Earl Stewart on Cars - 07.28.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Carl's Buick

Episode Date: July 28, 2018

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits Carls' Buick in Stuart to purchase a car with a Takata Airbag Recall. Earl Stewart is one of the most successful car dealers in the nation. This podcast gives you the benefit of his 40+ years as a car dealer and helps you turn the terror of buying, leasing, or servicing a car into a triumphant experience. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.streamearloncars.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. We are now on Facebook Live every Saturday between 8am and 10am. Go to facebook.com/earloncars to also watch it live or to watch a replay in case you missed it. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. Watch Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back. To you regulars, you know who's back. It's Earl Stewart, the recovering car dealer. And we're a new show here on the True Oldies Channel.

We're not musical. We don't sing. We don't dance. What we do is explain to you and suggest ways that you can avoid being ripped off by your local car dealer. We're talking about just not buying and leasing cars. We're talking about maintaining and repairing your car. All the things, all the contacts, face-to-face situations you may find yourself required to do when you own a new or used car. And unfortunately, over many, many years, I guess since Henry Ford started mass production

when you've been buying cars from car dealers, it's been a less than pleasant experience. And I say that, speaking for my own profession that I've been in for over 50 years. A little bit of a shame to that. I would like to see things improve. In fact, that's one of my motivations for what I do is try to improve the image. and the activities, the way car dealers sell you and maintain and repair your car. A little evidence, this is just my opinion, the Gallup organization, the probably world-renowned polling organization, Gallup,

every year since 1977 has done a poll, USA. I think they should probably do it worldwide, but I've only seen the USA poll. And it's called Honesty and Ethics and Professions. It's basically you, the consumers, view on professions, businesses that you deal with every day. And of all the professions listed, car dealers rank last, or next to last, in honesty and ethics. Kind of a sad statement. Now, this was since 1977, the last complete poll was last year 2017, and once again, car dealers were next to last. In all those 40-some-odd years of polling, they have never been above third or fourth from the bottom, usually dead last.

I give you two guesses who is down there with the car dealers, congressman, lobbyist, down there with car dealers. So this is a public service show. and I always like to say that I would never do an infomercial I am a car dealer I do that in full transparency so I do have a car dealership I've had a car dealers since 1968

in fact I've had multiple car dealerships and I still have one but this show is not about me trying to sell you something there are car dealers that get on the air and in fact all businesses use infomercials It looks like an informative show, and suddenly you realize someone's trying to sell you something. I'm not going to try you to sell you anything.

I might try to sell you my book, but then I'm going to take all the profits from my book, and I'm going to give it to charity. My book is what I do on the air. It's called Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer. It's available on Amazon. But it's how to do it book. How to buy a car, lease a car, maintain a repair a car, without being ripped off by a car dealer. So that's what this is all about.

We thrive on you, the caller. This is live talk radio. Very exciting. We've been doing it for over 10 years. And, I mean, the adrenaline really gets going when we come into the studio. We started out with a half an hour, an hour, now we're two hours. And we're going to this time slot now, 8 to 10 every Saturday, on the true oldie station. And here's a number.

I want you to write it down. you're going to hear this number lots of times. One of the reasons that we give it to you so often is not that you have a short memory, but new people tune in, and then you tune out and you tune back in. So the number is 877-960-9960. Now, if you'd write it down, it'd be handy

because you might not have a comment or a question, suggestion, criticism now, but you might later. So make a note of it, If you would please, 877-960-99-60. That's 877-960-99-60. Your questions are really what get us where we are, where we can help you. We have ideas about what you'd like to know, but nothing like talking to the person that has a problem. So if you've been out in the car market for repair maintenance or some sort of maybe buying a car,

thinking about buying a car, any questions that you have, give us a call. I'm not alone in the studio, by the way. I've got a team with me. To my right is Rick Kearney. Now, Rick is a certified diagnostic master technician, automotive technician naturally. Been on the business for over 20 years. worked for me for about that length of time and he is not a mechanic we used to call him a mechanic time flies and then suddenly we start calling him a technician on auto technician not because it sounded

better but because cars got more complicated now cars are literally rolling computers i don't know how many out there or do-it-yourselfers but probably far fewer than there were 10 years ago or 20 or 30 years ago because it's kind of hard to do it yourself, unless you're a computer technician, and that's what we call Rick Kearney. Rick is a auto computer technician. And when he fixes a car now, more often than not, he plugs it in and reads his computer. He might even plug it in to the manufacturer who will read their computer. And when he fixes a car, you'll download something into the car,

just like you would do when you download into your computer or your smartphone. So it's really crazy. It's complicated. And yet, you still have the same challenges when you go in to have your car maintain or repaired. And Rick is going to be here to help you out with that. Now, to Rick's right is Nancy Stewart. Nancy is my co-host. She's also my wife.

And she is not only very knowledgeable about cars and buying and leasing and repairing and maintaining. but she's also a very strong female advocate. So, hashtag Me Too, the women's movement in the 21st century, you can't pick up the newspaper without finding out some change, some stirring up of the pot. CEO of CBS is now being stirred in the pot, Les Moonves, and tomorrow it'll be somebody else. But men need to step aside and realize that women,

are equal or perhaps maybe a little better and they need to be treated with respect and courtesy and they buy cars and they repair their cars so nancy uh being ahead of her time she's been talking about this for 10 years you know hashtag me too is a new phenomenon but the whole idea of women being treated with courtesy and respect in car dealerships and independent repair facilities is just as important today, more important today, because people are really getting on top of that. Nancy? Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and I'm going to correct the recovering car dealer.

He said, 10 years I may have been, you know, talking about all this respect for ladies. I'd say maybe it might be more like 40 years, and, you know, it's like as if that, well, things are still changing. I wish that, you know, everyone would recognize that we are in the 21st century and going out there for a lady to purchase a vehicle. Things should be a little bit different. They are changing, though. Give us a call toll-free at 877960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to have a wonderful show, a fabulous mystery show. Shopping Report, and a whole lot to get to. Back to the recovering car dealer. Well, thank you. And we also have a text number. I think Nancy just gave that out, 772-497-6530.

We have something interesting, a new addition to our show, and it's an anonymous way to reach us. And one of the things that has always amazed me over the years, I always challenge folks in the auto industry, mainly car dealers. or the employees of car dealerships, even manufacturers. People don't like to call in or text in on live radio. I'm not sure, well, I, you know, people are shy. The text number is for people who really don't want to be on live radio. It's a big audience. We have 20,000 people out there listening to it.

So we understand that. But we have an anonymous line now. and uh this is the first time we've tested it on the air and uh it's interesting i'm going to give you that it's pretty simple to remember www.w. your anonymous feedback.com www. www.w.com.com. Brand new now is it really anonymous feedback.com. Brand new now is it really anonymous? It really is. We looked all over before we came up with something that was really foolproof. And this is the same web service that is being used by Tesla and Adobe and a lot of really, really big companies.

Big companies like to hear the unexpigated honest truth. In fact, smart companies like to hear really what people have to say. Some people are shy, some people are embarrassed, I guess some people, I don't know, maybe people just want to say nasty things, which that's going to happen. So if you want to say something nasty about me or Rick or Nancy or Earl Stewart on cars or anybody you want to, you can do that and nobody will ever know. We'd prefer to have honest, creative, informative criticism or anything that you want to say. but if you want to say something bad you can get away with it a website again is www. your anonymous feedback.com now I think I have a text here we're operating short of Stu Stewart my son who was our cyber guy he's out on

vacation but I'm getting these fielded to me by Jonathan Cantor who is our control room uh cyber guy thanks to jonathan yeah good guy this was sent last monday uh good morning my this a text my question is if you lease an automobile and die can the family just return it to the dealer and that would be the end of it thank you uh this is frank asking a question frank uh boy it's a it's a serious question it's a sad question it's a it's a very good question And unfortunately, as I say, I'm an active car dealer now. And unfortunately, I have to have that question asked to be by my customers. People leave cars.

And older people, these cars, even younger people, but some people die. Unfortunately, when you die and you have a car lease, you have a contractual agreement even after you're dead, because your estate has that contractual agreement. And your estate inherits the debt. And when you sign on the dotted line for a lease, for a lease you have obligated yourself and if you pass your estate for all the payments 36 month lease 36 payments 48 months 72 month whatever the number of payments on that lease you are obligated for plus you're obligated for all the

other things that lessees are obligated for above a normal wear and tear excess mileage charges is said you should really think about this when you lease a Because it's not just if you die, it's if you can't drive your car anymore. Or if you don't want to drive your car anymore, you might have a disability, you might have problems with your vision or whatever. Disabled to the point where you can't drive, you still are obligated for that full debt. So think about that anytime you lease a car, particularly if you're, you know, if you're a little older. I'm 77 years old, I would think twice before I lease a car. car you don't want to have to pass this debt obligation along to your estate so thank you very much

for that text and for that call and you can call us 877 960 9960 and text us as we said 772 49760 and our new hot off the press never been done before anonymous www your anonymous feedback.com. So I have to use a password to get into that, and so we'll be a little bit slow perhaps in getting back to those. And without Stu, Stuart, my cyber, pardon you're here to help me, we're going to have to struggle a little bit with that, but we'll do the very best we can.

Now, moving along a little bit here because we haven't had any calls, and I would have loved to have some calls, and I'm going to give you that, Nancy. I have a text from a young lady who is inquiring about extended warranties, and she wants to know when it's necessary, if it's necessary at all, whether she's buying a new car or a used car. Well, excuse me for a moment before you answer that, my first question is always,

what doesn't the extended warranty cover? Your thoughts? Well, that's a good follow-up question. Extended warranties are also called extended service contracts and you probably can't buy a car today without somebody trying to sell you one. They're very profitable to the seller, being an insurance company or a dealer. So my first comment on extended warranties is find out is this an extended warranty that is being serviced and sold by the manufacturer through the dealer or is it a warranty that

was designed by the dealer and sold to you by the dealer typically the warranties that are sold by the dealer are not as comprehensive and they're usually higher priced the ones by the manufacturer are usually fairly priced more comprehensive Nancy's point very well taken when you are considering buying an extended warranty you're should be more concerned with what is not covered than what is covered they always tell you what's covered And they can cover a litany of items, a lot of parts on a car. But I'm going to interrupt myself, and I'm going to continue with an answer because we have a caller.

Yeah, we have, John is holding from Palm City. He is a regular caller. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. Good morning, and Stu is not there. He deserves a vacation. Yes. Just want to mention something, a concern to a lot of callers that have cars that are over 10 years,

and we know the manufacturer does not have to supply parts for those cars, but there many of them exist. The biggest one probably is trucks, mainly Ford and Chevrolet. Well, there is great hope. People don't notice. There is, and not only that, it's 12 makes of cars. One of the biggest firms in the United States, you can get a free catalog from them.

It's called National Parts Depot, just to give you an idea for the Ford F-Series, They have two catalogs. They have one from 1948 to 79, and another one from 1980 to 1996. The Chevy trucks cover 1947 to 1998. They even have four walk-in locations. Their headquarters is here in Ocala. They're in Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and California.

But a tremendous nationwide, you can call for a free catalog, 800, 880,000. 874-75-95, and there's 12 makes of cars involved. I won't give you the whole listing. I mean, as much as Chevels, Firebirds, Mustangs, Cougars, Camaros, it's unbelievable. Even Broncos, and it's a fantastic firm. Rick will probably tell you more. I'm sure he's probably had ordered parts, but this takes care of a lot of, you know, There's absolute cars that around, you don't see any more Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, Saturns, one of the main reasons, not that there were such bad cars, but there's absolutely no parts available for them.

So this, especially for the people with trucks, which are so needed, like, well, I'm in Palm City West over here. Almost every tree farm and every nursery has a truck, and a lot of them, I spoke to them in a diner. they don't really know where to get the parts for them. So this will solve a lot of problem for people. Again, 800, 874, 7595, National Parts Depot. John, do they have any imports on there? You mentioned mainly American domestic brands. Are there any imports at all?

Not to my knowledge. But there are special companies like for M.G. and some, you know, foreigners that you could have catalogs out also. But this is probably the biggest one with 12 makes of American cars, and it's a reliable firm. Rick will testify to that, I'm sure.

But that's a nice span, like on the F-Series, from 48 to 96, and the trucks is 47 to 1998. And it's fantastic. Just to look through the catalog, it's unbelievable. You know, in our days, I'm two years older than Earl, but there used to be a lot of parts that you used to buy, mainly accessories,

if you remember the company. I think they're still in business today, J.C. Whitney. Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Everybody used to like to see their catalog. John, are these all new parts? The catalog is body parts, mechanical parts. One other thing, too, a guy with a 65 Ford truck, F-150 didn't know about them,

and he went to the local, there's two of them here in Stewart. Napa, and he needed, I think, was a starting motor. And believe it or not, Napa got it from him one day. So that's a try that people could also make, too, on cars that are over 10 years. John, are these used parts, or they have new parts, remanufactured? Well, as the starter was rebuilt, you know, with a guarantee, he had to give them the old one, and naturally, what else, you look at it, and where is it rebuilt, said China. But he was just glad to get it

That he could get it over the counter And one day They said the truck for Napa To this area comes up every day From Miami With a delivery from their main warehouse Rick, you deal with this I wanted to mention the people

That there is great hope for them For vehicles that are more than 10 years Yeah, Rick You've told us about this 10 year limit And I think in the past you've reminded us That even after 10 years they have to build the parts up to the very last day that they offer the car for sale. And then you have that pipeline of parts coming in and dealer inventories.

So even though 10 years is a shutoff, chances are in 15 years you probably still have some parts in the pipeline that would be available. But what's your experience with older cars? Have you ever really struck out entirely? It's like we just can't find a part? Every so often, that does happen. And believe it, it's usually computerized items. The engine control computers, different actuators. But it's usually electronic items because especially with us, we're more in imports, Toyota.

And we don't really have the following that the cars like John just mentioned, have those vehicles that he mentioned they have uh for want of a better word they have a following a flock of people that simply will not give them up there is a reason why the ford f series pickup is one of the best selling vehicles ever and it's simply because they are for trucks are good trucks and they will last forever and sometimes finding the parts can be kind of tricky, but like John says, these different companies are making reproduction parts. They're finding other places that'll gear up for them. They buy out warehouse supplies of what's called new old stock parts.

In other words, these are parts that are brand new from the factory, but the dealer just sold them off because nobody really needed them that much anymore. And these companies will buy them and just let them sit in a warehouse until somebody does need them. so every so often you can still find those parts you need but sometimes you do have to wind up in a junkyard looking for them yeah john i really appreciate your calling it with that number that'll be very helpful especially the people that are collectors i know there some people out there that have old cars

you know the nice thing about uh 21st century and google is that you can find just about anything i wouldn't be surprised if you couldn't go on to google and say 1946 Chevrolet, whatever, clutch assembly, and they would probably be somebody out there with information on it. Oh, companies like Year 1 and Rock Auto, they're all over, and good parts at a good price. Well, let's just, especially on Ford's and Chevy trucks,

it's a living to a lot of people, and let's just keep them running, and they were a Ford and Chevy both on their ads on TV lately show, you know, older like Chevy truck that people hold on to, and then for generations they give it to their kids and grandchildren. Yep. So it's interesting about this National Parks Depot. Great call, John.

You are, as usual, tell us something we don't know. And if I don't know it, I've been in the business 50 years, that's very helpful to a lot of folks out there. Please call again, and thanks very much for that information. Thank you guys for being in them. Thank you, John. That number that John gave us was 800, 874-7595, and that's the National Parks Depot. Great information.

And while I'm thinking about it, it heads up to our listeners. If you're unable to listen to our live show or you want to listen to any of our past shows, you can always go to Earl Stewart on Cars podcast on your smartphone. Or your tablet, and you can use it, and the following podcasts are available. Apple, Sound, Google, Stitcher. So keep all that in mind, and it's a great opportunity for you to listen to the show, or, as I said, any of our past shows. We have a great mystery shopping report coming out from Carl's Buick GMC in Stewart, I believe. That's Stewart, Florida.

And ladies, the first. two new lady callers. You can win yourself $50 this morning. So give us a call with your questions or your comments. 877-960 or you can text us. It's 772

4976530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. We were talking about extended warranties when we had the call from John in Palm City. And I got up to the point where I was saying that extended warranties have to be most favorably from the manufacturer. If the car dealer's extended warranty, you have to be very

careful. You also have to be very careful when you're buying an extended warranty to find out what it does not cover. Usually it does not cover the most expensive components on the car. And that is the real gotcha. One of the, one of the deceptions that car dealers perpetrate is the power train warranties which cover only the lubricated portions of the car. I think it's about generally accurate. And Rick, you're talking about your axle and your drive shaft and the engine block and anything that is lubricated. And the exclusion on the warranty is the fact that if you don't lubricate it regularly,

the warranty is null and void. And there's a lot of exceptions to whether or not they will pay. If there's one thing that probably won't fail on a car, If you maintain your car regularly, it's the power train. So when you get a lifetime power train warranty, or when you pay for a power train, limited warranty, you're really not getting very much. What is going to fail are the computer modules on your car.

And as I said earlier in the show, cars today are computers. So it won't pay for the computers. That's 90% of the problems you're going to have with a car. Air conditioning is another very expensive component on your car. and if your warranty, extended warranty, does not cover the air conditioner, you can forget about it. Rick? One other item I've seen a lot of that aren't covered by most of these extended warranties are door lock actuators. But they're electronic, they're computer controlled, but they're moving so they tend to wear out and break down.

And believe it or not, most of them are not covered, and those can be a couple hundred dollars or more installed. Well, the extended warranty is extremely profitable to the dealer. You typically are solicited for that after you buy the car. And if you're buying a good car, if you've done your homework, if you've gone to consumer reports and you found out something that has high reliability, low maintenance cost, you get all that information from consumer reports or other sources of information. But if you're buying a reliable car, you really don't need to be. need to invest in an extended warranty. I look at this way. Insurance companies make a ton of money.

Warren Buffett made his fortunes mainly from insurance companies. It's the premiums far outweigh the payments in terms of repairs. So if you are not going to be financially hurt if you have to repair your car, then go ahead and insure it yourself. If you have to be financially hurt, if you have to pay $100 a month or $50 a month toward a premium. You could put it in the bank, earn interest on it, or even invest it in the stock market. And if you have a problem, take it out of the bank and fix it yourself. But I would hesitate to recommend extended warranties on a reliable car. If you're buying an unreliable car, that's a different story. But you still want to be sure you know what the warranty does not cover and you want to buy a manufacturer's

warranty, not one from a dealer that he created for his own pocket. You absolutely, positively, have to have that Fiat. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I shouldn't do that. Don't pick on the field. At least I didn't say Jeep. The Fiat is an accession, but if you look at the consumer reports, they'll tell you we're not picking on them. Jeep is another very popular car that has a high maintenance cost and repair cost. Very popular, but Chrysler, of course,

corporation wouldn't be alive today at Ford for Jeep. 70% of their profit comes from Jeep. So if you want to buy a Jeep, fine. I'd recommend you buy an extended warranty from the manufacturer if I buy a Jeep. That's a good point and a fiat of course. But look at the number of people that love those

jeeps. And you've got to admit, when you see those jeeps running down the road, they look like so much fun to drive. Those things are awesome. Exactly. Make sure that you're educated on those extended warranties, ladies and gentlemen, you know, you can fall into a scam, and they can be pretty costly.

Give us a call toll free at 877960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. A reminder to the ladies, the first two, new lady callers, $50. Give us a call. Back to the recovering car dealer. And I'm going to give that number out again because we're not getting as many calls as we should. And as Nancy just reminded you, we love the female callers. That's the reason we're going to pay you $50 if you haven't called the show before. And you're female.

We want to hear the female point of view. Visiting car dealerships for repairs, maintenance, buying or leasing. Love to hear your experiences. Positive. And if it's negative, we'd like to hear that too. 877-960. That's 877-960-9-9-9-6-0-9-9-9-6. 960 and our new anonymous line, the anonymous hotline.

You can go to a website, it's a link, and it's real simple to remember, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-U-R, Anonymous, A-N-O-N-Y, M-U-S, Feedback, F-E-E-E-D, B-A-C-K.com, www-W-W-W-E-AnonymousFeedback.com, car dealership employees, manufacturers, anybody out there. You want to threaten me, you want to compliment me, you want to be anonymous, guaranteed anonymity. This is the same web service that's used by Tesla and Adobe and the National Radio, NSA, what is it, National, Public Broadcasting.

NPR, National Public Radio. Exactly, National Public Radio. So it's a really respectable, guaranteed, you can't be found out anonymous. Your anonymous Feedback.com. Tell us what you want to say, and we'll never know who it was. But we'd rather know who you are. You. 877-9-60-9960.

That'd be very interesting if you decide to let us know who you are. And again, I'm going to remind the ladies, first two new lady callers, $50 for you. So give us a call. I'm going to repeat that number again. 877960. 9960. Or if you have any questions, you can give us a text at 772-497-65-30. And as I said earlier, we have a great mystery shopping report coming up from Carl's Buick GMC,

and that was Otto Stewart. So you can stay tuned for all the excitement and information. right here at Earl Stewart on cars, back to the recovering car dealer. We've got a couple of texts here. Thank you very much for you, texters. Texts from Florence didn't need to remain anonymous from Royal Palm Beach. You mentioned this last week, but one are the car items most impacted by Florida weather? And I know Rick was talking about that last week, and boy, does that impact?

We see it largely with our seasonal customers, because, in addition, addition to the Florida weather, and you can see what we've got now with this high heat and humidity. Let's get to that after we take Pamela's call. We have a first-time caller, female caller. Good morning, Pamela. Welcome to the show. Good morning. How are you doing this morning?

We're doing well. You got me out of bed. That's great. I'm listening to you, and I'm going, hmm, maybe I should not get that warranty on Mike. Yeah, isn't that a great question? Yeah, I was thinking you're going, hmm, I'm getting all these warranty things because I have a 2013 Mercedes E350. And supposedly they, you know, just expired the manufacturers after 60,000 miles.

And I'm deciding whether or not I should try to get another warranty on it. Okay, well, before we go on, I want to tell you that you won yourself $50, and if you, after you after we discuss the warranty with you, if you'll stay on the line, you can give us your information and I'll mail that out to you. Okay, great. Pam, your comment was really,

I should have mentioned this. This is the reason I love live talk radio because my listeners call in and remind me of things that I should have said. When I'm talking about extended warranties, one of the biggest scams are the solicitations. Every state in the Department of Motor Vehicles

has a list. of all the cars that were bought, new and used. And so they know when you bought that Mercedes, and they know the Mercedes warranty, and they know when you're probably out of warranty based on time, they estimate the mileage, and suddenly you start getting these direct mails, emails, all sorts of solicitations from these scam companies.

You get a lot of them out of Nevada. They seem to have fewer controls there than a lot of states. Exactly right. And they try to make. make it appear this is a notice from the manufacturer scares you a little bit say warning your car is out of warranty or will be out of warranty and we've got this great warranty call this number etc etc these are usually the worst and least comprehensive warranties and the most expensive so rule of thumb ignore any

solicitation on an extended warranty whether it's direct mail or email telephone or otherwise ignore them they are nice 99.9% of the times absolutely worthless. Right. I'm getting a lot of them in the mail. Yeah. And the manufacturers don't do this, Pamela. You will never get a solicitation from an auto manufacturer as to an extended warranty. It's always from a third-party company that's out there to make a few bucks and more than a few bucks. In fact, in fact, some of these warnings are a couple thousand dollars.

Actual value would be worth virtually nothing. Hmm. Well, I'm glad I listened to your show. I was lying in bed. My alarm went off. I'm listening to everything. I'm saying, you know, maybe I'll tear up those letters and throw them away that I keep on getting. There you go. Well, you can mail me some of you love or... Yeah, we'd love to have you mail them. E-fax it, email it, or scan it, mail it to me, or whatever you want to do. I love to collect those. Really? And, yeah, I keep those, and occasionally, we get somebody that's crossed the line, will notify the Attorney General or the regulators. Usually they're pretty careful.

They have all the disclosure in the fine print that you need a magnifying glass to read. But, yeah, if you wouldn't mind sending me a copy of those, it would be great. Yeah, yeah, I can send them copies. I'm getting them in the mail. Yeah, and Pamela, you know, these mailers are so deceiving. Some of them are just so dishonest. And, you know, it's a way of the dealers getting you into their dealership. And once you're there, well, I'll tell you what.

anything could happen. So the advertisements that are out there, the mailers that are out there, sometimes they're accurate, and most of the time, they're not. So I thank you for the phone call. Sure. No problem. You woke me up this morning. Well, I hope we wake you up again next Saturday.

We'd love to hear from you. Okay, sure. Sounds great. Okay, family. Have a great weekend. Thanks a lot. We're going to go to our next first-time female caller. I believe, no, she's not a first-time caller, but we'll take the call anyway.

Good morning, Karen. Karen, can you hear us? Yes, I'm here. Hi, Karen. How are you? Good, Nancy. How are you? Good morning, Mr. Earl.

We're doing great. I am not a first-time caller. You all were very good answering my first question when I called. last time. I do have an extended warranty on my 2005 Camry, and you all are the ones that maintain it. It's been great. We've had a few problems, but you've ironed them out. I want to know what do you do after your extended warranty is up. Well, Karen, you bought a good car. The Toyota Camry is one of the recommended cars from Consumer Reports. And if you've maintained your car properly. In other words, if you've taken it in for all the fact you recommended

maintenance, I wouldn't extend that warranty. I mean, you can always buy an extension on a warranty. There's always somebody that will sell you an extended warranty. But you've got a good car, you take care of it, and the money that you're going to be paying on premiums for an extended warranty is more than probably what you're going to have to pay. Now, whenever I say that, there are always exceptions. And there are people out there that feel better when they have the insurance of never having to pay for a repair by the way most extended warranties do not cover everything when they say to you this is a bumper-to-bumper warranty they're not being honest even the manufacturers bumper-to-bumper

warranty is not truly bumper-to-bumper so if it's peace of mind you're after and you like to sleep better at night because you know you have that insurance I mean I That's the reason a lot of people buy insurance. They can't afford to make the repair, whether it's home insurance or health insurance. They may be able to afford it, but they like to know that they're not going to have to come out of pocket. But if you want to be practical about it, the premiums you're going to pay 99% of the time are going to exceed any kind of a reimbursement you're going to get from repairs on that warranty. Okay.

Okay. All right. And you said that, I think, on one of your other shows, you were saying that the best time to buy a car would be at the end of the year? If I said that, I misspoke. There are cases at the end of the year model year, and usually at the end of every model year, like we're right now at the end of a model year and getting there closer. large discounts are given on that current model. The fact is that you're often better off to buy the new model. If you do your homework, if you shop and compare prices, if you use the Costco auto buying service, if you use truecar.com, if you get three competitive bids and compare apples and apples

with the exact same year-break and model, the 2019 model, we're in the 2018 model, model year. The 2019 model, when they come out, well, you can probably buy for close to the same price as you could, a 2018 model in spite of the discounts. And then you don't experience that huge depreciation. When you buy a brand new 2018, let's say in November this year, you buy that 2018 and the 2019s are also out, the depreciation on that 2018 will overcome and outweigh the savings from the discount on the 2018. Rick has got a point.

I wonder if she means the end of the calendar year, like waiting until the last week in December and being ready to pounce when a dealership is trying to get those last few cars in sold so they get their big bonuses. Well, that's a good point, Rick. Is that what you were saying, Karen? Yes, yes. Yeah, at the end of the...

If my warranty is going to run out in 2019, it might serve me better to just buy a new. new car and get the warranty that comes with the car. And yes, I was thinking about the end of the year, the normal December type of year. Yeah, the end of the year or the end of the month is always a good time because of the incentives. Dealers are desperate, manufacturer is desperate. The end of the year is also a time when they're pushing the last year's model car.

They're really trying to clean out the 2018. So December 31st and January 1st and toward the end of the December, there's a huge volume of sales, mainly of last year's model. So if you're going to wait until the end of the year, buy the current model, don't buy last year's model, which is going to be the 2018. Okay. All right. Thank you very much. You all have a great day. Thank you, Karen.

Look forward to hearing from you again. We are going to go straight to Sherry, and Sherry is a first-time caller. uh we're going to skip sherry i think we lost sherry we're going to go uh we're going to go to bob who's calling from west palm beach good morning bob how is everyone today wonderful i'm glad you're on the topic of warranties because i did want to call about that i'm wanted to ask you a question uh before i do that i'd like to say that i'll want to disagree with you on the extended warranty i think most people if you're going to keep you their car beyond the original warranty and they live in South Florida with all the

electronic devices and modules that are in these cars and sensors the humidity does a number on those things and over time they all break and they're very expensive to repair so that's the reason why I always buy the manufacturer's extended warranty if I'm going to keep my car beyond the original warranty now the original warranty is the original why I wanted to call I wanted to ask you some manufacturers, they all have different lengths on the original warranty. It used

to be the standard was 336 on most of the... I know General Motors, the Cadillacs were always four years and I think 450 and eventually they changed the bill at 450 also.

And then Hyundai came out with a five-year warranty and now Volkswagen has come out with a six-year warranty. original warranty when you buy the car. And I was wondering if this is something that you should consider when you're buying the vehicle, or is it already factored into the price of the car so you're really not saving any money by getting the car that has a six-year versus a three-year warranty?

Bob, it's a good question. Sometimes the longer-extended, the longer manufacturers' warranties are put on because of the manufacturing, fact, you're trying to incentivize you to buy a car. Oftentimes, when a new vehicle is introduced in the United States, I remember Hugo, one of the worst cars ever made, had a great warranty. I think it was five years, 100,000 miles. They had to do that because the car was so bad and people knew it that if the manufacturer wasn't going to fix it, they wouldn't buy it.

Hyundai, when they first came, had, and I believe Hyundai still does have, relatively long warranty. Hyundai was a bad quality car when it first came to the country and now it's a pretty good car. Kia is the same way. Some of the better quality cars have shorter warranties. Why? Because they have the quality reputation and the popularity people recognize that they are good quality cars and they're not so concerned about the warranty. My opinion and manufacturers don't care. I'm a Toyota dealer in full transparency.

I've been a Toyota dealer for almost 50 years. I've said to Toyota many, many times. You build a great car, high-quality car. They don't break as often. You don't have to repair them as much. Why don't you have a better warranty? I mean, three years, 36,000 miles. You could make that five years, 75,000 miles.

How much would it cost you? and their answer is pretty much why should we we build a quality car we're selling a lot of cars we're selling more than anybody else and so they just don't do it I think they'd sell more well I think that Volkswagen they did they came out with the six year because of the admissions scandal that they had when they were dummying up the software on their diesel cars and they lost a lot of customers and they matter of fact the head of Audi in Germany, he went to jail. So, you know, they came out with this

to incentive, give people an incentive to come back. Exactly. They came out with six years on the Volkswagen. Yes. So I think that's why they did it. But I thought that was pretty, you know, six years is, that's twice as long as the standard 336.

Yeah, that was a... I was just curious if they just, if that cost of them doing that is just put into the price of a car. Well, it should be, Bob, and And it is for most manufacturers. Now, when you have a desperate situation like Volkswagen, that was one of the most amazing things I've seen. I've been in the business 50 years.

I've never seen such a bad situation. I've never seen manufacturers just flat lie about what they were doing. It wasn't the fact that they were selling cars with emissions that were illegal. It's the fact that they had premeditatively designed a sense. system to lie to the Environmental Protection Agency testing that detected I mean it was like

a spy mystery that they would actually be that deceptive to do it. So they got caught with their pants down and they had to do something I don't believe it's probably priced in. I think they did it out of desperation. Eventually everything is priced in

to a company. I mean if this company survives they have to price everything in in order to survive. So, yeah, the Volkswagen situation is truly unique. Volkswagen builds a great car, a high-quality car, a good performing car. Why they resorted to this sort of deception, ironically, during the middle of all this, we kept checking Volkswagen sales, and the car buyers, the Volkswagen buyers, just kept on buying it.

They didn't care that they were lying, cheating, and doing all this with the emissions. And the sales never seemed to suffer. What did suffer were the huge fines that they got hit with. And what did it hurt were when they started putting Volkswagen executives in jail, which they deserved. I was very happy to see that because, you know, a billion dollars to Volkswagen is chump change. When you put the CEO and the slammer, that gets everybody's attention. All right. Now, I wanted to ask you about TSBs, and why is it that the dealerships and the manufacturers never show the customs, the TSBs? Money. They don't want you to know about the technical service bulletin because you'll come in and get your car repaired, and they won't be able to get paid for it.

It's interesting what they do is the technical service bullet is sent to the dealer. The dealer is given a heads up and the dealers are told, now if a customer comes into the service drive, don't tell them about the technical service bulletin. If the customer complains about the particular issue that the technical service bullet addresses, then you can tell them about the technical service bulletin. But if a dealer can be reprimanded, a dealer can be reprimanded. and penalized if he advises his customers, for example by email or even verbally, hey, if you have a problem with your steering pulling to the right,

or if you have a problem with a noise here, or have a problem with your electric window or whatever the issue addressed by the technical service board is, if you notify publicly your customers, they will penalize you. I mean, sometimes seriously. So that's the reason that they're a secret. But the good news is, Bob, you can go online. And God bless Google and the whole Internet situation today. If you have an issue, you go online, you describe the earmic model of your car,

the exact name of the problem, describe the problem. And you'll find a chat room, and you'll even see the technical service bulletins. Rick has a point. Yeah, TSBs were actually, they were a great idea when they first came up with it because it was meant to let the manufacturer tell technicians out in the field, hey, if you see this issue, look at this part. And as cars got more and more complicated, they really became a godsend for us technicians because they sped up our diagnostic process and made it easier to find the problem, solve it, and get the car back to the customer. Then it reached a point where technicians were, well, the car doesn't have this problem, but I'm going to do it anyways because the manufacturer says, I can get paid to do this job, and it's pretty straightforward, and it pays me decent money, so I'm going to do it. And that was when that ball all started getting rolling in the wrong direction. But yeah, pretty much all technical service bulletins for all manufacturers, by the time they send that out onto the Internet,

portion for the technicians to access. Within a day's time, those TSBs are available on the general internet for the public, and you can pretty much, like Earl said, Google the year and model of your car and just put technical service bulletins, and you'll find a list of them that reference your car, even for things that you may not have noticed that you had an issue with. Right, but most people don't. My whole point is, all these years, they've kept that a secret from the, from the public. Most people, I had a situation where I had, my father had board a car, Cadillac DeVille,

and it, and we had, it was losing oil, and they serviced this car over, was originally school, and later became auto nation. They serviced that car for seven years with the extended warranty, and they always found every other excuse to say why the oil was coming out of the car. And then after the, I mean, it was, and that car had no mileage on it. They had like 14,000 miles. They would fix a gasket or something. And then after the, then it was losing two quarts of oil every other week.

And I went in and there was service and for, oh, that's normal for this engine. I said, now the car's only got 19,000 miles on it. It can't be. So then I went online and I did what you said. I went, I found it. I found they had the technical service bulletin on this car. They were having that problem with that motor for over eight. eight years on that North Star engine.

And what it was, was the oil was leaking through the valves and the valve guides. And they were told that either those cylinder heads had to be cleaned out or the valve guides had to be replaced, one of the other. Now, they had that information available to them, and they never did it. They kept doing all these other things. And then the car had just been out of warranty for a few months. So they're telling me they wanted $3,500 to do the job. I'm not going to give you $35,500. You've known about this problem.

I had the printout of the TSP. I showed it to him, and they said, well, you can call General Motors, which I did, and because my father had always bought Cadillac. This was like his 12th Cadillac that he bought. So General Motors says, okay, we'll pay for half. So, you know, they wanted over $3,000 to do the job. So they said, do you have to discuss with the dealership, you know, the other part of the service?

So I went down there, I met with the service manager and the GM, and they said, well, you know, you're on the car, it's your problem. And I said, look, you had this car for seven years under warranty. You serviced it. It's had this problem for a long time. You kept doing all these other things. This bulletin was available to you. It's been, they've had this problem for eight to nine years, and it plainly tells you how to fix it. And you never did it.

The service advisor never showed it to me. The mechanic never even looked it up. And so I had a, you know, I had a pull teeth over there, and they finally agreed to do it for $500 deductible. So it cost me $500, but not $3,000 over $3,000. The thing is, these technical service bulletins have always been kept a secret for people. And they don't have a talk, you know, I mean, you know about them because you're in the business, and I know about them because of the experience I've had with automobile. appeals, but I would say the general public, probably 75% to 80% of the people that own vehicles

are unaware of these bulletins that go directly from the manufacturer to the dealership, and I never presented to anyone. And I always thought that was odd. But like you said, the Internet is a wonderful thing. You just have to realize that that is there, and it's available for you to use it. Otherwise, it doesn't, you know, serve its purpose. You're exactly right. and you hit on one of the dirty little secrets of the auto industry.

In this case here, Auto Nation Cadillac, Scully Cadillac, Previous. I don't think they were deliberately concealing the technical service bulletin. I think they just didn't know they had it. There are so many of these technical service bulletins. This is a manufacturer, dirty little secret. The manufacturers, they call them secret warranties. It's a secret recall. If they have a product defect and they go and they do a recall, then they have to notify the world.

The NHTSA and everybody gets notified, the cars come pouring in, they got to fix it, they got to pay the dealer to fix it, cost of millions of dollars. If they do a technical service bulletin, it's kind of a CYA. They shoot the bulletin out, and it's like shotgun in these technical service bulletins. they come pouring into car dealerships used to be in the mail now it's email and the service manager or the shop foreman or whoever they got a huge stack of these technical service bowls there's not a week goes by when you don't get a whole lot of these technical service bolts so anytime a manufacturer finds out a problem of the car they send this out it covers them legally because they did notify their dealers the problem is the dealer didn't read it and the customer doesn't know about it so the customer doesn't know about it so the customer ends up having to pay for it anyway, but the good news is to the manufacturer doesn't have to pay for it, and that's what they care about. But there should be a congressional investigation on technical service bulletins.

You're absolutely right about that. Yeah, it's just, you know, and one of the other things, because you're always talking about, you know, when people come into a dealership, especially women, how they always get short served on these deals, because, you know, it's a male deal. dominated industry they also take advantage of the elderly yep absolutely i mean you know when i was shopping for the car for my father you know for this deville that he bought in all too i could tell you stories about how they were trying you know soon as they she's somebody walking in there that it's in their 80s right away the cash registers ringing up yeah yeah it's uh so you know i'm surprised

no one has come up with a uh a service uh so uh someone that's older could have somebody go with them as like a surrogate to help them for a small fee to help them through the buying process. I think that would be a great niche for someone to open up that type of a service. Especially down here, the population is, I'm not sure exactly with the numbers are,

but wouldn't you say it's skews towards the aged? Oh, certainly, yeah, South Florida. The average age is probably 10, 15 years, longer greater than the rest of the country we also have a lot of people that are have immigrated to this country from Haiti and South America Cuba we have a lot of non-English speaking at least people whose English is not their first language so you have a lot of elderly you have the people that are language impaired so to speak because they're dealing in English speaking

country. You go into buy a car. How'd you like to be in Haiti trying to buy a car and having the salesman talk to you in Creole or be in Chile and have somebody speaking to you in Spanish and you don't speak Spanish? So we have a lot of people that are victimized in South Florida because they're easy targets. It is a shame and that's one of the reasons why this show exists. And I can't thank you enough, Bob, for bringing up this technical service bull in issue I should have brought that up a long time ago it's always been one of my pet peeves and I I get my own customers because I am a current dealer and will call will call me about an issue and I'll find sometimes in my own service

department one of my service advisors was not aware that there was a technical service bulletin so the fact that we have to call our own service department attention to the fact that there is a fix on this the other the other thing that's bad about the technical service bulletins is there's usually a time limit put on it so they put uh for 30 days 90 days one year whatever the manufacturer designs and if you have a car that is three days out of that technically they don't have to fix the car if you lean on the manufacturer we find they will typically stretch it a little bit they call that goodwill but it is a dirty little thing now that's something i didn't know i didn't know so you're saying that they

actually can expire. Yeah, yeah. Well, they're usually based on the warranty period of the car, the three-year-36 or five-year-60 or whatever the warranty is. Exactly, yeah. So, at any rate, in other words, they're widening the warranty to cover something. But you can pound on the desk, you can call the 800 number of the manufacturer, you can go to the dealer, or you can go to hopefully the service director or service manager.

and if you make enough noise, oftentimes they will stretch not only on warranty, put on technical service bulletins if you're not, you know, 10 years out, if you're a few... Well, what happens with that issue, what happens if you have a three-year, 36,000-mile warranty, original warranty on your vehicle? Right. And the TSP doesn't come out until right before that original warranty is going to expire. You're telling me if you're a week or two out of the original warranty, you're going to expire. original warranty and you come across this bulletin and you've been having a problem with the car

that they're not going to fix it well they'll they'll have technical service bullets after warranty too so they will have time limits on fix uh rick you had a point yeah because believe it or not that actually happened to me when i bought my brand new tocoma in 2013 i i had to go on a road trip to orlando and it had this weird buzzing whistling noise at highway speed and for three years I kept trying to figure this out just playing around little bits at a time when it would annoy me and finally they came out with the technical service bulletin saying that the door gaskets were redesigned to solve that problem but my truck was already out of warranty because I had driven too many miles and I wound up I basically I just got goodwill to cover the gaskets and then installed them myself but yeah it it does

happened that way. So here's an employee of a Toyota dealership, works in the service department, talks to all the other techs, talks to the service advisor, talks to the service manager, and nobody knew about that technical service bull nor they would have told him. It didn't come out until

like a year and a half, two years later. It was crazy. Well, you think that's because the manufacturer, they get these complaints from all over the country on a certain issue. That's when they'll, when they get to a certain amount of complaints, I guess that's when they issue these TSBs.

So maybe they were dragging their feet on it and they didn't want to, you know, they didn't feel like they wanted to issue it and they waited, they waited and waited. And then what happens is, like you said, you're out of your warranty and then you're out of luck. Exactly. That happens and we have situations and all car dealers have situations where we know there's a problem because we have so many customers that come in and we call the manufacturer and the manufacturer will tell you, well, this is the first complaint about this.

We've heard. I mean, nobody... I have one other question for you all before I go. Yeah. And it's based on originally what I was talking to you about the warranties. One of your competitors up, Depp Smith up there above, that sells the same type of vehicle as you, is advertising a lifetime warranty. How does he do that?

It's a lifetime power train warranty. And I'll tell you something very interesting. Well, that's a great question. People value that highly. We did a survey at our dealership to find out what customers valued in different features and benefits because we sell cars. We want to know what's important to customers. And the survey that we did found that our customers thought that the power train warranty was a very valuable thing to have. The fact of the matter is the power train warranty is virtually worthless.

And you have a, but people want it. People value things higher. And it's a lack of not understanding what the power train is. And the fact that power trains do not fail if you maintain the car properly. If you don't maintain the car properly and you need the warranty, the warranty disallows the repair because you didn't maintain. the gear is a catch-22. So people think that...

Well, he doesn't, when he does the commercials, though, he doesn't say that. He says, he doesn't specifically say it's the power train. He says, a lifetime warranty on the vehicle. So right away, you're thinking... It's in the fine friend. If it wouldn't come to your mind, it would be just limited to something that never fails. If you... That might be set up for people.

It's a little bit deceptive, I would say, wouldn't you? Totally deceptive, but he does disclosure, but it's in the fine print. What you have to do is you have to have a high-resolution 40K TV and a video cam and you have to stop and freeze frame the fine print and then blow it up and you will see he's talking about a power train warranty. But it is totally deceptive and a lot of people do the same thing. Anytime you see a warranty advertised on TV, the fine print discloses the facts, but nobody can read the fine print. Well, I saw something else that was very unusual I've never seen before. It's the Mazda dealer down the street from you is if you buy a car from them or lease a car from them, they're offering a full car detail once a year.

I'm not quite sure what that involves, but I've never seen a car dealership offer that before. Some of the car dealerships will offer you like a car wash, but this was a full car detail, which I guess they mean they're going to, you know, wash it, wax it, do it inside and out once a year on your vehicle, which I thought that was different. I had never seen that before, have you? Hey, I'd take them up on that. That's a lot better than a free lifetime power train warranty. Yeah.

Bob, thanks for the call. You're an extremely well-informed guy. I really would appreciate it if you could call back in again. Great conversation. Okay, have a great day, everyone. Have a great weekend. Stay in touch. Ann sent me a text,

and she talks about why she considered this coverage. She knew that she would be selling her car, possibly to a third party and that it having the manufacturer's coverage extended warranty would increase the resale value over car. Would you agree?

The extended warranty it's possible. I mean, if people think the extended warranty is valuable and it has that on the car when you sell it, it's worth a few more dollars. The resale value would be increased. It depends on the buyer, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, ladies and gentlemen, every situation is, well, unique. And the coverage will differ. But one covered, one covered repair can pay for the entire cost of that plan. So there's a whole lot to take into consideration. Your thoughts? Give us a call toll free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us. 772-497-65-0. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, folks, I'm going to remind you again about this new anonymous call line we have. It's actually a click line where you could go to a link and you can input a question, a comment, criticism, a threat, whatever you want, anonymously. So you folks out there in the industry, car dealers, we know you're listening to us because we hear a roundabout most car dealerships are listening to us in South Florida because they know we do the mystery shopping and they're all waiting to see who the next target is.

So you car folks out there, if you have something that you want to say to me but you're afraid to call, here's an anonymous way to contact me. I'll never know who it was. It's simply www. www.youranonymousfeetback.com. Earl, do you have Steve Ward's text? He was inquiring about certified used cars versus regular used cars.

I do have that, and it is another very good question. Certified cars, used cars, are only as good as the dealer that does the certification. The certified, the manufacturer's certified cars exist. not because of manufacturers love for car dealers to sell used cars but because car dealers love to be able to sell new cars and they like to make a profit so certified cars sold by a Buick dealer or a Honda dealer Honda is selling a warranty to you on that certified car extended warranties or a warranty is sold to you with that certified car that's where the manufacturers make the money and of course the dealer makes the money on the certified car too now with that said there is a check sheet certified cars have a certain amount of requirements that you have to check to see that the car is a good car it might be 35 40 points

typically in the typical car dealership these cars are checked by the lowest price person in the dealership. You've got some guy on minimum wage and he goes over the car and he checks it. Particularly, when you get the check sheet on the certified car thing, you'll see a line drawn through it. 35, checked them all. Now, I'm being a little facetious there, but if you find a deal that is really conscientious and has really checked the car out and gone through all of the check sheet, then the car is a good car. He's checked everything. That probably should have been checked on the car even if it weren't certified so my advice on certified cars is still get it checked out by your own technician if you're buying a used car certified cars typically are a

later model higher price lower mileage anyway some of the certified cars are still under manufacturers warranty but choose the person dealership that you deal with carefully and then the certification of that car isn't nearly as important. And even if you buy it from someone that you trust, have the car checked out anyway. Certified cars exist because the manufacturers and the dealers like to sell you a certified warranty. I hope that answers your question. Didn't we open up a can of worms here?

Do you realize how long we've been talking about extended warranties? Yeah, it's a... This is an important topic. And like I said earlier, you know, every situation is unique. But it's so important for you to do your homework before you decide on signing on the dotted line. Very, very important. One more question about extended warranties. And when you're leasing a vehicle, there isn't any reason to consider an extended warranty.

Would you agree? you? Yes, typical lease would be three years 36, but if you make the mistake of an extended lease, 60 months or 72 months, leases... That had changed the whole picture. Yeah, it changes the picture. In general, as I said before, extended warranties are a high profit item to the manufacturers and to the dealers.

So you can use your own judgment. If you want peace of mind and satisfaction, you want to sleep well and sleep. night knowing you're not going to have to pay for repairs and you have a comprehensive extended warranty. If it is comprehensive, it will be expensive and you want to pay it so you can sleep better at night. Go ahead and buy it. My advice, find a good car. Go to consumer reports, find something with low maintenance cost, low repair cost that will last you a long time. Cars today are better than they've ever been. The reliability is amazing. I agree. Cars today, I've been a car dealer, I started selling cars in 1968.

That was junk compared to what we have today. Today, a car can run 300,000, 400,000 miles. And if you pick that car out carefully from Consumer Reports, a recommendation, and you did all the factory recommended maintenance, you still got a good car. 30 years ago, at 50,000 miles, you were really taken a chance. at 100,000 miles you're driving a pile of junk. Today, a 100,000 mile car can be a very good car. So do you want to buy that extended warranty?

I don't think so. That's my humble opinion. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we have discussed an extended warranty, and I want to let you know or remind you, if you've been listening, that we do have the mystery shopping report coming up from Carl's Buick, GMC, and Stewart. And I want to take a moment and thank all of you for, tuning in to Earl Stewart-Arin Cars right here at the True Oldies Channel. We appreciate you listening, you texting, and being part of the show. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60.

So keep those texts coming in. We'll try to get to all of them. And remember, any question is worth the phone call to Earl Stewart-Arne Cars. It's a minefield. out there. Do your homework. Knowledge is power. Back to the recovering car dealer. And I know I'm, you know, repeating myself here, but I got so excited when I came up with this anonymous contact line. And I just really want someone. I mean, I'm wondering why, for, you know, 10 plus years we were doing this show. And I always, I even go to the car dealers out there. I say, I've never been sued by any of them. you and I'm saying all these bad things about you.

And it must be because the perfect defense against libel and slander is the truth. So I'm telling the truth about you guys. And why don't you call and argue with me? Then I said, well, probably because it would be embarrassing for you to call me. But you must want to contact me

and I came up with this anonymous source resource and I'm going to give it to you one more time. Maybe you just need to think about it. But it's www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. I'll even spell it for you.

Y-O-U-R. Anonymous is spelled A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S. Feedback, F-E-E-E-D-B-A-C-K. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Tell me what you think about Earl Struent Cars. Tell me what you think about this show. Priceless information. You know, I'm going to go to a commercial right now.

Okay. I'm going to take a commercial break while you car dealers think about my anonymous hotline. Look at it. And I'm going to hold up my book, Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer. Now, before you get mad at me, I'm not selling the book to make money. I'm selling the book to make money for Big Dog Ranch Rescue. That's my favorite charity. 100% of the proceeds of Confessions of Recovering Car Dealer goes to Big Dog Ranch Rescue.

That's a... I believe that was Fido. That's from our creative control room. Thank you very much. Big Dog Ranch Rescue was founded by Lori Simmons, an amazing woman who has been doing this for a number of years. Her original Big Dog Ranch Rescue was in Royal Palm and then was moved to Okachovia Boulevard out in Oaksahatchie.

and we have a large campus out there. It's about 30 acres, I think, and it's right off of... Huge. Right, it's huge. Swimming pool, a lake. We don't keep the dogs in cages. We keep them in dormitory rooms. We call them bunk rooms.

And they have wallpaper, painted walls. We have a vet, a full-time vet. We have a... I mentioned the swimming pool. We have a lake. Dogs don't want to leave. believe. We have, we have, but we save dogs from all over Florida and outside the state. We're in no-kill shelter. So we keep dogs for sometimes years. And if you have a dog and you want another dog, we can take care of it. We, we, unfortunately, sometimes people move to a home, to a rental situation or a condominium that doesn't allow dogs. People, for a lot of reasons, they can't keep their dogs. We take their dogs. and we take any type of dog.

We rehabilitate the dogs. They get all their shots, heartworm, rabies. We check them out thoroughly. They're neutered. If the dog has a behavioral problem, we take care of that with our trainer. Big Dog Wrench Rescue. Now, you can buy Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer on Amazon. Go to Amazon.com.

Buy the book. Now, the book is good, too, by the way. it's not a you know it's not empty we got a lot of stuff in here and the the book is a how to do it manual on buying a car without being ripped off by your car dealer so pretty much everything we do on this show and say is right here in this book leasing buying maintaining and repairing and we got a neat index in there you go in there and you can find out what if you want to buy or lease which partly to blame for card dealers to set the car pricing buy a car you can afford don't get shafted caveat mTOR let the buyer beware buyer lease your car at the right time of year these are all chapter heads at confessions of a recovering car dealer 100% of the proceeds go to big dog

ranch just like thank you very much a storm of information in that book if you don't have it you should and how about precious pebbles we have pebbles that's up for adoption right now she came into the dealers this past week and we did a great video and if you haven't seen it go to earl's Facebook page and you'll see pebbles up there and she is just about as sweet as she can be

give us a call ladies and gentlemen 877960 or you can text us at 772-49730 and I want to get to a text before we go any further excuse me an email that I received on some guidance that a young lady needed. She wanted to know where the best place was to go for information and to purchase a vehicle. And I'm going to give her a list, and you can confirm, Earl, True Car, Costco, Consumer Report. Those are all options for you to get the best information and the best price for a car that you want to purchase, whether it's new or used or you want to lease. It's all right there at your fingertips.

As I said earlier, knowledge is power. 877-960-99-60 or 772-497-6-5-30. And remember, ladies and gentlemen, Mystery Shopping Report Time will be coming up soon, and that is from Carl's Buick, GMC, from Stewart, Florida. Now back to the recovering car dealer. That report, by the way, we targeted this particular dealer on our Takata theme. And that just made me a remember challenge, whatever you want to call it, that I made to the politicians.

This is political season again with the midterm elections coming up. And we've talked about the fact that none of the politicians out there running have made an issue of the Takata recall. Now, if you've been on Mars for the past two years, you might not know about the Takata airbag recall, but it is the biggest recall ever known by mankind, huge. The largest airbag manufacturer in the world, Takata, was discovered to be selling millions and millions of defective airbags. And, of course, that's on millions and millions of cars worldwide. these airbags can explode on impact or even without impact sending shrapnel throughout the cockpit of the car

maiming killing people in the cars and it has done that we didn't we don't even know how many have been killed because oftentimes deadly accidents the actual cause wasn't known it was assumed that the dead people people were killed from other reasons I mean you have an impact it 75 miles an hour into another car. Sometimes you don't know that the airbag shrapnel was the villain that caused the death.

So it's a horrible situation. I said to the politicians nationwide in the state of Florida, I specifically mentioned Bill Nelson and Rick Scott or anybody running from public office to call the show and say... You left out Pam Bondi. Yeah, Pam Bondi. What is your position on the Takata airbag? Why do you allow car dealers in the state of Florida to sell a car with a defective Takata airbag or any dangerous recall?

Why is it legal to sell a car with a defective part, being the airbag, they can explode and kill you? Why is it legal? Rick Scott, with a stroke of a pen, could issue an executive order. order today, making it illegal in Florida to sell a car with a dangerous recall. So Rick Scott, or maybe people on his advisory board, people on his campaign, of course, he's running for Senate now, but your governor of the state of Florida now, Rick, you want to try the anonymous feedback line? You're afraid to be live on radio and tell the truth about why you'd

don't want to do that. The anonymous contact number is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. www. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. So for Rick Scott, Senator Bill Nelson, or any other politician running, here's my $1,000 challenge. I will donate $1,000 to your campaign if you will call the show. If you will call the show and tell us in the studio and tell the listening audience about 20,000 folks out there why you have not made an issue of the fact that Takata airbag cars are being sold in Florida as we speak. I'll give you a little hint. Our mystery shopping report, a car was sold or would have been sold with a defective

airbag that does not have a fix. That's right. And this was perfectly legal for this dealer to sell the car with a dangerous recall to a person who happened to be our mystery shopper knowing that it had a defective airbag and knowing that there was no fix. So if a politician can tell me, call 877-960-99-60. Anybody running for office, and I'll donate $1,000 to your campaign. 877-960-99-60. And we have a text number. 772-4976530.

And we've got an anonymous number. Anonymous. It's fantastic. I love that idea you came up with. Your anonymous Feedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Rick? That's not Rick Kearney, not Rick Scrake.

No, no. If I were up in that office, I would have done something by now. Because here's another aspect of this Takata situation that it's occurring to me, but I wonder how many others are thinking of this. There have been confirmed cases of some of the oldest cars with Takata inflators. These are the cars that these inflators have been in the longest amount of time that they are exploding without an impact, without an airbag deployment. The inflator is literally exploding on its own.

Haven't twice in Florida. One was a Honda in the temp area. Each case that I've heard of have been Hondas, which were the first ones, 2002 to 2003. But now, how many other cars are getting, into that age range and you know that was when this whole thing got started that's when all these huge numbers you know takata airbags were showing up and all these other cars in greater increasing numbers as the years went by yeah so how many of these cars now are reaching that age point

in an exponential amount that now are becoming more dangerous to the point of which you don't even need to be in an accident you could be driving down the road and suddenly suddenly it just explodes in your face for no reason. Well, this is another sin of the auto manufacturers because they have been putting in Takata airbags knowing that in the future these Takata airbags would become dangerous. Theoretically, a fresh Takata airbag with inflator,

you know, the ammonium nitrate is the accelerant, the explosive powder or whatever it is, inside the inflator. When it's brand new, theoretically it's not dangerous, But as Rick just said, that over time, the ammonium nitrate becomes unstable, deteriorates under high heat and humidity conditions. So a 2-year-old inflator is not dangerous. A 10-year-old is very dangerous. An 11-year-old is more dangerous. A 12-year-old is even more dangerous.

And at some point, they become so unstable, they just blow up without even a collision. So the manufacturers also know, statistically, three out of four recall cars never gets fixed. 75%. So when they sold that car yesterday and told the new car dealer, go ahead and sell it because it's safe, because it's not unstable now, they knew that 10 years from now, the chances are 75%, that car will still be on the road. But the further down the road you go and the older the car gets, the more owners that car has, it is highly unlikely you'll ever be able to find, locate that owner and contact him. And when you do, the fact of the matter is they're not very responsive to the recalls.

So it's a terrible situation. The politicians don't care. The regulators don't care. And I'm getting myself worked up. I don't want to do that. Well, you should. We all should. It's just something that needs to be out there.

As a matter of fact, I'll throw my own little public service announcement out. Starting today, this afternoon, I'm going to be doing training classes for Palm Beach County Fire Rescue and North Palm Beach Fire Rescue, where we're going to be teaching the first responders and firefighters a little more information on what they need to know when they're approaching hybrid cars and electric cars that have been involved in collisions. and part of my presentation that I put out is I have a full section about Takata airbags, letting them know some of the things they need to watch for and just airbags in general, hopefully helping these firefighters and first responders be a little safer in their jobs when they're approaching these cars that have been in collisions. Sure.

Thank you so much, Rick. That is priceless information and safety that you do so well. And while I'm doing some thank you, I want to, before the show is over, I want to thank Jonathan and Gordon for the fabulous job that they do weekend and week out. And we wouldn't be able to do the show without them, a great asset to Earl Stewart on cars. Thank you, guys. We are going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report, and that is from Carl's Buick, GMC, in Stewart. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, before I get into the mystery shopping report, I would be remiss not to mention the number, I mean the website that you should go to.

Most of you folks out there right now probably haven't checked to see if your car is safe. Very simple to do. And you can go to the NHTSA website, National Highway Traffic Safety Association. And that website is an easy one to remember. It's just safercar.gov. safer car.gov S-A-S-A-F-E-R-C-A-R-C-A-R-G-G-O-V and you put your Venn number in

it'll tell you if there's a recall and if it's been fixed it'll also tell you if there's a recall and it hasn't been fixed and there's not a fix available and you'll hear more about that when I get in the mystery shopping report because there are a lot of cars out there that have been recalled

they don't have the parts available to do the repair which is terrible. Absolutely. Politicians sitting on their hands doing nothing about that. And what a great column that Earl wrote. That was the week of July the 9th. And the name of the article that he, or excuse me,

the column that he wrote was Open Letter to All Florida Law Enforcement Officers, ticket all vehicles with open safety recalls. So go back and read that. It has a lot of information in it. and it also has the website that Earl mentioned www. www.safercar.gov, and you can do that at Earl on cars. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, let's get into the mystery shopping report.

It was of Carl's Buick, GMC, and Stewart, Florida. This week we continue to focus on the Takata Airbag recalls. Our last two mystery shops have focused on smaller buy-heer, pay-here, use car lots. That's where a lot of these vehicles are being sold. The car dealers, the new car franchise dealers, at least in South Florida, for a large part, have been sending these airbag recalls to the auction. Some have not, as you will find today. But many of the car dealers, with the pressure we like to think with Earl Sturt on cars and the publicity that we have made about this situation, they have been more likely to wholesale these cars.

that's kicking a can down the road because when you're wholesale a dangerous we call a car someone's going to buy it and whoever buys it has got to be a car dealer because individuals aren't buying cars at auctions it's car dealers then the car dealer is going to put the car on his lot and sell it so we're finding that that's what's happening and a lot of these are ending up in independent car dealer lots particularly the buy-here pay-year lots aptly named Carl's Buick GMC is owned by Carl Fisher. Carl started as a car dealer in Michigan in 1979. He moved to Florida in 1999 to escape the harsh northern winters

and purchase what is now known as Carl's Buick GMC. According to their website, Carl is a hands-on owner available at any time to any customer. Well, that's interesting. Let's find out whether an operational or a hands-on owner would be willing to sell a vehicle with an unfixed and potentially dangerous safety recall. Here's a little background on Takata. Right now, there are millions of vehicles in the United States affected by an extremely dangerous safety defect in their airbag systems.

Specifically, the part of the airbag assembly known as the inflator, a component manufactured by a company called Takata. It's been sold in bankruptcy. A new manufacturer now is building those airbags. The inflator is supposed to do what its name implies. Inflate the airbag, blow up the airbag when the vehicle gives into certain types of collisions. The Ticotia inflators do a little bit more, unfortunately. The propellant used in these Ticcadia inflators can degrade over time,

especially in humid and hot climates like Florida, causing it to explode much more forcefully than it was designed to. This can cause its metal housing to turn into razor-sharp fragments basically shrapnel that can maim and kill the occupants to the vehicle and it has unfortunately new vehicle manufacturers have issued recalls to repair this defect but the extent of the problem is so massive there is no way for replacement bars to be made as a sufficient rate to fix them all so these replacement parts are simply not available leaving millions you heard me right millions of drivers without a remedy

and at risk for a life-threatening disaster. There are also millions of these affected vehicles currently being offered for sale by car dealers and independent sellers. This is the real problem. And as you know from this show, and every time I say this, I choke on my words,

there is no law that prevents anyone from selling these cars. From the last report that I read, there were over a hundred million cars worldwide and that number is increasing because more cars are being found that have these deadly inflators already installed in them so this is not a problem that is getting smaller it's getting bigger yeah and car dealers are free to sell these death traps with no disclosure uh there can only one be one reason for this and I know this is a speculation, and people would say I'm speculating. It's got to be economics.

And I think that the manufacturers are scared to death that if they froze to sale of all cars with a tecotta airbag, or dangerous recalls, if they froze to sale, said it is illegal to sell cars worldwide, you heard the number of Rick just threw out there, $100 million and growing. I'm freezing the sale of 100 million cars would devastate a lot of car manufacturers, car dealerships, and all the suppliers. Automotive is a huge part of the world economy.

And I think it's just a sad fact that this economic impact is so great that it is trumping human life. And I can't think of another reason. The lobbyist for the manufacturers and the dealers have pressured the regulators and the legislators into standing still. And that's the reason my challenge to these politicians out there is left unaccepted. The reason, when you often donate $1,000 to a politician, all he has to do is call the show. Why are you afraid to call the show? I think because you're afraid of the lobbyists. Money, money, money.

Let me get on with the report here. Okay, here's our mystery shopping report. Sadly, it took only a quick scan of Carl's Buick GMC's pre-owned inventory to find a target vehicle affected with a Targata recall. A 2011 GMC, Sierra pickup. Now, 2011, that car is seven. years old that car is extremely dangerous they start to get dangerous when they're four to five years old this car is seven years old truck seven years old

according to safercar.com website this truck has a defective front passenger airbag and currently no remedy is available no fix they don't have an inflator They don't have an earbag to fix this. Now, the car was built in 2011, and they don't have another airbag to fix this. Sad, sad situation. Another reason why this airbag inflator is not available is because General Motors doesn't want to pay the extra money to get an airbag. I mean, let's face it, if they wanted to pay the money, somebody would make that airbag inflator to fix it. but they don't have to and they don't do it so here we have found a car with a

defective airbag for sale at Carl's Buick GMC and Stewart with an air defective airbag that is irreplace that you can't fix the car we verify this also through Carfax so we did it through safercar.gov and HTSA and Carfax Agent X was sent the listing and given his orders our mystery shop He called Carl's Buick GMC to confirm the truck was available for sale and made an appointment to go see it. Speaking of the first person is a mystery shopper, I arrived at the dealership and was approached by three salesmen before getting out of the car. I asked to speak with John, the person with whom I'd made an appointment to see the truck. John quickly arrived and announced in a friendly manner that he had the truck pulled up front and ready to show.

If we were walking around the truck and checking out of the hood, I asked the first of the standard three questions we use on all of our Takata shops. Are there any mechanical issues I should know about? I asked John. John confidently responded to the truck was mechanically sound. Now that's not a true statement, is it? I mean, if you have an airbag component that hasn't been fixed and can't. be fixed that's not mechanically sound so that's not true i suggested that we take the truck for a test drive it was then i noticed that the power driver's seat wasn't properly working so much for

the truck being mechanically sound john said he'd get that checked out i took this as an opportunity to ask the second of the three questions has this vehicle ever been in an accident perhaps this malfunction. Malfaction was the result of a previous accident, and he replied that he would pull up the Carvax when we got back to the dealership. Well, if he hadn't pulled the Carfax, why would they have the vehicle on the lot for sale? You'd think that a responsible dealer selling cars would pull the Carfax before they offered a car for sale. Upon our return, John went to the close. I told him that I'd be paying cash for the vehicle from a recent settlement.

he replied wonderful I'll get you a purchase order so we can review the figures he came back with a worksheet that had the truck price at the online price of $23,000 in addition to the legitimate sales tax and license fees they added their $699 dealer fee I don't get to surprise anymore all dealers charge this and then a little extra $84 another little dealer fee he called it an e-file fee. Rick? I am surprised. There's only two dealer fees there. That is surprised. There's only two. Usually the dealer fees are higher and there are more, but dealer fees are SOP. A small price to pay for a death trap.

I said the numbers look good, but I need a little more info before moving forward. I then asked the third of the three questions, are there any safety issues that I should know about? This prompted John to review with me the Carfax he had earlier promised.

The vehicle's history showed two accidents from 2014. As he continued to review the Carfax, he came across the reporting of the Dakota Airbag recall. Oops. It specified on the report that the remedy fix was not yet available. I expressed concern at this disturbing news, but John didn't seem discouraged. I mean, he wasn't buying the car. Why should he worry? Correct.

And in the test drive, he was to the passenger seat. You know, if I'd have been John, I'd have been worried. But anyway, John wasn't concerned. He simply said that they would be happy to fix the airbag at no charge as soon as the remedy was made available. Now, the kind of airbag recall came out two years ago. It hasn't, the remedy hasn't been available now for two years. It might be another two years before the remedy is available.

and that's a sad fact we do know that there are cars without the remedy available and they don't know when the remedy would be available and this is one of those vehicles noticing my confused concern he even offered to fix a broken power seat at no cost if that would close the deal apparently there is no problem with curls or with john the dealer's selling us this vehicle now kind of shocking to me in addition to the fact the nonchalance of the salesperson also the fact that this is supposed to be a hands-on dealer that is there and present and aware of what's going on also that this is a GMC dealer so this is his product he has full control over that he not only knows from Carfax but he should know from General Motors that

this car as a recall and he also should know from General Motors because he's a gentle motor dealer this car can't be fixed why is the car being sold on his lot and of course the final question the big question why is it legal for him to do so I guess the answer is he's selling it because it's not illegal and that's what tens of thousands of dealers all over the world are doing now selling these cars that are dangerous because it's not illegal because they can. Hard to believe.

Very. Anyone out there is outraged as I am and Rick and Nancy and not Rick Scott, Rick Kearney, Rick Scott doesn't care. But if you are, give us a call. We still have a couple of minutes yet. And remember, ladies and gentlemen,

you too can vote on the Mystery Shopping Report. Your input is very important to us. Do you agree or disagree? that, you know, maybe there should be more money spent on education, money just re-educating the consumer, or let's take it a step further. These, well, experts that are selling vehicles, are they experts? It doesn't sound like it to me because you're supposed to know your product.

That's very important, especially whenever you're. putting someone behind a wheel of a death trap. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us. You can text us with your thoughts and your reading on this mystery shopping report from Carl's Buick in Stewart, Florida. 772-4976530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Let me try a different tack now.

I'm talking to the politicians out there. I know a lot of people support politicians. What about some folks out there that are supporting Bill Nelson? What about people that are supporting Rick Scott? John Green is another person running for governor. What about you all have political candidates now. We're being deluged on TV and every other media forum with political ads. And I know a lot of people I see on Facebook a lot of people talking about

their candidates. If you have a candidate, call the show and tell us why your candidate hasn't taken a position. Or if your candidate has taken a position, let us know what your candidate's position is.

Maybe they're too busy. I can understand it. They're not watching Earl Sterling Cars. They might not even know that we're challenged them. But you folks out there, I've got a lot of Facebook friends. Nancy has a lot of Facebook friends. He's got a lot of Facebook friends.

Anybody out there are Facebook friends, your candidates call the show and say, do you know what your candidate's position is on making Takata airbags illegal to sell? And defective airbags, illegal to sell cars. It's that time of year for you to approach these candidates and just find out how they feel about it. I have a vote that came in on our Mystery Shopping Report

from Linda F all the way around. Which reminds me, we haven't voted. Now let me remind you also because we can't let a motion jump into these votes and we have to

vote on the curve because if we voted in absolute terms as to what an A, B, C,D is, we wouldn't have anybody pass a test because we think certain things like Dayton Switch advertising, dealer fees, lack of transparency, and a lot of other things that car dealers in South Florida do are bad.

But we have a public service here to provide you with the better dealers and the worst dealers, and so we have to grade on the curve. So when we grade on Carl's, Buick, GMC, and Stuart, is he in the top, the passing would be the top 30 percentile. So if he does, F is 70 and below, is that right? So in the top 30 percentile, does he

pass, or is he in the bottom 70 percent? Brick, you want to start it out? Yeah, I'm going to go with a D, as in a just barely passing. They did

present the Carfax. However, I noticed that the salesman did not point out the Takata airbag. Agent X had to do that. They didn't really volunteer much of anything. And, you know, the vehicle really wasn't mechanically sound

like he said with the seat not working and with the airbag. So I'm going to say a D around solid D for them. Barely passing, if you're in that area and you are looking at a vehicle in that dealership, they, you know, just keep your eyes open.

Let me read a text here. before we get Nancy's score. Jeff called in from Westbom, and his question is, if a dealership sells you an airbag recall car and they knew about it and it caused you bodily harm, can they be held responsible

or legal action taken? That's a great question. And this is another mind-boggling fact. The Federal Trade Commission says it is illegal to sell a dangerous product. I mean, that's a no-brainer. That's almost from English common law. As far back as laws go, it's illegal for a person to sell you something that can kill you or hurt you.

So I would think, and I'm not a lawyer, if we have any lawyers out there, you can call in and correct me. But I think there would be liability on the part of the car dealer to knowingly sell you, especially if he concealed it. Now, if you knew about it and you said, I want to buy it anyway, that would be another issue. But if you concealed it, I would think that these dealers would have a serious liability. Nancy, let's get a score from you on Carl's Buick, GMC. John gets an F. John's supposed to know his product, and Carl's Buick gets a D. Yeah, I'm going to go with a D too.

It breaks my heart not to fail them because, as I say, we're great on the curve. we're going to pass them with a barely passing grade and I just don't think that I just don't think that this should be allowed and I hope all the folks out there listening that are afraid to call in will think about a little bit longer before they continue on with Rick

well hopefully this will serve to keep you know the tell them to get their eyes open you know do your homework and look at these cars and ask for the Carfax and read the Carfax right there in front of the salesperson. Don't just take their word for it

that there's nothing on there that you need to worry about. Check over everything. Do your homework as you're right there and from. Or safercar.gov. www. www. www.safercar.gov. Every time I give that URL out, every time I give that website out,

I think maybe I'm saving some of these life. It could be. www.safercar.gov. If you're thinking about mine, a car, if you've already bought a car, if you just don't remember when you bought the car whether anything was said, you really need to know if your car has been recalled. Remember, this is not just safercar.gov tells you about all recalls. Airbags are just one of many recalls that are out there. Yeah. And if I were trying to sell a car, I would want to know

about recalls before I sold the car. A great source of information. And remember, it's free. If you have a problem of the car, you don't have to pay a nickel. You take it in, the manufacturer has to pay the cost of the repair. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in Earl Stewart on Cars right here at the True Oldies Channel

and we will be back next week. Have a great weekend. Thank you, everyone. Let me go.