Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.05.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Grieco Mazda of Delray Beach

Episode Date: September 5, 2020

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

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart, our LinkedIn's side. 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. We're back. My name is Earl. I'm a recovering car dealer. And this is Earl Stewart on Cars. Welcome to the new listeners, folks that haven't heard what we do. and a whole bunch of folks that do hear what we do, and they've been with us for many, many years.

17 years, we've been asking you to call the show and tell us about your problems when you're buying leasing or maintaining a car, and we're giving you our advice on how not to be ripped off by a car dealer. It's a strange message to have to put out, or the 21st century. Most retailers have figured it out. car dealers have not figured it out when you buy a car new or used there's no price that you can depend on they don't put a price on a car the price is what you can haggle and hassle for if they put a price on the car it's not the real price and as you've heard on this show many many times there's not a car dealer advertisement out there that is trustworthy every ad you see is designed specifically to get you into the dealership And then to change the price, probably change the car at the same time.

This is something that is built into our culture almost because car dealers have been around for about 100 years. I won't get into the long story of why they are allowed to continue this way. It's an interesting story, but it isn't pertinent. It relates to the fact that it exists. You have to be careful. And during this pandemic that we have, and it's going on a lot longer than we thought.

We thought this thing would be over in a few months. Now they're talking about maybe a year or two. Everything's changed. And cars have suddenly become extremely popular. The car dealers are doing well. People are flocking into showrooms and buying cars. Reason being, people feel safer in their cars. and there's almost a desperation

in a lot of folks' minds I've got to get a car. You don't want to take a taxi, you don't want to take a bus, train, Uber, lift, forget about it. Forget about an airplane. A lot of people say if I'm going from point A to point B I need my own car. They're buying used car. Use car prices are going way up.

New car prices are up to, and there's inventory problems causing the prices to go even higher. But the dealers are making a lot of money because they're selling a lot of cars. a car dealer, and I'll be perfectly honest with you, we're having record month after record month. It's more treacherous out there buying a newer used car than it has been before.

So this show is important. We feel good about the fact that we have so many listeners and we need a lot more listeners, and we ask you to call the show 877-960-99-60. We also have a lot of other ways to get in to the show, and that's Facebook, Twitter, YouTube. We're also texting. Text number is 772-4976530. So most of our listeners that are regular, been it for a long time, we've got those numbers memorized. I don't even have memorized. I don't know why that is, but I should, but I don't. And our new folks, write it down. If you have a pencil handy, I'm going to give you the telephone number again. That number is 877. 877-960-9960.

877-960-90-60. We like the calls, the old-fashioned telephone call because it's more personal, and text are fine. And we do the text, they stack up, but we usually get to all of them by the end of the show. And then we have something that has become our most popular way to get hold of us, and that's our anonymous feedback. It's interesting how people who really don't need an anonymous amendment,

Oh, tongue twister. Let me say it again. Anonymity. Did I get that right, student? Anonymity. Anonymity. Anonymity. www. www.anonymousfeedback.com.

Anonymousfeedback.com. It's a great way to come. It's like a text that comes through to us, but we don't know who we are. So feel free to say anything. And sometimes we get, I guess you could say attacks, insults, that's okay. When I get insults and attacks, I know that the anonymous feedback is, being believed. So even if you don't need it and you feel more comfortable using it, use it. Anonymous Feedback.com. In the studio with me, we have Rick Kearney, certified diagnostic

master technician, call him a mechanic, call him a grease monkey, call him a cyber space computer scientist. That's really what he is on today's cars. He knows... Automotive love God. He knows everything. That's me. If you have a problem in your car, You feel uncomfortable without bringing it into your service department for whatever reason, COVID, or maybe you're just afraid to bring it in. Call Rick. Describe the symptoms. Squeaks, rattles, rolls, whatever got going. Rick can give you a pretty good answer.

And if he can't find any answer, we got Google, so we can help you on Google, too. I look over at my next partner here is Stu Stewart, my son. Stu has been with me for a number of years. He's a general manager. About 52 years. Yes, of our dealership. And he's hands on every day. It's nice to have an old guy like me that's been around since 68.

I knew the way things used to be done. I've seen how they evolved, not far enough. And Stu has been around about 20 years, so he has modern history pretty well under control. And he's also our spy master. He's the ones that sends our secret shopper out, including our new, highly prized female shopper. Agent Lightning, so we have a full-time mail shopper, Agent Thunder, and, of course, female shopper, Agent Lightning. They're anonymous, and anonymity is important.

See, I want to see if I could say that. And they're doing very successful. We have Agent Lightning do last week's shop and this week's shop also. And last, but certainly not least, Nancy Stewart, who is my co-host, and she's been in one of this thing with me from the very beginning. 17 years ago when we were only a half an hour on the show, 30 minutes, and she's a strong female advocate, and she single-handedly almost has built the female listeners to this audience that we have here to about 50-50. We're at parity. And we have a lot of new callers. We have a lot

of regular callers. I'm going to turn the show over to Nancy right now so she can tell you not a special offer that is almost too good to believe that we do to keep the new female callers coming. So, Nancy, it's all yours. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Remember that number 877-960-99-60. The ladies' first two new lady callers can use that number to win themselves $50 this morning. Yes, by being the first new lady caller, you can win yourself $50. $50. And then I'll wait for a second caller and a third caller and a fourth caller. But the first two new lady callers, a win yourself, $50. I was just being a little silly, but, you know, wouldn't it be something if we had a show where there was just all lady callers? That'd be crazy. So anyway, take advantage of that And remember youranonymousfeedback.com

That's an interesting site where you can bear your soul And we would love to hear from you We are going to go to our first new lady caller From Reading, Massachusetts, and her name is Allie. Good morning, Allie, and welcome Hi, good morning. Thank you for calling. What can we do for you? I have a question. My car technician says that I have an oil consumption issue, and I don't know what that means. Can you help?

Oh, yeah. Basically, it means that your engine is burning oil. Cars, when they're made, they do tend to use a little tiny bit of oil. It naturally gets past the different seals and the rings and gets burned by the engine. But as cars get older, and parts tend to wear, and parts tend to wear. the gaps get a little bigger, things start to loosen up a little, and the cars burn a little more oil. So what that means is on older cars, you may have to add oil in between your oil changes. When it gets really bad, then it's time for either an engine overhaul or a replacement engine. That's so helpful. Thanks so much. How many miles do you have on your car? I have about 125,000 miles on my

2013 Superer Forrester It's a 13 what Forrester Suburu Forester Oh, okay How much oil is it using right now? A lot It uses a quart about

Every 3,000 miles A quart every 3,000 is Yeah, that's starting to get up there a little bit. So if it's not leaking externally, yeah, you might want to consider having a mechanic look at it. It could be something that they might be able to go in and do some repairs to reduce that consumption quite a bit without having to do a full overhaul. And on a Subaru 13, that might be a worthwhile car to look into having it repaired, you know, if you really like the car. Otherwise, you might consider before it gets too much,

worse, start looking at the idea of trading it in, while it's still got a pretty good amount of value to it. Allie, when you first bought the car, how much oil was it burning then compared to a quart every 3,000 mile now? When you first bought that Subaru Forrester, how much oil did it burn? I would say about 4,000 miles per court. The problem is when, relative to the beginning of it, my point, being that some cars come off the assembly line the same year-making model and two different

cars can burn different amounts of oil based on the tolerances. But when you have the same car that starts burning much more oil than it did at the beginning, all cars probably burn a little more oil as they get older. But if you had one that was burning twice as much oil after just a few years, that would be a sign that you might have a problem that can be fixed maybe. Yeah. I'd have it checked out. I'd get at least two opinions on that because something like this can be expensive and I'd go to at least two Subaru dealers, maybe a third independent mechanic, get some opinions because I think your recommendation could be, cost you a few bucks. Yeah, one of my favorite tricks is I would go online and look for the Subaru forums for

owners that are in your area and ask their opinion for an outside mechanic because quite often a lot of these forum groups they know people that know these cars inside and out that are outside mechanics and the cost can be substantially lower than a dealership mechanic great idea is that answer your question i think so much oh you're welcome ellie isn't it great um here you call earl steward on cars You not only get free advice, good advice, can't go wrong with Rick. He knows it all. And you can win yourself $50.

So I want to thank you for giving us a call, and I hope that you spread the word with your friends. And I hope to hear from you again. Of course, thank you so much. I'll wait to hear from you by email. Have a great day. Okay, we've had our first new caller, so that's $50. And we need another one, another female caller. One more.

877-960-90-60, or you can text us at 772-49-2-497-6-9-30. Don't forget, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. There's another little highlight for the show. A lot of you who listen regularly will remember Mark Fisher. Mark Fisher is an owner of one of the largest independent used car dealerships. in Florida, and aiming to be one of the largest anywhere. In South Florida, they dominate, and they have been shopped, mystery shopped by several times. They're on a recommended list where to buy a used car.

There's a lot of controversy because any time you have a used car dealership or a new car dealership, for that matter, it's selling more cars than anybody else. There's a lot of jealousy out there, and Stu will read an anonymous feedback from someone that feels that Mark Trisher's offleysonly.com is doing business the wrong way, and we want to have him have the right to defend himself. So he'll be calling in at 9 o'clock, hopefully this morning. I texted him, and he texted me, and he would like to call in about the issue that was alleged in the anonymous feedback. Why don't we get right to the anonymous feedbacks, or the text or whatever, Steve? You got any text over there? Yeah, I was really excited.

We have our, one of the best questioner is Amory. She texts in every single week, and she has the best questions. She's sending one this morning, and I thought I was going to be able to make a joke about it, and I googled the answer because I didn't know, and I was surprised by the answer. So this is really cool. Amory says, good morning. Happy Labor Day weekend. Here in South Florida, it's not unusual to see an elderly driver whose head is barely higher than the steering wheel.

I suspect they bought their vehicle because it was comfortable and are easy to get into, not whether they had good visibility or not. So her questions are, one, what are the, quote, air quotes, best fitting cars for shorter people? Two, which models have accessories such as adjustable seats or other safety features that could aid short drivers? You can mention, just mention tooters, since that's your area of great expertise. and what's the way for a short or really tall driver to get good fitting vehicles. So the joke I was going to make was what's the best car for short be I go small cars. But that's not true because I looked it up and here and Consumer Reports actually put out a list of best cars for short drivers.

Wow. I didn't know that. Yeah, I mean they got a list for everything. So I'm not going to read all of them because there's like 20 of them. But just for the best cars for shorter drivers, Subaru Outback, Volvo X. C-90. Now, the Super Outback is like a wagon crossover SUV. The Volvo X-C-90 is a crossover SUV.

The Toyota Highlander, which is a pretty big SUV, and the Hyundai Sonata, which is a mid-sized sedan. The worst, Toyota Tacoma, that's the number one worst one, Ford F-250, so we've got two pickup trucks. Then a Mitsubishi Mirage, which is a tiny

subcompact car. And then you get the Chevrolet, Colorado GMC Canyon, which is another pickup truck. So I didn't even think that that was going to be the answer. Her second part of the question is what kind of equipment or accessories. I think that's what's doing it because I can speak for the Highlander. My wife is, she's five foot two. High challenge.

Yes, she's five foot two. And her most comfortable car is the Highlander. And the reason for that is because the seat adjusts so well and she can get really, the height adjustment's really high. And then something else, which was really unusual, the seat can short. the actual place where your legs sit. So it can be extended out if you're tall, because her knee, the joint, and a lot of cars will actually start before the seat ends, and that makes it very uncomfortable for it. So counterintuitively, some pretty big SUV has made that list. Read that list again, the best cars and the worst cars, because this is something that has been bothering me in my entire career that the manufacturers could very easily take this in a consideration. And let's face it, you should. shrink. I used to be six feet five. Now I'm six foot three, and I might only be six, two and a half.

But, you know, if I had started out at five foot three, I would have a problem seeing over the steering wheel. I was with my brothers last night, and we were joking, and I said, well, dad's five, ten now. That's not. But the fact that matter is, in South Florida, we have a lot of older folks, and they come in and they want to buy a car from us, and they, or maybe they buy the car, and then, of couple years later they come in they say can you do something with the seat can you do something with you can't change things that's a safety issue when you have a power seat and your dashboard and your steering wheel the federal regulations limit what a car dealer can do to accommodate now you can put a telephone book in the front seat and sit on it that's how old

I am there are no more telephone books but you can put a cushion things like that there's a gap between where you have accessibility um features that like say something like the mobility services if you're you know let's say you're like sub four and a half feet tall oh sure and then you have then the regular range of human height and and then in between there there's a lot of people that are you know four foot 10 five feet tall yeah that have a hard time finding a car they can see clearly yeah definitely definitely but the list is um it was the best Subaru outback Volvo xc 90 Toyota Highlander Hanesanata the worst and I don't see too many you know, older people driving around in Tacomas,

but Toyota Tacoma, Ford F-250, which is the big, the larger Ford pickup truck, the tiny Mitsubishi Mirage, which I could see somebody thinking, hey, I'm kind of short, I better get me a Mirage. First of all, I don't advise buying a Mitsubishi at all, but the Mirage, if you're short, don't get that in that Chevy Colorado. Anne-Marie, you are amazing. I hope you're listening.

You are week after week. You ask the most intelligent questions. and you stump us sometimes but you ask questions that are on everyone's mind and that's the reason we love you so please keep on texting and you know you're an important

part of our show you're one of the very very best truly definitely Anne Marie and you know Anne Marie I think that you and Consumer Report have the same questions on your mind because things are changing so much as far as

the say I'm going to use an example the crash test you know it's only recently that the crash test has included children and women it's always been a crash test with a man behind the wheel and there's so many considerations for comfort once you purchase that vehicle you're done and stew pointed pointed out how the highlander I believe that he said his wife drives and the the adjustments on that I want to you what, I'd give anything. I think I may, as of today, switch from my Avalon to a Highlander because I don't have that luxury on my Avalon. So to your question, thank you so much, and you are a real important part of the show. Okay, let's move along. Some more text, I'm sure.

Let me give out that number real quick. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30, and we are going to go to John in Hope's Sound. Good morning, John. Hi, good morning, everybody. Good to talk to you again. I've been an avid listener a little bit more than a year and a half. I've got an interesting question that I have never heard the subject come up, at least while I'm. I was listening. My son recently purchased a 2020 ram truck from a dealership in New York area

on North Lake near I-95. He traded in a 2017 ram truck that's, you know, he had financed also, so there was payments on that one. He just got a notice from his finance company from the first truck that he's overdue on the payment. So this dealer never paid off the truck he traded in. And now he's gotten two notices that he owes two payments. Have you ever heard of that? Oh, yeah. Unfortunately, John, it's a common problem.

There's a lot of reasons for it. I would think this is probably carelessness on where you're probably talking about Mapleton, Crashley-Jave Dodge. And they're a chain dealership. there are 24, 30 dealerships in the Napleson group. So it probably wasn't a financial issue, but it can be a financial issue. You should be very careful any time you trade a vehicle in that you are making payments on,

to be sure that that dealer makes the payoff. It should be calculated if you have a payoff and you have a negative equity. That's got to be calculated. The payments have got to be made if they don't pay it off. And if not, you can get yourselves in a lot of trouble. The problem is when the dealer goes broke, and then you have no one to turn to, and you're stuck with it. It's a felony in Florida for a dealer to do that. Dealers can go to jail.

But when you trade your car in, you have to verify with that dealership that they did pay it off. And if they didn't, in this case here, they weren't even making the payments. Some dealers will make the payments because they can't afford to pay it off, and they use that to float on negative. They have a negative bank balance. They use that to float, Stu? I have a question. What did they say when you called and asked them what was going on?

Well, a matter of fact, the check engine light on his truck came on, so he had to take it back to the dealer for that. And while he was there, he went and talked to the finance manager. And, oh, yeah, yeah, we're working on it. Yeah, it'll be taken care of. So, you know, I don't know who's... Stu, what is the recourse? What should he do next?

I mean, you go to the state attorney's office? Probably not going to get help there. I would say the most effective person to get a car dealer's attention is a Florida Department of Motor Vehicles. They operate on a DMV, Department of Vehicle License, and that agency can cancel a dealer by taking the license away. They can find the dealer. There's no judicial process for the Department of Motor Vehicles and a car dealer. they are at their mercy. And when a car dealer gets a letter telling them

they've done something wrong to correct it, they move very quickly. So that's what I advise. The other problem is there's been damaged to his credit because in the eyes of the credit bureau, he hasn't been making his payment. So that negatively affected his credit. There needs to be a letter to the credit bureau

from Napleton saying that it was their fault and not the person's fault, not your son's fault. another thing else the worst person to speak to at the dealership about it is the finance manager who did his paperwork. He's a salesperson so he didn't care and the deal could be

in his drawer it could be in a box in the back of it you don't you have no idea. Whatever you do put it in writing whether you talk to the finance manager or you're not going to get Ed Nabilton and you're not going to get his son for a lot of reasons but you get the general manager

send a certified letter to Napleton stating the facts. That way you're on record if you have to litigate, which you don't want to unless you have to. And you can send a copy of the certified letter to the Department of Motor Vehicles. All right. Thank you. So he should contact the GM of Napleton and then copy the DMV and then also his first finance company. Email or a letter. But Rick had a point. Related note here. Donovan on YouTube is saying, I traded it in a car recently. And It's been about three weeks now, and the bank has still not marked and has paid off. The bank says they are way behind on processing because of COVID,

and he says, I called the dealer and got a copy of the check and the tracking for it being mailed. So if the dealership shows that they did pay it, maybe the bank is the one that got behind due to COVID issues. Well, I believe John said your son showed that three payments had not been made. Two at least. Yeah, now it's two. It was the first one, and now he's got the notice that the second payments due. The first one is overdue, the second one is now due. Could be COVID.

Yeah, could be COVID. I don't know. But he did talk to the finance manager, and he didn't say, oh, yeah, we definitely paid it. Here's a copy of the check. He was a little bit elusive about it. He's probably not part of that thing. He's, trust me, he's selling warranties, and he didn't care about what's going on. You have to get in touch with somebody in their office and the general manager,

and because the guy he spoke to who doesn't care. All right. Folks, thank you very much. Listen, have a great Labor Day weekend, everybody. Thanks, John. Good luck. Give us a call to all free at 877960-960, or you can text us at 772-49-30. And Agent Lightning took us to Grecoe Mazda and Dale Ray,

so you want to stay tuned for that mystery shopping report it's going to be a doozy now back to stew do you hear about the new Hyundai recall recently there's a break fluid leak in Hyundai's that can cause a fire and originally Hyundai said um the question was can you park them in your garage or you know indoors and they said yeah no problem they recanted that uh it was in the news uh last night that no do not park those vehicles in a garage in your house because you could burn your house down So I didn't know if he had read that. Great information. That's a pretty scary one.

Let's jump over to some texts. We have one from Andreas. He says, good morning, Earl. What do you think about Daimler AG's chairman, Ola Kalinius, comparing Daimler's level three self-driving autonomy to the grand achievement of the Apollo 11 program that took people to the moon and brought them safely back to Earth? Either Ola is downplaying the significance of that program

or Daimler is so full of itself to claim a ranking as high as land. landing on the moon. I don't think that rocketing in a Saturn 5 rocket at 25,000 miles per hour to the moon is the same thing as taking your hands off the wheel and your Mercedes at 55 miles per hour while going to the shop. Well, Andre, I will agree with you that it was a stupid comment, but if you want to get technical about it, it could even be considered accurate. In terms of technology, we've said on this show many times that the technology that you have on your iPhone today, and here's one right here, has got more computing power than the computers who put the first man on the moon.

So it is crazy what has happened to technology in this country. But for him, certainly the significance and the historic significance of the moonshot compared to his autonomous Mercedes. A lot of the computing for the moonshot with gone slide rules. A lot of CEOs like to put their foot in their mouth. A lot of politicians like to put their foot in.

He's probably sorry he said that right now. He's a salesman. He's pushing a product. He gets, he got attention. Here we are talking about it on the radio. He chose the wrong comparison, especially a German talking about an American accomplishment. So that's a little touchy right there.

I think some of those guys are able to taste their knees. They get their foot so far in. Yes. Now, maybe you could do autonomous driving if you had about 150 NASA scientists in the back seat with slide rules. Really fast. There's a lot of sticking your foot in your mouth going on. lately okay uh ladies and gentlemen we're going to go to palm city where uh we have john

who is our favorite caller good morning john good morning to everyone i have some very good news for new truck buyers ford is reviving the ford bronco that's brand new out can be ordered for 2021 a jeep killer that's competing with the jeep wrangler yeah and that was a successful vehicle I don't know why it was ever discontinued. It's out for over 10 years now. Could be O.J. Sampson. Stu talked about that. Everybody thinks it out right away.

In a minute you mentioned Bronco. Then the most exciting news is the finest F-150 pickup truck that's ever been ordered from anyone. It's six power options plus a new hybrid. There's a towing up to 12,000 pounds. So many options is unbelievable. It really. cameras alone, the reverse pickup, 11 different grills, 13 different wheels. I was reading about that.

Stiles, three cabs, styles. I mean, it's unreal. And everybody knows that that's the number one selling pickup truck in United States. And then I have a question for Rick. If he didn't work for a competing manufacturer, dealer, would he himself actually buy, I'm being of many years a pickup truck man would he buy one of those himself?

Good question. No, I wouldn't buy a Ford pickup simply for the reason that most of them are just way oversized. Ford, they've had smaller trucks, but to me the Ford F-150 now is such a massive monster.

It's like the Tundra. To me, the Tundra is just way oversized. I like my little Tacoma. Yeah, I don't know why trucks are getting so huge. You notice it on the highway now. I think it's a matter because when you make it bigger, people buy them. And there's certainly no, it used to be a joke when the pickup trucks first came out and became popular. The joke was, when you see a pickup truck on the road, 99 out of 100 have nothing in the cab or the, in the bed of it, yeah. In the bed. No one. one's carrying anything in their truck. So it's the idea of being seen. It's a macho thing. You don't see that many women driving pickup trucks. And so I think they found when they make

them bigger and bigger, people buy them. I can't think of a practical reason to have a pickup truck that you need a ladder to climb up to the cabin. To me, it makes no sense. I mean, that's why I like the smaller truck that I have. I can carry my canoe when I want to. I've got one of those fancy three-wheel bikes that I can, bicycle I put in the back and I go off to the parks. You know, there's just, there's things that I carry quite often, so I

like having a pickup, but I like the smaller truck. It's easy to park and easier on fuel. Also, it may be overpriced, too. That's an important factor, too. They make a lot of money on those, John. But there's something that's on my mind. It's the second thing I'd like to bring up. This show is all about people that get ripped

off. We're not saying that a dealer shouldn't have a fair and on his profit. He's entitled to it. If anybody totals up what a dealer spends, his insurance, his lighting bill. The other night we passed by, I think it's Donald Ross Boulevard and 95, it's a Honda dealer. I can't believe how lit up it is, what the lighting bill must be, and that's mostly a security issue. But that's a tremendous amount of money involved. And just think of some dealers, I mean, you...

You know, you take a deal like Gilbert Chevrolet that's in Okeechobee and compare it to his expense of insurance and taxes and compare it to a Chevy dealer like Schumacher, which is in West Palm Beach, and, you know, they're all entitled to a fair and honest profit. Nobody is saying that the dealer shouldn't get that. We're saying on this show, it's to seniors, it's the people that don't speak English well, and it's many, many people, I mean, unbelievable, that do get cheated and chipped, and that's what we're specifying. And then, you know, just take some of the dealers that are finished for good. You know, during these riots in New York City, they broke into a Rolls-Royce dealer,

and they actually took some of those cars and destroyed them. In Chicago, a Tesla dealer broke into that. For some reason, and used car lots, they're pictures. checking on automobiles, and that's something that people need, especially a used car, and they're totally destroyed them. So just imagine the insurance after something happens to a dealer that does stay in business in any area, and he's exposed to the elements, and most of them just wind up going out of business. Yeah.

You know, that's a, nobody, a dealer's attack me on that, and they say, I'm entitled to make a profit. I say, sure. I just be sure it's an honest profit. We don't, we think the more money you make honestly, or we applaud you. That means you're a good businessman. If a dealer makes $2 million more than he did the year before, I give him a round of applause as long as he did it honestly. Because in order to make more money, you have to sell more vehicles and sell them more service. and if you do it honestly, you're taking care of more people.

Exactly. And the more employees, too, the more is FICA as taxes are, and he does help the economy because it's more people working. I mean, nobody questions when you go into a Costco or a target at the profit that they're making, but it's a fair amount of money. I mean, that's why Costco does so well compared to the other box stores because their amount of markup is less normally than even, or Sam's Club or BJs, any of those others.

But that's exactly it. And yet they're still entitled to shop around. If you want to buy an appliance or something, you can go to Target and you can look at it at Costco. But most of the time, Costco turns out to be, you know, the best net profit on it. Yes, I do. So I just thought I stick up for the dealers a little bit

because people are knocking dealers and say, oh, you make too much money. They have too much expenses, especially now, with the way things are going on I mean some of their insurance rates are out of sight you're right John so that's a shout out

to the dealers I don't know any deal up you know but I just I feel for them because they are going through tough times as far as expenses go yeah well thank you John that's very well taken

and we feel the same way we have a lot of friends that are dealers and we know some we know a lot of honest dealers well not a lot but we I'm sorry. No, not a lot. But that's a good point, John.

Everybody have a nice holiday weekend. You too. The same to you in our rain, John. Thanks for giving us a call. I think Stu has some texts over there to share with us. I do. We have one from Robbie and Stewart. This is another great question.

I had to Google it. I don't know what the answer is. It says, good morning. Car manufacturers are contacting car owners telling them that by the end of November 22, their safety notifications in their vehicle will no longer be operational because of the cellular 3G networks being discontinued and going up to I don't think it's going to the 5G yet but it's going up to the 4G LTE do you know about this I had to Google it my first

my first thought was that most of the connected cars they're pretty recent you know I think the first one was a 2017-18 Camry something like that for Toyota's and I don't think too many manufacturers it looks like a lot of a commercial fleet vehicle is used like cellular telematics. And so my first inclination, well, when they switch networks, it'll be a software update, but apparently it's not. And so they've extended it. Originally it was gonna sunset, I think, this year,

and it's been extended until 2022. So there's millions of vehicles on the road up there, I think primarily in commercial fleets, but Robbie could text back in, if I'm correct, if he has another source that he read, that vehicles will have to be swapped up for the newer technology. There's also 18, this is mainly a problem with Verizon.

AT&T had, I think, had better roaming capabilities, so you could jump onto other networks. But it's a very esoteric problem. I don't know how it's going to impact regular consumers, though. Okay. Very interesting question. We have a text from Steve in New Jersey. This is good morning, Earl.

Rick advised the caller to check a Subaru owner's forum for non-dealer mechanics in her area, In my recent new car search, I joined several car brand groups. Members were happy to tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly about the cars I was interested in based on their own experience. In addition, I was able to read comments about common repair problems, cost to maintain, et cetera. Met some great people and got some great advice. Yeah, Rick has always advocated that, and we don't talk about that often, though. I've checked to myself, not as often, but it's intense. I mean, when you look at one of these owners, groups, chat rooms, and whatever you call them,

unfortunately, a lot of people my age don't do that kind of thing, but if you can get into a chat room on a car of your make, there's certainly, and usually there's one club or other that dominates. I mean, I know we're Prius. There's a huge Prius. Preas chat. Preas chat. And you get in there, and I learned something about car owners. I find out that they are obsessed, some of them, with their cars,

and they know more about their car than the car dealer does, and they love to talk back and forth. You know, I would like, maybe we should tap into some of these and try to hire some of these people because they really, really get into the nitty-gritty. They can talk about things that the manufacturers don't want to talk about. Little problems that if they were talked about too much might have to result in some kind of.

of a recall campaign that could be very expensive. But one thing you get with a chat room on a Subaru or a Prius or a Chevrolet, you get the unvarnished truth. And if somebody is off base, if somebody gives some bad advice, five people will jump on and say, that's not right. So it's not only unvarnished truth. It's pure truth and it's corrected if there's something that's not right, Rick. The other advantage there is a lot of the youth, when you're looking at the,

site, the users will have, along with their name, how many posts they've made, how many commons they've made, and when other people thank them online, it shows a number for that. So you can judge. It's organized because if there's one topic, transmissions in 2017 Subaru Forrester's, then you can go to that particular topic, and you'll have sometimes hundreds. And I think they put the more pertinent and the more relevant up at the time. of the list. It's not dated that way. So if I have a, I've got a Volvo, and I want to go to Volvo, what would you do, Google Volvo chat room? I would do that or just Google Volvo

forums. User forums. Volvo forums. How do I fix my God? You know, Google is amazingly intuitive, so just word it the way you would. You'll probably take your right to the forums and where you get the most relevant. Great source of information. We first discovered those about almost 20 years ago it was the Prius Chat Forum that you mentioned. And it was crazy because Prius was going wild. Everybody wanted the Prius.

And we discovered that this is not a commercial because this was 20 years ago. People were going wild about the fact that we weren't marking up the Priuses. And soon we started, and it was free advertising. And the prediction we knew we were shipping Priuses all over the country just because of this Prius Chat Forum. and we became, I think, the number one Prius dealer in the United States for a period of time.

Yeah, for a short period, yeah. It's amazing that there is as many forums as there are, and there's so many people that spend so much time on these forums, and it's a good thing. By the way, Robbie texted real quick. He said it was a Toyota that he had read about, so his Toyota vehicles affected by this sunset of this cellular technology. So we've got to look into that.

they don't have a good answer for you yet. Now, the forums are also a great source for finding things like aftermarket add-ons to your car, things that you wouldn't expect to see, but all of a sudden, just some really great toys and great safety features that can be added to your car that these guys find out about and they start talking about them, and there's some fantastic information out there. It's almost impossible if you have a problem with whatever your McMill model car, you drive, And it's almost impossible that somebody else in the world hasn't had the same problem. And it's almost impossible that some of these are not on chat rooms.

So we rarely, as a car dealer, we have a Toyota dealership, sometimes we go to a chat room to find out things that Toyota doesn't tell us about. Customer comes in, complains about a squeak in a particular year-mic model Toyota. And we check with the manufacturer Toyota, and they say, we never heard of it. We do get a lot of customers who come in and say, hey, listen, this is all over the line, and we know about it. Toyota doesn't know about it, and we're just beginning to experience it. So it's pretty powerful. Okay. Let's give out the telephone number again, 877-960-9960, and while I'm thinking about it, hey, Tina, we miss you.

Yeah, where you've been? Give us a call. There are our listeners, and some of our callers are asking about you. I hope you have a wonderful Labor Day weekend. Our phone number again is A77-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-60. I think we're going to go to Rick. Donovan Lewis has a great comment here. Changing from 3G to 4G is a hardware change, not software. It cannot be upgraded. So once Verizon turns off 3G, any 3G device will no longer work. because they are the last roaming provider for 3G. So that's going to shut down a lot of interest. But obviously they'll just have to do the hardware updates

if they want to keep that system operational. Yeah, I guess so. Or upgrade, yeah, you go up to 5G. Okay, let's see. Who sent this? This is Everett. Everett loves our show. Texas all the time.

Good morning. I have an 06 tundra, and I've noticed a very small water leak originating from under the dash on the passenger right side when it rains. This leak's not specific, just my vehicle. I've learned of other similar tundras with the same problem. Is there a fix for this leak?

Ooh, that's something we'd have to do some research on. You'd have to Google that, and that's, we're just talking about chat rooms. It's probably all over the chat rooms right now. And, Rick, you know, when's the last time you had a complaint of a leak on an 06 tundra on the right-hand side? Haven't seen one myself personally. Okay, well. I mean, that tells you something right there because you see a lot of them. So it isn't a widespread problem, and Stu is rapidly Googling this.

Okay, well, while we're researching that, let's go to Summerfield, where Ron is waiting for us. Good morning, Ron. Hey, good morning. How are you doing? We're doing well, thank you. What can we do for you this morning? I have a question for Rick. I have a 2012 Highlander that I purchased new. and it has 98,000 miles on it now, it has been a flawless vehicle.

I am getting along an age, and I'm debating whether or not to buy a new car, a new Highlander, in fact, just because of the technology that's in the new car. However, you know, I just hate to spend that kind of money when I have a car that's running just fine, and I was wondering if Rick could help me out with that. the technology has increased exponentially every year and right now the the newest ones coming out are literally on the verge of almost being self-drive cars i mean it's it's incredible how much new stuff are in these if you went to a dealer and just got in one and drove it around for a little bit and just played with some of those new toys now i i call them toys but

they are safety features and safety increases. Let me jump in there Ron. I think you have a compromise answer to your question. I think it's almost, if I were you, I would definitely buy a later model than a 2012.

But I wouldn't buy a new one. I wouldn't buy a 2020 or 21. I'd look for a later like a two or three year old certified Highlander. And what you want to be sure you have, there's a couple things that I would drive a car without today. And one of them is a blind side monitor and the

automatic braking. Now I can honestly say that I believe I have been saved. Nancy and I sometimes together have been saved because of the automatic braking and the blindside monitors. When you're backing out of a driveway, you're backing out of a parking place at Costco Republic, or you're pulling out on a road, you've got a high hedge on both sides. These devices will save your life. And they're nothing that you have to, they're not complicated. High technology can be so challenging that you just can't figure out how to use it. Bluetooth and a lot of these other things drive people crazy with the entertainment systems.

But take Rick's advice, come in and test drive a 2017, 18, or 19 highlander. Look for one, be sure it's a, you know, have a mechanic check it out before you buy it. you will have an amazing number of safety devices on that vehicle that you do not have on your 2012. That's important. Absolutely. Okay. I have one follow-up question for you also. I have a 2008 Prius.

You were just talking about that. And again, I bought that used from a neighbor who was getting a new car, and I've had it for a few years now, and it, too, has been flawless. and it's still on the original battery. Is there anything, I mean, it's got 100,000 miles on it now. I'm thinking that I can go 150,000 miles before I have to look at a new battery. Is that about right? Yeah, about 150, the batteries seem to start going on those.

It's one of those little dirty secrets of Toyota doesn't like to mention, because they've always said, oh, no, there's no real lifespan of those batteries. Now, about 130 to 150, they start getting a little... If that were true, why wouldn't they put a longer warranty on them? Yeah, exactly. Well, they actually have now, on the newest Priuses, the newest hybrids, they have now increased it to 10 years, 150,000 miles. Good.

But it's not retroactive to cover the older cars. So, yeah, you would probably be looking about, by 150, it's going to be looking at a battery. Let me ask Rick a question for you, Ron. Maybe this is there a way that he could bring the car in to you or any train hybrid mechanic and have them have the battery looked at and you could see something in the battery and say, Ron looks to me like you got another 20, 50,000 miles on this or you got a problem here and it might... I wish there was.

Not, okay. We have actually had cars come in and we've looked the car over, run a health check with the computer, and everything seems to be perfect, and we sell the customer in your tires or brakes, and everything seems great, and the next day the car comes back with the hybrid battery has quit. I mean, they can literally go one day they're perfect, the next day they're gone. well I thoroughly enjoy the show I'm a new this is my first time calling you I've been watching you for quite some time but I really enjoy what you all do I think you do a tremendous service for all of us and I thank you for that thank you Ron how nice thank you Ron okay if you wish to give us a call you can do so by calling 877 960 9960 or you can text us at 772-497

6530 and i forgot earlier in the show to mention our attorney general ashley moody yes she can definitely help all of us out we do a great job with the mystery shopping reports and we need a little more help so if you were to you know get in touch with ashley moody ask her for her help to protect us you can give her a call at 850 414 3300 that That is 850, 414, 3,300. Attorney General Ashley Moody, please help us. Please help us to get these car dealers on track. Now back to Stu.

Yes, too. Mark Fish will be calling in on about seven minutes. Can you find that anonymous feedback? Got it right here? Yeah. You ready? Yeah. Okay, this came in anonymously yesterday around 8 o'clock in the morning.

It says, if you purchased a vehicle at off-lease only, and the window sticker on the vehicle identified it as a previous accident vehicle, along with Offlease Only's website, also identifying the vehicle as a previous accident vehicle, then you purchased a vehicle that was involved in a severe accident, and they emphasized that in all caps, and your vehicle sustained structural damage to the frame that may be dangerous. Have it checked out by a professional. Now you understand why the price, its value, was so cheap. had been severely wrecked, and that's in all caps again,

when Offleas Only sold it to you, and they knew it, and that we have initials, PV. Yeah, we think this is disingenuous, and that's the reason I asked Mark Fisher to call in, because as the owner and founder of Offlease Only, they're a very, very good competitor of the used car business. If you're selling used cars in South Florida or Central Florida, your main competition is CarMax and Offlease Only. And they sell thousands, thousands of cars, and they're growing and growing, and they're going to be bigger and bigger.

So a lot of people attack Offlease Only, and we wanted to give Mark Fisher a chance to defend that comment. Because all of his competition are probably using that comment. As a matter of fact, my dealership used to make that observation before we understood what Mark Fisher and Offleys only was doing, buying cars at auctions, and then they sell them for less money than most other used car dealers. You can get a better deal on a lower price on a car at Offleys only than most other used car outfits, and they're on our recommended list. So Mark will be calling it hopefully in about five minutes, and we can move on now to some other. Do you think that I think we have time to talk to John from West Palm Beach? Oh, sure. Good morning, John.

Good morning. Hey, this is John from John. I want to comment on the gentleman that was looking at the Highlander, and the radio program cut off when I made the phone call. But when you were talking about the current technology and the safety features, because my cars have the blind side and all that, we get a break on our insurance. I don't know if that was mentioned, but we get a discount for having those safety features on our cars. Oh, I didn't know that. Did you know that, too? I'm having a hard time hearing.

Yeah, he gets a discount. John gets a discount on the insurance. I did that last year. I was aware that certain safety features, I don't know if it's how common it is across insurance companies, if it's just one or the other, and if it's like, you know, the same feature will get you discounts. But, yeah, I did know something about that. Well, thanks very much. So it's interesting. And then also one other question, because I'm driving it right now,

but my son brought his car down and we missed you, Earl, on Tuesday. But we want to find out when will, I'm driving the cell suitor now. And I was just wondering when you'll feature, you know, where would I look for it on the website? It's on, we have that posted. It's on our Instagram account. So if you just, if you search on Instagram, and I don't know if you, if you play around on Instagram at all, it's at Earl Stort, Toyota. Well, ask your son. He'll find it. He probably already saw it. And also on our Facebook page. It's Facebook.com for slash Earl Strait Toyota.

So we posted some pictures and then also a video. And by the way, your son did great in the interview. It's not a long, not a long interview, but he looked great, sounded great, and the car looked awesome. Yes. All right. Great. Well, thank you. so much. Thank you, John. Call again, please. Drive carefully. Okay, let's should have that call shortly from, from awfully lonely founder, John Fisher, and Mark Fisher, I mean. Let's see if we get another text in before. No, we got so much anonymous feedback to get through. So the first one was the caller who noticed that we had a female caller

named Grace last week and noticed that we didn't offer her the $50 and want to know if the promotion was still going on, I believe Grace has called numerous times. And I think we, yeah, if we recognize someone, we should probably address it and say that you've called a couple of times. But we have some regular callers. Grace is one of them. And so she wasn't a first time. But yes, we are still offering $50 to the first two female callers every single Saturday. And if anyone has a question and they want to address it, they simply can do, they simply can send me an email. email nancy s at es toyota dot com okay great we have an all caps and uh anonymous feedback should i yell it yes will that be annoying to people listening

you don't yell it full full power i just got my insurance tracker today and i'm returning this piece of crap tomorrow i read and watched reviews on it and i haven't put it in my truck yet and i won't it's nothing but a scam it's designed for you to It's a program is a lose-lose situation designed for insurance companies to scam you out of your money more, and then you're already paying Mr. Big. I don't know if it's from Mr. Big or you're paying Mr. Big, but I'm feeling you right now. That was a lot of emotion. I didn't understand. There is a device that you insurance companies offer, some insurance companies, where you can plug it into the data port of your car and records, you know, hard stops, fast accelerations, other things that might.

might indicate you're not driving it so safely. And if you send those telematics to your insurance company and indicate you're a safe driver, you get reductions in your rates. Okay. And not a lot. And so this guy, he's not having it at all. Yeah, okay. I'm not a fan of those things because I have seen so many of them.

The insurance companies give them freely to people. And therefore, they're not spending a lot of money to make them. and when those units fail, they can start sending bad information into the can communication line of the car and actually cause the computer system in the car to begin acting in weird, horrible ways. How many times does that happen, in your experience? In the last three months, I've seen at least four cars come into the shop with check engine lights on for odd issues that we have traced back to them using tracker units. Okay, did you find out any consistent?

in the tracker unit that was used of the insurance companies not really all that goes you know we didn't really keep track of keep pardon upon track of who what units are being used well why don't we correct that out we don't even have the unit yeah we actually had to ask the customer do they use one of those yeah and they say oh yeah I had plugged it and put it in my center console no when I got to you well let's try to find out let's try to find out if there's one particular company that does that I'm gonna start watching for that because I hate to paint all

of them negative. I personally think it's a good idea. I think that to me it's a defensive thing. If I, you know, you can defend yourself in an accident. You can say, look, I wasn't speeding. I did break ahead of time. I did not swerve. And it's all corroborated.

So if you're a terrible driver or a drunk driver, you don't want to have one of these on your car. But if you're a good driver, it's a good idea, if it works. We have this information anyway. Now it's just communicating into the insurance company. And all that information is stored in your car's computers anyways,

plus your dash cam will be picking it up. We should be sure before we say any disparaging words about that app. But until then, we are going to go to Mark Fisher from Offlease Only. Good morning, Mark. Morning, Mark. Good morning, guys. Happy Labor Day weekend. Thank you.

Thank you. Thanks for calling in. We're you tuned in when we read the anonymous feedback that was attacking Offle's Only. because of the way they bought cars that had been in accidents? I didn't hear you read it, but, you know, I was brought up to speed by your text the other day. So there's a lot of ways to address something like that. You know, we have all car dealers do disclose previous accidents.

We do provide car fax reports on every single car. We do provide a third-party inspection report on a car that may have structural repair. do it. I mean, we go out of our way to try to be as transparent as possible. Let's face it, use cars do get an accident. Some minor, some not so minor, but it's up to providing the right information for the customer to make that decision. You know, the reason a customer should consider a car that's been in a previous accident in the first place is because the car is usually thousands less than a similar car, and they can get themselves more car with less mileage, newer car for less money, a car that they possibly couldn't afford it otherwise.

So it gives the value is there. And just having to deal with a dealer that does provide the transparency. We also provide a five-day 500-mile free exchange, no questions asked, no charge. So if you bought the car and you didn't like it, just bring it back and swap it for another one. We're not out to do anything to anyone. And we all buy cars in the same place, and we all buy cars at auction, and any new car dealers buying these same cars and not disclosing it and not giving the discount on that car.

They're just charging full. I just had a thought. You're talking about the exchange. A lot of times we make fun of dealers that have the exchange because when you bring a car back that you bought and you didn't like it for whatever reason, they exchange it, but they mark up the price of the car that you exchange it for, so they're really charging you more for the car than you'd otherwise paid. and I know you want to make the point

that it off lease only, you're one price. You put your lowest price on every car. So if I buy a car from you and want to bring it back and exchange it, the car I exchange it for has the lowest price. You're not going to jack the price up to take advantage of me returning the car. That's correct.

We don't play games with our price. Our price is on our website or the same price you'll find on our lot on the window sticker. The same price you'll find advertised on the third party websites like cars.com and auto trader. We don't play games with prices. Many, many dealers now are advertising

low, low prices that are just basically fake advertising to the fees that they get on on top of those low prices. You know, we've built off least only on selling cars on very little profit at very good prices. We don't have the markup.

We sell a lot of volume. We've been the number one volume use car dealer in the United States for many, many years because of this. you know anything else that you see advertised out there these days you really got to do your homework you've got to look for those fees and many of these fees that these dealers are heading on are such bogus fees in relation to the price of the car they're raising the price of the car 20 25 30 percent yeah mark address this for us uh i know the answer and you do but for our audience when they say a car is unsafe after it's been an accident because it has uh framed structural damage

address that I mean there was a time 30 years ago that could be a true statement but with the unibody why can a car be in an accident and it can be repaired and it's perfectly safe

why is that today when it wasn't true a long time ago so that's a very good point that there's no definition when the words such as frame damage and structural damage are thrown out there to the public they don't define what that means

Today's modern unibody constructed vehicle, 90% of that vehicle is a structural component if it's repaired for damage. And damage is small as, believe it or not, by auction standards, the rules are if the car has damage bigger than one-eighth of an inch dent to a structural component, that is structural damage. Now, think about an eighth-of-an-inch dent on a car, on a structural component of a car. You don't throw the car in the garbage. It doesn't make the car on tape. They need to update their reporting and their definitions. I think Mannheim of all places should update that, but Carfax and the rest of them. But you're right, yeah, you can have a $2,000 or $3,000 damage that technically they call it structural,

but it's a unibody and they fix it and the cars as good as it was when it was new. But people are afraid to buy it and you take advantage of that. when you buy them at the auction, you buy them for thousands less, and you sell them for thousands less. That is true, and it's not really that difference in price, not really thousands less,

and these cars that have had damage, the repair dollars to cause structural damage, it can be as little as $500. Sure, sure, exactly, yeah. You know, many of these cars with very minor damage and they use that word structural, and it's a scary word, and other dealers use that word, such as the dealer that was complaining about what we do.

I mean, they just use it to scare people to buy a car from them and basically puts their guard down, so the customer is not doing their homework. Any car with a bad car fact is subject to have structural damage. You have to have that car infected. Mark, let me ask you another question about AutoTrader. When you called a show of two, three months ago, you were lobbying, working with AutoTrader and your team to try to get AutoTrader when they put a price on their website to include any fees like, you know, dealer fee, electronic filing fee,

dealer installed options and all that other nonsense. In other words, where the price that AutoTrader shows is the actual price and you only have to add sales tax and tag to buy it. Did you have any luck with OtherTrader? So that's a good question. It's not just AutoTrader. It's the other third parties as well, Farrs. car gurus, which is a very popular site, all of these websites are not being governed as to what kind of advertising is going out there.

And most customers, when they're shopping for a used car, they're shopping for the lowest price. Most people are going to do a search. What's the lowest price used car that I'm looking for in my area? And this is where there's a problem. And we've actually taken it on a larger level. We're working with auto trader behind the scenes, but we're not accomplishing much. It's very hard for them to police these dealers. There is a law in the state of Florida that's not currently being enforced, and this is turning now to the state attorney and to the DMV to do their jobs and enforce the law that's actually on the book that says cars advertised for sale must include additional fees other than sales tax and bad.

And that law is not being enforced, and that needs to be fixed straightened this problem out. That's the only way that this is going to be a fair level playing field. And the consumer is the one that's getting hurt, and it goes further because he starts. parties have now added on to their dealers advertising the third party themselves like auto trader car gurus specifically they're telling the customer what's a good deal what's a bad deal what's a great deal but they're not telling the person if you add a $3,000 dealer fee to that price it's no longer a great deal you know auto trader they're the 800 pound gorilla they they represent virtually every car dealer in the united states maybe the world i don't know

but anybody i tell people to go to auto trader and as you say Auto trader's ranking a particular year-make model car at a dealer somewhere based on the lowest price, if you want to sort by price, the lowest price. But they have no idea whether that's the lowest price because that dealer can have $3,000 or $4,000 in hidden fees that they're going to add to that price. So it's just absolutely unconscionable that auto trader gets away with that. They're so big, and they deceive so many people. but thanks for your efforts to try to get that corrected. If we can help in any way, we'd be happy to.

You know, with Moody, what's our Attorney General's name? Ashley Moody. Ashley. Ashley Moody, somebody ought to go face-to-face on camera with her and ask her why she doesn't enforce Florida law. Ashley Moody, why don't you enforce the floor law that says if you advertise a car at a price, it cannot have hidden fees,

and anything cannot be added. The only thing it could be added is sales tax and license tax. That's a law, and everybody is violating it except for off-lease only and my dealership and maybe a couple others, which I'm not familiar with. Well, that's true, and the amount of dealer fees is the other thing that I feel is a subject here as well. Even though the law says, listen, you can have a dealer fee, it can be whatever you want to charge, but as long as it's included in your advertised price. Now, with a problem that comes in here right at the moment is there's so much of this type of advertising going on,

it's rampant in South Florida specifically because of the lack of enforcement. And a dealer like awfully only that has a small dealer fee, and we do disclose it clearly in our advertising, and we disclose it on our cars, on our windows stickers, we disclose it on our paperwork. We tell people before they come to the store that we have a $399 dealer fee. That is our fee, and it covers a variety of things. And most dealerships have to do that, especially at our price level, we don't mark our cars up. We use that fee to cover a variety of things, such as our free car faxes, such as our free third-party inspection reports of these cars. These things all cost money, and we're giving a value back for what we're charging.

When a dealer taxed on $3,000 or $4,000 on top of their advertised price, they're not giving the customer back anything. Yeah. Well, Mark, thanks very much. Again, you're on our recommended list. If you're going to buy a used car, that's about the best place you can go. would be off-lease only, and you'll be treated honestly, and you will get a good price. Their prices are consistently lower than the competition. So I also, I recommend to anybody, Mark Bonnese's car, have that car checked out by your mechanic.

Have your guy check it out, and be sure everything's okay. And if you do that, you buy it from off-lease, you can't go wrong. And thank you very much for calling in. I appreciate it. Thanks, sir. All, have a great weekend. Great talking to you. Bye-bye. Thank you, Mark.

Great call. Yeah. A lot of information. Give us a call, tool free, at 877. 977-9-60-90-90, or you can text us at 77-49-2-497-6-5-30. We do have to keep in them honest. It's $500 in dealer fees. He does have a private tag agency or something like that, so it's not the...

It's slightly above $500. And he does disclose it. You know, part of selling a car in Florida without a dealer fee or even a small dealer fee is difficult. And you have to empathize with Mark. You have to empathize with my dealership when your competition, because there's no enforcement of law, can advertise a car freely $2,000 cheaper than the car that you. you advertise because they use hidden fees. Now, you say, well, it's only a matter, you know, you're only a little bit pregnant, you know, you're a, uh, is a $500 fee or a $600 fee better than

a $2,000 fee. Yes, it is. It's better to have a small dealer fee than a big dealer fee. The larger the dealer fee, uh, the more you can be deceived. And, uh, I don't like any dealer fees. Uh, in other states, uh, they have a cap. And if you put a cap, then they it really makes it good because whatever the cap is, if they capped it at $150, you'd know everybody has $150 added to the advertised price, and you would mentally make that calculation. But in Florida, you can't make the calculation because Earl Stewart, my dealership doesn't have a dealer fee. All fleece only has a $500 or $600 dealer fee, and Greco has got a $3,000 dealer fee or $1,500.00, whatever. And every dealer in Florida,

can choose any amount he wants and any number of hidden fees he wants so you can have a $10,000 dealer fee. So the consumer cannot make a calculation is to what the lowest price is and that's the sin, Ashley Moody. That is the sin, Ashley Moody, that a dealer can deceive customers easily

in Florida by breaking the law that you do not enforce. So give her a call, 850-414-34-34-30-3-3-3-3-4-4-3. 3,300. This is a pretty serious topic, Ashley, and you can help us with us. That's Attorney General Ashley Moody, and you can reach her at 850-414-3300. Okay. Text. Yep. This is another one from Robbie and Stewart. It says, I was listening to the fellow rave about how great his Toyota was. I agree. For years, I bought BMW and Mercedes. So many. I'm on their VIP list. We bought a new 2019 Toyota 4-W. are limited four by four for you are all. It's the best built vehicle we ever had.

Bulletproof. However, why does Toyota have the most minimal manufacturer warranty compared to other manufacturers? And again, that was from Robbie Eubman-Stuart. Yeah, I have the same question, and I think a lot of people do. It's, I speculate that when a manufacturer has a problem car, I think about Ugo. When Ugo first came to the United States, they had the best warranty of anybody, because they had to have it, because

nobody would touch it because it was a piece of junk. If you look at a lot of the newer vehicles that have entered the country, Hyundai is an example. They have a great warranty. When they first came here, nobody ever heard of them. A Korean car was kind of a joke. There was a time when a Japanese car was kind of a joke. And the Korean car, and they were hard to sell.

And so when you enter this market to compete with General Motors and Ford, Chrysler, at that time, you had to do something. So they put a really good warranty on. And when they put it on, it's kind of hard to cut it back, so they kept it. Toyota came in, and they put a good warranty on the car for the car at the time. And the car, it's still a good car. Subaru's got a good warranty.

A lot of people, it doesn't, I can't figure out why they don't extend it. I think it's, well, it's probably a matter of dollars. And since, Toyota has a three-year, 36,000-mile warranty. If they made a six-year of 72,000, it would cost them more money. And they don't have to because it's not when they're talking. The sales started going down, they'd start considering every option on the table. We, as a dealer, we'd love them to double the warning. I wish they would, not to mention the fact that it'd be great for selling cars, great for the customer,

but we make money when we fix cars under warranty. When the car industry collapsed in 2008 and 2009, that was a big trend, a lot of them started beefing up the warranties as a sales tool. Exactly. Okay, we're going to go to Palm Beach Gardens where we're going to talk to Mark. Good morning, Mark. Good morning, team. How is everyone this morning?

Good. Good. Hey, I just wanted, I got over three decades in the collision repair industry, and I wanted to open up a little bit of a discussion on when you were talking with Mark, your guest, about concerns on vehicles that have been repaired with so-called structural damage and how small, whether it be an insurance company or the, you know, auction when they say how small damage can be to show that it's structurally damaged. Well, if you're talking in a front-end collision and you've got damage to the unibody rails or what some people call frame rails, which you don't have frames anymore, it's all unibody construction. But if you have something slightly off, even by centimeters or millimeters, appearance-wise, it may look

okay, but it can affect your alignment. You know, pulling one's way to another. It can wear you know, what am I looking for? It can wear on

parts in your suspension. Now let's take, for instance, either a side impact or a rear impact. A car can look fine by appearance outside appearances. But if that, you Unibody is off by very little amounts.

It can affect water leaks into your trunk area or your side door areas. So, you know, that's why the consumer needs to be worried about when they buy a car that's declared frame or unibody damage. Sure. It's a red flag. Something can't always be, yeah, it's a red flag, and the consumer can't always tell by visual and sometimes even by documentation when they say

minimal damage that it can be much more. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Excellent point. So the consumer can try to be a little bit more educated. And it reminds me to remind everybody always take a used car

to your mechanic, to your independent, not with the dealership you're buying the used car from, your own mechanic that you can trust and have them check it out. They can check it on mechanically, structurally, put up on the lift, Has a car been in a flood? It has been in a...

You say, I've got a Carfax report. It had structural damage. Check the car for structural damage. Be sure that the car had a quality repair, and you're not going to have these problems, Mark, that you so accurately pointed out. If you don't have a good repair on a car, even though it wasn't something that would be normal,

properly repaired, it would not be a safety item. Improperly repaired, it is a safety item. Yeah, well, you know, well-trained I like you say that I always kind of thought after retirement I might open up a business of car inspections you know for people that are buying used cars great idea but anyway a well-trained I can see minor flaws that could cause major problems after a year or two of ownership yeah so anyway well thank you talking to me let's you and I talk about that that's a great idea for a business

as you start a business and you do a proper, careful inspection of a used car being considered to buy, and then you and I will go into business together on this, and then we'll put a warranty on it based on our inspection, that what we inspected, we will warranty for a period of time. We sell the warranty to the person buying the car. Great idea. Yes, that would be advantageous to the buyer, and also buy grandpa a new pair of shoes. Mark, call it.

Hey, you guys, have a nice weekend, okay, and nice holiday. Nice talking, here, always. Thank you, Mark. Give us a call, tool-free at 877-9-60, where you can text us at 77-47-272-497-65-30. And you can also go to Erlon Quars, and you can read his latest column. Trust your car dealer, but verify. A great read. 877-9-60-99.

and you can text us at 7.72, 4976530. Don't forget, Anonymous Feedback.com. We'd love to hear from you. Now back to Stu. Okay. Jump over some more anonymous feedback. Thanks, Earl. I want to buy a new accord, but no one. I mean no one will give me the out-the-door price. It's always the same thing. I walk onto a car lot, pick out in the cord, and then when a salesman swoops down on me, may I ask him for the out-the-door price? price. It's always the same thing. They're too busy at the moment to provide me with the OTD price, but can I get your number and email, and I'll get back to you with that information. And that's always the same thing. Please come in and talk to me. I have some numbers for you, and I reply, send me those numbers and you might have a sale, but they never do. I keep moving on other dealers, L.O.L. Thanks again, Earl. Dealerships are so funny, and even though it's anonymous feedback, this is from David.

well you know the internet is your friend and online is your friend when you go into car dealerships they're under in control when you're on your smartphone or your computer you're in control you can use an anonymous name you can give a phony phone number you can even have a email address that you communicate with that's not your regular email address and you just have to go to three Honda dealers and you have to ask for a their best out-the-door price. On the car, make it clear to them that if this is not an out-the-door price, then you will be buying it from their competition. When you're anonymous and you're online, they have no control. They know they have one shot at you. They see that email and they hold it in their hand and they say to

themselves, this guy might be buying in a quarter. He might not be. And if I don't give them my best price, I'm never going to hear from them again. So what the heck have I got to lose? Five minutes, I'm going to give them the out-the-door price. And of course, you have to keep them honest. When you get your three or four or five or ten prices back, you call the lowest price. And you say, okay, $18,000, $212. I'm running out a check for it now. I'm going to come in. I'm going to hand it to you, I'm going to get in my accord, I'm going to drive at home. If they start to stutter, and then you hang up and you call the next lowest price, and finally you'll have somebody to say, okay, you bring me a check for that amount,

you could get in that accord and drive it home. That way, you've never left the comfort of your home, your living room, and you don't have to use a lot of gas or shoe weather going around from dealership to dealership and playing games. I still don't understand that. Did you know that, and I don't know if I'll get the exact statistic, At some point, 10 years ago, the average consumer visited 4.8 dealerships before they bought a car. You know, it's less than two now.

It's like 1.2. And the reason for that is technology, internet. You don't need to waste your time like you do. Exactly. Speaking of wasting time, we have anonymous commenter on one of our videos that we have about the waiting game that we have on YouTube. And it says, as an honest sales consultant, your video on the sales waiting game, angers me what happens when I'm dealing with the customers nowhere near what is described here yes I do need to take counteroffers to my manager but before that

I make sure my customers are comfortable I'm offering drinks and snacks that I buy out of my pocket I've never drank a cup of coffee or smoked a cigarette while playing a game with the price this stuff may have been prevalent before smart phones but it would be idiotic to leave a customer purposely alone with the ability to look up misleading information I'll define that as competing information Generally speaking, by the time I get to show numbers, I've already spent an hour to showing a vehicle, in many cases, multiple vehicles. I missed out in other customers. Why would I want to keep you there longer?

I kind of want to jump in. I go, I'm glad that you don't go and smoke cigarettes and drink coffee and purposely let your customer wait. You sound like a good salesperson. Yeah. But it still happens. I know it happens because we mystery shot people all the time. We hire salespeople from other dealerships that confirm this still goes on. and I'm telling you right now it's called

Schlitz playhouse acting it's an old term in the car business basically a customer comes in gives an offer that the salesperson knows right away will not be expected he goes back into the manager with the office and they sit there and they go yada yada yada yada and they just talk about this game and then they come back and go I'm sorry I'm going to have to have you step up a little bit more

it does go on but anonymous commenter I'm glad that you're not happy that you sent the text in because you're not doing it maybe your whole dealership doesn't do it And the more dealerships like yours, the more, the better it gets. But it is, as we say, we know statistically because we mystery shop hundreds and hundreds of dealers. In most cases, it does happen. More than half, certainly.

Okay, more anonymous feedback. Let's go to YouTube. Sure. Mark Ryan's asking, any opinions on General Motors and Honda jointly developing vehicles in North America? Yeah. I had to laugh. It being an old-timer, I think back of the day when the Japanese cars first came in the market, they like to refer to them. The General Motors is Jap cars. It's really offensive. I can remember back in the 70s, the zone manager for Pontiac. I had a Pontiac dealership, and I got a Mazda franchise in 1970, and we didn't have a separate Mazda dealership, so we put the Mazda on the showroom floor of the Pontiacs. So Murph Martin, his own manager for Pontiac Motor Division, came in to visit my dealership,

and I saw him on the showroom floor. He says, what's that on my showroom floor? His showroom floor. I said, oh, that's a Mazda. I just got a Mazda franchise. He says, get that damn chap car off my showroom, and I moved it. So now, and of course the rest is history, a few years later, the Mazda, the Toyota, the Honda were far better quality cars and General Motors was trying to gasp for air. Rick?

Back in the early 90s, Corolla's had a lot of General Motors parts on them because Corolla and GEOs were similar cars. We used to open the hood on a Corolla that would have a battery, it'd come in with the battery warning lights on, you'd open the hood and just glance at the alternator. If it had an external fan, you knew it was an AC Delco, General Motors Altinator, and you were done. You sold him an alternator, put a nip-and-denzo alternator on it, and the car was fine.

Didn't need to test anything, just one glance, you knew, nope, it's a Delco, put a denzo on there. But anyway, that's a Honda. Honda, you know, and GM, it's good. It's a world economy now. All the manufacturers

are partnering with all the other manufacturers. Sometimes it's a good idea, sometimes not so good, but there's a lot of comparison. and the technology and it's good for the consumer. The greatest thing that ever happened to the car industry was the introduction of Japanese cars in the United States. It forced

everybody to raise their game. And cars, for the most part, are pretty good across the board. Exactly. Hey folks, if you didn't pick up the Palm Beach, Florida Weekly, you should. Earl's got a great, great column in here, and don't let the car dealer

dictate the game plan. Don't let the car dealer dictate the game. plan so pick it up take a read and earlier I had mentioned his column where you can go to Erlon cars and you can read Trust Your Car Dealer but verify be sure to verify 877 960 where you can text us at 772-49730 you know this was an interesting article that you handed me Earl on this is from the Palm Beach the pandemic is edged to vehicles.

And, you know, I didn't realize that there are people out there that have never bought a car until the pandemic. And it's a very interesting reads. And it says here, of Americans currently shopping for vehicles more than one in five, that's 22% had not planned on buying a vehicle. So take a look at today's Palm Beach Post. There's further information. USA Today article and then reprinted in the Palm Beach Post.

I hadn't planned on buying half the crap I've bought during this pandemic online. You know, what would be odd would be to go to New York and to see a lot of cars on the road because any time I've been to New York, the only thing that I've seen on the road is Uber, Lyft, and the cabs. So the times are changing. Yeah, it must be weird up there. Okay, let's get some more text on before we get to the mystery shopping report. Yeah, real quick. One is it says, how much would it pay to replace a hybrid battery?

Talking about it actually for a Prius battery. A brand new one to replace, it's about, it's almost $3,000, like about $2,800. You can get an aftermarket one for... Rebuild. Yeah, rebuilt or around $1,200, maybe $1,500. The new one, you get a warranty, all the... parts, you know, three or 36,000 miles, I think, on the replacement part, and then you're kind of taking your chances with the rebuild.

Okay. Hi, when we see ads for employee pricing for a car, are we actually receiving employee pricing for the car? That's a great question. It depends on who's putting the ad out. One of the biggest scams, actually, you have to be very careful because the dealers jumped all over that. There are legitimate employee pricing.

If it's from the manufacturer, like I think Ford it that was legit um when a dealer does it himself it's probably not yes all right he's probably not being fair with his employees dealers will charge actually you might not want the employee price yeah yeah no no seriously they're the car dealers charge their employees the hidden fees if they charge their customers yeah it's hard to believe that uh i don't know what they markup is but in addition to the markup they add their hidden fees and they have to pay it hello rick this is a see back. Hello, Rick. Are you a Toyota master technician? Nope. I'm a Toyota master diagnostic technician. He's at the highest level. He is at the very apex of the training,

seriously, in the qualification and certification for any technician. That's why we, you know, we blow them up and embarrass them every week and call him a computer genius and all that, but it's constant, never-ending training, and Rick's been doing this thing for over a quarter of century. So, yeah, you're at the very top of your game, man. I am. Time to start sliding down the other side of the hill. Anyway, we're all caught up with everything. We could probably jump in the mystery shop report. We're good right now. Okay. Well, as I said earlier in the show, Agent Lightning, our female shopper that we've been, we should have had a long time ago, but we do now, and we've got Lightning and Thunder. And this was another Lightning personal shop.

mystery shop to Grico, Mazda, and Delray Beach. The Grico Auto Group operates five dealerships in Florida, Mastda, Ford, and Chevrolet, and Delray Beach, and Ford and Chevrolet. They have two Ford and two Chevrolet dealerships, pretty

close to each other, Fort Lauderdale for the other Ford and Chevrolet dealerships. We have mystery shop, the DelVerey Beach locations, and all of them on our do not recommend list, not recommend. They're old school, they're tough.

We've had more fun reporting about Grico dealerships than any other because their sales tax exhibit outlandish. Bazaar comes to mind. This shop you'll see in a minute what I'm talking about. Long-time listeners might remember the legendary Ghost Mazda of 2015. Back when they had a Mazda dealership in North Palm Beach, they sold that. Grickle ran an ad on a new Mazda CX-9 that promised a ridiculously low price.

Agent X, that was our shopper before Agent Funder, legendary Agent X. He manages a Cineban in Omaha right now. Oh, I'm kidding. We're sent in to investigate. Only be told that it was this car at the ridiculously low price was sold. It was just sold.

Following up, we revisited their website, several days later, only to find the same vehicle, the one that was just sold and still being advertised. We said, well, maybe they just had bad time to pull the ad. Subsequent checks, however, over the following weeks revealed the sold car still being advertised for sale at the same price. But wait, there's more. That's not the end of the store. We found the exact same car being advertised. at the exact same price on the web site of Grico's sister

Mazda dealership in Delroy Beach. Again, this ghost car continued to be advertised for weeks long after they claimed it had been sold. So, it's just defies... Fun. Yeah.

For Agent Lightning's second solo mission, that's our female shopper, we chose Gricoe Mazda for this week's mystery shop when we saw an ad on their website for a hail sale. hail, you like ice coming out of the sky, round ice cubes. Right.

Yeah. The ad link to a page that listed eight used vehicles for sale, five monsters, two Jaguars, and a Ford. All were 2020 models. It wasn't clear whether the vehicles were new or used until we clicked into the individual listings. Now, there's nothing wrong with a hail sale. We don't see too many of these in Florida, but out in Tornado Alley, Texas, or Palma,

Great Plains, big hailstorms are pretty common place. When a hail storm hits a car dealership, millions of dollars can be incurred. Referring the damage may not be an option, so the dealer may choose to hold a wholesale and heavily discount the damaged cars. Now, I can speak on this a little bit from my knowledge back when I was an evil dealer. And I had hailsales. We had hailsails at my Pontiac dealership. But you'd chew the cars with BB guns. No, no, no. Here's, we had If we had hail, we prayed for hail. You know, you prayed for rain. We prayed for hail.

Because here's what happens with a real, legitimate hail sale. The hell comes down, it dents the car. Usually, it isn't that serious. You have little dents. But a dent is a dent, and if you have to repair a new fender, it's very expensive. So we'll have relatively minor damage on the horizontal surfaces of the car. You call your insurance company. I'm the dealer.

I call my insurance company. and they did an appraisal, and they paid me to repair the car. Well, the car wasn't that bad. It just had little dimples in it from the hail, and I had tens of thousands of dollars in my pocket from my insurance company. Now I have a sale, and I have a sense of urgency. I have a reason for people to come in, and they're getting a bargain. Well, they weren't really getting a bargain,

because I'm selling the car for just about what I'd sold the car for without the hail, and I have the insurance money in my pocket. So that's the reason I had hailsails 40 years ago. Okay. Now, we're talking about the 21st century, and we're going to talk about what Grico is having a hail sale. It wasn't the way I just described it. Where am I here?

Okay. In fairness to Grico, the photos in the ad did reveal some hail damage on the hoods on other body panels. It looked at us like these cars, got clobbered by some awfully big hailstones. It looked to us, like these cars, we speculated, these vehicles may not have been greek vehicles that were damaged here in Florida.

Rather, we hypothesized that these damaged Florida vehicles were purchased with the intent of offering them in a hail sale. Now, we get to the first deception here. Now, if you have hail on your cars and you have a hail sale, that's legitimate. It sounds like you've got an emergency that you've got to deal with you.

Yeah, yeah, that's it. But when you go somewhere and say wanted hail damaged cars and you buy them and you buy them at a huge discount because they are damaged, now you have a lower cost basis and you bring them in

and pretend like they're your cars and you're being you're being injured financially so you're giving these cars away that's a blatant deception and that's apparently what happened. Nancy Google hail damaged cars hailstorms and the earliest one in Del Rey was I think 2016 so clearly there was not a hail storm and Del Rey were and certainly not the time that does this kind of

damage I mean we get them I had my house a few weeks ago and it was tiny these were big these weren't doubles these were later on in the mystery shopping report anyway they weren't they were they were purchased with the intent of having some reason to bait you and switch you. And that's what it is. Here's a report. Speaking of the first person is if I were Agent Lightning. I entered Grickos-Mosted to Charlotte Room at 333 p.m.

was immediately greeted by two people, an unnamed woman and a salesperson named Justin. The woman I asked if I had an appointment with anyone and said, I didn't, but I was there for the hailsale. She left me with Justin Justin and the woman were wearing masks That's good But as I looked around

There were several employees Not wearing them And several more were wearing them Over their chins That's not good Justin said he was supposed to leave To pick up a car but assured me the shopping customers come first

Well that's nice And led me to his desk He left saying he'd be back in a minute Justin returned with a tablet and offered to show me the hail cars on its screen. Of course, I said I would prefer to see the actual car. I want to know how bad the hail damage was. Justin was okay with this.

He left, get the keys to some of the hail damaged cars. We went outside from the hail cars. The damage was pretty extensive on all of the hood, and the roofs were the worst. But even the side panels were riddled with this, which makes me wonder how does hail damage? the side of a car. Strong winds.

Very carefully. Coming in at an angle. I suppose you're right, yeah. Or bounce off another car. But I mean, you know, a big hail, I don't want to get into a physics discussion here, but a big hailstone is not going to be diverted too much by wind. Well, wait a second.

You ever seen a tornado? Wait a second. Stu said they were clobbered. Yes. Maybe hits on an angle and bounces off another car on the side of that one. I told Justin I liked the silver 2020 Mazza, CX-5, Grant Turring. It had 1764 miles.

There was a sticker that showed the original MSRP, 3,0410, but there was no price displayed anywhere on the vehicle. I looked it up on my phone, on Grico's website. The retail value was $34,152, and there was an $8,691 discount. It's a pretty good discount, but you jacked the price stuff on me. resulted in a sale price of 25,461. I made a metal a note of this, but I didn't say anything to Justin. Justin started the engine, we started exploring the vehicle. The interiors would like new.

Justin asked for my driver's license, which I had it over. He scanned it with his phone, suggested I take it for a test drive. He asked me if I had settled on the CX5 and won't know if I was considered in any others. There was a Jeep, I'd like that was listed on the websites. I told him I would consider it. Justin told me to take the monster for his spin while he found the keys to the Jeep. Came back, drove the Jeep, then I decided I won the monster. We went inside to crunch the numbers. We sat down on the desk, Justin left to consult with his manager. Justin went up to a counter, Lord his mask, I love this, Lord his mask, and spoke to the manager

who was not wearing a mask. Justin returned, masks back on, holding a printed sales proposal. He asked me if I'd ever had a floor license plate. I said I had. And he went back to get another printout with a lower tag transfer fee. Now I'm going to go back up to the previous paragraph I just read. You know, people can be affected with COVID and be, they call it asymptomatic. They can feel like a million bucks, no symptoms. So if you're not having everybody wear a mask and you're lowering your mask and talking to your manager who's not wearing a mask, how do you know that that manager cannot transmit COVID to you and how do you know you can't transmit COVID the whole thing if you're going to go into a place a retail establishment be sure everybody's wearing masks and they're

wearing them over their nose and mouth there's no point to wearing one over your chin anyway I digress. Chins do not transmit COVID chins do not transmit COVID exactly exactly I don't think just return mask back on holding a print of sales proposal he asked me if I had ever had a floor anyway I did that just went over the numbers the sale price was the same as what I'd seen online 25 461 but he added get ready for a long list here folks but he added 249 dollars for Zurich shield which is a worthless paint ceiling $79 for private tag agency fee which is his cost 10 bucks marked it up to 79 passing along to you. There's two hidden fees. $132.95

cents electronic tag fee. No cost there. It's the same thing as a tag agency fee, but he's charging you for it. It's a hidden fee. And here's the biggie. $999 dealer services fee, which is just what it says. Profit to the dealer, but they call services. And here's one, $101.50 for dock stamps. There are no dock stamps, folks. That is a lie, a blatant lie. Not only are there no dock stamps he has to pay for, but it's a hidden fee. So you add those all up, $1,561.45 in bogus fees.

They were added to the sale price, which was $27,022. Well, after the fees, that was the actual sale price. Oh, that was that, okay. It went in 25-461. Okay. They're charged in 27-0-22. So my sale price was actually 27,0-22. That was including them, except for the tax and tag, which were legitimate because they're government fees.

I told Justin that I needed to get something to eat. I would think about it. Justice said that although they were one price, we could probably get another $400 or $500 off. Yeah, one price except we could get another $4 and find a. $5.00 off. And he said he was on my side. That's standard procedure to side with the customer when you're not really siding with a customer. And he said he got paid the same regards for the price, and that's not true either because it gets a percent of the gross, a percent of the profit on the car. So the lower the profit, the lower the commission Justin gets. I thanked him and left.

Apple log, Agent Leibings Price was on the almost new, low mileage, but heavily damaged 20-20, heavily damaged 2020-miles to CX-5, Grant Turring, $27,000. She was given about a $4,000 discount off the original MSRP. It's our opinion that this is not a very good deal. If this vehicle were in perfect shape, undamaged 2020 model was 1700 miles, it would be worth about 23,000 wholesale. With a hail damage, condition number two, under Mannheim criteria, the auction guide, this vehicle is worth less than 20,000.

So we priced our new monster CX-5s on the true car, and Agent Lightning could buy a brand new one, not that much more than the Grico was charging for the one that was beat to hell. And it looked like someone beat it with a baseball bat, and then she and I were joking in the car that maybe they did beat it with a baseball bat. Remember, they wanted to show him pictures, and they said, no, I want to see the car. So Justin went out and got the baseball. That's a joke. We're not even suggesting that happened.

It's heavily different. It's funny. It looks like a golf ball. Yeah, big heavy damage. So not only was there a lot of hidden fees, and not only was the premise of the hail sale, not just bait and switch, but a dishonest bait and switch, if you know what I'm saying. If you have a car that you can sell, but you try to make them buy another car to make more money,

that's bait and switch. But if you have a sale based on your cars being damaged and a hail damage that were not your cars, they were somebody else's cars that you bought at a huge discount, so you suffered no loss, and then you advertise it and said, Hail sale, let's say, Implies distress.

Double dishonest, bait and state. switch and just not nice at all. So that's where we are. And we've got a lot of time left here so we can have some boats come in. And we have time also to discuss our philosophy. And I forgot to vote last week. I shouldn't. I have to vote every week.

I will vote this week. But we do grade on the curve. And that means that we give passing grades to dealerships that do things that we don't like. and that you don't like, but we try to say, is this dealer doing things that even other good dealers in Florida would not do? Just because you charge a dealer fee, we can't take you off the recommended list

because everybody virtually charges dealer fees. If you do bait and switch advertising, we can't not put you on the recommended list because all dealers do bait and switch advertising. So when you grade, if you want to be with us, on the curve, say to yourself, is Greco, Mazda, and Del Rey, worse than most other dealers in Florida in terms of the way they conduct their business? You got to be really, really bad to get on or do not.

Yeah, unfortunately, that's true. And so if you're using our recommended list folks out there, it's still a buyer beware. Be careful, do your homework and be very careful, even on the recommended list. On the do not recommend list, don't go within 20 miles of that dealership, because you have got a chance. I have a feeling, I know the direction this is going to take when we get through the grades. Okay. Well, Jonathan

Wellington says, you had me at Greco. I didn't need to hear anymore. Their terrible reputation precedes them. Automatic F. Okay. We got another F for Greco, and this comes from Bob up in Maryland.

Up and then, of course, Linda, can anybody, what's Linda's grade? Linda's F. That's a huge F again, and she says, hail, hail, no way. And then Martha gives them an F. That's on the Facebook. So, hey, listen, I know we're great on the curve, but there ain't too many car dealerships doing hailsales.

So the curve is a very limited data set. I'm going to give an F because the whole concept from the beginning to the end was designed to deceive. It was like, like you said, implied distress situation for the dealer. It's almost like, I need you help. Hey, this is a win-win thing. You're going to get a great price. we get rid of a damaged car.

I forgot to mention in the report that Justin did say for $1,500 they could wrap the car with any color that they want, and that would a wrap as one of these vinyl plastic applications that a lot of businesses use, but you can do a straight color. It's much less money in a painting in a car. It doesn't last that long, but you could conceal some of the damage. But yeah, the whole thing. And then, I don't know what Greco paid for these cars,

But the car, we spoke to our wholesale, an expert, very confident to say this vehicle with the damage is worth less than $20,000. So if they made, if they're going to make $7,000, $8,000 profit on this car, that's unconscionable. So big up from me. You know, I can hear the, you know, the brainstorming session and the Grico Mazda management meeting. And what are we going to do? We've got to sell more cars. and then Charlie says, you know, I used to work up north and we had a hail sale, we made a fortune.

And another guy says, here Del Rey says, we haven't had a hailstorm since 2016. And another guy says, I got an idea. We'll go find some damaged cars somewhere else and we'll truck them in, we'll buy them dirt cheap, and then we'll say, hail sale, and people think we had a hailstorm, and we were damaged, and we can make a fortune.

You know what I mean? My cousin Lenny's got a dealership up in Oklahoma, and they just got hit with 40 cars. One hell of a wholesale. You know what I bet? I bet you there's a business for this. There's a wholesaler car, wholesaler outfit that goes around and buys these things and promotes this to dealers. And so, hey, listen, you got, he goes, have you ever had a hail sale? We don't get hail.

No problem. I got you. Yeah, that's a great idea. You're just honest dealers out there, you know, anytime you see on the weather report, the weather channel, hail, you immediately. go out there and you start buying these cars up and you could do a pool of cars and you can contact all dealers. Halesale. I have cars available for your

hailsale. And guess what, folks? If we had more time, we would have a whole lot more entertainment for you. And no, this isn't the comedy show. I've got a bunch of YouTube votes here. Tim Gilliland, good deal. Hail no, D.

Mark Ryan, F. Wayne with an F. Al-Suchery with an F. Karen, hate crooks, a big fat F, Mr. Hand, F to hail with them. And Mark from St. Louis, hell no, F. Mark, who called the show earlier, chimed in, he said, Gray D plus only because they declared the damage. Very dishonest. Apparently, I think he's been listening to the discussion that he texted again.

Never mind, F. And my own is F. And Earl, what's your vote? Well, I'll go last. Oh, thank you. I am going to keep them on the do not recommend list by giving them an F, F, F, F. Yeah, I usually have to struggle when I fail somebody, but my is an F. The whole reason for the F, not the huge number of dealer fees and not anything else other than the something we've never seen before, a manufactured hailsale. I mean, for all we know, when you buy a car that goes through the auction, damage that badly, as our appraiser said,

they bought that car for how much less than the... Well, I don't know what they paid for it. The wholesale value with that damage is under $20,000, maybe $19.95. Yeah. And they're going to sell it for $27. Yeah, it's just a huge opportunity. And people come in and it's deceptive because you can show them the car. Here it is.

Hale down. They really had hail damage. And they're showing me the car and they're disclosing it. And they didn't realize the disclosure is they bought the car. taking into account the hail damage, and they suffered no damage. And nobody ever thought to say, wait, you have 300 cars in your lot, but only eight of them got hit by hail? Yeah. So you'd invase your grade on the $100, wait a minute now, $101.50 on the dock stamp.

Okay. You'd invase it on that? We don't care about that. And there are no dock stamps. I told you, folks, we got more. We got a Bob. This is just fun. We have more that came in.

Another F, Bob gives them a, I think like Nancy, he outbid the edge of five Fs, you give him four. And then Jacks, it says, I give them a meteorologist, cloudy with a chance of hail. Don't buy a Mazda, a Greco Mazda, and Del Rey. Okay, on the do not recommend list. Okay, what are we got? Do you have any YouTube or texts? I think we've got a couple of minutes left, don't we? Yes.

No, I'm leaving. Okay. Okay. That gives me a chance. to be able to expound on something. And I, every now and then I do a blog that I really think is a good, I do hundreds of hundreds of them. And this one on Take Control, and you go,

earlancars.com, Earlongcars.com, take control. This is, it made me feel warm and fuzzy that I'd done my job to help you. And it's simple, it's short, I cover the basics, and I give you what to do there's only a say what I have I think I have six items here I have yeah six

I talk about hidden fees and what to do about that I talk about pre-installed accessories hidden fees pre-installed accessories two of the most prevalent deceptions that all car dealers are using

number three counterfeit window stickers Phony Monroney's. I talk about those. Almost every dealer uses these. Undervaluing your trade end, that's number four. We call it in the business, steal the trade, and that's something you have to watch. I tell you how to protect yourself there. Inflated interest rates and overpriced products sold in the finance department, the box. and I tell you there concisely what to do and finally

advertising that grossly understates a true selling price, this is the easiest one every car dealer ad grossly understates the selling price because they can add the hidden fees and they can add the dealer-installed

accessories and other things so if you go to Earl up cars and say don't live the car dealer dictate the game plan, take control. That's one of my latest blogs. If you read that, put it in your pocket with you

and read it every now and then. You'll never be taken advantage of by another car dealer. Yeah, really, put it in your pocket. And you said warm and fuzzy. Every once in a while, that's exactly how I feel whenever I proofread the, missed the columns. And it's just amazing how much information Earl puts out there for you. And as I always say, knowledge is power.

So go to Earl on Cars, check out all of his columns. They're amazing. They'll save you a lot of money. And Earl has his book that is right there in front of the camera. And 100% of the proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch, and you can go to Amazon.com to purchase. Ladies and gentlemen, have a very safe Labor Day weekend. Please keep that mask on. We'll see you right back here next week.