Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.04.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Arrigo Dodge Chrysler Jeep

Episode Date: August 4, 2018

Earl and Nancy take a caller, Tara, from Tennessee. Rick tells you what not to use to rid your vehicle of bugs. A customer responds to Earl's request for feedback to the Costco Auto Buying Program. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.streamearloncars.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. We are now on Facebook Live every Saturday between 8am and 10am. Go to facebook.com/earloncars to also watch it live or to watch a replay in case you missed it. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. Watch Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. We're back, your automotive team, your automotive advisory team, basically on how not to get ripped off by your car dealer. That you shook up a lot of people. And I also have to add, because we're on the True Oldie channel now.

We used to be on a regular AM talk channel Now we're on True Oldie And a lot of music on this station But we're not musical We are a live Radio talk show One of the most exciting things on the planet Live radio talk

You never know what you're going to get Like a box of chocolates You can call us up and say anything you want You can text us Or controversial In a matter of fact Roles Stewart on Cars is probably the only show of its kind

on the planet? I think so. If there's another show out there like this, I'd like to hear about it. But we tell it like it is, we're very candid. We name names, we name car dealers. Anybody who wants to be named when they call in, we name them.

Or you know who we are. We do something called a mystery shopping report, and that's probably the most unusual thing. dare I say daring, a daring thing. We go into a different car dealership every week. And by the way, we've been doing this for 10 years, okay? Going to a different car dealership in South Florida. We went all the way down to Sawgrass in Broward County for today's shopping report.

We go all the way north. I think we've been as far as poor piece. I think Viro Beach, we may have gone that far once. But we cover the southeast coast of Florida pretty well. well, and we pretend to buy or lease a car, and we report back to you the experience of the mystery shopper. Every week, we name the salesperson, the car dealership, and we tell you what happened. If someone was lied to, we talk about it.

If it was a good shopping experience, we put that car dealership on our recommended dealer list. If it was a bad one, well, you know, we put them on, don't buy a car from that dealership. So that's very unusual. Mystery Shopping Report, one of a kind. And we take calls from anybody about anything. We are not one of these Love Fest talk shows. You've heard them. A lot of these talk show hosts, the only people that call the show are the people to agree with everything that the talk show host says.

We actually encourage disagreement. Disagreement is fun. Disagreement is exciting. I love to debate. But I believe I'm a fair debater. I mean, if someone tops me in a debate, I'll apologize, say I'm wrong, and congratulate the caller. If I'm right, I'll tell you I believe I'm right. But it isn't.

We're not trying to be adversarial here. We find that most of the audience agrees with our platform. Our platform is that car dealers are among the least fair, honest, nice, choose your adjective, of any retailer. Car dealers operate today the way they did 50, 60 years ago. This is the 21st century. You might as well be in 1950 in a time machine when you go into buy a car today. Haggle, hassle, negotiate, bait and switch advertising.

They won't give you a price. Have you noticed that? If you go to a car dealership today and say, I want an out-the-door price, and you'll want to think about it, maybe take it home, talk to your spouse or friend or advisor, or you just want to think about it. You can't get a price. You know what happens if you go to a car dealership today and say, how much is that brand-new Honda Civic sitting on the showroom floor?

The MSRP is, you know, the $22,500. What will you sell it to me before? What will the answer be? Are you going to buy today? Huh? Stu had his hand up. what would you like to pay for this? Yeah, right.

How much would you like to pay? Rick. Well, it's not like the old circus city store where if you went in a week after you bought it and you had an advertisement showing that you could have saved another 10% and they would hand you that 10% right then. Boy, it's not like that anymore, huh?

So they don't want to give you the price for the several reason that they don't want you to shop and compare. Why? I think we have a caller. We do. We have a caller. Let's interrupt that. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. If you'd like to join.

Good morning. Thank you, Rick. Rick's taking care of me this morning. Again, good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you so much for joining us. You are an important part of the show. That telephone number for you to reach us is 877-960-90-60, or you can text us. It's 772-497-65-30 ladies. We're waiting for you to give us a call this morning

because we have $50 for the first two new lady callers. You are an important part of the show, ladies. Remember, you make most of the decisions, especially purchasing a vehicle. We are going to go to Tara, and Tara is calling us from Tennessee. Good morning, Tennessee. Wow, Tennessee.

Good morning. I'm a first-time caller. Congratulations. I, my husband and I had been looking for a use car, and we did our research, consumer reports, Carfaxes, et cetera, and we decided on, you know, what we wanted to see in the Carfax, you know, timing belts replaced at the right time, the mileage, and, of course, the price. But when it came to contacting dealers, I was wary of, you know, how they would treat a woman. So I decided to do all of the negotiations over email.

And my regular email has my first name in it. So I created a new email with my initials in it instead, which are, you know, T.J. I signed every email with T.J. And we found a car we liked. It ticked all the boxes for what we wanted, but it was a little bit over our budget. It was 6,000, and then we wanted to stay under 5. to give room for whatever repairs, you know, we would need to do to it. And through emails, I negotiated with dealer and got the price down to $4,800 out the door.

And when we got to the dealership, the dealer was visibly surprised to find out that I was a woman. We checked the car out. We drove, it drove well, and we completed the purchase. So I think any woman who worries about being taken advantage of can use, you know, their initials. and email negotiations to, you know, help ensure that they get a fair deal. Well, Tara, that's a great idea. You know, I never thought about that. Of course, it's a shame that women have to resort to this,

but the bottom line is to get the best deal. And unfortunately, you're right, there is a sexist male chauvinist mentality with many car dealers. And I love your idea. I also want to congratulate you on intuitively you understood that the best way to buy a car is online with email. Once you're in a car dealership, my introduction, I was talking about the games people play when you physically walk into a car dealership. So when you have somebody that you communicate to online, it's awful hard to play the game when you're doing email.

Nancy has a point. Welcome, Tara. You did win yourself $50 this morning. Before we get started, I'd like to ask you how you heard of Earl Stewart on cars way out there in Tennessee. We found some segments on YouTube, and then we've been listening to your podcast for about over a month now. Great, cool. Interesting. And, you know, let me add my two cents to what you, you know, took it upon yourself to do.

Well, I'll tell you what, did you feel like as if that you were in control by going and doing the research for the vehicle? Total control. Not only were you in control, but you saved yourself a lot of money by going to the Internet, to purchase a vehicle, back to the recovering car dealer. Well, Tara, we're talking about email and the fact that you have the savvy to use email. And for the rest of the folks listening out there, in most dealerships today, there's two-tier pricing. There's the internet price, and there's the walk-in-the-door price. So when you are dealing online, you will usually be given the lower price.

As a matter of fact, if you happen to go in physically to a dealership, you should actually, ask to speak to an internet salesperson. They have people in two divisions. You know, have the ones that are handling people that walk in the door and the ones that handle the people that do it online. So you got the best price. You worked it perfectly and you gave me something that I hadn't thought about before for a woman negotiating online. Use your initials. Don't let them know your female. Even if the dealership is not one to discriminate, you're eliminating the possibility and it's a great idea. And I really thank you for that suggestion. question. Thank you very much.

Please call again. We love folks from out of the area, and so thanks for listening and spread the word in Tennessee that we love to hear from other ladies and even men in Tennessee. Tara, I'm going to add your idea to my list of things to remember to do whenever you are purchasing a car. There's no reason for anyone to know whether you're male or female. Congratulations, Tara. I thank you for calling. Spread the word in state. on the line and give me your contact information and I will get that $50 out to you

Thank you so much You're welcome. Love the show. What a great idea. Thank you. That is a good idea. 877-960-9960 or you can text us 772-4976530 And remember ladies and gentlemen

if you're unable to listen to our live show or you want to, well, listen to any of the past shows. Remember, you can always go to Earl Stewart on Cars podcast on your smartphone or your iPad. And that's a good way to follow us on the podcast apps, which you can go to Apple, Sound, ICloud, Google, and so many other ways. And if you'd like to watch highlights from the show, remember, you can go to. to YouTube.

YouTube.com slash Erwin Cars. So we have a lot of options here for you if you miss our radio show from. And we're going to be here for two hours, so we're going to be going over a lot of information. But remember,

you make the show, and we love hearing your eye. Well, for instance, Tara, using her initials. So heads up, ladies. That's a great way to research a price of a car. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us.

772-497-6530. We're going to go to our next caller, and that's Paul from Jupiter. Welcome to the show, Paul. Hi, good morning, everyone. Good morning. Well, I have a quick question, please. Mr. Stewart had just laid out a scenario. You walk into a dealership, and you immediately ask for an Internet salesperson.

even though an in-person salesperson approached you. Would they take offense to that? Would they actually refer you to an Internet salesperson? They may. A good salesperson would not. And another danger is sometimes the salesperson you're talking to may misrepresent himself as being an Internet salesperson. That's a good point, and I'm glad you raised that.

What I would do is I would ask to speak to the sales manager, to be absolutely sure. And the sales manager would have no axe to grind one way the other. He gets credit for sale, whether it's a floor salesperson or an internet salesperson. And maybe another even safer way would be to call the dealership, ask the receptionist, the telephone operator, that you'd like to speak to somebody in their internet department. If you go online, of course, you can go to their website, and virtually every car dealer will have an internet department,

and they will identify the salespeople in their internet department. That way, you have a name to ask for it when you go in. But one of the problems I find with people walking in, let's say you're a Costco member, you'll walk into the car dealership and you say, I'm a Costco member, I'd like to speak to the Costco representative. The danger is the salesperson you're talking to who is not a Costco representative will say, oh, I'll take care of you, I'm a Costco representative. We've done this in mystery shops and has salespeople misrepresent that.

Same thing goes for a lot of other people that you want to speak to a manager. They can say, well, yes, I'm the sales manager. It doesn't happen in every dealership, but it's a risk, and you can minimize or eliminate that risk by going to the website ahead of time and phoning in ahead of time. Okay. Now, why would there be a disparity between pricing from an Internet salesperson versus an in-person salesperson?

Paul, that's a great question. Think about this. You're in a car dealership and you get an email. The person emailing you may be using a pseudonym. We just had a woman Tara that was using her initials, not her exact name. She was asking for a price. If you're a salesperson and you get a request online and you give them a price or refuse to give them a price

or give them a high price, the danger is you'll never see that person again whereas if you're face to face the way the game is played now and the sales managers and the dealers instructor sales force when they come in start the price high usually they're instructed

to start the price at MSRP or higher and then the games begin you say well gosh that's a lot of money and they say excuse me let me speak to my manager they go away for 10 minutes take a cigarette break have a cup of coffee, come back and say, my manager says, we can reduce that price by $500. And then you go back and forth and the games continue. Whereas online, you can't play the games. You ask for your best price, and they know you have the best price.

Meanwhile, you're sitting there with your smartphone or your PC or Mac, and you can go to three or four other dealerships in the market and get the best price from them. So the risk of losing a customer forever immediately without being able to follow up and do anything about it is much greater when you're dealing online. So they typically will give you their best price online. And if they refuse to give you a price, you just don't go back, you go to another dealer. The dealers have learned now the ones that refuse to give the price online, lose the deal.

Mm-hmm, okay. All right, well, I'm glad I made the phone call, and you certainly explained it very well. I appreciate that, and I'm sure it's helpful to a lot of people out there. Well, thanks, Paul. Remember this. Truecar is an online source that will allow you to get online prices from car dealerships. And they do a little pre-work for you. They identify the dealerships in your market.

They identify the dealerships that will give you a good price. And then you're allowed to choose the dealer that you'd like to deal with. So that way you can be online with Truecar and online with the dealer, best of both worlds. Another good source that you can deal with is the Costco Auto Program. But to do that, you have to go to become a Costco membership, which is around, what, 50, 60 bucks? Not even that. I think you can get like a $30 a year one per year.

So it's worth the investment. But, yeah, online's the way to go, Paul. Thanks very much for a great call. Oh, you're welcome. Take care yourself. Stay in touch. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, did you know a customer that has a good experience

will typically tell three to five people. But if they have a bad experience, how many people do you think that they tell? Millions. 20 or more. And, well, Stu just gave his opinion. I think he's absolutely right. That kind of news can travel real fast. So stay with us.

We've got a great mystery shopping report coming up from Arrigo Sawgrass and West Palm Beach. And so much more. Again, you are an important part of the show, and guess what? We want to thank you for spending your time with us on Saturday morning. I'm sure there's other things that you'd like to do, but, well, we all agree the show is extremely informative. So give us a call. Be part of the show, 877-960, 99060, where you can text us at 772-497-60. Now back to the recovering car dealer.

We haven't had any text yet. that's a little unusual. We like text, and we're going to try to always get back to you. If you text us, and maybe it's toward the end of the show, we'll try to always answer you after the show, and the text number, Nancy just gave that out.

Write this down in case you think of something. Sometimes you don't have an idea, thought, and if you write it down, 772-497-65-30. We got one. We got one. Bam. Isn't it great, ladies and gentlemen, we have Stu back in the studio. We missed him last week. Welcome, Stu.

Thank you very much. We have a text from John. Did you get that one? I'm looking for it. What is the best thing to use to get bugs off the truck off of their windshield and the rest of the body of the vehicle? We've been asked that question so many times and so many have given us different ways of achieving those crazy love bugs that come around that time of year. Rick, do you want to answer that? Love bugs are nasty. The best advice for the glass is Windex and lots of elbow grease. And the best advice for anything on the paint or anywhere else is a little bit of prep.

Wax your car very well beforehand. and then wash them off as quickly as possible. It's going to take elbow grease. A lot of those commercial products work very well, but be careful. Check their reviews on them. And folks, no, do not put cooking spray on your car. Trust me, this does not work.

I've seen it happen so many times. People say, oh yeah, you spray cooking spray on your car, and the bugs won't stick. Well, they still stick, but so does every other speck of dirt and grease out on the road, and your car looks horrible, and it's incredibly difficult to wash that stuff off afterwards. The main problem is you want to get it off quick, right?

Absolutely. Because it can actually eat through the paint. Yes. You know, the other part of that question, Rick, is that this texture is recommending ceramic coating, getting his truck ceramic coated. Right. Now, that's a new product that actually has been coming out of a new technology.

It's supposed to actually work better than car wax. But it's very, very expensive, right? It can be, yes. You're talking $500, $600 for the application, yes. And then it does have to be done, I believe, at least once a year or so. You can check it out. It's a good technology, but I think the guys riding around the Bentleys and Rolls-Royces, would be doing that.

Yes. And if you're driving a... How long did you say it would last, Rick? I have heard about a year or longer in a lot of cases, but I think a lot of this is such a new technology. I don't think they really have a whole lot of data yet on how long it's going to last on the cars, how well it's going to handle our Florida summers and the rain

and the abuse that our cars take here in this weather. So it's one of those things that if you want to try it, You know, just read up on it a lot. Do your homework and read the reviews. I think the best thing is, is used it earlier, Rick, is a good wax, and there's some component in wax that you can identify the more it has. The carnuba wax. The carnuba in the wax.

Spell that. It's C-A-R-N-A-U-B-A. Okay. Rick, if you have that ceramic treatment done and you keep your car in the garage, does that treatment last any longer? out of the elements and into a garage? Oh, yeah. Keeping your car in a garage is always going to improve the quality on any of those products.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, we're going to go to Bob. He's so holding, and Bob's calling from Lake Park. Welcome to the show. How are you today, Bob? Yes. I was a good today. We're good.

What can we do for you? We'll catch about the Costco auto buying program. Yes. I saw something on the internet, and I wanted to discuss it with you. But first, I wanted to ask you, you met with these people. Yes. And I was curious, has anything changed since you met with them? Not to my knowledge, Bob.

And they were seemingly receptive to our suggestions. And you're prompting me now, reminding me to follow up and see what's happening. the Costco auto buying program is a good program. The problem with the Costco auto buying program are the car dealers that do not follow the rules. And it's a little bit true with TrueCar also. They will certify a dealer, True Car, or Costco. And I think they do it a little too quickly. And they do not, Costco and True Car are not able to follow up and police the fact that the rules

are being adhered to. So the Costco auto buying program is good if you really follow exactly what Costco says. And it's kind of against human nature. But what Costco says you should do is you select the Costco dealer. You are absolutely certain to speak to the Costco representative because that's where sometimes it doesn't happen. The salesman represents himself to be a Costco representative. And he's not. Be sure you're talking to the Costco representative that was shown to you online. You have to go to the Costco membership website. Select your Costco dealer.

Select your Costco representative by name. When you go into the dealership, you must ask to see the Costco pricing sheet. And you should see. If you do all that, you'll get a fair price. But very few people. Well, the reason I brought it up was I saw something. on a website called Business Insider. And you can look it up.

It's Business Insider slash Costco Auto Buying Program. And they wrote in on the, they spoke to somebody by name of Rick Borg, who was a sort of a Glasgow, and they were talking about the program and how it works and everything. He was one of the people we met with. And I was looking through the comments.

Now, there was a time when you were offering people an incentive to call you up and speak to you if they had gone through the Costco auto buying program. Am I correct? Yes. Well, on this website a number of these people that responded to this story

were people that had gone through the auto program of Costco. And what I could see from a number of them, they said that they were actually able to get a better deal and pay less for the vehicle through other means at the same dealership. In other words, they would get the Costco price

that the deal would sell them to car at a lower price on a different deal. Very interesting. I thought the Costco auto buying program guaranteed you the lowest price at that dealership. Yes, it's supposed to be. That is true. That's interesting.

You know, Bob, I did read that article, but shame on me. I did not read the responses, the follow-up. I thought the article was kind of a white, watched that it was really kind of a tacit recommendation for the Costco auto buying program. And Rick Borg, by the way, the one that this reporter from Business Insider spoke to, was the man that my sons and I spoke to in our meeting. He's pretty much in charge of the whole program for Costco.

So he was talking. Okay, well, I just thought it would be interesting. You know, I read the article and I thought about, you know, because you had talked about it and had sent some people in trying to buy that program. And they almost never met with the Costco designated person at the dealership. They were always shuffled off to someone else. Well, you gave me something to follow up with. I'm going to give that article, and I'm going to talk to Rick Borg again,

show him the responses, because I'm really happy that you call. I read the article, but I forgot about reading the customer responses. Yeah, well, like I said, not all of them, but there was a majority of them And it seemed to me that what I got out of it was they were able to actually get a better price, you know, outside of that deal. Thank you very much. I was just curious as to how that works, and whether or not Costco's aware of what the deal is there at, I guess there's no, is there any way for Costco to monitor exactly what the dealers are doing? Yeah, Stu has a point he'd like to me.

Yeah, it's, the Costco program, this is a flaw in it, but it requires the cost of, customer to go back. If they think they didn't get the lowest price, they can call. There's an 800 number on the website. And then the Costco Auto Program will follow up with the dealer and access to sales documents to make sure that they did honor the price. But it's not an automatic. It's, they don't know what transpires until the customer lets them know. Right. Well, these people were getting a lower price, but they were getting a lower price in the Costco program. Right. At the dealership. Well, I guess they felt, since they got a good deal, I guess they figure what's the point going back

and telling Costco, you know, the person that's going in to buy the car, the only thing they're interested in getting the best deal they can possibly get. That's true. I think most of the complaints probably when the price goes the other way. Yeah. Bob, the problem with this whole concept is that the Costco auto buying program, which, as you know, because you listen to the show before, is not Costco. It's a, another company, and it is sublet. The auto buying program is sublet to this other company.

And this other company makes all of its money from revenue from car dealers. So if the Costco auto buying program comes into a car dealership, the car dealer has to pay him two or three or $4,000 a month to be a certified member. Now the car dealers, they kind of have things their own way in the market, and that's the reason this show exists. So when Costco goes in there and says, These are the rules, and if you don't follow the rules, we're going to cancel you, then Costco auto buying program doesn't get their $3,000 a month anymore.

So when the dealers are not quite following the rules, they're a little reluctant Costco auto buying program to discipline them or cancel them as dealers. So True car has the same problem. You know, when you're getting paid by the car dealerships, and that's the way you make your money, you are sometimes not as aggressive as you should be. to police your program and see if they're playing by the rules. So that's it in a nutshell. What we think Costco should do is what TrueCard does.

Costco should, number one, quote prices online. They should quote the price without having the member have to come into the dealership. That's the way the price should be given. And they should also take a pledge not to add anything to the quoted price other than government taxes. with Costco, they allow them to add dealer-installed accessories in some cases, and they always allow them to add dealer fees, which is just not a good thing to do. It just raises the price way over the Costco price. So the Costco price...

If you remember, when True Car first came out, and they were first doing, you know, they first started, you know, publishing their thing on the internet, that, uh, That was more of a great way of doing business. They had to change everything that they did because all the pressure they got put on by the dealership. The true car program is not what it was when it was originally concepted and when it originally went on the internet. They made a lot of concessions to the automobile dealers. They were threatening to get sued and all this other stuff. So True Car, it's not a bad way of looking at things, but it's not what it was when it originally came out.

When True Car originally came out, it really gave you tremendous leverage at the dealership because you could see exactly what was going on in your local market as far as, you know, what the cars were going for. Bob, you sound awfully well-informed. Are you in the car business? Have you been in the car business? Because you're exceptionally well-informed. No, I just, you know, it's just something I, you know, because, you know, I buy a car every once in a while, and so, you know, I try to stay abroad. I look at the auto blog, I read that every day, see what's coming out, and that's a pretty good site.

And, you know, I saw what a true car I did when they first, when they first came out. And then I, of course, you know, I saw all the headlines from all that all the automobile manufacturers were up in arms. Yes. because Truecar was giving the customer more leverage than they wanted the customer to have. Yeah, that was Scott. And it was hurting the negotiation process. Yeah, Scott Painter founded. People come into a dealership, if they're very well informed,

and they have all those numbers in front of them, the dealership's going to be hard-pressed to try to send them away because they could just go and get it from another dealership. Sure. So, I mean, you know, so it just, it's just, the dynamics of buying a car were a lot better when that, when that site first came out. And then they, they bought all kinds of holy hell from the automobile dealers. And they've, they've changed a lot of what they do. So you don't really, you're not really getting, it's still a good site, but it's not as good as it once was. You're exactly right.

Agreed. You're exactly right. And as I say, you're very well informed. I wish, well, I don't wish all of our audience was that well informed because then you wouldn't need this show. You wouldn't have to know it. But thank you very much for the call

and you're right on with your criticisms of TrueCar. Okay, now I'd like to see you go back and do some more of those Costco programs if you could. I'd be very interested to see whether or not these people have made any type of change

if they've had that meeting with you, you know? Otherwise, I guessing it was just, you know, you're spinning your wheels. Well, we're going to do that, and your call motivates me to do that, and we're going to get that story you talk from Business Insider. I'm going to read the responses, and I'm going to call Rick Borg, and we're going to start pushing him to come up with an answer to what he said he would consider to do, and we'll see if we can get him to improve

the program, and we'll report back to you. Thank you. Well, I think it's just a function of him being able to the, determine to monitor it. I'm not quite sure how they would do that, you know. Yeah. But it's a very interesting process. And, you know, the one thing I found that was very interesting when you were doing your

investigation of it was when you'd go to these dealerships, how they would shuffle you around half a dozen people, and none of them was the representative of Costco. You're right about that. That I found, but you know, and the funny thing, though, is, and you know, because you're in the business, that a lot of these dealerships, the salespeople, are constantly changing. Yeah, huge turnover. So even if you had somebody that was a Costco, was the Costco person, is a good chance that after he's been trained to know how to use the program at the dealership, he could be gone in three months.

Exactly. That's right, Bob. Thank you so much for the conversation. And as you suggested, giving the Costco car buying program some more exposure, affinity, who's also involved and responsible, you know, we hope to change things, and we slowly are changing things. Also, give us a call again. The number is 877-960, or you can text us at 772-49-60. We have a text, and we have a caller.

Would you like to make a choice? Yes, let's not make Frank wait. Oh, Frank, Frank, Frank. How you doing this morning, Frank? Nice to hear from you. Very good. Are you here? Are you in Florida?

Yeah, I'm in West Palm Beach. Oh, good. What can we do for you? Hopefully I'll be buying a car from you at the end of the year when my lease is up. Oh, great. and two things first i'm calling about the uh bugs the love bugs the uh i'm from originally from new york and i drove on the long island expressway for 20 plus years and all the trucks are spinning out little bits of the oil in their exhaust on the windshields and eventually you'd have

an oily windshield and I found a window man showed me, told me, rather, used Bainami. It's non-abrasive. It's a white powder. You buy it in a grocery store. Banami has a little

chicken on it. Oh, yellow container. Put that on, scrub it, and rinse it very well, and your windshield will look like it was brand new. I don't know about the rest of the car. I wouldn't put it on the wrist in the car.

Bonnami hasn't scratched yet. Well, thank you very much, Frank. Yeah, great tip. I'd never heard that. And the reason I love callers, you callers come up with some amazing info. Rick had heard about it, but I must have kind of an abrasive quality, but you wouldn't want to put it on the paint,

but the glass can handle it. On the glass is fine, but remember if you've got Rainex on your glass, it may remove your Rainex. Oh, boy. So, you know, you'd have to choose one or the other there. But it will clean your glass right down. I tried it once, and I like to put the Bynami on every now,

and then I find it better. The rain seems to just, you know, almost as good as Rainex, because I used to do that every three, four weeks in New York, just because of, like I said, driving on the expressway, I was, with all the truck exhaust, it's spitting out little bits of oil. You know, you really don't feel it or see it. Absolutely. But after a month, you turn on your wiper and it's all greasy.

Yep. Yeah. In Florida for 30 years now, and I only do it like once a year maybe or twice a year. Yeah. I don't have that problem. Great idea. That's the answer for that. Yeah.

And the other question is. talking about I like to see what I buy so when I come to your dealer I go to the internet sales department or should I do it online first? I would go

you look at the internet if you want to find a salesman to talk to depending on the deal you're dealing with most dealers don't post their prices online but you should always contact the internet department and try to

try to conduct most of the negotiation through the, with your, you know, PC or a smartphone. And then the only reason you really need to go to a car dealership is to drive the car, look at it, smell it, feel it. You know, you always want to be sure you see the car in real life and drive it before you buy it. But you could do all your negotiations online. Okay, that sounds good. Thank you so much, Frank. I want to buy it from you because you're the only honest dealer I know it. Florida. I know one in New York. He's a friend

of mine. We hope to hear from you again. They've been in 90 years. Yeah, definitely. Thank you so much. He's the best dealer for service year after a year in the whole United States. Thank you. Frank, why don't you ask your friend

who's the dealer to listen to our show sometime? I keep trying to get dealers to call in and we want to have a little fun because we know they don't agree with what we say and we'd like to have at least some sort of a interesting, entertaining controversy on the line. So

anybody out there that knows a car dealer, like you, we'd sure like them have them call the show someday. Yeah, we like to stir the put, Frank. Yeah, well, you know, the nice or funny part is, I don't buy cars from them anymore because I'm in Florida.

And he said, that's okay. I still have enough cars. But we're still friends. Thanks so much, Frank. We hope to hear from you again. You know what? There was a that came in back when we were talking about the love bugs and Tracy who as a regular viewer suggests the and so many people have the dryer sheets and bounce whatever you want to use and she finds it effective to remove those lug bugs and keep them off but we're going to go

to Steve's text and he wants to know if the Consumer Reports buying guide is worth its cost We both know the answer to that. That's worth much more than its cost. Yeah, definitely. One of the few totally reliable recommending sources of all products because they don't accept advertising. They will not even allow you to use their name in an endorsement. They are pristine.

All their money comes from contributions, magazine, online sales. It's a non-profit organization, and they are really good. They invests millions in research, and you can, you can go to the bank with what you read in Consumer Reports. Absolutely. They have you in mind. Nobody else in there looking out for you. And if you stay tuned, not only you're going to hear the mystery shopping report from Arrigo Sawgrass and West Palm Beach,

you're going to get some information from Consumer Report, and that is the nine terrific use car picks. that that was, is that this month's edition or next month? It's probably, it's probably September. Yeah, it's next month's edition. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-9960, or you could text us with your questions at 772-497-6530. We're going to go to Frank, and Frank's calling us from Jupiter Farms. Welcome to the show, Frank. Well, good morning, Earl and Nancy.

Good morning. My girlfriend retired three weeks ago, and she needs a new car. So we've been going around from dealer to dealer. We also, first and foremost, I want to tell you, we stopped very first stop, was to see you guys, met your son, Josh, but an absolute gentleman, but an absolute perfect, unbelievably great price. All the stress that you normally found dealerships was gone when we met him. regretfully the car didn't have quite the acceleration that she was looking for

so we may still come back and look for them to the different model but we followed a lot of your shows and listen by the way Earl if we mention your name at a dealership it's like a lightning rod you cannot believe how fast they react did they chase you well that makes me feel that's why we do it yeah just yesterday just yesterday we're at a dealership all a dealership we mentioned about the Costco price but we only do that in October November we don't do it this time of the year okay so that was interesting um that is very like you said you can do a lot better on the internet but you got to be see the car and actually she was very close to getting this one particular car at a very good price and then she sat

in the driver seat and realized the window was a little narrower than she didn't have the view on the rear that she would like so that went off the table but here's a here's a quick question They have some really nice 17 models because she's thinking about leasing instead of getting, you know, a car for all these years and have something, you know, three years different down to them. And they can't say they can't lease a 17 model. Is that correct or is that just with the reason why they can't? The less leasing companies, you know, they have to look at the value of the car at the end of the lease. and the leasing companies typically go for the current model car and they adjust the payments and the residuals

probably even the lease rate based on the age of the car. I wish a company would figure out that you could lease an older car so of 2017 or a used car for a better price than you could a new car. But there are reasons for that and they don't do that. I always recommend whether you lease a little bit. or buying a car that you go with the very current model right now i would recommend you don't even lease a 2018 i'd say at least in 2019 well the 2019s aren't out yet wait a couple of months they'll be out and uh there are bargains on the 2018 and there are even greater bargains

on the 2017s but bargain is not a true bargain just because it's a lot of money it does not take into account the build-in depreciation that a year-old car has 2018 is on the showroom floor it's brand new right this is August 2018 cars from the showroom floor it's a 2018 brand new car right wrong when you buy that car in two months it'll be a year old because of 2019 will come out and you'll have an entire year's worth depreciation suddenly hit that car whether you're leasing it you pay it indirectly because the leasing company is going to suffer that depreciation and pass that along due and a lease payment if you're buying it more of a hidden sudden slap in

the face because when you go to trade that car in even though you bought it if you trade it in two years and trade it in you're going to have three years worth of depreciation so negotiate for the current model even though you start higher and the price may even be a little higher accounting for depreciation, that's a better deal. Well, thank you. Another question, since she is, what's to get, she's had a variety of cars. Everything from Toyota,

Hondas, etc., and she's, they can maybe she'll upgrade a little bit more of a luxury type car. Are there any auto shows because you go up and dealer, dealer, oh, my goodness, just to subject yourselves to the, you know, how can I say, the wolves of the pack, so to speak.

Any of those car shows like in the old days you see at Miami Beach or something that you can go and look at all the models in one location? Yeah, it's a great place. The problem is you will be subject to indirect sales at all these shows. I know I sound like a broken record with consumer reports, but if I were going to buy a new car and I wasn't in the business, I would take Consumer Reports issue. I'm looking, I've got it right here in my hand.

of the show every week, it's the auto issue, April 2018. It gives the best and worst cars, SUVs, and trucks. I would take that auto issue, and I would go to the cars that I like styling-wise, SUV versus sedans versus trucks or whatever I want, and I would pick the recommended versions in consumer reports. Then I would go to the auto show. But to walk into a Detroit show or New York show or a Miami show. There's hundreds and hundreds of different cars. Every one that you walk by, the salesman there is going to tell you this is the best car in the show. But you need to filter that with consumer reports, then go to the show, then you can sit in the car, look at it, and experience the car. But you still need to go to the dealership.

I hate to say this, but you can't buy a car without driving it. And so many people do. You need to drive that car extensively before you can really feel sure and comfortable. I think you mentioned that your girlfriend had noticed one car when she couldn't see out of the rear-review window. That's a terrible thing to do to spend $45,000 or $50,000 on a car and not notice the fact that you can't have good visibility out of the rear window after you've already paid for it. So these are the kind of things you don't see or feel until you drive the car for half a day or a day. very true that consumer report

I've got consumer reports here is that a small little book like a like a Reader's Digest or is a regular magazine size? Yes I'm holding up the the April auto edition and then I also have Nancy hold up the you have the other one

here it is and you know something like you mentioned looking like a Reader's Digest there is a consumer report that that you can pick up And if you subscribe to a consumer report, Earl knows what I'm talking about. They have this small book, and it's filled with a lot of information, you know, about the latest cars and your, you know, the used cars. So both are worth their weight in gold.

Yeah, I've got stuff in my house. Oh, my goodness. I got so much magazines, mostly car magazines. But the April edition is the regular consumer mass size. magazine that you're referring to. You can ignore motor trend and hot rod and road and track and all the rest of them.

All these magazines, they have the car of the year and this is a good car and that's a bad car, but they all take advertising and the manufacturers, and motor trends seems to always have the car of the year from their biggest advertiser of the last year. I don't know if that's a coincidence or not, but consumer reports will not

accept a nickel in advertising it from anybody. Yeah, no, that's a very good point. Back to your love bug, real quick diversion. I grew up in Miami. I went and drive to Orlando during love bug season. What a pain in the neck there, no. And the other thing when I believe was Rick was mentioned about the Badaami, the windshield with Rainex, a very quick story about my Rainek story.

I had bought an old 1970s Porsche 9-11, and I didn't really have the money back then. It was a used car, but the windshield wiper motor stopped working. and it was back then with like $185, which today is nothing. But I got Rain X on my windshield. I never had to replace that pipe and whether. I drove the car for another year without wipers. It just rolled

off. A side note. Your show triggers so many different memories about my car years over, you know, 50 plus years of winning cars. Well, that's good, Frank. You're a great caller. You guys are really, you guys are great. I really truly appreciate your show.

Oh, thank you. going to have fun going around looking at the car dealers with laura and myself so thanks frank thank you let me let you get back here where did we did it calling yet gina rather gina oh she's not called yet she has not called yet she has not called yet she's on the phone now and guess what it's 853 where is where is that girl i'm a night day thanks frank i bet she's on hold don't go anywhere she's coming up uh ladies and gentlemen you might you might you might to check out that column that Earl wrote recently. He sent that out on Monday, and that's 10 tips on buying the right used car. The right used car is better, a better buy than a new car.

And so many great tips. And back to what Frank was saying about Consumer Report. You know, it's come to a point now where Earl and I will send someone a gift certificate, a subscription for Consumer Report. That's how much we believe in it. We go to Consumer Report for any and every product. And they don't steer you wrong because it's you that they're interested in informing and helping. And they're not making anything on the information. So we're going to go to, ladies and gentlemen, you've all been waiting for a certain caller.

She calls every week. She's got a lot of information for us. Tina, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Welcome. Hi, how are you guys doing this morning? Good morning. You're running late. Good morning.

Yeah, I am. I'm on my way to work, and I'm at the gas pump because my gas light went on that. But be that as it may. I was reading an article the other night, and the future is going to come next year. We've been talking about autonomous cars and electric cars. Well, we all know the financial trouble that Volkswagen has gotten into, and they're still dealing with the fallout from that. But the money that they were ordered to pay is going to Sacramento, California,

and Sacramento, California is going to be a test for the rest of the nation, because next year they're going to be getting autonomous electric cars that people can rent to go wherever they need to go. Wow. So I was going to – I'll send you the link for it, but I found it was very, very interesting. So they are going to be one of the first cities that's going to have a whole fleet of electric cars. And the price is going to be very reasonable. Like you can rent it for the day, you can run it for an hour, you can run it for a couple hours,

15 minutes, whatever you need it for. So this is really going to be a boon for electric cars, and it's going to lower emissions. That is really cool. It makes me want to fly to Sacramento. Let's do it. Rent an autonomous car. It's broadcast from Sacramento. Oh, I would love to do that.

Yeah. That would be awesome. Wouldn't that be nice? Yeah, you could drive out there in a... Yeah, be fine. And there was another article I was reading about electric cars. I'll link those. When I get to work and I have a chance, I'll link them both to you.

But this gentleman was talking about one of these days, we're going to be given five years to get rid of our cars, and everything is going to be electric. And he seems to think it's going to happen sooner rather than later. you're right absolutely right it's possible that's kind of scary

when you're a car dealer but maybe it'll be good maybe if there's enough electric cars then that'll actually be a boost to the economy because the dealers

will have the electric cars and the law says you've got to get rid of your car and buy an electric that'll be a boom so who knows well Earl Earl I have an idea for you

I know that you have this founded fear of you know losing your business, why not invest in a company that's developing these electric cars? I mean buy stock, invest, become like a shareholder. That could be an idea to make a few bucks. You're probably right. You know, the problem is you don't know whether to invest in the software.

Do you invest in Apple or do you invest in Ford? In other words, you know, right now, Google, for example, it's got the lead in autonomous cars. Waymo is their car company. and you don't know who's going to be the car manufacturer that we know them today are going to be maybe almost obsolete because it'll be all about the software and the car itself will just be a container

one of the coolest things you talk about renting autonomous cars Walmart now is contracting I believe with Waymo to provide autonomous cars for their customers so when you want to buy something at Walmart They'll have an autonomous car pick you up, take you to Walmart, and then take you home again.

Fabulous. I mean, that's amazing. And that's what's going to happen in Sacramento next year. Yeah, very cool. Well, you're always on top of the new stuff, Dean. I really appreciate your calls. Thanks. I try.

Stay in touch, Tina. We love hearing from you. Thank you. Y'all have a great day. Thanks, Tina. Have a nice weekend. 960, 9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Remember, we got that mystery shopping report coming up soon,

and the mystery shop is Arrigo, Sawgrass, and West Palm Beach. We are going to go to John, who also is a regular caller from Palm City. Welcome to the show, gentlemen. Good morning to everyone. I'd like to address the increase that's been announced on Channel 5 in the Southern District of Florida on stolen cars.

Very serious problem now. Most of them are not just one-shot deal where a teenager or something is grabbing a car. It seems to be the rings, stolen car rings, that steal them by the hundreds. And I want to just give you an example. In February,

my wife loves a PGA shopping center and we park usually at Sacks 5th Avenue. And on February, when I was there, I happened to observe everything around, and I see a tow truck with no riding on it and no phone number, nothing on it. It's just a plane, and he's starting to hook up the 7th series, BMW. For some reason, in that lot,

there's real high roller cars parked there. Most of them are for the whole day because they put their sun-visor shield on it with the sun. So I said to heck with it. I'm calling up, and I call 9-1-1, I gave him the plate number, and Palm Beach County, Sheriff Department came in not one but two cars and challenged the driver. I'm not hanging around forever to see what was going on. All I heard was a Riviera Beach towing company, a towing this BMW, and all they would tell

me that's an unauthorized tow. But I knew it was important when not one but two, a Palm Beach County. County Sheriff Department of cars came in. So I don't know if it's a ring involved, and I hung around to find out. But I will tell you this much, talk about rings. In the paper last month, John Gotti's grandson again caught in Richmond Hill, Queens, at 1001st Avenue. There's at least 9,000 cars that were stolen.

Some of them were sold for parts. Some of them were cut up. And the Gotti family, if you look to history, his son was, involved also in uh no the grandson the one in this car place served time in cleveland

Ohio for doing exactly the same thing he went to federal prison so we're talking about big time by the way there was no license in that wrecking yard and they were following for a while but the point is what can you really do

to prevent this well you know if in a dark spot you can park under the lights um you can do some additional, which I don't think it any did. I had three stolen cars in New York, and they all had aftermarket alarm systems, and two of them were found later. One was stolen at La Wadi Airport. They never found it, and they found that the cars had damage in the front that they were lifted from a tow truck. So there's no way to prevent something like that. but what I want to say is

you mentioned consumer reports when you buy a new car for instance the September issue on page 59 has ratings of used cars three years or older you want to get a car that's worth more

when it's a year or two years older see if it God forbid it's stolen you get more insurance money than a car that's like on the bottom of the list yeah exactly So that's an important thing, you know, with insurance, but as far as stealing and going, and also people today with their hot weather, they've got their car idling. They go in for the other day, I saw it in the Publix.

They went in for a sandwich, and they left it so it's cool in the car. Well, again, that somebody could just, and that could be a kid, just bust the window, and they've got themselves a car. It's already, you know, running. and then in a gas station very important people now a lot of people are going in they'll grab in a cup of coffee

or a donut or something and they leave the car open that's not very smart the pocketbook on the seat maybe or some valuables and it's not smart but people in the service stations now they're going in to use their credit card

because of the readers that are on the pump again should they do that lock that car out on the pump so nobody can get access and get into it. John, thanks very much for that. Thanks very much. Yeah, thanks very much for the heads-up.

I wasn't aware of the crime way of stealing cars in South Florida, but that certainly is frightening. There's not much you can do to defend against a tow truck going your vehicle away. And South Florida is a perfect place for stealing cars

of that way because of the exporting. I mean, we're so close to the coast. So I would recommend a GPS tracker in your car and there's a lot of those available out there you can track your car with a GPS I'd probably have a decal on the front and back say this car has a GPS

if it's hidden where you can't find it you can track it and your car come out of Sex Fifth Avenue and your BMW is gone you call the Sheriff's Department and say my car is crossing the county line in Broward it's on US 1 headed toward the port and they would be able to track the car and find it.

But, John, thanks very much. You're a great caller, and please call again next week. Thank you so much. Okay, thank you, guys. Have a good day. Have a great weekend. We're going to go to Henry, who's been holding, and he's calling from Jupiter.

Welcome to the show, Henry. Good morning. I wonder if you want to address this company out there. We pay the max. We pay themax.com. What do you think they do with the cars? because they don't seem to have a retail outlet. And then, of course, there's always the sales tax issue

when you allow them to purchase for cash and then you go to a dealer to then buy something either new or used, you're going to lose that benefit of the value of what your car was worth as far as sales tax goes. Well, Henry, you saw me. Do you know about it, Stu? I believe that they just operate in the wholesale market,

so they'll put bids on. cars it's auto buy and we don't work with them we have in the past but basically you go and get bids they go get bids from dealers and they'll steer you to a dealership there's not much beyond that I could tell you I would say put it in your arsenal Henry of trying to get the most for your used car the one thing you don't want to do when you have a car is traded into a dealer without getting competitive bids so put the we pay the is that like W-E-P-A-Y the Max, M-A-X.com. Yeah, I'd put that on, make a note of that, and give them a try.

If you get three or four bids on your trade-in, you do a whole lot better than if you just take it in and let the dealer put the number on the car. Basically, they shopped the car for you. Yeah. Around other dealers. Yeah. That's interesting. A student knew about it. I didn't know about it.

There's a lot of online buying of used cars now. Used to be cars were all sold physically at an auto auction. Oops, we lost, Henry. But right now, most of the car dealers are using online sources to evaluate cars. And this We Paythemax.com is just another online way to evaluate a car. Rick, you had a point earlier when John was on the line. Yeah, I just wanted to mention one of the things you'll see these tow trucks with no tags on, no signs or anything on them.

Quite often, those might be repos as well, where they're legally repossessing a car. However, in a case of repossession, they are required to notify the local police department before they go to the location to get that vehicle. So the police are aware that's repossession. So if the cops showed up at that location, that was not going to be a legal repossession. So the totocks that are repo and don't have a big sign that say repo man. No, they generally keep it nice and low key. Oh, okay. But they have great big, strong guys with beards.

and usually these firearms and billy clubs and yeah, they're pretty protective. The life of a repo, man, is always intense. Not fun. Very much so. Hey, I was just looking online at this auto buy thing. According to this, what they've got is a deal where if you want to sell your car, you contact them,

and within 20 minutes it says they will give you an appraisal and issue you a check that day. Well, that's impossible. So that's a scam. That sounds, yeah, something sounds real fishy there. You can't possibly appraise a car without physically seeing it, driving it, and checking it out. So that's a come on. I'm glad you mentioned that because I hope Henry's still listening.

If this We Paythemax.com is telling you they will listen to you, describe your car on the phone, and give you a price within 20 minutes. I think what they probably say in the fine print is that we will give you an estimate. And then we have to see the car, and then they'll take it to the car dealer, and the car dealer will say yes or no. So it's just another way to make money, and I would be dubious. But I wouldn't rule them out as a source. Well, like you said, I mean, they're going to do some legwork for you,

and you're going to have one more source for your trade value. The company's called Auto Buy. Yeah. Earl, I've got to share a personal text that I received from Mary Louise for everyone here in the studio. uh it's a rather unfortunate story but mary louise was looking for a vehicle so she goes into the dealership and she falls in love we all know that with the dealer with uh you know purchasing a vehicle you just no they didn't see you and by the way you're looking quite dashing today uh so uh at any rate uh she goes in and she falls in love with the car she's emotionally involved

She doesn't take it for a test drive, number one. Number two, she did not keep her trade-in separate. So she gets home and she does not like the car. She has a few issues with being able to see the rear view, the side mirrors and so on and so forth. So at any rate, I told her we'd share her story. It's certainly not the first time Mary Louise, so you're not the lone range. but it does, well, have an impact on you because we all know that purchasing a vehicle is, well,

the second most expensive general purchase that you're going to make. Purchasing a house is another. So we'll let Earl talk about it and give his intake. Yeah, you just have to drive the car. I always recommend people before they take a car home, ask the permission. to drive the car for an hour or two. Drive it under the same conditions that you drive your car. If you do a lot of expressway driving, get on I-95 or the turnpike.

Drive there. If you do a lot of city driving, drive around the city. Park the car. Do all the things that you normally do. Go to public. Go to the public. What do you do with the car? Drive that same car on the same driving conditions.

And if you feel comfortable, you feel comfortable backing up, rear view, mirror, side view, mirrors. You're going to live with that car for four or five, six years. So to make a snap emotional decision without even getting behind the wheel And you'd be surprised a percentage of people that will buy a new car without ever having driven it Usually the reason is, well, I've been buying a Ford whatever, you know Yeah, F-150, you know, for 15 years And so this is just another Ford, but it turns out they make it different ones Even the same model year, cars have differences.

You would think that the same year, make and model, but you take three different cars, they don't drive the same. No. So be sure you love the car that you mean to buy and don't take the salesman's work for. One other thing that I'm not in favor of is the purchasing a vehicle in the evening, going to purchase a car in the evening after dark, big mistake. So Mary Louise, we wanted to share your story, and I hope that, well, you do things just a little bit differently on your next

purchase. Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-90-90-60 or you can text us with your questions at 772-4976530. And we have a lot of texts. And remember, ladies, I have $50 to give away one more new caller, $50. Now, back to the recovering car dealer.

He has a number of taxes that he needs to get to. Okay, first, Good morning. My question is, does Toyota certified, backed by Toyota, is it backed by Toyota or a third-party company? Also, where do the drawbacks to this program? Toyota Certified is a dealer and manufacturer program. The manufacturer, Toyota, and most of the auto manufacturers, set the rules for what you should qualify and filter a car for before you can call it certified. They have an inspection check sheet, a mileage limitation, a year limitation. But the main thing the manufacturer does is supply a warranty on that certified car.

So the monetary motivation for the manufacturers for certified programs other than the fact to encourage selling used cars of their make so they can sell a new car of their make, is to make a profit when they sell you the certified warranty. The dealer also makes a profit when he sells your. that warranty it can be baked into the price of the certified car or he'll sell it to you extra so it's not a third party to answer your question it is a manufacturer Toyota Honda General Motors whomever the warranties or the certified vehicles are only as good as the dealer that sold it to you the dealer if he doesn't adhere to the rules of the program just like we talk about Costco

dealers if a dealership is reliable and he did the check sheet and he went over the car with a fine-tooth comb like the manufacturer told him to do, it's a good idea. The warranties are pretty good too. And so a certified car typically would be a better car than a non-certified. It's only, as I say, how check out the dealer's reputation before you sign in. I got one other word of warning for the certified program. So the extra miles in time that you get on the warranty with the certified begins when the car, first went into service.

Oh, good point. So they will advertise 100,000 mile warranty, but if the car already has 80,000 miles on it or whatever the miles are on, you only have the balance of it. So the lower the miles, the better the value. Yeah. That is one of the most common complaints I get as a car dealer, inadvertent, but the buyers are certified cars misunderstand or don't see that, or our salesperson doesn't do a good job explaining it.

But as Stu said, you buy a certified car, it's got a 50,000 or 100,000 mile warranty. That is not from the get-go when you drive the car. If your car's got 60,000 miles on it and it's 100,000 mile warranty, you've got 40,000 miles left on the car for the

warranty. And be sure you understand that when you buy a certified car. I've got another text here. How long do car manufacture support repairs on discontinued models at dealerships? repairs I'm not sure what you mean by that

the warranty on the car is the warranty on the car so once the warranty expires the manufacturer will not support the repair maybe you're talking about the parts and this is a question we get often 10 years they require the dealers to keep the parts

and 10 years from the date of the last manufacturer of that car so if they stop manufacturing the car in December of 2018, then you would have 2028 that the dealers would have to maintain those parts in the inventory. And then from 2028 on, you'd probably still have a lot of parts that were still left over. And so really, it's not a concern. But there is no support on repairs of cars by manufacturers. I hope I answered your question. I have another one here. Another text. I'm coming up to the end of my first lease and I'm nervous about what the

next step is. Any advice appreciated. You're very well to be nervous about coming to the end of the lease. There's going to be a pack of wool circling you. The dealer is going to be after you. The manufacturer is going to be after you because they're watching the clock. And if you've got a 36-month lease and 30 months have ticked off, the red light alert is on. go after this particular lessee because if we let that lessee wait too much longer, we're allowed to lose them as a customer. And so you'll be getting offers in the mail sometimes, very sweet offers. Maybe we'll pay your next payment or your last payment or your last two payments.

Or we'll give you a special price on the car or a special discount on the car. You'll have the car salespeople calling you. Manufacturer will be offering incentives. So you need to be aware of that. Now that can be a good thing. The other thing you need to be realized when your car is coming to the end of the lease, if you don't lease another car or buy another car of that make, you have a penalty. When you sign that lease, there's something called a lease disposition fee. And that's kind of like a blackmail. Because if you don't buy another Honda or Ford or lease another Honda or Ford, the you leased before, they'll be like a $300 or $350 penalty. They'll waive that penalty to keep you in the fold. So those are the things you need to think about. You also need to think about as you approach the end. What sort of shape is my car in? Do I have scratches or dings or dents that are going to be penalized and charged by the leasing company if I turn my car in?

You might want to have the looked at by your own collision repair company, and you might want to get a quote on what you should do. And you might find it's better off to repair that car so you know you're getting a fair price than leaving it up to the leasing company. You want to check your mileage. Check your mileage. You're getting six months toward the end of the lease. What was your mileage limitation when you lease the car? You might have a 25 cent per mile penalty if you exceed that. So watch your mileage.

If you're getting close to that, you might want to, you have two cars in the family, may want to leave that on the driveway and start driving your other car so you don't amass too many miles and too much of a penalty. So I didn't mean to go on and on, but leasing is so complicated when you get near to the end of the lease, you need to protect yourself. 877960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. sure do have a lot of texts I'm on them. Do I have any more that I miss, too?

I think you had a follow-up from the gentleman who asked about the certified, and he says, also, how long do car manufacturers support repairs on discontinued models? Yeah, I just did that. Oh, I'm sorry, I was zoning out. Not a problem. You were in the Bahamas. No, no, no, I was on the live Facebook page talking to people. Okay.

So remember, ladies and gentlemen, the mystery shopping reports coming up from Rigo Sawgrass and West Palm Beach, going to be a doozy. And, you know, I have some information from Consumer Report. If we have time for it, it's a brief. On use cards? I see you have a flyer over there, a mailer, I should say. And, you know, that's pretty important. What would you like to address?

Well, let's see. I think Stu's indicating I have another text. So I want to go to the text I got here, which is, Wow, this text is for Rick, so Rick, I'll just let you read it. Okay. Let's see. About three weeks ago, you reported your FICO score dropped several points. I just experienced the same.

My FICO score was 800 and dropped over 40 points. I have now outstanding credit and recently paid off my car alone. We were able to research while your score dropped. Thank you, Phil. No, I never really figured out why. It suddenly went down. It only went down about 15 to 20 points. I honestly, that's one of those areas that I would have to leave that to Earl and Stu.

I can understand every wrench size I need to disable a car to completely disassemble it. I understand hybrid systems. I understand engines. When it comes to credit and things like that, I'm outside my element. You know, before anybody makes a comment on that topic, I have to say that, Last night, whenever there was a release from the... What were we watching? Channel 5. It was amazing that they're coming down, putting the squeeze on these car dealers

and how they are taking advantage of the consumer. And it was an interesting topic. And along with that topic, they were talking about your score, your credit score, not lowering, being lowered by them checking on your credit. Would you like to talk about that? Well, the only thing I think interesting about that was the fact that car dealers will falsify credit applications. This is especially true with buy-here, pay-here dealers, people that are having to go and

find someone that will finance them. And car dealers for years, this is not breaking news. It's been going on for at least 50 years because that's how long. I've been in the business. And you can almost find the dealership employees that do this. They will go to a dealership, they'll go to work. Suddenly the finance and insurance income will soar. And that's because they will take a dealer or a customer who is desperate to get finance

and they'll have them sign a blank credit application. They'll fill the credit application in themselves and make it look good. And they will sell the car based on false credit. and the car will eventually be repossessed because the customer had bad credit. The thing to remember there is don't sign a blank credit application. If you have a credit application, they ask you to fill it out. Be sure you do fill it out completely. Don't leave any blank places and sign it and get a copy of it.

Never ever allow a car dealer to take care of that information for you. Always be sure you get a copy of the credit application that you have signed. ladies and gentlemen, but, you know, how exciting it was last night to see that the Federal Trade Commission is getting involved. And they're cracking down on these car dealers, and they're just investigating all the ways that the car dealers are taking advantage of you. An unsuspecting consumer that comes in, they just don't realize that if they don't do their homework, knowledge is power, ladies and gentlemen. So keep that in mind. So my hat's off to Channel 5 for releasing that story last night and what a story it was. Back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, Tracy Nelson

is the person that texts a question about the lease and she's coming close to her end of her release in a three-year 36,000 mile in 2016 Corolla. Best option to buy or lease another. Now, if you mean by option to buy the buy your lease car what you should do is have the car appraised to see what the current wholesale market value is compare that to the residual value if a wholesale market value by some fluke and I say flu because it's unusual that this happens is higher than your purchase option on the residual value then you can make a quick profit by flipping the car you could take the car to the deal

that you lease it from say I want to excise my option to buy buy it for less than the market wholesale value and then sell it back to the dealer and make a thousand or two thousand dollars this does happen and you should always check it when you are returning a lease car but the chances of this happening are about one out of ten usually the residuals are fairly accurate and sometimes are a little higher the residual value protects you in a way you're not responsible when the residual is much lower than the market value. And the rest of it, Tracy, is just to be careful

and be sure that the offers you get from the dealer, the bonuses, the waiving of disposition fees. There's going to be a lot of activity to try to get your business when you turn that car in. I've got another... John in the control room just reminded me, Jonathan, to mention something. We just inaugurated something

at our card dealership and it was to get anonymous feedback from our employees. And the website is Anonymous Feedback Your W-Y-O-U-R Anonymous Feedback.com. Youranonymousfeedback.com

www. www. Youranonymousfeetback.com. So let me throw that out to the air, on the air, if there's somebody out there that has something they want to say to us, and remain completely anonymous, you can do this. This particular company is used by Tesla, Adobe, the National Broadcasting System, two or three other blue chip companies.

Absolute total anonymity guaranteed on this website. A lot of people don't like to call in. and give suggestions or criticisms or whatever. A lot of people just want their anonymity and there's nothing wrong with it. That's the reason the police have anonymous hotlines. You want to report a crime. You just don't want the hassle of having your name bandied about.

So anybody out there on radio land or Facebook land or stream land or whatever you want to call it, there's listening to Earl Stewart on Carves and you have a comment that you'd prefer to remain anonymous. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Okay, we're going to go to David, who's calling from North Palm Beach. Good morning, David. Good morning. How are you?

And I'm very good. How are you today? Thank you for tuning in. What can we do for you? I purchased a car brand new in 2014, and I was just going to go sell a car, and it says that the Carfax is, the car has been in an accident. It gave me the date when it was an accident, and I'm positive. The car has never been in an accident.

So what do I do to get this off the Carfax report? David, how do you know the car hasn't been in an accident? It's my car. I purchased it brand new. No one else drives it. It's a Corvette. It has 8,000 miles on it. I bought it in 2013.

You don't have a teenager in the family? I'm only kidding. No. No, no, no. No, seriously. No one has ever driven the car besides myself. of my wife. It definitely has not been an accident. Here's what I would do. It gives me the date.

It gives me the date on the Carfax when it was in an accident. I would contact Carfax and I would report the issue with your VIN number and tell them that you are very upset about this and that you

will take legal action because they depreciated the value of your car with false information. And the other thing I would do is I would take it. If that didn't work, I'd take it. to a reliable collision shop and have them inspect the car verify that there was no damage

and then you could go back to Carfax say now I have written documentation from a certified collision repair center that my car has never been an accident and I think you would get that removed very quickly Hey David you can go to support carfax.com and I also got an email address for you right here if you have a pen.

I got a pencil in front of me can you give it to me please? Yeah it's consumer research at carfax.com and it's any questions or disputes about anything on the carfax report but like earl said make sure you get a inspection of that first so you can back that up okay very good it's all the information i need it thank you very much you enjoy your program very much great call david that's something that we haven't encountered before the first time we've had that question and uh carfax just like auto check they all make mistakes we see mistakes on the recall campaigns and they can also make mistakes as you've just proven on the collision. So everybody makes mistakes. One of the biggest

problems with Carfax is the fact that they can only get their data when the car is repaired by insurance. And there are a lot of cars out there where for whatever reason, maybe the person doesn't want to report the accident because it'll raise his premium or it's under his deductible. He'll bring it in and pay cash for the repair. Carfax never knows about it. So when you buy a car and you get a clean Carfax report that does not mean the car has not been in an accident. It means that chances are it hasn't been, but you should

always take your car to a reliable collision repair, have it checked by an appraiser, put it up on the rack, and a good appraiser at a collision repair center can tell you for sure whether the car's been in an accident. One very simple thing you could do that's really easy and fast is use a paint meter, and they have a

device that measures the thickness of the paint all over the car. So if your car has never been repainted, the chances are 99% it's never been in an accident. Do you have any more Texas? I don't know. Do I have any more taxes, too? Nope, I caught up. Okay, back to leasing.

I was asked this question about the information you gave out earlier that you're actually fined because you're not, when you turn that lease in and you don't lease. the same make, I think that's what you said earlier, there is a lease deposition fee that you have to pay. Is it always $350 or does it vary? It depends on the manufacturer. With Toyota, it's $350. I've heard $300, I suppose, it's over $350. These are all the things that you need to check when you lease a car, and people don't do it. Well, Janet leased her car, she never knew She never had that information, and she's in shock. The reason I don't recommend leasing as often is because it's so complicated. When I'm speaking to a group of people, I always get the question, should our lease her buy?

So I usually say rule of thumb, buy, because it's simpler. It's easier to understand, less chances for the car dealer to take advantage of you. The other statistic is the average profit a car dealer makes on a lease is about $1,000 more than a purchase. It's easy to inflate the profit to the dealer because monthly payments don't sound so bad. You know, when I say $40,200, that sounds like a lot of money. When I say $420 a month, that doesn't sound like as much money. Monthly payments are an easy way to lull someone into complicity. So unless you really want to do your homework and study hard and really read the fine print

and look at everything you sign, buy the car. And go to battle with every dollar of that lease payment. Basically, every $3 in your payment is about $100 to the dealer. So, you know, a $20 increase in payment doesn't sound like a whole lot in a monthly payment, but that's a ton of money of profit to the dealer. Exactly. Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, be part of the show, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-9-60.

Ladies, I have $50 for one more female caller, so give us a call. 877-960-99-60, and I encourage you to, you know, take some time, listen to the mystery shopping report. It's going to be a doozy. It's from Arrigo, and you can vote on what you think about the mystery shopping report. So back to the... I see that mailer in front of you. deadly. I got this in the mail.

These things are crazy. I got this in the mail yesterday. And I was interesting that I was on the mailing list for Treasure Coach Toyota. And as a joke, I put this on my personal Facebook page. It said I had one cash, $25,000 or something. The lowest value was $100. of what I would have won and I haven't peeled it off yet

I think I'll let Stu peel it off for me see if I won the 25,000 but the reason I bring this to your attention is when I posted this on my Facebook page to be funny I said wow I won a whole lot of money and I had a picture of the mailer I give this to you to want to peel it off

and see can I keep the 25 grand if I can't I'm feeling lucky exactly I put it on the Facebook page and the first rally at a number of Facebook

people congratulated me they said congratulations oh I wish I was that lucky should I go into the card dealer I've gotten one of these so

what it tells me then I had to immediately go back on and edit my posting and say I was only kidding I didn't really win $25,000

I won something is that telling Is that telling of these mailers to come out? You won? I won. I got to go to the dealership to find it. You've got to go to the dealership. And you wonder how do people offer the $25,000 for the free car?

The dealers buy insurance. And the direct mail company, they provide the prize. So if you read the fine print. Stude is through his headphones down. He's leaving. Stu probably can't. I'll be back. I'm going to Stewart.

He probably can't read the fine print because there's two. But somewhere it'll be one chance out of 50,000 or one chance out of a million. I forget the odds. It's about like being hit between lighting at 1130 this morning on your way home. And so they buy insurance. Insurance is cheap. So you can offer a new car. You can offer $100,000.

And insurance policy might cost a dealer $500. And the insurance company is making a lot of money too. I think I found that. what I probably won. Okay. The winning, and the winner is. A $2 bill. A $2 bill.

Look at it. Yeah. That's a collectible. Cash. Okay. So that's, uh... Wall supplies last. I just, the message and the moral to this whole story that I'm making fun of here

is that totally ignore all direct mail solicitations. Direct mail solicitations of any kind from any car dealer are, Two reasons they do it. Number one, it flies below the radar of the regulators. And Florida doesn't make any difference because we don't have any regulators. But Pam Bondi is not going to get one of these direct mail pieces. They control who these go to. They also control who they mail them to in terms of demographics.

They try to find people, they target people by zip code. Today, you can target people by education. Do you have a high school education? Do you have no high school education? Do you have a college education? They can target you by income. They can target you by occupation. The bottom line is they can target direct mail

just to the people that they want the people that will be unaware that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Rick? Do you suppose they targeted you just kind of thumbing their nose at you? Well, I think so. Well, look at the emails that I get from Napleton.

I think so, yeah. Yeah, I get emails from. from Nabilton, you get mailers. So maybe you're right, Rick. They're afraid to call and talk to us on the show. They won't come and face it here. So they send you mailers just to say, oh, do something. Well, you know, I actually get calls from people.

I had a call on the same dealership a couple of weeks ago, and it was an elderly man, real nice guy. And he says, I think I want $25,000. And I said, well, tell me about it. And I said, have you read the fine print? He says, I can't read the fine print. He said, so you mean I didn't win $25,000? Now, my conscience cut in because the odds might be that he won $25,000, won in a million. And then I started feeling guilty.

If I tell this poor guy, don't go into this car dealership, and there was still one chance in a million, he might have won it. And I'm the one that cost, I thought it's comical. Human psychology is an amazing thing. When you get something in the mail, people do it, we all do it, that says you might have won something, you'll go in to find out. So human nature, human psychology, it works. These direct mail companies, and we get them all the time in our dealership, I get them in email, they call on the phone, they will say, Charlie Dawson Dodge and Kansas City ran this promotion. He paid $10,000 and he sold 150 cars and made $250,000.

It's probably true. The direct mail works. It works. We see it every day. And people can't help it. They go in on these bogus offers. And when they get in there, they succumb to a really good salesman, a really decepty salesman, and they buy a car.

and they do work. The stats are about this. You send out 10,000 pieces of mail. You'll get about 1 or 2% back. 1% of 10,000 is 100. 1.5% 150. 150 people will come in. You will sell 1 out of 4.

So you'll sell about 40 or 50 or something like that. Cars. And you'll make about $2,000 a car. Not a bad day. And you only spend $10,000 on the, direct mail. It's a numbers game. It's a shame. And John from Palm City sent me a mailer

sent me a mailer a month ago on the same premise at Treasure Coast. And you can do everything from lowering your payments, your monthly car payments. You can go to the movie and a dinner.

You can win yourself $25,000. It just goes on and on and on. So it isn't old news. We're going to mention it every single week so that we can bring you up to speed. When you get onto that mailbox and you look at that mailer, drop it in a trash.

We're going to get to our mystery shopping report that's really important. So I'll give it back to Earl. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, you can vote on the mystery shopping report, so don't forget, 772 4976530. That's Mystery Shop, Arrigo, Sawgrass, and West Palm Beach.

This week's double mystery shop. don't normally do that, involves a very familiar car dealer, our old friends, the Rigo's. Jim and John. That's Johnny. He knew their father, knew their father, Joe. Earl Stewart on Cars has mystery shopped the Rigo dealerships around 10 times in the last few years.

Rigo's bill themselves is the largest volume car dealership in Florida. I think what they really mean is Chrysler, Plymouth's Jeep Dodge. I said, Plymouth, there's no Plymouth anymore. just like my pound 22 instead of... And don't forget Fiat. For those of you new to our program, allow me to offer you a little background. About two years ago,

after investigating dozens of South Florida car dealers for selling used vehicles with a deceptive in Italy to cut airbag inflators, I decided to sue, that's right. I sued Arrigal Enterprises under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Statute. It's important to remain ever-vigilant, and we decided to return our attention this week to where we go and see if they have any open Takata recalls vehicles listed in their inventory to see if they're willing to sell these potentially deadly vehicles.

Now, we found up until now, they have been diligent. We feel like we really stopped them, but we found out is that a lot of car dealers are still selling these, and we go through the computer listing. of cars for sale. We go to the NHTSA site, NHTSA. We find out that they have recalls and we shop them and the car dealers are still trying to sell these cars. So for two years, these cars are still being sold without being disclosed and many cases they can't be fixed because the parts aren't available. About a year ago we performed a similar exercise and we were pleasantly surprised to find that Rigo did not have any Takata vehicles for sale. at that time. And they've got three locations. Okay, Arrigo and Sawgrass. That's down in the Fort Lauderdale area. Very large dealership. A quick check of the Arrigo Sawgrass inventory revealed at 2008 on the Civic with an open Takata recall for the front passenger airbag inflator. Allow me to take a minute to remind our listening audience about the danger of these recalled Takata airbags. The propellant used in the

inflators can degrade over time, especially in hot human climates like Florida, causing it to explode much more forcefully than it was designed to. This can cause its metal housing to turn into razor-sharp fragments that can maim and kill the occupants of the vehicle. It's just like a hand grenade going off in the cockpit of your car. Can kill you, can kill the passenger, I suppose it could probably kill people in the back seat. We had our trusty agent X, contact Rigo to verify the vehicle's availability and to make an appointment to come see the car. Every time I do one of these reports, I have more and more respect and admiration for Agent X. He's the best.

He's an amazing man. And he's listening right now. And Agent X can't mention your real name. Hey, Jerry, how are you doing? Oops. I made that up. But we really appreciate what you do. You do a great job.

And you're a brave man. After confirming the vehicle was on the lot and available for sale, Agent X was sent in action. However, in the unexpected turn of events, they quickly called him back, Rigo and Zodgrass, called back Agent X while he was en route to the dealership. They informed him that the vehicle had an open airbag recall that had yet to be fixed. Agent X was told that he could still come back, come and look at the car and leave a deposit be like. However, they would not allow him to take the car physically until the remedy was made. Wow,

that really makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over. According to the N-H-T-S-A's website, www. www.safefercar.gov, you got to write that down, by the way. If you're driving a car and you haven't checked, you're thinking to buy in a car, writes this down. Safer.gov. www.saf-F-F-E-R-C-R-C-R. dot GOV. The remedy is available. However, in our experience, just because a remedy is technically available, it does not mean that it can be fixed right away. There is often a parts back order that could last for months or more. This further exposes the owners of these vehicles to these potentially deadly product effects. This being the case, the salesperson could not give Agent X a time frame for when the fix would be made. He even mentioned that the used car manager

may choose to wholesale the Honda Civic if the waiting time became too long. We must give credit where credit is due and commend the rego on disclosing the recall before the customer arrived to the dealership. Furthermore, kudos to them for refusing to sell this dangerous vehicle. Now, we've never had another car dealer do this, and we've shopped dozens and dozens, actually literally hundreds because we've telephoned shopped car dealers, Never had someone acknowledged before we got there when they knew we were interested in the car. So Arrigo has really tightened up on what they're doing.

And he's a big dealer. So the Waviw's cars. And after we sued him, I'm not taking away from him, but right after we sued him, he stopped doing this. Speaking of the first person as if I'm H&X, part two of this week's mystery shop being, brings us closer to home. a Regal Chrysler Diedjohn, Chrysler Dodge Jeep.

See, our first shopping report was aborted because of the fact we got the phone call. This is part two. This is a regal in West Palm Beach. We scanned their pre-owned inventory and were unable to find any open Tocata recall vehicles. However, we did find a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee that according to safercar.gov had two open safety recalls, a defective sunweiser that could potentially burst into flames. No, I've never heard of that one. I haven't either.

That'd be pretty terrible. I guess it would have to be like a wiring thing with a light. Yeah, right. They're lighted mirrors in a minute. And you're talking about a sun visor that if you've pulled it down, it's literally eight to ten inches from your face. And it also had a defective brake booster water shield that could limit braking ability and potentially cause a crash.

So these are safety-related recalls. Again, Agent X contacted the dealership to confirm its availability and was told it was on the lot and available for sale. So now we're not so high on Arrigo, but we're going to find out. And yet again, there was another unexpected turn of events. I arrived at Arrigo, West Palm Beach, told the reception that I was here to see 2011 Grand Cherokee that I'd seen online. I was introduced to a nice salesman named Merv. It quickly retrieved the vehicle and had all the doors open when I went outside to take a look. I asked if there were any mechanical issues, I should be aware of.

Merv confidently replied that all of their pre-owned vehicles are thoroughly inspected, even those with 100,000 miles like this Jeep. He then suggested we take it for a test drive. While driving, I asked if it had ever been in an accident. Merv said that he would pull up a Carfax report and check for recalls when we return to the store. He then began asking some high-pressure closing questions like, would I be financing or paying cash?

I said I would need to see the numbers first. Upon returning to the dealership, he showed me at Carfax that revealed no accidents. However, more surprisingly, he presented a recall check from the safercar.gov website that showed there were no open recalls. Remember, earlier that day, that same vehicle showed two open recalls. We can't explain this unusual discrepancy, and the next morning we confirmed that there are no, indeed, no open recalls listed on the NHTSA's website.

So we're just telling you like it is, it must have been just incredible timing that they had not taken the recall off, and then they did take the recall off. Furthermore, Chrysler's own website for checking recalls confirms that the brick booster recall was fixed in January of 2016, and the Sunsizer recall was fixed in September of 2017. So it's a fluke. It's also a heads-up warning that you don't have total accuracy with Carfax. Anything can happen. That's the reason we triple-check all of our recalls.

We check with the manufacturer. We check with Carfax. and what else will we check with Auto Check? And this is a, yeah, safercar.gov. So triple check, safercar.gov, Carfax, and with the manufacturer of the car. The rest of the shop, when it's expected, they wrote up a proposal at the Internet price of $11,991. Of course, they added their dealer fee, $799.95, and electronic registration filing fee, which is just another dealer fee by a different name for $59.95 and another dealer fee by the name of

private tag agency fee for $99.95. You add those together and you got almost $1,000, $9.55 in dealer fees. And then you got the tax and tag, which is legitimate for $14,270 out-the-door price, basically $1,000 more than the advertised price. epilogue we got to give credit to a regal for having a used vehicle inventory that appears free of dangerous recalls one of the very few inventories in florida that are free of dangerous recalls mostly other car dealers are sloppy premeditated or otherwise and we always find a takata airbag recall that we can buy and people will try to sell it to us the situation still exists as badly as ever. Now, a little footnote, we lost a lawsuit against Arrigo in the lower court, and we filed an appeal. It's in the appeals court now with the Forest District Court of Appeals. It was thrown out on technicality. The technicality saying that as a car dealer, I didn't have the bases, the grounds, pursuing Arrigo. Arrigo admitted in his depositions that he was knowing premeditatively selling cars with un-fixed take-out airbag recalls.

So that's on the record. Our suit basis was the fact that we were at a competitive disadvantage. We had to sue him under the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act because there's no law in Florida against selling cars with dangerous recalls. So we had to sue him under Florida deceptive and unfair trade practices. And the grounds we chose were the fact that he was putting us at a competitive unfair advantage because every time someone comes in with a car with a defective airbag, we trade the car in. But we can't sell it unless we can fix it.

So we have to store the car. So we've incurred hundreds of thousands of dollars and losses as we keep these cars and they depreciate and we have to pay storage lots for the storage. So that was our damages. and the lower court said, well, you don't have any grounds to sue under Florida deceptive and unfair trade taxes. Our appellate lawyer says not true,

and we have good grounds to state that we do. We believe we will prevail in the appeal. When we prevail in the appeal, then we will go after all the car dealers in Florida, and every time we get one that's doing what Origo did, we will file a lawsuit. We think what will happen when we prevail in the appeal, that Wardle will get out in a hurry, just like I got out to Arrigo, and Arrigo cleaned up his act,

all the car dealers will clean up their eggs. So that's what we're trying to do and what we're trying to accomplish. Any comments? 877-9-60-99-60, 877-960, and I'm also going to renew my appeal to the folks out there that are running for a political office. And I'm going to concentrate on the governor because Rick Scott is not going to run for governor anymore,

but there are a lot of people that are in the race for governor. And among those people, we have Jeff Green. Jeff Green is running for governor. Happens to be a billionaire. Philip Levine, he's running for governor. Andrew Gillum. Okay.

We got Gwen Graham. We got Adam Putnam. We got Chris King. We got Ron DeSanti. We got Andrew Gillum. So all you folks out there, Andy, Ron, Chris, Adam, Gwen, Philip, Jeff. $1,000 to your campaign, if you'll call the show, and tell me what your position is on selling cars in Florida with unfixed, dangerous recalls.

I'd like to hear from Bill Nelson. Well, Bill Nelson's 1%. We'd love to hear from Bill, too. I don't care what he's running for. I'd like to hear from him because he was, on board earlier quite some time ago. You shared that story with me about Takata Airbags.

The governor of the state of Florida can issue an executive order with a stroke of a pen, stopping the sale of cars with dangerous recalls. So Jeff Green, you want to be governor, don't you? I see you all over TV. Philip Levine, you're all over TV.

Gwen Graham, you're all over TV and supporters of Gwen, supporters of Adam Putnam, supporters of Chris King, supporters of Ron DeSanti supporters of Andrew Gillum. Why won't you folks call the show and tell me what your position is?

I don't want you to tell me you support my position, but I don't want you to tell me, do you have a decision? Or maybe you just don't care. If you call the show and tell me you just don't care, I'll give $1,000 to your campaign. Fair deal. And I know you're not listening

now, but a lot of people are listening who are supporting you. Your supporters, aren't you curious why Andrew Gillum, Ron DeSanti, Chris King, Adam Putnam, Gwen Graham, Philip Levine, and Jeff Green won't call the show? If you're going to vote for them, if you're going to contribute to their campaign, why wouldn't they be interested in a law making it illegal to sell cars with dangerous recalls? Or at least require that you tell the buyer that this car has a dangerous recall, and it hasn't been fixed. Why do you candidates for governor of the state of Florida not even care enough to want to call

the show? 877-960-960. That's terrible. A thousand bucks to your campaign. Your silence is deafening. Your silence is deafening. Any other comments? We've got about two minutes to go.

A student, we get any responses on the mystery shopping report? Did anybody rate it? Nobody voted, but we didn't vote in here either. Got a vote. Got a vote. How do we do on the regal? They passed. They passed?

Give them a letter grade. I give them a B plus. Nancy. I give them an A. A minus only because I would like to see the dealer fees go away, but otherwise, pass. 100% pass. Yes. I'll give them an A.

I'm emotionally involved in this because I'm so proud. I'm proud of what we did. to get their attention. Oh, by the way, I'll have to rush through this. I went back two years, and I saw an old audio or a video on WPTV. Sam Smink, the consumer reporter, when this whole airbag thing hit, and she went out and called all the dealers and said, do you sell cars with defective airbags?

And they said, no. And they all said no, Sam. So then she went on WPTV and said Earl's claim is not right, and that we talked to all the dealers, and they all said they aren't. all the cars with effective airbags and we have mystery shopping them for two years and we haven't found very many that have not been doing that we called right after that we called them all up and we found them in their website real quick uh rego dodge is already on our recommended dealer list um but not sawgrass so i think we're going to put sawgrass on there too very good yeah negotiate ladies and gentlemen

there's really no reason for you to have to pay that nine hundred and sixty dollars with a registration filing fee, dealer fee, and the electronic fee. Negotiate, negotiate. Ladies and gentlemen, and we've come to the end of our show. We wish you a wonderful weekend, and thank you for tuning in to Earl Stewart on cars. We'll talk next week.