Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.18.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Greenway Kia

Episode Date: July 18, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Greenway Kia for a used 2014 BMW X1 SUV and see if the sales rep will disclose the Takata Airbag Recall from the 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, the recovering car dealer. And I'm live and in color right here on your Facebook or YouTube. And my voice is live across the radio channel. of the world. I've been doing this show for 17 years. You've heard my recorded introduction, and I kind of covered everything pretty well. We're team here to help you, basically, help you avoid being ripped off. I hate to use that phrase, but it kind of rolls trippingly off the tongue, and it works for me. I'll avoid being ripped off by a car dealer when you're buying, leasing, maintaining, or repairing your car, and it happens too much. There's a gallop pole that has

been conducted every year since 1977. The irregular listeners are saying, oh, no, don't tell me about that Gallup poll again. But we have a lot of new folks out there that tune in. And in case you don't know it, you probably do know it, but car dealers don't really exactly treat you right when you go in to buy a car. Some states are better than other states.

This broadcast is coming from Florida. Florida is the wildest west town. This is Dodge City in terms of car dealers. And no, I'm not going to tell you. I'm Matt Dillon or who's the other guy? Wyatt Earp is a guy. Somebody, but I'm not trying to clean up Dodge. I'm just trying to arm you to help you take care of yourself.

How about Annie Oakley? Annie Oakley, is sitting to my left. You just heard her speak there. But if you listen carefully and you tell your friends and neighbors about the show and you're in the process of buying or leasing a car. You've got a car already and you want to take it into the internet. independent mechanic or a car dealership to get fixed or maintained. You'll hear some good stuff on this show.

And we love to hear from you mainly. That's, it sounds like I'm just trying to charm you because you're my listeners and viewers. Fact is, we get some really cool calls. We learn something interesting every day or every Saturday on this show. And we pass it along, you know. If you have a car dealer out there that is really treating you right, Oh, please tell us about it, because there's not many of them. The Gallup Hole puts car dealers on the very bottom in terms of honesty and ethics and professions,

and it's put them on the bottom for the past 45 years. So this isn't a fluke. And if you're a Florida person listening, you're really in trouble. The hidden fees, the dealer-and-soled accessories, and the tricks of the service drive are rampant. It's really crazy. And I get a lot of calls because I make myself very public. This show, I have, everybody has my personal cell phone number. I have the blog.

I have the show here, of course, where I do public speaking. So people call me all the time, and their tales of woe are unbelievable. Don't have a tale of woe. Listen, learn from our blog in this show. And there I went on too long. I was going to try to cut my introduction short. Let me introduce my wife Nancy Stewart, my co-pilot on Earl Stewart on cars. She has been with me from the get-go.

She's a founder of the show with me back on a little radio station called Sea View Radio, half an hour. And here we are big time. We've got a large listening audience, a large viewing audience, and we're on for two hours every Saturday. And Nancy's been with me on this long, long ride. and she does a fantastic job one of our main functions is her female advocacy and she's built our listening audience up to half female which is the way it should have been from the get-go

it was zero female 17 years ago now it's 50-50 and that's thanks to Nancy Stewart well thank you very much good morning ladies and gentlemen we have a fantastic show ahead hope you can stick with us for the next two hours and for the ladies this morning as we do every Saturday morning we extend $50 to the first two new lady

callers just a little encouragement we'd love to hear from you do you play an important part in the transaction purchasing leasing service everything so we'd like to hear from you find out what kind of an experience you may have had or do you just have an opinion for us again $850 for the first two new lady callers, and you can give us a call at 877-960-99-60. Or if you have a question and you're a little shy, you can text us 772-4976530, and we also have another offer. If you want to remain anonymous, you can go to www.org, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Now back to the recovering card dealer. That anonymous feedback has really worked well.

I had no idea that we would get as many sometimes comments, criticisms, and the anonymous feedback you would think would be used to assassinate us, to insult us, and things like that. Well, we get a few of those, a few zingers, and that's good. Because if we don't get to zingers, then we're really not getting everybody. So your anonymous feedback.com because you'd like to be anonymous. A lot of people, they just don't want to get involved.

They'd like to say what they had to say without having to explain and shoot the question out there and they feel better about it. So your Y-O-U-R-A-N-Y-M-O-U-S anonymous Feedback.com. And we'd love to hear from you. Those come on Stu Stewart's computer over there.

And, of course, the text comes in, too, 772-4976530. Our YouTube is covered by Rick Kearney, and he's our technical specialist. Stu is our cyber space. He's our cyber spymaster. Is that what we call you? Cyber assassin. Yeah, cyber. And he goes, he's in charge of our mystery shopping report, and a lot of people know all about it, but Stu tell them about why this is a special report. Before I get to the mystery shopping report, communications with the show is the lifeblood of the show, so all the calls and the texts. And I was inspired by a couple long-time listeners. I came in here, powered up my computer, and there's a text from Ann Marie.

I got a text from Brian out in California who asks us questions nearly every week. And, of course, your anonymous feedback, we get these coming in all the time. Sometimes we get so busy that we don't get to all the texts, and then we'll carry them over to the next week. My suggestion is if you have a question during the week, if you're just thinking about it, go ahead of time. Anytime. Yeah, the earlier you get in, the more likely we're going to get to your text. So I would say every week we might have a handful of texts that we just run out of time

because there's a lot of questions out there and we do our best to answer them all, but sometimes we'll go in the lightning round and do rapid-fire question answering. And that kind of does a disservice to the questioner because sometimes it might be a one-word answer yes or no but we'd like to get into it a little bit more so try and send those in a little bit earlier and we can get to them all mystery shopping report um without giving too much away well we went back and did another tecata test for the takata airbag recall and uh we did that because last week we tried to do it and it um kind of spiraled out of control became a very entertaining but also informative mystery shop so last week's was a doozy uh this one's pretty good too you know the our mystery

shopper often doesn't get enough credit. He has to be anonymous because obviously the dealers would be looking for him and seeing his picture, name and thing like that. But it takes a special kind of person. We've tried other, we've tried people to be out for mystery shopping and they just can't do it. And it's not a bad thing because you have, I don't know how to say this without insulting Asia Thunder, but you have to be hardened. You have to be. able to pretend and all i guess lie you have to go in there say i'm a real customer buying a real car you don't literally say act you have to act yeah yeah so you have to have that you and i'm not i guess i could do it because and stew you could do it uh i know nancy and i don't know about

rick maybe i don't know but it takes a special person and we've had some excellent and this guy here agent thunder really does it well yeah i was worried we had uh if you're a long time listener you know all about Agent X. And Agent X was our primary shopper for years. And this guy was truly fearless. He would go in there. And they are able to kind of act like a chameleon because we ask them to take on different personas

and roles when they go in. Some people just are not comfortable doing that. If I told Agent X to go in and be a hard ass, he'd go in there and give him hell. Agent Thunder's the same way. Yeah. Okay. Rick Kearney, sitting at my right,

certified diagnostic. master technician. And when we first started the show, we didn't have a Rick Kearney. We didn't have a, it was mainly a sales thing. And I don't know what the point occurred to Nancy and me. You know, complaints, you get far more complaints about service departments than you do buying a car. Real simple. You take your car two or three times a year to service. You buy a car every four or five years. And so the negative experiences, even though it aren't as costly, they could come close. Rick, what would you say

is the most common cause of people being taken advantage of in a service department? I know this is a little bit out of your area of expertise, but you see it, don't you? They don't ask questions. First thing the folks ought to be doing is following their factory recommended maintenance guide

that tells what the root maintenance for oil changes, tire rotations, air filters, the like. Right. But for other things, when a repair is recommended, a service rider who, shall we say, is experienced at getting the money, will sell them things that they don't really need or push them into repairs a little too easily because a lot of customers don't ask questions, especially the guys... Let me interrupt you here because you said something.

I get text on this all the time. People are incredulous at the fact that the person that you meet in a service drive, whether you go into a tire store, independent service department, Jiffey Loub, or a car dealership, these people are paid on commission. And they call themselves advisors. They call themselves assistant service managers. They are service salespeople. They are.

And they're honest ones, and there's dishonest ones. But the thing to remember that the more you buy from that service representative, the more money they make. That's how they feed their family. And they might get a guarantee, and they might have some other tweaks in their pay plan. But the service salesperson that sells the most service makes the most money. So go ahead. Sorry to interrupt. And in all honesty, auto mechanics are paid on a system called flat rate, which is, the more work that I can do.

the better I get paid. And some jobs pay more time than others. Like, say, if we're doing a simple break job, it'll pay two hours labor. If it takes me four hours to do it, I still get paid two hours. Exactly. If I can have it done in 45 minutes, I still get paid two hours labor. So a good mechanic who can do his job successfully without making mistakes and is fast can make a lot of money. However, the unscrupulous mechanic is going to be the guy that knows which jobs he can do really fast for good money, and whether you need it or not, he may recommend it.

Exactly. And it's always black and white when you have an issue with a car. You could have a leak of some kind. It could be a fluid leak, even an oil leak. And the solution could range from thousands of dollars to don't worry about it now. If it gets worse, come back, or maybe it's a good time to trade your car or something. I mean, it's not black and white. So when you get the diagnosis, a good question to ask is, what happens if I don't do this now? It really puts them on the spot. Now, they might lie to you again, say the car is going to blow up. But they might say, well, you know, if they have a conscience, they'll say probably nothing, but sooner or later you're going to have to get this fix.

And say, oh, sooner or later, well, I'm a little tight of money now. got laid off. I don't know I can afford a $2,000 repair. I'm going to baby this car for a few more months and will I be okay? Yeah, probably. An honest mechanic will tell you what you need to know and pull out the Missouri attitude. Show me. If they tell you, hey, your brakes are really worn down, show me. Take me back in the shop and show me my car. Even if you're bluffing because you wouldn't be technically qualified. They don't know that, right? Exactly. And you're And he might assume that you could figure it out. So I was like, well, wait a minute.

Let me reconsider. And yet an honest mechanic is the first, and this is one where Nancy loved this because females, the women that come to our shop that don't necessarily have that background in auto mechanics, they're one is the first ones to say, tell me why I need this, show me on my car why I need this, teach me what I need to know. So I can make a good decision. Us guys, we won't ask directions when we're lost.

Exactly. A woman will ask directions. Women have that confidence of the fact to admit that they don't know everything about everything. Us guys, we got all the answers, so we don't want to question the mechanic. Make us look stupid. That's an excellent point. An educated customer can make a good decision about their car. And when I show that I am an honest mechanic and I show them this is what you should do,

today, this is what you should do sometime in the future. And this, I wouldn't even worry about it. That person is going to trust me, and they're going to keep coming back to me. And times when work slows down and the other mechanics are sitting on their toolboxes, I'm going to have work because people will trust me and they will come back to have me work on their cars. And I have a career of this. This isn't just a job. This is my career.

If you have an honest mechanic and an honest service technician, they're still on commission. So I like this idea. I do this with technicians when they come over to the house. I say, when it's all through and they gave me the documents, I say, what would you do if it was your computer? Or maybe it's air conditioning. I say, if this is your mother's air conditioner, what would you recommend?

And if they're honest, there's always a gray. There's a middle road somewhere. And the big fat repair bill can be rationalized and even justified. If you took it to court, they could say, well, was telling you the truth but there's a gray area so well that's good Rick can answer your questions 877 960 9960 that's 877 960 960 our text line for whatever you want to tell us or ask us is 772 area code 4976530

that's 772 4976530 we're streaming Facebook we're streaming Twitter YouTube so check all those channels, check all that, and listen to the radio, and do whatever you contact in it where you can. How are we doing on a backlog? We always have a backlog. Let's get started with one of the early birds. We have Brian from California, which is particularly difficult. This came in at 502 AM our time. I guess that is about 1 or 2 o'clock his time. So it says, hey, Stu, Brian from California. Last week, I asked Rick about what type of damage could be done to a Toyota Crolla XSE, or really any car by starting it up and taking off instantly without letting anything warm up.

Rick said it could possibly cause premature wear to the engine. Today I'd like to ask Rick this. Would it discourage you from taking over the car long term from the person who has been impatiently doing this act to the car? I think he's talking about his dad. Also, what do you guys think about the new Ford Bronco? I got something to say about that. It's gotten a lot of attention out here on the West Coast.

I think it could be hot. Take care. Looking forward to this show, as always. Before you get into the inpatient driving, the new Bronco is coming out, is out. It's to compete with the Jeeps. And it has a lot of the same features, like removable doors, which I know that you just love. It's a great safety feature. Removal door, removal roof.

It's designed to be a true off-road vehicle. It looks really cool. I think it's going to give, and it's got a legacy image, too. It was a very popular car. They haven't made it since the 90s, I don't think. It's going to give a Jeep a run for the money. Yeah, I don't want to be a spoiled sport, and I don't want to sound like an old fogey,

but why isn't there a law saying you can't drive in a car with your doors off? I mean, if you take the doors off, your truck or your car, and you roll over, I don't care whether you've got your shoulder, or not as a seatbelt on or not. That's not a good thing. Why? Because they go, well, the postmen can do it. Do what?

The postmen can do it. The OPS driver can do it. Yeah, that's another excellent question other than the fact that the federal government can do anything they want, but it's not safe for the driver. Anyway, that's just... You know, you mentioned the Bronco, the only thing in the first thing that I could think of, and it's been a long time, O.J. Oh, the white Bronco? Oh, gosh. What a memory. What did OJ do for sales on the Broncos back then?

They stopped making it very shortly after that, so maybe not so. Maybe it wasn't a good info. Oh, boy. Okay, so Rick, what do you think about that, the impatient, dead driver? I would kind of judge it by the mileage on the car. If it's still relatively low, say, under $36,000, I would probably say you're safe to go ahead with that. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen to a used car before you buy it.

That's probably ranks pretty low in the abuse that a car could take. And if it's had proper maintenance, oil changes done regularly like they're supposed to, I would think you probably are going to be okay. All right. I got a question for Rick on the same job. Yesterday, my car was sitting out in the sun, and I backed it back into the garage and we're getting ready to go somewhere. And so I left the, open the garage door to be safe and left the engine run. And it was high RPM.

And I figured it was just doing this warm-up thing. So I walked in the house and got caught up with something else, and I was in there for probably 10 minutes before we did leave, came back, and the engine was still racing. I remember something about that if you tap the accelerator, it'll derace, it'll go off. I never tapped it. Probably wasn't a good thing for me to do to the engine unknowingly, but is that normal in cars that if you were the high RPM warm-up,

will not automatically go off. You have to tap it? That's a bit abnormal. Most cars, they should bring it back down on its own because it's all computer controlled now. I'll let you look at it, I'll bring it in. Thank you. That's always the best idea. We're going to go to our first caller, and that's Tom from Jupiter. Welcome to the show.

Hey, Tom. Good morning, everybody. I called me last week about this particular question, and you told me to follow up and let you know what happened. And my friend was looking at a used Audi, and we were talking about maybe taking it into your independent mechanic before you buy the thing. And I know Earl said that any reputable dealer will let you do that, of course. And so we went down to Audi of Palm Beach and asked the salesperson that, well, listen, can we take it to our independent? He said, no, no, no. He said, you're not allowed to leave the lot with his car.

any of our cars and I mean it was a used vehicle but still pre-owned and he said no he said you can't do that he said if you got a problem you bring it back to me well I'm trusted as much

as you could throw a car but anyway he wouldn't let us take it to our independent before we purchased before my friend purchased it so I thought I'd let you know good information that was Palm Beach outy

on Pine Beach Lakes Boulevard that was No, no, it was on Okachovie. Ok, Palm Beach Oedie. Who owns that, dude? Is that a Bremen dealership? I don't know. I don't think so.

Yeah. There is. Okay. Yes, yeah. Yeah. It's Brayman. Yeah. Well, that's very interesting.

You know something? I bet. The Bremen organization, at least at the top, is a legitimate group of dealerships. The problem is you get a salesperson that's not properly trained. I know. I know. I know. Yeah.

It's all about individual. because he said they have the best mechanics. We've got Audi, not Audi mechanics, and I learned something else and somebody else about the mechanic training schools. But anyway, and he said, no, no, no, you can't take it to your independent. No, it has to stay here.

So I just thought I'd let you know that Audi of Palm Beach on Ok-Dobe. Well, that's good information, Tom, and that's the reason I love callers to share this because Tom had the courage to resist that. He would say, I'm going to insist or else I won't buy the car. A lot of people just roll over and they would take it. This salesperson, we talked about commission earlier, is paid on commission.

And he probably figured he wants to sell the car today. And if it gave it to you to take it to the mechanic, it's going to delay the sale. You might not sell it. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Well, the bad news is my friend, I mean, my friend just went ahead, bought it, okay? So he didn't do what you were so recommended last week, and that was just walk away and go to another dealer or something.

But anyway, whatever. Great call, Tom. Thank you very much. Very valuable. And thanks for sharing that. Thank you, Tom. Give us a call, toll, free at 877-960-90-60, or you can text us at 7-7-24-9-7-653-3. Zero. And don't forget, ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. Back to Stu.

We have a couple of comments on Facebook. Steve was listening to our discussion about men asking for directions. He says, that is why men have GPS. You're right. If it hadn't been for that, GPS may never have been invented. Exactly. We did that just to, well, I don't know who invented GPS. He also said at car dealers, you rarely, if ever get to meet the mechanic, and that's true. That's not something that a lot of car dealers even let you do. A lot of them, you know, for insurance reasons, won't let you back into the area of the shop. Well, they say it's for insurance reasons. And there's no reason why the technician can't come out and talk to the customer.

So, again, there are a lot of ways to dissuade people from doing what they should do, like having the car they're going to buy and check it out by an independent mechanic to use car. and to talk to the technician. You might get an entirely different story from the technician that you got from the service advisors. You know, if you get an oil change, you don't waste your time. But if you're having expensive work done in your air conditioner, transmission, your brakes, you want to talk to the guy

that's actually hands-on. And you'll go an eyeball-eyeball with somebody. Sometimes makes a person feel a little bit more. It does. You connect with them. It's very easy to have a faceless person that you're recommending. Like people ask Rick questions, he answers them honestly all the time. What would you do if this is your truck?

And Rick's looking at me, Rick's going to tell him the truth. Well, he may say, well, I wouldn't do it, you know, if he didn't think it was necessary. It's much easier for a, you know, for a technician to send notes out on a repair order. I say that to my doctor. You know, he'll make a recommendation. I'll say, what would you do if it was your father? What would you do if it was your, you know. Your kidney.

Hey, listen, guys, back on track here, if what you say is true, Stu, about liability. And I think Rick has alluded to it, you know, at times also as far as the, you know, the mechanic and you can't come back here, blah, blah, blah. What is the percentage of customers, consumers that would, you know, stand eye to eye with the mechanic and say, okay, listen, let's go out in a parking lot, let's discuss this, let's, you know, put the hood up, And let's take this apart. I think it's unusual.

I mean, we're kind of an unusual situation because we encourage it. So my point of view from our dealership that we have, it's a commonplace thing. I don't know what percentage, but it's a high amount. We volunteer it often. As far as like the insurance liability going to the shop, you know, number one, it depends on how clean your shop is. You have a really messy place. You can trip over things.

We keep ours really clean. And as long as you walk back there with, you know, somebody, we're happy. to show it off. We're not worried about somebody getting hurt. The main thing is just worry about getting run over, so if you know the traffic patterns, stay clear of it, you're pretty safe in a mechanical shop. If you've got some extensive work that needs

done, what I'm saying is that, you know, what's wrong with, and what's the percentage of women that would do something like this and say, hey, listen, let's take this car out to the parking lot. You and I will do a one-on-one. We'll get that

hood up go into some details and work this out and we'll go from there. Would you say that it's 10%, 20%? That's a great question. Let's go to Napleton. Forget Earl Stewart, Toyota. Oh, I don't. I probably doesn't happen enough for sure. That's why we're on the show telling people do that, ask to see the car, ask to see what they're talking about. You've got to be educated before you make any decision, especially on an expensive repair. What's the percentage of customers that would say, hey, listen, when you replace that part, throw it in my trunk. I'm going to take a look at it later. No, 13%.

Part of the problem in all that is a lot of, if it's a good service department, they're busy. And you have a line of people, you have people that have appointments and they've got to meet somebody for lunch or whatever it is. They're in the service waiting lounge. And so if someone goes through a lot of, let me see the car, let me go in the shop, let me talk to the mechanic, you're slowing up the process. And you should slow it up because it's your car and it's your money, but I'm just trying to tell you the psychology of people are trying to move things along too quickly. And you should dig your foot in and say, I don't care, I want to talk to the technician. Yeah, well, you know, it's up to the customer or two and take on the responsibility to find out whether or not, they're booking an appointment, you know, to have their car looked at at an extremely

busy time, or they can put a special PS. Listen, when you book my appointment, I'd like to talk to the mechanic, get things straightened out, because I don't quite understand what's wrong with my car. I'm not talking about slowing process down or making things difficult for the dealership or for the mechanic, but just to have an understanding of where your dollars are going. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, 877-960, 960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30, and we do have a caller, and I can't see the computer. Hello, caller, what's your name? Let's wing it. Oh, we got a call from Minnesota.

Good morning, this is Andrea. Andrea. From Minnesota? Yes. Oh, welcome to the show. Thank you. Are you a first-time caller? I am.

Oh, how wonderful. I have $50 for you this morning as a first-time caller. If you stay on the line and give your information to the control room, Mike's right there and he's waiting. And I can get that check out to you. How can we help you today, Andrea? Yes, so I plan on purchasing a new vehicle in the next couple of months, And my plan is to shoot out a bunch of email to my local dealership, because I'm not the best negotiator.

And my question is, would it be better to include my local offer in my initial email or wait for them to shoot me their quote first? I think you're better off to let them give you their quote first. I think these, the psychology, once you make an offer, then you've kind of triggered the hassle, haggle process. And I think to make it clear that what you're doing, and don't keep it a secret, that you're getting prices from other dealers. And if you're buying a Chevrolet, you can tell them up front, the first Chevrolet dealer you go online with, you say, I'm getting bids from, and you could even name the dealerships, you know, Charles Chevrolet, Bill Chevrolet, and Tony Chevrolet, and I'm going to be getting the lowest out-the-door price. That's the price I can write that you would check for and drive the car home. You give me your best out-the-door price,

and I'll get two others. If yours is lowest, I'll buy the vehicle from you. Kind of puts the pressure on them because they know that if they give you too high a price, they'll never hear from you again. Also, you know, I think that the safest place is the Internet, when it comes to purchasing a vehicle and they really don't know who you are male female whatever and i think that it gives you a whole lot of leverage uh being right there and communicating back and forth okay let's know how that goes Andre i know it's you'll find some dealers that will not give you a price and they'll try to lure you in and then you just cut them off you just

Don't call them, you don't email them back. Remember, you're sitting at your computer using your smartphone. You could talk to half a dozen or a dozen or even more dealers that are sellers of the vehicle you want to buy. And so the ones that don't respond, the ones that will not respond, just check them off your list. You'll get, if you're persistent, it shouldn't take too long, more than probably half hour, 45 minutes. You should be able to get at least three responses. If you get three responses with an out-the-door price, take the lowest one, and I promise you it will be a very good price. Okay.

Also, another advantage is for you when you're just not in a rush, and yet you do have the time to really look up the history of each one of the three choices that you make, and whatever the best choice is for you, learn a whole lot about it. Right. Thank you so much for the call. Yes, thank you, guys. We appreciate it. Stay on the line. We'll get your contact information, Andre, and get you 50 bucks in the mail. And call again, please. You're welcome.

Doing what you said is probably the easiest way to weed out a bad dealer, because if a dealer won't even respond or send you a price, it might be their policy not to send out the price. I could just strike them off the list because that means there's a whole lot of other behaviors and tactics that they're likely to use. So that's the easiest way to weed out a bad dealer. Yeah, it's difficult sometimes to be forceful and direct. with people, people are polite people, nice people, but when you're buying a car, you really have to arm yourself, you have to be a little forceful.

So you make it clear when you're buying online, or either telephone or email, you make it clear that I need your best out-the-door price. Be specific, if you don't, if you're not specific on the year-make model car with accessories that you want, then you open the dialogue thing

and it becomes a negotiation. You tell them you want a white, you want a 2020 Honda cord with these accessories, and this color interior, and you might even have the NSRP. You just give them the specifics on that vehicle and say, give me your best out of the door price, and I will buy the car from you if it's the lowest. I'm going to two other Honda dealers, and you'd be surprised how well that works. The world is going online now, especially during this pandemic thing. People are buying more and more things online they ever did before, even automobiles. And so it's not a big surprise. It would have been harder 10 years ago.

10 years ago, you tried to do this. Probably half the dealers wouldn't give you a price. Today, in the pandemic situation, you'll probably find 90% of the dealers will. But you have to work it properly. You have to be carefully. You have to be forceful. That's right. Sharon on Facebook has a question I'm sure millions of people are asking

because I think you ask the same question what's the point of the stop and hold button on the center console and I'll tell you it's you probably won't ever use it but basically if you're at a light or something you push it it's kind of like putting your car in park right and you disengage it by you hitting the gas or turning it off I'll occasionally use it if I'm at a bridge you know I catch the bridge or something

Rick probably has some more info on that The purpose is to save gas. No, no, no. We're not talking about the start-stop technology. The engine keeps running. It's like a hold button. I think yours says hold. Mine says hold, too, and you push it, and you can take your foot off the brake.

The car stays stationary. A lot of cars actually have it where if you've got your foot on the brake and you push out extra hard while you're sitting still, it'll do the same thing. It'll beep, and a light will illuminate, and it will hold the brakes even when you let off. And the main reason for that is, mountain driving or stopped on a slope waiting for bridge whatever

if you're kind of at a bit of an angle where your car might roll back between the time when you take your foot off the brake to step on the gas it holds your car still and then when you step on the gas it will release it and let you drive forwards there you go Sharon simple

answer to a great question Steve on Facebook has a war story for us he said he had an extended talk with a service writer at a Honda dealership. He insisted on knowing what a small dollar amount on the bill was. After multiple trips back to the shop, the service writer told me it was automatic transmission fluid. This led to my next question.

Where did you put the automatic transmission fluid into my manual transmission car? That's a great story. It's probably referring to the dealer fee in the service department, the miscellaneous supply. Yeah, exactly, yeah. The environmental charges. okay we are going to go to howard who's holding and Howard is a regular caller from

Jupiter good morning Howard good morning I hope everybody's good hey Howard stay safe guys and it's a pleasure talking to you thank you my question is for Rick everybody does maintenance on cars but if they get to lubricate the latches I'll give you an example. I've had my class since 2017, early 2017, actually late 2016, never did anything with the hoodlatch. I took a look at it. It's rusted, it's crudy, and my question is,

what do I use to lubricate the hood latch? Years ago when I was sort of a tech, and I used to grease cars. I used to shoot a little grease into the hood. hoodlatch, swishing around and that did the job. But what do you suggest doing to lubricate the hood latch? A spray can of white lithium grease, just a little light spritz right on it. That's great.

Where do you get that at Home Depot? Auto parts stores, Home Depot carries it, but auto parts stores are the best place. It's just simple white lithium grease. What is lithium? I know what lithium is. It's one of the elements. It's, lithium is one of the major ingredients in that grease. And it's a, it sprays on, gives a little bit of a white color coating, and it's a very good lubricant that will stay in place.

And it doesn't really attract a whole lot of dirt to it, so it won't get all grimy and cruddy over time. But it then can be washed away easily at the car wash and reapplied when you need to. Sounds powerful. I can use three and one oil. That won't do the trick. That'll work. It'll work, but it won't stay in place very well, whereas the white lithium grease will keep a coating on there,

and it'll also help prevent oxidation. Okay. Another thing for you, Rick, is a good question. I'm in New York now, and when I was driving up, I had my remote, you know, the car remote. I had one in my pocket and once packed in the car. And every time I tried to get in the car, I had a problem. And I assume this is because I have two remotes in the car at one time.

So my question to you is, the next time I come, when I come down to Florida in October, or November, whatever it is, how can I protect, could I put a covering like over one of the remotes so it doesn't interfere? Huh. Rep it in tinfoil. Ah. About five or six layers of tinfoil. Really? Cool.

Yeah. You know, that was causing all kinds of problems. The car had it opened. Once it opened, then it made funny noises. And I assumed that, of course, I had the two remotes in the car at the same time. So that's what happened. Okay. Thank you very much. And I appreciate your input. And as usual, you guys do a great job. Thanks, Howard. We appreciate. We also appreciate you. Give us a call toll free at 8.7. 77-960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 and don't forget www. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com and ladies, I have one more, well, $50 bill right here, sitting right on the desk waiting for you to give me a call. You can win it if you're a first-time caller. Now back to Stu. No, we got Rick. Mark Ryan is asking, and Mark's in, I believe, Indiana, during the summer, the radiate in our vehicles become a vast insect graveyard.

Oh, we get that here. What's the best method to clean off the bugs, and are there any concerns with spray water into this area of the vehicle? I'd recommend the high-pressure guns at the car wash, but keep it at least a foot away. You don't want to take a chance on damaging those soft aluminum. fins on the radiator and having them fold over because you won't get airflow through it. It's better to use that, wash away as much of the bugs as you can, and just let the rest of it work its way off by itself. Is there anything you're going to put on the radiator ahead of time that will reduce the amount

of bugs it collects where they slide off? Really not. I've seen folks who've tried like Pam cooking spray on the front of their car for driving through when we have lovebug season, and it just makes a horrible mess, and it really doesn't work. Makes sense, yeah. But it is good to get those washed off very quickly. Yeah, yeah. And I've got Wayne asking, I've watched a video that claims the new AC refrigerant R1234YF is very expensive and flammable.

And first, yes, this is a new, we used to have R12 back in the day. Now it's R-134. Oh, 144. Now the newest one is the 1-2-3-4-YF. Oh, yeah. They just keep changing it. Yeah, but everybody said it'll be 1-2-3-4-5. Maybe.

There you go. And this new stuff is well over $100 a pound. It is super expensive. The newest cars, the last two or three years, are using the new chemical. It is mildly flammable, according to the internet, but it's been proven to be safe in automobiles because in order for it to have enough concentration of it in the air, you'd really have to work to try to get it concentrated enough with the oxygen

to get the right mixture that it would actually burn. I sure hope they're right about that. I'd hate to be... You know, I can't... I'm going to change subjects here, but I can't go another moment without mentioning John from Palm City. And Ann Earl agrees with me without a doubt. But I wanted to thank you for the bit of trivia that you had shared with me on Elizabeth Taylor

and how the color of her car came about. And it matched her wedding dress and Eddie Fisher tended to that. I hate Eddie Fisher. Not only, well... He took Elizabeth away from you. No, no, Debbie Reynolds. I was in love with Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Dwarster for

Elizabeth. We don't want to go. But I digress. We don't want to go there. But at any rate, John, what a fabulous job you do in making sure that we have information coming into the dealership just recently

and what you did with a 1937 Pontiac. I mean your eye for detail. This was extremely important that car means a lot to the Stewart family and you come into the dealership and it's like you own the place and you keep us up to date on everything and anything and thank you for the trivia and so there were so many things that John had shared with us this week that maybe you're all can

elaborate on it do you have anything to add to this well it just the fact that you were able to diagnose the repair on a 1937 vehicle, and we're pretty sure you're accurate. Rick got involved in that, and you even gave us the suppliers the handle on the 1937 Pontiac, which is on the showroom floor of our dealership, which was literally actually the first car my father sold when he started the business in February, 1937, and West Palm Beach. And that was first car. We bought it back from the original owner, so it's very important to us. It's sort of like a Like a fan

And the handle was loose And I don't think anybody Really figured out what was wrong And John was able to come up with a diagnosis We're pretty sure he's accurate Yeah I think he talked about a spring clip Yeah

Yeah And also John Thank you for sharing My love for the 1968 Barracuda You really made me feel good You know that the information was just as important

as the Elizabeth Taylor's Rolls-Royce. So you're a real stand-up guy, and I thank you for being part of the show every week. We are going to go to Frank. Frank's been holding, and he calls us from Jupiter Farms. Good morning, Frank. Oh, sorry about that. I'm going to my throat's quiet this morning.

Got a question. Do you guys work on Mercedes-Benz in your shop? Well, we do, and we are not, you know, we don't have the diagnostic equipment that a Mercedes dealer does. We would have the, for routine repairs, and also there could be an issue with parts. But, yeah, any competent technician can work on any make car, but when you get into something that is, let's say, high-tech, usually there's some diagnostic equipment that you don't have, and if you have to part-replace, you have the delay because a Mercedes dealer will have the part in, probably an inventory. We'd have to buy the part from the Mercedes dealer.

So, Rick, do they get that right? Yeah, right on base. Yeah, it's for like the front end parts. I had taken my 2012-350, E-350 up to place into Quest for tires. And six months later, the inside of worn out, I'm sure it's like some sort of front-end parts like pull. or I just, well, we'll take a look at it. $250 just to give you a quote. They want to give you a quote repair unless you pay $250.

Yeah, you can bring it in, Frank. And Rick, if he's there, he'll take a look at it for you. And we're not going to charge her for diagnosis. It might be something that would be better handled by a Mercedes dealer. But if it's not, we'll give you what the fair price is in our opinion. So I'm glad to take a look at it. Appreciate that. and I see you guys some new cars coming in.

It's Frenza or something that's coming back. The Venza. The Venza. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're looking forward to that. Yeah, we should see it in a couple of months. Yeah.

Well, you all have a good day. I'm sorry, my voice is so crackling up. No problem, Frank. It was great hearing from you, Frank. Thanks for tuning in again, as you always do every weekend. 877-960, 960, Texas. 772-497-6530. I haven't heard anything from Your Anonymous Feedback.

Remember, www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We've got quite a few of those on deck. I'll get to them in a second. Anne-Marie texted us, and before I read her text, I got a laugh out of her text last week. He came in at the end of our mystery shopping report. She was grading in Napleton, North Palm Hyundai.

She said, Big Fat F, these guys are lower than a snake's belly in Death in Death Valley. Right on, right on target. She says, good morning, I hope everyone is safe and well. I have a couple of questions. Number one, I haven't driven much since the pandemic started. Consequently, I refuel once

a month when the gauge shows my fuel is down to half or a quarter. Me too. Could this cause problems in the future? And two is a more general question. The gas cap needs to be tightened until it clicks once. Other cars I've owned requires three clicks. Why? Great questions.

I think these are Rick Kearney questions. Yeah. Rick, what do you say? Why do you have to make a click three times in some cars and one time in another car? Different design to the gas cap. Some of them have just a threaded design where just goes normal threads in.

Others have two little ears that will lock into place and only need one click. Okay. Yeah, my little observation there is I don't like that whole idea of having to tighten the gas cap. forcefully and especially for older people

for you young engineers out there designing these gas caps when you get to be 75, 80 years old and don't say you shouldn't be driving when you're 75 rating. I don't want to hear that. If I can pass a driving test, I'm going to drive. But why don't you take into consideration people that don't have powerful grips? There should be an easy way to put the gas cap on and it would eliminate a lot of aggravation. Sure. They've accomplished that with a lot of like, you know, the pills, they have those childproof caps, but they're available in most cases with an easier open. Well, make them sock. Make them standard.

Well, that's why the new design now has those two ears. So instead of turning threads and trying to compress down an O-ring that needs to three or four clicks or more, one click because those ears lock into place. And that's why you only need one click on the new ones. And they're much easier to install and get it in securely. How about a gas cap that will just pop on and automatically sealed completely without having to even worry about it? I mean, like a magnetic thing that would just suck it in and it would be locked. That'd be a good trick. Thank you all.

I don't know whether you heard me or not, but I was laughing at what you said, because this is one of our many funny moments that you and I have. And when you're getting gas, one of these times I'm going to video it. because it is a serious problem, like you said, you know. But most people haven't witnessed you out there with the hammer and chisel and getting naked. I hope they haven't heard me either, man. Well, the verbal part is very much interesting. We are going to go to John, the star of the show from Palm City.

Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. I heard my name mentioned. Several times. I'm just getting now at 12 o'clock. I'm going to go to my local Pontiac dealer. They promised to take a trade in on my barracuda. But anyhow, I've been listening to show for a long time,

and it's nothing but good things, especially consumers report, all good things mentioned. But I never heard one of the most important things that everybody should be a member, especially a female, if she takes a car and she drives alone, it's the non-profit club of AAA. $58 a year, $31 for your spouse. It's fantastic. I mean, there's so much good involved, besides recommended service places that you go to get your car done,

recommended hotels when you travel. It's actually the largest leisure travel agent in the United States. And I thought about this when a couple of weeks ago, A guy called in and his car doesn't run, so he had to get towed in. Well, if AAA picks up the car, they'll only send it to an AA recommended service station. And it's pretty strict on that, because if they do get complaints, that service station will be taken off their recommended list, just like the same way with their hotels that they recommend.

And also, AAA, you have insurance, you have savings, you have loans with them, and it's strictly been around forever, non-profit, and I can't say enough positive to join. It's important. And towing, you can even pay extra and have your car towed over 100 miles with anybody that's going on the road or gets in their car.

The latest thing they have now is severe weather alerts that'll, for no charge. They'll alert you on your, your cell phone, especially when you're traveling. So it's all good information, and it's a great organization, and I'm just surprised that it haven't been mentioned in the past

because it's a wonderful thing. It is, absolutely, John. Can I jump in there for just a second? One thing that you mentioned that is in terms of a service department recommended by AAA, AAA is the only organization that requires the dealers

in the service departments not to charge a dealer fee in the service department. I call it that. When you buy, when you have repair work done, they charge you a fee, 5% or 10% of the amount of the bill, and they make up a name like hazardous waste, disposal, miscellaneous, sundry supplies. They're very creative. And it can be on any amount from, it's usually relatively small compared to a dealer fee, $5, $10, $15. But it's a rip-off, AAA does not allow that. And so if you're a AAA-approved dealer. They cannot charge you that hidden fee. And I promise you, if you're getting your car repaired, you're paying that hidden fee. You just don't know you're paying it. So I'm sorry to

interrupt you, Nancy. Go ahead. Great information. It truly is. And you know what, John, all three of my daughters, AAA, they wouldn't be without it. They have always been signed up. And I'm surprised, like you said, that it isn't talked about more often. Because it's a safe place. You feel safe. Yes, 100%. Especially, God forbid, you break down on I-95 and you can be insured that they're going to come, take your car safely away,

and you don't have to fool around with anything, you know, whatever. Anybody that attempts today that change their own tire is out of their mind, especially on any road, how dangerous it is. And there are some cars like SUVs that you have to wind up getting the spare. even in an easy spot to get at. So it's a wonderful organization. I've been in over 50 years,

and I recommend that everybody be a member. Yeah, everybody should talk about it, and everyone should be a member. Okay, well, you guys have a good day, and I'm going to see what my training is going to be. I hope it's good on a barracuda. Thank you, John. Good luck. Thank you so much, John. Say hello to Irene. 877-960, 990-60, where you can text us at 770. We have a great mystery shopping report coming up, so stay tuned for that.

Let's get back to the first question of Van Marys. I don't think we answered it. She says she's only filling it up very rarely because she's on lockdown with the pandemic. She just wants to know if it can cause problems with her car in the future. No, it's very unlikely. Modern gasoline can sit in your tank for a couple of months and it'll be a good shape, even six to eight months. Okay. Jumping over to anonymous feedback.

I think this was from Andrea, who called from Minnesota. She had a question about should she give her initial offer, but it's almost identical. So we've answered the question about should you show your cards, so to speak, when you're first trying to get an out-the-door price from the dealers. So we covered that. The next one is in response to our show last week, when we had Mark from Offleas Only, we interviewed him over the air, and we put out a video out on Facebook, too, which is getting a lot of attention.

This anonymous commenter says, Offlees only is worried about unethical fees charged by other dealers. They buy every frame-damaged car they can get their greedy hands-on, and they are complaining about unethical dealer fees. Mark Fisher is a joke, and Offleys only thrives solely because of consumer ignorance. Hard words. That clearly came from a car dealer who was behind the times,

and frame damage is the tip-off to the fact you don't understand what off lease only does. Frames of cars, and Rick, you jump in here and correct me because this is not my field. But frames used to be, they used to be a metal frame that the body was put on, and they call that the frame, and you had a problem, you have to weld the frame together, and that was the way cars used to be built.

And then they came up to the unibody where the body itself serves as the frame. It's not, no longer metal beams that have to, if you had an old-fashioned car and you were in an accident, like our 37 Pontiac or even up into, when did they go to Unibody, 60s or 70s or 80s? Started mainly in the 70s, they started going to Unibody

on a lot of cars. So now they're all unibody. And if it was an old style frame and you were in an accident and there was frame damage, then you are probably driving an unsafe car if they didn't do the job right and they just replaced the fender and the frame was bent. You've seen these cars going down the road.

Some are older cars. Look like they're going sideways but they're off to tilted. Those could be frame damaged car. Dog tracking, we call that. So what happened is the auctions and the car dealers and the wholesale game

about what is a car worth was designed around, You saw the word frame damage, immediately kept the value of the car by thousands of dollars. They go through the auctions, the car dealers did it to themselves. And Mark Fisher, all please only, he suddenly realized one day that he could buy a car that had technically frame damage, which wasn't really frame damage, it was unibody damage. He could buy it for $2,000 less than any other car. he could disclose it and sell it for $2,000 less and sell a whole bunch of cars.

So this texter that said that he's a lousy thief and he's buying bad cars, off-lease-only, they are selling you, and I'm not saying every car off-leash-only sells is safe. I'm saying the ones that they buy that have nothing but cosmetic damage from my unibody that would repair properly can still test out as being a completely safe car. That's my answer. Another anonymous feedback says, hey, I have a very important question. I really hope and pray you answer for me.

I love your videos and I'm subscribed. I have a lease for 48 months in a Lexus RX 350. It's a 2017 for 10,000 miles a year. It's been almost four years, and I paid $750 a month for it. Love the car. Unfortunately, I had two big accidents in the car. which wasn't my fault, and they've been fully repaired.

My mileage is now 80,000 miles. It's double of what he's supposed to have on the car. His question, should I pay off the car, which is $33,000, or pay only the penalty, which is about $12,000. Oh. Or maybe I can negotiate the payoff. My worry is the car has lost a lot of value with these two accidents I had, thanks in advance.

Boy, there's a line from, an old movie, trains, planes of automobiles where Steve is talking to the gal at the riddle car company, and she says something to him that I can't repeat on the air. But, you know, you've got a problem. And, you know, the irony is the damage to the car, it was repaired properly, would not affect you if you allowed it to go back to the leasing company. but if you bought the car, it would work against you because any car that's been an accident because of the psychological thing that we just talked about from an earlier texter that it had frame damage or serious damage.

So the mileage is the thing that really concerns me. The cost, I'm not sure what they're charging you per mile. You got a good low rate because you took a low mileage lease. 10,000 miles per year is well under the average driving person. The person that bought that should have known in advance, and he should have been one, a low-mile driver, and then you can save money on the monthly payments. But what you weren't probably told this,

you're a high-mileage driver, and now $7,000 in over-mile-charge... 12,000. Okay, so you're caught between a rock and a hard place. You're going to have to make a very unpleasant decision. Is the $12,000 mileage fee better than the cost of buying the car and trying to unload it? Probably it is, but I don't know. It is a Lexus.

So what you have to do is get a bid from three Lexus dealers. Even though it's still being leased, you can go to a Lexus dealer, and you can check with Buy Anycar.com, you can check with Carvana, you can take it to any automation store. cars are used cars are in low supply high demand today so you get a good price

on a Lexus but it's going to be gigged heavily because of the damage and that would be the time I mean you're in luck in there I mean the use car market prices are sore you might get lucky and maybe you take a $6,000 hit for

you know for the depreciation because of the accident and you also, but it's better than $12,000 hit for the over-mile charge. But I'm very, very sorry that you have that. It's a terrible problem. You have two bad choices, but one will be better. It might not be a lot better, but it's got to go with the lowest out-of-pocket.

More than Adam's feedback, run away and never look back. Levin cars can potentially be hard to ensure. AAA won't do it. And also keep in mind that it's probably not a car you'd want to own when the factory warranty expires. I guess he's talking about cars that have gone through the lemon law process. So then what? Is it your forever car? Because if it's not, then good luck trying to sell a car with a branded title.

So you buy a lemon car. Yeah. And yeah, that is one of the things that you do because you won't save a ton of money. And if you can't save a ton of money, then you're going to pay the piper when you have to get rid of the car. So I would be very careful. before I bought a car that was sold as a limit. Exactly what you save up front is going to cost you in the long run. Yeah.

Rick, you got any YouTube's over there? I do have a couple. Justin Thomas is asking, when I call a dealership for an appointment, should I ask for a salesperson who has been at that dealership for more than a couple of years? I was told those salespeople can get me bigger discounts. That's not true. you should

you should choose a salesperson that you feel comfortable with I would not when I called the deal with your for an appointment I might ask I might ask for a salesperson that had more experience not because he's going to get a bigger discount but because

he's going to know the product better and he's going to in the process yeah he's not I started to say he's not a thief but it depends on who he's working for. But if you get an experience, car salesperson has been there for several years. It'll go quicker. You're probably better off.

But it isn't going to work for the discount. A young salesperson new, he's just going to take up a lot of your time. In fact, our mystery shopping report this afternoon has to do with a very young, inexperienced salesperson. You'll see what we mean. I got a really good one here for you from a dealer on anonymous feedback says this is owner of a buy here pay here that's who's texting us and he has to agree with you what you said on your YouTube video on buy here pay here financing how can you throw all BHPH in the same category we've been in business for 27 years sell quality cars with 15% interest monthly payments of $300 and less I think we do a better job taking

taking care of our customers than most new cars dealerships stealerships again you are wrong in calling all by here pay here the same well I'm sorry if I came across that way I definitely do not feel that way matter of fact we rate we are ranked easy buy is that easy buy easy buy easy pay easy own I'm not sure it's Bill Walls his store and Stewart buy here pay here we gave them a very high rating of integrity I don't Think all buy here, pay, or buy it. In fact, if you don't know what it is, buy or pay here, are usually smaller dealership lots, used cars that handle their own financing, and it can be weekly or bi-monthly, and they carry the paper, as we say, they do the financing, and they will finance people with bad credit. They have a very strict policy that if you miss a payment, they repossess the car quickly. but there are people of great integrity.

The last time I checked, Beach Cars was one of them. For years, you've said there's a need for that in the community. You have to have a car, especially in Florida. And that's the only place that many people can. And there's a lot of family-owned buy-here payers that are ethical.

If you have really, really bad credit, and you have to use a buyer-payer payer, do some investigation, check ratings, check with customer testimonials, If they have the moral character and you have to deal with them, then it's a necessary choice. You might have to pay 18 or 20% interest on the car, but you should also be sure that wherever you buy it, they report your payments to the credit union. Because if you make all your payments, you can build your credit back up where you don't have to use subprime financing and cost your fortune and interest.

but yeah, I'm sorry that I came across is painting all by her paint here lots with the same brush. They're good ones and they're bad ones. Okay, you got one over there? Dom's mom is asking, looking at a year old car, one-year-old, that is not a certified pre-owned

before any used vehicle goes on sale, does it automatically go through the process of qualifying for certified pre-owned before it goes on sale or not always? and am I able to purchase the manufacturer's warranty after purchasing the car? Well, you can't buy a manufacturer's warranty directly. You have to buy it through the certified warranty as a manufacturer's warranty. Yes.

And it goes through the dealer. But that's just the power train. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They don't automatically, I mean, there's criteria that they apply years and miles for a certified car, but it's the dealer's choice if they choose to put it through that process. You could have a car that is certifiable, and I don't mean crazy, I just mean it can, it meets the criteria, and the dealer might, for a number of reasons, decide not to certify it.

For example, it might be very close to the end of the sort of the mileage limitation, in which case, buying the certified car, you might have a day left on that extra warranty because it was such an old car or higher mileage car. A good dealer would do that. Or they just don't believe in the program, and they figure they could make more. money by not fixing all the things that you're buying a good car you're buying a Honda you're buying a you know Toyota you're buying a Subaru Subaru and you've got a good reliability report from consumer reports you're better off to buy it without the certification as long as they've done the check if they would have to do to certify it why pay the extra money for the warranty if you don't need

it but it is a security blanket it is a Peace of mind thing, certified car, but if you feel better about it, they charge you more for a certified car. And if they've done the checklist, you know, you're just buying a warranty. Plus, the car's going to be inspected anyways in the shop for general safety purposes, the tires, the brakes, make sure everything else is in good condition. And if the car's only one years old, it's still got the original factory warranty on it that is remaining. So that factory warranty doesn't run out. It's still there.

Let's jump over to some text. This is from Jessica. It says, good morning. It's Jessica from Sebring. This one's for Nancy. I have a 2008 Hyundai Veracruz, and I've had it for two years now. Of course, it's out of warranty,

but I keep seeing those commercials advertising extended warranty. Yeah, car shield. I've seen those. Because your car is sure to break down, they say. I do regular maintenance and kind of baby my vehicle. Should I spend money?

on warranty nancy well thanks for the question jessica and it's a good question i'm telling you you see all of these ads on tv and you receive mailers and it really makes me a little bit nervous because an extended warranty uh you're going to pay so much more for that than you would a repair on your vehicle and boy i'll tell you what there is a lot of warranty companies out there uh they're in the business to make money For sure. And it can cost you anything from, oh, gosh, I'm going to say $300 to $1,500. And is that, would you say that's a fair? Higher, even higher, you can pay several thousand dollars. I mean, $2,000. If, you know, you get a hold of the wrong company. And the repair that you might need on your vehicle, the most, it might cost you, you know, $180.

unless you're replacing the engine or the transmission and I'm being a little funny there but I'd stay away from the extended warranties. Yeah, they have the celebrities. That's the newest trend right now. There's Ice Tea, the rapper and actor pushing the car shield. And what amuses me is because we're in the car business, you know, these are insurance policies.

They've been sold for years and years and years, decades, and it's being presented like a brand new idea. Wow, there's a company that could save you thousands of dollars. Just remember, they're selling insurance, and then you've got to judge it on that. And, Jessica, you're doing all the right things by taking care of your car. There are a lot of people who really don't do the maintenance on their vehicle and more or less baby it, so you're protecting yourself. Thanks for the question, Jessica.

And thank you for listening to Earl Stewart on cars. Great. Kyle is texting us. He says, good morning, everyone. I hope everyone is healthy. I was wondering how Toyota pays dealers to do maintenance under the Toyota Care and Recalls. Does the dealer make a good rate for that work? Is it better, worse, or the same, what a customer would pay for similar work?

Thanks. Two parts of that question. One is Toyota Care and the other is recalls. Toyota Care, it doesn't pay as well as a customer pay. It's a little bit less, dealers will make less money. It was first initiated after the big Toyota recall crisis. 2009, 2010, and it was a way for retention to get people to come back to the dealers that they bought the, well, come back to the brand. And so... Well, that's serious. That's serious. You can say

that twice, because when a car dealer feels like he's getting screwed by the manufacturer, underpaid, then it's not a good thing. You want a technician to feel like he's being paid. You want the dealership to feel like they're being paid in Toyota and a lot of the other manufacturers, have the free maintenance, they pay a lesser amount than it would be fair to the technician or fair to the dealer. But the argument that they make is, yes, you're making less money, but now they're coming back to your dealership and they're more likely to come and do repairs. So that was how it was sold.

So you can upsell them. Exactly right. The next part is on recalls, and that's warranty work, and that actually pays pretty well, but it depends on how the dealer works the relationship with the manufacturer. So the dealer actually gets to negotiate their warranty rate from the manufacturer and some dealers get paid for the same work less than the dealer down the street

based on his ability to negotiate his warranty reimbursement rate. Yeah, well it's actually a formula. Now it is. Yeah, now it's based on the consumer price index. I don't think it never was a negotiation. It was a matter of they would come in on auditory, repair orders. Well, there was a little, there was art to it. Yeah, and art to it, exactly right.

We're going to go to Warren. He's been holding, and he calls us from Pompano Beach. Good morning, Warren. Welcome back. Hi, guys. How are you? Hi, the reason why I wanted to call is I had an extended warranty. I'm going to support tourists.

And actually, I have a good experience, and I'll tell you why. When the original warranty were ran out, I got a letter from Fort saying that they would offer an extended warranty. And I didn't get it from a dealer. I didn't get it from an outside source. I got it directly for them. Now, it wasn't cheap. It was like $2,500, but it covered the car to $125,000 miles. And they said it was an interest-free for two years, $100 a month. And because I drive back and forth from Pompinot to northern New Jersey,

and I might do that two or three times a year, I just felt it was a safety blanket that I didn't want to get stuck in Bubba's garage and, you know, North Carolina or something like that. Because I could take it to any fourth or a Lincoln dealer in the country. and one time going down there coming back from Jersey someone wrong with the car and sure enough I went into a Ford dealer and they fixed the water pump and it didn't cost me anything

now I don't know at the end of the warranty if I was ahead of the game behind the game I really don't haven't figured that out it wasn't important to me I just wanted to let you know that if you get it directly from the manufacturer I think it can be are you sure it is from the manufacturer

I've never heard oh yeah it had it before it was Ford Warren Yeah, Ford warranty service. They had a special division. Yeah, Toyota doesn't do that. And I don't know of other manufacturers that solicit warranties. Yeah, well, outside of the southeast, Toyota sells a Toyota extended warranty, but it's not the factory warranted,

but it is a branded Toyota product. And they solicit the business? I don't know how they market it. Yeah, I mean, I received, you know, when I bought the car, I said, you want the warranty, you said, no. But when I got to the end of them of the manufacturer, was warranty. I received a letter from Ford. I called,

I called a woman in Detroit who worked at Ford. It was called Ford warranty extension, blah, blah, blah, blah. But like I said, it was $2,500. It was $100 a month for two years. So, you know, it wasn't cheap, but it was peace of mind for me.

And I don't know how much that's worth. You know, your peace of mind is worth something. You know what I'm saying? That's the reason. Definitely. I'd love to see that. If you could scan it or fax said, I'd love to see that. I haven't seen a... It was called, I'm sorry, it was called Ford ESP.

Ford ESP, to look it up online. And it came directly from the manufacturer. They solicited it through a letter. And like I said, I always saw comfortable because if I went to a strange dealer or something, you know, they fixed it. There was a $200 deductible. I had two things that went on it was the water pump and the air condition. and the air conditioner

went on it and I don't know what was wrong the guy called me and just said it's leaking like it said we're going to pull the whole unit and put another one in but I didn't care because I've got question

and I don't know because he's getting back blah blah blah blah but I like I said it was a total peace of mind to me because I would go back to forth a couple of times a year sometimes even the dead of winter

I drive back from Florida to northern New Jersey and like I said when you're doing that kind of mileage on a car you don't really want to worry about where you're going to bring it.

Yeah. The manufacturer, Ford, is actually competing with the dealerships. Dealerships, sale extended warranties, and they don't like the manufacturers going in competition with them. So I say on the show, I learn something new every week, and I just learned something new. So the reason I'm curious to take a look at that, I'll investigate it. And maybe there are other manufacturers that are doing this that I don't know about. but Toyota doesn't contact my customers directly selling them extended warranties,

and I'm really a little bit surprised that the Ford dealers let Ford get away with that. Not that it's a bad thing. I mean, you're better off to buy the warranty extended from the manufacturer than the car dealer because you're probably going to get a lot more legitimate extended warranty. So thanks for telling me something I didn't know. Yeah, and one more thing, I just want to tell you what happened to me, And, you know, I'm 70 years old, so I've seen it all, done it all. I had a couple of cars, leased and bought them, whatever you want to think of.

When I bought this car, it was a four tours, I don't know, I pushed the button on the car, and it's called a child restraint, and my daughter gets in the car who was about 18 at the time. She says, we'll take the child restraints off. And I said, but you couldn't open the windows or the radio, and I couldn't figure out how to do it. And, you know, I took it to the dealer, and they put the key in, and nothing worked. So finally, they put it into the computer. It took them about 10 minutes, and they fixed it. I come back, and they gave me a $150 bill.

Oh, Lord. And I was, like, furious. And I said, could I speak to the service manager? He's not here. Obviously, I paid the bill. And about two days later, I get an email from the dealer, who is where I bought the car from, down in Florida. He says to me, well, how did you like the service? and I went through this whole tirade of what they did.

Service manager called me, and I said, three people bought, my cousin bought a car there, my uncle bought a car there, and I said, you charged me $150 to fix something that took 10 minutes that shouldn't have been charged anything. So he said, I'll tell you what I'll do. The next two oil changes are on me. You know, I said, well, he didn't give me the money back,

but I said, all right, what they did, they went in there, they had it on the computer. So, again, you know, sometimes, does it paste a complaint if you feel that something didn't do right by you. Absolutely. Yeah. You're crazy if you let a mad customer get loose without at least trying to make things right because that mad customer will tell 25 people how bad you are and it'll cost you a lot more money than taken care of him. Yeah, I mean, it was just, to me, they took it in the back, they hooked it up to some gizmos. I had no idea. They came back 10 minutes later. They said, it's all fixed.

the guy hands me a $150 bill, and I was like, well, what is this? Yeah. You know, but like I said, he gave me the oil changes over the next two, and I mean, it wasn't going to come out to 150, but whatever. I got at least they got some satisfaction out of it. It was a nice gesture, a nice gesture, for sure. It was a nice gesture. All right, guys, be safe.

Thank you very much. And like I said, it's called 4, I believe, ESP. If you looked it up, you'll check it out. Directly from Ford and Dearborn, Michigan. All right, thank you very much. Thank you, Warren. Have a great weekend. Thanks for sharing that with us. And Warren just totally ruined my image. Oh, it didn't ruin. I changed my image. I go, he sounds like he's 30 years old.

Warren is 70. He sound great, man. The new 70. Exactly. Okay. We got any text? Yeah. Jamie is texting us from Massachusetts once and now. It says, why has it become so difficult to get the out-the-door price? Like, well, that's just became, it's always been pretty difficult. You hit on the core problem of the automobile retail business.

It's the only business where you don't get an out-the-door price. Think about it. You buy a refrigerator, you buy a loaf of bread. Anything you buy, there's the price. Now, there might be a few little hidden things, but in general you don't pay a substantial larger, larger price, except for car dealers. So the car dealers, think about it.

All Ford dealers sell the exact same product. A Ford Taurus is a Ford Taurus is a Ford Taurus. So if you're going to buy a Ford Taurus, dealer A paid the same price to Ford as dealer B as dealer C. So they all have the same cost. Now, you come into buy the car, and you're all going to pay a different price, each different dealer.

If dealer A gives you an out-the-door price, you take that price to dealer B, and he'll be it. it probably. And if he doesn't beat it, dealer C will. And if he doesn't beat it, you get my point, once you have a firm price, and that's the real, your lowest price from a dealer, he is at the mercy, at your mercy, and the other dealers that you're going to shop and compare with. This is your power as a car shopper. Your power is to get that Alpador price because now you're in control. And that car dealer does not want you to be in control. The car dealer, that car dealer,

that will trust you enough to give you a real out-the-door price, the price you can write a check for, hand it to the salesman, drive the car home. If they have the courage to give you that, then you have the power to try to beat the price. And that's the way the free economy should work. That's competitiveness. And that method kind of eliminates all the questions we get about should I, what should I make on my first offer? What about these fees?

Does that fee legitimate? And if you focus on the bottom line of that buyer's order, the worksheet. Think about three people selling apples on the street, three vendors. And they're all selling Fuji apples. And you walk up to the first vendor and the apple's 25 cents. And you go to the next guy and you say, how much your apples? He says, 20 cents. You go to the next guy, he says they're 40 cents.

Where are you going to buy the apple? A Fuji apple is a Fuji apple. A Ford Taurus is a Ford Tours. That is why you have the hassle and the hassle. the negotiating nightmare every time you buy a car. Problem is the guy with the 20-cent Apple might have 50 cents and Apple fees. So you've got to focus on the bottom line. Apple fee, I love it, yeah. Eliminate all the stress, ladies and gentlemen.

Go to Erlon cars and download my famous affidavit. It's called the out-the-door price. Yeah. That'll secure everything in writing. We're going to, we're going to go out to Bakersfield, California. And John is calling us. Welcome to the show, John. Hi there.

Good morning. Thank you. Yes, it is a very early morning, right? I'm always up early. Yeah. Hey, I got a question. So I bought a 2018 Toyota Robpour. And they don't have an owner's manual in it.

So where would be the best place? I'd like to pick one up that I can thumb through. Where would be the best place to buy that? Do I have to go to the dealer or? Yeah, well, there's a couple of ways you can go. This is Stu. One, you can get them online. I know you want to thumb through it, but you can get the,

all the information is on Toyota.com, and you go to a section called Owners, and then you can see manuals and guides. I can do that. I can print it out so they can still thumb through it, right? Yeah, you can print it out. You can download it in a PDF file and print it from your computer. Or you can go to the dealership and see the parts,

department of the parts counter and asked they probably well they might have it so what'd you say it was a 2018 it's possible they have it in stock they might have to they might have to order it another thing i would look is also online i've seen them on ebay i've seen them on craigslist which is kind of a little sketchy but how about amazon are they on amazon i've never looked on amazon but you know i would just uh google it rick probably has a couple good answers but if you want information like right now just go to toota dot com go under the owner's section and look search for your vehicle i found one for a 2017 rave on amazon okay so they're out there it started with the internet and then um but if you want a uh an actual that the booklet version

of it um probably your best bet is hit the local toy dealer yeah yeah it just uh to print it out it seemed like i think it was 777 page oh boy yeah i forget it was quite a bit and i'm like man i don't know if i want to you know yeah so That's quite a bit of paper and ink, I guess. It's a cost you on that ink, it's a lot of trees. It'd be cheaper to get one from the Toyota dealer. Exactly. You might be able to call them.

They might, if you just probably do it out, you didn't save yourself the trip, call them up, say, hey, I can give them my credit card number on the phone, and they could probably mail it to you. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I just ended up going to the Toyota dealer. Okay, hey, I just want to put a shout out for you guys. I really enjoy your show. So, every time I listen to it, you know, off and on probably about every Saturday a little bit.

But I just want to give a shout out. I think it's an awesome show and keep doing it in the good work, man. All right, I appreciate it. I love it when we find out people are actually listening to the show. Grab the word, and please call the show again. We love to hear the further away, the happier we are. We love the reach. Absolutely.

Just for. Thank you. Give us a call again. For a second here, I'm going to check. change the subject and talk about Cheryl Miller. And in case you don't know who Cheryl Miller is, she was the first female CEO of a publicly traded auto dealership, auto nation. And she has stepped down or been let go or resigned.

Something, the details are a little fuzzy. And this is quite a dilemma that. that they have and Mike Jackson has taken over or will has he taken over or will he take over

he's already taken over he was still in the company but he stepped down when she assumed the CEO position and when she resigned he came back and took a position back as CEO

yeah there's been a lot of ups and downs about this particular subject and I don't know you'd think that Mike Jackson would have a better plan than he has has right now. So that's interesting news from AutoNation.

We hate to see a woman CEO of any company. We lose one like that, particularly the automobile business. We have a female with General Motors, and that's one of the few CEOs that are running a car company. So I think only like 5% of the CEOs in the country are women. And we certainly would like to see that increase. So we hope that maybe when they're do replace her they replace her with another woman I would hope so there are a few and far between but the ladies are they're gaining ground and uh Cheryl is 48 years old and I'll tell you what what a heck of a job that she's done and she's been with Auto Nation for quite a while I think we're going to go back to Stu yeah we got some anonymous feedback I think we can

get through these things pretty quickly before we get to the mystery shopping report So this is the great one is snapshot results. We were talking about the device that you plug into your car's data port and it transmits information on your driving habits to the insurance company for discounts. So here's the results from somebody who actually used this. Four months from, this is results over four months from the car insurance plug-in device. 3,200 miles total miles driven, seven hard brakes, one fast acceleration, 15 days where I use the car for more than two hours a day.

zero days when I drove more than 200 miles a day, zero days used after 11 p.m. Grade B-plus. Got a discount of 8%. Not worth it. Before the discount, the six-month premium rose $10 in a time where Texas rates dropped, and then they applied $48 off.

Yay, net savings, $38 or $6.33 a month. That's the results. Who pushed the box on the contract? car. The insurance guy comes out? I don't know. I don't know. Rick, do you know? They basically give you the little box piece and there's a data

port under the dash that you plug it in. So all you have to do is find a safe driver put it on his car for six months and then send it back in. Would it know? That's the evil car dealer coming down. Would it know, Rick? Is that legal? Is that legal? Technically, it could because

depending on what data it can retrieve from the car. Now, I'm going to continue to throw out my words of caution on these devices, though, folks, because some of these little devices, if they short inside, they can cause problems and put bad static or damage into the computer system of your car and cause your car to act up. Yeah, but it's a fact of life. It's going to happen. I think it's a good idea. Yeah, I do too. So, I mean, the discount is negligible, but what did you likely do when you had that in your car? you're probably on your best behavior because you know most people would be right because what happens

if you're a lunatic are they going to jack up your rates no no no um here's another anonymous question that says i don't understand my car dealers won't agree to have no dealer fees if it was done by all dealers then the profits that they would lose from a ban would be made up by a commensurate increase in prices the net effect to the consumer would be neutral well your the dealer fee advantage is is, we had off-lease only Mark Fisher on, what, three weeks ago now, he said it better than I could. He said that when you are shopping for a car, be at Cars.com, Car Guru, AutoTrader, most all there, when you're looking for cars, or directly with a dealer, the dealer with the largest dealer fee has the lowest price.

Now, that's counterintuitive. That's it's totally unfair. If I have, we had a car dealer, we before last, that was the Napleton Hyundai with a $5,000, $231. Okay. So Naplesden Hyundai has $5,000 in dealer fees. So when he advertises in the newspaper online, on auto trader, he can price his car lower than anybody else. He could price his car $2,000 below his actual cost, and he's still going to make a $3,000 property. The best example of this is when we ran that a parody ad years ago, we advertised back when we were allowed to do this by Toyota, we advertised a brand new 2009 Camry for $1.

And then in the fine print, we had a $25,000 dealer fee. And that was the joke. So conceivably that could be done. A dealer could do that today. There is no law in Florida capping the dealer fee. I can have a $25,000 dealer fee. I can advertise that car for $1. and if it cost me $20,000, I made a $5,000 profit.

That's legal in the state of Florida law. Actually, it's not legal, but they don't enforce the law. The law says you have to include the dealer fee in the advertised price, but they don't do that. So I'm getting myself worked up. My blood pressure is going up. I've got to calm down. Let's move on here.

Put yourself together. I need a Xanax. All right. Rick, got any text over there? The last one that I have right now is, is from Karen. And she says, Scotty Kilmer, the mechanic on YouTube, very famous guy there, says, never put C-foam additive into your car's engine. Do you agree? Sea-foam? Sea-foam is one of these, I call them mechanic in a can. It's one of those additives that

you're supposed to put it in the oil or something, others that you'll put in the fuel. And they're supposed to clean out your engine, make your, your car run better, increase your fuel economy, increase the power, you know, make the water of the world clean again and kill litter all over the world. Is it from the sea? And I wouldn't even guess. But 99% of these chemicals, folks, these are snake oil. They are blue-smoking mirrors.

If you're lucky, it won't hurt anything, but it ain't going to help anything. All they're helping is they're helping themselves to your money. Exactly. No, man. Next. We got a comment on Facebook real quick, agreeing with Nancy. Bob worked for an extended warranty company. Most are crooks and very few on the up and up.

So Nancy is absolutely right. They're in the business to make money, not help you. Thank you. Yeah, we have a text here. No name on it. It says good morning. Oh, it's John. Sorry.

John here just wanted to know about this car AC stuff. Years ago, I heard that the same company that owned the R12 also owned the R134 and just did this to charge more for the product. Now, is this the same case, again, with the new one, just to charge more? Well, R12 was found to be causing problems with the ozone. And in older cars, the AC systems were massive capacity. They used a lot of that chemical, and when it leaked, they would just let it go. It was 99 cents a cam. R-134 came out It's much more expensive, it's not as efficient, it doesn't work as well, but they could actually run smaller capacities with it, so there's less chemical in there. And now the new one, two, three, four chemical, which is much more expensive, the machines that are designed to use it are federally designed to where they won't even allow you to charge the system unless it's been leaked tested first.

they're very, very finicky on making sure that these chemicals don't escape. But what they're trying to do is get AC chemicals that won't destroy the ozone layer. Gotcha. Okay. I got a great text from Steve in New Jersey talking about the gas cap situation. Steve, long-time listener, long-time texter, and occasional caller. My new Volvo doesn't have a gas cap. The cap is replaced with a flap, which is open when the gas station, nozzle is in

started and then it automatically closes when the nozzle is removed. Hooray for Volvo. Hooray for Volvo. Exactly. I knew it. I mean, just you have to think a little bit. Just think and you don't, there's so many things, and particularly with elderly people, you know, now that I'm elderly, I'm seeing all sorts of stupid things that car manufacturers.

I guess they never thought about the fact that, you know, people are living longer and they're living useful lives longer and they're active. And people, there was a time when, you know, at 60, you hung it up. You hung up the shingle. You know, you couldn't ride your horse anymore. You couldn't ride your car anymore. And it's not that way anymore. People are driving that are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s safely.

And, you know, you're 70, 80s, your hands and other things don't work as well. The cars need to be designed differently. So that's my message to Detroit and Tokyo. Yeah, they've got to work well for everybody. You've got to start taking a consideration. I love it. A flap, no gas cap on the Volvo. There is a tiny chance that the salesperson just lied to them

because they forgot to put the gas cap on it. I'm just kidding, Steve. Real quick question for Rick, rapid fire. How do you reset the maintenance required light on a 2018 Toyota Tacoma? You're going to go into the steering wheel controls, look for settings, vehicle settings, and maintenance reset, and say yes. Very good. Morning all. I work throughout P.J. National, where they are currently laying new asphalt on the roads. Just wondering, if you guys, like me, get a kick out of driving on new asphalt, the little joys of life.

And let me tell you, yes, I do. I do, too. We had the dealership renovated, and one of the last things we did was re-serviced the parking lot. And I tell you, every time I drive in there in the morning, I get a feeling of joy. I even like to smell. I like a smell of asphalt. Yeah, we're weird. Guess what? We're all caught up. Very good. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to let you know that the lines are closed. They're shut down right now, and we're going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report.

And you reading the Mystery Shopping Report is real important. So rate this Mystery Shopping Report that's coming up, and I believe that it's from Greenway, Kia. I don't have a copy myself. You can still text. And you can still anonymous feedback, because if we get through with us a little early, we'll get to the text. and to the anonymous feedback. It took the words right out of my mouth. And that text number is

772-4976530. So rate the mystery shopper report and pass us a text. If we have a couple minutes, we'll get to it. Okay. Greenway Kia. And I have to say when I read this, I said to Stu, what is Greenway Kia? I haven't heard of Greenway Kia.

Greenway Kia was West Palm Beach, Kia. apparently they sold out and has anybody heard a Greenway key I guess they we shopped them last August and at the time we were like who the hell are these guys okay so we so we did shop them I thought we shop them when they were West Palm Beach anyway I'm not trying to make fun of them but it's not a good idea if you're selling cars if people don't know the name of your dealers yeah I thought it was in Illinois yeah at any rate here we go last week we revisited the Takada Airbag recall issue. It's been over six months since we tried our Takata test at one of our area

car dealerships. Everything's relative when the COVID-19 pandemic is making most of our problems seem small by comparison. I keep telling my this. So if that when I get up, said it little things, I mean, you're right. I mean, a huge, it's almost like a movie. I feel like I'm in a movie, this COVID pandemic. You know, I wake up in the morning sometimes and I forget until I see my face mask lying beside my bed. But even though the Takada death count is nowhere near staggering as COVID-19 is, it's just as impactful to the families who lost blood ones to this frighteningly dangerous safety defect. And we don't know how many people actually we've lost because often horrific accidents,

there's no autopsy. You just have somebody that died and you don't know whether it's shrapnel from a exploding airbag defective expecting an inflator or something else. So we just don't know. Another point to make is that the Takata problem will be with us. This is a very good point. Long after we have a vaccine for COVID-19, it's going to happen, folks.

This thing will be over and the world will return to normal. Pretty much. At least we won't have the COVID to worry about. But we're still going to have other problems. And this is a Takata thing is on the back burner now. So when this is all over, we have to realize we've got 140 million cars out there on the road with defective to cut airbags. Now, I'm going to repeat that. There are 140 million cars on the road that have defective to cut airbags.

These inflators are like a hand grenade. They explode in your face if your car is an accident. Sometimes they explode when your car is not in an accident, sending shrapnel throughout the insurance. entire car, and you are either defaced, defamed, not defamed, but what's the word? Diffigured. I've seen ads from NHTSA, and that's what they're using. It's an image of a steering wheel that's partial hand grenade. So, pretty bad stuff, and I know it's hard to focus on something outside of the coronavirus,

but we're going to do it. Now that I've scared the hell out of everyone, let's lighten things up a little bit, okay? Our mystery shop last week of Naples, North Palm Beach Hyundai, began as a takata test, but quickly dissolved into absurdity. We discovered another young, inexperienced salesperson with a heart of gold who was directed by his manager to basically rip off our mystery shopper. We're seeing a whole lot of young kids out there that haven't sold cars before. And it's the economy. They probably lost his job at a restaurant, lost their job somewhere. else and car dealers are hiring the car business is not bad folks people are buying cars and

they're buying used cars and they're buying new cars counterintuitively but apparently there's something about a car being a safe place and a lot of people a lot of people didn't buy them in March and April yeah that happened plus the fact you've got to have a car you can have a car Rick you can drive your car to work and live in it you can't drive your house to work or your apartment so true that exactly We uncovered the holy grail of ridiculously huge hidden dealer fees of this report at Napleton last week, Napleton Hyundai, 5,231 in dealer fees by every name imaginable. They had one, this is a really incredible, $1,960 dealer fee, hidden fee, I'd like to call it, for the Napleton experience. And trust me, folks, the Napleson experience is not worth.

If they paid you in $1960, you don't want the Naples experience. You go in there and like, I'm paying for this? I mean, I would rename it. I would name it Fuzzy Wuzzy or... I still maintain this a great name for a band, though. Ladies and gentlemen, the Napleton experience. It got so bad at Napleton Hyundai, and this in West Palm Beach. I know this was on North Lake Boulevard.

North Palm Beach. Napleton Hyundai and North Lake Boulevard. Palm Beach. They got so bad that the original purpose of the investigation, we forgot about it, and Agent Thunder was forced to escape. He was, yeah, yeah. Rondola. So we had to go back to do the Takata, and that's where we are now. But we didn't forget what we set out to do, give our listeners a real-world example, and I'm trying to turn the page without looking my finger, and I got my face mask on, of the perils of buying a used

car in the age of Takata. We reached online, quickly found one of those ticking time bombs at Greenway Kia in West Palm Beach. Where are they located in Military Trail? I think military, yeah. Yeah, there were the old Palm Beach Toyota was when they had built their freestanding building just north of the summit. We investigated Greenway Kia, formerly West Palm Beach, Kia last summer. That was now the purpose of our visit was in the Codontas. Well, they failed last year. You'll say this week, we were offering them a second chance to redeem themselves. The target vehicle was a used 2014 BMW X-1 SUV.

BMW is one of the leading cars. Honda, BMW. Yeah. What are the rest of them? Toyota. Toyota is up there. We don't say a lot. No Korean cars, no Kia's, Hyundai's.

You usually start looking at Ford's. There's a bunch of them. By the way, if you're curious, I mean, obviously you can run your van, your own van. safer car.gov, but there's something called NHTSA Recall Spotlight, list all the manufacturers and the years and models affected. You know what I do if I were a manufacturer, I would do a count of all the cars, it's a matter of public data, of all the cars out there with took out airbag recalls that have not been fixed.

And if I had a, I don't know, Subaru, there's some manufacturer out there that doesn't have very many, I would run an advertisement, and I would say, No Tacitus. Yeah, I have no cars out there with effective Takata airbags. Yeah, Kia should do that. Yeah, Kia, there you go. I don't think they're on the list either as Hyundai. Okay.

I mean, there might be a small amount, but certainly the lowest. Yeah. I mean, that would be good for two reasons. It would help Kia or whoever Hyundai, but it would also flash a warning signal to the culprits out there like BMW and like Honda and like Toyota that have a zillion. million cars out there. 140 million cars with defective Takata airbags.

And it's just a cry and shame that this isn't talked about more. Anyway, here's the report, and I'm talking as if I were Agent Thunder. I made me away into the showroom of Greenway Kia in the late afternoon. Look busy. Before I approached the receptionist, I observed the scene. It was an older building, but clean with maybe a half dozen new quias in it. everyone I saw was wearing a mask everyone kudos this has happened three weeks in around yeah and I think it was commensurate law you know the law well they're

saying oh yes the law so car dealers will obey it our dealers don't bear in the law so foolish of me I can we take some credit for that we were screaming and yelling and we're embarrassing dealers where they weren't wearing masks and we went on dealership after dealership nobody wearing a mask and we hollered about it and now everybody's wearing a mask. So I'm going to pat myself on the back a little bit. I think we helped. I said hi to the receptionist,

and I wanted to see a used car I saw online. She offered to get a salesperson. I was approached by Buddy, and it's not really his name, and we're going to try to be careful about not embarrassing car salespeople that are innocent, innocent in the sense that they're following orders, and they're not the cause of the crime. They are... Ponds.

Yeah, there are pawns in the crime, so we don't want to embarrass Buddy, and that's not his real name. I like myself in the last week, Buddy was young and experienced experience. I described the vehicle I had seen to him, and he led me to a desk. Now, I'm actually standing beside me here. Do you have something for me, honey? Yeah, I was wondering if you could interrupt Mr. Chauvinport while we ran out to get breakfast. Yeah. We sat down and Buddy explained.

You can give me my copy of Mystery Shopper report. I was checking your page. I'm sorry. We sat down and buddy explained he needed to get some information from me before proceeding. He asked for my name, phone number. He insisted on more than one, email address and home address. And he's really ticking things off the checklist. Then he asked me who my auto insurance carrier was.

I don't believe I've ever heard that question from a car sales person that we mystery shop. I was asked why that was necessary at this stage in the progress. He seemed uncomfortable, nervous, and said it was a question, and he was required to ask it. So you can see the pattern here. He'd been through an indoctrination, a training session, probably never sold a car before, and he's following orders. But he took all the information about me. He'd written down and left saying he'd be right back.

In a few minutes, he returned and said, so you know the vehicle just came in, and we really haven't. or checked it yet. What would you like me to do? Now, that's a rookie comment. And the same thing happened last week, right, Stu? The car had just arrived and they said it hadn't been inspected. Yeah. Now, you ask yourself, if a car just arrived, it hasn't been inspected, why are you advertising it? And how can you establish your price on a car that you've never inspected? Assuming the car had $2,000 a reconditioning cost. Certainly, that would be a factor you'd have to consider before you've set a price. You might not even have want to advertise a car because it could be a car that would be so unsafe that you'd have to wholesale it. Without getting into the weeds, there is a way to do that. At the time of appraisal, the appraisal tools they get, they estimate it while they're actually appraising it, and that factors into the appraisal and the pricing later.

Exactly. In every car, probably, if the dealership has any sense at all, They run a car factory report before they appraised a car or buy a car because car dealers are buying cars like you're buying cars, except we buy them at wholesale and you buy them for retail. So you want to get all the information you can before you establish a value for a car. Puzzle. I asked him if it was for sale. It was being advertised on their website for 10,175. But he said it was for sale and asked me if I'd like to take a test drive. I told him that with the COVID thing, I didn't feel comfortable going for a test drive. I asked if we could see it, start the engine, and see how it sounded.

He said he agreed about test drives. He isn't comfortable with those either. So, smart kid. But he led me outside. We wanted around the lot, but he couldn't find the vehicle. This is standard, happens to a lot of car dealerships, especially with rookie salespeople. But he speculated that might be in the service department. He directed me to return to the showroom while he investigated.

He said he'd come to get me when he found it. I followed his instructions. 15 minutes later, buddy returned. He said he found the car. We went back outside, and he led me to the X-1 BMW. He was quiet as I pretended to inspect everything carefully. I asked him what he knew about the car. Were there any mechanical problems?

But he said he didn't know anything about the car. I asked him if there were any safety issues, but he repeated that he didn't know anything about the car. But then recited the off-fused line, we can print a Carfax report. So they do have a Carfax report, or maybe they don't. Oh, they do. Yeah, I mean, yeah. They could print it, so they could download it then print it. It's on the website.

Yeah. Okay, yeah. They just didn't look at it. Or maybe they did. I don't know. We went back inside, sat down, but he left again, saying he'd be right back. he returned with his manager why are we keeping the manager's name

a secret? Why not? We're keeping Agent Thunder's name he's addressing Mr. Thunder there and we never got the managers no he didn't get the manager we should we should the managers are guilty so they should have to name them hey Mr. Blank and we're keeping Agent Thunder

I just want to thank you for you coming in Buddy is a little new and I wanted to help I think you would know that the vehicle just came in and hasn't gone through our inspection. What would you like to do today? I told me that I, that's the second time they asked me. Well, because I think that same manager loaded Buddy's left. What I'd like to do today is I'd like to go to the beach.

Well, like the day is not be. But I got to buy a gun. I'm here. I wanted to know if the car had any safety problems, any accidents, et cetera. I said, I want to see Carfax report like Buddy suggested. I said I was willing to wait until they finished their inspection before finalizing the deal. The manager said we could do that. They both left, and I waited.

Several minutes later, buddy returned, handed me a Carfax report. He sat down while I read it quietly. I found the Takata airbag recall, and I asked him what it meant. What's this mean, buddy? What he looked at and said, I don't know. I don't know. I said, it looks like it's involved in an airbag, but he said, sort of shrugged.

And, I mean, you know, the kid is inexperienced. He's doing his best. on bed we're keeping anonymous. Don't want to embarrass him. But he looked past me and seemed like someone had his attention across the shore of me, he nodded to whoever it was behind me and asked me how I would like to pay for the vehicle. I said I want to pay cash, but I would entertain financing

if the terms were attractive, but he left again. After a while he came back and I began to explain the workshed that he had with him. The selling price was 9,000. was $9,998, strangely enough, $177 lower than the online price. And I think that happened last week, too, didn't they? Yeah, they did it just, the stuff like this is just. They do that to, so you release endorphins.

Oh, do you think so? Yeah. Ooh, a discount. They added $866.40 in taxable fees, taxable, a $215.05, administrative. fee. No, it was actually as administrative. I thought when student brought the report, it was a typo, but that was also a typo on the worksheet. It was pre-printed on the worksheet. So you guys, Greenway, you have an as-administration fee, which is... That'll tell you how carefully people read these things.

Yeah, I thought you had to pay when you get the Napleton experience. I mean, if I was a customer and I'd say, hey, you misspelled administrative. And the salesperson, you would think would say to somebody, you may, but nobody said that. Thunder didn't notice it. I caught it. Oh, yeah. Yes, that is how it's on the worksheet. Okay, then sales tax, and $457 in non-tax fees,

more dealer fees, right? No, the taxable is the dealer. The non-tax is the registration. Oh, okay. But I suspect that is inflated $457 is a lot. Oh, I'm sorry. I got to be honest. That was my, yeah.

So the total dealer fees were over $1,000. Okay. I read it too fast. I took the sheet from him and stood up I said he would wait to hear from him after the inspection of the BMW was finished I started to leave with buddy stop and he said a manager had to walk me out

or he'd be walking with me and he really said it just that way or he'd be walking out and I asked him, are you serious? I can't walk out you have to walk me out he said No, a manager had to walk him

manager had to walk him and then he said they'd fire him on the spot if I left him let him leave without a manager. I said, wow, okay, I'll wait. Buddy brought the manager over to me, who spied the worksheet in my hand.

He said he was sorry, but I couldn't take it with me, but it's okay to take a picture of it. I mean, we hear this over and ever again. I don't understand that. And the fire a kid, because we're running out of time here. Anyway, they failed the Takata test. They didn't even remotely try to disclose the danger. So there we are, failing a tecotta test.

Anyway, let's vote. We're running out of time. Yeah, we have a few, some not-goods, no grades yet. I'm just to jump in there and say, I'm going to give him a C-minus. Okay. Nancy, what's your vote, and do you have any other votes? I have a vote, and it's F. V?

F. How about? I'm going to give them the F as well. well and say now this was a total failure all the way around on their part Jonathan Wellington gives them an F oh yeah what do you say so I said C minus because I'm thinking on the curve I could be wrong or I'm just feeling good today well they got you know they got an 100% mask they they have dealer fees which everybody has they didn't disclose to the cut airbag

I'll give them enough. I think there had to be, it was such a, such a total non-disclosure. Got to give me an F. Okay. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in, Earl Stewart on Cars. We'll see you right back here next Saturday morning at 8 a.m. Have a wonderful weekend. Stay safe. Thank you.

Thank you.