Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.12.2020 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Ed Morse Honda and Braman Honda

Episode Date: September 12, 2020

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female shopper, Agent Lightning performs an online shop pitting Ed Morse Honda's price against Braman Honda's price for the same 2020 Honda CR-V. 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. through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership.

And now, on with the show. Well, good morning, everybody. This is Earl Stewart, the recovering car dealer, live, right here on YouTube, right here on Facebook, on the conventional radio, on Twitter. We're all over the world. We've got a pretty big audience for getting calls from all over the United States. And in a nutshell, we're going to tell you how not to get ripped off by your car dealer when you're buying, leasing, maintaining, or repairing your cars.

We thrive on your calls. Your calls are the fuel for this show. We have a multitude of ways that you can contact our show during the next two hours. And we'll be on from now until 10 o'clock. you can call us on our old I call it the old-fashioned telephone I mean I'm an old guy and this iPhone thing is still

a miracle to me but we used to have telephones remember telephones anyway 877 960 9960 we'd love to hear from you because the telephone still has a personal touch we can hear you, you can hear us

there's the exchange sometimes it's a little bit you know, talking over back and forth kind of thing. But telephones are more like real life. So we love to have your calls. We prioritize our calls that are on the old-fashioned telephone, 877-960-90-90-60, partly because our switchboard only handles three or four calls

for the same time here at the radio station, and also because we don't want you waiting, especially if you're in the car and you make a call from the car. So I promise you, if you'll call 877, 960, 9960, we will get to you and quickly, as quickly as possible can. But a lot of folks like to text, and text are cool because they are like an archive. They build up.

We get to all of them almost every week, and sometimes we get to them out of way. Sometimes we don't, but during the two hours, we'll get your text answered, 99% of the time. And that text number is 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6-5-3-0. Write these numbers down, and when you think of something that you'd like to say, critical or otherwise, please do so. And we have a super number. We just absolutely love, and it seems to be the most popular number. I give it to you last because I really don't have to give it to you because a lot of people do.

Oh, we have a telephone call. I'll be with you one second caller, and I just want to give an anonymousfeedback.com. www. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Tell us anything you want to say. We don't know who you are. We can't track you down. We can't have you arrested.

We can't give you a reward. You're totally anonymous. You have my word on that. Now, let's go to our first call. Okay, let's go to our early caller. That's Warren. He's calling us from Pompano Beach. Good morning, Warren.

Hey, guys. How are you today? Great. Thanks for calling. the reason why I called was that I think it was Monday I'm not sure there was a big article in the New York Times about the shortage of used cars and I thought you guys might be interested in if you wanted to look it up I think it was Monday could have been Tuesday about you know what you've been talking about and it pretty much was going when you guys been saying all along about you know people just want to get a car go whatever but one of the interesting things they pointed out was that a lot of people who are in the upper echelons of society have discovered that, you know, these cars like Mercedes or Audi's or Cadillacs could be bought used to half the price. And they don't have to go out and pay $40,000 to $50,000 for these cars,

especially if you can find them with little mileage on them. And even people with money say, why should I pay $50,000 or $60,000 for Mercedes or Cadillacs when I can get it for $30,000 with $10,000 or $15,000. miles on it. So it sort of created a short deal, but it was interesting that it was sort of parody what you guys were saying. Yeah, Earl and I were talking about that article on Monday. One of the other interesting things was that a lot of people are buying used cars just to avoid taking public transportation, you know, rideshare or the subway or whatever, and that added just another reason, because we've been pondering this, you know, as you know,

listened to the show for, you know, since early this summer. And yeah, it was a great article. Yeah, it was just something I got I think too, you guys saw it, but I like the part about the used cars that are the expensive ones that are, you know, Warren, I tell you, I've always said, and it applies especially to use cars, it's a much better value to buy a two or three-year-old used car, particularly Cadillac, Lexus, BMW, Porsches, these high, high-high-priced cars. The luxury cars usually have a bigger market. markups, and they have less of a discount.

But as soon as they're traded in, the prices drop precipitously, and you can get a great bargain, even sometimes under new vehicle warranty. So if you're a luxury car buyer, you really should try hard to shop or the used car. Now, the problem is that prices are up. There is a shortage of supply, but these car prices are coming down a little bit. They peaked about, what, three weeks ago, 30 days it goes to? Yeah, towards the end of July, beginning of August. Yeah, so it's still a good time to buy used car.

And any time you're thinking of a new car, go out there and price the equivalent two or three-year-old used, and it's really a better value. Warren, thank you very much for pointing that out. That's one of the most important things any car shopper needs to know. Yeah, I mean, like I said, I know two people who I know a friend of what a Cadillac,

I mentioned before, who like half the price than another person who would have an Audi who would pay almost, about half price for it for a car coming off the lease, the deal and told them that whether it's true or not, I don't know. He paid about literally half the price for an Audi with 20,000 miles on. Yes. And that car goes in the 40s, and, you know, we went to look at and everything we bought it.

So I just figured, you know, how could you not go wrong with that? What's 20,000 miles on the car today? Exactly. You still have to be careful, and you should always compare, don't just think these cars a great deal. Compare the new car price. It's a good negotiating tactic. If you want to buy an Audi, the luxury you got a Cadillac, price the exact same car out new,

and pretend like you're going to buy the car, go through the process, get the best price you can on that new car, and then look at a used car, and you should save several thousand dollars. But sometimes you'll find out people take advantage of people buying used cars, and you can find out you can buy the equivalent new car, especially when there's big incentives for close to the price of the use. So you need to save yourself three or four thousand dollars,

at least when you buy used cars as opposed to the brand new one. Yeah, just one last question. The use car compared to leasing a car, just to say what you were saying before. In other words, if you're pricing out a lease of a car, in other words, if you're going to buy luxury car it was, you know, are you just better off in time of going leasing the car because you might get you're going to buy the used one. Is that any possibility? What is your thoughts on that?

Well, leasing is... Leasing is a good idea as long as you know, as long as you've done the process and research and cost of it out competitively is when you buy one. If you lease a car at a competitive rate, it's no better or no worse than if you buy a car at a competitive rate. The key is competition, competitive rate, best price. There is no advantage to leasing. Now, one disadvantage to leasing is a lot of people don't know the rules of leasing, which are

If you have a 36-month or a 48-month or whatever length of the lease, you're obligated for all those payments. A lot of elderly people in South Florida, a lot of seniors, and we have more health problems, I'm one of them. And you get into a situation where you can't drive the car anymore. Hearing health problems, they happen. And you have to pay those payments, whether you can drive the car or not. I know people, unfortunately, sadly, have called me. A car sitting in the garage. The doctor says you can't drive.

and the car is sitting there. You have to make the remaining 14 payments. And a lot of salespeople, when you lease a car, lead you to believe that, hey, it's like renting a car. If you don't like the car, bring it back and get another one. That doesn't happen. You're obligated totally. And if you pass away, God forbid people do this.

And what are you going to do? It goes into your estate. So your beneficiaries are paying the price because that estate owns a big debt. You know, maybe you've got 14 remaining payments for $500 a month. That's a lot of money. Your estate has to pay the leasing company. Just one quick question about leasing.

What do you think of these things? I see it about taking over somebody's lease. In other words, if somebody was paying $400 and moves for the X card, I'll say, all right, if you take over my lease, you know, I'll take it up $300 and I'll leave for $100. I'll give you a check. There's a year on a lease, for example. I'll give you a check for $1,200.

We'll do all the paperwork, and you take over the lease of $300 and finish up. Do you believe that's legitimate or any validity to it? It can be, but it's pretty tricky, Warren, and I'd advise against it. There are companies out there that do this. Remember, the leasing company has to say yes. So I can't just go to Allen or George or Charlie and say, hey, Charlie, take over my lease, and he says, okay, I'll do it. I got to go to my leasing company, and then I've got to check Charlie out pretty carefully.

They don't like it. I mean, you can see, I'm a leasing company, I lease you a car, and then after only half the lease payments are paid, you want to have somebody else make the payments. Well, you're making payments. I knew who you were when I leased you the car. Why should I accept Charlie to pay the last full payments? Maybe Charlie won't make his payments.

So I recommend against having other people take over your lease payments. It's a gamble. Okay, thank you very much, guys. Thank you, Warren. Take care. Same to you, Warren. Back to Earl Stewart. Okay, let's get into some, I think we probably got some texts. We've probably got some YouTube. What do we have over this? Let me take advantage of a moment here and remind everyone to go to www.

Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We'd love to hear from you, and we'd love you to share anything and everything with us. Now, we're going to go to Stu. I have a very special text. says hi Earl Nancy Stu and Rick this is Tina I know I haven't called your show

in recent weeks and this has been due to a schedule change in my work I hope to call back as soon as circumstances allow in the meantime I'm hoping that Nancy continues to attract more women to your platform

because we are still underrepresented I would like to extend well wishes to everyone keep putting the underhanded dealers and unscrupulous repair facilities on blast for their bad behavior hashtag big dog ranch hashtag adompt

shop thanks sincerely Tina so that was really good thanks for your support Tina oh wow we're worried about you Tina I uh yeah we didn't know what happened whether you moved out of the area where you got sick and we miss you so much I'm glad you got yourself a good job and sorry the hours conflict but call us as soon as you can yeah thanks for the update I'm gonna take advantage of reminding the ladies this morning because of Tina she has really supported me like so many other ladies and help to build the platform to, you know, let our voices be heard. You can win yourself $50 this morning, the first two new lady callers, $50.

I know you can use it. So give us a call at 877-960-9960, first two new lady callers. You don't have a question? Call to say hello. I'm waiting. And to Allie, I certainly hope you're listening and that you will send. me your contact information. Again, that number is 877-960-99-60. Now back to Stu. Let's get on somebody's text or anonymous feedback. Okay, so we have a great follow-up to a Tina

text. We have an Anne-Marie text. Amory has three questions. She says, good morning. Number one, since cars have become rolling computers, I was wondering how much personal data do they capture. Number two, do they store contacts from one's phone, for example? And three, is there any way to delete this data before one sells a vehicle? That's from Anne-Marie. I think Rick probably knows a lot about that. I can tell you that they do store your contact information if you allow it to when you're setting up your phone, you're connecting it for the infotainment, you know, for music, but also for communications.

and that's a great question because you do have to delete it yourself before it's resold and a lot of people I would imagine don't even bother to do that. Right, you're right. That's actually a great thing to let people know about. Yes, on the older cars

that I'm going to say two to three years, the past two to three years and going back about five or six years, if you connected your cell phone in, all your contacts were sent and stored in the radio. now within the last one to two years especially as car play from Google and Apple has become more prevalent instead of putting that information stored in the radio

the radio will simply contact the phone to access it when it needs it but when you want to get rid of the car you're going to let it go you want to go into settings and look for the line that says delete personal data the other thing that this will delete is all of your previous destinations and your home location that was in your navigation system you want to delete all that information so that way somebody can't when someone else gets the car they can't go back and look at where you might have been where your home was yeah or any of your personal data uh yeah i just have a thought that's very interesting makes it make a great

tv plot you know the guys the circuit and looking for other people if you had somebody you really want to check out a politician that was running for office and you found out he sold his car I'll guarantee you that he probably didn't do what you just wouldn't know about so you could buy the car you know be the top bid or go up and say how much you want for this car I don't care you're right out of check you buy the guy's car he traded in ABC Cadillac or wherever and then you do exactly what you don't want to do or you don't want others to do find out everything about the guy you You can find out where he went. Who he's calling?

Yeah, you can find the guy running for Congress goes to Rachel's Strip's Club every Saturday. You might find all his girlfriend's numbers. And it got strange numbers you don't know. I mean, that's really interesting. I mean, Ann Marie, once again, super, super question. Delete that data. I'm just one of these people that I don't delete stuff like that.

But you mainly use, I think you use your Apple Carplay, don't you? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so that's a good improvement. But I remember learning about this way back when they first started having these where you can hook up your phone to the car, and that was the big deal about changing. When they had navigation, you can set the home.

And I was always advised, set it like a block away from your house. So if somebody ever stole your car, they wouldn't be able to find your home, which I think would be a very unusual situation. If a car thief would steal your car, then wanted to come visit you. But it made sense. Or set it to like an intersection, the nearby intersection, but remember if someone does have that information that you know tells them how to find your house and if you have say home link that has the little button right you know in there and open your garage

they simply drive up to your house hit a button and pull right into your garage okay great information uh thanks anne mary thanks Rick so we're going to go to Frank who has been holding from West Palm Beach good morning Frank good morning how is everybody we're well thank you good i haven't spoke to you for a while just on the last thing about the where you were talking about why don't they set the car

you know your address to i think you cut out there frank could you repeat the question i said listening your last caller or text whatever about deleting your phone and everything from your car and then put your home address

at your address someplace else so they can't find your house I thought it would be good to put it at the local police station that'd be great you should be able to know how to find your home in your own car I would think yeah yeah well anyway I'm calling I had a thought the other day in the old days when your friend needed a battery

had a dead battery and needed to push to get it started or to jump it or whatever. You used to push the car. Today you can't do that because the forward collision brake goes on. And you wouldn't want to do today's because there's no more bumpers. But I was thinking about all the police cars. They had these great big bumpers that they put out in front of their cars to push somebody. So they don't have to pull the collision. Frank, you're fading in and out again.

Are you want an unusual kind of phone or are using speaker phone or something? Because you're fading in and out. I'm 441 driving. Okay. Okay, so you're using hands-free. Okay. Go ahead, Stu. Repeat your last question because you were fading out on us.

The forward collision. When you try to push your car in the old days with a bumper to get them started, to jump start a car. Right. Today's cars, you wouldn't want to do it because there is no bumper. But then I was thinking about the police cars with these great big bumpers they have. There's big brush guards, yeah. They don't have forward collision anymore. Well, I think you can turn that off.

I think in most of the cars the pre-collision system. So if you ever had to ram your car intentionally into something, I think you can push the button and turn off the, it's called the PCS. Is that right? Right, yes. So, oh, okay, well, I didn't realize that. That's a good idea then. Unfortunately, and by the way, I remember I used to start my car all the time,

my stick shift manual transmission with the jump start. You'd open the door, put a hand on the steering wheel, the other hand on the door, run along the car, jump in, pop the clutch, and then start the car. I don't think there's very many cars on the road that you can do that anymore but that gave me a good memory I used to do that too

and I'm twice as old as you are anyway that was my thought and I figured I just thank hello because I had spoken to you guys for a while no thanks Frank that was very nostalgic how about rolling the car down the hill

and then and then popped to the clutch or having your buddies pushing exactly a very common sight at least uh when i was a teenager well frank thanks again we love to hear from you appreciate the call thank you have a good one be safe you too my friend thank you frank well if you didn't jot that number done i'll give it to again that's 877960 or you can go ahead in texas at 772-4976530 and again your anonymous feedback take advantage of that ladies I'm waiting hear from you. First two lady callers, $50. Now back to Sue. First two new lady callers.

That's right. If you haven't called the show before, please call. If you're newly a lady, I'll give you $50. Okay, here's a good question. What does an alternator do? I guess this is a question for Rick. It's from Danny and Tallahassee. What does an alternator do? It alternates. Very simply, it takes the spinning motion of the engine. creates an electrical current that recharges the 12-volt battery. And it also provides the electricity to run everything on the car while the engine is running. So my question is, why don't they call it a generator?

They used to back when it was a simple DC voltage generator, but when they went to using a phased alternator that could create AC current and convert it to DC power to charge the system and run the car, they started calling them alternators instead. Oh, I didn't know that. I did, huh-huh. You did, really? Okay, well, your generator, your generac produces AC current, right?

Yeah. Why don't they call that an alternator? Well, they could. All right. Car folk said we'll do it. All right. Moving on. Earl, this is from Amanda.

Earl, why were you bashing a hail sale? These hail cars are good deals, if you don't mind some dents, and who cares if the dealership buys them for resale? Like I said, that's from Amanda. Well, Amanda, you know, here, I probably, didn't make myself clear. If you have a dealer that is in business and he has cars in his lot and they have a hailstorm and they damage his cars and he prices them fairly to compensate for the fact that they have dents all over them, it can be a good deal. But when a dealer buys

cars from a third party, after the fact, after the hailstorm occurred, he's buying the cars at a bargain. He's getting the bargain that you're not getting because these hail, these hail cars could be thousands of dollars below their normal market price. So he's in the car for the price where you'd like to be in the car. In order for him to give you a fair price, he'd have to sell you the cars for what he paid for them. But he's not going to do that. He's going to mark it up and you're going to have a mine discount. You're going to say, oh, I got a $3,000 discount. And you don't realize that he marked it up $3,000 before he discounted $3,000. So what happened on the mystery shop, I believe that was Del Rey Greco.

Yes, Graco, yeah. Del Rey Grico, and he bought cars from out of the area. We don't know where. They didn't have any Hillstones in his area in a long time. And he paid, he probably got a really good price. He's a professional. They might have been going through an auction. You don't know what it was, but, you know, we buy cars at auction, too,

and we buy cars at a really good price because we know the market. Then he marked them up and sold them to his customers. They paid way too much, so that's the sum total of what I did. There you go. Okay, we're going to go to John, and John is calling us from Palm. City. John is calling us from Hope Sound. Sorry about that.

I don't have my glasses on. Hi, John. Good morning, everybody. I called last week, and I let you guys know about an issue. My son traded in a ram truck, and they didn't pay. off the loan and he started getting late notices from his first finance. I told my son what I found out

from you folks last week. He did exactly that. He contacted the GM, skipped the finance manager now, went right to the GM, and he told them that, listen, if you don't get this squared away for me right away, I'm going to contact the motor vehicles, and I'm going to write a letter to the

state attorney. The GM was a little taken back but I just want to let you know on September 10th they paid off the loan so it was five weeks yeah five weeks from the time he traded in yeah so I don't know if that's normal or not five weeks but he traded it in August 3rd the loan was paid off on September 10th John it's so good to hear our advice being used successfully especially and it's uh if all you other listeners out there there. This is, you know, John's son paid off, he traded in his ram truck, bought another vehicle, found out that he was still getting payment request from the person that he bought

the ram drug from, and that means that the dealer he bought the car from never paid it off. So there's a lot of reasons that can happen, sloppiness or bankruptcy. Car dealers get the cash flow squeeze. They don't have the cash to pay the cars off that are traded in. And we don't know what it was, but the thing to remember is if you want to strike fear in the heart of a car dealer, there's nothing better than the Department of Motor Vehicles in Florida, the Florida Department of Motor Vehicles. And, of course, the Attorney General is a pretty heavy hit or two. If the Attorney General wants to get you, she can, and she can find you a lot of money. But the Department of Motor Vehicles is even better because they have the power of revoking your license or finding you.

have to go through a judicial process. You can't hire a lawyer when the Department of Motor Vehicle says, I'm yanking your license. The law says they have the right to license you or not license you to fine you, and a car dealer's attention will immediately be gotten when you call them and say, I'm going to file a formal complaint with a DMV. Oh, we're all worked out, and I thank you guys for that advice. Thank you, John. Take care. And call again someday. We really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks for the call, John.

Look forward to hearing from you again. That number again is 877960-99-60. And speaking of the Attorney General Ashley Moody, she's a top-ranking law enforcement officer, and she definitely can help us out, just like all of these other departments that can do so much for the car business. And you want to reach her,

if you can give her a call at 850-414. 3,300. That's Attorney General Ashley Moody. Give her a call. Yeah, we talk about Ashley Moody not taking action, and we mean it. She focuses on all Attorney Generals, not just Ashley, Pam Bondi before and others before her. It's a political position, and you're elected based on who votes for you, and people vote for you because they were urged to do so by a lot of money spent on your campaign. and who spends the most money on the Attorney General's campaign the interest that need the cooperation

and nobody needs the cooperation of the Attorney General more than car dealers. So they spend a huge amount of money getting Ashley elected now. You can still get action out of Ashley Moody, the Attorney General, but you have to file the complaint. If you file the complaint, I assure you, if you fill out all the paperwork, and it's not easy. on our website to the right

actually on our Rolongcars.com there's a click you can click on filing complaints download a form to file a complaint with the Attorney General

Ashley Moody and also the Department of Motor Vehicles when she gets to a complaint she has to act she will write that dealer a letter and I've been a dealer for a long time if I got a letter

to me from the Attorney General first of all I'd open it most of the mail that goes to the owner of a dealership, they never see it. They got people that are taken care of it. If something comes in from the Department of Motor Vehicles or the Attorney General, I see it as the dealer, the owner. A lot of these owners are absentee.

You know, they got to vacation homes in Montana and the islands and Vail and Aspen. You don't see these car dealers. They got a lot of money, and they're not even there. But they will see the letters that are sent to the DMB and the Attorney General. Yeah, the attorney is supposed to, well, she's supposed to protect us from all the fraud and scams that are going on, and this very dangerous products also, I might add.

So, again, give her a call at 8504143,300. We're going to go to Johnny, who's been holding from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Johnny. Hey, good morning, gang. How are you all doing? Well, thank you. Great. I listen to your show every Saturday on the way to the beach, so I'm pulled over here with the rain. I had a couple questions for you.

Great. Thank you. Starting off, my father's got a 2006 Toyota Highlander hybrid. He bought it brand new, dealer maintained, lives in his garage. He's never had any problems with it. He's been doing some independent research, and he's being told, not necessarily by the dealer, that his batteries, his hybrid batteries, are past their lifespan, even though they're still working well. And they're warning him that if the hybrid batteries fail when he's on a road trip,

the car will not be able to operate. It won't know to switch over to gasoline. Is that true? How many miles on it? This one got about 80,000 to 90,000. Rick, what do you say? That's not necessarily true, no. I've seen plenty of times when, as the hybrid batteries begin to fail,

the first thing that will happen is the computer will detect it very early, and it'll throw on the check engine light and the hybrid warning light. And when you see those, go to the dealership, get it checked out, and if it says, yes, the battery is failing, that's the time to replace it. but it's not a usually not a strand you by the side of the road thing. There's usually quite a good warning signal, and I've seen some customers that say, no, I can't afford to do it right now,

and they come back two, three months later, and the car is still limping around on that kind of halfway failing battery. So, I mean, they still have got a little bit of time usually. But if he has no warning light, he has no warning light. at all, the chances are almost zero that he's got a problem with the battery. If there's no warning lights, that battery's fine right now. Okay, yeah, and I guess it was in regards to being it was one of the earlier hybrid models, I believe, might have been part of the story.

Yeah, somebody's just playing scare tactics. They're trying to get him to come into one of the aftermarket shops and get a replacement battery. Yeah, to be frank about it, the 2006 Highlander hybrid was one of the early, these hybrids in that model. And we actually recommended people not buy it because they were much more expensive than the standard hybrid island, I mean the standard highlander, gasoline power only. And the fuel economy advantage was nominal. So, 28 miles per round. Yeah. And so, but now given the fact that she owns the car and the price is adjusted because it's a 14-year-old car, that's not really a factor.

If she were to buy another vehicle today and buy a Highlander hybrid, all the hybrid technology is much better, and the fuel economy 14 years later, and hybrid is precipitously hugely better than what it was before. Okay. Another question. Is there an approximate ballpark figure to replace those hybrid batteries today right now? if he had to for the Highlander

I'm going to say probably around 3,500 okay that's about what he was told okay that's good all right I want to switch I want to split to use that to another vehicle if I could

now talking about a 2003 Toyota Echo basic model stick shift about 184,000 miles on it maintained through Bob Davis there in Lake Worth. He takes care of it. What's the lifespan of, do I need to worry about a timing chain at all? No. Timing chains are for the life of the engine. Okay. So as long as

I'm routine maintenance and seems to be operating fine, I should be okay? The only thing that I would recommend is keep an eye for small oil leaks from the timing chain tensioner. And with that kind of mileage you might might go ahead and put a new tensioner in it the part itself through Toyota is like about $40 and it should be maybe an hour's labor to install it and put that in English for this this is actually a little spring loaded hydraulic device that keeps the chain tight an hour's labor you're talking $150 okay yeah I would say less than $200 total to replace that tensioner but it's a good idea because that'll actually help keep the chain nice and snug.

And timing chains now, they don't have the issues that we had years back. That's why most of the cars have gone back to them. And they'll outlast the rest of the car. Okay, great. Well, hey, I really appreciate your time. Thanks for a great show and appreciate the knowledge. Good luck at the beach.

It wasn't looking good this morning when I was there. Yeah, that's a little rough out there, but we'll see. Be careful. I bet it's a pretty interesting view right now. give us a call have some phone get some information and that number is 877 960 960 I think we're going to go back to

Stu I think he's got some text oh you do Rick okay we got a YouTube one quick one came in we're going to go to Rick Derek Lopez says hello my comment for the show I don't like the survey system

after buying a car I loved my salesman but the finance man was very rude and condescending. But I had to give all tens to help the salesman. Not true. Yeah. Kind of true. Well, yeah, the survey system is archaic.

It isn't accurate. It's manipulated by the dealers. That's what you're experiencing as the salesman begging for a 10. And it's probably true that he had to beg because the dealers will compensate employees on good survey. So if a salesman can expect a big fat bonus at the end of the month because he has all tens, you can bet he's going to try. Now, there's a lot of ways you can try. You can be really good and leave it up to the customer, or you can beg, or you can trick him.

You know, they give you a free tank of gas, let me have that blank survey. There's too many ways to manipulate the survey. The manufacturers who really care and the ones who figured it out know there's one way to measure a car dealer, And that is, if you buy a car from that car dealer, do you buy another car and another car? If you bring your car in for service, do you come back again and again and again? If you have customers that come back to you a very high percentage of time, then you're a good dealer. If not, the survey number means nothing. See, that's, dealerships are so much running on the line on these survey scores.

Tons of incentives and money given to the dealer based on how good their scores are. are prizes, honoraries, trips, everything is based on it. So it's not a surprise when you have, it trickles down from the dealer down to the salespeople who will bribe and conjole and manipulate to get a good survey score. You did mention Toyota got rid of their surveys. They have a survey, but it's no longer tied to any sort of incentive anymore. It's supposed to be just a gauge to see how you're doing. They went to like a five-star system and there's no, but that does not mean that dealers aren't

still tying compensation to it. Well, the Q districts was to put a phony email address when you sell the car. So you report the sale to Honda or you report the sale to Chevrolet, and you had a bad time with the customer. He got mad at you, so you know you don't want him sending a survey in. You don't put an email. Either that or you put a phony email address in there. And if you leave it blank, you might be, you know, transposed a couple letters.

Yeah, but the manufacturer doesn't know. I have to just transpose a couple letters. Oh, I made a mistake. So they're very clever, and the written surveys are so manipulated, they mean nothing. Okay. Okay, we are going to take a moment and take a call. We're going to talk to John from Palm City. Good morning, John.

Good morning to everyone. It looks like batteries are on people's mind. Have a question for Rick. Every time naturally that an oil change is done, the battery is. should be tested. And Rick's opinion, when the battery is tested, is that just the present state of the battery? Or can the testing predict to maybe the future or how long it'll last? What's Rick's opinion on that? Because I see in South Florida here, maybe the life of a battery is three, three and a half years in a car battery. But what's Rick's opinion on the test that's done? And

And also, why not, when I grew up, the testing that was done on the battery was for the hydraulic fluid. They used a hydrometer. You can't even find one of those today. Test the specific gravity of the fluid and the battery. But what's Rick's idea on this? Well, I've got a snap-on computerized tester in my toolbox that will tell me if the battery is testing good right now. And if it's testing good right now, I'd say you're probably good for a... 30-30 warranty on it 30 feet 30 seconds whichever comes first I you really can't

tell the future with them it can test good today and three days later that battery could fail okay probably probably a failure of the shorted plates I would imagine right on it that you can't predict right exactly okay then I want to point out to you which the Bible of I read regularly and Earl and Nancy can confirm it The new issue of Consumer Reports, October ratio, I just got it this week, it has a great rating of a battery called Evestart, max $35N, it's under $100. There's ratings from 47 to 96, and it gets a 92 rating.

Does anybody, do you know who, I'll tell you who makes Eversight? That's made by Johnson Control Company, which is a major battery manufacturer. and it's in all the Walmarts, and it's reasonably priced. And when things were better, now I see the service areas are closed in Walmart for installations, but they would install it even free when you buy it from them. And it has, if you buy the five-year warranty, it has three full years of return on it and two years of pro-rating. And I just want to point out that great report from Consumer Reports on it.

ever start max 35 and great information john i tell you every time i hear something like that i think about boy what a gift to the world consumer reports is i mean to have an agency that is so has so much integrity and such they're so well financed all by donations uh not profit so you get to just the facts and you get this information and i at ever start max 35 made by johnson control center and do they make batteries for winter type and summer type and well they have all different grades you can buy a cheaper battery that doesn't have a good warranty on it and it's much less some

batteries that look at as much as 70 75 dollars but it pays without automobile's especially here in south florida you buy the best that you can you buy the right size they have the books that'll tell you if you're not sure you know what the numbers and always the best amount of plates and the zero crank ratings, and it never pays to be cheap when it comes to a battery. Consumers

is not saying there's other bad batteries, they check the interstate and other brands, but this one came out on top. That's great to know. Rick would agree, you know, of all the complaints we use a car dealer get, battery is probably at the top of the list,

and it doesn't make any difference whether the car's two years old or 20 years So batteries always remain up there and it's something we take for granted and we shouldn't. The manufacturer decides what battery you're going to get and you buy the car and you keep it and the dealer's probably going to replace it with another battery from that same manufacturer if you're dealing with a dealer and if you're going somewhere else you're probably going to find a cheaper battery that they can mark up more to make money and you should be involved and say I want the best battery I could get for the money and this one here apparently is.

the Everstar Max 35 made by Johnson Control. I'm going to look into it myself. Maybe we should be selling them at our dealership. Well, Rick will tell you also the battery is the heart of the automobile, and it should be checked regularly, especially the connections. The connections tend to, you put like Vaseline around it and keep it clean, and you'll never have a problem that way. But it's so important that part of the automobile and has to be reliable.

time to start. Something like 90% of the factory batteries that are installed in Toyotas, when they're first being built, are from Johnson controls. I didn't know that. They make for many other manufacturers also. You won't

see their name on it like Walmart has Johnson controls, but they make it for many of the new automobile manufacturers. Great information as always, John. We love your calls. Keep them coming. It's my pleasure. You guys have a good day.

Thank you so much, John. Have a great weekend. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us, 772-497-6530. Don't forget, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And, boy, we have an interesting mystery shop this morning, and you want to stay tuned for that. That mystery shop is from Ed Morris Honda and Brayman. Bremen. And we have a little bit different. twist on the mystery shop. So stay tuned for that. I think we're going to go back to Stu with some texts. Okay, let's go. We have a text here from Steve in New Jersey, a long-time

texter. Good morning, Earl. This is Steve from New Jersey. I have a question for Rick. My new car has direct fuel injection. I've read that over time the intake valves can become clogged with carbon. What can I do to prevent this issue? Most modern fuels have cleaners in them that will help to reduce that. The best thing you can do is to exercise the car, figure about once every couple weeks, get out on the interstate somewhere and just drive at a 60, 70 miles an hour for about 45 minutes to an hour or more. It gives it a chance for things to really heat up and those carbon deposits to start to break down and loosen up because of the heat and the running of the engine, and the deposits will usually break loose on their own. So if I got

get a ticket on I-95 for going 70, then I say Rick Kearney told me to exercise my car regularly and you just give me a warning. Well, there's many areas of I-95 that are 70-mile-an-hour limit. That's why I say 60 to 70 miles an hour. Nobody goes 55. I never will encourage anyone to exceed the speed limit, ever. Well, that's good enough. What would be, I ask you this question on keeping the battery charge too, but as far as

exercising a car against carbon deposits, what would be the frequency? I guess it would depend on the car, right? I mean, direct fuel-injected cars versus other types, but how often do I need to take the car out on the highway? I know people, particularly older people, that just putter around town like I do, they don't go on the highway anymore. So if I don't normally go on the highway, when should I be driving 70 miles an hour, often and for how long if you're someone that you only put say 150 200 miles a

month on your car you don't really do a lot of big trips and it's those little short little hops that's what you want to get out and like I say again 45 minutes to an hour even only 30 minutes can help but up to an hour is the best and just kind of take a nice drive somewhere it doesn't even really need to be at at six or 70, but just at highway speeds, 55, 60. Can you put a brick on the accelerator in neutral and just rev it really high for an hour in your driveway? I wouldn't advise against that one because you're really not exercising everything on the car that way.

My thing is about every couple weeks, take a drive out to the Seminole Country and out in Indian Town. It's not a bad drive, and it's a good 35, 40 minutes out, 35, 40 minutes back, and they put on a heck of a spread. that's a good place out there a great idea right reservations good for the car

and bad for you right yeah I think Stu's been watching fuel fuel stale I take food recommendations very seriously made a mental

no when do they close we're going to go to West Palm Beach where Mimi's been waiting good morning Mimi what can we do for you this morning you're there on Mimi

I have I've enjoyed of course your show. I have a question because I'm just listening to what you're saying. So just driving even 45 minutes at 35 miles an hour isn't enough. Is that what I'm understanding? It has to be higher. At 35 would be, it would help do the job as long as it's just a good continuous drive like that. Yeah, for 45, half hour, 45 minutes. Right. I'm thinking West Palm to Del Rey or, you know, something like that. Yeah, that would help to do it.

Yeah, because I like to take the scenic route. I have other questions. Well, what is the remark? I just had the Dodge Radiator switched out, and the part of the dealer was $400-something, and the part at Advanced Auto Part, they gave a breakdown. It lists for a three-something, and they sell it for two

something. Anyway, I was just like why is there such a high markup on the dealers? Do you... Well, the answer is, it's like an old joke. Why do they do that because they can? And unfortunately, there's very little conscience or morals involved

in car dealership of retail, whether it's a car or service or a part. The markups are already large in a parts department. A new car dealer, our standard markup is 40%. And if you can get away with 200% or 150%, he will.

It's like anything else you need to shop and compare. There's a great place you can shop parts. It's probably the biggest independent parts company maybe of the world. It's a Rock Auto, R-O-C-A-U-T-O.com. Rock, R-O-C-A-U-T-O.com. They've got every part for every new car, used car. car, used car you can possibly imagine. The parts are competitive. They don't charge for shipping. Problem is you've got to get them installed. So if you want to benefit, you have to go to the

dealer and find out a breakdown between the cost of the part of the labor and say, well, I'm going to be bringing you the part, and I'm going to hold you to your quotation on the labor, and I haven't put the part in. Oh, okay. That's one thing. All right, now, as far as the next car goes, the one that isn't moving much. I just go in and rev it up because it has problems with the engine. And when the Dodge had trouble with the engine, it needed a modem. So I was wondering, like the mechanic that actually put the radiator in the Dodge fan, what should I ask him to see if he'll be able to diagnose the engine on the 2004?

for Mercury. What kind of question? What kind of machine should he have to figure it out? It's kind of hard to say because the best person to diagnose a Ford is a Ford mechanic. And for a Dodge, a Dodge mechanic, a Toyota, a Toyota mechanic. I've got all the respect in the world for outside shops where the mechanics are working on all the brands. But you'll find that a lot of those shops, when it starts getting very technical, they will tell you, I'm sorry, you're going to have to take this to the dealer. It may be part of the reason is that dealers have to spend a lot of money on very high-priced diagnostic equipment.

And a little guy in a shop, he might be a great technician, and might know all about the car, but he can't afford to pay $250,000 for a diagnostic machine. And so the car dealers are required by the manufacturers to invest heavily in the state-of-the-art diagnostic. If you're a Honda dealer and a new diagnostic machine comes out, they don't ask you, they tell you. You've got to buy this new machine, and it's going to cost you $100,000 or $200,000. The little guy in the shop can't afford that.

Now, that's not to say he might be as good or better than the technician of the Honda dealership, but you can't get the diagnosis without the machine. Yeah. Oh, I see. Okay. Well, that's part of it. The other thing is, once they diagnose it, do places like advanced auto part, I could ask them, do they carry modems and sensors and things like that, or are they all dealer parts? I'm not sure what part you mean by a modem, because a modem is a computer part that lets your telephone talk to your computer.

Oh, oh, that, okay. And then when it relates to the engine, let's see on the Dodge, we had it replaced, and I'm just thinking, I guess it was a sensor or something like that for the engine. Yeah, auto supplies will carry all those sensors. They'll have them all. Oh, good. Well, that's good to know. Okay, because when I put the gas on the mercury, it'll run in the parking spot. But the minute I take my foot off the gas, it will fade away.

It just, you know, stops running. That sounds like it might be an issue with the throttle body. Oh, so that's not a computer part. Well, actually, almost every part on the engine now is controlled by the computer. But when you have the guy diagnosed it, he'll be able to tell from that what you're looking for. Oh, but I have to take that to the dealer, probably. Yeah, Mimi, the good idea is, unfortunately, people will take advantage of people that are not mechanically inclined, and most of us are not. And so you need to find, if you haven't got a mechanic or a repair service company that you trust and your friends tell you about it,

and you've been with them, and you can verify they're good people, if you don't have that, then you need to get several opinions. So if you have a problem in your vehicle, take it to, you should take it to the dealer, but the dealer probably is going to be a higher price. If you're going to have it replaced or repaired by an independent, go to a couple independent and get some kind of a consensus. You don't want to go into one guy and take his opinion for it because you might be spending money you don't even have to spend and way more than you have to.

But if they know you're shopping and comparing, they tend to be more honest. Okay, the whole crooks is, I can't drive it because of that. You know, it just won't hold driving. So I'm going to have to have a toad. That's why I'm kind of stuck. When it doesn't move, you're stuck, and either I'm going to have a tow to the man I had to replace the radiator, or I'll have to have a to the dealer.

Well, where do you have a to it? I tow it to the dealer. and then insist that you get an estimate of what it's going to take. If they won't give you an estimate because they say, we just don't know, we got to do this, then call another service department and tell them. You should have someone at least be able to give you a suggestion of a relatively minor cost before you are all in and totally committed.

Once they have your car taken apart, you're at their mercy, and you could be, you don't know whether you're talking $200 or $2,000 or $5,000. Rick had a point. One thing you might consider is look for some of these guys that are doing what's called mobile mechanics, where they have their equipment all in a van, and they will come to you, and if you call them and ask them, how much would it cost for them to come out and give you a diagnosis and an estimate and let them know you're going to get it double-checked, but check into that, and they come out to you.

Oh, yeah, yeah. I think my husband had somebody a long time, like, you know, 20 years ago do that. Yeah. Of course, he's retired. Oh, that's a good suggestion. So I can go to the mechanic. I can go to the dealer. I can have someone come to me since it doesn't move.

Yeah. There you go. But no matter what you do, before you sign anything, be sure you get an estimate before they go any further. Sometimes they can get to a point A, but they say, Okay, you spent $100 now, but to get to the next point, we need another $150. All of that is better than just saying fix it, because if you do that, you're giving them a blank check. Don't give anybody a blank check.

Call us next week, maybe, and let us know how it worked out. We wish it the best. Oh, it's going to take me a while. I've got to clean it up first. I used it for storage. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Mimi, I just want to tell you before we let you go that you sound pretty informed. Great call, great questions, and I don't think you're going to get taken advantage of. It sounds like as if you've got a lot of knowledge, but do keep us posted and always be careful. I mean, always be careful, so let us know what happens. Oh, yeah, I got taken once I was at a tired place, and the guy talked, I was tired, and, you know, it was later, well, not later. I just was really tired, and he says, oh, I just want an alignment, and I have, like, contract with them and he said oh I can't align it because the wheel something is wrong with it with something underneath a car I forget I used to know those terms anyway and he he said

you're going to need it's an axle or something and I said okay you know but then then one thing led to me as well when we get in there we might find that there's something else wrong with it Can we go ahead and fix that? That was the wrong thing to say. You've got to make me call us next week. We'd love to hear how this works out, and we've got some other callers waiting. Yes, we do. Oh, good, good.

I'm glad to hear that. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 77249-9-7-6-5-30. I'm going to share a text with everyone from Michigan. Karen writes us that she was advised to stay clear of high-refer. because they cost a lot to repair or replace parts.

I think Rick can answer that question for you, Karen. You're wrong, Karen. Modern hybrids are so much better quality that, you know, the technology now has increased to the point that they're better than some of the gasoline cars out there. The cost of maintenance repair on a good hybrid. I mean, they're bad hybrid, just like they're bad everything. But on a good hybrid, the cost of repair and maintenance is lower, and it's a much better vehicle than a gasoline-powered car.

Yeah, definitely the luxury of the hybrid. You know, today's cars are just totally amazing, so much less maintenance and less cost. So I hope we answered your question, Karen. Thanks for the text. Now back to Stu. Yeah, you pay a lot less money for a brake replacement on a hybrid because the regenerative braking. okay this is a text that came in says what should happen if you catch a pricing mistake on a dealership website that's in my favor should the mistake be honored what if it's thousands of dollars

if you read the fine print you'll probably find out that it's uh that the they have a fine print that covers them on that and uh you can you can challenge him and maybe successfully it depends on what the fine print says also Is it credible that it was a mistake or it wasn't a bait and switch sort of thing? I would say, you know, I guess you can, it's up to you if you want to argue for it. I mean, if you're looking at, say, a whole bunch of Honda Civics and they're all priced, they're all the same car, they're priced the same way, and one of them is like $10,000 or less. That probably sounds like a mistake to me, but, you know, it's worth taking a shot.

You know, there's fine print that says not responsible for a type of graphical errors or, you know, blah, blah, blah. If you read the fine print, if this lawyer has a, if this attorney checks with his lawyer before he runs ads, he's covered everything. But you can still have a valid lawsuit. You lawyers out there listening, as Stu said, if there is clear intent to defraud and it clearly not typographical, then you would have a case. But you always ask, always challenge him. Sometimes you find the dealer will give you the price because he made a mistake. I can tell you right now that a pricing mistake. stake is easy and as advanced technologically as car dealerships are now, there is a manual

entry point when the dealer is putting in the pricing information and it's silly. That's changing in the near future. But right now, for example, at our dealership, if we get a car wholesale to us from our distributor, it's a physical manual entry on a keyboard, and if somebody fat finger is a price that will eventually translate to the website pricing. Okay. All right. We got any YouTube's over there? I don't want to monopolize. I've got two real quick ones. Why don't you take them? First one is Calgo down the trail. I still love that name.

The newer Prius models don't come with a spare tire. Is there a space down under the rear cargo to put a donut spare from an 08 Prius if I have one? I can address this because we are dealing with this with a customer where we failed to be very, clear about that and it wasn't intentional but this is a new phenomenon on and not just Toyota's a lot of a lot of manufacturers are to get the weight down are doing tire repair kits and those filler things and not giving a not even a donut just nothing and there isn't space in the well for it to accommodate your 2008 pre-a-spare but and I'm not sure if this is a it's done safely we have run

into customers who have done this with like there's a tie-down system and foam where it goes into the patchback and the spare is secured in the back. It's not ideal, but it looks okay, and it gives somebody a little bit more peace of mind for a spare. So it's possible to do, and we're working on that right now with the customer, same situation. On a note with that, too, these cars that come with the repair kits, if they have a can that's that foam in fix-a-flat stuff, I highly recommend do not use it. use that, you will have to replace the tire. Even if that tire simply went flat in your driveway

and is repairable, you will not be able to repair that tire if you use that foam fix the flat, and a lot of that stuff also destroys those tire pressure sensors, meaning another couple hundred dollars cost to you. I'm thinking there's got to be a better solution for the whole spare tire thing. A little $25 to $30 air pump that plugs into your cigarette lighter can put your tire back up, and if it's going to hold air for long enough to get you to a repair shop, that will save you a huge amount of money because a lot of places now will patch a tire for free or for $10 or $15 versus a couple hundred dollars to replace a tire

and maybe $400 or $500 if you have to replace the sensor as well. I bet you the manufacturers, when they made that decision thought they probably had statistics that said, you know, 94% of everybody gets a flat tire calls a roadside service, nobody's changing their flats anymore maybe i don't know but even the roadside service puts the spare tire on for you great information i have a text to share it's from diane and uh she says that she has a 2010 fort flex with a replacement computer that is not running and needs replaced again and listen a few months shop said warranty doesn't cover replacements since it got water in it somehow

sounds crazy to me water and electronics do not mix so unfortunately warrant unless the original reason for the water see if a water leak that was still covered under warranty then it should be covered under warranty but if the car's out of warranty or whatever caused the water to get in it's not a warrantable condition then no it won't be sorry Karen there you go give us a text again let us know how things turned out for you. And one last one here, Mark Ryan

is saying, with the fuel filter being positioned in the gas tank these days, do you recommend ever changing the fuel filter as part of routine maintenance? Nope. Really? Fuel filters... Last forever. They're the life of the car now.

Amazing. 877960 or you can text us 772-4976530. Do you want to mention, Earl, this article that you gave me? Very interesting. Yeah, the art magazine, I brought that. Did you know that the art magazine, A.A.R. The American Association of the entire people.

Yeah, this is the largest circulated magazine in the world. Did you know that? I never realize that. That's what fogies love it. Yeah, and it's got good information in there. Nancy found something really good, and it's kind of like the stuff we talk about on the show, about how can you fix something or take it and... Yeah, there's auto maintenance, and they give you a guide to the modern auto maintenance,

which, well, I still can't get used to every time I lift the hood of my vehicle. But just for, you know, an example, dipsticks showed if you had enough oil and automatic transmission fluid, But that was a time, a long time ago, for brake power, steering, and windshield water, windshield washer fluids, you just eyeballed the reservoir for coolant. You popped the radiator cap and look. So this guide tells you the modern maintenance. For all people that are used to doing things the way we did, I'm one of them, 25 years ago. And we think about that, and they say, this is the way I used to do it.

what do we do now and it kind of brings you up to the 21st century yeah you often remind me of that it's the 21st century nancy we don't do it like that anymore so it was fun back then so everything has changed and it's a little easier you know our our vehicles run longer there's less maintenance and but this year modern auto maintenance guide is worth taking a look at it probably have a copy maybe you throw it away i mean most of our audience is over 55 so if you're 55 plus you qualify 50 okay if you're 50 so that's probably 90% of our audience grab this if you threw in the trash pick it out and read this uh this article stew slumped to the side here i'm thinking i say he's 50 50 he looks like as if he's like 19 i can't wait for them to open up

movie theaters again so i can get my discount all right we have a text here says how do how can I prevent rodent intrusion in my 2015 Tacoma. I live in Virginia, and I've had rat invasions the last two winners. Aren't there common points of entry for the rats? Is there any kind of barrier that can be installed? You can put cheese around your neighbor's car, and they will... No? You're into trapping these days, aren't you?

Yeah, decoy. You decoy the rat, too. If you have a neighbor, you don't like, just put a bunch of cheese around his car. Earl's in conflict with an armadillo these days. I'm the rat trapper. He's trapping armadillos, and I'm trapping the fox. That's hilarious. I don't know if there is or not, Rick, and I can tell you one thing,

just from my extensive knowledge of rodents, they can get into very, very, very tiny spaces, so I'm not sure if there's any obvious points of entry. The first one is going to be where your fresh air intake is for your air conditioning. And there's very little that you're going to put there that a determined rat or mouse is not going to go through because even a metal screen. They can chew through it. They'll chew through it in minutes. Probably the best thing you can try is put some mothballs up in that area.

Believe it or not, rodents generally do not like the smell of mothballs. Either do I. There's also environmental and a hazard of mothballs. If you want your car to smell like your grandmother's closet. I got a better idea. A cat. You put a cat in the car. No, no, no, no.

They'll die of heat. Back to the 21st century. It would call me out on that because I'm a mothball girl. But he said this is the 21st century now. Back it up. Didn't you say a long time ago that Honda wrapped their wiring and their thing in a product that was a rat deterrent? Right. It has capsaicin red pepper in it.

The drawback to that is... Rats don't like spicy food. You've got to use gloves when you're installing it, and you don't want to touch your face or anything else like that. Is this a Honda standard? It's something that they will put on if they need it, if you need it as an environmental thing. And it's available now.

Amazon, everybody else, I think, has this capsaicin-infused tape. And when you bring it in for a service, warn your technician. Well, it's actually... When you look at this tape, it actually has... a little drawing of a mouse with the circle and cross across it. So you can tell, hey, this is some watch effort. Do you see that in the shop? Every once in a while.

It's rare, but we have seen it. I wonder if it works. I wonder if it works on armadillos. I don't know about armadillos. Why don't you just, yeah, you could spray the area around the turtle nest. Nobody knows what we're talking about. Okay. Well, last time we had an armadillo problem, I just called Bush Wildlife.

They set up a trap and took the... Yeah, and then we visit the armadillo. armadillo all the time we name army okay let's move along okay here's a text is I don't understand the difference of off lease.com by an accident damage buying accident damage cars at auction and selling them at his lot I believe this is a voice to text because this looks like a text from my wife there's words that are kind of close let me try it again I don't understand the difference of off lease com buying an accident damage cars at an auction and sell them at his lot, or buying hail damaged cars and an auction

selling them a lot, I don't get the difference. Well, the difference is when off-lease only buys a car, they buy it at a very, very low price, and they pass a lot of the savings along the customer. If you bought a car from off-lease only, I'd love to hear some people who dealt with off-lease-only because they sell a huge number of used cars, very high volume, and respected and they're on our recommended list. So when they buy the car at the discount because of the damage, they pass

the savings long to the buyer. What they also do is give full disclosure about the damage and most of the cases they do not sell cars that have safety related issues. We had Mark Fisher,

the N owner and one of the executives for awfully only called the show last week I think was it last week or a week before. And they say that this all goes back to the old-fashioned idea of anything with frame damage is dangerous to drive. And since cars went from a X-frame kind of a construction to a unibody, their whole body is essentially functioning as a frame, then they can be repaired and be very safe.

So off-lease-only is taking advantage by buying these cars and pass off-fung-the-savings. this leased, this Greco Mazda in Del Rey, they were buying the hail damaged cars, not disclosing that that wasn't their hail damage and making the customer believe that they were saving money when they really weren't. Well, they weren't because the big crime was the, now we don't know how much Greco paid for these cars,

but the value of the car, they're selling for $27,000, the value on the wholesale market is around $19,000. So that's not a good deal. Not a good deal. Okay. Okay. We're going to go to Frank, and Frank calls us from Jupiter Farms. We probably have a continuation of the saga out there in Jupiter Farms. And Frank, good morning. Well, good morning to you guys. It's always a pleasure to wake up and hear you guys with the, you know, Kleeney's wood movie theme coming through and knowing that you guys are there. Oh, thanks.

But on our continuing saga, that will still continue. I don't. want to say too much on the air. We'll get back. We'll be definitely next weekend. There should be a conclusion to that. But since I live in Jupiter Farms, and the last guest was speaking about rats, I said, boy, Zazilia had that base covered. And let me explain why. We have a chicken coop. And it actually belongs to the county. They come out every two weeks and bleed the chickens to test for West Nile virus, Zika, Malay. area, and if they find it, and they spray for mosquitoes, and we're like the canary in the old coal mine, once they get, you know, test it positive, then they spray it for the mosquitoes,

and we save everyone in town, and thanks to my diligence and my chickens, diseases are not spread. So there's, I'm pat myself on the back. Now, back to the rats. That's great. The chicken, yeah, oh, no, they're really cool. I mean, they're really cool chickens. They're not like any other chickens. We let them out.

They're free-ranging. Amory will cook rice for them and cut up lettuce and tomatoes, and they flock to her, no pun intended, when they see her, to have the food to eat and stuff. And it's just really neat. She was a city girl now. We're in, quote, unquote, green acres, you know, Dalling, giving me Park Avenue. Oh, yeah, there you go. When you bleed a chicken, I assume it's unhumanely. You just got to prick his finger?

No, no, it's not quite like diabetes. They take these chickens and hold them upside down. And they have a syringe, and they'd go in their wing area and pull a good amount of blood out. Okay. And they're a little stressed out. I mean, but it's just, you know, it's a chicken, and they're good about it. Wow. And the cage is a remarkable cage.

The wire is like quarter inch wire by a half inch or so. But you don't think anything to get in there. That's a better thing. Really? I'd prefer that to Kentucky Fried. Oh, yeah. It keeps the bobcats and raccoons from having a chicken thing. Wow, we need a little bit of that wire.

Frank. But here's what the problem is, you look at a rat. They can squeeze through a space that's unbelievable. It's incredible. They'll chew through one little piece of wire. And I've seen rats, you know, full-grown rats going through a half-inch space. It's truly incredible. But here's what does keep them away.

Obviously, unfortunately, we had a beautiful feral cat that was just a great cat. It was a blue-eyed Siamese cat that showed up here years ago. and I gave him an appropriate name I called him Sinatra but Sanatra took care of the rats the moles but when he passed on the rats have gone crazy

so here's the thing and they got in my I guess I'll say it my Cadillac that I sold oh my goodness there was rat feces it looked like it was unbelievable and I think they came out

through the air handler and how they got in the trunk I mean it's incredible where they squeeze but the one thing that will keep them out moth balls does work but just a really simple thing Irish Spring soap. They hate Irish Spring soap.

That's better in mouthballs. Yes. So I encourage people that have that Yukon and other cars, just put a bar or two of Irish Spring soap in the trunk. And it doesn't. It's not a bad air freshener either. It kind of, you know, makes you feel

that you actually got to shower that day or something. I guess the soap company wouldn't want to use that as an advertisement. They're great keeping away the rats. Yeah. It wouldn't make me want to buy a bar of Irish Spring Soap.

It might, you know, I don't mind keeping the rats away. What was the song? Wasn't there like a jingle? Never mind, I'll think of it. Frank, that's fascinating. You know, you're amazing. You're a very interesting guy. I mean, how can you top that?

He raises chickens, and they bleed them once a week to help solve the West Nile Virus problem. I mean, what an interesting life you have. I love it. And you got the anti-Rad chicken thing and the Sinatra of the cat. You ought to do. books. You ought to write a book or something, and it would sell. I mean, you're a very interesting guy. No, it's nice out here, and, you know, of course, yesterday was 9-11. And that particular day,

I was with American Airlines as a captain, and my whole life changed, of course. But, so anyway, I look back, and I feel I had a very blessed life in a lot of manners, a lot of things. And some people to take advantage of our trust. Being pilots, we trust people sometimes too much. Frankly, on that subject, let me ask the question. I just, you were in the air

when 9-11 happened, or you were or had you flown, you were still on the ground? I was actually at home, and the ironic thing, you talk about irony. In my entire life, I've never had a dream about being hijacked until September 10th. I had not one,

not two, but three distinct dreams that night. Wow. And it was scary when I actually saw it happening on TV. Yeah. Gosh. Amazing. Well, you definitely ought to write a book. You have led a very, very interesting life. And we feel privileged that you call our show regularly. And I hope you keep on doing it. We love you. Oh, yeah. I'm going to, I will, Stu knows I will have an update because I try contacting that number today in their close. So we'll leave that. You'll know what I'm talking about. Yeah. Talk to you all soon. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Frank.

Bye-bye. Frank, thanks for the call. We love hearing from you. 877-960. And you can text us at 77249-7-6530. You know, I'm going to go back to Diane. Diane is from Jersey. And, Rick, this was about her vehicle that 2010-Flex and the replacement computer

computer that got the water everything got the water and she asked a question she said she thought that was sealed that part was sealed so how would water get in with the insurance company

questioning her about this water she says she doesn't go four wheeling or anything she's just simply on the road well it's going to depend on on the car some cars the computers out under the hood and those are completely sealed against water entry but if the computer is inside the car they're generally not and you'd

have to find out where the water came from well there you go caring stay in touch and let us know what happened on 877 960 99060 or you can take advantage of your anonymous feedback we'd love to hear from you www your anonymous feedback.com I think we're going to go back to stew okay we got text are coming in. Hi, can you please talk about the best way to prolong the life of a clutch? I just installed a new clutch in my car, and I noticed vibrations, fully depressing the clutch above 2,500 RPM. There's a low vibration, but it's noticeable.

My dual-mass fly-wheel has worn, however, they replaced that. I put a south-bend clutch in my car, but I'm wondering if they used a stock, single-mass fly-wheel in the car instead of the one supplied in the kit. Could this be causing the vibrations in the clutch warranty on my car covered the labor for the flywheel as well as the stock part? I think this is an attempt to stump Rick because I am stumped. I have no clue what he's talking about with the flywheel.

Every flywheel I've ever seen is simply a big steel plate that's bolted to the back of the engine and the clutch disc is in between the clutch plate and the flywheel. so if it's a special design a dual mass flywheel and it was not installed properly then yes that certainly could cause issues I guess we need I'm gonna I'm gonna yeah we need more information yeah about take a take a picture and and and text their email to us and if Rick sees the device would you say if we saw the device and the injury would help you it would help yeah what did they call that flywheel Dual mass. Dual mass. A dual mass. A dual mass flywheel.

Google it. I'm going to. You do that. We do that. We'll move on to Mark's text. Mark from Palm Beach Gardens. It says in reference to purchasing a collision damage car, pretty soon there will be a company that will perform an inspection to verify the extent of the collision damage to a car that someone maybe would consider buying. Peace of mind objective is helpful. There is a company that does that. It's, oh, gosh, I'm going to brain fart right here and there. I think it's like frame, but basically you go true frame. And dealers use them to come in to certify whether or not there is structural or damage that's going to result. True frame. True frame. True frame.

True frame. And I think it's about 300 bucks. They come out, they check out the car, do an inspection, and then they certify it, that the structural damage, and Earl has talked about this a lot, does not have an impact. on the driveability or the safety of the vehicle. And they're available to retail as well, car dealers? Don't know. But we know that they do a service for car dealers. I would be surprised if they

would be surprised. Google and find out if they're available to retail. True frame. True frame. T-R-U-E, F-R-A-M-E. That's an excellent question, and we should get a precise answer because car dealers were kind of on their own until this came along. And we use them all the time. And I would think any car dealer would have to use them

when you take a car through the option if you've got a true frame. The auction uses them. Yeah. Manheim is kind of like the it's almost like a monopoly as far as I know but they're a trusted company kind of like Carfax. They do.

They retail customers so there's a whole there's a dealer side and there's a consumer side and you go to trueframe dot com and you can probably I don't know if they post their prices or I'm sure there's a way to contact them and ask them how much do they charge to come and inspect a car that you're

either buying or one that you want to sell? Are you sure about your estimate there about 300 bucks? Yeah, that's for a dealer. That's what we pay, yeah. Yeah, so 300 bucks. If you have a dealer friend and they want to charge them or ask a dealer

to do your favor, you might buy a car from them, give them some incentive, and have them true frame coming and check your car. And that way you really know exactly that might not be a bad idea if you're buying a car, but that's a lot of money. On True Frame, their consumer side for the consumer, as opposed to the

floor of the dealer section, it says, order your inspection now as low as 149. That's probably a hit you on the door, but... Yeah, it's probably like a cursory one. But try it. That's right. In fact, what we got to do is maybe they're screw on the dealers and settle the consumers. I'll call Ted. Yeah, we'll tell them we're a consumer. We have the Mannheim price.

and that dual mass flywheel apparently this is a design for when you're running smaller three and four cylinder engines it's actually a flywheel that has almost a spring-loaded torque converter inside it so yeah if the car was the clutch was intended to have a little mass fly wheel

you got to watch out for the spring-loaded torque converters yeah we have pictures coming in here but if they did not install it when it was meant to have it then yes, according to this site, it would cause vibrations. Okay, so I am now sending you pictures of this, and then we'll move on to another text, but check it out, Rick. Oh, you got a picture? Oh, yeah, we got a...

I love that. It's so high-tech. I mean, you know... Yeah, I mean, the fact that we can transmit images at the speed of light across the world. Yeah, you folks out there with the issues in your car, pictures, text them to Rick, or email them to Rick, and it'll really get a more refined opinion.

Yeah, 21st century. While Rick's studying the picture, let's go to another text. Okay, let's jump over to anonymous feedback because we haven't done that yet. Okay, good morning afternoon in your case. In case your viewers are not aware of the following. Mannheim, KB, Kelly Blue Book, Auto Trader, Dealer.com, HomeNet, V Auto, Vin Solutions, Dealer Track, F&I Express, and a few others are all owned by Cox. automotive. Cox Automotive is owned by Cox Enterprises and we are very

familiar with that. Cox Enterprises have been buying up automobile-related companies left and right matter of fact we use pretty much every service and company that you just listed in your and your feedback. It's worrisome I'd be honest with you because you wonder when one giant entity owns a bunch of smaller entities is there's influence and I suspect as a car dealer, I suspect that they're not as tough on their, what's the word, integrity and specificity, like in pricing and other things. When your customer is also the person you're reporting on, now remember, Kelly Blue Book is owned by Cox, but Kelly Blue Book has a customer

that pays them. That's a car dealer. So how hard are you going to be on your customer? If you attack a customer, they're going to stop being your customer. So I'm a little suspicious of all of those. And I wish I'm not one to believe in antitrust or Justice Department intervention with business. But I think maybe that's something somebody I'll look into. Now I have a different take on that.

And that's because most of the car dealer-facing programs, car dealers have, You can't even count the number of computer systems that they have to deal with, and they don't talk to each other. The one good thing about them acquiring multiple of the things is they've integrated certain things like the system that we use to manage our inventory speaks to the system that does our appraisals. And the one that puts the information up on the website, since they've consolidated that it's definitely a lot less confusing, a lot less work. But the danger is there just from any monopoly sort of thing. Once they own every property a cartier does, then they're kind of beholden. to that company and if they raise prices, there's not a lot of alternatives to go out there. Well, my point was like with True Car.

Oh, yeah. And True Car was the most honest, transparent, effective pricing machine to help a consumer buy a car at a fair price. And the car dealers didn't like it. Car dealers were their customer. They get paid by car dealers. So all the car dealers said, screw you, we're not going to do business, will you? They boycotted true car and almost put them out of business. So that's the reason I love consumer reports.

They don't have any customers that can attack them. They are supported by donations. So anytime you have money involved, when a car dealer is paying a company, there is reason to be suspicious that there not be arm's length opinion being given on those car dealers. So just something to think about. All those are good names. Edmonds and Kelly Blue Book. By the way, was True Car, was Autotrader on there?

Yeah, they own Auto Trader and Mannheim. See, Auto Trader is a huge example because if you listen to this show before, Auto Trader advertises prices on virtually every used car sold in America. Everybody that's in the used car business has to be on Other Trader. It's almost a monopoly. And when they advertise those prices, they're not true. They are artificially lower than you can buy the car for. They do not reveal the dealer installed accessories.

They do not reveal the hidden fees, multiple dealer fees. You can have an auto trader price that can be $3,000 lower than you can actually buy the car for. And how do they get away with it? They don't like it, I'm sure. but if they were to force the dealers to put their real price on the car, the dealers would say, screw you auto trader, maybe. Because they're almost a monopoly, it'd be hard to do. That's my example.

Okay, moving along. 931. Hi, Earl. Can you ask Roger, or your body shop guy or your detail guy? I don't know, we don't know Roger. Detail guy, what exactly we should use to clean the interior of our Toyota's dash infotainment screen and soft tax leather, inquiring minds want to know. Rick?

I would use a microfiber cloth with just plain water, and if you have any horrible stains on there, I would try a very, very, very mild soap, but test it in some spots you can't see first. Down on the side of the seat or something, yeah. What is a microfiber better than a cotton cloth? It doesn't shed. I like microfiber because you don't have anything coming

off of it. Everything stays in the cloth and it less chance of scratching and it does clean incredibly well. The dust thing with all the nice shiny services and the dark colors gets really dusty. I keep a microfibre right in the center console and it's, I can't hear anything. Anyway, it's pretty miraculous. It gets in two seconds it dust off your car and it looks like brand doing. Yeah, they're fantastic. It's great products. Okay. More anonymous feedback. Earl, I watched your video how to negotiate the auto lease price, and I can't agree with your comment to, quote, negotiate the lowest purchase price first. Seriously? Why would you simply negotiate the out-the-door price? You lost all credibility with me at three minutes and four seconds. I won't watch any of your videos now just based on that comment below. Clearly, you'd just like to listen to yourself, talk. Your air quotes, advice is average at best. Can I defend my dad here for a second? I'm sure you're you want me to pass me a clean extra you got me crying no actually actually there's some validity to your your attack you can just negotiate the payment price as long as you

negotiate it with apples and apples and you've got to be sure that if you're going to go to three or four dealers and compare the price you'd be sure you have the exact same car you have to be sure you have the same number of miles allowed You have to have the, you have to be aware of any hidden fees that could be tapped in. You have to be sure it's an out-the-door payment. But there's a problem with that. Okay. On an outdoor price, it includes sales tax, and in South Florida, it's around 7%.

When you're leasing a car, that would not be part of the out-the-door price. Why? Because you don't pay sales tax on the full purchase price of the car. I know you paid on the payment. I'm saying that if you shop the payment. He's saying to get an out-the-door price inclusive of everything and use that as your baseline for the- to negotiate your lease, but that would be too high of a price. Well, the Althodore price on a, that you become, as long as you were comparing it

with three different dealers, if I, if I'm buying a, if I'm leasing a Honda Civic with MSRP of $25,000, and I get an, I get an out-the-door price from a Honda dealer, A, B, and C, and D. And I get the lowest price, and I decide I want to lease. I say, okay, I want you to use this as a capitalized cost plus the sales. tax. Or you could ask for an out-the-door price without the sales tax. It doesn't make any difference. It's a simpler

way. When you say a monthly payment, there's too many ways they can flim-flam you. It could be a 42-month lease instead of a 24-month lease. But when you gave the advice, the point was when people are getting a lease payment, they're not focusing on a purchase price.

And so they get a payment. So if you get a purchase price on the car, yes, if you're purchasing it, they get out whole bunch of equipment on there you still got to watch out for that but his point was to get an outdoor price inclusive of everything and use that to negotiate the lease payment yeah it's it's a it's hard it's harder to do that and and the the big lion's share of a lease payment is the capitalized cost capitalized cost is the same thing as a selling price so if you have a

car and what happens oftentimes people go in and get a really good deal on a car and they say I changed my mind I think a lease usually that's being influenced by the salesperson, so you flip them to a lease, and then you can jack the price up, and they don't know the difference. But if you insist that they use the selling price as a capitalized cost, they can't pull that trick on you. So I stand behind your video. Both things are good. The capitalized cost is easier by selling price. Okay, we're running short of time. We've got a time. A couple more text. Okay. Here's a quick one. Hello, I love the show, wish there's more dealerships like yours, a true price and new dealership

fees, at least no dealership fees. Have you considered buying another dealership from someone else, even if it's not a Toyota dealership? I hope you or your sons will be able to have other locations. Keep up the great work. Wish you, your family, and everyone the best. I got to ask that question a lot. Yes, we are looking for other car dealerships, and we're looking for the right franchise in the right area. And the problem is it's just very difficult to buy, especially in South Florida. It's kind of like the promised land for car dealers and the price of car dealership to

South Florida is prohibitively high and yeah, if you know anyone that would like to sell a car dealership in this area, we'd love to talk to them. Okay. I think Nancy wants to do a book commercial. Yeah, I think I'll take advantage of that. You can always pick up Earl's confessions of

a recovering car dealer and what a book it is is something to have very close to you. Lots of the information in there and don't forget that all proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. You can go to Amazon to purchase the book so pick it up. Confessions

of a recovering car dealer. Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to go to the Mystery Shopping Report. We probably have some more text we can get to at the end of the mystery shopping report and so keep the text coming. We want to turn off the switchboard so the coals can't come through.

This is the highlight of the show anyway. the mystery shopping report, and it's something that I want to credit Stu and Josh, my sons, for coming up with this suggestion. It's a great idea. We decided, instead of going after the, well, let me read it. It's what we're actually going to do a mystery shop the way we recommend that you buy a car. And this is something we should have been doing all along. Yeah, great idea. And we probably will do more of this. So we mystery shopped two dealers, and we'd like to do three dealers. Maybe next week we will do three dealers.

Ed Morris Honda and Bram and Honda, they're both in Palm Beach County. They are obviously competitors. Every week we must to shop a different car dealer in South Florida. While we try to put together informative reports about various car shopping scenarios, our investigations follow similar MOs. We usually find an ad, the crazier or the better,

more entertaining, and send a shopper in to see if the dealer will honor it. We try to mix it up by having our shoppers take on the persona of different types of consumers, but the basic process is the same. This week, we're recognizing that not all shopping experiences start with bait and switch, as if you're a regular listener to this show, you know that we advise to ignore car dealer advertising altogether. To get your best price, we suggest getting multiple quotes online, making your best effort to get a real out-the-door price.

This week, we asked Agent Lightning, as our female shopper, to follow our advice. Lightning was instructed to try to get the best price on a new 2020 Honda, CRVLX, CRVLX, and then visit the dealer who provided the lowest price, although we suggest getting at least three quotes, we limited Agent Lightning to just two dealers in the interest of time. The 2020 CRV is a common vehicle with plenty to choose from any Honda Dealer's inventory. The one we chose was an LX model with an MSRP of $26,270. This report will be divided into three sections. One, the Ed Morris Online Experience.

They're on Blue Herron Boulevard, just off by 95 in Les Palm Beach. So we did Ed Morris Honda, online experience. Now we'll do the Brayman online experience. Where's Brayman located? It's Lake Worth Road. Lake Worth Road. And then thirdly, the lowest quotas on-site visit. So this is what we tell you to.

Go to three or four or five or six. I go to a bunch of doors online. And then hammer to get an out-the-door price and take that lowest out-the-door price and visit and see what really happened. And so we had to narrow it down to two, but this is the scenario that you should follow if you're going to buy a car. Edmore Online Experience, this is the first of the three, the Edm. At 4.15 p.m., I found, I'm speaking as if I'm the shopper, and that's Agent Lightning,

I found the CRV listed on Edmores' website and requested a quote by filling out a form. and the quotes I asked for their best price within a few minutes I received an email and a text message from Luke you know it used to be in the day you could make an inquiry back in the dark ages and you never hear back from the dealer boy I tell you that still happens

still us every now and then they did well yeah the email congratulated me for choosing such a great vehicle asked when a good time would be to discuss my purchase the text was all business Luke won't know if I was leasing or buying and if I was buying sooner, closer to the end of the month.

Now, you might be thinking, I don't like to do this because they know who I am, they know my telephone number, they know my name. If you're doing this for real, don't give me a telephone number. Make one up if you have to, and use a email address that you don't normally use. You get free email address. But then you can't text. Yeah. Yeah.

I replied to the text asking for the best price. Luke replied that he would best... Beat, I'm sorry. He would beat any other dealer's price, and you'd have that price for me the next day. I answered and asked if I could get the price tonight. He had a little red flag. Luke said he had several CRV product specialists available tonight. Now I wasn't sure I was speaking with a salesperson.

I asked that it would be difficult to get me a price now. Luke said he'd have to go to the desk. That's vernacular for the manager, and they're the ones that negotiated Hagel and hassle, so they got to go to the desk, see what the boss says. He asked if I own the Honda now and see if I'd qualify for a loyalty discount, and he said, I'd have my price in 30 minutes. About 30 minutes later, he texted me, a price, he said, I was getting $3,500 discount off the MSRP, $26,270.

My sale price was, I'm going to give you a lot of numbers now, and I don't expect you to write them down to remember these, but this is what the process was. My sale price was 22,0769. He hoped I was happy and said that he set up an appointment for me tomorrow. The next morning I received a text from Marina with Edmore Sondas. She said the CRV was on a lot right now, provided a sales figure, provide the sales figures again.

This time I was given an Althodore price. Almost, she indicated the tag fee would be extra. Almost got the Althador price. The sale price was the same given by Luke, $22,769. Then came the ads, the extras that we didn't hear about up until now. $289 for wheel locks and splash cards. One of the most popular, overpriced, useless accessories you want to get. And then there's $120 for a cargo tray.

I guess there's nothing wrong with the cargo tray, but I promise you it's way overpriced, and you probably don't want it, or maybe you do. Then the famous $999 dealer fee by many, many different names, and then a $285 filing fee, which is also a dealer fee by a different name, and they got $1,495 in sales tax, which is presumably legitimate, the outdoor price was $25,964 before the tax fee. That was the Ed Morris experience. Now we have the Bremen online experience. My experience getting a price online for a brain was very different.

Soon after submitting my request for a quote through a form on their website, my phone began to ring. I didn't answer it first. Instead, I read the emails that began pouring in. The first email came from Sean. In it, he informed me that my price was $24,297, which was $1,973 discount of $1,97,000. discount of an MSRP, and $500 below invoice. I love that.

$500 below invoice. Imagine what the rookie car shopper thinks when they say $500 below invoice. Oh, hey, hey, Charlie, listen, I just got the price from Bremen, and they're going to sell them in the car $500 below what it cost them. Wow, that's really cool. Yeah. Ain't no free lunch, folks. They're lying to you.

That isn't what they paid for the car. that invoice packs in thousands of dollars in profit to the dealer. In fact, Honda has a law that says you can't advertise the price of the car below invoice. And a lot of the dealers, Toyota has the same thing. If it has, you cannot advertise below invoice, even though most of the sales and profits the dealers make, they're actually selling price is below invoice. And typically, you can make $2,000 or $4,000 or more. on a car by selling it at invoice.

So $500 below invoice doesn't mean anything. He also let me know that Brayman has extended, I love this, has extended Labor Day. I didn't think anybody could extend Labor Day. Congress can. No, Congress, yeah. Until this coming Sunday. If I bought by then, I would get another $500 off.

So the sales is getting in there and the efforts and deception. I tried to get a more detailed quote, but Brayman was not forthcoming. I went back and forth for two hours before giving up and resolving trying again in the morning. Raymond was the first move in the morning. This morning, I got a call from a voicemail from Destiny, a salesperson at Raymond. Later, she began texting me. I asked to give me the best price so I could review it with my husband. After some discussion, Destiny agreed and sent me a pick of a price.

breakdown, the selling price was the same that Sean provided, $24,297. Add to that, there we go, $270.50 filing fee, that's a dealer fee, that's a hidden fee, $998 dealer services fee, they all have the big fee, and they're $1 cheaper than Ed Morris. I don't know why they do that. It's a bargain. And $880, I love this one, destination and handling. and handling. Borders on the illegal because freight and handling is something that the manufacturer does charge a dealer and they pack it into the invoice and into the MSRP.

And the dealer does pay that when he buys the car. So the handling and destination handling charge has already been paid by the dealer to the manufacturer. And he's passing it along in the pricing to you by definition. It's in the MSRP and the invoice. Exactly. So by charging another $880, he's double-charging you on the destination charge. And I'm not going to make it. I don't want to get sued because I have a perfect record. But I'm pretty sure that's a federal violation. The Monroeley label requires that you have this destination charge included in the MSRP and the sticker. So for the dealer to add it back again, I'm pretty sure that's a federal violation.

Anyway, the out-the-door price at Brayman was $28,015, and that was $2,000 higher than Ed Morse's out-the-door price. So do you see the advantage of shopping? And we only did two. Yeah. If we've done three or four or five or six. This is in the comfort of Agent Lightning's home in her cloud. Yeah.

And you remember that you don't have to actually visit the dealer. you know, if you were shopping locally and you went to Miami or even Tampa, you still have the price and you still can play poker with a dealer. Let's say I went to Tampa and the Honda dealer there gave me a deal that was $1,000 better than Brahmins. Or Ed Morris's. Yeah, or Ed Morris or whatever. You take the lowest price and you go in and you say, look, I don't want to drive the Tampa. I'd rather buy the car from you, but you're 2,000 else higher.

I'll drive to tampon back 10 times. I've got a hotel. I have a weekend vacation. I still beat your deal. So you can play them and you can negotiate with them. So don't limit yourself to only two or three. Get as many online prices as you can. Okay.

So we decided to go to Edmoresonda because they had the lowest, hopefully, out-the-door price. But there was one other thing you just missed out. I think Destiny might have suspected her price was on the high side because she says can you do me one little favor if you find that lower price please give me one more shot to beat it yeah yeah that was a dead giveaway

yeah she said she would really beat up her desk to get her a lower price the only way you can be sure that they gave you an out of the door price is if they say if you find a better price buy the car because that is my lowest price and if you really find one without hidden fees and dealer

installed accessories grab it because it's one heck of a deal they tell you that they're telling you the truth Okay. I wasn't sure. I'm the shopper now. I am Agent Lightning. I wasn't sure if I should ask for Luke or Rina, the people we talk to online. So I just walked up to the receptionist to ask for help. Everyone was wearing a face mask for the receptionist. Lord hers to talk to me in her defense. She was behind a plastic petition. I'll show you the picture later if we have time. It's kind of a funny picture, but what's the sense I'm wearing a face mask if when you want to talk to somebody you take it off. I mean... We saw that in last week. I mean, first of all, if you're not talking, you probably can take it off, but if you're talking, you're breathing on them and you should

leave it on, but I don't want to beat her up. There was a glass petitioner. I told the receptionist I had a price from the internet department, but she paid for available salesmen loudly over the intercom. And a couple of minutes, and be careful with that folks. The sales department and the, we call them the floor salespeople, they're merging now. In our dealership, they're almost one on the same. But the internet department and most dealerships is separate. And the salespeople that sell cars, they're the walk-ins, the people that come in and say, I want to look at cars. That price is higher. The internet price is always lower in car dealership. So you should always try to speak to the internet

salesperson if you can. In this case here, they just paid for a salesperson. And they may had been internet. In a couple minutes, I was approached by Sal, we chatted for a while about the type of car I was looking for. I tell them I was very familiar with Honda's. I said my husband drove in a cord and I was looking for a nice SUV like the CRV. We sat down, Sal asked me for my name and phone number, which he entered into a computer. I think he was able to see that I was already in their system and had received a quote. He showed me the same car. Wow, same stock number. That's good. It's the one Arena had given me on the prices. Marina's name never even came up, but same price, same car. Sal got the keys. We went outside, looked at the

CRV. He offered a test drive, which I accepted. Back inside in Sal's desk, he had some more questions for me. Was I interested in leasing, et cetera? I asked all the questions, let him know that I wanted an out-the-door purchase price. Sal was professional and patient. He said he would get an out-the-door price for me in writing. He left and returned. certainly after with a worksheet. The numbers match screen is, quote, exactly. The sale price was $22,769,000, $279,000, you know, you don't like that. And the splash guards, $120 for the cargo top, Gary, or whatever you go.

Trey, yeah. $291 is $0.25 in taxable fees, and a taxable fee. Probably the tag you can see and all that. Yeah, it's a dealer fee. Taxable fees are dealer fees. Taxable fees are hidden fees. They're bad, bad, dead. $999.

Again, that's taxable, but they somehow break it out to taxable fees. And the $999, $999, dealer services fee is a taxable fee. So it's all smoke and mirrors, folks. Just remember, if there's tax on a charge, it's profit to the dealer. And $1,493 in real estate. taxes, presumably. You don't know why not. We say presumably until you to the finance office and really see the breakdown. You don't know if they're really, you know, sales tax and whatnot. Anyway, the out-the-door price is the same as rain as quote, $25,0964. I asked

if I could get the info with me to review with my husband and he agreed. No pressure there either. Sometimes they really hammer you when you want to take the price out and you want to go home and he didn't do that. So basically two vastly different experiences and two vastly different prices and we checked the true car price on the Ed Morris quote and Cog and Honda in Stewart Martin County. Yeah. Yeah. Cog and Honda is a true car dealer and they beat the Althodore price from Brayman by $500, which is not a lot of money. No and they also had a lot the dealer fees too. The difference was the wheel locks and the cargo trade that added up to about $510. So maybe you could insist on them taking that out. I think you'd have a, but the whole

point is we got a good, she got good information and can use this price to probably even go lower. Yeah. So we did two things here. We have somebody we can put on the recommended list based on the vote. And we also have a competition between two dealers. In this case, Edmore Honda beat out Bremen Honda or did I get that back? Yeah, Edmore's Honda beat out Bremen Honda to buy the car. The beautiful thing was in the old days to find, to find that out would require driving in your car and spending hours and hours and hours. She didn't even give Brayman the shop because they were out there so far out of the

ballpark and save a lot of time. Now imagine doing that with five dealers. And you could have got on the Brayman and beat them up and screamed and yelled and got high blood pressure, maybe got a better price, but online is the name of the game. And I guess we're getting close. We probably ought to get some votes in here. I think we're sure.

Who wants to go first on the votes? Well, I'm waiting for them to come in on Facebook here, but I just want to, I'll jump in with mine. I'm going to give Ed Morris, I'm going to give them a B-plus. There is, even though they have the dealer fees and all that, they gave that up front online. That's all you're asking for. So who cares how they break down the price on their side?

They even out-the-door price. An interesting observation, by the way, and we can't make an evaluation just from one visit, but Bremen outsells Edmores Honda by a lot. Edmores Honda doesn't sell very many cars for a Honda dealer, and Bremen Honda sells a lot of cars for a Honda dealer. So I hate to say, but the sneaky tactics are working if we take this snapshot event is something. Okay. Well, I've got Tim Gilliland comes in with Eddard.

Morse gets a C. Brayman gets a D. And Mark Anderson says, Mark from St. Louis, A grade for the mystery shop idea, doing it this way. Never buy a car from a guy named Sal, grade D. Or Ace. He got a D for his name? Come on, man. Never buy a car with a guy named Ace. And for me, I'm going to go along with the B. I think that, I think she got treated properly at Ed Morris once she got there and they gave it a price and I've got Mark Ryan with a B minus. Okay. Linda gives

them a C, Martha gives him a B Mark and Pomey's Gardens gives Ed Morris a B and Bramon a D. Nancy? I'm going to give Ed Morris Honda a B and Bremen a C. Yeah, I think

you know, Ed Morris was so good that it makes Bremen seem bad and I kind of like that. I'm going to echo Nancy's road on that. I think that's the way I would do it. They're both on our recommendalists, I believe, or they have been. But here, now we're getting into nuanced differences.

Now we probably ought to have, maybe if we continue with this scenario in this format, maybe we ought to have a dealers we actually would have bought from or something. I mean, because even though they're both recommended it clearly, Ed Morris was a higher rating and a higher grade. Okay, do you have any more grades to? Thank you to everyone for tuning in, Earl Stewart on course. We enjoy your company. Be right back here next week. Stay safe and have a wonderful morning.

Peklo. Peklo. Pekno. Fenton. Fenton. Fenton. Fenton. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.