Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.08.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Kenny Ross Mazda, North Huntington, PA

Episode Date: July 8, 2023

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning continues her travels to the Pittsburgh area to visit a suburban Mazda dealer to see how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2023 Mazda 3 sedan on the lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back. I hope you're back. We've got a pretty good audience. We got an inquiry the other day from Queensland, Australia. anonymous feedback so we're we're encompassing the globe Earl Stewart on cars we're

here to help you avoid being ripped off by a car dealer it's kind of hard today the economy whatever you want to call it good bad or hysterically crazy the economy is on the car dealer side and the and by that I mean the supply and demand curve and the same thing with the manufacturers record profits if you ever felt sorry for a car dealer I kind of doubt that you did but if you just in case you did don't feel sorry anymore these guys are making a lot of money and let me be transparent I'm a car dealer and I'll admit it my dealership's making more money than I never did before so do I feel guilty yeah a little bit even though I'm

towing the line with my philosophy which I at first firmly believe in, to be honest and transparent, allow car shoppers to have their right, if they have the right with every other retail product, to shop and compare a price. And that's what it's all about. Unfortunately, today, when you shop and compare a price, unfortunately, if a consumer, all the car prices are high. And manufacturers are just making a ton of money. The dealers are making at least a ton.

and we're here to help you buy a car for as little as you can if you need a car, new or used, and also maintain and repair your car. Your phone calls make the show. If you're new, believe me, I mean, if you're new and you listen to the show, you'll see what I'll talk about.

We have some callers that are so incredibly intelligent and humorous and friendly. I mean, they're just, their personalities, the whole nine yards, it's just really good, but mainly information. I'm not saying this to flatter anybody. I learn things on this show. I've been in this business for half a century. I've been a car dealer.

I mean, I really, really know the business well. I'm not bragging. It ain't bragging if it's true. I really do know a lot about cars. But I learn something new, at least one or two things new, every week on this show. Rick Kearney's saying, in my right, by the way, is our certified. dynastic master technician. And this guy has really got his work cut out for him

because the technology on cars is just absolutely moving at warp speed. The new models are coming out. I've never seen more... I hate to use the word gadgets in the car business for next to we call them toys. But the technology is moving so fast the manufacturers can't control themselves and they're putting so many little really cool some of them are good too safety features a lot of them are entertainment wise and other things

the point is a lot of things are being added to cars today that haven't been field tested and i think they're using you the buyer to field test them not only are they not all working properly, but they're hard to understand even how to use. And Rick can help you there. And I would say, nod your head if I'm right, that's your biggest challenge, is the new stuff, right?

The old stuff, you got down, Pat. I mean, he knows all the, what we talk about with cars, we talk about engines, and we talk about transmissions, and we talk about squeak, rattling rolls, and noises, and motor leaks, and all that kind of stuff. But when you

get into the high-tech stuff, we get stuff on the cars. It's very difficult to diagnose. We have to sometimes get with the manufacturers and sometimes they don't know how to diagnose it. They send specialists out to the field and when they do diagnosis, guess what? They don't have the part to fix it. So we can tell you what's wrong with it, but we'll say it might be three months before we can do anything about it. So it's an adventure and we're here to help make that adventure calmer. call us, please, at our toll-free number, 877-960-9960.

That's 877-960-99-60. Now, there's a lot of other ways. And most of our contacts are not this way, but we like the telephone call. 877-9-60-90-60 because it's good radio. It's good Facebook. It's good YouTube. The personality, your personality comes through, good, bad, or whatever you're going to say.

But your personality comes through, and that's entertainment. I mean, let's face it, this isn't a purely educational show. I like to think we're doing a little bit of entertainment here. I mean, we have to entertain you, otherwise you don't keep listening. People need to be entertained. Two hours, if we can get 15 or 20 minutes of your time, we've done a good job.

But we have to do that, we have to. You know, have you something, give you something interesting. 877-9-6-9-6-8. I promise we will get to that number when it rings as quickly as possible. Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and a co-founder of this show 20 years ago, is sitting right there with a laptop computer. When she sees your call, it will be put on her screen. She'll have your name and number, and we will stop what we're doing.

She tells, Stu Stewart, my son just came in, and he's sitting across from her. If he's talking, Nancy will say, hey, Stu, we got a call. If Rick's talking, hey, Rick, excuse me, we got a call. And me too. Earl, we got a call. We stop what we're doing to get your phone calls at 877-960-9960. So please call us if you have anything to say.

And I don't mean just a question, a comment. We love constructive criticism. And we reach all over the world. I said earlier that we actually had an inquiry from Queensland, Australia. So we reach all over the world. YouTube, YouTube.com, forward slash hurl on cars. That's Rick Kearney's personal domain. He watches that, and he has a lot of, I hate to offend anybody else,

but his callers or his viewers, their streaming YouTube, are really smart. And we've got a lot of good stuff out there. One guy, Donovan, is amazing, and a lot of guys are amazing on the YouTube channel. YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars, and, of course, Facebook.com forward slash earl on cars. And if you just want to go to Erlon Cars, you can get this show. You don't even have to tune it in because they're all on their archive. You can watch the shows. You can watch YouTube for the shows.

We've been doing this for a long time, and we've got a library. of information on earluncars.com mystery shopping reports which i haven't mentioned if you're new you're in for a treat if you can wait just uh where it can come back toward the end of the show about the last half an hour uh we secretly go into a car dealership somewhere this one happens to be in pennsylvania our mystery shopping report today but we uh you know we're all over mainly florida i'll be honest with you most of them are south florida and we go into the car dealership and we tend to buy a car. Agent Lightning is our undercover agent,

and she does a fabulous job of, I hate to say, duping the salespeople, but she comes in and across as an actual car buyer, and boy, she really gets treated the way you will be treated if you go into that dealership, and we tell you exactly how Agent Lightning was treated, whether she was lied to, whether the law was broken in terms of violating,

advertising codes or bait and switch codes or anything else so you know if you've got a good bad or ugly dealership and we publish them we published this in the archive rolling cars.com we have recommended dealers and dealers we don't recommend and this all stems from that mystery shopping report and talking i was talking about entertainment earlier this is probably the ultimate entertainment not always but we have some outrageous experiences of these car dealerships. It's hard to believe that we don't have more highly qualified, high-scoring dealers. Most of the dealers, and I know people don't want to hear this, a lot of people don't want to hear this, but most car dealers don't do it right, folks.

I mean, I'm sorry to say it. I'm a car dealer, and I used to be part of the Don't Do It Right team many years ago. I got my act together. I like to think I'm doing a much better job today. But as a profession, and all you have to do is go to the Gallup and your poll. They've been doing one since 1975, I think. That's a lot of years.

About 50 years, they have been doing a poll as thousands and thousands of consumers what they consider the best and the worst and the ugly and as far as professions and businesses. Of course, car dealers are at the bottom. Who's number one? Nurses, they're number one.

Teachers are up there pretty high, too. But at the bottom, car dealers, congressmen, lobbyist, direct mail companies. Telemarketers. Telemarketing, yeah. That's what I was searching for, telemarketing. They really, really, today they really get you. agree. I can't tell you how many of those calls I get. Anyway, I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy Stewart sitting right next to me. And not only is she monitoring the phones, but she's

the female advocate on the show. She's the only female on the show. She has to be the female advocate. And she makes the case for why women should be respected more, treated with more courtesy and respect than they are now, and why they should be in the business. for them, well, they should be more involved. And she's raised the awareness of the women on this show. We have about 50% women would call. And

to reward those women, she has a special offer she'll tell you about right now. Good morning, everyone. That phone number is 877-960 9960. I have a question for you. Electric, everybody is buying electric. Can you afford

electric? I think you can. The model, The Model Y, $39,530. And if you subtract the incentives, you're going to get out the door for $27,030. That's cheap. And that is unbelievable. That's for the Model Y. Elon Musk is cutting.

In Colorado, they have a special $5,000 in addition to $7,500. The $7,500, yeah, correct. Also, how do you feel about flying cars? cars. Rick mentioned it. I believe it was last week. He was pretty excited as I am. Flying cars. Wow. How about you to? You saw that Aleph? Yes. That is really cool. Yeah. And only 300 grand. And if you want to sign up, $150. If you're real serious, they'll push you ahead on the list for $1,500. By 2025, flying vehicles. I'm doing it. The Federal Aviation Administration has been granted permission, and you can read all about that. If you have access to AI, access to Google, it's everywhere.

The news is everywhere, and it's exciting. There are only two occupants in that vehicle, and it can only travel at, what is it, Rick, 25 miles, I actually haven't seen any specs on them, but in order to fly, it's got to have, you got to reach a certain speed. Yeah. Yeah. Depending on how it's powered. And do you have to have a pilot's license? I don't even know. I know the FAA said, yeah, but I don't know what the details are.

It's a little limited. It isn't exactly the same as a pilot license. So, who. I saw an animated video that they put out of one of these cars driving down the highway, and there's a big wreck crossing the road. and it just goes up and over the wreck. I'm like, that's what I want. And I know that's what you want because you can do that at Bridges. He does bridges.

Right. He does. Anyway, he's airborne when he comes to a bridge. Ladies and gentlemen, again, that number is 877-9-60-9960, and you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback where you can get in touch with us. We're on Facebook. YouTube. We're all over the place. So you do have access to us. And we have two hours, two exciting hours of a lot of information. And as I always say, you make the show. You guys are a very, very important part of this show. Ladies, don't forget, you can win yourself $50 this morning. And if you are a new female caller, that's the first two new female callers. And I want to take a minute. I want to thank Betty.

Betty sent me a check for Big Dog Ranch. And Betty, we all thank you here. It looks like as if that you're just about as serious as we are with Big Dog Ranch. And I thank you for that, and I'll make sure that gets into the right hands. Also, we have Marshall who's coming in, and this is going to be quite an event. Marshall is a very large Dane. not from not from i'm sure he's not a horse i saw a picture i think it's a horse

right i think our audience might because he's not a dain he's not a gentleman from uh denmark it's a great dain he is a great he's a great he's a great dain he's four-legged with a tail and he's going to be in here sneaking up behind me in about an hour and about an hour and 20 minutes yeah he's going to be looking for stout you know you don't want to be adopt them if you're in small apartment. I don't think he would accept that. Exactly. He would, he would object. I think he might make a mess of a very small apartment. Just by moving around, you know, the bowl of the china shop thing, it's a great

day and in the studio. So stay tuned for that, ladies and gentlemen, and we have another great mystery shopper and report, and that comes to us from, I believe, North Huntington, Pennsylvania, which isn't too far off from, you know, Erwin and a few other towns north of Pittsburgh. So again, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers take advantage of that. Hey, 7-7-960, and you can text us at 772-49-6-5-30. We're going to go right to the phones where everyone is patiently waiting to speak to us, and we've got about four or five calls on hold. So we are going to take our first caller. We're going to try to keep each call brief, and we'll take advantage of every second.

Jersey, Mike, welcome back. Hi, dear. Thanks. Taking my call. I want to say a few things. First, about the Big Dog Ranch, I made a substantial donation because I adopted a dog for my roommate. Oh, Bouchy, thank you.

That's quite okay. It's a well-spent money. I have a boxer, purebree, almost 100 pounds now. It's a big guy, and that's a female male. So they get together in my backyard, and it's hilarious what goes off. It's absolutely hilarious. I've got films of it. It's unbelievable.

Anyway, getting back to business and cars. Earl, I talked to you before I said, you were one of the best guys ever met. I bought a 2018 Hyundai from you, and you gave me the, the fax report on, or whatever that thing is called. And it was one owner, never leased. And I brought it up for 33,000 miles, never did anything in that car. And I gave it to my daughter who got married that it was a wedding price to them. When I went ahead and bought another Cadillac instead for myself. yourself, okay? I'm very happy with the way you help me out there, Earl. I recommend your

location to anybody out there. You're going to get a fair shake if you go see Earl and Earl Stewart's car dealer. Thank you. Thank you. You're quite welcome. Now, you also advise me about working on my catalog because I had a problem with getting hot air out of one side of the air conditioner and good cold air only when I'm driving down a road out of the driver's side. So I turned the vents off on the right that was okay to get around i got that finally fixed believe it or not for 110 dollars i placed up in north jersey because they just came back from north jersey to see some friends and relatives up there for 110 dollars they diagnosed it to be what was called on the right hand side there's a power they call a power blow or power something or other they

replaced that for 110 bucks they had to take the dashboard down it or something like that It took about two hours, an hour and a half, and I got ice cold air coming out of there without having to put extra refrigerate in there. Matter of fact, I had the cans of refrigerant, and the gentleman there, and he was only recommended to me through friends who have been dealing with him for decades, that he was the best mechanic around. And he fixed the whole thing for $110, and that was what was wrong with it. And the worst thing I could have done was actually put more refrigerant in it, because you've got to be very careful when you do that. that you don't overexceed because you have to have the instruments to make sure that you're not putting too much in. And I don't have that instrument. I mean, mechanics have that.

Right. That worked out real well. Yeah. I'm really happy about that. That specialized machine is about, for an inexpensive one, it's about $4,000 to $5,000. And the better machines can go as high as $10,000 to $12,000. That would be less expensive to just replace your recognition system in the car. Wow.

All right. Now, here's my problem. I've had Cadillax since 1970, I'm sorry, 1978, new ones. I put 65, $70,000 on them each year in my own business. Three years later, I'd burn them up around $190,000. I'd trade it for another one. That's when they made Cadillacs that were comfortable. You know, they had big engines.

You know, they were like 4,800 pounds. This thing I have here is all plastic. I got a 2014 AST. The only thing that's metal on it is the hoods so it doesn't melt. Otherwise, everything on the car that you can go around. a magnetic magnet there's no metal on that car and it's very uncomfortable drive it's horrible i have to we probably get better fuel economy though right no no you would think so no i got a turbo in it i don't get on it i mean very careful drive i've never had a speeding ticket in my

life okay so but i move along i can do whole shots of 75 if i have to but anyway but quite simply is this it only gets 22 miles to the gallon no you guys start driving catalects me that He advised me already on this car that when you're at, when you come to a stoplight, you get you put it on a break, it rumbles. And he said, well, you've got to clean the throttle throat and from the car, or whatever, buildup. And that was done. And you know what?

After it was done, it's even worse now. I mean, the vibration is even worse. So he said it could be motor mouse. Not that's the one thing I didn't look at yet. Motor mouse. What I'm thinking about just getting rooted in this piece, what I called. P-A-R-P-A, I think it's

motor mouth. This car is bad news, all right? It's just, you know, I can't get comfortable the seat. I'm not a big guy.

You got to get back in there, man. I'm just saying, it's uncomfortable. I have to put on that leather seat as opposed to the pillow seats that were in the older Cadillacs, that's why I bought them,

and because I had to put that kind of mileage on my business, the seat, I have to put my wheelchair pillow that's on my wheelchair. chair on that seat in order to handle that seat.

That's how I'm being that car. I think we have Mary Barre, the CEO of GM on the line to answer your questions. Well, I'll tell you what. Whoever got, plus I get ripped off on the car. I mean, the molding on the inside of the car has fallen off. You know, all the fake leather, it's not fake, it's fake leather, it's not the leather. It just comes like crazy going to move back off. That seems to be like the whole and everything's going to light materials and it's cost

cutting and things have changed yeah so many changes uh jersey mike so many changes we just uh you know it's difficult to keep up uh you know i've got about five phone calls behind you and uh well question i want to go get i get don't do it don't do it's plastic it's cheap oh my god mike how much is it going to cost you to keep that on the road i'll leave you with that question please give us a call back we love talking to What was that Y car that you talked? What was the name? Tesla Y.

Tesla, Model Y. Tesla Model Y. Yeah, take a look at it, the Model Y. I didn't get the first word. I'll talk to you next thing. Tesla. Model 3 is the cheapest, though. Model 3 is the cheapest.

It is definitely. I don't know the name of the manufacturer of the car. Tesla. Yeah, definitely. Tesla. Okay, got you. Thanks for money, guys. You're welcome.

You're welcome. We're going to talk to Gene, who has talked to us before. and thank you so much for your patience. Good morning, Jane. Hi, good morning. I hope you all are doing well. We are. We are.

Good. I have a question about how manufacturers or how dealers can deal with manufacturers as to what cars, what type of cars and trucks they get into their dealership, how they are equipped, the colors, and that kind of thing. What kind of latitude do you have and, you know, could it be specific to type of region, where you live. Yes. I can give you just from the Toyota point of view because we deal with this every day.

Toyota decides based on their own research, how many cars are going to produce for a region like the United States, and each region within that gets allocated based on their sales. So it's called a turn and earn. They build a certain amount of cars based on how much they want to sell and how much they think will sell. and I'm also describing a time where there wasn't still a shortage of new vehicles for a lot of manufacturers on dealers' lots. But the dealers can't really just order what they want.

In a specific model line, they can preference, they can say I would prefer to have mainly silver cars with no sunroofs, and I'm just making things up here. And that's, so that is taken to an account, but it's not a guarantee. So every two weeks for Toyota, we get allocations of a big batch of vehicles based on how well we did selling those models in the prior time period. Does any of this make sense?

Yes, it does, yes. And I guess it's not like European cars where, you know, I don't know if you still could, but used to be able to actually order a car that you wanted, you know, the color and all that stuff. Correct. Things are so automated and doing special things like for the big manufacturing. are probably difficult because even a direct order with a large manufacturer like Toyota, it's still using their production system. So it's going to try and match your order with something that's going to get built.

And you're still kind of limited on everything. You can't really build something to order. I mean, I think eventually with enough time, you probably could. Yeah, but to you as dealers, do have some kind of a say about, you know, somewhat of a sense. Somewhat, yeah, basically it's a, you raise your hand for preferences, yeah. And what the demand is in your area. And one other questions I have for Rick, a quick one. I don't know, I read this years ago, and I think I'd be doing it a couple of times.

With the air conditioner, I'll have it on, and I hate to have it on when I get it into the garage with all the water and everything. So I turn it off, and what I do is I put the fan on that's out the AC. Is that a good idea? Does that help anything? Does that dry anything in the system? Yes, it does. That will actually stop the flow of the refrigerant through the evaporator core, and the temperature on it will begin to come up a little bit, and that will reduce the amount of condensation that will build up there, and the fan blowing on it will help keep the water off of it,

so you won't have as much dripping down into the garage when you get home. Right, right, that's what I do. And also, would it help with the, possible with the odor of mold or something like that. Does that help with that as well? Absolutely. Yep. Okay. So it's a good thing to keep doing.

Yes, you're doing a great job. Okay. Thank you all so much. Yes. It's Nancy Stewart. You know, I want to commend you on being an educated consumer. That's just amazing. There's not a whole lot of our people that we, you know, that we deal with directly

that would do something like that. and I certainly hope that you call again and spread the word to the other ladies to give us a call here we're building a huge platform at this point I will and I think you grew up the kind of the way I did my dad was always into cars and stuff I had two brothers but yet I like cars better than they did and I had some neat cars growing up when I was younger

so I can relate to that oh I recall I recall you now because we we talked a lot about cars and the fact that you grew up you know, being part of all that culture. Okay, thank you very much. Hope you have a nice weekend. Hope to hear from you soon.

Thank you, Gene. We're going to go to Les, who's been holding, and he is calling from Boynton Beach. Good morning, Les. Yes, good morning. How are you today? We're great, thank you. All right, I want thank you for taking my call.

I know you're kind of busy, so I'll get right to it. I have a 2017 sonata. At one point, I was just driving a car, and I got three lights on my dashboard, one for the anti-lock brakes, the electronic stability control, and the blind spot mirror. Now, the blind spot mirror will light up when I start the car, but it doesn't really work after that. So my question is, why did all of these happen possibly at the same time, and since I have to take it into the dealer to have to have. fixed what am I looking at as far as repairs a lot of these systems all work together and use similar sensors so sometimes we'll get what's called a sympathetic code when a when one system sees a problem the other systems will

actually activate their lights and they'll save the information that it'll trigger a trouble code in that system as well and it saves all the data that those sensors are seeing and it makes it easier for the technician to diagnose the problem when they're going in to look for it if they've got more information in multiple systems on as for the cost of it most places will usually run around a one-hour diagnostic charge for to look at it and give you a basic idea of what you're looking at I would figure anywhere from about $100 to $150 for them to

connect the scan tool, pull all that data down and give you a basic interpretation, and odds are, because it's a dealership, they've probably seen that exact same thing happen five or six times before. If it's a good technician, he could pretty much diagnose it right off the bat with that one hour's time and have a pretty good idea of what's, you know, what the solution will be that'll take care of it for you. all right the another I guess is a similar question is

I bought the car use and it came from White Plains, New York and you'll look at the facts report and everything was okay but I always wondered if there was a possibility it might have been in a flood and that might have caused all these issues

is that a possibility that is a it's always a possibility It's a slim one, but it can be there. Obviously, it may not always show up on the paperwork in the car, like the car fax and all that. People find ways to get around that. Some of the things you can do is kind of get down with a flashlight,

look underneath the seat of the car, look and see if there's any signs of rust, pull up the carpeting in the trunk, down where the spare tire is, and look down on all those little cubbies down in there, for any signs of rust or corrosion. It's hard to tell if the car, you know,

months later as to whether there was any flood issues, but if it's been more than four or five months and the car hasn't had any issues crop up from it, then you're usually pretty safe on water. Water damage has usually caused problems within

the first month or so. Yeah, that can happen, so that's okay. All right. Okay, very good. Well, I, I think that's answered all my questions. Well, thank you for your show. I've learned a lot from it. I'm not in the market for buying a car, but my son is,

and a lot of the information that you've given, I relate to him, and it's going to help him out a lot. So thanks again for your show, and I'll be a continual listener. Thanks for calling us. Thank you. Thank you so much, Vice. We're allowed to be part of that buying decision.

We're going to go to John in Palm, who is a regular caller. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. I just want to mention that if you live in other part of Florida or anywhere in the country, you get frightened, really, to buy a car in South Florida. But we do mention the good dealers, and there are all plenty of them, J.M. Lexus, Mullinix, but it seems like a majority of them are shady. We prove that like with Nabilton. But I just want to mention, I want to give a heads up for a deal. as a philanthropist. Unfortunately, he passed away in September of 2020. He started his dealerships in 1972 with Honda, I believe. It was one month in business. He was the largest Honda dealer

in the United States. I'm sure Earl must know him because he was close in age. He was only 78 when he died, and it was called Rick Case. He started in 1981 Bikes for Kids. All his 14, dealers, you dropped off your old bike, they repaired them, and they donated to Poison Girls Club. In 2015, he was a sponsor of Toys for Tarts. It continues on and on with him. They have a show in March, which, by the way, his wife still runs it. It's in Bocault, it's exclusive show.

All the proceeds go to the Poison Girls Club of Broward County, and it's just, he's a fantastic philanthropist. I'm sure that Earl knew him. And I believe that his wife still runs the dealerships. I think she's still CEO. So I have to mention that this philanthropy of this man, which was unbelievable, and it all started in 81 when he repaired the bikes at their expense. You dropped them off at the dealers, and they donated to the Boys and Girls Club to Fix Pikes.

So I just want to give a shout out to people that they know they're all great dealers. Maybe he's passed on, but his legend continues, and his wife continues with the philanthropy. John, thank you so much. Rick Case was a fabulous person, and that journey, as you said, began so long ago, and it was just amazing that he made so many children happy, and I'm sure Earl has something to say about Rick. No, just the fact that his wife Rita, she was very influential throughout his whole career. She was really the business end of things. Rick was the salesperson. Rick was, he was marketing, and his personality really exuded,

and he's largely responsible for the volume they did, the fact that you say he was one of the largest Honda dealers. But his wife, Rita, I mean, she was the power behind the throne there. She really controlled the finances and expenses, and I think a lot of the people, profit that they made, which subsequently went to, as you say, to charities. He's made some

great donations to Cleveland Clinic. I think he has a wing at the Cleveland Clinic. He has a... He has a cafeteria. The cafeteria, yeah. His names everywhere. So Rita Kay's, she doesn't get mentioned often enough. She's running things now, but she really ran

things before, too. But she's a great woman. Well, it continues with Nancy Stewart, the voice behind Earl Stewart, and Big Dog Ranch. So it continues. There are many great people out there, such as Earl and Nancy and Rick and his wife who traditionally carries on for him. Thank you so much, John. That was quite a compliment. My pleasure. Tice, you keep up your good work. Thank you. We enjoy your conversation, and we enjoy your calls every week. You're always here to inform us. Our number is 877.

960 9960 and you can text us at 772-4976530 and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com and the second half of the show we're going to have Marshall in. He's a great Dane and he's about two years old and he is coming in to entertain us and to greet Stu, I believe. He told me that he knows him personally. Isn't that right, Stu? That's what I'm right. Marshall knows you. That's what I hear.

Word on the street. Okay, we're going to go to Eric, who's in Fort Pierce, and I believe you may be a first-time caller, Eric, or have you called us before? It's been a while, definitely. I've had a lot of life changes to deal with, but I'm still up and right and standing and running. No problem. The big issue I had was, and I touched face and exchanged texts with Earl. briefly. They made some recommendations.

I don't know how well some of them were perceived. Basically, I'll go ahead and name them. This is Beth Smith Kia in Fort Pierce. And my car is subject to a recall, a national transportation safety board recall that Toyota has been mandated.

I mean, he'd call it Toyota. Kia has been mandated to, you know, calling people and notify them that their engines have a possibility of touching fire. Right. And that they need It's an engine replacement program. Is this the same as the oil consumption recall? No, I'm not sure.

It's been a while since I looked up all the what's and where's of it. I think there was part of it, which I first noticed that last week when my car started a little tapping. I thought, oh, no, my valve's bad. And then it started, this deal wouldn't go over like 25 miles an hour. And I got to work, and I just started, you know, on breaks. and lunch trying to figure out what the heck I can do about this. And, you know, my efforts to get them to provide any type of relief have been met with just total confusion and incompetence, in my opinion.

Is that all at the same dealership? Yeah, yeah. Well, the deal is in this area, I would have to drive 20 miles south to Stewart, where there's a Wallace Kia. I'd have to drive 20 miles north to a zero. a beach. There are, you know, we're not a big multi-populated area up here. But long story short is, I mean, they're first, you know, supposed to provide me with a rental car. And I've got like five strips of met techs going back and forth with, oh, I called Enterprise and they can't

get it. They don't have any available. And I went online that morning and they showed a compact car available, you know, so I'm not going to go and rent one if they can provide it. And If push comes to shove, I mean, by yesterday afternoon, I'm like, I have to be, I got to get home. So anyway, I went and I rented my own car. Hopefully I'll get reimbursed for it. I have to have a car. Terrible. Second of all, the deal with the engine, we're saying we can't get the engine.

It's on backward. So that may or may not be legitimate. I mean, it's likely because there are, that's what's happening everywhere or referenced that earlier with cars. It could have been alleviated by them working on a little bit. And this guy's going on and on, and, you know, I can't do this. I can't do that. And, um, I think you got to go down, you know, go down to Wallace. I mean, it's only, like you said, 20 minutes from you.

I'd have to yank the car out. Yeah. I mean, listen, you have a warranty situation in the backward and in part, so it's already difficult to begin with. If you have a dealership that doesn't, um, have a good relationship with the manufacturer, um, they don't get the type of attention. if they don't have an energetic enough service manager or service and parts director to be on the phone pushing Kia

to get the parts and get these cars to their shop, there's a big difference between dealership. So you're not just dealing with Kia, you're dealing with Beth Smith Kia, and there is other Kia dealerships not that far from you that might handle the situation better for you. A lot of us, the trust between the dealer and the manufacturer, You know, we talk a lot on the show about consumers being taken advantage of by car dealers.

Manufacturers are taking advantage of, too. And what Stu is saying is the manufacturers have dealers they know they can trust. And if a service manager can call the manufacturer and explain the situation and recommend a repair that the factory representative knows is at least honest, if it isn't accurate, but probably accurate, too. He can get action for the customer a lot faster. You can imagine a lot of dealers out there, not only do they cheat their customers, they cheat the manufacturer with phony warranty claims. You know, people, there was a dealer here in Palm Beach County, Napleton.

I've talked about him for years. I think it was a Nissan manufacturer. He had several franchises. Was trying to cancel his franchise because he had, he was deliberately, blowing up engines of customers' cars so that he could fix them and being reimbursed by Nissan. So this type of behavior creates a real problem for you, the customer, because you're dealing with a dealer. You think you're dealing with the manufacturer, but you're not really because he doesn't have a good

relationship. So Sue's advice is perfect. Try a different dealer. Wallace is a good way to go because Wallace has a reputation with the manufacturers of being honest. can I read you this one one little paragraph short bit of what I've looked it up on the text sure this is what the guy is telling me is to be clear a rental under this guideline is classified as a courtesy transportation not owed and obligated to anyone is depending on the availability of a car which benefits of kids not have used as enterprise and I will be more happy to film to fill my management team and I don't know this guy is just that that's that's exactly the type of thing that is that a good manager would push to get you a rental car.

He would, he would push, they'd put you in a use, they would do something for you. You got to get to another dealership, yeah. All right, well, I'll, I don't know if I got to try to contact the service manager, you know, because I got a, what a friend of mine originally sent me was photocopies of the original recall. You know, I mean, but they're on my phone, which is really hard to get them out of there, you know. Get in touch with, get in touch with Wallace first. Okay. They get the job.

It's a big paying warranty job from Kia. So to pay $150 to tow your car, they'll probably pick up the tow bill for you if they're going to get the job. Well, this is, you know, I mean, they did that's what Kia has been totally unresponsive about offering me solutions. Yeah. You know, I have to lay out money and I just laid out money and I, I, I, you know, it's impossible. Now I get, I have either a money after you know, either have to extend this. car rental thing.

Yeah, it could get worse, so you need to, you know, just nip it, nip it, cut, cut cords now. Tell the folks at Wallace that you're a friend of Earl Stewart, and Earl Stewart recommend you call him. Bill Wallace and I go way back. I've done it for 30 or 40 years, and just tell him you're my buddy, and I ask you to ask them but take care of you. Eric, you're welcome, Eric, and we feel your pain, and it's a terribly frustrating situation, and it's easy enough to save patience. that following Stu's instructions is going to take you a long way. And it's amazing that this is July 8, 2023, and we're still talking about part shortages.

We're talking about chip shortages. I mean, things are easing up, but we're nowhere where we should be. Thank you, Eric. Our number here is 877-960, and our text number is 772-497-60, and we're going to listen to what Rick has to say about this. On that note of a rental car, I know one case where we had a car that needed an engine ECM, the computer, and it was under a safety recall. So we actually had to hold onto the customer's car. Toyota covered the rental car. That vehicle stayed on our lot waiting for that computer to arrive for six months.

The customer was in a rental car for six months. waiting on that part. Unbelievable. So, yeah, it's a rarity, but it does happen that way. And the rental car was covered by Toyota, so that's... The person that owns that vehicle doesn't want to hear about the, you know, rarity, you know, it's just, it's amazing. 877-960 and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com.

We're going to go to Phil and Jupiter. Good morning, Phil. Good morning. I just wanted to ask you a question. I know this car is hard to find, but can you order a Prius Prime yet at your dealership? Yes, but most of those cars being produced are going to California, and it's a needle in the haystack to get one.

So it's a very long, very long wait for it, just considering the number of people that are have an order in. And it's most likely, you know, model year, will change. I mean, until there's a major increase. We know what the production plan is for the rest of this year, and it's one's these, twosies, so it's going to be a while, and it's a shame.

Like over a year or something? Yeah, over a year. Yeah, I would, you know, maybe 18 months. The, um, it's a shame because the plug-in hybrids are such a great interim step for people that are afraid to go into a full electric vehicle, you know, who are worried about you know, charging and

range. Because you use a plug-in as an electric vehicle, when you're in town and you only use the gas if you're going longer than 40, 50 miles. And I've got a regular Prius now, 2017, and I wanted to upgrade. But I just figured that would be the case. But what about the regular new Prius? I mean, is that readily available? The new body style of the 2023 Prius, it's a totally redesigned body.

It looks pretty cool. Right now the production is still pretty low. We're not getting a lot of them. Bad time to buy car, be honest, where they're just not. It's been a bad time for the past almost three years. And if you can avoid it, wait. But if you can't, you have to compromise. It's very unlikely you'll be able to get the specific model year, make, equipped car you want.

You'll have to compromise in color or model or even make if you want to go within a reasonable amount of time. There are cars out there that if you have to have it, as Stu said, we had one customer called this show regularly. He did 14 months over a year for a car, and when the car came in, he didn't want it. He didn't want it because they changed something, I think it was a headrest, and didn't take it. That's a horror story. But three months is difficult. Marty enjoyed the whole process.

Yeah, Marty was amazing. The Prius, the new body style, it's been out for a few months, and I think we've delivered six in the last several months, and that's not because we don't know how to sell cars. We just can't, that's all we can get so far. It would be faster to get that new Prius than the Prius Prime. So keep that right. All right. Well, good.

I just wanted to find out what the story was on that. Appreciate it. Oh, you mentioned the price on the Tesla model, the Tesla model, why, $37,000. I mean, is that? It's a, I think. Model 3. And that's, model 3. Model 3.

I'm sorry. Yeah, bottle 3. And that's in Colorado, because they just added a $5,000 rebate. the Model 3 qualifies for the $7,500 Tesla rebate. Colorado just hit a $5,000 rebate, so you got $12,500, and then the Model S was reduced in price recently by Tesla, so you can buy a Model S. What was the number of $27,000?

$20,000, $27,000, which is. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, oh, my gosh, is right. You can also buy a use one for a lot less. All right. Well, thank you. I appreciate the information. Thank you, Phil.

You got it. We're going to go to Norman, who is calling us from Del Rey. Good morning, Norman. Good morning. I want to give a shout out to Coggin Accura. I bought my MDX online over the phone through them. I contacted like 10 different dealers in Palm Beach, and they're a waste of your time. So which one did you finally get?

I got an MDX. At which Accura dealer? Coggin. Coggin Accura, okay. It's Fort Pierce, Florida. These guys are really upstanding, up front. They gave me a list of all the charges before I bought the vehicle, tags, et cetera, et cetera.

And they stood by their deal. And they didn't change it. That's all you can ask for. That's pretty good. And then I sold them my used Lexus, 460. They gave me a price over. the phone and they honored it when they picked it up really like crazy good well that gets like a a plus or an a from if it was a mystery shopping report yeah it's a for sure a plus okay i think

coggins owned by a public company now i knew the original cougan luther cogan uh he was a bonnaguer many many many years ago sounds like a like a villain's name yeah luther Luther and Coggin. They had my thank 20 dealerships, Texas, Florida. Yeah. But really legitimate guys, it was like, I was blown away that they were so honest. Yeah, I don't think we've ever mystery shopped them up there. That's good to hear.

Yep, I just wanted to pass a... Well, we got a lot of listeners on the Treasure Coast there that are listening right now, so there we go. Now, we can't certify your endorsement, but we can... We'll put it out there, and we'll probably follow it up with the shop, yeah. I would certainly make a suggestion, too. give them an opportunity. All right. The dealers in Palm Beach and Del Rey and Bocca and Pompano, they're not worth of salt

that are written on. It's crazy. It's very dangerous, yeah. Outrageous. Agent Lightning, if you're listening. Outrageous is the right. Outrageous is certainly the right words. Well, that's the word we can use on the radio.

Yep. Thank you very much. I love your show. You guys are great. It's a real education. Thank you so much. Thank you, Norman. Thank you.

Thank you very much to all of you out there. If you didn't hear me earlier, we definitely appreciate you, the listeners, the callers, Facebook, YouTube. You are a huge part of the show. Our number here is 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-6530. Don't forget, we have a great mystery shopping report coming up from North Huntington, Pennsylvania, and we do have Big Dog Ranch coming in again today, and we are going to be entertained by a Great Dane. Marshal.

Marshal, the dog. Okay. Guys, what you have? Oh, I'd like to kick off Amory's, her text here, because I got a few backed up. But Amory says, good morning, good news. Jolopnik reports that the Federal Trade Commission, FTC, hit an extended warranty company with a $6.6 million judgment,

and the company faces a lifetime ban on outbound marketing and selling vehicle warranties. According to the FTC, a company called Coal Consulting Group, which ran America Vehicle Protection, scammed consumers out of millions of dollars by selling what was claimed to be bumper-to-bumper coverage. Ooh, that happens in car dealerships, doesn't it? The policy that cost hundreds of thousand dollars

offered a protection that was anything but the article goes on the point that there are other potential scammers still out there. The article suggests that if you do get a call offering you an extended warranty, I'm calling about your car as extended warranty. Just hang up. Now, Amory says, tell them that your car is really old or really expensive, and they'll quickly hang up. And Amory wants to know if we have any suggestions on getting these scammers to stop calling

or just to hang up. That's what I say, hang up. You can play with them, and Nancy and Joyce enjoys storage. them. But I, you know, you can either entertain yourself by torturing them or the best thing to do is hang up and try to put them on a call block. I mean, if your smartphone works that way, every time I get a ridiculous call, I block that caller from feature. I do the same thing. It depends on what you want, you know. And most of the time for me, as I depend on what form of torture I use, they don't call me back. You want payback. That's what you want. Let them know. We can do this the easy way. It's a deterrent.

It's a hard way. Yeah, like Earl said, the most of the smartphones, at least I know the iPhone, like a lot of them gets, it says possible spam. If it comes from weird, listen, if you don't typically get calls from, you know, odd area codes, you know, it's just your grandkids calling you. You know, don't answer the, you know, the 7, 8, 9 area codes and, and they're mostly scam. But that's a good one, Amory. That's definitely what's going on. Yeah, thank you, Emory. Paul and Lake Worth heard us talking about those flying cars and he says flying cars stupid

if people can't drive how can you expect them to fly without catastrophe just look at how many people drive cars into houses on the ground yeah I had somebody drove in my house on the ground about 15 years ago oh that's right yeah somebody really did crash into my house nobody was hurt but the flying cars I answered seriously I think Paul might think I was kidding I'm pretty sure that these flying cars are autonomous, that it's like a drone where it has a set track. And if you've ever seen these drone shows, they're incredibly precise. I don't think they're going to let just everybody just start flying around randomly around tall buildings.

Believe it or not, you have to have more, you have to take a test and have more certification to fly a drone right now, a little bitty two-pound drone, than you do to fly one of those ultralight airplanes. Oh, really? The ultralights look like a canvas kite with a chainsaw motor. Yeah. Anybody can fly one of those without any licensing whatsoever. Wow.

But you have to have a special license. That's what I think Paul might be imagining is just people just kind of like in these things. Like the Jetsons. I saw some videos. Terrifying. Seriously, they showed their vision of what these things would look like. And I've seen other flying taxi things in Dubai. They already use these.

And I've seen like real life videos of these. autonomous taxis, they're flying taxis. They're basically drones that humans ride in and there's no pilot. Well, certain areas, if you're out of the wide open plains of the west, I think it's a great idea. But they communicate with each other. They form lanes, virtual lanes in the air. Well, pretty soon you're going to have bumper to bumper in the air. And if I got to be bumper to bumper, I want to be on the ground. I don't want to have a problem in the thing. I don't want to have a problem 100,000 feet. No, that's how I feel about flying in general.

Exactly. And Rick, to what you said about the drones, it's amazing the restrictions. I was reading about that. They have, they're really, was it always that tight? Or are they tightening up? Well, the FAA, this would be a whole thing. We won't even get anywhere near to it. But the FAA started out when drones first started getting out there.

They said we had to do something. So they determine that drones are considered an aircraft, an airplane, just like a... Well, the reason I did that think about, everybody can get a drone. They're cheap. And if you had 200 million drones, people playing with them, you would be knocking down aircraft. Oh, yeah. You have to have a tail number on my drone. You've got to sign a tail number.

You have put the sticker on your drone. So, folks, if you're looking to getting into drones, go to the FAA website on drones and read all of that before you do anything. Take my word for it. You can be a little more involved in you anticipate. I've got several of them, and you have to follow the rules. Yeah, you've been your pretty experienced. Do you have more for us, too?

Yeah, I got one from John. John says, good morning, my question is on Hyundai engine oil consumption. I have a 2020 Palisade. I have had my engine go so low on all to the point I thought I might have done damage to it. I also know there's a lawsuit going on due to the engine issues. your take on this, thanks in advance. I do know that there is a recall on the oil consumption and there is a big class action. This is all happening now with, you know, Kia's and Hyundai's. I don't think that we're like intimately familiar with the details of it, but it sounds like

you're in a situation along with hundreds of thousands or possibly millions of others. Here's a dirty little secret about the whole industry, including Toyota. You would be surprised the tolerances. You know, when you manufacture something, everything, no car comes off the assembly line exactly like the other car that just came off. Everything has got tolerances. And the engineers decide what it's going to be. So when they built your car, whatever it was, they said, oil consumption can vary between A and B. Now, the problem isn't with that because that's just the way manufacturing goes. The problem is the distance. And I, Rick would probably no better than I, but with a Toyota, you can buy a Toyota that will go five or ten times

further without an oil change than another Toyota, and they're both with intolerances. To me, that's not right. You could have one car come off the assembly line, the very next car come off the assembly line, and if you track the oil consumption on those two vehicles, one can go 10,000 miles, and use a tablespoon of oil, the next one could go 10,000 miles and use four quarts of oil. And they're still within what the engineers say is the specification. It says in the owner's manual that's in the glove box, that your car may use up to one quart of oil per thousand miles.

That's ridiculous. That's crazy. And the other side of it, too, is that, Oils now, the synthetic oils, are getting much thinner and thinner and thinner as we go. More expensive. The weight of oil used to be back in the 50s and 60s. Everyone was running 30 or 40 weight motor oil, and that was referring to the viscosity, how thick the oil was. The lower the number, the thinner the oil.

We now have oil 0W20, 0W16 in a lot of cars. And some of the newest ones coming out, ZeroW8, which is almost the thickness of like cooking oil. Or you can buy an electric car and you don't ever have to have an oil change. There you go, true. But this tolerance thing, I think that's one of the dirty little secrets of all the manufacturers. If you really want to be careful when you buy a car, find out before you sign on the dotted line, what is the oil change at which what is the oil consumption

at which you have a problem and if if you if it's written has said I think what'd you say 1,000 1 quart every thousand 1 quart every 1,000 miles that's ridiculous but the problem is they they use that as what's called a weasel clause that's their that's their lawyer term

that it lets them weasel out of a problem later on you won't know until you started driving that car oh it is yeah we love the mechanics love the weasel claws but you won't know

until you've been driving that car for a while and you say you're you're someone that does check your oil relatively often and you've driven the car for 10,000 miles so now you check your oil

and you notice okay that oil level stays perfect right at the top no matter when I check, it's always right. There should be a Federal Trade Commission standard that oil change can be, and the manufacturers of a particular car cannot vary between this, further than between this and this. It doesn't make sense that buyer one goes into a dealership and gets a car

that can get what's really good for a complete mileage on one filling of oil. oil. A 10,000 mile interval and uses maybe a cup at the most? Yeah. And somebody else comes in and he's going to have to get his world well added every week or I mean or every month. Yeah, every month, every two months. Based on how much he drives. It shouldn't be. There should be a law against it. And the Weasel Clause, that's what it is. So you lawyers out there, class action suit, go get them. Go get the manufacturers.

Of course, as you say, once we've reached the point with electric cars, it'll become a moot point. Exactly. And the best part, once we've got the autonomous cars and you won't even have to own a car. I hope that happens in my lifetime. I would love the idea of not having to own a car. Absolutely. Ladies, if you didn't hear after Earl opened the show this morning, we both are here to tell you, You're an important part of the show, ladies.

And for that, we want to encourage you to give us a call. Help us build the platform here for ladies. And we have done just that. Our number here is 877-9-60-99-60, and you can win yourself $50 for the first two new lady callers. Now back to Stu. Okay, we have more text, knocking them down here. We have, let's see.

Oh, this was interesting. Robbie and Stewart, a long-time listener, sent over an article that he saw about Toyota's breakthrough on solid-state batteries. I let them know that we had Inside Word, you know, several weeks ago through our Toyota rep that Toyota was close to announcing this. Now, whether and this is part of the strategy of their big shift to EV, or it's legit, but Toyota has announced that they had a major breakthrough in battery technology, going away from the lithium ion battery, which uses liquid, you know, all that stuff can catch on fire. all the charging, you know, how long it takes to charge all that. They have a solid state battery that they're going to put in production in the next couple of years, 750 mile range, possibly up to a thousand mile range that charges in about 10 minutes. Wow.

So if that's true and it's proprietary, it doesn't matter that Toyota was so late to the game because that changes the game. Well, they've offered that technology to somebody else. I read that the other day. They're not going to hoard that technology. They will share it. They will share it. Yeah. Maybe they can give themselves a five-year head start.

That would be nice for Toyota dealers. Just like Elon Musk here on the Chargers. I mean, you have to do this. When you do this, you win the trust and the goodwill of the buyers. But the whole industry rises and it benefits himself. What's up, Rick? Are they going to put that in a better looking car than the B.C. 4-X? Yes, they are. Yes, they are.

And hopefully have a better name. They've all acknowledged that. They've acknowledged that the names are bad. The name's bad. The car is bad. So they had to get out there. But, yes, it is normal. they're in next on September they're going to be announcing to a bunch of all these new vehicles publicly and so can't wait to see it but thanks Robbie it is really cool even though we're toy dealers and all that I'm actually hoping that they put that in my phone because if you have a something like that in your phone you might have a never charge phone it's a phone that you never have to charge wow um what a thought um Lee okay I have one from Lee says can you pre provide information about the fuel pump customer support program 23 T E It's about the fuel order in around the engine bay of Avalon's between 17 and 21.

So these are customer support programs from Toyota. They're beyond the TSB that we talk about. It's actually like they've given an extra warranty. Sometimes they got very far on time. I think in these cases it goes until 2036 or something like that. So you don't have to do anything except for bringing it into any Toyota dealership and it will be fixed free of charge. and it's a fuel pump issue. Have you fixed many of those?

We actually, there was a campaign for replacing fuel pumps. T-O-4. A lot of cars. Yeah, I didn't recognize this number. I recognized the 23-T, but I saw 23-T-E-O-4 is a bunch of cars, and those fall into it with this fuel pumps. Yeah, and they have come out with so many different numbers now. It's impossible to memorize them all because one campaign might have six different numbers

referring to it. A lot of these customers support things come out of legal actions. So there could have been a lawsuit where the manufacturer was not acknowledging a problem and they were sued and the court says, well, now you have to fix it. So in these cases, the advice to the customers is this. The dealers don't know what's wrong with your car. It's almost up to you to do the research. And there's also the, you know, the technical bulletins that go out. Yep. And I mean, you've got to advertise these. They don't have a test. And a matter of fact, the manufacturers don't allow the dealers to advocate a particular repair. They can't say, oh, have you checked this?

Well, on the CSP, the customer service program, where it said extended warranty, they do send mailers to the customer. I'm talking about the advisory bulletins. Right. If you, what I'm saying, go online. Google your, your make model. car and ask about any issues. And then you will find out that there are certain issues that the manufacturers openly acknowledge, but don't publicize. But either way, you'll find out what is publicized, what's not publicized. So when you go into your dealer, if you say, I have this

wobble in my steering wheel, and that happens to be one of these issues that the manufacturer has told the dealer, this might happen with a car. If you bring it up, then the dealer, then the dealer can investigate and fix it without getting in trouble with the manufacturer. A similar case to that the Toyota Prius 2010 or I think 2016 has what's known as an IPM. It's a power module computer inside the inverter that helps control the hybrid system. That unit is now under an extended warranty by Toyota for 20 years from the date of first use of that car unlimited mileage. So if your car has an

issue with the hybrid system, have it checked at a dealer, and odds are, that's what's going to be causing it. If you get a warning, says, hybrid system failure, see your dealer on your dash. If that's the issue, 20 years unlimited mileage, Toyota will fix that.

But they don't notify the customers. They actually did send out mailers on this one to the customers to let them know. They're not big flashy TV average. U.S. mail. It's not. Come on down on TV or anything like that.

All right, I have anonymous feedback from Australia, and then I will relinquished. Cool. This is it came in from, Earl mentioned earlier from Queensland's Australia. It came in all capital letters, so this is very, very upset Australian. I have had my airbag warning light on for the past 10 months with my 2013 CRV. It's a Honda CRV. My warning light is on all the time. I'm starting to get into an Australian accent.

When I took the car to a local Honda dealer in Hervey Bay, Queensland, Australia, they charged me $75, Australian dollars, for nothing, and they told me nothing, and fixed nothing. They didn't fix your caps, lucky. No, I was kidding. Sorry. Hey, thank you. Wow. What do you think, Rick? Well, first off, I...

Before Rick thinks, I just have to go, I have to wane to my personal story. Because my roommate at Purdue University was a studying for his Ph.D. in parasitology, and he was from North Queensland, Australia. And he flew an airplane from ranch to ranch and to, you know, take care of the cows. And the kangaroos. He knew all about kangaroos. About the koala bears. I just digress. I mean, it's my show all digress if I want to.

It has nothing to do with cars, but Bruce Coleman was his name. And it was just a... You shouldn't have said that. You just added your mystery shopping persona. Errol used the name Bruce Koetman and his Internet mystery shopping for as long as I've been in the... Well, as long as there's been an Internet mystery shopping. That's right. So, yeah, Rick, what do you think's going on?

First thing I'd be doing is right back in that service manager's office saying, where's my doctor? diagnosis. I paid you for a diagnosis. I want the diagnosis. I mean, literally, you want to see the printout that the computer said when they ran. Exactly. All right. I want to know what needs to be done to fix this car. If you're not going to do that, I want my money back and then I'd go elsewhere. Airbag situation on a Honda, this is something that any dealership should be able to diagnose quickly, straightforward. And if the light, is on it's on for a reason. The problem is in that area of Australia

the dealerships are about a thousand miles apart. Yeah, I don't really yeah, I don't know what the density is in Queensland. Well, as, oh, okay, so the dealership yeah, I don't know, that's a tough one. Oh, that's what I was going to say. I'm sorry, I lost my brain for a second. Because

you're not in the United States, but I'm sure the federal government of Australia, because I knew you have a federal system, probably has a traffic safety equivalent as R&NTSB and go online and see if you can run your vehicle identification number and see if there's any recalls that's been issued in in Australia for the car because we had a big situation. I know it's global because it's a Honda and we had a big issue in Honda CRV, especially old ones like that, you have a high chance that there is a Takata airbag inflator in

your car, so hopefully Australia is on the ball. with this and find out if you have any dangerous recalls too. Not to make you worry about more things, but it's important. I wonder where you heard us or watched us? I don't know. Well, right off just off of Google here,

it shows three different Honda dealers in Queensland Australia. One is in Wulungaba. Do you have any idea how big Queensland is? Don't make fun of Wulungaba. We got Okachovia. I just know the name, too. The other one is in Newstead.

And the other one is in Induripilli, Endurapili. Yeah, I'm driving down to Opa Laca today. I mean. I just, I thought I'd just look. I mean, it is the case. I know it's a very large country. Oh, it's huge. Let me tell you.

It's like Texas. Quangeload is huge. Yeah, huge. And Earl will. There's a lot of outback. You've heard about the outback. That's all. Yeah.

and being there. A ranch out there, here we measure ranches and acres. In Queensland, they measure the ranches in square miles. So you'll have a, you know how big, 50 square miles is? I mean, ranches out there would be. That's bigger than 50 acres?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing place. A lot bigger. For sure. Amazing. We're going to go back to the phones real quick. I'm going to interrupt Stu for a moment, and Rick has a few YouTubes for us. We're going to go to Jason in West Palm Beach. Good morning, Jason.

Good morning. How are you? We're great. Thank you. Thank you for calling. You're welcome. My buddy Frank out in Jupiter Farms told me about your radio station, and I've been listening. Oh, fantastic. You guys got some pretty good information. I'm a technician for almost 10 years now. Oh. Putting in a lot of good information out there. You work on old cars? You don't work.

for a dealer you're an independent technician well I started independent when I was 14 and I worked for Mercedes now so oh good for you yeah great cars my question for you is are you are you guys familiar with BG services yep very well familiar okay what how do you guys feel about that we don't use them I good for the most part BG for for those wondering, it's a company that makes different, shall we say flushes and chemicals

and for the most part, it's snake oil. It's blue smoke and mirrors. That's a good name. Snake oil. These are the chemicals that this company, BG, will send their advisors

around their salesmen around to dealerships and automotor shops and try to get to sell their products and it's things that you'll siphon into the engine that's supposed to help clear up the carbon deposits additives for the fuel additives for the transmission the oil the cool and all this stuff and really most of it is not necessary and now if you've got some cars that are under extreme conditions yes sometimes those additives can have an effect on it but for the most part it's just steak

oil and the most famous thing the BG did was inside each of their cans of chemical, there's a little plastic coin that the technicians would then save and these coins they would collect them and the BG guy would come around like once a month or once every couple months and they would give you $2 for each one of those little coins that helped encourage the technicians to sell this snake oil. So they're bribing the technicians to tell the dealer they need more products. Uh-huh, exactly. I hope I didn't get you in trouble. No, I was questioning, I wanted to know how you guys felt about it

because, you know, we work on vehicles that are well over $100,000. Oh, yeah. We put the stuff in the engine and the tank, and, you know, they'll sell a service without wipers, but they'll get a BG treatment. So that was my question to you, wanting to know how you guys. guys felt about it, but I appreciate you taking my call. Well, you know, to expand on your point just a little bit, is that BG looks like other companies at dealerships now in repair shops, because the cars are getting better and

better and better, and the maintenance is becoming less and less. They're more reliable, they require less maintenance. So 25, 30 years ago, I don't know how long you've been to business, but when I started back in 60s and 70s and 80s, you know, the warranties were only 12 months, so, one year, and the car wouldn't last 50,000 miles, and our service department, we made a fortune because cars broke a lot, required a lot of maintenance. Fast forward to the 21st century, these cars don't break very much, and they don't require much maintenance, so the service departments are starving to death, and technicians like

yourself have to have something to do to fix and hence BG and so when you walk into a when you drive into a service department today typically the the service advisors the service sales people they're going to be selling your stuff that you don't need so a horse just came into the studio Marshall is here everybody so anyway thanks very much for the call yes thank you Jason Earl is now hugging a horse's head right now. The Great Dame is just coming. Yeah. This is Marshall from Big Dog Grand Trescu.

We had to have two volunteers today because he's kind of, he's hard to handle. Just met him out there in the lobby. Marshall is a two-year-old Great Dan. We're going to let Peggy tell you all about him in a second. This is my preliminary assessment. This is a lover. He's got a head the size of a horse. and he just wants you to hold his head in your hands and scratch him and he kisses and he's smiling and uh oh he's beautiful

oh yeah look at him there's a little injury he has in the back they're going to tell you about in his back leg um but wow he's got brindle coat he's eating her all go ahead peggy hi um we have marshal as mentioned a small pony um i had to bring back up because he weighs more than me that's exactly what he was in I was thinking. He was 108 pounds. Oh, I'm sure. He's two years old, so he's still a baby. Unfortunately, he came to us with a pretty severe injury.

We're not sure what it was, but something got it as Achille tendon, and he had to have major surgery. He still limps somewhat, but we're doing therapy with him. We have something on my Achilles tendon. There you go. He still limps a little bit and holds his back left leg up. You're both in therapy. Yeah.

But he is a big goof. ball, as most Danes are. He loves everybody. He loves kids. He's playful. He likes toys. He likes most dogs. Yeah, he likes most dogs, but he needs like a... He prefers the smaller one-bite dogs

like the chihuahua. He just needs a like a slow introduction when meeting new dogs. Yeah. They all get excited, don't they? He is absolutely gorgeous with the Brindle coat. And he's eating my chair. He comes to us from Alabama. He's an Alabama.

So he's a Southern boy. Southern boy. Y'all from Alabama? Unfortunately, he does not like water. So if you're looking for a beach buddy to go in the water, he's probably not going to be your boy. He likes drinking water from my hand. He just had a little bit. He was thirsty.

He stays out of the lake at the Big Dog. Yes. He does like a sponge. sponge bath, though, however. Oh, I bet. Vanessa gave him a nice sponge bath before we came and he enjoys that. Let me tell you what, he's in the right place. Can you see him lifting up his leg a little bit?

Yeah, you can kind of see on the, I'm looking at the feed right now. He still favors that leg. So he limps around a little bit, but look at him. We're doing therapies at the ranch with him. Are you? And he's getting stronger and better every day. Yeah. Looks like it.

We just thought that he'd be great for today because we like to bring our ones that, you know, have a little bit of a challenge. Yeah. I don't see how any, you meet this dog. I'm telling you right now. Yeah, but just the love, the moment he saw me, I saw he made eye contact with me. It's the tongue for me. It looks just like marmaduke. He does.

It does look like marmaduke. It could be his middle name, Marshall Marmaduke, whatever your last name is. Exactly. Hey, folks, if you want to adopt the dog of the week, all you have to do is, and it's our featured dog, You can go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue, and that is www.bdrr.org. And you can find that all about Marshall or, aka Marmaduke, and so many other dogs. Hundreds of them out there. The website's great.

You get all the information of their age, and then there's contact information. But guess what? We're doing something special here on Erlon Cars. We do it every week now. We've been doing it for years, but we're doing it on our show here. This is, as our sponsored dog, we pay the adoption fees. So whenever you adopt a dog, no matter where you adopt it, there's always some cost involved, whether it's big dog ranch rescue, Peggy Adams, or furry, all of them.

They got adoption fees, but we take care of them for you for the adoption dogs. So this is we're giving away dogs here. That's a good point. It's a free day. The fees are so expensive for some, and they can't adopt. opening dogs. Yeah, it's a couple hundred dollars, a few hundred dollars. And, I mean, it's not, let's put this way.

Adopting a dog is not like buying a designer dog, you know, from some breeder. You don't spend thousands of dollars. But we want to make it easy and accessible. And so that's why we're doing that. So Marshall is basically a free dog. So call us or text us at the show. You all know the numbers. You can message us or go directly through Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

And like Nancy said, that's B-D-R-R.org. And we pay the adoption fees. Another, thank you, Stu. Another amazing feature is if you haven't heard about confessions of a recovering car dealer, listen, all proceeds go to the Big Dog Ranch. You can go to Amazon or Erwin Cars, I believe that's it, Jonathan. Yeah, and Earlsbook.com. Yeah, at Earlsbook.com and Amazon.

And ladies and gentlemen, it's 1999, right, Stu? 1999. I got it wrong last week. It's 1999. And all proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. And this confessions of a recovering car dealer, you definitely can use this book. Today, tomorrow, next year is filled with information on fees and so much more. Okay.

So for the radio listeners out there, very appreciative of that, Nancy. because they can't see what's going on here. So if you're streaming as us, you can see what's happening. He is, Marshall is getting a scratch fest right now. He's going around in circles, and he's, I think he's standing on Earl's foot. Watch it. Is that your bad foot? Be careful.

That's 108 pounds of paw coming down on your foot. So, anyway, so like I said, if you're streaming, you know what's going on. But if you want to see what's happening right here, Nancy, almost got knocked down there. Oops. if you want to see what's happening this stays on YouTube go to YouTube.com forward slash Erlon Cars or just search Earl on Cars

The video is going to stay up there forever So it's chaotic in here Like it is at 930 Almost every Saturday It's from one of our listeners Who made a donation to Big Dog Ranch And her name is Betty. There is

I think Marshall is making No he's making his way back over to Earl Hey bring this big dog Go over to me. I got to say goodbye to Marshall before he leaves. So anyway, you can watch this, the replay of this on Facebook and YouTube, but also share it with your friends and share it for people that might be looking for a dog who don't even know. So, hey, Dad, start talking. Hey, I'm going to talk cutesy to Marshall here. And remember, if you can't adopt Marshall and you just don't have the facilities, you can foster him for a while.

Just bring Marshall to your home for, you know, a week or two. And it makes more room at the ranch for us to bring in more dogs like Marshall that need help. Wow. I mean, we were teasing them before we met him. We said it was a horse, but that's a dog. That's 100% that's 110% dog. 108% dog. There are horses that size.

I have a dog that's 90 pounds, and he's not that tall. This dog came up to my chest. What do you think Marshall weighs? Well, he told us, 108 pounds. Oh, 108, okay. So he weighs about almost 20 pounds more than my dog. Which one of your dogs weighs 90 pounds? Wally.

Wally? Oh, wow. I didn't know Wally to wait 90. What does Oreo would? Oreo, I adopted Oreo from Big Dog to Ranch Rescue in 2016. Oreo weighs 17 pounds now. When we got her, she was little, like much younger, weighed 13 pounds. And then she put on some weight.

She got up to 23 pounds. and the vet said she's technically obese. So we put her on a farmer's dog diet, and she's back down to our normal weight now. Oh, how nice. But Wally is 100. While we're on dogs, and I can tell the whole world, because we're on the radio,

my daughter adopted a dog, a little rat-like terrier that was crazy, great human hair on, and she named them Tubbo. And so we have, number one? Tubbo. Like you're insulting somebody. She didn't realize it was an insult.

But hey, Tabu, if you're listening, I love you. And they're in New York. Yes. Yes. Uh-huh. City, city dog. All right, back to the recovering card. The camera does not do justice for how big Marshall really is.

Not at all. And the, oh, the smile on his face, just that goofy look on his face. I love him. I love that dog. Amazing. Well, if. We are going to, I believe, yes, go to the Mystery Shopping Report. We have time.

Let's get some text. Want to go back to Rick? We're actually a little slow, but we've got a couple comments here. Let's see here. Let me scroll back just a little bit. Of course, we had Eric commenting in earlier. Let's see. Johnny Z. Freidly, we got to bring a couple of these comments on the air here.

when we were discussing the flying car and its top speed, he came in with the comment of 88 miles per hour. It goes into the future or the past. That's right. It's not a delirium, though. When we were discussing with the fellow with the Cadillac talking about the fake leather, Johnny's answer was they call it vegan letter, vegan leather. And he says to him, The vegan leather tastes just as good as genuine leather. So I think Johnny may be related to Marshall a little bit of chewing on chairs there. So, yeah, but, and then he also did mention that his first car was from 1980 from Rick Case in Cleveland.

And he said that was at their first store. He said, but before that, Rick Case sold bicycles and motorcycles. So that was a kind of interesting move up there. He's a bike salesman. I didn't know that. Yeah, there's a lot of the nice thing about, you know, car dealers like Ken, you talk about a rags to riches story, case like that where they start out, saw the motorcycles and end up the largest Honda dealer.

It takes a special type of personality. Typically, guys like that are not really good business people, and so therefore his wife was so important and really kind of, I don't think they would have ever reached the size they did without her guidance. And she's still run the store now after he passed away. Makes you wonder if his Honda shop or if his motorcycle shop was Hondas. Yeah, good thing. I got to tell you, Honda makes a great motorcycle along with their cars.

And a great lawnmower. Yep. Oh, yeah. Generators. Honda knows engines. I got to say that. Honda does not. I think Toyda makes a better forklift, though.

perhaps I think so but you hear issues with Toyota engines Kia engines everybody else but you never really hear issues with the basic

Honda engines it just they they seem to know how to get those tolerances in what was Honda making during World War II they weren't okay I was just testing you guys

I knew that I got a text from Linda in Palm City if we got time yeah okay good morning Linda and thank you

She's going the text route this morning. She says, good morning. My warranty expired in my 2015 Nissan Marano Platinum. I have less than 55,000 miles on the car, and it's in great condition. As a senior, I'm concerned about high repair costs and looking to get another warranty. I saw online a company called Endurance that is supposed to be good. My cost for another five years is about $5,000 with $100 deductible. is this good or can you recommend anyone else?

Thank you so much. And that's Linda in Palm City. Well, a lot of people have heard my feeling about extended warranties. If you have a good car and you've taken care of it, meaning you follow the owner's guide, owner's manual recommendation on the maintenance, you're poor and good money after bad to buy a warranty. You don't need the warranty.

Bank it yourself if you feel you might not have the money if should you have a problem, and put $100 a month into an account, let it grow, and then if you need it, when you need it. If not, you got a bonus when you sell the car, trade it in. Got a down payment on the next one. The worst thing about warranties, too many of them are scams. We talked earlier on the show about a company that was busted for selling phony warranties. It's become a real scam thing out there.

There's some good warranties out there, just like, their good insurance companies and but they make money you know when when when you buy a policy from State Farm they're making money so unless you couldn't afford to fix your car and you would need that then you have to be very careful to buy a warranty it covers the important things you have $5,000 to spend on a warranty don't put it in a savings account yeah okay Okay, I think we've got about five minutes to take care of this mystery shopping report. Ladies and gentlemen, you definitely can be part of the grading of this mystery shopping report. And this is Kenny Ross Mazda from North Huntington, Pennsylvania.

And you can vote by texting us at 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, Agent Lightning is traveling again, and that's nice when she does that. And her hometown is in Pennsylvania, so she gets to Pennsylvania fairly often, but she travels other places too. So it's great. We used to do just exclusively Florida Car Reports, Mystery Shopping Reports. I'll speak in the first person, as if I am Agent Lightning.

I arrived early in the afternoon, was greeted by a gentleman sitting behind the front desk. He smiled broadly and asked me if I was there to see anyone in particular. I replied that I was just interested in seeing if they had any new Mazda 3s in stock. He chuckled, informed me that while they were difficult to come by, they did have two on the premises. When I asked about the color preferences, I expressed interest in the blue one. He promptly assured me he'd return shortly with a plate, a license plate, and keys. Upon his return, he beckoned me to follow him outside where he would pull the car up for me. After parking the car, inquired whether I was considering trading in my current vehicle,

and requested my driver's license. Now, these questions, when you go into a car dealership, I strongly recommend against, I recommend online buying, telephone buying. when you go into a car dealership, you're under the dealerships control. They have the edge. But if you're there, you're there. So he asked me whether I was considered trading my current vehicle. They want your current vehicle.

And when you answer yes or no, that affects the price of the new vehicle. So all these questions that you answer are feeding him information he needs to make the maximum and profit from your visit. And that's the way car dealerships operate. It doesn't sound like something that you would accept in the 21st century, but the last of the Mohegans are the car dealers in the way they sell cars. It's haggling and hassling. It's negotiating.

The sharp negotiator gets a really good price. The same person comes in, buys the same car that you did and pays thousands of dollars more. It's really, really like Russian roulette. when you're buying a car, and that's where we are in the 21st century. It's about the trade-in, and my driver's life is attempting to infuse some humor in the situation. Can I comment, believe it or not, I'm not always this much of a pain in the behind. And that's another thing that he's trained to do. Likeable people sell products, likable people sell cars.

So, when a person has a wonderful personality and treats you, we sometimes on the show when we do shopping reports, we get angry at rude salespeople. Well, rude salespeople are also stupid salespeople because the one that can really get you, the one that can really sell your car for far more than you should pay is a guy that smiles and ingratiates him or herself to you. And you like, when you like somebody, it's easier to get the checkbook out and write a checkout than if you don't. don't trust them. So the successful sales people that make the most money are also the nicest, unfortunately. Okay, I hand over my license and he left me to familiarize himself with a car while he made a copy of my identification. A few minutes later, his back and off we went. I hesitate to lick my finger to turn the page here because the dog we had here looked my hands in my entire body. I'm aware of the film on my hands right now. I hope Marshall is healthy.

He is. They gave him a sponge bath right before they came in. They did. They did a special cleaning. During the test drive, Nick expanded on the various features of the Monster 3, highlighting that it was top-rated for safety amongst all brands. I didn't check that. I meant to, but I didn't. But the Monster 3, you could check consumer reports to find out if it really is top rated for safety. It may be. We continued a lovely chat throughout the drive where I mentioned that I was considering buying a car to keep this in this area.

And remember, we're in Huntington, Pennsylvania in this area where I was considering buying a car. Responded to this, he suggested that I might want to consider leasing, given that I wouldn't be driving it frequently. I can kind of halfway understand that logic, but it was just sales talk. I guess it could make sense. After giving it some thought, I told him we'd most likely buy the car,

eventually handed down to her daughter when she starts driving. I thanked him for a suggestion, acknowledging it is a good idea that I hadn't previously considered meaning of leasing because they're not going to drive it very much. He's referring to the mileage issue. After the test drive, he demonstrated a few more features after which we headed back inside to his desk. As Nick began inputting my information, he made light of his one-finger typing skills, again, being friendly, of being nice, and getting ready to pounce, go for the jugular. He's asked for my email address, and I'm requesting it, I dictate it slowly so he could accurately input it. The 2023 Mazda 3 is a top safety pick by the I-IHS, that's what I found.

That's good. It has a less of an exciting score, 74. It is recommended on Consumer Reports, but the overall score of a pale green 74. It's not the rich, dark green, but it's a pale green. Well, Nick, if you're listening, I apologize. I was suggesting you might not be accurate, and maybe I'm being too horrid.

I probably am. But the Monster 3 is a safe car, according to testing. We verified that. After collecting all of my details, he inquired if I had any questions about the car, and whether I'd like to proceed with the buying process. Upon my affirmative response, he asked about my credit. There we go with the standard questions.

Financing duration and down payment details before excusing himself to confer with the salesman. Now, questions like this are qualifying questions. There are questions that eventually you need to answer. But I just tell you this, when you're being controlled by the salesperson, and he's asking the questions and you're giving the answers, You're giving him the things he needs to do to maximize the profit for the dealer and the commission for himself. So why go into a dealership and spill your guts, pardon the expression, and tell them everything about you and everything you want to do when you could do this online and keep your personal information to yourself and still get a good price? because if you're online, they can't, you know, they can't ask these questions and expect answers.

You're in control because you want one thing and you want their best price, which is the way you should buy a car. A few minutes later, Nick returned with a price sheet. Took the time to explain all the fees, and there are quite a few. The market value selling price was MSRP. The market value selling price, MSRP. $25,015. They took off a $1,0.45 discount.

Now, that sounds real good, right? Sure does. You hear about cars being sold at MSRP and over, but you say, this is market value selling price, $20,015, and they just took off $1,045. Well, hang on your head. Here's what really happened. After 1,045 discount from Myanmar's MSRP, they added, $99 for LoJack.

Now, a lot of you folks probably haven't even heard about LoJack. LoJack was the first GPS theft deterrent in the world. I mean, it was really primitive. And you had to sign up. Some states had it. Some states didn't. The price was high. And today...

And it's got to be installed, like, in your car, like some device. They hide it someplace. But you can do the same thing yourself. You can buy a GPS. device on Amazon for 20 or 30 bucks. Throw air tag in your in your back seat. Yeah. And you get, yeah,

an Apple tag, air tag is an OLOJAC. So here they want 900, can I say $1,000? $1,000 for a lojack, which is an archaic piece of equipment. It's like

a horse and Becky compared to a car. It's just it makes no sense. They exist only for car dealers to have big markups and big gross profits they make when they pack the LoJack onto your car

and don't ask you, and then they add $1,000 for it. Forget about lowjack. Next, $499 for NSD appearance package. We don't know what that is, but it's $499 mostly all-profit

to the dealer. and then they have a two-year paint. Oh, that is a two-year paint and fabric protection, okay? Now, what can a two-year paint and fabric protection be when that's all covered by the warranty? Unless you destroy the leather or the cloth yourself or scratch the car, I don't think this NSD-appearment package would cover that either.

So to me, that's worthless, right? Yeah, I mean, it's probably like a Scotch car type of thing inside. Well, for two years, the factory cover. Yeah, I don't know if maybe a kid spills Kool-Aid and it would cover that, but I don't think, by the way, I'm sorry, there was, I forget to tell you, we did get a Toya Guard claim paid for staying in the back seat. Was that the first one ever? First one ever.

The first one I know about. But we've been talking about it, but there has been one. And then, but wait, there's more. $400, $300 for Etch. Now that's this glass etch, which. back in the day when we used to do that, before I became a recovering car dealer, I paid $25 for that.

Today, let's be crazy and say it costs $100. They're charging $400. And then they add a doc fee, $419.49.4.49. Doc fee, documentary fee is a fee that you're supposed to pay. That's a legal term, and it doesn't exist. There's no lawyers involved in this, but they're still charging that they're making up these are all junk fees they have different names but they're junk fees

and there's some value to the uh things like the nSD very low value and even the low jack he said the doc fee was for state paperwork and that's it's for it's i mean they might say it's for their accounting department to send documents to the state My, my being Agent Lightning, my total out-the-door figure, was $27,963. My real selling price was $26,316, $1,3101 over MSRP. Now, I would have had more respect for this dealer if he had just had on the window, along the Maroni label, that had the MSRP of $25,015,000. They just said $1,300 addendum, market adjustment addendum.

I don't like it, but it's less deceptive. It's just saying, listen, I'm charging you $1,300 over MSRP. Be upfront about it. Give that shopper, meaning me, the right to shop and compare it with other dealers. But with a smoke and mirrors, with a lowjack, with the NSD appearance package, paint and fabric, dock fees, edge, that's smoke and mirrors. folks, they're trying to confuse you, and frankly, I'm a little surprised. We've had some really good shopping reports from Pennsylvania, and this really got me.

I'm agent lighting, I remember. I attempted to take a picture of the worksheet with my iPhone camera, but the salesman refused gently, stating that it was not permitted to allow this, and he could potentially lose his job over it. Now, first the place, I don't think he would lose his job, but you know something he could in some hard-nosed dealerships

they say, do this or else, it's my way or the highway. I mean, some dealerships operate like that. It's most like the dealership or the salesman was going for a pity response. Oh, I don't want you to lose your job. But he would not allow.

I mean, it's like saying I won't give you a copy of the of the price I just gave you. If they won't give you a copy, meaning your photograph, what does that tell you about the integrity of the person selling you the product? Yeah, and also integrity of the information on it. If they're not going to give it to you,

it tells me it's going to change. Yeah, exactly. And it tells you also that they don't want you to shop and get bear of their price. They would rather you go out blind and get the best price they can, which would be a higher price. If you had a good price from one dealer

and you'd just go to another dealer, you would have some control over trying to get a lower price. Anyway, I tried to explain that to my husband. Oh, I'm sorry. He wanted me to, you know, he would allow me to have a picture, but I said, I need some information to take home to my husband because he wants to detail breakdown of the cost,

to which he posed a challenge. question what would be the final figure that would convince me to buy the car immediately without my husband saying any numbers that is really you know he's trying to get between America that's really getting really I'm surprised I think that's a complete that was just a failure of salesmanship right there so and unusual for this part of the country by the way because agent lightning shop this area several times before I mentioned that might not work given that my husband is a numbers person and would want to scrutinize a breakdown.

I knitted down all the items, and then he took my phone and captured a photo for me. So there again, he ingratiated after asking me to fear for his life if he took a picture. He snuck a picture with my phone and gave it back to me. So I think it's a game he's playing. I think he's trying to ingratiate himself to me so that I will feel sorry. for him and buy the car. I'm sorry, that's the way I feel. Nick excused himself to fetch his manager upon the return. His manager suggested that I take the car for the afternoon to drive and show my husband.

That's aggressive. And, you know, if you're buying a car, you should take the car for the afternoon. Despite their offer, I declined, explained that I had not, I had a lot of my plate before heading back to Florida. I thanked him for the time and I lived. We are, Kenny Ross, Mazda, and Pennsylvania, North Huntington, Pennsylvania. And we will score this, grade on the curve, keeping in mind that there's no perfect dealers, there are no perfect dealers, and A is almost unheard of. So if they're anywhere above an F, we put them our recommended list, but we put the grade

alongside. So if you go to Irwin cars, you can see our recommended dealers and also the ones that we say do not buy a car from, that's an F. So grading on the curve, we'd appreciate your texting us your scores and let us know what you think of the Ross, Kenny Ross Mazda in North Huntington, Pennsylvania. You know, I'm looking at the map here and North Huntington is a little bit closer to Pittsburgh than Erwin. Irwin. So maybe as you get closer to the metro center, similar to what we see in South Florida, it just gets a little dirtier.

Probably, yeah. Intense competition breeds ridiculous tactics. I mean, one dealer feels like they have to resort to as strong tactics as the competition. And to some extent, that's true. It's really a domino effect. When you have one dealer that gets away with bloody murder and sells a lot of cars, he's taking business away from his competition. And the competition say, I don't like it, but I've got to do the same thing.

And that's the excuse that you hear oftentimes from dealers. I mean, when we dropped our dealer fee in our dealership many years ago, I had dealers call me, say, you know, I'd love to do the same thing, but I'm afraid to do it. and some the ones that did drop their dealer fee copying us or junk fee I should say the ones that did went back and added the back later on because nobody else did bigger and better

bigger and better yeah so yeah it's also interesting it's also the type of that last week it was a Kia dealership that typically do bad that did very very well yeah they did yeah has some grades coming in Jonathan and Delray formerly Wellington so between last week and this week Jonathan has moved

he says, I'll give Mazda this Mazda dealership a D the salesperson's amicable personality was appreciated but not enough to override the fraudulent fees for LoJack etch doc fee in the appearance package sounds disreputable to me and Bob says

F for failure for Kenny Ross Mazda you know my thoughts are there was a lot of stuff that we typically only see down here and I'm not sure if Nick's you know affable personality I think he was complicit

I mean sometimes we see salespeople that you know they're just as much of a victim as the management as the customer but this guy seemed like he knew what he was doing I'm not going to fail him because we are in a curve but I think the curve is a little bit different in in Pennsylvania so I give him a D-minus

Rick from Negan 1 in the words of Stu's S-bomb F. He paid a crappy deal. He got it.

Yeah, he got it. Yeah, I'm getting a call from the FCC. From Kirk in West Buy God, Virginia. Kenny Ross Mazda, what $1,900 of crap-tastic fees, but you get a $1,000 discount. Sorry, not for me. No picture of the worksheet, and magic hidden fees earns you a solid F.

Tom Steckle, D. Unwilling to immediately provide an out-the-door price, low-value options that added nearly 2,000 must be related to Al Hendrickson. Scott Hunter, D, fees, fees. Johnny Freedly, too many junk fees in over MSRP equals F. Tim Gilliland, from Toastie Yuma, I'm holding out for nitrogen in the tires, C-minus. Brian said, let go, D for me, too many fees. Give me five bucks.

This is a hard F. Too many junk fees. Rocky Blockatiel, low jack. Why not throw in an 8-track tape player while you're at it? I want to see that. T.K. That one stuck in Rick's throat. That one hurt. He's trying to speak right now.

Rick is leaving over coughing. He's smiling. I think he's okay. Sorry, folks. He's back to the mic. T.K. Mecklen, D. Minus. And for me, I'm going to say a D. Yeah, you can get the deal, but you're going to have to watch yourself there, folks.

It's a little scary near Pittsburgh. I'm going to give them a D, too, because that's the worst store we shopped in Pennsylvania. But there's some stores down here and around the rest of the country that's so bad. I'm not going to fail them. But I came close. Okay. From the Pittsburgh girl, I'll tell you what. You guys?

Mm-hmm. Do you hear that? You guys? That is clearly Pittsburgh. For North Huntington, Pennsylvania, I'm a little embarrassed. $9.99 for a low jack. They're making you look bad, Nancy. Honestly, you're making me look bad.

Stu just said it. At home, I have the Apple tags. I got them all over the place. I'll stick with that. And what was this? Was this a test? What would be the figure, the final figure, that would convince me to buy the car immediately without my husband.

Was that a test? That's called the final close. Guess what? You failed. I give you an F. Wow. There we go. The black widow.

Hey, it's personal. There you go. It very much is. I warned them the easy way or the hard way. All right, guys. See you later. Okay. Stu is out of here.

Listen, Marshall was in. I hope everyone saw. how beautiful Marshall the Great Dane was. And you can definitely adopt today's featured dog of the week. And you can do that by going to www. Big Dog Ranch Rescue.org. There you can not only see Marshall, but you can see everyone. I didn't hear you do your dog.

As deep as Marshall would, can you go that low? That came down first. That was tough. I don't think Marshall barked, too. No, he was here. I'm sure he's got a great bark then. He was quiet. He was a good boy.

Yeah, very. Also, let me mention again, Confessions of a recovering car dealer. Don't forget, you can go to Amazon, you can go to Earlsbook.com, and there, you'll pay $1999 for that book. And guess where that all goes? It all goes to Big Dog Ranch.

Except for the Amazon kickback fee, we have to pay Amazon to sell the book. Yeah, that's a few books there. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in to Earl Stewart on cars. And also, I want to thank Betty again for her contribution to Big Dog Ranch and her reaching out to other ladies who would like to call the show. Have a wonderful weekend. Goodbye, everyone.