Earl Stewart on Cars - 06.11.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mazda of Palm Beach

Episode Date: June 11, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning revisits a local Mazda dealer to see how much over sticker price they will charge for a new 2022 Mazda CX-5 SUV on their lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. You got your auto, how not to get ripped off by a car dealer team back. We're live now. That was my recorded introduction. And the auto business is very exciting now. I've been doing this since 1968, and we're about ready to see a watershed moment in the way cars are bought or leased, or if they are bought, or if they are leased, and if you have a car dealer, I mean, this whole scene that we're going through here in this digital revolution, artificial intelligence, it is just absolutely mind-boggling. We're at the point now in the auto industry that if you can imagine something, it's probably going to happen. Things that we thought about are now happening, you know, a month or two later.

I mean, it's just incredible with quantum computing, how fast things are changing. Seriously, we're talking about will people be buying cars anymore? I frankly don't think so. I think given the time, 20 years, everything's going to be different. We're either going to be sharing cars. We're not going to be driving them. They're going to be autonomous. But meanwhile, to get down to the today, and here we are,

we still have car dealers out there that take advantage of you. Practically all of them. It's an embarrassing situation. As a matter of fact, this behavior, this bad behavior, I've got to believe it's worldwide with car dealers, is bringing on their own demise. If they were just treating you nicer, honestly, more honestly, more transparently, if it was a pleasant experience, you know, look at Apple stores, look at Costco,

even Target. There are a lot of retailers out there that you actually like to go to Publix. I'll say to Nancy, my co-host here and my wife, I'll say, let's go to Publix. I just like to walk around Publix or Costco. I love Costco. I stand there and watch the chickens go around on the rotisserie. And everybody you run into is nice to you. If you buy something and you change your mind, you bring it back for any reason to give you all your money back. Everybody's smiling.

Meanwhile, contrast that with your local car dealer. It's like having a root canal. People don't want to go in to buy a vehicle. And the dealers have it locked up in their franchise system so that the only person that can lake, sell you a car is a car dealer. General Motors can't sell you a car directly. Honda can sell you a car. Toyota can't sell you a car. You've got to go through your Honda or General Motors, Ford, whatever it is, dealer. Franchise system, locked in. So when you're bulletproof and nobody can get rid of you, and actually they can't tell you what to do, the manufacturers

are very limited as to how they can control, persuade, or coach car dealers. The dealers are independent business people and their franchise agreements due to lobbying by the very, very powerful National Automobile Dealers Association

and the State Dealers Association, as well as the dealers themselves. I mean, every deal you see out there is worth a lot of money. They got a lot of money to give it to political action, committees, to get to the own associations, to lobby their state legislatures. Consequently, they're bulletproof.

They cannot be controlled by anyone, the manufacturer or even the state regulators. So why not take advantage of you? No one's going to spank them. And we're the only people that do spanking right here on Earl and Cars. And we talk about it in the show. We're very, very candid. Mystery Shopping Report. By the way, Josh Stewart, my.

youngest son is taking over for Stu, my oldest son. He's out today. And Josh has been here and substituted before. He'll do a great job for you. He will take over complete control of the mystery shopping report today and talk about it. Actually, Stu wrote it. But he dispatches the mystery shoppers. And we have another mystery shopping report that will demonstrate to you. I don't say they're all bad, but most of them are bad. And the demonstration, to the lack of control. So here we are. We're in, we're, we're now here today. What is the 22nd or 11th? 11th, 11th, I don't know. It's the half of the 22nd. I just, I just jump forward. I was talking about the future so much. I just crept forward 11 days. Twice as fast as we are.

June the 11th, 2000. You can't do that. Because you'll miss Father's Day. And we have to, we have that. I miss Father's Day. You want to milk that for all. You're off the hook, Nancy. No gift this year. So we have to get by today and tomorrow on the next day, right? You're going to buy a car, least a car probably, most of you are driving cars out there. So we've got to get by it. But the good news is your kids and your grandkids aren't going to have to deal with this because I don't believe the franchise system and the way car dealers operate today can continue indefinitely. In fact, I know I won't.

I'm sad for me to say we're a family dealership, and we've been around the dealership that we have. It's been around since 1975. I came into business with my father in 1968. This has been a family tradition kind of a thing for almost 100 years. The dealer franchise system, I think it's 77 years, right after Henry Ford got things cranked up with assembly line production,

the dealer system got put in, and it got tougher, tougher, in terms of ability to get along with the buy a car. and that's where we are today. Hence, Earl and Cars, how to buy a car without being ripped off by your local car dealer. Key part of the show, I got on a incredible rant here,

I know that, but I want to get some numbers out, and you'll hear Nancy do this, and we all do this, because you make the show, your calls, your text, your, you can access it by the web, anonymousfeedback.com. You can text us a lot of ways. But the phone number, the old-fashioned phone number, is 877-960-9960. I encourage you, voice your opinion, whether you agree with us, disagree with us.

If you have information for us, compliments, we'll accept compliments. Anything you want to say, we love the sound of your voice. It makes the show more entertaining. and we have a lot of friends out there that we rely on. Regular callers and we like some new callers. 877-960-99-60. Again, write it down.

You probably don't have a question right now. We're on for two hours from 8 to 10 Eastern Standard Time. So you might tune in later, you might tune out now and tune back in. 877-960-9960. And Nancy, who was monitoring the laptop,

And when the control room sees your call come through, puts that number up, your name up, you're right there, and then she will interrupt Rick or Josh or me or herself or anybody to get yours call on the air, ASAP. We won't keep you holding if we can possibly help it. We have a text number. Other folks are a little camera shy, audio shy, and you like to text. And I'm a text person. The text number is 772-497.

6530. You have a question about anything automotive. Rick Kearney, by the way, sitting to my right, certified diagnostic master technician. This guy knows about everything there is to know, about the electronics, mechanic of your car. They're complicated today. I mean, they are real complicated. And I just switched cars. My Tesla got a nail on the tire. And I had another problem with it so I'm driving a combustion engine car now and I forgot it's half combustion yeah half combustion you got a hybrid I got a hybrid you know I couldn't figure out how to start the car don't remind him yeah and then I got out of car I left it running because with the Tesla well I don't have to turn the car off I just got to leave and it automatically turns off so

it's cars are complicated I mean if you can fool a car dealer you'll go fool a new buyer Rick Kearney, he monitors YouTube, by the way, and we are on YouTube. YouTube.com forward slash Erlund Cars. YouTube.com forward slash Roland Cars. Rick Kearney, certified master diagnostic technician. If you have a problem, ask him, send them a video, an audio clip, a video clip, squeak, rattle, a roll. We don't have no smell clips, do we? Soon we will.

We'll have a... I hope not. Well, actually they have. There's a company out there. We talked about it last week or the week before. They have a machine now that can detect the source of the odor, the intensity of the odor, unpleasant, not pleasant. It's all physical science.

It's all particles. It's all molecules and atoms. Anything that the mind can conceive of today, we can do. So now, soon, you'll be able to send us a smell clip. Meanwhile, we'll go by with the audio clip or the video clip. Rick's leaving. Rick is thinking, what if someone has got a really sick sense of humor and sends me a really energy smell?

I'd be fine if all it did was send me a text message and says, the smell equates to this definition. You'll say I'll take your word for you. But if it all of a sudden has a little thing that pumps out a version of that smells, here, what do you think this is? No, what it does it, you don't even have to use your nose. That's the whole point. of the smell clip, it would just go through and be analyzed by your PC or your smartphone.

That I can handle. Send any evidence of describing the problem with your vehicle to Rick Kearney. He'll find the problem. And it'll save you an expensive repair, I promise you. Car dealers are very hungry now, and when you walk into or drive into a service department, they're going to sell you something that probably you don't need. Rick can prevent that from happening. And, okay, so we're UrononymousFeedback.com.

A very unique way to talk to us without us knowing who you are, where you are, anything about you. It's like when you report a crime, you don't want the criminal coming back and getting even with you. Okay, you're anonymousfeedback.com. If you want to say something to us that we won't like or somebody else won't like, or you just feel the need for privacy. A lot of folks just love privacy. And we have a lot of anonymous feedbacks where the people even tell us who they are. I don't know why they do that, but Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S Feedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

And Josh is monitoring that. That's about it. We got the 877-9-6-0-9-9-60 phone. We've got the 772-497-6-5-30 text, Anonymous Feedback. Call us, you make the show, text us, and we will acknowledge. We'll get to almost everything by the end of the show. And to my left is Nancy Stewart. She's my co-house back with me many, many years ago when we started this show half an hour on Thursdays.

And we were on for several years, and then we got fired because the dealers boycotted advertising on the radio station. We were off for a year, came back, and we're still here. So Nancy has a very special offer for you lady callers because she is a female advocate for the car buyer, female car buyers. and she encourages people of the female persuasion to call the show. So, Nancy, the mic is all yours. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I want to thank all of you.

You're very important to the show, and we are thankful for your calls. Every way that you can get in touch with us, you're an important part of the show. As Earl said, I do have $50 for the first two new lady callers this morning. Give us a call, And ladies, did you take the lead? Did you negotiate your deal, whatever it might have been, used car, new car, leasing?

Whether you were having your vehicle service, give us a call, or you can just call and say hello. 877-960-99-60. And for you others, text 772-497-6-5-3-6-5-3. I have a lot of, you know, good news to share with you this morning, and I'll get to all of that later. I'll give you an idea of what I might talk about if we have time. And that's, again, last week I mentioned, these weak fines that automotive news talked about last week that do little to deter these, the behavior of these dealers. and really it affects the auto industry in a very negative way

because they can still get away with everything. Also, in this week's automotive news is something fantastic, and that's all about car sharing, like your Airbnb kind of situation. An auto Airbnb kind of thing, very cool. Yeah, and we're hopefully going to talk about that in those two companies that are very involved. That's Tarot and Get Around. And that's pretty interesting.

I just love it. It's a great concept. We're also going to talk about the article that appeared in Automotive News about children and pets again and the number of deaths that are happening in those hot cars and what we can do about it. And the Toyota, Jim Lince, had something to do with us. There was a death, I believe, to a child, a close friend that he knew.

And this kind of accelerated the direction of this new idea that Toyota came up with. So stay tuned for that. So the auto industry is changing a whole lot, but there are a lot of positive things that are happening. So, getting back to the ladies, don't forget, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call. Say hello. I'd like to hear from Tracy again this morning. She called a couple of weeks ago and find out what her situation is, her ongoing situation.

Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. How are we doing on text over there, Josh? You got anything floating in yet? Yeah, we have Ann Murdy's inaugural. text, as always here. Good morning, Ann Marie. Yeah, thanks Dan Marie for sending this in. It's actually she sent an article. It's not about a recall, but it sounds like it might be an upcoming Honda recall. It involves the Honda pilot SUVs and the start-stop system that a lot

of manufacturers have. It's for those of you who don't know, it's that system when you pull up to a stoplight, the engine actually shuts off. You know, supposedly the AC and everything runs perfectly fine but then and then as soon as you take your foot off the brake and put on the accelerator again the engine kicks back on the idea of being I imagine is to save miles per gallon and you know that in nowadays that's a very you know good thing but apparently some of these hondas are failing to restart and it's become quite a problem there's been hundreds of reports to the NHTSA so traffic jam city exactly and these

things seem to create a lot of to start-stop systems. The battery that's required to handle it is, I believe it's over $500. Is that right, Rick? Something like that? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so if one of these goes bad, don't expect to spend $130 and leave Pet Boys. You're not going to go to the local auto zone and just pick up one of those. They're quite expensive. And as a matter of fact, unlike any other car out there, any car would start-stop technology. The battery and the starter motor, both are very expensive. are very expensive because they're supposed to be built to a higher tolerance, but they also

have a recommended replacement interval, just like an air filter. So even it's good. Where you are told by your owner's manual at certain mileage and certain time, you must replace these for safety safety. So if you don't do that, there's a chance they might not honor the warranty down the road. Well, and a very good chance, you're going to have this exact same thing happen. They will fail probably while you're sitting in the worst traffic of the world.

And suddenly you're stuck, unable to move your car. And you might, and you have to probably go to a dealership to get a replacement. Right. Yeah, so. Bottom line is don't buy a car with a start stop feature. It was a mistake and they'll probably get to discontinue that idea. I hope so. It's, it's a horrible system.

It was a great idea on paper, but when it hit the real world, nope. Yeah, I mean, obviously the idea of any way we can save, further save gases. great but the idea of your car like shutting off and shutting back turning back on so many extra times just doesn't seem like a like instinctively doesn't sound like a good idea but reality is it wakes you up on i i you know thanks anne maria i just love starting the show with your text yeah it's a really interesting uh yeah very top story and very tough because this affects people not just with hondos but with all different makes and models yeah thanks am mary and josh i'm going to interrupt you because we're going to go to the phones where uh april is waiting she's a

first-time caller to the show, Earl Stewart on cars. What a beautiful name. Good morning, April. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for joining us. You won yourself $50 this morning. Yay. Thank you very much. You're quite welcome. What can we do for you? Well, I was calling because I heard your question where you were talking about, was I the negotiator in buying my cars. And I had been a single mom for years, and, you know, I had a neon when my two little girls were, well, they were little, and when they started getting bigger, I wanted an SUV. And I went to a dealer down in Lauderdale area, and I just remember how stressful it was trying to buy that car. I went down first with my best friend.

she was buying a car and I noticed that they were trying to give her all kinds of extra fees and different things so I was you know kind of blocking that while I was sitting there and so they took me out of the room and so they called me um that next week and say hey we can give you whatever you want you know brand new car and so I went to go get what I ended up getting was Suzuki Grand Batara and um just the stress of being there I remember my little girls were with me and I thought it was going to be a quicker process than it was. But I was standing my ground because I knew my budget, I knew how much I can afford,

and they kept trying to give me these higher payments, these higher payments. And what it brought down to was I couldn't afford it, just giving my keys to my car, I'm good, let me go. And the hours that they kept me in that dealership, it was daylight when I got there. It was nighttime when I left, and my girls were hungry, and we were all cranky. And I was just thinking, I am never going through that process ever again.

And I think it's just so unfair how they try to take advantage of women when we try to go by car. Absolutely, April. You know, first of all, I want to thank you for sharing that story with all of us here. And it certainly isn't the first time that we've heard such a ridiculous story. And I want to commend you, do you sound like as if that you're a real educated consumer for you to stand your ground, and stand against whomever you came involved with at that dealership. And I have to pause for a moment and ask you, what dealership was it? We named dealerships on our show.

Oh, do you? It was years ago. I think it was in 08. I think it was Coconut Creek Suzuki. Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks for that information. But again, I want to come in.

you for standing your ground. It sounds like an easy task to stand your ground when you're in a dealership like that, especially when you're alone. But it isn't. It definitely isn't. And my kudos to you. And you are an example to other women that you can prepare yourself and you can just leave. And Earl, he wrote a great column on just that. Whenever they're, you know, you're not getting any cooperation and you're getting a lot of pressure, just leave. Okay, I'll let the guys chime in on this. And again, thank you for calling. Earl?

Yeah, I was just, came to my mind. This is the perception of car dealers and largely is accurate. And we talk about it a lot. And I always think about the Gallup Annual Poll on Honesty and Ethics and Professions. I just Googled it to refresh my memory. This has been going out every year since 1977, the Gallup Organization, you know, number one world-respected polling organization. They asked this simple question of every, you know, they do have the United States.

I'm not sure if it's done in other countries. But the United States, since 1977, almost 50 years, they asked this question, Please tell me how would you rate the honesty and ethical standards of people in these different fields. Very high, high, average, low, or very low. And they take all the basic professions. And number one, every year I've seen it, every single year, and I believe this, nurses. Nurses are number one. Medical doctors are number two.

Great school teachers. I mean, you know, who doesn't have a warm and fuzzy memory? about your great school teachers. Well, I have one. I don't have a woman, but, yeah. I don't know. I went to a Celtic school. She sent me to the cloakroom.

Anybody remember what a cloakroom is? That's how long ago. I read about that. Anyway, let's go to the bottom of the list. Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions. This year, 2021, the full year, 19, 2012, 2021, is the bottom. We're lobbyists, and the car dealers rarely don't make the body.

bottom, but the lobbyists who are responsible for keeping the car dealers where they are. It's like a team, you know, but car dealers are number two. Every year since 1977, car dealers have either been last or next to less. That means, it's unbelievable. It's shameful. Unbelievable. Listening to her story, my heart sank, just that that tactic of keeping you in the store, like, wearing you down, basically getting the customer to the point where they just want to throw up their hands

just say fine it's like it's so exhausting and the idea of starting over at another place it doesn't even that you can't even consider it so you just give in and or give in to most of their ridiculous requests and and most consumers do just that what josh just said give in and uh april again i have to thank you for calling and to let you know uh you've really encouraged a lot of women to call this morning or in the future okay you have really helped us build this platform. And I want to thank you. It's my pleasure.

I thank you for what you do. I hope you're quite welcome. Hope to hear from you again. Yes, ma'am. Have a great weekend. 877960. 9960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. And don't forget that you can subscribe to Earl Stewart on Cars, the podcast using

any of the following podcast apps from your smartphone from your iPhone and you can just subscribe to Apple Podcast you can subscribe to Spotify Google, Amazon, Stitcher, and

SoundCloud. So there's a lot of ways to get in touch with us. Any more options there? The list is endless. So give us a call and we're going to get back to Josh. Yeah, I have a couple of a text year but I just want to stay on April's call there too. I think there's a real lesson here. She mentioned that that happened a long time ago, 2008, I believe, and it's still fresh in her

memory. So just those sort of experiences, they stick with you. And I just wish more car dealerships would be aware of that. And the auto manufacturers and other car dealers all are aware of this. And you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand. And if someone has a terrible experience when they do something, they don't want to repeat it. And there's no question in my mind if you could hit a switch and make auto dealers treat the buyers with courtesy, respect, and transparency, it would probably increase business by 30, 40%. I mean, people will just go, they'll make the car last longer. Finally, they're caught between a rock and a hard place. The cars cost them too much to maintain, and they have to buy a car.

only time they go out is I said earlier this is a common expression I'd rather have a root canal than buy a car and that's how bad the experience is so yeah it's uh it's it's changing and it's there's a lot of a momentum now building up to change the way cars are retailed and bought you never you never forget the feeling of feeling hijacked in a dealership sometimes I think the the the shortage that we find ourselves in sort of reverse that trend I thought there was a a ground swell with the, you know, with access to the internet information, all these resources that the buyer was getting the upper hand and then all of a sudden here comes the shortage and it's a seller's market more than it's ever been.

You know, actually the situation with low supply high demand has lessened some with the trickery because they don't have to. They don't have to. Because now, as you say, it's a seller's market. They put the price on the car, thousands of dollars over MSRP, and you can take or leave it. I mean, one dealer we shopped regularly, you know, who was just fined $10 million by the Federal Trade Commission, the Napleton Group, on their door they had, I forget the exact wording was, but the car that you didn't buy today will be bought tomorrow by the next person. Yeah, the car that you looked at today, I want to think about until tomorrow, someone looked at yesterday and was coming in today to buy or something like that. So they're in the catbird seat, and counterintuitively, they're just laying it on the ground.

I mean, the line, I mean, they're saying you're going to pay thousands over, ha-ha. There's nothing you can do about it, because if you don't buy it, somebody else is going to buy it. When the supply comes back, competition increases, availability increases, then their trick. Yeah, and then they're back in the situation where volume is the key. Right now, they don't care about volume because they could take. sell they're making more on selling 100 cars than they ever made selling 300 cars before so uh that's why you see these i just saw a new addendum from a dealer in uh north miami 29 000 market adjustment and then all the fees i think it totaled like 30 000 over sticker exactly you just shake your

head it's i guess somebody's paying that for sure yeah and uh ladies and gentlemen to the automotive news that i spoke about earlier you know here's just an example of me mentioning this morning about these weak fines and I really hung on to this here is a automotive news from May the 12th and it's just mind-boggling here for instance listen up it took five years five years to plead guilty to felony in a federal in a federal courthouse and this is for fraudulent emissions and get Guess what kind of a fine they got? $300 million.

Guess what, ladies and gentlemen? Pocket change. Do you know what Volkswagen got? Two billion. What has happened? Okay, have we got any more text over there? We're going to go back to the phone for John is holding from Palm City. I kind of get all rubbed up.

Fired up. There's just so much going on. Okay, John, good morning. Okay, John, good morning and welcome. Good morning to everyone. If it seems like you're waiting forever for your newly ordered, imported car, one of the big problems are it could be sitting in Brunswick, Georgia, on the docks. There's over 1,000 cars waiting to be delivered. The problem is no truck is to pick them up.

So that's a tremendous delay, and it's way over 1,000. They showed the cars on the news just sitting idle waiting to be delivered. and they don't have the truckers to deliver them. So I just thought I'd mention that too. Also waiting for cars in Michigan and Dearborn plant, there's a load of Ford brand new F-150 sitting idle. They don't have the chips to finish the car up. So there's delays that are considered, you know, these two places alone.

And then another delay, I'll tell you about Tesla, which we know is the number one EV vehicle. There's 260 days waiting time to order one. There's 50,000 orders being held. And just alone, last month, in China alone, they sold 33,000 brand new Teslas. So when there's something hot on fire, that's the automobile. Yeah, that's amazing. Elon Musk makes more on every Tesla he sells than any of the other manufacturers.

his profit margin from when he sells a car directly, because there's no dealers involved, when he sells the car directly, it's about 23%. And I think the average manufacturer other than Tesla maybe makes 10%. So he's not only making more money, but the good news is, well, I started to say he doesn't market up over MSRP. He does have a nominal dealer fee, a couple hundred bucks, I think. Well, in my opinion, the government is picking specifically on him, his automobile. There were 35 crashes, 14 deaths caused by the autopilot on the model S, X, 3, and Y. So NHTS is investigating.

That's 2014 to 2021 on his cars. I don't believe there's anything wrong with the autopilot. It's just the people behind that's not using the autopilot correctly, or setting it wrong, but yet they're making a big production out of that. And I think it's unfair, and also they're picking on him because of his free speech, and that's another story in itself. But I believe that they're picking specifically on him, not only because he's successful, but I guess I don't know what it is because he has a successful call or whatever.

But whatever it is, they're not going to shut him down like they did in 1948. they do with the Tucker car or John DeLorean whatever they're up to I don't understand but he is number one by far and I think that if they try to pick on him they're picking on the wrong individual

I think you're right I think he will prevail and we mentioned last week on the show that Tesla is a number one luxury car seller in America that's amazing I mean they outsell BMW and Mercedes Lexus number one Tesla so they're they're right there.

They're selling every car they can make, and they're making them faster now because some of the situations with plans shut down in China are coming back to, you know, they're able to manufacture cars there now. So it'll be fun watching the Tesla phenomenon. Yeah.

And John, I'll tell you... The automobile industry. Yeah. Whenever you're number one, I'll tell you what. You've got to be prepared to take the punches. No, Rick has a comment. You don't really see a markup on Tesla's because he sets the MSRP on it anyways.

I was thinking the same thing. Well, that's the way it should be. His markup is in his MSRP. Apple does the same thing. You charge what you can sell the car for. See, the problem with playing games with prices is that you don't know the price. I mean, it's just absolutely insulting to a person's intelligence to not tell them the price. I mean, can you imagine trying to buy a loaf of bread or a television set or anything?

thing. They say, listen, are you going to buy it today? No, I'm not sure. Well, when you're ready to buy, come back and see me. I'll give you my best price. Meanwhile, shop around with the other places, come back, and I'll beat the price. That's the way car dealers sell cars. And it's just an insult to people's intelligence, and pretty soon they're going to be Joel. If you want the price of a Tesla to come down, other manufacturers are going to have to build an equally quality electric vehicle for cheaper, and then they'll come down. Exactly. That's actually starting to happen.

Yeah, it will. John, I want to thank you for calling and updating us as usual with new and, well, not so great information sometimes. Have a great weekend. John, do you have any of the questions or information for us? No, I just want to mention that specifically about. That's the second largest imported pier in the United States. I think the biggest one is in California, and a lot of cars come in through that, Brunswick, Georgia. And it's kind of sad that their cars are still sitting there, and no truckers to pick them up,

and people are waiting anxiously for their automobiles. And then we can get into a further problem. If some of these vehicles, especially that don't have the chips, we get into the end of the year, and they're 22 cars, and as they're all mentions, when you buy toward the end of the year, you're buying actually a year-old car, even though it's brand new. So we could run into a further problem when they're going. back up like that. Absolutely.

Well, the bright side there comes to mind is, you know, the fact that cars really aren't depreciating all that much. So that the fact that you're buying a model year late in the model year is less impactful now than it has been historically. So just one little silver lining. People will be glad to get it the way they're shortage. Exactly. Be glad to get it.

John, thank you so much. I'm not waiting for the shopping report. Fantastic. Thanks, John. We're going to go to Julie, who's been holding from West Palm Paige. Good morning, Julie. Welcome back. Good morning. I had a story about towing. Over 10 years ago, my mother and I were at the mall at Wellington Green, the big mall in Wellington, and we went to leave, and we were heading back to West Palm, and we heard this terrible noise, and my tire was flat.

So I called AAA. They came out, and the one man said, I usually handled the southbound lanes on 441. I'll have to charge another $25 for the northbound lane. So I tell you to my mother, can you call AAA and see if they can find someone who can cover the northbound lane? And he said, oh, no, no, this won't be a problem. So he changed this and puts his spare on. I said to him, does that line ever work? And he wouldn't say he just laughed. So he leaves.

My mother gets on the phone to AAA and says this man had tried to rip us off. And the AAA representative started laughing and said, just I think I've heard it all. So later that night, we saw on the news that multiple cars at the Wallington, the Mall at Wellington Green, had had their tire splash. So my tire was flying up to that point. I haven't heard anything, and that's been over 10 years ago, regarding, you know, splashing tires at that mall. But people try and take advantage of you at every turn. Exactly. Absolutely, Julie.

Thanks for sharing that story with us. We're all laughing. That's wow. It was pretty crazy. I mean, my mother and I just looked at each other like, does you think we're idiots? Yeah. What's great is that you stood your grant, you know. Yeah. So I assume people, I'm sorry, I was going to say, I assume people must have paid the $25 if he was still trying to use that line, so. Well, I hope he lost his affiliation with AAA. That is so, yeah.

Yeah, what next? All right, thank you. Bye-bye. You're quite welcome, Julie. Give us a call again. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to you. to Josh. Yeah, I have a text here. This is from Mark, and this is a little tribute to Rick and your ilk. On Sunday, June 12th, we celebrate National Automotive Service Professionals Day. Oh. Oh. On behalf of your loyal YouTube viewers, especially Mark Smith and Mark Ryan from Iowa, as well as

your growing national and international radio audience, we take this opportunity to thank you for all your contributions, not only to the weekly radio show, but the thousands and thousands of people's lives you've positively impacted throughout your career. Your ability to take fairly complicated and technical items and communicate them in a way that all people can generally understand is truly a gift. For all of this, and even

more, we sincerely thank you. In recognition of this special occasion, perhaps Earl would treat you to a public's oven rotissory chicken or your wife will grill you a rib-eye steak tonight. Or you'll grill your own ribby steak. Enjoy your special day tomorrow as it clearly

has been earned and well-deserved, you are the best. Yay. Thank you. Congratulations. And to all the guys, you know, turning wrenches into shops everywhere. Thank you for all you do. And remember that not only does Rick monitor YouTube, he makes a lot of YouTube videos. And hundreds, maybe thousands.

We've done a few. By far our most viewed videos that we've put up there, highlight Rick, I think you have one that's over a million, I believe. The squeaky brakes might be up there. We're close to it. it's the how to unlock your steering wheel, yeah. Yeah.

Those are upwards of a million. So you've saved countless people from jams throughout the years. If you Google a problem on, you know, just Google a problem. I Google. Everyone does.

I don't know how many. And it's an automobody problem. A good chance you might get Rick because I'll give you the YouTube clip and he has a whole bunch of them there. I guess, what's your thought process? You say, what do I have to, customers or when I do repairs or what's the most common problem?

And then you say, okay, and this is how I fix it, and then you do a video on it. That's pretty much it. It just, we look for what are the biggest customer concerns? What are people encountering in the world that they need to know and what can we do and show them information that they might not think of in the heat of the moment that might help them solve that situation on their own. So when you go to Google, in your own words, you know, repeat your problem.

How do I do this? I'm hearing a Bing, Bing, Bing, in the right rear of my Ford F-150, or whatever the phenomenon is, try to describe just the way you would in your normal language. Sometimes with Google, you try to get too fancy, but Google has this incredible ability, artificial intelligence or whatever it is.

Just say it the way you would say it, and you might end up with Rick telling you how to fix it. The translations in Google, what it can do is amazing. It's a lifesaver. What's cool is when you start typing your question, you're like two words into it and it autophiles the rest of your question. How do I open a stuck pithelage already knows it? And slow down because it'll do that.

It's smart than you are. You're trying to think what to write down, and you've got three words in there and tells you what you're going to say. Exactly, exactly. Okay, folks, we're having a good time here, and we're learning a lot from you, and we're giving you a lot of information, and please keep the calls coming. We are going to go to Henry, who's calling us from Jupiter, and Rick, hang on, and we'll get right with you. Good morning, Henry. Good morning. Welcome.

I've got two questions. One is a consumer report. on my Lexus. A little disappointed there. I know you do the Toyota, and Lexus is a cut above. I bought a 2015 Lexus back in the day, brand new. And, you know, for the amount of time I've owned the car, and I usually keep them seven years or so,

you know, there's a lot of points within the car that just don't hold up, you know, buying the Lexus and a Toyota product. I figured that, you know, it would really stand this test of time. You know, the leather in the seats has faded out, and surprisingly, the headlights went bad really quickly with the fogging and the clouding over on the website. And I just wonder if anybody is experiencing that with the Toyota product is probably made in the same factory. But all in all, also the navigation system I found to be very complicated. So I just wanted to point that out.

know if other people have mentioned that to you or if I'm, you know, by myself on this. Well, you're right, Henry, if it was, Lexus probably Toyota has it. And Rick is the guy can answer because he sees all the problems. Those are three of the most common issues that we see across the board, Lexus and Toyota. We get a lot of Lexus in our shop and the older cars, the leather fades, the leather starts cracking. and it's just the leather they use when they're doing natural leather. Myself, I would always go for a synthetic leather or man-made product for the seats. You'll find it just, it holds up better because the product that they're using to make that,

those leather seat covers is not a good high-quality leather. And for some reason, they just cheaped out on it. And I don't know why, but they did. the headlights that is across the board on I would say almost every car manufacturer out there that are using the polycarbonate type headlights they fog up and it's I've even done several experiments on my own vehicle trying different products trying different things and the only thing I have found that actually will help to extend the lifespan of that is they make a clear film. It's kind of like these, like the vinyl wraps they put on cars, but they do a clear version

that you can have installed on your headlights. But you can't clean it and get the, get the, oh yeah, you can, you can clean it and refinish your headlights, and they'll be good for about another year, and you can do it again. You can do, you can do this multiple times, and you'll get another, another good year or more if you have it refinished properly by somebody that takes her time and really does it right, or put on that clear film from 3M, and, but, you'll get another, Both of those will extend that lifespan of the headlights. And for the navigation, Toyota and Lexus used the same navigation systems.

And my opinion, they were garbage right from the start. They've been garbage all the way through. Well, you use your smartphone. All the navigation of Garmin, all the navigation systems are better than virtually every manufacturer of auto law. And the smartest thing they've ever done. My Chevy Chuck and my headlights on my Chevy and my Navigate. navigation in the truck, I could talk to it like I speak to you, just say address and I put in,

just tell it what I want. Whereas I think I've got to speak Japanese to get the Lexus one to work. You're probably, I didn't know about Chevrolet, but I, that wouldn't surprise me. When you figure Garmin, how long's Garmin been around? Chevy went to CarPlay a lot sooner than. Oh, I see, yeah. So, and once they started using CarPlay with the runs through your phone, it just, it blew the market away.

That's just the way to go. It's always updated. You've got instant traffic reports. Everything is right there with what you need. Amen. It's the way to go. One more point. One more question for Earl.

I got a little dilemma. Actually, a family member has a dilemma. About a brand, well, about a one-year-old Infinity up in Stewart at the Infinity dealer. And the Carfax and all points said there was no accident to the car. When she had been up there for service a couple times, she kept notice. noticing a little of the plastic bumper area kept popping and she'd mention it, we'd push it back and it would hold and then it would pop. Well, just yesterday she took it to the infinity down here in West Palm because the warranty is expiring and she wanted a full check and they pulled up their information and said this car was in an accident. It was in here for three months.

Now, my daughter was surprised. She says, wait a minute, I bought a car that, you know, with a clean repair. What they did was they held a ticket open down here in West Palm, and because the ticket was never closed until after she purchased the car, the car has a history, which is going to depreciate the value, and now she's very upset about driving a car that, three months in the shop, I guess it had some pretty good damage. Henry, was it bought new or used?

I was a year old. You're old, yeah. She'd have recourse if it were new, on used. The rule is if she said to the seller, has this car been in any accents, and he said no, then she would have recourse. Do you know how that dialogue went? Yeah, no, that's exactly. She was specific about having a clean vehicle. And I do believe it's a dealer-certified vehicle.

Yeah, that would be. She'd have recourse of, as a matter of fact, the owner of the Infinity in Stewart, Florida, if it's the same owner that I knew, is a pretty reputable guy. And if she went back and presented her case, I think she could get some consideration from them because they did misrepresent that. Now, you say it was not on the Carfax report. I mean, that'll be their defense, but a good, if you check over a car carefully, whether it's on the Carfax report or not, and you something called a paint meter we use, and most dealers do,

you can always tell if a car has been in any kind of a significant accident, not a little scratch maybe, but they should have caught that, they should have disclosed it, and I believe if she goes back to Infinity of Stewart, they will compensate her. is there two different dealers from west bomb to uh yeah you know schumacher is the dealer in west palm and uh i think it's gus machado or something margado margato yeah i just looked that up it's a murgato auto group i just wonder why the car went for sale another dealer as you know i mean if if you had a car that you could make a few dollars on you'd keep it within your own dealership so they they sent it along for i'm thinking for a reason

Tell her to go back there She has a problem You can text me I'll give her Mercado's a cell phone number I know I'm personally Did you say that the car was in the West Palm Shop for three months being repaired?

That's a pretty extensive repair Wow That's not small potatoes Yeah And the fact that they didn't close out Because they said the ticket was closed out And they gave her the date She says well I already owned the car by the time

You closed the ticket yeah terrible that explains why it didn't hit the car fax yeah i think i think they'll take care of that for okay thanks sir well the call calls back with us know how to win yeah give us an update henry and thanks a much for sharing your story and get that number from earl that cell phone number that'll be a big help okay could i go on hold and maybe collect that from your staff uh well i i tell you what uh jess you have do you have my cell number call call me after the show or text me, and I'll text it to you. Okay.

My cell number is 5-6-1-358-14-74. 358-14-74. Yeah, right. A thousand people just wrote that down. Thank you, Henry. Five million people already have. We're going to stay on the phones, and we're going to get to Rick's call from Palm Beach Gardens,

and Charlie, hang on. We'll get right with you. Good morning, Rick. Good morning. Welcome. What can we do for you? Well, I have a 2021 Sienna minivan. Just had recently a problem with the center console door locking, getting stuck. As a result, I lost my handicapped placard, you know, the hanging placard.

It's in there, and it's gotten lost. And so I'm just wondering if it's something that's... should be covered by warranty. You mean the cost of the replacement? How did the placard get lost? What happened to it? Well, you were sitting inside the console, and then that door got, you know, the door cover it,

it only opened like a fraction. And so then when we were able to get, you know, some things out to open the door, it was missing so it fell down inside right somewhere yeah i've read somewhere you know i've seen some chat there because we were trying to figure out how to get in and then we came across to the chat where it's been an issue with other people so the car ate your placard basically yeah um unfortunately i don't see how that would be able to be covered under warranty that something got a foreign object basically got lost down inside because what would have to happen is a technician

there's no actual defect in the parts of workmanship it's just you know there's always going to be gaps around doors and so for a technician to disassemble it to find it yeah you know that that they'd have to cover the technicians time to disassemble that console to find out where it went and get it out for you and then put it back together can you estimate how how long that operation would take there's no telling because it could i mean if it simply slip down in it might be just a one hour deal to take it pull one cover or two covers off but if it fell way down into the bottom that could be several hours to tear it apart i've heard of stories of like some personal items being lost like under a seat they get underneath the carpet right and you have to like remove

a whole seat to get to it sometimes just to get under that carpet you may have to remove a cedar a bunch of trim it's a really unfortunate situation i'm really sorry to hear this yeah it is definitely and uh you know it may be worth your while to go over and i know it's an inconvenience and very annoying to go to the courthouse and get that blackguard replace but that may be your only alternative i've done it can you do that online nowadays maybe or do you have to go in person it's been a while since i've done that uh my wife see my wife just recently got two of them because we have two vehicles. Yeah, that's what I got was two of them.

It's a painer, you know. Two of them. And they had an express line when I went the last time. So you might want to look into that. Right now at the courthouse, I know for a fact, anything to do with automotive, you're going to need to make an appointment and make sure you are punctual for that appointment

because it says right on their site, if you are more than 15 minutes late, your appointment no longer exists. Yeah, you might want to look at, to what Josh just suggested, and that's, excuse me, going online. Right, Josh? Yeah, a lot of those services can be done, you know, over the phone or mail or on the computer. Exactly.

Rick, good luck to you. Yeah, wish your luck, sir. Give us a call. Let us know how it turned out. Okay, sure. I'm sorry. All right, thank you. You're welcome.

The disgust. What can you do? Okay, we're going to go. to Charlie, who's been holding in West Palm Beach. Good morning, Charlie. Good morning, guys. First thing I want to say is, thank you for having your show. I don't know if you realize there's hundreds and hundreds of people that listen.

They just don't call in, but they pick up information from you guys, and it's a great public service. Well, thank you. Anyway, but it's for the whole crew. We thank you. Earl wants to. Earl is probably, anyway, here's my question. I have a 2015 Honda Odyssey that I bought brand new. And over the years, the window, and Honda called it window molding, but it's the rubber piece that goes kind of at the bottom of the window,

so when the electric window goes down, I guess it keeps water from going in and out. And I replaced them on a Corvette many years ago. But my question is, is it worth replacing because I went to one body shop and the gentleman said he could spray some type of silicone or something on the dry rot? And then he said it's not that important to replace it because water's going to get down there one way or another. So my question is, is it worth replacing the molding, which is going to cost like a $150 window? or should I just let it be and move on with my life? Now, is this the molding that's at the top, the top edge of the door, where the door and the window meet on that edge, on the outside?

No, it's down at the bottom of where the window goes down. But on the, on the metal of the door, it's the top edge of the metal of the door. And then where the door, at the bottom of the window, but at the top of the door. the main body of the door correct yeah that's called the belt molding in case you want the technicians term for it

we call that one a belt molding and they they do get very dry rotted over time Florida sun's really hard on that rubber and yes its main purpose is to prevent things like leaves debris and a lot of dirt

from getting down inside the door because what'll happen is if and water of course goes right past those but any of the dirt and debris that gets down in there can sometimes plug up the drain holes at the bottom of the door and then the water can't get back out of the door so I it's up to you I would not worry about it too much you know if they're still relatively in good condition I wouldn't worry about it but if you do happen to notice that when you open and close your door if you hear any sort of sloshing maybe like there might be a little bit of water in there. Take a metal coat hanger, open the door, and look along

the bottom edge, and you'll see three or four little drain holes there. They're just little gap holes. Just straighten out the coat hanger, push it in and wiggle it around to clear out the dirt and debris, and make sure the water drains out, and you'll be fine for years to come. You've got to lie down on your back to do that, right? No, you just kind of a little stool, sit down, just bend over and feel for those holes and just wiggle it up in there. Or you put on your lift. Most people, you have a lift at your house, right? Oh, yeah. I've got a pipe cleaner works, so. Doesn't everyone? Those work well

to clean them up. That's a great tip. So basically, you're saying that for me, it's just, I'm looking at it going, now I just don't look good, but it's still functional. Because I think they want, like, I'm going to say you're $200 a piece, because when they do the front one, they have to take the mirror off. Oh, yeah. At least.

and saw it like a big job yep as for sprays i wouldn't put any sort of spray on it because that spray then is going to get on your window and it's going to haze up your window and can make it very hard to see and when that spray gets down inside the door on some of the other pieces it's just every time you put the window up and down you're going to get those streaks on the window and it looks horrible and it can be very dangerous if suddenly you don't have a good clean view through that that window. Well, you guys probably saving about 500 bucks, so I'll just live with it the way it is and keep the rest of the car clean. Thanks so much for him. Excellent. There's a 10% charge, so please. And my address that you can send that to is. That's what we like to hear. Thank you so much.

Give us a call again. Have a great weekend, Charlie. We're going to go to Bobby who's been holding in West Palm Beach. Good morning, Bobby. First of all, I want to tell the boss that Rick answers his e-mails. So if you write into him with questions and you send sounds from your cars or whatever and you have a problem, he answers them. So I'm just making sure the boss knows his job. He answers my emails, but I'm glad that he answers your emails too. The second thing, you've been talking about Tesla's and that sort of thing. A friend of mine has bought a couple of them. And the last one he bought, they had a $400 vehicle registration added on, which, as you guys

have discussed, is sort of a little high. And in his particular case, he's a disabled veteran and is entitled to free registration or something like free registration. Yeah, it's like $20, I think. Right, something along that line. And he brought that up to him, and the guy just said, do you want the car or not? Oh, my gosh. To a disabled veteran, he said that.

So, right. So I don't think they're any better or any worse, but they're probably about the same. He also said that they deliver the car, and they actually deliver it to your house when it comes in after six months after ordering. But there are a couple parts missing. Things like, you know, the little screen that pulls over the hatchet. back so you can't see through the back window of what's under the hatch or something. Not big things, but some things like that, you can't call anybody. You have to email.

There's nobody will answer the phone to, and the part is not available. So you have to go and email and then wait for the part to come. Yeah, that's a stuck. I did, you see, that was a Tesla, so, so that was, yeah, I bought a Tesla, as you probably know. The sales experience was not delightful. The online was a little troublesome. As a matter of fact, I just had a little problem with my Tesla. I got a nail on my tire and I had an issue with another issue. But they're only open for service half a day on Saturday, which is shocked me, and they're not open at all on Sunday. And if you call them, they're

not very responsive. I've never thought that Elon Musk and Tesla was the person. situation but they build a great car it's a lot of fun to drive but they have problems I mean my I give you an example nail on my tire I had to replace a tire guess how much my tire cost to replace well 478 dollars one tire one tire you want to know why well it's a special made tire because it has a special foam insert in the tire yeah and a sensor built into the tire yeah and it requires specially trained technicians to even put that tire on and off.

Yeah, you sound like Elon Musk. I'm sorry, but I know my limitations. That's why I wouldn't touch that one. A man's got into those limitations. That's not a run flat tire, is it? Yeah, it is. It is. It is.

You know, sometimes I think people come across, you know, Tesla advocates seem to raise Elon Musk in the car to the heavens, and it's perfect. It's far from perfect. I mean, my Tesla does not have the quality. does not have the quality of the Camry I'm driving right now while my Tesla's in the shop. There are a lot of things that it lacks, but the one thing it does have, amazing technology, it's a fun car to drive, and I just love to pass gas stations. Yeah, it's a lot of fun, and Bobby, you know, I'm really glad I wasn't driving the Tesla

the day that it just quit, that it just shut down. But you know, let me go back to Bobby's. That saved you a lot of trouble. You know what I do, Bobby, on this? The thing that really guiles me about this is that the veteran should have gotten that registration for, did you say, 20 bucks? It's a nominal fee. A nominal fee. Yeah.

And they, and some stupid Settler salesman gave them that answer. I would call, are you local Palm Beach County? Oh, yeah. I'd call Channel 5, Channel 12, Channel 25. I'd call for the advocate, the consumer reporter. This is a great story. A Tesla story. There are a lot of people out there with Tesla.

You either love them or you hate them, and the media loves this. So they would love to get hold of this story where a veteran was told that he had to pay 400 bucks for registration when he should only pay 20. and they told them, if I didn't want the car, then to leave. That would make a great story. I'll bet you that as soon as that was being discussed by WPTV Channel 5, the Tesla would probably take care of it immediately. Yeah, I think you're right. If I could say one more idea for people,

and I'm sure a lot of people have thought of this, because cars are hard to come by or are a little expensive, you might think about if you're going on, vacation or taking a ride somewhere to, I don't know, whatever, just rent a car for a week or so, they're still not too expensive. You can get a Camry or something for $40 or $50 a day, which is not cheap, but it's not a lot of money, and they get good gas mileage. And if your car's getting older and you don't want to take it out on the road, you get a new car and it's sort of fun, you get a new car for a week or something like that and sort of adds to the

vacation, although it adds to the price a little bit. Yeah, with gas at five bucks a gallon is a lot of people rethinking those long drives on vacation. But you're right. Yeah, and Costco is a good place for that, too. Costco has a car rental section on their website, Costco Travel. Oh, I didn't know that. They seem to get pretty good prices. I can vouch for that.

I saved hundreds one year when I took a vacation, used Costco as compared to it, just going through, you know, Avis or Hertz. Wow. They just have a great discount deal. When did they start renting? cars it's been at least four or five years is that trip was four years ago cheapest chickens and chickens cheapest gas the price leading chickens well thanks for the show and thank Rick for answering my email thanks Bobby my pleasure thank you Bobby we are going to go to James who's calling us from Phoenix Arizona welcome good

morning James hi hi good morning I have a question about the morning morning question about the current generation rap four I was seeing a lot of people on the Facebook group talking about leaks from I guess like some washers or some steals maybe around the

roof rack causing the headliners to get destroyed and Toyota doesn't seem to know anything about it and they're saying it's not a manufacturing defect even on like a one-year-old vehicle I personally haven't heard of a Rav 4 like

issue with leaks through the roof rack but maybe Rick has a better insight I haven't seen any TSBs about that yet that's a technical service bulletin to those who right when what happens is if when a dealer's

RFQs any RFQs RFQs? Did you do a DPR? I'm not going there what happens is when a technician sees a car with a problem like that a water leak or something they'll file a dealer product report and as soon as that product report goes in a DPR that's that's called the DPR the factory gets notification of it and they will start looking

and if they get several of these coming in they'll immediately start looking at the process on building the car to see if there's something they need to change and technical service bulletins can come out within a couple of days just from one DPR being filed so they have something coming very soon about that. Sometimes it does take a little longer before that gets out. But so far we have been advised of it and I have not seen any major numbers of roof rack leaks in the shop yet. But we have seen other cars that come in. There was one other model, Tacoma pickups as a matter of fact, the third brake light up in the roof.

They had a lot of those were leaking water in. And once they see an issue with it, they will get this information out to us very quickly. There is a little chatter on the internet. If you Google it, it says, you know, it's split between the sunroof and the roof rack. So whether or not it's isolated or a really common problem is, it might present itself. But thank you for bringing the store attention. And in the meantime, it's covered under warranty anyways. So your car should be completely repaired. And if there's any signs of dampness or odor, go back to the dealer, and let them know, because that needs to be taken care of. That needs to be completely dried out and cleaned

to make sure there's no signs of any mold or mildew getting in the car. And the Toyota will reimburse the dealer and cover all of that. And James, I just Google it, and you go to Google, put in Rav4 roof rack leak, and the first thing that popped up, there's a YouTube, obviously not by Rick, called Rav4 Roof Leak, Explain, 2019, 2020, 2020, 2021 Toyota Rav4, so that'll help you, and we haven't seen them, but apparently they do exist. If you, you know, we had enough rain this last week. I'm sure one would have presented itself if there was a leak in your vehicle.

Yeah, I've seen like hundreds of these cases on the Facebook, Rav4 Owners Club. Interesting. I don't know why Toyota seems to not know anything about it. They probably know it just has to reach a certain threshold, I believe, before it becomes, you know, they, you know, like most corporations, until it reaches a tipping point in actions, you're really not taken. Yeah. Well, thanks very much. Thank you very much. James, you called something to our attention, a Toyota dealer.

They didn't know about a RAP-4 roof leak, and we got them because why Google it and we got them? But fortunately, our customers have not complained to Rick yet. Yeah, we haven't seen that many in the shop. Yeah. Thanks very much, James. Thanks so much, James. Okay, thank you. Let us know how that all turns out.

Our telephone number here is 877960-9960, and you can text us at 772-497-65-30. Take advantage of your anonymous feedback. We're going to go back to Josh. Yeah, I have a couple of texts here. This is from Steve in New Jersey. He says, good morning, Earl. I often tell people when looking to buy a car that is equally important to research dealerships in addition to conduct.

into conducting car research. Cars will break, partnering with a reputable dealership will help mitigate the hassle of car ownership. And if you can find a good place, I think he's absolutely right. And that might be one of the, you know, with all the advantages of buying directly from the manufacturer that Tesla is presenting, the fact that, you know, in the best case scenario,

having a good relationship with a dealership can be a very beneficial relationship. Yeah, a good relationship with a dealership, a good relationship with a technician, like Rick, a good relationship with a service advisor or a car salesman. I mean, you know, it's all about human beings. We have done mystery shopping reports where one of our worst rated dealers would actually have a salesperson that was a stand-up guy. In fact, we even had one couple weeks ago that says, hey, listen, go to Earl Stewart Toyota because they want more cars up over MSRP. That was the leak from last week.

So we actually, we actually, it's people. You're dealing with people. The car dealer can be good, bad, or in the middle, find a good technician, find a good service advisor, find an honest salesperson. There's great people at all these dealerships. There really is. You have to be quick because sometimes they don't last long. There's some people, literally, if you got an honest salesperson in a really terrible dealership, he's not going to make any money. Oh, no, for real.

We've had in the past people who have come to work for us. from another manufacturer, and then all of their loyal people came to buy cars for them, even though it was a different brand. They followed the person on the car. We hired Delray Toyota's number one salesman. Do you remember his name? Oh, you're talking about Pedro. Pedro, yeah. No, no, no, we hired. It was Brayman Honda. Okay, we hired Delray Toyota's number one salesman.

And after about six months, he came into my office and he said, I apologize, Mr. Stewart, I'm going to have to leave. And I said, why? Oh, okay. And he said, well, we don't have any floor traffic here. Now, that means people coming in the door, people responding to advertisements. And Delroy Toyota would run these ads, bait and switch, below cost. They couldn't sell the car for that.

And then the salesperson would talk to them. And if the salesperson could trick them and to buy another car, they would sell the car. So a good salesperson there was able, because he could talk to them. 25 people a day, but maybe only sell three cars a day, but three cars a day has a lot of cars. So in our dealership, because we advertise the real price, and what we really do, we'd only have maybe 20 people a day, but everyone would buy a car, but he wouldn't get to talk to one maybe that day. So good salespeople don't last at bad dealerships and bad salespeople don't last at good dealerships. That's very true. It's all about people. Great information.

We're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to go out to Boynton Beach, and we're going to talk to Moshe. Good morning. Welcome to the show. Hello. How can we help you this morning? Can you guys hear me? Yes. Loud and clear.

Wonderful. My name is Moshe, Katsberg. And I called into the station in the past that was back in May of last year. Oh, about a year ago. Yeah. We recall you. Oh, well, I can't believe. Well, thank you very much.

If I may rekindle shortly what my issue was and then it will come to why I'm calling today, and you may be very gratified to find out that I took your advice. But let me get down to the nitty-gritty. If you recall, last year I called because I had leased a car from a Schumacher dealership, a Jeep, 2018 Jeep in 2018, I was a three-year lease, which was due to expire on October of 2021. The reason I called back in May was as I was approaching the end of my lease, I decided that I want to purchase the car and the end of the lease. And that's where all hell broke loose. Because when I called Ally Bank directly, they informed me that.

that I could not buy this card directly from them per Florida state law, which still today I have never been able to verify, even though I contacted the Attorney General's office in Tallahassee. That's not true. That's not true. Please, is that true, by the way? No, you can buy, at least through Southeast Toyota Finance in the state of Florida. If you have a lease vehicle, you can buy it directly from them.

I confirmed that recently. If you're leasing with Toyota, so it might be a Toyota, I mean, a Honda, I'm sorry, it was a Jeep, like a Chrysler or an ally financial rule, I suppose, but it's definitely not a state of Florida rule. So, first of all, please tell me, let me digest the information. In the future, may I buy it from this agency you just mentioned? The scenario I was referring to is had you leased a vehicle from southeast Toyota, of finance. So that would be a, it would have to be a Toyota vehicle in this state. Then you would have the right at the end of your lease or at any time in your lease to buy it directly from the bank without going through a dealership. They'll send you the application for

title. You could register it yourself at the DMV. You do not have to involve the dealership. And there's also, there's also some breaking news on this subject. And that is that there a couple of South Florida attorneys that are suing a whole lot of car dealers in Florida and maybe out of Florida for violating the Consumer Leasing Act. 1976 Consumer Leasing Act and the Consumer Leasing Act specifically says

that your option to purchase is the price that you should have to pay for the car. They cannot charge anything more. And I've advised a couple of other callers to me on this subject to refer, and I've given them the names and contact information of these two attorneys

and when you mention this to a dealer because all the car dealers now know about this, a big suit, that they will cave in and allow you to buy it for the purchase option, Bryce. Well, that's great news. Let me tell you what has transpired since because I'm a little bit downstream

trying to cut the chase here and not trying to hog your air time. So, you suggested at the time was I, when I was lamenting to you my woes, in the runaround that I got from Ally, which was incredible because I could never get a direct answer from them, except it, go back to the dealer, go back to you, we cannot sell it to you, because we don't have a dealer's license in Florida, that is about the state law, you've got to go to a dealer, slam dunk, I even mailed them, full payment, including Florida's sale tax, they mailed

get back to me. So I ended up, in fact, I did call you, Earl, if you recall, contacted you and you turned me over to Stu, and Stu emailed me that my best, my most favorable option will be to go back to my original dealership. If the Stu is there, you can verify that. Anyway, that's downstream. What I ended up doing is I ended up finding a small-time dealer who was willing to process the purchase for me for $500, and I ended up purchasing the vehicle last October, after all the run around. But at the time that I called you last year in May,

and I was still full of fume and smoke coming out of my ears, you were very sympathetic to my cause, and you suggested that you knew about this problem, and you said that we guys should get together, or you guys should get together and get a class action going. that's exactly where I am right now. I am suing ally. I'm suing ally.

I have an attorney. I have an attorney. And in fact, this attorney is hooked up to another attorney, Earl, what's the name? Earl Adam Schweiber. Maybe I get those names wrong. Mr. Schreiber down Miami had the same issue with Chrysler, and he had to pay the dealer above the stated buyout price. and he, to the dealer somewhere in Miami, he did, and then he sued, and he won, he won

a judgment of $19.7 million from HAL. How could I not know about that? Wow. Congratulations. I think I emailed you at the time. If not, I'll be happy to email you the transcript or the link to go to the board documents. Please send the email again. I'm sorry, I missed it.

I know I missed it. No, no, no, no, you're a busy guy. absolutely selling to yotos and doing radio shows and got many much of a dancing act by now so anyway uh i will be have more than happy to to spring everything to you so let me get down to why my calling now at the time you suggested uh i get gathered with a pack of wolves around me and go go go and go from the allies to jugular veins with that's where i am like now i have an attorney as i said who was linked to uh uh mr schwey who in the past one, this judgment of 19.7, an identical case, and he is handling this case.

Where I am right now is my attorney, whose suing ally, has been contracted by Allies' attorney. So, Ally's attorney is puffing up a smokescreen in his face. Basically, what their attorney is saying is that, no, no, no, we have mended our evil ways, and we have contracted our dealers, including Schumacher, to tell him to be nice guys from now on and not to pull these sticks anymore. And I and my attorney say, bullshit. I don't believe it. So right now they are facing each other and the smokescreen coming out of their attorney

just as trying to present the first line of defense, which I think is full of phoey. So the point at which I am, my attorney says to me, look, if we can refute his story, there's only one way. It's for you to find out if there are any other disgruntled clients recently of Ally, who have leased or are leasing for Ally and trying to purchase end-of-lease vehicles and getting the same story by being forced to go to a dealer or any dealer, not only the original dealer, but any dealer, and have him and pay a dealer extra process. You came to the right place.

We're on the team. We're going to. Well, then I need your help. Sure. Or you tell me how you can help me gather disgruntled guys like myself so we can generate a class action. and we are ready, as of yesterday, we're ready to go. We can do it right now.

Your Allied, I believe, does financing for General Motors, and most of the General Motors dealers. So you've got Chevrolet, Cadillac, Allied, I'm pretty sure. And I think they do financing for other manufacturers too. I mean, if they're with Jeep, then they'll do the Chrysler Jeep Dodge. Okay, they do a lot of lot. So we will mystery shop and we'll go through. through our past mystery shopping

reports and we will report all dealers that created that committed this, I would say 99% of them are doing it this way, but we can nail them just our next mystery shop we'll find an allied

dealer that's fine that has leasing and we'll check with the purchase option. Well, Earl, please stop in your tracks and don't do respect. I need names, I need, in In order to generate a class action, I need names of clients. Lissies like myself, not dealers.

I need actual names of people who leased cars and have tried. I have a suggestion. There's so many, like, with social media, car forums, especially since you mentioned Jeep, and Jeep especially since they hold their value so well, I'm sure there's thousands. And we're doing that right now because most of you are, you are getting. you're fulfilling your request yourself you're on radio we have 20,000 plus 30,000

I don't know how many people we will make this a regular on the radio show so basically if you finance your car through Allied and you're listening to this show at this time we ask you to contact the show

you know how to contact us by text, YouTube Facebook 877 960 960 all you listen listeners out there to Earl on cars, if you have leased a car through Allied Finance and your dealer charged you more than your purchase option price if you tried to buy the lease,

please call the show, contact the show, and we will get the information to Moshe's attorney, Mr. Shriver, in Miami, and we will gather as many names for you as we possibly can. Right. Thank you. There's only one correction. The attorney is the attorney is not Shriver Shriver's the attorney who took them to court and won the case a couple of years back, I think, in 2019. His buddy is another attorney, and that's the attorney who's handling this case. His name is Kevin, Kevin Love, like when you are in love with a woman, right? Kevin Love. Do you have a number? That is his name, but I would love to, if you guys could contact me.

And I, because all Kevin asked me is to gather a list of agreeable names to add to the class action. So I don't, if you, if, Earl, if in your kindness, you can act as it intermediary, or if you're, if I'm allowed to divulge my email number, but if, if that's not legal in any way. Oh, it's legal. Sure, it's legal. Go ahead and give it to us, Moshe. Okay. So if you want to contact me directly, my name is Moshe Katsberg. And my email is Moshe Katsberg at Hotmail.com.

Please let me spell it for you. Yes. M like Mary, O, S like Sam, H.E, K-A-T-V-K-A-A-T-Z-B-U-R-G, Mosheat-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-K-H-M-H-H-M-H-H-M-H-M-H-M-H-E. Please write to me and contact me and I'll just add you to the list of a class action against ally. Okay, that's all I asked. Mosher, give me the second name spelled again for me, your last name. Yeah, last name is spelled K like King, A like Apple, T like Thomas, Z like zebra, B like boy, you like under, R like Robert, G like George, Katzberg. and my email is my full name no spaces

and Moshekatsberg at hotmail.com We got it and we will continue to look for that information and we will give that information out with your email address or you can contact the show. A lot of folks that don't have the email to contact the show and we will email it to Moshe's. So if you have an allied financing lease that you wanted to buy from your dealer,

and that dealer tried to charge you more than the purchase option price stated in your lease. There is a class action suit in process by attorney Kevin Love in Miami, and this was started by Moshe, and you can join this class action suit and participate in getting some of the money you were swindled out of back. Exactly. Thank you so much. I thank you so much, Earl, and guys and your team. Yes, Moshe, we're on this with you.

You can count on us. wonderful thank you I could thank you so much thank you thank you thank you thank you you're quite welcome we're going to go to Marty this been holding from West Palm Beach good morning Marty okay I can't match this last caller I'll just give you my take I do all my service at Earl Stewart Toyota but Southern 441 send me a coupon for a free three alignment check. And I don't know if Earl has this, or it must cost a lot of money to have this kind of a system.

They've got it in three service bays where you drive in, the machine looks how it does it. I have no idea. It checks your alignment and checks your tires. and then it comes up on a screen that's in front of you and they will do a printout. Obviously, they're doing this to catch people that really need an alignment. My car didn't.

Do you have that kind of a machine? Yeah, we do, Marty, and most dealers do. Most this machinery's been out for several years and we got it when they first came out there. They're really good machines. In fact, my advice, first of all, don't go to anybody that's going to charge you to check your alignment. That's like charging you to check your car over.

They charge you when they find something wrong. So they should check everybody should check. Every independent and dealer service department should check your alignment free. It's a very sophisticated machine. Rick's very familiar with it. You get a computer printout and it will tell you if the machine's properly programmed, which most of them should be, and it's a relatively new machine, tell you exactly what's wrong, whether you've got one wheel, two wheels, whatever it is,

how much it's out of alignment. It is also protective for you. If you go in, even if you don't think you need an alignment, say, please get me an alignment check, and I'd like to see the printout. That way, they're not going to try to sell you an alignment when you don't need one. So always ask for an alignment check when you come in for service, even if you're in for something else because if it's slightly out of alignment

it could cost you a couple tires I'm speaking from experience I wore out four tires one time because they were misaligned and they were wearing on the inside and they looked fine to me and I took it in to get my oil change a few years ago

and my tires were worn down right to the on the inside Rick might have caught it I did the steel belts were coming right through it yeah so as for alignment should be free and this thing that's Southern 444 one is advertising is BS.

If they are charging for alignment, they're crooks, alignment check. The alignment check should be free. The alignment is going to cost money, and that's what you should be for. Obviously, this was free, and my printout showed,

I asked for the printout. First, the guy tells me, yeah, you have no problem. And then I said, well, can I get the printout too? Yeah. They gave me the printout. I had nothing wrong, there was no charge, but I didn't know when I brought my car into your service bay,

they don't come out and say your alignment's good. So I don't know if it was checked, or it isn't checked. I guess you have to ask. Well, I'm going to go back and check to be sure we're doing this. We should be, if we have time available, which we ought to most of the time, to check alignments, we should be checking alignments on every car. I mean, it's profit to us, and it's a favor to the customer. If you come in, you've got your wheels out of alignment, can save you a set of tires and we can make a profit when we sell you the alignment. But we should check it free and we should check every car. We even should be checking new cars when they come off the truck because you can knock a car out of alignment very easily. Just getting

it on and off a truck, you can hit a curb, you can knock a car out of alignment. So Marty, thanks very much for the call and we're running out of time here. I need to get to the mystery shopping report. Thanks so much, morning. Thanks very much. We love hearing from you. We're going to go to Bob and I believe Bob is calling us from Minnesota. Welcome. Thank you for holding, Bob. Good morning. Good morning. I've got a car. I have a car coming in next week that I purchased about eight months ago. I finally got here. What kind of questions should I be looking at from the dealership? Like the final review from them as far as damage from the truck that it was delivered in? How do I verify that there's no damage from that and is there a checklist that I should be

getting from a dealership as far as going over the whole vehicle I'm speaking from a toy perspective there's a general it's called a new delivery checklist that most sales associates will use it just covers you know everything from the outside to the inside of the vehicle in terms of like you could ask for proof of a pre-delivery inspection a lot of times that's done by the distributor or the manufacturer sometimes it's done at the dealership Other than that, walking around the vehicle, just taking a nice slow walk and checking out every panel and doing a nice thorough inspection of the interior. And beyond that, you got your warranty.

So I don't think there's really many more precautions you can take beyond those measures I just mentioned. Got a new car, there's a long floor that says you can't sell a car without disclosure of the repair to damage on 1% of the MSRP. So if the damage exceeds 1% of the MSRP, otherwise they can fix it, they don't have to tell you. Yeah, if there's a five or six hundred dollar repair on a car, it's oftentimes, it might go undisclosed. But anything beyond that, they're required to tell you. So there's no checklist that I should be getting from them as far as if they've gone over the vehicle. There's a, like Toyota has a new delivery checklist. It is a required document.

They actually, if there is an issue with the vehicle down the road. And all manufacturers would have that. I imagine they do. Yeah. So that's something that they should do with you, the sales associate and you together. And honestly, it's one of those pieces of paper that a lot of dealerships kind of put to the wayside. So if you are concerned, I would insist on doing that new delivery checklist. That way you have a copy of it.

And it's also to protect the dealership because if you sign off on it and then you bring that issue to their attention, later, they'll be like, well, this isn't on the new delivery checklist. So it's a mutual protection. So I would insist that they do that with you. Okay, well, they just told me that they've already done it electronically, which I didn't, that makes no sense to me. I have known nothing about it. Yeah, I'm not sure. Maybe what they're referring to is like a, like the when the manufacturer will do these pre-delivery inspections, but then there should be another inspection and like a checklist with you. And it also covers things like equipment that you requested or if you ask for formats or the formats in the vehicle. Any other accessories you

might have added beyond the extra equipment. And this also will cover things like nicks and scratches and things like that that might have occurred after the dealer was already holding the vehicle while they were just moving it around. And to be honest, where the fact is that one of the most overlooked things is exactly what you're complaining about. When cars are delivered, there's an excitement factor, a motion factor. Salesman's excited. The buyer's excited. Everybody's in a hurry. The customer wants to get the car home in a hurry.

The salesman wants to get his commission in a hurry. And so the care of the delivery of the vehicle in almost all dealerships, including ours, we rush them sometimes. And it shouldn't be. You're talking about typically a $40,000, $50,000 product, and someone should go over that product with a fine tooth comb. the buyer and the seller and the car should be perfect when it's delivered. It should be as often is not, and you hit

upon one of the biggest problems in the industry. You know, the thing, it would not be uncalled for to have them put it on the hoist to have me look underneath the car. That's a great idea. No, it's definitely not out of the question,

ask for it, and they should accommodate that. It really wouldn't take that long, and like we just said, you're spending a whole bunch of money, and you're paying a premium nowadays, so I think you deserve to get the peace of mind you need. You might hear this from the dealers, a lot of them say this, I'm sorry you're not allowed in the service department because our

insurance company doesn't permit it. So our insurance company doesn't permit it either, but we do it anyway. I mean, it's stupid not to be able to see your own car, and we encourage people to talk to the technician and come in and look at the car. Service department is

a hazardous place, but you're not careful, so they're going to be walking out to be careful. But yeah, I'd always push to look under the car if I was curious. It's my car. I want to look under it. You got up on the lift. Just be careful. And Bob, we realize how important that checklist is to you. I've talked to customers who, you know, they took a look and they didn't have a safety feature that they had ordered. So we're right with you. That checklist, it's extremely important. And it sounds like as if you're an extremely educated consumer. Please stay in touch with us. We're running out of time right now, and we'd love to continue the conversation, but we do have to go.

Okay. Thank you very much for the info. I appreciate it. You're welcome. We have a mystery shopping report to get to, and that means that we call upon you to take and to, you know, grade that mystery shopping report. Our mystery shopping report this week is from Mazda of Palm Beach. Interesting mystery shop, as all of them are. Agent Lightning, fabulous job. We thank you. Now back to the recovering cardio. Don't forget you can grade that mystery shopping report on our text number, 772-497-6530. Okay, Mazda at Palm Beach. Last time we shopped the Mazda dealership was last September when Agent Lightning visited Nelson, Mazda of Merfreesboro. I always kind of slur that. It's very hard to say Merfriesboro, for me anyway.

Murphy's Borough, Tennessee. Two weeks later, we investigated Smale. Also hard to say. Smale, not snail, but S-M-A-I-L, Mazda, in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Agent Lightning has family in that area and visited Merfordsboro, apparently. Both of these Mazda dealerships

operated with integrity and professionalism and turned our preconceived notion of Mazda dealerships on its head. Prior to these mystery shops, our experiences with moscow dealers had been poor and a matter of fact a month before we shopped the out-of-state moss dealers we had Wallace Mazda in Stewart Florida and they did terribly it was just when things were getting bad with inventories and pricing it wasn't really the market adjustment that rubbed us the

wrong way it was the shoddy shady sales practices the shoddy and shady sales practices for example the salesperson told agent lightning that mr. Wallace did not believe in charging his customers over MSRP, but went ahead and charged her $2,725 over MSRP anyway. So that's pretty shabby and pretty shoddy. One monster dealership that hasn't been too bad is Mazda Palm Beach on North Lake Boulevard, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. That could be Lake Park.

We're not sure they're side-by-side cities. The last two visits, one in the early months of the pandemic, and won in August of last year have shown Mazda Palm Beach to be pretty average in terms of car dealer behavior we've given them a sea or on our good dealer bad dealer this so average we're great on the curve so it wasn't perfect by any means but it was about average I had to look up their last two grades because instinctively it seems like Mazda Palm Beach would be one of the bad guys we'd been shopping Mazda Palm Beach ever since it was originally opened by

Greco and Greco, we're kind of bad guys. They're bad behavior people. They have dealerships around, a little bit like the Napleton group, not quite that bad, but we had a couple of really interesting, terrible experiences at Greco Mazda. Some of you may remember the famous ghost car, and we laugh about that because we tried to buy the car at Pasta Palm Beach from Greco when he owned it, and there was no such car. And they tried to switch us to sell. nothing else. And so we got switched and gave them a bad grade. And then we saw then the following week it was advertised at another Mazda dealership owned by Greco. And then we saw was advertised later. Long story short, this ghost car that was advertised for weeks and

months, a car that did not exist. And so you can see why that gave us a bad taste in our mouth for Grico Mazda. But Mazda, a Palm Beach, new owner. in a new situation. To be fair, the Greek old mistress happened kind of boring. Maybe that's just because some dealers are cleaning up their act. And they are. We'd like to think we had something

to do with that. Hopefully we're creating a little bit of a good influence, or at least a threat to the people that violate the rules on Erlan cars. Went back into Boston, Palm Beach

to see if they've been rehabilitated in any way. Here's the report. Speaking as if I were agent lightning, I arrived mid-morning, went to shop in the sales showroom for a few minutes before being approached by a man. He asked me if anyone was helping me. I said no one yet, but I wanted to speak with someone about getting a new car. The man excused himself, returned with a salesperson named Greg. Craig, C-R-E-I-G. Craig asked me if I wanted a new or pre-own, if I wanted to buy or lease and several other qualifying questions. I answered this questions and then

decided on a new Mazda CX5, a sporty little crossover. There was a white CX5 in the showroom and we walked over to it. The Maroni label lay on the dash. The MSRP was $29,870. We stopped talking about Monorini labels not being where they're supposed to be.

Sometimes they're not there at all. Sometimes they're on the dash. Sometimes they're in the cloak apartment. The law says they're supposed to be on the window and only can be removed by the buyer, but nobody does that anymore. They all take them off. We take them off. They are ignoring that federal law.

A lot of laws get ignored. There was the addendum label, it was on the windshield. It added $495 for resist-all protection package. It's kind of a polish. And $4.95 for crystal fusion. is the glass treatment. I didn't know it either one until I Google it or actually I went on Amazon

where you can buy it a lot cheaper. It's still garbage, but if you want to buy garbage, best to pay a low price. $189 for all weather floor mats and $3.99 for a window tent. God, that's a lot of money for window 10. $4.95 for a three-year maintenance package,

probably practically free anyway, on a new car. And $9.99, a dealer fee, hidden fee, garbage junk fee, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, you add all that up together, and it spells $3,072 over MSRP. $3,000 over MSRP. Craig offered to pull the car out of the showroom, that's a salesman, so he could test drive it. I told him that wouldn't be necessary. He suggested finding a similar car outside. He said they preferred if the customer drove the actual car,

they're going to purchase. That's the first good advice that Craig God, maybe the last good advice. You should drive the car you're buying if you can. Today it's practically impossible because there are very few cars of inventory, but when things return to normal, if they ever do,

try to drive the car you're going to buy. It wasn't a big deal to get the car out anyway. They did. I don't know if they did. Craig put a license plate on the dash, and we got in and drove up A1A. Craig shared with all, shared with me all kinds of information about the car, the warranty, and the dealership on the right.

He told me that Toyota owned 20% of Mazda, super owned another 20%, and that Mazda was fused with Lexus. Well, that's not true. Mazda is owned by Mazda. Interestingly enough, Toyota and Mazda do have joint ownership of a plant where they build cars. and the Toilers and the Maas come off the same assembly line, but you know, Toyota had one with

Toya had a joint venture with General Motors years ago, Chevrolet, California. So just because they have joint assembly plants doesn't mean they are They own each other, yeah. They don't own each other. Bad information, probably just mistaken.

And I won't use that to gig them. There's enough other things to gig them on. Back of the dealership, Craig pointed out the owner's car something very old and expensive that's it's got my i'll have to ask too about that or agent lightning oh whatever it was uh roped off in the back roped off i like that they don't rope my car off yeah we we broke it off you rub it off okay do not touch i asked who the owner was he told me it was uh owned by lea corporate

I googled Leah, and the first thing that popped up was a underwear company in Miami, I want to say, lingerie. Oh, boy. The pronoun, polite word for underwear. But actually, there is a Leia auto-cardiolship group. We made our way back to the desk. Craig asked if I was interested, I said, definitely. He took my ID and entered it into their system. Then he said he'd be right back with some numbers.

It took about five minutes. Craig returned over the worksheet. The top line of $32,870 was labeled the market value selling price, standard nomenclature today. This could include, remember this included resin tall and the rest of the garbage, the junk stuff. Then they added all the self there supposedly already included, and this is where they really dropped the ball in integrity and honesty. deceptiveness and you name it, they charge you twice for the same junk. I mean, bad enough to charge you for junk. They charge you twice. I need two crystal fusions?

Yeah. Two reinstalls. Two sets of masks in case you get one man set dirty. $95 for a minute. Anyway, they also added it. In addition to the double ad for the junk, they had $999 for some more junk, a dock fee. and $400 in taxable fees, that's another word for junk fees. If they tax a fee, it's a junk fee. It's not a government fee. Anyway, the real price of the CX-5 was $36,0212, which was $6,000, $6,000, $342 over MSRP. I told Craig I didn't need any of the things listed.

Craig said they were optional, came right off that. And he was sure as sales manager, Dan, would take them off. I told them I would still need to speak with my spouse about this. So you still negotiate today, folks. Usually it doesn't do any good. But here you find them, as we say, the vernacular and the dealership business, they dropped their pants. And we tell you don't drop your pants right away.

You hold to your price. You come down slowly. But Dan dropped his pants and came down off of everything effectively. Craig asked if I could leave a deposit because with the inventory situation, the six, five might be gone. Later that day, I told him I had to talk to my husband about it. And that's where we were. As we spoke, the sales manager Dan came up anyway, offered me some water. Craig asked me to speak with him, and they both left.

Craig then returned with a new worksheet. Okay. The new worksheet showed a top line of 32-870. They removed the reinstall, the polish, and the other stuff, and only added $400 in taxable fees. So now they only added basically $1,400, $1,39 in taxable fees, junk fees, BS. Craig, set some time trying to convince me to trade in my car to all set some of the extra expense to me. I declined, thanked him for his time.

He asked me to wait so he could get Dan to thank me for coming in. Hold them as long as you can. Keep them in there as long as you can. Don't let them get away. Dan sat down in Craig's chair and asked me if there was anything he could do to earn my business right now. I told him I just needed to speak with my husband before moving forward. He said he understood and advised me that most dealerships are charging much more than they are over MSRP, five to six thousand like they originally charged when they double charge for the insults.

He came down to half that, only $3,000 over. He said they're doing this so they could still. trade their customers out when the market comes back to normal. So that's a story with Palm Beach, Masta, which is in Lake Park, I believe, or North Palm Beach. And they are second or third owners, that same location. And we need to vote on them. In some ways, they're doing the same things that all the dealers are doing by charging thousands

over. Do you see some things they did? were different, they would want you to grade them even worse than the average dealer. An average dealer would get a C because we'd grade on the curve and a terrible dealer would get an F. So if we have any grades come in, we'll go around. Okay. Let's see here. Mark gave him a solid D, way too many fees. Too many fees. I agree with that. I totally agree. They were, but six. He had all the dealer installed accessories plus two or maybe three.

There was six or seven. And briefly, they were all doubled. And then they doubled them. But that was a real egregious, in my opinion. I personally will be a D as well. I think they're somewhere in between egregious and average. I mean, maybe they have a point that they're not as bad as everyone else. But it's still a bald-faced lie to say that paying $3,000 over sticker,

you'll be able to trade, no problem when the market returns to normal. because that's not true. That's absolutely not true. Rick? Okay, we've got Tim Gilliland, still too many games, C-minus. Pretty nice on his part, for my opinion. Mark Ryan, D-minus, typical unnecessary fees and old-school tactics. Brian said Latko, Craig gets a C-minus.

Again, very nice on his part. Donnie White with a C-minus. And let's see. in West by God, Virginia, Mazda of Palm Beach earns a solid D-minus for the double junk add-ons and $9.99-stealer-slash-dealer fee dropped their pants,

but still over $1,400 over MSRP. At least they drop their pants. You've got to give them credit for the pants drop. Bob gives them a B. Bob is feeling very generous today. Thank you, Bob, for seeing the good in everyone around us. Anne-Marie, she's not messing around.

D, not illegal. but I'm getting really tired of these junk fees. And John and Wellington says they charge them twice for the same garbage. Let's grade them twice. D minus and another D-minus. And Guy Larrabee, D, rip-off fees. I'm agreeing.

D-minus all the way around. Not quite failing because you could point out the discrepancies and say, hey, take that all off. But, wow. Yeah, kind of Greek-o-ish. Yeah, it does have a Greek-ian feel. I wonder if Leah and Greek-I know each other.

Okay, Nancy, you're the last to give us a grade. That's right. Well, I can't avoid scoring this mystery shoppering report based on the environment, the new normal environment we're living in. And this stinks. I don't like it. and double dipping and everything else

that went with it they get a solid F from me Ouch Yeah No nonsense Yeah I'm I'm gonna give them a D minus I think

I almost want to give them an F too The salesperson May have been the culprit But even so It's too It's too much like They actually tried

To take advantage of a gullible buyer I mean a short buyer would not have ever fallen for the fact to pay the junk fees twice. So I think they were just hoping that Agent Lightning was gullible, and boy, were they wrong, she saw that immediately. And I think most people, the fact that they tried, I almost want to fail them, but I'm going to get my D-minus.

Yeah, I think that's the consensus. Yeah, yeah. And the thing is interesting to me about this, we had Greco, a terrible dealership at Palm Beach, Mast, and then we had now Kia Leah at Palm Beach Mazda they're also terrible

we shopped in Murfreesboro in Greensburg, Pennsylvania and we had delightful experiences so it's not the franchise I if sometimes she's didn't paint a franchise with the same brush there are good honest Mazza dealers out there and they're two up in

Pennsylvania and down here we got it's just a It's the geography. It's South Florida, the Solomon Gimora. That's where we are. And if you're down here in South Florida, good luck. It's the Wild West.

It's a Wild Wild West. Be careful, real careful. Very careful. You know, I think we have a couple minutes to get to some YouTube comments from Rick. If he could run them by us real quick. We actually had quite a backlog, but I kind of went through and answered them online. But let's get a couple of these out here. Charles Reeves says good morning all first-time car buyer who finally has decided on the car he wants

Subaru Forrester Wilderness nice vehicle it's been a two-year prediction as to when car prices will fall are we close to that godspeed well I apologize because I've been predicting for I predicted they were going to fall last year and it's just getting worse and worse I mean you got the war in Ukraine now it isn't just the microchips, it's everything. Now we're looking at a longshoreman strike in California. That's huge on impact. We've got the wiring harness. I think they were primarily,

one of the primary sources was in the Ukraine. So every time I turn around, there's another issue. I'm still predicting early next year, but don't count on me, because I could be way wrong. I think there's also a, sentiment unfortunately of the manufacturers and the dealers is hey this ain't so bad don't don't don't don't crank up production too much yeah let's don't don't bring it up for the first time I think the manufacturers and the dealers are

kind of like that because we're hearing all about the dealers gouging and the thousands of dollars in junk fees you don't hear about the manufacturers raising their prices and they can very easily do it they do it by incentives you take take away the incentives, you don't have to go and tell the government you're taking it away. So manufacturers have raised their prices secretly. The dealers have done so, not so unsecretely. Everybody's getting rich. It's like shrinkflation, whether they're not raising prices at the supermarket, but they're

taking the amount of potato chips out of the bag. Exactly. They're hiding the pricing grease. I couldn't have said it. So we may find ourselves with this environment, which will make a meme much richer and make the dealers or the buyers much poorer. Don't mess with my chips. And I admit it.

Okay. Rick, you have one more. Yeah, we can get one more in here. Craig Jacobson says, shout out to Pines Ford, P-I-N-E-S. Don't know where it is, but he says, took my vehicle in for service. They promptly left my rear window open overnight. And shocker, it rained in Florida. My entire rear seat was soaked. Maybe they parked under a pine tree.

That could be. Yeah. Okay. My advice to them was get in that service manager's office and get every signed document he can, stating that they will cover any forms of water damage or mold remediation for at least the next year or two. Great. That's great information. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us this morning.

You are a huge part of the show, and we thank you. and we would all love you to have a wonderful weekend. We'll be right back here next Saturday morning at 8 a.m.