Earl Stewart on Cars - 04.20.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Delray Honda

Episode Date: April 20, 2019

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Delray Honda, participating Costco dealer to purchase a car on the Costco Auto Buying Program. Earl Stewart is one of the most successful car dealers in the nation. This podcast gives you the benefit of his 40+ years as a car dealer and helps you turn the terror of buying, leasing, or servicing a car into a triumphant experience. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.959thepalm.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart, Stu Stewart, and Rick Kearney. Reach them with your questions at 877-9-6-0-960, and now here's Earl Stewart. Good morning, everybody. Back again for two hours of fact-filled, a little bit of entertainment along the way about how not to be ripped off by a car dealer, whether you're buying, leasing, maintaining, or repairing your car. That's what we do here at Earl-on Cars. true oldie station a little bit misleading because we don't sing there's no 60s and 70s music going on at least maybe in my head

and when I'm tapping my foot a little bit but we're trying to inform you this show is an educational show largely car buying can be a very very dangerous experience dangerous to your pocketbook and been that way for a long time I'm a recovering car dealer and my qualifications are that I used to do it the old way. Remember when the FBI used to hire jewel thieves that were, maybe they'd give them amnesty and they would inform the FBI

how to catch another jewel thief? Well, I'm kind of like a car dealer that's trained to help you avoid being taken advantage of by a car dealer. I start selling cars in 1968. I was a car dealer over 50 years ago. And I've had multiple franchises. I've sold Pontiacs and Mazas and Pujos and Fiat's and launches and checker cabs. I even sold

checker cabs. I'm selling Toyotas right now. Full transparency. I am a Toyota dealer. I've been a Toyota dealer since 1975. So I've got the inside track on what really happens when you go into a car dealership.

As I look back on it and I look at the way I used to sell cars, I feel a little embarrassed about what I used to do. Funny thing is, I didn't feel guilty back in those days. It was kind of like everybody, did it that way. And Bateson-Switch advertising was SOP. When we advertise cars, when I advertise cars, I used to advertise cars at a price I know you couldn't buy the car for. That's what

car dealers do today. And it's really a shame. In fact, one of my advices I give to all people is don't ever reply or respond, I should say, to a car dealer advertisement, whether it's online whether it's a newspaper radio television they're all deceptive it's amazing isn't it you if anybody out there is listening i'd like you to call me and tell me if you ever bought a car at the advertised price in other words out the door did you ever buy a car for the price that they told you you could advertise the car that you could buy it for on the advertisement I had one person, I think, on the show call in a few weeks ago that said he did. Let's see if there's anybody else out there because car dealers deliberately understate the price they'll sell you the car for.

If they didn't, if they gave you, in their minds, if they gave you the real price, you would just take that real price and go to their competition. And the competition will sell you the car for a little bit less. So they try to avoid that possibility. But that's what the free marketplace is supposed to be all about. When you shop on Amazon, when you go into Target, when you go to Kmart, Costco, wherever you buy Walmart, wherever you buy a product, what do you do? You shop for the lowest price. Car dealers take away that right for you to shop for the lowest price. So here we are for two hours.

Love to have you call the show. That's the most important thing. 877960-9960 is a call in a number, and we also have a text number, 772, 497. 6530. We had an anonymous feedback, or it might have been a caller asked. I think it was a caller last week says, don't give out two numbers at the same time. I apologize. So for that caller, I'm going to give just the text number out, and I won't mention the caller number. 772-497-3530. Easy to remember. We love text. I've got a studio full of experts here. Not just, I'm not here by myself. I've got Rick Kern to my right. Rick Kearney is one of the most knowledgeable people that I've ever known in my 50-plus years

in the car business when it comes to the technical aspects of a car, the how it runs, how it operates, how you need to repair it, how you need to, you know, fine-tune it. You know, we used to call them a mechanic, and then we call them an auto-technician, and now we call them an auto-computer scientist. I mean, it's hard to believe. You know, 25 years ago, you had no idea that you'd be doing flash computer fixes on a car. I had no guess at all on that. You didn't know what a computer was 25 years ago. That was sci-fi.

No, I called that. Do you remember? You should have put money on it. Anyway, the evolution, the evolution of the way cars are repaired is just amazing. Rick Bats about 990. Every now and then he's got to use that laptop in front of him, and he'll Google the answer. But if you have any questions, about the operation of your older car, newer car, any model. You just give us a call at

877-960-9960, and Rick will answer the question. You ladies out there to Rick's ride is Nancy Stewart. Nancy is my co-host. She's been with me since the get-go on the rolling cars, going back 14 or 15 years. When we first started, it was only a half an hour show. I can't imagine how we said much in a half an hour. We thought we were on for a long time. It was kind of scary. And then we suddenly moved to an hour. And then we just didn't have enough time in an hour. And now we're doing two hours. And Nancy's strong suit is the female aspect of buying cars. Half the buyers out there, obviously, are women, because half the people on the planet are women. And as you all know, if you're

anywhere around a television set or online or you watch the news at all, this is the hashtag Me Too Revolution. The women have uprisen. Is that the right words too? Uprose? Uprisen? Uprised. That's a hard one. That's a hard one. Yeah, it's too early. Anyway, they're off. They're standing up. They're coming at us, guys, and they have a right to come at us because we've been treating them wrong for a long time. And the name of the game is, if you're a woman, you call the show, Nancy's got, I won't worry in her surprise, but she has a special surprise for new female callers. And we love. to have at least half. We want at least half of the people that call in or text in. We want parity. We want parity. That's the word. That's a fancy word.

And Nancy will tell you why she feels so strongly about why women are singled out. There are other classes that are singled out, elderly. And we'll talk about that later in the show too. There's also the less educated, the

less sophisticated. Do you realize when you walk into a car dealership that nobody pays the same price for the same car. Isn't that amazing? Can you imagine going to the publics and everybody paid a different price for the same loaf of bread

or the same jar of pickles or the same steak? Everybody pay a different price. It's barbaric. It is barbaric. There's a difference between... The difference between prices on a car can be as much as $10,000 and more.

I kid you not. The same exact... You're a model car. The salespeople are paid on commission. They get 25% of how much they can mark the car up. MSRP, forget about it. That's almost a thing of the past. MSRP has to be on the car by federal law,

but the dealers are now putting their own labels on the car, marking them way up. And if they can get you for a $10,000 profit in the trade, car dealers call that a slam dunk. When I was a bad guy back in my evil days, that was a slam dunk. We used to reward the salespeople, right, Stu, that had the slam dunks. We gave them a steak dinner.

Steak dinner. A steak dinner, if you made $4,000 or more. At the sizzling steakhouse. At the sizzling steak, I mean, I'm confess. That was Ruth Chris. I mean, I'm embarrassed. It really makes me, it really makes me nervous to think that I actually did that. I know.

And then, of course, there's Stu. You've heard you, Stu's been chit-chatting a little bit here. Stu is my son. and been in the business quite a while, too. And he's our cyber guy. He's those clicks you hear in the background. Do you hear that? Look at.

Just who's Apple computer. And he's on Twitter. He's on YouTube. He's on Facebook. He's on Periscope. He's on Instagram. And all the, this is where it's at. And we have a lot of people my age listening.

And newspapers, television. It's where my kids are at. That's where, no, that's where the monials are at. at too. A lot of people. So, we are streaming as we speak. You're Facebook.com forward slash earl on cars. Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars. We're on YouTube. We're all over the planet, as a matter of fact. So you can watch us in living color at any time. I'm going to introduce Nancy to talk about her special offer for female callers to the show. Okay. I'm going to mention a special offer for Stu Stewart.

He's won himself a steak dinner for his birthday at Ruth Chris on Thursday evening. Well, thank you very much. Congratulations. I guess I'm going to cancel my reservations at Checky Cheese now. And Rudy's back.

Oh, my goodness. Thank you, Rudy. And, of course, Jonathan is right over there in the control room. They're part of our team. We thank them every week for all they do. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome, and ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Yes, give us a call at 877-960-99-60, and you can win yourself $50 if you are a first-time female caller.

We've got a whole lot to get to. I'm pretty excited about the Attorney General Ashley Moody and her week in review that I read this past week. Well, she's formed a, how shall you put it, it is a Florida New Senior Protection Program. And we are going to be a part of that. And we're going to talk about that. Some exciting news. So just stay tuned and stay with us.

We've got an exciting mystery shopping report. We've got a whole lot to get to. 877-960-99-60. now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, we'll talk about what you alluded to, I think, because it's coming up quickly. And what Nancy was referring to is we've been invited by the Florida Attorney General's Office, Division of Seniors v. Crime. A great group of folks in all over Florida.

They have different regions. The South Florida Group has invited us to appear on April 25th, which is also Stu's birthday. Stu, will you be attending? It's your birthday. You probably won't be there. Well, I'm going to be working. He's made that announcement. But it's April 25th.

He's been making that announcement for weeks. April 25th. And it's in West Palm Beach. It's just off of I-95, exit number 53. And that's Palm Beach Lake Boulevard. So whether you're coming from the north of the south, just get off I-95 is exit number 53, exit west. And it's right off I-95.

It's 900 Brandy Wine Road. And the United Methodist Church is off this their meeting hall there. and it will accommodate at least 500 people. At least, yeah. And we would love to have you attend. And for the first 500 folks who attend, you're going to get a copy of my book. And this book is Confessions of a recovering car dealer.

Confessions of a recovering car dealer. First 500 attending, April 25th, 2 o'clock, West Palm Beach, exit 53, off of Palm Beach, Lakeville Road, Exit West, 900 Brandywine Road 2 o'clock. And we're going to tell all the seniors where if you're not a senior, but you know a senior, you're related to us. There's a lot of ability in South Florida. Bring your friends, refer your friends. We're going to talk about the things that you need to do to avoid being taken advantage by a car dealer.

And did I mention it's free. Yeah. And just because you're not a senior, you're still qualified to get in. It's free to the public, ladies and gentlemen, and it's a seminar you just don't want to miss. So we'll give you some more information later on in the show. If you haven't jotted the date done in the time April 25th at 2 o'clock, that's a Thursday. And we have a caller, and it's Tina, who is our female caller, regular caller. Good morning, Tina.

Good morning, Nancy. Just the woman I want to talk to. I haven't had a chance to talk to you in a while and this is kind of like an update on a situation we spoke about before because I was mentioning and we were discussing as a group how there's not a lot of dealerships that are owned by women while the tide's starting to change just a little bit there's this blog called or website called blackbusiness.org

and in the January 1st edition of their blog, there is the first ever black-owned Lexus dealership. Woman-owned Lexus dealership, and I'm sure you probably already know about this, but it's located to Huntsville, Alabama, and the lady, I've got to read this here. The print's kind of tiny, but the lady, she worked her way up the ranks to be a dealership owner,

and her name is Eleanor Fairhurst. Is it? Yes, Ellen A Fairhurst, and she kind of busted the glass of, feeling on her own. She started, let me see what her story was. I have to flip back and forth here. She worked at the Chrysler dealership in a training program for a while prior to her Lexus dealership being the first securing infinity franchise. And she started all the way back in 1968. Wow.

So she was a secretary at the Ford Road. her company and then 20 years later she was awarded her very own dealership still runs it today so women can do this it can happen absolutely absolutely jena thanks for sharing that story with us uh there are more and more women who uh well i'm going to say maybe a handful that own their own dealerships and it's a new day um earl mentioned earlier about a well uprising and I think that the way I look at it is that we have all women realized that our voices must be heard and we need to join together because there's power in numbers. Earl, what do you have to say?

Well, I obviously support that 100%. I really think if the manufacturers were on their toes, I mean Lexus and Toyota, they're the same thing, but General Motors, Chrysler Ford, all the manufacturers, If they really had the foresight that they should have, they would be strongly proactively looking for women dealers. I just can't imagine. I don't know that much about women, but Nancy knows a whole lot about women. And they tell them, they tell them me, women I speak to and Nancy, they would prefer to deal with a woman-owned company, whether they're selling refrigerators or bicycles or cars.

they feel that this is something that they should do to patronize women-owned enterprises. Absolutely. And there are so few women-owned car dealerships. Stu just reminded me, we know another woman that owns a car dealership in Carlsbad, California. Happens to be a Lexis dealers. But out of all the dealers we know, that's about the only woman dealer we heard of. And then you just mentioned this other one, Tina. So you manufacturers out there are representing, you.

You start signing up some women dealers, and you would be amazed how your sales will, boom. You'll, you'll, you will dominate a market if you put a woman dealer into a market that has no other women dealers. I agree with that. And Tina, usually it takes dealers about 15 years to pay off their dealership. She paid off her dealership in eight. Wow. Wow. That's just amazing.

And do you know why? because to ignore women in this industry it's a financial disaster and there that statement that you just made that she paid off her dealership in eight years and not 15 says it all I don't need to say anymore yeah Mr. Verherst she has

quite a lot of really good reviews on her website as well so if you're in Huntsville Alabama and you need a Lexus or looking for Alexis I would definitely visit her place. And that's in Huntsville? She deserves the support. Thank you, Tina. I really appreciate that.

And we're behind you 100% on that and all the ladies. And I hope the manufacturers out there get the message. I'll bet you that Lexus dealership is amazingly successful and take a clue from that and open up another Lexus dealership

with a woman manager and dealer. Absolutely. You know, Tina, thank you so much for your support. You're really helping to build this place. platform that we need help on as females, and your call, all the information you share with us is priceless. I want to thank you personally. Oh, thank you. I appreciate it. Enjoy your holiday weekend. Thank you very much. The same to you.

877-960-99-60. Give us a call toll-free. We've got some text, don't we still? We do have some texts, and we also have Howard on the line. Howard on the line. Good morning, Howard. Good morning, a beautiful morning this morning. It is. Great talking to you guys.

I have two things that I can talk to you about. First of all, Tires. I purchased a car new from Earl, and it had a 500 treadwear. It said 500 for the treadwear. That's pretty good. I have 22,000. Yeah. That's pretty good.

Yeah, that's, yeah, that's, that's, a long, that's higher than normal in terms of the treadware index and that would give you a lot of miles aware. It's not giving me a lot of miles because I got close to 23,000 miles and I put

the penny in the tread. I can't and I could, you're supposed to see Lincoln's head. Lincoln's head is out of the

treadware. So in other words, The tires are done. Howard? Were those the original tires when you bought the car? Howard? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, it's a little unusual, isn't it? Rick, I didn't think. They're starting to put the higher treadwear index on cars now? 500 actually is about an average number, really. But it's, well, I'm going to throw out the sneaky little secret. And it's actually pretty well known. but tire companies make special tires to go on the brand new car. They're a soft compound rubber so that when you first drive that car out of the showroom

when you first get it on the road, that car is just as soft and smooth riding as can be. But would it be smooth riding with a 500 treadwear index? 500 is, it's about average now. 800 is actually a more reasonable number now for a trade. The 200 used to be about the average, so they've raised it. Oh, you won't even find a 200 anymore. Yeah. Okay, Howard.

Thank you very much. Yeah, one other question. The maintenance sign is coming on my dashboard. It says maintenance required. And after a while, it blocks out everything. I can't get the tire pressure or anything like that. Is there any way to reset that before I go in for service? Can I do it myself?

Yes, you can. You've got the little steering wheel controls that let you go into vehicle settings. And if you go into vehicle settings, you'll find the maintenance setting in there, and you can reset it yourself. Oh, that's great. It's just using those little arrows on the steering wheel. All right. We answer all your questions there are?

Oh, that's great. Okay, very good. Thank you very good. Okay, thanks very much for the call, Howard. Yeah, thanks, Howard. Give us a call to Free at 877-9-6-0-99-60. Remember, ladies, we're waiting for you to give us a call so you can win yourself $50, the first two new lady callers. We have a call from New Jersey.

Wow. Wow. Good morning, Josh. Welcome to the show. Nationwide. How you guys doing? Hey, Josh. Great.

So I actually found you guys booking when I was probably about two years ago. I was trying to get out of a current infinity that I'd purchased. And I was going to my first lease. So you've actually helped me go through two vehicles. So I wanted to just give, first of all, a lot of praise and say thank you for what you guys are doing because it's the first time I learned those things that you were teaching. So I appreciate what you guys do. Thank you.

Thanks a lot. Thank you. And so I have one question for you. So I'm actually getting ready to go into my next lease. So I'm currently in a Nissan maximum. So I'm going to the new Infinity Q50 Red Sport. And I've seen the numbers the way that you negotiate with lease terms and numbers and price. And the numbers are fluctuating a lot more than I expected.

And now I've got the numbers down probably about $200 a month. The first couple of quotes came back in the high sevens, which is pretty outrageous. Wow. But now I got it down to about $5.62 with tax tags, titles, and fees. And I actually got a buyer's order because I got it from a Pennsylvania dealership saying that I was going to make the drive out, but I needed the buyer's order to go ahead and sign and get all the paperwork done. So I actually got a buyer's order sent to me. So I was able to get it matched at a dealership right by my house, believe it or not here, right outside of New York City. So my question would be, I guess, I would like to see it maybe come down a little bit more.

And should I wait for a certain promotion to come out? because they say each month a different promotion comes out, or should I, I guess, maybe just say this is the kind of number I'm looking to be at. I'd like to get it down maybe another $50 a month. Josh, let me ask the question. Why have you decided to focus on the payment rather than the price? And the reason I ask is there are various ways that a car dealer can manipulate a payment with interest rates and terms and down payments.

I always recommend that you go, you negotiate the price first, and then the payment will fall in line with the price and you choose the terms, and that way you can be sure you get the right terms down payment interest rate. When you say that the lowest payment you got was $562 so far per month, are all the dealers giving you the equal term? In other words, is that a 36-month, 48-month, or a 60-month, or the dealers are all being the same in terms of the conditions of that payment? So everything is in writing on the buyer's order. It's a 39-month lease. $2,000 down. Okay, so lease, I'm sorry, I'm missing.

Yeah, $30,000. Okay. Okay. What about down payment? $2,000. Okay. All right, so I apologize. I'm sticking to purchase.

You said lease. No, I think you're going about this the right way. And your question about, can you take it down even further? There is the strange fact that the prices on vehicles drop toward the end of the month. And that's when the dealers have to make their quotas. The salespeople have to make their quotas, their bonuses and rewards, significant rewards that come at the end of the month. so I would wait until the end of this month

you're looking at we're close to it now and when you get close to April 30 I would give them one more shot and see how much further down in payment they could come on the lease okay

yeah absolutely that I remember you saying that and I've just been doing my diligence my lease isn't even up until the end of the year but they're trying to get me out of it within six months of of, I guess, the end of the lease contract, they could take you out of it.

So I can wait until the month of December if you would think that waiting for the end of the year would be probably lucrative in terms of getting the best. Even better. And be sure, Josh, that the allocation of mileage per year is the same for all the dealers because they can lower the payment by being chintzying on the mileage. You know, you can get 15,000 miles per year is about the average drive. if it's any less than 12,000 miles per year, you need to take a look at it.

Just be sure each dealer that you got the price, like the lowest dealer was 562. If he lowered your mileage to only 10,000 per year, and the other dealers were at 12,000, that's something to take into consideration. Because now you're looking at 25 cents per mile on overage if you're a higher mileage driver. Absolutely.

All of them are $15,000. I did what you did. and got my non-negotiables written down, and I gave it to each dealer. I went to about 10 dealers, and they all started coming back with numbers, and now finally the numbers are coming down where they need to be,

and so now I'm getting close to doing a deal once they're going to take me out of the lease without me rolling the payments. I'm proud of you. It really did your work. You're doing everything exactly right, and you will get the lowest payment possible on that lease. Congratulations.

Thank you. I appreciate all you do. Congratulations, Josh. Please call again. Thank you so much. Educated consumer. Fabulous. A great tool.

Give us a call toll-free at 877-9-60-9-9-60. And back to the recovering cardio. We've got some more touch here, don't we still? We've got some techs piling up. Get right to them. First one is from Steve, New Jersey. That's our second question from New Jersey. Do you know of anything Toyota is doing to help mitigate whiplash injuries caused by rear end collisions?

The largest number of accident injuries are whiplash injuries, which seems somewhat ignored when compared to front end accident injuries. Rick, this is right up your alley. Well, one of the first things they're doing is such things as active headrests. In a rear end collision, the headrest actually is designed to be pressed forwards to try to catch your head. But one of the main things is education in that people need to learn how to put their seats properly. And the headrest... Hold on a second, Rick. Earl should be paying attention to this.

Okay, well, I was thinking too. Because Earl is... He drives completely reclined. Ah. Now, see, your seat should not be laid all the way back. Is that right? And your headrest should also be up... I have a periscope.

I know you had something. You know what he thinks he is? Wait a minute. If he's lying down, wouldn't he force him his head? He's jet fighter style. Yeah. If he's lying down. He thinks he's a rapper.

Seriously. His seat is in a position of wrapping. Exactly. He's a rapper. He's got his ball cap on. It's twisted to the side. Dark sunglasses. Unfortunately, as far back as his seat lays.

I think we beat that to death. Seriously, how should you sit? Should you be like... You should be somewhat upright. Yeah. But the most important part is actually the position of the headrest itself that should be up directly behind the back of your head and just about touching your head so that if you you were in a collision from behind, your head would then hit the headrest and not be allowed

to actually snap backwards, which is what causes those neck injuries, is that violent backwards and forwards motion of the head. And under no circumstances should people remove their headrests. No. Older cars have that, right? Just basically like, it's like riding on a couch. Just about any car, you can remove the headrest now, but it should not be removed. It should be in place and should be placed, as I say, right behind the.

back of your head. If it's down at the back of your neck and you're in that collision, your head actually folds backwards over the headrest, and that actually makes a worse injury. There you go. Well, I'll make sure your seat is adjusted properly, sir, next time we get in the car. This is another one for Rick, I think. This is from Bob, and he wants to know, is there a fix to a stripped oil pan screw besides a new oil pan? technically there is there is what's known as well it's actually what we would recommend as a one-time only this will get you by until you can afford to replace that oil pan it's called a threaded insert or a what are these what's the other name for it there's a brand name for it it's like a it's like a Easy coil. Basically, what we do is we drill out the oil pan, cut new threads in it, just a little bit oversized, and put a special insert in there that makes the threads a little bit smaller size so it will fit your original drain plug.

I only recommend those as a one-time-only repair, and you should then begin saving and get a new oil pan. simply for the idea that if something were to happen and a drain plug fell out, you're going to immediately lose oil, and if you're on the highway, you're doing 75, 80 miles an hour, which is, of course, where it's going to happen when it's vibrating around.

That's when you would suddenly have no oil pressure and within a few minutes, no engine. What's the most common way that gets stripped? Usually from being overtorked when a service is being done. Like at our dealership, we actually had an issue with this for a while. And so we made sure every technician in the shop uses a special torque wrench on those drain plugs. That won't let them get it too tight then.

Right. It stops the torque. You can't tighten it too high. And that has actually prevented us doing a lot of damage to cars. That's a good question, I think, to ask when you go to a service department if they are using that tool. Absolutely. Otherwise, you're risking a, well, expensive repair for the dealership because they're going to be on the hook for it. Definitely.

Yeah. Great answer, Rick. Great, great topic. Who was that? Bob. That was Bob. Bob on a text. Because I've talked to someone who has had that happen.

Probably had our dealership. They didn't use, you know, the proper rent. And there's some pretty significant damage that can happen. Yeah. Okay. The next one's from Amory. And she just texted in because we were talking about Costco memberships last week. And she just wanted to remind everybody that the minimum.

for a basic gold star Costco membership is $60, that's for a year, and the executive membership is now $120. And I'm not sure that gets you, maybe the credit card, hot dogs for life. I'll tell you, $60 is the best investment. Once a year, you pay $60. You'll come out way ahead. You'll save $6,000 a year if you're a Costco member. $60 is a bargain.

That's right. Thanks for being part of the show, Annie Murray. Yeah, I love Ameri. Yeah. Okay, the next one is just a couple. comment. It says one solution does not fit every senior. I am single with no wife, no children, nobody to haul around, so I drive a new Hyundai. That's all I need. Not the case from my brother who loves Chevy Tahos. I lived on fixed income. My brother does not. He works. He spends $55,000. I

spend $15,000. There you go. You pay for the bells and whistles. You pay for the prestige. Let's face it, admit it. If you're driving a luxury car, you're paying for the extra. So transportation, a lot of people, that's what it's all about, getting from here to there, and comfortably. And a Hyundai will get you from A to B comfortably, and fuel efficiently, I might add.

Yeah, absolutely. It's not exactly what that car looks like in the driveway. It's what you can afford. Exactly. It is not one-size-fits-all. It's very true. Okay, we have one from Karen, and Karen says I have a lease car,

and soon I will either turn it in or perhaps buy it. The price for me for purchasing the car is $17,000. $800. Is this a set price or will the dealership allow me to negotiate a lower price? Great question. The dealership has no say-so in it. It is up to the leasing company, which is typically a captive leasing company by the manufacturer for that dealer. And they have to, by law, they have to take the car to auction to sell it. And they can't sell you the car unless you exercise your option to purchase. They can't sell it to you at a different price. They will probably sell it to you at the option price if they think when they take it to the auction,

they're not going to get what they can get at the residual value, which is your option to buy price. But it's something if you check, all you leasing folks out there, look at your residual value, and as you approach the end of your lease, you might want to do some checking to find the wholesale market value of that car. If the wholesale market value of your lease car is actually lower than the residual value, then you don't want to exercise your option. If it's higher, then you might want to exercise the option, either keep the car or we call Flip It, sell it back to the dealer. If the wholesale, which is the market value being higher, you can make $1,000, but this is rare.

Usually the residual value is not a bargain price. All right, we're all caught up. Oh, great. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, you're a very important part of the show. So give us a call. We really love hearing from you. And don't forget, you can go to Your Anonymous Feedback.com. What's your opinion?

Give us a call for you at 877-960, and we're going to go to a regular caller that we love, and that's John from Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. On this Holy Day weekend, I'm very positive. for a change. People accuse me, John, you're so negative, but I'm positive on the auto world, and I'll tell you the reasons why. The first major thing is this seminar that's coming on Thursday. That's the beginning to me of a beginning of a attorney general looking

further into abuses of the automobile dealerships, especially seniors, poorer people, and minorities. I just feel very positive that this is the beginning of somebody that's concerned with seniors abuses. So I think that's a great sign. The second thing is, I think that dealer owners that listen to this show are examining, even if it's only one or two, what Earl said in the past about doing away with dealer fees and the success that he had with it. So I just feel positive on that, even if only one or two enforces that and find out the benefits that I think it'll spread further. And the third thing I want to say is I read that in the paper that there's an excess

because the manufacturers concentrated on SUVs and there's an excess of SUVs and certain dealerships. I don't know if that goes for South Florida, but the proof is my friend in the New York area has been shopping for a Honda SUV, and he finds at least three dealerships to go to, as Earl advises. He finds that not only that they have plenty of them, but they even have great color choices on them.

So does Earl say that that's true nationwide, that the manufacturers did produce extra SUV, because of demand, and it's probably a good time to buy with this so-called excess of dealer stocks? I think it's true. I mean, the manufacturers typically lag a little bit behind supply and demand. Stu raised his hand, meaning we probably have a whole lot of SUVs inventory. It's just a matter.

The other thing is, remember this, folks, the trucks and the SUVs are far more profitable to the car dealers and the cars. I mean, to the, well, the car dealers, but the manufacturers. a truck, a big, like a Chevrolet Silverado, General Motors will make a profit. General Motors will make a profit of like $10,000 when they sell it to the dealer. Now, the dealer can make another $10,000

when he sells it to you. That's a huge profit margin on a vehicle. Cars are almost break-even in many cases, and sometimes they're losers, Stu? Yeah, a good indicator of slowing sales when you start to see manufacturers start to put more incentives on a vehicle. And historically, I'm just speaking for,

because that's all I know. But we usually don't see a whole lot of incentives on the SUVs, and we see them on almost all of them now. Ravours have Highlanders, Tacomas and Tunders have. Well, Tunders usually had a bunch, and that's kind of a new thing, so that could be an indication of what you're talking about. John, you're spot on. That's a good observation.

I appreciate that. It's all starting with the good news on this Thursday with this seminar. I think it's the greatest thing, and it's good that the new Attorney General has an interest. Ashley Moody, let's give Ashley a shout out. Ashley Moody, the new Attorney General, Pam Bondi, the ex- Attorney General, no longer there.

But Ashley Moody, apparently, and from what Nancy read in the show earlier, Ashley Moody, Attorney General, is going out very seriously to defend the seniors of Florida. I mean, it's a smart political move, too. I've never understood why Pam Bondi didn't get it, because if you can get the seniors, If you can get the folks that are over 60 years of age behind you in the state of Florida, you're going to get elected, reelected, and reelected.

They want to hear someone that's going to stick up for them. Yeah. Just new. I'm sorry, John, I'm really happy that you're plugging the event with your call. It's really important for people to go and spread the word because even if you're not looking to get a car or something like that, just a big crowd, a big attendance. You read my mind. We'll send a message, especially to the attorney.

General's office that the seniors versus crime effort is a serious thing and people are interested in it. And the more people that show up, the more seriously it's taken, the more likely that change is going to be, you know, be affected by all this. So thanks for plugging it. And spread the word, tell your friends. I mean, just go in there just for a big crowd. So we send a message to the politicians and everybody. Yeah. And you know, I'll be there myself. I'm already pre-registered. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much, John. You know, this new administration has, you know, got some exciting things going on. It is going to be a great benefit to us.

And this here, a new mission that they're on for the Florida new senior protection. This team they put together is amazing. And I'll thank you again, John, for mentioning this event on Thursday, April the 25th at 2 o'clock. Exit 53. We'll see you all on Thursday. Thanks, John. Thank you, John. Go ahead.

877-960-99-60. You can give us a call, and I'm still waiting to hear from the ladies' first two new lady callers. You can win yourself $50. Give us a call. 877-960-99-60. We're going to go to our next caller, and she, too, is from Palm City. Her name is Linda. Good morning, Linda.

Good morning, Nancy, and everyone else. How are you all today? Great. Great. Well, it's been a while since I called, and I think that Earl might remember many years ago when I talked to him. Not many years, but my dad bought a 1999 transam from the dealership when it was down on Dixie in West Palm. And anyway, it was with the WS6 option on it, so it had a LS1. motor in it. And this past week, it bit the dust. A valve spring broke and now there's some

other noise coming out of the engine compartment. So I'm faced with having to make that decision of do I buy, do I lease? And I need some guidance because I'm a single woman and dad's not here to give me a little bit of guidance. So, you know, I could help me out? one of the one on my agenda speaking to the group seniors versus crime this coming Thursday we are talking about that now one on my agenda is an item that says rule of thumb buy the car rather than lease it now that isn't to say that you can't get a good price on a lease we just talked to a gentleman from New Jersey earlier who was really doing his homework he's a very savvy guy he's shopping and comparing he is getting a very good

price on the car that he's leasing. I recommend in general that you buy rather than lease. For two reasons, you can get just as good a price or deal on a purchase as a lease, and there are far fewer areas that you can be taken advantage of. It's not as complicated. When you lease a car, there's probably three times as many hidden pitfalls that can sneak up and bite you. with a purchase is fairly straightforward and simple. So, Linda, I just recommend that you shop that car with three different car dealerships of the same make, the exact same car, apples and apples comparison, same MSRP,

and by letting them know that you're going to buy from the dealer that gives you the lowest out-the-door price, and I repeat, out-the-door, including whatever they want to add on there, like dealer fees, be sure that's the price you can sign the check for, prices from three different dealers. That will give you a very good price. You have to do the same thing if you have a trade in to get the best price when you trade in separately from the purchase of the car. And, of course, your financing is important, too, if you're going to finance.

But I'd stay away from leasing as my recommendation and go with a purchase. Okay, and I'm probably going to have to go with a used car, I think. I don't think I'm going to be able to go with a brand new car. so okay well that really is a big help and I sure do appreciate it and you know thanks for the your Linda let me say one more thing if you're going to buy a used car auto trader is a good place to find a large selection and by putting your zip code in you'll be able to locate the car of your choice

in that area if you can afford a later model certified car that's the way to go a certified car that is hopefully maybe even little factory warranty remaining on it try to try to do that use car you've got to also be sure you get a Carfax report carfax report very important it should be offered to you free by the dealer that will tell you if the car has been involved in the accidents it'll tell you if there are any safety recalls outstanding and the Carfax report also will have a list of the mechanical history of the car most likely and then finally the finally thing and probably

the most important thing if you're buying a used car is to take it to your mechanic, not the mechanic of the dealership you buy it from. Take it to an independent third-party mechanic. You might have to pay them $100 or even $150. It'll be a good investment. If you do that to be sure the car hasn't been in a flood, has been an accident. There's some things Carfax reports miss. If you do that, the used cars are better by than a new car if you go through that exercise. Well, I think I might take a drive down to Earl Stewart Toyota and see what you have on your use for a lot.

Thank you so much, Linda. You know, with all these tools that we just mentioned, you will really protect yourself. And knowledge is power, as I always say, and shop online before you visit a dealership. There's so many rules of thumb, and I thank you for the phone call. And I'd also like to add all those rules of thumb apply at Earl Stewart Toyota, too. so don't just listen to the advice, and it applies. You still got to check the car facts. You still got to compare everything.

I mean, we're good people, but you've got to watch out for number one. There's two. There's pitfalls out there for dealers that are just bad guys that want to take advantage of you. There's also pitfalls by dealers like us that sometimes make mistakes. So there's no car dealer out there anywhere that doesn't make mistakes. So if you're a good, sophisticated shopper, you can keep them smart and honest. Yeah, and that used car is worth its weight in gold. It's the best way to go, as we all said.

Okay, I think we have some text here, don't we still? Yes, we do. Let's see here. The first one is, this is going to be for Rick. It could be me, but I don't know the answer. This is from Wayne. He says, can the economy sport mode be set to sport on startup on his 2017 round four? In other words, there is a driving mode called sport.

Usually you have to push a button once you get in the car, correct? Correct? I'm pretty certain with that you have to push it each time. So there's no way to have the default setting? I don't think there is. That I would have to dig through the books to find out. But I think that's one where you have to activate it into sport mode. Okay. All right. So the next one is from Anne-Marie, who, her second text of the day. Well, I'll confess something. Her first text came in a couple of days ago when we checked this on the air. So Anne-Rie says, good morning. I tend to get a new car every day.

every 10 to 15 years. Consequently, I'm not up on the latest automotive features. I understand the new cars are basically computers on wheels. If you have a new car, is it still safe to use jumper cables if the battery runs down? Or would you risk killing all the computers? Thanks. And she says, P.S., thanks for the kind of words. Like John, I'm also registered for Thursday's talk on the 25th, and she's looking forward to it.

So we'll get to meet Amory. Oh, thank you. So what's the deal, Rick? Jumper cables are completely safe to use. However, you have to, for any car, be very, very careful. Do not accidentally cross the wires. Yes. In other words, do not hook up red to the negative and black to the positive.

If you're having someone else help you, they're going to hook up to one, you're going to hook up to the other battery. Treat it gentle and say this color to the positive terminal, this one to the negative and make sure that they do it the same way because if you do what's called cross jumping the main thing it will do the first thing is it will blow out several diffusable links what of your color that are very expensive uh that's why cables usually one very dark color and one okay makes it very easy which one okay so the red and the green right red and green And black.

Well, usually red and black. Red and black, okay. So the black is the one. But they might be orange and black. They might be yellow and black. The black's usually negative, right? Right. Usually the darkest black color, the darkest color, goes to the negative cable and just make sure that

you're getting hooked up straight because that can be a very expensive prospect. And yes, it can potentially blow computers out if you accidentally cross jump it. As long as you do it straight, you'll be fine. I got a follow up question now. hybrids now aren't those a little bit more challenging to figure out like is the battery sometimes in a different place that is a fact that a lot of the hybrids the battery may be back in the back of the car in the trunk or under the hatchback such as in the Prius gotcha okay uh one actually came from alan napier our collision expert and auto insurance expert and he's had a comment when we were talking

about SUV sales he says when gas prices go up SUV sales go down and that is true that's pretty Pretty crazy how quickly that happens. You'll start reading headlines with a $3 plus gas and suddenly all the hybrids start going off the shelves. Yeah, I mean, who knows? I mean, if we have a crisis in the Middle East, if Venezuela disappears, if there's only thing.

Yeah, I just, it is amazing. And I think that it's kind of a little crazy right now. The mixture we have of trucks, fans, and SUVs is, I have a personal pet peeve for that because I like cars. I like the way cars perform. I drive a car as opposed to an SUV and I can't see anything

because I look around me on all sides. There are these big high things and I'm flying blind now. Don't like that. I wish more people drove cars. My personal pet peeve. Absolutely. I agree.

I used to wonder like what was the psychology of somebody at the gas pump. They saw how expensive the gas that does it. I'm going over there to buy a, you know, economy car. But I think if there's a bunch of people ready to buy a car and you just see that

you get sticker shock and you say, my next one's going to be a hybrid. Well, folks, I won't even apologize. I'm a pickup, man. I like my Tacoma pickup. There you get. Get an electric one in the future. Okay. We've got a question from Phil and Stort. Should I wait for the low tire pressure

symbol on my dash to fill my tires or am I causing increased wear before then? Great question. Increase wear before then. Great question. Absolutely causing increased wear. Yes. How often should you check?

Check your tire pressures at least minimum once a month. I recommend two or three times a month. Once a week is best. Yeah, absolutely. All right, and that brings us up. We're all kind of a text. I'm a little overkill, but I... That's utopian.

I take very good care of my vehicles. Excess wearing terror on the tires. And Alan, Alan's asked us to mention the Easter egg hunt over at Kelsey Park. Oh. That's going to take place today. and it's from 10 until 12 o'clock over at Kelsey Park. That's in Lake Park. It is definitely in Lake Park.

And that's all our good friends in Lake Park. We wish them a happy Easter egg gun. Exactly. There's going to be a special appearance by Easter Bunny. Really? So there you go. Is it going to be Alan in a costume? I think it is.

So that's right on US1, where Park Avenue intersects U.S. 1. Park Avenue. Park Avenue. That's right. Okay. we're going to go to Ollie. He's been holding, and he's calling from Boca. A cat is on the phone?

A cat has called the show. That's impossible. You don't have cats. You don't know. Cats, yes, cats will be everywhere. We grew up with cats. Did you hear that? Did you hear the special sad?

Yeah, I hear you're Ollie over there. Come on, Ollie. I know it's Doug. Okay, Ollie, what do you have to say for yourself? Good morning. Good morning. That's it? No.

No, you know, Ollie is a seat. He's a seat. senior citizen, he's being discriminated a lot. He's 20 years old, which is very old. He needs to be out there next Thursday. Now, is he going to have time to come to the event on Thursday?

Yeah, where is that? I'm going to bring them. Well, I'm glad you asked. It's in West Palm Beach. It's an exit 53 west off of I-95. That's Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, 900 Brandy Wine Road. And the United Memphis Church has offered us, actually we rented it, for $500.

We're in the meeting hall at the United Methodist Church. They call the gathering place. Gathering place. So whether you're coming north or south, you'll take I-95 to exit 53, which is Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, west, and it's 900 Brandywine Road.

Two o'clock on Friday. Love to have Ollie and all his kitty cat senior friends there as well as humans. And everything's free, Doug. It's free. We could stream it and have all his cat friends watch it. There you go. And Earl's going to be giving each one of the guests a copy of Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer.

First 500 attending. So sign up and you can call 844-3461 and leave a 561, 844-3-4-6-1, and you can reserve a seat and the first 500 get a free copy of Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer. The Attorney General is partnered up with us. and it's going to be an amazing event. You don't want to miss it. Okay, and I have a complaint about, well, first of all, gas prices. I use premium, and premium has gone up to $3.42 a gallon.

Yikes. That's really expensive, and I don't know why gas prices are rising. Does your car call for a premium? Or do you just prefer to use it? Yes, it doesn't. Yeah, it's the Civic SI. So that's what I was going to ask you. Can I use a lower octane on that car?

Doug, I'll answer for Rick. I know he's not in the answer this, but I'm going to answer for it. You can experiment. He's staring at you. If they say recommended, you positively can't use lower octane. If they say required, you're supposed to use that octane. But I say to heck with that, whether it's required or recommended, I would still try one notch below.

And if you don't hear any pings or noises, if the car doesn't appear to have any problem, just keep on using it. You're not going to hurt the car. Okay, cool. And let us not. I'll try the medium grade. Yeah, try the medium and see what happens.

And you're not going to blow the engine. So if it sounds like it's going pop-pop, ping, ping, then you want to go move it back up to the premium again. But you're not going to avoid your warranty or anything like that. One more thing I button started. I mean, every car I've seen has gone to that, and I think I don't like it. I'd rather just have my choice at least to have a key or, you know, but the push button to me could be a hazard in the future, but that's just my opinion.

Well, I think... Makes them getting used to. That's for sure. A lot of people agree with you. and I really appreciate the plug for the meeting, and we're looking forward to seeing you and Ollie at the meeting on Thursday. Thanks so much, Doug. Have a great day, guys.

Thank you. By the word, bring some extra cats. Okay, we're going to go to Julio, and he's calling from Miami. Good morning. Welcome to the show. Hello. Hi, Julio.

Yeah, oh, yeah, I'm on now. Okay. Nice to talk to you guys. Oh, thank you. I have a question for you. For Rick, I think you make a mistake when you say how to hook up a battery to, you know, to start a car. Because in Cuba, I was a tech, there was a tech in Cuba. So I was told.

Do we lose you, Julio? You faded out there. You said you were a tech in Cuba, and you said you thought you. thought Rick had made an error in terms of, I think we're trying, I think we disconnected and we're trying to get Julio back on the line. Are the color codes universal? I mean, all over the world, would there be a different? It's not really the color because jumper cables, they will make them in any color combination.

I've seen green and white. I've seen outrageous color combinations. It's more the communication, but I believe the problem. point that Julio is probably going to make is that you generally recommended to go to the positive negative terminal on one battery, then to the positive terminal, and then to a ground source like the engine block or some other ground source on the car, on the second car. And the main reason for that is because when you hook up that last connection, quite often there will be a little bit of spark. And it's usually not a good idea to have sparks or

around the battery because batteries produce hydrogen gas naturally and a spark and hydrogen gas is a very bad combination. So there is a potential for a small spark and a fire. Okay, so let me understand that. So that may be what he's bringing out. So you're saying you positive or negative on one car and then positive or negative to ground on the other car? Well, the positive cable you would hook to the positive terminal of the battery.

Yeah. and then the other cable you would go like to a good ground source on one of the car on the other car right that would be the last connection you would make because that final connection is where you might get a little bit of spark i got you okay did we get Julio back or do we have another call I think we might have lost Julio holio if you're listening give us a call back uh we're going to be talking to sigh I believe that's Howard's friend and uh Cy's calling from Jupiter good morning sorry good morning i'm calling to thank earl and specifically rick for helping me i called last week

trying to increase the volume on the clicker when you open the door and rick was able to do that for me and i really wanted to tell you you guys go above and beyond uh any dealer that i've ever dealt with and i'm very happy to have purchased the car you know at earl stewart i i did have In addition to thanking you, I had one other question. I've just noticed this is a four-month-old Toyota X-L-E-2019 that there were a couple of lines developing in the windshield, and it doesn't appear that there are scratches from the outside because when I feel the windshield, there's no scratch,

and when it's not on the inside, and I'm just wondering what that might be. Rick, what do you think? It's hard to say without seeing them. What you might try, and this sounds a little silly, but try a little bit of just a good cleaner wax, like a carnuba wax, and just try and polish that in a small area and see if that makes those lines go away.

Okay. If it's a defecting windshield, then you should be able to get that replaced. Oh, absolutely. And you could just have an... us look at it or another dealer and we can we can make a judgment pretty quickly on that is it impairing your visibility in any way is it so is it so slight that it doesn't bother your driving or does it actually impair your your vision no it's on the it's on the passenger's side but i'm concerned that if it's it is a defect that it may you know

spread so i will do what you suggested and then if it doesn't take care of it maybe i'll bring it in and ask for Rick, would that be okay? Sure. Okay. All right, then hopefully I can take care of it. If not, you know, early next week, I'll just come in. Can I just call you, Rick, and as you did, to help me the other time, you could just come out and look at it, and then we can make an appointment

if it's something that needs to be followed up on? Of course. Great. Okay. Thank you, thank you. Thank you very much. I'd like to extend a personal invitation to, you and Howard. Hopefully you'll be at the senior versus crime this coming Thursday, April

the 25th at 2 o'clock. You know all about it? Oh, no, no, but Howard said he's going, so I will be there with him. Okay. You will? Thank you very much. Bring all your buddies. Bring all your buddies. Thank you, Shai. Thank you so much. Bring the gang. Thank you. Okay. You know, real quick, Rick, back to what you were talking about, about those jumper cables. You have to have both cars turned off. Is that correct? You want them both off and then the car that has the good battery have that engine running before you try to start the other one. Okay. Okay, we cleared that up. 877-960. We'd love to hear from you. Ladies, first two new lady callers. You win yourself $50 and we have a whole lot to get to. Yeah, Rick's got a couple text. We have one from Ernesto

Ortego, he's been waiting just a little bit here from YouTube. He's asking on his 2009 Kia Optima, when changing the transmission fluid, does it need a filter and gasket to be replaced? And the answer to that, Ernesto, is yes, there is a filter inside underneath the pan. So you'll want to make sure that the gasket and that filter get changed out when you change that fluid on your Kia. Very good. It's a very good maintenance. thing to make sure you get that done. And also from Guy Larrabee, he says over the last 30 years, I've driven close to a million trouble-free miles on four forerunners, the last one being a V8.

And he wants to know, why did they stop producing the V8 in the four-runners? Stu, any guess on that one? I think the answer is just more efficient six-cylinders and four-cylinders and the horsepower. they're getting out of a certain number size engine. Just the pressure also on getting the overall the whole fleet of MPGs down. There's a cafe requirements.

Yeah, I mean, VH are a thing of the past, and that's just the way it is. There are a few left. You drive one. Yeah, the Land Cruiser. And Lexus is big Lexus. Sequoia. Yeah.

Tundra, Sequoia. Yeah. All right. You caught up with your text? That was the ones we had here for YouTube. I got some over here. I got one that's a little funny, but it's a serious comment. It says, you wrong, Colonel Sanders.

I guess this is about the call from Doug. So it's for the 40 cents per gallon difference on probably a 12-gallon tank, I think he's talking about going down to the grade of gasoline lower than premium. So for the 40 cents per gallon difference on probably a 12-gallon tank, because he drives a civic, he said, I'd keep using the premium. I wouldn't risk a warranty rejection for $4.80 a tank, in my humble opinion, of course. he's burning less than 20 tanks a year. His annual savings are less than 100.

So, valid point. Well, he makes a good point. I will say this. Again, I will relate to my experience of 50-plus years as a dealer. I've never known any of the manufacturers. I've been dealers for a lot of manufacturers ever reject a warranty because of the type of gasoline that the person used. And if they ask you, how are they supposed to know anyway?

Rick. 25 years is a mechanic dealing with Toyota warranty. and fixing cars over, you know, thousands of cars. I have never yet had Toyota tell me, oh, we're, you know, this warranty is void on this car because of the fuel the customer was using. The only time that we've had anything similar is the customer complains about a drivability issue, and we are asked to check with them to make sure if they're having an issue, are they using the proper rating of fuel? And also in that Honda, just like in any other car, if you use the lower grade of fuel, you're not going to hear much of a knock or a ping anyways from that pre-ignition

because the spark the knock sensors in the car will automatically detect it and retard the timing on the car. Rick is moving into his high-tech mode now. I'm sorry, I was drooling. Well, the fact of the matter is, you'll never even hear it. Yeah, exactly. You may not feel the sports car portion of the car quite as much. Yeah, the quantum theory is. But your car is going to drive along just fine on that lower grade of fuel.

Yes. I will admit that it is an intimidating thing when you see that. It's definitely like there's an anxiety factor there. When you're like, am I going to screw my car up? Well, think about this. If you're a manufacturer, you want fewer complaints from your cars. You don't want bringing them in and asking for a warrant. work. You want the cars to run well. You probably have a better chance for a car running well,

even though it's a slightly better chance by using the high test. The manufacturer doesn't have to buy your gas. You have to buy your gas. So if you're on a budget and you have to pay a lot more for gas than you feel like you can afford, go ahead and test the lower octane. The manufacturer is going to tell you to use the higher octane. Tell them to go jump in a lake. Use the lower octane. Jump in a lake. We have a couple of texts coming in on the stew side. Looks like one is a direct response to what you said, so I'm going to start to that. He says, what is your motivation for advising the lower octane,

so you can get them in your service department and recommend a fuel line flush? Caught me. Oh, that was the evil dealer in me coming out. Wow, this is, oh. Well, that's, I can, let me just speak on my dad. That's not why he's doing that. He's really just trying to be reasonable.

But this is another, wow, this is, everything's lining up. So the next one that came in, well, it was whatever. You call yourself the recovering car dealer. That implies that there is still some bad in you. What do you have to do to become fully recovered? That's an anonymous. You never fully recover. There's a Japanese expression called Kaizen.

Stu's eyes rolled back in the set every time I say Kaizen. I name my cat, Kaiser. Because no matter how good you are, you can be better. And none of this is perfect. And I've got a lot of recovering to do. I started out years ago by stopping some bait and switch practices and things like that. I had a dealer fee 14 years ago. And I only went to, I only stopped the Haggle hassle process.

Seven years ago. So there's always things we can do to get better and better. And that's what we all strive to do. But I'm done. I definitely got a little bit evil in me. Just ask Nancy. Yes, most definitely. And, you know, to the text, what's the gentleman or lady's name?

It was anonymous. Anonymous, okay. To your text, we do have a special padded room. And periodically, I put Earl in there and I slap him around. It takes place for about 15 to 20 minutes every morning. And then he comes around and he is the recovering car dealer. Recovering. Yeah, for you folks out there that are recovering,

of various private that's the whole idea recovering plus that rolls off the tongue but recovering versus I'm the recovered car dealer

sometimes you need help yeah okay are we cut up on all our text on both sides I had a little thing I wanted to talk about and

something that's kind of a pet peeve with me as a car dealer and some of the manufacturers out there including Toyota and Honda have a policy that requires

that you not advertise cars below the dealer invoice now on the surface that sounds reasonable for people that don't understand the way cars are priced but if you understand the way cars are priced it's a bad thing in the invoice built within the invoice there is a large profit invoices on everything else are the cost of the person that's selling the refrigerator the invoice on a on a refrigerator, GE refrigerator, is what the GE dealer paid General Electric to buy that refrigerator. The invoice on a car is not what.

The dealer paid the manufacturer. There's a build-in thousands of dollars of profit on most invoices. There's some kickbacks there. And there's a lot. And there come from kickbacks, wholebacks, all sorts of shenanigans that go on between the manufacturer and the car dealer. So I used to explain this all the time until a few years ago when suddenly the manufacturers came up with this idea.

Honda was the first making it illegal, and that's the wrong word, but Honda requires their dealers to advertise all their cars above invoice. And pretty soon, a bunch of other manufacturers, including Toyota, Mazda, I believe, I'm not sure of all the manufacturers that do this. But I don't like that. because when you show me an invoice on anything, if I'm buying a lawnmower, if I'm buying an iPhone,

and you show me the Apple invoice at the Apple store, I'm going to think that that's what the iPhone cost. If you show me the invoice on a car and I wasn't a car dealer, I didn't understand what really goes on, I might believe that's what the dealer paid for the car. If the dealer told me,

I'm going to sell you this car for $500 over invoice, I might say, that's a heck of a good deal. But what I would find out, maybe never find out, that he made not $500 on the car, but $4,500 because there were $4,000 packed into the car invoice. So when you tell car dealers, they cannot advertise the price,

most of the cars that car dealers sell are sold below their invoice. Competition, just good old fancy competition, keeps the price below invoice. But you can't advertise the price, nope, below invoice. And I think that's a shame. I think that's a terrible thing,

and I should be stopped. I agree. We're going to go to North Carolina. Good morning, Rod. Good morning. Welcome. Crash dummies up here in North Carolina. Hi, I'd all.

And very happy Easter to you. Happy Easter. Happy Easter. What can we do for? I wanted to call and just say a quick high and a little cool up here. It's nice. Is it? Yesterday, but like 34 this morning.

It's cold here too. All right. I appreciate what part of North Carolina? What part of North Carolina in? Right up there in the mountains there, what they call Fines Creek. Oh, fantastic. Well, enjoy that cool weather. Thanks for the call.

And call us anytime. We love to hear from you. any problems with your car or any suggestions or comments on the show, we'd love to have you call back. All right. Thanks, and best all. Thanks, Rod. Thank you.

Take care of, Ron. Thanks for staying in touch. Enjoy that beautiful weather in the mountains of North Carolina. I love Asheville. Oh, Earl and I spent some, your dad and I spent some time in Asheville. We had a great time. What a beautiful place. You got to drive up this fall and check out the changing leaves.

When was the last time you did that? Oh, gosh. It's been a long time. We were both kids. Okay, 877, great suggestions, Stu. 877-960, 960. And don't forget you can text us, you can rate our mystery shopping report

that we're going to get to in a little while. And ladies again, $50 for the first two new lady callers. You know, we were talking about seniors and the fact that we're doing this seminar on Thursday at 2 o'clock for the benefit of the seniors. of South Florida. Nancy and I both had a talk with a woman from the Port St. Lucie area. I won't mention her last name. Her first name was Margaret. And she's a widow twice. As a matter of fact, her son also passed away. She's in her 90s. And she leased a vehicle. It was a one-pay

lease. And a one-pay lease is a suspicious thing to me. It's where you pay all the lease payments up front very few times does this occur and there's not really a good reason to do it sometimes people may think when they are making one big lump sum payment they may be buying the car and i think that uh i've had conversations with her about the return of the car and uh she wanted to know if she was getting any money back when she returned the car, and I had to explain to her no. She didn't understand the lease. So it's a situation that reinforced to Nancy and me how important it is for a lot of folks out there

that are in their 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. In South Florida, we have a lot of people that are active out there on the highways, buying cars, driving cars in their 80s and 90s. people that were born in the 40s and the 50s grew up in a different era and especially women and there are a lot more women seniors because of the fact of the longevity of man versus woman the women's longevity is about 10 years 12 years longer

so we have a lot of widows out there that are being victimized in South Florida it's a sad thing to say to think that that car dealers would deliberately target elderly people, especially widows, it does happen. They're a soft target because a lot of these women that are going into car dealerships today never bought a car before. A lot of them, their husbands passed away recently, and they are making a large-scale purchase for the first time in their lives. Because remember, back in the 40s, 50s, 60s, and even 70s, the man was the person

that, you know, made the decision purchasing a house, purchasing a car. Not the same. The the way it should be, but that's the way it was. And so here we are seeing so many seniors being victimized. And this woman that I spoke to was, we're trying to help her any way we can. Matter of fact, she won't be able to drive after she turns her car in. And so we're explaining to her how to use Uber, which is a great solution for a lot of seniors that can't drive anymore. And she had a three-year-old vehicle with 4,000 miles on it. And you can imagine how little she used that car for the past three years. The expense of owning that vehicle, in this case, leasing that vehicle, was huge compared to what

she could do to just be able to call an Uber to have her take her to public, take her to the doctor's office, to the pharmacy. And with Uber, they even have a special plan where you can do a monthly charge, which reduces the cost even more. Rick? It seems to me that the cost of the insurance alone on that car would almost equal what Uber would have cost her for what she would. Yeah, the cost of insurance on a lease car is even higher.

So that's the type of thing we'll be talking about this coming Thursday at 2 o'clock. You folks in the south or the north, take I-95 and get off at Exit 53, exit west to Brandy Wine Road, and you will be there at the United Methodist Church, the Fellowship Hall? The Gathering Place. Gathering place. I could remember the name of it. We've rented the hall there. for speaking at the United Memphis Church.

So exit I-95, number 53, off-exit, off of 95, Palm Beach Lake Boulevard, real close. When you go west, it's almost right there, Brandy and Wide Road 900, and we'll be there at 2 o'clock. Nancy and I and Rick, Rick will be there. If you have any questions on the mechanics of cars, the computerization of cars, Rick will be there to answer that. Nancy are going to talk about how not to be taken advantage of when you buy early security. car, something that is very, should be paramount in the mind of everybody, especially the seniors. Yeah, and back to Margaret, special hello to you, Margaret, if you're listening, and I'll tell you what, what a delight it was to speak with her, and her knowledge, her laughter was really

very contagious, 95 years old, and she was sharp. So, Stu, I have a question for you. as far as reservations are concerned for the seminar that could you give that out absolutely just to give us a heads up on who's coming so make sure we have enough books and that way you can reserve your copy of your book if you're r svp by emailing sandra v that's s a n d r a v i'll hold up the book at e s toota dot com and that's the book that you get actually it's going to be a soft cover it's not the hard cover um but email sandra v at e s toyota dot com and that's the book that you get actually it's going to be a soft cover it's not the hardcover, but email

Sandra V at E.S.toida.com. Let her know how many people will be attending with you, and hopefully you'll get a copy of Confessions of a recovering Cardiola. There you go, folks. And as long as I'm holding up the book, Rudy Q. The Doggies, if you want to buy this book,

you can buy it on Amazon, and 100% of the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. There you go. Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And I'm not talking about just a profit, Everything that we get paid for this book, it goes to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And Big Dog Ranch Rescue is the largest no-kill shelter for doggies in the state of Florida. And we found homes for something like 2,000 dogs last year.

And we're going to do it again this year. So Big Dog Ranch Rescue, buy a book, learn how not to be ripped off by a car dealer and learn how not to get ripped off and maybe save a doggy at the same time. That's right. And I just want to make a point. You don't have to RSVP. You don't have to email us. You can just show up.

The reason we ask for the RSVPs, we don't make sure that if you get in line for that book, you get your copy. And like Stu said, you know, if that's your prerogative, but we will not be turning anyone away. You can be sure of that. Yeah. We have plenty of space.

Plenty of space. Yeah, we definitely have plenty of space. And that is Thursday, Thursday, April the 25th at 2 p.m. and we have partnered up with the Attorney General and Ashley Moody is going to do a whole lot for us and be there. You can learn a whole lot. We still have some time for a phone call or two, so I might want to give that number out before the Mystery Shopping Report again.

Yeah, give us a call, folks, 877-960-99-60 and tell us what you think about your, you know, latest purchase, lease, insurance, anything at all. We're here to talk to you and share a little knowledge with you, and maybe you can teach us a thing or two. Also, remember, youranonymousfeedback.com. Youranonymousfeedback.com would like to hear from you, would like you to tell us how we can improve the show, what each one of us can do to be better at what we do.

Yeah, some people are a bit afraid to criticize publicly, and they feel better. Anonymous is good. You have an anonymous tip line for tax cheats, for crimes, and we have one for the show. You. Anonymous Feedback. You're anonymousfeedback.com. I just a little bit of information that I learned.

I learned something new on the show every day, and I had a text from a customer out there. That wasn't a customer. It was just a listener to the show. And he had a Nissan Versa, and he said the owner's manual told him it. change the oil every 5,000 miles. And I thought you change your oil every 10,000 miles on all the cars. And Rick reminded me that we even had a couple of Toyotas that had a difference. So there are a few cars out there that have a oil change recommendation more frequent than 10,000 miles.

And 1,700 or 5,000. But 99% of them are still the 10,000. But go with the owner's manual. Whatever your owner's manual says on whatever it may car you have, observe that. important that you report with the owner of any of the only say probably says 10,000 miles or six months

is the most common. So give us a call of 877-9-60 and we're cut to the mystery shopping report coming up pretty quick. We mystery shop Del Rey Honda and Del Rey and they're an interesting dealership because they're owned by the Berkshire Hathaway Corporation.

The Berkshire Hathaway Corporation owns quite a few dealerships and Warren Buffett is one of my heroes. I think I think he's a hero to a lot of people. He's a good man, very wealthy man, one of the few extremely wealthy people that really cares about customers and employees,

and he's really a good person. So it'll be an interesting report. Oh, we have Julio back from Miami. Oh. Good morning, Julio. Good morning, Julio. Hey, good morning for you. Welcome back.

I'm sorry for my problem with my cell phone. the battery died so I'm calling you from a different film now it's a pleasure talking to you because you make a lot of sense and I want to tell you a little story about when I was in Cuba

I was driving my 1957 Chevy and for some reason the battery, you know, I couldn't didn't start it. So my friend came with a 1951 Dodge, way through a Dodge and he tried to jump

and the battery exploded now Rick Rick see if you could figure out why the battery exploded I am going to guess that the last connection you made was directly on the battery and you had some hydrogen gas

build up around that battery wow that's cool sorry but you're wrong that's really Rick I got you it's the reason why listen to this The 1951

Dodge was a 6 volt The 1957 Chevy was a 12 volt 51 Dodge I got you You got me, Leo, you got me good with that one Yes The 501 Yep

Because when you're trying to charge off Trying to jump start a 12 volt off of a 6 volt it yeah you will you will damage that six-volt battery yeah it exploded completely exploded I was lucky I didn't get hey Julio I got another question for you

go ahead please you made a mistake yeah you made a mistake when you say jumping one car to another you cannot put the cables on the cables you have to put the negative to the ground on the car Not my English, you know.

You are very correct. You know what I'm talking about, right, man? You know English better than me, okay? The last connection that you want to make should be to a good ground source, not directly on the cable. And the reason for that is because it'll sometimes throw a spark, and if there's hydrogen gas around that battery, that could cause a fire. So that's why they recommend to make that last connection to a good ground source, something like the engine block or something that's just a little ways away from the battery. Yeah, you just have to check and make sure it's a good ground and not on the, what do you call that thing from the battery stick, the terminals?

The terminals, yep. Okay, I got the word, the same Spanish. Okay, thank you very much, and it's a pleasure talking to you guys. I have a question I got to ask you one thing what engine did you have in that 57 Bel Air or the 57 Chevy yeah yeah okay it was a straight 6

oh it was a not the Bel Air no no you talk about the Chevy right I had the 8 oh you had the 283 in there 283 in there 28 no it was it was wait a second It wasn't, I think the 262 or something.

I think it was before the 283. They made a smaller engine, I think. Maybe I'm wrong. Oh, in 57, I'm pretty sure the Chevy only had the 283. You two guys get together after the show. Why don't you run it down in Miami? Yeah, we'll get a couple cups of coffee going. We get some Bustello going and hang out with that.

Yeah. Thanks so much, Julio. We loved hearing from you. And thank you for taking the time. It's a pleasure talking to you guys. Call again, please. Have a great weekend. Good day.

We're going to go to Ken who's holding, and he's calling from Lake Worth. Hi, Ken. Good morning, Ken. Good morning. How are you? We're great. Welcome. Thank you for your service.

I'm a regular listener. Great. And I really have learned a lot and enjoy your show. I got a couple of questions this morning. Okay. I have a 210 Prius. I think it's level three, they call it, and I'm the original owner, and I'm down here in Lake Worth for most of the year, but part of the year that Prius sits without being started in a garage up in Ohio with zero degrees at time. and if I can get my kids to do anything for me

I try to get them over there to at least start it up once or twice during the winter and I notice that when it is started after sitting for a while there's not a smooth start I don't know if it's because the oil is not distributed in the engine and when it starts it starts

extremely rough which I think is not a normal found, but that sound goes away instantaneously. And I always say that it takes time for the oil to get up into the engine. Am I understanding that right, or is there something I should be concerned about? No, you are exactly correct. It takes a couple seconds for the oil pressure to build up, which that's not.

It won't hurt anything. And it also takes a couple seconds. When the car has been sitting for a couple weeks or more, all the fuel that's in the fuel rail, the pressure has slowly worked its way back to the tank. So it takes it a second or two just basically to work the air bubbles out and smooth out that fuel flow. So it's a completely normal thing. We do usually recommend that at least once a week you try to get someone to start the engine. and let it run for 10 or 15, 20 minutes just to keep it exercised.

But if not, well, you know, you do the best you can on them. Yeah, yeah, that's totally right. And, you know, it's been by far one of the best cars I've ever owned, but I came off of a 99 RAV, which I had for 18 or 19 years, and then the Prius. And then my second question is I rewarded myself with a new RX-3. F-sport. And the concern is with all the electronics on that car, leaving it sit for three, four months

with maybe being started once during that time period, is it doing any harm to the electronics not working or the engine? The only thing you've really got to worry about there is the battery itself. And my recommendation is if the car is parked inside a garage, it gives you the perfect chance to hook up a trickle charger. These are like $10 or $15 from Walmart. You hook it up to the battery, and it simply plugs into a wall socket. And it's a very tiny battery charger that just puts a little bit of flow into the battery just to keep it maintained. Is that safe enough that I wouldn't have to worry about it, not being checked during the winter month?

Absolutely. Okay. I've talked to a gentleman at the Lexus garage, and, of course, they want to put one in for like $300. And I said, well, wait a minute. These things only cost like $20, and he goes, hey, it's Alexis. It's still got a 12-volt battery. Yeah, I take that Lexus years to the Toyota dealer up there, Ken. You'll save about 50% of what they're charging at the Lexus dealership.

Those Lexus dealerships overcharge terribly. Yep. Right, right, right. But I understand that, and it's just an amazing car. I love both my Toyota and my Lexus, but my General Motors neighbors want to all assassinate me, but they have to get over that. But you guys, thank you again so much for the information.

and accepting my call. Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you, Ken. Stay in touch. Well, we're going to be going to the mystery shopper report. Or we have another text. We've got another text. We've got time.

Go ahead. We just have a comment on our Facebook live feed. It's from Edlin. He's a longtime listener and actually viewer because he watches the video. Edlin says, we have a dealer here in Georgia who's still advertising cars with Dakota recalls. I had a firsthand experience, he said. Yeah, it's terrible. I was so excited when United, when USA Today put it the headlines last week about the criminality almost of what car dealers are doing to continue to sell cars with dangerous recalls.

It should be illegal and the fact they can advertise them, not disclose in most cases the recall at all, and these cars, they can kill you and just a shame. I thought when USA Today did it to the headline, front page had. line, somebody, some legislature, somewhere, some politician somewhere, would say, hey, I got to take a stand against this. Instead, they got other stuff they need to talk about, more important than the lives of the drivers of their constituents. Let's get to, if we don't have any other text, let's get to our mystery shopping report. Let's tell the folks that they can vote on the mystery shopping report.

They can simply give us a text at 772-497-6530. So we did a mystery shop of Del Rey Honda. It's also a Costco Auto Program. And your vote will help us decide whether they go on our recommended dealer list or do not buy from this dealer list. So your vote will count and like to have you text it in after I read this report. Tell me what you think about it. Last week, we mystery shop, Edmores, Del Rey, Toyota,

and the Costco Auto Program. Specifically, we investigated how well Delray Toyota handled a customer who was referred to them through the Costco Auto program. Ed Morse passed with flying colors. They went strictly by the book. The salesperson was an authorized dealer contact. The member's only price sheet was presented, and the price was honored. Did everything right. Price was also very good.

Even after accounting for over $1,000 in dealer fees, the deal represented a very small, $500 market. to the dealership. That is a mini-deal we call it in the business, a very, very short-profit deal. Sometimes we call it a vomit deal because it makes you want to vomit. Exactly. Of course we have issues with the dealer fees

that had more del Rey Toyota. We don't like dealer fees by any name anywhere, but everybody doesn't. So we really don't dig car dealers anymore and we shop them about their dealer fees. We gig them for deceptive behavior and deceptive advertising. They had, Del Rey Toyota, had an $899 administrative fee, which is a dealer fee, a $199.75, electronic filing fee, which is a dealer fee, and an $85 tag agency fee. Dealer fee. Dealer fee has become a generic term. Dealer fee is kind of like saying aspirin. It can be bare,

It can be Walmart, it can be CVS, aspirin. They just name it different stuff to fool you to thinking it's a government fee. So that's the way it goes and that's the way it is in Florida and a lot of other states too. As I mentioned last week, if Costco Auto Program would modify the program to require the dealers to provide the member prices up front by email, the program would be much better. Just think of how much time that would save you, shoe leather, gasoline, driving around. get the price. They say that they want their dealers to give you the price. But it's strange, though.

I mean, it's contrary to everything that's going on in the business now. Anyway, this would make the process much more transparent and give the customer the ability to decide whether to make the trip to the dealership or keep looking. And sometimes it trips a little far because Costco doesn't have that many warehouses in the United States. and some areas they don't have any at all. And oftentimes, if you want to go through the Costco program, you might have to drive it.

For example, if you live up in Port St. Lucie, you have to have to come all the way to Palm Beach Gardens. That's a hell of a schlep. Yeah, and you don't want to have to go down there to find out you wasted your time. They should quote the prices over the phone. So given the fact that virtually all dealers have these fees, we would be holding Edmarsh Delray Toyota

to a different standard if we ding them for changing them. Instead, we passed them with a B. I actually gave them an A and put them on the recommended dealer list. And I think they really are the, that was the best Costco report we had on

a dealer. This week, we looked for another dealer who participated in the Costco Auto program. Agent Thunder went online and visited CostcoO.com and searched for a new 2019 Honda on the pilot. The closest his authorized dealer was Delray Honda

of Berkshire Hathaway. Dealership, and I mentioned that earlier. That's Warren Buffett. One of the most honorable business people there is. And I keep thinking about I love to be able to sit down with Warren Buffett and talk to him about his chain of dealerships. Wouldn't it be something?

I could do that. All I'd have to do is bid on the lunch. You can bid for the lunch with Warren every year in December. He auctions off lunch with himself into the highest bidder. The problem is last year went for like three million dollars. Somebody paid three million. I'm sorry I can't pay three million dollars to have lunch with a warrant. But anyway, maybe we could get donations.

I don't know. After I submitted my info and located the dealer on CostcoOter.com, I was directed the confirmation page that indicated my dealer was Delry Honda, and I was given my confirmation number. I didn't know. What sort of a number is it, is it a multi-digit sort of a thing? Yeah, it's almost like a serial number. Serial number, yeah.

And with that number, they know who you are. Correct. They can cross-revers at the dealership. I don't know if the dealership came. Maybe Costco Auto Program. Okay. I waited for the emails arrival, but they didn't arrive.

I waited a while, checked my junk mail, check my clutter nothing i decided to resubmit on the site same thing happened nothing came through normally like last week when we did delray toyota uh we got a couple of emails right away but nothing happened so uh agent thunder i was speaking the first person i headed down to uh delray honda i arrived around noon park headed to the entrance there were a lot of sales people around i didn't see customers, I went through a group of three male salespeople at the front door, and they followed me in. I approached the youngest-looking salesperson, tried to explain why I was there.

I said I'd made an inquiry with Costco, but I didn't know who to ask for because I couldn't get the confirmation email. And let me emphasize, if you're a Costco member, always try to deal with the Costco designated, certified Costco representative. If you don't do that, you're asking for trouble. They refer to them as the authorized dealer contact. Authorized dealer contact. If you have trouble like we did, I'd go back to Costco.

I'd go on their 800 number and say, hey, I'm trying to buy this car from your certified Delray Honda dealer in Delray, Florida. And I'm not getting any emails. I'm not able to communicate with anybody there that says they're the certified member. The certified member is shown on the website, though. Right, Stu? Yes. Yeah. Salesperson had no idea.

what I was talking about when I asked for the certified member and explained I didn't get the emails. He didn't say anything but he looked like he was thinking really hard. An older salesman was apparently listening. He approached me and introduced himself as Travis. He said he could help out with

the Costco auto operator. Travis led me to the office, tried to find my information on his computer. He kept saying there should be a lead in there. But he couldn't find the lead. I had I said I had submitted everything okay and I showed him my screenshot of my confirmation number

good thing I did that he probably would have questioned the fact that I had actually, oh, it was a Costco member but fortunately that confirmation number must have convinced him Travis said he needed to go find out what was going on walked out of the office within 30 minutes Wow Agent Thunder said during that time he ate a hot dog and an entire bag of chips

Is that right? Yes. Interesting bit of trivia. At least they had snacks. What type of chips? I have no idea, but it's nice to have something to nash on, you know. Did he have to pay for the hot dog? He didn't mention it.

I'm assuming that it was a complimentary hot dog, which is a... Well, there's a plus for you voters out there. They're complimentary hot dogs at Del Rihanda. Yeah. Okay. But we need to verify that. Everybody hang out. Head on down.

When he returned, he explained that they were having a hard time with Costco leads today, meaning probably a technical glitch, For some reason, the leads weren't coming in. And I just noted that in the thing, because I'm always amused how casually salespeople will, like, use a dealer slang. Like the customer is supposed to understand that. If you have no idea what he's talking about, it sounds a little odd, doesn't it? We assume, and I say we, because we're in the car business, we assume a lot of customers understand the process, and they don't. And they shouldn't.

There's no need to. I was feeling ill irritated as Agent Thunder, as if I were Agent Thunder, as if I were Agent for being made to wait, but mainly because Travis's focus seemed to be totally on some sort of a technical which the dealership was experiencing. I had already been there a long time, and nothing had been accomplished so far, wasting a lot of time. We started from scratch after a half hour. We established exactly which car I wanted to buy.

I asked Travis if I was still going to get the Costco price, and he said I was. He asked me to wait for him while he got the Honda pilot, pulled it around for me. Once again, 20 more minutes. Wow. A lot of people would have walked out after that amount of time. This is Agent Hunter's longest mystery shop so far. Yeah. We walked around the car, read the Maroni label together.

MSRP was $35,525. There was an addendum for 1832 in dealer-installed accessories, sealant, mudguards, security, plus a double dip on the manufacturer's delivery fee. That's a no-no. That's particularly annoying to me because not only is it unethical, I believe it's illegal. It should be. You're having, the manufacturer includes the destination charge delivery fee in the invoice. So the dealer's already paid for that.

And it's also on the Monroe available. So I have a picture of this, and it didn't come through that clear. It took me a while because there's a big reflection on it. But you can clearly see on the addendum, it's $9.95 for that. And then if you look over a little bit to the right, right there it's charge. charged again by the manufacturer. So that's a double dip, clearly. Charging it twice for the delivery fee, that has got to be illegal.

And I know Warren Buffett would have weep about that. Warren Buffett would be shocked. I mean, we're talking about a Costco auto program, and it is just supposed to be easy, transparent. We're talking about Warren Buffett and we're talking about Costco, two revered brands, right? Absolutely. I mean, Costco, you can trust with your. life. Warren Buffett, you can trust with your life, and you're caught in the middle with Del Rey Honda, a car dealership. It kind of shows you the corruption of the ethics, transparency,

honesty, the car dealer system is corrupting two hallowed institutions. Yeah, Warren Buffett and what else can you say after that? And I think what kept Agent Thunder's attention was the hot dog. Because if it would have been anyone else. I would have required a hot dog as well. So the total of the end of the end of the endem air, we're talking $1,332 in worthless dealer addendum. Mud guards. And then we're talking about, you know, we have 1832 in dealing sole accessories. And what did I say, what was the dealer fees?

That was over a thousand. Over a thousand. Too much. Yeah. Warren would be very upset about this. total denim was 2287 making dealer list 38,121. Travis was largely silent.

I was getting a presentation. I wasn't getting a presentation. He asked if I wanted to drive it. I said I did. On the ride, I did all the talking. Travis was distant and seemingly distracted. I asked him if everything was okay. He said it was one of those days

and return of the dealership. Nancy and I were chit-chatting on the way in of the car. Right. And she commented on this a phrase. And I thought it was money. That's exactly what I thought. Travis just wasn't going to make what he would normally make. It's one of those days when I get a Costco guy.

Now, this is another thing that Costco should be aware of is that most salespeople are paid on commission, virtually all. 25% is a standard percentage, 25% of the price of the profit on the car, the amount of the profit. The higher the profit, the salesperson can convince you to pay, the more he makes. If he makes $4,000, he makes $1,000 commission. However, with Costco and TrueCar and other mini deals, we call them, many deals, the salespersons pay what we call a flat, typically $100. So Travis is thinking, I could be making a thousand buck commission, I'm going to make $100. bucks and that's the reason he had a distance stare he said why me right or he could have been having a bad day he could be having a bad day i don't know so there we are uh Travis returned

with two pieces of paper one was a worksheet buyer's order and the other was labeled vehicle invoice the invoice price was 32,460 and 90 cents now remember we talked about invoice earlier invoice is not the cost of the car we put invoice in quotation marks. The invoice air quotes. It was $32,060.90. Below the invoice price and green pen was written, Costco member discount. So right away

they're discounting the invoice by $2,400. That tells you that it's not the cost of the car. But right below that they added $439.68 apparently I was getting Agent Thunder. I was getting a 76% off the dealer added accessories.

I was going to 76% off the worthless dealer installed accessories. Now that's for you voters out there in Facebook land and YouTube land. They're going to be voting on this. That's a no-no. On the buyer's order, they added a $899 pre-delivery service charge, a $239 electronic filing fee, and an $18.18. 50 cent agency fee sales tax and a hefty $540 tag that's an awful high for a tag I

question the the amount of that tag but we don't have any evidence total deal fees $1,156 so the interesting thing is I asked him by the way if I could take the buyer's order with me to discuss with my family he said he could and that's another plus because a lot time car dealers won't allow you to bring the vehicle buyers order because you can shop and compare it. They don't want you to do that. The interesting thing was that was still a good price. And even after adding back the dealer fees, it was only about a $500 profit to the dealer. That is a low profit. So in spite of all the mess up, the glitches in the system, the rest of it, that was a really good price.

It was, and I think you hit the nail on the head when he, so as Travis knows, he wasn't going to make a big commission. So why fight for another, fight for anything? It's nothing to him. It's going to be a mini, as we call it. And the true car price was $30,000, $32 before dealer fees. And I don't like that. I mean, I don't like the fact that the Costco allows the dealers to separate that. Well, here's this, we looked at it.

So I don't know Honda, so we went on. on True Car to get an idea, is that a good price? It was a good price. But their true car price was actually lower than the Costco price, and that breaks the rules for Costco. Yeah, I forgot about that. I'm glad you caught me on that. It isn't published on the Costco website, but the contract between the dealers and

Costco says that we insist that you give the lowest price to all of our Costco members. And that's the reason the Costco program is so cool, because if they abide by that rule, you get the best deal you can possibly get anywhere. You should get better than a true car price. In this case here, the true car price was better. Same dealership and one other thing, those accessories. So when you get the confirmation, it says you don't pay for those dealers installed options and they charge them 400 and something.

So we'll be reporting this to Costco. And Costco will go after Delray Hansa and they will tell them to clean up their act. The two violations they made, as Stu just pointed out, they didn't have the lowest price they offered anybody. Of course, two cars had a lowest price. And the other one was, you're supposed to give those worthless addendum items to the customer, your Costco customers, free. You can have them on the car, but you can't charge the Costco customer for it. But they did charge a customer about $4 or $500 for those fees. So there we have it.

We had a good price. It was a good price. You could say, when you're judging this, when all the smoke settled and the excitement was over with, the customer got a good price. And maybe that warrants, they passed a grade. On the other hand, you might say they were cheating the Costco program, and maybe that's the reason they shouldn't get to it.

I don't know. Let's start bringing the scores in. Rick, I'll go with you first. What do you think Del Rey Honda should get? Passing or failing? I'm going to say a D, barely passing, only because we're going on the curve, but I think the ball got dropped mainly by Costco,

it seems like, in this case. Communication. There's a communication error there. They're supposed to keep the dealers on us. I mean, it sounds kind of like an overly harsh thing to say to Costco. But you know the nature of the beast. The dealers, by definition, read the Gallup poll, Costco, read the Gallup poll. The least honest ethical profession since 1977.

You have to police these people. And if you don't police them, this is what happened. I can train my dog not to go to the bathroom in the house, but I still have to reinforce that and take her outside and make sure she gets the opportunity to do what's right and keep an eye on her. Trust but verify what Ronald Reagan said about the Soviet Union. Absolutely. Nancy.

The Costco Auto Program is supposed to be impeccable. This transaction left a bad taste in my mouth. The back and forth, Travis, what was wrong with him, what wasn't wrong with him, You know, I'm not there to determine that as a consumer. I'm going in for the Costco Auto Program, and that's what I expect. And all of this back and forth is just simply not necessary. And if it would have been I, I would have walked. Hot dog or no hot dog?

Score? Fail. Stee? All right, we got some grades from our listeners and viewers. Linda, she weighed in pretty early, so I don't know what point. I see F across the board. Neil gives him a C. Steve also gives him an F.

Laura gives him a D. Gene gives him an A for the price, but an F for cheating. And we also have Ray gives him a D, but he will elevate it to a C if it was a foot-long hot dog. This is a hard one for me because, you know, the bottom line, Agent Thunder got a great price. The Costco program got kind of adulterated, we should say, but it didn't affect the customer so much.

The worst thing was just the amount of time you spent and the disinterest of the salesperson. I can't give them a high score. I'm giving them a C-minus. But do we know if it was a Costco hot dog? If it was a Costco hot dog, that may change everything. This is a hardest score that I've had to give. I'm going to give it a D, and I'm going to slide them along on a recommendation.

But I'm going to, I really want to fail them because of the double dip on the freight. That is, that's really low, double dip. I'm hoping it was pure ignorance, but if they don't change that right away, I am really going to take them off the list. You can't charge twice for free. We'll put them on the list, but they get an asterisk.

Asterisk, exactly. Because that was on a separate case. We can't conflate the two. Okay, folks, I'm going to remind you just one more time about our seminar that's going to take place on April the 25th. Earl and I would like to invite you to a free seminar on how not to get ripped off by a car dealer. Seniors versus crime from the Attorney General's office has partnered up with us to put on this special event.

And believe me, ladies and gentlemen, it's going to be a special event. So please join us Thursday, April the 25th at 900 Brandywine Road in West Palm Beach at the United Methodist Church. And they're providing this gathering place. for us for this event because there's going to be just about 500 guests that they'll be there and they'll all receive a free book

Confessions of a recovering car dealer. That's exit 53 off I-95. A lot of you folks are coming for Port St. Lucie or maybe Broward County. Just getting on I-95 and head in the right direction and when you get to 53 exit off I-95, go west

and you'll be on Brandy Wine Road you will find the United Methodist Church there. Just tell Siri to take me to the United Methodist Church. There you go. There you go. Or tell Google Maps. There you go. And where you couldn't be happier with the Attorney General Ashley Moody and her week in review,

take a look at it, Florida's new senior protection team, they're going to be right there to help us to enforce the law. I think that we have one minute left. I want to thank everyone for tuning in to Error. Earl Stewart on Cars, and we will see you on Thursday. Rick, Earl, and myself will be right there on Brandy Wine Road. That's right. Have a great weekend.

Go ahead. Come on. Oh, Go. Go. Let's go.