your Saturday morning with us. And we've got a great show ahead. Our mystery shopping report is always a doozy. We're going to talk about the latest. consumer report and that's the auto issue of 2018 and the mystery shopping report is from the auto nation Chevy Green Acres and you definitely want to stay tuned for this this is one you do not want to miss ladies I have a gift for you if you'd like to give us a call at 877-960-90-50 for the first two lady-callers. That's 877-9-60-99-60, and you, of course, ladies, if you'd like to text us, if you're a little shy,

772-497-6530. So the next two hours is filled with a little fun, a lot of information. And as I always say, you make the show. So give us a call. We definitely appreciate your dedication to Earl Stewart on cars. Now I'll give it back to the recovering car dealer. For your new listeners, Nancy just mentioned our mystery shopping report. And I don't want to brag, but it's kind of unique, it's special, something nobody else does.

If you've been listening to radio for a long time, you've probably never heard an actual undercover. agent go into a retail store in our case we go into car dealerships and we send in a secret agent anonymous they have a pseudonym they make up an identity and they pretend to buy or lease a car and we visit car dealerships all over south Florida hundreds and hundreds of them and we've gone as far south as Fort Lauderdale as far north as Vero Beach and we try to pick a different dealership almost every day I mean every week we go back to to some, of course, because we get bad reports and we get good reports. We get a bad report, we go back and give up a second chance.

We get a good report. We try to keep them honest. And we have a whole bunch of these that you can access online at mystery shopping reports, plural.com. www.w.w.com. We've got 50 or 60 mystery shopping reports. We'll continue to add to this library. So if you're thinking about buying a car, why not go? go see the dealer you're contemplating buying the car from, how he does when someone is undercover

doing the same thing you're doing, buying, or leasing a car. Yeah, absolutely. It's a great site to go to, and it definitely has an assortment of things that can educate you. Not only the Mystery Shopping Report, but you can read all of the columns. You can also pick up some tips that Earl shares with everyone on a day-to-day basis. So ladies, again, let's be part of the show. Give us a call, $50 for the first two lady callers. That's 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-6530.

Now back to the recovering card dealer. Okay, I'm going to pull up a text here. Studio just sent me a text here. I just lost it on the thing, but I'm going to get it here sooner or later. And we have a text from a listener that says, I think I purchased some bad gas because my car is now hesitating and bucking when I accelerate. My tank is still pretty full. Any suggestions what I should do at this point?

Additives, this is Jake from Riviera Beach. I think I'm going to throw that to Alan. Normally Rick Kearney, who is off this week, would answer a question like that. I think I have an answer, but I bet you Alan has a more accurate answer. Well, if we were up north and you could get a bottle of heat, It's an attitude. You would put that in your gas tank, and that would help get rid of the water. What's called?

Bottle of what? Heat. H-E-E-T. We put it in the gas up north to keep the gas from freezing in the winter. I'm sure there's similar products available. You're probably buying on Amazon. Yeah. H-E-E-T.

I just learned something. Yeah. Good stuff. Other than that, you would just have to drain the tank and refill it. But if it's just a little bit of gas, and it's causing a small problem, I would put an additive in to dissipate the water. Well, thank you, Alan.

I would add to that to avoid this problem in the future, try to buy your gasoline at brand names. Some of these off-brands that nobody's ever heard of, they tend to buy from independent refinery and gasoline distributors, and they don't turn their gas. They don't sell their gas as fast as the name brands. And because of that, the gas sits in the tank for a long time, and sometimes you get more sediment there.

And if you can get in the habit of buying your gas from the same gas stations, you know, this way you keep your receipts and then when you experience a problem, hopefully you won't. But if you do have a sediment problem, you'll know you bought it from the Sonoco station on North Lake Boulevard.

You bought it from Exxon Station on US One. And it's kind of hard for them to refute and they'll pick up the bill. And I've experienced that with our customers. And usually they're very good about that. They say, okay, you know, buying all your gas from us you got sediment we'll take care of the fixing it up and dropping the tank and drain the the gas down if you need to pick up a bottle of heat that's heat H-E-E-E-T on amazon

com for 99 cents a bottle it's cheap that's quite an investment that's heat there you go ladies and gentlemen that is great advice from earl Stewart did a commercial for heat I learned that same station thing from rick years ago I heard him say that on a radio and I'm like religious always buying my gas at the right at the same place just in case yeah not likely but somebody that you know uh you know that uh takes care of the problem but great advice great advice uh 877 960 or you can text us at 772 4976530 we're going to go to uh Tina Tina's part of the show she's become a regular and we certainly enjoy her she uh shares a lot of information with us Good morning, Tena.

Hey, Tina. Hi, Alan. Hi, Earl. Hi, Tina. How are you doing? Nice to meet you, Alan. Hey. You as well.

Well, you know, you guys are always great at calling out bad dealerships, and I'm about to call out a bad dealership. Matter of fact, they even made the news here in April's Daily News. Uh-oh. Let's hear it. And this is Rick, Rick Kendrick Chevy. It used to be Bob Taylor-Chevillay a long time ago, and back in the day, Bob Taylor-Chevillay had a really good reputation. They were pillars in the community. If you wanted to

buy a Chevy, that's where you went to. Well, they sold out a few years ago to Rick Kendrick, and what's happened is that they have been underpaying their staff, they've gone through staff, turn over like crazy, and they have been overcharging customers in their repair department. So right now

there's a pending class action lawsuit against Rick Kendrick. And it's the employees that work there that are initiating this class action law suit, and it could be in the hundreds of thousands, if not the millions of dollars. Wow.

Well, that's interesting. That's interesting. Give me the name again. Could you, Tina, I got Rick Pender, P-E-N-D-E-R? Hendricks. Rick. Rick, Rick, R-I-C-K. Okay, R-I-C-K, and then K-E-N-D-R-I-C-K.

Yeah, he's a big dealer. He's got a lot of dealerships around. That's very interesting. Yes. What are the employees suing for, Tina? I'm sorry. What are the employees suing for, do you know? They are suing for withholding of money owed.

They've been getting really low commissions on the sales of cars. And the problem is that Rick Kendrick has been, they've been putting all kinds of dealer fees and other kind of ridiculous fees upon over and above the sales of car prices to client so it's been cutting into the commissions yet so it's been cutting into the commissions of the salespeople and some of these salespeople say you know they bust their butt and they don't even make $2,000 a month some of them have been making minimum wage which is ridiculous so there's been a lot of staff turnover and the repair department has been overcharging ridiculous amounts of money for repairs so they are not a consumer-friendly organization by any stretch of the imagination

Well, Tina, that's very interesting. And unfortunately, I've heard about this practice before, and I've been aware of lawsuits. It brings up an interesting point as to why the dealer fee is such a terrible thing. It's not only taking advantage of the customer because you're adding the dealer fee to the advertise or quoted price of the car, but you're also cheating the salesperson. Salespeople typically get paid 25% of the profit on the car. Now, I don't like that. And I think that the price of cars should be set by the dealer and that the, I don't like the haggle hassle process.

But the process is the process. It's been that way for a couple hundred years. And it just is a way that cars are sold. So if a car salesman can make $1,000 on Tina when she comes in to buy a car, then they get a $250 commission. If they can make $2,000, then they get a $500 commission. So it's, they're basing their. compensation on the percent of the profit. Now the dealer goes on

and he has a extra profit of $1,000 for a dealer fee. That's $250 that you're taking out of the salesman's pocket because they don't pay. They don't pay the commission on the dealer fee. So it's a practice that's going on lots of dealerships and I'm

going to be very interested in following this suit by Rick Hendrickson and Bonita Springs. If you could maybe text us or email us some of the newspaper clippings on their details, It's something that is going on probably in 90% of the car dealerships in the country. The salespeople are getting taken advantage of. Yeah.

And, you know, I think the whole problem with consumers having issues with car dealers is these people that own car dealerships are not treating their sales staff right. And if they don't treat their sales staff right, then guess what the consumer is the ultimate loser. Yeah, they're the victim. Our Mr. Shopping Report, for example, at the Green Acres, actually was, what's the name of the dealership we showed? Automation. It was an Auto Nation store, the largest retailer of cars in the country. Automation store, the salesperson has only been there two or three weeks. You see such a high turnover in car dealerships for what you described, Dina.

They really don't treat, many of them don't treat their employees very nicely, and so you get a high turnover. And that makes it difficult in the customer because you get a novice trying to, they don't have the product knowledge, they don't understand the rules of the road. Sometimes that can work to your advantage because they don't know how to cheat you as much as the pros do. You get somebody's been around the same dealership for 10 or 15 years. He's learned all the tricks of the trade. The new guys have to call the managers in to learn how to trick you. But, yeah, it's a bad situation.

And thank you very much, T. and I'd love to get the details on that. And we'll do a little research and maybe do a column on that. I will definitely send you a link. And on another vein, I know that we've been talking a little bit about the last three weeks, about a few weeks, really, about autonomous cars. And at the Geneva Auto Show, they actually have a small school bus for kids. And how it could potentially work is the parent will, like, Uber, the school bus for their children. And about four kids can sit in this little bus, and the bus will take them to school.

Wow. And they're thinking that this will save. on transportation costs for children. And supposedly, I guess a couple of adults can sit in this thing, too. It's quite small, but very, very interesting-looking, and I think it's going to become a big thing in European countries. Wow. Well, I tell you what, the times are changing.

Can't believe it, you know. I wonder if they'll be yellow. With little seat belts? Yeah. Hey, Tina, back to the information you shared with us about Rick Kendrick. When did that hit the news? This hit the news yesterday. It's actually in Naples Daily News, and I'll try to text you the link when I'm going to chant.

We found the link, Tina, yeah. It's not just, yeah. Oh, yeah, Donovan-Labelle sent us the link. Yeah, it's not just dealer fees that they were charging customers, but they were charging for washing the car, for detailing it. I mean, an extraordinary amount. We're talking hundreds of dollars just to wash and detail the car and for, you know, and for transportation fees and all that other garbage,

that they were charging over and above the deal fee. And it was like, and the commission that they were paying their salesmen, like for instance, a $60,000 car, I think they were only paying $250 commission. So that's the numbers I vaguely remember, but I will definitely share the link with you. For anybody that wants to buy a car, for anybody that wants to buy a Chevy, Rick Kendrick, don't do it because wait until this lawsuit's over, wait until they get everything settled, wait until they straighten up their act. And, you know, it's really a shame that Bob Taylor, Bob Taylor was the last of the good guys as far as the Chevy dealership goes down here. Yeah. Who blew the whistle on Rick Kendrick?

How does all... I'm not really sure who is... I'm not really sure who is the initial whistleblower. I don't know if it was an individual or a group of people, but anyway, this law suit is going through, and hopefully the judge will approve it as a class action lawsuit. Yeah, I'd like to see Pam Bondi, the Attorney General, to get involved. You know, this might be a seed that's planted, and, you know, it can go in a lot of different directions. So, anyway, thank you so much, Tina.

know. Oh, thank you, guys. Thanks for being part of the show. Call again next week. You're a great caller. Thank you. Always interesting. Oh, thank you so much. Have a great weekend. Give us a call toll free at 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. And remember, ladies, you can win yourself $50, the first two new lady callers. So be part of the show. As I always say, you are the show. So back to the recovering car dealer? Yeah, Alan has a text from Don Brown. He's an aerial photographer, by the way.

That's Don and LaBelle. Yeah. Okay, well, this says Donne Brown. He's from LaBelle. Oh, from LaBelle, okay, yeah. Can insurance companies use dealer maintenance and repair records of cars without owner's permission? and then might raise insurance premiums from what they see. And that is Don from Mobile.

I didn't see that. I just saw aerial photographer. I didn't know Don was an aerial photographer. Or had a last name. Yeah, exactly. What do you think about that? Is that violation of the law to use dealer maintenance and repair records of your personal car? I would say not as long as they came upon the information legally.

Any information that you come upon legally when you're setting rates, you can use the information. So most people, I would say, have good maintenance and driving records. So there's nothing really to hide. The ones that do have bad driving records probably should be paying higher premiums. Carfax uses it. I mean, they grab it right out of the dealer's computer. It's public information.

At that point, the... Hold on. I just lost my train. of thought. Oh, Allstate and Progressive, they give you an option of putting a little chip you plug right into the diagnostic port on the car to where you can voluntarily give them information. It actually tracks your driving speed and your driving habits. And if you're a good driver, you get a reduction in your premium. If you're a bad driver, you get an increase in your premium.

That raises an interesting question. Hopefully you would take it out at that point if it's raising your premium. I wonder if Progressive takes into consideration to people who refuse to give permission. You know, you might say he must have something to hide. It'd be interesting to do a survey of the level of premium on progressive customers, those that consent, and they have good driving records, those that don't consent, period. Forget about the driving, how they drive. Yeah, human nature would, if I'm Mr. Progressive, I'm going to say the same thing. What do you have to Why would you not want to take advantage of this if you're a safe driver? But most of us know we speed, and I certainly wouldn't want one in my car.

I wonder what percentage of the people do consent to that. I would say a relatively small percentage. Okay, we got another text from a listener, and I just... These texts are blown up this morning. Yeah, we got a lot of texts. Let me go back. We've got one from Hawaii, which is really interesting. And I love it that people in Hawaii are streaming us.

Aloha Earl I love it I live in Hawaii I went online on a Honda dealership's website the MSRP advertised is $23,570 so I went into the dealership

and asked about the particular 2018 Honda Cord LX that lives I was interested in we talked and negotiated a little when he came back with some numbers the MSRP was 24,460 I told him

but your MSRP online is 23,570 then he said no, we need to add the destination charge to that price because that's what they pay, which because that's what they pay, which is an additional $890. I was disappointed and I walked out. Is that right? Thank you.

I'm from Hawaii. Now, interesting, I haven't had a complaint on that in a while. There used to be a lot of that going on in dealers we used to mystery shop. We caught a few adding the destination charge. We call it double dipping. The destination charge is the freight that the car manufacturer charges the dealer when he buys the car. It's included in the price to the dealer. It's also included in the MSRP price that's on the window sticker.

So you're being charged for the freight, the destination charge, on any new car you buy already. I mean, it's baked in to the price of the car because the dealer has already paid the manufacturer for it, and he naturally passes that cost along to you. By adding the freight in again, they're charging you twice for the freight. Pretty cute trick, but it's illegal. It's a violation of federal law. And the interesting thing in Miami, I mean Miami in Hawaii, maybe Miami too, but in Hawaii, they have very few owners of car dealerships.

They are set up, I guess, because they're an island state, the 50th state. They kind of got started in the car business later than most of the other. other car dealers. A few families own most of the car dealerships. There's a large family from Hawaii, now from Japan, that owns maybe half the car dealerships in Hawaii. So it's a huge, it's a huge thing going on. I'm talking about class action suits. That could be a natural for class action suit in Hawaii if they are all doing the same thing. I don't know they are. Could have been just this one hot dealership, but I can see how they could be getting away. They have large dealer fees in Hawaii too so the there's there's not that it's not like in the

United States where there's a lot of individual owners or franchises it's just a few owners in the Hawaiian Islands so thank you very much for the text I think we have another text too don't we yes we do let's get going on the next text here from Sandra and Boynton okay Sandra in Boynton says how much money should I put down for a down payment when I finance my car is there a minimum required How much should I put down for a down payment when I finance my car? It's a variable, Sandra. It depends a lot on what you want to do and what your credit rating is.

Lenders oftentimes require larger down payments when your credit is not sterling. If you have a 700 plus beacon score, you should be able to get by with very little down payment. In fact, oftentimes you can get by with zero down payment. It might not be the best thing for you because obviously the more money you put down, the less interest you pay over the term of the loan. But check your beacon score and let that be your guide as to what down payment you should put down. If the car dealer is pushing you for a too large down payment, be a little bit cautious and be sure you get competitive bids.

One of the reasons car dealers will tell you you need more of a down payment is because they're charging you such a high price for the car that the lender is saying, whoops, you know, if they were buying the car at a good price, you'd only have to have $500 down. But since how you're overcharging this customer, $4,000, that's more collateral cost to the bank. So they have to protect their collateral, and they normally want to have a down payment that will bring the collateral within line. If they have to repossess a car, they don't want to have a lot of water in the car they repossessed. and oftentimes car dealers will charge two people can walk in and buy the same car on the same day, one for $10,000 less than the other.

I mean, the car dealer's style, Hagel Hassel negotiate, is to charge you as much for the car as they can. So if that car dealer has got you on a big fat profit, and he also is asking for a big fat down payment, you need to go and shop that price with at least two other dealers. That's what I always suggest, get at least three competitive bits. So Sandra, I hope I answer you the questions. Thanks very much for texting.

And let's give those numbers out again. We're getting a lot of text, which is very encouraging. Yeah, we are. Sandra, thanks again for that text. And as I all said, we hope we were able to help you out. That text number is 772-497-6530, and you can call us tool-free at 877-960. And you should pick up that auto-efficient. that I mentioned earlier. The 2018 auto issue, boy, it's packed with all kind of information.

It can be so helpful before you go out and purchase lease a new car or a used car. There's 255 vehicles that were rated in the review. So that's the Consumer Report, the April edition. And Earl's over there holding that, holding that we have, we have on this, this is how much we depend on consumer report in our home. We have his and hers so that we don't have to fight over our consumer report anymore. Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to go to John, who is absolutely a great caller. He's been with us for a very long time and we appreciate him. He's calling from Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to the entire crew. Thank you for giving up your morning on Saturday. I have two things, in my opinion,

I like Earl to comment on it after I say, two things that I think you should never give a new or use car dealer. One is an electronic contract. That's basically, they put a computer screen in front of you and here make it sign this and you don't really know you only want to print copy which you want to read first but that's the latest thing that some dealers are doing oh we save you all just sign this with your finger on here and it's a computer screen well he could sneak in extra course and things that you don't even not even aware of and the second thing is never never in my opinion i want to see what eros says about this give a car dealer power of attorney. He put his paper in front of you say, look, you don't need all these paperwork

and everything. Just sign this one power of attorney and we'll take care of you on everything. You know, you won't have all these mileage statements and everything else. Well, the reason why they probably want to do that to you is, well, maybe there is a reason. Like, I heard of a person he misplaced the title on his used car that he's trading in, and they asked him right away, well, we can get that for you, just sign this. this. But power of attorney could be very dangerous because you don't know what they're going to use it for, and it could be held against you. So I want to see what Earl has to say about the two things that I mentioned. Well, John, the electronic contract, unfortunately, is a wave

for the future. In fact, it's here today, and it's becoming a part of life. Transactions on cars now are going to be all electronic. You're going to be able to buy a car online. You still get a printout. You still get a printout. You get a printout of anything. You sign but on electronic contract you can be home and you can actually buy a car online never have to go into the car dealership never have to talk to a salesman you can pay online you can it's it's just like an amazon transaction so it's something you need to be cautious of unfortunately everything is signed in a car dealership whether it's paper or electronic is something you have to be cautious of the sad fact is we don't read contracts john i

I would challenge you to, on this, I'll bet you've signed a lot of contracts in your life and you never read them, whether it's for a home or a lot of other things. You might have a lawyer read them for you, but most people sign all sorts of things that they don't read. It's part of the modern society. You know, the devil in these things is fine print. For years, I've railed against fine print. And fine print, if they weren't for fine print, we would have. have any lawyers. And that's what they do for a living as they read the fine print for you. It's a terrible system. But electronic contracts are happening. You can have the hard copy

with the electronic contract. You should. You should read everything you sign. We read the fine print, but we don't charge anybody for it. Exactly. You should read what you sign, but human nature is you don't. And I'm confessing right here on the radio, I sign a lot of things that I don't read. But I'm very careful not to sign something unless I trust the person I'm dealing with. And if I really, really am worried, I send it to my attorney, and he reads it. Then I have to pay him a lot of money, but

again, that's the system. It shouldn't be that way. Item number two, power of attorney. The power of attorneys at card dealers ask you to sign are limited power of attorneys. You should be very careful if you sign a power of attorney, which sometimes you have to, to complete

the transaction. And for the tag work and title work. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And it will say that. It should be filled out. You should have never sign anything in blank. And always read it if you're so inclined. If they say you can't read it, they won't let you read it. If they don't sign it. If they say it's okay to read it, you're probably not going to read it, but at least they made the offer. Limited power of attorneys are okay as long as they limit it to exactly what they want to do. If they want to obtain a lost title on your behalf, there's nothing

wrong with changing that. If they want to get a license registration or a license plate on your BIAF, there's nothing wrong with that. It should be printed so, as I described, on the limited power of attorney, then it's okay to sign. On that limited power of attorney, you know, in the body shop, we have a lot of customers sign a limited power of attorney as well, and it's specific to the claim numbers listed on there, the repair order number, and the type of car. So while we can endorse checks that come in after the car is done and picked up. Another thing, and I'd like to hear from a lawyer, is one lawyer told me you can't give power of attorney to a corporation.

It's got to be to an individual. So most powers, if that's true, most powers of attorney that are signed are not legally binding anyway unless they've assigned somebody in a company to receive that power of attorney. Interesting question. I never thought about that. You lawyers out there, there's got to be a lawyer somewhere, out there listening, can I give my power of attorney as an individual to a corporation

because car dealers are doing it or receiving those signed by customers every day and if you're buying a car from Roger Dean Chevrolet you give the power turn to Roger Dean Chevrolet, that's the corporation and we have one attorney's opinion that's illegal. Yeah, and

you know what, the custodian or a porter or somebody that works at Roger Dean Chevrolet at that point can sign your name for you? I don't know. If he's an officer of the corporation there you go well you answered the question but just in regard to the electronic contract if it's done on internet is that legal would it hold up in a court of law they do uh john believe it or not uh i i recently and nancy and i recently sold the condominium

online we sold sold the condominium and it was all done electronically between the real estate agent and us and it was all done with electronic signatures and on the internet so that's that's what's happening. I mean, basically, you're not going to see any paper anymore. You're going to have paper files and things like that. But most people are not going to have any hard copies of anything. It'll be

stored for them online. Printing things out is also dying away. I mean, a lot of people print out everything. Some people don't print out anything because you've always got copies of everything online. So we're going into a cyber society. Everything's going to be done by computers.

It'll be stored in the cloud. paper will disappear, which is good news for the trees, by the way. Yes, absolutely. Just one other further question. On cable TV, they're driving everybody crazy, and these seem to be new companies. One is Car Guru, and the other one is Cardova. I mean, how can people actually buy cars that way? Car Guru is actually a good company, and it's a good place.

I always mention TrueCard, and I mention Costco. Car Guru is a responsible. affected outfit. They're much smaller than true car or Costco. But it's a good way. They're very sophisticated. They're honest. They have a fairly decent dealer following. And they know

how to irritate the dealers, too. So if you look for a used car on car gurus, it'll show you the one you're looking for it, but it'll show you some other cars at other dealerships, too, that are just like it. So it's actually pretty consumer-friendly. Yeah, car guru.com for you folks listening out there. Plural. Gurus.

Gurus. I always miss the plurals. Car gurus, car gurus, g-urus, g-ur-us.com. It's a good place to check while you're using true car in Costco. Well, the best one is that other one. They show all the hassle left, the dealership, and all of a sudden the car comes and it's delivered right to their house. That's that car don't, whatever that. Carvana.

I can't even think of the name. It's called Carvana. Yeah, it's online buying. Yeah, that's it. That's it. And what they're truant is they're showing you all the hassle that you go through and the signing and all the nonsense and here he presses the button and bingo

there the cars delivered to him well what you're describing thank you for the information well you're very welcome always good as usual thank you for the call John give us a call give us a call ladies

$50 for each lady caller the first two and we want to hear from you first two new first two new we would really like to hear from the ladies. We know you're out there. Sandra Text, was it just one

text from a female? Yes. So ladies, give us a call, toll free at 877-960. The first two new lady callers, but you got yourself $50. We're going to go to George, who's been holding. Good morning, George. Good morning. How you doing? I'll try to get my question. I'll try to get my question in quick because I seem to be fading.

We lease a car, and when you lease a car, they have wear and tear amounts of like $500 in disposal fees of like $3.95. Can that wear and tear amount be applied to the disposal fee? No, George, unfortunately, they get you twice on that fee. Disposal fee is a phony baloney fee that all leasing companies have. They waive the disposal fee if you lease or buy another car from them, which is kind of like a way to chain you to that dealership. But it's worse than a dealer fee, in my opinion. The wear and tear is supposed to be legitimate, but they typically try to go apt to you on that, too. The definition of the normal wear and tear is defined in the lease contract in the fine print,

which we just were discussing earlier on the show, the fact that nobody reads the fine print. So they try to come at you for dents and dings, faded paint, worn tires, stains on the upholstery. You name it, they try to come apt to you. and they will typically give you an inflated charge for your above normal wear and tear. I recommend that no matter what your normal wear and tear is, that you contest it. In my experience in 50 years in the business, and most recently when leasing has really exploded, I've found that if you object, they will typically come down. It's almost like they overcharge you on purpose.

And if they give you a thousand dollar charge and you squawk loud enough, it'll come down to $500. We object a lot of times on behalf of our customers, and we usually get an adjustment. Sometimes they'll waive the fee entirely. They'll even try to charge you for a paint job that you already had.

You might have scratched your car, had a fender painted, and they will note that, and then they'll try to charge you for that. But it really might come down to your dealer and how willing they are to try and help you, because a lot of times it takes a lot of pushing from the selling dealer to get them to waive those wear and tear charges.

What do you think, The other thing I found interesting is that we've leased through this car dealer more than once, so we've been with them. But the last time we were pretty insistent that we really didn't want to put any money down. And when they wrote up the contract, they put down the MSRP, and they put down like a down payment of like $3,500, even though we put nothing down. I used the rationale that if you go in to buy a car, the price is negotiable, and it was that number that they put it on there.

Yeah, it really is silly to me that people hide this fine print of down payments and leases the whole purpose of a lease is really to have a low out-of-cash cost. I mean, you don't, out-of-pocket cost. You don't want to pay a down payment. You don't want to pay a high monthly payment. But that's what happens. They've turned leasing into another way to get you in the door because the monthly payments sound lower when you have a high down payment. So you'll have a $5,000 down payment hidden in the fine print of the advertisement, and you come in and they want $5,000 cash. It makes no sense at all.

Shop and compare leases. Leases have so many traps in them, George, besides the ones you mentioned, which is the above normal wear and tear and the disposition fee, you also pay an inception fee. I'm not even sure you knew that, but there's something on your lease contract in the fine print called administrative fee or inception fee or. They have a number of names for it. All leasing companies charge it, typically around $1,000 as low as $800. So they get you there with that. And then you paid a dealer fee from that dealer. You paid an inception fee.

You paid a dealer fee. You paid a disposition fee. And you also paid above normal wear and tear fee. So that's what they come at you with leasing. The reason you have to be doubly careful when you lease a car. George, do we answer all your questions? Yes, yes. Yes, I did read the contract before we came to Florida from upstate New York,

and I read the part about tires have to have at least an eighth of an inch. So I was just about at that. So what I did is I put two brand new tires on the front and saved the two that had more than an eighth of an inch. And when I go back, I'll be putting them back on, and so all four tires will be legal to trade it. Very good idea. That's a great idea. And also, one last tip for you, when you turn the car in, take some pictures of the car inside and outside,

because those cars often sit on car dealership lots or sometimes on the lots of the leasing company for weeks or even months before they're sold. And oftentimes damage can occur after you turn the car in. You want to be sure to document any damage on your car when you turn it in. There'll be a lease inspection report, which you should receive a copy of. You should sign off on that and be sure that they didn't check any denser, dings or stains or tireware

that don't exist and then you'll have the pictures as a backup in case there's a dispute. When you do that they're probably going to be a lot less inclined to go after you. These cars will sometimes be dropped off of their car dealership and a salesman will grab the car because it's got a tank load of

gas and he'll drive the car for a month and who knows how many he's going to put on the car. Leasing company sees the car, they assume the lessee damaged the car. It was the car salesman so you want to be sure that you free in time exactly the condition of that car when you turn it back in.

Already. I appreciate it very much. Thank you, George. Great call. A lot of people had that same questions in their minds. Yeah, keep listening, George. Thank you for the call. These contracts, how complicated they are. When will it come to you know, just reducing the contract so that you don't confuse the

consumer? That's the reason why they won't, you know, they don't read them and the fine print. They don't care about anything so they just start signing away. If the leasing company needs that money to help process the end of the lease, that should be included in the money factor and the payment. Exactly. And no surprises. It's a dealer for you anything that you add after the fact selling any product or service should be included in the advertiser, quote of price. Anything that covers the cost that you have.

I mean, if you covered all your costs, wouldn't that be sweet for car dealers? You could put your phone bill, you could put your rent, you could put your... Oh, but those payments wouldn't look so good in the house. Why would they do that? Interesting. We have Howard, who's holding, and he too is a regular. Good morning, Howard. Good morning.

Thank you for taking my call. I hope everything is fine. I have a couple of questions for Alan. And I hear Alan's back today. So, Alan, here are my questions. A friend of mine has inaccurate. And someone damaged his rear bumper in the parking lot. took off and he never got the

person's name or anything and what happened is that he spoke to me and I told him make sure when he does body work that he gets the bumper from Accura and you know, not from China

so he said, oh, forget about it what is it matter, it's only plastic so he went to a guy named Val you probably heard of Val and they put on a bumper. They charge them very little for it and I think he has a Chinese bumper.

So my question to you is that's part one. What is the difference between the original part and a bumper that comes from, let's say, China? And he says to me, it's plastic, what's the difference? I couldn't explain to

him if it's not crash worthy. So what is your take on this? Well, there's a couple of things, Howard, and thanks for calling, and I'm glad to be back, by the way. If it's a remanufactured bumper cover, it can still be an accurate part, but at some point it was deemed non-reparable, and these companies get them, and they repair them and resell them anyway.

So usually, in a remanufactured, you're getting a product that should have went into the trash. As far as aftermarket, you know, where it originates at a different factory, a different manufacturer versus the original equipment manufacturer. The plastics and the urethanes they use in those are different, and the outer coating is different. The big problem with aftermarket bumper covers, other than the fact that they're not an exact fit,

is pain adhesion because they're... Usually the manufacturer is going to go through a little bit greater of an expense to produce a good product and aftermarket providers use cheaper products to make the same bumper cover. So the oils from, it's a petroleum product, any rubber or plastic is a petroleum product. So the oils in the aftermarket bumper covers tend to come out creating an adhesion problem for the paint. That's why you see so many of them with big sheets of paint missing from them. But it's like anything else, it just boils down to you get what you pay for.

If you're going to trade your car in in six months and you want to save 500 bucks or something and go with an aftermarket or a rebuild and kick it down the road. But if you plan on keeping a car, we always suggest you that you stick with the true blue OEM parts. What about safety? You haven't mentioned safety? Well, on a rubber bumper cover, they really don't affect the crashability of the car. once you get beyond the rubber bumper cover to where you're into the impact absorber

and the impact bar or reinforcement or what you would consider a bumper, the actual bumper, then you start getting into a safety aspect of the car. I thought Howard was talking about the rear bumper. Howard, you're talking about just a bumper cover? Yes, exactly. I got it.

The pump, well, the plastic... The painted part you see. Yeah. They're paid apart, right? Yeah. Okay, then it's my question. One other question. This friend of mine, he's going to trade the car in,

and he's looking to buy a car that has adapted headlights. He says, I have to get one. I'd like to get a Toyota, but I don't know if Toyota has the, you know, the headlights, and when you make a turn, they turn with, you know, with the car. Like the Tucker. Yeah, right. Does the Toyota have said your thing? No, I don't think so.

I'm not aware of any, Howard. I think BMW was the first main effect. Well, I know Tucker back in, what was that, the 30s or whatever. I guess. I saw the movie, at least. Yeah. Yeah, he actually had the first adaptive headlights and mechanical. But it's a neat feature, and I wish a Toyota's had it.

It's kind of like when he started putting qubits. cornering lights on luxury cars, you know, Lincoln Continentals and Cadillacs got cornering lights where if you turn your signal on, you got that nice bright side lights, so you can kind of see where you were turning. For anybody that doesn't know the adaptive headlights, as you turn your steering wheel, now you have a computer controlling the angle of your headlights. and my wife's truck Howard is so cool I can adjust the up-down illumination of her headlights because it's got a trailering package so with a trailing package you know when you hook a trailer up to the back and the back goes down well naturally the front goes up so your headlights are pointing in the sky now I can just push a button and electrically aim the headlights back down on the road. It's pretty cool.

That's a great feature. Yeah. Great feature. Yeah. Okay, so I think you answered my questions. You guys have a good day. Thanks, Howard. Thanks, Howard. Thanks so much, Howard. I just got a text here that while we're talking about Alan and talking about him being on the show,

why isn't Alan on the show very much anymore? Why isn't Alan on the show very much anymore? No offense Earl, but he's my favorite. Aw. No. Your fan loves speaking out. I'm tired. I'm just tired, man.

Let the record reflect that we would like to have Alan on the show. But he has a day job. He has a day job. So Alan is coming over as much as he possibly can. And as you say, two hours on a Saturday morning is a... Alan's my favorite, too. No offense, Dad. Yeah.

I got a great idea of way he can get his own show. There you go, a spin-off. When we did Tuesday afternoons, it was a little easier. but I do have co-workers that I like very much and I rotate Saturdays with them and you've got six dogs and yeah I got a yard

full of dogs and cats and a wonderful wife that I like to spend a lot of time with. Fences to mend and yeah so the we end up it's a car business we end up with one or sometimes two

Saturdays a month where we can actually put two days together and have a two days weekend and and uh i got an idea yeah here's a compromise how about you call in every now and see that way when you're here physically and then we can have a time when Alan would call in a certain time and you could end callers could anticipate that you'd be calling in and we'll pass the whole would give you a set of these headphones and migrate you walk around the body shop with this on just just talk yeah i'll just hot spot my phone and maybe strap on a laptop on my back and just you won't look ridiculous at all i think we're getting into the weeds okay ladies

and gentlemen let's thank allan for being here this morning i'll tell you what uh he he's a book of knowledge he's been in the business uh so long uh that it's just uh we're impressed uh with his credentials and he is an important part of the show and we're very happy he could be here this morning so uh we're going to appreciate him for the moment that he's here So if you have any questions for Alan Oh, that's so sweet. Give us a call. Give us a call toll-free.

Hit 877960-99-60 or you can text us at 797. I think I just messed up that toll phone. 772. 772. Oh, that's great. I'm glad you got on there. 772-49-76-5-30. And while I'm thinking about it,

In the Florida Weekly and the hometown news, you can read Earl's column, Ten Commandments for a Car Dealer. It's a great column. So, parentheses, secret is for success for all businesses. So Ten Commandments for a Car Dealer, it's a great read, Florida Weekly or the Hometown News. So we have a lot of avenues where you can pick up a lot of information, and I'll share that with you later. Again, that number is 877-960-99-60,

or you can text us at 77249-76530. Now back to Earl Stewart. Besides the hometown news and the Florida Weekly and Earl Stewart on Cars, this radio show you're listening to right now, Nancy and I do a lot of public speaking, and we usually bring Rick Kearney, who is off today,

He's our auto-computer scientists, we call him. He's a technician, been a technician on automobiles for 20-some-odd years, been with me for over 20 years, extremely knowledgeable. So we're a team to go around. We speak to groups. We speak at Rotary Club, Kiwanis Clubs, Condo Associations, and Men's Clubs, Church, Synagogue, Schools, Schools, Colleges, you name it. We're out there, and all you have to do is ask. No crowd is too small. No crowd is too loud.

to large we go down south we typically stay in Palm Beach County but we do go up to Martin County and we even go up to St. Lucie County if you have a group and you'd like to hear how not to get ripped off by a car dealer or you might have some

technical questions like autonomous cars safe cars Rick Kearney does that part and Nancy and I do the how not to get ripped off by a car dealer. So you call on us and Rotary Clubs and other groups out there just call us any time and we'd love to come in and speak before your group you know it's interesting

there's more ladies now that are part of the speaking engagement it's really great to see them right there and they're joining in and asking questions and they are an important part of the purchase of a vehicle I'd really like to see you speak to a biker rally and tell the bikers how not to get ripped off by Harley dealers. You think car dealers are brutal. You should see Harley dealer contracts. Is that right? I forgot to tell you.

We're doing a speaking engagement for the sons of... Anarchy. Anarchy. No. Sons of an anarchy. Yeah, we're doing it. Oh, me, all right. But Nancy says she won't come.

I'm not sure why. I'm off that week. Yeah. Hey, you know, that'd be really funny if we send Agent X in the mystery shop of Harley dealership. He doesn't know how to drive a motorcycle, so. We have got to go to our carly. our next caller that we love, and that is Desiree. She's from West Palm Beach.

Good morning, Desiree. Good morning, good morning, guys. It's so nice to hear from you. Yeah, well, I'm a little happier this morning. You know, last week when I called, I had a little issue with one of the car repair places. And I'm happy to say, I actually got a call from. the actual owner Monday and he was the one who called me to say that they were they apologized for the inconvenience of my automobile and that the mechanic that he had that he was

not as experienced as he made out to be and so I'm happy to say I took the car in Thursday and By Thursday afternoon, everything was done, everything was fixed. I didn't have to pay for anything. They took care of it. Great. And he really apologized, you know. So I'm extremely happy for that. It really made me, you know, want to, you know, actually tell people, when we do call in

and we have complaints about people, we want to them to come through. and do what they were supposed to do, and then we need to call back and let everybody else know that they did come through, you know, that's very important. Well, Desiree, can you tell us the name of the dealership? Well, it wasn't the dealership. It was the car place, and it was called Car Clinic. Oh, that's right. And the owner called you.

Yeah, he was, but, you know, when I called you guys last week to tell you about this, he was the actual person who mentioned to me about the upper ball joints on my Ford Mustane. And so, you know, he was the one who mentioned that, and I thought that that was kind of weird that you would have a company and not know that the Ford 2002 Mustang don't have upper ball joint. Yes, I recall. So, yeah, so he was the one who mentioned that. And so he just told me, he said, well, I really do apologize and let me take care of it, you know, the right way.

So he did that, and I'm very, very pleased. Boy, Desiree, congratulations, you know, your proof of, you know, just, well, asking for, you know, the higher-ups to give you a call, and hopefully they will, whether it's a manager, whether it's an owner. So you really accomplished an awful lot, and we want to thank you for following us. up, you know, on that conversation, you know, from last week. We really, it's really great when a caller does that. Because we want to get some, we want to put out some good news. All right.

Hey, Desiree, where is Car Clinic? What town is it? They are actually right here in front of me. I have the address. So let me give us, let me give this out to you and your audience. I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I'm just so impressed because I'm, And Earl has said numerous times over the years I've worked for him,

sometimes that's when you can really show who you are and what you're about is when you make a mistake. Sometimes a mistake is actually advantageous because it shows people what you've made of. And a car clinic sounds like they did everything right once they recognize that they made the mistake. Absolutely. What area are they? They are, it's 7-001, Norton Avenue, and it's Bay 11 and 12, and they're in West Palm Beach, Florida. West Palm. But they're, yeah, they're actually right off of Forest Hill.

As soon as you cross the track on Forest Hill, and then you make that right. So that's where they are. Yeah, and so you remember last week now, because their rating was pretty good. I think they were like at a 4.9. So that's a very, very good rating, you know, for them. So I really didn't want them to mess that up because that's, you know, that could really mess you up with one customer. And I could have been that customer.

Right, right. You know what I'm saying? Unfortunately, and not meaning that they were not. good people it just could have been a bad experience that it could have caused me you know as a woman as a consumer not to go back because women do we speak in volume uh we we need those companies to represent us and we need to feel like wow you know you're not just looking at me because i'm a woman and you're going to treat me yeah your voice but you're going to come through for me you know your voice has to be heard and uh you know each and every one of us is a

an example and again for you to have accomplished what you did congratulations I remember last week how you talked you know about car clinic and their rating and you know it can be ruined you know we have the power to do just exactly you know just take them down so and if they're if they're if they're a good place to go and it you know slides through the cracks you know but you took care of all that. Desiree, thanks so much for the phone call. Thank you guys so much. I'm so glad you guys are on and you've given, you know, all of us a voice. Yes. Because that's so important. There's so many things that we don't know about our cars. You don't know about what's going on. So I just wanted to say thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. That number is 877-960 and you can text us at 772-497-3530. And we're going to go to

Larry, Larry's calling from Stewart. Good morning, Larry. Good morning. Good morning. What can we do for you, Larry? This is for Mr. Stewart. Okay. I was digging through some of my stuff the other day, and I came across a bill of sale and a price tag for a vehicle I bought from Mr. Stewart. And I was wondering if he'd be interested in having it and displaying it in a show run. What is it, Larry?

Like 40. As for our miles, I bought them 72. Wow. 19702? How much was the dealer fee? Well, I don't remember. I just had to go look the other day if I knew where it was that. I had to go look the other day.

It was like a hundred bucks. It was like a hundred bucks. What model monster did you say it was, Larry? It was one of the rotaries they had at the time. Oh, probably an R-100. That was the first rotary engine brought in the United States. That is very interesting. And the price was what?

Ah, Lord. Two to three thousand, I think. For a brand new car. Yeah. You know, that was the rotary engine, a lot of people don't even know what a rotary engine is. It was also called the Wankle engine, because that was the German that invented the engine. The General Motors thought it was a great deal because they paid $50 million for the patent rights to the Wankle engine. And the Wankle rotary engine had no pistons.

It just went round and round. And it has a – actually the piston was actually – would spin. And it was spent extremely high RPMs up to – 20,000 RPMs. Amazing car. And they, when they first came in, they were winning all the races because they were much more efficient in terms of horsepower. You could have a 200 cubic inch wankle engine that would put out the horsepower of a 500 cubic inch piston engine. The problem is the gas mileage was terrible and the engines would blow up about every 50,000 miles. They never got it right. I was the first Mazda dealer in the eastern United States. I was the first

Mazda dealer east of the Mississippi. They had a few in California. And we were selling those rotary engines. You bought one of them. Did yours ever blow up on you, Larry? I mean, they weren't very reliable. If you put very many miles on, you might have had a problem. It didn't blow up, but the seals went in it.

Oh, oh, boy. Yeah, that's what it was. The seals, you probably stopped driving in time. The tips of the rotor, there were three tips on the rotor, and they could never figure out how to keep these tips from wearing off and especially when you drove it fast and so when the tips wore off

that's when the whole engine would blow up and I made a fortune back in those days with warranty work because Mazda would reimburse us you know and we were fixing you'd have like five engine replacement today yeah they're just coming out we're making more money

fixing them than we were selling them and uh hey aye y aye someone's going to have to gag me because I You keep going. I remember you had a plastic working model of the Wankle engine on your desk back then. Yeah, I actually met the owner, or the owner, the chief executive officer of Mazda.

It was called, well, his name was Kohai Matsuda. And I went up to Jacksonville, Florida, back in the late 60s, early 70s. Actually, it was late 60s because I had to, I became a Mazda dealer in August 1970. And that's met the actual guy, the guy that ran. around the company, and I had the first monster deal chip. Really, those were the good old days. You know, that rotary engine was so popular. I remember my brother, I don't remember if it was for his birthday, Christmas, what?

But as a gift, he got a clear rotary engine kit that you put together, and the outside was clear, and it had a little electric motor. That's what he had, yeah. Yeah, and it would turn, and it was a big deal when that motor came out. That was my first toy. Yeah. Interesting times. Very interesting. Your stories, Earl Stewart, are even more interesting.

Larry, I'd like to see that car. I mean, if you can... And the bill of sale. Yeah, I love to see the car and the bill of sale. If you get to bring it down, I'll tell you what it'll do. I'll make a deal. I'll buy you lunch if you'll come down and show me that car. I'd love to see it.

Take a picture of it. I don't have the car. I just got the bill of sale and the price sticker. Well, I'd love to see it. You don't get lunch for that, then. That'd be a... I was kidding. You could email it.

If you could send me a copy of it or bring it down, I'd love to see it, Larry. I appreciate that very much. Okay, where can I... If you want to mail it... Okay, I'm at Earl Stewart, Toyota, in North Palm Beach, 1215 U.S. Highway 1,215, U.S. Highway 1, Lake Park, Florida, actually, 33403. You can mail it to that address. And if you want to scan it for me or do a fax, you can email it to Earle at E-S-Toyota.com. E-A-R-L at E-S-Toyota.com.

Okay, I may give you a call down there and see when you're going to be in. Maybe we can get together. Yeah, that's fantastic. No rush, but I love to see that invoice. Put it in my archives. That brings back some good fond memories. Thank you, Larry. you know we had another customer came in yesterday he goes I want to let you know I'm a repeat customer I lost bought a car from you

44 years ago and I said really he bought a grand dam from the old Pontiac dealership on Dixie highway yeah uh-huh those for the days interesting I said it took you long enough a lot of interesting stories ladies and gentlemen the earl Stewart on car podcast is now available on soundcloud We've posted all our past shows going back to the beginning of January. So you can just simply go to saunclad.com slash earl on cars or download the SoundCloud app from the Apple App Store on the Google Play Store or the Google Play Store. So give us a call toll-free at 877-960-9960.

We still have a lot of time left for you to give us a call, especially the ladies, the first two new lady callers, $50, $877960, or you can text us, and we have really received a lot of texts this morning. It's a great thing. 772-4976530. Now back to Earl Stewart. The Earl on Cars website, Earl on Cars where we display our blogs, If you're going on your PC or computer, your Mac, we're working on our mobile app right now,

so you'll be able to do the same thing. But if you go to Erluncars.com on your PC or Mac, you can find all of our sources of information. You can find our blogs. You can find our YouTube. You can find the recorded shows on SoundCloud. We have everything pretty much with the interesting websites like Good Dealer, Bad DealerList.com. and the mystery shopping reports.com. So everything that we do is available on earluncars.com.

And we're working, we'll have that fixed up on our mobile, earluncars.com right now, but right now we haven't got that fixed. I'd like to mention something that Nancy already mentioned earlier in the show, because I know we've had a lot of people tune in. And the new annual auto issue for Consumer Reports just came out. It's like gold. It's something you should have a copy of. It's the April edition.

I'm not sure it's the newsstands. Nancy and I just got our copies in the mail yesterday. But this is something you should buy, even if you don't want to buy a car right now, it is the most valuable information in one place that you can possibly find anywhere. It helps you not only choose the right car, it helps you choose the safest car,

the best price on a car, car, it does something that is very rare. It tells you the cars that are terrible. It gives you the best cars and it gives you the worst cars. So just imagine you're thinking about a used car and you see some really

attractive prices. And maybe the cars are in good shape. You do a Carfax report. You can do a lot of research, but the research on Carfax and Auto Check and even doing your campaign recalls, safety recalls, won't tell you if it's a well-built

car, it was a quality car. Consumer reports test these cars. They had this incredible test track. You wouldn't believe it. They discussed the track and the test track facility that they have in the magazine. And they test these cars exhaustively. They're a completely reliable source consumer reports. They're a not-for-profit. They get all their money from donations, magazine sales. They don't accept any advertising. And another reason they're amazing is if they want to test a product they won't take it from the manufacturers they won't take a toaster or a refrigerator from the manufacturer they go to the dealer and they pay retail they don't even want they

don't even want a discount with a buy a car to test a little car dealer and they pay sticker price for the car and then they take it out on their track and they really put it through the mill so consumer reports annual auto issue it's the April edition it's blue the blue cover and you when you're on the newsstands, or you can access it online. If I were you, I would go online. Nancy and I are membership online, and we get the hard copy too. But you can do everything from selecting the right car to buying the right car right with Consumer Reports.

Absolutely. And this edition is worth its weight in gold. It is just amazing. It has so much information in here. It's unbelievable. So pick up the Consumer Report. That's the April edition. because there's a lot of information in this little book.

Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6. I'm making phases at Nancy. I'm sorry about it. I'm just looking at that Starbucks coffee in your hand. I'm going to tear that out. There's not much left in that. I'm Johnson for some caffeine.

Now back to the recovering card you'll also stay tuned for our mystery shopping report. Sorry about that. And that is the Auto Nation Chevy in Green Acres. You don't want to miss this. It's a good one. Yeah, I'm speechless. I'm stuttering. My hair's on fire.

Okay, back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, we've got a text. And for you, text,ers, that's 772-4976530. 772-497-6530. This text says, I'm curious. with a manual transmission, how does popping the clutch start an engine when the batteries did? I remember that. What does this have to do with the battery and starter?

Okay? Who wants to answer that question? Well, I'll do it. Once you pop the clutch and it's in gear, it's basically direct drive, just like you are. You have to have the key on because you have to have a spark, but it's doing the exact same thing that a starter does. it's just getting a thing turning. And as it turns, the timing, the gears, and everything,

create a spark, goes into the cylinder, explodes the gas. Whenever you let out the clutch, you're using the friction from the wheels to the road, which is turning the transmission, which is turning the engine, and you get ignition. Is that the exact same thing your starter does? They have the cranks in the front, like the model two, same mechanism? Yeah, I have a, I actually, have a air compressor in my

front yard. It's an Ingersoll ran 1917, four-cylinder air compressor. It was pulled by a horse and it's got a crank start too. I just had a flashback pushing this guy's car that wouldn't start and he would pop the clutch

too soon and then you'd slam your face into the... I told you not yet! That's something that younger drivers will have no experience with. I remember doing that. Battery's dead, roll down the hill, pop the clutch. I wonder how many of our listeners experienced that situation because I have. Popping the clutch, I will never, ever forget it.

And I took a trip back to Pittsburgh, and I had my dad's car. And it was an incredible situation. I will go into details. We don't have that much time. But, who, pop in the clutch, yikes. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-99-60. or you can text us 772-497-6-5-30.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. I think it's time for a commercial on my book. Oh, yeah. I've been doing this. We're going to start bringing dogs on now, but Confessions of a recovering car dealer. Confessions of a recovering car dealer is not really a tell-all, although I do tell a little bit in the book.

It's more or less of a how to do it book, how to buy a car, or at least a car without being ripped off by a car dealer. also how to have your car maintain and repair. And folks, he's in a confessional booth and he is telling the truth and confessions of a recovering car dealer. It's just that.

I thought long and hard about that cover because I thought we would offend too many Catholics but it is a picture. We went all over town trying to find a confessional the way we thought confessionals were and we found out that confessionals are not like this anymore, but this is an old-fashioned confessional. And we actually got permission

from the Diocese, the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach County, to be able to go into a confessional and do this picture. So we got the permission when we did this. But it's a great book, and it's less offensive than the original working title of the book. Exactly. Which was screwed.

Exactly. Anyway, the good news is, for you dog lovers, for you dog lovers, all the proceeds, 100% of the proceeds of the sale of this book, go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And we started out just making it a general charity, and then

Big Dog Ranch Rescue became our favorite charity, so we do 100%. You could buy the book, Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer, on Amazon, Amazon.com, and whatever you pay for the book, I think it's around $18 or $19. Yep, 1895. 1895. For

1895, 100% of the proceeds that we get from this book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue, and it helps to save dogs. Big Dog Ranch Rescue, website, in case you want to check them out, is B-D-R-R-R-R-S-N-R-R-Sk, W-D-R-R-Sq, as in big dog, ranch-rescue, dot org, check them out. We've got about 500 cars, 500 dogs. In cars.

I'm selling dogs. I'm giving away the dogs. I can't help. But I'm selling the cars. I've got 500 dogs out there for you. And all size shapes. We say big dogs, but we really have. Little dogs, too.

We got chihuahuas out there. We got little bitty dogs. We got great. We got Great Danes. We got Labradors. Usually, everybody, it's a mix. Yeah, I got a small dog from there. My dog was very small.

Oreo. Oh, Oreo is so... Until she put on weight, and now she's a little bit there. So please help. We saved over 3,000 dogs last year, over 2,000 dogs last year. And we are in a new facility on Okachovia Boulevard. Beautiful.

Out near where Alan lives in the Loxahatchee. And it's 3,000. and acres. Did you know it was that big? It's huge. I did not know it was that big, but I'm an avid supporter. I love that place, and you don't have to be lonely. You got Abby from there. Abby and Sarge. That's all, yeah. That's right. Yeah.

We're so happy we had a call from a Facebook friend the other day that found two pit bulls that were being euthanized in the Palm Beach County Animal Shelter on Delvedere Road. And he called me because of my affiliation with Big Dog Ranch Rescue, and I was able to, I spoke to Alan because I, you know, Alan is the greatest dog lover I know. Isn't he? I talked to Lori Simmons, who is the founder and the boss for Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And we were able to rescue those two pit bulls from being euthanized, and they're being rehabilitated and prepared for a foster home at Big Dog Ranch Rescue right now. When I talked to Lori Simmons from Big Dog Ranch Rescue, she just got back from Miami and saved three dogs there from being euthanized, one of which had been an auto accident,

and they were going to put the dog to sleep. But Big Dog rehabilitates. We have a veterinarian. We also have a behavior specialist. We work on the behavior, the training of the dogs, the shots. We do it all at Big Dog Ranch Rescue. So, by Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer on Amazon. on.com and save a dog

at the same time. It's a two-hurt. Thank you very much. Oh, there you go. We had almost had Toto in the dealership. He didn't make it. And we had Cheech on

Wednesday. And oh, he was gorgeous. So we have a video that you can watch from Wednesday. So give us a call to free. What is that? 877-9609.

9960 or 772-49-49-6-5-30. We have some sound effects. I hope we're not. I think I fixed it. Did you? I think it was that box. You're an electronic genius. I'm telling you.

I just push the off button. What a panel we have here. Well, we've got something we have to talk about. It's very important. We're getting close to the mystery shopping report time. But we have to talk about Takata Airbags. I don't like to talk about Takata Airbags. because it makes me sad and angry.

But I have to talk about Takada Airbags because it can affect your life. And you may be driving the car right now with a defective Takata airbag. The problem is not getting better. The problem is getting worse. We had a little bright sunshine last week when we found out that there was a big, big lawsuit

that was settled in favor of consumer group, cars in California. It's a large consumer advocate group that was able to sue CarMax. They also sued General Motors. But CarMax is the largest seller of used cars in the country, probably the world. There's CarMaxes all over the United States. And CarMax was sued because they're selling cars with TACTA Airbags, unsafe, repaired, unrepared, TACAD airbags. They were not disclosing the fact that they had the Taccata Airbags.

So Rosemary Shahan, who is the president of cars, sued successfully. It was class action. And that's case law now. So all car dealers out there, heads up, if you're selling cars with Taccata Airbags, you are at risk of being sued, and you're at risk of actually breaking the law. We're making progress toward making it illegal to sell cars with Takkad airbags, and it's going to happen. So you might as well get used to it right now. At the very least, if you're going to sell cars with Takut Airbags,

we warn you to disclose that clearly and conspicuously to the customer. One of the worst things about these airbag recalls is that even with notification to the consumers, we know from history only 25% never come back for repair and this is for all safety recalls any safety recall 25% that's a huge number millions and millions of cars are never repaired and the older the cars are the less likely they are to come back the manufacturers are unable to contact people when the car has been resold two or three times so if you have a car this is all you can do to defend yourself right now if you have a car that you're not sure of, you need to go to this website.

I hate to keep giving these websites out, but I have to. They're very useful. Safercar.gov. S-A-F-E-R-C-R-G-G-O-V. W-W-W-W-W-W-SafERC-E-R-G. Go to that website. That's the National Highway Traffic Safety

Administration website. Put your Venn number in, and you can find out if there is a recall outstanding on your car. It'll also tell you if the car is had a recall was fixed. It will also tell you if it hasn't been fixed and there's not even a part available. You heard me right. There are a lot of airbag recalls out there where the inflator, the parts you need to repair the vehicle, is not available.

You buy that car, you're stuck. You cannot get it fixed. You might have to wait a year or longer. Hondas are the worst problem. There are more Hondas than any other single make. BMWs are big, General Motors, Chrysler, virtually all manufacturers. 25 auto manufacturers, which is virtually all the manufacturers, have problems with the got airbags. If you're driving an older car, as I said, this is particularly dangerous

because the problem with the airbag inflator is in the inflator, which is the canister that literally has a controlled combustion explosion, supposed to be internal in the the canister to inflate the airbag. What happens is the inflator ruptures and becomes a hang grenade. And these hang grenades, these inflators, are killing people in the cockpits of the cars, killing the pastures, killing the drivers when these cars are in accidents. And they've been known to blow up even when the car wasn't in an accident. So you need to know and check your car, if it's four or five years old, the inflator is particularly unstable. And when they're unstable, that's when they blow up.

So if you're driving at 2005, 2006, 2006, 2007, 2008 car, you're in serious trouble if you have a defective earback. And there's a good percentage. Millions of cars out there have them. It's not like one in a million. It's like one out of five or six are defective.

The odds are not in your favor. Frightening. So ladies and gentlemen, enter that VIN number. Go to safercar.gov. find out whether your car was recalled. That's safercar.gov. Give us a call toll free

at 877960-99-60 or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Now back to the recovering car dealer. I think that we're going to go ahead and... Shopping the Mystery Shopping Report? Dissect the Mystery Shopping Report. Which, by the way, has been posted already

on Mystery Shopping Reports.com. There you go. Don't forget, folks. You can follow along at home. Oh, mystery shopping reports, mystery shopping reports, plural on the reports.com. We've got 50-plus mystery shopping reports out there, and we encourage you car dealers out there to also check this out, because if your dealership was on that list, you'd want to know what happened, wouldn't you?

Do you mystery shop yourself? I suggest you do. I mystery shop myself, because every car dealership has got people. You've got a big barrel, and you've got a couple of rotten apples. unless you're the world's smallest car dealer, you've got some people out there that are probably not behaving the way you want them to do it. So even if you're a nice guy, an honest guy, a transparent guy, you might have some people on your staff that aren't doing the right thing by your customers.

The only way you can find out for sure is a mystery shopping report. So we're doing you a public service. Just go to www.mosphericingreports.com and see if your car dealership is on there. If you're thinking about buying a car, by all means, go to mystery shopping reports.com and see how that car dealer treated the last mystery shopper that came in. We have some car dealers that are on there more than once because if a car dealer fails the report, fails a test, gets a do not buy score, then we check them again. If they clean up their act, we put them back on the recommended dealer list. So this mystery shopping report is of Auto Nation Chevrolet and Green Acres.

Auto Nation, Chevrolet, and Green Acres. Green Acres is Lake Worth area. It's southern Palm Beach County. Well, not really southern. It's kind of central Palm Beach County. West. Green Acres is a little bit west. And this Chevrolet dealership has been there for a long time.

It was owned by a friend of mine named Steve Moore, and then Aller Nation bought it. It's a very large dealership. And here we go. We bring the third installment in what we call the anatomy of a car dealer ad series. We stumbled upon a television ad from Auto Nation Chevrolet and Green Acres, Florida that was offering what appeared to be an amazing deal, $12,000 off MSRP. Now that's a lot of bucks off of MSRP. So we say, let's check this out.

The ad begins with scenes of customers speaking to the camera, describing the various vehicles they're looking for. The actor who is portraying the Auto Nation salesperson assures the customers that they have what they want at a great Auto Nation price. Now, these commercials are national because Auto Nation is the largest retailer of automobiles in the world, I believe, certainly in the United States. They've got about 250 dealerships all over the United States. Next, the announcer tells us to shop over 100,000 cars and trucks, coast to coast. So like I say, this ad is being aired all over the United States, like a national ad. Then, an enormous pink $12,000 off MSRP appears on the TV screen, as the announcer says, with huge savings like $12,000 off MSRP.

Now, let's listen to the ad in its entirety. Here we go. Red. Crossover with Southern. And navigation. We have what you want at a great Auto Nation price. Shop over 100,000 cars and trucks coast to coast, with huge savings like $12,000 off. Only at AutoNation. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

Now the big $12,000 off appears on the screen for just two seconds. And it's 13% of the time. It's a 15-second ad. In those two seconds, some more very important information, appears on the screen the infamous disclaimer in very small print in a darkened area of the screen far below the gigantic pink $12,000 off MSRP we could see the sentence new 2018 Chevrolet Silverado LT crew cab below that an even smaller and I say impossibly smaller print is more disclosure language listen to this on

select in-stock inventory example STK pound sign, hashtag, whatever you want to call it, JG278031, MSRP, $44,895, $6,000 manufacturer rebate, $6,179 auto-nation discount equals $32,716. Remember, this was two seconds. Yes. I'm not through. Manufactured remates subject to residency restrictions. Any customer not meeting resident restrictions receive a discount in the same amount of the manufacturer rebate. All offers plus tax, title, and license with approved above-average credit, offer expires end of this month.

Now, that's three seconds. Two. Two seconds. Two seconds. You couldn't possibly read that. And I think they deliberately put in disclosure they don't have to put in so that if you're trying to read it, there's just too many words. They do that on purpose. Yeah, I never thought.

The clutter. Arrigo used to be an expert on that. They would have, no, it was Napleton. Naplendt used to put all sorts of warm, fuzzy stuff in there that was totally innocuous, it was unnecessary. But you just get tired of read and fine print. I used to wonder about it because you got the, like, the with approved credit, but they're talking about a cash purchase.

Yeah, exactly. Okay, let's hear the offer by itself. Remember, this all happens. The offer, the two disclaimers. 65 words and microscopic print in just two seconds. Here we go. With huge savings like $12,000 off. That's how much time you have to read all that.

Wow. Anyway, unless you DVR recorded this commercial and bought a deposit at the right moment, you could be forgiven for assuming AutoNation Chevrolet and Greenegers is offering $12,000 off MSRP on new Chevroles. Just one particular model. In stock one. And in stock is a big factor because that means the Chevrolet dealer down the street might have the vehicle, which they could easily swap for, but they're not going to do that because they don't want to sell you the car at that price.

So it has to be on their lot. If they already sold that one car, it's not on the lot. If they never had the car, it's not on the lot. If they sold it before you came in, it's not on the lot. In fact, even if it's on the lot, they might tell you it's not on the lot. So here's a national company, folks, traded on the New York Stock Exchange. Michael Jackson is the president's CEO. He's one of my heroes.

I've always liked Michael. I guarantee you Michael Jackson doesn't know what's going on at Greenacre Chevrolet. I guarantee he doesn't know in Florida. He's got 250 stores. I wish he was listening to this radio show. Anybody out there know Michael Jackson, text him, tweet him, tell him to tune in Earl Stewart on cars and listen to this mystery shopping report. He would have a stroke

if he heard this mystery shopping report. Okay, where am I here? Okay. We send Agent X. Yes. So we sent Agent X in to see how AutoNation could explain it to him when he showed up to buy

the less expensive Chevrolet, Colorado. It's not the Silverado. It's a Colorado. That's right. Okay. I parked at Honolation speaking in the first term as if I'm the shopper, which I'm not the shopper.

I can't. People recognize it. I'd love to do it. I'm thinking about a disguise, but I don't want to shave my beard off. I parked at the Honour Nation Chevy on Lake Worth Road and Green Acres and began to explore the lot. I wandered unnoticed for 10 minutes before getting the attention of a salesperson. Starlin. Starlin.

Unusual name, Starlin. I bet they call him Darling. Maybe, or Marlin. You don't have, call me Starlin. Starlin was worth. Darling. Okay, enough of that. Enough of that.

Settle down. It's the old station. What do you want? Starlin, that's true. Yeah. Starlin was walking the lot nearby, sipping a coffee when I called out to him and asked for help. I told him I was looking for a new Colorado LT. Starlin said he had some great deals on the 2018 Colorado's.

I said I'd seen their ads and it looked like they were offering some good deals. I asked them what kind of discounts they were giving on the Colorado, suspecting that I would not be told about the $12,000 off. Carlin said he was new, only two weeks on the job. You hear this all the time with car dealers. That's because people don't like to work at car dealerships. You know, you heard the lady caller earlier that said that the car dealer salespeople are suing the dealer for taking an ad job. So nobody likes car dealers.

The employees don't like car dealers. The customers don't like car dealers. The salespeople don't like car dealers. That's right. But you know what? They train people to say that for at least the first year of your employment. Yeah, because you feel sorry for him. The pity factor.

Yeah, tell them you're new on the job and they'll feel sorry for you and they'll pay you too much money. Oh, shucks. I'm new. Anyway, purported new salesman in Starlin said he would find out about the discount, suggests that we take one of the trucks for a ride. We would go over numbers later. He said he would work hard for me and get all the savings that he could for me. I agree.

And this is the old, I'm on your side. This is almost like a good cop. bad cop thing. I'm going to work for you. I'm going to work for you. I'm going to do everything I can to go to, I'm going to talk to my manager, and it's you and me against Charlie, or whatever the manager's name is. You and me against the world. That's right. We found a new Chevy Colorado LT with an MSRP of $29,015. There was an addendum sticker, the infamous addendum sticker. Yeah, I didn't know the Auto Nation did that.

Yeah, they do. Yeah, well, obviously, yeah. I mean, everybody does it. The addendum sticker right next to the Monroney label, and I've done a blog on that, by the way, I call it Beware the Phony Monroney. So the addendum sticker is a phony Monroney. The Monroney is the official federally mandated sticker, and they copy the Monroney, hence the phony Monroney. It was for dealer added optional equipment, appearance package. That's a favorite. $499, $499, virtually worthless. debt protection for $499, outrageously high-priced,

window tent for a $1.99. Alan, what's the cost of a window tent? About $120. They're not making a killing on that. Side steps, those are, you climb up in your truck? Yeah. Side steps for $7.99. Cost on that's probably, what, $250?

Yeah, it depends on the quality you get, but, yeah. Bedliner, $400. trucks, you know, they range it all over. Anyway, they bumped the price to MSRP by $31,411,000 from $29,015. Starlin got the keys and went for a test drive. When we got back, he asked me how I was buying the truck. I said I was paying cash and asked him what it was going to cost me. Starlin delayed giving me the price again, said he needed to enter info into his computer.

When he finished, he said he would need to get Phil. Here's Phil. Phil's the manager, of course. He reminded me that he was new and said he needed Phil to help us out. Phil came over and asked me a bunch of questions. I told him I was ready to buy, and then I would have bringing a draft from the public's credit union, draft from the public's credit union after I brought them to buyer's order. I hadn't mentioned the $12,000 off ad yet.

Phil said it wouldn't be a problem. He left and returned shortly with a printed buyer's order. That's good. The selling price was MSRP, which is 29,015. They took off $1,246.79 for AutoNation Savings. Then they took off $2,000 for customer rebate. This gave us the AutoNation price of $25,768 and $21. Then he started adding, here we go, $4.99 for the worthless appearance package. Which, by the way, I think it's an insurance product, and I don't know if, I'm not sure on the legality of that. Good point. You're kind of packing insurance products, and also the dent protection is also insurance.

That's exactly right. I'm sure the State Insurance Commission would object to packing insurance onto a price of a car. We'll have to investigate that. $3.99 for the bedliner, $4.99 for the dent protection. And finally, the $799 dealer fee. What? Dealer fee? I don't remember seeing that.

disclosure that was not in the disclosure it was not in the disclosure now can we have a drum roll Colin don't have a drum roll okay bark that's okay you get bark they have no disclosure of the dealer fee this is a publicly traded giant auto dealer auto nation they are regulated by the security exchange commission their activities are transparent. You can look at everything they do. And they're breaking the law in Florida. Auto Nation is breaking the law in Florida.

Florida law says that you have to include your dealer fee and the advertised price of your car. The way they include the dealer fee, most other dealers, to comply with the law, which is really stupid, is to hide it in the fine print. Just like Auto Nation was hiding their car. their dent protection, their dent repair package, and their appearance package, all that in the other nonsense.

They hid that in the fine print. They didn't even bother to hide their deuter fee. Their $799-dealer fee. Now, Michael Jackson, if you tuned in, the CEO of Auto Nation, you're in trouble. They blatantly broke the law. I don't know blatantly. They just broke the law.

Probably accidentally. I know it's accidental. You know, from a standpoint of the corporation. I think the local people, you know, that's questionable. Did they do it on purpose? We'll find out. Maybe if somebody's who's them. The effective selling price after all the smoke and mirrors was $27,964, a modest $1,051,051 discount from MSRP.

That doesn't sound like $12,000. Not even close. I said that the deal was unacceptable. We weren't even close. I'd seen an ad for $12,000 off. Phil did not appear to expect this, but he told him he was pretty sure that that was for a Silverado, not a Colorado, Silverado 1,500. I asked him what price range those were in, and he replied they were more than the Colorado, but not that much more. He asked me if I would consider one of those. I said I was interested.

Phil left again and came back with another buyer's order with a Silverado. Now here we go. After the selling price was MSRP, next came the discount of $1,607, all the nation savings and the $6,000 customer rebate. Then he added the same stuff as before, parents, protection, dealer fee. The effective selling price was $32,993, a 5,612 discount off MSRP, not $12,000, $5,612, less than the $6,000 factory rebate, much less, huge, much less, than the promise $12,000 off. I asked him how I could get the $12,000 off.

He explained that I would, this makes me nauseous. He explained that I would need more rebates that I didn't qualify for. $3,000 for GM employees. Now, what's the odds of me being a GM employee? I'm in Green Acres, Whiteboard floor. Unless you worked at the dealership. Yeah, $3,000 for GM employees.

$750 for active military discount. I'm not in uniform. I don't work for GM and $500 if I finance with GMAZ and I've already told them I'm a cash buyer so they're hiding they're hiding this and they don't even disclose it in the fine print even if they disclose it the fine print it's terrible the fact they don't disclose it it's not only illegal it's unethical and it's disgusting and this is auto nation automation I really am shocked Sadly, truly shocked.

Very sad. I did not point out that as math did not add up to additional $6,000, like $5,500 or something like that in rebates. I instead, I told him I understood and thanked him for his help. I picked up both buyer's orders and said goodbye. Goodbye. Automation, Chevy, Green Acres did not honor the advertised discount, even on the correct vehicle listed in the ads disclaimer. The sales manager claimed the discount required rebates that are, available to very few.

But even when you add those up, it's still not $12,000. It's hard to believe a publicly traded company like AutoNation who will permit this sort of sales practice. So I appeal, I implore anybody out there that is affiliated with AutoNation, I know that some of you are listening because there's Auto Nation card dealships all over South Florida. Auto Nation really started in South Florida. so there's a whole lot of automation stores

some of you're listening to this I think I'd like to hear from you I'd like to hear from you and I'll show you the copy of the report you can check out yourself you can see the TV ad you can go to just search for Auto Nation Chevy on YouTube

yeah you'll see it yourself Automation Chevrolet on YouTube and you can see the actual TV commercial now this is proof this is hard evidence of violation of the law so people say how can you be doing this Earl why don't you get sued and I say the same thing every week the perfect defense against libel and slander is the truth

we don't get sued we've been doing this for 10 years Michael Jackson's not going to sue me auto nation's not going to sue me or if they do sue me I'd have a lot of fun am I wrong for laughing every time you say Michael Jackson because I'm picturing a whole different person every time you say that with a glove I'm tempted to start singing but I'm not going to do that This Michael Jackson, I've never seen, never moonwalk once. No, no.

We're going to have you bring your guitar in next week. I can moonwalk. Yeah. I really can. Oh, yeah? Okay. But anyway. Tune in, it's going to be live.

Stu's going to be moonwalking. This is why it's beyond my comprehension, why we don't have some activity on the part of our regulators. If you're with the Attorney General's office, if you're with the County Office of Consumer Affairs, if you're with the Department of Motor Vehicles, if you're with any regulatory agency, if you're a legislator in the state or the nation,

if you make the laws or you're supposed to enforce the laws and you're listening to this, you know there's some folks out there that are in these positions. Why is there no enforcement of these laws? I mean, it's like me saying there's a bankruptcy going off on at Wells Fargo Bank, on U.S. 1 and 45th Street, I don't know if there's a Wells Fargo on U.S. 1, 45th Street, probably, but there's a bankruptry in progress and all the police.

You know there's some police out there listening. Wouldn't they go over there and try to stop the bank robbery? I'm saying there's crimes being committed right now at Auto Nation Chevrolet and Green Acres. And all you regulators out there, all you legislators out there, are you just sitting there drinking your coffee, sipping your beer listening to Earl Stewart on Cars looking the other way

what are you doing what are you thinking maybe somebody else would do something about it I got a message for you nobody else has done anything about it we've been on the air for 10 years nobody has ever said guess what we heard that you're violating

the law on Earl Stewart on Cars and so we went in and we find you we arrested you we gave you a cease and desist order never happened Maybe we should do with Citizens Arrests. We'll arm Agent X next time. Now, that's a great idea.

Citizens Arrest. Yeah. I think I'm going to pick it. I think I'm going to go over to Auto Nation and Green Acres. Let's research it. Let's research it. I think Citizens Arrest might only be if the safety is being. I don't know.

Maybe you can't make it. I've heard the term. Well, there's safety. Some of those addem stickers can give you a heart attack. This is a health issue. That's true. I learned about citizens' arrest on a... You're taking it to another level.

Stretching it. Gomer Pyle. That's how I learned about citizens' arrest. Oh, really? The show? Oh, yeah. Holy. I'm going to deputize all our listeners

to make citizens arrest. And bring them here to the station. Exactly. When you have, when you have been the victim of the violation of a law in a car dealership, I implore you to make a citizen's arrest. and let us know.

I think we need to put a disclaimer on that. I don't know if you... Brings it, inciting public unrest. He's kidding, folks. I think picketing would be more effective. I really do. Oh, yeah. Just, you know, put up your sign and walk the block and...

Well, it is. At the very least, let's do this. We have a little bit of time, and so normally we rush the Mr. Shopping report, so we're going to vote on the Mr. Shopping report. so we'd like you to call in and cash your vote and your opinion on this because it's so egregious. This is one of the worst chopper reports we've ever had. It's terrible. And it's on one of the supposedly most transparent.

I've always said, I'm embarrassed because I actually recommend people go to Auto Nation. I think we have Auto Nation on our recommended list for several franchises. And here they've done this terrible thing, Auto Nation, Chevrolet, and Greenacres. They've done a terrible thing. So call in. Let's hear your opinion. how do you want to vote you give them an ABCDF do we fail them I know I can tell you right now we're going to fail them but we still have to go through the formality of the

vote but call in or text or whatever you want to do a text just came in so I'm going to send okay good I won't spoil the surprise even I think we all know what it's going to be it won't be from AutoNation it's from Michael Jackson I give him a big fat F, okay. Okay, big fat F is worse than a skinny F, I guess. I want to get a movie. But anyway, if it concerns anybody, Michael Jackson, Auto Nation Chevrolet and Greenacres is going on,

do not buy from this dealer. And, you know, listeners, you too can grade this mystery shopping report. You too can grade this mystery shopping report. you know, it's important that we hear from you, our listeners. So remember, you can text us at 772-497-6530, or you can call us at 877-9-690-960, and that mystery shopping report is from Auto Nation Chevy Green Acres. I'd be curious. I have a feeling that this was either a terrible mistake.

or one rogue person that causes to happen. I really think that automation is too much at stake. They have a huge amount of stake for something like this to happen. I would expect someone to lose their job over this. Now, that's not a happy thing, but I would expect something serious to happen because the word is out on the street right now and the buzz is out, and we will go back in,

and we will double check. We'll check. I would like to check fairly soon. I think we should maybe check daily because what we have here is an illegal TV advertisement. And we could find out if that TV advertisement is still running.

It wouldn't have to be illegal TV advertisement if someone went in and bought the car and they did not add the dealer fee. But my feeling is, in this case here, it was double-wamming. I wonder if there's a technicality here. since they didn't honor the ad, does the disclaimer even apply anymore? I don't think two wrongs make it right.

I don't know. I don't think two wrongs make it right. But anyway, this is going to be fun, and we will keep you posted. We'll tell you next week what happened, and when automation finally made the change, or in the highly unlikely event they did not make the change, I have to think of something else we can do because this is too egregious. I really hope so. You said mistake.

How many, there's a lot of mistakes here. I mean, I can understand one mistake, but we need to go back. The ad agency might have made the mistake because they might have, in which case this crime is being committed in multiple locations all around the country. Remember, this is a national commercial, and this TV ad is running in Colorado, it's running in Nebraska, it's running in New York. There's a lot of stores. 250.

And virtually all car dealerships charge deuter fees. So people are coming into this advertisement, and they're asking for the price that was advertised, which is supposed to include the deal of fee. And it doesn't. So this could be huge. Yes, definitely. We'll go back. And ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of our show. And I want to thank you for spending part of your Saturday morning with us.

And we hope to hear from you next week. Thanks again. weekend.