Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.17.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Al Hendrickson Toyota

Episode Date: September 17, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning visits the 2nd largest volume Toyota dealership in the US, Al Hendrickson Toyota of Ft. Lauderdale. She wants to see what they will charge her using the Costco Auto Buying Program for a new 2022 Toyota Camry XSE that is on their car lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, your auto, how not to get ripped off by a car dealer team, is right back in the studio here in North Palm Beach, Florida. And we're live. I feel like I've been gone for a long time, but I mentioned I just took a little a five-day vacation down to

Key West and really had a nice time. It's good to get away every now and then, but we don't miss a radio show unless we absolutely have to, like with COVID. We did miss a couple that way, but we're back, we're healthy. The whole crew here in the studio is healthy, and

we're here to help you navigate that minefield out there, which is buying or leasing or maintaining repairing your car. We have Rick Kearney is still with us here and he was out a little bit for COVID we're all we've all been down for COVID except for Stu knock on wood he's remained healthy the whole time but Rick is back and if you're new to the show Rick Kearney is a certified diagnostic master technician I mean this

guy knows about everything there is to know about repairing cars maintaining cars got a lot of good advice for you he can diagnose problems I say over the phone well if you have an audio or video clip, you can send it to our YouTube. Azo monitors our YouTube channel, and that's just YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars. So if you've got a problem, you're scared to death to take it into the dealer or to the independent mechanic that you use

because it's going to cost you an arm and a leg, just go to our YouTube.com for us slash Erlan Cars and ask Rick the question. You can post an audio clip or video clip, and if you want to, you don't have to. describe the problem and then call the show and I always say every morning during my live introduction this is what makes our show the show it is you but you have to call or text we have some other vehicles as I said YouTube and Facebook

Facebook.com forward slash Earl on cars our regular old-fashioned telephone number is simply 877 960 960 that's 870 7-960-960. Call us. Nancy Stewart sitting to my left here in the studio. She's got a laptop, and as soon as you call, she sees it on the screen, and we prioritize our phone calls. Why? Because we don't want to keep you holding for a long time.

Also, because we've only got five lines, I think, coming into the studio, and you might get a busy signal, I hate it when that happens. So if I'm Yakin or Rick's Yacken, we're going to stop, go to the telephone, and we're going to take your call. 877-960-99-60. And for those of you who are a little shy about live radio, I used to be, but it doesn't bother me anymore. It's something like kind of riding a horse. You get used to it, and it's easy every week. But if you're a little bit timid about live radio, you don't want to call on the telephone.

text us at 772 4976530 at 772 4976530 and we will archive those Stu Stewart sitting right across from me he keeps a list of all the text and we might not get to it immediately

we might be doing a phone call or something else but during the show we're on for two hours remember this is from 8 a.m. Eastern Standard Time to 10 AM. And we will usually get to all our texts. There's also a really cool venue for getting heard on our show, an anonymous way to say anything you want, or just privacy protected. I mean, people are becoming more and more concerned about their privacy. I mean, this world we're living in today, there's very little privacy out there. So we provide you with a privacy way to talk to us. And we don't know who. who you are, where you are, you can say anything you like. And that link, that web link, is Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S.

That's Anonymous, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And we'll get to those, too. And it's a very popular way. We get a lot of those, and we'd love to have you use that. And, you know, you can use it anyway and tell us who you are. A lot of people do that. They use Your Anonymous Feedback.com, but then they tell us who they are. But we don't care.

I mean, however you want to do it. So here we are. Lots of ways to talk to us. And we're going to cover some items that we think are important. But remember, it isn't what we think are important. It's so much what you think is important. So 877-960-9960. If you can call us with that number, we will answer the phone immediately.

I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy Stewart, my co-host. She was a co-founder of the show about 20 years ago. And we started out in a little half an hour show, and now it's developed into a full two hours. And we hardly have enough time at two hours. I don't know if I have the stamina to go more than two hours, but maybe one day we will. But that's a lot of time. And with a lot of calls and a lot of texts and a lot of us anonymous feedbacks, it goes by in like five minutes. So hang on your house. Here we go. Here's Nancy Stewart. I'm going to turn

the mic over to her. Good morning, everyone. We're glad to be back, as Earl said. This morning, we really want to motivate and we want to give the ladies an incentive. Well, I should say motivate, inspire, and educate. And you, the audience that's important to us, you're very important part of the show. You help us along the way in these two hours. But ladies, just a little inspiration, I offer $50 for the first two new lady callers. The first two new lady callers, give me a call, give us a call, say hello, ask questions, give us some advice. 877-960

for everyone else you can text us at 7-7-2-497-6-5-30 We have a great show ahead Don't go away, stay with us As always, we have a great Mystery Shopping Report from Al Hendrickson, Toyota. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, for those of you,

and we're worldwide, I think, We have some calls from out of the country, but we're in South Florida, and South Florida is very interesting in that it is a, I call it the Sodom and Gomorrah of car dealers. You know, car dealers, if you're new to the show, are probably the most difficult group of retailers to deal with that you've ever seen. and they have a reputation of being so with the Gallup Poll. Since 1977, they've been at the bottom of the Gallup Poll on honesty and ethics and professions. Sometimes they're next to last, but the average buyer, certainly in the United States, is afraid. And sometimes afraid isn't the word, it's just a distasteful thing to have to go in buy a used car, a new car, or even get your car repaired. So, of all the places in the United States, South Florida's worst.

Our mystery shopping report, which I'll let my son, Stu Stewart, tell you more about in just a second, we shop a lot of dealerships in South Florida, but we also shop dealerships out of state. And we see a contrast. We've had some excellent shopping reports in Tennessee and Pennsylvania compared to what we see in South Florida. But for some reason, South Florida is just the... just a very, very unpleasant place for anybody to buy a newer used car. But it has some of the largest dealers. And that's where I got off on this tangent. We shopped Al Hendrickson, Toyota, who is the second largest this year, in terms of their sales rate, the second largest volume

Toyota dealership in the world. I mean, they sell about a thousand cars a month. Is that right, Stu? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, in these days, it's come down to probably closer like the 700 or, But they're a huge dealer, and they're second only to a dealership in Los Angeles area called Longo, Toyota. And then the third or fourth largest dealers are in South Florida for Toyota. And the same thing is true for Honda, Ford, General Motors, so on and so forth. So I don't want to harp on Toyota. In full disclosure, we are Toyota dealership. We have a Toyota dealership in North Palm Beach.

And I say that in full transparency because, hey, maybe I'm just trying to con you and to buy in toilets for me. I want you to be sure this is not the case. If you listen to the show, you know it's not the case. This is not an infomercial. But it is a good thing that we have that car dealership experience. I mean, Rick Kearney has worked for me for 25 plus years. And so that's one of the reasons he really knows how to repair cars. He also sees some of the devious tactics that other car dealers use.

And so the same thing with Stu as the general manager of our dealership. Nancy and I were all in the business. And so insiders can recognize deception more so than outsiders. You read all the headlines about the Federal Trade Commission, and there's always lawsuits against car dealers. But you know who really knows how bad you're being taken advantage of? It's the car dealers. And we are a car dealer.

So we know what's going on. And the other car dealers know that we know what's going on. So we have a lot of fun. And the mystery shopping report, which Stu has got to talk about a little bit now, is one of the reasons why we're infamous among car dealers. They know what we're doing with the mystery shopping awards, too. Well, in the report I alluded to the conversation, how we settled on Al Hendricks in Toyota.

So we were having a little conversation. I think we might have a call. Yes, we do. We do? Okay, well, I'm going to, I will cede my time to Ms. Nancy. Thank you, Sue. I want to say that the cardinal rule here for anyone who wants to walk into a dealership, do your homework. It is definitely, well, I don't even think land mines even define the atmosphere that you will find yourself in.

So please do your homework. I'm going to take the first call this morning, and that's a young lady by the name of Kathy from St. John's, Florida. Welcome, Kathy. Hi, Nancy. Nice to talk to you. My question today is, what do you think of third-cardi car brokers will, give me the VIN, or Car Bar, USA, when you have an extra car to sell? Okay. Go ahead.

A car for sale at what? Could you repeat that, Liz, Kathy? Could you repeat the question? Sure, sure. I'm sorry. I said, what do you think of the third-party car brokers, like give me the VIN or Car Buyer USA when you have an extra car to sell?

Oh, brokers. Okay, if the question is about brokers in general, car brokers, for those that haven't dealt with one, just like any broker, they operate as a middleman, between the buyer and the seller. And of course, when you have a middleman, you have a markup that you don't have if you deal direct. But you also have, theoretically, and hopefully, the broker has the experience and the ability to guide you to save you more than what the broker fee is.

So when dealing with any broker, you just have to weigh the pros and the cons. The con is the fact that there's an extra fee which he charges you. Number one, you need to know exactly what the broker fee is, and you should also know what the exact selling price of the car is out the door. If he's going to be the broker, then he should negotiate a price low enough to pay his fee and still save you money. Oh, sure, absolutely. I was thinking about going that route, but I'd rather do my homework, as Nancy always says, and then go in and figure out what I'd like to buy and make my comparison. You know, here's where being a car dealer gives us a lot of insight, because we deal through brokers also.

And we know that some brokers out there charge outlandish fees. We can think of dealers. Over thousand dollars? Thousands of dollars, yeah. And so a fair fee, I would say, would be around $500. And the broker has relationships set up with certain dealers and different makes of cars that he has, an understanding that they will treat him fairly. He will treat them fairly, and he will bring them customers. In normal times, the dealer eats really feels the brunt of the broker fee,

and these days the customer is feeling because the dealer will, even with the broker, is still going to demand a much higher price. Today, Kathy, about the best you could find, if a broker could find you a car at MSRP, that would be a feat. And if you had to pay an extra $500 for that, it might be worth it. So it's something you might want to consider if you would feel comfortable and trust the person you're dealing with. And Kathy, from your response, I've been listening to you, it sounds like you've been listening to the show and you're an educated consumer.

I do have to add that, you know, sometimes we look at brokers and as maybe, for lack of another word, an easier way to purchase a vehicle. But often enough, things are lost in translation, let's put it that way. So you really have to be aware, and I'm sure that you can do that very well because the bottom line here is saving you money. And you just have to keep an eye on all that. I hope we answered your question. No, that was wonderful.

Yeah, I watch it every Saturday. My husband, he's got the full knowledge of. of cars he was kind of educating me very good Kathy have I spoken to you before I don't think so no very good I'm my first time calling Kathy um if you'll stay on the line

and you'll talk to Jeremy who is in our control studio um he can get your information and your contact information and I can get that $50 that you just won out to you oh thank you so much Nancy

that's wonderful news oh thank you birthday present for myself yeah and uh jeremy would be glad to take care of you and uh i'm going to mention before i forget happy birthday jeremy today's jeremy's birthday he is oh it's my birthday yesterday i really happy birthday kathy uh 50 dollars can help you out a bit so um sure talk to jeremy and you'll get that 50 okay thank you so much nancy thank you thank you kathy spread the word 877960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-6-5-30. And don't forget, your anonymousfeedback.com. Back to Stu.

Yeah, so when the wheels were spinning for the mystery shop, we were thinking about Costco because we did the Schumacher Volkswagen last week with Costco. So usually we like to do these in kind of like in phases or themes, so I wanted to stick with Costco. So Agent Lightning and Earl and I were just kicking it around. And I was suggesting something pretty innocuous because I don't have that adventurous soul that my father has. And he comes back with Al Hendrickson.

I go, oh, God. Because it's the Toyota dealership phenomena, the fact that we don't, it's a little bit risky or dangerous to kind of do that. We don't want to be, like Earl said, assumed to be knocking our most immediate competition. our same brand competitors, and also Toyota didn't like it. So we got to just make sure anything that we say is straight up. And that's what we always do anyway.

So that's why we're not really that worried, but it's still, it's a little bit more exciting to do Al Hendrickson than it is to do the guy down the street. And also, to be honest, well, part of the fact that Al Hendrickson and I go way back, Al Hendrickson worked for General Motors at one time, and he actually signed me as a car dealer with Pontiac a thousand years ago and now his son is running the dealership so it's a little bit of that. Al and I haven't spoken in a while but we and Al and Al's son Al Jr. and I we go way back to about 16 years old. So yeah there is a connection there and by the way both of them are really lovely people and it's really kind cool people but it's the it's the dealership that we're looking

at not those guys. So anyway agent lightning is a pro. She goes down there. She knows the Costco program. And I had a really good time writing this one up. So it should be a good one. Did you guys read it? Sounds like a... Oh, yeah.

What was it? 1140 you sent that to me? Oh, come on. It wasn't that late. It varies. Last week, it was 9.31. Oh, that was last week. Last week.

I was reading it at midnight. Sorry. Okay. To compliment you, it was a great mystery shopper. Ladies and gentlemen, you don't want to miss this one. As always, a fantastic mystery shopping report. We are going to go back to the phones and talk to Marty, West Palm Beach, a regular caller. Good morning, Marty.

Good morning. I got a question for Rick. I have a 2020 Camry in this past couple of weeks when I was parked with the two right wheels were in gutter, trough, whatever you want to call it. and I went to pull out, and the emergency brake went on. And I didn't pull the lever to put it on, and I've never used the emergency brake since I've owned a car for two and a half years. So I wonder if Rick can tell me if there's a problem. Did you maybe have your door open a little bit?

Not that I can recall, but it's always possible. That'd be my first thought, because starting in 20, 2020 with a lot of our cars that have switched over to the electric parking brake. They've tied it in now to the door switch to where if your door is open, it automatically and you're in gear, it automatically engages that parking break. I'll be darned. All right. You've seen videos of people, they get frustrated if something happens,

they jump out of the car and the car is still in gear and the car just starts rolling down the road because it's still in drive and so now the cars are set up they automatically activate the parking brake I would check to see was there a possibility that your door might have been not closed quite all the way

just half closed would that just be the passenger would that just be the driver door or any door? It's the driver's door just the driver's door yes all right I'll I'll check this the next time if it happens this time I've been looking

to see once I put it in drive to see if the light, you know, goes off where it says park. But this only happened, I'd say, in the last two or three weeks. Yeah, check to make sure that your driver's door is securely closed, and then when you put it in to drive, that parking brake should automatically disengage. Okay, yeah, you know, like I say, this has only happened in the last couple weeks. I've had the car for two and a half years. It hasn't happened.

and I haven't fallen out of the car that's a good thing I just wondered if there was something wrong with the brake itself but okay I'll make sure I check that yeah it's actually kind of annoying for technicians because when I'm going to drive the car onto my lift I open the door so I can lean out and watch the tires

because I don't want to hit the lift with the tire and when I open the door the parking brake goes on and all of a sudden I'm slamming into the steering wheel. When it first happened to you, did you know what happened? It took me a second to realize what happened for me. Marty and you both answered.

This is one of my little pet peeves because I've got to put my consumer head on besides being a car dealer. You know, when manufacturers do something like that, they should thoroughly educate their dealers to people that are delivering the cars and it should be required to tell.

Here's a technician. a Toyota technician that was never appraised of the fact that they had made this change in the model. And we have a customer, Marty, you were never apprised of the change. So when you do things like this, you engineers and people that are designing these cars, tell the people that are in the trenches what's going on so the people that sell the car can tell the customer, and certainly so our own technicians don't fall out of the car. Yeah. I mean, you just say, it first came.

out on the display and you know where the speedometer is and everything and I was trying to read it read it fast and also figure out what happened and then I just went and I looked

and I said it must be the emergency brick and I started driving and of course the car wouldn't go it was like jammed up I said oh my God what happened and I just didn't want to ruin the whole a brake system.

If you go too far, I could tell you that. No, no, because when it goes on, it stops those wheels, and it will stop that car. And you have to reach down and manually switch it off. Well, thanks for the call, Marty. Rick, you're a genius. I really appreciate you being so sharp on the thing. All right, thanks. I'll make sure I shut the door.

Key word, experience. You know, communication is a great thing, isn't it? Thank you, Marty. It's nice hearing from you, Marty. morning he's a regular he gives us a call every week just a little editorial comment for everyone listening here whether you're buying a Honda or any car used new whatever one of the most important things you can do is to have someone that knows show you the bells and whistles and the and the buttons and the and the bows and everything about the car because they are

complicated today and there are things that are so complicated you just if you were just listening even our technicians don't know. So that's not going to do you any good when it's one of those issues. But if you come in and buy a newer used car and they hand you the keys and you hand them a check and you go home, you're in for a lot of surprises and disappointments and aggravation. You're buying a complicated piece of machinery,

computerized, high-tech, and you will be very frustrated. Part of the condition of buying that car, you should be sure that the... salesperson or a training manager or whatever they call the person who is responsible for educating you on all the intricacies of that vehicle spends at least 45 minutes to an hour and they should drive the car with you and you should ask every question there are no stupid questions ask every question and when you're all through say did I forget to ask anything and then you won't remember a few years ago if you said does this car have a spare tire that would be a

stupid question. Now one out of every three cars sold does not have a spare tire so it's a great question. Things are changing. Again, we're car dealers, we know what goes on. One of the most common complaints that I get from my customers is my car wasn't explained to me properly. I didn't maybe it was and they forgot or maybe we didn't do it. But I'm telling you, if you haven't bought a new car in a while or a current model car in a while, you are in for both a surprise and a disappointment, surprise at how many features that it has on there that you never imagined could be on a car, and the disappointment is no one told you about them. I've actually, myself as an owner of a dealership, driven a car for a year, and then when I turned the car in to get

another car, found out about a bunch of things on the car I didn't know where there that I could use. I mean, I'm... This is new. Oh, no, I've been there for five years. Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. Okay, guys. Great conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, give us a call at 877-960. 9960. And you can text us at 772-497-6530.

Hey, anyone out there? Has anyone noticed how the prices are coming down for electric vehicles? I have a list that I can read to you later on in the show. if you're interested electric vehicles that's what it's all about it's here

whether we like it or not I think I saw one for like $30,000 hard to believe yes it is the list is hard to believe we are going back to the phones and we're going to talk to Petra from Palm Bay

good morning hello hello good morning and welcome to the show hello hi hi hello can you hear me I can hear you.

Did I pronounce your name correctly? It's Petra. Okay. Have I spoken to you before? No. Oh, welcome. You just won yourself $50 this morning for being the second lady caller. $50. Oh, thank you.

You're welcome. When we're finished with our conversation, stay on the line and talk to Jeremy. He'll take your contact information, and I'll send you out of check. what can we do for you this morning I have a question about fuel okay when I go to the gas station there's always so many different

fuel choices yeah and octane I guess it's called so like what is the best one to run in my car or what's like the major

difference? Have you checked your owner's manual? Simplest answer Petra. When you open the little flap door for your gas cap, right on your gas cap, it will say what recommended fuel you should be using.

If it says use most of them now, you're not too worried about the octane level. If it says use premium fuel, there will be a sticker on that fuel door that says use premium only that's on certain cars like lexas a lot of the higher-end cars otherwise stick with the 87 octane it's going to run just fine on it the computer will adjust the car to make it run perfectly on it but the thing you need to be

careful of is the ethanol content most cars now can run up to 15% ethanol and it will say this right on your gas cap. If it says up to 10% only, make sure that you get the pump handle that says 10% ethanol only. And if you see something that says E85 and your car is not rated for E85 fuel, be very sure do not put that in your car. And also watch careful to make sure because a lot of them now they've got three and four different pump handles. So you'll have one for the E10 to E15 fuel, which that's safe in just about every car right now. They'll have the E85, and then they'll also have diesel. And the diesel nozzles used to be much larger and wouldn't fit.

Now they're small, and they will fit right into the normal gas can, normal gas tanks. So you've got to be careful which one you look for. Look for 87 octane and the E10 or E15. And that's all you need to worry about. okay so it um i shouldn't waste money like doing the 89 arcane no it's that really it was a it was a nice little scam when it came out but it's it's gotten old there's no reason to run that fuel in your car it's really not going to make any difference and if you stick with a good name brand gas station uh shell chevron mobile most of the stations even rocket and 7-11

they're getting high quality fuel they're all buying it from the same refineries the fuel is the same coming to all of them and you're going to have no worries with it and patrick i appreciate that information also uh this is nancy um i just want to give you a little tip i stick with the same gas station um you know i i choose that gas station and that's where i go and like rick said you know check that gas nozzle don't be taking advantage of what are you driving correct um i drive a honda odyssey uh-huh very good car uh yep great car yeah i love it okay well uh you sound like an educated consumer i thank you for the phone call spread the word to your lady friends and tell them fifty dollars for the first two new lady callers have a great weekend you too you too

Thank you. You're welcome. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And, you know, I think that we ought to give a shout out to Earl's vigilantes. You can go to Earl-on cars. He's going to pop his hat on, and it's a great-looking hat that Stu is responsible for. I'll just hold it close so you can see there. Yeah.

So I'll go to Erlan. cars where you'll find Earl's vigilantes and you can volunteer to help maybe somebody in your neighborhood it's a really a win-win situation and all the information is right there you can also you can also talk to isn't there is that list available yet of the volunteers like Marty and so many of the other yeah I saw it's on Earl on cars yeah anyway it's all there on Erlon cars. Rick, you had something? Got a couple

YouTube questions. Oh, great. First one here is from Charles Reeves. He says, Good morning, all. Please give us the skinny. Would it be advantageous of me to look into a dealer loaner car, which will have between 7,000 to 9,000

miles on it, and the dealer would then sell it as a certified pre-owned vehicle versus a new car. Sure. Well, we always recommend a used car over a new car. It's a better value. As long as you get the right used car. A dealer-looner car is just like any other used car. It's oftentimes they try to, you know, sell demonstrators, dealer-loaners at higher prices. But they're driven just like anything else.

It's a mileage on the car. Probably there are low enough mileage where it's going to be certifiable when you buy it. And, yeah, it's, today everything's in short supply. Don't be lulled into the fact that used car prices have come way down. They really haven't come way down. They've come down a little bit. Today's cars are still selling used cars are still setting very high compared to where they were a year ago. So in comparison to a year ago, use car prices are still sky high. Compared to last month, they've come down and maybe the month before.

but there's no huge plunge in used car prices. Right. The other thing to watch out for is if they're selling it, it's a demo. Make sure that it's actually being sold as an official demo. It's checked on the buyer's order because that protects you on your warranty. And if it's not, make sure you're buying it as a used car. It's titled, resold it. A dealership can buy a car from themselves, title it, and then it's an official used car.

And then that way you don't have to worry about losing out a new car warranty. Exactly. Well, you still lose out a newer car warranty, but you have a used car. Okay, we have a text from Anne-Marie. We have time for that. Oh, welcome, Anne-Marie. All right. Amory says, good morning.

It seems that more and more vehicles other than basic models now have sun-slash-moon roofs, whether the prospective buyer wants one or not. I have a few questions. One, what is the difference between a sunroof and a moon roof? Moonroof you can see through. Number two, does a sunroof affect the structural integrity of the roof and the event of a rollover accident? I do want to talk about that. Yeah, I mean, when you have less metal and, you know, less cage around you, that's, you know, obviously air or glass doesn't protect you as well.

The moon roofs that are built with the cars at the factory, they're designed that way. So that's something I feel completely comfortable. Aftermarket moon roofs, or you just take any old car and a company cuts out a square in it and puts an apparatus so it closes and opens. I don't trust those. I think if you were in a roller of accident, without a doubt, I think that your structure. intellectual integrity has been compromised. And I would add this. I think moonroose and sunruth

are a profit-making thing for the manufacturers. To me, the cost of a moonroof for Sunroof, the suggested retail is much higher than I intuitively see the cost of it. Well, now they're built into

the MSRPs because they're standard on most of the Iran. But I just, this is just me. I don't like the idea. of a hole in my roof when i'm driving a car you don't you have a giant roof of glass i have yeah i have a i have a hole in the roof on my tesla no you don't you have a giant the entire roof is glass yeah but it feels like a hole in the roof yeah well one of the other factors

don't repeat that again one of the other factors on a sliding roof like that every time i drive it eventually over you know on an older car they will start to leak excessively another reason now Now, they're actually designed to leak a little bit, and they have drains, but if those drains get clogged, which can happen even on a brand new car, insects can crawl up inside those drains and plug it up. Suddenly, you've got water flooding into your interior. Yeah, she has more questions. She says, assuming if I'm wearing my seatbelt, am I more likely to receive worse injuries if I'm driving a vehicle with a sunroof as opposed to a solid metal roof and a roover accident? I don't know if there's any data on that. I never heard that.

But, I mean, just thinking about the material around you, I think that steel is going to protect you better than glass, even though I'm sure that the glass that they use in the sunroofs are similar to the safety glass. It's not going to like, so I feel comfortable. And my whole family drives cars with sunroof, so I feel comfortable. The sunroof glass is going to be the same as the side windows. So if it breaks, it'll shatter down into those little pebbles. which hopefully is intended to not give large pieces of glass that can cause major injuries. Stu, what's the average approximate cost of a sunroof? It's been a while since as a package, they're always like around $800,000, $1,200.

Yeah, I think it's over $1,000. Here, again, that's another gripe I have, is a lot of manufacturers will build most of the cars. I'm a very suspicious person by nature. and when the manufacturer pushes an accessory, an option, that usually means they're making a lot of money on it. And they like to build a lot of cars with sun roofs and moonroost. Or there's a big demand for it. It gets more margin, more markup.

So a lot of people are taking cars with sunroofs and moonroos because they have to, because the manufacturer is not building anything without the moonroof. I should have a choice, yeah. I personally love moon roofs. I wouldn't drive one without it. I feel kind of, you know, like a little claustrophobic if I can't have the letter. But you don't have to pay for your car. In a way, I do, kind of, I do actually.

But, yes, call. Excellent. Phone call. I finish with you, Mary? Oh, yeah, yeah. We're ready for a call. Okay. Sunroof, Moonroof.

What do you think, guys? Give us a call, 877-960, 9960. Me? I'd just say it's a personal decision, just like so many other decisions that you have to make before you walk, if you so choose, into a dealership. Me, I'm on the Internet.

So, we're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to ask Victoria to please be patient. We will get to you, and we are going to talk to Gary in Stewart. Good morning. Good morning, Gary. Good morning. Good morning. How are you?

We're well, thank you. I just want to ask you, I would ask you folks a question if I can. Can you hear me? Yes. I can't. Very loud. and clear. Okay. I ran into a curb in my complex and they put a left front control arm on the car. I have a Hyundai Sonata and I had the tires balanced and I had a four-wheel alignment. Is that

car a unibody? Should I have someone check the frame or do you think it should be okay? Hyundai Sonata is a unibody car so you don't actually have a separate frame the frame and the body are all one and once the alignment's been checked the control arm which would have shown being bent by being out of alignment so now that they've replaced that if all the alignment specs came back into proper specification you're fine next question quickly and I think you guys do a great job I'm a little new to the car business. I've been doing it about 43 years. Oh. That's neither there, and I ran some large auto groups in my day. But that's neither air and or there. If you were going to put a car on a Hyundai Sonata,

because I use this car as a computer car, I have about 150,000 miles on it, and I serve it into the back. Would you put a Michelin tire on this car? what would you put for the best performance tire, bar, you know, money's really, and when I say that I don't sound like I'm wealthy, I would pay for a good tire. What kind of tire would you guys put up? Gary, we wouldn't recommend buy and make. Mishlin builds some good tires.

They also build some tires that aren't so good. You know, the brand is not all that important. We usually look at consumer reports, look at the actual experience. of wear and tear on tires, but, you know, you can talk about Michigan, Goodyear Firestone, there are a lot of good Japanese and even Chinese brands. If you go to consumer reports online or you have to pick up a copy of the library or buy one, they recommend tires, but don't just assume because you have a good brand tire

that is highly recommended. Every manufacturer tire has some tires that are not so good. I understand. Listen, I think you guys do a great job. Lots of success with your dealerships, and you have a great day, and thanks for the answer. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Gary. Keep on listening. 877960, or you can text us at 772-49-6530. At Consumer Report, you just can't say enough about it, and you can go right there, as Earl said, and you can check out tires. You can check out anything, every single month they are just, they can just give you so much information and it's conducive to the climate of what is going on in the auto industry. Right now I have October edition of my subscription in front of me and it just gives you a guide to the safest cars to

drive. So take a look. Not to beat a dead horse about tires, but it happens to be very important for a car. I mean, that's pretty obvious. From a safety standpoint, there's not much more important than your tires. And it's a complicated product. It looks simple, you know, a big ring of rubber, but there are so many different types of tires, and there are so many different driving conditions. Winter, wet roads, you know, they're very, you're in Arizona or Florida, hot highways and blah, blah, blah. Consumers, reports is probably one of the things that you really need most with respect to your car when they choose to doing anything to pick your tire. And they will give you some very

good guidance. How you drive is important. The type of tire, there's a, there's a wealth of information in the tire, tire wear tread index, and you have certain tires you buy that will give you a better fuel economy, blah, blah, blah, blah, but it's almost, in fact it is too complicated. The tires that come with a new vehicle from the factory, when you buy a Hyundai, Sonata, they have a deal with a tire manufacturer and they build their tires to their spec. And typically, manufacturers, when they equip their new car that you're going to buy, they try to make the tires smooth. And when you drive the car, the manufacturer, they want to sell the car. So when you try your demonstration ride, they want to glide smoothly. They're

not worried about how long will the tire last or a lot of other factors that are important in both economy and safety. They want a smooth running tire. So we recommend generally when you buy a new car, think twice before you replace that tire with the same tire. You might want to choose a different tire that will get you a lot longer tread life. So again, I went on and on about tires, but it's a simple thing, but it's also a complicated thing. that's a lot of great information out there take care of your tires your tires will take care of you that pressure in your tire is extremely important to maintain uh rick you were going to say something oh well just got more youtube's here okay i'm going to interrupt you and i'm going to go back to

the phones where victoria uh is calling from wellington and has been waiting thank you for your patience good morning hi um just calling calling in again to talk about deceitful car dealers, taking extra money from customers, and telling you that I'm still plowing ahead, trying to find out what car dealers are owned by Terry Taylor. Right now I know that he purchased three car dealers on car dealerships. He purchased a property for three car dealerships on Southern Boulevard in West Palm. a Nissan, a Mazda, and a Toyota. Victoria, excuse me for interrupting,

but we have a lot of new listeners and are not familiar. Victoria, just for the identification of our new listeners, Victoria is involved in litigation with a Terry Taylor dealership or she was taken advantage of, and she's trying to build a class action suit for her attorney to rectify the wrong, which is done to her, probably other Terry Taylor dealerships. Terry Taylor is the largest owner of dealerships in the world, I suppose.

He's a private owner. He owns over 100, I'm sure, maybe 200. He's a very, for those of you who are old enough to remember Howard Hughes, he's a very kind of a mysterious person. He doesn't like to be identified with his businesses. And so the businesses, the dealerships, in Terry Taylor's case, are all over the United States, but they have different names. And we have found by trying to find ownership, and Victoria also, you have to really drill

deep to find out if it could be a Charlie Brown Hyundai, but Charlie Brown Hyundai is owned by Taylor. So Terry Taylor owns dealerships that are in other names. So I'm sorry to interrupt you, Victoria, but I just want to set that framework. And I know you want to give us that information. on the attorney and your situation, and I'll let you take the mic back. Okay, well, so what I'm trying to do right now is find out what Terry Taylor does own, and he does own this company called Automotive Group,

and they're actually in Palm Beach, West Palm Beach. And he, he, I've been trying to figure out how to find out if it's a Terry Taylor company. Now, one of the things I noticed is the contract that I was given has a heading on it, and it starts out, and it says at the top, I-L-A-W, in big capital letters, 553-F-L-A-R-B-E-919, retail installment sales contract, single finance charge with arbitration provision. So if you have a contract that you bought a car with, with that at the top of it, there's a fairly good chance that that's a Terry Taylor contract.

And also, if you go to your car dealership and you've had any problems, when you go there, ask them if Terry Taylor owns the dealership. You know, they might tell you. And please pass that information on to Earl because we're trying to compile a list as best we can. Exactly. Yeah. Right. And I've actually, I've already filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and with the Florida Trade Commission, but we need more voices.

We need to get more people to say that they've had problems. And you need to send that information to Earl so we can get it together and work on it. And Victoria, they can send the information of all the ways we have to be contacted. They could even call the show or text the show. Calls at 877-960, which is the way you just called us. They can text us at 772-497-6-5-3. And, of course, take any reaches on Facebook at Facebook.com for slash earl on cars or YouTube. YouTube.com for slash earl on cars.

Your anonymous feedback.com. So there's multiple ways that you can contact this. If you have an issue with a Terry Taylor dealership or if a dealership that you're not sure who owns, he owns so many dealerships, there's a reasonable chance. be owned by Terry Taylor. If you don't know the owner or having difficulty finding the owner, it might be owned by Terry Taylor because he deliberately, in my opinion, seems to want to remain a monitor. There's nothing wrong with wanting to mean anonymous, but he seems to carry it to some kind of an extreme. You mentioned some local dealerships. Palm Beach Motors, I believe, the franchise for, is a Land Cruiser or not Land Cruiser, a

Land Rover, yeah. And for Jaguar and for something else, another luxury car, is owned by Terry Taylor. I had another attorney call me. He couldn't find out. Here's an attorney that had drilled and drilled and drill. I was able to find out that Terry Taylor owned it through a associate I had who was a former partner, a limited partner with Terry Taylor. So give us that information and we'll pass along to Victoria, and we wish you the very best of luck in this.

I don't think Terry Taylor knew who he had stepped on when he stepped on you, but I know you're not going to give up. Well, you know, next week maybe I'll give some information out if people don't know about how to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission because these are the Florida Division of Motor Vehicles that regulates dealers has already fined and cited 441-9. Nissan. They wouldn't tell me how much money they find them, but they did tell me that they find

them. Very good. And so, you know, it's important for us these, these, when a car dealership deceives a purchaser, that's violating the Consumer Protection Act, which is a Florida statute. So there's plenty of legs

to stand on to potentially get your money back, but we just need to get people together so we can do it. Exactly. Yeah, we have a, on our On our webpage, earlancars.com, we have a link to the Federal Trade Commission complaint form, which you could download and fill out. Oh, good. Yeah, so we're oncars.com.

And we also give the information for the Consumer Affairs Office, also for the Department of Motor Vehicles. So, Attorney General complaint, we got all of the government complaint areas are on earluncars.com. okay good and if everybody would just go there and fill out those forms and send them in that's how your voice gets heard when we're all together on it exactly that's right Victoria and this is tell all of our listeners again in case you missed this is Victoria Victoria versus Terry Taylor they didn't know who who they were dealing with my money's on Victoria and thank you very much like you said let's let our voices be heard. The only way you can do that is if we join together for our voices to be heard. Where there's a will, there's a way, and it takes a hell of a lot of patience. Some of us just don't have that. Victoria has enough for all of us. Thank you, Victoria. It's a matter of principle. It definitely is. Have a wonderful weekend.

You too. Okay. That number again is 877-960. 9960, and we're going to go to John in Palm City, who's been waiting. Good morning, John. Good morning to everyone. Mention about sun roofs. This was an era where people were going crazy. We're building houses and putting the skylights in the roof, which you don't even see them today anymore. They were not only the bubble was turning different colors, but there were leaks. But there was a successful company that made a lot of money doing it for all manufacturers in California.

It was called American Sunroof Company, and they not only even put sunroofs for manufacturers which dealers had extra markups when they did do this, but they also made actually convertibles cars that were not convertibles

like the Cadillac when it was finished in 76. They actually made a Cadillac convertible, and it was all to me government specifications but I just fast, I don't want to belabor it. but it was a very successful company. The second thing I want to mention,

and this is a question for Earl, I read in the paper where General Motors will offer buyouts to U.S. Buick dealers, Puyicks now, as an alternative from franchise owners who don't want to make investments

that will be needed as the brand goes all-electric. Now, my question to Earl is what kind of actual incentives could they give those, I mean, with a buyout? Is it similar to the situation where they stopped making Oswebiel and Pontiac, where they paid dealers? I mean, there was a guy I spoke to a while back.

He used to have a GMC Pontiac dealer, but he never told me what compensation. He didn't want to discuss it that he was offered by General Motors. Yeah, they probably may do. And you elaborate on that, Earl, a little bit about this Buick situation now, offering buyouts? What kind of buyout could they possibly offer the Buick dealers? Well, remember that Buick is not exactly the hottest car in the country, and that Buick dealers vary in size from...

Now, the Buick dealers we see around South Florida are very large compared to most Buick dealers. The average Buick dealer probably only sells 15 or 20 cars a month. I mean, you'd be surprised in rural areas, and they're probably over-dealer anyway. A lot of the Buick dealers have multi-franchises. They'll have more than one franchise under one roof. The number I heard, and the article I read was in Automotive News, was in the $800,000, $900,000. Not a huge amount of money, but a lot of money.

It's pressure, in a sense, from the manufacturer on the dealers. A lot of dealers are saying, listen, these electric vehicles, they're a figment of somebody's imagination. It's not going to happen. A lot of these guys are just old-fashioned, frankly, and they don't see the future is electric vehicles. So they don't have a good attitude, a lot of the dealers.

So the manufacturers, they've got to clear the slate so they have outlets for electric vehicles because Buick and all the manufacturers are going to be doing nothing but electric vehicles in just a few years, 20 years, you're not going to see anybody build in combustion engine cars virtually. I mean, you'll always have a few being built, but it'll be in the high 90% of its electric vehicles. So they have to look at their markets, and they have markets, 50 states. And so they're going to probably a lot of the smaller deals and say, listen, we know you don't want to sell electric vehicles.

We understand that. I'll write out a check right now for $750,000. and you will agree to let me put another dealer in there at the time that we're not building any more combustion engine cars. They're not going to stop making combustion engine cars. They'll continue to build combustion engine cars, but those will be, they won't be any new model combustions. This will be the last year of the design for this model. They might build it for two or three years, but they won't change it. And then the new model in that Buick Skylark will be all electric.

and then they will not give that to a dealer unless he agrees to the buyout. The dealer has to be in there, be a player to take all EVs all the time. Well, here's some good EV news. Last week, Starbucks and IKEA announced that they're going to make a tremendous amount of fast charging stations in their premises. It was announced last week. It's a great idea. I mean, if you're looking at the future, what better way to attract the potential customers?

rather than say, hey, here's a charger for you. I mean, it'd be so cool, I mean, to pull in to think about it, you go to the mall, you pull in, and you go shopping, and you plug your car in. And when you come back, you're top it off, you've got a full tank of electricity. I mean, I love the idea of being able to charge my car when I go shopping. So, yeah, IKEA and... They got it right. Starbucks.

Starbucks, yeah. Well, this is a fact that they actually saw, contracts to start in on it with a big company. Yeah, we have charging stations at our dealership, and we'll probably have a lot more as time goes by. Right, okay guys. Thank you, John.

Thanks for the great call, John. Wait for the shopping report. Yes, definitely. You're welcome. 877-9-6960 Texas 772-497-3530. I think we're going to get back to Rick where he was finishing up some YouTube. I got a couple of good ones here. Richard is asking, what's you're thinking about buying an extended warranty on a new Toyota?

Do you believe in them? If so, do you have specific recommendations? One of the most popular questions that we always get asked, and it isn't a black and white answer. I have a personal preference. I don't believe in insurance. I think that if you can afford to pay for something, you should not insure it. I mean,

I can, now this doesn't apply to fire insurance on your house or flood insurance or something serious. I mean, if you lose a huge amount of, of property or personal property, it's good to have that insurance. But for your car,

depending on your economic circumstances, and if you buy a good car, it's probably not going to happen. Now, with all that said, for the average person, I'm not average. For the average person, if you buy a good car and you want to buy an extended service contract, you should read

the contract carefully, and what I'm going to tell you isn't to read it carefully to see what it covers, I'm going to tell you to read it carefully to see what it does not cover. Usually that's the way you get hooked and take an advantage of with an extended service contract. You say, well, look, it covers the engine, it covers the transmission, it covers the drive chain. And, you know, you think of engine repairs and transmission repairs. You say, ooh, that's really expensive. But what about the electronics?

What about the computers in the car? What about the navigation system? What about the air conditioning? I mean, a lot of things that you don't think about are not covered. In matter of fact, what I just described earlier is a power train warranty, and a power train warranty doesn't cost anything. They're practically free because engines and transmissions and rear axles and things like that. you lubricate them and maintain them, according to the manufacturers' recommended maintenance,

they never fail. So if you're going to buy an extended service contract, be sure you know what it does not cover, and usually it's some very expensive products that typically will fail more often than the ones I've described of the power train. Also, you want to be sure that extended service contract will be honored at any dealership or any repair facility. Sometimes these extended warranties are dealer-owned. We own our own warranty company of my dealership,

but that warranty is honored anywhere. But some dealers will have their own warranty, and they'll only honor their dealership. It's a minefield. It's a scary thing. Don't buy an extended warranty just from the fact that it's extended warranty. If you have to buy it, The manufacturers also offer extended warranties, and if it's a manufacturer offered by Honda or General Motors, you're not going to get taken advantage of too much, Rick.

The one specific component that I would say you have to have included is it's got to cover all the components of the air conditioning. Not just the compressor or the condenser, but the evaporator core. The evaporator core is the most expensive item to replace because on just about every new car, to do it, the entire dash has to come out of the car. It's a huge labor-intensive job. And the evaporator core usually is the first component to go bad on an air conditioning system unless you happen to get a rock hit your condenser. And other than that, that's the big one. And here's the other thing. If you haven't seen on television or got on the telephone or text or online solicitation,

the extended service, excuse me, contract companies are like rabid dogs. Sir, can I have called to speak to you about your extended service contracts? And so if you are solicited for an extended service contract, black and white, don't buy it. If someone's calling you and the television ads on these extended service contracts, With ICE tea and all the celebrities. They're criminal. Never buy an extended service contract if you're solicited. If you have to buy one, then be very, very careful, as we've discussed earlier.

And my overall recommendation is, I don't buy them. I wouldn't buy one. And when you do, be very, very careful. The biggest question in your extended service contract, what it doesn't cover. And I'll tell you what, the information that Rick just gave out on the air conditioner, that's gold. You just don't even think about it. 99% of extended warranties will not cover the evaporator core on the air conditioner. And if you find the ones that do, they're going to cost you so much that you'd be better off to put that money in the bank for the day the evaporator fails.

Here you go, folks. These terms are not stupid. They have all the research. they know that the evaporator core is the most expensive, most common thing to fail. They know exactly. They have data for billions of cars, and when they're writing the extended service contract, they've got a bunch of guys in the room and say, okay, we can't cover this, we can't cover that because these fail a lot and they're too expensive.

We'll cover all the one items on the car that don't fail very much, and if they do fail, they don't cost too much. So basically, you're playing the company. company's game, they know what's covered and they know what's expensive. They know what's going to fail. So you're like the guy goes in the poker game. If you look around the table and you don't know who the sucker is, you're the sucker. Yep. They have a plan, folks. Their plan to get rich. Do your homework. Again, it's a minefield out there. No matter what direction you walk in, 877-960. I'm back to Rick.

Donovan. I think you'll like this, Nancy. Oh, good morning, Donovan. Safety in cars has been a big topic recently, especially with women and children in crash tests. The Tesla Model Y just had crash test results published from the European crash test organization this week, and it scored the highest of any vehicle that has ever done the test. The car scored 97% for adult occupancy for men and women, 87% for child occupancy, and a 98% for crash avoidance. The test also proved the cars do not run over children as the internet has been in a fuss about. Apparently, yeah, from some of the videos we've seen, Tesla's avoidance system, they claimed

was having issues seeing small children running into the street. and apparently this European crash organization has said no their system is very good at avoiding that incident but apparently yes they are using male and female crash dummies and child crash dummies that's great information in that testing donovan thank you so much what great information and you know it saddens me to have read what I did from AAA and the research that they did in so many others, you know, and bringing up-to-date recognizing females and children, because in the research that I had, there was no attention given to them, and certainly things definitely have changed.

Okay. I think that we are done with Rick, and I'll give you that number one more time, and then we're going to go to Stu 877-960-90. 960 and don't forget you can text us at 772-4976530 now back to stew we have a text for nancy but i think they want to direct it towards rick but you can give it a shot if you want um hello nancy my name is john from tequesta i have a 2017 jeep wrangler i have a check engine light on that brings me back to to code cylinder for misfire the car has 60,000 miles and it doesn't run any different 60,000 miles.

60,000 miles, and it's a 2017 Jeep Wrangler, Code Cylinder 4 Miss Fire. Yeah. I'll tell you, there's nothing more annoying than to have that light come on your dash. And you just think all kinds of things. And now, for me, I just get out of the car, you know, open my gas lid, and put it back, close the door, get back in, straighten out the wheel, everything and anything that you can think of. but Rick can give you some pretty accurate technical information. Just a quick generic thing.

If the check engine light comes on and you recently had gotten gas within the last few days, check that gas cap to make sure it's nice and tight. And then swing by your local AutoZone, even Pep Boys will do it, but Pep Boys usually wants to try to charge because they've got a garage inside. But any auto parts store that does not have a repair facility attached to it, they will pull that code for free and if it's just a gas cap code the P-440 P-0455

that they say is gas cap just ask them to clear the code and the little code pullers they're actually about $3540 if you want to get one yourself and then you can look up what that code means on the internet and check things quickly for yourself now with that misfire code

my first thought is if the engine is running smoothly. And a Jeep Wrangler, I believe that's going to be a six-cylinder engine, but even that one, if you would feel a misfire on one of the cylinders, I would have them clear the code first and see if it comes back, drive the car a little bit. It may have just been a simple glitch. And otherwise, if it starts to act up, I'd have it checked by a mechanic because one of the big things we see here in South Florida is the coil packs go bad from just the brutal heat we've been having. And the other one is we see a lot of rats.

They get up in the engine and they chew on the wires. And sometimes they'll chew through one of those wires and it can cause that code and cause a misfire. That's great information. Rick, I have to ask you, would you recommend to the listeners that they spend that $35? If you're comfortable, a little bit of do-it-yourself type thing, it's not a bad idea.

$35, $40 for one of those little code pullers. It just plugs in the plug underneath the dash. And that is a standardized plug. It's called the DLC3. And you can plug that in, just push the buttons on it. It will tell you what the code is. And then you can go right onto Google, and it will tell you what that code means.

And like I say, if it's something generic that sounds like just a gas cap, check your gas cap, make sure it's tight. Make sure that the gasket hasn't split. You may need to replace your gas cap and you can clear it and be done yourself. I got one question where I can't get it on my head. You said we see a lot of rats. How many rats have you seen? Well, we don't actually see the rats.

We see their evidence. How many rats chewed wires have you seen in the past month? It depends on how hungry they are. I like that soy. I think in the shop we've seen maybe one or two in the last month. Okay. But wintertime, we get a lot more. Yeah.

Okay. You said we see a lot of rats. I want to clear that up yet. I would say in the past year. Not at the dealership. We don't see the rats. Right. You know why?

That's because they're in Jupiter. We've got good traps there. No, they're all in Broward County. In the last year, I'd say we've seen at least 10 or 15 cars in the shop with rats chewing through the wiring. Okay. That's out of 10,000 repairs. Yeah. But if you open a hood on your car, take a look at the,

those plastic engine covers in that. And look and see if you see footprints in the dust. Ah. I see that all the time. You're a tracker. I am. Yeah. I am.

All right. Okay. So that's the DLC3. Yep. And they can get that for $35. It's a standardized connector under the dash. I hope we answered your with a little humor. It's not humors, though.

I understand your frustration because how many times have I gotten out of my car and gone because of Rick many years ago and loosened my gas cap and tightened it again but there's a lot of ins and outs here I hope he answered your question and he got back to us he says thank you I cleared the code it keeps coming back but he'll check the coil pack oh great say give us a text let us know how that goes that's right okay we have some anonymous feedback but we also have a phone call we do thanks too we're going to go to Pat in Palm Beach gardens. Good morning, Pat. Yeah, good morning, everybody. Thank you. Love listening to your show. Now I'm a first-time

caller and some great little tips and information there. I'm a bit of a car enthusiastic, do-with-yourself type of guy too at times, dealing with car dealers for a long time and the one and so forth. So, but anyway, I just went into the Audi and Westpaw. I'm on Okotropy Boulevard yesterday and I was appalled I was looking at some of the markups they have today I guess on certain cars that are of you know I guess people want them but like there was one car particular in A7 there was a $10,000 markup on it I walked right out of the dealer I wouldn't even consider buying an Audi now we were smart congratulations Thanks guys

You know The Lexus I look at They don't have They don't have that markup I haven't seen it on their cars yet now But you know I'm very disappointed And especially in today's economy

You know Yeah It's not a time to buy a car Unless you have to And we've been repeating this on the show Since the whole COVID thing happened It's exploitation of the worst kind Of retail car dealers

And car manufacturers are getting rich their record unprecedented profits and where do you draw the line I think it's you mentioned Lexus Lexus seems to have

more of a ethical bent than a lot of the other luxury manufacturers and you know you sell lectures you sell a Lexus the J.M. Lexus in Coconut Creek is down Fort Lauderdale way

they limit their MSRP, their Lexus 2 MSRP, they do charge a very small dealer fee, $100 or something like that, but it's relatively small. But I think that when the smoke clears and this COVID thing is gone and the supply and demand meet and the prices come down, I think a lot of people like you are going to remember those car dealers that tried to exploit them when they were down, when they had no choice but to pay $10,000 for an Audi. And you'll remember that.

And maybe the other dealers, like the Lexus dealer, you mentioned, that would sell you a nice luxury car for sticker price. That's a lot of money and make a lot of money when a dealer sells a car for MSRP. But that's not enough for the Audi dealer. That's probably Brayman. He wants another $10,000. Yeah, well, I'll tell you guys, thank you very much.

and yeah. Appreciate the call, Pat. Call again, please. Thank you, Pat. Thank you. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Send us your anonymous feedback

at Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And I'll tell you what, that Consumer Report, October edition, certainly is educational. And for the time that we're in, and how often we repeat, do not buy a car right now unless you have to. And if you do buy a car by used, we can't say it enough. Times are still very volatile. And if that old car or yours, well, if it can take another, I'm going to say, I'm going to go out on the limb here, say another year, hang on to it.

but if it's going to cost more than the car is worth, well, you know what to do. 877-960-99-60. Now back to the recovering car dealer. I think you heard, if you've been listening to the show, that our mystery shopping report coming up in about 10 or 15 minutes was a Costco member dealer. I talk a lot about Costco on the show. I talk a lot about Zoom reports. we have certain institutions out there, companies out there, that we recommend highly when

it comes to buying cars. And Costco has a member-only buying program. I know there are a lot of places, not too many, but certainly some places that Costco warehouses, they call them, aren't too close by. But if you can find a Costco warehouse and you can join the process, and you can join the program, it's only like $65 a year to be a Costco member, if you follow the rules strictly of the Costco member buying program, you will buy a new car for far less than you would pay otherwise.

And the problem today is not only are there not as many Costco warehouses that we'd like to see in the country, but there are a lot of dealers that just had to heck with it. I don't want to be a Costco member dealer because the rules are such that you have to sell me the car at a very low price. And our mystery shopping report coming up later, they were trying to find, we were trying to find a dealer. We shopped one last week, and that was a local dealer, fairly close. We talked to, who did we shop last week's two? It was Schumacher Volkswagen. Yeah, Schumacher Volkswagen.

He was a Costco dealer. This time we had to go all the way south to Coconut Creek for the dealer to find another dealer that was selling approved for Toyota. And we shopped there. But if you're not a Costco member, consider it. And you will, if you do join and you go online and you follow their instructions carefully. The instructions of the Costco member program are not simple, and they're tedious, and you have to be careful. But if you do follow the rules, you will buy a car for less than you could possibly buy it anywhere else. As I say, there's a lot of dealers out there that have scrapped the Costco program for the very reason I just described.

They will not allow you to sell a car at $10,000 over a sticker, as we just heard from Pat and Palm Beach Car. who went into Bremen, Audi, $10,000 dollar sticker. They're definitely not going to be a Costco dealer. So find a Costco dealer, sign up, go to you $65 per year if you're not one, well worth the money, and then be very careful to talk directly, deal directly with the Costco member program and follow the rules to the letter. Stu has some anonymous feedback for all of us, and they're always very interesting. How did you know?

Oh, I said it before. I'll have to stew. Okay. All right, here's one here. It says perhaps the media and government officials insisting that to save the world, we must move to electric cars in a few years where the world would end should read articles on the end of the ice ages 12,500 years ago in the continuous cooling and warming of the earth that has been going on for one million years.

I think that was from a scientist. No. Next one. Can I, can I say that any one? For those anti-electric vehicle people out there, I respect your opinion. I mean, we're all entitled to our opinion. It isn't to save the world that electric vehicles are coming about. The electric vehicle is a far superior vehicle to a combustion engine vehicle.

Better. In every sense of the word. So they're simpler. They cost less to maintain. They cost less to repair. And eventually, when the battery technology, it's almost there. Maybe it is there, but the battery, when 10 years from now, and if I want to be absolutely sure, I'd stick my life on it, 20 years from now, I won't be around, so don't worry about it. You can't collect, but in 20 years, the electric vehicle will be so far superior to the best combustion engine you can buy to heck with the planet and the green and the, you know, all the argument about, is the, are we pollution? the plan. People are just weird, man. I don't understand. If you just said just, if you went up to

somebody say, hey, listen, I got a machine that can replace your current machine that is faster, cleaner, better, cheaper in the long run, quieter, quieter, and just cooler. But people are just resisting this for emotional reasons or political reasons. You know, everybody's talking about saving the world and save this and save this, let's save us from ourselves, you know? And I guess what folks um does anybody know what the resale of value of an electric vehicle is look it up that's right look it up it's amazing and uh i'll tell you i was the last one to get on board as far as electric was concerned it's here it's now and it's going to save me and it will save you give us a call how do you field 877-960. Now back to Stu.

Another anonymous feedback. What about Mitsubishi dealers? Have you ever sent Agent Lightning to one of them? We haven't. There was one like right around the corner from our dealership. I think we shop one a long, long time ago. I'm sure there's one in there. But, you know, we don't think about it. Mitsubishi has less than 1% of the U.S. market share and probably declining. I don't know We could look for one I think there is a There's one I might have heard

A commercial for a Gallant Coming out of Brown County We try to shop dealerships That more people tend to buy cars from And like Stu said The Mitsubishi I'm surprised they're still around

I mean Yeah They're big in Japan Are they still? Yeah I saw a lot of Mitsubesies driving around Japan They built great fighter planes They make cool little tiny vans

Like in Japan They have all these very small They're not even minivans. They're just like sub-minivans. Mitsubishi Fuso is also really big worldwide with their box trucks and delivery vans. Oh, yeah. They have a lot of industrial stuff too. Small turbocharged diesels.

And they make a hell of a fighter plane too. Well, they did. Yeah. Okay. Next. Wow. I've been hearing that used wholesale prices have been going down for a few weeks now. And that's, that is accurate.

If I were to sell my SUV, where would be the best? but also the safest, less likely to be scammed, place to sell it. Thanks for help. I'd say CarMax is my suggestion. Yeah, but I think on your side or the volume of people that you can shop is so easy. Now, you used to be, go back 20 years, selling a used car, it was just like you knew you're going to get screwed. You're going to get taken advantage. Today, you can go to Carvana.carvana.com.

You can go to we buy any car.com. Stu just said, you go to carmax.com. You can do it online. And all these, and there's V-R-O-O-M, V-R-O-M, V-R-O-M, of all the crazy names.com. You've got all these different online, then Google it. Who buys you's cars? You'll have a hundred of them.

So pick the best ones, and we just gave you the best ones, Vroom, we buy any car, Carvana, CarMax, and get four, five, six, seven bids. and sell to the highest bidder. Oh, and I left out the fact, if you're driving a Honda, go to two or three Honda used car lots and get the used car manager to give you a bid.

It is, you're in the best position today to sell your used car and get the top dollar for it than we've ever been in our history. And so take advantage of that. You be the seller. You take advantage of the other guy instead of being taken advantage of.

The only people who are not, not getting screwed in this market or people with trade-ins because they're canceling out the market. Well, hopefully. If they're getting a fair value for the trade-in. But you should still do, if you have a trade-in, you should shop your car to find out what you could sell it for if you didn't trade it in, and then you tell the deal that you buy it from, hey, Vroom or CarMax offered me $2,000 more than you're offering me. So I'm going to sell it to CarMax unless you want to come up on the price and keep the selling price of the new car the same.

get to be a dealer we have more anonymous feedback this is good Earl I'm originally from California and I remember Earl Shib paint an auto body commercials with this famous pitch

I'm Earl Shib and I'll paint any car for 9995 Was there ever an Earl Shib location in South Florida during his heyday? I don't think so he never made it to

Florida I heard he was nationwide famous and everybody heard about and everybody copied him There were a lot of 99.95 paint jobs, and there might even still be. I mean, you give me a spray can. I'll paint your car for 99.95.

I'm a real store. I'll paint your car for 99.94. I mean, if you see some of these paint jobs, we see them, you know, as being a car dealer. But, you know, you get what you pay for. A good paint job, it was a good paint job cost $1,000? Oh, no. A lot more than that. As a matter of fact, I looked into this just recently. To properly, the average car to remove,

any trim, take it over properly, really do a proper, good, high-quality paint job. You're looking at almost $10,000 at a quality shop. Wow. Maybe back in the 70s, 99-95 would get you good paint job. Yeah, back then. Yeah. Because they didn't have to worry about, like, the EPA or anything like that. They just paint it in the backyard.

All right, I think I'm caught up on the anonymous feedback. Let me check for some new text. Oops, we're all caught up. What you got over there, Rick? We're actually caught up right now. Okay, great. That number is 877-960. You can text us at 772-497-6530.

You know, something caught my eye. You and I, Earl, we're looking at the automotive news, and do you want to make a mention to page 22, or do you have some other agenda to share with the audience? Oh, gender safety gap, yeah. Yeah, we had a call last week from a man, I forgot his name, but he said that there was a discussion about women and not being injured at a higher percentage.

He said men have more accidents and we got into a discussion. I'm saying, well, it isn't a question of maybe the men don't drive as carefully, but given an accident with a man and a woman, the woman is more inclined to be injured. And then I'm glad Nancy brought that up because there is a discussion about that, and there's not enough data out there. There's some fairly reputable scientific research that questions how much more women are injured. So it's not black and white. My gut tells me my intuition tells me that it makes sense that if you use male-based crash dummies and based your design on a male-based crash dummy then the women would tend to be injured

more frequently but apparently there is some I'm looking for the page here page 22 yeah while you're looking for that page you know I want to thank Donovan again who is a regular he's the YouTube guy and Rick fills us in on what he has to say every week, and he brought to our attention the topic that Earl is talking about. I found it. Did you find?

I found it. Here's, if you're streaming us, a big article in today's automotive news about the gender gap, and a pretty good discussion. It's not what I've believed, it's not what others believe. There's a bill introduced in Congress now.

This is interesting. We could take this to beat up the Congress. I always love to beat up congressmen. But they introduced the bill that said that there has to be laws making cars safe for women, just like they make cars safe for men in accidents. The interesting thing is that there's only 66 congressmen out of 535 members that signed the bill. I thought that was kind of disgusting that that would be the case. And you would think that it would be more because, as they stated in the automotive news, 73% of women.

73% of women are likely to get seriously injured. 17% die. Now, the problem is that they haven't gone into enough detail. One of the reasons that I hadn't thought about is that women can be more likely injured is women definitely tend to buy different type of cars than men. If you look at, for example, you know, the big obnoxious pickup trucks you see on the road are generally driven by men. And we see women typically in the smaller SUVs and other type cars. There's a lot of work that needs to be done on this.

Rick talked earlier in the show about European, the Tesla Y, that said that said that, It was safer for women and for children and for men, the Tesla Y model. So that indicates that in Europe they are testing cars for women and for men and so on and so forth. There's a lot of more work that needs to be done. I don't think that it is the disparancy is necessarily all the way the car is designed, but also maybe the way of the type of cars that are bought by women or men. And so I tell you to read this, but it's in the automotive news, page 22 of this issue, but most people don't have a copy except for car dealers and manufacturers.

And I've got, and the first one, I wish I could remember the person that called the show last week. I apologize to him because he was on to something that I didn't understand this much. And he wasn't totally wrong. I thought he was totally wrong. He's partially right about this. Here's a subject, men versus women, how cars should be tested. This needs a lot more study and looking into. Okay, where are we?

You want to go to the mystery shopping report? And then if we have some text or anonymous feedbacks, we can get them. We do have more on Earl Shib. In the 1950s, Earl Shib advertised panning your car for $295, plus a $10 free body and fender work. I was going to add that little tidbit to this whole pain conversation because back in the 70s when I had a car painted, I certainly didn't pay $9.99.95.

I paid something like maybe $50, and it was a great paint job. Thanks, Bob. But that was then and this is now. Yeah, we were talking in the cars. as we always do coming to the show. And one of our discussions Nancy and I had was do car dealers, disreputable, treacherous, mean-old car dealers,

bear all of the blame for what is happening in the way of exploitation and selling repairs that don't need to be done, selling cars for $10,000 over a sticker. Is it all the bad car dealers? And we had a discussion, a dispute, Nancy and I did. Well, I don't know. Was it a dispute?

I think it was pretty passionate. And I said that I said that I think that at some point, consumers do have responsibility. And I think that on this show, we're preaching to the choir because most of the people listen to the show and call on the show are quite educated. And that's the reason we have the vigilantes. We recruit listeners to the show to help others. There's an element of our population out there, a fairly large element who lack the sophistication. experience, education to make the right decision when they buy a car. So there's a famous legal expression, caveat mTOR, buyer beware, that's accepted in a law.

That's English law, and we have it in our laws, and most countries have it in their laws. There's a certain amount of responsibility to buyers. You have to beware. And so that's what this show is all about, trying to help. you beware of being taken advantage of, but let's face it, you walk into a store, most salespeople are paid on commission, okay? That's the way you feed your family, that's the way you make a mortgage payment by selling at a high price to make a high commission.

And so when you walk into that store and you say, I'll take that without any due diligence, without any concern, without any negotiation, or without any shopping, And comparing prices, are you responsible? I say yes, to some extent. I say for the people, maybe the burden lies on the state, lies on with the government, we should have a certain minimum bar of educational requirement. Now we get into a huge discussion about education and blah, blah, blah.

But that's what we do on this show. We educate, and we need more vigilantes. If you go to Erlancars.com, you can become a vigilante. We'll even give you a hat. And if you have people in your area that need help, they can call you locally. If you're in Pennsylvania, if you're in Tennessee, if you're in Florida, we'll have your name and contact information on Erloncars.com. Help the disadvantage to people educationally, English language-wise, first-time buyers, the elder, senior person. population, a lot of people are taking advantage of, so that's what we do on this show.

And also that advertisement from the newspaper that we brought in together that's sitting to the right of you, well, it's really worth reading over and over again, which we don't have time for, but according to that advertisement in the newspaper, I believe it was the Sun Sentinel? Yeah. Okay. You can get yourself. Well, let's start with the gas for a whole year, free gas.

They'll make all your car payments for another year to get my point. Now, we'll go to the Mystery Shopping Report of Al Henderson Toyota. Okay, again, I've got a compliment Stu. This was very well written. Stu is in charge of the Mystery Shopping Report, and he takes the raw data from Agent Lightning and puts it into a pros for him. And he does a great job. He does a whole lot of, gives it a whole lot of flair.

Yeah. I like the biggest, baddest Toyota dealership in the world is Longo Toyota near Los Angeles, California. And I had, I have to, I still love the pros, the biggest baddest. Actually, Longo Toyota happens to be one of the more. Like it nicer. Yeah, I mean, they're highly ethical.

and they run a i shouldn't use badass i meant like it's like bad as good like you know and again i digress because of my age longo toyota used to be owned by an alleged mafia member and his name was dominic longo who was alleged to be a made member of the mafia and uh it was really a kind of a scandalous thing allegedly and it's no longer they since sold out and uh in the in the current uh they kept the name i thought interesting um But the Longo Toyota, if you live out in the Los Angeles area, if you want to buy a car really, really inexpensively and get treated right, you go into Longo Toyota.

They're huge. Number one, Al Hendrickson is very close. I didn't realize this, but Stu said they're within 86 cars. Last year. Oh, last year. Last year, Hollywood beat Al Henderson. Everybody wants to beat Longo. They're the big one.

But if you live in California, Longo, you can't go wrong there, best price. Even during the craziness of the pandemic and the upside-down world that follow Longgo, maintain its lead over all other toilet dealerships by a sizable margin. Now, they are consistently over 1,000 cars a month. I mean, they sell like 12, 14,000 new Toyotas a year. The number two-volume Toyota dealership in the world used to be Hollywood Toyota, and that was the advertisement that Nancy was alluding to earlier. We have a typical Hollywood Toyota ad, which is just crazy.

You buy a car from us, we'll buy your gas. I mean, it's just crazy kind of stuff. But they are no longer. Al Hendrickson is kind of kicking them out. And in 2021, Al lost Hollywood by just 89 cars. Now, are they ahead? year? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so, and ultimately, and this is a... I mean, they're currently the number two Toyota dealer in the world. They have to make it to the end of the year, but they've got a big lead. Yeah, and now, Al Hendrickson Jr., and I, we heard this from some very reliable sources, promised his mother. Oh, yeah, that's right.

Okay. That he would be the number one Toyota dealership in the world one day. And so I believe they're going to make it. I believe they're going to make it. they'll do almost anything to sell a Toyota. So, where am I, I keep digressing and losing my place. Okay, Alex that had to hurt. 2020 was a transitional year for Cardinals.

The first half of the year, they were giving cars away. This is beautiful. It's true. The first half of 2021, it was doggy, dog, selling cars below your cost. actually losing money on cars, anything to get volume. And then, here we are a half of you, just a short time later. They're selling the same dealership selling cars for thousands of dollars over MSRP. A caller saw $10,000 over on an Audi at Bremen Audi.

So this year, seemingly following the mantra by any means necessary. Al Hendrickson finally took the lead. So there are about 800 sales so far, about 800 sales so far, about 800 dollars so far. or a head or is that one of this? Oh wow. I had a Hollywood. This has been done with a combination of new vehicle allocation trickery

and we won't get into that with a lot of detail, but the dealers not only know how to take advantage of you, they know how to take advantage of the manufacturer by lying and cheating to get more cars, which is where you make more money because you have more cars when it's a seller's market. So it's a very interesting world, a crazy world out there. Bait and Switch, high pressure, etc.

These guys are the king of the junk fees. Some of the biggest we ever saw were at L. Hendricks and Toyota. Okay, here we go. I say all this because when Stu and Agent Lightning were discussing a target dealership for a new Costco style mystery shop, I suggested, now I'm being Earl Stewart, I suggest Al Hendrickson Toyota. Stu's response was, oh God.

And it's scary to go in there. We actually had a mystery shopper that almost came to blows with the was that the same deal? I don't know if it was the same dealership. I thought you're going to say almost lost their life. Yeah, Scott Cadmus, yeah. Oh, no, that was that was at Palm Beach Toil. Palm Beach Toil, yeah. So our

undercover shoppers have really had some very dangerous confrontations in the past. I used a Miami zip code. This is Agent Lightning speaking. I'm in the first person if I were Agent Lightning. I used a Miami zip code on Costco Auto.com.

I said earlier, this is the way to buy a car if you carefully follow the rules. She had to, I had to, to get the system to show me a participating Costco Auto dealership further south from here. Now, my dealership, Earl Stewart, Toyota, is the only

Costco dealer in South Florida other than apparently Al Hendrickson. I haven't checked, but that's what he's in Lightning said. I thought Delray was, but apparently the Delray wasn't coming up. Yeah, and we're coming up. Anyway. Al Henderson, Toyota, came up on a search for a new

2002 Toyota Camry XSE with an MSRP of $36,249. Now, last week, when we shoped Schumacher Volkswagen, they popped up, and I always appraised and Stute learned

that the Costco has to sell car for no more than 3,000, $150 off of MSRP. So that is one of the reasons that the Costco dealers are dropping like flies. Nobody wants to sell the car below MSRP. And you'll see the irony there later on the shopping report. So Agent Lightning, I exchanged emails with Al Hendrickson, Toyota, and begin receiving text and phone calls from Francisco.

The COFSA rep, presumably, the salesperson. said he'd been assigned to help me and told me to ask for him when I arrived. I asked him if I was if he was a trained Costco represent and he said he was. And that's one of the rules. And if you're going to do a little Costco purchase, Costco member purchase, be sure you deal with the Costco membership and member and that member dealer's name is on the website when you put in your zip code. So you want to buy whatever make, they'll tell you where the dealer is and they'll tell you the name of the salesperson, the approved Costco person you should deal with, only deal with him. I ubered, in quotation marks, I really had my husband drive me to Al Hendrickson

Toyota, and met Francisco at the front door. He led me inside to an office back in the corner, and Francisco explained a link about how great the Costco program was, and it is, but it's also very complicated, and it shouldn't be, but it is. He said he was so glad I was, I was I was going through Costco because that meant I was going to save a lot of money today. That is true. I asked for he had Camry's in stock and he assured me that he did. He asked what trim level I preferred, and I replied that I was not familiar with the different trims. Francisco suggested we walk outside and see the cars.

I picked out a new Black Camry XSE, and we took it for a test drive. We talked about Toyota's, and I told him I'd always been interested in hybrids, but never seriously. considered one. Francisco said that he had a black Camry hybrid in stock. Now it's unusual that he would have that type of car, but remember we're talking about the second. They're talking about Al Hendricks and Toyota.

They're keeping some cars for the They got a lot of cars. My excitement was doused though when he said hybrids were excluded from the Costco program. So there he are. Even Al Hendrickson excludes some cars from the

Costco program. That came or how it would be sold with a full market adjustment tacked on. And that full market adjustment is a doozy. We decided to stick with a non-hybrid. Of course. Of course. The MSRP was the same as I'd seen in the Costco inquiry, $36,249. There was an addendum for about $6,500 right next to a Monroney label.

So that's there for the non-C Costco members. know any different. We went back to the desk and Francisco left to go upstairs to get the numbers from Alberta, his online person. In a few minutes, Francisco and Alberta came back with a Costco member-only price sheet. Now remember those words, we talked about it last week with Schumacher Volkswagen. You'll always get the Costco member-only price sheet. It'll be right there on the top, Costco-member-only price sheet. See that, because you'll always get the sure it's not a forgery. Be sure it is that. And then read it carefully. You have to read the smaller print as well as the larger print. If it says CATCO member only price sheet, run.

The Costco member only price sheet was $35,707, which was $541.68. Now you say, wow, how about that? But that's the Costco member only big print price. Costco, and we don't, Nancy and I talk about this in the car on the way coming in. Costco, member only, only required that they put their extra charges on the Costco member price sheet. They don't have to deduct it from the Costco member only price. Now, that's just stupid. The Costco member only price, just like the advertised price, should have the Althador price. But Costco member only price membership rules don't require that.

So if you look at the Costco member only price sheet, you'll see the price for 35,707, and then you will see this in smaller print. The disclosure indicated they'd be adding $895 dock fee. $559.55 cent electronic registration filing fee and $145 agency fee. So there you have $1,057 added to the $35,707 MSRP, which was $541 below MSRP. So here you have a wash of a $500-some odd dollars over MSRP. which is still not a bad deal. No, there are a thousand of MSRP. That's what she, that was the price, which is better than the rest of the market, but it's still.

Yeah. And you still got to add tax on top of that. Mm-hmm. And a tag fee. Okay, wait a minute. The arithmetic here, if we're, if the 35707 is 541 below and you add back of, oh, okay, yeah, I see, you add back, if you had all that up, you Yeah, they add back about $15,000 and $15,000,000,000, yeah. Then you're $1,57 over it muster be.

Yeah. Okay. So there we are. I asked for a buyer's order that broke down all the pricing information with an out-the-door price. He said, I can only get the out-the-door price by adding all the fees of sales tax. Then ask for my driver's license. So I get me into finance. They want to get you into finance.

You're ready to listeners know that. That's the box, we call it. That's where they really get you. That's where they make, they used to make more money than they. do sell me of the car. Today, they just make a couple thousand dollars in addition to what they saw you the car for. Francesco and Alborgo refused to provide anything else. They wouldn't give me a piece of paper with an out-the-door price. They said I would get that in the box and the finance office. I changed the subjects that brought up a promotion of theirs I'd seen online

and Nancy talked about this earlier, this ad that I held up the paper for. They were advertising advertising free gas. I guess when, I guess the Hollywood started, or I guess they're in like a gas or they're in Hollywood, yeah, yeah. Free gas for a year. And free gas for a year. I mean, it's just, if you believe that, I don't mean it. Well, he addressed it.

He said he wouldn't qualify because he's- It would qualify, yeah. So I asked for an explanation for the docksy, and this is a doozy. Albert explained there was a dealership he used to pay the lot of tendons and detailers. That's totally untrue, and it's just shooting from the hip by a car salesman, and you get a lot of that. And that's the end of the shopping report. I have copies of the addendum label and the rest of it. The most important thing, I'll hold this up for the camera, is I did last week with Schumacher Volkswagen.

This is the Costco member-only price sheet. If you are a Costco member and you do use this program, you must. see this and then you must look for the small print and I circled down here I got my finger point to it this is where they add the over a thousand dollars in additional fees and to the price so the Costco member only price on the Costco member only price has the fact that the cost member price is not really the outdoor price they could have taken one little extra step and done some arithmetic for the customers. And again, I'll digress a little more because we do have the time.

And I'm talking now to Alliance. Alliance is the company that Costco subsidered member-only buying program, too. I say to Alliance, but I say more to Costco. If you really want to be Costco, True Blue Costco, then make the Costco member-only price the out-the-door price. Don't allow them to use a Costco. member only price sheet as a dupe

to the customer because they're not going to look at this one. It's like a worksheet. It's like a typical sales worksheet. They're going to look. What are they going to look? They're going to look at the Costco member price there. They're not going to look down here. So why do you allow that? You're allowing that because

you don't, I think to Costco you don't know what's happening. Alliance allows that because they get paid for every sale. And this way the dealers can screw you more often by popping in enough add-on fees, hidden fees, to negate the really, really good Costco price. So this is my attack on Alliance. I'll probably live to regret it because last time we attacked the Lions.

We had a few meetings. They were going to cancel us as a Costco dealer. So I dare you. I dare you. But we need to get Costco in line with Alliance, and we need to clean up the program. By the letter of the law, I guess it's legal, but to me, it's not fair to the customer. So there we are. Al Hendrickson, Toyota, Costco member program, time for the votes.

Right. They're coming in. Jonathan and Wellington says you're either a Costco member or you're not. Exclusions or BS. Costco needs to yank this dealership now from the program. Excessive fees are ridiculous. Hendrickson Toyota will never get a dime. from me. Give them an F for fraudulent fees. And we have from Mark a big no, a C. And I'm more inclined to

go closer to what I went last week with Schumacher with the Costco program. It was, seems to be the way that the dealers are doing it out there. I mean, they were getting a price. It's coming in below MSRP. The junk fees are taking them above it. So I'm going to give them a C minus. And, by the way, Bob came in D for deceptive pricing. Yeah, I see your logic there, and the reason Stu looks at it that way is that we've seen Costco dealers that even though we don't like to find print disclosure of the extra fees, they don't add all the extra fees.

And the ones that are on the Costco member price sheet, they have other fees besides that. What concerns me with the Costco experience or Costco Mystery Shop is if you go in there with a Costco, expecting to see a Costco person, then you're just put into the machine and you go back in the normal, back and forth. That's the Cardinal sin

that would happen on a mystery shop. In this case, even though there were fees, they presented a, they followed the program. They showed in the Costco price sheet. They asked for her card. They gave her the price and the price. Well, she didn't go into finance,

so we don't know what would have happened then, but up into that point, everything was kind of by the book. Yeah. Kind of. It wasn't perfect. You're right. Well, I've got Kirk in West By God, Virginia, says Costco member-only price turns out to funny games to shift to the box.

Just what Stu said. The not-so Costco price earns a solid D. Mark Anderson and Mark from St. Louis, a D. And Tim Gilliland, C-minus, Joseph Kelleher, F for fees. Brian said Latko, believe it or not, I'm not. I'm giving him a solid B. I guess he was a little more impressed. Yeah, there was nothing crazy happening.

Yeah, I mean, they went a little overboard with it, but I think I'm going to agree with Stu. I'm going to go with the nice average with C and say you've got to keep your eyes open, keep your wits about you, and good luck, folks. And by the way, that Costco membership card, if you buy your fuel at Costco quite often,

it'll pay for that membership over the course of a year. Just buying gas there. Yeah, that's the truth. Good one. Yeah, and again, I'll say this, that the Costco member program, if you're smart and you go by the letter of the program, you will save money.

So we're not beating them up yet. We're just saying that they need to modify it for the average buyer. Definitely. For this mystery shoprere, report, I'm going to give them a D. And folks, just because you hold that Costco card in your hand, you really have to educate yourself. You really have to be alert. You've got to watch your back.

The whole nine yards, there's a lot of eyes to be dotted, T's to be crossed, and there's a whole lot of people involved here. And for that, the communication, the whole thing, it can just be lost in translation. like I said earlier. So again, I give the mystery shop a D. And I've got Rocky Blocketeel. Came in with a solid C. Yeah, we're on the curve. A lot of people don't know, regular listeners know this,

but we grade on the curve, meaning the best dealer really gets an A and the worst dealer gets an F, but that doesn't mean the best dealer is playing by the rules. And we don't think, virtually no dealer really is by the rules virtually. There are some

and very few. And therefore, you know, dealers do things we don't like and we give them a C or a B. Even in A, we've given some A's where everybody can improve. And that's the reason we sometimes don't fail people that you think we should

fail. Yeah, continuous improvement. I'm going to go with C minus. C minus. Okay. ladies and gentlemen thank you so much for joining us today we definitely enjoy your company look forward to seeing you talking with you next week right here on the oldies channel 8 a.m. to 10 go stealers