Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.13.2018 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of Allen Turner Hyundai of Pensacola

Episode Date: October 13, 2018

Earl answers various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Agent X visits Allen Turner Hyundai to purchase a car with a identified Takata Airbag Recall Earl Stewart is one of the most successful car dealers in the nation. This podcast gives you the benefit of his 40+ years as a car dealer and helps you turn the terror of buying, leasing, or servicing a car into a triumphant experience. Listen to the Earl Stewart on Cars radio program every Saturday morning live from 8am to 10 am eastern time, or online on http://www.streamearloncars.com. Call in with your questions during the live show toll free at [phone]. You can also send a text to Earl and his expert team during the live show at [phone]. We are now on Facebook Live every Saturday between 8am and 10am. Go to facebook.com/earloncars to also watch it live or to watch a replay in case you missed it. Uncover additional automotive tips and facts at http://www.earlstewartoncars.com and follow Earl's tweets @EarlonCars. Watch Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Welcome to Earl Stewart on Cars with Earl and Nancy Stewart. Reach them with your questions at 877-960. Here's Earl and Nancy. Good morning, everybody. Boy, that week went fast, doesn't it? I can't believe it's Saturday again. And you're listening to Earl on Cars, Earl Stewart on Cars. For you new folks out there who don't know what this is all about,

you're on the True Older Station. Maybe you tuned in for some 60s and 70s music. Not going to get it for the next two hours. For two hours, you got me, you got Rick Kearney, you got Nancy Stewart, you got my son, Stu Stewart. We're an automotive team. We're here to help you avoid being ripped off by a car dealer. That's right. How to avoid being ripped off if you buy a car, lease a car, maintain or repair your car.

The car is the second biggest expenditure for most people, and car dealers have been dealing with, the same way they did back 50 years ago. That's how long it's been since I've been in the car business. And all the other retailers have evolved to face the fact that today's consumer is educated, is information accessible. Everything that has ever been learned in the universe is available to you on something called Google. You can find out the cost of a car. You can find out all the inner workings, the safety, anything about anything is available

to the consumer today. And all the other retailers have jumped on this and are appealing to the consumer is the new 21st century educated consumer except for car dealers. And they're locked in. You know, nobody can sell you a new car except a car dealer. You have to be a franchised car dealer. have an exclusive right to sell you cars. Most people don't understand that, but state franchise laws have done this.

Heavy lobbying by the auto manufacturers, but mainly the auto dealers themselves, to entrench laws of every state, making it impossible for you to buy a new car from Walmart or Amazon or Target or any place. You have to go through a franchise car dealer. So they control. It's like a giant monopoly. They know that they're the only ones that can serve you. And that's also warranty work on your car.

Consequently, the, what would you call it, courtesy, the respect for the consumer has been frozen in time for all these years. So what this show is all about, Earl Stewart on Cars, is how to navigate that minefield when you have to go in and buy a new car or a used car every four, five, six years, whatever cycle you may be doing. And, of course, maintain your car. Probably you should be going in at least twice a year to have your car maintain.

How do you avoid being taken advantage of overpaying, big tricked, bait and switch advertising, rampant, not just among car dealers, but among car manufacturers. In case you have a doubt about this, I know there are a few people out there. There's some good car dealers, don't get me wrong. And there's some honest car dealers, of course. And you may have found one, and you may have found a relationship that you're very happy with. But think about this. Since 1977, the Gallup Organization, the Gallup Polling Organization, has taken a poll of car, well, not car, consumers.

They have polled all the American consumers every year since 1977. And the title of this particular poll I refer to is the Gallup poll. honesty and ethics and professions and they ask the people just every year they ask them which are the most honest most ethical businesses you deal with and which are the least and you know what I'm going to say especially our regular listeners car dealers place at the bottom we're either dead last or next to last in a really good year will be third from last I think last year we were second from last that's coming up on that's 40 so on years they never have improved there hasn't been any trend

upward so you take 1977 and you take 2017 haven't got any better at all that's because they don't have to and they sell a lot of cars and they make a lot of money car dealers make a ton of money and this money is partly used spent on lobbyists like the national automobile dealers Association. In Florida, you have the Florida Automobile Dealers Association. And they spend tons of money to lobby your legislatures, our regulators, to leash, hold them back on the leash from going after unethical dishonest card dealers. You can look online, you can hear on the radio, you can go on television. If you still read newspapers, you can find a newspaper with illegal ads all the time.

Most of the car ads that you see are dishonest. If they're not illegal, they're unethical. You cannot buy the car advertised for the advertised price. You just can't do it. I'd love for someone out there in Radio Land,

of course we're also on Facebook land, but we're streaming this show on Facebook.com for slash Erlon Cars. www. Facebook.com 4 slash roll-on cars. Anybody out there that has ever bought a car for the advertised price, there's always the

extras, the dealer installed accessories, the dealer fees known as electronic filing fee, notary fee, doc fee, administration fee, tag agency fee, as fertile as a car dealer's imagination is, that's how many different names they have for that. hidden profit that they tack on after you come in on the advertised price, or you've called on the phone. Say, how much is that car? They'll give you a phone quote. They'll give you a face-to-face quote. You'll go through the whole process.

Think you bought the car. End up in the business office where the computer will spit out these phony fees and tack them on to the price of the car. They look real. They do. They do. And they're experts at making them look real. The one thing they have in common, all these dealer fees, different names, they all have. have fee because fees makes you think it's a government fee they are not

government fees these are profit to the dealers so don't think I'm alone here I mentioned earlier I've got Rick Kearney a very important component to the show Rick Kearney is well I've known him for over 20 years he has been studying automobiles he's a student of the automobile constantly upgrading his knowledge The technological improvements in the past four or five years have been mind-boggling in automobiles. You folks out there driving a five-year-old car, it's obsolete, at least safety-wise. It might not be obsolete from a standpoint of reliability. Cars are quality-wise much better than they ever have been.

But the knowledge explosion, the scientific engineering explosion that we have in everything, your cars are a rolling computer. So Rick Kearney is here to help you with that. You know, there was a time when some of you do it yourselfers could pretty much diagnose your own problems. You could fix your car. You could pop the hood. Look at this, look at that. You have a few simple tools, fix things. No more.

Right now, you have to be an auto computer. scientist. That's what I call Rick as an auto computer scientist because he's that good, he's that smart. He's blushing. And I challenge you to try to find anything about an automobile that Rick Kearney cannot answer.

I see Jerry holding on the phone and Jerry, I'll be right with you because I got off on a rant here. I know that because Nancy's looking at me like I'm talking too much. And I am. So we have a phone call and he's holding. Jerry be right with you. And I'm going to ask Nancy to give out the phone call and the text so that you other callers can get in and call.

And Jerry, be with you in one minute. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. If you just tuned in, you're listening to Earl Stewart on Cars. We're right here in the studio live. If you'd like to speak with us, if you'd like to ask us a question, or give us, well, your opinion on something. We're always willing to learn. And as I always say, you make the show. Give us a call, toll-free, at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530.

Now we're going to go to Jerry, who's holding from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Jerry. Good morning. Good morning. Remember last week I called in with a problem with my parking break. Yes. And Earl said, well, that's a solvable problem. him and he called me back and arranged to bring the car in and by golly in a day it was done

i used a rental car to get back home and and pick it up the next day and he really kept this word it fixed it and didn't charge well jerry thank you well thank you very much for that and the real reason that i asked jerry to call is um some of you heard of my book confessions of a recovering guard dealer? Well, I have a confession to make now because my dealership really dropped the ball with Jerry. And you have to understand that when you go into a car dealership, we talk about dishonest dealers and we talk about deceptive advertising and bait and switch and people that are paid on commission when you go into a car dealership, whether they're in the service department or the sales department. And I think I'm I tend to portray car dealers as being big, the only problem is being dishonest. There's also another problem with car dealers and with all retail businesses is sometimes they make mistakes. And we made a big mistake with Jerry. Jerry called in last week and he had a parking break that was on not functional, came in to my dealership.

In way of total transparency and disclosure, I do have a Toyota dealership. I've had it for 45, 43 years, something like that. And so this is not an infomercial. This is a consumer advocacy show, a car buyer advocacy show. So with that said, jury went in, and some very well-meaning people, we investigated thoroughly from the service advisor to the technician, looked at the situation, and thought it was going to cost about $2,500, was it, Jerry, that we quoted you originally to figure. your parking right yeah 25 2600 yes yeah so that's when jerry called the show last

saturday and uh said that's what the quote had been and i was kind of caught took me aback because here it's my cartiless and i my first reaction is that's crazy 2500 dollars to fix a parking break and jerry was so nice jerry said you know i really don't need to fix it i don't use my parking break i'll just run it'll just continue to drive it the way it is And I said, well, no, I want to investigate that. And I want to check. So I did. And I went and I checked with the service manager and my service department, the technician.

Long story short, it was a comedy of errors. There was a misquote on the amount of time that it should have taken to fix it. That was the technician could not find the actual time in the manual that he was supposed to check with to get the correct time. And then there was a misreading of the handwriting on the ticket. It was a order of great magnitude instead of one and a half hours. It was 15 hours. And that's just a minor difference. Type of.

And so the total cost of the repair was a few hundred dollars instead of a couple thousand dollars. And in my way of apology to Jerry, I just went ahead and took care of the charge. because had he not called the show and had someone else come in, it's entirely possible someone could have paid $2,500 for a $500 repair. And I'm talking around numbers here, but that would have been terrible. Jerry, thank you so much for allowing me to confess on radio and tell 20,000 people what a dumb thing my car dealership did. And I say that tongue-in-cheek because a lot of dealers out there,

instead of being dishonest, just make mistakes. So when you have a situation like this, if your gut tells you, your instincts tell you, that sounds kind of high, go to another car dealership or another service center. Or call us. Or call us. Because if you say, that sounds like a lot of money. It probably is a lot of money. And you need to double check and give it a couple other bids.

So, Jerry, thanks again so much for being a great caller and also for being a great customer. I appreciate how quickly you took care of it. Thank you very much. All right. Have a good week. Take care. Thank you, Jerry. Keep listening.

Give us a call tool free at 877-960-99-60. We have a whole lot to get to. And you're a little shy. Give us a text, 772-497-6530. Remember, we have a great mystery shopper report coming up, and a whole lot in between, between 8 and 2. 10 o'clock, we're going to go over a whole lot. If you didn't jot that number done, 877-960-99-60,

we're going to go to Tito, who calls us from Benita Springs. Good morning, Tina. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. We're great. Rick, I have a question for you, in particular. A lot of people are looking for used cars this weekend. Weekend time seems to be a high time to shop.

for these vehicles. And Toyotas and Lexus have always been at the top of the reliability list. However, there are some used toyotas that have been affected by the oil consumption problem, which I'm sure you're familiar with. How many of these vehicles have you come across? And what is the procedure to six these vehicles? We did quite a few repairs on them when, because Toyota came out with an extended warranty on it, where they increased the warranty and we covered the repairs on them and basically what we did was rebuilt the engine we put new bearings and piston rings in them all and that was where the issue was coming from was the piston rings were not sealing

properly so the oil was being allowed to get into the combustion chamber and be burned so replacing those piston rings and any ancillary parts you know anything else that needed to be replaced while we're in there took care of those issues and most of the cars, we don't see very many of those anymore coming in for that oil consumption issue. There are a few cars that we do see it on, but it's usually on cars where folks just really haven't kept up on the oil change is often enough. It's a matter of maintenance, really. As long as you keep the oil changed at the interval that Toyota states, most of our cars do very well. Yeah, let me jump in there because this

is an important question and beyond the specific problems with the rings where you can fix it and then lower the oil consumption piston rings. There's a standard variation in oil consumption on any car, Toyota, Honda, Ford, whatever it may be. When two cars come off the assembly line, two identical year-made models come off the assembly line, those two cars will each have a slightly different oil consumption. In fact, some of them, will have a large difference in oil consumption. Now, here's an interesting little tip, and the reason I love you as a caller

is because you make me think about things that I don't think about that are I should think about. And when I talk about what you should do when you're buying a used car, one of the most common things, one of the most obvious things that I never thought about, is find that about the oil consumption on that vehicle. You might have something narrowed down

between two different cars. And it could be so close that oil consumption might be an important factor. If you can somehow determine that by going to the previous owner from the service history file, somehow or other, you might find out that you have two cars at the same price, very similar in all other considerations except for oil consumption. If you have a car that will get you 15,000 miles on a quarter oil, and another one that only gets you 6,000 miles on the quarter of oil. Is that a reasonable range? Well, Toyota actually came out with a statement that they made.

Let's talk about all cars here. Okay, well, I use theirs as a general because it's the one I am familiar with. Toyota has said that it is acceptable for our engines to use up to one quart of oil every thousand miles. Okay. So, but another Toyota of the same ear-make model could get 10,000. miles on one court. That's very possible, yes. Okay. So you see where I'm going with this? Tina, it's not just

Toyota. It's all cars have a variation because when you manufacture an engine there are tolerances and you have all sorts of different components that affect the burn of the gasoline and the burn of the oil and all

these other considerations. And there's an acceptable variation. Unfortunately, that acceptable variation to the manufacturer, sometimes isn't acceptable to a consumer. So the bottom line I'm getting at here is when you buy a used car, if you can learn

the average oil consumption, the history of that car, it could save you a lot of money over the long run. One of the things that I have found is very helpful to me, especially dealing with non-Toyotas, where I'm a little more out of my element,

is the forum sites online from actual car owners. And going on, if you pick a model of car that you like the looks of, if you go on a forum site for that car and look and see what the owners are reporting as issues that they have seen very common. And these are not sponsored by the manufacturer. These are simply open forum sites by car owners who own that model of car. Yeah, exactly. That's a great idea.

And it's a wealth of information there. Tina, you probably know a lot of these. You're really savvy online. I'll bet you have seen some of these chat rooms and places online that talk about these sorts of things like oil consumption. Yes, this is exactly why I bought my Toyota Yaris because I wanted a small car that was, I wanted a hatchback. I always wanted one.

But that's the reason why I bought the Toyota Yaris, because I'd heard that it wasn't just a 200,000-mile car. It was a 400,000-mile car. And that really impressed me. So I've been happy with it so far. I took it in to get it. service the other day and the gentleman says, oh, all you need is a wiper blade and that made me feel pretty good, you know, 25,000 miles, so I really have no complaints. Well, that's great. Nancy,

you have a comment. I do. It's funny you should mention this topic, Tina, because I have a young lady by the name of Jennifer who texts me, and she has a 2007 Toyota Camry. And what is happening with her vehicle is that she takes care of her maintenance. And she takes care of her maintenance, And halfway through that maintenance, she's experiencing excessive oil consumption. And I took it a little further, and Rick can join me on this because he's the expert. But there is a class action suit. They are going to be targeted for a class action lawsuit in reference to this problem. and each person, depending upon the year of the Camry, has a different issue,

why they have an excessive oil consumption that they shouldn't, especially after they have maintenance. Well, the biggest issue that we saw, like I say, on the older Camry's, was the issue of the piston rings. And years back, many years back, they did have an issue where they had designed the valve cover a bit poorly and they weren't allowing the shall we say the gases that build up in the engine

the exhaust fumes in that in the engine to be cycled out properly like they should and they had a problem with the oil actually jelling it would turn into like a jelly like substance let's not get too deep in the technical there's so many different factors there the bottom line here is to alert the buyers of used cars and that was Tina's call

buying a used car research online, research in the chat rooms, research with a previous owner, with Carfax, and now with Autocheck, you can get the service history of the car you buy oftentimes. And if you see one with super high oil consumption, buy a different car. Tina, is that about wrap it up for you? Pretty much, yes, but the $64,000 question I have is all of those models they have listed that were affected by the oil consumption problem. Were all of those defective or just some of them defective or how many of the cars are really affected 100%, 50%, 40%, that's the big thing?

Or was it just a few? Well, I think that they're, depending on your definition of what the oil consumption should be, it's probably, they're probably, and Rick can correct me if I'm wrong here, you probably have some vehicles out there that could. go as much as 20,000 miles on a quarter of oil. It's very true because it's... And then you have some cars that will only go 1,000 miles on a quarter of oil. Now, to me, that's a huge variation. And the manufacturers can set as standard anything they say. I personally think that a manufacturer should have a narrow tolerance.

I don't think any car should burn a quarter of oil in 1,000 miles. And if it does, they should take it back and manufacture, another one. You don't sell somebody a car that's going to burn a quarter of a 1,000 miles. Now, you can't ask them to build all their cars that will go 20,000 miles on one cord. That's extraordinary well. But a reasonable tolerance to me would be a 5,000 swing, you know, maybe 15,000 to 20,000, or maybe, you know, 10,000 to 15,000. You need a narrower tolerance to have some guarantee. But to say to a buyer of any make car, when you buy this car, you might get a thousand, you might get a thousand,

miles of a quart oil or you might get 20,000, I think that is ludicrous, you know. Yeah, when I had my meada, she had 155,000 miles on her, and she was using about 1,200, you know, I was getting a cord of oil for 1,200 miles, but you're talking about an engine that had 155,000 miles, and of course I expect that to happen. True. That's not unusual. True. You know, and I was probably what? about maybe 20 or 30,000 miles away from a rebuild or an engine replacement anyway. So that didn't really bother me too much.

But I did make sure when I got in touch with the owner, the new owner that I let him know. I gave him a whole history. I let him know everything, but he loves that car. So it's living a good life, and that car is old enough to wear it in Pennsylvania. It's probably got a classic plate on it now. Yeah. Well, that's a good point. Older cars are going to have greater oil consumption, and the fact you give total honest disclosure is unusual,

but you're a totally honest person. So that's very nice. Again, average used car buyer can't always count on that information. Oh, well, one more thing before I go. I'm sure that you've read this. This is an unrelated subject, but there is a Toyota dealer in California, I do believe, and he has a whole bunch of Priuses on his lot that are used.

He will not sell because of a recall. It's a programming problem that may cause. the vehicle to catch fire. So he's taking your lead, and he says, I'm taking Toyota Prius trade-ins, but I am not selling any of these Toyota Priuses until Toyota comes up with an acceptable fix for them. Yeah, I know of that dealer, and it's very unusual that he's the only dealer doing that. We haven't come to the same conclusion that he did. I respect him.

He's got a lot of courage doing what he does. hand up to Toyota, the 800-pound gorilla, I give him credit for that. We have looked at that situation and have come to a different conclusion than he did. It'll be interested to follow that and see how it's resolved. Well, interestingly enough, Toyota's just announced again two more computer reprogrammer reflashes for those Priuses. So we're going to be seeing a lot of those showing up the dealership to be reprogrammed now. Well, Tina, thank you.

Extremely informative, as always. I do hope you have time to call us next week. Thank you, Tina. Oh, I certainly will. Thank you so much. Have a great weekend. 877960-9960, where you can text us at 772-49-65-30. One more comment on the topic of the excessive oil.

In Jennifer's case, the engine blew a rod. and well she's got a whole lot of problems and I really hope that Jennifer you can get your problem resolved and I hope that you call our show soon we have a caller and it's John I think we all know John from Homo Sasa Springs I think you and I went through that yesterday we were trying to pronounce the location that you were in Good morning, John. Good morning, Nancy. How are you? We're well. How are you? I'm hanging in there.

Yeah, I bet you are. Our local TV station in Tampa, they've been very proactive on the keeping the Takata airbags in the news. It seems like every three or four weeks they put something up. Well, yesterday they announced a recall for the Toyota Tundra, the Sequoia, and the Avalon for airbags. When you see airbags and recall in the same sentence, the hurricane flags go up, you know. But it seems to me that that is a program issue also, right? Well, this is a different than the Takata. The entire Takata airbag issue, of course, is the inflator exploding, sending shrapnel through the cockpit.

This particular recall is the issue where the airbag may not go off on impact. So it sounds like a software issue. It sounds like something that needs to flash and a computer repair, but it's serious, obviously. I mean, both of them are serious, so I'm glad to see the Toyota and all the manufacturers stay on top of this. This fortunately was not a large recall. I think it was 180,000 vehicles. It was. And it was, I guess that's worldwide.

So in the United States, they're probably far fewer. But all the manufacturers are hypersensitive now. And they're announcing recalls much faster than they ever did before, which is a good thing. All right. We've got a car dealer up here. I don't know if I should say its name or not, but I think it is the liquidation center for Takata Airbags. Really? Well, feel free to mention the name.

If you don't mind, I don't mind. Yeah, well, mystery. It's called 1, 2, 3 ABC Auto. Wow. It's a very large used car dealership. And we found four there. they were verified by both websites. Yeah.

Yeah, there's no law preventing it, and we continue to find them in our mystery shopping reports. That's an unusually large number to find. And were they, did you happen to recall, their driver and passenger side airbags? Yeah, it was, it was passenger on three of them and both of them on one of them. Really, yeah.

Yeah, that's a shame. It's every, almost every, city and every state of the union now has got cars sitting there with defective to cut airbags that folks can come in off the street and buy and drive home and expose themselves and their families to death or disfigurement, serious injury. Terrible situation. It's all our legislators of fault. Why we don't have some sort of an executive order from Rick Scott, Governor of Florida. Why we don't have some executive order from the federal law? level to stop the sale of these

is just a shame. Our mystery shopping report... It's a shame that it can be solved with a stroke of a pen. Exactly, yeah, yeah. Our mystery shopping report today, I won't give it away, but it involved the Tocada Airbag, a car dealer in Pensacola, as a matter of fact. Forthest, we've gone for a mystery shop.

And it didn't have a happy ending in terms of total disclosure. If you go in and ask the question, we're defining honest dealers is if you ask first and say, does this happens to Cotter Airbag that hasn't been fixed, and they say yes, and we're saying that's a good dealer. It should be that car's not on the lot in the first place, but it isn't that way.

You discovered in your market, John, and he's got three of them. And it's just something that we have to sit back and accept because our government won't do anything about it. The other question I have is I have a 2016 Chevrolet, Chevrolet, Colorado, I can't even remember what I have and somebody actually typed my question kind of beat me to it. I noticed the sticker they put for your next oil change. They also put a date. I think it's six months out. Does oil go bad just sitting?

Rick will answer that. It's something I'm glad you asked that, John, because one of the most difficult things people have to believe. It doesn't sound credible that oil can just sit there for six months and have any kind of problem. Rick, what's the reason for that? Well, the main reason is that especially in our high humidity here in South Florida and the dust and dirt we have in the air, I mean, it seems like there's construction everywhere. That works its way into the engine, and the water gets in there by way of condensation. you come out in the mornings your car is covered in water and do well that gets in the engine as well

and that water is picked up by the oil i know it doesn't mix but it does sink its way down into the oil and over time it starts to cause issues with oil that's not being driven a lot when you drive the car and it builds up a lot of heat the oil will actually help to burn that moisture out and it will evaporate it out and let it go through the engine and be gone but if the car doesn't get driven a lot, that moisture winds up just sinking down in the bottom of the engine and staying there in the oil, and that causes it to break down over time,

along with all the dirt that's in there. Rick, would that be the issue? My truck, it doesn't, I don't even drive. I think the recommendation is 7,500 miles for all change, and I don't even drive that. I mean, I just don't. My truck's two years old. I was 20,000 miles on it.

But when I started up, after it's been sitting for a few days, like white steam will come out of the tailpipe. Is that the condensation burning off? That is. That's exactly it. That's nothing to worry about, right? Yep. Okay.

That's great. That's a good answer. Thanks. Yeah, humidity is a killer. All right. All I have. Humidity is a killer, John, and that was a great question because three out of four people don't get that. And we encourage people to follow the factory recommended maintenance plan for whatever

car manufacturer they bought their car and whether it's a Ford or GM product whatever the manufacturers owner of manual says you should bring your car in and have that maintenance done and all of the manufacturers recommend a time and or mileage whichever occurs first so you can literally have your car sit in the garage and drive it not at all for six months and you should bring it in and change the oil that's hard for people to understand but it is important especially in Florida because we have high humidity here, and that condensation is negative for your engine. And to answer one of our Facebook questions here,

asking, is that moisture issue true with synthetic oil? Yes, it is. Yes. It's true with all oils. John, thanks. Thank you so much for the call. And you're a good Facebook friend. You're a good friend, and you're a great caller.

And you've got some health issues, and we're all praying for you. and I hope you feel better, and I hope you can call in next week. Thank you, Earl. Take care. Thank you, John. Thank you of you and your wife. Keep listening, and the best to you. Give us a call to all free at 877-9-60, and you can text us at 7-7-249-7-6-5-30. I think, according to the look on Stu's face, he may have some texts for us.

We're building a backlog of text. Actually, we have a lot on Facebook live video content. comments. But the first one is from Linda on Facebook. She asked a little while ago. And I don't know where Linda lives, but she says, now that it's getting cooler out, is it time to winterize our cars? If not, when should we do that? But she did add that it is 52 degrees there in Locust Grove. And that sounds like a Rick question. That's her Rick question, yeah. Wow, 52 degrees. How nice. I think we see that about two days a year. Yeah. Florida, we don't have that issue, but up north, winterizing your car, what's it really mean?

Well, the number one thing is you're going to want to make sure that your undercoding is in decent shape because of road salt issues. Up north, you know, you get snow and ice and that road salt. I thought all cars came with standard undercoat. Oh, not so much as you might imagine. Believe it or not, there's a lot of cars out there that don't come with a proper amount of protection. So you recommend that people have their car undercoded?

I definitely do for northern cars. Have your car checked by a mechanic to make sure that you don't, that everything is in good shape there, and if it doesn't have any undercoat, I would recommend having it done. Dare I challenge the genius, Rick Kearney. We're going to have a duel.

The guy that doesn't know anything about the cars to mechanically, to the guy that does. I'm going to check you on that, Rick. There was a time when we used to do a lot of undercoating. And I am of the opinion. I'm, I see, where do you get the transparency and honesty on this show?

I have a feeling that undercoding a modern car is not a good idea. You could actually muck up some problems underneath the car. But I don't know that. All right. I suspect that. And Rick, before you answer, I have heard that tone of voice from Earl before. So, uh, well, I will, I will put this, I will put this, this is not sugar-free, Nancy. Due to the fact, this is not sugar-free.

Yeah. I can tell. Due to the fact that I've been in South Florida for the past 42 years. Yes. Again, northern, northern issues are a bit out of my bailiwick anymore. Well, we'll research that. However, one, one factor I do know to recommend, find a local car wash for up north areas. when you get that road salt

that does undercar washing because quite a few of them don't and believe it enough folks, yes, you do need to wash your car in the wintertime to get that road salt and all that debris off. Gotcha. Other than that, it's change your fluids. Make sure that your coolant has been changed

according to the manufacturer's recommendations. Don't go with what the local garage says because, oh, well, it's our here. No, just follow what the manufacturer says. Make sure your tires have a good tread, and if you're in an area where you need snow tires, make sure you've got those on them, and

just follow the manufacturer's recommendations. What about a survival kit? Let's say you get caught off the road. Linda's question was at 52 degrees. Don't you think that we're kind of getting... At that point, we might be getting pushing those limits a little.

Make sure you pack a sweater. And the other thing that I highly recommend, check your tire pressures a lot more often. I would say at least every two weeks check your tire pressures okay thanks rick um we had some other questions about um oil um getting old on facebook and rick's already answered that but barb uh says i have several keys that may win me a car sent to me in the mail from a car dealer advertising i was waiting to get to that claims you can come in and check your number you may win l-o l-l glad you don't play us like that earl stewart so that is true

then andreas uh asks he says earl i've been following your recommendation about asking for the out of the door price i am considering purchasing a new car yes advertisements photos and the glitz and glamour of that new car has suckered me into going to the dealership good news i have had good experience in dealerships giving me i'm sorry something just moved up okay giving me the out-the-door price oh this is a very powerful shopping tool i've also had good experiences chatting with the sales force and that there was little pressure to test drive the car drive at home and push to proceed with the purchase maybe just maybe there is a chance chance to turn this Gallup pull around.

Wow. I hope so. I mean, it's going to happen sooner later. I just hope it's sooner. Yep. And then we have a text message that came in our 772-497-6-5-30 text line. And the texter says, been looking for a new car. Don't want to pay a $1,000 dealer fee in $7.95 charge. Have been thinking, can I get a better deal in another state if I go car shopping? That's a great question. Well, yes, there are states that have caps on dealers. fees. One of my biggest complaints about Florida is it has no cap. Very few states have zero cap. In other words, I'll listen carefully because you think I'm smoking something when I say this. A car dealer could charge a $1 million dealer fee. A car dealer could legally have a tag agency

fee for $5 million. I'm trying to be silly and exaggerate to show you how ludicrous the Florida law is. There is no legal cap. California has a cap of $75. I think $75 is too high. But at least you can identify it. When you go into a car dealer in California, you're going to pay $75. All you want to do is be sure it's included in the final price they give you.

Dealer fees are the worst. They hurt you the worst when you don't know about them. And that's what the car dealers in Florida love because they'll advertise a car you'll call up on the phone and say i want this this and this description car they'll give you a price and you'll get the price and maybe you'll compare it with other car dealers and then you go in and you sign on the dotted line and then you go into the business office and bam suddenly you got two thousand dollars in additional fees which are really just profit to the dealer so there is no

limit to what a car dealer can charge in Florida. And there's also no limit to what he can call it. He could run an advertisement saying he'll pay you to buy the car from him, but then he'll charge a $30,000 dealer. A car dealer can call a dealer fee, a corned beef sandwich in Florida. Yeah, that's right. Literally, you could, you could have on your, on your, on your, on your, on your, on your, on your, on your, uh, deli fee.

Yeah. Corned beef sandwich, $9.99. And it's legal. Call it a CBS fee Hey I think we're getting into weeds Let's go back to Barb and I'm going to interrupt you to Barb White and the keys that she received in a mail I have a fantastic story for everyone

Let's rewind the tape 1965 My sister gets a key Several keys in the mail Pittsburgh Pennsylvania She goes out She goes over to the car dealership puts the key in, bingo.

She wins herself a brand new car. She's the own... And she's in the Guinness Book of World Records, she's the only person that I know, and I've shared this with your dad, 100,000 times. Magnificent. That was back when car dealers were honest.

Well, we were in the horse and buggy, you know, error back then. But, you know, I go over the good, the bad, the ugly, and there is some good. There still is some good today. You know where the deception comes in is not with a free car

because most of the dealers actually insure that and they go to a company and they pay the company an amount and the odds are one in a million you're going to win the new car but if you do win it the company will pay and meanwhile the dealers pay the company $2,000 insurance premium

which they rarely collect but that's what happens the deception comes when they say everybody wins and then they have the car is the best prize and then they'll have cash and they'll have something else and something else and they'll be like a sandwich but they don't call it a sandwich they have something that sounds perceived value like wow that's got to be worth at least a few hundred dollars and it turns out to be worth junk that's the deception you have a higher likelihood of starting a car in the public's parking lot with that key yeah back in the day when i was evil we used to have diamond rings were they real i mean yeah there was a there was a real diamond ring, you've seen

diamond dust. They were diamond chipped. Yeah, chip. And you could have a little thing in there. So back when I was evil, back in 60s or 70s. I'm sure that wasn't a Zerconian? Yeah, in fact, that's Nancy's engagement ring. What's got on your figure? Uh-oh. No diamonds.

Not here anyway. But anyway, I was very jealous. She won herself a car. I was on the Monongaheli incline getting to work, and then I had to take the street car, and then I had to take the bus. But every once in a she took me to work in her brand new car ladies and gentlemen uh getting back to earl talking about dealer fees fees fees fees uh go to earle on cars and you can see his latest his latest column

hidden charges it's really worth the the read and uh i am going to give you that phone number john thanks for holding uh 877 960 960 or you can text us at 772 49765 30 john Welcome to the show. John is calling from Palm City. He's a regular caller, and he's fabulous. Good morning to everyone. Morning, John. I stopped the keys in the mail about a year ago,

and let me tell you how I did it, and everybody can do it. I got me very angry, not only the keys, but they were sending me all these forms from cars I don't even own anymore, about warranties extended, all from individual companies that just rip you off. but the one that really burned me up was I got a solicitation and it had an army fleece jacket, okay,

that you buy. It was Danbury Mint in Connecticut and it's a fleece jacket which I don't know why I would need that down here in Florida and it has, just like when I was in the U.S. Army on the right side has your name printed on it

and it has a picture of a person and you can have this jacket for $120, well anyhow, that may be angry for one reason. Nobody ever acknowledged that I did serve. I sit in the U.S. Army, Fort Totten, for Adonia Vietnam era, but I was never activated. And I said the only way they could have gotten this was through the motor vehicle because I have a V, a veteran on my driver's license. And when I fill out all the forms for that, it has your branch of service. So I said to myself, this is nonsense. I want to stop this. I went to the local tag agency, and I

filled out a form. It wasn't easy to get it. They even gave me a supervisor. What's your reason that I want privacy on mailings for, that the motor vehicle actually sells your name to these outside companies? But I didn't mention that at all. So she had me fill out this special form. And I said, it wasn't easy to get that. And I gave a reason. I want privacy. But you'll still get, you know, law enforcement or contact police or anything. They still have a right. naturally to contact you directly. But I stopped this completely by filling out this motive, I don't know what the number was,

the Motor Vehicle Bureau form. Wow. And I did it at a tag agency. I did not know. I just want to let people know that you can stop a lot of this nonsense mailing that comes to you. And because Florida State is selling your name. Yeah.

And that's how you get these solicitations. Well, that's one thing. And I want to tell people that it's available. That they can fill us out. John, the second thing is Earl's opening on franchise dealers. This is interesting because I don't think we'll ever see like Amazon selling cars. The dealers, it's too powerful. That'll never happen.

But let me tell you my experience, you have to hear about this in Palm Beach Gardens, where it's Tesla has a beautiful display of all three models. It's on the second floor. PGA Boulevard, people know what that is, in Palm Beach Gardens. Well, I went there Thursday. Very impressive. Three cars on display.

Four sales, well, I don't call them salespeople anymore now, and I don't think they will neither after they were finished with me. Two men and two women. So a female was very aggressive, came up to me, can I help you? I looked in the trunks, and really, you know, it's a beautiful way to see all three models. So I said to her, can you tell me, should I order where I can go to the next? nearest franchise Tesla dealership. She said to me, you're in the right place like that.

She says, we take the orders here and the cars can get delivered to you wherever you want or somewhere in Palm Beach County, and it's no problem. She said, I said, really? Okay. So I said to well, the first thing is you're Tesla. Don't you know there's a Florida law that you can't sell directly to the public? No manufacturer in the state of Florida can sell directly to a consumer. All right, she looked at me, like, and then I said, if you're a franchise,

how come all free cars on the showroom floor? Not one of them has an MSRP. So she, like, looked at me again, and I said, you know, there's a law in United States that went into effect in 1958. It's called a Monroney law, and I said every car that sold in all 50 states

must have this manufacturer's sticker attached to it. so she's really puzzled now now she goes and she doesn't know what to say next so she says to me well I guess I guess we can't call us a franchise right

I said no I don't think you can so right away she sees she gets nowhere with me even to tell me where to go and you know look further into her Tesla so then another guy she goes and goes to him she figured well this is a waste of time but what I want to say is

Hopefully, they changed their attitude. Maybe it was just her that they can call themselves a franchise because they're not. No. And if you do, you will have to have a manufacturer MSRP sticker on all your cars. Not one of those cars had anything to do. There was no pricing in the place or anything. So I just want people to know if it's a nice place to visit and look at the new models. But me, it's misrepresentation.

and I would say that it's gotcha. Well, John, what they're doing is they're using the loophole. They're not selling you. First of all, they wouldn't sell you any of those cars on the showroom floor. They're not for sale. Those are just available for you to look at. And if you buy a car, you can't buy. You're not buying the car in Florida.

You're buying the car from Tesla manufacturer. And that is the loophole that they're using. So the Florida franchise law, apparently permits people to sell cars directly, but not within the state. Like when you buy something from Amazon, you're buying it from Amazon in wherever Amazon headquarters or wherever the product is a stockpile. There are some states that won't even allow Tesla to do that. Apparently, Florida is allowing them to do that.

You could go online and order from a state where it was legal. for Tesla to sell cars online directly. It's not a, I think the dealers were frightened at first that Tesla was going to be a threat to the franchise, but I don't think that's going to happen. I don't think Elon Musk or Tesla wants to have franchise dealers. He wants to have total control of the sale of the Tesla from the manufacturer, which is him in the Tesla Corporation. Well, what gets the upset is we take your order.

that's what you said well they're taking the they're taking the order but the order is being filled by the manufacturer directly the sale and again some states have overcome this there are some states that don't allow Tesla to even do this Florida apparently is allowing them to sell cars online only but they do not allow them to sell cars out of the they can't service cars they can't oh they can't service cars but they can't sell you a car physically in the state of florida it has to be sold wherever you you know wherever the car is manufactured by tesla well it just proved i said on this radio station i predicted that president will go out of business or somebody will take them over yeah and

the day after i said that in a radio station it was announced that the government gave Leon, Eon Musk, a $40 million fine. Yeah. So I'm sure it doesn't even hurt put a dent in him. Not a good, I don't think that's a good investment. I think you're right. They have to continue, you know, maybe the CEO has to change his way of a public image. That's the way I feel.

I agree totally, John. Thank you very much. And that was an adventurous mystery shopping report he did for us there. And maybe we'll put that in. the mystery shopping report list that we have and let people know what happens when you try to buy a Tesla. Thank you very much. Thank you.

And the fleece jacket was very interesting also. John, you're always informative. Thanks so much for, well, being part of the show every Saturday. Keep on listening. We wouldn't know what to do without you. Hey, 7-7-960, or you can text us at 772-497-653. zero you know about that flee's jacket I used to get free steak knives

and I recall I vividly recall you're putting the stop to that yeah no more steak knives I'm not allowed to have any more steak no more sharp objects for you he keeps the sharp objects

out of the kitchen I think we have some more text don't we I think Stu has some more text for us we actually have four we have one texted on our text line says good morning guys jeff from west palm quick question uh when rotating your tires is it better to have your tires with more tread in the rear or the front that's a rick question

ah that one actually believe it or not all used to be they'd say put them in the front now however is recommended to put the best tread in the rear because front wheel drive cars there's so much weight up front the back of the car is a lot lighter and the tires need more tread to be able to the water, all that rainwater worked out away so you keep good traction in the back. The weight of the engine helps keep your traction in the front, so the best tread should be in the rear. Thank you, Rick. I think I heard that before, but good advice.

Johnny and Riviera Beach text us and says, can you bypass these corrupt, dishonest car dealers and go straight to the manufacturer and buy a car and then have it shipped to a dealer of your choice and pay that dealer a couple of $100 delivery fee? Not in Florida. Not in Florida, not in any of the 50 states, actually. And this is the, you hit at the crux of the problem. Car dealers are protected species, endangered. They cannot be terminated.

They have extremely strong state laws in Florida in all 50 states that you practically have to commit homicide if you're a car dealer to be canceled. manufacturers are, even the manufacturers that want to get rid of their bad car dealers are pretty much prohibited. But the only reason a manufacturer will cancel the franchise of a car dealer is if he doesn't sell enough cars. All right.

And order to sell enough cars, he's got to lie, cheating, and steal. And when he's getting close to that point, he gets really desperate. Yeah, right, exactly. He starts lying and cheating more. Yeah, if you fall below 75% of what the average market's share of the of the of the uh your market is then they put you on notice and how do dealers sell more cars to get back up to 100% or over advertise bait and switch advertising low ball uh pretending that they'll sell your car below their costs and they do all that sort of stuff so in a lot of ways

the manufacturer's pressure on car sales volume causes the dealers to the resort to deceptive measures. So it's a catch-22. Yeah. Yeah. Edlin on Facebook live video says, Good morning. I have a 2007 Nissan Pathfinder. Does it fall under the Takata recall? The answer to that is no,

but Rick did find it is possibly subjected to two other recalls, including an airbag recall. It's a non-deployment issue, but Rick can address that. Yep, for the front sensors. And again, I can't say it enough. W-W-W-W-SaferCAR.gov.

Go on that website. It is a government website and put in your VIN number and it will tell you specifically for your car any open recalls. Spread the word to your friends and family, put it on your Facebook, www.

www.safercar, S-A-F-E-R-C-A-R-G.gov. Folks, it's the Best thing you can do. It's easy. It's simple. It takes only a minute or two. Yeah.

No, definitely, Rick. It can be simple. And I'll repeat that safercar. gov to what Rick just said. I recently had a recall on my 2019 Avalon. And, you know, I can't understand why NISA can't make it just a little bit easier because of the zeros, you have to differentiate between whether or not it's a letter zero or a number zero. You mean a letter O or a number.

A letter O or a number zero. So it just really takes just a little bit longer to what. I can give some advice on that. The letter O will never appear in a event. Correct. It's always zero. So if it doesn't work, just double check those. Yeah.

Okay. That sounds good. And what Nancy was going to suggest to the National Highway Traffic Safety Association is that they accept an O instead of a zero. Because people, we say O, when you give a phone number, you say 5, 6, 7,000, O, and we use it. And so I think everybody out there with PIN numbers, serial numbers, passwords, and the rest of it, it should alternate between zero and O and, hey. How much is less security is that? Absolutely. And in this fast-paced life that we lead,

I could have easily have remembered what Stu just said. It's interesting. But I was multitasking. I was running around. I thought, boom, I'll just enter the VIN number, blah, blah, blah. And it'll be over and done with, and I'll find out why my car was recalled. And it just took me a lot longer to do than necessary.

So it's not really people-friendly right now. And my 2019 Avalon has been, it's due to an inappropriate programming of the airbag electronic control unit, the ECU. And that's the story on my 2019 Avalon. So knowledge is power, ladies and gentlemen. Check out that website that Rick just told you about safercar.gov.

Enter that VIN number and get the real deal about your vehicle. We're going to go, I'll give you that phone number one more time, 877-960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. We're going to go to Dawn in Palm Beach Gardens. Welcome to the show, Dawn. Yeah, I just want to give you an update on that bump chuggle fish bite, GMC, brand new van. I got some Schumacher months ago. Yeah. Remember?

Yeah, let's recap that a little bit. That was a conversion van, as I recalled on. And there was a rattle, the noise. And at first they couldn't hear it, then they could hear it. And then they said, well, there's nothing we can do about it. And then you actually called Gentle Motors, and they said there was nothing you could do about it. And this had been going on for what, about a year?

No, no, I got it about three months ago. or four months ago I bought it. Okay, it seemed like a year. It had the, it was like just a miss and it had, like when you accelerate it. It was like you pull a wire off it or it was a bad injector or something like that. It would jerk real bad when you tried to accelerate slow at any speed. Anyway, after taking it back three times or two times or whatever it was, they got a bulletin from General Motors that said that this was a characteristic,

and they called it bump chuggles. fish bite. Yep. And I didn't sign up for that. So anyway, I went to Lemon Law procedure. I want to let you know that.

I had to take it back. Well, the third time was on me, and then General Motors wanted the fourth time. They get a shot at fixing. And I was told that when I took it in the fourth time, I said, well, you'll put a dealer

plate on. I have insurance, but I haven't been driving it. They said, don't worry about that. We're not going to do anything with the technicians and the big shots of General Motors were all over that van anyway. So this was just kind of a formality. Our next stop was a better business bureau. That's the first stop before you go to arbitration with the state. And we had that appointment on Wednesday.

Monday, my attorney called and said they settled. They didn't even have to go to that first procedure, and they're refunding all my money, including postage. Fantastic. Wow. Well, Don, congratulations. You're my hero. We ought to have an award called the Hero of the Week, but you're the hero of the month, really. Persistent. Yeah, you don't want to give up. You know, you went up against the 800-pound gorilla, Don versus Gentle Motors. And you got yourself a good lawyer. And hopefully your lawyer got his attorney's fees from General Motors. Great. So it didn't cost you. We got everything covered. It didn't gossed anything.

They're just kind of hoping you'd go away. Yeah. But I've been, and I got, they're taking a van back. Oh, yeah. When you're right, you're right, and you run to a bulldog like Don, you don't mess with them. And it's just, it's a shame how much these powerful corporations can get away with. You know, the old expression, you can't fight City Hall. Well, you can fight City Hall, but you just got to be tough.

and Don is tough. He fought City Hall and he won. That's great news, Don. I really appreciate your sticking with us and bring us up to date. By the way, a moral to this story is when you buy something that's been modified, a manufacturer's product has been modified, the manufacturer will almost inevitably try to wheedle out of any kind of warranty work. And to bring up something absolutely horrible to make you remember this,

this limousine, this Ford limousine that killed 20 people, was a modified Ford. And a good rule of thumb is just be extra careful before you buy any product from any manufacturer that has been modified. In this case here with Don, he was able to prevail, and it took him a lot of aggravation in time and an attorney to get it done, but he won. So thanks again, Don. Great call. Yeah, this wasn't a factory modification. This was done by the dealer. They do these conversions in Indiana, so I bought it finished through the deal.

Yeah, yeah, I understand. They did the conversion. Yeah, you got them. Very good. Yeah, okay, thanks. Thank you, Don. Don, you go on to Hero List. Took a whole lot of, well, you know what.

I can't say that on the air. Give us a call toll free at 877960, 99060, where you can text us at 770. 2727-497-6530 and I want to talk for a moment about car safety systems and the fact that I get so many texts from people that are relying on the safety systems. The safety systems are supposed to assist you, assist you. You're always in control of your vehicle. Never give up the focus of controlling your car. The safety. system is to assist you. Give us a call 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. I think that Stu is ready, willing, and able to share some text with us. There's just an amazing conversation going on in our live Facebook video.

There's probably too many comments to get to, but our good friend, John Neal, he asked Rick a question. I'm assuming John is up in the Hurricane Michael, effect. area. He says, I drove through salt water, and I just cringed, but I had no choice because it crossed the only road in and out this week. I immediately hosed down the undercarriage. Will that suffice, Rick? That will indeed. And folks, South Florida, boating capital of the world, all the vehicles where you go to back your boat into the water and your wheels get right down in that salt water, even if it just gets that water that's on the ramp, rinse that vehicle off very, very often. And it's a very simple thing to do, but it will prevent a whole lot of issues of corrosion down the road.

All right, thanks, Rick. And Andreas asks Earl, if you don't want to deal with a dealer, Earl, do you recommend using a broker? I have read some articles, and the common theme is that huge savings are not guaranteed. At least, at least would you have to deal with a car dealer, though? Thoughts? on brokers uh brokers can be good uh if you trust the broker you know the broker uh hopefully you've had some experience with them or others that frenziers have if you're not the type of person that wants to do battle in south florida especially where

the dealers are really devious uh and you'd like the peace of mind to have somebody handle that for you a broker can be very good what you need to be aware of is the fee that the broker charges because the broker charges a fee to the dealer and they can i suppose they could also charge you a fee i mean broker's an independent businessman he can charge as many fees as he wants uh you want the broker to be on your side uh brokerage fees very tremendously um as i say before total transparency i'm a car dealer and my car dealership we pay brokers fees fees can vary from as little as $500 to as much as $5,000 or even higher. So if you're paying $1,000 or $5,000 to a broker,

that price of the car has been adjusted by the dealer by that amount, plus the dealer's profit. So you don't want to be paying an exorbitant broker fee that causes the price of the car to be priced out of a competitive range. A car dealer or a broker can save you money by avoiding the things. He's a savvy guy. He knows about dealer fees, tag agency fees, dock fees, dealer install options. He can cut through all that nonsense and get your good deal.

Just be careful of the broker fee. I'd ask him up front, say, what is your fee, who pays it, and how much is it? And then that'll tell the tale. But brokers exist, and they can exist for good or bad. We have a question from Edlin on Facebook says, Good Morning. Edlin from Atlanta. So we have another out of state. When you buy a new car, how long does the Lemon Law last?

Does it expire at some point? During the warranty. The Lemon Law exists during the warranty of the new car. So remember when you collect on a Lemon Law, you are charged, in each state, by the way, is different. Floral Lemon Law is different than the Georgia Lemon Law. So you're under the Georgia Lemon Law. You'd have to check and see the specifics. They're all kind of generally alike.

But you don't get 100% of your money back. If you've driven that car for two years, you're going to be charged for the usage of that car for the two years that you owned it. So you're never going to get 100%. All right. And the last text to get to just shows Earl Stewart on Cars inaction. June texted us just now, says,

I just did safercar.gov, and it works. She has no recalls in her 2014 Honda Civic. Beautiful. Save her car.gov. You can't hear that name often enough. Just input it. If you have a friend with a car that has a question, do them a favor. Help them out.

Check his car out or her car out. And don't buy a car anywhere from a dealer or from another person until you've checked it out. 25% of the vehicles on the road with recalls will never get fixed. 25%. That's scary. That's millions of vehicles. Tragic. Yeah.

Absolutely. Let me give out our anonymous website. You're reading my mind. And the anonymous website is simply anonymousfeedback.com. Your anonymousfeedback.com. Y-O-U-R-An-N-Y-O-N-Y-M-U-S feedback.com. Your anonymousfeedback.com. Why do we have that?

We have it for folks that would like to say the truth without offending, people, perhaps us. We're a radio show. We do some things right. We do some things wrong. You have opinions out there in radio land and Facebook land that you might not want to confront us on. I believe that total candid conversations, total transparency, what you think, what you feel about us can only go to improve us. We do get some candid feedback. We do get some candid feedback. back that hurts our feelings a little bit. But after we read it and we realize that you feel that way, we can make adjustments in the way we present the show, the way we sound, what we cover, so on, so on, so on. So whatever your comments are, please let us know. You folks are real nice

when you call in, sometimes you might hold back a little bit. Don't hold back. Your Anonymous Feedback.com. It'll come to us. We will address it. You can ask for a reply. We will always try to reply. If someone out there has replied, has done anonymous feedback that we did not reply to, let us know again.

If I missed it, I apologize. I will try to reply. Youranonymousfeedback.com. We'll discuss it among ourselves. try to come up with a correction, a solution, get back to you, and let you know what happened. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Great information.

You know, we can turn that into constructive criticism, and we all need that, and you take it a certain way, and you turn it into, you know, all these feedbacks that we get. We turn it into something positive. And ladies, ladies, ladies, I forgot to mention, $50 for the first two, new lady callers. and you do have time to call in. It is now $914.50 for the first two new lady callers. And I have to take a moment and follow John Neal's wishes, and we all send our prayers out to the Panhandle and all those people that have been tragically,

well, their lives are changed forever. Bless all of you. Also, I'd like to address Anne's, email and how she turned something into something positive that was very negative and she now has an email address this will toggle your mind you remember bulldog lady yeah yeah bulldog lady yeah yeah so anyway and congratulations for standing your ground and taking care of your problem and I know that you and Earl were back and forth with each other, but I too want to, I was copied that email,

and I want to let you know I'm very proud of you. Congratulations. Give us a call toll-free at 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Stu, do we have any more texts to get to? We have a question on Facebook live video. Brad asks, is there much? demand for accounting professionals in the auto industry at at the dealer corporate level or is

it outsourced the CPAs every car dealer has a accounting department and a staff very important one of the most important departments in all car dealerships we have controllers which are you know the head head person in charge and then you have typically an assistant you have an office manager but the answer is yes we're always looking for good qualified accounting people CPA is great to have If you don't have a CPA, the right experience, people are looking all the time for good accountants at car dealerships. Okay, we've got another one just came in from Steve on Facebook. Can you suggest any products to protect a car from the sun? We are snowbirds and have no garage or carport.

Thus, we do not have a Florida car. We rent cars for short trips and drive from New Jersey for longer term trips. A Florida car would be nice to have. Wax. Wax. Wax. Wax. Waxes the way, and I can never remember the name of that really good component that you want to have a high percentage of.

Carnuba. Carnuba. Carnuba. I just can't remember carnuba. Carnuba is some sort of a plant or something that they get the wax from. It's from Brazil. And who's it from Brazil? I think so. Yes.

And you get the can of wax, they'll have the percentage of carnuba, and if it's a lot of carnuba, they'll say highest percentage of carnuba. You should wax your car. At least, I'd say, quarterly, depending on where you live. You want to keep your car under cover if possible, not always possible. If you have a white car, wax the heck out of it, because it might not have clear coat. And if you don't have clear coat, you're really got to do a lot of waxing. And if you have a red car, there's certain cars that tend to fade more.

It seems like red cars fade a lot more than certain other colors. Rick? Yeah, what about interiors? Carnuba, a northeastern Brazilian fan. fan palm, the leaves of which exude a yellowish wax. Ah, there you go. To just rub a palm fron on your car is what you're saying. Yep.

Okay. With vigor. But what do you do about the interior of the car, dashboards, seats, all that sorts? Everything's affected by the sun. The best thing I can recommend there is window tint within legal measures and a sunshade for the front windshield. And even those little sun shields that go on with a suction cup on the side windows, anything that keeps the sun out

because unfortunately there's a lot of snake oil products out there that once you start using them you either have to continue or they can actually damage your car. Is there any particular kind of tint that's better than others? Like does it have to have a certain component?

I've heard that ceramic tint actually is very, very good about keeping the ultraviolet rays out and like on my own vehicle I don't like tint on the front windows because I want a clear window that I can easily see through, especially at 9. that's why those sun shades that you can buy

that simply attached to the inside will reduce a lot of that sun coming in. And the name of the wax again? Carnuba wax. Carnubal wax, ladies and gentlemen, 877960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-30. Thank you for waiting, Doug. Doug's calling us from Boca Raton.

Good morning. Doug, you still there? Hey, Doug. I guess we lost Doug. Doug, give us a call back. You know what? I was going to say to Doug if he'd gotten through that he know that Boca Raton is one of the few communities

that doesn't allow car dealers within the city limit. So I have to usually drive around the perimeter of Boca when I'm going south. And Jupiter, too, unfortunately. No, seriously, there are no car dealers in Boca Raton. There's one in Jupiter. There's one in Jupiter. Yeah, Jupiter doesn't like Cardillas either, but somehow Jupiter Dodge a long time ago got in,

and then Brayman came in and got that that already been zoned. But some communities just don't like cardiolas. I can't imagine why that is. They read the pole. Hey, what about Weston? Weston, there's a lot of carnivals there. Is there? Okay, 8779-960-972-49-30 if you'd like to text us.

Back to the recovering car dealer. I've got a little blurb here while we wait for Doug to call us back. Just, there's only one car dealer left in the paper, Palm Beach Post anyway. And that's Roger Dean Chevrolet. And I'll hold up an ad there. Can you see the huge discount? Oh, Doug's back. Doug's back.

Good morning, Doug. Good morning, Doug. Hi, how are you guys? Good. Ollie was watching it, but he said, I don't like this. I'm going to watch the sunrise. Oh, that dog. Doug, good morning.

Meow, that's a shout out to Holly. Is Holly calling? Exactly. Sim said hello to. Yes, I do. Hey, Tom. So I have a question for you. Yeah.

So I wanted to know if that gas, alcohol is bad for your engine. I notice that Chevron has it in there and I'm not sure about other companies, but I'm trying to

find a version of gas that doesn't have that in there because I hear that it can mess up your fuel lines and stuff like that. Yeah, Doug, that's very controversial. We have some people out there. We have a regular caller. We haven't heard from him in a couple of weeks, but he's a professional driver, and he's a strong advocate of using nothing but ethanol-free fuel. And you can buy that. I have an app on my phone given to us by our caller, whose name alludes me right now. Somebody can mark, I think. Mark is a caller.

Yep, I think that's it. It's pure gas. If you go to your app store and go to Pure Gas app, it will show you the location in your area of all the pumps without any ethanol. Now, ethanol has, the current law, has 10% or less ethanol. And so it could mean it has 10% or maybe 5% except the manufacturer. The manufacturers don't seem to be too worried about under 10% ethanol in their vehicles. The purists, the motorist out there seem to think it might. Rick has a comment. Well, the last two to three years, cars are now actually being built able to handle up to 15% across the board.

And any car that's listed as what's known as a flex fuel vehicle can handle up to 85%. The best way to tell, look at your gas cap. And right on the factory gas cap, it will say what percentage of ethanol fuel your car is safe to handle. And if you do want to get that ethanol-free fuel, be advised. You may be paying up to 50 to 60 cents a gallon more for ethanol-free fuel. Yeah. It's something used in marine engines, two-cycle engines, I believe. Yep. And you can't use anything, pure gasoline.

You don't want to use anything with alcohol in it in a two-cycle engine. Right. And also in older classic cars and muscle cars, old motor-cise. A lot of equipment is designed to run on ethanol-free fuel, and you kind of want to stick with that and just, you know, bite the bullet and absorb the price. Yeah, Mark, the professional truck driver, claims that he gets much better of fuel economy in his truck when he uses totally ethanol-free fuel. Now, we keep meaning to measure that, and I think I've even talked to Rick about it,

where we could actually try that, because if you could overcome the additional, cost of the ethanol free with the additional fuel economy it might not be a bad investment I'll get to work on that well Doug thanks very much for the call and thanks for being a member of the Sunrise Club and

you tell Ali that I said to behave himself yeah send all your love thank you Doug I'll see you guys in the morning how a great day thank you well indeed Jerry's holding he's calling from West Palm Beach good morning Jerry Hi there. I forgot to ask Earl before whether they recommend gasoline additives,

the kind you can get at Walmart, to the Prius engine. Is it a good idea or bad idea? Rick will extrapolate on that, but the answer is no. Don't use any additives to your gasoline and for Prius or anything else. But Rick, the only two additives that I would, would ever recommend, and this would be rare. The first one is dry gas. If you accidentally get just a little bit of water in your fuel tank, there is an additive called dry gas, which will help to prevent that water from causing issues with drivability. And again, I would only recommend that sparingly. Just if you know you have an issue, try a little bit of it to see if it helps. The other one is fuel stabilizers on cars that are going to be sitting for maybe a

month or more. Then a fuel stabilizer can help keep it in good shape. Otherwise, I recommend no additives whatsoever. The fuel that you get at the gas station has all the additives and cleaning agents that it's going to need to keep your car running properly. And as long as you're not buying gas from, you know, Uncle Ted's bait store and moonshine and fishing supplies with gas on the side, you know, you're going to be pretty safe. Stick with a major known brand of gasoline and you'll be just fine. Okay. Thank you. Jerry, thanks for the call. Good question. A lot of people wonder about that. Same thing goes for oil additives, too, by the way. Exactly. Just say no. Yep. Thanks, Jerry. Great well, Jerry.

curiously. 877-960. I think Rick made a funny. Give us a text at 772-4976530, and I believe that Stu has some texts to get to. That is correct. We have people chiming in on our gasoline discussion, and there is definitely a comedic theme going on. We have Andreas comments that his civic runs on moonshine. Now that is premium fuel. John Neal says ethanol-free fuel is a dollar per gallon more in home ascent. Wow. A buck. Yeah, a whole lot more. And then, oh, I'm sorry, the question was John asked Andreas. The question is, does he run on moonshine?

You know, if anybody out there has any knowledge about, if Mark, particularly if he's listening, I'd love to hear what your experience is on fuel mileage, extra fuel mileage you get from ethanol-free gasoline. If you pay the extra to get it, how much more fuel economy do you get? I'm just curious. We should do the test, but we keep saying that. We don't do it. Well, I'm going to get started on that. I'll get a couple tanks of regular fuel.

Okay. And then I'll switch to ethanol free and go run it and see what happens. Very good. Well, it's a little scientific test. We have another comment on Facebook. Somebody else ran their event on safercar.gov and found a recall. So keep doing that, folks. Save for a car.gov.

W-W-W-W-S-A-F-E-R-C-A-R-C-R-C-A-R-C-R-G-G-O-V. And that was on a 2018 accord, so it doesn't have to be an old car. No, as Nancy said. Even brand-new cars that are just sitting at the dealership can have an open recall. And, of course, now, the federal laws, they must be repaired before they can ever be sold if it's a brand-new car. but a used car again like Earl says you ought to check it anyway

to keep them honest you know not every dealer is going to follow the rules so nope you can run a brand new car on safercar.gov while we're on that subject we have an app that we were advised of on this show I believe you can download it from the app store

airbag recall and the cool thing about this app is that you can scan your Vend or your license plate and it's a lot easier to scan a license plate than it is a VIN, and it's a lot shorter. You scan it, it automatically goes in,

picks out your VIN, and puts it in the app. Now, it didn't work for me, so I asked Jeff Doss, who works with us, he tried it. Have you tried it? I have not. I haven't tried it. But I had a little problem with my scanner, not picking the VIN upright,

but it's just called Airbag Recall. And if it works for you, if the app works, it's a lot easier than trying to put in a 17-digit number. Yeah. Well, we're all caught up with text. Okay. I was right in the middle of talking about something that I had garnered from a newspaper ad. It's a dying breed of advertising. Roger Dean Chevrolet is the only car dealer that still advertises in the newspaper.

Interesting. And he has here a, but the thing I like about it, they're easy targets to pick up when they do something interesting. So this particular advertisement has a truck with an MSRP of $35,295, and they're going to discount it by $12,307. Now, the interesting thing about that, that's about a 30-some-odd percent discount. And the message there is trucks have huge markups in them. And I get calls all the time about how much should I get as a discount all. of MSRP. It varies tremendously from vehicle to vehicle. It varies from trucks to cars. It varies from 2018s to 2019s. There are probably even some 2017 new vehicles for sale. I know you

read the fine print on this, didn't you? Read it to me. He didn't he want my you want my magnifying glass? I have young, young eyes. I can I can do this. Oh, go ahead. Rub it I'm sorry, buyer must qualify for lease loyalty and must finance with GM financial. Yes. So there's some caveats in there. Yes. So that's true. And all the prices, as we look at that issue there, include all the rebates that you can't qualify for or can't qualify for.

So when you call in to a car dealership and get a price where you see an advertised price, they're probably counting in things like, lease loyalty, which means you've got to be leasing that and make a car, or you could be conquest, which means you can't be leasing that and make a car, or it could mean that you're a college graduate, or it could mean that you have to be an active member of the military, or it could even mean that you have to be a farmer. We haven't seen the farmer discounted in a while, but it does exist. I'm exhausted. But the bottom line is, when you look in a trucks, vans, and SUVs, their markup is

considerably higher than you get in a car. The smaller cars, particular, would have like maybe 11% markup, and you can have a 25% or 30% markup on a large truck fan or SUV. So you cannot compare apples and apples when you're looking at discounts to MSRP. I think we are about to go to the Mystery Shopping Report, and it is out of Pensacola. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to remind you, you too can vote on the Mystery Shopping. report we would love to hear from you and you can do it it's very easy 772 4976530 vote on the mystery shopping report from Pensacola and that text number

again is 772 4976530 now back to the recovering card and you already talked about our blog this is my column blog in Florida weekly So all you folks out there that get Florida Weekly or pick it up, it's a freebie, check it out. And this particular one is 10 tips on buying the right used car, Florida Weekly, every week. And also in hometown news for you folks up on the Treasure Coast. Now let's move to our Mr. Shopping Report. It makes it really easy for you to buy new or used. And going to Erloncars.com.

There's so much information there that they're, something there for each and every one of you. Remember, we would love for you to vote on the Mystery Shopping Report this morning. 772-4976530 comes to you from Pensacola. Now back to the recovering car dealer. And the Mystery Shop is of Alan Turner, Hyundai, and Pensacola. Now that's a long-distance record. We've never gone that far, almost 700 miles away from the Old Strung Car studio now just occurred to me some folks may not have seen our mystery shopping or heard of our mystery shopping uh we've been doing this for 10 years is what sets us apart from everybody else on radio or tv or online or any other way we actually go into real car dealerships i can now say

all over florida mainly we focus on south florida we actually go in with an undercover agent who pretends to buy or lease a car and we relate to you blow by blow what happened were they treated honestly ethically or will they take an advantage of or they lied to was there illegality involved was there deceptive advertising we tell it like it is we don't change the names we use the names just like we did Turner Hyundai in Pensacola Florida you'll hear about the salespeople were also named in this we tell exactly like it is now the reason you don't see this or hear it or read it because people are afraid of being sued today people don't

like to name names we hear callers that had a bad experience with a car dealership they inevitably say can i save the name of the car dealership and we always say yes the truth is a perfect defense against libel or slander and the proof that we're telling the truth is a 10 or 11 year history of never being sued by a car dealer because of the mystery shopping report.

Never. Just knocked on wood. Not that I fear being sued. I fear nothing. I fear nothing. As a matter of fact, I'd like to be sued because if you sue me,

if you sue me, then it's going to be even bigger because then we will have video of the courtroom, we'll have the jury selection, fancy's laughing at us yeah we're gonna if you go to new york he's right up on the empire state building right knocking by plans down okay agent x agent x had planned to take off some uh from his mystery shopping and spend the week with his family in pensacola the earlestone cars team found an alternate mystery

shopping agent to fill in for him unexpectedly his plans along with millions of others in the florida pan now were turned upside down by the approach of historically powerful Hurricane Michael. What was to be a peaceful family get-together turned into a stressful few days of storm preparation and waiting for a landfall of a Category 4 hurricane. That was a big one. Almost Category 5. While we were saddened by the devastation suffered by the Panama City area, we were very relieved that Pensacola and Agent X were spared the worst of the storm.

Agent X called around the time Michael came ashore in Mexico Beach to remember. report. He was only experiencing some light rain and a few good wind gusts, but nothing too bad. He never even lost power. He jokingly suggested doing a mystery shop of a car dealer near him after the storm passes, which is something we would have never thought of. He said that at this point, his vacation wasn't much of vacation anyway. We told him that if he was up for it, he might make for an interesting report. Agent X wondered, wondered aloud how easy he would be to find a decada car in Pensacola. And he thought about it. He said, let's do it.

10 minutes later, Agent X had identified his target. In 2008, Chrysler 300 with 90,000 miles offered for sale by Alan Turner Hyundai. 2008, that's a 10-year-old car. And you know about the Takata, the older, the more dangerous they are. That's about as old as they get. 10-year-old. And 90,000 miles. That's low mileage, though, for 2008.

The online price was $9,065. He confirmed that it was under safety recall for a defective passenger side to Carter Airbag Inflotor by checking NHTSA, Carfax, Auto Check, and Chrysler's own Mopar website. What's Mopar stand for? Motor parts? Yep. Am I right? Strange name.

Or move over, Plymouth approaching rapidly. Yes. There you go. But anyway. So, NHTSA, safercar.gov, if you want to chuck it, but we used all the sources, because sometimes one source will miss. We give out the safercar.gov is the best website. But if you've got time, you can do a Carfax report, auto check report, and you can call the manufacturer of that particular make car you're driving. That's for absolute certainty as to whether your car has been recalled.

agent x planned the mission for thursday evening when now tropical storm michael was dumping rain in on north carolina as a standard practice i called ahead i'm speaking in the first person now is the shopper agent x i called ahead to confirm availability i spoke with a woman named kelly who told me she would have to check but promised to call me back she kept her word and called me back within 10 minutes to say the 300 the Chrysler 300 was available. Kelly said she would have it out front for me when I got there. Kelly told me to ask for Michael, interestingly enough, the name of her name, asked for Michael when I arrived

at our just-scheduled appointment time of 725. I asked her if she was a salesperson, and she said that she was a BDC clerk business development center. New thing. Cardivas all have what they call BTCs. It's a phone bank, you know. boiler room a bunch of people in a room calling answering phone calls all the time as well she does sets up appointments and she sets up for salespeople and that's what she said she did

i pulled into the lot found a parking spot next to what looked like the crashler 300 i'd seen online i got out of the car walked around the crashler i caught the eye of a young man who appeared to be a salesperson he approached introduced himself as craig he asked if i was interested in the car, I was checking out. I said I was and explained that I'd seen it on their website and made an appointment to see Michael about buying it. Craig said, oh, you must be. Michael told me to look out for you.

Now, here's the way we tie all these together. He explained that Michael was a sales manager and the BDC clerk, business development center, that was who? Kelly. Set all the appointments and there we are. sounded reasonable. Okay, I said, got the keys. Craig started the car, began to open the doors.

I asked him if the car had been checked and found out to be mechanically sound. I was surprised by his answer. Craig said that this old 10-year-old car in almost 100,000 miles usually doesn't go through the shop for inspection. Kind of a strange comment.

This doesn't sound right. I asked him if you were sure about that. Craig said he would double-check for me. But I know it's a large circular sticker on the windshield that read. Turner checked. First, I thought that was the guy, the mechanic. So that's a good idea. Turner's the dealer.

Right. It'd be a good, nice thing to have the mechanic put his name that he'd checked it. Rick certified. Rick certified. Actually, we do it on certified inspections. He had a sign off. The mechanic signs the sheet. Should do it on all of them.

Craig looked surprised and said they must have. have decided to inspect this one because it was so nice. He said the sticker men that went through. They only mechanically inspect good-looking cars. Yes. He said the sticker of men, I went through Turner's 27-point inspection. And, you know, most cars in South Florida have a 100-point inspection, 48. 148.

You know, and in northern Florida, Panhandle, 27 points. 27 points is probably plenty. Yeah, but 48 points sounds better. 160 sounds great, yeah. Well, when they get down to the point of where they're saying, checking the tread on each individual tire is four separate points. And trekking the pressure is four more points. Some of them get a little carried away on their listings is all.

So I asked, does this mean the cars but it can't really sound and no issues? And he said, that's what it means. He suggested we take it for a drive as I help him close the door. I decided not to mention the broken door handle on this mechanically sound crash for 300. A little tongue and cheek there from Agent X. On the test drive, I asked Craig if the car had ever been in an accident. Craig said, guess what? He would check the auto check history report and let me know.

Now, did he say auto check or did we say auto check? He said auto check. And they have that on their website as well. Carfax Auto Check. Carfax used to do. be the only game in town now auto check is coming on strong a lot of car dealers are going to auto check instead of carfax because auto check is considerably less expensive and essentially does the same thing we found that auto check is as

good as accurate as carfax and far less expensive so keep both those names in your mind when you're checking for car be sure you get an auto check or a carfax report Craig Turner talked about the Turner philosophy and that they had no haggle sales process. Back on the lot, Craig asked me if I was ready to drive it home and how I planned to pay for it. I said I'd be using cash from a recent inheritance. He accepted my answer and made no attempt to get me to finance there or pressure me to fill out a credit application. Interesting difference in tone and culture between the panhandled car dealers in Florida and the South Florida. South Florida is truly the Sodom and Gomorrah of cardio ships.

North Florida, more contrived, laid back, relaxed, and 27-point inspections instead of 48-point inspections. Sweet tea and smiles, yeah. They're nicer in Japan, Handel. I was lifted at the desk for a few minutes, just in case you just tuned in, and people tune in and tune out. I know that. who are mystery shopping, Alan Turner, Hyundai, and Pensacola, Florida.

I was left at the desk for a few minutes while I waited for Craig to talk with Michael and give some paperwork to return with a printed copy of the AutoChick Report, like the Carfax, and it would appear to be a worksheet or buyer's order. The worksheet or buyer's order is always the first paper, typically a worksheet, and you don't see the real legal papers until you get into the box. or the business office where they got the F&I manager the business manager he sat down immediately disclosed that the car had been in an accident he quickly pointed out that the report indicated the damage was only minor it then showed me that

there was an open recall for a passenger airbag inflator he said he thought it had probably been completed and should be fine for delivery so well conversation between Nancy Stewart myself as we came to the students studio this morning. We were talking about this mystery shopping report. And I said, it's amazing that the fact that a car has a dangerous recall is never discussed at the beginning of the conversation with the salesperson and the shopper. And the only time it's ever discussed is when we ask about it, meaning the mystery shopper. Or if you're the real shopper, if you don't ask, they're not going to tell. Don't ask, don't tell. If you don't ask, don't tell. If you don't ask, if you don't ask, if you don't ask about them a recall, if you don't ask about accidents, if you don't ask about Carfax auto check reports, you're not going to hear anything. They don't want to do anything to mess the sale up. These folks are paid on commissions.

The dealers thrive on profits. They're not going to throw anything out there that's going to mess up the deal. So the burden is on you. Caviatt, mTOR, buyer beware. Know ahead of time if there is a car in the dealer's inventory that has a recall and he can get them on safercar.gov. He sat down immediately disclosed the car had been an accident and he told me about the recall.

He said it had been, I already read this, said it probably had been completed and it should be fine for delivery. Now we find out. I said he needed to be sure about that. I wanted to feel safe in my new car. I mean, he just said it probably had been fixed. You don't want to hear probably. when an exploding grenade is the consequence? Am I going to live?

Yeah. Probably. Is this a live grenade? Maybe. Is this a live grenade? Probably not. Maybe. You can throw it in the campfire.

We're good. Where do I sign? I have a choice when the shrapnel hits me. Yes. Probably. Is there a multiple choice here? Maybe. Craig Paws picked up the desk phone to call Michael.

He nodded his head and said, Mm-hmm. a few times as he listened to a sales manager. He hung up and said that Michael doesn't think the repairs were made. He said he was calling the Chrysler store down the street to see if they could do it tomorrow. He suggested, we review my deal while we waited. Now, the obvious question is, why didn't you call the Chrysler dealer yesterday or the day before? Why didn't you call the Chrysler dealer when you traded the car in or bought it?

and get it fixed. It's free. The Chrysler dealer fixes it free. Why? Because they don't care. Because our legislators do not care. Our regulators don't care. Car dealers don't care. It trickles all the way down to the salesman. Manufacturers don't care.

Nobody cares except you. He showed me the worksheet and pointed his pen at the top figure labeled market value of $10,250. He said, I was getting a discount off market value of $1,377. My sale price was $8,875, $190 less than the posted Internet price. They added a $499. Now, that's the panhandle dock fee there.

$499. That's half the going right down there. That's a dock fee. That's the dealer fee I charged when I was evil. No, they're a little bit higher. You were $4.95. $4.95. Yeah.

They beat you. How long ago? We dropped the dealer fee in 2003. 15 years ago. You remember the coup d'Ada. So, Penn Analyst charging a 15-year-old dealer fee. And then there was $430 for fees, which were not differentiated. And he said that was for license, titling a sales tax.

Out the door was $10,000, $427,78. I asked him if he had any wiggle room and told him the out-the-door price had $10,000 even sounded nice to me as opposed to $10,000, $427. He said they were a no-haggle dealership, but when I was ready to write the check, maybe they could wiggle a little wiggle of those little wiggly gummy gummy gummy-bear worms. You can't wiggle. Right, if you're no haggle. Haggle and wiggle are diametrically. If you're one price, no haggle, you can't wiggle. It's like being a little bit pregnant, right?

You take the test and you're pregnant. We're pretty much one price. One-ish, one-ish. You can't be almost pregnant. Is that? That's a saying. That's a saying. And Nancy's looking at me like I just violated the hashtag Me Too.

We all know it's a saying. Is it appropriate? You've got the anonymous, your anonymous feedback. If you think that was an anti-feminine comment, I'd like to hear from you. your anonymous feedback.com. I said, saying that you had some wiggle room on a no-haggle policy was like being a little bit pregnant.

You know where I stand. I don't think that was offensive. But it says me. Well, you're not a woman. I know. Absolutely. Just a little bit. Michael called back and said the Chrysler dealer

had the part and was set up an appointment with me to get the airbag fixed. That's good. I asked Craig if you could hold the car for me until the morning so I could discuss the deal. with my wife. He said he could hold it for 24 hours. We shook hands and I left. There you go. Here's the epilogue. Agent X never asked the third of the three questions because they disclosed the airbag recall after some monetary confusion on Craig's part.

I think I meant to write momentary. Yes. I read it wrong way. Immediately took steps to get a remedy. Alan Turner was quite high in their opinion of the 2008. meets 300 market value I when I saw market value that made me wince market value Kelly Bluebook considers 7,200 to be the average listing for this car with a similar miles and the fair purchase price to be 6,999 so this begs the question can you fall to car dealer for trying to charge you too much for the car no no that's the system and anytime you get a price from a car dealer and there are a lot of them like

this particular Turner Hyundai they claim to be no haggle one price they love the word it's a catch phrase one price no haggle no hassle they love that bottom line pricing is another phrase that's to get

you in the door don't believe it because 99 times out of 100 that'd be out of a thousand I guess 999 times out of a thousand you will find out you can negotiate a better price. It's very scary to put your bottom line best price on the car

because they know you can take that price to another competitor, car dealer, and they'll probably beat it, or at least they'll try. So, always negotiate. Don't believe no haggle, no hazel, and don't believe one price. I say that painfully because I have to, full transparency, See, I am a car dealer, and we do have one price. So don't believe me either. Don't believe anybody.

I mean, I inherited the reputation. I used to be a car dealer. I know what I used to do. So be careful. Don't believe one price. We're going to have to vote now, and I hope that we're getting a lot of votes online. We are.

You can text us at 772-497-60, or you can go online, Facebook.com, forward slash hurl on cars you can post your vote we go we vote on the curve i say that so you don't get too harsh because we have a recommended car dealer list where we have dealers that we recommend that you buy a car from if we did not great on the curve they'd be nobody on the list nobody gets 100 percent so think about that compared with all other dealers are they in the top 70 percent or 30 percentiles above 70 right we call that a passing score let's go with some scores online okay here we got we have linda on facebook gives them a d plus a b d plus she she raised it

it was originally a d and she added the plus okay subsequently then we have two texts without names both of them are f's yes wow we have gregg on facebook with a d uh we have mark a text i'm sorry Greg was a text. Mark is a text with a C minus. C minus. C minus, okay. Then we have John Neal on Facebook with a C minus. C minus.

Edlin on Facebook gives him a C minus. And Jeff on Facebook gives him a C minus. Okay. Well, that's very interesting. Now, in-house. I'm sorry, Jeff is a C, not a C-minus. Okay, Jeff's a C. Yeah.

Okay. Very good. In-house, Rick, what do you think? I'm going to put it on a curve, but it's kind of a double helix curve. Well, I like the way Craig did when he saw the recall. He did say, yes, there is a recall. He should have immediately been on the phone to Michael saying, hey, what's up with his recall?

And he should have jumped that opportunity right there. 100% with you. So I'm giving him a C-minus, you know, give him a little bit of benefit. Yeah. You know, hey. Nancy, what do you think? I give them an F. I don't expect this kind of treatment out of Pensacola. You know, I relate Pensacola as a kind of a mop, iced tea porch, you know, kind of a thing.

Rocket chairs. There you go. You just took the words right. Cracker barrel. Cracker barrel. There you go. We are lately painting. I know we are overgeneralizing the good people of Pensacola. Okay, Stu. By the way, Linda did qualify her D-plus only if they serve bagels. Thank you, Linda.

Yeah, I'm with Rick 100% C-minus, and they definitely get points for showing him the auto-check report and then pointing out the recall. And then when he says it's probably done, if this wasn't a customer who was familiar with this whole situation, they might have taken him at his word, and no more questions would have been asked. He never would have called Michael,

and they never would have determined that it wasn't, and they would have bought the car, gone home, and never knew that there was a problem. So C-minus for me. I'm not going to say C minus two. I was going to give him a higher grade, but I think you're right. I think we gave him triple opportunity to confess. And I don't think it was overt deception.

I think there's not enough attention put on this. I think they've never spoken to their salespeople about this issue. He didn't know what to say. He wasn't trained. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're going to, Nancy. Yes.

I'm going to get to Rosemary, who texts me the best way that she could buy a car, and just quickly, Rosemary. I find that buying online is the safest way for you to go. They don't know whether you're a man, woman, a Dalmatian, you can just go ahead and you can feel very safe right behind your PC, go online, and you can do all the homework that you want, and you are, guess what? full control. I think there is a Delmation. There's a Delmation discount rebate. With no dealer fleas on it. Exactly. These guys are just great to work with. We're putting Turner Hyundai and Pensacola on the recommended list. That's right. Okay. And I thank you all for your votes. C-minus was the most common, and I like that C-minus because it's just on the c-failing. And,

And I think that I'd like to say we're going to revisit Turner, Hyundai, and Pensacola, but we probably won't. No. We might. Agent X goes up there all the time. Well, that's true. We have remote shoppers. And, in fact, John Neal could volunteer. And we, in the Pensacola, yeah, in the Pensacola area, anybody who would like to volunteer to be a remote mystery shopper or any remote areas, we'd love to have you.

I had a North Carolina shopper that did two or three shops for us. So we can exist all over the world through Hong Kong. We could do a Hong Kong shop. That would really be a lot of fun. Send me. They won't recognize me. There you go. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us here at Earl Stewart on Cars at 95.9 and 106.9 FM right here at the True Oldies Channel.

And I want to remind everyone about some of the websites we mentioned earlier. Youranonymousfeedback.com help us to get better. Youranonymousfeedback.com. And also, safercar.com, enter that VIN number. Remember, anybody could have a recall. It doesn't matter whether you're driving a 2019 or a 2000. A 2001? Yeah.

A 1984? Yeah. Knowledge is power. Have a great weekend. Let's go Oh, Oh, Mama, Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Let me go.