Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.03.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Napleton's Northlake Hyundai

Episode Date: September 3, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning revisits the local Hyundai "bad-boy" dealer to see how much over sticker they will charge for a new 20212 Hyundai Elantra that is on the lot. 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. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back. I mean, we're finally back. This is live, and we're returning from our COVID adventure. Nancy Stewart and myself, we're out for the past couple weeks. and we're back. That's the good news. The bad news is Rick Kearney, a key member of the show, is going to have to operate remotely today. Rick Kearney, our certified diagnostic master technician that can answer just about anything on the electronics or computerization or whatever you want to call it.

Used to be mechanics of your automobile vehicle. He'll be available by phone, and you folks who have got Rick Kearney, technical questions about car, Of course, we'll try to answer them in the studio and ask your stew or I, but if it's a complicated one, we're going to have to go to the master. And Rick is standing by. We'll get your question, and then we'll actually bring Rick up on the air. He'll call in. We won't be able to have you and Rick on the phone at the same time. Of course, if it's a text message, that's not going to be a problem or Facebook or for that matter, YouTube.

Which reminds me, there are multiple ways. that you can reach Earl and Carr's and your questions are the lifeblood of this whole show. We try to tell you what you need to know, not what we think you should know, and the way we know what you want to know is the calls and the Facebook post and the YouTube's and the just regular text. The call-in number is 877-960-9960. Now, you're going to be hearing that a lot this morning. because, as I say, your calls are really what make the show.

And don't be timid. If you have a minute, just give us a call at area code 877-9-90-60-8-77-9-6-0-960. And a lot of people don't like to call, be live on the radio. It's a little nerve-wracking. It took me a while, and Nancy and Stu, and the rest of us to get used to it. But until you're a veteran, until you've done it week after week after week and year, every year it's a little bit nerve-wracking so if you prefer not to be live on the air we have a text number a text number is 772 497-6530 now Stu monitors

that and we will build a backlog and we will try to reach every text by the end of the show so you can text this at 772 497 747 6530, 772, 4976530. And of course we have our favorite, my favorite, I love this one, that's anonymous. You can use this venue to reach us, and we don't know who you are, where you are, anything about you. So you could be totally frank up and maintain your anonymity.

It's URL, it's a web address, and that address is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Fairly easy to remember your anonymous feedback altogether. Y-O-U-R-A-N-Y-M-O-U-S feedback.com. Your anonymous feedback.com. Stu monitors that. In fact, he's monitoring everything this morning. Rick normally monitors YouTube.

And that's a very popular way. Normally we say if you want to reach directly, well, reach Rick directly. Rick is probably monitoring at an own now. at home now. So we will call him if it's something we can't answer, technically, and that's just YouTube.com or slash hurlung cars. YouTube.com forward slash her along cars. Of course, Facebook.com forward slash hurlun cars. Multiple, multiple ways to reach us. Love to hear from you. Nancy and I have like a little pre-show meeting in the car on the way

It takes us about 20 minutes to get here. And we were just talking this morning about the irony of what we do. We try to explain to you how to be careful, how not to be ripped off, be taken advantage of when you're buying or leasing a car. Of course, the same thing applies to maintaining or repairing a car. And in the same breath, we realize here we are in this, call it what you will, COVID bubble, a worldwide crisis. I mean, the past two and a half years have been unlike any other in human history, not just American history. This is a worldwide issue. So it's affected everything.

The stock market, the hospitals, health care, there's not a facet of human existence that this hasn't affected. And, of course, the auto industry, and that's what we're all about here, manufacturing cars, buying cars, selling cars, we get into all of it. It's had a uniquely interesting negative effect for the buyer. It's become a seller's market. So the irony that Nancy and I were talking about, we're trying to tell you how to buy a car and be careful. In the same breath, we're saying, don't buy a car. It's not a good time to buy a car.

And then we have to admit that sometimes you just have to have a car. So that's what the show has become. how to be careful about and getting the best deal, the right car without being taken advantage of, knowing that you're going to pay a whole lot of money. You're going to pay

minimum of sticker price plus something, MSRP. Nobody out there is selling cars for below MSRP. And you're just trying to find the car you want at a reasonable price if you can call over sticker reasonable.

but that's what we're doing. And if you have to buy a car, then we'll talk to you about that and give you some tips. Used cars actually are coming down a little bit in price, and I've always thought that a used car was a better value

than a new car. If you look at return on your investment or what you buy for the money, used car, late model used car certified, checked out by your mechanic with a good Carfax report, it's a better value. And we recommend that prices are coming down and used cars.

Not so much in new cars. The supply is just so short that there are virtually no cars and dealer inventories. I'm a dealer. I have a Toyota dealership in North Palm Beach. And we don't have any cars in our inventory. We take orders on all of our cars. We sell them at MSRP. That's a lot of money for a car.

But it's the lowest price in our market. and we have over 1,000 cars in the order bank. It's very interesting to drive into our dealership and see nothing but employee parking and customer parking because there's no inventory. It's very convenient. It is, yeah. It is, yeah.

It's easy to find a parking place. So that's where we are. We're in, was it Disneyland, we're in fantasy land of car buying, car selling. The good news for the car dealers out there is they're getting wealthy. They're making record profits. manufacturers are making record profits.

That's because you're paying recordly high prices, and that's just a fact of life. So, as I said, please call 877-960-9-6960 for the regular telephone, Texas at 772-4976530, and, of course, Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

I'm going to introduce Nancy Stewart, and we've been quarantined together for two weeks. She's probably getting tired seeing me every day and I was getting tired of seeing her every day. It's nice to get out. So we finally tested negative for COVID a couple days ago. We're back in the studio. We're COVID-free. Our voices are a little raspy, but we'll do the best we can. Nancy is our female advocate, and she carries the banner for the ladies of the audience. She has a very special offer for you ladies. If you haven't called the show before, listen to what she has to say.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Here I am live in the studio. To what you said, that's 15 days quarantined. A long time. Maybe it was 16. Anyway, it was too long. Ladies and gentlemen, I have to tell you, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for listening to our reruns and all the phone calls

and all of the concerns that you had for us and how we were doing. So today we have a great show ahead. We have a great mystery shopping report. And we would appreciate it if you would stay with us the whole two hours. Today, again, we are going to offer the ladies $50 for the first two new lady callers. And, you know, I heard in my corner, moment. I've had a lot of telephone calls, but I have something to share with you. Have you heard this before? Ladies, women have it better today than they had 1950s. Hmm, backward thinking.

Wow. It's the 21st century, ladies. Well, if you're thinking, not everyone has gotten the memo, you're absolutely right. Give me a call. Give us a call. Let us know how you feel about that. 877 960, 9960. If you don't want to make a comment about my question, simply give us a call and say hi, $50 for the first two new lady callers. 877960 9960, and you can text us, as I all said, at 772-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. And I feel like I'm in the Grand Canyon.

Does anybody else feel that way? We have a double echo. Big empty spot over here. Oh, I just thought it was because Rick wasn't here. I feel it feels empty. If audio sounds good to me, I hope the listeners, we don't sound like. What do you think, Jonathan? Can that be fixed?

No? Maybe it's just my headphones? I don't hear it, no. You know. Okay. I'll try to keep up with everybody. It's a double conversation for me. Okay.

Stu Stewart is, did we talk about the special offer for the ladies? We did, but you know, I think we should mention it again. Absolutely. And I'll let you do the honors. Yeah, I said a lot of, every time we talk about this, I put myself in your shoes, meaning the listeners, and I say, that's not true. There's no such thing as a free lunch. There's no gimmicks. We're not trying to talk anybody into anything.

But if you're a woman, female, and it's the first time you call the show, we're going to send you check for 50 bucks. You don't even have to come up with any fascinating conversation. We just want you to call the show, kind of like breaking the ice. So if you're a woman, female listener out there, and you haven't called the show before, we'll send you a check for 50 bucks. You can give it to your favorite charity. You can give it to your children. You can give it to your husband.

We want to give you the money just to incentivize you. Because once you call and you find out it's not so difficult, and we will listen, and we will take your suggestions and problems. to the public and help. Maybe you'll call again. We're trying to build a female audience and Nancy has done an amazing job. We're just about 50-50 now. So $50 for the first two new female callers to repeat what Nancy just said. We have a Sue Stewart. I'm going to ask him to take the mic for a second. He is in charge of our mystery shopping report, which is arguably the most exciting feature of our show. At the end of the show, the last half hour, almost 20 minutes,

maybe of the last 20 minutes, we cover a secret investigation of a different car dealership somewhere in the United States, usually Florida, and usually South Florida. We've been out of the state several times. We have an undercover agent. Our favorite one right now is Agent Lightning, a female undercover agent, and she pretends to buy her lease a car. So, Stu, talk a little bit about the Mr. Shopping Reports and well first it's good to be back it feels like I haven't been in the studio in a long time and it's in traveling before you guys

got COVID so I think it's been like a month since I've been in here you're the only person I know who hasn't had COVID that's true I think that I probably just changed you no my brothers both my neither one of my brothers have gotten it yet mystery shopping report

I can't believe that we that we hadn't been back to our target this week and so long And this week, we mystery shopped Napleton Hyundai in North Lake Boulevard. And a year ago, more than a year ago, we focused on Napleton after he got busted by the FTC and had to pay that big $10 million fine. So we went to the stores of his that were accused of this, and they did the same thing. And this was like right, within a couple of weeks for this big news hitting.

So maybe it took some time for the word to trickle down. And so we went back one year. in five months later. And hey, we'll see how they do. I'm not going to give it away now. But it was fun to write one up again. Sorry for sending it at 1.30 in the morning last night, but that's when I'm at my best. 131. 131 a. We do have some text coming in. And I've one from Anne-Marie waiting for us if you want to get to the text. Yeah, let's do that. Okay. Anne-Marie, good morning. She says, good morning. Carvana is in hot water in Florida over tidal delays. Some customers waited over 100 days for their titles, and one customer waited 253 days for

their title. That Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles filed complaints against the dealer. Florida gave Carvana 21 days to respond and could revoke the company's dealer license in the state of Florida. Earl, you've been a dealer in Florida for decades now, so please explain. One, how hard is it for a dealer to do the title work? And two, how long does it usually take for a customer to receive their title?

I know you get tired of us complimenting you, Anne-Marie, but that is a fantastic question. Two things. Here's an angle, Anne-Marie, that you might not have known about. There's very few things you don't know about. Carvana is the enemy of the car dealer, the public company. They're like CarMax. They're a giant public corporation. They're new, but they're still trying to grow Carvana.

and the car dealers had their little fiefdoms. The car dealership is a protected business that allows exclusivity in selling new cars, and they also like to be kind of the only used car dealers too. So when a public company like CarMax comes along and really cuts into their business, they don't like it. And when Carvana came along, they don't like it either. So part of the attack on Carvana by the state

is actually the result of law. lobbying by the car dealers. To answer your question about getting the titles for cars, it is a problem. And it's a problem for almost all dealers. It's a problem for our dealership. I get a lot of calls from my customers and they say, I bought a car from out of state, I need my title, I've got to go back home, I've got to get a transfer, whatever the case may be.

And it can be difficult. There's a lot of paperwork involved. There's also the bureaucracy that we all see government bureaucracy. The Department of Motor Vehicles is not the most efficient government bureaucracy around. And there is a 30-day limit on getting a title. Sometimes you can't do it. Remember, you have the customer involved who has to participate in getting a new title. You have the dealership, accounting department and title clerk.

You have the Department of Motor Vehicles. You also have the lender, the lien holder. So it's a little bit of a complicated transaction. I think 30 days is unrealistic. I think it's a good average, and I think, in fact, you could probably have a good average of a week or 10 days. But to say it's against the law to take more than 30 days is totally unrealistic. And Carvana broke the law, and they were attacked and threatened with having their license taken away. Let me tell you something.

And at the same time, Carvana was doing that, there were 50 dealerships that were in worse violation than Carvana. Oh, yeah. So that's inside, insight on this Carvana thing. I think that, I think it's unfair. I think you need to treat all car dealers, including Carvana, the same way. And I think the 30-day rule on titles, there should be exceptions. They could probably say that you can have 5% exceptions or a 10%? percent exceptions. The law needs to be rewritten. It should not be simply, go technically,

if a car dealer takes more than 30 days to get you your title, he's violated the law. His license could be canceled. It's at risk. Hey, I think that's a very fair take at looking at this. I hadn't thought of it that way. I'll be honest with my original take was it was a little, you know, Schadenfreude. I was thinking like, hey, you guys wanted to play a car dealer, and now you're getting bogged down and what it takes to be a car dealer. Enjoy it. Because it is hard, because we've gone past 30 days lots of times. And usually there's a good reason for it. There's a complication.

The news is slanted, and you have to, we all know this. I mean, Marley, we're preaching to the choir. We have a very intelligent, listening audience. Anne-Marie is one of the most amazing examples. And so your sources of information need to be considered. Nancy was reading the automotive news the other day and pointed out a negative article on Elon Musk, and we know that the dealers hate Elon Musk.

the dealers hate Tesla. It's a threat to the franchise system. He's the number one luxury manufacturer in the world now. So obviously he's a threat to all the auto manufacturing. He just got the right to sell directly. What state was it? Louisiana. Louisiana. So there's a there's a brick in the wall that just fell out. So if you read an article about Elon Musk, if you read an article in a particularly the automotive news or something that leans to a particular industry. You have to question the source of the information and decide for yourself. Yeah. And to what Henry asked, you know, I think the laws need to be, well, rewritten, and there should be more control. And it's just, we've come so far. And you would think

that there would be a new way of looking at this industry because we definitely are looking at the past and that's the reason that we're kept way at the bottom as far as the gallopole was concerned and we'll stay there until things well are rewritten so to speak rewritten back to used to okay we have some more texts that came in and a few of them are technical Rick questions but I have the answers from Rick so we'll get right to it this is from Bob in Naples Bob says back again he had texted us a couple of weeks ago On the Corolla XLE, it says it has high-grade LED headlights. How is that different from regular LED headlights on the L.A?

I hate driving at night, so brighter lights, the better, thanks. Rick chimed in, he says, the high-grade, and we're only speaking about corollos here, so I don't know if this is particular to Toyota's or all cars, but high-grade LED headlights includes an LED parking light strip in the headlight assembly. So that sounds like more light to me, so it sounds like it's brighter than the regular one. who has an additional row of LED lights in it. So I hope that answer your questions, Bob. It answered mine.

All right. The next one, this was from anonymous feedback, and it was regarding Rick's famous, it's our most viewed video on YouTube, has well over a million views. I think it might be approaching two million. I haven't looked in a while. And it was Rick explaining how to free a lock steering wheel.

And that thing just took off, and I've mentioned on the air before we, We get comments, thank yous, like almost every day, people are right making comments thanking Rick for saving their life. So here we go, but this is a question about that. Thanks for sharing your video on Fria-locked steering wheel with a push button start, but I'm a bit confused. I own a push to start Nissan Centra, and while I was sitting inside my car with the windows and the car not completely turned off listening to music, Once I was ready to go inside, I attempted to power off my car, and it locked my steering wheel up, but now my car won't start. I'm not sure how to unlock the steering wheel or how to crank my car up.

Can you help? So I hope this wasn't two-time sensitive, but we're getting to it now. Rick says, on the lock steering wheel, grasp the wheel, press the wheel, press the brake pedal, and hold. Press start button and hold. Rotate the wheel left and right until the wheel unlocks. so you're going to push hold the wheel you're going to press

and hold the brake pedal and press and hold the start button how are you going to do all that with two hands one finger on the start button one hand on the wheel and one foot on the wheel and one foot on the brake

and then press start hold it rotate the wheel left and right and the wheel will unlock wow okay thanks Rick thank you Rick

and I hope because I think they sent that question like a day or two ago so they didn't run out of gas by that okay we got another one here this is uh says hello earl nancy rick and stew when i turn on my windshield wipers they take time to work when they do work sometimes they stop midway but then they work please

help thanks god bless a friend guessed it could be a fuse or a relay um rick says the windshield wipers are generally controlled by the ecu and that's the electronic control units the computer in the car the controlled by the ecu built into the motor assembly and it most likely needs a new wipe motor. If it was a blown fuse, he says, there'd be no operation at all. A bad relay would likely mean no operation at all. So it sounds like it's a bad motor. Great diagnosis, man. You just text them. Yeah. Mossie says if the battery gets too low, the steering wheel will not release. Oh, I'm sorry, this is back on the push button thing. If the battery gets too low, the steering wheel will not release and it will need a jump start. So if your battery is run down, that advice will be

back on Rick, his recommendations, for example, on the wiper motor, And you want to always remind me to remind you, always get a written estimate. You want to bring your vehicle in, describe your problem in normal English. Don't try to be second-guess and use technical terms. Just say, this is what happens and this is what I don't want to happen. Can you fix it? And then have a written estimate done. If it looks a little high to you, more than you want to pay, get another estimate.

The Florida law, I don't know about the other states, but some of the other states have similar laws, limit the amount that you can exceed an estimate, a written estimate, has to be written. So 10% in Florida. So at least it protects you a little bit. The one thing you don't want to do is have a verbal diagnosis, a verbal discussion, and then leave the car there and come back with a huge bill, because then you have no leg to stand on legally. So always get a written estimate, and then get a couple of checks with a couple of other.

repair shops before you let them go on your car. That's right. Great advice. We have a question here on YouTube. Frank monitoring that in Rick's absence, unless Rick wants to. If you're listening, Rick, go ahead and monitor all you want. But Frank Hall says, I've noticed many more car commercials lately. Is that due to sales being down or the new model year or both? And I thought about that one. My theory is no, because there's still no cars. So the the inventory situation hasn't changed. The demand is still higher than, I mean, then you could drum up with advertising.

So my theory is that car dealers just love to advertise and they've been itching and they've been holding back for so long. The reason I know it because I've been itching and because we've been talking, we have an ad agency and we've been, we have a strategy and I'm not going to give away our strategy on the air. But I feel like I want to go on the, I do commercials again because we miss it.

And I don't know because we also happen to have some great commercials with Earl that are just on like social media and the internet now, but it would be great on TV. So maybe that's what it is. Maybe they just can't, they can't help themselves. I mean, car dealers are all business. You have to get them on the door. And one thing I noticed on the manufacturer's ads in the dealer association ads, not so much to dealer ads, is the advertising of MSRP. And the law will not allow the manufacturer's ads. And the law will not allow the manufacturers to advertise anything except MSRP. So during the COVID era, this is totally misleading, you know, for General Motors to say that,

you know, that their Corvette has an MSRP of this or whatever. With a disclaimer at the bottom, the prices may vary by dealer. Yeah, dealer was just cited and threatened by General Motors and the public the other day for advertising a new Corvette or selling a new Corvette at 95%. $5,000 over MSRP. So to see a proliferation of MSRP ads by manufacturers, I think, is deception. Because there are very, very, very few dealers out there that will sell you a new card to MSRP. There's a lot, and I don't know if it's, I don't think, I'll speak about Toyota.

Right now, well, actually last month was the big Toyota sales event. And so every summer they have this thing planned. and it's a big advertising push. And it's probably hardwired into their, you know, their fork, whatever, they can't not do it. And so right now, it's funny because they're advertising great lease deals, special deals and all that. But they're not great. All the incentives have gone away. I mean, there might be something here and there.

And there are. There's a few little things here and there. But it's definitely not a big summer sales event. But they have their budget. They sent out the, I've seen the Toyota, the Southeast Toyota commercials and the Toyota commercials. Yeah. Here's an example. Just kidding. In mind, Honda, and this is in Florida, the Honda Advertising Association, which is representing all the Honda dealers in Florida, they're advertising hondas at MSRPs and comparing their MSRPs with Volkswagen. We've got the lowest MSRPs in town. Right. I mean, if that's not deception, I don't know what it is. I'd love to have a vote.

count of how many people have bought a car at MSRP recently. Get them in the door. Yeah, it's premeditation. And it's a shame. And I'll go right back to what I said earlier. I'll reiterate the fact that, boy, I'll tell you what, things need to change. This is the 21st century

and we're still doing things from the, I'm going to go to the 19th century. It's just been, it's horrible. And you can't decipher, you can't decide who's on us and who's on us. You know, this past two weeks I was asked this question, and I really couldn't answer it.

I was asked where a person, where a consumer, could find a dealership who sells at MSRP. Well, besides making all kinds of telephone calls, I didn't know exactly what I could tell this person, but it would take a whole lot of time, a whole lot of research, and it's definitely worth putting that time into. because, as Earl said earlier about the Corvette, I mean, almost everyone knows about the Corvette. I was told personally that a person that I knew paid $40,000 more for a Corvette than he should have. And what do you say to that? So, ladies and gentlemen, things need to change. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-9-7-6-9-6-9-7-2-49-7-6-5-3.

your anonymous feedback.com take advantage of that and ladies don't forget please give us a call this morning start to show off with let's change things 877 960 9960 you can win yourself $50 for the first two new lady callers we're going to go to the phones where Marty is waiting welcome Marty I've got a question that either, I guess, Stu or Earl can answer. All these advertising, forget about the COVID situation, but all of them say, oh, well, you can lease a New Highlander for $379 a month. In the little print, obviously, they have the down payment in there. To me, that should be against the law. They should say, if let's just say, for a number, instance, it's $3,600 down, they should say this car is $4.79 a month.

Exactly. And I don't know if anybody doesn't realize that all these ads, there's a down payment involved in the ad, and nobody that I know of has a lease with nothing down. Marty, you're absolutely right, and it happens all the time. the dealers do it the manufacturers do it and there is a law against it the federal trade commission has a law and it says that there's nothing that you anything that modifies the price that you're advertising has to be displayed in the same emphasis fine print uh audio volume uh it has to be emphasized the same as the price so if you're advertising at least with three hundred

$179 that has a $10,000 down payment requirement, instead of putting in the fine rent, which is what they do, that $10,000 down payment has to be right up there by aside the $379 per month. And that's a federal law. Now, this federal law is broken constantly. The worst is they will advertise zero money down leases. Yeah. But then in the fine print, there'll be money that you have to come out of your pocket. Yeah. Because they draw the line because there's, they get technical, there's a down payment, which is on a lease, it just reduces your cap cost, your selling price. And then there's, you know, your first payment, there's tag fees, and, but you still might

have thousands of dollars in fees, and that's not no money down. And, Marty, I can answer this question that you asked also. Tap dancing is a lot of it going on, and it's unfortunate and it's unnecessary. It's time for things to change. It's time for things to change with the manufacturing. with the car dealers, with everyone. Why do you have to fear walking into a dealership? Because you saw a commercial, you saw an ad, and you said, wow, can this be true?

It's their way of generating traffic into their dealership to take advantage of you. And it's not necessary. The car dealers today are making more money than they ever did, ever did. so your question is valid and as you can hear from my voice I feel very passionate about it I'll tell you one of my neighbors right now is the lease that it was coming up in December

and they called the dealership up and they said well we can give you another car it'll take a little while but we can give you another car at the same price so they went in there they talked to the salesman they talked to everybody the only problem was they said said, we'll give you the same deal, but you have to put $17,000 down. Well, that sort of changed the picture for them, and they ran out.

Yeah. But, you know, it's ridiculous. I mean, I understand with COVID, everything screwed up. But just the fact, to me, every down payment should be, like Earl said, it should be in big, bold print. When you see $359 or $3.69, it should say, with $3,600 down. Yeah, you've got to enforce the laws, Marty. You can't just make them. You can make laws all the time.

Most of the laws, nobody even knows what they are. I mean, you know, the Congress, they make a lot of laws. And there's so many laws that nobody, and the regulators deliberately don't enforce often because of the lobbyists saying, if you want to get re-elected as Attorney General, you better play ball with us because if you go after our business, our car dealership or whatever,

then we're not going to fund you for your next election. So it's all politics, and that's why this show is valuable. I think hopefully we'll be embarrassing some of the regulators. They're the ones to blame. The politicians and the regulators are the ones to blame for not enforcing the laws. And, Marty, I have one more thing

to say? Sure. You know what? You mentioned COVID. Okay, that's valid. I'll go for that. You know, that's relevant. But please, this has been going on since the last supper.

Come on, let's change things. This is the 21st century. I mean, for me, personally, I feel with the chip shortage, the dealerships and the manufacturers are using this, they don't need, if you're making so. much money, why change? Why produce cars like the old time? So to me, I don't know if it'll ever go back. I think it'll go back to some extent. And there's some validity to that. Fortunately for the public, manufacturers and most businesses are greed. That's what drives capitalism. I mean, greed is not a bad thing. It's just human nature. And so manufacturers and

retailers, they want to maintain the biggest market share in order to maintain the biggest market chair, you've got to make it out of the product, and you have to have a lot of buyers. So I think good old-fashioned competition will come back eventually, and maybe not to the same level we had it before, because you're right, everybody's making so much money. Now, there are laws, antitrust laws, against controlling the flow of product and limiting product based on supply and demand to raise the prices. So it'll get better. I don't think it'll ever go back to the old days.

Well, I thought there was a law against stealing. Anyway, I digress. Here's what I'd like to tell you, Marty. Earl wrote a column, Money is the root of all evil. Earl on cars, pull it up, take a look at it. It applies to today, yesterday, and tomorrow. So thank you so much for your call. We appreciate hearing from you.

All right. Have a good day. Glad you're back on the air. Thank you. God bless. We're going to go to Victoria, who's calling us from Wellington. Good morning, Victoria. Good morning, Earl, on Cars. How are you today? We're doing fine. I'm sorry. It's taken so long for us to get together again. I know we were out with the COVID for a couple weeks, and now we're back on. Just to recap briefly and correct me if I don't get this exactly accurately, for the folks that don't know you and your issue, you had a problem. was a year and a half ago, it's been a while with Napleton dealership,

and that you're trying to gather some support for a class action suit, and you'd like to discuss your issue and give some information out where people who are interested in participating in this class action suit would be able to join on, and once you have enough members of the class, then you can go to court and rectify the problem. Well, first of all, it wasn't in Apleton. It's my dealership was 441 Nissan. Oh, yeah.

It's part of the Terry Taylor Group. Right. Terry Taylor Group, yeah. Right. What happened is they advertised a car at a price. I went in to get the car. We agreed on a price, which was not quite the advertised price. And then when I saw the contract, which I didn't see right away, the price had gone from $18,500 to $36,000.

And it was only signed by electronic signatures that were not mine. So I've gone back and forth. I've gone to the Florida Department of Motor Vehicle regulators, and they find and cited them. And I went to the surety bond people that back insurer, Nissan, and I got some of my money back, and I've also filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and the Florida Trade Commission, and if there's other people out there who've gone in to buy a car and then ended up locked in a contract that was way more than they thought they were going to pay, I hope that they'll call into you, Earl, and give you

their information so we can get together and do something. Well, that's great. I applaud you, and you are the card. dealer's biggest nightmare, you're an educated consumer who realizes exactly how you were taking advantage of, and you've got staying power, and we've got, you've got us to support you now. So, yeah, let's get that information out, and we will give it to our listening audience and try to build enough former customers of 441 Nissan there in West Palm Beach on Congress, right? Actually, they're in Southern Boulevard and 441, but there's plenty of other Terry Taylor phone vehicle dealerships in Florida and elsewhere, and I'm presuming that they have trained

all of their employees to execute sales actions the same way. I don't know that for a fact, but I sure want to find out. The hard thing is it's almost impossible to find out what a Terry Taylor store is. because, I mean, when we do a mystery shop, and I'm trying to find out who owns it, I mean, I'm Googling for 20 minutes before I find out the owner. Victoria, let me, this, so you actually did not sign the documents. They were electronically signed. It was not your signature, and you did not agree.

So that sounds to me like a slam dunk case. That is about as an egregious violation of the law that I can think of to, forge a customer signature is this is correct well as it turns out in the after several months I somehow magically was shown three different contracts and after I talked to a certain attorney that was referred to me by you that attorney was able to get me a direct contact with an attorney who I thought was for 441 Nissan but when I I looked her up, she actually works for Terry Taylor, and I said to her, well, there's so many contracts here, which contract is it that you're talking about? And she emailed me a copy of the

contract that she said was the official contract. And nowhere on there is my signature. They're all electronic. So, you know, I feel that I have collected documents that are, uh, would stand up in court. But I, you know, I don't, it can't just be me. There must be other people out there that have gone into buy cars that end up like you said earlier with the Corvette, you know, with a price that was way more than they thought that they had agreed on paying. Sure. Absolutely. What is the contact address? Should they contact this show? And then we refer to the, I think they should, I think they should contact you. And if you could just give them some place to send in their name and some brief details, then we could contact him together.

Well, this is great. So if you're listening now, and you've done business or know someone that's done business with 441 Nissan in West Palm Beach, that's the name of the dealership. Terry Taylor is the owner, but his name appears nowhere. He's undercover kind of a private owner of more dealerships than any single individual in the United States. Terry Taylor is the number one private owner of car dealerships in the United States. So if you've done business with 441 Nissan, West Palm Beach, Florida, look at your paperwork and see if you have any thing that you bought on that car, price-wise, accessory-wise, or anything else that you did not agree to buy your own signature, and do you have your

signature on the paperwork that you were given? I know some dealers today are now relating to thumb drives and there's no paperwork. You don't have anything in your hand. You have a thumb drive, which you have to put in your computer to see what you sign. So if you've done that, contact this show, and you have multiple ways to contact. Probably the most convenient would be our text number is seri code 772-49760. And in the subject, you can say 441 Nissan complaint, and that way we'll flag that, and text us at 772-4976530. We'll forward that to Victoria, the caller here.

I have her contact information, and we have her telephone number, and I've talked to her on multiple occasions. So if you have a gripe with 441 Nissan in West Palm Beach, text that information. to us at Erland Cars at 772-49760 and we will forward that to Victoria who afford it to her attorney you can be part of this class action suit and this could be big because as I say Terry Taylor owns more car dealerships than any other private individual in the United States this could be one huge class action suit well and also there's a Nissan in Green Acres that he owns

and they're also combined with this Mike Panacho who advertises on television so if you've done anything with Green Acres Nissan that definitely would be in the same area and also I would just like to add that there's the Consumer Protection Act has been violated and if you get a chance you can Google Florida statute 501976

and Florida statute 520. 02 and you can see that there are rules that they have to conspicuously tell you before you make any agreements what it is in the cash price what is included in there and what pieces of materials or term of plate or any kind of add-ons they have to be included in there and you have to see them in writing well let's say or you haven't victoria give us those i got 509.176 is that correct 501.501.976. 976. 501.976. And that's a Florida statute. Right. And also 520.02. What?

02. 520.02. 520.02. Google those. Look at it. This is a Florida law. And if you bought a car from a, I started to say, Terry Taylor dealership, you won't know that because his name is generally hidden. Who are some of the dealerships that they own? I know that Palm Beach Motors, the Land Rover and Jaguar dealer, is owned by Terry Taylor. There's some other dealerships that... Is the Kia dealership on Blue Heron? Is that Terry Taylor or is that in Napleton?

I'm not sure. We'll have to do some research on that. It's a shame. I would say there's probably 30 dealerships in Florida that he owns. I think it's West Palm Kea, but there's a ton of them. I think one of the things you can do is actually call up the dealership and ask them point-blank if Terry Taylor owns them. And if not, who does? That doesn't always work.

Yeah. The reason I say that, there was another lawsuit, another individual, and is in process. says right now and it was Palm Beach Motors and it was impossible for the attorney to find out that Terry Taylor owned it. I was able to go around to a friend I have who was a partner of Terry Taylor who disclosed the fact that Terry Taylor owned Palm Beach Motors. So it's really interesting how you can hide your identity and own a... Because the actual, if you look on, I usually go to like sunbiz.org when I look up to look for owners and he's got a company. And I think He has multiple companies that actually own the dealerships like shell corporations.

And so his name's not out. You don't find his name. Even if you go into the documents, like the corporate documents, you don't see his signature or anything like that. It's very mysterious. He's very well protected. Yeah. He's very well protected. And you know what, Victoria, fanning this fire, all it can do is move us forward.

By us having this conversation just now with all of this information, is just putting it out there. There's a lot of people that are listening to our show. Believe it or not, there's a whole lot, and there's a whole lot of consumers that have been taken advantage of by Terry Taylor. And you can bet your bottom dollar that we have the evidence to back that up.

But to find out what he owns, to sit and make a phone call, I don't mind doing that, but it's just, you don't get any information, They protect them. They're not going to tell you that he owns the place. He's protecting himself against liability. Right.

We cannot do anything unless buyers call in and tell you that they had problems. That will give us the basis for going out and doing investigative work. Yeah, you've got to keep fanning the fire. Victoria, it's a pleasure talking to you. I hope we hear from you again and hope we can move forward on this. You will. Thank you. We're going to stay with the phones, and we're going to talk to Victoria in Palm Beach Gardens.

Another Victoria. Hello. Good morning, Victoria. Good morning. Another Victoria here. Yeah, you're Victoria number two. Yes. Just a comment on the other Victoria's call with respect to legal action. I would say that if she is planning on bringing a legal case, being a legal case.

part of a single derivative action might be more to her personal benefit than a class action because in a class action settlement, the group of class plaintiffs typically just get pennies at each in the final settlement. So she may be better. She has serious damages just bringing the case individually. Well, you're absolutely right about that for the individual. the facts are that the attorneys operate like everybody else in the world, I guess, on money and financial incentive. And the class action, as you pointed out, is a large financial incentive for the attorney

because they are able to have the court award them attorney's fees based on the size of the case. That gives them the incentive to go forward. And you're absolutely right, the individual members of the class receive a relatively small percentage of what they would had they filed the suit themselves. But in this case, with the plaintiff, the other Victoria, is that she didn't want to front tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees. and so if the attorney feels that he can build a big enough class, then he knows he's assured to get a word from the court to make it worth his while. So that's why she's going to the class action route. Right.

Okay. Anyway, on another point, I'd like to just commend your dealership. My husband and I have purchased multiple cars from your dealership in the past. Thank you. We're always satisfied. and just kind of an interesting story back in 2001. We were in there at the same time that Jeff Bezos' parents were in there. So that was kind of funny.

Then the next thing I wanted to just ask, if I just wanted to understand the magnitude of change of the manufacturer-suggested retail price between December of 2019 and now? What is the MSRP change percentage between December 2019 and now on, let's say, just to pick a car, the Toyota Rav 4, for example? Okay.

Normally, just on any given year, there's a small percentage increase, and it's usually like 1%. I didn't do the math. we did receive like a mid-year MSRP increase. This year was the first time that kind of came out at a strange time. They went up, I think, on average of about $600. And so I can't do the math in my head right now.

I guess the average MSRP is probably around $40-something,000. And they went up just this year, just in a big jump on average about $600. Victoria, the MSRP, it can be misleading in terms of the price of the car. The manufacturers are raising their prices considerably, but they do it in sneaky ways. MSRP is pretty public, and when you have an MSRP increase and the rare decrease, you don't see those. But if you have an increase, it's published, and everybody knows, oh, you know, the Chevrolet Corvette went up $300, the Toyota Raffor went up, $600 or whatever. But what the manufacturers don't publicize are changes in freight, for example.

Now, freight is a misnomer. It's not really freight. It's just additional profit. They have a standardized freight. So they have dealers that are receiving vehicles that are 100 miles from a manufacturing plant that are having the same freight charge as the one that lives 2,000 miles away. So the freight is just an additional way. They'll, if you look at the freight charge, and they call it a destination charge sometimes on the car you bought, you'll say, how could it possibly have cost that much for the car to be shipped?

Well, it didn't. That's just a way they have a marking up. The other way they mark up cars is they take away incentives from the dealers. And depending on the economy and the supply and demand situation, manufacturers have secret incentives for the dealers. They call it dealer incentives and they have customer incentives. So you see the $1,000 rebate advertised for customers. You don't see the $1,000 rebate advertised. They don't advertise it as secretly given to the dealers.

They also have holdbacks and things like that. So MSRP, many, many years ago, was 1958 when it became required by law to put MSRP on every new car. It really meant something then. Today MSRP is almost meaningless because there's so many other hidden profits, not just to the dealers, but also to the manufacturers. Okay, so getting bogged down and negotiating on MSRP is almost meaningless in that case. Is that right?

It is. Here's the main advantage to MSRP. If you're looking at a Honda Accord and you want to buy one at the lowest price with a certain amount of equipment, the MSRP, at each Honda dealer that you shop and you should get multiple bids, prices, is the exact same car. So if you deal back in the day before COVID for a discount from MSRP, you know, if you got a $2,000 discount, and that was your lowest, that was your biggest discount from three dealers, then that is really the best price, if it's an out-the-door price.

the problem today is when you shop around you find out how much over MSRP you're going to have to pay but it's still a basis so no matter what kind of a new car you're shopping the MSRP at dealer a will be the same thing at dealer B CD meaning the same thing in the same car so you're comparing apples and apples use that as your point of reference when you're shopping back of the day for discounts today for for markups how much over MSRP are you going to have to be? There is one caveat to that as I'm studying the increases which by the I did overstate the increase if the average it's probably around $400 to $500 average increase but these were mid in the middle of the model year so so these

are for example the a 22 Highlander hybrid I've had an increase of $450 in MSRP. So you could be looking at a 22 Highlander hybrid that delivered in April and then one in May that came in with a $450 increase in MSRP. Of course, then buying cars today, $450. It's not much. It's nothing compared to the dealer markups. But it was interesting. The reason it was notable to me was that normally we just see the routine MSRP increases.

This came out of sync, and it was basically cited inflationary pressures on the supply chain, materials, and the, especially for copper, steel, and polypropylene. And they had to increase the car prices. That's what they said. Interesting. Victoria, also, I don't know. whether you subscribe to the Consumer Report, but in September's edition, the subscription, they talk about the nine cars, you'll love driving, and the RAV-4 is one of them, and they

talk about miles per gallon, and it's pretty decent. It's just about 34, and they get an overall score of 84, and the price on that, between 40,300, and... 43,625, and they have so many other vehicles in this subscription. So you might want to pick that up and take a look at it. Even if you're not ready to buy a car now, it does give you a lot of information down the road. Okay. Thank you very much for that. And then last question, I'm just wondering with regard to, you know,

we keep hearing about the semiconductor shortage. And so if you were to order a car, let's say from Toyota, right now, is that the supply input that is causing the bottleneck? And do you have visibility on when all of these supply chain issues are going to open up? And how many months? Really, no crystal ball. And we don't, that's only one factor in timing. The biggest factor today, if you're buying a car, and as I say, you shouldn't buy a new car today,

but if you have to, is pick one that is readily available, relatively speaking. If you pick a unique car, color, trim, hybrid or non-hybrid, talk to your dealer and find out what is coming off the assembly line and what is a popular, The manufacturers are building the cars that they can build. And if there's a microchip issue that prevents them from building a particular description car, when you order it, it just doesn't get built. You want to order a car that your dealer can confirm is being built, even if it's not, enough of them aren't being built, at least if it's coming off the assembly line.

We have customers at our dealership, and they'll order a car, and they want this particular color and trim combination. And it's such a unique car that the manufacturer hasn't scheduled those even to be built. So they might wait a year before the manufacturer, Toyota, in our case, ever decides to build it. If you want a car in the shortest time today and you have to buy it, you're going to have to compromise probably what you will accept in terms of color trim and equipment. and that's the main thing that you have to worry about. Microchips are, in and of themselves,

are not the big problem. Which ingredient is the biggest problem? Which supply changes? You mentioned a Rav4. A Rav4 hybrid is in high-demand-low supply. A regular Rav-4, not so. so each manufacturer knows you can Toyota dealer can tell you which cars we're getting more of and which cars we just don't get right and there's other factors too COVID is playing still playing a big role it's a little bit earlier this

year we had a big slowdown they cut back the allocations that we were getting because of a big outbreak in Southeast Asia where a lot of parts come from so when they when people miss work because of COVID they shut down the line and they can't get the parts. Yeah, and I'll tell you, China has had a huge problem. And when you think that things can't get any worse, they're going to have their employees not only work there, but live there, so that they can pick it up a notch as far as production is concerned. But, you know, in my own experience,

I had a customer that, you know, really loved the Ruby Red. I believe that that's what it's called Rav4. the hybrid, and I said to them, you know, this is going to be quite a long time, would you have a backup color that you might like, maybe black or white, because you can get, you know, not a lot sooner, but you would get the vehicle sooner. And they just didn't want a bunch of budge on the color, and it was very important to them, and they figured they had waited this long, so they'll continue to wait. So there's so many stories out there, and there's some.

so many things that are affecting inventory and, you know, things that are backed up at the docks. And I could go on and on and on, but we don't have time. Well, I've used up my question allocation today, my quota. How sweet. Victoria was great talking to you. Give us a call again. Okay. Thank you so much.

Have a great weekend. We're going to go to John, who's been holding patiently from one. West Palm Beach. Good morning, guys. How are you? Good morning. Listen, two weeks ago before you guys left to go out of town after, because I tried to call, but you were talking about

women in traffic fatalities that study need to be done with the crash dummies. Yes. Were you guys implying that women are killed more than men in traffic fatalities? Yes, they are.

Injured, and they die more and they're more seriously injured. Let me correct you on that. I've worked for the state for 34 years out here on the interstate. And most of the traffic crashes we handled involving death were mostly men. It's percentage. No, we know that more men are killed in, because they're definitely, yeah. There was a study by the National Traffic Safety that from 1975 to 2020,

men are killed two to one as far as traffic fatalities and also I think in 2020 their data showed that over 70% of the traffic fatalities involved men now that's not to say that yeah they need to do something about you know most women are a little smaller than men and if they could do something you know I think that'd have to change the designs of the car you'd have to have a car for a man and a car for a woman but you know that's not there's not going to be happening I hear what you're saying, but there is a little bit of nuance on it. So they're more vulnerable to certain types of energies, injuries, almost 40% more vulnerable in certain crashes.

I think, I think, again, let me cut through the chase here. The statistics are on similar crashes. So if you have more men driving and men driving more recklessly, or faster or whatever the stats, I don't have the stats. But if you take the same car, if you take the same car at the same speed and drive it into a barrier, the woman will be injured more seriously than the man. And that's just a scientific fact. Now, I don't dispute your statistics.

I'm sure that there are more men that are injured seriously. More serious injuries. More serious injuries. But identical car in an identical crash, the female will suffer. more than the male. That's been documented. And John, from the AAA, you know, they came up with some real statistics here. And I realize what you're saying is true and important, but there's so many different aspects to look at. I'm talking about the crash test dummies that better reflect how women's bodies react to the forces of a crash.

They're smaller. They're probably driving smaller vehicles, lighter vehicles, and all of that is taken into consideration. And women, women, are 20 to 28 percent likely than men to be killed. And 37 to 73 percent more likely to be seriously injured. And the reason for all of that, why hasn't there been tests done on women? children and their sizes so that the test dummies could reflect our size. It's always been the larger dummies, the men who reflect those dummies. So unless that changes. Pardon me? Yeah. Well, we know what the answer to that is. It's money, of course. You know, if they want to spend the money, they can do it. And if you have, like I said, the men are getting killed at a rate of two to one over the women. So obviously they go with the larger death tolls and they're not going, which they should, do something with the children and women, because it's terrible to see a child getting killed in a crash. Trust me, I worked out there for 34 years,

and it's just horrible what happened in a car crash. Yeah. I can't even imagine. Yeah, but, you know, I was just curious because I caught the tail in the conversation, and off of this different subject, is why, because you were just talking about it with the last caller, why do we continually go to China for our chips? I mean, this is going to be a large enemy of ours, and we're letting them buy a plan. You know, they're doing our chips. We should be doing our own thing.

Nobody's ever addressed the medication, you know, as we're all getting older. And there's effort to do that. You're absolutely right. Taiwan actually is the biggest source of chips for the world. I think we, 36% of our microchips come out of Taiwan. So, yeah, there's incentives now being made for more local manufacturing, USA manufacturing microchips.

And you'll see the pendulum swing back in our direction. There's definitely a big mistake. Lack of foresight. I thought our governor had something starting in North Florida, where they're going to manufacture chips here in Florida. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to happen.

It's going to take some time, but it's definitely going to happen. Oh, yeah. So, anyhow, you guys have a good labor, nice talking with you. Thank you very much, thank you. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-3530. Remember ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. Win yourself $50 for the first two new lady callers. Take advantage of your anonymous feedback.com.

Now back to Stu. All right, we got some text that came in. Just have somebody chiming in. It's Bob on Victoria in Southern 441 Nissan. He says, ask, why couldn't they look at a criminal forgery charge for faking her hair electronic signature? So that's Bob's take. No, I totally agree. You know, it's amazing how things are not moving forward in obvious violations of the law.

You know, I attack the politicians a lot and I talk about the lawmakers. we talk about you, there should be a law. Actually, there should just be enforcement. We've got plenty of laws on the books, probably too many. All we need to do is we need to have more intelligent laws and probably fewer laws, but enforce the law. If you're going to have a law in the books, enforce it. And that's where the smoke is blown and people get away with things.

If you look at television or go online now, for five minutes, you'll probably find 20 violations of the law. And how many times we had a caller earlier, I think it was Marty, he said, $379 a month lease. You can't lease the car for $379 a month because there was a big down payment in the fine print. That's a violation of law.

It's right there on television, it's on radio, it's online, for all to see. Florida attorneys general sees that. The Federal Trade Commission sees that. Why don't they prosecute? It's because of politics, because the lobby of the manufacturers, the lobby of the car dealers in Washington and the state capitals is so strong, the regulators are afraid to act.

If Ashley Moody goes after the car dealers in Florida, do you think she's going to get reelected? If the Florida Automobile Dealers Association and the National Automobile Dealers Association and all the thousands of car dealers, in Florida, decide to support Ashley Moody's opponent for Attorney General, she'll be voted right out of office. So she has to treat the car dealers the right way. And that's, I'm not picking on Ashley Moody.

That goes with every Attorney General in the United States and all the other regulators that are supposed to be enforcing the law. All right. We got some anonymous feedback over here. Okay. I was about to say it's from I don't know who it's from because it's anonymous Have you seen the new light year zero solar powered car Scotty Kilmer has a new YouTube video about it looks amazing and much nicer than that

1949 Ford car we had when I was a kid I hadn't heard of it I googled it and it's a pretty cool looking car it looks a little strange it has a solar panel on the hood the roof and the back hatch. But I looked it up. It looks like it's, I think it's a European car because everything is in kilometers and the pricing is in euros.

But here's some quick stats about it. It's got a thousand plus kilometer driving range, and that's about 600-something miles. But not in Alaska. Actually, they're promoting it for like wilderness driving, being off the grid.

It shows pictures, but I don't know. Does it come with olive oil? It might. It's not very fast. It goes zero to 100 kilometers per hour in 10 seconds, and that's about 35 miles an hour. So, zero to 35 in 10 seconds. Top speed of 160 kilometers, which is about 100 miles is the top speed. But, yeah, we'll keep an eye on it, you know.

Pretty cool. So basically, it combines battery charging and solar power. So you charge it and the solar supplements it. That's interesting, but it's just not going to be something that's going to be practical for a long time. It's not fast enough for me. Here's an interesting question about California. So how will California's proposed law banning the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 impact the sale and purchase of classic and vintage cars at the time? I think there's a carve-out for things like that.

But on that subject, not a good look for California banning gas-powered cars and then calling all the electric car owners to stop charging because of the power shortages. Well, you know, California, they'll work it out. And Nancy, I've talked about that a lot. Something like 11% of all vehicles sold are sold in California. Now, that might as not a huge amount, but remember, there's 50 states. So 11% is a huge disproportionate chunk. And there's not a manufacturer, auto manufacturer of the United States, I would say, that wouldn't get hurt severely if he couldn't sell cars in California.

Oh, they're going to push the... California, you might not like... them, you might call them, you know, what they call it, you know, all the, if you're a conservative, you don't like them because you're liberal if you're, you know, if you're not a, you know, basically if you're conservative, you don't like California. Yeah, you don't like California. The fact of the matter is, they lead the way. I mean, they do what we call outrageous things and everybody gets angry at them and then the manufacturers fall in line. You remember with the first California restrictions on emissions, everybody says, that's impossible. You can't do that. Well, we did it. Right. And now all cars meet California emissions, and it's better for the planet. I'm not a tree hugger, but it was a good thing in the end. It seemed like a bad idea at the time, and now this sounds like a crazy idea.

You can't buy anything except an EV in 2035 in California. Well, I have a horrible feeling, or maybe a good feeling, that it's going to be pretty much SOP. That's what's going to happen in 2035. Exactly. Isn't there a limit on what time of the day you can try? charge the vehicle out there? I think that's what they're asking. I don't know if it's enforced or not, but that's what they're saying, because the peak times on the grid.

And so if everybody's charging like at 9.30 in the morning when everybody's, you know, that's not a, that's not good. It's not conducive. Yeah. It definitely isn't. It's cheaper to charge. And this is, I think, anywhere, I think, if you charge at lower peak times the actual kilowatt hour, charge is less. So it's smart to do it anyway. It's been in the news quite a bit all week. Yeah. All right. We have another anonymous feedback regarding your mystery

shop of Alpacar Ford, I do not understand why the salesman was considered rude when he interrupted Agent Lightning once he mentioned a Toyota model instead of a Ford model. What else do you think he should have done? I don't know. I mean, we weren't there, so... Yeah, I think attitude, tone

of voice, you know, facial expressions. All she does, all Agent Lightning does is give her reaction as a woman buying a car and I, technically you should. A sales should sell his manufacturer's product over and above the competition, but you do it in a

polite manner and not a confrontational manner, so we're not sure. You know, I'll say something to that. Body language is everything. I don't know whether anyone has ever taken a class on that, but boy, I'll tell you what, it applies to every walk of life. I took a class on that. It is a very good class, very important class. It was toy to sales training, and it was on body language, and it was, I mean, body, I'm not, what you said is absolutely true.

The class was silly. So they had to say things like this. I wish, you can't, well, you see, if you're watching it streaming, I'm doing it. They would say, raise it when somebody, a customer asked your question, you say, no problem. That's the easiest part of my job. And we all had to do it together and it was embarrassing and cringy. But anyway, yeah, it is important. That's a little bit of an exaggeration, but very true.

Yeah. But body language and tone. Yeah. You know, I mean, I could go in. to it but we would be I would be I think Jonathan would cut me off if I were to use the two words that it can be well taken two different ways and on the mystery shopping report like like Earl was saying I was she writes down her impressions and so she'll she'll mention whether she was irritated or she can so I'm just trying to convey her experience to the listeners as best

I can so but obviously like Earl says it's it's impressions and and Agent Lightning is really been intrigued and very delighted with some treatment. She's compliment. She's not, yeah, she's not like a scorched earth. She's out there and she tells it like it is. Yeah, she really rolls with it all, you know, and for her to make a comment about rudeness, you know what was there. There's another one.

I sent out emails to Florida car dealers, including Earl Stewart Toyota, and reference to buying a new ref for Exilea, MSRP, ES, that's Earl Stewart, was the only one to respond. Thank you, Earl Stewart. You're welcome. See, that could be me, because this is anonymous feedback. It could be you. Thank you, Earl. That was very nice. I think we answered that one. And, hey, I think we're all caught up. Very good. You know, I had something that I thought was interesting. You hear me rail on about lobbying and and politicals and how the manufacturers and the car dealers have such a huge fund of resources, financial resources, to influence the Congress and the Senate and the

and the regulators and so on and so forth. I'm a member of the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. They're a huge lobbying arm and I get I'm on the mailing list. They might take me off the mailing list when I do things like this but the Federal Trade Commission as you know has been pretty active lately and they've fine Napleton ten million dollars he's a very large dealer in the country and especially in Florida and they've been active in establishing rules and regulations for car dealers they don't enforce them very much but they established them and so we're seeing the as individual car dealers because

We have a car dealership. We see what the Florida Automobile Deals Association does. So it's a little comical. Here's a, I have a letter here that we're supposed to write our congressman and get our customers to write. And Nancy, read this first one here, just the first one the top. And the funny thing is the suggestions are different letters suggested from our customers and they use different type styles and different handwritings and different signatures.

So basically what the Florida Automobile Deal Association is, is have this come from your customer. Now, does it really come to their customer, or do they copy what is written here? Yeah, well, this has been going on for a long time. It's a very personable way to send somebody a piece of mail that you and I throw out. And whether it's written in script or whether it's uppercase, whatever it is, It makes you think that they are talking to you, and they're not. So here it is examples of customer letters.

Dear Commissioners, motor vehicle dealers, trade regulation rule-making number P204-800 added some products to the sale that made sense to me, including a service contract for issues that may occur after the warranty is over. I'm so glad to have that option because unexpected expenses are difficult to deal with. Okay, dear FTC, motor vehicle dealers trade regulation rule, and they refer to the rulemaking number P, blah, blah, blah, blah. I bought a new car and the process was easy and transparent. The sales associate gave me lots of options, and she was easy to work with. this is from anonymous and it goes on

and on all these different letters and so what happens now do the politicians and the attorney generals and the rest of the regulators do they believe these letters no they know what's going on but if if they support

the dealers against the Federal Trade Commission and the media comes in and says why are you doing this let's say well look at all these letters that I got from customers of car dealers. They really like the car dealers. And so this is just propaganda. Those car dealers aren't really taking advantage of customers. Look at all these letters I got here. So that's the game, folks. It's almost childish. That's funny because all those legislatures are all get ripped off by car dealers. Yeah. And the car dealers, we do the same thing. Our associations, our lobbyists say, write this letter and send it to this person. They even give it, because most of the car dealers don't even know their congressmen. They don't know their senators.

and they don't know their addresses. So the associations, the lobbying groups, they say, now here's the address, here's the name, write this on your stationery and send it to them. And that's the game. I mean, it's crazy. It's just, it's unbelievable that our elected officials. And they're very politically active.

I mean, we get emails weekly about legislative action and what to worry about. And usually it's stuff that would help a consumer that they're wanting us to fight back against. And I could almost say that the consumers deserve it. If you want me to be a little cynical here, the consumers of the world, we tend not to complain as much. I mean, a lot of people say, oh, you complain all the time. Actually, consumers don't complain. I don't complain that much.

You save it all up for this show. No. No, I put my goal on. I don't buy cars. If I go into a restaurant and I get bad service, the price is too long. why the food stinks you suffer I don't ask to speak to the manager I don't write a letter to the owner I don't even yell at the waiter I just you probably don't eat because I didn't like it and I probably don't leave a big tip I still leave a tip because I don't want to be

a meanie you want to talk about that and and then I just don't ever and then I just don't ever go back to the restaurant again so people do the same thing with car dealers you go into a car dealers and they jerk you around, they try to take advantage of you. You don't write the owner, you don't write your congressman, you don't write the attorney-in-general. You find a dealer that'll treat you nicer, and that's why this show is here. We have our recommended list, and that sort of thing there.

So the fact is consumers don't complain. So if the lobbyists can get the customers to send in phony letters, or the dealers to send in phony letters, that arms the regulators and the politicians, to defend their actions for supporting the very people that are taking advantage of them. So that's our system, folks. Like it or not, that's our system. So we try to rally you to complain.

We had Victoria number one called in earlier today, and she's trying to rally people who have had a bad experience with 441 Nissan on Southern Boulevard in West Palm Beach for class action suit. So that's what we're doing. We're trying to rally you. to complain, because if the regulators and if the politicians get enough complaints, legitimate, real complaints, they'll change their actions because they have to get reelected. That's what it's all about.

That's exactly. They're going to get reelected one way or the other. They'll get reelected by the phony letters from the car dealers and the phony letters from the car dealers' customers, or they'll get reelected because you really complained, and you don't. You don't complain enough. And that is why they don't enforce the laws. Do I complain enough? To me, you do, yes.

If we had 250 million answers, there'd be no problem. How about negotiating? Do we fight about negotiating? Exactly. Okay, let's get back to reality. We're going to talk to John in Palm City. We haven't spoken to him in a while. Hi, John.

Good morning to everyone. I'll be very brief. the shopping report and important information about people that got ripped off. But I want to make a prediction, and people think I'm crazy, well, you wait, and it's going to happen. Tesla is going to be sold. Within now, in July 31st of next year, Elon Musk will sell it. Why? He's going to expand into space exploration, form other corporations.

And I think that it's something like if you study billionaires in the past, like Wayne Heisinger down here, who formed Auto Nation, Waste Management, Brockbuster, which he's built up and sold it at its height. I just feel that Musk, you can see he's been selling off many shares gradually in Tesla. I mean, we know he doesn't need the money. And my prediction, and I'm making it today, that Elon Musk will sell Tesla and will turn out and see what will happen. That's what I have to say today.

Well, you surprised me. I hadn't even thought about that, but that's an interesting point. I mean, put all his money into getting to Mars for us. He says he wants to be the first person to go to Mars and come back. He says, be sure he comes back. Yeah, he has his chief in SpaceX. Absolutely, and that's where it's going to go. And that's my prediction.

It could be wrong, but we'll wait and see. And that's as of today, between now and July 31st next year, I think the company will be sold and it will always still be a big company and there's no question about that Well I'm going to ask Alexa to remind me on July 31st 2003 that John made that forecast and we'll see... And hey John

Hey can you help me out? I'm trying to Can you talk to Earl about going to the moon with Nancy? He doesn't want to join me. I'm not going there. It's like Jackie Gleason when he told to the moon. To the moon. You go ahead of the moon. I'll be right there.

I'm not going on in a rocket. I'm giving my edge of way, but that's what it was a great show. It definitely was a great show. I'll let you go on. I want to hear the chopping report. Thanks, John. We're going to go to Frank, who's waiting in Jupiter Farms. Good morning.

Good morning, Frank. Have you listened? Have you watched Jackie Gleason? We were just talking about going to the moon. I know. Bang them to the moon. It's very true. Not too while we're talking about the planet.

I'll just give you a quick little show. Then we'll get something serious. When I tell people, I live in Jupiter, they go, oh, yeah, right. They're thinking like the planet. Don't wait. They drive a Saturn, and our dog is named Pluto. Franks out in outer space. There we go.

That's not the space. On a serious note, my son and daughter, I bought a Honda Ridgeline from Johnson Honda. It was a certified use about a slightly goose, they said, about a year and a half two years ago. pickup and this year alone she's had three breakdowns where she was stuck and won't run they take it back took into the night they can't find anything um i guess it was friday or maybe thursday yeah no it was wednesday excuse me it was wednesday it wouldn't start she waited four hours for a tow truck

she's exasperated they took it back in the dealer it went tick tick tick i said it sounds like a battery well now they say there's going to be a three thousand dollar repair bill and it's It's just unbelievable. How long ago did they buy it? About two years ago. Oh, okay. About two years. Wow, there's not a whole lot of recourse there.

Johnson Honda at one time was a pretty straight-up outfit. I don't know if we have a shopping report on them recently. Not super recently, but they, I think they're like on the recommended list. They usually do pretty well. But we did a sales shop. We didn't, well, and this would be a sales-related thing too. That's a tough one, Rick. Do you know much about the Honda Ridgeline?

Because that's where they got. They got a really beautiful truck. Yeah. I mean, it was kind of made fun of when it came out. It's a unibody truck and, you know, real truckers don't get it. But it's actually, I think it does pretty well in consumer reports. And it's a pretty decent vehicle. Yeah, I don't know what the situation is with hers.

Was it, they only brought it to Johnson Honda for service, have another Honda dealer taking a look at it for a second opinion? That's what we're trying to tell them to do. Yeah, I just for sure, get a second opinion on that. And hear from you, because, you know, I told him, I said, I thought I was pretty savvy, but over the years, I mean, girl, and your guys have helped me out in many ways. And I take your advice for you also. Yeah, this one's kind of a no-brainer.

This is like getting the big diagnosis from a surgeon and says you need heart surgery, you know, a $3,000 repair. Yeah, definitely, I guess Ed Moore's Honda would be the closest one if they came down to Rivar Beach. yeah anyway I got your text here too Frank no I'm sorry no no I'm just trying to help him out because she's got a job

and she's the way to drive so well tell him Earl Stewart says get a second opinion because you know that would be crazy not to yeah absolutely well thank you guys

and welcome back it's always good to you thank you Frank you know talking about second opinions uh yeah it's we're all reluctant to do that I think the statistic that really got my intention a long time ago when I first realized it is that medically, you know, how many times the older you get, the more surgery you get

recommended. So when surgery is recommended, it's a no-brainer to get a second opinion. But there's something about, it's like betraying your doctor because we have this relationship with our physicians. And so you have to force yourself. But insurance companies really insist on it. They really push you for it for obvious reasons. Why?

Because, you know, I think something like two out of three cases, second opinion on surgery after, second opinion is the other way around. In other words, Dr. A says you should have the surgery. Dr. B says no. So when you're talking about going under general anesthesia and having a serious operation, there's a big difference between having it done

and not having it done. It's not quite that serious when you're having a car repaired, but the same thing happens. You get a very high price estimate on your car, and you go to two other repair sources. I can almost guarantee you that one of those other two will give you a much lower price. Same thing on the price of a car. So it's unpleasant. It's sometimes... Salesmanship is a science, almost, art and a science.

And Stu was talking earlier in the show about when he went through. through his training as a salesperson. I mean, there's a lot of training going into talking to you when you're trying to buy a product. And by the time you get through with your presentation, you're supposed to have enamored yourself to that customer. Build obligation.

And you don't want to betray your new friend. You know, your new friend, Stu, who spent three hours with you, you want to take good, you want to be nice to him. And if you say, Stu, I've got to go over to your competition and see if I get a better price. It's going to hurt. It's like slapping stew in the face. It's going to hurt my feelings.

Doctors, you know, oh my God, I can't ask. I can't, Dr. Brown, I've been seeing him for 20 years. He wants to replace my heart. If he wants to amputate my leg, I'm not. He wants to amputate my leg. I've got to let them do it. Don't let them do it, folks. Get two more opinions.

As painful as it will be, it'll save you a lot of money and maybe your life. That's a good one. So many stories. We don't have time. Yeah. Isn't? Remember whenever. they, we're going to put the

steroid injection in the wrong leg for you, you know, in your sacrioleoc. I took a look at it and I put a magic marker on your leg. This one. They do that for real. For real. Yeah, yeah. They mark you up with a magic marker. Okay, I think we got a little bit more time.

I got some text. Yeah. A text, no name on it. Oh, it's from Liz. Liz says if you have a car that has ants in it and spiders, what's the best bug fogger for a car? Do you have to clean up really well afterwards, too? I've never had to deal with that before. Okay. Where's Rick? Well, I can answer the question because I've dealt with this a lot. So first of all, if you have ants in your car, the first thing you want to do is move it away from an ant nest because that's usually what happens. So check make sure there's no ant

nets near your car that you're not parking through an ant infested area. Then you want to take a vacuum cleaner and vacuum out as many as possible. Just get as many as out. You're not going to get them all, but get the ones that you can see. Then you want to take just a like a damp cloth, maybe a mild cleaner, and clean up everything in your car. Make sure there's no sugar or crumbs because that's why they're in your car is to get food. Then when that's done, you want to use the, it's the Rade Deep Fogger. I think it's called the Rade Concentrated Deep Fogger.

And you set that off and then just follow the instructions. You don't have to clean up afterwards. It's going to get in every nook and cranny, but you want to open up your car and leave it open for a couple of hours. and run the air conditioning to clear out the vents so there's no residual poison in the car, but you don't have to clean it up. And that should be pretty effective.

And that's as good answer as Rick can. And if Rick, if you're listening, how do you like that? I want to know whose vacuum you're going to use. And if you want another answer, just go to Google. Right. Oh, Rade texted me. He couldn't stand it. He said yes, the Rade fumarer.

But also there's the dry smoke type. And he says, don't park under trees. Because I guess, and leap out of the trees and into your, Isn't that the truth? Yeah. So, Rick, how did I do? Remember your dad's idea years ago when we were on the Colorado River trip and there were

ants all over the place and we were camping out? And I just took a circle. Yeah, I took the, the ant spray. And I made a circle around my sleeping bag. It was a death zone. Exactly. You had like a protective shield all around you. There you go.

A man of many talents. True. And let's see, do I think, this, this. This is from Frank. I thought it was Frank and Jupiter Farms and just called it might not be, but I'll double check. He says, welcome back to your live broadcast. A few weeks ago, Victoria called the show for the first time to discuss the lawsuit. Before she was put on the air, Earl stated they had been in touch for the last few months. So technically, it was Victoria's first time call her last month. So maybe she's entitled to 50 bucks. Oh, all right. We'll think about it, Frank.

We're not made of money. I'm just kidding. All right. Now we're caught up. Okay. Okay, let me mention Earl's latest column, if I can find it. And it's buggy's and whips, I think it's called, isn't it? Car dealers and buggy whips. Car dealers and buggy whips. Here we go.

It is a great column as usual. Car dealers and buggy wits. It's kind of like a forecast. It is just. Kind of like John from Palm City did before he predicted that in one year, Elon Musk was going to sell to us. I'm predicting in 20 years there won't be any more car dealers. And they've pretty much, they were digging their own grave for a lot of years because of the way they abused their customers.

And now it's too late scientifically and technologically, they're going to be a race just based on autonomy. We'll have all electric autonomous vehicles and right sharing. There'll be no need for dealers anymore. So you will not have our dealership or any other dealership. It's just kind of like a buggy whip. I can't imagine. But it will happen.

This is one of my favorite, one of my favorite columns. You can go to Roan Cars to read all of them. They're just amazing. And this is the love of money is the root of all evil. And it talks about auto sales commission. So ladies and gentlemen, that's, I think we're all caught up. caught up and it is time for the mystery shopping report and that mystery shopping report is from Navelton of North Palm Hyundai my favorite people and as I ask you every week

it's extremely important that you vote and you can do so at 772-4976530 Mystery shop of Napleton, North Palm, Hyundai, and another fantastic job by Agent Lightning and Stu Stewart. Okay. Well over a year ago, when news broke of the historic federal action, federal trade commission, against the Ed Napleton Auto Group, they're all over the country. There's one of the largest autographs that they're in the top ten. The Federal Trade Commission bought the hammer down on old Ed and hit him in with a $10 million

dollar fine. Sounds like a lot of money, but hey, chump change. Dead Naples when you've had that money dealerships. $10 million fine for ripping off his customers in general and really ripping off his black customers in particular. The feds, along with state authorities, alleged that eight of Napleton's dealerships were sneaking junk fees. That's our new generic term for dealer fees. These are just worthless charges impersonating government fees and are just added profits, junk fees, unwanted add-ons, and their customer invoices. Napleson also charged their black customers more for the same unwanted worthless crap, again

allegedly. They settled, so they never went to court, they'd never been found guilty, but they decided for whatever reason. Make it go away. Yeah, $10 million, make it go away. What will it take? You could only imagine our excitement and we found out that two of those eight Napleton dealerships were here in town, literally down the street from our studios,

Napleton's North Lake Kea, and Napleton, Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge. Of course, we set out then to mystery shop both of these locations, to be honest, we didn't know what to expect. Some of us in the studio thought that, given the heat Napleton was under, his dealerships was straightened up and fly right, you'd think so, wouldn't you? Others believe that old Ed was incorrigible and had little hope these two dealerships of his could clean up their acts. The fact the matter is, especially with privately owned large groups, each dealership is pretty much autonomous.

The owner is, you know, he's in his ski lodge, or he's in his ranch in Montana, or he's in, you know, he's Tuscany. He's traveling. He's on the cruise. He doesn't know what's going on in the dealership, so he could be nailed in 10 of his dealerships if he's got 200 of them, the rest of them. who cares and he doesn't know and he's got so much money he doesn't care you know it's just truly sad that 70 million dollars and illegal fees illegal fees were charged to customers at eight dealerships i don't know could it be eight dealerships i think maybe it was just right here i mean it that like everyone says that's just like pocket change uh but for these poor unsuspecting customers What a shame. Florida, Pennsylvania, Missouri. Go ahead. I'm running, I'm going to be a politician. History will show that it was a latter group that was right. Both Napleson locations, even in the immediate aftermath of a multi-million dollar federal fine, employed the same predatory tactics they were accused of and the complaint. Junk fees, unwanted, installed accessories, you name it. It was as if no lesson was learned.

At the time, we did mystery shop, Napleton's Hyundai location on North Lake Boulevard, that's Lake Park, North Palm Beach, because it wasn't named in the Federal Trade Commission complaint. However, based on our experiences, there's little difference between the various Naples dealerships. We thought now it would be a good time to check on at Napleton again. It's been almost a year and a half, a year and a half, plenty of time to implement reforms, hire the right people, and write the ship. We send Agent Lightning to update us on the progress. Here's a report, speaking as if I were Agent Lightning.

My mission began at 11 a.m. I was greeted by a very chatty salesman named Jacob. I was a bit overwhelmed with questions before I could get around to telling him why I was there. I was able to tell him I wanted to see a new Hyundai accent. Jacob said they were just, there was just one came in yesterday. He said it was still wrapped in plastic. Jacob, they actually do wrap pars in plastic, partially, stone chips to avoid that kind of thing, scratches.

Jacob returned to drilling me with questions about my credit, my job, where my kids go to school, how much do I drive each day, so on, so on. He took a breath to tell me to wait. He needed to see his manager to get the key for the accent. He warned me that since it had just come in, it hadn't been inspected, and not be able to take it for a desk drive. When Jacob came back, he probably told me it was the only new Elantra they had, and it was available. He said, I could take it home today once it was inspected. We went to a desk and sat down.

That's a trial close. That's the way car dealers talk about you just, you keep hitting them, you know. This sure looked good in your driveway. Boy, I bet your neighbors would really be impressed with this. You could take this home today. Those were all trial closes. Jake was able to pull up my record in their system because of an outline online inquiry. I'm sorry, online inquiry.

I put in earlier this year. This is the way most cars are being sold today. They start out online, computerized. He asked if the information he had was still correct. I told him it was, but asked him about the text message solicitation. I was getting along with him. I'm sure you, I, we all get this. I mean, I'm overwhelmed with text solicitation, mainly from public.

politicians these days, but it's, he said you can opt out, and you can, in most cases, sometimes they ignore you, but you can opt out. So he took them, allegedly took Agent Lightning off the list. We'll find out. We'll find out, yeah. We went outside of the car, which was really still wrapped in plastic. It was bright red with an MSRP of $18,050. I didn't see an addendum, but like Jacob said, it just come in. It takes a while to put the addendums on. That's the reason they're dangerous. The manufacturer doesn't put it on. The dealer put some on.

Jacob went over the car and the factory warning and then he led me back inside. I sat down at the desk and while he went to his manager to run the numbers, he was back shortly with a very detailed worksheet. They were selling me the accident for 18,050 plus, here we go. This is a long list, folks. 1850 plus 2995, 2,900.

$95 market adjustment, plus an $899 junk fee, a dealer fee, a hidden fee, whatever you want to call it, plus another $129 junk fee, plus another $149 junk fee, plus another. So Stu has just written this up using the same term, which makes it, emphasizes how ludicrous it is. But the dealer actually came up with different. names for all these yeah each one sounds each one has everyone sounds great spin a little yeah electronic filing fee plus another 270 $50 drink fee plus logiac name that one logiac for 99 plus nitratire inflation for 299 i mean it's really comical 29 990 2 000 99000 99000 899 129 149 149 149 another

and $1.99, $2.17.50, $0.99 and $0.99. You add it all up. It bounced the real price, the MSRP, up $6,685 over a sticker. I demanded he removed the extras, so he went back to his manager, and he returned with a new worksheet. This time he took off the $999 lowjack and the $299 nitrophil. The bottom line was about $1,400 better. I just thought about this, LoJack. We talked about this a long time ago. You know, LoJack is a perfect drug for you. Because you can say it has LoJack on it, and you can try it.

And LoJack is a legitimate product. But you can say that's LoJack on it, but you can never find out if it has LoJack. They won't tell you. LoJack won't tell you. So we tried, we chopped it, and we tried to find out, and we called LoJack, and we gave our VIN number. We said we bought it. We said the dealer that sold it to us.

We just want to know, did he really do it on the car? He says, You can't confirm or deny. I'm sorry, that's confidential. But I, here's my VIN number. Here's my name. Here's my birthday. I'm sorry, we can't tell you.

You could be a thief. Did you offer your children? You could be a car thief. Anyway, okay, I digress. Ain't going to happen.com. I told Jacob, I would need to discuss things with my husband. He wanted to know if I planned to buy right away because he'd been there for months. This was the first available accent on the accident he'd seen.

He told me that sedans were practically impossible to get, and he's probably telling the truth. Jacob asked if he could get this manager to come down $1,000 on a mortgage husband. If I can, would you? Would I take it home today? I said, no. I still needed my son to drive it as to talk with my husband. I mean, you know, she can't be there all day.

I mean, she's got to draw the line somewhere. they started playing the if I could would you game she could be there until midnight so he goes back to the manager the manager says all right did you what if her because I did but she won't Jacob left came back with Garnet

is that Garnett or Gareth Garrett Gareth came back with Garrett Sounds like Carrot the sales manager so Garrett told me it was the first accent he'd seen in a month he explained that their market adjustments are normally 8,995 but

since he wasn't dumb, we'll take his word for it, he wouldn't put that much on an $18,000 car. He said he wouldn't do that to me. By the way, we're already getting grades are coming in right now. Not good grades. Not good grades. After he talked for a few moments, he said, I'll tell you, I'm going to reprint this for you with my best price.

Okay. And here's an old, I digress with another joke. One of the old things is you take out your, business card and you say I tell you what I'm going to write my best price on the back of my car and then you don't give it to the customer you put it in your pocket and then you say now when you come back you'll see my best price if you don't come back you'll never see it but it will be my best price I'm gonna keep it in my pocket for the next several weeks to hear from you years of

necessary yeah come to me oh the old school stuff that was those were the good old days um Garrett left and came right back with another worksheet he flipped it up had said, this is the truth, he really did, it said, happy birthday. I mean, that is really corny. He's very confident. This one was the same except he had lowered the amount of the market adjustment to $1,500. I told him this looked much better.

She had to say that. Otherwise, they'd never let it get... I thanked him for his time, explained I needed to discuss this with my husband. Garrett told me, he guaranteed the car would be sold today, and I would lose it. And so there we are. So we have this to vote on. I have all the documentation, pictures of the MSRP, and all the paperwork. We document everything on these so that if anyone would like to review a shopping report,

we have them all in our archives on every dealership we've ever shopped, and you can look all the paperwork. So we need to count the votes. She said they were already coming in. Yep. We'll start with Rick and Buy God, West Virginia on YouTube. 6,000 junk fees, same old school. I won't do that to you, but they earned an F.

So that's from Rick and Buy God, West Virginia. Rick just texted me. Does he have a grade? Oh, Rick has a grade. He gives him a D for disastrous. And Jonathan Wellington, Napleton, Say No More, F, the reputation precedes them. He sent that one in yesterday. No, I'm kidding. He sent

that in just now. Mark gives them a D-minus. Ed's boys and girls haven't learned how to play fair. D-minus. Oh, this is not a grade, but I'll read it anyway. What if everyone going to southeast car dealers wore a ball cap that says Earl Stewart? I think the prices might be more in line.

You know, the funny thing is we are infamous among the dealer network. And I'm surprised, oftentimes, who's heard about us. And you could do a lot worse than mention our name because they know you're educated if you listen to the show and they come a little bit more close to reality when they know you're informed. So feel free. Okay. I don't have a name on this one, but it's, is there a grade lower than F minus minus minus question mark? Absolutely ridiculous. Bob texted us as F, as in fees for Napleton.

And Amory texted a 33% markup. She did the math, a 30% markup on an $18,000 vehicle. F. Let me just check one more source. Oh, Martha on Facebook gives them an F-minus. I'm going to give them a D. There was nothing out of the ordinary. It still is horrible.

Bad thing, but it's nothing unusual. We've seen worse. You're cumulatively, and in its entirety, the Naples network is probably the lowest form of dealership. But everyone's different. They sure are. This one was just bad. He wasn't failing. We have Negan.

Negan says F, no F way. Negan, you're pushing the boundaries of the FCC. All right. Well, there you have it. What do you guys say? Well, I agree. predatory practices, my goodness, gracious. I don't know what to say.

I mean, it doesn't even deserve a grade. I'm just going to drop it in the shredder. But you guys know me. I give it an F, F, F, F, F, F, F. Yeah, they're crazy, though. I mean, now we're a year and a half after they got, they're doing the exact same thing. You know what?

He's not crazy. He's probably realistic. He realizes the lack of enforcement, and he's been in business since 1933. and it took them almost a hundred years to get a fine. So he figures it'll be another hundred years before they get them again. Great place, a great way to put it. And if you divide up to $10 million over the 90 years that they've been in business, it's jump change.

Honestly, and it's certainly indicative of a deeply flawed system for sure. Well, that's what we're living in. Yeah, I'm going to give them the D-like student, because, you know, you just want with the Naples, some consistency to get them an F, but it would be dishonest. And unfortunately, the average level of performance by Cardinals are so bad that... When you give somebody an F, you're saying there is nothing worse, and we have seen some worse than this, but it's still really bad. Yeah, what is the word?

I mean, they violate the law. Yeah, my anger is directed at the regulators. I'll give Ashley Moody an F. I'll give the Attorney General of the state of Florida NF because she knows what's going on and she does nothing about it because she is afraid of offending those that will contribute to her campaign to get reelected. That's about as low as you can go. So I give Ashley Moody and F.

I give Naples and Hyundai a D. Perfect. I'll tell you what, with these kind of mystery shopping reports from Napleton, I'm going to refer to George Carlin's list of the English language I think there's 10 words that you can't say on TV that you can't say on TV or the radio

or the radio but I'm going to start I'm going to start using them in some way for this person and that's the mystery shopping report of Napleton is their minefield oh I'm sorry that's a mystery shop of

Napleton North Palm so North Palm Hyundai anyway folks folks we had a good time we're glad to be back we thank you for being so dedicated and feel better rick feel better we appreciate you rick uh rick is such a special person and he adds so much to the show and we're just happy to be back and have such a platform here uh that is so significant stew stewart earl stewart nancy stewart and without jonathan i'll tell you what he is uh he he he's

He's got the sign language going. He's got everything going, and we can understand what he's doing back over there in the corner without him really seeing anything. So, ladies and gentlemen, thanks again. You are an important part of the show. Have a beautiful, wonderful, blessed, happy, happy Labor Day weekend. TREGO!