Earl Stewart on Cars - 05.28.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Arrigo Chrysler Dodge Jeep of West Palm Beach

Episode Date: May 28, 2022

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

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

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. We're back to inform you, entertain you, perhaps irritate you a little bit. But you just, you get the facts. You get the facts here at our own cars. We tell it like it is. Sometimes people don't like to hear how it is, but we tell it like it is. And at the end of this two hours, I mean, I don't expect you're going to listen for two hours,

but if you listen for a few minutes, you'll learn something about how to deal with car dealers. That's really what it's all about. We have a industry, a huge worldwide industry that is operating in, I was going to say, the 20th century, maybe even the 19th century, in the way they retail their product. Cars are retail today the way they were 100 years ago. There are very few controls on the advertising, the sales practices. There are rules and their laws, but they're not enforced. And we have a huge issue with the fact that the car dealers are pretty well grandfathered in.

You wonder why can't I buy a Chevrolet from General Motors or why can't I buy a Honda directly from Honda? If you want to buy an Apple, watch, you can buy it from Apple. But you've got a franchise system here in the United States, and really the world, it's a worldwide situation, which requires that cars be sold by car dealers. If a manufacturer wants to sell a car to you directly, and believe me, they do. They'd love to be like Tesla. That's a whole different story. But they're not allowed to by state law.

General Motors, Ford, Toyota, Honda, Honda. All the manufacturers are locked into keeping their current dealer network. The dealers are a protected species, a protected species. They cannot be fired, terminated, moved. They are in place to stay. And the only way that you can change that situation is through the legislature or through the regulators. And, of course, the dealers own them lock, stock, and barrel. It's called lobbying power.

They have tremendous national, state, local lobbying power, money. They make a lot of money. And a lot of that money goes directly into political action committees and their associations. In Florida, the Florida Automobile Dealers Association, South Florida Dealers Association, the Tampa Association. There's one in North Florida. There's a national. And every state has one or two powerful state associations.

and, of course, there's the most powerful of all the National Automobile Deal Association. So that's why you're dealing with what you're dealing with. You'll walk into a car dealership, you call, you go online, and they give you a price that's not honest. Yeah. You can't buy the car for the price they go to. I mean, just think how frustrating it would be if you had to do the same thing at Publix or Target or Apple. You go into buy an Apple Watch and they say, what are you willing to offer on this Apple Watch today? and you give me a number

and I'll take it to my manager this is the way cars were sold 100 years ago and that's the way cars are sold today so listen to this show Earl on cars as long as you can we have some experts

in the studio sitting to my right is Rick Kearney certified master die technician he knows all about cars I mean forget about the technicality

you ask a question he'll answer and he has YouTube you monitors the YouTube channel, YouTube.com forward slash roll on cars. So if you've got your smartphone

and your PC, go to YouTube, go to Erlon Cars, and you can talk directly to Rick Kearney. You can ask you, send him a file. Send him an audio file or a video file. If you have a noise in the back end of your car, Rick's got a little story you'll tell you a little later in the show about that.

Customer came into our dealership with a noise in the back of the car. Interesting diagnosis. But give Rick a call. if you have a squeak, rattle, or roll in your car you don't know about, he'll save you a ton of money. Stu Stewart, my son, a general manager of my dealership, yes, I do have, I'm a real live car dealer. And I'm talking bad about other car dealers. I do.

I do that. They don't like me. You talk bad about yourself, too. I'm proud of myself. And you talk bad about yourself, too. You're fair. Exactly. They say I'm fair.

They don't want me around, but they say I'm fair. And there's some good dealers out there. Don't mistake that. And we have a list of recommended dealers on our website, earluncars.com, earloncars.com. A lot of information there. And he's the cybermaster of our mystery shopping report. Nobody does this.

Nobody but nobody goes out and visits a car dealership, pretends to buy or lease a car, and writes a long, detailed report, and tells you exactly who you talk to, the name of the dealership, when it happened, the prices, the conniving, or the honesty. I mean, we've been blown away. I mean, we have tears in our eyes sometimes.

We go into a car dealership where the intent really is to be transparent and honest and give you the best price they can on the car with no surprises, no sneaky hidden fees or dealer-installed accessories, all that other kind of clothes. They don't do that every now and then. There's far too few. I'd say, what would you say, Stu, 5%, 5%, and 95% aren't doing it that way. I haven't mentioned the Gallup poll in a long time, so I have to do that. Since 1977, I believe, the Gallup Association, worldwide, the most respected polling association in the world, Gallup, as a survey they do every year since 1977.

That's almost 50 years. and it's called Honesty and Ethics and Professions Honesty and Ethics and Professions Guess who is dead last in that survey? Car dealerships Nurses are number one by the way I love nurses

They are and when you're sick They're so nice And my wife Nancy is like a nurse He takes care of me. I love nurses Car dealers dead last And they've been that way Since they've been that way since before 1977 That's just when the survey began.

So, I'm on a rant. I'm going to stop. Please call the show 877-960-99-60. That's 877-9-60. And Nancy, my co-host, who founded the show with me about 20 years ago, she is going to tell all the females out there, all the ladies in the audience, and there are quite a few thanks to Nancy. What special surprise and reward, if you're a friend.

first-time female caller, you get a prize, and she'll explain that to you. Nancy is also a strong advocate for our ladies' rights, and we're seeing this now. It's a revolution in the country, way overdue, and ladies have got a long way to go before they get equal rights. Like I started to say minority groups, they're not a minority group. I think they're 50-plus percent. They buy 50-plus percent of the cars, and everything. everything else. And so how the dealers get away with treating them the way they do? I don't

know. Anyway, I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy, and she'll tell you some other ways you can reach the show. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Boy, do we have an exciting show this morning. I want to open up the show by letting everyone know that the reason for my excitement in my olive oil saturated fingers hands I am holding a office of the Attorney General someone, not someone, but a caller, a woman from April, used her patience, her willpower, her strength to pursue why she was taken advantage of. And I am, I got goosebumps talking about this. This is just phenomenal. And her name is Lori. And I reached out to her this morning, left a voicemail and asked her to please call the show. The reason that she pursued all of this.

You let me hold that up while you're talking? Sure. The reason that she pursued this is because she was taken advantage of, and Earl and I, we really tried to help her a lot. Earl went ahead and gave out a cell phone number, a personal cell phone number. So there it is up on the screen. And if you want to take over and read the rest of that. Well, it's so complicated. I just say, you go ahead.

That's why I'm stopping. Okay, we'll hand it back to me. It takes a lot of work, and I just want to congratulate Lurig for doing this, and unfortunately, it just takes a lot of work, and very few people will take the time and have that persistence to do what you do. Here we, I'll just read you the second part of all this, the additional sheet from the complaint to the Attorney General. Here's Lori, my complaint. dealership is dishonest and did not honor promissory note and she has a photocopy of that general manager uh james lazaro refuses to communicate with me salespeople have dealt with me and it it hasn't been a

a pretty time for her but she pursued and she my hat is off to her she gets the purple heart um number three on the advice of earl stewart of earl stewart Toyota and now Nancy Stewart, I tried calling the owner, the dealership, which the telephone number was given on, 954-647-7-4-37. She left three messages. That's Teddy Morse's personal cell phone. Excuse me? That's Teddy Morse's personal cell phone. I heard the first time, but I wanted you to reiterate.

So through no telephone calls back, she was left with no other recourse but to pursue to use her patients, to use her patients, to use. use her willpower, to use her voice as a woman to get some recognition, some action, anything. So here we are. So, Lori, if you're listening, please give us a call. And then she goes, and, I mean, this woman is unbelievable, sends us a thank you card. And how many times do you get something like this of this subject manner? We get a lot of thank you cards, but this is just a little different. and she just went to lengths to just dot her eyes and cross her teeth.

And I really think that she's going to get some action in the Attorney General's office. You know that we have talked about that over and over again. Ashley Moody. Ashley Moody, are you listening? So, dear Earl and Nancy, thank you for your advice regarding my complaint against Ed Morse. And she goes on about the complaint, the Attorney General. I'm not going to reiterate, but here it is up on the screen. And I think Jonathan, I think, can you see that?

A bunch of pineapples. And what a pretty card. What a positive card. Very nice. So Lori, give us a call. We're going to talk more about that. And the moral to the story is you too can file in a complaint with the Attorney General. That goes on record.

And if you do that, they have to look at it. They have to respond. It's difficult. You can download the form, attorney general complaint form at earluncars.com. It's a lot of stuff that you can download on earlancars.com, and you can read mystery shopping reports. I have that back up, John. But you can download this form at earloncars.com. If you've got a complaint, you've got a beef with a car dealer, this gets her attention.

The chief law enforcement officer in the state of Florida is Ashley Moody. She's the big boss. She calls the shots on crime in Florida. And when this goes online, you send it to her. It becomes a matter of public record. And the media can access it. We access it. You access it.

Public record. And card dealers don't like that. They will have to respond. My guess is this will be resolved positively in LORIG's favor. So thank you very much for doing that. And men and women do the same. the rest of you out there, there's way too few complaints in and because it's cumbersome, it's difficult.

It's going to take you a half an hour, 45 minutes to fill that out, but it's worth it. Also, I want to thank everyone who has just shared with us that they are, you know, customers. They call it customers for life, but what they're doing is they're listening to us here at Earl Stewart on Cars. And all of us, the panel, I mean, we just simply couldn't do it without them. It's just magnificent. Give us a call toll-free at 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And don't forget, ladies, the first two female callers, you win yourself $50 this morning. Again, that number, 877-960, and you can text us at 772-497-30.

Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, I'm going to go to Stu just a second, but the most popular avenue venue for contacting us is your anonymous feedback. I was talking to Jonathan in the studio here about that and why we don't see more responses, or companies don't see more responses. And we were talking about it.

I think there's a fear among employees, and I guess the fear among a lot of people, that just because you promise it's going to be anonymous, maybe it isn't. I understand that. I mean, who can you trust today, right? Well, I don't know if you trust me. I don't trust incognito. That's the company we use. I trust them. And my experience with this, we've been using your anonymous feedback for years. And I have never seen any accusation or evidence of anyone actually being identified. Now, you know, sometimes you'll figure out who it may be because they do it either on purpose or they sign it or they sign it yeah

I mean I they want to be known but if you want to be anonymous you are anonymous I'm I can't say I have to tell you I'm not 100% yourself but I'm 99.9% that's pretty good so let's have your anonymous feedback.com we already saw one came in recently when I came into the studio and studio collects those and those are real interesting and if you will send us one we will get to it even if we miss it this week we'll get it next week we always answer all those say whatever you want because we don't know who you are and I feel good when I sometimes I just don't want to be identified a lot of times I don't complain in a store because I

don't want to make it a personal thing but I like the owner of the store to have the knowledge of what I went through and that's kind of like what you're doing And now, when you send the anonymous feedback, we can tell people exactly how you feel about car dealerships, including us. Okay. Okay. I'm going to interrupt you. I forgot my opening question.

And in the USA, the Wall Street Journal, this question was asked over and over again, how likely are you to consider an EV? How likely are you to consider an electric vehicle? Give us a call tool-free at 877-960. We have some callers, but I see that Lori got my message, so I'm going to skip ahead to her, at least if you can do that for me. Thank you. Good morning and welcome.

Good morning, Nancy. Oh, gosh. I'll tell you, pardon me for calling you at the wee hours in the morning. Oh, that's all right. I should be up anyway, but thank you for bringing to attention to everyone what I've done. I'm a little bit of a dinosaur in that. I still typewrite letters and I shall inform. But, you know, nowadays people get emailed. Well, they never gave me emails. And when I tried to call Ed Morse for numbers, they never gave me numbers. So I resorted to typewriting.

Excellent. Yeah, that's good. That's, anything in writing, email is always something. It becomes a matter of record. And if it goes to litigation or any sort of prosecution, it becomes evidence. So written correspondence is vital, whether you're talking to a car dealer or attorney or to the Attorney General. Yeah. And also, I'll add to that. What a great way to have a paper trail. Absolutely. I mean, I believed in that from the very beginning, back in the 50s and the 60s, a paper trail. So I compliment you. You are an educated consumer. We love the fact that you did take advantage of the Attorney General.

Yes, I did that, but my only thought is the dealership could claim that they never received a letter because I did send it certified, but I didn't send it if I had sent it priority, it would have been tracked, but for a letter they were going to charge me like $8 to send the letter. and I said, no, I just sent it certified. So, you know, it's my word against the answer, that's the letter. Yes.

That was my only concern. Well, Lori, keep us posted as this goes down, because we've always thought that Ashley Moody was not acting as much. We had a recent incident where we have lawsuits being filed for dealers not revealing hidden charges when people buy their lease cards back. And I understand that there are eight or nine complaints filed with Ashley Moody, Attorney General, on that very issue. So that's encouraging. I think once the ball starts ruling and people start talking and the media starts talking about things,

then you see the Attorney General halving back. Otherwise, she sits on her hands because of the fact the car dealers are very powerful lobbying. So any developments email us or call us, I really appreciate it. Yes, even if I get a holding letter, I will let you know. And thank you so much. Thank you again. Thank you. I feel like something's been lifted off my chest.

Absolutely. And if you could possibly email me to just retouch, you know, reconnect because I had a problem finding our communication between each other last month. Okay. All right, Nancy. Is it the same email they gave me before? Yes. Yes, Nancy S at E.S.Toyota.com.

All right. I'll do that right now. Have a splendid weekend, and thank you for calling. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. We're going to go to Donnie in Tampa. Thank you for your patience, Donnie.

Hello? How are you? Good. How are you? I'm doing fine. thank you. I was calling because I wanted to ask a question for Rick. And what it involves is, although I live in Tampa, I'm going to be buying a new 22 Corolla Hatchewack from your dealership because of your reputation. And I learned about it from YAA, which that's how I learned

about your dealership. So my question is, for Rick, is I'm getting the the SE trim of the Corolla Hatchback and I have a question concerning the instrument cluster whether or not the one that comes in the same car but the XSE trim

which has the bigger display screen and the digital cluster as compared to the analog one that's in the SC trim can those be swapped out just as a plug and play and work or do you have to stick with the one that comes from the factory

No, they're total different design, and the electronics and the wiring to it are completely different. They definitely would not be able to swap out like that. Okay, I was just, because I've seen some YouTube videos of people doing it, and it seemed like it worked, but I, you know, I'm always suspicious of that because I don't know the after effects of it. Yeah, there would be more to, yeah, there'd be more to it the way that they make it seem. I'm sorry, go ahead, please. There would be more to it than the way they make it seem on those videos. And certain features, I guarantee you'd lose certain features that wouldn't work.

And you also would jeopardize the warranty on the vehicle, too, if you've changed something like that out. Yeah, that was going to be my next question is if you did that, if that would affect the warranty in some way. Especially if it caused something to burn up by, you know, wires getting crossed, something, something not compatible, that would definitely be non-warrantable. Okay, well, thank you, Rick. I appreciate that. It was just something, you know, I mean, I considered ordering an excess e-trim, but I didn't really care for all the other upgrades, but I do like the instrument cluster.

So that's why I was calling just to see what you had to say about whether that was possible or not. So, and thank you for answering my question. My last question isn't so much a maintenance question, but I'm having a rear window spoiler added on because it's a two-tone car with the black roof. Are those spoilers safe for driving through a car wash, or do you want to avoid those? I don't know the specific, what the how big with the profile is. Hey, this is Stu. We do have a car wash at the dealership, and we've had issues from time to time on some vehicles that have things sticking out of them. roof racks. So it could be a thing. I don't know. It would probably depend on the car wash,

but I think anything's sticking out. But is this the spoiler? Is this a factory spoiler? Yeah, it's the OEM spoiler that I couldn't order it as an option on the car because it's two-tone. I could only order it if it was a solid color. And so I had to order the part through your parts department and to have it on after I get the car. So, but I got to think that I usually normally do a drive-through car wash. And I thought, well, maybe you can't do that anymore with a spoiler added on, even though it's low profile. I mean, I don't think it's likely to.

I mean, most of the issues when we run into them are with larger vehicles, like a big SUV and a roof rack or something, like I said, sticking out of it. The crawl's pretty small. Tell you what, I can find out for you, or if you want to speak to one of the guys at the parts department, like Martin at the parts department, he would know. You just ask him, is this going to be a problem in a... in a drive-thru car wash, and he's going to probably have a little bit more knowledge of it. I think it's possible, but probably not likely.

Okay. Well, I'll be coming down to the dealer maybe this week, and the car is supposed to arrive, and I'll do that. I'll speak to someone at that time. Yeah, and if it turns out it does, then just return it to us. And for me personally... I thank you all. Before you hang up, I want to ask you one quick question.

How did you discover YAA? and how long have you been a member? I recently joined about a month or two ago, and it's an amazing organization. How did you find out about it? Well, since I went into looking for a new car, I was on YouTube, and I just stumbled on one of their videos,

and I started watching it, you know, and I started listening to Ray and Zach, and during the course of following his daily broadcast and reading their articles and stuff, They mentioned your dealership. And at that time, I don't think you had joined yet. But that's what piqued my interest. Even though I live in Tampa, you know, I was like,

I'm not getting the same sort of consideration on buying a car from these local dealers that your dealers is known for. So I'm like, okay, you may be a few hours drive away from me, but, you know, I would rather do business with a reputable dealer than to go through the hoops that, you know, someone else does. And then I learned about your channel on YouTube from YAA. So one led to the other, and then I've been following both of you since then.

Well, thanks. You know, becoming educated on everything. So it's been a really good experience. Yeah, we had Zach call the show a couple weeks ago, and we'd like to give them a good strong plug. They are an amazing group. I've reason to ask you how you discovered them, because we haven't seen anything like that until we ran across.

You go to JoinYAA.com, J-O-I, J-O-I and, you know, like JoinYA.com, gives you all the information. It's a father and son, a group, Zach and Ray, and they have a lot of really qualified experts on advising people on buying and leasing and leasing and maintaining and repairing cars, testimonials, recommended dealers. I mean, join YAA.com is an amazing group. And thanks so much for finding us, Donnie, on there, and buying a car from us, and for calling the show. We really appreciate it. And, Donnie. Well, yes, sir. It's been a pleasure.

I just want to let you know that, shoot, what a domino effect. Great call. Thank you so much. And, well, YAA, I can't say enough about them. Thank you, Donnie. Thank you for calling. Yeah, you all have a blessed day. Thank you very much for your time.

God bless you, too. We are going to stay with the phones, but first I'm going to say that, you know something. Women represent a huge, huge opportunity for the auto industry. Please, don't forget that. 877-960-9960. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We're going to stay with the phones, and we're going to talk to Renee, who's a first-time caller, She's calling us from South Palm Beach.

Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Well, very well. This morning, thank you for calling, and you and yourself $50 this morning. Well, you're welcome, and thank you for the opportunity. That's exciting. Thank you.

How can we help you? Well, can I ask any question about a muscle car? Any question. Muscle Cars was really a big article in the automotive news recently, I was reading about it yesterday, as a matter of fact. How does it interest you? Well, I have a mini-car collection of vintage vehicles, like a 4-42, the first year, the 68 convertible, and it's not four on the floor, it's an automatic, it's on the console.

But I just acquired a 66 triple-black convertible Mustang, and I was driving, it's also an automatic. I sold all my manuals, and I was driving down the road, and I'm embarrassed to say, I maintain the car. It's a GT 350 wannabe because it has the hypo, it doesn't have the 289, and I, you know, decoded the VIN. I did all that. I did all the research. So I'm at this resume, hi, and it's like chugging, and then boom. Yeah, and I said, uh-oh. I never blew an engine, but I don't know what that means.

Like, no, I don't know if my car, I don't know what happens, and I don't know what to do. Because the car's not driving. Oh, boy. We'll have to turn this call over to our genius technician here, Rick. I could use it for yourself. From the description you've just given, it sounds like the engine has indeed locked up or blown up. Basically, it sounds like you're going to need to get a mechanic to diagnose it.

My first step is... Can it be a little more specific about what happens when... Well, there's many different causes, but the biggest one, is usually when a connecting rod bearing wears out or breaks comes apart and basically the connecting rod separates from the crank shaft into many pieces. So the crankshaft makes the connecting rod connects the crankshaft to the engine where the pistons go up and down. In internal, the crank shaft is the big center rod that's spinning and the connecting rods

are connected to it. They are moving up and down with the pistons and spinning the connect the crank shaft and when one of them separates away from it it basically the metal just starts to shatter and it starts just destroying like a new engine metal new engine right yeah wait a new a new end wait a new end wait have to get a new engine or can they rebuild oh no oh rebuild the use would be the you're not going to get a new engine for an older car like that so uh you would get a rebuild or a uh used and you should look for the warranty uh you know the pricing is going to determine how good a warranty you get. But they are available out there.

You'd be surprised. So there's some very sophisticated sources for used parts now. It's all computerized, and you can find it and price it out and get competitive bids. Well, for a 66 Mustang, though, that you're trying to keep it, I'm guessing you want to keep it as close to original. My first thing that I would do is I would seek out the forum sites and look for some of the car clubs around here. the antique car clubs, track down some members there and ask them who they use

for mechanics for their cars because you're going to want to find someone that really has a finger on the pulse of the community you'll be probably able to find parts for that car, maybe even locally, at an extremely good rate because what you're going to find is a lot of these car clubs, these members are so passionate about their cars,

they'll practically donate parts to try to see another car like that get back on the road. Exactly. So you're actually not in that bad of shape on it. Well, good luck. Sorry that you had the problem. And Renee, I want to tell you, you're part of a sophisticated group, and you piqued my interest.

Hey, are you going to take me for a ride in that GTO? I'm just kidding. It's a convertible. I don't care what it is. I love those muscle cars. Text me back to my teenage years. Renee, congratulations again on your $50. Thank you so much for calling this morning.

I'm sorry we have to rush. We've got calls backed up. Please spread the word. We're building a platform here for the ladies. Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. You too. I'll certainly do that I've already started spreading the word. Thank you so much for your time.

Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Bye-bye. We're going to go to Marty, and Marty's giving us a call from North Palm Beach. No, West Palm Beach, I believe. Morty's calling from. Good morning, Marty. Morning. I did an agent lightning job for you.

Look at it. So I wanted to give you the information I got. A relative of mine thought they wanted a Honda Civic. So we went over to Bremen Honda. The base price in the car was 24-765. They wanted $3.99 for wheel locks, $3.79 for window 10. window tent, lifetime warranty. They wanted $4.99 for fabric protector. They wanted $3.90 for maintenance, $580 for pinstripe and door edge guards, and only $2,000 for market adjustment. And that brought the car to $29,000,021. Wow. What model was it, Marnie?

It was the Honda Civic. Civic. That's a low-priced Honda. Yeah. So I talked to my relative, and we went over to Earl Stewart, Toyota, and they ordered a RAV-4. So, Raymond, I offered the guy, and I knew we wouldn't take it. I said, I'll give you the MSRP plus tax, and I said in the old days, you, you you'd say I was a sucker.

They didn't even move. They wouldn't even talk to you. So that was over $4,000 extra. Yeah. You're the greatest, Marty. So you can put that in your Agent Lightning files. Yes. And stay out of that dealership.

Exactly. Marty, what was the $580 for again? Let me see if I get back to my phone here. Hold on. Uh, 580 was... Pinstriping. Wait a minute, no, I'm not driving. Jonathan says it was pinstriping.

Yeah, pinstriping. Pinstriping and door edgigards, only 580. Walsy. It's tape. Okay. I thought that's what you said. You know, you can never believe these numbers. And I don't even know.

And this, but in defense of them, this was on the addendum sticker. I mean, this wasn't like going there. and start off with MSRP. This was out in the open, this is price. So, you know, I guess I've got to give them a D for honesty. Can't make the stuff up. Right, right. Well, thank you, Marty.

Call again. Appreciate your free mystery shopping report. And do another one. It was very interesting because I told my relative, I said, you're not going to get this for MSRP. I said, go to an Earl's store right away. But they wanted to look at the Civic. Exactly.

They're through with the Civic already. Marty, you're a blessing. Thank you so much for calling. All right. Have a good holiday, everybody. Thank you. The same to you. Ladies, I have $50 left here for the next lady caller.

The second new lady caller, $50, $877960, and you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, I want to mention brag a little bit. I like it when we get the word out, and I got a call. I didn't even mention this to Stu, I don't think. I got a call from CNBC a few days ago, and they've seen some of the hoop log going on in Florida, and they did a Zoom interview focusing on the future of the car business.

And it was all tied to the fact that what we talked about or what I talked about at the beginning of the show, how will cars be sold 10 years from now, 20 years from now? And what is going to happen? Will we be buying cars directly from the manufacturers because of the outrageous activity by car dealers? And we have this big lawsuit going on South Florida now, 30-some-odd dealers involved because they're charging hidden fees and dealer-installed accessories and all sorts of extra fees on the purchase option price, which is a direct violation of the law. The consumer has a protection when he leases a car, saying that the option on your lease contract is the only price they can charge you.

They cannot charge you one penny more than that. And dealers in Florida charging thousands of dollars over the option purchase price. consequently we have two attorneys in South Florida in Miami-Dania area that are suing around 30 dealers so CNBC has heard about all the hoopla and they'll be running that video or they've actually said they may want to do another Zoom video to talk about the history of the car business Rick yeah yeah guy Larrabee happened to ask a question says will other manufacturers likely go the Ford route with respect to

to selling their electric vehicles directly to consumers. And I looked it up and I found an article on YAA, join YAA, where it says that Ford is actually following Tesla's route where they're going to be selling the cars where you order it online and then the car is delivered later, which basically is a direct-to-consumer sale and that Ford is going to apparently follow this route and may even try to do it later with their

Ford Blue Division, which are the gasoline-powered cars. So do you think that they're actually going to get a direct-to-consumer? I think they would want to do it, and if there were a manufacturer that would do it, it would be Ford because Jim Farley, who is a friend of ours, we used to have him with Toyota years ago. In fact, Sion, he was the founder of the Sion effort, which failed, unfortunately, for Toyota. and then he went into a different capacity with Toyota and then Ford grabbed him and made him CEO Ford.

So Jim Farley is very positive when it comes to the consumer. The problem is the sands are tied by state franchise laws. And you can't just sell electric. Tesla is not able to sell cars directly just because they're electric. They are a new manufacturer. And so the new manufacturer... Are they getting around it? Because it looks like they're under the Ford umbrella, they're creating two different companies.

One's Ford Blue for their traditional, and then the Ford E is going to have, they're planning on doing this direct-to-consumer model. Yeah, well, they can try, and I applaud them for trying. The problem is if the state attorney generals don't want you to do it, and the state legislators don't want you to do it, and the dealers don't want you to do it, and they have a little meeting in a smoke-filled room, you're going to find a new law. And Tesla actually has encountered some laws popped up in a couple of states. I think Texas might be one of them.

There's one or two states that you cannot buy a Tesla. You have to go over the state line. So it's going to be a giant battle at the time the manufacturers do what Ford may have done. And when that happens, boy, it's going to hit the fan, and there's going to be lawyers, and there's going to be attorney generals, and it's going to be a bloody massacre. fight because the manufacturers want to go direct for it's only one with the courage to admit it publicly but I guarantee you Toyota Honda nobody wants to go through the car dealer network

it's just a pain a pain to them a pain to the consumer and they want to go direct but hey it's been a hundred years of lobbying and state legislators that have grandfathered these dealers in you can't get them out it'll take a long time before they get out ladies and gentlemen I have a question for you. Earl talked about this, and he was out, you know, even on the local news, why are car dealerships adding extra fees? Why are they adding extra fees to those that are buying out their leases? Give us a call.

We'd love to hear from you. 877-960-99-60. We're going to stay with the phones, and we are going to our next new female caller, and she's calling from Wellington. Her name is Camille. Good morning. Good morning.

Is it Camille or Camilla? It is Camille. Good morning, Camille. Congratulations. You just won yourself $50. Oh, wow. Thank you. Thank you.

Please spread the word to all of your friends that we are giving out $50 for the first two female callers. What can we do for you this morning? Good morning. Thank you again. I'm calling up. I have a folks waiting jetta. And it's almost done on. And we want to buy out the malls because we definitely don't want to try to, at this point,

try to go buy a new car with all the different fees out there. And we have a decent buyback on the car. We actually went to go visit the dealership, and our buyback is 13-5, roughly. That's a lease car, Camilla, you're talking about? Yes. Yes. It's the lease. Yes, it's a 2019 lease.

And when we went back to the dealership, they tried to have us buy the car back for over $20,000. Oh, my God. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Ineal fees and infection fee and...

Junk fees. Yeah. Fees after fees. And honestly, not even an explanation as to how their fees were breaking down, but, oh, see that. Camila Do you have a pencil handy and a piece of paper? I can't

I want to give you the name of an attorney in Dania and his name is Joshua Fagan last name is spelled F-E-Y G-E-N Joshua Fagin

F-E-Y-G-E-N his cell phone number direct line is area code 954 697 0357 I'm he suing now 20 or 30 dealers for the very

crime that you're describing here and there is a law it's the consumer lease law that says the purchase option price is required to be the number stated in your

lease contract. And your lease contract, that purchase the option price is all the dealer can charge you. They cannot charge you one penny more. The state can charge you sales tax and they will, and you also have to buy a license plate or a transfer. But the dealer cannot charge one penny over the purchase option price. So Joshua Fagan, before I call Joshua Fagan, what I might do is call the dealer back and say, I'm going to call Joshua Fagan. Okay. And if you don't know who he is, Google him. WPLG has done a series of articles that's Channel 10 in Fort Lauderdale.

WPLG Channel 10, Fort Lauderdale. So the words out, the dealers are really worried. Maybe this dealer doesn't know about it. But you tell them that you want to buy that for the purchase option price. Are you going to call Joshua Fagan, and you'll see him in court? Okay. This is going to take you a long way, Camille, and again, that number is 954-697-0357. So I'd take advantage of that avenue that you can open up, and I'll tell you what, you'll get their attention real quick.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much. You guys have a great holiday weekend. The same to you. Calls back and let us know how it went, Camilla. I will. We would love for you to stay in touch with us, and please. Spread the word to your lady, friends.

Thank you. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-60. Don't forget, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. I just have a little anecdote here that I ran across in automotive news, and it's amazing. You think luxury cars, what do you think about? Mercedes, Lexus, BMW. Do you know who the mogul in luxury car sales is today?

The big gun? Tesla. Tesla is number one in luxury car vehicle sales. And there are 33,400 cars ahead of BMW. There are ahead of Lexus. They're ahead of all the hot-shot luxury people. In the world, number one luxury car dealer. So if you think Elon Musk is a flash in the pan, think again.

He's reinventing the luxury car world for sure. Rick. And Kyle in Pennsylvania had just given us a quick note here that says, apparently Tesla immediately raised the prices by $9,000 in the case of the cheapest standard model S. He says, so I like that the price is up front, but the customer is still paying way more. more than a year ago. Yeah. Now the prices are going up.

You know, if anyone thinks, you see, the first thing they attacked Elon Musk and Tesla about was they're making all their money by the subsidies from the government on electric cars. And nobody can possibly make this, you know, make this thing happen with electric cars. People aren't going to buy electric cars. And as soon as they were subsidies run out, Elon Musk is going to go broke. Well, now he's making money hand over fist. And not just with Tesla, but with SpaceX and with, what's the other companies that he's got?

He's got... The boring company. Yeah, the guy is Twitter pretty soon. So the guy is a financial genius, and he's reinvented the car business in the United States. It's going to be amazing to see what happens. Yeah, they were saying if he should back away from Twitter, he's tweeting too much and just concentrate. on Tesla. Here, I have an alert for you, Earl. An Earl alert.

Earl. The Tesla, I believe, is leaving the parking lot. It's right here. Your car is leaving? What's going on? Tesla will we park out front? I think it's achieved a sentience and it's now going to get groceries. If anyone's interested, what has happened is Nancy and I, we parked the car in South Florida. son, we put it in doggy mode. A little thing on the screen, you had doggy mode, and we choose 72 degrees. So while we're at Publix or while we're at the radio show, the temperature

in the cabin of the Tesla is maintained at 72 degrees. And then your big display, which is visible from people walking outside the car, says, my owner will be back in a few minutes, and he's keeping the temperature in the car here at a very comfortable 72 degrees. Please don't break the window. And it's got a picture of a doggy in there. And that's so people won't break the window or call the police. But we realized we only had 22%, we didn't know we only had 22% charge left on our battery. So the Tesla notified Nancy and me that we're turning off doggy mode and you're going to have a warm car when you get downstairs because you've only got 20% left on your battery.

And we don't want you to have a dead battery. That little red Tesla is notified. How cool was that? I have a lot of stuff, but Mr. and Miss was crazy that's driving that Tesla. I'll tell you what. I see an opening here, ladies and gentlemen, we have to do. We do have to do a reality show. It will be like no other.

Two crazies in a Tesla. 877-960-972-49-7-272-497-6530. take advantage of all of the avenues that you can get in touch with us. We are going to take care of YouTube? We're actually kind of caught up right now on YouTube. Okay, so we're going to go to Stu. Absolutely. I'm going to jump over to Ann Marie's text, but before I do, the text just came in and said

they'd like to hear the information for the attorneys that you mentioned. They went by a little bit too quickly. And I'm also going to answer, before you do that, that we have these. listed on earlancars.com. As a matter of fact, it's the most recent article. So if you go to earloncars.com, the one right on the top titled WPLG, Channel 10 in Fort Laudel upholds the meaning of the fourth state. It's all about what we just talked about. And towards the end of the article, it's listed Joshua Fagan, and it's 954-697-0357 or Jonathan Kane, and that's 954-523, 5123. I'll repeat that. Joshua Fagan, 954, 697, 0357.

Interestingly, with Joshua Fagan, do you know how he got onto his first problem with dealers in this lease buyback thing? He tried buying back his own lease. No, they took, if they took advantage of his daughter. Oh. And you don't want to take advantage of a lawyer's daughter. Or mother. Uh-uh, no. And then Jonathan Kane, 954, 523, 513, 5123.

So if you are, if you've tried to buy back your car and the dealer has added extra, on to it. All these guys. All right. Let's jump over to Ann Marie, who sent this, sent this yesterday, and it's waiting for me. Good morning. I realize you're a Toyota dealer and not a Hyundai dealer, but I'm hoping that you can answer this question anyhow. News reports say that Hyundai is recalling 239,000 cars. There are the accents and Alantras and Alantra hybrids in the U.S. because the seat belt pretensioners can explode and injure the vehicle's occupants. One, why would a seatbelt pretensioner explode? I can understand the airbag is blowing because it has a charge,

but I've never even considered that a seatbelt pretensioner could explode. Can you explain this, please? And yeah, that's another little hidden thing. Normally they don't cause problems. It's what cinches the seatbelt back in the event of an accident. And Rick can explain the physics of that. and mechanics. You've pretty much got it exactly right. In the retracting portion of the seat belt where it will wind up the belt, there's basically a small charge, and it's got about the power

of a 12-K shotgun shell. I didn't know that. That's how it gets, that's how it saves you. I mean, there's a hand grenade right there. Well, that's only a firecracker. No, it's a shotgun shell, but without the shot. Yeah. I know this, by the way, father, when I first started selling cars in 1997, that's one of the safety things I learned about. This has been around for a long time. At the moment of impact, it actually explodes.

Blows up a small controlled burst that makes the seatbelt yank in and retract as hard as it can to pull you into the seat so that you're back up against the seat. So you're not just flying forward, it's pulling you back to keep you safer, which is a good thing.

Until Hyundai ran into this little problem. I must not laugh. going off immediately while you're driving down the road. That's a bad thing. Suddenly your seatbelt just basically yanks you back into the seat. Is that a feature? Pardon me for interrupting. Is that a feature that still, is that on the Avalon?

Every car. Everything. Everything's better. So Earl and I went back and forth for the last two weeks about my Avalon because there have been times whenever I have driven it in that feature, it's, well, it's good and it's bad. We're talking about in an accident when you, it doesn't explode. Well, when you make a sudden stop, it just grabs you. And it locks.

That's actually the seatbelt lockup. Yeah, that's a mechanical feature that when you're, if you get a sharp hit the brakes or something, the seatbelt will lock and not let you go out, you know, we'll let you pull out more seatbelt. And that, again, that's designed to keep you held in the seat. And it definitely restrains you and it definitely isolate you. And so what I've been doing is not the same thing. Oh, well, it's another feature of the seatbelt. Okay, well, we beat that up.

I don't know if they know, I'm looking at the, Annery sent the article, I just wanted to see. I don't know if there's been any injuries or if anything's happened or if it's just a potential defect. So I don't want to panic anybody. But if you have a Hyundai, you need to go to safercar.gov and put your VIN number in there and see if your car is affected by this. Any car, every car. You should check your car at least once every couple months, once every six months. months check your vid number to see if there are any open recalls on your car and the Hyundai

drivers you might have exploding seat belts and and then for whatever it's worth as we talk about this as if it's really going to make any difference when you have the recalls and you do know about it people just don't go then get them done anyway so only it's apathy uh the takata airbag if you've been listening to this show for a number years uh we hammered we hammered we begged we completed. People get the notices. Sometimes they don't. I mean, I know that. And there's availability, safercar.gov. A lot of ways to do it. You can ask your dealer, blah, blah, blah. The fact is, even when they get the notification, people don't come in. The manufacturers now are hammering the dealers and notifying the customers, please bring your car in these safety

recalls. But apathy. For every four recalls, one person comes in. to get it fixed. And here's a quick hack for you. If your car has a safety recall and you go to the dealer and they say, well, we've got ordered parts or something, you tell them, I don't feel safe driving this car, I want you to provide me with a rental car and a dealership has to pay for it. No money comes out of your pocket period. They are required to provide your car until they get your car fixed.

They'll get an argument now with rental car prices off the chart. it'll be a battle. Anyway, let's move along. Yeah, great information, Rick. We're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to talk with Julie from West Palm Beach. Welcome back, Julie. Hi, thank you. I had a question.

Fortunately, back in March, I had a car accident, the first of my lifetime of 50 years driving, and I hit somebody from the back. I thought it was a minor accident because they didn't really have, I couldn't tell they had any damage to their car. And mine, I thought it was mainly a fender. Bender, but I called up my insurance company, and they said I could talk to somebody in three weeks. So I go to the dealer to meet the insurance agent. It's actually a technician from the dealership, and I said, I thought I was meeting an insurance agent, and they said, we're a state farm certified shop, so our technicians can look at your car.

So then they ordered the parts three weeks later. They came in, and then they had my car for two. weeks. And I have a corolla with, you know, a relatively cheap car, but what I thought was minor damage turned out to be $5,500. And luckily, I only paid $250, you know, my insurance deductible. Is that normal now that they're having the technicians in the dealership represent State Farm or other insurance companies? It's very difficult. The insurance companies have got way back on their overhead for the obvious reasons of more profit. And we have a collision repair center at our dealership and is more difficult than ever to get insurance adjusters

out. They've gone to the videos and the graphic. You take a picture of the customer's car, you send the video file or the graphic file to the insurance company, and then they rarely do we see insurance adjusters. In major collisions, you can't get them out and usually takes a long, long time. But you're right. It is a, it should be a qualified person at the dealership that has been through a course on, on estimating damage, and he should, he should have a certificate, and he should know. In fact, he would have to, if he's a State Farm certified shop, State Farm would not accept the estimate from him unless he were qualified. And on the cost of the repairs, that's unfortunately becoming more and more frequent. There's sensors, there's so many

things. I was in a similar thing. My brother and I were rear-ended recently a few months ago. Zero indication of any damage on his car whatsoever, but it smashed his parking sensors apparently underneath the bumper, and it was a costly repair, yeah. Yeah, I was amazing. I've yet to look at the estimate that shows the actual parts of the car, because what I was given was parts in labor report. And the late, out of the $5,500, the labor was almost $2,000. would seem kind of excessive, but I don't know. Julie, let me ask you a question. This is for my own edification here,

because we have a collision repair also. When you had the accident, and you called State Farm, you called your agent and told him about it, did you have any discussion with him about where you'd like to head? First of all, what kind of a car do you drive? It's a Corolla. Corolla.

Okay. Did you say that you would like to go? to take it to a toilet dealer, a body shop, or did you, did I have any conversation? Yes, they did ask me where I wanted to bring it, and my car's very, I mean, my car's only like, was only like maybe 17 months old. I mean, it was relatively new still. And so, you know, everything was warranted still. So I decided to bring it to the dealership. But they did, we did have a discussion of places that I could bring it to. Do you mind if I ask you which dealership you took it to?

Palm Beach, Toyota. So we went to Penn State Collision. Well, that's a good indication from the State Farm. They've been gilding in the past of steering people to the shop they want. In this case here, they had apparently a shop that I didn't know was a certified Toyota shop, but apparently it is. State Farm Certific. Right. State Farm Certifying, yeah, but not a Toyota certified.

I'm not sure. Yeah, we don't know. Well, thank you. That's very interesting. You brought out a lot of information that a lot of people aren't aware of the high cost now with all the sensors and complications and cars. Fortunately, you had good insurance, and it only cost you $250. Yeah, but God knows that my insurance will be going forward. Yeah, Julie, things are terribly pricey, and thanks for bringing all of that to our attention.

Yeah, and one final thing, people would tell me I was pretty lucky that I got the parts in that quickly because it could have taken a lot longer. you're right that's for sure everything everything inventory shortage julie thanks so much for staying in touch with us thank you all right bye bye look forward to hear from you again we're going to go to john in palm city good morning john good morning john the recalls came up again we've more or less been ignoring it lately uh with all the things that are going on with the new car pricing but what i want to say was um particular car i'm going to speak to about is Hyundai. The notice is only going out July 1st, and there's 220,000 cars involved from 2019 to 2022. It's something major to do with the seatbelts. I don't know exactly what

it is, but it's a major problem. And again, on Hyundai, a second recall is going out for another major problem from 2013 to 2014, the fuel line in the engine. leaks, and the car goes on fire, whether the car is running or not. But that's gone out before, and evidently they're not satisfied with the amount of recalls that are coming in on it. So it's very important that a person that buys it, when we use cars are seller now, they get on the phone either call a dealer or a nationwide 800 number and find out if there's any recall on that car.

Very, very important, because safety is involved. And then the second part of that question, if I buy it, car that's 100% certified, like, say, from a Honda dealer, okay? They say all the points have been done and everything, and then I find out later that at the time that I purchased it, it had a manufacturer's recall on it, and the dealership, the new car dealership didn't do anything about it, but yet he's certified that all his inspection points and everything were done. Is there any recourse to an attorney that somebody could have?

I think it would be tough, John. I think it would be probably two. I don't think an attorney would take that. It's just, even though you're right and the dealer's wrong, when attorney takes a deal or doesn't take a case, it's based on how much money he can make. And usually that's within your benefit, too. The more money the attorney makes, you know, the bigger of the problem that you had that gets solved, hopefully. But it's too. It's too. small for most attorneys to take something like that but you're absolutely right yeah the remedy would be like to refund the amount of the cost of certification like $800 and you know wouldn't be a ton of money but you're you had a good point John because uh I'm going to shoot from the hip here seven out of 10 certified used cars did not have a thorough check to they claim there's a check sheet and they say check it uh the people that are doing the certification often are salaried uh you know you know if you're in a a dealership where they're on flat rate, they get paid on the, per what they do this, less likely they're going to take advantage when they're paid by the job. But it's like a lot of

check sheets. I, tongue and cheek, half seriously, I say, asked to see the check sheet. And if on check sheet, someone drew a line through all the boxes, and it's not dirty and greasy. That means they probably didn't do it. You know, they say, here's a car, here's a check sheet. They take the check sheet, they draw a line, and they send the car along, and you buy the car, and you never are the wiser. Good point. Well, I'm so glad that the topic came up again today, because it used to be part of the shopping reports, and it's so important for people, but you're used to cause of selling so fast, and it's a matter of life and death. So I just want to thank you for bringing up that topic again today. Well, thank you, John.

Thanks for the call. John, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Have a great weekend. Thank you very much. 877-960-99-60, and the text number here is 772-497-6530. Don't forget there are a lot of different avenues that you can go to. A lot of Internet out there, education, your PC is just unbelievably. What was the word you used one time, Stu?

You were talking about it being so, there was some adjective that described. it. Anyway, think about that. I'm going to give you a website you can go to www. Florida Law Protectingcarbuyers.com. www. Florida Carbuyers. Dot com. Take advantage of that also.

Okay, where are we going? Got a couple here on YouTube. Kyle in Pennsylvania says, I'm in an old dealership photo Facebook group and he saw photos posted. The first one was a Monroney label from a 1970 Chevy Camaro. MSRP was $3,500. Another photo showed a same car, Chevy Camaro, 1980 model,

with an MSRP of $10,500. Earl remembers the 70s inflation rates. Do you see a repeat coming on that? I don't think so. I mean, interest rates back in the 70s were off the chart. I remember paying the bank 20% interest to finance the new cars I had in stock. And you could buy a note, a GMAC, General Motors Acceptance Corporation, note and get like a savings account, but it's a note, and you get 18% on the note. you put it a thousand dollars and they pay 18% a year it was absolutely crazy that's when we had wage and price controls and i don't see this inflation here i mean people talk six or seven percent i've heard nobody talking double digit inflation i don't think it'll happen and john strine

says i've read lately toyota has announced twice a projected reduction in completed vehicles for 2022. I want to order a Venza and was told I couldn't order it until at least August. Will the announcements by Toyota affect the projected delivery dates? And does Toyota keep dealers informed on production numbers on a regular basis? They do, but not as well as they should. And we don't keep our customers informed either. It's not very organized. In fact, it can't be because there's too many surprises. I mean, the whole you Ukraine war was a huge surprise. We thought it was only a microchip issue, then we found out there's other.

So the supply chain is a complicated, worldwide convoluted mess. And when this pandemic thing came, wham-bam, caught everybody off guard. And Chrysler Corp., I still call them Chrysler Corporation, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Fiat, or whatever they are. Stalantis? What's Stalantis? Yeah, Stalantis.

Yeah, Stalantis. It's like Nissan. Anyway, they're on the low end of getting parts. They have certain manufacturers that are on the top end. They're the preferred, preferred ship or two. And so it's just absolutely, I don't think, I thought things were going to get better at the last year.

I still think things will get better. this year but it's going to be a long time before we ever if we ever get back to normal it's too good for everybody by that i mean nothing the buyers it's too good for the sellers the manufacturers even the ones that don't admit it if they're if they're good if they're going to survive they're making good money the dealers are making obscene money so i don't think we want to go back to the day where the manufacturer could build all the cars they wanted to and to the dealer and make him take the cars and they get into this vicious competitive selling, which is great to the consumer.

I think you're going to see some good price controls on cars. I wouldn't be surprised to come out of this thing and saying cars bought like you do Apple watches and iPhones. When you walk to an Apple store, you pay sticker price. You want to buy an iPhone or an Apple watch? Sticker price. You want to buy a Chevrolet? Sticker price.

I think that might be, it comes down to that. Maybe a little better. I don't know. So I have a question for you. So you don't really think that it's the 1970s all over again. No, no. Even with Wall Street, with everybody talking about it. No, inflation.

They're calling it stagflation. Well, we didn't have stagflation in the 70s. It was rampant prices and it was just crazy. Anyway, yeah, it's far, far worse in the 70s. Well, it's a real split. It's a real debate. Anyway, folks, what do you have to say? Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-99-60.

And you can also text us at 772-497-6530. And don't forget, don't forget that you can subscribe to Will Stewart on Cars Podcast. You can do so by following podcast apps from your iPhone and your Android smartphone. You can go to Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Amazon, Music, or radio and also SoundCloud app. So take advantage of that also. Now back to Stu. All right.

We have a text we got from Dee in West Palm Beach. And Dee has tried to ask these questions for last few weeks. We've run out of time. I've had so many phone calls last week. I remember we hardly got into any. But let me get to these questions. First question is just he wants to review, a quick review of rat and possum defense.

We were talking about animal intrusion in cars. and the most common is our rodents like rats. And Rick, maybe you could run over really quickly what you can do to keep rats from getting in your car and messing things up. Some of the best things that we've found are hot pepper tape. Honda actually makes this product where it's a tape infused with cayenne pepper and other hot spicy peppers.

You wrap this around places where the rats might get to and chew, and hopefully they taste that. They say, nope, and they leave. I've heard that cinnamon oil sprayed underneath the hood of the car can help chase them away that will burn your eyes when you go to work on that car yeah that's for sure and just other than that

some of the best things to do is try to avoid having cheese in your car yeah don't try to avoid having anything long grass areas near your car you'll avoid parking near places where rodents might congregate or come from and if you have a rodent problem like in your yard You can call your pest control company, and they can sit traps out there.

We call a push wildlife. Or call push where they can relocate the rats. What about millopedes? That's what they do. Don't see those much anymore. You don't? Come over to our house. They're in the garage.

They're in the car. They're in the house. They're outside. They're everywhere. They're harmless. I'm always taking pictures of them. You should try counting them. I have.

You said they're harmless, but step on them. Step on them. They're smelly? Yes. Okay. A second question is a question about do it yourself repairs, D-Y-I repairs for a rusting car roof using converter. Using, if you're a professional, maybe try that. If you're not listening to Rust converter, you can remove rust or you can apply something called converter, which it converts it into basically a goo, like a black goo, that hardens and you can paint over it, you can sand it.

And it's just, if you're, it could be a big mess, but it's a viable alternative to rest remover. And it might even be better if there's perforation on the rust because it's going to form like a little goo that will harden. But it would be messy. That's my only opinion. Are you familiar with Rust Converter at all? I've messed with it before. I've heard of it and I've never really been a true believer in that sort of thing.

To me, it's, I would consider... It's used on car parts and body repairs sometimes. But if you're really trying to save the car, replace that body part. Yeah. There you go. We have a text here from Robbie Instinct. Stewart. Hey, hey, Robbie. Robbie used to text all the time. Robbie says, good morning. I have a 2011, 2011 BMWX5, I bought new.

We bought a new forerunner limited from you and haven't driven the BMW since. Well, obviously. It needs a battery, struts or bushings. I want to sell it, but I don't want to go through the hassle of dealing with the dealer. You've spoiled me with your honesty in every department, and I don't want to go anywhere else. Who buys vehicles like this as is? Thank you. And that's, like I said, from Robbie and Stewart. I can answer that. Right now, anybody. Yeah, now's the time, Robbie.

I mean... You got all the sources, online source, just sit there with your smartphone, go to Carvana. We buy any car. Yeah, we buy any car. They're all... And then when you go there, you'll see advertise other sources. Everybody wants to buy that car. You're going to have

fun with this because you've got a car, you're driving, you like, you want to get rid of that car, you're in no hurry. Take a week and just see how many different places you can get bids on CarMax, I left them out. And everybody wants to bid on these cars. And you'll get a huge, huge

price and have some fun with it. Yeah, Robbie, you can call us. You call us, we'll get you a price, I mean, and we'll remind you some other places to go. We probably won't be the high bidder. I mean, if you really want to take your time and shop, it's a car seller's paradise out

there. If you're selling your car, be it a lease buyback, be it an old car you've been driving, or a late model car, whatever it is, it is a seller's market. You can finally enjoy what the dealers are enjoying right now. Dealers who are in high cotton, they're getting fat and happy, they're getting huge prices. You can be a dealer. Shop that used car years around.

You can make yourself several thousand dollars profit. And even with the issues with the struts and the other issue, you can still get a figure with that factored in. The estimate of the cost that repair would be deducted from the, the, the, um, the, the, um, normal appraisal or a figure to give you. Years ago, remember cash for clunkers, there wasn't any pandemic back then.

People think when they got an older car it's not worth anything. And dealers were taking advantage during cash for clunkers by paying 50 bucks a car. And we had wholesalers that would come in and bid on the cars. 3,000, 6,000.

Yeah. We weren't paying, but the wholesales were paying. And we would pay and then we would sell it to the wholesaler for $1,000, $2,000, $3,000, $4,000, and it was unbelievable. The clunkers, the cash that we got for those clunkers. None of them were so clunky. No. Boy, that was a time.

There's probably some listeners who weren't even born during that we could probably tell them about the cash for clunker. Never forget a different time. Anonymous feedback here. There's one that came in a couple of days ago. I think you read it. You might even dealt with Rick on this. It says, hey, great video from Rick on battery issues.

I have a charging issue. Battery light came on and could smell the belt. Alternator lost charge, replace alternator battery, light turned off. But it doesn't come on with key. Key on, grounded out alternate. This is a lot of technical stuff. Do you remember what this was about? Thank you, Rick.

Rick, thank you. You solved a big problem with a whole lot of technical stuff with 12-volt signals and ignition and alternators and all sorts of stuff. The card nots are going to hate me for this. Well, the bottom line on that, he still had some issues going, and I think we pretty much recommended the, it looks like you got a defective alternator. Okay. Yeah, it looks like it's spoken in Rick language here. It's not even like in English, like with, it's all just the facts, and Rick understood

it, and wow, okay. And when you're in Facebook, you have a translate, so if you get something in Rick language, you just translate it. Exactly. Here's another one. Nice tip at the end of your show last week. regarding being able to use your flashers in the rain in Florida, thanks for tips like that. Yeah, last week we just discovered I was Googling something else.

And we've talked about, we've said, don't put your flashes on in the rain. And apparently, without much fanfare, last summer, there was a law passed in Florida signed by Governor DeSantis that says, yeah, on highways with speeds over 55, and in low visibility conditions you can put on your flashers. Another law that will never be enforced. Exactly. I think it's just to let the annoying people off the hook so they can't get pulled over.

I'd like to be a lawmaker for a while. I just make a bunch of laws. Nobody reads them or enforces them. But, you know, you can kind of vent and get all the laws. Should I read this one about arresting Fauci or something? I'll skip that one. About what? Arresting Falci.

Oh. We get spammed from time to time. Okay. Costco program says vehicle will be sold at the lowest price for which model that's been for the, the model they'd sell to anybody. For what time period? I think it's pretty much during the time period when Costco audits the car. I mean, they can't say that you sold it at the beginning year for this price, and now it's the end of the year because the prices would always vary.

It's from the time you post that price. Yeah. So if you post a price in Costco approved it, say it's $20,000, and the lowest price you've been selling to your regular customers is $20,500. it's during that period when you post it. So if they chose to audit you, that would have to be in that time period. Well, yeah, you post prizes whenever you want to. I mean, and you can repost higher or lower whatever you want to do. Yeah, I don't know how quickly. Josh handles that directly with Costco.

So I think it's pretty much pretty instant. You go online. So I don't know if, see, because I don't have an evil brain. I don't always think of, like, the way things can be, like, used for nefarious purposes. So I don't know if that could be used about. a Niput, like a Costco dealer, could they change prices on a day? You're just like, how fast could you do it? Could you do it over an hour? No, because they don't honor the rule anyway, so they why would they care? So, Stu, you're saying, if you want to be evil, don't think too much,

just be evil, you're not going to get caught. Still, you're saying your brain doesn't go sideways? No. That's my biggest problem. I have a real quick question, and this may fall into Rick Slap, and it's from industry innovations from automotive news. And there's a French company. It's a French sensor and software company that specializes in food and fragrances and things like that. And just recently, they went into the business to detect what just doesn't smell right in your car. My question to you, how many times do you get a complaint like that, Rick, tell us what this smell is, where it came from? How can we get rid of it? Well, before you answer that, this article, and I apologize because I should have remembered that,

this is really interesting. This company has scientifically, can scientifically measure bad and unpleasant odors or any odor. And what we do now, it's all subjective. You know, Rick, you know, you have a science condition. My guess would be you can't smell as good. And plus the country has had COVID, nobody can smell anything anymore anyway. So human beings are imperfect. You come in and you've got a serious odor in your car, and Rick gets in the car, and he says,

smells okay to me. Well, Rick can't smell anything. I'm making this up. Rick can smell them. But the person driving your car. Same thing with a hearing. People in my dealership are angry at me because customer calls up and says, my car is making a terrible noise, and the technician took for a ride.

says he can't hear it. And so then I call the service manager. I said, would you please have a technician that can hear drive with his customer? And they get mad at me. That's not an insult. We all have visual sense, smell. So I can hear. If you can, if you can, if you can put it and if you can scientifically create an instrument that will measure it. What a great idea that is. Yeah. But our problem at home is that my own ability to smell things. is enough for the world I can smell anything and where it came from how many miles away it is

but let's get back to this article in the automotive news this is done with this is important this is done with biosensors we're talking science here with peptides this is from silicon technology so this

is what are your thoughts sounds like a great idea because it would it takes a subjective thing that One person might hear a noise that another person can't hear. One person gets an odor that another person can't detect.

A smell is offensive to this person or not to this person. And it gives you a concrete definition of what that odor is and how severe it is. Because I can take my iPhone and use a sound meter on my iPhone to tell me you're getting a sound at this frequency and at this decibel level. This is, you know, that helps guide me where I'm looking for. But smells are so subjective that... It's very personal. I'm going to investigate buying stock in this company.

This sounds like a huge breakthrough. It's fantastic because, I mean, the idea of sniffing out the scent of a mold that has grown because of a small water leak in a car or a belt that's starting to slip a little bit causing a smell. You know, things can multiply quite quickly. In this article, it says that we're measuring peripheral. affinity or the absorption of spurious odors and melodores to these peptides, which mimics what we have in our nose. Interesting. Well, your nose works by basically molecules going in and being detected. So if you can create a machine, they can duplicate that

process. That's always bothered me, because if I smell dog poop, that means I actually have dog poop in my nose. It means you have hydrogen sulfide. No, no, you're smelling hydrogen sulfide. You're smelling gases that are produced by the... And that's a good point, Stu. So many gases. It's not fecal matter and your nose. It's not actually the matter.

There's a gas being released by it. It's a worst part. But it's not poop. We're digressing in a very bad direction. We are. We are. There's a lot of, I have a lot of anonymous feedback over. Let's move back to one off.

Everybody has a very valid complaint, but I was just wondering how many times that falls into Rick's lap in a line of work that he does. Hey, 77-960, and you can text us at 772-497-60. You can tell by the speed of my voice, we're running out of time. We're going to stay with the phones, and we're going to Mark in Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Mark, and welcome. Good morning, Hall. I'm glad to get off that poop subject there.

Anyway, I wanted to get touch base with just a little knowledge about the rust- dissolving. issue. Back in about 40 years ago, I worked, managed a major local body shop. A lot of times we used a product called Osco Inhibitor, and we used it when we fixed up older cars that people want to pay. And a lot of times you get rust on the trunk floor from leaking or rust in the firewall between the engine department and the passenger department of the car. A lot of times we use those products in order to change the rust over the carbon or carbon-like substance to stop it from growing, whether it was perforated or not. And then after an overnight soak, you'd wash it with water, and then it was primed and painted.

It's weird that just yesterday, my daughter picked up a product. I have a canopy on my patio that's anchored to the patio of Florida. I spend most of my daylight hours under, and the straps that hold it onto the ground are starting to rust away. And I don't want to spend $600 for another canopy anyway. Make a long story short, there's a product sold by Home Depot, Lowe's, made by Rustolium. It's called Rust Dissolver, and it's a spray gel. you spray, you would scrape off any rusty area, and then, excuse me, spray it on, let it sit 30 minutes, and then rinse it off with water. You can paint right over. It stops the rust. So you can

do, use it on old-style steel wheels that have rusty surfaces on them. You can use it on tools. Anyway, it has an automotive use, and it's very inexpensive, but I heard you mention in the Rust situation. I just wanted to share that. What's a brand name? Mark, what's the brand name? Rustolium. It's made by Rustolium, and it's called Rust Dissolver. Okay, Rustolium, Rust dissolver. Interesting.

Hey, Mark, would you think for like a... Would you recommend an amateur messing around with the Rust converter, or is it too much of a messy situation? You know, you just make sure you wear safety goggles and gloves, rubber gloves. And if you get it on your skin, rinse with water right away. But it doesn't have to be too messy. This is, you know, like most spray applicators, you've got a spray stream and a straight stream. And, you know, you can keep an area as small as you want.

You just have to be conservative. And, you know, you just spray it on the area affected. You don't need to do anything more than that. So, yeah, use it. I used it and let it sit overnight, wash it down with a power sprayer. Instead of being red, crusty, rusty, it's now black. And I've used other products. First time I've used this one, but I'd rather use other watery type of sprays on my same thing.

It keeps them clean for about six months, and then it starts to slowly creep back. Thanks for the tips. Anyway, Mark, what a great tip. I know you guys are, and I'm looking forward to the. thank you my experience with rostolian products that's an amazing product and your wise wearing gloves doing it outside that's the best place to do it because those fumes really spread we are going to go to stew okay anonymous feedback says we just bought a used car from Brayman auto Brayman Audi in West Palm Beach they use the

digital closing documents here's the process once in the box the finance manager brings up all the standard docs, reviews them, and has you sign them on a touch screen. Once all the docs are signed, the documents are printed off on paper for the dealer file and then scan to a thumb drive for the customer. There's nothing underhanded about the process. If you wanted the paper, they would provide it. We appreciated the thumb drive rather than a lot of paper. I converted it from zip drive to thumb drive just as an educational thing. Zip drives went out about 20-something years ago. We're talking about thumb drives or flash memory drives.

Yeah, I think Earl, you did a little bit of follow-up after that last week, and you can report on that. Yeah, I talked to Alex Kirkin, who is the attorney for the Florida Automobile Delors Association. He's our go-to guy for auto-related law and things of that, you know, think of that nature. I was shocked to find out that's perfectly legal. And as far as he's concerned, I'm going to actually take a little further because I think there's got to be some case law. There's got to be something in the federal regulations for disclosure and transparency. Basically, you know, there's the letter of the law and there is the intent of the law. The intent trumps the letter of the law.

I think what we're seeing now with the digital revolution, I think we're seeing science and technology get ahead of the law. And we forget that a high percentage of of our population of consumers is digitally blind. In other words, there are a lot of people out there that don't know how to find information digitally. And they can't read it, they can't understand it because they can't read it, they can't find it.

It's hard enough when you get a hard copy, we call it in the digital age, a piece of paper with a disclosure, because a piece of paper's got a bunch of fine print on it. we were struggling for years and years and years to have the manufacturers and the dealers not have fine print that we should have important stuff like prices and modification of those prices in large letters and we're talking about on a piece of paper so we never won that war and before we could lose or win that war they changed the rules but remember what prompted this last week there was a woman called her son bought a car

had agreed to a price of 60, they tried to sell it to him for 65,000, then they negotiated, they agreed to 60,000, he went home, got the Thund Drive, he didn't have a computer, took several days, he went to his mom's house, plugged it in, saw the price have been changed to 65,000. You know, I think a good follow-up question for Alex is, shouldn't it be legal to make sure that they offer the option, offer paper first, or offer as an alternative, because it sounded like they just gave him the thumb drive and kicked him out. Well, he would probably tell me off the record, but the dealers love this. I mean, trust me, all I've got to do is rewind my brain to 1975,

and I would have killed for the ability to give somebody a thumb drive instead of a copy of the buyer's order or the installment sales contract or the lease contract. Because people don't read the paper contracts anyway. How are they going to read? Think of the trouble you have to go through. How many people know where the thumb drive insert is on the. their PC and what and I don't have a thumb drive insert on my PC well I mean I'm saying it's exactly right I mean it's right I couldn't I would have to go to work uh actually have an adapter at home

I'd have to find an adapter and do a bunch of stuff that most people aren't going to bother with well there's some attorneys out there listening I wish somebody would text or write call the show something and give us your advice I think I'm correct that the way laws are made someone would have to sue. So you'd have to, this young man that had the thumb drive that got taken advantage of because there was no disclosure, he needs to file a lawsuit. And he needs to find a good attorney that wants to do something like make case law, because once he wins, there's no law against it, but he can still win. Because the judge will say the intent of the law was disclosure and that was violated, therefore we're going to hold that the thumb drive was not transparent

and honest and then voila you have precedent and then you have a new law so uh that's our next windmill we will till that all right i'm going to ask you a question i'm going to stump earl you're ready okay easy to do it is this is a really easy one what are what are earl's thoughts on the lexas 500 v8 zero i don't have any thoughts on it yeah well i know the v8 i mean what is it uh well is this the i s okay so is we talking about the i s is their small corolla size car or Well, 500 is a big, big engine. I had the LS 500. You had the LS.

Now, if they're putting a VA in the IS, do you know if they are, Rick? I have not heard that. Because that would be a whole lot of engine in a little, little tiny car. That would sound dangerous to me. Kind of outrageous. Or fun, depending on your point of view. Combestion engines are an endangered species. They're going to go away.

You folks out to like the muscle cars and the big engines, you better buy them now because there won't be around much more. Well, even like in toilet entries, I think it's interesting. that Lexus is building V8's Toyota, the Highlander, is dropping the V6. But why would you do that when they just come out with the Corolla YR that a three-cylinder turbocharged engine is producing over 300 horsepower? Yeah, and you're seeing it like the Tundra got rid of the V8, they're down to a V6 turbo. I'll tell you why, because old guys buy $100,000 a Lexus, and old guys buy high price. And our female caller from earlier.

She does it too. And an old guy says, oh, a V8. How many horsepower? Wow. And then if you tell them a Tesla's got 1,500 horsepower. Yeah, just listen to Earl and John go ahead. I think the audience has widened from the old man or the just the guys in the muscle cars. There are a lot of ladies out there that are interested in muscle cars.

I'm one of them. Well. They're a dying breed. They're very unique. They're very, they have a lot of empathy for that vehicle. Rick, do I see a snicker from you? No, that's a, that's a Clark bar. You was just thinking of the old song, Grease Lightning.

All right, I got another. Grease Lightning from the movie Grease, the song, and the car. Oh, yeah. Okay, next anonymous feedback, that's a question that says, does the Toyota dealer decide whether or not to put on Toya Platon, it's not Toya Care, it's Toyo Guard Platinum for the $6, $700. Great question, and yes, it is up to the Toyota dealer if they're going to put that on there. So if they tell you, you're getting a car, and I've heard this for how many years, 25 years, all Toytas have Toy Guard.

No, they don't. It's up to the dealer. Now, in some situations, equipment comes in on a car because of a dealer trade after it's been work ordered, and so you don't have the ability to remove something at a certain point. but most dealers that are selling toy guard are selling 100% of their cars or toy card, and that's their choice. You go on to your accessorizing system and you click, I want a 100% toy guard. They sell the toy guard for around $700, and the cost to the dealer is around $250. Correct.

So that's almost a 300% markup. So that's the reason. They're selling it for more than $700 now because everything's over standard. And the pricing is so convoluted and complex. they have spiffs prizes for the salespeople they have money for the dealer they have holdback they have it's it's a it's a marketing genius thing where the dealers feel like they have to have it and 95 was it 95% of the Toyota dealers Southeast dealers have Toyota Guard right because it's a huge profit center and when a

salesperson tells you that it's required or it's on there, they probably believe that. They might have been trained that, you know, so. All great information. We're caught up. We are, thank you. We're going to go to the mystery shopping report and as Stu calls them

that's Arrigo, C-D-J-W, P-B otherwise known as Mystery Shop of Arrigo, Chrysler Dodge, Jeep, West Palm Beach. Now back to the recovering car dealer and don't forget, ladies and gentlemen, we'd love for you to rate this mystery shopping report. Put your stamp of approval on it

or give it a failing grade, whatever, but it's very important. 772-497-65-30. Again, 772-497-65-30. Please vote. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Oh, thank you. The theme of our mystery shops for the last week

has been family-owned dealership. What are located in small towns or in hectic metro markets, our shops have demonstrated that family-owned dealerships have priced their vehicles more fairly. We find that they're generally a safer bet for consumers during this shortage fuel pricing. I changed Orgy to melee. Okay. Yeah. But let me say something about family-owned dealerships. Nancy and I talked about this in the car on the way to the studio.

Family-owned businesses are an anachronism. dinosaur. Family businesses, period, I mean, this is something that we grew up with, Nancy and I, and all businesses now are almost not family-owned. Everything you buy is usually publicly owned, and even the publicly owns are owned by hedge funds that own all the stock. So, mom and pop stores are falling to Amazon and Walmart and AutoWise, according to AutoNation, and Penske and Sonic and the rest of them. So, yeah, it was a nice ride. Small car dealerships were a nice thing to have.

They're dropping like lies, folks, because the value of car dealership today because the obscene money car dealers are making by selling their cars at thousands over sticker, everybody wants one of those money machines. And car dealers are just selling out. The mom and pops are dropping. And 10 years from now,

it'll be like, oh, there's one in Oregon. It's just not going to be around. It would be like the last blockbuster. Exactly. We talked about the dying breed of family-owned cardiologists and how they're being acquired by big other groups, but publicly and privately. Okay. One such example is Arrigo, Chrysler Dodge, Steep, Westbawah Beach, here and shortened to Arrigo.

That's short? CDJ, WPB, okay. Well, we'll just go with Arrigo. Now, Arrigo was once sold by the Flamboy. Shobin, Arrigo brothers, Jim and Joe. By the way, did you know that their dad passed away about a month ago? I didn't know that. And he was a true pioneer, Joe Arrigo Sr.

Amazing guy going way back. He and Jim Moran were friends. He started out in Chicago came down to Florida with Jim Moran, Ran Jam, Pontiac in Hollywood. But he was the spark of the Rigo family group, which started out with a Dodge dealership, I think, in Jacksonville, and then the father bought another dealership and brought the sons in. So, we talk about family-owned.

What a story. They go way back. Yeah, God bless them. And anyway, they sold out, unbeknownst to most people, because the Erigo brothers are still enjoying the commercials. And the big groups now like to have a name, a personal name, because in the car business, you hear a name on a dealership. It sounds like you can walk in and talk to the dealer or call him on the phone.

In most cases, you can't. But it's a warm, fuzzy thing. Now, Schumacher, for you local people, come join the Schumacher family. Well, I guess there's a family, but I think they're in Montana at the ranch. but most of the dealerships he's got about a dozen in the area now here's the interesting thing Stu I don't think he realized how big

the Morgan Group was the Morgan Auto Group acquired a Regal Brother a few years ago a short time ago and it's more than 49 was it anyway

did you know that the Morgan Auto Group is a huge group now they're number eight nationally number eight Okay, so I was wrong. I looked up, it's on the web page, and they listed 49, maybe it's just looking at Florida dealerships. Yeah, and they, and they, but this, and during the buying frenzy, during the pandemic, they're out there just snapping up. Yeah.

The dealerships all over, so there's a huge group there on the top 10, and number eight, actually. So, way up there, and just a point of it, more interesting to us than you, because to you, it'll always be a regal dodge, and that's the way they want it to be. It's marketing. They're marketing it. And the Jim and Joe Rigo, or John, is it Jim and John or? Jimmy and John. Jimmy and John. Jimmy and John.

Joe's the father. Joe's the father, yeah, Jim and John. And they do a great job. I mean, they are entertaining commercials. They get your attention. And I'm not sure I like the practice of camouflaging in dealerships. Oh, real quick. The last, so a couple weeks ago when we did the Round Tree Mord,

roundree Moore Ford, up in Lake City, that's owned by the Morgan Group, too. Yeah. And that's part of the, they're just stabping them up. And Larry Morgan, I know well, because we were on the board of directors of Florida Automobile Deal Association together and on the executive committee, great guy. And he made a fortune in tires. He had, he sold tires. He had a huge, like, you know, chain, national chain of tires, and he sold out for a huge amount of money. He wanted to sell cars. And then, though, like a lot of multimillion.

He got bored, bought himself a dealership in Tampa, so hey, this is fun. And then he got on the Dealers Association and the rest of his history. So now he's number eight in the country. So really cool guy. The son is run in the store now, I think, these stores. Anyway, a lot of dealers are camouflaging, as I allude to early, Terry Taylor, the largest, privately owned. They're not even public.

They're privately owned. and I wonder where they rank. Oh, gosh. I mean, who's number one? Is it Automation, then Penske? Autonation's number one, and then Penske dropped down to three or something. Anyway, this is only interest to us car dealers,

but a lot of big groups are, when names on, Maroni is an example, in West Palm Beach, on Okotribi Boulevard. Bruni used to be, originally it was Roger Dean. He was a real guy. That was private, and then he sold out to AutoNation, and they changed the name to...

That was Maruni then. ...O Nation Chevrolet, and then Maroonie, who used to be the president of Auto Nation, bought it, he quit Auto Nation, and he bought it back. Now he has his own group called Marini. Why are we talking about? I better get some stock in Auto Nation. The point is, it's a big smoke screen, and no one knows who owns these dealerships. Exactly.

And it makes it very difficult. Who owns McDonald's? Yeah. Anyway, go there we are. Okay, Morgan keeps his name off the dealership signs. He even keeps the dealerships named after the previous owner. Not very transparent, and I agree with that. Most of them are doing it. And round treats, too, talked about this a second ago. They were really owned by the Morgan Group. And there they are. Actually, a good experience, too. Or was it a good experience? Not really. that's not a good. And the salesperson said he charged his own mama that $6,000 markup. Oh, that's right. So, you know, we gave him credit for being up front because I think after the text drive, he says, listen, I just want to let you know that we mark up our cars and he was up front. But, you know, it's kind of like being up front, like, I'm going to beat the crap out of you in five minutes.

Well, at least he was up front about it. Okay, here's the report. Here's the, here's what's, that's interesting to us. Now, this is interesting to you. I arrived as if I were Agent Lightning and the late afternoon, greeted by a customer service lady at the front desk. She asked me what brought me in. I said I wanted to see the Chrysler, Pacificus. She asked if I wanted a new or pre-owned and then handed me over to a salesman by calling over a man saying, Greg, you're up, dealer vernacular. Now, is it, you're an up system?

When you walk in the door, you're not a human being. You're no longer a human being, you're an up. And that's what we call you. More from possessive, that's your up. you're up to go now it became a thing alright let's keep going there's an up out there in the lot I see an up in the lot

and that's what we call you folks that buy cars Greg walked me through the showroom to the lot where there was a white Pacifica pinnacle Highest trim mobile obviously Greg said this model had the nicest of everything

and everything of everything that's nice phrase he said the only thing it didn't have was a refrigerator and I actually had a Lexus one time with a refrigerator So it doesn't have everything of everything, Greg. Yeah. Sorry.

Greg left me at the car while you went back in to get the key. It returned seven minutes to say the detailed guy lost the key, and they're waiting for someone to make a new one. Folks, you have no idea what an aggravation that is in car dealerships. Everybody always loses keys. In this case, it was an expensive mistake, because the set of keys cost $800. Highway robbery, I hate it, I hate it.

does the manufacturers screw the dealers and the dealers screw you we get charged obscene amounts as a toilet dealer for keyless remotes and then we charge you even more obscene amount and it's just not right 800 bucks you can buy an iPhone for 800 bucks right yeah yeah ness e how can they charge you $800 for a key i just ordered a new remote for my pickup just the simple little fob the locks and unlocks it my price on it as an employee was 80 dollars internal price a good that's a that's a bargain price I asked if there was another Pacifica to see and he said they had another one that just came out of the truck you offered to drive me around back to find it as we drove through the lot I could see they had maybe 30 cars on the ground when I was here last it was jam packed with vehicles on a huge lot that is a huge lot now it was a ghost town and that's what you're seeing now it's just sprinkling your cars most of those cars that you see

are probably orders that were canceled, people that backed out, or they just haven't got around to pick up the car. And if you buy one of those cars, folks, that's on the lot, you're going to pay a lot more than if you order the car. You understand that that's on the lot truly will not be there long. They tell you that, even when they have a lot of cars, when they have 10 cars or 20 or 30 cars, you know that car won't be there very long,

and they know it, and they're going to charge you for it. If you can wait, wait, and order the car. I mean, you can negotiate a much better price on an ordered car than you can from the inventory. When we found it, Greg asked that he didn't advise, that he didn't have the keys to this one, but it should be open. We'd look at it.

I told him that'd be fine. I said I was well aware of the difficulty finding cars, and if this one was available, I'd like to look at the numbers. The MSRP was 58,362, and there was no addendum. Greg went over all the features with me. Then drove me back to the showroom. I asked them if they were marking up their vehicles

like I'd heard in the news. He said they were only adding market adjustments on special vehicles like the Dodge Hellcats. That's what he said. He said they only added the 1995 Orico Advantage. That's what he said to their price. And it was the other dealers who were adding all the market adjustments.

Sounds like Greg may have been new. I don't know. I asked about the Aregal Advantage, which really should be the Morgan advantage. A bunch of dealers added garbage, same stuff, that was on the Round Tree Moore advantage. And it could be taken off. He said he had a little luck having managers do this.

I asked for a printed breakdown for the numbers for me. Printed. Give him a thumb drive. Yeah, right. He asked for some information from me first. then after he'd get the pricing from his manager. He left me waiting for 11 minutes and returned looking worried. He showed me a worksheet immediately apologized for the big fat market adjustment.

He said, it wasn't going to happen. It did happen. He said he was sorry, but the Pacific apparently was in the same category because my manager told me it was as the other vehicle subjected to a market adjustment. The top line was MSRP 58,362. added a $4,995 market adjustment, a $195, that's $1,995, installed Arrigo Advantage, or Morgan Advantage, as you prefer, $394 in taxable fees, which is a salesman talk for dealer fee, hidden fee,

gotcha fee, $394 taxable. Remember that. They charge sales tax on something, and they told you it was a fee, well, it's their fee. It's their profit. If you're charging sales tax, you're buying something. You're buying something. Right. You're not just buying the car. You're buying that fee. Exactly. It's not a tax. It's a profit to the dealer. And a 9998, can we say a $1,000 dock fee, which is silly. That's another hidden fee, another gotcha fee. And, yeah. Arrigo Morgan was charging Agent Lightning $8,382 over sticker, over MSRP.

for that new Pacifica. Just absolutely. And you know people are paying it, folks. People are paying it. And, God, Larry Morgan and company are making a lot of money. And we are too. I mean, I'm...

Not as much. Yeah. I'm not charging a sticker. I'm only charging a sticker. I choke every time I say to a friend, what are the prices of your cards? I said, well, we draw the line in MSRP. Then I choke.

Right. Because I... But then we feel. better because we say you can buy it and then go sell it and make an $8,000 profit the next day. You can. You can take it to the auction. Greg Preston asked if there was a number in my head and if there was to tell me what I want to buy the car for. He said he didn't want to lose my business over a market adjustment over a mere $8,382 over MSRP. I don't want to lose your business because a lousy $8,000. As if there was some minor inconvenience. I put the ball back in his court and told him to tell me what he thought

Lewis's manager would go for. That's which is what you're supposed to do when you're playing the game. He flipped the right back. Okay, we're playing tennis now. I'll tell you what. When you're ready to pull the trigger and fill out a credit app for me, I'll get him to do his best for you. That's the old game. That's the reason franchise dealers will not exist shortly because of the game they play. They can't buy anything unless you're going to buy it today. You'll never get to low price until you buy today and then it ain't a low price. So

there we need to vote. Rush through that a little bit. One other little interesting I included at the very end. I put a picture. So if anybody works for Google, you can report a rego for violating the Google review rules. You can't pay for reviews. It goes against Google.

Any review sites policy and I don't know if Jonathan has it on the screen, but they said basically, leave us to view and get a free $300 value vehicle detail so that's that that that breaks the rules i'm i'm going to email larry morgan and tell him i know he doesn't know that i mean he got 48 do how many did i say you well i counted 49 on the website in florida but if there's more uh whatever whatever automotive news said i forgot but anyway uh yeah you can't bribe google that's uh no no okay so we got uh we have some grades coming in uh mark uh says very cold dealer 71 k for a minivan ridiculous he gives

him a D. Frank, Jupiter Farms, F, same sad story. Bob F were frustrating at Rigo. And what do we got here? Well, that's what I got so far, but what you got, Rick? So far, I've got Tim Gilliland with a D, Nagan 1 with an F, and Joseph Kelleherst says, what an outrageous dock fee. The maximum dock fee in New York State is 175. So apparently New York State has a cap on I think California is $150. California, definitely. They have a cap on it. It's low.

And Brian Siddlako F. For me, it's enough. Too many games. Too many fees. Yeah, I'm with an F also. It was especially because when you look somebody in the eye and say, we don't do market adjustments and then five minutes later, I'm sorry, 11 minutes later you give them a market adjustment?

That's duplicitous by definition. I give them an F. Well, we had this conversation in the car, and I'll tone it down a little bit. Something stinks, and I don't like it, and I give them an F. If we only had one of those machines, we could find out what we're thinking. I don't need one. I got this. Anyway, if they come up with a machine that measures dishonesty, we'd be out of business. Exactly. We wouldn't need the show. We'd sell those machines.

I know everybody's going to get mad at me, but I'm going to get my D-minus. I don't want to think that I'm letting my friendship with the Morgan family come in our way, but I will say this. You need to recuse yourself. Oh, no, no, last time this happened, I did call the Morgans. They did call the Rigo, and they did change something. I forgot what it was. It was a couple of years ago.

But I will shoot them an email and just say, you know, take another check at your store here, and I'll send them a copy of the report. There you go, and remind them on the Google thing. That's a no-no. Yeah, well, that's a clear violation. violation, the rest of it was sloppy. How many times does that happen? Too many.

Yeah, but if you've got a huge number of stores, this is a problem with large organizations, no matter who you are. Walmart has problems. Everybody has problems. But it's not just the size of the organization, it's the franchise system. You know, Apple doesn't have a problem.

They have a lot of stores. They don't have problem stores, I don't think. And let me say that the customer service, that person was rude. Well, we've also got a few more here. Wayne Veit comes in with an F. Let's see. Kirk in West Buy God, Virginia. The market adjustment gives a solid F-minus.

M. Ave. They are simply taking advantage of people. F. Kyle in Pennsylvania, F. There are dealers, while rare in Florida, that will sell for MSRP. Every other dealer gets an F. I'll tell you what, I'm not going to stick with my D-minus, but I'm going to email the Morgans today. and if they get back to me and make some changes, I'll stick with my D-minus.

That's fair. That's very fair. All right. It's an F then. Thanks for watching, everybody. Good night. Good night. I feel like it's good night.

Hey, listen, you're not going to see me this afternoon, Mr. Stewart, because I'm headed to that dealership. Okay. I got a bone to pick. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, enough fun. We had a ball this morning. I hope that you did. Not only was it entertaining, but informing.

It informed all of us and you. Stay tuned next week. We'll be right back here, Saturday morning. Have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.