Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.21.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Prime Autos West Palm Beach

Episode Date: July 21, 2018

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits Prime Autos, a Buy Here Pay Here used car dealer to purchase a car with a recalled Takata Airbag. Earl Stewart is one of the most successful car dealers in the nation. This podcast gives you the benefit of his 40+ years as a car dealer and helps you turn the terror of buying, leasing, or servicing a car into a triumphant experience. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.streamearloncars.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. We are now on Facebook Live every Saturday between 8am and 10am. Go to facebook.com/earloncars to also watch it live or to watch a replay in case you missed it. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. Watch Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars. “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”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Well, good morning, everybody. This is Earl Stewart. This is Earl Stewart on Cars. And I'm not in the studio by myself. I've got a team, an automotive team.

We are not a musical show. I can promise you that. I can't sing at all. But this is the true oldies station, the true oldies channel. And we're a real live radio talk show. We're unique. Every show you've ever listened to will tell you they're unique. Nothing else like it.

But I think we really are unique because I know of no other radio show or TV show, for that matter, that does what we do. We expose car dealers who treat you badly. We are an advice show, consultation, we answer questions. We try to educate, even entertain, how not to get ripped off by your car dealer. We've been doing this show for a number of years, not this particular show, because we're up to two hours now, but we've been doing a show just like this for 10 years, and it's been received rather well. We've been telling the truth about car dealers for 10 years, Never been sued.

I'm just knocking on the wood. I mean, to be honest with you, I'd like to be sued because I'd love to stand up in front of a real live jury and tell the truth about what goes on when people go into buy cars, have their car service, maintain, repaired, leasing, buying. It's really a difficult experience. And I always quote the Gallup poll

on honesty and ethics and professions to legitimize what we do here. We have a lot of folks in the auto industry the manufacturers to the car dealers associations. Certainly all of the car dealers, there's tens of thousands of car dealers in the United States. So we're pretty much vilified by the industry. And so I cite this authority,

the Gallup poll on honesty and ethics and professions. You can Google it. I encourage you to just Google Gallup, GALUP, honesty and ethics and professions. And back in 1975, when they started the poll, they've done it every year since, car dealers have ranked at the bottom. I mean, sometimes dead last, usually either dead last or next to last. I believe in 2017 last year, the car dealers were next to last.

Now, I started to say we were next to last because in full transparency and disclosure, I have to tell you, I am a car dealer. I call myself a recovering car dealer, but I also am actually still in the business. And when I say that, I also have to tell you, this is not an infomercial. I promise not to sell you a car, even though I operate a car dealership. I look at it this way. Yeah, I could be biased. This could be a way for me to sell more cars.

But I'm not going to mention my car dealership or my product. I'm going to talk to you about your car, whatever it may be, Honda Swords, General Motors, Chryslers, you name it, and where you buy your car and try to help you make your next experience, buying leasing, maintaining, and repairing your car are more pleasant. We're live radio talk, and that's what's so exciting, is that, I mean, I really enjoy this. I do it every week, get up on Saturday mornings, and I really can hardly get to the studio because it's fun.

I never know when that phone rings at 877-960-99-60 and excuse us if we give that number out a lot, 877-960-99-60 because we love to hear from you. We love to hear your questions, especially, but also your criticisms. Sometimes we get some pretty harsh criticism, And we can take it, trust me. I mean, test me. If you think I'll get, what's the word, irritated, no.

I really enjoy disagreement, partly because it's showmanship, you know. If you ever watch these talk shows where it's a love fest, the host has nobody called with people that love him or her, and you just talk about how much you don't like somebody or you don't like this policy or that policy, and everybody agrees with you. That's dull. We want to have some fun. We want to have differences of opinion. And I have to tell you, I know that I'm not always right.

I like to think I'm right more often than I'm wrong. But when I'm wrong, I want to hear about it. Now, I said at the beginning, Earl Stewart on Cars is not really all about Earl Stewart. It's about the team in here. And I've got a man named Rick Kearney sitting to my immediate right. Rick is a certified diagnostic master technician. I mean, I'm just telling you, the guy knows more about automobile, technologically speaking, than anybody I know.

They used to call Rick a mechanic, and then they start calling him a technician, and now we call him an auto-computer scientist. He really truly knows his stuff. And Rick will tell you faster than I'll tell you that about every week, he's got to re-educate himself because the automotive technology is moving so fast, Do you remember back in the day when you could open the hood of your car and look underneath it and really pretty much identify, you could say there's a carburetor, there's a coil, you know, there's the alternator, there's the, you know, all the little parts for the car, and then you could even tinker with them and fix things and replace things.

Can't do that anymore. You look under the hood of the car, it's like a monolith, or maybe multiple monoliths, and they're computer modules. And forget about it. You're not going to work on your own car. So Rick is here to answer any questions you have about problems, not just with having your car repaired at an independent garage or car dealership, but questions you have. You know, why does my car do this?

Why does it make this noise? Or what do you think about this new technology? So we got Rick. And then to Rick's right is Nancy Stewart. She's my co-host. Nancy does pretty much what I do in terms of the overall picture. But she's a very strong female advocate. Hashtag, Me Too, the women's movement is running on supercharger.

And it needs to be to catch up because women really, truly have been discriminated against for a long time. And my mother couldn't vote when she was a kid. I mean, even before, after she was a kid, women only gained the right to vote a short time ago. So that's what Nancy Stewart does. Tina's calling for Benita Springs. Be right with you, Tina. Hang on just for a second here while I introduced my son. Stu Stewart.

Stu is our cyber guy. Again, the 21st century, it's just amazing what's happening in 2018. You can't identify technology by centuries anymore. You can't even identify technology by decades. It's by the month. you know this is july june was a whole lot more old-fashioned than july so stew's here came to up-to-date in cyberspace with twitter and snapchat and instagram and facebook and google everything you can think of and i know i left out a bunch of them but it's all about social

media now so you can stream us live right down as we speak uh you can go to earl stuart on you can go to facebook.com forward slash earl stew on cars And you can also go to Facebook.com for slash Earl Stew, E-A-R-L-S-T-E-W. So we're streaming all this stuff. You can watch us, if you care to, listen to us on the radio. And that's what we are. We're a fountain of automotive information. Now, I think we need to start talking to a caller.

We do. Ladies and gentlemen, I'll give you the text number 772-497-6530, and a number you can call us. 877-960-99-60. Give us a call. You are an important part of the show. We look forward to hearing from you every Saturday morning. We're going to be right here from, well, 10 o'clock, and we have that mystery shopping report coming up. You don't want to miss it. And our audience is free to vote on our mystery shopping report, and it will be very informative, as it always is. Tina, who is calling from Benita Springs. Good morning, Tina. Hi, everybody. How are you doing? Doing great.

I sent you text messages earlier about some auto recalls, and one of them is not really a recall, but it's just a concern because the Kia vehicles, there's been more fires that have happened with the Kia, and it hasn't really been listed as a recall yet. I don't know the year or the names of the vehicles. vehicle models that are that's affected, but it's something that really is a concern. And the other one was Ford. Ford's having problems with their parks here. Some of the Fords, if you put it in the park, they'll actually roll back.

Now, we live in Flatlands, so we don't have to worry about too much. But for people that don't live in flat ground or park on the angle, they might have a problem if they try to put their Ford in a park. So that's something to think about. The reason why I'm mentioning this is because I know that this show is beautiful because it's so organic. It just moves along naturally depending upon what people's concerns are. But I think it would be really good to have a segment on the show that goes to some of these major auto recalls because people don't always find out about them.

Like you said, the second owner never finds out about the recalls half the time unless they open newspapers. That's a very good point, Tina. And our mystery shopping report today has to do with your concern in spades. In other words, most serious concern are the older vehicles. Most of the older vehicles are sold by what we call these buy-here, pay-heer lots. And these are the most dangerous cars, certainly when it comes to the Takata airbag we call. And you'll be very interested when you hear this mystery shopping report about the non-sharming. that sellers of older cars have to do with recalls.

It's a huge problem. It's a huge problem with current model cars, but the older the car gets, the memories fade, the awareness fades, the concern fades, and the danger increases. So it's the perfect storm of an injury or death from a dangerous car that's been recalled. The older cars are by far the most dangerous. far the most dangerous yeah i and the article i was reading that i linked to you about the cia i do

believe at the end of the article then there was someone that was saying if you drive the kia bring a fire extinguisher with you i mean actually said that in the article i'm really shocked by that well we should do something it's it's difficult i to my knowledge uh the most informative side and current site is the National Highway Traffic Safety Association, NHTSA. And we try to put that website URL out every week. It's Safer Car, S-A-F-E-R-C-A-R-G-G-O-V. And everyone should check that. I mean, whether you are buying a car, new or used,

whether you're thinking about trading your car in, Whether you have, you might have a car that you bought and never thought to check it at the time. You could have bought a car three or four years ago. Everything is fine. But if you haven't checked safercar.gov, www.saferr-C-A-R-G-O-V, you need to do it. You owe it to yourself and to your family and to your friends. You might have a friend driving a Kia and as Kia has been recalled, and you mentioned it to your friend. He says, oh, I didn't check.

and that's a good way to save a friend's life, if you are aware of this. It's, you know, talking about the best thing we could do, Tina, and that's the really reason I appreciate your call to bring it to our attention. We have so many other things to think about and talk about on this show, but there's nothing more important than safety, and that's what these safety recalls are all about. Yeah, exactly. And another good website is carcomplaints.com, too.

Absolutely. Our complaints gets into the NCHSA. But they have even more updated information because you get real-time information from actual auto owners. Yes. Yes. When you ask about a car, when you buy a car, our mystery shopping reports are shown over and over.

You're not going to get the truth. It could be a mistake. It could be premeditated. We don't know. important thing is you just can't say, is this car safe? Is this car been involved in accident or has this car been recalled? You can ask the question, but the answer doesn't mean anything. And the Carfax report or the auto check report, that can help you, but sometimes they're not accurate too. Nancy, you have a point? Yes, to your statement you just made, I got a text and it was from

Brianna, and she wants to know how often does Carfax miss the safety recalls? 30% is what we estimate, and we're not accurate, but we do hundreds of these mystery shopping reports. And over the years, we found that Carfax is accurate about 70% of the time. That's not very good when you're talking about life and death. Auto check is about the same. The most accurate side is NTSA, NHTSA, and again that website, I can't give it out too often, safercar.gov. Your car dealership of the make car you drive is pretty accurate, probably more accurate than Carfax. And you should ask the service people, it's your car dealership, to run the VIN, the car you're driving.

They should have it on file if you're their customer and run the VIN, vehicle identification, number and Chevrolet, General Motors can tell you, Honda can tell you, if that's your brand car. You've really got a triple check. We advise people to do the triple check, Carfax, auto check or auto check with the dealership and with safercar.gov. And if you do all three, you're 99.9% sure to find out if you have a recall problem. It's been my experience that Auto Check is not as good as Carfax. I did a Carfax and Auto Check on my old car and Carfax had more information than Auto Check

Ever did. Auto Check was just more general, so that may be something to be aware of. Good point. Well, Tina, thanks very much. We can't talk about this too much, and anybody out there this has an experience, I'd be interested in any call at any time

from anybody about somebody that doesn't know. I mean, we'll walk you right through the process of checking it out. on safercar.gov, but if you don't know if your car, everybody out there listening, probably, 99% of you are driving a car. Do you know if the car you're driving right now has been recalled? If you don't know, there's a real good chance it has been.

What's the stat on that, Stu? 25% of the cars have never had a recall. I think 75%... Oh, the vast majority can get them, yeah. Yeah. Most often, sometimes they're not as dangerous than others, but most all cars have had some recall at some time. And if you don't know whether your car has been recalled, you better check.

And I likely keep stressing check multiple sources. I mean, like Tina mentioned, she said auto check and her experience wasn't that good. We've seen it go both ways. We've seen it where we don't see it on NHTSA. And it was on the manufacturer's website. So the best thing that goes to manufacturers is I think as soon as that dealership does the repair and they close the invoice out, that gets recorded with the manufacturer before anything else. and then from there it goes to the other sources.

Exactly. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, ladies, go ahead. I was going to say another thing that you can do that's going to really give you up-to-date and information, take your year and model number, will your year and make and model of your car, put it in Google search engine and click on new.

And you'll find real-time stuff maybe even quicker than the other sources. Great suggestion, Tina. Yeah, thank you, Tina. Google is an important part of it. our lives. My problem is, I can't remember to ask Google often, but the questions you ask your friends and you wonder about and you scratch your head about, Google's got the answer. All you've got to do is Google it, and that's a great suggestion. Great source for that. Also, on NHTSA, it's called NHTSA Recall Spotlight, and it lists every

manufacturer of car in which years of their models are affected by any recall. Fantastic. Spotlight. NHTSA Spotlight. Recall Spotlight. Recall Spotlight. Thanks, too. Thank you very much for the goal. Tina, you're our best caller. Yeah, Tina, thank you. You're our most informed caller. And we really appreciate that. Give us a call again. That number is 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772-497-60.

And, Brianna, I hope that we answered your question. If you missed it, it was 30% of the time that Carfax misses that safety recall. But as Earl and Stu discussed with Gina, there's a lot of options for you to get the information that you need about recalls. So, 877960, and the text number is 772-49-30. Remember ladies, $50 for the first two lady callers. We're waiting to hear from you. We're going to go to our next caller, and that is Pat. I believe that's holding from West Palm Beach.

I thought it was John from Palm City. John's holding also. Pat had to go, I think. Oh, okay. Well, we're going to go to John. Pat, if you're listening, give us a call back. Good morning, John. Good morning.

I want to discuss this terrible tragedy in the lake in Branson, Missouri. That involved an amphibious vehicle. That's a vehicle that goes on land and on water. It was terrible. In my opinion, it was so highly unsafe. It wasn't funny. It was a converted military vehicle, and one will never be built. A passenger car, that's amphibious, will never be built in the United States

because basically they'll never meet the specs of the DOT and the Coast Guard specs. However, there was one, only one, the world's only amphibious passenger car was made from 60 to 68. It was made in Germany. It had a M.G engine in it. And they sold about 30, I'm trying to think, what the year, 3,500 of them. It cost $3,400, weighed only 2,300 pounds. It, one speed of 65 miles per hour, seven moths on the water, and it was way underpowered.

It was very tight quarters. And actually, it was basically, as a passenger car, It was basically dangerous, and that's why nobody else ever made an attempt of it. So it's a terrible tragedy, but I don't think that this vehicle should have been operating the way it was and hauling passengers around tourists. So that's just my opinion, but we will never see one built in the United States, and for many reasons. And it's a terrible tragedy. 17 people have died.

They're going to haul it out on Monday and examine them further. You just figure out the engineering of it with wheels on the bottom. It's bottom heavy and it's not balanced right. So many mistakes were made. The captain of it never

even gave orders for people to put their life vests on and it's a terrible tragedy. John, there's a whole lot of those amphibious vehicles all over the country now. And they call them diva ducks, Nancy and I have written in them, and they got one in Palm Beach County. They're a tourist thing, and apparently somebody bought up a whole bunch of these, their, I guess, World War II amphibious vehicles, they convert them. And you raise a very interesting point. I think this is going to be all over the news now that this tragedy occurred because it is a motor vehicle, and it doesn't meet any safety requirements. And the fact that it runs in the water is adds to the water. It adds to the motor vehicle. they concerned. My guess is

they'll probably pull all these vehicles off wherever they are. I know they're in all the major cities including even the West Palm Beach, which is not the major city. They're in Miami. Boston and Samaran. All over. But to your statement, John, there were two

amphibious boats out there. One made it in. That storm came out of nowhere. And, you know, everybody just piles on these things, and as I said, there's just no rules, no regulations for these things, and hopefully, God bless the people that lost their lives, but hopefully there's going to be some law and order restored with these tour boats. Thanks for the call, John. Great call, as always.

Thank you, guys. Have a good day. Thank you. We'll look forward to hearing from you again. Rick has a point before we take Steve. Just a little side note. President Lyndon Johnson actually had one of the those amphic cars that John mentioned, and he used to play a prank with people. He would get them in the car, drive towards a lake, start screaming the brakes were out, and drive the thing right into the lake. That was in a movie about one.

I saw that. But that true story about Lyndon Johnson there. Ha-ha. Pretty good prank, actually. For home. Okay. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497. six five three zero ladies I do have a hundred dollars right here on the desk

fifty dollars for each one of you if you give a call in the first two lady callers we're going to go to first two new lady callers that's what you're here for honey to correct me and I mean that in the most fondest way thank you first two new lady callers Steve has been holding he's calling from to go out Westa. Good morning, Steve. Hello. Hello. Hi.

Good morning. Hi. Yes. What, $100. Is this Steve into question? Yes. This is his, yes, about the airbags. This is his wife.

Hi. Good morning. Good morning. What's your name? My name is Penny. Hi, Penny. What can we do for you? Let's just have one person to talk to Penny.

pardon me and I put my husband on oh certainly okay hold on I'm in okay hello good morning how can we help you

am I talking on the radio now yes you are you're live right here at Earl Stewart on Cars and this is Nancy Stewart we got Rick in the studio and Stu and all of us can well hopefully answer your question

well yeah it's kind of fleeting for help. I've got an old malign with an airbag problem, an 05, and I finally Ford sent me a letter to get a rental car. That's after a couple of years of trying to get it fixed at, Advantage Ford and Stewart. And recently, I called them about the rental car, which recently meaning about a month ago. And they tell me that they can't find enough rental cars to give me one and I keep calling they don't return my call

Steve what's the name of the Ford dealer you're talking about Advantage Ford and Stewart okay I suggest you try another Ford dealer that's not right you've got a you've got a Ford dealer

I think in Fort Pierce you've got several here in West Palm Beach but they should provide you with that and if they're not and they say they don't have enough cars, there's a Ford dealer somewhere. They can also allow you to rent a car and, say, from Enterprise or Hertz or Avis or wherever and reimburse you.

So you've got a dangerous car to drive. You don't want to drive it, but you want to get it fixed, and you need something to drive in the interim. So if Advantage Ford won't help you. Call Beth Smith or we got the closest thing in Palm Beach County would probably be Mullinix Ford in North Palm Beach. Molonex Ford is a good outfit. Give them a call.

What's, where are they at, North Lake? North Lake Boulevard, North Palm Beach, Mullenix, M-U-L-L-L-I-N-E-X, is that right? I-X. A-X, yeah. I-X. So the dealers doesn't really have to help you, right? I mean, it sounds like a personal thing of the dealership? No, they're supposed to.

It's just the way, it's kind of like who you're speaking to. Probably the owner of the dealership you're dealing with doesn't know what's going on. you're talking to somebody in the service department that thinks if we're out of rental cars and there's no way i can give steve a rental car i'll just have to tell them to wait but if you put your foot down uh they'll take care of you generally but if they don't just try this is a reason competition's a wonderful thing if one forward dealership won't help you you you call up and say, this is what I need. Chances are the second Ford dealership will definitely take care of you. Mullinix, M-U-L-L-L-I-N-I-X in North Palm Beach on North Lake Boulevard. They're on a recommended car dealership list, and you call and say, you listen to Earl Stewart on cars, and Earl Stewart said to call you. They'll take care of you. Yeah, I love your show, by the way. Thanks for the chip. I'll go to Mullinick.

All right, Steve, well, thank you. They don't do. I called their. every day. They don't return my call Larry, the manager, and the service department. It's just a shame, you know. I don't want my wife to drive the car. Yeah. And they just don't want to do a thing. I don't believe

that they can't get rental cars from Enterprise. I just don't think they want to deal with it. But thanks. I'll try them all on next. Love your show and you guys do a lot of good work. Thanks very much. Thank you, Steve. That has to be pretty frustrating. Oh, hey, question for you. Yeah. One other question. We didn't

mean to do this. We were already to think my wife was on the phone. Do we get $100? First-time call, or first-time female caller? Actually, Steve, that was Penny that put you on? Yeah. Okay, well, tell Penny to get back on the line and give us her information, and I'll get that check out, and that is $50 for each first new lady caller.

Okay, well, here she didn't know the commerce, the people that we had talked to, up at Stewart's stuff, so she really didn't want to, I had the details, and she got a little confused, and that's why you handed the phone to me, but here she is. Thanks a lot. Oh, thank you, Steve. Hi, Penny. Hello. Hey, how are you? Congratulations. You just won yourself $50 for the first new lady caller, and if you stay on the line, and you give out your information, I can get that check out to you. Oh, thank you so much. You're welcome, Penny. She's a show every Saturday. Thank you.

Spread the word. Tell your lady friends to give us a call. We're giving away cash. We will. I will. All righty. Have a great day. You too.

Okay, thanks very much. Call 877-960-9960. Love to hear from anybody. 877-9-60. And you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. In fact, I've got a text right here, and this is something that I think Rick can answer. I'll read this. I was a caller once before about my 2009 Prius that was having fuel gauge and gas tank problems.

Rick indicated it was a unique design with a bladder, and you offered a free diagnosis, which I'll have to check with Rick. Josh Scott is my appointment center. I will schedule and need to know that when Rick won't be on vacation. my question has two parts. What is involved in the diagnostic process? How long does it take? If replacement is needed, will it be new parts since the cars of 2009 and new parts may not be available? Also, in your opinion, would keeping this car be advisable since in last week's show I heard that car parts are really not available from manufacturers after 10 years. The car has only 66,500 miles on it. Thanks for your help. And Rick, I'll give this to use or you can refer to the text if you need to.

Diagnostic time on that shouldn't take too long. It'll depend on what the actual concern is. But if parts are needed, unfortunately with the design of that one, it's pretty much the only replacement part is the entire fuel tank as a unit. That's just the way Toyota sells them on that model. Yes, they are still available. And an interesting note, though, manufacturers are required to keep new parts available for every car all the parts for 10 years

from the end of when that car was produced so your 2009 all the way up through the end of the 2019 model year those parts are required to be kept in stock and because they're required most dealers wind up or manufacturers wind up having a nice surplus so those parts are available for years to come afterwards. Good information, Rick. Thank you very much. Great information. We're going to go to our next caller, but if you didn't jot that number, Don, 877960, and you can text us at 772-4976530. And ladies and gentlemen, don't forget, we have that mystery shopping report coming up,

and you too can vote on that mystery shopping report by just sending us a text at 772-49765-35-3. We're going to go to Ward, who's been holding, and he's calling from Hope's Sound. Welcome to the show, Ward. Hi, how are you? This is Ward from Homestown, and I assume I'm talking to Mr. Mr. Stewart? Yes. That's correct. Yes.

Well, you know, actually, I work with one of your employees, one of the most honest, beautiful men I ever known. He works at the airport. I'm not going to mention names, but... You know who you're talking about. Oh, yeah. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. You have to know what I'm talking about. most polite man i've ever met okay that's not my god's no why i'm calling the reason i'm calling is that

you know we talk about the airbags and this and that and it's great for the people that have money in time but what about these uh people that i work with the baggage handlers and so forth and they're most of them are immigrants and they're buying cars from accident of back lots and they don't have money or time to deal with this and you're talking thousands of dollars you know what are they supposed to do well they're the they're the biggest victims of award is it's kind of the theme of the show or our mystery shopping report is on a buy hair pay her lot prime autos and West Palm Beach on Okotopee Boulevard and they've been there for 50 years and thousands tens of thousands hundreds of thousands of

cars are sold through these older lots and people that have bad credit they make weekly payments directly to the seller these are people that are on the lowest of the income list and You're absolutely right. They're probably least likely to be aware that they're buying a car with a dangerous recall and that the least likely to cope with it if they did know about it. And the inconvenience of having to, our previous caller, was unable to get a owner car to have his car fixed, and he seemed like probably a fairly intelligent, middle income, savvy kind of a guy. You can imagine somebody that really doesn't speak English very well. They've only been in the country for a few years. They have a low-paying job.

They're the ones that are going to be victimized the most. It's a huge problem, and they're the silent, I call them the silent majority, maybe not majority, but there's tens of thousands of people that fall in that category, and they're really clueless when it comes to the danger of the cars that they're buying. Right, exactly. Well, that's a problem. Like, you know, I have a, I have an 04 in Tacoma.

It's got a hundred and, I don't know, 150 something I, who knows, I just gets up there. But do I have enough money to replace the airbags? You know, I can't really dip into my savings for $2,000 or whatever it's going to cost. Well, Ward, you don't have to pay, you don't have to pay for the airbags. You just have to be able to take it to a branch to the manufacturer of your vehicle. If you have a Tacoma and the airbags have been pretty recalled, you take it to a Toyota dealer and they pay for the installation. The challenge sometimes is not having the airbag available, the airbag in Flater. In Toyota's case, they're pretty well caught up, but there's some manufacturers like Ford and Honda and BMW that are kind of running a backlog

at terms of being able to provide the parts to fix the airbags. but no on all safety recalls the manufacturers pick up the tab. Well, wouldn't it just for, you know, just for argument's sake, wouldn't it be safer just to have this thing removed and disconnected and use the safety belt, you know, you're riding around with this bomb, you're riding around with a hand grenade in your steering wheel, and wouldn't it be better if you add an older car like mine just to have it removed? If you had to, Ward, and some people do elect that option,

It's a judgment call. I mean, here's the thing you have to bear in mind. Every Takata airbag, even though it's been recalled, is not going to explode when you're involved in a collision. In fact, we have on record cases where they've exploded with no collision. But the percentage of this happening, the percentage of the time this happened, is relatively small. But when you're talking life and death, you know,

one chance out of ten is not very good odds. If you're involved in a collision and you have a takata airbag, it's been recalled, the airbag will deploy. What are the percentage chances that the airbag will explode? The shrapnel will be sent out and hurt you or kill you. Nobody knows that exact percentage. But if you have no airbag at all, then you have to play the other odds. What are the odds that if you're going to be in the collision

and you have no airbag that you're going to be injured? Nobody can answer that question because you don't know the severity of the collision and how your car is going to respond. So it was a terrible choice. You're caught between the devil of the deep blue sea. You really have no good answer. But we have had people that said, I don't want to be worrying about this to go to the airbag.

Sometimes on the passenger side, they'll have it removed. You're exposing your passenger to the same dilemma that you would have on the driver's side. So it's a terrible choice to have to make. You have to make that call yourself. okay well it's just one more side interest that I worked in the baggage at BBI and that was on the prohibitive item list was the you know the assembly for the airbags because put that in the belly of the plane and it decided to you know go off it would cause some destruction in

the airplane so that was it was briefing after briefing about that would being on the prohibitive item list and if you found one in a bag or saw one on the x-ray you would definitely taking that thing out and calling the airline and having them remove it. Yeah, I hear you. Point to your passenger, if people are going to fly, don't try to transport these things on the jet. I'm glad those are prohibited. Yeah, exactly, yeah.

I'm flying tomorrow. Maybe I'll see him at PBAM tomorrow. Oh, Steve. Leave home, your nail clippers and your ribbons. Thank you. And that employee I tell you about, he is a wonderful man. That's right. Definitely.

He is. Top of the day, Dan. I'm going to go see him. Top of the day. He's always very helpful. Thanks for the call. Okay, thank. Thank you, Your word.

Okay, bye. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. I have a young lady that has text me, and she's out looking for a car. She wants to know if she should keep her, well, trade-in separate from the deal. My answer definitely yes, but I'll let the recovering car dealer elaborate on that question. yes is the answer you got it right and you keep there's three part parts to a purchase of a car trade in financing and the purchase of the car they should all three be kept separate once you clump them together with a car dealer he can

work any one of those three corners of that triangle to his advantage he can give you a great price on the car but he'll make a million dollars on the financing and the trade in so you have to get a separate bid on your trade-in. If you're driving a Honda, you can go to three Honda dealers, go to the used car department, speak to the used car manager, say, I want to sell them a Honda. What will you pay me for it? This is the only way you get a real honest answer to what your used Honda is worth. If that Honda dealer thinks that he can buy it, and that Honda dealer knows that you're getting bids from other Honda dealers, they like to buy used cars that they can sell and make a profit.

And so they will bid the highest that they can afford to bid on your car, and that will be a good indication of the value of that used to Honda. Now, financing, credit unions are the best source of financing, even better than banks. Your own bank is a much better source of financing than the dealer. So get a bid from your credit union, your bank, have that interest rate and those terms in your mind when you go into the car dealership. I'm not saying you don't give the car dealer an opportunity to earn your financing business, but you need to have him measured against what the bank or credit union will do for you. And finally, the price of the car. You get three bids, you're buying a Honda.

You go to three, Honda, New Car Departments, and say to Braymond Honda, I'm going to Ed Morris Honda right after I leave here. How much will you charge me for this particular model? You're buying a Honda Civic, giving me your best price, then I'm going to your competitor. And do that three times. Now you've got three bids on your financing, your trade-in, and your new vehicle. You're going to get the best deal you can possibly get.

I hope we answered that question for you, and good luck with your new car purchase. There's so much research to do on so many levels, and three, as Earl just said, about the three prices that you would get on your trade-in, transparency all the way around. You really have to be careful at there and do your homework. Knowledge is power. Give us a call. We have $50 left for the next new lady caller. 877960. Or you can text us with your questions, your thoughts, at 772-4976530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Rick and I were talking before the show about some seminars he's doing. for our first responders seminars on what to do if you have a hybrid or electric vehicle involved

in an accident. What a lot of people don't know is that these vehicles can be extremely dangerous if you don't know what you're doing when you're tinkering, when you're repairing. Rule number one is don't ever tinker. But Rick, just give us a couple of high points of what you're going to be telling the fire people. You've got North Palm Beach Fire Department, the Palm Beach Gardens Fire Department you'll be speaking to. Yep. Primarily it's going to be Palm Beach Gardens Fire Rescue with North Palm is sitting in also.

And we'll be at their station number one on Burns Road, starting next Saturday for three weeks to basically help them understand what they need to know when they approach these vehicles that have been in an accident. And, of course, first responders, fire rescue. they have their own pretty much agenda, things that they need to know that gets pretty specific for them. But for folks that like to play with their own cars, any time that you have a hybrid or electric vehicle, be aware that there are two what we call industry standards. If you see something wiring, any sort of wiring that is wrapped in a bright yellow housing, that's generally related to airbags leave it alone

especially do not touch bright yellow cable housing or the bright yellow connectors messing with those airbag connectors it can cause some pretty bad things to happen because there is a potential especially if you're playing around with a voltmeter or something

you could set off an airbag so be very careful with those and if you don't get plugged in properly that airbag may not deploy in an accident like it's supposed to. The other one is the industry standard now for electric and hybrid cars, anything high voltage is going to be bright orange. And when Honda actually first got their insight to the U.S. back in 2001, they beat Toyota by just a few months.

They actually were covering them in a bright blue, and they very quickly switched to orange, and now it's industry standard. Tesla, Nissan, Honda, Ford, Chevy, every manufacturer that has a hybrid car or an electric car, if it's bright orange,

leave it alone. That's the high-voltage current that can cause serious injury. Well, the best advice, right there simply, just don't tinker with your hybrid or your electric vehicle. If you were from, you know, from the old days and you like to tinker,

you can't do it with these vehicles. High voltage, you'll electrocute, you kill you, and just leave the hood closed and take it to a qualified technician that knows what he's doing. And if you do start playing a little bit, if you should have a vehicle fire, the first foremost then call the fire department immediately, especially on hybrid vehicles, get back away from the vehicle and keep everyone back away and try to stay out of the smoke path. Because a lot of newer cars, not just hybrids, but a lot of the other newer cars,

the chemicals that are used in building those cars, that smoke path can be quite dangerous to your lungs, to your health. So if you ignore what we're warning you to do when your car catches it on fire, run. Run, get away from it. Or if it catches on fire for any other reason. Yes, right. For any other reason.

Step back away quickly. Yeah, we've seen a few of those, that footage on the news recently. That's amazing, isn't it? Just think about it. You're in your vehicle. You're going down 95, and it catches us. fire and someone's screaming at you pull over get out get out get out if i see a bunch of plastic burning i'm generally not going to breathe what's coming out of it oh we're gonna we're gonna go to

our next caller uh that is uh frank from jupiter farms good morning frank hey good morning guys um this is going to be a quick one just the other night on channel 12 news they were talking about the airbag issue by any chances you happen to see that i missed it frank i What did they say? Oh, they were actually talking about the deaths and things like that, and they're actually going to start trying to do something. And immediately I felt a rural Stewart and Nancy and his team, and I go, you're finally getting some people in Marchden looking at this.

So glad to hear it. Why the media has ignored this so long, I have no idea. And I'm so happy to hear that congratulations to Channel 12 for talking about it. That's all we can do is talk about it. And then we need, if you talk about it enough, the voters hear about it. When the voters hear about it, then the politicians start to pay attention. If you notice right now, the only thing the politicians will do is something that's going to get more votes. And we're talking to the car coming to the radio show about Pam Bondi,

and she's got some sort of her new mission in life as what? Her newsletter, recent newsletter, is about the campsites. and being taken advantage of. Yeah, campsites. So that's real important. All you campers out there, she's worried about you. She's not worried about you getting to the campsite and your airbag is floating in your face.

But when you get to the campsite, keep your hands out of the fire. And, Frank, on a more serious note, you know, I keep in touch with Pam Bondi. Let me clarify that statement. I receive her newsletter. So, you know, I haven't given it. up. I hope that one week I'll click on her website and she'll give some attention to the Takata situation because it's like at a snail's pace and we're going to take what we can get

and we've gotten some attention and we're still, Earl is still on the journey to save lives and it is a very important topic because to just pull a pin off a hand grenade, that's what you have whenever you have a defective airbag and we're sorry we missed that segment the other evening on the news but we want to thank you for the call do you have any other questions well actually your time was impeccable while i was on hold listening to the electric car my son who's um lives up in port st lucy but works here in juker as a as a postal worker is um not happy with his um mileage he's getting out of this old honda and it's going apart and he's think about electric cards. So I'd learn something that they say you can learn something every

day with the orange virus and things like that. Yeah, there was actually, it's kind of kept light, Frank, but when the hybrids first came out, there were technicians electrocuted working on these things. The manufacturers didn't like to talk about it, naturally, but I believe it was not just dealership technicians, but I think even some manufacturing folks were injured are killed. Nobody fully appreciated how much voltage comes. You say a battery, how bad can a battery be? Well, a hybrid battery is huge

and they have a lot of power and they are deadly. And so our technicians in our dealership wear thick insulated gloves when they work on a hybrid or an electric car. Yes, well, I'm

looking at a new investment company and the guy is really cool. He's got a Fisker. Fisca. Something like that. Electric car? Oh, yeah. The Fiskar? Yeah.

Okay, anyway. So it's a pretty unique that it sits in your parking lot and it's getting charged from the roofs. Solar panels on it. Yeah, it's amazing for him. Anyway, he also got, we just started talking about the vault and things and something for my son. It's amazing. I never really thought about electric cars just recently. So, and we did stop by your dealership Saturday, and I can't believe how much people with the construction going on,

but it was an interesting business always, so we'll be back there again because we are looking for another car. Well, thank you, Frank. You're a great caller, and I hope you can call again next week. Love to hear from you any time. Not to worry. You have a nice day. Thanks again for being on the air. Sure, thank.

Thanks for the call. 877-960, where you can talk. access at 772-4976530. And remember, we do have the mystery shopping report coming up, and that will be from Prime Auto in West Palm Beach. And if you didn't catch Earl's latest column this past week, you can catch that at WWW.W. Earle on cars. The open letter to all Florida enforcement officers ticket, all vehicles, with open safety. recalls. How do you feel about that? If you're shy, Texas, let us know how you feel about that latest column 772-4976530. Or you can give us a call. We'd love to hear from you at 877-960-960.

And if you're unable to listen to our live show or you want to listen to any of the past shows, you can always go to Earl Stewart on cars. You can check out Apple, sound. cloud, Google, and Stitcher. And if you would like to watch highlights from our show, you can simply go to YouTube.com slash Earl On Cars. So you have a lot of sources to listen to our past shows, listened to us today. And again, we can't thank you enough for tuning in to Earl Stewart on Cars. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

When Nancy and I were driving to the show this morning, to the studio, we were talking about, you know, What is the theme of our show this morning? And, of course, the theme is whatever you want to talk about. But on our mind is this whole idea of the lower income people that are buying the older cars. And I've talked about this a few minutes ago. It's kind of the worst combination of all things when you have someone who is desperate to buy a car, but they're financing their credit score and won't allow them to do so. When you're desperate, you do some things that are not as prudent as they should be, such as be too careful about the car you buy.

You just want to buy any car because you have to have a car. Think about a family man or family woman. They've got kids to take care of. They probably have medical issues, and they don't have a lot of money. That's one of the reasons they have bad credit. And they live in Florida, which does not have a great mass transit system. PalmTran or Bright Line isn't the answer to a whole lot of people and most people need a car. They've got to get the kids to school.

They've got to get to the pharmacy. They've got to get to work. During the Great Recession we had, they found out that people would actually let their home before closed on before they let their car be repossessed. The car, they say, you can sleep in your car. You can't drive your home to work. People would actually forgo a roof over their head to have a car, which is a roof over your head. So there you are.

When you get desperate like that, you go into a place that is a catering to the lower income. We went into prime autos. We've been into Easy Drive. Stu, was that it? Easy pay cars. Easy pay cars. There's beach cars. You see them all over the place.

There's thousands and thousands of these buy here, pay here lots. And this is a source of last resort for people that can't afford to do anything else. One thing I admonish folks to when they are in this position is to, first of all, don't assume that this is your last resort. It's amazing today what lenders are doing, and I'm talking about legitimate lenders, banks, maybe even credit unions, in terms of financing cars with people that have, bad credit your credit score might be in the high five hundred or middle five hundreds on a beacon or a fico score and you think i have no choice but go to uh... by your payer

check with the legitimate lenders first uh... try that sometimes you can be pleasantly surprised and if you get a legitimate lender your chances of being taken advantage of are much lower so when you go into uh... buy here payer payer Buy your pay here will charge you the maximum legal interest rate that the state there found in will allow. In Florida, it ranges up in the 20 and 30%. Now, imagine you got a good score, you can buy a car at 3% or less.

You have bad credit, you're going to be paying 30%. It doesn't sound fair. It can be fair and it can be a necessity because would you rather pay 30%? and be able to get a job and go to work or pay, not pay 30% and not have a car. So that's a rock and the hard place that most of these people are caught between. I would implore anyone to call the show, but you know, credit, bad credit is an embarrassing thing, and some people don't like to talk about it. But if you would call the show and you have a situation like this, we can certainly give you some advice.

7-7-960-90-60. That's 877-9-60-9-60. And we haven't been getting a lot of text, which is unusual. Usually we get more text. I see where Craig is asking about the electric cars, and he's asking if Toyota will have full electric by 2025. I would be amazed if we didn't have a Toyota with full electric. I think all of the manufacturers have come to realize that all electric is the name of the game.

They were talking hydrogen fuel cells for a while. They were talking about hybrids for a while. And there are even those who are saying that we're never going to have anything but at turtle combustion. The electrical cars are just not practical. The way technology is moving now, there will be battery technology in the foreseeable future. Within five years, they will make it total. practical for everybody to have an electric car. So, yes, Toyota, Mazda, Honda, General Motors.

Toyota reported in May that by 2025, they'll have an electrified version of every model that they make somewhere in the world. It doesn't matter. Not necessarily here, but somewhere. I hope we answered your question, Craig. Give us a call tool free at 877-960-99-60. or you can text us at 772-4976530. Everybody's pointing that, so I'm not sure whether I've got some spinach on my chin.

I don't know what in the United in you say whatever. That's a roguilla. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we'd love to hear from you. As I said earlier, we do have the mystery shopping report coming up from Prime Auto in West Palm Beach. always an interesting mystery shop and we'd like you to participate as far as well grading that mystery shopping report because you do make the show and we love hearing from you getting your opinion and you asking us questions and as everyone knows Rick can answer any questions so he's right here and he's the genius

by making you nervous yeah give us a call 877 9000 60, 99, 60, and again, that text number, 772-4976530, and remember, ladies, I have $50 for you. First new lady caller. Back to the recovering car dealer. Well, here's something that really interests me. I was reading the newspaper this morning about the future of mass transportation. And you talk about Brightline. We've got Brightline, billions of dollars spent on Brightline, and all the big.

municipalities California they got Elon Musk is a drill in a tunnel so they can have a hyper super fast train and somebody says you know maybe all these trains and these genius ideas for mass transit are gonna fall flat because one thing will replace that cars autonomous electric cars autonomous electric vehicles because when we have no driver Uber suddenly becomes a financial reality lift the type of drive on demand that we have now you have to pay a driver what if you had an autonomous car the cost of autonomous driverless car autonomous car all electric would be less than bright line less than bomb train so buses and trains and the

other forms of mass transit might fall flat so before these cities start this massive infrastructure investment, Rick. Well, not to mention the idea that suppose your destination is 10 or 12 blocks a mile and a half, two miles from the Bright Line station. Exactly. Exactly. Whereas that autonomous car is going to take you right to the door. Yeah.

And when you're done with that location, you simply pull out your phone, hit the app, and a few minutes later, it pulls right up to the door and picks you up again. Picture of the USA with no more trains or no more. our buses and no more cars as we know them today picture all of our roads now with funny looking little cars powered by electricity and no driver and that they're all linked to your smartphone and all you have to do is hit your app and the nearest one pulls up and you say take me to Miami I want to see the heat game or take me to Taco Bell take me to the pharmacy the CVS and you get out and that little car goes away and no traffic lights

And no traffic lights. But I still want a hyperloop, though. I want to get on one of this. I know it sounds really neat, but we won't need it. I want one. Yeah, I know you want to go fast. He wants to go fast. Everybody wants to go fast.

That's the situation today. Stu, you need to go up to Daytona and do that driving experience. Yeah, I'm actually going to do a defensive driving and Sebring. Oh, okay. All right. How nice. I'll report about it on the show. I get to go fast there, too.

I've been there, done that. Have you? It's a whole lot of fun. What would you like to do? Would you like to go to that text or we tell Nancy to hold? Okay, we're going to take Nancy. She's a first time caller. Good morning, Nancy.

Good morning. You just won yourself $50, Nancy. Thank you for calling Earl Stewart on cars. Thank you. That's a great way to start today. It sure is. You stay on the line after you're finished talking to us and the control room will get your information and I'll get that check out to you.

Okay, thank you very much. You're welcome. What's your question today? Okay, I have a very interesting situation. A year and a half ago, I bought a new car, and when I went in, my credit score was 820. Wow. About seven months ago,

I went on, and I found that my credit score had dropped to 720. And I have perfect paying records. I have no late payments for, I don't know how many years, a very excellent payment credit. But what they said was I had opened up too many new cards. And what happened was I moved to Florida. And when I moved to Florida, first of all, there were stores here that we didn't have in Delaware.

So I got a couple of credit cards from stores that I knew I would be shopping at. And then I had worked there. on the house, and every person who did work on the house told me that I had a zero interest for so many months with them, but it turned out to be a credit card. So I have all these

one-time used credit cards that I want to get rid of, but now that they tell me I get rid of those cards, that will make my credit score worse. Well, that is the most interesting question for that a long time. I'm really amazed. There are sources

out there that are probably far more advised on this than I am. I did know that having too many credit cards could affect your credit score, but I had no idea it could affect it that drastically dropped from 820 to 720. I'm shocked. Stu has a point. I'll make a little advice. The newer ones, I don't think will hurt your score if you get rid of them.

You want to have length of time on your credit history. So if you have a really old card that you opened up a long time ago, you don't want to cancel that account. And a loss has to do with utilization. If you're using up, if you're pushing up towards the limit, a lot of cards, that's going to drive the score down, even if you're making perfect payments. But some of the newer ones that you get opened up those interests? I think I have 75% open credit. I don't have any balances, hardly on anything.

That's good. I wouldn't, I mean, you might want to just confirm this by Googling it maybe, but I think the newer ones that you opened up, you could probably cancel those. Okay, I'll try that. I mean, I just didn't know where to turn. It was like crazy. And in a few months, my credit score drops 100 points, and I have nothing on there that's derogatory except having this work done and using these companies.

The good news is it can jump up just as fast. Yeah, Nancy, you can go online, go to Google and just put the question in, like you asked us, Google's amazing. Just say, I opened a bunch of new credit cards, and my credit score plummeted. What should I do? Put that into Google. and you'll get more information than you can deal with

and you just pick out some of the pertinent stuff and it'll solve your problem. I think Stu is absolutely right. If you close out a card that you just opened a couple months ago, there shouldn't be a negative effect, but double check. I just refinance my house, so I have a little information there. Yeah, definitely. Nancy, I can't imagine the look on your face

whenever you saw that your credit score had dropped us. 720. So closing on a couple of those charge card accounts. Well, lucky for you. Lucky for you drop from Fantastic to really good. Yeah. Yeah. You're in a good place, but you even want to be in a better place because you earned that 820, 820 credit score. So good luck. Let us know how it all turns out. Thank you. I will. I know there are other people who move and make the same mistake, or if it was a the stakes. But I just think people should be aware that when they use these companies to do work and they give them this zero percent interest for so long that they're actually getting

a credit card. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of us that don't realize that your credit score is affected in so many different ways whenever you're, you know, making a transaction or you're working with the workers that you were just talking about. So, like I said, let us know how everything turns out and congratulations on the $50. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Stay in touch. Okay, I will.

If you just tuned in, you're listening to Earl Stewart on cars right here. We've got Rick and Stu and myself, Nancy, and the recovering car dealer, of course, at the helm, and I'll send it back to you. We have a text

and I like controversy. I said at the beginning of the show, we like disagreement. And we have a little disagreement on a couple texts. We have Pam LaVelle who said people want to have full control of their vehicles. So that's what her opinion is of autonomous vehicles. Forget about it. And we got Craig Hennie, autonomous vehicles, definitely the way redundant routes will be done first. Finland had autonomous city buses.

So there you have two opinions. The control thing, believe me, I understand that. I love driving. I love driving and a lot of us feel that way and that's our culture and cultures change one thing

that the older guys like me need to think about when we are opposed to losing control and we want to drive our cars is to say what happens when I get too old when I can't drive my vision whatever happens my faculties I can't drive or I shouldn't drive anymore

some of us are driving, us old guys, we are driving, but we kind of feel like maybe we shouldn't be. And there will come a point where we really can't. How cool is it that with autonomous cars, we never have to stop driving. I mean, not actively driving, but we can be in a car and go anywhere we want to go. That's what autonomous brings us, older folks. And the older folks are the ones that are kind of stuck in the old ways. and we like the control and we like the idea of driving.

So there's a sunny side to that street of autonomous cars. Yeah, definitely. I have a text, and it's from Tracy. And Tracy is interested in turning in her lease, so I'll let you read that text, recovering car dealer, and answer it. Tracy, great question. It affects thousands of people, thousands of listeners, turning in your lease car can be hazardous to your financial health.

There's a lot of things that can happen toward the end of the lease. It's very exciting. Within about six months, you start getting letters from all the dealers and the manufacturer saying we want to lease you another car. There are penalties you pay if you don't turn the car in the right way. The right way is what the manufacturer dictates and the dealer dictates. one of the things that you need to be most aware of if you don't repeat with that manufacturer if you have a Honda and you decide you want to buy a Nissan you're

going to have to pay a lease termination fee they're going to charge you three or four hundred bucks just because you didn't lease another Honda so be on the alert for that the other thing is your higher mileage you're allocated when you sign the lease, chances are you didn't read the fine print, but you were probably allocated 10 or 15,000 miles a year. If you put more than that on, there's a penalty. It could be 25 cents a mile, 20 cents a mile, something in that area, and that can be a lot of money. I mean, I've seen leasing penalties in the thousands of dollars. Something to be aware of when you lease the car. It's too late when you have to turn it in. finally there's the above normal wear and tear and that is again kind of subjective what is normal the manufacturer tells you what's normal they probably should find out when you lease the car what do they consider normal ding scratches treadwear your tires stains on your up all these things add up if your car was in an accident while you drove it and you had a repaired red flag

they're probably going to charge you for the fact that you had the accident even when you have the car repaired. They use a paint meter and you could have a perfect repair and they may well try to charge you because it wasn't an accident even though it was fixed perfectly. Those are all the things you need to be aware of when you turn your car in. When you have your lease inspection, be sure you witness it that you sign the paper that they use when they inspect it. Take your smartphone, your camera, take pictures of your car when you turn it in.

One of the dangers of having a lease turn in is somebody else drives your car after you turn it in. Exactly. Maybe they scratch your car. Maybe they wreck your car. You could be charged for that accident. So pictures of the car, sign off,

get a copy of the release report. No ahead of time when you lease the car whether or not you're going to have more mileage than what you normally drive. And then pay for that up front, not as a surprise when you turn your car in. Being very careful whenever you turn your lease in. And, you know, there are a lot of consumers that I know that are, you know, taking up, they make sure they take pictures of not only the outside of that car, but the inside, because, as I all said, you can be held responsible for any damage that's done.

Rick? To go back for a moment to the lady that said her credit score had dropped quite a bit with her. I noticed one thing, I recently paid off the loan on my truck that I had running for five years, and because that was a five-year-long account, when it paid off, my credit score dropped several points. I mean, we're talking 15 to 20 points on the two main ones, just because that account closed out because it was a five-year-long. credit account. Interesting.

So, yeah, those credit scores can be tricky. Are you sure that that drop correlated directly with paying the loan up? It happened within about two weeks after I paid it off, and there were no other changes. Nothing else had been changed. I had no other new accounts open or anything. I would be surprised if that were true, Rick, but I don't dispute the fact that it happened about the same time. It came up with an alert saying, you know, you closed out an account.

and because I use credit karma and it just happened to come up that way. Well, I'm going to investigate that. That wouldn't make any sense at all if that were the case because there's no logic behind that. Okay, I've got a text here, Steve in New Jersey. Is there any update you can provide from your meeting with Costco regarding the auto program? Thanks for checking, Steve. We are still waiting on the feedback. We had good vibes from the meeting with the Costco executives, and for you folks who aren't familiar with it, we had some issues with the Costco auto buying program, and we did a lot of mystery shops, and we found out that the Costco approved dealers for the Costco Auto Buying Program were not abiding by the rules of the program, and there were a lot of changes in the Costco price that was really a good price, but they were adding dealer-installed accessories to the,

the price, they were adding dealer fees to the price, and the Costco members were not aware of this. We called all this to the attention of the Costco executives in a meeting a few weeks ago. They received them well. They appeared to understand our concern. They were going back to the drawing board, so to speak, and see if they could make some changes. We specifically asked them, would they require their dealers to provide the Costco member price online or by phone so that the Costco member would know before he walked in to the

dealership. In the mystery shopping reports, we found that physically visiting the dealership was a very bad experience for Costco auto members. If a Costco auto member could get the member price on the vehicle of their interest before they went in, it would do two things. It would save a lot of aggravation on the part of the Costco member. It would also put the auto dealer on notice that if I try to play some games I'm not going to be able to do it I have to give the bottom line price and if I give a

higher price they will shop my price I'll lose the business so the Costco executive said they would consider that and we're waiting to hear but we have not heard. Some light at the end of the tunnel. Give us a call ladies and gentlemen at 877-960

or you can text us at 772 497-6530 Do you have a text? The text are coming in. He's got a few, yeah. I have one from Claudia, and she wants to know when the best time of the year is for her to purchase a car.

And also, if she does all her homework, she wants to know if it's safe for her to go out by herself and purchase that vehicle. Okay, we've got another text. What do you think? Oh, I'm sorry. I was reading the other text. Oh, okay.

Claudia, she is, in the market for a car. She wants to know when the best time is for her to purchase a vehicle. And she says with her doing all her homework, she wants to know if it's safe enough for her to go into the dealership and go in by herself. Best time to buy a car is at the early end in the model year, not immediately necessarily, especially with high-demand, low-supply cars. But if you're thinking about buying a 2018 right now and you want to buy a new car, you're probably better off to wait a few months and buy a 2019. You'll find, especially when there hasn't been a major model change, if the cars are fairly similar, the 219 versus the 2018.

The 2019, if you do your homework and shop and compare prices, you can buy the 2019 or even lease the 2019 for as good or better price than the 2018. 2018, this time of year, you're going to inherit a lot of depreciation the minute you buy the car. Car dealers hate for me to say that because they don't want to stop selling 2018s now. They want to sell all the 2018s they can, and then the 2019s will come in, they'll start all over. But you're better off to stick with the fresh model year. The discounts on the last year's model usually do not offset the first year depreciation that you suffer when you buy last year's model. There you go, Claudio.

Good luck with your car purchase. And my recommendation is if you're not pressed for time, I'd definitely, you know, take a friend into the dealership. Even though you do your homework, you know, it's a safe bet that two heads are better than one. Give us a call, 877960, or you can continue to text us at 772-4976530. Henry's been holding. He's calling from Jupiter. Welcome to the show, Henry. Good morning.

Just in FYI, I listened to you a week or so back when you were talking about our political officials, congressmen, so forth, not showing any interest in the recall, these vehicles that can't be fixed and whatnot. But did you know that in Australia, for example, when you buy your tag, along with that tag comes PIP insurance for 12 months? So when you come in and you pay $3,400 for your tag, that car is insured for a full 12 months for at least the minimum. Here in this country, we don't choose to do that. You could probably elaborate more on how much insurance one has to post when buying a new car. but people very often just put up a month or two in payment and then we're dealing with people running around with no insurance

who get an accident well Henry that is a very controversial subject it's in the news every day what is required to do now when a person buys a car what do they absolutely have to have to do they have to have the personal injury protection and liability insurance I don't believe so oh no no I think you have to have that you just you don't necessarily have to have collision

Yeah. If you finance the car, it's what the lender requires. If you don't finance the car today required is just, and that's only if the lender requires. You don't have to have collision insurance yourself. I think what Henry's worried about is what happens if someone buys a car without insurance and runs into me and he doesn't have any money. They have no insurance on his part to take care of damaging my car. I believe that you have to have now in Florida some sort of. of third party insurance but i'm not positive uh that's a good question uh henry and i will investigate that uh anybody know the answer well go ahead henry the uh the follow-up is that you know it makes perfect sense to require that the tag include a 12 month this way of an officer looks at a tag that's expired the car is operating without insurance good point and how many times we've read of somebody who's gotten maimed or seriously injured by someone without proper coverage and, you know, he's left holding the bag. Well, you're absolutely right. I think so. So you're suggesting we emulate Australia's law. I like it. I think that everybody driving a car, if they're not capable, and a lot of people are not capable of taking care of damage they do to a third party,

They should be required to have insurance or else they can't drive the car. I like your suggestion. Okay. One other thing that I'm kind of calculating in my brain, buy a new car cash money over three years, you lose a significant amount. What's the advantage of leasing it? Does it save you anything as far as the end value of the car? In my personal experience, I bought a Lexus for $50,000.

Three years later, it's worth $30,000. So that was a $20,000 expenditure for three years. So would it have benefited me at all to have leased it or would I still spend the same $20,000? There's no advantage to leasing over buying in that sense, Henry. The lessor, the finance company that owns the vehicle, they've already calculated the depreciation carefully into their lease payment. the only disadvantage to leasing is it's a complex transaction the average person can be taken advantage of when they lease a car by the car dealer and the average person is taken advantage of car dealers average over a thousand dollar greater profit when they lease you a car than when you buy a car but if you're oh if you're an astute yeah that's true if you're an astute buyer and leaser you just do the arithmetic you'll find out there is really no advantage one way the other leases originated

from the beginning so that people could have a low payment in very little i think we just lost henry but uh if you're on listening to us on the radio henry if you lease a car and you have to go out of pocket a lot of money there goes the original advantage to leasing right there uh the lease payments it's advertised by dealers typically will have thousands of dollars down payment required in the fine print so there is no advantage to leasing other than low monthly payment and lower cash out of pocket once they take away those two advantages you just soon buy the car there's no accounting business advantage or anything else people seem to think there is but there isn't the

manufacturers love leasing the dealers love leasing because it's more profitable to both okay we have uh you want to read the text or do you want to take mary's call from we'll take mary's calling from chicago welcome to the show mary hey how are you guys great how are you taking my call i called a couple i called last year may or may have not remembered me where i set up uh i've been sending emails out as a with a guy's name and i think i mentioned to you guys that i get better responses if I were a guy as opposed to being a female from these dealers.

But anyhow, my question to you is since then, you know, Earl has mentioned previously numerous times at the end of the month is the best time to buy a car. Are dealers that motivated at selling used demo cars versus a new one or it's all the same towards the end of the month? At the end of the month is typically the best time to buy a car. It sounds like a urban legend, but it is true. The way the dealers operate, the way they motivate their sales force, the way the manufacturers motivate their dealers is financially. A 30-day cycle manufactures financially their stock goes up and down based on how many cars

They sold in the last 30 days. Bonuses for the sales. So they motivate you to come and buy a car by getting you a better price. And I always recommend that you do your homework. You might spend. Which I've done. Yeah. Let me ask you, since I'm starting to interrupt, since there's 31 days, so it's 30 days.

So this month, I'm going to take off work because I'm having, now the emails are coming in, And now they're reducing and offering and so forth. And I imagine that this week I'm going to get bombarded with email. So not necessarily going in the last day, like the 30th, but like the 27th or even the 26th or 27th, towards the end of this month instead of like on the actual last day because they may have already met their goals. Sure. I mean, either day is fine. I mean, you don't want to push the deadline too far where you get beyond the end of the month.

certainly by the 28th you should be able to negotiate a good deal sometimes you can negotiate a good deal on the 28th and just don't sign in until the 31st and you might find out you actually get a few more bucks a discount the desperation level varies from dealer to dealer and from manufacturer to manufacturer there are situations where pure desperation can sit in and you can buy a car literally below the dealer's cost. I mean, all dealers say they sell you the car below their cost. Ninety-nine percent of the time

they're lying. But there are literally situations in some sales where at the end of the month the last day, one car can make a difference to a car dealer in the hundreds of thousands of dollars in terms of manufacturers bonuses. So, the closer to the end of the

month, the better, but don't push it to the very end because you don't want to find yourself in a position where you can't close the deal. and then you miss out. I appreciate that. I picked a Toyota four-runner. That's what I'm looking at. They've been so hard to find up here in Chicago

if everyone wants them. And the one I'm looking at is a demo, a 2018 demo with 5,000 miles. But I've noticed that even just a brand spanking new one with zero miles, the difference isn't that much. So I'll see what I negotiate with my alias account. Yeah, Mary Stu's got to come. Yeah, you should get an appreciative.

discount off the demo and also be aware that it does impact the warranty the warranty is still going to go to 36,000 miles on the bumper to bumper and 60 on the power train so you do lose that those miles on the with the demo. Yes, Mary, hopefully I'll call you guys next time. Mary, were you referring, this is Nancy Stewart, were you referring to the article that I read quite some time ago in Chicago where someone sent out a mail and a female car buyer with the same script, and they found that, you know, it was definitely a different buying experience for the female. Is that the article you're talking about?

No, I wasn't familiar with that, but, I mean, I can just say that from my experience so far, it had stopped that way, or they feel as if I had, you know, I've lied and said, oh, I've got to check with my husband and stuff, like, I have to check with the male person before, for making a big decision. Even though I'm a homeowner and run my own stuff, you know, it's just, it's kind of sad that that's the way it is, but I'm dealing, willing, with a male, you know, with a male name via email.

I want it to come in, you know, I'm going to say, look, pull it out, say, look, you treated me differently when I said I was a guy, and here I am in a female in person. Interesting. We'll see what happens. Thank you so much, guys, for having the show. I hope that I call you back with great news, okay? Thank you, Mary.

Stay in touch. 877960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Now, back to the recovering car dealer. Why I have a call? Oh, we do. We have Harris's calling from West Palm Beach. Good morning. First name is Bennett, though.

Bennett, okay. I don't know where we got Harris from. That's okay, Mr. Stewart. A couple of questions. you've been talking about the airbags a lot and when you buy a new car are there different manufacturers now to the airbags that are being put in today

and my second question is when you buy a car you go into financing and they try to sell you everything under the sun you're right about that you're familiar with that so is it important to buy the extended warranty and I'm thinking if a person

keeps the car for a long time that maybe it is because you get a better deal. What about Gap insurance and what about the tires and wheels protection? Thank you very much. Great questions, all of them Bennett. And first with the airbag,

the manufacturer of Takata Airbag went bankrupt. In fact, I think a few of the executives went to jail. That was the worst situation I've been in the business for 50 years, never seen anything as deplorable as what happened with Takata. So they have a new owner. I can't even think of the name of the owner of this Takata airbag. They're still building airbags. I'm sure they're calling them

something else. They were so big, Takata was so big that they supplied a majority of all the airbags in the world. That's the reason this is such an enormous problem. So right now, when you buy a car, whether it's a BMW, a Honda, a Chrysler, or a Jeep, whatever it is, you don't know what the airbag is. It's probably not going to have the Takata name if it's a brand new vehicle. It may have the Takata name. The Takata Airbag inventory in the pipeline before they change company names was probably enormous. The problem is that the manufacturers are putting takata airbags in cars now that they know are defective because they have no alternative. They are putting to cut air bags in cars with the ammonium nitrate accelerant

and the inflator, which is the problem. The ammonium nitrate, which is unstable under heat and humidity conditions and time doesn't blow up for a few years. So they can sell a new car, sell you a new car, and theoretically you can drive it safely for two, three, four years before it's going to blow up. It's hard to believe that the legislators and regulators and politicians are ignoring the situation and the media. But that's what's going on now. Now, some of the airbags in the cars that are being installed are from different manufacturers

with different accelerant that are safe. The dealers don't know in the manual. manufacturers won't tell you. So there should be a notice to all the buyers of all the vehicles. This airbag is positively safe. It is a different design, does not use the same accelerate, a different manufacturer, and it's safe, but you don't know that. So the answer to your first question, Ben, yeah. Can you ask the dealer if, you know, who manufactures these airbags, whether it be in another country or the United States? The company that bought Takata was a U.S. company.

Okay, good. And I can Google that, and maybe we can find that name for you. The other airbag manufacturers are all smaller, and there's probably a large number of them. But this is a dangerous situation. The good news is if you buy a new car today, it will have a safe airbag for a period of time. And if you trade the car in three or four years,

you're probably going to be fine. It's the guy that buys the car from you after you trade it in, and then the guy that buys the car after he trades that one in, that really has got a serious problem. Okay. Second part of you. And what about the, yeah, second question. Second part.

Extended warranties when you buy the car is Bennett says you go into the finance department and they try to sell you everything except the kitchen sink. They might even try to sell you a kitchen sink because you'll never know it'll be in the fine print. ignore everything they have to say is a good rule of thumb don't buy anything the financing if it's competitive with your credit union and your bank as long as you know it's a competitive interest rate then you can accept that extended warranties if you bought a good car you checked it out consumer reports it's a Nissan it's a Honda it's a Toyota there are a lot of good cars on the market. Consumer report says it's a good car and it's got a very low frequency of repair and maintenance.

Don't buy an extended warranty. It's a waste of money. If you're buying a fiat, you probably ought to buy an extended warranty. If you're buying a Jeep, you probably ought to buy an extended warranty. Gap insurance. Gap insurance is one of the biggest rip-offs out there. The dealers are charging, in many cases, whatever they want. It's not regulated by the state insurance commissioner's office, and dealers can charge anything. If you want, GAAP insurance can be very important, and sometimes lenders will require it. Sometimes the lender will, insurers like it, because as you know, with the GAAP insurance, if you wreck a new car and its total, you're not going to be reimbursed the full amount that you paid for the car. And that's what they call.

That's the reason that it's a good idea to have. If you put a, if you put a very little down payment down on a new car and you have an accident and a relatively short period of time, gap insurance can be very important. Buy the gap insurance from your insurer, if you're, you know, GEICO State, Fire Mall State, they all offer gap insurance. The gap insurance you buy from your insurer is competitively priced, generally speaking. Or if you carry over a lot of equity from your prior loan. Exactly. If you carry, if you have a lot of equity, a big down payment, then you don't require that the gap insurance. at all. What was the other one? Gab insurance, extended warranty.

Tire wheel. Oh, tire wheel. That is, that's not necessary. I sometimes feel like in areas like South Florida where we have a huge amount of road construction and debris in the roads in my car dealership experience, I seem to see an exorbitant amount of people coming in with road hazards, you know, nails, screws, torn tires. I sometimes say if you want to buy road hazard insurance, it might not be such a good idea. But like all insurance, the insurance company makes all the money. I'd rather bank it myself.

And if I was worried about road hazard, I was worried about a gap or worried about a warranty, put $100 in a savings account every month and insure it yourself. because the insurance company is making an obscene amount of money no matter what you buy from them. And I'll tell you, I must agree with you with 1,000% about insurance companies making all the money

because next to the church, they are the second-leased business because they're so nice to you when you get in an accident. But if it's your fault, your rates go up and you pay for it so the insurance companies aren't losing any money. What a gimmick, is it not? yeah it's uh you know i i wish i had more time to attack the insurance companies but oh i have a thousand questions because my gosh it's such a good ball if i had another life i'd go out to the insurance companies but i'm not through with the car dealers yet so i get through

the car dealers i'm moving toward the insurance companies right listen thank you so much thank you thank you thank you for joining us this morning you're hungry for something new You found it right here at Earl Stewart on cars, so you want to stay tuned for the mystery shopping report that's coming up, and I miss Alan. Boy, he went after the insurance companies like crazy, didn't he? He was very passionate about what he did. Exactly. Okay, I think the recovering car dealer has a text message. You know what I'm going to do?

I'm going to start on the mystery shopping report, and I'll get to the text after that because I want to be sure that we get through the mystery shopping report. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, you can vote. Give us a text and let us know your rating on the Mystery Shopping Report. And the Mystery Shopping Report is from Prime Auto in West Palm Beach. Now back to the recovering car dealer. This week, we continue to take a look at buy-heer, pay-here dealers in our listening area. In the past, Earl Stewart and Cars has not paid enough attention to these independently-owned lots that primarily cater to consumers who have bad credit and can't or,

think they can't buy a car from a more mainstream finance outlet. Another thing that motivated this is on my Facebook page, I had a nice woman post a comment to me and saying that one of the things she does is take care of people that have difficult time buying cars because of their credit and she wanted to know some names of more recommended buy here, pay here lots. And we talked earlier in the show about people with bad credit who were victimized. being the theme of the show. So this mystery shopping report fits right in.

Buy Here Pay Here Lots Act is both the seller and the lender. They hold their own paper. That's a jargon, car dealer jargon, for financing cars directly instead of going through a lender. These dealers typically charge the highest interest rates allowed in our state and often demand some unusual conditions for their customers to secure credit with them. For example, many require weekly payments instead of typical monthly payments because most of people of low income are paid weekly and not monthly they do this to ensure that their customers weekly paychecks will be used for their car payments avoiding the risk that it will be spent on other needs first now i call myself the recovering car dealer one of the things i recovered from i used to have a buy here pay here a lot

and it was on okotruby boulevard back in the 70s and 60s called Stewart's like cars. And that's exactly what we did. We sold old junk cars and we charged, they had weekly payments and it was for the people that had really, really bad credit that couldn't afford to buy cars anywhere else. I got out of that business. I don't like that business, but it has its place. So I speak from experience and I am a recovering car dealer. Many buy here pay here lots actually install GPS, satellite trackers, so they can have the ability to locate their collateral, also known as the customer's car, anywhere in the world. Some even install engine kill switches that allow them to disable the customer's car if a payment isn't made on time.

How horrible is that? I mean, you take your kids to school and you go back to start your car and you're stuck. And you're stuck. And then you're humiliated. We've been pitched that by vendors selling that system to us. Exactly. Things have changed quite a bit, haven't they, since the 70s, whenever you'd go out to see if your car was still parked out front, and it was gone in the dark of the night? Imagine your car stalled at a traffic light, and that happened.

Some of these practices sound ridiculous, and if we don't have time to, and we don't have time to debate their merits here, but suffice it to say that buy here, pay here, lost deal with an enormous amount of risk and employ these tactics and charge high interest in consideration of this. Now, I can speak from personal experience.

I didn't make very much money as Stewart's select cars to buy your payer a lot. Matter of fact, it was a nightmare. You know, I barely made money. So one thing that can be said for high interest rates is when you operate this type of business, you have to charge high interest rates. That's not to say that some of these buy-here, pay-here lots aren't making a lot of money. And not to say that some of these tactics are beyond what, you should do to human beings to collect your money we also discuss the need that buy

here pay our lots fulfill for certain customers in many cases these consumers have no other option for personal transportation their livelihood depends on the service this is why it is worthwhile for us to look into this kind of business the potential for exploitation of needy people is always there we've also looked at how these small independent dealers are handling the Takata recall crisis. We've had mostly poor results with the buy-hear payers, just as likely as the big dealers, as frequently with the big dealers, to mislead their public, the customers above the safety of the vehicle they're selling. Last week, however, we were amazed to discover a buy-here payer that earned an A-plus on a Takata test. We hardly ever give A's to the salesman or the dealer,

To a buy here, pay here? Amazing. A plus to the dealer and to the salesperson. If you tuned in, you heard the easy pay car in Stewart, Stewart, Florida, actually put the brakes on the sale of a Dakota car. They admitted the car was not safe and rightfully placed on, we put them on a recommended deal list found at good dealer, bad dealer list.com. So if you're thinking about buying a car, go to good dealer, baddealer, list.com, and that's where we put our good dealer, and our bad guys and we're starting to develop a separate list for buy here pay here and this is in response to the posting we had on my facebook page easy pay cars is owned by the wallis auto group and they're like their parent company they're trustworthy place to buy a car so we're going to try to develop several more buy here pay here and that was the purpose of

this shop I hold in my hand this week we visited a buy here pay here that built itself is the oldest independent car dealership in Palm Beach County. If you've ever stayed up watching TV at 3 a.m. or early on a Sunday morning, you know exactly who they are. Prime Otos buys up hours of television time for something best described as an extended commercial. The ad stars, The Deal Man, dressed in goofy, bright colored clothes. I love the commercial. I mean, I'll stop. They're addictive.

If I accidentally flip past it on. the channel, I stop in my tracks, I call Nancy, and we stare at it. It's hypnotizing to watch the deal man. It's a ritual for me to watch that. In just a second, we're going to show you what we're talking about. He speaks in the silly, made-up accent. It's an odd combination of rural and urban. You miss his costume. Oh, yeah. He's got a nose and glasses like a Groucho Marx thing. At top hat. A top hat. Stu, excuse me for a second. Has his uniform ever changed?

The deal man introduces each vehicle for sale and includes each offer with his trademark. So now we're going to put it on. You're not going to in person. I will try. First, I got to watch. Well, first is the introduction, and then there is the description of the car. Okay.

Cue the deal man, okay? Hey, the deal man here for prime motors. Palm Beach County's oldest and largest, independent auto deal. in Okotopia Boulevard right here in West Palm Beach. Prime models always has a great selection of extra clean. Cars, trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles to choose from. Now pay attention now because here are just a few of them. I can't believe it.

Prime models has a super sporty and totally loaded 2012 Nissan Central S.R. with factory navigation, Bluetooth, see the alloys moonroof, and so much more, for only $6,9.90. That's brilliant. Okay. $59.

I can't go that high. You can't get that high, yeah. That's falsetto there. But that's everything is something $9.90. Yeah. So anyway, even if you don't want to buy a car, if you've got perfect credit, try to find the deal man on television.

It's better than... Or just go on YouTube. Go to YouTube. Go to YouTube. They got all those commercials on there. Okay. Back into the Mystery Shopping Report, we started this mission by finding a 2008 Honda Cord

EXL on the Prime models website. It was being offered for sale for 9990. Sorry. Using savercar.gov, the NISA website, we quickly discovered it had two open safety recalls,

including a passenger side to Scott Airbag. Parts for their recall are available from Honda, but the repairs had not been made. We double-checked Honda's recall site and auto-check and confirmed the recalls information on the Nissan site was accurate. Agent X called Prime Otos to make sure it was still there and available for sale. He spoke to Scotty, who confirmed it was and arranged to meet Agent X at 7 p.m. They're on October Boulevard, right? Prime Onos, yeah, West Palm Beach. You know, I hear this right here. I arrived at prime autos at 7 p.m.

The place was old. Been there. It's old. I've been there for 50 years. Actually, I thought I was the oldest car dealer, but I've only been, okay. It was Scotty greeted me. He asked me what car I wanted to drive home today. I told him we had spoken on the phone.

I was the guy who won the 2008 Accord. Great, he said. Led me to the car about 20 feet from where we were standing. Scotty opened the door and watched me poke around. I told him it looked pretty good. It was really clean. I asked him if they checked the cars out to make sure they're mechanically sound. Scotty told me how they acquire the cars. They said they were very picky and would not buy from auctions like that was a good way to buy cars. He proudly stated that they buy all their cars from reputable local dealers. We make sure the selling dealer performs an inspection and makes

repairs before Prime Auto buys them. Now, I'll put my dealer head on for a minute. Virtually 99.9% of the dealers all sell their trade-ins and wholesale cars at auctions. Very few sell them directly. And I would seriously question the fact that they're reputable dealers are selling these cars to Prime Autos, but that's just my humble opinion. I ask again, so you're telling me there are no mechanical issues? His thoughts was that Prime Autos has been They're in the same location for 48 years, and they have never had a problem with a reputation. I moved on. I asked if we could take it for a spin.

Scotty said, yes, got the keys and the plate. We took off down Okachobee Boulevard. On the ride, I asked if it had ever been in an accident. Question number one. Scotty said, he didn't think so. I asked about seeing a Carfax report. You're going to love this. Scottie said they did not believe in Carfax.

They do not believe in Carfax, and they only believe in selling Prime Auto's used cars for reasonable prices. For the record, we do not believe in vehicle history ports. We do. We do believe, yeah, we do. This 2008 Honda shows there have been two accidents, including one that was disabled. But that's laughable. But it's also a little sad because when you say you don't believe in Carfax, it tells you how, the people that typically patronize by your payer.

To sell, if, I'm a car dealer. They don't need Carfax. If I told one of my customers, I didn't believe in Carvax Report, they would run screaming out into the street. Absolutely. It'd be like saying that I didn't believe in air. I don't believe in the earth rotates around the sun, or revolves, I should say. We returned to the lot, and Scotty asked me to come inside and sit at his desk

so we could discuss the numbers. A man named Mr. Beach came over to congratulate me on my purchase. He picked up the keys on the desk, read the plastic tag, and walked away. Scotty said he had to go to talk to Mr. Beach and ask how I would be paying for the Honda. I said I was getting the money from my credit union. They never heard this before at Prime Auto. He confirmed this by asking, so you're not financing it with us. He left to go to talk with Mr. Beach and return quickly.

He presented a handwritten order. worksheet that called it was called the finance approval worksheet he said i was getting the manager special a discount off the post at nine thousand hundred nine thousand nine hundred nine hundred nine hundred ninety dollars price was nine thousand two hundred twenty dollars he dropped the two hundred eighty nine dollar dealer prep and the one eighty nine ninety processing fee uh tag was cody cash and delivery i asked why they weren't charging the dealer fees he said it was the manager special I started the worksheet for a minute and asked Scottie, before I agree to buy this car,

can you tell me if there are any safety issues that could concern me? He asked me, like what? I replied, like something that could go wrong and kill me. Scotty said he'd go ask Mr. Beach. He returned about five minutes later with printed copies of a recall report from NHTSA. Very casually, he told me, yeah, there's a Dakota recall and a seatbelt recall.

He should take the car to a Honda dealer to get those fixed. It's free. I thanked him for pointing that out. He suggested we write it up so I could drive the Accord home. I asked him he could do better than 9,000-220. I said I had looked up that the car on Kelly Blue Book said it would sell for $6,500. Scottie was visibly irritated. He shot back.

Kelly Blue Book doesn't sell cars. I backed off. I asked him again about the recall. He suggested I call a Honda dealer. we'll wrap it up this way you can see the way people are treated they're used to treating selling cars to desperate people

they're not used to selling cars to people that are educated that are informed that can finance the car themselves much less pay cash they did finally when pushed

pushed hard admit the car had a safety recall they probably didn't know it has safety recall they ran it right there they probably didn't care if it has safety regal. They probably don't even look. They've never been asked that question. Never.

In 48 years. So now we have the dilemma. Do we recommend prime autos? I say if we don't recommend prime autos, just like Easy Pay and Stewart, we had to point out the fact that the car had a defective airbag. These people that are buying cars from die-hear-payer are victimized regularly and that's just the way it is.

You can put all the buy-hear payers out of business and people who desperately need transportation won't be able to buy a car. Let's vote. Rick? I'm going to go with a C for Scotty and a C for the dealership because I think

I don't see where they did anything dishonest but I think they did admit to the recall when we brought it up so I'm going to C for a pass. I give them a D. I just in like the remark about Carfax or Kelly

Blue Book and you know it's a minefield out there C minus especially because of the questions about mechanical soundness that he didn't address it he just says we buy them from good places yeah I'll give them the highest score I'm going to give them both a B and I'm considering the company of the source and the

need for buy here pay her lots and at the same breath I say to all you regulators and politicians and legislators out there you see what's going on and I'm having to pass a passing score to somebody that's endangering the lives of the citizens of Florida. And it's your fault, Rick Scott and Pam Bondi and all you politicians, it's your fault. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us here at Earl Stewart on Cars.

We'll see you next weekend, same time, 8 to 10 o'clock. Have a wonderful weekend. I don't know.