Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.10.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Wallace Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM

Episode Date: August 10, 2019

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent Thunder visits Wallace Chrysler Dodge Jeep RAM to see if they will disclose a car that has a Takata airbag recall notice. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Hey, folks, here we are. Another day, another Saturday, 15 years of doing this, we're Earl Stewart on cars. You've already heard my introductions. I'm both confused because I introduced myself, and we didn't used to do it. that way so we switch back and forth and we've had some anonymous feedbacks on that subject we keep it's have you heard the Japanese expression kaisen continuous improvement we try to do that and we tweak every week hey that rhymes and I'm gonna try not to repeat my introduction which was my own recording but I think give

you a little idea especially for the new folks that have just tuned in this show is unlike any other show we are a tell it all candid no holes barred we name names we do mystery shops we talk about the facts it's kind of hard to get that on radio or TV or online you've heard all the chatter about fake news and and exaggeration and and downright deception and lies and especially on the internet, the internet is just full of stuff that you just don't know whether it's right or wrong.

There's some really good information and data on there. The internet's most amazing invention, I think, and probably in our lifetimes, but it can really mislead you. This show, we will not mislead you. We'll make mistakes, but if we do, we'll try to correct them and we admit them.

I hope that's refreshing. We're totally transparent on the show, and it's all about cars. It's simply, we're not trying to cure the ills of the universe here. We're just trying to get car dealers on the straight and narrow. Car dealers have been doing it wrong for 100 years. And, I mean, I'm not exaggerating. They really have.

And it's a haggle, hassle, horse trading, BS, deceptive, trickia, bait and switch kind of a business. It truly is. I have a lot of friends. I'm a car dealer. I've been a car dealer in 168. I have friends just don't even like to mention my profession. I mean, they like me.

I mean, they wouldn't be my friend if they weren't. But they don't like to talk about the profession. I was talking to a fellow the other day a man I've known for two or three years and he was telling me how he bought a car recently. He's from Connecticut. And he said, you know, I bought it online. I didn't go into the car dealership

because then he stopped. I says, he didn't go in the car dealership because you're afraid you're going to at your pocket picked, and car dealers have a terrible reputation. And then he looked relieved that I could laugh at myself because I'm a car dealer. And anyway, that's what the show is all about. Your calls truly, truly, are the most important part of the show. I think probably the first time I said this, I didn't really mean it.

I just wanted to flatter the audience, but I kept talking about how much we learned from the audience. But after that, I started thinking about it, and truly we learn as much for the audience, I think, because sometimes the audience learns from us. New things. Love it when you folks call in with tips and ideas and suggestions. Anonymous feedback. We get a lot of really good stuff on anonymous feedback. Nancy's got an anonymous feedback that she'll read later

that was particularly interesting and valuable because it applies. I think everybody had it in their mind why something, a suggestion of something we could do on this show. I'm not going to go around and introduce everybody like I did in the introduction. already. We got Rick Carney, we got Stu Stewart and Nancy Stewart, my co-host, but I am going to ask Nancy to address the females in the audience, are lady listeners, 50% out there, and she is a very special

person in the fact that she's a very strong female advocate. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm going to share with you that over the years women have become a more powerful and influential segment of the carbine community. Research will show you that women influence 70, 80. I'm not sure exactly how the percentages have risen recently, but it definitely has. And, well, they are one to be reckoned with. They're very important, and confidence and knowledge. Well, it's pretty powerful, and they have all of that.

Also, I did a little research on women, and there are more women who are coming into the dealership alone. Yes, they are researching everything. The Internet is at their fingertips, and they are empowering themselves. With all of that said, ladies, please give me a call this morning at 877-960-99-60. You can win yourself $50. First two, new lady callers, $50. Just for giving us a call. You have a question?

Great. If you just want to say hello, beautiful. Also, you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovering cardular. And don't forget about Facebook. We're watching postings on Facebook. We're streaming live on Facebook. We're also on YouTube.

We're on Periscope, Twitter, and all the other vehicles out there to reach you. And that's the reason we're, I guess we're international. I don't think we've had an international call. But I guess Canada. Yeah, that counts. That counts. But we are all over the globe, literally. And it's kind of fun to watch us in the studio, I think.

I mean, we have certain graphics we can show you. And our backdrop on our new green screen, I believe we have nighttime traffic situation behind me. I know. we went back to the sign with the phone numbers. Oh, I can't see it. We can see the traffic lights through your shirt. Okay, okay. We're still tweaking it.

Yeah. Every week. New studio, and thank you all who have been through the transition stage of this new studio. We really had some exciting times. The phone stopped working and things like that. But as I say, we know what a challenge it is for you to go out and buy or lease a car, and for that matter, maintain or repair your car. And we'd love to hear your experiences.

You can call us. You can post. The text, I think, is very popular. And Nancy gave that number out. I'll give it out again twice. Text us is 772-4976530. 772-497-6530. There's been a lot of excitement recently with the Takata Airbag.

And I'd love to hear your thoughts. on that Morgan Freeman has begun has done a commercial that I saw last night on WPD WPTV Channel 5 locally in Palm Beach County and was called to our attention by Rick Kearney he saw it on the history channel I believe yep and the thing about I love about Morgan Freeman is I don't care what he tells me I'm gonna believe it I love Morgan Freeman he is just you watch him his sincerity just comes out of every pore and when Morgan says something you believe him and so thank you for whoever. Actually, what was the group? I didn't write that down. There's a group

of a safety group that. Yeah, it's saferairbag.com. Saferairbag.com? And I try to look up to see was that from the NHTSA, was that some of the consumer group, the only thing I could see that it was saferairbag.com. Yeah. And I, you know, somehow or other, we'd love to get Morgan Freeman's involvement in this show. I guess maybe the best way is to talk about it. Maybe there's somebody in the audience out there that knows Morgan Freeman or indirectly. I believe, I know he gets paid for commercials. I mean, he probably gets paid a whole lot of money, but I believe, I hope it's just not the visual, I believe he really cares about people.

And if he really cares about people, maybe he would actually call the show someday. He could text us. We could even talk to him about doing some sort of a supportive commercial for Roland Cars. after all, we're the only car dealer that I know that is truly proactively going after this issue with not just to cut airbags, but dangerous recalls. And there's a lot of things happening. We have a, there's a bill in Congress right now that has been introduced that may possibly make it illegal to sell per car, use car dealers to sell a dangerous recalled car, illegal

to sell it by used car dealers or new car dealers who sell used cars. I mean, it's everybody sells used cars if you're in the car business. Senators Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Ed Marquis of Massachusetts has sponsored a bill. And the chances of this bill passing are pretty slim. I'll just be honest with you. Of any bill passing. Of any bill passing, yeah. And you know how it is with the lobbyists, the heavy lobbies. And one of the heavy lobbies happens to be the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. And here's a, I'm going to hold this up for you folks that are streaming us, here's a memo that I got because I'm a car dealer,

and it's from the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. It was sent by Ted Smith, who was the president of the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. A fine man, by the way. But his job is to do what the car dealers want him to do. He's hired by the car dealers. And I'm going to read you this memo. I got it's not that long. headline, Congress wants to ground

use vehicles with an open recall. Congress wants to ground use vehicles with an open recall. Text of the message is this. On June 26th, Senators Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, and Ed Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, introduced the Use Car Safety Recall Repair Act, S.1971, S.1971,

which would end the street, criminally, that's Ted Smith, the FAA's words, ground consumer trade-ins under recall. Even for minor matters, such as a peeling sticker, that's cute to obfuscate the importance of this. We're ahead of our time. Yeah. This legislation would cripple the used car market and push unrepaired vehicles into the unregulated private market. You've got a lap of this stuff. So, NADA, that's the National Automobile Dealers Association, opposes S-1971, and instead supports the goal of 100% recall completion rate as well as initiatives to improve consumers'

response to vehicle recall notices. Well, for the uninformed, the recall system doesn't work. Up to a third of all cars on the road are never fixed. Bare minimum would be 25%. like playing Russian roulette when you buy a used car. You got better odds with Russian roulette. One chance out of six that you blow your brains out. One chance out of four, you're going to get a car with a non-fix recall when you buy a used car. They ought to send Morgan Freeman door to door. Exactly. That would work.

So I just thought I'd share that news with you. Hopefully we have some inputs, some texts, some calls. Yeah, absolutely. 7-7-960-99-60, that's 877-9-60-960. Certainly can't. It's a new day. I mean, whenever you have Morgan Freeman on your side, what a brand. What an amazing man.

I'm sure everyone knows about Morgan Freeman. And for him to bring this awareness, to launch it to the public, to make it an awareness campaign is amazing. We're talking about saving lives. Morgan Freeman, what a day, it's a new day. Morgan, if you're out there, I mean, somebody knows Morgan Freeman that's listening, you know, indirectly. You know, maybe somebody went to school with his mother or something. I mean, you know, indirect. That would be a very, very old person, I think.

For him to have taken this on as a spokesperson just says so much, so much about the topic, about so many lives that have been lost. And like I said, I have chills. I love Morgan Freeman. He is a brand to be reckoned with. Everyone knows him. And if he stands behind this, if he's joining us to save lives,

you know this is a long overdue, important topic. Ladies and gentlemen, give us a call, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497. 6530. We're going to go to Tina, who has been patiently awaiting to speak to us. Good morning, Tina. Good morning. How are y'all doing this morning? Fantastic. Well, I think today would be a great day to bring up an old topic that I brought up quite a few months ago. It was actually at the time that Prince Harry and Megan Markle had gotten married, and it was vehicle design. And just recently, the new 2020 Corvette has been unveiled, and beauty really is in the eye of the beholder,

but the Corvette was always known for its sleek, sexy, rounded lines. It was a voluptuous girlfriend of all cars. And now it looks like origami on wheels, and it's just not pretty anymore. That's my opinion. I just think the Corvette really lost its classic look, and it's gone the wayside of it. of a futuristic vehicle, which is fine. I guess it was looking for her, but I just think it's really lost itself. Well, we'd like to hear some opinions on that.

I have to say I like the looks of it. It's not something that I would ever buy. It's just a, you know, they're extremely high priced and high maintenance, I would guess. They're overpriced because the dealers are doing like they often do with high, demand, low supply vehicles, very popular ones that you don't have enough of. and they mark them up. Do you know what the MSRP is, Tina, on the new Corvette? Have they announced that yet?

It's around $60,000, and they've also done away with the manual transmission. So if you're looking for the manual transmission Corvette, you're going to have to buy used. Yeah, but I don't know. Corvette people are funny people. They're like, it's like a cult, and they buy these Corvettes. And the interesting thing is, if you buy one of these, new addition cars and hold it long enough, you can oftentimes sell it for more than you paid for it. And I think that's why the dealers take advantage of it.

They know that people are very hungry to buy these cars, and they'll take that 60,000 new Corvette, and they'll mark it up another 60,000, and somebody will pay the price. There's always the guy in the neighborhood that's got to have the first Corvette or the first whatever, the new vehicle when they come out, and they get the money, so they charge it. But it's kind of interesting, the psychological phenomenon of why somebody would pay, you know, $40,000 or $50,000 over a sticker price. And Tina, as Earl said, it is a cult. It happens.

It happens with the Jeep. Happens with the Corvette. But I kind of feel like as if it is, well, lost its luster a bit. That's my personal opinion. I just remember the old days. And what a beautiful car. Yeah. And I don't think it's so pretty anymore.

That's just my two cents. Yeah, aesthetically it isn't. Yeah, I have a client of mine. I'm going to be cutting his hair this morning, actually. And he has, I think his Corvette is a 2004, I think. And I said I think twice a day. It's the morning. Anyway, every time he buys tires for the car, he cries to me about it.

He said, oh, I had to buy tires yesterday, and it cost me $1,500. for tires and it was the best price I could find was 250 a tire plus install he says oh that's just killing me said well you know that you want to pay you got to pay the piper if you want to dance it's just how it is with some of these vehicles the tire costs are very high so and parts cost he says you know if I would have bought this in such car I would have only paid 80 bucks to have my horn replaced but I had to pay seven well I tell you um Dina I I can't answer because I just don't understand the cycle. Strangely, as a car dealer, I'm in a car dealer for over 50 years,

and I don't get excited about cars. I get to have to spend that much money to buy a tire, I would go the other way. But somebody once said about the guy that was going to buy a yacht, and he went up to the dock, and he saw this big 100-foot luxury, you know, luxury, you know, whatever, you know, sports fish or luxury motor yacht. and he asked the seller how much does it cost to maintain this huge yacht?

And the seller said, if you have to ask me how much it costs to maintain, you can't afford to buy the yacht. So it probably goes to the guy that's going to pay $100,000 for a new Corvette. If he's worried about how much the tires cost, he can't afford to buy the Corvette. So it's only rich people that don't care, and they got all the money in the world, they go out and spend this kind of money, foolish money, on these low-demand high-supply, or vice versa, high-demand, low-supply cars. No, maybe it's time we all started carrying.

Okay, Tina, if you are still in the line, we thank you for giving us a call, and have a wonderful weekend. Thanks, Tina. Frank, if you're still holding, good morning. Hey, Frank. Morning, Frank. You out there? Sorry, I apologize, Frank. You were on hold for a while. If you can, would you give us a call back? 877-960-99-60? And we will go to John, who gives us a call from Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone.

My topic today is a very serious topic, electric cars. It's not only the car to future, but it's here and now. They're growing at a rate at 7.6 percent in 2018. We had 14 of electric vehicles on the market. By 2020, there'll be eight more coming. Now, the seriousness about it, we all know the benefit. Monday school starts, all the Palm Beach County School buses, electric vehicles. The seriousness about it is this. Is that right? Yeah, I told you that last week.

All ordered with electric. Wow. But here's the seriousness of it. The states are against it. Don't ask me, you know, why? why they're doing it, but it's the gasoline tax, the road tax. So they're sock and it to them. When you have electric vehicle,

it's as much as some of them, I think it's $50 more for registering it. It's $200, and it'd be raising more. Now, Georgia stopped all tax credits in 2015, so the sales in Georgia on electric vehicles fell dramatically. The tax credits actually started in 2010 on them. It's full credit. you know, it started with Tesla, and it worked this way, manufacturers selling up to 200,000 units will get the full tax credit from the government, and then after that it's on a reduced basis.

General Motors expires in October of this year. It goes from 3750 to 1875. But here's the whole thing. The punishment of electric vehicles by the state motor vehicles, Bureau is absolutely ridiculous. It is. It's unbelievable. It'll hurt the sales of them, and they'll just keep raising it and raising it because they're losing their road tax on the gasoline for it. John, do you think that's a whole reason, or do you think maybe it's a little bit more

subversive, maybe a little bit more conspiratorial? Think about it. The oil lobby, I mean, oil is at very little prices now. a lot of the manufacturers or the drillers or whatever you call them producing oil and the distillation and the gasoline these guys are the stocks are dropping like rocks there's the talk of the electric car and they're very powerful they're like the insurance company they're like the automotive lobby of the national rifle association I wonder how much lobbying is going on in state legislatures to tax electric cars I mean if you make the car a little bit more expensive You don't sell as many electric cars, and so therefore you sell the gasoline power cars.

I mean, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but it's a possibility. Just slow it out there. I would agree with you 100%. But the tax, the gasoline road tax, it's not only the state, but the city, like when I go to Palm Beach County, the tax is higher on gasoline prices because of the local Palm Beach County tax. Exactly. So it's state and city, and it's no question. about it that the oil corporations are behind this, and just look at what happened within the last week at the price of oil.

Go to the gas stations in Palm Beach County. I'm in Mountain County here where as low as $2.17 per gallon with the excess of gasoline on the market, so it's controlled primarily, as you say, by the oil companies, and they push the states, and the states get behind it. and Saka took people that own an electric car, which is very, very unfair. Yeah, I hate to get political, but I think there is a lot of that going on. I think the same thing with a dangerous recall issue. Lobbyists, I mean, our system is very interesting,

and lobbyists cannot be underestimated huge amount of money behind the oil industry, insurance industry, the auto industry, and that's the way the ball bounces. That's the way politicians get elected. You have to have the money. And if you don't have the money, you can't get elected. And if you don't play ball with the special interest groups and the lobbyists, then you're never going to get into office.

So even the well-intentioned, good politicians, the number one rule of a politician is get elected. You might have all the good intent in the world, but unless you get elected, you're never going to do anything. So they rationalize, well, I'll do what I have to do, get elected, and then I'll get honest. And before they know it, they're up for re-election. Now they've got to get dishonest again to get re-elected and it's a vicious cycle.

So I know I sound like a conspiracy nut, but... No, not at all. How about the ones that get elected and do nothing? Yeah. Well, sometimes it's the only way to get re-elected. Something's going on in the state that's surrounding us in Georgia. I mean, they did away with the tax credit in 2015 on an electric car. That's unbelievable.

It just shows you the power You know, state has Well, electric is coming Whether I like it or not It's going to be so They're going to have the cost down The batteries and the whole vehicle The cost will be down

And they will not be able You just have to buy electric car In 20 years you're just going to have to buy one So get used to it And it's going to come Probably slower than we'd like But it's almost here Then I heard a rumor

I don't know how true it is I didn't check with insurance. And insurance companies now, if you got a car in the garage and it's an electric vehicle, they may sock you a surcharge because they're worried that when it's on charge, you could cause a fire, and your entire garage and house could go on fire.

But I don't know what the truth is in that. I hadn't heard that. And we know that the batteries today are so improved that that scares out the window. Yeah. Well, I wish I was younger, because I'd love to watch what happens you know, 50 years from now

when there's not a single internal combustion engine on the road. And there's no doubt in my mind, that will be the case. Electric is here to stay. You can fly it, you can slow it down, but it's going to continue to grow. It's here forever. Thank you for take a microphone. Thank you, John.

You're a great caller. We appreciate it. Have a great weekend, John. Hopefully we'll talk to you next week. Give us a call, tool-free, at 877-960, or you can text us 772-4976530 anyone here on the panel know whether or not any of the school buses

have seat belts I think they do let me ask my kids they would know Jake, Maggie Josie call the show please Jake will start laughing and say I haven't ridden the school bus in two years

but I'll ask them okay we got some text over there yeah we do one actually came in last Saturday after we had finished at the show But I had already answered, but I think it's a good thing to mention on the air. The question says, are there any honest Ford dealers in Central Florida? Because we were kind of picking on four dealers last week. Any honest four dealers in Central Florida?

I said, yes, Mullinac's Ford and Apopka. And they're the only ones that we've ever mystery shopped that truly had no dealer fees or any hidden fees by any name. And there was Mullinax running that store. And I spoke to this Mullinax personally because his store in North Lake Boulevard in North Palm Beach was not following the rules and they did have a dealer fee

and he said he didn't know about it or he thought it was he kind of waffled to be honest with you he has a general manager who was also a legal partner in an LLC actually owns a piece of the dealership they call them all next Ford

in North Palm Beach but it's really as another owner but the one on a popka thumbs up and you can buy a car there yeah it was a pretty big Ford dealership too so it's a great place to visit. Frank is back. Thanks so much, Frank, for giving us a call back. Sorry, you had to hold for so long. Good

morning. Hi, Frank. We still got you? We're jinxed with Frank. I think we have a short circuit between Frank and Earl Stewart on cars. Frank, keep trying, please. Okay, Frank, third time's a charm. Yeah. 877-960. Okay, next one. This is probably. a RIC question. The Prius and Prius Prime must have blind spot monitoring as standard. And that is why we got a quote on a 2019 Prius LE and also one on the 2019 Prius Prime limited. But the dealer stock, but the dealer took the printed quote back from us and I never got to record the itemized numbers for the same. Actually, I'm not sure if that is a RIC question. The Prius and Prius Prime must have blind spot monitoring as standard.

Hmm I'm not Let's get back to this one Let me study this one Because I'm not quite sure What the question is But we have several other texts Rick

This one's definitely for you Rick Will the pre-collision system On the CHR Stop the car if you do not Press on the brake And that's from Joe in Boynton Yes it will

That's what pre-collision is meant to do I can testify to that Although I wasn't driving the CHR but I have that, you know, same collision system. There are very many, many lucky people on the road today. And the front wall in my garage still exist because the reliability. Now there's a speed limitation on that, right, Rick? It doesn't do it if you're going 75 miles an hour.

It's not going to bring you to a stop, is it? It will do its absolute best. It will definitely get you slowed down. Obviously, if you're that close to the situation, It may not be successful getting you completely stopped, but it will do its best. It's a great system, I'm telling you. It is, you know, one of the things that this isn't a life-saving situation, but sometimes when you take your foot off the accelerator,

the idol's not set exactly right, and you creeps forward. And if you're busying yourself with other stupid things like texting or focusing on the radio, or whatever you're doing, if you're not looking at the car in front of you, you can just kind of coast into it. And boy, that baby will stop you before you get to it. Yes, it will. And before anybody picks on Earl for his driving, this is a daily occurrence for me. As a matter of fact, that's how I park.

I pull up to a parking spot. There's bushes there. If you have a faint heart, don't do it because it flashes red and beeps loudly. It screams break at you. But it's really handy and very convenient. Very, very much so. This is from Jennifer. This is for Rick.

And she wants to know if all the employees are in the auto. body shop or ASE certified? Is there an ASE certification for collision repair? There are ASE certifications for collision repair. However, I can't honestly tell you how many of our employees in the body shop would have ASE certifications because I'm in service department with that. It's actually two separate departments. They focus more on the Toyota manufacturer certification.

and it's a requirement for a certified Toyota collision repair shop that all the employees be certified and trained and so and so forth. So I think because of the specialty, when you're repairing a Mercedes or you're repairing a Chevrolet, you want to, this is a good tip for the listeners. If you erect your car, open never happens. Try to have the make manufacturer, if they have a collision repair shop, do the repairs.

because they're pretty strict about being that their collision repair technicians are certified and trained. And if you're going to have a Mercedes and you wreck it, go to a Mercedes dealer with a certified shop. Alan, give us a call. Alan, I'm sure you're listening. Help us out here. I do know this, that we get notifications on service technicians when their ASC is about to run out so we can remember them. So we see these. I've never gotten a notification on body shop technicians. Okay. All right, we were talking about Morgan Freeman a little while ago, and we have a texter that says, Earl, you should call him and ask him to lunch. And I'm completely down with that, and I'd like to go.

I'd love if anyone who has Morgan's number, I'll call them right here on the show. Absolutely. And Morgan, if you're listening, we'll even take a Morgan Freeman impersonator if you want to call the show right now. Excuse me, everyone. We have David on the line. He's given us a call from Loxahatchie. Good morning, David. Hello David I'm beginning to wonder if we have a technical problem I think we do have a technical problem Can someone look into that into the control room

Do they realize that we've lost David and also Frank So fellows if you're listening give us a call back Please 877 960 9960 Or you can text us at 772 4977 6530. Jonathan, you in communication

by text or otherwise, do you know what's going on in the control room? I'll text it. Yeah, if they're not responding, maybe Rudy keeled over. I hope not. We used to be able to see Rudy. David's back on the line. Hi.

Good morning, David. Good morning, guys. Hey. David, did you have to call back a second time? No, that's what I was going to say. First of all, is no. The audio did come up while I was on hold, and I didn't have to call back.

So it's working like I recall it working in the past, for me at least. Anyway, so Earl, I got a couple things. Okay. In the day, you know, when we were youngsters, diesel fuel was just

pennies compared to the cost of diesel fuel was pennies compared to, you know, gasoline. And once the major manufacturers, all started putting out diesels and things like that. The school bus

conversation is what got me started on this. We saw what happened to diesel prices. And most of that is revenue. It's not cost. And it's not, you know, from the manufacturers, you know, the petroleum producers.

Most of that came around because they needed their revenue. And that's such a point I wanted to bring up. Listen, Rick, Now, when these automatic braking systems on these cars, and I understand that they work in going forward, my example would be that guy at the stoplight who stopped in the middle of the intersection

and decides to back up in front of you, and, of course, it's happened to everybody where they forget to take it out of reverse. Well, those automatic braking systems help us behind that guy avoid a rear-end collision from the guy in front of us. That's it, guys. Thanks. Thanks, David. Unfortunately, no, they won't.

And yeah, that actually happened to me one time. A lady pulled too far into the intersection. She backed up. She left it in reverse. The light changed again. She floored it right backwards into my pickup. And that's the reason why I have a dash cam in my vehicle now. But no, unfortunately, they don't operate for reverse because the manufacturers kind of didn't want to insult everybody by saying, really, you need to have us do that.

So self-driving vehicles are the answer. David, you gave me a great idea. First of all, let me compliment you on being in a very astute, intelligent caller. That is something that none of us ever thought about. It's something that's needed. And then you stimulated a little synergy here. What do you think about this? How about the manufacturers installing a system

that when the car comes backing toward you, your horn blows? I mean, I can see why they wouldn't want you to suddenly back up because you'd have the car behind you, have the same problem that you got. So they're not going to give you a backup to get out of the way of a car backing into you, but why not just blast that horn when suddenly a car approaches you with a collision speed.

Well, the other advantage is that now that backup cameras are very common on all new cars, at least when you put your car in reverse, you've got a nice big TV screen showing you a picture, and hopefully people will see that. Good point. So it's older cars, and a lot of cars now also have sensors, the radar sensors. So when you're backing up, the car will beep and alert you that you're going to hit. something and stop and they will and stop some will yeah so the higher higher cars will

will actually stop you from hitting an object but in my belief self-driving cars we need autonomous cars humans amen have never been fully capable of operating motor vehicles to the ultimate degree that they should and since we gave up horses that worked great as autonomous vehicles We need autonomous cars. We need autonomous politicians. Well, yeah, but let's not jump off the subject. I think David had a great idea, and we all know we need autonomous cars. But I think we need to get the word out to the manufacturers.

I think this is something that needs to be addressed. And Rick was right about the backup camera. I forgot about that. So you could actually have the car back up a little bit when a car was coming toward the front. And if it did nothing less than less than the amount of impact. In other words, if you've got a car back in up at 20 miles an hour and you can back up at 5, it cuts the impact down to 15 miles an hour, lessens the damage and possible injury.

But I think, David, you're on to something really cool here, and we'll pass it along to Toyota. And anybody else out there in the audience, I think we should get a conversation about this. I used to wonder about that. I used to wonder if I was suddenly aware, somebody's about to smash into me from behind. Should I slam on the brakes and try and hold my position or let go and let the motion absorb some of the impact?

I don't know what would be a worse effect on my body either way. I think you should let the motion absorb the impact. Just take your foot off the brake and just rip that wheel. If it's going to be a high speed impact, I would get off that break and that way at least the momentum is reduced that way. It's counterintuity, but it is, though. Ladies and gentlemen, you are a very important part of the show. We certainly enjoy talking with you, and we certainly enjoy, well, you sharing all the information that you share with us every week. And ladies, if you didn't hear me earlier, I'm going to tell you again, $50 for the first two lady callers.

And ladies, we've been talking about service. David's still on the phone, didn't he? No, I said, I think he said, thank you. David said goodbye. Nowadays, women are likely to be the main consumers of auto repair services. Did you know that? They represent about 50% of the automotive service shops. They're taking care of it all, as if they didn't have enough to do.

Ladies, again, $50 for the first two, new ladies' callers. How was your service? Share it with us. Stu, back to the text. All right, they keep coming in. This one is definitely for Rick. I sent Rick the text in the picture. It looks like a picture of a Toyota Crolla on concrete blocks with all the wheels and tires removed.

And I sent the text to Rick. Can you read that? I did. This is actually, wheel theft has been a problem for many, many years. But recently, we've actually seen a rash of it with Camrys and Avalon's. I'm actually not surprised now with corollas. Rims and tires and the wheel speed sensors are very expensive. And they're very easily pulled off of a vehicle.

You know, they just jacked the car up, put something under to hold it, and run off with those wheels and tires. The caller was asking, or the text was asking, what is the best way to get their vehicle repaired? And unfortunately, a tow truck is really the only way get it towed to the dealership, get your insurance company involved, because it's definitely going to be beyond the cost of most deductibles for the cost of those wheels and tires being replaced. And quite often the car will actually sit down low enough that the backing plates for

the brakes become damaged as well. Therefore, it's going to need to get to a shop to be properly inspected and repaired and get your car back to the condition it should be. And one way to avoid having anything stolen from your car is with a good dash cam. Absolutely. And in fact, I saw a car the other day, Nancy and I were going somewhere, and they had a sign,

a sticker on the side of the car. This car protected by video surveillance, something like this. So in this high-tech world, it's believable. The crooks believe it, and they're going to go to the car, steal the wheels off the corolla

that doesn't have the dash cam. My car, I've got one of these owl, OWL, like, old dash cams? Do that again? It's amazing. Absolutely amazing. Somebody walks by the front of my car. You know, somebody bumps into my car.

When I have my car service, I can look at the technician and see what he's doing. I can actually hear him. And you can see what's going on outside and inside your car. But it's like a $300 or $400 investment. And they really work. Well, we actually have a question on Facebook about that. It says, can you talk about dash cams and where to find a good one? We both, Earl and I and Nancy endorse the Alcam because we have them in our cars and it works great, but there's a lot of them out there.

We went on Amazon and look for good reviews and see if there's something that works in your budget. And our old favorite consumer reports. Yeah, definitely a consumer report. You can't go wrong. And these security systems, boy, they're a plus today. They definitely are a great asset to your security and your family. You can also do carpool karaoke in your car, because you can film yourself. second if you want now to throw this thought out the owl cam i love one main feature on it and that is the fact

that all the footage from it is automatically uploaded directly to the cloud just in case the person that breaks into your car steals the camera because like now mine i've i've had the same camera in mine for quite a few years it's a cobra but if they steal that camera i don't have that footage anymore Oh, you have like an SD card? I do. And I'm thinking about switching to the owl cam now simply because of its internet capabilities. It has a cellular connection and it constantly uploads everything it records into the cloud and you can access it by your phone.

Absolutely. Okay, we got some more text over there. We do. And actually this, I don't know if Rudy wants to play any kind of sound effects because this is a historical text. It is the first text from a car dealer that we've ever received. Oh, wow. But it's going to shock you. Oh, is that Rudy?

Rudy? That sounded really amateur. Okay. We'll take that. This is going to surprise you, though. Okay. Good morning. Thanks for all you do. I had a customer asking me to provide a one-year warranty on a 2008 sedan with 130,000 miles.

I offered 30 days of warranty on Power Train, but she said the Honda dealership gives one year unused cars, and that shocked and surprised me. I didn't want to doubt her, but wanted to check with you if this is possible from your experience. By the way, I will be one year in the business on the 15th, but I flipped cars for about 10 years. Please advise if this is a question that could be answered here. I solely base my business on trust and integrity, so I don't want any of my customers to feel I have something I am hiding. Thank you, Stort family. We love you. You inspire me so much.

God bless you. Well, first of all, that's a car salesman, not a car dealer, but he works for a car dealer, right? I think you can interpret it either way. Yeah, I think it's a car salesman. Well, he says I base my business on trust, so I thought that was a more from a rocker. Yeah. Well, you can text us back. Let us know what your position is in the dealership.

Power train warranties are not worth the paper they're printed on. And car dealers are actually advertising free warranties lifetime on power train warnings. A power train warranty only covers the lubricated portions of the vehicle. And the warranty only is in effect if you do. the rigorous maintenance, at the very least recommended by the manufacturer. It's the very worst recommended by the seller of the power train warranty. And a power train warranty can require you to change the oil every 500 miles if they want to. It's in the fine print. You don't see it. You don't know about it. So a power train warranties never have any claims.

And I'm sorry, Stu? I'm just saying I texted him. He owns the dealership. He owns the dealership. Well, thank you very much for being the first car dealer, if you'd like to tell us your name and your dealership, we'd be happy to give you some free publicity. The fact that you would listen to the show and compliment us on our integrity and recommendations would give your dealership a lot of credibility, and we'd love to hear your dealership and give you some free PR. But the answer on warranties is power train warranties are worthless.

The Honda dealer gave 30 days was giving nothing. You give one week, that's nothing. It sounds good. It sounds good. If you want to give a good warranty, you can. You can give a 30-day unconditional money-back guarantee, whatever you want to do, but it's going to cost you some money. If you have a manufacturer's warranty type of thing, they call bumper-to-bumper. Pretty close, but it doesn't include literally everything, you can give that too, but it might have some claims.

The only reason car dealers offer power train warnings is because they cost them nothing, and they cost you nothing, and that's exactly what it's worth, nothing. There you go. All right, next text. Let's see here. Oops. How do I avoid, and there's no name on this one, how do I avoid the hiding, the hidden and extra fees when buying a car or motorcycle? Well, you don't have to play the dealer's game with, it's kind of like an Easter egg. I'm trying to find my hidden fee.

Try to find my hidden charge. You're playing their game and you're going to lose it. The car dealers today have multiple hidden fees. They used to only have one. In Florida, it's a terrible situation. Some states, they have a little bit of regulation. But in Florida, you can call a hidden fee anything you want. You can call it chop liver.

You can call it Earl Stewart. You can call your hidden fee anything you want. You also have no limit on what is charged. A car dealer can charge $10,000, a million on a hidden fee. If you can get away with it. Typically in South Florida, they average in total over $1,000. So instead of playing the car dealer's game about fine my hidden fee, you just go to the dealer and say,

I want an out-the-door price with government fees only, meaning tax and tag. And you say, you give me your lowest price including everything except tax and tag and I'm going to shop and compare your price with your competition. So if he's going to put a hidden fee in there, let him do

it because you know, all you know is the bottom line fee you got and if he doesn't have the lowest price, you'll never come back. Sometimes they'll refuse to give you the price, but you just tell him well, you'll never see me again. Nancy Stewart, my co-host here,

as an affidavit that you can download on the web. It's www. out-the-door price. Is it out-the-door price or out-the-door affidavit? It's out-the-door affidavit.com, and you can also download it at earlongcars.com. Yeah, that's easier to remember, earluncars.com. And on the right-hand side of the home page, there are a number of things that we have, including the out-the-door price affidavit.com.

If you can get there it is, Nancy's holding it up for the camera. If you can get them to sign that affidavit, they are swearing, legally, they're swearing that they have given you an Althador price plus tax and tag only. So that's my long answer to how do you find the hidden fees when you buy a car. Speaking of fees, I have a text. I don't think our audience saw that affidavit, but I'll put that up later. Speaking of fees, this is a text from Marta. She recently was charged $899 for nitrogen fee, and the argument ensued because she thought it was ridiculous.

The salesperson told her that the logic behind this nitrogen is that NASCAR uses it. Nassau uses it, and she thought it was just totally ridiculous. And she wants to know your, well, opinion. Dascar and NASA, by the way, also used it in the space shuttle. That's what she was told by the salesperson to justify the $899 that she was charged. And airlines also use it in their tires. The reason NASA and NASCAR use it is because of the extremely high speed that cars go around the track. You know, 230 miles an hour, the tires hit up, heat up tremendously.

And when you're trying to win a race, like the ND-500, you're talking microseconds or nanoseconds or whatever. You know, one second and lap time can mean a million dollars to the racer. So they want to be sure they have the exact pressure as they can in their tires. And nitrogen is able to maintain pressure at a stable level than oxygen. But unless you're driving 230 miles an hour, you don't need it. Also, airline pilots, and their airlines, when you're up 30,000 feet, huge difference in pressure. Once again, nitrogen in extreme pressure conditions can be preferable. But for your car that you drive on the roads today, and I don't think you drive more than about 120 or 130, you don't need nitrogen and tires.

Consumer reports has proven that in a year-long study and said that nitrogen and cars tires is worthless. So, Marta, I certainly hope that when you go back to the car salesperson, that you win your argument, and you can tell him that nitrogen tires, it's a waste of money. Good luck. Stay in touch. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-60. Gosh, our phone lines are very quiet this morning. They are, but we've got lots of texts. That'll make up for it. And Rick's over there with his, you too. We've got a few over here. Yeah, we can jump over to Rick.

Well, I've got Gregory is asking, do we use the owner's schedule for maintenance on the cars? And Gregory, we use at our dealership the factory recommended maintenance schedule that comes in every new car, every brand, every manufacturer makes them. and it tells what Toyota or what Honda or what Ford recommends for your specific vehicle and that's the maintenance you should follow. If the dealership says you need this, this, and this extra because, oh, we're so far south, we have such heat, we have this, we have that, I would ask them to prove it and I would say no, do the factory recommended maintenancees, and as long as you save all your records on that, if you have any problems, the factory's going to stand behind it.

Because the dealership doesn't warranty your car, the factory does. Yeah, and if you read nothing else in your owner's manual, and I fault the manufacturers, the way they create these owner manuals, they're too thick. It's like Encyclopedia Britannica. Our younger listeners would have no idea what I'm talking about, but there used to be these great big books, and they call them encyclopedias. Anyway, a thick book.

I had the Britannica. Yeah, people don't read books. And what they should do is they should have a prominent simple pamphlet that is easy to find that says factory recommended or Honda factory recommended maintenance, so you would read it. But in my car, I've got an encyclopedia of Britannica, and I just don't pick it up. And I think a lot of people don't read their owner's manuals. I would say 95% of car owners have never looked at their owner's manual. If you look at nothing else, look at the factory recommended maintenance, and that's all you should have done.

All right. Sounds good. Hey, I got a clarification on an earlier text. I misread the question about the Prius Prime and the Prius LE. They actually had sent a picture of a printout from a buyer's order with some pricing, and I'll just kind of describe it real quick. was for, the question was about a 2019 Prius LE and there was a buyer's order. It looks like it was printed out of the dealer's computer system and it had a sale price of $25,064. The question was, was this a good deal for a Prius LE? And the one thing that jumps out at me is there is a

$789 dealer fee that's added to that. I would say that the price of $25,064 is a pretty good price. But the dealer fee kind of puts it a little bit above average for that vehicle. So I wouldn't say it was a terrible deal looking at the bottom line. But I think you could probably get a little bit of a better deal if you address that dealer fee. And there might be another dealer fee he hasn't seen yet. Yeah. Well, I'm looking at this is kind of like from the guts of the system. And so I think that's about it because it even itemizes the sales tax on the dealer fee. Is it a vehicle buyer's order? It's not a buyer's order. It's a printout from, it looks like a Reynolds and Reynolds, which is a dealer computer system screen. I recognize that we used to use the program about 10 years ago.

And it looks like a fairly extensive breakdown of the price. So if you can get them to do a little bit better on that dealer fee, have them take it out. You got yourself a really good deal. Okay. I've got a really interesting one here from Stephen. Now, this is something that I have not tried. And I'm thinking I might look into this. Modern headlights all seem to fog over time, especially here in South Florida. The UV light from the sun, you see the plastic on the headlights, they turn that foggy appearance.

And he's asking if they're applying a protective film over the headlight will help to reduce this or prevent it. And truth be told, I just recently purchased a brand new RAV for my wife, and I'm thinking I'm going to look into finding some of these protective films and put them on the RAV and see how it works on this brand new

very expensive car we just bought a big investment on my part so yeah I'm thinking it's a good idea I'm gonna try it well shouldn't you check the legality of whatever thing you cover your headlights with absolutely and as long as it's a clear covering a clear film

it should be legal but I will verify that first to make sure that I don't do anything illegal but yeah I'll get back with you on that one Stephen because This sounds like something I want to get into and find out for myself. Well, sunglasses filter out UV light, so there is something that you can use to filter out. I'm wondering why the manufacturers don't manufacture, there are the lenses for their headlamps that will screen off the UV.

Exactly. All the windows have UV protection. Yeah. As a matter of fact, as a photographer, I get filters for the front of my lenses that filter UV light and they're perfectly clear. Okay. Okay. Next one I have here is Kevin is asking. He says he went into the dealership, a dealer. He got a price on a car, thought he had a pretty decent deal. And a couple days later, the dealer called him and said they had over-evaluated his trade and they wanted more money. Is this a comma after the fact? Block their number. Yeah, I said, did he buy the car and then go home, or did he just have the quoted price? He says, I recently bought a car, we made the deal, and signed it.

Days later, the dealer calls me to say they over-evaluated my trade and want extra money. Okay, here's what you do. Stephen? This is Kevin. Kevin, you call the dealer back and you say, ha, ha, ha, too bad. And then you hang up. do what I'm doing over here to start giggling on control. Listen, if there was an honest mistake, let's say there was a payoff mistake and you actually,

and they under us, that's a fair question to ask. But the appraisal is a purely subjective thing. They monkey around with that number anyway, so. Well, the fact of the matter is, we've made mistakes. We have really done some stupid things, both in our advertising and our appraisals. Car dealers do make mistakes. but Rick and Stuart Wright, you got them. You have a legal contract, and they cannot make you pay more money.

If they do, I would, I dig my heels in and really get nasty if they got aggressive about it. But if they were nice about it and said, please have mercy, we have a new salesman, and he misrepresented your trade in. The question is, like, how big was that mistake? How big was a mistake? Was it a $500 car and they gave you $50,000? It might be hard to sleep at night with that, but chances are it's not true

you have them legally and just an ethical moral question how do you feel how bad do you feel if you take advantage of the dealer because he made a mistake and but illegally you're home free and clear after being part of this show for a long time

I would feel absolutely no moral obligation whatsoever towards any car dealership out there I hope ours I think I hope you'd work well the minor difference when I worked for the dealership you know I get I get I I do get employee rate on my purchases. But, no, if it were any other dealership, having seen what they're doing,

no, I feel no moral obligation there whatsoever. And yes, I know that's a very gray area. That's fair. The trading thing is different. If they say they messed up on your trade, I don't know if that's true. How do you say seller beware in Latin? I know, caveat. Caviattemptor.

No, that's buyer. Oh, you're right. Yes, yes. Caveat Vendor. I will look up that Latin translation. I got it. Caviad Vendor. What a world we live in.

Absolutely nuts. I'm going to share my story about my checking account. And it was with Mellon Bank at one time. And I deposited $2,000 in my checking account. And I got in my bank statement. And it said that there was $20,000 in my checking account. account. Is that when you flew to Tierra del Fuego? So I want to know how many people would call the bank and tell them, excuse me? That's when you meant to move to Argentina. That's when you flew to

Tierra del Fuego. Tierra del Fuego, that was another time. So at any rate, I wonder how many customers would call Mellon Bank and telling that they had made an error that it is in $20,000 in your checking account. It's only two. So anyway, that's a personal story. Somebody asked a question about that sent in a text is what if they do something with the financing on that new card that he purchased and honestly that's a that might even be a likely thing that they might threaten to hold up the registration of the vehicle or somebody to the bank but they can't do that because legally you're in the right so they might say they're not going to register the vehicle or delay things for you hold your ground unless you listen honestly if it was like a huge

crazy that's obvious they gave you a million dollars for you're talking about somebody that bought a car salesman or the managers, someone of the dealership made a mistake on the trade in valuation to his favor, the buyer's favor, called him two days later and said, you owe us another fill in the blank $1,000 or something like that. The question is, do we, do you be a nice guy and it was an honest mistake? If they threatened me, the point I was going to make, if they threatened me is the implication could be, that's what would happen. I would dig in my heels and say, no.

If they were nice about it, then it's up to you. I have a conversation. Sounds great. Kevin just updated. He says, they wanted $1,500. He says, I'm just digging my heels in, his words even. He says, thanks. From your feedback, I'm going to continue to stand my ground.

There you go. Way to go, Kevin. $1,500. Is that what he said? $1,500. Take your heels in. They can sustain that. If it's a loss, I don't even believe it's a loss.

They probably want to have a higher profit. Their pockets are way deeper than Kevin's. I guarantee that, Kevin, stand your ground. Hang in there, buddy. Okay. Hey, from Rudy, everything is up and running now. Oh, good. Yay.

We're going to go to John. Good morning, John, and Frank is on hold. Hey, John. Do we have you out there? Can you hear us? Yeah, I can hear you. Oh, good. We've been having some phone problems.

So happy to hear your voice. What's on your mind today, John? This is concerning the headlight covers you were talking about. Oh, yeah. I have a 2018 Honda Civic, and my son I took it on as a project to keep them interested in his 15. We went ahead and ordered the chameleon film wrap, and we did the headlights and the tail lights with film wrap. And the headlight, they changed colors, you know, with the sun. You know that flip-plot-type color.

And I who lives here in West Palm Beach and the police team. not have faith. They don't even bother us. It's not a legal problem. I mean, we've never been stopped or anything like that. Oh, okay. Good input. And like I said, it's just a film. And when we go to turn the car in, because it's at least, we'll go ahead and just peel the film off. And we won't have to take care of the headlight. Fantastic. Great input. Well, thanks, John. I appreciate the call very much. Sorry, I'm glad you got through. Okay. The reason we asked before is we've been having problems with the phone, so Rudy's got it fixed in the control room. And please call again, John. That's great input.

Yes, John, please. I call almost every week. I'm the Pontiac guy, the GTO guy. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, I do plan on stopping by. My daughter goes to school right across the street from you. Oh. I have some GTO patches for you. Oh, fantastic. Fondest memories. I had a carousel orange, GTO, four on the floor, and I had three-two-barrel carburetors.

Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, good. Thanks, John. Have a great. Actually, a lot of people, we always had the discussion that actually the tri-power was better on gas than it was the four-barrel. Because the primaries are smaller on the tri-power than they were on the four-barrel. Yeah. And people don't get that through there.

They find the hard to the least sometimes. Back in those days, gas was 60 cents a gallon, and I had a heavy foot, and I didn't care about my gas mileage. Very good. All right, let's do that. Thank you, John. But the headlight cover lens, by the way,

the deal whole car, it only talked at $6 because he bought it off a wish. Thank you, John. It was a cheap remedy. All right, thanks. Bye. Bye, John. Thank you. I think we have a star in the studio. I got a glimpse of something.

That was me. I had my sunglasses on for a second. It is very bright. Is Frank? 877-960-99-60. And Frank, a special thank you for giving us a call back. Hello, good morning. Good morning.

Yeah, I found out that the last time, I called four times already. Yeah. The last time they told me I wouldn't hear the audio. Oh, boy. Our apologies. still getting the bugs out thanks for your patience yeah I know you're in a new place

and all that stuff always happens thank you Frank but the problem is I waited so long I forgot your question you know it happens to me all the time that's the reason I you know everybody gets mad at me because I interrupt him I say look if I don't interrupt you

I'm gonna forget what I got to say so you know anyway I got to ask Rick I'm the guy that bought the RAF for three months ago. Oh, yeah, I think, Frank. You know the Costco store, yeah. Right, right.

Yeah, well, that's a good subject anyway. Yeah. Well, I think that's a good reason to call because a lot of people didn't hear about that. We tell people Costco auto buying program is a great place to buy a car. So Frank knew that, and he listened to us, so he wants to buy a car from us and he comes in to buy the car and our salesperson former a salesperson did not give him the Costco price told him he was giving them the Costco price and here we are on the air pontificating and lecturing people and accusing other dealers of fraudulent deceptive things and

we did the same thing to frank and we didn't know about it i mean to john frank yeah frank and we didn't know about it until frank called back in and told us about it and anyway Life is interesting. And we put a new process in the place. Yeah. So we went on the honor system with Costco. Now we go through the whole Costco website and make sure that way Costco can follow it and make sure that it's even if we screw up, Costco will catch us. Exactly.

Well, Frank, you're a great caller and you're a great customer. Today's question is for Rick. Okay. I have the same car that he has. And my tailgate, it happened again last Wednesday. I can't open it. If I push the button on the dash, I push the remote key, I try to open it manually from the back,

I put my foot under the bumper, it just won't open. And then I, because I open it every day a couple of times. And this has happened maybe five or six times since I got the car. But the last Wednesday was the worst. It wouldn't open. And I had to put everything in the back seat. There's a setting on that, right? Could it refer it?

I'm almost wondering if there's something might be going on because there's actually a control setting on the dash controls on the combination meter where you can turn that on and off and you need to activate it on that center console but since yours has been operating for it to suddenly

stop like that that's weird that sounds like something we'd want to get a scan tool hooked up to and see what those computers are seeing. There's something going on there. I would bring that in for either Darshop or any Toyota dealership and tell them what's going on.

Just say intermittently that back hatch is not operating and ask them to put a scam tool on that and find out what's going on there. Yeah, it doesn't make sense if we go back to the factory settings. I was in there on August 1st for my 5,000-mile first check-up. And I asked the service writer, when I first pulled in, do I get a prize? He looked at me kind of like I'm crazy. He said, what do you want a prize for?

I said, well, it's 5,000-mile check-up. And I kept insisting. You're supposed to get a cupcake. I said, look at my old dollar. water. It's exactly 5,000. Oh, how many people can do? I don't think this ever happens. That's tough.

You just gave us a great idea. I love promotions, and we're going to do a promotion. You get a cupcake. How about this, Ryan? The one that comes in closest to 5,000 miles. So if you come in, the winner could be 5,001. Yeah. And then every day we'll have a prize

for the person that comes in closest to. the recommended mileage. You know, it's funny. It's such an unusual occurrence that if we do have a trade-in or we sell a vehicle and it's an even number of 30,000 miles, nobody believes that the deal gets sent back out to the managers that this is wrong. Somebody made up the mileage. But in some cases, extremely, extremely rarely,

you'll have 30,000 even, 5,000 even or something like that. It can't be too good at the price because people would be driving around the block before they came in. Yeah, do a few more. I would. What an amazing idea? It is. Yes, definitely. Remember we were at Costco, you and I, and we were talking about these special days, and we could have special, like, cupcakes, brownies.

Yeah. And this would be one of the occasions. A week before, I realized I'm getting very close. And, you know, every day I travel, I play golf out of a cemetery where my wife is. So I'm looking at all these miles, and I said, you know, when I get, I'm going to be pretty close. and I will admit I drove around the park there you go. Well that's enshrined in history on your Carfax report and service history. You're one of our greatest scholars, right?

You tell it like it is, you call the show and you hit me right between the eyes that day. Boy, I'll tell you. Well, helped us more than any call. Oh yeah, man, I'll tell you that. And see, it's good because the fact that we confessed and threw ourselves on the mercy of the court live on the air, That added to our credibility and our transparency. And it made you feel better because we confess, and it proves we're not a holier than now beating up all the other car dealers.

Sometimes we can do dumb things too. We're humans. We make mistakes, but we correct them. That's what proper humans should do. We corrected this one all right. That's it. And I told the Saturday, and I said, I'm going to call tomorrow, because it was a Friday night.

I said, I'm going to call Earl from the morning. And he fainted. Okay, don't worry. One more question. Yeah. The dash cam that you had, you mentioned it's a very good one. Yeah. And I didn't catch the name.

Who? Who? Owl. Owl, like the bird. Owl? Okay. Owl. Oh, to me well.

Yeah. Really cool. They are inside view, outside view. You park your car. If you a valet park your car, you watch the valet, you see where you park it. and then you can be having dinner in the restaurant, lunch in a restaurant, and you can go to your smartphone and look and see an inside view of your car or an outside view of your car, and they're relatively inexpensive. Yeah, it's $349 on Amazon. And it does have a fee, a yearly fee to keep it updated to the cloud.

However, I even looked at the installation video on it, and I got to say for the installation, Earl, I bet you could install one within about. about five minutes flat. A person with almost no mechanical abilities whatsoever could install it in minutes. Well, thank you. They are very simple installation, very straightforward. Get an owl, Frank. You'll love it. I want to get one for my daughter first.

Oh, man, yeah. She'll love it, absolutely. Yeah. She took her son to the doctor. It came out, and she's got a $3,000. Ah. Oh. Hey, when that happens.

Somebody ran in. She needs a new fender and headlights and all. And, you know, no notes. Nobody knows what happened. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Frank, thanks. Call us again.

You're the greatest. We love you. We love you, Frank. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Thank you, guys. Bye-bye. 877-960-90-60.

Or you can text us. That's 772-49765-30. Before we get to your text, I have a fantastic text from Molina. What a story she shared with me. She had been in and out of many dealerships to purchase a vehicle because of all the high pressure and because if she heard just one more time, what would it take for you to buy today? She said she was going to, her words, throw up. What she decided to do was go online.

You, that was the best way to go. Not only do you remain anonymous, but you get the best price. And my hat is off to you. Congratulations. Send me another text. Let me know what you bought. Okay. This next message is for people who live in East Peoria, Illinois.

The dealer who texts us earlier about the extended warranties. The name is OLA, OLA, and the dealership is G-inspired Auto Mall, and East Peoria, Illinois, and their website is www. www.g-inspiredautomall.com. That's all one word. G-I-N-S-P-I-R-E-D, A-U-O-M-A-L-L-G-inspired AutoMall. So it sounds like we've got an honest dealer up there, so check them out and give them your business.

Fantastic. So that was a fellow that talked about the powertrain warning. Correct. Okay, great. Well, thank you very much for calling and being a listener. And you folks out there in Illinois, listen to get that web address and give them a shot at your business. Or just Google G-inspired Automotive in Peoria, Illinois. That's a good, easy name to remember, G-inspired. I don't know what it means, but you remember it. Catchy. You remember. Yeah.

Catch you. All right. Next question. What happens to the residual value of a leased car if the lessee, that's the person who's driving it, is a heavy smoker? Is there a penalty that's covered in the lease contract? Who takes the hit for diminished value? The lessee, the dealer, or the less sore, and how much of a penalty or diminished value

would that be approximately? And that's from Joe in Palm City. I'm going to say that's if the car is really stinked up, it's probably going to fall under the wear and tear thing. They're going to get the car back. They're going to assess the cost to deodorize it, which is actually truly an impossibility. There's no way to really get heavy smoker out, but they can get some of it out. I don't know how much it would be. It's going to depend on the leasing company, but it could be a lot of money. I'm going to disagree with you on that. I don't think that would happen, although maybe it should happen. But as long as

have you ever heard of a charge on a smoke car, a smoker's car? I haven't, but I'm picturing something severe. You're right. I could be wrong. I'm just thinking that maybe technically it could fall under that. Yeah, what I would do is if I was a heavy smoker, I would die. No, I'm just kidding. If I was a heavy smoker and I turned my car in. Just start vaping. Yeah. If I turned my car in, I would have it done and I would have it, you know, temporarily. So it breeze the hell out of it. Yeah, yeah. And then be sure when they did the inspection and I signed off on the inspection and that there was no note of that. But I don't think you're going to get charged me.

You know, I'm going to do, just for clarification, I'll reach out to our leasing company and see what they would do. What about scrubbing the interior with baking soda and vinegar? I think it would be a big, nasty mess. The labor intensive. Look, can I completely change this up for a second?

Because, like I said, the earlier caller, if I don't do this, I forget about it. Hey, man, it's your show. Yeah, that's true. I forgot. It is my show. I made a mistake on the air, and I was talking to my younger son, Josh. He's my favorite son, Josh.

And we were in the car. Stu is weeping silently in the studio. And we were talking about, I had, I always advised, I always advised people to buy rather than lease, and I said in terms of depreciation, and I'm going to the reasons why you should buy rather than lease. And Josh said, Dad, I don't think that's right, because the manufacturing, manufacturers are giving higher residuals. I taught Josh that by the way.

Yeah, and okay. And so you do need to consider leasing all the time. And sometimes manufacturers will jack the residual way up. Residual, the higher it is, that's the amount of money that the car is supposed to come back at and they calculate your payment based on the lower high residual. And sometimes they'll have a residual that will be 10% high residual. 10% higher than what the real residual would be.

So you need to consider leasing as an alternative. All things being equal, it would say normal residual, then I prefer purchasing. But I wanted to correct myself on the air because I gave out some misinformation. It's just an incentive and regular leasing is a suspect. But if the manufacturers spend in some money, take advantage of it.

Exactly. Next question is from Mark in Vermont. Man, we got text coming in from all over the country. Are you familiar with a credit union buying plan, which is similar to a lease, except the customer is listed as the owner, and at the end of the time frame, you can re-buy the vehicle for another set amount of time and mileage, wondering about the downside to this type of plan, and I'll confess I'm not familiar with that plan.

Not familiar with it. It sounds like an ingenious idea. It sounds like something that a credit union could do because they're not a bank, And there are other advantages credit unions have, one of which is not the huge intensive regulation that banks have to go through. Their overhead and their expenses are much less than the bank, and they don't have the regulation. In this case, it sounds to me just like a lease by a different name, and you probably are getting some advantages, and that's why the credit union does it. I'd like to get some more details on that. We'll Google that and report back to the listing audience.

there you go also we got a text from Anne Marie I don't know if we heard from her last week Anne Marie says good morning I don't have any questions just an observation today I recently went on an excursion to the Yukon much to my surprise the road was better up there than we have around here you're kidding man is that right I guess oh wow wow it's quite a statement yeah by the way folks as just a public service announcement here. Despite what Nancy said, remember that mixing baking soda and vinegar causes an incredible amount of foam and massive amounts of carbon dioxide. So be very careful if you're playing around with baking soda and vinegar. Remember those old fifth grade science experiments where

they made the volcano explode. That's done with baking soda and vinegar. So on a very cautious On a serious note, my house always has baking soda and vinegar, and I use it faithfully, and it's a natural cleaner, and it does foam. Oh, yes. And nowadays, they make the volcanoes with a 2-liter bottle of Coke and a Mentos. Absolutely. Oh, we're giving away all our secrets. This is not a home remedy show, folks. Let's move along.

Welcome to Earl Stewart, D-Y-I. Okay. Earl, I'm sorry, this is from Johnny and Rivier Beach. He says, Earl, if you're stopped at a red light and the bozo in front of you has put his or her car in reverse, the reverse lights should be on. And if you see the lights on before the red light changed to green, I would just start blowing my horn to get that person's attention. Speaking of dealer's fees, it seems like everyone is charging fees, banks, hotels, motels, TV cable companies, airline industries, you name it, and there are fees everywhere. I guess we just have to get used to it. Yeah, you know, the fees are okay if they're included in the price.

Otherwise, the only reason you have a fee is to hide the price. And if an airline, you know, for example, now everybody knows that airlines are charging extra for baggage. And so it's not so bad because everybody knows it. When it first started out, you would buy a ticket and then you have this surprise. Well, you don't have to pay. You can just leave your bags here. But fees are okay as long as they're included in the price. But once you make that rule, then you take away the advantage of the hidden fee.

Speaking of the airline industry, they're actually doing a better job than car dealers in the car business. Usually when I buy a plane ticket, I go to one of these booking sites like kayak.com or orbits, and they'll list all the prices. They do include all the fees. And so when you sort them by lowest to highest, I know that I'm picking a cheaper flight. I'm not going to get surprised with the fee. That's our whole issue. Dealers don't do that.

Dealers list their sale price of the car and the fee varies so much that you don't know what the price is really going to be when you get there. And there's no reason for a fee with dealers. When you have an airline, I can see the reason. If you didn't charge anything for baggage and some guy came with 6,000 pounds of baggage,

that would throw you off a little bit if you're flying airplanes. Because fuel consumption and space in the cargo hold. There's a lot of reasons you don't want people to take advantage of the free baggage thing. There's no reason for a car dealer to charge an electronic filing fee, a notary fee, a dock fee, a nitrogen, the tires fee. All that is pure BS and it is simply to increase the price over what you thought the price was. Absolutely. There is one reason. Ladies and gentlemen, you can go to Consumer Report and you can look up, protect yourself against hidden fees.

me, Rick. I have to get to these two callers that just came up, and they've been waiting. Dennis is calling us from Lake Worth. Good morning, Dennis. Good morning. What can we do for you? I have a product that I've used for my headlights for quite a few years. It's made by McGuire's, and it's called Headlight Protectant, and it provides UV protection, and you just put it on a few times a year, and it's kind of like suntam lotion for your headlights, and it's worked great for me.

Wow. Where do you buy it? I bought it at Amazon, but a lot of stores carry the McGuire's product. They make all kinds of waxes, and they make a kit for cleaning headlights. It's got a little lambs wool bonnet, and you can put it on your drill, and it's got some polishing cream. And so McGuire is a real big maker of waxes and sealants and all kinds of products for your car. Some Walmart sells some of their products, auto bodies, or regular auto stores like AutoZone sells them, so they're pretty much all over the place.

Well, thank you. What's it cost? This bottle of stuff cost me, I think, $7. Oh, man. Very reasonable. Yeah, cool. And it's, like I say, it worked great. I had a car recently got rid of that I had for 18 years, and the headlights were still clear, and I've got another one at seven years old, and the headlights are perfectly clear.

Man. And I got a new one I bought from you guys a while back that I've already put it on there, so it's all I can say is it worked great for me. Well, the car dealer's listening to the show, have heard you, and they'll be adding that to the pre-installed dealer options for only $1,000. Yeah. And, Dennis, I'll be picking that product up myself. Yeah, we can put that on the addendums, right?

Yeah, it's like I say. Oh, yeah, I found it. I found it right here on Amazon. And it looks like there's a bigger kit where you get all the stuff, like you said, the Lampo Bonnet and a bunch of other stuff for $22, but you can get just the bottle of it for like $8. Wow. Well, we're going to, I'm going to try that. I won't.

We'll try that in our dealership. I'll attest it so I've used it for years now. It's got great reviews, Tim. And I have a comment about one other thing. I've seen the thing about the electric cars, and I've seen some articles from states like out west where, you know, the problem I think is with them, if you're not paying a gas tax and you're using the car on the roads,

you cause wear and tear on the roads. And somehow states have talked about either charging by the mile, if you're driving a car, because somehow, I guess it's not fair for somebody who has an electric car, not to have to pay anything to drive on the roads if they're not paying gas tax, because they wear the roads out just like gas-powered cars do. Well, that's a fair observation. And I said earlier when I was talking about conspiracy theories, I might have gotten carried away.

I guess my point was this, that we should do everything we can to encourage to purchase. Here's the federal government, in my opinion, doing the right thing. subsidizing electric cars because it's a good thing for energy cost it's a good thing for ecological issues with contamination and so to have a state government go counter to the general thrust it just is a bit disturbing but I understand your point the electric car is causing just as much we're on the road as a combustion engine you get more and more of them on the road you can collect less and less gas tax well who's going to pay that fixed roads you

make a good point into a toll road or you know there's a it's kind of a double-edged sword you know maybe maybe the federal government should bear the weight for the promoting the energy efficient and then subsidize the state so that they can get their revenue and so the more electric cars in the state have the federal government reimburse the state for those cars that are wearing the roads out but they're not collecting the tax rent though i don't know but uh i i think you make a valid point And also I have another, I saw the head of Chevron being interviewed on CNBC, I guess about four weeks ago, and they asked him about electric cars and how he thought it was going to affect their business. And he said, well, right now we, meaning Chevron, there's a one, we figure there's one billion gasoline-powered vehicles around the world.

So he said, I can't see anything in the near future where it's going to affect our business. because A, it's going to take too long to try to replace them. He said, B, there's a lot of poor countries in the world that will never be able to afford electric cars. There's always going to be gasoline-powered vehicles because, you know, some countries, China and some of these places sell cars that cost $1,500, and that's what people can afford. Yeah.

And so a lot of people, according to him, I'm just giving it, says, will never be able to purchase an electric vehicle. Well, by the time that all happens, he will retire. with a million dollar a year pension and he doesn't care what happens to Chevron after that. I think most of us tend to look at the short run for these things.

I mean, electric cars are never going to affect me. I'm 78 years old and they won't affect a lot of people but they're coming and it'll be 25 years from now there'll be nothing of electric cars on the road. I'm sure there'll be a lot of them for sure. Yeah, well, there'll be a few antiques.

Yeah, sure. Even today. I've got a 1937 Pontiac on my showroom floor at my car dealership. Maybe we should electrify that. Yeah, right. Well, thank you very much for a great call. Have a good day. Thank you, Dennis. Stay in touch.

Ladies and gentlemen, before I take our last call from Pennsylvania, I want to let you know that it is our last call. The lines are closed, and we want you to be part of the mystery shopping report, and you can do so by texting us. with your rating at 772-4976530 and that mystery shopping report is from Wallace, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram, and it is a doozy. We're going to go to Pennsylvania where George has been patiently waiting for us. Good morning.

Oh, good morning. How are you folks doing? Very good. Hey, I don't have a question. I have an anecdote similar to the poor fellow that bought a car. than the dealer came after him later for some more bucks. 20 years ago, I was working for it at a car lot, and a in-law brought his beat-up old Dodge fan to trade it in.

It had $160,000 on it. My boss traded it on a newer one. And a week or so later, we took this old minivan to auction. Now, if somebody bid on it on it, At this auction, they'd have an hour to back out of the deal. So anyway, Dan went to the office. Next day I come to work, and my boss is flipping out. He jumps on me.

I didn't know what was going on. And apparently, when the guy bought it at auction, he checked the records. They found out, it's going to have it 150,000 miles on. The thing had 209 on. Oh. But, and incidentally, my relative, my in-law, I bought this in Florida, so I was always on vacation, so I was sitting along the curb with the sales dime on it. He bought it and raised a home.

So over the next few weeks, my boss was just every day. I wouldn't let you live it down. He's trying to skin me. What are you going to do? I said, hey, I have no talking this way, you know? and he was getting mad he called my relative up threatened lawsuits so a couple weeks later we again the auction was on Thursday we go to the auction come back and the point was moved apparently somebody had come in off the street and just needed a car real bad

and even after the disclosure of the mileage problem, he bought the car anyway. It all worked at. You always remember those mistakes, don't you? You learn more from your mistakes than your successes. When I first started in the business, my big mistake was at night and I was appraising cars. I praised a car for a certain amount of money.

I don't remember. It was a Ford. and the next morning when the sun came up it was at nighttime and it was raining it was a police car that had a very very poor paint job you can still see the shield in the name of the police department underneath the paint and my father had a conversation with me about that too yeah well apparently when this thing was at auction and the buyer did the check out of the information found out that the whole automobile had been replaced from the wire wall forward. Oh, Lord. It's a terrible act. So my brother-in-law bought it, you know, undernosed.

Wow. That's all I got. Well, that's a classic story. That is a, I guess there's a moral and a lesson to be learned there. But thank you very much for the call. Rick, you had a point? We actually had a similar one a while back where a fellow bought a Camry hybrid on the internet almost sight unseen and he brought it into us and it had a bunch of electrical issues the odometer

showed 30,000 miles because someone had either turned it back or gotten an odometer from a junked car and junkyard and when we checked the car fax it turned out the car had well over 200,000 and by all the holes in the interior and the vinyl flooring I was able to show them that it was probably a taxi cab that had been retired. Probably a Craigslist purchase. Yeah. Oh, my. Okay, ladies and gentlemen,

I'm going to give you the text number again because we have stopped taking phone calls. 772-4976530. And you know earlier, I should have mentioned your anonymous feedback.com. We always love hearing from you, and it does remain anonymous. I think we still have time for a text or two

before we get in there. We just have a couple left. Amory followed up, by the way, about her driving experience on the roads in the Yukon Territory. She says specifically the road between Skagway, Alaska, and Carcross and Yukon Territory. It's smoother than the middle lane on I-95. Wow. That would think with all the moose they got up there, it would be a little bit more, a little rougher ride.

Moose? Are there mees, the plural of that? I always say mease, but I'm always corrected. This moose is moose. And then Mark in Vermont, who told us about the unusual. leasing arrangement with his credit union, he sent us a link to it, so we'll check that out. And it's actually vermont federal, vermontfederal.org. And so we'll look it out and we'll address it next week.

Sounds good. One last one, and this is on our Facebook live feed, and this came from Cable, who's a regular listener. He says, on the topic of auto body repairs, recently I had an experience, not a good one. I learned that most mainstream insurers will not pay to have luxury German cars fixed at the body shops that specialize in the business. those brands because they won't pay those steep fees. They'll push you towards shops that are geared to repairing Chevys, Hondas, and the like. Seems unfair, but it's a fact. It is true, and that is

a dastardly true fact that our regulators ignore. Mercedes, I happen to know, is very, very careful about their cars being repaired. They require that you use factory manufacture parts, OEM parts. And as we've talked about this show at length, that when you replace a crash part, meaning something that absorbs the energy in a crash, fenders, bumpers, hoods, these are manufactured to very tight tolerances and thicknesses, and the crush rate has to be to the thousandths of a second. Otherwise your airbag doesn't go off at the right time and you get killed in the car. And Mercedes and some of the other luxury manufacturers are stickler to that, the insurance company is saying it's going to cost us too much money to have your car

repaired safely, so take it to the Chevrolet dealer because he'll do it cheap, and he'll buy a Taiwan part or a Chinese part, it'll put it on your car, and it'll save me a lot of money. And it is an outrage and a shame that the insurance companies can get away with that. One last thing real quick is I was chastised for recommending vaping instead of smoking, and I'm going to have to hang my head and say, I absolutely agree with you. But vaping is not something we're seriously recommending it is probably really bad for you. And there's also a vaping teen crisis going on right now, and it's a bad thing. So don't vape, don't smoke.

Take care of those lungs. Thank you, Stu. Great advice. I think that this is worthy of mentioning, and it is from Earl on Cars' Anonymous Feedback. So I'll give a shout out, and here's how it goes. Hello, Earl, we appreciate your mystery shops. They have proven over and over how important it is to be educated and ready to walk away. The mystery shops only tell half the story, however, where there is, where is the remainder,

where Agent X goes to the box and storms out angrily. Where is the part where the pressure is put on Agent X to buy the finance officer's extended warranty? service plan interior master chef kitchen upgrade for tailgating where is the part where the box is exposed will you ever do a mystery shopping report where you follow through from obtaining three to four quotes to actually taking the keys and car home thank you a loyal listener that's a tough one We've done it before and we're going to have to do it again. Getting all the way through the finance department running credit and all that is a special level mystery shop that's tough to do. But we'll figure it out.

We'll do it again because it's been a long time. We've done it before and we've actually bought the car. So we'll put our heads together. We've done everything except shop and compare before we went in and bought it. But, yeah, I think that would be an actual true life simulation of exactly what people go through. takes a special type of person with a special type of knowledge and aggressive abilities to be able to go through that. Because you're subject, you have to be totally knowledgeable in the car business.

You have to be aggressive. It is really, really tough to do that. But I agree with you, and thanks for that input. We will do it again. And back to our conversation that we were having this morning as we drove in. Ladies, do you think that we're knowledgeable enough to do a mystery shopping report? And to gather all those details, why don't you, well, give me your opinion, your anonymousfeedback.com, where you remain anonymous. We have one more that, Nancy reminded me, I failed to check the anonymous feedback, but one came in since that one.

Hello and good morning. Would it be possible for Nancy to receive text from men and women? This clear favoritism of female correspondence is no less sexist than a misogyny. you guys claim to fight. Offering $50 for women for telephone calls is more sexist than prostitution. Both men and women can partake in that. We love the show. Thanks for taking the time to inform consumers every week, Beth and Chris in Vermont. Oh, thank you very much for that anonymous feedback.

Yeah, we don't want to get into this too deeply because we have to do. Oh, no, not at all. We'll take you under consideration. Yeah. We think that we believe that because we have an imbalance of callers, women versus men, that's the reason we're doing. It's kind of like affirmative action for women on the radio show. And we could get into a deep political discussion about affirmative action, but we don't want to and we don't have time to. No, not at all.

But your anonymous Feedback.com, you know, we're just trying to build a format here, a platform. And because the show has such an imbalance, this is the way. way we're doing it. So thank you again for that anonymous feedback. And we're going to go to the mystery shopping report from Wallace Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, and Ram. Our effort to alert the public and policymakers about the Takata Airbag recall crisis got some help recently, a website called Safeairbags.com, launched a public awareness campaign featuring actor Morgan Freeman as its spokesperson. In the video, and I saw this last night on WPTV, Channel 5. Freeman describes a massive scale of the recall and explains how serious it is. This awareness

campaign is by far the highest profile effort made by any entity to date. We hope people will listen. With or without Morgan Freeman's help, we will continue to raise awareness and keep the focus on this public safety crisis with the aim of giving our politicians to wake up and take action. During the last few months, we've increased the intensity of our investigations and have mystery shopped the largest sellers of used cars in Florida, probably the world. CarMax is certainly the biggest in the world, and off-lease only is the biggest in Florida or tides for a second with CarMax. Between the two of them, they sell almost all the used cars. Slight exaggeration. But they've demonstrated in our shopping reports how bad they are, really bad.

Even when they're not so bad, they need great improvement. Yesterday, we turned our attention to the Treasure Coast and paid a visit to Wallace Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge, Ram, and Stewart. Why they name themselves that? I don't know. We'll call them Wallace Chrysler. I mean, that is such a mouthful. We need to change that.

We sent Agent Thundit in to check out a 2012 Volkswagen Passat with three recalls. A Tricotta recall, a heat shield recall, and a headlight cap recall. call. All three have available remedies. Amazing how many we shop recently that did not have remedies. This car listed for $12,346. Agent Thunder was instructed to go to Stewart, pretend to buy the VW to pass the Dakota test. The Walls Chrysler would have to disclose the recall, stop the sale, and either offer to get the recall fixed or offer an alternative vehicle for a and thunder to buy. That's to pass the Triconda test. Operation Report, like I'm the guy shopping. I called Wallace to see if the 2012 VW. Passaaugh was available.

I spoke to Doug, who told me it was there, asked if I'd like to come in and take a look. I said I was headed that way on my way up from Jupiter. He said, ask for me when you come in. When I arrived, I walked over to where they kept their used cars and looked around for the facade. I found it within a few minutes, but it was locked. So I decided to head into the showroom. I was greeted by Doug as soon as I walked in.

He was ready for me, and he had the keys to the facade. Doug noticed I was sweating, very observant, suggested we stay inside so I could cool off before he went out to look at the vehicle. We sat down, Doug offering me a cup of water, a nice touch at the desk. He went through the standard Q&A that I normally experienced when I go into a cartilesship.

Asked me to wait while he pulled the facade up, the front of the showroom for me. When he came back inside, he gave me, he said the AC was pumping ice cold and was all gassed up and ready for me to take home. You know, he's working on, and I was sweating. He got me the water. And now the AC's cold. A very talented salesperson.

Very good. I enjoy the test drive. Doug was funny. Sense of humor. Very good. Made me feel comfortable. He also spoke very highly of the Wallace Company and its reputation of honesty and how they take care of their customers. In full transparency, I know Bill Wallace, known for many years.

I can't say we're friends, but we're acquaintances. We chit-chat. He's done me a favor or two when customers had problems in his dealerships. So that's disclosure. I could tell this conversation by Doug with standard pitch, but he delivered it convincingly. When we returned, Doug asked me if I had any questions. I said, I just wanted to know if I was getting a good car and if the price that I'd seen online was actually the price I pay. Doug replied with this question. If I was satisfied that it was a good car

and I got the online price, would I take it home today? Trial clothes. Classic trial close from a good salesman. Smooth and, you know, he's a good actor. And I say that in a positive sense because that's what selling is all about. You get a really good actor.

Well, Morgan Freeman, talking about. He's a fabulous actor and he delivers a message that is sincere and believable. In this case, I believe Morgan is sincere, but a good salesman has to fake sincerity. Play a role. Right. I told Doug that I came in on the price of 12,000, 346. If I could get that, I'd take it, but I wanted some info on the car first. Doug said, we take a look at the Carfax report. He said he could tell me right then and there that it was a one owner vehicle with no accidents. That's good.

He offered to get the paperwork and the Carfax reports. He left came back with another cup of water and then left again to get the documents from his manager. So he's bringing the cups of water as opposed to the bottle of water. There's an expensive reduction idea. Well, it's better for the environment too. No plastic. I just pictured that a nice cooler nearby.

Exactly. He showed me the worksheet with my price. Now worksheet, remember, a legal document and this plays anytime any of you buy a car you will not be shown probably the legal document the numbers you see the disclosure you see and whatever transparency you see is it not on a legal document so they can't be held responsible if you look at the fine print at the bottom it will probably say worksheet not a legal document let me see here okay

The sale price was okay. Sale price was $12,246 as promised, but there was a line for a $799 certification and another line where they added $699 for doctor fees, that's almost $1,600 in extras beyond the advertised online price. I asked about both. He said the certification was a mistake and that he would have that taken off. It was not a certified Volkswagen Passat. So what he was telling me was that it didn't meet the requirements from Volkswagen

that it would be certifiable, that you could check the car over. Seven-year-old car. And you would have to pay extra if it was certifiable and you get an extra warranty, but it was too old. But they thought it was, and it was a mistake. Sounds like it was a legitimate mistake, but you can't be sure. But like you said, it's not a legal document. So you'd have to be pretty vigilant and make sure it didn't appear on the real one.

The doctorate was not coming off, though, and the doctor fee is just another name for a hidden fee, which is a dealer fee. He also said, here we go, there was a $129 E-filing fee. Now that wasn't on the worksheet, wasn't? No. So that's what I meant earlier

when I was talking to Stu about the fact that just because you have a disclosure of a fee, that doesn't mean there are not more fees down the road, And when you get into the finance office, aka the box, that's when the fees come at you hot and heavy. I mean, you don't even see them, and they're in the fine print, and you're signing papers like there's no tomorrow, and you just don't see it. Some people never see them, and as far as being a hidden fee, they just don't even know they exist, and that's the danger of these fees. That's why, when they bring out a worksheet, tell them to turn around and go back and get a buyer's order. A buyer's order.

Just say, I want to see the paper that I have to sign before you let me take the car home. And I want the legal document that you're going to make me to sign. That legal document will have the full disclosure. www. It ain't going to happen.com. Not going to happen.com. Thanks, Kevin. Okay.

We moved on to the Carvax Report. We should register that domain. Let me make a note. Hey, let's buy that domain. Seriously? I guarantee that's taken. There's no way that's... Get it.

He'll buy it before we're off the air. I could say. Okay. We moved on to the Carvax report. Doug highlighted the one owner status and showed me where it indicated there were no reported accidents. He then said there was at least one recall, flip the pages to find them. So, you know, we're making progress. He showed me the three recalls and tried to explain what they were.

This is something we haven't seen in a while. Looks like we're going toward transparency in these recalls. And the past reports with off-lease-only and with Carfax didn't happen. He wasn't clear on the heat shield one or the headlight cap one. But he knew what the Takata recall was all about. He said it was serious, but he could get it fixed at Wallace Volkswagen. Now this is a part which kind of blows my mind. You know, Bill Wallace has a book.

Volkswagen dealership. He makes money when he does Takata Airbag fixes. And I blame this on Bill Wallace's organization. And he needs to have policies and procedures. Bill, if you're listening, you make money on his recalls anytime vehicle. And he has multiple franchises. He has, what, Ford, Volkswagen, Hyundai. But Pines, yeah. He's got half a dozen franchises. And the real. recalls on all these franchises, anytime you trade a car in at one of your dealerships, it should be flagged to the dealership of that make, and you should send it to that dealership, fix the recall, do the right thing for your customer and make a few bucks because you get paid for it. He's got a better setup than pretty much any dealer. Exactly, exactly. At any rate, he'd have to call the service department to get a time frame for me.

This is kind of humorous. It's an inside joke, but you'll see what I mean. in a minute. I grimaced and said this new information kind of soured me on the whole deal. Doug didn't break a sweat. He said he agreed with me. He said although it was something they could fix, if he were me

he may want to consider another vehicle very honest, very open, very caring. So maybe Doug wasn't faking sincerity. Maybe Doug was just a good guy. He might be a saint. He also had another car in mind for me. It was a 2012 beset.

and asked me for a minute for him to check the Carfax report. I waited a few minutes. It returned with good news. The other 2012 Passat was recall-free, and it was priced about $1,000 less. It wasn't a premium edition like the one I was interested in. Didn't you, I thought I read somewhere, maybe I skipped over it, where he tried to get hold of the service department,

but he couldn't get through to them. Yeah, he said he called and they were on hold for a long time. Yeah. The reason I'll ask is because my dealership has the same problem is the service department. It's coming up. It's coming up. It's the next paragraph. Oh, okay. Okay. But anyway, I'll just, I'll add a little bit because there isn't a lot of cooperation between the sales departments and the service departments. Rick knows about this very well. Yeah, Rick never answers his phone.

Never. Never. Because he's busy fixing cars, that's why. It's a bad thing for the customer. It's a bad thing for the dealership. our dealership and all car dealerships need to work on better communication. This is a form, an example of the ultimate miscommunication where the car dealer himself would benefit financially by better communication

between his used car departments and his service department. Loss the sale. Exactly. And it's just an inherent baked-in problem about getting recalls fixed. Anyway, I'm out of there. Doug shook my hand and we can go through the epilogue here but the bottom line is

that it's a lot better from a moral ethical standpoint that Bill Wallace Chrysler did than the last shops with off lease only and with Carfax. And it also points to the other than deception and greed motives

is the fact of life motive that these car dealers are not getting these cars fixed. and the hypocrisy of the Florida Automobile Dealers Association and the other folks out there, I'm going to hold this up again, this memo, Congress wants to ground, use vehicles on open recall. This is the bulletin that all car dealers that are members received, and the Florida Automobile Dealers Association

and the National Automobile Dealers Association are lobbying to have this law by Senators Blumenthal and Markey to make it illegal to sell cars with dangerous recalls. And they're saying, well, what we need to do instead is to get all cars fixed that have open recalls. And we've had recalls on cars for what? Oh. 50 years?

At least. When do they stoppers? They've always recalled cars, haven't they? And it's really gotten crazy recently. Five minutes, okay. They really have recalled an inordinate number. only about 25% 25% to 30% are getting fixed

No Yeah 25% to 30% are not fixed 70% are on the roads Well what are my number 70% are on the roads Unfixed that's what it is, yeah So it's Russian roulette You're probably going to get it here You're going to have one chance in four or one chance in three

The Takata airbag we call They take Oh Morgan, when did you get here? Morgan has arrived. Morgan Freeman, Academy Awarding actor, just joined us in the studio. Okay, thank you very much. One out of six cars, sorry.

Anyway, the point being that the recall problem exists, it's not going to get fixed. Car dealers are not going to try and to pretend so we can avoid grounding these cars, which is what they should do. we're never going to fix the problem trust me on this folks if you grounded the cars and you said you can't sell them that's the only way they would get fixed

they would have to fix them because if they didn't they're going to pile up an inventory and they're not going to be able to sell a car on a trade-in because they won't be able to allow enough money if they grounded it made illegal so this bill Senator Richard

Blumenthal and Ed Markey and this is is this a Senate bill? Yeah, Senate bill. Then it goes to the House, right? So it's S-1971. Let your representatives and your senators, your Congress, but know that you support this bill.

And be it known that the national and the state associations for card dealers are fighting it. It's just a damn shame. Yeah, great information. Do we have time? We've got to vote. We've got to vote.

Do we have time to run Morgan's safe court? We'll run it up. Let's do the vote, then we'll run Morgan. Okay, go ahead. Okay, well, we have grades coming in, and we have a C from Ed, an F from Gene, harsh, Erica gives him a C, Lisa gives him a C, and then Linda on Facebook gives him a big, fat C. Well, we have empathy among our voters, and I think they understood it.

We had an honest, seemingly empathetic salesperson pull disclosure. Yeah, I'm past. A C from Sandy just came out on our text line. My vote is a C. Okay, great. We've got Kit Kat says an F for the company, but a B for the salesman.

Frank is coming up with a C across the board, and myself, I'm going to give them a C. And LJ, C, and Karen gives them a D. I'm going to give them a C, and that's for the salesperson recommending that they can consider another vehicle.

I'm going to give him a C plus because of the sales person. Steve on Facebook just chimed in with the C plus too. Very good. Well, congratulations. Wallace Chrysler. Wallace Chrysler and Stewart, Florida. It seems strange. We congratulate you with a C plus,

but when you consider the competition out there, it's absolutely terrible. We had to take Carfax and off lease only off our recommended list. Yes, absolutely. So you'll buy a used car, go to the Wallace Group. Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to see that launch of the public awareness campaign from Morgan Freeman, you can go to safeairbags.com.

We'll post on earlancars.com. And also, I thought we just got a text from my brother, Jason, 358. Well, I won't read his number on there. It's a different area code. 678, and I'm not going to read the rest of it. It gives them a C. Thank you very much. And March from Vermont gives them a C as well.

Oh, great. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, I see where we're out of time. We all thank you for being with us this Saturday morning. Stay tuned. We'll be right back here in our hot seats. Saturday morning, 8 a.m. Have a wonderful weekend. Go Steelers.

Let's go. Oh, oh, oh, ma'amour. Oh, and go. Brick go. Uh-huh. Oh, go. And go to. Oh.

Let's come.