Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.03.2024 -Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Aventura CDJR

Episode Date: August 3, 2024

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

Hello, I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female listeners. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us is my son, Stu Stewart, our link to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, text messaging, and our encrypted anonymous feedback service. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our mystery shopping report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting car dealership. And now, on with the show.

Good morning, everybody. Well, this is Earl Stewart Live. He just heard the recording introduction. And the studio that we're sitting in now, I mean, we're really getting up down here. We've got green walls all over the place. I've got a monitor now where I can actually see. I don't think your mic is on, Earl. Oh, my mic's not on, right?

Yeah, I'm not hearing your mind in my headphones. Let's see, how do I get my mic on? I thought I had my mic, right? Oh, here it is. How about this? Nope. We got a technical, somebody told them that I, my marching out on here. Hey, folks, we're coming on the air real soon here.

Unfortunately, Earl's microphone is not working right now. Let me check mine right now. Yep, I can hear Nancy good. Do you see anything there that needs to be pushed? Go ahead and talk now. One, two, three, four. There you go. Now we got you.

Oh boy, I'll tell you. Another exciting start to Earl Stewart on Cars. My apologies. I don't have any excuses. I just forgot to push a button down here and no one could hear me. So a total panic in the studio, but we've got ourselves under control now. And thank you for joining us live here at Earl Stewart on Cars. I was about to say that the recorded introduction that we have has been going on for a while.

for a while now and and we made some vast improvements here in the studio and I was just you couldn't you didn't hear me say this but I said that we're in a really advanced high-tech studio we are prepared for Zoom for one thing we've been preparing for a long time a lot more complicated than we realized and so you folks out there with a Zoom account we're gonna hope to hear from you and see you I've even got a laptop over here can look at and see you right on the laptop so we're all we're all equipped to technical you know the glitches are out of the zoom we're in a exciting time

as I always tell you in the automotive industry I've never seen change like this and every time I I say this and you're talking to a guy that's been doing this for 50 plus years but we've accelerated the rate of change of the manufacturing of cars, of the retailing of cars, with the regulation of the retailers of the cars. And by retailers, I'm talking about us car dealers. Yes, I am one of them, and I have been since 1968. Thank you. That's when I became an automobile dealer, a Pontiac dealer, back in those days.

So here I am a toilet dealer. I say this in full disclosure, and also to say that this is not an infomercial, even though we do have a car dealership. I think of it as a huge advantage to what we like to call ourselves, which are consumer advocates. We've got Nancy Stewart, we've got Rick Kearney. Stu Stewart, my son, is on vacation, so he won't be with us for this week or the next couple of weeks, as a matter of fact. But we are in the retail business as we speak so we can know when we cast stones. And that's what we do. It sounds pretty crude, but we do cast zones at car dealers who don't operate ethically and honestly.

And that's most of them. I mean, it's hard for me to get it. Every time I say that, I want to gag because I'm talking about a huge industry. The car dealers, retail car dealers in the United States employ a huge number of people. They're very important to local economies and the national economy. And then you have the manufacturers and the suppliers. It's a huge, huge economic power. And they have huge lobbying power.

And that's where the problem lies because the lobbying power has protected car dealers and allowed them to operate promiscuously. Car dealers can break the law and get away with it. But do you hear footsteps? I hear footsteps, and that is a Federal Trade Committee. and they stopped our combat auto retail scams the cars legislation by the Federal Trade Commission combat auto retail scams now that's not my words

those are the words of the Federal Trade Commission and it was targeted to go into effect on July 1st there's some lobbying efforts to keep that from happening in Texas I mean where else would you expect problems other than Texas they they seem to be in the news every day. And we also have, we're broadcasting, telecasting or whatever we do here, we're doing this out of Florida. And Florida has some legislation,

regulation that's going to be implemented. So the footsteps are behind the car dealers. They feel the footsteps. They know the regulations are coming in. Oh, I almost forgot Amazon. Amazon has gotten the Hyundai manufacturer, and they're working with car dealers so that you'll be able to buy a Hyundai or a Genesis or Kia online through Amazon. Now, most of you probably have an experience with Amazon. You know they're a good outfit to deal with.

You know that the price that you pay is the price that you get, and you know that you can return things if they don't work, and you know that they get there pretty quickly. They give you a clear-out-the-door price. I mean, Amazon is eventually going to be selling most everything, and cars are going to be a huge step. If they have one manufacturer, actually Hyundai and Kia, on the same owner in Genesis, but if another couple car manufacturers jump online with Amazon,

then you will have a refreshing experience when you buy a car kind of like buying an Apple computer, or probably buying an iPhone, or buying anything at a reputable retailer like Costco or Target or Amazon. So these changes are coming in, so you're going to put a smile on your face. Things are getting better. We know, excuse me, we know they're getting better when you take a look at the consumer report that I pointed out to you on the subject. you're covering right now on cars, you know, it's getting, you know, some attention,

which is good for the consumer. Yeah, and that voice you just heard was Nancy Stewart, my co-host, and she monitors the phones. And if there's a telephone call, we want to hear it because we love the personality that comes through. And that telephone number is 877-960-960.

Do we have a phone call? We do. Okay. If you ask and you shall receive. Thank you. For all of you that are listening at, there are ladies, you get yourself $50 for the first two new lady callers. And also this morning we have two new Zoom callers. If you give us a call on the meeting ID number, which is 926-589-0-586.

We have a whole lot more to get to, but we have Howard Holding, and he is a real. regular caller. Good morning. How are you all doing? We're great. Okay, great. I have a question about tires. So maybe Rick can answer this question. I went into Costco to purchase tires, and my tires are V-rated. And they told me in Costco, they gave me a price of V-rated. And they said, I said, what about what do I need V-rated? Like 100 miles an hour? I know. Never go 100 miles now. So then they told me, oh, it's very important because when you drive it hot weather, the tires take a beating, and you're better protected.

So I said, how much would it cost to get a tire that's less than V-rate? I don't know what the, what's a D or whatever it is. And they said it's like $50 less than each tire. So I was thinking I should get, but the little genie went off of my mind. I said, no, I have to be protected better than that. In Florida, when you drive, I-95, you go in sometimes 80 miles an hour, and in the heat, I figured I'm better off protective than V-rated. Rick, was that right or wrong?

Nah. H-rated tires would be just fine. H-rated tires will handle any legal highway speed in the United States. Unless you're driving a sports car and you're, constantly doing a lot of hard cornering, the hard driving, and you need those speed-rated tires. No, if you're driving a family sedan, a minivan, you know, the average person's car, H-rated tires for your speed are just fine. You're going to save some money and be better off in the long run. Howard, let me jump in there and just say this in defense of Costco.

based on Rick's judgment, which I respect, they should have recommended the H instead of the D and say to you some money. I think it was a mistake. I don't think they were trying to make extra money on you. See, Costco has a fixed markup that they put on everything. And I believe that markup is 15%. And they, no matter what they put,

pay for something. They don't market up more than 15%. So they made no more money by selling you the DV-D-rated than they did, the lower speed rated. V-rated is actually what they're getting. One of the things that Costco also does so, they shy away from recommending anything except the tires that were manufacturer put on your car. So if you have a car that originally came with 14-inch wheels, and you switch it to 15-inch wheels, Costco's a little leery of that because the sticker on your car calls for a specific size of tire and wheel, and they want to stick with that because they don't want the liability of they put the wrong tires on that weren't correct for that car.

So you don't think that's... I think Costco was airing on the side of caution because the tires that he came in with were V-rated, So they wanted to sell him the same tires because that protects them. I guess my question is, why did you recommend a different tire? Because as a mechanic. You think there's no liability. You don't think the engineers, when they designed that tire for that car, and they said the V-rated.

Well, what's more likely is that when he went to another shop somewhere else, they sold him a higher tire to make more money there the last time around. Oh. It's like the difference between buying Kumo tires and buying the top rate of Michelin. Yeah. Where if you get the Kumo and you spend $75 or say $100 each on those tires

and their speed rating and their traction and all that, but their treadwear is much lower, you go to buy a set of Michelin's for $200 each. The treadware's much higher. Yeah. Well, I'm getting confused, but I just want I want to leave it with the fact that if you go to Costco, I would go with the Costco recommendation. And I'll quote you back.

I'm talking to Earl Stewart on the phone. Yeah, anyway, that's, that's, but I'm sure Rick is correct and his assessment is saving the money, but I think Costco is, you can't beat Costco. I mean, they just, if they recommend something, I accept it, and that's a good general rule. So, but thanks for the question, Howard. I just didn't want to say any negative down on Costco's myself.

Yeah, I have tires for life, so you always give me V-rated. I realize that. You never deviate from that. I got you. I got you. But when I was up in New York now, I needed tires. They were in bad shape, so I had to get in Costco, even though I have tires for life. So I had to bite the bullet and get the tires.

Okay, I understand. Well, thank you very much, Harry. Appreciate the call. great hearing from you Howard give us a call toll for you at 877 960 9960 and for the ladies we have $50 for the first two new lady callers give me a call and we have $50 for you I'll make that check out to you and send it out on Monday and for all of you that would like to give us a call at our Zoom meeting ID number that number is 926-589-0586 the first two Zoom callers win themselves $100 this morning.

We are going to stay with the phones, and we're going to go to Roberta. Roberta is calling us from Jupiter, and she has called before. Good morning, Roberta. Good morning. Welcome back. Thank you. I have two questions.

My husband is no longer driving, and I have two cars. Alexis Rx 350 2015 with 100,000 miles and I also have a Toyota Camry 2016 with 24,000 miles. Which car should I sell or should I sell both of them and get a newer RAV-4 or CRV with lower mileage? Have you gone up and gotten any estimates as far as what your vehicles are worth, either one of them? I was told maybe 15 on the Camry, maybe 18 on the Lexus, but I'm really not sure. I see. Okay. Let's see what the guys have to say, and then I'll get back with you, Roberta.

Robert, I keep the vehicle that I like the best, and sell the other one. I mean, there are two different vehicles. I'd probably keep the Lexus, but that's me. I prefer to. Yeah. Yeah, I prefer to, but I just wasn't sure because the mileage is so high. Yeah. Money-wise, which I'd be better off doing in the long run,

or should I get rid of both of them and get something with lower mileage? What's the mileage on your electricist? It's an RX-350. Mileage? What's the mileage? $100,000. On Alexis, that's low mileage. I mean, you can get, if you had $200,000, I'd tell you the same thing. And if you like it and it's had the factory recommended maintenance done and you're more comfortable in that, keep the Lexus.

And then it's a seller's market with your other vehicle. And I'd get a price from CarMax. They're an honest outfit. You could go to We Buy Anycar.com. You can go to Barum. You can go to a number of these companies out there that do buy cars. and you can shop it until you get your best price

and sell it and keep that Lexus and enjoy it. Okay. Yeah, you have a lot of miles to put on that Lexus. You'll have that for a long time. Okay, wonderful.

Wonderful. Thank you. I appreciate your help. You're welcome, Roberta. We're going to go to Barry, who's calling us from Tampa. Good morning. Good morning, Barry.

Morning. My question is about the options added by southeast Toyota distributors or status are sometimes called, I guess. Recently, I checked a few online window stickers at a

Tampa area dealer. I stuck strictly to new Camry SEs, and every single one of them had set options in some form or fashion. Worst, I'd say, would be Toyo Guard. However, the add-ons varied from car to car.

So my question, And obviously I could switch brands or buy a Toyota up north or just not buy at all, but is there another way to avoid the distributor options? There seems to be some leeway in what gets added. Will a factory order do the job? Yeah, that's a good question. And if you buy a car in the southeast, meaning the five southeastern states, you're going to, it will likely go through southeast Toyota.

They have an agreement with Toyota, and they buy all their cars from Toyota. Then they bring them in and they add options. You mentioned Toyo Guard. That's an overpriced, I won't say worthless but nearly worthless option. The dealers have the option to order these cars without Toyo Guard. In my dealership, we order our cars without Toyo Guard. But sometimes we end up with cars with Toyota Guard because we will swap cars. We call it dealer trading with other dealers.

So I'm looking for a white camry. I don't have one. I trade a blue camry to get a white camry. And that car's got Toyo Guard. And in that case, we pass the Toyota Guard along at our cost. Our cost on Toyo Guard is about $200. And the dealer sell it for almost $700. So I would avoid all options that were added by Southeast Toyota that I,

that I didn't want, and that would be most of them, and try to find one with at least options. To answer your question about going outside of Southeast Toyota, Southeast Toyota also has a markup. They call it an admin. You'll see it on the label that is added, the Monroney label, then they have the Southeast Toyota

portion of the Monroney label, and somehow they become official a part of the Monroney label, and they have a markup, that markups about almost a thousand dollars so if you when you buy a car outside of southeast Toyota I feel sorry for the dealers up in Alabama because you could just go across the border to the next state and and buy a car directly from Toyota and right away the dealers cost is about a thousand dollars less than the Southeast Toyota dealers cost so my I'm a Southeast Toyota dealer and I

pay more money for my toilets for the dealer in Arizona California or almost in the other state there's another distributive ship in the in the Texas area and that's also has markups that they add to the price of the toyas they buy from Toyota okay so is factory ordering an option here in Florida where you could eliminate all the Toyota that sure that up sure we can we can order well say we go So if I'm a South East Toyota dealer, I can't order directly from Toyota directly. I can get a car that came from Toyota directly. So we have, rarely, but we do, from time to time, we will get a car outside of Southeast Toyota.

And, you know, I can go to, you know, Connecticut. I can go to New York. I can go anywhere and give them one of my cars for one of their cars or just buy it out right from the Dealers will cooperate pretty much and swap cars back and forth, even outside of the distributorship. The problem is the transportation. For me to get a car that I buy in New York because it doesn't have the markup that SET puts on there and doesn't have the Toyogard and the other options that I don't want, I still have to pay, you know, $700 and $800 of transportation to get the car down from New York.

So if you're in a position where you can maybe, you know, maybe you, maybe you spend the summers up north and the winters in Florida, we have a lot of people to do that. You're better off if you have a home or a vacation home or whatever outside of the southeast to buy your car up there. But that goes with the caveat, you know, listen to this show and exercise the caution that you buy. car anywhere because whether you buy a car in New York or Florida you're going to have the dealers trying to scan you and and but if you can get a competitive price in New York the price will be much lower than you have to pay in Southeast Toyota okay I'm just a quick follow-up question and I'll hang up but you realize you realize you're getting me in a lot of trouble with Southeast Toyota because I've been around too long they don't know they

don't know what to do with me because they know I can't keep my mouth shut but anyway I appreciate the honesty. The label set has a couple terms on there that seem to be somewhat related. I'm not exactly sure what they are. One is set digital portfolio and the other is ILA confirmation. What do those mean? As he said

is Southeast Toyota stands for Southeast Toyota. Digital portfolio. I'm not quite sure. It doesn't sound like an option. I don't know that one. Is there a price on it? It's a zero cost.

It almost seemed like a set of pictures or something, a photograph. Yeah, but it's zero cost, and the dealer's not paying for it, and you're not paying for it. But I honestly don't know what that is. I should, but I don't. Okay, and what about the ILA confirmation? What does that mean? Is there a price on that?

No, I think it's like an attribute of an option or something. I'd almost like to distinguish as one option from another. Yeah. Rick, can you make a note of those two? We will check those, and I'll try to get an answer for you. I can text a dealership and ask my son, my other son, who's in the dealership, to get that information. But I apologize, I can't, I don't have an answer to either one of those. Can you give me those again one more time?

Sure. One is SET digital portfolio, and the other one is I-L-A confirmation. I-L-A confirmation. Yeah, we'll check that out, and we should have that answer before the show's over. You don't have to listen to the whole show. It's two hours, but it'll be on our podcast when you can check the podcast for the show. We'll have that answer for you. All right.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Well, thanks very much of the call. Our number here is 877960. And you can text us at 772-497-3530. We have some cash this morning for the Zoom callers. If you can give us a call on our Zoom ID number, that telephone number is $926,589.0586, $100 for the first two new Zoom callers.

And ladies, I haven't forgotten about you, $50 for the first two new lady callers. That number again is 877-9609. 9960. And, boy, I'll tell you what, I was so excited whenever I saw this lawsuit against CarShield. Weekend and we have been talking about CarShield and how aggravating the commercial is

and what they're selling, because it's all fake. That's iced tea, the guy that does the commercial. They're using celebrities, and I always liked Ice-T. I thought he was kind of a cool guy. And then he got into this scam. Well, he's got some great music, but this isn't his expertise here. He's just being paid for a face. But they're being sued for $10 million.

It's a federal settlement over deceptive repair and coverage ads. They're fine $10 million. It's not a lawsuit if they're going to have to. Car shield has been ordered to pay $10 million federal settlement. over deceptive ask anyway if you if you haven't had a chance to take a look you'll find it just go to the internet and Google CarShield and you'll find out what they're all about yes this leads us to the whole idea one of the most common questions we get on the show is what about extended warranties and I get a lot

sometimes I get their question what do you sell extended warnings well I I don't like extended warranties, and I don't buy them, Nancy and I, when we're buying products, we always opt out on the extended warranty. And it's a philosophy we have. If it's something we can afford ourselves, we'd rather bank it ourselves, invest the money, save the money, and then have to draw out if we need to fix a product, and that goes for cars, too. But a lot of people buy extended warnings because of peace of mind. The thing to remember is when you buy an extended warranty on an auto for peace of mind,

you've got to know what that extended warranty covers, and you have to understand the cost completely, and oftentimes the cost is extraordinarily high, and the coverage is extraordinary low. There are good extended warranties out there, and they are usually made available by the manufacturers. They're not all good that are made available, but don't buy them if they come from a company like CarShield.

CarShield is an independent company, and they sat down one day, and they made up an extended warranty, and the purpose of the extended warranty was it isn't going to cost them any money because we don't want any claims. Then they came up with an exorbitant price, and then they saturate television and digital and everything else with ads about this great extended warranty. and they got caught. The Federal Trade Commission signed them $20 million. So don't buy an extended warranty unless you carefully, carefully read it, evaluate it, cost, and coverage.

Absolutely. And, you know, they use these, like, iced tea and everyone else that has been advertising for them. And what they were doing is delivering empty promises, taking advantage of the consumers. So you want to stay away from CarShild. Our number here is 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-4976530. We're going to go to Larry, who's calling us from Oakland Park. Good morning, Larry.

Good morning. How are you guys this morning? Great. I had an experience. I went to – it's okay to mention the dealer? Sure, please. Okay. I went into Lorenzo, Nissan here.

I'm in Florida, Al. I saw an ad on Facebook, and I said, that looks exactly like what we're looking for was a dram pickup. I guess it was a trade-in. It had 50,000 miles on it was in 2019. My son and I are both car guys. We went over, checked it out. It looked beautiful.

I saw the price advertised on the marketplace, it was 24.9, and when it got there, the ad on the window set, the pickup the window said, the window said, 27-9. And so the salesman said, well, you get a special price. internet I saw an or on Facebook so we sat down you know the global paperwork and

and you said are you trading in your your Jeep because I was driving at Jeep Grand Prix I said no I'm not I said uh is that a problem because you had like a like a weird look on his face I said well that price is only if you trade in a 2015 vehicle or newer you can read the fine print and I said what finds that It's on the Facebook Marketplace.

So he pulls up the ad. He can't find it either. And then we pull up the ad for Lorenzo, Nissan, and there it is. But it's not on Facebook Market. So I made it. I said, you know what? For, I take $2,000 off the top. I'll take it right now.

He said, I got to finance. I said, no. No, I'm going to pick cash. They said, oh. I'm like, well, what is that me? I never look on his face. I'm like, okay, I don't understand. He said, well, if you're not trading anything.

the vehicle, it's $1,000 more. I think it's, like, made up this number. So he went and talked to Alex, who was the sales manager, and said, well, he'll take the thousand off. But I said, you take $1,000 off, and then he added $1,000 back in. He said, doesn't make it sense.

So we're not getting a very good, comfortable, warm, fuzzy feeling about our new car purchase. Yeah. And it's about, it's at 6 p.m. almost 6 p.m. and everybody's leaving. It's on Sunday. So the salesman was

disappointed, good, make the deal. And so my son and I were out there looking at the truck. I saw him clock out, and he didn't even say anything to us. He just walked right by us. I mean, I've been sales in my whole life. I mean, I told him out of the house. I said, I bought probably 60 cars in my lifetime. And I said, what I would have said was, you know, I'm so good to make the deal

today. But think about the sleep warrant. Get back to me tomorrow. You know, we'll talk again. He just walked right by us. I'm like, okay, I'm not like, I'm not like to just, oh, you know. So my son said, Dad, why didn't he talk to us? I don't know.

Maybe he's going to her. to get home I don't know. But we decided to not move forward, even though Alex called me in the next day, what can we do to make your buying experience take $2,000 off? And so we can't do that.

All right, well then we have, really, I'm not trying to be rude. I said, well, thank you anyway. I appreciate you call. That is. You're down there in the worst or the worst area, Oakland Park, South Florida.

They are I say this every week that the Wild Wild West, they get away with murder. Interestingly enough, the Florida Automobile Dealers Association, they also are frustrated and fed up with South Florida. South Florida has its own dealer association. They were, the South Florida Auto Deal Association was the dealer association for many, many years.

And they just let the dealers run rampant and commit any kind of crime they want to do to sell the car. a long claim to Florida Automobile Dealers Association. They're located in Tallahassee now. They were in Orlando. And they eventually took over. Now the South Florida Deal Association is a country club. They charge dues.

But they don't enforce the rules. You got the worst of the worst. What they're doing now on September the 1st, according to the Florida Automobiles Association, they will find them extensively. Ashley Moody, the Attorney General for the state of Florida, has said, I will be enforcing the rules on September the 1st. So this Lorenzo Nissan, they got a few more months

where they can do what they did to you and anybody else and get away with it. But on September 1st, I really believe they're going to be enforced, the rules and either they're going to play by the rules or else they're going to get huge fines and maybe they may have their franchise canceled yeah i was just very disappointed with the whole experience and my son you know he's in his my son's 27 and we've gone through a couple you know just said dad what what is going on with his dealership i said no because i'm not making the deal with this guy and he tried alice car you know tried and call me back like i said

the second day trying to make you know and make it happen and then i said you know what But I'm sorry. I just really, I can't go. It's not the experience that I wanted, and I brought my son along to enjoy the experience, and it wasn't there at all. I'm sorry. Well, Larry, thanks very much for that report.

You know, the thought just occurred to me. They may be, you know, the old expression, make hay while the sun shines. They might be making hay until the law goes into effect September 1st. I mean, they say, boys, we're going to have to behave ourselves on September 1st, but let's have some fun between now and then. So they could be just going. absolutely nuts, knowing that they have free rain to screw the customer up until September 1.

So if I lived in South Florida and I was buying a car, I'd be real careful, especially when you get down there around where you are in Oakland Park. Yeah, I just, like I said, it was a very disappointing experience. And my son was like, oh, all the dealers like this, Dad, because the last call we purchased was from a private individual. I said, no, well, I don't think they all are. Most of them. Well, then, of course,

then just put the ice it on the cake, the price was, I actually went up from 20, the pocketplace to 25-9, just I'm not trading the car, and then they had no $1,995 of the dealer fee, you know? So I said, okay, well, I think we're about done here. Thank you very much.

Oh, well, more thing. It would let me take the worksheet with me. So I'm like, well, can I take it with me? He said, no. sales but you might you might use it against us what does that mean what does that mean my son's looking at me like what does that mean Larry call him up and get the salesman and say you ought to go to earlancars.com and listen to the podcast of the last radio show he can listen to to your comments and see who got the last laugh well I'm glad I got a chance

just to vent about it because you're still looking anyway you guys have a great day You too, Larry. Thank you, Larry. Our number here is 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And don't forget that Zoom meeting ID number, you can call in in first two Zoom callers, can win themselves $100 this morning. And that number is $9-089-0586, and ladies, $50, $50, $50, $50, $50, $50, $1,000. for the first two new lady callers. And I have a question.

Has anyone peaked in the August edition for the most comfortable cars? What were you looking for when you went out shopping? Whether it was to lease a car, purchase a new car, or a used car. Boy, I'll tell you, they give you a lot of suggestions, options in the Consumer Report. It's our Bible at home.

So we'll pick up the all. August edition, 877-960, and Jerry is calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Jerry. Good morning. I just have a question about this, my Prius. Recently, I've had a problem where I can't unlock the rear door from the inside, the switch. I can open it from the outside. Can you tell me what's causing the problem or how to fix it?

so it's the actual door handle or the door lock the door lock on the inside won't work we'll open it from the inside i have to roll down the window and and open it from the outside to open the door you know okay so it's it's the actual handle portion um not the switch on the switch on the inside i get well i was supposed to handle on the inside yeah yeah is this the part that you pull on it to open the door yeah and nothing happens yeah on the inside it's probably the linkage or the the cable that goes from it over to the uh the uh the latch release um yeah most likely the plastic clip inside there has broken yeah and that linkage is not able to move when you pull on the handle uh you'd have to pull the door panel off to inspect it and see what's going on what's about what would it cost in the park wrong i just thought It might be something that's You program the thing or something, but no, it's probably just a mechanical linkage or something, right?

Right, that's simply a mechanical linkage on all cars Yeah, I drive a taxi, you said mechanical look at it I just was curious about what was going on with it But I appreciate your advice About what would it cost effects on, right show, you do a great service in there And the red phone is brilliant, I like that When I first came to Florida, one of my first commercials with Earl with the red phone, I love it. Yep.

Nice. The hotline. Yeah, cost-wise on that, you're probably looking at, I'm going to go on a limb, say, about $70 on a new handle if it needs it, and maybe another $25 or $30 if the linkage needs to be replaced. And in labor, you're going to look probably, I am going to say, an hour to an hour and a half labor. no the company mechanic is going to fix it so okay so you're covered on that yeah yeah I don't have to worry about that

cool all right thank you very much yep thank you Jerry okay we're going to go to Marty good morning Marty hi good morning welcome back I just have a question for Earl yeah with this new law that's supposed to take effect September 1st

does it say dealers cannot screw you or does it just say they have to do everything up front. No, it's a real, it is real. It's, I, I actually came to blows almost with the president of Florida Automobile Dealers Association because I accused him of being complacent with Ashley Moody and not trying to get things cleaned up around Dodge or South Florida, or in Florida in general. And so he got mad at me and I got mad at him and then we had a nice reconciliation.

And I apologize to him because he said, he said, I'm, Earl, I'm trying my best and we are going to enforce this. He says, I've got the northern floor, central Florida car dealers in full agreement that we are going to comply with the Federal Trade Commission rules on September the 1st. South Florida, I don't think so. And so, and he held special meetings in person and by Zoom all over Florida, explaining it to him. So he's told the South Florida dealers that you're going to be in trouble and we're going to see that we're going to come, we're going to work with Ashley Moody to enforce the law. So, yeah, it's going to happen. And basically they're saying, in a nutshell, when you buy a car in Florida,

you have to have a price that you can count on, and that is out the door with no extras. You can't add any junk fees. You can't add a dealer in the dollar accessories. The price that you see is the price that you pay in the advertising into conversation. That's the way it's going to be, and I believe him. And it's funny the way that the South Florida dealers,

we just had this call from Oakland Park, East, about an experience with Oakland Park in Easton that was terrible. So the dealers in South Florida are making hay while the sun shines, and September 1, it's going to be very interesting to see what happens. But does that mean, Earl, that if they have a dealer fee, if they disclose it right away, or whatever they want to hit on right away, then it's okay? Well, they can't just disclose it.

They have to include it in the advertised price. So, you know, what's the point? The only reason a dealer fee works to make money for a dealer is because they hide it, and they don't tell you about it until you buy the car, then they sneak it in on you. But if I'm going to put an advertisement on television, on Facebook, or Instagram, or in a newspaper,

They don't use newspaper that much anymore. But if I'm going to advertise a price of my car and I have to put my dealer fee and my electronic filing fee and my dealer install accessories and all the other BS and include it in the advertised price, I have nothing to gain because my competition is going to look at that price

and he's going to beat it. So chances are effectively those items that we just named won't be charged to you anymore. If they want to charge them, they have to include the advertised price. If they include the advertised price, it's going to be too high and you won't come there to buy the car. Okay. All right. Well, we'll see what happens.

Yeah, we will. I can't wait. It's going to be, I'm going to have a lot of fun. I don't know what the first show we'll have after September 1st. But you know where all our mystery shopping is going to be. It's going to be in South Florida after September 1st. because when we expose somebody, they could get their franchise canceled, or they could be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I mean, if Ashley Moody and the Florida Automobile Dealers Association and Ted Smith are true to their word, when they have information on the violation, bam, the hammer drops on these South Florida dealers and North Florida too, but they're going to comply, I believe. All right, well, your mystery shopping reports will be good. after September 1st. Absolutely.

All right. Thanks so much, Marty. Have a good weekend. You too, honey. Thank you. Thanks for being part of the show. Ladies and gentlemen, have you considered purchasing a former rental car? The Consumer Report really covers every aspect of that deal if you're about to make one with a rental car company.

Give us a call. you know, if you decided to go with a rental car and whether you got a good deal or not, especially on the warranty, Avis and some of them companies, you know, provide that. And if they don't, kind of a red flag, give us a call tool-free at 877-960-960, or you can text us at 772-47-3-0. So, Zoomers, if you've got an account, take advantage of the meeting ID number and give us a call at 926-589-0-586. Be a whole lot of fun to see you live and almost in person. And ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. $50 for the first two new lady callers. Now back to the recovery card.

You Zoomers, you got a call because you know, you zoomers got a call because you know, you know, have no idea what Jonathan has done to get this thing working for us. I mean, we have really put in a lot of overtime on this, mainly Jonathan, not to mention his wife, Jenny, and we got the Zoom working. So please, please, if you got a Zoom account, give us a shot, give us a holler. And I even got a laptop where I can see the Zoom better than I did before, so we're prepared for you. So if you...

That's exciting. I'm going to give you a Zoom. If you have a Zoom account, our meeting ID number is 926-589-0-586. And so if you have a Zoom, Zoom us at 926-589-0-586. We're waiting to be zoomed. Rick has a comment here. We have a definition on the SET digital portfolio. Oh, wow. Those are the digital photos that Southeast Toyota takes of the car before they ship it to the dealer so that the dealer has interior and exterior photos to display on their website.

I see. And the ILA confirmation, Josh wasn't too sure about it, but we did find a spot on Reddit where it was defined, we think this is what it is, as an in-line accessory. which is when they're building the car, certain accessories are built onto the car when it's on the assembly line versus accessories that are added, say, after it's been built and is maybe at the distributor or at a dealer.

And so that ILA may be in-line accessory confirmation making sure those accessories were put on the car when it was being built. But there's no price on the label. Right, because it's simply confirming that the accessories were put on, and then the accessories would be listed separately, like say parking sensors that are installed while it's being built versus parking sensors that might be added on at the distributor. Well, I hope the caller is listening that asked those questions, but he was right on about the dealer, about the distributor added accessories and the extra fee that Southeast Toyota. pays but these two issues are no charges that he mentioned yeah that's simply like an an administrative line that confirms on the sticker that those were made available to the dealership

very good great thanks for that information Rick we have a zoom caller and she's from tequesta her name is Denise and I'm here to welcome you to the show Denise good morning any day. Oh, well, nice to see you in person, Denise. Thanks for the goal. Thank you. My husband's a big fan of yours, so I feel like I know you forever. Well, thank you, Abby. I appreciate that. A couple of things. First of all, it's so nice to know that there is a dealership that's honest, and he's got an incredible reputation. I've owned several Tesla. I'm sorry,

I've owned several Toyotas and several of the, and a couple of Lexuses, but my favorite Toyota, I have to share this with, my favorite Toyota was a 1984 Toyota Corolla, and it was an SR5. I thought I was cool. It had intermittent wipers, and I could just be side view mirror from the inside of the car by reaching over. I thought I was, you know, queen of the hill. The more we get, the more we expect, and I think back to these things, too, where, you know, my first car, the standard equipment was a heater and a radio, and that was that. So every new accessory that came was a thrill. 1984, Corolla. So my question is, I purchased a, I went out of the lines, and I purchased a Tesla a couple of years ago, and the whole buying experience was so different. I'm just curious to hear your opinion on how that is changing the automotive

the whole automotive industry. Yeah, it's profound. I actually thought when, you know, you know that Nancy and I have bought Teslas and we have a Tesla plaid and we've got a Tesla cyber truck on order. But the buying experience was just was totally, it blew us away. I mean, we went into a Tesla-owned dealership, and we were treated like, you know, real people, and given prices with no hidden fees and no pressure. And I thought that it would have more positive influence on the buying procedure

at other dealerships than it has, but it certainly has had a lot of effect, and especially now that Tesla is getting so big, I think, and with the regulations being enforced, the whole experience will be changing. Yeah, I was just curious. And now Amazon's looking to be able to buy a call on Amazon. The whole thing is so different. It sure is.

It sure is. It leaves you just in awe. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for asking my question. You're welcome, Denise. Well, call again, Denise. We're so happy that, you know, Jonathan's got a big smile on his face over here

because he is responsible for making the Zoom thing. work and it was just perfect thank you so much for calling john jonathan and jennie really they they work together on this and we really appreciate them denise uh i have a hundred dollars for you for the first time zoom caller uh so thank you that's very kind you're welcome provide us with your information and uh we hope to talk to you soon yeah i appreciate it thank you so much you're doing a great job thank you very much thank you 877 960 99 960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 and one more zoom new zoom caller give us a call at 926-589-0-5-8-6 and win yourself $100 this morning back to the recovering car dealer when I came in the studio I always give the Rick and then say I walked to the door we come in later than Rick and Jonathan and I give him a

report about the autonomous Tesla that Nancy and I drive. Oh boy. And it's always interesting. They're a little, it was kind of a, we had a little bit of a tense experience coming in today. But it was good. It wasn't, it was different. Every time an autonomous vehicle does something a little different, you get nervous. And the reason I mention that is that I kind of counted out, you folks have heard of Waymo.

That's the division of Google, and you've heard of the Waymo Robotaxies. And there's a lot of negative publicity about them. They started in California, and there's always something going on the media about, this one crashed, that one crashed. So I kind of thought of them as, I wanted to take a ride in a Waymo robot taxi. I went online, signed up, it was a waiting list, and Nancy and I, in the past, to travel to San Francisco. I just thought it would be cool if we could have one a ride in a robot taxi. Anyway, long story short, guess what? I never count out Google. These waymows are

coming on strong. There are tens of thousands of rides being made without accidents. Now, there were 18 accidents, but out of tens of thousands of rides, they're expanding from San Francisco to Arizona, to Los Angeles, to Austin, Texas. Watch out, robotexies, they're coming. And they really harness this artificial intelligence thing. And in San Francisco now, for you folks, it's our favorite city, I think. When we travel outside of Florida,

we love San Francisco better than about any place. they used to you have to sign up and wait get on a waiting list but now they there's enough waymo robo taxis in San Francisco that all you do is take out your smartphone you hit the app and the robot taxi pulls up and you say take me the fisherman's wharf you know take me to the John's hopper you take it take me and and they do it it it's just incredible you're in there all by yourself there's no driver you're sitting in the back seat and boom You're driving around. The Traditions Village up in Fort Pierce.

It's out west of the Turnpike. They have these transport buses that hold like 12 or 15 people, and there's no driver. Yeah, but that's a fixed route around an enclosed community. It's a similar thing. Yeah, if you have ever driven in San Francisco, there's a big difference. Yeah, I understand. And as a human being, it's baby steps, is what I'm saying.

Until you've gone up and down knob hill and driving yourself, the thing I hate about driving myself in San Francisco is when you're going up a steep hill or go down a steep hill, you can't see anything. And other people can't see you. And when you park,

you know, you park on a 45 degree angle, it's scary. So I would prefer a robo taxi that knew what it was doing, and apparently that time has arrived. So anyway. That's become an, in San Francisco, a tourist attraction.

You know, people who are just wanting, as they're just as excited as we were, you know, about the Waymo. If there's been anybody who has taken a ride in a Waymo, a Robo taxi, I'd love to have a call from you. I'd love to have somebody to have that experience. But I, Nancy and I are just, we're, everywhere we go now in the Tesla, we just say, take us there.

Take us home, take us to the radio, show take us here take us there and and we call it miss nancy is the name of our Tesla I said miss nancy take us to the take us to Walgreens yeah what I haven't fine-tuned is the fact that everybody around us when we're driving the Tesla they're not aware of what we are driving so when the Tesla is on autonomous you know for me I really have to be focused and be aware of my surroundings not just the car that, well, is taking me someplace autonomously. 877-960-99-60.

That's 877-960-99-60. Give us a call. And also anonymous feedback. Rick's got a couple of anonymous feedbacks that he can address for us. I got an anonymous feedback that said, I'm sitting in anonymous feedbacks. Why don't you ever answer me? on the air so I plead guilty I mean we have text we have phone calls we now have

zoom and now we have an amount of feedback I'm sorry that we haven't been more responsive but we're gonna try to get to all the anonymous feedback so you go to your anonymous feedback.com while you are a N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S feedback.com and that's a web link and you go to that link and you call us a name, ask a question, make a comment, anything you say is totally anonymous. We can't find you. We don't know where you are. It is totally, totally bulletproof in terms of privacy. So we will get to those, and I apologize to the person that wrote the anonymous feedback saying, why don't you answer the anonymous feedbacks? But Rick's got a couple who'll address right now.

Rick, yesterday we saw another cyber truck, but we were headed to West End. It seems rather ironic that, you know, when we head south, we see more of that vehicle than you would north up in Jupiter, Stewart. Have you seen any cyber trucks lately? I've actually seen, I think, four of them now. And as a matter of fact, the other day I saw two in the same day. It was surprising. Yeah. But, yeah, they're...

They're getting there. They're getting around. What location were you in? Around North Lake, I think, for one, and the other one's down in West Palm. Interesting. So they're getting out there, folks. They're getting there. You recognize them when you see them on the road.

They're so distinctive. They're out of this world. Yeah. Okay. What do you have for us? Well, hold on a minute. We're going to go to John first, who's calling us from. from West Palm Beach.

Good morning, John. Hey, good morning. Welcome back. Thank you. Just got back from Michigan. First, let's do the first one, the cyber trucks. I'm here in West Palm Beach in our neighborhood and in my area. I'm there between Forest Hill and Okeechobee.

There's five or six of them that I can go see right now, whether it's in a business or someone's driveway. Is that right? Wow. And then driving up to Tampa, over the weekend did see an auto carrier with six of them

on there. I don't know how they got six in because they're so big. Yeah. Pulled in the charge of Tesla at Fort St. Lucy and two cyber trucks were on the chargers. They're out there. Yeah. And they're all stations. They're popping up. What we decided to do was to check out the garage

because we're pretty close to delivery day date. And it just doesn't look like it's going to happen. We are going to have to put it in the driveway of it. That's okay. I got another

two years. Yeah. I got another two years on the wait list. But I'm not going with foundation. I'm just going with the single motor. But anyways, the

autonomous driving thing, there is, you ask if anyone's done them. North of you, before poor St. Lucy there's a development up there and I think I heard it on this show where they have these taxis within the community

that take you around the community and they're autobots or you know you just get in and pull up to the stop is that traditions? Yeah that's traditions I've written in them yeah yeah I thought I'd heard you know yep I did hear that

I actually drove up there one day specifically just to ride in one of those vehicles a lot of fun well thank you very much for the call John I appreciate that I hope one of those trucks will have my cyber truck on it

there you go thank you well it was going from north to south so I got you okay we'll call again and we'll like to hear from there. All right. See you later.

Thanks, John. Have a great weekend. 877-960. We are going to go right to Rick because I know he has a lot to talk about. Well, we're going to do Anne-Marie's text. Hi, Ann-Marie. She says, good morning. I've been watching the Olympics and noticed that Toyota is one of the worldwide sponsors of the Olympics. In 2015, I think she might mean 2020.

Oh, no, I guess it was 15, okay. Toyota reportedly entered into an $835 million contract with the International Olympic Committee to be a worldwide sponsor for four Olympic and Paralympic games ending with the Paris 2024 games. It's not just money. Toyota supplying around 3,000 hydrogen fuel cell cars and various mobility assist vehicles

to the Paris Games. Toyota is a very profitable company, but that cap of outlay boggles my mind and prompts the observation and the following questions. Obviously, Toyota expects to sell more vehicles due to the increased worldwide exposure.

Number one, what does this cost to dealers? Do Toyotas tell all their dealers that Toyota is now a worldwide sponsor of the Olympics, so chip in extra? Number two is the cost. cost of the Olympic sponsorship just built into every vehicle that Toyota makes, is it part of the

MSRP? Number three, is Toyota so profitable that it can enter into this kind of sponsorship without asking the dealers to contribute extra? Number four, how does that work? And one final question, do you have at least one of the

TVs in your waiting room tuned to the Olympics? Thanks. Boy, that's a lot of questions. That is. Ann Marie, first of all, if anybody is going to be in the Olympic advertising, it should be Toyota. I asked myself the same question about some of the other sponsors. I think it's a prestige thing, like a Super Bowl. I mean, even if you don't sell any of their product when you advertise on the Super Bowl,

then you, I guess the CEO says, hey, I've got to add the Super Bowl. it's kind of like a prestige thing and the worldwide prestige even more so with the Olympics Toyota is a very different company not only are the world's largest manufacturer of automobiles and of course the world's largest retailer of automobiles and remember Alexis is part of that package but they've also they're their only family-owned business it's like it's like Earl Stewart Toyota, we're family-owned. Car dealerships, you see quite a few family-owned, less than you used to see, but you don't see any manufacturers that are family-owned.

So Akio Toyota is a grandson of the founder of Toyota. When Toyota makes a decision, when Toyota designs products and decides where they're going to advertise, they're not thinking about this year or next year. They're thinking about 20 years from now, 30 years from now because they say they have their sites set on forever and in Detroit it's not Detroit anymore but in the United States the manufacturers here they think of a 30-day cycle if you're the CEO GM Ford Chrysler Honda if you're

the CEO you're thinking how many cars I'm going to sell this month and how much money I'm going to make because if you're the CEO you can be gone tomorrow And if you don't have the numbers, if you don't sell enough cars, you don't make enough money, then they start whispering. And so you can't afford to lose money in the short run. So let's say that the investment they're making

in the Olympic advertising is in fact a negative cash draw. They're not thinking about next year or the year after, they're thinking about 10 years from now or 20 years from now. If there's anything that's gonna be around forever, going to be the Olympics I believe and I think even the Super Bowl that's going to be around forever so it's a huge difference the reason I I say the success of Toyota Day over all the other manufacturers is because they think in the future and they were they make mistakes and they and then they switch and change they they made a mistake on the

hydrogen fuel cell and and they made a mistake on the electric viat on the total EV and they just all they do is switch gears because when you're that big you can afford to make a few mistakes and and they take advantage of that luxury of not having to be right all the time so and Mary thanks what a profound question you ask some excellent questions and I don't know what the show wouldn't be what the show is without your your text thank you very much and do we have one of our TVs tuned to the Olympics in the waiting room Oh, sure. That's a great question.

It's impossible not to. Yeah, really. I don't want to sound un-American or unpatriotic, but I've got Olympic fatigue right now. I mean, every time I turn, I find myself watching shows I would never watch because everywhere else is the Olympics, and after a while you can only watch these gals spin it around the air so many times. And then...

Myself, though, I don't understand. Excuse me, Rick. There's a lot of guys that are spinning. Yeah, but I like to watch the girls. The guys are spinning. 24-7. It's driving me crazy. Sorry, Rick.

Now you can talk. I think my favorite one, though, the favorite story I had is I think it's an Armenian fellow that came out for the pistol shooting competition. And instead of having all the fancy, weird sci-fi glasses and all this, I don't think he even had earplugs in. he just walks out, picks up the pistol, shoots without any fancy sights or anything at all, and gets a silver medal. The dude was incredible. Like, wow.

That's interesting. No fancy equipment, just did it. Okay, moving along, we're going back to the phones, and then we are going to, I'm going to ask Mark to hold on. He's our next Zoom caller, but we do have Mary, who's calling us from Davy, and she's a first-time caller. good morning mary welcome hi good morning you've won yourself fifty dollars this morning mary if you stay on the line when we're done talking you can give jeremy your information and i'll get

that checkout to you okay so my situation am i ready yes okay um i have a honda accord And I have an issue with the locking child break, the locked. And I had an issue that happened about two years ago as I literally got locked in my car. I was driving home from work, and my car shut down. Had my windows up, air up, I could not get out. The locks are all automatic, the windows, electric. It was a crazy situation. Fortunately, I was a few blocks away from my house.

So called my husband. I said, please come meet me. brings a sort of car keys to get me out. So I'm sitting there as hot as anything. And, I mean, there's nothing I could do. I mean, I just couldn't open up. I couldn't push the windows down. I couldn't do anything.

Goodness. And I literally ended up calling the police. But fortunately, my husband got there. As luck would have it, he came, got behind me, put on his flashers. All of a sudden, the car starts up. So, of course, first thing I did was I jumped out of the car. I mean, it was hot. It was miserable.

Then we got the car. running, went to my house, got a little freshened up. I drove directly to the dealership. I was like, what is this problem? What's going on? And they were like looking at the cables on the battery. They put those little pads underneath them. That's kind

of all that was done. And to this day, I mean, there's nothing else wrong with this car as far as at that time. And it was very frustrating. And I was wondering if there's any way that you could turn off these automatic childproof, you know,

blocks they click on every time the car goes forward they click they make a noise and again i never really thought anything about it until i got locked in and it was kind of a nutty situation and people were like how did that happen i'm like well this is how to happen the car shut down is there any way of fixing this i contacted honda they kind of blew me off they didn't really have any response to that um it's great for the kids but i don't have young children so it doesn't really pertain to me. But is there any fix for this? Could I have done anything differently? Or?

I didn't know about this. What do you think? I'm going to go on a limb and assume that it's the same set up as Toyota uses. And the door lock activation on the Toyota is a it's what's known as a programmable feature. So

if the owner's manual doesn't have a way for you to change it, you'd need to go to the Honda dealer. and they can hook up the computer to it and reprogram it to where it will not activate the door locks. Generally, there's several ways that they can be activated. One is that when you first turn the ignition on, if the doors are all closed, they will automatically lock.

And then when you shut the car off, the doors, or you can program it to where only the driver's door will unlock, no doors will unlock or all the doors will unlock now for the other one is it's connected to the shifter to where when you put the car when you take the car out of park the doors will automatically lock

and then when you go back in the park you can either have no doors unlock the driver's door unlock or all doors unlock and the reason for that is it's a safety feature to where while you're driving and going down the road the doors are locked so you're sitting in a traffic light somebody just can't come up a yank open a door on you

and then when you park your car you go back in the park if you're maybe not in a nice neighborhood you may not want your doors to unlock at that moment again so somebody doesn't just jump in the car with you but yeah that can be reprogrammed and turned off to where the doors will you would manually lock and unlock the doors as you choose see fit. However, that needs to be addressed on a different level because even with, say you're driving along and your battery completely failed, shut down, and you have no electricity in the car whatsoever, you should still be able to manually open the doors and it should override that door lock and let you open the door from inside.

Oh, couldn't. That was the first thing I did, of course. It was one open. Yeah, that needs to be addressed by a technician to find out what's going on and why you couldn't unlock that door from inside. Because that's an extremely dangerous safety hazard. You know, we're in South Florida, the literal lightning capital of the world. And in my career, I have worked on at least.

20 or 30 cars that have been struck by lightning, either a direct hit or a near miss with lightning, and that just obliterates a lot of the electronics. So you could be going down the road, lightning strikes right next to your car, suddenly you lose all your electricity. You know, that car just shuts down. You've got to be able to get out of that car.

And that is a safety feature that those doors must be able to be opened from the inside, even if the car has no power whatsoever, I would go back to Honda and say, hey, this is a safety issue, a safety concern. I need this addressed immediately. And what year is your Honda? 2012.

Yeah, I'd be saying this, even at 12 years old, I'd be looking at that and saying, this is a severe safety flaw, and you need to look at this under warranty even, you know because that's uh that's that's incredibly dangerous yeah it's scary too and it got very hot in that car just a matter of few what an experience yes sorry mary and also um go on record and go on on writing you put that email text or a letter uh anytime you describe a safety issue uh to an auto manufacturer and or dealer be sure it's in writing that gets

everybody's attention. And Rick's absolutely right. That's a very, very unsafe condition, very scary unsafe condition. And I think once a Honda dealer and Honda manufacturer sees that in writing, you'll get a lot more respect and attention

than you have so far. It could have ended much worse. What a terrible story, Mary. I just couldn't even imagine. Yeah. It's not pleasant. Sometimes now I kind of keep my window down. a little bit like a lot of it.

I big examples, you know. Sure. If it happened, something is going to happen again. Sure. We'll revisit Honda and, you know. And Mary, I hope you stay in touch with us and let us know how that was resolved.

Okay. We'll do. Okay. And stay on the line for your contact information with Jeremy in the control room. Thanks so much, Mary. Nice talking to you. Thank you. You too. Have a great weekend. And I think that, according to Jonathan, we have Mark and we have Julie on Zoom, but our phone lines are shut down, correct?

We have one caller. There is one more caller? Let's take Mark on Zoom. Okay. Let's take and go to our Zoom caller, Mark, and then we'll go to Julie. Then we'll get our other call. Good morning, Mark. Good morning.

Welcome. You just won yourself $100 for being. first time zoom color I'd say could you could you donate that hundred bucks to the big dogs I don't need the hundred bucks oh thank you

are you wearing a gator shirt Mark no I saw the orange orange letters on your blue shirt I thought you were a gator my parents are both SU alumni so what's up

so Earl I heard you mention the Costco buying program and I was recently in West Coast Florida and looking for a car and I saw they had Costco has a certified used car buying program as well. I knew they had a used car buying program,

but doesn't it matter the dealer? If the dealer has a certified program than Costco does have the program, but I wasn't aware either that they had a separate program on certified cars. Yeah, I was surprised and I used it and the internet price was the lowest price I could find and then Costco's was $500 less than that. So it worked out great going through Costco. Where did you take delivery of the car?

Courtesy Toyota, Tampa area. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, so that's a certified program through Costco. I understand now. so yeah that's good they uh you can't go wrong with Costco i know i sound like i'm you know that i'm getting kickbacks from Costco but uh mancy and i shop there we uh you know we we spend a lot of time at Costco we were online there and uh there i in my in my opinion i know i sound like i'm exaggerating but i i don't think i am they're the best retail store in the world

Costco. I also have a comment for Rick on the speed rating of tires. So, like an H or a V rated tire is the speed, the tire can go safely. But the other thing that it does connote is that it dissipates heat better at a V rating than an H, which can affect the longevity of the tire. and you might say well you know nobody's driving 150 miles an hour but there's a lot of people on i-95 driving from miami to jacksonville driving 90 miles an hour for hours on end so they do 150 on the on the on the uh what's the uh sawgrass if you had if you head on the sawgrass

towards weston uh they're doing a hundred and fifty five miles an hour So, and the other thing people might consider downgrading from a V to an H-rated tire is a lot, some of these cars, not all cars, people bought them kind of like a fun for a mile car, okay? I turn my wheel and I get an immediate, you know, feedback and it drives great. Sometimes if you downgrade all of a sudden that snappiness, the sportiness of the car goes away because you got a less stiff side. wall and uh that's something to consider if you're going down the well that's interesting i know know exactly what you mean yeah yeah anyway that was my two comments for today and uh thanks a lot for having me on well thank you mark uh nice seeing you in person and uh look forward to seeing you again next week absolutely okay okay we're going to go to julie good morning jolly

Julie's on Zoom. Good morning. I have a question on window tinting. Okay. My driver's side window film is bubbling up in a line sort of way. Is it hard to remove that? I did it on my pickup truck that I had years ago, my 97th Tacoma. The tint finally started bubbling on me.

it was a lot of elbow grease um you wind up basically using razor blades and windex and rubbing alcohol and you're scraping and scrubbing the best way to do that is to go to a window tent place and ask them to do it for you if you want it removed or replaced okay i also have a comment if you're interested in experiencing self-driving in a Tesla Model 3 there's a podcast called Granny Tesla she's out of Tequesta and it's Granny G-R-A-N-N-I-E Tesla and she and her friend Linda experimented for the first time with self-driving in Linda's new Model 3 Jenny has done it in her car a lot, but that podcast is so entertaining.

Exciting. I can't wait to see it. I wrote that down. I'm definitely going to look at it because I feel like the world is missing out. And Nancy and I, you know, we just look for it. We say, let's go someplace just because we can, I refer to, who wants to be co-pilot?

I'll be the passenger, you'll be the co-pilot. So if Nancy's behind the wheel, and we named the car, Miss Nancy. But it's truly a thrilling and interesting and fun experience of autonomous car. So Granny Tesla, I'll check that out. Yeah, very interesting. And it's great to take the Tesla plat out at times on the road less traveled. because not everyone around you, you know, is, well, we can't share that experience with them. Well, I can't agree with you on that. I enjoy the heavy traffic situations.

Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Hey, Julie, stay on the line and give Jonathan your contact information so I can get that checkout to you. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Give us the call again. It was great hearing from you. Looking forward to going to the website. Okay, folks.

Rick? By the way, Earl, on YouTube here, Rocket Scientist says, Earl, cancel your order. You cannot reach into the forward end of the bed without a step ladder because of how high the sides are angled are angled up. The angles are so sharp that everyone's cutting themselves. You know, it's amazing. There are certain things that the world has taken a position on.

I won't get into politics, but you know about politics. And the cyber truck is the same way. You either love the cyber truck or you hate it. And the people that hate it are just vicious. And the people that love it are nutty like I am. So I just look at it this way. That's life. I mean, you're going to have, if you're on Facebook, Instagram,

YouTube or anything else that you're out there, you see the division in life. I like people who hate the cyber truck, and I like people who love the cyber truck. I understand how each side feels. So I know there's some bad things about the cyber truck, but hey, there's some bad things about everything. And rocket scientists, just to put your men at ease,

although you really can't tell it from the YouTube videos in this Earl actually stands about 6 feet 8 inches tall and he has a 48 inch reach so he'll be able to stand flat foot next to it and reach in through the sunroof

so he's all set on that part oh man I'll tell you I just love this show I love the callers I love the Zoom people I love the anonymous feedback people We really got some smart people out there. I mean, I walk out of the show largely, you know, thanks to you, Rick.

I learned, I wish we'd been doing this show a long time before we did because I learned more about the mechanics and the robotics and the electronics of cars just in the two hours you and I sit together. And then I learn all this stuff from people that call it Granny Tesla. I never known about that. And these people that are calling in the experience. with robo-taxies, but I just love this two hours of our life every week. What a variety of topics that we cover.

And you're right about Rick. Boy, I'll tell you what an experience has been for me, learning from him. So we are going to, I'm going to switch gears right now and talk just for a second, and then I'm going to get back to Rick quickly. but you know big dog ranches in dire streets say they really need someone anyone to foster a dog they are just overloaded at big dog ranch up to overcapacity and you can not only adopt a dog but you too can foster a dog and you can go to big dog ranch and find out all about that program We're going to get to our dog of the week, which is Lapsin, and he's a mixed breed, and he's two years old, and we'll talk about that in a minute.

But right now, Rick, do you have any YouTube or FaceTime? I've actually got a couple incognitas that we wanted to get to. Please. These were from the... Your anonymous feedback? Yes. Okay. Sorry, you said my brain shut down for a moment there.

That's all. The first one we wanted to address real quick is the person was asking about when should shock absorbers and struts be replaced. Basically, although you've got two different names there, they both do the same thing. It's simply a shock absorber, and a strut simply has the spring for the car mounted on it, whereas the shock absorber is usually on one that has like leaf springs or springs mounted somewhere else to support the suspension of the car. These have, in the past, they would wear out every 15, 20, 30,000 miles, and they'd have to be replaced. They were moving parts. They were lower quality back then. Nowadays, they may outlast the car.

There's two ways that you'll find that a shock absorber actually is starting to go bad. One is if it leaks, and you can actually see the moisture of the oil going, past the seals, you'll see a big wet stain on that shock absorber. That means it's time to have it evaluated for just how bad that leak is and get prepared to replace it soon. The other one is you do what's called a bounce test or a jounce test on the car. And it's very simple. You walk up to the bumper, put your knee on the bumper and get the car bouncing up and down. And when you step back from it, it should go maybe one or two more bounces and then settle and stop. If it does that, you're fine. If it keeps on bouncing up and down, that means your shock absorbers are no longer

doing their job, and it's time to replace them. Bad shocks, as you're going down the road, your tires are going to be bouncing, and your shock absorber isn't doing the job of keeping them securely on the road, so you're going to wind up damaging the tires. by causing odd tread wear. And it gets you a car sick, of course, because your car's constantly bouncing up and down. So if you have either of those two issues, get them replaced.

Otherwise, they're fine. And it shocks me outlast the car nowadays. Now, the other one we have here, I'm gonna actually try to read most of this off real quick. Customer says, I have a nine-year-old Camry, low miles 28,000. $28,000. Okay? I've replaced my tires twice already because Goodyear said their tires were expired. So they've already had the original set of tires and two full new sets of tires. That's 12 tires on this car in 28,000 miles. I went for an oil change and Mavis tire in plantation said I had old rubber and tire rot. I looked extensively on the outside. of the tires and I see no rot and I know what rot looks like because I had it on my

truck. Have you heard of non-visible sun rot and how common is a fraudulent upsell on tires? And by the way is a tires expiration date a real thing. These tires probably have 5,000 miles on them and are rated at 75,000. They are American-made Goodyear tires. Well, there's a lot of different opinions on that. Tires do have a date code on it and it's recommended that you should not buy old tires because once they hit about 10 years old, the tires can start to degrade. Well, six years is the... Six years? Okay. But even at six years, yeah, I would still not be too concerned if my tires were just six years old.

If they really hadn't been driven much, I would inspect them for any signs of dry rock cracking, which are those little surface cracks you'll see, if they start getting really large, I'd be concerned. But if it's just tiny, tiny little cracks, I'm not going to be too worried about them, and I'd be considering replacing when it gets worse.

Well, you don't want to buy a set that are six years old. Right. But your own tires, you can keep them as long as, You don't notice the cracks that Rick is describing. Yeah, and now here's the tricky one, this one just bugs Earl, but the DOT number, you're going to find a number on there, and the last four digits is going to be in a little bubble, and they'll be impressed, and this number is actually going to be only on one side of the tire. So it may be on the inside, you may have to get underneath the car to find it.

And that four-digit number, the last two digits are the only ones you want to worry about because that's the year that that tire was made. So if it says 19, that tire was made in 2019. If it says 22, it was made in 2022. If you see anything older than, say, one or two years when you're buying the tires, don't take them. Well, I'm not going to get under the car to see the number of my tire. I'm going to ask my grandson to get under the car and tell Grandpa what his tire number is.

Or the other trick is when you take it in for an oil change, ask the technician to take you out and show you your car and spot that tire on there. There you go. A lot of options. Okay, does that wrap it up, Rick? We're caught up for me. Okay, we're going to roll the video for our dog of the week, Lepson.

And as I stated earlier, it is a male two years old. And he is ready to be adopted, so roll it, Jonathan. Hi, I'm Jennifer from Big Dog Ranch Rescue out in Loxahatchie Groves. We have about 700 friends right now on property that need some new homes and I wanted to do you to my friend Lapsup. This guy's two years old, he's super friendly and cuddly, he loves to hang out, he loves to be in the grass, he loves to sniff all the sniffs, he'd be a great family dog. He's kind of a big guy. He likes to run around. He's pretty good on the leash, pretty calm,

got some low energy. We'll walk around a little bit so you can see him move, but he's a great guy and he is ready for a home. So come and visit Lapsum today. Great looking dog. He's smart looking, he looks like real smart dog. You can't help by their eyes. Yeah, and ladies and gentlemen.

We're looking forward to meeting you. We pay the adoption fee for Lapsin, so take advantage of that. It can be expensive to adopt a dog isn't he cute love them okay you know how big saves you a lot of money do you know how big that ranch is out there I just looked it up on their website I should know but 33 acres and Loxia actually grows that's just west of Western Palm Beach County not that far west is out of Okechobe Boulevard quite a way and it's

it's a it just it's a paradise for dogs 33 acres grass, trees, Puppieville, it's an incredible place. So just go to BDDR.org.org. W.W.B.B.B. Big Dog Ranch Rescue. org.org. And check out their website and see what they have out there. And they're also in Texas, and they're also in Alabama. I mean, they're huge.

And they just save thousands of dogs' lives every month. And what we don't talk about much is the kittens that they have out there. So there's a whole lot to take a look at, you know, just go out there and take a walk around or like Earl said, you know, go to their website. And again, we do pay the $200 for the adoption fee and that can save you a great deal of money. And we also have Earl's book that you can purchase. That's a question about the name of the name of the book. Confessions of a recovering car dealer.

I guess we all got it, Rick. I'm contagious. Really. So at any rate, confessions of a recovering car dealer, and you can go to Amazon and purchase that. And the purchase of that book, $19.99, proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. Proceeds, 100% goes to Big Dog Ranch. So take advantage of all of that.

We are going to get to, I think we're right on time, Jonathan. Jonathan's over there, cracking the whip. So we have to get to our mystery shopping report. It's another doozy. And it's Agent Lightning Shopped and at Ventura, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge. If you're not familiar with. Excuse me for just a second.

If you want to vote on that mystery shop, you can do so. You can text us here at 772-497-6530. Adventura is in South Florida, right in the heart of the Dodd City. It's the Saddam Gamora of car dealers down there. So hang on your hats. This is going to be exciting. It's just, Aventura, you know, I just don't know why car dealers don't mean their dealerships if you want to name an era who would nobody who knows where

Aventura is so it's what is it near do you know is it near Pompano or Fort Lauderdale or Aventure isn't that by Fort Lauderdale is near Miami that's isn't it in between Evan Miami and Fort Lauderdale anyway that's a Aventure Cresler Jeep Dodge I arrived I'll be speaking in the first person is a If I were Agent Lightning, I arrived mid-afternoon on 31st, and that was July 31st, and began wandering the sales floor. I was approached by a salesman named Michael, who asked if I was looking for anyone in particular. I said, no, I'm just looking to get a price on a new car possible.

He smiled broadly and said, he'd be happy to help me out today. I explained I'm looking for a car to keep it my second home in Aventura, near Miami and Florida. Michael congratulate me on having a home here in Ambitura asked if I was looking for a specific model. I said that since it's going to be a second car, I was wondering if they had any good deals going on. Just, you know, I want to spend a lot of money. I just want to give me a really good price on a new vehicle. He replied that he had a few 2003 challengers and chargers that were new and challengers that were new and challenges and chargers that were new now am i why would that Chrysler jeep dodge dealer have no challenges and charge or challenge yeah which way are challenges and chargers both both are dodge okay yeah i uh Chrysler jeep dodge they got so many models and cars I get confused that were new and could really hook me up with a great deal

he gathered my contact information said he'd be back with a new car I asked if there are wranglers are ever discounted he said unfortunately not is they are the ones that hold their value the most now right away when I was first looking at this mystery shopping report I could tell you that Michael had not been around for a long long time at the car dealers should be I'm guessing this might be his first week on the job but he just doesn't seem to it's a shame that happens a lot the Cardinals will hire somebody and not given the proper training indoctrination and and this is what happens so I sat and waited and Michael

finally returned after nearly 20 minutes of me pacing telling me he had some bad news and some good news the bad news was they don't have any more 2,023 models in stock although he just said they had a few 2023 challenges and charges but they don't have any they've been relocated and i'm not sure what he meant by that the previous day because i don't think that ablature has more than one dealership i wonder if maybe they sent them to the auction being their two thousand 23s and the 25s are just about to come out that's it's unlikely unlikely yeah but it's possible you know it's possible but he believed he could get a good deal on a jeep wrangler for me and if you're listening to the show you know you can get a good deal

on jeeps because the jeeps are backing up and jeeps were the lifeline for the whole stalantis auto group and now the jeeps are are not selling so if you're in the market for a jeep i don't know why would be because they have the worst quality and reliability of about any vehicle on the road but they're sexy and people buy cars in a motion and why not if you enjoy driving a Jeep Wrangler you could get a hell of a deal on one they're just backing up on the crash for Jeep Dodge dealership slots all over the country about ten minutes later Michael returned and had not still had in return. So I started walking around getting antsy. A lady in business attire came out of

an office and asked if I was being helped. I said yes. But the salesman had been gone for quite some time. And finally Michael came back and said he had the Wrangler for me to see. All indications that he's a rookie, as I said, probably his first week on the job. It was a brand new wrangler with only 33 miles on it. I noticed there wasn't a window sticker, and course, that's no surprise in South Florida. Manorini label, not on the car. So I asked him about the price. Michael said he could pull it up online for me and help me on my phone to do it. It was a 2003 Jeep Wrangler Sport with an MSRP of $45,930. Manager then came out to insist. since I had mentioned being in a hurry.

I clarified that I wasn't initially in a hurry, but after being there for an hour with Michael without seeing a car, I'm now in a hurry. I was getting annoyed. He apologized to the delay, and I asked if I was able to possibly make a deal today. I nodded, and he asked if I was trading in anything, if I was planning on putting money down,

and what my credit looked like. like I answered his questions and he walked back to his manager's office the manager's office I sat at a table waiting again Michael returns saying it should be much longer as it was the last day of the month and they wanted to get this done today after waiting five more minutes he returned with a sheet and I hold that sheet in my hand here it's a worksheet and we regular's know what a worksheet is It's something that you can show a potential customer that has no legal binding. It kind of gets the dealer off the hook because they disclose the BS, or some of it anyway, on the worksheet.

But if you're trying to obligate a dealer to a price, the worksheet won't do it. It is not a legal document. Going over the worksheet, they sneak in their dealer-installed accessories. their junk fees, mixing them up amongst real legitimate fields. And by a legitimate fee, I mean a government fee. So that's exactly what we had here. The top line on the worksheet was the MSRP of $45,390. They showed a $7,000 discount.

Things were looking good, right? Hey, $45,390 sticker, Monroney label. And I got that $7,000. $7,000 discount. Before, and you know what was coming next, there are packages and fees. There was $1,482 added

for installed packages. These are dealer installed accessories. And these, if you listened to the show earlier, other shows period, you know about the legislation coming up in Florida now. And on September 1st, this is

illegal. And it will be, well, it's illegal now. On September 1st, Ashley Moody, the Attorney General, has sworn to enforce it. And this dealership will or will be on September 1st, if it happens, fine excessively for hiding a price that wasn't advertised. The footnote on the proposal sheet explained this included the install package. $85 for one year of loob oil and filter changes. $3.99 for NSD appearance package, whatever that is, and $299 for NSD etch,

and $6.99 for LoJack, the famous LoJack. Next came their fees, totaling $3,073. The second footnote explained the charge included, this is a bad one, and this is something you only see in South Florida. $995 for port destination. Now that's a freight charge. Freight charge is already built into the invoice and the MSRP.

So by definition, you are already paying the freight charge and they're adding it back in again. So they're charging the freight charge twice. Yeah, because on the Marron, the actual Munrooney, it shows $1795 for a destination charge directly above the total price. Also, the real destination charge is even higher. So they're having a mini destination charge on top of the maxi destination charge that you've already paid.

$23 for e-filing, that's a junk fee. And they mix it in because the battery fee, a buck and a half, who cares, right? But the buck and a half is really a government fee, so that's a legitimate fee. Yep. And then they hitch it for $143.85 for dock stamps. Now, doc fees is a more common name, but Aventura is so egregious that they have the courage to call them doc stamps.

Now, dock stamps have a legal definition, and they are a legal tax on financing. Well, the car's not even gonna be financed. So the 143.85 is not only not, uh legitimate fee at all there is no financing so doesn't you have a legitimate basis in name but they are so flagrant they don't care uh now they mix here here comes another teeny we need real fee a lemon law fee two dollars that is really a uh a government fee so you've got a buck and a half battery fee and a two dollar lemon law fee mixed in with uh junk fees which are uh added in

profit five hundred dollars for license you could take that with a grain of salt it's probably inflated and here's one that's not even trying to feed a hide nine hundred ninety nine dollars for pre-delivery service fee and three ninety nine they this is another electronic registration filing fee so they give you they gave you two electronic registration filing fees and they here's another mixture now for the for the tire fee so I'm out of breath. After sales tax, the bottom line was $46,016.44.

He went over all the numbers, including the packages and fees, asking what I thought. I said I had no interest in those items. He said they might be able to adjust the price, but those fee lines would stay, and the adjusted price would reflect the discounts. If in fact his manager could do anything for me. I asked if there was room for movement and the price, he said he believed if I was ready to fill out a credit application, they could take a little more off.

Say, if they fill out a credit application, there's an implication that you might want to be financing and your regular listeners to this show, no, car dealers make more money on the financing in the box and the finance department than they do sell all the cars. If you're gonna fill out a credit application and you're gonna finance,

I might be able to take some more of the price of the car, because I'm going to add that back and then some in the finance office, is what he's saying. Then he asks what price out the door I would need to buy right now. This is the desperation plea when they realize you're just about ready to head to the door. What can I do? I'm begging you. Give me, let me take something to my manager.

I said that regardless, I need to talk it over with my spouse. So that burst is. pretty balloon there because she's going to go home and talk it over with her husband. He asked me to give them a minute. Just give me a minute. So I get my manager, know, I pace for about five minutes and then fed up, walked out the door. So there you have it. I hate to say it, but a typical South Florida mystery shopping report. I don't want to purchase the votes, but I got to call a spade of spade. I mean, this is just typical. And the only good news about this report is September 1. If it happens,

finito for that dealership yeah exactly and the cars roll is meant to crack down on bad dealerships behavior including bait and switch and advertising and sneaking in this finance and insurance and everything in between but it's really going to be interesting to see how it's all sorted out very much so until then you can go to good dealer bad dealer list dot com and you can see how all of you and us have rated every mystery shopping report and you can also grade this mystery shopping report

at 772-4976530 that's Evantora Chrysler Jeep Dodge Okay, what are our scores this morning All righty We've got Bob and Maryland says Agent Lightning at a long adventure at Aventura. It's an F for the double freight charge and a lot of other reasons like

No Monroney label. And we're waiting to see no more coming so far on the text. We will run to our YouTube channels here and see what we get. Joseph Kelleher says, with all the junk fees, I give an F. Tom Steckle, F. Illegal practices, no Monroney, double dip on delivery, fraudulent dock stamps still beat Central Florida's CDJR that charges 4,328 in junk fees. Johnny Z. Fradley says, F, plain and simple. Brian said Latcoe, jeeps are junk. F. Mark Smith, F definitely. Holden 53 says low grade.

Let's see. Okay, we're still looking good here. although Holden says Tom has it right and that looks like all we've got so far so for me I'm not going to go

with the F because like we say F is for the ones that just really earn that grade if they're armed yeah I'm going to say D minus but there there's stores down there that

have earned the F you gotta work hard to get an F out of me anymore so all you're going to do is slap me with a bunch of fees and I can easily give up a F and this is this embarrassing humiliating what are we going to do with the extra time that we have where we don't have to figure out all of these fees and all this well misconception of selling a vehicle well you know the the when the rule goes in It's, and I said this a couple of weeks ago, when the rule goes in, you're going to find out that there's going to be,

there's a little flex they're going to have there. They're going to go after the real nasty dealers first, and Aventura, Christman Chief Dodds, could be one of them. But they don't only have so many people to investigate. So the really egregious violators, but there's always going to be, you're always going to I there's always going to be a deal that's going to try to get away with a little bit and I hope that that's what happens if the tide doesn't know all the way back out but it it's going to be like a 995 speed limit is 65 if you go 75 they're going to 9 miles over that speed limit a 74 they'll let you go but if you go 85 90 or 100

they're going to get you so the 100 mile and hours in South Florida are going to be out of business yes and you're great I'm going to give them I can't give them an F I mean because we're talking South Florida I'll give them a I'll give them a D I mean that's that tells you how bad South Florida's because this was a terrible report if this if this report were in northern Florida or in Pennsylvania it would definitely be an F but in South Florida we got to give somebody a place to buy We're just complacent, right? Yeah, yeah.

They do it, so we'll do it, and they'll do it, and they'll do it. It's a rather unfortunate situation. Okay. Just one brief bullet, if we have time, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but any of you folks who watch the stock market realize that it just went down dramatically over the past couple of days, and one of the biggest hits was by a company called Intel. Unfortunately, Intel, they're laying on 15,000 employees. Their stock was the lowest. It's been in 40 years or some crazy thing. It just

dropped like a rock. And they're the major microchip supplier to automotive. So I hate to say, here we go around again, but Intel is, if Intel stops building microchips to the extent that they need to be, it's going to affect every manufacturer of the world. So I hate to go back to the days of cars coming in without accessories because they don't have the microchips or cars not coming in at all because they can't build the car, but hold your breath

and keep your fingers crossed that Intel is not going to have the effect that automotive news predicts they will have on auto manufacturing. Speaking of stock market, it was this week, wasn't it? Stalantis. It's no wonder

they can sell these jeeps. I mean, the stock dropped 48% you know and these vehicles are unsafe and I could we could stay on the air for another two hours I think according to Jonathan I have two minutes I go one you got one more thing to yeah one more quick thing here's some good news is California is adopting a digital registration in titling for cars and they're using blockchain you know blockchain is indecipherable coded way that the hackers can't get through to so instead of

having handwritten titles which is our cake which is what most states have now California is going to a strictly blockchain digitalized title and and it will be impossible to wash a title that means that flood cars damaged cars cannot be re-invented as a car with no problems. If you don't have the digital title, then you don't have, you can't sell the car. So congratulations. I know a lot of people hate Californians and California, but I got to salute them. Great idea. All 50 states should have digitalized blockchain registration. I second the motion. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning. We had a wonderful time out, and we definitely enjoy your company.

Have a great weekend, and we'll see you right back here next week. Saturday morning, the Oldies Channel.