Earl Stewart on Cars - 09.28.2019 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Palm Beach Toyota

Episode Date: September 28, 2019

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

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

Hi, everybody. This is the live Earl. You were just listening to the recorded Earl. My full name is Earl Stewart. I'm a recovering car dealer. As in kind of a recovering addict sort of a thing. It's a self-deprecating kind of a term I've learned to love because it accurately describes my life. I've been a car dealer since 1968, gosh, 68, it's stuck in my throat.

It's a long time ago. And I used to do business the bad way, the wrong way, the what can you say, bait and switch type of advertising and deceptive sales practices, all the things that we talk about on this show. If you're new to the show, I just want you to know this really is a good show if you drive a car, buy a car, lease, maintain repair. It really is. It is a minefield out there in the world of the consumer. When you're bringing your car into independent repair or car dealerships, the way cars are sold today is the same way cars were sold back in the 50s, 1950s. And that's when I got in the business, 1968. We're frozen in time. I say we, I am a car dealer. In full transparency and disclosure, I still have a car dealership. And I want to make

it perfectly clear that this show is not an infomercial. I am not going to try to sell you a car. I have a car dealership. That's a separate business. Actually, I'm more of a consumer advocate today, and that's what the show is all about. I want to say this as quickly as possible. You make the show, and you make the show by calling the show, and we have various avenues that you can reach us and talk to us, ask us questions, make comments, criticisms. We almost have too many ways to reach us,

but I mean that just kind of tongue-in-cheap, because there can't be too many ways to hear what you have to say. Without you, we don't have a show. Without you, I'm up here talking and Nancy and Stu and Rick, we're yakking. But we want to know what you are curious about and what you maybe have a problem with, even if the problem is us. So, you can call us at 877-9-60-99-60. You can call us on the regular telephone at 877-960-99-60. Write the next to the number down, please. You might not have a question right now or comment, but you will if you hang around for a while, and we're going to be on the air for two hours. So 877-960-960. Text seems to be

the communication of choice, I guess, as technology changes. People like to text, and I do too. I mean, I'd much rather text somebody or receive a text than have to get on the phone and talk. Because with a text, you can stop when you want to. That's right. And you can watch your text. You can read a text when you want to. And you don't have to linger. You can read it fast, read it slow.

So text us at 772-497-65-3-0. That's area code 772-497-6530. And I ask you to write the text number down too. Area code 772-497-6530. And, wait, there's more. Facebook. Yes, Facebook. Facebook.com forward slash hurlunk cars.

We're live and living color right here at True Oldies. And you can see the whole studio and my beautiful co-host, Nancy Stewart, my not-so-beautical, expert. Rick, I'm only kidding, Rick. You are beautiful. And my son's too. He's definitely beautiful. We're all beautiful.

You can't see Jonathan, but he's beautiful, too. So, Facebook.com or slash rolling cars, or you can go to YouTube, you can go to Periscope, you can go to Twitter, and I'm probably leaving something out, and that's why we're here. We also have anonymous feedback. I was leaving that out. Anonymous feedback. We were talking about this before we went on the air, and it's kind of a new dimension and communication because we don't know who you are.

I mean, I just said half seriously, and I wasn't, I was just kidding me. even half serious, that Jonathan could be sending in all the anonymous feedbacks or Nancy. All the mean. Or I could be doing it. We don't know. We don't know who's doing it. So it's kind of cool because it gives you any kind of protection, privacy, whatever you want to call it. Your anonymous Feedback.com.

Your, Y-O-U-R, Anonymous, A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S, feedback. You know how to spell feedback.com. your anonymousfeedback.com and we're getting more and more of those and it's good. I mean if they're phony, Rick and I were just saying even if you get a phony anonymous feedback, it was an interesting

question that other people are interested in that's okay. So there are the avenues for communication without you using those avenues we really don't have ourselves an interesting show at all. Oh and I got one more thing I know I'm going on and on

but I got to re-emphasize our mystery shopping report. We get used to it because we do it every week. We've been doing this for 15 years, but every week we send out an undercover agent to some car dealership in South Florida. It's really cool

and we go in there and pretend to buy a lease a car. We respond to an advertisement or we check to see if they're trying to sell cars with dangerous recalls. We try to see how they treat our mystery shopper because that's how they're going to treat you. and that's probably the way they've already treated you

and maybe you didn't even realize it. Undercover agent mystery shopping report and it will be the second half of the show and we have a list that we compile of recommended dealers and dealers we do not recommend pretty much based on how they treated mystery shoppers and we go back in repeatedly

because if we have a really good shop we follow up just to be sure. With all that said I'm going to introduce my wife Nancy Stewart She's my co-host, and she's been doing this with me for a long time, and Nancy will tell you a little bit about what she's about on the show. Thank you very much. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another fantastic show. I feel the energy this morning, and that energy comes from you, and without you, as they're all stated earlier, we don't have a show. So I send out a special thank you to all of you. Now, as far as what I do on the show, I share a lot of information, a lot of knowledge, but you do the same whenever you give us a call.

And with that said, I extend $50 to the first two new lady callers, and that is your gift for giving us a call. The first two new lady callers, you receive $50. Give us a call tool-free at 877. 960 9960 can I jump in to say why we do this I just because we have men out there that complain about it and I can understand why they're complaining but we got one this morning yeah well good and we'll give him we'll give him an opportunity to speak up but we want parity we want equality and when we started the show there were 100% men calling so we're trying to prime the pump and when a woman here's another woman

call they call and we're pretty much we're very close to 50-50 and we're not quite there yet but we want more women to call so it's an encouragement we're not trying to discriminate against the men we love them in college but we want to have half the people in the world are women and half the people in the world buying cars and repairing cars are women so we'd love to hear their input yeah there's a there's a lot of ladies on the road and uh to uh what earl just said Tina and Nancy can't be the only two females uh the leaders of the PAC to build this platform. And to the gentleman, when it becomes 50-50,

we will no longer extend that $50. So you have that to look forward to. Again, Your AnonymousFeedback.com. We'd love to hear what you have to say on any level. And just a little footnote of nancy at earl-oncars.com. I've received a lot of text messages and emails. week so you can take advantage of that also again that number is 877 960 9960 and you can text us at 772-497-6530 we're going to go to our first

female caller and she's a regular good morning Tina good morning how are you guys doing hey good morning I watched a really interesting video from Scotty Kilmer I don't always totally agree with everything he says, but this one kind of got my attention. This is especially valid for people that are shopping for a used car. And he was talking about the flood car problem because in Houston where he lives, they had horrible problems with flooding just recently.

And as summer continues and hurricane season continues, we're going to see more flood cars. I know it sounds like a mantra along with the airbag thing. But he said that if you are shopping for a used car, when you start the car up, all of the auxiliary lights come on momentarily. And if you start the car up and the check engine light does not come on, walk away from that vehicle. Because what some of these unscrupulous use car dealers will do is they will deliberately disable or cover over the check engine light. And a flood car generally will keep the check engine light on for obvious reasons.

But even if you turn the key on to the auxiliary position, if the check engine, engine lights not on, walk away from it. He says it's a disaster waiting to happen. Wow. That's a great tip. Is that right, Rick? It's that easy to disable it, and you can just turn it off. Well, it's basically they take the combination meter apart and either remove the bulb or the circuit to it.

Taking the bulb out is the easiest thing. Oh, wow. Well, that's a great tip, Tina. Thank you very much. That's 100% correct. Yep. And you know there was over 10,000 flood cars declared in Houston in just this month from that tropical depression they got.

So there's a big flood. I didn't know that time. Yeah, if Houston got hit again, you know, after, I think it was Maria a couple of years ago. Exactly. Yeah. They got hit so bad there were cars and city buses floating. Floating. They were literally being moved around by the water.

Yeah. It was horrible. Yeah, they'll be pouring in, that's for sure, to the state of Florida. Literally. No pun intended. Pretty good. Well, thank you, Gina. There's also a link that I sent you to Jalapnik.

Jalapnick had a good article just recently about what you need to do to outsmart a used car dealer. So I just thought it was interesting. I mean, it's too long you discussed right now. It would just take too much time, but it would be interesting to go to some of the bullet points and maybe go over them as the show progresses. Yeah. Yeah, it's minefield out there, and the more informed you are, the better chance you have, especially in mind and people with the used car.

I give out this general tip whether you're talking used car or potential flood cars is just find a good technician somewhere and independent of the place that you might be buying that vehicle and just have them check it out. A good technician

will be able to tell you in probably about 15, 20 minutes of inspection whether or not the cars had water damage, flood damage. Yeah, if he's been, Specifically looking for that right off, you could do it that quickly. Yeah. Yeah, here's the catch, though.

I remember one time a few years ago when I was looking to buy a used car, that the seller, he said, well, you only get the car for 15 minutes. And he wouldn't let somebody on the lot. So if somebody that's selling you a car tries to pull that on you, then you know not to buy a car from them at all. Exactly. Because of the conditions that you're under for trying to look at that used car. Yeah, that's a red flag right there.

only got 15 minutes to look at the car right maybe 15 minutes to drive over to my mechanic well thanks thanks so much Tina you are a sterling leader a female caller and you encourage

others people hear you and the other women call and we can't thank you enough for being a regular caller at Earl Stewart on Cars thank you and ladies ladies join the tribe there you go we're friendly

thank you Tina we look forward to hearing from you again next week and to what Tina said and Earl said you know with the power of the internet today there are less women men consumers getting taken advantage of and as far as a vehicle used you can you know take it for a drive for 15 minutes or stare at it for 15 minutes I think that's few and far between as again as I said the power of the internet and us here at Earl Stewart on Cars. We share a lot of information with you. So with all of that said, you are an important part of the show.

Give us a call. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us 772-497-2-497-6530. Now back to the recovering card dealer. Tina's comment is a perfect example of why you are so important. Now, she calls every week, and she comes up with some good things. But, and I have to say, I've been in the business a long time. I've heard most of it before. I never thought.

I mean, shame on me. I never thought about taking the bulb out of the Czech engine light. I mean, it's so simple, so easy to do. You wish you had thought of that. When I was evil. But you have, just think about it. You have a car, and you're thinking about selling it. Or maybe you're not, just you have a car.

And check engine light comes on. So you go over to AutoZone, and you get there, free tool and they plug it in and they say, you have a serious problem here and this is probably going to cost you a couple thousand dollars, you're going to have to get it fixed. You say, okay, you go home, you unscrew the bulb, you go into your favorite car dealer and you say, I want to trade this in. He cranks it up, check engine light doesn't come on anymore because the bulb's gone. So he gets another couple thousand dollars per his trade in.

So something as simple as that. Now, my question to Rick, how do you check to see if someone's taken the bulb out of the check engine light on the car you're looking at? Just like Tina said, all cars, all the bulbs on the combination of the idiot lights, all have what's called a bulb check. When you turn the key to the on position for the first couple seconds, all those lights should come on. and then they'll go back off.

I forgot. And that's simply to test the bulb to show you, hey, these are working. Now we're turning them back off. If they come on again, there's a problem. I can't believe. I've been starting cars for a long time. And when all those lights came on, it never occurred to me. That one got past you.

I thought it was just because the manufacturers were cheap and they wanted to annoy you and they didn't care. That's why they did. But there's a good reason for that. It's also because maybe. It's just to annoy you. Well, maybe one of those votes has just burned out from age, your time. Yeah.

It's amazing. Now, I have something else in the arsenal. I might even do a blog article. There you go. There you go. Fantastic. I'm going to jump on this one. We're talking about the engine light.

This is from Heather, and I received this at Nancy at Erlund Cars. And Heather and her mom took their car over to Napleton Hyundai. Bob, we know you're holding, and we'll be right with you. Thank you very much for. This will take a minute. So they took their car over to Napleton Hyundai because the engine light was on. And the, well, good people at Napleton Hyundai asked them to leave their vehicle overnight. And with that said, they got a phone call the next morning with a laundry of lists,

a laundry list of items that was wrong with that car that totaled $4,000. Wow. So her, well, footnote here to us. stay away from Napleton Hyundai and then we have to say this is hearsay this is a Heather hearsay call

and she says it was Naples on day but we don't want to be unfair you know when we do a mystery shopping report we endorse it because we're the ones that are instigating it but we can certify it we go I want to go on record of saying that for any of the callers we will pass

along your comments but we have to put in it is hearsay third party Neupleton Honda And with that said, Heather, let's confirm this. Give me a call, 561-386-6-6-4-9-8. I'd like to confirm that information that you just passed along to me. We're going to go to Bob, who's holding in Palm Beach Gardens. Good morning, Bob.

How are you? I wanted to thank Earl that four years ago, I was living on a small island, and I had a raft floor with the steering on the opposite side. the manual was in Japanese, and he said he would look into it and see what he can do. And lo and behold, about a bunch later, I got the manual. Wow. You know, it's shame about being an old guy like me. I forgot about that.

They kind of rings a bell. And I really appreciate your calling me, Bob, because all such an exciting thing of happened in my life that I need to be reminded of, but that is interesting. Do you mind telling us which island you're on? I was on Maserat I tried off Antigar With the volcano

Yeah That's it The volcano island Are you back in But I'm back here now Back on the mainland Well that's great Well thanks for the call

And I'll be in your And I'll be in your showroom This Thursday looking Wonderful Oh great both Well thank you very much Great call I'll be darned

I kind of remember that Bye bye bye bye That rings a bell for sure You have a call toll free At 877 960-99-60 or you can text us 772-497-6-5-30. Well, we need to talk a little bit about mystery shopping reports and cyberstops, too.

We talked to introduce Nancy, and you can introduce yourself. Well, about 10 years ago, I thought that we would run out of subjects to mystery shop, and it just never ends. So there's a little bit of stress every week when trying to figure out, number one, what are we going to investigate? Lately, it's been Takata Airbag recalls. Yeah, we've got anonymous feedback. said we'd overdone that, and I reluctantly confessed, I think we have overdone a little bit,

but it's just a passion that we have for it. But we don't want to bore our audience. No, I think it's very important. So it's okay. I think if we spice it up with some other topics here and there. But we never run out of material, whether it's Takata Airbag recalls, or if it's advertising or anything else that catches our eye during the week. But it's a lot of fun, and it's really informative of them, because we're really getting the heart of it. It's not our opinion. We're not speculating. We're getting firsthand reports of what's going on in car dealerships all over Florida. And eventually, I'd like to see if we can get Agent Thunder doing some more long-distance things. If long-time listeners to the show, remember Agent X was our long-time

veteran mystery shopper, and we sent him everywhere. And he went up to Pensacola and did a dealership up there right near the Alabama, Florida border. And he was over on the West Coast, Miami, Homestead, you name it so I got a I got an email from a recommendation for a shocking report in Miami for a Chevrolet dealer and they sent me oh they put it on ain't gonna happen dot com and it was one of the worst things I've ever seen and we that's a long ways but we'll put them on the checklist we might do it do we have a caller we do Samantha's calling good morning Samantha from Port St. Luzig Hey there.

Good morning, Samantha. Samantha, did we lose you? I apologize if we did. I was kind of hoping we were on a roll here with the phones. We've had chronic problems with our phones. If we hung up on you inadvertently, we apologize. If you'll call back, we will stop immediately and take your call. Samantha and Port St. Lucie, our apologies, but please call back.

Yeah, going back on the mystery shopping reports, If we get tips from the listeners, that's great. I mean, that makes it a lot easier for me, at least to find a target. And if something like really horrendous happens somewhere, let us know, just, you know, text us on the text line or email us at Stu at Erloncars.com. Just get in touch with us, and we'll check out that dealer. So this week, it's pretty much as a doozy. I don't want to tease it too much.

Excuse me, Stu. Samantha, are you with us again? Okay, she hung up, there was a disconnect, and then a, okay, go ahead, Steve. I'm here. Hey, Samara, Samantha. Oh, thanks for calling back. Good morning. Yes, good morning.

How are you doing today? We're well, thank you. Okay, my question is, what is the average time that you should wait to change your windshield wiper fluid? Well, that's a good question. And it runs out. That's how I do it. Yeah, exactly. Our expert here, Rick, you see them all the time.

Answer this. What is the average time? And I know it varies because some people are meticulous about their wind chills. Others aren't so meticulous. But what, 30-day supply? I've actually never changed washer fluid. It's simply when the washer fluid gets low, we simply add to it. Some folks use a lot of washer fluid.

throughout there as they're driving. Other folks hardly ever use the washers. I love washers. I'm always washing. I hate having bugs and spots on the screen. That's a topic that's near and dear to my heart. I refill. I mean it.

I'm very passionate about it. Maybe it's my age or the fact that, you know, I do have to be able to see what's in front of me. But at any rate, I faithfully refill my, windshield wiper fluid well often and it has a whole lot to do also with where you live i think if you're in an area a neighborhood where there's always construction uh you know without going through the laundry list of things that you need to pay attention to uh it that's all dependent on how often you fill your window washer fluid and also i have a little recipe i put together and

And it works a little more efficiently than some windshield wiper fluids that you can purchase. Okay. And that's it. What's the recipe? Yes. Egg whites, confection of sugar, inquiring minds want to know. Potato juice. To be continued.

I put my greens plus in there. Do you really? I run out all the time. We have so much salt in the air here. So, like, every day, I mean, I start pretty much every trip with a good wash of the windshield. and I run out, I think, more than the average bear does. Yeah, well, you'll try to figure this out. I keep my car in a garage, and so does Earl.

And I use an enormous amount of windshield wiper fluid. You're a clean free. I just had a great idea. You ready, Samantha? Listen to this. Your call prompted one of my ingenious revelations. I knew something's spinning around in there. I hope all the manufacturers are listening because what we do is we take the condensate

from the air conditioner. and we run it into... And replenish it. And you have a little pod in there that if you want to spice it up with a little detergent kind of a thing, just a little bit. But the auto manufacturer comes up with

you have an endless washer fluid and you never have to take the time to replace it. And when you get a fuel cell vehicle, the exhaust can replenish the reservoir too. Exactly. What do you think about that, Samantha? Pretty genius. Thank you. And I'll share...

I'm going to split the profits on. This will be the Samantha Earl on top of the $50. There you go. You have all my information. I'll be looking forward to it. And don't, we need your contact information because you get $50 for calling in. So we'll have that.

And you and I'll be partners on this. Yeah, best phone call of my life. You're rich. As of today, your life has been changed. Thank you so much, guys. I appreciate it. Stay on the line so that we can get your contact. And also, for the record, PSI, those tires, you know,

your pressure and your tires is so important to check and that's another well I'm just a fanatic as far as that's concerned so Samantha thank you for entertaining us and thank you for calling Earl Stewart on cars thank you guys I hope you enjoy your weekend thanks you too you're welcome you know I wasn't kidding about that no I that's a really good idea I mean stop and think about what is more I'm one of these I'm a not about I always have something on my and I spray the water and then I run out then of course I don't have to fill mine Nancy will fill it for me or I can take it into my dealers with a special recipe I mean I'm a but the average person has to interrupt their day and either that they run out and they get a bug on there

did you clarify what was on your windshield well just everything from from time to time we know the salt's always on there speed that you drive but hey I'm just saying Okay. Now, mine's really annoying. I should patent that quickly because everybody's going to be stealing this. You just said it publicly to like tens of thousands of people. Yeah, I know, but nobody will act on it. The only one of got that.

Samantha and I need to move quickly on this. That's right. Yeah, what's really annoying is I got a little, as soon as I start my car when I'm low, it's right there, low white, blocks all the other cool stuff in my car says low washer fluid. I got to get it changed. Yeah. We got some text piling up. Okay, let's do it.

All right, the first batch came on our Your Anonymous Feedback.com website. first one says, and by the way, like we said, we don't want to make this a Toyota commercial, so I'm going to try and make this a little bit more generic when I read it. So I'm going to edit it slightly, but the gist will still be there. Good morning, Earl and Stu. I have a question about financing. Various manufacturers are currently advertising 0% interest on new various models. Is it true, is it a true 0% or there are monthly administration fees

that make the loan an actual 2% to 4% car loan after adding up the loan fees? The answer is, no, it is a legitimate 0%. All the manufacturers offer a legitimate 0%. That's not to say there aren't possibly small loan origination fees or dock fees like state dock stamps and things like that, which could effectively raise it, but it wouldn't be raising it to an actual 2 to 4% interest rate. Those are really good deals if they're coming from the manufacturer. If a dealer is offering 0%, you know, be wary. It might not be legit.

Exactly. Yep. The next one, now this one is about Toyotas, but it could be, this is definitely not a commercial. It says, good morning, my friends. I have a question about the push button to start Toyotas. If I accidentally left my car running, could a passer-by break into my vehicle by breaking the window and then drive away, even though they don't have the fob on them? I'm going to say, yeah, probably, but Rick might say there could be an impact thing. He's looking at me.

Yes, they could. Okay. The only thing is that when they shut the car off, they wouldn't be able to read. restart it. Okay. So for a quick joy ride, watch out. You probably shouldn't leave your car running anyway that long. Right. But it also is a nice thing. You know, carjacking is actually a thing that happens in even here in the U.S. quite often. So keep that smart key in your pocket. And if someone wants your car, let them have it. Because once they shut it off, they can't move it again. Yeah. Don't leave it in the cup holder. Exactly. Okay. Moving along. Question for Earl or

Stu, how many keys does the new corolla come with? I'm hearing rumors that Toyota is no longer giving two keys with a new car and trying to extort the car buyer into buying a wildly expensive second key. To answer that, first of all, yes, they are wildly expensive, the second keys. And the other, your first part of the question is, on the new corollas, yeah, they are coming with a key with a built-in remote and one, just a standard key without a remote. And I guess in most cases that might be fine, but if you have somebody with two drivers on the same car, yeah, you're going to have to buy an extra key. And we don't know if this is a conspiracy or if this was just something they overlooked, but that's a real thing. And it's true.

It's not just to other manufacturers are going that route. It's probably to get cost down. But it is a shame because for the last hundred and something years, cars came with two keys. So is a cost saver? Well, you get keys, but you don't have the remote thing. So you can manually open the door. then the second driver loses a lot of convenience. The good news is that Ace Hardware and a lot of other companies are building,

making remote keys that are far less than your dealer will charge you. The dealers, by the way, pay too much to the manufacturers. Manufacturers are making a lot of money selling these remote keys to the dealers at wholesale. And, of course, the dealers mark them up to make a profit from you. And consequently, people are paying anywhere from $200 to what, $700 or $800. Your key for your Lexus is probably, you know, in that range. Yeah. So you shop around and you'll be surprised if the number, what is some of the other?

I mentioned Ace Hardware because that stuck with me, but what other sort of places can you buy remotes? For the remote keys, I think you'd wind up having to go to an automotive store. Home Depot, I'm pretty certain. Only would have the basic key. And I don't think they can even do a chip key. actually some of them I think can but they'll basically they'll clone the chip keys

Ace Hardware is not automotive and so Right they're one of the few that I believe can do a remote Amazon no that's right Amazon yeah Jonathan You know how can we forget Amazon Amazon has everything So just go ahead and be careful

You got to get a key that's programmed to your car Whereas going to like an Ace hardware What they'll do is they'll clone the remote you have So it will work on the same frequency as a new one. So you have to pay somebody to program it for you? And what is the approximate time it takes to program a key?

Programming key in 15, 20 minutes, maybe 30, depending on the car. Is that right? Yeah. What is the procedure that take 30 minutes? Because the computer systems now are designed where the computer actually has to go through a certain process. And then it, for no reason really in particular that I know of, it makes you sit, and wait for 16 minutes on a Toyota with that computer connected into the car.

And the manufacturers just decided, we're gonna put this timer in there to where you have to sit and allow it to do it. I think their excuses, that way if a car thief is trying to illegally program a key to your car, they can't do it in the 60 seconds and be gone. It has 16 minutes it has to go through with the car's computer. The technician make money because while he's waiting,

he's getting paid. Yep. Well, you're being paid for the job, however much you're paid, because you're on commission. But that's a flat rate. Right. So a flat rate is how much for programming a key?

A half hour? We get a half hour just to program just the key and then a half hour for the remote. Yeah. Very interesting. So it is a security feature is what they say, or is it just, is that published anywhere? No, it's not published anywhere.

It's more my belief is they're trying to make it to where you can charge the full 30 minutes. The car will not simply accept it in that quick 30-second thing. It has to be there for several minutes. I think there's got to be some mechanism for to identify the location where this programming is going on. The IP address of the dealership. If it's being done in the dealership, they should be able to do it and as fast as your Internet speed will allow.

I would think so, do it. I don't know. All right. We got a question for Rick. Get ready. I recently became aware that we have a cockroach infestation in our garage. This came in on your anonymous. feedback.com. Although I don't park my car inside the garage, I notice a tiny roach was walking

on the inside of my Toyota Corolla. What I'm wondering is, what is the most likely way this roach was able to get inside my car? I never leave my windows down and I never eat in my car. That's a great question. Never had that one before. Well, before Rick answers, I will say this. Roaches can get into anything no matter what. They'll get into a hermetically steel, sealed steel barks. I don't know how they do it. Anyway, roaches actually are the true masters of the

world. They actually don't crawl into anything. They simply teleport. They have quantum mechanics and they can teleport it. So yeah, the roach simply teleported in, but in truth there are so many different air vents and openings into your car that any animal

could find its way in there. My advice, and this is my best advice I have for you, I've done it on a couple of cars when my own vehicle got infested with ants because I'd parked underneath a tree. Raid fumigators, the dry smoke fumigators, they come with a little plastic cup, you put about a quarter inch of water in it, then drop the canister in it, put these in your car, close the doors up, let us sit for about four or five hours, take them back out, open the

windows, let it air out for a little while because that stuff is hard on the lungs. and you will not have any bugs left in your car and if there's a potential for any other creepy crawlies, they will have left or died. Exactly. I think keeping boxes out of your vehicle is a big help. Absolutely. Boy, I'll tell you what, this is major food for roaches.

Yeah, like Robert Boxes, they have the roach eggs in there too, so be careful with that. It's the glue they're actually going after. Yeah, they love the glue. Just like mice, love the. soil on the wiring in your vehicle? Yep. There you go. If water can get in your car, roaches can't.

Okay, this is the question I alluded to earlier. It came on your anonymous feedback.com says, can you please donate $50 to Big Dog Ranch Rescue for every caller regardless of gender? Thanks, Earl. Well, you know, we do donate a lot to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And we don't want people calling the show because they want

to help the dogs. We want people calling the show because they want to answer, and that's what the show is. Every time you buy my book, Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer, all the proceeds of that book, what is it,

20 bucks or whatever it is. 1995. Goes to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And thank you because you're a dog lover out there. We're very big supporters of Big Dog We just gave Big Dog Ranch Rescue a Highlander. And Big Dog Ranch Rescue took the Highlander.

It was the 1970, or, it was a 2000. 2003. It's amazing when you're an old guy, you just go to 19. 19. I did that last time. Yeah, 2003. And we shipped it over there to drive around the island, Marsh Harbor, and pick up dogs. So we love Big Dog Ranch Rescue by the book.

And that's a way we donate. And that way you get yourself a book on how not to get a problem by your car dealer, plus you help the doggies. 100% Amazon. Or you can go to Earlsbook.com. We're very connected with Big Dolman. That car went to the Bahamas, by the way. Yeah.

You didn't mention the Bahamas part. You're a little caught on the date. But yeah, it did it go to the Bahamas. I said Marsh Harbor. Ah, yeah. So, yeah, and just to reiterate, too, this will end. We will stop paying female callers, $50 in the future when half and half or when we're, Yeah, it's just an incentive.

As I stated earlier to, you know, our listeners, that day will, you know, come. And I think it will come soon because we are really building that platform. Okay, the next one is a little unusual, but I'm going to do my best to read it coherently. Earl, exclamation, boy, I need to share with you something I heard, John Cadigan from autoexpert.com, say in his video the other day regarding Chief Chrysler. Those seven-slot crap heap still compliant with Hannibal Lecter Retail Code of Ethics. If you're thinking of buying a Jeep, see a doctor's stat because your medication is no longer effective. That is not a Jeep fan.

Yeah, people get passionate about their vehicles. I really have mixed motions about Jeep because consumer report pants, and you heard me say this many times, they have high repair costs, they have safety issues. maintenance issues but they are so sexy that people love them and don't take that is just the only reason

because if you have a great demand relatively to supply the resale value goes up so normally when you have a junkie vehicle the depreciation is great and you lose money after you buy it if you buy a Jeep other than the insurance cost and the repair costs and the maintenance cost

which are considerable your resale value is very good in a Jeep and plus you enjoy it and you see people in jeeps they're all smiling they're having fun they're having more fun than I am I see them on the road and I go

why can't I have that life but as a purest I agree it is not a good vehicle it's like a mindset yeah when I go to the beach and my toy to Avalon I feel like an old man the guy pulls up the Jeep and I go I should have that car

yeah he's not really having a good time why is he driving a Jeep But on a more serious note, ironically, yesterday, a woman came up to me, and she was telling me that she had just purchased her Jeep, and you could just see the look in her eyes and the passion. And this is a cult, you know. She's going to climb a mountain. I said to her calmly, how long have you been driving a Jeep? And she says, oh, she's, I've been driving a Jeep for probably 20 years. And she said, I just love them.

She says, you know, she says, I have so many problems with it. my Jeep. She said, right now, she says, I drove off the lot and I've been on the road for an hour and I can't roll my window up or down. So I go over to the dealership and they said, oh, that happens all the time. And they said, do you want to leave it? And she said, no, I just bought this Jeep. She says, I want to go out and enjoy it. So my emphasis is on the look on her face and the passion in her eyes. And I said to her, are you planning a trip to the Grand Canyon? And she says, what do you mean? I says, well, it just simply puts you in that mindset, you know, as Stu alluded to when he was going to the beach.

I slip into fantasy when I see those things. I want to get a German Shepherd and put it in the passenger seat and drive to the Grand Canyon. That's what I picture, right? So being honest. Okay, the next one. Here's a good one. Okay, hello, I know you all say dealer installed accessories are overpriced. I want mudguards on my new car.

Is it better to buy the car without them, buy the mudguards, and then have the dealer install them or buy the car and negotiate the price? Thank you. Yeah, buy them on Amazon and check the ratings. The reason I love Amazon so much is it's kind of like consumer reports and a place to buy at the same time. You can check the price. You can check the ratings. And if you have a four and a half star, you can read the individual ratings. And Amazon verifies these as legitimate because you have to buy a price.

product. So, yeah, buy your mud flaps and then take them in and have something put them on for you, Rick. Go find an independent mechanic. Yeah. And I guarantee that he'll charge you half of what the dealership will. Oh, yeah. Exactly. All right, do you want to keep

going? You're fired, Rick. Okay. I'm going to go start a new business where all I do is inspect flood cars. I can make a fortune doing that. Well, Rick Kearney's Mudguard Emporium. All right, we'll keep going here then.

Hello, Earl Stewart. My name is Miguel. My wife and I are currently trying to purchase a vehicle. Actually, we're going to try and purchase two vehicles, both new. This actually should be for Nancy, I think. It says, I'm having trouble using the out-the-door affidavit. Dealerships are refusing to even look at it or even fill it out. Our carbine experience has become very stressful.

We've been trying for about a year now. What advice can you give us to help us out? we used to have we also used the Costco program but it seems to be very restrictive and we're unable to find a decent price yet what are we doing wrong please advise thanks did you say Miguel that's Miguel yeah Miguel you know for me instantly a red flag just went up and you know if if I can't get that salesperson or the manager to sign that affidavit I would just just have, there's so many car dealers here in the state of Florida in Palm Beach County. Well, we don't know where he's texting.

And I would definitely put my feelers out and check that just a little further and attempt to use that out the door. Well, I'm glad you text it because we haven't. This is the first response we've had about someone attempting to do it. The area code is coming from Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. you, I would say, seriously, on this out-the-door price affidavit.com, I would always ask for a manager and as high up the ladder as you can get. If you're in a smaller dealership, you might be able to find the owner. But it would be interesting to me to hear anybody that would try this

out-the-door price affidavit and have the refusal if you went to someone in charge. And if you do or if you refused, ask them why they would refuse to do it. And that would be an interesting conversation. That's a good technique that you use for everything. Ask why no matter what answer you get. And eventually you'll get to the right answer. That's a Japanese thing. Why?

It's a great idea. You ask why four times, I think. Four times or five times. We can't sign that. Why? And you know something, it eliminates these hidden fees. It eliminates all of the dealer. installed accessory that they get away with, and it's just a sure-fired way of you getting the

out-the-door price, and there is no reason at all that they wouldn't sign the affidavit. Well, there is a reason why they won't sign it, because they're not going to give you that price. Well, not up front, but later on, like this is what happens. You negotiate, you finally walk away from the deal, you get your car, and you get tackled by the sales manager, and then they finally give you what you want. Now you can download this out-the-door price affidavit at earluncars.com. It's on the web page there.

Or you can just go to www. Out-the-door price affidavit.com. Out-the-door price affidavit.com. Download it, print it out, and it tells you something. You learn something when they say no. And then you know they're not going to sell you the price car at that price. And you say, okay, that tells me that you're not going to sell me the car at that price. So just please tell me, what is the price you're going to sell me the car for?

That's all you're looking for, the price. It's amazing that in the 21st century, we have to argue with people, car dealers, to tell us what the price is. They don't want to tell you. And isn't it telling that you would get a response from a manager? You know, I can understand a salesperson, but isn't that telling from a manager that he would look at you and say, I'm sorry, we can't sign that affidavit? So buyer beware is a minefield out there. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530.

We're going to go to Russell, who's holding in Lake Worth. Good morning, Russell. Good morning. My fiancé is a big fan to your show, and she turned me on to this, and here I am this morning. Well, thank you. You're also, so you have at least one. once. And I just had a strange thing happen to me. I bought a 2017 Kia Sedona minivan

at Rick Case Kia, you know, has a basic warranty of 60,000 miles, and an overall warranty of 200,000 miles. And my blind spot detection system went out. And the short version of the story is I just had like a scratch, literally like a scratch on the side of my car. And they denied the repair of the blind spot detection system based on physical damage and I brought it to two or three dealers I escalated it to Kia and Kia said well it's just in between you and the dealers but I just can't believe Rick case and I bought a $42,000 vehicle here you know and the repairs turning out with a private I'm not you know I took it out of his dealership also disgusted uh the module is even located near where the scratches

It's almost like two feet away. Anyway, the bottom line is they won't honor the warranty. So I just want to ask, like, why would a dealer create so much bad will with a good customer who speaks to a lot of people. And now what I'm going to do is speak bad about the Kia brand to people. They don't honor their warranty. Sure. You know, don't buy a Kia. I mean, I'm a businessman.

I don't understand this logic. Yeah, I'm surprised a little bit because I've heard relatively good things about the Rick Case dealerships. I think Rick Case's problem is he's so big. And by the way, it's a husband and wife team. I can't think of his wife's first name, but Mr. and Mrs. Case are kind of co-owners of a lot of dealerships. I think they're so big that they really can't get into the details like this. what I normally recommend when someone is having a warranty problem on a new vehicle with a dealer that they go to a different dealership you need to try to find a dealer that is concerned about you

as a customer and will sing your praises to the manufacturer if a dealer goes to bat for you with Kia a Kia dealer and you've got a better chance the other thing have you gone on the 800 number directly to Kia and talked about it. That way it does get transferred to somebody in the dealership at a higher level than you've probably been talking. Yes, I did.

I did. I made that call. I got a case number. And I went to several different dealers. And they all said the same thing because there's physical damage on your car. They say it doesn't know, no matter how slight it is, they won't cover it. That's their blanket policy.

Well, you've certainly spread the word about Kia, and to me that's a totally nonsensical reason. They should have a technician look at the damage, and if the technician said this may have caused the problem with your blindside not functioning, or you could have someone say that based on the small amount of this damage, there's no chance that it could have caused a problem. It should be covered under warranty. The manufacturer is supposed to rely on the dealer. If they don't want to rely on the dealer, they're a specialist in the field. All manufacturers have specialists that work under the manufacturer directly,

and they go into the dealerships to confer with the technicians in the dealership. But in this case here, you're just being Stonewall. They don't even want to talk to you. Rick is a technician specializing in Toyota's. if you have a scratch on your, was it your side view mirror? It's actually a scratch on the left rear panel. Left rear panel.

Does it make sense? I know you can't see it, Rick, but it is possible that it's so slight it couldn't possibly be a problem. Unless it was a severe impact that actually damaged the sensor or changed its mounting, it damaged the

metal where it's mounted to, I can't see any reason not to cover that. under warranty. And as a technician, I would be kind of angry because I can make good money replacing that under warranty. That's very unusual. I'm surprised that Kia would do that. You know, Kia, I read recently, they're having some financial problems and pretty serious. Wall Street's talking about Kia's survivability. And it may be that they have just clamped down on all warranty claims, and if that's the case, shame on them, this might even merit a lawsuit.

I know you don't want to go to that trouble to hire an attorney on something like this because you'd pay the attorney more than what it would benefit you. But I just happen to realize that this may be a trend with Kia now. They may be having to tighten the purse strings a little bit. I know. What the most amazing to me is, you know, the ripple effect of one and a happy customer telling, like, I have a big fear of influence. I probably know, you know, a couple hundred people.

And I don't think they realize the impact of, like, one really unhappy customer. Well, one unhappy customer is talking to 20,000 listeners at Erlon Cars. And then we also have Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. And a lot of people out there are hearing this comment about Kia manufacturer and dealers being unfair and the way they repair their cars under warranty, so they've already cost themselves far more than they would have paid to fix your car for you the way they should have.

Yeah, okay, well, thank you very much for your opinion. I appreciate it. Thank you, Russell. Call again, please. Yeah, Russell, thank you so much, and thank your fiancé for turning you on to us. It's amazing what happens from word of mouth. Yeah, that's true. It can be pretty destructive.

Give us a call tool-free at 877-960. 9960 or you can text us at 772-4976530 I think we're going to go to Rick he is letting me know he's got some YouTube's over there I've actually got a couple of good ones here and the one that I'm kind of liking Ernesto Ortega from YouTube is asking good morning any truth to the color of the car affecting the price to buy or sell it example in insurance some colors cost more to insure like black and red thank you and I love the show I didn't know that I do know that you know some like the the the two process like that pearlized paint that you see in a lot of cars when you buy the car that's a premium that you pay for that for the extra paint I'm I didn't know that

red and black got that yeah yeah no I I think colors are something people don't think about when you buy a car you want a car this is probably your favorite color but you don't think in terms of the ramifications down the line five years later when you trade that car in. So if you buy yourself a purple car. A purple Mercedes, you might have a problem. This is a true story. Listen, first of all, I want to caveat, I'm a good dad.

I was driving my daughter home yesterday, and she sees this car in this, I'm sorry, I'm just going to say, God-awful burgundy color, and she says, oh, I love that red car. And I go, you mean no-sale red? And she looked at me like I had two heads, and that's an industry term. So what they're saying is to what your point is. There are colors that have a broad appeal. So if you notice on the road today, pretty much every car you see out there is white or silver. I mean, there's other colors, but that's the preponderance.

So if a dealer is looking to give you a trade in value or purchase a car, he wants one that has the biggest audience. So you'll get more money in your trade-in for these common colors versus something that was unique to, like Nancy or your shirt, beautiful color blue, maybe not so much on a car for resale value. Now, if you don't care about that so much, get the color that you. you like but it does affect the value of the car exactly the depreciation of purchasing a vehicle and driving it off the lot period is a little well it's it's more than you think it is but then you throw in a color that as Earl stated you know or a purple car or you know a lime green and there's a big depreciation when you go to turn that car in we are going to go to Jim, who's giving us a call from Lake Worth.

Good morning, Jim. Good morning. What do we do for you? Well, I have a couple of, one question and a comment for her, and then one comment for Rick. But I want to see you ever heard of this before. I was dealing a while back with Delray Toyota. I did, like, three cars with them.

And they were leased. And when I handed in the first car, my fault, actually, were going through with it. He hit me with this. I got to cover the car that I'm handing in until it gets to his final destination. And sure enough, a couple of months later, I got a bill for $175 to fix a scratch on a bumper,

but I got it back from the dealer, so I was good that way. But did you ever hear something like that? Cover the cost of the car back to the leasing company? Well, yeah, wherever the final destination is, yeah, I maybe sign a form saying I would extend my insurance on it until it got to where it was going. And it never happened again. I mean, when I went to them on the next car, I don't know,

it was just some cute thing they thought up or type of Toyota. I think it's something cute they thought up. You say this Delray Toyota? Yeah. How much was it? $135. What the gentleman just said before about customers, no loyalty in that?

I had to recall with them. Did they want cash? No, no, I had three cars with them. And then the last time, I had a question on service, never responded. I wanted a business manager just on the phone. Never responded. I finally walked away and never got a call. So, like the gentleman just before, I don't know, some deal was just amazing.

I don't bother the guy that gives them multiple business. Well, you're only required to return a lease car to the dealership, and the dealership makes the arrangements with the leasing company to return it to them. Sometimes the leasing company actually will go to your home, and, I mean, there are variations of that, but I have never heard of a dealership charging a leasing customer to transport the car from the dealership to the leasing company. They have this disposition fee, but that's not the same. Correction, they didn't charge me, but it cost me money because I had to extend my insurance on that car, which was no longer mine. Oh, I see what you're saying. I got it. Yeah.

That, I haven't heard of that either. Once you turn the car in, your insurance lapses, and once you have the dealership except the car back, the car now officially belongs to the leasing company. You still have to contact your insurance company and let them know that you've returned it to the dealer. Yeah. Yeah, well, that's normally what I did, but this was something that hit me by surprise, and I shouldn't even assign it, but, yeah, I just figured I call you to put out a warning to other people who have to try to do it. Don't sign it. Well, thanks, Jim.

That's a very good advice. Turning in lease cars can be hazardous to your wallet, and you need to be sure about everything they say it has to be fixed and look at the tires. and the interior, the outside, and there should be a lease checklist that you would agree with. And I always recommend that you take pictures of your car inside and outside. Oh, I know. Yeah.

My cause, I'm a fanatic. It's a lease car, but I take care of it like it's my car. So I get back, and it's very low mileage. They love me. But the next thing, I wanted to make a comment to you and should give yourself a pat on the back. I'd moved down the street, and I dealt with GMC, a Buick dealer, and I wound up to have a hell of a nice deal on the terrain, and I liked it so much.

I'm now sitting in my third one, but I had a bad thing happen with the end of the lease fee on the second car, and when I went in the next time to get my next car, which I have now, I wanted to make sure to say that I dealt with, I wouldn't deal with again. I did, sure, and there were a lot of new faces. And when I sat down to talk over the deal, he happened to say, by the way, we have a change format. We don't work on commission anymore, and I thought Earl Stewart just converted somebody.

Well, it's slow, but I'm always happy when I hear that. people say they don't have a, you know, a haggle hassle, but they do, but I'm going to see this. This is a Buick dealer and Lake where are they? No, no, it was from Delray. We're right now from

Toyota. Yeah, we shop them, didn't we? That's right. No, I just have one, I think Rick would find interesting if I could just talk with him a minute. Yeah, sure. Okay. Rick, I think it was a

couple of shows ago, you talked about the new terrain and the disaster waiting to happen because it's a stop-stop routine. I mean, I'm lint in the car, so I'm not worried. But the latest thing, I got a letter from GMC, or maybe six months after I had the car, and it was about people going to car washes, which I don't do. they go to hit the neutral and if they let off the brake beforehand and the car starts to go into the start mode

it has some kind of problem with the transmission have you heard that one? I have not sounds like they've got a serious glitch on their hands Well I had to go in I had there was a recall so that I went in and apparently it wasn't just a simple computer change or something that seemed like they went

had to change actually some item in the car. But I don't, you know, I never, it never happened to me because I never use neutral. I go to park and stop the car. But apparently it happens quite a bit and people that are going on the car wash. So

I thought I just add to what you had already said about disaster waiting to happen as far as the stop start. Well, sounds like a good heads up. for all the listeners, and that's on the terrain? Well, the start-stop feature is actually pretty common on a lot of new cars.

Yeah, okay. Yeah, that was a bad idea. Yeah, that's not a good idea, in my opinion. Yeah, well, it's true that, you know, when I went for the test drive, I said, what's going on? You know, I couldn't figure out for a minute in the salesman explained. And he says, it gives you good gas mileage. Well, I check my computer, you know, after a couple of weeks. And quite honest, I don't, well, I only do in-town driving, maybe on a long haul, it would be more, better.

But I don't see that much advantage on the fuel savings. I wouldn't think so. That was just a really bad idea, and they probably were going to change it back and not build them that way anymore. Yeah, I mean, it probably shaves off a little, but they could probably find better ways to get that, of that mileage. Well, I think maybe I heard wrong when I heard you talk about the first time.

You said something about it, they decided James decided it's so bad, they won't do it again? If they don't, they will, because I think I've never heard anyone's seen anything good about that feature. No, even Toyota now is backing off. There were several

companies that tried that, and to me it goes back to that old Cadillac had their 4-6-8 engine that as you were driving on the highway it would begin disabling cylinders and they quickly realized that was a bad idea.

What if they added a artificial vibration? I remember when I came out. That made you feel like the cars. That was what I had to say I love your show. I listened to it faithfully when I found it. I just happened to find

it one time on the radio. Well, thanks, Sam. Call again. much. Thanks, Jim. Thank you, Jim. Give us a good day. You too. Have a great weekend. Give us a call toll free at 877-960. And you can text us at 772-497-6530, and I see where Stu's got some texts. People are listening to you and they are texting us. This is from Anne-Marie, long-time textor. Good morning. Oh, great question. Good morning.

A while back, I heard a car backfire. That's when I realized that is no longer a common sound, thank goodness. What causes cars to backfire? And what have the auto manufacturers done to cut down on the number of vehicles that backfire nowadays? Just wondering, thank you. I'm looking at you, Rick, because I don't know. You know what? Just before you answer

that, I just had a flashback. When I was a kid, I used to make my father's car backfire by pumping the accelerator and I think generating too much gas that didn't burn in the cylinder, so.

you just answered the question that's exactly what it was and the reason you don't hear cars backfire anymore is because fuel injected cars limit how much fuel can go in the engine dramatically and you can't flood them out like you could with a carbureted car and the catalytic converter catches all that extra fuel and burns it up and doesn't allow it to go out into the atmosphere which is an emissions thing from the federal government So backfire simply has become a thing of the past. It just doesn't occur anymore. There was so much fun back in the day. I was just going to say, I bet you had a whole lot of fun doing that. And what did your daddy do to you when you did that?

I don't think he knew about it. That was like the old trick of riching up the mixture a whole bunch, and then people would actually install a spark plug in the tailpipe that you could power up. And you would actually get flame effect coming out of the exhaust pipe. Like in Greece? That's exactly what it was. As long as we're digressing, let me digress way back. My father was born in 1892, and one of his first jobs was general manager of a car dealership in Toledo, Ohio.

For the Dodge Brothers. Yeah. And anyway, this is during prohibition, and one of the things that they installed at the dealership was smoke screens for the criminals. And, you know, the guy would come in, and if the cops are chased, and moonshine or whatever it is. So my father's dealership would put in and it was like a little tube that would and you had a switch on the dashboard

and you go like this and then the oil would run into the hot exhaust and you have a smoke screen. Suddenly you burn a huge clouds of oil out. So he pioneered the rolling coal phenomenon. Yes. They're still doing that with diesel. All right, we got some text backing up.

Okay. All right, this is a, here's a good one. It's from Lenny and Stewart. Under which normal situation should I use my emergency break? I rarely use it, opting to leave my car and park. If I'm on a steep incline, decline, where are you going to find that around here? Am I doing damage to my driveway? That's true, yeah.

I'll tell you one thing. I sometimes long as the father of teenage drivers long for an emergency break because he used to be able to grab that handbrake right in the middle and just stop the car no matter who was driving. A few times it would have come in handy. But, yeah, I think you answered the question yourself. If you're on a steep incline, that's really, isn't that what it's for, Rick? That's it.

There's another reason. You need an emergency break to do a bootlegger turn. That's right, that full J turn. Yeah. I used to do that in my old age. A bootlegger turn for the uninformed is when the federal agents are chasing you and you have moonshine and you want to lose the federal agent. If you hit your brake and you're...

Turn the wheel hard. and turn the wheel higher and the emergency break you'll do a 180 and the federal latrine will just spin right past year. And then you'll hear loud banjo music playing

in the background. I saw that on Thunder Road with Robert Mitchum. Okay. And folks, for those of us that are in this well, actually this century and this millennium,

that's now called drifting. Okay. Oh, drifting, okay. And all of these facts will appear and you can read them in Earl's next book. Yeah, that's right.

federal agents. Well, there are certain crimes that have no limit of, you know, saturate, you know, what I'm trying to say? Statue limitation. So they can only be published posthumulously. And I say, why did you and I meet? And then I think back, you know, in this neighborhood I lived in and all of the moonshoning that was going on.

And I'm talking about the 50s, the 50s. So it wasn't so long ago. So there you go. We had something in common and we didn't know it. Yep. Nancy was making it. Earl was running it. All right.

Okay. Andreas, who is a Facebook fan, watches the show every week. Sent me a picture. And I forward it to you in your text. And if you want to show the screen. Andreas got a solicitation from a, it looks like a company that is selling extended warranties.

And it's one of these really deceptive ads. It came in and it looks like a big official, notice. It says, final attempt to notify. And it basically says his warranty coverage has expired. However, Andreas has nine and a half years of warranty left on his vehicle. And he hopefully annotated this, pointing out some of the things on there. The first thing, the headlines is its final notice. Andrea says, this is the first notice. And there's a QR code. If you've seen those things, you can scan it with an app on your phone. It'll take you to a website. Andres drives a Hyundai. If you scan the QR code, it actually takes you to

www.W. American Automotive Services Solutions.com, which is probably the company that generated this solicitation letter. And anyway, it's a scam, and we've talked about these on the show a lot. If you get anything in the mail offering, telling you that your warranty is expired, there's a 99. Infinite 9% chance that it is a BS solicitation. And if you just bought a car, your warranty is not going to expect. And the sad thing is there's a huge proliferation of this now with the internet, and

we joke about it, and you put these scams, and you share them with your friends, and you laugh about it. But the fact the matter is, it's a rule of numbers, and with email you can send out a million of these. And people, some guy in Nigeria or Taiwan or

Miami. I mean, they can be anywhere in the world, you don't know where they are, and they, the click of a key, they shotgun out millions of these scan things. So all they have to do is have one thousandths of one percent return. And there are people out there that are gullible. So we laugh at it, and we're preaching to the choir here at Erlen Kars, because you wouldn't fall for it. But some people do.

The piece that Andreas got, it came in, it's an actual physical mail, and it looks like a bill. I mean, it looks like something you get from your bank or your mortgage holder. or something important, and it does work. And by the way, you know, we're all, like you said, we're all sophisticated consumers here in this room and a lot of our listeners are. I pause when I see those. I mean, when something looks like junk mail,

it goes right in recycling. If it looks official, I don't want to take a chance. So, you know, even I will open it. Well, here's something. Here's something, and I've mentioned to you. I don't think I mentioned it to you. The really slick scammer artists now are legitimate people. I've had checks sent to me that I was entitled to. And they made

it look like a scam. And I threw the check away. I mean, think about it. We get so much junk mail that we study it, right? You get your, you get your junk out of your mailbox and you go through and you're throwing the trash can, this, this, I'll keep this, I'll throw this away. And like Sue just said, sometimes you study it for a minute. I'm like, wait a minute, I don't want to screw up. It could be a bill. So to take that to the other extreme, you're sending out refund checks

and you want people not to cash them. Make it look a little strange. So maybe 20% of them get tossed. And that is happening. That's intentional. It is. That's bad. Yeah, real bad. All right, I got bad news here.

Sorry, this came out on our text line. Sorry, Earl. Looks like someone beat you to the AC condensate reclamation system. Oh, no. A company called BrimTech has a patent on it. Samantha, do you hear that? Yeah. Sorry, Samantha. You're out. Only $50. No billions for you.

I sent you. I looked at that brim tech, and I sent you the website. I know. I know. I know. I know. Sucks. Yeah. Oh, man. I sent you the website. Maybe you can invest in the company. It's called BrimTech, and I don't know if it's in any vehicles, but it is a self-filling system connects to the condensate and the air condition system and fills the windshield wiper reservoir system. I actually feel like I was, you know, I feel good about it.

Yeah. Well, it's a very good idea. Yeah. But when I'm surprised is, I don't know. Why don't we have them? Well, I don't understand. Is it way too much a manufacturer? Why wouldn't they do that?

What a great convenient thing to have. I also saw that Ford was developing a water drinking system from the AC condensate, which is nothing wrong with that. Astronauts do it with lots of things. And so if it tastes good, do it. All right. Well, they make water coolers that you can buy that all it is is a basically a humidifier inside that collects water condensate, puts it through a filter, and it comes out in a cup for you.

You don't have to put a jug on it or anything. Yeah, we should have that in our homes too. Okay, this is a great one. Listen to this. Aloha from Hawaii, Earl. This might be not, well, we've had, we've had Bali, right? Bali, yeah. Okay, so that's not as far as Bali, but it's pretty far.

No. Hey, Aloha, and I replied, Mahalo, which means thank you. What are your thoughts about purchasing a new car via Ford's X-Plan partnership program? That's from Jeff and Honolulu. I happen to know quite a bit about the Ford's X plan because I Googled it after I saw the text. It sounds like a great way to buy a car. It's a purchase plan available to employees of Ford, Ford dealers, Ford Affiliates, and all that. And the way it works is you buy the new vehicles at invoice minus all the holdback and the advertising fee.

And then they also limit the dealers to $100 for dock fees. So unless there's other, you know, profit buried into the Ford invoice besides holdback. And when we say holdback, we generally mean like everything that's packed in there. But if that's the case, it sounds like a great way to buy a car. Now, say that again, they limit it to invoice less. It's invoice minus holdback, minus the advertising fee, which I think is a regional or dealer at a decision fee. And then they cap the dealer fee that the dealers can charge to $100. So it sounds like a legitimate thing.

It's been around for a long time. To be honest, I think I became familiar with it back during the recession, and a lot of the manufacturers started, and a lot of dealers started coming up to the concept of employee purchasing, and a lot of it was modeled after the Ford X plan. You know what we ought to do? We got a mystery shop of a Ford dealer, and I have one in mind, that we go in there and say we're retired for manufacturing employee, and we want to use the X plan and find out if they really will limit their dealer fee to $100. You do have to provide documentation proving that you are affiliated in the correct way, so we figure out what kind of they need, and I'll Photoshop it. Okay. Would you recommend, and this is not anonymous, but we don't have a name,

would you recommend that I buy a 2019 Highlander, which has a strong manufacturer rebate and proven reliability, or wait for the redesign 2020, which will be more expensive, but have a higher resale value in five years than 2019. Styling and features are less important to me than value and reliability. Thank you. Well, in general, I always recommend that you wait and buy the newest model there's some variables involved

is there a styling change from the older model to the new model yep complete redesign in which case that double reinforces my theory is that you always wait for the redesign new model

and the savings you get will be substantial on the 2019 but they won't be substantial as a depreciation you'll suffer yeah and like I think you said the variable if the rebate is enormous then that can even things out more for you

I can say, yeah, they do have some incentives on the Highlander, but they're not enormous. I think the waiting, it would be the better way. And one other caveat, when you buy the 2020, when you buy the new model Highlander, the supply demand phenomena when a new model comes out, the first few days or weeks, can cost you a lot of money. So don't be, you're going to keep that car for five or six years probably. Don't have to buy it in the first 30 days. Buy it in 60 days. Slow your role.

Exactly. And suddenly, you'll buy that 2020, just like it would have bought the 2019. That's right. They all become commodities eventually. Exactly. All right. Last one. Nancy's got something.

What do you got? Okay, I got it. All right. We had an incognito. I'm sorry. Your anonymous feedback.com came in. Great question. Has anyone used the out-the-door price affidavit at your dealership, Earl?

No. Not to my knowledge. It would be interesting. just for fun because we mystery shop our own dealership, it would be interesting to see what the reaction from our salespeople would be if somebody did actually insist that this be signed. That is a good question. I mean, we can't make it sound like a commercial.

Well, the fact is we don't have any hidden fees and we don't have any dealer install accessories, so it should be a no-brainer. Let's test it. We'll test it this week. But we get surprised every time we mystery. our own dealership. And we screw up all the time. We do. And you car dealers out there that are listening, and I know you're there, you just don't want to call, but you're listening.

Shop your own dealership. I think there's a lot of really good guys out there. I don't know how many, but there's some good dealers out there, honest dealers out there. You want to know what's really going on. You don't know until you mystery shop your own store. And I'm talking about whether you have a hardware store or a car dealership or a restaurant if you don't mystery shop because it is incredible you go through the screening process you hire good people you train them you have meetings you have policies and procedures and then you send that mystery shopper in and you would be surprised some of the dumb things the people that are working for you will do I'm going to take it a step further when has this affidavit been enforced by the

mystery shopper that goes out every way. Do they take it? We have yet to try that. Or fax it to the... We haven't tried it yet. We will, though. That's something we hadn't thought of. Yeah, that would be a great idea. And also, I received a text message this morning asking, when are we going to send out a female mystery shopper? And I'll answer that question. It's in the works, and we're going to get it done. Things like this take a little longer... Yeah, we've done it a few times this year. We've had, I can't remember the agent name we did two or three times earlier this year, and we could definitely dispatch this.

I will say as the mystery shopper, agent Wrangler, I mean, it is tough to find somebody to do. I mean, there's, you know, there's schedules and all that. You almost have to have somebody that's in the car business, and you have to have somebody that is tough. It is not, some people from a emotional standpoint don't like to deceive other people. which is a good quality. And we're not talking about women. I mean, we've had plenty of male mystery shoppers that tried it once, came back,

and it wasn't for them because they felt they, you know, you have to be a little bit sneaky, you know, there's a little deception going on. To the female texter who sent me that text this past week, you know, I do have to tell you, I'm expecting a great shop, a great mystery shop from a female that would go out. Because things have changed so much, and we've become so, educated and as consumers were involved in making such fantastic financial decisions. So I think with the Internet, you know, at our fingertips also, I think it would be a great

mystery shop. So we're going to take care of it and it'll be soon. So we're all caught up with texts and anonymous feedback. I have one text from a Rosalie who is a senior and she's going to be going out to to purchase a car. She says, I'm 78 years old, and to Earl, can you ask him, would leasing be a way for me to go? Or would that be a mistake considering my age?

Well, it depends on your health and how you feel. A lease is a permanent contract for the length of the lease. You can't turn a lease in early. And unfortunately, some car salespeople tell you you can. 36-month lease, you have to make 36 monthly payments. If something should happen, with your eyesight or some other reason you could not drive, you're stuck with a car that you have to make all those lease payments on. So be careful, but if leasing is a good alternative,

if I always tell people when they get to be older, to think about that. And remember that you're obligate. When you're by the car, as you make your monthly payments, you're building equity. And so, let's say that you're two years into a purchase on a 36-month financing, you've probably got some equity in the car, or at least you're at break-even, so it's not going to cost any money if you stop driving that car, you can just sell it and break even on the deal. But my rule of thumb is just buy and set a lease, but sometimes the leasing is a better alternative. Yeah, and also be aware of the additional cost that you might incur. there's always a fee at the end of the lease and they call it the disposition fee

it's usually $350 and typically they will not charge that to you if you release a car but if you're older and this might be the last car that you're leasing you're going to pay it and that happened recently I had a call from a customer who bought

I think 14 cars from us over the years and he's leased all these years I mean going back a long time and never had to pay the fee and then he retired and didn't need the car anymore and he got the first disposition fee ever saw, and he was apoplectic. And, yeah, so that was a surprise because if you're not releasing, you're going to pay a little extra money at the end. Yeah, so to Rosalie, you know, knowledge is power, so you must do your homework, whether you lease,

whether you purchase a new car, whichever way you go, use car. We're going to go over to Rick, who's got a few YouTube's over there. We've got a couple. The first one is from Stephen. He says, at what point, either based on years or mileage, should the fan belts and radiator hoses be replaced? And going back years ago, it used to be we had a recommended time interval that we'd say, oh, you need new belts and hoses.

But the technology on those has improved to the point of which I do a visual inspection on belts. If there aren't any cracks in the belt, or they're not. severely glazed or really messed up, I leave those belts alone. Same thing with the hoses. Visual inspection, if there's no damage and they're not leaking, leave them be. There's really not a lifespan on them anymore. That's interesting.

You know, that raised an issue. Nancy found an article in USA today recently, and they were talking about the fact that cars are so good today mechanically, and they last so much longer. Maintenance is nominal, repairs are almost non-existent, and you get 150,000 miles on a car, no problem. You probably have any problems. But the problem is with the rest of the car, and I'm thinking belts and hoses, and interior was the subject of this article that she read, the manufacturers are having to plan on the car lasting longer.

Yep. Absolutely. They're working on... What's the average time that they say? Making the cabins more durable to keep up with the exterior that's doing so well. And the average age of the cars and light trucks on U.S. roads has reached about 11.1.1.8 years in 2018. Wow. Can you believe that? I mean, you think of an 11 or 12-year-old car is an old car.

No more is the average age of the car on the road. Amazing. And where do we have problems? Dashboards. Faded fated plastics and stuff that, you know, back of the day, they used to trade cars every three years. Now they're keeping them for 12 years. Exactly. And all this faded interior that you come across whenever you purchase a vehicle. And it's kind of disappointing because the car is going to stay on the road to up to 300,000 miles. Now they're not saying 11 years is the trade cycle, though. No, no, it's the average.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, that means that some people are already in trading them in 20 years. Yeah, yeah. Okay, we got another YouTube? We have one more, and I love this fellow's name. Give me five bucks on YouTube. That's his username. I love it.

It's a great one. Oh, I like that. I had bought a new Nissan Versa, and I had it less than three weeks, and I had an issue with the airbag light on. When I took it to the dealer, Autonation Nissan of Lewisville, and they charged me $120 to fix the issue, they said it was not covered under warranty because I had a water bottle under the seat. Would you think a water bottle would unplug the airbag sensor? That's one talented water bottle. Well, here's my answer to that. Absolutely not. And the reason I say that is because the electrical connectors for any new car are a very tight that they

snap and they lock in place nice and solid. Now I have seen from the factory brand new cars where sometimes the connector is not pushed in all the way and they'll come loose. However, airbags are another story. Anything to do with an airbag generally has what we call a double lock system. And to disconnect that connector, you actually have to work a plastic tab once, slide it part way out, and then work the tab in a different manner to slide it the rest of the way out. It's an industry standard to have this double lock system on all airbag connectors to make sure that they don't accidentally become unplugged. And they make it very difficult to actually unplug them. So there's no way an air bag, or a water bottle,

could have bumped against that connector and unplugged it. And if this happens again, if it's something that's relatively recent, I would pull out the Missourian, and I would be right back in there saying, show me that connector and show me how an water bottle is going to unplug that connector. I would also, now that you've made him aware, he should go back and speak to somebody in authority of that dealership. You say it was a Nissan dealer in Louisville? Louisville.

Louisville. I think it's pronounced I'm going to need to look that one up. Anyway, go back to the dealership. I was trying to talk to the head guy, the owner, if you can, and just say, look what your people did to me. Talk to the general manager.

Go up the line there. And if that didn't work, I'd get on the 800 number to Nissan. And then you can't do that because the CEO's in jail. Oh. Mr. Goshi. Gone, Gone, pronounced Gown, yeah.

It looks like Lewisville, the first one that pops up in Google is in Texas. The chairman of the board's in jail, too. They put the chairman of the board and the CEO in jail in Nissan. I wonder who's running the show. In Nissan, I don't know. I'm not kidding, folks. I tell you, you want to talk about moral, what do we got, a moral crisis in the automotive? We've got Volkswagen CEOs in jail, Nissan, CEO, and chairman of the board.

who else is in jail there are multiple manufacturers that are going to the slammer and Elon Musk is just getting high and relaxing yeah

they won't go to jail do we have enough jails do we have enough jails there's going to be a lot of people going to jail all right

we got a couple of texts that came in okay let's go on this is a relatively short mystery shopping report so we can do well Linda on Facebook has a question

and she said, she had her oil and a cabin air filter replaced. It was $50 for the oil change and $50 for the cabin air filter. Is that a good price? We got a little more information, but generally speaking, yeah, for a synthetic oil change, I mean, you can be looking at $60 or $70, a cabin air filter, $50, $60, something like that. So it sounds like you got a pretty good price. Just make sure that wasn't for regular oil because $50 for regular oil change is a little steep. Yeah, a lot steep.

Yeah, it doesn't have to be a little bit high. Linda, thanks so much for tuning in Earl and Cars every Saturday. We really appreciate your company. Yep. And the next one is from Brandy in Pennsylvania and Miguel, who texted earlier. I just wanted to thank us for answering the question about using the out-the-door affidavit. And just a great show, and they're going to be listening to the Mystery Shopping Report. Speaking of parts, and we're talking about cabin filters that made me think what Jonathan said earlier about Amazon.

You know, a cabin filter is a fairly expensive item, and that's the one that filters the air in your car from when you were here you sit in. Oil filters, you can buy just about any automotive part on Amazon, and you can buy them at other places, too. But just a little test, you can buy an OEM part on Amazon. And just to keep your car dealer honest and keep your independent repair honest, if you're going in for routine maintenance, which is going to require new filters or some new part, just go on Amazon, check the part. And so when they charge you, the markup on parts can be huge. The manufacturer typically marks the part up to the car dealer. Obviously, we don't know what their markup is. They might double the price.

We don't know. But a car dealers buy a part from the manufacturer. The average dealer markup is at least 40%. That's suggested. But most parts departments use what they call grid pricing. And they will triple the price of a part, meaning a filter or something like that. So you can really get laid away on an auto part. We have the digital awareness now with Amazon.

and a lot of other sources that you can buy OEM, original equipment parts, or good quality after market parts, and keep your dealers in your independent repair shops honest on the parts. Or you don't have to go through the trouble. You can pull up Amazon on your phone and go, look, free shipping. Yeah, free shipping here. And why are you charging me? Please match this.

Yeah, I don't. I say, I don't mind you make a little profit, but why are you doubling the price of why I'm paying retail on Amazon? And you'll find out that some cases. you are. Yeah, great idea. As usual, we have all kind of great information here at Earl Stewart on Cars, and now we're going to get to the Mystery Shopping Report, part of the show. And I want to encourage you to text us with your grade at 772-497-6530. That mystery shopping report is going to come to you from Palm Beach, Toyota. Stay tuned. Okay. I'm Mystery Shop, Palm Beach, Toyota.

Palm Beach, Toyota, by the way, is a very large volume car dealership. Toyota sells the most cars in the market, in fact, in Florida and the whole southeast United States, and Palm Beach Toyota is outselling almost every car dealer, I would say, from the Fort Lauderdale area to the Orange County area, big, big area, huge volume. And they just moved into a giant new facility. They're on Congress in Southern. Correct. And it's a huge, beautiful, beautiful facility.

And they're doing a whole lot of advertising. And the advertising is really why we're doing this mystery shopping report. We're taking a break also from Takata investigations. I alluded to this earlier in the show that we're overdoing it on Takata. And I thought about it and I agree with the anonymous feedback that we, are still is caressing his microphone yes so soft oh we're discussing these little distracting you know I'm hearing some ASMR like whispering noises I think it's our that's our air condition does anybody else hear it I don't I don't hear any high frequency sounds okay I hear people's

I'm hearing voices watch out I'm hearing voices we're okay it's just some background white noise don't let us distract you Okay, we're taking a break from our Takata because we think we've overdone on Takata, and I confess, I got emotionally involved with Takata. It's important. As you should. We'll go back to it. Part of our duty here is to inform and entertain, and if you overdo something, you don't do that. That is true.

Our weekly mystery shopping report used to focus almost exclusively on car dealer advertising, and we've exposed just about every trick in the book. Yeah, the show was built on that. Exactly. we've seen ads with enormous and too good to be true discounts ridiculously low car payments and impossible offers for trade ads we've seen promises for guaranteed finance approval and offers for huge cash prices and gold coins yeah yeah if the heart of these ads is a simple concept bait and switch and we overuse that and I hear the same thing you're here in NASA I'm going to turn that down a little bit.

I hope you don't hear it over the air. But bait and switch is a term that is uniquely accurate and descriptive. And I think sometimes when you overuse a phrase, it becomes like you say it, but that doesn't anything. But it is true. It's exactly what it is. The bait is an attractive offer like really, really, God, wow, bad. You know, you're like a fish, and you see that juicy lure, and you think it's a juicy mullet, but it's got hooks in it. The bait is what the dealer uses to lure you, and when you come in to the dealership, then a less desirable thing awaits you.

It can be painful, too, because you can pay a huge amount of money when you thought you were going to get a bargain. We're focusing in on these. We've done less mystery shops and card jewelry advertising lately, mainly because of the shift to digital advertising. That's, you know, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. It's kind of getting away from newspapers, but there's still a lot of TV going on and radio, for that matter. It's targeted to the individual consumer online and on social media, so you don't see it, the digital I'm talking about. You don't see it as going to somebody else.

somebody else because you can target the people that are going to run in and buy the car. You can target people by their buying behaviors. And also, if you visit a dealer's website or if you'd visit other car type of websites, you'll get tracked from down on. You'll see these little ads appear and you're the only one who sees them. Yeah. And we're car dealers and full transparency. And we see the genius of the advertising and digital.

And we can advertise as a car dealer. dealer to people and know you know this whole privacy thing is real we know everything about them we know where they're going on the web when they go on their computer what products are looking at Nancy's always talking about how did they know that I was looking for shoes well they know you're looking for shoes because you look at somebody's company that was advertising shoes leaving a very conspicuous trail of breadcrumbs and it can be amazingly quick they know where you live They know how much money you make

They know what kind of car you drive The more you share online The more they know about you Yeah, yeah That information is very real And it doesn't matter whether you're looking at Buy a hamster Or if you're looking for a car

It's real And you're being tracked no matter what you do If you want a lot of cute ads Start visiting hamster websites No matter what you do No matter where you go You're being tracked on the internet And this radio show

They will think we're looking for hamsters and they'll be able to try someone's listening Well it was just to your point Now back on the serious subject of this mystery shopping report and the fact that we have seen a serious reduction

in outlandish ads The ads are still out there I mean Best Smith Toyota for example or Prime Auto there's still some hysterical outlandish ads Arrigo is outlandish

But there's been a reduction and a sophistication has come on to the scene that's making these advertisements, these bait and switch ads, even more dangerous. It's less safe now than ever before, but to look at it on the surface, it seems like people are calming down, but they're getting very, very clever,

and even intelligent people are being duped into the bait and switch. For example, this week, in an ad from a local toilet ship, Palm Beach, Toyota, and we're going to use this, and we found it digitally online. It's on television constantly. If you live in the Palm Beach County, probably northern Broward or St. Lucie County or Martin County, you've probably seen the advertisement. It's completely redesigned 2020 Corolla from $14,977, $14,977. $27.

Completely redesigned 2020 Corolla. Now, 2020, it's not even 2020 yet, and we have very few 20-20 cars out. That's a new car, right? That's a new

2020 Corolla. Well, and the price $14,977. Now, that's a really good price. A really good price. And we checked it out, 2020 Corolla, L.A. If you really did your work in True Card and Consumer Report, Costco, you might be able to buy it for $18,000.

But Palm Beach Toyota is advertising it for $14,977. In smaller print, above the corolla is starting at $14,977. That's literally in neon. Yeah. The word pre-owned is inserted. So that makes it legal. So these folks that are

having to deal with a more intelligent consumer and you are people who listen to the show are very intelligent and very aware, I want you to be pre-warned that you can even be tricked and I can be tricked. I have seen ads recently that I had to read

two or three times because I said where's the hook? I'm a dealer and I know that you can't buy a 2020 corolla, new corolla for $14,000. I know that. But sometimes I can see an ad that I have to read it twice or three times to find the hook. And that's what we're doing here.

Now you think for a minute, it's 2019. What would an average consumer think when they see a 2020 model year advertised? And that is the way it's being done. How about one promoters completely redesigned? Doesn't sound like a used car to me. It can't be a used car. I can't be a used car. I think an average consumer may think it is a new car that's being advertised.

To further money the waters right next to the 14,977 ad is one for a $99 lease. Well, first of all, you don't lease for use cars. So $99 lease has got to be a new car. So that soes it up. And that's how it's very, very diabolical and clever. It gets worse. It gets worse. When you click on the ad, you're taken to the new vehicle specials base.

Yep. Now, if this isn't deception, premeditated, I don't know what is. I know, I envision the Palm Beach Toyota advertising agency and the general sales manager and the general manager and they're all getting there and they're discussing this ad. And this thing spent a lot of time coming up with this. It is very good, well, I don't want to say it's illegal at this point, let's wait until we finish the advertisement. Okay.

Now you go to the new vehicles page, and if you miss the pre-owned, you really do. The very fine print reads, offer valid on pre-owned 2020 Corral LE, of the very fine print. Original MSRP 20,000895, example, stock number, and they give you the hashtag LP005-724. title registration administrative fees dealer fees $999 and $95 are not included

so I'll just stop there briefly advertised price $999 and $95 and administrative dealer fees which is a little over $100 bucks to $150 something like that not included now Florida law says

and I have this in one of my blogs Florida law says where am I here you're at the radio station studio yeah yeah at any rate I'm going to have to paraphrase

it because I can't find the highlighted thing there Florida law says that you have to include any dealer fees by any name in the advertised price include it you don't it doesn't say

you can disclose it in the fine print and say it's added later it says you have to include it in the advertised price so this is a violation of plural law right there not to mention the rest of it which is

but everybody's doing it everybody's doing oh where am I here okay oh yeah here we go Agent Thunder I went in to investigate this I'm speaking the first person

as if I were Agent Thunder I arrived at Palm Beach, Toyota, Congress and Southern Boulevard in West Palm Beach, around 5 p.m., back to a no parking spot, walked toward a large front entrance, framed by a large illuminated archway. A salesperson was sitting on the bench near the door, jumped to his feet when he saw me approach. He introduced himself as Luis, and asked, or perhaps Lewis, L-U-Y-S, asked what brought me in. I said I was helping my wife find a new car.

And she'd seen Palm Beach Toyota's ad for a new 2020 Corolla for $14,977. So I said, my wife's father said, for a new Corolla 2020, 2020, for $14,977. Louis said, without blinking an eye, he could help me and ask me to come inside. He said he'd like to show me around first and took me to the service lounge, Jerry, to point out, the coffee machine and the smartphone chargers. He walked me back to the new car area and explained the whole dealership was brand new. Walk me back to the new car area.

We sat at a table and made small talk for a few minutes. Luis seemed like he was avoiding something. Finally, he said, now listen to this carefully. We're shopping Palm Beach, Toyota, Congress, and Southern Boulevard, Luis the salesman. At this point, Luis says that he seemed like he was wearing something. He said he needed to be honest with me,

and he said they didn't have the car at the advertised price. I got to be honest with you. Now, I came in and said my wife saw the ad for the new 2020 Corolla for $14,097. Nothing was said then. and after the coffee machine and the tour of the dealership, he says, I've got to be honest with you. I asked him what he meant, that they didn't have it. Luis told me that they technically have it.

I mean, technically we have it, but it's just one car. It's so we can run the ad. It's there to get people in. When people come in to see the car, we show them other options. Now here's a salesman, yeah, here's a salesman, Luis, who is forced to deceive customers and he's ingratiating himself to the customer who happens to be me, the mystery shopper, and not really me, but Agent Thunder. He went on to say that this 2020 Corolla was a rental car, a Toyota rental car, T-R-A-C.

called it a track car. I called it a track car, Toyota rental. And they said it was a loaner car with about 5,000 miles. Now, I asked him if it was really a 2020 model and he said it was.

I told him I wasn't surprised about the ad being phony. I said I'd come to expect this sort of thing from car dealerships. Luis agreed that this was indeed the way it was, just the way it is.

and the way we were. We see this in a lot of car dealerships. Luis, honest guy, I mean, not really, but forced into dishonesty to make a living. Honest about the dishonesty. He was honest about the dishonesty. And that sounds funny, and it is funny, but it happens in a lot of dealerships. By the way, in the rental car, this is insider knowledge, because I am a toilet dealer. and in the Toyota

renter car system, when you put the car into a rental service, you cannot take it out without a penalty. You must keep it in for four months. You can sell it, but you'll get a charge back. You get a charge back. You're penalized. So the car never was intended to be sold. And

they advertised a car that they knew they couldn't sell. And they knew it wouldn't be there. And they knew it wouldn't be there. And that was to bait. You cast out with your good can lure and you're like this. Tasty, and you pull it in, and then you switch them

to something that you can sell. This is really terrible, really terrible. Bombie's Toyota on Congress and Southern Boulevard. Yeah, it's kind of a, it's very, they have a huge inventory. Huge inventory. Why would they advertise just one car? Yeah, exactly.

And they do a huge amount of advertising. And anyway, I just, I said he may have a deal anyway. I'm leading Luis on 14,977, 14,977 still sounds good. And it's crazy good because we're telling you right now, being toilet dealers, we know that $18,000 would be a doozy, a really good low price. So I'll buy a used car, 2020, Corolla, for $14,99777. And it was an L.A., by the way.

Even if I had a few miles on it, I asked if I could see it. Let me see that rental car. He came back shortly and said he was sorry, but it wasn't available. It may have been rented out. As I said before, they would have been penalized. This is the point when a real shopper is supposed to leave, by the way. Yeah, yeah. The thunder pressed on.

Exactly. It wouldn't go like this. But we were torturing Louise. I asked him if he had any other 20-20s. Corolla said he had a ton of those, but they were all new. And he couldn't do the $14,977. But he said he would totally hook me up. He said he could probably get $4,500 off the MSRP.

I acted surprise, told him I'd like to see that on paper. Lewis left to get the numbers, returned with a worksheet. showed the price breakdown. The MSRP on this 2020 new Corolla, LE, was 21,067. He showed a 45, he showed a 4,500 discount, which brought my sale price to 17,167. Then he added, here we go,

a $999,99.95 pre-delivery service charge, which is a dealer fee. as I just quoted earlier in this Florida law requires that this be included in the advertised price was not included and there's also an

administration fee that's not even being mentioned and it's not even on the worksheet this made my actual selling price $18,166 and my out-the-door my out-the-door price was $19,772

and $722. And remember, we came in on a $14,977 car. We got switched. Yeah. This ad was pure bait and switch. It was designed to blur the lines between new and used cars, and it successfully did that, and made it appear they were selling new 2020 corollas for $14,977. Yes, this was a disclosure in the fine print.

but that's not what people see or remember. Now, you'll see this ad. All you have to do is turn your TV on in the Martin County, Palm Beach County, probably northern Broward County area. And they're still running this ad. We shopped it the other day. You'll see the ad tomorrow

and the next day and the next day, and they don't have the car. Go on Palm Beach, Toyota.com. It's right on the main page. You don't have to search for it, so that's the headline. And you'll see some great prices. there.

Up on Beach, Toyota.com, great prices. The problem is you can't buy the cars for the advertised prices. And mentally

at about $1,200 to every price you see. Yeah. And they're very successful. This is painful for me

to think about how successful a car dealership can be when they lie sheet and steel. And they advertise cars.

They won't sell and can't sell. Wouldn't sell if they could sell. And people fall for it. It's a sad situation. They are currently on our recommended dealer list right now.

Yeah. They are. They are. Okay, folks, we need some votes, and we've finished to Mr. Schaimberg, Stu is flashed up as text votes. We have the grades coming in. Edward gives them an F, D gives him an F. I don't have Linda's grade, but she predicted at the beginning of the report that she's ready to give a huge F. Oh, wait, I get a face palm emoji coming in from Linda.

I bet you any second we're going to see huge fat F. Linda, I'm going to speak for you. Correct me if I'm wrong. Huge fat F from Linda. Okay. I concur. Do I see you got any votes over there? Sure.

First, I have to say to our listeners that, you know, getting car buyers in the door is limitless. And our mystery shop today proved that. I don't like being deceived. I don't like being taken advantage of, so therefore I give them an F. Rick? Well, so far we've got Give Me Five Bucks, says F. Ernesto says an F.

Mark Smith from Iowa is giving him a D. He's being lenient this week. And myself, I got to give him the F. I mean, it's just too blatant. Yeah, I'm going to, I have an anonymous feedback person that says how come I don't ever vote, I should vote, and maybe you missed a couple of votes, but I'm going to give them a big F. I think, I think this is so egregiously deceptive. I normally don't fail cardiologists for deceptive advertising, but this is so, this goes over the hump and deception, and so I give them a map. Stu, what about your votes? I'm concurring with the consensus with an F. We did have a couple came in. Amy gives him an F and

Ed gives him a D. Very generous Ed. And Mark Anderson is saying D for the semi honest salesman. Mark from St. Louis. I see the point there this is true and I feel bad about Luis because he needs a job probably. He needs to

earn a living and when he got into Palm Beach Toyota they said look when customers come in just lie to him and tell them, yeah, I'll take care of you, and then springing on them that this is a used car. And if they say they want to buy it, just tell them we don't have it anymore. Tell you, it just takes the wind out of you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in to Earl Stewart on cars.

I see, according to the clock, we have one minute left. At Mystery Shop came to you from Palm Beach, Toyota. And I have to thank Stu for his, well, ingenious way that he does this every week and where he shines in a lot of places, but this is so important to get out to the consumer

and he does it. The wording is, I'll say he's reached perfection. I'm a scribe. And tune in next week, if you would, and we'll be right here, Earl Stewart on Cars at 8am.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone. Red Bluff! Wrault! M. M. M. M.

Oh. Thank you.