Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.11.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Schirra’s Auto Sales

Episode Date: August 11, 2018

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

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Well, good morning, everybody. The week flew by pretty fast. My name is Earl. This is Earl Stewart on Cars. And we're kind of an unusual radio show to be on the oldie channel. We're not a musical show. We're all about cars show. All about how not to be. be ripped off by your car dealer when you're buying or leasing or maintaining or repairing your car. I think you will find a, we're probably one of the most unusual shows on radio. Now I know that sounds like a superlative.

That sounds like, you know, you can't possibly be. There are a lot of crazy shows out there. But I scratch my head and I think and I say, is there another show I've ever heard of? I've been around for a long time that actually does mystery shops of car dealerships and reports the real story. The good, the bad, and the ugly. Name names, name car dealerships. And we've been doing this on Earl Struton Cars for over 10 years.

Amazing thing is we've never been sued by a car dealer. I should knock on wood. Here's some right here. Knock on wood, we've never been sued, even though we have said some pretty rough things about car dealers. I mean, to the point where we've called some thieves, liars. I mean, that's libelous, slanderous. Could be.

It could be. But, well, it could be if it's not true. And, of course, that's the key. If there are any attorneys out there listening, you know that the perfect defense against libel or slander is the truth. And we always tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is, hey, that's a pretty good dealer. You should buy a car from that dealer.

And we put them on our recommended dealer list. But if they're not, we put them on their, do not buy from this dealer list. Now, I'm talking about the mystery shopping report, and that is the highlight, I think, of the show, but probably the meat and potatoes, or I should say, broccoli and spinach of the show that really can get you going and healthy and have a pleasant experience

throughout your car buying, leasing, maintaining, and repairing adventures, is our information. We have a team of, I'll call them experts, unashamedly, in the studio, right here. I'm one of four people. To my right is Rick Kearney. Rick Kearney is a, you're not going to know what I'm talking about, but I'm going to call them an auto computer scientist. You probably would think of them as a mechanic, depending on how old you are. If you're a little

younger, you think of it as an auto technician. If you're a millennial, you know what I'm talking about. Auto computer technician, because he tells you about those rolling computers on wheels that we call cars, and that's what they are. Rick has worked with me for over 20 years. He is over-educated. You have to be over-educated day to understand when you pop a hood on a car. Once the last time you looked under the hood of your car?

Think about it. What you saw was a giant monolith, a few modules. You didn't see any sparkbugs. You didn't see any coils or distributors or carburetors. you old guys will remember that but all you saw is a bunch of computers and that's the way cars are diagnosed and repaired these days

next to Rick Kearney is Nancy Stewart she's not my sister she's my wife good morning everyone good morning and she's our co-host and she is a woman's advocate I say that unashamedly

this is an exciting new era we're living in wow you ladies are there have got to be excited to have been alive in the hashtag me too time when the reality of the fact that women have been treated fairly shabbily for a long long time has come to light and there's a whole lot of things being done to well change that one of the one of the areas and businesses that treat ladies the the most shabbled, are car dealers. One of the reasons the show exists is because car dealers treat you the same way they treated you 50 years ago.

It's a retail business, and they're still doing the retail business they did in the 1950s and the 1960s. Baton switch advertising unfair and deceptive trade practices. You would not believe the tactics. By the way, stay tuned to today's mystery shopping report because we've been doing this for over 10 years. We have never seen a car dealer this bad. I mean, for you regular listeners, you've heard us talk about Napleton, and you've heard this talk, talk about Greco and some other car dealers out there, Al Hendrickson and Toyota.

We've talked about, we've really had some. We laugh and we cry at the same time because it's terrible what they do to the folks that go into their car dealerships. But we went into a dealership today that makes them look good by comparison. Now, I'm not going to tell you the name of the car dealership. Why? Because there's a bunch of car dealers out there listening and car dealership employees. And they are wondering, I wonder if it's me. So you're not going to find out.

You just have to stay tuned. Keep listening because it could be your dealership. I mean, we go from Vero Beach to Fort Lauderdale. You're not safe if you're in Fort Lauderdale, Palm Beach County, Martin County, Port Sveen, you're not safe. Could be your dealership, and we will announce the name of the dealership that we must be shopped, that will go in the record books of Earl's Stored on Cars is the most outrageous. I can't think Comical

Comical I hate to say comical because what they do to the people that really get swindled and people do get taken in the very

advantage of lied to sold cars that are dangerous That's tragic then It was a tragedy But for some reason It's so outrageous Anyway

It's just my perverted sense of humor I apologize for that Now as we're going We're going around the table We're talking about Nancy Stewart, strong female advocate, and she will remind you over and over again

that we need female callers. And as long as Annie's... I said, just said Annie, I just said Annie popped up. Annie, hang on. Please, she just called in because thank you, thank you, thank you. Nancy, you welcome Annie to the show, and we'll get with her in just two minutes. Good morning, Annie, and thank you for calling the show.

We'll be right with you. We have a couple of things to begin our show. with? Yeah, I just want to introduce Stu because we got around. And Stu occupies a unique musician because I can't just, I'm 77 years old, I've been doing this for like 50

years. I don't see things the way the young folks see them. So Stu is kind of like our millennial guy and he sees the internet is one of the most important ways to buy cars. And so he

not only sees the internet that way, He also sees the Internet as your salvation, and he will give you some important tips and ideas and suggestions. He's spreading the word also by the Internet, because we can't talk to people in conventional terms like we normally do, radio, even television and newspaper, the old forms of communication. It's all about cyberspace and the Internet, Instagram, Snapchat. Facebook, Twitter. I mean, Twitter has become huge. I mean, with our president, Elon Musk. So cyber communication is very important,

and that's what Stu Stewart will do. Now, let's welcome our first caller. Nancy, please. Good morning, Annie. Before I introduce you, I am going to introduce our telephone number where you could reach us. or you can text us at 772-4976530 and also what's very important is the first two new lady callers you win yourself fifty dollars now we'll introduce annie good morning annie

good morning nancy good morning earl and all your wonderful staff there good morning well i want to talk to about my car and it's a 2015 Ford Explorer it's literally falling apart the car handles to the driver's door fell off so I now have to crawl into the passenger side the inside

the inside panels it's all leather but it's peeling away from like where the window it meets the window the glove box just literally fell off the hinges and So... What year is this?

2015? 2016. Yeah, and a friend of mine looked it up and she said, Annie, I found this thing on as she Googled it and it appears it might be under some kind of lemon law

or some kind of, there's many of the cars that same year with the same problem. Well, we're Googling this right now ourselves. Annie, how many miles do you have on this car? Hang on a second. I have 50,000, 5-0.

5-0. You know, your car is very close. I'm not sure of the exact warranty. I believe you would be under the power train warranty. You're probably out of the warranty that would cover things like doors. But I think you're a great candidate for something called Goodwill, which is when you have problems like this that are slightly outside of warranty, you're in warranty on time, but you're out just a little bit on mileage.

Have you spoken with your Ford dealer? I called the GM. He's out of town for the weekend. He said, bring it to him on Monday. Yeah. Now I'm looking at the link that my friend sent me. He says, Ford Explorer, TBS, Car Complaints.com, and there were multiple cars like this that had the same kind of complaint.

One thing I need to tell you is that the Lemon Law is a powerful tool but one thing that you always want to do is you need to go through the process with the manufacturer and the dealer it's really with the manufacturer

the Lemon Law when you invoke it and it is powerful when you invoke the Lemon Law the communications are shut off between you and the manufacturer and the dealer. The manufacturer tells a dealer you may not speak to this customer

regarding this issue because it is a legal issue and they turned it over to their attorneys and of course you can't have your attorney and that's the reason. So it's better to resolve these things in a friendly, amical way if at all possible. Now the Lemon Law, probably the greatest strength

of the Lemon Law, is the implied three. So you don't want to, you can talk about the Lemon Law, just don't formally invoke it. When you invoke it, it has to be in writing, and you have to give the manufacturer and the dealer three attempts to repair it. That's the Florida Lemon Law. Each state's a little different. So with that said, I think Stu is and Rick are both frantically going through the Internet to see what they can find out about this issue. At a quick glance, I can just tell you that there's lots of complaints over a very widespread variety of issues with the 2016 Ford Explorer. Haven't found anything with the door yet? Is this an electrical problem with the door lock, or is it a latch, or what's going on with the door?

No. The whole handle fell off. Oh, the handle fell off. Mechanical, yeah. I haven't seen that yet. I found it on car complaints. Did you? They're talking about the handles falling off, the door panel's peeling.

Yeah, there's quite a few issues already. Oh, that's under the body and body problems. Yep. Yeah, pretty high occurrence of complaints there. Annie, which dealer are you working with? Out package. And I will say they have been wonderful. Okay.

Well, that's great. Now, you've got a dealer that works with you well. That's really 90% of the challenge. And if you could get speaking to somebody that will work, with you the fact that these issues are on the Internet and obviously Ford is aware of them there could be technical service bulletins addressing these issues your challenge will be your car being slightly out of warranty and remember this word because it's everybody in the car industry knows it well it's called goodwill

goodwill means a repair on an issue that is out of warranty and the goodwill most likely will happen when your car is close to warranty and yours is very much and also when it's a well-known problem now goodwill will not necessarily pay the whole thing although in your issue i think it should i think it should cover the total cost of repair sometimes the goodwill will cover 75 percent maybe 50 percent it's a negotiable issue and i would stand firm on 100 percent when I talk to Al Packer, and when you're talking to Al Packer, go up the line as far as possible. The owner of Al Packer's name is Mark. Mark Packer. I know him very, very well, and very, he was a wonderful man.

As a matter of fact, the general manager, I text him on the phone. Great. And he's on vacation with his children, but he got back to me immediately. He said, I took the kids for the weekend before school starts, bring it over to me. Monday so I feel but I'm just thinking to myself personally at this time I just like to get rid of the car and

a different car I was I was wanting to know look at some of the because my sweetie keeps telling me which you know him in the morning from sunshine club Greg oh

yeah come on Greg and he said let's just just get rid of both of the cars so he's been looking at my orders and And I like the SUV. I had, I was in a Mercedes since from the age of 18 until I got into an SUV and I said, I'll never go back in a regular car.

It's just, I like the comfort of it. I work. I have a lot of things in my car. I'm constantly traveling. And so it works for me. And I feel a comfort level in the SUV. So Greg wants us to look at some of your cars. Well, that's good.

I would say this, how, Rani. You don't want to tell Al Packer that you, thinking about buying a Toyota right now, you want him to do everything he can to fix that explorer. So you tell Al Packer that, you know, you want to get it fixed. I don't know whether you want to tell a little white lie

and say, you're thinking about buying another one because it would be a lie. But you want to be as friendly as possible when you're trying to get them to go to Ford Motor Company and get permission to repair your car under goodwill. Because if they wanted to be,

tough with you, they could say, sorry, it's out of warranty, there's nothing I can do. So you want to be friendly and nice and make them think like they're earning a customer for life, and then once you get the car fixed, it's going to be worth more in the trade-in. So wherever you trade the car in, when the door handle doesn't fall

off, it's going to get a praise for more money than it would otherwise. So get it all fixed up. But tell them you're going to drive explorers for the rest of your life. Right. Well, you know, quite frankly, I wouldn't have a problem with that And it really wouldn't be a white lie. I mean, because I wouldn't have to.

I've been very happy with it. Oh, I just cost myself a sale. I do you like that. But that's okay. Just read the consumer reports about the SUVs. Well, you know, Annie, I would love to hear from you again next week if you could call us next Saturday. Because this is such a typical problem with folks out there. And it involves a lot of things, the Lemon Law, psychology, warranty, and dealing with the dealer.

and a manufacturer. So when you go through what you do, very fortunate that you know Mark Packer, I know you'll mention that often because it's important. Nancy has a comment. Annie, before we let you go, I just want to let you know

that ladies do know how to be sweet, don't we? You'll be able to get that job. Yeah, you'll be able to get that job done. But a little more information if you do decide to go in the other direction, meaning a Toyota or Nissan Honda. There is so much information at your fingertips if you go to or pick up consumer reports.

They have several terrific used car picks in their September edition. And also it might be worth your while to, if you don't already have the April edition for the auto issue, there is just loads of information there on best-use cars under $20,000. And also they will give you a list of recall and safety updates and the best new cars for under $30,000. So there's some information for you. And that's vitally important because I do know that knowledge is power.

That's sure. We all know that. But in having that information at the fingertips, thank you. I appreciate that. Yes. I say that every Saturday, knowledge is power. And one other thing, power in numbers. I believe wholeheartedly that we do not go into a dealership alone

or making any other purchase. It's always beneficial to have two people with you. Annie, stay on the line. I'm not sure if you have any other questions or not. but we want to take your information so we can get that checkout to you. You won yourself $50. And thank Greg for watching the sunrise every morning with me. Yes, indeed.

We do every morning. We have a lot of fun with that. We certainly do. We certainly do. And those dogs this morning were wonderful. Did you like that? K-poppy and chibi-choo. Jimmy Choo

I'm the one that's always writing free bailies Oh really I didn't know that Well you got to enjoy your day I thank you for the information It's very informative and Keep it up you're doing a great job Thank you from all of us here on the panel

You're very welcome Spread the word Okay I certainly will Thank you 877, 960, 9960, and we've got some text backing up here. Stu, how about reading the first text that came in? All right, no problem. So we have a text.

It's a great question. It says, good morning. How accurate is the temperature that shows on the dash? My camera can say it's 95. The radio may say it's 91, and if I'm passing a sign with time and temperature, it might say 93. Yes, the bottom line is that it is darn hot out. But how accurate is the reading my car is giving me? Just wondering.

I think that's a Rick question. I don't know. Rick, what do you think? Well, the interesting part there is that that temperature sensor is located in the front of the car in the bumper. And it's where the airflow can come across it. But if your car is sitting still, that thing's only about a foot and a half to two feet above the asphalt. So it may get some reflected heat. So 95 degrees, 91 and 93, you know, those temperatures are always going to vary.

a little bit just due to whether you're near something very hot like the engine, the asphalt of the road or whether it's like the radio station that's saying 91 degrees, their temperature sensor may be 10 feet off the ground and some other sign

may be, I don't know, 100 feet off the ground, so well I was just showing you're going to get slight differences I was showing a little picture here that I took of my dash and maybe I'll get it on the camera. This was on Thursday. My temperature you're reading is 109 degrees.

Yep. It felt like it. Sitting right down on that asphalt where that hot asphalt, the heat is just building right up under it. I'd have been afraid to get out of the car. Yeah. That was right when I got in the car. I would dial 911 and have someone bring me a cold suit.

Exactly. I got out of the car and I made breakfast right there on the... Just cracked it on the hood? Yeah, sure. You can do that. We got another text, didn't we, Stu? We do. Let's see.

Excuse me, Stu. Mark, we know your... calling us and you're on hold, and we're going to go ahead and take your call. Good morning. Good morning. How are you all? Great. You're talking about the repairs to cars, and of course, if you have a good dealer to work with and you're getting somewhere, that's fine.

But I'll tell you, I've had two incidents over the last several years where I've had to use the relief bond law in Florida. Are you being familiar with what I'm talking about there? repeat that please mark okay there is a law in florida i can't quote you the name of it or the number of it but uh for example i had a truck a company truck in a paint shop a few years ago and took the driver to pick up the truck after it was painted and ready to be picked up and uh the rear bumper was missing off the van and i asked the body shop i said what did you do with the bumper oh we left it outside one night, somebody stole it.

That's not our problem. We can't. Wow. That is outrageous. And the bill for the job they did was much more than what the bomber was worth. So I got a copy of their bill. I took it to the clerk of the court. You get a release bond which orders the sheriff

to enforce the release of the vehicle. And essentially what happens is you go there if they don't give it to you and they read the bond and read the court order, you call the sheriff or whoever is the local police in that jurisdiction, and they enforce that release. In other words, any time, if you're given an estimate and the bill is much more than the estimate that you agree to, you can do that in just about any case.

Now, if they fail, you have to put up all the money in the clerk's court. If they fail to file suit against you within 90 days, the clerk will refund all of your money, and they have no more recourse. Wow. Mark, this is the reason I love this show because the callers teach me things. Now, I knew about why they hold your cars called the Mechanic Lean Law. And anytime you have your car repaired,

there's a law that says, if you don't pay the mechanic, you can't get your car, and he can keep your car. In fact, he can actually sell your car and to get paid. It's a really, really onerous law, and most people don't even know about it. But I never knew that there was another law, which you just described, that is the defense against the mechanic lien law.

I found it right here. And Stu found it on. Oh, sure, yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's there. Another thing that I have dealt, and your man, Alan, who I dearly loved, has made three body repairs to a Lincoln town car that I had, I just recently sold it.

I was rear-ended three times over the last seven years, and that was like my work car, and Alan took it. I like your body shop, because, number one, you don't use reclaimed parts, and you don't, you know, fix stupid stuff. You use new parts. The insurance companies, by the way, I've got to tell people, really don't like you a lot, and that's what I like about you. Yeah, car dealers insurance insurance.

After each of those accidents, when everything was said and done, I asked the at-fault party's insurance company. I said, okay, now we have to talk about the diminished value of my car. And they said, what do you mean? I said, come on now, let's quit playing games. You know what I mean. My car is going to have a car fax report. The value of it is going to be less than it was before the accident.

And that's what I want to be compensated for. So in each case, it's funny, three different insurance companies. In each case, they said, okay, well, we'll give you a five. hundred dollars for the minister's value i said i said really i said that's not going to work and they said well what will work i said three thousand and they're like where did you get that figure i said well i i pulled it out of my uh same place you pulled your 500 out of i love it and in one in one case they actually hired a lawyer to defend themselves and he eventually said that against his advice they're going to pay it.

So I collected 9,000 in diminished value. Wow, good for you. For that car that I recently sold for $2,000, by the way. They had 291,000 miles on it. But diminished value, and again, that thing about the dispute, and you just pay the money into the rest of the court, they give you a court order right there from the clerk. And again, if they don't bring action against you to collect that,

which I used it twice. Once was with the international truck dealer, and one was with an independent paint body shop. But the International Harvester dealer quoted repairs of 1900, went to pick up the vehicle. It was like 3,300. I just went to the clerk's office, put up the money.

They never set a peep. And 90 days later, we got all the money back, so the repair costs nothing. I was willing to pay for the repair. That wasn't the problem. I was willing to pay what I should have paid, not what they overcharged or didn't get authorization for. Did you get an estimate in both instances, Mark, of the repairs? Oh, yes.

Yes, I always get a written estimate. Yeah, that's something a lot of people don't realize that you have that right implore of and that you should be automatic. And when you go in to get a car fixed, always get an estimate in writing and initial it so that they know that you and the and of course the mechanics initial or the company and they have to stay with it 10% of that estimated repair mark if there was a prize for the most informed interesting in this case entertaining caller you'd get it because first of all you told me something I had no idea about you bought up this whole concept of mechanic lien and getting estimates that is so important and and you talked about diminished value and that's one of the best kept secrets one of the insurance companies one of the reasons the insurance companies hate us on this show as we we talked about it before and we even recommend I

listen I don't like lawyers I'll tell you that up front I've got some good friends that are lawyers and they understand I don't like lawyers but they're still personally I like him but I'm gonna recommend a lawyer Gordon and Donner the firm of Gordon and honor they are one of their specialties is diminished value and they just have a template for it you know it's just in 20 minutes they can get you a diminished value claim and the mechanics or the the auto repair shops a lot of times don't know about it but you should always collect for the from the insurance company for the diminished value as mark described because once your car's been an accident

You can fix it perfectly. The car can be better than new, shiny and bright, and you look at it. You can't tell it was an accident. As Mark said, on the Carfax Report, everybody knows. And that means your car is worthless. But the insurance company doesn't take that into consideration when they settled your claim. Gordon and Donner will see to it that your insurance company will settle properly. Oh, Earl.

Last week I went into a business on North Lake Boulevard that will not be named. but they're a good business. And the lady who works for the front desk, I had told her months ago, she had a Toyota, not Toyota, an Ultima, Nissan Ultima, and the dashboard, the dashboard literally was melting in her car. Well, a good friend of mine

who also has a business on North Lake Boulevard, the vacuum store there, he had the same problem, and he didn't do anything about it. He doesn't take care of cars. He just doesn't care about that stuff. But I told her, about that because Nissan was telling her

that there's nothing they could do. It wasn't under warranty. The car was like four years old, three and a half or whatever. And that's just too bad. Those things happened. And I told her about this deal. She went and said, I want you to replace the dashboard. I don't care. Just replace it. And they did. She went to pick it up. She got a copy of the invoice. She went to the clerk. She put up the money. They released the car.

And just two weeks ago, she went back and got her money from the Wow. I'm telling you. You know, Toyota had a huge problem with the melting dashes. I know all about that. And Hondas and Nissons. And it was a fight, a battle. I had no idea that you could use this tool and go to the local court. Wow. This is really... And by the way, you can go to the court and just walk in, walk out with the release bond. I mean, you can do all this in an hour and a half.

Love it. It's not, you know. I love it. And you know it will happen on the ultimate. The dealer is going to complain to the manufacturer. They're going to get credit for it. They have to. If they don't, the heck with it, you know?

I think you've given me an inspiration for my next blog, Mark. I'm going to give you credit for my inspiration and the information for my next blog article. I emailed you the statute, so you have material to work with. You're the greatest. I'm going to tell Alan you called. And we're going to try to get Alan on the show next week Because Rick is going to be off We're going to try to get out

Two weeks from now We'll have Alan on two weeks from now So, thanks for me Alan will know about the tan Lincoln Town car That he has fixed on three different occasions for me All right Thanks so much now Hey Mark

You guys have a good day Mark we need to travel in your circle You'd be a great asset to us It's a very small circle I bet it is. Thank you, Mark. All right, big care. Have a good morning.

877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-9-7-6-5-30. Also, you can listen to Earl Stewart on Cars anywhere anytime by listening to our podcast. You can listen to Earl Stewart on Cars podcast on the Apple podcast. app, SoundCloud, and just about anywhere podcasts are found. For a full list, just go to Earl Stewart on cars. Our

next caller is Bob and he's calling from Lake Park. Hey Bob. What's on your mind, Bob? I was wondering to be some of the fellow that went in and tried to

use the internet sales department at the car dealership. Did you read that article? I know, I miss that. I have USA today, but I haven't read that yet. Yeah, it's in the money section if you have the app on your phone. And what he

did is he went on, you know, it's very popular these days to go and use the internet sales department and you get the price, you price it out, and he did that and he thought he got a great deal on the car and he went down to the dealership and they introduced him to a salesperson and the salesperson

took him for a test drive and everything was good up to there then as soon as they came back everything changed what do they do uh raise the price that they had on the internet or uh no what they did was they tried to renegotiate the price starting from the MSRP and they kept them there for over four hours. And this was an educated guy. I think actually he writes for the USA today. I think that's why he put it on there. It's a very interesting story. He said they tried

to wear them down. They had forever. They had all these different people. They were shuffling around the different people. The price kept changing. And by the end of the day, you know, he felt like walking out, but he had spent the whole day there to get this car.

So he felt back. This article reads like one of our mystery shopping reports. Bob, one of the, you know, what I would have said to the guy if he'd asked me about this, the danger of going into a car dealership without having gotten the price on the Internet. The beauty of the Internet is when you are sitting on in front of your computer or your smartphone and you're communicating with a car dealer, he knows he can lose you real quickly. And when you ask for an out-the-door price, he has a choice. do I give it to them or do I risk

never hearing from this caller or text or email or again so well he had he had he had it all printed out they had him a price over the internet they ignored it

he had the paperwork when he went over there and then they tried to do this try to renegotiate the price you got to read the article it's extremely interesting I will what's tried to do to this guy

and, you know, they just, I think it was just a concerted effort here to try to squeeze them for more money. Sure. Yeah, I'm going to find that article, Bob, and I'm going to post it on Facebook, and we'll publicize that. I wish the media would do more of this. We find the media very timid about attacking cardio is because they're so important to advertising, newspapers, television, radio, all the media, rely heavily on little. car dealers. Think about it, what local business spends more money on local media than a car dealer? So when a car dealer pulls out of the advertising, they can really crush a radio station, a newspaper. We were actually thrown off a radio station a few years ago when the car dealers got together who were advertising on the station. It was called Sea View. It was this same call editor. It was 95.9, but it was by a different owner.

And they came to the owner. They said, look, Earl Storn on cars, you drop them as a show, or we're going to boycott. We will not advertise. General Manager came out to me and said, I'm sorry, Earl, we love your show, we like you, but we've got to tell you you can't be on the show, and you can't run your show anymore. So I admire USA Day for the courage to stand up to the not just auto dealers, but manufacturers because they have powerful, powerful lobbying capabilities as well as, pulling their advertising.

Well, that fellow had called previously about the, going to court, what was the law that he was using to get his refund on his car?

Stu, you pulled it up on their own. It's called a release bond. So, relief. Release. Release. Rele-E-E-F. Nope, release. Release.

Yes, release. Let me go. Release. Release. It's a release bond. You go to the clerk of the court, and apparently it's common

they know what it is and say, I got my car at ABC Chevrolet. I owe them $3,000, but they did a terrible repair. And then you'll have to put up a bond, and they will give you a release to take to the ABC Chevrolet, and by law they have to give you your car. Then they have, so I recall, something like 90 days, to file suit to dispute your release.

And if they don't sue you, which nine times out of ten, apparently, when they know they're wrong, going to waste the money to hire a lawyer and you got your car and you get your money back right so you so in other words well wouldn't they release your car if you if you went ahead if you had a dispute but they don't want to release your car so you go ahead and pay them anyway and you'd say you can get your car out of there and then then you could go down to the court could you do it that way they wouldn't yeah they wouldn't release the car because there's something called mechanical lien law they have the legal right to

to keep your car until they get paid. So you have to let them keep your car until you get the release bond, then you take it back, and then they have to release your car. That's the reason they call it a release bond. That's right. I thought he said that somebody went back and had paid and then went back two weeks later and got their money back. Well, you get your money back on the bond.

You have to put up the bond. Oh, on the bond. Yeah. on the bond. On the bond, yes. Yeah, how much is that cost? Did he say what the cost was for the bond? I don't know.

Maybe we can find that online. According to surety 1.com, it's an additional $1,000 or 25% of the amount demanded in the lien, whichever is greater. Okay, so the, so this is new to us. Excuse me, Bob. So you pay for the bond. thousand dollars or 25 percent whichever is greater whichever is greater and then you get your money back on the bond and uh you you get your uh your car back but if they don't file suit then they don't get their money right so so you come out of it clean you get you get your money back on the bond and you don't

have to pay for your repair if they do nothing then you get everything back. Yes. And it says also you have to give them the, you have to put into that bond. You have to put the amount of the lien, the amount of money that they're asking for, plus an interest rate equal to the legal rate for up to three years.

And then they, and then that $1,000 or the 25%, so you're putting a bit at risk. So if they do decide to sue you and they win, then that's what, that $25% or $1,000 goes to cover the legal costs and attorney's fees. So what the courts are saying is you better be real sure that they're wrong and you're right because you have a lot at risk.

And the courts and the time and trouble the court goes through, they're going to keep all your money if it's a bad call. In other words, if you made a mistake and the repair person was right and you were wrong, you're going to lose your money. So you've got to be sure. And in many cases, you are sure if you're dealing with an unreputable mechanic or a company. And you just have to be sure you're sure. So the woman that had the Nissan Altima that got the dashboard replaced and didn't have to pay for it,

she was actually taking a chance because if they weren't legally obligated to replace that, it was out of warranty, and it's not covered. They could actually take her to court. In that particular case, and I'm familiar with this because we had a huge number of Toyotas, with the same problem. Toyota was very reluctant to do anything, and we were beaten on the table and calling Toyota, and we were telling them that they're wrong,

and we were able to coerce and shame Toyota into taking care of these vehicles. And then Channel 5, WPTV, picked up on this, and their Consumer Fair Reporter came by and filmed our dashes. They were melted and filmed, you know, videoed all the, The repairs, I think they had Rick Gurney involved in a couple of these situations where we were replacing these dashes. And when it finally got out of the media and they picked it up, then Toyota announced a recall on these dashes.

And they took every dash tens of thousands of dashes times three or four hundred dollars per dash. More than that. More than that? How much, Rick? I would say the part alone was around $400. and in the labor and other several hundred, so you're looking $6,000,000, maybe $1,000.

Plus a lot of these customers received a rental car while their car was being repaired. So we're looking at tens of millions of dollars and when that happened, the other manufacturers jumped on the bandwagon, and I believe Nissan did eventually. So in this case here,

the court would have been aware that these were defective dash, and a particular manufacturer was responsible for this. that manufacturer kind of like the Takada airbag where they had a defective product that a lot of different auto manufacturers were using and so the court would have recognized this

and said boy this lady's right and you better give her another dash right got it all right so I did see another story about a fellow that wanted by a Toyota TRD Pro you know what these vehicles are it's like a truck

he went down to Toyota dealership and he went over there and they told him that that particular vehicle didn't exist and then they tried to sell him a different truck that was on their lot so he wanted up walking away and buying a Ford F-1 system well you know it's hard to shock me about what car dealers say if you stay tuned for the mystery jobming report coming up at the end of the show the last half hour back in about 15 minutes it is going to absolutely I don't know whether you're going to laugh or cry or just be frightened it is what car dealers will do to buyers

and customers it's just nothing in charge I got it all read that story on USA today you're going to love it I'm going to read it and I'm going to post it on Facebook Bob thank you very much Have a great have a great weekend everyone Thank you

Thank you for joining us 877 960 9960 where you can text us at 772-4976530. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, we've got a couple of texts. And after the text, Nancy's got a subject

on premium or regular gas. It is very interesting. And if you could call in on that, it would really be nice. We want to discuss something. Nancy's got some suggestions for you. They're going to save you a lot of money. still would you read those texts that we have yeah we have one that's actually a comment on our live

Facebook video and it's cable and he says an airbag related question he says we take some of us truly love cars we take great pleasure in keeping our cars for many years and maintaining them perfectly well beyond what's recommended by the manufacturer but once a car is 10 years older older what about the airbag can we assume it's still fully operative is there any way to test it as the car moves into its senior years can a dealer routinely service it to extend its life. How can we tell if we're driving around in a car that is both beautiful and perfect in every way, except for

an airbag that is dangerously kaput? And that's cable in Palm Beach Gardens. Well, that's an amazingly good question, and we've had the question before, and I'm going to defer to Rick, but I can say this is something that needs to be addressed by the

manufacturers, because they don't. There should be an unlimited warranty on your airbag, and there should be a way to test an bag without actually making it go off and there should be a way for you to be safe in that car whether it's 10 or 15 or 20 years old. Rick, you answered this question before. What can a person do with a 10-year-old car? Unfortunately, there is no way to determine the condition of an airbag except for the computer

can detect whether or not if the wiring to the airbag has an issue. but there's no there's no testing to know if the airbag is good there's just no way to know the only way to actually be sure would be to put a new airbag in and unfortunately i have never yet seen any specification from a manufacturer stating the lifespan of an airbag being a chemical explosive device they have never put out saying this is how long this is good for I mean, it seems like everything else has an expiration date, milk, batteries, even tires. They say there is a way to inspect tires that are getting old, but airbags, there is no way. There would be a good way.

I just have thought. I hope there's auto manufacturers or representatives are listening out there. Think about this. Why wouldn't manufacturers buy old airbags or buy old cars with airbags and check them? If you're manufacturing Chevrolet, whatever model. You get, just start buying up randomly all over the country, airbags and 10-year-old Chevroletes.

Take them apart, dissect them, analyze them, check them. What's the failure rate? You find out that there is a very low failure rate? Put a warranty. We have an extended warranty on emission control-related items. Why wouldn't we have an extended warranty on airbags? I think there should be a lifetime warranty on airbags. So that is something that should be addressed.

Also, Consumer Reports, they should go into this and analyze it. We probably should do some more Googling and information seeking on this because this is really a great text, and I thank you very much. What was the texter again, Stu? That was Cable. Cable, Newhouse. Cable, thank you very much, an outstanding text. We have another text, Stu.

Yes, we do. Hi, Earl. I discovered your videos on YouTube, and they, have been very helpful in my current car search. I'm new to this whole car shopping, buying world, and there's just so much to know in research. I had a question. I currently live in Minnesota, but I'm from California.

Since this whole car buying situation is overwhelming, my family recommended I fly home to California to do the car shopping buying with them and then drive it back to Minnesota. I'm wondering, if I buy a car in California, is that California dealership able to register my car in Minnesota? Or will I have to pay to register it in California, and then when I drive back to Minnesota?

Minnesota, pay to register it again, but this time in my current residential state of Minnesota. Any thoughts, feedback advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. All of the states have reciprocal rulings and cooperations between them in terms of registering cars. So yes, you can buy a car in California and have it registered by the Department of Motor Vehicles in Minnesota. You register the car and you're where you're, your resident. is. So you can buy a car anywhere. We have a lot of people in Florida. They, you know, come down here for vacation. They buy a car. They go back to Massachusetts, which happens to have one of the most difficult motor vehicle departments to deal with. But all the different states

have reciprocal agreements. So you have to get a temporary tag and use that to drive to the state of your residence. Then you go to the department motor vehicles and they will register the car wherever you bought it. And I think we're still got some text coming in, don't we? We have one more. This is from Jeff in West Palm Beach.

He says, how are you going to definitively tell the difference between 87 and 93 octane? What are the signs you should look for that tells you it's worth your money? Sounds like a rare question. Before you guys answer the question?

Yeah, before we get to that, Tina is waiting, and Nancy is going to address the issue on premium gas versus regular. So thank you for the tech. Nancy will answer that right after we talk to Tina. Good morning, Tina. Hi, how are you guys doing?

Hey, Tina. Hi, how are you? Good. I have two things. There's been a big recall with GMC trucks, and it has to do with the trunk match, and it affects about 1.1 million vehicles, and this is something that GMC truck people's owners should get fixed. as soon as possibly because you could potentially be driving down the highway with an unsecured load and not know it.

So until there's a fix for it and they send out the recall notice, they're saying for GMC truck owners to make sure the loads are secured, make sure you have an additional means of securing it rather than relying just on the trunk latch. What do you think, Rick? I'm looking, trying to look that up right now in car complaints. I'm not seeing it, but it may take me a moment to find that. But, yeah, the tailgate latches on any pickup, obviously, if they're not secured,

that's an incredibly dangerous situation. So that sounds like a new one, but something very worth putting out there. I see stuff like that all the time, Penn, and it really makes you nervous. I was driving home the other day, and it was a truck and a huge truck with a flatbed, and it had this giant slab.

I've never seen a slab that big, and it had to be an entire wall in a condominium or something. The thing had to weigh tons and tons, and it was chained on both sides of the flatbed. It was the only thing on there. I mean, it was 75 feet long. It was 25 feet tall. And I was terrified. I just got away from that truck, and I'm wondering to myself if that thing ever fell. So I don't know what the rules are.

Rick's got a comment. Well, this is crazy coincidence, but a couple weeks ago, my wife and I were driving on Lake Worth Road and saw where a truck had lost a giant concrete eye beam had slid right off of the flatbed of that 18-wheeler and was blocking half the lanes of Lake Worth Road. I mean, it was incredible, this massive chunk of concrete. And I know they had to get at least a couple cranes out there

to try to lift that back up. Don't know what the rules are on that, Tina. You raise an excellent subject, but pickup trucks, you see it all the time. You know, the cops have got a lot to do, and we keep asking them to do it more and more. I've been asking them to, you know, pull over cars with safety recall problems. But when you think about all the things I need to worry about, you know, is this guy got a red flag on the board sticking out the back of his pickup? Is his lash to get properly skeered on the tailgate of his pickup?

Is that slab too big? is the chain. I mean, look at all the cars on the road. It's a huge problem. I just don't know. I'm glad I'm not on the Florida Highway Patrol. I just don't know how they do it. Yeah, I don't know either. And whenever I am behind, I drive a small car. I drive a Toyota Ours. I love it, by the way. It's a great little car. But whenever I'm behind a truck, I try to get up from behind it to the best of my ability. And if I would have been in that situation to where I would have seen that huge wall, I probably would have pulled over into the emergency lane until that thing passed over. But I know that on I-95 was the way that some of the exits are constructed in the on-ramps and off-ramp

because that's not necessarily an option. And we won't even talk about driving an I-95. That's a whole other subject. Yeah, the cops have to use common sense, too. Think of the disruption when you pull over a huge 18-wheeler. you pull it over, you disrupt traffic in both directions, you know, the rubber knickers, everybody's got to slow down. So at rush hour, people get away with things, I believe.

I'm not, you know, I've never been a cop, although I played one on TV, I'm only kidding. But I've never been a police officer, but I've got to believe that you've got to use common sense. Sometimes it trumps the law. I mean, if you stop traffic on the Turnpike Road 95 during rush hour, what is going to cause more problems? That, or giving the guy a ticket because there was something wrong with his tailgate?

I don't know. Common sense is important for everybody. Yeah, but then again, if the guy loses his, loses everything he has in the back, if he loses the wall or loses anything, any kind of item, that can not only cause rubber knuckers, but it can cause a pile-up crash. Exactly. So, you know, and honestly, I think if you were a highway patrolman,

you'd probably be the nicest one that you wouldn't put up with any garbage either. You very nicely tell somebody where they need to go, what they need to do, and you would very politely write them a ticket. Thank you. Well, Tina, thanks again for a great call. We missed you last week. You didn't call last week, did you? Oh, you did.

Yeah, I did that. I called in the second hour. It was the week before that I wasn't able to all. We were worried because you hadn't called. So thank you so much. for being a regular caller. You're the best of the best, and the show wouldn't be what it is without Tina

from Bonina Springs. Thank you, guys. I appreciate y'all. Have a good morning. You too. Thanks. That number again is 877-960-9960, and a text number is 772-497-6530.

Don't forget about that new website that you can go to. We talked about it last week, and that is Anonymous. It's helping us out tremendously. And again, anonymousfeedback.com. 877-960. As I always say, you make the show. Give us a call.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. Well, Nancy, I think people would be interested in learning how they can save a lot of money with regard to premium versus regular gasoline. And I know you read an article in Consumer Reports, not too long ago, so talk about that a little bit. All right, I will. Premium gas sounds like it's a special, pretty special, but it translates into paying extra for higher octane

without any performance or fuel economy benefits for many cars. Some cars require premium gas and others simply carry a recommendation to the owners. We wanted to see whether owners could save money by using regular gas on their cars or merely the recommended premium fuel use. So we went to Consumer Report, and they really broke it down for us. It was a very interesting topic, and you know, Errol and I always talk about the Consumer Report. You can get a lot of benefits by purchasing that subscription. So what I would like to recommend is that you check the Consumer Report. The most important thing to check, and the operative words here are,

manufacture recommended or required, recommendations or required use of premium gas. So would you like to join in the conversation? on premium versus the... Didn't they also mention how much money you can save on that? They had a... Yeah, they did have a rundown of how much money you could spend depending upon how much you use your vehicle. There were a few things.

What I find informative is, and I never noticed, your gas lid. When you're putting your gas into your vehicle, Rick probably knows this. But there is a recommendation right on that door. I never noticed it, but it's very helpful. Yeah, and as you say, the operative word is recommended or required. I don't like that because, you know, when a manufacturer recommends something, it's kind of like a doctor. They recommend it.

You say, well, I better do it. You know, I recommend that you take supplements. I recommend that you stop smoking. The manufacturers say that, but you don't have to do it. It's not like what a doctor says. And if the manufacturer says, I recommend you use premium, then I'm going to recommend you don't use premium. I'm going to recommend you use regular. The reason manufacturers recommend premium is because it will more likely eliminate all knocks

and any kind of performance problems help minimize it. And they want to do that because they don't want complaints. But if you use regular, you can save yourself two or three. $100 a year. Yes, Rick. Well, the interesting part about it is that modern engines, because they're all computer controlled, they have what's called a knock sensor. And so back in the 70s, when you would use regular gasoline and you'd stomp on the gas and you'd hear just, knock, knock, knock, knock, knocking sound, that was pre-ignition.

Well, not the modern-day cars, as soon as it starts to get the least little bit of knock, the engine changes its configuration, and it gets rid of it. The problem is you lose a little bit of that peppy engine feel. You don't get as quite a powerful performance out of it. Yes, that's true. But I think what the manufacturers do is even with the knock preventer that we have in the modern cars, the premium gas will have maybe zero knocks. and some cars may knock in certain climate conditions or certain humidity conditions.

Environment varies all over the planet. The manufacturers build cars to work on the Sahara Desert and the rainforest of Brazil. So there's no car that's going to have the same tendency to knock in the rainforest as it does in the Sahara Desert. So to optimize that situation, the manufacturers say, let's recommend premium. Right. And that way, it'll be less likely. Well, they're covering all their bases. Back to the noise that you and Rick were talking about in the recent issue of Consumer Report,

they talk about the lower octane gasoline that causes an occasional metallic knocking noise in the engine. Well, it'll result in a decreased engine. performance. Back to your question about fuel economy, 30 miles per gallon, savings per year, $209, $25m per gallon, $251, $201 per gallon, $301 per gallon, $314 a year. And also the 15 miles per gallon, $418. So be very careful, as I said earlier, the opportunity word whether or not the manufacturer recommends you use premium gas or the low octane gas. But be sure to check your owner's manual. Yeah, whether they recommend or require, that's the operative word.

And remember on this, the savings that Nancy was just reading, you know, $2,300. That depends on how much you drive. This is for an average driver. And if you had, I believe, for 30 miles a gallon, it was like $250 a year. $209 for 30 miles per gallon. Yeah, if you have a 30 mile per gallon efficiency on your car. But that's probably for 15,000 miles a year. If you drive twice that, you'll save twice an amount.

So you'll save 400. I can see a professional driver saving $500, $600 a year by going to regular. gas. I recommend, no matter what kind of car you drive, you try the regular gas. And if it seems to run okay, you will find yourself saving a ton of money. Even if you don't get as good fuel economy, you're going to save a ton of money on the premium. Rick? Yeah, I think that recommended thing is then if you were to come in with a concern, and they look at you and they say, well, are you running premium fuel? And you say, no. They say, well, there's your problem right there. Exactly.

That's their little get-out-of-jail-free card. They just use that so they can have an excuse to say, nope, that was the problem. They're covering all the bases. Without actually looking to see, is there an issue with your car? Right. That said, if owners make the switch and think their car is performing sluggishly, well, they hear the knocking or the pinging.

They should go back to premium fuel. Beyond the test findings, it's a key to note that car reliability, consistently shows that most dependable cars tend to be those running on regular fuel. So check out that consumer report. It has a whole lot of information about premium and low-octane fuel. We're going to go to John, who's holding, and he's calling us from Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone.

I just thought a little good autumn news. Two weeks from today is going to be the world's most valuable car ever offered for sale. It's going to be by Sudby's auction company who's combined with R&M company in Monterey. The car is a 1962 Ferrari, 250 GTO. Only 39 were made from 60 to 62. At nude, it cost $18,000.

The last one of those, sell them for sale. But the last one, in 2014, at Obama's auction, also in California, once sold for $38 million. The estimate on this one is $45 million. Now, I said to myself, let me do some research as to what company will handle these type of cars. And the company I found was AIG, who ensures 18 of the 39 that were made. By the way, all of them exist. One One was almost totaled, and it was restored, was put in pieces and sent back to Ferrari. I don't know what year that was, and it got back to, you know, original condition. But the company is AIG that has 18 of these.

The clients are called platinum clients. The average client, they don't say what the rate is, which must be astronomical. The average client has nine homes, $20 million in fine art. a boat, a plane, a wine collection, and some other half of their garages are full with vintage cars. So people thought it's only like the anti-insurance companies are like Chubb and Lloyd's of London, Haggetty. But the one that specializes in this is AIG. So they do more than credit default swaps. That's good enough.

Yes, yes. But, you know, it gets more interesting, too, because there is also the same date, there's a collector from Naples, okay? He has quite a few cars. He's putting up a, there were only three of, two of them made, a 35 Duesenberg SSJ. This one was owned by Gary Cooper. The other one was made for Clark Abel. Probably half of our listeners don't even know who Gary Cooper and Clark Abel was. But besides, these were actually owned this particular.

car was owned by Gary Cooper, and the estimate on this Ferrari, I mean, Duchenberg, is at least 10 million. Wow. So it's some good news. There are cars out there that are unbelievable, and nobody would believe a $45 million $1962 car would bring in a world record like that. Yeah, Rick has a comment. Can I give the line for Clark Gable?

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Thank you very much for that. Well, that's about the size of it, too. But it's interesting because I have followed some of these cars, like Duesenberg in the 80s. It was selling for like a half a million. And then a guy named Tom Monaghan who founded Domino's Pizza, he paid over a million at an auction. And then from there on in, it was up, up, up on prices. So it's interesting to know.

And then, by the way, the same Monterey auction in two weeks from today in California, a Tucker is going up for auction, too, and most of them are all in museums, and that's estimated. I don't have the catalog from them, but that's estimated at $1.8 to $2.5 million on a Tucker. That's a Tucker with a T. Yeah, you know, the Tucker that was made in 48. Thank you. Everybody saw the movie, I'm sure.

Adap the first, adapt to the headlight. A fabulous car. but mostly all of them today are in museums. You know, what I think is going to happen, John, is all these old guys with all the money are going to die. I mean, we're all going to die, right? And when all the old guys with all this money die, the value of these old cars is going to plummet.

I mean, what's the millennial care about a 1962, a Ferrari 250 GTO? I mean. Don't look at me. I'm not a millennial. I'm just a millennial. You've got a millennial mind. I don't know. What's a millennial?

I'm a faux millennial. Hey, when you're 77 years old, everybody looks like a millennial. But, no, John, that's great information. I just, you know, it just boggles my mind, $45 million per car. I mean, you just, you know. It sounds unbelievable. Absolutely. And then to ensure it, it'd be another problem, exactly.

Oh, I believe. Can you imagine driving that? A guy gets close to you. Right. Well, one guy did, he wrecked it through the years, and he really, he wasn't hurt, but racing it, and he didn't want to accept it was a good insurance payout. He said, no, I want this car, and they boxed it up, and mostly pieces, sent it back to Vrari, and restored the car back to the original condition, which they said in excess of what the insurance company would have paid him at the time,

but he really didn't care. He wanted that car. it's a romantic thing I mean everybody dreams about owning a Ferrari I mean everybody my age I mean a Ferrari oh my god if you could get a Ferrari you know just got close to a Ferrari

so I kind of see it I just don't see the 45 million I mean you know no well I would be happy with the car that I take care of for the summertime from my neighbor which is a 57 Chevy and by the way he paid $80,000 for it at auction

but restoration on that car it would have been over $100,000. I'd be just happy with a car like that. Was that a power pack? Did it have four-barrel carburetor? Yeah. Yep, exactly. It was also a fuel injection.

When they restored it, they wanted to put a fuel injection on it. He said, no, because the numbers won't match. I want it just the way it was, you know, when it was restored from the factory. But that's the guy he bought it from that auction. And he had bills on that eight times he purchased it, which was $12.

2015, they were over $100,000 on a restoration. And Earl knows firsthand what it can cause to Pontiac that is for the first soul. You can have more in a restoration in the actual car, but it's nostalgia. This guy wanted a 57 because it was the year that he was born. So people have their purpose in owning somebody to collect the cars. And they pay all the money. John, thanks very much. Great call.

Yeah, thanks for the call. Thank you. And for the record, I was impressed with Clark, but I wasn't impressed with his vehicle. Yes, I did date, Clark Gable. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, give us a call. You're an important part of the show. 877960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530, and remember, you can be the sharpest, the shrewdest, negotiator on the block. but when it comes to purchasing a vehicle,

tube heads are better than one. Give us a call, give us a call, and let us know how your negotiating skills worked, how your car transaction turned out. We'd love to hear from you. You're an important part of the show. Marvin, thank you for holding. Marvin's calling us from Loxahatchie.

Good morning. Thank you so much for taking my call. Sure. And it is true. your program is really out of sight. I love it. That's the only program of its kind on the radio. I really appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Yay. My daughter driving age 2003 Nissan Centra. It's got about 50,000 miles on it. She, her horn, the horn in the car wasn't working. We took it to our mechanic. In fact, we took it to two mechanics. So I guess what they're telling us is true.

Apparently, the horn is somehow attached to the airbag. And they're telling us that in order to fix the horn or replace the horn, we have to replace the airbag. And that's a $600 item. Was this a Nissan dealer? Just to get the horn to work. Was this a Nissan dealer that she took it to? No, no. Oh, a mechanic, yeah.

The mechanic, yeah. Did you ever hear of anything like that? No, that sounds outrageous. I'm just by the expression on Rick's face. He's scratching his head. Marvin, what year Nissan is this? 2003. A 2003 Nissan.

And the horn is connected to the airbag. I have never. Oh, wait, okay, wait. He must be meaning the horn, contacts up in the steering wheel? Well, yeah, I am, right. However it is, I'm not sure exactly how it's how it is, but the bottom line is they're telling us that

if we want the horn replay, if we want to fix the horn, so now she doesn't have a horn. So if she wants to have a horn, which she has to have a horn, you've got to replace the airbag. Well, there is actually a way to make that work, and that is simply to run the wires for that horn because all that horn really does

is that's a single wire looking for a ground source that turns on a relay to blow the horn all you have to do is run it to a button on the dash and just get a nice big button and when she needs the horn she just slaps that big button

and it would blow the horn I'm not a mechanic but that's what I thought could be done but mechanics both mechanics never said that to us well they're generally not going to suggest that idea i'll tell you i'll tell you what they did say they said that as she's driving if she shakes the wheel the steering wheel

if she if she gives it no seriously if she gives the steering wheel to shimmy the horn will work yeah that is a crazy you know it's a safety item uh it doesn't sound serious but a horn is a safety item It is. Of course. I'm not even sure that a call, even though it's way out of warranty, a call to Nissan might be in order. If you go to the 800 number, I would go on the email, put it in writing. But if you have a safety defect on a car, even though it's out of warranty, something that might get their attention. And it raises the issue is how long or how many other Nissan's might have the same problem.

But there should be something. that would be simpler than taking the airbag out. As far as to why the guy didn't suggest an alternate method, he gets made a lot more. And as I say, she showed it to two mechanics, and neither one came up with an idea of a button on the dashboard. Yeah. I don't think we found anything online,

because I know Rick's clicking around, and Stu's clicking around on their laptops, and we don't see anything online about that. typically you would find that. But, Marvin, thanks. And glad that you've got a solution. Rick, recommend something as not what you like to have. But I think she should contact Nissan.

And I would go to a Nissan dealer first and just talk to them. And then I would go to Nissan themselves and say, this is a safety issue. And I would like a solution that is not going to require me to have to take my airbag out of the car. Yeah. Exactly. Well, I appreciate your help with that.

Marvin, thank you. A great call. Interesting. I love things I've never heard before, and that's one I never heard. Thank you so much. Yes. Keep up the good work. Thanks, ma'am.

Oh, thank you so much. Give us a call again. Boy, that's a new one. Yeah. My goodness gracious. Ladies and gentlemen, Earl's blog and newspaper column this week is entitled Follow-up Letter to Florida Law Enforcement. You can read his blog at www.

W. Earlongcars.com. You can also read it in the Florida Weekly and the hometown news. If Earl gets a chance, he's going to discuss that column that he wrote. Give us a call toll-free at 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Remember that new website that we have. Anonymous Feedback. Your Anonymous Feedback. Your anonymous feedback.com.

Very interesting, right? What a great idea. Your anonymous feedback, nobody knows where the suggestion came from. And we've had some really good ones. And we thank those of you that submitted them. I can't thank you personally because you're anonymous. And some of the suggestions had to do with the structure of our show. And Nancy and Rick and Stu and I all brainstormed it.

And we talked about some things that we thought, that we could do differently. And we've incorporated some of them, and we will incorporate some more. We want our show to be the best that can be for you to help you avoid being ripped off by a card dealer. So if you want to write this down, it's, again, something that you won't hear of very many places.

Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S-F-E-E-D-B-A-C-K.com. It's really anonymous. It's truly anonymous. And some very big blue chip companies like Tesla and the public broadcasting service and Adobe. I mean, big blue chip companies that are serious about finding out what people really want to tell them. You know, too often you don't tell somebody something that's going to upset them. You're afraid that, you know, maybe there'll be retaliation.

Sometimes you just don't want to hurt their feelings. Too often people will tell you what they think you want to hear. But what we want to hear is the truth, as you see it. We might not agree with you, but we want to hear it. And we will seriously consider every comment, your anonymous feedback, your anonymous feedback.com. And you cannot be identified. You can ask for an email return. It will be anonymous to return.

But I can, if you, it comes to me and I will see your comment. and I will respond if you want me to. If you don't want me to, I can't. You have to enable me responding. And even if I do respond, I don't know who I'm responding to it. It goes through the company. The company is called, what is it? Incognito.

With an E-A-T. Incognito is the name of the company, I-N-C-O-G-N-A-T-O. And that company, as I say, used by Tesla and Adobe and Public Broadcasting Service. and several other blue chips. So this completely protects you against hackers or anybody trying to learn your identity. Your anonymous Feedback.com would appreciate any comments you have. What a great idea.

Very productive, constructive criticism. And we're always striving to do just a little bit better. And with your help, we'll achieve that. 877-960-99-60-772-49-9-7-2-49-67-6-5-30. I think we have another text. Oh, no, we have a caller. Didn't see the caller. Oh, yes, we do.

Dawn, welcome to the show. Hey, Don, what's going on? Well, I wanted to buy a conversion van. Probably a lot of people don't even know what those are anymore. one. I took one for a test drive at a local dealer that was a high top one. I didn't want, so I'd have to order one, but I never drove a three-quarter tonne. We're always half tons. I took it out for a test drive with my son and a salesperson, and the one they had a demo or one for sale, we got about, I don't know, blocked down the road and acted like somebody

pulled a spark plug wire off. Oh, boy. I said, man, I said, I don't know how you're going to sell a truck like this. It's missing. but yeah, well, we're going to take care of that. Don't worry about that. Otherwise, the truck rode great. So I moved this conversion van and it had to be converted in Indiana. Uh-huh.

I got it back. I didn't test drive it. I signed a paper and did everything. I took it home immediately. This tuck started doing the same thing. Oh. So I said, I call them up, and this was on, I took delivery on a Monday,

and they said they couldn't get it. I call them on Tuesday, I believe it was. They couldn't get into the following. Monday. So I took it in. I had the test go out with me. He had he had, there's a problem. I know what it is. I'm pretty sure. Blah.

Well, they had it for two days. Called me up and said it was six. So I asked the guy, I said, you sure? Did you drive it? And he said, yes. I went in. Took it out. Same thing. Oh, man. But then I left it again, that same day. I left it again. They checked

into it. They but come back to get it three days later they told me that that it was characteristic of that truck oh now he tells you characteristic of the truck so yeah I mean it should have told me that when I drove it

absolutely demo anyway I brought it back again after this would be the third time and they got a bulletin from the factory and it says that what I'm experiencing is what they call you're going to look at a random bump chuggle or fish bite sensation

you heard of that Don say that again please a random bump chuggle or fish bite sensation while cruising at 1,300 RPM fish bite

as in being bitten bitten by a fish it sounds to me like a sharp The sharks in this company are biting you. Well, we won't even go into the anatomy there, but there's something wrong there. What brand is it, Don? Do you mind my name? It's a GMC.

GMC. Do you mind naming of the dealer? Yeah, and now the test when I went back there yesterday to bring a vehicle, he agreed with me, said he went out and did the same thing, and then he, you know, the test drove it, and said he experienced the same problem, but he showed me a bulletin from GM that came out July 16th, it kind of explains this, and it says recommended instructions. If another vehicle exhibits the same concern, this should be considered a characteristic of a vehicle and no repairs should be performed.

Oh, Lord. That is absolutely ridiculous. Well, how does the Lemon Law fit into this problem? The Lemon Law, I'm a little worried because it's a conversion. And typically, when you have a vehicle, manufacturer is built by the manufacturer, and it has changed, modified. The General Motors, GMC, is going to give you a hard time because you send it to Indiana to have the conversion done. I didn't. They sent it. But you requested it. Yeah. You requested it, right?

It's not a manufacturer conversion. It's a third party. And manufacturers are typically very nervous about any conversion or change to their product. Now, in this case here, it seems to me you would have an argument because they probably didn't convert the engine, and the engine is a problem. So I think you still have an argument, but I cannot tell you for a fact that you would be able to invoke the Lemon Law. I hate to ask anybody to check with an attorney, but you might, if you know an attorney, if you know an attorney, If not, I could probably give you one to, they would give you an opinion without a... Yeah, I'm going to bring it back again and see what happened with it.

I bought it right from the dealer converted. I didn't, I just... Oh, oh, okay. I thought you had asked it to be... Okay, now, so let's... No, they have one on the lot. I didn't like it because they had a high top on it. I said, I like one like that, but I don't want that high top.

Well, then you're in good shape there, because if you don't have a problem against GMC, if you don't have a Lemon Law valid against GMC, General Motors, you have a valid complaint against the dealer because one or the other is responsible for this. It's probably GMC. I would go with the Lemon Law. I would tell them first because you use this as a threat,

that's the most powerful part about the Lemon Law, say, I don't want to do this because, you know, not good for you, it's not good for me, it's not good for General Motors, and therefore please fix this. And if they say we can't, then you invoke the Lemon Law, which means that you have to give them three chances to fix it, or they have to tell you they can't fix it. And then you certified return receipt mail, notify them that you're invoking the Lemon Law, and then your dispute will be disputed or be arbitrated by the Better Business Bureau here in Florida. and they'll have a panel of people.

General Motors will send a representative. You will represent yourself, or you can have an attorney, and then the panel will look at it, and they will see that you have a problem, and they will judge that you get your money back prorated based on the amount of use that you've had out of the van. So far, it's only got 400 miles on it, and that's going to from the view.

But if you win, you'll get most of your money back. They can't fix it. It's a characteristic of the van. Well, then that would be up to the Lemon Law, Better Business Bureau arbitrators to decide. Rick has a comment. I had never heard. I had grown that went out that they had. I told them that this isn't acceptable.

You've got to fix it. They should have told me right then. Exactly. Characteristic of that tough. Yeah, they hung themselves right there, Don. The problem is that it was one-on-one. Now, if the salesman admits that in front of a witness or in right, writing, then you got them.

Well, my son was with an attorney. Beautiful. Okay. Well, okay. Then you've got two against one. That is going to enter very, very critically into the lemon law issue. And the fact that they clearly should have told you before you bought it. And you didn't find out about it. They probably didn't find out about it until you took delivery. So I think you have an excellent chance of getting your money back.

You sure you don't want to mention the, the, the, dealer? Well, yeah, with Schumacher. Okay. I would call Chuck Schumacher if I were you and let him know what's going on. You can use my name. You can tell him, I know Chuck. You say, I talk to Earl about it. He says, you're a fair person. You run a good dealership. You do the right thing by people. And we talked about it on the radio show. Earl says, for me to call you.

and you can, you know, put the, you could call General Motors, you can ask for help or you can do it yourself. I just want you to either fix my van or trade me into another one that doesn't have this problem. Yeah, no, in all fairness to them, and everybody's been great over there, and they're on my side, they just said they can't do anything about it. Yeah. Well, sometimes when you go to the boss, things can be done.

And the one thing he can do is he can get you another van. without having to invoke the Lemon Law or hire a lawyer. Rick has got a question. Well, like I was about to say that, I can't avoid that. Yeah. I had never heard this term chuggle before, but when I Google it for GMC and Chevy, this looks like it's an incredibly widespread problem across a lot of their light duty and heavier duty models. And I'm finding dozens of documents on diagnosis,

and it looks like a really severe issue. I got to tell you, if it were me, and according to what you're feeling, this is quite a severe feeling, I would be looking at getting out of this vehicle completely, getting a refund and getting out of this vehicle. That's exactly what he wants to do, Rick. Yeah.

I would get away from it, not even want another one. Yeah. I'd want away from it. Well, Don, I want to do. Yeah, Don, see what happens. Will you call us next Saturday and let us know how it goes? Yeah, I sure want. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thanks for the phone call. 877960, 990, Texas at 772-4976530. We're going to go to Bennett. Bennett is calling from West Palm Beach. Hey, good morning, everyone. Morning. Good morning. I called a couple weeks ago about extended warranties on new cars.

Yes. So last week I was listening to the show, and I caught the end of the answer of about certifying cars because so many people buy used cars today and they offer it. And what is the correct answer or response to get a certified vehicle that's almost at a warranty or has no warranty on it at all? Do you recommend it? Thank you. Yeah. Benet, certified cars are often certified with the expectation that you

buy the extended warranty. There's two good things about certified cars. The manufacturer for a manufacturer certified, now be careful because a car dealer can say this is a certified car. That means he certified it. You want to be sure if you're buying a Honda, it's Honda certified or a Chevrolet, it's General Motors certified. So the manufacturer certification process requires it meets certain criteria, mileage, and condition. It also requires the dealer do an extensive check and examination of the car and that passes examination

or the problems they'd be corrected finally you'll be strongly encouraged to buy an extended warranty now my advice is if you're buying a reliable car you've checked it out on consumer reports and it is certified by the manufacturer you can skip the warranty

or if you feel better about having the security of knowing that if there is a problem, it'll be repaired. You can pay out of pocket for the warranty. The warranties are expensive, and I believe I'm a gambler. If I buy a good car that's been recommended, and I know the certification process has been gone through, I'd save myself $600 or $1,000 or $2,000,

and I just buy the car. I see. now also um so you right so you don't recommend getting the cost certified no because you know like i mean it's cause mechanical and anything can happen even in good vehicles yeah no when i say no you want it should be it should be certifiable but you don't want to buy the warranty necessarily unless you need the peace of mind from that i think uh the warranty company the manufacturer insurance companies they make a lot of money selling warranties they always make more money selling the warranties then you get back in repairs from defects.

So if you know you're buying a new car and you buy the extended warranty for another three years or X amount of miles, you don't recommend that, even though you know you're going to keep the car for five or six years, or get the extended warranty at a lower price. It depends on the car, Bennett.

If you're buying a Fiat, by all means, buy the extended warranty. If you're buying a Jeep... No, I won't be it. If you're buying a good car, like a Honda or a Nissan or even a Hyundai, Kia. I mean, good quality car. And check consumer reports.

There's no better source. Whatever new car you want to buy, check it out. And if it's recommended by consumer reports, I would buy it, take the manufacturer's warranty, and I would not buy the extended warranty. You don't need it on a good car. Okay. Thank you for the information.

Have a wonderful day. Great call, Bennett. Thank you. You have a wonderful day. too. I have a private text that I like to share with you. We are running out of time. We do need to get to the mystery shopping report. First, I want

to thank John. I want to thank John from Palm City for keeping me informed on the mailers that come through the mail. I can't stress to you how dangerous they are. I'm going to hold one up right here that John sent me from Treasure Coast

and, boy, it's a doozy. I have a text that came through. What is the difference between a factory car advertisement and a dealer advertisement? This here is the innocent part of mailers. The part that's going to become very dangerous is if you pay attention to that mailer and get to the dealership that is sending you the mailer, there are so many ways for them to take advantage of you. Earl, what do you have to say about that topic, about the advertisement that comes through the mail,

and what is the difference between the manufacturer and the dealer advertisement? Manufacturing advertisements typically won't break the law. I don't like manufacturers' advertisements either because they put a lot of stuff in the fine print that can't be read. Most of the manufacturers advertising I see is TV, and it's literally impossible to read. read the disclosure. So I think they're breaking the law. I think they're violating the Federal Trade Commission. But the dealer advertising is far worse. So it's a question between bad advertising and terrible advertising. Manufacturers advertising typically is bad, but the dealer advertising is off the wall terrible. So ignore all advertising. The worst of the worst is what Nancy just held up

with the direct mail. That's the worst of the worst. Ignore all advertising, take control, buy a consumer report, subscribe online to consumer reports, get online, Google. There's a wealth of information on the internet. And you do your own advertising and don't rely on the dealer

telling you what the deal is because the deals, the manufacturers and the dealers give you are too good to be true. The mailers want to get you in the door. They'll do whatever they can to tantalize you, to stir your curiosity,

And Treasure Coast, John just sent me a mailer for, I'm laughing before I even say this, $25,000 lucky ball. Whoa. Anyway, be careful of the mailers, whether it comes from the manufacturer or the dealer. We've got three texts here, and we've got to get to the recovering car dealer. So let's see how many texts we can get through before we do the Mr. John. Well, I think I could help these out pretty fast. We have two quick mechanical type questions, and we're going to be. one for you. So the first one is, do tire monitors go bad very often? Do tire monitors get less

reliable as cars age? And then the other question was, what would happen if you use E85 fuel in a car that I'm not sure if it would be okay to use? Tire pressure monitors mounted in the wheel that send a signal to the computer, tell how much air pressure you have. Lifespan on those, most cars seven to ten years, and they're not super expensive to replace. They do keep their accuracy throughout their lifespan, so nothing to worry about there. When that light starts to blink at you, that's when you've got an issue with one of those sensors. E85 fuel, if you put that into a car that is not designed for it, you will cause massive damage to the fuel system and massive damage to your wallet. Don't do it.

Also, be advised, look on your fuel cap because your fuel cap will specify up to E10 or up to E15 because some stations now have E15 fuel and only the cars that are two or three years old are rated to handle E15. So be sure that you get the right fuel for your car. Thank you, Ray. And the last one is from Steve in Palm Beach Gardens, and he said he didn't get to hear the beginning of the show, and he wanted to know if you address the situation of your hiring practices, which he heard on the local news.

Actually, we have a press conference on our hiring practices. Believe it or not, my dealerships are being sued by a man who applied for a job as a salesperson because we hired a woman instead. We've only got about 30% of our services. sales force as women 25? Oh no, no, no, I was saying that's not why he sued us, but that's... So, we hired the woman.

We also have on our head on our hiring site, hireology, that we were aggressively trying to hire women. That's true. And it's true. He filed a complaint with the EEOC, the

Employment Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, federal EEOC, The federal EEOC said they ruled against him and the fact that we did not discriminate against him because he was a man. We discriminated against him because he wasn't a good salesman and we hired the woman instead.

But the EEOC also said we violated the law by saying that we were aggressively trying to hire women and we were favoring women in our hiring. Just quick, correct. We didn't hire a woman instead. No, we didn't. No, no. We didn't.

He thought we did. He thought we did. Now we are being sued by the same gentleman, and in fact, we're having to fly to Tallahassee. It's a federal hearing because, again, we violated the law, and we're taking the position that we did not do that. And we'll be all over the news next week because all three local TV channels,

the Miami Herald, the Palm Beach Post, we're having a press conference with our attorneys on Monday morning at 11 o'clock, and it'll hit the news. because we think we're doing the right thing by trying to hire more women. Absolutely. We have about 30% women. We want to have about 50% women because women are really good employees,

and they're about half the population. We think they should be half of the workforce, but they're not. So they're being discriminated against, and that's what we're doing, and now I've got to read the mystery shopping. Yes, but let me add to that, that the Boys Club will finally get it for several reasons. Women make great salespeople. And also, guess what? It generates a whole lot of traffic in your direction.

The sales goes up. It doesn't go down. Okay, mystery shop, Shira, auto sales westbound beach. Shira. I'm going to spell that for you. You just revealed the name. That was a big secret.

Sorry, guys, if it wasn't you, if you were waiting all this time. But please, stay tuned. It's not in Apleton. Stay with us. Yeah, here's that in Able to. stay with us yeah stick around anyway it might not be your dealership

enjoy this this is going to be a whole lot of well I hate to use the word fun but it's going to make you feel real good yeah shira warm and fuzzy s C-H-I-R-R

apostrophe yes I spell that because we shopped this buy here pay her a lot on military trail in westbound beach we never investigated this small independent dealership And we never even heard of it.

I mean, I've been around for a long time. And I thought I knew all the car dealers. I've never heard of this little guy on a military trail. But we're trying to develop a portfolio of buy here, pay here lots, because we've been asked by folks that are helping people with bad credit by cars. We're trying to get a recommended list. So far, we've only got one recommended. Yeah, that's, oh, gosh, it was the Wallace.

Yeah, it was the Wallace store. Yeah. Easy pay. Easy pay in Stewart, Florida is the only one on the buy-here pay here. As soon as we found Sheras, we knew we were in for some fun. I put that in quotation because we're going to laugh a lot during this report, but it's sad at the same time because people are victimized and people that are least prepared to be taken advantage of economically and otherwise.

So we'll chuckle and we'll get a laugh out of it. but we know it's serious. The first thing that jumped out at us was their terrible online reputation. Never seen anything this bad. One star, Yelp, have you ever seen a one star? I don't think there can be no stars.

You have to give them a star. You've got to give them a star. So the worst Yelp rating. A two-star, better business bureau. I mean, you have to be insane not to have better than a two-star. But with a Better Business Bureau, You don't have to do anything, but respond to their complaint.

Well, that's for the grade. There's two components. There's reviews, and then there's a grade, and they've got a C, which is really kind of like an F. And then finally, a 2.7 star Google rating, which is really low. Now, by the way, for all you disreputable people out there, should I tell them, you can fix that overnight. You can fix it. There are companies you hire to raise your Google rating. One of them is called Podium, and there are ways to fix your Google.

You can still be a crook, and you can still take advantage of people. Yeah, don't worry about that. You can raise your Google Rite. Now, Stu told me about this. If you see somebody with five stars, be very skeptical, because you can fix your Google rating all the way up pretty much as high as you want to go. So when you check a company's Google rating, look at the three-step. stars. Three stars and then read the report. Just don't look at the stars. Because the three stars are people that said they weren't terrible and this is why we think they weren't good. So

be careful with Google and Yelp and all the other. Don't go for the real good ones and stay away from the real bad ones. Because if a guy's got a real bad Yelp or Google, he's too stupid to even know that he can rig his rating and raise it. So that's what happened. here. That said, any business that earns mostly once, I just said that too. It wasn't just bad reviews that caught our eye. It was the responses to the reviews that were posted by Shira's management or owners. And this is unbelievable. Experts advise businesses to avoid getting into conflicts with the posters of negative reviews and simply apologize and offered to help fix the problem. Shira's auto sales had chosen to ignore this.

advice and they go to the attack if you criticize them they come after you coincidentally the first review we saw was left by someone we know in the radio business this is hysterical we can say his name because it's public online what are the chances he gave them this guy we know

he gave them a one-star review and accused them of selling him an unsafe car in all caps he called them liars and cheats Scheer's response was to accuse this gentleman of unreasonable expectations. Now, we know the guy.

And he's a smart guy. Yeah, nice guy. He's not unreasonable. He's not unreasonable. And I'm not going to mention his name. I just, here's his actual review. One Star was four weeks ago. Shady liars, untrustworthy.

All they care about is selling a car. I bought many used cars. This one was just bad, but was not just bad. but unsafe to drive they would not even return phone calls don't believe a word they say they are liars, cheats

untrustworthy and should be put out of business now as I say Stu and I know this guy and he has a radio show and not me but he's fair

and honest and I have no reason to believe that he's not being totally honest in this review here's a response to this complaint. We have addressed this complaint numerous times and have concluded

I'm a blank out of his name here. Partly because he's difficult to pronounce. That's the only reason why you're not doing. No, I just don't want to know. Mr. H. Mr. H. Mr. H. Has unreasonable expectations.

Anytime he has a problem with his older Jaguar, he feels we should fix it for free, a real badmouth this, on his radio show. Now, that's just not true. The guy's telling the truth. There are a dozen more just like this. A very unhappy customer post.

A one-star review in Shear's comments. I share a response on the offensive. Here's the review. Sucks dealer every... It doesn't quite make sense. Yeah, sucks dealer ever, they told me an accurate TL. 03 for $8,000 with 160,000, it turns out, 16,000 miles on it.

The worst thing is the car had a transmission. problem. Worst dealer ever. Response. Jeff, I'm sorry you're not entirely happy with your purpose. It doesn't sound like he's even partially happy. I'm sure we have never let a car go out of here with a bad transmission. Never.

Listen to this. How could that even be possible? Did you drive out of here? Then they accuse him. How many miles did you put on it before you concluded it had a bad transmission? How did you drive it? A car

with 166,000 miles will always require maintenance and repairs. Really crazy. One of our favorite responses include the line if man breaks it, God makes it. No, if man makes it, it breaks it breaks. Yeah, if man makes

it, it breaks, it God makes it it, it dies. That was very profound. Very strange, too. Right, very strange. I mean, I'm really, I'm starting to get a little fearful now too because, well, so far I haven't been physically attacked but we had a good laugh yeah all right we had a good laugh reading these but we didn't

forget the reason we looked them up in the first place to find a takata afflicted vehicle we searched shira's inventory listed on their website they didn't have many vehicles just 32 used cars listed for sale we looked at the ones most likely to be under tecata recall and zeroed in on a 2010 forward fusion listed for sale for 7-995 we clicked on the listing and tried to find And the VIN, we couldn't. The VIN was not displayed anywhere in the listing. Never seen this before. Nope.

We did, however, find a link that read, Click here for VIN. Now we're in the Twilight Zone. This is Twilight Zone. Ten years. None of this stuff have we ever seen before. We clicked the link and opened up a form that required us to enter a phone number and an email address.

so we put in one of our alias phone numbers and one of our alias email addresses we got a whole bunch of them by the way we waited a few minutes and received the vent by email really mysterious this was a first for us and we couldn't help but think that most consumers probably wouldn't go through the trouble

we did anyway we ran the vent on safercar.gov carfax auto check and for his own recall website and saw that this fusion had a passenger side to Calderico. That was the only vehicle they had was a Colorado recall. We deployed Agent X

to investigate. And, yeah, got five minutes to go. This thing about the VIN. Weird. Has to be a way to keep people from checking the VIN. There'd be no other reason, not to put the vins on. Unnecessary speed bump.

I got to Shears Auto on Military Trail around 5.30, wandered around the tiny lot, looking for the 2010 Ford Fusion with Takata Recall. A man with tattoo-covered arms approached to me and asked me what I was looking for. I hesitate. Is that politically incorrect

now to talk about tattoos? It is what it is. I apologize to all our tattooed. Yeah, Colin, just showed me his tattoo. Stu's got a tattoo. So, at any rate. I said hello, told him my name, and asked about the fusion. The man said his name

was Jimmy, and that the fusion was sold this morning. Without missing a beak, Jimmy, so he had another car in the same price range, led me to a rough looking 2010. Hang on, I want to show you my tattoo. No, go ahead. Toyota Corolla. He said, I could tell you this one right now.

I can tell you this one right now. For $8,000, 9.95. I asked him if I could take a look inside. Jimmy said he had a better idea. We could go inside and finalize my numbers and financing. Then we'd come back out and drive it. We'll be real quick, he said.

I was annoyed. And I said, he could tell I was annoyed I told him I had been chombing around I just slept Napal at Kia because of mistreatment from my salesperson I said I would have no problem walking away if I felt I was being played Jimmy was visibly irritated

and said he'd go get the keys he left me outside while he retrieved the keys and returned with a scowl on his face he unlocked the car while I walked around it observed mismatched paint several panels, dense

scratches, a section of missing grill. One completely bald tire. A missing wheel cover. I popped the hood and checked out the engine compartment. I asked Jimmy if it was mechanically sound. He replied that they checked the cars out after they are sold. After

they're sold. Weird. That's weird. Everything's weird about this. I sat inside. It was a rat. I hate to use that. Auto venecutor. We've car dealers used that a lot. It smelled bad and had cigarette burns all over the interior. I didn't want to, but I asked Jimmy if we could drive it.

Jimmy said, since we had not yet come to terms, he would have to ask the owner to drive it. Jimmy led me up to the patio office where we met Vito, the owner. Uh-oh. I'm not going to make a comment because I know that would be politically incorrect. I can't. Vito, he can. Vito said hello. And I asked them why I couldn't drive the car to see how it sounded and drove.

He replied by asking me what it would take for me to buy and drive at home. I said I had to drive it first. Vito came back with a discount. How about if I lower the price to $7,000,99999 right now? Would that help? I faint interest and said, Hmm, let me take another look. Jimmy and Vito watched as I walked back to the Corolla.

I tried to open the trunk, but it wouldn't open. I sat in the driver's seat and started the engine. I felt the AC, cool, not cold. I walked back to the two men and said, to Vito. That's missing the trunk of the grill. The trunk doesn't open. It needs new tires. I'd like to see a Carfax report.

Love this. It was if he didn't even hear me. He asked me what I thought about the car. I said I just asked him about the Carfax report. Vito said he could give me a Carfax report, but you'd have to charge me $32. Twilight Zone.

However, he said he would fix the trunk latch, and he'd already ordered the grill. If it just hadn't arrived yet. I don't believe that. I asked him if there were safety issues. He said he didn't know of any. He pivoted away from the condition of the car. Asked me how I planned financing. I said I was going to make it easy and pay cash using my credit union as a source of funds. I said I need the final figures to bring them. I'm going to read fast because I've got two minutes. Bito said, all right, let's talk Turkey. We went inside the Vito's office. He had a

messy desk and the big mean barking pit bull behind the barrier it set up there was a sign on it and we sat down there's a pit bull he barked at me Vito wrote out the order on a plain piece of paper

$799.95 $500 dealer fee $489 tax and pit bull barking at me $8,984 I said he had to do better the pit bull barked again 7995

I'm getting worried now I said to make it 8,000 Pitbull's still a bargain Vito bashing the keys on an old adding machine Old school I mean not even old school

Ancient school I can't read anymore We ran We didn't walk We ran I had to come back And get my car I was terrified

Most amazing Unbelievable Shopping report we've ever had We're running out of time. I'm going to vote. Okay, first of all, the trunk wasn't locked. Okay? The trunk wasn't locked.

The reason that our mystery shopper couldn't look in the trunk is because there were bodies in the trunk. That's number one. We'll clear that up right there. The grade from me, F. And look, get that pit bull under control. F. I don't know. I'm going to give them a C-minus.

because I love dogs I'm making points for the dog I'm going to call the Department of Vehicles I can't believe this guy exists I don't believe he has a department of vehicles I'm going to call my people We've got to go I'm calling Big Dog Ranch Rescue

Big Dog Ranch Rescue Okay ladies and gentlemen Thanks guys What a fantastic show To the people in the control room Jonathan and Colin Thank you so much for your participation Join us next week right here at the True Oldies Channel.