Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.23.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mullinax Ford

Episode Date: March 23, 2019

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

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. We're back, your automotive team. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. We're on the true oldie station, musical mainly, but this isn't music.

This is a live radio talk show. It's pretty candid, too. We tell it like it is. In a nutshell, this show is about how to buy or release a car, maintain or repair your car without getting ripped off. It's an advisory show. We realize that car buying can be hazardous to your health. Also maintaining and repairing your car can be hazardous to your health and your pocketbook.

That's why we hear that. That's why we exist on this show. We're doing the show for about 14 years. We're two hours now, start out at a half an hour. and I want you to realize that I'm not in the studio alone. I've got a group of auto experts in here with me. In fact, we have a special auto expert with us that used to be a regular on the show. He comes in about once a month now.

His name is Alan Napier. And he's a collision repair expert, body shop, whatever you want to call it. And we really want to let you know that he is available because he's not available every week now. You don't have accidents too often, hopefully in your car. You don't have to worry about body shops, but once in a while you do, most people have at least a fender bender every now and then. And if you've got questions about paint, your rental car deductible, your insurance premium, what's their good insurance company to use?

Should I use the cheapest parts to repair my car, or should I have the better parts, safer parts? What about my windshield? yield. What about my comprehend? The whole thing about car repair in the body shop is complicated, and people often have problems because it doesn't happen that often, which is a good thing. And I believe we have a caller, and callers take precedence on this show.

Ron, I'll be right with you. I just want to give up the number for the rest of you callers, because it's all about you. Your calls, your comments, your suggestions make the show. 877-960-9960 is our regular call-in number 877-960 and you can text us a lot of people prefer texting today I do I mean I don't call people anymore I text them and let's say something real important I text them you can text us at 772-4976530 text number is area code 772 497 6530 and we are streaming fools today we are wide banding we've got the

Comcast thing working and where a wide band is flowing data and we're on YouTube we're on Periscope we're on Facebook we're on what else did I leave out there? Twitter Twitter yeah of course Twitter so we're in all just about

every form of the media out there that you can imagine and old-fashioned telephone works, as I said, 877-960, 960, and we have Ron from Del Rey Beach, who just called us, and Ron, how can we help you this morning? Oh, good morning, Earl.

Thank you so much for taking my call. I first want to tell you that you're doing a great public service. I enjoy your show. Thank you. And I have some questions about leasing. I've been leasing cars specifically Accur-MDX for, like, the last five or six years.

And I just had a couple of questions. I thought maybe I could get some clarifications. about. A lot of times the salespeople will tell me if I return my car early, like three or four months earlier, they'll pay for the last three or four months of the lease. And I just don't understand whether this is economically advantageous for me or it only results in my being able to return the car early. So I thought maybe you could give me some advice on that. Ron, that is not true that if the salesman tells you without verification. Sometimes the leasing company, the manufacturer will have special leaf incentives where they will waive your last

one, two, or three payments. But if the salesman tells you that, there's a danger that he's just going to take those payments and he's going to add them back into the price of your new purchase or your lease. So you have to verify that this is a bona fide offer from the leasing company. For example, this would be Honda leasing. This is an Accura. You would have to check with Honda Leasing. If Honda Leasing has a special program for their leasing customers to waive the last three lease payments,

it is a legitimate deal. But salesman will often tell you this, and it's just increasing the total cost for your next purchase or your next lease. Okay, I appreciate that. That's an important information. The other thing is, since I've been listening to your show, I only want to pay, in terms of leasing for government fees. I don't want to pay bank fees and things of that sort. and I know a lot of times they push and they say, well, we can't help the bank fees. This is what they charge us, you know, to arrange a lease for you.

So I just, you know, I wanted to check with you about the government fees. And I guess one of them that is legitimate is the sales tax. Yes. And the sales tax I have to pay up front now. Is that sales tax based on the MSRP or the selling price of the car? And how does that work? Well, on a lease, it's based on the number of lease. payments. So if you're leasing a car and you have 36 payments, the sales tax has to be paid on

36 payments. You mentioned a bank fee, by the way, a leasing fee. Oftentimes they call it an administrative fee. Leasing companies in banks who lease will charge a, I call it a bank dealer fee. Now, it's difficult to negotiate that because the bank charges the dealer. But sometimes, in fact, I would say about half the time there's a kickback to the dealer on the administrative fee or the leasing fee that the bank or leasing company charges. So it is negotiable.

Most people don't even think about this, but if you're a good negotiator and you go to the salesperson and the manager preferably and say, I know on this administrative fee, bank fee, whatever they call it, which most people don't even know

it's being paid, but when you show it to them on the leasing contract, and I know you get a piece of this back, I want you to take the piece that you're getting kicked back and take it off the fee. For example, if it was a $750 fee and the dealer were participating and getting half of that, $375, you can say take $375 off the capitalized cost of my lease, and they may do it. Sometimes they don't, sometimes they will. Right, okay. the other fees like license, registration, title, tags, etc., plate fees, how can I make sure that they're charging me the legitimate fee for that

and not inflating that? Well, you can check with the Department Motor Vehicles, but another way to check is on the documents that they present you, the leasing or the vehicle purchase order, they have to, by law, charge sales tax on anything that is not a government fee. So if they give you a license fee or registration fee and they are paying for the sales tax on it, 6%, then it is not legitimate. If they are not paying the sales tax, then it would be legitimate. Let's put it this way.

If they're not charging sales tax on something that they should be charging sales tax on, they're open to an audit and a severe fine. But sales tax is only charged on non-government fees. Okay. Well, this has been very helpful, Earl. I really appreciate it because, I mean, my view is when I go into either buy or lease a car, I have to put on my body armor. It's a battlefield, and I'm not prepared for it, so I'm trying to get prepared. Well, you're very well prepared. You sound like an educated consumer. A leasing is far more difficult. You have to wear a lot more body armor when you're leasing than when you purchase, because there's a lot of different ways they can get you. Some of the fees that you haven't mentioned. and leasing are the you have a lease inception fee and then you have a lease disposition fee so they get your going and coming uh the fees when you lease the car and when you dispose of the car and there's also the mileage over mileage fee and there's the above average normal wear

and tear fee and of course you have the traditional dealer fees and other fees so uh you're covered up with fees with a lease on a purchase you only have about it's third of many fees but you sound like you're knowing what you're doing, Ron. You can take care of yourself. I appreciate her. Just the last question is I'm under mileage on my current lease now. I have 36,000 miles available over the three-year lease, and I have $22,000 on the car,

and the dealer or the salesperson is saying we can roll over these miles and add it on to your new lease so that instead of taking out 12,000 miles a year, you could take out $10,000 or perhaps $7,500 and still get more miles. Is that a legitimate thing? No, once again, they're adding on the cost. You owe that leasing company. Any extra mileage you put on there can be 20 cents or 25 cents a mile, and it has to be paid. So all they're doing is it is being paid, and they're making you feel like it's not being paid

by carrying it forward into the next cost of the purchase or lease on the following purchase. So, yeah, you have to pay that over mileage. I tell people that get close if you have extra car in the family or a bicycle or a motorcycle you can use another vehicle to try to minimize the cost because if you have another vehicle

it's not going to cause you near the amount that's 25 cents a mile if you go over on your lease car. Right, yeah, well I'm way under so I don't have to worry about that. I just didn't know if I was getting really credit for the miles that I haven't used. No, they want you to think that

but you're not getting credit because the deal was made when you sign the lease and the person that benefits from a low-mile-lease turn-in is a leasing company. They'll sell your car for more money than they thought they would. Now, one way you could get that money back and you might check at the end of your lease because you have an option to purchase the car

and the residual value option to purchase if it's a very low-mile-age car, you might find out that the market value for that car is higher than the residual, which case you could sell the car, you could excise your option to purchase, sell it back to that dealer or another dealer, and you could make a profit, which would be, in fact, reimburse you for the low mileage that you had on the car.

Right. That sounds very good. The last thing I just want to mention, I think my strategy is going to be, after having listened to your show, is maybe asking the salesperson to just give me the out-the-door price for all of the fees that I have to pay up front and the out-to-door price for the monthly fee and then go around to different dealers

and see if I can get it lower. Ron, that's in a nutshell. You said succinctly, would I take hours to say the best way you can possibly buy a car? The trick is getting that out-the-door price. But if you can get an out-the-door price, actually the amount that you have to write the checkout for, if you can get that from a dealer and then chop it around,

that is the very best way to get a great price on a car. Yeah, I think that's probably the easiest way for me to get started, doing this. Thank you again, Earl. It's been absolutely great talking to you, and I learn every time I listen to you on YouTube and talk to you on the phone. Thanks, Ron. It's been great. Hope you can go all again. Take care. Bye-bye. This leasing can be so complicated. It is. Someday, maybe it'll be just, you know, easy, easy. I mean, there's another issue that I've been confronted with, and that is to make sure that your car that you turn in is in the greatest shape, and to take pictures because that can all backfire and they can say that, you know, the car scratched,

a dented, you know, whatever. So the interior, exterior, everything's extremely important. What's so bad about leasing is a fact, not that it's complicated, but it's being forced down the throats of the car consumers. The manufacturers love leasing because they had a, they got a leash around your neck when they lease a car. They know who you are, where you are, and they could come and try to get you to buy or lease a another car. Whereas when you buy a car,

you're foot free and what I'm trying to say. Put loose and fancy free, that's the word I'm looking for. And you can go anywhere you want. They don't know where you are and you can buy another car anywhere, but they got you when they're leasing. And they will come at you two or three months before the leases up. And for some consumers,

there's an advantage. There's an advantage and a disadvantage of leasing vehicle. Ladies and gentlemen, the telephone number where you can reach us, 877-960 9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And remember, ladies, the first two new lady callers? You can win yourself $50 this morning.

So join us. Join us in an exciting show. We have a whole lot to talk about. Exactly. Before Ron's call, I had introduced Alan Napier, our collision repair expert. Love to hear from folks on insurance, cost. tips to how to avoid being taken advantage of by your insurance company we also have this video Rick Kearney and Rick is a certified diagnostic master technician

that's a mouthful I call them an auto computer scientist because cars are so advanced today they're really rolling computers and if you have any questions about your car maintaining or repairing how not to be taken advantage of anything of a mechanical or computer I should say electronic nature Rick Kearney is the guy to call. And Nancy Stewart, who you've heard earlier, she's my co-host, and Nancy is a very, very strong advocate

of female car buyers. Females, as you probably know, if you've got anything to say about the hashtag me too movement, the fact that ladies in this country, in fact ladies in the world haven't always been treated fairly. They're treated particularly unfairly

in car dealerships. We've seen that with our mystery shops. And Nancy would love to hear from all you. As you say, as she just said a minute ago, $50 to the first new free mail. If you haven't called the show before, 50 bucks if you call the show. We sure did set a record last week, didn't we? The first six callers were female. Exactly, yeah. So I love to hear from you ladies. You buy half the cars. You have half the jobs. You cast half the votes. You should get your fair share of being treated properly when you go into a car dealership and nancy stewart can help you with that um if you if you're not listening

to us on the radio we mentioned earlier and ron mentioned he was listening to us or watching us on youtube you can also watch us on twitter you can uh periscope uh facebook that's facebook.com port slash hurl on cars love to hear from you and i think we have another caller we do welcome to the show bob good morning yes good morning how are you okay all right we're great we're All right. All right. I have a question for Earl, if you please. Uh-huh.

Okay. He's waiting. Okay. All right. Okay, Bob. What's your question? Yes, good morning. Good morning.

Earl? Yes. Oh, good morning. Good morning. Listen, my daughter's planning of buying a used Honda certified car. Uh-huh. And she lives in Gainesville. and she's planning on using the Costco program.

Does it matter which deal she goes to? Well, if she's a Costco member, then she has to go to a Costco certified dealer. And she needs to go online to www. www.coscoautobying.com. And that will take her to the website for the Costco auto buying program. She will be given when she selects the vehicle that she's interested in.

This case, she's looking for a used Honda. Then she should go to a Honda dealer. They have a better selection. And she would find the Costco certified Honda dealer in the Gainesville market. I'm not familiar, although I did go to school in Gainesville a long, long time ago. I think there is one in Gainesville and another one in Ocala, but that's about it. Yeah, so they'll mention the Honda dealer that they have certified. When she's online there, they'll ask her for her Costco membership number,

and then she'll be able to access that information. She can see the kind of probably, they'll show the Costco dealers in both the Ocala and the Gainesville area, and she can check with both of them. But both of these dealers will have a list of cars with the Costco price. It'll be a price sheet. The website will also reveal the sales. certified salespeople within those Costco locations. She should make a note of the Costco certified salesperson.

Sometimes they even have a picture, and you get the name of the person, and you approach that dealer. I would call first, and I would ask to speak to the Costco certified salesperson, and I would tell the salesperson my name and what I'm interested in, and I was asked them, what is the Costco price on this particular vehicle? I'm interested in. Costco has a rule that the price if they sell a Costco member, a vehicle for, must be less than the price of anything else they sell. If they sell that car to anybody that's not a Costco member, it would be at a higher price. So if you pursue the Costco program

in that manner, you will get a great price. They will also have to disclose on the Costco price sheet anything else they add like dealer installed options like nitrogen and tires, or constrites or dealer fees. So it's all out there for her to see, and it's a great way for her to buy a used car. Yeah, I told her

about your program, and she says, okay, I'm going to try it, and she's a member of Costco. Right. Best way. But you remember, the Costco auto buying program is only as good as the dealer, and that's the reason

you should always be sure you verify the name of the Costco representative. When she gets into the dealership, you need to remind her to ask to see the Costco price sheet. That's very important. Sometimes the salespeople will tell you that they're giving you the Costco price, but you need to verify that by seeing the Costco price sheet. If there's any shenanigans, if the dealer tries to take advantage of me anyway. I relay the message.

Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Bob. Appreciate the call. Very good. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Give us a call again, Bob. It was great hearing from you. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-4976530. And don't forget your Anonymous Feedback.com. And there you can go and voice your opinion and give us an idea of what you're thinking about. And maybe you might think that, well, we need to improve the show. Nobody does that. Nobody has, you know, I say nobody, some people do, but very few companies, radio stations, TV stations, anybody says, if you want to tell me what you really think about me, you can do it anonymously, but we do that, and that's your anonymous feedback.com, www.com, your anonymousfeedback.com, tell us whatever you want to say.

We've got thick skins, we love to learn. Yeah, we've had a lot of great responses from that, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We are going to go to Brighton, Michigan, where Karen is giving us a call this morning. Good morning, Karen. Hi, good morning to you, too. Welcome to the show. Kind of cold here, though, but like 25 degrees, so. Wow.

I don't know. Can you hear me? Oh, we can. Loud and clear. Okay, great. Yeah, I was reading an article from Earl's blog, I guess that's where it's from, and I texted it in last week, but they didn't have time to address it. I'm sorry. So it was an article about the word track, and I did not understand how to use that word track when you're trying to go negotiate a deal. and it was from an article titled Earl's Suggested Word Track for No Hago, No Hasso, Bying.

Oh, yes. Yeah. Word track, just a paragraph or two that I write that you can either memorize or just or just refer to when you go in. It's on my blog. Some of the things that from memory that I'll tell you, you'll go into a car dealership, and when they start the shenanigans and what will you willing to pay today and if i could get you to a great deal today would you buy today you explain to them what you're doing and you say this is kind of like the word track say i'm going to buy a car in the next week i'm not going to buy a car today so if you think i'm going to buy or sign it a day you can forget about it what i am going to try to do with you today is i'm going to try to give you have you give me an out-the-door price. Our first caller in the show said,

isn't this a good way to really get the best deal, is to get an out-the-door price and shop it with other car dealers? It's the very best. So that's what we're trying to do with this word track. You say, I want the out-the-door price, meaning I want your dealer fees, your dealer-installed options,

I want sales tax, I want your license plate, I want all the accessories on the car, and the very best price you're willing to give me. then i'm going to take that price and i'm going to your competition uh let's say you're looking for a ford there are two other four dealers in town and after you give me your best out of the door price i'm going to the second poor dealer and get his best out the door price then i'm going to the third four dealer and get his best out of the door price and whoever has the lowest

price that's where i'm to buy my car and then you can also so i'll save your breath because i know what you're going to say if you give me if i give you my lowest price you'll just just shop it and somebody will beat it. Well, the answer to that is yes, they might. And you have a smaller chance of selling me a car if you give me an out-the-door price. But if you won't give me the out-the-door price, and here's the punchline, if you won't give me an out-the-door price, I'm going to turn around, I'm going to walk out to my car in the driveway, parking lot, I'm going to get in that car, and I'm a driveway, and you'll never see me again. And then I'll go to another Ford dealer, and we'll see what he says. So that is.

is a word track and you have to be kind of tough to do this because you have to be willing to hurt a feeling or have someone look at you funny but if you if you really implement this you're telling them either give me your best price or there's no way in the world you'll ever sell me a car a smart salesman or a smart dealer will give you its best price then that's so difficult to do though I I when we went to buy a Mustang I went to to Mullinex down here, they would not give me a buyer's order. And he said exactly what you said. He said, you'll just take it to the competition.

They'll beat me by $100 and they'll sell you a car. I said, well, if you won't give me a price, how the heck do you expect me to buy from you? Did you ever turn around and walk out? Yeah, we love. I ended up buying a truck. I went down to Wayne Acres Ford. Same thing. They wouldn't give me a price price unless I sat down in the finance office.

So it's a lot tougher than it sounds. And I ended up going to work and buying a truck. Well, Linda, go to the blog on the Word track and read. There are other suggestions in there. These are just paragraphs that I've thought through very carefully after 50 years in the business and being a guard dealer who used to do business the other way, by the way. And they're phrased in such a way that the salesperson will understand it, his manager will understand it, and you stick to it.

there's a good chance you might be able to really get a good price on a car. Okay, well, thank you for that. And I have another question. I don't know if I really have enough Stamama to do all this. And I was reading a lot of reviews on YouTube about people who have had experiences purchasing a car from Carvana. And I was wondering what your opinion on that would be. Carvana is a publicly owned company.

They are nationwide advertisers. I think there's nothing is going to happen to you with Carvana that is illegal because they have too much exposure. And they're a publicly held company. They are a lot of hype in advertising. I think you should consider Carvana for a used car. They don't sell new cars. They sell used cars. and I think you should check their prices and then shop and compare with CarMax, that's another nationally owned company, or your local car dealers.

Car dealers, used cars are easy to shop today if you use auto trader. I recommend that you go to AutoTrader, A-U-T-O-T-R, Autotrater.com, and they have the merchandise listed for all used cars in the United States, all through in virtually there, but 98% of the use cars sold in the United States are shown on AutoTrader. And you can sort on AutoTrader webpage by price, by make, by model, a year. you can really streamline your search and then you can narrow your search down geographically. But check Carvana, check auto trader, check your local dealer, check Carmex. It's almost like buying a new car shop and compare. But I can't say anything bad about Carvana. I think one thing they don't do is charge dealer fees, and I think that's a good thing.

But most other cars, the people that sell used cars, will charge your dealer fee. but give Carvana a shot and CarMax. Well, that sounds like a pretty good idea because I did check around my local area I'm in for buying a used car because the new ones are just way out of line to me. I'm thinking about getting maybe a Key Optima or a Hyundai Sorrento.

Good cars. But they don't have anything what I want in stock anymore. I'm looking for like a 2018. Have you checked? If you checked AutoTrader, I think you'd be surprised. Those are fairly popular cars. And if you go into it, look for 2018 Sorrento or Optima, I think you'll find, you might have to drive a few miles, but you can expand your geographic area just by, you can even say everywhere, you can shop everywhere.

But you could go out, you know, five miles, 10 miles, 20 miles, or by zip code. And you will find some dealers that do carry those cars. To save your shoe leather and your gas mileage and your gas, you can just use online. Check with the dealers online. Most dealers now are posting their vehicles online, and the auto trader will have the prices. The thing you have to remember with auto trader is the dealers will add their dealer fees and their dealer installed options. So find an attractive price on a surrender or a optima.

Call the dealer that has it and say, will you please give me the out-the-door price? including your dealer fees and dealer install accessories. And if they'll give it to you over the phone, then you won't be surprised or disappointed when you drive to the dealership. Okay, very good. And Linda. And one more question. I don't know if this might be off the wall a little bit,

but I've been listening to this guy on YouTube who used to be a car salesman and calls himself a 60-minute car. I don't know if you, and here we'll try and buy a car for you if you wish. Do you know anything about this? That's a broker type of thing, and brokers can be good. Brokers get paid by the dealer. The problem is how much will the dealer pay? Sometimes dealers will pay too much money to the broker.

Broker its fees can be as high as $1,000 or even $5,000. Clearly, you're not going to get a very good price if the dealer has to pay an extra $5,000 to the broker. The normal broker fee would be about $500. That can be a good investment if he's an honest broker who is really going to deal on your behalf. You have to be sure that the dealer has your best interest, I mean the broker has your best interest at art and not the dealers. I know people that deal with brokers year after year and they take good care of their customers and they put their customers first. So until you have an experience with a broker, I'd give a broker a chance. I would say, okay, here's the car I want to buy.

What's the price you can get me? Meanwhile, you've already shopped and compared to get prices on that same car from somebody else. So give this fellow a try, see how its price compares with the other prices that you've got. Yeah, he charges $1,000. Sounds too much to me, Leland. For $1,000, that's a high fee. I would try it on my own. Make him prove that he's going to save you money.

Okay. And Karen, you know, it's great to hear you talk about used because, you know, today cars last so much longer. You can put so many miles on them. And buying used, you save yourself so much money. And there's a lot of people today that are, you know, deciding to buy new because they, I don't know, they kind of want to impress the neighbor.

but used is a great place to start. And with the World Wide Web today, you can empower yourself with so much knowledge. And, you know, besides drinking an energy drink before you go out, you can go to the web and get all your information. So let's get moving along. I think we have Linda from all the town. So Karen, stay warm, and we'll talk with you soon.

Stay in touch. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 7-7-2. 2497-6530 and we're going to go to Linda who's calling us from Hope Sound. Hi Linda, we still got you on the phone here. Linda from Hope Sound? Okay, I guess Linda got tired of holding and I think we have some other people on there. Do we, or Rudy, anybody else on the phone? I think we have somebody else on the phone.

we'll put our next caller on. Maybe not. Hey, the Carvana thing, if anybody ever opts to do the vending machine purchase and you're in South Florida, call me because I want to go. I want to see that. That shows you how much money they spend

on promotion and advertising. Okay, we got Pam, first time calling from Hollywood. Hi, Pam. Hi, Pam. Hi, welcome. Hi. Thank you. I have a car question.

It's not just about buying cars, is it? I had a question about maintenance. Is that okay? Sure. Okay. I actually have a Prius, and I love it because of the gas mileage, and it's really holding up well. I wanted to know, besides oil changes and getting the tires checked regularly,

what can I do the best thing I can do to take care of my car? Two words, Pam, owner's manual. If you look at your owner's manual, Toyota has the required maintenance for your Prius for as many miles as you want to own it. And I would recommend that you have all of that recommended by the manufacturer. Now, be careful because if you go into a car dealership, they will have dealership recommended maintenance, which may not be required. But whatever is recommended. What your Prius do you have, Pam? I'm sorry, what is, oh, 2010.

2010, you probably got up the higher maintenance areas now. You look at the mileage you have, and it'll tell you what maintenance has to be done. Rick is our technical expert here. Rick, what do you have to say? Other than keeping the tires inflated, which especially on the Prius, keeping those tire pressures up is the most important thing, change the air filter and the cabin filter about every 30,000 miles. Based on the owner's manual.

Yeah, and the coolant at 100,000 mile. And that's it. The Prius is one of the most maintenance-free cars out there. And they just, they don't quit. They keep going. I love it. Oh, my gosh. It's my buddy.

They are awesome cars. Thanks for calling, Pam. Just read that owner's manual and go by the letter of the law. Don't do anything else other than what that owner's manual. it tells you as far as maintenance is concerned. Okay, thank you so much. Pam, you won yourself $50. Stay on the line.

Stay on the line. Give Rudy your contact information. Okay. Yes, I gave it to them. Oh, good. Have a great day. Linda, thanks for calling back. Linda's calling from Hope Sound.

Hey, Linda. We still got you there? Yes. Oh, great. How can we help you this morning? I own a 2016 H-R-V Honda, which I purchased new, and I'm coming up on 20,000 miles now, and I'm at the end of my warranty time. I went to the dealership to ask about the extended warranty.

I had thought someone would contact me, but no one did, so I went in, and got information on, it's called the Honda Care Warranty. But it leaves me with questions, I don't put on a lot of mileage. I keep the car in the garage. This is a five-year 80,000 or 80,000 mile warranty. And I know today with the electronics in a car and all the computer stuff, it might not be a bad idea. But I need some insight on this and also the comparison on the two different types that they told me about.

Linda, what is the cost of the warranty? All right. There are two different types. One features a deductible, which is a $100 deductible, so it says on the paperwork. And the cost for the five-year 80,000 miles is $1360. The one with no deductible, same time, same coverage, is $1580. Linda, my suggestion to you is you've got yourself an excellent car. Hondas are one of the most trouble-free cars you can buy.

Got a great reputation with consumer reports. You sound like you maintain your car carefully. You're having all your factory recommended maintenance done. I would bank the $1,360, or $1,680, and mentally bank it or actually bank it, and use it there as a kitty if you do have to pay for a repair. Because on a good car that you maintain properly, especially a Honda, and 2016, Hondas are particularly good cars, the likelihood that you'll have to pay $1,360 or $1,680 in repairs are very, very slim.

Rick has a comment. I would be concerned about anything in the fine print that is not covered because if they list things like the radio, the stereo system, the computer electronics, or especially the air conditioning components, any of those things that are not covered could be a huge big. bill and if this doesn't cover it it makes this thing worthless well this is a Honda factory warranty so the Honda factory warranties are genuinely fairly constructed and they they cover a fair amount of components but Rick is right they certainly don't cover everything too often the salespeople will tell you bumper to bumper and there's no such thing as a bumper bumper warranty there's no warranty that covers everything between the bumper between the bumpers but in your case You did the right thing by looking at a Honda warranty as opposed to one that's banked by the dealership or a third-party independent warranty company.

Oftentimes they are very, very lacking in coverage. Oftentimes they only cover the power train when in fact they don't cover the air conditioners or the navigation system or sometimes even critical items that you would expect would be covered. But if you felt you needed that peace of mind, you would certainly not be crazy to go ahead and buy it. I'd buy the lower price one, $1360 with $100 deductible, if I were you. But speaking for myself, I would not buy the warranty. I recommend you don't buy it. I have one other question in regard to this warranty. They charge a surcharge on top of the 3rd.

$1.60, which is $1.20. What is that surcharge for? I don't know. Sounds like another dealer for you. It sounds like a dealer extended warranty fee. I've never heard of that. I don't know. It would be interesting if you could either fax or email me a copy of that paperwork. I'd like to read that and see how they try to justify the surcharge. Well, what it says, and I don't have the availability to do those things, I'm a dinosaur, Earl. Anyway, when you're reading on the eligibility, it says vehicles up to 12,000 on odometer, no surcharge.

Vehicles with 12,000 1 to 24,000 miles, 120 surcharge, and then with the mileage, the surcharge goes up. I see. Yeah, that's just a way to adjust the price. That's not unfair, but I don't like it. I don't like it that they don't just show you a full price, but now you're talking 120 on top of 1360 or 1680, but I think you're going to be pleasantly surprised. You're going to keep that Honda for as long as you want,

do your owner's recommended maintenance, and it's not going to give you a lick of problems, and you'll save yourself over $1,000. Thank you so very much. I do enjoy your show. Well, thank you. Please call again. You're a great caller.

Thank you, sir. We're going to go to Frank, who's calling us from West Palm Beach. Morning, Frank. Hello, good morning. Good morning. How can we help you? I like to ask a question about my new RAV-4. Okay.

I have a under-guide that caused some problems there with the Costco business. Oh, yeah, I remember. Anyway, I love the car. The hold button for the brakes. How does that work? Does that put the car in neutral or what? I'm trying to figure out how that works. The hold button.

Which button is that, sir? Hold, you know, for the break. When you stop, you... Oh, okay. Okay, so... Right, it's when you step on the... brake and you've come to a stop and you press the brake a little extra hard and it will actually the computer will then hold the brakes on so that you've got a moment to switch from the

gas from the brake pedal to the gas yeah that's for one of those situations like say if you're at a drawbridge or something and you're stopped waiting in traffic and you're on kind of a slope and you don't want your car to roll backwards when you're switching from the brake pedal to the gas pedal. That actually just holds on for a moment, and it's simply by pressing and holding on the brake a little hard, the computer will activate the ABS and just

hold the brakes engaged, and as soon as you touch the accelerator pedal, it lets the brakes off and lets you go again. I don't like those. Yeah. I don't like it, Frank. I just like to keep my foot on the brake. It's also so you can take your foot

off the brake. Why you don't want to do that? I don't know. And that way it won't creep forward, but some engineer thought this is a good idea. I never have liked those things, but that's what it is. It's so you can text, and if your foot comes off the brake a little bit, you don't hit the car in front of you. Let's

be honest. It's a text button. It's good when you hit the drawbridges, and you sit there for five, ten minutes. If you want to put your feet up on the dash or something, yeah. I actually find it better than put the car in park. Yeah. You'll actually

by sitting in park, you'll use a little bit less fuel and it's less wear and tear on the brakes and your car can just sit and wait until you're ready to go again, then shift into driving, away you go. Okay, okay. Yeah, I just was wondering how that works.

Well, Frank, thanks very much. And Frank, were you listening to the earlier call the lady from Michigan that asked about or maybe it was another place to ask about Costco? Yeah, the man from Gainesville. And I gave him the advice. Frank called in a couple of weeks ago,

came into my dealership, and we had a salesman tell him that he doesn't have to look at the Costco price sheet. And we found the salesman, and we tied him to a tree, and we horse whipped him. I'm just teasing. We didn't really do that.

But it just goes to show you that you have to be very careful in all car dealerships. You can be dealing with true car. You can be dealing with Costco. But when you're dealing with, with a salesperson who has been trained properly or maybe he has been trained properly

and he's just trying to take advantage but if you're a Costco member be sure you physically see that price sheet and Frank was denied it in my dealership I was so embarrassed but we appreciate to call Frank you exposed a problem I didn't know I had

well it's I think he's a used cars down from someplace else yeah and it's still in his blood. Yeah. Frank, thanks,

thanks very much and please call again. All right. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Have a good day. Okay,

we're going to go to Howard. Thanks for your patience, Howard. I've been hanging there for a while. Howard's calling from Jupiter.

Hi, Howard. Hi, how are you doing here? Beautiful day. I'm walking on the beach and it's beautiful. Great. Great weather.

I like cool weather. If you could cold, cool. Okay. Let me make you a couple of comments on the call washes. I was reading that

if you call watch that has damaged to the paint. Howard Howard, your voice is coming across broken up. If you're walking on the beach, maybe

you can slow down a little bit. You're walking too fast. I can't understand you. Okay, can you hear you better now? I do. Yes, I hear you real well now. Okay, great. So when they have brushes, when they have brushes, the cars can suffer damage on the paint in the brushes. So there's also damage done to the paint. So my suggestion is don't use a car wash.

Do it yourself. Does that make sense? Well, Howard, not everybody has a yard and a driveway in a place to hook up a hose or anything. We have, especially down here, we have so many people living condos and apartments, and they have rules against even some of the housing communities, the HOAs don't allow car washing in your driveway. But there are different kinds of automatic car washes, the old style that had the big plastic brushes

that just drug across the top of your car. Yeah, those left marks in the paint. Now they have a softer fabric and foam. If it's a well-maintained car wash and it's not got a lot of dirt and grit in it, which it's a coin toss, you know, it's a gamble. Those aren't going to damage your car. And then they also have brushless automatic car washes.

that are very effective. But anytime anything touches the pain on your car, it's like anything else. Friction causes wire. So if you go to an automatic car wash once a week and it's beating the heck out of your car, it is going to be causing some minor damage, but usually the benefits of the car wash

outweigh the very, very minor scratches you might get from the car wash. if I detail the car if I waxed it do I have to compound it first no wax it or should no you never compound the car

unless you're trying to correct a specific issue because compound has grit or pumice in it and you're basically you're using liquid sandpaper on the car so it's not necessary

to compound the car ever unless you're trying to remove a scratch or a defect, maybe some chemical etching or something like that. Because compound, like I say, it's just like sanding. And when you're sanding a scratch out, you're really not sanding a scratch out. You're sanding the good paint around the scratch down to the level of the scratch. You're hiding a scratch by creating more damage to your paint, basically. But compounding's a bad idea. Even if you have a residue on your car, a lot of people have a lot of iron in their water,

and when the sprinklers are on, they end up with that gold, yellow, brown tint that gets on their paint. It's hard to get off, and people, they bring cars in to my job all the time and ask me to compound their cars. And it's like, you don't want to do that. There are chemicals available that we can wipe that off. And actually, that stuff comes off pretty easy with just a cleaner wax. When you go to Walmart or AutoZone, there's wax, there's paste wax,

There's liquid wax. Get a liquid cleaner wax, and you can usually just wipe that type of residue off. Compounding is a bad idea. If I have white paint in the car, is that clear coat also, or is that void of clear code, 040? 040 is it's debatable we've never really been able to get an answer if that's clear-coded or not we do know that code 040 that's a Toyota solid white paint code for those of you that don't know I imagine most of you don't because the only real unless you witness a car being painted the only way to tell if something is

clear-coded or not say on a black car if you go with a piece of sandpaper and you sand it just a little bit, and what comes off on the sandpaper is white, then you're sanding the clear coat off. If you sand a black car and you look at the dust, the powder that's in the sandpaper and it's black, then it's not a clear-coated car. Well, with white, you don't know

because the clear coat and a white are both going to come off white in the sandpaper. And the code 40, I don't know. I honestly don't know. I have to assume that it is clear-coded, but then why do they oxidize the way they do? I don't know. I will make that my mission to find out. Well, I've tried.

I've asked. Thanks for the information. Take care, Howard. It's always good to hear from you. Enjoy the beach. Give us a call tool free at 877960. Or you can text us at 772-497-6530. I think we have some text, don't we?

We do have a couple in. Dave G. says that he's got several dealers fighting back and forth for his business, and he just wanted to mention that the car he's looking at, he's already gotten them down to $3,500

below MSRP. So I think that's pretty impressive. And Skywalker's asking, what's the best way to get the... Can I comment on that? Please. Yeah. $3,500. off MSRP sounds like a really good deal but until you know the year-make model you're not sure

there are markups can only be measured in terms of relativity so if you're looking at a markup on a Ford and you have three Ford dealers and the low and the best markdown discount is $3,500 is it is a good deal but you can have a $10,000 margin in a car depending on rebates holdbacks, incentives, and other criteria. Automotive pricing and new cars is very complex. So you're doing the right thing, Dave G., and you've got three dealers fighting. That's great. As long as the discount is measured against the best discount of two other dealers, you're okay.

But in terms of absolute amount, you can't say $3,500 is good or bad. If I could add one thing to that, too, make sure Dave G., that, specifically, they're talking about the MSRP, the Monroney label, because dealers have suggested retail prices. I see the commercials on TV all the time, $10,000 off suggested retail. Exactly. Well, it's the made-up suggested retail that the dealer put on the car. It's not the Monroney label.

So to make sure that it's apples to apples, make sure they're both specifically talking about the MSRP on a Monroney label. Great points. Okay, and Skywalker has commented asking what is the best way to get the best price on your trade-in? Shop it like you would, anything else. You want to be talking to the dealers that sell your maker car. So if you've got a Mercedes, you go to three Mercedes dealerships, use car departments. Stay away from the new car department, call, make an appointment with a used car manager,

and say, I've got too many cars in the family, my son's going away to college, make up a story, and I've got this Mercedes, I've got to sell it. I'm going to take a two other Mercedes dealer, use car departments. What's the price you'll pay me for this Mercedes? And you do the same thing twice more, and you've got three bids on your car. Now, choose a Mercedes dealer that you want to buy your Mercedes from, and it might be the deal that gave you the best price, it might not. But wherever you buy it, you're going to have the best price you can,

If a Mercedes dealer you want to buy your new one from, it doesn't give you the best price, sell it to the other Mercedes dealers. Shop and compare. CarMax, if you're near Carmax, is a good place to get another bid because CarMax buys a ton of cars over the curb, they call it, and they'll give you a bid on the car, too. And I'm going to make a point that Earl usually makes that I didn't hear him make. Your trade in and your purchase need to be two separate transactions. Exactly. I'm lazy. Most of us are lazy.

We just want to go in, hand them our keys, give me what you're going to give me, give me the best price on the car, and we turn it into one transaction, which gives them so much more opportunity to fudge the numbers and take advantage of us. So two separate transactions. You're selling a car and you're purchasing a car. Absolutely right. Okay, and we've got an anonymous text stating they, just this past Saturday, they were able to get a 19 Corolla

2019 Toyota Corolla SE out the door for 17800 and they got them to throw in window tint and body side moldings and they wanted to know did you think that that was a good deal well this is why we missed Stu Stu's in North Carolina

or South Carolina and I getting an award somewhere and he's the one that normally looks this up on so I have to plead ignorance on this I will do this I will research it, and I will tell you if that's a good price. It sounds, I'm not even going to say it sounds good or sounds bad, but if you were shopped and compared it with three toilet dealers, it's probably a very good price.

And if you looked at your paperwork and you saw that they didn't add fees that were not disclosed when they quoted you the price, if you know that the 17.8 was an outdoor price, it's probably a good deal. Okay. And our last one we have, what do you guys think of scratch-off tickets that dealerships send out in their ads? Can I expect to go there, get a prize, and go home? Scratch off prizes. I assume you're talking about scratch-off for how much you won. Right. When you get an ad in the paper, they send you something in the mail, and it's got this thing that says, come into the dealership and scratch this off in front of our salesmen

and you could win a set of golf clubs or a new TV or something wonderful if you read the fine print you'll find that there is a there's some really good prizes there'll be sailboats and motor cycles new cars homes and all that kind of stuff there'll be some prizes that you're not really sure what they are maybe a vacation maybe it's a don't forget a cruise they're giving away a lot of cruises there are a lot of things that will have a high perceived value, but literally have practically no value. There will be some obvious things that maybe cost five bucks. So you can be assured you're going to get one of the five bucks presents,

and it's worth five bucks to get you in the dealership. It might even be worth ten bucks to get you in the dealership. But you're not going to win the ski lodge, and you're not going to win the Rolls-Royce. Not going to happen. It's a numbers game. They'll send out 10,000 mailers. Typical response will be 2%. So they'll have 200 people come in and they'll close 25% of those and 20%.

So they might sell 50 cars or 40 cars and they spent $18,000 on the promotion. It's a numbers game. You know, I got one a few months ago that it must cost them $30, $40 to mail it to me. It was a scratch-off and then it had a little thing where you scratched off to get your numbers and it had the prizes underneath and then you pushed a little button in this little LED light started flashing one of the number. And lo and behold, I matched a number. And then I let it sit there and blink

until the battery went dead and I threw it away. Great idea. It had to cost them a fortune. Yeah, the direct mail are the lowest form, the most deceptive form of advertising. That's because it flies below the radar of the regulators. Not that the regulators pay any attention, but they definitely not going to send a direct mail piece

to the Attorney General. You know, they know who they send the direct mail pieces to. They don't send it to any regulators or legislators, and they just can get away with the murder. I've never seen a direct mail piece, and I see a lot of them, my customers bring them into me, that has been legal or legitimate. No free lunch.

Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And Rick, do we have any more text over there? We have one more. Remy D. from the YouTube channel is asking a question on leases. Are there disadvantages or advantages for returning a leased car at the end of the lease to a different dealership? It has to be to a dealership of the make-car you lease, but you can take it to a different dealership. Wherever you take it, just be sure that there's a thorough inspection made of the car.

There should be paperwork, which is an inspection sheet. And you should sign off on it. You should also keep a copy of it. And you should see exactly what is checked off and what's not checked off. They're going to check your tire tread. They're going to check your paint. They're going to check your upholstery, your mileage, all the different factors that can affect the value of that car. And just be sure that the car condition is exactly represented as the way you see it.

A really good thing to do, and everybody's got a camera in their pocket today with their smartphone. take pictures of everything take pictures of your tread take pictures of your body the auto body take pictures of the interior of the car take a picture of your odometer reading that way you can document if they try to come back at you many times these cars are not inspected by the leasing company for weeks i've seen it with months later a car sitting there with a tank of gas on a dealer's lot is a real temptation for a salesman And they'll take an off-lease car, and they'll drive for a couple of weeks. Suddenly, your mileage is a few hundred or a thousand miles more than you thought it was. Happens every day, ladies and document it, document it. And lease storage for a dealer is a pain. And so you're in the worst part of the real estate. These cars are parked down in a dirt lot under the trees, and that's why the photo documentation is so necessary,

because it's going to be crammed in, and I do mean crammed in where you practically got to crawl out the window because they're taking valuable real estate. Never leave it. You get that inspection report, and if you get a bill from the leasing company, whether you have documentation or not, you should.

But if you have a charge, $1,000 is typical from your leasing company for above average warrant here, contest it. Contest it because you usually find they have a guilty conscience and they'll cut it a little bit for you. Sometimes they eliminate it. I know for personal experience because I fight for my customers all the time with leasing company and I'm batting about a thousand.

If I go in there and raise heck about, I know the car was in better condition that is. The tread depth was better. The paint was in better shape. They will knock something off and sometimes I get them to knock the entire charge off. Contest your above average warrant air report. Okay. Any more text? We just got a new one in.

Vicki from Palm Beach Gardens is asking, for every recall on a new car, how much does that devalue the car for resale? Vicki, that's a great question. You know something? I don't think it devalues it much at all. That is a sad statement on the lack of awareness that people have of recalls.

You would think that a recalled car, let's take a Takata Airbag, that's recalled and there is no fix available you would think that the value of that car would plummet if you have a you could have a takata recalled car

with a passenger and driver side recall with the inflator not available maybe for six months or a year here's a car that can explode in your face and kill you you would think that would have some effect on the resale

value and for the people that aren't our regular listeners, if you don't know what the Takata airbag recall is, they're recalling these things because of the deterioration. These things can go off on their own, but even going off in an accident, the casing, the housing, has deteriorated. It's been chemically deteriorated, so rather than just inflate the airbag, it's exploding the metal housing and sending shrapnel, just like a hand grenade throughout the, um, interior of the car. People have died from it.

You go to safercar.org. www. www.safercar.org. That's the National Highway Traffic Safety Association website, S-A-F-E-R-C-A-R dot org. Put your vent number in and check and see it. The funny thing is, and it's not funny at all, but the reason it doesn't devalue the car, because car dealers are legally permitted

to sell that car without disclosure of the airbag or any. other dangerous recall so car dealers are openly and aggressively selling a lot of cars with dangerous recalls we document this on this show every week and we find out that unless you ask or check the car max report which you should a car fax i'm sorry car fax report unless you check the carfax report or check with the dealer uh manufacturer or safer car dot org if you don't do it yourself buyer beware They will not tell you. So why should the car dealer lower the price just because there's a dangerous recall?

Terrible. And we just got another one in. Good morning. Is it possible to minimize the time and hassle in the box? Can I tell the F&I guy, I don't want any extras or any pressure just this vehicle? I usually like the sales experience, but the box is terrible. I'll tell you why I love that. I have to tell you a little story.

when I answer that. A couple days ago, I had a call from a Wall Street Journal reporter. She's an automotive reporter. Her name is Adrian Roberts. And she was asking me about the finance and insurance department and what profits they made there. So I'm hoping she'll do a Wall Street Journal article on the dangers of the box. And I said to Adrian Roberts, she's a young woman. And I said, you probably never saw the movie Cool Hand Luke. And the movie Cool Hand Luke, there was something called the box and if a prisoner misbehaved the movie was about prisoners

and people in a jail and the prisoners misbehaved in the jailhouse there was something worse than the jail and they called it the box and it looked like an outhouse and it was outside in the hot George's son

and they took Paul Newman he was the prisoner and they would put him in the box and leave him in there for two days and the hot sun and he would just be exhausted and when they opened the door you couldn't sit down

he had to stand up halfway and he would just fall out and they'd carry him back and so that's the box and that's why they call the finance insurance department the box because it's a terrible place so uh the box is something that uh dealers make most of their money on the average profit on a new car today is somewhere in the neighborhood and i'm talking south for the market uh $800 or a thousand dollars in the box in the finance insurance department they make over a thousand $1,000 at least, and I'll give you a real number, and I told Adrian Roberts, the Wall Street Journal reported this, and she can verify it because AutoNation is a publicly held company. AutoNation makes over $2,000 on every car in the box in the finance department. Dealers are having to make the money in the finance department because it's become so competitive in the new car department, they have to make their profit in finance and insurance. Got your mind right yet, Luke? That's right.

There you go. Well, her question of how do you cut to the chase with the F&I guy? I forgot the question. I'm glad you told me with the question. I got so carried away. It was a great story, though. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Cool hand loop. So, sorry about that. The best thing you can do is you bought the car and there's really nothing else that you want to buy. Remember that. And you don't want to buy the extended service contracts. you don't want to buy the maintenance contract you don't want to buy the gab insurance maybe you want the gab insurance the thing you need to remember is don't buy anything until you fully understand it and read about it and it's almost impossible to do that in the emotional packed time after you bought a new car and while you were in the finance insurance department uh you should take anything that they want to sell you and digest it take it home study it before you purchase it. They'll tell you you have to buy it now or else you're not

eligible for it. That's nonsense. When you walk in to have your car financed, you should have already had bids from your bank and your credit union. Those bids should give you the interest rate and the terms and the down payment. If the car dealer, through his financing, can improve that lower down payment and lower interest and better terms, or at least lower interest, then you should consider their financing. But nine times out of ten, your bank or your credit union is going to give you a better deal. So just you'll have to sign some papers, and just be sure you don't buy something that you didn't think you were buying.

Great advice. Ladies and gentlemen, you can stay in control. And if you can't, walk away. Give us a call toll free at 877-960, or you can text us at 772. 497-6530, and to my statement about advising our listeners just to walk away, have you ever known anyone who said, hey, listen, I'm not going into the F&I office. I'm not going in. I'm not going in right now.

I have my car. I'm going to go home. I'm going to digest a few things, you know, use the language I'm going home. I'm going to empower myself, and I'll be back. I do know a few brave souls when you pay cash Brave souls I do know

when you're paying cash And a lot of people Pay cash Not a lot But you know Maybe 25% pay cash You've got your It's not really cash

You might have got a check from the bank Your credit union But you're not using their financing There's literally no reason to be Into a office where they keep trying To sell your products Like gap insurance And things of this nature

But Yeah just say here's my check, there's my car, goodbye. And there's no reason that you have to sign anything when you're paying cash. I don't see anything wrong with doing it that way. It makes it really easy to stay in control.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a great mystery shopping report coming up, and that's from Mullinex Ford. And also, I'm going to remind you about your anonymous feedback.com. You can go there and voice your opinion.

And also, don't forget, that we've got three different ways that we're streaming today. And I'll remind you that it is Facebook, it is Periscope, Twitter. YouTube. Great. Okay. Now back to the recovering cardio. Does you have a comment there, Ellen?

Yeah, just getting back to being in the box. Oh, boy. Two suggestions. You know what your personal habits and your history are. If you're prone to losing things, most dealers now offer key insurance. Some of these keys, by the time you purchase the keys, get both of them reprogrammed and everything, is several hundred dollars. So if you're prone to losing keys, and you know some people do, some people don't lose things, get the key insurance. And the other thing is wheels.

Just about every car now comes with alloy wheels. Most of them are $400 to $1,200 per wheel. if you have a history and if you ever had to replace a wheel, you know how expensive it is, consider the wheel insurance. So sometimes when you're in the box, I know it's irritating,

but think back to what you've lost and what you've damaged and do you want to put out a thousand dollars because you lost your keys. It's a good point, Alan. Let me make this point. There's nothing wrong with insurance for keys their wheels, it's the price I'm concerned about.

And the problem is, usually the prices in the finance departments or car dealerships are inflated. Now, you could probably buy yourself key insurance somewhere else. I don't, I'm not sure where. But I think if you went online and you shopped and compared prices, when you go into a finance department, the products, they'll have a menu, and this menu will have sometimes a half a dozen, sometimes a dozen or more products. they are typically marked up very, very high.

And you don't want to buy anything without compared to the pricing. I would take the products that they wanted to sell me, and then I would take it home and digest it. And if they told me I had to buy them now or don't buy them, I say, good, I'm not going to buy them. I would say, if you want me to think about it, I might come back tomorrow and buy it,

but if you're telling me I have to buy it now, I'm not going to buy it. Then I would shop and compare the key insurance or what other sort of a product they wanted to sell me, the finance department and insurance is a matter of peace in mind to some people i'm just one of these people if i feel like i got a good product and i'm not going to need any insurance help i'm not going to buy the insurance but other people feel differently rick we got another one we do uh lj is asking what do you think about buying extended warranty on a brand new toyota from your credit union from the credit union well credit unions are in

business like other businesses they sell products and they make a profit it's a not-for-profit I believe credit unions are not-for-profit I'm not sure I'm right about that maybe they're profit-making credit unions I'll have to research that but yeah they will sell you extended warranties again as I answer to Allen's question before shop and compare the best extended warranties are the ones the manufacturer offers so if you're driving a Honda go to Honda and see what they have to offer. Typically, the manufacturer's extended warranties are a better value. And according to Google, credit unions are not-for-profit organizations that exist to serve

their members. Well, that would tend to indicate they're probably a little more legitimate. There are some not-for-profit organizations out there that aren't so legitimate, but that's a different story. What's a different show? Well, and the other thought would be they're buying a, you know, they're buying a, a warranty. The credit union's got to buy the warranty from somebody. Somebody.

So somebody out there's going to make a profit. Yeah. Shop and compare, ladies and gentlemen. We're going to go to Chena, who's calling us from Benita Springs. Good morning, Tina. Good morning, everybody. How are y'all doing? Hi, Tena. Can you hear me? All right? It's kind of breaking up just a little bit. Yeah, I hear you loud and clear. How can

we, what do you got to talk about? Awesome. Okay. Well, I was just looking online again, and there's this big recall, the Toyota the FRS and the Subaru BRD, not all years, I do believe it's years 2011 to 2014, but there is an engine recall, a big huge engine recall, and it has to do with the valve spring. So if you have, you'll have to look online to see the exact gear, but this is a pretty major thing because it means the engine has to be, it's like deep within the depths of the engine. I think Rick could tell everybody a whole lot more about a valve system.

spring than I can. So take it away, Rick. Yeah. This is a rather interesting one because it's actually cars, for the Toyota version, we're from March of 2012 to July of 13, and there were about 25,000 cars involved in this where we're supposed to replace the valve springs on these engines. However, and the Subaru BRZ, basically it's the same car, but the one produced by Subaru. So they've got it the same situation. There's also a big problem that a lot of people aren't aware of that a lot of these engines, when they're coming into dealerships, already have internal engine problems.

And these engines, once the technician rebuilds, it puts the new springs on, suddenly these engines are failing. It's a very wide problem through Subaru and Toyota, and we've been battling it. dealership, we've already been battling back and forth with Toyota. Many other dealerships, I have this from sources that I won't even mention, but many other dealerships are having this issue. So if you own a Subaru FRS or Subaru BRZ or the Sion FRS and you have this recall, I urge you to have patience because I think this situation is going to change and instead of putting springs in it, they're going to have to step up and start doing major engine repairs on these cars.

So are you suggesting that removing and replacing the springs precipitates the engine problem? No, I think the cars already have major problems before they even get in there. And one of the things that I've found that other dealerships are doing, before they even start work on the engine, they're pulling the oil pan off, which is not necessary for this actual recall, but they're pulling the oil pan off just to inspect that pan to see if there's any size. of metal that has gotten in there because apparently it's not just the springs there's other issues with these engines wow this is a watergate kind of thing well and it very much is and the manufacturers are playing the dealers yeah manufacturers are blaming the dealers and the only

the only thing that's going to protect the consumer and the dealer in this case is Subaru or Toyota but it's ultimately a Subaru motor they need to send remanufactured or, I'm sorry, complete engines to the dealers because they're saying the dealers don't know how to build these engines, right? So you build them and send us a replacement and we'll put it in. Right. Everybody's pointing fingers back and forth. It's terrible situation.

Nobody's accepting the blame. And the customers are getting caught in the middle. Tina, you didn't know you had a breaking news story here, did you? You just exposed a huge. No. I'm glad, and I do believe it's expanded to a million cars. Now, that's what I've heard. I'm not for sure on that.

But, you know, you think that Subaru would learn the first time because Subaru has been notorious for what is that part? I'm trying to think of it's right in the tip of my tongue, but it's, oh, my goodness, I can't think of the name of the part, but part of their engine, the valves, not the valve cover, it's something else, but they're notorious for that sailing, and that's like a $2,500 repair. and I, aggravating, you think I should know this. Well, Super is a great car.

I mean, let's not badmouse Subaru, too. Their boxer engine has a particular failure that's very common, and everybody that owns this boxer engine knows that they're going to have to replace this. The head gasket failure, you think, yeah, I'm such an idiot. You think that the Subaru would learn from the head gasket debacle, but they haven't. Yeah, because the Subaru side of it, not only is it on the BRZ but also the

Subaru Impreza and their Impraza station wagon a lot of those use that same boxer engine and this is where they're having these issues well this is good that you got it out on the air and a lot of folks out there who own these vehicles need to know they could

be caught in the middle on this because you've got a fight here between the manufacturers and the dealers and you're caught in the middle you're the customer so stay tuned we will keep you advised on this show. We will do some investigating, and we will report back to you next week. But, Tina, thank you.

Who are the Watergate reporters that broke it? Woodward and Bernstein. You're like a... And one more thing before I go, I don't mean to interrupt you. I'm sorry. But for those young men and some of us young ladies that love to modify our vehicles, you know what, sometimes you're better off not modifying your vehicle because you never know.

You just do not want your warranty avoided, and you don't want any kind of very expensive repair work to be denied because you modified something. Exactly. So that's something to keep in mind. Okay. Great information, Tina. Tina Woodward or Bernstein from Anita Springs. Thank you very much.

Give us a call again, Tina. We love hearing from you. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-4-9-9-9-60, or you can text us at 772-4-9-9. 97-6530. Looks like we got a call from St. Louis, and Glenn's been holding. Good morning, Glenn. Good morning, all.

Hi, Glenn. About six, I listened to your advice on buying the key insurance. And, oh, about six months ago, I bought two, four escapes, one for my wife, one for my son. And after following Earl's advice, I got to a price where I was happy. It was a done deal. Except I just hadn't quite signed yet, and I dealt with the young lady, salesperson, and I said, okay, if you throw in an extra key, because my people are just what you say, they're prone to lose things, I said, if you throw in an extra key, it's a done deal. And it took two minutes, and they came back and said, yes. And I know the dealers have access to keys a lot cheaper than they charge.

Way to go, Glenn. And I'm not sure, but the escapes I bought in 2009, you could make your own key if you got a blank. Yeah. And you, but you had to have two keys to do it, two active keys. Now, I don't know if that's still true or not, but I thought, hey, if you lose one key, you can get a blank and make your own key. Well, Glenn, you probably, you might have got somebody else's key because two keys. keys, two smart keys come with every car. So I think you probably drove such a hard bargain

that they took somebody else's car key and gave it to you. I do know this, that a lot of the smart keys now are being offered by outside companies. Ace Hardware is one of them. And I've had a couple calls from people that have gone into Ace and gotten smart keys for their cars that were crazily priced by the dealer $300, $400, $300, and they're buying them for less than $100. So check with Ace Hardware, if a dealer tries to overcharge you for a key.

And I love your idea, Glenn. That's a great idea. I never even thought about it. You go in, and first of all, you should get two keys, but you can work that, too. You can say, look, you got me two keys. We got a deal here if you give me a third key. And there's a third key somewhere. There's also, I know Ace, there's some.

an ace by me, and they weren't able to duplicate keys when I checked. They do duplicate keys, they couldn't do mine. But there's a, oh, there's an outfit here in St. Louis. I don't know if they're nationwide. Batteries Plus or batteries

and bulbs or something. And they duplicate keys. They quoted a price of like $110, which is more than I wanted, but more and more people are doing it, and the machinery, the equipment, I think we recently bought some equipment in my dealership for this. So if someone wants to make the investment, it's fairly expensive.

But if you make the investment, you can, in competition, what's bringing the price of these keys down, when you have enough people like Ace Hardware and this battery company mentioned in St. Louis, making the keys, competition will bring the cost of the smart keys down so you don't get ripped off by the dealer. Earl, thanks for all your help. I love your program. Thank you. Thanks, Glenn.

Meet me in St. Louis, Louis. I had to say that. You know I was born there, right? Yeah, I forgot about that, yeah. Yeah. I'm a St. Louisson. Absolutely. Okay, well, speaking of Mystery Shopping Reports,

we're almost there yet. We've got to, we can take another call or two. We might have some texts, but we shop Mullinx Ford, as Nancy Stewart mentioned, and they are on a recommended dealer list, and I'm going to tell you it's a real shocker. Malnick's Ford is a family dealership, multiple dealerships. They're half a dozen at least, I think, in Florida.

And they advertise no dealer fees, and we've got a shocker coming up. And I just want you to stay tuned for that mystery shopping over. I have something I want to mention speaking of Nancy Stewart. Nancy Stewart and I will be speaking to a group in the latter part of April. Seniors for Florida Attorney General's Office, Seniors Against Crime. Florida Attorney General's Office,

seniors against crime. We were approached by the group. Big. And they were being their members, seniors in South Florida, are being taken advantage of by car dealers in an epidemic proportion.

And they called us out of desperation and said, would you please speak to our group? So we're so proud and so happy to be able to speak. It'll be somewhere in the Palm Beach County area and we're going to try to invite as many

seniors as possible, but that is a Florida Attorney General's Office, Seniors Against Crime Group, that we will speaking in late April. It'll be after Easter and Passover at the very end of April. We'll be announcing more information on

this speaking engagement. We'll keep you closer there. Yeah, it's going to be big. And you have a text, Nancy? I do. I've seen a lot in the news about automatic emergency braking A.E.B. Can you tell me exactly what this is and why it's such a good thing? I'm in the market for a new car. Can you tell me what cars have it available now and what cars will have it available soon? Thanks very much, Mary Ann. Well, I think this is a question that all of us can chime in on. But first, I'll tell you that this automatic emergency braking system,

what it does is it prevents you from having a head-on collision can save your life and it can save another person's life and it's a safety feature that's very much necessary and there's a few cars that have it right now and they are the Toyota, the Tesla, the Volvo, and the Mercedes. Tesla's got everything. And I think you'll be able to find a whole lot more by 2022. Yeah, I think they mandated it requiring on cars. I'm not sure about that. But, you know, remember how excited we all got about the backup camera?

That's how excited I'm getting about this automatic emergency braking. I mean, I hate to admit this, but the other day I'm going into my garage, and I don't know what I was thinking. And basically it saved me from ramming the end of the garage. Again. Yeah, again. Uh-oh. But it has a sonar thing, I guess, and it just, it feels whatever's going out.

So if you got a kid or a dog or a brick wall or a car stops in front of you, the darn thing just, it goes beep, beep, and then it gives you a big flash, and then it just absolutely stops the car. It's amazing. You know, I was doing a product knowledge test the other day on the 20 and 19. Corolla Hatchback, you know, the Toyota Global Architecture car. And I did not know that they now have sign recognition. They have pedestrian detection, bicyclist detection, the white lines on the roads, the skippy lines on a road.

They're using all kinds of stuff. And they can read three road signs at a time. Just all kinds of really neat stuff. But my advice to Marianne is whatever, get the most of all this safety technology that you can afford in the best brand, whatever your preference is. But I love all this stuff. Can save a life. The feature I'm waiting for, though, the one thing I want to see is an automatic love bug deflector. Something that keeps love bugs from hitting the front of your car.

I want that. Hey, I saw a bobcat cross North Lake this morning on the way in, by the way. Not that that has anything to do with what we're talking about. I don't want to minimize that. Automatic emergency braking, the more I think about it, and maybe it's because I'm a crazy driver. I don't know, but I feel so secure in my car now. I mean, we talk about distractions, and we say texting,

and we say all the distractions that you see people, this thing will save lies save damage it'll be bad for your business it is bad for our business very few front-enders anymore with those things how many times

you know I the other day I was stopped in line at a traffic a red light or something a stop sign and I'm in line and I don't know what I was thinking and I looked up and I said why is that crazy car in front of me

backing toward me Well, it wasn't back and toward me. I had taken my foot off the brake. That up a little bit. And it was creeping toward the one in front of me. It couldn't happen with the automatic emergency braking. Great, A.E.B. If you're going to buy a car, check to see if it doesn't have the automatic emergency braking.

I'd make that a major consideration. It definitely is. And I do have to point out to our listeners that it is one exciting moment after another driving with Earl Stewart. Thank you. Okay, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you very much. On a more serious note, you can go to consumer report.org and get the rest of the information on a very necessary safety feature. And you can also find out what cars don't have it, what cars they have the feature on now, and what you can expect in 2022.

Okay. It's Mr. Rochall. We got no, we've got a text. We've got just one last one here. From Bob and Jupiter, he says, to follow up on his box. question and to the idea of paying cash and walking what about telling the salesperson

that I would like him to have the F&I person print out the paperwork and bring it back to sign at the sales desk if he won't then I would tell him that I would walk correct I think that's a great idea and there is a trend the slow trend

toward eliminating the financial insurance department or the box kudos to J.M. Lexus and Coconut Creek. J.M. Lexus has combined. They're one price now,

and they have combined all the functions. You don't have an after-sales person. You don't have an F&I person and a salesman. You have one person,

that's a salesperson, that takes you through the entire process. Wow. You come into J.M. Lexus. They give you their lowest price, and then they give you

their interest rate and their terms or the leasing or whatever it is. and the person you started with is a person you finish with he gives you he signs all the papers and he takes you out the car and you go home you don't have

you don't have a sales manager back and forth nonsense you don't have the box nonsense jm lexas and coconut creek and that's the trend of the future and that's the way it should be and it will be one day that's awesome yeah okay mystery shopping report

mullinx ford as I said Molinix Ford is, in our opinion, has been a very, very good dealership. It's a family dealership. They've owned, I think, mainly four dealerships. This one is in North Palm Beach that we shopped. We shopped, it's actually Lake Park, and we shop them several times. It's been on a recommended list. Because of their past good behavior, Malinix Ford tended to stay under the radar.

We've never seen examples of deceptive bait and switch style marketing. We've never seen, we don't get calls or emails about Mullinx Ford. No complaints. We just said they're one of the good guys. Molinx Ford was the first, and for a long time, the only car dealer to pass the Takata test. And they actually had a car in inventory, discovered it, unbeknownst to them that had the Takata recall. and realized if there wasn't a fix, and they said, we can't sell you the car. I mean, we've never seen a car dealer do that.

So, Molnix Ford, we just hold in high esteem. So, but we've got to go back. We just can't leave anyone because you never know. And we found in the past bad dealers can become good dealers, and good dealers can become bad dealers. We got a little twinge that there's a problem with Molnack's. forward because they advertised no dealer fees we found one dealership for malnakes as I say they own multiple that did not have dealer fees and we found

one that really had a small dealer fee in August of 2017 and again in January of 2018 we sent agent X and he returned with Malnix buyers orders that listed a fifty three dollar charge for dealer delivery fee and that another $49 for Florida dock stamps. At both cases, Agent X was paying cash, and there's no dock stamps on a cash transaction. In fact, there shouldn't be dock stamps on an installment sale that is charged by the lender, not the dealer. It's been well over a year since our last visit to Malnick, so we decided to dispatch our new mystery shopper, Agent Thunder, to check in on the Malnix Ford and see if anything has changed.

Now, here's the report, and I'll be speaking as if I were Agent Thunder and the first person. I arrived at Mullinix 4 at around 3.30 p.m. I must admit I was excited to mystery shop this dealership due to the fact they advertise no dealer fees. I was truly hoping this would be a real deal. They would be the real deal. I entered the dealership and proceeded to the reception desk before I could even finish saying why I was there, I was approached by a salesperson named Waldo. That's an unusual name, Waldo.

There's a town of Florida named Waldo, I believe. But they were able to find him. Yeah, find Waldo. That's right. That's who Waldo. Yeah. He was friendly, said, what brings you in today? Waldo asked some qualifying questions,

and based on my answer, it suggests I look at both purchasing and leasing. We decided on their small SUV, the Ford Escape. But Waldo excitedly informed me that they have the largest selection of Ford's in the state of Florida. Now, that troubles me a little bit because Ford has a lot of dealers in Florida, and they have some huge dealers. Yeah, they do. And I have to say it's highly unlikely that Little Mullinick Sword has the largest selection. Now, listen to this. He offered me a bottle of water with no dealer fee.

label on it. Well, that's encouraging. Yeah, it is. Now listen, sit down for this one. No dealer fees. On the water bottle, I've never seen this before. But anyway, it's a nice touch. I asked him about this. Waldo said they've been in business for 40 years

and have always believed in being honest and straightforward. He also said they're a one-price store, and that's why they outsell their local Ford competition. It's sounding better and better. Sounded better and better. I'll have to check the statistics,

but I believe that Alpaccair Ford and Wayne Ingers Ford, and I believe Del Rey Ford, all out cell Mullincks. I would be inclined to believe that myself, especially Wayne Acres. We could call this puffery or white lines, but a little odor here to the presentation.

I like puffery. Just because nobody used, what a cool word, puffery. Puffery is a legal term. And the law, they say that a retail business can use puffery. Puffery is lying with a smile on your face, and it's not really too serious. Mile lies, white lies. I'm going to try to use puffery in a sentence at least once a day for the next week. I'm going to start a trend, puffery.

So, again, I am Agent Thunder, and I... I just tell by the way you say that, you love it. I do. Hey, Alan, just don't use that word describing your wife. Huh? What? I asked if he heard that Earl Stewart is a no-dealer fee, one-price store. He responded, absolutely, and it's good to see other car dealerships do the same.

Now, again, I was not a one-price dealer when I learned about Molnacks in Fort Laudelieu. Waterdale. And that's how I first heard we really had a one-price dealer. So he knew us, knew of Earl Stewart Toyota, and he was complimentary. We went on test drive, headed back to the store to go over the numbers. He sat me down, disappeared into the manager's office. That's not a good sign, too. There are one prize. Why was he in the manager's office? He returned with a couple of printed proposals with the aforementioned lease and purchase options. Myers immediately focused on the Althador breakdown on the side of these proposals. He showed a discounted selling price of $36,538, less a rebate of $2,500 for an adjusted selling price of $340. To this, they added $2,364 in sales and $505 for tag and registration for a bottom line of $36,000. nine hundred seven dollars now i threw a lot of numbers at you there and i'm reading them so you're you know they're going over your head not important but i scan the figures on this paper they showed me for any sign of a dealer fee i was pleasantly surprised to find none

great news breath of relief but stay seated please or was there i was suspicious with a tag and registration line that totaled five hundred and five dollars however i didn't push the issue i thank waldo first time and said i would be in touch now that's where we've left it before with a couple of other dealers but this time uh it would appear that malnakes is true to their word about not charging dealer fees nothing of the sort was itemized or labeled as such on agent thunder's proposal so how does this drive with our previous shops that reveal the duty fee we instructed agent thunder to contact waldo the next day to request the formal buyer's order that a customer receives when they complete their final paperwork in the business

office or the box okay oftentimes this request is denied unless you're in the store and ready to buy surprisingly and this is very surprising they quickly emailed him a picture of the formal buyer's order now this is really amazing now we have a picture of this and I'll hold it up for you folks that are streaming us live you won't be able to see much but you'll see this is the evidence and you see the red mark there at the top that is the evidence that in the box in the paperwork being spirited out by the computer. Molinex Ford was adding

dealer fees. I hate to use the word lie, but they lied. They lied verbally. They lied on their water bottle. I'm going over to get that water bottle. I wonder

if there's an extra severe penalty for water bottles. For water bottles, yeah. Water bottle lying. We need to look into that. And I'm very very disappointed in Mollinx. that they would do this. Usually, when you get into the box, you don't even see the additional fees, and this is what a lot of car dealers count on.

More and more car dealers are counting on the fact that they can show you their prices on something called a worksheet or a internal document, and nothing is official. And if you don't consummate the deal, don't buy the car, you leave the dealership thinking, hey, they didn't have any dealer fees. Interestingly enough, in my current blog, it's called a poorly written Florida law, ineffectually regulating dealer fees, and that's available on earluncars.com, www.orgoncars.com.

I refer to this heinous practice. I'll read the paragraph. These hidden fees are often not revealed in the paperwork seen. by the customer when the deal is consummated vehicle sale is consummated dealers often use documents labeled worksheets or internal documents with fine print indicating that it is not legal it is not a legal document sale so that allows them in their minds to be able to lie to about their dealer fee the official document vehicle buyers order is printed out in the finance office along with reams of other documents like the installment sale or lease contract the odometer form the powers of attorney

the extended warranty the maintenance contract the gap contract etc etc i mean that computer it spits out all these things sign here sign here sign here sign here sign here no customer has a time or inclination to read all the fine print on all the documents a high percentage of florida car buyers are unaware that they were charged a dealer fee and this is what malnick's ford is counting on i'm amazed that they actually email this uh to to our mystery shopper to agent thunder but they did and i think it was a mistake otherwise and here it is right here so malnix ford who verbally and in writing says they don't charge dealer fees do charge the dealer fee uh i don't know what to

say other than the fact that it's time for us to vote. I don't know if we forgot to remind you to vote. I hope we had some people text in some votes. But it's voting time. Yeah, it's not too late. Listeners, you can text us your vote at 772-497-6530.

We have plenty of time. And your vote is important to us. And it's a difficult vote because I often say, oh, we've got 15 minutes. We've got plenty of time. I often say that we grade on the curve on this show because if we grade it on absolute terms, we'd probably fail almost every dealer. And you have to have a place to buy a car in Florida to be practical. So this show services consumers, and if we said, guess what, folks, you can't buy a car in Florida, that's not a good thing.

We'd rather say buy a car in Florida, beware, be careful. and that's our recommended list that are the role of least speaking better dealers Malnick's Ford is a role to be speaking better dealer but now we have this so we have to make the decision does this warrant taking Malnakes Ford off the recommended dealer list I don't see how this is not deception overt deception on the other hand the dealer fees are relevably small. Yeah, in comparison. If it was just a dealer

fees and they weren't advertising, no dealer fee, those are very small compared to most places. The dealer fee is $53 plus $122.15. So that's not even $200 dealer fee. We have dealers out there. In fact,

I was just showing Alan before the meeting. We have a dealer fee. We have a dealer out there now it's too small you can't read it i'll read it to you but uh he has an electronic filing fee of 1,799 and 99 cents he also has a private tag agency fee of 149 he also has a dealer services fee of 695 and then um the nitrogen and the tires is 899.99.99 sense. That's too high for me to add up. That's close to $3,000, isn't it? Yeah, and let's remind our listeners, nitrogen is air.

Yeah, air. So, here we are. Let's go around and take some boats here. Rick, I see you've got some numbers on your pad there. We do indeed. from the Facebook group we got an F and we got an anonymous that says it's beyond puffery and an F and from YouTube we got an F and a D

Yeah Oh boy I tell you I'm feeling pain about Molnik's Ford because I've always bragged on Melanix Ford Me too I don't know what I feel like they're in They led the world in one price

and for so long they had no dealer fee let's go around there I don't know what to say yet Rick what do you say how are you going to grade them well I want to give them a passing grade of a D just to say keep them on the list

but I don't know the whole water bottle with no dealer fee and then they tack it on at the very end it's deceptive and it's more deceptive it seems to me than all the other places to say yeah we have a deal dealer fee. So it just, I don't know, I'm really going to have to say F on it.

Yeah. Nancy, how about you? What do you say? Well, I can't base my grade on whether it's 50 cents or a dollar. You know, it's a dealer fee, plain and simple. I failed them. Well, of course, it's the dealer fee, which was a lot about. You know, we have to realize that every dealer in Florida almost has dealer. But when you lie about it, you know, if you say, I'd rather say, this is our dealer fee, and we make a profit on it, but we charge it, and you just have to make the choice. At least you're being honest about the dealer fee, but I just don't about lying. Alan, what do you think?

I'm with you guys. It's deception. I think they're making a bad business decision there. If you're going to charge a dealer fee, charge it. throw away all the water bottles or donate them to a charity or something, get rid of them, stop advertising, no dealer fees when you know as soon as it comes out of your mouth, it's a lie. As much as it pains me, because I don't know if we have any four dealers on the recommended list, I hope we do. And, you know, between shoemongers and the mullinxes are some of my favorite dealers,

I got to fail them. You know, I hate it, but I've got to do it. I think I have to, too. And I think, because it's Mullanex, let me do this. I'll make a commitment to call the Mullinexes. I'll try to get hold of the Mullinxes. And I'll tell them what we did, tell them we failed them, but we didn't want to because we had, for so many years,

respect and admiration for their leadership, giving him, we're going to fail them, but hopefully we can put them right back on the recommended list. If Molinix will commit to me that he will remedy the situation. And Wayne from YouTube also votes F. Another fail. So, you know, you've got, Molnex for it, I think it's got, let's say a half a dozen stores. The Mulnix family can't be in all the stores all the time.

It could be a rogue operator for the North Palm Beach store. that is doing this. It could have been a situation that went without the knowledge of the Malinix family. So they will be on the do not buy list from this moment until next Saturday

and between now and next Saturday I will make a commitment to speak to someone in the Malinix family. And if I get their commitment that they will change that practice immediately, we will then, of course, shop them to verify. I'll take a Malenek's family word for it, but we will trust but verify. Fair enough.

As Ronald Reagan once said. Fair enough. They earned our respect once before. They can do it again. Absolutely. And for all you other dealers out there that are following this new, very deceptive practice of hiding your dealer fee until the box. And we've dropped some of you before, but we haven't been aggressive enough to find out if you're done. doing this we're going to find out now and if you are not if you are deceiving somebody about this

you're going to go on the do not recommend list now i talked to uh scott painter i don't know how many you know on the name scott painter he uh was the CEO of true car true car is the one of the companies the third party buying sources that we recommend along with cosco truecar.com was the original CEO of a true car he's now no longer CEO of true car he's he's now CEO of a company called fare f a i are and it's a company similar it's a buying company similar to true car i don't recommend fair now because i don't know much about it i downloaded their app on my smartphone f a i are you can download it in the apple store and they combined a buying source and a financing source for cars.

And it's similar to true car. Scott Painter called me at home last night, surprised me because I really have a lot of respect for Scott Painter. Very smart guy. Nancy knows him too. We have another vote. Well, actually, we have a quick question. I just want to throw this out because I know you'll like this one. Angel from YouTube is asking,

have you ever considered mystery shopping out-of-state dealerships? Well, it's a long drive. the state. Florida is a big state. We're in South Florida. We've gone as far as Pensacola, but

we've done remote shops, and we have for a while there, we thought we had like a group of volunteers. We had somebody in North Carolina that

was shopping vehicles for us. So if you're out of state and you want to shop a dealer, you can call us, we have to be careful about, because we don't

know you, and we have to be careful that we're giving valid shops. But we'll talk about, a shop that you want to call in, but I don't think we can regularly get outside

the state to do that. Back, yeah. I really, really think that we need to shop the Chevy dealer in Honolulu, and I know it's a long... You want to do it. It's a long flight. You're reading my mind. I volunteer. You're reading my mind.

Scott Painter. Yeah, Scott Painter. So the reason that I was impressed is the fact that he was thrown out of True Car because the dealer's ganged up on him and for a while true car was a hardcore these dealers are giving you a good price these dealers aren't it was really it was so tough on the car dealers that they sued true car

and there were several lawsuits and there was such a hue and cry the true car basically fired Scott Bainer. You've got to remember that car dealers are the customers for true car. They charge the dealers a fee. True car gets $299 I believe

it is for the cost of being a true car dealer. So they are beholding to dealers and so that represents a potential conflict of interest. You're smiling, right? Oh, I just happen to look up something real quick. So will we be sending Alan to Honolulu, North Carolina?

Yes. So that's my take on this whole dealer fee thing. And that we are going to, the other thing I need to mention about dealer fees is the fact that we have been talking aggressively with a firm of attorneys who have assured me that a large dealership group will be targeted shortly. in a class action suit against dealer fees. That's what Scott Bainer was calling me about, by the way, was dealer fees when he talked to me last night,

and I told him about the class action suit. His problem is, as operating a third-party referral service for car dealers, how do we get a price to refer to the customers? If Alan Napier goes to fare or true car or to another third-party source, and they give you a price which is a really good price and then you go into that dealer and he adds a $2,000 dealer fee

are you getting a fair price then? No. So all the third party buying sources are having a heck of a time fighting these dealer fees and true car is having a problem Costco's having a problem fair if they are

Scott Piener's company is having a problem the only way to do it is to beware and diligent, diligent yourself, because Costco cannot go in and investigate these dealers. You have to see the Costco price sheet, and with True Car, you have to be sure that the true car price does include all the fees that are advertised, and it's buyer beware when you buy a car, and that's all I can say. The True Car thing, because it's not my end of the business, and we only have two minutes.

Let's playtime. Just a real quick question. Once they got rid of Scott Painter, did the dealers or dealer groups drop their lawsuits, and that was enough for them to back off? And Part B in my question, TrueCard, did they modify their behavior? And did their business model change once they got rid of Scott Painter? What was the point of getting rid of him? They did modify their business model so that it wasn't so painfully aware

which dealer had the lowest price in the market. True car now forces the dealers, which is a very good thing, to give the true car price with no dealer fee or dealers in salt accessories. But that true car price is not compared with two other dealers in the same market. What the dealers hated was having three dealers on the same market with three different true car prices, and they were exposed to who had the lowest and who had the eyes. That no longer happens.

So if you're doing a true car today, you still have to compare that true car price with your own diligence, maybe with Costco or maybe with your own research. And I think we're at the end of another show. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us and helping us walk through this minefield called the auto business. Stay tuned next week. We'll be right back here at the same time and have a fabulous weekend. Come to me. Vendom.

Come. Come. Welcome. Oh, no. Momuahua. Oh. Oh. And go.

Go. You know,