Earl Stewart on Cars - 08.15.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Napleton's Northlake Kia

Episode Date: August 15, 2020

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

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

This is Earl, the recovering car dealer. I'm live now, and you heard my recorded introduction. I'm not crazy about repetition so I'm trying to be careful not to bore our regular listeners with what we do but at the same time we keep getting new folks tune in and you got to tell them a little bit about who you are and what you do so welcome all you newbies we're a car show that you won't see anywhere else we're an expose we're almost like a 60 minutes Mike Wallace kind of a thing where we mystery shop car dealers. We do it every week. We tell it like it is. We have a lot of lawyers out there listening to us. I hear every now and then from lawyers, and you lawyers can really

appreciate the fact that for 17 years, we've shopped a different new car dealership and used car dealerships as well all over South Florida and some in North Florida. And we name names. We tell it like we see it. We're totally honest and transparent, but if we see a cardio that's breaking the Florida law, we say so. And you lawyers out there know that if you say, if you accuse somebody of being a thief and he's not a thief, and you did it maliciously or irresponsibly, you expose yourself to a big lawsuit. So I'm just kind of bragging about the fact that we've never been sued in 17 years. We've been threatened, but never sued. And, um, it just goes to show that we are seeing telling the truth as we see it I'm not saying we

haven't ever made a mistake I I don't know which ones we made if we realize we make a mistake we try to correct it on the air and we have another mystery shopping report today which is extremely exciting very entertaining so that's all you new folks the old folks you know what's going on and I really appreciate your loyalty every day I'm amazed at who sees the show and I think we need to get our Nielsen ratings because I think we've really grown and we keep saying we have 20,000 listeners I bet it's bigger than that we need to check with that on like three years ago yeah and I'm ashamed to admit that I got stopped by a police officer the other day I made a yesterday actually they had

the train track blocked off and I had to go a different route so then I I made a U-turn and and all sudden I was surrounded by Jupiter police and I felt like a fool because I did a stupid thing. I didn't see. I didn't see the sign. I really didn't see the sign. So I'm in the middle of the street and he comes up and I got my mask on and he was very unhappy with me and he should have been. So I rolled the window down and I pulled my mask down so he could hear me talk so I could say I'm sorry. He says, I know who you are. I listen to your radio show. So I mean, it shows you how. And I know what happens when you get pulled over by the police. So I'm going to let you go right now.

Well, yeah, he let us go, and we appreciate that. But I think it was mainly because, you know, if you're nice to a cop, if you're belligerent and you're defensive and you make up a story, when I get stopped, I always plead guilty and tell them I'm sorry, and I am. I don't watch the Odominor or whatever the sweet I mean. Anyway, I take the fifth. I digress. The best part of that story was that the officer who pounded on your window,

Yeah. When all the other officers came over, I thought that they were going to rip you out of the car. But they didn't. But he stepped away. Let's not get too dramatic about this. The nice officer was, you know, sweet enough to say that he recognized you. Anyway, we've got to get back on the subject of automobiles and how you can avoid being ripped off by a car dealer, which is the essence of Earl Sterling cars. And if you're watching and streaming us on Facebook or YouTube, and you're watching.

you see me playing with my mask. I have a new strap on the back of my mask. I thought I liked it, but it's with the headphones, I'm having a little difficulty, so pardon my fidgeting. Pinch the nose a little stuck on my state. I'll pick. That's a good idea. I got that metal clip here. I'll pitch the nose now. Before we go any further. I can't breathe, but it doesn't

slide down. Before we go any further, we're going to go to our caller who's been waiting. Oh, cool. And I'm going to say, welcome to Wendy, and And good morning and to congratulate you on being a first female caller. What can we do for you this morning? You just won yourself $50.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that, Nancy. Thank you. I have a 2018 GMC Denali. When we bought the car, the steering wheel is cocked a little bit to the left. My husband took it in and asked the dealership about it. it and they said something about maybe the tires are inflated and properly so on and so forth at any rate they looked at it and it's still it's still the same it's cocked a little bit

to the left now what i'm wondering is is that something correctable or is it's so complicated that they're just saying deal with it i think rick can answer that question that should be the simplest repair in the world for them if you're driving down the road and The car is running, you know, you just got it where it's going perfectly straight, and the wheel is just turned a little bit to the left. All they need to do is adjust the front toe just a little bit to move the steering wheel back. It should be about a 20, 30 minute operation at the most to put it on the alignment rack, go under there and set the steering wheel straight, and then adjust the tires to match where the steering wheel is. That should be extremely simple. okay well then I'm just going to have to press them to do that

maybe pick somebody else my husband's a huge fan of your program so we listen to you every Saturday morning I might almost consider a different dealership and ask them to just do the alignment and just let them know your concern is that the steering wheel is off center and that you'd like them to make sure that when they're done that the steering wheel is perfectly centered

And road test a car with the technician or the service advisor after they say they fixed it because nothing more frustrating getting home and find out that you've got to make another trip all the way back. But they should do that for you to prove they did the job right. Yeah, and Wendy, it's great to know that they took your concerns seriously. So as Rick suggested about maybe going somewhere else, I think that might be a good idea. Yeah, if they're dumbfounded by an alignment job. Yeah, if that threw them off. I don't know what kind of advice to give you except, well, whatever. Right.

Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate it very much. Okay, Wendy. I'll be hearing from you. All again, please. Our phone number here is 877-960-99-60.

Give us a call, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Now back to the recovering car dealer's opening. Well, Mrs. Sunrise, a.k.a. Turtle Mama and Nancy Stewart, the co-pilot on this show, asked a question last week, and we didn't get any response, and we were discussing it in the car on the way into the radio show, and we thought it would be good. In fact, we got this from anonymous feedback that why don't we suggest questions that would be of interest to a lot of people

and pose a question to the radio, YouTube, Facebook audience, and see what response we had. So she asked, I thought a good question. We both thought it was a good question, and I don't think we got any response at all. So, Nancy, do you think we should try it again? Yeah, I think we should. I have a question for our listeners, for our textures, for everyone.

And as Earl said, we were discussing the topic of why is the retail car business so good during this terrible pandemic? would like to have your opinion. You know that more retailers are failing and laying off employees right now and the exception of online retail like Amazon and just to name one.

So why are people buying so many new and used cars would like to have your opinion? Give us a call. 877-9-60-99-60. And it's also interested, I mean, financing is tight. The banks are tightening up. The lenders are tightening up, so it's harder to finance a car.

And unlike Amazon, the cars are not being bought online. The people that are buying cars now in great numbers are coming into the dealership physically. In other words, exposing themselves to the COVID issue, driving into service departments and sales departments. And it's just a little bit of puzzlement. We have some theories, but we wonder what you thought. about that. Yeah, we'd love to hear from you. Again, that number is 877960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Well, another exciting issue that we can tell you about is the fact that we have finally, we hope, got ourselves a regular female mystery jopper. And I'm going to let Stu Stewart and

Nancy talk about that because they're the ones that have... of rammer out of this project and we had a mystery shop just the other day and she was out on a training mission so Stu tell us about it well it's always exciting to get a new mystery shopping agent we've done we've probably hundreds maybe approaching a thousand mystery shops and over the years and out of during all that time we've had maybe two or three really, really good mystery shoppers because it takes a certain quality. I mean, it's tough to do. I mean, it's embarrassing,

it's scary. I mean, you're going there, you're putting on, you're acting, you're going and then. We've had people try and say, I can't do this again. Exactly. And the other part is you've got to be able to take your experience, hopefully make, you know, contemporaneous

notes, and then tell the story about what happened and include details and take the appropriate pictures. Know what questions to ask. Even Agent Thunder in the beginning, you know, I had to remind him, make sure you, you know, ask this or take a picture of this, look out for this or that. And so we have an opportunity. Nancy found a recruit for us. And so instead of just throwing her out in the field, just in the cold, we decided to pair her up with Agent Thunder. She is now known as Agent Lightning.

I love that. Very clever, right? And she came up with herself. And so, so, she's being paired with a veteran with a with a pro learning the ropes and so they went in there and I'm not going to give anything away until you hear the actual report but it's so she's going to do a solo run this week this past week she was kind of under the tutelage of her her mentor agent thunder so but it was a it was a great shop so I'm looking forward to hearing it and so make sure you stay tuned in for that next week we'll find out how it goes and I got high confidence that it's going to, that it's going to go well. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. And Amy, she, she just has a talent, and it's great. And I knew that whenever I met her. You know, we are talking a lot

about ladies, and I am so excited, really. And I am going to go to the next female caller. And I congratulate you. Vern, are you there? Here. Or is it? Oh, okay. it's Vera okay good morning Vera thank you you are a first-time caller what can we do for you well I wanted to thank you and Earl I was at the dealership Monday with a situation my husband had passed away recently and left me with a $10,000 loan on a old Mercedes which I don't even know how to drive and I was lamenting what to do, and I thought, well, the only way I could find yourself was to go to Earl Stewart Toyota. I also owned a 2012 Rav4 that was paid for, and I did not even think that I would be driving away in a brand-new Rav-4 for the same amount as along with my husband's Mercedes.

and I'm just so appreciative of your honesty and the way you took care of me and I just needed to thank you for that. I mean, you know, you and you're retired. You could be walking the beach right now, but instead you're there and you're teaching consumers how to buy a car without getting that thought,

and I just really need to thank you for that. You are truly, truly wonderful people. and thank you. That's all I wanted to say. Very nice of you to call. No, thank you. Very nice. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Vera. And please call again. We'd love to have you as a regular caller. We can't have enough female callers. We've got to go hit 50-50, which we're pretty much there now. So thanks again, and hopefully you can call again next week or the week after. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye, Vera. Now, I have to jump in here and say that, you know, when we get these accolades and praise, I got to admit, I do feel real good when I hear those things, but one of my fears is that people will think this is not truly a consumer advocacy show, but some sort of a self-serving infomercial, and I just have to, I can't say, we're not a car dealer, we are, we have a dealership, I've been a dealer for 50 years, but we don't push our own product, our own dealership, and we can't help it when people call in and think. thank us. We like it. I mean, I'm not going to say, don't call me, but when you do, I know it's sincere. We don't fake it. We don't think it. We're totally transparent. Being an active car dealer and having been one for so long is actually one of the reasons why we have the expertise. I mean, Rick Kearney, to my right, has been fixing cars for a quarter

century. He doesn't look that old, does he? But, well, you can't tell with a mask on. But anyway. And my son, Stu's been with, how long you've been in the business with me? 25 years. Good Lord, both of you, a quarter century. And, of course, Nancy's been with me since the get-go. She's a founder of the show, Earl and Carr, 17 years, and we've been married for a long, long time. So she's stuck with the car business. So being active in the car business lets us see things a whole lot more accurately than, you know how it is when somebody from the outside comes in and tries to criticize an industry.

half the time they don't know what to talk about we know what we're talking about we do truly so that is the reason that I have to say we are car dealers I still interrupted you I think we had oh no way we got a YouTube over here for Rick I was going to go to him

Well I got one quick comment first When our new Mystery Shopper lady finally comes out with this comment I got to say it first the old country song Thunder's just a noise boys it's lightning does the work.

I guarantee that's why she chose that name. I love him. Hey, Stu, Guy Larrabee is asking, old inventory costs money and is not like fine wine. It doesn't get better with age. How motivated would a dealer be to move a car

before the factory rep gets on his case? Well, with new cars, we've talked about this a lot on the show. In some cases, at a new car dealership, you might have a new car, and I'm using air quotes here, a new car, that's been there for a year, two years even, or even longer, I mean, depending on the economic conditions and the franchise. So unfortunately, you don't have a ton of leverage with a new car, I don't think.

A lot of times the dealers will get floor plan assistance, which will help finance the, you know, just them holding the inventory. You know, floor plan is a in-house term for financing, borrowing money to pay for the cars you have on your lot. Right. Now use cars is a little bit different. See a new car dealer will have a new car on their lot and they'll keep it there until they sell it. They don't send it to an auction even though that technically you can. A used car dealership, the longer you keep it, it continues to depreciate, it follows the used car market. And you actually have a pretty good leveraging tool negotiating for a used car, especially if you've seen that

car online in the inventory for a long time. Typically it's 90 days is the longest. they could keep it, but a poorly managed dealership might have a used car on the lot for years. I mean, let me jump in there on something that maybe, you know, that's one advantage of being around for so long. Many years ago, when I was a Pontiac dealer, interest rates to finance cars on the lot went up to 20% double digits to zero. So a 20% interest, you cannot afford to have vehicles that you don't, sell and it used to be a huge pressure on car dealers

and even when interest rates were normal you were talking 6, 7, 8 percent. Today they're at historic lows and we are paying literally less than 2 percent for our interest. So dealers can afford to finance and inventory, huge amounts of vehicles. The bottleneck for us and the bottleneck for most car dealers is not how much your interest is in because it's chump change today to finance your

inventory but you don't have the physical room so they don't want to have it sit around you don't want to have a car sit around and you don't have room for customer parking you don't have room for employee parking that's the only stimulus to move the inventory so there's no other pressure certainly not from the factory and certainly not from the banker it's just good common sense that you have a car that sat there for six months and it didn't sell this something there's a reason for a better piece of advice I think for somebody's thinking about that yeah is for this they call it a lot rot the longer car sits on a lot the more problems it

has so a dealer who manages their new car inventory well will make an attempt to sell the oldest cars but you don't want that car you want the car that just came from from the factory that hasn't you know been driven hasn't had dings on it or the tire is going bad so and not to draw this out to extremes the fact of matter of just what Stu said is that what dealers do when they have a car that's when they're too long is they put a flat commission. A flat commission is a large, they should call it a fat commission, not flat, because it's a big one. You can easily pay $500 instead of the normal commission of $250, double commission to whoever sells that dog of a car that's been sitting there for six months. So when you come in and you've got your car picked out that you want to buy,

and you finally have the salesperson making an unnatural effort to put you into another car, there could be more than your good interest at heart. It could be his commission. And every dealer pays flat commissions on cars that they are having difficulty selling. You don't want to be buying the car that they can't sell to anybody else. Okay. I have a question for you. Is it unheard of for someone to walk into a dealership and,

to ask, hey, how long is this car been sitting on the lot? You know, I mean... Never hear that. You're not really going to get an answer, you know, an honest answer, but it would be a great approach and to press them on it.

That's a great thing. I don't think we've really talked about that much on the show, but that's definitely, you should, if you're looking for a new car, say, give me a fresh one. It's like going to the grocery store. They put the older stuff up front and the fresher milk in the back, want to sell the older stuff yeah do you think do you think they'd come up with a better idea at this point because everybody knows that now whenever you go to the store yeah yeah think of cars is

eggs or milk exactly you know and i'm one of those guys that starts pulling everything out looking for the one with the longer always yeah if i'm going to go in and buy some fish i'm going to ask him if it just came in today i don't want last weeks not to beat a dead horse but the length of inventory on one dealer's lot doesn't say how long that's car have been sitting a lot of cars are dealers traded, we call it swapped from one dealer to another. You could have a car that was manufactured in January, still floating around different dealers' lots a year from now, and it's only been on his lot for 30 days. Used cars are the same way. CarMax is a good example. CarMax has so many outlets that if they can't sell a car in 60 days, they just

move it to another lot. And if they can't sell it in 60 days, they move it to another lot. That car might be unsaleable to CarMax for two years, but you never know. You're really getting in the weeds, but that's a good point. We have, from our distributor, they count the age of our cars based on from the time it was manufactured, but once it gets a dealer traded, once it hits your inventory, it might be a year old car, but the clock starts on day one at that point. Okay, 877-960-99-60. That's 877-9-60.

We've had two female callers so far, and they were both first-time female callers, and we love you ladies to call the show. 877-960-99-60. And, excuse me, we are going to go to Matt, who's giving us a call from Stewart. Good morning, Matt. Hey, good morning. Enjoy the show. I've got a question for the tech guy.

Sure. Sunroof is on my wife's Highlander. Sunroofs, when you open the, well, when the sunroof is closed, sensor lights coming on. Of course, when you open it, it goes off. So is there a sensor in there up by that seal? What is causing that light on the dashboard to come on? That would probably be in the motor ECU assembly. What's that mean? ECU.

The electronic control unit. The little control unit is the computer. Good, still. Good. Yeah. And that's going to be mounted basically right up where the switch is. Right above there is where the motor and the little computer will be. But if it's closing all the way and the system is still saying that it's still showing a light that the sunroof is open, there's going to be a problem inside that control box, the computer for it.

Okay. So I need to bring it down to the dealership? Well, if you want to, if you feel like you want to try something yourself first, and this is actually, it sounds a little weird, but this is a fix that I will recommend on just about any car for any weird electrical problem that anyone can do easily. disconnect the negative side of the battery, just take the terminal off, wait for about 30 seconds to a minute, and then reconnect it. And then you may have to, once you do that, you may have to re-initialize your sunroof by holding the button all the way to the open position, just keep holding it until the sunroof gets all the way open, then press the close, and hold it until it comes all the way closed again and stops.

Wow. And then check and see if it works normally. but we see a lot of electrical issues with computers and it's kind of like your home computer it's a reboot you're re-exactly and the like if you have a problem with your computer at home the first thing they tell you is hey did you try turning it off and turning it back on again and it's just like everything's a computer that's what that's such a great thought that you just

everything in the house you have to unplug it and plug it back in again and the same thing with a car exactly everything and you don't think it's just a computer because everything's a computer right now. Your can open is probably a computer. Oh, yeah. And they're all talking together, and one day they're going to take over the world. But just that simple disconnected battery,

and the only thing you'll need for that should be a 10-millimeter wrench just to turn that nut a few times, loosen it, and pull it off, wait about 30 seconds, and reconnect it, and snug it back down. Matt, call us and let us know if that works. I think that is so cool,

and I think it is something that I never thought about it so give that a try and let us know if that worked I really think that's a cool idea could save you a hundred bucks or more I mean you go into a car dealership and you don't know what they're going to charge you so and they probably did the exact same thing that Rick just said first thing I try every time yeah first thing okay thanks a lot I'll call you back thanks man well we just learned something new

yeah he said thanks thank you very much Thanks, Rick. Enlightening. I just gave away one of my secrets. And before that, there was a, and you created a miracle. A77960, or you can text us at 772-497-2-497-6-5-3-0. Now, I'll mention www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

I forgot to mention that earlier. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We would love to hear from you. And you remain anonymous so you can say whatever you want. Isn't that fun? You know, I'm still thinking about a mask call because a lot of you folks out there have little things like this.

Maybe it isn't as serious or more serious. And I know a lot of you are thinking about do I really want to go into a service department somewhere and I maybe half the people aren't wearing mass or I'm in the customer of waiting lounge and the customers are in there, they're not wearing masks, and I just don't want to do it off. I'll live with the problem.

Call Rick, and he has all sorts of cool little things. He's not going to guarantee it's going to fix your problem, but he's going to tell you the thing probably you can try that you haven't thought of and save yourself a trip into a service department or into a car dealership. So Rick Kearney, the guy is, he's got a 999 bet and average.

He does a fantastic job. Absolutely. I agree. We are going to go to Bernice, who's calling us from Boca, I believe. Bernice? Good morning. Good morning. I'm from West Palm Beach, actually. Oh, okay. Oh, thank you. Yes. I had a question. I bought from off-lease Chrysler 200, 2015. I had a check engine light on. Now I bought the fixed little attachment and I put it on it and it did actually tell me what the dealer told me, but I was curious as to how accurate you think it might be if it's, you know, close to the analysis that the dealer did. and can I disconnect the negative on my battery to resolve that check engine light? What code did it give you? It gave me a sensor in the gas tank that needed to be changed. Do you remember the number, what the code number was?

It would have started with the P? I don't, yes, it did start with a P, that I do know. But I don't remember the code on it, but it says it needs to get replaced, but they wanted to charge me an arm and a leg to do it. And I don't know how important that is if that's going to cause problem with the exhaust or the AC of me breathing, something, or anything like that. So I'm a little concerned. Most likely, and I'm going to say this with probably 98% certainty,

the code that you had is for an emissions issue. And all that means is that if we still had emissions testing, your car wouldn't pass emissions. But because of that check engine light. But it's not going to be a breakdown issue. It's not going to stop your car from running. It's not going to affect your AC or anything like that. and it's not like something that's going to be pumping gasoline fumes into the car with you. So it's safe just to ignore it.

The only drawback is that if something else goes wrong on the car, you won't know it because the check engine lights on all the time. But she can get the code if she goes to one of the other. Yeah, well, she has one of the little code pullers, she said. Oh, okay. And, yeah, those are, they work pretty well, and they tell you what the code is, and then you can usually go on the Internet to find out.

out what it is. I'm willing to bet that you're going to be just fine if you ignore it. But what I would do is I would check the codes like once every couple months just to make sure nothing else is popping up in there. Okay. Would it be safe to, I mean, how do they reset that check engine light? Do I, is part of it taking, disconnecting the negative on the battery would help it or how? Not on the newer cars for that. part. Unfortunately, when they get a trouble code that's stored in the computer now, it used to be that we could disconnect the battery and those codes would be erased, but they won't anymore. The newest ones now, they're stored in the memory, and the only way to erase

it is to go in with a computer and clear the code out by telling it, okay, I fixed the problem, now you can erase that code. She has a 2015. That's not, that's still a newer. Right. Much, much too new for it. it. Now, if it were a situation where, say it were an intermittent problem, and the problem went away, then after a certain time, the computer will turn that light off automatically, and it'll erase the code after a while. But that's only if it doesn't see that problem anymore. I gotcha. Another question I have, every once in a while it will putter. I had it last year putter on me and shut off, and then I just turned it back on. What could that possibly be?

I'm, like, terrified to go to the dealership because I really do not trust them. Yeah. Driveability is a little more tricky to diagnose, but if it's, you say it's sputtered on you, that almost sounds like maybe you've got a four-cylinder. Yeah. That almost sounds like you might have a fuel issue, like maybe a fuel pressure issue, but that's something that we'd have to get in and diagnose by checking the pressures to see if the fuel pump might be going. But if it only happens once in a while, I wouldn't get too concerned on it. One question, did it, did you notice, did it happen when you went around a corner, when you turned a corner with the car? No, it actually happened when I was stopped at the gate to enter my complex.

it did that. Okay, was the ground pretty level there or was it at an angle? No, it's level. Okay. Well, that rules out one thought is sometimes if you get a little bit of water in the gas tank, you know, water and fuel won't mix. So the water will form a little bubble down in the bottom of the tank. And as you're driving around, it'll actually move.

And sometimes when you turn a corner, that bubble will move over and some of the water will get sucked up, and, of course, it can't run on it, so it'll sputter a little bit when the water tries to go through and maybe stall it out. It couldn't be an idle adjustment? No, because the computer controls all the idle

and everything now on them. Sure's your hell old fashioned right. Yeah, everything now is completely computer controlled. So another question. I got two more questions, and I'll let you go. And I really appreciate all this. And I'm a first-time listener, and I was really intrigued by all.

the free information that you guys are giving, and I'm excited that I was able to get a hold of you and talk about this. Now, I have also a cap issue, the gas cap. I replaced that at the dealer, and it still says that I have a problem with the gas cap. Is that a seal? Maybe there's water getting in there that's causing that maybe a little bit of water got in that gas. Could that be a possibility? No, I think that'd be unlikely because I'm sure your gas cap is behind a gas door as well, so it's pretty

unlikely. They're usually set up to where water can't simply drip even to get in there. They may have gotten a defective cap when they sold you a new cap. I mean not being a fuel cap. Not being vacuum. Right. If the fuel

camp cat doesn't seal properly, that'll cause a check engine light. the time. Oh, okay. So when I put that fix indicator on my computer, you know, attach it there, and it gives me codes of that, and I find out what it is, and one of them was replacing that cap, and I replaced that cap. So basically you're saying probably it's a defective cap. And once I get a good cap in there, would that, like you said, Eventually, when you shut the car off, eventually it'll take it off of the dashboard indicator. It might, or if there's another problem somewhere else in the system,

if there's something else that's leaking, you know, leaking vacuum out to the atmosphere, then that's going to cause that code as well. So it could be that possibility of that admissions, then that's all this is all up there. And, Bernice, one thing you might consider also, So, and just, because I know how you feel about going into car dealer service departments and you're smart, you should feel that way. But if you can find an independent service department or a car dealer and call them up, talk to the service manager on the phone and say, I'm afraid to come in.

I've got this problem. Describe it to him the way you just described it to us and say, I'd like to have you diagnose that. can you diagnose at no charge they say yes then you come in and you let them drive just be careful what they try to sell you

if they say no we'll say well how much would you charge me to diagnose the problem that way you're not being charged for the fix if you decide you don't really want to spend the money but if you can get in there and get an opinion at no charge or a small amount

it might be worth your while sure sure and I appreciate that advice and I appreciate you telling me that I'm smart about that because that's the reason why I got that fixed because I wanted to compare it to the codes that the viewership gave me, you know, so I appreciate all this information. You guys are great.

You're fantastic, and I will be listening to your show every morning on the way to work. Well, call again, Bernice. We love to hear from you again. Thank you. Bernice, thank you so much. Thank you very much. Have a wonderful weekend.

877-960-99-60. Or you can text us at 772-497-65-30. We haven't done any text or YouTube or I did one YouTube. I'm getting scared. Yeah. I think we're going to run out of time. They're piling in. Okay, let's go.

Yeah, they started coming in last week, so we have a lot of anonymous feedback, so I'm going to start there. I'm going to start with the newest one that just came in because, This one's for Rick. Sorry. Anonymous feedback says, I had an intrament problem with the intermittent setting on my windshield wipers, I think. Can't be sure.

Intermitts squared. That hadn't been a technician. They sent that in. All right, let's jump back to the earlier ones. Okay. Common theme in the days of the pandemic. This question is for Earl and Stu. Have you seen the news and videos

of people walking into Walmart or Costco and refusing to wear a mask and then engaging in a physical altercation with the staff of the stores. What is the store supposed to do? Physically engaged in the lunacy of a physically fighting these people because they won't wear a mask? Certainly, then the non-mask wearers can more easily spread the virus to the poor employee who's been chosen to have the fight. What do you do in your dealership if someone walked in, refused to wear a mask and then refused to leave the store where you have physical fights with that person? And we've appointed Rick the best of bouncer of the dealership. No, no. It's funny. That's a great question because, believe me, we

were worried about that. And Stu is in the trenches, and he's actually administered that. Tell them, tell them what we do. I usually do a chokehold, and I'm kidding. I'm sorry. It hasn't happened. I would say a handful of times, a month, there's people might walk in without wearing a mask. and our policy is to approach them in a friendly way and offer them a mask because we've got a ton of masks they're readily available now and we offer them a mask and 100% of the times that's

happened they've taken the mask and put it on without incident so. And plan B in case they still don't know we ask them to go outside. They're waiting for their car we have a nice area where you can sit in the shade and as long as they're outside we don't require the mask and it's amazing people

people are being if you approach people properly. I don't know about Walmart, but if you don't, if you do it in the right manner, Stu is a general manager or dealership, and the managers and all the employees are instructed if you have someone that is reluctant, call Stu. And Stu is able to, or our other son, my other son, Josh, have been able to reason with everybody. And we have hundreds of people coming in. And we're just amazed at how cooperative they are. We are. And I think there's another part is we're a little bit different than Walmart. We do a large amount of appointment business and service and in sales. And we're really clear on the phone that, hey, make

sure you bring a mask. And if you don't, we can give you one. Walmart, and no one makes an appointment to go to Walmart. So there's probably more opportunities for someone to. You know, there was actually an op-ed in the automotive news. This current issue, the automotive news is the trade journal for manufacturers and dealers and every car dealer and every manufacturing person and the auto industry reads this every week and they're pro dealer obviously because that's their customer but they came out with a op-ed about you should require your customers to wear face masks that's a radical thing to do because in last week's automotive news there was a dealer saying we can't make

our customers to do wear face masks so you know initially even the dealer personnel weren't wearing face masks and it was radical to add your employees to wear face masks. Now that happened and it's going real well, but customers are the next phase. What good does it do to protect your employees and your other customers if your employees are wearing face masks but the customers aren't? So all it takes is a few customers in there with COVID-19 to infect your employees and to affect each other other the other customers. So it's a no-brainer. All retail establishments should require their customers and

their employees to wear a face mask, and if you lose some business, too bad, right? Which is more important, losing the sale or losing the life? And that's real simple. I think it starts it with the company, with the store. If they're not following it themselves, you can't legitimately ask your customers. You have to show that there's a safe environment there that we're all doing it, and I don't think you get a lot of resistance. We started doing regular testing at the dealership.

We're doing every two weeks we're doing testing, because we're not going to leave anything to chance and one of the things uh testing for every employee and family members right that live at home yeah so um and we're you know we make that known and uh so i think when when someone comes in if they're not wearing a mask they realize they're walking into an environment where it's taking it seriously so and people i think are okay with that okay all right we were talking about alignments uh on even on new cars uh last week and somebody uh sent this in they said i actually returned a new Honda a couple of months ago after having it for for only five days it had an issue with the alignment and they tried fixing it but it didn't work they were nice

enough to change the car for me but they had the same issue they checked a few more cars and they all had the same issues and then they refunded my money that's very interesting i saw that feedback it'll be interesting how that develops with honda because apparently sounds to me like a recall sounds to me like at least a technical service bulletin but they're building hondas that are chronically out of line and they can't fix them. I'd be curious to know just what went on, is this a situation where Honda's designing a problem in their car

or maybe when they're putting them on the trucks or on the ships if they're attaching them wrong for tie downs and bending something out of shape. But why couldn't they fix it? There's your answer, yeah. Yeah, that sounds fun. If something's bent out of shape, it should easily be able to be fixed by replacing.

that part you know this calls for a Google search alignment problems on new hundas more anonymous feedback one car brand that you rarely talk about is Mitsubu Mitsubishi what are your thoughts on their quality and value any consideration of doing a mystery shop and a Mitsubishi dealer and shipping and shopping a Mitsubishi car I'm not familiar with that that brand can you do they still make those they do the only of the closest Mitsubishi dealership to us closed down a while back. It was on North Lake Boulevard and

Lake Park. Clearly not a large volume. They have a tiny, tiny market share. I don't know. I don't even have a Mitsubishi dealership vehicle and I think. It's not a good idea. Mitsubishi is hanging on by a thread financially. And

we actually had a friend in our realtor, commercial realtor that we've known for many years that was trying to sell us at Mitsubishi and we investigated a care and we said www. ain't gonna happen.com and strangely enough this realtor I won't mention his name because he decided he wanted to buy it and he bought a piece of the action and he's sorry he ever did that and finally he'll never not take your advice again

I didn't take my advice but Mitsubishi is I think the quality of the car is probably okay I don't know that much about it but they just never made it into the USA and they are We have too many brands, and the marginal brands are going to be dropping out, and Mitsubishi is about as marginal as you can get. In the States, and then over in Japan, it's considered a high quality, and it's very, very prevalent. You see Nissan's Toyota's and Mitsubishi's all over the place. They built great fighter planes.

They shot down a lot of American planes. That's right. The Japanese Zero was manufactured by Mitsubishi. Yeah, maybe that's why we don't like them. According to Mitsubishi, they've got one in West Palm Beach, a Schumacher. And then Delray, Deerfield, Davy, and Coconut Creek. Okay. Well, we've done our quota of talking about Mitsubishi, so we've done our job.

Hey, guys, we're going to go to Marty. Marty, thank you so much for your patience. Marty's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning. Hi. Hi. I got a quick question for you. Last Monday, I've got a 2020 Camry, and it didn't start.

It's almost six months old, a few days short of it. So I called the automobile club. The guy came down, jumped started the car, and he said the battery was, I think he said a nine, whatever a nine means. And he said it was very low, and he said, you probably need a new battery. So I said, well, obviously it's under warranty. So I drove it over to you and your people took it in. I didn't shut it off at all. I took it in and they said they recharged it and it came out that it was holding the charge

and it looked good and whatever the parameter is for the battery. Why would a battery less than six-month-old battery go like that? Good question. Rick? It's possible if the car wasn't driven very much for the time before it failed or if a light might have been left on at some point or something. There's a lot of reasons it can draw a battery down, but the biggest one is if the car really doesn't get driven very much and if it's just sitting for, say, a couple weeks or more at a time, that battery is some of the charge is still being used by the computers, so it can lose some charge over time very easily. Yeah, well, obviously, with the pandemic, it isn't, I haven't driven it as much. Yeah.

But like right now, I've got almost 4,000 miles in six months, I used to happen. Normally, I would have double that. Yeah. But it does get driven almost every day. Now, Maynack had driven real far, maybe it goes to public and comes back in, you know, in 10 or 15 minutes. But with that, it shouldn't happen, I don't think. Marty, you've got a great question. Nancy's Avalon, same thing happened for the same reason, because of lack of use.

And this is something that's happening to millions of people, because as you say, a lot of people are just staying home and they're not driving their car. I think that a lot of people listening out there should listen to Rick. I think Rick recommends that when you drive the car, you drive it, you told me one time, and I made fun of you. drive it 50 miles or 30 miles and I said who's going to drive a car 30 miles but what you have to do you have to do how far do you need to drive a car in the pandemic weekly to keep it from this happening it's going to depend on how much you use the car but if you picture your battery as being like the the coffee jug the big coffee jug in your coffee maker

and it's got a slow trickle coming into it that's the charging rate when it's charging rate when it's charging back up to get the battery back up to full but when you go to start your engine it's like you're taking that coffee jug and you're pouring out a big mug of coffee putting it back in its way down so it's gonna take it a while to fill back up and if you need to start it up again before it gets all the way full you dump out another big mug of coffee out of it you know eventually you're going to get it so low that you can't get a full mug or coffee out of that caraf so that's why you need to take it out and drive it a bit gives it a chance

for that trickle charge to build it back up. Give us some time. In other words, what I'm saying is... I would say at least a good 30 minutes of driving. How often? At least once or twice a week. Okay, so there you go, Marty, twice a week, a half an hour. And just make it...

Okay, well, I don't want to say I've driven much more than that. Oh, really? Okay. You know, it's not like I'm driving it for five minutes, shut it off, and that's it for the week. So what I'm going to do personally, if it happens again, I'll bring it back into you again. You know, obviously, if it doesn't happen, hey, it could be a defective battery, and you've got a battery warranty on that and might have to replace your battery. You can't rule out a new battery on a defect. A new car can have a defect.

And Marty, you're taking your car pretty far. I'm not really taking my car that far, but I do feel good that I got in my car. I used it for 15, 20 minutes, and I brought it back and put it in the garage because, you know, to go out and find yourself with a dead battery, which I did, you know, I need my freedom machine. Right. The other thing I wanted to point out, I've been a member of the Automobile Club for, I'm going to say, over 40 years, and I never give it up. I mean, I've got it for me and my wife, but I called the Toyota Care number to see if they come out quicker or whatever. But once I got into their system, I guess it's because it's national. They need your location and this and that where the automobile club came out in 20 minutes, and that was it. So I'm sure that Toyota service would have done the same thing, but I don't want to give up.

the automobile club either? You're right, Marty, and I don't like the way Toyota's response is in their emergency road service, and also a lot of dealers are selling the package where you get emergency road service has become a commodity. The dealers can, I know Toyota gives it to you free, but after that you have to pay for it. You can't be AAA. I was a AAA member for many, many years myself, and they're the best of the best, and I would not buy any other emergency road service other than AAA. You're very smart to keep it. All right. Well, thank you. Thanks for your comments today, and you always have a great show. Thanks, Marty. Call again. Thank you. Thank you for your call. 877960, or you can text us at 772-49730 and 4-h that was holding, I believe,

West Palm Beach give us a call back sometimes we get tied up a little longer with some of the calls than we anticipate again that number is 877 960 9960 your car is using the battery

even when it's just sitting there right isn't like I mean we've talked about this before like your remote it's like it's always pinging your remote it's not well there's there's memory being kept alive on all the computers so they it does use a bit of the battery power the whole time And you can turn that feature off, can't you, if you know your car is not going to be used for three weeks?

The only way to do that is disconnect the battery completely. Okay. I've heard you give that advice before. Hey, Stu, Guy Larrabee's asking, how can I find out about manufacturer-to-dealer incentives at any given time? Good question. You can't. You can't. A while back, I believe TrueCar listed those on their site.

And Automotive News used to do it a long time ago, but the dealers, the dealers. The dealers don't want you to know about that, and that's their profit. Customer incentives are advertised, and you should at the very least inform yourself, because they won't even tell you about direct-to-customer incentives, and when you come in to buy a car, they'll make you think that that is their discount when it's really offered by Honda or Nissan or whatever, and you think they're being nice, that money is yours. And when you buy the car and sign out and sign all the papers, you sign a paper that you don't even know you sign that said, I assign all rebates and incentives to the dealers.

So it's pretty sneaky. It doesn't hurt to ask, and you could probably get maybe, Kelly Blue Blook. Well, I want to, Edmins might have information, but I think Edmonds, when you do, when you do price out of card, admins used to, but it's tough. like you said, they keep that close to the vest. We do not want to make this a commercial. Some dealers will disclose exactly where the discounts come from. We are one of them. It'll show like Earl Stewart's discount and then Toyota Cash incentive.

And that's itemized separately. So you know who is discounting the car and who is not. See, the incentive is looked at differently by the dealers. Dealers look at the incentive not as a price reduction, but a profit increase. So they come in, you come in to buy a car. car, if they have money coming from Chevrolet, $1,000, and you don't know about it, they can give you a $1,000 discount, and you think they're being a nice guy, but they're selling you the car, it's ticker price, MSRP.

So we might have, that, that might happen in the mystery shopping report today. Yeah, I'm, I used to be on the dealer council for Toyota, and one of the biggest arguments always was when we have the dealer council meeting with the factory, they say, okay, we're going to come up with some incentives. What do you want to have? Do you have customer incentives or do you want to have a dealer incentive? They call it dealer cash.

All the hands go out, dealer cash, dealer cash. Nobody wants customer incentives because the customer might find out about it. They don't want you to find out about the incentives. So there you go. All right. It's anonymous feedback. Here is somebody who was not pleased with our grading of Kagan Honda.

We missed shop them a while back. Regarding your mystery shop of Kagan Honda, 2,000 miles is a little pregnant. Undisclosed is a lie. New is a lie. These alone are enough. Broken in questionably. Paint scratch by wrong washing and buff to correct the clear coat,

maybe more. This is kind of like a free form thought sort of a comment, but they're basically saying we gave them an A. They sold a car that had some miles on it. It was disclosed as a demo. But they said this is a response. you mr. Stewart but this is not a new car demos aren't new and that was their their issue so I read that you know what happened in my mind of the

time my clouded mind of the time I was thinking in terms of technically it was a new car and that shame on of you know on Florida or maybe it's a federal law I don't think so it's a state law that says that as long as you don't title the car it's a new car so this car had 2,000 miles on it that doesn't make it a used car. The car had never been titled. And there is a Florida law that says if you have a car with miles on that's been driven, let's say I sell a car to Rick and Rick drives a car for a thousand miles, brings it back, says I don't want and I give Rick his money back. I have to disclose to the next buyer of that car that I did sell the car to Rick, although I still titled it as a new

car. So there's a, there's a shadowy, shady difference between a new car and a car that's been driven. He could have driven the car for 100,000 miles. And if I take it back and never titled it, I could sell it to Stouffer as a new car. So, the technicality to me, I agree with the anonymous feedback. I should have been harder on Coggin, and that should have been disclosed more than it was. It was a bait and switch, and I should have been. looked at it that way. Here's another one. I guess a lot of car dealers in Florida that deal with senior citizens that aren't informed

like a lot of people are today. It's easy to rip them off, so sad. And you've identified, there are several classes of car dealer victims, you know, not to infantilize anybody, but senior citizens are probably the most susceptible group, especially, you know, people who have lost their husband or their wife and they haven't a car shopped alone before. And so, yes, and it sucks. They are definitely a target by dealers.

Yeah, medically, I had a call yesterday from a man that had diabetes, and he went in by himself to buy a car, and he was feeling really bad, and I think he hadn't had his insulin or whatever the situation was, and he ended up taking a car home he didn't want to buy. And I think we were able to help him, I knew the owner of the dealership, and I told him to play that card, and I think it worked. But, yeah, these salespeople are paid big, fat commissions, and they don't care if you're coming on a walker, and you have diabetes or you even dementia.

It's just terrible things that happen to the seniors in South Florida, and I guess all over. You're victims, and they take advantage of you, and that's just too bad. Salespeople get intimidated when they see a 40-year-old attorney coming in, you know, ready to negotiate and go to town with them. And they see a very sweet old couple walking in, and they start to salivate. Yeah, when I first started on the business, we were afraid of pipe smokers. And pipe smokers, because they think too much, you know. They say, yeah, what do you think about this price and they go puff, puff on the pipe? Can I let our listeners know that you yourself were a pipe smoker?

You know, speaking of being taken advantage of, I didn't mention this earlier in the show, but let's talk about the Attorney General for a minute or two. And as you well know, each state designates an agency to handle, you know, the consumer complaints, fraud, deception. Oh, geez. Continue as if nothing. On for business practice. I drop my headphones.

I'm trying to adjust my face mask. typically the state's attorney general investigates all of this and I just like to encourage all of you your voice has to be heard we can't carry it all right here at Earl on cars and you can be a big help to us give Ashley a call 850 414 3,300 and that's attorney Ashley Moody okay while you're still getting your Oh, I think that's going to work. Earl has now readjusted the straps on his mask. I think he looks good.

I think that's good. I need a larger pair of ears. I'm having a problem myself. Rick has noticed. Your ears are cute. You don't need larger ears. We're going to go to John in Palm City. Hey.

Good morning, John. I'm having a question for Rick. Thank God, all new car manufacturers are made better than in the past. We don't have any. effective manufacturers that we don't want to say don't buy their cars. But in all the years that Rick has been repairing

cars, especially over 25 years, did he ever have an automobile either on his own or at a dealership that he just gave up and said I can't fix that. I think it should be either hold sale off or maybe even go to the scrap yard. It was ever a frustrating

problem that he just gave up on. no there you go well how about the most difficult how did you ever get to the point where you just said well I know you've had to call the manufacturer yeah I'm sure I mean the true answer to that is I've never yet hit a car that I couldn't fix if someone was willing to put the money into it just to keep throwing parts because unfortunately there are sometimes where you hit a point where you have to give the customer, you know, if a car's out of warranty, I've had many, many times that I have gone to the service rider and said, advise this customer to take this car and go get rid of it.

Do not fix it. It's not worth putting the money even into diagnosing it to try to find out what's going on. Or I've also had newer cars where we've had a point where we just said, all right, we need to stop working on this at our level, buy this car back and send it up to the engineers and let them fix it and use it as a training car at a school somewhere, but there's too many issues with this car that we should not be continuing. Not that we admitted failure, but that we hit a point where it simply would have taken far too long and far too many resources for us to have fixed it at our level, as opposed to sending it up to the next level.

And they're called lemons, and there's a name for that, and there's a law for that, and we actually have cars that we never, never could, fix, even with the factory's help. And we had to declare the car a lemon and refund the customer's money and give it back to the manufacturer. Well, the reason I bring that point is we don't have anything even close to a problem like that, even including the new cars that are made. They're

superior. If we follow the manufacturers mentioned on this show warranty and booklet, they will last indefinitely. Even though they cost more, it will last much longer than their past. Earl remembers the days when you needed a carbon-a-valed job, you needed a ring job, especially on the old Ford flatheads. We don't have anything even close to that today. But there is in history, and it's probably before Rick's time, the worst J.D. power, worst car ever made in history.

Does anybody want to guess what that is? Pencil? Wait, wait, I want to... It's a Ugo. It was made from 1985 to 1992. They built 141,000 cars. It was unbelievably bad. A good friend of mine lost his Ford dealership in Minneapolis, New York, because of that car.

He took into Ugo, and it tied up with warranty work, all his racks for the regular customers. And actually, that car, it got nailed really good in 1989. there was a terrible accident with a 31-year-old female, a nurse. She was killed in Michigan. Her car actually blew off the bridge by wind, and it plunged 17 feet down. She was killed outright. John, John, did you so lucky today?

The Ugo was a Fiat. Did you know that? What's that? The Ugo was a Fiat. People didn't know that was that. I didn't know that myself. No, I didn't. It was a Fiat 1-28.

I was a Fiat dealer. back in the day. And the Fiat 128 was just a terrible car. And the difference between the Fiat 128 is that the Ugo was manufactured in Russia, but it was Fiat design, engineered, and the Russians produced it. They probably had Fiat 1-28s and Ugo's coming out of the same plan in Russia. Well, I didn't even know that, so it just showed you to learn something every day. But I just want to mention that we don't have any cars even, I mean when Hyundai and Kia came in, they weren't the greatest quality, but today, as they all even mentioned, very high standards. It's a completely different car.

And we are very fortunate today. We pay more, but the cars are built to last as long as we maintain them, and we do the maintenance that's required. And the oil today is superior. Even our gasoline that goes into the engine is superior. and we don't need the tune-ups that we did in the past, and just in general, the cars are made to last that we take care of them. Absolutely. It's amazing the progress,

and service departments all around the country are dying because there's nothing to fix anymore there. I don't mean that literally, but you compare the amount of customer service that a car dealer was able to have in the service department the number of times repairs and maintenance to 30 or 40 years ago, night and day. One of the reasons is so dangerous going to a service department

of dealership now is they have to kind of invent things to fix and repair and maintain. So you have to be careful. Can you just imagine old J.D. Power calling it the worst call in history? Earl, do you have any idea what finally happened? Did they all go to scrapyards or they go to other countries? Where did the U.S. wind up?

They probably are still in other countries and it was such a joke. They tried to get me to take a Ugo dealership. They came in, and they were so desperate for cash, Hugo, when they started out, they wanted me to order one year's supply of Ugoes ahead of time. I laughed him out of my office, and there was a Dodge dealer called Fred Hosak on Okachobi Boulevard that I guess it was desperate, and he took on the Ugo franchise. Now, the final laugh was on, if Fred had the final laugh,

because it turned out that the Ugoes were so cheap that people, were buying them in spite of the fact they fell apart and they had these huge discounts and rebates and the warranty was incredible because they had to put a huge warranty on it otherwise you wouldn't buy it but the hugo dealers were making money hand over a fist selling this junk and they would fall apart before they got home but they couldn't sleep at night well just thank god those days are gone forever you're right now manufacturers today have fine automobiles exactly thank you john i tell you we love you and thanks for calling uh and please call again next week always great to hear from you okay

877 960 9960 or you can call uh text us at 772 497 6 i 3 0 this mask i know it's you guys we need to get you some good straps on this mask how we have more anonymous feedback um um um i'm I bought my 2020 Rav4 from you in June, Earl. Less than a month later, I got a screw in my tire. When I brought it in, I was told it wasn't repairable because it was too close to the sidewall. I was livid. How is it possible to get a flat so soon after buying it?

This is a new car. Your shop replaced it and did not charge me, but the point is it never should have happened. Your son, Josh, was involved, and he said it was possible to get the damage at any time, regardless of when I purchased it that is crap what are the odds well we just have a huge amount of construction in Florida I don't need to tell you that maybe huge amount of construction everywhere the roads

are terrible there's just a lot of road repair construction screws and nuts and bolts and bottles and things are around and to me it's a miracle we don't have more of that we see a huge amount of road hazard

stuff I normally We normally don't recommend road hazard insurance, but in certain parts of Florida, it might not be a bad investment to buy an insurance policy. You know, when you were reading that text, anonymous feedback or whatever, the thought popped into my mind. Why don't the tire manufacturers do something to design a tire that makes it not necessary to replace the tire if you got a hole in the sidewalk? You still go out of business. You know what I mean? Why? Because it seems silly.

They got to sell more tires. Well, yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. Rick? One of the new technologies, and I would, oh, I am waiting for this one, airless tires. They're going to be specially 3D printed and designed to where the inside of the tires actually a honeycomb design that can flex.

Like the Mars rover tires. They don't have pneumatic tires on it. And what will happen is when the tread wear, when the tread finally wears out on the tire, they'll simply take and replace it with a new one, or they'll take your wheel off at certain shops, they would reprint new material onto the wheel, recut new treads, and put it back on and boom. I can't wait. Going down the road again. I can't wait.

I have another thought on thing. Let me ask Rick this. When you inflate your tire, when you under inflate your tire, the sidewalls, right closer to the ground or on the ground so if you inflate your tire more does that raise your side walls so it would be okay you get interior can but what will happen then is the center of the tire okay tread is going to wear up much faster isn't there a happy balance between the two in other words we recommend properly inflated tires if you carry an extra five pounds over and above the tire manufacturer the car manufacturer the car manufacturers

recommendation then you'll have you know you'll have less of your side wall riding on the end it doesn't ride as close but the problem is that nails and screws can come up at almost any angle okay it's and it's when you're turning a corner okay say you're doing a right-hand turn your tires are getting close to the edge of the road which is where all that debris is so you see sidewall's peers like halfway up the side wall I've seen it yes okay I still think the tire manufacturers ought to do something about it and come up with a tire that is less vulnerable to sidewall penetration.

It doesn't seem right. You can just screw in the tread, and you can fix the tire. It's as good as new. And it gets on the sidewall, you've got to buy a whole tire. It doesn't sound right. I just think that when we finally get that technology for the airless tires, that they can 3D print. Imagine this, too.

How many dumps are there out there right now with millions of old tires sitting in them? and just sitting there and they can't even recycle them properly well that will be great to do if you had a 3D printer at the dealership you wouldn't have to stock the tires you know how much space those tires take up

you do and so do you but great observation we're going to go to Mark who's calling us from Palm Beach Gardens good morning Mark good morning Angie Earl Stu and Rick hey I hope everybody's having a good morning I'm glad you made it through

Well, yeah. Anyway, I've got a technical question for Rick. Some of you know, I was in an auto business for years. Anyway, I have two adult children that seem to prefer to ask others rather than their father about issues with their cars. I guess they build trust otherwise. I don't know why. But anyway, an issue came up yesterday. yesterday about check engine light and my daughter has a key as fordage it uh she's got 90,000 miles on and she was telling me she says you know what dad it's strange that you know just as I hit that

90,000 mark my check engine light came on now what can be wrong she has problems with the gas cap you know not being tight retightening the light goes off but um Rick question is as I told her and I want to make sure I'm right that your check engine light can come on for various issues, you could have a problem, but don't they also come on to kind of remind you that, you know, you have a service coming up or, you know, to consult your manufacturer's handbook to see if, you know, there's certain periods of mileage that certain things need to be done in order to keep the car running to, you know, it's full capacity. So I want to kind of inform my daughters more of as,

especially since my youngest daughter drives my car, my 2017, Camry, that she needs to ask me and not other people, if I know what I mean. But you can give myself an education, maybe a lot of the other listeners, about check engine light basics. There was an old rumor that the check engine light was set up to come on at certain mileage, but it's not true. the service engine, which is your maintenance reminder, will come on every 5,000 miles

or whatever the manufacturer has set it for. But that's a different light than the check engine light. And the check engine light comes on anytime that the computer actually detects a problem. So it can come on for 100 different sensors acting up can cause that computer to turn on the check engine light and then once you fix it, then it will go away. Now, what about an intermittent light to come to on-off, on-off?

That means you've got... Isn't that also a potential problem? Well, you could have an intermittent problem, like, say, if there's a loose fitting on one of the gas tank's assembly parts on the emissions part, that is leaking one day, and then the temperature changes and it seals itself back up and it doesn't leak again, the computer will turn the light back off after a while. And I've also seen sensors that sometimes they'll get a little lazy, and one day they won't be working quite as efficiently, and it'll turn the light on. You clear the code, and the light may not come back for six months to a year.

Right. Well, we've got one Toyota and one Gia in our family. And as far as expense, let's say we have a nuisance light, that does, like, what you just said, does a computer store codes for that on and off? Or I've heard the old story, you know, my light's been on, but as soon as I drive into the service lane, the light goes out, and, you know, the customer sometimes is sold, not necessarily at ESD, but, you know, at other dealerships. Well, we can't do anything because the light's not on right now. Is there stored codes?

Quite often the code is still stored in memory, and we can check it out. but if the light's not on, we usually say at that point, don't spend your money on it. Uh-huh. Okay. And if you wanted to come in to see about diagnosing a light, what is the average, you know, the average expected on the high side for a diagnostic charge? What would you use? An hour, hour and a half. What do you guys?

Probably about an hour. About an hour. But if you want the easy way, go over to AutoZone. They'll come out and they'll pull the code for free. and then you just look the code up on Google and it'll tell you what you're looking for or buy your own tools, which I go. Yeah, that too.

Yeah, I see this day you advertise those. It's kind of a very inexpensive bee. Yeah, like 50 bucks you can get it fixed after it's already been diagnosed, huh? Yep. Interesting. Very interesting. Okay, well, I don't know my daughter's listening.

How many daughters do you say you have? Well, living with me, I have one daughter, two granddaughters, and two female cats. I got all sorts of estrogen flying around my house. That's exactly the way to put it. There's a lot of estrogen flying around. Sounds like my house. Be brave.

Hang in there. Don't give in. Don't give up. My daughters are 39 and 37. I have 3935. Uh-huh. Well, without a dot, everybody knows everything. Right?

Oh, yes. My three daughters, they all know everything. Right. And, you know, Pops knows nothing. Oh, no. I know nothing. All right. Thanks for the info, and we'll see at ISC in the morning.

It's always great to hear from you. Thank you, Mark. We look forward to seeing you. If you didn't read Earle's column this week, it's a great one. It's car dealers are angry at you because you want to buy new cars for lower prices. Go to Erwan cars. All of his columns are there, and you're going to find something that interests you. And this one is amazing that he's just written.

And they're all amazing, recovering car dealer. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay, Stu. All right. We got one coming here. It says, Earl, Uyghos were made in Yugoslavia, not Russia. Duh.

You're right, I'm sorry. And then he followed with a duh. It was Serbic. Anonymous feedback. It's good. We talk about this a lot of them. show about getting... Yugoslavia was a communist country.

It was. So was Russia. Hi, my local Toyota dealership said the only service Toyota. Could the dealer refuse to service a Lexus? The nearest Lexus dealership is about one and a half hours away from me. Your local Toyota dealer

is a fool. Right. I think it makes money. He should love to service Lexus. It's a dump. Just a Toyota with a high price tag. And also, there's a lot of cars that are very similar. So most

Toyota dealers love to service other cars. They can't do warranty work except on Toyota's. A toilet dealer can't even do warranty work on Lexus. But let me tell you, Lexus owners out there, and your luxury car, Infinity, take it to a Nissan

dealer. Lexus, take it to a toilet dealer. A cord, take it to a Honda dealer. If you tell you, I leave out Cadillac, take it to a Chevrolet dealer. If you have an electric, Yeah, accurate. Yeah, that's what I meant to say.

Take it to a Honda dealer. The low price spread charges less. The service department are considerably less. I'm going to say half of all of the maintenance items, you can get your oil change at a toilet dealer for half of what the Lexus dealer charge you. Just think about a tire rotation. Why do you need to spend $150 for a tire rotation, a Lexus dealership, when there's no parts involved?

Exactly. And that's half of your service in the first few years. Yeah. And Rick, back me up on this, right? Under the skin, Toyota's and Lexuses are either identical or extremely similar. Yep, exactly. Absolutely. Excuse me, we're going to go to Scotty, who is calling us from Jupiter.

Good morning, Scotty. Good morning, team. My name is Scotty LaRouche. I had a question about the DeLorean. Is there another alternate resource besides Cipotony and his time travel? Well, I think the new lexas do have, you have to go to 88 miles per hour, though. Actually, you need to get to 888 on the new Lexus. Oh, that's right.

It's a much tougher situation. So if I get the new Lexus, then I would be able to time travel without the plutonium altogether. Right, but your flex capacitor has to be in good working order. And you're going to need at least three ounces of unobtainium. That's right. No, of course. I have the flux of ambassadors. Perfect condition. Maint condition. Excellent. Glad we could help. Thanks a lot.

Okay. Let's move on to another anonymous feedback. This was, Earl is completely bewildered. He's not remembering back to the future. That was a prank caller. Prank caller. Prank caller. But unfortunately, you got shut down by the nerds. Come on, yeah. I'm a moving nerd. You're not going to get that over me, man. Okay, so this is in reference. We were talking about special incentives from new car dealers if you're financing versus paying cash. And the anonymous feedback says, I would think that if you have the cash, go ahead and finance for the best price, then pay it off in a month with your cash.

Now, it's a very good point, but make sure you're aware of what the incentive is. In some cases, for example, in Toyota, there's a cash incentive. if you pay a lower price in lieu of a low financing rate. In that case, that wouldn't make sense. However, some manufacturers will offer a lower price if you finance with them. In that case, absolutely. There's a period of time before you can pay it off, but if you pay it off, then you get the advantage of the lower price.

And if you have the cash, go ahead. And you can't forget the huge penalty you pay when you prepay an auto loan. Right. So it's called the Rule 78. It's not a pro rata. So if you owe $4,000 in interest over maybe a 60-month contract and you drive it for one month and then cancel the finance contract, you don't get back a pro rata amount on your interest costs. They glom up a good percentage of the interest that you owed for the whole four years. So you really get screwed when you early pay on a finance contract.

Now, with 0% interest, you know, incentivized 0% interest, really that makes a whole lot of sense you're paying, in a lot of cases, the interest is so low like money is free. In some cases, money is free. And, you know, and it makes more sense to keep all your cash and pay zero interest on a loan, just an installment. Hey, Stu, I've got one from Rico West here. It says, hello from Toronto. Does Toyota have a program similar to Hyundai, where a put a... potential buyer can rent a new vehicle for up to three weeks for an extended test drive, and if you buy, they refund the cost of the rental.

Not from Toyota, but a smart Toyota dealer will do that. We're a smart Toyota dealer, so yes, it's a tribe before you buy. Manufacturers encourage it, and I'm not sure, I know Toyota doesn't have an official program, but it's definitely encouraged. And if they have what it's called, it's a Toyota rent a car. So a lot of toy deals will have a fleet of brand new cars that they use for rental, and that's what they would use. So you'd use it, make sure you like it.

And that goes along with our advice we give on the show. If you can do that, that's so much better than a one-hour or a 15-minute test drive. Be careful and look at the fine print. Because Hertz, for example, has that on rental cars. We were shopping Hearst's rental car prices, and we found out that the cars you bought from Hertz with a try before you buy, drive the car for 30 days or whatever and then bring it back

the rental cost was not was high and the purchase price was higher than the cars that didn't have the Hertz drive before you buy so there's no free lunches so when someone says I'm going to give you the car for three weeks or whatever and if you don't like it bring it back

read the fine print there's a lot of gotchas in there right well I think yeah if you buy if you rent the car and you don't buy it then you pay the rental fee if you don't then what you pay it would be deducted. And you might even pay a higher rental fee than you pay for a normal rental fee. They think these things.

When you drive a car, a new car, the car depreciates. And if I give Rick a car to drive for three weeks and he tears the car up and he gets a bunch of miles on it, they probably got fine print on that too so they could get you that the car didn't have what it should have and then they charge you before he can bring it back. So in general, rule of thumb, stay away from the trial. before you buy. It's just a way to get you in the door, and then when you do redefine print, you're not

going to probably go for it, and you'll either buy a car or not buy a car, but it got you in the door, and that's the reason they advertised it. That's right. Here's a great question. That's from Bob up in Maryland. Do service writers start as technicians?

No. The answer is no, but it's a good idea if they did. Well, they should, and we have, and we have had service advisors that had tech experience. No, service advisors are salesmen, and they learn on the job, and a lot of them are very knowledgeable, and some of them aren't so knowledgeable, to survive as a service salesman, you've got to be a good salesman, and that's the reason you have to be careful because

they're paid on commission, and an honest person can work on commission, and everything's fine. A person that's not so honest, or maybe he's just too hungry. I mean, when you need money really, really bad, and you have a customer coming, a little old lady comes into the service drive, and she says, please fix my car and gives you a blank check, and you're getting 10% of everything you sell her, suddenly she needs $8,000 worth of work. So be careful, really be careful in the service drive. everybody's on commission in a car dealership truth here's a good one um this texter uh wants to ask i want to ask about signing a binding arbitration agreement i did not sign it and after that the

leasing process went no further are they fair to the buyer or leasing customer upon further reading auto dealers are not bound by this to the manufacturer true or false does your business require one no you can do uh at our dealership we don't have an arbitration agreement. We're the only car dealer that I know. If there anybody's out there, car dealers, said you do not have the arbitration agreement and the fine print on your installments, on your buyer's order, let me know. But virtually every car dealer, as far as I know, except us, has that. And it takes away your right of a trial by your peers, of your right in court, of your right to sue.

One of the most important rights, I don't like lawyers either. I like some lawyers, but... We like our lawyers. I don't like the way the legal thing is in the United States. But your right to be able to sue when someone does your wrong is an American right. And it should be when the fine print for the arbitration thing is signed,

you can no longer sue the car dealer. Terrible. That's right. You wrote an article on it called Cardiolers have taken away your right to sue. You can find that at earluncars.com and it has a lot more detail on that. But yeah, the quick answer, no, it's not fair to the consumer. It's designed to keep the auto dealer immunized from his bad behavior.

And by the way, Florida has another law. This is unique, other than all the dealers have in the arbitration agreement, they have a law in Florida that if you get wronged by a car dealer, you have to write the car dealer within 30 days before, before you can sue the car dealer. And you have to, you have the, they enumerate somewhere, I have that page read it out,

they enumerate all the things that you have to cover in the letter. And you have to be specific, and if you don't dot your eye and cross your T and send that letter, you can't sue the car dealer. So you're screwed by the arbitration agreement and this letter that you have to write.

In fact, if you don't write the letter, you can't even go to arbitration. and nobody knows about that and what you said about dotting your eyes and crossing your teeth you leave out one little detail it's all over and that leads me to mention

to the folks that are listening Attorney General the Attorney General Ashley Moody you know although we expose a lot of car dealers and there's some great car dealers don't get me wrong

they're taking there are too many today taking advantage of the consumer and we need your help we can't do it alone so i always remind everybody every week to give ashley moody a call that's our attorney general and hopefully you'll be able to reach her at 850 441 3300 that's attorney general ashley moody all right we got one last text and we're all caught up very simple one is hand sanitizer bad for your steering wheel i'd say if you have a leather wrap steering well i think it would could damage

the leather. Yeah, I'd make sure you rub it in very, very well with the sanitizer. Make sure you're not still damp when you grab your steering wheels. Yeah, it's mainly alcohol and alcohol will dry out and it's a solvent too, so it dies, anything else in there, it'll muck it up.

You shouldn't drink. You don't want to drink hand sanitizer either. No, I sent you a funny meme. You guys look at it after the show about hand sanitizer. CHJ-229 says, Earl, good morning. I just wanted you to know I was shopping for a used car for my daughter. I found one.

I saw a car that I liked for about $5,000. Then found out the dealer fee was another $1,099.99, which is crazy. When will this madness stop? The dealership was Hodges Mazda in Jacksonville. Yeah, that's one of the really nasty things about the hidden fees. They had the same hidden fee, whether you were buying a $40,000. dollar new car or a $5,000 used car and to charge somebody 20% of the sale price of a product for a meaningless hit fee is even worse than charging the

thousand dollars on a $40,000 car so it's crazy I mean we know dealers in Florida that have dealer fees up to $3,000 theoretically they could buy a $3,000 car off that dealers used car lot and pay another $3,000 and head and fees. What a joke. Theoretically. It probably happens every day. It happens every day. You're exactly right. Let's go to, I see we're really running close to the mystery shopper me report.

Let's go to, we're going to take our last call. And that's going to be Roadrunner, Steve, from Boynton. Haven't heard from you for a while. How you doing, Steve? Very good. I was up at offleash.com. last week with a friend of mine and right in the front office

they had a big bulletin board of dealerships that were charging those crazy prices dealer fees they had one I see Nissan as was that 99 good deal special

right $999 then they had one I should have picked the name their dealer fee was anywhere from zero dollars to five thousand dollars wow so my question is let's say you're going to finance the car and that deal is a thousand dollars are you financing that thousand dollars also oh sure it's part of the price that's what it's part of the dealer's profit and uh you're paying uh six

percent sales tax on it's it's insane now now suppose you just say okay here's your thousand dollar deal with sweet because i don't know any better would they do that or they would say oh no you can't do that you got to finance yeah you don't win that argument because you're playing in their game the best thing to do is to ignore these dealer fees and look at the total price and if you're looking at the car negotiate by getting competitive prices from at least two other dealers and say that way they can either lower the price price for $1,000 or $2,000, if they want to call a part of that price or their dealer fee, let them call it that. As long as they've got the lowest price, you don't care.

But once you start arguing with the dealer fee, they'll win the argument. They're experts, their pros, they've heard the same objection so many times. They'll have your head spinning by the time you get through with the argument. And Offleas Only, by the way, we've had the founder of it on the show recently. but bear in mind, off-lease-only also has $500 in dealer fees. Yeah, Mark Fisher is the founder and still a significant owner of All-Lease Only. He was on the show, called into the show, and he's lobbying right now, state law in Florida to put a cap on the dealer fee of $500. He already charges $500, but you're right, the $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 dealer fees are immoral and insane.

Sure. Like you just said, if you bought a car for $3,000, you're going to pay an extra $3,000. Double the price. Yeah. Crazy, yeah. Okay, thank you for listening and keep up the good word. Thank you, Roadrunner. You know, it's funny. The argument against us back of the day from all the car dealers who, you know, when we were attacking the dealer fee, was like, just pay attention to the bottom line price. Well, we have the same argument. The problem comes in advertising when you can. list the car artificially lower by $3,000, $1,000, then they're actually going to sell the car for it. That's our problem.

You waste your time arguing about it. I just use that as a total. Acknowledge that you know they have the hidden fee, if you want to, and just say, okay, your total price, including all your hidden fees and your dealer and sold accessories is this. I'm going to take this price to your competition, and then I'm going to take it to another competitor and maybe another competitor, and whoever gives me the bottom line out-the-door price best that's where I'm buying the car you know knock yourself out on your dealer fees you put as many in there as you want because I'm not going to buy from somebody that's going to

overcharge what your competitor will sell me the car for that's right one last quick and honest feedback is uh it's relevant to the mr shopping report just came in says if the manufacturing is off if the manufacturer is offering a cash rebate is it still possible to negotiate more off than the rebate and the answer is yes the rebates no skin off the dealers to he's not helping you out at all. You've got to get a dealer discount along with the rebate. You know, people think in terms of MSRP, which is a good thing if you can compare the same MSRP with different dealers when you're getting your competitive prices.

But remember that the dealer invoice is actually a good profit from most cars that are sold. The average dealer would love to sell your car at his invoice price because his invoice is lower than MSRP, but it's not as cost. Typical invoice will have thousands of dollars of profit billed in. So you can't play the game. You've got to start somewhere. It's a good idea to start with MSR

because it's standardized. Be sure it's a manufacturer's suggested price and then negotiate with at least three dealers. I've said that so many times. But it's the bottom line. We can just cancel the show right now. Exactly. We'd have a recording going on.

One more popped in if we got time, might as well. How can a customer be sure that a new car purchase won't have the fuel pump recalled or is it a gamble? The answer is if it, a new car, if it has the recall at the time, they can't sell it to you. If it comes later on, you're right, it's a gamble. It can happen. You know, in a way, recalls are good things. I mean, the fact is, as good that the manufacturers are very sensitive and they are recalling their own cars,

if you go back enough years, they have recalls, but they just ignore them. and good good luck I was a Pontiac dealer years ago I sold 50 cars to budget rent a car one time Pontiac Venturas and the owner of the franchise there called me up he says Earl he said I had one of my cars I rented the car out and the plug came out the gas tank and my customer came out and his car sitting in a flood and a pool of gasoline and he says he said

have you ever heard of that happening so I called Pontiac they said I've never heard of that happening so I called Pontiac they said I've never heard of that. We've never had anything like that happened. Bring it in and fix it. So I called the guy back and he says, everything's fine. Long story short, 25 plugs dropping out later.

Pontiac finally said, oh, yeah, I guess we do have a few of these, and they recalled the car. So recalls are good things when they're proactive by the manufacturers, not from a quality standpoint, but it's good the fact that they fess up and admit it now

instead of pretending like they don't exist. Okay, we've got to get to our Mr. Shopping report. Mystery Shop of Naplesden's North Lake of Kia. We have an exciting mystery shop for you today in addition to shopping one of our favorite targets that Mapleton Auto Group. We're also introducing a brand new mystery shopper, Agent Lightning. Very exciting.

Very exciting. Female Agent Lightning. Agent Lightning is still technically a trainee into the tutelage of Agent Thunder. Love that, Thunder and Lightning. Her first mission was done in tandem with her mentor, Thunder. Of course, Agent Lightning's identity will remain secret, but we can't say that she's a local woman

who is highly experienced in both sales and customer service. Nancy and I know her personally. She is not employed by my dealership, nor does she have any connection to the car business. Now, this is refreshing and good once she gets the experience, because if you're in the business, you're a little bit jaded, you're not, you can't be totally objective. Agent Thunder, by the way, was new to the car business. And so he learned on the job, but he didn't grow up or sell cars.

It's really good to come from the outside because you see things as a typical shopper car buyer does. And that's very healthy. As I say, we picked her, Nancy and me, based on we knew she was smart. and we knew she had very high energy and really a great personality. I mean, she's really an amazing person. Agent Thunder's assessment of his protease after this is that she will become a great missing shopper. He reported that she's a fastener, fearless, too important qualities.

Fearless, I underline that in my notes here. You've got to be fearless. It's tough to walk into. I mean, it's like being a spy coming into a country where you're a countersplied. It's dangerous, and you've got to be cool. You're going to maintain control at all times. Agent Thunder and Agent Lightning's target this week

was, as I said, Napleson, North Lake Kia. We probably shoped Naples more than any other. I couldn't give me an exact amount, but I'm guessing over a dozen. I'd say probably 50 over all the years. He's got a lot of dealerships. We keep coming back to Naples because he's so good at being bad. Stewart loves that phrase, and I do too.

He's so good at being bad. I use it every time we should. Yeah, I know. I know. I know I've used this quote a few times, blah, blah, blah, but I'm using it again today. And here's another one that Stu loves, because he's a Star Trek guy. Obi-Wan Kenobi, you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. I love that. A more wretched hive of scum and villainy.

I'm not exaggerating, maybe just a little we have seen some of the worst behavior and tactics at Naples, Naples, Naval Deluge. Back in May, we shoped Naples, Crusher, Judge, Jeep Ram, Store, North Lake Boulevard. On that mission, we uncovered the Holy Grail of unobtainable rebates. This is almost like we're making it up, and we printed out a copy to be sure that I'm just not saying this. Rebate qualifications. That's how many they are. I'm going to read them to you.

But we have never seen that many. Yep. And this is really a Guinness Book of World record. To buy a car, to get the advertised price, you have to be a member of the National Realtor Association. You've got to be in the military. You've got to have a friends and family, an employee advantage thing. You've got to be, I guess, a member of the family of Napleton. I don't know. Truck owner conquest. You have to have a truck, non-fluor Chrysler Conquist. Either you are you know why it's not bad

you're one or the other pull ahead program conquest have no idea what that is non-prime retail bonus we have no idea what that was TDM certification mailer who knows automobility offer

yeah we didn't like that one that was if you had a disability and you needed a special disability equipment on your car first responder you had to be a fireman or a cop 10 virtually impossible quantification. Anyway, it's worth noting that on that mission,

Agent Thunder reported that no one in the dealership was wearing a face mask. And this was May, so it wasn't like early on. This is May, yeah. Nor practicing social distancing. So when we shop and Naples a dealership, we can expect to have a remarkable experience. It's never born.

Agent Thunder and Lightning were instructed to portray themselves as a couple looking for a new Kia Sorrento. plan was for them to put up a little resistance, put up little resistance, and to make the salesperson operate under the understanding that they were taking the vehicle home that day. So here's a report, Agent Lightning and I arrived to the dealership, I'm pretending like I'm Agent Thunder, at 10 a.m. We quickly observed that most employees had masks on, that's good, but several were wearing them on their chins, that's disconcerting, exposing their mouths and

noses. We were greeted right away by a salesperson, and we introduced himself as Charles. Charles was wearing his men's properly.