Earl Stewart on Cars - 06.06.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Ed Morse Honda

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Ed Morse Honda to see if he can purchase 2020 Honda Accord LX featured in their online ad for the "No Payments for 12 Months" offer. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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 linked to cyberspace 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 sales forward a dealership. And now, on with the show. Well, good morning, everybody.

It is really good to be back. I know everybody says that when they're on television or the radio. We really are. I say we, the automotive team. that we have here in the studio. It's a show all about how to tell you avoiding being ripped off by car dealers. We tell you what the tricks of the trade are,

how car dealers will try to bait and switch you to come in to buy things, service, repairs, new car, used cars, lease cars, but going on for a long, long time. I guess close to 100 years. I'm not sure when the dealer exact date of the dealer network, but it's been close to 100 years. I've been doing this since 1968, so that's over a half a century right there.

And my father was in the business before me. Take it all the way back to Henry Ford, and they used to sell cars directly from the factory. Then they came up with the idea of the dealer network, and that's where the trouble began. And that's where we find ourselves. Of all the retail businesses in the world, probably the least regulated either by actual law or enforcement of law or car dealers. And it's almost become status quo for a car dealer to survive today is to emulate their competition. If you don't emulate your competition, which means deceptive advertising, Baiton's Witch, then it's really hard to make a living. There are probably some good guys out there, some good

dealers, honest, that either don't know what's going on, or if they do, they say, what am I going to do about it and they just kind of have to look the other way well that doesn't mean you the consumer have to follow the rules you you make your own rules you have the right to choose a dealer that will give you the best price and we'll tell you how to do that we've been doing this for 17 years right out of this studio we've been with a different radio station we're now with another station but we've been doing it for 17 years started out a half an hour show and now we're up to two hours so we'll be here right with you until 10 a.m. Eastern time here in South Florida.

Most of our mystery shopping, oh, by the almost forgot to mention, the highlight of the show, and I always say this, even though you regular listeners have heard it a thousand times or more. The mystery shopping report is something totally unique. You'll never hear anything like it, see anything like it again. We actually go out into the dealer bodies of South Florida. Florida. We venture sometimes fairly far north. I think we've been to Orlando,

Tampa, and now south to Miami. Where? Pensacola. Pensacola. Wow. That's way way up. It's almost to Georgia. That's the distance record. Yeah. We've had some remote shops from even out of state from listeners that have called in. And we go in

and we tell it like it is. We name the dealership. We name the salespeople, the managers when they're involved, which is usually. And we tell exactly what happens. If someone of a car dealer violated Florida law, we say it on the air. We name his name. And if we were lying about that or were misinformed or mistaken, it would be liable or slander.

It's neither of those because it is the truth. It's never been sued. And I've been threatened, but I've never been sued. Car dealers know they probably think they can sue me and they call their attorney. And the attorney says, well, did you really do that? And he says, well, yeah, we might have. but but but but and the attorney says well listen if you did it it's not liable slander so that's the reason we're still on the air that's the reason the radio station's on the air and uh we haven't been sued

so when you tune in at the last half of the show or the last quarter of the show between 930 and 10 we'll do the mr shopping report and you'll see for yourself we choose a different well we try to use as many different dealerships as we can we go we do go back and we repeat shops because you could shop a dealer today and then six months from now he's you know he's changed he's gotten better we have a list and we have a recommended dealer list and another list that says you better not buy from this dealer those two lists are available online at earluncars.com in fact just about everything we say in the show and all of the tips we have are nicely consolidated on

earl on cars got dot com www. www. We archive our mystery shopping reports. In fact, we had one mystery shopping report archive that was read by a salesperson from Edmores Honda. And that'll be in our comments later on today. We'll talk about a nice lengthy comment about why we had done a terrible thing by saying such things about Edmores Honda. And those are available to you at www.urluncars.com. So you other car salespeople, sales managers, car dealers out there, if you want to argue with me, if you want to text me, call me, my personal cell phone number is available to the world.

Area code 561-358-1474. And if you don't have your pencil handy, I'm going to give it to you again. Area code 561-358-1474. Call me. And look to the mystery shopping reports. We can discuss it or you can text me. that's what we do on this show. So I'm going to go around the room and introduce my team here.

First this week, I'm going to look at Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and Nancy was the only one that's been with me from the beginning because not only she, my wife, but she's also my co-host, and she started 17 years ago with Sea View Radio when it was only a half an hour show. I think we're on Thursdays. And anyway... Saturday morning.

Exactly. So Nancy is very special because, first of all, she's a woman. And the women get a raw deal today in a lot of ways. And the world is waking up for a lot of the things, ways we mistreat minorities, and women are minorities, but they are mistreated. And she's an advocate for women, and she built the female audience

from practically zero when we started to about 50-50 right now. So Nancy, it's all yours. Good morning, everyone. Remember that number, 877-960-99-60, and again, you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. I'm going to start the morning off by mentioning our Attorney General Moody. And I have to tell you, folks, the most important... I like that name, Ashley.

Yes, that's right. That's a nice name. The most important way to be an advocate is by speaking up. And that leads me to Attorney General Moody. And he's on a first name basis, Ashley. At any rate, again, speaking up, we do these mystery shopping reports every single week. We could fill the room, two or three rooms, with the mystery shopping report. but we need your help in order to change things we can't do it ourselves it's just like the

encouragement I give the ladies to give us a call but back to the attorney general on each state designates an agency to handle consumer complaints of fraud deception unfair business so many things and typically the state's attorney general investigates those complaints if you have been the victim of fraud or deception, you go right to the complaint department, and hopefully your complaint will be read and heard and revised. And you can download the complaint form at Arloncars.com. You can go to there, and we have a complaint form to the Florida State Attorney General's office. And I'm holding it up right here, and that's what I was about to mention. But the recovering car dealers right on it this morning, he wants

Your help. Please go to Earl on Cars. Download this complaint form. Help us. We want to start, well, doing some mystery shopping reports. They're going to knock your socks off. And the way to do that is for Ashley Moody, the Attorney General, to hear from us. Okay, moving right along here, we have got www.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. So don't forget, take advantage of that and remain anonymous. Also, first two lady callers this morning, you're going to win yourself $50. Yes, $50. I know you can use it. So give us a call. The first two new lady callers at 877-960, 9960. And now we are going to go to Howard, who's calling us from Jupiter. Who is a regular?

Tomorrow, I will take small one. Hello? Are you there, Howard? Yes, I'm here. Good, I can hear you now. You're on the air. Okay, and keep safe people, and I hope everything is okay. So far.

Now, my question to Rick, is Rick there? Yep, right here. Okay. Drive train, okay? Are the boots, the CB boots covered under the drive train? Yes, they are. Five years, 60,000 miles on a Toyota. Rick, why don't you do this for us?

Because you guys are, Howard is very, very knowledgeable about mechanical things, and you are too. I'm not really sure what a CV boot is, and probably 90% of our audience isn't either. So kind of explain a little bit as this thing gets into the high technology. Not a problem. Basically, the engine and transmission have two axles that come out either side of the transaxil, and they'll go to each of the front wheels. Brief and simple. So those two axles have to be able to spin,

and the wheels have to turn left and right, so they have very special joints at each end that have a big rubber boot around it to keep them full of grease. That way they can spin fluidly and smoothly, and those rubber boots, or what he's asking about, is called a CV boot,

because the joint is actually called a CV joint or a constant velocity joint. Okay, so the CV boot, keeps the wheels keeps all the grease in that joint yeah very good okay go ahead Howard okay now I think Rick knows

about the split years ago when we didn't have enough money you know and we couldn't afford anything we used to buy a split boot at one of the stores that you know you couldn't get in the dealer so you would have to get

in the pet boys and you get underneath and the grease the joint and you put the split boot on now. Do they sell them anymore? No, because they were a horrible idea. Basically, the picture of these boots is looking something like a short, very wide ice cream cone, and the boot has to be able to flex all different directions being made of rubber. But now I imagine that they take, and instead of having it sealed all nice and tight, and a big metal clamp around each end of it, the small end and the large end, they actually cut it down one side so that you can simply wrap it back around the axle

without taking anything apart, and then put it back together with these little screws. And it did not work for anything. They were great for a very temporary fix, but that's it. I answer your question, Howard? Yeah, I use it as emergency, and fortunately, Unfortunately, it was never, you know, I never used it, but I didn't have an emergency, but they were very cheap. And I did, you provide a lot of people that were using them and they didn't last. So, you know, that answers my question.

Next question and last question. I'm going up to New York, and I want to know exactly how much air should I put in my tires. What would you say? I had five pounds, ten pounds or what? Now, my recommendation is look on the sidewall of the tire and find out what the maximum of safe rating amount is for those tires, which most of them are going to be about 35 pounds and run that amount. The tires...

The maximum of minus 40. I would run the 40. You'll get much better fuel economy and better tire wear. It might be a little bit rougher ride, but you probably won't even notice the difference by dropping tire pressure, but you will see a difference in fuel economy and a difference in your tire wear. That's a good tip. Thank you very much.

I appreciate your help, and next time we're calling you from the Bronx. Sounds good. Drive carefully. There you go. Take care, Howard. We love hearing from you. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. never Rick was talking about degrees and how it keeps all the joints going and all this other

I related to a synovial fluid and that's what we have in our bodies I just thought I'd share that with you guys I'm always thinking medical that's funny because is that with a C and a V in there synovial fluid S oh wow so it's S V fluid that's why let me ask a question when Howard's driving and he wants to be sure he has the 40 pounds which is what is the maximum pressure stamped on the side of his tire. He measures that when he fills it up when the tires are cold, right? Right. You want to have the tires sit for at least half an hour so that they cool down because temperature and pressure are directly related. Now that leads me to my next question. They must clearly state the tire manufacturer that the maximum load in this tire is measured

when the tire is cold. So that means that actually technically you're exceeding the maximum, but it's not really because they define it as the tire when it's cool, which, again, not to just turn this into a theoretically thing, but that's the way my demented mind works sometimes. If I'm in Death Valley and it's 120 degrees, and I've got my car that I measured when I was home, and it was 70 degrees in my garage, and I put in 40 pounds of air,

and I take it out to Death Valley, and I do 120. I can easily see the temperature, the pressure rising way, way up there. But is that accounted for and taken into consideration by the manufacturer? It is. Okay. They always build a nice, big safety margin in there. Good to know.

Good to know. Okay. We have an introduce Stu Stewart, who is my son, and the general manager of my car dealership in full disclosure. I do have a car dealership, but this is not an infomercial. You will not hear us say anything about selling you a car. Matter of fact, we get embarrassed sometimes when people, people call up and you know talk about that because we know the competition and the

dealers out there are accusing us of being disingenuous this is a consumer advocacy show and you can I swear on a Bible that's the truth Stu is also the head of our cyber undercover division mystery shopping reports and that is the highlight of the show and Stu tell us a little bit about what you do well I mean you already mentioned I'm the spy master general and And that's the most interesting and fun part of my role here. But the other thing that's really cool is as we've kind of got the word spread out and we've gotten more attention and more viewers on YouTube, you know, we are an international.

Some people quibble with some of the countries we've cited, but we have Bali. So as long as we have Bali. Bali, I'm sorry. Was that a Bob Hope movie? Couldn't help it. Was that a Bob Hope movie? No, South Pacific. Okay, right. Bloody Mary.

Bloody Mary is now. Everything before the mid-70s becomes a blur to me. No, but we get a lot of comments, and we got a lot of correspondence that comes in from all around the world and the country. And so we get these, even when we're not on the show, we get a lot of comments that come in on YouTube and Facebook, and we get questions. We try to address them on the show, and it just makes me feel good that we have the reach that's going out there. The majority of the comments that we get are a lot of thank yous for the, the, the, you. advice that we gave and it worked for them. So when we see somebody make a comment like, you know, your advice on your show last week, you know, saved me $1,000 or are prevented my

mom from getting ripped off, it really feels good and reaffirms the mission that we're on and the good that we're trying to do. I don't want to spoil it, but there was a comment that came in on YouTube last week that we're going to address on the show today. And I can't wait for that. We've been asking for, we like critics too. I mean, it's nice to get the fonding adulation because you know it's that's what we like car dealers and we like people in the business because they're so timid and they're reluctant and it takes a lot of courage so we'll get to this later but the young man that called in was a was a car salesman and he really lambasted us for a mystery shopping report we did on his dealers show we'll talk about it later but I don't want

the I hope he's listening and I hope he listens to the show now because it was courageous we don't think he's a bad person we think he is misinformed it's a cultural thing and we will address it respectfully. So any of you other folks out there that work for car dealers, we'd love to hear from you. And we will not attack you in any way, shape, or form. I'm going to attack you if you try to lie about something or if you get profane or nasty.

But I'm not going to, I'd love to hear your opinion, honest opinion. And we love to have that in the show. We're not always right. And we make a mistake. We want to hear about it. All the time. We get corrected and then we do our best to correct it. That's the difference between anybody with a,

a different kind of agenda. I mean, listen, we do say that we're a studio full of experts, but we haven't seen it all because we get surprised every week as evidenced by the mystery shopping report. I didn't know what a CVS boot was. I did.

Okay. But, you know. Okay. That's good. Yeah. I have one in my closet. Does that count? I think that's a orthopedic boot. I think yours is from Walgreens. That's it. Okay, folks.

Did Nancy Sinatra wear CVS boots? I don't think. They weren't made for walking. No, they were made for rolling. All right. Okay, folks, I mentioned earlier about the Attorney General, and don't forget, you can go to Erlon Cars and download the complaint form that you can fill out. And you heard the conversation just now.

Stu was talking, you know, about response and responses from all of you. And it's really quite rewarding because we're helping each other, but you would also be a huge help if you, you were to go to Earl on Cars, download that complaint, send it to off to the Attorney General. She holds a lot of power. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-2-497-6530. And we're going to go to Bob, who's been holding patiently from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Bob.

Yes, good morning, and thank you for your help. Earl, I called you last week, and I asked you her advice. I don't drive anymore. I gave up my driver's license. I have a Honda. It's a 2003, a Honda Odyssey. Right. And there has only 77,000 miles on, and most of these miles are highway miles.

I used to go out west every summer. and spent two, three months out west, you know, fishing and whatever I did, you know, camping. And you told me last week to call you, I want to, I have to sell that car. Right. I gave up my license and I have a temporary, whatever, identification card now. Well, what do you suggest? Well, there's a different ways that we can. sell cars. It's the most difficult way is try to retail it, Bob. And the problem is you have

to expose yourself to a lot of people out there that might not be genuine buyers and people that are trying to take advantage. Yeah, I try to avoid that. Yeah. The best way to sell a car today, and it's really a good situation with online becoming such a almost standard operating procedure. I have to admit I'm completely illiterate, computer illiterate. I have a telephone and that says... Well, a lot of people are, but I bet you've got some friends, kids, grandkids, people out there. I have a daughter, yes. I would ask your daughter to call the following companies, online companies, for starters.

and you get online companies and I'll go slow on one of the most well known please do that yeah one of the most well writing it down right Carmax C-A-R-M-A-X and yeah there's the closest one where do you live in West Palm Beach the south end of West Palm Beach I used to be a customer of years when you were oh that's right yeah CarMax is on nine 95 and Boynton, and so she could, she could email them, describe the car, and then she would have to drive the car for them to physically inspect it. It always has to be physically inspected. Yes, yes. I sold the car there my mother-in-law when she died, and then I sold the car there, you know, to go down there. Yeah, CarMax is an honest company. They're publicly in. owned and they if you want to buy a used car you can do a lot worse than buy one there

but what they're almost as famous for is buying cars and they'll give you a five day fixed you'll give you the price and it'll be good for five days and it's legitimate uh when i say legitimate if they need your car of that type of car i think they can make money on it they'll give you a higher price if they don't need your car they'll give you a lower price so that's the reason you go to other sources as well the The other one, then I'm going to give you this, you can write this down. Carvana, C-A-R, V-A-R-V-A-A-N-A-A-C-A-R-V-A-A-C-A-R-V-A-A-V-A-A-V-A-A-V-A-A-V-A-A-V-A-A-V-A-A-V-A-A-G-A-A-G-A-R-V-A-C-R-A, and they're doing a lot of advertising and your daughter can go to carvana.com.

That's the website. And she could describe the car to them. They will send an agent out to inspect the car and write you out a check right there. So that's another source. So you've got CarMax and you've got Carvana. Now, the other one... Carvana, Carvana.

Right. Okay. Carvana. Carvana. Okay. And she can find... She's very confused. I mean, she's literate, not like me.

I'm completely illiterate. And I'll give you, Bob, I'll give you one more, and this is easier to write down because it's real simple. We buy any car. We buy anycar.com. Okay. We buy. Any car.

Okay. Buy anycar. Any car. Any car. Okay. All right. All right. All these.

These numbers are on the internet or whatever. They are, yeah. As a matter of fact, she happens to be here. She lives in Gainesville. Oh, great. She happens to be here because I have a medical treatment. I understand. My eyes, except, whatever.

Will you tell your daughter to call me if she has any more questions, and she can reach me directly at 5-6-1-358, 14-7-4? Okay, I'm writing this time, 561. 358. three, five, eight. One, four, seven, four, fourteen, fourteen, seven, four. Nine, four, seven, four. One four, seven, four. One, four, seven, four.

All right. Okay. I thank you very much. Well, you're very welcome, Bob. Good luck. And, as I say, to have your daughter call me. We'll help her. Anyway, we can, we can even give her a bid on the car ourselves as she brings it into my dealership. But I'd start with those three sources, Carvana, CarMax. We buy any car and car or... Buy any car.com. Yeah, buy your car, yeah. Bob, good luck.

Call again next week. We'd love to see how you made out. Yeah, we love hearing from you, Bob. Good luck. Thank you. I need it. Thank you very much. I appreciate you.

You're welcome. Give us a call next week. Bye-bye. 877-960-99-60. That's how you hear. can get in touch with us, give us a call, questions, complaints, voice your opinion, whatever. And you can also text us at 772-4976530. And don't forget, www.

Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, I think we cut you off there. Stee, you were talking about the mystery shopping reports or... I was just talking about how good I feel about our noble and wholesome mission. I love that we're getting the word out there I'm glad that people it's resonating and I'm glad that it's actually helping people

and I said that's the two sides of my job here one is a mischievous even though it's for good I enjoy kind of mixing it up and doing the mystery shopping reports but clearly the most rewarding part of the show is actually finding out when we help people yeah yeah it's true the frustration we have is with the regulators and with the legislators.

Yeah, we need help. You know, we're international, as Stu said earlier, and people all over the United States, certainly, and then we go all the way to Bali and Canada and Australia. Australia, I forget about Australia. So South Florida and Florida in general is probably, and I won't say probably, I say it is, the most unregulated state in terms of ethics, honesty,

certainly regulation by the Attorney General, by the Consumer Affairs groups. There just doesn't see to be anyone that really controls the car dealers. And if you're new to the show, I'm going to tell you just one example of what I'm talking about. There are hidden fees that all car dealers in the world charge. In fact, there are hidden fees that rental car companies charge and airlines charge. Hidden fees are attacked often by the media.

Very rarely for car dealers, they'll attack them for rental companies. They'll attack them for airlines. They'd love to attack the airlines, the baggage fee and things like that. You buy a ticket, and then suddenly that's not the whole price because you got to pay for this. You have to pay for an aisle seat. You have to pay for a baggage because you brought a little bag on. It used to be weight. But anyway, the car dealers get a blank check.

They just don't get held accountable. So in Florida, as opposed to any place else in the world, there is no limit to the hidden fees that a card dealer can add. I choke when I say that. I mean, are you attorneys out there listening? Are you legislators out there? Regulated? Listen at what I'm saying.

A card dealer could charge a million dollar hidden fee if he could get away with it. And the only reason they don't is because they can't get away with it. They don't have any limit on the amount of hidden fees. California has a limit. $75. Other states, $25, $50, $100. Florida, no limit. Also, Florida has no limit on the number of hidden fees.

In California, they have one fee. is called a I think they call it a dock fee in California correct me we have California and I think it's $75 maybe it's $100 maybe it's $50 but it's a control thing so when you go into a car

dealership in California everybody does the same thing so you consider part of the price of the car it's there they're not going to take it off it's legal but it's quantified and it's not hidden it's right there in front of you okay and Florida you're going to

have as many different dealer fees as you want. You can have as much as you want for each one. I know of a dealer in Coconut Creek that charges close to $3,000. We're pushing $3,000, yeah. Yeah, close to $3,000. And there's probably

dealers that even do higher than that. These are just the ones we know about it. Now, I said in California, they name it a dock fee. And all the other states they have to call it what it is. Dealer fee, doc fee, whatever they want to call it. service fee, call it whatever they want. In Florida,

you call it anything you want. You call it a tag agency fee. And they call it electronic filing fee. They call it an administrative fee. And so by calling it anything they want, they can keep changing the name. Car dealers out there used to be called dealer fees. Car dealers out there will advertise now. We do not charge a dealer fee. Why? Well, they're lying. because they're charging another fee by a different name,

which is the same thing as a dealer fee. It's a hidden fee. So we have to have some attorneys out there. Why don't? I'd love to have one call from one attorney just a call and say, how is this possible? Or a regulator. Let's have somebody from the state attorney's office.

How about how about how them just show some interest? I mean, even imperfect solutions like capping the fee in California. California, obviously somebody paid attention to that at some point and passed a law or made a regulation and the DMV code. North Carolina, we know a dealer up there that told us there was a big push on litigation on dealer fees and they reacted this terrible solution, basically they had to justify the cost. If they said if a dealer fee was to cover paper work processing, they actually had measure

the time, calculate the wages and then come up with a justifiable fee. still BS, but at least it's something. Yeah, it's still deception, but it's at least educated deception. This is totally uneducated, open wild wild west. It's complete neglect by what they call the fight, the fights when

there's no rules, it's a bear knuckle brawls. Yeah, bare knuckle brawl, melee. Yeah, it's a melee. We have melee here, so. Okay, folks, it's a wild wild west. Yes, I think Rick's got a YouTube over here. And I just want to mention real quick, I have a phone number

another way to get in touch with an attorney general, and that's 850-414-3-3-0. And I'll be mentioning that throughout the show, and you can download that complaint form. Erwan Cars. Now back to Stu, or to Rick. Hi.

Mark Ryan is asking, he says, we received our insurance renewal and do not feel that nationwide is on my side any longer. He says, do you have experience with the plug-in tracking devices to lower your insurance rates? Any risk on using the OBD port for this device? Now, the OBD port that he mentions is the little plug under the dash for onboard diagnostic that a technician will plug your computer in to pull the codes from your car, talk to your car. A lot of these insurance companies are giving you these little boxes that plug-in,

progressive, nationwide, and they track how you're driving your car, and it sends this information back to the insurance company, and the idea is that if you are a safe driver and can prove it by the way you drive with this little box, it will reduce your insurance rates. Here's the drawback on those. They're not selling them. They're giving them to you. Therefore, they're not very expensively made little items. They're made by the cheapest of the cheapest of the cheapest that they can find.

And quite often, I have seen several cases of cars coming in with some extremely weird issues because these units short out, very cheaply made, and of course, they break very easily inside. And if they short, they're connecting directly into the data stream cables going right to the computers of your car. So what you're plugging in is a 20-cent device that could possibly cause bad effects in your computer. I am

very leery of those. Wouldn't the insurance company be responsible for that? Ah, but see, they'll have you sign little waivers with all the little fine print that says they're not responsible for anything when they hand those to you. I'd like to see one of those disclaimers. I find that

hard to believe. I'm going to see if I can come up with this information, but I do know that we have had several cases where I have chased a problem around and around and around, only to come to find out that when the customer arrived at the dealership, they unplugged that little device and put it in their center console because they didn't want to block up the port where they knew I'd have to plug in without them really realizing that they had just taken the problem and put the problem away. And now the car worked perfectly. And they got back in the car and they plugged.

that thing in, all the problems came back. Okay, so it wasn't a permanent damage, it was temporary when you unplugged it. Okay, that's right. Yeah, okay. Well, that's good to hear. Okay, folks, we're going to go to Steve who's calling us from New Jersey. We just heard from Howard, he's

heading to Brooklyn, and you and I just finished the Sopranos. I've got to go home and make some sauce. Okay, Steve. Some gravy. Good morning. Good morning, everybody. How are you today? Good morning, Steve. Hi, I'm a long-time texter, a long-time listener, but first-time caller.

Earl, I have to thank you for receiving my email during a week, and do you mind if I would go over my buying experience with my Volvo? No, that's fine, Steve. I appreciate it. You're one of my consumer heroes because you were persistent, you're intelligent and articulate, and you fought the good fight, and you won, so I'm proud of you. I'd love to hear the story. Great. Thanks.

Well, I started off about a year and a half ago with my new car research, and my knees were pretty specific. My wife has a serious back issue, and we wanted to use a car for long-distance driving to visit our family and friends, so I needed to make sure that I could get a new car that was comfortable, very comfortable to drive in, as well as obviously safe. And I also wanted to avail myself of, as much as I could,

and what made sense to me, at least, all of the different technologies that are now available for accident avoidance and if you were to be in an accident, you know, safety. Volvo's got a great reputation for them. Yeah, but, you know, Volvo used to be a differentiator in safety. safety, but I think there's an awful lot now of car manufacturers that are probably on par with them. I agree. And so when I started doing my research, I really didn't limit myself to any type of vehicle.

But there's also one other interesting factor. My wife is about 4'10. She's a little height challenge, too. And so you might assume when I sort of looking at SUVs, which are the most prevalent things in the market, it was kind of hard for her to get in and out of those. So that led me to look at cars more than anything, which I prefer anyway. I like the drive of a car as opposed to an SUV. I don't feel comfortable in an SUV.

And the other issue I have is sometimes I have to transport things, including sometimes her wheelchair. And so I needed to have something that I could easily put in whatever vehicle I bought. So, I'll make a long story short, I probably test-road 15 cars, and many actually are not that, we're not that comfortable for us. And then the ones that were, I had issues with just putting a wheelchair in the back, which then led me further to decide that I wanted to get a station wagon. And most of the station wagon in the United States are really these crossovers, which are relatively tall. They're almost like SUVs, and it would have made it more difficult for me to put a wheelchair slipping in the back, and my wife climbed me into the car and things like that.

Plus, I didn't like the drive of it. So ultimately, it whittled down to just a regular station wagon, an old-time American station wagon. They're a dying breed. And there's only two really out in the market, soon to be only one, and that was the E-class station wagon, which is very expensive, and the Volvo station wagon, which is somewhat expensive. expensive, but not nearly as much. Next year, Mercedes is going to change,

and their E-class station wagon is actually going to be more of a crossover, very similar to the Subaru. So next year, it'll only be one station wagon left. But anyway, with all that said, so I narrowed my research down, and I used Nanty's tool. I modified it, but I basically sent it out to five Volvo dealers, Yes, for their outdoor price, and to help them along on that, I actually define what the outdoor price was. And even with that, I still got a couple of dealers that, you know, that would say, well, you know,

if you're going to throw an incentives that I didn't qualify for and things like that. But eventually, I used that tool, plus I contacted Costco, auto buying program, and true car. So I knew by the time I found a dealer with a good price, that I was comfortable with that price. The other things I did, though, was I researched the YouTube, I read a lot about the cars, IHS, all the different things about safety and whatnot. I even looked at research the dealers for ratings and any litigation they might have gone through. and so I knew by the time I picked this dealer this is the right one for me Steve if I had a consumer medal to award

I would like to pin it on you you really really are the perfect car buy if I could have all the people in my audience be as sharp as you are when you're buying I would be a happy man and Steve we're going to put your picture in the consumer report my goal in life

when I make some major purchases I make them as informed as I can but And if I make the decision, I don't look back. I don't second-guess myself. So I'd rather be aware of what's going on and then just make the decision. This particular dealer had the only litigation I could find was back to 2001 where an unemployed lawyer decided that he was going to put some fraudulent information on his application to get a car. And then shortly thereafter to say he couldn't afford the car. and then sue the dealer for false advertisers or something like that, which they threw out.

So it was almost comical. So anyway, what all I said, I ordered the car back in February of this year, and the reason I ordered it is this particular station wagon that I got, the only way you can get it is a factory order. And it's not actually widely bought in the United States. So even in February of this year, there were only five of this particular car actually were delivered in the United States. But it suits aren't my needs, and that's what I'm happy about. Anyway, so February, I waited, and they said, we'll probably come in in May, and it came in, more or less, in the middle of May.

So I checked on the car when the dealer was closed as we live in New Jersey, the coronavirus, and whatnot, and lo and behold, everything looked to be there except for the wheels. Now, these wheels are not cheap. They're like $750 apiece. Wow. And they, they make it long so short, the salesman that I ordered it from, and I have the sign order form, in their dealership, that form is given to a different. different salesman who then actually keys it into the computer system, and that person keyed it in wrong. And so when I received the car, and I noticed that the wheels were incorrect, I told them, I'm not accepting the car the way it is.

I'll only accept that if the rooms I ordered are put on it, and if you won't or can't do that, then I want my deposit back, which was $1,000. But I actually wanted the car, but I wanted it under those circumstances. Well, look how long you had to wait, of course. I mean, to go through this again, you'd be an old guy before you ever got the car, so I don't blame you for being a thing. Well, it actually would have been worse because of the coronavirus. Oh, yeah.

There were two huge incentives that were available to me as long as I picked the car up in May or June. That's right. A $2,000 incentive from Costco, and then another $1,000 incentive from Volvo. And so with all that together with the original deal I had, my, my, my, my, net cost to purchase a car would have had a discount of about 13.2% which for a brand new car is pretty good. It is damn good, yeah. And so I would have lost those incentives if I didn't pick up the car.

And quite frankly, this car really is going to be modified that much for the next model year of 2021. And actually in 2021, as I said earlier, the only car, true station wagon I'd be able to get the United States would have been that particular car because the E-Class is. is changing. So I went back before. I waited a week for finally the ordering salesman to tell me that they did it incorrectly, but all he did was offered a slight discount on the car or get my money back.

He didn't really make any effort to get the wheels, which I thought was strange because it didn't ring true to everything I've had researched about this dealership. Well, make a loan short, and I'm sorry to take up so much your time. Not at all. This is very important. The owner actually knew about the issue at some point in time and had instructed the salesman to get the wheels for me. And he had thought it was all done.

So another week transpired. And that hadn't happened. So finally, I had research that I found the dealer's name and contact information. So I emailed this person, and I basically said, unless you get back to me in a few days, this is what I'm going to post on my Volvo owner's forums and I belong to some car enthusiast groups and things like that,

just to let you know so that, you know, this isn't going to be good press for you. So he immediately went back to the salesman, and, by the way, the owner told me this eventually. And then at that point when he found out to do wheels in order, he immediately ordered them on Friday afternoon, and they came in rush delivery the next Wednesday. So I have in my car right now.

That's great. My car, the way I ordered it, and it looks great. Well, see, you know, the thing that you proved for our audience and reinforced for me, oftentimes the owners of these dealerships, the top dog, whether he's a general manager or vice president, or hopefully in this case is the actual owner. He was. Most of these people are not bad

people. They're careless, and they hire people. I do the same thing. I'm a car dealer and I've got people working for me. I had a problem the other day. I had a complaint and I won't go into the detail, but we really dropped the ball. And

the guy knew to call me and I'm open to my customers and I was able to make it right. But if I hadn't been there, it wouldn't have happened. And all the folks listening to Steve in this conversation, if you can possibly, when you have an issue that you're buttheads with the salesman, the sales manager, or even the factory sometimes, the manufacturer, if you can get through to the owner, there's a really good chance. Not always, but first of all, it's hard to get through. And Steve, it was. Yeah, well, it was hard to get through.

But when you do, you usually get satisfaction. Yeah. Wow. And a one thing, well, a couple of things I learned from my whole process through this, because I thought I was pretty thorough. I checked all the boxes, but there's two I didn't check. And if I ever order a new car again, I will do this. One is, I signed a paper order form which listed everything that I wanted in that car because it's a special order. However, that form has to get keyed into a computer system. and so what I would insist on if I ever order another car again is after they key that information into computer system

I would want a printout of what they keyed in so I can match it up of my order you know that's a great advice right at the beginning that something was wrong I never thought about that you added something to the show because I've never recommended that for before a lot of cars that are ordered are as you say keyed in and computerized and you get a keystroke mistake and you never know about it till it's too late. Right. Well, and in my case, and for certain cars,

it can take months and months to get them. Three, four months is not a problem for some of these cars. Exactly. So you'd rather find out the problem early rather than later. And the second thing I would say is, if I had to do it over again, I would visit the dealership and actually meet the owner and shake their hands.

Yeah. And actually develop a relationship with that owner beforehand because you never know when you might meet that. Exactly. That again is something I had I'd recommend this in the past but I'm going to start recommending it again when you buy a vehicle. At

that time you haven't bought yet, you haven't signed on the dotted line, you're on the verge and you thank everybody and they thank you and say one thing I'd like to do I'd like to meet the boss as the owner and if he's not here then make a time to meet him. Once you have that face to face it's almost a psychological

bonding thing. When someone looks you in the eye, shakes your hand, of course, we can't do that during the coronavirus, but you know what I'm talking about, then, you know, and you get a cell phone number. I say, what I do, I'll say, here's my cell phone number,

may I have yours, and that way it's awfully hard for them to refuse you. And I think that's a great suggestion, Steve. I'll tell you what, you get the Congressional Medal of Honor for consumers as far as I'm concerned. For sure. And I'll tell you, I mean, I have no animosity to us at the other ship. It was really

the salesman that didn't care. The owner was the nicest person, and I could see with this coronavirus all the financial pressures that he's under and all that. And I was sensitive to that, too, because quite frankly, the need I had for this car isn't as great now as it was before because there's so much restricted travel and with my wife with the pre-existing conditions. You know, we have to be very careful. So realistically, I won't extensively start using his car for about another year, year and a half anyway. But I didn't want A contract's a contract to me And I didn't want to leave the dealer in a lurch

Because I knew this particular car While it was great for me It's also unique And chances are good It might have sat on his lot For six months to 12 months Before he could sell it Meanwhile eating away

At his profit And he admitted that to me We have to move on here But I would like you If you can do this If you will do this Can you give us the name Of the dealer in the location

Because we want to recommend this guy if people want to buy a Volvo. Would you mind doing that? Absolutely. Red Bank Volvo. Red Bank Volvo, located where? New Jersey. Okay, Red Bank Volvo.

I think it's a third-generation family-owned Volvo dealer. One of the oldest-owned Volvo dealerships, I think, in North America, as I recall. Well, if you want to buy a Volvo and you're in the New York, New Jersey area, that's where you go. Absolutely. And also the salesman that I dealt with that was really great was Girard, J-E-R-A-R-D. He was fantastic. He really helped me. As for Gerard at Red Bank Volvo.

There you go. Thank you very much, Stephen. Call again. I love to hear from you. Yeah, what a great story, too. And thanks to call the show. Thank you so much. And thanks for all your help.

You're welcome. I like the part where you go to Eran Cars and download that affidavit, you know, the auditor price. Give us a call tool free at 877. 960-99-60 or you can text us at 772-4976530 and don't forget we've got the mystery shopping report coming up and it is from edmore's Honda now back to the recovering car dealer okay text our youtube how are we doing anonymous feedback we got it all let's do it okay uh let's see here um we had a few that came in while we are when we finished up the show I will tell you Yikes. Okay, here's one that says the dealership does steal your money and your trade-in. Wait, I'm not sure this makes sense. The dealership does not steal your money nor your trade-in.

You voluntarily completed the transaction without first consulting your experts, Earl Stewart, Kevin Hunter, and Steve Leto, Earl's younger brother from another mother. So that was a compliment. Okay. Oh, boy. Okay. A lot of businesses like Amazon have taken a stand on the side of justice and made statements in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Will you be making a statement with your position on behalf of your company? Yeah, we, I think we make a statement, by the way we conduct ourselves, and I don't want to

get into any kind of a political controversy. at our dealership, we think that we sell. You know, when you're in the retail business, in my opinion, you have to deal with all walks of life, different political opinions, different intelligence, different, you know, levels of morality and ethics. Retailers, unfortunately, to be successful, even the great retailers like Apple, Target, Walmart,

they can't call their customer and say, we're only going to sell products to people that agree with our political philosophies and our moral and ethical philosophy. So I try to keep my politics and my ethics and my morality to myself, except for it's the way I sell cars. And we try to sell cars totally honestly. And anybody, we welcome anybody to come to buy a car from us no matter what their personal beliefs are. That's right. Okay.

I have another anonymous feedback. I have a 2009 Kia Optima with about 107,000 miles. My owner's manual says to use conventional oil and change it every 7,500 miles or 12 months. I've been doing these intervals with conventional oil, and the car still runs well. Okay. I think that might have come out when we were talking about the synthetic oil versus conventional oil. And I think what we said was you follow the guidelines in your vehicle's recommended maintenance. So I have a feeling, and I don't know for sure, that maybe an 09 Kia required or called for conventional oil, and it seems to be working just fine.

And I think also Rick said that you're not going to hurt your car, I think. If you put conventional oil in a car that calls for synthetic, it's not going to hurt the vehicle, just won't be optimal. It won't hurt it, but you should switch your oil change intervals to a much lower number if you're going from synthetic to conventional. The main thing you need to do, though, is make sure that you're not getting the wrong weight of oil, the viscosity. If your car calls for 0W20, 0W20 is only available as a synthetic oil. Okay. Same thing for the new 0W16. Okay.

All right. Also, this came a couple of days after our show last week. Says the May 30th show. That was last week. Introduction too long. Need more time for stew. Yeah, I sent it. this one in. Just kidding. Need more time for Stu to catch up on missed incognito

and text messages from the last seven weeks. Thank you. Okay. Okay. Um, okay. While you're looking, you got a YouTube over here, does you Rick? Peter Mary's asking, I'm looking to buy a Dodge Charger with the scat pack. Any help on purchasing it would help tremendously. Well, I don't know what a scat pack is, but I don't with a Dodge Charger is I the only thing I would say is like any other vehicle you have to have several bids and I say this over and over on this show competition is your best friend if you go into one car dealership and you buy from that car dealership without talking to any other car dealerships you probably paid too much money in fact you you did pay too much money

what you have to do is you have to get at least three Dodge dealers and you have to get a out-the-door price, that's the price you're right to check out for, hand it to the salesman, and drive that Dodge Charger home. And when you have three out-the-door prices from three different dealerships, some you can do online, some you might have to go in and play the games, but get the out-the-door price. And if they refuse to give you the price, I love this line, okay, if you give me a price, there's a chance that your competition might beat it. If you don't give me the price today, there's no chance that you're going to to sell me a car because I'm never coming back.

So if you want to play the game and want to have a chance with my business, give me your best price. Keep your fingers crossed. And do that at least three times, and that's the best way to buy a Dodge Charger. And the Scat Pat, by the way, is actually kind of a high-performance upgrade to the charger. Similar to, like, the Challenger, came out with the Hellcat. And then what was the latest one that they just did?

And is that the one that Michael Gills bought? He had the Hellcat, but then they came out with one just above it, that it's like it's literally a race car. These limited production cars are overpriced, and you buy these things. We're Toyota dealers, and we had a Supra that came out a few months ago, and people were paying $50,000, over sticker, and even more. And now they're being discounted and rebated. and the depreciation cost of buying any kind of a limited prediction car too fast is crazy.

Wait, you don't have to be the first one on the block. Wait a couple months, wait six months, and you can get a really good deal on these limited production cars. Yeah, these things are a little bit more expensive than an iPhone. Yeah. I want to jump out. Okay, excuse me. Folks, I'm going to, I have a text, and Stu has a whole lot more. Is this a text or an email?

But excuse me, we're going to go to Denise, who's been holding. Good morning, Denise. Good morning, Nancy. My name is Denise Lazarulo. My sister talks about you guys all the time, and she knows I'm in the market for a new car, and she asked me to call. I've been trying to reach you guys for weeks now. I hope you guys are doing well. Thank you.

You're welcome. My question is, I'm in the market for a new car. I've been in the market for a new car, but then when we went into the pandemic, then I just didn't go out at all. Now that we're into the month of June, I'm wondering is, is it a bad time now because we're mid-year to buy a new car, or shall I wait until next year to buy a new car when all the newer models come out? Well, I can address that. It's kind of used to be that way. We talked about back in the old days with Earl's old Pontiac dealers.

ship. End of the year, every manufacturer had all the new models come out. And that's changed over the years. And there doesn't seem to be any real rhyme or reason when the next model years come out. We have two, we have 2021 cars already that are going to be here this month. Toyota does. And sometimes it might be eight months, almost a year ahead of time. So they kind of scatter them throughout the year. There doesn't seem to be rhyme or reason. I would add to that, the least of your problems is buying in June because of the model year. deduction, your biggest problem is going to be availability, and the availability of new vehicles now, all new vehicles, is dropping rapidly. The incentives that we're on earlier during the

coronavirus episode are coming off. So fewer incentives, fewer products, fewer selection, and the bottom line is going to be higher prices. So if you could wait until later and get the new model, it would be okay. It would be a good idea to get the new new model, but it'd even be a better idea to have a lot more production. So if you can, if you can wait. And I can. I totally can wait. I can. I would recommend.

That's good. And you'll feel more comfortable going on the car dealership, too, because we shop a lot of car dealers on mystery shop, and most of them we shop so far. They don't even wear the mask, trying to shake your hand. It's, you know, the precautions. So, yeah, do yourself a favor, health

wise, and then price-wise, and wait until November, December. Denise also, this gives you time to do your homework to find out exactly what you want. Line up your lenders. You know, I'm not sure if you've done any of that yet or even know what model you want. I have you? Well, believe it and that, I've been driving Toyota forever. I'm currently in a corolla.

I'm going into a Camry. So I do know the model I want. Great. I haven't really done my research yet because I don't know if now's the right time. I've been researching for years on the clock, but do I know exactly what I want? No. The Internet's a great place to go for all your information. The knowledge is power, as I always say.

Okay, have we answered your questions? I want to jump in real quick. I think probably the best time to wait, since you did mention you're looking at at Toyota's, is give it to the end of the summer, I think maybe in August. We've been told by Toyota to expect the, well, the production's already increased, but the availability, it's going to be at its worst this month. And we've already seen, for example, on Camry's, they've lowered the amount of the cash incentive by $750. They got rid of the 0% financing. You can still get 0.9, but they lower the Rav 4 by 500. So anticipate better incentives. I'm going to, my prediction

is August, as we're going to see it get a little bit better. Well, thank you so much. Like I said, I'm not in a rush. August does work for me. You guys are great. I'm going to continue listening to you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Thank you. Denise, are you a first-time caller? I am. I couldn't get through for the longest time. Yes, I am. Wonderful. You just won yourself $50 for being the first new caller. Thank you.

It's going to go towards my new car. Oh, absolutely. Denise, if you stay on the line, you could give Mike your contact information. He's in the control room. He'll have to talk to you. He'll pass that along to me, and I'll get that checkout over the weekend. Well, thank you very much. Both of you, everybody, stay safe, and thank you again.

Thank you, Denise. Thanks for being part of the show. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to Stu. Well, you have another anonymous feedback. It says, hey, on June 4th, it was announced that Ford has a lawsuit going up against them. This time involving any 2011-2019 Mustang with the MT82 manual transmission. There's a link to the lawsuit.

In full transparency, I own a 2018 Mustang GT with this transmission. The car was my dream car, and now I feel pretty sad over this. Mine has only 10,000 miles on it, and I don't drive the car that hard while shifting. Now I feel like I'm sitting here on borrowed time, wondering if the transmission will hold up. How concern should someone be about this hurting the long-term value of the car and the reputation of it? I feel like I got kicked in the gut with the news. Also, does Rick have any advice to preserve a manual transmission? Thanks, as always, and I'll be tuning in.

I don't think you have that much to worry about. A lawsuit is a dime a dozen, and you never know whether it's legitimate. or not. You didn't mention a safety recall. You didn't mention any kind of recall. You might want to investigate with Ford if there's a technical service bulletin on the transmission. Unfortunately, the consumers are sadly misinformed and uninformed, and the resale value of your car because of a class action lawsuit probably would not exist. It isn't going to affect the retail value unless it gets worse. And if it gets worse, then Ford, would probably step up with a fix.

Did he say his car was relatively late model? Sounds like it's under warranty. 2018. So the car is under warranty. You're protected by that. The lawsuit can go away. It probably will. Most lawsuits never go all the way through.

There's a settlement. And even if it became a safety recall, then you have a fix because recall would make you bring the car in and get a fixed. So don't worry about it. Enjoy your Mustang. And if you don't have any problems, that you can detect driving the car, then enjoy it. And as for protection or anything,

really just common sense driving. You know, be a little gentle on it maybe. If you really like the car, you don't abuse it. Stick with Ford's recommendations for fluids and fluid changes, which I don't know what their maintenance schedule may be, but follow exactly what the book recommends. And when you do that, either make sure

sure you have it done at a Ford dealership or make sure you document very well and keep all your receipts on any services that you ever have done on your cars all right it's great of dice I'm going to go to Rosemary's text that she sent me from North Carolina and it's in regards to the fine print that she constantly sees on TV and on all of these car ads and she once know if ever will something be done about it and does it serve a purpose well rosemary before i turn this over to earl i'll just tell you that i think you'll always see that fine print and i believe that it should be banned it's really wrong and it should have been banned a long time ago we need to regulate these cowboys and indians uh what earl what do you have to add to that it is illegal and

the violation of the Federal Trade Commission's requirement that anything in an advertisement that modifies the price or payment has to be conspicuously displayed in a font size, type size, adjacent to the actual price. So if you're selling a car for $19,000 and in the fine print of the bottom it says that you have to have green shoes before you get the $2,000 rebate. We saw that on a mystery shop once. then you have to display that disclaimer next to the price so that people see the price and they see the disclaimer

every car dealer in fact every advertiser I know violates that Federal Trade Commission just sits on their hands they claim they're overworked and underpaid and they never enforce the rules if someone pushed the Federal Trade Commission they'd probably write a letter to the offender and then they would change it for a week and then go back and do it the other way I have a thought, and it's interesting. So there's also a lot of language that's required by the FTC that has to go into an ad.

Nobody reads this stuff, and when you read it, it's Gabbilygook. It's hard to understand. So it's called the truth and lending stuff that they're required. It takes up a lot of space. I'm wondering maybe if they backed off on that regulation or at least put something in some plain language, it'll leave a little bit more space in that fine print, you might be able to read it. They can use a larger font. WWW ain't going to happen about it.

Rosemary, I hope. we answered your questions and stay in touch with us. And I have an idea. Go to Erlan Cars and download that affidavit that I have put on the website. And that's the out-the-door price. That will really help you out a whole lot in your car shopping. Give us a call tool-free at 877-960 or you can text us at 77249-9-60. Okay.

Okay. We're going to go to our sponsor. It's Jupiter Baker's sourdough. I'm just kidding. This is perfect. I think with some more effective time management, you could cover more on the show as I was making jokes about sourdough. I agree with you 100%. You know, one of the problems with the show is it's live and we have, we never know who's going to call. In fact, we never know if anybody's going to call. And the text are the same way. The YouTube's, the anonymous, feedback and we've got four people in here and all of us have something to say so on the car I sometimes offend members of the staff here yes and I'm the I'm the coach and I have to try to get the show moving we got a call earlier Steve a very articulate person and the question is was he on too long I had to make a judgment call the fact that he covered so many good things

that were of interest to the listeners I kept them on longer than I with some other people. And that's just, you're right. And I plead guilty time management is difficult when everything is, what's the word, it's spontaneous. We don't know what's going to happen next. That's what makes it so exciting.

Yes, exactly. Very much exciting. Maybe we get another hour on that. Nancy's got something to say, doesn't she? Pardon me? I think you have a caller or something? Yes, we do. We have a caller, and that is Henry.

Good morning, Henry. Good morning. How are you all doing? We're well, thank you. Thank you for calling your own cars. You're welcome. I wanted to update Earl. I called a couple months ago about a brand new GMC Sierra pickup truck where I switched the mag wheels on another car that was on the lot at the time of purchase. I don't know if you remember the call.

I do. Okay, and the mag wheels that were. switched, brand new GMC wheels had some defects, some pitting in the chroming, and I asked the dealer to warranty the wheels. And I was told that I could not have a warranty because the built sheet for that car did not include those wheels. Do you recall? I do. Schumacher, wasn't it? No, no. Schumacher was actually quite cooperative. It was Delray GMC. Buick, Oh, okay. Okay.

I didn't realize that they were the obstacle because Schumacher kept stating that they could cure the problem if it was their problem. But between GMC and Del Rey, I've gotten no resolution as of yet, and I filed a lawsuit to have them actually, you know, come to terms with the problem. Meanwhile, just recently, I got a call from the general partner offering to be. purchased me a separate type of warranty for the wheels and tires. I don't know if this is an aftermarket item that's sold through dealerships. However, when I told them it didn't matter to me who warrantied the wheels, I just wanted to have some type of protection. Three weeks after the fact, I had no resolution, so I did file a lawsuit. Well, good for you. I always think lawsuits are less resort, but you certainly waited patiently and tried everything you could.

I have a hunch that you will probably get. Is the attorney going to do this on a contingency, or are they charging you by the hour? Well, actually, having enough knowledge to be dangerous, I filed it myself. Good for you, yeah, small claims. It's $3,900. $2,900 total is what I paid for the upgraded wheels.

And I've been dealing with this since November, So I told them just last week. I think I waited long enough. Well, I'm glad you were persistent, and I salute all of the callers out here who don't give up. Steve earlier was amazingly persistent. A lot of people don't have the stomach for it, and you're a tough guy, and I think you're going to prevail.

And I thank you very much for keeping us informed. Let me know if it goes to trial or it goes before the judge. I guess this is small claims court, So oftentimes these things get settled on the courthouse steps. I have a hunch that's what's going to happen. They don't want to go to court because they know they're wrong. You're right. They're wrong.

And I think the judge is going to see it that way too. Yeah, one more thing. You were talking about all that small print on the advertisements. Yes. On a previous call, you know, I was in the Medicare business for a number of years. And the federal government says when dealing with a senior citizen, all information that you're going to be. going to be handing out must be typed or written in a way that a 10-year-old child could

understand it. So they have, they have requirement that, you know, old people, older people tend to, not to be sharp as they age. And Medicare insisted that when we solicited those people, the information had to be quite plain and obvious. So maybe that's something the, the, whatever agency is overseeing that should adapt. That's a very interesting point. I wonder if it's restricted to Medicare purchases or if it would apply to any retail purchase by a senior citizen. Well, since the programs I represented were Medicare funded,

Medicare was the overseer. But I think it's a good business practice. I agree. Anybody dealing with the general public, you know, especially with these amendments that we get on the voting ballot. Why should I need a New York lawyer to interpret what's written when it should be written in a way that we all understand it? Exactly. As seniors in Florida predicted, if a crime in the punishment for a crime against the senior is more severe than for a person who is less than 65 years of age.

So that's good, but we need something. If for no other reason, most folks, I mean, I'm 79 years old. My eyes are not as good as they used to be. My ears are not as good as they used to be. Hopefully, I still have my mind, but a lot of seniors my age are starting to fail. There should be a special law for seniors in terms of the amount of fine print, the simplicity. There should be, they should cut seniors some slack. I totally agree.

And that's a great point, Henry. Thank you. Very good point. We've got to get in touch with the Federal Trade Commission. Henry, great conversation. Thank you for calling. Thank you. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30.

Okay, text, YouTube. Yeah, we have a lot of texts, and let's get to it. No name on this one. It says, I'm going to purchase a new car soon and plan to keep it five to six years. Is it better to lease a car for that length of time or lease two cars for three years each or just purchase a car for five or six years

and drive it for five or six years? That's an interesting question. Leasing is not a magic thing and purchasing isn't either. They're actually pretty much equal, just different ways of driving your car. I always say

be careful of the leases because there are a lot more ways a dealer can get you in a lease. There's more hidden fees in a lease by far than a purchase. But if you are sophisticated, intelligent, articulate, and you've got some courage, and you can look a car salesman in the eye and do it carefully, a lease can be just as good an option. Sometimes it can be a better option because the manufacturers are so, are pushing leases so much today, and dealers pushing leases so much today, that some

of the incentives from the manufacturers are for leasing. They want you to lease more than they want you to buy, because when you lease a car, they have control. If I lease a car from ABC Chevrolet, ABC Chevrolet knows who I am, where I live, my telephone number. I have to send them a check every month. I don't mean literally the Chevrolet dealer, but Chevrolet leasing company. And they know when I have three months or six months left on my lease, and they can come after me to be sure I go into another lease or at least purchase from them. And if I don't, some of the fine print I was talking about, they fine you.

You have a fine if you don't continue with the leasing of that make or that purchase of that make. So if you're going to lease a Chevrolet and you don't want to lease another Chevrolet, you want a Volvo, they're going to penalize you when you do that. And they also penalize you, put too many miles on it, if you scratch the car in the way they don't like, and they give you an inception fee, they give you a dealer fee, multiple dealer fees, and a disposition fee, which is the fine if you don't buy it. So rule of thumb, I would buy the car because it's simpler, easier to analyze. But if you're sharp as a tack, go in there and Lisa.

Just be sure you know all the hidden fees, the mileage allowance and any number of other things that they get you on. Yeah. Boy, all this free advice makes you feel warm and fuzzy. Let's start charging. Let's start charging. Oh, absolutely. Okay, folks, we're going to go back to the phone lines, and we're going to talk to Steve, who's calling us. from Pompano Beach.

Good morning, Steve. Good morning. I'm in Boynton Beach. Oh, good. Okay, my question is, I have a 1969 Plymouth Roadrunner, 383 automatic, and I changed over

to electronic admission years ago. My question is, is the ballast resistor supposed to get hot? That porcelain piece that goes on the firewall? Steve, does you roadrunner go, beep, beep?

Yes, it does. I thought so. That's an English taxi on. Rick, what do you say? Yes, a resistor will get some heat to it, but I don't think it should be anywhere more than something that if you were to put your hand on it, you should be able to touch it for about one to two seconds before it gets too hot to try to hold onto. If it's getting excessively hot beyond that, I would consider replacing it.

Okay, I did replace it with a new one, an original Mopart part, which I'm lucky to have. And it still gets hot. Well, that could be just a side effect of having switched over to the electronic ignition from the original point system. Yes, I had this put in like 10 years ago, the electronic system. Yeah. The place I would search for this information, really, I would go online and find a Dodge forum site with Dodge owners that own those old muscle cars. It's a Plymouth. I beg your pardon. Yep. I'm all, I've committed the Cardinal sin, and that is true. And boy. Yes, the Plymouth Roadrunner versus the Dodge Charger would have been the two. but another question

are there mechanics in my area in Boyton Beach that work on these old cars because everybody does Ford and Chevolets nobody knows how to handle mopars down here again the forum sites will help you there because that

yeah mopar mechanics guys that know those old mopars you're going to have a tough time finding one but when you do he's going to be gold hey Steve I know hey Steve from Boynton Sorry about that earlier. Hey, there's somebody in the studio dying to know what color that beauty is.

Okay, it's a Dodge Daytona color called Flash Red. It's from the 90s. Wow. Okay, okay. I bought it in 1991 for $1,800. Is that right? Wow. Lucky you.

What do you think is what? I had the guy down to $1,500, his wife ran out and said, no. So always deal with the husbands, never the wives. What do you think that car is worth today, Steve? Well, I haven't insured with Haggerty for $35,000. I figured, yeah, wow. Okay. That's better than the stock market.

You buy the right cars and collect them, and you got yourself a real valuable investment, so congratulations. Yes. No radio, no heat, no air conditioning, no GPS, no disc brakes, all stock. You're earning the 383. What do you got for a transmission? The 727 torque flight automatic on the floor console. Sweet.

I have built many of those transmissions. See, what's the dashboard? On your show, own the barracuda. Who owned the barracuda? Oh, that's a Nancy. Nancy had a barracuda, yeah. Yeah. But you don't get a talk of.

He doesn't want, Earl doesn't want you to ask me any questions about the barracuda. Steve, he's almost like you. And I'll forgive you for the statement that you made about your wife. But moving on, I'm going to elaborate about my barracuda. Oh, boy. No, I'm not going to do that. Earl's going to... The 69

Barracuda Coup to me was the best-looking Moparder ever came out. There you go. Steve, what's the old song out there about Beep, beep, beep, is the name of the song. Oh, the mammalism. The ramble went, beep, beep, beep. Pass me by. Cadillac.

I had a key in my eyes. Oh, boy, I'll tell you. You sound like you're very passionate about that baby that you have. Where do you have her? Where is she? You ever parked in the garage? In Brighton Beach. Yes, I have it

in the storage unit. Because I have a carport, so you cannot keep these cars in the sun down here. No. No. With that. Because I go to a lot of local car shows in my area, Road Rascal,

sponsored by D. We go to Anchor in the Texas Roadhouse on Congress in Boyton Beach. So she gets a good crowd and it's a good show for locals. Steve, I got a 1937 Pontiac, the first car of my father sold back in 37. Had it restored. It's on the showroom floor of our toilet dealership now. And we've learned just like you did. Nobody knows how to work on the old engines.

And even Rick here was stumped. You have to find an old guy that knows how to work on these old engines. And Rick's a young guy. Well, to me, all these old cars, I don't look at them more as art. Yeah, you're right. You know, they don't even need a motor. You just look at them. The way they're built, handcrafted, today's cars, everything looks so white.

You can't tell one car from another. Exactly. I used to be able to identify every car on the highway. Now they all look alike. I totally agree with you. Everything like that. Okay, it took me a month to get true, but thank you for answering my question. Oh, no.

Take care of yourself, my friend. Give us a call again, Steve. We enjoyed your conversation. He was humorous. And he mentioned my paracotta. So there. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-3530. And I'd like to mention Earl's column, his latest column.

sell cars from your home. So take a look at that. Earl on cars and all the other information we shared with you this morning. Now back to Stu. Yeah, I think we got a YouTube over. Let's let Rick talk. Okay. Got two quick ones. Peter's asking, what is a good down payment amount for a first-time buyer? Well, most people want to put as little down payment as possible. You can buy even for a first-time buyer. If you have sterling credits, you can still get a low down payment. Down payments used to be something that people did as a sign of, what is it, prudence, because the more you put down, the lawyer monthly payment. You build equity in the vehicle quicker when you put a big down payment down. Now, if you're getting extremely low interest rates, the reverse is true. You try

to fight to put as little down as possible. If you can get zero percent finance, and some of the manufacturers are offering that now, you're crazy to put anything down because you're using the full availability of the incentive when you put no money down. So that's my answer to that question. And Rico West is asking, if leasing, what about the lease protection insurance?

So when you return the car, you don't get hit with excessive wear and tear fees. He says, I listen weekly from Toronto. Keep up the great show. It's like, it's an insurance policy, and like most insurance policies, the car dealers sell, they're overpriced, and take care of your car. I mean, understand what normal wear and tear is. If you read the lease contract, which nobody does, and you see the section on normal wear and tear, they do define it, the size of a scratch, the kind of stains, the tread wear. and you can pretty well identify what the leasing company is expecting your car to look like when it comes back in.

Don't buy any insurance for that. I mean, everything you buy from a car dealer that they call insurance or extended contracts or warranties is overpriced. And if you can buy it on the outside, you'll probably do better. And my feeling is don't buy any insurance. Just be aware of what the risk are and bank it yourself. If it's going to cost you $50 a month in your monthly payment to buy the insurance, take that $50 and put it in the bank or put it in the stock market and then every month for 36, 48 months,

if you have a problem, go to the bank and draw the money out. There you go. All right, let's try a lightning round on the text, see if we can get through them before we get to the Mystery Shopping Report. And you might have time to get to the comment, the YouTube comment, that we were going to bring up. Yeah. All right, lightning around.

Lots of water on the road this week, so be very careful. Question, is there a certain depth that is safe to drive through? I have a Kia Soul, small SUV. Is that enough ground clearance to safely go through this water? Every car has got a different specification on that. You should know the clearance. And it's a judgment call. I mean, I don't recommend going through deep water than anything.

But if you're driving one of these big pickup trucks with a giant tires, you could go through the Mississippi River. If you got one of the snorkels, you can submerge yourself. In a car, you have less clearance from a truck or a van. I think the rule of thumb is just be careful and avoid the water. Don't go through it. The most important thing is if you absolutely have to go through it, go very, very slow. Winding around.

Mountaining around. Okay. Hi, it's Jim from Riviera Beach. I purchased a 2018 CHR. I truly like it. I have heard that production will cease in 2021. Is this true? That is not true.

CHR is getting a redesign. so they're continuing the model. Anne-Marie, one of our favorites. Good morning. I was watching the Weather Channel, and they showed a video of a car being driven through a severe hailstorm. The hailstones were larger than a golf ball,

but smaller than a baseball. The hailstonesome smashed through the rear windshield, but just cracked the front wheel windshield. I was wondering, is the front windshield stronger than the rear one, or could the slipstream coming over the front of the vehicle tend to protect the front wheel shield, or was the driver just lucky

that the front windshield didn't break through? you. Anne-Marie is so smart. Yes. Really smart, lady. Thanks so much, Anne-Marie. Just lucky, I think. Yeah.

Same strength. There's no difference in the... Yeah, the front and rear windshields are designed, laminated, not to shatter and break apart as easily as the side windows, which are meant to be safety glass, that when they get broken, they turn into little bitty pebbles, so you don't have shards of glass flying around. Great information.

Excuse me, guys. We're going to go to John from Palm City. Good morning, John. John? Good morning to everyone. As I predicted on the show, unfortunately, Hurts declared bankruptcy. But before they declared the bankruptcy, they paid $16 million. You don't need the permission of the bankruptcy court. The CEO was only there one month. He wound up with $700,000. The executive officers right down the line, $600,000, it's a disgrace. But my point is, now is an excellent time since the used cars are down in value. Hertz included.

Many of the rental car companies are selling used cars. Some of them are really in nice shape. They're not being used. They're sitting there with even dead batteries. So my purpose is to say, check out the used cars and companies like Kurtz and all the rental cars. And there's some probably damn good buys out there. That's what I want to say. John, let me do those.

great entree. I wasn't going to get to this because we didn't have the time, but there's a full-page ad in today's Palm Beach Post, and it's a phony ad put up by Southern 441 and Green Acres, Nissan, implying that you can buy these

cars directly from Hertz for the bankruptcy and save a lot of money. It's a lie, it's not true. Hertz isn't selling these cars. It's Green Acres, Nissan, and Southern 441, on and they're probably selling a whole lot of cars besides rental cars. So in order to take

advantage of Hertz's bankruptcy, first of all, Hertz cannot sell a car in the distress case in a bankruptcy. The bankruptcy judge would require that they get a fair price because the creditors, the people that loan hurts the money, the banks, to finance their cars, has to be made whole. So they can't sell cars at this. stress prices. They have to sell their cars at market prices at the best price they can get for any car. You're not going to get a rental car from Hertz at a bargain price. You're going to get a rental car. If you buy one, you're going to have to buy it through a dealer. In all the states, rental companies can't sell cars directly. A rental company to sell a car

directly has to get a retail license. They become a car dealer and they mark them up like all car dealers do. So the market is volatile now and I hear you about the eventually when these cars begin to come on the market, prices will come down. Actually in Florida right now, wholesale prices are

going back up. They came down and now they're actually going back up again and our cars that we're selling at auction were actually making a profit on. I'm glad you mentioned that because I didn't know that. I wasn't aware of it. But it's just like

they beat the bankruptcy court, they gave these bonuses out before they declared bankruptcy. Terrible. Because the bankruptcy court wouldn't allow them to give these tremendous bank bonuses out to people. Now, one of the first thing about prices being down, this is a fact, they're coming back up again a little bit. But the classic car, collect the car market has completely fell apart. Completely. Absolutely. There was the biggest auction in Florida that was the end of April.

It was Barrett Jackson at the Fairgrounds. It's canceled. It won't be held until the end of October now. And the largest collector car auction, not auction show in the world, in October, is on hold for October also. But the prices of major collector cars are way, way down. Hopefully, it doesn't stay that way. But it's probably a good time to live into that market for anybody that's interested in one. Very interesting, John. Thank you very much.

Yes. Thank you for the information. Okay. I want to get off because I want the Shopping Report. Okay. Okay. You are the last caller, John. We'll hear from you next week. We are going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report shortly, and you can send in your vote. Text it in. 772-4976530.

Remember, the lines are closed for now. We got time for some more. These are quick. So we had a bunch that came in. Everybody loved Steve and Boynton. Texer coming in. What a great call. Everybody really loved them.

So Steve, I hope you're still listening. Call back next week. You're a star. Jonathan Wellington says, what exactly is the Toyota logo supposed to be? It looks like a little bold to me. Some people call it the sombrero, but actually there are three ellipses that intersect. The two in the middle represent the heart of the company of Toyota and the heart of the customer. And it's encompassed by the world embracing Toyota.

It's very Japanese. very zen and very cool but it looks like a sombrero to me Earl what's up with still wearing the masks do you realize that as you are talking that you are breathing in CO2 that's bad for your brain I can appreciate the fact that you're trying to show best practices

to your viewers and listeners also wrist mask is so tight I can read his lips you guys look about six feet apart love the show thanks Mark let me answer it real quick it is prudent and wise and smart to wear a mask CO2 does not kill you it is permeating it's a gas and we're practicing

appropriate safety things in the pandemic. Good morning. Question for Rick. Since you guys were talking about oils, what's your takes on AMS oil or AMS oil? It's all caps. Have you heard of that, Rick? Amsoil is a company that sells full synthetic products, been doing it for many years. They do not sell in most stores.

The only way to really get it is to become an ANZOil dealer or no someone who is, and you actually purchase it directly from AMS Oil and resell it. oil or bad oil or just about the same as all other oil. There are some people out there that swear buy it 100% and it generally is a good high quality product. Okay. Guess what? We're caught up.

Fantastic. We're caught up with the YouTube suit. We are. Very good. Well, let's get to our mystery shopping report. We came back and we mystery shopped Edmore's Honda. Interestingly enough, about the same time, well, actually it wasn't coincidence at all. It was because we decided to do this. We had a YouTube of an old mystery shopping report with Ed Morse.

And that was coincidental. That was coincidental. And I have a very long text here and I don't have time to get to it right now. Maybe later if I get to the mystery shopping report. But a salesperson at Ed Morris Honda named Rich Grogan and I printed his text out and it's a long text. It's one, two, three pages. three pages, long text, and he was very unhappy with the way we condemned Ed Morseanda

in the last shopping report. And I'm not going to attack Rich Grogan. As a matter of fact, I commend him because he has courage and gave his name and talked directly and told us what we had done wrong. We disagree. And we'll address that. Probably next week when we have more time, maybe. And he volunteered to debate you publicly. He did. Debate me on the dealer fee, I believe. So we need more Rick Grogan's out there.

People that will state their case. We will always treat them with respect and dignity and courtesy. Difference of opinion is what makes this country great. Everybody can't agree with you. And the same thing with Earl Stewart on cars. We don't want everybody to agree with us. Controversy is good radio. It's entertaining.

We try to educate, but if we don't entertain you and educate you, you're not going to listen. So to educate you, we have to entertain you. And we want more risk programs, car dealers, car salespeople, sales managers, call the show. We promise you we will have a respectful debate. And that's why I'm here to entertain you. Exactly. Let me entertain you. Okay, Edmorse Honda is one of three Honda dealerships in Palm Beach County.

The other two are Brayman Honda and Green Acres and Delray Honda and Delray Beach. Delray Honda, by the way, is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, which is a Warren Buffett company. Very interesting. Blue Herron Boulevard is where Edmore's Honda, Blue Heron Boulevard and River Beach, they're right next to I-95. Edmore sells quite a few less new hannas than either Brayman or Delray, which is interesting. He's got a great location. At least the factories think it's a great location. near I-95. At any rate, Honda is a very popular car in our area, popular car pretty much

all over the United States. Not so much in Japan. Interesting enough, just a little anecdote there that Honda sells very few cars in Japan, and their success was really in the USA. Toyota and Nissan, or King over there. Honda has 9% of the new car market. About 10% of cars out there you see on the road are Hondas. also plays a special role in my history as a consumer advocate. During the early days of my crusade against a dealer fee, the Ed Morris Group made a public claim that I secretly concealed a dealer fee in the price of the car. I sold at my Toyota dealership. Now, it was a radio commercial that they said that I had a dealer fee and I hit it in the advertised

price. So I'm not a litigious kind of a person, but I sued. Ed Morris and they countersued me. Actually it was Ed Morris's attorneys that countersued me and we went back and forth and we got a lot of PR, television, radio, newspaper and people talked about it. And the end result was the consumers in South Florida got a great education on what dealer fees are and how car dealers use them deceptively in their advertising. All the one that tended my legal battle with Ted Ted was Ed Morse's son. Ed Morse passed away 15, 20 years ago, and Ted Morse passed away about eight or ten years ago, I'm guessing, and Teddy Morse now is currently, that's the grandson,

is now in charge, I believe, of the Ed Morris dealerships. This worked. This dispute did shine an unflattering light on car dealer practices. And for a time, One, was it more than one, Stu? Edmore's Del Rey, Toyota dropped their dealer fee. I think all their, I think all of their Palm Beach County dealerships did, I think. Yeah. Anyway, we really shocked the public and got their attention, and Lord knows what happened. I think that the car dealers realized that they had to have the dealer fee to survive financially

because they all reinstated their dealer fees at a later time. In the end, the Morse lawyers and I worked it out, and we all stood down legally. No money out of pocket except for our own legal fees, and everybody dropped the suit. Edmore Sonda grabbed our attention this week when we got word from the huge sales weekend. They just enjoyed on Blue Heron Boulevard. And normal times, a good weekend for Edmores Honda. They'd sell about 20 new Hondas on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Last weekend they sold 45, and we had a lot of folks, including.

the Toyota district manager said, whoa, made a few phone calls, what's going on? How come they suddenly came alive? The spike in sales, we wanted to get an explanation. We asked around, even prodding, I told you, our factory guy from Toyota, and we were told they were running a new ad that had generated a lot of attention, an offer of 12 months with no payment. Now, I haven't heard that. I mean, I've been around a long time.

three months, four months I've heard payments until next year but that might be three or four months away but actually you buy a car from Ed Morris Honda

and you don't make any payments and they go on to say that and there's no gimmick here Ed Morris is going to make the payments for you well it's dead but you know the company

will make the payments for you so it sounds pretty damn good and you can see why people would flock in there on Ed Morris Honda's web page the office was front and center no payments for 12 months this is not a deferred payment

your first year is on us I mean you'd come on that road and you're right I'd say hey says no games no gimmicks that's right yeah now here's the fine print which you can't read without a magnifying glass of course

all factory incentives to the dealer okay that means if you have a customer incentive you have to sign it over so all incentives that the Honda has come, not to you, the discount for car, goes to Ed Morris, Honda.

Any additional payment over $200 per month. On the monthly payment, they're going to pay your payments for 12 months, but not on anything over $200. All Honda models qualify. Now, I put a little star by that. All Honda models, it almost sounds like all cars qualify, but all Honda models. Think about that.

example new 2020 on the Civic LX Auto Stand 195 per month 36 month lease 10,000 miles per year that's not much mileage your average that's about 50% less than the average person drives average person drives 15,000 miles a year zero dollars do it signing

zero dollars of security deposit plus tax tag title and fees that's that weird dissonance they have there it's like zero doing it signing but then you got to pay fees and tax the titles. NSRP, 21480, must finance through American Honda, financial,

not all buyers will qualify on select models. Okay, it says here, all models, and then it says on select models. So I think what they're saying is the general quality, all models, but only one vehicle within that model line. I'm going to be more charitable

and say they have boilerplate disclosures that they copy in pace because we do the same things and that might have like been a carryover. But it ain't true. That ain't true. www. Ain't going to happen.com.

Okay, here's the first detail they gave you. This is at least with extremely low, allowable miles. Second major detail, Ed Morris Honda caps the amount over $200. The example of the disclosure was a 2020

civic with a 195 payment. That would theoretically be covered, but if you at least a 2020 CRV with our advertised payment of 289, then you're going to have to pay $1,068, which is $12 times $89. The over is over $200. So how does Ed Morris Honda do it? How do they cover up $200 a month payment for 12 months on these deals? Simple. They use the profit from the deal. For every offer they honor, they need to find $2,400 in the deal. In other words, they've got to figure out a way through hidden fees, dealer-installed accessories, financing. They have to come up a way to get that $2,400 back, and they do always find a way.

So what would happen if we negotiate a low price first, then ask for a no payment for a 12-month deal? That's what we set up to discover. And that's really something you should consider doing any time you buy a car. You see the bait, that's the bait and switch, you know, you throw out, you reel it in slowly, and you see the bait, and if you start asking for the low interest trade, you start asking for the big discount, you start asking for the minimum trade and allowance, you're playing their game. What you do is you just go out and you forget about all the special deals are going to give you,

and you just go to three different dealers, and you check with Costco, and you check with Truecar, you do your homework, and you get the lowest out-the-door price. That's the price that you write a check for, hand it to the salesman, and drive your new car home. You do that. Then you come in and you can say, okay, what about this? You're still going to make my first 12 payments for me free?

That's when you find out the truth. We went to truecar.com to find the average low true car price for a 2020 Honda cord LX with an MSRP of 25. $4,800. That price was $21,300. We would ask Agent Thunder to go to Edmorse Honda and ask him to match a price he got from another competing Honda dealer. So we took the True Car price, pretended like we got it from another Honda dealer. Just so we knew it was a doable price. And that was the average on True Car. So it could be lower, a little bit higher, but it's right there in the middle. Yeah. They would ask for the special deal and see what happens. Oh, that's what we did. And here I am. I'm being Agent Thunder. Today's mission was Edmores Honda. Rivera Beach. It was for a special. They were advertising no payments for 12 months on new Hondas. No gimmicks, no games. Wow, the gall. No gimmicks, no games. My mission was to tell them I was looking for a 2020 Honda cord LX and then I already been to a former dealership, another dealership who quoted me 21,300 plus tax and tag. I arrived at Honda, Edmore's

condo dealership after lunch, made my way into the showroom where I waited to be greeted by an associate. No one came. I stopped the salesman walking by who told me they were helping someone else. He said he sent someone my way. A few months later, I was greeted by Josh, who wore a mask. Everyone was wearing masks. Now if you listen to the show, this doesn't happen very often. This is like the second time since the coronavirus hit that we found a dealership that actually wore a mask. So kudos, no matter what we find further in this report,

kudos to Edmores Honda, Blue Heron Boulevard and Riviera Beach, kudos for having everybody in the dealership wear a mask. Congratulations. I can't believe that so many dealers, most other dealers, are not wearing masks.

Josh identified himself as a VIP sales rep. I told him my story instead if he could at least match the $21,300 code, I'd rather do business with it, Morris, because it's much closer to my home. It's a great way to put it. Josh took me to an office, gathered my info, entered it into a computer.

There was a plastic sneeze guard petition between us on the desk, and that's a nice touch. And we don't do that. We do. We are? Yeah, well, in the offices, so in finance, yes, and service, we have them also when we open up the service thing.

Okay, fantastic. Great sneeze car. That's what it is, right? And we were with the other day, we went someplace where we had... Like Publix has them. Yeah, I mean, I've seen them in a lot of places. At any rate, precautions, precautions, precautions. And a lot of you folks ask me, when should I buy a car? I think into consideration, how safe is it to buy a car? And if you walk into a car dealership and nobody's wearing face max, turn around and walk out. Or you can ask for demand that they put a mask on. I think in most cases they have them. They just don't wear them.

He asked me about the deal I had from his competitor. I told him the details of the car, the MSRP, etc. Josh asked if it was on a purchase or a lease. I said it was a purchase. Josh frowned, said the price sounded awfully low. He asked if they gave me the price in writing. I said they did, but I didn't bring it with me. This is classic here.

I love this. Josh warned me that dealers will often give a low price than add a bunch of fees when I got into finance. Now, the funny thing about this is probably exactly what Ed Morse Honda does, and that's how Josh knows that. And all dealers do that, yeah, Josh is telling you the truth. He's warning you about the bait and switch, the gimmick, the deception, because you haven't discovered his deception yet.

Well, he's being honest because he puts the fees on before he gets to. in the finance. I replied that this is what they quoted me and I said I could buy the car for it. I asked if he could match it. Josh said he tries best. He said that he thought they may be hiding. Here's another one. He said they may be hiding what's called a destination or handling fee, which will jack up the price. Today they don't even know. They don't know what they called. Is it a destination fee? Is the handling fee? A dock fee? A notary fee.

I mean, there's so many floating around, and the amounts are all hidden, and all the dealers know that all the other dealers do it. And Ed Morris does it because he's got two dealer fees. One is called a tag agency fee, and the other one, what was it? Was it a services fee? I don't know. We'll see it. We got the worksheet back here in the mystery shopping report. He asked me if I was open leasing.

I said I was, and my credit was stellar. Josh stood up and said, let me see what I can do. get you close. They always say close. Close is a very relative term. He left. He came back with a worksheet. The MSRP was 24-800, 24,800. He gave me a huge discount

of $4,497 before adding here we go, $289 for wheel locks and splash guards. A $999 dealer fee. Did they call it dealer fee? I think it says dealer services. Dealers, yeah. And an

$85 tag agency fee, And $199.79.75 cent electronic filing fee. $78.40 in dock stamps. I mean, this is a new world's record for multiple. So we had a dealer services fee, a tag agency fee of $85. Deval services, $1,000. $200 for the electronic filing fee and the dock fee $7.8. Plus to $1,400.

Yeah, $1,400 worth of hidden fees, folks. That's what they are. Hidden. Hidden fees. And they're $300 for wheel locks and splash guards? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's 50 bucks on Amazon. Yeah, exactly. I asked them about the wheel locks and other adage on,

Josh said that they were non-negotiable and added to every deal. Unbelievable. So you don't want to get into negotiating the components of their deception. You just look at the total price. The wheel nuts, the lug nuts, the protective coating, the hidden fees. Let them do whatever they want to do.

Let it put a pile it all in there. You just want the bottom line price, the out-the-door price, you're going to write the check for, and you get the competitive bids from the competition. But when you start playing their game, arguing, then they can wear you down. You know, they'll wear you down. What happened to no, no, no, what the heck did he quote earlier

in the mystery shopping report? No gimmicks? No games? No gimmicks, no games. What happened to that? Yeah, he forgot about it. Okay, Josh said it was real, just like he said, no gimmicks, no games. He said I would have to pay up front fees, the inception fee after that. My first payment would be June 21st, 2021.

Sounds like a long way way. Yeah, I said I would need roughly 2100 up front. He then advised they couldn't discount the car for that deal. He said it would be worked at MSRP. So raise the price. to take care of the $2,400. I said, so you overcharge for the car, so you get afford to make a year of payments.

Josh replied that it worked out to be about the same discount I'd get on a cash deal. And as Sudhaed, that is not true. He offered to print another worksheet for me and left, came back with a lease worksheet. Trudeau's word, he was selling the car for MSRP 24-800. He added the same stuff he did on the cash deal, about $1,500 in hidden fees and added equipment.

selling price, 26, 382, and I'd have to give them $2,100 up front. Josh asked me which way I wanted to go. I said I was playing toward the lease, but need to talk it over with my wife. I asked if I could take the worksheets, and he said I could. I thanked him. We elbow bumped, and I left. And that's basically it. $1,500 bump to cover the $2,400, and he sold the MSRP to take care of the rest of it.

So it's not a good deal. It's bait and switch, and there we are. The question is, we're going to vote now, and it's always the big question. This is not an absolute score. Did some things wrong, did some things right. I love the mask. That was very right, and you don't see that often enough, hardly at all. Multiple dealer fees. Bait and switch. Every car sales ad is a bait and switch.

So we're going to grade on the curve. Do we pass? Do we recommend Edmore's Honda? I want to give them a low passing grade, and the only reason there were some mitigating factors, and that was when Josh, at the very least, and he wasn't in finance, it was during the sales process. He says, hey, if you're going to lease the car, get the payments,

we're charging MSRP, you're paying for it. You know, the implication when you see the ad is, hey, they're paying for it. We've been educating people for months now saying with these, you know, no payment ads, adding it to the price of the car. At the very least, the salesperson gave that information to the customer before they got into finance. Yeah. So I give them a D, a D.

Okay. Rick, what do you say? Well, so far I've got John Stein in with a D plus. Myself, I'm going to go with a D plus as well. I think it's a passing grade. They pulled the same games, but they did have their hygiene guards in place. and it just seemed like Josh was trying to be a little more honest saying, hey, this is what the deal is, you know, but... He doesn't control the advertising. He works there.

They come up with the ads, and he's got to live with it. Josh did what he had to do. On a number of levels, I'm just going to give them my D. Yeah, I'm going to make it unanimous. I want to say again to Rick Grogan, the Ed, Morris Honda, the salesperson that we didn't have a chance to get to your text. And I put Josh in the same ballpark. It's a culture.

You work for the company. The question is, do you think that bait and switch advertising is okay? I don't think anybody could deny that the idea of paying 12 payments for one year. I mean, your first 12 payments was not a bait and switch. It gets in and you find out that you don't get any discounts. you don't get any relief. You buy the car for a sticker plus dealer ads plus dealer fees.

That's not a deal. I have a very historic grade from a longtime listener. I think this is the first passing grade I've ever seen from Linda on Facebook. She gives them a D. Are your shirt not a big fat D? Linda, I need to know.

And also we have a D minus from Terrence on Facebook. Yeah. So we'll put them on the recommended list at Morisanda and Rich Grogan, I hope you hear about this show. We talked about you. We'll make it a point to talk next week. We'd love to have you call in, and then you said you would debate me.

We can talk about that too. Absolutely. But I just want you to know that I respect your courage, and I respect your opinions. I don't agree with your opinions, but I respect your right to have your opinions. Okay, folks. Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

And remember, you can go to Earl on Cars, and you can download the, complaint form get that off to the attorney general help us get control of the wild wild west here and you can also download my affidavit the out-door price it'll take you a long way have a blessed weekend we'll see you next week Thank you.