Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.11.2020 - Your Calls, Texts and Mystery Shop of Napleton’s North Palm Hyundai

Episode Date: July 11, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Napleton’s North Palm Hyundai to see if he can purchase a 2015 Honda Pilot with a fixable, but unfixed, defective Takata airbag and to see if the sales rep will disclose the recall from the Pilots' CarFax Report. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

This is Earl Stewart, the recovering car dealer, live. That was my recorded introduction. And here we are, right in the middle of the biggest crisis in human history. pandemic worldwide crisis and Florida is not too good we're having some problems out there we're gonna be talking about something my hearing ages fell off but I'll try to I can get by with one face mask and hearing aids are not compatible I just want to throw that out there I've seen you struggle from time to time with that little arrangement you got exactly so we're gonna give

you some helpful advice hopefully some entertainment car dealers can be in a kind of a morose sort of a way. We have a mystery shopping report that is the highlight of the show. Actually visit a car dealership, and we visited one yesterday, pretended to buy or lease a car, and we tell you exactly what happened. I'm not going to ruin it for you, but it was one of our more interesting ones. I say this a lot, but car dealers vary from extreme to extreme. And you will love the mystery shopping report coming up in the second.

half of the show the most benefits you can get and from this show is to arm yourself with some information uh... if you're going to venture out there and have your car serviced or maintained uh... if you're going to buy something uh... or lease something if you're going to buy or lease a car you really can pick up some interesting tips

and we have a a wealth of library of information here earluncars dot com is a blog uh... we give you uh... websites uh... KBB.com, Kelly Blue Book. If you listen to the show, it's two hours, I don't expect you to listen for two hours, but

during the time you listen, 15, 20 minutes, half hour, love to have you for the whole show, but if you have any questions on the mechanics, the electronics, the computerization of a car, Rick Kearney, who I introduced, is a guy to call it. And 877-960

is our call-in number 877-960-9960 Stu Stewart, he's my general manager in my dealership, I have to say in full disclosure and transparency, I am a car dealer today. I've been one since 1968, but this show is purely consumer advocacy. It's purely to help you not get ripped off by a car dealer. That's what we've been doing for 17

years. And we're all over cyberspace, YouTube. As I said, earlancars.com, a blog. I've been running for 17 years. Hundreds and hundreds of articles out there accessible to you. So Stu is, he's in the dealership every day. He sees exactly what's going on. I'm not in the dealership every day like I used to be, but I maintain pretty close contact. So 877-960-99-60, and if you want to text us, text number 772-4976530, Again, that text number, 772-4976530. And, of course, Nancy Stewart, she's my bride, she's my wife, she's my partner, she's my cool pile on the show.

She's a founder of the show. When we first started, way, way, a long time ago, we were only half an hour, and Nancy and I have been doing the show together, and we've grown, and now we have Stu, and we have Rick, and I like to think we're up to two hours now. I think we've improved things. We've helped a lot of people. And if you have any calls, particularly you female callers out there, we built the show. Nancy, I give her credit, total credit. We started the show, no females called. No women.

It was 100%. It was like a man's club. And suddenly it began to grow. And we're up to about half a female caller, which is the way it should be. And any of you ladies out there, Nancy Stewart, is going to. to give you an offer that you can't refuse. If you haven't called the show, she'll tell you about it. In a matter of fact, why don't you tell them about it right now, Nancy, tell them about

the special deal we've got to encourage more and more women to call Earl on Cars. Good morning, ladies. That encouragement will be, well, $50 for the first two new lady callers. And I think that you all have a lot to say. And I'd like you to take advantage of our offer, $50 for the first. First two, new lady callers, 877-960-99-60. That's 877-9-60-99-60. Back to the recovering car dealer.

I'm still struggling with my mask now, but I can talk. I'm going to take advantage of that, and I'm going to remind our listeners that, pardon my raspy throat this morning, I just wanted to point out that although we expose although we expose car dealers, you know, that are taking advantage of the consumer, we still need your help. We need your help, Ashley Moody. Ashley Moody is the Attorney General, and she has such a position that she holds.

And one of the things that she does is she protects the consumer. And by protecting the consumer, she can do a whole. lot more. We can do it together as a team, and we would appreciate it if you would get in touch with Ashley and remind her that she definitely has a responsibility to protect the consumers against these car dealerships that are taking advantage of everyone. Again, that number is 877-960-9960 and don't forget www.W.W. Your Anonymous Feedback.com and you can also text us. You can text us at 772-4976530. Are we all set?

Jonathan, I want a YouTube. I've been pulling around with his mask. I'm watching myself. real for you know me i can just keep on talking i'm going to remind everyone that uh i'm going to take advantage at this time yeah yeah talk about the barracuda uh still wants to know about my barracuda is a 1968 i got the mask back on i got the mask back on oh no he did that deliberately just to cut me off okay here i am i think it's going to work you know i have a new stew's an instigator i have a new excuse for all these people out there that don't want to wear a mask if they have hearing aids.

That's a good reason. Now I want to wear a mask. Let me tell you something. I would rather fool around with my mask and have a lot of trouble than die. Exactly. Exactly. Hey, I want to tell everyone my story about my mask and my hearing aids. I'm showing my age.

I'm going to tell you what. I went on an Easter egg hunt the other day. My hearing aid fell off in the driveway. And I'm looking all over the house. And by the way, hearing aids are expensive, as everyone knows. But these masks, I said, damn it, I'm not going to put this mask back on. Well, I got myself together, pulled myself together, and I put my mask back on. Welcome to the Earl Stewart on Mask show, and we'll continue to talk about hearing aids a match.

Let's talk to us, too. No matter how uncomfortable they are, a mask is very important. Stu is my spy master general. And I said earlier that we don't want to give away a Mr. Shopping Report, but it was just, you know, I just tell them a little bit. Don't tell them too much because this is a doozy. I'll just tease it just enough. Last week it came up that had been a long time since we did a Takata shop,

and you made the comment that concurrent with this pandemic, which is a serious crisis, and to be honest, it's killing a lot more people than the Takata crisis, but it didn't diminish the importance of it and didn't diminish the importance of us talking about it. We ignored it for too long. Yeah, for almost half of this year. And so that kind of got me thinking.

So we plan to do a Takata test where we go out, try and buy a use car that we know has a Takata airbag recall and see how the dealership handles it. And this one kind of, I don't want to say it spiraled out of control, but it just got strange, bizarre. And we discovered something that we hadn't uncovered yet in 17 years of mystery shopping. So I'll leave the tease at that.

And I think it showed a little bit of the effect of the pandemic on individuals. Yeah. The individual, at least one of the individuals we talked to, you could see the effect psychologically and emotionally. And, you know, it was funny and it was entertaining. But it's also kind of sad because be honest with yourself. Are you normal compared to four or five months ago?

How many days are we into this pandemic now? It's about three months, right? Yeah, the national emergency was on Friday, March 13th. and but it had been going on for a couple of weeks before that where people started getting concerned but the uh almost four months yeah end of march all the shutdown started yeah anyway the it's you just got to hear this mystery shopping report it's educational it's entertaining and it's almost unbelievable yeah absolutely and that mystery shopping report is going to be from napleton so napleton of north palm beach Hyundai yeah 877 960 9960 where you can text us

at 772-4976530 we are going to go to Tina Tina calls us from Benita Springs where you've been to welcome well it was July 4th last week and I thought you weren't broadcasting but apparently you were so I missed my window of opportunity oh boy we broadcast ran or shine and most holidays yeah I think there's been a few times that you've done like pre-recording or whatever so you get to hear my voice twice that's good but anyway i was getting on this website called autoevolution.com and i guess this recall thing is just going like wildfire because it's saying one million dodge price their vehicles recalled on airbags up spoiling projectiles so this is not

anything to do with takata but apparently the airbags could fail and they could cause injury so it's something to be aware of. But the great thing about autoevolution is it has a lot of information and it really does a great job of reporting recalls. All right there. Autorevolution.com. Autoevolution. Evolution. Yeah, evolution.com. Yeah, auto evolution. Very good. Well, thank you, Tina. Nice to hear your voice. When we don't hear your voice, we miss you. You're kind of like the representative of the ladies out there where you are, you, you're, you're, you're, you're a lot like Nancy and your feelings about equality with the sexes and you ladies don't have it yet and you should have it and we're moving toward that but certainly on this show we're

there and thanks to you and a lot of other lady callers out there we really feel like we are doing the show the way it should be done half the people buying cars our ladies have but more than half the people having car service are ladies. So we need to help the ladies just as much we do the guys. Probably 50-50 is a way to look at it. Yeah, Tina. Thanks for joining my team. We're growing because there's myself, you, and Ashley Moody is, well, I'm waiting for her to sign up on our team.

So, you know, the Attorney General can help us out tremendously. And I didn't mention her phone number, if you want to jot this down, Tina. Her phone number is 850414, 3,300. And all of you out there, including Tina, can take advantage of that telephone number and let your voice be heard. And she can give us a hand. Thank you so much for calling, Tina. Thank you. Ladies, Nancy, and I can't do this by ourselves.

We need to. Thank you, Tina. Rick, thanks for we've been ignoring you and you're probably maybe the most important part of the show. The sales gets all the glory, the leasing and the buying, everybody gets excited.

But, you know, you buy a car once every four or five years, you maintain and repair your car, you should at least twice a year, and depending on mileage, a lot more than that. And that's where you get taken advantage. I'm telling you I get more calls on people taking advantage of folks in the service drive that I do anywhere else and I have it's the I guess the reason we focus on the purchase is because it's a big ticket item

but there's some pretty big ticket items in the service drive too Rick he won't say it but I'll say it for him you'll never find a technician more on top of today's modern automobiles and diagnosing and helping you answer of your questions. Rick, give us a little bit of your history and how you came to be here today. Well, I started off at a little place called North Tech Learning Auto Mechanics. It's not even there right now anymore, but once I got a little bit under my belt and started looking around for a job, your place is hiring for an oil changer, and I started there at the very bottom level. But even before you went to school, I think that you have to have a natural aptitude for mechanics. I don't. And I've been to school, but I can't fix anything. And Nancy can fix things

better than I can. I think you're born with an aptitude, because you told me that you used to tinker with cars with your dad, and you loved it, and you would fix things and repair things that, you know, when you're 13 years old. Well, I grew up as a 10-year-old kid, a buddy and I started trying to build a mini bike. Yeah. And basically got an old edger motor, and we put it on an old frame, and we put together a mini bike that it actually ran and would get around a little bit. So we are having fun and it just, you know, it comes from that idea that you can take these old pieces, put them together with your hands and make something interesting that

runs and, of course, you're playing with fire and an engine. It seems natural to you, but to a lot of people like me, you know, my father would give me a model airplane for my birthday and I'd never be able to put it together. I mean, I once I took the radio apart. and I couldn't put that back together either. So it's just, you've got it, it's great. Rick, if you call, he's going to answer it 99.9% of the time. And we would love to have you call the show, 877-960-99-60.

Ask for Rick Kearney, 877-960-90-60. And our text number is 772-497-6530. You know, I don't mention Your Anonymous Feedback.com. we get more inquiries on that I think than anything else your anonymous feedback.com we probably have some right now don't we stu yes we do they tend to pile up in the week so we have a few on deck to get to

this one actually came in after the show last Saturday says good morning I have a question for Rick can Toyota Service Department install factory integrated turn signal lights on outside mirrors on Camrys or corollas that don't come standard with the car and then they send a link to an eBay listing, which I think it shows probably shows some aftermarket turn signals. Yeah, because I don't think it's actually an add-on feature that can be done.

That's something that has to be integrated into the car because the wiring is not going to be there out to the door for the most part. Toyota usually doesn't build a wire harness that is just universal for all the doors of all the features. they'll have specific ones for each feature just to try to save money on the cost of them so you'd probably have to end up running all the wiring everywhere and it'd get quite expensive

and if you bought something to claim to do it it would be a Mickey Mouse kind of a thing and it wouldn't really be what the factory mirror was and those factory mirrors by the way are extremely expensive used to be a side view mirror was peanuts and now a side view mirror have cameras and lights all sorts of You've got them, what, a couple thousand dollars?

It's a ton. I couldn't tell you exactly, but any cheap, that's for sure. Now, there are some aftermarket kits that can add things in, like adding in a blind spot monitor to a car, and some of these, you'll want to do some research and do your homework on them, make sure it's good quality and has good reviews, but some of them can be really nice and quite effective. Would it be fair to say if you do any sort of alteration to the electrical systems, you better have a dang good mechanic doing that? I would highly recommend a trade technician. And beware of voiding your warranty if the cars are not an warranty. Anything you do to modify a new vehicle is going to be looked at very, very carefully by the manufacturer before they do on a warranty claim. A lot of things that take into consideration that we didn't take into consideration a long time ago can be very costly, especially when you avoid your warranty. That's right.

More anonymous feedback. I got plenty to go. Let's do it. All right. I read an article about a person with a lease taking the money to pay off the lease to the dealer. Within a few days, the dealer closes the business and all the cars and furniture is moved out. Yikes. Dealer did not afford the lease payoff money.

That was the finance leasing company, says it's not their problem and they still want their money. And reporting her as passed due to the credit agency. She now has no car. Credit may be ruined for a long time, and she has still required. to make the payments. Perhaps you could discuss on your radio program how a person protects themselves. I assume there will be many card dealers that can make assets and money disappear as the economy declines. Well, there's a very sad story, and fortunately it's not common, but it does happen. Matter of fact, a few years back, the dealership owned by the president

of the Florida Automobile Dealers Association went out of business. And there were a lot of people out there that were hurt because cars weren't being paid off. Money's owed. Customers were not being paid. And he went broke and he also went to jail, which is very sad. The way to avoid this sort of thing is check out the car dealer that you deal with carefully. You should check Google reviews. And they have dealertrack.com. They have measurements of customer satisfaction available that the manufacturer awards to dealers based on

ones that do the good job. Be careful. Google that dealer, get some references. Because you're on the hook. A lot of people think that Honda dealer is part of Honda, and Honda's a great big company with a lot of money. Or General Motors dealer Chevrolet. The dealers are separate independent business people. The only affiliation they have with the

manufacturer whose cars they sell is they have a contract that allows them a franchise agreement to sell the car. But the manufacturers have very little to say about how that dealer does business, which is one of my pet peeves. I think the manufacturers should have more influence and they should try to influence the dealers to be more honest and law-abiding and certainly financially responsible. So every dealer out there is, can hang up the shingle and leave town and leave you hanging on like this poor lady was and all you recourse down was the courts you sue or you call the Department of Motor Vehicles you haven't arrested I mean but it's too late then just be sure you know who you're dealing with

some dealer spent around for a while it's got good ratings or consumer ratings and got a good reputation and that's the way to go ladies and gentlemen if you just tuned in you're listening to cars and we'd love to hear from you especially the ladies this morning I offer you $50 for the first two new lady callers so take advantage of that phone number 877 960 9960 or if you're a little shy you can go ahead in Texas at 772 4976530 and don't forget your anonymous feedback dot com now I think we're gonna go back to Stu yeah let's get to some text We have a text from Dave in San Diego.

Hi, Earl, Stu, and the crew. Greetings from California. Just following up on some advice, she gave a few weeks back. I was looking at buying a CPO, which is a certified pre-owned Volvo XC60 from across the country in New Jersey. The dealer claimed the car was perfect because it was certified, but you strongly suggested I get it inspected by an independent mechanic. Salesman was very reluctant to hand it over to the mechanic, which should have been a red flag right there. Well, in the inspection, not only did they find the car needed four brake rotors, but the car also had close to 20 scratches, some as long as seven inches. None of this was disclosed by the dealer who said the car was, quote, pristine.

Thanks, as always, for the solid advice. You guys save me $28,000. Love the show, and that's Dave in San Diego. Well, that's great. You know, it's probably the single most important thing when you buy used cars to have an independent technician inspected. Carfax reports can be wrong. You can, obviously, the representation by the seller is probably wrong. And if you have to pay, I don't know what Dave paid for that inspection,

but if he paid $200, it certainly was worth it, right? It's probably more like $150, right? Rick, you could get their car checked out. Yeah. I mean, a mechanic isn't just going to look at the, does it run right? In this case, he caught scratches. It could have been a flood car. A good technician can tell you if a car's been in a flood.

You want to be sure the odometer readings right, and you certainly want a test drive, and you can hear the squeaks and rattles. A lot of times you'll have an independent mechanic check it out, and you'll say this and this and this are concerns, and then the seller will fix them and include them in the price that he quoted you because he'll claim he didn't know about them, and he'll fix them anyway. So it's worth the money and then some to have it checked out. Yeah, when you buy a house, you pay for an inspection, and you should do this.

Exactly. David, thank you so much for that text. Do you know how many people heard that? And it is, as Earl said, very, very important to get it checked. Certified means nothing unless you check it out. You just gave me a great idea that I hadn't thought of before. You said a bank, you said that when you buy a house, you have to have an inspected. One of the reasons you have to have an inspected is a lender, the bank, requires you have to inspected.

Now, you lenders out there when you, when you finance. a used car why don't you have a requirement that an independent mechanic check it's your collateral so the banks the credit unions here this out there if you want to finance somebody on a car require an inspection and then you can control the price too I mean you you don't want to get and you can also control the technician and you could be like Rick could be approved by the credit unions of the banks if you check the car out and you have to bring in the Rick and I'm not trying to sell Rick's but I'm just saying

wherever you are. Rick just found a new career. Yeah. This might be my new blog. Yeah. Very good. Thank you. That's a great idea.

Nobody controls me, except my wife. Yes, Chris. My wife does. Chris, the controller. Let's go back to California because we have another text from Brian in California. I love that we have a big presence out there on the West Coast. It's pretty cool. Hey, Stu.

Brian from California again. Question today for Rick. My dad drives a 2020 CROLAXX. Upon starting the car, he immediately shifts the car into gear and starts driving away within two to three seconds without giving anything in the car time to warm up. That's what I do. Is he damaging anything at all in the car mechanically by doing this? I personally start my vehicles up and wait about a full minute until my motor reaches the true idle before I put the car in gear and go. He makes fun of me all the time for doing this.

What do you think and what do you personally do when you drive your truck? Thanks as always and looking forward to the show. Technically, he's not really doing anything wrong that's going to damage it, per se. But it does accelerate the wear a little bit on the engine, I think. Because you've got to give it a chance for the oil to warm up a little, start moving and fill in the gaps, and let the oil do its work in the engine to help make sure everything's lubricated properly and that it can do its job in there. Um, myself, when I start my truck in the morning, I let it run for at least 15, 20 seconds. You know, in that time, I'm getting my cell phone plugged in for my Apple car play.

I'm plugging in my seatbelt, you know, making sure my mirrors are adjusted right. And getting myself settled in. Yeah, I was kidding. I have a whole little ritual when I get in the car. Same thing. Seatbelt, shut the garage door, get everything situated. Yeah. Take a sip of coffee.

30 seconds. I'm always, I'm always in a hurry. and I have a question for Rick when I'm in Nancy knows I'm always in hurry so I hop in I don't have a pantomime I gotta get out of that garage I'm in the garage I crank it up I get the garage

and when I start up my Lexus it runs at a high RPM and if I when I'm really in a hurry and I crank it up it's run at about 6,000 RPM and when I take it out of park it likes to leap forward into the wall in front of me or maybe into the people behind me so yeah is that you know it's a safety thing i mean i realize i shouldn't do that

i shouldn't be in a hurry but do all cars uh run at a high r pm for 10 seconds or something like that and before you answer that question rick i have to tell the audience that i do have my safety features that i use when i'm in the car with earl and that is my helmet my bulletproof best i have these uh gloves that can protect my hand in case i hit the concrete so anyway I'll share the rest with you later go ahead smelling salts yeah when you first start the engine on all the new cars it does rev up for a few seconds usually four or five seconds long enough to make sure that all the cylinders are firing properly clear out any condensation or anything that's built up in the cylinders and basically get the car

go into operating temperature as quick as possible that's a safety issue for a guy in a hurry and it can be but that can be the same safety issue as the person that driving a stick shift cranks the engine was forgetting to put their foot on the clutch yeah true okay it's my fault you know what happens when you forget to put the car in park oh that does happen that yeah that can be an issue too yeah for whom would that be the driver or the passenger for all okay moving right along next well we have Linda on Facebook said that I'm one of to know, Rick, when did you go to New England Tech, both of her son studied there? Nope, North Tech.

You hear that, Linda? It was North Tech. As a matter of fact, when I started at Earl Stewart Toyota, the guy next to me had gone to New England Tech, and I used to joke with them a little bit because the old commercial for New England Tech was be a New England Tech graduate or compete with one. I remember that. Great branding. That fellow wound up going into work in the parts department and sales, and so. service writing and me

I'm a top master technician for Toyota so I'll take compete with one we're going to go to well first I want to say that he without he without seen cast a how does that go cast the first stone

I have to say that I have to admit embarrassingly that I did leave my engine running with the garage door closed oh that's something you will never

ever, ever, ever forget. Never. And you talk about a safety issue. If it wasn't for my husband, we wouldn't be sitting here having this conversation. So I'll leave you with that thought. And I'm going to, because I'm teasing Earl, and I mean it in a loving way. I saw you look at me, snarl, and I do mean it in a loving way. Ladies and gentlemen, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530, and we have Tom that's holding from Jupiter. Good morning, Tom. Good morning. Good morning. Great show, guys, always. The question, I have a friend that's getting ready to buy a car today, and what I'm thinking is that most contracts that I'm familiar with, really with about anything, have a 72-power cancellation clause. in the fine print. What about the new, well, it's a used car. What about a used car

buying a used car? Tom, that's, you know anything about that. Yeah, that's one of, that's a common belief, Tom. There is no 72-hour cancellation right when you purchase a vehicle or anything else. There's a, in the state of Florida, there is a home solicitation law. And if someone knocks on your door

to sell you something, and you consummate the sale at home, then you have 72 hours, three days to back out. It does not apply to automobiles, and even if they deliver the car to your home, it does not apply. So when you take delivery of a vehicle, you own it, and it's not going back.

Most dealers will not take the car back, yes. Okay. Yeah, I got you. I got you. So if it's a lemon, you're stuck. You really are, and that's the reason you should be very careful before you sign on the dotted line and before you drive the car home. Anything in your mind about quality, price, any consideration, get it all in writing before you drive the car home. Once you sign and drive the car home, or they take the car to you today with the pandemic, leave it in your driveway.

You cannot bring it back. Well, what I'm thinking is I remember getting a time share a long time ago, and you did have a 72-hour. cancellation with that. But it's a whole different world, I guess. And so, but because what we're thinking is to get this car in where, West Palm, I think,

and then taking it up to our mechanic in Jupiter to have him check it out. Good idea. But that's kind of meaningless, so isn't it, as far as if they find something made you wrong with it. Not necessarily. You bought the car and you're stuck. Oh, after the fact,

exactly. You want to take that car, and this This is kind of separates the crooks from the honest people. When you say to a person that you're buying a used car from, we've got a deal. I'm going to sign and I'm going to pay you. But first, I have to bring this to my mechanic and let him check it out. If they say no, then they're not an honest dealer. Anybody that is selling a vehicle.

This is actually the Audi dealer in West Palm. So, you know. He won't allow you to take it to an independent mechanic to be checked out. Well, that's what we're going to check. They should, right? Absolutely, yeah. If they should, I would buy it from another Audi dealer, because most Audi dealers and most car dealers period

will allow you to take a car to an independent mechanic. It's an honesty test. When they say no, then you turn around and leave. Yeah, because what they said yesterday was we've got top-notch mechanic and blah, blah, blah, outy and all this stuff. So we'll see what happens today when he actually brings a checkdown for it. You just tell them Earl Stewart told you. They know.

They should tell them Earl by now, right? Tell them we'll be talking about them on next Saturday show if they say no. Oh, okay. Thank you, Beth. Okay, Tom. Thank you, Tom. Same on your wife. Shame on Etsy.

Thanks, Tom. Well, I've done stupid things like that myself, I assure you. Yeah. You know, what happens is sometimes. you just don't stay focused and you're so you're multitasking and uh you get caught up and those things happen in the end i'm not making any excuses but a lot of people out there don't realize how quiet their cars are when they're running i know it's happened to a few people more than a few 877 960 or you can text us at 772 49760 and ladies 50 dollars for the first two

new lady callers. Please give us a call. 877-9-60-99-60. Now back to Stu. Hey, Rick, Linda came in. She misspoke. It was North Tech that her sons went to. Oh, okay.

So when were you there if you'd like to know? I was there in 92 to 94. Okay. And she wasn't, if you remember, she thinks his name was John. He ran the auto part of the school. His name was John. He's passed away since.

actually we had Gary Miggins was the main instructor there at the time old times old times do you got any YouTube's over there we're kind of quiet on YouTube this morning YouTube is one of our favorite channels and Rick is monitoring YouTube so YouTube port slash or along cars and check us out and we can well we have plenty of other texts and anonymous to get you I have a text from North Carolina from Mary Ann

and she's purchased a vehicle. And after she got home, she realized that she had paid in a regional ad fee and a dealer prep fee. And she asks Earl, which fees are legitimate? None of them. Unless there's a federal fee or a state or a local tax, if it's a government fee, then it is acceptable to pass that along to the customer.

But the hidden fees, and when you put a name on it, and you call it a prep fee or anything else, it's not right. And it goes back to what we were talking earlier to it, I think, Tom, about, and once you take the car home, you bought it. I know you can complain, you can write a letter to the Better Business Bureau, you can call the Department of Consumer Affairs, you can even call the Attorney General's office, but it's an uphill battle once you bought the car. We're going to talk a little bit later in the show about a law in Florida that prevents you from suing the dealer. So not only aren't you going to get any satisfaction once you take the car home, but if you sue them, it's awfully hard. And in fact, it's practically impossible. Unconscionable.

You've just got to be sure that all your eyes are dotted T's across. Everything is online. Once you take that car home, you're in trouble. And Marianne, you mentioned the fact that you were embarrassed. it was great of you to text me and to share that with me because again like I said earlier there's so many people listening to this show and once you do get home

there's nothing you can do about it so I thank you for the text and pointing it out to our listeners back to Stu okay let's jump over to anonymous feedback Stu this is for me Stu I bought a car from you personally

right when you started working at the Toyota dealership back in 1998. It was the first good car buying experience I ever had. You did have a dealer fee back then, but you subtracted it from the price before totaling it. The fee was $395 and you said you wanted to convince your dad to stop charging it. Looks like that worked out. Love the show. Well, that's very true. I mean, you were always an advocate of getting rid of that dealer fee. Well, it was a lot of, I mean, I know that it's morally, I think it was the right thing. I think, just to be perfectly honest, I remember when I first started selling cars, that was the first stopping point I remember running into where it was just really uncomfortable.

So everything was going great. I'm not a natural born salesperson by any means, but I would usually enjoy, you know, talking with the customers and everything was great until we showed them the bars order. You were a terrible salesperson. You were too honest. Yeah, I sold about 12 cars a month. I was average. But yeah, I just like when it came to that, Everything just went to hell as soon as you get the dealer fee, then you had to explain it. What a time it was, 1998. It was self-preservation.

That's why I pushed to drop it. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for that, Stu. We're going to go to Pompano Beach where Warren is on the line. Good morning, Warren. Good morning, guys. How are you today? Well, thank you.

The reason why I called was, you mentioned that thing about the woman, the person who the cars were lost, with the, you know, they lost their money on it. They had a big thing up in Northern New Jersey is about 10 years ago, and this guy who seemed legitimate, he was taking exotic cars on consignment.

I know if you ever remembered it or not. And, you know, when I made exotic cars, Bentley's and Ferraris and all that kind of stuff, he had him shipped all over the United States to his dealership in northern New Jersey, which was in a very exclusive area. And, you know, people would send in there and he would sell it on consignment.

and it was all a scam because he ended up scounding with millions of dollars. He sold the cars, and, you know, he didn't have the title, or he had the title. It was all a scam, and over a two-year period of time, people got stuck with two people got stuck. The people sold the car and the people who bought the car. They were both all stuck, and he ran away to some foreign country, and the FBI got him about two years ago. But he took millions and millions of dollars, and these are not stupid people. These are people who have these very, very expensive cars.

You know, they were, you know, not cheap. Yeah. You know, so I just thought I'd give my two cents and let you know that it can happen to anybody. Yeah, Warren, I'll tell you, you'd be surprised that people that happen. In fact, it doesn't have to be an exotic car on consignment or any kind of a car on consignment. When you buy a used car, you don't know for a fact that that dealer owns that used car. You don't know for a fact that he's paid the lien off. on the loan from the previous owner.

And when you buy the car and you take delivery of that car, in case something happens and he cannot deliver you the title, which means you're not a legal owner, the guy that the bank that has a lien on it can come and take it away from you. And that's something that's done on trust too often when you buy a car. How many people who have bought a used car have said, let me see the title and let me see it assigned to me. because usually the lender has a title

or the title isn't immediately available and you take the car home after you sign the paperwork and now you're at the mercy of the dealer to be sure that car is paid off. So that's a great point, Warren. We trust car dealers too much. Everybody does. I assume that they're going to deliver what they promise

and sometimes they don't. Just did one more thing on that because I had a friend who wanted to buy a use Corvette and he finally found He's up in Northern New Jersey, and he found one in Jacksonville, Florida. Everything looked totally 100% good. He had a mechanic then they looked at it, yaddy, yad, he had it. Anyway, when it came time to pull a deal off, he said,

and I said to make sure you see the title, the title had a lien on it. And the guy was going to sell him the car with the lien on it. And, of course, he wouldn't have owned the car. And the guy was going to pull a fast one because he couldn't make the payments under that. So, you know, he just figured this was the car. a good way to get rid of it. And then my friend would have been stuck with the car. He's in Jacksonville, Florida. He's in the New Jersey thing. Well, come get me. You know, that kind of thing. So, anyway, it was a good thing you pointed out, and I appreciate that. Well, thank you,

Warren. Just to add to this point, also, we're in financially stressful times now, and it includes car dealers. Some of them are suffering a lot of problems with cash flow. And the first thing that happens when a dealer has a cash flow problem, he doesn't have enough money in the bank to make the payroll to pay his suppliers. What does he do? He doesn't pay the loans off on the cars he trades in as quickly as he should. And sometimes he'll even deliver new cars without paying the bank off because most all car dealers finance their cars, used cars and new cars.

Even the financially stable ones will oftentimes finance the new cars. So cash flow problem hits, bad economic times it. You buy a car and you find out that the car has not. been paid off, the bank that owns the lien on that car is going to come get it. And this is a very dangerous time to be buying a car without knowing for a fact that it is free and

clearer when you take delivery. Yeah, well, I guess if I don't know, these don't trust anybody. Yeah, that's a sad fact. If a guy up here, he had a very, like a million dollar show room and, you know, glittering, you know,

Ferraris and Bentley's, you know, And the first reaction would be, I never sort of told him I just read about, but, you know, your first reaction would be when you walk into it, wow, this guy's got to be legit. Look at this, look at this array of cars he's got here. Yeah. I mean, you know, he must have $20 million of the cars sitting on the lot. Because he's one of those cars was well over $100,000. But anyway, thank you very much.

You guys get a lot of good information. Thank you, Warren. Thanks, Warren. Thanks, Warren. Give us a call again. 877-960-99-60, where you can text us. at 772-497-6-5-30, still waiting to hear from the ladies. First two, new lady callers, $50 for the first two new lady callers.

Take advantage of that WWW anonymous feedback, and let us hear from you. Rick, do you have anything for us? We're still pretty quiet right now. What's wrong with a YouTube channel? YouTube channel. Is it up and working, Jonathan? It's working. It's working.

You're YouTubers. That's what's Rick's favorite channel. Maybe we're explaining things so clearly that it requires no additional explanation. You know what I noticed this morning, too, on a lot of different topics that honesty, transparency that we've shared with our audience and they've shared with us. And that's a big part of this show, Erlon Kars. So I want to bring that to everyone's attention. And also, while I'm thinking about it, I want to apologize to John from Palm City, who I did. I didn't call back. I had been so terribly busy. I apologize. I'll talk to you this afternoon, John. Oh, goodness. Mental telepathy. John's on the... Is he outside the door here? He's under the table down there with his cell phone. John from Palm City. Welcome to the show.

Good morning to everyone. Recently, you spoke about J.D. Power and their surveys. It was quite thorough about it. And actually, it's not the same thing as consumer reports. But for the first time ever, J.D. Power did a quality study on Tesla that was done on June 24th, and here's the news about it. The industry average with them is 166 problems per 100 cars. Tesla came out 250 problems for 100 cars. That's like the second worst to them was Land Rover, which was 220. 28 problems for 100. So this makes a red flag

with the survey on Tesla. But you know, the good news is Tesla stocks is way above a thousand. Last June, it was worth $212.12 a share. Elon Musk is the second, 22nd richest man in the world. So

it makes you wonder about doing more survey checking on Tesla. But that's a lot of problems. 250 per 100 cars It is Rick had our comment You know I always wonder about those The surveys looking for problems on new cars like that It seems like the more expensive the car

Like Land Rover Tesla They're obviously very expensive cars As compared to like Kia's I think the average buyer of a Kia Is less likely to see some minor little thing As a problem and report it They're going to accept certain things to be... Plus, the fact, there's more bills and whistles and toys and electronics and gadgetry.

Exactly. They're much more complex. So, exactly. And the complaints don't necessarily have to be valid complaints. You can bring in a dealer and complain because the salesman didn't show you how to operate the car. So in the highly complex, highly expensive cars, they tend to be more. And this is a, this is complaints from the first 90 days of ownership. It isn't two years or three years into ownership. This is the first 90 days. What do you have to complain about? And the more complex the car, the more you have to complain about. Exactly.

So I would take those numbers sometimes with a little bit of grain of salt. Yes. I agree. We all know it's a great car. And Earl and Nancy, right from the beginning, did a test drive on it. And they were impressed, and they were almost ready to buy one in those days. I remember that distinctly. and they mention it on a radio show.

But we know it's a good car, and Rick's Point and Earls is right, and what can you really learn in that short of a period of a brand new car. So take it for what it's worth. Thank you, John. Thank you, John. Okay. You guys have a good day. You too, John.

I want to mention one fast thing, too. Be careful. People don't realize at the gas station. An item not to use is the air pump. Because the air pump could be, you know, loaded with the coronavirus on it. And the latest issue of consumer reports has a testing of pumps that you can buy under $100, mostly all when you fill your tires, plug into the cigarette lighter in the car. But I recommend you in a store, it's like an electric drill.

I think there's several brands that make it. It's like $60, $60. And it has just like a portable drill. It has the battery attached to it. It has a gauge on it. And it works very well better than dragging out a hose at a gas station. And you can blow up your rubber ducky with it, too. I was going to say, we have those, has a little turbine in it, and we blow up the pool floats with it.

There you go. They're fabulous. It really worked good, and it stops. When you set the number, what you want to put in the tire, and it sets, and it's so portable, it's just easy because you don't have any plug your wires. Well, thanks very much. I'll tell you, you're very well informed. We appreciate it, and we hope you can call again next week.

But thank you very, very much for the call. Yeah, thank you so much, John. And I'll talk to you over the weekend. Okay. Thank you. Have a good day. You too, John. On 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-30.

And ladies, $50 for the first two. new lady callers. I have a text from Jenny and Jenny is asking us about her back window. I went to put down the window the other day and notice that the rubber at the bottom is disintegrating. How costly is it that if I were to replace it? I've been driving to work alone for the last seven years and never noticed it because I never put the window down. I think Rick can answer the question for Jenny. Okay, I'm going to guess that the rubber she's talking about is along the top edge of the door, where the window glass goes down in, and that's known as a belt molding.

Most car companies, they're probably going to be around $60 to $70, maybe $100 for the part. And, of course, you know, it's a rubber gasket. It's meant to help debris and stuff from getting down inside the door. so it's a good idea to go ahead and get that replaced so you don't get a lot of stuff inside the door that can actually build up and start to rot the inside of your car door. Why not just leave it up and forget about it? Well, because it's that rubber piece that goes against the glass,

even with the window up, that rubber, once it deteriorates and breaks apart, it leaves a gap where, like, leaves and grass and other debris, dirt and that can fall down inside. And, of course, you get too much of that inside. It holds moisture. and it can cause rust. Exactly. That's exactly what I was going to say, Jenny.

I think that I'd be more worried about the moisture. And it's like opening up a can of worms in the mold. Once that starts to grow and the odor of it, good luck. It can also plug up the drains at the bottom of the door so water can't get out. I would say less than $200 to get that replaced. Yeah, well worth it, Jenny. Jenny, thanks so much for the question. Stay in touch with us.

We are going to go to our first female caller of the morning, Lovetta, from Riviera Beach. Good morning, Lovetta. Good morning. Are you a first-time caller? Yes, I am. Oh, I'm so excited. Lovetta, you just won yourself $50. If you, after you're done talking to us, if you stay on the line and give your information to

Mike in our control room. I'll get that checkout to you. Well, thank you. You're welcome. What can we do for you this morning? My question is, my husband and I were looking at buying a new vehicle, and I remember in the past that you all used to do the free tires for life, and my question is, do you all still do that? Yeah, we have a program if you bring your car back. for all its factory recommended maintenance, and for as long as you own the car, we'll provide the tires after normal wear and tear.

So yes, yes, we do. Other dealers, not too many, but there's some other dealers out there that offer a similar program. Oh, okay. That's for the trucks, right? Trucks are any new car or any Toyota. We sell them certified Toyotas,

and just like used, just like we do the new. for as long as you own the vehicle. But you have to have all the factory recommended maintenance done and it doesn't cover road hazards like nails and tires and things like that, just normal wear. So once your tires wear below 3.30 seconds of an inch, we replace them at no charge. Oh, that sounds awesome.

Well, thank you, LeVetta. Appreciate the call. And thank you for being a potential customer. And LeVetta, thank you for supporting the ladies here at Erwan Cars. we need more lady callers and I'm happy to have heard from you this morning and the $50 will definitely help you at this time

you know that for sure with this crazy pandemic Rick has got something he's got a YouTube over there yeah thanks Levato talk to you soon now we're going to go to Rick Karen is asking I asked this question before but I must have missed your reply my stop-and-go feature on my 2016 Malibu quit working,

repair shop couldn't fix it, any damage being done to the engine if I ignore it. Now, this feature is what's known as start-stop by some of the manufacturers, and it's basically when you are pulling up to a traffic light, the engine will shut off and then restart when you step on the gas pedal to go again. It's actually, we've talked about this one before, I don't like it. I think it's a poor design set up.

I don't think it's worthwhile. Technically, if it's not operating, the only thing that it's going to do is you're not going to get the small amount of fuel savings that it was supposed to provide by having that feature. You're lucky to stop working and don't worry about it. Yeah, that's my opinion exactly, Karen. I would not worry about it.

As long as everything else is working fine on the car, leave it go. Okay. Great advice. Okay, soon. Some more text over there? Oh, yeah. We have a text from Maria in Jacksonville. She says, did you hear about the 12-year-old girl who invented a device to alert parents when a child is left behind in a car seat? She was awarded $20,000 for her idea. Wow.

And I did hear about that, and she's brilliant. It was a pressure sensor that goes into the car seat. It's easy to take out. You know, it's totally portable, so it's not hardwired into the car. the second it feels any pressure on it I think over a pound or something that it activates and then when it detects the temperature when the temperature gets to I think 100 or 102 degrees

it sends out an alert by text to the parents if the parents don't come and take the child out and I think within a minute or I'm not sure the time it sends a text 911 call out to emergency with the location wow well why isn't that the sale or is it the sale This happened kind of recently, so I imagine that this is going to get picked up. I mean, she got a big reward for it, so I hope it gets developed. Well, let's Google that and get the details and see if we can't give that some publicity.

I look at it up here. She's also from North Carolina. She's only 12 years old, same age as my daughter. And when it sends his way over five pounds, it activates. And then it has a built-in GPS chip, so it doesn't require a phone or a car with GPS. If the parent doesn't reset the button within 60 seconds, physically. in the car, it sends a message to 9-1-1. 12 years old?

12 years old. Wow. I got to meet this lady. Yeah, her name's Lydia, and she's up in North Carolina. Patent it, quickly. You should see the picture of her working on it. She looks like a genius. She's got all her chips and circuitry out.

Anybody know Lydia ask her to call the show. We'd love to hear from Lydia. We've been jawboning about that idea for years now, and the kid's solved it. What part of North Carolina does it say? Hang on a second. Where'd she go? She is from, oh gosh, give me a second. We'll make a concert effort to contact Lydia

and at least have her call next week. It would be so cool. I've never spoken to a 12-year-old genius. Well, except for me, you know. That's true. Wow, okay. Okay, well, Stu looks for that information. I have a text, and that text is,

I have it, I think this is for Rick. I have a 2008 Hyundai Veracruz, and sometimes when I break at the light, there is a drag in the brake. It lets go, then grabs. It doesn't happen all the time. Should I call a mechanic? I would definitely get that checked out. Anything to do with the brakes, to me, is incredibly safety conscious. I'm one of those, hey, I know there are folks out there that will fix the air.

air conditioner before they'll fix their brakes, but anytime I drive my car, I want to know that when I step on that pedal, that car is going to stop. You got a lot of weight going down the road. Get those brakes checked out. And just like anything else, get a second opinion. Always find out if they're going to charge you a diagnostic charge, if so how much. And you take it to a Hyundai dealer, and you might have to talk to two or three before you find the best deal and the most reliable to work with. Yeah, definitely worth looking into. Thank you for that.

We are going to go to Mark from Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, Jim. How is everyone this morning? Pretty good. Good, good. Hey, I have a warranty question. By 2017, Camry's 336, unfortunately's

warranty goes out in six days. Oh, boy. Anyway, we've had a reoccurring problem. This is probably for Rick. The right rear tire sensor, tire pressure sensor. We've had it in like three or four times for the same reoccurring problem, being as I can't get around. My daughter brings it in.

But anyway, I'm not sure whether it's been reset, replaced, or my question is, Rick, is that an isolated park right on that right rear or does that have something to do with some type of computer board to where my basic question is because it's been in for the same problem repeatedly is that is there any potential um help on my end if it happens again after 336 or does that all get thrown out the window well first off most car companies And I know for a fact, Toyota does this, and I'm betting Honda and the others will be right on board. If you have a concern that starts occurring before your warranty ends, but they can't solve it right then, they can't find it, intermittent condition, and then your warranty goes out and they eventually find it, they're still going to cover that under warranty. If the initial complaint was before the warranty ran out, you're covered.

You just want to be sure that you go on record because there can't be a he says, she said. Be sure in email or on a repair order, something in writing that you can refer to later if there's controversy that you did identify this issue that a vehicle wasn't warranty at this time. They will fix it. Any manufacturer will have to. It's just a matter of law. Absolutely. Always keep the receipts of your repair orders and make sure that they put that specifically on the repair order that that's the concern you're in for them to fix.

Now the way they basically operate is the tire pressure sensor is a little monitor chip inside the tire and it's where the valve stem is and it sends a signal to a computer that tells the car, you know, whether the air pressure is safe or not. So it could be the sensor or it could be that receiver, but most likely it's going to be that sensor. And I think they should have replaced it by now. If you've had it in two or three times, they should have stepped up and replaced it because of that having that issue. Right. Well, I think what I'll do is I go in, you know, before Friday and just do a face-to-face hands-on communication. Um, also one, one other thing, just maybe on a comedic end, um, uh, Stu might know or remember this. Several weeks ago I called in about warranty situations.

Jim, during our conversation, we talked about, I, I forget with a new warranty company out there that, uh, started with cars. Yeah, you know, they're broadcasting. What's the name of that, Steve? Oh, God. Oh, was it safe car? No, not safe car. Um, Car shield.

That's what it is called. Well, you know, I do, I spend a lot of time in front of the TV, and, you know, now it's all over the house. You know, they show closed, being thrown out of the dryer and, oh, yeah, we'll carve that, basically. I believe it's the same company. I think that the next thing on their list is they're going to warranty marriages. If you're not satisfied with your bliss. within your marriage. I think they're going to start warranting

that. Marriage shield. Will they furnish a replacement spouse or just pay the legal fees? Yeah. Small deductory. But, you know, the more I see the ad, Earl, I remember what you said about it, that chances are that

you know, that one of the ad shows goes, oh yeah, I've had my engine and transmission replaced at the same time. You know, but like you, mentioned the small print is probably so vague that, you know, the chances of them doing something without a great expense to the consumer is probably, you know, probably doesn't, I'm losing

my train of thought. But you know what I mean? The chances of them actually paying out what they're claiming and their advertisement is probably slimmed in. Yeah. Best advice is just ignore all extended warranties. I hate to say that because there are probably some that are pretty reliable, but there's so many out them that aren't. If you buy a reliable car, forget about the extended warranty. You've got a factory warranty, and after that, if you take care of the car and maintain

it, according to the factory recommended owner's manual, you're not going to have any problems and you're just paying you're overpaying for these extended warranties and you know i would have i'm sorry um go ahead nancy and mark it's not that uh you're losing your train of thought that small print not only does it make no sense but you can't read it it's so small earl and i for a while when we were doing the radio shows was carrying a magnifying glass and that's the way he was able to well both of us read the small print Yeah, well, you know, also, how in the heck can they be making money if they're spending millions of dollars on advertisements and paying out claims at the same time? It's impossible.

So they aren't paying much out on claims. They're paying a lot for advertising to collect premiums. But anyway, thank you very much for taking my call this morning. I enjoy the show. I enjoy the daily mornings. and I will talk to you soon. Thanks, Mark. Thank you, Mark.

Thank you. And thank you for listening to Earl on cars. Hope to hear from you soon. Stu? Anonymous feedback. Earl, hats off to you and Stu for managing a difficult situation at your Toyota dealership. A larger organization like Home Depot Company can't even manage the face covering mandate. I had my Avalon service this week with you and everyone was following the guidelines properly.

as a senior citizen, I felt very comfortable at your agency. Well, thank you very much. Well, people are getting more and more serious, and I'm glad to see that in our recent shopping reports, mystery shopping reports, we've seen more and more masks being done, and I think slowly, but surely, at least in the South Florida, the people are starting to get in that.

I think the county mandate had a lot to do with that, so people took it seriously. Yes. More anonymous feedback. You recommend getting multiple quotes for everything, and I agree that is good to do. How do you do this when it's a service quote when your car isn't running

and it's in the possession of the dealership service department? I'm being told my engine needs an expensive repair, but I can't drive it to another mechanic and I can't afford a towing service, let alone the $3,000 they want to fix my car. It's a good point, and it's a tough one. Sometimes you're better off to, it might be bluffing if you're a poker player,

but sometimes you have to bluff them say, I'm calling ABC towing company and have my car towed over here and I'm going to get another bid and that in itself might elicit a reduction in price they feel like they have you when the car won't run I would always I'd stick to my guns on getting a second and a third bid

if it's an expensive repair and at the very least always do this even if you don't have a towed get an estimate in Florida we have a law that says if you get a service estimate, the actual work charge has to be within 10% of that amount. So if they quote you $1,000, they can only go to $1,100. They can't go any higher, and you don't have to pay it by Florida law.

But you have to have a written estimate. You can't say, he told me it was going to cost as much. It has to be in writing. Should be on the repair order. But tell them you're going to have the car towed, and you're going to get another bid from another service department. and usually, if they're not being honest, they're going to reconsider. I have another thought. I would think that if somebody diagnosed the car with a certain repair,

they wouldn't be afraid, and I don't know how easy this would be to do to bring a mechanic there, just to talk with the technician who diagnosed the problem. Unless they're in collusion. Yeah, make sure they don't know each other. I mean, you know, in car dealerships and most service departments' periods, the service advisors are paid on commission. The technicians are paid on condition. And so you don't know who's exaggerating.

The technician could be fooling the service advisor and the customer, or the service advisor can be fooling the customer. So it's really a dangerous thing if you don't get on expensive repairs, second and third quotes. More anonymous feedback. Rick, I'm watching you on Facebook. I really like your mask. Can you do a Bane from Batman impersonation?

Love the show. No. good enough oh the people are looking at you on Facebook that's my impression a star is born this one's for you Nancy

how do you get Nancy's private text line I never hear you announce it over the air let's read Nancy's cell phone number out no I'm not going to do it I didn't understand that they want to know how you get your private text line because you're getting text they said I never hear you announce it over the air somebody wants your phone number oh that's my private

Don't give that out. Good morning. This is more anonymous feedback. Good morning, everyone. My beef with Toyota is a premature failure of a recently installed front brake caliper. You did not install the original part, and another Toyota dealer did, but I have since felt better using you guys. By the way, the caliper was just a little over one year old. The additional mileage was less than 5,000 miles.

You replaced it for what I thought was pretty expensive, but I still paid it, and will continue having you service it. It's a 2008 four runner. Now aren't the parts warranted for 12 months? One year unlimited mileage. So if you have a 12, if you have one that's been there for close to a year, you need to contact us again. We can probably get that covered under goodwill and if it's close to warranty. But any part, I think it's on most of all cars, the part itself is warranty for 12 months. So you could have a 20-year-old car. And if you put a new part on it, you've got a 12-month warning on that part if it fails. Yep.

Okay. We have a text from Bob in Antonville, and he asked the question last week, and we answered it really quick because we were trying to go through rapid fire, so he might have missed it. The question was, is it necessary to change your transmission fluid? Rick gave a one-word answer, which was no. No. But maybe we could speak about it for a minute just to explain why. I don't know his vehicle right off that, do you? No, but he did have, Nancy Pluggerus, he did have a Barracuda 70, 440, 6-pack.

Well, on a barracuda, you... Okay, no. Get the telephone number for me. Toyota and most manufacturers now are, because they're reducing the maintenance requirements on these cars, and the quality of the fluids and the quality of the transmissions has increased so much that at this point, Toyota Worldwide. their W.S. transmission fluid has a lifetime for the car. It is not necessary to change that fluid.

And I'm sure it's true of all cars, I think. Everybody doesn't. Yep. The only time you'd need to is, say, if you've got it contaminated with water or a transmission repair, other than that, nope, leave it be. Bob has let us know it's a 2015 Volkswagen Passat. Leave it be. Leave it be, Bob.

There you go. Yeah, I have a text in reference to that text that you had earlier, how I'm getting the text. And Jessica says that because my reputation has grown by leaps and bounds, you have to be on the list of my very, very best friends. It's like the secret menu at Starbucks. Not everybody knows about it. Okay. This is from Amory. We hadn't heard from her in a couple of weeks.

She's a longtime listener and a longtime texter. She says, good morning. I hope everyone is well. Rick, I need your help on an interminute problem with my 2013 Camry XLE. My radio works just fine, but the display screen turns white with pink lettering when I first start my car instead of the normal black background with blue lettering. Sometimes the screen turns a deep blue with aqua lettering. Whether the screen is white or deep blue, it will eventually switch back to normal. Sometimes it will switch to normal in a few minutes. Other times it might be a half hour of driving until the screen goes back. The backup camera display turns either a solid white or a different, not normal color when the display screen hasn't switched back to normal. Thank heavens the car has mirrors so I can see what's behind me when the screen hasn't returned the normal.

This is an intermittent problem. It was easier to ignore when I wasn't driving so much, but I'm driving a bit more, and this is getting annoying. What's up with that video screen? The radio works fine, and the screen responds when I change channels or switch for data. Please tell me what's going on. Thank you very much for your help. Before Rick answers that, I've got to say to Anne-Marie, that was one of the most beautiful descriptions, articulate, specific, and I saw it, and I saw it. Anne-Marie, you should be a writer. Maybe you are, but that is just the most, if everybody would express their complaints on cars that way, they would be a lot easier to fix the cars, wouldn't they, Rick?

Absolutely. Yeah, that's the toughest thing sometimes, isn't it? People kind of, they have a hard time explaining it, yeah. As a matter of fact, the exact same thing happened to the radio in my Tacoma. The screen started going white, and because I'm normally leaving for work at 5.30 in the morning, but well before the sun comes up, I would suddenly have this glaring white light in my eyes. Very distracting. My recommendation, do not go to a dealership for it because a factory radio is going to cost you over $1,000 just for the radio, if it's still available

and that's an exchange unit where it's going to take them several days to get it then there's probably another $150 to install it go to your local best buy shop around a little bit check a couple places find a nice aftermarket radio that looks good to you and get a radio with 2020 technology

installed in your 2013 and it's going to make your camera almost feel like a brand new car to you great advice and by the way Best Buy is one of the few companies that is thriving during this pandemic and one of the reasons is for this sort of thing it's a place, it's a go-to place

they have people there that can advise you and they can actually do installations and things like that for you and the prices are incredibly good and you can buy online and I mean just it's a great store they manage to survive the impact of the online retailers they kind of

they work themselves into that model okay we have a text from Steve in New Jersey another long-time listener, a long-time texter. Good morning, Earl, Steve from New Jersey. Prior to COVID, the pace of introducing safety and autonomous driving aids was rapid. And these current times, do you see this pace slowing down? I think everything is slowing down during this time. And I think it will continue to say, I think it's stalled a little bit.

I think because of the economic threat, the cost of going autonomous are huge. and the cash flow of all the automotive manufacturers now is strained. So I think they've kind of put a lot of things on hold in the way of research and development. So we'll see. I mean, you know, if we could get through this thing, we're looking at the light at the end of the tunnel being 2021 when we have an anecdote or a vaccine

that is going to help kill this virus thing. But it'll probably be delayed for at least that long. and maybe longer. There is a leak that came out. Somebody leaked some vehicles that Toyota is secretly working on. These are all electric vehicles, and there are some concepts. They said they would be introduced in 2022. So there's a lot of things that car manufacturers are just,

their R&D, it's constantly churning. And they might slow down an introduction of a model because of sales or things like the other circumstances. Well, the juggernauts like Toyota, the ones that have got the cash, the people that are going to be really slowed down, They're going to be people like General Motors and Ford, unfortunately, but the Googles and the people that have the cash. Yeah, they keep going.

Keep going, yeah. Interesting. Ladies and gentlemen, if you just tuned in, you're listening to Erlon Cars. Give us a call. You have a question? 877-960-99-60. Advice, anything at all. We'd love to hear from you.

And I have a call from Siebering, and it's... On your secret line? We have a call from Sebring, and it is Nigel. Good morning, Nigel. Good morning, Nancy. Good morning, Earl. Good morning, Sue. Thank you for calling.

Thank you for having the show. It's very informative. I have a quick question about my car. It's a 2008 Honda Veracrujee. so whenever I stop like break at a stoplight it has a slight drag in it

or like it seems like it grabbed and then let go and grabs again yeah that's something that I would have a checked by a mechanic brakes are extremely important having your brakes work properly to stop your car it sounds like you might have a spot on the rotor that's got some heavy corrosion or something and that's why it's doing that catch and catch and catch but I would definitely have a mechanic

check that out to find out what's going on for sure and of course check a couple different mechanics and get a good estimate from at least two or three mechanics on it okay thank you thank you so much you're welcome that's exactly what is feels like to like it's like you know it has that grab and go again like you know there's something there so thank you so much thank you for listening okay more text too for having this show thank you thank you we have some more text you know youtube over here great we do we just had a couple of them come in uh justin thomas he actually has two questions here it's uh hi there is a certified lexas a better value than buying brand new

and suffering depreciation as soon as I drive off the lot, and he asks, is there a stamp or a date listed on the car that tells me how long it's been sitting on the lot? Regrettably, no, but you can usually find out. It's just a matter of asking, and you can even ask for the, to see the stock number, if you want to do some arithmetical calculations, you might be able to figure it out.

But certified, you pre-owned cars are better value than a new and certified is only good as the dealer that says it's certified the manufacturers have the certified program which is really a way to sell more extended warranties for them and the dealers don't always do the checklist and and check the car out the way it should I would buy a pre-owned car certified or not before I'd buy a new car and then I take it to my independent mechanic I have to check it out and if it gets a clean bill of health you're going to save yourself two or three thousand dollars and depreciation. And Donovan Lewis is asking, what is the best way of negotiating the price of a car at a dealer that says they are a one price for used cars? I'm watching one, and I believe the price is higher than it should be. Well, you do the same thing you do with somebody that doesn't say they're one price. First of all, most people that say they're one price are not really one price, and you always should negotiate or at least attempt to. And when you find the real no

price dealer, low-priced dealer, that has really put his lowest price on all of his cars, and you say, are you sure you can't give me a better price because I'm going to take it to your competition? If he says, well, you should take it to your competition, and if you get a better price, you should buy the car. And that's the way you find out if they're sincere, and then take it to the competition and see if they have a better out-the-door price. The key there is the out-the-door, because a lot of times other dealers, will take a price that you've been quoted by another dealer and they will say yes we'll match it and by the time you get to the paperwork you find out they've added

two or three thousand dollars and hidden fees and dealer and solar accessories if you stay tuned for the mystery shopping report this coming up shortly we have just set a new world's record on hidden fees and additions over and above the quoted price so always be sure that when you shop that price from a one-time price dealer or anybody that the price you shop it with is in fact an out the door price out the door price is a price you write the check for hand it to the salesman get in the car and take it home that is the out of the door price nothing should be at it next all right we have a text good one probably for Rick I think Earl you should take it swing in it though

if you just replace one tire does it matter if it's the same brand as long as the rating, size, tread, et cetera, is the same. Go ahead, Rick. My recommendation is never mismatch your tires on the axle, because what can happen is you'll develop a pull to one side of the other because of the different qualities in the two tires. Yeah, it's something that stands out. People, you know, anytime you get a car appraised or people look at it,

it stands out that you've got a good year in a Michelin. That's... It looks bad. It looks a little tacky, too. What about on the, you say, on the axle, what if you have on the front, one brand and the back one brand? Now, that's fine. I have no problems with, say, a couple of Goodyear's in the front, a couple of Toyos in the back. Nope, that's fine.

It's kind of tacky, though. It still didn't look good. Yeah. You generally want to have the same brand of tire all the way around. You want to be cool. You're going to have. Exactly. Remember, ladies, you can still get your call in.

$50 for the first two new lady callers. I wanted to mention consumer reports. It is the August edition, and Earl and I both found it very interesting that there's so much information in this subscription, and one of them is the right time to buy, and the right time to buy is now. and there's that information. It's several pages and also on tires. Just a great magazine to pick up and take advantage of, and that's the August edition.

It's just looking August, yeah. Really good article in there. The one caveat, if you buy this or go online and you read this article, they're talking about now the time to buy, it depends on what part of the country you're in, region. cars are car dealers are getting shorter cars in some areas more so than another

every car dealer is going to be shorter cars pretty soon and this article for consumer reports was probably written about the time there wasn't such a shortage but when you are buying a car unless you absolutely have to buy a car you don't want to be buying a car when there's high demand

and short supply you'll by definition pay more so other than that the article is great they recommend true car They recommend Costco, and it's a really good article. Yeah, and pick up the consumer report. One of the interesting things is the RAV-4 that is extremely popular, and there is a very short supply,

and if you find one, you're going to pay a whole lot, so it definitely pays to do your homework. 877-960-99-60, and we are going to go to Ellen, who's calling us from Stuart. Yes, hi. How are you? Well, thank you. Ellen, are you a first-time caller?

Yes, I am. Congratulations. You just won yourself $50. Woo! Thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome. If you stay on the line after we talk and speak to Mike in our control room,

he'll get your information. I'll get that checkout to you. Thank you, Nancy. You guys are the best. Thank you. Thank you. What can we do for you this morning? Yes, I was just listening.

Somebody had said something about replacing, like, one tire. I had done that because I had a flat. And so I have, they said it was a little bit better quality. I went to Firestone, and I replaced one tire in the back. Now, I was wondering, how am I going to get my, I usually get my tires rotated, but the people at Wallace said that they wouldn't be able to do that because I have the odd tire in the back. Correct?

Well, the tires can still be rotated. On most modern cars, they're meant to go, the front tires go to the back, the back to the front. So the rotation can still be done. However, when that mismatched pair does get to the front, there is a possibility that the car will pull to one side or the other. So Wallace, of course, they're probably going on the air on the side of caution that they rotate the tires. You're going to come back and complain, hey, it's pulling, and they're going to be responsible now.

So they've either got to rotate the tires back to their original position or try to fix this pull. So they're probably just kind of airing on the side of caution there. Okay, so, yeah, because I mean, I just got these, the four new tires that, like, years ago. So I hate to get the same tires. I had to do it because I had a flat and that was all they had at the time. Right. How about a pull would it be, Rick? I mean, is it something as long as she would, maybe she'd prefer to do the rotation to preserve the life of the tires and live with a slight pull as long as she was aware of it? It would be just a drift. Let me give this definition real quick. When you're driving along, if you look at the white lines in the road, the reflectors

are what I like to use. If you drive in the center of the lane with just a very light touch on the wheel, just keep your hands just touching on the wheel, never let go of the wheel, if you pass three or four of those reflectors and the car stays in its lane, then it's going pretty straight down the road. By the time you pass that fourth or fifth one, if it starts to drift out of the lane, you have what's known as a drift. But if it pulls itself out of the lane within the first two or three or four reflectors, then you have a pull, and that's something

you're going to want to get addressed. Because that could mean the tires going really low or some of their issue with the car. But a pull is something that when you're just giving a light touch on the wheel, the car moves out of the lane relatively quickly. And the drift is just it moves slowly over out of the lane. out of the lane okay all right well thank you i listen to you i try and listen to you every

saturday and all i read you your articles in the hometown news and you guys are fantastic nancy wonderful for the ladies and thank you all for all your wonderful information oh thank you allan hello please thank you for all the compliments and thanks for helping so much bye bye to build this platform for the ladies 877 960 9960 or you're you You can text us at 772-497-6530. Anonymous feedback. Earl, you always claim that car dealers break the law every day in their ads. How is this possible?

It's so out in the open, it would be so easy to bust them. Well, let me give you an example. Have you ever driven on I-95? Is there anybody going to speed limit? So the problem is when everybody breaks the law, it overwhelms. and so you got I-95 thousands of people speeding and if the Florida Highway Patrol tried to stop them it would have resulted in total chaos

I guess if the Attorney General maybe she's afraid to crack down on car dealers because every one of them is breaking the law every day and you'd have to arrest every car dealer in Florida I mean it's something that's been let go so long that I think you've got the lobbyists going at them the FADS

They realize that if they go after the car dealers, they're not going to get reelected. And if they do go after the car dealers, there's so many of them out there. You go after one car dealer. He's going to say, but my competition's doing it. And then pretty soon, everybody's sporting the finger at everybody else, it would be impossible to enforce it. It would be overwhelming. And we let ourselves get into this position.

And somehow or other, we've got to dig our ways out. That's what this show is all about. We're trying to embarrass somebody where they start trying to do something. Raise consciousness. All right. Another text. No name on this one. I try to buy a new Camry from a dealership in Georgia.

I was told that the bank said I had to buy a Corolla, not a Camry. My credit isn't very good, but I don't understand why they care what model I buy is this discrimination. Well, I mean... They're talking price. They don't care about the model. I think the dealer probably explained it poorly to you. It's just the amount of money that they'll loan. Maybe based on your credit, they feel comfortable.

If somebody has some credit issues, they might restrict the amount that they'll advance for the loan. But clearly, you left that dealership thinking that there was something else going on, and they did a bad job explaining that. It's a matter of down payment also. You can buy yourself a Rolls-Royce if you have enough down payment. So with a Camry or Corolla, you come up with an extra 500 bucks, maybe $1,000, you can buy the Camry. it's just a matter of total amount of debt exposure that the lender has and based on your credit they're thinking of camera is too much debt exposure yeah okay this one's from robbie and she's

also she's in store he's in store florida i get that confused i also know a robbie who is a woman in store but this is the man robbie uh good morning uh we bought a 2019 Toyota forerunner limited four by four from you um we're considering buying an airstream travel trailer ooh cool It weighs 4,000 pounds dry. Capacity of our forerunner, towing capacity, is 5,000 pounds. Will this be okay? It came with a hitch. Does it have a towing package on it?

What will towing do to the engine and transmission? And like I said, that's from Robbie. It sounds like that trailer is well within the proper capacity of your forerunner to handle it just fine. Now, bear in mind that towing, you're obviously going to put a little more wear and tear on the engine and transmission. so it will shorten the lifespan of it a little bit. Not a huge amount, but some. And other than that, you're just going to have to deal with my jealousy because, man. Airstream.

I love those airstreams. Yeah, I was looking at those online. I was always scared to fly. Now I'm terrified to fly. And I was thinking, I wouldn't mind renting one of those just to see how I liked it. Are those beautiful or what? That's one of Nancy's and I's running jokes. Whenever we want to make the other laugh, we say, let's go by a one of a bit of,

and we'll get in that and we'll drive that around the country together we get about as far as Jacksonville before one of us were killed by the other one maybe you should have a have a hire a driver and then I mean I can't imagine being inside a container for for all that period of time I just right but see that's that's why you get the forerunner with the airstream yeah once it's at one one and the other yeah that's perfect yeah I don't think that's an option yeah the airstream's really There's the silver tube. They're very retro-looking. They're just really cool.

They're awesome. We don't want to be anywhere that's confined. Ladies and gentlemen, our lines have been shut down. We are getting ready for the mystery shopping report. It's going to be a doozy from Napleton, North Palm Beach, Honda. Hyundai. Hyundai, Hyundai. We have one more.

Yeah, we've got another text here. We got time. And we would love for you to vote on the mystery shopping report when Earl does it now. Back to Stu. Okay, morning all, and this is from Colin. Just wondering what your thoughts are on building your own new vehicle. I tried to, and he doesn't mean literally, Rick started getting nervous, don't build your own car, it's not going to be safe.

Building your own vehicle. I tried it on Toyota's website. It was extremely fun, and it seems like I can get a vehicle's price high very quickly. Are there extra costs added when picked up, or is the price on the site what you'll pay? The only thing I would caution on building your own vehicle on these sites is sometimes there's regional differences in what's available. So you might be on a site adding factory option packages only to find out when you actually get in touch with the dealer that it's only available in the northeast or out in the west coast. But it is fun to do because, yeah, you can really run the price up. I do that with Mac computers a lot.

I just see how expensive I can get them on Apple.com. And I don't buy them. It's just a weird hobby I have. But, yeah, generally speaking, it is if you're using a regional website, for example, you're talking about Toyota, Toyota has a Southeast Toyota's buy a Toyota.com. Typically, they will only show you what is available, so you should have a pretty good time building it. Now, as far as the price goes, well, it depends on where you're getting that price from. If it's from a dealer, probably not a good chance what you see online is what you're going to pay.

Some dealers will. Try not to make it to commercial at our dealership. Yeah, if you build a vehicle on our website, the price will be the price. On our YouTube. I've got one good one here. James Ferreira is asking, Hello, I'm trying to replace my rear tires that are 285 slash 30 slash 21 with not much luck finding them. I'm having better luck finding tires with a 35 aspect ratio.

Now, real quick, folks, this tire measurement is what they call the P metric measurement. 285 is the width of the top of the tire in millimeters, 285 millimeters. The aspect ratio is the next number, that 30, and that is that the sidewall of the tire is 30% of the width of the tire. And then 21 is the diameter of the rim, which is 21 inches. Why they decide to mix all that up like that? I don't know, but that's what the industry did. James, the best thing I can tell you, if you want to try to go to a 35 aspect ratio, it's going to make the tires a little bit taller,

and depending on what car you're fitting these on, if it's too close to the fender wells, you could damage the car by putting too tall of a tire on there. I am guessing that you're probably owning a Tesla P95, because that's one of the few cars I've ever seen that came from the factory with a 21-inch wheel. So I would check with Tesla on this and find out if they have sources for that proper exact size tire.

Can you buy tires on Amazon? You can. Yeah. But it's just finding that specific size is going to be tough. And Costco, I'd check Costco. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, let's move into the mystery shopping report.

Let's check a memo to file. Check prices of tires on Amazon. I've never thought to look at a price of a vehicle and see how they compare it with Costco and other prices. Mr. Shop of Napleton, North Palm Beach, Hyundai. This week we turned our attention to the Takata airbag recall crisis because there just hasn't been enough bad news lately, ha ha ha. But seriously, the Takata problem did not go away.

when the world turns its attention to this pandemic. The Takada recalls over 140 million vehicles. I choked when I rode that for the first time. Can you imagine 100? That's all the vehicles, isn't it? I mean, 140 million vehicle takata recall. It's almost like the odds are the car you're driving and has a Takata airbag recall.

That's not literally true, but it seems like it. I've been with it since 2014. That's the other, I can't believe it's been that long. Good Lord, six years this thing has been going on. And it's not getting better. They're getting more recalls. And they're selling cars, new cars, with recalled with Takata airbags, that they know are going to be recalled

because they don't have another airbag they can put in there and they don't recall it until it's four or five years old. And so it's wave after a wave. It's the recall that keeps on given. Exactly. It's like herpes. I'm sorry, I shouldn't say that. That was like a joke from the 70s.

Well, all the old guys out there like that. I don't know about the girls, anyway. I just came out. I couldn't control myself. Anyway, the staccata thing is something we have to address, even in this pandemic. And I know in the eyes of the COVID-19, Takata Airbag recall doesn't sound important. And I guess, relatively speaking, it's not.

But we can't forget about it. We spent the last four years trying to bring attention to the unrestricted sale of used vehicles with unfixed or unfixable detective airbags, hard to believe that it's legal to sell a car with an airbag that can blow up in your face and kill you, and it cannot be fixed because they don't have an airbag replacement for that car, and it's legal to do that. shame, shame, shame on the federal legislators, regulators, the state, the city, everybody. How can you allow someone to sell you a car with a dangerous recall that cannot be fixed? Rick?

Even worse are the ones that the parts are available and it can be fixed. Well, I don't know about that. All they have to do is take it to the dealer and get it fixed. I agree. I disagree. I think to sell one that can be fixed, there's some. a conscience salvageable if you can't get a fix.

You find out about it, you get a fixed. Imagine going into a car dealer, buying a used car, and you find out when you get home that night that it has a defective airbag, and you can't get it fixed. And you bought a car. Now you can't get it fixed. What do you do?

Potential hand grenade sitting in front of you. I don't know what you do. What do you do whenever you find out that person has lost their life because of the defective airbag? Especially that person. Let's move on it. Exactly.

We've implored officials and politicians to establish regulations that would prohibit the sale of used vehicles with dangerous safety recalls. After four years, there's still no law. Not even one that mandates the disclosure of these effects. At the very least, they should have required disclosure, but they don't. We have uncovered dozens and dozens of car dealers who are more than willing to not only sell a car with a Tocata Airbag recall, but who are willing to conceal the danger and willfully conceal it from their customers. I mean, that should be punishable by imprisonment. Forget about a fine to deliberately sell a person,

a product that you know can kill that person. Premeditated, I'm starting to get myself too upset here. Getting the favors. Blood pressure is up. We've uncovered dozens and dozens of car care wages did that. We haven't done a Takata investigation says January of this year. It's been too long. Our search for defective Takata airbags to us led us to Napleton's North Palm Beach Hyundai on North Lake Boulevard and Lake Park, Florida.

That's right next to North Palm Beach because a lot of people don't know where Lake Park is. Napleton's North Palm Beach Hyundai. That's the reason they say it's North Palm Beach Hyundai. On their website, listed to sale was a 2015 Honda pilot with a fixable but unfixed, defective to cut airbag. It was listed for $14,499. Now, as John from Palm City would say, you better sit down for this one because this is one classic, one-of-a-kind shopping report, and it's just starting to get good now. Don't touch your dial. We summoned a veteran mystery shopping operative, agent funder, to administer the takata test.

Now, without giving too much away, this investigation took some unpredictable terms and resulted in one of our weirder. That's too kind and adjective. Outrageous, probably be more appropriate. Our investigation evolved from a takata test yesterday. I want to interrupt. I was going to mention this earlier. Do you think just because, do you think maybe you should use a pseudonym for the sales? I was a little concerned about some of the things that were said, maybe just call them Bob or something.

Okay. I think, yeah. Anonymity for the salesperson, we rarely do this, but I would defer to Stu's better. I just got to chill thinking that I don't want to be responsible for somebody getting in trouble. Our investigation involved from a Takata test to a crazy sales experience, and I guess I want to lick my finger, and I can't. You need one of those things that you... I can't lick my finger. I got my mask on it.

Mystery shopping is like a box of chocolate. You never know what you're going to get. One of the classic phrases of all times. Okay, here's a report. I'm the shopper. Today's mission was Napleton Hyundai on North Lake Boulevard on a Takata airbag mystery shop. I set out to ask the three questions,

the three questions that we always ask on the Takata shop to be sure that there's no question that what happened, happen. If a salesperson has asked these three questions and still tries to sell you a car with a dangerous recall, you know you've got a problem.

Question one, are there any mechanical issues? Well, that's a mechanical issue. Has it ever been in an accident? Well, that's not directly related, but it still needs to be answered. The third one, this is the killer. Any safety issues? Now, can you sell

an unsafe vehicle? Let me rephrase. Can you sell an unsafe product? The Federal Trade Commission says you can't. All laws say you can't sell an unsafe product. And yet our laws allow you to sell cars with defective airbags. I dreaded going back to Naples because it brought up memories from the last horrible experience I had at Naples-Kreisler Dodge Jeep. However, I gave myself a pep-doc to stay optimistic. I mean, Napleton is just about the worst of the worst, always on the do not buy list, and I can't remember ever getting a good mystery shopping report from a Napleton dealers here now. I arrived around 1 p.m. I made my way inside to a sparse showroom. There wasn't a receptionist sitting up front, that's unusual.

A salesman was seated near the front engrossed by his smartphone. He never saw me walk past. the employees that I could see were all wearing face masks. Now, savor this and remember this because that's the last good thing you're going to hear in this report. But kudos to Napleton. Your folks were wearing face masks.

Maybe they always wear a mask in Napleton dealers just before the pandemic. They were a bandit masks. I just cracked myself up. I'm sorry. Nancy hates it when I laugh at my own jokes. Okay. I made one lap around the showroom and then returned to the salesman on his phone.

Can I get some help? I asked. Instead of assisting me, he went to find another salesman. He returned with a young man. Hello, my name is Daniel. What brings you in today? I told him, oops, I just dropped the ball. I was kidding. That's the false name. Wasn't really Daniel. Bob.

Bob Daniels. Oh, God, I feel so bad enough. His real name was Bob. Bob Daniels. You let it that out. I told him about the use hard to pile of. I showed him the picture of the vehicle on my phone. Daniel said, oh, I don't know.

I think that just car just came in. Let's have a seat in my office and take a look. Daniel said, oops, I don't know. The name. Bob. Fictitious names. Yeah, Bob. Bob, yeah.

Bob said, oh, I don't know. I think that car just came in. Let's go have a seat and my office take a look. Things got weird as soon as we sat down at the desk. He immediately tells me, man, I'm going to be honest. And I tell you that I'm just super tired. I stayed up all night and I'm just exhausted. Now, you know, you think that is really bad?

I think it's painfully refreshing. I mean, just total honesty. I mean, the guy just, he was telling the truth. I wouldn't have reacted like Stu did. Stu wrote the report and Agent Thunder. Yeah, I'm just taking Agent Thunder's tone here. So he thought it was, he thought it was a little weird. Yeah.

And he was. I think I was refreshingly honest. And I'm not just saying that. Okay, thanks for letting me know. I said sarcastically, Agent Thunder didn't I? Just bear with me. I told him the stock number in the ad. He found the car on his computer screen.

Bob? Bob stated. This car just came in yesterday. I have to apologize again. I was supposed to check it out yesterday, and I completely forgot. I mean, that's about as honest as you're going to get. I mean, if you screw up and you admit it

and you just look somebody in the eye, I like that. Bob? I think that's nice. I decided to have some fun with him. That's Agent Thunder. I said he was hilarious and asked how old he was. He said he was just 22. He's a kid.

I said he looked terrible, and I'm saying Bob looked terrible and asked him what happened the night before he said he was out late, being stupid. I mean, I remember those days. But that's endearing that you would say something like that. The average person would just- How stupid was he being during a pandemic? Well, probably really stupid. If he is stupid, he used to be an honest, right? Yeah.

He'd be stupid. I am stupid. At least he's wearing a mask. He's running there. Bob. Bob joked around with me for a bed and then turned his attention to the computer screen. He reported that the pilot was up front and suggested we go look for pilot being the model of the car. And not the airline pilot.

It was so dirty. I laughed out loud. I understood the vehicle just came in, but I didn't think I'd ever seen a dirtier car. When I opened the driver's door and four empty plastic soda box, models tumbled out. I laughed louder. This made Daniel laugh. Then apologize, my Bob. You'd have a hard time with it. I should have done this before the show. I said right, I should have typed it up there. Yeah, it's my fault. It's my fault. We walked around the car, asked about the ball tires. He said these would be replaced. He promised that after it was done with Rick Con, it will look great. Now, I'll be honest with you, I'm a car dealer, and we've done this before.

Yeah, we're doing this now. And you trade, yeah, you trade a car in, and somebody wants to look at the car. You can't say, I won't show you the car until we get it all dolled up. It's the totality of everything that's making it. So it happens. It happens. And when you're honest and you confess, that's all you can do. We walked around the car, blah, blah, blah. I asked Bob, two of the three questions, had it been in an accident,

and if there were any mechanical problems, Bob reiterated. Sorry. They just came in and he didn't know. He asked if I wanted to drive it, then ran back inside to get a key. Bob didn't say much on the test drive. He gazed sleepily out the window. I mean, that's endearing to me. If he fell asleep, would it be more endearing?

If he was driving, that was a bit of a different story. He was? He was. No, I'm scared. We pulled back on the lot. He asked me if I liked it. I didn't answer. I just said, let's see the numbers.

Back at the desk, Bob asked me what I wanted to do. I repeated that I wanted to see numbers. I said I wasn't impressed by the vehicle's condition so I expected to be impressed by the price okay hard negotiation I like it okay yeah it'll be a lot different when you see it again

are you going to put any money down that's a required question no I'm going to pay cash okay let me go talk to my managers plural and run the numbers came back a few minutes later Bob put the worksheet up on the desk

and placed his hand on it. He said, oh, yeah, right, upside down on the, yeah, that's cute. Sir, before I show you this, I mean, that is cute, turns it outside down, puts his hand on, before I show you this number, we like to throw out to see if we have something going here. This is just the number we like to throw out. Yeah, yeah, we don't like to just throw out this number. So before I do, you know, is this thing, we're having a serious thing here. so before I turn it over

I mean this is really drama I mean this is old school old school drama don't think this is the price you're going to pay this is just where you start I mean we're not making it we're laughing a lot but we're

not making this up this sounds like a farce if you just tuned in this is not a farce this is a real mystery shopping report and this really happened I asked him Bob I asked Bob No. Yeah. Are you new in the industry? He says, yes. And he gets 22 years old. Please go on. I said, I'm going to flip it over now. Here he comes.

Are you ready? Today's mystery shot by Mad Magazine. He didn't say that. He just said, okay. Bob turned the wigsuit over slowly. I could smell his fear. That was Agent Thunder's, or that's Stu's word. He said, I know it's online. Okay. He says, Bob says, I know it's online for 14, 499, but we haven't really checked it in yet. The realist price is $18,995, but my manager will sell it for $15,988, but he wants me to add the Napleton VIP experience package for $1,960. Wow. I asked to hold the worksheet. The sale price was $15,98.

He added, better sit down for this one, he added $1,960 for the Napleton VIP experience. Sounds like a band name. Yeah, and then he added $1,895 for recon. Yep. They're charging the customer to recondition they used caries buying because they didn't recondition it when he came in

and $899 dealer service fee and $1259 fee fee file and $149 private tag agency fee and

$199 documentation fee I mean you add it all up you're talking $5,231 in hidden fees How much? $5,231. How much?

Ring the bell. Then, as if reciting a script, Bob said, is this the price you would like to pay? Or did you have a different amount in mind? I love it. I love it. It's like classic old school. I mean, they actually did this 25 years ago. I mean, they still do it, but they don't talk like this.

I mean, they still do, they still commit to crimes, but the language has changed. This is language from 25, maybe 50 years ago. Yeah. Yeah, I said, I want to pay the price I saw online. I want to pay the advertised price. I also need to know if this is a safe vehicle. Can I see a Carfax report? Bob said, he didn't think they could get a Carfax report until the car was checked in.

Well, we had a Carfax report. It was on their website. Yeah, it's on their website. So Bob wasn't accurate. Greenpee mistake. Yeah, right, rookie mistake. I wasn't quite sure what to say. Bob seemed helpless and uncomfortable.

I decided it was time to abort the mission. I asked him if I could take the worksheet to go over at home. Daniel said, I couldn't leave until I met his manager. He can't leave. I wonder whether he would have tackled me, tied me up, knocked me unconscious. I don't know. He said, I can't leave until he meets the manager. He said, and then he says, oh, I can get in trouble.

And so I indulged him. He ran to get his manager, literally, probably. The manager said he understood I wanted to wait until the car was through recon conditioning. I said that was true, but I didn't like how they had jacked up the online price. The manager told me not to worry about it. If it checked out okay and reconditioning, he'd honor the online price when I came back. I got the hell out of there. So we just hit a new one.

world's record of hidden fees in Florida of the old record holder I'm sorry Al Hendrickson you're now number two three thousand dollars won't cut it we have five thousand what was that five thousand nine hundred five thousand hundred and two hundred and thirty one over five thousand dollars in hidden fees so there we have it folks I mean we're getting near we got to get the votes in there's nothing else in the report is just a classic and I can't wait to get that post in our archives by the way our mystery shopping reports, you can read this in all the shops at earluncars.com. We archive them,

and this is a doozy. We probably ought to highlight this one so we can find it again when we want to laugh, or maybe to cry. I'm not sure which. How the votes look so far, folks? Well, they don't look very good. The first one that came in is an F-minus. We do have a comment, though, a valid point. David, on Facebook says, shame on you for wasting a salesperson's time, trying to make a living, that's the real crime. We've talked about that on the show before.

It's a lesser of evils. We feel bad about it, and I feel particularly bad because we weren't going to mention his name because it was so terrible. And I slipped up, and I mentioned the name. But, you know, you have to consider the greater good. We're trying to help people avoid dealers that will take advantage of you.

and that's what we're doing. And I'm sorry that sometimes we have to waste the salesman's time. We have a fail, comma, fail, comma fail, dot, dot, dot. Anne-Marie gives them a big fat F. Jonathan Welton gives him a big fat F. I'm going to just go ahead. I think Linda voted before the mystery shopping report. Not totally fair, but we gave it away at the beginning that it was going to be bad.

So I'll accept Linda's big fat F, and I've got to fail them. But I agree with you. Now that I'm thinking about it, Bob. I think he's a new guy. He's got plenty of time to maybe find another dealership. It can be a good career to have selling cars. Just got to be at the right place. So, you know, keep at it, Bob.

And I think he'll do it. Just maybe try a different dealership. Yeah, great Stu. That is great advice. You guys, you have a vote? I've got Mr. Hand with an F, M. Ave with an F. And then I have, let's see, Ed Overdike with an F. Mark from St. Louis, F for the deal, A, for entertainment.

Steve just with an angry face, and T.J.H. 11638 with an F-minus. And I have, no, let's see. M-Out says, wasting a dishonest car person's, car sale person's time is a public service. Well, again, I have to, that's the most failing score I've ever seen, so I unequivocal F. Okay. And from me, Nancy Stewart, I say the world's a stage, and Napleton is acting out their part. Ladies and gentlemen, tune in next week. We'll be right here. Saturday morning, 8 to 10. Have a wonderful weekend.