Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.01.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Coral Springs Nissan

Episode Date: October 1, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning revisits a Nissan dealer in the Fort Lauderdale area to see how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2023 Nissan Kicks SUV. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, this is kind of a special show. If you're anywhere in the world, you know about Hurricane Ian, and we're broadcasting from South Florida. we're on the east coast where it wasn't much of a hurricane but the west coast very close by it was pretty terrible and we certainly send out our concerns and hope that all you folks on the west coast of Florida especially Fort Myers and Tampa and Sarasota and that area over there that was hit so hard on Naples unfortunately maybe a lot of you can't listen

There's no power. There's a terrible situation over there. So this will be a show that we're going to devote toward things that we can do to help you with regards to automobiles, with regard to hurricanes. And Hurricane Ian apparently is going to go down in history as most costly of all hurricanes in Florida. That's saying a lot because we've had some duzies in Florida. We're here to help you. We'll be directing our help at those sorts of things that you'll be confronting, like not having a car, depending on where you live. Cars have been totaled, cars have been flooded, and here we are in a shortage with prices at historically high levels.

And now, unfortunately, it looks like car prices may go up even further, at least in the short run into this flood situation, a hurricane situation, resolves itself. which could take quite a while. If you have to have a car, you are a target for those unscrupulous people out there that may try to take advantage of you. And that's what Earl on Cars is all about, helping you not being taken advantage of when you're buying or selling a car, for that matter, repairing or maintaining a car. And this is a very important show. if you have some friends in the area that were hit and maybe can't listen and you are an area where you can listen

and pick up some tips you might want to pass them along to your friends or you might want to tell them about Erlon cars which is our blog site when they have the ability to get back online they can check out some of our podcast and we talk about a lot of things that are preserved on YouTube And I think some of the things we talk about today will be available to all those people who need it the worst, those that were affected by Hurricane Ian. I guess Ian's not true yet. They're still working its way, although it much reduced power far further north on the east. So very special show today at Earl on Cars. Rick Kearney is sitting to my right here in the studio in North Palm Beach, Florida.

and he is a certified diagnostic master technician. One of the worst problems you can have with the car are water-related, flood-related, because when you get into that sort of thing, you're talking electrical and computer. There's nothing more expensive or frustrating or difficult to diagnose than a water problem. And even if it's a current water problem, water problems tend to pop up weeks, months, maybe even years later. because water, as you know, can permeate just about every area in your house and your car and sometimes the immediate danger damage isn't realized until much later. So listen carefully, take notes and then if you have friends, as I said earlier,

that are not able to listen to the show, they can access our archives at earluncars.com podcast, hear the show repeated. and the tips are all available online. We also have Stu Stewart. He's my son, my general manager of the toilet dealership in North Palm Beach, Florida. And he stays on top of what is happening today in the buying and selling market.

And it's quite unusual today with the COVID issue, now added with the Ian hurricane issue. it's really going to be a real minefield. I use that comparison a lot. It's going to be even worse. So be extremely careful now when you venture forth into car dealerships. We have a mystery shopping report that Stu is in charge of. We have a mystery shopper that goes out every week.

Visit a dealership in South Florida this week. Happened to be a Costco dealer. We've done several of those because... We stumbled into the. that. Yeah, exactly. We didn't know they were. You're right. So we ask you to call the show. I'm a I can't find my numbers here. I've only been doing the show 20 years. So 877-9-60. Thank you. Where you can text us, 772-497-6530. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, thank you very much.

Nancy, his memory, is a lot better than mine. But, yeah, that's important. 877-960-90-960. We prioritize the call-in number because we've only got five lines. And we expect to have a lot of calls this morning, especially for those that are able to call that were in in hurricane-affected areas. Also, if you try to call or don't want to call, if you don't get through, we have a text number.

and Stu watches that all the time and we keep checking back to see if a text came in usually by the end of the show. This is a two-hour show so by 10 a.m. Eastern time today we're probably going to have gotten back to all of our text and that text number is 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530. Anonymous feedback. What's that? Well, it's a secret line.

You can have your secrecy, your privacy. You go to Your Anonymous Feedback.com, Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And you can leave a message, and we don't know who you are, where you are, and you can be very open, honest, even insulting, if you choose to be.

And we just want to hear from you. No matter what's your motive, there's interesting information in almost every feedback we get. And we will get to all the feedbacks by the end of the show, probably. If you're a female and we treasure our female callers and our texters and our anonymous feedbackers, cars seem to be a guy thing for a long time when the show started 20 years ago, this was like a guy show. And a lot of people called in. They were all males.

And we started to think this isn't right because about half the people out there are females, as you well know. And we know that females buy about half the cars. And if they don't buy them, they're certainly instrumental in the decision-making process. And so Nancy Stewart, my co-host,

and she founded the show with me many years ago, She has a special offer for you first-time female callers, and we will love you to call in. If you've called in before, we still love you to call in. The female perspective on things in general is very valuable because you're happy, life on the planet. Don't be timid, and we'd love to have you call because your perspective is usually at least as interesting as immense. refreshing. So we want to know what you ladies have to say. I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy Stewart and she will tell you about a special offer she has if you're female and you haven't called the show before. That offer is for the first two new lady callers. We have $50 for you just for you to call in, say hello or maybe share your car buying experience with us or give us some advice. We always. Need Advice, 877-960-9960, or for the other listeners, you can text us at 7-7-2-497-6-5-3-0.

And my mic's on? Mm-hmm. Get close. A little closer to the mic. Get closer. Okay. Rick's here to guide me. These guys are great.

You're an important part of the show, and we appreciate your company. So I take advantage of the number 877-960-9960. And also, you know, buyer-beware, did we really need what has affected the car industry while floodcars are out there? They're everywhere. You really, really have to check out that vehicle. Did you know that hiding flood car damage is against the law? I don't think everyone knows that. So, we'll get on with the show.

877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. Back to the recovering car dealer. I'll ask you to give us your take on what you think the folks are going to be in store. for with regard to supply and demand. Here we are in the highest demand we've seen in a long time and the lowest supply comparatively. And now it hasn't really sunk in with me. This Ian hits so fast and so widespread

and so unexpectedly severe. What's your take of the market? What's the market going to look like? The first thing that comes to mind is the demand that's going to come out of Southwest Florida and Central Florida all the way across the state. I didn't read how bad it was in South Carolina, but there's going to be a lot of people with total losses,

thousands and thousands of them. And even though use cars prices have come down, I don't want to say stabilized because they're continuing to come down, I don't know how, that's a lot of people. That could be 100,000 people. I don't know how that's going to impact the shaky recovery that the use car markets is seeing. So I think demand is going to,

is going to be a part of it, and also just taking those cars, the totals off the market. So you're having a kind of a one-two punch on both sides of the... When you think about a hurricane, what do you have to have? You have to have a phone, you have to have electricity, and you have to have transportation. And right now, as we speak, a lot of the people in Fort Myers and Naples, I suppose, some in Tampa and St. Petersburg in that whole West Coast area. Their cars are gone. Yeah, they don't hear us because they don't have power. Maybe they have battery radio.

I don't, you know, it's been a while since we've been hit on the East Coast. So, but thinking back, one of the most frustrating thing is not being able to communicate with your family, with your friends. And there we are now. So those people who know people on the West Coast and that area of Florida pass along anything we can. we can't wreck it. Well, one of the other issues that they run into is not just your own personal phone charging it, getting power for that, but the cell towers themselves, even though a lot of them have their own generators, sometimes if those generators fail, it shuts down those towers,

and now you may have your phone working, but you've got no signal anyways. Yeah, so what we need to do is help them decide what to do with their car. and I think that I'm going to give those numbers out because we can talk all day on the show the questions that we answer are things that are far more applicable because it's what's on your mind. So if you're thinking about the flood,

if you're thinking about friends, family that may have that issue, give us a call at 877-960-9960. Nancy Stewart is monitoring a laptop in front of her. When the call comes in, it was a telephone audio call. We stop what we're doing, and we answer the phone. We will answer the phone when you call. 877-960-9960. And if you don't want to call, Nancy?

We do have a caller. We're going to get to John and Palm City in just a moment, but I wanted to share some information with everyone speaking about. flood cars. Did you know that Carfax estimated that there are currently, currently about 400,000 flood cars. Yes, flood cars. With all this prior damage, they're on the road. So this is something to look out for now that we've been hit by a hurricane. And this is up 6% from 2021. And the numbers are staggering. Okay, so if you have a question about flood cars or anything else, again, 877-960, 960, we're going to go to John in Palm City. Good morning, John.

Good morning to everyone. This is just a brief call to thank Earl and Nancy for pointing out on lease cars that are returned. All the junk fees are involved. It seems like the South Florida, new car dealers, they feel they have a license to steal. We seem to be the worst in the country of anywhere at the schemes that are going on. And this particular one that's pointed out by Earl and Nancy is disgusting. It's terrible. And people are getting ripped off constantly against the law on their lease cars when it's turned in. And I just want to make a thank you for Earl and Nancy to make us aware of what. Well, thank you for mentioning that I have been in communication with Jeff Winesier.

He's the investigative reporter for WPLG Channel 10. As a matter of fact, the blog that I wrote, the current blog that will be posted on our, is posted on our website, and will be out eventually in Florida Weekly and hometown news, is really a thank you and congratulations to WPLG at South Florida TV channel and Jeff Weinseer who is the investigative reporter who blew that story that you're talking about, John,

out of the water and really brought it to the attention of a lot of people. When I talked to Jeff Weinstein here earlier this week, he said that he is, there's three more lawsuits that have taken place. So this whole thing about not allowing leasing customers to exercise their option to buy their off-lease car at the price on the contract in violation of the Leasing Consumer Act of 1976.

That is being right out there, being investigated, being prosecuted, and being exposed. And you can look at the blog, our current blog, I believe, online. Isn't that right, Stu, or what do I title that? the devil or the you don't know? Right, the devil you know versus the dealer versus the manufacturer. Yeah, exactly. In this case here, and there was also actually another, I did two blogs last week

and the other blog was directly thank you to Debbie PLG and Jeff Weinseer and those will be posted online too. So if you're an off-lease car, be sure to check that. John, thanks very much for the call and the compliment. Yeah, we definitely appreciate it, John. have a great weekend you know i do have to mention our hearts and our prayers go out to everyone who was affected by hurricane and and god bless everyone in southwest florida

and it's going to be a long time before everybody is well made right so the last thing that anyone needs to deal with is a flood car because it was you know, right there and it was for sale and it was inexpensive and they're going to jump on it. Please be careful. 877-960 9960.

Yeah, I'd like to I'd love to get some more calls. I'd love to get some more text and I'll just, I'll start the subject which I think, well, it's got to be on most of your minds. How do I protect myself against buying a flood car? We heard the statistics

I think hundreds and thousands of people out there are going to have their cars damaged by flood and those cars are going to be taken off the market supposedly but unfortunately it's easy to get them back on the market and there are a lot of states that will allow you to sell a car without a title you can buy cars without titles just for fun this morning when we were preparing for the show

I googled how do I buy a car without a title and if you're if you're someone that wants to take advantage and you want to know how you can find a car

without a title to sell it to somebody else that's going on right now and the worst thing about a flood car is that you can have a car that seems to run perfectly well

it might even look good it might even smell good it might even drive well but if a car's been exposed to water in certain areas, that water will manifest itself sooner or later. So if you have any questions on that, please call us at 877-960-99-60. Text us at 772-497-6-5-30, and we gave you their anonymous feedback, your anonymous feedback.com. We have any texts? Oh, yeah. And that seems to be top of mind, but I think we have a phone call. We do. And ladies and gentlemen,

If you haven't read about Carvana's problems, boy, they have some legal troubles. Earl's talking about titles. Let me tell you, you wouldn't think you would have this problem, but they're failing to transfer the titles of vehicles that they sold to the buyer. And they've lost their license in some states, Illinois being one of them. There's a whole laundry list, so you might want to look into that on the Internet. 877 960 9960 we're going to go to Morty who is a regular caller from West Palm Beach good morning Marty morning I've got a question for either rural or stew what does you know in the old days a new car

dealer would have had a couple hundred cars in their lot if all brand new cars got flooded what would like Toyota or one of those companies do I have a real-world example to use. We had a friend of ours as a dealer in the Houston area when Hurricane Maria hit. And that was the last time we were talking about flood cars being on the market because that event flooded the Houston area. And then the market was flooded with flood cars. It was an insurance claim. And back then Toyota assisted with some supplemental allocations.

that can't happen now because there's just not the supply they're not producing enough cars so the all the forge Toyota every dealership over the southwest coast that got clobbered hopefully they did some you know some preventative measures got the cars to hire ground parking garages and protected them things like that and I'm sure they did the best they could but some some lots they just got probably clobbered and flooded and they're going to file insurance claims and hopefully be made whole on if they had cash. If there's any good news about the inventory shortages, in fact, there'd be fewer cars on the ground that were affected by the flood. But there's still be a lot of used cars that were affected by the flood. And these cars are

going to come in the market real fast. The problem is there's such a high demand, low supply, and the prices are already so high that now if you buy a car and you don't do your homework and you don't check it out, you're not only going to be buying a bad car, a flood car, but you're going to be paying far too much money for it. So, uh, yeah, but my, my question is if there is a Toyota that got flooded brand new, even though you're going to be made wholesale by the insurance company, what do they do with that physical car? They get sold. They get sold. Yeah, no, there's, they should be, but there are, there is a whole underground network in this country of people that love. like to take advantage of you. And if you want to have some fun, just go to Google and Google floodcars.

They have people, these disreputable characters I'm talking about, online advertising, they have flood cars for sale. And dealers can also, the dealer we knew, they did as much cleanup as they could. They determined the ones that were, you know, minor. And they sold them an auction, and they're declared. at auction as having flood cars. And see, right now, as Mannheim owns, how many auctions

the United States? Like all of them? All of them, yeah. Okay. So most, not I'm saying most used cars, but a huge amount of used cars go through Manhattan options and auctions. And they have very careful protocols. And we'll address this, you know, later in the show because everybody's asking about flood cars.

But they check them out. It's a, it's a, it's a serious business. But that doesn't account for the other huge part of market, which is private sellers and that which dwarfs dealers in terms of mine. Marty, every state, all 50 states, have slightly different laws on titling and selling cars and flood cars. One of the loosest states is Texas.

New Jersey is a very loose state. Florida happens to be a good state, but every, all the disreputable characters out there that are in the flood car business, they know which states. They have states that they can buy a car. take it to that state wash the title so they have a clean title and you never know that that was a flood car so it's a science and art how to take advantage of people during situations like this the only safe thing you can do to be absolutely sure is don't rely on the title but check to see which state that the car was

titled in originally and most recently and all also take the car to a qualified technician. A good technician, they could put the car up on a lift and look at it carefully, and they could tell you if the car has been in the flood. That's the only absolutely sure way that you're going to get a car and not get taken advantage of. But now a brand new car that's never been titled, like in a new car dealership, it's never been titled.

If the dealer sells that, and it's really a flood car. aren't they really liable? I mean, it's like... Yeah, the dealer wouldn't sell it. The dealer would wholesale it to somebody else, and it wouldn't come across as a new car. And it would be sold at the auction, declare it as such. Okay, so wouldn't that be, even though it never was titled,

it would still be a flood car. Well, they could title it. I mean, the bad guys, the disreputable characters out there, They're experts. So they'll take that car that was on a dealer's lot that was flooded and that they'll, the dealer will sell it for something. Right. He purchased it from, he purchased it from the new car inventory and buys the car. And then he sells it at the auction and it will be declared and then branded forever such as a flood car.

So he sells it for something. Then who gets hold of that car? That's when the artificial things happen. They go over the car carefully. to try to remove all signs of the flood. They find a state where they can title it clean as if it had not been in a flood, and that's when you have to watch out.

So the paper trail and the VIN number and the rest of it, that might be something that could save you, and I said that there is a way to check the VIN, and that's something you should always do when you buy a new or used car. There is a way to track a VIN to see if it was, in fact, declared a flood. flood car. So you just have to be very careful. And the ultimate test is having a technician like

Rick Kearney sitting beside me here. You give Rick a car and say, assure me this car has not been the flood. He can say, yes, this car has not been on the flood. And now you're safe. Okay. All right. Unfortunately, very interesting information. Yes. Yes. Thanks so much, Marty. Okay, let's get back to some more text. 877-960, or you can text us at 772-4976530. You know, if you haven't purchased Earl's Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer, you know something? It'd be a great time right now.

Do you know why? Not only is there so much information in that book, and it is definitely a guide that you can't do without, But all the purchase of the book goes straight to Big Dog Ranch. And, you know, every pet in Southwest Florida, well, they're not in a good situation. And I don't know whether you noticed or not, but Big Dog Ranch right now, they're on their way to Southwest Florida. And they're bringing back the dogs that have been just left. You can buy this on Amazon, Amazon.com.

That's correct. Go ahead, Earl. Confessions are recovering card dealer. Okay. You heard it from Earl Stewart. We are going to go to Sarah, who's calling us from Boyton Beach. Good morning, Sarah. Good morning, Nancy, and everyone.

I'm calling to tell you all, I'm grateful for your show, your professionalism, and I gained so much bias. I'm just calling to say thank you very much. I'll learn from you every week. Oh, thank you. That is my call. Oh, that's amazing. Yes, I wish you all a great weekend. Oh, thank you so much.

I love your show. I just love this show. I'm glad you're getting something from it. I am. Yeah, it's just fantastic to hear from you. Thank you, my dear. Have a wonderful week. All you have a great day.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're going to go to Stu while we can, and I get caught up on some texts. That's okay. I like busy phones. It lets me to work on stuff while I was a skid. Amory texted us, and like I said, flood cars are on top of mine of everyone with Hurricane Ian. Amory says, good morning. I hope everyone is safe and sound.

We just had Category 4 Hurricane Ian clobber, Florida with significant storm surge, and dumped heavy rains across Florida before plowing the South Carolina. Carolina, bringing war storms, storm surge in heavy range there in the joining states. Bottom line, a lot of people lost their cars and will need a replacement car in a time when the supply of cars is limited. I fear the worst of human nature will rear its ugly head in a lot of flooded cars that should be junked, will be sold to unsuspecting people desperate for transportation. What should people be on the lookout for so they can avoid buying a flood car?

And that's remandering. Well, Rick, pretend like you were in. instructing an apprentice technician, and you were going to show him what he should look for when a customer came in and said, can you assure me this car has not been in a flood? Well, what should people be sure that they look for or have their technician look for? First thing is starting the trunk, pull the spare tire out, and look at all the wheel well, they have side wells usually. Look for any signs of moisture, any signs of rust, mold, mildew, anything like that.

even algae, any signs of excessive dirt that might show signs that water had been in there, rust or corrosion, and also look to see, is anything too clean, does it look like it's been super polished and scrubbed up recently? Go underneath the seats, look for any signs of rust or corrosion on any electrical connectors, the bolts on the seat, the seat tracks, and rails. Try to reach under the carpet to feel if there's any sort of dampness. And again, the other thing you're also looking for is, is the car too clean? If it's a two-year-old car and you see some dust and dirt and debris in the seat tracks and down in those tight crevices that you really can never get to, that's a normal thing.

But if all of a sudden that carpet is just spotless clean... It might have had a bath. Everything in there is super, super clean. that's a red flag then because that's not a normal you know clean up for the used car a lot they don't they do a good job cleaning them but they don't get all the little nukes and crannies

way down in deep if you see it's been just totally like brand new looking car like if after something's disassembled you take something out and normally there's crud that gathers in there and you will find you can you can find some of these cars the

they do such a good job cleaning it up after the flood that It's too good to be true is the thing. That's a red flag to make you dig further and look for other signs. Shine a flashlight up under the dash. Look for any signs of anything that just looks out of the ordinary. And again, it's either going to have signs of mold or mildew or corrosion or like marks in any dirt that might remain. Or again, it might be just flat out too clean to be good.

If I were going to take my car with a flood car, I take it to my dealer and say, somebody wants to sell me this car, I'll pay you to check it out for me. How long and how much should a dealer charge me to give me a thorough check on a flood car? We normally do about one hour for a used car inspection, but if you suspect that it may have been a flood car, expect to go double that, expect them to take a couple hours. because especially if you tell the technician, look, I think this might have been a flood car. I want you to really look hard at it. Expect about two hours labor.

Put that into dollars for me. $250 to $300. So for $250 to $300, you can get a guarantee that the car is safe to buy, and that might be the best $250. That's a good segue to another text we have here from Bob, unless we have a phone call. We do. We do. Thank you. Rick, I have a question for you about fled cars because of my experience in purchasing one.

I had the car for about a month. This was many, many years ago. And it wasn't until a month that I started noticing the mold, the mild. And the odor became more significant. My question to you quickly, because we have a call, how long does it take for, you know, know the customer to recognize they bought a flood car. It might even be a month or two months. Is that right?

Well, there you go, folks. Right here from Rick. Okay, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-2-497-3530. We're going to go to Kevin from Buffalo, New York. Good morning, Kevin. Good morning, your team. and again, even though we're 1,300 miles away from Florida, we're all concerned about what's going on in southeast Florida.

Thank you, Nancy for breaking up Earl's book, and I was about my question today. Earl, you wrote the book a few years ago when the sales of cars were a little different than what they're doing today, like they have holdbacks and floor plan assistance. And I know you're writing another book. How part is your book, Confessions of a car salesman,

are still related to buying a car in this time? well actually you know fortunately or unfortunately took me a long time to write this second book where we've pretty much completed it and and right now we're doing editing and and it does take into consideration the COVID issue and the you know the last three years because I you know I started writing it probably been a year and a half ago. So it's the full title of this is the redemption of a recovering car dealer. It'll be out before the end of the year. And it's more directly, it's not, it's, it actually answers more current problems.

It's amazing. I look back when I wrote confessions and that was close to 10 years ago and now things have really changed quite a bit. The new book does take into consideration a lot of the new shenanigans, as we call them, that are taking place, especially during the COVID era. Okay, because I'm sure it's very critical now for people to be well informed if I buying a book in a car. I was just wondering how your book still relates to buying a car today. Yeah, I'm glad you call me because I've got it, and I need to start proofreading it, and I need to arrange with a publisher. and so that was that was the main reason that got him going on the book was was recognizing that

the world had completely changed and but this one's kind of this is going to be better this one's going to is a has a more of a biographical uh tilt to it you know it's more you're going to learn more about earl personally yeah and um in addition to like the good advice that he gave you in the last book two completely different books yeah for sure well thank you for donating My wife and I just adopted a dog from rescue too, so thank you. Awesome. Thank you very much, Kevin. And thank your wife.

Give us a call again. Yes. I will. Thank you. Okay, we're going to go back to Stu. Oh, hi, everybody. Okay, we had a text here, and I want to read it from Bob. And he said, good morning, when car dealers go to auctions, what procedures do they use to make sure the vehicle of their buying has not been in a flood?

and kind of talked about it earlier when you're buying at an auction and 99% of the time that means you're going to be at a Mannheim auction well they're inspected vehicles have to be declared with any kind of issues so if you buy a car from the auction and there is a flood issue from auction and that wasn't declared they'll take it back and the second part of your question was does your dealership inspect every auction purchase for water? water damage, yes, and that would be Rick and his team, and that's the guys over there doing that. But those are the options where you can buy flood cars. So there's a thriving wholesale.

But those titles are branded as such. Yeah, yeah. There's a whole underground, if you want to have some fun, just Google flood cars and see, you will see the bad guys that are touting all the cars they have to the other bad guys to be able to buy from. them and they have middlemen wholesale and there's a whole industry in blood cars now one thing with carfax in auto check vehicle history reports and we've talked about how they're sometimes not always accurate um that's because an accident report might not have been filed or insurance claim generally when state and when titles are branded on on by the state those are accurately reported to the vehicle history because that's really easy to get that they don't have to search for that

they just go to the state so um when the auction when the car's go through the auctions, declared as flood cars, those titles are branded, and if someone's buying them, a Carfax or an auto check report will reveal that. We can't forget that this is an international show, and one of the favorite outlets for bad cars are experts. And, you know, you can export a car to South America, ends up in Colombia or Venezuela. Caribbean, Caribbean Island. Costa Rica. You can, Haiti. There's a thriving market, especially in South.

Florida, a lot of the importers meet the exporters at auction. And they buy cars that would be illegal to sell in the United States and they export them. Or you can do it the other way around. The problem with the whole situation, protect a consumer, is every country is different. Some countries have no laws. Some states have, of the 50 states in the United States, they have different laws and there's no consistency so the the car buyer as long as we're talking a global economy is really at risk tremendously when you buy a car so you really have to depend on yourself and your own technician and your own diligence you can't depend on the state or the country when you're buying a car there's no federal or state laws to really protect you all right all right

we have another text from bob and this is extraordinary and this is going to sound like like a little bit of the commercial, but it's relevant, and I got to read it. This is Bob, and he's from Naples. He just got through the storm. He lost two cars in the hurricane this week and wanted to thank us, especially Stephen at the dealership in Josh, my brother and your son, to help me buy two replacements in order a third. He said, it's so easy to purchase remotely in this time of stress.

Thousands of cars and homes were lost and untold lives, too. While the insurance adjuster has yet to total my cars, I wanted to beat the right. listening to your show and seeing you folks on the podcast gave me the confidence to purchase sight unseen and I look forward to picking the cars up and meeting you. Thanks again, Bob. So that's something else to think about for the folks over in the affected areas. It's going to be a long time in your immediate area to find a place that's even operational or cars that are fit for sale. So going online and looking outside your area, which has kind of been a trend lately anyway. especially with used cars, people are extending their purchase radius out, many miles beyond and traveling farther than they used to.

So going online and checking maybe even out of state. Actually, I've got a comment on YouTube that fits right in with us. Kyle in Pennsylvania is asking, what are the current wait times on new Corolla Cross and RAV-4 hybrids? Oh, boy. Okay, so the wait times for all new cars, it's pretty long. So I would say for the regular versions of those vehicles,

the non-hybrid versions, three to six months on the hybrid versions on most vehicles, and this is just because they're produced at a smaller than a smaller percentage of the overall production, they are taking much longer a year at least. That's at the dealers that are doing orders. Some dealerships don't do orders, and they bring their cars in a lot,

They're sold for ungodly sums of money. So I don't know if you got all that. We were talking about the Bob and Naples that lost both cars and was able to replace them by purchasing online. Yeah, you're not going to get a bargain today, folks. And if someone approaches you with a bargain on a used car or a new car, there's no free lunch. and it could well be a flood car.

If I were going to try to take advantage of somebody and I had a flood car, I'd probably ask too much money so they wouldn't be suspicious. But if someone is sloppy enough to say, I got a real bargain for you on this used car, be sure you get it checked out. And we talked to Rick Kearney on this show just a few minutes ago. It might cost you $200, $250.

Get a good technician to go over that car with a fine tooth comb and get a seal of approval, this car is water-free, has not been in a flood, don't buy anything today, especially right now in Florida. But even after the smoke settles, these cars that are flooded in Florida, they're going to end up everywhere. I mean, the sellers of these cars are very smart, and they know that they can find a market for it in Iowa a lot easier than they can in South Florida. So they're trucking these cars as we speak, and they're buying them as we speak, and they are out there actively buying flood cars.

They're not buying them for any other reason than to sell them to you. So spend the $250 or $200 with a mechanic you can trust and gets a seal of approval and be sure you have a clean title. Unfortunately, too many people now absolutely have to have a car in a hurry, and that's when mistakes get made when you need to buy. something in a hurry. Okay. We have some anonymous feedback and I'll kind of summarize because it's long, but it was last week we had a discussion. They asked about Toyogard on all being put on all the Toyotas in the southeast and this person is from Alabama and we discussed that last week and know Toy Guard is not required to be on the car but most dealers in the southeast are putting this package on that's put on by the distributor.

other dealers from just Toyota dealers it's just a high markup high profit margin accessory quote unquote um that they put on the cars um so um this anonymous dexter says uh they went they found there's one dealership in alabama and that doesn't do toy guard but unfortunately they add about another nineteen hundred dollars in other um poor options on the car and that's the same thing so the question is are there any accessories or options that Toyota requires its dealers to put on the car, and the answer is no. There's absolutely nothing. You can buy, get a car from Toyota with nothing on it.

And so... When you say Toyota, you're talking Toyota manufacturing, the parent company, yes. The parent company, Toyota Motors, North America, and in the southeast, our distributor, but our distributor does not require you to put any accessories on the car. They encourage it, and they pay good money for you to do it. They entice you with all sorts of incentives to do it, and they talk to you about it regularly. And if you're not selling it, they always want to come back and see if you reconsider and sell it. So there is not pressure, but there is definitely an interest from the distributor.

They make it so financially lucrative to the dealer, and they not only reward the dealer, they reward the salesman, the sales manager, and, as I say, the dealer himself. So there's multiple incentives. Now, when you take those multiple incentives, paying the salesman, paying the sales manager, and the dealer, like the general manager, everybody's getting greased, if you know what I'm saying. So all that grease is what you're paying extra for. So when you buy Toyogard from a toilet dealer, you're paying $700,

and the dealer is actually out of pocket about $250. So that's almost a 300% markup, and that 300% comes. from all the extra grease because they're paying everybody. If a Toyota dealer has a certain percentage of cars ordered from Southeast Toyota with Toyo Guard on them, then they get a kickback. I have exciting news for you. And all your years, have you ever seen a Toyota Guard claim? No.

I have. You did? My first one. Oh. I was contacted from a customer who asked what is the procedure to make the claim. Was it honored? I'll find out. They said, no, if there was a stain that wouldn't come out.

I gave her the 800 number to call, and they just have to get repaired at the dealer and then submit the reimbursement and Toyota will pay it. So I'll find out. I'm sure she'll let me out. Our service manager has never seen one. Well, I have. I'm the only one. I don't know if that's true. I mean, that's my first one that I've seen that I've been involved with.

That's shocking. Yeah. All those years. Ladies and gentlemen, 877-960, 9960. Don't forget, ladies, first two new lady callers. You can win yourself $50 this morning. Give us a call to say hello like Sarah did. Or share your experience in the, whether you went to the Internet to purchase your vehicle or anything else.

Or if you went to the dealership, again, 877960, and you can text us at 772-4976530. And don't forget your anonymous feedback. Okay, we're going to go to Rick. I've got a couple of them here, actually. First one is from Guy Larrabee. He says, good morning. We were lucky not to get hit hard by Ian. CEO, Akio Toyota, in recent statements, is pushing hybrids

and is still resisting the EV transition. This can be disastrous for Toyota. What's your opinion? You know, obviously I'm just, I really... We wanted to participate in this. Yeah. We think that I'm not worried as a Toyota dealer because Toyota is very strong and they're very smart.

And they'll be there with electric vehicles because they have the net worth and staying power. They'll be around for a long time. They're like one of the most powerful, profitable automotive companies in the world. But I'm disappointed that they missed the electric vehicle bus, especially when they invented hybrids. I mean, you know, the Prius really changed the world and became a hybrid world. You'd think with that foresight, they would have seen the EV, but they didn't. And they got hung up on the hydrogen fuel cell. So that just says nobody's perfect.

And Hacchio Toyota is a race car driver, so maybe that's why. He likes driving those Formula One. That's a good reason. But maybe you should drive a Tesla, and he'll see how fast that feels. And maybe he'll get excited. Wakudoki, that's excitement for Toyota. So what's real excitement feels like? Race cars is really, I mean, you know, I get a lot of argument on this,

but racing cars is just going to be a thing in the past. I mean, it's fun now, and all your NASCAR fans out there will hate me for saying this. But, you know, an electric vehicle is just kind of boring the whole sport because there's nothing more. than there's a faster than electric vehicle. Okay, so what's wrong with racing electric cars? That'll be too fast. Come on.

There's no track. You can't have a Daytona 500 with a car that'll go 400 miles an hour. They had to put restrictor plates on the NASCAR to slow them down. They'll just put a restrictor on the electric cars to slow them down and run it that way. Yeah, but they don't make noise. All right, right. They don't smell bad. That's the whole part of the NASCAR thing.

Could you imagine watching a silent race? Yeah, right. Everybody's talking. I can't hear the race. I mean, noise is part of the race, right? The smoke, the noise, the rumble in your gut. All right, I have some anonymous feedback I'd like to read. I read that it will take five new refineries in California to provide fuel for all of the new gas automobiles in 1900.

Bummer is that it takes a long time to build them. I saw a picture from a standard oil gas station in Southern California. The 12 pumps were occupied, and the line waiting for a pump was about 30 model S's. Oh, I'm sorry, I read that wrong. He actually wrote, Red, that will take five new nuclear reactors in California to provide electricity for all the electric cars in 2030. Bummer is, it takes a long time to build them. Saw a picture from a Tesla charging station in Southern California. The 12 chargers were occupied, and the line waiting for a charge.

was about 30 Tesla cars. Sorry about that. I was just making a point. The texture actually said that it's not going to work out. So this decision by California to go to all electric and stop selling gas cars in 2030 is a colossal mistake. Well, that's what they said before when they came with the new emission standards in California.

They said you can't do it. Here's what I think, all the naysayers and the people that are coming up with these formats like eight nuclear reactors. only five. They're not looking at the speed of science. And, you know, if you go back to the middle of the... Or the speed of the South Korean company that builds nuclear reactors in 39 months. Yeah. I mean, I look at it from a, you know, I'm a scientific nut, and I look at what's happening now with some total of human knowledge. It used to double every 40 years. Now it doubles every 12 hours. If that doesn't knock your soccer,

off and spin you around and make you crazy, nothing will. But we are with our quantum computing and our cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and all that other stuff, human beings are falling way behind on the generation of knowledge. So technology is almost a joke now because there's nothing you can think in your, and you're, I started to say stupid, stupid. We haven't imagined. stupid. We as human beings are stupid compared to what artificial intelligence will be. And artificial intelligence will solve virtually any problem that you can imagine. It will happen. We're going to be. And it's also a very common thing throughout human history. It's when new industries and economies are birthed, magical things happen. There is a need for this electricity.

They're not going to just let the entire automobile or the entire global industries crash. new services will arise, businesses arrive, new sciences and technologies like Earl said. So that's what happens when a new economy and a new industry is. Absolutely. I just read the other day, this is totally off the subject, but it shows you a little bit about science. You know, one of the greatest horror stories and science fiction stories has always been an asteroid destroying the earth. Well, you say NASA just crashed a spacecraft onto an asteroid. And it changed the course of the asteroid.

It did. They accomplished what they set out to do. So there you go. The future is here, folks. What do you think? Give us a call toll free at 877-9-60-960, Texas also at 77272-497-6-5-30. I've got one other here from Donovan. He says, I'm seeing dealers holding cars for a lot longer today.

Prices are falling some. Do you think we're going into a new slash used car recession in the end of the year or beginning of 2023? I don't think so. I think if you look at it historically, used car prices today are still quite a bit higher than they were one year ago. In the past couple of months, used car prices have come down like 6%. I don't see a trend yet. Now, it might be. There might be a trend.

unfortunately if if this happens and prices do start to go down too much the bad news will be we're in a bad recession and there's a lot of people talking now a lot of smart people out there talking about recession and if there is a recession then all all these fat cat car dealers out there are going to have to start working again for a living and it's I don't want to see it I'd rather I'd rather have a problem with price gouging

than seeing a recession with people out of work and not being able to buy you know the basics all right we have a oh we have a call

we're good all right good this is for Rick anonymous feedback good morning everyone this question is for Rick I have a friend who doesn't want to replace

bad wheel bearing I'm sorry doesn't want to replace a bad wheel bearing I know other things can be damaged I just don't know what those other things are. What other things might be damaged if a bad wheelbearing is not replaced?

Thanks for your help. Your life? The wheelbearing on a car. How much does that cost? Yeah. Good question there. The wheel bearing, basically, when they start to wear, they build heat because the wheel is supposed to spin nice and smooth. And those bearings are supposed to be greased in.

so that they can turn freely and smoothly. When they start to wear and the grease breaks down, it starts building heat and friction. It starts making a growling noise, and one of the easiest ways that we use to tell this... Can you make that noise, because I can't imagine when you say growling? As you're going down the road. Okay.

And the way you can actually kind of test this a little bit, find an open road with a parking lot. around, get to about 20, 30 miles an hour, and then actually weave the car from side to side, and when the weight of the car shifts to the side with the bad bearing, the noise will get louder. When the weight goes to the other side and takes the weight off the bearing, the noise will go a little bit less. And once that occurs, that'll help you identify where the bad bearing is. The problem is, as those bearings get worse and worse, they can suddenly seize up and explode, apart. Wow. And especially say you're on the highway traveling 50, 60, 70. Where is the wheel

bearing? It's like up in the wheel? It's right where the wheel, the hub, where the wheel bolts to the car. So you're talking suddenly the loss of, maybe the loss of the entire wheel might fly right off the car. Okay. And suddenly you're out of control and crashing a car with innocent people being hurt. Wheel bearings are nothing to mess around with folks. If it's starting to make noise, you need to get it addressed very quickly because they can go a week or a month, but they're not going to make it very much longer once they're making noise. Very good. So you tell your friend that you have to replace that wheelbearing, and because it's not just other

parts of your car, you could actually get in a serious accident and die. So do it, yes. Big safety issue. Video, they saw a video, there's another anonymous feedback. They saw a video on YouTube, and Rick's going to like this. where a man went to get an oil change and was told he also needed to get the cabin filter replaced for only $154.62, which he declined. Instead, he went and purchased a new filter for $15. The video shows him replacing himself, and it took less than 20 seconds.

What do you think about that? Should people be doing that? Some cars, you can actually change them very easily. Just get a good filter, though. Don't get a crappy filter. Some cars are a little harder to replace. My preference, though, is I would buy a little more expensive filter. I would look for one that has activated charcoal in the filter, especially because both my wife and I have allergies,

and this is actually filtering the air that is going through your air conditioning system and being blown right into your face. So an activated charcoal filter will help get those particles and the allergens out of the air. How much is something like that cost? they can run up to about $3540 retail that's a lot better than $154 and 62 cents absolutely and the labor for it really is not that much at our shop the labor we would run up i think about $3540 for the technician to put it in uh-huh some of them are kind of tough to get to because they're behind the glove box right others just have a simple little panel that you remove and then

other cars like the new Toyota Supra I have to get one of the young kids that can bend like Gumbie to get up under the dash to get to it. One of the guys are like under 5, 6 and yeah, a little skinny kid and I just say, hey

I'll give you $10, go in there and replace that filter for me. That's great. So let's see. Do we have any more feedback here? I don't think so. I think we're caught up. Okay, I'm going to share something with the folks. Back to floodcars, you know, here's something that we haven't mentioned on the show. This is from Consumer Report, and did you know that some floodwaters, they contain raw and untreated sewage and other contaminants that may pose serious, very serious health hazards.

If they're, you know, this is from the Center for Disease Control, and you can get more information about that. But it's best to leave this up to a professional cleaning or if you're going into service at the dealership, you know, they would have the, well, protective equipment and such to take care of this problem. Rick, what do you think? Have you had the flood course? I'm sure in your, you know, years, you've seen them. You've done. You've done. You've touched them you've worked on them as a matter of fact I just spent Thursday and Friday resealing the glass panoramic roof on an older Venza that just through the years the seals had broken down and it started leaking water inside and as a matter of fact those wells that I spoke about in the

back corners of the car they were probably about eight to ten inches deep with water the padding underneath the carpet was just soaked right in and when I first brought the car in the bay the the odor the smell the mustiness coming from it was horrible we were able to leave the car in the shop I drained all the water everywhere I could kept the doors and windows open for the whole time that was in the shop just to let it air out and one of the things this customer unfortunately they wanted to reseal the roof but they said they would take care of the rest of the cleanup themselves. My first recommendation is get a couple buckets of damp rid from Target anywhere, Walmart, Home Depot. Amazon. Amazon. Park your car outside of the garage,

have it out in the sun, windows up, put the damp rid inside. Florida sun will turn that car into an oven, evaporate the water inside. The damp rid will soak up all the moisture from the air and of course mold and mildew then without that water will dry up and hopefully it will reduce the odors and reduce any health issues that might come up from it great information it's not going to go away but it will reduce it dramatically yeah absolutely we don't actually at the shop unless the customer requests it our normal thing would be to remove the carpet remove the padding from underneath thoroughly scrub every everything we can on the floorboards of the car, and then put new padding, clean the carpet,

and put it all back together. What kind of a chemical are you using on the floorboard? Just basic cleaners, ammonia and water. We also have a serve pro. We'll come in and do mold remediation. That's a great company. Where they will use their cleanup systems to just basically kill all the mold in the car. and I mean there's ways to art that of course can get rather expensive so you know if you're really

tight on a budget go with the damp rid and let that Florida Sun do its work yeah you can't go wrong with the damperid we're going to go back to the phones and we're going to talk to Frank from Jupiter Farms good morning Frank well good morning to y'all I'm almost perplexed in one way someone not went to wheelberries and I mean for such a minimal price and it was interesting the technique of turning the

cars side aside on the road I have never I never knew that before so that was cool and on another note the other day on the news I was really proud to see a big full of ranch rescue ranch truck getting ready to go across the state

and how large it is they looked it in and so immediately I said You know, as the old stewards go to people, it was nice to see them on Tate route. Yeah, they, I mean, they're like part of, like, emergency response all over the country. I mean, every time there's a disastrous, I mean, who's thinking about the dogs, and it's them. And they're out, they get there on the road, and we're going to have, you know, in the coming weeks and months, you know, we feature them. We try and help them get these dogs adopted, so we do some sponsored dogs, and we try and promote individual ones, get some attention, and see if we can get them adopted. it fast so we're going to get a whole bunch of South Florida dogs and that's just really sad

because not only you know that we support them we're all dog lovers ourselves and it's just heartbreaking when you think about you know Frank did you see the clip that uh channel 5 ran on big dog ranch last night no it did you can you can probably uh pull that up uh go to the website channel 5 but it was just amazing what Lori Simmons is doing and they interviewed her and they showed this huge bus that they were taking to southwest Florida and they were showing all the floodwaters and the dogs that are stranded and you know they plan on coming back with a more than a bus load yeah i'll definitely go on there i'm very impressed with them over the years and of course i'm very proud to make you guys do so much work for missa that's a pretty good thing and one last thing

A few weeks ago, I was in your dealership and my car aligned, which was just one of the guys of a Mercedes. Hey, Frank, you're breaking up. Okay, no, I'm sorry. Can you hear me better now? Yeah, a little. I'll be quick. I had a chance to go into that and see your workshop. What a nice work with.

Nothing like I had when I was working at Shell in the 60s, you know, doing two nights. Oh, thank you. Rick keeps that place clean. All right. Thanks for calling, Bob. I'm glad you got through everything. All right. Talk to you next week. Frank's a regular caller, and he was pointing out that meticulous floor.

Back there with words. You could eat off those floors. I'm a big clumsy guy. I do not have a messy floor because I slip inside too easy. So I keep my bay clean. He's got to do it. We have a text from Patrick who sent something pretty astonishing here. It's a news story.

This was in the panhandle in Florida just a week ago. A Navy officer, 23-year-old Navy officer, was found dead at the wheel with neck wounds. And it was his airbag that it had exploded. And his family is claiming that it was a Ford vehicle. and they're claiming that they never received any recall notices and Ford is on the other side saying we have sent recall notices for the last how many years and that just this is a brutal example

of the fact that only, what, 25% of people get any recall repaired and this is at the extreme but very possible end when those recalls, these Dakota recalls were put out and you remember they said these vehicles, the only time they should be driven is the dealership to get them repaired. And this is a very sad story, but this just happened. That's been a problem for a long time, hasn't it, Stu?

Where you get a recall and, you know, they just ignore it. They ignore it. I read in New York State, they still require, and I imagine other states, too, still require vehicle inspections. So recall notices are handed to the vehicle owner when they come in for the inspection. We don't have inspections in Florida anymore. We used to have them. back when i started we used to they were a good thing um pain in the butt but yeah one of the things we do at our shop and i hope other shops are doing this as well and i guarantee most dealerships

of every make do this every single car that comes in for service we run the vin number to check for recalls every used car that we bring in for an inspection before it goes on to use car lot is checked for recalls. Every mechanic shop, dealership or aftermarket, has the ability to run a VIN number through the NHTSA.gov website to find out about open recalls. And if you're a mechanic or you work at any automotive repair facility and you are not doing this, you are doing a disservice to your customers. Complicit. To be complicit. I just, I think that. Just the knowledge of how serious it is. You're putting people's lives at risk for no reason when it takes less than five minutes to run a vin, find out about a recall and say, hey, Mr. Jones, did you know your car has an open recall?

You should get to your dealership and get this done. Yeah, a lot of great information here, folks. Give us a call toll for you at 877-960-9960. Are we going to go to Stu? Yeah, I just went over because I realized I had been neglecting our Facebook stream and I went over to look at it. So John, John Neal is over in Port Charlotte, and that was, you know, that's dead center. He has Wi-Fi in his GM car and has really saved us, so they can make phone calls and use the Internet. So there is the one thing you didn't think of.

We were talking about Wi-Fi. We thought it was a stupid thing to have in a car because everybody's got phones, but that's pretty good. So he's got the Wi-Fi in his GM car, but he reports that things are not good over here in his area. in Port Charlotte. So we wish you the best, John. And I'm going to mention again, folks, you know, the book, if you put off purchasing confessions of a recovering car dealer, definitely take advantage of that.

All proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. All proceeds go to Big Dog Rants. Confessions of a recovering car dealer. Amazon. It is something that doesn't become outbursts. updated, so to speak. There is just so much information, and it's something you would probably carry with you. It just gives you every bit of information. It's a how-a-do book. It's not a, yeah, the new book is more of an autobiography, but this here is a how-to-do-it book, and it really

summarizes pretty much what we talk about on the show all the time, and it's available on Amazon.com and you buy it for about 20 bucks and 100% of the proceeds that we receive for the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. And if you If you saw the clip last night, folks you'll realize

the impact and Lori's doing a great job and they're headed to Southwest Florida and boy I'll tell you there's some real stories, real stories so purchase that book, go to Amazon and you can be part of the solution. Thank you. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And don't forget,

we will have the mystery shopping report coming up soon, and that mystery shop was from Coral Springs, Nissan. Now back to Stu. Got some anonymous feedback coming in. Hello, this question is likely, most likely for Earl or Stu. Will car prices? for new and use cars stay the side even after the inventory shortage is over, it appears people have become used to the high prices. I thought, I heard it said the prices will not go back down even when the inventory shortage was fixed. Thank you.

Well, we definitely have opinions on that. I think it's going to take longer, but it's hard to fight the natural forces, the invisible hand of the market, and eventually production will increase, and eventually the natural greed of actors in this economy are going to discount to get more business and get more market share and it's going to become normal. But we don't know how long it's going to take. I think the manufacturers, if the dealers don't learn anything from this, the manufacturers will. And I think that the manufacturers are realizing that they cutthroat war for market share. And my term as a car dealer over the years has always been they shove cars down the dealer's throats and they build as

many cars as they possibly can they like to run those plants 24-7 the more you can run a plant to crank out cars the cheaper you can build the cars less expensive per car the only problem is you've got to get rid of those cars with general motors for Honda Toyota they could build them real fast but how do they get rid of them well they get rid of them through their dealer network And they tell the dealers, here's 400 cars that we're going to send you this month. And the dealer says, I don't want 400 cars. And then there's coercion and there's all sorts of things that go on. And dealers end up with too many cars.

And this has been going on for decades. And so if a dealer has 500 cars in his inventory and he really should only have 100, he has to sell them because in normal times, especially when you don't have low interest rates, it's extremely costly to hold that inventory. You have maintenance, insurance, interest on the cost of ownership. So what do you do? You sell the car is cheap. Now, that's good for the car buyer. It's funny because these modern car manufacturers understand the problem of not having unused inventory on hand, so they use this just in time. We don't get to use that. We are now. My recent blog about

You know, is the devil you know or the devil you don't know. Some total of the meaning of this blog I wrote is that we might be too quick to try to get rid of the dealers. I don't know. Something's going to change, though. And going back to the original question here, I don't think we're going to see the wild, while west when things settle down. When the whole COVID thing is over and the microchip thing is over and all the other, the flood, when we get back to whenever we, if we ever do it normal. Because of the manufacturers.

It'll be because of the manufacturers. I think the manufacturers are going to have a more control. I agree. If they do that, then that's going to happen. And prices will be higher than they were. And they're still going to be pretty high. And you're still going to be able to try to negotiate the price. down, but they won't be as high as they are today by far.

All right, very good. Let's see. Let me jump back over here. Amri came back with another text. Amri says, before COVID, there is a very smart lady from the Florida's West Coast who called in every week. I believe her name was Tina. That's right, Tina from Benita Springs. Yep.

Benita Springs was right down there. I really miss her fascinating calls. I seem to remember that her schedule changed due to the pandemic, so she wouldn't be calling in anymore. have you had any word from her? I hope she did okay with the storm. We do too. We haven't heard anything from Tina since her work schedule changed. She hasn't called it in the show.

I actually just had a map Benita Springs just to get an idea where it is. But it's right there just south of Fort Myers Beach, so it got hit pretty hard. So we're praying for Tina. Absolutely. Do we have Tim's last name? I don't know. You guys might have, because I didn't know if you had any other off-air discussions with her. I had contact information and I got in touch with her and it was quite some time ago

and confirming what you just said, her, you know, schedule had changed. Yeah. Well, I hope she's doing okay. That she's doing fine. Yeah. Bob sent us a text. Let us know that there are now races with F1 type all electric cars. And he sent me a link to a new story, NASCAR Electric Racing Series leaked documents.

So it looks like that's happening as we speak. sorry for all the AV haters out there but the world's changing it'll be a new audience I can tell you that I mean that's a yeah they'll have charcutory boards and crudette

anyway it'd be like polo exactly those would be sipping things very quiet and little sandwiches that would be a great cartoon comedy or something

you know to have a bunch of people sitting in the stands just sitting in total quiet and you're just here's Ladies, don't forget, you still have time to give us a call. And when you're $50 for the first two new lady callers, hey, 77960, and for everyone else, give us a call

if you know anyone over there on the other coast and, well, what kind of an impact on their lives that they shared with you. Give us a call and let's talk about it. It's definitely worth talking about. God bless all of them. Okay, back to Rick. We're caught up.

You all caught up? Yep. Okay. How about Stu? We have no more text and no more anonymous feedback. Okay. We better give that number out of love. Yeah, definitely.

877-960. And you can text us at 772-4976530. Earl, do you have something that you and I. went over on the automotive news? I have a, you know, I'm starting to get irritated because we have our Attorney General running for re-election. And it's just, you know, we talk a lot about the fact that the Attorney General for the state of Florida, what's their name? Ashley Moody. How many times did we see a commercial last night?

And I kept saying, November's here. And she's in the tank for the court dealers. And I even looked up her opponent, and I've never heard of her opponent. Her Democratic opponent's name is Aramis Ayala. And nobody's ever heard of her. She has practically no financing. And so it's just a foregone conclusion

that she's not going to be able to defeat Ashley Moody. Ashley Moody has a huge war chest and yeah it's part of the system I you know it's silly for me to worry about it and get myself upset about it because that's the way our politics is in the United States we're the greatest country on earth and you know nobody wants to live anywhere except the United States and certainly you know that's evidence by people that are trying to come here all the time we say too many people are trying to come here well you can't blame How'd you like to be born in Nigeria or Haiti or you know I could name a thousand other places that you wouldn't want to be from and so they come here. So we're a good country. The problem is we're a capitalist country and and our politicians are run based on donations and contributions and the people who make the contributions I get what they want and the car dealers and the car dealers association select Ashley Moody.

Ashley Moody will not enforce the laws to protect the consumer, and there we are. I think the problem is term limitations, plain and simple. Well, get them in, get them out. Well, that's good. I'll vote for that, but the problem is the person that goes in is going to be the one that gets the most money to spend the most on the campaign. That's our system, but she's spending a lot of money right now. That's our system, and that's the way it is.

Love it or leave it. I prefer to stay here. I'm not going on. Absolutely. And everyone knows that we've, you know, been in contact or on our own end here with the governor, with the Attorney General. We haven't heard from anyone. So you can understand us being annoyed. But we're not giving up.

The reason I'm so high on WPLG Channel 10 and Jeff, you know, once here, the investigative reporter, is they are true journalists. and the true sense of the word. Journalism is supposed to be an honorable profession, and to some extent it still is, but to some extent it's not. And the way it's not is because media relies on advertising. And television channels, especially, radio stations, newspapers, they have to have advertisers.

Who advertises more than anybody? Car dealers. Oh, maybe lawyers. When you turn on TV, when you listen to the radio, when you look at the newspaper, what do you see? Either a lawyer ad or a TV ad, right? So if you're on a TV station and you're getting a huge revenue

from the car dealers, you're not going to attack the car dealers. And when you do, it takes a lot of guts. The WPLG and Jeff Weincier have a lot of guts. They've gone after car dealers in South Florida and there's a class action suit right now against car dealers for taking advantage of people when they

trying to buy their off-lease cars. And there's lawsuits crapping up. They're really stirred it up. So if you're in South Florida and you get to Channel 10, watch Channel 10. And I'll listen for Jeff Wynne once here on his investigations. And if we do enough of that, if the media had the courage to stand up to these car dealers and advise the voters, see, the car buyers are also the voters. If all the voters got stirred up, then the politicians could run on the basis that I'm going to take care of you

and see that the car dealers behave themselves and obey the laws. And that would be a platform you could run on and get elected. And you wouldn't have Ashley Moody, his attorney general, Florida. You'd have someone that cared about you, the consumer. So that's my wish. Cared about you and the consumer. What a fabulous job, Jeff did. It is just amazing.

Go back and watch this video. You can go to Erlon Cars. You just want to watch it over and over again. It is, wow, that's all I can say. Ladies and gentlemen, we still have time left here, 877-960, and we're going to go back to the phones, and we are going to talk to John in West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Hey, good morning.

Welcome. You can hear me, okay? Absolutely. All right, very good. All right. You know, you mentioned about that NASCAR EV, electric car racing. That's, you know, a possible future. And the only way I see that happening is the cars equipped with high capacity batteries for the long miles or some type of pit stop where the car slides in or comes into the pit stop.

and all of a sudden the batteries get replaced by driving in and pushing the old battery out to continue racing because they won't be able to sit there and charge for the half hour unless they have some type of high capacity charging system. But to slide the battery in and out and then also the cars are going to change because they're low center of gravity. It's not going to look like the cars we have now because like I said, they'll have a low center of gravity. They'll be able to change the shape of those cars almost like the little slot cars. I used to race I was little and that

because that you know and then if you keep going with it because of autonomous cars you'll end up having you won't even need drivers

and that because of the computers they'll never crash Wow wouldn't that be something that's cool just just my thought on something in the near future

what race is going to come down to yeah the future's here it's going to happen robot wars. Like, what's that thing they have on the, right where the competition between the robots that destroy each other will be ruined on? Battlebots. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Has it gotten any better? I mean,

have the robots gotten like more robotic instead of like little rhombos with chainsaws? They've gotten pretty imaginative in their devices, but the violence on that show machine to machine is

unbelievable. Unparalleled. Oh my gosh. It's like a demolition. Thank you so much, John. Yeah, we've got a kind of caught up topic there. Do you have a question or continued conversation? Okay, John, John's gone. If you want to watch something, watch Elon Musk and the robots that he's working on. And one day that plant is going to be open and it's all going to be.

He has an AI conference coming up and last year he teased a humanoid robot and there's supposed to be. there's going to be something more on it this AI conference. I hope it's a robot that walks across the stage. Humanoids, it's just amazing if you watch any of that. We are going to go to Dan in Hope's on. Good morning, Dan. Hello, how are you all doing today? Hey, Dan.

Yeah, I just got a new Tacoma day before yesterday from you guys. Oh, great. Okay. How to go? It went great. It's a third vehicle I bought in the last six years. Leonel, I just go to Leonel because he's real friendly and I like dealing with him.

And I just want to tell you what a wonderful experience it was. And it always is. You know, I'm in and it out quick. There's no nonsense. They give me the payment I want. And I just want to tell you how happy I'm going to come in there to buy you. What day was it yesterday? it was day before yesterday

nice and quiet wasn't it yeah yeah yes it was it was very quiet if that happens to car dealerships when there's a hurricane within 500 miles yeah yeah it does and I first came into a test drive it on Tuesday when it

when that storm first came and I wanted to come get it the next day you know but I felt like a little kids just this morning I just couldn't wait you know and uh But I took you that Thursday, and I just want to tell you know how happy I am with, you know, a nice, pleasant experience, no stress or anything. And like I said, it's a third one I bought in six years from you guys, and I'll be coming back.

We do appreciate it. Thank you so much for calling. Yeah, thanks for calling, Dan. Glad you had a great experience. All right, bye-bye. Have a great weekend. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Okay, we'll go back to Stu. Well, I was looking, this is kind of interesting. we have a text from Bob and he said he had the recalls done for the airbags on his 2006 Mustang I remember there was a lot on those Mustangs when we were back in the Dakota heyday

when we were finding them all over Florida there's a lot of Mustangs a lot of Chrysler's wow Bob wants to know will a VIN check show the recall was performed if you run the VIN on a vehicle that the recall has already performed it will not show up on that

It only shows open recalls. As an interesting, I went back to an old taccata shop, mystery shop, and took a VIN number from a Chrysler 300 LX that had a open Takata recall that was being sold by a dealer. And I ran the van and it has been fixed. There is no open recalls in that car. So whoever the new owner of this car is, great job. And then I ran a Carfax just to see what it looks like on that. And what you have is Carfax, if a service history is listed on that and the repair

to recall, it will list that. But it doesn't show, if it's not on a service history, it's not going to show up on a Carfax report. But it doesn't matter because it's been fixed. Right. But a dealership, if a dealership runs the VIN number through their system. It shows open and closed, right? It will show all.

Yeah, because that's the whole service history. Yeah. That's a little bit more detailed. And you can ask the service department that give you the information. They shouldn't have any problem. to let you know. But if you run it on on safercar.gov you'll find out if it's not there, you're good.

It'll show completed if they've completed the paperwork. We've had some situations in the past where they just for some reason sat on the repair order for a few months and never got back. So if Chevrolet doesn't know, they're not going to be able to

take it. Hey, I got a great text for you from Paul. Paul wants to know, it says local newspapers used to have complete advertising sections from car dealers. Earl's laughing right now. No more. So where are the local newspapers

covering this consumer rip-off? Well, that's true. Online advertising. Yeah, online. They have the online version. And the local paper still has full page from actually Maruni Chevrolet

for some reason. I don't know why. That's the reason. Every time we take a shot at Maruni, it's never gets a bus. He's the only car dealer in the Palm Beach Post, so I can't figure that on. But, yeah, it's newspapers, because they've fallen from favor so much, you know, even online, you know, you got Wall Street Journal in New York Times and USA Today and national papers that are hanging on, maybe the Washington Post, but the local newspapers are pretty much dead.

And so they're not very influential anyway anymore in the market. The TV stations, mainly, and online are the big venues for the advertising. Earl, we would sit years ago. We were with C-View, and the whole kitchen counter would be lined up with advertisement from all the newspapers. And we'd have the magnifying glass out. It was just, it was unbelievable. I never thought the day would come whenever we weren't, you know, clipping and cutting all of these advertisements. out of the newspaper.

It was mind-boggling the amount of money that was spent on advertising. And messy, too. Oh. You know, just before we do the Mr. Shopping report, I alluded earlier in the show, I just pulled this up to show you online on my iPhone. This is a, when you Google floodcars, there's a website, auto bidmaster.com. and I'll just hold it up briefly, but what it is, they're listing all these flood cars. A 2020 Jeep Wrangler, here's a 2015 Ford Escape, and they have hundreds and hundreds of these things,

and they're selling them to the dealers, and why are they selling them to the dealers, so they can sell them to you. So I think sometimes people think when a car is in a flood, somebody comes by and picks it up, takes it to a scrap heap and you see these big things and they smash them. No, they don't. They sell them. Yeah. If you want to buy one, go on down. And then they resell them. All these cars. Go to Big Reds auto sales in West Palm Beach. Seriously, they're selling flood cars, auto auction mall, R&R car sales. I googled it in South. Blood cars for sale and Flo. So there's going to a huge, a huge amount of these cars. And they're going to smell good. They're going to look good. They're going to be cheaper than what you could buy.

real car for and this is happening and people will be victimized so that's that was the theme of this show I'm really glad we devoted so much time to it because it's going to be around to haunt us for a long time definitely big red been around for a long time I don't know I never heard of it but apparently it's a local car and when something shows up that's a keyword that they're using in search so when I search flood cars they came up it should be I mean I we'll have a show of what it should be some time. It should be mandatory to destroy a flood car. If a car is totaled by an insurance company,

then that car should be destroyed. Or only allowed for parts salvageable parts of service. Certain parts. I mean, they're parts of the car. So, yeah, exactly. We don't have the laws, folks, and I go back on my broken record. We don't have the laws because the regulators

and the legislators are in the pockets of the auto industry, and that's why you could go online and have something blatantly saying, flood cars for sale. Why I'm here, and then sell them to whoever is the big sucker out there. That's the way our

capitalist society is, and I'm a capitalist. He's got to live with it. You got to live? You got to love us or leave us? Right, exactly. If you're not, if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. I'm kidding. We're consumer advocates. We're trying to make the kitchen a lot cooler. That's what we're trying to do.

Let's do the mystery shopping report, and then hopefully we'll get some text as we'll finish up earlier. Folks, you're a big part of the Mystery Shopping Report, and we'd love for you to vote on it. So go to send your vote in at 772-4976530 Mystery Shop of Coral Springs, Nissan. Don't forget, you've got to vote. Okay. When Agent Lightning chose Coral Springs Nissan for this week's mystery shopping report, I wasn't sure we've been there before. We've been doing this so long, it's easy to lose track. I mean, we've got, how many, how many of mystery shops have we done?

I don't know, just in the file that I have since I've been saving them as PDFs, there's hundreds and hundreds. It's also easy to lose track of where Coral Springs is, not for me, because that's where Cleveland Clinic is. Oh, okay. And then I should not drive down there. Well, this is speaking as if you were Stu, because I didn't know where. it was. Yeah, well, there. Cleveland is also in the Weston, but Coral Springs is just a little bit closer.

So, Stu Check Google Maps. As it turns out, we have Mystery Shop, Coral Springs, Nissan, and Carl Springs is in North Broward County as far west as you're going to get before it's the Everglades or Weston. Was Coral Springs Nissan owned by the Page or Auto Group, Bill Page and Company? I didn't know the Pages had any in Florida. Oh, yeah. They're just up in D.C. area.

No, there was a Bill Page Auto Group in Florida, and it was one of the pages, not Bill Page's Jr., but one of the pages that owned several dealerships. And it may be. Oh, seniors brothers or something like that? Brothers, yeah. Ten members of the family. And they all have creditors.

I just know the kids. Well, the 50-year-old kids. So we know this family going way, way back. It was December 2020. when we last visited Coral Springs, and it was part of a multi-exposé on Nissan dealers. Over the years, we observed Nissan dealerships that they tend to be a little more aggressively

with regard to sales taxis, I think partly because they get beat up more aggressively by Nissan. Nissan is probably one of the least desired manufactured by car dealerships, and the dealers they have are about as mean as Nissan is. It's just a mean manufacturer and a bunch of mean dealers. I know I'm stereotyping. Meanness rolls downhill. And they're exceptions.

Obviously, there are exceptions. We can confirm we see this sort of thing in our mystery shop reports. We've received calls and comments from listeners who call out Nissan dealers for a poor customer experience. Our last Coral Springs Nissan shop was also centered on the Costco Auto Program. To recap, they didn't do well. They played games with the price, had a $1,500 addendum in the days before these add-ons were even all over the place. Before agreeing to take half off, I'm sure, was not the experienced Costco members expected, or Costco expected for their members. We returned almost two years later in a world almost unrecognizable from the one in which we conducted our last investigation.

The Costco Auto Program, while still one of the only tools to get a discount, of MSRP. These days, it's currently a reliable way to price cardulies because cartilers aren't already to give up their fat margins. So it's better than nothing. It's hard because you can't find models. There's such a car shortage, but I still recommend the Costco auto buying program as being the best way you can do it even though it's not nearly as good as it should be. and it used to be. Costco member auto buying program. She was not a Costco member join.

It's worth of $65. Instead of going through what would likely be a futile search online, Agent Lightning drove straight down to Coral Springs and walked in the side door. Here's a report. I'm Agent Lightning. I'm not really Agent Lightning. I'm just going to say I'm Agent Lightning.

I entered the showroom at mid-morning, wandered around waiting to be greeted. There was a new bright, yellow Nissan Z parked behind a in a ring of red velvet ropes. MSRP of the Z was 54,915, but the dealership added a market adjustment. You can't even say it. I can't say it. The adjustments almost as much as the dealer lists, $32,375 added to $54,915 added to $54,915.

ticket price, dealer list price was $88,000,888. So they did that, like they had to do the math. They did. Let's sell it for 8888. That sounds good. So what's the markup there? Absolutely. You know they did that. Do the map for me. And they were laughing. They were laughing when they did it.

And some will probably buy it at that price. No one asked me, so I walked to the front desk. A young lady there asked me if I had an appointment. I said I didn't, but I'd like to speak to somebody about a new car. She called someone to help me. This is a tongue twister

Yeah It's Benjamin with a Y It's Hebrew Benjamin Yeah At first I thought it was a typo But it's really Benyman Benjamin with a Y

Came over in a couple of minutes I asked how we could help I said I was there to get a new car Either one of the smaller models Like the censure The Versa Then I pointed to the LZ And said my son would prefer that

Miniamen said Is he pronounced it a Benjamin? Benjamin Call him Ben if it's easier. Call him Ben. Said that was the only car they mark up. The rest are sold to the MSRP. And that's good if it's true.

He said the Kia dealership next door is doing $4,000 over MSRP on everything. Benjamin and Ben excused himself to see if he had any centrals or versus. He returned quickly to say he didn't have any in stock. He suggested they consider a used vehicle. I said I prefer new than he suggested the new kicks. he had out front, the Nissan kicks. We walked outside of the car, it was red with an MSRP of 24,270, and true to Ben's word, there was no market adjustment, I didn't.

We took the car for a test drive, and Ben was very thorough, as he explained all the features, focusing on safety. We returned, and Ben led me to a desk, asked me to sit, left for a minute, and he returned, sat down, asked me to sign a document. document. It consisted of a single printed sheet of paper, whole sheet of paper, I guess, that included the dealerships Why Buy for Message, and this was at the bottom. And this really irritates me. It irritated me. It should irritate anybody. It's arrogant. I don't like arrogance with retailers. And this piece of paper, I'll just show it, if you're streaming us, I'll show

a little piece of paper there. Says customer will buy and drive car home now if all terms are acceptable and then there's a line for customer signature so that just that would make me angry it would make you angry it made uh agent lightning angry and uh why would you sign something like that he said when i objected to signing it he said it doesn't really obligate me to buy it wasn't legally binding all then why why use it well we all know psychological intimidation exactly i think it was a test you know agent lightning is phenomenal she has so much experience she can handle any situation

well that's okay she doesn't buy that car from treasure goes for $8 million over anyway my point being there not too embarrassed Agent Lightning is the fact that we all

succumb to being taken advantage of when we're buying a car cars are extremely emotional item of merchandise it's not like buying a loaf of bread, you know, when you buy a car, you get emotionally involved. And people name their cars. They get sad when they trade in their cars. I name my car. They talk to their cars. It's like bringing a puppy dog, huh? You named your car. So don't think that you are, again,

Agent Lightning, who is an extremely smart woman, who knows more about buying cars than 99.9% of the people, that's what she does for living. She pretends to buy cars from disreputable. evil car dealers, and she actually got taken advantage of by a car dealer because she wanted to buy a car, and she paid too much money for it. She had to have a car. So there you go. We all are victims of these car dealers. Okay, so we argued about the signature on the silly document that said that I'm going to buy the car if the terms are acceptable. I didn't sign. It wasn't legally binding and anyway then Jorge the sales manager came over to the desk with a printed pricing sheet for the kicks they bring in the manager standard operating procedure the top line was

MSRP 24, 270 there was no discount but there was also no market adjustment that speaks well just like Ben said however there was an eighteen hundred ninety nine dollars in fees 1,899 dollars in fees Now, $1,500 worth of that is going to, or maybe $1,400 worth of that, he's got a BBS. And some of it is actually tax and tag. I studied the sheet and objected to the fees. Ben broke it down for me. $992 dealer fee, and there's probably more than that. He says $4.49 title and $450 tag.

And that's a, that's, he's obviously doing those e-filing and private in the $440. And the 450 is a standard tag estimate, but it will not be that. So, about $1,500 in phony fees. I told them that, wait a minute, what I say? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I told them I was considering another Volkswagen in Westbound Beach, and they were going lower than MSRP, where he interrupted by asking if it was Schumacher,

familiar with his competition. It's not really his competition, because Schumacher is like way up here. He's down in Coral Springs. Yeah, but there's not that many Volkswagen dealers, I guess. Well, she brought up that she's looking at that Volkswagen from the last shop, but she's looking at a Nissan now. Yeah. Oh, that's true. She's just saying she's getting a price lower than MSRP.

Oh, my gosh. I said I was told it was, and I told him I was getting a Costco discount there. Okay. Or I came right back and said they have Costco pricing. She went in on purpose, not saying she was a Costco member. And that's what happens. If you don't tell them your Costco member, they're not going to tell you about it. it because they don't want you to use the Costco pricing program.

And he even asked for my Costco card, which is something they're supposed to do. I showed him my Costco application with my Costco membership and the manager, or he excused himself to get updated pricing. This time, there was a $650 discount and the fees that had been lowered by $30. So he didn't look at the membership Costco member pricing sheet, which she did in the last shop. which you just chose not to do it here. If you are a Costco member, you always want to ask to see that.

Now the Costco price on the Costco member sheet doesn't give you the dealer fees, but above it, it tells you what the extra fees are. So you have to mentally add that back into the Costco member price to get the real price. And they do have to, as we understand it, charge you $350 blow list. In this case here, they said it was $650 discount. Yeah, but with a bunch of fees. Yeah, and on top of the fees. And that we didn't get into the fee argument.

Jorge also advised me that they have a new VERSA coming in on October 11th due to a cancellation. That vehicle, I said, is less expensive than the kicks. I said I couldn't wait until then. Jorge suggested putting me in a rental until arrived, and I said I had to check with my husband. Orhey asked me to wait, to meet someone else. to meet someone else. I waited and then Hesus appeared. He told me what

Jorge had told me they had a cancellation on a Versa and he could get me out the door around $22,000 on it. I said thank you to Jesus and I left. And that's our story, man. That's... And we're sticking to it. Costco, another Costco.

So, yeah, so they clearly have a Costco program and last time she went, they went through the actual procedure. They followed the I read the mystery shop report from two years ago.

They went through the procedure but they still added on all these fees and when they told her I mean when Agent Lightning objected to the fees they said Costco program says that she means she can get the addendum items for half half off. So it was a plea

then they completely screwed up after that. Was that one when we complained to the Alliance company who is the company that does Costco membership. Maybe. Maybe because I remember there was a, we had a discussion of what was allowed to be on the Costco pricing sheet.

And then we saw another Costco pricing sheet that said that all dealer installed items will be offered to cost members at dealer's cost. So they're still making people pay for things. But if you help it to the letter of the law, they would have to pay $200 for an $1,800 addendum. But I don't know what became of it. Yeah, I keep saying, we're going to do this, but I, you know, Costco, Nancy and I've talked about this a lot. You know, we rely heavily on Costco, and we were disappointed that they don't administer their program better with the Costco Auto Bike program.

I think their heart's in the right place. They mean to, but they got in bed with this alliance company many years ago, and they let them run the program. and they don't really they don't the Costco experience isn't what you get with the Costco auto membership program and the auto buying program it's not like you get

when you go into the store and it should be it should be the same thing but we haven't devoted the time to go after Costco on this now it's not the right time to do it anyway because the program is basically not really being implemented

the way it should be because there's no car And in fairness, yeah, I'll say in fairness, it's kind of not a, you know, it's not a real environment to kind of assess and it'll change. We'll figure it out. So grade-wise, you know, there's a few things that make it really hard for me to think of anything else. And that's that, even though it wasn't the car that Agent Lightning was shopping, the $32,000 market adjustment just hits you right between the eyes. It's hard to get past that because it's the same company. But keep in mind. If the toilet dealers do the super, car dealers always do that to their hot. It's probably only one of those. It's influencing me. It's not my definitive criteria. The next one, even though it's not as impactful,

but it's still, it was the customer will buy and drive car home now if all terms are acceptable. That's true. That bothered me more than a email. So Agent Lightning did not get a priceable MSRP contrary to, or at MSRP. they discounted it and they added, we're estimating about $1,500 in junk fees to that. So in reality, they're significantly over MSRP. So that was misrepresented, although it did come in the form of fees and that is, you know, typical. So I don't think I can pass them.

I'm not passive. So I'm going hard with an F. Okay, now let me reiterate because I had to do that for Nancy coming in the car. I said, when you were in school and they graded on the curve, you know what that means. That means that with 100 question tests, if you got 50 wrong and you only got 50 right and everybody else in the class only got 49 right, your score was an A because they graded on the curve. Or average.

no no no if you got higher than the average you have a beer no no no if you have the highest grade in the class yeah oh yeah you would in normal times it could been a C or a D you would have an A I understand that but I also understand there's there's some have you been taking the test that said this question is worth 50 points so that's where I'm looking at so do you intimidate your customers

and force them to sign documents to psychologically manipulate them into agreeing to buy a car this question is worth 50 points and their question was yes they do that okay why you're failure do you have any other yeah I'm sorry yeah they're coming in I did see Mark I think came right in and said oh fat F for arrogance no need to go any farther on any deal but these are all over the place Bob gives a B for Coral Springs but Nissan and and Frank is giving them he says always look forward the mystery shopping report sadly the bad

dealerships are the majority and still running wild. So walk away. Unfortunately, people need a car and the walkway option is not always feasible. My grade is a D plus. And he thanks this again for our program. So Jonathan Wellington says $34,000, add on automatically earns an F in my book. I know it's applying to man in action, but that doesn't mean I have to play along. And yeah, those are the grades are coming in. They're all they're kind of up and down. Right. Now I've got Josie. Joseph Kelleher with a D, Kirk, and West Buy God, Virginia, YAA, junk fees, Fooey, and sign this now, and I agree that you have earned a D. Let's see here. Guy Larrabee says, well, actually, Mark Smith says, well, that price stinks already.

Gee whiz, Nissan dealership. He didn't give a grade on, but he did this a little further here. Guy Larrabee, I give them a C-plus, don't like their fees and agreement to buy document, not totally agree just so. Mark Smith then gives them the C. Wayne Veit with a C. Mark Ryan a B-minus. He's got the curve going on that one. Tim Gilliland, a C. Brian said Latko, if you needed a car now, this deal is not too bad. Great is a C. Kyle in Pennsylvania, F, period. For me, I'm going to say, it's a D because of that document, because I think there's a lot. of uneducated people out there that would be fooled by that I agree and but then I say that's why we're here is to help educate those people to understand that

such a document means nothing and even the salesman said it when agent lightning of you know disagreed with that document so as long as you're educated enough to understand that that document is useless and say no I'm not signing that you should laugh at it you know it just you got to go in there with some armor on but i think they did give her a reasonable price on the car considering yeah and even a reasonable price on that other car that they were looking at so yeah i say a deed but they've just got to you got to watch yourself as all absolutely um we say that over and over again here um but Asian Lightning did a fabulous job, and she stood her ground.

She walked into a very aggressive, I'm telling you the truth, kind of an atmosphere. And this whole thing here, customer will buy and drive car home. Now, if all terms are acceptable, you know, where do you go with that? You know, what does that mean? Who are these people? am I going to get out of this dealership alive? Am I getting out with my teeth? It's a feeling of you're intimidated, you're trapped,

and it's psychological warfare. May sound a little dramatic, but that's how I feel. So, as Rick said, you know, in a way, buy or beware, do your homework. It's a minefield out there. I give them an F. Amory just texted. She's with the F crew, too.

Failed for not living up to the Costco program. I always feel like the Loon Ranger. Thank you. This is the most I've varied from everybody. Actually, I didn't vary from everybody. Rick had a lot of Cs. I'm going to go C minus. You know, I think one of Rick's caller said,

you know, it wasn't a bad price for a car in today's market. Other than the insulting, I'd have to give them a C if we weren't insulting in the intelligence of the buyer by saying, sign this and you're going to buy it. That was the thing that irritated me the most. But they backed off on that pretty quick anyway. Most car dealers, and the reason I didn't gig him

too bad on that, is we've heard it all before. We've seen Napleton with a sign that says, the car that you passed on today will be gone tomorrow. I mean, that's just as bad. standard parlance of the trade has always been if you don't buy this car now the price won't be any good tomorrow so it's just a

new form of an old trick and it's average so I'm going to give a C minus okay there we go how much time do we have left Jonathan two minutes okay we're going to give a shout out

and mention Earl's book you know confessions of a recovering car dealer and what you can do when you purchase that you could be helping the people in southwest Florida definitely because there's dogs there's dogs over there that belong to these people and they are stranded and by purchasing this book from Amazon you can donate you can donate you're donating because all proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. You know, I say there's everything the whole time where they say that

a portion of every sale and then you look it up and fine print, they give a dime or five cents or one percent. We give 100 percent of the purchase price after Amazon's cut. Yeah, right. Amazon takes zero. We get zero.

Absolutely. What do we have? It's like 19905 and we, I think Amazon gets like seven bucks and 11 of that goes to Big Dog. The people in South, in South West Florida can no longer take care of their pets. Yow to Amazon purchase that book. Thank you so much for tuning in to Earl on Cars.

We had a fabulous time with you. Stay tuned next week at 8 a.m. Have a blessed weekend.