Earl Stewart on Cars - 06.18.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Mercedes-Benz of Starling Buick of Stuart

Episode Date: June 18, 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 Buick dealer under new ownership to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2022 Buick Encore GX. 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. Here we go again. We're the How Not to Get Ripped Off by Your Car Dealer Team. We've been doing this for years. You've heard the recorded introduction. You know the nuts and bolts, the fundamentals of what we do. and this is just reporting to you that we are pumped up as usual.

We really, really love doing this show. We're seeing some results slowly. Some exciting things are happening in the industry. And some terrible things are happening in the industry. And you're the victims. You folks out there in car truck buying land, car truck leasing land, you're at the mercy of a predatory dealer network,

nationwide waiting just like a pack of wools for you to wander under their lot and be sold to car at an exorbitantly high price prices have never been higher on cars and trucks leasing prices it's crazy the only good news you regulars know this is a car you're driving right now is worth far more than than it's been last year or the year before you're driving a car that's a appreciating in value. So that's not bad except what are you going to do with it? If you sell it and you've got to go out by another used or new car, lease one, and then all that profit that you made on selling the car you're driving now goes back.

So you're caught between a rock and a hard place. And we're here to help you navigate the really, really, really difficult mind field that you have to go through if you're thinking about leasing or buying a car. Our advice to you is don't. Just play it safe. Don't buy right now. And no matter how much I say that, I'm a dealer. We have a Toyota dealership in North Palm Beach.

And we're selling cars. And we're selling a lot of cars. Not as many as we sold previously because of the supply situation. But our prices are higher. We're selling cars at MSRP. And gosh, it turns out, We're the lowest price in town. All the other dealers are marking them up over MSRP.

So I really almost feel conflicted. You know, my heart bleeds for you. I feel your pain as a consumer, but my heart also is happy as a dealer because we're making a lot of money. And I just got to tell the truth. We're all car dealers who are making more money today than they've ever in their entire history.

The manufacturers, that's a little bit variable, but they're doing pretty well. You don't hear the manufacturers crying too much. They wish they could build more cars because they can sell everyone they can build, but they're still getting all the money for the car, and they're not doing too bad. So here we are, everybody out there in Radio Land, oh, by the way, YouTube land, Facebook land, Twitter land, you know, cyberspace, you're listening and watching us in different, venues. We welcome your calls. I have an agenda, Nancy, Stu, Rick, we all have things we want to talk about, but that's what we want to talk about. We actually should be listening

to you. What do you want to talk about? You've got something on your mind. Recently something happened. I know. You got a car. Most of you do. You would be listening to Erlon cars if you didn't have a car. If something happened, was it a squeak, rattle, or roll? Was it a gas pilot situation? Or is it on its last legs and you've got to buy a car? And you don't want to buy a car because you know you're going to be paying through the nose. What do you do? Well, you can call 877-960-99-60. That's 877-960. We will take your phone call. A little heads up. We're having some technical difficulties here at the radio station. And so we're not going to be able to use the laptop to transmit the call numbers and names.

We're doing it by text, and we're on a group text that we have two people, Nancy, will be receiving a text of your call, and Nancy is sitting to my left. She's my co-host, and been with me since the get-go on this radio show, and she will prioritize your phone call, your 877-960-90-60, but we've got no problem with our YouTube and Rick is monitoring YouTube. Rick Kearney, certified diagnostic master technician. He is the know-it-all, see-it-all,

answer-it-all questions about anything, mechanical, robotic, electronic, what's another word, computer? You can answer all the questions. So if you want to talk to Rick and you're on YouTube, YouTube.com forward slash earlun cars. YouTube.com

for slash Erluncars. Get your question to Rick. and he will answer it. 99%, I mean, nobody's 100% right, but except Google, Google's 100%. So in that 1% we jump on Google, or you can jump on Google and save yourself the time. Okay, YouTube.com for slash roll on cars. Text us, just the old-fashioned text. Eric Code 772-497-6530.

That text goes right through to us, Stu Stewart, My son, a general manager of our dealership, is sitting across the table here in the studio, and the text go right to him. And he will try to get your text pretty quickly. We prioritize the phone call, and as we do the phone calls, we go to the text. It's all about you. What are your comments? We don't have to have questions.

Your comments sometimes are more fun. I mean, if you have a problem with us, we'd love to hear from you. And if you're timid, no problem. We have Your Anonymous Feedback.com. That's for the folks that don't want to be, have their privacy invaded. I gave up on that a long time ago. I have no privacy. Doesn't bother me.

But to a lot of people, privacy is very important, and we respect that, and there is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Go to that address on the web. Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S feedback. F-E-E-D-B-A-C-K.com, your anonymous feedback.com. And say whatever you want, how you want to say it. The only way we will censor it is by vulgarity, profanity, but not essence, not the meaning. If you think I'm crazy, we'll say that you think I'm crazy, but we're not going to use dirty words to describe my mental condition.

Although you may think them yourselves, we're not going to repeat that. respect for other people's dignity or whatever you want to call. So there we are. We're waiting for your calls. We're waiting for your text. And I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart. She's sitting to my left. She has the automotive news clutched at her left hand. And she has her pen and her right hand. And she's got a really important notice. If you haven't listened to the show before and you happen to be female, hang on your hat because she's got some great news for you. Nancy? Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. You're a very important part of the show. Here's a question for everyone, just to kickstart the radio show this morning. I'd like you to give us a call with your answer. How far did you travel to purchase a vehicle recently? It's an interesting question, and it's one that Automotive News asks over. and over again.

And with the car shortage, the consumer is traveling. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Ladies, were you in control of negotiating for your vehicle this past week? Were you in service, and did you get the respect that you were due when you asked a question? question. This morning, I have $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call. Share your thoughts. Give us a call and just say hello. 877-960. And again, you can text us 7-7-2-497-6-5-30. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. And Jonathan is here. to, well, remind me

weekend and week out about a podcast and the following ways that you can hook up with your iPhone and your Android smartphone. Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon Music,

Stitcher, and SoundCloud. So give us a call toll for you at 877-960 9960. And now back to the recovering car dealer. I believe we may have a phone call, but go ahead. I'll check it. Okay. I was just going to say, our mystery shopping report, I was going to introduce to Stuart, my son, who was charged that. But if we have a phone call, then we will defer that and go to the phone.

We're going to go to Doug, who's a regular caller from Boca. Okay. Good morning, Doug. Hey, how are you, guys? We're doing fine. So, I'm in a quandary. I have three months. lease cars. One is my mom's, and she wanted to get an extension on it. So they only would give her until July.

No, I'm sorry, August, August. And when I called up Toyota to see if I could extend it more, they said no. Really? That was your Toyota? Mm-hmm. That's my mom's. I'm surprised. how long was the first extension

four months they did a four months oh I didn't realize that yeah well I thought maybe I didn't hear that first part yeah yeah four months is pretty generous but I can see where they draw the line somewhere

so so Sim's got an accord that the lease has been over and they're extending it to November which would mean is that 11 months then yeah which I was surprised that Honda did that.

So now, my mom's car only has 7,000 miles on it. Wow. And the lease is up in August, and I was thinking of purchasing it, but I don't know how to do that since it's my mom.

Okay. Actually, you're with Southeast Toyota Finance, so it's pretty easy. You contact them and let them know that you want to buy the vehicle. A lot of people think that you have to go to the dealership. to do it. And you can, but we don't recommend that. Or you can go directly through Southeast Toyota

and you can buy it directly through them. They'll send you a bill for the sale of the car, which is your residual, plus sales tax. You'll still have to handle getting the vehicle registered, because right now it's registered to Southeast Toyota with you as a driver or with your mom as a driver. Or you can go through a dealership. If you're local, you are local, we don't charge anything to purchase your own lease. So if you wanted to have a little convenience, you could do it through us, and she'd buy it for whatever was on the contract

and just sales tax. I think it's 15, which I thought was really a good deal. It's incredible. Doug, you can't afford not to exercise your purchase option on lease. If you don't ever want to let that car go back to the leasing company

or to the dealer or anybody else, that's like a gold mine. you've got accrued there thousands of dollars in profit even if you just flip the car you could turn around and sell it tomorrow and make several thousand dollars so there's a whole lot of interest now in all the lessees there matter of fact that Stu and I were talking the other day about the fact that with our used car shortage is a lot of those but everybody's buying their own lease used to be the leases came back went on the wholesale market and dealers

could buy them you can't buy them now because People like you are getting wise to the fact that you have a bargain, yeah. They're listening to the show. They're a hell of a bargain. In this case, you say not to buy a car, but in this case you're saying, yeah, definitely buy it. Yeah, you buy it because you have got an option that's thousands of dollars below the market value. So if you were to take that car out and put it on a used car a lot, even if you didn't retail it, you'd probably make $3,000 or $4,000, and if you want to retail it, you could make $5,000.

or six thousand dollars so it's a it's a real nest egg gold mine thing you got to jump on take advantage of yeah when they when they lease that car when you lease that car the bank had no idea what was going to happen in 2022 or 2021 so they figured it was going to be worth 15 000 and and they were making out like bandits and um things turned around and now you're the bandit well thank you i appreciate one more thing i wanted to get the new toyota corolla the top of the line one are you going to have the in it anytime soon no unfortunately uh just with the inventory shortage um everything is a considerable weight um and probably four to six months um maybe or maybe even longer even for corolla oh one more thing and i'm sorry to take up the time i have you know i have that honda civic s s sedan

and they told me that if i they wanted my car right it's on the lease too and the buyout on that it's only 15, and supposedly the market value on that is 29,000. It's crazy, yeah. Caching, ka-ching. Okay, congratulations. But be careful with that Honda, don't let them charge you any dealer fees or any inspection fees or anything like that. That's your car. You can buy it.

Doug, thank you so much for the call this morning. Oh, and Ella and Sim say hello. Oh, hi. You all have a great weekend. Give us a call again. Thanks, Doug. You know, Earl Stewart on cars right here, you can get so much information. It's amazing that there are so many people out there that don't realize that they can purchase that lease.

And boy, you are going to get a deal of a lifetime. And it is worth definitely looking into exercising your purchasing, options. Do it. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-6-5-30. We're going to go to Frank, who's been holding from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Frank. Good morning, good morning. Great.

My question is, I have a 2019 RAP-4 limited that I got from you guys about three years ago. And when I pass the intersection, it goes beep, beep, beep, and I'm trying to figure out, can you turn that off? It's probably not reading the white lines. Do you have the radar crews turned on? I don't know. I'll bet you do. My wife has pretty much the same vehicle. It's a 19-Rav XLE that she's driving.

And when you have the lane detection on that detects, you know, the white lines in the road, and you have radar crews on, when you pass that white line, it's going to give you an indicator because the radar cruise and lane keep assist work together like that. Turn off the radar cruise and, you know, when you're not using it, and that beeping should turn off. All right. I got to figure out where they're going to learn something new every Saturday. Yeah, exactly. Thanks to Rick. Good luck with that. It's not the lane detection. Right.

No, it's the lane detection works in conjunction with the radar crews in order to help keep you centered in the lane, especially when you're running with radar cruise on. But when the radar cruise sees that white line, you know, the lane keeps it, and it will, it beeps because you're using radar crews at the same time, it will do that beep at you. But if you turn off the radar cruise, then it'll work normal. Where do you turn it off? On your steering wheel, just look for the button for cruise control and just touch that until it says cruise off up on your center display. Okay. All right. You just saved me $99 post-tax.

Glad to do it. Thanks so much, Frank. Here's the story. I was there yesterday at the service. and I mentioned it to the service advisor which I never had this fellow before because when I booked this service call

that didn't give me a choice to pick my serviceman so when I got there I got a different guy I told him the same story he said you can turn it off and your steering wheel so he comes and shows me and he pushes the plane detector I said, no, it's not, I'm not

charting that off, I'm turning off the BP. Then he pulled up to the car in front of us real close, and he said, look on the dashboard, is that the beeping in there? You know, it's the radar because I'm too close to somebody. I said, no. All right, we

go in to sign the papers. He says, $99 diagnostic feed, and you get us now. So maybe you ought to tell this guy what to do. Well, you are, you know, Essentially, you listeners, Frank's talking about our dealership. So here's one of our own service advisors who isn't trained enough, trained as well on the technology of a 2019 RAP 4.

It's kind of embarrassing, frankly. He should have had a technician. I mean, we should be diagnosing it in the lane. I'll become a psychologist. Now, nobody likes to admit they don't know the answer to something. And what people should do when they don't know the answer, they should, this particular service advisor, they call them, should have asked for a technician, like Rick Kearney, say, I'm sorry, sir, I don't know the answer to that question, but I'm going to check with my technician on this. So instead, he said, he made it a guess. He probably thought he was right.

And he told the customer, Frank, who was too smart to listen to him, it's going to cost you $99 for me to tell you what I should. have already known in the first place and that's uh if it can happen at our dealership it can happen at any dealership and probably if it probably it is happening so uh get anytime someone's going to try to charge your anything uh get another opinion especially on diagnostic fees uh because that diagnostic fee would to find out that you didn't have to do anything so we're going to charge you $99 to tell you that you don't have to do anything when it went back in the shop the tech would have said this is all it is

and they wouldn't have charged. You hope well if it had been me I know well I know you wouldn't I'm just I'm being real here folks so Frank thank you very much I appreciate to call and we all learned including Stu and I and Nancy and Rick

a lesson and the listeners learned a lesson is be careful when you're talking to service advisors and car dealerships I was going to ask me The manager there, I think Matt is his name. Mark. Mark.

Mark. Yeah, well, I was close. I had DM. Anyway, I was going to ask, talk to him, but he had people in his office, so he went home. But I knew it wasn't right. That's okay. We'll talk to. We're going to talk to Mark for you.

Thank you so much this morning for sharing with us. We do appreciate your call. Please give us a call back again. We're a little backed up on our phone calls, so sorry to cut you short. Have a wonderful weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, give us a call toll free at 877-960. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We're going to go to Kathy.

She's reporting back. She gave us a call. I'm not sure what week it was, but she's calling us from Lake Worth. Excuse me, Lake Park. Good morning, Kathy. Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. You're welcome.

I used to listen to car talk on PBR all the time when I traveled in my car around the state of Florida, and I miss being able to listen to things like this, and we are neighbors here in Lake Park. I just wanted to tell a quick story. I have an older model car, much older, and the air conditioning went out a couple weeks ago, and I was puffing it out, driving around, thinking, what am I going to do? Where am I going to take this thing? Because everybody is saying, oh, it's going to cost you thousands of dollars and this, that, and the other. Well, as much as we, like our neighbors, I have a local family-owned repair shop that I've taken vehicles to for many, many years.

And I thought, you know what? Speaking of diagnostic, I'm going to take my car in there and just see what they say because I'm not sure I want to be purchasing something new. and these economic terms in time, but I also don't want to be dying of the heat in my car. Long story short, it was a relay. It cost me not $200, but certainly not $2,000, and I just wanted to give a shout out to all of you people who take care of us, girls and guys, our family, our kids, our grandkids,

and that's my good story of a good neighbor, local businessman, who had me in air conditioning yesterday and actually earlier this week traveling to Tampa and back with air conditioning. Yay, thanks for taking such good care of us, everybody out there. Hey, stay cool. Kathy, thanks so much for this call. Great call. Thank you, Kevin.

We really appreciate you and all of everyone out there appreciates your call. And the ladies love your call. And it's hot out there. Yeah, for sure. Extremely. And that Tampa ride, boy, when you got there, I bet you could really appreciate the AC. Kathy, stay in touch with us. We love hearing from you.

We'll do for certain. Thanks very much. Have a great day, everybody. Happy Father's Day. Oh, no, bye, bye, bye. Thank you. Bye. We're going to go to Howard.

Howard's been holding, and he calls us from Jupiter. Good morning, Howard. Good morning, yeah. And happy Father's Day to all the fathers are listening. My question is about a friend of mine who was living in Del Rey, he's a snowbird. He left his car for two years in Del Rey, came back, and he needed a jail fine, which they put in. And he started driving the car. This is a 2010 Malibu.

And the car was shaking all over. and vibrating and and he brought it to an alignment place. I told him that's a one place to bring it to. But they couldn't do anything because they couldn't loosen anything to get to the correct alignment. So he

left it there and now he's considering it taking it to another place and before you take it someplace I think you should junk the car because I think a car sitting two years of 2010 Malleable should be junked. I don't think you should do anything about it.

But my question is, he was able to drive the car below 40 miles an hour and was shaking and everything. What would cause a car to shake, especially because it's sitting for two years. I don't think it's the alignment. I think it has to be something else. So, Rick, what do you think the problem with that car is? Could be quite a few things, but the two. two major ones that pop to mind. First one is flat spotting on the tires. When your tires sit

in one position with the weight of the car on them for a good long time. Two years. Yeah, like that. Tires are square. Yeah. It develops a, literally, it pushes that tire out of shape. So it's got a flat spot where it's been sitting. And as you're driving, every time it hits that spot, it's going to thump and shake. And of course, the tires don't all rotate at the same speed because you know turning left and right so they're going to get out of sink and you're going to get all this thumping and bumping from all four corners now sometimes that will cure itself as the tires heat up sometimes they will actually regain their original round shape sometimes they won't the other thing that's most likely is the brakes

the brake rotors and the brake drums get rust and surface debris and corrosion. And as you're driving with your pads and the shoes are hitting that, that will actually cause it to shake and vibrate quite a bit. Even when you don't put your foot on the brake? Even when you're not stepping on the brake. Oh. Yep. Because when you release the brakes, the pads and shoes only move away from the rotor and drums by a tenth of a millimeter, just a very tiny, tiny little bit.

That way when you step on the brakes, you only have to step a little bit, and you've got full brakes. So they're really close, and when things are out of shape, you know, it's going to bounce and shake that car around quite a bit. Okay, so two things you're saying are ties and brakes. First things I'd look at. And the biggest advice is don't leave your car for two years without driving. I mean, we worry about leaving a car for six months. is a new record. Two years. I'm amazing. The car runs. I mean,

it's just so many things in South Florida that can happen to a car sitting there for two years. And, you know, my car sat in the garage for two weeks. I came home. My car was dead. So, just a heads up. Next question for

Rick. If you're going to leave, for example, I'm a snowbird. But I'm studying to spend more time in Florida six months. I'm spending like eight, ten months, going up to New York for two months. Now, I've got that two months, right? I don't know if the battery put on a trickle charge, and would that be sufficient to bring the card back to the other?

Yeah, for two months, you'd be okay. A trickle charger, and I wouldn't worry about putting, no matter what, anyone says, no chemical additives. Don't do any sort of like fuel stabilizers, not for two months. Again, when you get back, take the car for a drive as soon as possible to help smooth out the tires because in two months they're going to start to develop a little bit of flat spot and just basically get some exercise. There's a lot of controversy about the idea of whether you should leave it with a full tank or an almost empty tank. modern cars

anything built in the last five years I wouldn't even consider that a worry I wouldn't even consider that just a trickle charger on the battery to help keep the computer's memories alive and then when you get here just take it for a nice easy drive

and kind of give a time to wake everything back up and smooth it out you gave me another idea I can actually check up the tires You know, I have enough jacks to do that. Would that help in the tires if I jack the front and the rear-tile? I was thinking the same thing, Howard.

What do you think? That would definitely help prevent any flat spots, yeah. Yeah. But I wouldn't use just jacks. I'd put it up on safety stands so that you don't have a chance of it falling over, literally. You know, I never thought of that. safety stands check up the front

and higher than the safety stands then let it check down and let it rest on the safety stands. What do you buy these safety stands? Any auto parts store. Okay. Don't hurt yourself, Aaron. Excuse me. You can also get

them on Amazon or pretty much anywhere. No, when I was in the Army, I was in the motor pool. So I worked on Jeep. So I know how to chop the car up and take the battery out, you know, things like that. And by the way, you're the only person that knows what fording a car is. I asked about 10 people, knowledgeable people, do you know you could for a car? And they said to me, you've got to be crazy.

How can you afford a car? And Rick, you're the only one knows about fording a car. Is that when you take it out of the river and around a rapid? Absolutely. No, because you said for the chiefs. When the chiefs go in water, you would make sure that it's waterproof. Howard, it's been a pleasure. You've got to keep the exhaust and intake up in the air and make sure everything's just drives can be.

Can we answer any more of your questions? Yeah, one question. Where can I buy a car that goes in water? They all go in water. They call them submarines. They're very expensive. They still have cars that do that. I believe, Rick.

Amphi cars. There actually was a car built back in the 60s called the amphicar that you could switch the power train to run propellers. The car was pretty well sealed watertight, and you could drive right into the water, switch it over to propellers, and it turned into a little boat. And they were incredibly slow, and they leaked, and they didn't work. But they were an awesome concept. and they sank sometimes yeah listen i kid you not if someone did it in six o'clock and uh uh he got a ticket

he drove it in okay kids we got to wrap it up thank you for listening howard thank you for all the information and the questions 877 960 9960 or you can text us that 772 4976530 don't forget ladies $50 for the first two new lady callers call and say hello Colin ask us a question

I'm going to talk about Earl's latest blog and you can pick up this beautiful written amazing column blog and you could go to Earl on Cars number one number two you can pick up the hometown news the Florida weekly

but it is near and dear to our hearts and some of the calls that came in earlier when we started to show, when you purchased your lease car, when you purchased your leased car, participating in a class action lawsuit to repay you. This is an amazing story, and we have an amazing caller who has been in touch with us for quite some time, and he may even, did you talk to him this morning, Earl?

Will he be calling? No, but I just noticed the headline. I thought the headline was when you purchase your lease car, you paid too much money. So that's what it was supposed to be. I must have made a mistake. Oh, boy.

And I proofread it. When you purchase your lease car, you pay too much. And this is a blog soliciting business. And I can do this. The lawyers can't do it. And I'm not even sure the plaintiffs can do it. But we have a very, very courageous,

intelligent, a man by the name of Moshe Katsenberg. Is it Katsberg? Katsberg. That is from the Miami area, South Florida. Hopefully he's listening, and hopefully Moshe will call the show. And he's working with a very, very talented class action attorney. And we're trying to find out if you were a victim out there when you were trying to buy, exercise your option to buy your lease car from the dealer and

if you if you created a if there was a problem you can participate in this class action shoot we have the contact information for Moshe Katsberg at Kottmell.com

that's his email address. Mosha M-O-S-H-E-K-A-T-Z-B-R-G that's one word that's his last name K-A-T-Z-B-R-G at hotmail.com Moshe, M-O-S-H-E-K-A-T-Z-B-U-R-G at hotmail.com. And you can also call in at area code 845-3-2-3-6-1-443. I hate to give you all these numbers and email addresses.

I know it's frustrating, but if you were victimized and you had a lease car and you heard Doug one of the earliest calls to the show this morning asking advice, he has three lease cars and he understands that he's got himself a bargain the lease cars that are coming back off lease are thousands of dollars below the market value and you have an option on your lease

you might not even know or you might not have known that you had that option if you do and you have been to a dealer and they charged you more than the purchase option price then you got screwed I mean you were really taking advantage of So, there's a dealer in South Florida that's lining up participants for a class action suit.

And let me tell you some, of the leasing companies in the United States and the dealerships in the United States, a high percentage of these are guilty of charging you more than your purchase option price. That's a violation of the Consumer Leasing Act, 1976. So, again, call Moshe, M-O-S-H-E, Katzberg, at area code 845-3-2-3-2-3-6-14-3. That's area code 845, 3-2-8-1-6-143, 3-2-3, 3-2-3, 6-143. And tell him what happened. He'll pass it along to his attorney. Attorney can't solicit this directly, but he can, and he can pass it along to his attorney.

And you can participate in this class action suit. were victimized by a leasing company or a dealer because they charge you more than your purchase option price, which was a bargain. Let me tell you, Doug, the earlier caller, he had one vehicle, was it $7,000 less than the market value. So if a dealer overcharged you, he was taking away that profit that you have in your purchase option agreement that's guaranteed in writing. They've taken that away from you.

So listen to this carefully, and if you were victimized, let us know. I think this is going to be a new trend. I mean, are you excited? Oh, yeah. Here's Attorney General for Lori. Remember that? And she's still working on that. And she claims that the dealership, just Edmour's Cadillac,

just didn't cooperate with her and more or less shrugged her off. and she has complained, she, you know, took advantage of all of the avenues that she could possibly take, and she called us, and we talked, and we've talked several times, so at any rate, she paid too much, and it's right, I just pulled it up in front of the camera, Jonathan, if you want to put that up there, and it's just an exciting time. I mean, here's number two. She should call Moshe Katsberg at 845-3-2-3-6-143. Moshe, Katsberg, K-A-T-Z, B-R-G at hotmail.com, or area code 845, 3-2-3-6-1-4-3, find out that she can participate in that class action suit against all the dealers and leasing companies all over the United States that are victimizing leasing customers. Absolutely. And she went on to Del Rey to Ed Moore's Cadillac, and Lori's up in Hope Sound. So at any rate, her phone number, 772-485-2776. So all of you out there that, you know, want to talk with, you want to talk with, you know, the same conversation and what's going on. This isn't unusual. There's a lot of stuff going on that's not talked about.

Form yourself like a cult. And, well, as I say, a coup d'etat, uprising. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. Again, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Now, back to the recovering car dealer. Well, let's get some text for YouTube. All right. We got an Amoree.

He's got a text waiting for us. Let me jump over to that. Emory says, good morning. Sometimes I toy with the idea of renting a different vehicle to see what the new models are like. Good luck with that. And if it would fit me and or my garage. Since car rental companies don't always have the vehicle brand, I want to rent, I wonder if dealers might rent the various models I'm interested in.

This prompts the following questions. Do all car dealers rent cars or just dealers with body shops? Do car dealers have most makes and models to rent, or only a few? number three, how much does it cost to rent a vehicle from your dealership? And number four, considering the vehicles that have been in short supply, do you even have enough rental vehicles to cover customers with cars in the shop and those who are curious about driving something different? Thank you.

Well, I can jump on somewhere if you want to get it. No, I'm just going to say that there is a website out there, a source, might even be an app. And we talked about it. I can't remember whether it was on the radio show. If you Google it, Anne-Marie, you're extremely good on computers and smartphones. If you Google it, there is a source that does exactly what you're talking about. And I shame on me for not writing it down, or I probably did. I can't find it.

I'll Google something. Yeah, there is a source. But, yeah, think about it right now, the car shortage, you'll want to drive a car, you don't want to go in and fall into the talons of the dealer and have them attack you when you're trying to look at a car. Probably doesn't even have a car that you want to buy in inventory. So all you want to do is just say, do I really want the car? There is a source.

Stu's looking for it now. I'll add one a second after we answer your question. So do all dealers rent cars? No, not all dealers rent cars. Some dealers rent cars. Some have really good rental department. Some have terrible. Very few rent cars, yeah.

Number two, do car dealers have most makes and falls to rent? Well, speaking of the dealers that do have, rental departments. No, they don't have all makes and models. They have the ones that are probably going to best serve the rental needs and also their used cars because after they're done to be rental cars, they try and sell them as used cars. Now this is the cost to rent a vehicle from our dealership that it depends on the model. Like a van is like $120 a day and the cars are down closer to like 50 or 60. But we have everything online with the prices. listed so you can you can go there if you want to see that concerning the vehicles in

short supply do you have enough no we don't I'm it's it's really tight work we're currently meeting the needs of our service department and and also the just regular customers but to have enough vehicles to for all the models to show us demonstrate that's we can't as a matter of fact our source of rental cars through Toyota has been drastically cut back because of the inventory they're all coming from the same place they're coming from Toyota factories Normally, rental car companies can buy directly from the factory, but not literally directly, but for all intents and purposes directly.

And they buy the special price, and rental car companies forever have been able to buy rental cars, dirt cheap. It was a source of excess production for manufacturers, and there was never a problem. Today, the rental companies are actually paying sticker price and above. The dealers are actually selling cars at the auction to rental car companies for over sticker price. New cars, they're buying whatever they can buy. No. Just cars, and it's all very expensive, and that's

driving the rates up really high, too. All right, that's, thank you, Ann, Marie. It's a great, great set of questions. Here's another one here. It says, I saw Kia and Hyundai, way, I saw Kia and Hyundai are the same company. Deals are charging 15%. I'm sorry, that was that from last Saturday? I remember

reading this one. There we go. This is from Negan 1. There's a story. He just sent a new story about there is a performance shop, a mechanic had a bunch of vehicles in the shop, collected a bunch of money to modify them and make him performance cars and then he took off with

all the engines and the cash and left all the cars without engines and ripped off. I don't know how many people, a bunch of people, but he sent the length of the story. Negan asked a question, he says, if you're going to have to pay, if you're going to pay money to have your car modified with a lot of money,

he would think it would be best to pay a little at a time or have some kind of escrow account. That might be safe. I didn't know it was that dirty of a business. I mean, usually... Sounds to me like he was fast and furious. That's what it sounds like.

And he was, he left quite fast and furiously with his engines. Oh, wow. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. For like a special project like that, usually there's a deposit involved and there's a balance due when the work is done. So if you're going to pay anybody up front for everything, you better, that better be your mama.

You better know that person. Do you have any YouTube? comments coming here? I've got a couple. Great. Excuse me. First one here is from John Strine. He says, got a story on pricing for you. Stopped into Toyota of Euro Beach just to see what they had. Salesperson met me and told him what I was looking for and I asked about pricing. He gave me an MSRP on a Venza and a Highlander hybrid. And then said, of course, there's a $10,000 to $12,000 markup over MSRP plus taxes and fees. John says, I smiled and asked over MSRP?

He said, yes, it's just supply and demand, and every dealership is charging more than MSRP. And Donovan, our buddy Donovan came in. By the way, that was the same dealership that sold, I think it was like 20 brand new Toytas of the auction, making about $7,000, $6,000 on each. one of them wow right now donovan says speaking of Toyota of Euro Beach I got a random text message from a salesperson I interacted with in 2021 this past you got text this past Wednesday he asked if I was still interested in a car

they had a few I said maybe I was not or I was excuse me I said maybe I was but not with their crazy 10K markup. The salesman replied back with, it's the market, bud, Biden's fault. Oh, really? I was shocked that that became political within five minutes. I told him to leave me alone and left a negative review. A few hours later, I got a call from the general manager, Joe, who could not stop apologizing for what the salesman did. It was totally uncalled for, and he totally agreed. He was shocked one of their salespeople did that. And Donovan's advice,

be careful where you shop today. Oh, yeah. Boy, great. It's always great. Hearing from Donovan. But apparently some of these salesmen out there are just so hungry. They're utilizing different tactics now. That's what we see in every shop. It's always like

they justify their markup and say everybody else is doing it. I've never had a whole bunch of seen so much. Justification. Exactly. Rationalization. Ladies and gentlemen, speaking of justification, I want to guide you towards WWW, Lord of Law protecting car buyers. Go there. It will definitely help you with the car dealers that are breaking the law. Now back to Stu. Yep. I'm jumping over to the anonymous feedback. We haven't really hyped that today,

but we have our anonymous feedback line. You go to Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We can't tell where it came from or who you are. It's encrypted. At least they tell it is. We trust it. I haven't been able to find any anonymous textures. I haven't really tried, but the first one says,

I just watched your mystery shop of Round Tree Moore Ford of Lake City. This is just another case of dealer greed. When there's pushback from the customer, the dealer blinks. There will be a day of reckoning when greedy stealerships. I love that term. them Steelerships will regret hosing their customers. Yeah, you know, smart business people, you know, realize Carl Sewell had a comment in his book that we all read a long time ago that kind of informed, you know, the way we think about

like customer service. And he says, you can shear a sheep for many years, but you can only skin them once. And what's happening now is there's a lot of dealers out there skinning people alive, and it's going to come back to burn them. So this anonymous commenter hit the nail on the head. head. This is for Earl. It says, hello, Earl, and thank you for being

a YAA premium member. I have a question for you comparing the Highlander All Will Drive Platinum to the comparable Hyundai Palisade calligraphy all-wheel drive. Can you give us opinion? I saw this came in last week, so I looked into it, and I want to address it.

And I'm going to get a dirty look from my father. Here's it. I'm going to recommend the Highlander, and the reason for that, I did a side by side comparison on Edmonds. And basically, if you go down all the features, they're pretty much the same. All the luxury features, they have everything. The Palisade, the Hyundai has a small advantage on interior room.

But overall, they're pretty much equal. They're close in starting price, but the cost to drive is significant. The depreciation in the Highlander is so much less. So it actually winds up being about $7,000 cheaper to drive over five years. and then I jumped over to consumer reports for you and I saw that both the 22-22 Highlander Platinum and the Hyundai Palisade are both recommended by consumer reports but the Highlander edges out by one point

they got a score of 88 versus the Palisade 87 so all things being equal unless you're a bigger person you might be more comfortable if you're really tall in the in the Hyundai so yeah I think you know I I don't think you need to go out there and buy the car the consumer report says is the best. You can get the second best or the third best. The one thing I think you should adhere to,

don't buy a car the consumer report says you shouldn't buy. I mean, you know, you're, listen, today most of the cars are really good. I mean, most of the new cars out there in the late model use are really, really good cars. But Consumer Reports has a really valuable list, and these are cars that are just terrible. They have a high cost of maintenance and repair. They break down all the time. They have a terrible resale value. They're not safe.

You know, it's only about 10%. Those are called red flags. Yeah. So look at the 10%. It's not going to cost you a whole lot of aggravation, not to have to buy one car out of 10. But don't buy that terrible car. Just checks and consume reports for the worst cars.

Right. Red is bad. Yeah, that is bad. If there's red, bad. Yeah. Okay. This is probably for Rick. Definitely, Rick. Rick, any idea what I might cause the tire pressure light to stay on, even though the tires are all good? I double-checked all four, and they each have the same pressure.

First thing, the question is, depending on the car, have you checked the spare? Some cars have a full-size spare with a sensor in them. A lot of pickups had that, although now they've gone away from it. They try to save money, so they've gone back to not having a sensor in the spare. and the other thing is when you first start the car up, if your tire light blinks for about

30 or 40 seconds, then it's a very good possibility that one of the sensors has failed. Maybe the battery has died or the sensor has broken or has basically just given up the ghost. Well, let's just hope that he skipped the spare.

That's actually a very common thing. I mean, people, I didn't think of that for a second. He checked all four tires, but he might have a fifth tire, unless he's got a really new car. And even so, even if you check the other four, check your spare anyways. The donut, because a lot of folks, you wouldn't believe how many times they'd go to try to put a tire on, and that spares flat, and suddenly you're totally stuck. Right, and you feel really dumb.

Especially because you happen to be crossing the state, you're in the middle of State Road 80, and there's no cell signal, and the mosquitoes are coming out. And alligators coming towards you. mosquitoes the gators don't bother the gators don't scare me is the mosquitoes they kill more people than any other animal on us absolutely i'm an interruptor we're going to go back to the phones because john from palm city is holding good morning john good morning to everyone i want to announce a recall serious ford announced this week n htsa four vehicles from 2013 to 2021 2.9 vehicles involved, various models.

You have to go look and find out on a computer. Rick will probably explain maybe the reason it happens. The ship lever is in park, and automatically it drops itself into drive. Now, the good news is nobody's been killed yet, but NHTSA announced four injuries and six reports of property damage. Well, you know what? John, this is rhetoric. You know, you ask yourself, you know, here's Ford.

I won't go into money and all this rant Earl will probably throw me out of here. He's heard this over and over again from me lately. But here we have Ford, a Ford dealership. They're under investigation for selling. Recalled, recalled, cars, trucks. I mean, what is up with that? Are they so desperate to make money that they're going to sell a recall? People's lives are in danger.

That's my comment to your call. I fully agree with you. Thank God so far, nobody was killed. Yeah, and that's a Ford escape. I just want to make people aware of it if they're driving a 2013 to 2021 to get on top of this because it's a very serious problem. Absolutely. And Rinkle will probably explain, they say there's some kind of defect in a better. that makes the gear shift lever drop from park into drive.

Can you exonerate on that a little bit, Rick? Most likely what's happening is it's worn to such a position that when you shift into park, it's not fully engaging into park and that shifter can then basically fall back out of position. My first recommendation, if you have a car that even might be under this, always apply the parking brake as well as making sure that it is firmly in park before you get out of the car and always check your VIN number, any VIN number, all your VIN numbers on NHTSA.gov to see if your car might have an open recall on it for any safety recalls

and if you are covered under a recall get it done as quickly as possible. Well, then it continues, as Nancy said, what's going on with Ford. Ford vehicles, the EV Mustangs, okay, the electric vehicles, the battery cable, overheats, and it can go on fire. That's also at high speeds it can happen. So actually, on these 49,000 Mustangs, Ford has stopped selling them until this problem is corrected on any new one that's delivered. But as another recall, it was announced at the same time,

49,000 EV Mustangs, battery cable, absolutely can go on fire. Ouch. And, John, I think it's Healy Brothers, Healy Brothers in Beacon, New York, they're one of the culprits that have sold a recalled vehicle. well it's it's so serious it's out of hand completely and we've been going a history of recalls it goes way back when and it only gets noted when NHTSA announces publicly and these recalls that I just mentioned today are only going out after July 1st so people just better get on top

of it and it's 290 million John you said what's that 290 million no 2.9 million no 2. 2.99 million. 2.9 million. 203 to 2021. 2.9. Still, so, Earl, how many of those will eventually get fixed? 20% of those? 25%.

Okay, that's better. Crazy. One fast question for Rick, if he has a minute. My friend has, you know, the delayed wipers, winchew wipers, which came out 55 years ago. Intermittent wipers, yep. But the delayed part don't work. Does he have to replace the whole wiper motor? Unlikely, it might be just the switch itself or it might be the wiper motor.

That would need to be checked out. Okay. One of the greatest inventions we've ever had, though. It's so great that you can slow down the wiper. Earl and I are from the era where you, it was a vacuum operated and you stepped high on the gas and your wipers got wiped out because of the vacuum. But the electric in general was a wonderful thing that they put on automobiles. I never knew that.

Vacuum powered, like pneumatic windshield wipers? Yeah, it worked off the fuel pump. I'll explain it briefly, but thank God for the electric wipers. Yeah. No, GM used to have the AC controls for switching your airflow vacuum powered. Weird. Okay, look. John, it's great hearing from you.

Do you have any other information to share with us or a question? Well, it's just a history of the guy. I mean, Robert Kern's invented. that delayed wipe is 55 years ago, and he put it on a 62 Ford Galaxy, and then he went to Ford to try to sell him the patent, and they said no. So what happened, then Ford copied it in 69. He sued Ford. He got a lot of money from them, and then Mercedes adopted it, and then Chrysler, et cetera,

but he sued all of them, but it was so hard on his marriage and his health that he actually wound up in a mental This means to be turned into a movie. That's not good. It was. It was? You're kidding me, really? John.

No, this is a true story about him. He invented that patent, and the reason he invented it at his wedding, he popped champagne and the cork one in his eye, and then he had a lot of surgeries. So he just thought about this blinking therapy,

and he adopted it to a patent, which he patented in here. Unbelievable. I got to find this movie. Thanks for breaking it down. for us, John. You're always filled with so much information. Give us a call again next week. Happy Father's Day, John. Thank you. Thanks, John. That's great. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. You distracted me with your hat.

I want to officially wish my husband, the recovering car dealer, a very happy Father's Day. Happy Father's Day, and if you will put your your hat on. Your. Your hat, hat, hat, hat. Okay, moving right along here. Real quick. We're going to.

There is a movie, by the way, about the guy that it's called Flash of Genius. I just looked it up, starring Greg Keneer, about the guy invented intermittent windshield wipers, and I'm going to rent that tonight. Interesting. Continue. Interesting.

Okay. Earl's vigilantes, Earl has his hat over there, and he wears it well. and I want to ask all of you to help us out. Go to Earl on Cars. Look at that. He's looking good in that hat. Jonathan didn't get a picture.

Okay. We're having some fun here. But on all seriousness, Earl's vigilantes, you can go to Earl on Cars, get all that information. And also we need volunteers for, you know, helping some of our seniors or maybe some that are young.

who can't maneuver themselves through, you know, the Internet. So give us a hand. You'd be helping us, and you'd be helping a lot of your neighbors. We've been interrupted. Okay, Stu. Yeah, I got some more anonymous feedback. This one just came in a few days ago. Our dealer's stockpiling vehicle is off-site to give a perception of scarcity.

No. We're not. No. I haven't heard any. information or seen anything like that. They're doing the opposite. They're giving an illusion of having cars in stock and they don't. In matter of fact, the manufacturers are doing the same thing. We're having a little disagreement with Toyota. I think they're slowly coming along. But as far as I know all the manufacturers, when they have cars that are in the pipeline, they allow the dealers

either that or they themselves indicate on the dealer's website that the cars are in stock and they're not. So don't worry about the dealer hiding cars. Just worry about him saying he has cars because they don't. Right, exactly. Fake cars. Next anonymous feedback question. If you do an inventory swap with another dealer that is charging an excessive market adjustment for the car, do they pass along that charge? Are you compelled to pass it along to your customer? No, we do not. If they do, will you tack on an equal market adjustment fee to the car you're swabbing with them? No. it's up to the individual dealer how they want to price their cars. So if one dealer wants to charge $10,000 over MSRP and the dealer trades that car with another dealer, that dealer is not going

to, well, unless it's... The dealers are very selfish at dealer trading. And even before the COVID phenomena, supply demand situation, dealers always tried to screw other dealers. Why not? They screw the customers. They screw the dealers, when you dealer trade a car, they'll try to add junk fees to the car to the other dealer I mean I'll get a little more

more specifically they'll have packages so if you want to get a let's say a Camry from another dealer you have to get their pen striping and their whatever garbage they put on the car

and they'll charge $500 to that dealers don't like to dealer trade cars they have to dealer trade cars and so the only reason a dealer will trade a car with another dealer is because the other dealer has got a car that he wants

So if the other deal's got a car, this dealer wants, and vice versa, then the swap happens. But let me, actually, there's a caveat to my answer. In the cases where the dealer's cost is increased by that car to get it, yeah, that gets passed along to the customer. But in most cases, it's just a couple hundred dollars. But these market adjustments, no, that's not happening there. So I'm all cut up, I believe. Oh, I, no, we might have, do you remember answering a question about your engineering background last? week? No. Okay. So not a car question, but just curious with your engineering

background, did you ever visit the Coral Castle? Did we talk about that? The Coral Castle try to figure out how it was built by just one small man? No. I've never heard of the Coral Castle. I'll Google for you. Ed Leitz. Okay. Is that in the Key West Area or South of the Miami? Miami. It's the guy he's a European immigrant came over many years ago. And he built this entire area out out of big pieces of coral that nobody has any clue how he moved

these. It's like the pyramids of Egypt. Huge blocks of cocaine. I've heard of it, but I don't know the details. So you don't know how he did it? UFOs? Magnetic levitation? Probably. You know, UFOs, I'm thinking. All right. Okay, we're caught up with Texanonymous feedback.

Back to the recovering card dealer. There's an article, Nancy, reminded me on the way to the show this morning. It's in a trade journal magazine, part of Automotive News. It's the service version of it. And I learned something from this. I'm really surprised. Talking about body shops, collision repair centers.

And the fact that most people are not thinking about taking the... I thought that the insurance companies were overly influencing customers to take their damaged cars to a preferred shop or you know all state state farm Geico preferred shop and they have certain guidelines according to this article they don't they did there was a survey done so I learned something from the article but what what you can learn is this from the article is there body shops are scarce today many of dealers don't like body shops because they can't make as much money as they'd like and there are a lot of reasons for that the number one reason

being insurance companies pay the dealer in the insurance company and they pay the customer but the dealer ends up with the money if they have a body shop and the Allstate State Farm Geico they're pretty frugal they don't want to overspend on a repair so if you if you have a damaged car you should try to find a dealer body shop you should probably find a deal that owns his own body shop because he will use your factory recommended parts. Your factory OEM, they call them, original equipment manufacturer. The factory parts are the ones that are tested for safety and they're also tested for quality.

And the other body shops are inclined to use the cheapest part they can find. So they'll find a part from Taiwan or Korea or Vietnam or they shop the world over and They buy the cheapest parts they could find and they take the check they get from the insurance company and if the insurance company won't pay them more money, one way to make more money is to buy a cheaper part. If you go, if you got a Lexus, go to a Lexus body shop, if you got a Chevrolet, go to a Chevrolet dealer's body shop, and the insurance company should cooperate with you on that. They might give you a hard time, but according to this article, they won't.

Give it a try and I would be very pushy if I had a beautiful. I'd want to find a Buick dealer body shop. I wouldn't want to just take it to an independent shop or I wouldn't want to take it to any dealer's body shop because then he's got to buy the parts from the Buick dealer if he's going to use OEM, chances are he probably wouldn't use OEM. He'd use cheap aftermarket parts.

So that's my tip of the day. Great tip. We're going to go back to the phones and we're going to talk to Dana who's calling us from Jupiter. Good morning, Dana. Good morning. welcome back thank you I'm calling to say thank you to you and Earl and the family you help my brother-in-law Richard get his hybrid rap for the other day and he is smiling through the day and night he is so happy

they're just thrilled with all the work you put into it and I just want to say thank you Dana thank you so much for this call Dana how long do you have to wait for that December. Oh, good. It was a long journey, Dana. Yeah, they were going to be leaving. They're leaving on Tuesday to take the auto train up north, and the car was due next week, and you guys scrambled and made it happen, so they have their brand new car.

Yeah, we talked. They were very happy. Very, very happy. Thank you so much for the call. You gave them a great deal on their trade-in. You gave them a great deal on their trade-in, and I'm just so happy because I recommended you guys you guys and you've come through so I really I appreciate it and thank you so much you're quite welcome everyone here thanks you everyone is smiling I'm smiling

see there's Stu smile there's Rick smile it was like a warm Johnson smile it was a warm grin we needed a positive comment after Frank slagged us for the service advisor trying to charge him a $90 diagnostic visa that makes us even so thank you Diana. I'm glad. I'm glad everything is filmed. And you have a fantastic Father's Day. Oh, thank you so much, Diana.

Thank you. Thank you. You're very welcome. You take care. You're welcome. I have to include, too, that there are several fathers sitting around me. And I want to, well, wish each and every one of them a very happy Father's Day. That's Stu, Rick, and Jonathan.

Thank you. Enjoy your day. Have a ball. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. The Consumer Report is just, I always say how amazing it is, but while Nancy's coughing, Nancy is... I'm taking rich place. Nancy is making me a blueberry pie for her father's day.

And I mean from scratch, she's got the shortening and the flour. and the fresh blueberries, and I'm going to have a homemade blueberry pine and a rolling bin. Yeah, you're taking your life into your hands. I tried to talk you out of the rolling bin. I said, please don't buy the rolling bin. A little taste of Maine. There you go. But at any rate, I've regained my composure.

Allergy, allergy, allergy seasons. Rick can relate to me. Oh, yeah. Of course, can stew. But at any rate, the consumer report, both of them, the June edition, if you didn't pick that one up, it's got so many used cars that are just, well, they give you a list of the most reliable. So June edition is a plus. And of course, July, the best cards to get on the road with.

And everyone, well, I hope everyone, is taking some of those summer trips. And remember, the worst car is more important than the best car. You just don't want to touch that with a 10-foot pole. Yeah. Well, that's another show. There's only one best car, but you can buy the next one, the next one. If take the top five and the consumer reports recommendations, you can't go wrong. Just don't take the bottom five.

Exactly. So take a look at the Road Report and several other topics that are in both June and July. We're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to Henry, who's calling from Jupiter. Good morning. Good morning. How are you today? Good. Earl, thanks for the phone number last week for the Infinity dealer up in Stewart.

Oh, glad. I'm glad they did it work? Well, it ended up, just to follow up, the Infinity dealer down here, Schumacher, has made an offer to my daughter to say, tell me what you want to make it right. And she's yet to answer that question. She's trying to figure out what the damaged car would be worth as opposed to a car that's never been in an accident. I see.

Well, that's fair. As long as you get an honest determination, that should make you whole. Yeah, so I didn't know if you could weigh in on that question. And, you know, the car was in there for three months. So obviously, you know, there was a fair amount of work. Sure. I guess that was done.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, you're right. That wasn't a dent and fender. That was something pretty serious. So, you know, I mean, it's going to come back to buy. Now, the car is still not showing car facts. I mean, they didn't, doesn't approve yet, which was the thing that basically, you know, she was not aware of the car facts when she bought it.

So, you know, when she goes to trade it or whatever, if the part tax appears, she's going to be having to answer to that. Exactly. And she's not aware of it. So I don't know if $1,000 is reasonable or $5,000. Well, you know, you have to kind of know the severity of the collision and repair. but Stu is better he's more on top of appraisals than I am

but if it was a three-month repair if I was just going to shoot from the hip something that took three months at a body shop to repair is probably going to gig that car by a good 20% it's well you're going to look at without full disclosure

for the guys just appraising the car metering the paint and looking at the damage and seeing where there's areas of bondo yeah I mean a longer time the shop implies a larger area that's worked on And so it's going to look like a lot of bodywork. And, yeah, it could be as significant. 20%, I think, is you're being a little bit too kind in some cases.

It's serious money. It's just simple logic. You know, you're got to use car a lot, two cars side by side. One of them has been in a major accident. The other one hasn't. Which one would you buy? And so the one that wasn't a major accident, people walk around. So you have to lower the price to retail it.

So therefore, trade in-wise. a smart dealer is going to say, listen, this car was in a serious accident. Normally, I could give you $27,000 for this, but I'm only going to give you $18 because of the fact it's been in an accident. It's been hurt, so to speak. Did this start with a call last week, sir? Because I was sick last week. I needed some direction, and they'll give me the infinity owner's name in Stuart,

who solded the car. and got it from Schumacher down south. You were here, one of them. And, you know, there was a Macado, Gus Mercado. Yeah, so, well, that's good. I'm glad that you're getting some resolution of this, Henry, and keep us posted if you have any more information. We'd love to hear from you.

Thank you, then. Thank you, Henry. You're welcome. Okay, text of YouTube. We got a text that came in here from, Bob, long-time tech stories. Good morning. My question is, do car manufacturers charge all of their dealers the same price, excluding all promotions for volume, et cetera?

The second part of your question was very smart. So, yeah, without those, dealers, same car is sold to every dealer at the same price, but there are these stair-step incentives which effectively lower the cost to certain dealers based on their sales. Now, that's not really a factor now because of the way the inventory situation is, But great question. But yeah, answer simple question.

Dealers pay the same on the invoice for the cars. For the cars, right. And that was the last one. Rick, any popping in over there? I got a couple over here. Let's see. This one in from Charles. He says, good morning all.

Is a used 2022 Subaru Wilderness with 798 miles on it at $29,760,000, $29,760. worth it as opposed to a new one going between 36,5,000, and 42,000. What year is the used one? The used one is a 22 with 798 miles. So it's essentially like a new one. And the used one, the new one is more than the used one? 36,500 to 42,000. Get the used one.

That's crazy. I would jump on that 798. mile car. It's a pretty good deal. But I'd also wonder why that used car right now is being priced that much less because right now it should be more. True. And unless it's seriously been damaged in an accident. Or it's being sold by an ethical dealer. Do your due diligence. Get a mechanic to check the car over. Look at the Carfax report. And if the car is as represented, it's a steel. Yes.

Yeah. How about that odometer? Maybe they'll check into that too. As far as 789, isn't it what you said? It's just under 800 miles, yeah. But if it's a 2,022 car, odds are 800 miles could be right on the money. Can it? Okay.

We're going to go back to the phones, guys, and we're going to talk to Mark in Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Phil. Earl, I just have a comment on the article that you quoted in reference to body shop use of aftermarket parts or original OEM parts. Usually those parts, usage of those parts, are usually dictated by one's policy that they have purchased through their auto insurance company. Now, when a repair starts off, let's say a policy calls. for use of aftermarket fenders or bumpers. The customers kind of really stuck, you know, regardless of who repairs the car.

The only difference is that usually a dealership, if they're having good body shop management, they're going to imply, you know, tell a customer that they can't guarantee those repairs unless the parts are from the manufacturer versus the aftermarket parts. There's also the profit in San Diego. If you have a Subaru and it was in an accident and you take it to an independent body shop, they're going to have to go to the Subaru dealer

and buy the parts. Or they're going to have to buy the aftermarket parts. They have to source the parts. If you take it to a Subaru dealer's body shop, They have the parts already because they're a dealer and they're licensed to get those parts at a much lower price. So they don't have to go outside and source the parts. They have the parts. So there's a double motivation.

If you have a body shop that really cares about their customer, they're obviously going to push for OEM parts, especially on crash parts. Because if you have a fender or a bumper, that bumper has never been safety tested if it's an after-month. market. If it's a OEM part on a Subaru, that has been through NHTSA, crash testing, and it's a very safe part. So you have a profit motivation if the Subaru dealer body shop, and you also have the concern for the customer motivation. The independent body shop, all he's got is a profit motivation. Right. My point is, being from the customer's point of view, that their insurance company is only going to read, you know reimburse the repairs for what the policy covers so point one would be when a customer goes out uh...

uh... owner they go to buy their insurance policy make sure the policy includes the usage of oem parts uh... and you can pay a little higher premium to get that but also i wasn't aware of that mark i didn't know as far as the profitability is that if uh... like you said if the dealer really cares, rather than asking the customer to come out of pocket and say,

hey, you know, there's a $150 difference between that bumper and our bumper, you know, the aftermarket part, that sometimes they'll lower their profit margin in order to be able to use those. But somebody's got to come out of pocket for the price difference between the OEM and the aftermarket. Let's say my point, Mark, is that the coming out of pocket is much greater if you don't have a franchise for that particular car. If I'm a Subaru dealer, I have a franchise. I buy cars, I buy my parts 40% cheaper than somebody that comes in and buys that part from me. Average markup on these parts is about 40%. So if I buy my car parts from Subaru, I have a much lower cost to be able to.

to put them on that car and meet the insurance company's requirements. Also, sometimes you just need some advocacy on the part of the dealer. You can persuade an adjuster sometimes, not all the time, and depending on the insurance company, you can persuade adjuster that an OEM part is not good on this car, and particularly when you have the customer on your side, the two of you can team up against the insurance company and say, listen, we want an OEM bumper. We don't want a bumper manufactured in Taiwan that has never been through cash testing. Yeah, well, we could talk for a long time about this subject, but my only point being is ultimately somebody's got to come out of pocket.

Usually the repair shop doesn't want to come out of a profit or loss, depending on what the insurance companies pay for. But that is true. Now, we have to understand one thing, an appraiser that comes out and does the appraisal on the damaged vehicle has no hands in what usage of the parts. Again, it is dictated by the policy, not by the inspector or the adjuster that actually handles a claim in the office. My basic point was just to remind or inform your listeners that when you go to buy an insurance policy, make sure your policy covers original equipment

parts from the manual I'm gonna challenge you on that I don't think there is such a policy but I could be wrong I'm going to double check that I did not know that you could go to a state former Allstate and say I want a policy

that will guarantee OEM parts only if that's true then I'd have to check to see how much more you'd pay but yeah if that's certainly something you should consider if that's the fact I wasn't aware that that was the case.

Yeah, well, I have a policy just like that. Okay, well, then you know. The reason why I know is because I spent 37 years in the auto body business. Which insurance company was it? Like they say, the insurance company is trying to save money just like everybody else is. It's a profit and loss situation for them. Mark, what was the name of the insurance company? What was the name of the insurance company that will give you a policy?

guaranteeing OEM parts Allstate Okay I didn't know that All state and state farm Very good Okay Mark thank you very much Good advice

Have a good day You too Bye bye thanks Mark Give us a call again I'm hearing from you I'm looking up There's a few things OEM coverage

Is added coverage That you can get added I didn't know that I didn't either I only saw it on this one Amfam insurance But I haven't looked at the other Is that in the small print

No I just googled can you get car insurance policy? It covers OEM parts. And the first thing came up is Amfam insurance. And it says OEM coverage is added coverage to help you get original parts for cover repairs. Interesting. Mark, if you're listening, thanks for that. We didn't know that. And also, we're going to research this and find out how much more expensive it is.

I mean, it could be really ridiculously more expensive. And it also could be something that most buyers of insurance are not aware of. I mean, if we're not aware of it and we're in the business, I guarantee you there are a lot of buyers out there so thank you for that very valuable information. Absolutely. Mark, give us a call next week, please. We are going to go to Bennett, who's been holding from West Palm Beach.

Good morning, Bennett. Hey, good morning, guys. Happy Father's Day to all. Thank you. Ella. Thank you. That's my little dog, Ridge, there. Oh, is that? My little girl.

A couple of questions. I was wondering about if the manufacturer sells the cars to companies at the same price for every, you know, for every car to all car companies. Is it the same price? They, manufacturers cannot sell. Or they go by volume. Yeah, the manufacturers don't sell cars to anybody but dealers. They kind of do with fleet business, but they include the dealer because state law requires that everybody's got to buy a car from a car dealer. This is the reason we have Earl on cars because the dealers have a unique franchise that you can't buy a Buick from anybody but a Buick dealer.

So General Motors can't sell anybody a car except a dealer. And then the dealer turns around and marks it up, $5,000 over a sticker, and there you are. You can't, there's nothing I can do about it. So the price that they charge the fleets, the Hertz's and the Avis's, is actually a subsidized price, and they get away with it by putting it through the dealer and paying him Pittance Commission for going through them as a fleet sale. but not now with supply and men's situation because the manufacturers aren't selling any rental car company's cars because they're not off cars they're going to all of the dealers and the dealers are selling them to the rental cars over MSRP so that's where that goes okay another question if you don't mind sure uh this this because

this is inevitable uh when you relinquish your car dealership through health reasons or another reason reason, and Stuart, I assume, will take over the business. Would he change anything about your business that you don't know about yet, or will he actually take over the business? Yeah, you have due diligence if you're buying another dealership, and you really have, you need to carefully analyze a lot of things, liabilities, if there's lawsuits outstanding, liableless lawsuits. And typically you don't buy the company. When you buy another dealership, you buy the assets and then you have a separate

contract for what they call goodwill or blue sky. But you don't, one of the rules of thumb when you're buying anything, especially a car dealership, never buy the corporation. When you buy a corporation, you buy all of their liabilities and all their responsibilities. And you could buy a corporation ABC Chevrolet dealership and then a year later a woman that worked for that dealership that you didn't even own can sue you for sexual harassment

or for lying and cheating and stealing. I mean, you never want to buy a corporation. And I just want to let all the the listeners know that my insurance rates were hiked again because insurance companies just

don't care. There's no loyalty anymore. So I got fed up last week and I checked another company and I have Allstate now and I went to another company and not only do I'm getting a better policy, but it's half the amount. So I just want people to know to check their company because there's no loyalty anymore and get your rates down. It's just like credit cards. If you call your credit card company, they'll lower your rate if you're on good standards. Yeah, that is a great tip. And everybody listening, be sure you understand. You can save thousands, hundreds of dollars.

I went from $1,400 for two cars, to $600 on two cars. Never said. Exactly. You never save with the same insurance company more than two or three years. always shop and compare a new company will buy your business they'll come down to take

Geico will take it away from all state State Farm will take it away from progressive very very competitive so when you're thinking about it next time shop your insurance your auto insurance I guarantee you you'll save hundreds of thousands of dollars

and it's worth every four years never go more than four years without shopping your auto insurance great advice okay guys thanks so much thank you so much happy father's day

let's get on to the mystery report thank you so much have a good morning thanks happy father's day I think we're going to wrap things up with some text

and some YouTube all I have right now I have a follow up from Anne Marie talking about the Coral Castle and she said she went down there and she recommends it as a fantastic day trip

when we had when I wasn't talking I looked it up it looks pretty impressive it looks like Stonehenge I mean, actually a lot more attractive than Stonehead. It's really neat. I might take the kids down there this summer.

Yeah, I've heard about it. In fact, I might have even seen it. The pictures are pretty amazing. Maybe I saw those pictures over here. There are this giant limestone blocks made of Coquina Coral. And I looked at these giant several ton blocks are like 20 feet up in the air. And he didn't let anybody see them. He built us in the 30s and no one saw him build it.

The interesting part is he built it and there was an issue with neighbors nearby. and he then moved the entire thing several miles and rebuilt it. He also, actually, I'm sorry. He also had a castle in Lake City that he moved down to Miami, so the guy's crazy. And amazing. Edward Leeds Skellen, I think, is his name. Yeah. I've been there.

It's a pretty cool place. Well, I got one little note from Donovan here. He says, the caller is incorrect on the Mustang EV recall. He says, it does not actually catch. on fire says the cable gets hot and the connector breaks from excess current as it was designed to do kind of like a circuit breaker type deal so it would not cause a fire however it does mean that the vehicle will lose power when that connector separates so again folks is my car recalled search NH NHTSA the National

Highway Traffic Safety Administration you simply put in your VIN number and it will tell you if there are any open safety recalls on your car do this at least once a month once every couple months just be aware because these safety recalls they do not cost you anything to have them done you go to the dealership they will get it done for you if they don't have the parts available here's a little trick for you say I really don't feel safe driving this car with this safety recall open and they're required to get you a car they will get you a rental car

and the manufacturer pays for it all you don't pay a dime but your car gets fixed and you're back on the road again safely great information great information we have a mystery shopper report

to get to if you guys are all caught up okay and we're gonna let me do one thing before We get to the mystery shopping report. There's a great article in automotive news, and front page had to do with Jim Farley. This is our hero.

He's the CEO of Ford. And Stu and Nancy and I know him from the days when he was running the Sion Division, which no longer exists at Toyota. And we always thought he was a really cool guy, and he was an honest person. He understood the customers. He understood respect for your customers and being honest with them.

That was the whole concept of the Sion that was a new division of Toyota. Well, it didn't work. That was, what, 20 years ago, Sue, that that happened. Oh, my God, yeah. And it was back when things were even more wild west than they are today, the dealers, the toilet dealers just raped the Sion concept, took advantage of it, destroyed it. Jim Farley ran with the tail between his legs. He went to Lexus for a while, and then he ended up with Ford, but he's got, he's a good man. And here, I want to read you

something with the electric vehicles with Ford, and there's going to be some new policies. And Jim Farley is leading Ford in those new policies. And he's been, he spoke before a group, not an automotive group. It was a group that had to do with just, just, strategy in business and he he was telling like it is the way Ford's going to be doing things and he's thinking about competing with Tesla so he he respects Tesla he doesn't he doesn't laugh at Tesla he doesn't phone at Elon Musk he understands this Tesla corporation has got some ideas that we can adopt so Ford CEO I'm reading from Automotive News Ford

CEO, Jim Farley, speaking this month at the Bernstein Strategic Decisions Conference in New York, said he expected Ford to offer a better retail experience than Tesla and other direct-sale startups. Listen to this, quote, I think our dealers can do it, but the standards are going to be brutal. He said, they're going to be very different than today. Farley specifically mentioned, non-negotiable pricing. Wow. 100% online sales. And, I mean, that is revolutionary. Very revolutionary.

And he's talking about electric vehicles, but that's all you're going to be buying in 20 years, folks. One of the two divisions he called, the new four division is the blue. No, the blue is the old one. Yeah, he's separate. that's going to weather an atrophy and the electric division is going to explore. So here's for leaving the charge, God bless you, Jim Farley.

I hope that you, the dealers are out to get you. They don't like this. And they were, Farley also came on in this meeting. He advocated a 100% unconditional seven-day guarantee. Unbelievable.

He heard that from. And the dealer shot that down. And he, he backed off on that. So, anyway, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and the way you car buyers will be treated, and Ford's

leading the charge on this. Tesla, well, actually, Tesla's leading the charge. Ford is following Tesla. But in 20 years, lucky, yucky, you real young people going out buying your first car, are probably going to have a real advantage.

That's what, that's all I've got to see about that. That's great information. Now we got to the Mr. Shopping Report. We really met a few good men along the way, Carter, Lance, Farley, to name a few. Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to get to the Mystery Shopping Report, and that took place at Starling Buick in Stewart by Agent Lightning. And it's real important, folks, for you to grade this mystery shopping report, and you can do so by texting. Eurograde to 772-497-6-5-30. Now, here you have the recovering car dealer

and the mystery shopping report. When I read this, Starling, Buick of Stewart, I said, what's that? I never heard of it. And, of course, very few people have. A new, a new dealer. About a year ago, the business was already feeling the inventory pinch, and June of 2021,

prices were already going up, but they were far from the peaks that we're seeing today. My dealership was raising prices, but we still had a few months to go before going all the way to MSRP. Every time I say that, I choke. I get emotional. No one was running ads for big discounts back then except for Carl's Buick, and that's the name I recognize, Carl's Buick in Stewart, Florida. I thought they were still there.

Their website stuck out like a sore thumb advertising a $5,000 discount of a brand-new 2021 Buick Enclave. Of course, that got our attention. We mystery shopped them. Agent Lighting actually got the discount. Most of it was a factory, well, I got ahead of myself here. The discount was a factory discount, and the additional charge were the usual junk fees added to the price.

And to be accurate, as I said, was a factory discount. But it was pretty good. I mean, it was no skin off corals, Buick's teeth. Prior to last year's mystery shop, Carl's Buick hasn't performed too well. They've used bait and switch ads with unobtainable rebates, and as I mentioned, the standard slade of junk fees. This week, Agent Lightning found out that Carl's Buick is no more. A little research revealed that Carl Fisher retired last year and sold his

Carl's Buick to a little-known small group known as the Starling Automotive Group. Never heard of him. Starling consists of Alan Starling and three sons, kind of like us, too, right? and Andrew, Jack, and Walker, they're the sons. They have six dealerships, including the newly acquired Carl's Buick, five dealerships here in Florida, one in South Carolina. It's so exciting to test the waters in a brand-new dealership, or mostly, brand-new. It's been there six months under new ownership, so we can expect some changes.

New ownership means new management, new culture, new ads, new tactics. The changes can be good or bad for the sake of our listeners, on the Treasure Coast. Let's hope they're good. Now, I'm thinking back of Baderigo, and they sold out to the Morgan Auto Group, what, three or four years ago? No, not even that long.

Yeah, a short time ago. And nothing much has changed, has it? Same place. Yeah. But we'll see what happens here. And there's a lot of dealers are changing. I can't stay up on top of it. Dealers are being sold and bought and sold like crazy

all over the country. Everybody's excited. There are a lot of dealers saying, perfect time to bail out because I get an incredibly high price for the dealership and there are other people saying boy we're just going to keep money making money like this forever I'll pay any price and so it's a seller's market for car dealerships and the sellers are making a fortune speaking in the first person I am agent lightning I arrived at noon was greeted by a customer service person at the

front desk I told her I was in the market for a new car want to take a look at what they had in stock. The lady introduced me to a nearby salesman named Lee. Lee said that he would be more than happy to assist me today. We shook hands. He took me to his work area. Lee had an extensive battery of questions to ask me about my

preferred vehicle. I answered everything to the best of my ability, and we determined that the perfect vehicle for me was the 2002 Buick-on-Cor GX, Select FWD. What a mouthful. The names for cars are getting longer and longer and longer. Well, I say,

Collect FAA. Just Encore. Yeah, I know. But I mean, what a weird name. I mean, just. Lee asked for my license and walked me outside to the side lot to find the car. His sales manager, Corey, came outside to meet us. He said he had the key to the Encore for us.

The MSRP was 27,780, which included $50 credit because there were no heated seats. Lee said as soon as the chips became available, he called a range to have them installed. But he had no idea how long that would take. That sounds pretty cheap for heated seats, don't it? Yeah. 50 bucks. That doesn't sound like much of a credit. I'd want more than that.

Yeah, I don't get that. We test, I drove the encore. Due to a lot of construction, our excursion, ended up taking over 40 minutes. I guess they're expanding the dealership. Lee was apologetic. We returned to the dealership, Lee asked, what other vehicles I was considering.

I said, I was also looking at Ford escapes. I asked Lee if they were selling a blue-in-law. MSRP. He said he wanted to be really up front with me and said they were adding $3,000 to MSRP because of the car shortage. But he added he was still trying to give me a good deal and keep me from buying elsewhere. Lee said that other dealers were selling their cars for $10,000 to $15,000 over MSRP. I said, yikes. And then I told him they'll go get me a good deal. The games begin.

Let the games begin. Lee said he needed to get the numbers from Corey, manager, here we go, back and forth, back and forth. He was gone for 15 minutes and he returned with a worksheet. This is a deja vu thing. Every shopping report, right, Stu? Every time it's the same old game. Same old game. And remember what I said earlier about Jim Farley and Ford?

He's going to stop the games. No negotiating. No negotiating. The reason it's the same is it's all, there's basic sales training. and it's all, it's all hins around the 10 steps of the sale. So everything we see here, I have deja vu because when I was trained as a salesperson, I'm like, okay, he's doing that. I know what's coming next because it's a, it's a process.

Yeah. This all goes back to the days of horse trading in the Old West. And that's what it was, negotiating, you know, say, what do you give me for my stallion? I'll give you this pile of buffalo hads and, uh, and we're still doing it. And the government. Top line with MSRP, $250 rebate came up, but the price started to go up. They had a $3,000 market value adjustment, MVA, $121 in taxable fees,

a.k.a. hidden fee, dock fee, junk fee, and an $89 dealer fee, aka junk fee, hidden fee. Starling Buick's price was $4,020 over MSRP, and the salesman had just said it was $3,000. So there was the first lie. Lee asked me what I was thinking. I said, I was thinking I wasn't paying $4,000 over MSRP. He asked if I would do business with me today, here we go. Can I get, can I earn your business today? If you could split the difference with me, I'll go back to the manager.

So here we go. It's like a dance. Lee asked me what it would take. So I told me to get out, get my out the door price to MSRP or less. you left to speak with Corey again. A few minutes later, both men came back. Oh-oh. Corey said he understood I wanted to look at another car.

I shook my head. I said I wanted to discount the encore we were working on. Corey said, I should drive another car that might work better in my budget. That takeaway. Yeah, yeah. I said I wanted him to make this car work in my budget. Corey encountered that.

And, you know, that's a sales tactic. That's a subtle sales static. you're suggesting to the person that they can't afford it. And so you say, you want the emotion to be, I'll teach him that I can afford it. I'll say, oh, yeah, I can afford that. I'll take it. I really, I taught him.

Back in a long time, customers probably actually did that. Yeah, yeah. A little more subtle now, but yeah, they get that same emotional response. Yeah. I said I want to make this car with my budget. Corey countered that he didn't even know.

If I was serious about buying this car, He said that if I could show I was serious by giving him a deposit. I mean, this is really old school. Well, I don't have any cash with me. Give me your watch. I'm serious. They take anything of value, your wedding ring. They take, this is old school.

And letting him run my credit. Oh, yeah. I'm going to run your credit. I want to see if you can knock your head off in the box in the F&I apartment. He'd go to his general manager see if you would remove the $3,000 market adjustment. You notice he didn't say he's going to remove it. He's going to go to the manager and see if he'll remove it. And he's the manager.

So what's going on here? Right. What's the general manager going to say? I'm going to call my dad. Exactly, yeah. I balked at this. He said he knew I was also concerned fords. He told me that Ford is marking the cars up, 10,000, 20,000, even 30,000 over sticker.

And he's only going on 3,000. I shrugged my shoulder, said, sorry, and walked out. So there we go. That's a classic old school, Starling, I'm guessing, never heard of him, but I bet old man Starling started out of the business a long time ago, and he's teaching his sons to do it exactly the way he always did it, and that's what they're doing. And here we are, it's voting time.

Yeah, I got one. Mark has got a great coming. He says, not as bad as most, a C that just came in. And I'm not sure if I'm agreeing with, Mark, I was going okay until Corey got involved. And I didn't really write it down. Agent Lightning indicated in the shop that she started feeling some pressure from Lee. And it was kind of vague. She said she was feeling the pressure.

So she was getting that vibe before Corey came in the picture. And Corey sat down and did the full old school clothes on her. And what really bothers me, and I don't like this, is going to give them an automatic reduction of one-letter grade. When you say things, prove to me that you're serious. yeah um what what is this is not a game there's a person coming in to buy a car obviously there's surreous on some level she got out of bed and drove to the dealership so um i'm going to give me a d that's my my grave yeah i i i don't disagree with it i i think it's it's all

dealers think the same thing and try that the dealers have modernized their techniques uh this old school is even old school for the automobile business which the whole thing is old school, but this is just older school. So I understand your point. You don't insult the customer to earn its business. The newer dealers, the modern dealer, they're still

trying to screw the customer, but they're doing it in a subtle manner so the customer doesn't realize he's being taken advantage of. Any more votes? Yeah. Stu, you got any more over there? Bob gives him an F.

I don't have any on Facebook here. I think we just, just the two. Okay, I've got Negan 1 with a D-minus. I've got Wayne with a big F. Guy Larrabee, Starling gets a C-minus for me. Tom Steckle, due to the current grade shortage, I have is a D. We can factor-order a higher grade, too many old-school tactics. Tim Gilliland, I'd walk out too, C-minus.

Brian Sidlako, it's an F for me, too. Mark Ryan, D. minus, myself, it's the old school games, so D minus, not quite failing, but they're down there. Oh, and cram 1624, F, don't insult the customer, cram. Yeah. Well, you gig them on not dishonesty for that, just stupidity, I think. If you're going to try to take advantage of them, just try to be smart about it. another thought is like they are in the best position they've ever been in their lives that salesperson that sales manager is making more money than they ever did there is no need for pressure when they say hey somebody else is going to come along the road in 10 minutes and buy the car it's probably true lighten up give people good experience and then somebody will buy your over price on the other hand remember they're selling buick's and uh and so it's not there's not a lot of people coming in yeah i i mean i i haven't checked

I mean, Buick, you just don't hear the name anymore. I mean, there's some. I mean, I've seen they're doing well with some SUVs that the encores and the enclaves are actually kind of popular, and they get some decent reviews. I've seen some good stuff on consumer reports for them, too. We'll check the sales volume. I think they're also another division of GM that's going to planning on going all electric. So let's see what they're launching. Do you remember the Buick Electra?

Oh, sure. Okay, well, they're relaunching the Buick Electric Car. And I thought, that's probably one of the best names for Electric Car I ever heard. So let's see how they do, and I wish them luck, yeah. Interesting. Okay, folks, they say there's strength in numbers. I don't think that applies to Lee or Corey. There's five of us here.

And for me, the laundry list is just a little bit too long for me. I don't like to be subjected to stress and pressure. So for that, I give Starling Buick of Stewart and F. Yeah, Nancy said that in the car. Even though you and I talked about that. I was arguing with her about that, but I changed my mind thinking about what Stu said about the insulting and the other. It's too old school, so I'm a lower, I was going to say a C, I'm going to lower my grade to a D because of the older than old school tactics and insulting the customer. I feel bad about that

because really the net effect wasn't any worse We don't need the pressure You don't need to lock the doors You don't need to offer your firstborn It just isn't necessary Okay So we'll go down in history

We'll do a follow-up report And we'll shop Carlos Buick again And see if they can improve But they'll be on the recommended list I don't know where Schumacher is now Schumacher's got two Buey dealerships in the area I don't think they're a D

are they? They're probably up Schumacher is a C C plus even Yeah yeah so we'll see if we get We'll give Starling Buick a chance to get up to tie with their competition Schumacher but right now

Schumacher would be the preferred choice We're in short of time I just have one thing We go back to we had a lot of people We're talking about consumer reports, and I said a couple of times, just don't buy the car that they don't recommend. My consumer reports happen to be turned to the page of most reliable brands for five-year-old vehicles. Now, when you're buying a five-year-old vehicle, a used car, you want to be real careful. There's no new car warranty left.

You're out of warranty. And so there's a nice long list here. I'm just going to read the bottom five. That's interesting. The bottom five are Hyundai, Jeep, Chevrolet, Ram, and GMC. So I would even, you know, and then they have the caution, the yellow ones. I stay away from them too. But you've got a big choice of the green, the light green, the dark green, the best ones

are the dark green. So just don't buy the red. Hyundai, Jeep, Chevrolet, if you're going to buy a five-year-old vehicle, GMC, RAM, Chevrolet, Jeep, Hyundai. Now, the Hyundai is a really good car. A new Hyundai of really good cars. The real test of a car is when it's got some age on it. Because a lot of times you can buy a car and drive with three or four years and it's just fine.

But a really well-bid quality car will last longer than three or four years before it starts to have a lot of bad problems. Definitely. And that's your most reliable brands for, a five-year-old vehicle. So again, you know, the consumer report definitely worth picking up. We have a couple of minutes. Do you want to talk about big bolt in the automotive news? Yeah, it's just, that's another interesting conversation.

You've probably heard about General Motors has lower the price on their, on their $2,000. They have their SUV. And it sounds pretty exciting. Oh, they're lowering the price on electric. cars, wow. And of course, what that means is the manufacturer is lowering the price, the MSRP, the dealer is going to do whatever the hell he wants to do. And if it's a short supply of Chevrolet bolts and they're selling well, which they probably will be, and there's not

many of them on the road, which there won't be, the dealer is going to take away that $6,000 discount and a heartbeat and probably add another $6,000. Because the dealer, with a dealer, it's all about how much can he get. And the manufacturer's MSRP means nothing. Proof of fact, MSRP right now is being marked up thousands of dollars. And it could be

ironically, counterintuitively, just a huge profit opportunity for the Chevrolet dealer. Oh, they cut the MSRP, they're going to cut the invoice cost too. I just increased my margin. And just increased my margin. So that's... Bigly. Don't get excited about the Chevrolet

Bolt. By the way, the Tesla happens to have a higher markup than any other car on the road. And they just increase prices. And they just increase prices again. So Tesla, the manufacturer who sells direct to you, is selling at a huge margin.

Elon Musk is making money hand over fish. More per car than any other manufacturer. Exactly, yeah. And more than any dealers making it. Elon's doing what he wants to do. That's correct. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us today.

We certainly enjoy your company. You're a huge part of the show. Happy Father's Day. to all you daddies out there. Have a wonderful weekend, and we'll be right back here. Next Saturday morning at 8 a.m.