Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.22.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Delray Auto Mall

Episode Date: September 22, 2018

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits Delray Auto Mall to purchase a car with an associated Takata Airbag Recall. Earl Stewart is one of the most successful car dealers in the nation. This podcast gives you the benefit of his 40+ years as a car dealer and helps you turn the terror of buying, leasing, or servicing a car into a triumphant experience. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.streamearloncars.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. We are now on Facebook Live every Saturday between 8am and 10am. Go to facebook.com/earloncars to also watch it live or to watch a replay in case you missed it. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. Watch Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars. “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”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us this morning. My name is Earl, and I'm a recovering car dealer. I'm doing this radio show now for 10 plus years. I want to tip you off a little bit because, you know, we have new folks tune in all the time.

In fact, we have people who are tuned in after right now, podcast. So good afternoon or good evening to you whenever you're watching the podcast. But to you live listeners that just joined us, good morning. I say I'm a recovering car dealer. My name is Errol. I've been in the automobile business since 1968. And I kind of started out doing business the wrong way. I kind of did business as a car dealer the way most car dealers are doing business today.

This is a show to advise you and help you, answer your questions, make that mind feel that you have to negotiate whenever you buy or lease a car a little bit safer. Also, when it comes to repairing or maintaining your car, bottom line, we're going to tell you how not to get ripped off by your car dealer. I've got a lot of experience. I kind of look at myself as a jewel thief who was caught, convicted, and then released and put on the consultation with the place. police. I know how it was done. I used to do it myself, and then I changed for the better, and I know all the tricks of the trade, and I'll share some of those with you. So you're telling us that you have some expert advice? Expert advice. I'm only, only because I've been around so long, dare I talk about it, because the statute of limitations

is up on most of the crimes I committed. I'm joking about that. I'm joking. Crimes is this true. To my knowledge, I did not commit any crimes. I certainly tested the ethical limits, which all car dealers do today. Have you ever tried to buy a car at the advertised price? I would love to hear this morning from anybody that saw a car advertisement by the manufacturer, by the way, or the car dealer, and actually went in to the car dealership and bought it for that price. It's never happened.

It'll never happen. Yeah. It should happen, but it doesn't happen. No. And we're going to tell you how you can make it happen if you listen to this show. Same thing with repairs. How many times have you brought your car into a service department and paid what you thought you were going to have to pay to get your car back? I guarantee that that's never happened either.

Exactly. Even with a coupon. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, and it's not just dealer fees or sundry fees on the service invoices that they come at you nine different ways. and we're going to help you. And by the way, sometimes I forget to do this because we've been on the true oldie station for a while.

But I know a lot of you have just tuned in looking for 60s and 70s music. And I'm not going to sing to you. I have a terrible voice. I love to sing, by the way. I was born in the 60s. Yeah, yeah. And that's when I started the carbus when you were born.

And by the way, that voice is my son, Stu, and the other voice was my wife, Nancy Stewart. And the voice you haven't heard is Rick Kearney. Rick Kearney is a certified diagnostic master technician. And he's what some of you old guys out there and old gals would call a mechanic. The younger ones would call him an auto technician. Grease monkey. And the millennials, the youngsters, would call him an auto computer scientist.

You've been called a few things, haven't you? I've been called a lot of things. It's a mechanic, yeah. But I'm recovering. He is recovering. Well, that's right, I forgot. She were a little bit into the back of the day. Yeah.

But we know how it was done. Rick and I and Stu, even to some extent. Nancy. I think I know how it was done. Absolutely. I recall a few things. So if you feel nervous about buying, leasing, maintaining, or repairing your car, you've found us.

Nancy will give this number out over and over again. And I'm going to give it out for the first time. 877-960-99-60. That's the number that we hope you will call us on. If you haven't got a question now or comment, you will if you stay tuned. We're on for two hours. I don't expect you to listen for two hours. I hope you do because at the last of the show, the last half hour, we do a mystery shopping report.

And that is really something. I'll tell you about that just a second. I want to give that number out again so you could write it down, 877-960-99-60. And you can text us. That's right. Texting is a lot easier. I love, I text all the time. It's much less invasive. You don't have to interrupt the person's day by calling them on the phone. You text them. They get to the text whenever they want to. Now if you text it says 772, that's the area code, 772-497-6530. We'll get to your text if you get it in in the next 1530. 7-7-7-6-5-30. We'll get to your text if you get it in in the next 15-30. 15, 20 minutes. If you get it in in the last part of the show, we might have to get to it next week.

Or we can respond to your text online and answer your question. And it's kind of more anonymous, too. So I want to say good morning to Tina. She's our first female caller, but she's a regular female caller. And we're going to get to her in just a couple of minutes. As soon as I finished with this introduction, amazing woman from Bonita Springs, who knows so much about car. She could be part of the show.

In fact, I've invited her. Well, she is a part. But I've invited her to be live in color. And speaking of that, Facebook, we're streaming live on Facebook now. So if you're listening to us on a radio, you can whip out your smartphone or your PC, your Mac. After you pull over.

After you pull over. I mean, you're assuming they're in their car. And you can stream us at facebook.com for us slash Earl Stewart on Cars. If you can't remember that, if you just go to Earl on Cars.com, there's a link takes you right there. If you go to Earl on Cars.com,

you can find me everywhere. My blogs, you can find me live Facebook. You can find my YouTube's. You can, what else can you do? You can read the archives. We have hundreds and hundreds of blogs

going way back. Everything about this show is on the blog, or store, Erloncars, www.orgoncars.com. And what else am I? Oh, the mystery shopping report, I just alluded to it.

And before I talked to Tina from Binda Springs, I want to tell our newer listeners what the mystery shopping report on is all about because it's extremely unique. Nobody does this. It's kind of like 60 minutes. I mean, you remember the old

60 Minutes? Nobody was ever better than Mike Wallace was. 60 minutes when he would walk into a business with cameras and just to watch the people look at the, what, how Mike Wallace just came in. Very informed. They knew why he was there. Yes. Well, this is what we do.

We do a mystery shop, except we don't tell them then who we are. We tell them now who we are. We go into a car dealership somewhere in South Florida, and we pretend to buy a lease a car. We also pretend to maintain a repair car. Don't do enough of those reports. We need to do some of those. Most of the time, we're in there pretending to buy a car, and undercover, a fake name, and we go through the whole process.

We report exactly what happened. Now, this is the unique part. We name names. We name the dealership. And by the way, back on earlancars.com, www.orgoncars.com, we have an archive of our mystery shopping reports. So you can go there and pull up all of our mystery shopping reports. If you're thinking about buying a car from ABC dealership in Fort Lauderdale or West Palm Beach or Stewart or Fort Pierce or wherever you live,

see if the name of your dealership is on that mystery shopping report list. We have the good dealers and the bad dealer lives too. That's also everything. The whole treasure trove is on Earl's, Earl and Cars. So the mystery shopping report, I like to brag about this. We've been on the air. And I see now we're talking as we came in to the studio this morning. How long have we been doing this?

How many shows have we done? I'm thinking it's about 500 shows. About 14 years, 13, 14 years. Yeah. So, I mean, we miss some. We take vacations. We've had some repeats. But I guarantee we've had over 500 shows.

And we've had over 500 mystery shopping reports. So that is the highlight. We do that. last half hour of the show, we're on 8 to 10. Now, let's talk, Desi. Yes, I'd like to say something before we go on. I want to remind everyone who's listening right now, we want to thank you for tuning in to Earl Stewart on Cars. You could do just about anything on a Saturday morning, and you choose to spend it with us, so from each and every one of us, we want to thank you. As a female advocate, I'd like to extend an invitation to the ladies.

Earl has started a website, I guess it's been maybe a month or so now. And to the ladies, Your Anonymous Feedback.com, use it. Let your voice be heard. And let us know what we can do to improve the show for you, the female buyer. The woman who chooses to go into a dealership and purchase a vehicle, and she is they're purchasing a lot of vehicles let us know how you were treated

if you don't wish to give us a call or text us your anonymousfeedback.com I would love to hear from you again tell us how we can improve this platform for ladies how we can well increase the number of ladies that call we'd like to hear the good the bad and the ugly

So give us a call this morning, if you wish, at 877-960-99-60. And by the way, ladies, the first two new lady callers, you can win yourself $50. Yes, $50. If you'd like to text us, you can give us a text at 772-497-6530. And Earl has a great column this week, and it's our last week. lunch with Bob Woodward. And as Earl said earlier, you can go to earlancars.com and be entertained for hours. There is so much information there. It will increase your buying power, your knowledge, all of it. So stay with us. We have a mystery shopping report to get to. And now we will go to

our first caller, Tina, from Benita Springs. Good morning, Tina. we still got you there Tina okay Tina might have dropped off and those things happen but she'll call back and we will hear from her hopefully from some other female callers we do really try to try to bring our callers to a 50-50 after all most of our half the people that buy cars

and maintain repair the cars are female and while we're waiting for Tina to call back in, I have a little victory dance I'd like to do because I was sued by a gentleman who tried to take me to court because I was trying to hire too many women. It was a male applicant for a sales job, and when I didn't hire him, sued me for being discriminatory against men. Well, we were going to go to court and tell Icy, actually, fly up on the 20th, and we won. His lawyer refused to prosecute the case. and he dismissed it. And I think we have Tina back.

We do. Good morning, Tina. Hey, Tina. You back? Well, I guess we're having more technical problems. And as I say, to all you females out there, we try to, we're trying to reach parity between male and female. Hashtag me too.

You can't pick up the newspaper, turn on the TV, go online. without hearing some of this rising power of the females, and we want to see more and more of it. While we're waiting to get Tina back, let's give out that text number. 772-49765-30. That's 772-49765-30. Remember, knowledge is power,

and you can text us with any question at all. And remember, I'm going to repeat this over and over again, your anonymous feedback.com you can share so much information with us and believe me, when Earl gives his word that you are anonymous, you are. So just put it out there. And the telephone number where you can give us a call

is 877-9-60-99-60. Back to the recovering car dealer. Okay, I hope our phones are working for other people. They're not working for Tina. but while we give the phones, hey, if you even didn't want to call the show, call the show 877-960-960, and we'll find out if our ferns are working at all,

because if Tina can't get in, maybe nobody can get in. While someone's testing our phones for us, I'm going to talk about my blog a little bit, and I'll hold this up for the camera. Actually, it's an ego thing for me because I'm so happy to, I actually, one of the few people

who actually had lunch with Bob Woodward. He's an amazing man. And Nancy and I were in Washington, D.C. a few years back, and we had lunch with Bob Woodward and some other dealers, car dealers. We spent several hours with him, as a matter of fact. And the point of the blog, of course, you know Bob Woodward is in the news now because there was no book, but that's not the reason I did the blog. Bob Woodward said something to us at lunch that I thought was pretty impressive,

particularly a few years ago. He asked each of us, well, we consider the most important threat to the United States and the world and went around the table and asked each of us and we gave our idea of what it was. I think I said terrorism in the Middle East or something like that. And he said, no, in his opinion, anyway, he thought the greatest threat to, the world in the United States was the media. Now, coming from a guy in the media, arguably one of the most famous journalists in the media, that was kind of shocking. But he was concerned,

and this goes back six or seven years, he's concerned that the media is not accurately bringing the news out, not accurately and honestly and ethically. And I see so much of that. How does that link to Earl Stewart on cars and what we do? I see so many things happen. in advertising and the media thrives on advertising whether it's online or television and you see so little criticism of some of the crimes that have been committed by car dealers in terms of flat illegal advertisements so why don't they report that because the car dealers are extremely heavy advertisers and their associations the National Automobile Dealers Association the

Florida Automobile Dealers Association are such heavy advertising that if the revenue from advertising were pulled away from television, say, it could cost a television channel existence. It could put them out of business. So think of it. The media thrives on, like we all do, money. We have to have money to live. Businesses have to make a profit to exist. The media has to make a profit to exist.

And if they start catering to the advertisers and compromising, their ethics in reporting the truth. That's kind of scary in it. I'm a very strong supporter of the media. I think the media should be, they have to be here. They call it the fourth estate. It's the balance of our democracy. We have the, you know, the Justice Department, we have the legislature, and we have the executive branch, and we have the fourth estate. We have the media. It's important to keep everybody honest. If you look at other countries where they have an imbalance media let's go to China

and China on newspaper a television station or online could only do what the government the Chinese government says they have to do in fact Google had to throw the towel in and Facebook I believe is even compromising if you want to exist as a medium

in the Chinese country of China or a lot of others that you have to compromise your morals I think we got the phones fixed Yes, we do. Vivian is on the line. Good morning, Vivian. I'm going to hang myself. Well, we have a text to go to.

Okay. We apparently can't take phone calls this morning, folks. We're going to try to fix it. Yeah, we are going to try to fix it. You know, to your report on Bob Woodward, it's just an amazing time whenever you can't differentiate. We'll get to the text. We can't differentiate between. fake news and real news. And you said a couple of years ago on Bob Woodward, it was longer ago than that that we met with him. But even then, everyone knows that how important it is for us to get the real news. So hopefully that's going to change someday.

Now we're going to get to the text that Stu's going to read. That's right. We got Johnny from Riviera Beach, who's a regular texter. And he says, I saw a report that rodent rats are feasting on newer cars. soy-based wiring insulation under the hood, causing big problems with electronics and sensors. Last Monday, Channel 5 interviewed a lady where rats got under the hood of her truck, chewed up the soy-based wiring harness, causing her a $1,500 repair bill. She said she had the harness replaced with a petroleum-based insulation.

The courts threw out a class-action lawsuit against Toyota and Honda concerning these soy-based wiring insulation issues. Do you think Toyota should pay for these repairs if they are responsible for installing something on your car that's inviting rats to dinner. And by the way, I want to thank you for standing your ground and not caving in to that idiot who sued you because you hired a female salesperson instead of him. Oh, thank you. You know, I think the manufacturers should take care of these chewed-up wiring

and harnesses. I don't think that legally they're liable. And, you know, there's the spirit of the law, there's a letter of the law, and there's common sense, and there's customer satisfaction. I can't believe that too many wiring harnesses are being chewed up if suddenly they were to decide that they would take care of these things even in an unspoken warranty.

It'd be really good customer relations. If you don't, you should. I believe Honda had a fix for that. They were the ones, one of the first ones. They offered a tape, right? Yeah, a tape. There's a tape that we can wrap around the harness that is actually, I am pregnant with capsaicin pepper.

and the techs that use it have to use gloves and be very careful not to touch their face or anything because it can burn your skin quite badly. Yeah, because I think Honda uses cheese for their insulation. Actually, cheese and crackers, both. The tape is a great deterrent, though. I was listening to the same announcement on Channel 5, and I was really in awe of these mice

that are chewing up the wiring underneath the hood of the car. When did this soy go into effect? I was unaware of that. Yeah. Has it been 10 years? It's been probably 10 or 15 years. Has it? Because they're trying to get more environmentally friendly with the coatings on these wires.

The interesting thing, though, is the cars that we normally see that come in the shop with rat chewing on them. It's usually down in a cubby nested area. where the rats are actually looking to make a home anyways. There's a new solution. I don't know if you saw that. But Honda is now offering is an option, a cat, that stays under the hood. That's right. It's called that.

From Big Cat Ranch Rescue, right? It's a train mouser. And if a rat gets under your hood, chews up the harness. Hey, let's rent that cat because the mice came in and chewed up our wiring in our. generator and made a nest, and it was very expensive to get all of that fixed. I'm going to give that text number out again because we seem to be out of business on the phones. It's going to be a long two hours if we can't take any phone calls because we rely heavily on you. And you folks out there who have tried to call, we certainly do apologize.

We do have another text, but before I read or Stu reads that, the number is 7.7.7. 272-497-6-5-3-0. Please write this number down just in case the Goldie-Oldie station here can't figure out how to get the phones working. Please write our text number down because texting is working. 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530. And Stu, we'll read our next text. This is from Paul in West Palm Beach.

How do I free... This is for Rick, by the way. me to everyone that's listening, the phones are down. No, I didn't realize that. Oh, wow. John, the boys are making fun of me. Guess what? The desk is going to be flipped in about 30 seconds. Okay, guys, back to Stu and his text. Yeah, Paul wants to know, probably asking Rick, but I have some ideas on this myself.

How do I free a lock steering wheel that has a keyless remote fob? Paul from West Palm Beach. Hmm Now I'm assuming by locked steering wheel He means he can't turn the ignition on for some reason I'm assuming that the wheel is turned like when you have it turned Right, it's in a locked position But once you turn the ignition on

The computer is supposed to release that steering lock interlock piece And what he may need to do is turn the ignition on And wiggle that wheel back and forth a little bit Because if that interlock has too much tension It can't release it properly We get these complaints a lot, and nine times out of ten or maybe 24 times out of 25, that's exactly what you have to do. Unfortunately, the design is some of these things, and if you pull into a curb and you have the scrunched up against the curb, that's hard to do. That's very hard.

And some people aren't strong enough to do it. You really have to muscle the steering wheel a little bit sometimes. That was closer to my solution, which is I start flailing on the wheel and yelling at it, but wiggle it. Okay, good. I'll try that next time. that's happened to me, and I'm a rather small person, and I am quite able to adjust the steering

wheel until it does what I wanted to do. You are small, and that high chair that we got you is working real well, because everybody can see Nancy now. That's right, and that high chair can become airborne at any moment. That telephone number, ladies and gentlemen,

when our phones are back up, 877-960, where you can text us. It's about to get ugly in here. Take advantage. The phones are back up? No, they're not back up. Take advantage of that text number. 772-4976530.

772-4976530. Now back to who are you? Another thing you can do is get us on Facebook and the postings, right? We forget about the posting. So because we've lost our phones, you can go to Facebook.com for slash Earl on cars, Earl Stewart on Cars. Earl on Cars. We need to get it working on both of those because if I can't remember.

Or just go to Earl Oncars.com. Yeah. www. Well, it's Facebook.com forer slash Earl Stewart on Cars or Earl on Cars. And then you can post if you're already posting or listening or watching. you can post, and we can get your posting. We can get your text as 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530.

And I think we do have another text. We do. Thank you very much. That's right. The text says, hey, just try to call. Your phones are down. Sorry. I'm getting over cold.

I have a question about electric cars. I live in upstate New York, cold weather. Are they reliable? And what's your thought on the environmental impact? Well, you know, Rick is the expert. I'm just going to tell them what I know. I do know that cold weather degrades the battery, causes the battery range de-lesson.

And certainly if you live in Minneapolis, you're going to have more of a less of a range of battery in an electric car than you would in Florida. I think the battery quality and the range is improved. considerably, I think that we're going to be an all-electric car company, country, before too much longer. Batteries are inevitable, and as I say, the technology is just moving on at warp speed. So, yeah, if you want to split hairs, if you live up north, you're not going to have as

much range in the battery as you would if you lived in the south. Rick? Without having seen any scientific data, I don't think. anyone has really done a study on this yet i would guess you might see maybe a 10 to 15% drop in range but you know this this goes to the idea of how many people run their gas tank until it's all the way down to fumes you know if you plan ahead for it in the wintertime yeah and charge the car a little more frequently i think we wouldn't see any big issues well i i respectfully disagree on that. I think that the

battery range on the original electric cars was considerably less. I believe the Chevy Volt range was cut in half in very cold areas. So it just degrades the battery and I think

they probably made some improvements now. I don't know. I believe there probably had been some studies on that. I think Stu's Googling that right now but I think we're at the point now where no one's talking about it so it doesn't say if you can get a 400 mile range and you only get 300, that's not so bad, is if you can only get a 200 mile range and then you only get 100.

So I think we're going to be there. It's not going to be a matter of concern for the future and probably even now. True. But even so, I think the quality of those batteries is going to constantly be improving. And it's like fuel economy and cars where they're always getting better. So I think they're going to see a, it won't be as big an issue. as it might seem right now because I think the quality of the battery is improving

will make up for that. Yeah. One of the big things about batteries are getting smaller, and of course that helps everybody. Smaller means greater range because the weight of a car, of original electric cars, were almost half the battery.

In fact, in the Tesla, I believe the size of the battery was almost took up half the space. So if we can get a battery down to almost a normal size of the old batteries we would really have something I think that will be happening before too much longer let me do this I usually wait till the change of the first hour the second hour but I want to talk about my book this is a commercial I call them

and this is my book Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer it's a handbook how to do book on how to buy or lease a car maintain or repair your car without being ripped off by her car dealer. It's available on Amazon. And all the proceeds, 100% of the proceeds of the book, go to charity. Charity happens to be Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And we support Big Dog Ranch Rescue for the amazing job they do out there in Laxahatchie Groves. It's a brand new facility for doggies. It's almost like a college campus. There's no cages. Everything is totally air conditioned during the summer. The dogs are

out there in total comfort. In fact, maybe too comfortable. They have a swimming pool, a lake. They have dozens and dozens of volunteers that take the doggies for walks. Good food. It's kind of like a resort. And I know you dogs listening, no.

You can't check in to Big Dog Ranch. You can only go there if you don't have a home. Don't run away from home, so they'll take you out to Big Dog Ranch. We have about five 500 dogs out there available in the campus. They stay in bunk rooms, four or five doggies in a bunk room, and there are murals on the walls. It's actually very pleasant.

We'll save about 5,000 dogs. We don't euthanize our dogs. We're one of the largest, probably the largest, no-kill shelter in the state of Florida. We bring Big Dog Ranch Rescue, brings dogs in from all over the country. whereas the Palm Beach County Animal Control and Care will only take Palm Beach County dogs. We're bringing dogs in right now as we speak from the Carolinas, hundreds of maybe thousands of doggies there that were affected by the hurricane. We're still bringing doggies in from the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and even Houston.

So we save dogs from all over the United States, and we don't discriminate, we don't euthanize. we're trying to find a dog home for a dog named Reggie right now three-legged dog and Reggie had an accident had to have his left front leg amputated and so we're trying to find

a dog for Reggie a bunch of other dogs out there, old dogs, young dogs and by the way we're not just a big and little dog ranch, we're a big and little dog ranch we really ought to change our name should be big and little dog ranch rescue but big and small we save

them all. That is our motto. Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And if you buy a copy of this book, it's a tufer. You can study it, know that you're going to get a good buy on your next car, and you're going to help save a dog. Because 100% of the proceeds, I don't take a nickel from the sale of this book. It all goes to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. So please consider adopting one of our dogs. And if you don't or can adopt a dog, you can volunteer. We always need volunteers, and of course, we always need contributions. Big Dog Ranch Rescue on Okeech Boulevard and Laxahatchie Grove. Thank you very much. What a great place in Reggie. Wow, what a lovable, sweet dog that was there on Wednesday. He was so docile. He was just

so loving. Happy. The amazing thing about dogs is they don't care. They seem to be. On their handicapped, they don't notice it. They compensate. They figure out. they're so forgiving you know i mean there's some humans that really need to learn something you know from these animals that are just amazing and if you get a chance to go out to big dog ranch go out you'll be very very impressed i think we have a text here and uh for you people out there that haven't got the text number down and if you just tuned in don't be frustrated because our phones are down uh we finally got we've got a regular in from the station here and i think he might be able to help us and we'll get those phones up but in the meantime

Texas at 772-4976530 is the only way you can get through to us is 772 4976530 and we beg you to use that text number because I'm running out of conversation here and we really thrive I don't believe that on your input so we do have a text and I have a text when Stu's done reading that text wonderful so there you go And I don't believe you're going to run out of material. Well, I just said that. I agree with you. I can say it is a true oldies.

And I have an idea. Okay, so we just found out the problem is with Comcast. It's our phones. So, if you're listening, everybody call Comcast customer support right now and tell them to fix the radio station's phones, and we should be up before you know. And I've got another idea. The radio station should have a backup when Comcast goes down. Just like I know a car dealership that does that, they have a backup.

So when the phones go down, it automatically starts. which is over, and you don't lose 20,000 listeners. We wished it would. Yes. Usually does. Stu, by making that announcement for Comcast and everyone to call, you have created a coup d'etat. I think I just created a problem for Comcast.

Okay. Okay, so the text says, and this is really nice, says to your listeners, please do not punish Big Dog Ranch Rescue based on what the president Lori Simmons did with the Nike Shoes. The point is to save dogs. I couldn't agree with that more. Well, yeah, and let me say this.

It truly is all about the doggies. And I think that the comment being with Big Dog Ranch Rescue, there was some media attack on... I was just in the middle of saying something there. There was a media attack on Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And my position is a strong believer in what Big Dog Ranch Rescue goes. You don't attack the people that work there or the founder or anybody else. we've probably got with volunteers and employees and everybody else,

including me because I'm on the board of directors, we have a diversification of political views. And the only thing we all have in common, the Big Dog Ranch Rescue, is we love doggies. And if you attack Big Dog Ranch Rescue because of the political views of one or more people, then you're hurting the dogs. You're not hurting the person you're attacking. They are used to being attacked, but they'll attack you.

I mean, they can fight back. The doggies can't fight back. The doggies don't have a political view, and they don't care about Nike. They don't care about Donald Trump. They don't care about anybody. All they care about is finding a home. I think most people, when they talk to you about it or talk to anybody about it, realize that in a second.

I spoke to somebody who was mad about it. When I told them that big dog ranch rescue had taken in dozens of dogs before the storm even hit North Carolina, they were just, they were touched, and they realized that's the point. Okay, very good. So thank you for that text. and I think we have another text. We do, and it's from Don and LaBelle. Oh, wonderful.

Thank you, Don. Bless your heart. So Don wants to know. Could you explain the warranty on hybrid battery and components on a 2012 Camry? And when it starts, for example, the manufacturer date or the delivery date, and how the customer can find out what date that is? Well, the best way to find out your date of first use, which is when that warranty begins. Dofu.

The dofu is take your VIN number and contact the dealership and just ask them to please run that VIN number and they will tell you what the date of first use actually is and your warranty on a hybrid battery is for eight years, 100,000 miles. Pretty good warning. Yep. And we're finding that most of the hybrid batteries last much longer than that. Oh, yeah.

It's amazing. Yeah, they do. I was going to make a joke, but it wouldn't have been factual, so we'll leave it at that. 100,000 and one miles. Oh, that's cute. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, guess what? Those phones are back up. They're back up and running.

Please. Your calls did the trip. Vivian, Tina, and whomever else tried to get in touch with us at 877-960. Give us a call again. We're ready to answer your questions. I have a text, and it is. from Lori and Lori texts me about trading in her car and she wants to know how she should go about it well I will first answer that question by telling you you must keep that trade in separate

always keep that trade in separate go to three different dealers ask for the manager and tell them that you're downsizing and that you want to get rid of your car and get a true price for that trade in. Believe me, you'll be much further ahead. Earl, do you have something to add to that? No, that's perfect. You take it to the dealers of the make of your car. If you're driving a Ford, you want to go to a Ford. A dealer of the same make will typically buy their make at a higher price than another dealer. If you took your Ford to a Honda dealer, you likely wouldn't get as good a price as you would from a Ford dealer. And there's always car max if you're anywhere near car max they buy a lot of cars over the curb and they give

you what they consider it honest price sometimes you actually get a really good price there depending on supply and the man if they got a whole lot of forward fusions and you're selling a forward fusion of the same year and model then they might not give you as good a price and also it'll be worth your while to make an appointment with the manager in order for him to give you a price on that trade in and be sure to tell that manager that you're getting two more bids from other dealerships so lori i hope we've helped you out i'm i may have been daydreaming and so you might have already said this but um ask them if they give you a figure on your trade in if they're willing to buy that car from you outright at that

price as separate from the deal that way you can figure out if they are over allowing for your trade or offering you more than it's really worse i love that good points do and these car dealers they love purchasing a car, a purchasing car directly from the owners. So Lori, good luck with your purchase. And again, Vivian and Tina, please give us a call back. Our phones are working. 877960. Or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And remember ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. We are going to go to Sue, who's giving us a call from Jupiter. Good Good morning, Sue. Please, Lord, let Sue be there.

I really want to hear her voice. Well, I feel like Charlie Brown and the control room here is Lucy. And they keep putting that football and telling me to kick it. And then just as I kick it, they pull it away, and I fall flat on my back. So I apologize to Sue and all the other people that we've been telling. Well, ladies and gentlemen, just keep on Texas. us, please, at 772-497-6-5-30. If you want to hear the lovely sound of my voice, just keep texting.

Yes. Okay. Another text, thank God. We got Joe. He's in Chappaqua, New York. And he's on our Facebook live feed right now. And he says, good morning calling from Chappaquin, New York, about my about to give birth daughter-in-law, Kathy, who asks, Why won't the headlights set on auto on my brand-new Toyota Highlander X-L-E turn on automatically when the wipers are in use.

You know, that actually... Zoom in on Rick's face is a feature that I think Toyota must have dropped the ball there. You know, that's... Is that a malfunction or is that designed to do that? I don't think that is part of their design. I'm going to have to research that real quick, but that's an incredible thought. I mean, your headlights should be on in the rain. Yeah.

And I wonder if Toyota has ever thought of the idea of linking the automatic headlights to the wipers. Could it possibly be a defect? I think it's a design, not a flaw, but a design miss. Maybe it's not working right as what I'm trying to say. Right. I'm going to check on that right now. I think they're supposed to do that. I think Kathy should take her car to the nearest Toyota dealer and confirm.

Great answer. Yes. Yeah. in New York, and say that we don't think it should be working that way, and would you please fix it? I replied to Joseph and Chappaqua said, I think you might have stumped Rick. Actually, it's never happened before.

Well, actually, one thing that I think should be done, and I'm going to do this, I'm going to double check it. You're driving an Avalon. Yes. Well, you're driving a 19 Avalon. I'm going to test and see if that feature is available on your Avalon, and if not, I'm going to do a dealer product report on that and give that idea

to Toyota and say, why doesn't this feature work this way? It should. Well, first, let's find out if it was just broken. Yeah. Right. Sometimes things don't work, and you've got to fix them. I would notice it never rains down here, so I, yeah, never came out. Ladies and gentlemen, the phones are back down again. So, anyway, listen, I got to ask you guys something. I know today's the first day of fall. Did they turn, well, I'm from Pittsburgh, so Did they turn the furnace on or what's going? I feel heat in here, and it's not our body heat.

Okay, somebody maybe you'll run out and adjust that thermostat on the air conditioner. Because without the phones and the high temperature in here, well, I should have wore my bathing suit. Listen, I do have a text, and I've been asked this often, and this is from Jim. and he wants to know what the difference is between a factory car advertisement and a dealer advertisement which both you've got to be well I'm going to rather than for me to go on about that I'll let you well the factory advertisements are paid for by the factory and the dealer advertisements are paid for by the dealer and I was just being silly yeah yeah that is real because there's such a thin line here no I think

I think what the texture is trying to get at is can you rely on the factory advertisements in terms of ethics and honesty, transparency? The answer is more so than car dealer ads. Usually you'll find the manufacturer advertisements are legally accurate. Ethically, not so. And where they drop the ball, in my opinion, the manufacturer. manufacture advertisements, you still use the fine print. The fine print should be made, it should be abolished.

It should be illegal in an advertisement. If you don't have fine print in the contract and have a lawyer read the fine print and to pay the lawyer a lot of money to read the fine print, that could be the system. I don't like it, but it could be the system. But when you're advertising to everybody and you're not going to hire a lawyer to read a newspaper ad or an online ad. So when you put the fine print in a television ad, you're doing it for one reason. You're trying to hide it.

And that's what the manufacturer does, General Motors, Toyota, Honda, all of their advertisements conceal material items that affect the price, leasing payment, or the price of the car in the fine print. And that should be banned, but it's not. However, the dealer advertisements, in contrast, do that and then some. They have illegal ads, for example, in Florida. You can look at television ads all the time that will have in the fine print on the TV ad plus dealer fee, when the floral law states categorically that you must include the dealer fee in the advertised price. All they will say is plus dealer fee, but they don't tell you the amount. Now, what good does it do a consumer to know there's a dealer fee?

Our mystery shopping report that we will go to in the second, the last half hour of the show, had a dealer fee of what was it, $299. $299. We have dealers in town in North Palm Beach and Lake Park and the area, West Palm Beach, that have $999 plus other dealers fee. That's called $3.49 because they had another little one. Oh, $3.49, yeah. So if you don't know the amount of dealer fee saying there's a dealer fee,

doesn't tell you anything. So bottom line to this, the manufacturer's ads are a little bit better than the dealer ads, but not a whole lot better. Don't believe any advertisement, never, ever buy a car based on the advertisement. You know, these are some of the things that

how can I say it? Honesty and ethics really lacks in our profession. It's really unfortunate. And, you know, you can go all the way back to, what, 1977, And for 40-plus years, we have been fourth from the bottom. Do you know who we're sandwiched in with?

Congressman and lobbyist. That's sad. So for the manufacturers, for the car dealers, please try to help us with this gallopold that's taken. And it's embarrassing. So just my input about the gallopold. 6530. Remember what I said earlier, ladies and gentlemen, Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

We would love to hear from you and give us your feedback. The good, the bad, and the ugly. We want to improve the show. We want to know if we are doing our job to create this platform for ladies for you to give us a call. And we would love to hear from you. I can't emphasize that enough. That's Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

We do. Stu? All right, we sure do. The question is, do, and this is from Keith and Lake Work, do economy cars have less of a markup than big cars or SUVs? How much? Great question. Yeah, they have a, the economy cars have much less of a markup.

Cars in general have much less of a markup. And it's very interesting. A lot of people don't realize this. The manufacturers make almost all their money with the larger vehicles. The trucks, fans, and SUVs will have a profit margin to the manufacturer of 20 or 25%. And then they sell the car to the dealer, make all their money. And the dealer, MSRP, there's another 25% or 30% in some of these big vehicles. And these are also very high price.

So the dollar margin are huge. And the small vehicle, the small of the vehicle, the lower the margin. It might be $300 or something like that. Actually, not including all the incentives and holdbacks. Exactly. There's still some money there for the dealer. Exactly. In many cases, not many, but in some cases, the manufacturers lose money on the small cars.

For many years, Toyota lost money on every Prius. They just wanted to get their foot in the door, which they did, and they were able to get their costs down, raise their prices, and now they make a profit. But bear in mind when you're negotiating to buy a truck van or SUV, there's a lot of room to move. Discounts, I have seen legitimate discounts of 50% off MSRP on some large vehicles. Yeah, when they throw some rebates in there too, yeah.

Exactly, because it's all part of the market. You can have an MSRP and an invoice, but then if you have a $2,000 or a $5,000 kickback, they call them rebates, I call them kickbacks because they're hidden in many cases. there is something called dealer cash, which is a hidden rebate, which is a kickback to the dealer. And there's something they call customer cash that's advertised. But if you don't read the advertisement, it might as well be hidden. So you can go in to buy a big truck with a $2,000 dealer incentive and a $2,000 customer incentive that you don't know about. And you could pay a $4,000 discount off the MSRP, and still,

pay a big profit to the dealer which was his original markup so never rely on anything except competitive bids from three different dealers at least three different dealers when you buy a car discounts off msrp are better than nothing but they certainly do not give you the true dealer cost and how much profit the dealer's going to be making and in addition to that you can be tricked into thinking that the msrp is really the is not the msrp might be the dealer dealers are recommended price. They have dealer list and manufacturers list. Too confusing.

And the invoice is even more confusing. Competity bids are the only way you can be sure to get a fair price. And ladies and gentlemen, you know, by going to earl-oncars.com, there are so many answers there for you. And this minefield

out there of purchasing, leasing, new, used, or even having your vehicle repaired. would be so helpful. That's earl on cars.com and also consumer report I highly recommend and Earl I think would agree with me. Consumer report is an amazing magazine and I'm still talking about the 2018 auto issue and they're rating over 255 vehicles in that subscription and they're also talking about the recalls and safety updates and so much more. So knowledge is power.

Text number. Text number. Got to give that text number out where our phones are broken. Don't call us on our landline. Comcast is out of business or maybe we're out of business here. I don't know. All I know is the phones aren't working. And our text number is the only way we can communicate other than Facebook Live. If you're watching us Facebook Live now, you can post. We'll try to get to the post as quickly as possible. Text number 772, that's the area code 4976530. That's area code 772, 4976530. Please text us.

Yes. Because your input is really what makes this show. 4976530. Area code 772, 4976530 is our text number. We'd love to hear from you. Absolutely. make the recovering car, help the recovering car dealer to feel a little bit better this morning. Him, just like all of us, we really depend on your phone calls and your input because you are an important part of the show.

So take advantage of the fax number and help make all of us happy here. 772-49765-3-0. I want to talk a little bit about maintenance and repair because we talk to you. much about selling cars. We just had a text come in, so before I get to maintenance and repair, Stu, please read that text. Rick, you are the most popular guy today. So, question for Rick, is it true that fossil oil never loses its viscosity?

If recycled oil has the dirt components removed, is it as good as new fossil oil? Why or why not? Thanks, Tito in Port St. Lucid. Hmm. Now, I do know that oil can break down over time. uh having the dirt and water vapor and other stuff removed the impurities removed from that fossil oil and recycling it um i've heard and read that it is supposed to be as good as the original fossil oil i don't know if i would really trust it in my own personal vehicle that i paid a lot of money for

i still think i will stick with either a good full synthetic oil or a brand new fossil oil myself. You know, here's something interesting that a lot of people, and I didn't realize this until a few months ago, that fossil oil and synthetic oil are both fossil oils. The synthetic oil is made out of fossil oil. So I always thought synthetic oil was what its name implied, synthetically assembled chemically, but it's not. It's fossil oil that is processed.

So you're really talking apples and apples. I would think that they would not break down one wouldn't break down more than the other and synthetic oil is superior it is not really synthetic but it's super fossil oil right it's processed to a finer degree

and unfortunately that doesn't really help us much on the idea of getting away from using fossil oils which is why we need to concentrate on getting those electric cars I wonder if that's why they named it synthetic oil. There's another, that's my, my conspiracy theory, a problem. I always think everything is a conspiracy, but why would the inventors or the people that wanted to start

selling synthetic oil, call it synthetic when it's really fossil oil? It's almost, it's confusing. It's simpler to think it's totally different, but it's really, it's just a high grade of super refined fossil oil, and it has, allows your vehicle to run too much tighter tolerances. Gives you a little bit better fuel mileage, and you don't have to change the oil every 5,000 miles. You can do it every 10,000 miles, which leads me to believe it doesn't break down as quickly because maybe that's the reason that you can get 10,000 instead of 5,000.

But it breaks down sooner or later. Otherwise, you could get 100,000. Exactly. And we have a text. We do. Okay. No name on this one, but the question is, what is the best security system for cars today?

Is LoJack any good? other GPS trackers, alarms, what should I get from my new beamer? I have an opinion about beemers. I just heard. I'm going to extend an invitation for everyone to drive with us so you can hear it firsthand from the recovering car dealer and his personal opinion about BMWs. Well, because they only have about 4% of the market. He's saved to attack them.

But I just heard of a device, which isn't even advertised as a theft detection device, that I think is the ultimate. And this device is a dash cam. And the dash cam, as you all probably most know, films the front of the car. It films the end of the car. You can mount one in the rear of the car. So you really have pretty much 360. And it's meant to be, protect your car against outside invasion when you park your car at night or you're not going to break into the car.

But this particular new dash cam also links with your iPhone. And it's on 24-7. So how about that for a theft detection? Anyone approaches your car wherever you may be. Your car could be in Paris and you know someone's getting too close to your car. It also has a glass shatter detector if they break into your car. And then if they do break into your car... Can you talk to the thief?

You can talk to the thief, or the thief can hear everything you say. Strangely enough... Flip that around, you hear everything the thief says. Yes. Strangely enough, when people steal cars, they don't know the dash cams are there. The dash cam, for some reason, has to do with psychology. You thought that was really funny. Some of the smartest people I know...

have been inside the cars and forgot that the dash cam was there and said some really stupid things. And we know thieves. I think you did that once, didn't you? I probably had. So it's kind of like a... We've seen that firsthand. Dash cam's like a fly on the wall. We don't think about it as being there.

And we are, this is a new device. You'd probably Google it. I'm going to get one in my car. A dash cam that does audio inside the car. Oh, jeez. It does the outside of the car, the back of the car, all around the car, and it links to your smartphone. What an amazing.

It should be an option that manufacturers offer. It should be. Seriously, it covers so many bases. Yeah, exactly. And, of course, the basic purpose for dash cams is to, if you're in an accident. And I think people, when they think of it as that, they think, well, I'm not going to have an accident. You know, I've got a good driving record. I don't need one.

I think everybody needs a dash cam. whether you're going to have an accident. If you do have an accident, what a great way, unless you cause the accident, of course. And if you see something really weird or unusual on the road and you don't have a dash cam, you're going to wish you had one. Yeah, and Rick told me about this.

When we first started about dash cams, you can go on Google and you go to YouTube, and they have some countries like Russia and some other people, everybody's got dash cam, they got planes crashing. Tanks going to, asteroids crashing down. and everything that happens on the road is now being filled by dash cams. Well, it's also to help prevent insurance fraud

where there are many cases, apparently, in other countries, where people will walk in front of a car and literally throw themselves on the hood of the car then claim that the driver hit them. Exactly, exactly. Craig is listening or watching on our Facebook live feed, and he wants to add that his Tesla X model shows exactly where the car is down to one meter,

which is, I think, a little bit better than standard GPS. I'm not sure how that works. That is very good. One meter. That's amazing. You just talk about your GPS, Greg. I assume that so for your navigation is what you're talking about. So you can find out pretty much your cars, whether the cars in the garage or the driveway.

I mean, it'll be that close. He also makes a good point that in Florida, with the recording laws, you have to announce to the person that they're being recorded. That's what Craig is. Well, not on your own car, do you? Well, I don't know. Well, actually, I did a little research recently into those recording, because remember we had talked about the idea of recording some of our mystery shops, and Florida state law states, it is illegal to record audio on someone if they are in a place where they have a reasonable expectation of privacy. My car would not be a reasonable expectation of privacy if somebody said, my car. Well, it may become a gray area because if you're in a car with the windows up, and they differentiate it in the law as stating if you're in a public place where it is expected reasonably that someone could overhear your conversation, then you can record that conversation freely without the other person's consent.

Well, that's good. Well, we need to research that because I think a private car, now if you were driving a Uber or a Lyft or a taxi cab, then that certainly wouldn't be. permitted. But if you're in your own home, for example, if I'm in my kitchen, in my living room and I'm recording everything in it. Just put a sign on your review there. And guess what? Ladies

and gentlemen, all these videos that Earl's talking about in the car, in our house, I'm going to be supplemented my income because we have an upcoming reality show coming out. So stay tuned for that. So stay tuned for that. Like, whatever I want.

Okay, text number 7.7.2. I feel like I'm on my candid camera. 4976530. Our only link with the outside world now is 772, area code. And Facebook. 4976530. And, of course, Facebook.com.

If you're not already streaming us, you can go to Facebook.com forward slash earl on cars. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. You got it. Facebook.com. You're getting good. Ford slash Earl on Cars. You can stream.

live on Facebook and you can post and we can converse and you can see me and Nancy and Stu and Rick and we're all here and we'd love to hear from you and you can text us at 772 497-6-530 and we do have a text. We have Lenny who is

jumping in on our conversation about the legality of recording somebody he wants to know if someone is it legal to record, wait do they have a reasonable expectation of privacy if someone is stealing your car? Well that's a Good question. I think there are some, there's some people out there that might argue that. The ACLU may well defend that person. That would become a nationally recognized case. Exactly. No, I do not think someone stealing your car has a reasonable expectation of privacy.

What if they roll the windows up? How about someone servicing your car, road testing it at a dealership? Does he have a reasonable expectation of privacy? I'm not sure. I'm going to call my lawyer. Yeah. But the point is, the point. point is, and the original call, I think it was a great one. What is the best theft, detector, car protector that you could have? I'm not sure, but Craig, who's been participating in our conversation here, is about to get in trouble. But I'm going to read on there anyway. He says, well, when my wife drives the car, I know where she is and how fast she's driving. I just installed to a way to find out how much she's spent at Nordstrom. So Craig, good luck.

Yeah. You're in serious trouble now, and I hope that your wife isn't on Facebook right now. streaming it's live. But that's supposed to be for your kid. You know, you're supposed to take care of your kid, not your wife. Okay, we're getting in the weeds. And my kid was spending money on Nordstrom's. I'd want to know about it. Yeah. We have a text from a young lady by the name of Tammy that I'm

going to try to answer, but I'm going to, you know, once I say something, I'll have you add whatever you know. She's asking about the Munrooney label, and she wants to know what it is. and the Moroni label, Tammy, is a label that's required in the United States. It's displayed in all automobiles, and it includes the listing of certain official information for all new, yeah, all new automobiles.

And this law was started by a senator, and that senator is a senator. Monroney, and he's from Oklahoma, and that was back in July of 1958. I think you're telling us more than we need to know. What time is it? I can tell you how that clock is built. Over to the recovering card.

You're like, hey, we have plenty of time. The beauty, no, we've got some text backed up here, actually. The beauty of the Monroney label is a fact that it gives you one of your few bases of comparison when your shopping price. So you always want to look at that MSRP, the Monroney label, and when you're comparing

apples and apples, let's say you're buying a Chevrolet Camaro, you want to go to three Chevrolet dealers, but you want to get the Camero with the same Monroney label price, MSRP, and the discount from that Monroney label, as you shop it from dealer A, B, and C, is the way you get the best price on the car.

Before that, it was up to the salesman. Exactly. I could say you that car for $1,000. Can you imagine what life was like back in the day before 1958 when there were no stickers on the cars, except the ones the dealers might want to put on there. Everybody told you that the asking

price of the car was something different. So it was just like shooting fish in the barrel. Back then it was like, used cars is now. Yeah, exactly. Use cars is exactly. But by all, and when you're looking at the Monroe label, be sure it's the legitimate monorony label because we have something called.

The phony monorone, which is the addendum label, and that's a fake minority label that they put next to the real manufacturers Menroney label, and they try to jack the price up to $3,000, $4,000 sometimes. We should get true audience to play Boni Moroni. And Tammy, here's a little bit of information

that I doubt if anyone knows, but there is a fine for tampering with that Minrooney label, and that's $1,000 or one year imprisonment. Now, I'm wondering, when was the last time that somebody had to pay a $1,000 fine 1958. And also technically, the dealer cannot take that labor off. It has to be taken off by the consumer.

Exactly. So I hope I answered your question and early answered your question, Tammy. 772-497-6530. Give us a text. The phones are still down. We appreciate your text. We appreciate you hanging on and listening. $50.

Well, I don't need to say that because we can't, maybe before the show is over. We've got a couple of text over here. They'll be working. I don't know. But we're going to go over to Stu, and he's got a couple of texts to share with you. That's right. John and Palm Beach says, my dealer suggested cleaning the injectors. How much more does the dealer do that I cannot do with injector cleaner from an auto parts store?

Actually, quite a bit. What we do is we actually disconnect the fuel line and connect in a pressurized can of a very, powerful chemical that we spray then actually run the engine on and it goes through the injectors to clean them out and clean helps get the carbon off of the valves and out of the cylinders. And the reason that we only use a small amount is it actually can become detrimental to the engine if you ran a whole lot of this through it. Rick, is this on the factory recommended maintenance? It's actually not on the recommended list. However, it is a products sold by Toyota, and it is recommended, especially in areas where you do get high

carbon build up in some of the cars. What would be the symptom that I would have in my car that would be cured by cleaning my fuel injectors? If you start and notice, the engine seems to run a little rough at times. The idle seems to be a little bit lower, and your fuel economy starts to drop a bit. Sometimes cleaning those injectors and getting some of that carbon out can help improve that a bit. What does it cost to clean the injectors? I believe we're running right now somewhere around $130 to $150 for that service. Well, my advice to you is be very careful.

My rule of thumb is don't do anything to your car that's not part of factory recommended maintenance. And if you're dealing with a service department who you totally trust and feel like they are your best interest as well, if they have at heart, then you can listen to a recommendation that's not on the manufacturer's owner's menu list. But I would be very hesitant. 13999. 13999. At your dealership. Sorry, this is not a commercial.

So, the terrible price. So if you have something that's wrong with your cars, as Rick mentioned like, sluggishness, it doesn't seem like it's performing properly. and they recommend a fuel injector clean and then afterwards your car runs fine then you did well but if it doesn't run well they just sold you a $139 clean injector

so my advice is unless you have a problem with your car don't do it and if you do have a problem with your car get them to assure you that if they do this the car will run better afterwards if not you want your money back when they tell you that take your phone out Google it and see if the symptom matches their solution right on the spot.

Exactly. They don't take too long because probably a lot. 772-49765-30. Give us a text. Do we have another text? We do. From Jake and Jupiter. This is from my son.

Uh-huh. Not really. It's from another Jake. But when people years ago referred to the starter, what component were they referring to? The alternator, the ignition coil, the distributor. I remember it as a separate component. Am I wrong about that? Jake and Jupiter.

Well, the starter is simply the starter motor. It's the electric motor that's bolted onto the engine. And when you turn the ignition key to the start position, it spins the engine until it begins to fire and run on its own. Alternator. Well, no, the alternator is actually a separate component bolted on the engine that once the engine's running, the alternator acts as a generator to create electricity.

to run the engine on and to recharge the battery. So it's always been the starter motor has always been, that's what it is. It's never. Yep, just a simple starter motor. Although on hybrid cars where the drive unit is actually a set of electric motors to drive the car, those actually use those electric motors to replace both the starter and the alternator. So like the Honda's hybrids, and the Toyota hybrids don't have any alternators or starters on them at all.

That's the reason that electric cars are the way with the future. I mean, fewer and fewer parts. I mean, all you've got to do is electric motor and you've got a transmission and everything you need. No oil changes? Nothing. Craig's got the final word on the recording thing. We'll put this subject to bed. But he said he just looked it up.

He said that he looked at it. And if you record a parking attendant, valet, in Florida without his knowledge, it's a felony. Is that right? Well, I haven't verified that, but that's what Craig says. Now, what if that valet parks my car, listens to my radio, and smokes a cigar in my car? Is that considered a violation of my privacy? I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Like I said, I have to call my attorney. But I couldn't use the video I had of him doing that because that would be illegal evidence. Maybe if you had that sign up, you might get away with it. But is it the video or is it the audio? I'm pretty sure it's the audio. Because Florida law actually makes a very distinct difference between video and audio recording. Exactly. Very interesting, yeah.

So I could read his lips. I wonder if that would be legal. Could you read his lips? I think you're okay with a little sign. You're not recording audio, so I would say yes, that would be legal. There you go. Now you need a device. I'm really stretching now.

Face recognition that reads lips. Exactly. Face recognition that reads lip, and you would have subtitles, which would be perfect. legally legal in Florida. Exactly. You hear that apple? Get to work on that. Very interesting.

Thank you very much. Okay, Mary texts me, and she wants to know how often she should check the pressure in her tires. Well, I will answer that first, and then I'll let, well, I'll ask Rick to add to it. And my recommendation, I check the pressure in my tires once a month, and be sure that you check the pressure in your tires when they're cold. Number two. Number three, I stay away from public pressure gauges.

I don't think that they're actually accurate. Now, I'll turn that question over to Rick. I couldn't have done any better. Buy a good quality tire pressure gauge from a parts store and check those tires at least once a month when they're cold. You're exactly on target. Yeah, and they've come a long way, Mary. Those gadgets have come a long way.

very people-friendly, and I have one in my glove box that I use, and it's very easy to use. I've got a question. Go out and get yourself one. I've got a question. If every 30 days is a good cycle, what if I'm an Uber driver or a taxi driver, or I'm just a business guy, and I put 20,000 miles a month on my car? Does the mileage require more often changing or checking the air? than just time.

Do you have nitrogen in those tires? I do, 78%. I always use 78%. That was a trick question. Yes, exactly. What about that, Rick? Does mileage affect how often you should check the tire pressure? Actually, in my opinion, yes.

Simply because our Florida roads, every time you hit a pothole or a good bump in the road, those tires take a little bit of impact. and the bead where the tire mounts against the rim could shift just a tiny bit each time and lose a little bit of air each time. So I would absolutely recommend checking the pressures much more frequently if you drive a lot of miles.

Yeah, and another reason for that, that you just made me think, there's two reasons for checking your air pressure because when you check the air pressure, you're looking at the tire. When you look into the tire, and you can see a nail or a slice or a crack or something like that,

visually you're inspecting the tire when you check the tire pressure. So you should visually inspect your tire as often as you possibly can, especially if you're putting on the miles of the car. If you're putting 20,000 miles a month on a car, you should visually inspect that tire probably every week. Absolutely. And not to mention the heat cycling of the tire as it gets hot and cools down

when it's doing that much more frequently, that can cause those beads to begin to lose air just a little bit more. And Rick, the tire valve, that's also very important. important to maintain. Yeah, make sure you keep caps on those valve stems because dirt, water, and debris that gets into those little valve stems can cause them to leak as well. Yeah. You know, I had a call or it was a text.

I can't remember from a person that had a problem with cracked tires. He bought a used car and his tires were cracking and which leads me to the age on the tires. And just as long as we're talking about tires, you should not be driving. on a car who has tires that has tires that are more than six years? Is that what NHTSA says? Six to eight years. Six to eight years. That's when they start to crack.

And there's no law. There should be a law, but there's not a law on the age of the tires. You don't have to disclose the age of the tires. So theoretically, you could go to a tire store now and buy a new set of tires, quote, unquote, that are five or six years old. Or they could be eight or ten years old. They can sell old tires to you. and not disclose that, which case your tires basically are obsolete and worn out from a cracking, aging standpoint, when you buy them. So you could get the date code on the side of the tire, and I can never remember the code.

Rick probably can. It's the DOT number, the last four digits. The first two digits are the number of the week, and the last two digits are the year. So if it's 2418, that's the 24.18. That's the 24th week of 2018. So check the date code. Anytime you buy us other tires, it's amazing that we don't have a rule or law on that.

It is amazing. I was just going to say that and buy or beware because those tires, old tires are sold all the time. And ladies and gentlemen, checking the pressure in your tires, it's really very, very important. This affects the safety of you driving your car, stacking a bunch of stuff in the trunk of your car. It also affects your tires,

but it's very important gas mileage. There's so many different things. Got a text. We do. We have a text. No name on this one. It says, finally, the state of Florida is putting electronic sign messages, instructing drivers in all caps, not to use their flashers in the rain. Please do not do this. Excellent. That's all the time. Thank you very much. And it's an interesting thing because I kind of see why people turn the flasters on, turn a heavy rain. Let's say, and if you're a Floridian, you know what I'm talking about, you're a 995. Have you ever been in a downpour?

I'm sure you have if you're a fluidian where you're virtually blinded. You can't see the car in front of you, and you know the guy behind you can't see you. So what do you do? You turn your flatchers on. It's almost a survival thing. Some people just turn them on because they're stupid, but I've almost considered turning my flashers on when I'm caught in the center lane where I can't pull over.

So you're in the center lane, and you want to be seen. You can turn your lights on, but the lights don't get the attention of a flasher. And the reason it's illegal is because the flasher tells somebody who knows the law that you're stopped. And if they think you're stopped, they're going to stop. Yep. And so it's a terrible situation.

Has it ever gotten so bad that you just pulled off the road and waited it out? Ruraly, for me, because I'm crazy. I've never done it either. I have. I wanted to. I have. I have. I have.

I have. I have. I have. I have. I have. Not often enough. Can I ask one favor, folks, please, please, please turn your headlights to the low beam position. I cannot tell you how often it is.

It seems like every third car on the road these days. they've got their high beams on. And that is so distracting and dangerous, blinding other drivers, especially some of these newer cars with these incredible high-intensity headlights. They're so bright, and you've got them on high-beam position all the time,

blinding the other drivers. Please put your headlights down to the low-beam position. That's a good tip. I appreciate that. Texas is at 772-497-6530. I'm going to go to the mystery shopping report early, and that way we can build up a backlog of text, and then we can get to them before the end of the show. And, of course, if our phones miraculously come back on, then we might even be able to take some phone calls, too.

So we do have one text holding. We'll get to that, and I'm going to give you that text number out. So I won't be giving you the text number during the mystery shopping report, so please write this down, if you're not driving. Area code 772-497-65-30. That's 772-497-6530. Write it down. We'll go to this next text and then do the mystery shopping report.

Okay. Why are rims on new cars with bad paint after two years are not covered under warranty, Joan Boynton? I'm not sure if he's referring to the paint on the rims like a powder coat. That sounds like what he's mentioning. And that should be a 336 item on just about every car I know of. Yeah. If this is a factory warranty, which sounds like it is,

then I think you've got some bad information from the dealer. And you need to go back to that dealership. You maybe text us some more details. Go back to that dealership. and asked to speak to the service manager, the guy that's running the service department, and if you've already talked to him, then I asked to speak to the owner or the general manager.

And if that doesn't work, then call the manufacturer directly on their 800 number. You can go online through their website and speak to the customer relations people because I believe that's a violation that is part of their bumper-bumper warranty. As Rick said, I know of no car manufacturer.

you're at least in the United States or anywhere that has less than a three-year, 36,000-mile warranty. And even if it was out a little bit on mileage, it should be covered under goodwill. So I think you're getting a raw deal, and I think you need to go to the top as high as you could go and complain about it. If you don't get satisfaction, call us back or text us back, and we'll go to bat for you. We've got another text. How nice. We do. Good morning. I was listening to your show a little earlier, and you were discussing, fuel injector cleaners through the dealership.

How do you feel about over-the-counter fuel injector cleaners periodically being used? This is from Paul and Jupiter. Most of those, I think, are more snake oil than anything else simply because the chemical that they're using is dumped into the fuel tank

and it's so diluted by the fuel that it's really not going to have that big an impact if the chemical were strong enough to really make any impact on any debris that's already in the injectors or on the carbon, it would be so powerful that it would be detrimental to the fuel lines in that. And most modern fuels already have cleaners in them that are equal to anything you might buy over the counter.

You're really not going to do any improvement, I don't think. Okay. I'm going to give that text number out again. Then I'm going to read the mystery shopping report. And that text number is area code 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530. And into our audience, so you too can vote on this mystery shopping report, and your vote is very important and your opinion of the mystery shopping report, and also, again, your anonymous feedback.com.

take advantage of that website and give us your opinion about the show mystery shopping report and so much more we will thank you okay mystery shopping report i'm sorry we just had a good follow-up for on that last question oh great this is from paul and he he wants to what if you brought the fuel level down really low before you put it in you'd have a higher concentrate of the fuel injector cleaner right even then and i don't think you'd see much result from it okay yeah all right thanks very That's why the ones we use at the dealership, we actually disconnect the entire fuel line and run the extremely strong chemical through it,

then reconnect the fuel line to flush all that out. On the subject, a lot of the things that we do and car dealers recommend are based on history, and the engines are improving. The fuel injectors are improving. Everything in an automobile is improving at warp speed. So a lot of the flushes and the fuel injector cleaners and a lot of the things that we did 15, 20, 30 years ago, or even 10 years ago aren't necessary today. The engines today are like highly sophisticated, highly reliable compared to before.

Another text we have here, still. It's a comment on our live Facebook video. Steve wants to know. He says, newer cars display the tire pressure on the dash. Is that accurate? believe it or not, they can be very accurate. Great. Yeah, I would say within one to two pounds, they're spot on the money.

The one thing that I would add to that is that looking at that when your tires are at running speed is really, if you're taking a trip, that's what you're worried about. If you have a coal spell, we get this in Florida a lot when we have an uncharacteristic coal spell. Temperature drops down to 35 or 40 degrees, and everybody goes. goes into the garage and starts their cars and they need air in all four tires. Well, as they drive to get the air of the tire, suddenly they don't need the air anymore because their tires worn up. So it's very susceptible to the temperature outside, especially where we have variations like in Florida. Okay, mystery shopping report of the Delray Auto Mall. Delray Auto Mall is an independent used car dealer on US One in Delray Beach.

We came across as large, it's 171 used cars, while searching for Takata recall affected cars on another trader. The dealership is owned by Franz Menardi. I don't know the name. Been a business on this same location since 1996. It has a decent online review and a better business bureau, A-plus. We had a tough time finding Takata cars this week, and that's a good thing. I honestly think about, Nancy and I were talking about this on the way, driving into the studio. I think we've had, and I say we Earl Sturt on cars, has had an amazing impact on the sale of Takata cars in the sound of our voice.

All the car dealers know that we're coming. The footsteps, we're going to be checking you out. We're going to be live on radio talking about you trying to sell Takata Airbag Recall cars. And I think they're wholesaling these cars. They're not disappearing, unfortunately. They're just going out of our market area. Going out of our listing area. Exactly.

They're going to Panama. They're going to Georgia. They're going to auctions. And people take them out of our listing area. So that's good, the folks in our listing area. But they're not disappearing. And there's just as many or more than they ever were. It may be that a lot of them, too, they're getting them fixed.

Where they would have just said, let the buyer worry about getting it fixed. Maybe some of these places are actually getting them over We're getting them fixed. The parts are becoming available now. Right. Good point, Rick. But there's still millions of them out there.

Oh, yes. We have the stats on that. We had a tough time finding, as I said, but we did find a 2014 Chrysler 300 with two very scary sounding recalls. We thought we'd give it the same Takata-style treatment. The first recall is a Chrysler roll-away defect. I like that roll-away. the same one that infamously killed

Star Trek actor Anton Yilchen in 2016. I remember that. The defect can cause the driver to erroneously leave the vehicles in park position and suddenly roll away which scares me because I have a very steep driveway

and I mean steep I'm talking 20 degrees pretty steep and that would be terrible if I hop out of the car. For Russell Bourne. Yeah, exactly. My neighbor. Watch out of it.

Russ. Run. The effect that caused the driver to earnestly leave the vehicles in park and roll away. That's the reason they call it the rollaway defect. The second dangerous defect on the same car was the

engine control module. While using cruise control, the vehicle may suddenly accelerate out of control, causing an accident. That's really scary. It is scary, yeah. We're all computers now, a little glitch and you've got yourself a serious recall problem.

Clearly, until both of these defects are repaired, no one could recently consider this Chrysler 300 a safe vehicle. We wanted to see if Delray Auto Mall represented as a safer car, a safe car after Agent S asked our three questions. I called ahead to confirm availability. James answered, told me that the 2014 Chrysler 300 was there ready for sale. He was anxious to get me to come down and see it. We agreed on 7.15 p.m. We work day and night, our mystery shopping reports. I arrived on time. I'm speaking as if I'm H&X. Obviously, I'm not.

You're not as good looking. No, definitely not. And James was waiting outside to greet me, shook my hand, and led me over the car that I called about. There was a porter hosing it down. James said they washed it just for me. We washed the porter, dry it off, and then we walked around the car inspecting it.

I asked James to pop the hood and start the engine, and he did. The engine turned over right away and hummed smoothly. I looked around for signs of a service department. Didn't see anything. It looked like a service department. I asked him how and where they checked out and fixed their cars. James pointed to a barn-like structure and said, over there. He said they had two mechanics that worked out of the shed.

Not a highly sophisticated facility, apparently. I asked if they thoroughly checked out all the cars for sale. He said they did. I asked him about the Chrysler, and he said, this one passed inspection. He said, it was a great car. I said, so no mechanical issues. That was question number one that we asked. James said there were none.

I looked over the interior, checked out the operation of the windows and other controls. It was a nice car. We took it for a test drive. James talked to me about the deal. He asked when I was planning on taking it. and how much I wanted to pay for it. James was low-key, low pressure, and I felt comfortable telling him I had arranged financing

through my credit union. I was glad that he didn't press forward or try to get me to fill out a credit application. That is unusual for a car dealer. When we got back, James led me directly to the owner's office, France. France applied a little more pressure than James did. He began by asking me the same question I was asked on a test drive. was driving at home how was I paying for it his tone was more urgent and I felt my

anxiety level rising rising I also wanted to know about the price $16,550 was that I think it skipped something yeah I did I skipped it that I was interested that I needed to feel better about the car and I asked him if had been any accidents that's question number two then I asked him about the price so question number one mechanically question number two accidents and of course I threw the price in there France talked as he pulled up the auto check report that's the sister company to car check I mean CarMax they're not related but they do the same thing other check and CarMax auto check is almost as good maybe as

good they're less expensive than CarMax auto check report price was reduced from 2199 he said 21 to 999 he said so there was no more discounts available France report the report began to reading off the highlights and the low lights too he told me about an accident that was moderate in turn and report in June of this year he said it didn't look too bad there was only moderate damage made me think when I read that that you often see that the accident that occurred happened just before the car was traded. A lot of people trade their car when the car is in an accident. And that's not a bad thing.

People feel bad about driving a car when it's been an accident. Although this Carfax report said it was moderate damage. He said there was a shift lever recall on the Carfax report and another recall involving the electronic control. So he identified both the... that we had already spotted when we checked it out. I stopped and asked, hey, is the car safe? Adding that, it doesn't sound good to me.

Fran said, I had nothing to worry about. He would arrange to have the repairs made down the road at Schumacher-Rissela-Dodge Jeep before I took it home. France added that he was also putting new tires on the car. Now, I highlighted that when I read the report because even though we did notice the tires, we didn't mention it. And so theoretically, they could have sold the car with the worn tires. And so that's a good thing about this particular mystery shopping report.

And I'll say that Delriotto Mall, you know, gets a kudos for that one. They did point out something that the agent hadn't even complained about. I was kind of a loss of words, so I said, thank you, offered my hand. from his shake, France. The owner shook my hand, said, let me put this together for you. Got up, James said, congratulations, shook my hand. Friends came back with a buyer's order, sat down and reviewed the numbers. Sale price was $16,490. Interestingly, $60 less than it was discussed. I don't know why that is, but I kept my mouth shut. That's Agent X. But there was a $299 dealer prep fee. and a $50 lien fee, but I'm paying cash.

So that's obviously phony. But it was only $50. And the dealer fee was only $2.99. And they had actually dropped the price by another $60. Yeah. I mean, they said they did. So you could take their word for that. So this certainly isn't terrible,

and it certainly is a lower dealer fee or combination of dealer fees that you normally see. I'm going to say the average dealer fee, what do you say? There's around $800, $900, $900,000? The traditional dealer fee. I mean to some total. I think over $1,000 at this point.

So when you add all the, see, the dealer fee started out as one fee. And then they started changing names and raising it slowly. And then they got into the multiple dealer fee. And so now that we're in the multiple dealer fee, virtually all dealers in Florida have more than one dealer fee. Some have three or four. And so you have to add them all together. they all have different names so it's hard to figure out what is average but we're going to say

over a thousand dollars so uh del ray motors here was actually pretty low uh three hundred fourteen dollars something like that when you have the two fees together three hundred you know um out-the-door price was eighteen thousand four hundred sixty-four dollars uh he said he should have it back saturday afternoon from schumacher to get the recall fixed and he would call me. I left with a smile on my face. Wrap it up, Frank Minardi, owner of Del Rey Automol past the recall test. For the most part, it would have been better if the repairs were made prior to offering it per sale. Now I'll pause there because I do have some time.

I'll say this. I don't want to fault Del Rey Motors for not having it repaired because I know why he didn't have to repair it. There's no law saying you have to. have to repair for one thing and you get a car in you check it it does have the recalls now if i send it to another dealer to have it fixed they're going to put me at the back of the line there there are a lot of recalls being fixed out there so at a time i use car up for a week or maybe only three or four days or maybe longer i got a car that i've got money invested in i bought the car or traded it in and i'm going to send it to schumacher and i'm his competitor

I'm selling used cars. He's selling used cars. He's not going to put me ahead of his real customers. So he's going to tie my car up. So that's the reason the car dealers are not fixing the cars. Now, the downside of that, what if he misses it? And we've seen many of them who did miss the repair. So this is why I blame Governor Rick Scott, the reason I've been in our legislature.

I blame the Ford Automobile Dealers Association for not passing a law saying you cannot sell a car with a, with a, recall. Take it up to a federal level, too. It should be a federal law, exactly. Pan Blondie could help that. Because the dealers are doing two things. The devious dealers are selling it premeditatedly with a recall,

and the honest dealers are making mistakes. We've seen dealers use them as a bait and switch car. One of the earlier shops we did a couple of years ago, they kept them online, didn't sell the car, but they switched them to another one because the price was so good. So the only way to ensure these cars don't go out is to make the dealer realize that they could go to jail, I mean, or be fine heavily. So he'll be sure, the dealers believe me, that people with the money invested

are going to be sure that all cars are checked for recalls, and the recalls are fixed because he knows there's a heavy fine waiting for that dealer or worse. So, but right now, I hate to say it, Del Rey Alamo probably did what most dealers would do because it's an economic decision they have to make. So there we are. The rest of it, price, Kelly Blue Book, fair purchase price for this model is 14-844. This price was higher than that.

You can't fall to dealer per sold in the car and making all the money. You can. That's what dealers do. And if you don't shop and compare price, you're going to pay more than you should. And it's very difficult to shop and compare. our price on a used car.

Fortunately, we've got a couple of texts here. We do. We have people grading, grading Delray Auto Mall. Yeah, great Del Rey Automol. And we'll come back and give our score. So what's the first grade score? The first one is from Linda in Orlando, and she says, I give them an A-minus. And then the second one is from Jack and Hobes Sound.

It says, good job, Del Rey Mall, B-plus. Wow. So we've got two good grades. And what was the second name? Jack. Jack. Uh-huh. And Linda.

Very good. This is exciting. We'll really get some scores here. So, rest of you out there, and we get some more scores. I don't want to taint your scores. We won't taint your scores with our scores. But please, Texas is 772-497-6530. That's 772-497-6530. And tell us how you score Del Rey Auto Mall on a Mr. Shopping Report. And I'll digress a little bit, as I tend to do sometimes. I'll tell an old war story from an old guy that's been around too long, maybe.

The Del Rey Auto Mall, or Del Rey, yeah, was owned by a guy previous to France. And the guy that owned this years ago was not paying sales tax to the state of Florida. And he was in business for two or three years. And he was selling late-model used cars. He would buy current model cars, new Buick's and Osmobiles, Toyotas, and he was selling hundreds of cars because he was selling amazingly cheap. And it was unbelievable. All the dealers were up for, how can this guy possibly sell these cars? And the answer was, he wasn't charged any by sales tax.

So that's, you know, sales tax could be hundreds of thousands of dollars on a new car. and I was competing back in those days at Stuart Pontiac and I a friend of mine, a very good friend of mine went in and bought a car that he had gotten my best price on from Delray Auto Mall and he beat my price and I'd sold him the car almost at my cost

and I could never figure it out and it was like a six months later that they put him in jail I was going to say right when he was incarcerated anyway I digress We have some more Mr. Shopping Report scores. Yeah, we have one that's a great. Larry M. and Akron says one of your better reports, A. Oh, thank you, Larry.

Wow. This is a great. You know, I do know Larry in Akron. You do? Yeah, I wonder if it's the same guy. I'll ask them after the show. Great, great. This was not a gray, but this is a question.

We don't have a name on it. It says, if the dealer promises new tires, don't sign any papers and wait to proceed with the purchase until you see those new tires on the car. new tires, in quotes, could be synonymous with simple, less worn tires or retreaded tires. Until you see it with your own eyes, don't sign anything. Wow. I'd love to know who that dealer is. Apparently, you have a personal experience, but that's certainly great advice. Takeoffs, you know.

I'm sure there are cheap tires you can buy, and you need to inspect them carefully. But good tip, good advice. And we got those texts coming in so well, and we still got. got some time left. 772-497-65-30. That's 772-497-6530. You can give us a score on the mystery shopping report. We have another one.

Yes, we do. John Neal. Who's watching us on Facebook. Facebook says he gives him an A-minus. From what I've seen doing mystery shopping, for doing mystery shopping, honesty is very hard to find. Thanks, John. And he knows a little bit something about that. Yeah, John is a Facebook friend of mine also.

And Diana, his wife, is also a Facebook friend. And John will be doing. And Diana has already got, she's going to be calling the show one of these weeks, but she's so busy she hasn't been able to do that. And John has done a mystery shopping report, a satellite report on the west coast of Florida. So we'll be hearing from John and Diana. And thank you for that score. And we have another text.

Linda, who is also watching our live Facebook video, gives them a B-plus. Oh, thank you, Linda. I'm so excited. Yes, this is great. This is so good because I always felt like we were just picking on all these dealers or we were giving our scores. Now we have the public scoring. We have another one.

David, who's watching our live Facebook feed, is agreeing with John. It doesn't have a great business agree, more honest than most. Wow. So the John's was a minus. So we'll give that an A-minus. This is very cool. Let's do our own scores, and then we'll wait for some more text. 772-497-6530, if you want to score Del Rey Auto Mall.

Well, I've been influenced by our listeners. I have, too. I was. And it's really their opinion that's important. I was going to do a B-minus just because there is a dealer fee, but I've been persuaded. I'm raising it. I'm going to give them a minus.

Nancy, what do you think? I mean, the Black Widow, are you persuaded? This here was a pretty good mystery shopping report from Delray Auto Mall, and I'm going to give them an A-minus also. And I'm going to tell our listeners that you can go to the 2018 auto issue of the Consumer Report, and you can find the best used cars for under $20,000,

and you can get all the information that you need right there so that you're not taking advantage of. Rick, what do you think? I'm going to actually make a quick suggestion. I think we ought to move the mystery shop a little earlier in our shows from now on so that we can open up to get more audience voting. Might be a good idea. That was Jonathan Canter's idea.

And I'm also going to give an A to the Delray Automall because I think they did a good job. An A. An A. Why, this is. I'm going to start on getting emotional now. Can you see, if you're streaming me live, I have tears, yeah. Because this is one of the best reports we've had.

It's a Democratic report as well. And I'm going to go with an A-minus. I mean, we had the Bill Wallace buy-here, pay-here store. What's the name of it? Easy-pay cars. Easy-pay cars. And Stewart, what was the score we gave them? I think we gave her a C-minus.

No, I'm sorry. I think it was a C-plus or? So the reason I'm emotional is because Del Rey-O-O-O-O-Mol just got the highest score that we've given any dealer. Yes. I think, although Gunther

Volkswagen comes to mind, we may have given a better and that was a new car score, but certainly the best used car score. So congratulations to Del Rey Auto Mall and congratulations to Franz Minardi.

That's M-E-N-A-R-D-Y, Del-E-O-A-R-D-M-A-L-R-A-Mol, they're on U.S-1 and Del Rey. So you used car buyers in South Florida, let me tell you, it's hard to find an honest, ethical, transparent use car dealership. You got one in Del Rey with Franz Menardi, the owner, and James, the salesperson. The lowest grade we got, I think, was a B. B minus. B minus. And this has never happened before. So very low dealer fees. Total honesty about the recall. Pricing was a little higher.

Probably should negotiate a little harder, but car dealers are going to try to make a profit on it. Make your profit up front, not on the dealer fee, not on the hidden fees, and that's what France did. So they're going on our good dealer list. And I want to thank all of our listeners.

We had 24 texts. Wow, 24. It's a new record. Wow, that makes up for it all. Well, the phones were outside. Now let's vote on, let's vote on, true oldies as far as their phone system here.

I'm going to give them an A because these things happen. These things happen. You're going to blame it on Comcast. They happen. It's the world we live. I need a backup. This has happened before. I just want to take a minute and I want to thank Johnny and Jonathan for participating today.

We got five minutes now. And to be, you know, helping us out so much with the radio show. Thank you guys. My own little comment here at the end is www.safercar.gov Folks, go to the NHTSA's website, put in your VIN number, do this for all your family and friends, find out if your car has any open recalls

so you can get them handled. www. www. s-a-f-E-R-C-A-R-C-A-R-G-G. It only takes a few minutes and you'll find out for sure if you have any open recalls and you can get them handled. And here's something even better

that just came out, NHTSA just came out with an app you can download on your smartphone. I forgot about that, yes, yes. And it's called, you can go to your, your app store and just type in airbag recall and you'll have a little icon I don't know if you can see it right here with a little triangular warning yeah and the cool thing about this app is you can scan your license plate and it will automatically translate your license plate

into your VIN number or you can manually input your license plate or you can manually input your VIN number. Now, I had a little problem when I scanned my license plate. I couldn't recognize it. Then I check with some other people who said it did work. So don't get too frustrated if when you scan your license plate, you might have to digitally, manually input the number, and you can always go to the backup of the vent. The reason I like scanning the license plate is because you got 17 digits in your van, and it's too easy to make a mistake. So airbag recall, download it, on your smartphone and scan your license plate and you can scan everybody's license plate scan your friends your kids license plates your wife's license plate it's fun you can be as

we've been doing vins scanning for years but now the public has it I just put the link to the app on our live Facebook feed so if you're watching right there just click on that with your phone and you can download it right now absolutely it's a great way to save lives great way yeah and remember ladies and gentlemen that website that I've been giving you all through show your anonymous feedback.com go there and give us your opinion it's completely anonymous about the show any advice at all that you'd like to share with us again ladies would like to hear your input about the platform that we're building here for women so please be sure to take advantage of that your anonymous feedback.com

you know you could use that app if you wanted to be a good samaritan just walk around parking lots, scan vins, leave a little notes, hey, you got a recall. Scan your Uber driver's license to be sure you don't have any recalls when you're getting into his car. You're fine in the back seat. You know, we're talking about the good dealer, bad dealer list,

that website is just simply good dealer, baddealer, is that right? Gooddealerbaddealist.com? That's correct. www. www.gdielderbaddealerlist.com and you can access that through Earl Stewart on Cars.com. Yeah.

And we have Yes, we have a question, actually, on our Facebook page. Want to know if that app is available on the Google App Store? I believe it is. It is. I am looking it up right now, and I'll post the link. It is. Very good.

Ladies and gentlemen, we've come to an end of another great show, and your participation has been absolutely overwhelming that you took advantage of the text number. We apologize for our phones, but if you want to get even, give Comcast a call. We will be right back. here next week. This is 95.9 and 106.9 FM, the true oldie station.