Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.20.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of CarMax Fort Lauderdale

Episode Date: July 20, 2019

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits CarMax of Fort Lauderdale to see if the salesperson will disclose a Takata Airbag recall on an identified Ford Fusion. 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 LinkedIn CyberSiber. space through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show.

Hi, folks, I'm the guy that you were just listening to with that melodious voice. And my name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. I've been in the business for over a half a century. Frightening when I say that. frightening to myself a long time started in the business in 1968 and had a lot of different car dealerships sold used cars and new cars and had buy here pay here lots lease maintain repair body shops i've done it all and uh i did most of it the wrong way for a long time and that's

the reason i call myself a recovering car dealer something happened over the years and uh it's kind of in my book confessions of a recovering car dealer but something happened to Nancy has a copy there, she's holding it up in front of the camera if you're streaming us, but I kind of evolved into a consumer advocate, and that's what the show is all about, how to help you maintain or repair your car without being ripped off in the service department or the sales department, how to make buying a car an easier experience. And you heard that I introduced who's in the studio with me, and we're here to answer your questions.

We've already got a lot of text and YouTube's. and post. I love to have you call the audio number, the telephone number, 877-960-90-60. And I always try to give it out twice because feedback from you out there in Radioland. Don't just say the number once. I can't write it down that fast. So here we go. 877-9-60-99-60. Call us, text us, 772, 497-3-0. That text number again. is 772 497-6-5-30. And as I say, you make the show.

We would much rather listen to you than listen to ourselves. We've been doing this for 15 years. You can imagine we're kind of getting tired of what we have to say, but we hope you don't. You come up with interesting new questions and you come up with some stuff

that we don't even know. I honestly, this is not just to flatter you or blow smoke, as they say. I honestly learned something new on this show for, from you every day not every day every week because we only on Saturdays please call with your comments suggestions criticisms we welcome criticism you can call us about anything and if it's so rough you don't want us to hear it or don't want to be

identified I should say you could just go to anonymousfeedback.com your anonymous feedback.com www.w.com your anonymousfeedback.com Well, let's just kind of go around table here. Rick, you're the car genius. What's on your mind? Actually, the biggest thing that we've got coming is that new 2020 Supra, the GR Super, about to hit the shores. Well, this is not an infomercial.

True. So we can't sell Toyotas. In full disclosure, I am a Toyota dealer. But we're not going to try to sell your car. But other than Toyota's, what's on your mind, Rick? Well, first and foremost, every week, and this one is just, just my favorite one to scream about Takata. Yeah, Takata Airbags.

That's on everybody's mind. At least it should be. As a matter of fact, it's not on everybody's mind. It's on our minds. In the studio, a dangerous hand grenade in the front of your car on millions of cars on the road. And Rick and I and Stu and Nancy are very upset about that. We think about it every day. We talk about it every day.

And Takata Airbags, don't buy a car until you check safercar.org. That's go. www.safercar.gov, GOV. www. www.safercar.gov. And that's the NHTSA website. You put the VIN number in, and it'll tell you if you have a recall. And if you have a recall on your airbag, it'll tell you, is there a fix available?

And we found a lot of people out there are buying cars that can't be fixed. We have a mystery shopping report that will talk about that very subject. Oftentimes, you buy a car, and it does have a recall, but you can't. can't fix it. Now you're stuck with that car until the manufacturer finally decides to furnish apart. Absolutely. Plus, there's an app that you can get for your smartphone where all you do is you can put in the VIN number or just scan a license plate number. And it will tell you, in seconds, it tells you if there are any open recalls. And to kind of aside, any recalls should be taken care of as quickly as possible. Nancy Stewart, I know you got, I know what you got out of your

mind because you never stopped talking about. You go ahead and tell the folks what you got on your mind. I'm not sure what you're referring to. How about female callers? At any rate, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. You're an important part of the show. And what I have on my mind this morning, as I do every single morning whenever I turn the TV on, recalls. Have you ever seen so many recalls? It's frightening. And we're here to keep you informed. But then again, we enjoy listening and hearing from you and all the information you have to share so join us this morning be part of the show knowledge is power 877 960 or you can give us a text that's real important we get a lot of text we get a lot of YouTube also from Rick at 772-4976530 and as

Earl suggested earlier ladies you're an important part of the show Give us a call. I have $50 for the first two female callers. Eight-seven. First two new female callers. If you haven't called the show before, 50 bucks, cash, no conditions. New. New, new, new.

Okay, ladies, 877-960-99-60. Give me a call. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, Stu, you're next. You're going to be gone for a couple weeks, and I think you always have something interesting on your mind. Well, right now I'm wondering how we're going to get through the 15 text messages that we're waiting for us when we got here to the studio this morning. Let's drive in.

Today, it will be time management. We'll see. And I'm also really thinking about the new studio. We have a lot of questions all the time online when we're moving into the new studio. I think it's next Saturday. And I'm not going to be there, which really, I know. I'm going to miss it. I think you guys are going to do a practice run this coming week just to get through using the new equipment and everything.

But when I come back, you guys will be pros. Just tell me how to work the equipment. Well, you got a replacement, don't you? Oh, well, I thought we were going to announce that in a very special. Temporary. Temporary. Well, our world-renowned collision and insurance expert, Alan Napier, will be taking my place in the studio for the next two Saturdays,

and he's a fan favorite. Oh, he is. He's very popular. Yeah. Well, if we want to get to the text, I see the phone is ringing, but maybe I get through the first one before we get them on the line. The first one is on Your Anonymous Feedback.com, and it says, hello, Earl, and Rick. So I'm confused.

Why did the Toyota rep tell me my oil is good for 10,000 miles if I have to change it at six months, even if the car has only 3,000 miles on it? What is the service schedule for a regular 2019 Toyota, Camry, Corolla, or Rav 4? I think I can answer that. The service rep was wrong, and he should have given you a more complete answer because it's time and mileage. Correct. So it's a common thing, common confusing. Most people put more than 5,000 miles and six months on their car, and they put more than 10,000 miles in a year.

But a lot of people don't, particularly in South Florida. So remember, as confusing and as counterintuitive as it sounds, you could drive a car for 1,000 miles, but in 12 months with synthetic fuel oil, you need to change that oil. Once a year, that's it. Yeah. Okay. I thought we had a call.

Well, they're still getting queued up, so I'd go on to the next one really quick. Good morning. Question for Rick and Earl, are there any negatives to using a pressure cleaner to wash your car? I see a lot of mobile detailers use them. Would I damage my paint if I use a pressure washer at home and did it myself? That's a great question. I don't think we've had that before. Well, Rick, I know I sound like I'm jumping in and answering all your questions, but I dropped the ball on that.

I saw that anonymous text, and I talked to Alan because I figured he'd be the expert. He is. And Alan basically says a power washer in your car is a could be problematic, it could be okay. depending on your paint. And if you have a fresh paint and it's strong and solid and not faded and cracked or anything like that, then it could withstand the pressure washer

and you could probably do it. But generally speaking, it's problematic because if your paint isn't up to par, you could peel the paint off. And there's also little things you can get like at Home Depot. It's not powered by a compressor. It's something you screw onto the end of your hose,

your garden hose, and it's not nearly as powerful as a gas-powered pressure washer. Right. That probably won't. So that's great for outside windows and gutters and things like that. And with all the variables, with a pressure cleaner, I advise not to. You can take your skin off with one of those professional ones. I think Rudy's talking to his mom on the phone, so we could probably go ahead and do another type.

Here's a good one. By the way, I'm just clearing out all the anonymous feedback ones. But this one says, Dear Earl, this is good. What are the chances you will mystery shop Broward or Dade County? Look at it. Yeah, we've got a surprise for you today. These dealerships are out of control. Do you ever look at the Better Business Bureau complaints online with these dealerships?

Yes, we do. We're weird. That's pretty much all we do. And many have DNF ratings, and they could care less. And actually saying that they care less, that's an accurate statement. Because all you have to do to get an air rating on Better Business Bureau is just respond to the complaints. Exactly. I bet you didn't know that.

That's true. The Better Business Bureau, I mean, I don't think they're a bad group. We've always been a member of the Better Business Bureau. but it's kind of silly to be able to be a bad guy and take advantage of a lot of customers and as long as you respond to the Better Business Bureau complaint, you get a star. Here's an example.

Somebody could say, you rip me off, you stole $10,000 for me, the dealership could reply, nope, and that would qualify. I deny it. I think they're pretty loose and fancy free. It used to be pretty strict, but they've lost their flavor.

Okay, let's keep on roll. Okay. This is anonymous. Can you please explain the Patriot Act forms? Who has to sign them? When are they required and under what circumstances are they not required when purchasing a car? Well, I can answer that. All car dealers have regulations that have to comply and some came from the Patriot Act, which I think was back in 2001, 2002. There is a government agency called the Office of Foreign Asset Control. And they just want to make sure that money, that's getting moved around. Repeat that. The Office of Foreign Asset Control. Assets. Yeah, otherwise known as OFAC. Most car dealerships have this built in when they run credit.

And that can be a dangerous thing because a car dealer could convince you to run credit when you don't need to have your credit run. That is true that the credit report will pull up these checks. It makes checks for identity, any inconsistencies in your financial dealings. But you can also do the same thing by going to the trade. Treasury Department's website. I know this sounds convoluted, but the quick answer is you do not have to have your credit run to be compliant with the Patriot Act. The second part is, has to do with cash payments. So just say no. If they say, we need to take your credit. You say, I'm going to pay

cash. We need your credit because we have to fill the requirements, Patriac. Right. Now, there is one form that you absolutely have to sign, and it's an IRS forum called the 8800 form. If you are paying in cash, it's $10,000 or more, you have to sign an IRS forum. If it's $9,99, you do not. But that's always been the case. That's a money-lundering issue. Okay, excuse me. We have a first-time lady caller from Loxahatchie.

Wow. And I am very happy. Good morning, Tracy. Good morning, Nancy. How are you? Hey, Tracy, we got you there? Yes, I'm here. Hey, good morning.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. How are you all? Great. Congratulations. You just won yourself $50. Excellent.

And that's great to hear. Well, more than that, I'm excited about, well, excited and also a little bit sad about sharing experience that I had at a local Ford dealership, excited because, you know, we'll put the information out there to the rest of the community, but sad because it was a disappointing experience two separate times. We had appointments two times at Greco Ford down in Delry Beach to see two different cars, appointments that were made more than 24 hours in advance, and both times upon arriving, the cars that we were told would be there, ready for us, out front, were not. And it's just

very disappointing when you make appointments ahead of time and you're expecting to see the cars. Both times, we were ready to make a purchase. And both times we were tremendously disappointed because the cars we had been promised were not present and we really there wasn't really anything done either time to try to you know make amends or you know the second time they had only just sent the driver to pick up the car from an off-site location well tracy that's uh that's that's very disappointing i can understand was this a car that was advertised with a special price? Both times cars that were advertised

with special features that we were interested in and special pricing. Yes. We've mystery shopped Grico several times and one of the things that they're notorious for is advertising cars that they don't have

in their inventory. They may have it in one Grico inventory, but they don't have it another Gricoe inventory. They're the ones that advertise the ghost car. The one and they were advertising at multiple dealership. Yes. And both times they had more than 24 hours to have the car prepared and brought from wherever it was off-site. And two separate times, more than six months apart, we were tremendously disappointed because the same thing happened. Oh, I see. What do they say when you came in? Do they say the car had just been sold, or do they make another excuse?

No, the first time they said, oh, you know, we don't have the car here. I'm sorry, we don't have it. Can we show you a another car the second time they told us and they called us a couple of times to confirm our appointment um they told us when we got there oh the driver just left to go get the car from another location and which was much further south and we said well never mind we're not we're not going to wait so very disappointing and the driver actually called us on our cell phone after we left the dealership saying, you know, please come back, I'll be there in 20 minutes. And it's like, no, this is the second time this has happened with you all, and we're just not interested.

Obviously, you don't need our business. Well, Tracy, thank you for that input. Their M.O. is to lure people in on an advertised car at a low price that they would not sell the car for, and then switch that person to a different car. Once they switch the person to a different car, they raise the price, and they make a big profit. You wouldn't play that game. you stuck to your guns, you saw the car and the price, and when the car wasn't there, you just turned around and went home, which is exactly the right thing to do.

We have Greco Ford on our Do Not Buy list under the recommended list, good dealer, bad list. If you go to www.gooddealerbaddealer list.com, we have a list of all the dealers we recommend and the dealers we do not recommend, and you'll find Grico on the Do Not Recommend list. No greco locations are on the recommended one. Zero greco locations. So you would just reinforce why? Yes, they definitely deserve that status. Mm-hmm.

And Tracy, you know, I have to congratulate you for standing your ground. You know, a lot of these dealerships, they've got this, you know, advertisement out there, commercials, and the deals sound, well, too good to be true. And, you know, you just, you're, they stir some. consumer's curiosity and it's called get them in the door and it happens to a lot of people but you stood your ground and you did what earl always recommends turn around and just leave and congratulations for being well an educated consumer thank you very much and we love your show oh thank you very much from all of us stay on the line and we're going to get you that $50 check in

the mail Rudy needs to get your contact information we don't want to take it live on the air but I hope you can call again and we'll get that check out to you right away stay in touch Tracy very good we'll do thank you thank you we're going to go to Tina bye bye we're going to go to Tina who is a she's a regular and we enjoy speaking with her she always has some great information for us good morning Tina good morning y'all how you doing good morning good morning well breaking news. Ford has got bad press. What else

is new? They knew that they, the Ford Focus and Fiesta with the DSP6 transmission engine code, whatever it was, was defective to begin with, and they sold these vehicles anyway. Yay! But now they're trying to fix it.

You know, they're trying to low downplay this and be elegant about it. Say, well, you know, the first expiration date's going to be July 16th, 2019 to have these transmission 6th. And then after yesterday, there was going to be an update as to how they were going to fix these vehicles. But, yep, they sold defective vehicles anyway. They just put them out on the line. So that's pretty bad, I think.

Absolutely. And, you know, if you read any of these emails from the owners of these Ford and Fiesta, you know, it's heart-wrenching, you know, to be on a highway. and for your car just to shift in another gear you're unaware of. You know, I was reading where there was a gentleman that had to drive 35 miles an hour, 11 miles before he got his car off the road and so many other emails that are coming in about this disastrous story. Yeah, I'm surprised that he wasn't able to put his car in neutral and just dressed. A lot of people don't realize that if you're driving,

and something goofy happens with your transmission, press on the brake paddle, put it in neutral, and you can just drift safely off to the side without losing the activity of your power steering. I think for some it's startling when you're on the highway, and then there are some like you or me who can handle it and know what gear is safe. Tina, it also matters where you are. If you're on an expressway at 75 miles an hour and you're in the middle lane, and suddenly your car shifts into neutral. It's awfully hard to get off the road without being rear-ended

or killing somebody by changing lanes. But Nancy and I were on the interchange on Sawgrass Expressway with I-95 or 1-95, 595, 75, and Sawgrass Expressway at the Clover Leaf yesterday morning. And if our car had shifted into neutral in that situation, we probably wouldn't be here today to talk about it. Yeah, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Well, no, that's not what I meant, though. I think I didn't make myself clear. What I'm saying is if your car is having problems shifting from one gear to another

and can't get out of one gear and you're on the highway, try to get into the right lane, put your car in neutral, drift off, and stop. Exactly. That's what I meant. I didn't mean, oh, my goodness, the car went into neutral right in the middle of driving. I'm just saying that would be the safe way to get off the road. Yeah, I was talking about the fact that the fords themselves, are downshifting where you can only go 35 miles an hour.

So the same thing holds true, having been in the middle of that clover leaf, and if I had to go 35 miles an hour with cars around me going 90 miles an hour, it would have been a disaster. If you're in a chaotic situation, you panic. I hate that clover leaf, by the way. Whenever I go to the East Coast and come home, of course, I have to go through it. I hate that area with a passion. Some of those bridges are super high, and it looks like the retaining wall is low,

and that's really scary. Exactly. It's a whole other subject. It's high energy, that's for sure. But most of the stories that I read on the Ford and the Fiesta, they do, you know, they do shift into neutral. So I'll tell you what, if you're on 595, I don't even want to elaborate on that. No, anytime you drive on I-95, you have to have, you know, what's this deal.

And you have to have a really clear, sharp mind. you better drink a bunch of coffee because it's going to be a race. Yeah. Sounds like you're seasoned. Well, I think the... I've been on the East Coast a few times. It's always kind of nerve-wracking for me. You know, if there's ever any reckless drivers on I-95,

if you call Star FHP, they'll say, well, was the driver going over 100 miles an hour? Because if not, then we're not going to send anybody out. Honestly, goodness, that's what they'll say. You know, head out to California. There's a freeway you'll never forget. Oh, yeah. No, thank you.

I'll take you on this post. That's what my family is right now. But anyway, I think my main complaint is, or my main question is, these automakers are deliberately sending out less than subpar vehicles. They're selling them with their name on it. Why are they letting their quality control be so crummy? Are they just so desperate to put out product? I mean, that's the only thing I can think of.

It's all about the money, Tina, and you can just forget about morality when it comes to big business, especially the automa manufacturers, going back to the issue of the Takata airbags, the manufacturers are actually obligated to make a profit for their shareholders, for the stockholders. And it's a conflict of laws. A Ford could actually be sued by the stockholders if they did not sell cars to make profit.

So until the legislators do something to make it illegal and make a point of it, they will continue to do something. So I'm not trying to defend the CEO of Ford or any of the top management, but they have a fiduciary responsibility to sell cars and to make money. If they can sell a car, and that's not against the law, they are required by law to sell that car. It might be immoral. It might be unethical, but unless there's a law that says you can't sell it,

they must sell it. And our legislators, right now the Senate is looking at this, they should have looked at it a long time ago. It should be illegal to knowingly sell a car. that can be dangerous, and it is not illegal, and they have to make it so. Oh, and before I go, one more thing, because we were kind of getting into the airbag situation, three weeks ago, USA Today reported that Honda is recalling 1.6 million cars to replace Takeda airbags, so anybody out there that has a Honda, please go on safer.com and check your vent.

Thanks for the heads up, Dana, and thanks for calling. We look forward to you calling every weekend. You're so good. Have a great Saturday. so dedicated to us. Thank you. Thank you so much for your company and your information. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to go to Howard, who also is another regular caller.

Good morning, Howard. Good morning. I hope you're cool there because I'm not. It's over 100 degrees here. Heat index. It's a 92 in the studio here. I have a tremendous heat wave in New York. Wow.

Wow. I wish we're down in Florida now because it's really bad because we have a lot of places here that the air conditioning is not as efficient as in Florida. Pretty dangerous. You know, in Florida, if it's hot, you drive to a restaurant, you go in and it's air condition, and you drive to a movie. Over here, it's a different story. Not that every place is air conditioned, but it's really not the same. Okay, the reason why I'm calling is, I have. I was told that Prius now is experimenting with solar panels,

and they have a car that has solar panels, which is a thin layer of paper or some kind of material, like the paper that they use on the glass. on all cars, you know, to make them so that you don't get it hot. But this goes on the roof of the car and on the trunk, and it's supposed to be

860 watts, and it gives you extra 35 miles. Did you hear about these things? Yeah, yeah. Actually, a little history, Toyota put solar panels on, it was two models ago on Prius, and all it did was it just ran a fan that helped vent the car kept a little bit cooler,

but it wasn't more than a gimmick. But it's not a bad idea because of what happens with kids and dogs and cars. Oh, yeah, yeah. But Toyota is now developing using cutting-edge solar panel technology. Like you mentioned, Howard, it's like a film, that will actually work to charge the battery and extend the range of the car. Don't have any idea when that might come to an actual production vehicle,

but they're working on it right now. Right, but part of that original solar panel roof idea was to gain real-world experience as to how well it would work in the real world, even just powering a simple little fan, now they have data they can use to build a real one for powering the car. That's right.

In my humble opinion, Howard, it's an expensive thing for a small return. And as Rick said, they were using it earlier to experiment with the customers that were buying the car, and there was a lot of money extra and not worth what you actually got out in return.

and one day we'll have solar power that will actually do something in a car, but right now I don't think it's on the table. If you think about adding 35 miles from the range, how much gas does that really take on a car that's already getting close to 60 miles per gallon? It might save a little square of gas. Right.

But it's something, and they do use real-wheel driving to experiment. It makes people feel good to say, I have a solar panel on my car. And it looks cool. And it does look cool. And if you're of that nature, that you want people think you look cool because you're concerned about our economy.

ecology, then go ahead and buy it. That's right. Howard? Okay, thank you very much. Well, thanks for the call. Stay cool. Thanks, Howard. It was right here and from you.

Our phone number here is 877-960. And you can text us at 772-497-60. And don't forget your anonymous feedback. Take advantage of that. Your anonymous feedback.com. And we're going to go to John, who's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, John.

Hello. Hi. I have a question about what's coming up. I know it's not about any car safety issues in that, but the new vet that they've come out with that's mid-engine for 2020 and they're going to start taking orders, but yet they're offering at $60,000 because you've been in the car business, what's that going to do to all the other vets that have been so high-priced? you know, when everyone chases after this one,

you know, I know someone's Googling it up now to see it. Maybe Rick might have done that. I'm not sure. I'm just kidding. I mean, what did that? There's a mid-engineering Corvette we're talking about. Yeah, it's a brand-new one coming out. It looks like a Lamborghini, and it's a mid-rear engine,

so the engine's sitting. And the purists are unhappy about it because the purest corvette owners think it's a, they're being traders. to change the corvettes erratically to go from front engines to mid-engines. And a lot of the Corvette owners are saying, we don't want to see it, but who knows? Yeah. But one of the questions about the value, I guess it's all going to depend on how well this car does. So if it's hot, if it's hot, the value of the existing Corvettes will probably go down.

Well, mid-engine design is superior to front-engine design, I believe. All your race cars have mid-engine. And if you're a racer and you want a car that handles better, the mid-engine, would be worth it. You're paying $125,000, $150,000 for a Corvette anyway, so what's another $50,000? I have a feeling that the looks and the performance is going to make, it's going to be hot. And it brings the main part of the weight of the car to the center. Yes. Did that answer your question, John?

No, because if they continue to hold true to what's been released, offering this at the introductory price of $60,000, I mean, What does that do to the market? And you guys are in the market. I'm not. I'm just, John, the real danger is when they come up with something new, Toyota's got a new super coming out momentarily. And the car dealers are charging $20,000.

I think one car dealer is charging $100,000 over sticker. 100,000 over sticker. 20,000 over sticker is about average. This new Corvette will be charged 10,000. of thousands of dollars over sticker the sixty thousand dollars will be meaningless yeah fifty thousand dollars will be a drop in the bucket compared to how much they will mark up the MSRP so you can say is it legal yes it is supply and demand I call it price gouging it's kind of like taking advantage

of something when it first comes out if you're a sucker enough to go in and buy a car and pay fifty thousand dollars over the sticker because six months or year from then the price will precipitously drop and you will have lost a huge amount of money and depreciation. Now, if you want to gamble and think the car may become a collector's item, then go ahead and gamble. But in most cases, these cars do not become collector's items, and the extreme premium they charge over sticker price, you just stone the money away.

Okay. Well, I'm just hoping that it drops the price on the older, you know, the vets that are, you know, the newer vets, you know, like the 2013s, 14th, you know, those prices come down. initially no yeah it's going to be just the behavior of the dealers yeah but then that will settle down after a while and then it could have a negative effect on existing values any time you see a new model come out john on any vehicle especially a radical model like you're talking about with a midgetin uh you're going to see a spike in the price and it's going to stay up there for a while and as stew said it'll come back down again you'll be able to buy it but people that buy

cars for that high price. They want to be the first guy on the block with it. It's a status thing, and most of them, they can afford to pay an extra $20,000 or $50,000 and they drive it for a while and they get there, you know, look at that and they, people

share them at the stoplight and they talk about it and it was worth the $50,000 premium they paid. The average person is not, it's not a good investment, let's put that way, very bad investment. The Dodge Viper and the Dodge Challenger, the The Hellcat and the Demon were, and the new Red Eye were great examples of that.

The sticker prices on those meant nothing because the markups were five times that amount and more. Shocking. Yeah. Okay, very good. Okay, John, I hope we answered your question. Oh, yeah. And give us a call again, would you? Thank, sure.

Have a great weekend. Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-7-7-2-49-7. 16530. Don't forget, second half of our show, Mystery Shopping Report, is coming up. And it's another shocker. So stay tuned for that. That's a mystery shop from, as we continue, the Carfax, well, investigation. A whole bunch of texts. I mean, Rick is chalking on up. Steele has got, what do you get there? About a dozen? 12. Very good. Wait, 12 is a dozen. Duh. Okay. Anonymous feedback. We're plugging through these. Earl, what do you think of Ford, let me try and read this, what do you think of Ford built the focus with the power shift transmission

despite engineering's knowing and reporting the symptoms that consumers are experiencing? Detroit Free Press's Phoebe Wall-Hawood reports, there may not be a fix for these affected transmissions. Ford certainly isn't forced to fix them by NHTSA. Customers want to fix. The fix for consumers may lie in a completely new transmission, a replacement, so to speak. If GetRag, now MagnaPT, can make a transmission for these cars,

then so can other transmission manufacturers. Why is Ford not stepping up to source a replacement? Is it money? Are they hoping that the statute of limitations will run out? Like VW's Dieselgate scandal in continuing sales. Ford isn't missing their sales due to this problem. Is this problem not widely known? Why are people buying from a brand that doesn't take care of its customers?

And that's from a loyal listener, incognito. Well, we kind of addressed that earlier, but it is such an important. issue. Phoebe Roberts, by the way, she's a reporter, automotive reporter for the Detroit Free Press. Kudos to her. She's done an amazing job. It takes courage to make a report like that. Remember, newspapers thrive on advertising. Manufacturers of cars advertise in newspapers. And a reporter is really going to stand up to her editor and get permission to print these things.

Detroit Free Press is her paper, but this was copied by the USA, did they and really hit the headlines. I've actually been communicating with Phoebe Roberts and trying to talk to her about having the same courage to stand up on the Dakota airbag recall. We answered this question earlier about the Ford issue. They knew that they were selling a car with a defective transmission. They didn't do anything about it.

The question is why. They have a fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders to sell cars and make money. Oftentimes you can sell a car with a defect, and it'll never get noticed. I've seen it over the years as an auto dealer. They'll have technical bulletins to go out on cars, and they won't recall them. I've seen technical bulletins on cars that, in my opinion, should have been safety recalls,

but if they can fix it and have it quieted up and taken care of without a recall, it's much less expensive. And as I say, the corporations, the auto manufacturers, have a responsible for their stockholders. it is counterintuitively illegal not to sell a car if you can sell it if it's not against the law to sell it until our legislators say and put it in writing Ford if you sell a car that you should have had reason to believe could be unsafe you must stop selling it they have to put that in the law or Ford is obligated legally to sell the car and that's why these cars are on the road right now with the defective transmissions, not because of Ford, although certainly they have a lot of responsibility, moral and ethical, but legally they don't have any responsibility. So they're caught between a rock and a hard place. The legislators, our Senate, our Congress, our House of Representatives, and for that matter, the executive branch of the government are to blame for not stepping up and making it illegal

to sell unsafe cars. Okay, that answers the question. And if you want to read that article, Phoebe's article is in the Money Magazine, or excuse me in the USA Today in the money section. And it's a pretty interesting article. 877-960 or you can text us at 772-497-60. Next text. Okay.

This is more anonymous feedback. Hi, Earl, 18 or so years ago when I bought a Nissan, Nissan sent me a customer satisfaction survey with reference to the purchase of that Nissan. I loved the car at the time and hated the experience, which was literally a mental battle slash beating. I took from a salesmanage with the salesman chased me down the street in a golf cart as I drove away.

I came back the next day after they faxed me a signed copy of a true purchase order with the agreed upon price. And the comment section of the survey, I told them that I loved the car, but I would literally never buy another Nissan because of the experience was so offensive,

debilitating and draining. I purchased many Toyotas since then and have not received a customer satisfaction survey from Toyota. Does Toyota send the surveys out after the sale of their new vehicles? P.S., I've never purchased another Nissan since that one bad experience. I can address this. It's really up to the salesperson that abused you whether or not you're going to get a survey, because if they supply the wrong email address for you, because most surveys are emailed these days. If they monkey with the information, you're never going to see a survey.

So if the salesperson is afraid they're going to get a bad one, you might not ever get one. Let me jump in on that way. Doug, thanks for calling. Hold on for a minute. I just want to finish up this answer on this text, and we'll get to Doug in just a second who's holding on the phone. The surveys are becoming obsolete among auto manufacturers. They finally come to the realization, or I should say they finally admitted

that the surveys were being manipulated. And as Stu just said, if the salesman doesn't, if it feels like it gave you a hard time, the salesman will put down the wrong email address or just not puts you down to get a survey. So the manufacturers have finally recognized that the CSI score, they used to call it, that comes in from the surveys, are pretty meaningless. What they've gone to now is if you bought the car from this dealer, did you go back and buy another car from this dealer? They call that sales retention.

So a loyalty to the dealership and loyalty to the manufacturer is becoming a more important and accurate indicator. The surveys are manipulated. Car dealers are offering free tax and a gas for a good service. survey, they'll say, please give you the survey in blank, and they'll fill it to themselves. We've seen car dealers in our experience that have terrible practices that we've verified through mystery shopping reports, but they get good surveys. And their online reviews. And online reviews.

So the true test, the asset test of how good a business is, a car dealer or a manufacturer, if you bought a Nissan, do you buy another Nissan? If you bought it from ABC Nissan dealer, did you go buy and buy another one? If you go back, it's a good dealer. And now, we've got Doug on the line. We do. Welcome to the show, Doug. Yeah, how are you guys?

Hey, Doug. I wanted to thank Earl for having Josh call me up and help my mom. I think she's going to go try out a car today, and maybe she'll get a car that she wants. So I appreciate you having him call me. me yesterday. You're very welcome. He told me that Ollie asked me to say that he appreciated it.

I never know if that's Rudy or Ollie. He needs an electric car because he's going to college, so I don't know what to do about that. Uh-huh. Interesting. Be sure you have a kitty seat. You've got to have a kitty cat seat in the car.

Keep Ollie safe. Yeah, you guys have a great I'll let you know what happens with my mom. And thank you again for your help. Have a great day, guys. Well, thank you, Doug. It's a true test when you trust somebody with your mother. So we'll give her the red carpet treatment.

Thank you very much, Doug. Yeah, thanks for the phone call. If you get a chance, pick up the hometown news and you can read deaths from dangerous recalls are the fault of legislators. That's Earl's latest column, and that's in the hometown news. Give us call toll-free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530.

That's right. Rick's got a bunch of it. Yeah, Rick's got like about a half a dozen. Too quiet. The YouTube channel has been blowing up with a conversation here, but first one is Frank. He's asking a very great question here. If you have a vehicle with the Takata issue that cannot be repaired, and you don't want to pass the problem on, a conscientious thing,

and you cannot afford another vehicle, what should you do, somehow disable the airbag? I'll tell you, Frank, what I would suggest, and I really, really don't like to recommend hiring a lawyer, I would call the deal that sold me that car, and I would tell them I want my money back, including the sales tax, and for my waste of time and dealing with you. I think you've got a legitimate lawsuit against a car dealer that would sell you a car with a defective airbag recall that cannot be fixed. He had a duty to know. He did know because it is in the Carfax report. It is in the manufacturers report.

It is in the NHTSA, safercar.gov report. So you've got a rock-solid lawsuit. I'm not a lawyer, but I do play one on TV. I'm just kidding. I'm not a lawyer, but I recommend you sue the dealer if he does not give you 100% of your money back.

So they've got you starring in a new Perry Mason remake. Exactly. Excellent. Now, Nate brought up the question that this has absolutely blown up. He says,

quick story, he had a Jeep with a certified pre-owned warranty. It was three months, 3,000 miles with pretty much bumper to bumper. So right before it, was going to end and he had had his own mechanic inspect the vehicle at when he bought it but right before this warranty was about to expire he looked at the car himself and while the engine was cold

he took the radiator coolant overflow cap off and noticed that it was very discolored and it had a horrible smell to it in this jeep's cooling system took it back under the warranty $3,500 repair on the warranty. He paid $100 deductible. That's all he paid. But the warranty had to pay $3,500 to replace the heater core, the radiator, flush the entire system, and replace the thermostat, and I believe the water pump as well.

Basically, it was contaminated somehow, and it was a major repair. So as he brought this out, the conversation got started about the certified pre-owned warranties and inspections on them, whether it's worthwhile to have that warranty, which in his case, it seems like it made a great idea to have it, and having your own mechanic inspect it, which he said his own mechanic missed it,

but obviously he wouldn't be able to pull the cap off the cooling system with the engine being extremely hot since he had just driven it in. What causes that? What got in there? I have no clue. Well, here's the answer. Maybe somebody put the wrong coolant or wrong chemical in there. answer the certified pre-owned warranties are only as good as a dealer that you buy the car

from of the certified pre-own warranty as a an inspection sheet it could be 50 items 100 items 200 items they like to brag about how many items and unless the technician who's responsible for checking those items does his job then it's not worth the paper it's printed on so certified pre-owned warranties be sure you deal with the deal you can trust and that's not easy today, is it? This is kind of a half joke, but not a total joke, has to see the inspection sheet. And if the inspection sheet isn't kind of dirty

and isn't checked off individually, if you see an inspection sheet with all the checkboxes and a line drawn through it very quickly like that, chances are that's all the inspection. You want to see some fingerprints on that. They put the paper on the fender of the car, and they went like that, and they drew a line,

and so I checked it. And that's what happens. The manufacturers are supposed, to audit the dealers and they're supposed to check the cars for their manufacturer certified pre-on, but they don't do it. If they do it, they don't do it often enough and they don't

know thoroughly enough. This sounds silly, but I would recommend when you buy a car a certified pre-owned warranty, I take it to an independent mechanic, a used car, and I have them check it. See what happened to this guy? Because it was a basket case

and it's a good thing he had the warranty. Yep, absolutely. Mr. Darkhawk has brought up an interesting point. He says that most dealership brands in his area are owned by Joe Matchen's Automotive. They advertise that they're volume dealerships and they have the lowest price because of their sizes. Do you find that near monopolies will jack up their prices or do they lower prices based on their size? You got it. They jack them up.

If he owns almost all the car dealerships in the area, he's probably charging you more. I would definitely shop him out of that zip code area. I'd go to AutoTrader for used cars. I'd go online for new cars. True car, but use a different zip code. A couple hundred miles away. Yeah, use a different zip code and then use that to negotiate. By the way, large volume dealers don't get a break in price.

A lot of people think that a car dealer that sells 1,000 cars a month, buys his cars from the manufacturer for a dealer that sells 10 cars a month. Whether you buy 10 cars a month from the manufacturer or 1,000 cars. cars, the price you pay, the manufacturer is the same. Monopoly's definitely raise the prices. It's amazing what happens when you leave your zip code on everything. Exactly. And Donovan's asking, he says he recently bought a car, and when he got home, he was looking

at the paperwork, and let me find him the eye, he says he was charged $995 dealer fee and $399 e-registration fee. This was not any advertised online price. He says, how can he go about getting his money back on it? He bought the car three weeks ago. Donovan, I got some bad news for you. They're going to tell you that they disclose that. And if you read your paperwork in the fine print, it will be disclosed.

Probably. Now, if they were dumb enough not to do it, you could get your money back because they broke the law. But the whole purpose of the dealer fee, we call them, which we should call hidden fees. Dealer fee goes back 15, 20, 30 years ago when we first started talking about these things. They are really hidden fees. The only purpose to this so-called dealer fee is because it is hidden. And you serve a perfect example. You didn't see it until you bought the car and went home. And when you got home, you saw it and it was never disclosed to you. Disclosure in fine print is not disclosure. It's hiding. And that's what a lot of people do. They hide the reality

of your transaction in the fine print. You paid $1,200 too much for that vehicle, more than the advertised price, more than the quoted price, and that is the sin and the terrible nature of the fact that our legislators are allowing this to perpetuate. What you can do now is,

well, you can take a stab at the dealership, but it's probably not going to do anything. What you can do is tell everybody you know. If you have a Facebook page, take a picture of your buyer's order, you know, hide your personal information and point out what happened to you. and warn as many people as you can.

And the more people will know about it, the more people will be prepared to ask that question when they get to the dealership. And Donovan also, tell us the name of the dealer. We're happy to announce it on the air. Sure. On Earl Stirling cars, we name names, we name people, we tell the whole story.

And if you would post back, we will get to that. And Nancy has a point here. She's talking about something. Had Donovan had this in his hand, he may have avoided this happen. Go ahead and tell them what that is nice, sir. What I have in my hand is an affidavit of vehicle purchase, final out-the-door price. And you can download this on, or on cars, and you can fax it to the dealer,

or you can email it, whatever. Get them to sign this, the out-the-door price. You're not going to be charged anything else, anything in between, out-the-door price. Affidavit.com. Affidavit.com. And Donovan just replied here that it was Phil Smith Accura in Pompano Beach. Phil. Phil Smith.

Phil Smith. Our old buddy. Phil Smith. I used to know Phil Smith. Phil passed away, God rest of soul. But Phil Smith, Accura and Pompano Beach is charging $1,200 in hidden fees that the buyers do not know until they get home and have a chance to redefine print. Donovan, if you can, ask to speak to Ken Zube. who runs the Phil Smith dealerships now.

Yes, C-Z-U-B-A-Y. Ken Zubei. Okay, I have a text, and it's from Jennifer, and she's on the road a lot, and she's getting ready to either lease a car or purchase a car, and she's wondering with all the mouths that she puts on her vehicle

because of work, what should she do? lease it or buy it? Buy it. far less dangerous, far less complicated, far less chances of being taken advantage of. Simpler, give three bids from three different dealers, use true car, use the Costco out-of-buying program, use consumer reports, but buying is safer than leasing. There you have, Jennifer. If you have any other questions, feel free to text me.

Speaking of text, you can text us right here at 772-497-6530, or you can text you. you can give us a call at 877-960 and I think we're going back to Rick. I think I see where he has one more. We do actually, one of them was asking, for certified pre-owned inspections, how much extra does that add to the price of the car on average, do you think? $5 or $600. Ah, that's quite a chunk of change added in that. Well, let me qualify that.

The cost of the warranty, which usually comes from the manufacturer, is packed onto the cost of their car, so that will jack it up. five or six hundred dollars um typically on certified cars dealers will spend more money um spending on fixing it before they sell it so that would also raise the price over one that let's say they did less uh repair or maintenance on it before they put it up for sale another right that's another dirty little secret about certified pre-owned warranties um the manufacturer certified pre-owned warranty is something the manufacturers came up with to sell warranties and they make a lot of money selling warranties they sell them to the dealer and they take in a lot more revenue from the money the

dealer pays them for the certified pre-owned warranty than they pay out in claims and it's a warranty game uh it sounds like we're the manufacturers are trying to help you buy a safe use car it's a profit motivation for the manufacturers it's also a profit motivation for the car dealers because when the manufacturer sells the certified pre-un warranty they uh they make a profit and And then the dealer marks up that, just like the car, they mark up the certified pre-owned warranty when they sell you. So they charge you more money for the car because they have to do the inspection or they're supposed to do the inspection. And they might have to do some work on the car to bring it up to snuff. And they also have to pay for the warranty.

And all this cost is being passed along to you with a markup when you buy a certified pre-owned car. The certified warranty that comes with the car is typically just a power train warranty. And the dealer will have a wonderful compliment to that package, which is the more comprehensive, quote, unquote, bumper-to-bumper warranty, which costs a lot more. Here's a little fun fact that you can ask them to decertify the car. Just because it's certified, you can say, I don't want that warranty and ask them to take off the cost of the warranty

if you're buying that, if you want to buy the car without a warranty. And it would be cheaper. That's a great, great suggestions to it, because it would be cheaper for them to take that car to a good independent mechanic, something, not at that dealership, and have them go over that car with a fine tooth comb. You got yourself a certified car for 150 bucks. Meanwhile, they're probably charging you $600 or $1,000 more than the car if we're not certified.

So you can ask to decertify the car, how much will you reduce the price? Exactly. Plus, such items as the brakes and tires are obviously going to be in better shape for a certified car because there's minimum requirements. Great information. If you just tuned in, you're listening to Earl Stewart on Cars. A lot of information from Earl and the rest of the panel. 877960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-60.

We're just getting started. A lot of energy here in the studio. We're going to go to Bob who's calling us from Lake Worth. Good morning, Bob. Good morning. Good morning. How is everyone this morning? Good.

We're doing great. I heard something, I didn't hear the whole show, but this morning when you came on, you mentioned something about the Super. And I was wondering, have you seen what the dealers are marking them up at? I thought it was very interesting, is a place in Larry Miller, Toyota, in Colorado Springs. It wants $50,000 over MSRP. for a regular series production car. That's correct.

That's correct, Bob. They are marking them up, 50,000. We know one dealer that's marking them up 100,000. We've heard the range we've seen is they're marking it up over MSRP, this Toyota Supra, the 2020 Toyota Supra, they're marking them on anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000 over MSRP. I consider it price gouging, I consider it deplorable, unethical, immoral, whatever you want to say, but it's not illegal. MSRP is a manufacturer's suggested retail price.

Their car dealers have the legal right to mark it up as high as they want. It's just suggested. It's just suggested. Okay. Okay, I have a question. Yes. When you engage in an agreement with, you, uh, engage in an agreement with, Toyota for the franchise, are there no stipulations in that agreement on certain things that

cannot be done that could damage the brand? Is the dealer not what the dealer have launched to do anything that they want, regardless of how it reflects on the brand? Well, that's a good point. That's a good point, Bob. I think that they do have something. They use that language that if you tarnish the Toyota brand, they disallow it in your advertising.

Interestingly enough, you can say anything you want and you use car advertising, but you can't say it in your new car advertising. They use tarnish the brand to keep one Toyota dealer from tarnishing the reputation of another toilet dealer because if they didn't do that, the toilet dealers would be calling each other liars and cheats and thieves.

and if everybody was calling everybody else a liar, cheat, and a thief, then you're tarnishing the brand. But they somehow allow car dealers to mark a new super-up $100,000, and there's nothing they can do about it. The dealers probably stand on the legality, and as long as it's legal to do something, they take the position that if it's legal, you can't stop me. They might get a visit from their sales rep who might say, hey, guys, what are you doing here? it doesn't look good, but the language is so vague that marking it up probably wouldn't get them in trouble. The irony is there are rules on how they won't allow you to advertise a price below a certain amount, but there's no cap on how high you can go, which is crazy. That's very true.

Toyota has a rule in Honda and several of the manufacturers. They've all copied each other in this. They will not allow a car dealer to advertise a price below the dealer invoice. Now on the surface, that sounds pretty innocent because, hey, the dealer invoice isn't what the dealer pays for the car? No, the dealer invoice has packed in thousands of dollars a profit, and car dealers would love to sell their cars all day long at dealer invoice. So the manufacturers, in my opinion, I think it's price fixing. I think to require their dealers to advertise a price no lower than a big, fat profit to that car dealer is price fixing. I don't like it, but that is what the manufacturers are doing, several of them.

And meanwhile, you can mark a car up $100,000 over MSRP, and the manufacturers say, hey, that's okay. Well, the manufacturers say, well, you can sell the car for whatever you want. You just can't tell anybody about it. Yeah, can't advertise it. I have an experience on ties that I wanted to tell you about. I needed to replace the tires on my performance package Mustang. And I went, first I searched on the Internet.

And, you know, these are high performance summer tires, so they didn't have, they don't last very long, which is okay. I understand that. And I looked up on the Internet, and I saw them that most of the local tire shops were selling them for $300 a piece. So I just happened to go and look on Amazon. And I found them for $175. Good for you.

So I went over to Taya Kingdom, and I talked to them, and they agreed to match the price. However, and this was the manager, he started adding all these other stuff on. Yeah. And I said to him, well, wait a second, what is this charge for? It was for a TPMS. And he says, and I said, well, the car has only got 14,000 miles on it. It's the original tires. I said, why would I have to change out the sensors?

And he says, he says, we have to do it. It's required by state law. I said, oh, I says, that's very interesting. I said, okay, I'll let you know. So I went home and I, you know, I Googled it, of course. I couldn't find anything at all that you're forced to replace all your. sensors when you change out your tires, especially an original set of ties that only had 14,000 miles on them.

So I went up the Tires Plus up on North Lake on the corner there, and they said that that was not true, and that they did it without putting it on all those extra charges, and I just wanted to pass that along to people, that whenever you go into these places that you have to be extremely careful because they lie about everything. Bob, you're right. You've got to do you. You've got to go back and you've got to take your time and go back and do your due diligence because otherwise they're just trying to separate your money from your wallet.

Well, Bob, you motivated me to go back in a mystery shop, Tire Kingdom again. This is a story after my own heart, your experience with Tire Kingdom, because I had a little problem with the CEO of Tire Kingdom. I did a mystery shopping report a few years ago on Tire Kingdom, and it was a joke. They really took advantage of our shopper, and they had a bunch of lies and deceptions about buying added fees that they added to the price of the tire.

And so we did a mystery shop on it, and I did a blog on it, and accidentally re-ran the blog, like two or three years later, Well, the CEO of Tyre Kingdom called me. They apparently changed their practice on the specific items that I caught him on that time. And he said he was going to sue me if I ran that blog again. I apologize. And we went back and did another mystery shop. And he did not do what he did the time before.

But this thing with the sensors, that's a new one. We'll mystery shop and see if they're telling that lie to other customers, Bob. That's a great call. Yeah, this was not a salesperson. And this was the manager of the store. Oh, wow. And, you know, this was the original location. You know, that's an interesting story on how that business got started.

I'm sure you remember Chuck Curcio? Oh, yeah. He was a most entertaining guy on TV. Yeah, well, you know how he got started? He used to sell tires at the flea market in Riviera Beach off of Old Dixon. That's how he used to his business. He also started selling tires at the old farmer's market. market down on Congress just south the summit boulevard my father bought tires from him

i think on the second or third time that chuck brought a load of tires in there to sell him the old days he built a tremendous franchise of course he's not there anymore he's sold out but uh you just got to be extremely careful uh you know it's just it's a shame uh especially with the elderly population in florida a lot of older people They wait for the older people to come in, and right away, they see the dollar signs go up in the cash register. Exactly. And your Amazon check is a great comment, too, because Amazon's taken over the world, and I didn't even think about tires on Amazon. So I'm going to say right now, we'll verify this, but do what Bob did.

Go on Amazon before you buy a set of tires. Now, you're going to have to pay for mounting and balancing, but so what? You can have your tires, put them in the trunk, in the backseat or wherever, call around to different tire stores and say, I've got a set of new tires. What are you going to charge to put them on my car? And what are the charges? That way, you'll have the tires at the best price you can get.

You can ask them what the price of the tire is, but it'll be a lot more than Amazon, I can guarantee you. Or take your phone out as soon as you get a quote from Tire Kingdom and just keep them honest right there. Show them what you found. Bob, you're a great caller. Thank you very much. okay have a great day everyone

you too take care bye bye isn't it amazing isn't it doesn't it just feel good talking to everybody here in the studio all these great callers we have so many educated consumers and ladies and gentlemen we appreciate you so much

you're such a huge part of the show yeah we learn from them yeah exactly there are Saturdays when we do indeed learn from all of you and again I can't emphasize enough you're an important part of the show and back to the ladies I have $50 for one more new lady callers.

You're running out of time. Give me a call at 877-960. 9960. We're going to go to John. Thanks for your patience, John. Good morning to everyone. Today I have gasoline in my mind. Nobody has brought up this year that the government has approved a new grade.

It's E-15. For people that don't know what that is, that's ethanol 15%. regular gasoline has up to 10%. It's confusing people to no end, especially a Sonoco station. I told my friend he works in Vero Beach, please get me a picture of this station. He has advertised. It starts with the E85 because that's the cheapest gas that you could put into your car. And it goes all the way on up E15, the standard E10, no ethanol gas, 85, 91, 93.

and with the diesel, that's like eight different grades. Well, to the women that get confused, completely, and she pulls into a station, usually there's a button that she can press. It says, press here for help. It's in your Huawei stations. It's in your major chains. So if she has any doubt, I would have a press that and ask for help. But be very careful, because she does not want the E85 unless it's written on her car or an manual.

that is for flex fuel. It's the cheapest type. E-15, I'm sure, Earl or his mechanic would not recommend it, because it burns faster. It's ethanol up to 15%. But it's very, very confusing, and especially Sonoco stations. They're notorious for this because they like to put that cheap price on the outside marquee of the E-85. And that's limited with the amount of people that can use that in that car if it doesn't have a flex fuel capacity. So, and then I want to say, course, your gas buddy on the website, your fuel, you should be gassing up early on a Monday morning.

That's the best time to gas up. The worst is on a Friday. What happens is the fuel gets adjusted during a week, mainly on Monday afternoon, and the price changes. So they recommend very highly on a Monday morning, to gas up and to stay away from what everybody seems to do because they get paid is a Friday afternoon.

Interesting. And I wanted to say that it's very important. But this grades of gasoline, especially to the females, can be very, very confusing. So be careful and do what I say. If the female is pulling up and she's in doubt, press that, it says help here. I think the help is required in case a person is,

disabled or something. Somebody told me there's a law that they have to do that, even have a number that you can call. But I can understand the confusion. And a second thing I want to say, too, I want to ask Rick, why, when you rotate a tire, some people also say a station that you should rebalance the tire. Is that true? Is any truth in that when a tire is rotated, that technically, to be perfect, it should be rebalanced? Tires should be balanced if you have any signs of unbalanced on the wear,

which a qualified mechanic would be able to spot that, or if you feel like you've got a vibration that kind of appears and goes away for the range of about 50 to 65 miles now. But if you just, everything is fine, and then you rotate your tires, you need to rebalance them. You're going to spend extra money

to rebalance those tires, that you don't need to spend? Answer is no, John. Answer is no. Okay, all right, answers that. Then another question, with the recall cars, why doesn't some repair shops and people at a shop know what they're doing,

buy up somebody's cars, get them at auction or whatever, and do themselves, go in to the ones that have the Takata sensor in stock, the dealers, no charge, and then resell the car after it's been fixed. There's no one I'm going back to last week

You remember They made the last Volkswagen The old beetle Volkswagen Well when I lived in New York area There was a tremendous Tremendous place That did nothing but rebuild Wrecked Volkswagen

He had parts It was in Omaha Long Island But you don't hear of anything like that today Of a repair place That will fix these cars Buy them Do American good people With a used car

Get them a safe use car But buy them and then fix them up at no charge. They have to be patient. They have to go into the dealer and get these cars back on the road again legally and they can make themselves some money as a U-Car dealer. John, the reason they don't do it is because nobody cares,

nobody knows, the car dealers that are selling these dangerous cars don't tell the customer that it's a dangerous car. So if you have two cars sitting side by side, think about this, you got two Ford Fusions, one for a 2012, one Ford Fusion has a safe airbag, and the other Ford Fusion has an unsafe airbag that cannot be fixed. And you walk into the dealership, and they're identical cars. How much more would you pay for the safe car than the unsafe car? You don't even have to answer that question. You'd pay $1,000.

You'd pay whatever you felt like you had to pay for the safe car. But if you didn't know the difference, and they were both. presented to you as saved cars, you'd buy the one that had the prettier color. Cars are being sold every day by car dealers with defective taked out airbags that cannot be fixed and they don't know about it. So the price is the same. What would be my motivation if I were to go out and buy up a whole bunch of cars with defective takot airbags and fix them and advertise them and save cars? I can't make a profit doing that because the other dealers are already advertising them is safe cars. And that's the reason

I blame the legislators for allowing this to happen. The only way to stop it is make it illegal for the car dealers to sell these cars. And although the fix is, the repair is free, a dealer wants to sell his cars as quickly as possible. He's not going to tie them up waiting at another dealer

or paying a guy to drive them over and drive back. And I'm talking about cars that even don't have a fix. So it's the lack of public awareness. The market value of a car with and without, with a defective recall, or with a defective recall. Either way, the price is the same

because you don't know which one has the safe car and which one isn't the safe car. Absolutely true, but where the mortal sin that's committed is the salesman and the dealership that absolutely lied to the customer and say everything is fine. There's no safety issues.

That's the one that have to be nailed completely. And I'm so thankful that we do have these shopping reports. So I look forward to the one. today and see if another dealer is involved. It'll be a good one, John. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks a lot, John. To John's topic on gas. I just got a text message from a young lady, and she says that button that he's talking

about, that John's talking about, a man could push it to find out what he needs to know about the gas, and she also comments, P.S., women are smarter today than you think. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you very much. Speaking of women, we are going to go to Sandy, who's a first-time caller, and she's calling us from Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Sandy. Good morning.

How are you doing? We're doing great. You just won yourself $50, Sandy. Oh, wonderful. What a way to start a day. I'm telling you. So what's your topic this morning? Well, I was wondering why my car clicks when I started up.

My Kia Forte clicks when I go to start it. up, but it drives fine. Is that anything serious that I should have to worry about? Can you describe the click a little more to me? Is it just a single or multiple, or? It's like a multiple clicking. Okay, so you turn the key and you hear just a clicking sound, or does the car seem to start normal and also make a noise? Yeah, it starts normal, but you hear the clicking while you're starting it up. And then as soon as you start driving, it's gone.

That sounds like you might have something a little worn on the starter or on the ring gear. I would have a mechanic check that out to find out what's going on with that. Because that could be a sign of something getting worn or damaged. Is it okay to drive it a while? Or do you think I should go in right away? As long as it starts up relatively well, I think you're okay for a little while. But I would have a check pretty soon. Oh, okay. I didn't know. It's very unusual, isn't it? I never had that happen before.

Sandy, do you have a dealer that you can trust or a repair person that you can trust and get a, I just want to caution you. Anytime you have something that you don't know what the problem is, you take it to a repair place, you have to really be sure that you're getting an honest or an accurate diagnosis. So if someone tells you you need a lot of money, need to spend a lot of money, take it to another place, maybe even a third place. get a couple of opinions before he spent a lot of money on a diagnosis that you can't be sure of. Okay, that's a wonderful idea. Also, if you buy a part yourself, can you bring it into a mechanic and have them put it on? Would it be cheaper? If you, just an independent mechanic, is that what you're saying?

As opposed to the dealership? Sure, if you trust him, if he's a certified mechanic, he has ASC certifications, and that would be starters. and things of that nature, I would certainly say that's just fine. You usually spend less money with an independent than you do a dealer, but you've got to be sure that the independent is qualified. It's qualified. Can you also bring it to a regular dealer, or they have to use their own parts?

You can use a regular, a dealer will typically do use the manufacturer's parts, and they will have better trained people, but you also will generally pay more money. So you have to be careful. What year of vehicle do you have? It's 2012, Kia Forte. Yeah, I would take it to an independent because you're out of warranty and any sort of goodwill wouldn't be out of the question. So I would take it to a good qualified independent mechanic,

but I'd still get another opinion on top of that if you're talking about a lot of money. If they say, well, I can fix this for you for less than $100 than I wouldn't worry about it. But if they're charging you a $3, $500, I can. give a second opinion. Okay, great. Well, thanks. That's helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Sandy. Stay in touch. I have a text for Rick, and Rosalie asked if you could do a separate show of your own on sound effects of customers coming in and asking you, oh, my car's making this noise, or that noise. Only if Rick does the sounds like you just did. Let's hear a clicking sound, Rick. There you go.

Oh, that's perfect. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, a little comedy there. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us. Please text us. Your thoughts on our mystery shop, our mystery shop, from CarMax again. This is a very interesting report from Fort Lauderdale. And I think that we're going to go to Stu, who has some more text. We've got some text, but I have a question for Rick.

Honestly, if you were working on a car and it was making a noise, something that's common that you hear every once in a while. If you record it with your phone or with a video, would that translate good onto YouTube so we could put things up there and say, if you hear this, it means this. Worry about it or don't worry about it. I don't know. It might not come through on the

microphone. In a lot of cases, trying to get it onto our microphones might be a little difficult. We might be able to work with Jonathan to see if there's a way that we could put sound files up. But one of the greatest diagnostic tools that I have, when a customer

has an oddball noise if they record it with their phone I've actually been able to solve problems with an intermittent noise that it's not doing it when they bring it to me but they show me a recording and I can hear it there have been times that I've been able to figure out a problem

which is great advice because one of the hardest things that we experience I mean is if there's an intermittent problem and this just happened to me I had an issue I brought it in we can't make it happen so if it's happening once in a while and if you can catch it with your phone Yeah, send it to your right idea.

It's awesome to do that. Yeah. Okay, on your anonymous feedback, we have a really good question. It says, Dear Erland, Team, I'm trying to understand how dealerships make money on new cars is the following true. A manufacturer will sell the cars to the dealer at roughly double the cost of producing it. The dealer then must hit their monthly quota in order to receive a large amount of money for the manufacturer. Otherwise, they will not net much profit for the month on new cars. And I'll defer that to the recovering car dealer.

Yeah, manufacturers definitely don't double the cost of the car selling to the dealer. Manufacture markup can be anywhere from actually break-even or losing money on cars, meaning small vehicles, to making maybe $10,000, $12,000 on big, fat trucks and SUVs. The average markup, I'm a guess. I don't know, but from my experience over the years, the average dealer is probably making around $3,000 or $4,000 on a car. And the cars are, you know, typically $30,000, $40,000. So percentage-wise, that's not a huge markup,

but, of course, they sell a whole lot of cars. And that's the gross profit. I mean, at the end of the day. That's the manufacturer's problem. Oh, the manufacturers probably. And then we're talking about the car dealership's profit, which is a different story. And car dealers actually, when you're looking at the total picture of overhead and all expenses and the markup, their net profit on new cars is negligible today.

A lot of car dealers are actually losing money overall in the new car department. but their gross profit not factoring in salesman's commission advertising and overhead rent factors and things like that a dealer maybe a thousand or two on a car net profit about under 500 bucks about 475 bucks and yeah it's less than you think if you shop and compare prices the best way to get a fair price from a dealer exactly moving on to Facebook live feed this is from Michael who had a who had a leave but he's going to come back and watch the the recorded show on Facebook. He wants to know, can a repossessed vehicle keep me from buying? And I'll tell you, it's going to make it harder to buy a car. It doesn't mean that you won't be able to when you're going to finance a car. Even with bad credit, a big down payment could overcome that, but it definitely

makes it tougher. One of the worst things you're going to have on your credit report when you're trying to buy a car is a charge off or repossession on an over-proper. What you want is somebody you can sit down and talk to at a bank or a credit union your own bank or your own credit union uh sometimes repossessions have special circumstances that not justify but mitigate uh the damage of repossession all the lender wants to know is if i loan money to this person to buy a car is you going to pay me back and if you can convince a lender which is easier face-to-face than you know going through a car dealership application credit application convince him that yeah i think this guy's going to pay me back all the time you can get financed.

Steve on Facebook brings this up. I know this is a vague subject, but can you talk about the total cost of ownership for various car models? Reliability and maintenance costs vary greatly from one car to another. Timeframes for keeping a car for replacement very greatly.

Cost versus comfort. There are too many variables to list. Now, I think I've read the cost of ownership article is not sure where. That's a valid question. And yes, we could probably talk for hours and hours about that. We direct you to consumer reports

because they address everything like that from reliability and also to the cost of ownership. And that is something you have to consider. You might get a great deal on its face when you're buying a car, but you have to look, what are you going to spend on this thing down the road? This is the Consumer Reports annual auto issue, and it lists all the vehicles and the used and the new and the cost of maintenance, repairs, insurance, safety. The only thing you need is your consumer reports to answer that question.

That's right. finishing up our questions on Facebook from Andreas. Those affected Ford cars are not living up to the expected function and performance. Isn't there a possible action that consumers can seek under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act? Okay, repeat on that. I was paying attention. That's okay. Andreas wants to know, we're talking about the Ford cars that were not living up to the expected function. Is there a possible action that a consumer can seek under the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act?

Yes. If you bought a car from Ford, the Magnuson-Moss Warni Act says that the vehicle that you buy has to at least be good for the purpose for which it was intended. This is true on any product. The product that you buy, whether it's a toothbrush or a toaster or an automobile, if you buy a toaster, it's supposed to toast toast. If you buy a toaster and it won't toast to toast, then that's a violation. So theoretically, you could go after four. board for this, but it would be quite costly, and you'd have to hire an attorney. Class action suit is the best way. Keep your eye out for that. Exactly, and if you find a claim, you can go online, find class action lawyers and talk to them about it. We've done this, and there's some good class action folks out there. Best way to attack a don't know manufacturers that way.

I predict if you Google that, there's already a bunch in the works right now. Text message. This comes in from Anne-Marie, and she texts this every week. Good morning. I'd like to give a heads up to everybody who has bought a 2019 Subaru Outback or a legacy built between May 31st and June 6, 2019. There's a recall of 2,107 vehicles due to a welding problem. 142 legacies and 1,965 outbacks are involved.

It's believed that only 20 of the vehicles are in consumer hands because Subaru caught the problem relatively quickly. Bottom line, check safercar.gov to see if your vehicle is part of a recall and if so, contact your dealer. Thanks, Sam, Marie. that is great advice anytime. Subaru is a great car.

I was surprised when I read that. And they sure acted fast, didn't they? I only sold 20 of them before they call it. Yeah, I mean, goodos to Subaru. Ford, learn a lesson from Subaru. Ford, attention Ford. That's right. Okay, we have this text message, no name.

I have a 2004 tourist. I went from 15 miles per gallon city, now down to 11 miles per gallon city. What can it be? I'm looking at you, Rick. one of the first things that I would suspect is it may just be this summertime the incredible heat that we've been having your air conditioner's working a lot harder and ultimately the air conditioner gets all its power from the gasoline engine

check your tire pressure so I would check your tire pressures and I would look and see you know is it just because of that extreme heat we're having okay moving along quickly this is from Boris Boris says I have a 2019 Jeep Cherokee latitude plus When do you consider your car a lemon when you repeatedly bring your car in for transmission problems? I brought it in five times, but the dealer is saying three times and on the last time Jeep had given permission to replace the transmission. So far, two weeks and no problem. So there's a lemon law in Florida, which is three times, right?

Yeah. And you have to go on record. You have to send a certified letter, preferably to the car dealer, putting him on notice, that there's, is a problem that they have been unable to fix, and then they have three attempts after that, including, I believe, the manufacturer's attempt, and in which case you will be able to get a portion of your money back, depending on how much you've driven the new vehicle. That's right. This is from Robbie and Stewart, Florida. Good morning with all the talk about defective Takata airbags.

I have not heard from anyone what's being put into new 2019 Toyotas. Is the problem solved? Thank you, Robbie and Stewart. Toyota's told that they're not putting any more Takata airbags in there in the Toyota vehicles. I can't speak for other ones yet. They're not called to Takata anymore

and shame on me for forgetting the name of the company that bought out Takata. But we can announce that. A lot of times people don't know manufacturers and dealers don't know the manufacturer of the airbag in the car. So it's a really, really scary

problem. You would think they would know this type of thing. Some of the manufacturers are still using Takata airbags, which have changed their name because they went bankrupt and another company bought out Takata. Toyota is not doing that, but some manufacturers are. Okay.

Okay, we're going to get ready for the mystery shopping report shortly, so we're going to put the lines on hold, but we're going to take one more caller, and that is Okay, from West

Palm Beach. Yeah, we need a drum roll. Hi, Dave. Hi, how are you guys doing? We're doing well. You just got in under the wire. What can we do for you? Okay, great. I just wanted to give a testimonial for the RAP 4. That is a fantastic vehicle. I was in a head-on accident yesterday, and I just wanted to say that all the safety features on that vehicle worked, and I'm here today to prove it. a car crossed the road in front of me trying to make an illegal turn into the lane going in the opposite direction, and I hit it head on, and all of the airbags went off, and the automatic braking worked, and it's just a wonderful vehicle. I'm not sure if it's going to be totaled out or not. This morning I have some bruising from the seatbelt in the airbag, and my leg's a little sore. But I'll be going down today and taking some pictures in the impound lot, and then having it towed up to Earl Stewart Toyota for repairs.

And I don't know if it's going to be totaled out or if I'm going to be able to get it repaired. and it's a lease vehicle, so there's not to do with that ahead yet. I'm certainly glad you're okay, and you probably ought to get checked out anyway, go in and let a doctor look you over. I know you feel good, and you're only bruised a little bit, but better safe than sorry. Getting an MRI. Yeah, you're pretty banged up from what I read, Dave.

Yeah, the first thing I did was go to the hospital with the paramedics, and they had to cut the side airbag for me to get out of this. vehicle so that's been done and I'll be seeing an orthopedic a doctor on Monday so so that's testimony to following the routine yeah the safety of these cars is amazing and body shop when you see a car coming to a body shop these days you say how could anybody survive the cars they crumble more than they ever did before and they're meant to crumble and they'll be mashed and you say how can anyone survive and they do. We rarely see, I mean, deaths on the highway from this type of collision are way, way

down. And if you're driving a car that's four or five years old, it's obsolete in terms of safety. And having a late model car is a safety move today, as opposed to just, you know, in terms of reliability, it's a much safer car. And Dave, thank you much. Glad you're okay. And please call again. Yes, thanks, Dave. Thank you. Be well. Have a great weekend. Ladies and gentlemen, before we get to that mystery shopping report, I'd like to remind everyone of Earl's book. What a great book this is. Confessions of a recovering car dealer. And we're making it easier for you to obtain that book by going to Earle'sbook.com. That'll take your rate to Amazon, where you will pay $19.99 for that book. And guess what? 100, 100 of the process. seeds goes right to big dog ranch so there you have it it's a great read it's a great cause that's right you can learn how not to be ripped off by a car dealer and how to maintain a buyer release a car without being taken advantage of and you can save a dog

because as I say the all the proceeds from the book on Amazon just earlsbook.com easy to remember right earlsbook.com Amazon and I don't get one nickel out of that. It all goes to the doggies. 100% of the proceeds, Big Dog Branch. And ladies and gentlemen, I'll remind you that you can vote on the mystery shopping report. You can just text us

at 772-4976530 that mystery shopping report is from CarMax and Fort Lauderdale. Again, all the lines are on hold right now so we can get to that mystery shopping report. Now back to the recovering car dealer. But you can still text us,

at 772 4976530 and we might be able to get to some text we got some posts so we'll try to answer some posts and text we just can't take the audio calls because we're going to be doing the mystery shopping requirement Rick's got here mystery shop of CarMax Fort Lauderdale another Takata test Today's mystery shop is part four

Wow in depth of investigation that has brought us to several CarMax locations across Florida to learn how they handle the sale of used cars with the cut airbags. This probe began over a month ago at CarMax Boynton Beach and took us to Jensen Beach and Pompano Beach, and now we're in part four. And by the way, the inspiration of this CarMax series of shops is from Rosemary Sheehan, who was an amazing woman, a consumer advocate from California.

and she invented the lemon law. We talked about a lemon law earlier. She was the first person to think of, if I get a car and I buy a new car and they can't fix a darn thing, there should be a law against that. And she got a law passed in California, the first lemon law, Rosemary Sheehan.

And she found an organization down there. The acronym is cars. I can never remember what it stands for, but it has to do with auto safety and reliability. Rosemary Shahan attacked CarMax to the Federal Trade Commission and she sued CarMax to the Federal Trade Commission because they were saying, hey, we inspect our cars very safe completely and we certify these cars to be safe and they were selling cars with defective stuck out of airbags and other dangerous recalls.

So Rosemary, I hope you're listening, probably not because this is California and you're probably still sleeping, so good for you. At any rate, this is because of Rosemary Cheyenne that we are doing this. In every case so far, consumers for auto reliability and safety. Consumers for auto reliability and safety cars, C.A.R.S. Rosemary Cheyenne. As I was just saying, all so far, the CarMax failed the Takotic Test, and we're willing to sell our shop or use cars with dangerous airbag defects. The last two failures in Jensen Beach and Pompano Beach were particularly egregious because our shopper was informed the repairs could be made when in fact there was no remedy available.

Now that's disgusting. To know that you're selling a car with a dangerous airbag and when they buy the car they can't get it fixed and you don't know when it will be available. You might have to drive that car for a year or two that could explode in your face and there's no fix available. This is what happened with the last two Carmex used car lots that we shopped. Both of the unfixable vehicles were Ford's, 2012 Fusion, and a 2014 Mustang. It's important to note that Ford seems to be the only brand we've been able to find recently with no-fix defective to cut airbags. I mean, Ford's all over the news now with selling cars with dangerous transmissions.

for some reason they're the only ones that we're finding defective to cot airbags on so ford i don't know what's going on with you but get your act together you're going to get yourself in serious trouble i know you're shaky financially right now and ford's hurting financially this could be uh the kiss of death if you don't get on the ball and start taking terror of business uh before i continue i'd like to point out that compared to most car dealers we mystery shop carmacks actually does a better job handling the Takata situation. First of all, CarMax's website offers consumers the easiest way

to check recalls. They provide a link to the NHTSA, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. National Highway Traffic Safety Association. Them too. Yes, I'll just say necessary. On every used car listing.

This link will auto fill the VIN and begin the search. Just one click. So technically, they're doing a better job. In reality, people don't use this stuff. People don't read the fine print. They don't go online. They don't do the things they should do. It definitely makes it easier for us when we're mystery shopping. It makes it easier for us, but it's just not right. It should be illegal to sell these cars. Secondly, two of the three locations we shop this past month disclosed recalls verbally to our shopper. Now, this is what you should do because we just said, you don't

read the fine print you don't go online check it you need an in-your-face verbal and what's the sense in having the car on the lot for sale if you say yes this car has a defective to cut airbag and it can't be fixed they're not going to sell that car but didn't didn't both of those even though they verbally told the shopper didn't they both say yeah all you got to do is take it over to ford and they'll fix it yes even though it could not be fixed yes we still failed them They're on the Do Not Recommend list, but there's some mitigating information. Yeah, right. Anyway, here we are our fourth Caramax to Cadet Shop.

We went to CarMax in Fort Lauderdale, also known as Davey. On the Google search, it shows it both ways, down south. They seem to be interchangeable, Davy and Fort Lauderdale CarMax. Using CarMax's handy recall checker, we quickly found another 2012 Ford Fusion with a no-fix tecotta airbag recall can't fix it the inflators are not available again I urge caution to anyone considering buying a use for it these seem to make up the bulk of unfixable takata defects is if Ford didn't have enough problems here's another one we called up veteran mystery shopper agent funder and here's a report speaking in the

first person is if I were agent thunder after verifying the that the 2000, 2,202, Ford Fusion. You like reading my dyslexia, don't you? Yeah, 21-2, Ford Fusion, was where it was supposed to be. I headed down to Fort Lauderdale to take on my latest mission. I arrived at CarMax around noon, walked inside, immediately greeted by Rob. Rob asked me how he could help. I told him about the 2012 Ford Fusion I had seen online.

Ford replied, Rob replied, by saying, perfect. Let's have a seat, check to see if it's still available. I told him I'd called ahead, but Rob said it was better to be safe than sorry. I followed him into a desk, watched as he checked his computer. Rob exclaimed that it was here. Asked if I wanted to go outside and take it for a test drive. I agreed, and we went outside. Rob asked me to wait while he got the car.

In a few minutes, Rob pulled up near the entrance. Park walked around the car with me describing the features and benefits. When he was done, he explained that he had to drive the car off the lot. That was a liability thing with CarMax, but we would switch, and I'd get to drive the car when we hit the highway. On the ride, Rob continued to talk about the car, and it told me a little bit about himself. He mentioned that he was in CarMax's Presidents' Club, in honor belonging only to their top employees. Let me guess. Their top employees sell the most cars.

They're not the most honest. They're not the nicest. They're not the brightest, but they sell the most cars. car dealers and car manufacturers have an interesting way of deifying those for the highest honors. I would say at CarMax, for some reason, I just like them better. I have a feeling they're probably better, more honest than that. It's probably because they're commercials because I'm a sucker for good marketing. Exactly.

They all look like such clean-cut young people. And they're smiling and they're dressed, you know, funky? Yeah. Is that the word funky? No. No. Okay. Back of the desk, Rob asked me some questions and entered things into his computer.

He told me that he would begin by going over a vehicle history report. That's good. Vehicle history reports are important. And he was talking about an auto check, which is a cousin to Carfax. It's less expensive. It's just about as thorough. Auto check report and went down line by line explaining what was on it. He paused to point out a prior accident and explained that a door had been damaged and repaired.

You know, it used to be, that's all they did. Carfax reports were just all about accidents. And it would be flood damage and things like this, history, title history. They've expanded to go into mechanical repairs, and mostly importantly, is the recall history. So a Carfax report is really invaluable. They're not 100% accurate, but they're very important. And you have to look at it yourself. Don't let the car salesman read it to you because we've learned from Mystery Shurray.

shopping reports. When they read it to you, they tend to overlook certain things like dangerous airbag recalls that cannot be fixed. And most dealers post them on every used car listing. So it's pretty easy to find and you could check it out before you even get there. Had we, if we were a real buyer instead of mystery shopper, had we looked online, we would have seen what we did see, that this car for sale by CarMax had a defective airbag that can't be fixed. So you've got to ask yourself, Why was it even for sale? And why, I know I'm a broken record.

Well, that's her whole point. Forgive me. That's her point. Broken record. Why does the law allow CarMax to advertise a car for sale with a dangerous airbag that could kill you that cannot be fixed? How can that be legal? This is a rhetorical question, folks, because we know why. Yeah.

Right. Legislators won't do anything because the car dealer money. I'm emotionally overwhelmed. I'm sorry. I apologize. Rob then paused and pointed out that Takata Air. airbag recall. Okay. He's reading from the auto chick, he almost like the CarMax, Carfax, and he read it and he said, there's a Takata Airbag recall. That sounds pretty good. He admitted,

he talked about the Takata Airbag. We found other car dealers won't even talk about the recall, the Dakota Airbag recall, and they'll overlook it. He said, maybe an elbow goes over that spot on the report. Yeah. But here he said, okay, there's a Takata Airbag recall. So, so far, so good. So good. He said that although the recall had not been fixed, I could get the repairs done after I purchased the car. He said that I could contact Ford and I would be referred to a Ford dealer who would perform the repair free of charge. And that's a lie. It's a lie. I told him it would be a little inconvenient for me, but Rob said the repairs usually only take a few hours. But if it took longer, there was a good chance

to dealership would provide a loaner. Sounds pretty good. Sounds pretty good. But the car fax, or an auto check report that he has right in front of him, says that there is not a fix available. And he has, Rob has this in his hand, and he's reading it,

and he's telling our mystery shopper that he can get it fixed. And he gets paid a commission on the car. Now, yes, we're blaming Rob, and yes, we're blaming. gaming car max but who we really blame and blame are the our legislator who do not make this illegal the state legislators and the federal legislators that allow this to happen it's an abomination it's terrible he went over my buyer's order as usual the the price matched what i saw online except

he said okay we've got a three hundred ninety nine dollar car max processing fee and a twenty-seven dollar optional electronic filing fee so we're looking at over four hundred dollars and hidden fees which are not hidden in this is because he did verbally disclose it and it wasn't writing so this is one of the few times where the fees are actually verbally what can i say but there's still a disguise there right because there's the implication of a propriety it's a car max processing fee but it's a profit to car and the $27 optional electronic filing fee, which is not optional, is also profit to Carmex. I shifted to my exit strategy as if I were Agent Thunder.

I was late to meet my brother for lunch. I'd return a few hours. Rob remained nonplussed. I happily folded my documents neatly, put them in a folder for me to take. For the third time in a row, CarMax told our shopper it was possible to repair an unreparable. to cut airbag. Folks, I don't know what to say. I just, I'm not going to go off on another rant.

It's just so disturbing to me that this goes on. I guess because I repeat it all the time, it affects me more. Nancy? I just want to see if I understand this correctly. So we have Agent Thunder who's going to purchase this car with a recall. And I'm not sure. Did Rob say that the San Diego? salesman that he guaranteed that Agent Thunder would get home safely.

Did I, was that in, was that in the report? By telling me, by the way, he couldn't possibly get home safely because he had to go right to the Ford dealer and the drive from there to the Ford dealer. His test drive wasn't even safe. In fact, Agent Thunder was exposed as well. So anyway, we're, horrendous. What are we going to do? Do we want to vote first and we can go over some tech?

that we have coming in because they'll be on a different subject. Why don't we vote first on the mystery shopping report? Okay? Who wants to go first? We just have a couple coming in online. We have Linda, who is older reliable, a big fat F, and also Boris, who had sent in a question earlier, also gives them an F, and those are the only two online we have so far. But, I mean, remember that CarMax is the biggest seller of used cars in the world.

They're the biggest seller of use cars in Florida. And they do a lot of things right. This is terribly wrong. It's amplified by the fact that they have such an impact because they sell so many cars. I think it's more egregious. If it was a small little lot somewhere, you know, they sell 12 cars a month. But these guys sell thousands and thousands of them. So big F from me.

It's an amazing business. I give them an F. And I want to remind everyone that you can read, or we'll call them, deaths from dangerous recalls, are the fault of the legislators. And it's an interesting, it's interesting column, F for Carmix. Rick, what are you saying? I'm going to give them that D minus because we all know that you've got to do your homework, but we can't fail everybody.

However, from online, Nate, Frank, and Ernesto, F, F, and F. You know, I'm going to make a watershed moment change here. I'm going to fail them. And I think we have to take a stand somewhere. I think where we have to draw the line is deliberately misleading and lying to a customer. I got to believe the salesperson was either mentally ill or he was lying or maybe both. he had the car auto check report in his hand

he read it he looked the customer in the eye and said you can get this airbag we call fixed at the four dealer at no charge please buy my car and please drive it off the lot and if you did that you'd be driving that car for maybe months weeks years

you don't know how long before you can get it fixed and the airbag can kill you how can we possibly we could blame it on the salesman and say it wasn't car CarMax's report, but then it's not CarMax's responsibility. This is three out of four CarMax salespeople. They have detailed information on the NHTSA site.

It's right there on their website. So even, because a lot of times here, I'll defend, I'll play devil's advocate for a second. The vehicle history reports don't have as much information on the recall that might just say there is a recall, but on their own website, and once you know there's a recall, the NHTSA site specifically says that it can't be. fixed that owners will be notified in the future. So they have all the information

on their disposal. And let's take the blame up the line a little bit. We're blaming the salesman here. How about the manager of that car next door? Somebody check that car in. They bought the car or they at auction, or they bought it from a customer, or they traded it in. They had to bring that car into

their inventory. When they brought the car in the inventory, you know they looked at the auto check Carfax report, and you know, or at least they should have, check with NISA, safercar.gov, they should have looked to the manufacturer's website. They had to know at the managerial level of CarMax, this car had an airbag recall that could not be fixed.

The car should have gone to their storage lot or they shouldn't have bought it in the first place. Pass. Why did they buy the car if they knew it couldn't be fixed? Seven-year-old car, too. I think it goes right up the line. And this is all in their database. So let's say the manager knew, but how about his supervisor, it's in the computer.

So everybody could have known about that. How high did it go to the CEO of Carmex? How high did this go? I don't know. By the way, that is William D. Nash, the CEO of Carmack. So somebody who knows him, let him know you heard this report. How do you spell a last name? Nash, N-A-S-H, William D. Nash.

You asked about the CEO? Yeah. He's vacationing on the islands, or in the islands, I should say. William D. Nash. William D. Nash. We've got some more grades that came in. Ali, the cat, gives him an F. And his friend Doug gives him an F too.

That's right. And also, by the way, that was Brad had given F. That was not Boris. Boris didn't vote. That was Brad gave him an F. Unanimous. Zero grade point average. There it is.

Again, before we get to, we're going to go to some text. now and we've been changing the subject from this terrible abomination and sin completed by carmacks and carmacks you're going on our do not buy list uh it's got to be a little bit embarrassing to you you're the biggest retailer of use cars in the world and we're putting you on the do not buy list you should lead by example and rosemary shahan i'm going to talk to rosemary shayhan about this and she's got your number had a long time ago when she suit you through the federal trade commission so uh i ask some of our legislators out there there, some state senators, some state representatives, or federal representatives.

Somebody out there in government, lawmakers, I'm asking some of our lawmakers, or how about some of our lawyers, somebody called the show and address this issue about why the lawmakers are sitting on their hands. And with that said, we'll change subjects and go to our next. Yeah, we'll do it. Real quick, Frank, text that he says the real problem is that Earl correctly states it's the state legislators fall F to both parties. Let's see, let's find these most recent ones.

These actually came in on YouTube after we finished the show last week. First one says, nice video, thanks. My question is, is the true car, are USAA priced the best, or is there still room to negotiate? You should negotiate any price, even at Costco. Costco is probably the best price you can get, but I was still negotiated. You never know when some shenanigans are going to occur. between Costco and the dealer and I don't mean Costco's involved

but the dealerships and sometimes fake a Costco price so auto check, I'll auto check out of my mind what I'm going to try and say here is consumer reports a true car or Costco always negotiate. Okay and by the way I incorrectly

said Boris gave him an F it was actually Brad but Boris has come back and texted in he's giving him an F too so there you go. Here's a question. I have a I'm hoping you can help with. I want to know how does tax get calculated on a new car? Let's say I have an offer at $26,000 for a car and I have a $7,000 down payment. Do I get charged tax at $26,000 or after the $7,000 down, after it's deducted making the loan $19,000? The answer is you get charged on the full purchase amount. The loan, the down payment is just,

you're just reducing the amount that the bank is going to finance for you, but you still have to pay the full percentage on the purchase. Rick had something I want to say. Not on that one. Okay. Nope. I know nothing about taxes. Okay.

So I ought to pay them. Your hand was twitching. Oh, sorry. Okay. So this is kind of a long one, but we do have about six minutes. So I'll read quickly and clearly. I'm having a hard time seeing the rationale as to why a small dealership would be deserving of a harsh review.

The Honda had tires of varying brands, but I see no mention of the salesman guaranteeing that the tires would all be the same brand. only that the tires are new, so the buyer of the car would be out of a car for a while as the car is repaired for free at the dealership, all at the same time when many of these dealerships provide free courtesy vehicles. That was something else that has failed to be mentioned in the video. I like the following video to detail how much it costs the customer to have a recall performed. Also not mentioned in the video is that when someone buys a car as a recall, the manufacturer of that vehicle will send the customer a recall notice so that

the customer isn't left in the dark about the recall. So on the buyer's guide that is taped to the glass, it clearly states that the customer should ask the dealer about having the vehicle inspected either on or off the lot. When the mechanic, if he's halfway decent, should find out about the recall and inform the customer when the mechanic performs his pre-purchase. I'm going to trail off here,

because I think we have enough to address, without making accusations, this kind of sounds like it might be coming from a car dealer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I would almost guarantee it was a car dealer. And car dealers and the car dealer associations think that anything they put in print, even microscopic print or audio disclosures that are read so fast you can't understand them or flash on a TV screen. Like me reading that text. Exactly.

So if they, again, it goes to legality. Disclosure should be something that could be comprehended by the buyer. and comprehension at very least is verbal, but even verbal is questionable. When you disclose something, particularly when you have massive amounts of disclosure, if you buy a car, if you bought recently, if you looked at your contract, you know you didn't read the contract. An installment sales contract, it'd take you two weeks to read it. People don't read their contracts.

I don't read it. I'm an educated consumer, and everybody in this room, Rudy's an educated consumer. We don't read contracts, folks. you have to ethically, morally, disclose slowly, carefully, and the dealers don't want to do that. That's a dealer. And the other point that he made was he said it's really simple that the manufacturers were going to let people know

with the recalls. The reality of it is very few people ever get that notice. Very few people actually know that their cars getting recalled because if they would, they'd be repairing them more. Exactly. We have three minutes. The only other text I have is almost as long as that one, so I think Rick might have something,

and then we could probably wrap up. I've got one to Mr. Darkhawk just asked, have you ever mystery shopped your own dealership and found something that disturbed you, and what actions did you take to correct it? Every week. Well, Stu Grimmist, he's my general manager, and we do shop ourselves regularly,

and we have some reports that not only make me mad, scare me, and it's called human nature. We have about 30 salespeople, and I'd like to think that every one, One of them was a rocket scientist and totally smooth and abiding by everything that we want them to do. But humans are humans. Mystery Shopping Report is a great tool for people to use internally, and we use it externally, as you know, on this show. So human nature is human nature.

People are not perfect. And when people know, maybe this sounds draconian or 1984-ish, but people, if they're watched, are a little bit nicer than if they're not watched. When you see that Florida Highway Patrol parked along on I-95, what do you do? Everybody slow down a little bit. So our salespeople slow down a little bit because they know I'm the trooper and I'm parked by I 95 and I'm watching. Yeah, we do it about three times, on average, about three times a week. And we got one minute ago. We got to wrap it up, boys.

And I can say for the technicians in the shop, we're humans, we make mistakes, but we try to correct them too. You said well, Rick. And the question, want to know what we've done in response. well, we've actually had to let people go as a result of mystery shopping report. Very true. Thanks too. Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for tuning in to Earl Stewart on Cars this Saturday morning, and I hope we made a difference

in your morning. Stay tuned next week at the same time, and have a wonderful weekend. Welcome! Oh! No. No. No. Oh.

Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Go.

Don. Dr. And Doctor I'm gonnae.