Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.22.2023 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Sutherlin Nissan of Vero Beach

Episode Date: July 22, 2023

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels north to visits a local Nissan dealer to see what they have on the lot and how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2023 Nissan Sentra sedan. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. We're back here, how not to get ripped off by a car dealer team. Doing this for a long time or live. We're right here in the studios in North Palm Beach, Florida. The True Old East Stations are several instances. South Florida, but we also stream all over the world. We have Facebook, facebook.com, forward slash Earl on Cars.

And we have YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars. So a lot of ways you can stream us or listen to us. We hope that you listen to us for a while. I don't expect you to listen to us for the full two hours because we're on from now. That's about 8 a.m. Eastern Time to 10 a.m. Eastern Time. every Saturday, two hours, mainly talk. It's live talk, which is exciting. There's just not a lot of that going on now.

There's so many other areas of entertainment. Well, I don't think live talk will ever die. I mean, there's nothing that can match it. It's exciting. It's fun, educational. It's real. I mean, you can't, if you play the game honestly, which we do, We don't screen our callers, we don't ask him, what are he going to say, or are you happy, are you mad, do you have a constructive criticism, or you just want to tell early stupid?

We accept all calls, and we get mainly very good calls. In fact, the calls we suddenly realize had been the backbone of this show. we literally learn more from you callers and I think that we teach the people that are listening extremely educated, well-informed people from the streets of the USA and around the world. We hear experiences at car dealers that are very educational to everyone listening

and we have advice and suggestions, criticism. So we prioritize your calls. I'm going to give that telephone number out and we hope you have time to call us. Please write it down because I know you're not going to want to call us right away, but if you tune in and tune out sometime before 10 a.m. Eastern time,

call us at 877-960-9960. That's 877-960-9-60. And you can make a note if you have something on your mind and call in any time during that time. We prioritize your calls, and we have other means of reaching us, which I'm going to give you the information to in just a minute. But the calls, whenever they come in, Nancy Stewart is sitting to my left,

and she just did what I was going to say she would do. She tapped me on the shoulder because we have a live caller. Good morning, everyone, and welcome. We have John from Palm City. Welcome, John. Good morning. Good morning. I want to discuss a topic that Nancy spoke to two weeks ago.

She touched on it, and it's amount of car insurance and the way it's going through the roof. It's unbelievable. It's not only on a car. It's on a house. It started in California, and it's spread now to all of the state of Florida, and companies like Farmers Mutual and AAA have pulled out completely. And the reason that they stated on it are several. one is the cost of new replacement parts on a car if it's hit or a stolen two is a stealing theft theft is out of sight unbelievable and naturally the availability of replacement car replacing a lease car while your car is being fixed but here's what i want to say the number one thing is car theft and i've been there i hope nobody has

How's the experience that I did? When I lived in New York, I came from a flight at LaGuardia Airport, and I, with the luggage, came to pick up the car, and it was gone. It was gone with the wind. No sign of it. How to take a cab home. And it's unbelievable. What's gone, Memphis, Tennessee, there was 11,000 cars stolen in 2022.

That's twice as much as 2021. that had actually set up a sky tower in the heart of town with the police look overall, like an overall view. It got so bad. Columbus, Ohio is another one. Tremendous theft, Buffalo, New York. It could go on and on, Minneapolis. It's unbelievable, and one of the big guilty people was Kea and Hyundai.

Kia and Hyundai had a problem with stolen cars. 3.8 million Hyundai's that were available to be stolen. 4.5 million keys. It's been corrected with software updates, but the Attorney General's of 17 of the United States had to sue them to get the recall on those cars. So it's completely out of sight. It's unreal.

I don't know where we're heading because the car insurance renewals, especially, are so high, it's just unbelievable. And I just want to ask, oh, another thing, too, two weeks ago, if you saw the fire in Newark, New Jersey, on the Italian liner, and had 1,200 used cars who were being shipped out, completely out of the United States to who knows what countries, and this is another problem that's going on. One of my three cars that were stolen, they were all Toyotas,

were found on the way to the Throgdeck Bridge in Queens they ran out of gas on the expressway and they presumed that it was being taken out of state or out of the country. But I just want to mention, and I want to, you know, we're back to the old bars on the steering wheel. I want to see if Rick recommends using that or what he thinks about a deterrence

that we could prevent from the stolen cars being done. If you've got two identical cars sitting side by side and one of them has that big old steering wheel club locked on the steering wheel, that one's going to still be there because it takes more time to defeat that and they're going to go for the easier car. So, yeah, I totally agree that those can be worth the money to get them and use them, but you've got to remember to use it. Well, that's a great suggestion. And it's not just a club, but any theft deterrent that the thief, potential thief, thinks is on that car is going to make him go to the car beside it that has nothing. I mean, you can have a glass edge, you can have an artificial sticker that says this car protected by GPS. And as long as they, why should they take a chance? Why not take a car that's totally unprotected and they're sure of it?

So I think that's a great idea. You don't have to spend a whole lot of money on theft. to turn, just put a sticker on the car saying it is covered. A lot of companies used to sell these little devices that you could kind of wired in and have a light that would show up on your dash that would just sit and blink. And that's all it did. But it made them think that you had a car alarm. And if the guy next to it doesn't have that, obviously they're going to go for the easier target. It's like security cams around a home or a business. You can put up, you can go on Amazon now and you can buy a fake security camera that looks.

is authentic, maybe more so than a real one. And you put those up that cost maybe $10 a piece instead of $100, and people think you have security camps. They rob your neighbor's house instead of yours. Yeah, exactly. You know, there was a time that I didn't get out of my car unless I put that locking bar on my steering wheel. There was a time when nobody got out of their car,

almost nobody, and they did the same thing. My favorite thing I always heard about that was somebody would say, oh, well, They can take liquid nitrogen and pour on the lock and break it with a hammer. That takes some time. Well, I'm just wondering, how many people wander around with liquid nitrogen on them? I mean, I've never had any of that in my life, and I'd love to play with some. That's a good one.

How do you like that, John? Thank you, John. You're always a great caller. Do you have any other? No, I bought that bar, and I never had a car stolen after that. Yeah. But is it that easy for, if the car was exported, like this show, ship in New Jersey. Is it true

Arrow would probably answer that? That many of the cars, they don't require the title of the ownerships, and they're not even on a national register of stolen cars, and they just get shipped out, one, two, three. Is any truth in that? Yeah, there's the few problems,

serious problems we've had in our dealership, and it's been a long time, knock on wood, but professional thieves, they do exactly that. It usually happen around an area where a port exists, like the port of Miami, the port of Fort Lauderdale.

So people will come all the way up to Palm Beach County, jump in a car, drive it straight to the port, put it on a boat, and it goes to Panama, where it goes to some other country that's not too careful about checking cars when they come in. So yes, that happens all the time, and that's a real pro. And the real pro is awful tough to stop

because he's really educated and knows what to steal or what not to steal and how to get rid of it real fast. Well, everybody, be cautious. The bar is a good example to use. Exactly. Thanks for the call, John. Stay tuned for our mystery shopping report.

It's going to be very interesting. You're going to enjoy it. All right, guys. Thank you again for being there. Thank you. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. Don't forget your anonymous feedback. We love hearing from everyone who uses Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

We are going to stay with the phones, and we're going to go to Lance, who's become a regular caller from Tennessee. Good morning, Lance. Good morning, Arnold. Hey, Lance. Boy, now, you have to stay tuned because the dog of the week that we have is a coonhound, and I know that's kind of a southern thing, coon hunting, so we got a coonhound named Sully that were,

trying to find a home for do you need a coon hound i'm sitting here looking at one a matter of fact it said was my first wife you're a hoot lance today you were uh you talked about educated and informed listeners we felt like that you were reaching out to us this morning with that comment and we came up with a little song to start the day's show off. Let's hear it. If you're sitting alone and no place to go, it's every morning or a third on the radio. Do you mind if I save that audio clip?

We can use that on our introduction. We'll use that for advertising. If you'll sign off on it, That was really good. Well, I'll sign anything. I do, too. We got... I listened to the interview of the current president of the Ford Motor Company on CNBC this week.

He certainly is changing the face of Ford. I'm not exactly. be curious for the best. And I think that Ford is facing a revolt in dealers. You know, everybody in this world is not comfortable buying a car

on the internet. Yeah, a lot of people aren't. You're absolutely right. It's a generational thing. And when old guys like me die off and nothing is left but the young folks, everybody's going to be using the internet.

But I think if you're born in the 40s, 50s or 60s, the whole idea of committing your hard-earned cash via a smartphone or a computer leaves a little chill. You know, you're a little bit nervous, and you're absolutely right about that. And, you know, Lance, it gives you – it gives some of us some protection, and it gives us control to go to the Internet. but myself you know maybe it's my age I don't know I would rather go into the into the dealership yeah pick the product off the shelf put it on your arm pay for it and go home it's a it's a simple thing to do so a lot of people still feel that way well you all talk a lot about A and I you know we've got a tremendous amount of A here but not much I was wondering you're going with that that's a good one

have a good show today thank you Lance stay tuned for the mystery shopping report it's going to be a doozy we will yes definitely you want to hear this one Lance sets the mood for the day yes

ladies and gentlemen I want to let everyone know that we do give $50 for the first two new lady callers ladies give us a call let us know what your experience was in service sales lease or if you

you just want to call and say hello. We'd love to hear from you. And it's a win-win situation. I'm trying to build a platform for the ladies right here on Earl on Cars. And we're doing a pretty good job of it. You sure are. So join us this morning. The first two new lady callers, $50. We are going to go to speaking of lady callers. We're going to go to Pat. She's calling us from New Jersey. Yay, New Jersey. And she is a first-time caller. Good morning, Pat. Good morning. Welcome.

We're great. Nice to hear from you, Pat. You just won yourself $50 this morning. And when we're finished talking, if you would like to stay on the line and get your contact information from Jeremy, it will allow me to send you a check for $50. Wow. Thank you so much. You're welcome. I wanted to ask, Earl, a couple of questions.

I'm in 2008, 3,000. And it's, I have 176,000 miles on it. And the main battery is still, it keeps charging up. It never seems to let me down. I was just wondering how often I should get my car tuned up. Well, that's my answer, but I'm going to turn this over to Rick. My answer is, check your owner's manual, and they will tell you exactly when it. Rick, what's your comment?

A tune-up on a Prius is simply replacing the spark plugs, and it takes a little while extra on those because the way the engine is designed, it's kind of buried under what's known as the wiper tray. So the cost on that, let me get my head around the numbers here. You're looking at about $300 for replacing those spark plugs. And that needs to be done about every 120,000 miles. So if you haven't done that, it's definitely time to do those spark plugs. That's all there is for a tune-up. Your coolant is due at 150,000 miles.

And every 50,000 miles after that, and this is coming straight from the Toyota factory recommended maintenance. Other than that, it's just oil changes and air filters in that. But as for the HV battery, the computer keeps such a close watch on it that if there is a problem with that battery, it'll put up a warning light to tell you. Otherwise, you kind of have to have some faith in it and just go ahead and drive it and enjoy it. because trust me, a lot of people get concerned about the animation showing where the battery level is on that screen. All that is is an animation to help encourage people to drive in a more fuel-efficient manner. But it really correlates somewhat to what the actual battery is doing.

But that big hybrid battery is never going to be fully charged or fully discharged. It's always going to be going up and down, up and down, because it's constantly using power and getting power back into it. Pat, how many miles you have on that 2006, Prius? 2008. 2008. 2008. 176.

Yeah, it's getting up close to the warranty. Have you done a spark plugs on it yet? Yes, yes. Okay. I did. I get it late, though. I did it late around $150. That's all right.

Better late than never, Pep. And did you do the coolant? Have you had the coolant replaced yet? I'll have to ask Mike the guy that I take the car to. I haven't been to the dealership in maybe years, but that's one dog. That's totally fine. But there are two. I don't have to ask him.

I don't remember. Good idea. There are two cooling systems on that. one is for the engine and one is for the hybrid system and i i do highly recommend the toyota pink super long life coolant because it is specifically designed for the toyotas especially uh but yeah other than that and anybody can do that fluid change but uh yeah you're in good shape i would i would keep running that car and uh oh yeah and pat i'm going to drive that darling right into the ground yeah pat you know you know and i know you're driving a great car

It doesn't require a whole lot of maintenance. So for that, you sound like as if you're an educated consumer. Wish you a lot of luck. And if you don't have any other questions, I will put you in contact with Jeremy now. How's that sound? Okay, great. Okay. Have a good day, everyone.

Give us a call again, and thank you for helping us build this platform here for the ladies. Okay. Our number here is 877-960. 9960 and you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. And remember, I have $50 for the next female, new female caller. So give us a call. We are going to go to Charles, who's calling us from Connecticut. Good morning, Charles. Good morning. I've got a question or two for Rick. Pros and cons and costs. I'm looking for a second.

opinion. And he may want to grab a paper and pencil or just answer these as they come up. I have a 2009 XC-70 Volvo station wagon. It's got 71,500 miles on it. I drive it about five months, maybe three, four thousand miles during the summer, and then I'm back to North Palm Beach. And it's the six-cylinder 3.2-liter engine. I got a suggested list of repair, not repairs, but preventive maintenance probably. One is a coolant flush, and I just heard something called long-life coolant, which is interesting. $460. Spark plugs, $590, and I do know that Volvo recommends replacing those at 75,000 miles.

engine and cabin filter, $327, a brake flush, $251. And then what precipitated all of this was the fact that there's a crack in the windshield washer reservoir. And I don't know if that's just a tube that runs there or if it's the actual reservoir. But anyway, net cost $2,275. dollars and and i do i do plan on keeping the car because it uh it's solid there's no rust 2009 Volvo station wagon seemed to me to be a pretty solid keeper so i hope you're not throwing up there rick no sorry i just had a little bit hey charles we all there was a moment there when you hit me with the air filter car we're gasping that was like wow okay we're we're

Where did this happen? Is this in Connecticut? Yeah. This is up in Connecticut. This is not back down in Florida. Okay. I'm not super familiar with the prices on Volvo. However, the coolant flush, I would check the owner's manual for your recommended maintenance

and see if that's a Volvo required thing at that time. Because like Toyota says, the first one is do it $150,000. And the super long life is simply what Toyota calls our, pink coolant and so I would I would check and see what Volvo uses you know in their recommended how much was it how much was his where they charge him like 460 yeah Charles Charles about the bottom line is if you haven't checked your your owner's manual you should because don't do anything don't buy anything from an independent repair or a cardiovascular repair that is not in your owner's manual

recommended by the manufacturer so absolutely I would go with that for the spark plugs and the coolant and check and see if that brake flush really needs to be done. As for those air filters, go on YouTube and look that up, and I would bet that if you can't handle replacing it yourself, you can find some young guy nearby that can watch that YouTube, replace those two filters, and it shouldn't cost you more than, even if you bought the filters from Volvo, it shouldn't cost more than $100 for the the parts and normally replacing air filters is about a five to ten minute job even a cabin air filter some of the worst ones i've seen the hardest there are to do they take 10 to 15 minutes 300 and some odd dollars charles go to go to consumer reports they check your consumer reports

i have them pulled up here just i put in consumer reports car repair and they have a advice for you You put your zip code in, you tell them what car you're making model, and they will tell you the recommended independent end dealer repairs, and they will also give you an estimate of the fair price of whatever operation is recommended. So consumer reports, car repairs, and put your zip code in New Jersey where you're located, they'll give you the place that are honest, trustworthy, and have fair prices, and tell you what those prices would be. Yeah, because on live, a cool one should be about $200.

for a Volvo, the average is $219. $219 for the coolant flows, yeah, is the average. Okay, yeah, well, I mean, I'm thinking that the car is at this point 14 years old, so it's probably time to get the coolant out of there and replace it. And every now and then, Rick, I've noticed that when I start the car up, it will misfire for a few seconds. So I quickly turn the engine off and start it up again with no problems, and I'm guessing that may be related to the spark plugs age.

Who knows? That can certainly be if they've got a little bit of fouling on the spark plugs. Or I have seen some engines that when they sit for a while, a little bit of oil or coolant can seek past some of the seals and slowly go down into the cylinder. And you'll get just a small amount in there. But when you first start the engine after it sat overnight, it's got to burn that off.

so it can make a little misfire or even some smoke for a first minute or two. If that's all it's doing and it runs normally and smoothly once it's warmed up a little, I wouldn't be too concerned on it. I would just keep driving until it gets worse. For the main reason being that an older car like that, you don't want to put a whole lot of repairs in it because you're not going to really see a big return financially in the value of the car later. But you also don't want to waste a bunch of money on it and trying to fix things that really don't need to be fixed on a car that you would rather, you know, trade in later or sell later.

It's not going to change that value very much. I would just keep driving it and get the best use you can out of it. Well, speaking of continuing to drive it, I'm wondering if there's anything else that you'd recommend like belts or hoses, because I don't want to be stranded along, you know. who knows where with a busted belt or something like that i go with a visual inspection if the if the houses aren't leaking they're good if the belt doesn't have cracks in it it's good charles thanks so much for the call you want to stay tuned for the mystery shopping report if you want to you know open the door into your situation with pricing you want to listen to the mystery shopping report from southern nissan sutherland

nice on thank you one one quick final question one quick final question wait times on a highlander hybrid steve highlander hybrid is is over a year right now um yeah the um those you asked about the toughest one right now to get um that in a in a sienna the hybrids are just second half the year are seeing a increase uh pickup in production so the pace at which they're getting delivered dealers will pick up a little bit but um it's still going to we have people on our waiting list right now that have been on on it for over a year and we'll be getting there shortly after waiting a year that also depends on the what the dealer's charging and uh well because we we have a fair price MSRP we don't

go over that yeah we have a list but uh if you find that if you find that model on our toilet dealer's show them they're probably asking several thousand dollars over for a hybrid Well, I want to buy it from you, but okay, I'll let you move on to the next caller. Okay. And, in Charles, it's amazing how your order can be expedited whenever you don't get, I'm going to call it crazy about the color of your vehicle and a lot of other things. You can get a lot of quicker. A77-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530.

We are going to go to Elisa from Pompano Beach, and she is. a first time caller good morning Lisa good morning how are you we're well thank you thank you for calling and if you stay on I came across you folks I really am oh thank you so much there is a lot of information to take in isn't there if you stay on the line you can talk to Jeremy in our control room and he will get your contact information that will allow me to get you a check for $50 okay that's awesome thank you what can we do for you this morning okay so i caught ending your show um last week when i was driving to work and today i didn't have to work so that's why i'm person do have a youtube channel yes we do we do

you do yes i just look for yeah just look for earl on cars um on youtube but you could just go directly youtube.com slash or slash earl on cars but using the search yeah searching on youtube is what i do every time i get up okay that's awesome um so when i caught the end of Well, it was early in the morning because I usually work at 8, so it was like I caught, like, let's just say it was quarter of 8 last week. I have a Toyota 2005 Green Camry. Now, I think it was a woman that was speaking, actually, and it was something about the car paint, and then she said that you, it was something about the insurance, the insurance has to, and so she has to rent a car in the time that the car is being repainted. Is that true? Yeah, she had, the paint was peeling off on her car.

Yeah, mine too. Right, and there was a Hyundai, and there is a class action suit, and there might be an extended, like, a warranty campaign to have that repaired by the dealer at no cost, and that's what she was asking about. Oh, it was a Hyundai. It wasn't a Toyota. Okay. Yeah. Because I'm seeing a lot of Toyotas around here that are the same thing. Yes, well, Toyota went through the same thing, and particularly on the white pearl paint that they had on a lot of models, and that campaign expired two years ago. of course it did yeah but it's going on for a while yeah and a lot of people are coming to like our dealership

gosh we're repain hundreds of cars and it didn't cost the customers just because you're out on mileage or time on a recall campaign of this nature sometimes especially if you're a good customer if you

if you're a Toyota customer if you patronize a particular dealer and they really value as a customer they'll stretch on the mileage and time on these campaigns. We've had people come in with delamination paint problems that have been out by, you know, a year or two or more and mileage-wise. And there's something called goodwill and customer loyalty. There's a couple of other hidden clauses that manufacturers use to help out good customers. So find a dealer

that'll go to bat for you and call the manufacturer and ask them to stretch the warranty on what you're trying to get repaired. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, the Florida Sun just does a job in your car. The other question is, oh, I don't know if you put, because you guys are in Palm Beach County. I'm in Broward. I don't know if you've been seeing it on the local news

about people stealing the license plates. No, I haven't seen that. I haven't seen that up here, no. No, we have. So it's been in like Lighthouse Point, Pompano, Boka. they're stealing, and some of the times I can't get them off, so they're leaving them bent. And so I don't know if there's any, so if you haven't been hearing the story, I don't know how you, other than, you know, having a license plate, I mean, at my house that I live in, I have the security cameras,

and I have the, you know, the little beeping thing in the car, but I just, there's no way to really secure a license plate. Yeah, because I'm sure. Well, because the license plate itself is pretty flimsy, so you can put big bolts on it, but it'll still pop off. There is, you know, law in Florida, you know, you can't. You can't cover up any information that a cop would have to see on the road, but there could be maybe a license plate frame that bolts on the security thing. Rick's nodding affirmatively. So take a look at like an auto parts store or Amazon or something like that

for a secured license plate frame. Rick? They make mounting bolts for the license plate where you can use a metal frame that's heavy duty so they can't just bend the plate and break off the same. section with the sticker and certain bolts they'll make for mounting them in that are an uncommon type of bolt so it uses a special what's called a torx bit and that makes it to where they can't just come up and unscrew the bolts to yank it off real quickly so those those are two ways that you can help to protect your license plate yeah definitely will slow them down also but

that's a great idea you can catch one camera yeah i'm looking at one last question But it's not too much. So my husband has a 2007 Dodge Ram, and it has like over 100,000, like, let's say 100,000 miles on it. And now his AC, and it could be, so he used that, I don't even know what's called, and he's not a mechanic type, right? He has a special, specialty of his own that he does, but he doesn't know anybody. Put that coolant, I guess, you know, the stuff you put into the, you know what it's called. The R-134? It's a can, and it has, like, a little thermometer or thing on it.

Is that making sense to you? STP? He's using one of those recharge kits for the, well, for Frion. Frion is what used to be called R12. It's kind of like a brand name for it. Yeah, yeah. With air conditioning, it's actually best to have a professional do it because if you get too much air in the system,

it winds up actually mixing with the R-134 and the chemical. there and can create a mild acid that will start to destroy the other components. That's why a proper air conditioning job before it's recharged, it has to be vacuumed out completely so that there's no air left in the system

because otherwise that can actually wind up damaging the other aluminum components. Cost you a lot more money in the long run. So how much do you think a job like that would go for? It would have to be diagnosed and depend on what needs to be done. Yeah, and because we have so many callers

Lisa that are backed up. I'm going to leave you with this real quick. Go and go to Amazon. Amazon's choice, get yourself an anti-theft license plate frame. It's tamper-proof. $20, $21. Yeah. You can go that. And as far as your peeling paint is concerned, I can't tell you the number of people that have had that problem. Whether there's a will, there's a way. You can get that taken care of and have it paid for. Lisa, thank you so much for calling and helping us build this platform here. have a wonderful weekend we're going to go to john who's calling us from steward good morning john good morning john you off there john good morning john i hear him yeah there is okay you can hear me yes now my brother-in-law uh nine months ago ordered a rab four hybrid for me guys and so he just

got a uh email or whatever paul and said it's in So he's up in New York, so he's going to come down in the next few days and get it, I guess. But he wanted me to ask you, you guys, I know you sell it at MSRP, but do you guys ever, in the times that we're into, you ever negotiate lower than that? No. No, that's probably, you just stick out. Right? No, that wouldn't be fair to the other customers.

It's a one-price system, even before this whole crazy inventory system, you know, before the inventory dried up and everybody's waiting for their cars. back then, you know, our one price was much lower, but, you know, we just, yeah, now, but here's the thing, his is already in, but, you know, whatever the market is right now, we will never go over MSRP, and when the market goes to MSRP, we will be lower. Yeah, eventually, eventually we will adjust prices, hopefully downward, because that'll mean that the fair price is below MSRP like it used to be three or four years ago, so when that time comes, we'll be adjusting our price. but we basically sell every car at the same price, the lowest price. We don't, the President of the United States is going to pay the same price as my brother. Yeah, okay, that's cool. Hey, one more quick question.

My neighbor, it kind of piggybacks on that one guy that wanted to pay all that money. You've got one of those Audi station or SUV things, like a Q50 or something like that. And so he came back yesterday and he said, how are you doing? He said, not too good. He said, I just paid $800. He went there, you had an oil change. They rotated his tires, and he put in a new battery. And I thought that was like nuts.

Don't you think that's way too high or what? I think it's, I mean, when you said Audi, I'm thinking, I don't know. I mean, because we hear like, you know, luxury manufacturers, I mean, the cost of simple maintenance is really high. What you said was shocking, so it. Howdy doesn't have a counterpart automobile they manufacture that's for the common folks So I tell Cadillac people to buy To get their car fixes to Chevrolet,

Lexus people to get their cars fixed at a Toyota dealer But Audi, they stand alone And they just, you just pay all the money If you can find an independent foreign car dealer, German cars What about Volkswagen? Doesn't Volkswagen own Audi? It's a European car, but I know it's not Yeah, they do.

Volkswagen, Porsche, and Audi. Maybe pull into a Volkswagen dealership and see if they do. Do you have you priced that service at a Volkswagen dealer lately? I haven't, I haven't been to a Volkswagen dealership in 56 years. They're high-priced. 56 years. 56 years? You're rolling.

Got five callers on the line. If you bought his tires at a Firestone or somewhere, they rotate them free, and I know it doesn't, an oil change, it's not going to cost. I got a Porsche, and it costs. and it cost me $200 to get the oil change. But, I mean, yeah, that's stupid. That's crazy. But anyway, enjoy your show.

Thank you, John. Keep it up. Good to work. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to go to Mike, who's in Aventura. Good morning, Mike. Hi, good morning.

I have three quick questions. Number one, there's been a lot of talk, unfortunately, about AM radio going out of cars. I understand that a lot of car dealerships wants to get rid of AM radio. Is that true? That's true, but there's, I think, a couple of manufacturers. It's not the car dealers, it's the manufacturers. I think they've reversed course. Do you remember which manufacturer was?

It was at Ford? Yeah, Ford had announced that they're going to remove the AM radio from all the cars, and it's going back in. Other manufacturers are going ahead with it, so you won't be able to tune in AM. Yeah, Mike, remember, you can also stream AM if you have the streaming ability. So I think we're just seeing the evolution, the change of technology. We're streaming. It's kind of like broadcast television versus cable television.

People are streaming more, and the TV channels are going broke because people are going to Netflix or Hulu or someplace like that. So probably the next car you buy will have that streaming capability, and you'll be able to stream AM radio. Okay, and I have two more questions. Number one, is the government doing anything like I know a lot of the guide dog schools and a lot of the places who are against the electric cars because they don't make any noise for blind people like myself crossing the street?

That's true. the hybrids. Any time an electric vehicle is mandated that they have to make a sound. Each manufacturer has their own sound, but it's used kind of like a low whining. It has a mechanical sort of sound. Rick and I joke around and say it sounds like a scary chorus because it has a howling aspect to it, but that is true. Howling. I would definitely, you know what, if I needed to get a car, I would definitely get a car from you. Only I don't have a girlfriend yet to drive it. but I'd love to get a car.

He might meet one at the dealership. Yeah. And Mike, I have to wrap it up. Do you have any other questions? Yeah, one more thing. Do your radios in the cars have knobs or just a screen? That's a good question. Most of them will have one knob, and it's the screen and touch and push buttons.

Oh, wow. I miss the knobs because I used to love the DX on radios. But anyway, listen to this. in stations when I would go traveling with my friend. Anyway, thank you very much, and I enjoy your show. Mike, thank you so much for tuning, and we love hearing from you. Give us a call

more often. Okay, thank you. We know exactly who you are. Okay, we are going to go to Marty. He's one of our favorite caller from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty. Good morning. How's everybody doing? Great. We're talking fast. Yeah, I'm going to give you a fast

question. Okay. I intend I tend to buy my wife's CRV in a few months and I want to know once you buy the car the title obviously is in the name of Honda, the Honda

company. Right, or at least. So do you have to take all the paperwork that they send you once you buy it? Do you have to take it to the DMV to get it put in your name? If you're doing it on your own outside the dealership, yeah. If you do it through the Honda dealership,

They'll take care of the transfer. Yeah, but they're going to charge you for that. That's the problem. Yeah, probably. They charge you for everything, Martin. They shouldn't. They didn't used to years ago. And then when the junk fee craze thought that became one of the favorite loopholes.

They call electronic filing fee or, you know, they make up fees. It's profit. It should be overhead costs, but they try to charge you twice. Yeah, Ed Morris, who has your back, they want $999 to do that. So I could go to the DMV a lot cheaper than paying $999. For sure. Morris has got your back.

I'm trying to think of a play on that phrase. I'm going to come up with a good one. Okay. Now, the other question I have is, let's say when you get all this paperwork, you don't go to the DMV, but the car is registered in your name. Will you keep getting your registration if you never go to the DMV, but you pay more for a lease car? So the DMV still thinks it's leased, but you're going to end up paying more, right, every time you get your registration. If you don't bring it into the DMV, the pay-ball.

You have to, because at the point when the lease is expired, you know, that car is either going to go back to Honda or you're going to buy it. and when you buy it, it's going to change title. You can't leave it. Okay, so you have to bring it in. Yeah, you have to change the registration. Yeah, you have to transfer the tag. Now, one other thing is, if I had it where they send it to me, and all of a sudden you, you know, five months from now,

you had a Toyota that I wanted to buy. Could I just come in with all that paperwork to you and buy the Toyota, or do I still have to go through the rigmar rolls with the DMV? No, if you bought, if you had, well, if you just turned in, I'm not following you exactly, if you turn in the lease and you, if we're, and you, wait, you buy the hundred. No, in other words, I'm buying the car. You buy the hundred and then you trade, then you, exactly.

And I want to trade it in the next day once I get the paperwork from Honda. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you could, I mean, you might, you'd be writing, you know, that day on an, you know, on an, you know, on a valid tag, but you could get, yeah, that could happen. we wouldn't have to ever title or transfer the tag to the Honda. Okay. Well, I mean, actually, let me think about that a little. We'll get on to other callers, and if I come up with a different answer, I'll keep listening. All right. I'll announce it.

Well, I know they have my back, so right now, I'm definitely driving. I'm driving out doing it myself. All right, do that. That's better. That makes more sense. All right. Unless things change, now, Lisa's my life. be better in April again, but I doubt it. I think they will be. Well, I'm an optimist. I think things are

going to change by next April. So we'll see. I have to disagree with you because they're making too much money the other way. For sure. Okay. Thank you, Marty. Have a good weekend. Great to hear from you. We're going to go to Phil, who is calling us from Jupiter. Good morning, Phil. Yes, I was reading an article. I've 2017, Chris, and I was reading an article that said you should change the oxygen sensor. And I wanted to ask for Rick, I said, is that right? Or what is an oxygen sensor? If you get a check engine light on and the code says that the oxygen sensor, or they're now called air fuel ratio sensors, if the code says that that's the bad component, then yes, it should be replaced. Otherwise, nope. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Real quick, the sensor goes in the exhaust pipe and it determines how well the engine is burning the fuel and it tells the computer whether it needs to adjust more or less fuel for the amount of air coming into the engine. Okay. Yeah, and my other question is I was reading this article by the CEO of Toyota saying that they're looking into ordering. cars directly from the dealer if you all heard anything about that um nothing officially i mean you mean directly from the from directly from the manufacturer yes i mean from the manufacturer correct um uh no i haven't heard anything about that i i seriously doubt that the i have to say that that i think that's in the minds of all manufacturers In fact, my recent blog that I just wrote, The Nature of the Beast,

why car dealers take advantage of you, I wrote about that issue, and the manufacturers secretly want to sell cars directly. They see the success that Tesla is having and some of the other electric vehicle manufacturers. The electric vehicle manufacturers, because it's almost like a new product, were able to get around a loophole to get through the state laws that require that all cars be sold by dealers. But the manufacturers would much prefer to go direct because the car dealers aren't doing the job for them.

But I can almost guarantee you, Toyota would not make that public state. But now, in the privacy of the boardroom, when they're talking about what they'd really like to do, they probably have a master plan, but we dealers don't know about it. Officially, as looking at it was recently as April, Toyota's officially made, they said that is not in any of our plans. They're not going to do it. No, if they were honest, they would alienate the dealers, and the dealers are very powerful. I mean, you think, well, general owners is powerful, Toyota's powerful.

You take all the car dealers in the world, and you put them together, and they're very well organized, and they make a lot of money, and they have a huge number of PACs, political action committee, And they are lobbying-wise, they're like big insurance. I mean, they are really powerful. So the manufacturers want to keep us car dealers happy. And the last thing they want to say is let it leak out that they're thinking about selling directly and eliminating us as a retail arm of their business. Okay.

Well, thanks for the information. I appreciate it. You're very welcome. Give us a call again. That column that Earl wrote, I'm going to tell you, it's fantastic. You definitely want to take a read. It's filled with a lot of information. Earl just takes you from the beginning to the end

and why there is so much deception. That's nature of the beast. And I love the graphics. Why car dealers deceive you. It's scary. Josh saw it. He was scared. He told me, he called me afterwards and said,

why is dad sending me scary pictures? It was like a cookie monster nightmare. That's a cookie monster. Okay. There's a beast from X-Men. That's okay. I'm not that culturally. We are going to go to our favorite person.

He's a regular caller, educated, and, well, filled with a lot of humor. Roadrunner, Steve. Me, me. Good morning, everybody. Hello. Eric, last week, I was listening to the show, and I had to pull over because I was laughing so hard, when you came up with a word for peeling paint that comes off the car. I couldn't even pronounce it.

Banana lamination. Yeah, that's it. Say that three times. No, I can't. What I wanted to ask you about, I read a little article about Tesla Electric cars, that they go in for less service. Is that correct? Yes, that is true.

Okay. The thing was, you're tired, the tires on electric cars are not being looked at since you're going in for service for tire wear. Mm-hmm. That's true. Okay. Now, the other thing is when you buy your Tesla, does Tesla offer you a warranty on anything? I think, yeah. I don't know what the terms of the Tesla warranty are, but yeah, there is a manufacturer warranty. It's competitive. I think it's three-year-36,000. It's a very comprehensive warranty, competitively, competitively with all the other manufacturers. Okay, what about the batteries? Are those in a warranty? I think so. It's actually, it's a four-year, 50,000-mile basic warranty, and then the power train, which there isn't a power train.

Not the conventional sense of a power train. It's a hundred twenty-eight years. That should be an unlimited warranty. I'm going to say, I'm just going to guess, and I'm sure what people can correct me is that that power train has to do with the motors and the battery. Unlimited, is that onto an extended warranty? I don't know. I don't know if Tesla sells extended warranties, but I don't know if there's any unlimited aspect to the, okay, the battery, here we go. So the battery is, and it's different for models, but eight years or 150,000 miles is the battery, is the battery warranty on the Model S. That's the one you're driving.

The Model 3 is eight years, 100,000 miles, and on the other ones, Model 3, long range, Model Y, yada, eight years or 120,000 miles. Okay, so if you want, if 100,000 miles, you want to sell that Tesla, what are you going to get for it? Well, that's going to be a very good point of negotiation, because if you're selling a car that's coming up to the end, a lot less. I've been thinking about that. I think I'm going to get not much because the prices of electric cars are coming down, even on the expensive ones. And you just saw the other day where Ford cut the F-150 electric by $10,000. So the price war going on, Tesla and all the EV manufacturers are cutting prices. So that's not good for the guy that bought the car two years ago.

So nobody would recommend buying a used Tesla, right? I'd recommend you lease it. I mean, oh, a used Tesla? No, I think you could get a good buy. I think you could get a good buy on a used Tesla. I just wouldn't buy one of the 120,000 miles. No, yeah, that's true. Yeah, but you want to be sure the price cut compensates you for the, you know,

the fact that you've got a car that's near the battery failing. True, true. Now, tell me that word again, banana ramble. What was that? It's called banana lamination. Is that a real word? Yeah, that's a real world. Delamination. I want to look at the dictionary to look that word up.

All right, go ahead. It sounds like a medical condition. Yeah, that's what it sounds like. Banana denial emanation. And thank you for your answers. Thanks, Steve. Bye-bye. Nice to hear from you, Steve.

At the halfway point, we've got the Big Dog Ranch coming in, bringing in Sali. Sali is a coon hound. Yes, Rick. One quick note on the Tesla thing there. Donovan just came in. He says he mentioned the same warranty that Stu did, and he says that Tesla also does sell an extended two years additional warranty. I don't know whether they would extend the mileage or not. And he says the battery and drive train are covered for eight years,

and eight years is the minimum by law. California is 10 years. Okay. Oh, great information. Okay, folks. Thank you, Jonathan. You're the man. I love this guy.

He's awesome. He's amazing. He really is. He knows it all. As I was saying earlier, just a couple of minutes ago, we have the Big Dog Ranch Rescue Bringing in Salie is a Coonhound. and he is a Georgia boy you're going to love him when you see him

so stay tuned for that at the halfway point and then we'll get to the mystery shop But you don't want to adopt Sully if you have any raccoons of the house Right Or maybe you would Or if you want raccoons Or if you want raccoons

Right absolutely Hey 777 960 9960 We're going to hear from Stu and Rick And you can also text us at 772 4976530, your anonymous feedback. Don't forget, www. www. Your anonymous feedback.com. We are going to go over to Stu. We're going to hear from Anne-Marie. Anne-Marie. Good morning. She says good morning. Good morning. I realize that production isn't packed up to pre-pandemic levels, so that may affect your answers. Number one, what are the best-selling

vehicles at your dealership right now? Ravours, number one selling car, followed by Camry's. Corolla's, those are the Rav4 hybrid or just Rav4 and gas Rav4 we sell more of them just because we can get more of them Toyota is combining the two Eventually they're just going to call them Rav4 starting in 2025 I think

or maybe even next year but Rav4 is the top selling vehicle What vehicles are leased in demand that's easy the BZ4X That's our electric vehicle that we have one that's still sitting there other models are like like Sequoias. They're not like

the big, the really big SUVs. That's everybody wants a... Why don't we discount that car? Huh? Why don't we discount that? Because we don't have them. Oh, I thought you said, it's just sitting there. I thought you said we had one. Oh, the BZ4X. Yeah, BZ4.

Oh, because we'll sell it. Okay. We'll sell it. Or trade it for a Rav4. Yeah. No one's going to do that, though. Hey, can you give me that Raff 4. I got a BZ4X. Um, what is, uh, what is the most popular features that your customers want? Uh, blind spot monitor. Um, that is by far the most requested feature.

It's a safety feature. Um, it's, uh, it's standard on some models and higher-end things, but it's one of the safety features. It's still an option on the lower end. The original blind spot monitor was the backup camera, I guess, in a way. And now it's expanded. So, yeah, I, uh, I love, uh, my Tesla because it has cameras all over the place. Well, it's autonomous, so it has cameras everywhere. And I can just sit in my seat driving,

and I can see everything around me. I can see further ahead through the cameras, because the cameras are mounted over my head, and I can see you know how you pull up to a stoplight, and the truck in front of you, prevent you from telling whether it's red or green, the camera on top of my Tesla tells me, And even though I'm right behind the truck.

Or the ones where you pull up to the stoplight and it's so high in the air and so close to the intersection that you can't see it. You're praying in your neck to see it. What I love about the Tesla, and I think that since more cars have more cameras on it, that's a great feature, is that little chime that you get when the light turns green. It recognizes it. So if you happen to be, you're not playing on your phone, of course, but if you have to be not looking at the light and you don't want to get that beep behind you, the light turns green inside the car goes, you know this is really a great feature one that I really like and on Squawk Box this past week

you know somebody was talking about these features that are on this the screen the panel the you know the yoke and what a distraction and that Elon should think about revising the guy in the car behind you loves it too because you don't you know these idiots that sit there and don't start and the light goes up

and you're in a hurry Josh, can they blow the horn at you? That's a good feature. I'm going to embarrass my brother Josh. He didn't notice a lot turning green all the time. So I now, I politely just go, whong. I like that.

And it's kind of funny. Anyway, they were asking Elon to just sort of change. Make it simple it? Yeah, change the aesthetics of the. I like my car cockpit to look like Apollo 11 dashboard. I want to see as many dots and knobs and everything. It makes me feel like I'm, you know. You're in a pilot?

Yeah, it makes it feel. like I'm doing something special. That's probably how Jackson feels. He's tuned into the radio show, and I believe that he's in his little electric car right now. Hey, Jackson. Hey, Jackson. What features you get the most complaints about? A lot of, like, the entertainment stuff.

Waiting for service. Cell phone connections. These are talking about features of cars. Oh, features of cars. Yeah, features of cars. Yeah, cell phone. Getting your cell phone paired and getting the cell phone. to connect fully with the car.

Yeah, that's one. A lot of things are like kind of mundane things like seat issues. Like it doesn't move into a comfortable position. But a lot of the high-tech features now are people are repairing their phones and they're using their stuff on their,

they're used to the maps. The navigation used to get a lot of complaints. And to a general answer would be not understanding the complexity of the car. Cars are becoming so complex now that you really have to study the owner's manual to know. I still don't know how to operate my Tesla.

There's so many features. I think it's a valid thing to say. High tech, yeah. What's the number of complaint? There's too many things to figure out. And the sad thing is you take it into your dealer and they still, they can't explain to you. I mean, Rick probably he probably answers more questions than anybody else in our dealership because he knows more about the high tech features of the cars. So the technicians, In the dealership, forget the sales force. They don't know anything about the car. And I say that tongue and cheek a little bit.

It's changed a lot. Because that's what happened was, I think, there was a period of time where you had the old type of features that everybody was used to selling, and the new ones came in all computerized. That's pretty much all there is now. So it's forced it. It's like anything else.

The experience, dedicated, good salesperson does have a lot of knowledge about the car. But, you know, people start, you have new salespeople. You got used to be selling Kiyas, not only selling Hyundai's or the guy's selling Hyundai's or the guy's selling Hyundai's selling Toyotas. It takes a long while to learn these very complex machines. You got the guy that's been there for 50 years. He didn't know about Bluetooth. We have a text from Marty. Just wanted to correct you from last week.

Ferrari sold 13,221 cars in 2022. Who then? Ferrari. Enzo. I know it was a small number. What did I say, 130? Well, I guess. Listen, he said 13,000.

I said, I went 10,000, and you said in the hundreds. I know. All right. I love admitting when I'm wrong. Yeah. And it's always, it's fun for us to tease you and correct you because, you know, you're the boss. We get to tease you. All right.

I think there might be one. There is an anonymous feedback. It says, Earl, you. You keep talking about a chip shortage. Hmm. The old chip shorts, I'm making air quotes, chip shortage line. Right. There's no longer a chip shortage, L-O-L.

This is merely the new excuse to get us to pay more for a car. There still is a chip shortage. It's improved drastically. The reason I know there's a chip shortage is because big banks like Morgan Stanley, they're making forecasts on huge amounts of money for a lot of, lot of rich people, and they're basing it on the information, their research into the industries, and I just read at Morgan Stanley report that the chip shortage is abating, but it will continue into 2024, but continuing to getting better.

Yeah. The manufacturers are a different animal than the dealers, and the manufacturers, the name of their game is high volume and market share, and they still feel that way. It's kind of a primitive way to look at life and business. but that's the way they do. Honda's got out sell Toyota. Toyota's got out sell Ford. Everybody has got whoever's ahead of them in line. The manufacturers want to be number one or number two or worth.

They have a place in the pecking order that they feel they must be. And they just shove the cars down the dealer's throats when they're available. And they love to do that. So when they're not shoving them down the dealer's throats, that means they can't build them. But, you know, I promise you there's not a manufacturer out there that's holding back on production on purpose. They want to build every car they possibly can. Now, the dealers, on the other hand, you know, they'll hold you up, and they'll charge you a huge amount of money to buy a car.

But manufacturers, their profits baked in when they sell off the dealer. When Toilin sells us a car, we don't negotiate. That's the price of the car. That's a price you pay, or you don't get the car. So, and if they want us to take a car, most car dealers, we don't succumb to pressure, but a lot of car dealers do, most Toyota dealers do. And Toyota, if they had too many cars, they look in the eye and say, we have 100 cars allocated to you. We sure hope you'll help us out. Yeah.

Yeah. And if you don't help us out, you wonder, what are they going to do to me? And that's the reason car dealers typically have way too many cars. That's right. One just came in, anonymous feedback from someone we know, from Agent Sprinkle. That's one of it. She's... Oh, Aged Sprinkle.

I don't remember. You just had a call from someone who said they had ordered a Rav4 hybrid nine months ago from you and has arrived. I ordered a Rav4 hybrid 10 months ago, and it has not arrived. What gives? Well, it's not all Rav4 hybrids are the same. There's color, equipment, trim level, and some come in easier. Like Nancy mentioned before. customers that give a, you know, a wider range of color and equipment or even trim levels.

They just get me a refor hybrid. I don't care what it is. It's, it will get there a little sooner. It's not drastic, but, yes, so they don't want to come at the same time on a conveyor. And I also say this, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. And because I get a lot of calls, people call me about these things. All I do is I'll call Stu or I'll call our inventory control manager. Laura and interestingly enough when I when I push a little bit and Laura pushes a little bit

and Stu pushes a little bit somehow things seem to happen and cars seem to come in faster so squeaky wheel gets too well if you ordered a car and you haven't had it you know they told you'd be in three or four months and it's been six or seven you should call the the dealership you should speak to someone up in the ranks not the salesman that sold you the car but the sales manager or the general manager and say, what can you do for me? Sometimes that turns into a conversation about, well, would you take a white one instead of a green one? Or do you have to have the sunroof? And you make a few compromises and you suddenly find out that you can get the car quicker than you thought.

But don't sit there and stew and worry about it. Call and complain, and that'll expedite. All right, we're caught up. But Rick, what's going over there in the land of YouTube? got a couple here uh one is from bruno he says quick question i bought a new car a couple months ago but recently i've been loving the supra 3.0 premium could i sell my car instead of trading in and negotiate the value for positive equity negotiate can you repeat that again i don't understand Could I sell my car instead of trading it in?

Okay, sell it to somebody else. And negotiate the value, pardon me, and negotiate the value for positive equity. That makes no sense. Okay, sorry. I'm not sure what he means. All right, maybe you could rephrase it and then we can read it. As far as the super goes, we have a fixed price on the vehicle and everybody pays. We put our lowest price on every vehicle.

sell and that's a price you pay so yeah but he's talking he sells his car and negotiate the value of his trade after he sold it to somebody else I if he wants to negotiate on the new supra it would be no but I don't understand the part about the trade yeah we'll see if he comes in with some more information oh I see I think I see what he's saying yeah he's saying what you just he he's saying negotiate because he had negative equity when he sold his car he'll sell the car and it cost of money because he had to pay up the car off And he wants to pick that up by having us discount the super.

No. Answer is no. Right, yeah. That's a few. And this one from Casey up in, I believe, he's in East Tennessee, yep. It says, why when you call a Toyota dealership to get your car serviced, they always ask, did you buy the car here? I'm wondering, what's the purpose of that question? One possible good, honest reason they answer would ask is because we would have the information in our,

computer about what service had been done and the VIN number and all the details. And another reason is for like a retention program, like we have tires for life, we'd like to know if they have bought the car here because they would possibly qualify for a program like that. Well, I think the implication is if you didn't buy the car here, we wouldn't take as good care of you as if you did buy the car here. It used to be years and years ago car dealers looked at it that way. but they don't so much today.

But there's still an element of truth of that. You know, you take a Toyota looks that way, the manufacturer looks that way. If you have a good customer, you do a little more extra for those good customers that are loyal and have bought. You know, we have customers that have bought 20 cars from us, and we have people that come in off the street,

never bought a car. So to be honest, who are we going to treat a little nicer, probably the one that bought 20 cars from us? Yeah, no. I mean, that'd be crazy not to go. You've got to be honest about that. I'm pretty sure our system, we get a phone number or an email address, and it pulls it up right away on the computer,

and you see if they bought the car. I tell you, the manufacturers do that. If you have a car that's slightly out of warranty, and they found out they bought three toilets before, they're going to get a little cut more slack than the guy that never bought a toy. I was tell you this, and those warranty exceptions I've been involved with, I have never seen them turn down somebody They bought 10 Toyotas in their time

They're like they're a lifetime Toyota owner And they take care of them And we do the same thing as a dealer I mean you know I had one the other day I had a tire problem And I told the service advisor To sell them the tires at our net cost What we paid for the tires

You know Because it was the 10th time he's complained to you Hmm? Well it was a very But it's a good customer It is. It's relationship. So when you have a good relationship somewhere, you know, that's naturally what's going to happen. Well, and in service, we've heard the phrase, sales department sells a person, their first new car.

Right. Service department sells every car after that. Right, exactly. So. Oh, well, you know, and we have customers that come in that understand this, and the first thing they say is, I've bought 12 cars from your agency, and then he then go into the complaint to let you know, to let us know that he, Well, statistically, customers that return for service are 50% more likely to buy another car from you than those that don't return.

That's right. All right. I'm all caught up over here. That's got us pretty well caught up as well. Okay. You know, I'm going to take a minute and mention this news that we've been hearing lately, and it's all about babies, dogs being left in the back seat. and my goodness we all know how hot it's been getting

and with the humidity and heat index it takes a very short time to die in a back seat of a car when you're left back there had that happened in South Florida not too long ago just recently there was a baby that was

forgotten my point is that you know they keep saying and I'm not sure everyone's listening luck It's locked before you leap So Pay attention

If you have a grandchild If you have a child A dog There's so many Aftermarket products that you can purchase And I'm sure Rick knows a whole lot about them He has a dog And he's probably seen a lot of situations

That have come through service. You know, in our Tesla, we have something called doggy mode, which could just be called child mode. It's just not a good idea to leave a child in the car, period. But if you're going to leave anybody in the car, animal or human, you don't want to have it set where they can't get out of the car and they're not kept cool. But with the doggy mode, Nancy and I just came up to the studio here. It's going to be 95 or 98 degrees when we leave the studio. And I punched doggy mode on the car. It'll be 72 degrees in the car. And I don't think it's that costly. Maybe Donovan or one of my experts out there could probably tell me, but you don't want to

leave your car running in a combustion engine. But when you put the doggy boat on, the battery just powers the AC. And I don't notice a huge drain of battery power. And I don't notice a huge drain of battery power after I leave the car for a couple hours. So I'm sure we'll have some experts that will get back. Donovan just chimed in. I know it. He says, Earl, you also have something called overheat protection. Make sure it was not turned off and your car will never get above 40 degrees Celsius inside.

Which, okay, let me Google real quick what the 40 degrees Celsius is in Fahrenheit for those of us. 9 5th C plus 32 is the formula. Smarty pants. I don't remember. While Rick is looking that up, you know, there's so many things that you can do. You know, as far as a tint on your windows, you know, now, you know, there are a lot of people that are put in having installed ceramic tint. And gosh, does that help? It really cuts the heat index in your vehicle.

And it protects your skin. It does a whole lot of things. so everybody keep an eye on the back seat who do have children and dogs you may save a life sally has in the room soli has arrived in us and and he is so cute he's from georgia hi thank you thank you we have our big dog a camera up on sully in just a moment here a big dog week is entered the studio and he is absolutely adorable his name is sully and he's a coon dog and a lot of you folks out there uh for the south particularly uh coononing is a big thing in the south at tennessee and georgia and this guy here's so cute he's an expert uh stew's gonna fall in

love with him i know i haven't even seen you guys snuck in when i was out you saw you saw I know we've got a lot of people from Tennessee and Georgia. Who's ever heard the expression, the big coon runs late. Now that's a hunting expression. A hunting expression. Look at Sally. Oh.

Oh, yeah. Everybody out there that's watching. Everybody out there that's watching, I mean, take a look. Take a look at Sally. He is a lover. He is so. sweet. You won't last the show. He'll be, he'll have a home before the show is over.

Oh, he's not a typical hound, that's for sure. I think Stu's going to adopt him. He just loves daily exercise. He just loves, he loves the water. He is just the perfect. What are you going to do, Stu? Are you adopting? I think there's a connection. You know, my my old dog, Sully, we lost in 2020. And the Memorial Garden at the Big Dog Ranch Rescue is named the Dolly and Sully's Stuart Memorial Garden. And so this is the only other dog other than my dog, Sully, that I've ever met.

That was named Sully. You named after Sully the pilot that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's what I did. Right of them down New York Harbor. I'll land on Hudson River. You have something to say. I have the microphone right here. Hey, Shelly, you have the biggest personality of any of the dogs.

Can you imagine folks out there cuddling with Sully? Look at Sully. He just loves his belly rubbed and scratched in his ears. His ears rubbed. Look at those eyes. Look at that tongue. You're a superstar, Sully. Great tongue.

Great tongue. Are you a hound lover out there? Sully's your dog. Hey, Selle, did you ever catch a coon? Really, tell me the truth. No, this dog's never caught a coon. This doesn't have the killer instinct. This is a, every special affectionate coon.

They don't catch them, they trim. Oh, they just trim them? Okay. He probably, he looks like he could catch. Oh, he is fast. I can tell right now that he's got some serious fast dog musculature. Hey, listen, while Sally is over there giving Nancy love. Let me tell you something. As our sponsored pet, our sponsored dog, we're going to take

care of the adoption fees for anybody who adopts Sully through us. And you can do that by calling the show or texting the show or going directly to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Their website is BDRR.org. And you can go, there's contact information there so you can call them or text them. Oh, Sully's getting a little rumbunctious over there. And they'll get right back to Yeah, there's also, they list all the dogs that they have for adoption out there, and there's hundreds of them. So you can scroll through the webpage and see if there's another dog. But I'm telling you, Sully is, he's a winner. And also, just let you know, whenever you adopt a dog anywhere, you're going to pay adoption fee.

So we take care of that for you. While we got your attention, while you're looking at this dog and feeling generous, take a look at confessions of a recovering car dealer. That's Earl's book. It's all the dirty secrets of the car business. And when you buy it, all the proceeds go directly to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Yeah, you go to Amazon and you buy this book. You got yourself a handbook of how not to get ripped off by a car dealer. And 100% of the proceeds goes to Big Dogg Ranch and doggies like Sully that we show every week on this, find homes.

And we support where we're big supporters of Big Ranch Rescue. They're the largest no-kill shelter. We don't euthanize our dogs. We keep dogs for years, if necessary, until we find a home. Sully will not last years. Sully will be gone today. This should be adopted by Josh Stewart.

Your son and my brother. He's thinking about a dog, and I'm just this... Oh, yeah, perfect. This dog is so gentle. This dog melted like caramel into my arms. But listen, This is live right now, but the show stays on YouTube and Facebook, so you can share it. So if you have a friend or somebody you know looking for a dog or you think they need a dog,

send the video that we put up, it's at 925 AM, so find it like towards the end of the show and send the link to your friends because I'm telling you right now, you guys want this dog. There, that's my sales pitch. Okay, Charlie. it's a done deal. I guarantee you you're going to find a home real soon and a good home because we screen, you know, all of our

applicants. It's like adopting a child. We want to be sure that you're going to take care of Sully and that you're responsible and that your home will accommodate Sully and that you're going to give him a lot of love. So be sure you love dogs and you got one to love there because you can't beat

Sully, the Koonhound. He's two years of age, by the way. He's two. He's only two. He's only two. Yeah, he's a baby. He's a big puppy. Yeah. And he's great with kids and other dogs, and as you can see, people.

Absolutely. He's a people lover. He is a lover. And he's a Georgia boy. He wants to dance with you, Beck. He wants to dance. He wants to dance. Put the music on.

We can do that in post-production. You know, what was? Somebody at Big Dog Ranch mentioned that he's like a biscuits in gravy. Oh, yes. Biscuits and gravy type guy, aren't you? Oh, wow. He is. He really, really is.

You can see. Those eyes stay long. What a winner. Well, thanks for bringing him in. Where did he come from? He came from Georgia. He came from Georgia. He had to be sort of in there.

He's going over to say hello to you too. So now he's going to say hi to Jonathan. I think he probably likes people more than any of his. Folks, this is what happens when we have a very special dog. All decorum breaks down, and we just start having fun. So there's a microphone over here, so I'm just occupying it. So what I'm seeing over there is Sully went over there and started messing with Jonathan's streaming equipment. So are we still live?

Did you turn us off, Sally? No, we're still in the air. All right. I wish you're in the studio. You're not going to believe this dog. He is amazing. If you're driving in your car right now and you're going, what the hell's going on? Go home and then pull up the video and Rick still has the camera on on Sully.

Yeah, he's in Building C. Building C at Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Yeah. To adopt a feature dog of the week, I'm sure Stu already told you, you can go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Uh-huh. You can go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue website. And there you can view Sully and so many other dogs.

But Sully has certainly energized our service. studio this morning. He was a real highlight. Exactly. I wasn't expecting. I'm not sure. He may be going home with Stu, but I'm not sure. I don't know. Probably not. Probably not. I have three dogs at home right now. But, you know. But one's only temporary because one's going up to New York with Maggie in a couple weeks. She's still there.

Yes. So we have, we'll have two, so who knows? I'll have a full house. Yes, I do. All right, thanks, Bernadette. Okay. Good luck, Sally. Good luck. You don't need good luck.

Our volunteer from Big Dog Branch, she comes in every week and does a great job. Have a wonderful weekend, bless you. Bye, Sally. He's ready. I wish I was that happy. I wish I was as happy as Sully. Yeah, Sully was definitely very happy. That's the reason you need a dog because I think we wouldn't even have to have a psychologist

a psychiatrist, just give somebody a dog. Someone's got a problem and they're depressed, give them a dog. Well, therapy dogs are a real thing. Oh, absolutely. And they have real dramatic effects on people that need, especially people with anxiety disorders and things like that. Yeah, and it's just amazing. You've said you're on point, you know, dogs change your life.

Yeah. For sure. That's an interesting study. People with dogs and depression, I'll bet you there are far fewer people. I tell their own dogs. I totally agree with that. proven fact they've done studies and also know that therapy dogs they don't start them as like little puppies i think they're a couple years old before they can start the training

so if somebody if you're listening and you know somebody or you need or use a therapy dog i think sully just based on his demeanor and his age would be a perfect candidate right now to go through that training i saw a picture on facebook the other day that just brought tears to my eyes they had a bunch of therapy dogs and a chemo treatment center for children and they And all the dogs were looking at the door because the child that they were there for was having the chemo. And when they came out of chemo, then the dogs were there. And they were just sit there looking at the door waiting for the child to come out. Oh, that's so sweet.

Oh, sweet. Yeah. Okay, folks, we are going to get to the mystery shopping report. And as usual, you definitely can vote. We definitely appreciate you voting. You're a big part of the show, as I say, every week. And you can do so by texting us at 772-497-65-30. That's 772-497-6530.

Our mystery shopping report comes from Sutherland. Sutherland, Nissan, right there in Vero Beach. So listen. It's just a little north of Pondage County, about what about 25, 30 miles, 40 miles, something like that. Yeah, it's about an hour from Jupiter. Okay, and for those you're listening to read this, Stu composed it, and Agent Lightning lived it,

that's our undercover mystery shopper. And I won't tell you, I don't hate to give away the ending to the story, but I just want you to hear me say, this is not fiction, this really, really happen because when you hear this, you're not going to believe it. Okay, I'm speaking in the first person as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived in the morning and was greeted by a salesman standing outside as I arrived. He asked me if I was there to see something specific. I told him,

I didn't have an appointment, I was hoping to get a new car that day. He smiled widened, and he asked what type of car I was interested in. A sedan, SUV, small, large. I expressed my desire for something fuel efficient, easy to navigate, and not too costly. He suggested that we look at the lot, and we walked over to where the 2,023 Nissan Centres were parked. I noticed that none of the cars had window stickers. Those are Munrooney labels. Uh-oh. None of them displaying their prices.

When I asked about this, he replied that the price listings were inside the vehicles, not on the windows. Duh, I mean, like I should have known that. Well, of course, our regular listeners know, and I think a lot of people know, that it is federal law that requires mandates that the official factory sticker, also called the Moroni label, must be affixed at the manufacturer, by the manufacturer, when the car is built and cannot be removed by anyone, unless other than the customer,

literally have to remove it but the customer has to say please take off that window sticker I just bought this car that's federal law so the salesperson was just nonchalant and say you know of course there's no window stickers on the cars we put them inside the cars when I asked about this we replied that the price listings run inside the vehicle not on the windows after perusing the lot I decided on the Centra yes if I wanted wanted him to get the keys I said yes and he headed inside while he continued to look around. On this return, he insisted on showing me the spacious trunk

before we headed out for a test drive. That's curious. Can fit three bodies in there. Oh, Agent Lightning just texted. She said the ones I saw were all laminated and tucked in between the driver's seat and middle console, so not even really visible. Wow, hard to believe.

The Maroni label was laminated and lying on the seat. The MSRP was $21,490. The addendum was also laminated. It added $10,000 for things like paint protection, $10,000. That's a biggie. $10,000 extra for things like paint protection, microbial interior spray.

Let's throw back to the COVID days. Nitrogen-filled tires, good old nitrogen. The air you breathe, by the way, in case you haven't checked on. This is 78% nitrogen, so they're putting air in your tires. Etch, that's a theft deterrent, glass etch, and a bunch of other stuff that will be banned by the new rules proposed by the Federal Trade Commission.

So that's got the dealers all excited, very unhappy, about some of these junk fees and useless overpriced accessories that are packed into the price of cars. During our short test drive, We drove up, US1, made a U-turn at the first red light and the return. That was a quickie test drive, not the type you should insist upon if you're going to buy a car. If you have the car that you want to buy, by all means, give it a serious test drive, meaning hours, not minutes, and preferably a day or two.

Drive that car in the same circumstances that you would drive your own car if you had owned that car. That drive, you didn't learn anything on that drive. All you learned was it runs. Yeah, exactly. On the way, he asked me if I planned to trade in my current vehicle. I told him no that I would also need a new license plate. I explained that we currently had four drivers plus one on a permit in only two cars. He quickly agreed that the Centro would be the perfect addition to our fleet.

Back at the dealership, we sat down at this desk where he asked for my driver's license and finally introduced himself as Marco. After making a copy of my license, he inquired about my credit score, asked if I planned to lease or finance, or respond that I would either pay cash or finance depending on any available incentives. He interrupted to suggest that if I didn't finance, they would need to add an additional $2,500. So, again, the deception will grow as we continue this. shopping report, but the price that they led you to believe made the assumption for you that you were going to finance. Now, there's a lot of cash buyers. A lot of people don't want

finance. Interest rates are high, and people have their reasons for not wanting to finance. But they made the assumption that Agent Lighting was going to finance the car so that they could take $2,500 off and make it look like it was cheaper than it was. advise that I should finance and then pay it off after a few months after a few months which is a very deceptive thing to do it's deceptive to the lender

it's also deceptive of the buyer because there's a huge penalty that you pay and the dealer and the dealer they're going to get charged back the dealer who cares about the dealer but you have it's called rule of 78 so when you finance the car

and you pay it off early you're not getting back all the interest, you're only getting back a fraction of that interest, and the interest that you paid, you'd never recover. So he was giving you some very bad advice and implying that it was a smart thing to do so you could get the $2,500 rebate. Not true. I have to see the cost for both options, financing, paying cash. He excused himself. I assumed he was going to get the pricing information that I just asked for.

Instead, he returned with a questionnaire. The deception is going deeper and deeper, folks. The questionnaire won't know how I intend to purchase the car, my credit status. Military service. There's something rotten in the state of Denmark here. Recent graduation. Now, why would they want to know that, et cetera? After I responded to know to all the questions, he left with the completed form.

Upon his return, he presented me with a sheet detailing the cost. The market value selling price was $31,490, but there was a discount of $10,750, which made their adjusted price $20,375. Now, I know you're getting dizzy with the numbers. If you were buying from Sutherland Nissan, you'd be dizzy too, and the numbers are coming fast and furious and deceptive. But then they added $3,000 for C-O-L-L, and then M-I-L, these are all caps, C-O-M-L-T-E-R. This made total price $23,375. To that, they added a $1,199 dock fee, and then there was $304.505. in taxable fees, which are junk fees, sales tax, and a hefty, $666 in government fees.

Interesting number, government fees are legitimate if they are, in fact, government fees. The total walk out the door, drive out the door, was $27,469. I was a little confused by the pricing and mentioned this to him. he retorted rather abruptly. I mean, not only is he a crook, but he's rude. And you don't get rude with customers. It's just not smart. If you want to really take advantage of a customer,

you've got to have that customer like you and trust you. You don't answer questions abruptly in an insulting tone of voice. He said that he had given me a $10,755 discount. So kind of like, why are you asking? asking these questions. Right, hey? Yeah. After this gift I've given you.

When I asked about an additional $3,000 charge, he snapped back explaining that I didn't qualify for any of the discounts because I answered no to all the questions. So the questions were probably things like, are you a veteran? Are you currently on active duty in the military? Have you recently graduated from college? And anything else you could figure out? Are you a realtor? No, I don't know.

I don't know if that was one of them. But see, this is really old school. This is what the really down and dirty dealers do. They look for any kind of possible discount from the manufacturer, from anybody. And no matter how obscure and remote the chance that the readers of the advertisement or the customer that comes in will qualify for any of these, much less all of them, The chances of qualifying for all of them are about like winning the monster lotto. It's not going to happen.

At any rate, I expressed my discomfort with these fees in the entire situation. He interrupted me again, asserting that he had already explained everything. Now he's got himself into an argumentative, adversarial relationship with the person he's trying to sell the car to. At this point, I was curious. I sat up, told him to forget it, and walked down. Now, Agent Lightning literally did this. She told us, after the shopping report, because she got so mad, she just got the hell out of there.

I mean, you know, and she's a pro. I mean, she has shopped a lot of dealers. It's amazing what she's like. She had every kind of a treatment, and she's all, I think that's the first time she ever lost her cool. She just was stormed. She's gotten angry before because she's had, I mean, she's had, like, managers just confirmed.

front her but no we're not where she's just just turn around and with all her skills she has really knows how to apply herself you know and she was just uh the the the personality of this person you know she just displayed it by getting up and just saying say levy yeah i just um but you know what they need to see that you know and i'm and i'm sure that that's not the only time that's happened at sutherland nissan i think it's a interesting observation about nissan is they score very low on the dealer attitude survey, and that's an inside thing most people don't know about, but annually NADA surveys, their car dealers.

Twice a year. Yeah. Like twice a year. Yeah, twice a year. And the idea is manufacturers want to stay on the good side of the dealers to get to cooperation, and they value the results of that survey. They really push the dealers to fill the surveys out, and Nissan scores extremely low.

The survey just came out, by the way, and Alexis, Toyota, BMW, Audi, I forget the top 10, but Nissan is on the bottom. They typically have a very adversary relationship with their dealers, and that breeds the type of dealers that we see here at Sutherland. Nissan dealers, on the average, just don't treat their customers very well. And one of the reasons is Nissan themselves, the way they treat their dealers.

So that's... I like Stu's less. He wrote this. He says, I still have no idea with the mysterious 666 devil's fee. No, no, that was actually... That's from Agent Lightning. She didn't know what the devil.

I didn't know until I read it. 666, yeah. It's the mark of the beast. They probably packed government fees with something that weren't government. I don't know. Maybe they did enough wrong without worrying about the 666.

It was just an atrocious experience. We've got to have the votes, and I think we probably get a lot of them. We kind of know where this is going here. I'll get to our, let me see if I, I'll read the ones I got so for. Jonathan Del Rey, when your first experience with the dealership is them breaking federal law. What else will they do? Definitely disreputable. This dealership gets a hard F.

Thanks, Jonathan. You know, the fine is $1,000 per offense. So if they had 100 cars in stock, all of them without mononi labels, that's a $100,000 fine. that should be assessed. So where is the enforcement of these rules and regulations we have? Hopefully it's coming if they get the new FTC thing unless it's all window dressing.

Mark says easy to score, Stu, stay out of trunk. F, minus, minus. Way too many issues to discuss. Imagine going in for service, he said. Bob says, this may be the worst mystery shop I've heard. This must be fiction. F or Southern Linese on there

They are really dishonest and rude No way anyone should shop there And I'm gonna incline They're getting an F for me It's just too much of that stuff I mean We have no Forget about the curve

I mean this is We don't give out many F so when we do We're giving it I'm giving an F and this F is on the curve All right I've got T-cash says F-minus and worst of all It's a Nissan. Negan 1 says,

I was at F, two minutes into the story. I'm at a point, if the Monroney sticker's not on the window, I'm leaving. Kirk can West Buy God, Virginia. Southernland Nissan, horrendous. I just threw up a little bit in my mouth. Here you go, argue with this, F minus. Oh, boy, they are rolling in on here. Second Channel, it's Tom Stechle, says,

this is an F. They took lessons from Napleton, one of the worst we've seen. Mark Anderson, great F. Part of the addendum also included money to keep the former CEO in hiding. Johnny Z. Fradley, 50% markup? Then they take it off? Then add more fees? It's getting dizzy here.

F. Rocky Blockadele, very bad and rude on top of everything. F. Tim Gilliland, a $10,000 addendum with the obligatory nitrogen, rude salesman F, F, F, F, Mark Smith, F for such deception. T.J.H. F. Baby Boomer, Triple F. Clifford Manthe, L-O-L-L-L-F. And Cram, 1624, F, dishonest. Well, here we go with Kyle in Pennsylvania. you joining late well I'll answer that question

in just a moment Kyle for me F yeah it's it's too easy don't even need to explain that that's enough do I even need to ask Nancy Nancy's giving them an egg

you're not going to take my mic away from me are you Agent Lightning you and I we got to do a mystery shop together oh boy I could have some fun boy could I have some fun On a serious note, I just want to share what I've talked on the air about, and that's Senator Mike Munrooney.

And, you know, the sticker didn't even exist in 1958, but because of him, because of him, there was a law passed in Congress, the Munrooney Act. And there is a serious fine, if not jail time, for this outrageous way of doing business. and you know this this mystery shop could have gone sideways I know Agent Lightning and boy did she handle it well rudeness disrespect I'd love to have somebody go back and mystery shop this place again

just to see how they fare they have stirred my curiosity and for that I give them an F now we don't give F south lightly. I usually raise the score because I remind everybody about grading on the curve, but let me tell you something, curve or no curve, that's an F in space. And I totally agree. Do we have any, hopefully we have Nissan dealers on the recommended list. I'm going there right now.

It's going to have some fun with that too. I'm on it. I'm like, I'm like, I'm doing anything. That's one of the reasons that we grade on the curve because if we grade on an absolute basis, we'd have brands, and there would be no dealers to buy from. So you have to have some dealers to buy from, and you just have to be very, very careful. Right. So here's what we have.

We actually do Auto Nation Nissan in Pembroke, Plains, Florida, has a C-plus. H. Greg, Nissan, and Delry Beach got a C. Corros. Maybe we're on a generous, like, one of these, like, really grading on the curve sort of things. But then there's a bunch of Ds and D-minuses, and Sutherland's on here already with an F.

Oh, there already have? Oh, I forgot about that. You know, I wonder if there has been anyone that's ever leaped across the desk at a salesperson or flipped a desk over. Has anyone really ever gotten? The way to find out is if you go to this dealership and if there are signs that say, we will not tolerate any violence or threatening language or curse words, because usually an incident will prompt a sign.

They have a sign like that at Cleveland. clinic i thought what the hell happened here that had to put these signs up over the whole hospital well i have my sign that i travel with so if you want me to abide by your sign you go to abide by mine we can do this the easy way or a hard way yeah uh it's hilarious you know i i think we've got a couple minutes here and i nancy's brought up the blog i've written up about uh where oh here it is right here uh the nature of the beast and uh you'll hold that up uh the reason i mention that is we're really hard on dealers. And even the dealers we passed, we were highly critical.

And let's face it, the Gallup annual poll on honesty and ethics and professions, they've been doing that for 40 years, and car dealers are always at the bottom. But because I've been around so long, and I started the business in 1968, I saw, and I learned from my father, too, the way this happened.

And the reason you have to deal with, like Sutherland, and they have dealers that are not as bad as well, but they're still pretty bad. The Cs that we give are for dealers that don't do a very good job, but we have to give them a C because we grade on the curb. This all happened because the manufacturers over dealer, the manufacturers, you go back to Henry Ford, when he invented a simply line mass production, suddenly he could build cars real fast. but you couldn't sell them that fast from the manufacturers. Back in those days, the manufacturers sold cars directly.

Then they discovered mass production, and they wanted to grow, and they were insanely competitive amongst themselves. So General Motors Ford, the original Chrysler Corporation, all these big, big manufacturers were just at each other's throats, trying to sell more cars. So they set up car dealerships all over the United States, and they had them on like a one-year franchise, and they put car dealerships on every corner. They're like gas stations and banks. Every corner had a Chevrolet dealer, a Ford dealer, and the dealers had so much competition.

They couldn't advertise a car at a price they'd sell it for it because they'd never sell the car because the competition was advertising the car for less money. So that's what turned the dealers into line, cheating, stealing, misinforming, deceptive advertising, bait and switch. And that's what we have today. It's a sad statement on the development of why what happened exists today. And why we're going back at the very beginning of the show, the subject came up, a call came in about, Did we really believe that cars would be sold directly by the manufacturers, and did the manufacturers want to do that? Well, they do. They just don't want the dealers to know about it because they need us right now, and they need to keep us happy and pacify us.

If we became aware of that they were going to take away our franchises and sell the cars that we sell directly to the customers, there would be a huge amount of battling between the dealers and the manufacturers. Okay, Harold. Got one other question to Kyle in Pennsylvania. He got in a little late today. He says, new car prices are still MSRP minimum, but trade-in values are plummeting. Isn't now the worst time ever to buy a new car

if you have a car that you need to trade in? Kind of. It's a misunderstanding, and I see the headlines too. used car prices are coming down, but they went up so high that your car is still worth considerably more than the equivalent car at that stage before COVID. So when COVID came in, the prices of used cars soared and new cars soared. Now they're at the top of the curve and the prices are coming down. That's what's coming down. But if you bought a car, if you have a used car that you bought four or five years ago,

that car is worth far more today than it would have been had we not had COVID. So you can still get, relatively speaking, a really good price in your car. If you have a lease car that you took out during the COVID issue, same thing. You're still going to get, you can get more for the car than what the residual value or the purchase option price is. So you're a good shape used car wise. and Bruno from earlier, he came back in to explain what he meant was that he bought a 23 Camry TRD and a white 23 Camry TRD.

He's upside down it a little bit right now, but he's wondering if since it's a popular car, would he be able to get a reasonable enough price of it to cover most of that negative equity and leave him almost breaking even on the price. He's in a better shape with a TRD. That was kind of a, it's a unique kind of car. It's like, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not going to mean he's going to pay, get the same premium that, you know, he paid over an LE camry on the trade in, but it would be recognized. I mean, you get a little, I think if it's in good shape and all that on the higher end of it. We don't, and we don't know what the negative equity is, so yeah, it all depends.

The thing you do, you take that Camry and you shop it. You go to Carvani, you go to CarMax, you go to Broom, you go to toilet dealers, shop it around. I mean, you're in the driver's seat. I mean, it's a seller's market. You're the seller. And instead of three or four prices, you get eight or ten prices. Use cars are still in high demand. But the prices have come off the highs, but they're still much higher than when you buy.

off that car. So you're in a good position. Excellent. Okay. Okay, folks. I think it's time to wrap it up. And Agent Lightning, what a fabulous job you did. And

thanks to Big Dog Ranch for our wonderful volunteer for bringing Sally in. And as you know, you can go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue and you can enjoy the website, sally and so many other dogs and of course the panel here is so certainly you

know phenomenal and we forgot to mention that you can foster dogs there too meaning keep them for a couple weeks we we ask that you do this if you can't adopt the dog and a lot of people have good reasons but you can free up some space at big dog ranch so we can take in more people more dogs and and when we take a dog in we're saving lives because a lot of these dogs were to be executed, euthanized. A lot of shelters have a 30-day, 60-day, 90-day, some limit, and they won't keep the dog beyond that,

and then they euthanize the dog. So they call Big Dog Ranch, we take them, we take them all, we don't euthanize dogs. So we have a space problem. If you want to foster, you know, Sully, I don't think you're going to be able to foster Sully because he was such a cutie pie that he'll be adopted immediately.

He's not going to be around it. If you want to help out Big Dog Ranch, just say, I'll take a dog for two weeks, and that helps them out. And then you return the dog, and hopefully by then they can find a home. Yeah, and we help out by paying the fees. Sometimes, you know, you want a dog, and you can't afford it. You know, we can help you on that. And don't forget, you can go to Earl's book. You can go to Amazon, and you can pick up Confessions of a recovering car dealer.

And the cost of that book is 1999. All proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. And folks, the pictures that you're going to see online, they don't do the dogs justice. Take a few hours, go out there and water. Because just having Sully here in the studio, that was amazing. He is so beautiful. And I mean, on video, he's incredible, but in real life, he is awesome.

Go out and wander around and see some of these animals. and just go there. If you get a chance to see the dogs out during recess, actually I don't know if it's recess, it might be all the time. They have a big pond like a lake. Dogs are running in and out of it. It's like the Serengeti, but all dogs.

That is awesome. It makes a great afternoon. It's a holiday every day at Big Dog Ranch. Ladies and gentlemen, we've come to the end of another show. We thank you for joining us this morning. and I think we have more calls, Jonathan. I think it was a record. And thanks to the ladies that are listening

and joining us also. Everyone have a great weekend and we'll be right back here next Saturday morning at 8 a.m.