Earl Stewart on Cars - 06.22.2024 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Linus Buick GMC of Vero Beach, FL.

Episode Date: June 22, 2024

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels north to visit a local Buick GMC dealer to see how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2024 Buick Encore GX SUV on their car lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “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”

Hello, 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 listeners. 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, this is my son, Stu Stewart. our link to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, text messaging, and our encrypted anonymous feedback service. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report.

He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting the car dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Now it's Earl Stewart live right now, and I know I tell you this every week, but sometimes it's truer than others, but we have got an exciting show. for you. Probably, arguably, maybe the most exciting show we've done a long time. It's a huge amount of breaking news in the auto industry. And there's also a huge technological breakthrough here at Earl Stewart on Cars. We are now on Zoom. You heard it correctly. Video participation. Radio callers will now be also in the movies because you're going to be on television.

Zoom, whatever you want to call it. And we have another number. Your regular calls, we'll say, oh, no. You got too many numbers. Yeah, we got text numbers. We got anonymous feedback numbers. We got telephone numbers. Now we've got a Zoom number.

So, hey, we've got to deal with this. This is a 21st century, and it's really, really exciting. I mean, autonomy, autonomous driving, crazy stuff going on. Now, Nancy will give you all the details of the numbers that you need to call. I'll give out the regular ones. And, of course, as you know, Nancy Stewart is my co-host, co-founder of the show, some 20 years ago. I mean, 20 years ago was like we were riding a horse, and now we're in a spaceship in terms of technology. half an hour we did one show this is a true story we did one show and the radio

station was broken the tower there was no signal and for a half an hour we yacked we were sweating like bullets because nobody was calling and we just figured we just weren't you know interesting to anybody it was one of the worst half hours of our life and then finally after it was all over the manager of the station, said, no, I just found out that the station was not sending a signal loud. So I guess that's a better news than the fact that we were so bad, nobody was listening. But here we are, two hours. We're on from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. That's Eastern Standard Time. We're in South Florida, the Sodom and Gamora of the automobile

dealers. We're in a little town called North Palm Beach, which is about 75 miles north Miami and it's rough tough it's Dodge City here for car dealers we're going to talk to you for the newer listeners as the old listeners know about this how to buy or lease a car or maintain or repair your car without being taken advantage of by car dealers now I I really don't even have to say this because I know if you're listening to the show you probably have a car you probably have bought a car, and you probably have had a nightmarish, like

experience, or at least a bad experience, with a car dealer somewhere. If you didn't, if you have a trusted car dealer, God bless you, and you're a very lucky person, because most car dealers are just not doing business the way they should be in the

21st century. And speaking of breaking news, we got some breaking news on that, too, with Amazon. And we'll talk about that a little bit later too, but this Amazon project to be able to sell Hyundai's has got legs now and it's moving fast and, well, we'll talk about it later. If you want to call the show and I hope you want to call the show, because no matter what I say and how excited I get

about the show, it's what you have to say is the meat and potatoes of the show. It's really, really, the essence of the show are the callers. And we can have Zoom, we can have anonymous feedback, we can have text, the good old-fashioned telephone folks, we love you. The telephone.

877-960 9960. I wish you'd write that down if you can, if you're not driving and something, but 877-960 9960. As I say, the show goes on for two hours, 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern Standard time.

And people tune in and tune out. People, you know, people don't listen to two hours of radio. I mean, maybe one person does. I don't know. But my family, you know, maybe, Nancy's family. But normally people listen to the radio for 15 or 20 minutes. They might tune back in later. So write the number down. 877-960-9. 960. That's 877-960-960. And we will prioritize your call. I know we got text. I know we've got anonymous feedback. I know we got Zoom now, but good old-fashioned telephone. We have a caller. Nancy has just signaled me. Yes. And quickly, I'm going to give up some very important information. So Joanne, hold on. And by the way, Joanne's a first-time caller. Okay, ladies.

What we have here for you is that, as usual, it's an exciting offer. It's a special promotion just for our female listeners and callers. First, two new lady callers? You can... Fifty bucks. I just forgot what I was going to say. Yeah. Okay, I got everybody's attention, I bet.

Okay, ladies, first two new ladies. callers, you can win yourself $50 this morning, $50 for the first two new lady callers. In addition to that, we have a new feature on Erlon Cars, and it is going to be amazing. Just like everything else, it'll take time to fine-tune everything. So I just have to ask you for your patience. So we are going to take calls through Zoom, yes. And if you can't get through on our regular line, you can get through via Zoom. And that Zoom number, jot it down, 926-589-0586.

And one caveat, you have to be a member, you have to have a membership in Zoom. had to participate. So that limits the number of call. Well, I'll tell you what. If they don't have a Zoom account, this will certainly give you an incentive. $100. $100 if you give us a call. If you don't have an account, you'll get one. And if you do have an account, you'll call us 926-589-0-5-86. And later, Ladies, being the first two new lady callers, you'll not only win $50, but if you have an account with Zoom, you will win an additional $100. Important number, jot it down. $150 for a Zoom first-time lady caller.

Wow. Exactly. We have an exciting show this morning. And again, I'll give the number out several times. 926 the Zoom number 926 589-089-0586 we've got so much to get to

so we are going to go right to the phones and we're going to talk to Joanne who's been holding and guess what she is a first time caller good morning Joanne oh good morning how are you excited thank you for calling and supporting

the female audience. You won yourself $50 this morning, and you can stay on the line when we're finished talking, and you can leave your information with Jeremy in the control room, and he'll give it to me after the show, and I'll send that checkout to you this week. How's that sound? Oh, that sounds great. Thank you so much. You're welcome, Joanne. I have a question for you before we get started. Do you have a Zoom account? I do, but I am on the road, so I'm not going to be able to do it at this time. Okay. I'm sure that you heard the Zoom number, and if you didn't, I'll repeat it later on in the show.

Thank you for calling. What can we do for you this morning? I just have one question. I have a 2008 Prius, which I love. It has 42,000 miles on it. it drives great and I'm just wondering if you could tell me approximately how long

the battery pack averages as far as lasting and mileage well we're going to let Rick Kearney answer that question it's really kind of a two-phase question how long is it under warranty is an easy one and how long will it last

is a little bit more of a challenge but you don't have very many miles on that car Rick what do you think Well, the warranty is 10 years, 150,000 miles. There you go. How long will it last? There are so many factors that it's hard to really put a time on it, but the quality of them has approved so much that now they're 2,300,000, maybe more.

In your experience, and you see probably more Priuses than almost anybody, how many praises have you worked on because of the battery running out kind of an issue and it had this this is a 2008 that's an older

older car it's only 42,000 miles yeah you're talking about a what is that 14 16 how old is that car 15 years old yeah

it's really hard to say because I've seen them go as soon as it's like 120,000 miles, and I've seen others 300,000 miles still going. But time is time and issue as a well? Not always, actually. It's more than miles. Yeah. It's really more of the mileage on the battery.

That's encouraging, Joanne. Yeah. Because I, see, I didn't even realize that. I always say I learn something on the show every week. So the hybrid battery doesn't degrade just from time. But the miles is really what works it down. Right. It's because it's the charging cycles that it's getting charged up and down,

up and down, up and down. Right. And so the more it's used, the more of that lifespan is eventually going to get worn out. Yeah, that repetitious move over and over again. On your car, I would just go with the mindset of continuing basic maintenancees, just the basic oil change tire rotation, air filter cabin filter when it needs it and I wouldn't I would try to avoid

putting money into little things on it can we do a battery check I don't think we can't there really isn't with normal battery you can put a load test on but with a hybrid battery it's just kind of there are no symptoms it's kind of like it like when it goes it goes and there are very few are there any symptoms at all

not really because it's actually the way the hybrid batteries built. There are 36 separate batteries inside. It is complicated, yeah. Yeah, it's a very complicated system. But the computer watch is over it quite well. Joanne, you could have another

you could have another 16 years in that car with a little bit of luck. That's great news, right, Joanne? Yes, and thank you for all the information. It was really certainly helpful. So I do appreciate to responding to it. Thanks, Joanne.

And as I said, stay on the line and keep those miles low on your Prius. And if you take care of your Prius, your Prius will take care of you. I agree. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. The same. 877-960-9960.

Or you can text us at 772-497-3-0. And remember, we have a new feature on Earl on cars and that is the Zoom feature and if you don't have a Zoom account this may well push you in the direction of making that decision for a Zoom account because if you call us at 926589-0586 you can win yourself $100 this morning And if it comes from a lady who is a first-time caller and has a Zoom account, she can win herself $150. First three callers. And, yes, as Earl said, the first three callers.

926-589-0586. We're going to go back to the phones and we're going to talk to Brooklyn, who's calling us from Boca. Good morning, Brooklyn. Hey, how are you guys doing? Actually, it's Brooklyn, George. And I wanted to say good morning to you, Nancy, Rick, and Earl. Thank you. And I don't know if you remember me, but I had spoke to you folks about three or four weeks ago

with reference to my 2012 Venza that the computer suddenly went dead on me. Yes. And that problem has been rectified. And I just wanted to see if Rick was interested in hearing what the prognose. this was, which might not have been the computer. Yeah, I would like to hear that. Yeah, my mechanic had switched out

the computer to make a long story short and programmed the VIN number, and it still would not start nothing. So what he did was he enlisted a help of, I guess, a higher-up technician on electronics to figure out what's going on.

And what they found out was inside the fuse box underneath the hood. There's sort of plastic encasement that slides in and out, both in and out, that has sort of a myriad of fuses, pull-out fuses on it, and also on the inside, about six blister-pack types of fuses that, I guess, they're designed for higher usage. Yeah, they're fusible links, they call them. Yeah, a T-30, a T-45, and one of them had actually bursted. It was black.

Yep. And I don't know, my technician says, well, that blew out first, which took down the computer. Who knows? It's actually very possible, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So my car is running great again, and I just wanted to touch base with you, just give you that information. Excellent. That's fantastic.

Well, thanks very much, George. I appreciate the feedback. We always wonder, after a caller, get some advice on the show, what happens. So we really appreciate your taking the time to let us know. Oh, thank you so much. You're welcome, Brooklyn, George. We really appreciate you calling, and as Earl said, and Rick, you know, keeping us up to speed on what's going on. It's very helpful, not only to us, but our listeners.

Well, I enjoy the show, and I enjoy the folks that call and also. You have a very nice show. Oh, thank you so much. You have a great weekend. Do you have a Zoom account? No, I do not. Okay. Did you hear that announcement I made?

uh when we opened the show absolutely i've been listening since you since you opened the show oh great spread the word uh brooklyn george maybe there's someone out there that you know that has the a zoom account it can be quite profitable if they give us a call okay we'll do have a great weekend have a great have a great weekend thank you all you're welcome our number where you can reach us by phone is 877 960 9960 you can also text us us at 772-4976530. And don't forget, if you do have a Zoom account and you are going to call us, you can do so at 926-589-0586. And you can win yourself $100. That's for the first three Zoom callers. And for the ladies, I have one more lady that I need to call.

I have $50. I'd like to share with you. And not only that, but if you have a Zoom account, you can win yourself $150 this morning. So take advantage of all that. And don't forget, you can always text us. Our text number is 772-497-6530. I know it's a lot of numbers, but everyone will get used to it just like we will, and I'll be repeating these numbers throughout the show. If you so choose, you can go to Your Anonymous Feedback.com and get in touch with us that way and remain anonymous.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, we don't want to forsake our YouTubers because our YouTubers are really the backbone of the show. I don't know how Zoom's going to fly. I do know we get a lot of phone calls, which is great. But YouTube is something special. We not only have a large number of regular YouTube calls, but we have remarkably well-informed on YouTube. I'm not sure why that is.

But you go to YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars. YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars. I wouldn't be surprised if we didn't have a YouTuber that broke the ice on the Zoom, because you guys and gals are tech-savvy, and you might be the one that's going to break the ice on the Zoom call. By the way, I want to thank Jonathan, our producer here in the studio, who really worked his tail off to put this thing together. It was no economic piece of cake,

and he had to work with the station people here, the technical people, and it took a lot of going back and forth. I don't know another radio station that has Zoom, And I think if we can kick this off and make it a success, I think we might be a real pioneer in radio. I mean, I don't want to be negative about radio, but we all know that radio used to be the dominant force in the country. And now television came along and then digital came along. And so television, now we have Zoom. So Zoom can be the rescue for the radio show.

I think you can have your cake and eat it too. You've got the person you're talking to, live and in color, side by side with a person he's talking to. So there we are. But Zoomers, we love you. You're our favorites. Thank you very much. Zoom.com.

I'm getting my dot coms confused. YouTube.com. For slash Erlon cars. And also, I almost forget about Facebook. How can I forget Facebook?com or slash Earl on Cars. We have too many venues, roads to Earl Stewart on Cars, and that'll be another challenge for maybe Jonathan to figure out how we can

avoid confusing everybody, and I don't know if there is an answer to that. Is it possible we have too many ways to contact the show? I don't think so. I think that everyone is excited. I think it'll take time to catch on, and I I think it's going to be a great thing, and it's going to be unique for a studio, a radio studio. It's going to be phenomenal. Speaking of YouTube that you were talking about, Rick, did you see the young lady who went for a test drive and stole the car? No, I didn't see that story.

That's on YouTube. Everything you want was on YouTube. Guns drawn, and it was crazy. It popped up on my phone this morning, so I don't have any other details because we were like 150 miles an hour on autonomous this morning. Not exactly. But at any right, ladies and gentlemen, keep in mind that I'll be, you know, I'll be repeating all these numbers periodically throughout the show. And as Earl mentioned, $100 for anyone who calls, and they're calling this particular number, which is 926, and it's the Zoom number, 926-589-0-586.

Here's a hot topic for you, people thinking about going on YouTube or Facebook or telephone number or Zoom or whatever. Probably the most exciting, scary headline news involving car dealers happened this week. If you watch the evening news on any network or any way you get your news, you heard about the cyberspace attack on car dealers. A huge number of car dealers are basically out of business as we speak. I think it was June 21st or so that Nancy saw it on television. And she said it was in the evening. She said, did you hear about the cyber?

attack on car dealers computer systems. I said, no, I said, we weren't affected. I said, it's probably just a few dealers. Well, we come to find out it's a huge number of dealers, thousands and thousands of them who are basically out of business, computers kaput. And if you're from South Florida, and if you're a Toyota dealer, it is even more pervasive. Most of the Toyota dealers in South Florida are without computers. Now, we got lucky because we used a different computer management system, a customer, they call it customer communication system, and we were not affected.

So I didn't even know about it, but at the time that was announced on the air, car dealers, they can't sell a car because they have to use the computer. They can't order a car from the factory because they have to use. use the computer. They can't pay their employees. I'm telling you, there are a lot of car dealers that are terrified right now. Back to pen and paper, I have something exciting for you. You're going to love this. We have two Zoom callers. Holy mackerel.

How do you like that? My teeth are chattering. I can't take the pressure. Hang on to your hat. Jonathan, did you say Megan? Well, Marty is on. Oh, Marty. Hey, Marty, also, Roger, hang on for a second. Marty, can you hear me?

Marty? We told you this to be a technical challenge. Okay, Marty, hang on, and we'll get back to you on Zoom, and where are you talking to, Roger? Roger, are you still there? Hello? We don't have audio, yeah. We probably have video because Jonathan's got...

Yes, Marty's on Zoom. Okay, Marty's on Zoom. Why can't we hear him? And Roger's on the phone. So... And I can't hear anything. Well, listen. But we have a video. Marty, you qualify for the $100, even though we can't hear you.

That's our problem, and we'll work around that problem. And for both you callers, hang on and leave your contact information with Jeremy in the control room. Oh, there you go. Oh, I see. Hey, hi, Marty. Can you hear us? Yeah, we can't hear you.

But you can, I assume you can hear. If you can hear us, raise your right hand. Marty, if you can hear us, raise your right hand. Marty is raising his hand. Jonathan, is the audio affecting you? Okay. Why, I heard something. You had an echo from your microphone.

Oh. Okay, you got to laugh. If we didn't laugh, we'd be crying, folks. I'm sure this is what all the great inventions in history encountered at the beginning, even the telephone, the radio, and now Zoom on radio. Jonathan, besides Marty, who else? Okay.

If you can hear us okay, Jeremy, I know Jeremy can hear us in the control room. Please get the contact information of these two Zoom calls. Marty's waving at us. Hi, Marty. I'm waving back at Marty. Okay, we have, Marty. Marty, the hundred bucks, if you give your contact information, to Jerry. Don't hang up. Jeremy will get you that. And if for some reason, you still are not

able to communicate, you can either call back or you can text us back. Just call the regular 877-960-960-877-960. Because I want to get you that $100. This is a matter of history. Marty is the first Zoom caller on our Earl Sterling Cars radio show. place in history and to dot all the eyes and cross the teas ladies and gentlemen as we you know stumble through this whole zoom thing please if you need if you can't leave your information so that you can receive your check you can text me or you can call me at 5-6-1-386-6-4-9-8 you can talk to me personally Rick now I saw on the list there we had Megan Smith and Brenda Wise were the next two coming

up and they're both YouTubers. So can we try to get Negan? We definitely. Jonathan, was Negan on first? Marty was on first. Okay, we got, so we got Marty. And call number two on Zoom. Are we getting sound over the interview?

Bear with us, folks. That number again for the, if you have, have a Zoom account is 926-589-0-5-8-6-9-26-9-26-589-0-5-8-6. And we might want to soft-pedal that number until we figure out how we can talk to people when they call in. But this is, again, seriously, folks, this is history in the making. This is Zoom on radio, and we've got a couple glitches here with the audio, but we're going to work through it. Yeah. Once we pull up your video on Zoom, if you raise your hand, we'll know that you can hear us. So we'll rely on that. Okay. Niggins. Jonathan, should we hold off?

Noggin. Nogne? Should we hold off a Niggin and the other call and just go to the regular calls at 877-960? 9960. Okay. He's shaking his head. We're going to go back to the phones, and which I'm Manning from my X-screen, and we're going to talk to Roger. Hello, Roger. Hey, good morning. How? Good morning. Harry. How's everybody today? Excited.

We're flustered. We're very excited, Roger. Hey, Roger, do you have a Zoom account? I do. I didn't. It's set up on a computer. I didn't know you could use it on the cell. Well, unfortunately, you can't because we're having some technical problems, but keep that in mind. We'll have the bugs worked out. We've had two or three Zoom callers, but audio isn't coming through. So I'm glad you're on the old-fashioned telephone, old reliable.

And, Roger, when you can give us a call on our Zoom number, you can win yourself $100, and you can give a call back. Yeah, that would be exciting. And I'm sorry that I don't know how to use Zoom on the cell phone, but if I had my computer set up, which I don't, I would be right there with you right now. Oh, well, thank you. What can we do for you this morning, Roger? My question, I have a couple of questions, really, for Rick. Okay, Rick's right here.

He's a mechanic expert, right? Yes, he is. Yeah. I have a 2011 Honda element. he's got about 115,000 miles on it and I've been toying with the

the idea of changing some of the fluids and the first question I had for Rick do I have to use Honda fluid or can I buy fluid that's Honda certified at any parts house?

And I'm going to take a cop out here's my basic answer on this is the first thing I would do is go to your owner's manual. The book that would have come in your car for your recommended maintenancees. I know Honda will have one. Same thing as Toyota. And if you don't have the hard copy, you'll be able to find it online. But look and see what the recommended intervals are for those fluid changes.

And if you decide that your car does qualify under extreme conditions and you want to do those changes, that's fine. But also in your owner's manual, it will list each of the Honda fluids and it will tell you what is an acceptable aftermarket substitute as in like for gear loop and things like that or automatic transmission fluid. It will tell you what the acceptable aftermarket fluid is that you'll be able to get just right from like AutoZone or other parts houses like that. Yeah, your Honda dealers should be able to give you that information. Okay, so my second question is the transmission fluid. You know, there's pros and cons. Never change the fluid.

Always change it every so many miles. What's your take on that? I've heard all the sides of it. I just said I chat, GBT, and Honda strongly recommends you use their fluid, and they do that for all of their fluid. I just got that from Chad, GBT, GBT, AI. And the caveat there is most manufacturers take that stance. Why? Because they want to sell you their fluid.

So you'd have to dig a little deeper. I would bet. I'd be willing to bet that there are acceptable fluids that would substitute for the Honda. But you'd want to be very careful. In your case, the car is out of warranty, so that's not going to be an issue. but if your car was within warranty, I would definitely go with the manufacturer's recommended fluid because they could use that as a technicality to void your warranty on something.

But you've got 150,000 miles and you've got a 13-year-old car. I do a little checking around and get a high-quality brand name, look at Amazon and get a rating on these and ask about the acceptance. but I think you could probably save yourself a lot of money. I agree. That's what I was thinking. And on the idea of that, that whole thing about, oh, if on an older transmission,

if you change the fluid, it's going to break down. No, if your transmission breaks down because of a fluid change, then you had other problems that were going to occur very shortly anyways. So I would not feel a problem on that for changing the fluid. would not be something that would make me go away from it. The brake fluid, by the way, Roger, is an exception. Honda does say that it's acceptable to use a good brick fluid from a reliable brand that meets onto specifications.

By the way, on the brake fluid, I was going to ask, I don't think I have the time to get under the car and bleed all the brakes, But if I sucked all the fluid out of the reservoir and replaced that fluid, is there any benefit from them? If you did it about, say, once every thousand miles, about five times over, you would basically dilute all the old fluid back to new fluid over time. But it would take a while to do that because that fluid, not only is there what's in the reservoir, but you've got the master cylinder, the ABS actuator, and all. all the lines and what's in the calipers. So there's actually quite a bit of fluid left in that system other than what's just in the reservoir at the top.

I got you. Okay, well, listen, thank you so much. Well, thank you, Roger. I appreciate the call. And I know what to do. Very good. Thanks, Roger. Give us a call, let us know how that turned out for you.

Our number here is 877-9-60-99-6. or you can text us at 772-4976530. And if you have a Zoom account, you can always zoom us when yourself $100 for the first three. Zoom callers. That number, 926-589-0586. We're going to stay with the phones

And we are going to go to Marty, who's calling us from West Pone Beach. Hey, Marty. Can you hear it? Good morning, Marty. Good morning. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay.

I'm on that old regular fall. Well, we tried, and thank you for participating. And you want 100 bucks, by the way. Stay on the line and give Jeremy your contact information so I can get that check. out to you and congratulations this is a very exciting day and you are the first zoom caller and we're just overwhelmed what can we do for you all right well first of all i want to thank you i wanted to be earl stuart history making as i am i as handsome as nancy tells me i am i as handsome as nancy tells me i am oh you don't have to answer that

Never mind. I have a question, though. I change my wife's filters in her Honda's car. And I know dealerships charge a lot. What my question is, is it good to do it at the dealership or is it good to try to find a cheaper place that can do a simple job? Marty, here is the answer. It isn't a question of whether it's a dealership or another place.

Unfortunately, car dealers use the oil change as a starting position for a new technician. So typically, not all the time, but typically, when you go into a car dealership, the guy that does your rotation balances your tires or changes your oil, he's new. He's probably, he's qualified. They interviewed him. passed some tests and and but he's still learning the business and there's nothing that's going to mess your car up more than to lose all the oil in your car while you're driving down the highway and that's happened it's happened to my dealership of course I you know it's we've been

we've been there for almost 50 years so a handful of times we've had a situation we're an apprentice mechanic just out of lack of experience did that I forgot to didn't tighten the plug the oil plug it boy dropped out so if I if I were the consumer and a car driver and I wasn't a car dealer and I was going to have my oil change I would try some of the fast loop places I would also consider the dealership the fast loop places will be a much lower cost but before I let anybody change my oil I say who's going to change my oil and then I would let them know

I'm interested in his qualifications, I don't want to know how long he'd been on the job and how many oil changes he's done, how long he's been with the company. And if you've got yourself somebody you trust, but even though it's relatively inexpensive to have the oil change, it's catastrophic if it's not done right.

Right, right. Okay, well, these were the filters I was talking about. What's that, Marty? I was talking just about the air filter and the cabin filter. Rick, that's probably why he was waving on me. I recommend those usually at around every 30,000 miles. Okay.

Okay, but I mean, is it worth having the dealer? I mean, for 30,000 miles, that's like three years almost driving. Yeah. So, I mean, it's not a big deal if you do it every three years and have the dealer rip you off a little. I would not do it at the Jiffy Lube places because there's been a huge huge cryal from a lot of them

a lot of places you hear about them keeping a dirty filter Well Jiffy Lube is one company There's probably a dozen Quick Lute places I can't remember all their names so are you talking about just Jiffie Lube? No generic across Oh generic okay yeah

Quick Lube places They'll keep a dirty filter show it to you and then they'll charge you 60 bucks for a filter and 50 bucks to put it in. I'm going to slightly disagree with you. I think that does happen.

I think you need to be alert for it, but there are fast loop companies that are honest and have good technicians working for them and do a good job. The risk might be higher to get one of those nasty ones that doesn't do what he's supposed to do in a quick loop

because I think the hiring requirements are higher in dealerships. But if you find yourself a trusted technician, whether it's in a quick-loop store or not, and you know the person that's changing your oil, you can save a ton of money, and you should do it. Okay. And the only other thing I was going to say is it took six months from my production day to get my second key. And for people that only got one key, it took at least six months. That's ridiculous.

It's inexcusable what all the manufacturers, including Toyota, did. And it's a simple matter of the bottom line, money, profit. When we had the supply chain issue with COVID, it's over with, thank God. Microchips especially were almost impossible to come by, high demand, low supply. So the manufacturers had to decide, you've got to give a guy, key to buy a new car. I can't sell a new car if I don't give them a key. But if I give them two keys, I'm going to not be able to build the second car and I got people waiting for that second car I could build. So they're in a nutshell is why even today, because

even though demand is kind of catching up with supply, it hasn't totally caught up with supply. And Toyota, Honda, Ford, General Motors, they're all of making a second key unavailable to their customers. Because if they do that, it can cost them the sale of a car, the dealer and the manufacturer. Okay. All right. Well, thank you again. I'll stay on the line for Jeremy.

Yes, do that so that I can get that check out to you, Marty. And also, you know, I was just looking at an update on Crown cars and the camera defect. and it was a news article that just came out, I believe it was yesterday. And it affects 13,000 Toyota crowns. And no, the news came out on Friday. And it's citing defects with built-in cameras. And if you want to know if it's affected your crown, you can go to Toyota's website of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Okay. Thank you. all right nancy thank you you're welcome have a great weekend i have an announcement to make before i get to the next call as far as zoom is concerned if you have been trying to get through on the number that i gave out earlier for the zoom number which is nine two six five eight nine oh five eight six we're having a little difficulty not surprising next week will be even better than this week. But my point, give us a call on our number, our regular

number, which is 877-9-60-99-60, and let us know that you did give us a call on the other number. I hope I haven't confused you. Well, we'll know because Jonathan will see the call. We just can't hear the call. Right, Jonathan? Okay. So give us a call at 877-960-99-60. Or you can text us at 772-4976530 take advantage of your anonymous feedback.com. We're going to go to the Roadrunner, and he has been holding, and he calls us from Boynton.

Good morning. How are you, Steve? Good morning, everybody. I also heard about that computer hack problem with the car dealers. So if I'm a car salesman, why can't I use pencil and paper like you said and use the telephone? So in other words, I'm losing money because it is. You know, it's nice talk to another old guy because I feel the same way. You know, I sold cars for many years. I ran dealerships for many years, and we didn't know what a computer was.

I mean, we did everything by hand. The buyer's order, we sold the car. the finance of installment sales contract to finance the car we fill that out by hand and when they came along with a computer it was like a miracle and we even did our accounting all by hand and so computers were like Zoom to us back 50 years ago so but that's what happens when technology takes over people forget how to do that do you you're not going to believe this but the banks are actually refusing to accept contracts that aren't printed out by a computer. So if I sold a car and I filled it out by hand and I want to get my money and I give the contract to the bank, which is the normal process to get your money, they won't take it. They're going to make me have it printed out on a computer. Now, my computers are working fine.

I got lucky. of all the toilet dealers in South Florida my toilet dealership was one of the few that was not affected because we had a different computer system but you're right I understand exactly how you feel

how can can you imagine what would happen with a cyber attack on the financial system how about the New York Stock Exchange or hospitals how about doctors?

I mean, people aren't too excited because who cares about the car dealers? I mean, they're probably saying they deserve it, Rick. Just remember, it's not just this car sales, car service, and body shop and everything at the dealership. Everything's computerized. There's nothing we do in a dealership

that's not computerized. Well, let me bring up my old story. Remember when I tried to get an oil change on my roadrunner? Oh, it don't show up on a computer. Is that? Okay, the other thing was, my friend was at a service station, and the guy called them, he could put spark plugs in there that last 100,000 miles.

Is that possible? In which car? In your roadrunner? A Nissan, no, a Nissan Titan, 2016. Oh, yeah, depending on the vehicle, right now, we have cars that the first spark plug interchange, the first recommended time to replace the spark plug, is 150. 50,000 miles. That's when the factory says to do it for the first time.

Okay. Now, the other thing was, have you seen these mini trucks riding around anywhere? I think they're made in Thailand or Japan. They call them truckettes. I've seen some internet vehicles like that, that they're getting shipped over here. And how they're getting them road legal,

I don't know. Because you obviously haven't passed any of the safety. safety checks or anything. I haven't seen any. I've seen three of them so far. I think they've been pretty cool. Yeah, I've only seen them on, like, the Internet on YouTube and that, but I don't, I don't think they're actually road legal.

Well, I've seen him driving. Okay. Hey, Steve, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Did you call Zoom number 926-589-0586? I'm on a flip-point. phone.

Okay, so you did or you didn't? Didn't. And guess what, Steve, before we go on, that flip phone, everybody's running out to purchase one. That was in the Wall Street Journal just recent. Just this week, it was. They are on fire. Okay, back to my question.

Did you or did you not call the Zoom number? No, if I did, I would have donated $100 back to the Big Dogg Lynch. Well, we have to clarify things. Okay, Jonathan, Roadrunner, he didn't. He didn't. I didn't. Thanks for us. I would have donated to the back.

Thanks, Steve. Thank you for that. And have a great weekend. 877-960-99-60. 877-9-60-99-60. We are not taking any Zoom calls as we simply can. no audio you can also text us at 772 4976530 don't forget your anonymous feedback dot com and we're going to go back to the recovering car dealer now we talked briefly and Steve

the last caller brought up the subject of the cyber attack on car dealers a high percentage of car dealers were affected your car dealership may be affected it's all makes of cars all over the country. One of the primary computer servicing companies, CDK, used to be called ADP a long time ago, was hacked. And I believe the hackers were from overseas somewhere, Nigeria or China or someplace.

And they are blackmailing the computer company, CDK for tens of millions of dollars and according to the automotive news the believe it or not the CDK the computer company has agreed to pay the ransom now that's good and that's bad it's good for the dealers that they'll be able to start doing business again it's bad because of the fact it sets a precedent that other hackers and there's a there's no short supply of hackers out there folks. They're all over the world. So you can be sitting in the most remote corner of the world and you can hack somebody in New York City. Now, I know you're not too upset about car dealers being hacked. A lot of you out there, including me, think a lot of the dealers deserve

it. But if you can hack a car dealer's computer system, you can hack hospitals, you can hack emergency services, you can hack the New York Stock Exchange. That is a I've never really felt the impact or the severity of how important it is to protect your computers. And one of the things that you car dealer haters out there, and I'm one of you, are the people that are not crazy about car deals, think about yourself because your data now is exposed. Exactly. And if you bought a car, if you gave all your personal details, about your credit.

All the information that you gave that car dealer is now in Nigeria or China or Japan or Alaska. I don't know where it is. Hackers can operate anywhere in the world. And there are a lot of very smart people out there. They probably, you know, there's probably a lot of parts of the world. They say, what do you want to be when you go up? I want to be a hacker because you can make more money faster, tax-free, if you're sharp. and know how to hack a computer, and a lot of people do.

So you listeners to Earl Stewart on Cars now, check with your dealer and find out, if you can't get through on the phones, that's a bad sign. Because the computers are affected, can affect phones and everything else that's going on in the dealership. But get an assurance that your dealership, that you're servicing your car, maintaining repairing, your collision repair,

they're buying parts, you're buying new cars, you're buying used cars. If you have business with a car dealership, before I went back in there, I would find out have they been hacked. And hopefully, if it's true that CDK is paying the ransom, it's possible that the dealers could be back as early as Monday. and that's this coming Monday but if I were planning to buy a car this weekend

or have my car service this weekend I'd be very sure that that car dealership was not a victim and as I say there's I think there's something like 15,000 dealers that are affected that's a high percentage and for some reason a high percentage for those are in South Florida it's almost like you know just desserts I mean 17,000 are in South Florida, no, no, no, 7,000 are Toyota dealers, and almost all of the Toyota dealers in South Florida were affected.

And it was like 7,000 dealers in the southeast, Toyota deals. Toyota got hit especially hard, so if you're buying any car, servicing any car, doing any kind of business with a car dealership, check. And if it's a Toyota that you have, that you're doing business with a Toyota, be very sure that this dealership has not been hacked. And if you're into privacy, which a lot of us are, not me, because my life is an open book. But most people are sane unlike me, and they do like their privacy, and I respect that. But if you value your privacy, you might want to make a few inquiries. you might even want to call your attorney because you have been victimized if your dealership has been hacked. So just the word out there, you can Google this, every newspaper, all the networks have been blasting all over the news.

Yeah, and those dealerships are reverting to pen and paper. So remember folks what Earl said, you know, customer data, you know, this is very simple. serious. So if you'd like to give us your input, call us 877960-9960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. Earl? Well, Rick, you have any YouTube messages or any kind of messages at all? Well, actually, let's start off with Anne-Marie in our text list. Oh, good morning, Anne-Marie. She says, good morning. Here's an updated question. Since Earl mentioned at the beginning of the show that there's a cyber attack on CDK Global,

which did not affect his dealership, but it's affected a lot of dealerships across the U.S. and Canada, what would you suggest it could help the dealerships that are affected? Lay in the stock of paper, pens, and patience? And I think we've already got that one answered. Yeah, that was. Ann Reeves this morning, right along with the CDK. I just started reading it right off the back there, but...

The advice to the dealers of what they can do is, first of all, you need to discover how serious this is. So if you have cars that are sold, and most cars that are sold today are finance, and these dealers are holding finance contracts, you need to find out as quickly

find out as quickly as you can which banks or which credit unions or which lenders will accept a handwritten contract. I think it's ridiculous and I think it might even be illegal for a business to refuse to accept a handwritten legal document. I mean, let's face it. For your convenience, it might be something you don't want to do. But I'd like to look into that. So car dealers, call your bank. If you give your, if you give your bank a lot of business, here I am giving advice to car dealers. I can't believe I'm doing this, but anything for Anne-Marie, call your bank and say, listen, I think that you need to accept these contracts that I'm having the meticulously hand right and they are accurate. I guarantee the accuracy.

I don't want you to buy anything that isn't completely filled out and completely accurate. But because it's a type, it's not a type number, it's a handwritten number, and I'm predicate, by the way, you should take that. Put a little pressure on them, and I think you can't, because your business is important to these banks. My rest of my concern would be with my employees. I would, if my dealership, everybody is paid by direct deposit. And Rick's check comes into, if I'm correct, goes into his bank.

and every time it gets a check, it just appears in his bank account. Well, I can't do that now if I had been hacked, but I haven't. So I'm lucky. So I would get with my employees and then say, this is what we're going to do. We've actually, in years past, we had some situations not nearly this serious where we had to pay in cash, and we actually paid cash to our employees. So you want to take care of your employees, you want to take care of your customers, communicate with your customers, communicate with your banks, and not knowing is very dangerous.

If you fully inform your employees, fully inform your lending institutions, you're going to make the least problems about this whole thing. And you probably ought to call you a lawyer too because you're going to have a lot of customers who are going to sue you over this. There's already some big class action suits on this cyber attack because whether you like it or not, data that you were entrusted by your customers is out who knows where and being sold being sold to companies that want to buy your personal data yeah can be traveling folks for the service department bear in mind they're they're being affected as well but i remember plenty of times that we've had issues with the computers going down our service riders stepped up we brought out old paper forms filled them out by hand we would write down the

the part numbers that we were putting on everything and everything was being calculated on calculators. You've been around too long too, Rick. I mean, would that happen today? I mean, we don't have to worry about it because we were an act, but it's happened. It's happened. How recently?

I think the last time I saw it happen was maybe about a year and a half ago. Oh, I didn't know that. Not that long. I mean, you know, a computer, the computer system went down. Yeah. While we're waiting for it to come up, we're technicians. We're going to work around that.

Hey, bring me my car and my parts, and I can work on it. Yeah. And you guys fix the computer later, and we'll get these cars moving in and out. A lot of dealerships, what they do is they have a computer link with the manufacturer. And this computer link is when you get these codes and your test machinery in the car dealership will indicate what the code is. and they can communicate directly with a factory technician via a computer. I was meaning just writing up the repairer tickets and all the internal paperwork and we would get around it and the technicians would keep right on working.

Yeah. But be patient with them and give them a chance to try and get you out of there. Rick, I'm going to give an update on that Zoom number. You had text me about Nigen. Could you please get in touch with you? Maybe he's listening right now, Negan. Oh, he is? Please call us at 877-960-99-60 so that you can leave your contact information in the control room with Jeremy.

And also the same applies to Brenda, and that will bring us up to speed as far as three Zoom callers. I hope everyone out there heard me. I'll wait to hear from you. Again, our number is 877-960-99-60. Our text number is 772-497-6530. We have our Dog of the Week. We have our Mystery Shopping Report. We've got a whole lot to get to.

So Jonathan has Nugan's contact information, and he's going to pass that alone to me. We are going to go back to the phones. No, we're not. Somebody was there. I've got an anonymous feedback here. Anonymous feedback, and we don't know who it is because it's anonymous. It says that someone should shop our dealership, Earl Stewart Toyota, for comparison.

We've done that. We've always, we always shop, mystery shop our dealership. This anonymous feedback for people that have a list of the show before every week. week, we have a mystery shop where we send an undercover agent into the dealership and pretend to buy or lease a car and we report exactly what happened, the good, the bad, and the ugly. We name the dealership, we name the people involved, the salespeople, the sales managers. If they did something really bad like broke the law, we say dealership XYZ broke the law. And the proof is the fact, the proof in our sincerity and our integrity is the fact that we haven't been sued in 20 years on reporting exactly what has happened in car dealership.

So the perfect defense against libel and slander is the truth. So we tell the truth. Agent Lightning does a great job. And that is what we do. We do it to our dealership. I've got about 160, 170 employees, and I would be a fool to say that everyone that worked for me was the best of the best. I would say that we might have a rotten apple in the barrel or maybe a couple of rotten apples in the barrel. So that's the reason we do mystery shops on our own dealership, and you car dealerships out there should do the same thing.

Instead of getting mad at me for mystery shopping your dealership, and embarrassing. you over the air, shop your own dealership. If you're sincere about wanting to do a better job, then find out if you have some problems and you don't have to fire somebody because they did a bad job. You can coach them. You can give them some more training.

You can clarify what their job is supposed to be. And you can improve your organization and there's nothing like a mystery shop of a dealership. So I thank the anonymous feedback. That was an excellent comment. And we do do that. In fact, what we need to do probably is to read a couple of our mystery shops on the air like we do for the other dealers. Excuse me.

And we have our mystery shop this morning is from GMC, Buick, Cadillac in Vero Beach. We're going to go back to the phones. We're going to talk to Brenda. She's a first time caller. Good morning, Brenda. Good morning. Hi, Brenda. Did we lose you, Brenda? Are you still on the line?

Brenda, can you? Yes, I'm here. Okay, Brenda. Did you try to reach us by Zoom? I did. Okay, Brenda, you won yourself $150. The $50 is for the first-time female caller. $100 is from the Zoom that we're trying to put into place.

So if you hang on after we're done talking and give your information, and give your information to jeremy i can get that check out to you well i appreciate it but i did call in once before okay brenda what you'll just get a hundred dollars that's fine thank you i appreciate it i just want to say good morning and i love listening to your show every week and a shout out to um schumacher lincoln because i had called in and asked you all for advice months ago and i did go to schumacher um lincoln for service and i just want to give a shout up because i'm just dave there was wonderful oh great great thank you for letting us know that of course but most importantly i love listening to your show you guys are wonderful and i learn

a lot every weekend uh thank you so much we learn a lot from uh you know people like you women like you and you keep us informed and I'm really happy that you followed up you know on the phone call and I hope your experience was great out there at Schumacher good all right very good okay then don't forget that information okay thank you and have a great weekend you do the same Brenda thanks again for calling and encouraging other women caller to callers to callers to call the show. Our number here is 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-4976530 Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And I believe that, do you have an anonymous feedback?

I do have an anonymous feedback. We're really proving today, June the 22nd, that we are live okay here's anonymous feedback and Nancy just gave you that location as a website your anonymous feedback.com just go to that website

and you can communicate on total anonymity we don't know who you are where you are we can't come and get you if you say something bad about us we love candor here's one that just came in I just recently got an email quote from a Dodge Jeep dealer

dealership in Doreau Florida. There was only one fee and that was called pre-delivery service charge for $599. Same fee you circled in the position in your video. He saw it on our YouTube video

on these sort of things. I emailed back asking about the pre-delivery charge. The salesperson emails me back stating that the paperwork that's generated automatically charged pre-delivery charge and that they did not know why

that still shows that term. Well, that's his problem, right? That was editorializing from my name. Back to the anonymous feedback. He states that the correct wording is just a dealer fee. And the dealer fee, which is $599, can't be negotiated out. I'll comment on that later too. I replied back asking what is in the dealer fee.

Is it a document fee or an administrative fee? They have not replied back. just another example of dealers trying to take in money from bogus fees. I love this anonymous feedback because this is an educated consumer who knows that when you see something irregular in your paperwork, you call and find out. Well, he busted that dealer. I don't know the name of the Dodge Jeep dealer in Durrell, Florida,

but I think there's probably only one. So beware of the Dodge Jeep dealership in Durrell, Florida. It's also says something to the efficiency of a company that doesn't know what their computers are saying to their customers when their customers go to their website. As far as the fact that the dealer fee cannot be negotiated, their salesman is telling you that because he doesn't get paid on the dealer fee. Now, I advise you when you find a junk fee, we call them dealer fees, we call them admin fees, we call them admin fees, we call them, we call them, them, electronic filing fees, they make up a name and it's a junk fee. So this $599 junk fee, the salespeople don't get paid on it. So the salesperson will tell you it can't be taken off, but what the salesperson will do

is he'll lower the price because by lowering the price for you, and he has to give the manager's permission to do that, but by lowering the price, he's still getting 25% of how much the price is lowered. So he's losing that much. Whereas if he gave you $599, they take it right out of his commission, which would probably be his entire commission. So not only is a dealer charging junk fees hurting you, the unbeknownst consumer, but it's also hurting a hard-working salesman, assuming he's hard-working, that goes out there and does his best to sell a car. and you, the dealer, make a $590 profit, goes into your bank account, and you don't pay any commission to the salesperson for that.

So you're making that salesperson, lie to the customer, and saying it can't be removed. Well, it can be removed. He can't remove it, but dealership policy is why it's still there. Okay. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones. Then we're going to go over to Rick. but for now we are going to be talking to Bobby in West Palm Beach

good morning Bobby hi how are you this morning we're fantastic how about you great thanks I have a couple things first of all Earl about you being on Zoom I've told you before if you put Nancy on Zoom you'll sell more cars I believe that I you know I can't believe how

unawares the manufacturers and the Diva are about the power of the female buyers. They've got the money. They've got the education. They use a lot more logic in buying a car, and it would be so easy to get to that female, that huge, 50% round number, probably a little more than that,

of the buyers of cars are female. I agree with you. Second, this is about a month-old information. And somebody called in about tire sensors, getting them replaced in cars. And I wanted to report that Costco will replace those sensors for about $50 or $60 per tire, which is $100 or $150 less than car dealers will do it. Car dealers will tell you that Costco can't pair the sensor with the car, but that's not true.

They have the same computer the car dealers do that pairs them. And it works fine. so if you want to save a little money that's a good thing I do have a question about that for Rick if one of them is going bad let's say it's a 10 year old car should you replace all four or just wait

until they fail kind of a gray area there because if you're getting new tires put on the car and you've already got one sensor or two sensors have gone bad I'd go ahead and do all four because while the technicians got the tires

broke down he can replace that sensor right then. But otherwise, I'd only replace the bad ones. If I have two more minutes, I have a sales sort of a blind shopper report for you. Love to hear. Oh, great. Sure. So I had a 2012 Lexus that had a bad sillinoid, and Rick and two other,

mechanics said sell it don't replace it don't fix the transmission and the reason why is nobody works on transmissions they only replace transmissions so they don't take them apart and put them back together again it's very difficult to find yeah it can be a tough one so they said sell it and go on carvana or car max which i did so it had a hundred thousand miles was 12 years old and i put it on I tried Carvana, and I didn't check that there was an engine light on to see what price I'd get. And it was $8,800. And on CarMax, it was $8,600 without the light on. And then I took it to CarMax so they could see it so I could get an idea of how much this light was costing me.

And they offered me $8,000. So the car, so the light being on cost $600, which the transmission was anywhere from 4,000 to 11,000, depending on who you talk to. So that was interesting information. And I had been looking for a new or used Lexus particular model in color and stumbled across one at JM Lexus and took the car down and they offered me $12,000 for it. Wow. So, and there are one-price dealer. I know what you're talking about, one-price dealer, so the used car had a price on it.

I don't know whether they were giving me a $4,000 discount on the car or what, but I ended up getting more money going to J.M. Lexus, buy a lot. Well, it's, you know, there's no dealer, and I include my dealership in this statement, there's no dealer. dealer that you should get a price from and not shop and compare. I'd be foolish to let people think, I put my one lowest price on every car. If the President of the United States or the Premier of

China came in to buy a car, he'd pay the same price that you would at my dealership. But if you shop long and hard enough and you're a good negotiator, there's some dealer that could sell you the car for less. So whether it's J.M.

Lexis or it's Earl Stewart Toyota, it's a good place to start because I know J.M. Lexus is the largest Lexus dealer in the world. I do know that they are honest, they're 99% honest. One gripe about J.M. Lexus is the fact that they advertise no dealer fee and they do charge a dealer fee. Why they do that, I don't know. One of the reasons I don't jump on them any harder than I do is because it's a small dealer fee. I think it's like $3 or $400, something like that. I don't think that's on there anymore.

I think they took it off after you brought it to their... Wow. That's the best news I ever heard. I didn't do that. Well, I'll have to call them up and thank them. I harassed him on that for years. But as I say, you can get a lower price at J.M. Lexus, another Lexus dealer, if you're a good negotiator,

and you can get a lower price at Earl's or Toyota in another dealership if you're a good negotiator. But there's the danger involved. You have to be educated, a consumer, because there's a big difference between buying a car for less money that's really less money and buying a car because you think it's less money. And so when we lose a lot of business at our dealership,

they go to the other dealership, and they tell them this is the price, and then they hide junker. fees into the financing of the car and they'll end up paying a thousand dollars in junk fees that they didn't know they paid so they go and tell their friends oh i bought a car for less money than this other toilet dealership when they really didn't they didn't know but an educated consumer which you are you'll know if you shop and compare like a jm lickses nobody there's no one dealership in the world that sells all the cars at a lower price all other time

I'm not a great negotiator and I'm sort of a pain in the neck well you're like me I hate to negotiate oh Bobby I love to negotiate I'm the greatest negotiator Earl sends me in I'm gonna come pick you up the next time I'm going for a car I'll make it right I do ask at JM Lexus which is a one price dealer I do say I know this is your one price but is it your best price which is something Earl has taught us. And they all say, no, that's the only price we sell it at. And then I bring up Earl Stewart's name and claim to be a better friend than I am.

I do know you. I do talk to you, but I claim that I know you very well, and they still don't give me any more money off. Yeah, I haven't a $5 a dollar to get your cup of coffee, right? Right, right. Well, thanks very much. and Costco for the tire sensor. Yeah, thanks for that information about the sensors.

Sure. Thank you, Bobby. Have a great weekend. We are going to go to Ronald. Ronald, are you still holding? Hello, Ronald. You out there? Yes, I am.

Hi, Ronald. Welcome to the show. What can we do for you? Two questions. I just got out of the hospital. I'm glad you're out. That's no fun place to be. Yeah, I am too.

I'm glad you're out. Hope you're feeling better. I'm getting better. God bless you. There we go to Longwood. I know it's on the radio, but they are not good. Don't be married. Anyways, the key recall for the

We got it in here. What does it do? I'm sorry, the recall for what's the device on? The key, yeah, what? Anti-Seth. Oh, the anti-seth. Oh, yeah, yeah. Okay. And could you repeat the question about the end-dice?

I haven't heard of this one. I'm going to take, yeah. Sorry. Anti-theth. They've got to stick around the door. they did something about, I don't know what they did, Kia Antisef Protector. I guess they did something with the ignition,

but I'm not sure. Okay, that could be almost anything from just replacing a module that was acting up. Quite often they'll have a recall for something like that, when they see the same problem occurring over and over in the one, model of car they just say all right just just issue the recall get them all done and let's not have an issue come up where they you know try to do a class section lawsuit or something there's quite a quite a long printout on chat gbt on the Kia has indicated a recall to address theft concerns for certain

vehicles that have been targeted due to vulnerabilities popularized on social media specifically they have introduced in ignition cylinder protection device for models not eligible for their anti-theft software upgrade this device reinforces so it's it is out there and i wasn't aware of it until i just hit chat chb t yeah i think it was a software update okay my sister was there forever all right second question was kea stewart affected in the cdk effect yeah i i don't know do we have do we have do we have have a list anywhere of is there a list of dealerships affected by the cdk issue i think it's all kea dealerships i'm not i don't believe it it would be unusual just to have a few dealerships

so i think it's it has to do it's uh the models affected include vehicles from 2010 through early 2020 such as the kea of soul uh forte sportage and rio well i think he's asked about the CDK issue. The CDK issue? Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, CDK, yeah, Kia are affected. It wasn't, more Toyota deals were affected than any other, but all the manufacturers were affected by this, like 15,000 dealers. So the best thing to do is just call up and ask, were you part of the cyber hack and try to get somebody to tell you

the truth because your data will be shared with whoever the hacker was and that hacker is going to be selling your data to God knows who. So it's serious. A lot of people should be upset about this. This is big. I said before earlier on the show, it was anybody but a bunch of car dealers who were in trouble. Any other retail group, there would be some empathy. and a tier or two shed for the dib. I don't think people, I think people look at Cardinals and say, oh, they're getting what they deserve. I don't think that's true.

I think that's going too harsh because not only you're affecting the customers, you're affecting the employees. Auto parts that give the parts to the people, they can't order parts. Everything. Yeah, everything, Ronald. It just rolls downhill. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Ronald, thanks so much for the call. Have we in? I tried to Zoom. I tried the Zoom thing, but it wouldn't go through. You tried that number? Invalid ID, and it wouldn't go through. Are you subscribed to Zoom? Yes, I am.

Something that's going on, I don't know. Well, let's send Ronald $100. You tried. And if you subscribe to Zoom and you didn't get through, then we'll shoot out $100. Can you leave your contact information with Jeremy in the control room? Of course. Okay, stay on the line.

Jeremy, they'll get your contact information. He'll pass it alone to me, Ron, or if I'll get that check out to you. Have yourself a great weekend, and I hope that you feel better soon. They're taking care of me at Volunteers of Medicine for free. Oh, great. And then sending me all over Stewart for x-rays, MRIs.

That's no fun. No, I don't like it. We've both been there and done that, Ronald. We know the mental strain, physical strain. It's terrible in and out of hospitals, but we wish you the best. Yeah, and Rick's been going through a lot lately himself. Ronald, have a great weekend, and we hope to hear from you again. Get that information to Jeremy, and I'll get that check to you.

Go ahead. Okay. we are quite i'm going to have to get jonathan a sedative quickly and he has his own medication he brought his own medication with him okay kids we're going to big dog ranch where it's much calmer yeah for the for you new listeners i'll just interrupt you briefly here uh for our new listeners this is our our pet charity this is uh we've been we've been working with uh big dog ranch for many years the reason we chose Big Dog Ranch is they are a home

for the homeless dogs uncomparable anywhere in any animal shelter in the country. And they're amazing people. They screen the dogs. When you buy a dog, you've

got a healthy, happy dog to adopt. And also, you better be healthy and happy because Big Dog Ranch screens you as being a parent to adopt these dogs. They find homes for thousands and thousands and thousands of dogs. This is a huge operation. They're in Loxahatchie, Florida, just in, that's western Palm Beach County.

And they also have two other locations. But that's the reason that we push this big dog ranch, the dog of the week, we call it, every week. Once a week. And I'm going to give a shout out to Karen, who's been listening. to us i think the past well she's been off and on uh listening to us and uh we really appreciate you're listening karen and uh like karen uh there are so many women out there uh that are listening and i want to take a moment to thank all of you for the thank you cards that you have sent me and uh i'm quite touched uh we are going to go to the uh dog of the week and the dog of the week's

name is blue and uh he's two years old and he's 61 pounds he's a mixed breed and we want you to take a look at the video that was sent in so you can see what blue looks like and blue was found on the streets of Alabama and you know he they all have such sad stories and big dog ranch what a fantastic job they do out there as I said earlier the reason we have Blue at Big Dog Ranch in Laxaggy, Florida is because Alabama was going to euthanize the dog and shelters all over the country and the world call Big Dog Ranch and we take the dogs in because we do not euthanize. We do not put any dogs to sleep. We keep dogs for years and years

until we find a loving home in the conversation. Yeah, and he's showering the whole family out there with love. He's such, he is so lovable. So, um, take advantage of the Big Dog Ranch and you can, and also Blue just won't be given to just anybody. There's a background check. So Jonathan, would you roll that video? Hi, my name is Sam. I am from Big Dog Ranch. We're in Laxahatchee Grove, Florida. I'm volunteering today, and I met the sweetest dog. This is Blue. He is so sweet, so easy to be around. He's about two years old. He's about 60 pounds, loves kids, great with other dogs as well. He just loves to get hugs and kisses and loves to give hugs and kisses. He's working on his

leash training, but he's a great dog. He's looking for his forever home, and I just had so much fun meeting him today. I fell in love. So come by and meet Blue. He's just so sweet, and we'll give lots of hugs I like the fact that she's wearing a blue shirt while she's introducing blue that's very nice that is very nice so you can go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue and you can pull up not only blue but all of the dogs that they have excuse me up for adoption and also you know we pay the you know the adoption at Earl Stewart, Toyota. And also,

Earl's book is Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer. And all the proceeds from the sale of this book goes straight to Big Dog Ranch. That's... Go ahead. Do you have your book over there? I don't think I left at home.

I left it a panic from home this morning. Yeah, that's for sure. We were all in a panic. confessions. It's available on Amazon. You go to Amazon.com confessions of a recovering car dealer and whatever Amazon charges you we donate to Big Dog Grants. Any money we get from Amazon, we donate directly to Big Dog Ranch. So we did thousands of books and tens of thousands of thousands of dollars

we've given Big Dog Ranch rescue because of what they do. They are an amazing amazing organization. And boy, I'll tell you, I hope everyone knows that. And also, you know, they have a lot of events that are going up, going on out at Big Dog Ranch, and be sure to check out or call them. And there's a lot of people out there who can't afford the fees for these dogs and food and so many different things. And Big Dog Ranch is there to fulfill your needs

and to make it affordable for you to adopt a dog and feed a dog. You know, one question, and I'm really speaking to myself here, but the only thing I thought peculiar about Big Dog Ranch is why they called it Big Dog Ranch. And I think maybe when Lori Simmons founded Big Dog Ranch years and years and years ago, it probably was for big dogs. But now it's for all dogs, but I, by using the name Big Dog Ranch, and they mitigate that by saying big and small, we save them all. But big dog ranch, it should be dog ranch, doggy ranch. But it's a, it has every, breed, age, if you want to, if you want to, if you want,

want a selection, they got every dog you can imagine out there. If you want a pedigree, if you want a Labrador Retriever, they got Labrador Retrievees. You want a Piccadish, you want a Chihuahua, or most of the dogs out there are mixed breed. And by the way, my preference is for mixed breeds because, well, first of all,

they're healthier and they live longer. But whatever kind of dog you want, color, they have puppies, they have mothers, they have fathers, even if you have to drive a little way to Palm Beach County, Luxeahatch, go to Big Dog Ranch, you can spend the day out there. How about Puppie Land?

Yeah, Puppie Land. They have a city, literally a city with little houses, and in these little houses, they have puppies. And then next to Puppie Land, they have the maternity room hospital, and they have all the mothers that are giving birth, and it's like a machine. They take the puppies and they move them over to puppy land after they leave maternity land. It was a smile on my face.

Even if you don't want to adopt a dog, go out there, you won't believe it. There's so many things to learn by going out to Big Dog Ranch that it's just amazing. And, you know, what they do for veterans, that's another thing that they do out there and how they pair them up with a perfect dog for that veteran. And it's not an easy task. So go to big dog ranch rescue.org and you can even fill out the application before you go out to Big Dog Ranch if you so choose to adopt. We are going to go to the mystery shopper report and that mystery shopping report is from Lidna, do you have your shop? GMC, Buick, Cadillac, Vero.

Before I read the report, there's one more piece of breaking news that is good news. You know, we got to, we have the cyber hack, which is bad news for car dealers. It could be bad news for you, too, if you're dealing with that car dealer. But the good news is that Amazon and Hyundai have decided to open the program to all the dealers. So if you want to buy a Hyundai, if I was going to buy a Hyundai, and it's a, good car by the way pick your model carefully and use consumer reports but if you're going to buy a Hyundai I'd wait till July because in July they are going to have a lot more Hyundai dealers participating in the Amazon program now if you buy a car

on Hyundai with Amazon you're going to get a real price I'm I'm betting it's going to be a low price and it's going to be something that you can shop and compare. So you don't have to buy the car from Amazon. You want to buy a Hyundai? You go online, you go to the Honda dealers that are participating. I mean the Honda, the Hyundai dealers into participating. And then you take that price. If you want to shop your local dealer because he's not a member of the Amazon program, that's okay. Shop as many as you want. Be sure you get their true price without junk fees and dealer installed accessories. But this is a historical moment in the car business, buying new cars on Amazon.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think Amazon is an amazing company. Nancy and I, we buy everything on Amazon. We just don't go to the stores anymore. That's a slight exaggeration. We do to go to the stores sometimes just to get the exercise. But Amazon, if you don't like it, you're return it. you get your price and that's the price

and it's a low price and you can shop and compare it online Amazon is the name of the game so when Amazon starts selling Hyundai's watch out because when Hyundai is extremely successful guess who's going to follow all the other

manufacturers I mean I'm talking myself right out of business here because I've been a car dealer for too many years and if Amazon picks this up I don't know what's going to happen I do know this it's going to be good for you the consumer. That lifts off

the end of the year, I think it is, where they're going to really go gun-ho on Amazon. It's getting better. They're sweetening the program all the time. It is going to be good. Okay. Mystery Shopping Report. Let me tell the folks that they can vote.

Yes, we appreciate your vote on the Mystery Shopping Report, and that can be done at 772-497-6530. That's our text number where you can vote on this mystery shopping report. Okay, Linus, GMC, Buick, Cadillac, and Viro Beach. You know a small town when you have multiple lines of General Motors products. So you don't see too many, we call them duels when there's two.

What's the triple? GMC, Buick, Cadillac in Vero Beach, Florida. That's not really South Florida. It is technically geographically south. Florida but there are the perimeter of decency there they're not they haven't crossed the Solomon Gamora line which is way down in Miami and Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach County but it's up there is that Port St. Lucie County River Beach I think it's out of error here's the report I'm speaking in the first

person is if I were our undercover agent agent Lightning a salesman was sitting at the customer service desk when I walked walked in. He said, hello. And I said, I was here to see about getting a new car. He smiled and said he was very happy to help me today. He stood up and walked around and meet me. I asked if the car right out front was for sale. He said, yeah. He believed so. I then said, I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name. Apologized. Extended his hand and said, Brandon. Agent Lightning throws in these little comments about the salesmanship techniques. These Mr. Shopping reports are primarily to detect fraud and deception, but it's nice to know if someone has good salespeople. Salesperson should introduce himself. Back to the report, we walked out and checked out the car,

a new 24 Buick-Encore GX preferred with an MSR. manufactured retail price, Munrooney label, of $29,280. The label was right there where it was supposed to be. Now, remember I said earlier? This is not really South Florida, Firo Beach. If you're in South Florida, try to find the Monroeney label. It's going to be in the trunk, glove compartment, underneath the seat. It might not be anywhere.

The one place it won't be is on the window where federal law says it has to be. or else you're breaking the law. So every dealer in South Florida almost, I don't, but most dealers in South Florida just ignore that law. So Viro Beach is up into, is past the bad, bad wine that we call South Florida. I told Brandon, the salesman, I was looking for something for my daughter, who was getting her driver's license soon. We went inside, he commented on how much he liked the color of the car.

of that car. He said there were way too many white and silver cars on the road. Well, that's a good salesmanship type answer. The fact of the matter is white and silver cars actually retain their value better than unusual colored cars. But, you know, to agree and reinforce a buyer's decision is a good sales technique. He didn't ask me if I'd be trading anything in. I said, no.

Brandon asked if I needed a new license plate. this plate, I said yes. He asked if I was military or a Costco member. He also asked me what other make-model car I own and hope of maybe finding some sort of competitive incentives. Some of these are really stretches, but this is not such a stretch. Costco is unusual that they would ask that because it tells me they're honest. A lot of times the salesperson in a car dealership doesn't want to know that you're a Costco member because a Costco member qualifies for a lower price than you sell that car to anyone else for. And that salesperson doesn't want to sell you a car at a lower price because that means a lower commission. So Brandon was honest.

He asked if I was a Costco member. Okay, here we go. We then went for a test drive. Brandon went over how safe the on course are, noting that I said my child would be driving it. Another good thing, reinforcing my belief in preference for color, and then doubling down on safety because it was for my child. Very good sales techniques. Once back to the dealership, we headed back to his desk. He said that as of right now, the best interest rates would likely change at the beginning. I think Stu wrote this up, I think he meant July, at the beginning of July, because

yeah, but we're based on a 740 beacon score, Equifax for these rates. That's a pretty good credit rating, 740, so they do give a discount. Brandon then excused himself to speak with the sales manager. He was only gone for five minutes, refreshingly short period of time, and returned with the sales worksheet and proceeded to go over the figures. The sale price, which means nothing, I don't know why, it probably is illegal to call this a sale price. I don't know. The sale price was what she'd sell it for, right?

I mean, the sale price was MSRP, $29,280, and there were no discounts. They added a $799 junk fee, which by my book, that isn't the selling price that you had. but it is a selling price if you believe it's a fee, which you think is a government fee, but I digress. And tax attack, and a $750 rebate came off the bottom line.

Well, there's good news. I'm not sure which one that you qualified for, but he apparently qualified, I apparently qualified, for one of the rebates. And that's, you know, the fact that that was volunteered is good because a lot of car dealers

just don't tell you about the factory rebates. Why? Because in the business office, the F&I office, when you're signing all those reams and reams of paper, there's one little piece of paper that says in the fine print, which you don't read, that you assign all rebates and incentives to the dealer. So if it's a customer rebate incentive, they probably were advertising it, but you missed the advertisement.

So the dealer realized you missed that advertisement. So if they don't tell you about the rebate, they could pick that up and put it on the bottom line and make $750 more on the car. All they have to do is slide a little piece of paper there, this and this, and this, and this, and you sign something, they just gave the $750 rebate to the dealer.

They didn't do that. They were honest about that. Where am I now? Oh, yeah. My price was about $50 over MSRP. Oh, that's not a bad price. I smiled and said his deal was looking pretty good. Now, I say that's not a bad price.

Let me say this. That is not a good price. General Motors is discounting cars. General Motors has incentives. General Motors has a high supply of cars and dealerships. So if you're shopping for General Motors car, you should get a discount, a good discount, off of MSRP. By good, I mean at least a thousand or a couple of. $5,000. You should get that if you're buying a gentlemotors car.

Brandon asked how soon I'd be looking to buy. I said my husband and I were looking to buy in the next week or two, but if there were good deals, we might buy sooner. He reminded me that there's always room to adjust the numbers. Do you love that euphemism? I mean, Haggill and Hassel has a negative, negotiate has a negative connotation, but room to adjust some numbers. We're not haggling.

We're adjusting the numbers. I love it. I nodded recognizing the sales tactic, and then Brandon pointed out again that he was able to get me a $750 cash rebate. Then he switched things up and asked where I was looking to be as far as monthly payments were concerned. I replied that I was more interested in the out-the-door price

than the payments, as we always pay off sooner than we finance them for. Brandon said he understood, and would love to do business with me. He mentioned he had been there with the dealership for only six days. Well, he might have been there for six days, but he's been at other dealerships. This is an experienced salesperson, and he's good. And it's not unusual to find a new salesman that's really been in the business a long time

because salespeople opt from dealership to dealership. My face must have betrayed some surprise, and he laughed saying he'd been selling cars for many years. I laughed. I can tell. He said he didn't have cards yet, but. but gave me a cell number. He said, when I was ready, he would definitely work with me

to get me the price I like. So there you have it. And as Nancy reminded you earlier, we'd love to hear your votes. And you can text your votes to 772-49760 and, of course, YouTube.com. And we grade on the curve. So we want to be sure that the dealers get a fair score.

I say fair score because the average dealers just isn't too, I hate to use the word, ethical. If I really want to be harsh, I'd say honest. But that's true. There's a lot of dishonesty and a lot of lack of morals and ethics in card dealerships today. So if we were to use an absolute scale of A to F, I wouldn't be able to recommend there very many dealers. I wouldn't recommend any dealers for you in South Florida. So we used the C average. So the average dealer is not really that good.

But he's still, you've got to buy a car somewhere, right? So we have a recommended dealer list and a do not buy from this deal list at earluncars.com. So when you're grading Linus GMC, Buick Cadillac, and Vera Beach, use the curve. If, relatively speaking, they're doing a good job, you give them a B.

hardly ever an A's. A's are like, hens teeth. Is that the old profession? Scarce as hens teeth. A's are scarce as hens teeth. B's are pretty scarce. So a B would do for a good dealer. And a D generally will be for a bad dealer. And with somebody's really breaking the law blatantly, we don't like to hand out F's because an F, we don't even put them on the list. anyway that's your story do we have any votes coming in we do first I had several people have mentioned that Viro is in Indian River County

Ah India River And I should have known that I've read down there all my life Also Rick Jonathan let me know that we have two people on Zoom and you're familiar with them and they can chat via text

And that's Brenda and Nigham Okay, let's see. We'll start right off with Jonathan and Wellington. He says, the dealership is on the border of decency, and it shows. With a properly placed Monroei, Costco membership partner, and a good credit discount is good news for the buyers. The bad news are the junk fees, and it costs the dealership a full grade. I'll give the dealership a B, which is amazing coming from me. Lose the dealer fees, and I'll raise her grade to an A. see if we have more coming in here oh yeah we do uh bob in maryland says b for the buick and brandon jonathan and palm coast oh he's already there okay that was who he just had we have an anonymous says b plus pretty transparent but junk fees and above msrb let's see joseph says C minus would have been higher without the high dock fee T-cash says C but it's just a made-in-China Buick Tom Steckle C plus no addendums out-the-door price is too high based on GM inventory situation Negan 1 says C minus I gave my info to Jonathan so yeah he's got his info on

that. And let's see. Oh, we have a bunch over here. Jonathan Z. Fradley says, Good grief, Linus GMC. Buick. Charlie Brown thinks it's only a fair deal. That is a funny name, Linus. Yep. Tim Gilliland, refreshing and straightforward, but still too pricey. B-minus. Mark Smith says, I give this dealership a minus guy laryby pardon me folks a minus because of the 799 doc fee Brian said Lacko no haggling it's a C for me cram 1624 still worried about getting in the finance box and watching the add-ons D pop Hartley says B George Bertrillo says I would negotiate the dock fee

insist they lower the price of the car for the amount of the dock fee and he didn't really give a grade from George okay that's all it for the texting that last comment is a very good one

because I maybe he was listening when I spoke earlier in the show about the salesperson is not paid on the dock fee so that $599 on a 25% commission would be $2,000 in price 799 799 so it'd be $3,000 so yeah that's so when you

want to negotiate the dock fee the junk fee when you want to have them take the junk fees out you don't ask them to take the fees out because that would be technically costing the salesperson so much money it would be no no no I can't do it they We can't be done. But if you say, if you'll lower the price by $3,000, I'll buy the car today, then he'll go to his manager and there'll be a long discussion. That might be, you know, you might still have to do some Hagelin and Asling, but you'll get a flat no, not even going to think about it on the junk fee, but you'll hit, we'll talk about it, just convert the junk fee into a price reduction. And then you've got the salesman on your side and maybe even the sales managers, because the sales manager, because the sales manager, don't get paid sometimes on the junk fees.

So you'll have a coalition. You'll have the salesman, the sales manager, you against the dealer, and they've got a better chance. But don't attack the dealer fee per se. They'll never take it off. Yeah. And my vote would be, I'm going to say B minus. I think they did a very good job.

Yeah. What do you say, Nancy? What's your grade? You know how I feel about fees, and for that I give them a C-minus. And folks, anything is negotiable, especially when you go into a dealership. So keep that in mind, negotiate. You can't lose C-minus. I'm going to give them a B.

I got a good feeling about it, and I think it just reinforces. Now that I know it's Indian River County, that sounds a lot further north than Port St. Lucey. Port St. Lucie is still feeling the ramifications of Sodom and Gamora. But Indian River County, that's a lot more peaceful and civilized up there. It is. That's what I heard. We have two minutes left. What would you like to do with that? Everybody take a nap. We had a caller earlier that talked about Costco and how he got the sensors at a very reasonable price. so I say this every week and if you're not if you're not familiar with Costco

find a Costco there's some if you have to drive 100 miles to Costco it's a great store and you don't have to drive there if you join their auto buying program auto buying program for Costco I don't care where you are join the Costco auto buying program it's like 65 bucks and you're going to buy a car you'll save 10 times that by going to Costco Well worth it. Yeah. Well, worth it.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning, history in the making, with our Zoom app. And we'll be right back here next week, 8 a.m. So stay tuned. It'll be another exciting show.