Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.12.2024 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Hollywood CDJR of Hollywood, FL.

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to the Miami area visits a local CDJR dealer to see what how much over sticker they will charge for a new 2024 Jeep Wrangler Sport 4x4 on their car lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, 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 live. We're in the studio here in North Palm Beach, Florida, ravaged by another hurricane. And we're seeing all those hurricanes. relatively speaking maybe more tornadoes cyclones the weather's crazy out there i mention this because there's six and a half or more billion dollars worth of damage from hurricanes so far and it's still counting we haven't added up the total so we'll be talking on the show about protecting you from damaged cars and you'd be surprised what what a car deal

can do to make a car that shouldn't be sold look great. Sometimes I think they make them look even better than the ones that could be sold, but a good detailer can make a flood car, which is just absolutely, it should never be on the road, look nice enough where somebody could be tricked into buying it. That's what the show is all about. How to avoid being taken advantage of by an automobile dealer? We've been on the air for over 20 years for you, new folks,

the show is very important that you call. I can't put it more simply than that. If you don't call the show, and by call, I mean contact us. Let us know what you think about the show, about your last car purchase, about a friend, maybe contemplating your car purchase. Maybe you don't know what type you should, type of car you should be buying,

or which dealer you should visit. we've established a pretty good foundation for information sources. We have a blog, we have a web page. You can go to earluncars.com, and almost everything we do on this radio show is referenced and sometimes in greater detail on our earl on cars. We have podcasts, we have video, YouTube, we're on YouTube.com forward slash earl on cars. we're on facebook.com forward slash earlum cars

and of course we're streaming live here from the radio studio true oldies in south Florida we're actually in North Palm Beach it was pretty icy around here the past few days the hurricane came very close we didn't catch the brunt of it

most of the west coast of Florida but 120 auto nation dealerships closed so right now they're cleaning up the rubble, and there's going to be a lot of bargains out there in these car lots

of the United States. You know, we talk about where the hurricane focused. Well, yeah, the hurricane focused in Florida and, of course, North Carolina, the southeast area, and you say, well, there was no hurricanes in Michigan.

There were no hurricanes in California. There's enough flood cars damage to go around. And usually when these flood cars are put on the market to be scrapped and the villains of the world, the people that want to take advantage of you, if you buy a car that was totaled,

should be scrapped, turn it into something that looks buyable, and they ship it. They ship it to California, Michigan, Wyoming. No state is safe. It's always been a rule. Be extra careful when you buy a used car. It's always been a rule.

Get an independent mechanic. your mechanic, pay him. Pay him $200 and say, listen, I love this car. I drove the car. It seems like it's something I want to buy. And I just want to be sure. Let him go over it. And you'd be surprised what a beautiful looking cars.

It might smell good. It might look good. It might drive good. But underneath that skin, if that car's been underwater and a lot of them have, it's going to come out later. It might be a year. It might be six months. It might be two years.

So be very, very careful. I'm going to give out some numbers here, and I should have been given them out already, but our phone number is the one we like. We have regular callers that are just such an asset to the show. Our regular callers inform us oftentimes more often than we inform them, and they correct us. And we're looking to be corrected,

because we make mistakes on this show. And you folks out there, the regular listeners, especially, on YouTube, for example, YouTube.com for slash Earl and Cars, well, that's your contributions. Earl and Cars would not be the show it is today. Telephone number. You got a pencil handy, write this down. We're on the air for two hours. So it might be an hour before you think is out there.

Maybe you get home and you feel like you want to listen to the radio at home. Whatever. 877, 960. 9960. That's 877-960-960. Now, it's either feast or famine with the telephone. People don't call for a while, and then everybody calls it once. There's no way we can avoid doing that. So to try to keep an even-setty flow of phone calls, we prioritize them. So when you call 877-9-60-99-60, Nancy Stewart, who you'll be hearing from in just a few minutes. She's my co-host and co-founder of the show 20-some-odd years ago. Nancy Stewart has got her laptop open. Our control room takes the calls, puts them through with your name

and the fact that you're calling and where you're calling from. And as soon as your name appears on Nancy's laptop screen, she waves at it, me or Rick or my son, Stu, and say, listen, we've got to call her. So we stop over. doing we listen to you because we get to know you i mean the sound of a voice laughter anger these are emotions you can't get as well as a text or email uh it's just it's just a a source of pleasure some of our regular calls for many many years we've got some that been with us from the

very start 20 years ago so again our telephone number is 877 960 996 so. I know I'm plodding you with numbers, but we got to get them out, and some people haven't heard the show. We'll be on the air Eastern Standard Time until 10 a.m. 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. So there's plenty of time for you to call text or get through the show. Our text number, which I haven't given it out yet, is area code

772-497-6530. That's 772. 4976530. We kind of accumulate these calls. We don't get to the text necessarily immediately. Sometimes we do, but we prioritize the phone calls. And then as we have a little time during the show, two hours. We go back and we look at some text.

We do the same thing with YouTube. So, YouTube.com, as a matter of fact, that's our busiest channel of communication. YouTube.com forward slash Earl on Cars. And you can look at this, he was live, and you can post. Rick Kearney, who is sitting next to me, will monitor that. He has a following, a special following, because Rick is a certified diagnostic master technician, which means he knows everything there is to know about cars. And he's been around, he's been with me over 25 years in our dealership in North Palm Beach.

and so he knows the cars from technology back in the dark ages of technology hardly believe 25 years wouldn't be dark ages but compared to today's highly sophisticated software-operated cars it is and every time I'm looking for Rick he's in school because he's got to stay on top of the technology changes matter of fact if an old old car comes into our dealership all the young mechanics go over to Rick and say hey, what is this? What's the distributor? You know, it's just

their components of a car. Most components don't exist today, right? I mean, they're, they're just not around. So we got cars on the road, been being driven 25, 30 years old. How are you going to fix that if you didn't know back then? So check the YouTube.com for us slash your own cars. Now, I'm going to turn the microphone over to Nancy Stewart.

As I said before, she's by Colin. host. Something very, very important that I didn't mention about Nancy is the fact that she has made this a show for the ladies, too. We started out, it was an old boys club. That's what I was. We were on the air for a year or two, and it was always the bail's call, you know, cars or a guy thing, right? And if you go back in time far enough, there's a time when women wouldn't even be allowed to drive a car. And, I mean, it's really crazy the way the world is flip-flop, and now women are buying as many cars or more than the men. And she built our listening audience, our watching audience, up to 50-50. So that's what Nancy Stewart

is going to tell you about. She's also going to tell you about what you get if you're a female and you're listening to the show and you haven't called the show before because we truly treasure new listeners. We've got a great base, a regular listener, a lot of ladies out there. But if you haven't called the show, Nancy is going to tell you now, if she could ever get her microphone working over here,

she got... Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. There she goes. And welcome to the show. We have a special offer for the ladies. Give us a call toll-free. 877-960. 9960.

First two callers, new callers. You win yourself $50 this morning. $50. Give us a call. 877-960. Don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. Also, I want to let everyone know that we continue to stay in touch with our Zoom callers. And that number is 926-589-0586.

Okay. So Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Don't forget that. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks, Rick. I'm only working with one hand this morning. But we'll get the job done. We have a great mystery shopping report, colorful.

Hollywood, Florida, of course. Everything down in the south end has always been pretty crazy. Okay. No callers. Let's go back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, the mystery shopping report, Nancy, alluded to that. And I always, we've been doing it for so long. We have hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands.

I don't know how many times we've been out visiting a car dealership with our undercover agent, Agent Lightning. And we've had a whole group of different undercover agents. Currently, it's Agent Lightning, a female, Mr. Shopper. and but it is it's not only entertaining it's extremely informative now you older folks out there remember 60 minutes to Mike Wallace when he used to slip into a company

of some kind and somehow get through the hallway to the CEO's office and walk into the president of the company and say hi I'm Mike Wallace and it was just a lot of fun watching that because that company typically had done something incredibly wrong and they were with live cameras and live audio and Mike Wallace was talking to him.

Well, that's what Agent Lightning does, except she doesn't tell them that she's Mike Wallace or undercover. She just goes to the buying process of a newer used car. And she goes all over the place. She's been out of state many times. She

covers the state of Florida like a blanket but also some of the northeastern state. and she's on top of things. She sees, for example, in the flood car situation, the pricing over MSRP because of shortages, the supply chain issues, and she addresses that. Her visit today is going to be to a crush for a Dodge Jeep dealership.

Stalantis is what they call themselves. And the reason I mention that is, is the front page of automotive news right now. I'll hold this up in front of the camera. Front page headline, Stalantis, sales show depth of trouble. And it's something we talked about last week and the week before. You know, car dealers are having problems of survivability. Is that a word?

the industry is so shaken up now with electric vehicles and the talk of fully autonomous that a lot of manufacturers just aren't up to pace technologically and they might not be around so here we have probably the largest group of dealers still in is crashly Dodge Jeep the largest group of dealers that used to be dominant six or seven years ago still Alanis was the number one manufacturer. They actually hit number one one time. And now they're struggling for survival. And they've got too many vehicles.

And you need to tune in the last half hour of the show between 9.30 and 10. And listen to what happens when Agent Lightning visits a Stalantis Jeep dealership in South Florida, a dealership that is in an endangered species, the salespeople and managers, if I were, worked into Stalantis dealership, I'd be very nervous about what am I going to be doing for living next year? Because Stalantis was hanging by a thread financially. Anyway, that's what the mystery, what makes the mystery shopping report so important. I also need to let you know, yes. We're going to go to the phone's going to interrupt you. John's been holding for a while from West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Hello, John. You there?

Yes, I am. Good morning. What can we do for you? Well, I went to this dealership. I don't know if you've ever heard of it called Stuart Toyartia. Okay, is that the Toyota dealership in Stewart? No. Earl Stewart Toyah.

Oh, okay, that must be me. We're opening with a comedian. And so what do you have to say, John? I bought a forerunner, a used forerunner. Thank you very much. And the service was superior. The people were so nice. And my wife has tickled.

Well, that's good. It's an emotional experience buying a car. And people don't fully understand that. But having just been through the process, you know how. exciting it is. And that's one of the reasons that I, the show exists, because when you get emotionally excited about something, sometimes the brain doesn't kick in and you don't go through your checklist. And we've seen it happen many, many times. But sometimes you could have an honest experience that's also emotionally satisfied. Sounds like you had one of those. So,

thanks for sharing that with us. Yeah, I was really pleased with everything. If your listeners have time to get up there and see your dealership. They work on anywhere else. Well, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for everything you do. You have a great day. Well, we appreciate that. When I get compliments and I get people that tell us about our dealership,

I go into my full disclosure mode, which is we own a toilet dealership in North Palm Beach, Florida. We've been there since 1975, but we're not on the end. here today to talk about our dealership. Our dealership's name is Earl Stewart, Toyota, and we don't like, I sometimes shy away from that because people will accuse us of doing this show just to sell more cars. We don't do that. We do this show to help you avoid taking advantage of it. In fact, sometimes we find out that we took advantage of somebody.

We are car dealership. We have 160 employees, and I'd like to look at you in the eye. and say everybody in my dealership is totally above board, honest, and ethical. Every now and then you get a rotten apple in the barrel, and we've had that happen. We've had people come into our dealership, and we find out, embarrassingly enough, on live radio and streaming that we did something wrong. And so if you happen to have bought a car from me and didn't have a problem, be honest. Tell me, you help us.

you be our mystery shopper and that's what we do every week we mystery shop at other dealership we also by the way mystery shop ourselves anyway if do we have any calls waiting Nancy okay ladies and gentlemen I'm going to give out an important telephone number and that's some place where you can let your voice be heard and that's with Ashley Moody the Attorney General

we really need your help that number is 866966 7226. How do you feel about all of the fees that most of you get stuck paying before you walk out the door for a car that you thought was, well, it's a lot of smoke and mirrors? Anyway, that number is 866-966-7-226. And we've been talking about Ashley Moody forever, it seems. need your help. Again, that number, 866-966-7-226. Ashley Moody. Ashley Moody, the Attorney General. We're going to go to Ward, who's been holding, and Ward is calling us from Hope's Sond. Hello, Ward. Hey, Earl. You know, you're talking about the lattice and Jeep Chrysler. You know, they've had cars on their lot for over 300 days.

Yeah. And from what I understand, the Toyotas aren't selling too great either. What's going on? Well, actually, the Toyotas are not selling as great because of a shortage of product. Toyota dealers and their other makes like Honda that are still suffering the residual effects with the whole COVID thing, the microchip shortage and things of this nature. Toilet sales were off 20% last month, but it wasn't due to a lack of people wanting to buy toilet. It was due to a lack of people able to finding the Toyota they wanted to buy.

Meanwhile, if you happen to be a Stoleness fan and he had a lot, not, no, not at all. Well, there are a lot of people that love Jeep, and a Jeep is one of the most popular cars in the world. It's become an icon ever since World War II. So people, I said earlier in the show, people buy vehicles a lot of an emotion. Yeah, the World War II Jeep was an icon, but if you look at consumer guides, it's one of the worst-rated vehicle, and it's at the bottom of the barrel. You're exactly right. But they sell a lot of them, and the incentive money on the Jeep, that's the reason I mentioned earlier in the show. We mystery shopped a Jeep dealership down in Hollywood, Florida.

And the whole process, if you keep in the back of your mind, the Stalinas Auto Group, the Jeep, is hanging by threat financially, and they have a huge supply of vehicles that they can't get rid of. They're having to add additional special incentives. They have thousands of dollars. There are jeeps out there that the manufacturer is paying the dealer, $7,000, $8,000, kickback money to sell. sell it so they can manufacture another Jeep.

The jeeps are just sitting there gathering dust. So if you are, and I know you're not a word, but if you are a Jeep fan and you don't care about the quality, you care about feeling good driving that Jeep, you should at least get a bargain because they can't get rid of those jeeps. They're gathering cobwebs over lots today. No, I always get a kick out of the habit. tires when they shoot at jeeps on top of the mountains.

There's no, it's federal land. You can't go on private property. You can't go up to these remote places unless you're G.R. Ewing and you own 10,000 acres somewhere. If it'll sell cars, they do it. I've complained to Toyota as a toilet dealer because they've had ads of toilet trucks running through rivers. you know, splashing the water up and said,

look at all the fun, big smile on the guy driving the vehicle. And meanwhile, if you did that in a real tundra or Tacoma vehicle, you'd flood the engine and... Yeah, we'd be running to see your son to fix it, right? Exactly. Thanks very much for the call. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Our number here is 877-9-60-99-60. Later on in the show, we're going to share a conversation with you. About one-minute conversation from the Federal Trade Commission, we heard from them, and we're going to share some oral arguments that they shared with us, so stay tuned for that. Our number again is 877-960, 9960, and, you know, I can't say enough about flood cars, you know, being the victim of a fled car once in my life. lifetime. And you just don't forget the nightmare. It's so hard to crawl out of. And there's ways that you can be more careful today than, you know, when I was taking advantage of probably about 40 years ago. And you remember that because you're stuck. The car stinks and you just don't

know what to do. Well, what you do before you purchase that vehicle is that you get three opinions as to whether it is a fled car. So remember that. Also, ladies and gentlemen, with our mystery shopping report, you want to vote on that mystery shopping report later on in the show, probably about 9.30, and you can do so by texting us at 772-497-60 with your vote for the mystery shop. from Hollywood Jeep Dodge.

Now back to the recovering car dealer. I haven't gone to do enough detail about Rick because Rick currently a certified diagnostic master technician because I know a lot of our important information is to provide you with knowledge enough to be able to take your car and get fixed without having being taken advantage of. The cars on the road today are older, of course, than any time in our history.

The average car, I mean, this is average. Cars 12 and a half years old. So we used to think of a car that was three years old as an old car. The car today, and I criticize the industry, but I'm going to compliment the industry now because the quality of the cars built 20, 30 years ago, can't hold a candle to the cars in being built. We have cars today that are virtually maintenance-free, but most of the cars out there on the road require maintenance, and most of the cars out there have been around for quite a while. So that means you're going to be getting some interesting symptoms, and you're going to be tempted to take your car into your local car dealer and say, can you please make my car stop squeaking, or can you please find why this is, my car is vibrating or pulling? And when you put an open-ended question to an independent mechanic that you don't know

or a car dealership service department that you don't know, there's a huge opportunity for them to take advantage of you. So Rick Kearney, he's got the answers. And if you don't want to buy a car or lease a car, but you just want to keep the car you got for another two or three years and you got something that's got you worried, give Rick a call. And he monitors YouTube. YouTube.com

forward slash Erlung Cars or you could call them at 877-960-960. You'd be surprised some of the things that we had diagnosed that callers have said I was into my local

Chevrolet dealer and he said that my TOW required $7,200 worth of repairs and Rick said no it needed a it needed a $20 fix or it doesn't need anything or I mean it's we're not talking about a few hundred dollars here folks a squeak rattle or roll is a smell some little thing can be absolutely

nothing or it could be something very serious so if you if you want to get your second opinion before you even have to take it in and then you're prepared to deal with the situation I remember the people in the independent garage that you go to and the people in the dealership service department that you go to are all on commission. Now, I'm not to be critical of a person that's trying to make a living. So if someone's paying me a percentage

of everything I sell a customer when a customer comes in with the car, am I going to be looking for problems in the car? Yes, I am. I can almost rationalize it and say, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't look for all the problems. But at one point, morally, ethically, do you draw the line? And that line's not going to be drawn by the independent service garage

or the independent dealership, service department. That line's got to be drawn by you. Best way to draw the line is a second opinion. And we've got a second opinion guy here that you can't beat Rick Curney. and if you call them at 77-960-960 or YouTube at YouTube.com for slash rolling cars, he can save you a ton of money.

You know, I forgot to give a shout out to our Zoom what club, maybe. That's what we're forming. And I see where there's a few people that are watching us. And we appreciate you. Sorry, we didn't mention you earlier.

And also, I'd like to mention that if you are joining us on Zoom, and you have a question, you can click on the icon at the bottom of your Zoom screen, and that'll, you know, alert Jonathan, and Jonathan will take your name and location, and he'll put that call through. So keep that in mind. And that number, if you didn't jot it down for the Zoom meeting, 926589.0586, back to the recovering car dealer. One of the most interesting things to me, and I've got kind of a scientific background, I love gadgets, I love electronics, I love computers and software, is, and I'm a nut on Tesla. They say, well, I thought you said you were a Toyota dealer. Well, I get that all the time. Nancy and I each own a Tesla. I'm driving the new Tesla

Cybertruck, the Beast, and Nancy's driving the Tesla plaid. And it's very exciting. For you folks, you either hate Elon Musk or you love him. And Elon Musk did a press conference the other day. He widely recorded about the robotaxi that he's designed that he claims will be here in four or five years. He's, Elon Musk is basically saying that in four or five years, people will begin to buy shares in the Roboto Taxi, meaning you'll have a phone with an app and you won't own the vehicle. You just have a share of the vehicle.

So if you're going from your home to your doctor's office or to Publix or to, you know, the corner drugstore, wherever you're going, you'll hit the little app, hit the button. Within a minute, about the time it takes you get out the front door, this robotaxie will pull up, and you say, take me to Walgreens. And then a robo taxi through total self-driving, total autonomous, will take you, drop you off at Walgreens. And then the robo taxi goes somewhere else. They're going to pick somebody else. When you come out of Walgreens, you've got your prescription. Then you hit the app again. Again, within a minute, there's another robot taxi.

you say, take me home, and the robotaxie takes you home. The reason that I mentioned this recently is Nancy and I, and her Tesla plaid, has fully autonomous, total self-driving. And yesterday, South Florida, we're having some pretty bad weather. And I had a doctor's appointment that was too far away. It was almost an hour's drive. And the weather was terrible. And so Nancy and I hopped in her Tesla,

plaid and said, take us to Wellington Hospital in Wellington, Florida. And the plaid didn't talk back, but it started. And it took us seamlessly from our home in Jupiter, Florida, to Wellington. Now, what's so exciting about this is that we had terrible weather yesterday. And the residual of Hurricane Milton. And I'm telling you, there were tornadoes, they were trees down, the rain. People shouldn't have been out. We probably, matter of fact, Nancy and I talked about not even making this doctor's appointment.

Well, we got on the Florida turnpike with her Tesla plaid, we call it Miss Nancy, and we're on the turnpike. It was raining the old expression cats and dogs. It was scary. And you know how it is when you can't see, and the windshield wipers. one as fast as it can, and there's crazy drivers out there, too. Long story short, Nancy said, you know something? I wouldn't drive today, and we felt safe in that Tesla plan. It was amazing how the fully self-driving detected the danger when it got, when the rain

was coming down in sheets, it slowed down. We were, the Tesla plant had us on the turnpike doing as little as 45. or 50 miles an hour when the speed limit 70, and it has to do an 80 or 85 when the weather cleared up. I mean, I'm just telling you, a pleasurable experience. Sounds like it's really come a long way. They used to shut off if there's too much. If there's rain, it would say FSD not available.

Well, you've got to. That'll still happen. Oh, well? Yeah, absolutely. But still, I don't think it would have handled that as much rain as you guys experience. I think that what they call it on the screen, if my memory serves me right, you've reached deterioration.

That's it. I love that. That sounds very scientific and sci-fi. There's a lot of little memos that they send us while we're driving. I would have pulled over the side of the road and waited for it to blow down. But pulling over the side of the road is also an exciting procedure if you've been in one of these rainstorms where you can't see 50 feet in front of you. Sometimes it's harder to pull over just to try to remain steady. and pray someone to ditch you from the back.

Yeah, this is true. Okay, we're going to go back to the phones. We're going to talk to a regular caller, John. John's calling us from Palm City, and hopefully he fared, well, as best as he could. He's here? Yes. Palm City.

Good morning, John. Thank God we're safe. Yeah, you were in a bad spot. Well, not far from me was a place called Midnight Farm, and the whole roof was destroyed at the Cascar Station. but I don't hear anybody was killed. Yeah. But what I want to ask you, I want to talk about flood cars, okay?

In 1975, I was buying a brand new Chevrolet Caprice Classic in Reedman Chevrolet. They were in Langhorne, Pennsylvania. They had 13 new car franchises, very pleasant experience, probably secondary to dealing with Earl Stewart and North Palm Beach. But here's what I gotta say is something. A very pleasant salesman. They're up at 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. They're still in business today. Saturday service 8 to 12.

And here's this actual story they told me. It was a big dealer group that purchased Pennsylvania's noted for floods, and particularly in the Poconos. They bought up all brand new crises that they could find this dealer group, very wealthy. And they found out, after they owned them, that crisis would not issue the certificate of ownership, you know, deal with MF, whatever you call that number. So they got stuck, and they got stuck with good. Wow.

He didn't say whatever happened to the Chrysler's, but Christen would not allow those cars to be on the road, brand new cars. So I just want to mention to you that there are people that go around large groups that, buy up even brand new cars, and who knows if they get the actual titles? They're exactly right. It's an undercover industry that has thrived for many years, and sometimes they export the cars, sometimes they have them detailed out, so they smell and look good, but, of course, they're dangerous to drive, and there's a whole industry. The insurance companies, remember, when they give you money and pay you,

under your insurance policy because your car was total, quote unquote, because of a flood, they don't bury the car, they don't burn it, they sell it. And the people that buy these cars, some of them are strictly honest, because if you have a car that's been in a flood and you take that car apart, there are good parts that haven't been damaged and they can sell the parts. You know, if you added up the cost of the parts on the car, it would probably cost five times the value of the car as a total. So there is an honest industry out there for total cars.

But the insurance companies don't know who the honest buyers are. They know who gives them the most money. And as you say, John, that industry, the undercover ulterior motor industry, are buying these cars and making a fortune by making them smell good, sound good, and look good, and they don't drive good is a problem. Well, one other comment about Reebman, they're still in business today. They're 80 acres. At the time, they had 11 franchises, but there's two of them that they would not handle.

One was Ford, and the other one was Jeep. I didn't know that. Yes. And it's unbelievable. They have a race, a track that you can demonstrate your car, and they are so pleasant to deal with. So that was in 75 a long time ago, but I just, just want to give my experience. Well, thank you very much, John.

You're one of our oldest. In fact, you probably could be the oldest. Do you remember the first time you called the show? What year was that? Oh, I can't remember. It's way over 20 years ago. Yeah, wow. TV Radio, I believe it was.

Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah, it was. You're as important to the show as we are. But you've been there through the thick and thin of it, and you're always there to call. I remember back in the old days when we first got started, it was a half-an-hour show.

And then, see, I would sit here and talk to each other, and the phone wouldn't ring, and you start breaking out in a cold sweat, and we were praying for somebody to call. And John did call, so you got us out of a lot of jams back of those days. And then I called Stu. Yeah, right. More important that you guys were there from the beginning. Thank you. Thank you.

I thank you for being there. God bless you both. Thank you. Oh, thank you, John. I'm really glad you and your family are doing. okay yes we're fine thank you have a great weekend thank you very much uh we um you know we can't talk enough about flood cars uh really uh they're out there ladies and gentlemen everywhere and uh even you know if your car has been submerged in water if it's been exposed to high

levels of moisture you're in big trouble in high this moisture that the vehicle has been you know subjected to, if it's out there for a long period of time, boy, I'll tell you the damage that can take place, it's, you can't imagine unless you've purchased a vehicle and you're stuck. And there's a lot of problems. Remember the caller last week we had? Yeah. She had the car, and it wasn't totaled out because the water didn't get high enough to

the electronics, but it still messed up. Everything below that, her brakes and, you know, and other stuff. Yeah. She bought the car and she's stuck with it. The electric system, you know, can fail. You know, you've got engine problems, mold, rust. The list is endless. Okay, I think you all get the point.

Our number here is 877-960-9960, and you can text us at 772-497-3-0. We're going to go back to the phones and talk to Bill who's been holding from Boynton. Good morning, Bill. How are you doing today? Bill, you're there? Welcome. Yeah, there you are. Yeah.

What can we do for you today, Bill? I was just wanting to give an experience that I had with the dealership. I was talking to my friend Roadrunner, Roadrunner, Roadrunner, Steve. And you want to be to call you all to tell you about it. It was Palm Beach, Mississippi. Oh, okay, yeah. We've been there, a long time ago. I was just wanting to schedule a service for our car.

I bought my 24 Miss Beachie Outlanders, and I called at least five or six times, left my number and name. My wife has called. Nobody ever called me back. So I called the Mississippi customer service, and they told me to try. talking to a manager or a supervisor something. So yesterday I called that and the guy was very unfriendly

but he told me that all I had to do was come in and they would service the car and I didn't need an appointment. So I was very upset. Well, it's a miso-visi struggles They're, I'm surprised they're still a business. Especially this one. This one, I think, moved from North Lake, and now they're on Belvedere.

Someone tried to sell that to us one time. Yeah, yes. I think his name was Bill Reichel. Yeah. We consider buying the land. We never, I wouldn't own a Mississippi dealership. They have two jaded a history. It's like the kiss of death.

So I think that that bleeds over to the attitude of the employees. You know, like when they say, just come on. in for an appoint without an appointment either they're inviting you to into their little chaotic service tribe thing and that's why you know that's why appointments are good and and that they wouldn't do that that's that's definitely a red flag um maybe look for a unless you look at doing warranty work on the Mitsubishi uh maybe look for a uh an independent shop that that does you know well on on on Mitsubishi cars you know that might be a better thing than dealing with with them because it seems like they're struggling and they're struggling to get good people too

Well, this is the sixth or seventh Mississippi we've owned. We moved here from North Carolina five years ago, and the dealership up there we always dealt with, so we never had any problems. Yeah. I hate to paint a brand as a place you don't want to go, but the fact of the matter is, think of yourself. If you're a professional, you're a technician, you're a salesperson,

or you're an accounting or auto body repair, and you're looking for a dealership to work for, people like you were in high-demand, low supply, so you can pretty much write your own ticket with a dealership, if you've really got the qualifications. They choose not to work at marginal dealerships like Mississippi. And why should they? because the volume, the amount of cars sold, repaired, maintained,

it's just hard to make a living when you're working for a third-rate franchise. And that's what Mississippi is or a third-rate franchise. You remember U-Go years and years ago? I mean, anybody working in a U-O dealership, they were working in the U-Go dealership because they couldn't find a job anywhere else. So if you're looking at it, you're more likely to get a qualified technician at a good selling store like a Honda store or Chevrolet.

Hyundai, yeah. You might want to look at switching brands. I mean, there's some really good, you know, those, you know, mid-level price imports. Hyundai, IKEA are very good cars now. Yeah, Honda and Toyota are a little bit more expensive. But, you know, maybe switch brands. Because I wouldn't be surprised if they stop selling cars in the United States,

you know, at some point in the next few years. I'm amazed they're still here. Yeah. I mean, I had experience with Pugro, and they're gone. From here. Fiat, they left and came back. Lonsia. I bet people don't even know the little Lonsia as I was a Lonsia dealer.

Oh, here's one. A lot of people don't know. I was a checker dealer. That's right. Checker dealer. Yeah. Remember after checker cab went out of business. They were many of still manufacturing cabs.

So somebody says, oh, we'll just set up a line of dealer. So I raised my hand. I was a checker dealer. I sold six of them, right? Well, I was just amazed of the lack of customer service and the lack of care. Yeah, you're seeing the result of exactly what Earl was saying. Yeah, it's not like, you know, people are in there with, you know, that tier, tier one people aren't working there because it's kind of fading away.

Well, thanks for them. We appreciate to both. I'm going to have to change brands. All right. Well, call us if you need any help picking a new one. Thanks for calling. A77-960-99-60. Give us a call.

We'd love to hear from you, share your experience. We'll talk about flood cars. We're going to talk about the damage that everyone has sustained by the hurricane and tornadoes. What's left of your car, while we watched the news, we saw a lot of cars that were just spun. into the air and it's just amazing the damage. We're going to go back to the recovering

car dealer. First let me mention that we do have a viewer and he is part of the Zoom Club and of all the places, he's watching us in he lives in London. Oh, that's so? Wow.

Yeah, he's in London. And I think he joins us now just about every Saturday morning and he called quite a while ago, right, Jonathan? We took his call, and I guess he doesn't have any more questions. So if you're listening, we'd love to hear from you again. Hey, he just gave us a shout out. Okay, our local number here is 877, toll-free, of course, 960, 9960,

and you can also text us at 772-4976530. Please, don't forget, Ashley Moody, we'd love for you to get in touch with her. Let your voice be heard. Are you tired of, I know the consumers are tired, you know, of being taken advantage of, and we've done our part on this end, and we need you. So give Ashley Moody a call, and that number is 866-966-7-226. That's Attorney General Ashley Moody. Back to the recovering car dealer.

We talked earlier about the Federal Trade Commission, and we talked about the Federal Trade Commission a lot on this show. And, of course, your regular listeners know that there's a lot of, a lot of push going on now for the Federal Trade Commission, the federal agency, to hold dealers accountable for their bait-and-switch advertising and for their junk fees and all the other things that we know that goes on. And we on this show, we have filed an amicus with the court at the 5th District Court, federal court, and they had some oral arguments.

Jonathan has got queued on the computer back here, just a sound clip of the oral arguments before the federal court, the Fifth Circuit Court. And that is the Federal Trade Commission versus the Texas Automobile Dealers Association versus the National Automobile Dealers Association. And all car dealers and their associations are fighting to keep this regulation from going into effect. It's very serious, and the reason the dealers are worried about it is that not only does it put the dealers, at risk for violating the federal law if this is passed. But it also puts the employees of the dealership

because there's joint and several liability. You lawyers out there, you legal fans, joint and several liability means that if you're involved in a crime and you're just a part of the crime, meaning you work for the company that committed the crime, you could be held liable joining me for the company. In the past, a car dealer like Napleton would get in trouble, and he could find $8 million.

Of course, $8 million is a jump change to a dealership group like Napleton. But what about the sales manager? You know, if you're a sales manager, you're a finance manager, or you're a service manager, and suddenly you are held liable by the Federal Trade Commission for a $200,000 fine or a $2 million fine, that gets everybody's attention. So, Jonathan, if you've got that audio, let's play this audio from the, this is two days ago, by the way.

So this is breaking news. Consumers often travel to multiple dealers, and the reason they do is because of the classic bait-and-switch tactics that this rule addresses. They see an advertised price, and they believe that they can acquire the vehicle for the advertised price. They travel to the dealer only to discover

that either that vehicle is not available, that price is not available, or neither are available. So they have now wasted time traveling to a dealer in pursuit of a transaction that they cannot get. That happens multiple times during the car buying process. By requiring upfront, honest disclosures, including in advertisements, the rule will save consumers trips to the dealer. The rule also flags time saved during the negotiation process. Again, this is something that digital consumers enjoy,

and the rule looks to that as a source of time. time savings. And I think we've all been there. You go to a dealership. You sit down in the dealer to negotiate and the dealer gets up and walks to the back room to talk to the manager. That is time that you have wasted during the negotiation process, that digital consumers do not waste. They can just do that by email while they're sitting in their kitchen, while they're upstairs playing with their kids. They don't have to wait there during this back and forth. Isn't that interesting, the angle that this attorney for the Federal Trade Commission took with respect to defending a consumer, we talk about it being taken advantage of, and of course

that's part of the argument too, paying too much money is being taken advantage of, but think of the time that you have to waste when you buy a product, be it a service or a vehicle from a car dealership, you know how quick you can go into Publix or the Apple store or to Target or Costco. Or just pick up your phone. Exactly. Pick up your phone and it's delivered to your house. Amazon gives the same day delivery now. So, I mean, time, you're listening to an 83-year-old man right now.

And I promise you, if time isn't important to you now, when you get to be 83, time's very important. So for me or you to have to spend an extra, not a few hours, an extra few days to avoid being ripped off by a car dealer, if you don't spend that amount of time, you're going to get ripped off financially. So an interesting approach to the Federal Trade Commission. I mean, obviously, nobody's going to argue that if you advertise a car for $3,000 less than you'll actually sell the car for, That's a no-no, but the twist that you just heard in that oral argument is, why do you have to sit in a car dealership? Mystery Shopping reports, you'll hear our mystery shopper, and she times the amount of time it takes her. And she gets in a hurry because she's a professional mystery shopper, but if she weren't in a hurry, she'd be there all day long.

As long as it takes to sell you a car, they're wasting your time because they know when you get in a hurry, get anxious, you're likely to make a bad decision. Yeah, you want to scratch your head whenever you hear, you know, from a consumer and she or he says, you know, it took me all day to purchase this vehicle. Right. And guess what, ladies and gentlemen, that's the good news. It just took all day. I've already talked to, you know, prospective customers that it has taken a week.

And I'm not talking about waiting for a vehicle to come in. I'm just talking about the paperwork. 877-960-99-60, and you can text us at 772, 497-6-5-30. We're going to go back to the phones. We're going to talk to Bill, and he's calling us from Lake Worth. Good morning, Bill. What can we do for you? Good morning.

I wanted to ask Earl, if he's ever had the chance to talk to dealers in other countries, whether they're Toyota dealers in Japan or Europe or whatever, as to their business practices, and if they pull all these games themselves, or if they're more civilized. To some extent, my son, Stu, has been to Japan more recently than I have. Have you, did you get a chance to talk to a Toyota dealership outside of Nagoya?

And it was really interesting. They pulled up, first of all, just what they did for the group. It's a group of toy dealers that get to go on a tour of Japan and experience the cultural sites and get to know our Japanese partners better and also visit the manufacturing plants and some of the other places where they're innovating, like, with robots and things like that. But we went to a Toyota dealership and they rolled out the red carpet.

They lined up to greet us all. And then we went into their conference room. And what I saw was very similar, but on a smaller scale than American dealership. It was about the size of a, like maybe a dealership in the 70s. It was very small, like a small glass showroom. But they were all dressed in suits and ties and they had prices and payments on the windows.

of the cars and there was painted on the lot and there was flags strung across poles like a car like an older car dealership in the United States and we they did a they would negotiate but not as much it wasn't a contentious thing they said it didn't take as long I also understand there's a lot of like door-to-door sales with with cars in Japan like very like demure 50s era sort of American things are still that they still do. But I didn't, obviously, I didn't ask them about, like, you know, do you guys screw the customers or things like that. You know, we kept it very polite because they were extremely accommodated. And then we left and they all lined up in the parking lot, in the line, every

employee of the dealership and waived until the bus was out of sight. Cool. It was really cool. But it looked like that. I also, I know I was in England recently and I drove past car dealerships on the way from the airport into London, and they look like regular, I think they call them a motor sale. I don't know, I forgot what they called them, but I didn't visit those, but they look like big American dealerships.

Okay. I understand negotiating on the price, perhaps, but all the junk fees and everything they get you with at the end of the process. I doubt it. This feels like more of a result of, you know, of more of a lax, as a fair sort of governing style that we have in the states for business. And it's different, I think, in a lot of other countries.

Yeah, right. A quick comment from Donovan here. He says, for the caller, in Western Europe, car dealers do not get to pull any of the stuff that they get away with here in the U.S. They would end up in jail if they did. He said dealers are also very small. And most people order a car, they do not simply pick one off the line. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

It's, you know, a lot of the ideas and efficiency we get are come from places like Japan and Europe and I see it's like they've applied it. But I don't think, I mean, we're capable of great efficiency. It's the business decision not to avail themselves of technology because the technology is there to buy a car and have it deliver that day. We could do it. It could be done. But there's a lot of, you know, fight pushback. This is very profitable. The current model is very, very profitable.

Canadian dealers are also nicer and more honest than American dealers. I have that experience to Northwood University, which is a college to train car dealers. And a lot of Canadian dealers come to America to Northwood University to learn to be car dealers. And I've sat, Northwood University asked me to speak before their classes. And we also interviewed the graduates of the class of Northwood University. And when I would interview graduates to sign off on, say, this man understands or this woman understands what it is to be a car dealer. I found the Canadian car dealers to be a couple of notches and more honest and moral.

It's just they're really nice up there, eh? Remember when you gave the speech to, it was a group of Brazilian car dealers or students. They came from Brazil. Oh, yeah. This was more recently, and, you know, Josh and Jason and I sat in the audience, and I don't remember. They were still learning, but I don't think it was as brutal in Brazil as it is as it is here. Exactly.

What a nice global tour we just took. Great question. Okay. All right. Just one of this thing real quick, Earl. I know you've spoken very highly of Jim Moran at times. and I was just wondering if you saw the article in the sports section of the Palm Beach Post yesterday about the owner of the Jacksonville Jaguars in his yacht and how he came to have it.

He was on Jim Moran's yacht and he saw how Moran used it to build business relationships and such. Yeah. I didn't see that, but I sure will look for it. Yeah, Jim Moran, you know, we could do the entire. show and a guy like Jim Rand, he was one of the pioneers. He's like a Henry Ford. He'll go down in history. He started out as a pumping gas.

He pumped gas in Chicago, worked at a gas station, ended up being the largest Hudson dealer in the world, and then he was the largest Ford dealer in the world. And then he came down with cancer, he thought, terminal cancer, and he went to Florida to die and bought a Pontiac dealership. And turns out he got cured. didn't die and uh this little something knocked on his door one day this is like you know a long long time ago and said how'd you like to sell uh how it's like you be our wholesale distributor

for toyota and no they ever heard what toyota was what jim moran said i'll take it he paid a hundred thousand dollars for the rights to be the toilet distributor in the southeast united states and now and you know the rest is history uh um um I was going to ask you something to slip my mind there. That happens to all of us. No, well, thanks for the call. I just looked at us up. Yeah, he bought his first shot, Sean Con's first shot.

He bought it from Jim Moran. He bought a gallon lady. Yeah. Great conversation, Bill. I'm sorry? Great conversation. Yeah, just one other thing real quick. I know you have other callers.

It's my understanding. He was the only auto dealer to ever be on the cover of Time magazine. Correct. And I think maybe Earl should be to see. second, maybe should have put in a good word for him. Yeah, he was truly a pioneer. There's a dark side to Jim Moran, too, and I won't get into that, but. That's fine.

That's the typical of the era. Yeah. You know, if you're tough in business in that time period. Yeah, that's the way it was done. A dark side to me from that era. I know you have other callers. Thank you, Bill. You all have a good weekend.

Thanks. Have a great weekend. Back to Stu's conversation. about his trip to Japan. You know, this is interesting information. I never thought about it. But do you know when you purchase a vehicle in Japan, you have to have proof,

you have to have proof that you have a place to park it in many urban areas in Japan. Before purchasing a car, you must provide proof that you have a legal parking space as parking is very limited. Yeah. As you do that in New York City. Yeah, exactly.

But they backed off all the good ideas. They were going to fix the problem. And there's a few stipulations as far as purchasing a small vehicle. You can imagine, you know, everybody in Japan wants a small vehicle. I think they don't, they wouldn't want to see me driving around in that tundra. Earl's cyber truck wouldn't work. No, the cyber truck would be a, no, no. I don't think you could get it across.

You know, it's amazing that. We're sitting here, and Earl opened the show, and he was talking about the robo taxi, and gosh, how things have changed. Here we are in the 21st century, and not to rub it in this morning, but on another note, did you notice how difficult it was to get gas? Mm-hmm. Yeah. That was the moment that I looked over, and I said, boy, oh, boy, am I glad I'm driving an EV? Yep. And it has served us well in situations.

Did you guys lose any power on Wednesday night? No. No. Everybody around us. Yeah, wow. We were very fortunate. Did your generator kick on? I never did.

I was waiting for that to happen. But I thought you're going to say I could just plug into my cyber truck because I can run my house off of my cyber truck. Not very long. Yeah, but you could still plug a fridge into it so ice cream doesn't melt. I was worried about I lost power for the first time since I lived in my home. I've been there for almost 20 years and it's the first time power cut off. And I got concerned about my freezer with all the dog food in it. But I got a propane generator just in case.

Yeah. So it's kept, it came back on right away? It was no, it was I, when I woke up and my wife said it went off around 11 and then it came back on around 10 a.m. the next morning. Oh, really? That's great. I'm still talking to people that don't have any power at all. 877-960. I'd love to hear from you.

Share your experience during the hurricane, talk about flood cars. Ladies, give me a call. 877-960. You can win yourself $50 this morning for the first two new lady callers. Don't forget, we want to hear from you on the Zoom Club. Do you know the number? Did you jot it down? Here it is again.

926-589-0-5-8-6 give us a call we'd love to hear from you this is great we have this audience in london and he seems to be pretty involved with our show and i point that out because he's very young he may be looking to go into the car business i think i see a little smile on his face as i mentioned him anyway if you're out there and you want to talk to us Jonathan's here. He'll take your Zoom call. He'll take your information.

He'll put you through. And we'd love to see you and talk to you. Earl? Well, we're getting charitable about buying and selling cars. And again, I got Rick Kearney with his vast knowledge sitting next to me. And he can tell you how to fix your car and not being taken advantage of him.

Jonathan, do we have a call from Ocala? I hear somebody. It was in the line of fire. We have a call from Ocala, and I'm not sure. Well, there's a caller out there. What's your name? Good morning. Hello, Ocala.

How do we do that? Jinks. Ocala, Florida. It's about 40 miles south of Gainesville, I think. It's a messy, a wonderful forest. Yeah. Springs. Well, let's let's go.

Let's go back to the right here. If we haven't got a call. I don't know. Okay. Well, Ocala, if you're listening, give us a call back at 877-960. And we're going to go to John. Hello. I'm still here.

Hello. Hello. Good morning. How are you doing? Good morning. Thanks for calling. We didn't get your name. Welcome.

Sydney, Mondi. Hi, Sydney. Good morning. Welcome. Good morning. Yeah, I have two questions. week. Okay. I have a theater high in there, 2013.

Right now, I have 200,000, 150 miles. My first problem is the back window, the weather street inside. Every time I put the winter down, they go down with the window. I don't know what can I use to fix that problem. And I don't know if they sell this little piece. Yeah, that's called the belt molding. If it's the piece on the outside of the window. On the inside.

On the inside weather strip. Yeah. Okay, yeah, that can be replaced. Basically, you'd have to remove the door panel and then take that weatherstrip piece off and replace it. What you might try doing is, do you have window tint on your car? No. Okay, that's good because a lot of times window tint, the thickness of it, and the material will actually grab that rubber weather strip. The best thing I can suggest for just to try it is try scrubbing the window really well with some good windex or other glass cleaner and especially try to work it down around that rubber weather strip.

And sometimes that will actually solve that issue for you. But if not, you would have to replace the rubber strip on there. Pretty cheap, right? Yeah, the part would be less than $100 on that. And, I mean, if you can, handy enough that you can pull the door panel off yourself, I mean, you're talking maybe an hour maybe to replace that. What kind of tools would he need? Probably just a Phillips head screwdriver and some sort of like little pocket screwdriver to get the plastic trim pieces out.

And what's the name of it? It's just called the inner weather strip. So if you go, if you go to your local Toyota dealer and tell them what you're looking for, Hyundai dealer. Hyundai, he said a Toyota Highlander. Highlander, 2013. Oh, Highlander. Come on, guys.

Stay sharp. So, yeah, if you go to your local dealer, they'll be able to bring that, bring up a picture on the computer. And so you can point to see, yes, I want this. weather strip at the top edge of the door panel and almost for the inside and they can easily order you a new one. Most dealers in South Florida, right now things are going to be a little weird because of the hurricane. But most times, if you order a part, they'll have it the next day. Hey, guess what? I got the part number. It's a 2013, right? Yes, sir. You want to jot this down. Yeah. You got a pencil? Yes, sir. Okay. It's.

Part number 6-8172-0-0-E as an earl, 0-4-0. And it's about 40 bucks. Actually, MSRP is $40.75. There you go. And my second question is the car is boning oil. I don't say burning oil. He's drinking oil. because I have to put

half coat between oil change and the next oil change. Ooh, yeah, that's... Where can I take it to fix? The first thing you want to make sure is, is it leaking oil? No, or is it burning it through the engine? It's burning.

It's burning it. No leaking. Yeah. That probably means that the piston rings are done, and you've really got two choices on it. One is an engine overhaul.

to rebuild the engine. The other is to have the engine basically replaced with like a recycled engine, a used engine from a scrapyard. A lot of places like that, you can get a used engine for a very reasonable price, and they'll include a warranty. You'll pay a little extra to get the longer warranty, but most of them offer a choice of a six-month warranty or a one-year warranty. and they're pretty comfortable about that.

They'll give you a pretty good idea of how many miles are on that replacement engine and usually they're in pretty decent shape. So I've actually done this on some of my cars in the past replaced it with a junkyard engine and had good luck with it. So why did you lead with the weather strip? Because this sounds like a pretty serious thing.

Never mind. Rhetorical question. How about the rebuild? Like to rebuild it to six. To rebuild it is a four-sinder or a V-6? Four-cylinder. Four-scylinder. I'm going to go out on a limb and say you're probably looking at about $3,000, maybe more.

Oh, no problem. Yeah, it's... Where can I take it? I would feel more comfortable with experienced Toyota guys. working on it. There is some Toyota dealerships up in your area. I can't attest for the, I'm pretty sure there's a Toyota dealership in Ocala, near Ocala.

Oh yeah, I'm sure there is. And then you're also about too far drive from you know, you go to the Orlando area and there's a bunch of big dealers down there. Or you go to Gainesville because there's Gatorland up there. I don't know. I used to live in Tampa. I just moved to Ocala.

I bought it at Stadium, Toyota. And I went there. I asked one of the service guys. how much it could cost to six? It's better to buy a new one. That's a fair thing for a say is how he delivers it because sometimes service departments might recommend service that is cost more than the value of the vehicle

with an older vehicle, but then there's people like you who want to keep it going. And so that's a different consideration. So he might have just said, listen, it might not have been ethical to say, I want to take $5,000 from me because I think a new engine would be, you know, quite a bit more.

But a toy dealership can get you a used, can get a used engine for you. Yeah, and buying it. Okay, did we answer all your questions? Yes, ma'am. Great. If we can do anything else for you, please give us a call.

It was great speaking to you. Thanks for calling. All right, hope we helped. We're going to go to Barbara in West Palm Beach. Good morning, Barbara. For all you others that are holding, I'll be right with you. How you do you do?

doing, Barb. Hello, Barb, you out there? Okay, Barb, give me a call back. We're going to go to John in West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Yo, John. What are they dropping like flies? Do you think we had a technical problem?

Oh, there's Barb. Oh, there's Barb. Oh, there's Barbara. Hey, Barbara. Sorry. Hi, Barb. Nancy, I was supposed to do a couple of times. I just want to tell you

I have a great accolades for dealing with you 2,000 and I have tried to get enough events and now I have a 213 with 180,000 miles

and it was up at the dealership last week and I got two mid-liers with that field that we got when we bought it all right interesting Randy is a great different person. Randy is a sweetheart.

But it's a trip from in 45 minutes. I don't have my husband. But I will never go to the place else. I'm having a hard time. You're such wonderful people. There's a lot of, I think the phone connection is dropping in and out. I'm trying to catch every other word, Barb. Oh, I'm sorry.

It's my wonderful apple. Oh, okay. Are you on Bluetooth now? Can you hear me now? Yeah, that's better. Okay, well, I was just saying it's a wonderful deal. It takes me 45 minutes to get there, but I won't be anywhere else. Wow, that's a long drive for you, but I really appreciate making the trip.

Thank you. My gosh, that's going to, I mean, that's great. It's a little crazy. I don't know about you. Well, I'll tell you. The other deal is around the corner from me. boy there's a lot yeah you can throw a rock in south florid and hit a head a toilet dealers well i'm glad you're making making the trip and um it's good to hear yeah 16 toilet

dealers between um palm beach county and homestead yeah you can't you can't miss them barb you know whenever you're making an investment in a vehicle like you are it's really worth you know doing your homework and uh i commend you uh thank you i will never get another car i'm 83 years old oh is that right well good good for you and you and ear old graduated the same year well consider you know this is opening for me to to tell tell you why i'm so high on autonomous driving is i figure it this way i at a certain age uh you probably shouldn't be driving a car and but who cares who if you have a car that you could use that is fully autonomous and safe all you do is walk out the door getting the car say take me to walgreens or take me to

publics and the car will take you there wait for you when you come back it picks you up it takes your home so you might be driving you might be being driven but when you're 93 years old so don't give it up it's fun to be in the car let me let me tell you I've been driving for six years. I've never gotten a ticket or I've had an accident. Wow. That's incredible. That's incredible.

The insurance companies love you. Wow. Well, USAA. Oh, yeah. The best insurance company out there, USAA. Yeah. Congratulations. They still love you.

Yeah, my husband's a entire turn. You're a statistical anomaly. Yes, you are. Okay, Barb. Okay, thank you. I've got some calls. Thank you for calling. and give us a call again, 877-960-99-60.

And remember, ladies, first two new lady callers, $50, $877-9-960. We're going to go to John. Good morning, John. John's calling us from West Palm Beach. Yeah, hello. I'm going to address the gentleman up in the LAPF. Mm-hmm. The, if he goes to replace a window stripping and others who tend to do work on their cars,

before they go in Princess Park, they can go to a U-Pay-U-Pull. And if they've never taken apart, like, for instance, the door panel, go work on a junkyard car take their door panel at your part and get your part just because you may be $5 now you know how to take

and put it back together I love that great idea I love because I have done I have done I've got an opinion and I don't know what he's going to say

but I'm going to say that I have ventured into things before that I certainly would have benefited with a dry run ahead of time I would just say that if you want to try that, okay,

but you'd have to find a junkyard that has a 2013 or reasonably close to that year Toyota Highlander that hasn't already been disabled. It's going to be 2008 to 2013. Yeah. But you got to find one that somebody hasn't already pulled apart and then try to pull it, you know,

for your practice mode. My actual recommendation would be to go on YouTube because I guarantee you somebody out there has a video posted that will explain exactly how to pull that door panel off, showing you each of the hidden screws and clips, and how to remove each of those clips properly and safely like you. You and John are from two different generations. Yeah. And John thinks like I do because of his age, and they don't have junkyards like we used to go to, John. The junkyards now, unfortunately, are all online and everything is categorized. So the junk

dealers, they buy up these cars and they strip them and they put them online, just like going to a car dealership, parts department. They've got everything that you could possibly want. We restored a 1937 Pontiac a few years ago, and we were able to restore that 1937 with all original Pontiacs just from availability. If you've got a car, you need a part, that part's out there somewhere, and you could go online now, get your grandson to show you how to do it and find that part, and it'll save you a lot of time because you're never going to find the junkyard like we used to go to. Well, there's two of them off of Southern Boulevard and the turkey.

I think it's an tired boulevard that we go to. It's called You Pool, You Pay. It's online. You look at the car that you're looking for, and it'll tell you if it's when it came in, and you want one that came in within a couple days, Because if it's after two weeks, it's been fixing through. Yep.

I remember when I was a lot younger, I used to go with my brother to the junkyard to get parts for his car. And while he's trying to pull certain parts off for what he needed, I would go to some of these cars and I'd just take a screwdriver and I'd start disassembling things and just laying it out just to play with it. I mean, you know, I'm 14, 15 years old. and I would just take stuff apart just to see if I could get it to come apart I can't take things apart it really easy I just can't get it back together again that's my problem

that's yes I've heard it that's the real trick that's where all I like this idea that's where all my tools come in ladies and gentlemen I have my own tool belt the whole thing we're at a quandary I know as I say if anyone takes the advice

because it is muddy and wet. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of nasty. A lot of oil on the brink. Yeah, it's probably a super fun site. Well, and the other thing to watch out for, especially right now with all the rain we've had, watch out for fire ants. You won't believe it,

but the rain will bring the fire ants up out of the ground, out of their nests. Then they move into the cars. This is a southern problem. So about the time that you start working on something, and you feel something crawling on your hand, you look down? I think we're going into too much detail. How about those Army hands?

Hey, ladies and gentlemen, as I sit here, I just gave it a thought. Earl and I are working with a couple of kids here. We have three other people, men, who are involved in the show, and they're kids. You and I have been talking about age a lot, and did you think about that? Stu, Rick, Jonathan. There are a couple of kids compared to the two of us. So anyway, that is public information for everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the dog of the week that will be coming up.

His name is Meeks, and he's a cutie pie. Meeks. And we have a video, unfortunately, I'd say, quite brief, but we will be showing you that video so you can take a look, as Stu pointed out to us. All right, listen, this is a private matter. It was an observation. It's a private matter. Well, I don't know.

I do want to read Anne-Marie's text before we get to me. Yeah, Anne-Marie's text is coming up, and we have the Mystery Shopping Report coming up, and we have Meeks coming up. Now, Stu is going to share that text with you. I just thought it was a really interesting take. I know a lot of people were asking about the hurricane, because, wow, that was the big event this week. But Amory has a really interesting question about hurricanes. Good morning.

Florida's been hit by two hurricanes. In the last two weeks, how dealers respond partly depends on how likely the storm is going to hit them and their ethics. Yeah, you're on to something. First example comes from jalapnik.com. Hurricane Milton was bearing down on courtesy Toyota of Brandon. Staff moved as much furniture from the show floor to make room for as many cars as possible. Those they couldn't get into the shore when they put into their massive workshop. They stack cars on top of each other by putting cars on lifts and storing cars beneath them.

Some trucks are used to block the entrances to the parking lot while the remaining trucks were moved close to the building away from the trees and the staff leaves. Example two comes from the other side of the state, which was only experiencing feeder bans of rain and tornadoes. Daily Doubt reports that a car salesman at Wallace, Volkswagen, and Stewart, who we have Mr. Shopped. was still trying to close a sale while under an active tornado warning. And by the way, tornadoes hit up the road in St. Lucie County and killed four people. The Daily Dot Stories is backed by videos on TikTok. Granted, dealers walk a fine line as to whether the close or stay open when dangerous weather is possible. It is a tough decision.

What does your dealership do when faced with hurricane and tornado warnings? Well, that's a great question. And it's really hard to do this because every storm is different. And we've tried. And here I'll stay our general policy is we stay open unless we're in a hurricane warning. And typically that is a normal situation and everybody's okay with it. Sometimes we have ambiguous situations. Like it's a strong storm and it's not, we're not in the cone, but there's potential, you know, effects that we're going to get.

So we've told our employees, hopefully that they take the message to ours, even if we're not closing anybody, anybody who feels unsafe leaving their home or anybody feels they need to focus on their home or protect their home, they go. We're okay, because we usually get down to a pretty skeleton crew anyway because there's not a lot of customers coming in right before a hurricane. So we just try and play it by ear, but we are definitely closed if we have a warning. and that's the best we try and do that. She sent some pictures of these articles here. And yeah, and I'll say at one point, Earl himself was kind of a little crazy when it came to hurricanes. He didn't want to close for anything. And because we had a period of, what, 30 years of media hype and no hurricaneings hitting us,

then suddenly we started getting hit by hurricanes. Yeah, I would like my emotions get the better of my common sense and remain open just. to prove to the hype that you get from the media. I mean, I realize that the media has to warn people about danger, but I also know that the media gets paid from advertisements, and people love danger, and they love mayhem, and when they hear about the number of bodies or the number of people, I think it's terrible the way they find these people that are,

the house is just burned down, their dog is dead, and their husband is missing, and they say, how do you do? feel about that? You know, I think that's exploiting human emotion for commercial reasons, but the reason we should be closing, and a lot of doors should be closing more often during her case, because the people that work in these stores need to take care of their property, and psychologically and mentally, they're not at work anyway. They need to be home taking care of their doggies and their kitty cats and their family, and we shouldn't be forcing people

to work when they don't want to. And also just a minor defense of your attitude. I'm a second generation of Floridian, Earl is native born, and that's kind of rare in your generation. Most people are transplants. And we went a period, and I don't know, okay, I was, this short story, I was born in 1968. I didn't experience a hurricane until I was in sixth grade in 1980.

And then I didn't experience another hurricane until I was married with children in 2004. Or climate change or the increase in storms, it has changed. And now we don't think it's never going to hit. I had two hurricanes before I was 40 years old. Interesting. Okay. If we don't have any more texts get to. Let's do it.

If we have any YouTube, we've got to move. We're running out of time here. We got the dog of the week coming up. What do you say, guys? What's you got for me? Woof, woof. I want a dog. No, nothing?

No YouTube? No. I got a bunch of comments on YouTube. We can run through real quick if you'd like. Well, we'll go to the dog of the week, and then we'll go back to the both of you for the text and for the YouTube. This week we have our dog of the week. And, you know, I don't know whether you're familiar with Big Dog Ranch or not by now. Everyone should be.

We are definitely involved with Big Dog Ranch. And we certainly try to help. and do our part to ensure that these dogs have a home. And today we have a little hound, Mix, who came to us from Georgia. Meeks. And Meeks is looking around, and he's wondering why he is at Big Dog Ranch. And that's where you come in. We would love for you to get involved.

Go to the website, bigdog ranch.com.org. it is, I believe, and take a look. Take a look at all the dogs they have out there. Take a look at Puppiland. If you don't, if you're not interested in Meeks, there are many dogs out there that you can familiarize yourself with, you know, by going to www.W. Big Dog Ranch Rescue.org.

And we're going to show you a little video on Meeks. And like I said, he came. to us from Georgia and he's looking for a forever home he's he's I think they're guessing that he's between one in three years old and as I said he's a hound mix and if you'll be so kind Jonathan roll the video hello this is meeks he's very easy on the league he loves treats he just went for a nice 15-minute walk and I think he's ready for a little nap I love you.

You got to adopt meeks. Look at that. Yeah, he's so cute. And the luxury of this, ladies and gentlemen, is the fact that we pay the fees to, you know, adopt the dog. It's very expensive. $200 is a heck of a lot of money. So keep in mind that we do pay the fees. And if you go to the website that I mentioned, you could.

fill out an application and see whether or not you are acceptable to adopt Meeks because they do a background check. You got to be qualified. And I got to tell you, they do so much out there at Big Dog Ranch, you know, for veterans, for the disabled, for everyone and anyone, there's a program out there that makes it affordable for you to adopt a dog. And don't forget Earl's book. and that's Confessions of a Recovering Car Dealer.

The book was written quite some time ago. I'll tell you, the information in the book is priceless. Yes, you can put that on your shelf and you can refer to it forever. And I might add at the same time that that book, and it's, you know, last time I checked it was 1999, all proceeds go to be. Big Dog Ranch. All proceeds go to Big Dog Ranch. And that's Confessions of a recovering car dealer. Rick? I'll see. Well, hold on a second. Before you start reading his comments, I got to tell these people about Meeks. I mean, because a lot of people heard it, but didn't see it.

In Meeks, this is where, like, her second hound mix in a row. We had Duke last week with the big long ears. And this looks like a beagle basset hound, sort of like a beagle coloring. Yeah. And it's like, you know, medium-sized dog. How much did he weigh? Like 40, 50 pounds maybe? Yeah. And he looks like he stands about two, two and a half feet tall.

It's a long dog. He's got that hound dog appearance. Yeah. The long, slender legs, black and white. Lots of white on him. And a big old smile. Oh, yeah. He has a take, take me home look in his eyes.

He is just adorable. If you didn't catch our video that we just showed. Watch it. Come back to YouTube and watch it. Go to WWW. Big Dog Ranch Rescue.org and take a look at it. He just looks like a beautiful dog, so friendly. He's compared to your dog, Rick, he's a little mini dog.

Yeah, my girl, Harley Quinn, we got her a little over 10 years ago now. And she's getting up there in age, but, you know, for a hound dog, she weighs almost 70 pounds. She's a little, a little chunky because now she's getting older. She doesn't exercise quite as much, but I guess that's all of us as we get older. But, you know, she is still the sweetest girl. Oh, that's a great story. You know, ladies and gentlemen, Meeks is, like I said, she's waiting for you. And she, you know, she likes older kids, let's put it that way.

And she needs some attention. He. Meeks is he, Ms. Jennering our boy. There you go. Okay, I think that, did we cover everything, Stu, on Big Dog Ranch? We're good, yeah. Okay, so Jonathan, I think that we're going to go to the mystery shopping report, and the mystery shopping report, if I recall, is from Hollywood, Florida.

That is the Dodge dealership, and Agent Lightning did an exceptional job, as she always does. So we're going to go right to the... We're going to go right to the mystery shopping report. Yeah, not familiar with Hollywood, Florida. Everybody's familiar with Hollywood, California. Hollywood is right next to Miami, and it's a very unique place. The second and third largest toilet dealership in the world is in Hollywood. It's a gathering place of all people from around the world.

There's got to be the Hollywood Toyota who we're familiar with. have salespeople that speak nine or ten different languages. I mean if you speak a language spoken on earth and you want to buy a car at Hollywood Toyota, they have a salesman that'll do that. But it's very interesting area. It's in the heart

of the Sodom and Gomorra, I call the area of Cardiff's because it is rough down there. That is an area where I would probably drive 50 miles anywhere away. Not to have to buy a car in Hollywood, Florida.

I'm just saying that the other interesting thing is Stalantis hanging by a thread. And Chryslerjee, Dodge, is hanging by a threat because that's who Stalantis is. And it's interesting to go into a car dealership that two or three years ago were riding high and making tons of money and selling tons of cars. And now they're wicking up each morning and saying, I wonder if I'll have a job, because Stalanis is to say, financially, is hanging by a three. threat. I'll read this shopping report as if I were

Agent Lightning, who went in undercover just the other day. I arrived at the morning. It was greeted by a salesman who was standing up front about to light a cigar. I'm talking about... Pause. Throwing days of yesterday light a cigar. Yes, I did.

I used to smoke cigars, folks. I mean, I was evil, and I looked evil back to those days. Well, you were never crazy enough to let up a cigar in front of a customer. No, no, I don't think so. The salesman greeted me with a handshake, laid his cigar down on a lockbox attached to the front of the building. He introduced himself his clawed to ask for my name as well. He didn't ask if there was anything he could help me find today.

He said, well, with this rain and flooding, I'm realizing I want something that'll lift me up a little bit so I won't get stuck. He suggested a Jeep Wrangler. I said, that's what I was thinking, too. He showed me a few that were right up front and said, I really like this one. It was a new Jeep, 24, the 25s you're out, by the way, and this was a new 2024. Jeep Wrangler Sport S, 4x4, and black with an MSRP of $49,095,000, $49,000 a sticker price. The Maroni label was affixed properly. And I underline this because it's almost, I had a bet a thousand dollars that the Barone label would be gone.

But most Carly lives in South Florida ignore the law on displaying property of the MSRP. So that's a plus for Hollywood Jeep Dodge that they actually had the window sticker, the Barone label, actually where it should be. There was no addendum on the vehicle. Remember, on the vehicle. Despite this, Claude mentioned that it has some aftermarket upgrades, so it was priced a little higher and asked if that was okay with me. It's called a trial close. Always closed, the salespeople, they're always closing.

ABC. ABC. I said, yeah, I think so, but I'd like to see what it would cost me out the door. I underlined out the door because who knows what out the door means. I use that term. We all use the term. And out-the-door means different things to different people. And you don't want to know what it means to a car dealer because it means nothing.

So you need to be more specific when you're trying to ask. I go so far as to say, if you want to buy a car, you really want what you think is an out-the-door price, say, that's the price that I'll write you a checkout for, put it in your hand, get in that car, and go home, and you never see me again. That is an out-the-door price. Continuing on. He suggested to get the keys so I can see it and drive it. He went inside for a few minutes to return with the keys. He mentioned he was looking forward to a break, and he was going on the drive, so this was perfect timing. We hit it out down 441.

That's a road that used to be a main highway in Florida all the way from North Florida and South Florida. And it's still a main road down there than Hollywood, Florida. area near Miami. 441. 441. 13th Street. And he navigated the roads while making a lot of conversation.

Sounds like a good salesman. I let him know up front that my husband won't come in with me and we won't pay over addendums. So there's a little worry now for Claude, Agent Lightning will not pay for

addendums. Claude told me that the vehicle had aftermarket items which raised the price. Remember, there was no addendum where they should have put those items if they're going to charge him, but now we find out about it. And he says, wheels, rims, and a winch that's totaled about $7,000. Whoa, $7,000.

That's why. About 15% out on there. Crazy. Yes, if I was okay with that, it was another trial closed. I shrugged. I didn't want to test, drive another vehicle or waste more times. We arrived back to the dealership, headed inside, where he asked for a license and confirmed my ideas. Claude asked, what brings you all the way down here?

I said, well, for starters, I still don't have any electricity. So I decided to come down to the Hard Rock. That's the Semino, if you're not familiar in South Florida, the Hard Rock for a while. But honestly, I'm not a fan of the Jeep, Mapleton dealership. near me and anyone that listens to the show or it's not a fan is not a fan nobody's a fan well there are fans of naples because he's still in business uh but um locally napland has a terrible reputation nationally i guess they do too um so she said um agent like said and i'm picking my family up from the airport shortly so that's why i'm here that's

why uh it'll work out just fine he then asked what vehicle i was driving and if i'd like to trade traded in i said no i'm keeping it it gets great gas mileage cause city understood and then asked what i planned on buying i said well if when i planned on buying and and i said well if all goes well and the numbers are reasonable today and if you don't if you don't give them that information you'll never get on the game playing because they they they they'll they'll if they think they can sell a car today, that will derive a greater amount of action and a lower price. Because that's what the manager is going to ask. The first thing is, is she buying today?

Exactly. And he'll go, yes, boss, she's buying today. She's told me. So that's the hot button. You've got to say that. He won't know how it's going to get two vehicles home, very astute of him. He might have been a little suspicious. I said, my family's flying in.

One of them can drive it for me. He then excused himself to talk to a sales manager and get some numbers. I waited for a while and stood up. He looked back and saw me and asked, you weren't leaving on me now, are you? I said, no. I was just looking for the restroom. He directed me toward the restroom.

I asked if I would like some water. I returned to the show. I've been waited for a while, roaming the showroom floor. He kept coming out saying his manager was crunching some numbers for me. And it takes time. I mean, they must have been moderately busy. Finally, after about 24.

minutes, he returned with a proposal. The market value selling price was $61,643, $12,548 over MSRP. Where did that come from? Now, think about this. Jeeps have cobwebs on them now. They can't sell them. The inventories are huge. Stalantis that builds the Jeep, the manufacturer is hanging by a thread financially.

They are pushing big incentives to their dealers to clear the lots because the dealers aren't ordering more cars from Stinas because they have too many cars parked on the lot. And here we are with the Jeep dealer in Hollywood, Florida, asking $12,540 over sticker price. Okay. That's just the scenario. Then they took off a $5,000 discount before. Air quotes discount. $5,000 discount before adding another $1,397

for installed packages, LoJack, and Edge. Unbelievable. $1881 $481.486 in fees. Nearly all junk were added. So this is huge. Yeah. This is huge.

And in view of the fact, it's for a struggling manufacturer and by definition of struggling dealer to go for the jugular and looking for thousands of thousands of dollars over a sticker, it was like it was three years ago during the height of the COVID issue. Shortages apply where they could have gotten $12,000 over. But today, the cars are not selling over sticker, especially for Stalantis and price with a Jeep Dodge.

I was shocked at how high the price was on this vehicle up because the window sticker already showed aftermarket items. Well, I'm not, yeah, that's, they weren't aftermarket if they were other than money. Yeah. So that was a little mistake there. Paul explained there were additional after market items totaling over $7,000, and that's how the price got all the way up to $61,000, with a $5,000 discount. I'm getting dizzy. Yeah.

I thanked him for trying, so there was no way I was paying that much for the GPS. Let me ask you this. What price would make you drive off with this Jeep today? Now, this is the question that is burned into the brain of every salesperson. Because a salespeople, the way they're trained today and the manager is a, you know, the puppet thing. The salesman's the puppet and sales manager pulls the strings. And you got to say, when you go back to see the manager, the man, and you're the salesman, you have to have asked that question, what will you buy the car for today?

And Agent Lightning asked the question, and he asked the question, Agent Lightning answered it. I said, if I was around 55,000 out the door, I'd do business right now. So he got his answer, and he wants to run back to see his manager. He wrote those numbers at the bottom of the sheet, and this is really old school right here, and asked me to sign confirming I would do business if they could meet that price. There's nothing legal about that, but it's a mentally, a mental commitment, and the buyer, Agent Lightning may feel legally bound. I mean, when someone asks you to initial and sign something to assure you that this is what they would pay, maybe they do obligate themselves mentally. I don't know.

I mean, we see it sometimes. Yeah. It's not as often. Really old school. Now this is unusual. Psychological trick. Yeah. This is unusual.

Anyway, Agent Lightning signed it and made that commitment. So Claude had to be thrilled to him. He must dance back to the manager, returned a few minutes later and said that after speaking with his manager, Claude said she informed him there were quite a few more aftermarket items added the vehicle and there was no way they could go that low. Okay. Maybe an additional $1,000 off, but that'd be the best way, the best they could do. I thanked him, so that wasn't going to happen.

I stood up and left and said, well, he said, well, let me know, you have my card. And there you have it. A financially threatened dealership and manufacturer trying to go for the jugular, get thousands of dollars over MSRP. You figure it out. I don't know why that would happen, but it does. And now we've got to vote. And we go, we do the curve. A is the best dealer that you want to run across,

which could leave a lot to be desired, plus the R card dealers. And F is, you know, you really got to be a criminal to get an F on the curve. So most of our scores fall in the middle, C's, really bad Ds, really good bees, but once in a while, we go above that, but not very often. So we'd like to hear from you. If you want to vote, you can do so at 772-497-6530. 772-497-6530.

Or you can vote on the YouTube channel too. Yeah. Or text me. Oh, you just told him that. All right. So Jonathan in a freshly flooded out Palm Coast says it didn't take long for me to crunch the numbers. and give the dealership an F. The adenims were too high

to even consider a better grade. Bob says the F I am giving is so big and heavy. I had to use the winch on the Wrangler to pull it up. All right. That's a big old F. Amory says, Hooray for Hollywood. Just had to say that.

Got the Munrooney sticker on the window where it should be. 12,000 plus oversticker for a Jeep. Run don't walk from this dealership, C-minus. And I see she is. Definitely thinking about the curve there. I struggle with it. This is not that different.

I'm just wondering, I'm struggling to understand the fact that they will walker. They had so much profit built into that. Did they really think they're going to sell that Jeep that day? I don't think so. It's kind of, I don't know, it's a big old, big old mess. I'll give them a D. I've got Brian Szilatka says,

I would have walked out too. F. And over here we got Tim Gilliland says D minus. Mark H simply says F, looking for a rube or think they can pray on a woman. George Petrillo says F. Neo Shazam says D. Rocky Blockatiel, D minus, close, but no cigar. Cram 1624.

F ran out of the showroom 12K over. I can't go that high. D-cash says D-minus. Really? A witch? Is that for getting stuck in the Dunkin Drive-Thru? It's pulling your friend out of the Dunkin Drive-Thru. Yeah.

I think I'm going to follow along with most of these. I'm going to say it's a D-grade for that one. I just don't like all the surprise add-ons that weren't even on an addendum list. Yeah, they just stacked it. on. It was all surprise. Frank also gives them easy to vote on the dealer

an F. Hmm. Oof. Manzy? Well, this is another interesting mystery shopping report and needless to say,

you know, I've got five. Needless to say it's, you know, not a surprise at that part of town and now

any part of town, you know, but number one, cigar. Number two. Are you leaving? Hmm. Number three, crunching numbers? Hmm. This is a 21st century. We've got to move on here, you know, and they have not. They're still stuck. They're stuck taking advantage of everyone that walks through their doors, through their doors, believe me. And you can help, ladies and gentlemen, and you know what my vote's going to be, but you can help. Ashley Moody, she's the attorney general. General. Give her a call. 866. 866. 866. Write it down. 966-7226. Let your voice be heard. These guys are out of control. And we just don't need to be part of it anymore. We have a choice. My vote for Hollywood Dodge F. Oh, boy. I'm going to give them a D. And I'm going to give them a D. And I'm, and I'm, I, that's low for me to give the, especially in South Florida.

We are grading them to occur. But I think we have to take into account that on September 1st, the Attorney General swore that she was going to start enforcing our 20-year-old laws and Hollywood Jeep broke all the laws and nobody said anything. And all the dealers, since we, since we've been shopping after September 1st, have ignored the whole ruling. the Florida Automobile Dealers Association has even threatened the dealers saying, Ashley Booney really means it this time, this really will be enforced.

And, of course, let's not forget the Federal Trade Commission. That's going to happen. That regulation will go through. So the dealers are existing in a dream world as if nothing's going on. At what point will the other shoe fall? Have you spoken to Ted Smith at all? I mean, has there been any feedback from F-A-D-A on, like, has anybody gotten that? Quiet, too quiet.

Yeah, they don't, no one's stronger. You know, we went from, this is laughable. What was it last week or the week before last? They're going to pick up these dealers. They're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to, they're going to the slammer. They're picking up the salesperson. Employee. Everybody in F&I, everybody's going to jail.

Yeah. They were all in, or at least they led us to believe that. Okay, great show. It was. Ladies and gentlemen, lots of fun. Have a great weekend. And stay tuned next week. We'll be right here.

Same time, 8 a.m. on the Oldies Channel. Thank you for joining us.