Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.05.2024 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Subaru of North Ft. Lauderdale

Episode Date: October 5, 2024

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to Fort Lauderdale to visit a local Suburu dealer to see what they will charge for a new 2024 Suburu CrossTek on the showroom floor. 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, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Join us on Zoom during the live show via Meeting ID 926 589 0586. To purchase Earl’s book, “Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer”, go to www.earlsbook.com. This will forward to Earl’s Amazon page to complete your purchase. All proceeds from the book go to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. For more information or to adopt the dog you have seen today or any of their other dogs, please visit their website at www.bdrr.org. “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”

Hello, 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 listeners. 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, this is my son, Stu Stewart. our link to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, text messaging, and our encrypted anonymous feedback service. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our mystery shopping report.

He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting the car dealership. And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. Well, we're back. We're back doing what we like best. We just hope you like what you're listening to. If you're new to the show, you're about to have, I would say an exciting experience because there's nothing like this show, as far as I know, anywhere, on radio or anywhere else.

We're a show designed specifically to help you buy or lease, maintain, or repair your car without being taken advantage of. And we represent, we have a car dealership. We are not an infomercial. I rush to add that. that we're not trying to sell you anything, but we happen to own a car dealership. But we, we're consumer advocates. And I say we, we've got Rick Kearney,

we've got Nancy Stewart, we got my son Stu Stewart, we got Jonathan Canterer, or a team that's been doing this for 20 years to make it safe. I hate to use the word safe because that sounds like physical harm could come upon you, but when you go into a car dealership, And it's been this way since Henry Ford came up with the mass production, assembly line theory of production.

It had to go to retail outlets to sell cars for 100 years now. Car dealers have been taking advantage of you, the buyer. And it's been going on for so long that you get used to it. And the regulators, that's even worse, the regulators are getting used to it. So we're here to stir things up. We want to stir the pot and get people a little bit riled up so we can change things. Now, the good news is that history is changing things too, and technology is changing things.

And there's a lot of good things in motion where I'm confident that the way that you buy a car today or certainly you did 20, 30 years ago, is changing radically. And that's another thing that we love about this show is it is so, well, you know, you watch the news, you read the newspaper, you do your online research, and you find out that the information explosion, I'll use that term, with the Internet and artificial intelligence and quantum computing, the information flow is so enormous, you can't stay on top of it. So this show is we do a little bit to help you. It's all about you because we can't look inside your head and tell you what you need to know. You know what you need to know about buying a car or leasing a car or maintaining a car. So if you contact the show, we're live right now. We're live here in North Palm Beach, Florida.

We'll be at this station right here from 8 to 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. And we'll be yacking, but we'd rather hear you yack. We'd rather hear you call the show. So your regular listeners get tired of this, I know, because we give the number out a lot. We have to, because we have a lot of new listeners. So please consider writing this down, or memorizing it, we'll be giving this number out often.

It's the main number, right? And that number is 877-9-9-60, that's 8-7-6-0. That's 877-960-960. Now, we have five lines coming into the studio in North Palm Beach, Florida, and we try to take the calls that come in on 877-960-9960, ASAP, because we have a limited number of lines. And we don't want you to wait,

and your time is very valuable to you, obviously, obviously and to us also. And what you wanna know, the question you ask is the same question that's on the minds of thousands of other people. And some people just don't have the time or maybe they're a little bit timid about calling the show.

So please consider writing this number down. 877-960-9960. Now Nancy Stewart, my co-host, she's sitting right across from me right now in this studio. She has a laptop computer, and we have Jeremy in the control room here that will be notifying her when the phone rings. When you call 877-960-99-60, she will throw a rock at me

or smile or do something. She'll get me to stop talking. And by the way, Rick Kearney is in the studio with a Stu. My son, Stu, he should be here in about 15, 20 minutes. He's run a little bit late this morning here in San Francisco. South Florida, rainy day, rainy day in South Florida. Rick Kearney, by the way, is, I don't give them enough credit. I don't talk enough about the fact that the glory is always with new cars.

New cars are a lot of fun to talk about. I mean, you know, Lamborghinis and McLarens and, you know, cars are fun and they're sexy and they're fun to talk about, especially new cars. But the fact of the matter is your time and concern and expense, danger, a lot of other stuff, are associated with just owning an old car. And today, an old car is redefined. I used to be an old car was three years old. Now an old car is 15, 20 years old.

And I have to say, I do a lot of criticism about the automobile industry. I criticize manufacturers. I criticize dealers. but I will say this and this is a compliment industry here comes a compliment from Earl you have built an amazing product you are your technology and your design what you've done in the past 20 years in terms of improving the automobile is amazing so I kudos to the to the industry and but that raises a problem because car dealers for years have relied on fixing cars

because they make more money fixing cars than they do sell them. A lot of people don't realize that. You'd be surprised that the new car department or the used car department in a dealership don't make as much money as a service and parts department. And if they have a body shop, that's a good profit center too. So when the cars became better and better and better,

and almost maintenance-free. I mean, I hate to use that because they are not, but I don't misunderstand. They do require maintenance, but the amount of maintenance is minimal compared to what happened 20 years ago. So, with all that said, Rick Kearney is a certified diagnostic master technician.

He's been fixing cars for a quarter century. Does it make you feel old when I say that? Yeah, because... He worked for me for... I am old. I got to say that, but still, yeah. For an auto mechanic, I'm getting up there. And the advantage is this.

The advantage is this. He stays on top of his trade. It gives him a sense of perspective knowing what that 25, 30-year-old vehicle took to make it run right and what that one-year-old vehicle takes to make it run right. And there's a correlation there. So if you have something that you can't figure out, out about your car. And we all do. I do. I mean, I'm a car dealer. There's not a day that I don't say, I wonder what that was or if I should do that. Rick? This kind of fits right in. Last week,

one of our younger techs has a 1990 corolla that he's been rebuilding. And it's a beautiful old car. He came to me and asked if he could borrow a timing light. A 1990, a 1990 corolla. It's 25 years old, or beg your pardon, 35 years old. He asked if he could borrow a timing light because nobody else in the shop had a timing light because it's, this is technology back when you used to have distributors on cars that pretty much went away about 1995-96.

We all switched to direct injection, our direct spark systems. And I was the only. one in the shop that still had a timing light and could make sure you understood how to use it. And it's like man, because I remember timing lights were old technology when I started, but still

man, it makes me feel old, but it was kind of cool that I could teach these younger techs the history of how these cars worked. You know what's interesting, Rick, is the fact that what you just said I read in the New York Times

and they probably had vehicles as old as like 1990, and everybody was hanging on to their vehicle. And they, too, were having the same issues with finding certain tools, finding people who can even work on them, but they're keeping their cars a whole lot longer. There's an old joke on it for Toyota text where we say that Toyota came out with a recall on the 1990 to 95 Camrys

because you really should have bought a new car by now. And so I'm just trying to recall them all because they just have lasted too long. But all cars are that way now. It's a good problem for you, the consumer, to have a car that's so good now that you can afford, you can hold a car for a long time

and your maintenance costs, they're going to be minimal. I mean, consider the way it used to be. But that isn't always the case. And there's one bad thing about today's new, fancy maintenance-free cars. I use that term loosely. They're not maintenance-free, but they're almost. One thing about them is they're complicated. And like so many engineers and designers of products, the engineers get carried away.

They like to do cool stuff, and they like to build products that titillate the imagination of the buyer. And you say, oh, this has got this, this has got, you know, the bells and whistles sell cars, bells and whistles sell products. So the problem is when you get too many bells and whistles, you don't know how to use them. And that's the reason we have Rick mainly in the studio. I mean, he'll help you on a 1990 car. But what they really help you on is your Bluetooth or some other strange thing that your smartphone won't work with this car, but your smartphone works with your other car, he can help you with that.

So Rick monitors our YouTube channel, by the way. And I've been talking about a regular telephone. That's 877-960-99-60. And please write that number down and please call 877-960-99-60. But also, you can monitor YouTube. That's YouTube.com for slash Earl on Cars. YouTube.com.

forward slash earl on cars and rick kearney our certified diagnostic master technician uh he he looks at that channel all the time so when you post rick sees it and uh it's interesting he's developed a following of his own and he has some uh very very very uh he has some followers on youtube that could do the show one of them's named donovan and i mean there's not a week goes by when our YouTube caller or what do you call it poster Donovan will tell us something we didn't know and it's a great great way to watch the show and if you're particularly into the technical part of things you'll be able to communicate directly with with Rick Kearney I know I know I'm overwhelming it with numbers but the idea is to get you calling us instead of me talking to you. And we have a text number. That text number is 772, or you code, 772-497-6530.

That's 772-497-6530. And we accumulate those calls. And then toward the end of the show, if we haven't answered the text, we try to get all of them. We get most of them. And as if I haven't confused you enough already, let me give you another number which

one of my favorites I like the anonymous feedback and that's a link that's a web link and it's just you go to the web link if you write this down or remember it Your Anonymous

Feedback.com Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-U-S feedback just the way it sounds F-E-E-D-B-A-C-G-com Your anonymous Feedback.com. And you go to that link

and your communications are totally private. Secret. High tech. FBI can't find you. CIA can't find you. I can't find you. You can say anything you want. You can be as direct. And we welcome criticism.

We have a lot of car dealers and employees of car dealerships and manufacturers that listen to the show. And I have to tell you that some of the things we say about car dealers isn't very pretty. So some of them are a little bit nervous about getting on the phone face-to-face.

If you are, tell me what you think. I mean, I respect your opinion. I can see why if I were you, I might not like me. But I try hard. I try hard. So your anonymous Feedback.com, tell it like it is. And give me some ideas. give us some coaches on some things

that we should maybe be doing that we're not doing better. Now, I've been yakking and yakking, I'm going to turn the mic over with Nancy Stewart, my co-co-co-co-she co-founded this show with me, by the way, 20 years ago, and she built the audience that we now have from all-male,

kind of an old boys club, into a 50-50. We have parity. We have about half the people calling the show, and probably more than half the people listening to the show, or female. And if you haven't figured this out yet, folks, females look at life a little differently

than males. And I think they have some pretty good ideas and suggestions. And if you don't hear from half the population, where are we going? So we need to hear from you ladies out there. And Nancy Stewart has got a very special offer

that she's going to mention to you right now about what a first time new caller if you're female can benefit if you call the show. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. And, you know, I mention every week how important you are to the show, and you definitely are. You're inspiring. You prompt us to think about some things that we just don't give a thought to, and you encourage that, and we help you. So it's an exchange between us and you.

Keep that in mind. Please, give us a call. Do you have a question, a concern? Would you like us to change something about the show? Give us a call tool-free at 877-9-60-9-90-60. You can also text us at 772-497-6530. And for the ladies, did you know that we are having the greatest positive impact on the American auto industry.

That's the ladies. Do you realize how important you are to this industry? You have definitely made a difference. And for that, we'd like to recognize you every Saturday morning by giving the first two female callers $50, $50 for the first two new lady callers. So give us a call. You may have a question. You may have a suggestion.

877-960-99-60. And we have another feature that we have found pretty successful. Everyone is having fun with it. They're enjoying it. And that's Zoom. Zoom has become our new feature. And if you're joining us via Zoom and you have a question, please use that function.

that you see right there on the, your icon on the bottom of the screen. You see that right there? 926-58-90586. That's the phone number. That's the Zoom phone number. That's if you belong to Zoom, you can dial that number. Is it dial? Do we use that word anymore?

Dial the number? I'm 81 years old. soon to be 82, ladies and gentlemen. I thought I'd make that announcement this morning in case there's any mistakes or anything going on. You can just take my age into consideration. Okay, moving on. I guess I can't talk now.

No, it's my show. No, go ahead. Cool thing about Zoom is that you can actually show Rick a problem. We had a caller last week, a couple, I think, were in their car. So they were driving. He was in McDonald's, having a fish sandwich, I think. but he had a zoom going in his car, and just think about it, you take your Zoom camera,

and you could point it to the problem, and Rick could see you, and diagnose it would be almost like going into a car dealership and having a mechanical problem or a software problem or something like that. So you zoom callers, Nancy says that if you have a Zoom account, you can get one, you know, can sign up, but if you already have one, that Zoom account is 926-58, zero five eight six zoom account nine two six five eight nine zero five eight six and when you go on and zoom you'll be an immediate touch with Jonathan who's in our control room here with us right here in the studio and he'll chat with you so he'll have a chat going back and

forth so when we're ready when the say we're on a phone call or a text or something else then we can switch over to zoom and you'll know when you're going to be coming on Otherwise, we just see your picture on the laptop, and we'll, but we're waiting for you. We know you're waiting. Well, Jonathan's getting the, you know, getting their location, you know, information and some other things, just finding out how, you know, our listeners, Facebook, everybody, how you found out about us, where you're from. Jonathan just likes acquiring all that information. So, again, that Zoom number, that Zoom number is 589. Oh, I'm sorry, 926-589-0-586.

That's 926-589-0-5-86. So take advantage of that. You know, here's one really important number. They're all important, but this heroine is much more important, and that is Ashley Moody. Do you know who she is? She's the Attorney General. Ashley Moody is the Attorney General, and by using this phone number to contact her, you can be helping out all of us, all of us, as consumers, because we are fighting, we are fighting this junk fees, just anything that you can imagine that these dealers are slapping on that price of a vehicle that,

you're trying to buy in this crazy climate that we live in today, they're adding fees onto the price of the car. Is that honest? Is that fair? Please. I mean, we really have to get Ashley Moody involved. So give her a call. Please give her a call. And her phone number is 866-966.

7226. That's 8669667226. And you can see that on the bottom of the screen also along with the Zoom number. And so many, so much, there's a lot of information that Jonathan, as the producer, you know, provides us with on the screen and for the show. So with all of us, that's it. I think we better get moving on our show. a lot more phone numbers, but I think I've overwhelmed and you have our audience, so we'll move on. Yeah, the biggest, if we're going to give a warning, the warning should be floods. And, of course, we all know that this hurricanes that we've had recently have been way, way past what anyone dream, with deaths, with flooding, with damage, six and a half billion dollars in property damage. Now, why do I talk about hurricanes and flooding?

because you're driving a car. And unfortunately, we talked about this last week before it was as bad as we finally realized. No one had any idea how bad this was going to be. But the storms that ripped through the eastern part of the United States through Florida and through the southeast caused unbelievable damage, especially in the Carolinas, Asheville, absolutely terrible. Now, I don't know what the can.

will be on damaged cars it will be on imagination you're gonna have cars that are just damaged that are totaled now last week we talked about it but I'm gonna I'm gonna repeat these states there's there's I've got five states that if you buy a car that was in the state the car can wash the title now what does that mean it sounds like a washing clothes though I'm saying a car title is supposed to indicate the history of the car history of the car is important because if you buy a car you want to find out what happened to that car two years ago or ten years ago you want to have the history of the car but if

you completely clean the title from what the history was which is what New Jersey North Carolina Mississippi Tennessee and Georgia I'll repeat that the states of New Jersey North Carolina Mississippi, Tennessee, and Georgia. They allow people, I don't know why, but they allow people that have cars to change the title where the history is erased. And then you have a clean title,

you have a dirty car, but you have a clean title, and you can sell that cars if nothing happened to it. I think of this, six and a half billion dollars of damage. How many hundreds of thousands of cars are in a, trench somewhere or in a junkyard somewhere and let me tell you something with with human beings and the motivation they have if there's a profit opportunity they're going to be there and there are people crawling around and I say crawling like a reptile crawling around buying these cars knowing

perfectly well that they are dangerous they are they shouldn't be scrapped and they're putting it together cosmetically and they're pretty good at it too I mean these people do this for a living so they take a flood car and they turn it into a car that looks like a pretty nice car and if you don't know what you're doing you're gonna end up with all these cars so the words of the wise is be sure you know the origin of the car you buy if you're buying a used car and they do the same thing with new cars by the way so Be very, very careful.

If you suspect this car may have been in New Jersey, North Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, or Georgia in the past couple of months, watch out. Yeah. And, you know, there's so many different ways that you can check, you know, on a water damaged, a flood, whatever the severity of the damage is. and you really need to check and it doesn't matter where the car comes from even though Earl mentioned these states Jersey and Tennessee and Georgia and Florida I mean trust me the cars are everywhere

and you really must do your homework I mean check for the musty odors check for the water stains check for the damp carpet electrical issues there's just there's a corrosion there's just so much your check your check your headlights foggy headlights i'll get to it in a second um check the check your headlights it's very very important because once you sign the papers and you drive off the lot it's uh you know becomes extremely

difficult okay uh the guys want me to take this phone call from jeff who's calling us from wellington good Good morning, Jeff. Hey, good morning. Jeffa? Hello. Hi, Jeff. He out there? Welcome.

Are you, is this Jeff from Wellington? No, there was a Chet from Wellington. Good morning, and welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars. Good morning. This is Chet from Wellington, and I'm just calling, following up on a phone call we had a couple months back, You guys were fantastic. I came and I was very nervous. We had a family member who put diesel fuel into our gasoline car.

I proposed what had happened. You guys explained. You guys were real good about telling me what to do. And you were spot on. We did with what you guys asked and said and drove the car away. Excellent. Perfect ever since. Toyota survived another one.

Awesome. That is fantastic, Chad. Yeah, it was one of those deals where you, I thought it was dead, but it was not, thanks to your tutelage, that got right on the money. Yeah, as long as you catch it in time and a proper clean-out, a car can easily survive diesel fuel, and you'll have no lasting damages, and just keep up on your regular maintenance. That car will last you a long time. Yeah, it's been a great car.

No, it's not good for new car sales, but it's great for those of those that have some used ones. Well, when you look at the prices, some of these new cars, I mean, you know, the prices are just going crazy, but used cars, you know, a good used car can be the better deal. And if your car's in good shape and you want to keep running it, hey, a little bit of maintenance, you can keep a car on the road for a long time. yeah my son had this car that was in question about the diesel fuel and it's never been in the shop for anything other than general maintenance awesome you can't complain about that i'm sure it's because it's Toyota that's why it is what it is yeah i mean thank you go ahead go ahead all all the brands have stepped up on their quality like just head and shoulders over what they used to be just have really gone crazy but to To me, the real true Big Three is Toyota and Honda, and they're neck and neck on the quality.

I'm partial to Toyota myself, but Honda, I've got to give them all the respect in the world. And then there's that Dark Horse Ghost, Subaru, that their quality level is right up there. But it's just, there's such a small company that nobody really talks about Subaru much, but they're still, they're a fantastic car. but even the American cars, Ford's and Chevys, they have been forced to step up their game and bring their quality up. So, yeah, it's all coming up.

And that's, you know, that competition, it's what means the others have to keep up. Right. And guys like you are the ones that keep the dealerships going because of all the diagnosing guys do. So you keep it up too. It's got to be quite a different world than it was 10 years ago.

technical part of it. Oh, absolutely. I literally, I am insane at night. My wife looks over and I'm constantly just tacking on the computer, reading through all the new stuff and trying to keep up. And man, it's been an education like you wouldn't believe. I've gone from points and distributors and carburetors to computer controls on everything now. Eric, while you're talking about that, show, give me out the information on ASE for people that are looking for a good mechanic. Yes, if you're ever looking, you want to check a mechanic's certification levels, ask him what ASE certifications he has. It is the National Institute for Automotive Service Excellence is what ASE stands for. And basically, this is a, it's an across-the-board test.

there are for automotive there's about a dozen different categories but there are eight primary ones and then there's a couple advanced levels and any good mechanic should have at minimum those eight primary levels of A1 through A8 certification levels and this will tell you that yes they have the proper training to be able to work on your car whether they work at a dealership or at an independent shop as long as they have those certifications you should be able to trust them and they wear a patch to know what they're doing they have a recognition patch on their uniform you we'll either see patches on the uniform or a sticker or magnetic sign on their toolbox myself i just keep one of the little magnetic signs on the toolbox just as hey yeah i've got that but uh yeah most of us old guys

we've been certified for years because you get started right at the beginning I love the way you said that for years. We purchased a few cars at Earl Stewart, and I've never, ever felt like there's any kind of pressure to do anything that I didn't want to do, and everything was always fully explained. Well, thank you very much for the call. That means a lot. We always feel good when we know we're getting through to people,

and when you call the show that affirms that. So call again, please. We really appreciate your. Take other time. And we appreciate you guys for doing this online for us. Thank you. You're very welcome. Thank you.

Give us a call again. That number here is 877-960-99-60. I didn't finish about the flood cars that I was talking about earlier, but the most important thing for you to do is to get that car inspected by a mechanic and let him assess any of the water damage and anything else that's going on that could affect your car.

This will encourage you to get to a mechanic. It will affect your car long-term. Yes, long-term problems, and you don't want that, especially with electronics. So get that car to the mechanic and let him check it out. That number again is 877-960-90-60. We're going to stay with the phones for a while. We're going to go to Tricia, and she is a regular caller.

We've spoken to Tricia about her tires and so many other things on her vehicle. She's become part of the show. Good morning, Tricia. Well, thank you. But today is not a tire call. But you talking about Ashley Moody, I was a good student, and I called and I called and left a message last Saturday. and they called me back on Monday because, you know, I wanted to call and complain. Why aren't they, you know, following through on, you know, the law and letting all these, you know, dealers, you know, add up junk fees, yada, yada, yada, y'all.

So, you know, one guy, I think his name was George, finally called back, and I said, you know, I want to complain. Hey, this, you know, law has been in effect for over 20 years. And even you reiterated on September 1st, you were going to enforce it. And, you know, I'm in constant contact with the Earl Stewart radio show and hearing that you guys are not, you know, enforcing the law. You want to know what he said? Who's Earl Stewart? Did you tell him?

I said, oh, my God. He's like, we're over now. I'd say, if you not know, but I guess what are they located in Tallahassee? Is that it? Yeah. Where's Tallahassee? Yeah, where's Tallahassee? Right.

But I'm thinking maybe that's why I said, oh, my God, you know, he's a, you know, has a radio show for 20 years, and are you calling to complain about that dealership? He didn't even listen to me. I said, no, I'm calling to say. you're not following through, you know, as of September 1st. And then the second part of what he said to me was, well, it's not the end of the month. And I'm like, I didn't realize the day because the day was September 30th. And I didn't realize at that time it was the last day of the month. So after I hung up, I tried to call back because I was going to say, hey, wait a minute, dude, this is.

the last day of the month, right? September 30th, you know, after we said, well, you know, September's not over again, and I was on hold for like 10 minutes, and when they answered the phone, I got disconnected. So I wanted to tell you that story. I love it. Yeah, that's our government. You know, it's funny.

You talk about Tallahassee, and folks from all over the world are listening to our show, but Tallahassee is a little bitty town in the northern, northern. northern part of Florida it's like a it's like a country bumpkin town and and it's the center of the of the state of Florida in terms of the government and it's almost impossible to get from South Florida to Tallahassee it's like a different country and and so that part of the problem I think in Florida anyway is the fact the government is so remote from the rest of the world that they don't

the problems that you have are in the high population areas so the further south you go in Florida the greater of the population and you get down to Orlando then you get down to Fort Lauderdale in Miami and the explosion the population explosion is there

meanwhile in this little town up in Tallahassee they kind of live among themselves up there and chit-chat and I've been thinking about running a full-page ad in the Tallahassee I think they call the Democrat to Tallahassee. Yeah. Democrat

about attention Ashley Moody, when are you going to follow through on your commitment to enforce the law that you've had on the books for car dealers for the past 20 years? And I'll get a little hint.

We've got a mystery shopping report that doesn't look too good about her enforcing any laws and it happens to me for a dealership in South Florida. So whatever she's doing, she's not making a lot of noise and she's not getting a lot of publicity about it. But, Trisha...

Well, that's why I was a good student and I tried to call for you and this is, you know, the follow through. You know, I can say, Trish, that there's probably I'm going to go out on a limb here and say a handful of people that may have a handful of consumers that may have done what you did because it's rare. It's a few and far between

but if you ever, Trish, if you went to Tallahassee, you would understand what Earl meant. When I went to Tallahassee with Earl back in the early 80s, I thought I left Florida. Now, keep in mind, you know, I had come here from Pittsburgh, and that was 40 years ago. But going to Tallahassee just took me way back. Like I said, you know, as a person who came from the northeast, I'm. just couldn't believe where it was. I couldn't believe it was Tallahassee. So my point is, I think those people have a whole lot of time on their hands, and they could help us in more ways than one. And I want to thank you for going above and beyond by staying on the phone

and making that phone call. And wouldn't it be great for our show if almost everyone that called us did just that? So thank you very much for that, Trish. You're very welcome, and I've been up to Tallahassee. I wanted a guy up there. It's a big college town, but I've been up there. But, yeah, right. It doesn't make a difference where, what town, you know, it's in like Tallahassee. They should be taking care of the problem, no matter where. So. Well, they're even in D.C. and they're not taking care of any of us. So with that said, I'm going to shorten the call, Tricia. I have a whole lot of callers backed up. I can't thank you enough for calling and spreading the word to the ladies that I do give them $50 for the first two

new lady callers if they call this morning at 877-960. So Trish, have a great weekend and give us a call next week. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, we're going to stay with the phones and we're going to go with, I think, Bobby's up next. Hello? Hello? Welcome to Earl on cars. Hi. I wanted to revisit an older issue about replacement parts, OEM replacement parts. My wife, somebody ran into the back of my wife's car and messed up the bumper cover. So I had to take it to Lexus Body Shop. And when you go in now, one of the papers they ask you to sign is to agree that if the insurance company doesn't want to provide OEM parts, you agree to that. And you don't have to sign it. but you have to be aware that it's there,

so I didn't sign it, and they're quite aware that I didn't sign it. And then Allstate called me and said, well, the lady who ran into your wife's bumper agreed to take aftermarket parts, and I said, well, that's great. Put them on her car, but don't put them on our car. Good for you. And, you know, he's all flamuxed,

and he's explaining that that's not the way it works, and I, because of what I've learned from your show, I said, oh, yes, it is the way it works. And so, as it turns out, Lexus was never going to put on aftermarket parts, so it wouldn't have mattered eventually, but that's what happens. And it's hard for the consumer, because we don't do this every day. And you get shoved four or five sheets of paper that you have to sign. You could easily sign that and say. Bobby, you've hit on one of the most atrocious, misunderstood, I'll call it a crime.

That's probably a little exaggerated, but there's a understanding between insurance companies and, unfortunately, our government, that they are going to allow insurance companies, and insurance companies have enormous financial clout, and they get politicians. politicians elected. Therefore, they're like big insurance and big auto. They have that lobbying power where they can get away with things that they shouldn't be getting away with. And a original equipment manufacturer in part has gone through all the safety testing by law. So if you have a car, it's got all the parts on that brand new car are original equipment because they were built by the manufacturer of the car. And then the government took that car. out and they tested it. They crashed tested it. They rolled it over. They did a head-on test, and they gave it a grade. And the National Highway Institute for Safety also does a similar test. So you know yourself, when you buy a new car, the government says it's safe. Now, when you repair the car, all bets are off, because now the government allows insurance to take a car that was

never safety tested and put it on your car. So here's a brand, you've got a brand new Lexus, a hood. That hood, by crash standards, has to compress at a certain rate. There are a lot of qualifications that that hood has to meet, and they actually crash those cars, and they inspect them, and then they get an approval to use on the car when they manufacture the car. Once you fix the car, you get the hood from Taiwan, or Hong Kong or wherever these aftermarket parks come from and they have never been to

safety tested now the insurance company State Farm Geico and the rest of them they do a little song and dance and they've been trained and here's what they say oh these all these parts had been certified well they're certified because they they look pretty and maybe there are a certain thickness or they have some certifications but the one certification that you care about are crash testing and they've never been crash tested and can you imagine that this has been going on for forever and the insurance companies you know they're doing it because these certified cars the parts they buy are cheaper to the parts they buy from the manufacturer right all state this time by the way. But yes, that's the song and dance. But you got to, the problem is you got to be

ready for them. You know, you don't, I guess you do expect the people to be sort of dishonest and misleading, but you have to have all your answers ready for them when they, when they start coming at you. So that's the issue. The other issue is careful what you sign when you're turning your car in because you could agree to take the aftermarket parts without hardly knowing it. Do I have times? Go ahead. Bobby, you're exactly right.

And the thing that you can do also is do what you did. Lean on the insurance company, lean on the dealer. Because the dealer also, the dealer can help and the insurance company can help if they know you're going to

insist. Also, some of the manufacturers, I'm surprised when you told me Lexus allow that. There are some manufacturers that do ask that crash parts be very few, but some of them do require the crash parts be OEM because of the very reason we talked about

because they're safer, pure and simple. But you said Lexus would not agree to put the OEM parts on your car? No, they didn't agree to put the aftermark. parts. Oh, okay. Yeah, okay. I thought Lex was one of the good guys, yeah. Right, they are, but they still, when I turn the car in at Lexus, they ask you if you'll agree to take the aftermarket parts, and you just have to not agree. You have to specifically. They make you beg. Yeah, right. Do I have time for a light bulb question for Rick? First, I want to tell you, Bobby, you know, what a great call, you know, the advice that there's a lot of people that are listening to you, and what a great call for, I heard you say you got to be ready and isn't that the truth because a lot of people walk into service they walk into purchase a car lease a car whatever it is and they're not ready they just don't do

their homework and bobby i commend you well i'll have to say the reason i'm ready is because i listened to this show so that's why i was ready and and i don't think they knew what hit them this time so that's good thank you that's a good thing That's a good thing. That's progress. How about Mike? Do I have a time for a light bulb question for Rick? Rick. Some light bulbs on a, it's a, it's a 2017 Lexus on the dash where you control the lights,

the lights that shine for the air conditioner fan and what mode you're in. Gotcha. When those lights burn out, do you just live with it? Or can you dig in and fix them? Here's the tricky part. Sometimes there are little micro bulbs in there. Some of those are available through the dealer where you can take it apart, pull out the little socket and actually replace the bulb,

but you'll need to check the parts department on it very carefully because some of them are not available. They simply can't order those little bulbs. Most cases, they are replaceable, though, and you can simply pull it apart, pull out the old one, pop a new one in. And it's literally just like a tiny eyeglass-sized screwdriver that you just put it in the little slot, give it a twist. The little socket comes out.

You put the new one in, twist it back, and snap it back together. And you can do that all from the front of the dash. You don't have to take the... In most cases, yes. 90% of our dashes on Toyotas, you can take the entire dash out of the car. with a Phillipshead screwdriver, a 10mm socket, and a 12 and maybe a 14 socket. You could literally take the entire dash completely out of the car. But usually on that front section, check on YouTube,

and I guarantee you'll find somebody has posted a video of how to disassemble that center section, because most of those AC controls are simply held with plastic clips. So a pocket screwdriver with a little bit of masking tape on it so that you don't scratch anything up and pop those right apart. Or if you have them, Harbor Freight or Amazon, you can get what's called the dash plastic pry bars. They're little pry bar pieces that are made of plastic

so you can pop those dash components out without scratching anything. Okay. All right. Well, thanks very much. And appreciate the information. And thanks for the show. Thank you, Bobby. Thank you, Bobby.

Ladies, let's prove to the guys this morning that you have made a positive impact on the American auto industry. My lines are all lit up. Guess who's calling? They're all guys. Come on, ladies. I'll give you an incentive. $50 for the first two new lady callers. You can win yourself $50. Give us a call toll free at 877-960-99-60. now we are going to go to Marty who's been waiting patiently and for Rick and Dan and John hang on everybody. We'll be right with you. Good morning Marty. Good morning. How are you? We're well, thank you.

I got a question for Earl. Okay. All these states that were flooded, I'm sure a lot of new car dealerships got flooded. Yeah. What does the manufacturer do when the new cars have been flooded? Do they replace them, scrap them, or what do they try to do to them?

Well, yeah, the main franchise. The main, go ahead, Phil. Oh, they, well, it's an insurance situation. Great example, a friend of ours out in Houston or near Houston several years ago. What was it? Big Maria that hit Houston and flooded it. It was like biblical flooding, and they lost, I think, most of their new core inventory that was already on the ground. insurance paid covers it and and then as far as support the manufacturer you know

objectives are canceled special considerations are made it when it affects a big region like that it's insurance no that we've those cars have been purchased by the manufacturer those deals are done and they got dealers garage keepers insurance will cover that. Does the car just get scrapped then? What would they do with that? They sell the cars. They have people crawling all over the lots.

There's an industry Marty. Trucks will pull in. All they do, this is really a specialty. They travel around the country. I see there's a disaster, a flood, then these people go up there and they bid on these cars. They'll have a flood action. So the high bidder gets the cars.

The person that's going to do something under you know underhanded with the car is going to be able to pay more for the car than then the insurance company would allow the insurance companies are not going to are not going most likely take advantage but the guy that is going to glue the car back together and make it look pretty and smell pretty but not be a real safe car he's going to outbid the insurance company and that's how these cars and then they move them to another state because they don't So obviously, if you're in Asheville, North Carolina, and you're going to buy a used car, you're going to be real careful.

But they take that car from Asheville, North Carolina that was in the flood, and they ship it to Delray Beach? Yeah, Delray Beach and sell the car there. Now, the legit purpose on some of these cases, though, people will buy these cars companies, and they'll bring them to a scrapyard. They'll strip the entire thing down and clean up the salvageable parts. parts that can still be then sold and reused. There are legitimate uses, but it usually involves that disassembling and finding out what it has not been, you know, what is usable, which is not any of the electronics.

I don't think they, I don't think they scrap any cars. There's always a piece of a car. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, recycling. Scrap is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, is a, it's a term. Yeah. Yeah. I think the unfortunate situation is the fact, Marty, that these cars could end up anywhere, no,

matter what anyone tells you, you know, about the paperwork, about scrapping them, about selling a part, about this or that. There's an unfortunate person out there that's going to end up with a flood car that thinks that he or she got a pretty damn good deal. And as I explained earlier in the show, you know, if you don't establish, you know, that you've got water damage and have a mechanic, look at your car. Well, you're, Rick, you're screwed. What I'm saying, Nancy, if the car has zero miles on it, can it ever end up back in a new car dealership? Not, not it shouldn't, but I can imagine a situation where it could, but generally you're not going to see that at the new car dealership. Well, in Marty in Florida, part of the industry is export, and so if you were to go down to Miami or Fort Lauderdale to the port now,

you would see thousands of cars being loaded on wreck cars, flooded cars being loaded on these large car carriers and headed south or east or someplace. And other countries take these cars in. And there are no laws. You go to South America, you go to Costa Rica, a lot of places. They have no regulations. And South Florida is a huge export center for cars. like this. And if you go to an auction in South Florida, a wholesale auto auction, you'll see these very people buying up these flood cars, putting them on a truck, taking them to the port,

putting them on a boat, taking to Venezuela. And then wherever they end up, and they make a ton of money doing that. Well, all right. Very good. You answered my question. Thanks, Marty. Have a great weekend. You too. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And, you know, obviously, just checking in on these flood cars and auto auctions. And you can agree with me or disagree. The cars damaged in floods are frequently sold at auctions like Copart or what's the other place? Insurance Auto. They're sold there also.

So these flood damaged cars, they're everywhere, and they're going to affect everyone. Well, reputable auctions will not sell a flood car, but there's also auctions that will. So it's like any other industry. You've got good people and bad people. Exactly. And there are dealerships out there that are selling flood cars. It happens. It's real.

Okay, let's give out that number again. 877-960-99-60. And ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. I'm waiting to hear from you. 877-960. We're going to stay with the phones, and we're going to talk to Rick, who's calling us from North Palm Beach. Good morning, Rick. Good morning. Welcome. Thank you. I just thought I was listening. I actually scroll across your station, your show unexpectedly and haven't turned it off since. So thank you for doing it. It's a great job and informing all of us. So I thought I'd share.

It just happened to jump in when you guys were talking about blood damage cars. And I thought, I'm from Wisconsin. And as we have learned, there are dishonest and honest people everywhere in the world, and it doesn't matter whether it's Florida. But I will tell you, I bought a car from a reputable dealership that I thought, well, I know these people. So I bought this used Nissan Rogue, just a couple years old, and drove it off a lot. And about two weeks later, I had a problem with the hub and brought it back in.

They were not going to replace it because you drove it off a lot, as you guys had explained. But, again, they're a reputable company. They took care of it. Through time, things started going wrong with this car. So then I took it to a local Christian-based repair shop that we know very well, and we trusted over the years and would rather send you somewhere else than to say they could pick something.

So we trusted them for a very long time, took it to them and let them look at it. They told me that they believe there was flood damage to this car. And I said, it was not reported. He goes, oh, let me explain a little loophole to this flood damage. He says, if the water did not get inside the car,

they don't have to report it. now it could be a quarter inch below that line right and this car could he says it looks like your car was sitting in standing water for a very long time just below that line because i see that's crazy the amount of rough taking care of underneath he goes i this car could have been sitting in water yeah he could see the floodline on it he could see underneath he could tell where the rust difference happened he said now Now, I don't want to say that anyone's dishonest here, but there truly is a loophole. It looks like your car was sitting in water for a very long time, and every component that it was sitting in is damaged.

Yeah, so it might have, like, some of the things like the computer systems. Rick, what do you think? I'm thinking right off the bat of the, he mentioned the hub. I'm thinking of the wheel bearings, the brakes, the calipers, the caliper slide pins. these are all items that are going to be very low right right so the computer is an electronics might have escaped but before the water even gets up to the level where it gets inside the car this is where it can seep in displace a lot of the grease and get in and cause corrosion in parts like especially the brake caliber slide pins if you get water that sits in those right and creates corrosion you step on the

brake pedal and guess what no brakes no brakes the car does not stop you could be driving along on the highway it heat you know things heat up on the highways you're moving along the bearings heat up everything is warmer suddenly you have no brakes all right so what happens so they they point out the flood you know the evidence of the flood damage and and what would you do so what i did was i went back to the dealership and the dealership says you may be right however this was a traded in car from another person we did our new diligence to see if it was any in any flood it was not wow so we have no responsibility to do anything for you because we only go by what the documents say um did the um did the other shop how long it take them to find this flood damage well because i brought it in for other i brought it in for other things because it seemed like you said the brakes were acting weird and they looked at the brakes and they said yeah we're going to replace your brakes however you have a bigger problem okay but i wonder if it's something if they just put it on the lift if that's all it took the other the dealership that sold it to you

i mean i don't know what the the law is in your state the law the law generally is if you knew if you knew or had reason to know that the car had a problem and that's objective right i mean that that's i mean they we can always play dumb and it's just it's just crazy i'm sorry to interrupt but just a lot of dealerships, I'm going to say, because they don't have to, but they have a process where they do a basic inspection. You know, they got to look, all right, how much is it going to cost me to get this car ready for sale? So they put it up on a lift. If it was, I mean, I'm thinking how, unless this was really hidden, but this sounds pretty extensive across the whole bottom portion of the car, if they have a process, that dealership where they look at all cars and they say, well, we didn't look at this car, then they're lying.

you know they if they have a process by which they it's called reconditioning or just an safety inspection and uh i think it sounds like it would have been obvious yeah and i'll go and i'll go back to my very first statement which is why i said there are dishonest and honest people across every state everywhere so i i agree with you i think what i thought at least was an honest dealership could have been different they also could have just did uh you know a half-baked in inspection and threw it on a lot, I'm not really sure. A walk around, maybe. Did you have, how many mechanics looked at your vehicle before you purchased it?

None. And that was the problem because I bought it from, I actually bought it from not just a used car dealership. I bought it from an actual dealership that was a Chevy, it was a Chevy dealership that I bought the Nissan from. I see. And, you know, it's so unfortunate that we. We get into such a gray area, you know, it really is unfortunate, you know, and if you listen to this show and you see, you know, how I grade the mystery shopping report, you can see that, you know, I am just, I'm true to what I believe in. And some of these mystery shopping reports just don't reflect who I am.

Your story right now doesn't reflect who I am. there wasn't there some honest person honest person who would sympathize with you you know i don't care how long the car was sitting or whether it was an inch of water half an inch of water it doesn't really matter that you purchased a vehicle and you know down the road you expected to keep that vehicle for quite some time once it has water damage there's so many different things could be affected by that vehicle which leaves you in a financial situation, it leaves you crumbling. Sorry, sorry to interrupt.

I just a quick question. I mean, it sounds like you have a statement. You have a, I think you have an actionable case here. I mean, it would be a simple matter. I mean, you could start by saying, can I just see the safety inspection report that the tech did before you sold me? I don't know if they're going to give it to you. I mean, but you can at least ask, didn't you do a safety inspection?

Because at some point, I mean, I don't believe it a new threat. Every franchise, they don't have a used car inspection process. They have a Chevy certified inspection process, and then they have their own in-house one. I guarantee you, I know Chevy dealers. And I appreciate that. Now, this was about four years ago. Oh, forget about it. We probably let this sale.

Yeah, your call is still very important, extremely important for you to call. And, you know, I wish you were in the studio. You know, why? Rick is just scratching his head. Not really To me it comes down to the one I hate to be the pointing a finger here He's holding that vein down

It's any time you're going to purchase a used car Even if the car only has like a thousand miles on it Have it inspected by an independent mechanic of your choice Someone that will give you their honest opinion Of whether this car has any issues Whether it's been in an accident Whether it might have been in a flood whether somebody might have just taken it on a joyride

and bounced off a dozen curbs, I mean, unless that car is a brand new car, which will be covered under a three-year, 36,000 mile or more bumper-to-bumper warranty, it should be inspected by a mechanic of your choice. Please don't feel bad for not doing that. You know, we sell a lot of used cars, and I couldn't tell you if anybody ever really does that,

despite we speak about this on the show every week, very few people are taking their cars. Just last week, Agent Lightning, they purchased a truck from a dealership, a used vehicle. And they did. They did not have it inspected. And I hope Agent Lightning does have it brought into our shop to be looked at by one of our guys to make sure that everything is right on that. For sure, Rick. For sure.

And here's the other side of this, folks, is that there was one of those. dealership in Wisconsin. You know, we're all rural and we're all farmland. So it's one of those dealerships that was off of a highway, not really in a town anywhere, 30 miles from where I lived. But gosh, what a great deal this car was, right? So you drive 30 miles, the guy you trust, the Christian-based guy that would not screw anyone over is 30 miles away, and you're going to take it for a test drive.

Shame on me. I will never do that again. but my recommendation to anyone is, gosh, if you're going to go buy a used vehicle, make sure somebody, at least in the vicinity you trust, can look at that car because there just wasn't anybody I could drive this car to that I would trust. Geographically impossible. It was great speaking with you. I have several calls that are lined up, and we appreciate your call

and the information you shared with us, even though, you know, it's, The bottom line here, you just got through saying that was four years ago. Is that what you said? Yep. Yeah. And here we are. Here we are talking about being taken advantage of, you know, and my heart has to go back. I think of her often, Ashley Moody, the attorney general.

What is she doing to help the consumer? There's so much for her to do, so much for her to do. and she's not doing it. So I thank you for the phone call. I truly appreciate it. Okay, we are going to go to Dan, I believe, who's patiently holding. I'll tell you, guys, you really have a lot of patience this morning, all of you. Welcome to the show, Dan.

Good, thank you, Nancy. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. I have a question. It's not a flood-related question, but I tell you, the information, when I was on hold, listening, very, very informative. So, but my question is this. I was talking during the week at work, I was talking to a friend, and he was involved in an accident, and it was a minor accident.

It involved the hood and the front panel and so forth, and no ticket was given by the police officer, by the police officer to him or the other driver. And so once the police officer came, he went ahead and contacted his auto insurer, which is State Farm. And once he did that, he received an email as far as a list of approved body shop owners of companies that could do the work. And seeing that he lived in Boca, it was convenient, so he got a list. I think it was like that happens to the body shop to go to. So my question was this.

Is there any incentive for him to shop around those body shops on that approved list of State Farms or not? You should take the car to the body shop that you trust, and if the insurance company gives you a hard time, then you need to go head to head with them. You have the right to choose a qualified body shop to fix your car. I always recommend that if you drive at a Chevrolet, try to find a Chevrolet body shop. If you're driving on Honda, then go to a Honda dealer's body shop. They have direct access to the parts because they are the manufacturer's representative. Therefore, they pay less for the parts

than another body shop would. They have the technician training available to them. But State Farm, Allstate, and GEICO, and the rest of them, they have their preferred shops. The question is, why are they preferred? And oftentimes, the reason they're preferred is because the body shop agrees to do the repairs for less money and cost the insurance companies.

money less money. So first thing you should say when you have an accident that you want your body shop, your insurance company, to allow you to use the body shop you choose, and that's the one that you feel will do the best job fixing the car. So if he wants to choose a company that wasn't on that list, another body shop that he felt comfortable with, would State Farm be obligated to pay that full bill or not? Well, they would have to. to, that would be between the insurance company and that you chose and the insurance company. The insurance company can haggle and they can argue,

but if you, I've had a body shop ever since I've been a car dealer and I've had multiple body shops and I've had oftentimes confrontations on this very subject with body shops. If you're persistent and you stand up for your rights about why you want that body shop to fix your car. Usually the body shop will reach an agreement with your insurance company that you chose. I mean, the insurance company will reach an agreement.

And they don't want a lawsuit. I've had to sue, my dealership, I've had to sue insurance companies because they refuse to allow my customers to use my body shop. and I won. We never lost a case. They called it steering.

Yeah. Okay, no, I appreciate that. So basically what I'm understanding is that he does have an option to go on that list or off the list. And if he does go off the list, then he just got to stand firm and his decision to go in another body shop other than he approved this. Yeah, if you like the guys on the list, there's no problem. But if you don't, if you have a preference, you take it, it goes where you guys want to take it. Perfect. All right. Listen, I appreciate the information. I'm going to talk when I see my friend on Monday. I'm going to relay the info. Thank you very much. And you guys have a great weekend. Thank you. You have a great weekend also. Ladies, $50 for the first two new lady callers. You still have a minute or two to win that $50 if you're a first time caller.

877960. We'll be turning the phones off shortly. We're going to go to John in Palm City. Good morning, John. Good morning. I'd like to accuse a new card dealer or a group of car dealers in Lorton or St. Lucie County of boycotting Earl Stewart on his weekly blog and hometown news. Other editions of hometown news run his blog. Earl runs an ad in the local Treasure Coast edition, which is the one I'm talking about. and his ad has no dealer fee and he pays for the ad and also the shopping reports are not good if you go back and check the

records including even last week in Martin County particular of dealer reports shopping reports so I feel that he is being completely boycotted and he has a right to have this published

in the hometown news weekly newspaper which is free but it has fabulous news in it. The latest edition, two weeks ago, had about an incident in Target and Best Buy. Some of the stores, they robbed $3,000 worth of merchandise. They were from Florida, and no other paper had this detail on it. They put stop sticks out, and they got the four people in the van, the rented van,

and they were driving even on four flat rims. And also weekly, they have arrest reports. But it's a great newspaper, and I'm very disappointed that they used to, in the past, run Earl's blog, and they have admitted that permanently it looks like. Well, thank you, John. They changed owners a couple years ago, and we used to have to fight with them because the local dealers didn't want to have our column. are we have a blog and we you know it's an opinion blog and we say what we do on this show

in the blog about how not to get ripped off by a car dealer and of course the car dealers don't like to hear that especially when we talk about mystery shopping reports so we've been fighting hometown news on and off for years and we've won until this new owner came in and bought the paper and now been yeah there's a there's a long history of um you know of conflict with with Earl's publications and various publishers and radio shows. It's also funny, even when they did publish articles, a lot of them, they would reject quite a few. They said, we're not publishing this.

But Florida Weekly would. They had less of, I guess, political sensitivities. At one point, hometown news just basically said, if you're gonna mention or feature any public figure, we're not gonna run it. It made no sense. I mean, the First Amendment, I mean, this is not really a first amendment case, but what is the press for us, but to criticize our...

I think we mentioned Ashley Moody. They got mad at us because we mentioned Ashley Moody, I think. That's exactly what it was. They didn't want to run there. And, John, what a great conversation you and I had. And I'm so glad you called this morning to bring this topic, you know, to the forefront because something is so wrong here. It is unacceptable and it's wrong.

And have you read... the Florida hometown news and have you read the all of the papers that Earl has his column yes I get it from another source okay okay another area you give it to me yeah so what gets me upset is I moved here 30 years ago and it seems to me especially in Stewart that the shady dealers from say from South from Dade and Brownwood County even from Palm Beach County that They have notified, they came to this town in St. Lucie County and to get away from, you know, problems they caused down there, and they've caused them down here. I mean, just for instance, the Cadillac, the Chevy, the Ford, the Toyota dealer, the Buick dealer, GMC, they have all changed hands.

And Hespie is so bad Toyota dealer and Stewart was Toyota Stewart was actually revoked. Blue Marlin Motors was it to use car dealership. the owner went into federal prison. He was accused of first-degree grand theft. I mean, it goes on and on. Scotty's used cars on Route 1 was setting odometers back 50 to 100,000 miles. I mean, there's no way to it. I have a theory.

The perception for dealers in Miami, it's a super high competitive area, and it's very dense. You throw a rock and you're going to hit another dealership. when you get up in the Martin County and St. Lucie and the population thins out some, there's less of a culture there is, I think it's a, I don't want to say naive, but it's a, the guard isn't up as much. And so, yeah, dealers, owners seek opportunity in areas like that. We had a caller before he said he bought this car at a dealership with 30 miles away from anything. And Earl and I was 20 group, we had a guy who had a dealership in Amarillo.

It was similar to that. I think it was like 50 miles of the nearest dealers. dealership he just he controlled how much he charts for everything and and and people didn't go you and he was luckily he was a good guy he wasn't insane but he had these opportunities so uh to do that because there's nobody around them and so yeah but martin county's growing and all that so it's going to it's turning into Palm Beach County but that that uh that area that's growing uh you can no longer see the sign when you drive to Tequesta Stewart, Kumbaya? Mm-mm.

Doesn't exist anymore. You've got to be careful no matter where you go to purchase a vehicle, to get any kind of information. Even if you get your car worked on, you just can't let your guard down. Well, I moved away from these years ago. These shady deals in a New York area, and I didn't expect to find so many of them down here in Florida so it's pathetic you have to be careful you have to listen to this show every week yeah absolutely john thanks so much for your dedication all right guys have a great weekend

the shopping report thank you so much it'll be a good one you're going to enjoy it we're going to go to bill in lakeworth good morning bill good morning nancy i'll be real quick i'm sitting here laughing about so much um you asked what ashley moody has been doing. And I don't want to get political. It's a car show. I don't want to get political. It's God is my witness. But it seems to me she's been busy trying to keep potential amendments to the state constitution off the ballot and not just letting people vote on them. And so she's probably been busy doing that. And is that what she's been doing? Oh, okay. I think so. Am I wrong? We're not going to open a can of worms. No, no, no. Like I said, it's a car show. It's a car show.

up. Hey, Bill, no matter what anyone says today, and I mean that literally today, everything is political. I mean, there are so many people out there with thin skin. You've got to really be careful what you say. And that's just the way of the land now. Yeah, it's like you're always walking on glass, you know, let alone with your own family. Oh, that's even worse. Yeah, but Sue said Martin County's turning into Palm Beach County, and I'm laughing because Palm Beach County's turning into Dade County. So, I don't want to hurt Howard's feet. No, John, it was John who was on before me, right? Yeah, yeah.

I don't want to hurt his feelings or anything, but he said he moved down here to get away from all those dealers in New York, and I'm thinking they just followed him down here. Yeah, that's where they are now. Well, they all did, too. It was like, it's nice down here. You know what, Bill? I'm tired of shoveling snow off my cars. Bill, I'm from Pittsburgh, and I had a saying, and I marked it on my calendar every morning before I left for work,

the land of milk and honey. And I was referring to sunny Florida because I was so tired of digging my way out of the snow. I was getting old, and my arthritis was, yes. The old saying of the South is, When you get to Florida, the further south you go in Florida, the further north you are. Well, where are you? We're New York south down here.

Where were you 40 years ago? Why didn't you tell me? It's a different world in northern Florida and up in Georgia, and that's the true south up there. Okay. Earl is either playing a little Beethoven. Earl's stored on geography. Okay, Bill. way that's all I had I know you have other callers thanks so much Bill it was great talking to you

yeah good Nancy have a good weekend you too bye okay according to our producer we are done with our phone calls hey Earl uh T Cash is asking Earl shouldn't you have bought the hometown well he's just a hometown rag I think he meant the hometown news well you know that that was really put You cast doubt about my integrity if I own the newspaper. But no, I kind of like the controversy. For a while there, for many years, probably 20 or more years, we've had that little controversy. And I used to call the editor, and I would shame the editor

at Hometown News into doing what he should do. Because most journalists, I'll use that term loosely, are fairly ethical. and a lot of them aren't, but I mean, I think most of them, the majority are. And if you talk to a good journalist and you tell them the truth, the ethics take over sometimes, and they've agreed to run articles that they wouldn't run before. But the new owner came in, and that was a different ballgame,

and the new owner won't listen to anything. So Hometown News doesn't like my column, them and they won't run it. And poor St. Louis. Okay, guys. The mic is yours. I'll be back in five. Okay. Hey, before we get to that, we have, can I get a text from Ammarie? Good morning, Ann Marie. Unless you already read that. Okay. Amory says, good morning. Jalapnik.com reports that Hurricane Helene swamped a Kia dealership in Newport,

Ritchie, Florida, leaving parts of the dealership under four feet of water. The floodwater has destroyed 660 new and used cars, it's a pretty big dealership, as well as 12 customer cars that were in for repairs. Wow. The dealership's insurance will cover their cars minus the deductible, but whose insurance covers the loss of the customer cars that were in for the repair, the dealer's insurance, or the individual owners. Would the value of the customer's cars be even lower since they were in for repairs? Well, while the cars were in for service, it's called control. care and custody. And that means the customers' cars that were destroyed should be covered under the dealer's garage keepers' insurance unless they have an act of God provision or something like that. I don't think that's common now. I don't know the answer to that, be honest with it. I do know that while we have them in for service or body shop, we have custody control, so they will be under ours.

But the second part of the question is because they're in for repairs, would they be worth less? The cars would just be assessed for the current value in the state that they are in. And yeah, and how it would work. Some people's insurance policies might cover things for that. So if there was, God forbid, an exclusion in the dealer's insurance, that could be covered flood. You know, flood damage is covered in some comprehensive policies. So that's all I know about that. The insurance companies would fight it out would be the answer.

Oh, yeah. They would everybody be fighting your insurance companies, fighting it against the dealers, and eventually you get screwed. No. Eventually, it's not a good thing no matter what, but. Well, this was, this was, see, it's so huge. It started out, for the folks that followed the hurricanes going back a couple weeks ago, it sounded like just another nonsense hurricane, you know, with very little damage. and the media hypes everything. And all of a sudden, you wake up one morning,

and there are hundreds of people dead, and there's six and a half billion with a B, six and a half billion dollars of damage. So this is, I think, one of the largest hurricanes in history, and it wasn't really that bad a hurricane. It was the water in the mud and the- Yeah, it wasn't the wind up in the Carolinas. And so this is gonna be enormous.

we can't overemphasize to be careful about buying cars these cars are not going to vaporize they're going to be moved around someone's going to be buying some of these cars they shouldn't be buying those cars by the way Donovan came on earlier he mentioned some of the for more of a feel-good point of view here a lot of folks with the F-150 lightnings and other electric vehicles even several with cyber trucks are using these vehicles to help power not only their own homes, certain essential elements, but also to help out their neighbors as well in places where they got serious flooding and issues like that up there.

So a lot of these new EVs, they're finding a dual purpose where, you know, hey, at least if you've got a way to plug in and run a coffee pot. Yeah, or if you want to have a barbecue, you just submerge it in salt water. Well, yeah, there were a couple of issues cars that did get under saltwater. the electric cars had a fire they have at least a couple of those but folks don't underestimate you know when you're out of power for weeks on end several weeks and this i know because i've been there when we had hurricane hit my area and suddenly your neighbor says hey come on over here i got a cup of hot coffee for you this is a beautiful thing that right there we don't want to brag

but that's what we did uh the same hurricanes you're talking about i think we had two weeks and uh the most important thing we did is we got a generator going at the dealership and we had a coffee maker. Yep. And that was a luxury. It was. It was a tough time. Yeah.

So for all those folks up in the area there, North Carolina, Tennessee, all those areas were hit so hard. We feel for you a lot here in Florida. We've been through a lot of that sort of thing. Except for the mud slides in the river. We don't have a dog this week? I was about to ask Jonathan. We do have a dog.

We are one minute away from the dog. Oh, okay. Are we really? No, we should get to it if we can. Okay, we are zero seconds away from the door. Well, let me just mention one thing. I've been meaning to mention during the entire show. And it's just, again, the warning, we're talking about floods.

Now we're talking about when you're buying a new vehicle that is not just a new vehicle, but it's a new manufacturer. I had a friend of mine the other day said, have you seen the new Rivian truck? I said, yeah. He said, what do you think about it? I said, I understand it's a good truck. It's really got some great qualities and features, electric vehicle. And I said, I don't particularly care the way they look.

Jason's drive one, my brother, your son. Yeah. He drives one. He likes it a lot. Yeah, yeah. Now, the problem is they're hanging by a threat financially. So the warning to our listening audience is there is a turbulence and a, what is the word, danger in the auto manufacturing industry like never before.

You're going to see some stalwart companies, manufacturers that have been around for a long, long time, go out of business. I don't want to, you know, jinx anybody, but I think Stalantis might be one of those. Rivian, even though they're an upstart, and they build a great vehicle, in my opinion, they might not make it. I mean, let's face it, Ford, General Motors, we don't know who the survivors are going to be, but the manufacturer, the auto manufacturer that we think of today, you know, we think of Toyota, Honda, Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, you know, which is now Stoannis,

we think of these, but the fact of the matter is there won't be auto manufacturing companies as we know them. They're software companies. So we're talking about, you know, like alphabet and Waymo, and the whole world is turning into a software company, and then, oh, by the way, we'll put the car together over here. But the assembly and manufacturing of a car is just an afterthought. The science and the technology is what it's all about. So we'll have to end up 20 years from now,

and 90% of the manufacturers that we do, deal with today will be gone and you don't like that you know do you remember oldsmobile do you remember pottyac saturn remember edsel sirs saturn saturn saturn saturn i mean a lot of these car companies have come and got you go uh you know yeah but even kind of recently it's like yeah i mean it used to be like you'd think of back to edsel but in the last i mean you know there's so many car companies that are just nobody even remembers them anymore. Fisker was one of the recent ones, the electric car.

They were here for a short time. Boom, they're gone already. Here today, gone tomorrow. Lucid is hanging on by a bit of a thread right now. Raytheon is another one. Hey, Earl, you know, you were talking about, I came in on the end of it. I think you were talking about service, somebody getting service or bringing their car in. Here we have reached an age where here's the cyber truck that you now have, and it's

been recalled and it's been recalled since 2023 several several different times but isn't it amazing that you can have your car serviced right in you know in the garage overnight it's all software download and isn't that an amazing feat you know we got the we got the for our cyber truck Nancy and I have a Tesla cyber truck and we got a recall notice in the mail the other day oh damn It was the accelerator, the issue with the accelerator, so that's dangerous. I'm not going to, you know, let this go, I've got to get it fixed. And then I double-checked and found out that there was going to have a software download

was going to come that night and fix my accelerator. Yeah, and it was going to, it also is coming in, at midnight, I believe, and it's going to take care of the issue with the screen on the cyber truck. Yeah, exactly. So that's, you know, it's a whole lot better than going down to Okeechobee Boulevard, is what I'm trying to say. Okay, folks, Jonathan is going to hang me. You know why? He wants.

I wish the camera was on him right now. Do you see what he just did? Here, I'll turn this one around. He's wonderful. We wouldn't know what to do without Jonathan. He keeps us all on the straight and narrow. Okay, folks, we have to get to the mystery shopping report We got a doggy

We had Duke We have a dog We got a dog in Oh, we got a dog, Rick Oh, that's right, we got Duke We got Duke And you sound like Duke That's the reason Johntha was panicking

I think Duke has a higher pitch park I like that, yeah So we have Duke and Duke is our featured dog of the week And you can adopt Duke And you can save yourself $200 dollars yes we pay the adoption fees for this dog and uh i'll tell you he's such a cute little young dog he is just so sweet he's um i think that he's three years old three between three and seven

they said and uh he was abandoned of all places in south carolina and uh well take a look at the video and you'll see what i mean about his duke's cuteness wow he's made his he's travel Hi, I'm Tara. I work at Big Dog Ranch Rescue. This is Duke. He loves to go swimming. He's good on leash, knows basic commands. He's an absolute sweetheart. Okay, there's definitely some Basset Hound in this dog. Okay, what does it say here? What's his bio? It says he's a, just a mix? Hold on. Sorry, I got it right here. Okay, those camel card details. He is a, hound, oh, I was right. Hound, mixed breed. Okay, so he looks like your everyday dog.

He's got like patches on his eyes, brown patches, a white nose. This is important for our listeners. And he's like, but it's got kind of long. And he definitely has some basset hound in him. Maybe, but I don't see it in the ears. Not in the ears, but there's something in the, in his, in his... Well, let me tell you something, guys, you better have some room for this dog because Duke is going to get pretty big. So have yourself a nice backyard.

How big is you? Some kids that want to chase him. Oh, I don't know about that. He's big now. From the size of him there, he's over 40 pounds. And they say he's three years old. He's trainable. Yeah.

And also, he's very affectionate. Uh-huh. Yeah, he's three years old, so he's not getting any bigger unless you feed him a lot. I just remember a friend of mine had a basset, and they used to actually have to pull his ears up and use a clothes pin to hold his ears off when he was eating. so his ears wouldn't go in his food. Good Lord. He might be a house. Hey, way down.

Do you say clothes pins? Yeah, simple clothes pin. It didn't hurt? Didn't hurt him, no. He didn't mind because he was interested in the food. We have to tell people when we talk about the dog of the week who Big Dog Ranch Rescue is and why we do it because they think we're suddenly going from cars to dogs, but we're trying to help the doggies.

We're doing it for a good reason. We're not just babbling about dogs because we've been involved with Big Dog Ranch Rescue for 10 years. We started in 2014, and we've just worked with them. We've helped, you know, we've donated. We've, we're just a sponsor, you know, and so we feature them on the show. We used to do it in the dealership, but we figured this is a, you know, we've got a much bigger audience. Yeah, well, with COVID and everything, it just, you know, it went, it went south, so to speak, and it was a good time. Everybody really enjoyed us bringing dogs into the dealership. Yeah, we had actual dogs. We tried it here.

Yeah, we did. tried here and we had puppies at the dealership and boy was that special puppy day it was just an amazing time with the dogs so there's my point here is there's so many dogs out there that need adopting the you know these shelters are just swamped because of everything that's going on right now with the weather so this duke here's an example duke was left on the streets of south Carolina. And he made his way to Alabama somehow. Yeah? Yeah, Alabama and now here. Ah, okay. So he's traveled the whole south to find his forever home. Yeah. And I'll tell you what. I see here where a group estimated Duke's weight. And I'll tell you

right now, I don't want to be part of that group because who estimates weight from six, Did they say 60 pounds to 99? Well, that's a group. Yeah, I don't know why they can. And they base it as a large dog. I think that without getting any detail, I know they weigh the dogs there. They can give us the exact weight. That's a pretty big range.

That's a 40-pound range. I don't want to be near. I don't want to be near that range. Look at that face. He could be a giant cuddler. Okay, so fill out that application, your, you know, adoption. application before you go in to take, before you take

that ride to that dock ranch, because it's a big day out there, and there's so much to see, you'll get caught up with all these dolls. I can see the shine in Stu's eyes right now. He is, I think he's going to tell us, he's going on

break, and he wants to adopt Duke. No, there's no way. To go home and take over for Wally. If you know what happened this morning, you would know. That's why I mentioned it. He could be in charge. He's not going to let me tell.

But my dogs did not cooperate with me this morning. They have no sympathy for me. Yeah, they were abusing. They ran around me like mocking me this morning. And it was a tough morning. Tough, tough morning. Okay, they can be just like his. Okay, folks, remember you can go to big dog ranch.

Bigdog Ranchrescue.org. And you can fill out that application. And that will save a whole. whole lot of time and they do a background check which is necessary. Yeah so if you're a dog abuser you're not going to get a dog. You're not going to get a dog or a cat. So there you go. Take a look at Duke. Go out to big dog ranch. Take a walk around or just go out to puppy land. That's my favorite place. Puppie land. Okay. With all of that said, I think that what we're going to do is go to the mystery shopping report and our mystery shopping report took us to north fort lauderdale yes prepare yourselves

that is Subaru north fort lauderdale yeah we didn't really prepare the audience when we started the show about the mystery shopping report but if you haven't heard this mystery shopping report we've been doing this for 20 years it's something that you'll see nowhere it's like remember the old Mike Wallace, 60 Minutes, when he burst into a company and surprises the CEO. This is what we do. We go into a car dealership. We surprise the car dealership. They don't know who we are.

We pretend to buy a car. We go through the whole process. And then we read it live on the air like we're doing right now. Yeah, we surprise them like a couple of days later. Yeah. We go in and then a couple of days later. Surprise. You're on the radio.

Well, here we are. You folks down there in South Florida, you know, Solomon Gamora. in North Fort Lauderdale. This is a Subaru dealership. And we went in. Agent Lightning is our undercover agent. We don't use your real name, obviously.

I'm speaking in the first person, as if I were the shopper. I arrived in the late afternoon, entered the doors adjacent to the large parking garage where I parked. It was a bit difficult to find, although it was quite visible from I-95. I followed the sales arrows

pointing upstairs to the second floor. Halfway up the stairs, I was met by a salesman who was headed down but stopped to say hi, asked if I was looking for anyone in particular, that he could help me find. I said I was just stopping by to see about the possibility of getting a new car. I'm sure he smiled at that. He introduced himself as Chris with a gentle handshake, said he'd be happy to help me today. He turned around, headed back upstairs to the showroom floor. It was a big show with a grand piano.

I love that touch. Grand piano in the center of the showroom. There were a few cars, a few balloons, banners, not much else, very sparse. He asked what type of vehicle I was interested in, and I replied that I was thinking about a smaller SUV. He suggested that we take a look at the Cross Trek, S-E-C-C-C-C- Cross-T-X. Cross-T-T-T-E-R-T-E-A-Mouthful. It's a mouthful.

It's a cross-trex. We walked to the showroom floor. It was extremely warm, and if you're not around South Florida, it is warm down here. I said, wow, it's hot up here. He replied, yeah, unfortunately, the AC has been out since I started in July. I find that hard to believe, but, I mean. I mean, it could be subjective, you know. Maybe just a garage.

Maybe he's warm everywhere, yeah. He went over the differences between the three models of the cross trek, and I decided on the premium, which is the middle trim level, and I love the red. Of course, anyone knows, Agent Lightning says we should know she hates red, but she pretended. Well, when you're a mystery shopper, you've got to be a pretender. It was a new 2024 Subaru Crossstack Premium All-Wield Drive with an MSRP of $28,600. That's not bad.

$28,000. The average MSRP these days is pushing 50. So I would I would I would I would describe the cross track more of a crossover you don't get a lot of space in there It's like it's a small issue thing. So it's it's a baby. It's a baby issue. There's so many new names There's so many new vehicles. I frankly even though I'm in the business I I lose track I had to open the car to find them an irony label and for you folks that haven't listened before This is a South Florida thing only in South Florida are they exempt from the federal law required that you have have a monorny label right he's joking but the whole thing's a joke yeah that's tongue and cheek

it's of course it still is a federal law but when we go and shop and in fact most of Florida but certainly south Florida the card dealers just don't care that the federal government says it's required by law to leave the sticker the MSRP monorony label on the window and they just don't do it and we laugh I guess we shouldn't be laughing we should be crying Ashley Moody should be trying, but she's in Tallahassee, and she doesn't know where South Florida is. So that's part of our problem. The free state of Florida. Yeah.

So anyway, it opened the car to find the minority. It was laminated. Well, it was nice. Nice touch. They laminated it. It was illegal to take it off, but they figured as long as we take it up, we'll lemonade it. Because it makes a good, you know, evidence in the court. They go, look, this is evident.

And I was sending on the passage of you. That's a nice place to put your federal document on the passenger seat. The agenda added another $1,870 to the MSRP. So now we've got the Benroney label and another pop $1,870 on top of the sticker price. He asked what exactly I was looking to do today, and I said, well, if all goes, well, I'd really like the numbers, I'm going to buy the car. He said, great. Let's go back to my desk where it's much cool. where it's much cooler, and I'll get you some numbers.

As we walked, he mentioned that he was heading downstairs to check on a friend who had their car in for service, but he texted them and all seemed to be going well. He asked for my name, phone number, and then said, hmm, no one seems to put you in our system yet. I said, I don't believe I've ever been here before. I mean, and Agent Lightning has been around, but she missed this particular Super Road dealership

in northern Fort Lauderdale. He then said, I'm surprised you found us. We're rather hidden off the beaten path, apparently. Chris told me he'd be back in a few minutes after seeing his sales manager to get some numbers for me. This was at 11.01 a.m. Agent Lightning is very precise. 11.1 a.m., he came right back and let me know he was going to run downstairs really fast while his new sales manager got the numbers, but he assured me he'd be right back. At 1111, 11, 11, he returned with the numbers apologizing for the delay and mentioned that the sales manager was fairly new to the company.

He also said he checked on his friend in service. He said like a nice guy. They're all new. The top line, the selling price was MSRP, and that was $28,600, as I said before. They added an NFL, I don't get this, NFL Subaru Advantage package for $1,695. So there's the first of the junk, $1,695 in Starlink, which I thought was the Elon Musk satellite, which I'm having installed today, by the way, at my house. As we speak, they're on the roof.

Elon Musk is on your roof. Aon is on the roof. For $99.95 for the not the real Starlink. Starlink doesn't cost that. And then there was a $2.85 for taxable fees. Now, taxable fees for you folks out there that are due to the show. Those are legitimate. The way to tell.

No, no, no, you got it backwards. Taxable. The taxable are illegitimate and the non-taxable are legitimate. So they had $2.85 and taxable fees. So those were the junk fees disguised as government fees. $999 dock fee that's obviously not legitimate and finally

and this is even more obviously not legitimate 8.95 that one surprised me for permaplate usually what happens when I'm looking at the buyer's order she brings back it always starts with the price a discount then the add-ons

and the last thing is usually the dealer fee or e-filing fee and they get smaller and then then this 895 pops out of the blue and whoa that's ceramic coating But look at the junk here. 1695 junk, 9995 junk, 285 junk, and 99.95 junk, and 999-fee, and 895 junk. That's a lot of junk.

That's a junkyard right there. They wanted $3,9703 over MSRP. And that's October. This is October. so that's insane you know the the multi multi thousands of dollars of MSRP days are long gone and we're back down to below MSRP except for North Fort Lauderdale Subaru we haven't seen this since like early 2022 or you know that's right yeah middle of uh mid 2022 things started coming down so I borrowed the salesman and wrote down what each item was for he explained

that the $1,695 NFL package is exclusive to this dealership and includes a lifetime power train warranty. Maybe Subaru advertises on the NFL. I don't know. I just don't get the NFL connection, but

I'm sure there's something there. I tried to look incredulous and responded to his explanations with a few typical hmm. Chris asked me where I would like to be as far as the numbers go. I replied, well, I haven't bought a car in a while, but to me, a good deal is closer to the window sticker price out the door

rather than almost $8,000. $8,000 in October the, to least one, October the 5th, unbelievable. In 2024. 2024, with all the added cost. He said the NFL package and the perma plate are negotiable and then added, well, basically everything is negotiable. That's not really like a, it's like a mafia truism. Yeah, everything is beautiful. He confirmed with me that I'd like to be close to the selling price out the door, and I said yes. Chris said, let me talk to my manager and see what I can do, although I don't think I could get you that low, but I'll try.

This is so standard, typical. I mean, it's like you memorize this. They don't even change the verbiage. He left for a few minutes and returned with a new show. that was identical to the first, but with some new info written in ballpoint, the bottom. $32,000 OTD, out the door. Just said my daughter called, and I told Chris

I had to leave because she had landed at the airport. And for you new folks, our mystery shopper is a family person, a big family, and she takes her family on the mystery shops. Her husband, her son and daughter. And she buys a lot of cars. And she buys cars. For her family. So this is the most legitimate mystery shop you can do because she buys cars.

In fact, heads up to all you people when Agent Lightning comes in, she might buy a car from you. She bought one last week, I did. She returns to dealership. She shopped. She shops for the whole family, shops for the neighborhood. So, hey, you're listening, you need someone to purchase a vehicle from you? Agent Lightning would be the one to ask. anyway he asked a salesman asked me if his sales manager could say a quick hello on our way out

because he would be forever grateful his words and of course what that means is it's the rule especially in south florida you got to talk to the manager if you of a salesman a car salesman lets a customer leave without speaking to a sales manager that's grounds for dismissal salespeople and many have been fired because they did not like to let the customer speak to the salesman managers work under extreme amounts of stress because their bosses are on them and they like to yell so it's unpleasant to screw up at the salesperson level so i felt sorry for the sales button when we stopped by the sales office manager came out thanked me for coming in chris let him know i had to leave to pick up my daughter

manager said he understood and mentioned that when i'm ready to come back in he tried to get me at an even better price they always do that too You'd haggle, you hassle, and then they say... You know what's called? You know what your son used to call it? The middle son? No. He used to call it sprinkling beadback dust on them.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So when you give them that less bit of cope, you'd sprinkle beadback dust and they'll be back. My favorite, I think I used this when I was evil, but I would say to the customer when they were leaving it, I'd hold up my card, and I'd say, now, when you come back, I'm going to write a price here that will be lower

that any price you'll ever see at any dealer. And then I say it's in my pocket. When you come back, I'll show you that price. So that image is in. I'm going to wear this shirt until you come back. You know how many years Jason's been telling me to get out there and shake the bushes? Shake the bushes. Literally.

Okay, that's the shopping would work. Yeah, well boy. Jeffrey Bandez wants to know the NFL, does that mean? maybe stand for North Fort Lauderdale? Oh. Subaru. That's a very smart guess. I'm saying that's what it is.

And just to say that because Scott H. Sr. says on here also, he says, NFL package, does that mean I get the NFL Sunday ticket? Oh, boy. He's talking my language. Honestly, what Earl thought, too, is a lot of dealerships do, like, NFL packages advertising at the local station. And so maybe that's what it was. And they're just like kind of, no, that makes a lot more sense towards Fort Lauderdale.

Okay, guys. Well, it also has the nuance. Okay, Jonathan. You can take over. Hints. All right. You can take, I'm done with the hand, hand side. You can take over.

You see them? All right. We have votes coming in Jonathan and Palm Coast. Due to a removed Monroney label, the lies about government fees and excessive junk fees, I'm giving this dealership at F. I can't tolerate junk fees that end up in the pocket of the dealership. They would make plenty if they make plenty if they made an honest deal with a customer. That is very true.

Bob says, I feel bad for the Subaru dealer. They need the money for the new AC. That's true. But still, it's an F. And Amory says if the AC is, it rang a bell. Touch the nerve. If AC is out in the dealership, which reflects badly on the dealership, makes me wonder what kind of quality work does the service department provide.

I think that the owner maybe just likes to keep the thermostat up to keep the electric bail down. Well, I think they better chop, chop, and get that AC fix because it's playing AVO on that grand piano. Baby grand piano. It's very true. Can't have any... Anyway, so she gives them a... Amery gives them a D. I didn't

like them. They're not that... We're still on the curve, so I'll say a C-minus. Because it is Waterdale, man. That's, you know, we've seen worse. C-minus. Okay, we got Scott H. Sr. says F for outrageous fees. Tom Seckle says the addendum plus all the

junk fees on the worksheet adds up to 3874 or 13% of the sales price before sales tax and title. Holy, correct. Nitrogen on the addendum automatically gives them a D-minus. Joseph Kelleher, high junk fees and selling over MSRP, gets them an F. T-Cash says D-minus. I thought Subaru dealers were different and somewhat honest. I bought a 23-forster last year, local family-owned dealership at Hanover-Mass.

Monroney's label still on the window, even a third. thousand off the sticker. Wow, yeah. Cram, 1624 says, get Ashley Moody involved. Have Agent Lightning file a complaint? Now, F, throw out the junk. Johnny Z. Fradley,

looks like Ashley Moody's doing pretty good at enforcing that law. Uh-huh. F. tongue-in-cheek. Mark Smith, definitely D-minus for me. Sad for South Florida. Tim Gilliland,

too many fees and games, NFL and advantage. D-minus. Jeffrey Banda's I'm being generous today C-minus It's just typical South Florida junk fees But it wasn't overly outrageous

Tim appreciates life Too bad I'm in Boca and thinking You're getting my daughter A Subaru Cross Track I wonder if Subaru and Coconut Creek is better Hopefully they are for you My grade

I'm going to agree with Stu on the C minus I'm changing mine to D What the egg D minus that I forgot I'll give you one better Hey, Stu's mood isn't exactly where it should be.

He just went back for a second in his mind. He's going home to those out-of-control dogs. Don't call our salespeople that. I'm going to the dealership. They're not out-of-control dogs. They're lovely people. What's your score? Okay, he was just going to stop there.

He'll be at the dealership, everyone, if you need them. The dogs won't be with them. D-minus. Mike. Okay. And guess what I'm going to give them? Yeah. And my heart breaks. I love those commercials. I love the dogs. I love the whole thing. But this is ridiculous. I don't care whether it's in Fort Lauderdale or not. That's Subaru. I mean, they have to stand up for their reputation. Okay. I'm starting to perspire. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, next week, we'll be right back here. 8 a.m. Earl Stewart on Cars. of us. That's just a warning. So we'll see you right back here next Saturday morning. 8 a.m. You don't want to miss it. You never know what's going to happen.