Earl Stewart on Cars - 10.14.2023 - The Best of Earl on Cars with Mystery Shop of Firkins CDJ of Bradenton, FL

Episode Date: October 14, 2023

This is a replay of one of our past Earl Stewart on Cars live shows. Agent Lightning travels to the west coast of Florida to check out a Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep dealer in Bradenton, FL. If you have a question for our auto expert team, you can text it to [phone], or online at youranonymousfeedback.com, and we’ll answer it during our next live program. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

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

Good morning, everybody. Here we are again. Right back in the studio here in North Palm Beach, Florida. You heard the recorded introduction, and I'll just add a little bit to. it. We're in a very interesting time. You regular listeners have heard me say this before, but every day things get more interesting for the automotive business, the retail and the wholesale, manufacturing, new cars, used cars, microchip shortages. It's becoming, well, I've been in the business a long time. I started as a dealer in 1968, if you can believe that,

And I did see some crazy times. I mean, we saw some crazy times back in those almost 60 years that I've been around doing this. I have never seen anything like this, and that's saying a lot. This COVID pandemic, the war in the Ukraine, the economic situation, the parts shortage, they call it the supply chain shortage, the supply and demand situation with new and used cars, it is absolutely crazy out there. And it changes every day and it changes differently than we expect it. I'm guilty of forecasting that for the past two and a half years that in about a year, things will be back to normal. We'll spend almost three years and they're not back to normal.

I don't know when or if they're going to get back to normal. This car business, whether you're buying, selling, maintaining or repairing your car is just becoming more and more of an adventure. for you and the dealers, the sellers of the buyers. So it's interesting to me. If it's interesting to me, I hope it's interesting to you. Our role here this morning is to help you navigate this very, very difficult time to buy a car. Add to all of this, Hurricane Ian, which, again, threw a real monkey wrench into the used car market and the new car market, mainly into southwest Florida.

We broadcast from southeast Florida in North Palm Beach. Ian touched other areas too, Georgia and North Carolina, but mainly southwest Florida. Huge number of homes, damage, lives lost. And as far as this show is concerned, a lot of used cars out there

that you really, really got to be careful about. Rick, you got a point? There's actually a new story is coming out from that area with electric cars having been flooded and now the water's draining away from them catching fire from it.

So what I'm trying to get to you if you don't have to buy a car today, used or new, don't buy it. Every week, month that you wait, things are going to if they don't get better

at least they'll be clearer. If prices stabilize, then you'll probably still play a higher price, but you can at least know that if you have weight, it's not going to go any lower. With used cars, I can't advise you enough to be careful. There's only one way that you can truly be sure you're getting a safe used car, and that's to have a good, trustworthy technician. look at the car. You'll have to put it up on the lift. You'll have to go through the car carefully because water damage is about the worst thing you can have to happen to a car. It affects the electronics, the computerized products, the most expensive parts of your car. It's not so much the transmission in the engine, which used to be the big parts of expense in a car. It's talking about the computerization of your car, the navigation system, the computer modules that do all the fancy stuff, the safety stuff. stuff, the cameras, the sensors, the radars, the lasers, I mean, what you're driving now is a very high-tech piece of equipment. And you put that high-tech piece of equipment under water for just a minute or two, and you have totaled the car. Now, they could take that totaled car

and they can go over it with a fine-tooth comb, I mean the experts, and make it look like it's never been in a flood. They'll probably make it look better than it did before. It was in the flood. In fact, that happens to be a red flag right there when a smart technician looks at the car, they say, hey, this is a four-year-old car. It shouldn't be this new shiny clean as it is.

So you need an expert to check any used car or proposed new car, late model, whatever it is before you buy. That's my urgent warning to you today because car market is booming, especially in South Florida, in other areas that

were touched by the hurricane. The hurricane caused people to have to have a car. If you have to have a car, you're going to buy a car, and you're going to buy it in a hurry, and you're going to be taken advantage of unless you're super careful. So even if it doesn't affect you and you have friends or relations that are in other areas that were affected by the storm, remind them, spread the word, let people know that they can listen to this radio show

or go to my blog, earloncars.com. simple to remember, earluncars.com and you can find us on Facebook, facebook.com forward slash earl on cars and we're also on Twitter we're on YouTube.com forward slash rowing cars. There are a lot of ways that you can contact us. In the studio with me,

we have Rick Kearney and he's the one that has educated me a lot on flood cars. He's the one just mentioned a moment ago about the electrical cars on the southeast southwest coast of Florida that were damaged some of them actually catching fire but there's not that many electrical cars out there

most of them are just old-fashioned gasoline powered cars and they're the ones you're probably going to be buying and they're the ones you have to be especially careful of so you call in and ask Rick he monitors the YouTube channel YouTube.com forward slash or on cars you could talk directly to Rick and say hey listen I'm getting ready to buy a car or maybe I just bought a car or my car

was in a flood, he can answer a lot of questions for you about what happens to a car when the water rises to about the level of the dash even for a few minutes and why you might not know about that damage till a month after you bought it, maybe a year after you bought it. You won't know until something shorts out or something happens and then it's too late. So be careful, just to be sure you don't buy that car if it's been exposed to water. My son Stu Stewart is in the studio and he is our cyber underground cover guy that sends our undercover agent out to mystery shop, car dealerships all over, and our mystery shopper this time shop to car dealership in the flood affected area, the Hurricane Ian affected area,

to see what was going over there. She actually went to Bradenton, which is right in the heart of the storm affected area, hurricane affected area, I should say. So, Stu will talk about that mystery shopping report. And to my left is Nancy Stewart, my co-host, co-founder of her alone cars back about 20 years ago. And she is a strong advocate for you female listeners out there. We have a very special female caller out there, hopefully listening now, and she'll be calling on later in the show. We kind of took her from the very beginning of her issue with the car dealership, a Cadillac dealer,

as it were and her efforts to try to get getting justice to to getting a wrong done her made right and she took some advice and listened to us and she'll be calling in later in the show I think she started out as a first-time caller first-time female callers Nancy Stewart has a very special offer and I'm going to turn the mic over to Nancy and she'll tell you all about that good morning everyone and welcome for the ladies $50. $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call at 877-960-99-60. And for others, you can text us at 772-497-6530.

We have a whole lot to get to this morning. And something that really is near and dear to my heart, that's Lourg. And if you're not familiar with her name, She was dealing with Ed Moore's Cadillac, and she went all the way to the attorney's office, and she got satisfaction. We talked to her yesterday and last night, and we were ecstatic at the outcome and the conclusion, and it's finally over, and she's a living example not to give up. give us a call

87-960 and don't forget to go to Earl on cars where you can find that column that Earl mentioned how to avoid buying a flood car after the hurricane of Ian disaster now back to the recovering car dealer I forgot to give out your anonymous feedback.com

and I just looked at my iPhone noticed I didn't see any recent your anonymous feedback.coms That's our favorite channel. People love it. It's a URL, a web address that is set up by a company that does a lot of blue chip companies. A lot of companies like to use this form of feedback from their employees and customers, just like, you know, the police and there's a lot of hotlines out there that they're anonymous for a good reason.

And people feel more comfortable with their privacy when they can communicate. They don't want to be harassed. many people you call, they keep a record of your call, your number, and they harass you after that. If you want total privacy anonymity, just go to Your Anonymous Feedback.com. Y-O-U-R-A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S feedback. F-E-E-D, B-A-C-K, just like it sounds, Your Anonymous Feedback.com. And Stu monitors that along with our text line, which you get us for people that don't want to call me live radio. I mean, I don't blame you.

I think back to when we first started the show. I was nervous. It's one thing to talk to somebody normally, but when you're talking to 10,000, 20,000 or 30,000 people all over the world, and you start thinking about it, you can choke. I don't choke, and Nancy doesn't choke, because we've been doing this for a long time. But if you feel nervous about it, use our text number,

and that is just 772-497-6530, That's text member, is there he goes 772-497-6530. And the text will be, we'll accrue them, and Steve monitors those along with the anonymous feedback. And if we don't get to your text right away, we will, and by the end of the show, most likely. And by the way, I know you can't listen to the whole show. We're a two-hour show. we're on from 8 a.m. Eastern time to 10 a.m. Eastern, 8 to 10 Eastern Eastern Standard Time. We archive all the shows, and that's on Earl on Cars.com.

So if you can catch the show, just go to Earleoncars.com archives, and we have every show there. We have podcast available. You can go to YouTube and see segments of the show. So this show, if you can catch it, and we're all over the, you know, we're going to California. In fact, we're going to Bali. We have a listener in Bali We're Canada. We're all over Every time zone. So go to the Archives, listen to our podcast

And you can check our podcast out on any of the podcast Venues, Erlan Cars, and that's the name of the podcast there. I'm going to turn the mic over to my sons too Who I say He's in charge of Agent Lightning Who we have been

Dispatching now for over a year And she is able to you know our first permanent I guess you would call her female shopper she's amazing and she's been all over she's been in other states she's out of this area a lot more frequently than our previous mystery shoppers did so he'll tell you about that and see if we have any text or anonymous feedback well it's a lot of times we make it look like we plan these things so we can't take credit agent lightning was going to the west coast for personal reasons anyway.

And when she was over there, she decided to knock out a couple of mystery shops. So it did sound, the timing was good. And I believe she was going to go out to check on relatives and things like that at the affected area. So I know Bradenton, I used to date someone who lived in Bradenton back in college. And it's a really nice beach town. And it's right there near Sarasota and about maybe 45 minutes south of Tampa, Clearwater. And it was like right in the path. And it's a typical small town.

It's unusual to have a small town in southwest Florida, but it is a small town. Oh, yeah. It's just kind of like a little downtown area, and it's a cute little place. But it got hit hard, not nearly as bad as Cape Coral and Fort Myers Beach and all that area. But they were right there in the path of it. And so their market is going to be flooded with flood cars. I don't know. Flooded with flood cars.

And so they have a lot of things to worry about. These cars are going to wind up at dealerships. around there. Also, those cars are going to wind up in dealerships around here. And also, there's cars that aren't going to be, I mean, some of these cars, like I'll mention the mystery shopping report, will be totaled up by insurance companies. The tiles will be branded, and there'll be a mechanism by which consumers can identify these cars, but there will be thousands and thousands of cars that won't have that branded title, and you don't know what you're getting. I'm going to hold up, still, while you're talking, I'll hold this up, and maybe Jonathan can put this

on the people who are streaming us. And there's a huge demand, as you can imagine in Florida, for cars. And, of course, there's also a huge amount of flood cars. So this is the front page of our Palm Beach Post, I think, for Tuesday or Wednesday. Yeah, most of the picture, if you've seen of the storm surge, and clearly that was the most destruction came from the storm surge. Most of the deaths came. I think we're 100-something deaths right now.

a lot of them I read were older people that drowned and that's just awful but central Florida the path of the storm went over central Florida huge metro areas of Orlando millions of people I'm not not exaggerating millions of people between Tampa and Orlando and Jacksonville and millions of cars so yeah like I said it was Agent Light and was going over there anyway but we got some good information for y'all coming up with the mystery shopping report and it's a two-part series she did too so next week we'll get to hear the other the dealership this week it's furkins chrysler dodged jeep in bradenton florida um we do have some texts if uh if we can yeah no phone callers coming in all right just remember we prioritize phone calls folks so if you call

and we're talking we stop talking and we just jump right on the phone calls because you can only get five calls in and we love the personal touch of a phone call so still we'll get into our text I'm going to interrupt you for a moment, Stu, and we're talking so much about the hurricane. Let's talk about Earl's book and the impact it can have on these people that have been affected by the hurricane. And if you don't know about the book, it's confessions of a recovering car dealer. Confessions of a recovering car dealer. And if you go to Amazon, you can order the book. and you know all of the proceeds all of the proceeds goes to big dog ranch and you know

that was really Rick scared me we got to feed that dog that's a hungry bar that dog sounds hungry so anyway thank you Rick I just want to remind all of you confessions of a recovering car dealer go to Amazon and like I said 100% of the proceeds goes to Big Dog Ranch and Big Dog Ranch feed that dog. Give him a granola bar. And, you know, Lori Simmons is out there and her staff and they're rescuing dogs and helping people. And what a great job she has done during this disastrous time. So take advantage of Confessions of a recovering car dealer, you can't go wrong. You can put that book on the shelf.

You can use it today, tomorrow, or next year. It will have an impact on you purchasing a vehicle. 877-960-99-60, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. And as Earl said, don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. Now back to Stu. Thanks, Nancy. It's a good segue talking about Big Dog Ranch Rescue. Before I get to Ann Marie's text, we did get a text from Joe, who's out of town. He's a longtime listener, and his son has a dog that he has to give up, and he doesn't want it to be put down. And they're willing to drive down at what state are they? They're going to drive down to Big Dog Ranch Rescue. I forwarded his message to you and Robin. It's pretty heartbreaking, but also inspiring. So I sent that to you an email, and we'll get back to him. And absolutely, if you can drive the dog down, I don't think there's going to be any problem with big dog ranch rescue taking this end. You know, one thing with big dog is on where on that subject.

And you can foster a dog, even if you can adopt one. And the problem with big dog ranch is the largest no-kill shelter anywhere in Florida, I think probably of the whole country. No dogs are euthanized, a big dog ranch. We have four or five hundred dogs out there at all times. and the facility is expanding thanks to a lot of donations and a lot of personal help from Lori Simmons. The problem is we still are bulging in the seams because other dog rescue places don't keep their dogs. They do euthanize them. And because we don't, they send us a dog.

So we're getting dogs from all over the country and we are keeping them out there in our facility. so we don't have enough room all the time and we have to ask people to foster a dog so if you can just take a dog for a week or two or two or three weeks maybe you can free up some space and we're expanding out there as we speak so big dog ranch rescue

that's www.bdrr.org big dog bdrr.org and go to there and you can offer to foster a dog and that'll make some space for someone that can permanently adopt one. Okay, back to you, Stu. All right, thanks, Dad. We have a call, I think.

We do. We have Laura, who's on the line, and she's been holding for a couple of minutes, and I talked about her as we opened the show this morning, and she's the young lady who went after Ed Morris Cadillac. Went after Ed Morris Cadillac. Why? She was taken advantage of, and guess what?

She was driven. She was focused, and she is an educated consumer, and she never, ever lost sight of the prize, and the prize arrived yesterday, and that is satisfaction, uppercase, exclamation point, satisfaction. We'll bring her on right now. Good morning, Lorg. Good morning, Nancy. Good morning, Earl. Good morning. I'll just, Nancy, somewhat summarize things, but to summarize your journey, you started out very distraught and upset because the car dealership that you dealt with at Morse Cadillac was not hearing your complaints and certainly not acceding of them in any way.

and you just didn't give up. And you epitomized the type of consumer that I think is becoming more and more prevalent in America today. People are not, they're not going to stand for it anymore. They're not going to sit quiet. And you continue to persist, and you listen to the show, and you complimented us on helping it to some extent. But it was really your persistence to continue on.

Now, this wasn't a huge claim. It was a valid claim, and it was an obvious claim, and we were very upset because the authorities were not listening. But you persisted, and you've signed an agreement. You've settled this with Edmore's Cadillac. Of course, in the agreement, you've signed you can't disparage them or any way criticize or anything like that. But I can, and I know what's happened,

and I can talk about, but I'll turn the mic back over to you or the phone back over to you, Laura, again. Just kind of give us, in your words, what happened? Okay, your advice was great. You told me, contact the Attorney General's office, which I did online. I did that back in May, and I didn't hear anything until about a month ago.

They sent me like a holding email, which I then responded to online and said, look, you need to do something. These people are not going to answer you. I said, it's a small claim, it's a valid claim. They didn't honor a contract. And the next thing I know, two weeks after I sent that email, I get a call from the service department and Ed Moore saying,

you have to come in, we've got a check to you. That's about what happened. But my big beef with them still, and it still sticks in my craw, is that the general manager didn't even have the guts to come and apologize. Yeah, I read that. That's amazing. Hard to believe. That sticks in my call.

I mean, if I were running a business, I would want to come and make sure, you know, apologize or make sure things are okay. And it landed on the desk of a new service manager there, and he was very nice, and he listened, but he had no background. He had no backstory. story. But, you know, I did get my satisfaction, and thank you very much. You did advise me. All I can say to people out there, when you deal with something like the Attorney General's office, keep a paper trail. You have to be pretty good at online, and I'm an older person,

and, you know, to attach emails and scan things in, it's not as easy for me as it is for a younger person to do. But I did it. Laura, correct me if I'm wrong, but you wrote the Attorney General, you filled off the official form, you issued a complaint, and you didn't hear back from the Attorney General, but you think that the Attorney General contacted Ed Moore's Cadillac directly. Is that true? Yes. From what I understand, they wrote a letter to the sales department. Now, whether they wrote it physically or it came through on an email, that I don't know. But I did have to sign a disclaimer, which then, uh, Ed Morris has to send back to the attorney general's office once it's notarized, which it was notarized. Yeah. And that, that happened, um, that happened yesterday.

So, you know, as you said, things got squared away. I persevered. But I can see where, um, if it were a bigger amount of money, um, it might have taken more, more back and forth. I was kind of shocked that, because I put down in the amount that, what I was out of pocket, you know, and it came from a Cadillac, accessories catalog i had kept you know all those years ago you know unfortunately i keep things well this should be a lesson to to all the car dealers out there the amount of money do you mind

if i mention it you can mention it 300 350 is what they gave you that they owed you and probably and then some for aggravation but uh uh what they paid their attorney i'm reading the release that you fax me and the release in itself and the attorney got i guarantee you they paid this this attorney five thousand dollars because they were not they were stonewalling you on a 350 dollar claim so a lesson be learned to all you car dealers out there it's not only the right thing to do the moral ethical thing to do just the cheap thing but it's also the cheapest thing because if you find someone like lord that isn't going to be scared away i love this release i i i underlined a few few lines here.

Lorig had to promise that she will never say anything bad about Edmore's Cadillac again. And here's the legal term. And it says, reason by any matter cause a thing whatsoever from the beginning of the world to the days of the present. So did you hear that, Lurig, from the beginning of the world? That's legal. That's like taken straight from English common law, I guarantee. And the fact that they paid you. is not an admission of any liability nor guarantee that any additional service will be likewise

provided and then and then you are prohibited and barred from bringing forth any additional claims against Ed Morris Cadillac as a condition of this agreement. I mean it's laughable and this is for 350 bucks. They paid the lawyer a hundred times that much and they could have just done the right thing. We settle things in which we were right just because it wasn't worth it to get a lawyer. Right from the get-go. But, you know, I afterwards I thought about it. You know, I was charged labor, and I should have put the labor charges in for a couple of hours in doing the work. And, you know, it doesn't matter.

It's the principal. And I told the service manager, I said, it's the principal. If you go after the principal and you get them, you feel satisfied. It wasn't a monetary amount that mattered to me. It was the fact that they did wrong. And you cited that, too. We're going to have to come up with a plaque. I'm going to give you a heroine plaque.

We'll have the heroine plaque because anyone that is smart enough and tenacious enough to pursue something like you have. And we have some other people out there, very few. But you really get a, you should get a medal for that, Lord. And thanks so much for being part of our show. Yes, thank you. Hey, Earl, I got a question to you.

You know, with Hurricane Ian and the electric vehicles, you know by 2035 we're supposed to have electric vehicles only and they're going to be charging stations now florida where the lightning capital of the world we get hit by hurricanes what's going to happen if all those charging stations and all those cars and emergency vehicles police vehicles can't run because of the charging stations down are they going to be run on generators yeah that's a that's a very good question. It's kind of the same thing with gas stations, you know, when we had a power shortage, they can't pump the gas. I mean, it's not electricity, but the gas pumps don't work when the electricity goes out. So most of the service stations now have the generators, and I'm

sure you're right, the generator will be the answer, the backup generator. They'll probably be, by 2035, they'll probably be solar-powered battery generators. And, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, there's a lot of, I'm like you, Lord, I can't envision 100% electric vehicles, but it's going to happen. We see it. Currently, Florida is underway, like, burying power lines. They've been doing this for 15 years now. It's a slow, I mean, thousands of miles.

They mentioned this during the, lead it to the storm. And some communities, like my neighborhood, everything's buried, and we very rarely get a power outage. Yeah. It's affected us also. that upgrade you guys did that in your neighborhood as well yeah yeah so that's uh it's fun to watch it long i mean uh it's just uh incredible what's happening uh with electric vehicles and uh it's it's fun to watch i i can't believe that my great grandson will not even see a combustion

engine car by he's by the time he's old enough to drive he'll he'll have to buy an electric vehicles so it'll be fun to watch all that isn't that amazing just amazing well i look forward to hearing you carry on that discussion over the next few months and years. Well, we're going to get your medal or plaque or something to you because we're going to have anyone like you that can weather the system and go against the attorneys

and the rest of it. Yeah, the dealers. She's a dealer slayer. Yeah, there you go. A dealer slayer. I like that. It's Nancy. Thank you very much for your help. And I just want to I want to thank you. It's been quite a journey and it's been quite a journey for you and hey you weathered the storm and you know the strong shall overcome and survive and you did just that and what an example for everyone and I you know

emphasize the ladies and somehow we think we won't be heard and guess what you were heard and I want to thank you so much we were very fortunate to, you know, meet. And I hope you... Nancy, I just wish there were more women like you. You go into these dealerships, very few women. They're all salesmen. On the service desk, they're all men.

Very few women like you. And I'm just very grateful that I did meet you. And we've become friends over the YouTube. But it's just very sad. It's a sad predicament because there are good women out there that should be in these dealerships. Exactly. And, you know, you're absolutely right.

In the automotive news that I read, oftentimes I take a look at the back sheet, the back page, and take a look at the graduates from that industry. And every once in a while, there might be maybe two or three. Well, just recently, Earl pointed out to me, because I hadn't taken a look at my edition, that there was, I think, Earl, what was it, 14, that they showed all these pictures,

and that was encouraging because things are changing because of women like you, women like me, and as I always say, your voice must be heard. It must be heard. So I want to thank you. And thanks again to all of you, and good luck with the show and may you have

continued success out there and you have lots of listeners. I want to ask you to repeat what you said in your email. It was in French and it was plus Khae No, plus a change

which means life goes on, nothing changes. Nothing changes, yeah. It's like a satirical type of comment that you know you're trying to change things, but in the end, nothing changes. And that's how I felt after I walked out of

that dealership, you know, I thought, you know, okay, I'm gone, they don't care. And there'll be another stooge after me, right? That's how I felt. It would have been somewhat satisfying if you could be, well, look back and say, hmm, I'm just a memory, you know, but I don't even think that that would apply. Again, thank you so much for the call. and I hope to talk to you again. All right. And thanks for sacrificing your morning for us. Yeah, I really pressured you.

Thank you so much. All right. Take care. You're welcome. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530, and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com. We're going to stick with a phone. and we're going to talk to Marty from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Marty.

Good morning. She should have bought a Toyota. That was her problem. Okay. Is Rick there? He is indeed. He's ready. All right.

I got a question for him. Maybe in the last month, I'm going to say two or three times, and I drive my 2020 Camry probably three or four times a day somewhere. the electronic parking brake did not release, so the emergency brake stayed on. And I called once, and you told me, make sure my door is shut. So far, I haven't fallen out of the car, and I know it's not the door. However, I'm coming in Wednesday for oil change and tire rotation, but I really don't want to have that monkey around with the brakes.

What do you think the possibility is that the electric, parking break just doesn't release. I mean, when I see that it happens, I just push down on the lever, and then, of course, it's off. I would recommend have this run a health check on it with the TechStream scan tool just to make sure that you haven't got something weird going on there.

Okay, well, they do that when I do the oil change and that? Only if you request it. If you tell them you're having an issue with the parking brake, telling them that we recommended run a health check then you know obviously that we'd be able to take care of that but only if you don't mention the issue

then it does normally get done no okay but that doesn't mean they're going to start taking anything apart not unless you authorize it if it's under warranty and to all my customers out there please don't call on the radio to get your service done that they'll

or Toyota, so call us at 844-3461, not the radio show. Okay. The other thing I wanted to ask you, if it's just, let's say, it can't be just like a fuse or something? No. Fuses, if a fuse blows,

whatever system it's powering shuts down. And pretty much anything, if the fuse blows, you got to understand a fuse is simply a piece of wire that if it gets too much current drawn across it, it heats up and it literally burns apart

and once it's done it's like a light bulb. Once a light bulb burns out it's done. So when a fuse blows that's it. What you've got going is probably some issue with the computer system and we'd need to go in and diagnose that to find out for sure what's going on.

All right. All right. Thanks, Rick. I think I'm going to leave it alone. Okay, Marty. Thanks for going. Have a good day, everybody. Thank you, Marty. Bye.

Marty sounds so disappointed on the break issue. Yeah. I wish I could remember the French phrase that we just heard, but I don't know. We don't speak French. Are we good on the phones? We do. We are still on the phones and we are going to talk to Mara. And this is for you, because I know that you'll be able to say that eloquently.

We are going to go to Mara, and she's calling us from West Palm Beach. Good morning, Mara. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? We're well, thank you. Have you called before? No, this is my first time. Oh, that is fabulous. I have $50 for you. That's even better. Yeah, Saturday mornings we offer $50 for the first two new, new lady callers, and you are the first new lady callers.

So if you'll share your information with Jeremy in the control room, he'll get it over to me, and I'll send you out of check. Okay, thank you. I appreciate that. Great. What can we do for you this morning? well I just I have a 2006 Toyota Highlander hybrid and I love it I've had it since it was brand new and it has 225,000 miles on it and I had planned on buying a new one about two and a half years ago but then the pandemic hit and I worked from home and now I'm really ready for a new one but I keep waiting for the chips to be released. least. And I don't know, or I'd like to buy one that's maybe a year old, but that still is under warranty.

But now I'm getting a little leery because I do, in traveling again, and I'm concerned with that many miles and that old that I maybe need to break down and buy a new one. Well, Mara, let me jump in here quickly. One of the things that I advise people, if they've taken care of their car, and you sound like a woman that would take care of her car, even though it's a 2006 with 225,000 miles. By today's standards, if you've done all your factory recommended maintenance and you don't experience any issues with the car, it's good probably for at least another 75,000 or more miles. Today's a bad time to buy a car. It's just new or used. I advise people only if they

have to. I don't think you have to, unless there's an issue with your car that I don't know about, but two questions. Had you had all the factory recommended maintenance done, and have you, do you know of any issues with the car? Is there anything that concerns you with the performance right now? I have had all the factory maintenance done. The only thing that concerns me, and I'm going to take it in soon, is my brakes seem to be pulling a little. They're great, but they're different than what I'm used to. Well, you can, you certainly should have that checked out because it could be just an alignment issue that could cause uneven wear on your tires. And I'm an expert at uneven wear on tires because I'm always changing the tire.

I'm knocking things out of line. But that's a maintenance item and issue. You have taken a look, but as far as buying a car, If you're going to buy a 2020 or 23 Highlander hybrid, it's going to cost you a lot of money. And even a late model used at 2020, 2021 would cost you a lot of money today. You've got a perfectly good car and SUV. And have someone check out that pull. Rick has probably a suggestion on that.

You said it's pulling a little bit when you step on the brakes? Yes. And it's only when I first start the car in the morning, and I'm pulling out of the driveway and step on the brake, it kind of grabs a little. And then once I get going, it's fine, but it had never done that before. Okay. You might have a little bit of corrosion on the rotors, or possibility is the slide pins for the calipers are starting to stick a little bit. So when you take it in for your service, just mention that. Ask them if they can check the calipers and make sure that they're.

they're sliding freely like they should. Rick, let me ask you a question on that. And that should take care of that issue for you. Why does it happen only early when we first starts up in the morning? And why wouldn't that phenomenon occur, you know, at any time she stepped on the brakes? Well, one of the main reasons for that is sitting overnight, we get a light surface of rust forms on the brake rotors. It's totally normal. But sometimes when it's a little heavier in one spot than the other, instead of the pad simply sliding along and cleaning that rust.

off, it'll actually catch a little bit and that wheel will grab and that causes a car to pull to that side. But then it stops grabbing so why? Because it breaks that little bit of rust off of there. And the rust forms again in the next morning? Yep. Oh wow. Never realized

rust could happen that. South Florida issues yeah. Yeah. Well that's helpful. I appreciate that and I will ask them about that when I bring it in this week. Very good. Well, thanks so much, Mara. Sounds like a good idea. Mara, I'll leave you with this.

If you go to Earl on Cars, you can read a column that Earl wrote about holding on to your old car for all the reasons that Earl just mentioned. You know, there's so many variables right now, and it's just not a good time. So go to Earl on Cars, and you can read the column and so many others that will help you, well, make you help you feel more comfortable about holding on. to that 2006 well I appreciate that and I do feel better I think I just had a magical number in my mind 225,000 that maybe that was the end of a car but I feel better now that you said I can hang on to it for another 75,000 miles possibly you're good to go hang on the line because Jeremy will get your contact information and then she'll send you that check spread the word mara tell all your lady friends absolutely thank you

Our number is 877960, and don't forget, your anonymous feedback.com. You can also text us at 772-4976530, and we're going to stay on the phones, and we're going to talk to Doug, and he's calling us from Boca. Good morning, Doug. Good morning, guys. How are you? Thank you for having this program. It's very informative. You know, of course, the Sunrise Club, I love that, too.

Thank you. Thanks, Doug. Thank you. Ella says hello. Oh, meow. Right back at Ella. Don't bark, Rick. No barking now.

Hey, does Ella react to that Rick's barks? I have a quick question about... Miao. Terrible. That was a little... Meow. She actually looked at the phone when you did that. What was that?

There you go, Ray. What creature was that? A cat's a persinator. Right. So I have a question. I had an opportunity to order a Toyota Corolla GR circuit. And the thing is, you know, we don't know when they'll be out.

Right. I won, like, a little lotto thing and put a little deposit down, and they told me basically that there's no way I'm going to get the sticker price. But my friend knows the owner of a dealership in Hollywood, and he grew up with him, and basically I could get the car for sticker price. But then I just heard you say, why don't you just heard you say, why don't you just stick with the car that you have, which is that, you know, the Honda Civic S.I that I've had since 2020. Because the Colorado GR is so cool, that's why.

Yeah, I know. So, so because of the new laws that Honda did with their leasing, I can't sell my car because Honda forbids me to do that unless I buy it and then sell it. so I don't think Toyota does that no and I'm kind of upset about it because now if I turn in my Honda well which is dumb very dumb because it's worth more yeah well that's typically the that's the what you go I mean you would buy it exercise your purchase option and then sell it that's how it would be done even through Toyota oh yeah at the end of the least you're either going to indicate you're going to return it or you're going to buy it if you return it then you know you just walk away and

that'd be crazy now because like you said your civic SI is worth a lot a lot right now more than your payoff but that's kind of like the step so you can't just sell it directly because right now it's owned by the lessor by Honda American Credit and you're the lessee and And then according to the contract, when that ends, you know, that goes back to the dealer unless you exercise your right to purchase. And I'm pretty sure that's the same on all manufacturers leases. Yeah, Doug, it's particularly where you live here in South Florida, there's a big class action suit in process. WPLG Channel 10 has done a great job at raising awareness of what the car dealers were doing prior to this time. They were requiring high fees, thousands of dollars sometimes, on top.

top of the purchase option price you have in your lease contract. Right now, I'm pretty sure if a dealer isn't scared to death to do that because they would really end up in this class action suit, I think if a lot of dealers are starting to behave themselves. So you'll be able to buy that Honda at the actual price listed in your lease contract, purchase option price, which will be thousands of dollars less than the market value. So you can flip it, you can buy it, and then resell it and make a couple thousand maybe more. And the dealer can't interfere with that process. If he does, just let us know.

And we'll let the Jeff Weinseer at Channel 10, WPLG, know. And they'll be interviewing that dealer the next day. The only thing you have to pay for your purchase, if you purchase your lease, is just the sales tax. And then you're going to have to register it again because it's going to transfer the tax because it's registered under the lease. Well, the buyout price is $6.000.

thousand one hundred not including tax and and the dealer said that they were going to charge me a thousand dollar fee so what I did I went to credit union I said hey I'm gonna call Honda I'm gonna have them give you whatever and and so therefore I would save the thousand dollars that they when did they do that when did they tell you they wanted a thousand dollar fee just a week ago wow yeah where was this. Doug, I'm going to tell you the name. I'm never

going to go there again. They're still doing that. They were good. They were getting me, but no more. That's crazy. That happened. That was after all this came out. Yeah. They live in a bubble. They must not know what's going on. If you want to talk to Jeff Weinshear,

the investigative reporter for WPLG, I can give you his telephone number. He'd love to walk in there with a microphone and talk to Haunted dealer. I would definitely do that because you know that I'm in that field. And I really appreciate you guys, but I don't know how I'm going to get boat cars

because if I want, you know, I'd have to be a dealership to be able to buy two cars. Because you've got to wait a long time for the corolla. Yeah. You know, I wonder, they said January, but I don't think so. I think it's going to be maybe even February, but we'll see.

and I'll let you know what happens with that. I need the number for Jeff Weinstein. Okay, Weincier, yeah, let me give that to you. He'll be happy to hear from you, Doug, for sure. I'm going to give it to you on the air because everybody else could call. Everybody else would like to have it, too. Wines here he goes. This is a cell phone number, Jeff Weinstein, Reporter, WPLG Channel 10.

If that number is area code 954-364-2823. I'll repeat that. Area code 954-364-2823. Again, Jeff Weincier, W-E-I-N-S-E-I-R, investigative reporter W-P-L-G Channel 10. And he led the charge in South Florida for this class action suit. and car dealerships and car manufacturers' captive finance arms are settling this out of court right and left. So even Toyota was involved, Southeast Toyota Finance was involved.

They settled it. Toyota dealers have settled it. Buick dealers, Chevrolet dealers. It's a bloodbath down there thanks to Jeff Weinstein. Well, I'm going to call on everyone's behalf because this shouldn't be done. and I can't tell you how much I appreciate both of you and love both of you and I hope you have a wonderful Saturday

and thank you for all your help Thank you, Doug. Oh, you're welcome, Doug. We hope to hear from you again. 877-960-9960 or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-3-0 and as I said earlier don't forget your anonymous feedback.com.

And whenever you go to Erlon Cars, there's so many columns that you can pull up, and one that's extremely appropriate, and just to put her face out there, it's an open letter to the Attorney General, Ashley Moody, and, you know, she can certainly help you if she has the time, which she never has, but at any rate, Laura is a perfect example from this lawsuit with Ed Morris.

That's an interesting example of our Attorney General. If you listen earlier, or if you haven't listened earlier, a woman, a very, very smart, educated consumer-type woman called because she had been taken advantage of it, Ed Morris Cadillac. And we advised her when she called to the show to file a complaint with the state attorney general and she did and that went to Ashley Moody and you would think that when someone had clearly committed a violation the Attorney General would have made more of it but apparently the Attorney General just talked to Ed Morris Cadillac and said

you've done you've done a wrong thing here and you better give that money back and he did which is good but the point is they were trying to keep it under wraps. And Ed Morris had Lorig sign a non-disclosure agreement. The Attorney General acted secretly between Ed Morris. The Attorney General never contacted Lorig so that it would be conversation about it. So in this case here is the case of Ashley Moody, the Attorney General, protecting the car dealer and saying, this thing is going pretty far.

I'm giving you some friendly advice. Settle this thing. $350 bucks, settle it and get a non-disclosure agreement and then tell me you've done this. It sounds to me like this is not government in the sunshine.

This is government in the shadows. And that is proof that our Attorney General is in the pocket of the car dealers and the car dealers associations. And this is a very bad thing. And Ashley Moody's running for re-election and guess what?

She'll get re-elected. No one's running against her. The woman that's running against her doesn't have any financing, any support. I can't even remember her name, but she has one opponent, and of course, Ashley Moody will get elected again. And that's the way politics is in Florida and a lot of other states. Yeah, they really move forward with the advertisement commercials for Ashley Moody just recently. As I said earlier, 877-960-99-60, give us a call, and we're going to stay on the

phones, and we are going to go to Miami. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? It's Elaine from Miami. Ah, Elaine. Welcome. Have you called before? I have not. My friend Regina. Elaine, I have $50 for you this morning as a second new female caller. You win yourself $50 in after our conversation is finished. If you'll stay on the line and talk to Jeremy in the control room, he will get your information and I will get that. check out to you. That's awesome. Thank you.

You're welcome. How are things in Miami? Well, how can we help you? So my friend Regina, she actually referred me to listen and she actually ordered a car and it's coming like in about in 2023 and she also told me it was a hybrid. I recently got an Highlander in 2020 pre-COVID and I saw something on the news about like this whole hurricane disaster and they said about electric cars

as they're plugged in before we lose power if you plug them back and I thought I don't know if it was on Channel 10 however I was looking online I couldn't find the article and it said if you plugged it back into the house once the power

you lost power in the house would it it would give back power to the house so I didn't that was a great question that I didn't know how to like I was like Regina did you hear about this and she was like no I didn't so she's like you should ask that question on the air so do you know about that Elaine there are some cars that have that benefit I think Tesla might have that I'm not sure this isn't a common thing in any electric car but there are trucks I believe maybe Ford

Rick might have some specifics on this but yes there is there are electric vehicles, a few of them, that offer a generator ability in a situation of power storage, so you can run a small amount of small power consumption items off the generator from your electric vehicle. But that isn't standard, and most electric vehicles don't have that. Rick, can you add to that? Yeah, the only one I'm aware of that has that capability are the Ford Lightning trucks, the F-150 lightning that is just now coming onto the market and it's they have to be specially

equipped for it and even then it would only be a short time before you'd lose that you know that powered run out so you'd only have a small amount of it but in an emergency situation that can be a life-changer so yeah that's certainly a possibility yeah on the actual like when they were doing that bit on the on the news it didn't really specify and it was like one of those quick um you know make you want to watch through the commercial right i didn't get to watch through the commercial however thanks for that information and you know um i also it um the opponent for the opponent for moody is ayala which i did follow um but yeah we should definitely work on you know getting government that hides things away so yes

Ayala I'm glad you're give us that name again this is the opponent running against Ashley Moody is that correct yes it's Aramis Ayala and if if you're looking for someone to vote

that will be better than Ashley Moody Mrs. Ayala unknown as she is would be a prefer preferential choice I don't even know Ayala's background or what she would do, but she couldn't be any worse than Ashley Moody. Any attention and concern anyone would have for the car buyers in Florida would be better than what Ashley Moody has.

She has zero. Perfect. Thank you, Elaine. Thank you so much for the call, and we hope to hear from you again. And good luck and spread the word. We're here. $50 for the first two new lady callers. It's my first time listening, and it's really interesting, actually.

Thank you. Well, please call again and spread the word. I will. Thank you so much. Thank you, Elaine. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6530. Your anonymous feedback.com is right there for you. So take advantage of it. We're going to stay with the phones,

We're going out to Palm City, and we're going to talk to John, who is a regular caller, and he fills us with so much information, weekend and week out. Good morning, John. Good morning. Speaking of EV trucks, Pepsi Cola is taking delivery on December 1st of 100 Tesla semi-trucks. They're going to be used at the Frito-Lay plant in California, and also the beverage plant. in Sacramento, and they were ordered in 2017. They are Tesla, semi-trucks, EV,

so here and now, that's a statement from Pepsi the second largest beverage company in the world. And I have a question for Rick. On the EV, Tesla's, particularly, when they're in a flood, naturally, as a total flood, they're no good because of the electronics, But can the batteries be reused again on a Tesla or a EV car? Can you use the batteries again?

Are they scrap also? I would say it's highly unadvisable due to the fact that the situation we've seen here with Ian, the water that came up was dirty salt water, contaminated salt water. Once that has found its way in, even though those units are sealed, that water is going to seep into everywhere and even after the water evaporates and dries out the residue that is left, the salt and dirt residue is going to contaminate everything

caused massive corrosion and that's actually been a situation they're having over there where electric vehicles are literally catching on fire days after they've dried out because of that corrosion causing salt short circuits and literally catching those batteries on fire and suddenly the car is bursting into flames.

Of course, those batteries are on the bottom of the very bottom of the car. So they're going to be exposed to the water before any other part of the car. So that's a good point. Apparently a lot of water and floods are maybe even worse for an electrical car

than they are on internal combustion. Absolutely. Well, you've answered the question. One fast question to Earl on nostalgia. Earl, will you ever offered a Sab dealership

Saab was taken over by General Motors and I believe they closed it down in 2011 and Saab was in my opinion a good car at one time Yeah no I wasn't offered Had I been offered I would have declined Because you're right

The sob was just a real clunker And it's Do they still sell sobs? No Born from Jets I think they're worse than Fiat's And that's about as bad. Their motto was born from Jets because the original Saab company over in Europe was building jets.

Yeah. And then switched over to cars after the wars. Yikes. General Motors shut them down, I think, in 2011. Total shut them down. Is that right? All right, guys, you answered the question about the EV batteries. Oh, thank you.

I'm glad we could help. Thank you. It's always a pleasure to talk to you, John. John, and I know you always look forward to the mystery shopping report, and we went to Bradenton, Florida, if you didn't tune in earlier, and it should be a great mystery shopping report from Agent Lightning. One place I recommend you never gone to us, not that far away, and it seems like one family owns every car dealership in Sebring,

Seabring, Florida, which is not that far north from us, I would like to see a shopping report done at Sebring. Yeah, what's that guy's name, John? My sister lives over there, and she's often talked about him, but I've forgotten his name. Well, I don't remember his name either, but it looks like he owns every dealership in town. You're right. It would be an interesting shopping report. It's like going down to Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, you know, with all these dealerships,

and he owns them all, unlike Palm Beach Lakes. but it's just a melting pot for the dealers. Thanks, John. Thank you guys again. Thanks for being now. You're welcome. 877-960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-6-5-30. And don't forget your anonymous feedback.com.

Alan J. Alan J. Alan J. Alan J. That's it. I got a little anecdote for Alan J. he's a again he's kind of like out of monopoly

in the Sebring area on car dealerships family operation they've been there for a long time but they're very very small dealerships and they had a Alan Jay ran for the time dealership dealer of the year award which is a political thing

they were they were nominated as to be the deal of the year and the Florida automobile Dealers Association won the nominated. There was nothing spectacular rather than the fact that he owns a lot of very small dealerships over there. It's family. They're not bad dealers. I mean, they're

a C on our curve when we grade dealers. And this is probably 20 years ago. And about the time I started dueling with Florida Automobile Dealers Association and becoming a consumer advocate. So

they were, they nominated him for the time dealer of the Year Award and they won't know if there's any other nomination so I nominated myself as that and of course it was kind of a joke because I knew that FADA

the Dealers Association would never elect me for anything and since I turned consumer advocate but Alan Jay was voted the time dealer of the year award from Florida they weren't for the national but they were for overall so

it was an interesting story story to share with the audience. We are going to talk to guess who? The Roadrunner, Steve. From Boynton, good morning, Roadrunner. Good morning, everybody. How everybody doing good? We're doing good. Now that you're going, we're great.

Okay. We love hearing from you. Yes. Anybody see that commercial where there's a vehicle on the left, an open parking spot, a vehicle on the right, and it's a tight spot. The guy gets out of his vehicle, hits the button, and the vehicle parks itself in the tight spot.

Ah. Uh-huh. I haven't seen that. What model, what kind of car was it? I think it's a Hyundai. I'm not sure. I've seen that. Right.

Okay, now my thing is, now the guy on the left, the passenger can't get in the vehicle, and the guy on the right of it, the driver can't get into the vehicle. Why would you park there? Now, being for New York, I would have left a loogie on his windshield or his door handle or I would have wrote a window. We all know what a loogie is, right?

Yeah. Okay. To me, that's the stupidest thing I ever see, especially if you were a handicapped person. How are you going to get in and out? Yeah. I have that feature on my Tesla. As a matter of fact, I don't want to use it. It makes me nervous, but technically my Tesla will park itself.

Very nervous. Yeah, and what happens if the vehicle just decides to take off? It goes right into the restaurant. That's why I'm nervous, and I haven't tried it. Okay, I want to get on a serious point now. Okay. I was in Fort Myers Beach before the hurricane. I was there for three weeks.

I left September 16. Oh, boy. I just want to say to all the car show people out there, if you're having the car shows, get donations to help those people. Yeah. You know, how big or little donation is just getting a little. That's where you've got to do. Yeah, it's worse than anybody thought.

I've been a resident of Florida since I was born. I'm born in Fort Lauderdale in 1940, and I've been through all the hurricanes. And Nancy and I, and before I even married Nancy, I never left. evacuated. Well, I did one time 1947, but this is the worst hurricane in terms of human misery property damage.

It's just terrible. So thanks for bringing that up. These folks on the southwest coast of Florida are in terrible, terrible conditions. Yes. My time share was in the parking level where I stayed at the Stable Island Beach Club.

Wow. That is. And the barrier islands devastated. That's where a lot of the deaths were these little islands pine island i hadn't even heard of pine island uh but uh there was just devastated and so many there's several i just thought there was just two or three there were like half a dozen sanibel island the only bridge to it was completely wiped away yeah yeah it'll be months before they get a road to know on that sanabel island pier yeah with that and the lighthouse stood up after all those years wow i didn't realize that's when they really built stuff

Okay, everybody, have a good and safe day. Thank you, my friend. Thank you, Steve. It's always great to hear from you. 877-960-99-60. We're going to stick with the phones, but don't forget you can text. We've got YouTube. We're going to get to Rick shortly, and we are going to go to Mark in Palm Beach Gardens.

Good morning, Mark. Good morning, everybody. I'm assuming everyone's doing it. well. I'm just calling with my usual reminder for the listeners. Hopefully everybody's heard about the program that you guys started, but you know the show

has only last two hours and there's so many questions out there that, you know, with all these cars that will be or have been totaled, a lot of them are going to hit the use car market. But Earl's Vigilantees is a program you guys started.

for the vigilantes to give information to your listeners that after the shows, it's a good resource. Nancy and I are both good proponents of the program. You know, these flood cars, if you're considering buying a used car and you're wondering if it's a potential flood car, the questions that you can ask us and we can answer. And also, you know, on sales,

service and body repair of cars. Earl's Vigilantees is a great program. All you have to do is look up Earl on cars, and I believe that's where you'll find the category for vigilantes. Well, thank you, Mark. I just put my head on. I just put my vigilante head on. Thanks for reminding everybody.

Yeah, your call couldn't have come at a better time. Yeah, where's your Earl's Vigilante shirt, Earl? Well, we haven't got the shirts yet. I keep asking Stu. Sue stepped out, but I'll jump on him when he comes back. Where are the shirts? They're in the making. We're supposed to have shirts.

You're right about that. Yeah, they're in the making. But Mark, again, back to you, you know, we can't thank you enough for, you know, your contribution to Earl's vigilantes. You've been a great asset. And as I said, your call couldn't have come at a better time because there's so many people out there who need help. and they can go to Earl's vigilantes as you said and it's a win-win situation you don't know you don't have to know how to take an engine apart

and you can not only help you know others but you can help people in your own neighborhood and as I said Mark you've been a great asset and I can't thank you enough for calling the show no worries well I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable remainder of the weekend. Thank you so much, Mark. Thanks, Mark.

Same to you. We are out of calls. Rick, do you have? I've got a couple of quick ones here. This one from Mark Ryan, and it fits in with what we were discussing a few minutes ago. Ford announced that the F-150 Lightning, the EV truck,

would increase by $5,000 for the 2020 model, Due to ongoing supply chain constraints, rising material costs, and other market factors, orders are extremely strong. He says, I'm guessing the other market factors is Ford's cash grab opportunity. Any thoughts on this? Well, remember, before we talk about the high price, there is just enacted into a law is the subsidy for the electric vehicles. And I haven't got all the details there, but it's substantial in the Ford Lightning and the other new EVs. For most manufacturers, including Tesla, there'll be substantial rebate, cash rebate for electric vehicles, which will offset the increase in cost.

And this one from Charles Reeves, he says, good morning all. I live in New York City, and as of late, mass transit has become a harrowing experience to say the least. Do you think I should be looking at cars auctioned from scofflaws and the marshals? I'm not familiar with those myself. He says, thank you. I'm not sure either. I got to do a little Googling. Is that an auction house, scofflaws?

But mass transit, I mean, that's what you want to have when you got a problem with cars in a congested area like New York City or Chicago. So I don't know exactly. Oh, that's a surprise. Yeah. well there is an online auction called scofflaws and Microsoft sued them a few years ago but we have to look into it a little bit more to give you an intelligent answer to your intriguing question yes very intriguing I do have a text from Anne-Marie and she says good morning a friend just came back from a 16-day tour of Japan she remarked about all the

different models that Toyota's there that we don't have it here in this country and I went to Japan too there's lots of models of all sorts of Japanese manufacturers that we don't have here. Lots of little small vans and, like, cute little cars that you just don't see over here. She liked riding in the Toyota Crown taxis, but she thought that trying to wedge three full-sized adults into the back of a Prius taxi was a bit much. It is. As they toured the country, my friend noticed that the dealerships, of all brands,

they passed were smaller than American dealerships, but they had more inventory on display than the American dealerships have. One, do you know if it is actually true? that Japanese car dealers get more inventory than American or American car dealers. You know, when I was in Japan, I visited a car dealership, a Toyota dealership over there, and it was cute. It was a little tiny store. It looked like about the size of like a gas station, like a big gas station here.

They didn't have a lot of inventory, but it was a small lot, so it was filled, and this is in the years before this crazy time. So I learned a lot about the individual dealership, but to answer Amory's question, we didn't really get into their like distribution I don't know if they have access to more cars. I mean make sense that they would. Do you know if they have less of a problem getting chips

and other parts because of their proximity to where the chips are made? I would imagine, I know a lot of our parts that we have that slow down that we can't get come from Southeast Asia. So less ships involved, the logistics possibly, but I really don't know.

Toyota's worldwide. You know, most of Toyota's, I'm going to I don't have the written proof of this, but I would think that most Toyotas are not built in Japan anymore. They're built somewhere else at one time, you know, 30 years ago, that might have been the case. But right now, they're building South America, they're built in China, they're built in the United States. Huge number. We actually, in the United States, export cars to Japan. We export Camry's and manufacturers.

So it's a global economy and the whole thing. The Japanese car dealer is totally different, as Stu described, they're not the flashy big mega dealers. There's not the slam-bam, you know, $1,000, million-dollar discounts. They're more like family little places, and they wouldn't have large inventories typically, partly because they get all their cars probably next door from the manufacturer. The factory is down the block. And it's just, it's probably a very sane, friendly way to buy a car in Japan compared to the way it is in the USA.

Yeah, it was, they had sales meetings. We saw a sales meeting. It looked a lot like American car dealerships. Maybe American car dealerships from the 80s. Everybody wore suits and ties. And like dark suits and ties. But you couldn't tell what they were saying. No, well, we had translators and our guide was there.

And I think, I'm pretty sure that the dealer spoke English. He spoke to our group. Anyway, it was really neat experience to see a different culture. doing something that really was invented here. I mean, I mean, we invented card dealerships in the United States. So that's a, that's their approximation. And they had all all signs for all like the least, like the, you know, lease payments and things like that.

And it was all very colorful. Interesting. I love the suit and ties. Yeah, very formal. We wear it in the United States for years. We had to wear them too. They told us when we visit the car dealerships, it would be proper. We ought to wear suits and ties.

I wore a suit and tie for the probably first 25. five years in my career. Yeah. When I had to draw pictures of my dad for, like, school, I'd wear crayons. I would draw a guy with a blue suit and a red tie. Oh. Uh-huh. And dark brown hair and a big dark brown mustache.

Uh-huh. What about the cufflings? And gold cufflings. I have a text from Bob, and this is an update. We've heard from him last week. Do we have a phone call? We do. Thank you, Steve.

We're going to go back to the phones where John's been holding from West Palm Beach. Good morning, John. Hey, good morning Welcome back Thanks I just wanted to say I was going to call last week But it didn't fit with the subject that was

Being talked about But it just came up again And I'm really getting tired Of this supply chain I want to say excuses But I'm sure it's not excuses It's a real thing Yes

But the reason why I'm bringing this up Is if people are wondering why their car insurance has gone up, call your agent, call the company, and when you ask them why there was an increase, because they're going to tell you that it went up by, ours went up in several categories by $50 because of the supply chain and the dealers, not the dealers, the body shops, and those that are in the automotive industry keeping the car is running, have a lack of supplies, and the costs are going up because of the supply chain interruption. And so our insurances have gone, well, our insurance went up in several categories.

And the reason was because of the supply chain. John, there's also the fact that your car now is so high tech. It used to be when you bumped a bumper, all you did was replace the bumper or you might have to maybe even. been painted or you can't pound out a bumper but now a bumper's got sensors in it there's electronics on every inch of your car and so uh well when you normally just had a dent fender or dinnid bumper you now have computers that are being damaged and got from a 300 dollar repair to a 3,000 exactly yeah so today's cars with their tremendous safety and ease of driving and handling and great fuel economy and et cetera et cetera the downside is

They are extremely expensive when they get damaged and to repair. So the collision repair now is, you know, many, many times what it would be 20 years ago. No, that part I understand. I understand the parts go up. Yeah. But to say the reason why we're raising your rate is because of the supply chain. That sounds like, I hear your irritation because I hear it everywhere. I mean, you know, everything is.

is affected. And you don't know how much of it is true because it does become a convenient excuse. And sometimes you just hear that one thing, supply chain. John, how long have you been with your insurance company? We've been with them for like 18 years. Okay. Who's your insurance company? Progressive. Okay. I've got a bet for you. If you will go out now and get bids from four or five insurance companies, you will beat the current premium you're paying to Progressive. All the insurance companies add a little bit more to your premium. Sometimes it's just a few dollars every year, whether they have to or not. That's part of the game plan.

That's part of the way they make a huge amount of money. But if you've been with Progressive for 18 years and you haven't gone out for competitive pricing, you're paying too much money. but what happens with the competitive pricing is here's the trick that they use on you if you sign up you're now a new customer and they give you a 15% discount the second year it goes right back to more

than what you're paying with your original company we went through that well then play the game you know and it's just and like I said that first year they gave you the big discount to draw you in it's hey it's just like down at a city place

where they bring in all the restaurants and that, they offer them a great lease for two years, and after the two years, they go out of business. They bump the rates way up. That's why the industry down there, you know, all the businesses are two to three years, you know, for the smaller companies. There's a lot of truths of that,

but my point is, so what? If you have to go out every year or every two years, it'll take you 10 minutes online or on the phone to get a competitive quote, and then you save yourself 15, 20, dollars a month in premium so just use a fake email address because as soon as you get quotes your email box is going to blow up yeah and that's uh and and when you do sign up for those uh you know cheaper insurance and it starts looking for you i think there's a website that uh

you tell them you're looking for car insurance and then they send you a whole bunch of different companies that are going to try and out bid and out beat each other it doesn't it's just not we're sometimes yeah it's a circus i hear you don't great point But the whole point was, if people are scratching their head and why their insurance went up, that's one of the excuses that you're going to get. The supply chain is interrupting everything, and they're trying to cover their costs on it. Well, there's truth in that, but there's also the, I'm an insurance company, and I know how to make money. You know, that's where Warren Buffett made most of his money was an insurance, and anyone that has an insurance business, I have an insurance business. Stu has an insurance business, and insurance has got a huge number of tax deferrals and tax breaks.

Insurance is a great way to make a lot of money. So Progressive, Allstate State Farm, all of them, GEICO, they are making a lot of money, and you're the ones that's paying the profit. I pay it, you pay it. Everybody who pays insurance is making the insurance companies extremely rich. John, thank you very much for the call. Let's move along. Give us a call again, John.

It was great hearing from you. We are going to get to Stu because he, no doubt, has a lot. I got a good text over here. This is from Bob. But we heard from Bob last week. He lives in Naples, and he lost two of his cars were washed away during the storm. And he called to let us know that he used our advice on taking a chance in buying online. And he did.

And he bought two used cars from our dealership. and ordered a new car. So here's his update. Good morning, Bob from Naples with a hurricane damage update. My 2010 and 2016 croas were inspected and totaled by the insurance company. Water came above the wheels. They were towed away by Copart and sent to auction. Beware out there of those used flood cars.

Yeah, they're not going to scrap those cars, folks. They're coming back on the market, and you don't want to buy one of those. He says, this is wild. My certified used 2016, but they purchased for $14,000 in 2018, got a $19,000 offer from the adjuster. $5,000 more than he paid for it four years ago. Based on the comps, though, I think I can get that to $20,000. Four years used and the value went up $5,000. This will be a nice down payment on one of the 22s that I bought from you guys.

But on the stock market. It is. this this this month uh still waiting for uh numbers on the for the 2010 corolla with 25 000 miles um also stephen that's that's one of our um sales associates uh stephen helped me grab a second 20 22 two month old corolla rather than the first 2020 efforts picked out great customer service stay well all bob from naples and bob i'm glad you're safe and that's just a great thing to listen to so many lessons here learn the lesson from bob's old cars which are now on the market also remember that your use car is worth a lot, especially over there on the West Coast

when there's a local shortage of used cars. There's a perfect storm. We had high demand low supply. Now we have off-the-chart demand because of the flood. So a huge percentage of the population on the West Coast of Florida, southwest coast of Florida, is having to buy a car. The only time this show recommends you buy a car is when you have to. Well, you've got thousands of people over there.

rushing out to buy a car. Now, the cars that are being taken off the market are being sold, I would hate to think, maybe to some of the same people that are rushing out to buy the car. So you have a huge number of cars that you should not touch with a 10-foot pole, but you can't tell because they look really good. I mean, it is a science, art, or whatever you want to call it, people that spend their professional careers taking cars that are... flood cars and turning them into seemingly

viable products. So it's a terrible situation. Be careful if you're, if you can hear us on the West Coast. I don't know. Is all the power restored or the wireless? The last I saw there were, it was you know, below a million were out. It was like a few hundred thousand I think still have or without power. And so many on scrupulous people over there in southwest Florida. Can you imagine, does anybody know about all the looting that is going on? It's just

an unfortunate situation and, you know, they're there, and they don't care. They take advantage, you know, under any circumstances. Back to Stu. We have a text from another Bob. This is from a listener in Stewart, Florida. Bob says, good morning. What are the tire rotation pros and cons of front to back and back to forth, back to front versus crisscross rotation? Crisscrossing your tires can create what's called a radial tire pull. Tires, if you were to look straight down on them, the inside edge versus the outside edge is not always a perfect smooth surface, and the tire may actually have a little bit of cone shape. You won't be able to see it, but if you put that tire on the opposite side of the car,

it may cause the car to drift one way or the other. So if your car is driving straight down the road, we always recommend that your tires should be rotated by front's going to the back, back's going straight to the front. Crisscrossing them only should be done if you're having an issue with a pull or a tire wear issue. Sometimes that crisscross can help correct that. Okay. So it's not really a rotation. It's more like a swap.

Yes. Oh, okay. We'll do a tire swap. Well, never mind. We'll call it a rotation. Well, and the reason you're putting them, moving them from front to back and back to front is because on the front wheel drive cars

70% of the weight is all on the front tires and they also do 70% of your braking. So that makes them wear a little faster and by rotating them it keeps the wear patterns even on all four tires and helps your tires last longer so you get the best use out of them. Thanks Rick.

All right. Well, I'm all caught up with tech so I'm going to go over here to anonymous feedback unless it logged me out. It did. but it only takes a second to log back in. I saw one that came in. You said it's only been a couple of days since we got one, but here we go. Here's the question.

If I take over the payments on the remaining months of someone's existing lease, will I be able to purchase the car at the end of the lease for the buyout price that was originally on the lease contract three years ago? The answer that is no, unless there's some strange exceptions

I don't know about, the person on the lease contract is the person. who can buy the lease out. Now, you can make an arrangement with that person to, you know, to help you go through that process, but you don't go on the lease contract when you take over the payments. Well, I'm not sure that, and I don't, this would be like a very unusual situation. If they formally and got on the contract, in that case they would. If I leased a car and then I wanted to, I wanted to transfer the lease deal, I've never done this

or heard about being done. I don't see. why I couldn't call the leasing company and say, I want to assign my lease to Stu, and they would do investigate you and approve you, it would be a, it would be a lot of paperwork. If they would allow it, it would make, it's common, I mean, it just, it makes sense that, you know, there would be a mechanism to do that. Obviously, they get their lawyers and all that. I don't know if they do it though. Well, I think, as a matter of practice. A lease contract is a contract. All contracts can be assigned legally. And it's just a question whether the owner of the contract wants to do it.

And that would depend on the leasing company. But it would be a stretch to say the least. Yeah. So, but right now, barring, you know, that, you know, unusual situation. Yeah, you just work it out with the person that you're taking over the payments for if they want to do that. Have another contract. Yep. Let's see.

We have another one here. It says, why do you require? Why do they require car buyers at new car dealerships to purchase over-priced floor mats? Well, a lot of dealerships will load up vehicles with equipment that are overpriced and unwanted. You can always request not to get any options or you won't buy the car. That might be a tough situation in today's market because a lot of dealers are just taking advantage of the short supply of new cars to load them up with accessories. but you can always put your foot down and find a dealer that won't do that

because they're not required by the manufacturer. Well, there are certain accessories that have high markups. In the case of Toyota, we're very familiar with because we're a Toyota dealer. There's something called Toyogar. That's an accessory put on by the distributor and it's extremely profitable.

And so the dealers all put it on. They pre-order it. They put it on the car you want to buy even though you don't want it or never heard about it. And you mentioned floor mats. Floor mats have a large markup. And so dealers like to, there's different ways dealers try to get you. The worst one is dealer-install accessories.

They'll take something like glass etch or nitrogen and tires that costs them practically nothing, and they'll mark it up 1,000 or 2,000% and it's a dealer-install accessory. The value is practically zero. and they try to do that to you. The other way is by factory. Pinstripes. Yeah, pinstripe. The other way are factory options,

and even the factory has certain options that are a higher margin, and they will take those floor mats, seems to be a favorite, and they like to take these very expensive floor mats and put them in the car, and so when you buy the car, you have to buy the floor mat at the high margin.

Well, back in the old days, what dealers would do with the installed formats, they would get the aftermarket cheap ones and put in there. Now they can't do that, at least I think all manufacturers are doing this because now the Toyota floor mats have these special locks that go in to keep them in place. They've evolved beyond the hook, so they go in there. And I believe you could probably buy an aftermarket version, but they have to have this special lock that works in to the floor of the car. Here's some more anonymous feedback.

Headlines on Sunday, October 2nd, 2022 was that Tesla had missed their deliveryist, Who creates the estimates, and are the estimates ever intentionally set high in an effort to increase the short-term stock price for a quick profit on the sale of the stock? I would say yes to everybody except Tesla. Elon Musk is just one of these people that doesn't care what he says, and he doesn't care about money. So he probably was integral in that estimate, and he missed it. It's a crazy world out there, manufacturing, COVID, the war in Ukraine, supply chain, crane, supply chain. So today for any CEO or any company to forecast accurately is more difficult

than it's ever been. Right. I mean, we, on a smaller scale, we forecast at our, at our dealership. And it's a educated guessing game. And sometimes we're close and sometimes we're way off. And yeah, so that's a normal thing. But you have to forecast because you have to, you know, you plan for all your business operations along the way. So sometimes you get it. Sometimes you don't. Okay, I'm all caught up. Okay, Rick. Actually, I got one quick note from Negan 1. He says, he works for Frito Lay out in Arizona.

And he says, Tesla's actually in conjunction with Frito Lay out there as well. Frito Lay being owned by PepsiCo, they're going to be arranging to have electric vehicles there to do delivery of the Frito Lay chips. And then they have a large solar field. solar panels in the field right next to the Frito-Lay warehouse so they can recharge the trucks by solar power during the day and run the trucks at night doing their deliveries. Wow. That's great. Convenient.

Great idea. And you'll never hear them coming. No. Not a bit until they open a bag of chips. Freedom, my favorite. There was an article in the automotive news, which surprised me and disappointed me a little bit, that the American Automobile Association has been testing the safety items on cars. And one of them was the automatic braking, which I kind of like.

I know Stu does too, has saved my garage wall a couple times. And it automatically applies the brakes, even though you don't see what the obstacle is, it stops the car. And apparently the testing on a lot of cars, one of them was a lot of cars. Toyota, I believe it was a RAV, the AAA tried, and the success rate was only in the 30%. And the damages when they tested it in real traffic situations, the automatic braking wasn't that good. So I haven't had a chance to look into that carefully. That's better than hitting the wall 100% of the time. That's true, yeah.

And my garage wall is there because of it, because it does work. sometimes and yeah there you go well it is it is kind of disturbing to me because i brag on and on about the you know the the backup cameras and the and the passing warnings and the and the braking and a lot of things like that the the braking is a fail safe you got you got to pay attention to the beeps first and what i haven't thought of that you know the nhtsa doesn't test those they test just a car and a crash the nhtsa should be tested the standard safety features. There's a lot of manufacturers are really touting these things as like

lifesavers, and it should be tested, absolutely. That makes you stop and think. And, of course, how long is it going to take the NHTSA or any governmental agency to wake up and know what's going on? We'll be autonomous before that happens. I won't hold my breath. We have a late last minute anonymous feedback that just came in. It's funny.

Ha ha, nitrogen tires. I went to a dealer that wanted to sell nitrogen tires. I asked to see the nitrogen machine. And oops, there was none to be found. The nitrogen machine is your atmosphere around you. You know, I know I say this to the people of the regular listeners. 78% of the air that you breathe, the same air that you put in a tire, is nitrogen. So when they do put nitrogen in the tires, they're not putting 100% nitrogen in there.

That's impossible because there's already air in the tire anyway. And I'm not sure the exact percentage nitrogen you get in a tire when you use quote-unquote pure nitrogen. But to pay for something that's already in your tire and which consumer reports, the Bible, at least for us, that says nitrogen in your tires is worthless. I mean, it's just they tested every tire for a year and found there was no, Fuel economy saving, there was no anything that was beneficial from that, Rick. I'll never forget when a guy that owned a, I believe it was like a cycle shop scooters, said before a group of people that nitrogen helps prevent your tires from wearing on the inside.

And I was scratching my head thinking, what wears the inside of a tire? I think I had heard that they said because oxygen is a corrosive element and it is. It's very reactive and it binds of things. And so they're saying that the oxygen, if you have too much oxygen on the inside of your tire, it's going to corrode and oxidize the inside of the tire. If your tire, if you get a blowout from the inside of your tire corroding, you must put one hell of a lot of miles on that car. I mean, it would take 20 years and you should not, you're not supposed to buy a tire that's over six years old.

Just don't fill your tire with pure oxygen. Right. You're not supposed to pump tire from pure oxygen either. Yeah, exactly. Okay, Stu, are we going to have time to read the email from? This is outside of mine. We have, yeah, so before we get to the mystery shopping report, we have a message that I'm going to read on the air that Earl and Nancy got.

It says, hello, Mr. Stewart. It's James Fronte from the YAA platform up here in St. John's County. I just wanted to say thank you for the $50 check that Mrs. Stewart sent to my wife, Kathy, on September 17th. My wife's birthday was the day before. Thank you for your generosity. Also, I'm watching your show from morning now, and when I looked at a Honda pilot in August of 2021,

Honda the Avenues in Jacksonville, Lusob is the owner. The sales manager tried to get me to sign a similar form about making a deal today and taking delivery on the spot if we agreed on the deal. The same form also had a line for my signature that said all decision makers were present and that the vehicle for my desired needs and the salesperson did his job properly into my satisfaction. I refused to sign the form and the salesperson said

it would be hard to get pricing out of his manager. I thanked the young man for the Costco water bottle and walked out. The sales manager came running and caught me in the parking lot while I was getting into my car. I declined to speak with him and left. For the next week, I kept getting calls on my cell phone from my salesman and the manager. responded to the young salesman and said, thanks, but no thanks, as I won't be emotionally manipulated. The dock fee at the time was $899 plus a $1,900 accessory package. Now it's $999 on the dock fee plus a $2,900 mandatory accessory package. I am so happy that we got my wife the 22 Hyundai Paliside calligraphy back in early February.

Just thought I'd share this with you as your mystery shopping report yesterday made me think of my local Honda dealership. Thank you again for the $50 check to my $1. wife. So yeah, this is what's going on. That's the reality out there. Thanks too. St. John's County. That's up near Jacksonville, I think. I'm not sure. I think it is. Northern Florida. Yes. I think it is. We're going to get to our mystery shopping report, but let me remind you that you two can vote and your vote is very important. As I say, every week, you guys out there that are listening, that are YouTubeing us, that are

Facebook, everything, calling in the show. You make the show. You're an important part of it. So a vote on the Mystery Shopping Report. Has 772-497-6530. We're going to have to Bradenton, Florida, or at least

our Agent Lightning did, and she did another fabulous job as Stu did. And we went to Ferkins, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, in Brayton, Florida. Now back to the recovering car dealer. Furkins.

Furkins. Unusual name. Furkins. On the road again this week, our Mr. Shop took us to the west coast of Florida. Furkins. Chrysler Dodge Jeep in Bradenton, Florida, a little town, small town.

It's unusual in this part of Florida to have this type of town. I've known people in that town, and it's kind of like Mayberry. It's just near Tampa and some rather big areas. but it's located just south of Tampa on the Gulf of Mexico. And the Manatee River. Yeah, Manatee River. This area is battered last week by Hurricane Ian, as you well know.

It'll be a long time before things return to normal. That's an understatement. A long, long time. The worst of the hurricane was experienced further south in Ford Myers Beach area, but the damage was widespread. Last week, we talked about the thousands of cars and trucks that were inundated by water, ocean water. Many swept away.

If we think about floods and we think about water, well, ain't nothing worse than ocean water. Salt water, you know, a flood car is bad enough, but when you have salt water flood, it's even worse. A great many of these vehicles will be totaled by insurance companies, most of them, and will need to be replaced. A lot of these vehicles will wind up in the used car market, some with branded titles and some without. As I said before on this show, flood cars are an industrial. Because there's always a flood somewhere, and there are people that specialize wholesalers and retailers in buying and selling flood cars. These cars are not scrapped like they should be. There should be a federal and state law that's saying you can't take a total car and resell it, but there's not.

So these cars are sold to you and your neighbors, and you don't even know about it in many cases. Be very, very careful when you buy a used car. Thousands of people on the West Coast and Central 4 are currently in desperate need of replacement vehicles that just adds to this terrible situation a desperation to buy and total cars available that look really nice that seem like bargains on the market

that's the worst case scenario you can think of the sudden a man is hitting new and used vehicles at a very unstable time in the car industry I mean here we are in a terrible situation aggravated by an even more terrible situation. The Lofside supply and demand environment had brought out the greed in most car dealers in the last two years,

but Hurricane Ian poured gasoline on the fire, whereas I should say Hurricane Ian poured blood in the water. It's never been a worse time to buy a car than the last two years. For the people on the West Coast, like Bradenton, Florida, it just got worse. Agent Lightning traveled to the disasters zone and hope of identifying a trustworthy dealer and warning the folks of Bradenton

with the bad ones. This report is the first of two-part series, and we'll do the next one next week, and here's the actual report speaking as if I were Agent Lightning. I arrived in the afternoon. The dealership was undergoing some construction, but it looked like it had been well cleaned up after the storm. I was immediately greeted by a salesman named Brad. As soon as I walked in the showroom, Brad thought I was a service customer, since I'd come

in to the service entrance. I told him I was visiting my son on the West Coast while I was here and I planned to buy a new Jeep Wrangler. I told him I had come over from the West Bond Beach area and I really disliked the Chrysler Jeep dealer there near me and Brad says, are you referring to Arrigo? So it's funny. I'm car dealers here about other car dealers and I said, no, it was enabled and then Brad laughed again.

He said he knew of them too. though the two of the most notorious is not too strong a word for those two dealerships Arrigo and Naples I'll have to say in fairness to Arrigo Napleton is more notorious and also in fairness to Arrigo it's not really Arrigo

Rigo sold out how many years ago a couple years ago and Morgan is now the Morgan Group the owner Bradst City had a new firecracker Red Jeep Rangler Sahara Firecracker Red, I like that, Chief Wrangler, say her in stock and available. He said there was a plug-in electric, and it would go 24 miles in all-electric mode before the hybrid system kicked in.

Pretty cool. Yeah, well, you know, there's a few, a few, toilets got one of those, and there's a couple of others. A couple of others. He took me outside to see it. It was parked on the pad near the front door. It was bright red, had an MSRP of 61,290, and there was no addendum. And that's the shocker. Don't hear that very often these days.

We took it out for a test drive. It drove well and was very quick, but it wasn't charged enough for me to try out the all-EV mode. Brad went over everything, and I was in press with the vehicle's technology. We went back in the dealership. Brad led me to a seat and said he would go get the pricing for me. He said, I was lucky to have found the Jeep. The plugins are very rare. I sighed knowing he was setting me up for the big one, the big hit.

You want to know if I wanted to pay cash or finance and how much money I had to put down. That's all standard operating procedure in car dealerships. My anxiety began to rise. Brad left and he said he'd be right back. Returned in three minutes. Hmm. Very quick. With a worksheet, the top line labeled market value was MSRP, 61,290.

The line labeled selling price was the same. $61,290. Now, here we go. There was an $887 dock fee, that's a hidden fee, $19995 electronic filing fee, that's a hidden fee, and a $60 third-party tag fee, obvious, another hidden fee. I don't call them dealer fees anymore because dealer fees has become a generic term, and there are actually dealers out there that are advertising no dealer fee, but they don't say anything about electronic filing fee or a third-party.

party tag fees or dock fees which are just made up names for hidden fees and usually for years they call them dealer fees everything else had it looked legit and yeah those together was like eleven hundred and uh forty seven dollars not a huge amount of money over sticker in today's market and uh brad told me that the owner never marks up his cars and never did during the pandemic or during the inventory shortages and this is uh... quite amazing. Really good actually. And the Jeep Wrangler is about as hot a vehicle as there is on the market today. And a plug-in hybrid Jeep Rangler. And plug-in hybrid really makes it rare. So I was shocked, Stu was shocked, Dancy was shocked when we read this. And so I think it's

a small town thing. I don't even understand the world anymore, the universe. Because they have excessive dealer fees in any other time in history that we would have probably dinged them for that but I mean the fact you're getting like like in with Toyota we have or you mentioned we have plug-in plug-in hybrids they call them primed Prius Prime Rav 4 Prime those are those take well over a year just to even get you know they were hard they were low supply before right and now Toyota dealers those are getting a big premium over MSRP so to see a a Jeep dealer yeah to control himself and only throws junk fees on there I'm impressed Bradenton Florida a little sleepy town near Tampa

right in the heart of the hurricane area not putting an addendum on a car not charging over MSRP except for about $1,100 in hidden fees and on one of the hardest vehicles to buy a very popular Jeep Wrangler even more hard to buy because it's a electric combo hybrid

so there you have it we're great on the curve and we'd like to hear your votes I think our listeners are shocked, too, because there's no grades coming in. It's kidding. Bob gives an A for Furkins. And I'm inclined to go, I can't give them an A. I'm going to give them a B plus, though.

A B plus because they still have the junk fees. You got to reserve the A for the ones that don't do that. Perkins, Chrysler, Dodge, Deep, and Braden, the Florida. Rick, what do you say? Like you, waiting for the grades to come in. It seemed like we kind of like it got a little short there. Well, we shocked. We shocked.

Well, Mark has a B-plus for Furkins, and Jonathan Wellington says, I'm sorry for what Florida's West Coast went through, but due to too many hidden fees, I must give this dealership a B, a decent grade because of no hard sell. Well, let me, and let's do this. Even before the grades ran, this will kind of telegraph my score, but I think you're going to see some higher scores here. FERCEN's Chrysler Dodge Sheep, if you're on the west coast of Florida and you want to buy a vehicle replacement, you have to do it in a hurry. According to this mystery shopping report, this dealership does not add dentum labels. They do have about $1,100 in hidden fees, which we don't like, but everybody does that.

And all the dealers in Florida are doing that, or most of all. And if you want to buy a Chrysler Dodge or Jeep, Jeep, one of the hottest cars on the market today, and you're on the West Coast of Florida, go to Furkins, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, and Braddon, Florida. So if we have any more grades in, we'll get back to the grades. I am. We have all our grades in, so, yeah. Oh, no, Martha on Facebook, gives them a B. I've got some coming in here.

Negan 1. I give it a B-plus. Kirk in West by God Virginia Ferkins Stalantis MSRP plus junk fees much better than more but not perfect

equals a B and let's see oh here we go Tim Gilliland still not a fan of the hidden fees but a B minus Mark Ryan with a B plus Brian Sedlatko with a B

Rocky Blockatiel with a B plus Scott Hunter with a B I got a lot of grades over there. I'm going to agree with them. I see a B to a B plus, really, because the hidden fees don't like them, but you know you're going to be getting them. Yeah. And Doug gives them an A-minus, which is the same thing as a B-plus.

Almost. Who was it? Doug. Oh, Doug, okay. I'm going to go ahead and vote, and this morning, whenever I read the Mystery Shopping Report, I was somewhat impressed. but I definitely am not complacent and therefore, you know, giving them a high grade, I would not. But I'm going to give them a B, and it's all because of junk fees.

Ella, the cat gives them a B out. Yeah, I'm going to give them A-minus. I feel a little guilty about that because of the $1100 in fees, but in view of the special circumstances of Hurricane E and, Flood cars galore. I'm almost emotional about how well they treated Agent Lightning. And I also go back to the small town syndrome. You know, I think small town dealers know that what they do to their customers today

will be remembered tomorrow. And I think that Perkins is just a smart guy. He's in a small town. and if he takes advantage of a customer in a small town, the whole town knows about it. And there's a lot of big dealers around there. There are a lot of competition. If you're a small town dealer,

you pretty much have to take good care of your customers or else you won't have very many customers. They won't repeat. Repeat business is what keeps car dealers around for a long time. And we're speculating that after this whole COVID thing subsides if it ever does, the supply chain and the rest of it, and now the effects of the hurricane, there are going to be a lot

of dealers, they're going to lose a lot of customers because they will remember what they did to them when they exported them and charged them thousands and thousands of dollars over a sticker price. People have long memories, and Perkins knows that, so buy your Chrysler, Dodge

Jeep at Perkins and Braddon Florida, just a little bit south of Tampa. Yeah, great advice. This is rhetoric, but But what would happen to Napleton and O'Rego in Bradenton? Could you imagine, say, the general manager goes to get lunch, and the place that he's having lunch, he has sold cars to half the people that are in there as customers and employees. You know, if you take care of me and treat them right, they're all going to welcome you open arms.

You know, that's a similar phenomenon to Earl. He's very well known in the area, and so maybe he would be evil if he was a little bit more in the way. anonymous. Everybody sees him in a restaurant, go, hey, girl. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. We had another great show, and we hope you think so, and that you will have a wonderful weekend and tune in next week. Same time, 8 a.m. We'll be right here, the oldies channel. No, Doctor. I don't know.