Earl Stewart on Cars - 03.26.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Sendell Motors Subaru of Greensburg, PA.

Episode Date: March 26, 2022

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

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

He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back. The Earl Stewart on Cars team, live in the studio here in North Palm Beach, Florida. You heard the recorded introduction. It's pretty accurate, except we have a substitute. for Stu Stewart. That's another son. I've got three sons. And Josh Stewart fills in for

Stu when he has issues and he's got a little illness at home. So he's taken a day off. And we got Josh who will fill in very well for him. His main function, Stu, is in charge of our mystery shoppers. And actually Josh is very much involved in that too, very familiar with Agent lightning, dispatching her and writing and diagnosing our Mr. Shopping reports. And other than that, we've got Rick Kearney, our certified master diagnostic technician, answer any question about the electronics or computerization of your car. I mean, the mechanics, I almost hesitate to mention at all. Who's got a telephone list around here, so I don't forget to read the telephones.

I stole my phone list. And we have to give you those numbers because your calls are numeral uno. Your calls are far more important than just about anything else we do on this show. Because if you don't call, we don't get to good stuff. And if you're a regular listener, you know what I'm talking about. You think of things. First of all, what you're thinking is what we ought to be talking about because that's why we're here to help you.

And I use that collectively as our entire audience. Well, your problems are pretty commonly shared by most everybody listening. So we asked you to call in, and Jonathan gave me the list here. You'd think I'd have these memorized after all these years, but it's funny. When you use a crutch, you just don't get off of it, and you just, I should go home and memorize it. I mean, I memorized the multiplication tables. I should be able to memorize this.

Our phone, old-fashioned telephone. If you'd write that down, I'd appreciate it. You might not have a question now or a comment, but if you listen for a few minutes, you probably will. We really get into some interesting things. I promise you, if you listen just for a few minutes, I know you're not going to listen for two hours. I wish you would, but that's a long time.

We're on from 8 to 10 Eastern Standard Time. So, for whatever amount of time you listen, you'll think of something that'll peak your time. that will peak your curiosity, interest, or perhaps your anger. You can call us at 877-9-60-99-60, and we will prioritize your call. We have, I think, five lines coming into the studio here, and when we get busy, sometimes they all get tied up, and you'll get a busy signal, we don't like to see that happen. So Nancy Stewart, who's to my left here in the studio, she's got a computer screen that she looks at

regularly and when a real caller, a live caller, comes in at 877-9-60-960, she hops on it, waves at me, taps me on the shoulder, and anybody will stop what they're doing, Rick or Josh or me or Nancy, and we will talk to you because we love to hear your voice. It's more personal. Phone calls are more personal, but we know everyone doesn't want to be personal on live radio. It is kind of scary. I don't know why I'm not pride into this. When I think about it, when I'm not here, I get nervous, but when I get here, for some reason, I relax. I don't know what it is, but I know a lot of people don't feel like I do. So if you don't want to be on live radio, then you just use your text. We have the

old-fashioned text. I say old-fashioned. I remember when I never heard of texting. I won't say I never heard of phones. I mean, I'm not that old, but I've never heard of cell phones when I was younger, so. Anyway, our text number is 772-497-6530. That text number is 772-4976530. Those texts go to Josh Stewart, and he collects them. We get to them all by the end of the show. And if you text us right now and the phone rings right now, we'll go to the phone first. And if we have a long conversation and something comes up, we'll get to the text, we promise you. Now, a really cool line, no one has this. I like being unique.

We have an anonymous feedback. Way to get to the show. I don't know, politicians should have this. Regulators should have this. CEOs of companies should have this. Police departments do have it. FBI, I mean, for important stuff, they have it. A suicide lines have it.

I mean, it's recognized is the way to get through to somebody because people sometimes don't want to be identified, and we have it. So that number, or that URL, that website is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-O-U-N-N-Y-M-O-U-S-Feedback.com. And if you will go to that website, you can send us a message, you can ask us a question, make a comment, you can even use profanity and vulgarity. Now, we'll bleak the profanity and vulgarity, but we'll get the essence of your message across, even if it's something bad that you don't like about us. As a matter

of fact, we do appreciate criticism. We prefer constructive criticism, but we'll, we accept all criticism. And there are a lot of car dealers out there. You guys want to be taking advantage of that anonymous feedback line because I know some of you really don't like this show. Matter of fact, a group of you got together in South Florida and boycotted advertising

on this show, not this particular radio station, but it was this channel, this station before it changed ownership. You boycotted the station and said we will stop advertising unless you get rid of Erlon cars and we got fired. We were off the air

for almost two years until the station changed ownership and then the new owner invited us back. And here we are. So you car dealers, you want to say something nasty to me and let me find out who you are? You are, Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S Feedback.com. It'll go right through to Josh,

and he will read it on the air. And we can talk about it. In fact, we'd love to have you call the show. I know you won't. Actually, we have had a couple of car dealers call the show. And if you do, if you got the nerve, and you're an automobile dealer or an employee of an automobile dealership

you know manager, salesman, whatever and you call us, I promise you will be treated with respect and courtesy, I promise you will not be muted out, I won't hang up on you, and I won't insult you. You can insult me, but I'm not going to insult you. We just want to hear what you had to say.

Youranonymousfeedback.com and that's the different ways we can be reached on this show. I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart, who's sitting on my left, very important to the show, and she is our leading, well, she's the only female in the show. She is our female advocate, and her purpose being here, other than just being part of the team and answering your questions, is to encourage women to participate more. And she's going to tell you about an offer in just a second that will enrich you if you are a woman

who has not called the show before, we have a lot of very, very talented, knowledgeable women that do participate now. We're trying to reach 50-50. We're almost there. In fact, I would, arguably, I would say our most talented, interesting, intelligent text her is a female by the name of Anne-Marie. And I bet she's probably texting us as we speak or maybe already has. He is already here. Already here. So, you ladies out there, we'd love to have you contact the show, and I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy,

and she's going to tell you precisely what that offer is if you will be a first-time caller. Thank you. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Earl on Cars. We're right here for you, and as Earl said, we'll take all your calls, all your opinions, and everything you have to hand us, We're learning something new every Saturday morning.

You're an important part of the show. For the ladies, our first two female callers, you can win yourself $50 this morning. And remember, women represent a huge opportunity for the auto dealers, the auto industry. Also remember, you're listening to an international show. Yes, we're reaching people across the globe. So give us a call at 877. 960-9960 or you can text us at 772-497-6-530 and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com now back to the well actually we're going to go right to the telephones because John's been

holding from Palm City welcome to the show John. Good morning John. Good morning. Good morning to the entire crew. Thank you for being there. I want to discuss a law that was passed in 2019 by the EPA for all 50 states. It's against excessive idling of any motor vehicle, trucks, buses, etc. They can't idle more than three minutes, and the federal fine is $350. This set up a group immediately, if they call them the idle warriors and people like Bill de Blasio in New York City went into effect

with fines people, they call it bounty hunters. They filmed a videotape with sound of trucks, buses, Uber cabs, and they submit that to the city

and they get 25% to that $350 fine, which is exactly 87 they get issued a 1019 form, and they've made a lot of money on it. Last year alone, New York City collected $2.5 million in fines and paid out to these bounty hunters $725,000. It's pathetic.

I mean, if you think about it, for a delivery sometime, especially a truck has to idle, waiting, the car carriers, They have to keep the engine running, I think, in order to use the hydraulic lips on it. And it gets insane with these people, with these so-called idle warriors. But it is a law, and it's effective in all 50 states. And it's against excessive idling of trucks, buses, and cars, motorized vehicle. John, if I didn't know you. John, if I didn't know you for so long and know how smart you are and how honest you are,

I would swear you were playing a joke. That law... There's an absolute thing that can be authenticated and it's just out of hand because there are situations especially in a cab I like at New York City

that they're waiting and waiting for a fair or sometime down here you see in a park a lot people keep it running to keep the air conditioning on you know more than the three minutes. I'm guilty of that this morning.

Yeah. You know here meanwhile mile, they're speeding 20, 30, 40 miles over the speed limit on the expressways. They're driving recklessly. They're drinking coffee and they're texting and they're on the phone. They're doing all these terribly dangerous things. There were more traffic deaths last year than ever before. And so the federal government's worried about, and New York governor is worried about someone idling for three. You pull up to a train crossing and you have a freight train. And you have a big trucker, you have a bunch of, there are a bunch of vehicles there and they all turn the engines off.

One of the odds of one of them is not going to be able to start the car. And when the train passes, you're going to have this massive backup of cars. I can think of a million reasons why that's the dumbest idea I ever heard. But John, I love your calls. I'll tell you, that's right up to an Anne-Marie call in terms of interest because it is outrageous. I can't believe it. But thank you so much for calling it to our attention. Every week, John.

You're welcome. It's certainly, the law, absolutely ridiculous when you think about it. Yeah. It's just out of hand completely, and I won't point it out to people that the law exists. Well, I have to say, I mean, I think a lot of people, most people, I know everybody here thinks, we think about cleanliness, and we think about emissions, and think we think about using renewable fuels, And we know that global warming exists. I know a lot of you people out there don't think it does.

I happen to believe it does. I think it's an issue. But when you take a stupid approach like this, you hurt the cause. Because when you make stupid laws, the people who are on the edge, you know, leaning one way the other, in terms of cleanliness of the air and so on forth, this is used against them. So you've got to get rid of the stupid laws and we're going to get the intelligent laws enforced. And, John, thanks very much.

I don't know what we do without your goals. John, does that include that stupid law? Does that include UPS, FedEx? That includes everybody. And that's how they're making money on this law by videotaping them and, you know, submitting it. And states like cities like New York City are getting revenue.

from this stupid law, and it's just out of hand completely. I would have think that that was a, well, candid camera skip, but that's just me. Okay, John, thanks so much. You're always an important part of the show. We do appreciate your call. Okay. Okay, we're going to go to Sarah, who's been holding. Thanks for your patience, Sarah.

Sarah's calling us from Pointe Beach. Good morning. Good morning. It's Sarah Lynn calling. and I'm calling about a blog, Earl, posted, and it just burnt me. It got me very upset because I had a Toyota Supra in, actually it was 87, and I had an accident with hard drives company and received money. And of course, you know, I wanted the same car, but I got a Toyota something different and ended up that they drove it. to my house. That's how enticing

they made it. They even drove it to my house and unfortunately I went for it. My payments were up $400 back then. I had them repo it. So, you know, that's just something I'll never forget. Let me see.

The fact they put the miles on the car driving it to deliver it to your house? No, it was a used car. Oh, used car, yeah. They drove it formed to my house to sell it to me. Okay. And what was the nature of the complaint?

What was your, what do they do that angered you, Sarah? What they did was, I was, I guess, I was very gullible at the time. I'll be honest with you, and they talked me into something I should never have been talked into. Just a high-pressure, heavy-handed. Oh, I see what you're saying. Yeah. You know, there is a, how long will this happen?

It happened over 20 years ago. Oh, okay. Yeah, there's a little known law. It's called the home solicitation law. And you can rescind a purchase in 72 hours if the seller comes to your home and sells it to you. It was, it's an old law. I think it was probably passed many years ago to protect you against encyclopedia salesman. Most of the younger people don't know what an encyclopedia is.

They know what Google is. But, yeah, knocking on doors, a fuller brush salesman and that type of thing. So a lot of people think that 72 rescission law applies when you buy a car. But if you go into the dealership or into the store, you don't have 72 hours. as soon as you sign and take the product, you bought the product. But had you known 20 years ago, you might have had something that I'll never forget and then I read your blog. Well, thank you, Sarah.

Sarah, was it the convenience of them bringing the car to your residence? Did that kind of seal the deal? It did kind of. It was like they kept telling me, you know, and it's no pressure, you're going to have a great deal here. we'll even bring it to your house. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. Your defenses are down and you're not as sharp, shall we say?

Oh, I was not at all sharp back then. Thank goodness it was 20 years ago. Things have certainly changed consumers really much more educated. I love you all so much. Thank you, Sarah. Sarah, I don't recall talking to you. Are you a first-time caller? No, I'm not.

Actually, I'm the one that got. you. I gave the sneakers to your grandson, Jackson. Oh, I should remember that. It's okay. It's quite all right. Thank you. So you need to call more often so I can recognize your voice.

Okay. Sarah, spread the word that we do have $50 here for the first time, two of the first time female callers. And I thank you for listening to Earl Uncars. in thing shoe. He's long worn, he's, he's long, I've grown no shoes. You have a wonderful weekend. Thank you. You do the same. Thank you. Bye-bye. Okay, we're going to get back to. You know, I had to Google Encyclopedia salesperson, and then I found the definition on Wikipedia. So everything worked out. How about Fuller Brush? Well, you never heard of the Fuller Brush, man.

Uh-uh, no, that's a one that's over my hand. How about the Avon lady? That I know. I mean, that was a huge amount. It was common back in the day. People just, you know, that's what people did. I'm a door-to-door salesman. Did you have a set of encyclopedias in your home? Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah.

I think we all did. I had a world book encyclopedias said. Yeah. They were like the old-time cardioleship because they would come in, they would flimplam, and they would sell you a full set of encyclopedias, but you only got like one a month, and you had to pay forever high interest rate it was really worth it your kids really took an interest in it you know you put them in a you know place in the living room where they were really

interested and you know just reading every single one of them it was well worth it different time yeah it certainly was okay uh back to the recovery card i think we have anonymous feedback some texts yeah i have anne marie's good morning text so let's not a not delay um good morning this week's most talked about video has to be the one where a red truck gets rolled by a tornado set up right and drives off down the road. I saw that too. Yeah. Amazing. I missed that one.

Wow. You should. YouTube it after the show so you don't get distracted. I mean, they actually had on a security webcam and it actually flipped the truck upside down, flipped it around, back in the direction, and the guy just kept on driving. Well, she has some more very interesting details about that. She says, I'm glad to report

that the 16-year-old boy who driving home from a job interview that was the driver kudos to you young man is okay even though the truck is totaled so it drove off but it must have still been totaled what model what truck was uh here it is that um forward f 150 uh close i'll give you one more guess uh 350 the ford ford ropard no not that close chevrolet nancy there you go chevrolet and chevrolet caught news of the story and apparently they're giving him a brand new truck wow Great story, right? Oh, that's awesome.

Don't you wonder what went through his mind? I mean, I wonder if he realized what had happened. I bet he probably didn't realize. I mean, maybe when he saw the video later, he's like, oh, my gosh. He probably got home. That happened. I mean, it was so fast. And just think about it.

You think that maybe you just had a stroke or... A 16-year-old kid, he probably was just so shocked at it occurring. He was just hanging on for dear life. And then when it landed back on his wheels, he's like, okay, and just throw home. I mean, it's... 16 years old, they're like a little Gumby. Amarie knows she's wondering why the person of videotaping it continued towards the tornado. That's a really good question right there.

Well, I thought it was like a security can. It was actually. No, apparently there might have been multiple angles from it. Usually that's the case when there's something like that. Maybe a tornado chaser. That's what I'm usually. There are storm chasers. Yeah, they're really amazing people if you've ever watched it.

And Anne Marie, on another note, I was thinking about you this morning about 4 a.m. if you could believe it. I'm sitting at my PC, and I'm thinking about all these cargo ships that you, you know, all this information you filled us in from week to week. And I just asked myself, why, why? And there they are out there in Chesapeake Bay and out there in the Black Sea. And, gosh, you talk about interrupting the food chain with the grains and everything. But I just wanted to share that with you.

I was thinking about you, looking forward to your texts as we always do. every week. Yeah. She actually wants to add a PSA to her text here. She says, please try to avoid driving in bad weather, especially tornadoes and hurricanes. Sound advice. I'm guilty of after a hurricane comes through town of wanting to go survey the damage afterwards. I used to love doing it. But that's not really a smart thing. A vehicle is a safer place. I mean, you're best to be in a safe room in your home or in a real shelter. But next to that, a car is. a safer place, but not from a tornado. I mean, from a hurricane, but obviously you don't want to be anywhere outside with a tornado. What about the old, you know, kind of, I don't know if there's an old

wife's sale or not about being in a car protects you from a lightning strike because you're off the ground with rubber tires. What do you think about that? Yeah, the, you got to understand lightning is basically a spark that has just traveled, what, 30, 40,000 feet. That little bit of rubber it does nothing. It's the effect of the steel cage around you creating a Faraday cage that channels the lightning around you. Okay. So what happens in lightning strike on your car, if it hits more than just a nearby strike where the electric pulse basically wipes out the computers and that, a direct hit, which I've seen this a few times, usually hits like the antenna. It just takes the antenna out, blows it away, and we will find burn marks. Usually at the lowest point of the car

somewhere, we'll find another burn mark where it arched from the car to the ground. You better off to stay in the car during a thunderstorm than get out and run for shelter because you're exposed. Absolutely. And lightning doesn't necessarily go for a metal object. It goes for the highest point and usually a sharp point. That's why the antenna with its point the end will normally catch the antenna catch the lightning if you're in a boat and the smart captains will bring in their outriggers oh absolutely get as low as possible actually i'm not even sure that's true when i think about it maybe what i'm trying to say is the outrigger would actually direct the lightning you know away from right right down and through the boat you don't

want to be the highest object is the case yeah anyway we'll have to ask captain trent about Anyway, Anne Marie signs off, you know, please drive safely, and she signs her name Mother Hen. So that's very sweet. Thank you, Anne Marie. Great to hear from you. It was a Chevy Solerado, she wanted to clarify. Wow. So, kudos to the Chevy.

Okay. And the 16-year-old has survived. It's quiet on YouTube right now. I have a text that just popped in here. It says, my sister and I have an ongoing debate since we were children, and I was hoping you could help clear this up for us. my sister insists that the steering wheel is what makes the wheels on the car go and I and I say is to turn the front wheels to steal the car that's why it's called the steering wheel who's right my family is split on this with both my parents agreeing with my sister because she's the smartest in the family please prove me right so just to clarify that she insists that the student wheel is what makes the wheels on the cars go and I say is to turn the front wheel so who's right well obviously the steering wheel does not make the wheels on the car go. So you're definitely right. However, I think on an all-wheel drive, do they make a car now where you can turn all the wheels with the steering wheel? Actually, that has that type of system known as all-wheel steering. All-wheel steering is what I'm saying.

Has been attempted on quite a few models. I think one of the earliest ones was like 20 years ago or more. Now, there may be also other one-off models. many years back but I think like 20 or 30 years ago we had a couple of cars came out that had all-wheel steering can you buy one today or as a matter of fact I think the one of the newest GMs actually has the ability that when you turn the wheels the car can actually crab walk sideways oh cool I've always thought it has the ability to do that for people who can't parallel park that be exactly that's that's the basic idea no the steering wheel has nothing to do that's all the engine and the transmission right and the axles and that

The drive train is what powers the wheels. That's why if your engine's not running, you can still use the steering wheel to turn the front wheels left and right, and you can push the car in order to get it to where you need it to be. So that's from Leon in Winter Park. So thank you, Leon. And your sister, she might still be the smartest person to family. But as I can tell you from personal experience, even the smartest person in the family is wrong. Every once in a while.

Every once in a wrong. I get it right. There you go. I just heard from Rick, who monitors our YouTube, Earl and Cars for us, that's YouTube. No, YouTube.com, slash Roll in Cars. I got that backwards. He monitors YouTube. So we have no YouTube input.

So if you go to YouTube.com. Forrest slash Erl on Cars, you can stream us live, see how pretty we are, and how smart we are. and you can also ask questions and Rick will hop on that and I almost said Stu Josh he does the text and he does the Facebook so Facebook.com

4 slash Earl on Cars so we need to get the streaming post and the YouTube the Facebook we need it all come in. Your input is what makes the show or you call us at 877 960 99060

877 960 99 or text us at 772-497-6-5-30. So we'll go back to Josh, and I know we have some anonymous feedbacks over there. Yes, we do. This one came in a couple of days ago, I believe. Yes. Just simply says someone needs to prosecute the crooks at Wallace.

Maybe someone's listening to a rerun of the show and inspire them. Well, that may or may not be true, but what we need to learn is that one of the reasons this show exists is to put the heat on our regulators not just in Florida but all around the country Florida I think needs it more than most of the countries other states but we need to let our regulators know

we expect them to enforce the laws and we do have laws and I wrote a blog Nancy will probably find that blog and I have a URL address in there that you can go to to read the Florida statute that has some very important laws, Florida law, that are not being enforced. And I can pick up the newspaper, I can go online to Facebook, I can go to YouTube, I can go anywhere, and look at any advertisement

and find a card dealer ad right now within 30 seconds that's violating Florida law. We have an attorney general named Ashley Moody. She's probably not listening to the show. I wish he were, but I bet there's somebody that knows Ashley Moody, the soliciting of the show, and someone just tell Ashley Moody, Erlon Carr's saying, why aren't Florida laws being enforced, right? I use the comparison. People to complain about being on the I-95 and going to speed limit and being rear-ended and being so terrified of the cars that are passing them by 20 and 30 miles an hour, when they're trying to adhere to the speed limit,

means that nobody on 995 is obeying the law. So what's the sense that having a law? Because when you ignore a law, others see you ignore the law, and they either say, well, they can do it, I can do it, or they say, hey, I can get away with it, and I'm gonna do it. And that's what car dealers do. Car dealers see their competition,

let's say I'm a Honda dealer, and I'm advertising cars, honestly. I've got a competitor that's eight miles away from me and he's advertising the same place I am. Now he's advertising in a car that I know he won't sell. His advertising is a Honda car, which I happen to be no, is $1,000 below his cost and he can't sell it for that. But guess what? The car dealers are selling cars to people who come in on that ad. They flim-flam them, they confuse them, they sign them up for a car. Some people get it. Some people don't go in, but the people that go in that believe

if it's such a good lunch, buy. So I see my competitors selling a lot more cars than I do. I say, look, I got to do it. And so that's what pollutes the market. That's the reason the South Florida market is the Sodom and Gomorrah of car dealerships because it's polluted, the nominal effect. And you will see a mystery shopping report today

in the Midwest, Pennsylvania, that illustrates my point. If you have a majority of honest dealers, then you will have almost all of them being honest. If you have dishonest dealers, it permeates the market, and then suddenly you have mostly dishonest dealers. Rick, you've got your hand up. As a matter of fact, the question just came in from Craig Jacobson. He says, does Earl Stewart Toyota charge over MSRP like other dealerships are doing? No, we don't. And we never have. I mean, back in the day, I mean, there's always been car dealers charging over MSRP. Corvette is a good example.

Corvette dealers always charge over MSRP even when there's plenty of corvettes. Well, there's never plenty, I guess. Chevrolet General Motors generally limits the manufacturer so they can sell at high prices. But when a limited supply vehicle comes out, for example, the Toyota Supra, when it first came out, the new Super Bowl, came out, Toyota dealers, we're selling those for 10, 20, 30, 40. One of them had it listed at 100,000 over MSRP. We sold our super's at MSRP. Now today, all cars are in limited supply, like super's and like Corvettes, and virtually all the dealers are selling them over MSRP.

We do not sell them. It's a moral ethical thing. It's not illegal because the car dealers can sell a new car for anything they want. car for anything they want. It's a suggested retail price. You can mark a car up a billion dollars or MSRP and it's perfectly legal. But it's not moral, it's not ethical, and it's not good business because you buyers will remember how you got gouged and you will migrate toward those dealers that treated you somewhat honestly. And there are more and more dealers we're finding in our mystery shopping reports. There's a coming close to MSRP. We haven't really found

Well, there have been a couple, but very few actually do MSRP. Usually there's some Zurich coat or polyglycoat or nitrogen in the tires, dock fees, dealer fees, side agency fees, hidden fees. Usually they jack the price up. Even the good dealers that we give Bs or A's to mark them up $2 or $300. That's a good dealer. Very few just don't mark them up at all. that answers the question. Perfectly. Back to you, Josh. Well, that actually brings up a good topic.

This new website that came to our attention. Oh, yeah, yeah. It would be a nice segue into that. It's called markups.org, M-A-R-K-U-P-S dot org. Plural, markups. Exactly. And what this is, this is like a crowdsourced website, an associate of ours that brought it to our attention. And users from around the country can submit to this website a picture of like a markup up a dentum sticker and the dealership name and some of the pertinent information. And then there's a resource for people to go, you know, if they're shopping for a Chevy or Ford or Toyota, they can look in their state for the different markups that different dealers are adding to that particular model car.

And so we, I took the liberty of actually taking Agent Lightning's mystery shop of a Wallace Cadillac dealership a few weeks ago. There was a $5,000 dentum sticker and I uploaded it. with the pictures that she took and they reviewed it to make sure it was a legitimate posting and it got posted. So I think this would be a great tool

for the listeners out there to... This could be huge because it's an ingenious idea. You have to be a little cyber savvy. I had to ask Josh to navigate the website for me to post that. So you might have to play with it a little bit

but if you'd write that website down mark ups, plural, M-A-R-K-U-PS.org-O-R-G, not dot-com, you know, not dot-gov, it's dot-O-R-G. Markups.org. And we don't know who posted the website. They're anonymous. I don't know why. I'd be proud of it.

I wish I'd done it. But they created this website. So anywhere in the world, and we're mainly interested in the United States, you can go to markups. org and you can post the dealership that you had an experience with you can upload as Josh said an addendum sticker or you can just put the information in there I believe they require they want the photo evidence just to stop someone from falsely you know you know putting information about a dealer that's not accurate oh that's why I wasn't able to do

it see I didn't read it carefully okay take your smartphone take a picture of the addendum label or somehow get a copy of the addendum label and all All of these experience, wouldn't it be wonderful? Now, when we first heard about this, there were no Florida dealers. So Josh posted the first Florida at markups.org. So if you're listening out there, Florida desperately needs, and we will populate markups. org with our mystery shopping reports, and we will, we'll give it a jump start because we've got a lot of pictures we could post with different dealers.

And so heads up to all the dealers that are within the sound of my voice, we're going to get a picture of your addendum label, and we're going to put it on markups.org, and we're going to publicize markups.org, and we're going to put markups.org on earluncars.com. There you go. So it'll be up there where you can go to markups.org, and we're teaming up with another good person that's trying to help protect the consumer in car buying. in this case from the whole United States. And markups.org, I can't say it off enough.

No, that's, what great thing. It's the beginning of the Justice League. Pardon me? It's the beginning of the Justice League. I like that. And you have vigilantes. I mean, we've got so many websites. Eulisvigilani's.com, right?

You were reading my mind when you mentioned that Josh had to help you out on the markups.org. And ladies and gentlemen, Here's proof right here. You know, we all can't maneuver our way around the Internet, and we need some help. And this is something that you can help us with, and you can sign up. You can go to Earl on cars. Not only are we looking for, you know, volunteers in respect to the Internet, but we're looking for volunteers for Earl's vigilantes. You don't have to take an engine apart.

Just, you know, sign up and volunteer. And you can help some people in your own community. And it's a great organization. We've got some great people that are volunteering for girls' vigilantes. So take advantage of that. And remember, knowledge is certainly an opportunity. And we're all here to help you, and you're here to help us. We enjoy your company.

You're a big part of the show. Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-99-60. and also don't forget our podcasts Jonathan is definitely responsible for all of this and it's just amazing did you know that you could listen to our podcasts of all our past radio shows he's got it all there

and tune in radio Google podcast to name a few your favorite podcast So go over there and take a look. We are going to go to our first female caller of the morning, and her name is Jackie, and Jackie won herself $50 this morning by calling in. Good morning, Jackie. Hello.

Welcome. Hi. Good morning. Thank you. Welcome as the first female caller. Thank you. And you won yourself $50. That's great.

Never can turn that down. What can we do for you this morning? I was listening earlier, and you were talking about the idling law. I also had a question about recently I was discussing with some friends about how long you should let your car warm up or start up before you take off in the morning. And I was wondering, some people, you know, say you got to do it a few minutes, some say a few seconds. But if you're letting it warm up too long, is that going to go against that? I don't think if it's just sitting in your driveway. Well, Rick Kernan can answer that question.

Jackie, Rick, what's the answer? If you're here in South Florida and where average temperatures we might see the lowest, if 40, 50 degrees, on a really cold day, I would let it warm for at least 20 or 30 seconds before putting it in gear on a really cold day. otherwise 10 to 15 seconds really the only time that you want for running just that idle that little warm up is just to let it build some oil pressure and make sure the oil gets circulated through the engine and 10 to 15 20 seconds that's plenty long

enough so by the time you've got your in the car buckled your seatbelt got the mirrors checked you know maybe adjusted here and there a little bit set the AC where you want or whatever you're pretty much safe to go. Northern states where it gets icy, cube, cold. I mean, in wintertime and in northern states, you may want to let it sit in idle for a minute, two minutes, three minutes, just to kind of let the coolant start flowing a bit and help get the energy warmed up and get some temperatures in it. But that's only when you're reaching those like near zero and sub-zero temperatures. Okay, yeah, I did move down from Pennsylvania about six years ago, so I

I did have that experience of being in the colder climate, having to let it warm longer. I thought I detected that sound of someone who, probably your father told you when you get in the car in the cold weather, let it warm for a while. And so, yeah, it's definitely worthwhile in the northern climates in the wintertime, but otherwise really, it's only just 20, 30 seconds at the most, and you're ready to go. And Jackie, I think being from Pittsburgh myself, I think I may have broken a few laws because I'll tell you what, mid-February, December, my car sat outside overnight, I didn't have it in a garage, and let me tell you what, it was more than a minute or two for me to warm up my car. I had to take the ice pick to my windshield, you know, had to go through, you know, the whole warm-up situation. and I remember those days like yesterday. So, I've... Pittsburgh is a great place to be from.

Yeah, I remember the ice building up, and it took sometimes longer than a minute or so to get all the ice off and everything, and you want to have the car running to help warm it up from the inside to get the ice off. Yeah, and you wanted to beat the snow plow when they came through, because you shoveled all the snow, you know,

away from your tires and everything, and then you go back in the house to get your coffee, and you come out and go, whoops, the snow pile just came back, buried me again. Where's my car? Anyway, Jackie, thanks for the call. I really appreciate it. We all do, and all the ladies out there are listening to you and gives them a little more encouragement to give us a call.

Yeah, I'll spread the word. You took the words from my mouth. Thank you so much, and have a wonderful weekend. I look forward to mail on that checkout. you. Oh, thank you very much. 877-960-9960 is a telephone number you can take advantage of, and you can also text us at 772-4976530. I have a question I want to ask, Rick, about that.

Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. About that's warm-up period. Is this in an owner's manuals, in any owner's manuals, does a manufacturer recommend an idling period of time for based on temperature? Not that I'm aware of. Yeah, that's what I thought. And I honestly don't, I think that maybe, you know,

you've been around a long time, not as long as I have, and you said that maybe Jackie's father told her about it. Back in the day, you had to do it. I don't think you have to warm a car up today. I think, I think, and when I get in my car, and I think most cars now, they automatically I'll hire for a few seconds when you first started.

Oh, that's absolutely true. Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying if you get in really cold weather, yeah, that's where, you know, it may give it a minute at the most. It might not start. You'd have to run it so it wouldn't install again. I don't know, because I haven't been a really cold weather a long time. It makes a difference whether the car is on the street or in a garage.

Oh, absolutely. I think if it was important to the, durability and the reliability of your car, I think it would be in the owner's manual. And I, you know, the manufacturers are pretty good about that. I'm contentious with manufacturers, and I attack them almost as often as I attack car dealers. But one thing about the manufacturer, I believe, in my experience, I've had several franchises besides Toyota, they're pretty good about their owner's manual. What they, if you do, what the owner's manager tell you do, you're never going to have a problem

with the car. anything, the air on the side of being too careful. So you're definitely more knowledgeable than I am about the mechanics of a car, but my answer would have been, don't worry about it, just start the car and go. I'm wondering if I don't typically wait 15 to 20 seconds, but like Rick says, I have a brief case usually when I get my car in the morning, I put that down,

my water bottle, probably takes me 10 to fit. I probably get most of that period inadvertently. So what does the, allowing the oil to come to pressure, What does that, in your opinion, do for the car? Well, basically, it prevents excessive wear and tear on the engine. Because, I mean, the oil is designed. A lot of the engines are designed now to help keep oil actually up in the engine. There are different valves that will close, spring-loaded valves.

So when you shut the engine off, the oil doesn't all drain back into the pan. Back in the 70s in that, you'd start an engine up, and you'd actually hear it rattle. until the oil. We don't want to get too granular here, so I'm going to make a comment, then we'll move on. Back in the day, we didn't have synthetic oil, which is extremely much more fluid, and it will lubricate the engine much faster than oil from 25, 30 years ago. Fossil oil, old fossil oil took longer to circulate and protect the car. I think the synthetic oil, certainly, gets in there pretty quick. Anyway, let's move along, and I could be wrong about owner's manual having it in there. Maybe if it's in the owner's manual, do what the owner's manual says.

Did you warm your car up when you lived in Squirrel Hill? I probably had to, but that was 40 years ago. Or 50 years ago. And the car was different, and the oil was different. Okay, what did we got over there? I got some texts. We can get to that. Thank God.

Here's one. It says I'm looking at a Kia EV6. That's a little electric SUV, I believe that just came out. I see a handful at area dealers all around $4,000 to $5,000 over MSRP. Go to markups.org and register that. I'm not in a hurry, so I'm curious if ordering and waiting has any impact on price, and is the price still set by the local dealer I pick up for delivery, I have no idea how that process works. That is a great question. And interestingly enough, in this week's Automotive News, which Nancy and I both subscribe to, there's an article by Subaru saying that they encourage their dealers to take orders on cars. Now, this tells me that the manufacturers don't understand what their dealers are doing. Well, of course, in Subaru's case, the dealers are pretty nice compared to other dealers.

But with that said, car dealers don't want to order a car for you even when they have cars in stock. Today, they don't have cars in stock and inventory, and so they really don't want to order the car. Why? Because it gives you too long to think about it. They want you to buy a car on emotional impulse. They don't want you to be thinking and researching and getting a parity pricing. They want you to come in. They fall in love with that beautiful red whatever you're buying and get all excited and

sign on the dotted line and take the car home today. Puppie dog syndrome. Exactly. Car dealers bonus their salespeople for spot deliveries. A spot delivery means that a person came in today at 10 o'clock and they drove the new car home at 1130 and they were still in the ether, as the car dealers say. They were still under the trance of the new car experience. But if you order that car, it's going to take two or three months. Give you a lot of time to do a lot of reading, get on the internet, compare prices, and change your mind.

And car dealers don't want to change your mind because the only way they're going to keep you in as a customer is to lower the price. So good luck, Subaru, on talking your dealers into taking orders. The only reason a dealer will accept an order is because they know they've given you such a good price that you're not going to be able to get a better price somewhere else. and there are very few dealers that will do that. So a great question. I thank you for the text. Very pertinent question.

All right, here's another one. I think we know the answer to this. What is your take on the Costco auto buying service? This is from Richard up in Minnesota. Speaking of cold weather. It's the best. The Costco Auto Buying Service, to those who don't know, has a requirement in it for their dealers

to be a certified Costco or dealer. You have to sign a contract saying that the car you sell a Costco member will be less than the price you charge anybody else for that same car. Now that is crazy. The dealers don't like it.

The only reason people certify themselves as Costco dealers is because they feel like they have to to be competitive because their competition are certified. But when they sign up as a Costco certified dealer, the first thing they're thinking of, how can I get around

this? And most of, them try. So if you're going to buy a car as a Costco member, and you should, you can join Costco for 65 bucks. I mean, my lord, if you're not a Costco member, you're going to buy a car. You should join because of 65 bucks is trump change compared to what it will save you. If you're going to buy a car or a chicken. Or a chicken. Exactly. $4.99. Isn't that the truth? Now, if you're going to do, make the purchase, you have to still be very knowledgeable. You check the website, got to go to the website, register, you have to do this, may require it, and put your name information, they'll tell you the dealers that they certify,

and try to get other dealers other than the one they give you. You can call Costco and get other certified Costco dealers. Now, it's not simple. First of all, a dealer doesn't have to put all his cars on the Costco contract. So if he has a car that he wants to sell you above the price that Costco wants you to sell that, he just won't put it on there. But if it's on that Costco member price sheet, he's contracted, obligated by contract. Now, he's still not going to honor that. So you need to know that when you go into the Costco member dealership, you speak to the person that's listed as a Costco salesperson.

Now, he's listed too, his name, insist on speaking. to him, no one else, and then insist on seeing the Costco price sheet, look at it, and be sure that's the official, Prosco, Cosco, Cows, and in our deal, yep, Josh is certified, and he will show you that, or the certified member would show you that, and then you decide if you want to buy the car. After you buy the car, call Costco and say, this is what you paid, and they will verify that that was the listed price. And if it's not, he'll call the dealer and say, you took advantage of my member and you are going to be canceled as a Costco dealer unless you make it right

or else we will find another certified dealer. So it's a great program, but it has to be followed carefully and it's a little complicated to do. Am I right, Josh? You're dead on and the challenge nowadays is you'll find fewer and fewer dealers or they've dropped out in this, you know, this crazy the inventory situation. You might find that the closest dealer could be hundreds of miles away from you now. It could be that or the dealer just says, I'm going to take advantage in spite of Costco. If they cancel me, they cancel me. But there are a lot of people that buy from Costco and that's a huge market. If you buy from Costco, there's a good chance you can be on the Costco auto buying program. You probably will sign up as soon as you find out. You already

signed up. So as soon as you find out about it, you'll probably go to the Costco. Costco Auto Buying Program, and if a dealer's not there, then the member go where, unless it's too far away, the member is going to go there. So in our market, let me ask you, how many Toyota dealers are on the... Well, it's less than there were. I can't tell you exactly. Before there was... Yeah, we could check.

I believe there was in Del Rey. In Del Rey, they had one. And going south, there was more, but they're fewer now because of the... Costco is trying to regulate them from going too far over MSRP. It's worth going on. If you do nothing else, find out what that price is, even if it's a long way away. It's awfully hard to get that price over the phone. Some dealers, very few will give it to you.

But you don't have to buy the car. But if you find out what the Costco price is, you know it's a good price. Now, today, a good price for a Costco member dealer would be MSRP. So, if you go into a non-cosco member dealer and say, your competitor, who is a Costco dealer, will sell to me at this price, it will be an SRP, but you can show it to his competitor and maybe bring that non-cosco member down to the price to meet the competition. So even if you don't buy it from a Costco dealer, it's a great tool to use to get the competitor to come down, the dealer you want to buy it from. Very, very true. All right, great question. I have another text here, unless we have a phone call or something.

All right. No calls. Here we go. So, good morning. What is your opinion about the wisdom of buying an older car with very low mileage and using it as a daily driver? The latest candidate I have is a 1991 Toyota Camry in very good shape, appearance-wise. The car has about 36,000 miles on it. That's like nothing for a car that age.

The seller is asking 12,000. I recall an article on Jolopnik a few years ago that essentially said, no, if you plan to drive the car every day, too many things can go wrong when a car sits unused for a long period of time. What is your advice? I would perform a basic maintenance on the car, have it inspected by a qualified mechanic, and drive it. Unless there's a typo, I can't imagine a 91 canary being anywhere close to $12,000. It's also, I don't mean to be overly paranoid about these things but sometimes as josh has said uh you want to verify the odometer reading uh a good a good technician can look at a car that's got 100 000 miles on it but says it's got 12 000

or whatever 36 it says 36 000 uh and i tell you that it's not accurate but it could be i mean you never know you never know so check it out and as rick says have it checked over by a mechanic uh 12 000 dollars um it's probably not a lot of money for a well-maintained old car. A 12,000, but for in 1991, it's, yeah, essentially it shouldn't have much value at all just because it's... Well, that's a very interesting question. It's a 31-year-old car. I tell you what, how many cars can you buy for 12,000 that are of that description, highly reliable?

If it was well-maintained and it's a good brand and it really only has 36,000 miles, I think $12,000, you can negotiate, but I think I'd pay $12,000 if I just want transportation. If I had a guarantee of the car's reliability, I agree with you. Yeah. I agree. Okay. Okay. We're going to go back to the phones, Josh, and Marty's calling us from West Palm Beach.

He's a regular caller. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How are you? I will, thank you. Welcome. I just wanted to, I don't know if Earl will agree with me in this, but I put in for the Costco. I put in a Toyota Camry XLE.

Oh. And Costco only gave me Al Hendrickson as a dealership. What's your zip code, Marty? 33411. I can address that. They have an XLE and their inventory currently, and apparently any closer dealer, maybe us included, would not have that.

So they only direct you to a vehicle to a dealer that actually has the inventory. Oh, I didn't know that. That's a great question, Mark. So we can only list cars on Costco program that are in stock? It's to stop the dealers from bringing people in on cars they don't have. Wow. See, that should be changed. They should change that. And we will contact Costco. It's actually absurd today to require that because a lot of dealers only have, I mean, Al Hendrickson is a large dealer, second and third largest in the United States, so he'd be inclined to have those vehicles. That'd be a great one to shop because I know he wouldn't sell it for that price,

but maybe you would. Maybe you would. Well, here's my other point. I happen to, I'll say maybe in my lifetime I bought maybe 25 cars. There's nobody will let me walk out of the car. their dealership when I've hit the price that they're willing to sell the car for. And Al Hendrickson is one, I've got two or three cars from them. And believe me, it was a three, four hour ordeal, but they didn't let me walk.

If you give them the price that they're willing to take, they will do the deal with you. But I feel as a good negotiator that I am, that there's no, Costco. I could beat. I don't know if I could prove this to you, but I could beat a Costco price. So I don't know if you look at Earl. I don't know if Earl will agree with me, but for people, now, there's many people that I deal with that are my friends. They hate buying a car. When's the last time you went to Al Henderson? My last car is 2020. I went February of 2020. That was pre-C...

That was pre-COVID. Something happened in between February of 2020 and now I can't put my finger on. Right, right, right, right now, it's a different world. And I challenge, I love to, that'd be great. I'd love to have you go down this coming week and see if you can buy that XLE for that Costco price and see what happens. Or try to buy it below that price. You said you said you can buy it below the price if you can. We will feature you on Earl and Cars.

Now, let me tell you this. On February of 2020, they discounted the car $6,800. They gave me $3,000 more for my trade than any other Toyota dealer in this area. And they gave me a good deal. Now, again, I told them out, because I had an 18 cam. memory that I was trading in. So, as far as I'm concerned, all these, there's a lot of people

that are, that just don't want to do any work. Well, Marty, you know, we've talked about this before, and you are the best of the best. You're aggressive, you're smart, you know the car business, you know cost and invoices, and you listen to the show all the time. You're probably one of the most educated car buyers out there. Now, the reason,

we have a problem with L. Hendrickson is not because you can't buy a car they're cheap, it's because the little old lady that comes in right behind you will pay $20,000 more for the same car. So they have a huge markup on all their cars, addendums, they have thousands of dollars in hidden fees, and God only knows what happens in the finance departments and the extended warranties and the other products they sell you. so you buy a car probably below maybe even their cost or certainly below invoice and the little old lady pays the penalty for that extra car they sold the reason they'll sell you that extra car and break even on it or lose money on it is because they want to be number one now we know i know personally the hendricksons i know i know the father i know the son Josh knows the son and their sworn reason for being in existence is to be the largest cardiovascular ship in the world.

And right now, they're number two or number three. They sell over a thousand cars, if you can imagine that, a month, new cars, a month. So their mission in life is to stay in number one and number three, and go to number two and number one. I'll sell Longo Toyota in Los Angeles. So if you are as good as Marty, go down there and put your boxing gloves on and wear your pads and slug it out and you'll buy a car real cheap. But if you're not a slugger and aggressive and smart, they'll take you to the cleaners and you will buy a car for thousands of dollars more than you should. So that is the fact of almost all car dealerships.

Al Hendrickson, Toyota is that in space. They are, they'll sell your car cheaper than anybody. they'll also sell you a car for more than anybody, and it depends on how tough you are. Yeah, they're very, very high pressure. Exactly. I mean, I walk up and down their stairs

three times before a deal could be made. They come running out of the doorway there and come back. So I can tell you that, if you're not willing to do that, you're not going to buy a car there. Yeah. We ought to put Marty on as a mystery shopper

just for that special type of report we would see how far below cost you can buy a car that would be interesting you know what would be interesting I don't want to shop there no I worry for your safety buy another car there

it would be interesting to see like how he performs in the seller's market we find ourselves today you can't do that today Marty but you'll still do you'll still do better than anybody else but you won't buy it below MSRP but I just want you to know I ordered

a car from your place He told me four to six months. They won't give me the value on my car until the new car comes in. Sure. You've got four to six months to compare prices, so if Al beats us in four to six months, you'd want to buy it from Al.

Game on. I personally believe that the chip shortage is partially fabricated. I think there's so much money being made that it's not going to end too soon. Well, partially. You're right. It is partially. It's mostly not, but it's partially. Sure. I agree with you. All right. Well, have a good day.

You too, Marnie. Nice chatting with you, Morty. All right. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-3-0. And Rick has something to. I just did just a fast search through the driving section of the owner's manual for a 21 cam. I figured it was one of the most popular cars on the road.

The only thing I could find was, Tornado says, do not race a cold engine. In other words, sit with the engine in park or neutral and step on the accelerator hard with the engine not being at operating temperature. You know, a car, the cars are set, you correct me if I'm wrong, but the last few Lexus I've driven when I would start it,

it would race the engine for a short period of time. The computer would. The computer would. So they're saying the computer will race the engine, but they don't want you to raise the engine. Okay. They trust the computer more than they trust us. We're going to go back to the phones.

We're going to Buffalo, New York, where we're going to talk to Kevin. Good morning, Kevin. Good morning, team. Thank you for taking my call and the listeners. Good morning. Earl, thank you for you. Earl, you on your team.

for empowering people like Marty says you're out there training people or teaching people if they want to learn take care of themselves not to be taken advantage that's very nice of you to do you and your team also also I wonder at the Florida car dealer association's dinner do they ever allow you to go because you tell things I'm sure most car dealers don't want the public to know about I think that's very kind of you know at the dinner however I do have a taster for my food And I do wear a Kevlar vest. I don't think it's nice that you have Nancy taste your food. You know, with Agent Lightning and everything else,

and what Bernie says, and what you said about, my wife is going there, she'd be like a doormat, just say yes to everything, and then just walk right out and not put any effort into trying to research things. Most people do, well, you know, as human, and people are nice, you know, nice people get taken into that joke. And that happens, and car dealers have been making a fortune. where that fact of human nature, people are trusting.

When they hire their salespeople, they look for honest-looking, trusting people with a nice smile and dressed nice, and, you know, they know that if you like somebody, you trust them, and you pay too much for the product. Right. Well, I know it's not a good time to buy a car, but I have a 12-year-old car now, and I'm thinking about buying either like a forerunner or a Sequoia. I know you don't want to do an infomercial, but my understanding is they're changing their platform for next year, the engine platform specifically. Is that true?

Josh, we'll answer. Well, there's the 2023 Sequoia is definitely re-designed and coming out later this year, and there'll be two versions, a gas and a hybrid version of the Sequoia. I don't have any concrete facts on the forerunner yet, but rumor has it that it'll kind of be going in that direction, like the conjure of the Sequoia. The Catoiard and all the manufacturers play it kind of close to the vest with new product. They like it to be a surprise, and they don't even tell the dealers until they know it's going to be leaked. And when they tell the dealers, they tell the dealers not to tell anybody, and that's always a joke. But, yeah, usually we will see a press release. We'll see the press.

We'll get hold of the facts, or at least somebody like Jolopnik or somebody, gets the information before the dealers. We find out from our customers sometimes about a new product. So true, yeah, so true. But, yeah, everyone's excited. The four runners is long overdue for an update. It's been basically the same car for a dozen years now. Because if they go to a new major update, not just changing the window tint or something. It takes a while to get the nicks and crannies out of a new product before it really comes dependable, I think.

So that's what I'm concerned. Yeah, a lot of people like to wait until the second year. you know, in my opinion, I mean, Toyota probably does eight, nine years of R&D on these vehicles before they ever hit their roads. Absolutely. But, you know, do each their own. All righty, team. Thank you.

Thanks for the call, Kevin. I hope it's warm in Buffalo. Thank you, Kevin. It was great hearing from you. I'm always warm when I listen to Earl Stewart. Thank you. 877-960 and you can text us at 772-4976530. We still have.

a whole lot to get to. We have, we're looking forward to one more female caller. One more female caller. I have $50 for you. He'll give us a call. Josh? We got some anonymous feedbacks I can get to. This one, I think we were talking about this earlier right before the show started. I watched Rick's video on poor gas mileage in my 2004 BMW 325I only got 15 miles per gallon since I bought it five years ago. I cleaned the mass airflow sensor and I'm getting around 30 plus. It never threw a fault code for anything, including oxygen sensors. So

I, uh, Rick is doing a service to the community. Well, that's, that's amazing. I mean, I know it makes Rick feel good. And, uh, and of course, the advice other alone cars is, uh, go online if you have a problem with a car and, uh, put in your type,

your, your, make model car, and your problem. And it will show you various sources. In this case, it probably showed, uh, person with his BMW, Rick's YouTube. And think about it, they're, fortunately, there are nobody as good as Rick out there, but there are a lot of people that do what Rick does. And a lot of people post, just regular owners post.

In this case, Rick, being a 25-year-old certified diagnostic master technician, he probably has more expertise than most. But just finding the real life experience, I can't tell you how Google has changed. my life and Nancy's life it cracks me up you know when we have a conversation now half the time we look at the other person we're talking to them and they have their smartphone in their hand and I think she's not paying attention to me what she's doing if she's Googling what I'm talking about or I'm googling what she's talking about I was looking up a French scientist last night yeah

so so anyway if you got a problem you can listen to Erland Cars you can go in our old Cars.com or you can go to Google and just do your problem. You'll end up with somebody like Rick that helps solve your problem. And you don't have to take one word for it because there'll be a series of people. What I do is I see almost always find my topic and then I look for a consensus. And if I say two or three people, typically Google is very smart. They put the good replies up toward the top anyway and you read two or three, four of the top

replies and you know what your problem is so. Rick. One of my favorite resources are what are called forums where it's, and you'll find these for everything, from knitting to dog owners to car owners and especially car clubs for specific models and even year ranges of cars. And you will find people on there that are just completely 100% willing to help you with anything that you might have with your car. And the way to find the forum is to go put your car and go through Google. Yeah, go through Google with the with the problem. If you say I have a Subaru such and such model and it's giving bad gas mileage, it'll show you not only the forum, it'll probably show you other discussions. Right. Well, the place that I

would start to say, say you've got a Subaru Outback, I would say Subaru Outback, I would say Subaru Outback car owner forums and go to those forums and then search in that for that particular problem. Are they all called forums? Are they all called forums? Most of them are called? forums and because it's a specific setup for you know for anyone that's had for whatever problem yeah i i'm in them for drone clubs for i do it for different cars that i've seen issues with i'll go in those forums to look for a problem you on it and you'd be amazed at how helpful it is and how much information you can find okay we got any more text over there oh yeah we're going to go back to the phones first.

Okay. Even better. We're going to talk to Mimi, who's calling us from West Palm Beach, and she's called us before. Good morning, Mimi. Welcome back. Good morning. Thank you for taking the call.

It's nice to hear your voices. I'm enjoying your show so much. Oh, thank you. This is a very basic question, the 2008 Dodge Van that I still have. It, the engine is occasionally, after I had the tune-up, it worked really, really well. But I noticed that it started hesitating again. I guess it was about six months ago. I had that tune-up within six months.

And it started hesitating a little Lema, 1995, and then the engine light went on. So I backed down on the gas, let it catch up, and then, the engine light went off so I talked to my friend who helped me with the car and he said well it has to stay on for us to take it to the mechanic and I was wondering why Rick no some there are certain things that will occur that will cause a check engine light to come on and then turn back off when the computer sees that problem stop however it will store in memory what it saw

so that you can go to the mechanic they can pull that information and find out what happened so I would go to the Dodge dealer or you don't even have to go to the Dodge dealer I think you can go to a place that will check it free right?

She got 2008 so that information should be stored in the memory of the computer yeah so oh okay the last time I went to the dealer they charged $225 or something, and they said I needed a hydraulic something and a ABS sensor, which they didn't have,

because that lights been going on forever, and they said there's a shortage in the chips so they don't have any, and they're going to call me when they get it. They had hydraulic part. I tried to ask the service person, and she was brand new, and I don't think she knew what anything really was. So when I asked her what's that for, she said she really wasn't sure, maybe something to do with the brakes.

So when it comes to hydraulics, could that have something to do with the accessibility? Because it's one of those conversions, man. That's unlikely, very unlikely. Because ABS and the engine on those models that year were pretty well separate. they'd have their own computer each one had its own controls an issue with the engine is going to be something very different from something to do with the brakes okay okay I think Mamie is mainly worried about the drivability and the safety right in terms of emissions or any kind of sensors I don't think that's

a concern for her right now but if she were to go to pep boys or someplace and and they were to put the tool on their diagnostic tool, it would be able to diagnose it, store it on the computer. Yes. Yeah. So just go to PEP Boys or else another place you could go. AutoZone, the parts stores will at least give you the code, but you'd want to have someone that can diagnose it

what that code is interpret it for you. That's right, PEP Boys. Was there a PEP Boys near you? Yeah, they're all over the place. I'm sure I can find one. Yeah, they'd be less expensive. I used to go to them years ago with the Grand Marquis. kept it alive for a few years for me.

What I was thinking of is that this sensor or part that the dealership couldn't get because of the chip problem, is that something that's dangerous, that I don't have an ABS? Well, what will happen if the ABS system computer detects any sort of problem with its systems, it will simply shut down the ABS,

and you'll be driving a vehicle with normal brakes. You just wouldn't have ABS. Is the sensor, is a sensor light related to emissions? No. No, okay. No, this is an ABS system problem, like what she's saying, is probably a wheel speed sensor. So it could be serious.

Because that brakes are always a serious issue because of the safety concern of it. However, it's not a system that is. is going to put you in a dangerous situation per se. It's just you won't have the antelock brakes. You would have to be on the brakes yourself, and if you started to skid, you would actually have to control the brakes yourself. Well, that'd be dangerous.

You wouldn't be able to rely on the ABS points. I got to get it checked out right away, Mamie. Take it to pet boys and get a checked out. Yeah. Oh, okay. Because I said the dealer, they just said, you know, we can't get it for you, and we'll call you when it comes in.

Well, that was a while ago. getting a second opinion, exactly. It might be available now, and you might not need it. So I would always, anything that's going to be an expensive repair, I would want to get at least one, preferably two opinions. So get another opinion for pet boys. And let us know what they say. Yeah, I don't think they charge $200 to look at your car. It's probably less, right? Like 50. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. Now, what's with the hydraulic thing? What was that that they were thinking of putting in. I really couldn't tell you without seeing the receipt or paperwork

to give me an idea of what parts you're talking about. Because the whole brakes are basically everything in your brakes are hydraulic. So that could be anything in the whole system. Mimi, you definitely sound like an educated consumer. Give us a call back and let us know how it went for you. Get those two other bids. Have a wonderful day. You're quite welcome.

We're going to go to Frank and Jupiter Farms. Good morning, Frank. Hi, Frank. Good morning to you all. Good morning. Good morning. It's always great listening to your show because I was going to call you and I said, well, you almost told me what to do. And I'm on my computer.

I have a Ford F-150, 2018, and now it's on his third battery with $27,000 miles. But that's besides the point. I might have spoke to you about it last week. It was under warranty when they put the battery in, but because it's on the three-year warranty, even though the battery is only a few months older a year, they won't touch it. So I had to go buy a new battery. And if the battery disconnected, I believe something occurred with my running boards. I have, it's a king ramps.

So when we open the door, these running boards come out and give you a nice way to get in or out of the truck. And so I'm trying to figure out if you, obviously, I know you got Toyotas, but I figured it must be something. sort of reprogramming now that the battery has been replaced, that it lost its memory. And I've been trying to find that online, but everything I saw was, you know, that it didn't lubricate it or the motors were worn out. And that's not the issue with such low mileage. And it's just simply they just don't have the, how should I say, the sense to know the doors open and they should come out. Any suggestions? Okay, is there a control switch anywhere for them?

No, it's all basically automatically when the door is open or the door is closed. When the doors close, they retract. When they open the door, they come out. Okay. Here's what I would try just as a shade tree mechanic quick check thing. Make sure all the doors on the vehicle are completely closed, nice and tight, and then disconnect the negative side of the battery, count to 30 and reconnect it, and then wait about a minute and let everything kind of get the computer systems all back to firing up again.

again and then try it and see if that corrects the problem quite often if they've disconnected the battery and the door was open when they disconnected it it may cause the computer to get confused and even though the boards would have retracted they may not you know get the right signals to to start operating again because they're going to be safe that works on everything when in doubt reboot that's pretty much it yeah I would I would try that first and then And if that doesn't work, Google re-initialization of the power running boards. And see if there's anything up there on that.

First, Google, how to spell re-initially. You put that on your cell phone. It comes up after a few typing. Thank you very much. And Frank, it's not a day that goes by that Earl and I don't reboot something in our home. Good luck. One quick thing. One very quick thing.

Yeah. When I got the batteries, they have some that are four-year warranties or five-year warranties, and it's like a $100 difference. And my question to them, what's the change in price? And their answer was because the four-year batteries are used from recycle lead because it's so expensive now to get the new lead, the freshly mine lead. But the freshly mine-led ones are the one they can give five. years on, of course, it necessitates the price.

That's a very suspicious-sounding answer to me. I would Google that. I don't believe that for a minute. That sounds like a very smart battery salesman. Well, anyway. All right, guys. You have a great weekend, as always. Thank you, Frank.

It's always great to hear from you. We're going to go to Jupiter where Dana is holding, and she is a first-time caller. A lot of female. callers. Wow, you're doing a good job. Dana could be a man. We don't know. I like hearing that. Good morning, Dana.

Good morning. I was calling. I happened to be in the car and heard your show. And I said, let me call in. I have two questions for you. I have, from your dealership, Toyota Prius, 2013, and it has the ventilation system. So it keeps the car lost in the hot. I never have to use those stupid sunshay. And now I understand you don't have that feature anymore.

Is it coming back? Not to my knowledge. I had a Prius with the solar roof package and the fact that it would just automatically ventilate the car. It wouldn't cool it so much but keep it at the ambient temperature. So then blasting the face with 150 degree air in the middle of summer when you open the door. Great feature. Unfortunately, it's not currently available.

but I'll be happy to do some research and see if there's something coming down to pipe. It's probably only popular in the Sun Belt states and probably a lot of parts. Remember, manufacturers sell cars all over the world, and when they come up with an option accessory, they have to look at the overall picture. So in Florida, we love certain cars. We miss our convertible so much. We have the solar convertible, which was popular in Florida. But, you know, if you live in Buffalo, New York, you're not likely to buy a,

convertible on i suppose other parts of the world too but i i we like that because we thought it was kind of cool too and it worked great in florida i mean i joke with people that i don't think i'm ever going to get a new car because i love this feature so much and your guys you know the car is fantastic it works great and i you know i don't see a reason to get rid of it but i get your letters all the time asking about trade is and i'm just very content so i don't think i'm going to do anything I don't blame you. I don't blame you, Danny. If you love it... Hang on to that car. When you love a car today and you like driving it, hang on to it.

The worst time in the world would be to... Don't listen to my mailers about trying to lure you in. I want to buy your Prius. I do want to buy your Prius, but if you love it, keep it. You're in the driver's seat, Dana. I would be remiss if I didn't mention, though. Say hi to your doggy. Say hi to your doggy for me. event. So she's happy.

Don't tell her where you're taking her. Don't tell her where you're taking her. And if she wasn't fine, as long as she's in her car, see, he's a happy girl. So my other question for you is my brother-in-law has on order a Rav-4 hybrid from your dealership. He ordered it, I think, in December or January. How are those things coming along? Wow. And slow. Yeah, the timeline, you know, four to six months back then, it's probably six months, even plus nowadays, depends on the model.

And sometimes cars do come available that were, you know, spoken for and someone backs out. So, you know, it's, you know, it's so hard to give an accurate time frame nowadays. And then, you know, then there'll be new news about a factory reducing production that could, you know, further delay things. So I think that their, his initial timeline should. still be pretty accurate um you know the you know four six months it's a good idea to check and i one of the things that i bug you know josh and and other people that are active in the dealership every day about is keep in touch with those customers because today all of our customers have ordered cars and you you signed in for a lot of money on a new car and you think about it a lot uh you know we

we sell 300 cars a month and so we don't think about all the cars the way we should so call, ask your salesperson, and get a current update. And if he doesn't get your current update, call me or call Josh, and we'll give the update. But, you know, it's frustrating. I don't blame you for wondering or your brother. Yeah, both of them. Yeah, well, I'll tell you, my brother mentioned to me yesterday that he did call and he hadn't gotten a call back, so please be sure to call him back.

I've heard that before. Josh is blushing right now because we're guilty of that. take care of us. And we're very sorry. We will call him back today. Definitely. That would be right because, you know, I brought him to your dealership when they became snowbirds. They said, you've got to get your new car here. And they did buy a car just before the pandemic. So, but they want to trade it in and get this new hybrid. My brother-in-law was a long-time hybrid dealer. He had the very first Highlander hybrid in Brooklyn, New York. And he had it for a million years.

dog up, please. He actually takes his car his original hybrid to my niece. So that's

going strong. I think he wants to talk to me. He doesn't have a car. Dana, what a

great call. We not only have you, but we have the dog and the dog can represent Big Dog Ranch

who you know we're part of... And you were able to get me some constructive criticism of my own dealership, which really

got Josh worried, and the salesman is going to be even more worried when I get old of him. So, thanks again for the call. Dana. Thank you so much. Everybody at your dealership, you're sorry? Be well. I've got to go.

Dana, thank you. Bye-bye. Now, we know that was a genuine call, right? We couldn't have fake that call. You can't make that up. Dog barking. Josh, I have a quick question. for you. I was asked about the Prius. Would there be a new redesign on the Prius for

2023? I don't believe for 2023, but not too far. Usually the cars are changing, you know, being redesigned every five to six years. So it'll be 24, probably. I've got a, I've got, unless you have a caller. I do. Okay. Okay, we're going to go to Charles. And he's in West Palm Beach. And good morning, Charles. Good morning. Actually, I'm in North Palm. But I'm calling about the idling law. And I'm fascinated by that because I've been bugged for a long time about all the carbon that gets admitted, waiting for the Parker, PGA, Donald Ross, bridges, et cetera, et cetera. And also the amount of time that the bridge tenders seem to take getting the bridge back down again, seldom do I ever see.

a vessel that's still within eyesight after the bridge comes down, seems a very cautious approach to that. Just thinking about people wanting to take early retirement and how much money they might be able to acquire simply by walking out and taking a picture of all the cars that are idling at the bridges. I always put my window down and turn off the engine. Well, you have to get Ashley Moody. You have to get Ashley Moody to put the bounty out. The governor, New York, put the bounty out. It's a federal law. Now, I think, I don't think you would get paid by the federal government. It has to be a, I'm not like the attorney general in New York. I'm not sure, but, or the governor, I'm not sure which. But yeah,

you're right. I'd be out there myself. I mean, you can make a fortune. People lined up. Nobody turns their engines off. You take a video and you get to get your bounty money. I mean, It's devisively effective for something that's stupid, but I mean, I'm sure that people will start not idling their cars, but it'll create more chaos. I'm curious. Oh, go ahead. I'm sorry. Well, I mean, it just bothers me that people don't turn their engines off. I count it somewhere between seven and a half and eight and a half minutes for a normal bridge closure, and you multiply that by two and et cetera, et cetera.

there's an awful lot of excess fuel being burned and carbon being emitted as a result of that. Maybe somebody ought to get on the stick. Well, Charles said, you and a lot of people have the same concern. The point, the contra point I took earlier from when the call came in from John from Palm City was the fact that when you have a long line of cars, and boy, in South Florida these days, we got a lot of long line of cars, we got a lot of bridges. And when those bridges go up, you know, for me to get, and Nancy to get to places where we want to go, we have to go over at least three bridges, at least. Now, if you're in a hurry, a doctor's appointment or whatever you might have, you might have an intestinal problem.

If you're in a hurry and the bridge goes up and everybody turned their engine off statistically, and I'm a mathematical kind of a minded guy, statistically someone's not going to be able to start their car so you all turn your engines off one or two cars won't start and now besides the bridge you've got to wait till they get that car that won't start out of line police would come by you could be there for an hour or two so I think from a practical standpoint in certain areas it doesn't make sense but I hear you a huge amount of carbon pollution happens from idling cars there's no question about that I just think putting a bounty on it to encourage people to stop doing that is a little bit too far. But the difference of opinion is what makes a horse race.

So I respect your opinion, Charles. Well, I think maybe what will happen is when all the cars have this automatic shutoff when you stop somewhere for a little while, a problem will really be exacerbated. Well, you're right. You're right. Your point is well taken. I appreciate the call very much. Yeah, thank you, Charles. Give us a call again.

I will. Have a great weekend. Bye-bye. We are getting close to the mystery shop. I believe that Josh is going to wrap things up for us. I got one. Do you have the anonymous feedback on the spot delivery? Yes, I do.

Okay, read that one because that's very important. Okay, I believe this is one you're referring to. Purchase a car last Wednesday, drove off the lot brand new. I had a trade in. Everything was settled until I got a call the following Monday, Tuesday from the dealership saying that they needed proof of income. They have been lax with their approach, seemingly not caring too much about me getting that to them. I'm working on getting the proof of income, my last paycheck stuff. My question is, why would the dealership let me drive

off in a brand new car, take in my trade, and then call me back requesting something almost a week later? I signed all the paperwork at the dealership. Should I be worried about the status of my financing or giving up the vehicle? Okay. I'm glad you're listening because this is an extremely important question. We've talked early about spot deliveries, a puppy dogging. All car dealers tried to get you to take the car you're thinking about buying home, and they would really like it when you sign the paperwork. Now, oftentimes they ask you to sign the paperwork before your credit is approved. This can happen more often on weekends or evenings when the banks are not open. So dealers take a chance that your credit will be approved, or sometimes they premeditatedly

will get you to sign on a lower payment knowing that you're going to have to put more money down. There's a lot of devious, evil ways that they want to have you take that car home. The message is, don't ever do it. Always wait until your credit is approved. Now, the good news, and I hope you're listening, because the good news is there's some case law in Florida that says that if you have the paperwork signed and you deliver the product

and the person takes the product home, you are the financier. Now, actually, and the way it's been interpreted in the past, I don't want to get too legal here, was that the bank or the credit union is a lender. That really is the case. The bank or the credit union is a lender,

and that's the reason the dealers trick you into thinking you have to come back because the bank turned you down. I would recommend that you have your attorney check the case law on spot deliveries and there is case law supporting the fact that the dealer made the decision to deliver the car and you get to keep it and then you make your payments to the dealer. Now you may have and you may probably sign something called a rescission agreement. That's what the dealer got you to something. probably didn't even know you signed it to cover his fanny because it says that he's not

the lender and that if your credit is not approved you must bring the vehicle back and if you don't bring the vehicle back they're going to charge you some obscene amount of money 50 cents a mile or something like that and you have X number of days and a lot of terrible threats if you don't bring the car back a quick letter or call from your attorney may solve your problem and I think if the dealer calls his attorney, he'll realize that he fights us in court because the case law supports you, he might say, okay, keep the car. And then they'll do what they have to do to either sell the contract to the lender or they'll actually have to finance the car themselves. Very good. Thank you very much.

So many outrageous stories out there that you hear. I have one quickly about a credit union. And here's a consumer who is looking to finance her vehicle to borrow some money, and she's got a 840 beacon score. I guess what, folks? She was turned down for financing. You talk about things falling through the cracks. It happens every day. Earl's story with the anonymous feedback, mine.

Like I said earlier, knowledge is an opportunity. keep your eyes open and buyer beware we're going to our mystery shopping report we're back out in Greensport, Pennsylvania and you are an important part of the mystery shopping report we ask you to vote

you can do so at 772-4976530 we're going on to Sendell Motors Subaru of Greensburg Pennsylvania now back to the recovering car dealer Okay, Sindel, Subaru, Greensburg, Pennsylvania, we've run that twice. Our shopper, Agent Lightning, is out there visiting family. And so we take advantage of that fact.

Second shop in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Who ever thought, you folks, dealers in Greensburg, that Earl and Cars would reach all the way and shop you twice in a row? The good news is the first shop was a pretty good shop. We were able to draw the contrast between the mildly pleasant. in a non-threatening car shopping experience up north in Pennsylvania, Midwest. And I love Stu's adjectives here. Soul-boiling anguish.

He likes to come up. He should be a writer. He's a writer. There's a reality of South Florida car shoppers. The thing is, most car shoppers in South Florida are unaware of their souls and are being boiled by car dealers because it's been done for so long. And it's been done everywhere. It's normal here.

This is the Solomon Gimorra, as I said, early in the show. And I explained early in the show, it's always grouped. It's always regional. One bad apple can start it, and it spreads like a cancer. And then it becomes survival. It becomes self-preservation. If you're a business and your competitor, very close by, is successfully cheating their customers, which could be your customers, what are you going to do?

You're going to go out of business? Or you might call Ashley Moody, and she'll, she's the Attorney General in Florida. She'll ignore it. They can call the manufacturer. They'll ignore it. There's a lot of apathy about what dealers do. The funny thing is, when you cheat your customers and you get away with it and you sell a whole lot of cars, the manufacturers, they might pay lip service to saying you shouldn't do that.

But in reality, they're selling you a lot of cars, and you've heard the old expression, follow the money. Drawing back the curtain and showing our local audience what's possible in other places may be what South Florida needs to wake up and say, no more. Okay, back to Greensburg. Not only does Agent Lightning have a lot of friends and relatives up there, they all seem to buy new cars these days. That's good.

Last week, it was a little strange because I don't think it's a good time to buy new cars, but who listens to me? Last week, it was her mother-in-law. This week is her best friend from childhood. That's really nice. And Alicia. So Agent Lightning's best friend, Alicia, is in the market for a new Subaru,

WRX. Never heard of that, but it's probably a good vehicle. What is a WRX? It's Subaru. It's a little four-door sedan. But they're kind of a Zipki race car. She currently owns a 2019 and loves it.

She wants to trade it in on a new 2022 model. Agent Lightning agreed to go along to the dealership as her wingman. Boy, that's really cool, you know, I mean, having Agent Lightning, I was saying if we could put her, we could broker her. I mean, you want to hire Agent Lightning to go in with you. Like 500 an hour. Kill two birds of one stone. We can make money from the brokerage fee and we get a mystery shopping report. Split the savings with the customer. We can explore that, yeah. Here's a report speaking in the first person as if I were Agent Lightning. Alicia and I arrived at Central Motor Subaru mid-morning and were quickly greeted by

salesman named Kevin. Alicia told him she was looking to replace her 2019 WRX with a new 2020 model, preferably in white. Gavin actually hung his head when he said he was so sorry to inform us. He had zero new vehicles in stock. Interesting, he would actually hung his head. Do you think you're really? What a visual. I like that. You're ashamed. Yeah. I asked him how they're selling cars. If they have none, great question. He said, every sale is an order, and if my friend had enough time, she could get exactly what she wants. That's a good sign.

Because usually in South Florida, Salomon, the few cars they have, they will tell you why you really don't want the car, you thought you want it, you really want this one, and they'll shove you in the car so they can make a ton of money, but not so in Greensburg. Alicia took control of the conversation and told Kevin, she wanted to, would like to speak with someone in finance because she has some questions. Kevin said he'd get someone for her, offered us some Starbucks, coffee, and water. Came back about four minutes later and explained that Josh in finance was working with a customer, but we'll join us shortly.

Kevin asked if we had any questions for him while we waited. Alicia asked about her trade. She wanted to know when she would find out what her appraisal value. You can see the control going down here. Okay, give me the finance information, give me the appraisal. I mean, totally in control. Runs in the family. Exactly, yeah.

Kevin said if she gave him the keys, she could get his manager to appraisal right now. She handed them over. We shouted while we waited for the appraisal and for the finance guy, Josh. Kevin told us they'd never seen it this bed, referring to the inventory, says dealership's monthly sales quota

was only 18 cars a month. Wow. That's sad. Yeah, a small dealer anyway. dealers in South Florida I mean our quota is what 250 or this month or something like that yeah 200 is our

200 is our 200. He also told us that Sindel Motor Subaru was one of the few dealerships in the area that was not doing additional markups they're capping prices of MSRP now that brings a tear to my eye

I mean that's a good thing right I'll just read on just then Josh appeared we followed him to his office and sat down. Alicia explained to him that she'd filed for bankruptcy two and a half years ago. Now, of course, that's a red flag. That's going to affect things, bankruptcies. Her credit score had since recovered in the mid-700s,

and she wanted to discuss the potential impact of this on our hypothetical loan. That's a very good question. Alicia had tried superfinanced directly to no avail. Interesting. So a lot of banks and credit unions, I think, have looked differently upon bankruptcies now. Apparently, Subaru finance did not. She has paid Subaru perfectly, and they were not included in the bankruptcy. Now, that's very good.

That's even more interesting why Subaru Finance would not want to find this. Josh Holder, he would get in touch with Superfinance on her behalf, and that she should have no issues. Okay, good. since she was good with Subaru. Kevin had a worksheet and a word from us when we got back to his desk. MSRP was 40,039.

Now this is where, this is a little disturbing. I mean, he said they kept their price at MSRP. The selling price was $40,039. We're off to good start. Then they added $422 documentary fee and $899 for Zurich. for Zurich Shield. I Google Google.

In fact, you can Google Gourg Shield. What's up with that? You can buy a can of it for $30. You can buy a can of it for $30. And you're going to charge you for $8.99. The installation is very complicated. You have to put it on yourself.

So for a $30 can of Zurich Shield, they'll put it on for $900. And then they're going to charge your $422 documentary fee, which is not just a hidden fee. which is just a dealer fee. So basically we're looking at $1,321, the real price, and they said the real price with MSRP. Okay, so in South Florida Parliance and terms,

it's not a bad price. It's, there are better prices. We're seeing more and more dealers than selling prices near to MSRP. We're seeing virtually no dealers that are selling them at MSRP. Don't like it when they say they're selling them at MSRP when they're not, but this was the case here. Kevin also hand wrote a payment, interest rate, quote, $550 for a month, 72 months at 5.59%.

I'll ask, Josh, is that a reasonable price for 72 months today? In the mid-fives? Mid-fives. I mean, I don't know how the bank is going to handle the recent bankruptcy, but it sounds a bit high for credit score in the mid-sevents. Well, this is Subaru Finance, so she could probably shop that. I would recommend shopping that rate. Okay. Well, Nancy was right, because she said the same thing.

I thought with a bankruptcy two years ago, it would affect, but not that much. Elisa told Kevin she needed to think about it, so she collected that paperwork and we left. As we drove, we talked about the deal, even with the extra she was taking, so she recommended. So Agent Lightning recommends she take the deal. I did tell her that this was nothing compared to what I'd seen in South Florida, which is true. So everything is relative. I myself would have told her to shop it with another Subaru dealer or two. Subaru dealers are better on the average than other make cars, and I would have shopped it.

But she's not going to get her too bad. Worse would be $1,21, and she might get a little better interest. Alicia made up her mind to do the deals. We turned around, head back to dealership. we found Kaffin and Alicia ordered the car. So kind of a cool shopping report. We actually bought a car indirectly, but we actually bought a car. And there we are, and we have to vote on it, and we have a little bit of time left.

So let's see how the votes come in. All right. I don't have any on the texting just yet, but anything coming in on YouTube? Not so far. Come on, folks. Let's have those votes. I'll give it great. I'm not going to give them an A or an.

or an A minus. I'm going to give them a B minus. I would say they're certainly good in South Florida terms, but it disturbed me that the salesman said, I will sell it to you for MSRP. That's the selling price. The selling price is a price that you pay plus tax and tag.

The selling price is not the price you pay with hidden fees. Hidden fees are part of the price. And you have to tell the truth when you're talking to your customer. You'll never get through to them, Dad. You'll never get through. I guess not. But never, don't give up. We have a Mark came in with a C, very informed buyer, smiley face.

Frank gives them a B, says nothing, compared to South Florida, especially. That's a B. I totally agree with that. Personally, I'm with you, Dad. I think a B minus is fair. The fact that, yes, they are 1,300 over MSRP technically, but in this market, that's almost a hero price. So I give them a B-minus. Exactly.

Plus Subaru is a good vehicle, and they have a very short supply. And remember, you're going to order the car. And I wish I thought of this when I read the report. When you're ordering the car, you still can shop around, and you can still change your mind. I think this dealer would allow you to. So through Agent Lightning, we will tell. her to call her sister Alicia, or best friend Alicia, and tell her that take her price even now,

because it's going to take her several months to get the car and talk to some other Subaru dealers and maybe even try the Costco auto buying program. Well, we've got Negan one with C, your way out of the dealership. Brian Siddlatko, give them a B, Mark Ryan, B, Wayne Veit, C minus, Tom Steckle, B, B minus. don't like the $899 for the paint protection. Tim in Florida, B. Zurich Shield, love it. Cramm 1624, your rule. Shop two or three more dealers.

D. Oh, Graham, giving them the hardball. You know, it might be a D in Pennsylvania, but it's not a D in Florida. Yeah. No, well, it's, you know, we're talking apples and oranges. Bob, asked the question, and I think this was, it might have been skipped, he asked about the trade in.

They gave her 285 for her 2019 WRX, which seems to be a fair value compared to what was showing on Mannheim. Yeah, that's pretty reasonable. I have to say, I think I agree with a few of us that said that she should really shop around. You've got time to do just that. But this is kind of a high price for the Subaru. And I believe it's a sedan. I'm not positive. I know there's a sports car.

There's a... Rick said it's a four-door sedan. It is a sedan. It is a sporty sedan. They have a sports car. The WRX is actually the World Rally Experimental, and the SDI version is Subaru Technica International. And basically, it's a little four-door race car. They're extremely fast.

They talk about a sports car. I'm going to go real fast because we're running out of time. I'm going to give them a C. Okay. One last thing I wanted to get in. I want to do something. Jonathan went to a lot of trouble for some displays on the camera. I haven't got time to do the detail on that, but I do want to hit the point.

We'll do the displays next week. And the reason I had this information is I got a direct mail and the envelope to look like this. Yeah. Yeah, I got an album to look like this. And they're trying to buy my Lexus, 2013 Lexus, which I haven't had in several years. So they got a bad mailing list. And they're trying to buy my Lexus for about $8,000 less than it's worth.

And chop and compare your trade-in today because the prices of trade-ins and used cars are extremely high. And when you get the letters and the notices from, the dealers, they want to buy your car, be very careful, shop at least three places, and one of those should be Carvana, one should be CarMax, one should be We Buy Any Car.com, and the local dealer that sells your make. So be careful and ignore these letters like I got in the mail. Yeah. It is interesting envelopes. It says here, delivered to registered only, the notification department. I mean, it really looks official, but they're BS.

official. Exactly. Yeah, that's so great information. I'm still getting letters for my barracuda. I don't believe, man. Hey. That's a good story. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

We certainly enjoy your company. Have a great weekend, and we'll be right back here next Saturday morning. Let's go!